12.28.07
Posted in Philosophy, seeker at 6:00 pm by Dan Jensen
This blog got its name “Idol Chatter” for a reason, or even a couple of reasons. First of all, the blogger is a rather militant unitarian (note lowercase ‘u’). Secondly, he tries not to take his own chatter too seriously.
By “unitarian” is here meant anyone who recognizes the tendency of leaders, doctrines, and ideologies to become idols that stand in the way of our search for truth. Idolatry, according to this school of thought, is a mighty sly shape-shifting devil. As a former Unitarian minister once challenged us:
“We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of the idolatry.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Similarly, a Greek philosopher once cautioned:
“It is wise to listen not to me, but to the Logos, …” — Heraclitus
I use the term “unitarian” because this cautious mode of thinking is embodied in the Unitarian tradition, in which some Christians long ago determined that worshiping Jesus is missing the message of Jesus, who did not forbid blasphemy against himself, but rather forbade blasphemy against “the spirit”. It is the spirit of the message that gives life, he said, not the flesh of the messenger; not even the letter of the message.
In this sense, we can see that Jesus, whom some identify with the Logos, was not so different from Nietzsche’s anti-prophet Zarathustra:
“All the names of good and evil are parables: they do not declare, but only hint. Whoever among you seeks knowledge of them is a fool!” — Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The Great Iconoclast
Imagine if you will a medieval man, centuries after Christ, who was familiar with Judaism and Christianity. Imagine that this man was impressed by the Judaic aversion to idolatry, but also recognized Christ as a man—or messenger—of Truth. Imagine that he rejected the Trinity, and the notion that Jesus is God. Imagine that this man became quite well known for his opinion that Jesus is not God, such that we might consider him the first Unitarian. Imagine that he was a man of his time, and realizing the efficacy of power, mustered an army and ordered that army to pursue idolators and smash idols to the ends of the earth.
Let us call this man, for lack of a better name, Muhammad. Maybe this man was so single-minded about smashing idols that he might be called a prophet. Perhaps he was such a dedicated Unitarian that he rejected the very possibility of any religion other than the religion of Unitarianism, going so far as to call himself “the Seal of the Prophets”:
“Muhammad is not the father of any man among you, but he is the Apostle of God, and the seal of the prophets: and God knoweth all things.” Qur’an (Rodwell translation)
Let us further imagine that this man was seen by by his enemies as a militant religious fanatic and his followers as a crusader for his god Allah. Perhaps we can imagine that they had him wrong. Perhaps we can imagine that he was after something more fundamental, and that the rest—his doctrines, methods, and even his personal beliefs—was all circumstantial.
The man in the painting is not going bowling. If we look closely enough, we find that even Muhammad was an idolator; but who isn’t? Shall Muslims be permitted to rise above the man? Not if they continue to idolize him.
It is commonly understood that Islam means “submission”, but submission to what? Submission to Islam? Certainly not. That would be circular, would it not? It has always been understood to mean “submission to God”; but what is God? Is God to be taken as the Islamic image of God, “Allah”, or is God to be taken as that ultimate, unknowable creative essence behind—or within—things? Perhaps the core meaning of Islam is “submission to no idol, however subtle”.
“Seek knowledge even unto China” — Muhammad
If we were to take this as the essence of Islam, could this not be a religion of the future? Could we go so far as to say that Islam is faith in Reason? If this seems like too much of a stretch, can we at least see how Islam might be seen as a medieval attempt to free humanity of idolatry?
Let the true Muslims step forward to smash the idols of Islam.
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12.26.07
Posted in The Mission at 11:41 pm by Dan Jensen
Armen Adroushan lie spread out on the Horseshoe green on the last day of final examinations. He looked up into the fat Carolina sky and let the steaming sun soak into him. A slight breeze trickled through the lofty canopy of stately old trees, but it didn’t seem to reach the ground. A squirrel barked up in the canopy, a raven hovered out and back into the leaves, and the squirrel scolded again. Armen gazed lazily at the sky, watching it roll, and listening to it rumble.
This was it. “This is it,” he replied to the sky. He’d previously planned to go on to graduate school, but lately he just couldn’t see it. He was having a hard enough time getting motivated to attend commencement. It would be worth a recollection, with President Bush and Andrew Lloyd Weber slated to speak, but no, there wasn’t a chance that he’d even be in the state by then.
The night made a rumbling sound. The massive sphere rolled. The rumbling was low, steady, and everywhere inside the sphere. The road under the streetlamp felt the rumbling. The streetlamp felt the rumbling. The car parked along the curb felt it. The windows at the drive-in felt it, as the sphere continued rolling.
As a glow spilled across the horizon, a bus roared down the whispering street, drowning out the rumbling, and the air was filled with foul, black smoke. The street rolled away under the bus. The street lamps rolled away. The town rolled away. An iron bridge rolled away. A forest rolled. Corn fields. Night rolled away, and suddenly, so had the dawn. Other towns rolled away under the wheels of the bus, and other bridges, and days, and nights.
