He had a Kawai baby grand piano in his living room
It wasn’t a Bosendorfer, Steinway, or Yamaha
But he had a baby grand and my roommate a long time ago
Had an inherited Steinway with real ivory keys, she let me play it
Play way into the night, a nurse now, and a music school graduate
With her inherited Steinway, and he is a psychologist with his Kawai
Laura Rain played Blues on Whyte in Edmonton, and
The Edmonton Bluesfest; I heard she played Buddy Guy’s
I first heard Monkey Junk at the Salmon Arm Folk and Roots Festival
Playing on a side stage; Taj Mahal headlined on the mainstage
My sister had a Taj Mahal album in the ‘70’s; and Monkey Junk
Can fill a moderate concert hall and they’ll always work in Canada
My friend the psychologist got a friend of his to cast his wedding rings
And having lived in Southwest Florida for decades could always get gigs
He wouldn’t be able to fill a concert hall, but there weren’t any, anyways
Just the symphony hall, and I heard B. B. King play there, once
And I’m a Swedenborgian minister of a small, aging, dwindling church
An accomplished piano player in Nashville asks me spiritual questions
And critiques recordings of my original music free of charge
He plays cruise ships and exclusive summer resort hotel bars, solo,
With an illustrious past, having performed with industry giants,
Making a living in an undependable business. We’re all making a living.
And there’s a place for art in life, however life ends up construed
Whatever life is called, or identity defined, be it by a career, aspiration
Passion or calling, writing on a business card, how others know you
Like my friend with the Kawai, or his friend who cast his wedding rings
Or the music graduate with her inherited Steinway, who is a nurse
B. B. King, Taj Mahal, Monkey Junk, Laura Rain, my musical friends,
My musical inclinations, the thousands I spent on instruments
I, a Swedenborgian minister at a small, aging, dwindling church,
Still happy, contented with my life, contented with my inclinations
And their manifestation, my pay, the recognition of my peers, my friends,
My musical instruments and their exercise, my career, my attainments,
Those I yet pursue in these advanced years, the lingering dreams I cherish
The moderate drive moving my intentions through happy reflections
WE ALL SEE THE SAME MOON
24 May 2021 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: aging, art, BB King, Bosendorfer, Buddy Guy, dreams, Kawai, Monkey Junk, music, Nashville, poem, poetry, Salmon Arm, spirituality, Steinway, Swedenborg
THEODICY
01 Apr 2021 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: Aqualung, bisexual, Blake, Eliot, Good Friday, Jesus, Jethro Tull, Madonna, Mi'kmaq, poem, poetry, Star Teachings, Swedenborg, theodicy
“Hey Laura! Lookin’ hot!” Jackie exclaimed at coffee hour after church
Broadcasting her own bisexuality, which struck me as attention-seeking
And I thought about her mother’s own attention-seeking behaviors
Of her childhood abuse she now struggles as an adult to survive
And her several marriages, separations
I wonder how many generations down
The iniquities of the fathers are visited
And I have to survive the iniquities my father visited upon me
Complicit with my mother’s silent abetting
Once riding with a Harvard friend in his boat off the coast of Atlantic Florida,
Which we were able to enjoy through his wife’s wealth,
We glimpsed the mansion visited upon the young Kennedys
—I think I saw a yacht moored in front of the Kennedy mansion—
And try to wrap my mind around why, from one perspective,
Some don’t seem to catch a break
The Aqualung types hanging around the convenience store down the street
Made something by Jethro Tull’s ‘70’s rock album, otherwise despised
And to discourage them from hanging around the convenience store
Scaring people by being who they are or were made to be
By iniquities of vague, distant Fathers
The cashiers won’t let me buy them a sandwich
Won’t let me practice Mi’kmaq Star Teachings
Won’t let me care
From one perspective, the fates spin an unjust thread
What a cheat life would be were that myth exclusive
A shade drawn on the glimpse through ultimate reality’s greater window
Vanishing lines that converge upon the perspective of conviction
That an ultimate equity may yet inhere here, inherited curses be confounded,
Or else redemption were a vacuous term,
Rebirth but a rabbinic dialogue written in a Sacred Text
Close the embossed leather covers and lock the words in silence
Yet were there another perspective, vanishing lines of inquiry pointing to
An unjust inquisition’s verdict denied, then there were another perspective.
