Summer and the Herme Moon
Sunday gratefuls: The sacred. The holy and the divine. Supernatural? Yes, if you mean super natural. Finishing Korea’s Place in the Sun. Starting Two Koreas. Wanting to pare down my home work to focus more on my own work. Reading more. Writing more. Seeing friends more. My friend Tom going on a trip tomorrow. Bon Voyage, Buddy. Diane. Seoah. Murdoch. My son. Rising, rising insurance rates. Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain. My wild neighbors
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Convergence
One brief shining: I set down Korea’s Place in the Sun after finishing began to wonder how many books I’d read in my life must be in the thousands by now and where the knowledge I gained is in my inner world and how it affects my day to day life you know all those stories all those facts all that poetry crammed into the tiny space neurons and synapses and blood vessels needed to keep it available and pertinent.
Wanted to pick up today on the definition I posted about revelation. Here it is again:
“In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.”wiki
Even when I posted it I wanted to edit out the word supernatural. In some ways it’s a nonsense word. Doesn’t pass the how would we know it when we saw it test. It might though if you unpack the portmanteau into super natural. After the post about the Bull Elk and considering other similar experiences I’ve had over my life I began to wonder about the true nature of revelation. What, in other words, does it reveal? And why is it different from ordinary experience? Why do some experiences fit Rudolf Otto’s definition and why don’t others? Posting Otto’s definition of the holy again below.*
I once again insist on my own turn with his definition, not the transcendent, but the incandescent. What lights up your inner world? Not supernatural, but super natural. That is, experiences that reveal the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of the natural world. I’ll return here for a moment to that Bull Elk on the Rainy night. He stood quietly, watching, lit only by the dim light cast sideways by my headlights.
It was a natural moment. Yes. Earlier that evening I’d seen a Bull Elk pass by the amphitheater at CBE. Also a natural moment. And an inspiring one as all encounters with our wild neighbors tend to be. But. It was not super natural. The difference. The second Bull, lets call him Rainy Night Watcher, made my heart jitterbug. He exposed a sight which I rarely have. A Bull Elk oblivious of the Rain positioned in his Forest habitat as a Watcher from the other side of nature, super nature, revealing in his brief appearance the holiness inherent in wildness.
*“the transcendent [the holy]) appears as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans—that is, a mystery before which humanity both trembles and is fascinated, is both repelled and attracted. Thus, [God] sic can appear both as wrathful or awe-inspiring, on the one hand, and as gracious and lovable, on the other.” Rudolf Otto, the Idea of the Holy.