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For now, we are the meaning makers.
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Category: Bounds>Symbol: Making Meaning

  • What religion are you? (uh-oh)

    I recently came across this little essay that I wrote back in 2004. Was surprised a bit by how relevant it still seemed, both personally and as a cultural artifact of sorts. With two very minor modifications, I re-publish it here:

    “What religion are you?”

    I was asked this question this evening (11/17/04) and I honestly did not know what to say. I am certainly *not* very much of what would enter into a person’s head if you used the word Christian. On the other hand, maybe I should answer “a Christian” for that very reason; maybe the questioner should see someone who is like me but who, nevertheless, thinks of himself as a Christian?

    Besides, I am much of what *might* be properly thus labeled. I take the Bible seriously; I either go to church or feel guilty for not doing do (usually the latter during football season); I think that any real hope for myself or any other person is inextricably linked to Jesus, etc.

    And yet, there must be a better answer.

    I am definitely not any of the following, and therefore should not answer so as to present the idea that I am any such thing: atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Catholic, Pagan, Wicka, Communist, liberal mainline denominationalist, or Bible-thumping Right-winger.

    I have been accused of being a left-wing Jesus freak by Bible-thumping Right-wingers. I have been accused of being a Bible-thumping Right-winger by liberal mainline denominationalists. I’ve never been accused of being any of the other things by anyone.

    Okay, so I am probably a Protestant, but what the hell does that mean anymore? Or what might it mean to any given person in any given context? I certainly would not fight against Ireland’s effort to gain independence from England. I would certainly not burn witches – at least, not just because they were witches. No, forget it; I wouldn’t burn anyone that I can think of, for any reason. Not even if they asked me to.

    I certainly have a very high regard for the faith of several people I know who are *not* Protestants; and I certainly consider many Protestants I know to be either silly or dangerous – specifically because of what they think of as their “religion.”

    The problem is, when someone asks me the question, they don’t want a speech. Usually, they just want a quick answer that seems meaningful to them so they can move on in the conversation. What to do?

    Question: What is your religion?

    Possible answer: I want to find out why both irreligious and religious people wanted Jesus dead; and I want to be like Jesus in any way that is an appropriate goal, including whatever habits (“disciplines”) will move me in that direction..

    Okay. That’s pretty darn close to the truth. But now I need a label that communicates my “religion” with some clarity without triggering inaccurate – and sometimes silly -prejudices. Can anybody help?

  • Ecclesiastes 12:01-08, Interpretive Paraphrase

    We entrust ourselves to the futile things that seem to matter at the time, says the one who knows.

    While you are young, 
    before the inevitable days of sorrow come
    when you will say, "Whatever."
    Do all you can to keep the True God - the Ultimate, Personal Source and Destination - in your awareness

    Before your seeming lights turn dark...
    Before clouds have too often been on the horizon...
    Before the last anxieties loom...

    ...When all doors are shut.
    The factory makes barely any noise at all.
    The softest birdsong awakens.

    Fear keeps you at home, though all is in bloom.
    Wild fruit is everywhere, but those who would eat it are fatigued.

    You are preparing for Eternity Revealed while those who will miss you prepare to mourn
    who watch their precious link to you dissolving,
    a dozen unique benefits dwindling,
    your support becoming fragile.

    What they knew most of you will return to soil
    As what they knew least returns to God, who knows you best.

    9/10/2012
    Pasted from <http://donmcintyre.blogspot.com/2012_09_01_archive.html>

  • I Trained My Dog

    Lessons from Lesser Loves

    I trained her in what to expect
    which grew into comfy routines.
    And routines became character,
    sound, instinctive ways, unscreened.

    By acting toward her, with her, for her - 
    oblivious to subtle stress - 
    I instilled a sense of order,
    safety, even righteousness.

    Train out of me what I became
    from puppy efforts, premature:
    my expectations in Your name:
    Routine became my caricature.

  • Just a Symbol? – Part 2

    [continued from Just a Symbol, Part 1]

    Picture a father coming home several hours early from his workday. His wife is most likely still at her place of work. His youngest son, age 14, is out of school and almost certainly out with friends…

    This father, a generally traditional person, especially as regards family values, walks unexpected through the front door of his house to the sight and sounds of a party, complete with beer, smoking (tobacco, plus), and music of the variety one would expect.

    Astounded at the surprising scene, dad takes a rather long pause as all sound and movement becomes general silence and stillness. Finally, the father speaks at a volume that is uncharacteristic of him:

    “WHAT in the HELL do you THINK you’re DOING?!”

    While messes are cleaned up, belongings are gathered, and hasty exits are made (all but the man’s son), let us take a closer look at dad’s question.

