Hermeneutik und Kritik

2011-03-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

Understanding: A Desideratum
Countering Psychotic Mis-Understanding

I register big disappointments with the trend of modern Hermeneutik: too much of the time this new work stresses a kind of homilitic in which the intent of the utterer-of-text does not rate being understood. Especially this seems to be the case with postmodernist Deconstuction-ism.

But! This say-what-you-will attitude does not aid in my project, which consists of avoiding the misunderstandings I suffer of the Mitwelt when I am psychotic. I desperately need to fathom what the 'real' state of social nature might be, and am willing to make an all-fronts attack on the problem.

In my not-too-limited studies, Friedrich Schleiermacher represents the one thinker who most-clearly and most-level-headedly deals with 'understanding the utterer at least as well as he does on first hearing, and then better.' He uses all indicators--linguistic and cultural-- for achieving this goal: including meditation and statistical quantification. He never says that he has 'absolute' understanding of the-Other, but in steps called 'recapitulations' he tries to approximate the understanding-gained-so-far.

For my part, this process of understanding seems to be a logical process involving a reductio-ad-absurdum-- 'eliminating all non-causes until I get to cause.' I begin with the assumption of total mis-understanding, then reach for progressive correction until I 'have it right.' This means in other words that I assume myself psychotic in noesis until the limit of misunderstanding gives over to approximate understanding of the Social-Other.

My approach seems consonant with Schleiermacherianism; it seems opposite of the postmodernist preachings of Karl Barth, Jacques Derrida, and the ' theorizing' of Michel Foucault. None of this effort at homily gives me 'enough' in my necessity to get-it-right, which now has civil/legal aspects as well as the personal/philosophic.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens

2011-01-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

Bibles and Translations Thereunto
As Folk-Literature

My reading of Johann Gottfried von Herder convinces me that 'the extra stuff' associated with the interpretation of 'Bibles' gives expression to Volkspoesie-- the soul of society expressed in literature.

I am most familiar with the 'Christian Bible' (Old and New Testaments.) In this case I know that a different folklore is associated with the Elizabethan King James Bible than would be the case with more-recent versions, especially with the New Revised Standard Version, which inter alia tries to craft a gender-neutral text, a 'unisex Bible.'

I read all these in connection with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity-- that language colors the perception of reality. I know perfectly well that this position is not widely esteemed among linguists, but I find it quite plausible based on what I know about memory-- that short-term memory is not affected by language but long-term memory is extremely effected by the words going together to frame the memory.

In this connection, Bibles are a reflection of culture; the words in the various versions contain percepts that define the society at the time of Biblical utterance-- both at inception and per subsequent 'revision.'

Friedrich Schleiermacher would hold that 'the extra stuff'-- the layering of contemporary culture with a translation of a text-- is just as lively an expression of Volkspoesie as the original. This thought abets my 'crisis reading' of the Bible incumbent on my Orthodox belief; 'the willing suspension of disbelief' is facilitated by this awareness.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens

2010-12-25T10:25:00.000-08:00

Eigenwelt as a Quantum Hybrid

The Orthodox Christian has forms tautological/axiomatic comprising the Scriptures, the Creeds, and the Testimony of the Church (Saints and Fathers.) The actual world where one lives, moves, and has being (cf. Acts 17:28) in a 'space' likely to be radically different from the world presented in the Axioms.

This means that we have a formal system with narrow categories, a 'fauna with two forms, a dragon and a unicorn' from which we have to christen a non-conforming world. This is a quantum resonance hybrid model par excellence. Thus we have quantum logic to aid us in this betimes harrowing protocol.

Our job becomes one of reclaiming/redeeming our world from the seeming paradox thus presented. An imaginable exemplar would be the GI in Viet Nam whose job is to store bombs, and at Christmas season having to listen to a radio blaring Christmas carols and other holiday music. Keeping with this seasonal/holiday message, a parallel condition exists for the 'normal' Christian who must try to process something sacred out of a religious holiday which in secularity seems to contradict the core religious intent. A third example-- pertaining to my condition-- thus presented last in this paragraph-- would be the Christian subject to psychosis who must transform profound religiosity from its formal elements into the seeming 'Welt' appearing as heresy-- the 'normal world and its medications.'

I call the paradoxical message of the Axioms a 'music': I want to improvise an acceptable 'dance' to the music. Someday then I shall be able to say, "I believe; helpest thou my unbelief" (cf. Mark 9:24.)

This for me is a PROCESS OF TRANSFORMATION-- a matter of taking the manure 'ore' of my profane reality and transforming it into acceptable compost (not gold, as the alchemists claim) but a 'psychology' [soul-talk] as C.G. Jung would have it.

Thus, let me work to redeem my Welt (Umwelt, Mitwelt, and Eigenwelt) as a Christian product amenable to The Axioms!!!

--Vernon Lynn Stephens

2010-12-24T11:31:00.000-08:00

F=T;
The Musical Puzzle of the Miraculous Element
In the Gospels (& in the Bible Generally)

The Gospels as rhetoric type resemble the texts one might find (in my experience) the literary product of a not-very-well-educated peasant, with the possible refinement that the modern peasant would be less likely to try to convince with the description of fabulous/miraculous events.

It is only Orthodox to claim belief in the Gospels, the New Testment, the Bible, but so difficult it is for me to do so that on most days, my hardest-clot in this regard would be to claim "poetic faith" of S.T. Coleridge, "the willing suspension of disbelief." This same kind of faith occurs in a reader who though totally secular and non-superstitious 'lets go' to follow by way of entertainment a ghost story.

I am in concurrence with Rudolf Bultmann in thinking that the mythic content of the Gospels needs to be broken down (the post-modern word for this is "deconstructed.") To be Orthodox with the Gospels creates a paradoxical syllogism, like F=T in the propositional sense. This is modally shown in the highest level in Biblical allegory, but is also evident in other Scriptures, and to me can only be broken down to a tautology good for casting the lessons of morality/ethics.

Indeed the ethics of the New Testament are-- without the layers and layers in the Bible of the-miraculous-- immanently agreeable. It is even hard to use this convict-like narrative as a 'musical background' to best-practice-conduct because of the nearly obvious conclusion to a sane modern reader that here in the Gospels is FALSE (not TRUE) witness, a violation of the 9th of the 10 Commandments.

I am a modern reader; I am polite to educated people who claim to believe in Jesus BECAUSE he walked on water, yea resurrected. But I wish to redeem walking on water by never attempting to try doing so, and in resurrection which means rot-in-peace.

In W.S. Maugham's OF HUMAN BONDAGE is a chapter where a lad with club foot prays unsuccessfully for the wholeness of his feet, only to have failed and for his priestly father to proclaim that the lad lacked faith. I would thus claim that faith-- good faith-- means having a 'club foot' and realizing that there is nothing one can do of one's own to correct this condition.

Let me claim this as my 'Orthodoxy'... as a counterpoointal music to the drone of the miraculous held by the Gospels-- and thus by me 'musically'-- for the 'marching-hymn' for the walk-of-faith.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens

2010-12-22T13:27:00.000-08:00

Considerations Regarding My Episodes
Of Total Misunderstanding

Here are some thoughts & considerations underlying a general/least-case hermeneutic that underlie my periods of psychosis/total-mis-understanding/Missverstehen.

By retrospection, I have determined that my periods of delusion are marked by 'loud' (read "inserted") thought, which are 'too beautiful' (read "pleasant") not to be true.
Of course this is pathognomonic for schizophrenia, but that is a non-hermeneutic consideration.

The delusions generally come after physiological insult (in the case of the decompensation of 2009 with me, after fasting and enduring a winter without anti-psychotic medication or heat or electricity.) A 'spiraling effect' can be observed-- the condition of error grows progressively worse.

Re-medication-- a purely physiological consideration is essential for restoration of equilibrium -- with the general awareness that it cannot be that I am the only one who sees correctly while all the world besides me is incorrect.

The aesthetic aspect of pleasure differentiates from the formal aesthetic that a scientist uses as a criterion of beauty is said to apply. Even here I need to beware any notion that aesthetic appeal of any kind sustains a claim of validity.

I become 'immersed' in the beautiful(in the pleasure sense) and then progressively eliminate any other mode of reality testing.

I do not think that any n=1 gambit for detecting psychosis is possible. I shall always need to be told when-I-go-crazy.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens

2010-09-01T14:13:00.000-07:00

Notes toward a Least-Case Hermeneutic
Of Non-Psychotic Understanding

My last psychosis occurred in 2009-- beginning in January; here are some notes about the logical structure of that illogical process (by outcome, that is.)

My errors of reasoning were propositional... There was logical method to my syllogistic reasoning, but the assignment of truth value was errant. I think I could have done algebra, addition, geometry, and even probabilistic reasoning as I might during a non-psychotic interim, but the delusionality derived from the fact that I was permitting propositions based upon inputs that were dereistic-- fantastic.

For example, I came to believe that my gaussmeter/radio-emission-detector was validly indicating that my personal computer was 'bugged' as a result of discovery of emf (electromotive force transmission) was coming not only from my computer but from 15% of the computers at the local public library...I simply could not imagine any other reason other than eavesdropping for this phenomenon... and thus became paranoid. The actual signal from my computer was quite strong-- over 10 milliwatts-- about 5X the maximum recommended by the FDA for human exposure.

Only later did I discover from a technician that computers COMMONLY put out a radio signal; had I known that, I doubt that I would have developed a full psychosis, or at least would have developed a different kind of disorder.

As a result of the inference that the apartment had high emf in it, I felt that there may be danger of fire, as I smelt something like a burnt-bean-plastic smell in my apartment. Accordingly, I cut the electrical power to my apartment, and also-- as the plasticy smell persisted-- cut the heat to my place.

In the dark and cold of winter, I lost my psychotropic medication, which of course contributed to my psychosis; however at the time I thought omega-3 fatty acids were the sole mood stabilizer I needed, and though I lost these too, I supplied myself from the dietary source of canola oil.

In about 3 months, I was beginning to think that my 'thoughts' were a kind of communication (telepathy) and spun completely into madness, but this too was a propositional logic errant but syllogistic in form. I was arrested for illegal behavior in April, and only after several months in jail -- 'feeling fine'-- did I get psychiatric treatment.

On the N=1 basis of my then-psychotic condition, I posit that-- just as there are schizophrenics who can do math and play winning chess-- my ability to reason was formally OK, but the mechanism that does the assumption mentally had become aberrant.

Accordingly, I want to investigate my 'positing equipment'... which is in fine a kind of rhetorical discipline of determining WHY and WHEN I believe things to be true. I am completely willing to assume that I had a schizophreniform psychosis, but that the propositional-positing-mechanism-- that which makes belief seem real-- is the actual mechanism that needs study.

I can I think detect myself to be non-psychotic; I cannot detect myself 'crazy' when I am psychotic, and that seems to be the Job-1 for this afore-mentioned least-case hermeneutic.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens

2010-08-09T05:08:00.000-07:00

A Least-Case Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the discipline of seeking understanding; for me and for others subject to psychosis there are times when such understanding (insight) is completely compromised.

Accordingly, it would be helpful to derive a "least-case hermeneutics" for situations requiring satisfaction of the minimum requirement of insight, and such would become a highly practical undertaking-- no "arm-chair philosophy" whatsoever.

I for one have never when psychotic been able to detect that my delusions are false ideas, although I have propped every kind of leverage-cognitive that I can muster to ascertain that I would KNOW reality from illusion...to no avail... I simply choose illusion. A least-case hermeneutics therefore constitutes a high priority for this psychotic, and I shall pursue it as energies and skills permit.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens

2010-08-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

Dealing (Carefully and Slowly) with a 'Lying Spirit'

I am subject to a delusional psychosis, which is often religious in quality. I am however reconciled to the fact that no part of the tradition Orthodox-Catholic gives credence to delusion or any process causing false belief.

In fine, delusion is a "lying spirit" (cf. 1 Kings 22:22-23; 2 Chronicles 18:21-22); any what-is-true most aptly is divine Logos; any belief conducive to falsehood, in other words, no matter how deceptively pious, is of Evil in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. This position in principle is not hard for me to accept, but in practice when I am decompensated difficult to follow, as what is true appears oftentimes to be false, and what is false true.

Theology aside, it is humiliating to think that I can be this far from reality when feeling precisely a Sublime Notion, which seemingly cannot not-be-true-- but is false nonetheless. What seems to happen when delusion sets in is a positing based on wishful thinking, not unpleasant to experience, but 'fabulous' (by which I denote 'mythic.')

I have tried much of my adult life to control this potential for false belief, and short of declaring religion to be worthless as usually constituted for reality-testing, I simply have to say that my 'spiritual walk' is unconventional, not at all like the legend of getting-religion-getting-cured-instantly.

I need a form of creed which is more than nothing, and which at the same time provides keys for being a real and reality-seeking person. Ethically, Christianity is just fine; what is problematic is its prophetic overload, and its (for some) charismatic mandate.

There is a noetic tradition here and there in Christian logotics which addresses the problems of the person experiencing 'lying spirit,' albeit not much in Protestantism (except for the work of Anton Boison); I refer to the work of (St.) John of the Cross and (St.) Teresa of Avila, which vigorously deals with altered-states-of-consciousness (and mostly by way of prevention of ecstatic experience.) The letters of (Pseudo-) Dionysius also speak to eschewing heavily theological cognition, which seems to point in the direction of John-Cross and Teresa-Avila in the point just made.

I am not even sure that in the end I can control false assumption; what seems to 'work' best is avoiding humiliation, and stress generally, and maintaining habitual antipsychotic medication ingest-- and avoiding all concrete/literal religious thinking.

It even occurs to me that the psychotic 'walks' a decidedly different path than one who needs/does spice up life with ecstasy. For me and those like me it is neither creative nor healthy to make the thrill thus identified a desideratum.

As I can, and as I settle into a mode of mental-self-management, I shall try to pursue the phenomenology of this modal logic sans 'revelation' in favor of 'reasonable postulation.' I have avoided this topic for some time, somewhat out of fear (and trembling!) and partly as a matter of kairological timing. If I am successful in mapping out this reasonable domain, perhaps I can help myself, help other psychotics to have a way out of this seeming mental quagmire.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens

2008-09-06T00:46:00.000-07:00

Barth-- Proving Himself to Be False--
A Man of Sin Preaching in the Temple--
Will Be Abandoned in Favor of Reverent Study
(In a None-Too-Schleiermacherian Way)

My reading of the German for Barth's Epistle to the Romans-- called simply Romerbrief-- is netting diminishing new returns from the same kinds of conclusions that I have made by way of Verstehen for this Church Father: I find to be highly repetitive of a highly-tilted thesis-- 'Word of God'-- that those who take a scientific approach to religion (in the sense I would understand) are fallen from grace, are both sinners and represent sin. I am supposed to listen to the What-- content-- of this kerugmatic and not to the How-- but the What with me as I have said repeatedly is the moral implication of what-one-preaches. Given that the A = B of Barth's life does not make a What I would call 'good Christian conduct'-- the What of his sermonizing-- a drone tweedledum tweedledee of 'music' (I am told to call it music; that it is sinful to call it otherwise) in preachings when the-man-of-sin IS Barth expounding from the Temple. Now the True must leave Barth, the Sinner, as we are instructed by 2 Thessalonians 2. Thus I esteem Barth not to be a man of God, but an apostate who only knows how to make a redundant sermon loosely put-together with Bible verses.

I need to move on. In a not-too-Schleiermacherian way, I find this an exhausting experiment, not an exhaustive experiment: further reiteration of this same Barthian lostness is just not in me to effect. When I deal with yet another Barthian (say from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) I shall when the direct-sales-approach to Barthianism is made, just say 'we don't want any; we got some; but how was Barth resurrected to visit Baptistland in Louisville some ten years after his death on December 10, 1968????'

Hermeneutik und Kritik does not have to be done on false subjects that bore me. The process of understanding is something that I in my station-- looking for true creative reverent behavior-- need to do-- others may want to have this need to fill as well. I think I have given Barth as much logical scientific generosity as the principle of charity and his theses warrant-- to the point of A = B invalidation. Barth "has been weighed in the balances (enough) and found wanting": I shall certainly move onto truly reverent behavior and work.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Prime
Apparition of Archangel Michael in Colossi (Orthodoxy)

2008-09-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

Disturbing Reading about Barth's Discipleship--
To Be Postponed for Deep Consideration for Later--
On the Principle of Charity

I have just finished reading Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth... by Suzanne Selinger (1998); I am almost of mind that this should not be my first-- easiest-- reach for Barth's motivation. For the principle of charity I am diligently trying to follow, I shall put the contents of this writing 'on a back burner' when trying to present Barth's 'strongest case'-- in the spirit of reductio ad absurdum ultimately if that seems warranted. Clearly this material presents in an ad hominem way all the 'fuel to fire' castigation of this Church Father as hypocrite. Barth's strongest suit is not his relationship with his secretary-- which could be said to present either sin or stumblingblock to those who wish to utter pejoratives.

Clearly Barth is 'a European boy' in his facile treatment of marriage in his private life. This screams at one who senses that here is a theologue who is vigorously anti-feminist in his preaching. He may not have had a mistress. But Barth did everything but publicly announce that he had Charlotte as his mistress. An 'American boy' who had recourse to such behavior could be said to 'follow after the sin of Bill Clinton and Monica.' I shall not dwell on this any more than I have to, and mostly in this entry.

The cohabitation of Barth with von Kirschbaum seems to have gone on for more than 30 years. At one point for some months Barth lived with Charlotte apart from his married family. Of course many kinds of ideas come to the natural mind in contemplating this situation. It would be almost demagogic to go beyond here, to say more in going into an alleyway of this type. It is hard not to call it rather 'my stumblingblock,' I repeat, if not Barth's actual sin.

Barth was in the public eye, holding himself out as a Christian exemplar of orthodoxy or neo-orthodoxy. This in itself is different from my stance, holding myself to be nothing in the eyes of God but a sinner. But the sin that crosses my mind as a total possibility with Barth and Charlotte is NOT what I would ever aspire to do-- Christian enough, trying hard enough to seek total discipleship to Jesus. In this I sometimes fail. The question does become: how far down the path to adultery in the Matthew 5:28 sense did this Church Father Barth go? Or was this 'holy sin'??? If the latter possibility obtains, then indeed Barth is 'paradoxed' logically and scientifically with tautology of the Great Sermon violently going counter to the conduct of his life (the A = B in the Fregean sense.) By one more criterion in other words, we may never believe nor disbelieve Barth-- but we shall see how well such theses 'play' in the deep-consideration Barthian reading demands.

It HAS been extremely trying to do these studies. Barth seems to have reputation-- something I do not as a person with bipolar disorder-- several times in mental court-- one 'd.c' (disorderly conduct) NOT filed away in my criminal record. Whether Barth-- holding out himself to be 'some great one' (see Acts 8:9-- about Simon Magus) at least insofar as profession of Divinely Revealed Message-- was indeed 'in the American boy sense' as great as all that.

The American-boy sense-- "one life and one wife"-- of marriage is with near exactitude the New Testament sense-- going no further ethically than the modified 'liberalism' of St. Paul's 'concession' in 1 Corinthians 7. In every way, in ways that Friedrich Schleiermacher Barth's nemesis did not behave, Barth's conduct is violative of New Testament marital ethics. And what is more, it is a violation of Barthian theology-- the 'Anthropologie' of the marriage covenant.

I will say this much: here Schleiermacherian Verstehenanalyse abets a somewhat sympathetic reading of Barth. So Barth behaved in a classically European, cavalier way to Christian marriage. Verstehen aids in a more-positive interpretation, not otherwise. Barth must be understood-- on his strongest logical argument-- from a Schleiermacherian standpoint, not by a Barthian criterion.

I cannot be much kinder to a Church Father-- modelling himself so clearly to be a 'deutero-Aquinas'-- who resorts to this unflattering conduct, in an even more unflattering flaunting of his own teaching. Only belatedly, for the principle of charity I say, shall I dwell much more on this unseemly topic.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Veil (Coptic Office)
Day of St. William of Roskilde (Western Church)
Day of St. Mamas, Martyr (Orthodoxy)

2008-09-01T18:02:00.000-07:00

Still Reading Barth:
This Will Be a Protraction

I think I am reading Barth in the Barthian way-- 'considering well'-- with some thought to the How of the What of his dogmatic in the Schleiermacherian Hermeneutik. I personally find this most tedious. Barth again and again makes the same points, in an 'existentialism' whose premise is extremely redundant and then again discursive writing-- with a highly tendentious point said to be certainly 'from God.'

Accordingly, there will be a hiatus in this Web-log: it will take months and even years to get to the end of this 'tunnel' whose end now looks progressively more minute, tiny, insignificant. Barth the pontiff is showing more than Barth the prophet. This matters greatly as a growing and unshakable pre-conclusion to this 'Kritik.'

All the while, I am reading the Church Fathers, the papyri, philosophy of all eras. I shall try harder to master Coptic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and polish-off my Greek and Latin. Of growing attraction is the theological work of William of Ockham, who facing trial on heresy against the Avignon Pope has compelling things to say about the meaning of orthodoxy/catholicism/Christianity (see "Dialogus" at this link.)

Thus, "I have my work cut out for me." The reader should check-into this site from time to time to see what my progress is. It is looking like a drawn out affair.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Compline
Labor Day (USA)
Day of St. Giles (Western Church)
Beginning of the Indiction (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

Two Passing Topics in My Study of Barth:
Science and (Auto-)Biograph

I am hotly studying Karl Barth, in a hot season. For this entry, I shall none-warmly, factually, touch on two passing topics of this study.

I. The First Topic.

"Dogmatics is a science." So begins the very first sentence of Barth's Englished Dogmatics in Outline (1959, 1949). By 'science,' he says he means, "...an attempt at comprehension and exposition, at investigation and instruction, which is related to a definite object and sphere of activity." (ibid.)

I think I may have some understanding of this defintion, and this explanation of dogmatics. But it would be hard to see by this standard how astrology, enteromancy (fortune-telling from animal entrails), and the earnest side of "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll have a certain comprehension and exposition and thus are science. By a very gracious and to some understudied mathematics-- the discipline of being-consistent-- is also a science; for the purposes of the principle of charity logically and ethically I shall assume that Barth means this sense, that theology is the tautological comprehension and exposition of Christian consistencies (that also happens to be the way I mean theology.)

But the tautologies from which Barth work themselves have inconsistencies, and the tautologies he posits themselves have inconsistencies that reach out just a thought beneath the surface of reading. The Creed Barth expounds upon is the dubiously titled 'Apostle's Symbol,' of Latin construction several centuries status post the Apostles-- and 76 words in Latin picked from thousands perhaps of letters from the 144+ confessions of Christendom; Barth both knows this and writes as much in his Preface here (ibid.) His Ultimate Tautology is the Bible: this Bible I know says to indulge a fool in his folly, and immediately not to indulge a fool in his folly (Proverbs 26:4-5) and other statements which may be satisfied in poetry, but harder in tautology.

This almost becomes tautologizing which can go-anywhere, do-anything; by a doxastic logic such paradoxicality can be neither believed nor disbelieved. Thus by reductio ad absurdum Barth's prime thesis-- the absolute for belief of dogma-- is paradoxed.

II. The Second Topic.

I now have in hand a book which almost goes-the-distance toward fathoming the first theologizing of Barth: Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts by Eberhard Busch (1976, 1975). The English text seems thoughtfully translated by a John Bowden, fitly said to be a Barth scholar.

I have read only the preface to this work. Some of my hindrance concerning the Christian walk of Barth ( A = B in the Fregean sense) have been well-attenuated by Bowden's depiction of Barth as anti-Nazi, pro-trade-union, initially a 'red pastor' for these causes.

The report in this Preface satisfies a notion that Busch's text-- even in English-- will suffice at the level of prolegomenon for study. Deutsch as close to the holographic (handwritten) level of the letters/autobiographs of Barth will be the requisite for sure analysis. Verstehenhermeneutik can only recapitulate at some vastly greater date.

This is only the method of hermeneutics permissible under Schleiermacherian 'house rules' (Greek: oikonomia -- rather "economics"). Barth does not seem to permit this, nor do Barthians for study of Barth-- only to some extent for other matters.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Compline
Day of Ste. Monica (Western Church)
Day of St. Poimen, Ascetic (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

Using the Barthian Method with Barth:
To Ask Some Questions after Hard Reading
In Total Pursuit of Understanding

I am about 30 pages into Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology 1910-1931 by Thomas F. Torrance [2000 (1962)]. This is the most informative book I have found about how one is to read Barth, which is to say in the same way he says he reads, wherein "...ruthless criticism is made the servant of his will to listen." (Torrance, ibid. , page 21.) In this, we are supposed to engage in "...through determined self-renunciation, courageous repentance and most severe-self criticism, before the face of the Word of God." (ibid., page 22.) Barth is thus said to be writing a theological "symphony," in which "...sheer creative power, his ability to produce something new" (ibid., page 23) is shown "...the depth and complexity and yet the sheer simplicity and beauty of this theology in which elements are brought together in a profound and fertile economy of insights which in other minds fall apart in a profound and fall apart into antagonistic positions or at best are only related to one another in some desperate artificial dialectic." (ibid.) In exactly this way we are to engage in "questioning" (ibid., page 19) in such a way as to avoid the faux pas of acting as though this teacher were being interrogated in such a way that the Professor "...were the disciple and the student were the teacher." (ibid., page 21.) Furthermore, we need to fathom the most in depth, profoundest interpretation of Barth, for "Barth is not a theologian one can criticise until one has really listened to him and grasped his work as a whole and discerned its place in the history of theology." (ibid., Preface.)

I think this is an almost-adequate understanding of Torrance's 'way' to read Barth. Accordingly, utterly in the non-malicious mode of the principle of charity to which I have alluded, I have loving questions-- to be answered either by Professor Torrance or Professor Barth. I realize that I have not read all of Barth in German; that would "set me back" probably close to $50,000 with skills at my well-started level for mastering these texts. IF the Barthian method is to always ask Professor Barth in a loving and non-tendentious way about those against whom he engages in "ruthless criticism" (ibid., page 19.) I do suppose the only answer I shall get is by reading the totality of Barth, though, in German-- more by far than the Bible and Creeds which are his ultimate authority; I need to criticize myself and repent if this sounds like the method of every self-aggrandizing and pedantic Professor I have met, who claims for a repetitive, obviously capricious opinion for any question says simply "you misunderstand my deep message; go out and buy all my books at such a cost, and read them until you can be loyal to God's Word and above all repent for your hardness of heart." So in a 'good stab' at heeding all these mandata, I think my mood shall slip into the interrogative.

Here are some beginning questions:

? "Why do I need to repent for any difficulty I have with your method and your content? Are you saying that I need to agree with you-- having the Word of God-- and that I have no truth/Word-of-God because I cannot get with your 'program' ?"

? "What kind of symphony is your opus? Why do I think this musically a theme-and-variations on a highly repetitive message? Why do I who majored (English) in composition find your writing highly redundant, saying the same message in the first lines and pages what seems to obtain in the Nth page written near 1968 (when you died, somewhat more than ten years before you visited Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, USA)?"

? "Why does the 'egg-shell'/first-understanding of your writings, Professor Barth, NOT differ very much from my first reading about you in September 1965, or my reading of Epistle to the Romans and Dogmatics in Outline some few months later?"

? "Why is there no biography or autobiography of your life, who lived very nearly to be octogenarian in fame; and who died about 40 years ago in continuous fame?"

? "Why do your Divine Revelations seem tacitly like every crackpot, fanatic, and psychotic with whom I have had encounter; is this result of that for which I need more self-criticism and repentance, for in the mode of the Muslim who 'witnessed' to me only on the condition that 'you agree' would the teaching continue?"

? "Why does your text on Romans as 'commentary' hardly at all seem 'loyal' to Paul, but rather more in the spirit of making-up-a-long-sermon-with-one-semi-valid-thesis?"

? "How is it science-- theological or otherwise, when you begin with the premise, 'Take my word for it" when not so with other theologues speaking theologically-- the Church Fathers, nor Aquinas, nor Anselm, nor Ockham, or any other preachers of truth who are not monomaniacs?"

? "If you find these questions tendentious and leading toward some hostile end, do the questions always have to be agreeable yet in 'ruthless criticism' in order that they might be framed for you (both of you, Barth and Torrance)?"

I know reasonably well that my 'answer' will consist of "you don't understand me yet; read on; buy my books and be loyal to me." But essentially the same questions have arisen since first bare exposure to Barth, Church Father. Whether he is the Authority for Evangelicals and Catholics means that for some reason agree with his content = "appeal to the masses," argumentum ad populum. This means an expensive reading-on with suggestion of the same message on about every page, more than any writer in my experience, of any persuasion, any profundity, any religion. Even Aquinas and Schleiermacher -- who wrote about as much as Barth-- demand that I read deeply every word of the opus in order to get the gist of a part/passage. But I shall do this reading, in German to the degree that I can, in order to effect "understanding the utterance of the utterer at least as well as the utterer on first hearing, and then better," a Schleiermacherian principle in which your Barthian excoriation of Schleiermacher disapproves, but which you demand-- loyalty-- for yourself.

Nor is it the case that I "don't believe the Bible": Holy Writ is tautological, axiomatic: I glean it for its every mystery. That you seem to be interested, Professor Barth, Professor Torrance, to have me without falsification possible to accord with you is a somewhat more-challenging task. I shall nevertheless in the principle of charity heed what you say and read-on.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Vespers
Day of St. Louis, King (Western Church)
Day of St. Bartholomew, Apostle (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-19T19:26:00.000-07:00

A Preface to Reading the Biograph Re Barth & Kirschbaum--
The One Best Biograph I Can Find
About this Church Father

I have a copy of Suzanne Selinger's Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth (1998); it may have some interest for me, as I study the Church Dogmatics to greater proficiency (meaning I have only read the Outline... thus far.) I have said that the relation between the two subjects is not of immense interest to me, in part because I have never been one to tease the unknown from known in the form of 'muckraking,' and further because I am pivotally more interested in Barth's earlier years-- for which no biograph competently exists, as far as I can determine.

Reading this work will thus be a requirement for understanding/Verstehen; I am more interested in spiritual/noetic/motivational matters than in 'physics' and whether-there-was-impure-lust in this Church Father amounts to an almost irrelevant question for now.

In short, while it is even theoretically impossible to accomplish, I wish to aspire to a tabula rasa on Barth. I shall no doubt proffer recapitulative opinion about Barth, but knowing my objectives and my personality and my experiences, I shall likeliest put these conjectures into abeyance until a fuller Gestalt emerges. The message to which Barth would wish to give me as one of his readers may not be agreeable, but I shall desire to postpone conclusiveness until far into this ongoing digest of reading-- indeed from the Schleiermacherian model I can but be somewhat uncertain about the motivational factors for Barth or any 'utterer.'

One of my biases is that I am somewhat detached from gender issues which seem to be all the rage in academia. I like women, wish to promote their agendas to the degree that these are not succinctly un-Christian. But I am not a woman, cannot see or be like a woman; my disdain for men in general comes from my perception of cultural male violence. That is about all I can muster for thoughts about sexism-- feminism-- or all the -isms associated with the madding crowd of late. "Good and bad in everything and everyone" seems to be a truism to me.

I am only contributing this input for reference. I want to go on record as having a 'tuned null' attitude with regard to Barth and his attitudes about women. I simply do not know enough save for what I have read on Internet and may hear in 'gossip' about this potentially sensitive part of Barth's life. This reading therefore simply amounts to background material for a protracted study-- then an empirical assay based on sound understanding.

Those who would expect diatribe or yet-more-gossip on a great man or a lesser man will likely be disappointed herein. Everyone according to my own dogmatic is a 'sinner'-- a tell-all-attitude is not what I wish to do now. Instead, the What in the context of the How of Barth's 'soul' has become the Ding an Sich for examination. This, I believe, will be the-most-interesting, but if it emerges that somehow Barth colors his writs with inconsistency, I shall by all means convey that surmise.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Midnight (Coptic Daily Office)
Day of St. John Eudes (Western Church)
Day of Great Martyr Andrew Stratelates (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

After Reading Barth, After Reflection

These are 'midnight thoughts' in reflection on having read thus far in Karl Barth:

A. I suppose there would have to be people-- yea a lot of people-- who would be edified by preaching that calls the Schleiermacherian trend (if it may be called that) some kind of heresy for hypothetically leaving-God-out-of-the-equation enough to foment war (Barth1 and thereafter). There would also be people in reference to Barth2 who have no problem with a kind of prophet who expounds on the 76 Latinate words of the Apostles' Creed in the certainty that this is --revelation-- a sure miracle. This seems to be exactly the What that Barth not with any sense of trying to persuade-- again hypothetically-- but to proclaim the Sure Word of God.

B. What may be hard for me is the insistence on Divine Certainty, which in my world has always been the "God's-on-our-side" of Pied-Pipers, demogogues, and in large complement psychotics. Now one with my biases, I trow, indeed might have difficulties with such call-of-Jahweh claims. I am one who holds to a notion that all-truth-is-God's-truth-- and 'by the fruits' of one's professed tautology -- the initial symbolic logic of utterance-- the A = B after the A = A. I would have no qualms whatsoever about claims that were backed with discipleship behavior. Since there is no authorized biograph of Barth, one is left to piece together motivational scenarios from what is known. And if true Barth to the degree that he is saintly would have no qualms for this method-- which does derive with precision from the Great Sermon of Jesus (see Matthew 7:20, etc.)

C. Following the semiotic of Verstehen, I can suggest that at least two scenarios may come from such ideal-typing. The first would be to depict the Sitz im Leben of Barth in penning his utterances. A second type might be the putative audience who would find Barthian contributions attractive. Other scenarios with other putative motivations for other audiences can of course be imagined. I shall for now only focus on these two typologies.

D. Barth is (scenario type one) motivated strongly to redeem the Church from the sinful tendencies he witnesses-- the lack of revealed preaching consistent with the Creeds and other testimonies of Christendom. To him and to his approach, a correct Kerygma would be one speaking with clarity and with certainty from God; he is sure that this will always produce messages exactly as the traditional witness of Christianity has been. From the factuality he would possess from God, the 'old old story' would be re-told for new ways and times, in a sure pastoralism.