Swedenborg said he saw it;–what if temporal goods matter
Only insofar as they remain eternally? What if matters of soul matter
As much as material goods in this material world
And the Madonna of antiquity means more than a pop star
Even now relegated to antiquity
Then the ode to Jackie, her mother, the Aqualung types, and I is composed
in quite another key. Overcoming the iniquities of the fathers,
The iniquities of vague, distant Fathers, we see the material of humanity
when our eyes meet, and belie Blake’s HUMAN ABSTRACT
Rise up in new birth, reform into new selves, new souls, Arise all Souls Arise
The vanishing lines of ultimate reality’s perspective converge on
The crucified One
I try to wrap my mind around how He just couldn’t seem to catch a break
And look where He ended up
Have I tried to squeeze the universe into a ball?
To roll it to an overwhelming question I can scarce conceive:
Really, where did He end up?
WINTER: SEASONS BLEEDING INTO TIME
25 Mar 2021 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: aging, Emerson, life, Marinetti, Nature, poem, poetry, seasons, Swedenborg, Tao, winter
WINTER WAY NORTH
In the way north, winter is warm
We’re indoors almost all winter; we’re way north
It’s just too cold to go outdoors
I like to watch the float and swirl
When snowflakes bless the cold air
I don’t complain about road conditions
When I do go outdoors after my car warms up
And maybe it’s 5 minutes in the elements, the bracing air
From my car to the shopping mall’s stale air
Which is community in the winter
Or maybe live music and dancing indoors in a bar’s congested air
Which all conspires to make winter warm
And it is not a Taoist reverence for Nature
As one would find in Swedenborg or Emerson
But more like the poetry of Marinetti without fascism
In celebration of an industrial conquest of nature
As most who live in -30 temperatures would
And buildings and tunnels connecting buildings
And automobiles transporting you warm in the elements
Would make anyone a Futurist in a warm automobile
Warm shopping mall, warm apartment, warm winter
In the way north where the outdoor elements are deadly in winter
And indoors we are warm, my body heat borrowed
Until what makes my heartbeat departs the final cold
I watch the snowflakes cover the pallid earth
PAS DE DEUX: MY DANCE WITH THE MACHINE: A COMEDY IN THREE ACTS
04 Dec 2020 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: academics, ambition, eternity, failure, harvest cycle, Irish-Catholic, karma, love, no-self, poem, poetry, Reike, success, Swedenborg, wisdom
Any More Than The Way Things Are
My Irish-Catholic friend published a book
About a world-famous Irish-Catholic poet
On a highly respected Irish-Catholic university press
And teaches college in a large, deeply Irish-Catholic city
I am a Swedenborgian
And even if I wrote a book about William Blake
There are no highly respected Swedenborgian university presses
Or big cities with prominent Swedenborgian populations
I have to think that all this matters
Isn’t it why my dissertation director counseled me not to write
About Swedenborg, for the sake of my career?
–“Academics don’t know, in fact, what they are suppressing”–
The dean of a Lutheran university confessed to me over breakfast
The General Secretary of a prominent interdenominational organization
Asked me over lunch why I am a Swedenborgian, meaning, I think,
“Why on earth are you a Swedenborgian?!”
