From: C.L. Everett (seaelle@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Aug 22 2005 - 18:03:49 BST
> Sam said to dmb:
> ...you might just open your mind up and entertain the possibility that
> mysticism isn't what you think it is, and start to explore outside the
> narrow box of SOM dominated descriptions of the religious way.
>
Sam, I've lived for 30+ years with an understanding of Pirsig's
*enlightenment* that certainly included a huge chunk of the
dynamically mystical within it. But it does not fall under a static
religious creed, especially one** that tends to take itself very
seriously and very literally, at least in the US, lately. And as best
as I can see religion is static. The experience might not be but the
edifice is.
I have a feeling that you and DMB are not really at odds with what
lies beneath your words. Words so often make us come out as enemies.
Words are windows and if they've been painted opaque, why then what is
the point?
Lots of us have been beat to death with loud loud screaming Xtian
words so that we flinch whenever someone uses them or when we see
someone "wearing the clothing".
I challenge us all to use fewer words that we think are familiar or
that are loaded label words (I think someone has recently said
something about the checking definitions of words--Ant or Matt,
maybe?). I would think somewhere we have a file of definitions for
mysticism somewhere?
Maybe no thing is what we think it is?
**(mainstream Xtianity--what I mean by mainstream is that amorphous
blob of folks who in the last 10-15 years "went back" to church but
couldn't tell an Episcopalian from a Jew from a Lutheran because they
don't know the *history* that you do). What is in your head is not
what is in theirs, even if you know the "facts". Go back to what I
said about being beat to death. Tends to make folks plug their ears.
I'm not saying that is what you are doing. I read your letter to a
friend at the start of your essay draft on your website and I loved it
so I trust where your heart is coming from. It's just the uniform
scares some of us, and justifiably so.
In the middle, C.L.
the organizing principle is of all, everyone and everything, refusing
to be tangled in words, laughing at us, asking us to play and dance
and sing and laugh more.
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