E. The most-receptive audience for Barth would seem to be intrinsically Calvinist-- but with some decidedly non-Calvinist (possibly in this sense 'modern') slants-- away from predestination toward some hybrid that rather accomodates freewill. Barth is NOT fundamentalist: his preaching of the Word is self-reputedly founded in a textual understanding OF the science-of-religion; the preaching of this Word does seem to follow a crypto-Pentecostal model of sequence faith:knowledge. There may be some others who CERTAINLY are not Pentecostalists who cherish Barth's message, but from the look of it the most-receiving-audience would like some feeling for a prophetic certainty professed to darken prospects for those after Schleiermacher who were as interested in what I repeatedly have called the How along with the What.

F. I do not feel that I am errant for some hard study of Barth's psychosocial reality. That Barth's message does not 'swallow well' now simply has to do with the baggage of hard learned lessons about those who preach-- including the certain prophets who live in asylums and psychiatric nursing homes. Barth's life-- and life after death-- is seemingly only cursorily known apart from the written record-- including whatever record the Louisville Courier-Journal daily may have about the visit of Barth to local Southern Baptist Seminary some 10+ years after his death on December 10, 1968. But consistent with psychobiography, these matters and other indications of motivational time-series will have impact on the 'constellation' I can construct about this newer Protestant Church Father.

This construction of an ideal-personality-type is completely consistent with what I know to be true-- and likewise jibes perfectly with the "psychological exegesis" in the Schleiermacherian hermeneutic. Given the potential for quantification found in the Verstehenanalyse in Schleiermacher, Max Weber, and (I think) Wilhelm Wundt and Ewald Hering-- early psychologists in the tradition of phenomenology, I think I am on solid methodological and topical ground in pursuing this. To those would would cast aspersions on this project-- I would only ask simply, "What is the objection if I am only concerned for finding the truest-fit with reality?" Barth does believe in reality he pointedly says as proof of God's Providence. Ergo?

ANTEPENULTIMATE CONCLUSION:

My fatigue would be the only material factor working against these designs. From the look of it, Barth is only 'neo-orthodox' in a limited sense. There are emerging questions about what this professed orthodoxy consists; there is even a sense that in the universal/catholic sense Barth may not be so 'ortho'. He does not seem to mind 'cherry picking' texts-- does not mind picking-and-choosing his pre-text for dogmatism. This very tendency may have a motivational predisposition-- perchance to be 'gadfly' or provocateur. These are only tenuous and tentative pre-pre-pre-conclusions for now.

To the A = A presently I can feel only a tepid identification with Barth's Kerygma, for the reasons I have reiterated above and at other times. But to Barth's Christian behavior-- in the more-valid sense I shall evaluate his prophetic ministries. To the degree that human-all-to-human motives can be attributed to this Conservative Existentialist, I think I shall be able to claim missing-the-mark. I could never factually dispute Barth's 'transcendental' claim to be speaking/preaching God's Revelation; I could not even do this for the transcendental claims of a paranoid schizophrenic who surely felt he could slay his daughter with Divine Calling as Abraham might have treated Isaac-- 'because of being in the sanctuary with the butcherknife and the girl... and no lamb appeared.' Here with Barth as with the schizophrenic child-slayer, the standard will have been not so much the tautology-- always unprovable beyond A = A-- versus the consequence A = B of conduct derivative from tautological symbolism.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Veil (Coptic Daily Office)
Day of St. Louis of Toulouse (Western Church)
Day of St. Andrew Stratelates, Martyr (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-18T14:43:00.000-07:00

Applying the Brakes:
I Beckon Myself to Circumspection
In Reading Karl Barth

At the present time, I think I need denouement of sorts; in reading the past entries, I balk at the somewhat irksome tone of my comments on Barth.

Barth wants me to heed his message, as practically any preacher does. The problem is that this form of preaching does not "speak" to me, and looks human-all-too-human in motive-- if not banal. Were I not a person accustomed to interpreting people who say they have direct inspiration from God as being part of a great host of deranged and megalomaniac people, the task of sorting out Barth's goodness would be easier. But he sounds familiarly like the Fundamentalists and fanatics I have met, both outside and inside the 'asylum.' It could be that I shall never 'agree' that accusedly-profane people engaged in the scientific study of religion are 10000% humanists who have forgotten God; it could possibly be that that Barth's message will always have a tone of falsity to me therefore. But the objective at this point is to understand the prevailing theologists held with esteem by Fundamentalists.

[Whether this endorsement of Barth by Fundamentalists is warranted may be another matter; Barth's written sentiments about the place for the historical-critical method, and his non-literalist reading of the Bible would hardly make him a 'Fundamentalist' in the-whole. Barth may thus be a 'broken stick' to lean upon by theological conservatives.]

My sample of the total Barth corpus probably approaches one tenth; this only means that I have not read Church Dogmatics-- a large and very expensive and incomplete 'set' that my present incentive to acquire and read is only a little higher than reading all the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) for the United States. There is a strong sense that I do not like the What of Barth-- and have found his How long since suspect-- so this profundissimo of understanding will be a goal hard-to-come by.

Really, I do not much care whether Barth had a long-time-something with Charlotte von Kirschbaum; this seems to have been the product of a late-life involvement, pattern for which comes from a younger -- if not youthful-- Barth with particular focus on his first pastoral experiences in Safenwil. This biography and some better annotation about his 'crisis' in World War I are desiderata. I in no wise wish to be a 'muckraker'; however for the purposes of Verstehen I need to gather what information I can about the stimulus motivation from which the first theologizing derives, and then the formation of the 'frame' in which the CD was cast. These would seem to be a minimum requirement for a hylebiopsychosocial understanding.

In short, I need to ease up on the 'judgments' as required by my method. I am only engaged in a 'yes-but' -- but a potentially-terminable yes-but-- by anything but the adherence to the techniques of Verstehen. I think this is fair-play; for those who play yes-but with me, however, there may be no satisfaction in this approach.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Vespers
Ste. Helena's Day

2008-08-16T17:32:00.000-07:00

Settling-In for the Long-Haul with Barth:
More and More and More Readings
Re His Dogmatic Certainties

As intended pious behavior, The Epistle to the Romans needs to get my best reading. I have read it I say a couple of times at least, once a long time ago, and rapidly some days ago, with my slow and thoughtful reading now. My goal is to understand this preaching-- the What as the desideratum of the leaning author-- and along the way for hermeneutic try fathoming the How, and the How-of-What for this indulgence. Using the canon of Schleiermacher, all these 'three types of lectionary' are appropriate.

Of the three types of readings, however, the third is-- here now-- superior. Then the degree of repetitiveness and utterance of same-message-this-way, same-message-that-way, same-message-all-other-ways becomes like hearing a man out with greetings redundantly uttered each day. Then what Roman Jakobson called the 'phatic level' of communication-- intercommunion-- may set in, in neighborly ways of dealing with one-issue people in all walks of peripatetic philosophy.

The teachers of 'dialogue' would include Barth; oddly what I am encountering ('close encounters of the read-kind') is almost perfectly monologue. I think it is rude to interrupt the preacher, so for this homily of 500+ pages I need to heed more than answer. Should I occasionally punctuate this heeding with certain 'Amens'-- 'Truth'-- pertinent to expletive, one would have to say that I am in a tradition where such 'truthing' is a possibility, and not to be deemed impious of necessity.

Barth is saying ( up to and including comment on Romans 2:5) that revelation comes from the Void, that the Void instructs that there are those deprived of God-- the object of this homiletic treatment-- who need to discard profane human orientations and reconcile with the God who speaks from the Void. Barth as I suggest has already lined out the parameters of this message; I can with zero prophetic skills assert that this will be said again mutatis mutandis. Dialogue I shall in the long ride coming to page 544 (English trans) or page 525 (German text.)

But I do think that dialogue with Barth might be conducive to Amen/Truthing along the way, I say, to make this other than an obvious 'monology.' A heart that has been scarred by preacher's judgment SHOULD NOT 'apply' to this process; I need to get-over these scars of bygone to meet Barth the man for his purpose to get-right one now in his fold who may be going astray into sinful Hows and Hows-of-Whats.

The principle of charity-- a canon of logic-- requires my highest devotion to this text-- then to understand the man and motive behind the text. The principle of charity-- a Christian principle-- does mean loving the neighbor Barth as myself-- and thus truthfully addressing the preacher as the component of love that touches-self the. Amen.

...Whether I shall learn Barthianism thus well to practice his method with 'my little nutcracking hammer' on other projects to sufficiency remains to be seen. I shall to my utmost TRY however.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Compline
Day of St. Laurence Lauricatus, Hermit (Western Church)
Day of St. Diomedes, Martyr (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

Report on Two Books ABOUT Barth--
More Work Establishing a Prolegomenon
To a Verstehenanalyse of Barthianism

It is "the midnight hour" here in this hovel. For the past few hours, I have been digesting a couple of books about Karl Barth. In the principle of charity, then with some after-burp, I shall precis these readings.

With the succession of new and more informatics about this theologue, my 'guess-o-logy' will probably come to be less and less pronounced, and by the time real Verstehen occurs, I wonder if from this understanding a project of concurrence will happen; or something else. There is coming to be some recognition that first-impressions have more than a modicum of validity, which impression for the purpose of the 'null' I pursue I wish to put aside or at least minimize until in the truly Schleiermacherian sense, I can permit myself real dogmatics about Barth's dogmatics.

The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, edited by John Webster (2000) is a collection of essays that summarize the life (cursorily) and theology (in much more detail) of Barth. Here in the collection of essays on these matters, I read that Barth's first objective is to preach the Word of God as Truth. In this particular work, my impression that Barth's approach to Dogmatics is of one who clearly sees this Truth, and is thus freed to expound. There is also confirmation that a kind of Barth1-- witnessed in Romerbrief-- and Barth2-- in the subsequent writings is a real pattern-- representing a twofold shift from modernism and then from Redephilosophie (say, homily) to credalism as revealed crypto-axiomatic Truth. Anselm, Dogmatics in Outline, and Kirchliche Dogmatik would thus be Barth2 creations.

In both this work, and the one I shall shortly introduce as another of tonight's readings, Barth is described as a kind of patriarch of 'postmodernism.' In the other work I read tonight in fact, Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology, by Graham Ward (1995), Barth is shown to have a fundamental aversion to the scientism of his mentor/professors from days in universities in Berlin and Marburg, and some complete identification of this scientific trend Barth equated the German theologians' support of the war effort in WWI with a humanism that left-God-out-of-the-equation. The the comparison between Barth and the work of Derrida, Levinas, Kristeva is further drawn here, but in every kind of fairness this seemed tendentious-- and it seemed to me that Barth's 'post-modernist' tendency was an effort to shun in an Evangelical way the force of fairly substantive readings re the etiological correlates of Bible and revelation.

Nevertheless, the charge 'you just do not understand this great existential thinker, Karl Barth' is progressively becoming more tenuous. I suppose that if "preaching" in my autobiograph would ever count for something more than an obligation for the church member to just endure-- not seldom with apparent 'digs'/pointed-reference by preachers to some 'bady' in the congregation-- then I could be a little more sympathetic to Barth's insistence that he has Truth he wishes to preach to me-- from the God of Gods, he says, with absolutely no doubts.

But the sermons I have heard-- and Epistle to Romans and Dogmatics in Outline would have to be included in this -- do NOT typically add much if anything to my faith-walk. Preachers including Barth seem to have in mind keeping some flock in moral check-- with the bludgeon of hard persuasion and passive-aggression and not-a-little name-calling. My walk in faith with near completeness has to endure the-preachers as something for which I must in so many words pay-tithe (if not more, your money and your life.)

But where I 'live and move and have my being' ( compare Acts 17:28), I need hand-to-hand combat with an Adversary who wants money at every turn, especially hush-money and dues of all types, enforced with a requirement for deference that is nauseating. But stoop I must-- to evil when I am trying to do my Psalter and love the Bible of petting-kitty-feeding-watering-kitty and someday (hoping I outlive) burying kitty in a solitude enforced with insults and the heavy hand of (criminal) justice with psychiatry good enough to handcuff me and whisk me to asylum for praying. Preachers are NEARLY ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT to this floundering required, to get from Point A to Point B in the connect-the-dots of my thrown/flopped existence.

Barth's sermon in The Epistle to the Romans reminds me whelmingly of the raving sermons my hell-fire-damnation preacher maternal grandfather-- subject I trow but without checks to the same decompensatory psychoticism as I-- would issue against the sinners. The tone and the style and the repetitiveness compares quite effectively between "Crazy Sim's preachins" and what I have heard now ad nauseam from Barth. And Barth does not sound qualitatively a lot different than a huge number of Baptist-land evangelists in my life-experience, in fury fulminating from a pulpit that congregators must perforce say, "Preached us a good one again t'night, Brother Fumpy!"

Such preachers did have me with the rest of honors high school students in Florence (KY) Baptist Church forswear "Devil Monkey Evolution" when I was scoring at the 99.9%ile in science at the time-- and probably new more science than the broadcast engineer who televisioned this hellion's favorite Billy Graham Crusade. I HAVE come to appreciate Creed as the What-- as Barth would insist-- but with Frege I would stipulate that the A = A of Creed go with A = B of the Way:Truth:Life which is at least constructive for something-- not a moral repudiation of almost-everthing-but-saying-the-Word.

To a consummate level, science, which studies Hows and is nothing but the discipline of being factual-- can limn the behavior of Barth. The How of the What can then become apparent. If Barth would Word us in nothing but his superior knowledge from God, then I wonder whether his life, the A = B matches this meeting-of-God-with-Barth. In this way, books now at my attention -- Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth by Suzanne Selinger (1998) are beginning to suggest that the A = B of Barth's life is openable as a book, and thus read-- for truth or consequences.

In such a way too, I am inclined to wonder about such things as Karl Barth 'visiting' Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, USA about the turn of 1980-- when in fact he was supposed to have DIED on December 10, 1968 (the exact date of Thomas Merton's electrocution.) Was it the case that Barth was 'resurrected' for this visit to Louisville? Or is there some not-too-holy not-too-flattering -- but solvable -- mystery ahead with regard to the A = B of Barth and Barthians?

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Veil (Coptic Daily Office)
Day of St. Stephen of Hungary (Roman Church)
Day of St. Diomedes, Martyr (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-14T18:21:00.000-07:00

Retooling: I Do a Rapid Re-Read of Romerbrief --
To Be Coupled with Meticulously Close Reading--
In an Effort to Effect Understanding/Verstehen--
A Long Day's Journey Into Night Seems to Ensue

PRELIMINARIES

In a way that is both congenial to my reading habits, give or take, as well as to be true to the method of Schleiermacher, I have done just now a swift-- prone to error-- rapid overview reading of Epistle to the Romans. This will have been accompanied by a consumately careful (slow) reading of this book, parallel to a reading in Deutsch.

SUMMARY

I should have done this on receipt of this book some days ago, but was relying on the memory of my 1965ish reading, as well as every wish to put the best and most-positive slant on Barth, with whom I think I may have fundamental disagreement.

Simply, reiteratively from every reading I have done of Barth, he put-into his interpretation of a text what is his own, not the author's material. This would be about as problematic as any other highly subjective commentary IF the content is sustainable in a convincing-- authentically owned here-- way; if I persist in reading the same essentialism from fraudulence as bemarks a 'cry-baby,' this will show in all ways. Barth's 'commentary' may be problematic in this last-designated way; his approach to the What-- and the How-- so I speculate to the How-of-the-What by a method well known to preachers, i.e. to start with the Bible-- and by exposition put in every kind of personalized opinion to 'bless out' opponents of some sand-castle or sin or another in theology. The Expositor's Bible as far as I have heard is certainly of the literary genre akin to this work by Barth. As such, with considerable indulgence for creativity, what for Barth for some reason has done is use Romans as a pre-text for a work that para-textually is not far from a long and repetitive sermon about 'bad guys,' the liberals not-too-secretly cast as sinners for following in the footsteps with digression from Schleiermacher.

This criticism to which Barth expresses is veiled for the most-part; clearly Barth is writing with a high level of negative critique at someone sinful, and says at every turn of paratext something bad about these malefactors. Psychologically, for long there has been a word for such veiled hostility-- not quite reaching the point of proper-noun nomenclature. To psychiatrists and psychologists, this veiled kind of referential hostility is called passive-agression. Whether Barth indeed 'wears this hat' is now a conjecture open for investigation; prior to this now, I had taken Barth from the Preface(s) to mean that he intends a straightforward presentation of Paul's true propositions in Romans; now the table has turned perforce of getting into the 60s of pages for this work by close-read, and all the way through this work a second time with a rapid-reading.

I know not the Deutsched original wording; indeed only with utmost superficiality do I know the whole text at all. But this is a text that in English goes over and over the same theses with the same points, each point a replication of something said several times in the text. In a whopperjawed kind of way, its need for a 'blue pencil' of editorial work would be an inviting comment to make, as a person who likes relatively non-redundant writing. This sort of say-again-and-again writing is witnessed in Nietzsche; the work Thus Spake Zarathustra is of this apparently telling needs-editing style. Barth likes Kierkegaard, but the Dane is marked by a something-different at each turn of phrase; one must follow Kierkegaard closely as this penetrating innovation is easily lost, and hard-to-attain first of all. On the contrary, one can pick up Barth at almost any point in a random-read and in a few minutes get the very same sort of message as anywhere else in Romerbrief, with very little sense of progression.

PLAN

I do need to get Romerbrief in German; that I think can happen tomorrow, not much later. While this still increasingly is seeming to be a narrowing tunnel with only a hopelessly deceitful promise of light at the narrowest-neck, I need for my own benefit to see with extremity of charity where all this Barthian tunneling leadeth. With the texts I have, and can get, about Barth's vita, and the texts by this now-established Church Father, I can begin to magnificence decipher Barth's beloved What (in every way it can be meant), his How, and the How-of-the-What. For such tasks, the hearing out of the well-established to the point of folly, and for putting the best-face on this hearing, then proceeding with truth I am conditioned by much social justice work in the context of State bureaucracies; in these dimensions, from here now it would appear that Barth differs only in kind, not in quality.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Compline
Day of St. Maxmillian Kolbe (Roman Catholicism)
Day of the Prophet Micah (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

Reorientation: I Need Verstehen of Barth
At a More-Fundamental/Most-Fundamental Level
Prior to Any Dogmatic Appropriation of His Method(s)

PRECIS

In the last entry, it is apparent that I betrayed negativity with regard to a re-reading of Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans. As I am trying to among other objectives use the canons of logic, I think now I need to heed "the principle of charity" in which one first of all tries to expound upon the strongest-suit of a theses before in any way by analysis to effect "tearing it down" (if that will prove redemptive at the end of a thorough-worked process which I 'own.')

The strong point in this close re-read seems to be: there is a crisis in theology, which occurs when folk have a No-God denial of His ways; this makes a theological defining moment in theologizing.

Barth is a 'What' man-- he is not concerned at a level I would be about the 'How of the What'-- rather his interests-- using a method which structurally has affinities for allegory-- he uses the first text of Romans to pastorally launch out to a new engagement-- with his vision of God in the world. I would call Barth's approach to Scripture here as a 'permutation' of pastoral tendency which has always obtained in religious experience-- the tendency to seek a (it is not too hard to say 'facile') pragmatic application for the community to which address is given. This kind of writing reminds me of Fathers like Epiphanius (4th century Christian) or Philo Judaeus (1st century BC Jewish theologue) in starting from one cue in Holy Script-- then going where the theses of the author would deign to go.

Nor is it even true that Protestantism necessarily adopts the approach to text used by Erasmus-of-Rotterdam/Thomas-More/John-Colet-- which mutatis mutandis has been passed onto us now under the rubric of 'historical criticism,' or perchance as Schleiermacher's Hermeneutik . There has always been a pastoral trend in all Christian theology, and I think in every fairness I can say the assumption in this mode has been to assume that text-received is just-fine as conventionally/personally understood-- and to go from there.

The 'How of the What' with Barth does suggest that his 'crisis' was of a different order than mine; my pretense that my crisis was more fundamental for (my) faith than a squabble with liberal professors bygone is merely a value judgment-call that will have to be made on an individual basis. We will bypass my observation that fundamentally Barth is motivated by a form of revenge -- writing a text which in every way violated the canons of scholarship in which he had been taught -- to "trash" the Christian walk of those with whom he (for whatever reason) decided to unleash this argument, which could be taken as ad hominem diatribe. All these things will now be 'short-circuited' out of the logic of what my approach to Barth will now be.

PLAN:

I. I need a concentration on Barth's writing, with no assumption on my part prior as to what I think it "should mean." It would appear that Verstehen is required for study of this author to whom Verstehenanalyse was part of the problem, not anything like contributory to solution. The "dogmatic interpretation" of Barth is important for a couple of reasons: A. the 'dogmatic' is the thrust of the essential message/What of Barth; B. the 'dogmatic' by strictest Schleiermacherian orientation is likewise obligatory-- after the philological work is done.

I am here hamstrung. Virtually all the texts of Barth that I can conveniently acquire are in English; he wrote almost every word of his opus in Deutsch. In reading the English, I should in each instance regard this as ersatz Barth, and make every effort status post digesting this English to obtain the German.

My irritation abides with the apparent minutia of the issues which form -- with the test-approach-- the stimulus/pretext for these writings may be transitory. Still, in the required logic I vow, the charity works in the direction of understanding all things about Barth, the 'What,' the 'How,' and the 'How of the What'-- reaching for total-systems understanding "at least as well as the utterer on utterance, and then better." As I am human, these matters will occasionally voice as negative-- and yea no doubt betimes as positive-- but my real objective in Finis will have been a dogmatic explication AFTER all the philological and prolegomonic elaboration.

II. The study I planned-- using a series of works sampled from The Web and explicated via Barthian ('1' or '2') approaches to writing, versus my own method-- consonant with the logic of William of Ockham who said "The ability of a doctrine to handle objections is a sign of its truth" (Summa Logicae 1:17, Loux's translation, 1974, page 84; for the Latin text see this link.)

This task-- preassigned sampling of paired combinations of words-- 'searched'/'Googled'-- on which I will do Barth1 and Barth2 renderings versus my/the-Scholastic reductio will still be done. However, in view of circumstances, I think I shall publish these on Google Base, concentrating in the first instance on the first-understanding prior to any dogmatic generation-- the Verstehenanalyse to the degree I can of Barth-himself-- then to wax dogmatic in a clearly Schleiermacherian idiom-- when then I can with priorities met-- "pass judgment."

CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT

I was telling a friend in a communique last night that with Barth studies, there is a kind of 'diminishing return'-- while at every breath Barth says that we need deepest understanding of him-- certainly to buy and read his many many many writings-- the further I go in this process his 'What' seems rather progressively trivializing. This is like "being in a long dark tunnel with the hint/promise of light-at-end," being fabulous, a 'prize' unavailable at the terminus-- just a way to make the prols keep on working in the dark:darkness.

This sense of alienation about the relevance of Barth's What, as well as his How, and especially the How-of-the-What will need to be constantly checked as onward I go. There is a sense of getting-less-the-further-I-go which belittles the What of which Barth so vigorously would have us study as sacrosanct. I care not if Barth is considered an "authority" in Baptist and other Evangelical seminaries; to consider this alone is a fallacy in logic well known-- and having the name ad hominem to the Scholastics onward. Nor is 'littleness' per se objectionable to me: I aspire to it solely in this my hovel, just enough to keep-clean in the Kingdom of God.

The principle of charity is one that requires big understandings-- from the 'ground up.' In such a way-- stumbling a bit naturally with what I think are loving guesses-- I shall before all things consider the strongest-strong-points of Barth; then wax dogmatic. That seen from his sacred What and his How and his How-of-What ongoingly, I sense progressive weakness-- is a factoring that needs address, but not a slackening of attention to the task.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of None

Day of St. Maximillian Kolbe,
Polish Priest, Hung 17th century (Roman Catholicism)

Day of the Prophet Micah (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

Cuddled Crisis:
"Loyalty" to Barth's "Loyalty" to Paul Ends--
Ending This Phase of Hypothesis
As to How to Accomodate to Barth

I am now a few pages-- at page 63-- in Barth's Epistle to the Romans. The reading I am giving the work now, after a quick 'summary read' in college days, gives a conclusion now about as the first-- that his method is eisegetic. The closeness of detail in which I read the Preface-- with its promise solemnly in description of the commentator's relation to Paul that "he is to place himself in relation to his author of utter loyalty" (page 17.) Clearly in going where he has with Paul, this 'loyalty' certainly looks like adding-onto the text, and this must be what Barth means in utterance immediately thereafter as his intent to comment "on" Paul not "with" him.

Like an analogical method, in which any sense can be taken to mean the desired sense in the writer (such as we read in Hebrews and Philo Judaeus), in such a work as this given the most sympathetic reading would require attention to the "message;" the "how" is seemingly a tick-tack that could be constructed from any stimulus to text. As to the message of Barth in this commentary, I find it topsy-turvy -- but saying analogous things to me in the allusion to crisis--but utterly in a wrongheaded way-- about matters in complete opposition to what I find real-- and thus true.

In 1965, I was instructed in the Episcopal Church that Barth in this book describes a 'theology of crisis,' and knowing little more than to borrow and peruse the book from the University of Kentucky Library (Margaret Keane), I assumed that the 'crisis' of which Barth was writing was something like the crises I was experiencing-- being jilted right and left by women with whom I felt infatuated mostly... and some other silliness. Later, I read that Barth's crisis had occurred because his liberal German profs had during WWI signed an affirmation of loyalty to the war policies of Kaiser Wilhelm. Barth did not like that. Had he been German instead of Swiss-German, perhaps Epistle to the Romans would not have been written, from what I can gather about what "the crisis of theology" was at the time with Barth. All Swiss subjects are required to do military service: 'conscientious objection' as known in the USA is not legally possible, short of leaving the country. Barth must have been in some sense therefore 'a military man' who went with Swiss military policies: which are real: you-hit-us-we-will-hit-back-10000000X-harder. It was engaging in 1965 to read something that was almost true then-- 'girl problems,' not being attractive, and all that detritis. But knowing these factors, I cannot accordingly see this writ as 'pacifism' that would be a turn-the-other-cheek, but more on the order of -- consistent with my land's foreign policies I am writing something consistent with those foreign policies-- in favor of neutrality in other words of Switzerland in that fray and the ones after (down to the American Cold War with Russia.)

Thus, now reading what I thought was eisegesis read from a borrowing in haste in 1965 has become in 2008 just human-all-too-human (with apologies that this phrase derives from Nietzsche.) As a general theology that Krisis engenders rightness-with-God I am quite amenable to hear. For the stimulus (a theme on which I shall subsequently give more treatment) of the human-all-too-human-ness of Barth in "his crisis" I am hardly more than tepidly sympathetic.

Nor indeed can I be. My major and prime crisis took me in directions radically away from the What on which Barth had targeted Romerbrief. In 1977, the crisis was manic exaltation, coming in two phases "an unreal" in which I assumed:lived:meant every word of the New Testament, especially exemplified in the Great Sermon-- followed by "reality" in which I realized that this concrete orientation to meaning-every-phoneme of the Bible was illusory-- confusion (see 1 Corinthians 14:33 in whatever text-- my King James simply says 'confusion' is not of God: good words.) Only by painful (betimes) adherence to a reality-principle, and to rigorous validation of pat assumptions IN EVERY SINGLE CASE thereafter do I avoid the 'confusion'-- and in each case when I go-back just a wee wee wee bit to fundamentalist concrete totality-- it is time to go to the mental hospital again-- usually with little variance in handcuffs like a criminal.

I see the good message of the eisegesis being squandered for a cause/'stimulus' that I find business-as-usual. I do not think "liberalism" is the problem with Barth here: it is preacher-preaching-at-targets-from-the-lectern-- commonly known to be the most-banal form of behavior that a cleric can perpetuate. Barth's 'response' taken atop the piles of projection in which he approaches innocent-enough Paul is just about readable as 'okay.' But here/now it seems to be good words from which many in numerous settings could derive benefit-- but inspired by a moral cry-baby pusillanimity and a get-back in a not-at-all-turn-other-cheek way to those Barth found disagreeable.

Barth's 'Krisis' would seem to be hardly any different in this work from the effort of a disgruntled student to poo-poo the work of his profs-- with whom somehow at a time he finds himself at odds. I doubt if Barth went into some ecstatic 'flip' to press this ongoing ongoing ongoing business in which he need not have invoked any part of Paul to write-- but instead-- as man-- could have just written and pressed in some 'alternative media' of the time.

I shall continue this slow, second read of Barth-- in particular here the Epistle to the Romans. It is said that Barth smacks of existentialism; the 'existence' ('stimulus') in this case is hardly more than motivated by revenge. I regret if this causes consternation in any reader (the half of one besides me) in this Web-log, but for such ponderosity I can hardly be more kind.

Accordingly, I think I really need to tune-into Barth and his message-- his response-- as one component of analysis-- then try to reconstitute the stimulus-end of this communique. 'Clay feet' are coming to mind as a metaphor with this kind of writing, and thus the 'message'-- and the style-- in subsequent assays proposed will have been 'flavored'/'colored'/influenced. At present point in reading, the 'crisis' at root with Barth is just the sort of mousey pablum I hear people utter when trying to describe their altered-state-of-consciousness 'religious experiences'-- whereas I who have had earthquake altered-state-of-consciousness know that this crisis is REAL and needs treatment with REALITY more than indulgence for whining. And these are at present very nearly the kindest words I can utter about the 'crisis' which stimulated Barth to write this eisegetic book.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Compline
Day of St. Hippolytus, Martyr (Western Church)
Day of the Apodosis of the Transfiguration (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-12T15:11:00.001-07:00

Excursus on the Last Excursus:
Metaphors Potentially Serving for Analogous Reason
Concerning the Development of Canonical Truth
(Side-Thoughts Appropriate to Barthian 'Ways')

I have within the past 24 hours completed reading two works by Karl Barth-- Anselm: Fides Quarens Intellectum (1960, translation) and The Humanity of God (1968, translation); these readings do convince me that there is at least a 'Barth 1' and 'Barth 2' as I suggested in the last entry-- an evolution over time-- and there may be an expansion of categories for this or perhaps a continuous distribution. At any rate, I find with regard to what I shall postulate as Barth 1 fairly 'tight' understanding of text, then homiletics, but in Barth 2 more like a 'faith flashlight' in which with some perceived certainty of discernment of 'ultimacy' Barth goes about pronouncement on faith-topics and otherwise.

I am frankly coming to suspect that this 'faith flashlight' in Barth amounts to little more than a consistency deriving from canonical postulates. This means that in a propositional sense, Barth uses the canons of (certain) Creed and Biblical Canon as a kind of illumination which is virtually tautological from these postulates; Barth is 'pastoral' in working from these pre-defined canons, which then become tautologies subject to the rigorous logic applying to these. This-- as he says in Dogmatics in Outline (1959, translation), page 15, is really in logic Ockham would understand a "what" (Latin: quid); it is almost exactly true that Barth does NOT fault the Schleiermachers, Harnacks, Bultmanns, Tillichs for the concentration with the "how" (Latin: quomodo) of canon/canonzation, but that he deals from the canon as establishment/stasis from which all consequence follows.

I in turn am concerned BOTH with the "what" and the "how" of all things. I endeavor to speak "the truth in love" (see Ephesians 4:15); this criterion (self imposed canon) in the mode of reductio ad absurdum must be to determine whether a set of postulates is not-not (truth-love [T:l])-- in logical terms I seek validation of ~ ~ T:l. The "how" I find in practice describes artfully by fleshing out the manner in which-- in consummate detail-- "what" obtains. I think this means that in the catholic (little "c") sense, I am both an advocate of orthodoxy (the 'what') and praxis (the 'how'). I cannot change the canon of a logic that has been esteemed tautological in my 'communion' (faith-walk); I am pragmatic in referent to the ecstatic "shaking of the foundations" of my process of 'confession.'

With all this in mind, and reflecting on the whole business of the-what in the-how of pragmatics and dogmatics, I am led to utter three metaphors, from which I can make some reason by analogy (dangerous unless the set of postulates is complete, then if complete statisfiable in logic-- see John Stuart Mill's A System of Logic (1891, 2002 edition), pages 524-525.) I do not intend this reasoning from analogy to be aught more than a source of hypotheses for subsequent reductio. Here then are my three metaphors, and my consequence:

I. The Metaphor of Constitutional Canon

I am familiar with the process of making constitutions to some extent. The utterance of British charters such as the Magna Carta is more-remotely known to me. But like all who were trained in American history in secondary schools in the United States, I know adequately the process-- marked my much floundering 'revolution' and bickered brokering-- then a 'canon' (it really cannot be called otherwise) which became our U.S. Constitution, and in a larger sense (understood in England) in which we Americans 'constituted' (made hylebiopsychosocial arrangement) this reality which is commonly known (even in other parts of this continent) as "America."

In the words of Justice John Marshall in the Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison (5 U.S. 137) we read of this processing to effect Realm:

"That the people have an original right to establish for their future government such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected. The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; nor can it nor ought it to be frequently repeated. The principles, therefore, so established are deemed fundamental. And as the authority from which they proceed, is supreme, and can seldom act, they are designed to be permanent."

I draw the reader's attention to the 'legal' notion of "great exertion" and "so established are deemed fundamental." These terms will play later here for methermeneutic.

II. The Infinities and Praxis

It is often said that discussion of 'infinities' is beyond the realm of comprehension and 'off the table for discussion' consequently. But mathematics and logic have taken no such 'hands off' attitude to infinities, and thanks to the work initially of Georg Cantors have workable syllogistics which may be formed with these 'transfinites.' They are as I understand it called the "Aleph" sets-- for the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (I understand that Cantor was Jewish, and may have been of the Orthodox persuasion.) There is a variant of Aleph mathematics to deal with continua as well as for ordinal numbers; 'transfinite induction' and other computations can readily be done with these sets in math.

Mathematically, 'infinities' are 'boundless sets'-- occur in math with conception of the largest possible number, division by 'zero'-- in the forms like 0/0, 1/0-- and the one which to my breathing spiritedness is the most-fascinating 0/1. I do not suppose that math-people have exhausted every imaginable but real 'infinity'-- and so I am led to make a cognitive leap to another-- into which the boundless set of praxis-- practice-- happening-- occurs. This makes linguistic sense to me; that I am lacking in ways to express this symbolically will just have to await some maven:guru with higher algebras than I possess. But I can define that to which the infinity of the boundless set of praxis equates in semantic terms-- thus it must be real and potentially awaitable by some Newton to better flesh this out than I.

