To The KKK – and all others of their kind

[DISCERNING THE MIND OF THE LORD *]

To The KKK – and all others of their kind –

The LORD the Judge of all nations and of every man and woman says to you,

Do you call yourselves after My name, and say that My Book is your Book? Do you put your hope in Me, believing I shall separate you from the children of wrath when they follow their father, the Devil, into the Lake of Fire?

Why then do you hate Me, and curse Me, spilling My blood wherever you can, despising Me for the color of My skin? Do you not know I am the life of every brown-skinned human that has knelt before Me and become Mine? Do you not know they are flesh of My flesh and bone of My bones, that we are one spirit, and one body?

Do you not remember how I said whoever shall offend one of My little ones, it were better for him a stone were hung about his neck and he were drowned in the sea? And yet you call My little children, innocent in their years, venomous names which poison their hearts. Do you not know it is Me, their life, you call nigger, spic, redskin, and chink? Do you not know it is My life you are crushing and breaking and snuffing out? Inasmuch as you do it to the least of one of these My brothers and sisters, you do it to Me.

Have you no fear of Me, who shall add My awful wrath to your torments as you bathe in the lake of horror and pain? Do you think it a light thing to trifle with Almighty God, Lord of Heaven and Earth?

Those whom you call your Grand Dragons are but foul lizards of Hell to Me, and you their venomous brood. I tell you, unless you repent and live lives of service to My multihued brothers and sisters, horror and agony shall follow you all the days of your lives, and there shall be no mercy for you, neither in this world nor in the world to come. My sheep know My voice, and they have My Book, and My Spirit is their life. The goats of Hell I do not know, nor they Me.

_______________

* This is not prophecy as per the Old and New Testament prophets of God, neither is it in the vein of those who hold the “charismatic gifts” continue in this day, but rather a discerning the Lord’s mind and voice according as He has revealed His heart and will to us in His Word, with that same liberty certain seers have taken, as in Francis Thompson’s “The Hound Of Heaven,” and the authors of the hymns, “How Firm A Foundation,” and “ ‘Twas On That Night When Doomed To Know.”

POETRY—IN THE KINGDOM UNDER SIEGE

The burden of Art, especially Poetry, is the establishment – and defense – of Human reality.

This essay is about consciousness, vision, and language in a time when worldview shifts have unsettled peoples’ views of reality, indeed, even how they view their own personhood. And while these seismic upheavals concerning the perception of reality have impacted the general culture, there have been somewhat quieter developments regarding states of consciousness this past century that bear on our literature and poetry, and these – especially the poetry – have seen radical developments in both the uses to which language may be put, and the understanding of what it is, and all of these things are of interest to us, the poets of God’s Kingdom.

This Kingdom is not at present in a placid setting; to the contrary, we are besieged on many fronts by foes of different species, using varieties of weapons, intent on either terminating our existence or obtaining our complete surrender, and the forfeiture (were it possible) of our state of being as children of the Highest.

We may go about our business as people and poets, expecting things to continue as usual in our lives, but I suggest we err in this complacency, and are in grave danger, even as the proverbial frog in the slowly-heated water who got cooked before she knew it!

Take our consciousness, for instance, as children of the God whose Spirit indwells us as the principle of our lives, and whose word establishes the reality we live in and by. This consciousness, which is our joy living in His truth, has been deemed dangerous in light of an emerging cultural consensus as to what are acceptable states of consciousness and concepts of reality. If you think I am kidding, or exaggerating, I’m afraid you are the oblivious aforementioned frog.

We may think of Postmodernism as simply the new worldview on the block, and while a bit extreme in its Political Correctness rules, a needed antidote to the excesses and arrogance of cultural bigotry and the old Modernism with its blind trust in Enlightenment reason, secular humanism, and social progress, all supposedly based on a “logocentrism” and Eurocentrism that disregard or oppress varying viewpoints, minority cultures and subcultures. However, according to the new postmodernist (PM) thought, we who live by the Bible, and seek to bring to God’s world knowledge of His existence – as well His justice and His saving mercies – through proclaiming the person and work of Jesus Christ, are deemed guilty of violations – crimes! – against humanity. We are accused of spiritual and intellectual imperialism, seeking to impose our culture’s story on other cultures, indeed, having our story dominate all others, while – the accusers say – it is simply one of many cultural constructs, real for us, but an infringement on the equally valid realities of what other peoples and cultures have determined are their truths. There are no universal and absolute truths, they say, and to affirm there are is to be a Totalist or a Fundamentalist, one who cruelly disrespects and seeks to invalidate other cultures’ beliefs and realities.

Nor is this just a harmless tendency to relativizing truths and beliefs which can be successfully argued against by a clear mind, but the principles of new world-wide (starting from the West) philosophical and legal initiatives that are sweeping up all our institutions – education, politics, sociology, science, law, medicine, art, theology, psychology, history, literature, etc. – into their fold, and that will actually outlaw dissenters as disturbers of the social order. That this is not a mere “futurist prediction” may be seen in that this is a growing consensus widely established even now, possessing legal teeth, as Canadians and some Europeans know – and even Americans, although the encroachment here is subtle, for the present. Which is not to say that postmodernism is entirely destructive, for it also has important positive aspects we shall consider shortly.

The question for us is, how may we as poets and writers effectively speak into this situation? (Other artists will have their own tasks and MOs, though they may be edified by ours.) First of all, we should not shy from publishing the vision we have been given and are alive in. That many do not spiritually apprehend the existence of God as He is revealed by His own Word, particularly in the person and sayings of the Lord Christ, should not deter us from unabashedly proclaiming life as we know it in Him, speaking from the awareness we have in this Realm of Consciousness, entrance into which is only through the living door, Christ the gatekeeper to eternal life, and the wondrous cultures therein – some in the process of being formed right now.

In these days the human race en masse is under lethal assault by spiritual forces of darkness, vast multitudes of us taken captive by the prince of that host at his will; even the idea – the divine image – of what it is to be human is being destroyed, or more nicely put, deconstructed; indeed, this is one of the prime tactics in the siege of humankind: ignorant of what we are, what we are meant to be, we have not withal to throw off the multifarious death that bears down so ferociously upon us, albeit with great subtlety at times.

Artists – poets and writers especially – have a calling to create – to manifest – human actuality within the actuality of God, thereby allowing light to illumine our condition, that those in darkness yet who love “the truth” (John 18:37) may hear Jesus’ word and see His light “shining through us” and, drawn so to Him, enter the kingdom we joyously and passionately herald. True humanity is preserved in God’s kingdom alone; elsewhere it is darkened and in ruin. Which is not to say that everywhere in the kingdom it is known and manifested in good health; like lingering infections the old satanic distortions still cling to some of us: we are not to be light only to those without, but also to our kin, those within, for their healing and freedom – as we ourselves gain it.

Bob Dylan (I do not know his spiritual state, but ask the High King to save him) said a true thing in his song, “Chimes of Freedom,” how they flash like lightning,

strikin’ for the gentle, strikin’ for the kind,
strikin’ for the guardians and protectors of the mind,
and the poet, and the painter far behind his rightful time…

It is, in part, to remedy his sad complaint this is being written, and so glorify the King of artists, who has made us, and not we ourselves.

I would like to discuss three aspects of our situation: Poetry in “the last days”; An aesthetic for the 21st century; then, lastly, The Global Arena of Consciousness – and the Story beneath all stories.


Poetry in “the last days"

This term “last days” refers to the entire period of time from the coming of Jesus Christ into the world to His coming again to close the age, ushering in an everlasting kingdom that shall love its poets, especially Himself, King of the poets.

Given the Biblical worldview, the imminent danger billions of our fellow humans are in, our status as minor prophets in the spirit of the Prophet (Rev. 19:10; John 17:18) and the terrible encroaching darkness (more blighting than the shadow of legendary Mordor) wasting both earth and souls in its occult – hidden – blast heat (if the shadow so wastes, consider that which throws the shadow!)…. Given these things what ought our poetry to be?

