zoarster's Xanga

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:21:50 GMT

I'm bringing Xanga back - drop a comment if you're with me!

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:21:46 GMT

apparently my account will be deactivated if I don't do this.

An Advent Reflection (Belated)

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 08:44:22 GMT

            -Ad-venire. To come. Not only to come, but also a directional coming, an arrival. Ad: to, towards. Venire: to come. Something nears in this season.
            -Something comes? Something, not someone?
            -That is all I am saying, that something comes.
            -But Advent is the season of the coming of the Lord, the coming of Christ.
            -So you say.

In reflecting on the days leading up to Christmas, we must constantly keep in our minds and spirits the word Advent and its origins in Latin. For the advent is not a verb of expectation or of waiting; it is a verb of motion. And in order to fully understand the mystery of that verb, we must take ourselves back in the tradition of Loyola and re-read in the tradition of Derrida the texts of the season of Advent. St. Ignatius-Derrida, Jacques of Loyola, guide us through this time and let us see what secret is born(e) in Advent.

Waiting. What is there to be said for the value of waiting in Advent? For in the first season of Advent, there was very little to be awaited. There was certainly, in the hearts of most, no expectation for Christ as we know him today, Christ who would later ascend the cross to for(under)go the sins of humanity.

-Mary knew what she was waiting for.
            -My soul doth magnify the Lord,
            And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior
            For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold from henceforth all the
                   generations shall call me blessed
            For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name
            And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
            He hath shown strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their
                  hearts.
           He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree
          He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
          He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;
          As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed forever.
                 (St. Luke 1:46-55)

-There is neither knowledge nor waiting for Mary. There is only the past, the seed of Abraham.

If it can be said that we wait in Advent, we certainly do not know what we are waiting for. Advent is a season in which the other, the tout autre, moves towards us. There can be no waiting in Advent, for the tout autre can never be expected. Thus the spirit of Advent is the spirit of a-waiting, of not waiting.

-But that was then, as they say. This is now, and we know what comes after Advent.
-But do we know what comes after that?

The point of Advent is not a commemorative waiting, but to wait for something new, for the tout autre. One cannot wait for something that has already happened:

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

We are always waiting for something to come, and it has never come. Our great mystery never states that Christ has come—it infers such, but the existence of the tout autre and its advent is a precondition of the secret, not a part of the secret itself. It is as if Christ both eternally preexisted and never existed at all.

Thus we are faced in the season of Advent with two impossibilities of waiting: the impossibility of waiting for an event that has happened and the impossibility of waiting for something that is unexpected.

Yet we must wait faithfully. Advent predicates itself on the space between a/waiting, a spirit of painfully impossible waiting. The in(de)cision of a slash places within us a cut that cannot be healed—yet it is this same cut in which a hand shall be thrust and through which shall come forth (advenire) the tout autre: “My Lord and my God” (St. John 20:28). But that is a different story altogether.

A Totally Unrelated Diversion

When at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
When you get the message that you're a failure, try government service.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Wed, 18 May 2005 22:47:34 GMT

I've been thinking of late that the problem with modernity is our obsession with power and control. We are so caught up in our own plans for life that we often forget that life has its own plans for us.

After all, how will our best laid plans help us when the element of chaos strikes and stops us from their fulfillment? Campbell portrays the present as a moment of free fall into the future. None of us can fully comprehend the great reality that lays before us, and none of our plans can serve as an ultimate reference for our life. The failing grade can end the career of an academic; the car accident can paralyze the athlete; the housefire can shatter the dreams of a devoted parent.

But what more damage does our ambition do than it does to our friends? For when we are filled with ambitions and visions of future destiny, we see our fellow human beings not as temporal presences but rather as simple unrealized potential. And what worse sin can we commit against our friends than to see them as something as yet unrealized and ignore the real presence that is here with us? What hubris, to think that our plans and not the plans of life shape our relationships!

But even if we should not, cannot plan, there remains one thing to us as we fall into the future--we needs must dream. For it is in dreams that we see the world as it ought to be. Dreams are the weft of the tapestry yet unwoven, the vision in the weaver's eye. It is through our dreams that we look forward, and it is only through dreaming that we may truly feel the calling of life, and know what purpose life has for us.

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Sat, 02 Apr 2005 16:25:37 GMT

Dip Ball!!!

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Sun, 20 Feb 2005 18:30:03 GMT

I keep my little God in a box of space.

He talks to me in my sleep,

and He whispers the answers

to a thousand unasked questions.

“This is my Father,” He shows me,

and I see everything in the universe

and not-everything there too;

“shh,” He says, “no questions.”

But I know that I’ve approached

from the side of everything—

an approach from the other side

would let me experience oblivion.

“This is my Mother,” He shows me,

and I see our shared mother,

sitting at home and shedding pearly tears

for the loss of her sacred sons.

But I know that if we approached

from the other side of time,

her tears would be tears of happiness,

after the suffering of birth.

“This is Dream,” He shows me,

and my mind is opened to

all the things that I knew were there

but was afraid to admit.

But I know that approaching

from the unconscious side,

I would see all the things that I admit,

but cannot possibly know.

“This is the unspeakable,” He shows me:

I see the Father and the Mother in dream,

clothed in robes of pure light,

and sitting on their great thrones.

But I know that the other approach,

from the side of waking,

would show them clothed in darkness

and hidden to all of us, even little God.

“This is Love,” He finally shows me,

and I see Her opening the box with me,

experiencing our little God

even though She might not know Him.

But for Love, the approach from both sides

is identical—I know this because

Love is the one thing that encompasses

the Father and the Mother.

