Hat tip to Gundek.
Posts Tagged ‘Divine’
I Think You Mean Good Vicar
Posted in Religion, tagged Almshouse, Anglicanism, Bafflement, Bishop, Church, Comedy, Conversion, Darkness, Daventry, Divine, Entitlement, Eternity, Gundek, Hell, Humanism, Humor, Hunger, Internet, Lord, Marriage, Mitchell and Webb, Peace, Peasantry, Philosophy, Religion, Satan, Seeker, Sketch Comedy, Spirituality, That Mitchell and Webb Look, Theology, Vestry on February 5, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Ares Is…
Posted in Spirituality, tagged Alcohol, Ares, Army, Battle, Beer, Bravery, Brotherhood, Camping, Cars, Courage, Death, Divine, Etiquette, Fatherhood, Girls, God, Gods, Greek Mythology, Heavenly Father, Hellenic Polytheism, Hellenismos, Heroism, Hunting, Integrity, Jupiter, Manhood, Manners, Mars, Masculinity, Men, Military, Myth, Mythology, Neopaganism, Paganism, Penis, Polytheism, Relationships, Religion, Self-reliance, Sex, Spirituality, Sports, Sportsmanship, Survival, Tobacco, War, Warrior, Women, Zeus on June 29, 2011| 3 Comments »
Zeus is our Heavenly Father, but let’s face it: most of us have shitty relationships with our fathers, and that can carry over into our relationships with our Heavenly Father.
It’s alright though, ’cause we’ve got Ares.
Ares is the older brother who tells you all about girls and the real deal about sex, who turns you on to heavy metal and cars and gives you your first beer and your first cigarette. But he expects you to keep your cool, to be tough, to roll with the punches and not to be a mama’s boy.
Ares is the upperclassman you respect and admire, who lets you be one of the guys, who shows you how to tie a tie and button your cuffs, who makes you feel accepted and doesn’t treat you like a dumb kid. But he expects you to do the right thing, to study hard, to treat girls well, and to show respect and earn the respect of everyone around you.
Ares is the uncle who takes you camping and shows you how to build a fire, to hunt and fish, to shoot a rifle and take care of yourself. But he expects you to do hard things, to not complain or whine, to learn fast, to try hard and to tough it out when things get shitty.
Ares is the team captain who gives his all, who holds the team together and who understands exactly what you’re going through because he is right in the middle of it too. But he expects you to train hard, to play hard, to keep your head in the game, to take care of your teammates, and to win.
Ares is the squad leader who laughs with you, drinks with you, teaches you to be a warrior, and leads you into battle. But he expects you to fight hard, to have integrity, to have courage and a good attitude, to take care of your battle buddies, and to kill every last one of the enemy motherfuckers. He does his damnedest to make sure you make it back home, but he makes damn sure you are never forgotten when you don’t.
Just because you’re born with a penis doesn’t mean you know how to be a man. Don’t worry; Ares will show you.
My Five Favorite Books
Posted in Book Reviews, Parenting, Spirituality, Western Fiction, tagged Adulthood, Ambition, Arthurian Legend, Bible, Books, C. S. Lewis, Cattle, Childhood, Christian Fiction, Christianity, Commitment, Cupid, Darkness, Death, Divine, Divinity, Eros, Evil, Family, Fantasy, Fiction, Friendship, God, Good, Horror, Illinois, Jack Schaefer, Judgment, Kingship, Larry McMurtry, Latin, Literature, Lonesome Dove, Love, Mississippi, Monarchy, Montana, Morality, Motto, Myth, Mythology, Obligation, October, Parenthood, Place, Psyche, Ray Bradbury, Royalty, Science Fiction, Self, Shane, Sin, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Southern Literature, Strength, T. H. White, Texas, Texas Ranger, The Once And Future King, The South, Theme, Thomas Sutpen, Till We have Faces, War, Waukegan, Western Fiction, William Faulkner, Women on June 8, 2011| 6 Comments »
My top five favorite books of all time, in alphabetical order by author:
1. Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes: A dark carnival comes to a fictionalized Waukegan in a timeless October, bringing nightmares. It is a story about childhood and growing up, fathers and sons, friendship, and the good and evil in every one of us.