Among the familiar engines of destruction surrounding our camp are the latest in the satanic armory: to be precise, these are engines of deconstruction, which attempt to take apart – disassemble through critical analysis – our language and use of reason, claiming these latter are valid only for the culture that “created” them and no other, thereby invalidating the claim that God and His word have absolute and universal reality, but are instead culture-created and thus culture-bound local – not universal – “realities.” The “texts” (read: sources of authority) in our culture are subjected to a hermeneutic suspicious of truth-claims which by their nature declare anything false, bad or even incorrect; the PM hermeneutic considers such exclusions exercises of oppressive power.

Against such ideological assaults we respond with vigorous intelligence and activity of our own; in the past this has been called “the defense of the Faith.” As artists we are not involved in apologetics per se, for it is not primarily doctrine we fight or promote; what we fight against are the states of consciousness and ways of seeing that have come to prominence in our day which say there is no absolute truth, nor is there intrinsic coherence or value to personhood save what we – culture by culture (each culture having its own “truths” and “values”) – invest it with, and thus what we might erroneously term “absolute” and “universal” meanings or realities are simply constructs of respective cultures. Language itself, the new thinking claims, is a construct of a particular culture with its own logic and view of reality that is neither applicable nor communicable to other cultures. This philosophical cynicism and nihilism is already in place – and constantly gaining ground – in many of our Western institutions, as noted above. This “movement” gathers under its umbrella many disparate groups, and together they constitute a formidable adversary, in concert projecting a nihilistic epistemology so as to disarm all concerned opponents. We need to learn how to speak and be in the face of this cloud of corrosive philosophical poison, the equivalent in the intellectual sphere what radioactive fallout is in the physical. There are some who are invested in this as a means to power for marginalized and oppressed minority groups (gender, sexual orientation, ethnic, economic, etc), to “throw off” the yokes imposed on them by “logocentric” (word- or reason-oriented) and “Eurocentric” majority cultures. The name of this game is power, with “truth” being irrelevant and “justice” defined by special interest groups. (Two discerning Christian books on the subject are, Postmodern Times, by Gene Edward Veith, and The Death of Truth, by Dennis McCallum, Ed.)

To be fair, there is a desire among some postmodernists – in their “deconstructing” the “texts” (sources of authority) of certain dominant cultures – to do away with those boundary-creating “truths” and categories that exclude or marginalize those who don’t concur or fit in. Christians, after their withstanding the hammers of modernist assaults, often took up these “cudgels of persuasion” themselves in their “evangelism,” and alienated many. PM has opened to our view new ways of thinking and relating, showing us the value of inclusion and inclusive styles of being the church and evangelizing. We may learn from PM to be aware of our oppressive and power-mongering styles and tactics, turning the lens of the hermeneutic of suspicion upon ourselves to see if there are things in us which ought not be. We may even, as has been suggested, learn to number the conversations we have entered into with those we evangelize, rather than merely tallying supposed conversions – friendships as opposed to “conquests.”

The inescapable end result, however, of PM is the eradication of all commonalities between human groups and the mutual exclusion of all ethnicities, cultures, and subcultures, thereby utterly fragmenting and disintegrating the human family. I understand this was not what Jacques Derrida, an important postmodern thinker, intended, but it is what is happening.

As the authority and intactness of God’s word – Scripture – cannot be successfully overthrown by direct onslaught, then the assault is to be made on the very foundations of language itself, and the attempt to relativize those cultures in which and from which God spoke, and in which He acted in history, thereby invalidating His universal authority. As a satanic strategy it is very clever, and do not be deceived into thinking this is not its source. And if it is validated by a cultural consensus, its enforcement can be given legal teeth.

Our response to this “shadow of Mordor” must gleam with the brilliance of otherworldly light, and be possessed of a robust vitality such as can win the hearts of those who see something greatly desirable in the quality of our being, for our “weapons” are not carnal, but glorious in the depth and profundity of Christ’s heart. This gives a new clarity to His saying we are now the light of the world (Matt. 5:14-16). As artists our weapons against this particular form of darkness are our spiritual and human actuality manifested in our art. Remember, we know God because He became human – took on human nature and walked among us – and the attack on the integrity of human personality impacts the significance of the Incarnation. We would do well, then, to study the postmodern assault on reason, language and meaning, so that we comprehend it, and can answer to it.

The challenge, then, for artists of the Kingdom, is how their art may be such as withstand this assault on our lives, for such it is. Our lives and our art are not impotent in this regard. We walk with the High King and trust the power of His gleaming scepter, and we know that things are not as they appear, that horrific destruction is all about, our adversaries voracious predators cloaked in invisibility (indeed we do not wrestle against flesh and blood – Eph. 6:12). Given these things, we should have great hearts, great stories, and great art.


An aesthetic for the 21st century

Let me beg the reader’s indulgence a moment, as I wish to comment on and critique some essays – from Poetry (Chicago) – and a book from a university press, which are over couple of decades old; I do this because, first, the publication of these items were watersheds – or reflected watersheds – in the development of contemporary aesthetics, and in dealing with these foundational premises I critique what is built upon them; and, second, I knew of no forums in which to publish such critiques when they appeared, whereas now there are. So bear with me, please, if I occasionally speak as though these articles and the book were current – as developments in aesthetics over the past twenty-five years are indeed current, as voices have spoken, establishing visions which are false, and still stand, and need to come down.

The following quote is from an essay in March 1984’s Poetry (Chicago), “Waking Up Over The Aeneid,” by Paul Breslin:

With Skepticism about the favored destiny of this or that people comes skepticism about teleological interpretations of history in general, a habit of mind that makes epic itself an intractable form for us. Epics such as Homer’s or Virgil’s—or even Milton’s, the last great example of the genre—tell a story universally known among its audience, a story which, moreover, assigns a universally acknowledged meaning to the sequence of events. As Alisdair MacIntyre argues in After Virtue, we no longer try to understand our experience by telling a story; we perceive a sequence of events but not a plot, not an action in the Aristotelian sense….That the kind of public narrative poetry we associate with the epic cannot grow in post-Romantic soil may be regrettable, but it is nobody’s fault, nor can sheer force of will restore the epic to life. In a pluralistic culture, there are many stories, but no great story whose resonance is immediately audible to everyone. As Czeslaw Milosz says in The Witness of Poetry, “For us, classicism is a paradise lost, for it implies a community of beliefs and feelings which unite poet and audience.”

This is the “bird’s-eye view” of postmodernism in literature; the “great story” Breslin talks of “whose resonance is immediately audible to everyone” – i.e., a universally acknowledged reality – is nowadays termed a metanarrative, an “overarching explanation of reality based on central organizing ‘truths.’ ” In his book, The Death of Truth, Dennis McCallum (with Jim Leffel) comment,

Those who believe in universal explanations of reality are considered to be totalistic or logocentric in their thinking. Instead, postmodernists believe each group tells its own story or narrative, their own understanding of reality—understandings that others should never discount, exclude, or marginalize. Totalistic thinkers such as fundamentalists (…anyone who claims to know truth or charges another religion with falsehood…) want their story to dominate all other stories. (p. 201)

This view is the natural consequence of the denial of God: His story is discounted; instead we are reckoned but evolved beasts in an accidental and purposeless existence. Our consciousness of our history – read, “random and often bloody happenings” – has no redeeming value, so this reasoning goes, and our art but pointless signposts on our helpless, meaningless sojourn through futility and anguish. Being culture-bound our “realities” are but our various tribal constructs built on our peculiar languages and experiences.

Although such nihilistic vision purports to be an authentic and universally valid world-view (despite the PM claim there are no universals!) it in fact is the intellectual and aesthetic disintegration taking over much of Western civilization, the minds of many of whose leaders have been blinded by a stealthily encroaching global darkness.

