For 7

(some notes follow the poem)

Seven looks so elegant in
Its two-line design.
Seven Sisters constellation:
Closest one to Earth.

We love Seven oh so much
When we're naming things
Such as mountains, soda pop,
Samurai and Cowboys, cliffs.

Seven's such a fulcrum age,
Social awareness grows, though
Innocence abides. It's a famous
Lucky number, though I'm not sure

Why. Oh, maybe God threw dice that
Day, betting with himself on
His creation.... Seventh son of
Seventh son--turn numbers into
Myths. And seven, being slick and
Prime, does have a certain swag.
Miller was the man who wrote in
Nineteen fifty six that it was more than co-

Incidence that seven seemed ubiquitous.
Mathematician Bellos, twenty-14, said he could
Prove that seven was the most popular of
Numbers worldwide. My friends the crows can

Count to six, thus leave respect to Seven:
Yes. Religions several have divided Heaven in-
To seven. Leave it to us to turn One Heaven into
Condominiums. I wish you luck this 7th day.

notes: George Miller, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information." Psychology Review, 1956. Alex Bellos, The Grapes of Math: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life, 2014.  "Counting Abilities of Crows," Covid Research Blog, 6-11-2015. The movie "The Magnificent Seven," 1960 ("heroic" cowboy-gunslingers) was based on "The Seven Samurai," Kurosawa's classic, 1954.

hans ostrom 2022

Belief

The first time I heard my father pronounce,

"When we die, we're meat for the worms,"

I was about ten. He repeated the wisdom

occasionally. He thought "preachers"

were hustlers. Ma ran away from her 

evangelical minister father when she 

was 18. He was a bigot and a creep. 

She never worshipped publicly again,

thought of Heaven, I think, 

as an earned vacation. She gave me

her leather-bound Bible, Oxford U.

Press, all of Jesus's words in red. 

I joined the Catholic Church

at age 45, but my "worship" consists

of giving food to the parish's

food bank and trying to be kind. My

wife's the real Catholic and prays for me,

in both senses of "for." As to God,

who knows? Believing isn't knowing.

Nor is atheism. I'm too busy fearing

humans--of every belief, including

atheism, to fear God.  It never surprises

me to see that another American 

Christian has turned out to be evil.

Sometimes evil and popular.

After my college

History of Philosophy class, taken

at age 17, I never stopped thinking

Spinoza had it right: God equals

everything there is, but probably

no more. A cold view, true. 

Of course, the Jews expelled him,

the Christians condemned him,

and Leibniz envied him. 

Spinoza made a living grinding lenses. 

It's a true fact, as we say

in the American West, 

that the body disintegrates.

Aging gives it a head start. 

The universe is too big, 

dynamic, and complicated

for us to understand

all the way, but I say to science:

keep trying.

We should concentrate on peace, 

equity, and care of Earth. Make these

our primary worship. Keep it

simple-like, you know?

hans ostrom 2022

He Carried Papers

He carried with him
a pouch full of papers
that showed he was among
God's most select people and
that others claiming to be
select were misinformed,
also doomed. In theological

arguments, he pulled the papers
out and cited them. It started
a trend. Everybody brought papers
representing holy favorable status.
It got to be a real paper-fight.

Which then spilled over into brawls,
mass expulsions, wars, and genocide.
It didn't take long. The violence
ran counter to what all the papers
said. Of course, you didn't need

to be God to see that all these
paper-carrying people were the same,
meaning nobody special or select
but all deserving dignity because
in fact they were all the same.


hans ostrom 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

The Matter with Matter

It rolls on. It
rolls over itself as it
rolls through itself.

How could our relationship
to it--matter--be anything
but terrifying?

Terror may be
the original spark
of myth, ideology,

religion: To explain
elaborately so
as to defend ourselves.

Christ, you think
(if you think Christ),
I'm already dead. 


hans ostrom 2018

The Trinity in Your Hands

Believers, bow your heads.
Worship your phone. It is all things.
Its icons bind you
to the holy trinity
of Telecommunications, Infotainment,
and Consumption.

Accept the liturgy of apps,
the dogma of fake urgency.

Believers, tap your loving phone
with humble thumbs and fingers.
Stream and text. Forward and purchase.
Your phone will go with you
where you go, amen.


hans ostrom 2015

"Faith and Works," by Muriel Spark

Re-posting one from about 4 years ago.

America's Bible Challenge

I shit you not, Brethren,
a cable-network in the U.S.A.
has added a game-show
called "America's Bible Challenge"
to
its
lineup.

The "host" (hear me, people)
is a smart man who became a
stand-up (hear me, people)
comedian with a hick-schtick.

Just before the break,
he says, "Our two teams
are backstage studying
for the Revelation Challenge!
There is twenty thousand dollars
on
the
line!"

You cannot make this shit up,
sisters and brothers. What
the fuck did Jesus Christ
and Moses, for example and
e.g., do to America that
America would make such
an unholy motherfucking
carnival (and I do apologize
for my language) out of
the
Bible?



hans ostrom 2013

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

Entrance, Entranced

One benefit of working at a college is that sometimes you get to sit around and listen to smart, well read people talk about an interesting topic. Of course, usually these talks occur during an hour that's squeezed between several hours of teaching, office hours, and many hours of committee-work--not that I'm complaining; it's just that college is somewhat less leisurely than it's portrayed, say, in the cinema, even though college is, undeniably, a privileged place. Sitting around talking about ideas is a privilege. It is also a necessity.

Yesterday I listened to colleagues from departments as far-flung as Math, Religion, English, and Political Science discuss the topic of religion/spirituality--how spirituality plays a role (or not) in their lives, the extent to which it's become socially acceptable to mock religion of any sort on campuses, the extent to which religions are reduced to caricatures and then, like straw men, knocked over, and the extent to which a broad education requires some education in religion. One need only consider how little Bush II (a U.S. president, a graduate of Yale) apparently knows about different kinds of Islamic belief, and how this absence of knowledge may have affected his foreign policy (strategically and tactically), to take the point well.

The professor of religion mentioned that some yogis in northern India practice the following ritual: In Winter, clad only in a small piece of cotton and wearing no shoes or sandals, they walk slowly around a village. Then they sit in the snow and have a kind of friendly meditation-competition. Presumably, the temperature is at or below freezing. They measure the competition by how many blankets they can soak with their perspiration. They perspire because, through meditation, they can raise their body temperatures as much as 17 degrees. Apparently scientists have studied the practice, the phenomenon, the temperature-increase, etc., and although they have documented a factual basis, they have not yet arrived at an explanation of how the yogis can manipulate their physiology to such an extent. The point the professor wanted to stress, however, was not that this practice was somehow exotic or strange but that "there are things out there that we simply don't know" and that, to some degree, religion is one lens through which to examine such mystery.

So is science, of course. His assumption was that science and religion could and should coexist quite comfortably. He also opined, refreshingly, that of course students should leave college knowing something, knowing many things, but that, perhaps more or as importantly, they should leave college not knowing things--or knowing what they don't know, being comfortable with some areas of uncertainty, some mystery, and with that vast universe of things about which humans know nothing. He also quoted Nietzsche (by way of Freud, perhaps), who noted that when people don't undertand something, they often rush to "explain" it, take pleasure in feeling "safe" from confusion once more, and move on--having explained nothing, really, of course. This sort of thing may help to explain why citizens are so comfortable with political slogans, as opposed to more patient, subtle political analysis. Slogans "feel better" to the brain, perhaps.

Today, I was looking at a sign that said "Entrance," and then I associated it with the word "entranced," which made me think, again, about how fluid language is and about those yogis (one of whom is 80, by the way), essentially naked in the snow but sweating profusely, entranced, as it were. So I played around with a draft of a poem:

Entrance

*

*

The entrance entranced her.

A portal, it projected a practical

sign of passage. A designed object,

it also evaded intepretation,

asserted its mystery. To pass through,

she knew, would be to know the entrance

differently. Entrances don't really

lead anywhere, she believed. They

are their own expressions of somewhere.

Entranced, she chose not to pass through

the entrance. Just yet.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom