"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Monday, July 22, 2019

Proverbs for Living & Leading Well




Proverbs for Living & Leading Well
by R.E. Slater


I

"The wise seek not fellowship for consent's approval
but release from myriad burdens weighing the soul."


II

"Today's burden is no less than yesterday's
at obtuse comment, studied audacity, or
soulless pronouncement, each confirming
prideful hearts both vile and repugnant."


III

"To live freed from service to others must be hell itself,
but unknown to the one bound  to their own deportment."


IV

"Living indifferent to the pain of those oppressed is
but the wine of song and dance to those oppressing."


V

"Fools gather with fools from dawn to dusk;
the wise hear and consider no such company." 


VI

"As proverbs are to the ear of the wise, so they are
mocked and despised by the fool in their hearts."


VII

"Sin gathers to sin as the arrogant to wealth and power, but
true wealth is a freed heart caring for the welfare of the stranger."


VIII

"Each waking day we have as the next man, 
but time binds all men to its daily watch
to do good or ill before death comes."


IX

"Each morning is never like the last, yet
the unrighteous think it so and redeems not the day."


X

"As one man calls out to the other
even so does day call out to day
on the hand of the God who weighs all."



XI

Mockers are an insult to all men,
their words poison the heart;
but sweet balm goes from the mouths
of those who offer hope and healing.


XII

Those who listen with their hearts see all;
Those without hearts see nothing.



R.E. Slater
July 21, 2019

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved



















Friday, July 19, 2019

R.E. Slater - The Winter of Our Discontent





The Winter of Our Discontent
by R.E. Slater



Now is the winter of our discontent,
Where brother calls brother brother no more,
Where hand lifts 'gainst head by anger’s vent,
And smouldering ires lie murderous about.

Surely no woman, no man, denies family or friend,
Yet vile offenses seethe neglects and feuds,
Fueling lies of ill-will, refusing fellowships sweet,
Castrating lives like mown grasses of summer.

Low lay brooding spirits inflamed siren’s hymns,
Fell darkness descending on remorseless charms,
Imagined illusions guiding misguided spirits,
Hearing no seasons but hell's hateful dark maw.

Winter or summer, springtime or harvest,
All be the same moved intent's dark climes,
Spewing madness’s flames lit burning moods,
Noxious marshes befouling most putrid fools.


R.E. Slater
July 17-19, 2019;
edited Aug 20, 2019;
May 5, 2020

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved


Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Shakespeare's Richard III, Gloucester's Soliloquy, "Now is the Winter of Our Discontent"



Speech: “Now is the winter of our discontent”


(from Richard III, spoken by Gloucester)

Gloucester:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.


* * * * * * * * * * *






Background

Wikipedia - Richard III


Analysis (from Phrase Finder)

Question: "What's the meaning of the phrase 'Now is the winter of our discontent'?"

Response: 'Now is the winter of our discontent' express the idea that we have reached the depth of our unhappiness and that better times are ahead.

Question: "What's the origin of the phrase 'Now is the winter of our discontent'?"

Response: 'Now is the winter of our discontent', is the first line of Shakespeare's Richard III, 1594. It needs to be read together with the second line of the play 'made glorious summer by this sun of York'. Shakespeare was using the summer/winter weather as a metaphor for the fortunes of tthe English House of York and its rivalry with the Plantagenets for the English throne. The 'sun of York' wasn't of course a comment on Yorkshire weather but on the 'son of York' Edward IV.

So, what Richard is saying is that we are now at the depth of the winter but the son of York (Edward) is like the sun of Summer and good times are on the way.

In this play Shakespeare presents an account of Richard's character that, until the late 20th century, largely formed the popular opinion of him as a malevolent, deformed schemer. Historians now view that representation as a dramatic plot device - necessary for the villainous role that Shakespeare had allocated him. It isn't consistent with what is now known of Richard III, who in many ways showed himself to be an enlightened and forward-looking monarch. The discovery of Richard's skeleton under a car park in Leicester has provided precise evidence of the extent of his deformity. While being somewhat curved Richard's spinal deformity has now been shown to have been exaggerated and deliberately faked in some portraits.