    If he had just spoken literally – if he had “just said what he meant” – the question might have been worded like this:

    “What are you doing?”

    Pretty clear; not particularly open to nuance of meaning or misunderstanding. Dad wanted a his son to explain with both immediacy and clarity the thought process that led to this juncture in their lives together. It is quite astounding how much feeling and meaning and dread and compassion and defensiveness that various observers might project on to such a simple 4-word question. But ignoring any great level of literary analysis, most who are presented with these basic facts would have a good idea of conversations and actions that might ensue. All that, even with the shocking simplicity of a mere, “What are you doing.”

    So then, one might ask, why the added poetry? Why the metrically accented cadence? 

         V     -    -       V     -    -         V                               V         V      -
    WHAT in the HELL do you THINK [brief pause] YOU'RE DO - ing?

    Or:

    Why enquire about his son’s thought process (“think”) when it seems likely that the son’s intelligence is already likely suffering a severe critique?

    Why the mention of Hell?

    But most importantly, if I may say so, how can I possibly put the label of poetry on these characteristics of the father’s expression? Isn’t poetry dull and trivial; and more to the point, hard to understand?

    And if the dad’s question is an example of “poetry,” what does it possibly have in common with the pompous drivel that so many have come to associate with that word?

    Here’s the beginning of an answer to that question: if a person had been fed for years a diet consisting of nothing but dry oats and cabbage, a word like “food” would long ago have stopped salivating the taste buds.

    But you ask, why would an entire culture conspire to feed it’s members nothing but dry oats and cabbage? I’m tempted to offer my own verbosities of an answer, but I will remain focused on the matter at hand.

    True poetry in language emerges when one is trying to describe an experience that was or is so intense — so horrid or shocking or compelling or beautiful or rapturous or revelatory — that mere words, in normal usage, are inadequate to the task.

    And yet one speaks anyway, because quite often, beyond merely holding intense feelings within us, speaking (or writing) words often seems, for a number of reasons, the best or only option.

    Very often, our words are spirits — or if you prefer, internal impulses — just before they turn into actions.

    The Old Testament prophets…

    [to be continued]

  • Salutation (by Ezra Pound, 1811, 1813 – worth sharing)

    O generation of the thoroughly smug
          and thoroughly uncomfortable,
    I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
    I have seen them with untidy families,
    I have seen their smiles full of teeth
          and heard ungainly laughter.
    And I am happier than you are,
    And they were happier than I am;
    And the fish swim in the lake
          and do not even own clothing.

  • Just a Symbol? or, “Why don’t poets and song-writers just SAY WHAT THEY MEAN?”

    We are a generation that is drunk on the ideal of the "literal." Our public discourse at all levels is increasingly turning to what amounts to suffocating jargon, dominated by the seeming clarity of the commonest words whose definitions are assumed to be known and mutually agreed-upon. Any ironic (now mostly sarcastic) or idiomatic phrases are so dully common that the average mind -- and there are many of those -- can catch the "meaning" easily, or seem to.

    I will save the reader from a lengthy tirade about the role of language in a culture, and how the habitually shallow use of language is a subtle but essential tool of cultural demise.
    Going a little deeper (optional):

    See “Poetry” in The Encyclopedia of Maredi:

    If you use the word “poetry” in conversation, it will generally be met by a combination of rolled eyes and yawns. Why? Because the word is now associated with only two types of writing – both of which in our day have had most traces of true poetry diluted by glop. The two types are:

    (1) “free verse” – in which regular prose gets broken into poetic-looking separate phrases simply because it looks more consequential; e.g.:

    today you
    Broke
    my heart with your Cruel
    joke

    (2) simple rhymes and methodical rhythms that have remained associated with the great poetry of the distant past but are structurally indistinct from mere nursery rhymes; e.g.:

    Today when you bantered with me,
    you meant it as a joke.
    But it was cruel. I was a fool.
    Today my sad heart broke.
    What is real "poetry"? And - here's a shocker for many - why do we use poetry in our own lives daily, and find it satisfying? And why do we allow ourselves to be delighted, crushed, hypnotized by poetry on a daily basis without even knowing that it is poetry?

    The answer is coming.

    Do you want people to "just say what they mean" as clearly and as concisely as possible? Do you want them to use terms that are so meticulously defined that they can not create confusion and conflict because of the nuances of differing individual personalities, contexts, or agendas? If so, you share the primary goal of the theoretical mathematician and the high level AI programmers who not only pursue increasingly sophisticated technology, but in many cases, serve a passion to reduce all things human to statistics and equations. Or to put it another way, to reduce Reality until it is bound within a frame of their own making.

    We humans have been doing exactly that since the three-fold tragedy of our Fall (Genesis 3, 6 and 11). We have developed innumerable ways to do so. The present age simply upped the ante in majestic and terrifying ways.

