In Resisting, Dung Beetle Falls Backwards and Upside Down into the Monolithic Pantheism of a Kernel Containing Everything
As one resistant of labels, with equal parts zealous interior violence, comic irony, and a dash of cowardice, I walked the fields of this farm land counting my ewes and does, counting the rams and bucks, counting the yearlings, the lambs and the kids and the wethers. It is warm for February. I walk the crop land; the recent snow having melted in the winter sun. Walking through the corn stubble I stop to retrieve, from the earth, two large ears of “bloody butcher” corn missed by the corn picker last fall, missed also by the gleaning deer, raccoon, crows and the like, lying perfect and impervious to the recent moisture until the wet warmth of spring softens their hardness: two glorious ears. I contemplate my relationship to that particular variety of dent corn and through it, the land, and through it to Everything. I consider the blood-red kernels, possessed of this inner light, very much like jewels, but of a different telos. I encounter in there a bewildering and univocal intimacy, and before knowing, and without thinking I fall down into it.
I recall my friend sending me a word, “Panentheism”, a few weeks back, like a gentle test, or inquiry. And I think of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French priest and scientist with whom I most readily associate to panetheism. I like him quite a bit, and his ideas, and I like the word. It is artful, that word. I said to her, I don’t much like labels, generally speaking, but I suppose I would often consider myself a Panentheist.
Panentheism: the belief that the being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him, but (as against pantheism) that His being is more than, and not exhausted by, the universe.
-from the Oxford English Dictionary
But now, facing the intimacy in the interiority of the kernel, it was in panentheism rather than in pantheism that I felt the limit. Indeed, panentheism’s caveats felt more like a weak-kneed parsing, seeking to hold-back and play it safe. It is in the same way that we tend to parse the imagination, classifying visionary experiences (artistic or otherwise) that we find acceptable as “imaginal”, while those that seem unacceptable, for whatever reason, remain just imaginary, made-up, or fanciful. I know why the distinctions are there (and I love Corbin), but sometimes they piss me off. And just this morning I had written in a bit of a headache trance: “Imagination is God, Art is God”. As if I had decided that I no longer had the wisdom or the will to sort these matters out, or distinguish between them. I watched a lifelong internal rift between God and art vanish in the twinkling of an eye, and it was good.
Back in the kernel of red corn out in the field, instantly and unexpectedly I slip from panetheism into pantheism. As quickly as putting on a shoe- or taking off, I am in an entirely new dimension of the world. The fall is easy but precise, and not without risk. I have no will to be safe in regard to the Heart of Everything in the kernel. A pantheism of necessity where I choose nothing and where I choose Everything. And I am “naked on the horn of the world”.
Over the years I have watched my discernment deliquesce, losing familiar boundaries amidst the univocal acuteness of the immanent transcendent intimacy of encounter. These moves which seem outwardly as a “falling away” are indeed a falling, but a towards-falling, a deeper-into-Christ-and-his-wounds-falling. A cascade failure into the mysteries and reconciliations of those wounds. A dung beetle descent into the earth and her wonders. The stigmata materialize and manifest and I pitch over into it. I tumble into the graven image. Image becoming likeness and circumcised on the heart. I might end up with a heart like Queequeg’s face. The wound and the eye are one.
I emerge with a blessing, mined long in the trouble of the earth, fashioned from the resistant material of words. This blessing is backwards and upside down. If I understood it, perhaps, I would not offer it, but as it is so I must. So, I bless you with this blessing which is backwards and upside down. It is the blessing of the indirect way, and the willingness to endure it. It is the blessing of the third way, when you are only offered two. It is the blessing of wearing the wounds of Christ as a garment, dwelling in them. Not even Solomon in all of his splendor was clothed as one of these. It is the blessing of the Graven Image, the moment when image transforms into likeness, circumcised on the heart.
This upside-down blessing defies the senses, it is supersensible in a left-handed way. What appears to be rotting is a flowering below, what tradition holds to be a sacrilege and profane is sacred and holy and pure beneath the threshold of knowing. It is Coyote’s blessing; it is Raven’s gift. It is Jesus saying, “you have heard it said, an eye for an eye etc., but I tell you, love your enemies, and so on”. It is the kingdom hidden inside the mustard seed. The upside down and backwards is resistance that looks like abdication and failure. It is a divine and holy silence that feels like complicity. It is losing explanation and definition for the awe and intimacy of mystery and paradox.
There is never an interpretation for the backwards and the upside down. It offers no proof and no footholds. It is the mystery of the drunkard and the addict who find fire. It is when God becomes Imagination, and when God becomes Art- and not because the form is necessarily good or beautiful by established standards or sound judgements.
