This is It - Episode 11: On Children

They were on their way to Capernaum when the toll takers said to Peter, Hey, your teacher didn’t pay the toll.

Peter replied, That’s right, he didn’t.

He rushed to catch him up, but Yeshua had arrived at the house ahead of him.

What do you think, Simon? On whom do leaders impose taxes and tolls, on their children or on the children of others?

Peter responded, The children of others.

And Yeshua said, While their own children go free. Not to make trouble here, go down to the water, throw in a hook and line. Take the first fish that comes up, and you’ll find a coin in its mouth. Take the coin to the toll collector, to pay for us.

Then the students came. They asked him, Who is the greatest in the realm of the holy one?

He called out to a child, placed the child in front of them and said, If you don’t turn your thinking around and become find the realm of the holy one in the manner of the generously playful child, you’ll never enter in. Whoever meets a child without pretence—open, humble and with compassion—meets me also. 

Whoever returns to the unguarded perceptiveness of a child, that’s who is the greatest in the realm.

In short, don’t be contemptuous of these little ones—learn from them, receive them, do not turn them away—vulnerable as they are, they always before the face of the holy one.

Whoever trips up a child would be better off sunk in the sea with a millstone. 

Woe to the stumbling blocks of this world. 

Woe to any who lays a stumbling block with intent to marginalize another.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

A brief note about my literary exploration of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth: I have undertaken this exercise having read, sung (in several languages), meditated and prayed on the contents of the Synoptic Gospels (as well as the Non-Synoptic Gospels) for at least 45 years. In that time, I’ve accumulated a bit of a library (which comes as no surprise to those who know me), and I try to follow modern scholarship. Here is a partial list of the authors and books that come to mind as I write these episodes:

Ballentine, Debra Scoggins, The Conflict Myth & the Biblical Tradition; Oxford University Press 2015

Erdman, Bart, various titles

Gaus, Andy, The Unvarnished New Testament; Phanes Press, 1991

Herzog, William R., Parables as Subversive Speech; Westminster John Knox Press, 1991

Louden, Bruce, Greek Myth and the Bible; Routledge, 2019

Tatian, Diatesseron; www.earlychristianwritings.com/diatessaron.html

Wajdenbaum, Philippe, Argonauts of the Desert, Routledge, 2011

Ward, Keith, The Philosopher and the Gospels, Lion Hudson, 2011

Yosef ben Maityahu (Titus Flavius Josephus), various writings

Clinamen (Swerve)

Straight lines bend,
like the supple willow branch;
even light can bend around a corner
and the voice in song
can, in the right conditions,
pierce the equanimity of the soul.

A passing thought might lead to an idea,
or it might land to resting point,
or even dissipate
into a cloud,
perhaps to reappear
—  though maybe not —
or reform in re-emergences
symbiotic with certain concurrent vibrations.

Being arises,
blossoming forth
from omnipresence
in unique expressions
based on exposure with
any surrounding elements;
attraction to certain resonances
or even repulsions,
conversions and distractions
divert every linear trajectory.

Continuity,
shaped by chance encounters
along the omnizon
with any resonant factor,
might follow a path
or diverge.

Differentiation
need not be disorienting;
every voice finds a place in the choir,
and while yet singular,
can by agreement
coalesce harmoniously
in a timely flow of momentarily
cascading resonances
punctuated by titillating,
even thought provoking, dissonance.

Each and every pathway leads,
whether blazed or followed,
divined or diverted,
elemental in its own way;
the traveler experiences
a full and varied range of
compliance or resistance,
from and with, betwixt and between,
toward eventual results that,
on one hand,
resolve to known
quantities, weights, measures
and tonalities,
though on the other,
fruitions that may never
accumulate or articulate in such a way
as to be seen, heard, felt or fully known
in the open-work of space and time. 

© 2018 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This is somewhat in memory of Dixon Adams ("Uncle Dodds"), that late, great book pusher, who would be tickled to know that I have found myself on a pathway through western classics, his specialty. A Lucretian/Epicurian martini of thought, blended with a whiff of Antonio Negri and Gilles Deleuze... 

Transcriptions

A cacophony of voices rises,

along with the noises of Life;
the shrieks, crashes and throbs
of man, machine and beast—
a polyphony of distractions.

There is no substitute for listening,
even among the best thought partners,
and doubly true that is for the transcriptionist
who must gather a single thread,
from among the knotty ribbons of fire,
that will allow Theseus to quit the labyrinth.

