tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8605839.post109994769183236058..comments2023-09-03T10:27:50.770-05:00Comments on Personal Musings of Priestly Goth: The Icon of/on the Grain of the UniverseCommunity of the Holy Trinityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15327079170088324442noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8605839.post-1100537093966798452004-11-15T10:44:00.000-06:002004-11-15T10:44:00.000-06:00Nothing Personal, rh, and I'm not sure your comme...Nothing Personal, rh, and I'm not sure your comments were specifically focused on my sermon ... but ... my words were very specifically chosen to deny the appeal to something beyond embodiment as a ground for ordained ministry. The working with wood that I suggest in my sermon is all about searching the grain of the universe ... which is the grain the embodied word - the word in wooden form - the word that we can see, touch, feel and become splintered on. If we conform, transform or are performed by something it is not the disembodied other but rather the rough hewn wood of the cross; reshaping our bodies into a cruciform shape.Trevorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12868812827844743895noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8605839.post-1100281985606831542004-11-12T11:53:00.000-06:002004-11-12T11:53:00.000-06:00I think a full responce to your question will requ...I think a full responce to your question will require a post of its own. However, before I do so to what does "it" refer to in you comment? I could read your question as either asking if this is true about mysticism or iconcolasm or both. <br />For clarity I do not see mysticism as essentialy iconoclastic, especially if we limit our discussion to Christian mysticism.<br />Thus my statement about the disembodied other was addressing what seems to me to be the logical (though not necesary) conclusion of iconoclastic mysticism. This form of mysticism (which is also a certain interpretation of postmodernism) in seeking to preserve alterity, refuse encounter with the other. <br />All encounter is mediated through our bodies (I would venture to suggest that even the experince of ourselves as other is due to being a body). Even this virtual communication requires even though it defers interaction between our bodies.<br />This Iconoclastic mysticism of the Other seems only able to concieve of encounter as mastery. Thus, to avoid mastery it refuses the name and the image absolutely, denying the other both body and name. It seems driven more by an obsession with pure otherness rather than valueing any/all pariticular other(s).<br />I will expand on these comments soon.Community of the Holy Trinityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15327079170088324442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8605839.post-1100211449547323052004-11-11T16:17:00.000-06:002004-11-11T16:17:00.000-06:00larry--i wonder if it is really seeking the disemb...larry--i wonder if it is really seeking the disembodied other? and if it is, since we are always other to one another and ourselves, what could this mean? could this, then, become not the attraction to the formless but that which is forming us and subsequently performing us? ....just wonder....while i wander...as the baptistnomad does! rhAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8605839.post-1099975548621521002004-11-08T22:45:00.000-06:002004-11-08T22:45:00.000-06:00Trevor,
No I did not actually think you had an ico...Trevor,<br />No I did not actually think you had an iconoclastic point in the sermon, and the exerpt certainly, as you say hints in the direction I was running with your text.<br />However, your sermon, did have iconoclastic echoes. Though admitedly it is difficult to speak as a protestant without those echoes (even if one is something of a Lutheran). Being an artist and iconographer perhaps makes me more sensative to hints of iconoclasm.<br />With this sensativity I wanted to explore the images of ruin and striping to the grain from the perspective of the icon. And explore how the icon might play out in the text of your sermon.Community of the Holy Trinityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15327079170088324442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8605839.post-1099954889265860722004-11-08T17:01:00.000-06:002004-11-08T17:01:00.000-06:00Larry,
Thanks for your reflection. This is a real...Larry,<br /><br />Thanks for your reflection. This is a really nice development of stuff I'd love to have said. I agree with pretty much everything you say here. I certainly did not rule out iconoclasm in my sermon; that was a rhetorical choice and perhaps a bad one. I'm not an iconoclast, and am somewhat unlike my co-religionists in this way.<br /><br />Here's a bit from my sermon <br /><br />"For even Christ "who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross." Here the grain of the universe is made more obvious by a crimson stain."<br /><br />I think there would be room here for your perspective. I don't consider all paint, all stain, all gold encrusting to be bad.Trevorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12868812827844743895noreply@blogger.com