From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 188

Another Simon who goes to find out what really happened...in William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 187

Simon Peter running to the tomb. He wants to find out what really happened. An example of moral empiricism.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 186

Gathering and scattering revisited...the women at the tomb.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 185

Going back to the tomb. "Death, where is thy sting?"

Creating sacrality out of the most numinous thing around…death. The scandal of the cross.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 184

“Vampire novelist Ann Rice launched her new book by dressing up in a bridal gown and lying in coffin in a New Orleans cemetery…”

Our fascination with death is symptomatic of our abandonment of the Biblical revelation.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 183

“Rapture and terror bound by blood…” a review of a movie based on Ann Rice’s novel. Our culture is increasingly ‘in the business of death…’

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 182

Secularization…breakdown of conventional cultural morality. The empty tomb and the cult of death. Ann Rice’s book: Interview with the Vampire . In some sense every culture is a cult of death

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 181

If the Cross represents the decisive beginning of the descralization of our world, will the result be simply secularization?

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 180

The empty tomb...all culture begins at the tomb. The corpse is the gathering apex of conventional culture.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 179

Eric Gans continued...a different approach to Girard's mimetic desire

An abortive gesture of appropriation...the crowd reaching out to take the body of their victim.

Prestige is nothing but mimetic contagion focused on one object

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 178

An anthropological understanding of 'gathering and scattering' courtesy of Eric Gans

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 177

Gathering and scattering continued..."but all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things..."

Simone Weil - attentiveness & prayer

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 176

Gathering and scattering continued...the parable of the lost sheep

A new kind of gathering.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 175

Gathering and scattering continued...a parenthesis into the Gospel of John:

Caiaphas says, "It is to your advantage that one die rather than the whole nation should perish." And the writer of John's Gospel adds, "He did not say this on his own but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one." John 11:49-52

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 174

The effects of the Gospel continued: gathering and scattering.

Myth veils sacred violence so as to hide its morally troubling aspects. Myth tricks violence into spending itself on victims whose death will provoke no reprisals. To avenge a death is to reenter the sacrificial system

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 173

The effects of the Gospel continued: the ethics of war...mythologizing of violence

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 172

The effects of the Gospel revelation: gathering and scattering. There is a race between the message of the Gospel (gathering) and the effects of the Gospel (scattering). An example from the news of 1995

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 171

This excerpt begins the final tape in the Poetry of Truth series. Gil Bailie reviews with emphasis the theme of 'gathering & scattering' from the end of prior tape.
"The crowds who had gathered for the spectacle went away beating their breasts..."

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 170

"Surely this was an innocent man." a Roman Centurion.
The crowd that had gathered for the spectacle went away beating their breasts...now scattered.
Those who had followed him from Galilee including the women stood at a distance watching these things.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 169

The crucifixion.
"Father forgive them for they know not what they do." The definition of human ignorance, of human 'not knowing'.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 168

"If they do this when the wood is green...what will happen when the wood is dry?"

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 167

Two "sons of the father", Jesus - son of the Father of self-donating love and Barabbas - son of the father of sacrificial violence.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 166

Pilate interrogates Jesus. Capitulating to the demand of the crowd he frees Barabbas.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 165

Jesus judged by his accusers. But in fact it is Jesus who is the judge. Starting from this point all of history will be judged by how people respond to this revelation, the revelation of the cross.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 164

Peter around the fire in the courtyard where Jesus is being interrogated…while he was speaking in denial of Jesus, the cock crowed, and the Lord looked at him.
He remembered the word of the Lord and went out and wept bitterly.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 163

In the couryard of the High Priest Peter gathers with the crowd around the fire. And a servant girl recognizes Peter…sees him in the fire light.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 162

Suffering and death – cannot separate Jesus from his relationship with his Father

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 161

The Passion...Jesus is handed over.
The betrayal with a kiss...but love is stronger than death.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 160

At the Mount of Olives...the agony in the garden. Jesus' prayer, "Not my will, but your will be done."
Sweat mixed with blood...the temptation to bypass the cross and forsake his mission.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 159

Arm yourselves…be ready! Are two swords enough?

Correction to Previous Post

A kind and attentive follower of this blog informed us of a duplicate audio track in the posting of Parts 152 and 153 of the Poetry of Truth series. We have corrected this error and have updated the audio track on Part 152 posted on 9/29/12.

Thanks again to all who follow these excerpted posts. We hope you find them helpful.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 158

Jesus' mission is understood in retrospect...no one 'gets it' until after the fact.
Jesus says to Peter, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 157

Jesus goes to the cross with his whole mission in shambles...

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 156

In the upper room: after Jesus has shown the disciples how to break and give away their lives...a dispute arose as to who among them was the greatest.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 155

The breaking of the bread...Jesus tries one last time to get across to the disciples what they need to come through the experience of his crucifixion and death (and their scattering) so that they may come back together (gathering) at the resurrection.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 154

Preparing for the Passover meal - the upper room - the last supper ending in total failure...