He was quite accustomed to the rolling. He felt at home with it; the not pretending to stand still.
In the belly of the monster, he seemed to time his breathing with the monster. The bus exhaled its smoke, and Armen exhaled his. Each had its fire. The internal combustion of one and the internal respiration of the other were essentially the same technology.
As another night rolled away from the eastern horizon, a great grey bridge rolled past the bus. It did not roll away in a moment, but kept rolling and rolling past. The grey, striped hollow of the bridge flickered, then suddenly became dark, with a narrow stream of light pulses, and then the bright stripes returned. The stripes vanished, replaced by a canyon of boxes, some dull and some flashing, bright, and reflective, rushing by, slowing, ceasing, then rushing away. Sometimes when the box canyon slowed, it would turn and flow away in another direction, but the direction was always the same somehow. The boxes hurried past.
The boxes slowed and rolled through a half turn. The rumbling diesel engine tripped in silence. The bus door opened, and peopled dropped out, one by one.
Armen Adroushan stepped down on the floor of the garage-like bus station, walked alongside the bus, and waited by the cargo doors. He cradled a paperback book and a spiral-bound notepad in his right hand, his fingers shifting their ballast slightly to keep their cargo from tipping too far in either direction. The driver opened the cargo doors, and the passengers ducked under, pulling their luggage out. Armen grabbed a worn backpack, heaved it out of the bus and onto his back. He stepped through the waiting area into San Francisco.
“What now?” he wondered. He inspected the cracks in the sidewalk and wondered how much they’d grown during last fall’s earthquake. He felt relieved to be back on trembling soil—so unsteady, like himself, but he could feel the City’s ceaseless activity overwhelming this delicate familiarity. The boxes, so abstract from the bus window, now became walls of steel, with an appearance of windows and doors, yet ominously inaccessible. The sun only cast shadows. It was forever hidden behind the walls of the deep canyon, and the chill exhalations of the City would howl up and down the steel canyons. As the shadows darkened, the day-dwellers thinned out, and the night-dwellers came out of the cracks and crevices and sterilized the pavement with their bladders. Armen allowed his feet to lead him back to the bus depot. He walked in out of the City and purchased a ticket for Fresno.
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12.15.07
Posted in Igneous Range at 10:59 pm by Dan Jensen
| Through the airliner’s port window, a sea of tiles surged up and down. The tiles, each a distinct shade of rust, formed a great flowing quilt. “Rust,” he remembered the cowboy’s voice, “is the fire that burns iron.” He could imagine the smoldering fire spreading slowly across northern Bombay, consuming just as respiration consumes, out of control like the respiration of a cancer or a conflagration, devouring the great city; that city of hope and opportunity. A city of tolerance. An Indian city, no doubt, but forever a British city, and a Muslim and Persian city too. Rotting at its core with the foulest poverty. The slum capital of the world in an age of slums, though it still retained its grand old Imperial name Bombay. |
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Not for long. The Mosques were burning, the Parsis were dying off, and even the Gujaratis weren’t welcome.
He wondered about the mathematics of misery. What is the misery of a million miserable souls? Is it a million fold, or is it the same as one? Is the misery of a million more than a single mother in mourning?
He braced himself, not so much for the landing as the arrival.
“Name.”, the customs agent recited, as he received the passenger’s passport.
“Mehrzad Kariyani” was the reply.
“City of birth.”
“Pasadena, California”.
The traveler sensed suspicion in the agent, or perhaps he imagined it.
“Religion”
“Parsi.”
The agent gave him a second look, and then let him pass.
The traveler unlocked the door to his room and dropped his suitcase on the bed. He snapped it open, and lifted out a dark green outfit. After changing into the long sleeve shirt and pants, he lifted out a black topi and pulled it over his head. He dug into the suitcase and removed a small pill jar. He opened the jar, dumped out a capsule, and put the capsule in his change pocket. He pulled a circular strap and a pair of binoculars out of the suitcase, attached them, put the strap over his head, and adjusted it. He dumped the contents of his rucksack out onto the bed. He then flipped the binoculars down over his eyes, and pulled the headgear off his head and placed it into his pack, emptied it out onto the bed, slung the pack over his shoulders, and left the room.
Walking through the hotel lobby, he turned and approached the front desk. “Excuse me sir. Would you happen to know where I can find a hardware store, say, where I might find screws and such things?” The man at the desk responded, “Certainly, sir. There’s a shop just two or three blocks from here, up Veer Nariman Road.”
When he’d found the shop, he looked around, the finally asked the shopkeeper if he had any cable cutters. The shopkeeper then said something in another language that seemed like an order to a young man, who immediately ran off. “My assistant will return shortly with the item you have requested.” The traveler nodded and continued to browse through the shop. After the assistant returned with the cable cutters, the American purchased them, along with some rope and a pair of gloves. Outside the shop, he stuffed the purchase into his pack, looked up the street, and began walking back toward the Astoria Hotel, but stopped short the Churchgate rail station, where he planned to catch a train to Charni Road. Not quite up to fighting the crowds, he opted to walk instead.
