Post 133.
"The irreligious mind is simply the unreal mind, the zombie, abstracted mind, that does not see the things that grow in the earth and feel glad about them, but only knows prices and figures and statistics. In a world of numbers you can be irreligious, unless the numbers themselves are incarnate in astronomy and music. But for that, they must have something to do with seasons and with harvests, with the joy of the Neolithic peoples who for millennia were quiet and human." (Thomas Merton, When the Trees Say Nothing, p. 71)
This irreligious mind of prices, figures, and statistics has weighed the world, taken the measurement of what it means to be human; accomplishes surveillance and research; reduces all meaningful questions to multiple-choice assessments and rubrics; and ultimately misses everything meaningful about living and dying on earth. We pay a price when we abstract. And yet we have been given this abstracting mind for a purpose, by the God who is logos, who says, "be light" and there is Goodness, and Truth, and Beauty, and life. As Merton says, our abstracting mind has a purpose. It is meant to incarnate itself in astronomy and music, within the context of harvests and seasons. That is, to become something less idealistic and more materialistic. It is in the materialistic that enters sin, but it is also within the materialistic that there is any hope for salvation. Without the material there is no living and dying, no harvests and no hungry days. No stars and no melodies. No life and no death. Only nothing. Nihilo.
And yet, ex nihilo, in perfect Love, God (the Father) spoke (the Son), breathing (the Spirit) over the waters to sing all that is into being. Not Being, in its abstract sense, but being. An actual garden, with actual animals, with actual names, and an actual tree, and actual sins. And so, ultimately, actual salvation. But we so often want to return to abstract, that tree of knowledge whose fruit caused our initial fall in pride. The pride that can only emerge in abstraction, because in the real, every day, we are too imperfect to allow even a shred of pride. Too close to earth, too much hummus to be anything but humble.
DS
"The irreligious mind is simply the unreal mind, the zombie, abstracted mind, that does not see the things that grow in the earth and feel glad about them, but only knows prices and figures and statistics. In a world of numbers you can be irreligious, unless the numbers themselves are incarnate in astronomy and music. But for that, they must have something to do with seasons and with harvests, with the joy of the Neolithic peoples who for millennia were quiet and human." (Thomas Merton, When the Trees Say Nothing, p. 71)
This irreligious mind of prices, figures, and statistics has weighed the world, taken the measurement of what it means to be human; accomplishes surveillance and research; reduces all meaningful questions to multiple-choice assessments and rubrics; and ultimately misses everything meaningful about living and dying on earth. We pay a price when we abstract. And yet we have been given this abstracting mind for a purpose, by the God who is logos, who says, "be light" and there is Goodness, and Truth, and Beauty, and life. As Merton says, our abstracting mind has a purpose. It is meant to incarnate itself in astronomy and music, within the context of harvests and seasons. That is, to become something less idealistic and more materialistic. It is in the materialistic that enters sin, but it is also within the materialistic that there is any hope for salvation. Without the material there is no living and dying, no harvests and no hungry days. No stars and no melodies. No life and no death. Only nothing. Nihilo.
And yet, ex nihilo, in perfect Love, God (the Father) spoke (the Son), breathing (the Spirit) over the waters to sing all that is into being. Not Being, in its abstract sense, but being. An actual garden, with actual animals, with actual names, and an actual tree, and actual sins. And so, ultimately, actual salvation. But we so often want to return to abstract, that tree of knowledge whose fruit caused our initial fall in pride. The pride that can only emerge in abstraction, because in the real, every day, we are too imperfect to allow even a shred of pride. Too close to earth, too much hummus to be anything but humble.
DS
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