Geode

03 May 2017 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

I bought a geode at a New Age store

–So like my being’s core

Unbecoming outside

Oh, but beautiful inside

Appearing unresponsive, hard, or harsh at first sight

Oh, I’ll fight

In a world with so much violence

So much negligence

So many who don’t seem to care

I despise the callous shell I feel I need to wear

For I am weak

Unlike Love lived out in a world gone dark and bleak

Inside hide facets of love I long to share

Oh, I care

So much love I have to release

And do in too few places

Those opened spaces

When there is peace

In holy times

In safe, sheltered, placid climes

In sacred spaces, among hearts beloved

Among sacred hearts, peacefully moved

 

When the crusty world breaks open

So often merely broken

Shattered

Wits scattered

When dreams, comfort, complacency quake

Break

Hearts open and lay bare

When comfort and complacency tear

I found my torn open heart and nurtured and cultivated

And prayed and wept and meditated

My soul sublimated

And hard-hearted adamant beatified

Inside

Though whenever fractious forces weep and subside

The beauty shows

Love flows

Received and bestowed

Shining and reflecting like my opened geode

And Goodbye

27 Apr 2017 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: , ,

And goodbye; we celebrate the parting,

And togetherness–aye both we share–

And bitterness: the herald of our starting

Life again, again–you here, I there.

 

It seems forever when the gulf looms before us

And years together collapse upon themselves into

Seconds of bitter meaning:

It’s always goodbye.

Places and Friendships and Goodbyes

26 Apr 2017 1 Comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

I’m a long way from home

And those customs I’ve outgrown.

Each new direction’s pointed toward success

In this foundationless infinite regress.

 

Here alone, I’m feeling

How many times

I’ve said goodbye

To those I’ve loved, the places I’ve known.

 

Guess I’ve done what I had to

Or what seemed to be good moves–

The kind of thing I should be glad to do

But for all those good times and broken loves.

 

How long can I survive

Moving around

Wanting a home

A long-time friend, someone to trust.

When Art Tries to Be Art

25 Apr 2017 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

When art tries to be art it fails and offends.  Novels should be a good story, film should be good drama, music should be rhythmic and melodious, poetry should be the marriage of sound and sense, paintings should be about space, figure, and form, and beauty is important, as is passion in all this.

I saw a movie that began with a woman walking in a graveyard, in the autumn.  “Here we go,” I thought.  Where could the movie go from there?  As the story progressed, it kept cutting back to the woman walking in the graveyard.  Something about death intruding into a quite ordinary story.  Then there are films with odd camera angles.  An odd camera angle that adds to the dramatic tension works.  But there are too many films that show odd angles for their own sake, under the mistaken assumption that those camera angles make a mediocre movie into art.

I’ve heard musicians who add performance art into their songs, so that they will be artistic.  I saw a singer wrap herself in a blanket with an image of the whole world on it, as she bowed.  I wasn’t sure of her point, but I was sure she was trying to be artistic.

I’ve read poets who use precious words, poetic words, so that they would be making poetry.  One such word is gossamer.

I saw an artwork that was a spiral cut of paper with great works of art reproduced on it.  Something about art being about art.

A good story will be art.  A good poem doesn’t need poetic words to be art.  A riveting movie will be art.  A song that touches the soul and bespeaks humanity’s pain, joy, and passion will be art.  A painting you can’t take your eyes off will be art.  Art doesn’t need to try to be art.

Why I’m Glad I’m Sober

22 Apr 2017 1 Comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

I’ve seen both sides.  I lived a long time drunk or high every day.  And when I wasn’t high I was thinking about getting high.  Here’s the things I did when I was a drunk:

  • get mad so I needed a drink
  • get drunk

Now I live a clean and sober life.  Here’s the things I do, now that I am sober:

  • write music
  • record original music and play with other musicians
  • form healthy relationships
  • play card games with friends
  • volunteer in interfaith functions
  • sit on a faculty committee
  • teach classes at church
  • organize lecture series
  • feel my emotions
  • read philosophy, poetry, and fiction
  • go out on dates without drinking
  • listen to live music and hear it and enjoy it
  • write poetry
  • buy art with the money I don’t spend on drugs
  • enjoy life
  • laugh and cry

There are still struggles in life and hard days.  But, as a musician friend of mine said about the process of recording my original music, “enjoy the process.”

