In the wee hours of this morning I finished James Kunstler's post-oil book.
Here's a quote:
"...it was more possible that the human race possessed a spark of divinity that was worth cultivating that that a mysterious being was up there in the ether somewhere with anthropomorphic qualities of goodness and mercy running the whole show, and maybe it was the job of clergy to nurture that divine spark in us and make something of it."
I found it interesting that both Jim and I sold out...maybe that's too harsh a term...but in my austere novel THE HALF FULL MOON which is about the desert of the real, and the true nature of the original human being, about the threat of extinction to the human race (set in the Kalahari), I also flirted with divine inspiration and interference. Is it not (only) through the divine that we authorise radical change to ourselves and society? This is a peculiar subscription for us though, if you think about it, that we effectively endorse this view even in our fictions, while in our lives are chagrined by the washes of diffused 'religion'.
If you think about it, both Kunstler and myself have resisted the easy way out, which is escaping our worldly troubles through 'salvation and living forever' by simply declaring and committing to faith in a saviour. Yet in both our stories we certainly flirt with the idea of a divine presence, but one that is human in its divinity (and its source), not a sort of disparate alien power originating from elsewhere in the universe. I called my 'Jesus' Alcala, 'the desert dragon', and she was a supremely wise but feminine force, and appeared both fragile and able to circumvent some of the limits we take for granted. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I specified whether her origin was an Earth origin, or a product of the universe forming. I have an idea it is probably both, as divine consciousness is based on a omniscient consciousness and connection to everything. Interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment