ATDTDA - grace

[Paul Mackin]

On Tue, 2007-02-13 at 11:21 -0500, Mark Smith wrote:
> I read the link you provided here, Paul, and I think the context of
> Sagan's comments is the interface between science and religion.  I
> think he is gently doing what Dawkins, Dennet, Gould, et al. are
> trying to do.  He is warning us about trying to retrofit science to
> conform to the wishlists generated by our faith.  Sagan is saying that
> we need to have the courage to let our discoveries take us where they
> take us, without the impositions and limitations of our preconceived
> notions. 
>  I think Pynchon is doing something else with Lew, and with "grace" in
> general.  I think it goes well beyond science and religion, to an
> immediate and immanent perception of things "as they are", before
> concepts, before categories, before words, before ego. 

Whatever he's doing, it seems beyond the reality we ordinarily
perceive. 

There's always the realm of the Unconscious to wonder about.

 
>Perhaps I am wrong here, perhaps Lew does not have the stature as a
character to carry this off... 

Lew's very "out of it" state-of-mind must be an important bit of
information.  His problem (early in he book) isn't Kafkaesque, but
rather Autistic--a lack of social relatedness, interest in others, an
inability to  appreciate how he might affect the world.

Whatever his problem it makes him a fine candidate for conversion, but a
non-theological conversion, a secular Road to Damascus maybe.



> but I feel Pynchon has expanded the concept of "grace" well beyond
> theological  (or scientific) boundaries.  It's not even spiritual.  If
> I had to put a name to it I would label it "philosophical", but in a
> very direct, experiential way. 


Don't know what to call it.


> 
> On 2/13/07, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>         On Tue, 2007-02-13 at 08:14 -0500, Mark Smith wrote:
>         > Yes, I agree that the term "grace" has been secularized...
>         but would
>         > go further and suggest that releasing this notion from
>         secular
>         > limitations is not enough.  I do not get any kind of
>         material notion 
>         > entailed in the word, no sense of betterment in earthly
>         matters, no
>         > notion of afterlife rewards (or punishment), but a release
>         from
>         > expectation.  The loss of hope that Lew feels when he
>         discovers that 
>         > things are "exactly as they are" is in fact a liberation,
>         though
>         > perhaps Lew is not ready to receive it as such.  How,
>         actually do we
>         > interpret this quote?
>         >
>         > P. 42:
>         > "One mild and ordinary work-morning in Chicago, Lew happened
>         to find 
>         > himself on a public conveyance, head and eyes inclined
>         nowhere in
>         > particular, when he entered, all too briefly, a condition he
>         had no
>         > memory of having sought, which he later came to think of as
>         grace." 
>         > "He understood that things were exactly what they were. It
>         seemed more
>         > than he could bear."
>         >
>         
>         I have trouble trying to reason Lew out too much. A bit
>         surrealistic.
>         
>         Do Carl Sagan's slightly similar sounding words (from his
>         posthumous 
>         book) shed any light?
>         
>         (quoted in an article in this morning's Times)
>         
>         The search for who we are does not lead to complacency or
>         arrogance, he
>         explains. "It goes with a courageous intent TO GREET THE
>         UNIVERSE AS IT 
>         REALLY IS, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it
>         but to
>         courageously accept what our explorations tell us." (emphasis
>         added)
>         
>         http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/science/13carl.html
>         
>         
>         
>         > I see this as a realization of self.  He has briefly and
>         temporarily
>         > come into the state of fully inhabiting his true
>         nature.  Call it
>         > realization of atman, if you will, or "peak experience", a
>         la Maslow, 
>         > or whatever other label you are comfortable with, but it is
>         a deeply
>         > inexpressible experience, which  Pynchon somehow expresses,
>         or hints
>         > at, through  words.
>         >
>         >
>         > On 2/11/07, Paul Mackin < paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>         > In other words, 'Grace' has been secularized--it is no
>         longer
>         > ecclesiastical or theological, but has become strictly
>         concerned with 
>         > things of the world, the temporal.
>         >
>         > This shift from Heaven to Earth does not obviate the basic
>         thrust of
>         > the
>         > word. Grace imho still implies the hope, if not much of an
>         > expectation, 
>         > for some kind of betterment in the life of the dispossessed
>         of the
>         > world, some change from the status quo.
>         >
>         > While AtD does not take a theological view of what Salvation
>         from the
>         > injustices of the world might  entail, it nevertheless
>         refuses to draw 
>         > a
>         > strict line between the Sacred and the Profane. There is
>         obviously a
>         > lot
>         > in the book that is quite spiritual, mystical, and, of
>         course, even
>         > magical.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > 
>         > --
>         > http://www.downstreamer.com
>         
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.downstreamer.com