It is Jesus showing up as a Trans-person. It is the astrologers suddenly having the answers where the priests are blind. It is the water-witch locating the spring. It is Nebuchadnezzar raping Jerusalem and Jeremiah buying land from the pit. It is finding God when every other voice says “not God!” It lost the rules and burnt the patterns for sake of the seeking of the Kingdom of Heaven, forever standing the world on its ear.
So, I bless you backwards and upside down in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. If you do not want this blessing, wipe the dust from your feet and give it to me. I will take it, I want the dust.
– a piece of writing from The Diary of a Tree Standing On It’s Head
Ad Astera
awakened into the dark day desperate the shame of days disused heaved their defiling way into the new air (the now air) tilting hope into a tainted air peace pierced pressed throbs instinctively the leper calls unclean a reflex of grief from deep wounds unclean son of David, have mercy on me
then a sign in the heavens for the penitent under the stars, starwatching and to see so instant a reply to the cry, for mercy, so fleet delicate and sensitive to the time a meteor in a tiny blue white line quits the bright sky to kiss me in the night
the stars now singing across my soul a song do they, great beings, all light and fire and mass, who I see as a remote and pulsing brightness, do they perceive me as a speck of distant darkness? a black dot dancing upon great luminous eyelids closed against the internal glowing abyss of their being
I sense the song singing dreaming into my soul's slumber heard by spirit into spirit waking Everything's own sonorious drawl near and warm as seems my blood distant and cool as seem the stars:
oh, my beloved, oh, my heart do not be afraid, I am for you now you, who have been thinking you are too slow too slow of your hands you thought and your feet and your heart you thought too slow in your great labors you thought but I say, no, not slow enough, no not yet the trees are slow and the rocks still more the earth prodigious in slowness but not yet you, you must be slower still
oh, image, oh, self-discerning self you, who have been thinking that you have become too small too obscure and too insignificant you who have been thinking that you can measure meaning by size and shape and outward things but I say no, no, not yet have you become truly small not as the small beings whose life doesn't weigh on the moral scales you must become as obscure as the undiscovered as insignificant as the poor no not yet, my dear, you must be smaller still
dearest dear, heart of my own heart you who have been thinking that you are too foolish foolish beyond what is acceptable, even for an artist even for a fool, and what miracles are there to make it ok? but I say no, not yet you are not yet foolish enough to contain me be foolish until all is lost and squandered and as a fool go on, and then we'll talk I am not far
oh, beloved god-knowing self you who have been thinking that you have failed too often and too greatly too grievously you who have been thinking much that I will disown you that I would spit you out because the great practice you have made of failing and of shame but I say no, not yet you have not failed enough nor greatly not yet enough to receive me when I come like water and when I come like fire fail still, fail and fear not I will not abandon you fail and do not abandon me
(silence for one minute) (silence for one hour) (silence for one day) (silence for one month) (silence for one year) (silence for a week of years) (silence for a generation) (silence for an age) (silence for an epoch) (silence)
the hands of the stars touch me their billion flashing fingers reach out tingling very nearly, but not quite, painful pinpricks like little electric shocks in a limb waking up from awkward sleep and receiving blood again receiving life again and new
something big entering into something small I wake something high lifting something low I rise
not slow enough, I sigh slowly into the long morning of an eternal presence not small enough, I sigh quietly into the deep obscurity of Everything's smallness not foolish enough, I sigh foolishly into the unknowing of Everything's beautiful foolhardiness not enough of a failure, I sigh falling into the vulnerable nakedness of Everything's own fall into me
I hear the star's laughter now like children they laugh without derision for joy they laugh and for love, they twinkle like stars in the sky
Exploring the Recurring Theme of the Great Beast and the Prone Man
I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the recurring image of the Lion/Dog-Chimera/Beast standing guard over the prone man in my work from the past 2 1/2 decades. The Beast Himself shows up in many other works, but today I am concerned with His appearance specifically over this lying-down (dead?)man; an obscured self-portrait echo of Hans Holbein’s Dead Christ.
When I first started making these images, I was very uncertain of the beast. Is he good or evil? Is he standing guard to protect the man from being devoured or to devour him himself? As time has gone on plenty of uncertainty remains, yet I feel that the beast transcends the duality of good and evil- I could even venture that he transcends it as goodness.
Pushing a bit harder, I might say the beast is the Angel of the Holy Spirit- if that’s too far, I can retreat to the ground that he is “messenger”.
Entering into the imaginal space of these images, the land of spiritual vision, allows their merger with memory and experience. That’s a leap into what some call the realm of the unseen. As for me, I say it is a seen realm, but with other eyes. They are my memories and experiences.
The man, is he alive or dead or both. He begins to be folded into the Earth in later drawings. And fully inhabits the worship life cycle of growth and decay by the last image. The relationships have matured a little bit perhaps? Time will tell.
I’ve been working on this drawing for a number of years. It was intended as a companion to another work, The Spiritual Mechanics of Labor and Rest, pictured below.
The School of the Transfer of Energy 