Meanwhile people the world over turn from the fantastic and useless mythologies of popular and classical antiquity, from the bleak perceptions of the self-proclaimed “evolved apes” become erudite, and from the “science” so impeccably turned against them, to their own collective intuitive vision, where simple perception makes sense both in terms of daily life and historical perspective: there is a palpable evil at work in the world not attributable to the mere bestiality of animal life – not even the wild carnivores – but to an image like man yet its utter antithesis. There is diabolic evil afoot in the world; somehow the gates of the dark realm have been opened wider than ever before! Intuition – as in much science fiction and fantasy – gives rise to a view of the earth, with all its sentient life, as an enchanted yet horribly besieged domain, and the dry rustling of the thoughts of the intelligencia in their chrome, steel, and glass tree-tops are as divorced from the consciousness of the global masses as their “literacy” and “art” are from the verities in the howling archetypal heartlands. The strange spin of the apologists of purposelessness and disintegration of meaning are as little side-pools in the great epic current of the human adventure on the Dark Planet.

We are here presented with a challenge – we the artists of the kingdom of God. The literati in the PM camp – who are great in number and influence – say there is “no community of beliefs and feelings which unite” artist and people. But the apostles – I have Paul particularly in mind – labored and succeeded against even greater odds. What turned the battle for them was the Spirit of Christ in their courageous, uncompromising, and wise proclamation of the Story of the Ages, and in the King’s call – command, if you will – for all men and women everywhere (Acts 17:30, 31) to turn from darkness to His light, joining Him in His Story of redemption and eternal life.

That such a glorious metanarrative can be told – and received – in this day is obvious. How else explain the immense popularity of the film version of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings? (Or even the first of the Matrix films?) As in the sixties counterculture (when the books were famously loved) great multitudes longed for a story that overrode the atheistic separating of faith in God (and the whole supernatural realm) from reason, which separation resulted in “there is no God in reality,” and thus neither are humans made in His image, so that what we are are meaningless things devoid of true personality in an impersonal universe. Tolkien, however, whose reason was informed by a knowledge of God, held forth in his work a mythic world that was ordered and meaningful, where absolute good and absolute evil (Francis Schaeffer’s “thesis & antithesis”) warred for the souls of the inhabitants of Middle Earth. The hearts of many, then as now, intuit an absolute order, design, and benevolence in this creation, as well as the antithesis of that, an evil which ravages and devours all that is good and sane.

Can we so tell the Story – or reflect it, or manifest a glimpse of it – in such a way as to arrest the hearts of those who see our art?

I refer now to the other article in Poetry (Chicago). In the August 1983 issue voices are raised telling us what must and must not be in order to have a great poetry – or even an authentic poetry. In the essay, “The Neural Lyre: Poetic Meter, the Brain, and Time,” by Frederick Turner and Ernst Pöppel – we are told that metered poetry alone is to be considered genuine, and that free verse is but an unwholesome aberration peculiar to bureaucratic and/or totalitarian states; we are told, in short, “it is not poetry.” This the supposed word that hath gone forth from Parnassus – alleged to be located somewhere around Chicago.

Quite some years have passed since this article, and likely they have published other – perhaps even opposing – views. One might think the view mentioned is outdated, but it is not the case. Just because many today write in measures other than formal meter does not mean metered poetry has no stalwart defenders! Indeed, a linguistic warfare exists in the arena of poetic consciousness, and only poetry – poems! – shall decide it.

Perhaps the last significant modern poet (writing in English) representing the tradition of poet-as-man-of-letters was – arguably – T.S. Eliot; he was withstood in his poetic/linguistic endeavors by William Carlos Williams, who saw his use of scholarship and literary allusion, and in particular his metered verse, as antithetical to what Williams was trying to do with language, that is, find a measure inherent in speech instead of imposed from without. Ezra Pound was friend to both men; he influenced W.C. profoundly in regard to “de-poeticizing” his poems, bringing in an organic vitality through the use of image, with an utmost economy of words, in real speech. Oddly, he gave the same advice to both his friends, but they put it to different use.

Eliot took the world of poetry by storm with his long poem, The Waste Land. When it came out it crushed Williams; he could not deny its power, opposing as it did his own work with language.

That’s the trouble with genius
he will create his reality
and we must live with it

Williams, however, had genius and power of his own, although it was slow going, and it was his to provide the foundation of a new poetry, while not building high upon it. His long poem, Paterson, is considered by most (himself included) a failure. He was discovered by a young poet living in Paterson (N.J.), Allen Ginsberg, who drank deeply of his poetics, as did numerous others afterwards, until Williams was seen as the master of a new school of poetry. It is important to learn of these things, and to see demonstrations (actual poems) of the uses the new poets put language to.

In the last section of Eliot’s poem – “What the Thunder Said” – his erudite (obscure) appeal to hope for salvation in purgatorial fires, the Tarot, and the Hindu Upanishads (a scatter-shot approach to spirituality) in the final two stanzas, rather than offering Redemption from his wasteland of letters, is the pyrite marker of its grave.

These are some of the seminal developments – and ongoing dynamics – contributing to the situation in contemporary poetry. Whether the schools adhering to traditional meter or those of the new poetry will prevail, will not be decided by essays or arguments: only poetry – poems – will settle it. It is not a set of “rules” that shall determine any great poetry to be written, but a poet who knows what he or she is about. Only a poet can resurrect poetry from its lettered grave, its trashcan of the peoples.

On another front – as part of the postmodernist siege – are the voices of M.L. Rosenthal and Sally M. Gall (R & G) in their work, The Modern Poetic Sequence: The Genius of Modern Poetry (Oxford Univ. Press, 1983). Their discernment of internal dynamics in sequential poetry is profound, but they introduce serious error in their views, and such a mixture of truth and error is dangerous, as one may easily swallow poison if it is covered or mixed with nutritious and tasty fare.

In their Forward, R & G say – concerning the formulation of aesthetic theory – “Relevant theory grows out of direct engagement and sufficient empathy with literary works” (the rest of their quotes herein are likewise from the Forward). While this maxim is sound, and their insights into the nature of the modern poetic sequence keen, they have adopted the postmodern critical approach, the eventual result of which is the dehumanization of poetry. This they did as early as 1983. It is now – in 2008 – the fashion of the day in letters to declare (as we have seen) the demise of epic, dramatic, narrative poetry. (This would apply to all literature, not just poetry – and it would make the Bible, alleged to use outmoded thought-forms and culturally limited worldview presuppositions, irrelevant to modern thought – and it behooves us to be aware of and counter such assertions.) In what follows we will look from the “ant’s-eye view” at the effect of PM on poetry.

Poetry, R & G say, is no longer to be a poet’s voice lifted in song, as such might be contaminated by “externally imposed narrative, dramatic, or logical structuring.” “A poem,” they insist, “is not a literal communication but a structure of affect…” and “what counts in poetry is its dynamics, not its alleged subject matter.” This is the dehumanization of poetry, its reduction to mere “units of affect” where what is crucial is but “the emotional charge of the language.” When the perception dominates the consciousness that there is no order to history, either of the human race or of the lives of its individuals, then the relevance of “voice,” “character,” “drama,” and “plot” must give way to a poetry stripped of personality and history, leaving but moments of affect and awareness which move by their own internal logic, by “successive reorientations of awareness and modulations of feeling.” R & G admit that “this evolution produces an ever more elusive and forbidding poetry,” but it does not seem to trouble them that poetry is now to be – in their view – out of the hands of the people and solely in the domain of the intellectuals and literati – those trained to delve into the obscure.

The value of the work, The Modern Poetic Sequence, is in its focusing upon the affective dynamics in and between poems, giving them a coherence based upon internal movement and vitality rather than external form, thus laying the foundation for long poetic works, without using the tool of formal meter. The disservice they do the art consists in their denial that there is any meaning in personhood (and in its art) except for random intense moments of feeling and/or awareness, or in history except for insignificant, purposeless events.

