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poliphilo I forwarded Ailz some suggestions for cooking pumpkin. "We should try these out on the coven," I said.
Slip of the tongue- I meant the Quaker Meeting....
But as we used to say in Wicca, "All gods are one god..."
I'm reading a collection of poems by Daniel Ladinsky. It's called Love Poems from God. Edna gave it me with heartfelt recommendations. What Ladinsky has done is take texts by mystics of several traditions- Rumi sitting happily alongside Teresa of Avila- and reimagined them in a contemporary poetic idiom- with the result that they all seem to belong to one tradition- which, if you look at it sideways, is indeed the case. How much of the result is Ladinsky and how much is already there in his sources I have no idea- and really don't care because the truth is the truth is the truth. Also Ladinsky's a very fine poet- a finer poet perhaps than some of his orginals- and if the ideas are theirs the poetry is his. And, anyway, he and they are, as his title suggests, all simply channeling God. As Blake said of his own work, "The authors are in eternity".
One thing that emerges strikingly to me is how shamelessly erotic so many of these mystics are- including the celibates- or, indeed- especially the celibates...
Which brings me back to the earliest statue ever found- whose picture I posted a few days back and who I assume to be a god of some sort- and how shamelessly erotic he is too. Sex and faith both yearn after the Other- and share a common tongue. When a faith tradition rejects eroticism it rejects the truth of things.
But eroticism refuses to take any "No" as final and has a way of sneaking in round the back wearing a black mask with spangles...
Everything we humans get up to is driven by Desire...
Slip of the tongue- I meant the Quaker Meeting....
But as we used to say in Wicca, "All gods are one god..."
I'm reading a collection of poems by Daniel Ladinsky. It's called Love Poems from God. Edna gave it me with heartfelt recommendations. What Ladinsky has done is take texts by mystics of several traditions- Rumi sitting happily alongside Teresa of Avila- and reimagined them in a contemporary poetic idiom- with the result that they all seem to belong to one tradition- which, if you look at it sideways, is indeed the case. How much of the result is Ladinsky and how much is already there in his sources I have no idea- and really don't care because the truth is the truth is the truth. Also Ladinsky's a very fine poet- a finer poet perhaps than some of his orginals- and if the ideas are theirs the poetry is his. And, anyway, he and they are, as his title suggests, all simply channeling God. As Blake said of his own work, "The authors are in eternity".
One thing that emerges strikingly to me is how shamelessly erotic so many of these mystics are- including the celibates- or, indeed- especially the celibates...
Which brings me back to the earliest statue ever found- whose picture I posted a few days back and who I assume to be a god of some sort- and how shamelessly erotic he is too. Sex and faith both yearn after the Other- and share a common tongue. When a faith tradition rejects eroticism it rejects the truth of things.
But eroticism refuses to take any "No" as final and has a way of sneaking in round the back wearing a black mask with spangles...
Everything we humans get up to is driven by Desire...