'Sun of York', not 'son of York'.

"Now is the winter of our discontent" are the opening words of the play and lay the groundwork for the portrait of Richard as a discontented man who is unhappy in a world that hates him. Later Shakespeare describes himself as "Deformed, unfinished, sent before his time into this breathing world, scarce half made up". He says that as he "cannot prove a lover" he is "determined to be a villain". Whether Shakespeare believed the propaganda against Richard or whether he was happy to use it for dramatic effect isn't clear.

It is clear that brooding malevolence that Shakespeare has Richard personify mirrors the playwright's view of the state of the English nation during the Wars of the Roses.


* * * * * * * * * * *


Richard III (Shakespeare Resource Center)

"Now is the winter of our discontent...."

/ - - / - / - / - /
Now is the winter of our discontent
As Shakespeare often does, he uses a trochaic inversion to begin the speech; otherwise, the line scans normally. Note how Shakespeare uses metaphor in this line and the one that follows, comparing the Yorkist ascension to the throne to a change in seasons. Discontent in this context can either denote "dissatisfaction" or "sorrow"; given Richard's character, it is more likely the former.

- / - / - / - / - /
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
The completion of the metaphor is arguably a line of strict iambic pentameter. This presumes that glorious is pronounced more like "GLOR-yus" than "GLOR-e-us," but the scansion would seem to indicate that intent. Sun is a pun in this line, playing upon the word son.

- / - / - / - / - /
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In this straightforwardly iambic line, Richard extends the metaphor by comparing the erstwhile reign of Lancaster to the gloom of a cloudy sky, playing upon the "sun of York" line that precedes it. Lour'd—Shakespeare uses the apostrophe to signal that "loured" should absolutely not be pronounced as "louréd"—is an archaism (from the Middle English louren; probably deriving from Middle High German luren "to lie in wait") that meant "to look sullen; to frown upon." The reference to "our house" refers primarily to the family of York, although it could also play off one of its meanings as "the management of domestic affairs" (referring to the War of the Roses).

- - / / - - - / - / -
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
This line demonstrates another common occurrence in Shakespeare's blank verse, in which he begins an iambic line with a pyrrhic followed by a spondee. Sometimes it's used to reinforce meaning; other times, as it seems here, it merely adds a rhythmic changeup to the speech. The line also breaks up the iambic regularity by employing a feminine ending (an extra unstressed syllable). Notice also how Shakespeare uses ellipsis to omit the implied "are" in the line, helping to maintain the meter.

/ - - / / - - / - /
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
This line employs a pair of trochaic inversions back to back. Victorious seems to warrant the same pronunciation as glorious in the second line above. As tasty and well known as this soliloquy is, its dramatic pitfall is that it's the opening speech of the play. Richard is serving as his own chorus here. So what we have over the course of the ensuing 23 lines is largely exposition of backstory and character. It may be well written, but it's still a character telling the audience everything they need to know to understand what's going to happen in the next five acts.

- / - / - / - / - /
Our bruiséd arms hung up for monuments;
Note in this line how the acute "e" (é) serves as another metrical road sign. Much like the apostrophe in "lour'd" signals the speaker not to pronounce the "ed" as an extra syllable, the é is the poet's way of ensuring that bruiséd is pronounced as two syllables rather than one. The phrase bruiséd arms in context can be read as a slight double entendre; it can refer to both weapons (as bruised's archaic meaning of "battered or dented") or limbs (as bruised's more traditional meaning of "contused or wounded").

- / - / - / - / - / -
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Another line, another feminine ending. Alarums here is an archaic version of alarms, which derives from the Middle English alarme (alarom) via the Middle French alarme, which in turn derives from the Old Italian all'arme (literally meaning "to the arms"). Richard's comparison also employs antithesis and alliteration in this construction and the one that follows.