He paused in front of an old fire temple for awhile, then continued down to Chowpatty Beach, bought some bhelpuri, and sat there watching the street performers, dispossessed, and the fun seekers until sunset. He resumed walking, first further down the beach, then he spotted a griffon vulture soaring westward, and followed it toward the towers of Malabar Hill.
After awhile, he came to a place where one side of the street was forested, as it were a park, behind a wall. The traveler strolled in and out of the light, following the barrier as he walked. As he passed out of the reach of a streetlight, he stopped along the wall where a gap in it had been patched with steel fencing, now rusty from the Bombay weather. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the cutters, and snipped two strands of the fencing, then returned the cutters to his pocket and continued walking. He made several right turns, and was soon at the gap again, and quickly pruned the fending a little more. On the forth pass, he walked directly toward the gaps and slipped through it without pausing.
He walked quickly through the forest, then stopped, and moved the cutters from his pocket to his pack, and slipped the capsule out of his dime pocket. He squeezed a green paste out of the capsule and wiped the paste over his face. He pulled out the binocular-cap. He slid the strap over his topi, adjusted it, and pulled the binoculars down over his eyes. He then put on the gloves and proceeded through the forest. The calls of birds still echoed through the forest. He heard the startling call of a peacock. He paused, and followed the growing smell of death among the trees.
His nose led him to what resembled a large petroleum tank, such as might be seen at a refinery, only this tank, perhaps ten meters high and three hundred around, was made of stone. He then began walking from tree to tree, inspecting each tree momentarily, and following a wandering path around the tank. Inspecting the trunk of one tree more thoroughly, he pulled the rope out of his pack, wove it around his torso and each leg, and then around the tree.
He then scaled up the trunk, then wormed out onto one of the main branches toward the stone tank, and removed the night vision glasses. From the branch, he looked down into the roofless tank, seeing the dim contrast of corpses against stone. He lay there against the branch, occasionally adjusting his body for comfort, and saw the silhouette of a vulture in an adjacent tree. He smiled through the green mask, and started to hum pleasantly. He then began to sing in a cracked whisper, “when I think of heaven (deliver me in a black-winged bird) …”
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12.10.07
Posted in Personal at 11:32 pm by Dan Jensen
Our daughter took up violin just last summer.
I recently mentioned to her violin instructor that I’d like to take some lessons as well. I’d bought a violin awhile back, and I’d been practicing along with our daughter. I’d played violin and viola as a boy, when I was about as old as she is now. That was a long time ago. I cannot remember when or why I stopped playing. Was it the bully smashing my violin after school? Was it the move to Africa? Perhaps it was that terrible concert: I was so nervous I could barely play.
I love classical violin; well, romantic violin, to be precise. I’ve always regretted giving up on the violin. It doesn’t help to read about Einstein and his violin. What a pair those two made! So when our daughter expressed an interest in violin, there was no delay. A violin was provided, and shortly thereafter, an instructor.
I’d been doing pretty well during our practices. When I finally got my lesson, I had hardly started playing when our instructor noticed the bow bouncing on the strings. She asked me if I’d seen a doctor about it. She wanted to know whether I was certain that I don’t have a real medical problem. I told her that I don’t think I have Parkinson’s. I’ve always had a tremor; as long as I can remember. I remember that concert. Suddenly I feel like I’ve traveled back in time to childhood. I shrink into a corner as the world expands back to its former proportions.
I’ll bet Parkinson’s is a nightmare, but this is no picnic. I slipped into a funk. The next time our daughter and I practiced, I quit after 30 seconds, and we didn’t practice for another week. I would pick it up when she wasn’t around. I got frustrated immediately. I was ashamed.
My father, a chiropractor, describes that slight tremor as a cerebral palsy. I asked an MD once: he told me: “you shake a little.” Yes, I suppose it doesn’t really matter what you call it.
It can be aggravated by stress, but I don’t always know when the stress is there. It can be rather frustrating when I’m trying to cut my kids’ bangs or finger nails, but I don’t let that stop me.
My daughter recently scheduled a duet for us before several ladies. She had been having a little more trouble with the piece than I had, and just before the performance, she began to get agitated. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it. I told her, “hey, let’s just do it, and if we mess up we mess up. No big deal.” When we began to play, I suddenly couldn’t focus on reading the music. It was as though the notes were slipping around the page; not literally, but I could not get a fix on them. I faltered repeatedly. I’d pick up at the next measure, but I couldn’t concentrate. I was disappointed in myself, but I couldn’t be more proud of her. She just kept going. She played the complete piece without a single pause. She was flawless, in spite of all the distraction that I caused.
She’s a performer, and she’s got one very proud father.
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