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 153

Luke ch 22 - "Now the time of the Passover was approaching and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus..."

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 152

Everything is there in the cross...it teaches us how to lay down our lives so that given life by God we may give life to others in turn. This is a mysterious bond between one another and God.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 151

The locale of the 'scene of the crime' - in the 1st century Roman world crucifixion was reserved for the worst criminals. And in Jewish understanding anyone executed by 'hanging on a tree' (Deut 21) was considered accursed by God.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 150

 



Notes from the scene of the crime...book by Danish archeologist P. V. Glob- The ‘Bog People’

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 149

The love or the wrath of God?
"How could we have possibly understood God as love without the cross?" Hans Urs Von Balthasar

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 148

Taking away the sin of the world...the cross is the place Jesus went to take away the sin of the world.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 147

Speaking about the crucifixion..."to speak without breaking the silence" Thomas Merton
Who was it that got crucified?

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 146

When you see these things taking place (the heavens and the earth being shaken) stand up and lift up your heads for your redemption draws near - Lk 21:28….by your endurance you will gain your souls Lk 21:19

This endurance is an act, a commitment. It is a form the imitation of Christ.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 145

The parable of the fig tree - the Kingdom breaking in on human history

Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away

Panic – reconstituting the old sacrificial system around the latest ‘victim’ – finding and victimizing the latest victim’s victimizers

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 144

A digression from Luke's apocalyptic discourse...2 Thessalonians ch 2: the 'Katechon' - restraining the 'Lawless One'
Hobbes' Leviathan - the power of the state
Carl Schmidt

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 143

These are the days of vengence...endless cycles of reciprocal violence.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 142

But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecuted you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors and all on account of my name.

Luke 21:12

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 141

Realized eschatology

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 140

Realized eschatology...apocalypse occurring in events in the present, not just at some future date.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 139

Luke's apocalypic themes and eschatological vision.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 138

Gil Bailie’s interpretation of Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. What is going on in history?

From the Archives - Poetry of Truth Part 137

Luke's apocalyptic background of the 'stone the builders rejected' - Daniel Ch 2, Nebuchadnezzar's dream.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 136

Satellite image of mass graves in Bosnia.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 135

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. - Luke 20:17

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 134

Jesus and the money changers...meddling with the sacrificial mechanism. Jesus is not attempting to reform the Temple, but replace it.
The parable of the wicked tenants.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 133

"The ultimate stuff of being is communion" - Henri de Lubac

Jesus enters Jerusalem as the only one who knows what it means.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 132

The mind of Christ

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 131

Jesus' entry into Jerusalem continued...



Not one stone shall be left on another...
The epistemological significance of the Cross

From the Archives: Poety of Truth Part 130

Crowds and Power...


Where does Jesus get his authority?

Weeping over Jerusalem...if only you had recognized the things that make for peace...

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 129

Triumphal entry into Jerusalem

“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord…”

Enthusiasms - Of stones & stoning

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 128

Luke chapter 19 - Prolog to Jesus’ suffering and glory



Jesus’ choreography of the passion

The disciples are in a fog – Jesus accepts this and works with it so that they will be able to ‘see’ it after the fact

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 127

Hypostatic selfhood: a self that cannot be distinguished entirely from the God that is the ground of the self’s being

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 126

A reinterpretation of the scene depicted on the Parthenon frieze. The renaissance attempt to emulate Greek rationalism found itself, like Greek philosophy, in orbit around a 'hidden in plain sight' center of sacrificial violence.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 125

The Parthenon Frieze continued...

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 124

The Parthenon frieze continued...

Papyrus Fragment

The founding violence we could not see…at the heart of Athenian culture.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 123

The Parthenon Frieze

Seeking a respite from the Gospel's revelation, Europe turned to Athens...

When cultural paradigms come to an end we often look for a marker - the Parthenon Frieze

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 122

Moving from a world of myth to a world of Gospel. Conventional culture lasts from the moment of its founding violence until the sacrality of that violence wears off. Everyone knows the enlightenment project is over.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 121

The souvenir shop at the Smithsonian after visiting the Moche exhibit was something like going to the Holocaust museum and coming out and seeing Nazi memorabilia.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 120

Moche sacrificial rites and the ulluchu fruit. The iconographic depictions of their sacrificial rites are considered masterful works of art. Does art have a revelatory responsibility?

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 119

Moche sacrifice continued...

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 118

The video above was created from images taken from Moche artifacts and depicts their sacred/sacrificial ritual warfare.


The principal purpose of Moche war making was to obtain sacrificial victims.
The sacrificial system worked – it kept violence at a minimum (at the expense of the victim) and it will take more than a stiff dose of rationalism to replace it…

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 117

The Moche culture of ancient Peru - a large and thriving civilization at whose center was an altar of blood sacrifice.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 116

Notes from an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC (ca 1995) on the ancient Peruvian culture of the Moche.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 115

The forces of myth versus the forces of the Gospel

"You build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestor's killed..."

