When salt loses its savor it needs to be thrown out and replaced-this is an emphatic lesson from The Second Vatican Council, which addresses "joy and hope" in a faithless and despairing culture. The shining light of Vatican II is a beacon trained on the natural reality of transformational consciousness that grows out of and thrives in beauty and truth. The beauty of the moment, the truth of the moment is all that is and all that ye need to know, for beauty is truth, truth beauty. A Tree's leaf is a lexicon (DIVINICON) of symbiotic history. Leaves are pages of durable consciousness that green freshly every Spring. Open to the beauty, the wisdom of a leaf, and the destiny of the blossom-HAPPINESS IS A LITTLE FLOWER GARDEN.
The POETREE WORLDVIEW
Leafing Through HistoryBy Sylvester L. Steffen AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Sylvester L. Steffen
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4520-4888-8 Chapter One
I. THE BOOK OF COMMUNICATION Quantum Cosmology - NOVOGENESIS
LIFE'S UPLIFTING TIDE
Rainbow's playgrounds are the painted prairies / a spackled patchwork of riotous lace; Butter blossoms and butterfly fairies / are glory graces on green carpet face.
Refrain: Listen within to the voice of your art / the keeper of hist'ry, the lyric song. Dance to the beat of your rhythmic heart / Go for the good! Redress every wrong!
We are brush-stroked life on Nature's mien / light-splashed in place by Sun-driven flair; We are lessons-weave on a fabric clean / palette-mixed grace on self- conscious air. Refrain.
Resurgent Earth spins an all-fresh story / of news line under the unturned stone, Of an upside Hand scoring the glory / of th'under-side creatures up-keeping home. Refrain.
Warblers vocalize their mate-call in spring / and wind-waft their flight in hope-filled song That liltingly uplifts their northbound wing / by impulsive spirit driven along. Refrain.
Life's deep concern is the call to survive / the anxious worries of all who are young, Is the pressing urge for parents to provide / before the harsh turns of the seasons come. Refrain.
Bouncy life trips o'er white-capped lakes / in the buoyant games played by bobbing terns Who search for a piece of bread to partake / but never more than their appetites earn. Refrain.
Life's hasty pace is a southbound arrow / of geese nervously outrunning the cold, Mystic'ly held by knit of the narrow / magnet-path script for the young by the old. Refrain.
A freshly spread coat is Nature's cover / of leaves carefully quilted by caring trees, That shrouds the mystery of trefoil clover / from the crisp chill of th'imminent deep freeze. Refrain.
The fulfilled life crests with the rising tide / uplifting all ships on the foaming sea; But we ask of the Wind more than a ride / an escape to havens where Spirit is free. Refrain.
Softening the dash of the roiling waves / the gift-bearing hand of an Angel paves The return of Truth to its testing place / and the ascent of Soul to new found grace. Refrain.
The RHYTHMS of the SPHERES
Life's complexity is a rhythmic inheritance - the word-harmony of original gravity - wave-characteristic of the first fiery undulations emanating from singularity's dense center.
Communication is the harmonic dialogue of wave/ particle, from masslessness to mass.
Harmonics are the weave of word-rhythm; the bond-edification of evolved experience; the taut threads of inherency and coherency.
The amplifications of least constellations resonate with sounding chords of the greatest. The intensional inherency of quantum harmonics is intentional love's beginning.
Quantum Poetics is more than metaphor; it is word-working - evidence of collaboration fine-tuned in the micro-cosmic edifications of subatomic particles - the constellations of light-tensioned dust.
The conscious human is a vibrant, melodic organization of symbiotically conscious strand complexes, intensionally communalized. Individually, we, like the least live creature, are poetic renderings of trademark harmony, of Love's intention. So, where have we gone wrong?
FREE SPIRIT
Psychedelic Butterfly! Random as your winged colors are the paths you fly.
You travel maps whose original places rearrange and require your flaps to change.
By the colors you leave, places are made to image your presence.