- / - / - - - / - / -
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Like its predecessor, this line employs a feminine ending; scanning the "to" as unstressed is debatable but makes sense given the construction and the sense of the line. This is also a great example of how Shakespeare tightly combines rhythm, sound, and rhetoric within an individual line. In addition to the stressed syllables of blank verse, Shakespeare uses both antithesis and alliteration to highlight the opposite ideas here. Dreadful contrasts delightful, and marches (denoting the drum-dominated compositions typically used to accompany soldiers in marching) contrasts measures (denoting more melodious and formal dance compositions)

/ / - / - / - / - /
Grim-visaged War hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
The line begins with a spondee, but is otherwise straightforward iambic pentameter. This line begins a transitional turn in the speech, in which Shakespeare briefly employs personification to make war a humanized character. Richard will juxtapose that character against himself in the latter part of the soliloquy. Smooth'd in this context denotes "made even" with a connotation of "softened"; front means "forehead or brow."

- / - / - / - / - /
And now, instead of mounting barbéd steeds
In this strictly iambic line, Richard builds upon the overall theme of the soliloquy. War is retiring his spurs, so to speak, and Richard doesn't seem particularly overjoyed by recent developments. Barbéd is a term used only in the two Richard plays, and refers to horses being "armed and harnessed."

- / - / - / - / - / -
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
The line scans as straight blank verse with another feminine ending. Fright is used in the sense "to terrify," whereas fearful, rather than meaning "frightened" denotes "inspiring terror; dreadful."

- / - / - - - / - / -
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
This line hearkens back to the previous line of "dreadful marches to delightful measures" by invoking the metaphor of music and dance. To caper is "to leap or spring, in dancing or mirth." The effective use of imagery creates a diametric opposite to war and provides insight into Richard's view of recent events. Could there be any more disparate images than War as an armed horseman trampling his enemies and War as a courtier "in a lady's chamber" dancing?

- - - / - / - / - /
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
After beginning with a pyrrhic, the rest of the line plays out in iambs. Lascivious (from Middle English, from the Late Latin lasciviosus via Latin lascivus, "wanton") denotes "lewd, lustful." Pleasing here denotes "the pleasure; command or arbitrary will." Essentially War, who should be strewing death in battle, is instead dancing captivated by music. Note the word choice and sibilance in the middle of the line. Richard is bitter, and it's not just from current events, as betrayed by the turn that the soliloquy takes at this point.

/ / - / - / - / - /
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
The heavy stresses of the initial spondee help to signal the aforementioned shift in subject. Richard's cynicism turns away from its disdain for peace and waxes introspective. This is where Shakespeare alludes to Richard's deformities, most notoriously the hunchback. Sportive means "amorous, wanton" in context. Trick (deriving from the French trique= "trick, deceit, treachery, cheating" via Latin tricari = "be evasive, shuffle") is used in its sense of "deception or mischief." The phrase is highly ironic given Richard's courtship of Anne in the next scene.

- / - / - / - / - /
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
Depending upon the scansion and pronunciation, one could read the line as five iambs or as four iambs with an anapest substitution in the fourth foot. The natural tendency seems to elide the middle vowel sound so that the word sounds like "AM-rus," which is reflected above. Note how "court an amorous looking-glass" implies a bit of self-loathing in Richard's psyche, especially when coupled with Richard's lines in the second scene of Act I ("I'll be at charges for a looking-glass"). It doesn't take a therapist to decipher the body image issues at work here.

/ - - / - / - / / / - -
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
Metrically, this 12-syllable line is something of a puzzler. It could read as an alexandrine, but Shakespeare's overall body of verse doesn't really employ hexameter as a bona fide metrical variant. There are plenty of unavoidable stresses in the line, and it makes for some wildly speculative scansion toward the end. Rudely stamp'd means "roughly or crudely fashioned" here, while want means "lacking" rather than "desiring or feeling a need" given Richard's character.

- / - / - / - / - /
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
In contrast with this line's predecessor, the scansion here is textbook iambic pentameter. Richard shows more disdain for love and beauty by dismissing womankind as a "wanton ambling nymph" (wanton = "lustful," ambling = "moving affectedly; dancing," and nymph = "a beautiful woman").

