Magicians’ Epiphanies 26 March 2008
Posted by mecca in ABUSHARIF, Culture, History, Spirituality.6 comments
Almost universally, the confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh is branded on human culture and memory. That epic face-off evokes familiar empathy for things like justice, struggle against apparent odds, and spectacular escape and triumph. If you’re a reader of the Quran, you can’t help but notice how the confrontation is told in several places and that the treatments offer subtle changes in emphasis and scope. But consistently they feature two mortals of opposing archetypical mien meeting on ancient soil. One is a man of tremendous temporal authority, whose conspicuous quality is apparently incurable hubris, a narcissism that has become part of the national myth. The other is an Israelite Prophet confessing his fears and shortcomings. No polity or standing army behind him, he comes with only his brother, a warning and promise from above, and a special staff that challenges the Pharaonic serpent cult.
The Moses-Pharaoh narrative is packed with nuance. Take, for example, the sudden conversion of Pharaoh’s Magicians in their contest with Moses. That stunning public announcement in favor of the God of Moses and Aaron provokes discussion about modern reactions to spiritual awakening and the deconstruction of a continuous sacred narrative.
The Seeker’s Pick 19 March 2008
Posted by mecca in ABUSHARIF, Culture, Science, Spirituality.1 comment so far
This quote is from one of America’s most distinctive literary voices, Annie Dillard. I’ve read it many times and not sure exactly what makes it so appealing, but I think it has something to do with the off-road slant she boldly considers when reflecting on nature. In the “Koran,” from which she quotes, we are invited, challenged to ponder God’s creation, as if pondering is the seeker’s pick, the instrument through which we mine gems and insights. Secrets never give themselves up easily. So we look, think, and pray that we are moved in ways that bare empiricism is inept in achieving.
In the Koran, Allah asks, “The heaven and the earth and all in between, thinkest thou I made them in jest?” It’s a good question. What do we think of the created universe, spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms? Or what do we think of nothingness, those sickening reaches of time in either direction? If the giant water bug was not made in jest, was it then made in earnest? Pascal uses a nice term to describe the notion of the creator’s, once having called forth the universe, turn his back to it: Deus Absconditus. Is this what we think happened? Was the sense of it there, and God absconded with it? . . . “God is subtle,” Einstein said, “but not malicious.” Again, Einstein said that “nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning.” It could be that God has not absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its helm.
Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, winner of the Pulitzer Prize 1974.
Alcohol and Short Stories 21 December 2007
Posted by mecca in ABUSHARIF, Reviews, Sociology.2 comments
I looked for something to read a slow Sunday evening and pulled down a volume of short stories on alcoholism, a Graywolf Press collection of short fiction from masters (like Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Frank O’Connor, and Langston Hughes) who had honest and pointed observations to make about liquor and its impact on the lives of families and individuals. Appropriately, the stories are free of nasal moralizing; the narratives allow the movement of plot and characters to carry the day. The introduction begins this way:
Whether its purpose is social or business, to celebrate or to mourn, Americans have come to expect the presence of alcohol whenever they come together. If anyone should drink too much, it is not seen as a problem but rather shrugged off as a mistake or an amusing peccadillo. Few people are comfortable making an issue of drinking because alcohol is such an accepted ingredient in our way of life.
The book is: The Invisible Enemy: Alcoholism and the Modern Short Story (Graywolf Press, St. Paul, MN, 1989). Ever since I picked up its first volume from a Hyde Park (Chicago) bookstore, about fifteen years ago, Graywolf has been a personal favorite of mine as far as small literary presses go. There is something unpretentious about Graywolf, kind of like its namesake, the endangered animal itself.
retread| About Sacred Art 25 August 2007
Posted by EDITOR in ABUSHARIF, Arts, Spirituality.add a comment
Retreads are quality posts from yesterweeks that are given a second run on Saturdays. This piece was originally posted by ABUSHARIF on 4 January 2007.
People may disagree on what is “art,” but what can’t be dispute is that art has origins. Many have said that its earliest association pertains to the sacred, namely, human attempts to express the religious instinct and, later, free it from strict discursive forms and carefully worded theologies.
