Hunter's Lament

I hate to deer hunt.
I hate the dimness of a late November afternoon.

I hate the knowledge that a deer might come, and spoil my plans regarding coffee and a
fire.
I hate the chill wind, the groan of writhing trees, and the rattle of sleet against
dry leaves.
Did I mention how I hate the dimness? I suppose I did.

Most of all, I hate that you are not here, waiting at the truck or camp with coffee,
or sometimes whiskey, and stories of what you did or did not see.
Who else would love to hate these things but you and me?

Meditation in Muir Woods, June 26, 2010.

Creator, I am a slender fern growing here in the shadow of these vast red trees. For a thousand years they have listened to the soft murmur of the water running over rocks worn smooth. They have listened, and remember everything wrapped within their slow growing rings. They remember storms and fires and droughts when the creek fell silent and moisture came only from the omnipresent fog. They remember looking down at my fern ancestors, clinging tenuously to damp life like tiny acolytes serving nervously at the redwoods’ feet. They remember silent Indians, moving swiftly through the forest in search of better hunting grounds. They remember men with saws and teams of huge horses, hacking at the boundaries of this sacred place, cutting, sawing, hauling, burning, building, piling up money along with boards, while the trees still loomed and grew ponderously overhead.
They remember it all, and the memories reach so high, up toward you, the creator, and down deep into the earth toward you as well, and I am lifted and drawn deep with them. They sing with the people walking by today, speaking Italian and Russian and Alabaman. “Theyuz a whole whoppin’ beeg fambly ub’m ovah theyah,” they proclaim in wonder, their necks crained backward and their voices muffled, as if they were pilgrims in an unfamiliar church.

A leaf falls on the page where the man is writing, making him another memory enclosed within the trees, making him bark and branch, fern and fog, silence and water-song.
His friends are waiting on the footbridge. All are remembered, all have gone.

More Psalmic Verses: Creation-Song

CREATION SONG

Abba, U slung this chunk of cooling space-rock into orbit * and wrapped the
biosphere around it.
U coaxed forth precise conditions * for thoughts slowly to emerge, tentative
and slimy, from primeaval mud.
U provided animals for our clumsy ancestors to hunt, * and on the walls
of caves they scrawled icons of their gratitude.
U sought out tribes to represent U in the world, * and wrestled them into
something like submission.
U rescued them from slavery by the hand of Moses and Aaron, * and many
unsubmissive women.
U hounded them with relentless prophets, * and beheld the folly of their
kings.
U revealed Urself in unexpected births, * and in the fertility of fields and flocks.
U scattered them like seeds upon the earth, * that they might become a blessing to
the world.

The "Parable of the Dishonest Manager" Luke 16:1-13

REFLECTIONS ON THE “PARABLE OF THE DISHONEST MANAGER”*
Luke 16:1-13

About the “dishonest manager…”

WE are the “Dishonest Manager”, just as we are the “Rich Young Man”, the Good Samaritan, Lazarus, etc. ALL wealth is dishonest. There is NO “parable of the righteous Manager.” Even the Good Samaritan is in need of forgiveness. We all partake of what the older translations call “Mammon,” even if we avoid the flagrant wheeling & dealing of the Dishonest Manager.
So then, some will ask, “what’s the point of trying to be honest? A legitimate question, and one that has been addressed by St. Paul, St. Augustine, Martin Luther, and many others… but not by me at this moment. I leave the issue of “antinomianism” for another day.
“The Master commended the Dishonest Manager. There is a clue! What “Master” would do that? The beginning of the parable paints a picture of the Master as a typical boss-man. The Dishonest Manager does not go to the Master and say, “I figure you’d be impressed if I doctored the books to my own advantage.” He had to be as astonished as we are at this unexpected twist in the plot.
So does that mean we will be commended if we act shrewdly on behalf of the kingdom? “Make friends for yourselves”, he says (and so did Pastor Manisha in her sermon yesterday) using “dishonest wealth” (is there any other kind?). Nothing is said about how the Dishonest Manager RESPONDED to the Master’s equanimity. Chances are, he saw it as a sign of weakness and became more corrupt than ever.
The kingdom of God is a Retirement Community for unsuccessful swindlers and inside-traders. “How did I get here?” asks Bernie Mahdoff. “Beats me”, responds the head of ENRON Corp., “you must have done somebody a favor back in the day. As for me, I can’t stand this place, all these big wedding parties with riff raff as guests of honor. I’m trying to arrange for a transfer to some other kingdom.” “There’s only one other alternative that I know of.” says Bernie. “It’s hard to get used to this forgiveness thing, but I find that it’s growing on me.”

