Lyle Stevik
Maybe the point is not to find, but to search. How does that help to overcome the paralysing feeling that doing a Lyle Stevik means that one never has to think about earthly consequences? Maybe that feeling is a symptom, not the actual ailment requiring remedy. What then is the ailment? What then is the remedy? Maybe it’s not about being cured, but looking for it.
“Curiosity leads to Freedom, to Knowledge, to Truth, and to Felicity.” (Dale Allison citing Peter Annet)
Maybe the unhappiness is an imperative to search again…
Like the spring demands labour for the comfort of winter…
Because it is the undignified begging of attention not to accompany the pain with redemptive aesthetics, gratitude or humour. Entertainment is the price for attention.
Evidence does not improve with age (P. Gardner-Smith)
If evidence is milk, what is the wine? Reality is the water. What is the wine? What gives us direct access to reality? If our bodies are made of water that bend the light, where does rain meet sea but on the horizon…neither bird nor fish…the sun does not sink into the ocean…the ocean will never reach the sun…no water will reach the water, no water, no milk, no wine…we are all passive to the sun…some grow like plants…some whither…some never heed it like those in the cave…we can only try…either two rewards for being correct, or one reward for trying…to give up is not to try…the paralysis is a call to rest…in winter we must rest because outside there is no sun…
There were some people who did more good before they became Muslim. After becoming Muslim, they joined ISIS…
What about unknown knowns? If we are the knowns of the unknown known, then perhaps our unknown unknowns were not only always unknowable but that the unknown known knew/knows that they were unknown unknowns to us, but that we acknowledged that all the twigs pointing to different directions were part of the same tree...
You see with love all this can stay quiet...
It’s about finding the quiet of peace, not the quiet of abandonment…
It’s not about trying to quiet the confusion and pain, because that’s a desperate neediness, and we established that neediness must be redeemed with being entertaining…
To be entertaining, you need to know your audience’s needs, your needs are irrelevant. Your needs are only to fulfil the needs of the audience...
If there is an unknown unknown that is unknownable, then there cannot be any moral responsibility to know it. If the known known is unknown owing to not knowing that the known known is known, there can only be a moral failing if no effort was made to know what is known and what is unknown. The known and the unknown are the sea and sky meeting at the horizon. We swim towards it until we drown. We must stay still to stay strong, to survive, to witness the sun drown in the ocean and wake up again the next day, perhaps it is the same sun, perhaps it is a different one…it is the same one, it did not drown. That is now known.
Ask yourself, why are you so keen to prove that Jesus’ resurrection is true or the Quran is God’s uncreated speech is true, yet never true as sunlight and hunger, and pain…?
"Because those divine miracles show that the ultimate Knowing Knowable Known who is at the same time the ultimate Knowing Unknowable Unknowable is the source of all sunlight, nourishment, and peace?”
Knowing the Knowable Knowing Unknowable is unknowable except to know the known knowns of the Knowable Knowing Unknowable.
Sunlight, hunger and pain are best known with trying to know the knowns and unknowns, making mistakes, that if they are known, will be worthy of forgetting once the destination is reached. Once you’ve reached the destination, the stumbles and wrong turns won’t matter anymore. The pain on the trip is a sign to slow down. There’s a stone in your shoe. There is nothing wrong with slowing and stopping. The trip ends once the unknown becomes known. But to know the unknown before you have tried to reach the horizon is to abandon ship and dereliction of duty to those who are behind you. The pain is motive, as it is symptom, to find the cure for yourself and the unknown others. Every diagnosis needs the pain spelled out, every prescription is a spell, a poem. Every healing is a wound mourned. Every mourning is testimony to a known becoming unknown but never forgotten.
Everyone will experience God differently. But we need to live with each other. We need a way of being at peace with each other as each of us is a vessel for God. You must not allow our prejudices and passions to harm another vessel for God.