• Tag Archives Hesse

  • Spiritual Resources for the Humanist

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                                                Waning Honey Extraction Moon

    More butting my head against a language that any 4 year old in ancient Rome could speak and a reasonably intelligent 5 year old could read.  I guess there is a plateau affect here and I’m standing on one right now.  I can see the path I’ve taken to get here, off to my back, but the road ahead lies blocked, beginning at a point somewhere above me, as if I stand before a cliff.

    Not complaining, just observing.  I’m here by choice and I know that.

    Groveland asked me for a sermon topic, something I’m going to preach on October 9th, exactly a week before our cruise.  A month and a half is a long lead time, so I went back through this blog, hunting for a topic that interested me and one that might interest Grovelanders, too.

    Here’s what I sent them:

    Spiritual Resources for the Humanist

    What resources do we have, those of us no longer in the Christian faith?  Or those of us never in it?  What resources do we have to replenish the spirit and feed the Self?

    The Western cultural tradition, a great river of classical literature and fine arts has enough nourishment for several lifetimes.  We’ll explore works like the Bible, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Dante’s Inferno and how to use them for our personal growth.

    I lifted the phrase the great river of the classics from one of my favorite authors, Camille Paglia.  Other eras have used the writings of the Greeks, the Jews, the Romans and the Italians in particular as stimulus for reflection, contemplation, meditation.  I’ll toss in a few later writers like Kafka, Camus, Goethe, Hesse, Tolstoy, Isaac Bashevis Singer, probably Rainer Rilke and Wallace Stevens, too.

    Might toss in a few works of art, perhaps Goya, the color field painters, Song dynasty potters and painters, perhaps a Tibetan Buddhist thangka.

    I suppose I’ll have to start by considering the nature of resources for spirituality, something I’ve come of late to define as enrichment, expansion, deepening of the Self.  But count on a Latin phrase or two, just because I can.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Humanities Writing 📎and tagged

  • Megrims Burn in Sun

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring         Waxing Seed Moon

    “Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” – Herman Hesse

    Hesse was a key author in my youth.  I’ve revisited him since, as I am Dreiser right now.  They both hold up well, though Hesse can sometimes seem a bit feverish.  Still, his Steppenwolf had an adult anguish that I did not understand when I read it first at 20.  The Theatre for Madmen Only was a place we all could go if we understood the world in which we lived.  6 months ago, when I re-read Steppenwolf, I realized Harry Haller was mad in an existential way, that he had seen too much, walked too close to the flame.  At 20 he was my hero, today he is a cautionary tale.

    The mental megrims of last week have receded, perhaps the sun today burned them out or the root canal gave me some concrete pain.  Whatever the reason, I feel once again whole and engaged.  These ups and downs, a neurotic cycle now much milder than in former years, do get tiresome, as I said a few posts ago, but they no longer paralyze me, stop me in my  tracks.  Thank Jung, John Desteian, age and Zoloft for that.

    Tomorrow morning Kate flies off to Denver.  She will be in Grandma heaven.  I saw a license plate holder that said, Parents say no?   Dial 1-800-Grandma.  She’s a good grandma, more a doting grandma than a Jewish grandma, though she is both.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Literature 📎and tagged

  • SteppenWolf

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    66  bar rises 29.68  0mph NNW dew-point 61  sunrise 5:57 sunset 8:42 Summer

    Waning Crescent of the Thunder Moon

    Sierra Club.  Numbers and names. Strategic decisions about endorsements and targeting of races.  All constrained by a set of compliance rules that would cross the eyes of a medieval theologian.  Still, this is the medium and political power is the message. 

    Coffee afterward with Margaret.  We talked about organizing, but had to cut it short so Margaret could get back to her beagle.

    Another wonderful summer night on the way home.  Stars in the sky.  A thin crescent moon somewhere, or not yet up. 

    Still listening to Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf.  It is so different from what I remember, though my memory of it is fuzzy.  Makes me think of Steppenwolf, that wonderful German Sheperd who was part of my life for such a brief time.


    📂This entry was posted in Politics 📎and tagged