2. William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!: Unimaginably rich and mythic, a magnum opus about the South, chronicling Thomas Sutpen’s obsessive but doomed struggle to found–“tore violently a plantation”–an aristocratic dynasty in Mississippi before, during and after the Civil War, and about the destruction brought down on his bloodline and the land they inhabit as judgment that ripples through place and generations as a result. In the end, it is relentlessly a book about the dark places we should not go but that we ultimately cannot resist.
3. C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces: Lewis’s re-telling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche is the most true book about God that I have ever read. It is the story of an ugly queen whose beautiful sister is taken from her by a god, and who unintentionally enacts her revenge on everyone around her by taking just as ruthlessly, until at last she is finally forced to come to terms with the true nature of herself and the Divine.
4. Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove: An epic, episodic novel about a pair of grizzled ex-Texas Rangers and the men and boys they lead on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, for no reason at all, more or less, other than to be the first to be there. It is a powerful and poignant story about manhood, friendship, obligation, women, cattle and death. Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.
5. Jack Schaefer, Shane: A short but intense novel from a young boy’s perspective about a dark gunfighter who drifts into a Wyoming range war between farmers and an unscrupulous cattle baron. Shane is a cracking, fast-paced novel about courage, love, commitment, manhood and true strength.
6. T. H. White, The Once And Future King: A lush and quirky but immensely powerful retelling of the entire Arthurian legend. In a sense, there is nothing that this book is not about. If I had to give a boy only one book to live their life after, it would not be the Bible. It would be this book.
An Old, Powerful Dream
Posted in Spirituality, tagged Death, Deity, Divine, Divinity, Dogs, Dream, Dreams, Family, Fear, Friendhip, God, Knoxville, Nuclear War, Sight, Unconscious, Vision on July 16, 2010| 1 Comment »
I had a dream when I was in high school, I guess fourteen or fifteen years ago, that I still remember more clearly than almost any other dream from that long ago.
I was walking home in the Knoxville neighborhood I grew up in–if you’ve ever been in a slightly run-down lower-middle/working class neighborhood in the South, you know exactly what it looks like. I was with my best friend at the time, and maybe with a few other people (my brother?), and we were walking around to the back of the house. I was aware that there was warning of an imminent nuclear attack. There might have been an audible siren, or it might have just been the impression of an audible siren.
But we walked around to the backyard, and there, laying in the back yard, just outside the window to my father’s studio, was an atomic bomb.
The bomb was made of wood, some light kind of wood like balsa or just a rotten log, and it looked like it had been roughly carved. It was about 15-20 feet long and 3-4 feet wide, roughly missile-shaped. A panel was open on the body of the bomb, with sort of a generic instrument array inside. Maybe flashing lights.
I remember the dread in the pit of my stomach–the world-shatteriing terror of coming dface to face with an armed atomic weapon. We all dove to the ground, aware for some reason that the only way we would survive this thing was to not look at the bomb, under any circumstances It was not clear or even important in the dream whether not looking at the bomb would actually prevent it from detonating, or if we would just survive the explosion. It was only crucuially important that we did not look.
Of course, I looked. I couldn’t help it. I looked, I peeked, I watched.
The whole world had gone still, but what I saw was a dog. A black dog. In fact, I saw a talking black dog, in the middle of a conversation, standing next to or maybe even on top of the armed atomic bomb. And I could not hear the conversation, but I knew the dog was talking about me.
Although I could not see dog’s conversation partner, I was also deeply andf unquestionably aware that the dog was talking to God.
Like I said, I couldn’t make out the conversation, and I could not hear God’s voice talking back to the dog. The only thing I caught was the dog saying, referring to me, “this one has his eyes open. This one can see.” It was not angry. The sense of it was more like a discussion about what should be done about me, because I was looking at the bomb when I was not supposed to, and I was seeing things that I was not supposed to see.
It was the kind of dream that you wake up from and feel changed by it, like it was profound and meaningful, even if you are not entirely sure what the dream meant. And I had the dream a long time ago, but I remember it as clearly as if I had it last night.
