God had no emotions but wished temporarily
to move in man’s mind
as if He did: Christ.
Not passion but compassion.
Com- means ‘with.’
What kind of witness would that be?
Translate it.
I have a friend named Jesus
from Mexico.
His father and grandfather are called Jesus too.
They account me a fool with my questions about salvation.
They say they are saving to move to Los Angeles.
—Anne Carson
Man’s misery consists in the fact that he is not God. He is continually forgetting this.
That God is good is a certainty. It is a definition. And it is even more certain that God–in some way that I do not understand—is reality.
The name of God is the name of a deed.
[Evil is] a bad attempt to imitate God.
Simone Weil, “SCIENCE, NECESSITY AND THE LOVE OF GOD”
Charles Wright from Bye-and-Bye
Eliza Griswold from Wideawake Field
Eliza Griswold from Wideawake Field
Can the poetry of witness be a purely spiritual phenomenon? That is, can the dynamic that you’re describing in this essay, the permanent wounding of consciousness and language, occur from metaphysical, as well as physical, trauma?
If we think of the spiritual as a way of knowing, one can be wounded spiritually. Jean-François Lyotard would argue that the language of the Torah is permanently wounded by the experience of the divine. Jacob endures wrestling with the stranger, his angel. The slightest shock or event can send you from one thinking to another; trauma is said to occur when this shock is sufficiently strong as to overwhelm. If the experience of God is traumatic, it is because we meet with the incommensurate.
Little Bristling Soul 