The unpredictable effects of your flip-flap wings across the dappled heather are uncertain as arrow truth trailed by the twisted tail of the fallen feather. Truth conforms less to the will of the human quill than to some chaotic constant of uncertainty;
The Butterfly Effect.
DARKNESS and LIGHT
Luminous water Is Soul bearing the substances of Nature; the selfsame Sky speaks and keeps the Word; reveals by day, conceals by night. The flaming swords of pride and possessiveness deceive man to deform Nature.
The Female Angels, Dawn and Dusk, escape male deceptions and relay the Word. Dawn, the Spirit of day, the Soul of Light, belongs to Nature. Dusk, the sharpened vision announcing night, belongs to nurture. Night turns in, day reaches out. Life greens by day and fruits by night.
These Angels of the Word in Wisdom's Library are keepers of life's complex labyrinth. Life and consciousness are serpent and Angel, hero beings, substance/ soul, forge-cast in darkness and light, who hold their ground fearlessly against the minotaur.
MY AWAKENING
From the perspective of time I have come to recognize more clearly the belief-problems of my childhood and youth. My inability to resolve my place in the order of Creation, whether I belong to Earth or to Heaven is I realize an identity problem of misunderstanding the personal nature of being/ becoming. Informed understanding has come with the gathering sense of transformational reality (cosmology) as opposed to the static one I learned from childhood; of coming to understand a unified mind/ body reality (metaphysics) as opposed to a cleaved and necessarily adversarial relationship between soul/body, spirit/ matter and spirituality/ secularity; of coming to understand personal authenticity (theology), the primacy of personal conscience over institutional dogma, and revelation of the divine essentially future-focused and ongoing in the evolving universe.
My "wrestle with angels", that is, with my gradual coming to cosmological, metaphysical and theological certitude (epistemology), has never escaped me, even during the years of family-raising and of active business preoccupation. Because I never bought in to the speculative presumption of essential opposition between science/ religion, reason/ faith, soul/ body, I actively cultivated a sense for connection rather than for disconnection. It is only now after more than seven decades of practiced openness and study that I have been able to find an intellectually satisfying resolution to the spirit/matter schism.
Even though I take exception to what are "fundamentalist" absurdities cultured within the belief-system of Roman Catholicism, I find my Catholic Faith to be intellectually and emotionally a religion credibly "universal" and soul-satisfying. As a legacy to my children, and with the hope that others might profit from the "jihad" of my personal wrestle, I have committed to writing my convictions in text, rhythm and rhyme.
Spirituality is a complexity potential, a wave-field capacity for growing into self-reflective awareness. Inter/ inner connectivity and activity within wave-field complexities engage quantum potentials to conspire into ever greater awareness; lesser complexity experiences the coherency of reflexivity while higher complexity, cortically processing in brain complexes, experiences self-reflectivity. The ever compelling invitation of personal authenticity is to come to higher self-reflectivity; the dialogue of this becoming is the process of word/ reason, of communication/ consciousness/ conscience.
The Process of Word is the Process of Wisdom, the harmonizing of knowledge and experience. Knowledge is like the snakeskin; knowledge that is too dated, that no longer fits reality, must be sloughed off to make room for new skin that fits. The fix of mind in beliefs that no longer hold true imprisons the spirit in skin that doesn't fit. This is the frustration of dated, institutional dogmatism, a too common religious frustration. Christian faith is ensconced on laminations of cultic fideism.
Knowledge, the grounding of faith, is experience-acquired learning; process spirituality is a conscious coming to truth, to wisdom, which is the lifework process of Age and Grace. Coming to Wisdom and Truth is and always will be a journey of personal enlightenment; the role of community in this personal journey is to illuminate and not obfuscate the individuality of the conscionable person.
Faith, hope and love resound in the processing of POETREE consciousness. Network life is the expanding light-weave of Eden's Earth/ Heaven POETREE. Society-wide, this generation is presently restrained with too much dead and obfuscating skin; the time is overdue for us to shed the deadness that no longer fits the realities of new knowledge. Be not afraid of the new. Open yourself to the New Genesis reading of Nature's Scripture.
The saying has it that "the rising tide lifts all ships"; an uplifted personal sense of self raises for all the prospect of personal/ social wellbeing. May your uplifted sense of your personal self add to the tide-swell of conscionable wellbeing, for conscionable wellbeing holds the real promise for a new community of faith, hope and love-and from these, an ever revitalized and revitalizing people-a new and civil Country/ City of God.
Caught in their own trap
By their own doing, Roman Catholic institutions are trapped in the past; their arrogance is an affront to God; their ignorance is a scandal to the people. Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council sensed the dead-end direction of The Church based on the theology/ ecclesiology of the First Vatican Council. (I am a Roman Catholic, of Vatican II persuasion.)
Here's the problem: the Roman Catholic Church claims institutional inerrancy. Pope Pius IX pushed the First Vatican Council to declare his infallibility; the same pope issued blanket anathemas on all things "Modern", with special animus against evolution. The Second Vatican Council, to the contrary, averred to the fact of general public acceptance of evolution and of the need for Church to come to a new "analysis and synthesis ... a matter as important as can be." [Constitution IV, Gaudium et spes, Introduction, No 5]
At the present time, old-time First Vatican stalwarts in and outside the Vatican, following the recidivism of Pope John Paul II toward First Vatican theology/ ecclesiology, are in open battle with Second Vatican theology/ ecclesiology. In the meantime, the engines of evolution push on while institutional catholicim is stalled dead on its tracks. Like other European gothic cathedrals, the Vatican is at risk of becoming a museum.
The world is faced with crises much bigger than petty preoccupations of religious institutions trapped in self-preferred irrelevance, and by the way, denominational Christianity isn't any better off than Roman Catholicism for it too is factionalized over ideologies that come from the same theology which denominations inherited from the Church of Rome. What history proves is that, whether plebs or pope, people make mistakes, institutions make mistakes. On the evidence of history, claims of infallibility, of inerrancy, are patently vacuous.
Like oil and water, dominion theology and "evolution theology" are immiscible. Water is elemental to life, the fluid matrix of vital evolution; oil is a derivative of life. In the order of nature, life evolves from within; "faith supposes reason as grace supposes nature." Anointing like authority derives from the order of life in nature; by nature all people are equal in standing before God, all are fallible.
Globally, people need to get beyond the old traps of ignorance and arrogance, get with the flow of evolution, be faithful to nature, and culture the wellbeing of all people, all life. Churches! Get your act together. The future isn't about returning to the past! It's time to move from the past, acknowledge nature's patterns, honor God's Plan, and enable people in their responsibility to each other, to nature, and to God.
Weathering the Weather
When a thunderstorm on a hot summer day moved across Iowa my daughters and I would go outside and watch the turbulence as it developed; that was more satisfying than being petrified with fear. One thing Jesus couldn't stand was dull-witted Scribes and Pharisees who didn't have a clue about the signs of the times. "You big dummies," he said, "you see clouds build in the west and feel the south wind blow and say `it's gonna rain', and it does. Why can't you read the signs of the times?"
The weather-forecast (on the TV) pictures weather systems as they develop and move through. Weather systems are large masses of air circling around a low-pressure center. They move generally from West to East and rotate counterclockwise. Their diameter varies, but can span hundreds of miles. Their movement from West to East can be fast or slow. Turbulence develops at the leading edge-greater variances of temperature and moisture create greater or lesser turbulence. The wind generally blows from the South and East. Once the front moves through, the central area of the system is more benign with sporadic turbulence. As the calmer mid-region of the weather cell moves through turbulence again returns along the trailing arc, only this time the wind generally is from the North and West.
Western cultural history is a massive cyclone like a weather system; except, its movement and development takes centuries not days to pass through. A useful way of looking at history from the time of Christ to now is to see it as one huge slow-moving weather system. The time of its turbulent leading edge coincides with imperial church/ state culture from Constantine (pre A.D. 1000) to the 15th century Reformation.
