Sun, 28 Aug 1994 10:29:37 -0700 for Date: Sun, 28 Aug 94 13:12:20 EDT From: "T R. Young" <34LPF6T@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU> Organization: Central Michigan University Subject: Postmodern Religion as Poetics and Politics To: GRADUATE STUDENTS IN SOCIOLOGY Part III: Wm. Blake writes about the god concept in a distinctly pomo voice even if he lived and dies two centuries ago. Many know his effort to understand why a loving god would permit so much evil in the world; that is embodied in: Tyger, tyger, burning bright in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? And what the shoulder, and what art could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet Where the hammer, where the chain and what the furnace forged thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp dare your deadly terrors grasp? When the stars threw down their spears and watered heaven with their tears Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?? *** Blake wrote about God as a product of human genius in these lines: The Ancient Poets animated all objects with their genius, calling them by lovely names and adorning them with wondrous properties: woods, trees, rivers,streams, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, what ever their senses could percieve. And particularly they studied each city and people giving each a deity appropriate to its nature; 'til a system was formed...which some took advantage and enslaved the common man by separating the deity from its object; thus began the priesthood. Choosing the forms of worship from poetic tales and thus at length they pronouned that Gods had ordered such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast. ***One more excerpt from Blake then I will close with a poem by a woman whose very name is poetry. To Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love all pray in their distress; And to these virtues of delight, return their thankfulness. For Mercy has a human heart; Pity a human face and Love, a human form divine...and Peace the human dress. ***And now for Edna St. Vincent Millay: The world stands out on either side, no wider than the heart is wide; above the world is stretched the sky, no higher than the soul is high. The heart can push the sea and land farther away on either hand; the sould can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through. End of today's sermon....as the poet says, Go in peace with your God. T.R.