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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (6955)	10/4/1999 8:38:00 PM
From: Edwarda	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Well, think about these and let's consider going to another thread to think about Merton: "In dealing with symbolism one enters an area where reflection, synthesis, and contemplation are more important than investigation, analysis, and science. One cannot comprehend a symbol unless one is able to awaken in one's own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the symbol not only as sign but as 'sacrament' and 'presence'.... The true symbol does not merely point to some hidden object.... A true symbol points to the heart of all being, not to an incident in the flow of becoming." Think about the intensity of the response to Adolf Hitler and how future generations--even of Germans and German-speaking people--have had so much difficulty comprehending his appeal while you read the following: "The vital role of the symbol is precisely this: to express and to encourage man's acceptance of his own center, his own ontological roots in a mystery of being that transcends his individual ego. But when man is reduced to his empirical self and confined with its limits, he is, so to speak, excluded from himself, cut off from his own roots, condemned to spiritual death by thirst and starvation in a wilderness of externals. In this wilderness there can be no living symbols, only the dead symbols of dryness and destruction which bear witness to man's own inner ruin. But he cannot 'see' these symbols, since he is incapable of interior response." With the foregoing in mind, think about social activism. How much may be guided by the "dead symbols of dryness and destruction" despite the unanchored good will that drives much of what we see?