Out

[purejuice]

http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/theater/reviews/26tempest.html?scp=2&sq=ariel&st=cse

Pagels says encounters with angels are terrifying, and quotes Rilke to that effect. Germans are so...transcendental. Wings of Desire. Funeral pyres and fiery ends.

Pagels on the gnostic gospel of Thomas:

But discovering the divine light within is more than a matter of being told that it is there, for such vision shatters one's identity....The poet Rainier Maria Rilke gives a similar warning about encountering the divine, for "every angel is terrifying." Giving one's self over to such an encounter, he says, involves terror, as if such an angel

would come more fiercely to interrogate you,
and rush to seize you blazing like a star,
and bend you as if trying to create you,
and break you open, out of who you are.

What "breaks [us] open, out of who we are," shatters the ways in which we ordinarily identify ourselves....So Thomas adds, "Jesus said, 'Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished.'"

Are you surprised, boddhisattva, that Bishop Irenaeus threw this Jesus -- instead of John's, the one who is God and thus outside us -- away?

Comments

[unemployia.livejournal.com]

wow. you have some of the most amazing posts I've ever read on livejournal. thank you for needlepointing such fine entries (and sharing). this is beautiful.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

thank you, you're sweet.