ramble ramble little thoughts while i struggle with the oughts
so as I ironed a shirt for my husband this morning (yeah ~ no, I have NEVER managed to be one of 'those' wives whose life was ordered, finished, an all-shirts-in-the-closet-are-ironed kind of person . . . sigh) anyway - - as I ironed I began to think about The Prophets by Abraham Heschel. {that is the great thing about ironing, and such tasks of ought: your hands are conscripted so your mind is free to roam and ramble} I need to read it again. Reading Prophets is not like munching on cheese and crackers: the kind of reading you can 'plow through a plate full' while you chat with friends, enjoying every bite but hardly noticing what you have consumed. It isn't even like eating a bowl of hearty soup: full of texture and flavor, filling and warming, each bite sliding down easily, one after another. It is more like eating a steak: cutting and chewing is required for each bite. It is more like Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup pie: intensely rich, every bite an explosion of flavor, but something you can only eat in slivers, slowly ~ taking perhaps 30 minutes for a sliver 5 bites big - savoring each bite - letting it melt in your mouth -- holding the flavor -letting each bite's experience wash all through you - - waiting - - - sipping coffee, then another bite. Prophets was introduced to me by Dr. Hartley, the hands-down best teacher who ever effected and affected me, when I was in college. I read it then...but I think it was like when stories are read to us when we are two: we really love them but must wait to re-read them when we mature to have more than auditory delight. Since college I have read and re-read and re-read this book. It hits me anew EVERY TIME!
Passages like these stay with me like the savor of fine food, and the refrains of great music, and the memory of perfect views of beauty ~
"By insisting on the absolutely objective and supernatural nature of prophecy, dogmatic theology has disregarded the prophet's part in the prophetic act. Stressing revelation, it has ignored the response; isolating inspiration, it has lost sight of the human situation. In contrast with what may be called "pan-theology", psychologists have sought to deduce prophecy entirely from the inner life of the prophets. Reducing it to a subjective personal phenomenon, they have disregarded the prophet's awareness of his confrontation with facts not derived from his own mind."
page vii, "Introduction", Prophets I
"Insight is a breakthrough, requiring much intellectual dismantling and dislocation. It begins with a mental interim, with the cultivation of a feeling for the unfamiliar, unparalleled, incredible. It is in being involved with a phenomenon, being intimately engaged to it, courting it, as it were, that after much perplexity and embarrassment we come upon insight -- upon a way of seeing the phenomenon from within. Insight is accompanied by a sense of surprise. What has been closed is suddenly disclosed. It entails genuine perception, seeing anew. He who thinks that we can see the same object twice has never seen. Paradoxically, insight is knowledge at first sight."
page x, "Introduction", Prophets I
{see what I mean: chew -- savor -- reflect -- reread -- chew -- savor - - - then: OK! ready for another little bite.}
"The situation of a person immersed in the prophets' words is one of being exposed to a ceaseless shattering of indifference, and one needs a skull of stone to remain callous to such blows"
page x, "Introduction", Prophets I
"Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society, an individual's crime discloses society's corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, continually concerned for God and every man, crime would be infrequent rather than common."
page 16, "What Manner of Man is the Prophet?", Prophets I
"Having an idea of friendship is not the same as having a friend or living with a friend, and the story of a friendship cannot be fully told by what one friend thinks of the being and attributes of the other friend. The process of forming an idea is one of generalizations, or arriving at a general notion from individual instances, and one of abstraction, or separating a partial aspect or quality from a total situation. Yet such a process implies a split between situation and idea, a disregard for the fullness of what transpires, and the danger of regarding the part as the whole. An idea or a theory of God can easily become a substitute for God, impressive to the mind when God as a living reality is absent from the soul" (underlining is mine)
page 1, "The Theology of Pathos", Prophets II
Yup! gotta read it again!
Passages like these stay with me like the savor of fine food, and the refrains of great music, and the memory of perfect views of beauty ~
"By insisting on the absolutely objective and supernatural nature of prophecy, dogmatic theology has disregarded the prophet's part in the prophetic act. Stressing revelation, it has ignored the response; isolating inspiration, it has lost sight of the human situation. In contrast with what may be called "pan-theology", psychologists have sought to deduce prophecy entirely from the inner life of the prophets. Reducing it to a subjective personal phenomenon, they have disregarded the prophet's awareness of his confrontation with facts not derived from his own mind."
page vii, "Introduction", Prophets I
"Insight is a breakthrough, requiring much intellectual dismantling and dislocation. It begins with a mental interim, with the cultivation of a feeling for the unfamiliar, unparalleled, incredible. It is in being involved with a phenomenon, being intimately engaged to it, courting it, as it were, that after much perplexity and embarrassment we come upon insight -- upon a way of seeing the phenomenon from within. Insight is accompanied by a sense of surprise. What has been closed is suddenly disclosed. It entails genuine perception, seeing anew. He who thinks that we can see the same object twice has never seen. Paradoxically, insight is knowledge at first sight."
page x, "Introduction", Prophets I
{see what I mean: chew -- savor -- reflect -- reread -- chew -- savor - - - then: OK! ready for another little bite.}
"The situation of a person immersed in the prophets' words is one of being exposed to a ceaseless shattering of indifference, and one needs a skull of stone to remain callous to such blows"
page x, "Introduction", Prophets I
"Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society, an individual's crime discloses society's corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, continually concerned for God and every man, crime would be infrequent rather than common."
page 16, "What Manner of Man is the Prophet?", Prophets I
"Having an idea of friendship is not the same as having a friend or living with a friend, and the story of a friendship cannot be fully told by what one friend thinks of the being and attributes of the other friend. The process of forming an idea is one of generalizations, or arriving at a general notion from individual instances, and one of abstraction, or separating a partial aspect or quality from a total situation. Yet such a process implies a split between situation and idea, a disregard for the fullness of what transpires, and the danger of regarding the part as the whole. An idea or a theory of God can easily become a substitute for God, impressive to the mind when God as a living reality is absent from the soul" (underlining is mine)
page 1, "The Theology of Pathos", Prophets II
Yup! gotta read it again!
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