Obviously we didn’t get to it yesterday. Here it is early afternoon. Busy morning. Last night, Carol and I went to bed earlier than usual.
Life gets in the way of art, orndorff. One of the tweaks from my perspective.
I had a good old Brazilian, French friend, Roger Allain, who would have a response to that comment. I’ll politely paraphrase it by saying the tweaks sometimes “put a not so gentle downward tug on one’s male nature.”
You can picture your friend saying that like he was here.
I can, and with sparkling eyes, a grin, with a slight accent of subtle body language, and of course in fluent French. Roger and his wife and family of children lived in a commune for some twenty years in Paraguay before entering Brazil. They were Quaker and did not believe in passports. Their socialist farm commune was made up of Europeans who protested World War II. His wife was English. Roger took me into the jungle with a machete and told me to hack my way out. What a shock. Nothing like the Tarzan movies of my youth (I was twenty-eight at the time). There was no room to swing the machete, plus we were on the lookout for deadly spiders and small very poisonous snakes.
You just returned from the grocery on Green Street then out again to the Gelato place next to the Apple store. You worry that you already told the story about Roger, your comrade at Escola Graduada in Sao Paulo.
He was my friend, an older fellow, a father figure. I loved him because he was a learned man of principle and lived by them as much as he could. He was a scholar in European literature and history as well as an excellent chess player who gladly gave me lessons on the game. Here is Roger’s photo taken in 1972 at Escola Graduada. He wanted the pose to look more philosophical so he got out his pipe.
You wrote a short philosophical work while in Brazil and proudly showed it to Roger and Vladimir who although they gave it no praise, they were polite enough not to laugh at it either.
Yes, I saw a copy of that in the basement a month or so ago. The title was “Illusions of the True God” or something to that effect. My interests were the same then as they are now as far as spiritual matters are concerned. Really, they go back to the Apostle’s Creed episode when I joined the Presbyterian Church in 1954.
Why don’t you post your concerns at that age here and now.
I can, but it has no bearing on the story as far as I can see.
Let me be the judge of that. – Amorella.
This makes me anxious, Amorella. I was only twelve.
Then why are you still angry about it?
I don’t know.
Let’s get it up here and out of the road.
I don’t want to offend anyone.
Get to it, boy.
The modern Presbyterian version:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
The modern Common Prayer version:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.
I think the modernized Book of Common Prayer version is closer to what I had to give an oath to as I joined the church. It was the equivalent of an oath to me and I didn’t agree with it. But, they wouldn’t let me join the church otherwise and I felt I was being coerced into joining because other school classmates were joining the church also.
What was the line you objected to?
1. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
I did not know how anyone could know this for a fact, that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. I thought, ‘well, maybe he was, but then, maybe he wasn’t. Who is to say?’
2. he descended into hell.
And, this line is self-evident. Who is to say he descended into hell. Why would he go into hell if he had already forgiven everyone? If he went in, how did he get out? What was his purpose for going there? It seemed to me like someone put this creed together and said, “Here, we will use this.” I still question the lines. And, if there is a hell, then Presbyterian-wise I’ll probably go to hell for it. Maybe I really will I don’t know. I know this, if I have to swear to this creed in order to get into heaven then I am going to have a real problem because it would be hell either direction I was forced to go.
Do you feel better now, orndorff?
No, I am still irritated by the whole concept of it. I have my doubts and that is the way it is. That’s the reason I declare myself an agnostic. What else can I do other than claim myself an ‘transcendental existentialist’ who according to Beliefnet’s questionnaire (2009), Beliefomatic, says I believe in: 1. Reform Judaism, 100%; Liberal Quakers, 90%, Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants, 88%, and Unitarian Universalism, 85%. So, I am somewhere in that vicinity. At least I don’t have to give an oath.
Why is any of this important here?
It is important to see where you are as you write the discussion that Thales and Mario are about to have. – Amorella.
There arguments have to be based on Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, right?
Generally, yes. That’s later. Mid-afternoon. Post and take a break. – Amorella.
It was a long break as it is almost 2200 hours.
Let’s get to it.
