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Snowy parking lot at night, Greektown, Chicago: photo by photoalvin (Alvin Shubert), 10 February 2010
The street preacher spoke of Christ's withdrawal of his own luminosity into himself, so as to cease dazzling his disciples. A cold wind blew through the empty parking lot on the other side of the street.
Empty parking lot at night: photo by Jarshua (Josh Wunder), 6 August 2011
City lights in parking lot: photo by [insert s/n], 26 December 2008
Empty parking lot at night: photo by daily44s, n.d.
Empty Parking Lot at Night, Lorain, Ohio: photo by The Jenk (Matt Jenkins), 11 November 2007
Parking lot, Thunder Bay, Ontario: photo by Phillip Girondin, 19 October 2010
Parking lot lit monsoon: photo by Brn King (Brian), 6 September 2010
Image of Deus Absconditus set against space where all spirit has been harried away.
ReplyDeleteThis also brings to mind the Tzimtzum (contraction) but with the hope of a beginning gone.
Words and images are all too apt for a dark night after the rain here.
the effect of light can be so different and have so many meanings...
ReplyDeleteThe street preacher in the doorway under the arcade of the closed-down department store was delivering his Gnostic message to an audience of two. I was put in mind of the audience relations that maintain in blogging.
ReplyDeleteIt was a dark and stormy night, as the story goes. Rain was beginning to fall.
The depersonalization or self-emptying of Christ, achieved through the constriction or contraction of his infinite light, would allow space to exist. That would be good of him.
Then again, if Christ was merely Jesus, a person, and not God, and not a container of infinite light, he would simply be practicing humility. That would be better of him.
The Bulgakov version of the story of Yeshua is interesting. It makes Jesus into a sympathetic human being with a megalomaniacal streak and a dangerous disregard for his own physical welfare.
These street preachers, with their ragtag disciples (street-soiled runaways, dogs with dirty bandanas), make one understand that religions are born not of belief but of desperation and desolation. The rest is just the trappings.
The empty god stared down at me from his sacrificial pole and pointed to a darkened doorway down the block.
With him to enclose
Is better than to oppose
To withdraw
...............though
He might be waiting
Behind that door
Three Movements
ReplyDeleteDressed simply in black . . . tall
arch and pale
the piano sunny
as she welcomes us to our pain
You wanted to feel its scale
wrung to joyful tears and sadness -
buzzed and lit
refusing to be extinguished
As the world in all its pettiness was
so too the uncertain beauty of it
taking shape: an immense
emptiness Gracious and becoming
Oh the EU
ReplyDeleteconsidering banning
"baby boxes"
unauthorized but not uncommon
feature on the landscape
especially Central Europe
heated night depository on the
outer wall of clinics or hospitals where people
can secretly
abandon
newborns