Was für ein Tag

Immer dasselbe eigentlich, gleich welcher Aufgabe: über einige Leute habe ich mich ordentlich geärgert. (Anderen waren super.)

Jetzt bin ich müde.

agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi

I took communion again, thinking: I, God help me, hereby accept an invitation to partake of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the World.

In religious parlance, I “received” this Lamb. In a rush of incarnational theology, I say this Lamb and this sacrifice is in me and I have become it and it has become me (through the digestive process). This that is in me is something that takes away the sins of the world.

Can I believe, and understand this world as having had its sins taken away? All those murders, wars, exploitations, oppressions, and the infinite unwarranted casual daily hatreds and injustices…. That there is a sacrifice which takes all that away: can I believe that? What can this sacrifice be? How can I see it and be embodied by it? Blessed indeed is the man who can come (through some digestive process) to see the world in this way.

https://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/a/klee-paul/agnus_dei_qui_tollis_pec.html

On “genetic archaelogy” and health

I heard a radio interview with a genetic archeologist from Cambridge. They study genetic remains of once important functions; genes which proved themselves advantageous once but are now redundant. One statement in particular caught my attention: “We have an immune system that is not suited to the modern world”. It is a funny thing when we are creating an environment – “the modern world” – in which we cannot live healthily. (In which our immune system is overwhelmed.) What “gene” in us is driving us to create this world, for which we do not have the “genes” to cope?

Or by “modern world” did he mean merely, the planet, the environment-today-without-reference-to man’s-seemingly-great-imposition-on-it-and-himself? Presumably, some will happily mutate the right genes for this environment, or not and it’s curtains.

Or should we alter our environment, so our immune systems can cope after all? But… that is the “modern world”, that we have made, that our immune systems cannot cope with….

In short, our continuing evolution will mean the eradciation of whatever gene it is that compels us to make an environment unsuited to our immune system; or the development of new genes which are better suited to the environment-today-without reference-to man’s-seemingly-great-imposition-on-it-and-himself. Well, really, both. Could we could find the gene that causes man to create an environment unsuited to his genetic make-up, and turn it off? What gene would make us do that? If we had such a gene, we wouldn’t have that aspect of the problem in the first place.

The God of Jacob

The unique understanding of God that the Bible gives us is of an omnipotent etc. God, Creator. Anthropomorphically imagined, he is portrayed as an actor in history – that is, life and politics, interpersonal wrangling in general. (The narrative pinnacle of this action and this anthropomorphism is that God becomes a man in history, according to the Christian development.) Further salient is that this God acts for a particular person, family, nation (later, Church). Now, this idea of God elicits a certain type of prayer (see the Psalms) to God who will do good things for us, especially. Admittedly this religion includes all the normal elements of religious sacrifice too, whereby we serve this or that god to keep things going – you better feed It and do what It says -, but its main idea is that God serves us, does special things for his people, even though we don’t deserve it. (Because we have failed ritually and morally; sacrificed insufficiently.) But he’ll do it just for us! Just for me!

What, though, about the others, the ones God helps me defeat in the life-wrangle? Their disfavour hardly seems a recipe for peace, it invites an infantile sense of self and God’s blessing (or not).

Yet, who else does one call upon in the hour of need? And doesn’t calling upon this God “work”? For me. Yes.

I suppose we could make it sound grown-up by calling it the religion of subjectivity, or something – a religion for me, me, me!

Who else.

On the Sun, 5 (Resurrection)

Upon the announcement of Lee Perry’s death my immediate understanding of the matter was that he would be back.

“What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.” (1. Cor. 15:36-38)

“It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1. Cor. 15:48)

“Except a corn of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.” (John 12:24)

That is Christianity: the teaching of resurrection – the metaphysics which underpins biological processes of living, dying and regenerating. It is the life principle of the universe and so makes for the ethical absolute of all human interactions.

Note: It is the Sun that brings life out of seeds.

“A time to sow and a time to reap”

At Mass, 28.12.23

What the Catholic Church does in the liturgy of the mass is present the human world before “God”. This liturgy brings to mind this world at the point of its despair at its destruction through its own hate-filled acts, its violence – its “sin”. The liturgy unifies the individual who confesses his sins with this human world which is sinful. The climax of the liturgy is the prayer for peace, the opposite of violence, the refusal of violence for violence.

The Agnus Dei sums this up. Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us; …grant us peace. It sees in the sinless person whose answer to violence as peace, who is murdered, and raised on a cross for all to look at, and whose blood is unanswered, the possibility of reconciliation between those in violent conflict, and through this the possibility of redemption for the human world – me and governments, me and armies, me and religious institutions, me and banks, me and everyone I know – from the destruction our violence brings upon ourselves.

I left the service with a strong feeling of peacefulness – rightly or wrongly -, a gentle idea of reconciliation with the human world, others, the Church even, and myself. Still, there seems to be a lot of violence about, and I can’t think of what I can do about it, other than desist from violence myself, though I know…. But I am reconciled with that too, for a moment.

Shortbread in the cellar

On their last phone call, he told his much-hated mother that the best thing he had done that year was to convert to a low-carbohydrate diet.

Next thing, a Christmas parcel arrives for the family: two huge tins of biscuits. Cheese crackers and shortbread.

There followed the familiar overwhelming feelings of rage. The trauma! The hatred!

What to do? Take them into work? Gift them to someone else?

Upon WhatsApp consultation, his wife suggests binning them.

None of the these ideas could quite win through. So for the meantime, he removes them deep into the cellar – out of sight, out of mind.

Later, picking her up from school, he tells his daughter of the problem and the solutions proposed. She says yummy, she loves shortbread.

At home, before her dad does anything silly with them, she steals into the cellar, opens up the tin and takes a good handful to her room.

He sees them in her room that evening and says – fair enough. He commends her for her clear-headed sense of purpose and her discretion.

Later, his daughter heads for the cellar for a few more.

“Get one for me while you’re there then.”

She returns from the cellar with a few more shortbreads.

“Well done, Daphs,” he says.

Shortly afterwards, the angel speaks; he laughs, and goes to the cellar, gets the tin, returns to the flat, places it square in the middle of the dining table. He and Daphs just keep going till the tin is empty. Yummy.

Übersetzungen/ translations, 1

Und Gott sagte, gut, mach doch was ihr wollt. And God said, fine, do what the hell you want.

Mir ist es nun wirklich scheißegal. I couldn’t give a shit anymore.

***

Border

The Neue Nationalgallerie in Berlin is being developed. As such, the current building is somewhat sidelined by the building site next to it. In light of this, the Gallery rather brilliantly decided to mount on the fences colourful posters with short sentences in which the word „border“ is inserted into sentences the artist found in newspapers, advertisements, songs etc…. Here’s my choice:

Be Berlin. Be Border.

In the beginning was the border,…

Vorsprung durch Border.

Ein Border geht um in Europa,…

Liberty, Equality, Border.

There’s no place like border. There’s no border like home.

Border is where the heart is. Home is where the border is.

There are lies, damned lies, and borders.

Ich bin ein Border.

No border, no cry.

Love thy borders.

Mehr Border wagen.

Border macht frei.

Healthy border, healthy mind.

Kein Border? Nein danke!

Kein Border? Da kann ja jeder kommen.

It is not that which goes into a border which makes it unclean but that which comes out.

Border = mc2

Alle Border haben ein Ende, bloß die Wurst hat zwei.

On the Sun, 4 (Equality)

The state of ecstasy rendered everyone perfectly equal because each became perfectly deferential to the other.

Under capitalism on the other hand – that is, in the real world of humans – the trick is to exploit the labour of your workers and to extract the highest possible price from your customers. It is a perfectly hated-filled modus operandi.

The argument is that it in the round makes everyone richer than does any other economic modus operandi. Even if that were true, does it make it any less hateful? … individual wealth through mutual contempt?

Does God know why we persist in this business? For the sake of maintaining it, we invent two ideologies. One is honest: celebrating, in the end, the crushing of the technologically less advanced and economically weaker. The other is morality-politeness: to insist on equality in every respect and interaction other than the economic. This entails anti-racist, anti-sexist etc. manners in every aspect of life such that business proceeds politely. (Not to mention healthily.)

Even laughter is sacrificed. While it is true that the best humour is possible between equals only, we are not going to achieve equality by forbidding bad jokes. Only by forbidding the exploitation of labour and lending at interest will we achieve equality. But people would rather take their bad joke honest chance of “winning”; or keep their advantage and ban even laughter according to the protocols of morality-politness and healthy living, than risk their savings in the bank.