As Francis Schaeffer indicated in his gem of a book, the God who is there [sic], if postmodernists assert there is no Biblical God, and the cosmos is accidental and meaningless, it follows they would find no meaning and significance in the skin-bags of chemicals they see humans as. But God is, and we see in the light of His revelation, and would shed this light far and wide.

Do not be afraid – do not be intimidated – by those secular visionaries holding up their various banners championing Meaninglessness, Incommunicability, the Illusion of personality, the Demise of reason, the Absence of universal truth, and so on. We are authentic spiritual children of the infinite-personal God; we need to learn to speak as such in the midst of a blind and mad world. Consider: created in His image and likeness, and in accordance with His decree, we are given to possess certain inalienable qualities, namely, a) “immortality of the soul,” or as John Murray put it, “indivisible and indestructible, immortal subsistence” (Collected Writings, Vol. 2, p. 21) in either Heaven or Hell, depending on whether we are His or not; b) full moral responsibility for our choices and actions. (May I lay the blame on Him or any other creature for my disobedience to His commandments? I may not.) c) With regard to our sentience: by God’s decree we are indestructible souls having unending subsistence in the consciousness we now have. From His promises we children are given infallible assurance He will save and keep our souls in this life and forever; the Westminster Confession (III; iv) phrases it, by God’s decree we are “unchangeably designed” to this fair destiny. There is an absoluteness to this status. He has immutably set us in the safety of His Son. Notwithstanding this wondrous gift, in this phase of our existence we are in training as moral agents absolutely responsible for our choices and actions. (Thank God for the precious cleansing blood!)

We are partakers of His divine nature through the promises by which He has united Himself with us and separated us from the world, delivering us from the power of darkness in His death and resurrection, translating us into the kingdom of God’s Son. But note, our possession of His qualities will always be of a lesser and derivative nature. We will possess them only by virtue of “possessing” Him – not having them in and of ourselves, i.e., not intrinsically.

Still and all, in the face of those who look upon me as merely a “skin-bag of chemicals and water” with no inherent significance whatever, soon-to-be-refuse in a later-to-be-extinguished solar system, shall I not assert my royal and absolute status as a member of God’s family in an unending kingdom? I am most conscious of the absolutes that pertain to my existence and my status, and if I rightly distinguish these lesser – derived – absolutes from the glorious and eternal absolutes of the Almighty God, I will not err in ascribing to humans those qualities that belong solely to Him.

These qualities given us by the Creator when He made us in His image, and after His likeness, are they not among the very qualities that, in Tolkien’s term, afford us to be sub-creators?

And thus I speak,

One mustn't let the image take
over
voice

nor language matrix
heart

the aesthetic
is this:

absolute sentience
wears words
as crystalline structure
diamond

spirit and mind
in sync

the ontologic truth
whole and nothing but
man

transparent
and irrefutable.

This is the only poem remaining from a (now lost) series to postmodern critics. It is an affirmation of personhood as irrefutable and absolute reality. We are not the negligible things it is asserted we are, but brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus, and children of the Father of light, sons and daughters who shall never perish, and who shall be actually like our Elder Brother, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). Given these wondrous realities it is clear I may assert I am among the highest of “things” – only personality made in the image of God can make this claim – and what is our poetry but being solidified into language?

Williams and Pound of another time…and yet…Teachers in the school of poetics…yea…teachers in human consciousness, the poiesis of, masters of consciousness-as-reality, poetry solid as any jewel, full as any heart. (From, The Lightning Herald: Un Journal De Poètes Terribles, p. 72).

Interwoven in the matter of “what is personhood” is the issue of what is language, and particularly, what is poetry, quintessential language?  We, as emissaries of the King of Heaven and earth, endued with His spiritual power, appreciate a view of poetry such as Charles Olsen sought to develop in one of its aspects; to him “the poem itself must, at all points, be a high-energy construct and, at all points, an energy-discharge” (cited in Louis Simpson’s Three on the Tower:  The Lives and Works of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams) and to us it is indeed that.  Does someone object that these are poets of the world we are building upon?  Solomon said, “…the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just” (Prov. 13:22).  And their labors in the language are indeed treasure, by which we may glorify God and win the hearts of men and women.  The words that come out of our mouths – and pens – carry life and death in them (Prov. 18:21).  The very energy and truth of God may be in them.

The Global Arena of Consciousness – and the Story beneath all other stories

Let postmodernists condemn and critique; we are living in the Story that continues underneath all stories – some of these reflecting it dimly as mirage-images – and if we excel in our craft and in our spirits, our words will ring with the richness of truth, and contain a robust unearthly light, which, God willing, may illumine and touch even our adversaries’ hearts.

Do we have a vision of – I mean, do we see – what is going on in various realms of the world today, in the spiritual regions, the “world of letters” and the arts, the wars, the world of nations, politics, liberation movements, and the virtual world of online global awareness (to name but a few aspects of life on this planet)? A term I use to designate the gestalt of this reality is the Global Arena of Consciousness. In this arena voices are lifted up proclaiming the supremacy of their visions of reality, and the postmodernists are but one of many camps vying for the mastery.

Can you envision it? In it stand the spirits – the very voices, words, awareness – of men and women from the beginnings of recorded history, those whose words were spoken into the air upon the earth, whose voices did not fall to the ground till they had eventually lighted on a page and were kept for ages of humans yet to come. All the poets, seers, prophets, magicians, occultists, etc. who had their words or thoughts saved in some written form now exist in the arena. In some sectors it may appear to be a battleground of sorcerers.

You might imagine the kinds of people who strive for the mastery, seeking to have their visions of what is real dominate – by virtue of their power – other competing visions. Not only the various sorts of seers contend, but economists, politicians, psychiatrists and psychologists, musicians, singers, even the mad. You who are seers (by the word of God) will appreciate how demonic spirit-entities seek to gain a hearing through humans who “channel” them much as mediums did a century ago. Anyone who thinks they KNOW something – or has an agenda to further – takes a shot on the world stage. Be assured that the Global Arena of Consciousness is the world stage, although not every lifted voice gets a wide hearing; in fact, very few do, and those by dint of either their genius (or perhaps even cunning), their political/military power, or by the force in their inner being. There may be other factors that get people heard globally, such as atrocious acts or other major evil doings. And the Lord, of course, places what He wants where and when He wants it.

The great writers of earlier ages, for example, and many artists and writers of the present day are in the Arena. Tolkien is well known – and loved – in it. Our political leaders – our recent presidents, and the leaders of other nations – are all in this arena, for as our lives hinge upon the doing (and undoing) of nations, so we listen to the voices of those who wield power, and effect events worldwide. Many listen to those teachers who purport to see what exists in the hidden realms, the realms called by some the spirit-world, or the place where other beings than ourselves exist, and where we ourselves will be fully conscious when this life is over. Not all believe such teachers, but they are among the most heeded and sought out of those voices on the world stage. Some have not lived on this earth for centuries, and some not for millennia, but they speak as loudly as those living now. For even in ancient times, before ever there were computers – or electricity – the words of some notable people were committed to memory and to writing. One might say that in the Arena of Consciousness are vast repositories of voices, many not belonging to those living in this realm now, but which may be called up and activated by the living.

This global arena of consciousness – and the activity within it – is a reality we are all a part of. This is part of a metanarrative that cannot be denied. In this great ocean of collective consciousness it will be words of power that prevail. There will be words attended by political and military power, and there will be those containing spiritual power. Does anyone think the Lord of the world will not speak into this arena, through certain He has raised up to this end?

Are you a visionary? A seer schooled by the Son of God, well acquainted with His word, an experienced veteran of the satanic wars, an accomplished craftsperson in the ways of language? Have you lived a life in the spirit unseen by natural eye, a life of adventure, suffering, joy, loss, gain, ignominious failure, renewal, a life of love and spiritual combat? Do you have a story to tell? A visionary adventure, nonfiction? Hold your course, hold steady and true. Well-crafted stories that are part of the grand Story slowly unfolding in this world beneath the radar of those without spirit-sight will soon become highly desired by editors who realize their value.