The Trouble with Social Action

19 Apr 2017 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,

Eco-justice is a movement that is growing in popularity and importance.  And there are other justice issues that have already become nearly established.  Some of them would be homelessness, bullying, hunger, domestic violence, LGBT issues, and others.  Social justice organizations have been created to address these issues.  There are homeless shelters, soup kitchens, shelters for abused women, and bullying is a matter of consciousness raising.  Religions as far back as the ’60’s became active in social issues.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one prominent theologian who championed social justice as a religious issue.  Another was Reinhold Niebuhr.  Niebuhr once said that theology should be done with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

But there are problems with religion understood as social justice.  In its history, religion has also been concerned with character development.  Moses, Jesus, Paul, and Mohammed have all taught that a person needs to be moral and good.  For instance, Moses gave us the 10 Commandments, which are all moral rules.  And Jesus and Paul both teach a religion of love.  These teachings are about character virtues, or becoming a good person.

The trouble, then, with religion as social justice is that becoming a morally good person can be forgotten in social action.  One doesn’t need to be loving to be an advocate for ecology.  The worst case view of eco-justice is that a person can be concerned with ecology for selfish reasons.  We save ourselves when we save the environment.  Or we save our children or grand children when we save the environment.  We certainly do need to take dramatic action to save nature, but does doing so make a person loving, and good?  The same can be said for other social programs.  I know many self-righteous Christians who are all in favour of homeless shelters–as long as they aren’t  built in their own neighbourhoods.

A morally good person, a loving person, will care about his or her neighbour.  Such a person will want impoverished and homeless persons to have warm, safe homes and enough to eat.  Such a person will care about God’s created order–Nature.  But social issues will be one action flowing forth from a good-natured heart.  Just as honesty, sincerity, and friendliness will inform their relationships with others.  But the converse may not necessarily be the case.  I’m not sure that social consciousness will render a person loving and morally good.

Language Games and Interfaith

16 Feb 2017 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I had a striking experience with acupuncture yesterday.  Not only did the tranquility of my treatment relax my stiff muscles, it helped me with concentration, alertness, and mood–it put a spring in my step.  It accomplished all this as I lay on a table with a few needles in me, listening to meditative music with ocean waves.  My body healed itself.  Or as the Chinese doctor said, acupuncture restored the flow of ch’i in me.  The philosophy behind this treatment was to still my mind first, then my muscles would relax.

This got me to thinking.  Lying on the cot, stilling my mind and muscles, listening to quiet music made me think about life outside the doctor’s office.  The stillness, the absence of stimulation, all quieting my mind, relaxing my muscles.  Then there is the hectic pace, the over stimulation of our society, the noise.  If it is therapeutic to be in a still, quiet environment, is it still possible to live an ordinary life in society?  I saw that I would need to adjust my lifestyle, of course, and not let stress and stressors into my mind.  I thought about the tranquil Chinese music they played when I practiced T’ai Ch’i at another Chinese studio.  It would be as hard for me to listen to Chinese music, if I weren’t doing T’ai Ch’i due to its simplicity and meditative quality.  T’ai Ch’i, the acupuncture office, Chinese music are all products of a culture that values quietness, I think.

