Steven,
You say you're beginning to see George's point.
And which point would that be? George has variously described me as: "ridiculous, inane, spooky, brainwashed, psychopathic [these alone in his very first post to me--the one where I had the audacity to link God to an experience of love at a Cancer Society convention] immature, snotty, Emilian, despicable, non-tao, non-god, non-nature, fanatic, sneaky, duplicitous, dishonest, a con man, no mind, no ethics, scheming, deceiving, idiotic, complacent, and intellectually sleezy"
Our exchange, as I recall, began with a question you had about the connection of art and religion in my "nectar theory". I answered your question, you poked a hole in my reasoning, and (apparently) by virtue of this exchange I have proven (at least) one of George's characterizations as being true. Very interesting.
But back to this issue of art--written and non-written.
Music, dance, painting, and architecture (I believe this was my original set) predate written forms of art (literature, poetry, etc.). There still exist to this day preliterate cultures (some Australian and New Guinean aborigines, for example) who rely on non-written forms for metaphysical expression. I'm certainly not a historian, but my guess is that in the grand scheme of things, written art is the youngest sibling in the art family. Because the other forms predate written art, I believe they were the original, and purest modes of man's attempt to express the ineffable. Of course written forms later evolved but only recently (in the last few hundred years) has the common man had access to (or the ability to read) these writings. Because written forms are so much younger than their non-written counterparts, they have also had less opportunity to evolve.
You ask if I "consider the possibility that words may speak in that emotional and spiritual vocabulary, and [I] may perhaps not be understanding it?" Considering much of the spiritual material I have been exposed to is in written form, I think I have a general appreciation of what words can convey. The fact that we are having this discussion in a written format also comments on the capacity of words to communicate emotional and spiritual matters. This written discussion also comments on the difficulty of communicating spiritual ideas in writing.
I ain't dissin words man.
Rick |