/ - / - / - - / - / -
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
This line seems to scan as trochee/trochee/trochee/iamb/iamb with a feminine ending. The only stress that could go another way is the upbeat on "am"; everything else is dictated by natural emphasis. Curtail means "to lessen" (literally "to shorten" from curtal, "to dock an animal's tail" via the Middle French courtault). Fair denotes "pleasing or favorable" in this context, although its proximity to "cheated" in the next line brings to mind the connotation of "due or just" as a subtext. Proportion is synonymous with "shape."

/ - - / - / - / - / -
Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,
As with most lines, natural inflections dictate the stresses here with the arguable inclusion of "by" as a strong beat. Note how the Richard's word choice in cheated implies that he deserves better. Dissembling (from Middle English dissymblen, deriving from the Middle French dissimuler via Latin dissimulare "to simulate") means "putting on a false face; effecting a pretence to conceal facts, intentions, or feelings" and also reflects a man at odds with Nature.

- / - / - / - / - /
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
In his line of straight pentameter, Richard states that he was prematurely born, which would explain some of his infirmities. On the other hand, Richard was known in his day as a sturdy, brave swordsman, which would lead one to believe that he wasn't so deformed after all.

- / - / - / / / - /
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
The "scarce half" comprising the spondee in the fourth foot could read equally well as an iamb. Scarce is synonymous with "barely" in context; the line builds on Richard's assertion that he was a premature baby.

- / - / - / - / - - -
And that so lamely and unfashionable
This line presents another metrical irregularity; Shakespeare rarely ends a line with a five-syllable word, much less on a three-syllable downbeat such as this. After four iambic feet, there are two ways to view the end of "unfashionable": either as a pyrrhic followed by a feminine ending, or the more controversial (among critical scholars, at least) interpretation of a tribrach—a trisyllabic foot consisting of three unstressed syllables. The reason that many scholars contest the very existence of the tribrach is that there always seems to be an alternative scansion for it, no matter the context (such as, in this case, scanning it as a pyrrhic in a line with a feminine ending). Building on the theme of the previous two lines, Richard reflects bitterly upon his deformities.

- / / - / - - / / -
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
The stresses here could fall a couple of ways. The swing stress here is "me"; I've scanned it as an upbeat because it's hard to pull off four consecutive unstressed syllables in the middle of a line. Halt means "to limp."

- / - - / / - / - /
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Note the interesting play of the long-voweled "I" sound in this line. Piping time is another contrast of war and peace in this speech; the pipe has replaced the fife that accompanies soldiers. Richard hearkens back to the beginning of the speech to tie his disdain for peace in with his disdain for his stature.

- / - / - / - / - /
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Because Richard is not suited for love by appearance or nature, he can indulge in none of the delights of peace. All this part of the speech is leading up to his eventual rationale for his misdeeds, "And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover/To entertain these fair well-spoken days/I am determinéd to prove a villain/And hate the idle pleasures of these days." Richard, in addition to being a thoroughly rotten human being, is suffering from that ageless affliction of being a man of war in a time of peace.

- / - / - / - / - /
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
There's little more to say about lines of regular iambic pentameter, except that this makes the ninth line out of the 27 that comprise this speech that are strictly iamb/iamb/iamb/iamb/iamb in construction. That makes a third of the selection. The remaining two-thirds exhibit some form of variation. Even early in his career, Shakespeare knows that line after line of unbroken blank verse would lull even the groundlings to sleep. This line also demonstrates Richard's self-aware sense of humor; it's as if he steps out of his soliloquy for a moment to share a joke about it with the audience. It's sort of the Elizabethan equivalent of acting into the camera.

- - / - - / - / - /
And descant on mine own deformity.
The scansion of the line largely depends on how one pronounces descant (meaning "to comment"); most dictionaries show either syllable as taking the stress, and we don't know how the Elizabethans would have treated it. The above scansion, however, makes the line a little less sing-song when following the previous one. From this point forward, the exposition inherent in the speech shifts from revealing setting and character to revealing the plot to come. Richard casts himself as villain by his own admission, and Shakespeare's words in his mouth ensure that history will always remember him that way first.



Monday, June 10, 2019

Film Review - The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky (actors: Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz)


‘The Fountain’ Has Nothing to Do with Time

NOVEMBER 22, 2016


I adore Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain. It’s one of my all-time favorite films. I get something new from it every time I watch it, and I watch it at least once a year. I’ve listened to Clint Mansell’s score countless times. The film features Aronofsky at his most earnest and operatic, and while the film flopped when it was released ten years ago, it has gone on to gain a cult following.


However, there also seems to be a common misconception with how the film approaches its narrative. It’s a problem that likely began with the film’s trailer:

As you can see from the trailer, it lays out the three narratives as existing in three time periods: 1500, 2000, and 2500. So if you saw the trailer, you would assume that’s how Aronofsky structured his film. While it’s clear that what’s happening in “1500” is Isabel Creo’s (Rachel Weisz) story “The Fountain” about a conquistador who travels to find The Fountain of Youth in order to empower his Queen, and that in the year 2000, Tommy Creo (Hugh Jackman) is a scientist searching to find a cure for his wife’s illness, we’re left to assume that in the year 2500, “Tom Creo” (as he’s referred to in the credits) is now traveling in a spaceship of some kind with the tree that has allowed him to extend his life.
It’s understandable that some people would think The Fountain is a story that deals with time. Some have even gone so far as to create a “linear” cut that puts the film in “chronological” order. And I get that. If this is a story about The Fountain of Youth, then one would assume that a character who discovered The Fountain in the form of the Tree of Life, would be living in the distant future.
Except The Fountain isn’t about The Fountain of Youth. It’s about death and creation and reconciling the two. The film even takes time to point out how the two are intertwined when Isabel talks about Xibalba:
Izzi: This is an actual Mayan book. It explains the Creation myth. You see that’s first father. He’s the very first human.
Tommy Creo: Hum. Is he dead?
Izzi: He sacrificed himself to make the world.
[pause]
Izzi: That’s the tree of life bursting out of his stomach.
Tommy Creo: Hey, come.
Izzi: Listen. His body became the trees’ roots. They spread and formed the earth. His soul became the branches rising up forming the sky. All the remained is first father’s head. His children hung in in the heavens creating Xibalba.
Tommy Creo: Xibalba. The star, eh,
[corrects himself]
Tommy Creo: Nebula.
Izzi: So what do you think?
Tommy Creo: About?
Izzi: That idea. Death as an act of creation.
For Tommy, a doctor who has dedicated himself to stopping death, he can’t fathom how death could be an act of creation. After Izzi dies, he angrily tells Dr. Lillian Guzetti (Ellen Burstyn), “Death is a disease, it’s like any other. And there’s a cure. A cure – and I will find it.”


The arc of The Fountain isn’t about a man who found The Fountain of Youth or The Tree of Life, ate its bark, and lived to be over 500 years old so that he could rejuvenate the Tree in a dying star. To assume that the scenes in space bubble are literally happening deprives The Fountain of its central conflict, which is about Tommy accepting death and using that to fuel the creation of finishing Isabel’s novel.
When we see Tom Creo in the bubble interacting with Izzi, they’re not preludes to flashbacks. They’re thoughts interfering in Tom’s mind. For Tom, he can’t finish Isabel’s novel because to do so would be to accept her death. “Finish it,” are the worst words to him because if the novel is unfinished, then Isabel’s work, and by proxy Isabel, lives on. He literally can’t close the book on their relationship even though her dying wish was for him to finish the novel.
The climax of the film is Tom learning to accept death, something he has refused to do throughout the story because it’s too painful. When he finally accepts it, we see Tom Creo interact with Tomas’ storyline in the novel “The Fountain”. That scene isn’t Tom teleporting back in time to reveal himself as “First Father” to the Chieftain. What we’re witnessing is an act of creation. Tommy (in the present day) is finishing the story, and the “future” Tom is his mind penning that creation. He changes Izzi’s ending, which had the Chieftain killing Tomas and instead the Chieftain sacrifices himself in the presence of a figure he believes to be “First Father”.

What Aronofsky is showing us isn’t a guy in the distant future getting hit by an exploding nebula. He’s showing us in the abstract the act of accepting death and how it can lead to creation. Tom is now penning the end of “The Fountain” where Tomas reaches The Tree of Life, greedily drinks its sap to heal his wounds, and then is overwhelmed by the power of the Fountain, and dies in its thrall. Like Isabel’s story, it’s autobiographical. She began it as a tale about a woman hoping that her beloved could save her, but Tommy ends it almost as a mea culpa. For Tommy, Tomas is undone—much like he was—by refusing to accept death and chasing eternal life at his own peril.
Of course, how do you sell that in a 2-minute, 27-second trailer? How do you tell audiences, “Hey, all this cool stuff with bald Hugh Jackman in a bubble going through space? That’s actually an abstract representation of the character’s mind as he learns to accept death and finish his late wife’s novel. Coming soon to a theater near you!” It’s much easier to say, “Yeah, this is just three time periods. Roll with it.”
It was an easy sell that did a disservice to the story Aronofsky was trying to tell. While some may argue that The Fountain romanticizes the ugliness of death, it could also be argued that raging against the inevitable shortens our lives in ways we can’t perceive. Instead of enjoying the first snow with the person we love the most, we push them away because we can’t face the pain their death will bring. For The Fountain, we can only move forward after we’re willing to embrace the end.

Image result for film the fountain poster hd

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

R.E. Slater - The Becoming of God




The Becoming of God
by R.E. Slater


Winter's long spell finally has broken
slumbering woods shed snowy coats
in trailing wispy billows blizzard-like
upon the frozen ground below and below.

My spirit too, in this way, is casting off
any remaining tendrils of frozen clutter
stopping life from imagining wonder,
hope, or care, in a world dead to wonder.

Dead things in a live world becoming undead
under the warmth of God's radiating Spirit
undoing both church and world's long history
of politics and war upon the spirits of men.

Languishing for a word of awe, of curiosity,
of the Divine nurturing life into a lost world,
lost in unbecoming dark thoughts, habits, and acts,
lost as a race of nonbeings in an evolving universe.

Rather than nouthetic beings embracing both
world and Spirit together as one, not two,
integral and integrating, unlives made separate
by church misapplying religion for gospel.

A gospel of oneness in Christ, oneness in God,
oneness in Spirit divine to a living cosmos
becoming all in one and one in all,
reminders that winter's hold can break.

Must break if world without end can be
imagined again, hoped again, breathed again,
as in Eden of old - before there was man,
before there was death, before, before, life everlasting.


R.E. Slater
March 5, 2019
May 24, 2020


@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved


* * * * * * * * * *
Wikipedia
Ecotheology is a form of constructive theology that focuses on the interrelationships of religion and nature, particularly in the light of environmental concerns. Ecotheology generally starts from the premise that a relationship exists between human religious/spiritual worldviews and the degradation of nature. It explores the interaction between ecological values, such as sustainability, and the human domination of nature. The movement has produced numerous religious-environmental projects around the world.
The burgeoning awareness of environmental crisis has led to widespread religious reflection on the human relationship with the earth. Such reflection has strong precedents in most religious traditions in the realms of ethics and cosmology, and can be seen as a subset or corollary to the theology of nature.
It is important to keep in mind that ecotheology explores not only the relationship between religion and nature in terms of degradation of nature, but also in terms of ecosystem management in general. Specifically, ecotheology seeks not only to identify prominent issues within the relationship between nature and religion, but also to outline potential solutions. This is of particular importance because many supporters and contributors of ecotheology argue that science and education are simply not enough to inspire the change necessary in our current environmental crisis.


Image result for ecotheology and process      Introducing Evangelical Ecotheology: Brunner, Daniel ...