I see the infinitude of praxis as the hurly-burly of creation (in all senses)-- for out of formlessness and staleness there emerges new order. In the last series, I dealt with the crafting of my versifications in pious behavior in this way-- inchoate and trite beginnings from hackneyism to some new (hapax legomenon I trow in every sense) 'essence' defined by an oughtness of get-it-right! I conject that there are many occasions when such boundlessness occurs; indeed it has not been settled in my mind yet that The Creation-- Big Bang of cosmology some 14 billion + years ago was not of this sort of unbounded setting.

If as is sometimes afforded those who present novelties (if this is new) I get the opportunity to put a symbol on this praxiological form of unbounded-set/infinity I would have to choose some untaken yet somehow fitting symbol that I can make-- this needs to be practical too-- on this present keyboard. I am looking at the instant now at my keyboard to this PC and see so many of these 'taken' for mathematics/sets. But the symbol on a keyboard at my disposal which seems germane is the one with me just above my '2'-- named "@" -- for in every way (it seems now) there 'plays' a significand about at-ness in the praxiological infinity-- the newly-constituted is not-at-hand, coming-at-hand, occurs in an instant both at-and-not-at-time. Thus I think of all the symbols I can make for praxis-transfinite-infinity, @ is suitable.

III. The Metaphor of the Eternal Now.

Barthians grate at any mention of Paul Tillich. OK. I do not wish to cause unrest, but do in fine think that all this squabble -- in view of the What:How types to which I have referred-- is merely in-house-feuding about whether one is in-the-club of 'conservatives' or 'liberals' (whatever that is supposed to mean, with Barth espousing a form of universalism [see Barth's The Humanity of God, pages 61-62]; or his stridently anti-war 'liberalism'; as well has the very conservatism a Tillich must have for a 'systematic theology' or a Harnack for a 'history of dogma.')

At any rate, Paul Tillich to me says something quite engaging when he essays about 'the eternal now'-- of the ontological import of transcending the chronology of clock:stopwatch:atomic-clock:arrow-of-time in the praxis of Christian service. In 'creative' ways this praxis is quite generalized-- can occur in any semantic of uttering-- from-old-to-new.

What I think could be said is that some relation obtains between the infinitude of praxis and the eternal now thus contextually defined; the relation may be identical, separate, or mixed; but from my living "with life depending on the [iron-blood-red] liver"-- that there is some overlap of unbounded sets in a way that could be worked with transfinite induction-- and from either Gedankenexperiment or real-experimentation.

IV. Derivation of Hypotheses from these Analogies

I have in the last entry speculated on a God-talk which derives from the practice/habit of pious behavior. In this entry, I acknowledge the essential contained in the What of Canon-- that which is a tautology to which postulated/consistency adherence in logic is required; I have suggested that each What has a How to it-- and that I as catholic and orthodox accede to the validity of both the What and the How of constituting canonization. To me the What is a finitude, however; the How derives from the infinitude of praxis, the warp:woof of habitude operating from an oughtness-- and as well the process by which oughtness is canonized. This makes semantic sense to me; it as real therefore but needs some keener algebra beyond the I who simply scribbles now a name @ for it.

The moment of creation is a kind of transfinite 'now' @ the point of origin; it semantically occurs with a beyond past:present:future and is NOT other than that which creates a canonical 'universe' (as defined in set-theoretic terms.) On this I now am to rehearse.

This 'constituting' is 'a work of very great exertion' yet from it come fundamental canons-- Whats-- from which the calm logic of tautology, equation, and commutation with cold logic apply-- with neither poetic un-satisfaction nor paradox. The first-- the how-- I stipulate as transfinite-- thus 'theological' yet about which meaningful syllogism can be accomplished; the latter is placidly logical using traditional (if un-paradoxed) logic is utterly-- and in the Barthian way-- applicable.

My suggestion: in gist, I am saying that all creation comes from a logical mode which can be seen as transfinite-- in the Aramaic sense for all such events this would be a tsli ( 1. turning back and forth as on a barbecue spit; 2. turning toward canon; 3. prayerful ['pious'] behavior.) I leave it to better-symbolists than me to limn these mathematically. I can only-- for me-- thus an 'x' in the diagram meaning 'some/someone'-- point to a real process which humanly is from my-me, and can 'in the eternal now' pass on to others for consideration

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Compline
Day of St. Jambert (Western Church)
Day of Sts. Photios and Aniketos, Martyrs (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-11T18:52:00.000-07:00

Excursus after Reading Barth's
Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum--
With Potential for Effect on the Planned Clinical Phenomenology
Employing Barthian Exegesis

I have finished a slow and contrivedly careful reading of Barth's Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (1960, 1958). I have some comments, which in the time-series of the ongoing project at hand (clinical phenomenology of "considering well" in the Barthian idiom versus my reductio ad absurdum presumption.

It is clear that Barth 'considers well' Anselm, and in the end I can almost accord with Barth's explication except for what may be minor points in terminology, but more fundamental in modal logic. Barth initially seems to agree with Anselm in most points, with the slight exception that he thinks a higher thought than God can be conceived; at the end of the book, though, it is clear that Barth regards the utterance of such theology ('God-talk') as deriving from a real Ontic known-ness of Jahweh-- who sets the principle that He exists axiomatically. To this point Barth says,

"If it is to remain, if it is now supposed to be proved, sic ergo vere est, then this can make sense only if an article of faith were fixed in itself as such, has been proved in such a way that the opposite statement would be reduced ad absurdum by means of the statement of the Name of God which is likewise assumed to be revealed and believed. This article of faith (regarding that existence of God which is not only genuine but also incapable of being denied even theoretically) was introduced first of all disguised as a possibility of thought alongside another, and it remains before us as the positive result after this opposite statement has been dropped. Responsibility for the givenness of this statement (for the last ratio quomodo sit) is not for the theologian to bear. Intelligere means to see into the noetic rationality and therefore into the noetic necessity of the statements that are revealed, on the basis that they possess ontic rationality and necessity as revealed statements, prior to all intelligere, to all 'proof' and therefore not based on proof. This can only happen in theology as such. But it can happen and it is what in fact has happened here." (Op. cit., pages 143-144, Englished translation.)

To these telling words I can reply that:

1. The posulate of desiderata for theses is not particularly something which can "only happen in theology as such." Science for example has such precepts, which are called "canons." The canon for 'consistency' for example is what predetermines the qualities of mathematics' tautology, equality, and (short of quantum logic) the notion of commutation; in logic per se there are equivalent notions. Science has canons in areas like probability and statistical inference: the notion of "the .05 level of significance" is merely referent to a standard that in a series of tests, the probablility acceptable for science would not be less than seeing such a result once in 20 random runs or more. These are more like "oughts" than "revealed statements"; I am beginning to wonder if theological statements are not theological for being the practical result of "oughts" as in science-- and thus their God-talk is uttered in practice and habit-- where the "revelation" actually takes place.

2. This development leads me further, in the direction of Barth's unverifiable essentialities as 'dogmas,' then next to the process of the active form of piety-- on which I explicated in the riffs on worth-ship poetry in the last clinical phenomenology. Barth's reference to reductio ad absurdum in this context 'jangles' somewhat; a reductio derives from the assumption that a proposition is false, then managing total proof that this assumption of falseness itself is false. This is a STRUGGLING, a PROCESS-- and as Way Truth and Life IS God-talk. As truth is God's, then all truth is God's truth-- the profession of words (as Barth himself concedes at the end of his explication of Anselm admits) make a Truth, nor does a deep certainty ab orignio compelling all logic afterward in the Ontic sense constitute 'thingingness'-- but instead an operant from cannot-not-be-oughts operating the pragmatics (Greek: praxis-- "acts, actions, habits, practices") of existence. These have an "ontology/etiology"-- but functionally they are the 'categories'-- thus making 'categorical imperatives' -- with a warp:woof:floppiness:penultimacy to be sure, but the definitions by which "revelation" takes place (using the line of reasoning in Duns Scotus' Ordinatio.) This cannot-not-be should be taken in an emphatically unknowing individual psychic (from Greek: psuchein -- "breathing in and out") way. From this complexity after cannot-not-be oughtness derives the 'germinal state' of dogmatics. This is the 'existere' from which the 'esse' becomes firm. To be true to that definition of what is true for oneself -- in the Mitwelt and Umwelt of Others-- constitutes the 'ought' from which revelation occurs. It has been demonstrated in the prior series in clinical phenomenology that this 'revelation' is a hurly-burly, vital, uncertain yet churning for a better certainty-- that makes the praxis a revelation. There is nothing whatsoever static or 'res' (Latin: state-of-being) about it. 'Spiritus' (breathing) is more what creation resembles. The reductio as a 'spirited' process means simply that one has begun in great and fundamental dis-ease of dis-sonance and works toward a truing, and an ease, in consonance.

This intervention in writing is but an excursus. However in some measure as a result of this finding this day and this far I am convinced that I need further refinements on my assignment in the protocol to come. I am beginning to see what 'considering well' means to Barth and thus what it should mean to me in my assumption of his main recommendations. To me, it looks as though active engagement with the writer and his text are presumed in the Barthian orientation. It does not mean that one 'need not do the homework' philologically, but that from profound understanding one 'comment' on the text. Not so bad. But it seems obvious that what Barth is saying about textual analysis in The Epistle to the Romans is NOT what Barth is really doing in the Dogmatics in Outline or indeed in Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum; the first process-- written in an older era for the theologue-- is to me not-bad, not-bad-at-all; the latter looks too much like another kind of science and another kind of logic than the traditional practitioners 'do'-- as Barth would seem then to have left himself without a way to falsify falsehood from these a priori assumptions. What I am proposing is that my referent to the reductio method-- with all its warp:woof to it-- is the way of theology as a practical science-- that form of pious behavior which effects creation-- thus which effects (in the Duns-Scotus' sense) revelation. This is HOW it gets done; the WHAT is canonical. I speak to a Hebraism not a Hellenism [see Thorlief Bowman's Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (1970, 1954)]; by this I mean that the God-talk habit is a dynamism-- not a stasis-- and one where truth derives only after every form of falsification has been falsified.

Thus, it looks as though I shall try some permutation of what I read in The Epistle to the Romans ['Barth 1'?]; I do not know how to deal with the "faith flashlight" of the glimmering I read of Church Dogmatics I get in Dogmatics in Outline ['Barth 2'?]. It is much closer to eisegesis than any Schleiermacherian venture would take; for that reason it needs adoption as the 'null' in order certainly if naught else "to see what happens." The matter of 'loyalty to the author' does not appear to be a strong factor in Barth's work on Schleiermacher or Anselm, so this becomes a mooted issue to the approach.

On all these matters, I shall think. Perhaps I can portion off the part designated in the forthcoming text-sampling for Barth 1 and Barth 2 exegesis. The remainder could be my reductio of verification-- by my 'ontic' instructed to be my Way Truth Life-- and my revelatory process.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Midnight (Coptic Daily Office)
Day of Ste. Clare (Western Church)
Day of St. Euplus, Deacon, Martyr (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-10T14:09:00.000-07:00

Further Development of Clinical Phenomenological Design
For Textual Analysis wit/without Barthian Presumptions:
Some Plan of Sampling, Some Forethoughts

I have crafted an order -- using the Adjustable Biased Coin Design protocol-- for sequencing the analysis in my clinical phenomenology to detect what-happens in Plan A (when-operating-from-first-faith-understanding-as-only-true FK:W) versus Plan B (when-operating-from-reductio-after FK:W). This corresponds to my present understanding of Barthian methodology, which may indeed be imperfect or even wrong. For this reason, and because I have hardship with the Barthian methods that seem to obtain, I shall only try this determination-of-what-happens-when per instance in the sampling I have selected.

Using a random number generator, therefore, I have pre-determined whether Plan A or Plan B should apply. There may be a number of entries in a certain pairing of search-words; in each case the Plan applicable to the allotment would be used for that categorical pairing.

The resulting sequence (for later Google Search, using the criteria I have specified in the last entry and in the entry for August 10 (1st entry) and August 8 here) is as follows:

1. (enface druid) Plan A

2. (Luanda Sunday) Plan A

3. (moquette aqueduct) Plan B

4. (furlough slept) Plan A

5. (xylogy neckcloth) Plan B

6. (appraisal tobagganer) Plan A

7. (mimosine stradavarius) Plan B

8. (yogi tibetan) Plan A

9. (oratorical Rembrandt) Plan B

10. (intensifies paraphasia) Plan B

11. (tolerate octopus) Plan A

12. (Michigan cantonment) Plan B

13. (delicate apnea) Plan B

14. (leucocyte nodal) Plan A

15. (protector simiannual) Plan B

16. (tendril foreclosure) Plan B

17. (pique workbasket) Plan A

18. (psychopathist morencite) Plan B

19. (medlar amorality) Plan A

20. (menfolk insolvent) Plan B

21. (euthenics coniferous) Plan A

22. (trotter pacing) Plan A

23. (suppress Lycurgus) Plan B

24. (stratometer pousse-cafe) Plan B

25. (sopping taxable) Plan A

26. (armipotent shoelace) Plan B

27. (uninflammable nekton) Plan B

28. (moistureproof driller) Plan A

29. (fylfot factual) Plan B

30. (revokable raffling) Plan A

...This series will terminate when I get no more than 30 ( N< href="http://www.directtextbook.com/prices/0226394875">Karl Jaspers' model for clinical phenomenologies presented in his General Psychopathology (1963), pages 55-154; I shall however again use the "permission slip" from Max Weber and from Friedrich Schleiermacher to effect quantitative analysis to ascertain the purity of types.

With Duns Scotus, I believe that theology is a practical science [see Duns Scotus by Richard Cross (1999), page 9]; any violence to Barthianism when indeed I am assaying those Barthian assumptions is regretable for its extent; but in a very real way-- using Barth's own concession that his dogmatic could be used for interpretations of literatures like Lao Tse or Goethe (see Barth's Epistle to the Romans (1968), page 12)-- I am proceeding maximally to use/reverse his method with the method itself as my first intention (but not my first conclusion-- for that reason therefore operating on the assumption of Barthianism-- as the null hypothesis [as is not pejoratively known in science]).

These factors will affect, as other contingencies selectively presented, in toto attended, in my forthcoming work here. I pray the readers' attention and indulgence; the serious-of-mind should find this "an interesting trip."

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Vespers
Thirteenth Sunday in Pentecost
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Roman Catholcism)
Eighth Sunday of Matthew (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Clinical Phenomenology Assaying Barthian Assumptions:
Further Refinements in Study Design

In view of cursory overview-- of the 'tabs'/links only of two Google sample offerings for the proposed demi-Barthian clinical phenomenology of textual materials, I need to make several additional plans and qualifications/stipulations:

I. WITH REGARD TO THE SELECTION FROM THE SAMPLE.

A. No selection from apparent Holy Scripture (to Christians) will be chosen for analysis/methermeneutic; I am [O/o]rthodox in this respect and categorically Holy Writ in the Catholic Canon will be presumed 'Divine.' The potential variance-- and degrees of the same-- from Divinity is the key differential I seek.

B. Selections need to be in the known English language.

C. The link must manifest the exact wording in the sampled content; variation in any way from the sample will NOT be permitted for purposes of this study.

II. WITH REGARD TO THE STUDY ASSUMPTIONS & PROTOCOL.

A. I think the Barthian method means that to which Pentecostalists when they speak of "the Word of Faith," followed by "the Word of Knowledge." As I DO have preliminary beliefs and understandings in each case prior to verification (attempting to invalidate falsehood), I CAN express these in a kind of Barthian 'Ontic.' Therefore I shall read a text, specify in writ what my belief/faith is with regard to this, and write my understanding from this knowledge on the sole assumption that this is VALID; then I shall try the opposite, assuming the faith and understanding-knowledge to be invalid false, then trying to see if this assumption is correct by the best intelligence obtainable. I need to think of ways in which this pattern could be randomized: perhaps by the Adjustable Biased Coin Design protocol I could vary between first assumption of the FAITH>KNOWLEDGE:WORDS [to which I shall betimes refer as "FK:W"] and the REDUCTIO [which correspondingly will be abbreviated "R"] method. The 'trick' will be to create a procedure which will not be affected by the arrow-of-time, and by the foreknowledge created by (long-term) memory, which could contaminate results.

B. The Barthian assumptions will be maximally followed/adhered-to. This would be true whether I assume an 'Ontic' of FAITH>KNOWLEGE:WORDS or of the REDUCTIO. The problems with the categoric lack of a procedure for falsification-- requisite for the known discipline and thence of science to which Barth himself accedes and identifies and 'owns'-- need not be worked out fully in a clinical phenomenology (a search for ideal-types/categories/(hypo)theses to use in subsequent pragmatics). The gist of what I shall try to do is see-what-happens to the degree Barthian assumptions are followed, and vice versa. If pathologies of inference or pathologies of the psyche obtain with either method, then this confusion would be seen as a dis-ease and violation of 1 Corinthians 14:33 in the traditionally understood sense. Whether such pathologies occur to the strict reading of the Barthian method is of presumption immaterial--but of course highly undesirable from a personal pragmatic standpoint-- FK:W is a given-truth/revelation it would appear using these assumptions-- and the potential label of psychosis-- delusion and derangement-- would not particularly matter to such a Barthian. Or so it looks from here.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Sext
Thirteenth Sunday in Pentecost
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism)
Eighth Sunday of Matthew (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

Pathologies-- Logical and Psychological--
Possibly Deriving from (My) Assumption of Barthianism--
Explication and Analysis Prior to Assay
(Clinical Phenomenology/Methermeneutic/Meta-Hermeneutik)

I am CAREFULLY reading Karl Barth with every intent to follow his assumptions-- on the ontic level. However, in the upcoming clinical phenomenology I plan here, there are some problems.

A. Barth is clear that he is using theology as a science (Dogmatics in Outline, page 5.) He insists that this be done in "a thoroughly logical manner" (ibid., page 25.) On the other hand, he insists on never-- for-the-sake-of-argument-- assuming the truth (then the potential weakness OR strength) of the alternate position ( Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, page 63.)

B. This stance creates problems for both logic, and then for science. The reductio ad absurdum is THE way of validation of inference (to the degree these can be cast into sentences, of which Barth utters a number.) True: logic does not recognize the possible use of reductio for all propositions-- this may not always apply in conjunctions (A-and-B) biconditionals (A-if-and-only-if-B), negations of conditionals (not [A-if-then-B]), or disjunctions (either-A-or-B-is-true); statements of this sort may be falsified in more than one way.

C. But the yen to attempt falsification is not a capricious requirement. Logic demands that whatever be taken for true at least meets the requirement ~ F. Really the exceptions to the reductio ad absurdum amount to possible falsification by other methods. As one needs to be quite careful about the presentation of Truth, this is the only logic that IS. A Barth-- or anyone-- saying that there needs to be in this case another-kind-of-scientific-logic is simply preaching "another Gospel" (Galatians 4:9).

D. Barth would say "Ontic rationality precedes the noetic" (Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, page 50.) In American-Englished phraseology, Barth is saying precisely that the sense of truth precedes understanding; talk of the 'ontic' and the 'noetic' is merely phenomenological trade-talk which to an Anglo-American audience tends to mystify or alienate and only rarely meet with grasp. This seems to be uttered in the sense of existential phenomenology (Heideggerian, too Nazi for my tastes) despite some protestation that Barth does not completely identify with this Germanic trend.

E. The "ontic" is exactly the mode that psychotics prefer for the validation of their thinking. I have seen this more than 1000 times in myself and other mental health consumers (N >1000). It could be that Barth's kind of ontic rationality IS true... IS logic...is science (the discipline of being factual, not-uttering-false-witness.) But in there using exactly the same phenomenological method are the deranged, the prejudiced, the fanatical. Barth seems to be saying in all that cacophony of deluded noise this HIS IS REALLY THE TRUE ONE to whom our credence is required. But all the voices in this asylum (Switzerland is quintessentially considered to be an asylum-country!) it may be hard to detect this, for all-- absolutely all deranged-- say THIS IS REALY THE TRUE ONE to whom our credence is required.

F. From psychology I took at the University of Kentucky decades ago, I learned of a theoretical psychologist -- I think it was Orval H. Mowrer-- who acted on essentially 'Barthian' assumptions in the presumption that there was an ontic (as defined above) in a persecutory trend. In result, I was told that he had to drop the experiment because he became paranoid. It would appear then that there are 'uncleannesses' associated with the occasion of use of the Barthian assumption of the ontic-- in his way defined as the first-assumption then validating all else.

G. I am only saying that my ontic-- conditioned by an categoric invalidation of assuming the first assumption as revelation-- my "tyranny of magical thinking"-- I became psychotic (manically exalted.) Like Mowrer's (if this is the psychologist) 'experiment' my first reality from 1977-- when I assumed/knew that the best thing from God would be to "consider the lilies of the field" (Matthew 6:8), throw away my wallet and credit cards, drive on a full tank of gas into whatever jungle that then came, and to live-for-Jesus until I dropped dead from past sins. For this ecstatic confession, I was thereafter incarcerated in Our Lady of Peace Hospital (Louisville, KY) for a month, and with the aid of a sharp psychiatrist who was both earthy and (in his way) pious determined that the way of the psychotic HAS to be the method toward-validation-of-hunches-- toward assuming in the first instance that a 'spirit' has ontic (true) import. Other people in faith-walks from here seem to be trying to "cop a buzz" in so many words-- toward getting a real-feel-good (call it born-again-experience, transcendental experience, rhapsody, or whatever) which a psychotic learns instantly-- after the pain of mental incarceration teacheth-- is invalid. Indeed what may be invalid for a psychotic may be quite valid for non-psychotics-- to dip into 'the crazy stuff and irrational' to logically satisfy the notion of inquiry about "what it's like to be that far off the edge." But the ontic for the psychotic HAS to be-- if salt-worthy-- to test every spirited assumption every guessology-- to see if it is FALSE.

H. My experiment in 1977 (replicated ~ 22X subsequently, unfortunately) is-- like (?) Mowrer's or whomever did this psychological phenomenology assuming delusionality-- that the first Barthian assumption is A LIE-- that one does not well simply to assume that 'the spirit is leading me in all things'-- so I must be right. If I begin with the postulates of the ontic from Barth, my ontic says that I need to "try every spirit to see if it is from God [Way, Truth, Life]" (1 John 4:1). The only thing I can do is this trying-- whether exasperating to anyone even me being immaterial-- with the first assumption that the 'spirited' is not truly spiritual/pneumatic/of-breathing-life. This I say is Biblical (Exodus 20:16 ; Matthew 19:18 ; Mark 10:19 ; Luke 18:20 ) -- the witness of both Moses and Jesus, that is-- and with the general conduct toward the-true/validation by the Cappadocian Fathers, Aquinas, William of Ockham-- and really Anselm ( I say despite Barth's possible eisegesis)-- who answers in reductio form the fool's question-- the disproof of I-Am-That-I-Am/God. From here, it would appear that only by the trial ~ ~ T can we assess a fleshed-out/incarnate truth.

I. Accordingly, my clinical phenomenology to come will be in search of categories-- I shall attempt 'dogmatic' interpretation using the A = A of the tautology that my first ontic (perceived true) sense is the correct-reading; and then the assumption that this assumption needs the trial of the spirit for validation, A = B. Only that which is True-- not what others or I would like it to be-- will be the standard to which I hold The Divine accountable. God as the Absolute Truth/Validity = my objective. Thus Frege's paper on the semantics of "Sinn und Bedeutung" seems exactly applicable.

As this intent is broader than Barth's method would seem to be (would include all variants of reading reality, not just presumption) I have termed what I shall do meta-hermeneutic or methermeneutic; this is really a way to be slightly off-beat from Barthian assumption of dogma = truth-- for the simple reason that my dogma--reductio-- seems PROFOUNDLY different from Barth's-- and except in the tautological sense identified above-- is subtended under a species of thinking which psychology calls "autistic."

What I most want to do-- since I cannot with known methods validate Barth's assumption of "faith flashlight" than I can ultimately invalidate the autisms of psychotic unfalsifiable faiths-- is merely to detect (as Mowrer may have done) the differences in behavioral/cognitive product which derive from the assumption-of-correctness in the first case, versus an assumption of incorrectness.

In the coming sample (not yet executed/effected) of textualities, I can estimate that there will be a number of offerings from Google; some of these will have been longer, some shorter. My self-assigned task will be attempt methermeneutic along the lines I have specified-- to generate ideal-types/theses/hypotheses and whatever real accrues from these two assumptions, both applied in-good-and-earnest, at the same time. When I 'get to 30,' I shall desist, and in the manner of a (Max-) Weberian analyze; there likely will be a number of 'leading' hunches to derive from this.

I am wondering, however, if a "faith flashlight" should be the first-assumption of one prone to psychosis. For this reason-- in my ontic-- I doubt the first principle of Barthianism.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee, Nazarite, Sannyasi
Time of Vespers
Day of St. Romanus (Western Church)
Day of St. Matthias (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

I Begin a Clinical Phenomenology with Barthian Assumptions:
Potential Methermeneutic
Of Derived Texts in Google--
Design for Sampling Protocol

I have made a random selection of pairs of words from Harry Sharp's 50,000 Words Divided and Spelled (1978). My plan will be to Google Search these pairings, to generate documents with exact wording of the words in the pairing per the "caption" (or whatever it is called when Google brings up particular documents), NOT obviously part of an alphabetical list/wordlist, not to exceed 30 in the total sample (<31.)

1. enface druid
2. Luanda Sunday
3. moquette aqueduct
4. furlough slept
5. xylogy neckcloth
6. appraisal tobagganer
7. mimosine stradivarius
8. yogi tibetan
9. oratorical Rembrandt
10. intensifies paraphasia
11. tolerate octopus
12. Michigan cantonment
13. delicate apnea
14. leucocyte nodal
15. protector simiannual
16. tendril foreclosure
17. pique workbasket
18. psychopathist morencite
19. meddler amorality
20. menfolk insolvent
21. euthenics coniferous
22. trotter pacing
23. suppress Lycurgus
24. stratometer pousse-cafe
25. sopping taxable
26. armipotent shoelace
27. uninflammable nekton
28. moistureproof driller
29. fylfot factual
30. revokable raffling

For those who follow the experiments of this (quantifiable for understanding) clinical phenomenology in which I engage, this material is provided, for candor, and for those who would like to follow this experiment in a replicable way.

It will be assumed that the putative interpretation is either possible or not possible; in either event I shall attempt methermeneutic (my avoidant term for a 'dogmatic' for matters agreeable/disagreeable.) As this will have been a search-for-categories with a statistical tendency-- using the Max-Weberian model for Verstehenanalyse-- as such a search for (ideal) types-- it would ostensibly appear that this randomized design covers adequately the research question. This will be, in other words, a research to derive-hypotheses-- and only in limitation subsequently to test these theses.

Thus these data are submitted for the readers' (both of them!) attention!

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Compline
Day of St. Dominic (Western Church)
Day of St. Emilian the Confessor, 9th Century (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-06T15:07:00.000-07:00

An Approach to 'Barthian' Methermeneutic--
Based on Entry to Anselm: Fides Quarens Intellectum
And Other Barthian Work

I have cracked-cover in Barth's Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum. Now I begin to find the range of opinion to which this Barth makes of theo-logy. In this book, Barth attempts a theologizing with a work with which he is in most-agreement with the author (the corpus of St. Anselm) but nonetheless has some reservations. We read:

"From all this I cannot deny that Anselm's Proof of the Existence of God in the context of his theological Scheme a model piece of good, penetrating and neat theology, which at every step I have found instructive and edifying, though I would not and could not identify myself completely with the views of its author." (page 9.)

To the issue of a potential eisegetic tendency Barth may have, we find instructive:

"...I may be suspected of reading this or that idea into the eleventh-century thinker, so that under the protection of his century I might advance it in the twentieth. But I have no qualms. Who can read with eyes other than his own? With that one reservation I think I am able to say that I have advanced nothing here but what I have actually read in Anselm." ( loc. cit.)

This "one reservation" would not obtain in the motivation of a Schleiermacherian hermeneutic, but is nevertheless only partially a reading-into the text at hand.

Thus the presented range of theo-logizing to which Barth resorts runs as follows:

Complete "loyalty" ( e.g. witnessed in The Epistle to the Romans.)
Essential agreement ( e.g in Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum)
Essential disagreement (e.g. The Theology of Schleiermacher)

By way of content, Barth seems more intent on a reading which may not be present in the author: I do not notice this so much in Romerbrief or the second book just listed; and essentially have Barth's confession (a level of testament that he ever/always says is most-important) only in the Preface to Anselm... on which to assess an eisegetic tendency.

No matter: I shall adopt a Barthian approach to randomly selected texts from the Internet-- as heretofore explained. Whether this method will be exactly Barthian may be a debatable point. Certainly that goal will have been my 'aim.' It would appear from this evidence presented above that the essential criterion for Barthian reading is not so much an agreement factor ("loyalty" so called by Barth) but something more plastic-- each time presuming understanding the gist of what the author has to say. My use of the term "methermeneutic" for my entry to Barthian methods is tempered with my own potential for 'mis-reading Barth'; from the 'outside' -- given Barth's insistence that any text (like Lao Tse or Goethe) might make germane study using his approach-- this rationale is not unjustifiable.

I am as may be detected somewhat dubious about the validity-- the trueness/falseness of what I could get from the Barthian method. Consequently using reductio ad absurdum it will be necessary to assume Barthianism "and see what happens" in exegesis. [In behavior science-- as to William of Ockham if he might have known the terminology of latter date-- this is called "assuming the null hypothesis."] I reiterate that I shall NOT work with known Scripture in this task-- as the dogmatic assumption is that Holy Writ HAS to be assumed true-- and only true.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Vespers
Day of St. Sixtus (Western Church)
Holy Transfiguration Day (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-04T18:09:00.001-07:00

Some Potentials-- Problematic and Otherwise--
Deriving from Dogmatic Exegesis of Text(s) Using Barthianism:
Thoughts on the Next Construction-Series in Verstehenanalyse

I have been thinking over ('rehearsing' as the thematic would be from last entry) what I have been reading in Barth. He does on occasion fearlessly take on those with whom he disagrees. The Theology of Schleiermacher would seem to be a work of that nature.

What I need to know now is whether this fearless address/disagreement constitutes a "dogmatic"-- a 'considering well'-- in which case one may use the Barthian method as a tool for numbers of texts with which one is at imperfect agreement.

I must confess that I do not know Barthianism well enough at this point to throw down a solid opinion on this matter. My clinical phenomenology of course would not have -- of necessity-- to detect fine points of dogmatics-- or of degrees of agreement -- with generated texts in the contemplated sampling. In other words, I see no reason why I should have to identify the degree of accord with the presumption of a text, and thus may by that contingency leave-moot whether to Barth's satisfaction I have "been dogmatic." By operational definition using another, more-neutral term (to be identified below, three paragraphs down from here) I may rather 'duck' the issue. From here, it is beginning to look touchy/tenuous to effect explication with a Barthian approach of a text for which one can have 'total loyalty' can certainly be considered 'dogmatic': whether Barth's explication of Schleiermacher-- almost the only negating theology I have found by him-- amounts to dogmatic-- or perhaps to a younger and less-developed phase of the Barthian method.

Certainly too I do not have enough texts by Barth to generate more than a casual surmise on this subject. It may even be that he does not address the subject directly-- in his huge numbers of publications.

In form therefore, I think the cast of the sampling will be for a random or systematic selection of passages at links; then I shall find from this list documents-- and the degree-- to which accord can occur, and which not-so. A sample resembling 10 of one type and 10 of another might be acceptable, but of course > 30 selections will have to be generated in my searches.

From the analysis of the samples, I can try to do 'dogmatics'-- understanding-based considering-well which will try to effect 'reading between the lines' in order to 'meta-speak.' There is even a New Testament Greek word for this: methermenein -- which in the King James Version generally gets rendered "translation" but does have a rather wider semantic domain in Classical Greek writing-- toward "meta-interpretation." I shall thus refer to a "methhermeneutics" to supercede the explications (grammatical and psychologic) required by Schleiermacherianism. This is the term which I think I shall use as the operational equivalent to "dogmatic/dogmatics/dogmatism" in this assay-- with only occasional use of these "d-words" for variety.

It would appear from 'the outside' that there will have been differences in the meta-interpretation when the stimulus material is disagreeable/agreeable. The bias (Greek: "force") of my pre-conditioning, and my attitudinal set, and the 'how' of the document's address to me will play some measure in the resulting analysis. For the lark of it, I think these too need address in my considering-well. What cannot be strictly inferred-- it would appear at all events-- is a falsifiable/validatable certainty that indeed the 'considering well' I craft will indeed be the opinion of the author-originating. Only approximations to that goal can be achieved, with no absolute certainties at all of correctness of 'reading.' The author's tone-- and thus the motivation-- can only be with some indirection interpolated from a reading; if the piece has been edited by redactors subsequent to the writing this complicates the-dogmatic as well.

The degree to which editorial and motivational issues-emergent as not completely straightforward/transparent in New Testament and Tanakh have proven to be a real issue in exegesis and hermeneutics there. How quickly one can go from "the safe assumption" that one has 100% understanding of the exegesis in order to "go-dogmatic"/"methermeneuticize" would appear to vary. In Schleiermacher, the standard for exactitude permitting dogmatics seems quite high; to my eyes, it looks as though Barth does not fret understanding as deeply toward the grammatical/linguistic/semiotic substrate-- leaping rather quickly into the psychological explication. In practice, I have noted a tendency in (mostly-lay-) Christians to be quite projective in certainties envisaged in text-- with the linguistic understanding becoming the "hard stuff" which if invoked is heretical-- or at least NOT NICE to preach.

Wishing to eschew these sorts of controversies, claiming only an "orthodox understanding and belief" in Scriptures, will devote energies instead to alternate exegeses. What I find, though, may well pre-figure what might be problematic in safe/easy/quick/facile methermeneutics/dogmatics on a piece of writing-- including the Canons called 'OT' and 'NT.' Thus for the business of derivation of hypotheses this work will have been effected: the selection of texts-not-scripture which have no 'baggage' of certain acceptance for credalism need not be made.