CAN THERE ANY GOOD THING COME OUT OF WOODSTOCK?

(with apologies to St. John’s Gospel, 1:46)

There is as great disdain among Christian writers and speakers – Our Christian Leaders – toward Woodstock and the ‘60s generation it symbolizes as there was among rabbinic authorities in ancient Israel toward the district of Galilee, and the little village of Nazareth within it, during the time Jesus was alive in that nation. Even Nathaniel of Cana (another little Galilean village), who was to become an Apostle, initially saw no connection of Messiah with Nazareth,[1] and hence no enduring worth in that place.

This is what two writers who are cited in Christian author Os Guinness’ “landmark” work on the ‘60s, The Dust Of Death,[2] have to say:

First, social scientist Robert Nisbet:

“I think it would be difficult to find a single decade in the history of western culture when so much barbarism – so much calculated onslaught against culture and convention in any form, and so much degradation of culture and the individual – passed into print, into music, into art, and onto the American stage as the decade of the Nineteen Sixties.”[3]

Second, social and political philosopher Allan Bloom:

“Enlightenment in America came close to breathing its last in the sixties.”[4]

Compare these with ancient rabbinic attitudes:

“There was a general contempt in Rabbinic circles for all that was Galilean.”[5]

“…the wretched town of Nazareth…[that] small despised place in despised Galilee.”[6]

The old rabbis thought only in Judea – and particularly at its center, Jerusalem – was there to be found godly wisdom and practice, and that Galileans in general were rough and ignorant peasants (although it was ceded “they cared more for honor than for money”[7]), devoid of worth before God.[8]

Likewise is there a consensus among many Christians that Woodstock has no spiritual worth, but rather is the bane of all decency and wisdom, and what the generation Woodstock typifies is a blight on our world, worthy of all censure.

                                        *                     *                     *                     *                     *

I am not of a mind to defend Woodstock or laud its great virtues, as I am well aware the Yellow Submarine [9] sank – that our dreams and visions of changing the world for good came to nothing. And I want to say I do not consider the militant radicals – SDS, Weathermen, etc. – what I call the Woodstock generation, but fringe extremists. Nor do I include the Vietnam anti-war movement in “Woodstock,” at least not as one of its core “distinctives.” What I seek to do in this little piece of writing is show that something good did indeed come out of there. And I would that you brothers and sisters of mine in Christ stop knockin’ the place I call home, be it ever so humble and mean in your eyes!

When I talk of Woodstock I refer to a spiritual awakening, and to the quest for genuine, loving community – these two things.

Before the Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York, in August of 1969, the seekers and wanderers that comprised the counter-culture youth of the ‘60s were sometimes called simply the Tribe, or Human Tribe, in honor of the Native Americans they respected for their simple lives and love of the land. The first time I became aware such a segment of society existed was in the summer of 1961, while visiting my two closest friends in the world, Gordon, and his sister, Phoebe. Redheaded Irish kids, Gordie a dancer and musician (Julliard), Phoeb a dancer (Julliard, Martha Graham), both with large hearts and good senses of humor. I was, admittedly, the culturally deprived Jewish kid (although I loved Kerouac in high-school English!); hangin’ with them was joy and education, rich as they were in soul and art. We both came from the same Manhattan neighborhood – the upper East Side, me from Park Avenue and 94th Street, they from 95th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues – and had known each other a couple of years before I went into the Marine Corps, and out of which I had just been freshly discharged (this before Nam).

They were now living in a loft in Chinatown, on East Broadway, and this was the first I had seen them for a year or so. After my time in the Corps, and then bumming at Carolina Beach in North Carolina, they were sights for my sore eyes!

As I was relaxing in the loft, catching up with them, they gave me this capsule – organic mescaline they called it – and said, “Take it, you’ll like it!” Trusting and loving them, I did.

Gordie, 5’ 11”, well-built and vigorous, usually merry-hearted, a bush of red hair on his head, and Phoebe, a classically beautiful face, high cheekbones, rich red hair, and a lithe well-formed body, they walked and moved with grace.

Dvorak’s symphony, Billy the Kid, was on the stereo, and it seemed there was a surreal gunfight happening in the air around us, the music unusually vivid and penetrating, sounds as solid as matter. Everything in the room – all the objects – glowed as though I were in an enchanted realm where things had innate beauty and life, and lavished the vivid essence of their being into my own through the wondrous portals of sight, sound and touch. I had never known life to be so glorious and rich!

A bearded man dressed in white robes had earlier been by our place to drop something off, and I was told after he left it was from him we got our drugs, and as I now looked out the window onto East Broadway I saw him and the two young women – also dressed in white – who usually accompanied him, gaily and gracefully walking down the street, I said to him in my thoughts, “It’s because of you my mind is deranged like this!” For along with the ecstasy of such heightened perceptions there was also an agony of inward awareness, and such profundity of affect – feeling – it was almost unnerving!

For Phoebe had once been my girlfriend of sorts, and I greatly desired the comfort and intimacy of her love now that I was back in New York, and would ordinarily have approached her on this wise, but under the influence of this… this having entered through the doors of perception into a strange heaven and hell (the titles of two Aldous Huxley books that were on the table before me, on the topic of this experience) – I found that I was incapacitated to broach this most personal of all personal questions from a terrible fear of being rejected by her. She was so much more of a person – the dignity, depth, and glory of her being! – than I had ever realized, and who was I to approach her with my petty desires and designs?

She was gorgeous and desirable beyond words, a quiet, joyous fire of a woman, and I stunned and overwhelmed by my own fear into silence. Still, aside from the pain of this, my heart was calm, and I thrillingly alert to these new depths of life.

They gathered me up and told me we were all going out to eat, and then go to a party. We went to a little restaurant in the neighborhood, and they ordered, but I couldn’t eat in this state, all I wanted was a beer.

At the party I met some new people (in my silent grokking of them) and I was continually amazed at the richness of their beings, the depth and beauty. It was as though I could see into the very hearts of them, and intuit easily the essence of their personhood. What a wonderful gift of sight! Yet it was deeper than sight, it was a knowing with my heart, an actual experiencing their hearts! As I sat there filled with the treasure of our shared lives, I realized I knew nothing of life, that I was ignorant to a profound degree. I had been a pseudo-juvenile delinquent, trying to be a tough guy and a lover, and after the Marines I didn’t know what I was. In later years I called this my “young jerk” stage, and from which I was transformed into a “young fool,” just one small step up.

Suddenly someone came in the room where most of the dancing was (and where I sat), and said, “We gotta split, the cops are here – too much noise!” So I followed someone who seemed to know where they were going and found myself out in the street (separated from my friends), and I willed myself to look as though I were a normal person out for an evening’s stroll, and not a drugged-up whatever you might call me! [LSD, and I think mescaline also, were still legal at this time, though I felt like an outlaw, being so conscious through the use of a drug.]

This may not sound much like I am defending my point, but bear with me; this was my initiation into the society of the counter-culture of the 60’s.

A day or two later I bought a book called Philosophy Made Simple (sort of like the …For Dummies series of our day), the first step in my quest to comprehend Life and Being. And I began to voraciously read. Freud, Jung, psychology, literature, anything that promised the depth and wisdom I knew I lacked, but had glimpsed the possibility of.

Soon after this experience I went to a junior college in Ocala, Florida – living with the family of my closest friend in the Marines – as my dad wanted me out of the city where he felt I might come under bad influences. I found teachers in Ocala who were a delight, and they were glad to have someone who had a genuine thirst for knowledge. After a year or so in Ocala with very good grades – my father decided to send me elsewhere, and the choices were either Bard College in New York or Rockford College in Illinois. When we looked at Bard I supposed it seemed to him too bohemian (which I loved), while Rockford seemed nice and normal. To Rockford I was sent! But it was a good school also, and the teachers there were likewise a great encouragement to such thirsty learners as myself.