Time was I believed that if I worked hard, became good at what I do
Success would be laid at my feet, not disappointment
It takes other things than being good at what I do
And I wonder that I am passed over for so many things I am good at
I am not asking for a leg-up toward success
Any more than is the way things are in this world
My Irish-Catholic friend is good at what he does
As am I, a Swedenborgian
Disappointment
Disappointment only descends upon failed ambitions
More than just getting your hopes up, as, for example, winning The Lottery
Expectations in general that fall through
Especially ambitions’ realization evaporating as one watches
Years pass, the doors close on what could have been
Out of time; out a life; a lifetime passed by
They say Reike can heal time—the past, present, what will be
Which is a different understanding of time that I know
Carol tells me that she has no ambitions, never did
My mother wonders where mine came from, since
Neither she nor Dad craved other than their work, homelife
–Nor credited me with success—
There’s something so real about Carol, which echoes back to a place I once was
I take it her upbringing on a farm
Where dirt and the harvest cycle are as real as it gets
Formed her out of the dust of the earth
The blanched suburbia of my impoverished culture
The shallow depths I almost drowned in
The neglect and torment my nascent family ignored and inflicted
Perhaps conspired to inspire my drive to reach for what my hand never grasped
I don’t know if Carol knows my disappointment
She has come to terms with riches she will never own
Guess it is not for me to posit where I would be
Why I continue to reach; I think Carol likes it
Some Glad Morning
I raged against the machine and did my own thing
Cultivating the garden that is my soul: wisdom, love
I didn’t care if they groomed me for success
Or if they said that I was just a fool
And so, my self found development in accord with aspiration’s beckon
Ever evolving aspirations leading my meandering pathway. I am pleased.
So why do I want that machine against which I raged
Now to bless me, sanctify my works with recognition and acclaim?
I wouldn’t say that I resisted playing ball with it all
I wasn’t in it for the game. Karma drove my play
More than systemic machinations: I never felt like
–A cog in something turning, never cared to—
I followed and worked through my karma: the issues and stages
I got out of my system, that were me, became what is not me
Yet not another; self—the salve and the wound
The problem and the solution, the lock and the key
I suppose I made too much of eternity
Some told me I was too old to be thinking like that
And yet, I am old now and had better be thinking like that
So why this desperation about credit from the system I never much rated?
I suppose it isn’t so much about credit, I have credentials
Damn craving for more laurels I will never rest on and smile!
I do smile, smile at who I was and am: this beloved self
This no self, no permanency, only eternity of states flowing into who I am
EINSTEIN, THE IKON (A Spenserian Sonnet)
17 Oct 2020 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: Descartes, Einstein, ikon, intelligence, Liebnitz, Newton, poem, sonnet, Swedenborg, wild hair
Einstein’s face: the universal ikon
The single signifier signing brilliance
We know how Einstein looks, but not Newton
Who has Bach or Swedenborg’s appearance
And all are equal in intelligence
But it is Einstein’s face we see as genius
Leibnitz or Descartes don’t stand a chance
For smarts, it’s only Einstein’s face for us
His smile, mustache, and wild hair all a fuss
Two Narratives about English Literature
19 Jul 2020 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: art, criticism, deconstruction, English literature, Hemingway, Mona Lisa, movies, poetry, Swedenborg
My Ph.D. is an interdisciplinary degree in Religion and Literature. When I was in school, there were only two Religion and Literature departments in universities: U Chicago, and U Virginia. Religion and Literature is a strange major that neither discipline wants. Religion departments don’t understand why one of their students would study literature. And I have been called an “interloper” by a professor in the English department. The reason I wanted to study Religion and Literature is due to my conviction that literature conveys meaning. Most sacred literature, including the Bible, is written in literary forms (also the Rig Veda, the Koran, and the Songs of Milarepa). Many of the prophets use poetry and metaphor, the Psalms are lyric poems, and much of the other books are stories. It was, and is, my belief that Hemingway says something about life, about reality, and about meaning or the lack thereof in existence. So did T. S. Eliot. So did Samuel Taylor Coleridge–especially in his famous poem, THE EOLIAN HARP. And Coleridge certainly said something about existence and thinly disguised religion in THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. But I need to be clear, I was not interested in religious literature. Rather, I sought statements about life in all literature. I suppose I was making a Swedenborgian connection not everybody would make. Swedenborg writes, “All religion relates to life, and the religious life is to do good.” So for me, statements about life are religious statements.