In this way, we can ascertain-- with this N=1-- the domains of methermeneutic/dogmatic-- for Schleiermacher, Barth, and any/all others who bother with the stern discipline of kerygmatics-- preaching-from-Scripts.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Compline
Day of St. Molua, Irish Hermit, 6th/7th Century (Western Church)
Day of the Seven Youthful Martyrs of Ephesus (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-03T02:54:00.000-07:00

A Re-Search Question Derives
From Reading Karl Barth--
Conducive to Another Clinical Phenomenology

Life to me has been a matter of reading and rehearsal: the reading pertains to the understanding and explication of opaque-- initial-- reality; the rehearsal is the practice -- once the opacity diminishes-- of trying relationship with reality. Reality is just a substrate for lessons, learning-experiences. What I do with reality differentiates, determines.

In this entry, I begin another avenue in re-search, and thus in life, and thus in reading and rehearsal. The experimental explication of the pieties will of course be here the general topic. The quest for understanding will always-- as here as elsewhere-- be my abiding goal.

I have been reading Karl Barth for the past few days, all during the phase of my experiment with versification, and problem-solving potential thereunto. Barth's Church Dogmatics is mostly unavailable to me, a multi-volume set with ease only obtainable with a library-card/privileges at a seminary library. Lacking this (which did obtain years back, when both the Presbyterians and the Baptists would lend to lay-folk) I am to study Barth by what I can afford to buy and borrow from holdings available to me. My readings thus are including The Epistle to the Romans, Dogmatics in Outline, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, and most particularly, Barth's earlier work, The Theology of Schleiermacher. I suppose that given much time and some effort, I can obtain the ...Dogmatics via interlibrary loan; but the material I have at hand now would seem to be a good representation of Barth, his method, and his content of thinking.

It may be rightly expected that rehearsal of Barth's critique of Schleiermacher is peaking most interest in me. I have this book, which dates from 1921 (in the German original; my Englished translation dates from 1982.) Presently I shall turn my attended comments toward this text. But for a moment, I wish to present a prolegomonon to the 'Barthianism' I presently grasp. I do not profess to be expert in Barth, am just a novice with him, but am already sensing the gist of his approach to reading-- as well as to rehearsal (as I have defined these contextually above.)

In the preface to The Epistle to the Romans we find Barth telling us that his method consists of the process of 'considering well' a text (page 12); this seems to mean that the task to which Schleiermacher assigns himself in 'reading'-- "understanding an utterance a well as the utterer when he speaks, then better"-- is but a first step in the rehearsal of the text as life-lesson. The Barthian approach to text seems to imply: 1. that understanding has already been satisfactorily effected; 2. that going beyond understanding, one actively engages (rehearses) the text as a living document. This active engagement is NOT simple eisegesis-- "putting words in"-- but an active teaching from the truth of the text. This implies that the person speaking 'out of' the text must agree with the prime source:

"The commentator is thus presented with a clear 'Either--Or'. The question is whether or he he is to place himself in a relation to his author of utter loyalty. Is he to read him, determined to follow him to the very last word, wholly aware of what he is doing, and assuming that the author also knew what he is doing? Loyalty surely cannot end at a particular point, and certainly cannot be exhausted by an exposure of the author's literary affinities." (The Epistle to the Romans, page 17.)

Without reservation, Barth calls this approach 'dogmatic interpretation' -- which he differentiates from (impossible!) 'systematic theology.' The sense in which Barth uses this term seems well anticipated by Schleiermacher, who says, "Without the latter (dogmatic explication) the theological task is not completely accomplished..." (Hermeneutics and Criticism, Bowie's translation, page 54.) However, it seems clear that Barth spends much less time in the 'philology' to which Schleiermacher mostly devotes himself, prior to this form of 'preaching'/theologizing.

To Barth, I need to say, there is not-- as the latterday interpreters of Barthianism seem to claim-- a profession that Schleiermacher is particularly 'heterodox' -- indeed Barth regards Schleiermacher as "pious" (page 106, The Theology of Schleiermacher) and even "orthodox" to a degree (page xiv, ibid.) Schleiermacher's morality as a Christian is unquestioned (page xvi, ibid.) But because of what Barth sees as a humanizing tendency, he regards Schleiermacher as having a 'weak' Christology, and an even weaker doctrine on Redemption.

[Whether these criticisms are balanced and fair may be a moot point. Schleiermacher spent most of his life trying to redeem the essentials of the Enlightenment to a form of Christianity which could esteem the witness of the Gospel. His first lessons in Christianity included deep influences from the Moravians, for whom discipleship-- then and now-- mean approximately the level of devotion required for Catholic religious orders. As a Protestant, Schleiermacher professes approximate 'Methodism' theologically-- not 'orthodox' with the Eastern or Roman Church-- but still professing a belief in miracles such as the Incarnation, and the kind of deeply felt pietism common to certain Quietist professions.]

To approach his dogmatics, Barth's 'first line of defense' is the Bible; secondly he has chosen to emblemize the Christian profession in the Symbol known as the Apostles' Creed. Indeed, from my reading of Dogmatics in Outline I infer that Barth develops volumes from the 76 Latinate words of the form of this Creed. Consistent with Barth's shunning a 'systematic' this 'dogmatic' seems but to derive from this singular-- but clear-- understanding of the Symbol explicated.

Barth acknowledges that his method may be used to expound on any text by any writer-- such as Lao Tse or Goethe (The Epistle to the Romans, page 12.) The 'trick' and 'catch' seems to be on the matter of the 'loyalty' that the Barthian approach to textuality demands.

As far as I am in Barthian methods, and as far as I have presented him-- admittedly with a partial lectionary-- there are some research questions that emerge from the rudiments I infer from this approach to 'reading.' Should there merely be exegesis of works with which one can completely agree/show-loyalty? If so, it would appear that one is restricted-- in a way that Barth imperfectly himself practices-- to 'cherry-picked' scripts designed to support theses one already fully endorses. What does come from such a method, in fine and in totality-overall?

As may be detected, I -- for one-- could not use a Barthian approach to the rendering of Barth himself. The 'Bible' with which I start for authority begins with the reductio... of Exodus 20:16-- "thou shalt not bear false witness..." (~ ~ T)-- which is reiterated in the Synoptic Gospels -- each one-- by Jesus. I need good ways to detect 'false witness' on presentation, and I cannot give 'loyalty' to the Barthian to the degree that he REALLY means that I must profess loyalty to a text. The texts to which I could allow-- the one just cited-- plus Matthew 19:18 -- Mark 10:19-- Luke 18:20-- etc. in the Bible-- would accord the-more with the Patristics of the Cappadocian Fathers (Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa), Aquinas, and William of Ockham. These do get my loyalty. My 'cherry picking' would dogmatically only include works and writers who give me solid ways of disallowing the false, as well as validating the true, in other words. A theology which does not, in other words, contain actual ways of acomodating such falsification/validation in other words at best may be 'an incomplete Gospel' or even 'another Gospel.' But my cherry picking, I would contend, contains the 'wee hammer' for hammering out discernments-- which do not abound in the narrow selection of only preaching the Gospel which one finds agreeable (which seems exactly Barthian.)

However: a 'testing of the spirits' is possible by clinical phenomenology -- the science of Understanding/Verstehen. Assuming that I am an intact 'system,' and assuming further the realistic probability that I could get a larger 'N' from which to sample 'reading' and 'rehearsal' than from myself, I can proffer my validation process to the business of this work-- both with texts that I find 'agreeable' as well as 'disagreeable.' With the Bible-- the standard of Orthodox Christians all-- I cannot therefore comfortably take such issue; instead I can select texts which are in 'the common domain' of varieties-- agreeable/disagreeable-- and on reading, rehearse what the categorics are on the level of this N = 1. What would obtain, of course, would refer to me-- would only sustain disproval of a universal theory if negative-- and if positive for the general population would only be the source of a working hypothesis for further testing.

The nature of this assay would be: 1. find texts which are non-canonical, and of varieties agreeable and disagreeable; 2. attempt falsification/validation/satisfaction of both; 3. ascertain and numerate categorical similarities and differences.

I shall in the next days cast-about for such a randomization of agreeables/disagreeables in the readings at my disposal: they will not include Scripture-- with which it is only Orthodox to agree. But these in the way of text analysis will be outside of the 'supposed to be' for the safety from claims that somehow there is a suspect heterodoxy in my approach. The use of the Internet for the sampling process immediately comes to mind. 'Googling' or 'Dogpiling' random word selections from a wordlist-- such as Harry Sharp's 50,000 Words Divided and Spelled again-- may provide a viable list of agreeable/disagreeable writs. These could be used then for content analysis-- along categorics of validity/falsification/satisfaction-- as well as phenomenology of the characteristics that accompany the several sorts.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Twelfth Sunday in Pentecost (Anglicanism)
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism)
Seventh Sunday in Matthew (Orthodoxy)

2008-08-02T15:39:00.000-07:00

Poetry Engages Connection to the Process of Validation--
Is Not Paradoxical (Hypocritical)--
My Inference from Speculation on My Recent Work

It is time now to take a longer view, a view backward to the purpose of this Web-log, and to connect thematically with the primal material on which I initially wrote here.

The question becomes: is there something which could fit into a paradigm of validation commensurate with the writing of poetry such as I have uttered in the past series? Moreover, how does this connect with the modes of logic which I took effort to explain? Have I uttered a type of nonsense or paradox-- in what some call "a poet's ruse"?

In a previous entry, I have diagrammed statements consistent with logic as being "valid, invalid, or satisfiable"-- terms which approximate the usage of Kurt Godel in finding statements either valid, falsifiable, or satisfiable. By this I mean-- and Godel seems to mean-- that falsification is important aspect of logical semantic use-- that a valid statement is ascertained not-un-true, ~ ~ T-- and that there are ways in which -- by poetry for example-- that expressions can be found true in SOME interpretation.

What is generative in poetry is the ability to effect new categories of determination. There might be a "parting that is sweet sorrow" if the creative energies are applied to the semantic of human experience. What would NOT be such use would be to hold out a 'sign' with a meta-message-- a 'reality behind the sign' that what is being uttered is UNTRUE. This important distinction distinguishes in my opinion between poetic interpretation and the utterance of paradox.

The first task needs to be the-semantic: is the REAL MESSAGE professed to be true/false? Then one can consider the 'valence' of the uttered proposition itself: if the 'reality check' going with an utterance is congruent, then the semantic of validity obtains as a proposition.

Frege's notion of Sinn and Bedeutung is immediately instructive. The proposition itself is a kind of tautology, an A = A; the connectedness of the proposition to the intended reality behind the utterance, the A = B is the gist of semantics, and the defining characteristic for determination of whether a statement is/is-not paradoxical.

Thus there can be a level at which my poetics -- to the degree that sincerity is intended (always)-- can be other than paradox. Should I ever play "hypocrite" in verse-- such as would seem to be the case in the Rococo poets and others-- then something approximating the deceit of semantic paradox occurs. Whether symbolism is implied in a poetry is of null effect to the possibility of non-paradox-- as this implies something connected with the tautology of the utterance-- from which the Sinn/meaning/referent may or may not coincide.

The modals thus apply in poetic construction. If there is a definable in which an utterance is intended to be true, then there would be a "possible world" in which the statement(s) are valid, falsifiable, or satisfied. "A liar when he tells the truth" is only as true as his meaning-- which is to say not meant at all.

This to me means that the poetic imagination-- the "romantic evidence" -- is on the order of a truth, not a paradox. That real problem solving can be involved at 'fundamental' levels I take as demonstration of this type of validating/falsifying/satisfying process.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Day of St. Etheldritha, Hermitess, 9th Century (Western Church)
Day of the Translation of the Relics of St. Stephen (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-30T20:22:00.000-07:00

Toward an Ideal Type of 'Closeted' Worship
As Active Problem-Solving, Re-Vision, Con-Clusion in Deepest Care:
Clinical Phenomenology of Worth-Ship Writing Behavior Concludes,
With Validation of First Theses

Prefacing Remarks:

In the past 24-48 hours, I have busied with the quantifcation/calculability of the data for the clinical phenomenology (in the Weberian/Schleiermacherian idiom) of the categories in the craft of my writing 'religious'/worth-ship verse compared to non-religious writing. Probably to the point of tedium my readers (both of them-- the one besides me too!), I have tried to link and connect to previous entries so that there would be no mystery as to what I am doing. It is time to rejoice a little in my new understandings-- and in my figures to bolster understandings.

To those who are "revolted," turned-off, alienated by this numeracy I proffer, I offer the following apologia: I truly believe that qualities can be considered in a quantitative aspect, and that quantities have qualities. The Grand Canyon is a-lot-of-rock-in-tonnage as well as a pretty awesome sight; the Pacific Ocean is a big expanse of H2O (essentially) as well as being a whelming spectacle; the tomes of the Summa Theologica of Aquinas are a mass of paper as well as a great theological edifice of worth-ship. Certainly too there are beauties to fathoming the endless random meaningfulness of Pi, the Gestaltic quality of catharsis that comes when making some statistical inference of complex simplicity; and there is a succinct beauty to the numerics of a balanced checkbook. These beauties are all counts; these counts are all beauties-- and thus the 'mathophobes' may consider this set of goodnesses (in particular I refer to those who loathe quantification-- there may be 'esthetophobes' too of whom I certainly cannot fathom!)

The General Procedure and Findings:

I started with the thesis that individual worship has a component which can be problem solving; writing in pious idiom may hold 'germinating-work' in addition to forms which are permutations of deference and rite. This creates an 'alternative hypothesis' in the sense of empirics, against which for purposes of falsification there is a necessary null-hypothesis: namely that this problem solving component does not exist. I was restricted to a N = 1 study-- and thus chose clinical phenomenology for the determination of content (e.g. "with problem-solving"/"without problem solving" etc.) I have never held doubts about the amenability of 'counts' for determination of 'quals'-- but in phenomenology one is virtually restricted to the 'Patriarch' Schleiermacher and later to Max Weber for forms of Verstehenanalyse which would permit quantification.

With the help of the adjustable biased coin design for small-sample study, and randomized selection techniques, I was able to pre-determine that I would go for a series of 20 writings-- 11 of which would be religious poetry (the total set) and 9 non-religious writs (following the random Pi series per segment, 3.14159... until the desired number in the sequence was satisfied.)

Since July 14, I have in "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville" published the indexed poems; I have provided the grammatical and psychological explications to some satisfaction in this Web-log from that time. The non-religious writs were published with accompanying statistics in Google Base; in Google Base too I this night published the psychologic and grammatic explications-- such as they are, admittedly banal-- and to all this material one may link. Then, for my own benefit and for the edification of others, I 'pressed' my statistical findings as Excel graphs with statements regarding statistical significance using the Fisher Exact Probability Test. I say again, all the results were encouraging and strongly corroborate my alternative hypothesis-- that religious poetry writing does differ from its complement-- that it does have strongly integrative 'totalism'/con-clusion in re-vision (as I may refer literally and with some sense of metaphor.)

I found considerable indication to invalidate the null: using 'subjective units' as per usage in mental health practice for determining psychic state quantifiably, I learned that indeed my religious poetry derives from heightened care (defined along a continuum to Ultimate Concern, as Tillich so operationally posits), degree to which the work applies to total-personality/totality/con-clusion of the wide dimensions of the human motive, heightened self-questioning/shaking-of-foundations (again a Tillichian expression of great operational potential), and there was an unfinished quality to such poetic writing, as evidenced by heightened concern with re-write/re-vision/change-ability. The other factors-- like the duration of writing and the use of 'cute' new words and different words-- are not so pronounced. All of the factors mentioned in the sentence-before-last-here were statistically significant-- were far far far from chance events-- and this means that none would be predictable randomly more frequently than once in fifty random trials-- and generally the number of randomizations to effect such an end result would be in the thousands.

Therefore, using the reductio ad absurdum method so well established in the writing of William of Ockham and Aquinas and Anselm and Kant, I am able to reject the 'null' as highly improbable.

This means in turn that I can now begin to work at the definition of an ideal type-- or constellation of ideal types-- which define a certain form of worship behavior which is problem-solving. This would seem to be a more "restless" form of worship than the usual simple deference in (stereo-) typical worship behavior. It DOES more closely resemble the usage in the Aramaic tsli-- the word Jesus may have used in Matthew 6:6 for 'closet' prayer-- in the first instance meaning "to turn back/forth on a barbecue spit"; then "to turn, as the shadows with sun, toward God," then finally "to pray." One DOES here think associatively of Wolfgang Kohler's apes in problem-solving Gestalt psychology-- only in this instance does the 'banana' become a broad and encompassing meta-idea for the governing orientation of life.

The ideal type of problem solver in worship would resort to methods not unlike Thomas Merton, Juan de la Cruz, Teresa de Avila, (Pseudo-) Dionysius, Mohandas Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevski, Franz Kafka, Soren Kierkegaard, James M. Houston, or David Virtue. In a more general way we see this in the 'spirited' meditations of Copernicus, Galileo, Erasmus, and Thomas More. There would be a common denominator between this type of 'noetic' problem-solving and the 'brainstorming' in mathematics and science: witness the work of Einstein, Newton, and C. S. Peirce. In all this, the commonality would be a restless energic, aimed at fundamental shaking of assumption, testing in a lived reality, toward a more-comprehensive picture/Gestalt/Principle from which to operate-- with greatest investment of Care.

Limitations of this Study:

This is an age that venerates size-effect-- meaning that statistically there is but strength in numbers. My defense that I , N=1, am an integrated system hylebiopsychosocially is only a partial justification, and certainly no justification for not going further-- with larger sets of people-- doing whatever problem-solving worship as may obtain for them. The sufficiently-large numbers for my study are those only pertaining to the set:me-- any generalization to the madding crowd would certainly have to wait better and more expansive study. For this intent, apart for what I am saying about myself, I can only provide conjecture and speculation and hypothesis for what worship may resemble in the larger community of folk. "Further research is necessary" indeed!

Conclusion:

I shall elaborate on this thesis derived from these empiric findings for a few more entries, then I shall explore other topics regarding that behavior constellation which is called "reverent" and as a process "reverence." I think I have shown-- among other pre-conclusions-- that worship can be an active and creative process of 'turning back and forth on the spit' as well as practiced quiescence and deference. I think too that my approximations to this ideal type of un-rest-seeking-con-clusion are well figured in quantified/calculable results. And thus I think I shall re-apply this reductio ad absurdum method with even greater verve and over a wider domain of this set of studies. Thank you, William of Ockham! Thank you, Max Weber! Clinical phenomenology via your boost will become a harder-fact-science!

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Midnight (Coptic Daily Office)
Day of St. Ignatius of Loyola (Western Church)
Day of St. Joseph of Arimathaea (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-29T22:25:00.000-07:00

I Find and Locate on Internet
The Precise Passage in Max Weber
Sustaining the Kind of Statistical Verification
Of the Present Verstehenanalyse

Precis:

I have mentioned the use of statistics in connection with Max Weber's Verstehenanalyse-- and I have found the passage which I think "best says" that the proffering of an ideal type is ONLY to be corroborated with social facts, such as sociological statistics. The passage is online in an Web edition of Wirtschaft und Gesellshaft (a real find for me because it appears to be the complete and authentic text.) I shall put out the entire passage 1:1:7 from this massive work, and then shall paraphrase its contents.

Text (in German):

"»Motiv« heißt ein Sinnzusammenhang, welcher dem Handelnden selbst oder dem Beobachtenden als sinnhafter »Grund« eines Verhaltens erscheint. »Sinnhaft adäquat« soll ein zusammenhängend ablaufendes Verhalten in dem Grade heißen, als die Beziehung seiner Bestandteile von uns nach den durchschnittlichen Denk- und Gefühlsgewohnheiten als typischer (wir pflegen zu sagen: »richtiger«) Sinnzusammenhang bejaht wird. »Kausal adäquat« soll dagegen ein Aufeinanderfolgen von Vorgängen in dem Grade heißen, als nach Regeln der Erfahrung eine Chance besteht: daß sie stets in gleicher Art tatsächlich abläuft. (Sinnhaft adäquat in diesem Wortverstand ist z.B. die nach den uns geläufigen Normen des Rechnens oder Denkens richtige Lösung eines Rechenexempels. Kausal adäquat ist – im Umfang des statistischen Vorkommens – die nach erprobten Regeln der Erfahrung stattfindende Wahrscheinlichkeit einer – von jenen uns heute geläufigen Normen aus gesehen – »richtigen« oder »falschen« Lösung, also auch eines typischen »Rechenfehlers« oder einer typischen »Problemverschlingung«). Kausale Erklärung bedeutet also die Feststellung: daß nach einer irgendwie abschätzbaren, im – seltenen – Idealfall: zahlenmäßig angebbaren, Wahrscheinlichkeitsregel auf einen bestimmten beobachteten (inneren oder äußeren) Vorgang ein bestimmter anderer Vorgang folgt (oder: mit ihm gemeinsam auftritt).

"Eine richtige kausale Deutung eines konkreten Handelns bedeutet: daß der äußere Ablauf und das Motiv zutreffend und zugleich in ihrem Zusammenhang sinnhaft verständlich erkannt sind. Eine richtige kausale Deutung typischen Handelns (verständlicher Handlungstypus) bedeutet: daß der als typisch behauptete Hergang sowohl (in irgendeinem Grade) sinnadäquat erscheint wie (in irgendeinem Grade) als kausal adäquat festgestellt werden kann. Fehlt die Sinnadäquanz, dann liegt selbst bei größter und zahlenmäßig in ihrer Wahrscheinlichkeit präzis angebbarer Regelmäßigkeit des Ablaufs (des äußeren sowohl wie des psychischen) nur eine unverstehbare (oder nur unvollkommen verstehbare) statistische Wahrscheinlichkeit vor. Andererseits bedeutet für die Tragweite soziologischer Erkenntnisse selbst die evidenteste Sinnadäquanz nur in dem Maß eine richtige kausale Aussage, als der Beweis für das Bestehen einer (irgendwie angebbaren) Chance erbracht wird, daß das Handeln den sinnadäquat erscheinenden Verlauf tatsächlich mit angebbarer Häufigkeit oder Annäherung (durchschnittlich oder im »reinen« Fall) zu nehmen pflegt. Nur solche statistische Regelmäßigkeiten, welche einem verständlichen gemeinten Sinn eines sozialen Handelns entsprechen, sind (im hier gebrauchten

"Wortsinn) verständliche Handlungstypen, also: »soziologische Regeln«. Nur solche rationalen Konstruktionen eines sinnhaft verständlichen Handelns sind soziologische Typen realen Geschehens, welche in der Realität wenigstens in irgendeiner Annäherung beobachtet werden können. Es ist bei weitem nicht an dem: daß parallel der erschließbaren Sinnadäquanz immer auch die tatsächliche Chance der Häufigkeit des ihr entsprechenden Ablaufs wächst. Sondern ob dies der Fall ist, kann in jedem Fall nur die äußere Erfahrung zeigen. – Statistik gibt es (Absterbestatistik, Ermüdungsstatistik, Maschinenleistungsstatistik, Regenfallstatistik) von sinnfremden Vorgängen genau im gleichen Sinn wie von sinnhaften. Soziologische Statistik aber (Kriminalstatistik, Berufsstatistik, Preisstatistik, Anbaustatistik) nur von den letzteren (Fälle, welche beides enthalten: etwa Erntestatistik, sind selbstredend häufig)."

Paraphrase:

Motive/motivation is a context in meaning, in which the utterer behaves in a certain way. This if adequate in meaning should correspond in degree designated, as is customary in thought and action is said to be correct. This adequacy should be more than a chance correspondance between what is claimed and what actually occurs. This adequacy corresponds to the usual way of validating generalizations to particular examples. Causal adequacy when there is statistical stability of occurance in a way that would confirm "rightness" or "wrongness"-- just as in mathematical problems or other problematics. This corresponds to the contingency when a finding deviates stably from random-occurence according to some known rule of statistical inference.

A correct interpretation denotes a correct reading of motive corresponding to observed behavior. A valid interpretation of type entails finding that a type is as claimed to the degree claimed and thus seems causal. This denotes a regularity, not a misunderstood statistical correlation. Sociological events evidence adquacy of meaning only when not of chance-- and manifest as approximated with frequency of occurance obliges assent. The reference here is only to statistical regularities as providing sociological rules; only by such a correpondance of types and observed statistical regularities can we reconcile types... which are only tokens of outer experience. There are different types of statistics-- mortality data, morbidity statistics, industrial statistics, meterological reports, national statistical profiles, are precise in themselves; statistics in crime reports, career vitae, price time-series, and data on production are often of a mixed sort, containing various types of data.

Brief Discussion:

...My German is imperfect, but I think I can safely assert a 'close connection' between the original text and the meanings I give. At any rate, it seems clear from this that Weber expects that ideal-types need to be validated with facts-- which for the most part are amenable by statistical analysis.

This provides me with incentive to recourse to the statistical analysis of my writing behavior, 'religious' and non-religious-- in the sincere effort to derive motive and an ideal form/type/model for what makes this behavior in either class what it is-- and isn't.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee

Veil (Coptic Daily Office)

Day of Sts. Abdon & Sennen,
Martyrs in Rome, 4th Century (Western Church)

Day of Sts. Silas & Silvanus
Apostles in the 70 (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-29T17:38:00.000-07:00

I Express My Attitudes
Toward Quantification/Calculability
In Verstehenanalyse--
At the Threshold of Interpreting Findings
Of a Complete Set of Raw Data
In This Clinical Phenomenology of Worship-Writing

[I have gathered 11 'worth-ship' poems and 9 non-religious writs for the announced clinical phenomenology commenced on July 14. What follow are my thoughts on how this study could effect calculability/quantification in the Weberian/Schleiermacherian mode to effect understanding of the contents categorical of 'religious' writing I do.]

Prior to entry into the thicket of information that I have collected, let me state from the outset that I am emphatically interested in the characteristic form and content pertinent to the understanding of the kinds of writing I am examining. I am in "both continents" -- America and Europe in my appreciation of the human creature and his existentiality. To me, with this exegesis, it seems fit to examine the whole me by successive approximation and iteration-- by approaching the Ding an Sich modally by carving away at its complements. With the residue of what is carved away, then perhaps I can craft an analytic construct of accuracy for the true-animal, psychosociality. In fine, I wish to use the quantitative to reach for the Gestalt of knowning/modeling the qualities of Soul. This first apology for my method will endeavor to defend this method of numerics and numinousities as consistent with the Verstehen methodologists, and no 'eclecticism.'

There are several "loose ends" that need attention before I can explicate on the generalities of this study. Now in this particular entry, I wish to allude to the form of Verstehenanalyse most closely followed here-- that of Max Weber as evidently on the inspiration of Friedrich Schleiermacher. For both Schleiermacher and Weber permitted quantification to abet the work of understanding psychosocial reality. Weber goes further than Schleiermacher in this regard, and of the two is more-explicitly sociological; however it is still true that Weber's approach to Verstehen is 'more-soc' than 'psych' but the psychological is the more consistent element defensible in Weber's work-- to which characteristic Talcott Parsons-- one of his principal translators and a great sociologist in his own right-- observes with some sense of ambiguity. It is a psychosocial orientation in Weber to effect understanding of the whole through devising "ideal types" from empiric data, which in turn act as models for the entire social reality.

Jaspers, the mentor in Verstehenanalyse who gives us content-oriented clinical phenomenology to point toward the formal structures of personality, takes a dimmer view of what one can accomplish with numerate data with case study. In him we read,

"The prejudice in favor of quantitative findings derives from the exact sciences. Examination of qualitative changes is regarded as arbitrary, subjective and not scientific. Statistical and experimental methods, which by their use of measurement, calculation and graphs seem so valuable for the investigation of certain problems, are held to be the one and only scientific method...

"The examination of physical phenomena, of performance and productivity is indeed very valuable but all the same we can only penetrate to what is psychic if we let the psyche confront us directly and never be directly perceived, only indirectly in the way they express themselves. This self-evident point explains why a psychopathology which simply confines itself to what can be seen through the senses becomes inevitably as psychopathology without a psyche." (General Psychopathology, 1963, page 20.)

The opinion of Schleiermacher, the Ur-Patriarch of Verstehenanalysis, however says something decidedly at variance with this position:

"The knowledge of the language arises via hermeneutic operations. The first thing is to have as complete indices as possible on the individual writers [etc.], thus-- use of parallels. From this we then gain indices for the language, for specific areas, for the philosophical, rhetorical, mathematical area, etc. In this its is largely a matter of presenting in context those expressions which occur mainly in key passages, the customary expressions of every object and their dissolution into general linguistic usage. In this way the true dictionary from both operations; it must give the main location for every word, and, beginning from there, present the dissemination of the usage in being applied to related areas, as historically, chronologically as possible. In the same way as the use of parallels, often in the broadest sense, is necessary so that one goes over in a comparative manner to related languages, to the root language, explication also always requires the use of parallels in the narrower and broader sense. The knowledge of the language which the explication presupposes is still incomplete. It is only sufficient to begin the artistic explication. But precisely for this reason artistic grammatical explication must in turn have effects on the extension and completion of the knowledge of the language." (Hermeneutics and Criticism, Bowie's translation, 1998, page 55.)

Weber comes at quantification sideways to his discussions of rationality in society: he seems to be in accord with Schleiermacher that numerics are certainly possible in social study-- and his works evidence this. See "Sociologische Grundbegriffe," in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der Verstehenden Soziologie, J.C.B. Mohr, Tubingen, 1956, pages 1-30; this section describes Weber's 'permission' under which calculability in social study may be accomplished. I translated this chapter from the German about ten years ago; my offering herein derives from that reading, to the extent that I regard my clinical phenomenology now as a neo-Weberian derivation. [The pure-form/ideal-type/analytic-construct which will derive from this calculability will come upon and be consistent with some quantification consistent with this viewpoint.]

I am generally in accord with Jaspers on the importance of clinical phenomenology: he and I differ on whether quantification-- calculability in the Weberian vernacular-- is possible to effect understanding of a psychosociality. The making-conscious to which Jaspers refers is not indirect as a product when one clarifies a motive or other form. The process of becoming-conscious furthermore is greatly abetted by unbias in looking at total evidence. If this is effected, and if quantification is applied-- as we shall see-- the result can be a better understanding than what would occur in the nescience of naivete. In fact, as I think my work in the next few entries shall demonstrate, naivete would not "catch" the phenomenologies that 'hang subtle' in information, and quantification can abet both the clarification of true-ideal-types as well as the variance from ideal which can obtain in real world arrays-- and from this we have the-better invitation to derive more encompassing types, which augur to have better accuracy and better predictive value.

Numbers aren't everything: they are never as good as a clear idea. But clear ideas start with clear perceptions of reality. And numerics can abet this process of Finding-Content-for-Pure-Forms. If a form lacks a good fit with reality, on the other hand, it is a suspect typology-- and thus far from the-ideal.

Therefore, I shall demonstrate how there CAN be a metric of religious behavior --exemplfied in worship-writing-- and that this will have been consistent both with the aims of clinical phenomenolgy in the Schleiermacherian/Weberian 'last.'

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Compline
St. Olaf's Day

2008-07-28T11:33:00.000-07:00

The 'Righteous' Who Murder Defend:
The Untoward Tendency to Alibi
For All Criminals Who Remove Life--
Explication of My 10th 'Worth-Ship' Poem
In Clinical Phenomenology Study Here

Precis:

I near the end of the series of collecting 'religious' poems (as previously contextually and denotatively designated) ; here I report on the 18th in the series, the 10th worth-ship writ, with the non-religious writs + concordances pressed shortly.

The problematic with with I deal here pertains to the self-righteousness of '[hu-]man-slayers,' which runs the gauntlet between frowny-facing one disliked to the use of the Atom Bomb as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to try conflict-resolution-- and all permutations between and beyond.

To me, unrighteous behavior is in my experience 'covered' with an alibi that is forever a defense and protestation of innocence -- yea even virtue. The quintessence of this happens when one wishes a removal of one who causes psychic distress-- the paradigm of which is murder-- thus invoking Cain [Chapter 4 Genesis] and the Mark-of-Cain borne by all of us.

The poem was-- as the prior in this series-- published in "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville." The protocol for the design of this study of which this poem is part has been-- and consistently so-- from the intent published in this Web-log on July 14, 2008.

The Grammatical/Linguistic/Semiotic Explication:

The poem to which I refer is "Prayze Raise Cain BrotherKillers," from the first-mentioned blog above. This work obtains in 3 stanzas, 19 lines, 125 words, and 100 different words; it took over a day-- about (with near exactitude in fact) 453,611 minutes -- to go from 'inspiration/obligation/perspiration' to publication; this length of time was a statistical outlier-- and needs to be considered as such in the analysis, and occurs largely because: 1. I needed to collect 3 non-religious writs as alloted for the sampling and this took time; 2. I needed to 'percolate' on the topic, a 'slow train coming' in every respect, and -- as may be seen from the subsequent psychological explication, below, the source of considerable foundation-shaking and broadening of phenomenology/insight/Gestaltics. A lined/versified text and key-word-in-context concordance of this work is obtainable by my inclusion thereto in Google Base, at this link.

Syntactically, there needs but one point-- a rather fine one-- made about the 'musicality' of the versification. In the top of the second stanza, I needed 'something soft' to mollify the tails of the first three lines, and I wanted to do so (certainly!) without 'hard' rhyme, assonance, or alliteration-- my mainstays betimes. Thus, I tried to use softening by reference to the natural 'softeners' of our language-- vowels-- in this case -e , -a, and -o. I know that a speech therapist would have a precise way to describe what this phonemic mechanism might be called-- it has to do with 'un-blocked' aspiration in spoken utterance; knowing that there is a no doubt a tech term for what I have thus effected, I shall simply refer to it ('in hillbilly ways') as mollification. That will have to do to describe this modification of syntactics for now.

Pragmatically, this material is trope on the archetype of murder-- in all ways-- described fabulously in Genesis 4 with the slaying of Abel by Cain. As I have indicated, this in the Christian sense I use covers all displeasure with the presence of Another, and any desire to be rid of 'him' (her, it, etc.)

