#gretchenfrage

[leontinrau]

... wie haben wir es mit der Religion? ...

[addeleven]

"nun sag, wie hast du's mit Chomskys 1959er Antwort auf B. F. Skinners zwei Jahre zuvor erschienenes Großwerk Verbal Behavior?"

[notsosilentsister]

Meme response hi. :) Rosie - 26 - URL from a character in Three Missing Days, a super odd book about witches I read as a child. My hobbies include I guess reading, cooking, playing with my cat + embroidering with my granny. I follow you because you are so smart + interesting + articulate ♥, found your tumblr in the Vikings tag (oh Vikings). Fact about me: I dumb myself down a lot in social situations to reduce my own anxiety, aha. Question: what are your religious beliefs like?

Thanks! What a timely question. I was raised fairly catholic - mum a member of the pastoral council, dad a member of the church choir, little brother an altar boy, me reading out the intercessions, one of seven people in my class who did not opt out of religious instruction as soon as you were old enough to do so without faking your parent’s signature - but I’m fairly lapsed by now. Not lapsed enough to miss out on Easter Eve Service though. Got up at 4.a.m to attend yesterday (Whatever; my sleeping schedule is fucked up anyway).

On a political level, I’m mostly embarrased to be affiliated with the institution. (Kinda like the new pope though; even if it’s just good P.R, I’m in favour of the rebranding). I strongly support the separation of church and state.

On a metaphysical level…..it’s complicated. I suspect I’m always going to pray when the shit truly hits the fan, so I’ll never make for a particularly convincing atheist. Seems like I lack the stomach for existentialism (although I often see the appeal). But I don’t think my religion is any truer than any other (except for stuff like scientology; yeah, I do have some double standards left and I have my reasons, although I admit it’s a difficult argument to make from a purely logical perspective) and I don’t take the bible very literally. If there’s any truth in it, it’s not the kind of truth you find in scientific theories. I never lose sight of that distinction. (But I don’t always look for objectivity when I look for meaning).

On an ethical level … it’s even more complicated, I guess. Whether you believe in an immortal soul or not, a Christian upbringing also comes with a certain value system and no matter how many Sundays I just sleep in nowadays, I’ll always find some of that bleeding into the choices and judgments I make or fail to make (in the form of guilt, in the later instance). I don’t think most of those values are uniquely catholic/Christian (lots of traditions have some variant of the golden rule for instance), and I certainly don’t think you _need_religion as a basis for ethics. (To the contrary, I think people who only behave decently because they fear judgment day are a menace - that’s a very childish stage in a person’s moral development and won’t do at all for a grown-up.)  I support secularism, marriage equality, sex education and I would go to the barricades for the legality of abortion. I’m sure many co-religionists wouldn’t perceive me as christian at all and I’m fine with that. But some part of me still believes that even if you strip Christian practice of the misogyny and the homophobia and the fetish for blind obedience, there’s something left and those are the aspects I cling to.

I’ll spend the rest of my life sifting through my catholic heritage, trying to determine what to keep and what to throw away.

On an aesthetic/intellectual level, I’m deeply fascinated by all kinds of religions, because I love myths, and I feel most comfortable talking about Christianity, because I actually know one or two things about it.

[daniellli]

die gretchenfrage

Mama, glaubst du an Gott?

Ich glaube, dass es etwas größeres als den Menschen gibt.

Ja, die Giraffe!

[thatshakespeherianrag]

    Erfüll davon dein Herz, so groß es ist,     Und wenn du ganz in dem Gefühle selig bist,     Nenn es dann, wie du willst:     Nenns Glück! Herz! Liebe! Gott!     Ich habe keinen Namen     Dafür! Gefühl ist alles;     Name ist Schall und Rauch,     Umnebelnd Himmelsglut.

[therevolutionist-blog-blog]

Gretchenfrage

I've never been one for stasis. Indeed, I've always shunned it. The double edged sword to this is that while it may keep me moving and excited and processing life, I might always be looking so closely that I might actually miss the process. That the movement makes me shirk just staying still. I suppose that balance is best - most ideal but not always achieveable.

Buh.

Somehow, when your attention gets called to one thing, you start seeing it everywhere. For me, its the imperceptible shifts that are going right now, in everyone's lives. Something is moving, something is changing, something is in motion and what else is revolution if not movement. Hence my interest.

I also came to realize that, somehow, at these very pivotal moments, as Uranus is moving into Aries, as you run to catch the bus, as a bee is moving from one flower to another, as a transition of monumental proportions is about to occur, someone walks into your life and - whether or not it is their sole purpose to do so, or if they have a grander function and a longer role is yet unknown - illuminates all the areas you strive to achieve, hope to change, the trajectory and quality of dreams you one day wish to follow and cultivate for yourself and throws them into sharp relief.

By relief, I do not mean a rescue to your endless flails over the years. By relief, I mean a canvas portrayal and representation of what could be given what currently is. How far you could miss the mark but, more hopefully, how brilliantly you could make the mark. They pick up a paintbrush and throw a spalsh of communist fucking red paint on yours and suddenly you're left wondering what was what and what this strange feeling is.

Either alternative is scary in its equal parts ellipsis/possibility and heady promise.  

I suppose they could be exactly like you. I suppose in them, you could see a mirror reflecting back what you know you have grown into - or what you might someday grow into. Maybe in their movements, maybe in their gaze, in their thoughts, you see your considerations, your poise or subtlety. I suppose, too, that they could be nothing like you for in your quiet you could see their noise and the possibility of your noise as you try and reconcile why it is not you who is the noisemaker.