Unfortunately for me then, and now, the keepers of English literature do not think that literary art is about meaning-making. I’m not at all sure what English literature does or is for them. But two narratives point to what literature does or is, today.
In Charlottesville, Virginia, where the University of Virginia is located, I ran into a fellow student from the English department in a bar. I asked him what he was writing about in his dissertation. He said he was writing about the process by which the Mona Lisa became thought of as the greatest painting. He alluded to T.S. Eliot’s remark that Hamlet “is the Mona Lisa of literature.” He said that in his dissertation he makes a lot of that remark by Eliot. We were on friendly terms, and I was interested in his doctoral work. But I wondered why someone in the English department was writing about how the Mona Lisa became thought of as the greatest painting. I think that my colleague was writing critical theory. Making judgments about the value of art is something critics do. But I thought that what he was writing on would be more appropriate in the art department than in the English department. This was due to my presuppositions about English literature. You see how out of sync I was, and am still?
My second narrative isn’t direct personal experience. It is a conversation I had with an English professor at a charming coffee shop where I live now. She has a friend who won an award, she thought, for a poem her friend wrote. My acquaintance at the coffee shop related her recollection of the process her friend went through in writing the poem. She said that her friend wrote out in prose a narrative about her parents’ murder-suicide. She may have also included the guilt she felt as their child. Then, the poet either physically or conceptually cut up the narrative into phrases and segments. Then she rearranged the parts out of sequence, out of grammatical order, and the final product is unintelligible. The final product is called a poem. My acquaintance at the coffee shop said she was unable to read the poem. And she believes that her friend won an award.
I think that these two narratives show what is going on in humane letters. Criticism plays a prominent role in English literature. That’s what my first narrative says. Although criticism didn’t really come of age until the 17th Century, it seems to be alive and well, today. Deconstruction, which I thought was a passe brand of philosophy, dominates contemporary literature. That’s what my second narrative says–I think. For I think that disassembling and reassembling a story is a form of deconstruction. I’m guessing here, I I may be wrong. But what I do think, is that the poem in question is a lie. If a narrative is first written out in prose, that is the truth being expressed. Cutting it up and rearranging the parts into an incomprehensible word salad is a lie. Why rearrange the sentence fragments? Or, more importantly, why write out the story in plain English first? Isn’t the plain English story the reality and the cut-up poem a falsification of the story? And I don’t think that rearranging words into salad is art at all.
Finally, the subject matter of the so-called poem is also telling about the direction in which contemporary art is going. Of course her art would be about something horrible. Contemporary art is not allowed to be about happy, pretty, joyful subjects–especially about the glory of God and God’s works. Only a few years back a movie called No Country for Old Men won several Academy Awards. That movie is about a serial killer. The movie narrated him murdering people. He got away with his killing as Woody Harrelson, the sheriff, was also murdered. (A generation ago The Sound of Music cleaned up at the Academy Awards.) Another acquaintance of mine at the same charming coffee shop told me about her experiences in art school. She said that someone made a painting of an animal torn open. Then, the artist covered the frame in pig’s blood. I went to the art gallery in the city I live in now. There was a display composed of about 20 speakers on stands, with folding chairs set among them. I sat on a chair, and there was an audio loop of a woman describing a dream of crows dying. No eagles soaring upward into the sky. No baby crows hatching into life. No hummingbirds and flowers. Crows dying.
I come up with these ideas about art because I still believe that art makes statements about life. I believe, too, that my view of art is disjunct from how the contemporary keepers of art view it. I have already expressed my inability to appreciate contemporary art. And, indeed, my disinclination even to try. I have made a decision, though, that in my artistic endeavors, I will express my own vision of art. I will not attempt to assimilate contemporary trends. And whether there is an audience or receptivity for what I do is not of my concern. I think that artists who matter, held similar positions about creativity. Critics debated Frost’s value all his life. Andrew Wyeth never was considered a real artist. And Hemingway’s mother never liked his fiction, nor did Gertrude Stein. Of course, I’m not situating myself in such august company. I’m just saying.
