Fwd: Re: Food for thought (is also Re: The Gospel of Thomas

[rj]

dm
> Don't believe everything you see and hear on TV.

Nor everything you read in books and critical articles likewise.

> This material has in no
> way been suppressed -- all of this (and much more that would appear to
> challenge many practices of the Church) is in the New Testament,  in fact
> these are among the core sayings of the canonical gospels -- I can provide
> chapter and verse if you wish.

The Egyptian Coptic Church is still suppressing the Gospels found at
Nag-Hammadi by not translating them into Egyptian. Of course the
Apocrypha were suppressed, otherwise these texts too would have been
included in the New Testament the Church Fathers drew up.

There are different emphases in each of the four synoptic Gospels which
spoke to different political motives and factions of "the Church", or
the various alternative and competing sects which were just then coming
into being, drawing up their protocols and corporate strategies, vying
to become "the Church".

> >>IN *GR*, Slothrop's story is a living out of the path [which] Thomas's Jesus
> >>advocates, I think.

NB [not "of Jesus's advocates"]

> I'm not sure how Slothrop would parallels this in GR.

Glad you asked. The Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas speaks of spiritual
enlightenment coming from within, from the oneness of self in nature,
somewhat in the ascetic tradition of St Antony:

"Slothrop moseys down the trail to a mountain stream where he's left his
harp to soak all night, wedged between a couple of rocks in a quiet
pool. ...
  Through the flowing water, the holes of the old Hohner Slothrop found
are warped one by one, squares being bent like notes, a visual blues
being played by the clear stream. There are harpmen and dulcimer players
in all the rivers, wherever water moves. Like that Rilke prophesied,

       And though Earthliness forget you,
       To the stilled earth say: I flow.
       To the rushing water speak: I am.

It is still possible, even this far out of it, to find and make audible
the spirits of lost harp-men. Whacking the water out of his harmonica,
reeds singing against his leg, picking up the single blues at bar 1 of
this morning's seg-ment, Slothrop, just suckin' on his harp, is closer
to being a spiritual medium than he’s been yet, and he doesn't even know
it. ...
  He's kept alone. ... He's letting his hair and beard grow, wearing a
dungaree shirt and trousers .... But he likes to spend whole days naked,
ants crawling up his legs, butterflies lighting on his shoulders,
watching the life on the mountain, getting to know shrikes and
capercaillie, badgers and marmots. Any number of directions he ought to
be moving in, but he'd rather stay right here for now. ...
  [A]nd now, in the Zone, later in the day he became a crossroad, after
a heavy rain he doesn't recall, Slothrop sees a very thick rain-bow
here, a stout rainbow cock driven down out of pubic clouds into Earth,
green wet vall-eyed Earth, and his chest fills and he stands crying, not
a thing in his head, just feeling natural. . . . "  
                                             (GR 622-623, 626)

best