* * * * * * * * * *


Missing Bland Crowder

Why Sustainability Needs Poetry

I can never hear the word “sustainability” without also hearing the word “sustenance." That’s because about fifteen years ago an English professor at Hendrix College, Ashby Bland Crowder, taught me to hear the word that way. 

Bland was in a working group of faculty interested in what we called SAGE: “the sustainability and global education initiative.” We were sitting in what was then called the Raney Building. There were about twelve of us. Many who were present were from the natural and social sciences, and they naturally thought of sustainability in terms of resource management and responsible public policies. Sustainability was about what we “do” with “the environment,” as if the environment was something outside us, consisting of all that was not human: land and water and plants and animals and atmosphere.

Isn't Sustainability Connected with Sustenance?

Bland was himself an environmentalist in the sense my science friends would understand and appreciate. He was very much concerned with protecting the more-than-human world, and that’s one reason why, when he died, donations were to go to the Environmental Defense Fund. (You can read about him here.) But Bland also knew that sharp divisions between “the environment” and “human life” missed something very important. We humans are within, not apart from, the larger web of life; we are creatures among creatures on a small but beautiful planet. And he knew that truly sustainable societies need people whose minds and hearts are sustainable, too. 

In our gathering that day he casually asked: “But isn’t sustainability connected with the word sustenance, and don’t we need sustenance, too.” He wasn’t talking about physical sustenance alone; he was talking about moral and spiritual sustenance: kindness, awe, wonder, play, imagination, hope, honesty, compassion, care, a love of life. And of course he was right. In our meeting we were forgetting the human and cultural side of sustainability. With his simple question, he opened our minds toward a wider, gentler, more inclusive way of thinking. A more sustainable way of thinking.

You Need to Shift into Second Gear

Bland was a scholar of poetry. He loved language and words. I was a new father at the time, and I found that I didn’t have the time to read novels, so, a former English major myself, I started to read poetry because (so I thought) it would take less time. But I felt that I wasn’t reading it rightly. I was too intent on finding “meanings” quickly. So I asked Bland if he could advise me on how to read poetry.

He said something very simple: “You need to shift from third gear to second gear. No need to hurry. Let your reading be relaxed and thoughtful.” In a way, Bland was telling me something a little more about the “sustenance” needed in a sustainable society. Such a society needs people who are less compulsive, less hurried, not always on the way toward a happiness that never quite arrives. It needs people who find wisdom in patience, in listening, in the wisdom of what is slow and beautiful.
These two lessons from Bland have been with ever since: “Sustainability includes sustenance” and “In order to read poetry you need to shift into second gear.” As I consider his recent departure, I miss my teacher, but I carry with me these lessons and many others: his presence, his easy laugh, his slow gait, his smile.

by Jay McDaniel
March 2, 2019

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How should we believe in God today? If we look beyond our little lives to the vast cosmos, we may even ask: Why all that? And even if we spiritually feel the universe: Why believe any religion? After all, there are many; and haven't they contributed to the predicament of humanity? Process theology gives provocative answers to these questions: how we are bound by the organic cycles of this world, but how in this web of life God shines even in the last, least, and forgotten event as the Eros of its becoming and as its mirror of greatness; why anything exists: because it is from beauty, for harmony and intensity, and through a consciousness of peace rising from our deepest intuitions of existence. We can change: not only in our thoughts and lives, but even in the way we experience this world. This book introduces such a new way of experiencing, thinking, and living. Based on the fascinating work on cosmology, religion, and civilization of Alfred North Whitehead, this book develops the main theses of process theology and elucidates it as a theopoetics of mutual care for the unexpected, the excluded, the forgotten, and a future society of peace. - Roland Faber, Professor of Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology and Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Claremont Graduate University.

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*Faber has been influential in the ongoing development of process philosophy and theology through organizing annual conferences since 2007 in Claremont. His own research focuses on constructive and deconstructive theology, postmodern and process philosophy, poststructuralism and mysticism, theopoetics and eco-process theology and interreligious studies (particularly transreligious discourse). He announced joining the Bahá'í Faith in 2014.


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What is TheoPoetics?

Theopoetics is an interdisciplinary field of study that combines elements of poetic analysis, process theology, narrative theology, and postmodern philosophy. Originally developed by Stanley Hopper and David Leroy Miller in the 1960s and furthered significantly by Amos Wilder with his 1976 text, Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagination. In recent times there has been a revitalized interest with new work being done by L. Callid Keefe-Perry, Rubem Alves, Catherine Keller, John Caputo, Peter Rollins, Scott Holland, Melanie May, Matt Guynn, Roland Faber, and others.

Description

Theopoetics suggests that instead of trying to develop a "scientific" theory of God, as Systematic Theology attempts, theologians should instead try to find God through poetic articulations of their lived ("embodied") experiences. It asks theologians to accept reality as a legitimate source of divine revelation and suggests that both the divine and the real are mysterious — that is, irreducible to literalist dogmas or scientific proofs.

Theopoetics makes significant use of "radical" and "ontological" metaphor to create a more fluid and less stringent referent for the divine. One of the functions of theopoetics is to recalibrate theological perspectives, suggesting that theology can be more akin to poetry than physics. It belies the logical assertion of the Principle of Bivalence and stands in contrast to some rigid Biblical hermeneutics that suggest that each passage of scripture has only one, usually teleological, interpretation. The dismissal of the aesthetic as a living part of language has turned the academic enterprise of biblical studies and theology into a language more at home with lawyers than poets. Theopoetics is the art of using words and thoughts that speak to the reader in an aesthetic and existential way to inspire spirituality in the reader.
Whereas those who utilize a strict, historical-grammatical approach believe scripture and theology possess inerrant factual meaning and pay attention to historicity, a theopoetic approach takes an allegorical position on faith statements that can be continuously reinterpreted. Theopoetics suggest that just as a poem can take on new meaning depending on the context in which the reader interprets it, texts and experiences of the Divine can and should take on new meaning depending on the changing situation of the individual.

Notable publications

Books

  • Ricoeur, Paul (1976), Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth: Texas Christian Press, ISBN 0-912646-59-4.
  • Wilder, Amos Niven (1976), Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagination, Philadelphia: Fortress, ISBN 0-7880-9908-6.
  • Alves, Rubem (2002), The Poet The Warrior The Prophet, SCM Press, ISBN 978-0-334-02896-3.
  • Cruz-Villalobos, Luis (2015). Theological Poetry. Foreword by John D. Caputo [1]
  • Hopper, Stanley Romaine; Keiser, R Melvin (1992), Stoneburner, Tony, ed., The Way of Transfiguration: Religious Imagination As Theopoiesis, Westminster John Knox Press, ISBN 0-664-21936-5.
  • Faber, Roland (2003), Gott als Poet der Welt: Anliegen und Perspektiven der Prozesstheologie [God as Poet of the World: Concerns and Perspectives in Process Theology] (in German), Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, ISBN 3-534-15864-4.
  • Miller, David L (2006), Hells and Holy Ghosts: A Theopoetics of Christian Belief, USA: Spring Journal Books, ISBN 1-882670-97-3.
  • Miller, David L (2005), Three Faces of God: Traces of the Trinity in Literature & Life, USA: Spring Journal Books, ISBN 1-882670-94-9.
  • May, Melanie A (1995), A Body Knows: A Theopoetics of Death and Resurrection, Continuum International Publishing, ISBN 0-8264-0849-4
  • Keller, Catherine (2003), The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-25649-6
  • Bronsink, Troy (2013), Drawn In: A Creative Process For Artists, Activists, and Jesus Followers, Paraclete, ISBN 1557258716
  • Harrity, Dave (2013), Making Manifest: On Faith, Creativity, and the Kingdom at Hand, Seedbed, ISBN 1628240229
  • Keefe-Perry, L. Callid (2014), Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer, Cascade, ISBN 978-1625645203
  • Garner, Phillip Michael (2017), Theopoetics: Spiritual Poetry for Contemplative Theology and Daily Living, Wipf and Stock, ISBN 9781498243742

See also


External links