In this case, not typically to this series, the syntactics requires greater attention than the pragmatics. The semantics seem tied up and cognate with the material in Genesis 4, too.

Psychological Explication:

The murderer-- with whose class I have dealt in a large sub-set-- perhaps professionally about 1000 and perhaps unbeknownst to me not a few in my 'circle'-- forever seems to have the trait of justification. To the [hu-]man-slayer one is not "justified by Jesus" necessarily-- but maybe Jesus is 'made' to cognitive defense of murder-- or any other rationale that suits the killer's slant about the very rightness of topping-off-folk. One does not need such rationale to the degree that one does not engage in any trend in this direction, or indeed in any direction toward irresponsible/unethical behavior.

"Love covers a multitude of sins"-- but the sinner "covers with a multitude of sound defenses"-- as I have discovered to be nearly axiomatic for all takers-of-human life. I am sure this is done in socially acceptable places-- on the battlefield by chaplains is the first scenario to mind, but then the euthanizer must have such an alibi (there are some in my circle who have done this, and have the rationalizations too that I proffer)-- and the sideways talk that comes with the 'executioner's song'-- and those hiring the executioner-- must speak to all the doublespeak which killing necessitates. The covering of what almost cannot be BUT unrighteousness in this case is made to be a kind of rightness-- yea Rightness-with-God nearly always as far as I can determine.

What separates the alibis with the designated guilty and the designated innocent who slay is more social-sanction than degree or quality of rationalization: all parties try to a defense for the rightness of removal-of-the-other from the presences of [hu-]man-kind.

I am guilty of this 'murder' when I shun another who discomforts and discomfits me: I too say this Removal is just and defensible-- even though in quality it is Christianly of Cain and of murder.

I allude in this poem to the murders that go on per Louisville streets at night: this statistically numbers 'up there' with cities known for great-murderous-sin-- but we here do not have the [hu-]man-slayer stereotype-- so well we here are known for "the fastest minute in sports" our Derby and "finger lickin' good" chicken-company, and for "korn-likker" and "bas--sss--ket-ball"-- but in all these things we are murderers and so abide. So are all everywhere-- until the last powerplay of shunning and removal and undealing will effect in the problem-solving attempts of people.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of None
Day of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus (Western Church)
Day of Prochorus, and All, Saints of the 70 (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

Tentative Categories-- An Important Consideration--
Proffered Provisionally for this Study:
A Progress/Process Assessment
In this Clinical-Phenomenology-Ongoing

I near completion of the data-collection of this empiric series. As with all such work, there is a factor of 'business-as-usual' to data collection, rather at the exhausting quality of exhaustiveness which need please neither myself nor the impatient reader-- hungry that is for results, 'damn the facts' to support the results. For this tedium, I proffer 'regrets.'

At any rate, I have in the series of 20 planned examples gone to 16th; this means that thus far in the scheme I have uttered 9 'worth-ship' poems and 7 non-religious-writs. As I have indicated, in Google Base I have pressed the 'experimental' data-- the poems-- with concordances thereto. Later I shall (to avoid necessary tedium with 'dull material' for many) publish the same for randomly selected non-religious-writs. BOTH sets of data are essential for the assignment I have given myself-- and 'publicly present.'

The task to which now I assign myself -- in the writing in this entry-- will be to contemplate the categories appropriate for the classification of this material. In the business of phenomenology generally, this is the 'soul' of the operation. Whereas in other sciences one starts with categories and fills-in-blanks with them, the development of categories here is the gist (not infrequently existential phenomenologists refer to this as 'working toward essence.') To quote Edmund Husserl on this point, we read

"For psychology, the universal task presents itself: to investigate systematically the elementary intentionalities, and from these [unfold] the typical forms of intentional processes, their possible variants, their syntheses to new forms, their structural compostion, and from this advance towards a descriptive knowledge of the totality of the mental processes, towards a comprehensive type of a life of the psyche." ("The Purely Psychical in Self-Experience and Community Experience. The Universal Description of Intentional Experiences," in Chapter Three, Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology, Edited with Commentary by Joseph J. Kockelmans, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indiana, 1994, page 77.)

Accordingly, this process set-in-motion by this particular undertaking-- detecting the-what of difference between worth-ship poetic writing and non-religious-writ-- also of detecting what-if-any problem-solving behaviors implicit in such 'religiosity'-- comes to the need for the clearest presentation possible for defining the subjective states formally beneath the raw-data. As has been seen, I practice a form of clinical phenomenology permitting quantification. By the process of quantification, we are allowed to indicate the how-much and the how which abets understanding of the-what we seek.

As it turns out, there has been some methodologic sophistication in the presentation of the quantifying of subjective states. I shall only provide a limited glimpse of what I know with regard to this set of procedures, which are empiric and recognized for application to the task here at hand. I shall by this denote the business of specifying "Subjective Units," as described particularly in Chapter 6, "Individualized Rating Scales," in the wonderful book by Bloom, Fischer, and Orme, Evaluating Practice... (2003 [1995]), pages 194-210. In this case, ordinal numbers are designated-- as a means of pragmatic communication-- to degrees of "the soft stuff" of human subjective experience. There may be variance from the actual subjective state in actuality in such a report, primarily due to 'dishonesty'/bad-faith, or to slip-shod estimation; in general though, as a 'handy' way of conveying such informatics to another, this comes closest to being the-most-accurate kind of affective/volitional/subjective data to the Mitwelt that I have yet discovered for the process of worded-writing.

Thus by way of approximation 'around' the limits of this interior data, I am thinking that if I present-- say in scales of '0-to-10' the kind of categories I am envisioning now for these findings-- data in search of categories really-- then to the degree that I am honest in this presentation there may be better clarity of this-what. Nothing in particular is 'magical' about the decimality of these data-classes; it is true however that clinicians in mental health frequently use such scales to assess subjective states in clients/patients: by this method 'disturbed' folk and otherwise can-- if honest and thoughtful-- convey 'the insides' of psychic workings. The terms of course will be provisional, and may expand or contract to the degree that subsequent integration and categoric-disintegration occurs. And there will always be a category 'other'-- a germinal residuum of material which have not been classified.

To this end, from the 'eyeballing' I give the material coalescing in the two designated sets of findings-- 'religious' writs versus non-religious-writs-- there would seem to be at least the following dimensions-- which are are continuous/'0-to-10' or ordinal/'0-to-10' classifications:

[A] Degree of Concern/Care/Sorge in utterance
[B] Degree of Totality/Conclusiveness/Ultimacy in utterance
[C] Duration of Utterance (Minutes OR 'Kairology') in utterance
[D] Degree of Rework/Unfinish/Penultimacy in utterance
[E] Degree of Self-Reflection/Self-Questioning/Shaking-of-'Foundations' in utterance
[F] Degree to which Thought-versus-Objective-Fact obtains in utterance
[G] Other Factors, and Emergent Categories from utterance

These seven categories are only provisional: they may change. But by reference to defining the total-set, even if there should be something askew about this presentation of categories here, the presentation represents-- by virtue of the inclusion of the class 'other'-- a 'tight' systematic. In other words, the designations provided here may change, but from 'other' may come the novelty and reduction/expansion and growth-factor of this typology-nascent.

I shall thence apply the '0-to-10' labelling for each of these imputed categories. I shall also try-hard to 'try the spirit' of each category to see what may be termed its 'goodness-of-fit.'

I am beginning to see patterns in the emergent data, obviously, or I would not be able even to specify these classes. The 'tentative' findings are in this series that the 'religious'/'worth-ship' pieces are 'higher' on all classifications to 'F'-- i.e. ' > 5 on this 10-scale.' Whatever numerics I apply in the terminal end of this series will be amenable to qualitative numeric analysis, albeit provisional for the tentativeness of my 'Gestalt' subtending the work.

Those who look at askance at the possibility of making numerics of qualitative data will certainly be encouraged to peruse Analysing Qualitative Data by A.E. Maxwell (1971 [1961]), passim. In this work, subtantial demonstration is made that 'qualitativeness' is no bar to numerics-- that such data can be treated with inferential techniques such as the Chi-Square Test, the Fisher Exact Test, and the Binomial Test. In an effort to abet understanding-- with Max Weber and thence reaching backward to Friedrich Schleiermacher's example-- we shall here recourse to such numerics. Then as clinical phenomenology there may be designation of the relative-weights of classifications.

To me, this approach minimizes the requisite arbitrariness of this kind of assay-- not least because with some clarity I can convey 'degrees' and 'strengths' of noetics as well as mere nomenclature.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Terce
11th Sunday after Pentecost
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism)
6th Sunday of Matthew (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-25T23:38:00.000-07:00

I Explore the Potent Impotence of Rage:
The Ninth Worth-Ship Poem-- The 14th Writ--
In this Clinical Phenomenological Study

Precis:

Anger is a potent -- and impotent-- emotion: here I offer analysis of a poem about anger-- but written with utter dispassion-- as presented on this date in "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville." My analysis merely suggests that getting-angry only feeds into a system of missing-the-mark (Greek: hamartia) for which a social system predicated on callousness is WELL prepared-- and will deal with as a "welfare" problematic-- emblemized by the 'ultimate solution' attempted by National Socialism and the Third Reich. Thus, effectiveness of 'one's serve' implies a constructive response to the enraging features of social insult, not destruction in any form from the definable 'victim' of social injustice. This seems generally in accord with the several apostolic instructions for "slaves to be dutiful to their masters, even as to the Master in heaven" (compare Ephesians 6; Colossians 3; Titus 2.) Slavery may be definably unjust somehow-- but it is Providential-- and in this land the governance (albeit for Mammon, money, lucre in a theoretic voluntary system), work governed still by the common-law in commonweal of master:servant relations. As such, we need turn-over to Jahweh good and not rage for testament and testimony to good-done-under-conditions-evil. Whine not! Definable and real injustice does not exonerate the disciple from turning-the-other-cheek and Christian-service!

This poem will have been-- as announced from this Web-site on July 14, 2008-- part of an ongoing clinical phenomenology comparing worth-ship/worship writing versus non-religious-writ. Thus far in this controlled study, there have been 14 writings, of which this is the 9th 'religious' poem (of a total set) and including 5 other non-religious-pieces. I shall try to determine in this the nature of cognitive separations between the 'religious' and the 'non-religious' writs-- in particular focus on the kind-- if any-- of problem-solving that is effected in worth-ship.

The Grammatical/Linguistic/Semiotic Explication:

This poem is entitled "Just Go Away UnMad," and obtains in 6 stanzas, 49 lines, 222 words and 144 different words; from inspiration to publication the duration of this writing was about 20 minutes. A lined/'versified' text + key-word-concordance of this writing has been published in Google Base, which may be reached at this link.

The 'rage' to which this poem refers equates to the sense of injustice; I see allusion to this in Psalm 2:1-- and a parody of the same to a degree in the aria in the Handel Messiah. The pragmatics of this writing, therefore, begin with a Biblical text that makes rage a heathen and imaginary thing-- whether or not there is reality to the perceived insult. The response would seem to be in accord with 'the end of welfare as we know it'-- meaning the end of any communal way to foster well being in general-- except for the interests of the few, the powerful, the well-placed; that in the USA this means 'the monied' is only a reflection of what creates prestige and social-class in our society; the National Socialist and other politic economies but had other ways of accomplishing the same end.

The Christian response to insult can only be to turn-the-left-cheek-for-a-smack-right; this is the instruction of the Sermon on the Mount. As neither I nor other living disciple authored the Great Sermon or the New Testament this directive is not to be re-written or changed from the testament it implies. The cheek will now turn leftward!

The syntactics of this piece are not unlike previous writings in this series, so no further comment will be given for this.

The Psychological Explication:

I first of all wish to clarify that what is posited here is not a willful seeking of hurt: what is instead proposed is the ethical response mandated by discipleship. Any rationale in the mind of the first Incarnate Moment would suffice for the purposes simple obedience: however we are given to know that this is -- not a seeking of pain and insult -- but a "building of coals of fire on the head" of humiliators. Paul and the Wise Ones in Proverbs knew well that this is the ether-fuel and gasoline to fire reconstructive social justice-- and it is especially true in the United States that streets must run knee-deep in blood before social justice is thus effected. That is our history. That is our proud heritage. At every turn of America. At every enslavement, disenfranchisement, and lynching.

I think this as a social stratagem is effective. I cannot say that it is likely to "feel great." But even as this device worked to bring Christendom from a sodality-of-slaves to the Dominion in some centuries, even as chattel slavery and involunary servitude ended, even as there was a Civil Rights Movement which worked-- then there needs to be a Christian response to the slavemasters now. Let this be my testament, and the testament of all of my kind and 'family.'

"Thy will be done;
Thy Kingdom come;
in earth as it is in He'an."

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Veil (Coptic Office)
Day of Sts. Joachim and Anne (Western Church)
Day of Sts. Hermolaus & Companions, Martyrs (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-25T02:02:00.000-07:00

Something Newer from Something Older:
I Pen and Publish the Eighth Worth-Ship Poem,
The Thirteenth in Series For my Clinical Phenomenology
Aimed at Detection of Cognitive Processes in 'Religious' Writing

Precis:

In the eighth 'religious'/worth-ship/worship poem in this series (part of a clinical phenomenology to ascertain the qualities of religious versus non-religious writ) I entertain some of the logotics of Christian reference to night, and to the kind of City in which the Christian disciple endeavors to live, breathe, and have being. More specifically, this work is a trope on taking mass-transit in this metropolis (Louisville, Kentucky, USA) by summer night homeward as a signific like being in transit in the Christian life, as in the City of God, through the Dark Night in love, to a home where the Light is the Word:God. With such illumination, I try to exemplify, one can with all good timing 'come home,' to an abiding rest, though one has been far-afield from homestead.

This poem appears-- as do all the others in this series-- in "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville," this day in the wee-morning hours. The writing is the eighth religious poem to be considered in a total sample of such work in a series projected of twenty writs. This writing is one of thirteen writs so far-- with the complement obtaining as randomly selected non-religious-writings. The publication is part of a clinical phenomenology whose design was published in this Web-log on July 14, 2008.

The Grammatical/Linguistic/Semiotic Explication:

Again, the syntactics of this poem are in nearly all ways identical to the alitertive, assonant, rhyming style of the folk idiom on which I have heretofore written. I find it necessary the-more therefore to specify here matters of semantics and pragmatics-- the 'meaning of the author' and the 'meaning in social context' of this poem.

This poem is entitled, "Mass Transit to MyPlace on a DarkNight." This consists of 7 stanzas, 34 lines, 109 words, and 86 different words; it was penned-- from 'inspiration' (meaning sense of obligation to write, yen) to publication in 52 minutes' duration. A lined/'versified'/enumerated text and key-word-in-context (KWIC) concordance have been published in Google Base and may be accessed at this link. Perhaps in a way that would not satisfy composition teachers in high- school or super-high- school, there are heavy allusions to various social facts, and to literature that is common to Christianity-- on a figure of speaking-- an extended metaphor-- of being on a metropolitan bus, coming in from the hinter-suburbs to home on a warm and 'fun' summer night. The envisioned locale is my Louisville. There was a derivative experience of such a bus-ride home from worship in the Louisville perimeter on July 23, and some happy non-manipulating sense that circumstances were 'right.'

In the term "Mass Transit" there is pun on the Christian pilgrimage (as in the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134) via "Mass"-- the several layers of Communion implied in the Way of the Jesus Movement. The line "on a dark night" is lifted per word of the English translation of Juan de la Cruz' (John of the Cross') poem beginning his Dark Night of the Soul.

"Inner City Word" is a dual reference to the great work The City of God by St. Augustine, and the almost trite metaphor of the-interior meaning the-integrative in this Western culture. The referent to "The Driver" suggests mundanely the mass-transit driver's habit of being professional, and of announcement of where-one-is: this is imagined in connection with a God, whose Words are often the shouting of contexts making for in-sight. Straight Street is a reference to Acts 9:11 in literary work; but in the proximic context the streets of Louisville actually quite four-square in design and thus 'straight'; the 'Beautiful Gate' is also a reference to something in Acts, the healing-site mentioned in Acts 3. Louisville is called "The Gateway to the South," as it functions socially and in other valid ways. I do "Stations of the Cross"; I cross-myself when I so think to do; the stations and stops at that instant I was connecting with the stations-toward-Home one makes on a bus and Elsewhere. The Keys are known to be given to Peter and to the saints who effect the Will of Jesus in their lives. (A 'saint' here is anyone in Christendom, the City of God.)

Coming home, the traveler finds the light already on. This is the reminder of the Light-- Jesus-- who for the disciple is Ever:On/Never:Off. I am "between churches" and "between jobs" as Americans say only in a limited sense, as the reality of my being on-Patmos as Christian, and one whose first mundane vocation is writing-- I actually have both of these-- though perhaps not as the mass-culture, mob, crowd would deign. So in InnerCity, this sinner is home in the lived sense.

The Psychological Explication:

At the 'top' of my motivation for this writing, I was afraid of only perpetuating trite re-hash of old uses of older words. But there is the factor of the-real-referent-- that these surds connect with the cob-webs (or just "webs") of my process of coming-together. All the words in this poem, including the most-operant-semantics, are products of long-term memory. The Whorf-Sapir thesis of linguistic relativity holds that such language 'colors' one's percepts. While it is not a thesis that today in language science has a wide following, it seems plausible to me that long-term memory -- which is known to have a large linguistic component-- does shape and pre-condition the product that ejects from continued use of memories. This may not be completely the process: it could be that the wording and its associations in the expression of memory shapes the cognition in recall-product. I am not specialist in this, and have only followed the research from a distance-- much removed from the opportunities to do this sort of query. Nevertheless, I think I can say here/now that in the more fundamental levels of integration (what is only poetically called 'the deeper') I have a sense that the amelioration of words with wits in this poem derives from a need to effect a perceived integral of these divergences.

Hear what comfortable words (an invocation after Confession in the Communion Rite from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, Church of England) I can put to this here/now: this is a mix of the formulaic-- almost cliched-- symbolism of parts of the Christian experience which engage me in a fundamental yen toward Gestalt-formulation. The images of the warm summer night and travel mesh with my readings of Augustine's discourse on the City of God-- and on Juan Cruz's Dark Night-- and the Scourby readings (which are great) of the Holy Bible-- all reverbing in my "mind's ear" to come out in such a way. Again, this resembles the mode of the epic folk poets described in Albert Bates Lord's The Singer of Tales (1960); my recent hearkening to the dynamics presented by Lord in my writing is invoked in a recent review I made of Lord's book.

I am -- consistent with being a "riff writer"-- in the process of working out in writing. In somewhat the way that Ernest Hemingway's 'therapist' was Smith-Corona (his typewriter), my use of wording on my hybrid-system PC, and connection to the Internet through Blogger and Google Base-- are the 'strange works of love' (to use the words of Luther expropriated by Paul Tillich in Love, Power and Justice [1960]) -- intended to make love of my floppy-flops-- the loose ends and disconcertions of this crazy life which is alloted to me, an ecstatic confessor who thus is manic-depressive by the science and hoyle of my modernized Mitwelt. My 'temple' is not Microsoft Monastery, not MozillaFirefox Orthodox Church, not a prayer-stall of PC, but the psychology (Greek: "soul-talking") that comes to the PC and all its accouterments with same problematic that I do when I get on a TARC (Transit Authority of River City [Louisville]) bus-- head full of ideas and issues! These are only tools-- these junks-- the shovels and hoes-- with which I grow a happenstance garden of ideas not-completely-baked, but somewhat-more-than-half-baked with each 'replowing' of the hackeyed old stuff I had grown and cliched-in-the-flora-of-cliches which is the domain of language.

The raw experiences of busing-- of coming home-- of lights-on-- without the words is not less-magical in portent; but the connection with words-- Wording-- makes meat-- a kind of incarnation-- the totality of words-and-experiences blended into some new content-- and from a new formal shaping of Form-- from the motivator-me.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Prime
Day of St. James the Great (Western Church)
Day Commemorating the Dormition of Ste. Anna (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-23T04:34:00.000-07:00

Engagement with the Problem of Moral Masochism:
The Seventh 'Religious'/Worth-Ship/Worship Poem
Exploring Self-Sacrifice-for-Self-Sacrifice-Sake
As Tantamount to Psychic Self-Mutilation

Precis:

In the series here undertaken since July 14, 2008, I have engaged in a hard-regard self-clinical-phenomenology of 'religious'/worth-ship/worship poetry I have written, and am comparing this in an ongoing way with non-religious-writ. I am now into the eleventh writing-- a seventh in a total sample of religious poetry I have written (so defined) and there are five non-religious writings (all of which will be published together, under separate cover, at a site in Google Base, exactly as the individual religious poems are now.)

The poem here has appeared in "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville," as of this date. It treats of something known as moral masochism-- the yen with objective of obtaining love to seek utter self-destruction. Karen Horney, in her New Ways in Psychoanalysis, indicates that this amounts to the misunderstanding of a childish impulse which per se is ineffective for obtaining love-- or more importantly-- for self-activating, responsible living. I in another perspective regard this as defective discipleship in the Jesus Movement-- as a 'self-mutilation' without moral sufficiency for martyrdom/'witness.'

The Grammatical/Linguistic/Semiotic Explication:

The poem here is "Tricky Ricky KickMe"-- obtaining in a publication this day as indicated in 4 stanzas, 31 lines, 183 words, and 121 different words. From inception of writing (essentially meaning 'inspiration' -- should there be such a thing-- these with me are mostly 'yens' for writ) to the publication spanned a duration of 24 minutes. This done, I made a lined/versified/enumerated text with key-word-in-context concordance, published the same. These are available at this link.

Again, the syntactics of this poem are quite quite quite similar to previous poems; I shall dwell on semantics and pragmatics. The poem relates to a factor of one who frequently -- motivated by love-- reaches out for the 'self-emolating flame' of sacrifice-- as this is impressive and 'gets one love.' Self-criticism is intended: the designation of oneself as 'fec' has heretofore been explained; it is indicated that such a one as would seek-self-immolation-for-the-fire's-sake-and-pity alone would too turn down 'the wife of bath' (a loose woman who breaks vows) and baths (connoting the dirtiness of such a one.) "Sinn" in German means "referent meaning," but sounds veritably-- and has some suggestion here-- as connoting 'sin.' That such a baby is 'unforgiving' derives from the teleology of training-trajectory and the exercise-of-self-defined-will. Indeed, such folk are not good at mountain climbing, for there has to be a strongly overweening urge to-live, not to-be-punished-with-self-extinction. Thus "KickMe" is urged to desist.

The Psychological Explication:

This is a psychic-body-blow critique. It portrays a personal tendency to seek-the-cross for love, not for moral necessity, in the hope of obtaining love. This-- as Horney teaches-- is a psychosocial fiction of considerble self-malevolence and auto-destruction. From here, it would look as though the person described has some of the false Christianity of Lucian's "Peregrinus," who seeks martyrdom for the 'kick' of it -- in a masochism before its designated time in the then-'psychiatry.' This Peregrinus appears obviously to have become a Christian only in order to obtain pain-- and does get the martyrdom he seeks-- but I say may not have received the Crown which is the Paradise of True Witness.

The Apostles in the time around Jesus knew of those-self-hurt types. Paul in Philippians 3:2 seems to be aware of those who would engage in genital self-mutilation in order to effect a pain-for-pain-sake, and he decries this practice. The early Christian scholar Origen was supposed to have engaged in such self-castration, and for this exact reason apparently missed canonization by the Church. Not without reason does the very first canon of the Council of Nicea forbid promotion of those who have so-mutilated-themselves.

Clearly, what these practices amount-to is a physical self-injury; but the spirit is what means 'souled' in the Jesus-Movement. I do not think it off-base at all to stipulate that any yen to 'prove' for love or any other reason that one can proudly be, and reasonously, humiliated, hurt, is just mistaken that such would be anything like the martyrdom-for-faith as exemplar in Christianity. No. Martyrdom is GIVEN-- is a matter of accepting a fate of doing right and when the occasion comes-- as did with St. Thomas More in his beheading-- that one must pay all for the-right-thing, then one must pay as a moral one. Any yen to seek-the-Cross just to bleed hanging to death is sin.

As can be seen, I am far along enough in my spirited process to speak much ill of the yen-to-die-for-pain's-show. I think I no longer actively practice the death-wish-trend that once I did, proving this with perhaps six suicidalities in my autobiograph. In the long swim in this sea of existence from self-emolation, I have come to this point-- almost a joyous one-- though in splendidly unobserved isolation-- that I meet with the happiness I must like Jesus what-comes, but not now for the 'narcissism' (for that in fine is the motive in this dis-ease) of trying to illustrate to others my strength to endure pain. Pain = hurt. Period. And that-- top and bottom-- is all I need to know to live as "joyful exile" (see the work by James M. Houston on this subject.)

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Terce
Day of St. Bridget of Sweden (Western Church)
Day of the Prophet Ezekiel (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-21T01:09:00.000-07:00

As-If: I Write a Religious Poem with a 'Straw-Man'--
An Ideal Personological Type--
To Explore the 'Dubious Battle' in Which I Engage
In My Psychosocial Station (As Mental Health Consumer)

Precis:

I strive to write only what is true: when paradox emerges-- so facile I say with the 'satisfactions' of logic in the poetry I write-- I try hard to get-rooted to whatever inconsistency emerges and to clarify. While there are conditions with confusion and overlapping and continua, the process of clarification as it appears here is ALWAYS conducive to a sorting process, and thus a potential hypocrisy that develops in expression of (logical, semantic) paradox.

Here, I present yet another poem previously published in "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville," which will have been the sixth 'religious'/worth-ship/worship/rever-ant poem in a series of by-now nine writings-- with a goal to analyze 20 such writs (11 religious and 9 non-religious.)

I make use of 'ideal type' Verstehen (see this link) in this poem-- the presentation of a fictive police officer 'pweeeeeeeeseman'-- who would have no use in the sovereignty he watches-over for 'ecstatic confession' (see the book by Martin Buber by name of this ilk) which = the-stuff-of-my-life, my existentially-defined-self-purpose. I regret any association others might make that this portrays Metro Louisville Police in 'a bad light.' In actuality as in all social cohorts, police are a 'motley crew,' with some not unlike identical to the personology presented in the poem analyzed here, and others extremely humane, and deferential maximally to human and civil rights of all-- including religious ecstatics.

The Grammatical/Linguistic/Semiotic Explication:

This poem is entitled "A Pweeeeeeeeseman's Sworn Report." It obtains in 5 stanzas, 29 lines, 161 words, and 123 different words; it was crafted-- from inspiration to publication-- in ~ 30 minutes duration. A lined-enumerated text + key-word-in-context (KWIC) concordance of this work can be located at this link.

There are liberties taken with orthography and in a quite-limited way with syntax from 'standard English' in this poem. The likes of this are hardly different in kind than the observations I have made on other poems in this series; please refer to prior entries in "Hermenteutik und Kritik" for these details as relevant.

In terms of difference, again, we are squarely into the semiotic domain of the pragmatic (the 'referential' of Roman Jakobson). I am a 'card carrying crazy,' a manic-depressive/bipolar subject to 'highs' of 'ecstatic confession.' This nets me contact with the Louisville Metro Police Department betimes, and I have a history of some 22 psychiatric-hospitalizations, almost all of which are involuntary in nature. This legally has to be done with some demonstration of 'immediate danger' to self/others-- and since it can really never be said that I intend danger to others, I trow that these involuntaries are effected under the rubric that I am 'dangerous' to myself (somehow.) The psychologics of this with me will be discussed in the next section.

The Psychological Explication:

With very few exceptions-- meaning when I was actively suicidal some twenty years ago-- the 'danger to myself' posed by my religious ecstasies in my opinion-- which need not at all deeply be an 'humble' opinion-- is that the involuntaries are the exercise of 40-pound-hammer-dominion over a germ-problem in 'killing the issue.' What I experience in ecstasy is a state generally of consummate beauty or of rage at injustice. While the prophet Jeremiah in Biblical days got himself incarcerated for such righteous indignation (see Jeremiah 32:2 and sequence), clearly on the receiving end here-- of so much overkill for what can turn into benign, generative, and productive socialization (by way of problem-solving in verse and other writ)-- I am left with some puzzlement over the fact that "Great is the hand which holds dominion over man by a scribbled name" (Dylan Thomas) There would be a subjective impression 'over here' that there has been much scribbling about the danger of my 'case,' and this much-ado-about-zero on the real risk that I might harm anyone-- down to a bug when I am so tenderized-- or yea myself in any way. Clearly, this is worship in the sense of perception of the-Numinous-- that Other Who Is What Is-- say Jahweh. The profoundest misunderstanding arises from the official-designation of what 'danger' is -- which would seem to be a vast/broad/inequitable criterion especially for the problematic I present when ecstatic-- and on this-side how I am really motivated for actions.

Some police-people seem to present the attitudes toward my religious liberty-- to have ecstatics-- with the hardness portrayed in the poem. I have come close to being beaten (in July, 1998) during emergency-mental-'runs' for me, status post getting hospitalization for being beaten by a property manager who claimed I did this to myself-- and evidently with this report befooling the law enforcement, EMS, and psychiatric officials at University Hospital, Louisville. At least to whelming degrees for my religious verve I am thence taken into mental (inquest) court to be held accountable for the 'danger' of dream-life-about-God-- with no motive whatsoever of intent to harm others/self-- but to worth-ship/make-worthy/worship.

But the hard edge that has been employed by some police-men (it is generally the men-cops I most fret; for inscrutable reasons the women are not so hard herein)-- is NOT shared by every person in the criminal justice system here. While I do have some almost insignificant criminal record (misdemeanant 'disorderlies' to the civil peace), mostly my most difficult treatments by the Law (as police are known in the South) have been dealt by file-aways and dismissals. I think there was one 'd.c.' (disorderly conduct) that stuck after my jail-then-hospital treatment in 1988 (when my doggie Nugget died at Christmas and I knew/felt it.) But overweeningly and not inappropriately the police see hospitalization as viable for a person who is so 'out of contact with reality' as I might be-- and there is handcuffing generally atop my worship-- but I think this is just standard-operating-procedure for such police-calls.

There has always been a sense of injustice on which I have brooded about these 'busts.' In part, these may somehow be justifiable sentiments. But the better is it not to "whine," or feel sorry for myself in that my cosmicity, my universal-we-feeling, my ecstatics are not shared by others who see me in such states. For that sense of self castigation-- for clarification and not for logical paradox-- I refer to myself as "Ol Phon-eeeeeeee." Self pity and moping are NEVER justifiable for constructive action in life, nor do such produce 'good works.' There is thus a sense of detached self criticism-- of myself for what I am to society in my ecstatics-- in the paradigm/type of 'Pweeeeeeeeseman'-- and thus to get what I deserve-- despite all existential yearning for The Other to Whom I allude, above.

Discussion:

In all things, I am one who tries hard to present the-truth, the-whole-truth, and nothing-but-the-truth, so-help-me-Truth-- if for no other reason that when I lie I am invariably caught in my inconstant inconsistency, and am scolded/shamed/blamed/'hanged' for it. As the truth is dappled/motley-- but in no sense a 'version'-- the 'catching' seems with me to be part of the whole, the (-) side of what has complexity and dimension in the explaining. My sense that the-worst-possible-slant-of-it as my 'dangerousness' is pressed to Metro Louisville-- my beloved city-- site to my hovel-hermitage-- site of my pilgrimage now nigh 40 years-- I am given much occasion to retire-- to not-take-chances-- not to venture out with my beauties-- and to 'leave my ecstatics at home.'

The motivation for this poem to me -- perhaps not to all-- seems clearly to ridicule myself as 'a ridiculous man' (shades of Dostoevski's Notes from the Underground, Constance Garrett's fine translation.) The ideal-type of the care-not-at-all-for-ecstasy policeman is a stereotype-- only partly real-- aimed at critiquing at the fundamental fundamental fundamental level THIS ecstatic-- in order that I might thus "shake the foundations" (see the Paul Tillich book with title-this-like as well as Isaiah 24:18 KJV)

This 'shaking' is nearly the profoundest rationale of my-me: I am willing to pay the price for being misunderstood as a threat for this oddity of slipping into reverie or what may be termed 'prophetic' rage. I am however no Jeremiah. I do not wish this jailing simply to enlighten police or psychiatrists-- which contingency never occurs in reality-- about my new-found-Gestalt. Instead, beginning with the foundation-shaken Hermeneutik of myself-- and to that same for the Revolutionary who founded Christendom, the Nazarene, the Crucified-Messiah-Figure my great hero-- I am willing instead to hermitage and all the ecstatics conformative to what Officer-- the Pweeeeeeeeseman of this piece explicated-- will permit in the great dominion of scribbles which does betimes cost me my liberty. But: let freedom ring!!!!!

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Hour of Prime
Day of Ste. Praxedes, Virgin, Rome Sub-Apostolic Period (Western Church)
Day of Sts. John & Simeon, of Edessa, Syria, 6th century (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

I 'Press' 5 Lined-Texts + Concordances
For the Previously-Analyzed Worship Poems--
And Speculate about the Limitations and the Assets
Of My General Pursuit of Defining Whole-Holiness

Briefly Reporting:

This has been a busy night for me. As I have promised my readers (say BOTH of them) to this Web-log, I have crafted lined-enumerated texts + key-word-in-context (KWIC) concordances for the 5 worship-poems to which I have analyzed in this site-- for the 'experiment' in clinical phenomenology to detect categorical content-differences between worship-for-problem-solving (as in the poetics) versus non-religious writings-- with 11 worship poems and 9 non-religious-writings sceduled for analysis, ongoing now since July 14.

This is just a note to provide names and links for the 5 in Google Base now. As I have stated repeatedly by now, the 9 non-religious-writs-- mostly consisting of notes-to-self-- and thus tedious-- will be 'pressed' at one time, all nine of them. As some of this in non-religion is just numbers, and since I lack a way of concordancing numerics, the best I shall sometimes be able to do is provide the text; otherwise, in that 'publication of the 9' expect both an enumerated/versified text and a concordance.

All of this is motivated by the wish to be as transparent as possible. Only by sharing as much information as I can will this operation objectify-- beginning with subjectivity, and may work through qualitative analysis into quantification-- and then with the oversight of the best-minds with the best 'calcs' going to compare notes on the raw data I am generating.

The Publications: Five Lined Worship Poems with Concordances

The five referenced publications are-- with first designations in titles suggestive of identity-- as follows:

"RAW DATA FOR AN ONGOING CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY: Lined-Text and Concordance of "Glossolalic Tendency in Strained Effort at 1 Cor 13," A Problem-Solving Worship, A Specimen in a Study of Self-Professed Reverencing Behavior"

"RAW DATA FOR AN ONGOING CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY: Second Worth-ship (Worship) Poem, Third in Series of 20 Writings, to Ascertain Content of Reverent/Non-Reverent Behavior"

"RAW DATA FOR AN ONGOING CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY: Third Religious/Worth-Ship/Worship Poem, Fourth in Series of Documents Testing Religious/Non-Religious Writing as Problem Solving"

"RAW DATA FOR AN ONGOING CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY: Fourth 'Religious'/Worth-Ship/ Worship Poem in a Series of Thus of Six Writings, with Lined-Text and Concordance, for Purposes of Detection of Functionality of Reverent Behavior as Functional for Problem-Solving"

"RAW DATA FOR AN ONGOING CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY: Fifth 'Religious'/Worship Poem, Seventh in a Series of 20 Writings Comparing Such Reverent Behavior to Non-Reverent Behavior"

Some Materializing Observations and Pre-Conclusions:

It is clear that some problem solving is involved in WHATEVER I do. In casting about for content-categories in this (clinical) phenomenology, I need to clarify the kind of 'problem' which might be addressed under the varying conditions. This does mean that there are different kinds of worship-- not just public/private with their "motives delta," but also sub-set variations e.g. private worship which is more-deferential and ritual, and other forms like writing Numinous verse which seems aimed at problem solving at a deep level. It also means there might be 'worship' clumsily interpreted from bodily functions, chores, TV-attending, etc. etc.

I am informed by Husserl-- the Lutheran of Jewish provenance who after Schleiermacher and Dilthey did most to develop scientific phenomenology-- that the quest for pure category is likely to be an arduous task. In Husserl's case, the regard for Nous/Understanding-of-Form is paramount. In the system of Jaspers-- a practicing psychiatrist and thus an applied social scientist-- the quest for categories of phenomenological content consumes an equivalent kind of energy. I think for now, the best I can do would be to fancy gradients on a 'curve' of some sort...or ordinal quasi-continua of categories... or just nominal categories... sorting out the degrees-to-which there is corresponding to the content-defined of reverent behavior.

[This does not mean that the form of motive is unimportant, only that the focus of a clinical phenomenology is on content with the presumed presence of form-- or the meristem thereunto nascent. In my work, I am not only concerned with the 'symptomatology' but also the 'personality' behind behavior, in this case behavior esteemed to be revering. It is only the 'first leading foot' out in this walk that inclines me to understand content.]

There are advantages and disadvantages to this type of study. One should note well: the restraints of my condition MUST be an N=1 study. It is a self-case-study. And I am well aware that I need to control for BIAS-- "forcing the evidence" if we construct an etymology from Greek. For this reason, the inputs I derive are from an admittedly too-small dataset-- my me-- but I am an operant hyle-bio-psycho-social system-- and attention to the details of my search for these categories could abet clear-thinking about this condition elsewhere. I shall try to do what Schleiermacher suggests in this regard,

"One must be versed in meditation and composition in order to understand another's meditation and composition. On this side one's own composing is so essential in practice for higher studies in literary gymnastics." (Hermeneutics and Criticism, Bowie's translation, 1998, page 135.)

I regard these biases as limiting factors to understanding The Other, but by the elegant detail of limning-around what 'my opinion' and its contents fully are can I effect meeting in a Mitwelt with another, who physically must come from a universe-of-discourse comparable-only but different-ultimately. The courtesy to others can only be fathomed by careful scrutiny of how I exert this 'force' on the data which may not be shared externally.

Thus, if I fathom what I mean by 'worship' in a self-consistent way, then perchance I can be clear in drawing thus the boundaries of what-is-not as well as what-is owned understanding to me. This would be the better than taking the route of (logical, doxastic) inconsistency. In other words, I need to mean what I say: were I to 'fudge,' I would merely be in that Cretan paradox-- of saying-that-all-of-us-always-lie-wink-wink. Clarity and signified-honesty are the way beginning to lead out of the morass of hypocrisy which are the hallmarks-- known by even the most casual observer of things-Christian and things-religious in this day. So therefore let us be candid, with ourselves first, and also with others-- in this hush-hush of professed piety.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Hermit, Lollard
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism)
Tenth Sunday After Pentecost (Anglican Church, et al.)
Fifth Sunday of St. Matthew (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-19T19:19:00.000-07:00

I Utter Another Worship-Poem:
On the Phony and the Real
Of Confession, Non-Confession,
And Consternated-Closure

[For the 'outline' of that which pertains in this entry, again I refer the reader to the entry of this Web-log for July 14, 2008; in general I can say that I am trying to do a clinical (Verstehen-, in the Schleiermacherian sense) phenomenology of a pre-ordained 11 religious poems and 9 non-religious writs to determine qualitative differences/indifferences to writing I do in a worshipful mode (by self-definition.) This offering now concerns itself with the seventh writ in this series, a worship/religious poem in "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville."]

Precis:

I have written the 7th specimen-writing in this series to which I allude above, which series now consists of 5 worship-poems and 2 non-religious-writings. This poem, pressed tonight in the blog identified-above, is entitled "Of Bored Confessors, Hearing Boring Confessions, In Black Confessional." This utterance went from 'riff to write' in about half and hour; was published at 9:05 this night (Eastern Daylight Savings Time.) It is intended to expose the dark-underside of the humanity involved in the Sacrament of Penance-- which like all things of our mob-species can obtain in fallen-ness, imperfection, whereas the truth consists in work-doing-better (see the character Do-Well in Piers Plowman by 'Langland.')

Grammatical/Linguistic/Semiotic Explication:

This poem obtains in 5 stanzas, 29 lines, 159 words, and 123 'different words.' A lined/'versified' text + concordance of this has been produced, and will shortly-enough be published-- with all writs in this series-- in Google Base. The alliterative, assonant, rhyming internal/external pattern of prior poetic entries in worship-poems appears here as well; I shall as heretofore dwell on differences, which from 'here' appear to reside in 'eccentric' perspective-- not impious-- on the 'peculiar honor' of sacramental confession as practiced in certain ecclesiae.

Thus the differences are mostly in what Roman Jakobson identifies at the-referential (pragmatic context); it is assumed that the reader have some knowledge-- at least superficial-- of the rite of confession in demi-Catholic churches; the novelty only emerges in the observation that confession CAN BE (but need not always be) BAD FAITH, by which is meant a fundamental dishonesty, mendacity, and corny-deceit instead of authentic work-on-fallen-ness.

I DID on one occasion hear an ex-Roman-Catholic priest say that hearing-confessions is an extremely boring business. I think he was referring to the tedium of hearing-- again and again and again ad nauseam-- the same kinds of missings-of-mark (hamartia) done in a hackneyed way, without obvious deep-thought or much sincerity to move-from-sin-toward-responsibility. This left a 'mark' on me.

More proximately, I had occasion to hear a tape recording of myself talking about 'my sins' this day; I think I meant what I said about sorrow, but there was a stiffling and 'gaggy' reaction to this on my part: the sound-of-unction (a form of self-pride) generally has this effect in me! The work, here linked for July 19, today, is my versified-regurgitative-reaction to this self-pious-sounding...

The (Motivational) Psychological Explication:

Friedrich Schleiermacher speaks to the telling-quality of detecting 'inner'-direction-in-utterance:

"The first task is therefore the unity of the work as a fact in the life of its author. The question is how the author arrived at the thought from which the whole developed, i.e. what relationship does it have to his whole life and how does the moment of emergence relate to all other life-moments of the author?

"One might think the task is already solved by the title. But this is deceptive. For the title is not something essential for hermeneutics and was almost always missing in antiquity...

"In the accomplishing of the task one must begin with the following opposition. On the one side, the more a work belongs in terms of its form to the career of the author, the more its genesis is self-evident. The only question left would be how the author came to this particular career. But this is of no interest at all in relation to the single work in question. The opposed case is the one in which the task is diffiicult to the extent to which the activity from which the work emerges appears contingent in the life of the author. In this case the whole life of the author would have to be available for the task to be accomplished. We distinguish here the question: in what circumstances did the author come to his decision, from the question what does this decision mean in him, or what particular value does it have in relation to the totality of his life?

"...In general the following rule can be established in relation to this: The more a work has emerged from the inner being of the writer, the more insignificant the external circumstances are for the hermeneutic task; if on the other hand, the author was compelled to the work by external matters, it is all the more necessary to know the external reasons.

"Much more important is the second question: what does the true, inner seed of the work, the decision in the life of the author mean?" [Hermeneutics and Criticism, Andrew Bowie's translation (1998), pages 107-108.]

Thus by Schleiermacher, my externals of alliteration:assonance:rhyme tendencies derive from motives-- and are an instance of the larger set of motives engendering the author (myself, in this case) to 'spiel.' The externalities of this nature are thus secondary to the stammering process of trying to grasp well and say well my fundamental issues and answers to as yet an unclear question: What here am I trying to do, what am I 'up-to' ??

I think the externals -- the coupling-in-colons-and-couples which make the HOW of this utterance PROBABLY WOULD NOT OCCUR BUT TO MAKE PSYCHIC CLOSURE ON AN ADDRESS-- THE WELL-SAIDNESS IS SUPPOSED TO BETRAY A WHOLE-WORK IN COGNITION. In this case, there is a reckoning-- becoming a dead-reckoning-- that there is insincerity in the business of uttering sinful mea-culpa status. Like all holy words, the profession that one is Un Miserable is too-easy, 'too-cute', and often short-circuits the floundering process, the fulminating-and-flummoxing which bemarks a truer process of working-toward-perfection (compare Matthew 5:48). While one cannot say that the-process-of-seeking-end-state-perfect is an end in itself, it seems true for me that the process is generative of 'meristem' growth -- at first awkward-- then well-uttered-- which is the process of disclosure. On the one hand, disclosure means tearing down the old hackneys; then it means disconcerted disorientation, and finally it means saying the result as well as possible (but never perfectly perfectly finished.)

My thoughts on confession here are part-in-parcel of an imperfect imperfector trying to grasp the gist of gropes; nothing comes out exactly right any particular time: the play of going-out surds from coming-in awarenesses speak to a kind of hydraulic of retention and catharsis. Too much going out catharsis can be inauthentic: none at all cathartic IS inauthenticity. In the balance between the inner-work and the the metric forms of externalities, my confession and this obsession is but a JOKE ON ME-- NEVER VERY FUNNY-- BUT ALWAYS SELF-ENTERTAINING. Such must be the work of the authentic 'new man' (compare Ephesians 4:24.)

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Midnight (Coptic Daily Office)
In the Place Here Commonly Called 'The Desert'
Nitty Gritty City Louisville, Kentucky USA

2008-07-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

Interim Report:
I Publish Tonight Another Worship-Poem--
"Apologetic Apology to Papa Santo Benedicto 16"--
The Fourth Religious Poem in the Test-Series
And the Sixth Writing Specimen in the Present Study

[As I have indicated heretofore, I am doing a series of analyses of my writing, with quasi-random selections of 11 'religious/worship poems' versus 9 'non-religious writs.' As I have promised not to bore the reader of this Web-log with tedious material, the non-religious pieces-- which mostly consist of randomly-selected notes-to-myself-- will but need to refer to a subsequent pressing of these items in Google Base. This will be done with 'lined/versified text' as well as key-word-in-context (KWIC) concordances of each writ. The same will apply to each and every poem I write in (religious poetry blog) "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville."]

Precis:

Tonight, I wish to explicate upon "Apologetic Apology to Papa Santo Benedicto 16 from my Fallendown Church, Near Homelessness," presented as I have indicated severally in my religious/worship poetry blog. The poem consists of an address effected from a sinner-- in a church not in communion with Rome-- and from the conventicle-worship-place, my 'pad.' I hope I have been sufficiently humble; I loathe vain folk outwardly, but have some pronounce vanities of my own-- which need deflation for damage-control. The format for this explication will equate to that on previous entries herein, and of this kind.

Grammatical/Linguistic/Semiotic Explication:

This poem's 'riff' set in on me at 2:15 p.m. I 'pressed' it after one sitting of about an hour's duration at 9:00p.m. Thus the entire workup was of rather long duration (405 minutes), but most of this time was spent on 'new creation' (see again 2 Corinthians 5:17) in trying for a spontaneous worship (perhaps at such time I shall convey this information and other matters related to my [somewhat] structured 'Lollard' prayerlife! Suffice to say that my private worship only partly resembles what I do in 'common prayer.')

"Apologetic Apology to Papa Santo..." obtains in 6 stanzas, 38 lines, 178 words and 123 different words. Most of the poem presents with rhetorical technique which is known in this blog from prior entries; of the part which is 'unlike' here, I shall present.

By the Jakobsonian 'referential,' I really am NOT one in the fold of Catholicism which Pater Benedictus, our president Pope, shepherds. My catholicism is of the universal nature, the Bible to which Francis Assisi pointed when he had no-text Bible in his Order's attention. I have but the nothing of sun on sunny days, sometime hazy moon by city-lit night, and rains in the warm season as now, and then frosty chill and rare snows in wintertide. I AM a pauper: the sovereign state and Jefferson County will have to put me away when I am composting-well: I do not suppose they will 'let me stink' in offense to the dignity of commonweal!

"BrokeBody" I have literally at this 61th instant year of age; when I had a break-in from "the buggars" the Metro Police refused at first to take a report of this evidently because I am "just a guy who lives over in The Desert, and should expect that kind of thing." I have a queen-cat (kitty-female) who has been 'fixt' and clean here for 6 years; she gets 'lauded' despite the onerous repute of the Archbishop of Canterbury by that surname.

There is a St. Cross and St. Bell to which I allude in the reality of this working neighborhood: it obtains at St. Louis-Bertrand-- a Dominic-place. Sometimes I peek-- especially at night-- through my window/portal at these 'saints,' and as indicated as sinner close after a long glance. I have taken my vows: I am Anglican, I am divorced, the emptiness I have is the willed emptiness of one who prefers the Warm Dark Night over Presence a block away. Maybe a loving God will indulge me in this: I hope: but I cannot be what I am not, and I deign not to be a phony.

I am happy. I am not gay. Being a little-too-gay is sound occasion for any manic like me to fret sanity, and to 'seek asylum' at University Hospital 6th Floor Psych. That time is not here apparently.

Psychological Explication:

There IS pain on the deep level in NOT being in a proper church family; my car and my gas-money will not take me to that sanctuary I have just found, with new siblings in Jesus. One has but what-one-hath. If one is theist-- I think I qualify-- this like all things is blest-- all that is will but say Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes to Jah(weh.) Providence gives out cookies as are meant, not like the cute gingers in Chinese and wonderful restaurants. My cookies are the Dark Night in SummerSolsticeSeason-- this SunWaxing eclipsed as now in humidhothubrishospice-- as I get over whatever I thought I de-serve and strive the better to-serve.

I think I AM serving: kitty likes the blood-and-grain-food that somebody like Purina proffers-- I purchase-- I am much between-jobs, but re-serve to write furiously and frenetically and ferally until the time-come-- when this carcass stinks so bad in here that somebody responsible calls the Coroner's Office and OUT I GO.

There is nothing bitter at all about my life: the cookie-crumbles makes a windfall life that is NOT crumby. As long as I can pay the rent and not incur the wrath of God, in other ways of saying it, I shall be alright, alright, alright.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee, Lollard
Time of Compline
Day of Sts. Edburga, of Chichester & Minster, Nuns (Western Church)
Day of St. Emilianos of Bulgaria (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

Third Religious/Worship-Poem and Fourth Writ
In This Study of Private Worship
As Problem-Solving Behavior

I just uttered a poem into "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville," the likes of which I for the purpose of the experiment undertaken -- on determining the contents of private worship by Verstehen clinical-phenomenology methods. The protocol for this assay was specified in this Web-log on July 14; this is the fourth inclusion in this ongoing project, quasi-randomly selected beforehand to have content of 11 religious poems for "The River Raver," and random selections of other kinds of writing for comparison/control.

Grammatical/Linguistic/Semiotic Explication:

The new poem here is "The Light is on when the l-ight's Squeezed Out," a versification obtaining-- by the standard imposed by Notepad + + -- 24 lines, three stanzas, with 145 words and 103 different words. I have prepared a 'lined/versified' text of this document and a key-word-in-context (KWIC) concordance in addition to publication for the blog cited. This will have been published in Google Base after such time as lined-texts and concordances have been prepared for the other writs in this study.

The poem was written between the yen to 'riff' at 10:18 p.m tonight, and publication time was -- with last minute touches-- online at 11:54 p.m. herein. Thus the duration of this working was 96 minutes. Conditions of indexicality and iconography are nearly identical to other publications of this nature in "The River Raver," and this has already been reported, several times in explication. The alliterative and assonant and rhyming style of this piece is quite comparable to that in other poems in this series.

Some comment needs to be made on my tendency to be a 'riff writer,' which is structurally not unlike the mode in which jazz musicians work. At the Morehead (Kentucky) Writer's Workshop in August, 1963, a published poet named Robert Francis instructed me that I should use "outline form" such as what he called "preliminaries" to write poems. This was reiterated by Wendel Berry in a personal communication in the fall of 1987, and he also said that "polish" is imperative in the pressing of poetry, as in all writing. Neither of these two companion 'advices' seem to gel with the raw-meat desideratum for which I inevitably seek in writing. I have ALWAYS regarded my poetics as forever works-in-progress, and I will seek out the flesh-o-logy in other to reduce the potential for preventing this overwrought quality. I use prosodics-- the stanzaic meter of natural speech, what good I hear, what bad I hear, and the scansion of 'pretties-enough' like the read poems of Dylan Thomas and Scourby's rendering of the King James Bible. My works in this regard are a folk-idiom, not unlike what Albert Bates Lord describes as the creative process of (Eastern European) epic poets. [See my review of Lord's Singer of Tales at this link for the gist of my prosodics. ] A "polished" poem from me would be like my polishing my boots or automobile-- just almost completely out of character. Form critics should take note of these matters in regard to the study at hand now.

Psychological Explication:

The great inspiration for this writ derives from a reading of Psalm 121 KJV: in verse 5, there is mention of 'shade' from Jahweh as a protection; I read in my Hebrew lexicon that the rootedness of the Semitic word referent here is tsl-- which also refers to 'shadow'-- and furthermore there is Hebraism to denote 'the shadow of God' in Temple service. I was keenly desirous of saying something about this summer night as being softly in the Shadow (Jungian and Hebraic sense) of Jahweh-- using positive archetypal association. I conjured 'night' in hackneyed-negative terms. Of late, especially in the gossamer season of summer that beckons now, I am in a 'fairie' mood about these matters, and do feel "close to Jahweh."

Indeed, I am now beginning to make associations with the summery qualities of certain Elizabethanism-- of which the KJV is a belated part (much alive in these Hot United States now.) I am for example thinking of the summer-ness of Shakespeare's The Tempest as well as Spenser's Fairy Queen series. Of this soft and darksome magic (superstition NOT intended) I wished to make invocation. The problem-- which this worship addresses-- is the finding of The Light (God, the Numinous, The Divine) in the physical dearth of light and in warmth. (Meant in several layers of consistent positive association.)

This Numinous quality -- the power of Warm Darkness-- comes very close to the 'darkness' in Dionysius' Mystical Theology (for the link to the Greek text in Migne, click here); with me there is also a strong association with the 'dark night' of spirit/soul invoked by St. John of the Cross in The Dark Night of the Soul (see my work for this in Google Base-- the Spanish text + a concordance at the link here) ; perhaps an even more-important description of such 'nocturne' appears in John-Cross's Ascent of Mount Carmel (see my efforts at this point, like the prior link just mentioned, here.)

Darkness now to me is the Mantle of the Shekinah of God: in that Darkness, the Throne of Truth sits, from Whence I have emerged in evolved time, to Which I demise, soon enough. The new found Darkness beckons like poetry; with raw-Word-Fleshed in poetry do I meet God. This IS my religion-now.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Hermit, Servant of God, Lollard
Time of Veil (Coptic Office)
Day of St. Macrina the Younger

2008-07-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

I Write Another Worship--
Word Made Flesh-- Raw and Real Poetics
To my Liking and Problem-Solution Effected

[ I have written a worship-poem, about the affront which is dying/death before the Portal of God at heaven; it is entitled "Natcheral Death, The American Way, Natcherally," as appearing on the entry p.m July 16, 2008, in "The River Raver..." Consistent with the objectives of the study proposed in this Web-log on July 14, I am now to explicate this poetic construction as worship. From the outset, I shall have to say that despite its 'fleshed' topic and my approach, this is worship as weaving of reverances to solve a problem, and is effected for 'new creation' (compare 2 Corinthians 5:17).]

The Grammatical/Linguistic/Semiotic Explication:

(Note that I am following the guidelines recommended by Friedrich Schleiermacher as indicated in the last entry, herein.) This poem consists of 260 words, 184 different words, 37 lines in 7 stanzas. From the very-foggy-groping beginning until a liking-and-roughly-accepting-then-publishing the work here was effected in exactly 120 minutes (to exactly 10:16 p.m. on my electronic clock.) Essentially it obtains in stanzaic-Biblical free verse-form (see pages 336-340, of A Poet's Guide to Poetry, by Mary Kinzie); this meter follows the 'versification' of the read-aloud King James Bible; it is witnessed in Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra ; and is indistinguishable in most respects from the meter presented in Walt Whitman. Coupled with this tendency is internal and external rhyme and near-rhyme, as well as alliteration and assonance. This is more-readily effected in the natural 'Hillbillyism' of my native lower-lower-class speech idiom, much conditioned now by hearing many white-po' and black 'Skids'/American-Cockney speakers in 'g-chopping' and slang-talk. Those who want a lengthy discussion of this patois will get none here; I may make utterance on this sometime else.

The semiotic particularly assumes an audience phatically relating to the 'American way of death,' to which I mention. This I find scares many people-- and is about as 'natural' as any way of meeting the Ultimate-Concern-God -- meaning awful getting there-- being there may not be aught but peace-- but getting there is A PAIN (unless one in the redneck land in which we live is criminal getting painless lethal injection!) "Natcheral" (line 1, etc.) however is what poor people-- especially poor white Southerners-- are supposed to say when confronting a corpse. "Bapto-cath'lic" is a play in line 3 with 'Anglo-Catholic,' and is an effort at self-mockery. I mention-- without apostrophe-- "Id"-- for I'd-- but there is trope for the Freudian-Id too. In lines 10 and elsewhere, I use repetition-- which is the facile way that working class folk prosodically effect rhyme-schemes. There are extra letters appearing in the spelling of words 'quaddddddy' (line 24) and 'Biggg' in line 26; these are plays on the phonemics of language, in the first instance, and on a local Louisville (KY) super-store in the second. "Do-Nut Whole" is trope, aimed at gutter humor in the face of demise/fate.

There is a structural-- associative-- beginning middle and end in this poem. I try to play real at the thematic of death as an affront to all dignities wished for life; that there is meeting-God-Heaven-Paradise-- only after much pain BeforeDeath AfterBirth. As is my usuality, I make a 'gordian knot' and untie it with a poem. All factors are roughly aimed at making a 'Sinn' in Frege's use-- which satisfies/substantiates after com-plex-ification of wording (Bedeutungen in the Fregean terminology-- see last link).

The Psychological Explication:

The 'problem' this poem addresses in motivational psychology came with the aftermath of sitting in a waiting room this day, where two adults, woman in wheelchair with 'oxy' fixings was with a man-- obviously a husband. She was very demanding in her dependent disability; the room happened to have 'advice pamphlets' about sex life in disability, and she insisted that her man get this and all such literature; but she could hardly breathe. Her husband was obviously palpably irritated at all for which he was asked, and indeed appeared to loathe his wife. This was a mixture of sick dependence, and mustual mistrust/misgiving/dislike. I was convinced that this woman was dying-the-wrong-way-as-a-whiner-- and would encounter the shock almost all Americans find in the Last Exit-- that one is not beloved ooooooed ahhhhhed at deathtime, but rather hated.

In fine, the American way of death is un-natural: it is delusional in the assumption that the mythology of being surrounded by love and quietly expiring, happily remembered by all-- tombstoned as great-- forever after. I was not too far from thinking that Faulkner did a splendid job describing the 'meaty' end of death in the South in the Dirty '30s with As I Lay Dying; and that Vachel Lindsay's "death is an elephant, foam flanked and terrible, torch eyed and horrible" in The Congo says what-death-is even better.

This kind of problem-solving approach is cathartic-- in both the Greek (Aristotelian) sense of providing tragic relief-- as well too as in the Freudian sense of profound-emotional-release-of-tension. I want not here to be under any illusions that there are real 'sweeties' about dying, but only in what pacific may come afterward. This comes closes to executing the A = B of my lived credalism-- mere words and mere rites otherwise being of nuller working to me. Thus, my poetics are efforts-- I say again-- to 'flesh the word'-- exactly in the sense implied in the Greek sarx of John 1:14-- 'made raw meat.' Clearly this is the 'existential' sense of joyous exiles interior to the great work of this namesake by prophet James M. Houston.

Only by honest face to reality-- the before- and the after- of life, I trow, will give us humanly any better grasp of that greater Incarnation-- which is the word and knowledge of be-lieve, Faith.

Hylebiopsychosocial Consequences:

I OF COURSE do not want a nursing-homey death for my demise. But: I am decidedly unlikely to get my wish/'druthers in this regard. I want not to whine; the great indifference to my living that has been shown by 'medicine' will realistically be all I get when I Prepare-to-Meet-My-God (as holiness signs all over Kentucky preach.) Better then to expect the kind of death I have always seen set in-- to doggies and sufferers and even the bugs I swat and trees I cut-- nearly tuned out of the awareness of 'caregiving' and of what would trouble one thinking in the ordinary way about one's own dimise. One should not regard this Exit as sexless: on the contrary this woman in the (waiting) room today, and others of whom I have heard toward death-- DO have all the erotics that Freud said we alway have in libido-- and which Darwin assigns us as our biological lot.

Religion best deals with ultimacy; the ultimate reality is that when we are "knock knock knockin on Heaven's door" the prelude is awe-full. God awful. The rest we get afterward-- it can get that good-- hardly matches the pain beforehand-- in birth traumatics and death traumatics.

In this sense, the problematic with which I deal in this poem is under no illusion that life comes without pain before the Peace. "Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble" (Job 14:1 KJV.) The sooner we-- but for the take-home lesson let me say "I" -- learn that there are no easy fixes avoidant beginning:middle:end to this hurting, the better better better worship becomes. Such is the knot I try to tie and untie in this poem. It is thus a 'new creation' along the same hypothetical concerns invoked earlier in this Web-log.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Lollard, Servant of God

In the Place
Commonly by Police and Neighbors
Called 'The Desert'
Louisville, Kentucky USA

Time of Veil (Coptic Office)

Day of the Scillitan Martyrs, North Africa, 180 A.D.

2008-07-16T15:30:00.000-07:00

A Clear Example of Non-Worshipful Writ:
Reportage of a Specimen Writing in the Control/Comparison Group

PRECIS/OVERVIEW:

[See the previous entries back to Monday, July 14, here for context. This is a process-recording as part of a clinical phenomenology in the science of religion, studying religious writing versus other-types from the standpoint of a Schleiermacherian hermeneutic, which would include an address to semiotics/linguistics as well as motivational and other psychologies. The study undertaken has a semi-randomized "adjustable biased coin design" sampling with 11 poetic constructs planned for the experimental/index grouping and 9 in the non-poetic-writ control.]

For perhaps this sole occasion, I shall make a report of a single examination of a non-religious-writ control specimen of my writing, as much to exemplify the type of writing this is in sort, and after the same protocols as used for analysis of religious poems, will then try to illustrate how this out-of-sub-set evidence will contribute to the whole-understanding of worship-behavior-not-strictly-patterned-individually.

I am for controls using random-sampling procedures; as the Pi series 3.14159... is such a random series, I am sampling the third, then the next after the third, then the fourth, in the series according to the familiar-Pi we learned in high school (assuming American education.) Today, after having written a poem of worship for "The River Raver..." (to which this report relates only as a sequel) I did count the writings thence.

This Designated Example, Analyzed:

The 'third' writ I uttered status post this poem-- which needed to be not-self-definedly a religious poem-- turned out to be a late-entry recording of my blood-glucose from last night, before retiring. This appeared on page 70 of my notebook for such measures, entitled "Biometrica: Blood Sugar, Etc." with the following wording:

"7/15/08 - 11p | 106 (late entry) |"

Again, as in the last entry's case (for poem "Glossolalic Tendency..."), I shall use the format for pansemiotic invited by the R. Jakobson article "Linguistics and Poetics," on which I had crafted an outline for such project in Google Base yesterday. This means that via the Schleiermacherian thrust for hermeneutic understanding-- OF WHAT WAS UTTERED IN CONTEXT AND HOW-- I shall globally assay the significs of this utterance-- for indexicality, iconography, and symbolism, by referent to the three-part contingency (in this case the phenomenon during:before:after.)

Semiotic-Subsystems Overview:

Very briefly, ballpoint pen on notebook paper, known current in this land since at least the mid-1950s (before); the pen 'skipped' somewhat (during); writ was perfectly preserved status post (unsurprisingly, after 7 hours.) This in turn was 'recorded' input on magnetic cassette tape (after) and transferred here (thereafter.) Iconographically, one finds 'American' alphanumeric entry, mostly in clear hand, somewhat fading/'skippy'.

Symbolics will be effected through invocation of Jakobson's six communications-functions, as 1. Referent = assumed note about blood glucose, from glucometer reading, simple. 2. Poetic-function-- (form) date-time data separated per convention numerically with a 'bar'; numeric of blood-sugar number; designation literal, "late entry"-- (function) manifestly to specify that this is valid information about blood sugar, from a writing after the event of actual measurement; the writ appears not to effect sense of beauty or worship. 3. Emotive-- the writer obviously wishes to convey information. 4. Conative-- the message is obviously to the writer (himself) and additionally anyone else to read. 5. The phatic level is that one here wishes to share something important with the successor reading, about blood glucose. 6. Code/Metalinguistics-- all signs are familiar symbols; the syntax of month/day/year-time is followed in the American idiom of medical writing; then follows the coded score; then follows a paratext that this is a late-entry, a kind of formalism. DOMINANT SYMBOLIC FUNCTION = the referent to inform, about blood glucose. An additional time referent: writ took about 1 minute to construct/put-to-paper.

Reaching for Psychological Understanding:

From the Schleiermacherian hermeneutic, the type of inputs above are but an aid to understanding, which is completed in understanding the psychology of the utterer. The grammatical/linguistic understanding precedes the psychological (see Hermeneutics and Criticism, Bowie's translation, page 30, "First canon: Everything in a given utterance which requires a more precise determination may only be determined from the language area which is common to the author and his original audience." Page 10, "Psychological interpretation is the higher when one regards language only as the means whereby the individual communicates his thoughts; grammatical interpretation is in this case just the removal of passing difficulties."

Thus, I can approach a psychological understanding with some clarity, as self-understanding is by all means more straightforward than not. Motivationally, I felt in this note obliged to put-down information which eventually would be forgotten. The information-- blood glucose-- is scientifically important, as the cut off into 'high glucose' is set at 100. I wanted to record honestly that this was no contemporaneous measurement-- for in a way consistent with practice I had learned as a psychiatric (medical) social worker, 'late entry' specification captures the essential of such candor. There was NO effort to be deferential, NO effort to solve any problem other than putting down valid information in an accurate way. The pattern used to hardly any sane person would suggest form-of-worship. NOR was there a motive or indication of desire to 'new creation.'

Why the Information-Above Is Relevant:

In short, the form and content of the semiotics here, coupled with a construct of psychology/motivation, suffices to specify differences with the first (poetic, from yesterday) utterance. On each instance of the three 'negations' at the tail of the last paragraph, nothing but procedures unrelated to the worship in writ of religious poetry is effected. Knowing the pattern/non-pattern of other types of inputs than religious poetry puts in highlight what IS within the set (see prior entries); with this I have one essential of an empiric science-- a way to falsify theses.

That there might be in clinical phenomenology a mixing of patterns/structures individually to effect a purely poetic-- that other forms of worship (public/private) are marked by deference-- that the 'meristem' of new rituals derives from older-rite-- these are all theses under investigation here. Clinical phenomenology-- the quest in the Schleiermacherian sense for Verstehen-- can by the protocols effected here approach the validation/falsification of these theses. Only when we know that some-what is certainly-not-false can be begin with a science with empiric truth. Such should be the discipline of the scientific study of religion.

[I shall in recognition of the tedium implied in doing every single instance of non-religious-poetry-writ in this series, from henceforth only summarize 'chunks' or all of the non-sub-set-religious writing. I may if/when encountering surprising findings intrude on this plan, but for now, the means:motive:opportunity for this entry has been allowed-- and should barring such surprises as stipulated suffice in this one example illustrate.]

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee, Sannyasi, Nazarite
Time of Vespers
Day of St. Helier, Hermit, Martyr (Western Church)
Day of St. Julia, Virgin, Martyr of Carthage (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

An Instance of (My) Private Worship--
Empiric Analysis and Cogntive-Process Explication
of a Religious Poem Appearing
In "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville"

OVERVIEW:

I am trying to examine instances of my own private worship-- exemplified in part by the creation of religious/worshipping poetry-- as uniquely NOT aimed to be structured, but 'a new creation.' In this entry, I shall follow a paradigm for holistic hermeneutic-semiotic according to an article I produced in Google Base this night, "An Outline of Pansemiotic-- Examining the Succession of Total Significs as a Diachronic Series-of-Synchronics-- Inspired by a Lead from an Article by Roman Jakobson." What is envisaged for this article is to paradigm the crafting of this worship-piece (poem) by dimensions of indices, iconographics, and symbolism by a diachronic-series-of-synchronies present, past, and sequel to the writ.

PRELIMINARIES:
As is the expectation with empiric design, with the help of a random-number generator and the protocol of "Adjustable Biased Coin Design," I have deigned here to follow a pattern of an assortment of 'religious poems' vs. 'general writings, non-worship.' As I have indicated, I wish to compare entries in "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville," with (what may be randomly or systematically sub-set-selected) non-religious writing/writ. Allotment from the generator created the following plan as per the proposal in the entry at Vespers-time, July 14, 2008 herein:

1. Examine religious poem

2. Examine non-religious writ

3. Examine religious poem

4. Examine religious poem

5. Examine non-religious writ

6. Examine religious poem

7. Examine religious poem

8. Examine non-religious writ

9. Examine religious poem

10. Examine non-religious writ

11. Examine religious poem

12. Examine non-religious writ

13. Examine religious poem

14. Examine religious poem

15. Examine non-religious writ

16. Examine non-religious writ

17. Examine non-religious writ

18. Examine religious poem

19. Examine religious poem

20. Examine non-religious writ

...as per my planning with last night for this project.

EXAMINATION # 1: Religious Poem "Glossolalic Tendency," 7/15/2008

The Slim Details: I began the writ of this poem beginning with a bare idea @ about 9:44 p.m. on 7/15/2008; the finish-- meaning the leave-alone -as-is moment when the work may have been considered "published" occurred at almost exactly 11:15 p.m. of the same. Thus this writing took about 1 hour, 29 minutes (89 minutes) to go from start-to-finish. During this time I took notes by use of the cassette recorder, and then penning the notes-of-these-notes to paper. What I have in the notes-about-notes could be called 'process recordings,' but deliberately I did not try to contaminate my a priori approach with the type of typographic expectation as to what I should 'look for' as per mainstream cognitive psychology. [Presently, this is a 'clinical phenomenological fishing trip,' and this holistic orientation is not only justifiable method -- but warranted.]

Narration of Process: I began-- as I indicate at 9:44p-- with a sense of obligation-- a feeling that to-be-me, to be-true-to-my-commitment-here, but in particular to-be-true-to-my-need to-be-me vls-nobody-more-nobody-less that NOW THERE OUGHT TO BE A POEM COMING-ON. I record that this is not uncommon in me, that while in no wise do I consider myself a 'good poet' or even slant my craft in that direction there is the yen-first, with topic-known almost-never. I note on the recorder that this is so typical for me, but that I KNOW somehow that by "thinking sideways" (associatively) I can to all levels of statistical likelihood craft a new poem, a new spirited creation.

At 9:51 p. I record that I was re-debating an old conflictuality with myself: the yen to write a really beautiful piece this time. This tendency I regard as nothing but a vanity, a form of bad-existential-faith/phoniness [see J.P. Sartre's Being and Nothingness ]. Nowadays, in the time I have endured since divorce and landing on disability from my beloved social work profession, I prefer from-the-motive-level more willingness to BE AUTHENTIC/REAL in what I write-- 'pretties' and esthete's proclivities left-aside. This in no wise means that I am immune to 'say it pretty'; what obtains instead is a hybrid-system, on the one hand mentored by the well said models of the poets, and of the King James Bible (in stanzaic free verse which I chronically use), and the idiom of 'the streets' here, and of my 'lower slobovian llc de-classiness," if this vernacularism can be permitted. This is a dualism/polarity that constantly surfaces when I craft words, however.

From 9:55p to 10:15p, I was in the throes of trying clumsily to say something about me-here-now. That this is frequently-- to the disdain of many a reader I suppose -- about the humiliation of being what I am. Now this I AM is approximately a disdain at fundaments to me-- as I am a mental patient patient patient who knows all the words of psychiatry-- as well as a lot of other 'surds'-- and yet must deal with this 'flop'/thrownness-philosophically-so-called which is my life-- my Eigenwelt. These false starts were all about 'busts' for mental issues-- the chronic theme of my anguish-- the source of much-relived-pain, and I need-go-through-to-get-over.

The poem was essentially intact, in the form in which it presently appears on "The River Raver..." tonight, by 10:35. At present, the poem "Glossolalic Tendency-- In Strained Effort at 1 Cor 13" obtains in 32 lines, 198 words, and 144 different words. The title refers to the 'poem to charity' of St. Paul in First Corinthians 13; there is pun/trope/word-play with the expression 'cor' which also means 'heart' in Latin. In line 1, the reference to "70X7" is the proverbial number of times from Matthew 18:22; the obvious implication might be that whatever 'glossolalia' I have (which is considered a theological virtue and a psychiatric symptom as well) needs be forgiven, or at least indulged-- with concomitant obligation for me to be so indulgent with others. There is alliterational word-play in the lines to come; I am an alliterative poet in large measure-- a fondness which is just-mine, but which also is found in Beowulf and the Middle-English ecclesiastic poem Piers Plowman. In line 4, Prolixxxxxin is a play on the medication used in psychiatry called Prolixin (r)-- and for practical and legal reasons dodged issues by the "5X" approach-- which is reiterated in line 6-- and is a play on the fact that I used to require nearly that size of 'lowers' in clothing, and still am known as 'big man' by my neighbors. There is alliterative play in line 7 and 9 betwixt 'flattie' and 'fattie,' with some insinuation of flatulence in personality (say). Voices in psychiatry (line 7) are symptomatic; 'loud thoughts' (line 9) are sometimes reported, but said to be less-hallucinatory psychiatry. An 'ecstatic confessor' is known as one engaged in saintly behavior in theo-talk; but in psychiatry this is considered 'manic.' "Fec" in line 12 is a play on feces-- and IS commonly called that by biochemists in sewage-science. "Guilty Bystanders" are the sort of person known to Thomas Merton in his last major book, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1968) ; in this work Merton expresses some remorse for the Holocaustic events of World War II, through which he lived essentially unscathed. The imagery in the 5th stanza here is of what does happen in certain cases with mental patients who resist a mental inquest warrant; I have only seen this for others, but dread it for myself, and by the same token HAVE had some rough-times in involuntary psychiatric proceedings. This culminates, tying loose ends almost-all, in the last (6th) stanza. There is allusion to 'watchman, what of the night?' as found in KJV Isaiah 21:11, which I of late have taken to singing at midnight for the Coptic hour pertaining, in Anglican plainsong (and this to my ear 'does not sound bad.')

Stylistic Comments: A poem from 'here,' in my seclusion, isolation, sequestering, hermitage is but a plaything. Here with zero feedback, and zero on many other areas, the 'play' to which I resort is of the sort that I find both re-creative and worth-ship-ful. A pretty poetry to me always seems artificial; actually I cannot usually call such truly 'pious'-- in the mysterium tremendum Other-sense, either. I aspire in my work for raw edge-- 'the word made flesh/meat/gore'-- and as there is none to please but me-- and a gnawing sense that I must be honest-- to myself and God at the same time-- to the Ultimate Concern which is my life, living, with yearning for that Transcendence Beyond My Me.

In the recording, I comment that my poetics does have an order-- a working through typically with beginning:middle:end-- but the attack on this objective is NOT what I use in crafting prose; indeed it is almost unlike that other part of my worship-- private prayer in the sense employed in Matthew 6:6-- which does conventionally resemble the kind of deference frequently seen in public worship (with some personal 'mixology' of rites from-outside.) There IS problem-solving in a poem; it is NOT however completely immune from the 'liturgic' factor of heard rhythm, tones, phrasing, loudnesses-- which are prosodic mainstays everywhere sounds and speech are witnessed.

I say in my recording-notes that I do not intend overwork in my poems, something I learned from graphic artists, and which I have observed in graphic artists. I do not wish to smudge with too much effort to eliminate mistakes, any more I say on the cassette than one would like an overworked contrivance of an old-style "Little Rascals" B&W feature with heavy effort to model Aristotle's Poetics for dramatic paradigm.

I am well aware that most people read-silently poems-- if read they do here-- not read-aloud; for this reason "eye-appeal" is an important factor. If a poem LOOKS boring-- to me-- I will neither do much but correct it-- and will not 'put it out.' I am faltering somewhat here...I am immediately in reflection on something I read about a year or so ago on the bearing Chinese poets have to the total-configuration of brush-paper-and-shape-of-calligraphy in the produce of a poem. [Thinking that this must have been a reading from Internet and made into a favorite/bookmark, I looked unproductively just now; but I have found a fair overview of this conception in Chinese rhetoric of a poetic effort as work of brush-paper-calligraphics-and-words; see this link.] I am well aware that these factors -- the total Gestaltic configuration of the physics (indexicality) graphics (iconography) and words (symbolism) are actually THE ingredients of a poem-- that a great poem in queer style of lettering and on the wrong 'background-paper' could seem like a mediocre poem-- perhaps to not-a-few, a bad poem.

I am not worried about the production of a bad poem. I do not really think it matters much whether the 'calligraphs' between the keyboard (brush) and vacant screen (paper) and spellings (the fonts and figures of shaped letters, and other graphics) together make a picture that pleases anyone but the one with the two eyes in my own head. But this pleasure: the pleasure of being-real: of not boring myself with the lies and cliches I am prone to tell myself: this makes me 'like' a poem-- in its 'raw-meat/word-made-flesh.' In each case, here, what emerges is a configuration in 'stuff,' in 'life,' in 'psychology,' and in 'sociology.' I thus use the expression--utterly derived from scientific terms-- to describe this as the hyle-bio-psycho-social. It is replicatively a worship as well a a problem-solving process.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee, Lollard, Servant-of-God

Time of Veil (Coptic Office)

Day of St. Stephen Harding, Cistercian,
Author of the Charter of Charity (12th Century)

Day of St. Athenogenes,
Hieromartyr, Beheaded by Diocletian (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

An Instance of Ritual-Changing
In Worship-Behavior Evidenced in Praying:
The 'Meristem of a New Brachiation' for My Practice of Compline

The focus of recent entries-- in the last couple or three entries here-- on my own private 'worship behavior' as a case-example of available reverent-behavior. What will follow may be called a 'clinical observation'-- meaning an application-- based on self-identified worship.

PRECIS: The behavior on which I report connects to this-- is the clinical phenomenology of a change in behavior, for which I have previously pointed as being emblematic of the between-state of 'social' rite/structured-behavior which I have estimated to subtend over 90% of my reverent behavior, and which to reiterate and explain obtains in about 1/3-1/4 of my waking behavior (with a rationale-- almost at rationalization-- that the-whole is nonetheless turned-over to the Ultimate Concern-- designated Jahweh [God/'Allah' as culturally identified.]) Any change in the format and structuring I exhibit as a social animal could be taken as a referent to a larger issue of structural social change, in myself first of all, and more-largely in the sometimes ponderous business structural-functionalists of explaining-change-and-transformation-of-patterns( I am only interested in structural-functionalism as one with a hermeneutic/phenomenological formalist/informalist angle; this will emerge now limitedly, and more expansively in latter entries.)

THE WHAT: The conduct I describe will have been a a clinical-phenotype of such change-of-structure in my private prayer-behavior. I do Compline-- night-time prayer -- generally before retiring. This was a form of chanting Anglican plainsong and citation of a Bible verse, and is intended heretofore to 'top-off'/complete my day before retiring to bed. As an appendix to this entry, I shall specify this format of worship, which I learned as a young master (teacher) at St. John's Cathedral Boys' School in Manitoba in the year 1968.

[Suffice it to say now that this behavior is not identifiable in my mental health self-measure called Cognizance per se as "ritual behavior" -- which designates only behavior psychopathologic-- aimed but at ex opere operato transcendent connection to effect some tangible/real/goal end-state. This is NOT 'ritual behavior' as here thus defined, that is. See a companion Web-log to this site, "Bipolar in Louisville," for July 8, 2008, at this link.]

A moment may be required for 'biopsychosocial fill': I think it would help to explicate on my motives for Compline-behavior. But a paragraph or two would cover this need most-adequately.

MOTIVATION: I have often reflected on WHY I do Compline. The answer not-too-complexly explained in a pragmatic/folk psychosociality would be that this is PLAY-THERAPY, RE-CREATION functionally. To me, it is 'pretty' to hear and to perform; it invokes a connection to my personal-history/autobiography and psychologically thus touchstones a sense of connectedness to past, and in the English-prayerbook sense 'collects' to a sense of well-being/wholeness with some semantic domain into 'comfort,' 'nostalgia,' 'revel.' I learned and kept as habitual the form of Compline from the pasting-in-back of the Canadian Anglican Prayerbook (BCP) at the school, and in the warp and woof of time this 'play therapy' has abided with me, particularly since my single state after 1986 (divorce.)

[I shall cast the substance of the following in terms of what behaviorists call 'three term contingency'-- not so much because I am a Skinnerian behaviorist but due to the fact that this model best corresponds to a functional-causal paradigm putatively. See pages 29-30 of Applied Behavior Analysis by J.O. Cooper, T.E. Heron, and W.L. Heward (1987).]

Antecedents : Much before the advent of Compline in my habits, such things were only witnessed admiringly in movies-- for as a Baptist youth these things were not practiced. As I indicated, I learned compline as a 'novitiate' (the term does only loosely apply to the procedures of the Canadian Company of the Cross, the religious order for St. John's School.) Intermediately, since divorce, I have on-occasion with some habitude engaged in Compline. Since March of this year, I have tried to effect 'prayer without ceasing' in the best way I can mentally reconcile with 1 Thessalonians 5:17 ; as one must sleep and do other essentials-- not excluding social obligations-- obviously there is some 'cognitive-readjustment' of defined behaviors effected-- not inconsistent with what I have termed 'poetic (substantiated) definition' -- see the entry for this Web-log at June 18, 2008. Clearly, this is no simple oxymoron-- 'prayer without ceasing' -- as is complexly related to an attitude of prevailing worship-behavior-- submitting to a revering discipline with the assumption that when I am NOT consciously praying, then I am 'in surrender'-- falsifiable only (and this does occur) when I willfully engage in spriteful-- and spiteful!-- conduct. I think on this basis what is indicated is not paradox-- as there is no violation on what I have termed the level of A = A tautology OR in the conduct-inferent specific to violating overall an A = B; see the entry for May 31, 2008 of this blog, at this link. [Any degree of logical paradox will now or on discovery thence be eschewed!]

The (Sub-set-of-) Behaviors, Presented: Tonight, there were changes in my routine for Compline. In the first instance, I started at twilight-- here locally around 9:00p.m. seasonally-- and lit my rear-room kerosene lamp ('prayer-candle' I term it) beneath the paperboard 'Celtic Cross' of my making. As 'keroseners' do, it was expedient to correct the wicking of the light, as when 'drawing' after being-lit, lanterns like this expand in flame, and thus smudge of lamp is a problem; so-- instead of waiting until after the flame grew-- I stood at the lantern. I made-quiet-- and there was some of the 'deference' by way of play to which I alluded in the entry on the entry herein for July 11, 2008. Then in cognition, I began to reflect that this deference-making was not unlike what I had seen in public-worship-attendance by Old German Baptists ('Dunkers/Dunkards' ) in Mid-Ohio during the 1960s: for these plain-people Dunkers had the habit of driving to the lot where the sanctuary for worship stood, and then WAITING for 'N minutes' (algebraically speaking) before going into the worship-place.

THIS PLAYFUL DEFERENCE-- WHICH COULD HAVE BEEN VIOLATED AT ANY TIME, OF COURSE, STRUCK ME THEN AS PECULIAR-- BUT TONIGHT SEEMED LIKE A MORE-PERFECT TIMING TO: 1. THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM RELATED TO THE FLAMING OF THE 'KEROSENER' WICK; 2. THE HYLEBIOPSYCHOSOCIALITY REQUIREMENT OF WISHING TO SETTLE-INTO QUIETUDE (PRESUMED TO BE BY MANY AND OFTEN MYSELF TO 'CONGEAL' REVERENCE.) I WAS ALSO MINDFUL OF THE MONASTIC 'SILENCE' OF TRAPPIST MONKS, IN MY EXPERIENCE AT THE ABBEY OF GETHSEMANI IN NEW HAVEN (BARDSTOWN), KENTUCKY. IN BOTH OF THESE AUTOBIOGRAPHS I WAS IMPRESSED BY WHAT-THEN SEEMED PIOUS. THIS STANCE THUS SEEMED TO PRECONDITION 'REVERENT BEHAVIOR' TO ME.

Waiting for the flame to settle down after several adjustments, and then I began Compline in the usual way (again, see the 'Appendix' following the main-body of this entry.)

Consequence: 'Physiognomically' the quietude of the apartment thence was apparent-- as a tape-recording would have abundantly demonstrated during this minutes-long hiatus. Cognitively, there were among other preoccupations-- [like the will to do another novelty-- chanting when awake Isaiah 21:11 KJV at midnight (heretofore done more haphazardly or using Coptic-Arabic recordings) and to do Coptic 'Veil' Office (2 a.m.) using Song-of-Songs 5:6 etc. as well as Hebrews 6:16-20 in the New Testament.]-- future plans specific-- and a sense that this stance just-taken generates a better approximation to reverence/piety consistent with my hylebiopsychosocial definitions thereto. The effect was thus deeply pleasant-- and for this reason by many social-science models would likely represent a replicated-behavior-mode.

TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS (SCHLEIERMACHERIAN 'RECAPITULATION'): This shift in behavior is signal. Changes in rituality do not occur often in human nature. And this slight shift began with a series of rough-approximations to novelty: the change from late-night/before-bed Compline Time to 9:00 p.m.-- a change that comes with the new recognition that about this time IS monastic Compline in the religious orders; then too there was a concomitant decision to use the scriptures cited just above for 'midnight' and 'veil' office-times; finally there was (a) practical recognition that better use of my 'kerosener' needed effect; (b) this was consistent with prior hylebiopsychosocial conditioning, and with 'situationally-defined' reverent behavior. It is CERTAINLY possible that in other people, particularly of different times and cultures, 'reverence' would be directed in other ways. That this emergence here comes-to-be at all is part of a complex of behavior and attitude conditioned by prior-contingencies. These in turn may be described with hyper-behavioral exactitude assuming that the recording equipage existed at the times-pertinent. [Such exactitude seems irrelevant-- and of course relevance is one of the essentials we hold for argument-evaluation, along with validity and total-evidentiary postulates.]

DISCUSSION: In short, this change of behaviors reveals much about my behavioral structuralism-- and could be pertinent and revelatory about the old problematic concerned with the change of structure in social order. I must reiterate that such novelty is rare with me-- my behavior is generally a 'sloppy medley' of mixed rites in retrospection; the emergence of this new pattern-- for which I wish to do and report-upon future consistencies in this regard-- are worthwhile behavioral observation.

That I can so well control the circumstances of such evolution in the confinement and enclosure of my time-- in near-total isolation from the 'madding crowd'-- would seem to be an advantage for this set of assays I am perpetuating. The tools needed for such clinical phenomenology are simple enough that many abodes possess exactly what I do to make-recording; having time and what I call means-motive-opportunity (which I think I shall abbreviate MMO and use in the future here) are quite otherwise for many.

I can in a not-too-qualitative way describe this demeanor-- structure and change of structure in self-defined reverence. SHARP BEHAVIORAL DESCRIPTION-- to the precise recording of foot-pound expense in action-- seems 'out of the essential set.' But the general format of the ABC three-term-contingency protocol really seems to apply in situations of this type. What will be required will be a flexible as well as valid use of these (aboriginally behavioral) typologies for the task-at-hand.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee, Lollard, Sannyasi, Nazarite
(By vow of May 21, 1994 at sunset in E.P. Sawyer Park, Louisville)
Midnight Office
Day of St. Bonaventure (Western Church)
Day of Martyrs St. Julitta & Kyrikos (Orthodoxy)

APPENDIX: The content and format of Canadian Anglican Compline in 1968 was: 1. the Anglicanized plainsong of the English translation of "Te Lucis ante Terminum," i.e. "Before the ending of the day/Creator of the world we pray/ that with thy wonted favor Thou/Wouldst be our Guard and Keeper now./ From all ills defend our eye/ from nightly fears and phantasies/ tread underfoot our ghostly foe/that no pollution we may know/O Father we ask that this be done/through Jesus Christ Thine Only Son/Who with the Holy Ghost and Thee/ Might live and reign eternally. Amen." 2. the KJV exactitude plainsonged of the Song of Simeon, Nunc Dimittis, cf. Luke 2:29-32. 3. Recitation in prose of the KJV exactitude of Psalm 4:8. In/with me, this recitation is ALWAYS a form of play, relaxation, re-creation, as well as the occasion of much thought about the old questions WHO AM I? FROM WHENCE HAVE I COME? TO WHENCE AM I GOING? (said to have first utterance from St. Ignatius of Loyola.)

2008-07-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

Proposal: To Study Intended Worship/Reverent Behavior
To Study a Series of 10 'Religious' Poems I Write
At Another, 'Creative' Website

I have set for myself a 'new tack' on the familiar topic of reverent-behavior/piety/worship which is the content-matter of this Web-log production. Now I seek to craft a protocol by which I could in the clinical phenomenological mode study a sub-type of my own revering behavior. I have eshewed behaviors which are of the structured/patterned sort, which in the last entry here was shown to be more than 90%-- probably definably more like 98-99%-- of my self-identified worship behaviors. I wish now to concentrate on efforts which seem to spring de novo-- "new creations"-- as these most-clearly represent the null-case of lack-of-structure.

Such an effort is important for empiric reasons: one needs best to study a phenomenon from that which lies beyond-its-boundary in the approach I take. When studying an index-property "A" in other words, limning the boundary and pertainance of "~A" is a pursuit which could abet in completing-the-set for the studied topic.

In casting about, the challenge I have presented myself accordingly would be to find revering behavior which are in effort to be new-- ways of thinking which are to represent not so much the more-stereotyped repititions of social order and instead (because that topic is the topic-under-consideration-- the designation studied) the fraction obtaining in that portion of cognition --less than 10% and perhaps no more at all than 1-2%-- socially-motivated to study those creations-- with future-reference mostly-- which are the quintessence of my effort to be perfoming: (1st, non-stereotypically) + (2nd, thoughtfully) + (3rd, worshipfully.) In this regard, it emerges to me now that my poetic efforts might best qualify here, the best-public-example obtaining in my sister-Website for this blog, "The River Raver: Lays from a Lollard in Louisville." This designated Web-log is "the lyric side" of my cognitive product herein, and the site consists of poetry in a worship-mode, a willed parallel to the more-abstract-business obtaining in this blog. "The River Raver..." has been 'up' for some weeks, has almost exactly the same number of entries as this site, and to my identification contains "more of my personality"-- for (+) and (-) than almost aught of my workings now.

I would like to propose an ongoing-- pro-jected study-- of what-I-do in crafting these examples of worship-behavior, my poems. Note well that there is absolutely no claim that these creations are "good" (whatever that is supposed to mean to whomever-discerning), but that they are truly and limpidly MY efforts at being a "New Creation" (compare 2 Corinthians 5:17) before the Ultimate Concern (Paul Tillich's term for the-numinous, see his Systematic Theology I, pages 11-15), esteemed in understanding to be God, Jahweh. [That "ultimate concern" seems to have eminent potential for an operational-definition according to the requirements of behavior science is NOT lost on me, and figures much in this specification.]

I need in the preface here to specify that the type of study to which I refer-- observation of oneself as a "case"-- is fraught with many scientific perils. I am here but to strive for a clinical self-assay-- specifying in a mode consistent with the clinical-phenomenology of Karl Jaspers the content and not the pure form of cognition [see Jaspers, General Psychopathology, "Subjective Phenomena of Morbid Psychic Life (Phenomenology)," 1972 (1923), pages 55-154.] I wish to identify the content-processes operant in the development of a viable sample of these creations-- 10 should suffice in a clinical phenomenology like this-- to specify what-happens-- and by way of control what-does-not-happen in this professedly "new creation."

That this would derive from writing I do models-well in the burgeoning new discipline of cognitive psychology. This in gist is what I read in M. W. Eysenck and M. T. Keane's Cognitive Psychology [2003 (2000)], especially at pages 376-378, where with some precision a method for evaluating writing as graphic reproduction of consciousness called directed retrospection. This means that one writes a piece, then reflects on the processes by which the utterance was 'graphed.'

Here then is my proposal: I shall-- for purposes of the study in this Web-log-- craft ~ 10 poems for "The River Raver: Lays of a Lollard in Louisville," and I shall immediately thereafter for each entry-- appearing thus publicly for common examination of all-- write a summary of the processing I have done in each writ. Consistent with the methods stipulated in Jaspers (citation above), I shall try to identify the content of the workings I am effecting-- mistakes as well as corrections-- for this series until completion.

As every experiment needs a "control" I shall also do such a summary for non-poetic-constructs I effect in writing, chosen using the "adjustable biased coin design" proposed by A.B. Antognini and A. Giovagnoli of the University of Bologna-- a procedure which in small-sample designs has been validated for representativeness.

When in other words I have ~10 "instances" of poetics versus another comparable group of non-poetry, I shall "crunch" the total result-- with ongoing representations of individual poems/non-poems in the process. For these preliminaries, this study will have sufficient scope and even (by consideration of number-of-behaviors) adequate size-effect for an N=1 study.

In terms of instrumentation the 'meters' I shall use will include the cassette tape recorder, and pen-and-paper.

This presently seems to be a 'fair' way to get at the study of intended worshipping behavior/conduct. It is a new 'tack' on what is becoming a broad approach-- using history-present-and-future behaviors to measure the 'target.' Since I am not particularly aware of a parallel effort in these matters, perhaps this assay will be excusable, even defensible.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee, Lollard, Sannyasi
Time of Vespers
St. John Keble's Day (Anglicanism)
St. Camillus de Lellis Day (Roman Church)
St. Nicodemus the Righteous at Mount Athos Day (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

My Private Worship Speaks of Public Worship!!!
An Overview-Holistic of my Private Prayer-Life

I have been looking over what I wrote in my last entry, and am in the "rough notetaking phase" of examining my own private worship/reverence/piety because I gave myself that assignment.

I worship by comparison with other people what some may call "a-lot/a-great-deal." Of course I have only faith on the level of transcendence to ascertain in fact/fine whether this is sufficient-- amounting to 1/4-1/3 of my waking day-- with allowances to 'surrender to that Love Who Is-- Jahweh-- God' at those other times to complement the notion of 'prayer without ceasing' (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:17.)

There is a patterning-- a form-- a structure-- to much of what I do. There are rituals as pleasing as attendance at Mass to me. These include:

Frequent lighting of a "prayer candle" (which for safety is one or both of my kerosene lamps); these remain 'on' for generally a period of some hours.
With some variation I keep the pattern of cloisters and cathedrals-- of morning-prayer, terce, sext, none, vespers, and compline; very consistently in keeping with Coptic interests I keep prayer times for 'midnight' and 'veil' (2 a.m. worship.)
I sing Anglican plainsong from such things as the Anglican Parish Psalter ; I chant Latin 'for' the saints (in the Communion of Saints); I do the plainsong for St. Francis of Assisi's "Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace..."
I like to do stations of the cross.
I pray the Hesychast/Jesus-Prayer, in Greek, translated from Luke 18:13, "Ho Theos, Ilasthiti moi to hamarolo" ['God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'] The (Hesychast means 'the silence' in Greek-- see the Wikipedia article on this subject.) I find this to be consistent with the prayerful silence I generally keep-- unless I feel 'the Devil urging me to say something' if this can be permitted.
I do the rosary-- both the Roman Catholic way and the Eastern Orthodox way (with the Jesus prayer)-- and betimes I do my own variant with a Jesus-Prayer for the years respective of my life (61 now and counting!)
I do a fete with plainsong of the-number-count-of-the-days-of-my-life with the addition to sing that this is one more day unto death, and one more day 'after-birth' (with several layers of meaning); to this I append lines from a song in worship learned recently in a song running in part "Do few things, but do them well, simple things are holy; day by day, stone by stone, build the Kingdom slowly."
And there are spontaneous prayers-- which Catholic theologians call "ejaculations."

TENTATIVE SURMISES HERE-TO:

My studied observation would be that what I uttered in the last entry is only in part true: the spontaneous element-- the asocial element-- the unstructured element in my private devotion is really tiny in this process. When spontaneity does occur, it is likely to be experienced as something like a 'mistake' between different cadences, or rites, etc. In each case I am 'borrowing' the prosodics of worship-places in public (what I call 'common prayer'-- anything outside my door) to the private rhythmatic of my lifespace and praxis.
New structures derive from making 'medleys' of the-old-- something learned in common-prayer outside the door of this domicile.
What some would call the 'creative process' at work in my homespun liturgics (and in my religious poetics, some of which appears on the 'Web') is nothing but a reworking of what some could call 'cliches,' and which for me is nothing but a casting about of familiarities to find something I can 'make-homey' and live-with.
The 'accidents' to which I refer which make new rites are probably something like 1/100th of my structured-worship process in domicile here.

TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS:

Private worship is problem-solving, but it is more like 're-hab' than 'creation-from-nothing.' With this phenomenological perspective, looking at the whole and to-reach for the parts, I would say that what-new does appear is merely a reworking of various aspects of the-old.
There is truth in the saying that a strictly hermitic life is a Christian-- and social-- malapropism. One needs the mix of society in the generation of rhythms which incubate in private worship-- and from which 'new songs in a strange land' can emerge.
The rhythms-making-spirited-reality do not specifically occur only in professed worship, but in the professedly secular. One can learn about these rhythms as one waits for a mass transit bus, sits in a reception area, in participating in a radio talk show, in buying store-brand mustard/mayo/pickles in the local supermart, listening on the back porch to the neighbors ruminating with one another.
The infamous Archbishop William Laud is supposed to have said that 'the form of worship creates worship.' I think by these presents that he is right!

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Vespers Time
Ninth Sunday in Pentecost
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism)
Sunday of the Holy Fathers (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

An Emergent Structuralism:
Deference
-- The Show of Deferred Social Conflict
-- The Presence of Collusion/Agreement--
As the Paradigm of Public Pious Behavior:
With a Developing Sense That Private Worship
Is of a Different Behavioral Order

This entry is a progress report on ongoing work I am doing to determine from randomized sampling the "delta"/difference between one experiential mode and another as defined in culture and psychology-- meaning the science of behavior.

I think that in the sort-process of detecting reverent behavior (in our Western culture) so far I have detected a pattern emerging in the performance of "reverent behavior" so defined. I have been doing-- the reader of this so far may attest-- a phenomenological study of randomly selected Google-base searches of "worship" versus other variables (for details see the entry in this Web log for July 5, 2008). Thus, I can report in four "measures" of audio-visual streamed material from the Internet I have some regularities on which to report.

The emergent pattern I witness is toward deference-- as operationally-defined as not-taking-issue with a speaker-- of acting in collusion with the mentor/speaker/moderator of a social interaction produce-- as being an essential common denominator-- the abeyance of conflictual content. "Conflictual content" would to my perception include the willingness to take-issue with the speaker.

The paradigm I have in mind -- the core case-- is my witness of a 'county commissioners' meeting in Manatee County, Florida (I think this is the metropolis of Sarasota.) The meeting observed was a Real (r) recording from August 29, 2006. This deliberative body-- the County Commissioners of Manatee County-- show definite indication of conflictual discourse. The conflict is 'genteel' and stylized, but there are definite expressions of disagreement.

Another type of example emerges from 'news like' broadcasting; here there is considerable tendency to excite emotionally with rapid content, appealing to emotionality, without an apparent motive to do other than activate/agitate.

This pattern did not obtain in the "worship" sequence so far. Here the pattern seems to hold that when some reverence is obliged, then one is supposed to show moderate deference and cooperation. In the business of Divine-entreaty, one is expected to show -- or rather does show in the forms I have witnessed in my sample-- total defererence. In the several Protestant worship recordings I have heard so far, there is some tendency to bring up disagreeable content, but pragmatically it would appear that the speaker is "looking for a malleable audience," and usually in so many kinds of ways is 'amened' or is encouraged to 'plow on' with the theses he is presenting. One is supposed to agree with the speaker, apparently. In Catholic worship witnessed so far, the degree of deferential behavior shown is even higher-- and this is accompanied with softer tones, slower rhythms, less-stress-accentualism so common to the English prosodic idiom.

Deference thus in phenomenology is emerging as a strong characteristic of degrees of reverent behavior. By this, I mean that this pattern is what is exhibited in public, in social interaction when the expectation is that one is supposed to "act pious." It means a dearth of presented conflict, to the degree that in extremer authoritative settings-- as when the "prayer behavior" is effected-- as when the Manatee County Commissioners open-meeting, there is zero-opposition.

In our society's mass culture, it would appear that the other extreme from reverence is best approximated in sports-matches. Here the presentation is still stylized, but closer to outright antagonism than any other conventional mode of interaction. Clearly outright antagonisms do occur-- physical altercations, mayhem and murder may follow. But in the instance of mass-culture, it would appear that the venue most amenable to conflict-expression, and the furthest from worship-- is embodied in the sporting event.

Faith-practice is apparently as much a willing-suspension-of-conflict as willing-suspension-of-disbelief in the social order. All the metrics of language point to this in my data-set. "Churching" is the most-stylized form of cooperative, deferential demeanor I have at my disposal. It would no doubt be exceeded by funeral orations, which are perhaps even more polite than highly ritualized Catholic services. But in the two sets I have to compare now-- the conflict avoidance of pubic worship-- the tendency to behave as though "let's not fight because we're not supposed to now" is highly evidenced.

I think it would be true that in private worship-- what Jesus in Matthew 6:6 calls "closet" behavior-- I think another pattern emerges. In Aramaic, for example, the word for such prayer is tsli -- meaning "to turn; to turn as on a barbecue spit; to pray." Whether or not Jesus really spoke Aramaic, or really used this expression in the Great Sermon are matters of less consequence to my point in general: worship in private, 'the closet behavior' of worship is apt to resemble the Gestaltist's portrayal of problem-solving, as when in isolation Wolfgang Kohler's apes were confronted with problematics, and were compelled to scratch-heads, grope-about, 'flummox' until getting the reaching-stick-to-bring-down-the-'banana' (which is intended to be figurative/metaphoric now.)

