The Earth and moon as seen from Mars
It has often been said that we are the universe gazing upon itself. We have made eyes and sent them to Mars, and beyond that. and we are able to hold the mirror a long way from our face and see a view of our planet that almost loses us in the blackness of the space between spaces.
This photo is not just a photo of Earth from Mars, it is also a photograph of a sunrise over the island on which I live, off the west coast of North America. As this photo was taken, on the morning of May 8 I was immersed in a conference call with people in Edmonton. The dawn chorus of robins and varied thrushes and woodpeckers and chickadees was alive outside my window. This is a photo of a typical Thuirsday morning in May on Earth.
What were you doing? Where were you as the sun rose on my home that morning? Which tiny pixel of blue did you occupy at that hour?
It was thought that atoms moved according to Newton’s laws,
and could be predicted
like the falling of apples in the autumn afternoon.
Atoms are huge
Vacuous atoms…
An Atom is as empty as the solar system.
— Ernesto Cardenal Cosmic Canticle, Cantiga 7: The Infinitesimal Calculation of the Apples
Image courtesy of NASA
Just discovered Les Murray, who is no stranger to antipodean readers and many others no doubt, but is new to me:
Cotton Flannelette Shake the bed, the blackened child whimpers, O shake the bed! through bleak lips that never will come unwry. And wearily the iron- framed mattress, with nodding, crockery bulbs, jinks on its way. Her brothers and sister take shifts with the terrible glued-together baby when their unsleeping absolute mother reels out to snatch an hour, back to stop the rocking and wring pale blue soap-water over nude bladders and blood-webbed chars. Even their cranky evasive father is awed to stand watches rocking the bed. Lids frogged shut, O please shake the bed her contours whorl and braille tattoos from where, in her nightdress, she flared out of hearth-drowse to a marrow shriek pedaling full tilt firesleeves in mid-air, are grainier with repair than when the doctor, crying Dear God, woman! No one can save that child. Let her go! spared her the treatments of the day. Shake the bed. Like: count phone pole, rhyme, classify realities, band the head, any iteration that will bring, in the brain's forks, the melting molecules of relief, and bring them back again. O rock the bed! Nibble water with bared teeth, make lymph like arrowroot gruel, as your mother grips you for weeks in the untrained perfect language, till the doctor relents. Salves and wraps you in dressings that will be the fire again, ripping anguish of agony, and will confirm the ploughland ridges in your woman's skin for the sixty more years your family weaves you on devotion's loom, rick-racking the bed as you yourself, six years old, instruct them.
The first time I read this poem my eye caught in different places. It started with the word “unwry” in the first stanza. Having that word followed by “wearily” made me initially read “unwry” as “unwary.” I had to double back, smiling at the word play.
But then it continued…the mother “reels” out instead of “reaches”, “chars” instead of “chairs.” I thought the whole thing strange and just the product of reading too rushed, so I slowly read the poem out loud and the same thing happened. On the same words.
It is as if there is signal noise built into this poem. Deliberate places to trip and pause, a poet that asks you to sit still and concentrate even as he lulls you into the seemingly easy flow of the work.
It’s beautiful and engaging and lovely all at once.
Many Murray links (poems, reviews, audio):
My friend Micheal Herman (who is new to blogging but not to wikis) has added a really interesting point in my comments about the god/human division and Pilate’s role in the whole matter:
..there are those who’ve suggested that mao tse tung was a very high tibetan teacher, come to essentially take the karmic hit for busting the tibetan practices out of tibet so that the rest of the world could get at them.god messing in lives of people seems only to extend the division between god and people, no?
That is a very interesting perspective. I replied:
Maybe one way to think about the Christian story from that persepctive is to see Jesus as just that attempt the erase the division between God and human. I mean if Jesus wasn’t a blended being, then it’s hard to imagine who would be.
Meanwhile, Bob Hunt adds that the Old Testament God creeping into the New Testament troubles him from time to time:
It is most definitely an echo of the Old Testament God – the God I find troubling. I feel a certain cognitive dissonance when I think of these different faces of God. I can’t help but think of God as infinitely compassionate, and yet we have countless examples of God behaving in ways that appear very cruel at worst, and unforgiving at best. I suppose I have come to a tentative resolution in this regard by realizing that God is Love, yes, but Love is not only beautiful and compassionate, but also fierce and seemingly unjust.