Things That Are Not Personal Revelation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, Classical Conditioning, Conditioning, Deity, Divine, Divinity, Emotion, Film, God, Happiness, Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, Humanity, Joseph Smith, Literature, Mind Games, Mormonism, Music, Mysticism, Neurology, Pavlov, Peak Experience, Personal Revelation, Prophets, Psychology, Religion, Spirit, Spirituality, Television, Theology, Thought on April 20, 2009| 14 Comments »
It should be clear by now that I passionately believe that real spiritual/mystical experiences happen. People experience the presence of divinity. I don’t know for sure whether they are merely experiencing a neurological or psychological phenomenon, or whether they are actually contacting a real deity, or whether the distinction is meaningful. What I am sure of is that mystics throughout history have reported eerily similar phenomena and labeled them as divine contact.
Mormonism has taught since the days of Joseph Smith that such mystical experiences–jargonically termed “personal revelation”–are available to Mormons, basically on demand. Modern-day Mormon prophets have consistently promised that every earnest seeker who asks God for a personal confirmation of the truth of Mormonism and/or its components will receive it. The problem with these promises is that inasmuch as mystical experiences exist, that’s just not the way it works. No matter what your theology promises, God is not on tap. God is not predictable, as much as we would like it to be.
To reconcile the irreconcilable–theological promises about the availability of mystical experience and the unpredictable reality of mystical experience–Mormonism has lowered the bar on personal revelation. Mormons believe a priori that mystical experience is there for the asking, so when experience prove otherwise, experience must be wrong. Mormons tell each other things like “I think you have had personal revelation; you just don’t recognize it,” and they tell themselves stories about how subtle the Holy Ghost’s influence is.
But they’re wrong. They’re ridiculous, even. The real experience of the presence of God is not subtle. It is not difficult to discern. It is like a hurricane: massive, beyond control. Like a roller coaster, but you can’t really be certain that it is going to stay on the tracks. Real contact with God is total loss of sense of self, a total absorbtion into something so huge and so other that it can’t be described.
But like I said, that kind of thing is rare and unpredictable, and so it doesn’t really do a good job of fulfilling Mormonism’s promises about the availability of personal revelation. So, to make up for God’s failure to deliver on Mormonism’s promises (which can’t possibly be true because then Mormonism would be false, and Mormons assume that cannot be the case), Mormons recast completely mundane experiences as “personal revelation,” and thus save themselves from having to face the unfortunate disconnect between Mormon theology and the real experience of God.
What follows is a list of things that do not count as spiritual or mystical experiences, but that are often characterized as such in Mormon testimonies. They are in no particular order.
1. Negative Confirmations: These happen when I either want to do something or thought I should do something, and so I prayed for guidance, and God did not definitely tell me “no,” and afterward I felt an increased desire and/or obligation (as the case may be) to do the thing. But that’s not personal revelation; it’s what I wanted to do anyway. Silence from God can’t possibly be evidence of God’s influence in my life. The increased motivation post-prayer is just excitement or resignation in the absence of a contrary instruction from God, along the lines of “God didn’t say ‘no,’ so it is definitely the right thing to do, and it’s coincidentally what I wanted to do anyway! Hooray!”
2. A Burning In The Bosom: Mormon scriptures describe prayers being answered by personal revelation in the form of a “burning in the bosom”: a warm sensation in the chest. This happens to Mormons, and it shouldn’t be a surprise at all, because it is basic Classical Conditioning at work. Let’s say that for my whole life I am told that I will feel a warm sensation when certain triggers happen (when I pray, when I read the scriptures, when I go to church, when I am with my family, whatever) and that this warm feeling is the Holy Ghost. When this warm feeling inevitably results, it is not the Holy Ghost at all. I have conditioned myself. I have spent my life looking for a particular sensation whenever the appropriate trigger is present, and eventually my body obliges my mind by producing said sensation. This makes me happy because it confirms my religion to me, and it is the thing I have been wanting to happen. Thus, my body learns that producing a warm feeling in response to certain triggers makes me happy. This is not called God. This is called Pavlov’s dog.
