After the flood

 

The same. The same. then once, in a flash, fresh ground,... black, grey, green, and blue water, stone, grass and sky and each unique set stone! --R.Lowell Not things but a web of connections, "indirect words, which constantly efface themselves in a complementary silence" (on Monet).

~~~

On how silence works:

"I find the here-and-now of vital [but not ultimate] importance. It’s important because it is ephemeral; this moment is here and gone. How I respond to it is the vital question. Do I respond to it from my deepest values? That’s the reality of my faith."

~

On consolation:

Consolation without faith, salvation, grace? İf this is part two of The Needs of Strangers then I'm looking forward to it! Can it, must it, now only come through art, music and texts? Not touching but to be touched. Can there ever be a complete acceptance of pure randomness if we are, in reality, sense-making creatures always searching for meaning?

Perhaps we humans have wanted God most as witness to acts of choice made in solitude. Acts of memory,of sacrifice. --Denise Levertov

Are secular forms of redemption/hope destined to fail- or worse, turn into nightmares? Capitalist modernity's freedom from nature brings forth and perhaps always contained the seeds of climate catastrophe; Marxist utopia results in hopeless architectural brutalism and hell on earth. The structure of redemption narratives (just barely) remains but the substance seems hollowed out.