From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Sun Aug 08 2004 - 07:26:17 BST
Dear David B.,
I haven't had time yet to find and read Pirsig's 'Copleston annotations',
but your 7 Aug 2004 11:21:51 -0600 post may make it unnecessary to do so for
the moment. It did help, thank you.
I have no real problems with Pirsig's anti-theism even if I prefer
agnosticism for myself. I (and most Quakers) do have problems with 'virgin
birth', 'resurrection' etc. when taken literally and as dogmas. I don't
smell a rat yet when god/God is referred to as 'he/she', as I can still
understand personification/anthropomorphisation of god/God as a useful
metaphor for DQ, even if I personally prefer to refer to god/God as 'it'.
I did not agree with Kuitert's identification of god/God with 'the Word'
either.
I agree that 'defining God as "that which connects everyone and everything"
fails to portray DQ'. It is (like every static pattern of value, even 4th
level ones) only an imperfect way to 'point at the moon'. I'm fine with God
understood as "mystic unity" too, but it is just less practical to me. "That
which connects everyone and everything" helps me better to contribute to
making that "mystic unity" visible in this world.
Do you remember reading my poem Genesis 3, which I quoted a few times before
on this list (see underneath)? It does completely without a 'god'-concept,
but points to the same connectedness/unity.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
GENESIS 3
'I' is a bundle of other people's quotes,
a set of memories, cravings and hopes.
I am connected, one with all that lives and prospers.
'I' seeks status, seeks to contact, to impress.
Impression leads to fear, opposition, repels.
'I' becomes who I am, always as ever.
'I' versus I.
I contain 'I'.
'I' is a wave, whipped up by the wind,
a wave of craving to be more than I am.
I am the sea, an ocean of love.
I receive what streams back, what returns to its source.
Wim Nusselder, 30/3/96
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