I thought about interfaith relations.  I am deeply committed to interfaith ideals and multicultural societies.  But what if being deeply immersed in a culture that values stillness and quiet is incompatible with other cultures that are more boisterous, aggressive, and confrontational?  I ask, can one be open to intercultural ideals while being committed, oneself, to a deep tradition and culture?  This is what Lyotard calls, “the heterogeneity of language games.”  What if music is more than aesthetic?  What if music embodies a cultural philosophy and ethics, like the Chinese music I heard at the T’ai Ch’i studio?  I like classical music, jazz, blues, and rock.  But these are aesthetic judgments.  These forms do not embody a western ethics or culture.  Beethoven composed in Vienna, but his music has world appeal.  But the Chinese music I heard reflects the ethics of stillness, meditative quiet, and tranquility of Chinese culture, I think.  It is akin to Palestrina’s choral music, which one could say does embody a Christian ethics.

Is it possible to live within the norms of a deeply held culture, and also hold multicultural ideals?  That would be quite a feat.  I once heard a Christian minister speak art an interfaith gathering.  She was so sensitive to interfaith values, and so anxious not to offend anyone, that she didn’t even pronounce the name, “Jesus.”  That is interfaith at its worst.  That is multiculturalism eroding one’s own norms and values.  Interfaith means different faiths living in mutual respect.  But can I live with the tranquil Chinese music and all that it represents, and also enjoy Z.Z. Top?  Or does one preclude the other?  One thing I do know, life is richer for me living in the multicultural city in which I live.  Without multiculturalism, a white man like myself wouldn’t have been able to experience Chinese healing.

What Acupuncture Taught Me about the Tao

15 Feb 2017 1 Comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

I went to a centre of oriental medicine today to get a Tui Na deep tissue massage.  I was experiencing muscle stiffness, especially in my neck and shoulders due to the amount I type or play the piano.  I thought that the rough kneading, slapping, and chopping that comprise the Tui Na massage would loosen me up.  I had experienced some relaxation from a Tui Na massage I got at booth at a city fair in summertime.  So I went to the centre to get another one.

They ushered me into a room with an oriental doctor and he asked me some questions about my lifestyle and symptoms.  He said something really interesting, “First you relax the mind, then the muscles relax.”  Then doc had me lie on a table.  Next thing I knew, doc started putting acupuncture needles in me–feet, legs, abdomen, arms, cheeks, and interestingly, a needle at the top of my head–right where the last chakra is, and another needle where the “third eye” is, as doc said.  Then doc attached an electric pulse to the two needles in my head and third eye.  Then doc dimmed the lights, put on some soothing music with ocean waves, and left me there for 20 minutes.  At first it was really hard for me to lie there.  My mind was restless; my body was restless; I got bored.  I felt a disjunct between my muscles and my inner self/feelings.  After a while, my mind/body were all one.  Calm was coming over me.  After acupuncture, doc put some suction cups on my neck, shoulders, and back.  I felt much, much better.  Doc told me to come back in a week.

I wanted a force external to me to manipulate my muscles and relax them.  But by leaving me on a table to relax, with the few acupuncture needles in me, my mind relaxed and my body relaxed itself from within.  My mind/body healed itself from within.  Taoism teaches us to be natural and spontaneous.  In Taoism you don’t force things–either in social manners, or in ethics.  You yield to “the way of water,” “the breath of the valley spirit” and return to “the uncarved block.”  I think that’s what happened to me at the oriental medicine centre.  I began my healing process and my body taught me about the Taoism I learned in school.

 

T S Eliot and the Absolute

13 Jan 2017 1 Comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

In The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock, one theme is the interplay between self and other.  The narrator appears to be overpowered by the social forces with which he interacts.  He is “fixed in a formulated phrase,” “pinned and wriggling on the wall” by others.  His constant refrain–“Do I dare,” “How should I presume?”

But there is more than spinelessness at work here.  The narrator is on the verge of asking, “An overwhelming question.”  Some think that he is going to propose marriage.  But Eliot and the narrator are possessed of greater depth than nervousness about proposing.  The overwhelming question is, in fact, religious.  The fear is of bring up deep matters in a superficial environment.  How should I presume?  The narrator has “wept and fasted, wept and prayed.”  The narrator is about to break the complacency of a tea party,

Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,

Should say: “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.”

