oh concision, encroaching on my verbosity

[starfrosting]

Kaeden was right: I am not a one-page kinda guy. My outline for this "500 words" response paper is already exceeding that tight limit. Ohh well. Maybe I'll just bang it out and actually figure out how to be sparse.

But I'm just too flaming to be laconic, even in my writing. I remember learning the word "verbose" back in the day when someone I was trading zines with responded to my first issue. I think it was "verbose"; it may have been some synonym.

Other than that things are going well. I made a list, very satisfying, of all the work I've yet to do. I drank a little bit with my boys last night and wondered around with them, feeling like a first-year, which was a much-needed respite from all this seriousness lately. My back hurts. I'm hungry. But I'm in the library with Cristina listening to the Pogues, and going to see Alix Olson/Pamela Means in an hour, so I'm a happy lad. Content, maybe, better word.

Also, is it lame to talk about the idea that what is commonly called ‘g-d’ is not a transcendent absolute authority but rather a force of transformation, intersection of infinite and corporeal, historically-situated emergences, co-emergence...in this Kierkegaard thing? I feel like it fits with the concept of radical doubt but it may be too Pagan-wishywashy. Any riffs, as usual, much appreciated.

cheers,
me.

Comments

[taxishoes.livejournal.com]

I can't say, 'cause if I've seriously read Kierkegaard I don't remember.

[starfrosting.livejournal.com]

Thank you for giving me advice in the sense of "I can't," like when I invited you to the party I probably wasn't gonna go to ;). Now that however I've invited you to the party I am gonna go to, I think it makes more sense. Also, can I ask you the rather Jewish question of, does the following little note make sense?

"in struggling with the command to sacrifice his son, abraham acts as a catalyst for a particularly jewish understanding of faith, where dedication to g-d is not *obedience* tog-s wil but rather a dynamic tension b/w what Kierkegaard might callresignation to the absur and a sort of wondrous doubt and interrogation of the relationship b/w the human and the divine."

Put on yr kippah and tell me what you come up with.

[toughguykaeden.livejournal.com]

For some reason the phrase "one page kinda guy" makes me think of Rufus Wainwright singing "one man guy", you're not really either of those things are you? ;)

they'll recognize what i stand for and what i just can't stand.

[starfrosting.livejournal.com]

lol...no dude, I guess I'm not ;).

what came to mind was

[taxishoes.livejournal.com]

Godwrestling.

And when I google that all I get is this one guy's stupid book.

"Arthur Waskow, and his book called Godwrestling. The title comes from chapter 32 of Genesis, the story of Jacob at the river Jabbok, where he wrestled an unidentified being all night. When dawn breaks and the being has not defeated him, Jacob is given a blessing in the form of a new name: Israel. In Hebrew, this name means "one who has wrestled God,'' or "Godwrestler'' for short.

This name is a key to the amazing and still-unfolding saga of Jewish history. Jacob's sons became the Children of Israel, the children of the Godwrestler; the people of Israel; the nation of Israel; and even today there is the State of Israel. Godwrestlers all.

"Godwrestling'' also provides, as Waskow explains, a key to understanding the course and diversity of the scriptures--the Hebrew scriptures initially, but the Christian scriptures as well. They are the record of, and the resource for, a set of faith communities that has fruitfully wrestled God for three thousand years, and counting.

Indeed, Waskow insists, that "every Shabbos morning, [his community] wrestles God. Ourselves, and each other, and God. We do not simply accept the tradition, but we do not reject it either. We wrestle it: fighting it and making love to it at the same time. We try to touch it with our lives.'' [Waskow, 1978, p.11]"

Yes? No? Maybe?

yes.

[starfrosting.livejournal.com]

Totally awesome, and bizarre in that that's what I thought of as well. I don't really know my Torah, but I was thinking of the story of Jacob wrestling with God...maybe cos of that book "Wrestling with Zion" that's been sitting on my book shelf, I dunno...but thank you so much for finding that. I really was trying to articulate the idea of wrestling with God "not simply accepting tradition, but not rejecting it either." It's sort of hermeneutical.
Then of course there's the question of whether you can Godwrestle while interrogating Jewish conceptions of God and questioning whether or not those images make sense, if there is a God in that sense, etc. But I digress.