Good News. Great News. We are forgiven for our participation in the Kingdom of Mammon. We are like Jonah, swallowed by the Monster but vomited safely back on shore by virtue of the grace of God. Our part is to stop fighting it, but even if we can’t stop (and no one can, if they eat), the Mischievous Master keeps pulling the rug out from under both our sins and our virtues. It’s also our responsibility to accept the essential kinship between ourselves and the Dishonest Manager types.

* From henceforth I shall refer to this passage as “The Parable of the Mischievous Master.”

Cranbrook Philosophy Students: Existentialism & God

http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=2297937018350238193
Existentialism & God

I. Sartre
A. “When we conceive God as the Creator, He is generally thought of as a superior sort of artisan… God produces man, just as the artisan…makes [whatever…]”(“Existentialism and Human Emotion”, Marino, p.34)
B. “…the atheistic existentialists, among whom I class Heidigger, and then the French existentialists and myself… have in common …that they think existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the starting point.” (p. 342)
C. “Atheistic existentialism…states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and that being is man…” (p.345)
D. “Dostoyevsky said, ‘If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible.’ That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn…” (p. 349)
E. Existentialism isn’t so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn’t exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing. There you’ve got our point of view. Not that we believe that God exists, but we think that the problem of His existence is not the issue.” (p. 367)

II. Camus
A. “Our aim is to shed light upon the step taken by the mind when, starting from a philosophy of the world’s lack of meaning, it ends up by finding a meaning and depth in it.” (Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”, Marino, p.471
B. “I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance, and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it” (p.477)

III. John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, Chas. Scribner’s Sons, NY, 1966
A. Proposes to speak and think of “God,” not as a being, not even a “supreme” being, but as “Being.”
B. The “Meaning of Being” cannot be approached in a detached, speculative fashion. “For we began by asking about ourselves…with the confrontation with the nothingness in our own existence that opened our eyes to the being which contrasts with nothing.” (Macquarrie, p. 97)
C. Being is NOT…\
1. “itself a being, that is to say, something that is.” (p.98)
2. “a property, i.e. “white, hard, round…etc.”(p. 98)
3. “a class”… (among other “classes” of existing things) (p.99)
4. a “substance” or “substratum…supposed to underlie the phenomenal characteristics of beings.” ( p.99)
5. “the absolute. If there were a …supreme being, we would still have to inquire about the being of this being…[which would be] more ultimate than our supposed absolute…” (p. 100)

D. Distinctions Between “Being” and “Becoming”
1. “we can talk about being and distinguish it from nothing only in so far as it includes becoming.” (p. 101)
2. “becoming is unintelligible apart from some conception of being.”
E. Distinction Between “Being” and “Appearance”
1. “Being gives itself in and through its appearances and nowhere else.” (p. 102)
2. Appearances also conceal being.

F. Conclusions

1. “Being”= “incomparable.” It is the condition that there may be any beings or properties of beings.” P.103
2. “Being” = “Letting be”
3. “We become aware of the presence of being…of what lets the beings be and mediates itself through them.” p. 104
4. “Being, which is transecendent of every particular being and thus ‘wholly other’ and the furthest from us, is also the closest because it is present in every being, including our own…” (p.104)
5. “Strictly speaking, however, once cannot say, that God “exists”…for if God is being and not a being, then one can no more say that God is than that being is. God (or being) is not, but rather lets be. “ (p.108)

Philosophy Students...

How does the following passage relate to existentialism?

"It was as if the boy had already divined what his senses and intellect had not encompassed yet: that doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with plows and axes who feared it because it was wilderness, men myriad and nameless even to one another in the land where the old bear had earned a name, and through which ran not even a mortal beast but an anachronism indomitable and invincible out of an old dead time, a phantom, epitome and apotheosis of the old wild life which the little puny humans swarmed and hacked at in a fury of abhorrence and fear like pygmies about the ankles of a drowsing elephant;- the old bear, solitary, indomitable, and alone; widowered childless and absolved of all mortality- old Priam reft of his old wife and outlived all his sons." THE BEAR, by William Faulkner

Grassroots Existentialism: APRIL 20, 2010

"Life is here, we live it, we endure it, and we do so without any knowledge of how we have become." From "The Revolting Test", April 19, 2010

For more reflections on the Meaningfully Absurd read the following poem and comment regarding its use of existentialist ideas...

Under the Sun

I have yet to find myself
For I was born under the sun.
Amongst every living creature
I have no sense of purpose.
Alive in awe of wind and fire

I have yet to prove myself
For I am a new born.
The worn out burden of the planet
The existential put to the test.
Destruction of life proves much easier than creation

I have yet to end myself
For I have too much pride.
Look down at the sea of creation
And know it was me.
Gaze at the power of nature harnessed
And know it was me.
See the extermination of my worldly brethren
And know it was me.


For I was born under the sun
And I’m here to stay