Noisemaker.

So what does one do when faced with the most beautiful prospect of change through reflection? Well, there are a number of responses. I have indulged in a few myself.

You could take a sharp and incisive look and lay out a pro-con list. You could try and use contrast to see where you are in difference with where they are. You could try and fantasize a path which will lead you to becoming the kind of person they are. Or you could just...jump and see where it all takes you. Me, I'm not too sure yet but the whole point of an ellipsis is the possibility inherent as part of its meaning.

The problem with someone - this noisemaker, I'll call them - of this grand a proportion walking into your life is that, most of the time, its the most inconvenient time for them to do so. Now, you think, is never a good time. But those whispers of limiting circumstances are NOTHING compared to the blares of life that suddenly permeate that cell membrane encasing you. 

Me, I feel as though I'm trapped in a bubble of my own construction and one that is packed into a tunnel that is transparent. All around me, life is going on but time doesn't pass in the bubble. The only way I travel is through the motion of the bubbble (think Jake Gyll's Bubble Boy) and I'm grateful for the tunnel because I only look forward, hoping the time will pass, the bubble will keep moving and that when I finally break the FUCK free, it will be to finally respond to all that life going on past the confines of the transparent tunnel. Because, while trapped in the bubble, it's not as though I couldn't see what was going on - rather, looking out and trying to reach for it was (i say was...because maybe that is all about to change) such an impossibility.

It is all so easy to avoid, yes? It is so easy to say "later, later. Later, there will be time. Later, I will bloom, I will take flight and be that snowballing juggernaut on fire. later, later." The promise of it gets completely shattered when this Noisemaker enters your life. That lie, that facade and charade you kept parading around (which was never even the slightest bit true to begin with) comes completely undone, unravelled at the seams. It becomes imperative, to the point of being integral to your very breath, that you chase this motion, that you stop the facade and call it what it is!

I'm torn, as ever, to try and fight to describe the most beautiful person and the most beautiful circumstance.

The ethics of this: is it okay to have this someone be your catalyst instead of an ideal? What if this person is the one that embodies all that you admire? (i.e. Poise, elegance, awareness, steely discipline, well-employed ambition and sheer humanity?) Is it alright to rely on someone else's trajectory? Is it alright to be so completely consumed? And is it alright to be scared that if, someday (soon, you think) when they leave you, that fire might competely burn out and so you need to place their presence in a grander context of meaning for your life?

Or is that existential bullshit and gripe?  Following those questions, what also burns in my mind is the sustainability of this: how long before you acknolwedge the effect they've had on you? How long can this possibly go on - your current situation and the sheer beauty they're able to give you? Can something so consuming as motion and the anticipation of motion ever truly be rivaled and surfaced from? Is it sustainable? I cannot define what it is about moments in which I see this person. I cannot say why everything seems possible and doable and unadulterated, like I could adopt the slogan of "absofuckinglutely" and apply it to every question and answer in my life. I cannot say why it is so important that I memorize every one of their hand gestures or the splay of lips or the way their pronunciation of "kautsky" is the most inspiring and lovely things I've ever heard, rivalling the soundtrack of The Painted Veil.

One of the biggest problems, I find, is the mantra in one's head that tells you, "Reign it in, Temper it or it will turn to deadly tempest and that is good for no one". Temperance: Necessity or plot to pull you back from your own sheer heights of brilliance? Control: breathe and process mechanism or ropes of confinement?

Is there really a problem in burning bright and then exploding or is the better way truly the balance that allows a slow burn into eternity? I suppose one could argue that a slow burn allows a process. But I feel like, process is already there. When we are sitting and speaking, I am perhaps never so in the moment, desperately drinking every detail before it fades away, as I am in that moment when I see - in him, through him - all that can be and the inescapable and infinite iterations of beauty.

Time and again I try and rationalize it. It's a bad sickness, this rationalization. But there is nothing, I find, that can remotely give a reason as to why it is this person. Why it is that their actions and their self are so important to examine and why it is that I am always left wanting more and yet don't want anything more? I mean, how can I explain why a road looks so much more promising, a sky seems limitless? When silence between two people is the most gracious gift of all? How can you give words to something that sets a feeling in motion that you cannot capture in words and even if you tried to visualize, the best you could do was a large teetering rock upon a small stone fulcrum. The direction of which...could be anywhere, any side.

Is this examination contingent on them? Well, ideally, it shouldn't be. They are but a catalyst - a necessary spark to get you thinking again. To get you in motion. To reach the core of the most necessary question. Even in trying to determine their presence, torn between them and the ideal they represent, is a fight - your fight, the war of your life.

Des Pudels Kern is a Faustian phrase that somehow has made its way into the German language and translates itself as something that appears to be one thing but is actually, in disguise, something else entirely. That is what Noisemaker reveals: the fallacy, the untruth of what seemed so apparent and concrete a moment before. Poof, you've waltzed into your possibility. Stay a while. Try to be sane.

For now, I sip my tea quietly and look outside at the cold, fast moving rain but I, ay, I am still and silent - for now. It's ten degrees in Germany and four degrees here. Europe calls. I look with a quizzical brow and a small smile.

And, to loolah: Thank you for always telling me I am beautiful. Somehow, after Friday, after him, I really believe it. That was the fundamental shift I was trying to tell you about. Inside, I feel different - I believe your words. So when you tell me I am damn fantastic and smashing I am humbled but, also, I become your words on your observation.