{"id":45097,"date":"2017-12-01T15:41:17","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T22:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=45097"},"modified":"2017-12-01T15:44:45","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T22:44:45","slug":"longing-return-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/12\/longing-return-message.html","title":{"rendered":"“This longing . . . IS the return message.”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"J'lem<\/a>
I received this photo a couple of hours\u00a0ago from friends at Jimmy\u2019s Bazaar in East Jerusalem. BYU\u2019s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies \u2014 you can see it here, spilling down Mount Scopus (essentially the Mount of Olives) from the upper left, with the tower of the Augusta Victoria Hospital to its right \u2014 has just turned on its Christmas lights for the first time this year.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thanks to Russell Stevenson for reminding me of this choice passage from Orson Pratt\u2019s essay on \u201cThe Absurdities of Immaterialism\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf, at death, his followers are to be made like him, they will enjoy, with some of the modern Pagans, all the beauties of annihilation. To be made like him! Admirable thought! How transcendently sublime to behold an innumerable multitude of unextended nothings, casting their crowns at the feet of the great, unextended, infinite Nothing, filling all space, and yet \u2018without parts!\u2019 There will be no danger of quarrelling for want of room.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Once again, something from the great thirteenth-century Sufi mystic poet Jalal al-Din Rumi:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

One night a man was crying,<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Allah!\u00a0 Allah!<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

His lips grew sweet with the praising,<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

until a cynic said,<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cSo!\u00a0 I have heard you<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

calling out, but have you ever<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

gotten any response?\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The man had no answer to that.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

in a thick, green foliage.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhy did you stop praising?\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I\u2019ve never heard anything back.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThis longing<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

you express is<\/em> the return message.\u201d [1]<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some notes, including Thomas Carlyle\u2019s translation from the German of E.T.A. Hoffman\u2019s The Golden Pot:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gracious reader, may I venture to ask you a question?\u00a0 Have you ever had hours, perhaps even days or weeks, in which all your customary activities did nothing but cause you vexation and dissatisfaction; when everything that you usually consider worthy and important seemed trivial and worthless?\u00a0 At such a time you did not know what to do or where to turn.\u00a0 A dim feeling pervaded your breast that you had higher desires that must be fulfilled, desires that transcended the pleasures of this world, yet desires which your spirit, like a cowed child, did not even dare to utter.\u00a0 In this longing for an unknown Something, which longing hovered above you no matter where you were, like an airy dream with thin transparent forms that melted away each time you tried to examine them, you had no voice for the world about you.\u00a0 You passed to and fro with troubled look, like a hopeless lover, and no matter what you saw being attempted or attained in the bustle of varied existence, it awakened no sorrow or joy in you.\u00a0 It was as if you had no share in this sublunary world.<\/strong>[2]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Many, if not all of us, have, at one time or another, felt as Hoffmann describes the student Anselmus \u00a0here:\u00a0 \u201cHe felt that an unknown Something was awakening in his inmost soul, and calling forth that rapturous pain, which is even the mood of longing that announces a loftier existence to man.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Coleman Barks, with John Moyne, trans., The Essential Rumi<\/em> (Edison NJ: Castle Books, 1997), 155.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Nutcracker and The Golden Pot<\/em> (New York: Dover Publications, 1993), 17.\u00a0 The Golden Pot<\/em> was published in 1814; Carlyle\u2019s English translation appeared in 1827.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Hoffmann, The Nutcracker and The Golden Pot<\/em>, 18.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Park City, Utah<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Thanks to Russell Stevenson for reminding me of this choice passage from Orson Pratt\u2019s essay on \u201cThe Absurdities of Immaterialism\u201d: \u00a0 \u201cIf, at death, his followers are to be made like him, they will enjoy, with some of the modern Pagans, all the beauties of annihilation. To be made like him! Admirable thought! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"This longing . . . 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