Unholy Sonnet 1
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Dear God, Our Heavenly Father, Gracious Lord,
Mother Love and Maker, Light Divine,
Atomic Fingertip, Cosmic Design,
First Letter of the Alphabet, Last Word,
Mutual Satisfaction, Cash Award,
Auditor Who Approves Our Bottom Line,
Examiner Who Says That We Are Fine,
Oasis That All Sands Are Running Toward.
I can say almost anything about you,
O Big Idea, and with each epithet,
Create new reasons to believe or doubt you,
Black Hole, White Hole, Presidential Jet.
But what’s the anything I must leave out? You
Solve nothing but the problems that I set.
Just as believable as it is unbelievable.
ReplyDeleteThe last sentence just doesn't work for me. I had a long day. Am I missing something?
I think that sometimes people use God as a reason to justify their thought or what happened... Or vice versa, people blame God for what they cannot understand. The last line reminded me of that.
DeleteDid you find the last line funny?
DeleteA person would want her problems solved (maybe that is all she would want??). Also problems set are something, not nothing. The sentence is a paradox. It isn't funny or provoking... I don't like it
I have been learning a lot about this concept in my yoga teacher training. A lot of the ancient Indian texts can be interpreted with using the idea of god as a "____" as in you fill in the blank with whatever title this concept has for you, whether that is God, Krisha, breath, prana, life, etc. In yoga, even atheists have a belief- you cannot doubt a breath, but you can doubt the idea of where it comes from.
ReplyDeleteThe phrases that he uses are quite odd. Some seem like opposites, some mimicry and in the last line the paradox. As if he has tried thinking philosophically about a lot of things and in the end, this dualistic idea is not resonating.
This, too, I have been thinking about- the idea of dualism versus "tantra" or philosophizing that everything is one and the same, instead of a human-god relationship or seeing that there is something to overcome to get to the "divine", in tantra we are the divine, we are the breath and the breath is us- there is no separation. A lot of dualism in the yogic philosophy came from the idea of tantra, but it was just an easier way to think about it, to personify it, to give humans in a sense a goal....overcome the fluctuations of the mind and you will merge with pure consciousness....versus, "you are consciousness itself"...
I wonder if this author isn't just turning his wheels in a dualistic mindset. I used to relate when I was learning a lot of the Christianity concepts when I was little. If you do this you are good, if you do this you are bad, a black and a white, a yes and no, a you are going to live forever or you are going to burn forever. This can be quite confusing and uninspirational if you get stuck in that particular wheel.
I found the last line sarcastic...I don't like it either.