The centrifugal energy of overreach at the outer perimeter of the cyclone is where the greatest havoc occurs; the crusades, Islamic conquests, suppression of the Eastern Church, witch hunts, the Inquisitions, internecine wars of city-states, church mercantilism, colonialism, Protestant revolt, 30-years Wars of Religion, Counter- Reformation and the denominationalizing of Christianity after the First Vatican Council.
The "doldrum" period, the somewhat lesser violent region at the center of the cyclone includes the time from Enlightenment to the end of Modernity; the present Postmodern era continues movement from the low pressure middle to the trailing turbulent backside of the system's arc; stormy times follow as culture moves through the fresh and potentially more stable high pressure region of evolutionary consciousness to the backside of the cyclone. When the system passes, new weather highs are ushered in; and eventually a new weather system develops with its own uniqueness. The weather system created by the papacy of Pope John Paul II is yet in its developmental stages; the storms are still with us.
Real change is coming. Fresher air, sunshine and good growing weather are on the way. Let's prepare the season for global greening and keep faith with nature.
TRANSFIGURATION
From the mountain vantage I watch the dawning of Jahweh's Light across the bright horizon of the Promised Land.
But entering is denied me even though I feel within me fire glowing brighter-sparks across synapses, light transforming my body with transparent soul revealing Trinity-the Paschal Mystery transforming the social body with Spirit symbiotically illumined in oils anointing soul-symmetried body enlivened with Bread, with spirited Wine-by common astral fuel transubstantiating the soul of water-joined quanta into mosaic substances of faith giving promise to land in the transparent consciousness of hope empowering intentional love.
The raised cloud of rain moves across enlivened land and binds the dust of trustful Light that inspires soul/ substance and uplifts the banal to become the sweet gifts of female love, the milk and honey of conscience divinely showered.
GODSPEAK WORD is the Scripted Voice of Singularity behind diversified plurality. WORK is the natural term identifying the dialectic of creative polarity;
BIG BANG
Still point! wave splash point! Emphatic Word unfolds the Cosmos, Reorders human speculation.
Explosive potential begins in the imploded idea. For better, for worse, self-constructed nullity-walls Dissolve in the idea-explosion.
ELECTRICAL VALENCY
Impulsive Angel-photon is word in light-charged horizon, Processing dream and reason.
VOX DEI
Even before "Word", before Light was Word-ordered, God made vocal chords, except for which There couldn't be voice, creation, harmony.
Word-faced thought is filament-reticulated In the firmament's expression. The people has face, has voice, God's, Because God anticipated Self-reverberation in theirs.
Universally connecting the least and greatest to the Creator Are common sounding chords.
CREATION Flammis acribus addictis-formless energy is furiously ignited! Pacified energy is molecularized! Spirit is eternally resonant. Programmable destiny purposely imprints reliably redundant patterns. Winds on waves! Echoes in caves! Wavelengths' self-reflective wanings are ethical constructs! Force-fields conscionably seeking community!
ON READING CREATION
Einstein read the Book of Nature; her story told him that E=MC, That captured light, photons, gives Earth-dust its energy. If this states truthfully Nature's architecture The question for us is What edification does it have for reason, for Faith, for Hope, for Love?
SONG OF CREATION
Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Spirit undulates water In reflection and refraction of rainbow Light.
Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Spirit harmonizes water In the reaction and expansion of glowing Light.
Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Life, under the Sun, Renews all things - work of Spirit, water, Light.
Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Life mollifies harshness And liberates the sands to dune in flowing Light.
Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Soft sand seamlessly Births Earth's green turfs in radiant Light strands.
Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Green Spirit brilliance In matter raises Soul/ substance to Trinity's height.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The POETREE WORLDVIEWby Sylvester L. Steffen Copyright © 2010 by Sylvester L. Steffen. Excerpted by permission.
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