While I was in my second semester at Rockford dad died (mom had died in 1959, when I was 17). In all our lives together we only had one heart-to-heart talk, and this was but a brief one a few days before he died. I didn’t know his heart, or my mother’s (she’d had cancer, and I was away in boarding schools from the age of 7 or 8).

After (or in the middle of the last of) I think three semesters I got the urge to hit the road, and travel around the world. My dad had bought me a new Austin Healy Sprite (identical to the MG Midget) when I was in Florida, and so – it was 1965 – I took off to Mexico, sleeping on the side of the road in a sleeping bag. Thus began my life as a wandering poet and writer. I had a few hits of LSD with me (safely tucked away), which I would share and take in Acapulco and Vera Cruz.

All this time I was in search of…what? Experience, adventure, love, wisdom… But underneath all these things was a quiet, continuing seeking for hints on attaining the “Illumination” or “Enlightenment” spoken of by various sages; as well as reading world literature I started reading spiritual works – the Sufi mystics, Maurice Bucke’s classic, Cosmic Consciousness (which posited – and sought to demonstrate – the notion that many Western poets, writers, and religious had experienced this, as well as the better-known Eastern mystics and gurus), the writings of Herman Hesse, Tim Leary’s translations into psychedelese of The Tibetan Book of the Dead and Lao Tse’s The Tao; I pondered the teachings of Buddha, the Hindu Scriptures (and Joseph Campbell’s popularizations of these), etc etc.

I stayed in touch with my contemporary poets, both in the English-speaking world – especially America, whose poetry was diverse and vital – and whatever poets from abroad who’d been translated, particularly the French, Spanish, German and Italian, all of which had great, innovative talents. I sought to be attuned to consciousness and “language art” as it was manifesting in the world of my time.

I knew I lacked that inner indomitable vitality which was the Source of life, and I hungered for it. I could see the great poets and writers of my own day – Kesey, Watts, Ginsberg, Leary, Bly, Wright, Corso, Kerouac, Olson – themselves involved in these matters of consciousness, questing after visions of the divine in one way or another. We were a people bereft of God, and although acid, mescaline, mushrooms, peyote and the like gave us visions of the glory and wonder of our humanity, and of an ineffable Spirit that seemed the quickening principle of all life, we somehow always fell short being able to utterly unite with this Spirit, and were crushed by our own and others’ egos with their grasping, pushy nature, expelled from Paradise by our own selves! The attraction of Leary & Co. was their claim that through acid we could transcend the ego, and attain Illumination. It proved a false claim.

Listen! We were not fools in our quest, no matter how foolish we were in our failures! Religion in America seemed to us just so much nonsense; “the opiate of the masses” of spiritually blighted people, people who seemed to us caught up in some meaningless quest for security and affluence at the expense of their sacred humanity. The first taste of the new drugs instantly gave us the insight to see the absurdity of American life; as a saying of our time put it, “Western Civilization? It has not yet begun.”

The racism of that era rankled bitterly in our guts, as did the preoccupation with money, power, fame, and beauty, altars men and women gave their souls in service to. We wanted none of that!

The reason we of those times (40 years ago!) loved Tolkien and his Middle Earth was his (as our) love of natural life and loathing for the technical, industrialized society which scorched and wasted the earth. Plus he gave us a vision of the spiritual forces at play in the world, and the virtues of those who would make a difference in it.

It grieves me to hear the heart of our yearning ridiculed and scorned. It’s as though you never heard the Apostle John say, “…the whole world lies in wickedness”[10] – and that includes this America whose idolatrous altars you think we should have worshipped at with you!

How was it that I, a poet and writer intensively and extensively seeking out the voices of the spiritually aware, heard nothing in the contemporary arts or literature of the Lord Jesus? I heard about other spiritual teachers, but not Him. Why no voice lifted up among you of His glory, or His superiority over the others? Was it because you scorned poetry and the arts? Because you denigrated those expressions of the human spirit, and crushed those urges in so many among you?

We knew the world was evil – and the Amerika of the CIA, the KKK, and the treadmill work-a-day nightmare of quiet desperation and interpersonal alienation as rotten as any of it anywhere, just more “civilized” – and we acted to find a better way. There had to be more to life than what you offered us in 1950s and ‘60s culture. We, the children of those decades, were sick unto death with the malaise you drank like water. And we sought to purge ourselves of this sickness through our spiritual quest, and our experiments in creating intentional communities. Who knew what the true foundations for relationships were? We saw nothing of value in the communities of Christ in that day, so why do you revile us as casting off righteousness in lieu of pagan morality? We had no use for the uptight, selfish, comfort-oriented “nuclear family” (to the exclusion of those outside it) who loved their cars, TVs, alcohol, and the insulated lives you lived. You just did not seem deeply human – or even humane – to us.

Yes, we also made a mess of it, possessed as we were of the same human natures as yourselves. Were it not for the Lord Jesus wading into our midst with His mighty Spirit and saving those of us He did, we would have perished in our sins and depravity.

But I tell you, in the muddy field of Woodstock you missed a great treasure – a diamond in the mud – and amidst the gaudy beads you missed a pearl of great price. For my culture was no worse than yours – just different. And there were virtues in our search for better lives, and the longings for truth and illumination were our silent and ignorant acknowledgment of our need for God. Yet each culture was evil and under the devil’s thrall in its own way. But out of yours came good things, no? And out of mine likewise.

What good came out? I came out. And others like me. The Lord has raised me up a preacher and teacher of His Gospel, and I seek to be what I once decried the lack of when I looked at you 30 and 40 years ago.

Has not the Lord said (through Paul) that “the kingdom of God is not in word but in power,” nor is it realized with “enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power”?[11] And there is power in the Gospel of Christ. For example, there is the energy that comes from having perfect spiritual rest, and the heart (courage, morale) that comes from being perfectly loved, the both of which together translate into Resurrection Power, which may be quiet and unassuming, yet is the vitality of God in lives and situations.

And has He not given us directions for setting up communities of grace, communities of order, kindness, and love? If we as spiritual communities are secure in our Savior’s love and care, and are full of His Spirit as we increasingly know the depths and heights and breadths of His heart for us, we will have a strong and pure energy for lives that glorify Him and help our fellow humans. Such things are the nourishing fruit of sound doctrine and godly preaching.

Does not God “out of the base things of the world, and things which are despised”[12] choose and make such things as glorify His great name, that humankind should not boast of its supposed wisdom and prowess? The “straight” culture of America is no better in His eyes than the (albeit despised in yours) Woodstock culture. Admittedly much evil has come from the latter, much that is – and remains – very destructive, even in our time – but the same can be said for yours. When the dust has settled, it will be seen that out of Woodstock the Almighty has raised up chosen vessels who glorify His name in these days, and some of the characteristics of that culture yet in us redound to His praise and honor.

Nor am I ashamed of the culture and community I call home, both the generation I came of age in, and the town where my daughter and I (a single parent) lived for 19 good years. Brothers and sisters, before you knock my beloved Woodstock again, think of me, and of my prayers before the High Throne, that He who sits thereon would raise up laborers to work in that harvest, where some of the dearest souls I’ve known and loved still reside unsaved, precious humans just like you (although sinners – as you also once were).

I can’t be there now as the Lord has placed me here on an island in the Mediterranean to do His will. Please don’t curse my home, but bless, and pray.

