[FRIAM] Religious Imagination: The Archer

Sun Apr 11 18:21:41 EDT 2021

Hey, Steve, sorry if I appeared to shrug your question off.  My answer was meant to be colorful, but not facetious.  

The only god worth having, in  my book, is some sort of an anthropomorphic god.  I am pretty sure that no such god exists.  What does exist is a longing in people to be held in loving hands and put to a purpose, and they may manifest that longing in many ways.  If I care to imagine a Diana-like god as a momentary expression of that longing, then I see nothing wrong with that, or necessarily facetious about it.  Freud, of course, would love it.  

When I am indulging my religious imagination, I generally expend my effort on designing the perfect heaven.  Just to reassure you that I am not fooling around here, I will quote the ending of my obituary for my brother, written 8 years ago and spoken before my august, waspish, mostly atheistic family. 

I am a life-long Darwinian.  Like Darwin himself, I believe that no-one should be denied the comfort of a religious imagination, particularly if she or he happens to be an athiest. Even a non-believer should take the time to think what heaven might be.  Where will it be?  How old will you be in heaven?  Whom will you see there?  Will those people be as you know them now, or as you knew them as a child? What season will it be?  What will you wear?

For me, heaven will be, a doubles match on the court in Ipswich, my parents, family and friends cheering from the shade of the grape arbor, and me, bent to the net, with my big brother at the base line behind me, ready to serve.   

I think that, right there, is the best of religion,  the comforting imagination.  

Now, if believing in least action as a fundamental law of nature, as a goal that nature is trying to fulfill, gives you that sort of comfort, I am all for it.  But I cannot imagine being comforted by that.  Well, I suppose I could imagine it like a river, heading toward The Good, and I, lolling in a boat, being carried along.  But I think, pretty quick, I would sit up in the boat and wonder what this Good Place is  (See the TV series of that name)  No religious imagining is going to do me good that isn’t pretty specific.  

My own sense of How Things Actually Are is actually pretty unsettling.  As in our politics, I imagine two basins of attraction, one, the progressive democratic, the other, the autocratic fascist, and a function that goes back and forth, going down to the bottom of each basin until it is suddenly flung out into the outskirts of the other from which it now descends.  The only question is how deep down into our present cesspit we have to go before things start to get better.  Is this a 50 year cesspit, or a 400 year one.  

Nick 

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2021 6:53 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Instructional scaffolding - Wikipedia

Nick asks: 
| How do you imagine Her. 

I interpret the Archer to be symbolism of an Immanent God in the pantheistic tradition of Spinoza and Harold Morowitz. Looking a little into Khalil Gibran, he is described as a pantheist and Sufi mystic on Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahlil_Gibran> ..

You've referenced this poem twice now and I was curious what the symbolism was for you (Not necessarily if you believe it).

If you want to stick with your original answer, we can return this thread to plumbing the semantic depths of "scaffolding" ;-p

-Stephen

On Sat, Apr 10, 2021 at 6:12 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Hi, Steve, 

She’s about seven feet tall, has two gigantic hounds at her side, wears tall boos, short skirt, works out like CRAZY.  When she bends the bow, she always say, “Easy now.  Relax.  This may stretch a bit.”  Despite this kindly warning, I am never ready for the “twang!”

How do you imagine Her. 

Nick 

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2021 5:54 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Instructional scaffolding - Wikipedia

On Sat, Apr 10, 2021 at 5:48 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Or as Kahil Gibran once famously said: “You are the bow from which your children as arrows fly; let you bending in the hands of The Archer be for joy.”

Nick you turned me on to this poem a couple of weeks ago and I think it's beautiful. Who/What do you understand the Archer to be? 

On Children

 <https://poets.org/poet/kahlil-gibran> Kahlil Gibran - 1883-1931

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
     And he said:
     Your children are not your children.
     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
     They come through you but not from you,
     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
     You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

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