3. Intense Emotional Responses: When I watch a Church movie, I may indeed get choked up and emotional when something poignant and magical happens. But this isn’t personal revelation of the gospel truth being presented in the movie; this is my emotions being manipulated. TV shows and movies do this all the time. Filmmakers, directors, artists, composers, musicians, and writers can and do purposely arrange this stuff to tug at your heartstrings and make you feel certain emotions. And it happens in other situations, too (the kinds of legitimately emotional situations that these filmmakers are trying to artificially provoke): when I bear my testimony I might cry because I am sharing something deeply personal and emotional, so I have emotions when I talk about it. But that’s not the presence of God; that’s just having feelings.
4. Contentment And Happiness: Feeling generally happy and content about the spiritual tradition and related community that I have been brought up in is just normal. It’s a classic case of the grass looking greener on this side of the fence, and it results from a basic human complacency with the status quo. People are comfortable with what they know, and being comfortable feels pleasant. On the other side of the coin, converts to Mormonism may feel happy and content with their adopted faith tradition, but again, this comes from natural and expected feelings of gratitude and newfound belonging. Belonging feels good, whether it’s a church or a street gang. Being happy with your religion is a perfectly good reason to stick with your religion. But is isn’t a mystical message from God that your religion is the one true path, because pretty much everyone feels that way about their own religion.
5. “Impressions”: When I suddenly feel impressed to knock on a door, to approach someone on the street or a train, or to get up and bear my testimony, I may think something along the lines of the following: “hey, I just had a thought about doing that–I wonder if it was God telling me to do it. No, it was just a thought. Bt wait, what if I am talking myself into ignoring the Spirit? Is the Holy Ghost telling me to do this and I am just brushing it off? Why would I do that? Of course this was an impression; of course this was the Holy Ghost!” That is not personal revelation from God; that is a hilarious mind game you are playing with yourself.
6. Good Ideas: Sometimes, I suddenly have a great idea, out of nowhere. I might therefore want to attribute it to God, especially if it is related to church, religion, or my calling. But here’s the thing: people just have good ideas all the time.
All of these things are normal, basic humanity stuff. They happen to everyone. So the only way they come from God is if everything comes from God, and then we have to invent a new word for the mystical peak experiences that seem to be something wholly other, and from which these normal human life experiences are qualitatively distinct. And even then, if I have to concede that these things do come from God, they definitely don’t come from God in a “personal revelation that proves that the Church is true,” because they happen to everybody.
Even if I take Mormonism at its word and accept that feeling the presence of the Holy Ghost (i.e. the presence of God) is conclusive and unimpeachable proof that all of the Church’s truth claims are true–which I most certainly do not–these six types of experiences just don’t count.
Polytheistic Possibilities
Posted in Spirituality, tagged Aphrodite, C. S. Lewis, Christianity, Dionysus, Divine, Divine Female, Divinity, Female, Fertility, Goddess, Gods, Hard Polytheism, Heavenly Mother, Hellenic Polytheism, Hellenismos, Hera, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Magic, Magick, Male, Mormonism, Mysticism, Neo-pagan, Neo-Paganism, Neopaganism, Odin, Paganism, Polytheism, Reconstructionism, Reconstructionist Polytheism, Religion, Sex, Sexuality, Soft Polytheism, Spirituality, Violence, War, Wicca, Witchcraft, Zeus on April 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Or, other ways of explaining the experiences I have had…
So, having personally experienced the presence of two separate divine figures–Dionysus and Aphrodite–I immediately assumed that the next step was Hellenistic Reconstructionist Polytheism. Simply put, it didn’t work. I have an intuition about where to go from here, but I am still assuming some kind of variation of ful polytheism, that (probably, I guess, more-or-less) multiple distinct gods exist and can interact with human beings. But that is not the only possible explanation–there are others.