-----------

1 But Matthew made clear there was one: Matthew 2:23. Check some good commentaries for the technical details of such exegesis.
2 The Dust Of Death: The Sixties Counterculture and How It Changed America Forever (Crossway Books, 1994)
3 Cited in Dust of Death, page xii. From, The Twilight of Authority, by Robert Nisbet (NY: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 67
4 Cited in Dust of Death, page xii. From, The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom (NY: Simon And Schuster, 1987), p. 314.
5 The Life And Times Of Jesus The Messiah, by Alfred Edersheim (Mac Donald Publishing, n.d.), Vol. 1, page 225.
6 Commentary On The Gospel Of St John, by E.W. Hengstenberg (Klock & Klock, 1980), Vol. 1, pages 106, 105.
7 Unger’s Bible Dictionary, by Merrill F. Unger (Moody Press, 1981, Third Edition), page 387.
8 John 7:49 ff.
9 If this reference is unfamiliar to you, check out the Beatles’ animated film, The Yellow Submarine, to see the dream and vision of hope we had of changing the world.
10 1 John 5:19
11 1 Corinthians 4:20; 2:4.
12 1 Corinthians 1:28

BATTLEFIELD OF BEAUTY

Beauty is not only a terrible thing, it is also a mysterious thing. There God and
the Devil strive for the mastery, and the battleground is the heart of man.

                   – Dmitri Karamazov, in The Brothers Karamozov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

In the passage this quote is from (Part One, Book III, Chapter 3) Dostoevsky holds forth two ideals of beauty, “the ideal of the Madonna and…the ideal of Sodom,” as though these were the two combatants for the hearts of men on the battlefield of beauty. I hear an echo of this in Solzhenitsyn, where he opposes a secular humanism to religion — namely the Russian Orthodox, although he has strong affinity with Roman Catholicism — as though the beauty of “religion” could stand against “the beauty of Sodom”! This beauty of Sodom, for Dostoevsky, is not just raw sensual pleasure, but that love — or desire — which is but human, typified in his story by the lovely and unscrupulous Grushenka. He does not refer to the dark lusts we reflexively think of, but to the well of earthly beauty and passionate love our longing hearts drink deeply from in lieu of a better love. Dostoevsky thinks to distill this matter of beauty to its essence in comparing Sodom against the Virgin. She to whom the angel said, “Blessed art thou among women,” and in whose womb God the Son was conceived — according to His flesh — by the agency of the Holy Spirit, she whose tender and holy heart cared for the young Lord all His youth, why has she been elevated to the pinnacle that is her Son’s place?


It is not fitting to contrast the world’s cornucopia of sensual joys and beauties with the chaste young woman, “the handmaid of the Lord,” not fair to the “blessed mother” to compare her in this way. She — notwithstanding Rome and Byzantium — is not the well to quench the thirst of the heart. She herself drinks from the well of the better love.

Fit to stand against the beauty of Sodom is her Son, the young King, He who is so glorious in majesty the angels shield their eyes. As He leads His people into the fray against the powers of darkness — they having learned that the “jaws of death” are sometimes the bite of exquisite pleasure — they turn from the allurement of Sodom’s fair beauties to gaze, if but fleetingly, upon the smiling face of Him who flung forth the billions of galaxies,(1) and the Creator of all this earth’s pleasures; His smiling approval is a beauty that satisfies the heart and steels the nerves; men and women both will walk through fire for His love.

How is it then, that great souls can err so greatly? Solzhenitsyn shows some of his thinking in this statement from an address to the International Academy of Philosophy in 1993,

Of course, one cannot declare that only my faith is correct and all the other faiths are not. Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God. One must not have any negative attitude to any religion but nonetheless the depth of understanding God and the depth of applying God’s commandments is different in different religions. In this sense we have to admit that Protestantism has brought everything down only to faith. Calvinism says that nothing depends on man, that faith is already predetermined, and also in its sharp protest against Catholicism, Protestantism rushed to discard together with ritual all the mysterious, the mythical and mystical aspects of the faith. In that sense it has impoverished religion.(2)

This reminds me of another saying; in my files I have a quote from Christianity Today (April 24, 1995; p. 41),

Dosova commended [Billy] Graham for his preaching. “But this simple Western style is not enough for Russians,” she said. “For Russians, the message must be complex, so the individual not only worships but experiences the message. Westerners preach in a rational, logical style, but the Russian soul understands tears and mysticism.”

As a poet and writer I can relate to Dosova’s sentiment. Is it possible to so present the gospel that the complexity of intertwined human destinies, of the ways of our hearts, of the paths on which salvation finds and keeps us, and of Him who orders all these things, may be exposed, so that the sight of this provide-ence draws the soul, arrests the soul and leaves it panting after this ravishing and mysterious One who knows the labyrinths of our beings and ways, illuminating their dark corridors with wisdom and love, and drawing us to Himself? A preacher I love has said, “God not a one- or two-dimensional Being, although He is often caricatured to look like that; in truth, His character is profoundly complex.”

What I want to show is that the “religious” imagination — however rich — is what is “two-dimensional” compared to the actual experience of God, and thus it is unfair to compare the beauty of it to the world’s beauties, as though it, or even the beloved Virgin, could represent the glory of God Himself.

I do not want to comment here on Solzhenitsyn’s views on other religions, although I hope he is not saying that “all paths lead to God, in greater or lesser degree;” as then I would have to withstand that view properly. What I do wish to remark on is his view that religion — with all the embellishments he lists — is far greater than faith alone, even though he now laments the turning of his countrymen away from “Russia’s religion” and to Dostoevsky’s Sodom (spiritually supplied in abundance by the decadent West, I am sad to say). How can so great a heart miss the point that it is not faith per se — faith itself — we cleave so to, that this is but the way by which we apprehend and hold onto Him who is the desire of our hearts, who satisfies us as the world cannot? It is trust in His word — our Scripture — by which we draw near to Him; this is our faith; it is the trust in Himself He has planted in our hearts as a gift. He has magnified His living Word above all His name!(3)

And such communion with Him, is this not the essence of what is called by some “mysticism”? Union with Christ, and in Him one with the Father — resulting in intimate fellowship with God — this is the goal the mystics of the ages sought. The Protestants — yes, and the pure Calvinists especially — know this well. I call it a robust mysticism, after the manner of David in the Psalms, or Paul in his letters.

Sometimes the traditions — and even the liturgies — of men become corrupt or archaic, and the beauties of religious music, architecture, and apparel deeply stir the senses but leave the heart and its volition untouched, so that gangsters are deeply moved, even to weeping, yet do not throw away their guns, drugs, and bloodied money, cleaving in remorse to the Savior for mercy and eternal life, and lesser sinners likewise do not repent, they just become religious over hearts hardened to God and neighbor. God’s word, on the other hand, goes to the deeps — the Spirit of God Himself speaking to the sinner in that living word — and the sinner is hardened or renewed, hates or loves, according to the mysterious will of God.

When Solzhenitsyn states, “Calvinism says that nothing depends on man, that faith is already predetermined,” it appears he objects on the grounds it will “discard…the mysterious, the mythical and mystical aspects of the faith” by putting the locus of salvation in God’s hands instead of ours. In supposedly making salvation a building on the foundation of human free will, he would disdain a house built otherwise. Nicholas Berdyaev, in his little volume, Dostoevsky (Living Age Books – Meridian, 1968), shows how Dostoevsky also was greatly wrought upon over the matter of human freedom. In Letters from the Underground, Dostoevsky’s hero says of a human being,

All he needs is an independent will, whatever it may cost him and wherever it may lead him….In only one single case does man consciously and deliberately want something absurd, and that is the silliest thing of all, namely, to have the right to want the absurd and not be bound by the necessity of wanting only what is reasonable….for at all events it will have safeguarded our dearest and most essential possession—our personality and individuality….If you say that everything, chaos, darkness, anathema, can be reduced to mathematical formulae, that it is possible to anticipate all things and keep them under the sway of reason by means of an arithmetical calculation, then man will go insane on purpose so as to have no judgment and to behave as he likes. I believe this because it appears that man’s whole business is to prove to himself that he is a man and not a cog-wheel. [Italics Berdyaev’s] (pages 52, 53)

Without entering fully into this discussion on freedom of the will, I would like to aver a point of importance to me. Without the sovereign arrest of my plunge into eternal destruction by Christ, my freedom consisted of choosing which pictures would decorate my house as it was being swept in the river of time over the falls of death and into the abyss. I was shackled and bound by the spiritual deadness of my human nature and rendered incapable of making even the slightest move toward God on my own to seek escape from destruction. From a conversation with a friend on this subject,

We must consider the nature of the free will of the creature we are speaking of. With the unregenerate man, his freedom is constrained only by the nature of his heart; it is free to act according to his moral and spiritual qualities. He is free, but he cannot — by nature — go beyond his own limits. He is dead to the spiritual life of God, and cannot choose anything but what accords with an evil heart. He has free will — the free will of a sinner antagonistic to God. The only thing that will change him is a new life and heart given in regeneration. I do not deny the free will of humans at all. But the range of choice is similar to your being committed to jail: you could choose freely within the precincts of the lock-up, never beyond it. Unless, of course, the president (or governor) issued you a pardon.