I would be hard pressed to find an adequate 'sample' of private worship behavior. As a form of problem-solving, a Gedankenexperiment would bring to focus that the profounder the problematic confronted, the deeper the behavioral expression of unease in the private worship experienced, not to be confused with the unease of 'fighting' in public. Instead what one would expect would be an engrossment in something-- not to be met with relaxation/ease until some closure to the 'puzzle' might be effected.

I shall continue with the assay of my data for 'reverent' versus 'general-not-necessarily-reverent' social behavior. But at present it would look as though a gainful avenue for inquiry would be an N = 1 survey of a person-- myself-- dealing with a prayer-concern as active problem-solving. The design of this would also be tending toward the phenomenological in nature.

[But I am not deceived: what B.F. Skinner called radical behaviorism-- the study of cognition as a type of behavior--has more in common with clinical phenomenology than not, practically/pragmatically. <For the nuances hereto-- (+)/(-)-- see this link for "Animal Cognition" in Wikipedia.> A good clinical phenomenology of this type-- with the spirit of radical behaviorism-- has never been attempted for reverence "in the closet" of the spirit of Matthew 6:6. With design, and good record keeping, and some bravery I think I can eventually do a designed time-series which might empirically so pass-muster.]

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee, Lollard
Just Prior to ComplineTime
Dies Sancti Benedicti

2008-07-11T07:50:00.000-07:00

An Effort at Recapitulative Meta-Definition
On the Precedent Entry, Etc.

Hermeneutic aims for understanding; understanding of oneself is requisite in this process, but primarily as a means for identifying and "treating" one's biases in order to clearly peer on the message in context of the utterer.

Says Friedrich Schleiermacher, in a phrase here already proffered, and which will betimes be repeated,

"Die Aufgabe is auch so auszudruecken, 'die Rede zuesrst ebensogut und dann besser zu verstehen als ihr Uhrheber.' " (Hermeneutik und Kritik, "Einleitung," 18:3.)

"The task is also to be expressed as follows, to understand the utterance at first just as well and then better than its author." (Andrew Bowie's translation, page 23.)

In these postings, I have cited material which has varying potential for quick-empathy. The material from Climacus' Ladder of Divine Ascent, Chapter 5, and some of the more tent-revivalist audio-material to which I have been attending come close to being material which immediately cannot be bridged with empathy. This "culture shock" as described herein reflects my biasing (Greek: bias = "force"; may be related to bios = "having life; living; life") which means that there are fundamental assumptions which make my system "go."

To a limited extent, I have described some of these assumptions. What makes the systems of others "go"-- in the case of Climacus with his penitences -- in the case of tent-revivalists with the assumption that a quick emotional 'decision' to follow Jesus will induce perfection forever thereafter-- I find that I must in a truly Schleiermacherian way-- and in a way that always obtains-- to find the assumptions-beneath-assumptions and the assumptions-beneath-assumptions-beneath-assumptions which will after a latticeworks for this purpose be constructed will "bridge," will connect-dots in the gaps where at first there is only disconcertion.

"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto." ['I am a man: nothing human is alien to me,' Terence, "The Self-Tormentor," 50:77.] This means that in a place far fundamental to the place where I do "business as usual," there is a potential for fathoming the seeming-unfathomability of another. And the process which goes for these fundamental fundamentals is one that leads toward growth: for on the one hand, it may be that my stance toward business-as-usual is simply rooted in rote and habit, and the alternative presented 'by shock' from this alienating culture is the-better, or my 'superiority' for me will prove itself 'in this particular case of mine' and I shall go on living with what I have, though chastened by another's social world (Mitwelt.)

For the 'question' to which my life addresses (the protocol proposed to us by R.G. Collingwood -- see the last entry) there is a point at which slow and piecemeal challenge works best to effect the goals of e.g. the tent revivalists or a Climacus. For on the side of the evangelist-preacher, there may be some who in great emotionalism and tumult over sin 'convert' into perfection ever-thereafter; I do not appear to have been one given-such-a-lot-in-the-lottery-of-existence. To the Climacus, I would in a qualified way rejoin that my process of purification does not prosper on massive dosages of pain, or any significant self-induced-pain-for-pain-sake. I am a one who seems to do well with slower, more-incremental inputs/outputs than these totalists.

But I do betimes go-whole-hog. What causes the 'culture shock' for the evangelists and Climacus' seems to reside in the fact that when I am whole-hog about enthusiasms, I am likelier than any other sort of time to be mistaken. That this may not be for the likes of Billy Sunday, Maze Jackson, John Climacus, or Francis of Assisi would have to imply only that what works for them may not be the best for me.

"In my Father's House are many Large-Rooms/Mansions," cf. John 14:2. What in this 'interior castle' is the right room for other saints-- down to the house-sparrows, oposums, wildmints, and musrooms-- may not identify with my small need for a small cell with bars and pulse and water on which dining is famous. I think this is the meaning of Catholic (large C) and catholic (small c, i.e. "universal.") One should strive for that cell/mansion where the getting-perfect gets-best. If there is no getting perfect in the room one is situated, then best to get a transfer. Above all one needs to get where the getting is most-perfect (c.f. Matthew 5:48, etc.)

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Sext
Dies Sancti Benedicti

2008-07-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

A Hermeneutic-Recapitulation and Sythesis Tentatively
On Much Reading of Chapter 5 of Climacus' Spiritual Ladder--
An Application of 'Questions and Answers' Method of R. G. Collingwood,
A Disciple of Friedrich Schleiermacher

The following entry comes after I have done disconcerting re-re-reading of Chapter 5 of The Spiritual Ladder (also known by other English titles but comparable) of St. John Climacus. I have read the Paulist Press version-- which engages the-less-- and the version by Harper & Row of Archimandrite Moore (1959)-- which is the-better to me. But the reading of this + the Greek in Migne leaves me in a deeply uncomfortable pew (to counter Pierre Berton of the Comfortable Pew authorship of times-ago) on which I would now like to unwind, extrapolate, interpolate, teach-by-teaching-myself in the modal logic of the (categorical-- to Immanuel Kant) imperative of morality. We may call this disconcertion and my address to it a "culture shock," as defined and described below.

"Culture shock" is a relatively recent term in social science-- but is well-understood to imply the age-old phenomenon of strong feeling-- usually of shock/disgust/displeasure-- at confrontation with a culture that is alien and remote to one's own-- and thus to one's meta-assumptions. This phenomenon to a satisfactory level may be appreciated in the Wikipedia article on this subject.

While the term "culture shock" is not used by Friedrich Schleiermacher per se, he does speak to this process-- as a tool for the Verstehen/noetics of deciphering the variance between one's own 'culture' and that of another utterer-- who may well live in an epoch alien in vast ways from the index-culture-one's-own. He says,

"The task of psychological explication in its own terms is generally to understand every given structure of thoughts as a moment of the life of a particular person. What means do we have to achieve this task?

"We must go back to the relationship of a speaker and a listener. If thinking and the connection of thoughts is one and the same in each, then, if the language is the same, understanding results of its own accord. But if thought is essentially different in each, it does not result of its own accord, even when the language is the same. If we take each case in absolute terms, the task disappears, for in the first case it does not arise at all, because it completely coincides with the achievment of the task, in the second case it is, it would appear, unachievable. But the opposition never occurs as extremely or as absolutely as this. For in every case there is always a certain difference of thinking between the speaker and the listener, but not one which cannot be overcome. Even in everyday life if, in a case where the language is completely the same and completely transparent, I hear the utterance of another and set myself the task of understanding it, I posit a difference between him and myself. But in every case of wishing to understand another the presupposition is always present that the difference can be overcome. The task is to go more precisely into the nature of and the reasons for the differences between the speaker and the one who understands. This is difficult." (Hermeneutics and Criticism, Andrew Bowie's translation, page 101-- italics mine.)

To the "shock" of reading Chapter/Step 5 in Climacus' Spiritual Ladder I am thus compelled to specify MY assumptions, CLIMACUS' assumptions-- in order to portray the apparent structural-functional gulf which separates us, and to reach for a common ground-- perhaps Schwer as Germans like Schleiermacher would have said-- but the only way a Gestaltic Form may emerge from which a-progress may ensue.

Here are some 'shockers' in Climacus 5:

There obtains a 'prison' in a voluntary and consensual community-- to which recipients WANT to go-- for PUNISHMENT.
The people who go into this 'incarceration' show undeniable signs of profound and chronic mental disorder-- catatonia, mutism, melancholia, pica/geophagy, self-mutilative-tendencies.
The people in this lock-up are prone to physical, medical problems like tuberculosis (spitting blood, etc.)
For neither mental nor medical conditions, is any 'treatment' provided but custody.
Dietary is poor; 'inmates' choose a poor diet of their own volition.
Of this, Climacus offers praise, as do the custodians of the 'jail', as obviously does the religious body of this (Pachmian) monastery.

This implies the 'shock' value in MY value system and that of CLIMACUS:

To me, such punishment is NOT EVER considered anything but brutal; mental and physical symptomatology is ALWAYS to be afforded scientific, evidence-based treatment (as I understand it); furthermore, to WANT incarceration is considered wholly unnatural, SICK, depraved-- and such 'geophagic' behavior generically conceived is naught but WICKED.
To Climacus, the model seems to be that inasmuch as sinners have violated a covenant with a loving God, such penances with self-humiliation IS treatment-- for sin which is the disease, of which the symptoms are a manifestation-- and for which the privations also are treatment under God and not symptomatic.

This implies:

That I live in a social world that values PLEASURE; my penances when attempted are soft-ones compared to Climacus' and always aimed at improving a discipline for PSYCHOLOGIC INTEGRITY--which is defined in terms according to a post-Freudian-era model of ego-orientation-toward-hale-prosperity. PAIN is not a desideratum; it would be pathological (the 'answer' to the ancient notion of 'sin') to pursue a self-punishment-- a business called MASOCHISM-- and in nearly all social sectors of religion, WORSHIP is defined according to these terms.
Climacus' worldview has 'sicknesses' and 'hospitals' and indeed all incarceration defined along lines which are in oppostion to almost all the values just espoused. The odds are that he knew well of this value system-- knew of the culture of 'cosmo' Alexandria from direct visitation-- but considered it PROFANE. He acknowledges this: "I am full aware, my good friends, that the stuggles will seem to some incredible, to others hard to believe, and will seem to some to breed despair. But to the courageous soul they will serve as a spur, and a shaft of fire; and he will go away carrying zeal in his heart. He who is not up to this will to realize his infirmity, and having easily obtained humility by self-reproach, he will run after the former; and I do not know may not even overtake him...of whom it was said 'From him who is not ready to act even what he has will be taken from him.' " (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Climacus, Archimandrite Lazarus Moore's translation [1959], page 107.)

The take-home lesson-- reaching for the Large Picture-- would have to include a notion that social conditions vary and are due to variance in causes which are peculiar to times, Mitwelts, circumstances. Problems which others address in ways alien to mine-- as alien in my case reacting to Climacus' laud of "The Prison" described in Chapter 5 of the Spiritual Ladder as might have been the case when Catholic brothers first saw the cult-of-human-sacrifice in Motezuma's Mexico in the days of the Conquistadors. EASY resolution of these differences are not effected; there needs to be a reaching for some way to preserve-the-whole, to abet growth, to encourage "chastened synthesis."

"And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved." (Luke 5:37-38 KJV.) In such a way, it obliges us to go from the LESSONS of history, down to the 'first edition of history' which is the journalistic values of the day-- to effect a real understanding of what OUR situation is by proper comparison of the past (unto the latest micro-micro-micro-micro-second.) In the Verstehen tradition-- not per se in Schleiermacher but in his disciple-worthy R. G. Collingwood, a professor at Oxford who lived into the WWII era-- we find what may be an accomodating approach to this problematic. In Collingwood's An Autobiography (1999, 1978, 1939), page 31, we read that Collingwood approaches 'understanding' in the following way:

"I began by observaing that you cannot find out what a man means simply by studying his spoken or written statements, even though he has spoken or written with perfect command of language and perfectly truthful intention. In order to find out his meaning you must also know what the question was (a question in his own mind, and presumed by him to be in yours) to which the thing he has said or written was meant as the answer."

From here, it looks as though Climacus had a problem on-hand-- in the bosom of an ever-profane Egyptian culture the ilk of the Alexandrian of the time-- his monastery was facing an onslaught of what R. K. Merton would call deviant-retreatists--'refuseniks' for the program of the dominant times. These people-- who seem to include Climacus-- were bent on establishing a Utopian-alternative to the secular/profane one dominant (especially in the time immediately preceding.)

The Christian religion is only somewhat by inception ascetic. We read that Jesus demurred from the asceticism of the-Baptists-under-John:

"Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast...No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new peice that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse." (Mark 2:19 & 21); and there is the iteration into the new-wine-in-new-bottles logion. This may mean that there was ecclesiastic allowance for a certain amount of fasting and ascetics after the Jesus-event, but during His time, there was none of this emphasis. So the moment of Jesus -- his questions-and-answers-- differ from those of both Climacus some five centuries afterward, and to our own 21 centuries following.

We are physically unable to go backward in time. We have coextensively the work of Jesus, the work of Climacus, the work of all other disciples, on which to construct living-fire-exemplars for the questions of this age-- with the old and certain essential messages and lessons our predecessors have answered to their exactitude.

The discipleship to Jesus is said to be a Way:Truth:Life (John 14:6); that this is a 'way' (Greek: Ho-Hodos; Akolouthos ) is evidenced numerous times, in the Gospels, Acts, and the rest of the New Testament. This way-of-truth-and-life is a matter of living that Love-of-God-of-Humankind which-- the Impossibility:Certainty of our Address-- will have an avenue/venue for all problematics pragmatics can 'throw'-- albeit there is no satisfaction that this for our side/end will have been without difficulties and misfits-- or that we in all times will like this or another approximation to way:truth:life attempted.

I am convinced that loving-God-and-my-neighbor-as-myself includes a semantic that I need love myself enough to do construction and not destruction with my life-- to that degree I have some investment in the intellectual/spirited/noetic bequeatments of the Era of Psychology (from Freud onward.) BUT I ALSO HAVE A BEQUEATHMENT OF SCIENCE-METHOD-- WHICH RERIVES FROM A STANCE OF REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM (ESSENTIALLY FROM WILLIAM-OCKHAM, AQUINAS, MAIMONIDES, AND THE ANCIENTS) IN GIST NOT DIFFERENT FROM THE DIRECTIVE IN 1 JOHN 4:1 TO "TRY THE SPIRITS WHETHER THEY BE OF GOD: BECAUSE MANY FALSE PROPHETS ARE GONE INTO THE WORLD." This is an explicit necessity in both science-- including noetic science-- but need not be an experimentation in the here-now.

In the ascetic monastic example-- which reaches the level of a definable masochism in Chapter/Step 5 of The Spiritual Ladder here-- there seems to be less a loving-of-myself-and-the-neighbor-and-God as rather a self-loathing. The 'fruits' of that experimentation are well documented, and do lead to a kind of excess and phoniness of which we have many facts, figures, chronicles and a Reformation/Counter-Reformation to 'answer.' In the Collingwood sense, the 'question' would in each case be: 'Is this the example of life that exemplifies the best approximation to Discipleship-- Way:Truth:Life with Jesus that can be effected?' The very fact that Climacus makes the admission that there would be those in the Christianity of his time who would find "The Prison" described to be 'cruel and unusual' (they actually did not have Tom Jefferson's 'rights' in vocabulary at that moment.)

BUT: Our 21st century solution to discipleship-- which to many, and to many teaching-places in Christendom-- seems to denote "Jesus didn't mean DISCIPLINE; he really meant E-Z Livin'-- have all the paroxmic fun fun fun-- and just say the Creeds at Creed-time and go about Your:Merry:Way." But to me, your:merry:way hardly at all resembles taking-up-any-kind-of-cross-and-following-- as betimes it needs to be and is in certain places and 21st century environments. Discipline is one of the first-layers in the semantic-domain of the term discipleship-- as far as I can detect-- and The Cross looks far more like eudaimonia than fun-and-games-all-the-time.

I and we need to make a recognition-- that for the thrown-fallen-ness of masochistic asceticism (we find in Climacus 5 and in monastic history)-- the libertine blast-seeking-hedonism of the time is NOT exemplary discipleship-- and no amount of creed-saying will really make a Christian Orthodoxy.

We need to couple words-with-deed, thought-with-action, discipleship-with-discipline NOW as EVER. Maybe Climacus in excess in The Spiritual Ladder 5 tends toward missing-the-mark (Greek: harmartia); to me, here-now, it looks like the-times-are-out-of-joint now with a bigger missing the mark-- which so pretty 'creeds' in the Mass-- and goes then out for every kind of debauchery-in-the-night-spots afterward. May God Jahweh judge us as he judged the lesser masochistic ascetic harmartia of Climacus' time and onward.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
In the Place Here Commonly Called 'The Desert'
Nitty Gritty City
Louisville, Kentucky USA

2008-07-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

"Culture shock" is a relatively recent term in social science-- but is well-understood to imply the age-old phenomenon of strong feeling-- usually of shock/disgust/displeasure-- at confrontation with a culture that is alien and remote to one's own-- and thus to one's meta-assumptions. This phenomenon to a satisfactory level may be appreciated in the Wikipedia article on this subject.

While the term "culture shock" is not used by Friedrich Schleiermacher per se, he does speak to this process-- as a tool for the Verstehen/noetics of deciphering the variance between one's own 'culture' and that of another utterer-- who may well live in an epoch alien in vast ways from the index-culture-one's-own. He says,

"The task of psychological explication in its own terms is generally to understand every given structure of thoughts as a moment of the life of a particular person. What means do we have to achieve this task?

"We must go back to the relationship of a speaker and a listener. If thinking and the connection of thoughts is one and the same in each, then, if the language is the same, understanding results of its own accord. But if thought is essentially different in each, it does not result of its own accord, even when the language is the same. If we take each case in absolute terms, the task disappears, for in the first case it does not arise at all, because it completely coincides with the achievment of the task, in the second case it is, it would appear, unachievable. But the opposition never occurs as extremely or as absolutely as this. For in every case there is always a certain difference of thinking between the speaker and the listener, but not one which cannot be overcome. Even in everyday life if, in a case where the language is completely the same and completely transparent, I hear the utterance of another and set myself the task of understanding it, I posit a difference between him and myself. But in every case of wishing to understand another the presupposition is always present that the difference can be overcome. The task is to go more precisely into the nature of and the reasons for the differences between the speaker and the one who understands. This is difficult." (Hermeneutics and Criticism, Andrew Bowie's translation, page 101-- italics mine.)

To the "shock" of reading Chapter/Step 5 in Climacus' Spiritual Ladder I am thus compelled to specify MY assumptions, CLIMACUS' assumptions-- in order to portray the apparent structural-functional gulf which separates us, and to reach for a common ground-- perhaps Schwer as Germans like Schleiermacher would have said-- but the only way a Gestaltic Form may emerge from which a-progress may ensue.

Here are some 'shockers' in Climacus 5:

There obtains a 'prison' in a voluntary and consensual community-- to which recipients WANT to go-- for PUNISHMENT.
The people who go into this 'incarceration' show undeniable signs of profound and chronic mental disorder-- catatonia, mutism, melancholia, pica/geophagy, self-mutilative-tendencies.
The people in this lock-up are prone to physical, medical problems like tuberculosis (spitting blood, etc.)
For neither mental nor medical conditions, is any 'treatment' provided but custody.
Dietary is poor; 'inmates' choose a poor diet of their own volition.
Of this, Climacus offers praise, as do the custodians of the 'jail', as obviously does the religious body of this (Pachmian) monastery.

This implies the 'shock' value in MY value system and that of CLIMACUS:

To me, such punishment is NOT EVER considered anything but brutal; mental and physical symptomatology is ALWAYS to be afforded scientific, evidence-based treatment (as I understand it); furthermore, to WANT incarceration is considered wholly unnatural, SICK, depraved-- and such 'geophagic' behavior generically conceived is naught but WICKED.
To Climacus, the model seems to be that inasmuch as sinners have violated a covenant with a loving God, such penances with self-humiliation IS treatment-- for sin which is the disease, of which the symptoms are a manifestation-- and for which the privations also are treatment under God and not symptomatic.

This implies:

That I live in a social world that values PLEASURE; my penances when attempted are soft-ones compared to Climacus' and always aimed at improving a discipline for PSYCHOLOGIC INTEGRITY--which is defined in terms according to a post-Freudian-era model of ego-orientation-toward-hale-prosperity. PAIN is not a desideratum; it would be pathological (the 'answer' to the ancient notion of 'sin') to pursue a self-punishment-- a business called MASOCHISM-- and in nearly all social sectors of religion, WORSHIP is defined according to these terms.
Climacus' worldview has 'sicknesses' and 'hospitals' and indeed all incarceration defined along lines which are in oppostion to almost all the values just espoused. The odds are that he knew well of this value system-- knew of the culture of 'cosmo' Alexandria from direct visitation-- but considered it PROFANE. He acknowledges this: "I am full aware, my good friends, that the stuggles will seem to some incredible, to others hard to believe, and will seem to some to breed despair. But to the courageous soul they will serve as a spur, and a shaft of fire; and he will go away carrying zeal in his heart. He who is not up to this will to realize his infirmity, and having easily obtained humility by self-reproach, he will run after the former; and I do not know may not even overtake him...of whom it was said 'From him who is not ready to act even what he has will be taken from him.' " (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Climacus, Archimandrite Lazarus Moore's translation [1959], page 107.)

2008-07-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

St. Takla (Egypt) is 'Back Online'--
With Agpeya-- Brief News Note

The most-Egyptian source for things Coptic would seem to be online at St. Takla.org ; there one can get news of the Coptic Church, which is simple in its complexity-- and at any rate of a culture of which I am hardly familiar-- but with which for a number of reasons including my desire to further the interests of this Web-log (with study of the During:Before:After events leading to the interment of the mostly Gnostic Nag Hammadi texts-- down to this instant.)

For a time St. Takla went mysteriously 'off' the Web; this was missed here in 'The Desert' (as I have explained IS the real nickname of this dangerous place) at least in my domicile here. I was getting accustomed to taking in Agpeya in 'large doses,' from the Arabic (the language that has mostly but not entirely replaced Coptic in this Church.) I speculated that this may have been due to civil unrest, but this would have been a 'wild' and even paranoid guess-ti-mate on news filtered strangely by the reports of mayhem-sectarian in Egypt. Then too, there was the injury-- a fractured thigh-- of the octogenarian Coptic Pope with whom I am most familiar (there seem to be two Popes, Shenouda and Alexandrios, and a complexing relation-- but recognized in communion-- with Rome and Benedictus XVI.) This meant that for a time Pope Shenouda was in the USA-- on 'Fathers Day' of all happy times-- so I sent him a 'Holy Father's Day' card.

But Agpeya-- and St. Takla-- have been down for some days. There was a Web-report from Alexandria (Egypt) on this matter that I could have gotten-- at $60+ more money than I had in cost-- so I was 'tuffing it' with not a little spirited despondency (not the melancholic type, which I betimes experience too!) I checked the Web for St. Takla LOTS. I found Englished Agpeya, and these were vital sources. I made new Web acquaintances-- YouTubes of the fiery Zakaria Botros-- and found as I needed badly a Muslim-girl's Website which had an authoress wonderful enough to also have honest-opposing-Copt opinion-- but like me aspiring for balance-- in "Egyptian Chronicles" by a 'Zeinobia'-- which not infreqently laments the insult Copts experience in her land (with difficulties-- as USA hath too!)

But there was NO Agpeya, no St. Takla. Then tonight, Ins'Allah the St. Takla re-emerged, complete with Agpeya as well as the news of Pope Shenouda's recent visit to Ethopia (the Church in whose land-- with clergy as married as the Coptic for clergy-- and 'in Rome' too-- is communing with the Copts-- this not-too-complexly!!)

SO: I rejoice. The Agpeya in a 'native' tongue is back in my iTunes player, and in a few minutes I shall 'play' Midnight Office (in Arabic: Nos El-Leil .) This may not be any kind of miracle.

[This is a consistent 'noetic' (understanding') phenomenological trait in me: as a manic-depressive mental health consumer I try at all costs to eschew superstition and magical-thinking. (See my other blogs on mental health for this--"Bipolar in Louisville" AND "Agonia: Mental Health Advocates"-- for this-- current-enough-interest but lapsed just a tad due to this engrossment in worship/reverence/piety.)]

I have NO idea how many if any people follow this Web-log (blog); but if there are any remotely interested in the Coptic Church (Present:Past:Future) this should be EDIFYING and WORTHWHILE NEWS.

... Now for the pressing concern-- 'ultimate' Paul Tillich would have it-- of doing the Midnight Office!!!

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Nos El-Leil (Coptic Midnight Office)
14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Roman Church)
Sunday of St. Matthew (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-06T10:34:00.000-07:00

The Evaluation-Plan for My 'Argumentation'

The diagram above depicts the general process I shall pursue in determination of the dynamics of the target-behavior: reverence/piety.

In general, what is undertaken will be a systematic reductio ad absurdum which aims as closely at a completely evaluated argument-- the intersect of truth, relevance, and total-evidence as determined by negation of ALL its complements.

A special mention needs to be made about to evidence which is neither true nor relevance-- which I call 'the mythic,' and would include all social fictions, fables, and simple-unreflective-habitudes-without-rationale.

Insofar as other matters in this inquiry might be concerned, determination of what is not-true occurs in the identical process determination of total-evidence, and of ascertaining relevance to the intersecting subset. Total-evidence denotes the evidentiary completeness/categoric-certainty/absoluteness/purity of the sets; this requires a sort-process, which in practice may be quite difficult. Simultaneously would come ascertaining whether the totalized-evidence is relevant to the desideratum, as well as an inference that one possesses validities-- for the most part implying factualities.

I will permit recapitulations as tentative assessments of process-- and every recapitulation requires and should get promptly critique for its not-being-untrue (reductio...)

Reverent behavior is a broad topic. It covers a number of areas, and is said to obtain in all human cultures of all time (a sociologic dogma-- needs testing but seems not-untrue prima facie.) Practically, I have been approaching this topic on three 'fronts' -- as a communications process with semantics, syntactics, pragmatics in semiotic, then in the example of modern (19th, 20th, and 21st century) religiosity, and then in the paradigm of Egyptology-- especially in the Patristic Period around the time the Nag Hammadi (Gnostic, essentially) texts were deposited in the Sahara.

This stress on what is past, present, and always 'true' about reverent behavior-- focusing on its parameter-boundaries-- compares to the Gestaltic method of defining a Pragnanz by outlining its boundaries. In such a way as graphic artists using this method can accomplish cunning exactitude of realities, so I think we shall poly-dimensionally in reverent/pious behavior be able to accomplish such canny realism.

The 'mythic' obviously obtains in reverent behavior and worship-- and is immediately picked-upon by 'outsiders' to a tradition. Non-Christians for instance report knowing well that Christians are "big talkers," "make a lot of word-arguments," "say they are ever-loving but fight just like every other hating-person." To perceptions like these I wish first to turn, before taking my 'pencil' to describe-- with anticipated reality-- the cunning reality of my Credalism-- "warts and all" -- which to Aquinas and all Thomist Catholics can only imply the higher-level-of-truth-of-dogmatics. It is to the HOW of this valid dogmatics to which I turn with the WHAT of the symbolic Creeds.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of None
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday of Matthew (Orthodoxy)

2008-07-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

Progress-Report:
Control Sample of General Behavior Drawn--
To Control for Culturally Defined 'Worship' Behavior--
With Speculation about Hypothetical Findings Re Reverence/Piety

In a prior entry in this Web-log, I outlined a method which I think even now will suffice to put parameters on what appears-to-be, intentionally-is, reverent behavior. This would substantiate in the entry for Hermeneutik und Kritik for May 26 of this year-- see the link 'beneath' this hyperlink. Here, I describe the progress I have made in deriving a randomized sample of NOT-NECESSARILY-PIOUS/REVERENT MATERIAL-- and will describe how I intend to use this database to the task at hand.

To explain, to back-up: the scientific method is based on the logic known as reductio ad absurdum-- by which is meant that in inference the truth can but be interpolated from what is certainly not untrue-- T = ~ ~ T. While this principle does not 'work' in every case for tautologies like conjunctions, biconditionals, negations of conditionals, or disjunctions, for 'statement-like' sentences (those in the propositional, declarative or indicative moods, for instance) this amounts to THE way demonstration takes place. SAMPLING is indicated when one cannot take-in/examine an entire population for the domain/universe-of-discourse here considered-- and RANDOM SAMPLING best exemplifies what obtains in such a domain-- meaning that each element in the domain has equal prospects of inclusion-for-consideration, and thus is likelier to be REPRESENTATIVE.

Now to the person of my ilk-- a believer and practitioner of a Creed-- what I mean by 'reverent behavior' may seem quite apparent. I am operating on my ASSUMPTIONS about what piety should/should-not be, and these of course may not be 100% conscious. What the empirical scientist would like is a demonstration of what the UNIVERSE resembles for all behavior, before trying to ascertain what I-- or anyone else-- means by "piety."

Now I aspire to come as close to actual, foot-pound-energic, effecting behavior of real humans when I attempt this study...which in fact is a broad undertaking deliberately, with many avenues, boulevards, and back-alleyways to consider. But with this in mind, I have as I suggested I would done per Internet two types of search-- on Google-- TO DETECT WHAT IS CULTURALLY DEFINED (IN THIS U.S.A.) AS REVERENCE/PIOUS-BEHAVIOR/WORSHIP FROM A BROADER SET THAT INCLUDES ALL BEHAVIOR (ON THE WEB, IN THIS CASE.)

To wit, my first Google search used the terms "worship + online + stream + streaming," from which I obtained some A-V material-- all types in a way of which one would consider 'worship'/religion; these are stored as 'favorites'/'bookmarked.' To obtain a more generalized view of A-V material of the total set of A-Vs on the Web, I also searched here for such material-- MP3s and the like-- for the following terms:

"wildebeest + (online + stream + streaming)"
"blastocoel + (online + stream + streaming)"
"ravin + (online + stream + streaming)"
"waiver + (online + stream + streaming)"
"peroxydisulfate + (online + stream + streaming)"
"fantail + (online + stream + streaming)"
"relapsing + (online + stream + streaming)"
"scallion + (online + stream + streaming)"
"lithography + (online + stream + streaming)"
"alias + (online + stream + streaming)"

... Terms which were selected by random-number generation from the word-list in 50,000 Words Divided and Spelled: Desk Edition by Harry Sharp (1978 [1964]); this series of searches provided MP3-like A-V material for all terms here but 'blastocoel,' 'ravin,' 'peroxydisulfate,' 'fantail,' 'scallion,' and the total number of audio-visuals in both sets seems to be on the order of about 30-40 entries-- an ample control/contrast/comparison set of about 80 cases/specimens.

What I am about to do will be to examine both sets of samples-- those Google-described as "worship..." versus those 'other...' audio-visuals-- to determine in a categorical way what is the behavior differentiating these from each other-- as exhibited in the semiotic of indexicality, iconography and symbolics of each universe. In the case of the 'general' sample, of course, it may be expected that SOME definable reverence-- up to and beyond the presence of 'praying behavior' as pragmatically identifiable in this culture -- may indeed occur. And too the 'worship' A-Vs are likely to contain pragmatics suggestive of other-than-pious-demeanor to the 'casual eye.' My goal will be to detect whatever differences do trend in the two sets of data-- UTTERLY IN AN EFFORT TO DEFINE THE CULTURAL SEMANTICS IMPLIED-- IF NOT THE SYNTACTICS AND PRAGMATICS PERTAINING AS WELL.

This method is known in certain circles-of-science as 'phenomenology,' and here I would be quick to define this as clinical phenomenology as described by Karl Jaspers in General Psychopathology (1972 [1923])-- which is "[T]o make some representation of what is really happening in our patients [or any other phenomenon], what they are actually going through, how it strikes them, how they feel...So in phenomenology we expect to account for every psychic phenomenon, every experience met with in our investigation of the patient [or other phenomenon] and in his own self-description" (page 56, here.) Elsewhere in this book, Jaspers makes clear that pure phenomenology is concerned with (noetic, understood subjectively) form-determination, whereas applied phenomenology-- essentially on the order of what I attempt in this venture-- determines the content of a classification.

In fine, I am looking in a 'clinical' way for what-- in Google-- and on the Internet-- and thus in 21st century culture-- what 'makes' socially-defined reverent/worshipful behavior. It is anticipated that this 'formal' designation will run the gamut of what Eric Berne (see Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships {1992 [1964]}, pages 35-65 & 180) described as games, pastimes, rituals as well as spontaneous behavior-- perhaps with least artifice-- and the most-potential for schlock negative sanctioning-- for spontaneity.

In other words, this will have been a structural analysis whose first assumption is of the lack-of-structure, either randomness or chaos, from which spontaneity and the other categories of action could possibly 'grow.' Again, this is consistent with the method of science, the reductio... assuming first the not-so-false, before imputing POSSIBLE structuralism, 'the alternate hypothesis.' Jonathan Culler (see Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature, Cornell University Press, 1975) has properly (in my opinion) faulted the structuralism of e.g. Claude Levi-Strauss for assuming what is to be proven-- the fallacy in logic of assuming-the-consequent-- but instead of postulating a lower-criticism in "Kritik' to be the desideratum-- as in deconstruction-ism, or the assumption that WHAT the utterer has to say in the first place has the-least bearing on discourse-- I strive for UNDERSTANDING-- place myself solidly in the phenomenological camp Culler posits-- albeit I am concerned by the Whole System-- the signifier + message + significand. In my phenomenology-- purely of the clinical/scientific type with not to do with the false/quasi-mysticism to which certain pure phenomenologists apply-- I seek for TOTAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE UTTERER, AUDIENCE, AND 'MESSAGE.' Phenomena at all levels-- reaching for understanding as taught by Schleiermacher -- will be my goal and thus my approach-orientation.

...One may note that I am engaged on several levels of several facets of this study of reverent behavior. These are 'all in process' and results, ever-tentative conclusions, and recapitulations will here get 'pressed' as the situation seems warranted. Suffice it to say, though, this is becoming an 'edifying discourse.'

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of None (Daily Office)
Day of St. Anthony Zaccaria (Western Church)
Day of St. Athanasius of Mount Athos (Orthodoxy)