OF GODS AND MEN

There is a painting by Simon Vouet (1590-1649) in The National Gallery in Washington entitled Urania and Calliope, (1634). The two Muses sit together near a temple of Apollo. Urania, who inspires those who contemplate the order of the heavens, wears her starry crown. To her left sits Calliope, Homer’s Muse, holding a copy of The Odyssey while to her left winged babies carry laurel wreathes of achievement heavenward. Urania has her hand on the shoulder of Calliope who in turn faces her, and so the Muse of Epic Poetry looks to the Muse of those who observe the heavenly order. Meanwhile Urania turns and looks directly into the eyes of the viewer of the painting as if to suggest the Delphic admonition to know thyself.

With St. Valentine’s Day approaching and Lent on its way I’m reading Plato’s Phaedrus. It is all rather wonderful. For Socrates, it is a rare romp in the woods as he and the beautiful Phaedrus sit together under a Plane Tree at mid-day along the banks of the Ilissus River in a place dedicated to the god Pan, rich with nymphs. As cicadas sound overhead the story is told of how these tiny, noisy, creatures report to the Muses and tell which humans honor them and how.

To the eldest, Calliope, and her next sister, Urania, they tell of those who live a life of philosophy and so do honor the music of those twain whose theme is the heavens and all the story of gods and men, whose song is the noblest of them all. 1

1.      Phaedrus, R. Hackforth (trans); Hamilton/Cairns (ed).

OUR RIGHTFUL MIND

We are seduced into thinking that the right to choose from a menu is the essence of liberty, but the powerful are those who set the agenda, not those who choose from the alternatives it offers. (Benjamin R. Barber, Consumed, 2007)

Little Protestant shopkeepers and players of golf take the meaning out of everything.

(Lewis Thompson, 1909-1949, Journals)

I think both of the authors quoted above would agree that if humanity has any hope of surviving we are going to have to come to see things in a whole different way. I’m talking about changing our perception of reality. We tend to discourage that sort of that sort of thing; it’s bad for business. Right now most of us perceive ourselves as needing a lot more stuff than we actually require. Our perception is that we need this, that or the other thing, and we cannot possibly be happy, fulfilled, whole, complete, cool, hip, or whatever without it, and in a consumer society we do not want those perceptions messed with. If the commercials during championship football games teach us anything it is that it takes time, talent, and lots of money to encourage our perceptions and we don’t want anyone waking up and questioning the insanity of our lives – not the quiet desperation, nor the fragmentation, nor even the way in which we spend so much time dwelling on the past or fretting about the future that we sleep-walk through our day relying on familiar patterns and routines to such an extent that even our most intimate moments run the risk of becoming formulaic. As near as I can determine consumerism is its own zombie apocalypse.

Sooner or later we’re going to have to criminalize prayer. It can lead us to recognize our true likeness, and the Market won’t stand for that. Prayer introduces us to our rightful mind; it enables us to see among other things that happiness belongs to our essential and eternal nature and is what we bring to people, places, and things, not what is produced by them. This knowledge changes us. What would life be like if we loved God with our whole heart? What if we really loved our neighbor? What would become of grasping and fear if we truly knew that nothing in this world has the power to rob us of our happiness?