Good Lord and my word,
Existence seems absurd.Still, if you insist
I’d guess that God exists—
But that—that’s just a guess.
And meanwhile: what a mess.
hans ostrom 2024
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Almost Faith
Still, if you insist
I’d guess that God exists—
But that—that’s just a guess.
And meanwhile: what a mess.
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Imagine Religion
Imagine religion without
killing, without spiritual
extortion. Imagine religion
without obsession about
women, without greed.
Imagine religion keeping
children safe. Imagine it
absent exclusion and proud
certainty. Imagine religion
with warmth, humor, supple
thinking, generosity. Imagine
religion getting along with
religion, good friends in spirit.
Imagine religion with democracy,
with science, with Earth in mind.
Imagine religion that defers
to God on final judgments,
not on preachers' rage. Imagine
religion that trusts rational adults
to make rational choices within
the confines of community,
caring for our home, which is here.
hans ostrom 2020
hans ostrom 2020
killing, without spiritual
extortion. Imagine religion
without obsession about
women, without greed.
Imagine religion keeping
children safe. Imagine it
absent exclusion and proud
certainty. Imagine religion
with warmth, humor, supple
thinking, generosity. Imagine
religion getting along with
religion, good friends in spirit.
Imagine religion with democracy,
with science, with Earth in mind.
Imagine religion that defers
to God on final judgments,
not on preachers' rage. Imagine
religion that trusts rational adults
to make rational choices within
the confines of community,
caring for our home, which is here.
hans ostrom 2020
hans ostrom 2020
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Memo to Religions
Pretty much all religions
need to take a break from being God,
from being chosen, elected, selected,
right and righteous. Religions
are human and assuming God sends
rules and info, religions must therefor garble
the message, if not twist it into a club
used to knock around the faithful.
Religions, please spend the next 100 years
doing practical good, making up
as best you can for your stupidities,
atrocities. Get the hell out of the way
and let people breathe. Dump
the vast stores of wealth, throw
water on the preening, the pompous,
the predatory. Put that goddamned
fire out.
hans ostrom 2019
need to take a break from being God,
from being chosen, elected, selected,
right and righteous. Religions
are human and assuming God sends
rules and info, religions must therefor garble
the message, if not twist it into a club
used to knock around the faithful.
Religions, please spend the next 100 years
doing practical good, making up
as best you can for your stupidities,
atrocities. Get the hell out of the way
and let people breathe. Dump
the vast stores of wealth, throw
water on the preening, the pompous,
the predatory. Put that goddamned
fire out.
hans ostrom 2019
Friday, May 13, 2016
Faith Is Bulbs
Faith? Don't speak to me of Allah, Yahweh,
Jahova, Christ, Moses, da Buddha-man, Zeus,
Sky Papa, Earth Mama--or any of it.
I'm no atheist. I'm a modest gardener,
vegetables and flowers, who in Spring
is online-ordering tulip bulbs to plant
in October and to witness the following
Spring. That is faith.
hans ostrom 2016
Jahova, Christ, Moses, da Buddha-man, Zeus,
Sky Papa, Earth Mama--or any of it.
I'm no atheist. I'm a modest gardener,
vegetables and flowers, who in Spring
is online-ordering tulip bulbs to plant
in October and to witness the following
Spring. That is faith.
hans ostrom 2016
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Monday, January 27, 2014
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Dogma
Dogma
Dogma's what we're supposed to to believe.
It puts the ortho in doxy. It's like architecture--
elaborate, well planned, impressive, and completely
human. Acknowledge dogma. Quibble with it if
you've the time and energy. Otherwise,
go with the simplest creed--streamlined, quick,
and pithy. Believe in God (or not: your choice)
and await further developments. Dogma's
a human pursuit, a kind of hobby. Godma
is the thing. Whatever the thing of it is, is,
is God. Cut through the crap. Believe in that.
Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom
Friday, September 14, 2007
Fathers and Sons, Faith and Faithlessness: A Sonnet by Jeffers
Robinson Jeffers tended to write in long-lined free verse in which ideas and images were mortared together like stones. The lines are well and patiently built. Although one might be tempted to compare his verse to that of Whitman or Sandburg--other American masters of the long line--Jeffers is much more rhetorically and metaphorically restrained; unlike Whitman, he's not an excitable poet. He tends to stalk his subject coldly.
It was interesting to me, then, to run across a sonnet Jeffers wrote. I found it in a lovely pulp paperback, The Penguin Book of Sonnets (1943), the kind of compact paperback published on cheap paper that I remember fondly from my childhood. The westerns by Zane Grey and Max Brand that my father read--in bed, while smoking a cigar--came in this form. I think most people who love books love them not just because of the reading but because of the physicality, and one may cherish a cheap paperback--the feel of the thing--as much as an expensive leather-bound book with exquisite paper and printing. An old soft paperback is like an old soft baseball glove, in some respects.
In any event, here's Jeffers's sonnet:
To His Father
Christ was your lord and captain all your life,
He fails the world but you he did not fail,
He led you through all forms of grief and strife
Intact, a man full-armed, he let prevail
Nor outward malice nor the worse-fanged snake
That coils in one's own brain against your calm,
That great rich jewel well guarded for his sake
With coronal age and death like quieting balm.
I Father having followed other guides
And oftener to my hurt no leader at all,
Through years nailed up like dripping panther hides
For trophies on a savage temple wall
Hardly anticipate that reverend stage
Of Life, the snow-wreathed honor of extreme age.
Jeffers does well in the sonnet-form here, in my opinion, but I feel him straining against its limits, sense his wanting to let the lines find their own length, rather like the Pacific coastline on which he lived. Jeffers here is like a fine athlete who's been asked to perform within the proscribed limits of a team-sport; you can feel him wanting to overwhelm the sonnet-form.
And Jeffers's characteristic brutal honesty is by no means discarded in the sonnet form. Faith in Christ served his father well; that's the truth, and Jeffers speaks it, and he explains precisely how that faith worked in his father's life. The faith helped the father through "all forms of grief and strife," and it kept his father noble and calm.
The surprising adjective "coronal" is terrific. Because of his father's faith, his father's age became a kind of crown, and death became a kind of balm.
This is a Shakespearian or English sonnet in form, but, like an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, it breaks after line 8, and "turns" to another view of the topic. Now we learn that Jeffers couldn't imitate or adopt his father's Christian faith. He has followed "other guides," namely Classical models, including Stocism and Greek tragedy. But how brutally honest Jeffers is about his own lack of faith; often the guides he's chosen have not soothed his pain, have not helped him through grief and strife, and the years lived in faithlessness are compared to "nailed up" "dripping panther hides/For trophies on a savage temple wall." How wonderful of Jeffers to find a pagan image for what he admits is his own version of paganism, and to state that such trophies can't do for him what faith in Christ did for his father. Nor does Christ escape Jeffers's honest assessment. He claims Christ "fails the world," meaning what? Meaning, one supposes, that Christ has not returned yet, and that evil marches on? Perhaps. The final hard truth Jeffers leaves for himself: His worldview will not leave him in as good a shape, spiritually and philosophically, as his father when he, Jeffers, is old; "extreme age" will not be the equivalent of a "snow-wreathed honor." He's not looking forward to growing old. Old age will be harder for Jeffers, in the absence of faith in Christ, than it was for his father. I find this to be a bracing poem in which Jeffers honors his father and his father's faith without being sentimental and in which he honestly contrasts his own world-view with his father's without being argumentative or combative.
It was interesting to me, then, to run across a sonnet Jeffers wrote. I found it in a lovely pulp paperback, The Penguin Book of Sonnets (1943), the kind of compact paperback published on cheap paper that I remember fondly from my childhood. The westerns by Zane Grey and Max Brand that my father read--in bed, while smoking a cigar--came in this form. I think most people who love books love them not just because of the reading but because of the physicality, and one may cherish a cheap paperback--the feel of the thing--as much as an expensive leather-bound book with exquisite paper and printing. An old soft paperback is like an old soft baseball glove, in some respects.
In any event, here's Jeffers's sonnet:
To His Father
Christ was your lord and captain all your life,
He fails the world but you he did not fail,
He led you through all forms of grief and strife
Intact, a man full-armed, he let prevail
Nor outward malice nor the worse-fanged snake
That coils in one's own brain against your calm,
That great rich jewel well guarded for his sake
With coronal age and death like quieting balm.
I Father having followed other guides
And oftener to my hurt no leader at all,
Through years nailed up like dripping panther hides
For trophies on a savage temple wall
Hardly anticipate that reverend stage
Of Life, the snow-wreathed honor of extreme age.
Jeffers does well in the sonnet-form here, in my opinion, but I feel him straining against its limits, sense his wanting to let the lines find their own length, rather like the Pacific coastline on which he lived. Jeffers here is like a fine athlete who's been asked to perform within the proscribed limits of a team-sport; you can feel him wanting to overwhelm the sonnet-form.
And Jeffers's characteristic brutal honesty is by no means discarded in the sonnet form. Faith in Christ served his father well; that's the truth, and Jeffers speaks it, and he explains precisely how that faith worked in his father's life. The faith helped the father through "all forms of grief and strife," and it kept his father noble and calm.
The surprising adjective "coronal" is terrific. Because of his father's faith, his father's age became a kind of crown, and death became a kind of balm.
This is a Shakespearian or English sonnet in form, but, like an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, it breaks after line 8, and "turns" to another view of the topic. Now we learn that Jeffers couldn't imitate or adopt his father's Christian faith. He has followed "other guides," namely Classical models, including Stocism and Greek tragedy. But how brutally honest Jeffers is about his own lack of faith; often the guides he's chosen have not soothed his pain, have not helped him through grief and strife, and the years lived in faithlessness are compared to "nailed up" "dripping panther hides/For trophies on a savage temple wall." How wonderful of Jeffers to find a pagan image for what he admits is his own version of paganism, and to state that such trophies can't do for him what faith in Christ did for his father. Nor does Christ escape Jeffers's honest assessment. He claims Christ "fails the world," meaning what? Meaning, one supposes, that Christ has not returned yet, and that evil marches on? Perhaps. The final hard truth Jeffers leaves for himself: His worldview will not leave him in as good a shape, spiritually and philosophically, as his father when he, Jeffers, is old; "extreme age" will not be the equivalent of a "snow-wreathed honor." He's not looking forward to growing old. Old age will be harder for Jeffers, in the absence of faith in Christ, than it was for his father. I find this to be a bracing poem in which Jeffers honors his father and his father's faith without being sentimental and in which he honestly contrasts his own world-view with his father's without being argumentative or combative.
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