    I guarantee it: You do not want to live in a world where everyone is compelled - in one way or another - to communicate only in ways that someone in  authority defines as "literal," so that we all have to "just say what we mean" - regardless of context, without nuance, without individuality.  Be certain: Some future generation of AI will be tasked with translating everything a person says (and means) into chewable doses for the masses. Never mind freedom of speech. The human mind itself is the ultimate target, and much territory has already been yielded.

    And finally, think of what is meant by the word "symbol," or the  phrase: "It's a symbol of..."
    What exactly is A a "symbol" of? What is the "B" that is being reduced to mere symbol status?

    A dollar is a symbol of wealth. Buying power. But a dollar can also buy things! It actually, in itself, performs the very task of which it is supposed to be a mere symbol.

    A wedding ring is (or once was) a symbol of marital commitment. Lifelong union, oneness - body and soul - with one other person. Of course, the power of such symbolism is one of the dilutions that has taken place in our midst. Yet, even then, if person A sees person B across the room and is immediately romantically attracted, the eventual sight of that wedding ring will make the setting at least a little more nuanced.

    Baptism is a "symbol" of dying and rising again in union with Jesus Christ, to a remarkably new life. Is it really just a symbol? I pray that it not be so in my own case.

    Communion is a "symbol" for a gathering of disciples and would-be disciples of Jesus Christ coming together as one in identity and intent. If it is just a symbol, Lord have mercy on us all.

    The swastika was a "symbol." Did it or did it not produce effects deep inside the German people: feelings, convictions, impulses? And eventually, deeds.

    Symbols, metaphors, parables, analogies, memes, word pictures, allusions, fables. They all convey more (and when necessary, less) meaning than is even remotely possible if we only try to "say what we mean."

    To summarize four thematic strands that must be united into one:
    • The verbal and written language by which the members of a group or culture communicate is a critical component of the health and survivability of that culture.
    • We are being culturally hypnotized to value communication only in the shallow realm of the merely “literal,” the unchallenging, the easy to grasp.
    • We owe it to ourselves and to those we love to give a new level of attention to what human language does, and can do, for both good and ill. Our routine communications used to reflect an almost infinite world of possibilities. In a given moment, many of these possibilities can only be vaguely sensed, and expressed only as hints or shadows. But to ignore them for that reason evokes that which begins with ignore, namely ignorance.
    • Rather than being merely illustrative of these issues, real poetry – which is used with gratifying regularity by virtually everyone in the world – is a doorway into a solution. In its essence, origins, and unpretentious real world usage, the poetry that is hiding in language is a buried treasure, covered over by layers of multi-generational ignorance.

    Picture a father coming home several hours early from his workday. His wife is most likely still at her place of work. His youngest son, age 14, is out of school and almost certainly out with friends…

    [Continued >>> Here]

  • Honestly…

    Clearly, the primary (only?) motivation we website makers have for making websites is:

    To get people to pay attention to us regarding something that matters to us.

    And, yes, this usually involves getting people to give us money for whatever it is we’re offering. Yet as prominent as that goal might be, even sales is still about ME commanding YOUR attention in a way that benefits ME, and possibly you. (Thus, I have affirmed these nuances to the main point on which I am focusing.)

    So unless one already has a following — people who will visit our sites as an enhancement of a relationship that already exists — the feedback at first comes to us from bots, the youthful human equivalent of bots, agenda-addicted crazies, or others with something to sell.

    Many years ago, I was needy, naive or ambitious enough to jump into that flowery swamp. It is after all what the world has to offer, and here we are trying to do something in that world.

    Now that I have come to accept the fact that precious few real and innocently motivated humans will be reading what I write here, or caring very much if they do, I have in a sense been set free. The fact remains that the habit of writing things down for a little understood imaginary audience still has its appeal, if for no other reason than long-established habit.

    It is more of a challenge to create something for an audience – even an imaginary one. It strengthens the will and improves the finished product. Why? I have no idea, except for this one solid assurance:

    When I write something down as if expressing it to a worthy reader, I am forced to dig deeper – while at the same time striving for clarity, to be vigilant regarding my own ingrained self-deceptions and self-protections, to be more courageous when a matter at hand starts to feel uncomfortable, and to communicate prayerfully in the presence of the God who both listens and speaks (“The Word became flesh…”).

    Therefore…

    Dear Iyue’em…

    (Okay, I'll admit it. Sometimes along the way, simple immediate "clarity" is not of utmost importance, or even possible.)

  • Words that touch well

    What skill would you like to learn?

    To communicate in a Christlike manner in troubling situations, without having to fake it.

