This is something of a rant; apologies. I’ve been asked to write on civic religion for an online journal, and so the question of ritual forms that perpetuate unifying ideals has been on my mind. What are they? Hopefully not this.
And Painted the Floor
I would not normally repost things not thematically related to this blog, but Kindra is worth your support in this time.
In the kitchen
my mother was dead with no religion;
she’d bumped her head and painted the floor.
Dead head red
linoleum
Mother were your eyes closed or open?
Only the cat knows
as well as policemen.
Bloated bag of bones
drained and taking space in chest of drawers…
you don’t belong there but what can I do?
I’ve never been good at saving you.
You wait for the oven that will
fulfill
your wishes.
Don’t fret mother;
your girls won’t toss the dirt on you.
We will wear your body dressed in silver
displayed ‘round our necks.
No one can hurt you now.
Not your mother or your father;
not corrupt Jehovah
who’d abandoned you at sixteen years
young.
Mama 19 again at 24;
You weren’t perfect but you were ours
and you were beautiful even at your ugliest
because we knew you loved us
so fucking hard it…
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Teaching the Feeling of the Classics
I first brought up historical distance here; I encourage all to read this distinct, but related, excerpt on Sententiae Antiquae about the role of the translator to bridge historical distance, to conquer time.
Gilbert Murray, The Interpretation of Ancient Greek Literature
“I remember about twenty years ago reading an obituary notice of Bohn, the editor of the library of translations, written by Mr. Labouchere. The writer attributed to Bohn the signal service to mankind of having finally shown up the Classics. As long as the Classics remained a sealed book to him, the ordinary man could be imposed upon. He could be induced to believe in their extraordinary merits. But when, thanks to Mr. Bohn, they all lay before him in plain English prose, he could estimate them at their proper worth and be rid for ever of a great incubus. Take Bohn’s translation of the Agamemnon, as we may presume it appeared to Mr. Labouchere, and take the Agamemnon itself as it is to one of us: there is a broad gulf, and the bridging of that gulf is the chief part…
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Still, Wait, Decay, Emerge
Gress to the glade and grimly grind the grist;
crunch with the crowns, crush the kernel, create Continue reading
Excerpt #15 — Charles T. Mathewes on The Alienness of the Classical World
We introduced Charles Mathewes in an earlier post.
In one section of his online course on Augustine’s City of God titled “The Classical Worldview” Mathewes notes that
Modern thought offers two ways of imagining the ancient world: Continue reading
Into the Clarities 