Dodging A Nervous Breakdown

[poliphilo]

Yesterday was Ourdert's confirmation. I didn't have a nervous breakdown, but I realised I was heading for one. I left the party early and went and sat somewhere quiet- by which I mean in front of my computer.

It wasn't the confirmation service that did it . (Though I have to say I thought it was awful; the bishop was a corporate smoothie-chops who made sure there wasn't a whiff of ancient mystery about the ceremony.) This has been building for days.

That meeting with the evangelical clergymen last week rattled me. It's not that I don't respect them, because I do. Even admire them.  It's just that their path goes in that direction, and mine goes in this.

They dismiss doubt. Sweepingly. I think of doubt as a very dear friend .

Here's one instance. Ailz said something about needing the divine female. The head clergyman replied that it was an issue that didn't arise. And I do believe he made a sweeping gestiure with his arm as he said it.

It may not arise for you, mate- but it certainly does for me.

I am not "a priest in spite of himself".  Every time I've tried to function as a priest it has ended in tears. Yesterday  was an early warning. I'm slipping into the role- which for me is a temptation not a vocation- and losing my true self. I need to squash this nonsense now. 

It isn't Christianity that's the problem. It's organized religion. Organized religion is poison to me. There's no way I can act as its agent and stay happy and sane. 

I can't bear to be organized- and I can't bear to organize other people.

I've started reading the Hypnerotomachia again- the 15th century novel from which this journal takes its name. Call it a return to basics. It was written by a guy called Francesco Colonna, aka "Poliphilo" - a monk who lived in the community and dreamed about Roman architecture and blondes.

Comments

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

well ...if each of us is a glance
from the eye and mind of God into
this lot, the universe etc then the
relation to God is primordial and
also unique...
so the thing with unique is what can
one say to another etc but perhaps
there are also things which are,
primordially ,in common one supposes...
there had better be of course...

I am thinking several things, and dont
worry I am not spending my time thinking
about your spiritual journey but as a
live journal friend one responds to what
the friends offer...one that in speaking
of a ,what was it, medieval kowtowing there
is ...is what? well thought is faster than
word and a certain mental chess shared can
save the words...

but I think for me as much as for you and
therefore I can say it without being somehow
over any line, an issue is whether it is about
me or about God. But put that way there is
again every possible objection... let's mental
chess past that to the thought that the
acknowledgement(=eucharist) of God is that
which accompanies the recognition of the
impossiblity of the line we draw around our self
separating ourselves from our shadow and all that
other good stuff as we know...but it is the
recognition of God that allows one to be at
resolution with all these impossible paradoxes...

my journey, my development, my thought ,are
all interesting but also trivial too...the I
and the my are the seed growing in the night etc
what remains but 'acknowledgement'

well "block that metaphor" in the phrase
(ring lardner's? of a running feature in the
new yorker magazine over the years) the glance
has become a seed.
boggles the mind.
bows out the livejournal friend
in contrition.

+Seraphim

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'm right and you're wrong- or anything as simplistic as that. I accept that symbols, practices, modes of being that don't work for me may be deeply satisfying for you. It's like food, I suppose. Or taste in art and literature. I can't stand the Iliad. I refuse to go on reading it. I can give reasons for this. But at the same time I have to acknowledge that the Iliad is a masterpiece of World Literature- and that my private taste and opinion hardly matter.

And so- I am what I am- as God made me- and I must follow my own path. I'm glad it seems to run in same the same general direction as yours- because- whatever our disagreements- I recognise you as one of the wisest people I know.

the Iliad. setting aside all that other business.

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

On the iliad, coming ashore with this one
item from the shipwreck of metaphors referred to.
I think it is possible to find a way to adjust
the focus and see it at least for a moment in a
new way...
Simone Weil's "The Iliad: the Poem of Force" I
recall was a little pamphlet that did that for
me at my next reading of the poem. now I remember
little of either weil or homer but I suppose it to
be that the central axis of the poem is that force
destroys its weilder as it does its object.

seen that way the poem becomes quite different
but I prefer the Odyssey and when I think of that
I think of our strange old Idaho uncle Ezra's

"And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on tha swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, so winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water..."

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/canto-i/

Re: the Iliad. setting aside all that other business.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I only know the Odyssey through retellings. Some day- perhaps soon- I must tackle the thing itself.

I'm very fond of Old Ez. No-one did more in the last century to "purify the dialect of the tribe".