  • Words about Words (and humans)


    No statement is true in all contexts,
    including this one.
    Words are as hard as rock,
    but as flexible as water.
    If you feel the need to concur, 
    the words will feel firm beneath your feet.
    If you feel the need to oppose, 
    the words will submit to your magic.

    Participants in important disagreements do not deal as often as they imagine in obvious "facts" or "The Truth" or "the bottom line." How much more fruitful it would be if disputants respectfully agreed -- or pretended to agree and than held to it, hiding any growing intensity -- that all statements be labeled considerations worthy of some consideration.

    Meaning-makers are magicians. The spirit standing invisible between you has complete control.

  • You Can’t Fix a Zombie with Makeup

     

     

    You can't fix a zombie with makeup
    or by making sure it's well-fed.
    Wealth redistributions,
    Reformed institutions:
    The walking dead still remain dead.

    A zombie will get what it asks for,
    then go on demanding in swarms.
    It craves acquiescence.
    Your blood is it’s essence,
    and comes in a number of forms.

    You can't fix a zombie by paying
    for “Give me my rights” show and tell.
    Exploit an election?
    That's no resurrection.
    Just wanderers under the spell
    of a garden hose pointed toward hell.

    You can’t fix your car at the car wash,
    no matter what soap it provides,
    nor gaze at the sky
    with ordure in your eye.
    (You’ve grown use to darkness, besides.)

    And you can't fix a zombie with makeup.
    That’s not where the deadness resides.

  • She Just Doesn’t Care

    She just doesn’t care
    who pets her, or where.
    On this spot or there –
    she just doesn’t care.

    The neck or the chin
    somewhere in Berlin.
    A cathedral in Paris,
    outside, on the terrace.

    There, under the collar
    where itches are smaller,
    Or along her whole back
    near a mosque in Iraq.

    On top of the head
    in the sheets on the bed,
    Or the base of the tail
    on the Oregon Trail

    Where it’s stiff in her muscles
    while driving to Brussels,
    or down deep in the drawer
    where she likes to explore.

    Just watch claw or tooth
    in the telephone booth.
    She can get bloody rough
    when she’s had quite enough.

  • Some Personalized Definitions Related to Human Nature

    Aletheia [origin: koine Greek, pronounced ah-LAY-thee-uh]: Reality (“the way things really are”) and Truth (accurate perceptions, ideas, or statement regarding the way things really are), treated as one, with no intrinsic effort to distinguish the two meanings from each other.


    Aletheite [dlm adaptation of the above]: One who strives to recognize, explore, and restrain the separations of Truth from Reality that have been constructed by hers corrupted core.

    < – – – >


    (s)Elf: A person’s corrupted temporal self, including the natural body in which that corruption primarily resides. This (s)elf has actually been fragmented into several isolated niggling (s)elves, each of which is alternately over-confident, expansive and rivalrous, then deflated and self-deprecating. See James 4:1-3:

    What is the cause of your conflicts and quarrels with each other? Doesn’t the battle begin inside of you as you fight to have your own way and fulfill your own desires? You jealously want what others have so you begin to see yourself as better than others. You scheme with envy and harm others to selfishly obtain what you crave—that’s why you quarrel and fight. And all the time you don’t obtain what you want because you won’t ask God for it! And if you ask, you won’t receive it for you’re asking with corrupt motives, seeking only to fulfill your own selfish desires. [James 4:1-3]

    < – – – >

    spirit/Spirit (a definition from the human perspective):
    A personal energy
    – contingent upon no corporeality,
    – – consisting of an overarching mood, an embedded narrative, and a will,
    – – – that is the source influence of an individual’s perceptions, experiences, and actions, or a group’s social influences,
    – – – – manifested by means of “personality” or “enculturation” as conventionally conceived.

    < – – – >

    Three Primary Components of the Human Individual through which a s/Spirit or spirits become manifested (incarnated or embodied):

    FEMII / F.E.M.I.I. (pronounced FEH-mee-i) Feelings | Emotions | Moods | Instincts | Impulses: Energies generally associated with subjective feelings, taken as one major category of characteristics in the individual human psyche-spirit.

    PANII / P.A.N.I.I. (pron.: PAA-nee-i) Perceptions | Assumptions | Notions (Idea, Intuition, Intimation) | Imaginings | Inspiration (Identity, Enculturation, Persuasion, Ideology): Energies generally associated with subjective thoughts, taken as one major category of characteristics in the individual human psyche-spirit.

    WAVII / W.A.V.I.I. (pron.: WAY-vee-i) Works | Actions | Ventures | Influences | Impacts: Energies generally associated with outward action or activity, taken as one major category of characteristics in the individual human psyche-spirit.

  • I Knew a Girl

    I knew a girl whose name was Gay,
    and that’s about all I can say.