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94643870

May 20, 2003 By Chris Uncategorized One Comment

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.

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94630109

May 20, 2003 By Chris Uncategorized


Creation is a poem
Poem, which is “creation” in Greek and thus
St. Paul calls God’s Creation, POIEMA,
like a poem by Homer, Padre Angel used to say.
Each thing is like a “like”
Like a “like” in a Huidobro poem.
The entire cosmos copulation.
And each thing is word,
word of love.

— Ernesto Cardenal Cosmic Canticle, Cantiga 2 “The Word”

Vincente Huidobro (1893-1948) was a Chilean poet. He founded a school of poetry called “Creacionismo” or “creationism”

“Creacionismo was the apotheosis for Huidobro, a space where the poet could assume a role as the divine. In his poem “Arte po�tica” (Poetic Art), the final verse reads: “El poeta es un peque�o Dios” ‘The poet is a small God’ (Huidobro 69). This verse was the epitaph for his movement. Creacionismo licensed the poet to become the Creator within their poetic space, where the world of subjectivity was merged into the reality that the poet created. Huidobro maintained that the rise of Creacionismo was solely attributed to him, free of any direct influence. He describes his poetry as not singularly influenced, “but only by the universe of poetry that has been studied and felt”” (Perdig� 42).

Here is the full text in English of “Poetic Art”:

Poetic Art

Verse is like a key
That opens a thousand doors
A page turns, something takes flight
How many believing eyes look
And the hearing soul remains trembling

Invent new worlds and care for their word
The adjective, when it does not give life, kills
We are in a cycle of nerves
The muscle cluster,
Like I remember, in the museums;
No more do but we have less force;
The true vigor
Resides in the mind

Why do you the rose, oh poets!
It will flourish in the poem

Only for us
Live all things under the sun

The poet is a small god.

A small god making poems as nature creates trees. Singing them into existence.

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94606525

May 19, 2003 By Chris Uncategorized

BagpussCoffeeShop is closed for a spell.

Farewell friend…you posted good stuff. Here’s hoping for your return.

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94601581

May 19, 2003 By Chris Uncategorized

This just in via LanguageHat: An archive of Miao songs about the origin of the universe.

Nice blogging sychronicity, I’d say.

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94599979

May 19, 2003 By Chris Uncategorized One Comment


Before beginning only Awonawilaona existed,
no one else with him in the vast space of time
but the black darkness on all sides
in the space of time.

And he brought forth his thought into space…
Nothing existed, neither did nothingness exist,
Between day and night there was no frontier.
Everything at the beginning was hidden…


— Ernesto Cardenal Cosmic Canticle, Cantiga 1

I am struck with the creation stories that begin with a gesture of art. The song, the word, the sculpted gesture. In the Midewiwin tradition of the Ojibway, we are taught that the first sound was the sound of the rattle, and indeed scientists posit that the universe could only have become differentiated as a result of some force moving through the smooth early universe and causing matter to lump together, making it possible for bodies to form and grow separately from one another.

If that is true (you know what I mean) then the human attraction towards song maybe is a primal urge, infusing matter, to find this song or gesture again, to capture that echo the faded sound, movement glimpsed in the dreaming eye, a mark in the depthless blackness of a sleeping eyelid.

To discover this moment, we would need to sing the song backwards, in a sense recite the prayer of creation from below and in so doing restore the unity of force and matter.

Everything we know about the expansion of the universe says that we are always growing further and further apart from each other, separation initiated by song. Are we seeking something in music and speech that can draw us back together again?

In Cosmic Canticle, Cardenal inventories creation stories that have to do with the thoughts and dreaming and song of the creators. Whether it is Awonawilaona or P’an Ku (“…First there was the great cosmic egg. Within the egg/there was chaos. And P’an Ku floated above the chaos”) or Na Arean (seated in space/like a cloud floating over nothingness”), the poem rocks between traditional stories of becoming and the scientific ones, and all those stories blur together.

The story of Na Arean from Polynesia is like this:

“In the beginning, Na Arean sat alone like a cloud floating in nothingness. He didn’t sleep, for there was no sleep. He wasn’t hungry, since hunger had not been created. So he remained for a long time, until a thought came into his mind. He said to himself, “I will make a thing.” So he made water in his left hand, and dabbled it with his right until it was muddy; then he rolled the mud flat and sat upon it. Then a great swelling grew in his forehead, until on the third day it burst, and a little man sprang forth. “You are my thought,” said Na Arean. Your name is Na Arean the younger. Na Arean the Younger then proceeded to straighten out the elements of the earth.”

And the stories of the world created from song puts me in mind of this classic from C.S Lewis:

“It was a Lion. Huge, shaggy and bright, it stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song and it was pacing to and fro about the empty land. And as Aslan walked and sang, the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the Lion like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave.

In a few minutes it was creeping up the lower slopes of the distant mountains, making that young world every moment softer. A light wind could now be heard ruffling the grass which was sprinkled with daisies and buttercups. Along the river bank, willows were growing; on the other side, tangles of flowering currant, lilac, wild rose and rhododendron closed them in.

All this time the Lion’s song and his stately prowl, to and fro, backward and forward, continued. It was clear that all the things were coming “out of the Lion’s head.” When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up; and when you looked around you, you saw them all. This was Aslan’s world of Narnia.”

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