PicoBlog

I'm with you on the idea that there could well be an unknown force out there driving the universe. I don't have any sense that it cares one whit about humans in particular. As I have posted elsewhere, I belong to the Congregation of the Sublimely Indifferent. If no Daddy is going to reward me for being a good girl, I just have to choose what seems to be the best ethic to keep society functioning and go with it. The Golden Rule and Love Thy Neighbor pretty much sums it up. I do draw the line at loving neighbors who want to ignore the Golden Rule.

I don't feel any sense of spiritual connection with whatever the Force is. But I do believe that the human mind at its best has created all sorts of things that could be CALLED spiritual. For example, a friend asked me if I believe in the Tarot. My response is: not as a predictor of the future. But as a series of images, winnowed through time, that speaks to our deep psychology, such that our REACTION to them tells us something about ourselves and helps guide our conduct, yes. I've felt it.

It's like the old bromide: with two choices, flip a coin and go with your REACTION to what comes up.

I feel the same way about what much of Joseph Campbell says. As with Tarot images, there are STORIES also winnowed through time that speak to us even without belief in their original context. Prometheus on the rock. Milton's Satan. Pandora. Even freakin' Cinderella.

Years ago I wrote a poem on this theme. It is obviously and intentionally based on Auden's Musee de Beaux Artes. Stories tell us things that clarify our thoughts, even if we disagree with what they originally meant.

Grimm Heritage

About love they were often wrong,

the old stories: so pat they set us up

for hopeless endings, so tight their webs---

the white-armored prince, and the thorns, and the princess

pure surface;

so cruel to those Evil who, active and passionate, scheme

towards their golden desire, while the Good simply lie

sleeping on silken couches, beautiful, waiting

for a kiss to propel them to life:

They always insist

that a queen's facile mirror reveals the truth complete

of beauty's mysterious call, that a magic wand

can veil the rags and pumpkins underneath, and that the perfect girl

needs only a glass slipper to be perfect wife.

But in Hansel and Gretel, consider: how the children turn

together into the forest: how the girlchild plans

salvation, how she slips the bone

to her caged, fattening brother: the fire cracks

in the oven, the witch peers in at the moment of

push: and the two scramble from gingerbread heaven and walk

back into the forest, no happily ever etceteras, just

the searching together for the long trail home.

sorry about the vanished line breaks. For some reason Substack wants to ignore them.

Expand full comment

ncG1vNJzZmiqmZi1or7DnZiwo5mjwG%2B%2F1JuqrZmToHuku8xop2iqlaW5urXNoGStp12fvLOwwKdkqZ2kmr%2B0u81omqilnZq7tb8%3D