Antiphon
The fire of a wild white sun has eaten up the distance between
hope and despair.
Dance in this sun, you tepid idiot. Wake up and dance in the
clarity of perfect contradiction.
Lesson
There is a silent self within us whose presence is disturbing precisely because it is is silent; it can't be spoken. It has to remain silent. To articulate it, to verbalize it, is to tamper with it and in some ways destroy it.
Now let us frankly face the fact that our culture is one which is geared in many ways to help us evade any need to face this inner, silent self. We live in a state of constant semiattention to the sound of voices, music, traffic, or the generalized noise of what goes on around us all the time.
This keeps us immersed in a flood of racket and words, a diffuse medium in which our consciousness is half diluted: we are not quite "thinking," not entirely responding, but we are more or less there. We are not fully present and note entirely absent; not fully withdrawn, yet not completely available.
It cannot be said that we are really participating in anything and we may, in fact, be half conscious of our alienation and resentment. Yet we derive a certain comfort from the vague sense that we are "part of something"- although we are not able to define what that something is...we just float along in the general noise.
2 comments:
I really like the 2nd set of lines in the antiphon.
And the lesson is good and relevant.
It seems to take such commitment and discipline to take or make opportunities to not be driven to DO one of the things that I need to get done, to try to to focus in, quiet the business of my mind, let go and just sink into BEING with myself, with God, and within the somethings that I'm part of.
I wish meditation held more prominent places in the Christian tradition. I think in fact its sometimes held in some suspicion, other times just disregarded. But I think its something many of us need.
i think the world needs silence. i really do. for most all of human history, people had significantly more of it. the way we live now is...unprecendented.
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