This Week

This week at praxis... I just don't get it

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
"Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"
And I said, "Here am I; send me!" 
And God said, "Go and say to this people:
‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.’
Make the mind of this people dull,
and stop their ears, and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
and turn and be healed."
Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And God said:
"Until cities lie waste without inhabitant,
and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate;
until the Lord sends everyone far away,
and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.
Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing
when it is felled."
The holy seed is its stump.
     ----Isaiah 6:8-13
     
 
"Do not search for truth, just stop having opinions"
-- Seng T'san, ZenWisdom


And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.
----T.S. Eliott, "Little Gidding", Four Quartets


My dear fellow...life is infinitely stranger than anything
which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive of the
things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.
--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity", The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes 


That which is impossible and probable is better
than that which is possible and improbable.
--Aristotle


Student: "What is Zen?"
Master: "Ordinary mind is very Zen."
Student: "Should we try to get it?"
Master: "As soon as you try, you miss it."
--Nan-ch'uan to his student, Zen Wisdom

"Nothing is something, because by it's definition,
nothing is the total absence of anything."
--Shawn Kinzel, 1993 in a discussion with a friend at a coffeehouse


"I walk the maze of moments
but everywhere I turn to
begins a new beginning
but never finds a finish
I walk to the horizon
and there I find another
it all seems so surprising
and then I find that I know
Chorus:
You go there you're gone forever
I go there I'll lose my way
if we stay here we're not together
Anywhere is...
I took the turn and turned to
begin a new beginning
still looking for the answer
I cannot find the finish
It's either this or that way
it's one way or the other
it should be one direction
it could be on reflection
the turn I have just taken
the turn that I was making
I might be just beginning
I might be near the end..."
---- Enya "Anywhere Is..." Memory of the Trees

We prefer, therefore, to see (the text’s) intent as pastoral, directed
specifically at the figure of Isaiah and with due consideration for the
prophetic office. Isaiah is not to interpret the refusal to hear, which comes as
a result of his preaching, as a sign of his failure or as an indication of
divine malfeasance. 
----Christopher R. Seitz, Interpretation, Isaiah 1-39

Questions:

• Why would God want the people to not understand what Isaiah was telling them? Does Seitz’s explanation make sense?
• What do you do when you don’t understand something, especially something sacred?
• How much of your work is talking to people who don’t get it? How do you deal with that?