The Post From Nothing to Nowhere

A post of unalloyed free association, AKA compost. It came from nothing, and from nothing comes nothing. But a Coon will never ask for money, because free association is freeeee!

It’s difficult to talk about the “spark of divinity” at the core of each person without sounding as if one is on the new age spooktrum of oprified woowooitry.

This metaphor evokes the image of a central fire throwing off sparks of light, so it’s not bad for a folk metaphysic. “Light” is always featured in such mythopoetic modes of thought, as are such elemental things as fire, water, heat, wind, rock, rain, and thunder. So let’s try to dig beneath the veil of language and find out what’s going on with all these metaphors, similes, and allegories.

Regarding the latter, one of the scandals of Christianity is that it is all allegory at the foundation, or in other words, abstract principles embodied via history. 

Why not just give those of us on the right side of the Bell Curve the straight-up abstractions? Why the middle-man of history? Why the Jews? And before that, Abraham? And after that, Mary? And before any of them, I AM? 

Why present the beautiful abstractions of metaphysics via the crooked timber and dissonant timbre of a primate hurtling through time?  

Why the flying monkeys?       

Seriously, is there some reason why we have to swallow what sounds like a big myth? Certainly I can understand why God would want to condescend to the Peoples of the Left Side of the B.C. I get it. But why superior specimens such as ourselves?  

That’s why.

What? 

Those with ears, yada yada. We’re gonna have to move on.

Now, a spark is not substantially different from the fire, rather, just a smaller version, much like a fractal. Come to think off it, we had a fire last night, because global warming isn't happening fast enough in my corner of the planet. Seriously, it was freezing last night. 

Outside in the dark, I could see some sparks flying up and out of the chimney, and just now I thought of something Harry Nilsson said.

Good advice, but no, that's not it.

This:

Late last night, in search of light, I watched a ball of fire streak across the midnight sky. I watched it glow, then grow, then shrink, then sink into the silhouette of morning. As I watched it die, I said, "Hey, I’ve got a lot in common with that light." That’s right. I’m alive with the fire of my life, which streaks across my span of time and is seen by those who lift their eyes in search of light to help them though the long, dark night.

That’s the one. But are we nothing more than little streaks of light to help the other little streaks see in the dark for as long as the streaks last? Is all of history nothing but a huge streak show?

Where do the sparks come from, that’s the question. From the fire? I can’t think of any other plausible answer, but what is the fire and how does it get here -- or anywhere?  

Just spiritballin’ here, but heat and fire can happen with enough friction. I just had an image of the perichoresis inside the Trinity happening so fast that fire breaks out, like a, like a Disco Inferno! 

Wait, what?

Why? What’s that supposed to mean?

I don’t know. Ask a rabbi.

Okay, I will, but in the context of an old post that streaked past us a decade ago:

"Man is human because he has a task in life to relate to the world, to raise it up and give it meaning and purpose. Otherwise the universe is an endless repetition, a question without an answer, a movement without a goal" (Steinsaltz, emphasis mine). A dead, because closed, circle.

In doing his cosmic duty, man elevates himself (and everything else) and is "lifted up out of the earth," such that "hidden sparks of holiness are released" to become "part of a higher level of reality" (ibid.).

About our material substrate. We are not wholly immaterial (angelic) beings. Rather, "the Divine soul of man had to be fastened to something firm and steady like the earth," for "man is also the lever and the hoist of all of creation, the factor that can raise the essentially inert parts of the world" (ibid.).

Yes, just like God. For what is artistic creation but essentially raising up inert parts of the world, whether color, sound, or rhyme? Man creates beauty, discovers truth, and embodies -- incarnates -- virtue and love. This is called "why we're here."

"A circle is thus formed; the end meets the beginning. Indeed, it would seem that the end and beginning have something in common that is of the very essence of the whole," for purpose "requires the simultaneity of both the end and the beginning. The end of the matter is in the nature of the beginning. The original idea contains the result; the final result contains the initial notion" (ibid., emphasis mine).

So, if I understand correctly, we are like a spark from the fire, only a spark capable of making a you turn -- from I to Thou -- back into the fire.