I recently wrote about being true to oneself regardless of social pressures to conform.  But I must confess that there are environments in which a person can’t be oneself, especially when one is particularly spiritual.  When one is in a superficial environment, one can’t really talk on a depth level.  It would not be received.  One would be ridiculed, ignored–as in Eliot’s poem–even be met with anger.  Try being a divinity student in a bar.  The social disjunct, the ridicule, the inappropriate context all make it nearly impossible to be spiritual in a secular environment, a secular world.  How should I presume?

Eliot himself was Prufrock.  He kept his Christianity to himself until his reputation was firmly established.  Then he converted to Anglo-Catholic Christianity publicly and wrote Four Quartets.  At that point his literary career became a bit suspect.  And much of his later work, like The Cocktail Party, is bland to the point of being insufferable.

But I am a fan of Eliot.  And as a Swedenborgian, I know what it is like to have a deep spirituality that one can’t speak of in most public venues.  I have expanded my social network to include an interfaith organization, an interdenominational Christian organization.  And in these environments I can be openly Swedenborgian and be well-received.  But in the blues club, in 12-step organizations, in casual environments I seem to need to keep it all inside.  It isn’t a matter of fear.  It is more a matter of good taste.  I would not abandon my Swedenborgianism, it’s just something others don’t care to hear about, and I respect the others with whom I socialize.  In Jacob’s dream, the angels ascended and descended the ladder–they didn’t stay always at the top.

Self and Other

10 Jan 2017 1 Comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,

T. S. Eliot writes about the power we can give to others.  We can let others tell us who we are.  Eliot’s poetry goes:

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

How do we begin to declare who we are when others decide who we are, treat us according to their understanding of us, and pin us to a wall?  When I was in high school, there were jocks, bikers, and hippies.  I identified with the hippies and looked like one, but my best friend was an all-state wrestler.  We can see ourselves according to the category we fall into.  In high school, pressures are extreme when it comes to emotional survival and identity.  And the answer to self and other can become identification with a peer group.  Then where is the self?

Things continue in this vein when we enter adulthood, though with less extreme pressure.  People can become identified with their role in life.  How others see us can depend on the money we make, the job we do and how important that job is, the things we possess, our social graces, our families.  I remember when I had graduated with a master’s degree and did’t know what my next step in life would be.  I was applying to Ph.D. programs, but didn’t know if I would be accepted.  This period of uncertainty occupied about 6-months.  I didn’t have an identity.  When people asked me what I do for a living, I didn’t have an answer, and people didn’t know what to do with me.  I know of people whose life centres around their family.  Their primary relations are with their spouse and children.  Some of them do not know how to relate to the world outside their families.

The question is one of self and other.  How do we relate to others?  When a person expends much effort creating a public persona–buying the right things, talking in the “in” language–and this includes the social graces, functioning in a profession that grants prestige and dignity, one can actually become very lonely.  One’s soul no longer communicates with others in an honest way.  In religion, this would be called “worldliness.”  There are other issues.  Some indulge in substances.  Consider drinking.  A whole culture surrounds drinking.  There are drinking games.  There are drinking parties–knowing how to party can be important.  There is a whole bar culture that any alcohol commercial sells.  Then there is a luxury car that says exceptional people make the rules–they don’t follow them.  But buying that car is what makes a person exceptional, along with following the surfing culture which is a “cool” thing to do.  These examples show how identity is falsely created by dependance on things external to the self.  Self can be very lonely when one depends on extrinsic things for identity.

Self confidence gives one the freedom to be authentic.  And this means being authentic with everyone–spouse, friends, co-workers.  An old rock group sings, “You know who you are, you don’t give a damn.”  I asked a native elder about moving away from home and loneliness.  His response was similar.  “If you are firmly grounded in who you are, there is no loneliness.”  Being who one truly is, and encountering other in that capacity is the only solution that gives true relationship and community.

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