Loudness and speed or lowness and length
are symptomatic of a need for supremacy.

On the one hand, those windows of silence,
that would bring necessary context,
are lost in the wall of loud, louder, loudest.

On the other hand, many words run too fluidly
to make out with any certainty whatsoever.

And so the peace and understanding
of all the world hangs on the ears
of the lone and earnest stenographer,
to accurately record life, libation, living and love
as a single strand of thought, a manifesto.

The wings and winds of distraction
whip at curtains of indecision and disillusion,
not to say disinclination,
to forge something real from delusions,
something that will last beyond a convenient now,
something that will cancel the end game.

But, there comes an end to all our talking—
we must breathe to speak, and so we stop;
all is futile, futile, utterly futile,
even while the earth glows with Life—
we are mostly deaf to Life’s music;
it plays beyond our petty cravings,
beyond our ignoble dominions and wars.

Silence comes only because we must stop,
and welling, as from within an eruption of silence,
a truer answer finds voice and flight,
one that only the transcriber can hear.

The answer is heard by one,
but goes unrecorded;
truth often lies outside
the contractual agreement.

© 2011 by Elisabeth Eliassen

Copyright Laws: 2 Cents

The function and value and enforcement of copyright law has been constantly in the news--for years, now.

Right off the bat, I will say that I believe in an individual's right to the intellectual property s/he has generated. 

You will notice that I attach my copyright to many articles. This is just a reminder to all, as this is additionally noted at the bottom of the blog. I am grateful that there is copyright protection for my work. I believe copyright protection important to free speech and truth, as well as to the freedom of art.

That said, I believe that the way in which the courts enforce copyright law is inadequate, draconian and inequitable.

We have forgotten the whole point of copyright.

Think of this phrase from the prophet Isaiah (55:8, NIV 1984):

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.

What if the line read this way:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Creator.

Or, further:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the humble author.

I believe that each person is a fragment of a whole of Being called Life. We each perceive the world, existentially, in a different way from everyone else, and therefore have a unique expression to offer (and to share) as we so desire.  Hence, in this case, my blog. 

For my blog is not your blog! Et vive la difference!

I also believe that it is possible, like a layering of the pages in a book, that we are touched by and influenced, in our observations and perceptions, by everything that has come before us, to which we have been exposed. The growth of the human mind and spirit comes about because of all that has been written in the ages upon ages that have come before. All creativity is both self-referential and reflective of the richness of everything around us. Hopefully, we know when we are paying homage to work of the past, and so note it, legally and reverentially, when we publish.

Personally, I will always purchase an album or a book or a piece of art that I want to add to my personal collection. Many of these are artifacts are created by artists I know personally. I want to honor those artists, my friends, by purchasing their work. 

Yet, I am not interested in duplicating what they have done, even if I possibly could. Neither would I welcome seeing someone else's name on a facsimile, or close to one (plagiarists being, by nature, not terribly creative), of anything I have done.

Strange as it may seem, I am interested in expressing my thoughts, which are not your thoughts, nor could ever be. 

In saying that, I also acknowledge that I am unlikely to earn money of any substance from my own copyrighted work. That is really not what creativity is all about. There are lots of lucky folk out there who have turned themselves into popular commodities for public consumption; indeed, into veritable cottage industries. That seems unlikely to happen to most of the rest of us. But, again, I suggest: while this can be a welcome consequence, it is not the point of the exercising creativity. 

I add that I enjoy the possibility of collaboration, as well as the life of my creations moving beyond me (with my knowledge and permission, of course). And so, I thank the several composers who have moved my words off the manuscript page and into an art form, music, that lives beyond print. It is both a joy and a blessing to see and hear the work migrate into another idiom, as filtered through another mind. 

To recap: I exercise my right to what I create. I acknowledge and submit to the turning of the pages of life. I like to share. I enjoy collaboration, to see my work take on new life beyond me.

Can the courts do justice to that? Will the courts protect my rights to my small body of work and the rights of others to their small bodies of work? Or will they only protect the rights of huge corporations, littering case law with judgments against little people, who mostly have no money, for ripping mp3s? Will they protect only the cottage industry, commodified novelist or songwriter who made it big, on ideas of a work from a previous generation, because the novelist or songwriter is now a millionaire, but leave the less successful writers and songsmiths to fend for themselves?

If it is all about money, copyright justice remains to be seen.


Meanwhile, keep on creating, people! Vive la difference!

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen