Deus Ex Machina

One of the questions I hope to explore with this blog is the potential for spirituality on the internet. Despite my gentle ribbing of e-meditation and questioning the validity of standardized ethical tests, I nonetheless believe there exists a tremendous potential out there for enrichment. Even if that only means hosting creative sites seeking to look at the old in a new way. The internet is both noun and verb, archive and conference. It has no equal in terms of accessibility, thought-provocation, or initiating connectivity. And if spirituality isn't about helping people gain access to and connect through ideas, then I'm much less spiritual than I thought.

Take this one out for a test drive:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.

- Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi (Islamic mystic, 13th Century)


That came up on this site, both a great library and a gentle argument for ecumenicism. Go ahead. Spin the wheel.

Next up is a YouTube video of Allen Ginsberg reciting A Supermarket in California:



Great poem about Walt Whitman, who wrote:

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means,
Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff,
I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Lastly, a prayer for all of the cats I offended with a recent post. It comes from Christopher Smart, an 18th-century poet, who wrote this adoration to his cat "Jeoffry" while confined to an insane asylum. Click on the link here to read the whole poem. Sample quote:

For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.

Strangely moving, isn't it? Thanks to my friend Liz for sharing it with me way back when.