And that’s the one thing

I can’t get out of my head,

that picture of Love,

because I find it everyday.

Love’s the one thing that little God

won’t show Her when we’re there.

“Say it to her,” He tells me,

“She’ll know it because it’s Dream.”

But that’s the one thing I can’t say

because I don’t know how to say it.

My little God just tells me I’ll know

and sits in His box and smiles.

Friday, February 11, 2005

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 04:14:59 GMT

I haven't written for a long time, but it's my obligatory Ash Wednesday-ish entry.

As we begin the penitential seasion of Lent, it is imperative that we look to the Gospels and to the Christ-mythos to see the true purpose of the season. What we see in the scriptures is as follows: having just been baptized by John the Baptist and confirmed by the descent of the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Christ journeys out into the desert to hear the voice of God and to be tempted by Satan.

Christ symbolically is seen going to the place where the spirits dwell and clensing himself of the attachments of the material world. Knowing that he is the Son of the Father, the Lord goes out to test his mettle against Satan--his victory is not assured, but is rather predicated upon the struggle between the human and divine natures of the Christ.

When the ashes are imposed on Ash Wednesday, they remind the Faithful that all glory in this world--even that of Christ the King--is transient. The palms of the triumphant Christ in Jerusalem are burned and their ashes remind the Believers: "Remember, o soul, that thy body is dust and to dust it shall return."

What, then, is our task in Lent? For some, fasting, prayer, and good works are enough. This is the calling of Christians in Lent, for therein can be found the virtue of the world and the pathway to Heaven. For others, however, the chosen path is more dangerous. Lent can be a pathway to a showdown within the soul, a battle between good and evil. This is not the path for all, and it is a dangerous one; however, those who choose it with God's help shall become, with His will, bearers of the Light.

Saturday, June 12, 2004

Sat, 12 Jun 2004 22:56:11 GMT

Another month, another entry. Today, I'll be writing about something slightly more substantive than my last Xanga. It is an imperative that finds its origins in religion but has impacted all modes of thought in the last 2,000 years. If you're not interested in religion, please don't stop reading now. Something in here is bound to be relevant.

The commandment of which I'm speaking is, of course, the Great Commandment: "love thy neighbor as thy self" (St. Matt 19:19, 22:39; St. Mark 12:31; St. Luke 10:27). Echoes of this commandment are found in Gnosticism, Judaism, and almost every world religion and philosophy. Even in the Far East, the Hindu Gitas state: "tat tvam avi," or "thou art that." Most people see this commandment as simple: treat others as you want to be treated. The commandment is, however, deceptively simple.

Love others as you love yourself; treat others as you treat yourself. It seems easy enough, but religious and philosophical wagers are never so simple. Adherence to this commandment raises one major question for the mystic or the philosopher: "how ought I to treat myself, that I should know how I ought to treat my neighbor?" For all the Great Commandment seems to do, it only brings religious codes of conduct back to the self. It brings codes of conduct, which at one time governed conduct with respect to others, back to conduct towards oneself.

This call to introspection brings an opportunity for meditation and introspection, as the Gospels, both canonical and Gnostic, are curiously silent as to how one should treat oneself. They give basic guidance, but no solid dogma. This silence is deliberate; most of one's code of conduct must be discovered within than given from without. The Gospels give an interesting starting point, however. They give a few rules governing conduct with others--and these, in turn, can give us a starting point for the mystical and religious introspection necessary to decide how we shall treat ourselves.

The best summary of these guidelines for outward conduct are found in Logion 6 of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas: "Do not lie and do not do what you hate." Simply put, these commandments can be turned inwards to say: "Do not deceive yourself, and do not be hypocritical to your own beliefs." Easier said than done. Honesty with oneself means admitting all of one's desires, no matter how dark and "immoral" they may be. It means struggling with moral dilemmas instead of adhering to a rigid dogma and pretending they don't exist.

And with this stepping stone, I leave off. All paths have one end, but to divulge my path may be to force another to second guess his own path on my account. But remember that one should always be honest to oneself--lest we fall into the trap of dogma, into the hazard of the herd. This trap binds us on an earthly plane into a life of mediocrity and possibly on the celestial plane as well. Know thyself, and know how to behave towards thyself. Only then may you treat thy neighbor as thyself.

Monday, May 31, 2004

Mon, 31 May 2004 03:59:59 GMT

Note to all Hoyas who took Mitchell's PST class: this post proves that Blogs are the end of history.

The rest of you may stop wondering what the hell I'm talking about now and start reading what will most definitely be an inane post. I'm not being facetious, it really will be the most irrelevant post ever.

I went to the supermarket by my apartment yesterday, and they have those nifty little self-checkout lines that raise the odds of shoplifting so high that I don't even want to think about it. Then I started thinking: what if you buy alcohol at one of those things? Do you get to card yourself?

That's it. As I said, end of history. Have a good day, peeps.

PS-for anyone who doesn't know, I'm not going to be home this summer. Visit me in Maryland. That is all.

Saturday, April 17, 2004

Sat, 17 Apr 2004 03:36:37 GMT

"'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus asks the last man, and he blinks.

The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea-beatle; the last man lives longest.

'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth.

Becoming sick and harboring suspicion are sinful to them: one proceeds carefully. A fool, whoever still stumbles over stones or human beings! A little poison now and then: that makes for agreeable dreams. And much poison in the end, for an agreeable death.

[...]

No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

'Formerly, all the world was mad,' say the most refined, and they blink."-Wm. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Could it be that we are the last men? Or will our children be?