Before Aphrodite came on the scene, I realized that in many ways the story of Dionysus has stong parallels to the story of Jesus. I recognized the possibility that I was getting at Jesus through Dionysus somehow, that Dionysus was a pagan step on the path to Jesus Christ. This would definitely be consistent with C. S. Lewis’s assertion that you have to learn to be a good pagan before you can learn to be a good Christian. Even with Aphrodite in the mix, this isn’t out of the question–Aphrodite, a divine female figure, could easily be a shadow of Mary or of the Mormon Heavenly Mother. I’m not sure what to make of all of this, though. My intuition says that my experiences with Aphrodite have been too… much like Aphrodite, too sexual and too warlike, to seem like a plausible aspect of a Christian divine female. In any case, I think that if my paganism is a step on the road to ultimate conversion to Christianity, it’s more of a wait-and-see thing than a suddenly-realize-it-was-Jesus thing. I’m not closed ot the possibility that I’m really talking about Jesus after all, but I’m also not really convinced.
Another thing I am acutely aware of is the fact that I really haven’t strongly experienced the reality of more than two deities–Dionysus and Aphrodite. I could certainly be dealing with a male/female dualism, which is a hallmark of Wicca’s fertility religion, and probably some other variations of paganism aswell. Even to the extent that I have intuition about other deities–Hera, Zeus, and Odin–I might simply be talking about various masks or manifestations of an ultimare divine male principle and an ultimate divine female principle. I am also open to this interpretation. Although my immediate reaction is to reject it, I realize that the rejection might be a knee-jerk product of my long-standing prejudice against Wicca and my age-old belief (really a product of Mormonism) that only Reconstructionist paganism–marked by decidedly hard polytheism–is valid and legitimate. And furthermore, I don’t necessarily believe in magic (hmm… future post? you can count on it), or feel any desire to practice any kind of magic as a part of my spiritual life.
At the moment, those seem like the most significant and plausible alternate hypotheses. On the other hand, my spiritual life is still growing and developing in its infancy, and so whether my hard/soft polytheism or one of these alternates hapens to be true may not ultimately wind up mattering. For now I am going to act the same way towards the gods regadless of what they really are and how they relate to each other. Most important to me right now in terms of my spiritual development is how I experience them and how they relate to me.
My Own Goddess
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Aphrodite, Bhagavad Gita, Blogging, Buddhism, Dionysus, Divine, Divinity, Emotion, Exmormon, Experience, Family, God, Goddess, Hinduism, Love, Marriage, Mormonism, Mysticism, Parenthood, Polytheism, Religion, Spirituality, Zen on April 6, 2009| 4 Comments »
So this is a post I have been meaning to write for a long time. I mention my beautiful and sexy wife often, but not often enough. It’s high time I gave her some much-deserved praise and explained how vital she has been in my spiritual journey.
When I first started questioning Mormonism, she was loving and supportive. She didn’t freak out (to me, at least). She was willing to talk about long-term ramifications of being a two-faith household should it come to that. She was willing to listen and to talk, and was willing to think and read and consider. Poke around the exmormon bloggerverse a bit and see how often you find people telling a story like that. Good luck.
Even if that was the whole story,it would be one worth telling over and over. But a quick browse through my blog archives should be plenty of evidence that that ain’t the whole story. I’ve struggled to figure out what I believe for years now, and she has supported me every step of the way. And not just in a hands-off “whatever you say, dear” way. She’s read about and carefully considered Buddhism when I was interested in Zen. We had long talks about Hinduism when I first read the Baghavad Gita. Even as she has cautiously explored the limits of her own spirituality (in a nonchalant pretending-shes-not-doing-it way), she has been willing to accommodate whatever harebrained religious idea I am entertaining at the moment.
I have a really hard time talking about genuine spiritual feelings, but she gives me a safe place where I can do it. She doesn’t judge; she doesn’t mock. She’s just there for me. When I finally told her about Dionysus and the gods, she encouraged me to explore this new spiritual world. She even suggested we get a good book of Greek mythology for the kids. When I experienced the presence of Aphrodite, she was excited for me, and thrilled about the new development. I can’t imagine that this is kind of thing is typical.
There’s more I could say–like about how the decision to pursue a relationship with her, ultimately resulting in our marriage involved what may have been one of the few genuine spiritual experiences in my life–but in the end, it all boils down to this one thing: she is my everything. She is the universe. When I love her, I feel like I am loving divinity. When I touch her, I feel like I am touching a goddess. I know what it feels like to be in the presence of deity because it’s llike what I feel like when I am in her presence.
I love katyjane.