The Son of This Slave Woman
24 Jun 2020 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: Breonna Taylor, Genesis, George Floyd, Indigenous, Isaac, Ishmael, Matthew, race, Rayshard Brooks, religion, residential schools, Sharia Law, slavery, spirituality, Swedenborg
The Son of This Slave Woman
Rev. Dave Fekete, Ph.D.
June 21, 2020
Genesis 21:8-21 Matthew 10:24-39 Psalm 86
The readings from this week’s lectionary are extremely timely. Well, they were written thousands of years ago. But they are current, timely. I write this talk conscious of the upheaval going on in the US. But I am a Canadian Permanent Resident, and I write also conscious of my Canadian home. The issue of these readings is privilege. When Sarah says, “the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac,” she is claiming privilege for her son. Hagar’s son Ishmael was of a different race from Sarah’s son Isaac. Ishmael was Arab, Isaac was an Israelite. Further, Ishmael was the son of a slave. Isaac was the son of a free Israelite. Sarah doesn’t want her slave’s son to share in the prosperity of her privileged son.
The parallels with the racial issues surfacing in the US are clear. Protesters are talking about systemic racism. And a primary indicator of systemic racism is the wage disparity between white Americans and Americans of color. Another salient issue is the disparity in policing between white Americans and Americans of color. The murders of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, and Breonna Taylor by police are but three examples of countless cases that people of color know about in their day to day lives. A newscaster on TV brought up the fact that an African-American senator had been pulled over by the police seven times in the past year. A US senator! Then the newscaster looked straight into the camera and asked, “How many times were you pulled over last year?” I haven’t been pulled over for about seven years. And that time was because the Canadian police didn’t have a record of my US driver’s license before I got a Canadian license. But this US senator had been pulled over seven times in one year for no other reason, apparently, than the color of his skin.
I suspect that I may be losing my Canadian friends at this point as I am talking about the US. For Canada, our reading from Matthew seems more appropriate. In Canada, we aren’t seeing protests but that doesn’t mean we’re insulated from racial injustice. I think the line from Matthew 10:26 applies to life here, “for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.” We don’t see racism in Canada because we are in the majority, what would be called privileged. But even here, downstairs in this very church, we had a Muslim woman speaker who said some disturbing words. She said people here in Edmonton tell her to go home, just because of the color of her skin and her religion. And she was born in Canada. Go home means stay in Canada! She told us that she is scared for the wellbeing of her son, because of the color of his skin and his religion. Carol’s own hairdresser, a Canadian of East-Indian decent, told her that when he and his friends went into a diner in Red Dear, the whole white crowd of customers were staring at him and his friends. They left without ordering.
And in Canada, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began in 2007. That’s one year after I got here. The Truth and reconciliation Commission was established to repair the damage from the Residential Schools. The Residential Schools were set up to systematically destroy the Indigenous culture and spirituality. To eradicate every vestige of Native life and to replace it with the culture of white Christianity. Practically every Christian denomination was involved in the systematic obliteration of First Nations. Children of children of the Residential Schools are still suffering the effects of the schools. Their parents, who were interred in the schools didn’t grow up in families. They grew up in huge dormitories with little sanitary facilities. The Residential Schools largely succeeded. Many spirits of First Nations individuals have been crushed. Hence, their parenting skills are often diminished. Life on reservations is often impoverished, some even lack adequate drinking water. I’ve heard Canadians tell me that the government sends plenty of money to the reservations but the chiefs keep it all for themselves. I know a chief who told me he made $30,000 when he was serving his Nation. When I toured Blue Quills University in Saddle Lake, I noticed a stack of fliers that read, “Do you know anyone who has been murdered, or have you heard of anyone who was murdered?” Then there was a number to call and an office set up to deal with these murders. The fliers were just sitting there on the table. Have you yourself ever in your life seen a flier asking you if you know someone who was murdered? Then giving you a number to call? What does that say?