For me though this Pilate as Mao thing has me thinking that perhaps, from the Christian perspective, the exploitation of Pilate was in the service of a compassionate gesture for human kind. Without the execution of Jesus there is no way that his message would have got out of the circle of a dozen (11 at this point, thanks to Judas hanging himself) frightened friends of Jesus. The death and resurrection of Christ is the real showstopper for Christianity. Without that, Jesus is just another anarcho-rabbi sticking it to the Man.
Our little place-blogging community has shown up on this week’s Carnival of the Vanities. Thanks to all who made it happen. Now go over there and read what these really interesting people have written about. Scroll down to the bottom to see the place blogging entry.
There is an amazing thing happening out there, in this post-Easter world. I admit to being a spellbound observer of the whole thing. Here’s the play by play:
Bellona Times started the ball rolling with a riff on a Francis Bacon essay that treats Pontius Pilate as a sympathetic colonial bureaucrat who had been tricked by Jesus into fulfilling a prophecy he wanted no part of:
Pilate’s patience is remarkable. Like later totalitarian regimes, neither imperial Rome nor Tudor England held truck with silence; self-incrimination was their favorite evidence, and they had no scruples about getting it.In fact, the reader can’t help but be struck by the gospels’ generosity toward Pontius Pilate, increasing over time as the early Jewish cult became more reliant on Roman gentiles for protection and converts. The Romans weren’t going to take the fall for this one.
The Gospel of John, being written last, sketches an especially sympathetic portrait (elaborated by Bulgakov, among others), of a colonial bureaucrat hamstrung into damnation by politics, confusion, and self-fulfilling prophecy.
And the Happy Tutor chimed in with
Jesus has come bear witness to truth, but only for those who will hear his voice, and only they who are already “of the truth” can do that. To which Pilate, demonstrating his incomprehension, showing that he does not hear, that he is not of the truth, asks the already cliched question, “What thing is truth.” It is not Pilate who jests, but Jesus. In this dance of deadly wit none can say that Jesus bore false witness against himself. He simply dissembled the truth that he, though innocent, might be condemned. Truth, Jesus shows us, is best conveyed by misdirection. For, had Jesus told the truth outright, it would have set him free in the flesh, subdued in the spirit.
And then he adds this from his comments:
I was stunned reading the Gospel passage at how deep the game was, that Jesus with Pilate, for what high stakes, how Jesus bluffed Pilate into crucifying him, against Pilate’s own better judgement. Pilate was back into a corner. Yet what is the story of the crucifixion, if not a story of bearing witness. There are two planes, flesh and spirit, and Jesus operated on both, while Pilate, saying, “What is truth,” could not escape the order of the flesh, or even imagine the order of the spirit. So, Christ’s Kingdom, as Caesar feared, came on earth. Amazing.
The scripture passages of interest here are in John 18 and John 19. Reading them again I actually held my breath. It’s high drama as Jesus is turned in and interrogated by the high priests and then delivered to Pilate to do the dirty work. Pilate doesn’t want to be executioner and once he realizes what’s going on he tries to release Jesus, but the crowd wants a thief instead, and wants the colonial adminstrator to put to death this man. And there was a time pressure because this all happened on the Friday afternoon before Passover and they had to get it over with before the sabbath set in.
In the midst of all this chaos Pilate asks his question: What is truth? But he doesn’t hang around for the answer. Bacon has him jesting, but maybe he was just throwing that one out there, as if he recognized that he and Jesus were locked in a story that was going to end only one way. Jesus is certain of the outcome and engineers it with a set of skillful and evasive answers to Pilate’s questions about whether or not Jesus is really the King of the Jews. For his part, Pilate must have been ready to throw his hands up that this decision has come to him, late on a Friday and so obviously pre-determined with a defendant who doesn’t seem willing to help himself.
But as the situation unfolds, Pilate finds himself not only in a bind, but also a trap, and in the end he frets a little. Jesus gets into his head and the crowd calls his bluff.
When the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify [him], crucify [him]. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify [him]: for I find no fault in him.The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.
When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid;
The Happy Tutor writes “So, Christ’s Kingdom, as Caesar feared, came on earth. Amazing.” And this leads me back to Bacon, who concludes:
Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
Pilate didn’t have a snowball’s chance. Played for a fool, used as a tool.