So Solzhenitsyn’s disparaging dismissal, “Calvinism says that nothing depends on man, that faith is already predetermined,” misses the very point that saves my life. It is not faith that is predetermined, it is a love that sought me out in the abyss of eternity, engendering — albeit to be realized in the future — a responsive love in me, thus rescuing me from the freedom to inescapably go into eternal torment. And to say there is no mystery in this! On the one hand there is a love that knew me — and willed to secure me — ever before I existed, and on the other we have the startling saying of Jesus,

For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.(4)

This saying clearly presents the responsibility of humans, and how they act by what they love or hate. Is there not an unfathomable depth here? And the depth does not stop with man, and his love, but with God, and His, and ultimately one cannot plumb it. I kept the saying of Dostoevsky’s “Underground man” in my heart for over thirty years, as I went through my own passage in the archetypal heartlands of humanity, and it lightened my way, until a greater light brought the clarity I now have. Perhaps this corresponds to what Berdyaev calls the two sorts of freedom Dostoevsky explored, the initial, and the final — the freedom to choose the truth, and freedom in the truth. I only know that regarding the initial, I gained that freedom solely in responding to an irresistible love. Is that a contradiction? Or a mystery? Perhaps a gist from another conversation can clarify:

When [your friend] says, addressing something that passed earlier between you, “the concern you expressed in your e-mail about the idea that God might compel someone to be saved, because that would be a sign of weakness in God,” I would elucidate further by urging a more detailed examination of the word compel. It can be used in many different senses: “I was compelled by her beauty...”, “He was compelled by the moral force of her argument...”, “The majesty of his person and the quality of his love compelled me to follow him...”, “I was compelled by my conscience to...” and so on. It may be a quality that draws, moves, and even drives the affections, the mind, and/or the conscience by outstanding virtues and not by mere and base force. The sense I am referring to — and the sense in which God compels someone to come to Him and thus experience salvation — is not a compelling which violates the will of the person, but wins it over; it is a compelling by virtue of the ravishing excellence and profundity of His love which kindles in (say) my heart a responding love, and desire to be joined to Him. The “forcing” that results from such passionate love is not to be likened to that of coercion. So do not be offended by the word, please.

I equate irresistible and compel to be the same quality (as used here), but seen from different vantages, objectively and subjectively: He was irresistible and I was compelled. Sometimes a person may be so winsome they capture our hearts. We know this humanly speaking, so why may love not enter into the issue of the freedom or bondage of the will? Suffice all this to say that Solzhenitsyn’s dismissal of Calvinism on the grounds it impoverishes religion….well, “religion” is impoverished compared to the robust mysticism of that faith which allows intimate fellowship with the divine Friend!

Contra Solzhenitsyn again, plenty depends on man, such as obedience, creativity, self-sacrificial love, loyalty, all that is involved in being human in the kingdom of God. All that we may do as sub-creators — to use Tolkien’s term — depends on us!

Are we ordained from eternity “unto [specific] good works”(5) thus making our creations or vocations mechanically? No, we are given talents — skills — with passions and loves to propel them into actuality, even as an artist pursues his or her craft with joy, or a mother devotes herself to the nurture and upbringing of her children with delight. The children of God learn — after Paul — to “labor, striving according to His working, which worketh in [us] mightily.”(6) That is, we discern what God is doing in and through our lives, and we co-operate with Him as intelligent children. To labor thus in resurrection power, having the energy which comes from being in perfect rest, and the fullness of heart which comes from being perfectly loved, both of which are part of our present inheritance in Christ, this is abundant life, with freedom of the will found in loving our God, and choosing to do His will.

What impoverishes man — and what impoverishes the Gospel of Christ in particular — is the absence of that preaching or teaching which declares His marvelous and abundant provision for the wretched characters we are. When I say provision I mean, among other things, the gift of the righteousness He bestows upon — imputes to! — the poor young saint struggling (sometimes unsuccessfully) against his or her ungodly passions and desires. The gracious, undeserved, stability the tempest-torn soul knows in this family of the heavenly Father, where he or she will not be cast away despite repeated failure, engenders a gratitude, built on the security of a steadfast love, that bonds the soul to God with cords of joyous, repentant, adoring, and grateful love. The sufferings of Christ as He took the place of His people under the poured-out fury of outraged Justice from the Father — utterly exhausting the punishment due us for our sins — bespeaks a wealth of grace proffered us, and along with the moral perfection of His obedience to God’s law imputed to us, why, we stand now before the holy Godhead robed in the righteousness and purity of the Son, nothing between us and the Love of Heaven! This is riches!

This preaching of the opened floodgates of God’s choicest treasures given in Christ to the lowest of His struggling saints may impoverish “religion,” as Solzhenitsyn terms it, but it is the making rich of all who seek Him, and is the antidote to the glory of earthly pleasures. Russia could use a little of this, to offset the banes of its religion and modernity, or rather, post-modernity!

Let us look again at this quote of Dostoevsky’s;

“Beauty is not only a terrible thing, it is also a mysterious thing. There God and the Devil strive for the mastery, and the battleground is the heart of man.”

Might we not aptly typify Dostoevsky’s “Sodom” by the figure of Aphrodite? (The accoutrements of man’s religions I would include in the beauties of the world.) And here the battle is not between her and the Virgin, it is between Aphrodite and Jesus the Christ. The antidote to her ravishing beauty is the revelation of His saving love to a world about to go over the roaring falls of time into the seething maw of Thanatos while embraced in the arms of her pleasure (underneath her guise, is she not the archetypal hag, the monstrosity whose gaze turns hearts to stone?), and will not this love of Christ the Savior capture the hearts of those who love the Light that has come into the world, and win them into the safety of His heart, them gladly willing it to be so?

The preacher I mentioned earlier, Tim Keller, has another saying, “The essence of beauty is relationship.” (Consider, what avails great beauty without love, but a torture akin to that of Tantalus?) To be in the love of God — to be passionately and steadfastly loved by Him, and loving Him in return — is the rarest beauty there is. The entire world lies under the sway of a counterfeit beauty — a hidden stinger of death in her kiss — and the lifting up the genuine beauty of a love which has abolished death for all who will come and bow the knee to the young and glorious Lord of eternity, this beauty devastates all contenders on the battlefield, exposing them as tawdry playthings of dwindling Time. The Scripture says to the thirsting soul, Whosoever will, let him come and freely drink the living waters of His love! (7) And He assures, “him [or her] that comes to Me, I will in no wise cast out.”(8)

------------------------------

(1) From, Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe, by D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D. (Master Books, 1994). “There are about 100 billion galaxies within the viewing range of our best telescopes.” (Page 9.)

(2) Cited in, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul In Exile, by Joseph Pearce (Baker Books, 2001), p. 302.

(3) Psalm 138:2

(4) John 3:17-21

(5) Ephesians 2:10

(6) Colossians 1:29

(7) Revelation 22:17

(8) John 6:37