Spirit

Rowan Williams on the Ascension of Jesus

/ gregorystackpole / Leave a comment

This is the twenty-third follow-up entry to the post, “Gagarin and the Seven Heavens”; here we look at a short entry on the ascension of Jesus by Rowan Williams (published in a theological dictionary), and some homilies by the same either touching on the ascension or else delivered on or about the Feast of the Ascension.

The previous posts ranged across a number of authors at different times and places and religious affiliations, and were not organized well into any outline, so I ordered them; further, the follow-up posts were becoming so numerous, and the text block listing and briefly introducing them was so large, that they were soon going to take up more space than the posts themselves. Thus, I organized and listed them here.

Continue reading →

Itinerary

/ gregorystackpole / Leave a comment

In that corner

a window fan

inhales frigid

air

in this corner

single-malt

catches

the ceiling fan’s perfect circle

over

a huddle of boxes

flowering open

into an unknown space

______________________________________________-

Header image found here

Poem Exchange on Statues

/ gregorystackpole / Leave a comment

I had an exchange with a friend several weeks ago on the tearing down of statues; we only wrote to one another, at first, in poems, and we wrote our poems in under an hour, so excuse us the flaws in our work. I offer it to you here as an interruption in programming, before the event recedes too much in the rearview mirror.

I am not an iconoclast, although I wholeheartedly endorse removing statues to Confederate generals and those whose purpose was wrapped up in the institution of slavery. This trend can, of course, go far past the original target. I feel this awkward need simultaneously to apologize for the poem and to explain it and even (at least in part) to justify it.

Here are the poems; I will say a few words of explanation after them. Continue reading →

The Pandemic, and the Question of Value in Nature

/ gregorystackpole / 24 Comments

Is valuing always a human activity (is it something relative to our purposes), or is value something — say some quality or class of qualities — to which we can become more sensitive? Do we project it, or do we discover it?

Continue reading →

More Reflections on Star Wars — Myth?

/ gregorystackpole / 2 Comments

I wrote a post about Star Wars. This is not my typical content.  I’ll post a few more. I may need some catharsis.

Here is one on the question of the mythic dimensions in Star Wars — or the question of whether, and to what degree, there are mythic strands in it. 

As I mentioned in the first post, were I to be responsible, I’d buy and read the recent biography of George Lucas before writing this (more likely, I’d listen to it on Audible). I’d look at the concept art books or the Ralph McQuarrie art boxed set or the storyboards for the original trilogy. I’d read the books that dealt with how the movies were made — volumes on A New Hope, or The Empire Strikes Back, or Return of the Jedi. I’d find and finally read my copy of How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, or any number of other texts that would give me access to the history of George Lucas, Lucasfilm, and the production dramas and decisions that resulted in so many of these films. (Buy those books! I’ll get a few pennies to spend on the coffee needed to keep writing blog posts.)

Continue reading →