Scene 4
Late morning of the seventh day and Thales and Mario are sitting at an old small wooden table in Mario’s private quarters. Both had just finished their normal chit-chat before getting down to the business of the moment, What contingencies should be made for what they may discover is on the other side of the River Styx? A momentary sub-question relating to this is: What does Justice say about what the original First Cause might be? Nature or a God?
Thales said, “We ought to begin with First Cause and work our way up to what may be on the other side of the Styx.”
“Anaximander said that the First Cause was an element he called Boundlessness, a nature that first immortal and also unborn.”
Mario countered, “Anaximenes said air was the First Cause and that everything that exists evaporated from this air, that the stars that surround the Earth are like floating fiery leaves, that the sun circles around the Earth and not under it.”
Thinking this was going to be a short discussion, Thales replied, “Both Anaximander and Anaximenes appear to think the First Cause is natural element or event. As such we should be able to reason from what we know of Living and of Death that what is probable on the other side of the Styx.”
Mario smiled slyly and added, “But your namesake and their teacher, Thales of Miletus, is reported to have said that the soul is the cause of movement. He thought the lodestone or magnet had a soul because it causes iron to move. Some say this logic jumps to the concept that everything is full of gods.”
Thales smirked, “Thus supposedly the aphorism attributed to Thales of Miletus, ‘What is the divine? That which has no origin and no end,’ at least according to Diogenes Laertius.” Thales went on to say, “A god then has no origin and no end. This does not make sense. Everything has a beginning. It is observed in nature, but alas, Living or Dead, we each began in the middle of things. We cannot envision what was before us or what will come after us, we can only know that something was before us and that something will follow us. We exist. We are the evidence to support this.”
“How are these concepts supported by our human sense of Justice as a virtue?” asked Mario. “We are here in Elysium where the where the heartsansoulsanminds of the good and virtuous are selected to be after the death of the body. Does this mean that those who are not so good and not so virtuous are outside Elysium on the other side of the River Styx? Why is the river here if not to give a place of selection?”
“Why is the Earth where it is, Mario? And the stars where they are? If you are looking to add Justice to this argument, this discussion will never end.”
“If the discussion of Justice never ends does this mean it may never had a beginning? If so, then perhaps, the god of all gods is not Zeus or the Supervisor or anyone else, perhaps the god is Justice,” admonished Mario.
“If Justice is a god, then what of the other three classical virtues, Temperance, Prudence and Fortitude, not to mention Humility, Hope, Faith and Charity. Do we have four virtuous gods in charge or seven? Who is the top god, the lord and master of the virtues?” charged Thales.
Self-discipline ordered Mario to silence while he thought it out first. He noted there was no smugness in Thales’s face. No pride. Thales was waiting for a response for the question he did not have an answer to. He had blurted out his last comment, it had just rolled out, and mostly from anger. He sat self-aware of his shortcomings in this discussion and he had forgotten why the discussion had begun in the first place. Finally Mario muttered in defeat, “I would have thought we would have learned more by being Dead.”
***
That is the end of the scene, orndorff.
Well, I can see I have learn a little self-lesson today about humility and anger too. Who am I to question the Apostle’s Creed. I suppose my anger, embedded all these years, is mostly on the circumstance, that I felt pressured to join the church and I did not like to do something under pressure, I still don’t.
Then I have another question for you. Why do you feel the self-pressure or compulsion to write these Merlyn’s Mind books?
It is necessary that I free my mind before I die. I have a need, a compulsion if you will, to be free-minded. I must write my mind out to be free with it. I do not want to die and think, ‘I should not keep the secrets of my imagination and my inner intuitive thinking secret. What good will that do?' I do not know it will do good in reality in general but it will do me a world of good psychologically. That is how I see it. I am surprised at myself for being able to respond to this question so quickly.
You have spent your lifetime thinking on such matters. Tomorrow we move on to scene five which will include Sophia and Cassandra. The focus will still be on what is beyond the River Styx but from an entirely different philosophical perspective. The Milesian philosophers will not play a part. I think the readers will be surprised by the approach and the outcome when the two women are interrupted by Mario and Thales.
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