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 114

The inability to ‘see’ the suffering of the Son of Man is the same as the inability to recognize the breaking in of the kingdom. The victim is the Rorschach test.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 113

Why we do not see the kingdom breaking into our world..."The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation...because the kingdom of God is within you."

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 112

Jesus gives clues to the coming of the kingdom..."where the corpse is there the vultures gather".

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 111

The Greek word for truth: alethia - to stop forgetting...comparing the story of Cain and Abel with the Roman myth of Romulus and Remus.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 110

This excerpt begins tape 9 of the 12 tape series on the Gospel of Luke: Poetry of Truth. In this part Gil Bailie introduces the section on chapters 16 to 19 of Luke's Gospel where Jesus is questioned about the coming 'kingdom'. The atmosphere of these texts reflect a brooding eschatological horizon. How we respond to the crisis presented in these passages will be decisive.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 109

The parable of the Prodigal Son - conclusion: The father does not see things like the sons do - he does not see the substance/property/ousia that is of intense interest to the sons. Exchange without possession - the mystery of person-hood. Christian non-dualism.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 108

The parable of the Prodigal Son continued: moving beyond the modern western idea of the individual. The waning of ontological density. The son has dissipated his substance and lost his filiation - he has nothing left to stand on and so has no way of understanding what has happened to him.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 107

The parable of the Prodigal Son continued: Orphan of the paternal gift, the son wants to owe his father nothing. Some notes from Jean Luc Marion's "God Without Being"

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 106

The parable of the Prodigal Son continued: The son's new position and the elder brothers resentment, a second version of the story of a father's unfathomable forgiveness.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 105

Parable of the Prodigal Son continued: "He came to himself..." The son's return and the surprise in the actions of the paterfamilias.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 104

Part 1 of the Prodigal Son: 'Give me what is mine' - individualism

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 103

Overture to the Prodigal Son continued: the parable of the woman and the lost coin. Spending more to find the lost item than the item is 'worth'.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 102

Overture to the Prodigal Son story: the parable of the lost sheep...are you lost enough to find yourself?

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 101

'you will not see me again until you say ‘blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 100

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem…you who have killed the prophets…..How often I have desired to gather you as a hen gathers her brood"

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 99

Jesus on a schedule…checking his clock and calendar for a rendezvous in Jerusalem

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 98

An example from the New York Times - Pop Music review of Philter..."bottled rage"

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 97

The Parable of the leaven. The modern sense of ‘progress’ is the secular version of the Biblical notion of ‘promise’

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 96

The Pharisee's Sabbath setup continued... What knots may be untied on the Sabbath?
The parable of the mustard seed.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 95

Jesus: a teacher or a revealer? Does metanoia proceed from the head or the heart? The Pharisees set up Jesus - will he 'unbind' a woman on the Sabbath?

Sex-Selective Abortions and the Twisting of Souls

Not only is Hadley Arkes a preeminent Constitutional scholar; on the most important issue of our age he is one of our greatest moral philosophers.

"... they kept evading the main moral questions over the years, they would fall into the forms of argument that must have, as their purpose and effect, to undo the very act of moral reasoning.

"We would indeed move step by step, and with each move we would ask the liberal side to honor the principles that they themselves had enacted into law. If it were wrong to discriminate against the handicapped, how could it be justified to kill a child in the womb with Down syndrome?"

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 94

The parable of the fig tree. The fig tree as an image of the old Hebrew covenant of law become unfruitful. A prophecy of Jesus' passion.

The Queen

"The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne
Burnt on the water ..." - Shakespeare

"Once again, the monarchy allowed people to connect through powerful symbolism to their collective history and their identity as a nation. And what a stroke of genius it was to use the river to make that visceral connection."

So wrote British journalist Melanie Phillips in yesterday's London Daily Mail. 

"What a fantastic, glorious, emotional, quite overwhelming spectacle. It wasn’t just that it was flawlessly executed. It wasn’t just that, as billed in advance, it would provide a sight that people would never have seen before. 

"It was also a triumphant restatement and reaffirmation of a Britain that people love so deeply but which so many fear may have been lost for ever."

This is of more than passing interest to me, inasmuch as I am currently trying to assess whether modern or postmodern cultures still have the ability to foster and sustain a center of gravity with sufficient assimilating power to inspire the trans-generational loyalties and sense of purpose on which a healthy culture depends. The jury is still out as far as I can tell, and there are plenty of failed or short-lived attempts. However evanescent the current revival of British esprit de corps might prove to be, it is worth noting that is indebted to a remnant of a pre-modern institution: the monarchy.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 93

Jesus strips the sacrificial trappings from the stories of state brutality and natural disater leaving his listeners with a choice: death as an accident – without meaning or death as ‘self-sacrifice’ – the giving of one’s entire self, spending one’s life in service to others

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 92

Unless you repent, you will perish ‘just as they did’

Metanoia - repentance