These issues I have been discussing are our symbolic father. They are the culture we have inherited. They are the society that has given us birth and these issues are the issues we have been brought up in. It is for this reason that Jesus says,
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
35 For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
36 and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
The voices that are rising up in the US are the sword of truth. In Swedenborg’s system of symbolism, a sword stands for truth. Jesus does not bring peace when there are festering wounds infecting society. Then Jesus calls us to set ourselves against our father, mother, and household when that family is diseased with injustice.
In Canada, we have issues of racial injustice, but no mass protests. It was a brave teen-aged girl who used her smart phone to record the murder of George Floyd that set off the powder keg in the US. We don’t have something like that smart phone recording here in Canada. Though the power of privilege and racial injustices are rampant under the peaceful surface of Canadian society.
“Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” That sword of truth is intended to cut through the peaceful surface of unjust social structures. And we need to be swordsmen and women. It is our duty to seek out the truth and to become informed. I think it’s easy to go with what we’ve always heard. It’s easy to go with opinions about issues that may not be true. I personally know people in Canada who think that Muslim women like Salima are trying to overturn the Canadian legal system and replace it with Sharia Law. They think this especially about refugees from war torn middle eastern countries. It is opinions like this that need to be measured against the sword of truth. One truth about this very issue is, “Which Sharia Law?” There are at least four schools of Muslim tradition, much the same way we have Catholics, Lutherans, and Swedenborgians. Each of the more than four schools of Muslim tradition have their own style of Sharia Law. So the whole opinion that Muslims are trying to replace the Canadian legal system with Sharia Law falls apart when we ask which Muslim sect is trying to do this with what Sharia Law.
Swedenborg teaches that the religious life is characterized by a love for truth. In fact, faith itself is called a cohering arrangement of many truths. An incoherent mash of opinions is not faith. As Christians, it is incumbent on us to search for truth. As Christians, it is incumbent on us to measure our opinions against the sharp sword of truth.
And finally, Swedenborg teaches that the sword of truth must be wielded by a loving hand. It was Gandhi who said, “When you have a truth to tell, it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.” The riots and looting in the US got the attention of the world several weeks ago. But I suspect that the subsequent weeks of peaceful protests will do more to make lasting structural change in the US.
Well, this is supposed to be a Fathers’ Day sermon. I’ve gone all-in Swedenborgian, though, and spoken about father as our inherited evils. Not personal evils, but collective social evils. We Swedenborgians have an advantage in all this. Repentance, reformation, and regeneration are central doctrines in our theology. And never in my lifetime, has the call for repentance been louder. And our world is in dire need of reformation. And regeneration means re-birth. If we are zealous about our repentance, and dedicated to reformation, we will see a rebirth in society. We need to be aware of our privilege. And being of the privileged race, it is especially important for us to educate ourselves. And some of us may even be moved to wield the sword of truth to cut through centuries of oppression and social injustice. And the children of enslaved persons will finally find their rightful share in the prosperity we take for granted.
THE EYES OF ALL NEED NOT WAIT UPON ME
16 Jun 2020 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: art, Borofsky, critic, greatness, insignificance, peace, Picasso, poetry, publication, soul, Swedenborg
He turned toward me
As if for comment, or what didn’t need to be said
To indict Borofsky’s words painted black on a white canvass
“I want to be great”
I, a Swedenborgian divinity student; he, a photographer married to a conceptual artist
The lust to be great is quite a thing different from what is
Great in se
Not likely to produce what is great
–What is great–
Greatness is a gift
Vibrational resonance on the sound-board heartstrings thrilling the ode
That is what is human
A gift to us all—co-cooperation—collective consciousness all-soul
That is we human solidarity together
It is great to share all together collected around
A Prime Mover of soul
As is to me Borofsky’s Hammering Man and Picasso’s Untitled in Chicago’s Daley Plaza
Condense what is human freely among the affairs of daily life
These are not what humans commonly thought are metrics of greatness
A publication, a work alive 100 years after the artist’s demise, to be a class in a university, a
critic’s nod, mass appeal
Peace breathes in the spirit attendant relaxation of the choke-hold that is
The lust for greatness
And insignificance be not a curse;
The eyes of all need not wait not upon me
The satisfactions of being a good man among our common men are great enough to sustain
To be happy with the faces that you meet
And perhaps to touch a soul or two or two or three among the faces that you meet
And to touch the sky in private
For you don’t have to be tall to see the moon
And to walk humbly with a soul or two or two or three
And to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God
AMBITION’S AMBIGUITY IN AGE
07 Jun 2020 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: age, ambition, disappointment, grandmother, love, mysticism, poem, poetry, Swedenborg, verse
I’m not sure I know
How to about whether I can
Assert this point’s possible ambiguity
Things upon aging looking back
Ambitions to attain a name
Good job be important get ahead all the way to the top
Mystical experiences recast matters
I recall the litany I told the cabbie
Of failed attainments I felt entitled to by cheated life
Myself a failure disappointment and life half done things undone
Is it mysticism? Workplace satisfaction? Found love?
Olding? That fuels my contentment
The whole question of ambition
Where’d that come from?! How widespread in humanity
Nascent? Acquired? Self-imposed? My grandmother?
My recasting of what I thought were failed attainments
In my age I realize that Swedenborg’s values were inscribed in maturity
For maturity? And where would the world be without ambition in the younger
In my mind I distill a modicum of peak importances
And my failed ambitions fade into a fractured joke
And in my age I now understand Swedenborg’s values as mine
Some Swedenborgian Truths in a Time of Crisis
19 Mar 2020 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: Black Plague, COVID-19, good, hardships, Last Days, love, neighbor, plague, Revelation, Swedenborg
Some Swedenborgian Truths in a Time of Crisis
Religious people may have mixed feelings about the Covid-19 virus. In addition to the strange new restrictions on our social life, the growing numbers of sick, and the death toll, religious people may want to force meaning onto this pandemic. I think that we are in a kind of state of shock as we try to understand what is going on. Religious people may ask why this is going on. But asking theological questions while in a state of shock, or panic, is not wise.
The first thing that Swedenborgians would assert is that this is not punishment from God. God doesn’t punish. From one way of looking at it, you could say that God can’t punish. God is good and can do only good. God can do only loving things. God does only loving things. God does only good to us. Consider this quote from Swedenborg,
as He wills only what is good he can do nothing but what is good. . . . From these few statements it can be seen how deluded those are who think, and still more those who believe, and still more those who teach, that God can damn any one, curse any one, send any one to hell, predestine any soul to eternal death, avenge wrongs, be angry, or punish. He cannot even turn Himself away from humanity, nor look upon anyone with a stern countenance (True Christianity n. 56).
So Swedenborgians would say that the pandemic is not punishment from God.
The pandemic is not a sign of the Last Days. The Book of Revelation talks about a plague coming in the Last Days. Swedenborgians say that the Book of Revelation is about what goes on inside us. The battles and plagues and earthquakes are symbolic of our spiritual struggles. After all, Jesus said, “The kingdom of God does not come visibly. Neither will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is.’ For the kingdom of God is inside.” There have been several “plagues” in my lifetime. There was h1n1, swine flu, and the sars virus. Either one of these could have been called the plagues pointing to the end times. Then there was the Black Plague of the middle ages. That happened in the 14th century. People then thought that they were in the end times. But we got through all these plagues and forgot about them and the end times. And we will get through this.
In these hard times, more than ever, we need to think about our neighbor. We need to practice social distancing to protect ourselves and our neighbors. Many of us will experience financial hardships. Those of us who are fortunate financially are in a position to wisely help out when they can and as they are able. I don’t mean to minimize the difficulties we will go through in the months ahead. But we will get through it. Now, more than in times of prosperity, neighbor love is needed. As we all struggle through the uncertainty, fear, and hardships, love will get us through. And though we practice social distancing, we are not alone. God is going through this with us. “Behold I am with you always.” Let’s be with one another, too, always.
David Fekete 