Letter To the Leaves: God Does Exist. And It's Spelled W-E

My Fellow Contributors,


One of the books I am reading at this time is Eckhart Tolle's book, The Power of Now. This book was actually recommend to me by Slick a few months ago and I have been devouring it every since. The tagline for the book is, "A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment". I recommend it to everyone who is searching for their own inner voice and presence.

I bring this book up not to discuss philosophies, but because their is a section of the book that I feel resonates with what I have discussed in several of my previous blogs.

Here is the section I want to point at today,

"Don't get stuck on the level of words. A word is no more than a means to and end. It's an abstraction. Not unlike a signpost, it points beyond itself. The word honey isn't honey. You can study and talk about honey for as long as you like, but you won't really know it until you taste it. After you have tasted it, the word becomes less important to you. You won't be attached to it anymore. Similarly, you can talk or think about God continuously for the rest of you life, but does that mean you know or have even glimpsed the reality to which the word points? It really is no more than an obsessive attachment to a signpost, a mental idol....

...If you had a strong aversion to the word God, which is a negative form of attachment, you may be denying not just the word but also the reality to which it points. You would be cutting yourself off from the possibility of experiencing that reality."

 Jack and I were having a conversation after the last open mic. You see he's been writing a bunch of physics poetry lately and asked me if I believed in God. I told him, that I was raised Roman Catholic and my views aren't as simple as whether or not there is a God. I told him that I view organized religion as a medium through which I can find my spiritual enlightenment or presence.

In rebuttal he told me that I had to acknowledge that science is the only universal truth. That God is only used as a weapon against groups and that it is worth not believing in because it is only used for evil. He told me that he was raised christian but has now come to the realization that there is not a God.

I read the passage from The Power of Now after this conversation, and felt that these were a few lines I should have quoted in defense of my position.

The way I see it, God is only a signpost used to get everyone connected to a universal truth. Jack, and other people like him, are asking the wrong question. Its not whether there is a God, but why would a God be created.

I was doing some research for an article on the relationship between business and religion. In my research I came across an article about Karl Marx. He held the view that God was created by men, and was used to keep the laborer in the chains of the capitalist. I agree with Marx in one respect, that God was created (the word and the way its delivered) but rather than a means of oppression it is a means of liberation.

It is a way for all of us to "be on the same page"; to focus our attention on one idea. Rather than getting caught up in the how of religion, we need to get focused on the Now of religion. The feeling that it makes us experience and the sense of freedom, warmth, love, and tenderness it opens us up to feeling.

So don't get caught up in words. Don't get caught up in other peoples opinions or in their religion. Everyone is searching for the universal truth. They are searching for their own god-essence and they are teaching us that we are all connected.

Physics, God, Science or Religion. These are only tools teaching us to transcend.


As Always

Undoubtedly Yours,

Bermuda the Man

"I Sound My Barbaric Yawp..." In Free Verse, of Course

Folks,

This week I read a lot of Civil War poetry. As some of you might know, this is kind of my area of expertise – I’m a big fan of Whitman, Melville, Crane, and all those guys (and gals, of course; I love me some Emily). The reason I bring this up, though, is that I’ve spent most of my time studying the poetry of the latter half of the Civil War – more specifically, post-Whitman free verse; however, much of the poetry I’ve studied over the last week was the poetry from the first half of the Civil War. This was a switch for me, and the first thing I noticed was the use of form.

Poetry from the first half of the Civil War often appears to be written in what could be called “borrowed verse.” Early American poetry and the poetry leading up to 1865 was almost exclusively written in sonnet form or other forms of traditional British verse. Many of the canonized poets such as Longfellow, Bryant, and Emerson employed British verse into their poems – the subject matter of the poetry, in addition to the mirroring of the form, sort of echoes the thoughts and sentiments of the British romantics. The transcendentalists are especially guilty of this. In this regard, it appears that the American poets of the early 19^th century were finding their poetic sea legs, so to speak; the poetic tradition had not yet taken a uniquely American turn in terms of form.  

Whitman, however, changes things on many levels. Whitman may not have been the first to ever experiment with free verse, but I think it is safe to say that he is definitely the front runner, if not the forefather. Whitman’s revolution in poetic form begs the question of what exactly is the role of the form of free verse. Prior to the breakthrough in this poetic form, traditional forms were used for specific purposes: epithalamion was used for weddings; sonnets were used to express love; villanelles conjure up musical festivity, and so on. Free verse opens up a wide variety of possibilities, in that the tradition is not grounded in formal purpose, per se.

Since 1865, we have seen free verse grow into a widely popular mode, if not the mode, of American expressivism in the contemporary poetic tradition. Free verse is a playground of sorts, I suppose, in that there are no latent fetters in the form. An interesting question arises out of this freedom. What is the purpose of the form of free verse? If traditional poetic forms are dictated by occasion or thematic intent, then what are these things for free verse? Let me know your thoughts. If free verse seems appropriate for the form of your response, please use this form. If you want to leave a comment in Rhyme Royal, though, that’d be awesome.   

Until Next Time,

J