BEER Group Read. spring and a burning bush

[Fiona Shnapple]

3.  the vision, is the blessing of the sun, of the creation, of life,
the cosmic organism.

On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 6:32 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not easy to say much without digging deeper into the book,
> but...a book about death  is also a book about survival and life and
> remembrance.
>
> 1. these trees are common in NYC and on the UWS.
> 2.  they are known for their great strength, their resiliency, the
> ability to survive pollution and salting and sloshing of waste waters,
> in fact, they are said to thrive under these conditions
> 4. in a uws meeting people talk about them, planting them, saving
> them, not planting so many on the same street..etc.
> 5. the debates can get testy but are nothing when compared with the
> debate, a furious debate about the wtc, its museum and memorials,etc.,
> this continues, though the worst seems to have ended, their is general
> agreement that the pear tree, the  survivor tree, is an appropriate
> symbol, or...not symbol but, well, for many it is more than a symbol,
> so and here we can dig into Eliade and Widengrean, and believe me,
> people did, and do.
> 6. Maxine, taking time for her children, to care for the children of
> her neighbors, to live deliberately, takes communion with the visible
> form of Nature.
>
> http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/Bryant/thanatopsis.html
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Survivor_Tree_at_the_National_September_11_Memorial.jpg
>
> On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 12:24 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Anyone here have a strong knowledge of the significance of the burning
>> bush in strands of Jewish mysticism? I only know it through a
>> half-remembered Catholic childhood, in which the bush was basically an
>> avatar of God, or maybe just a speakerphone.
>>
>> The otherworldly light recurs in the novel and Maxine's response to it
>> changes. What's the 'God' here? I reckon there'll be a few theses
>> written on it.
>>
>> Also on certain acts of refusal or turning away. No posting spoilers,
>> to be polite.
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 12:49 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> First day of spring. Equinox. A pagan celebration co-opted by The Church. Someone, Laura, wanted
>>> an example of simple fine writing: how about here, first page, about the Callery Pears on the Upper West Side
>>> and "sunlight finding its way past rooflines and water tanks to the end of the block and into one particular tree,
>>> which all at once is filled with light." Such an image, why?
>>>
>>> I suggest we get the author's almost-religious love of nature and light, the pantheistic or panentheistic vision, as we wrote
>>> about it in that Book of Light, Against the Day embodied in that illuminated Callery Pear tree that catches
>>> secular Maxine like that Biblical bush caught Moses.
>>> "As a powerful religious symbol, the burning bush represents many things to Jews and Christians such as God's miraculous energy, sacred light, illumination, and the burning heart of purity, love and clarity."--wikipedia
>>>
>>> If Oedipa wanted, tried, to hear the Word, but couldn;t Maxine sees god in a Callery Pear tree fifty years later.
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l