I've loved this since two years ago when some friends were singing it around Pascha, and shortly after we found out my niece had cancer. She made it through, God bestowed life on her alleluia. Now this spring I grieve a dear friend, and I still find this hymn a balm.
Honest question here, trying to stay on the tightrope of curiosity without certainty: When you run the words through your body about sinners perishing and enemies melting and such, what do you imagine you are naming in the world? Seems like it would be hard to stay clear of all the ancient magnetic bits, the iron filings of ancestral violence that must still have some presence in such ambiguous spells?
Second of all, what a great question. Living inside the Orthodox life, singing and dancing -- not just reading about or watching -- songs like this, it does not at all feel resentful, petty, hateful in my body -- and I try to be very watchful of those emotions. "Sinner," as you may know being a badass word guy yourself -- in Hebrew literally means something like "one who goes astray." Not necessarily a moral dirtbag, not necessarily someone you can self-righteously hate. Primarily the ones that have gone astray -- in the context of this song about resurrection -- are the various cosmic powers which have arrayed themselves against life. (That may sound sentimental and lazy; I hope you know what I mean). These rebellious powers, in the resurrection, have been defeated -- that's what the song is about. It's not about the Georgians defeating the Russians or something, or about Us Good People Over Here being better than Those Bad People Over There. And these cosmic powers manifest themselves at all levels of reality on Earth, too -- the boot of empire stomping on our human face forever, etc; Monsanto. All these vast and seemingly superhuman irreversible life-destroying processes -- let them be scattered, let them melt like wax, like the nothing that they ultimately are.
Thanks for the two kindnesses here, Graham. I may have once had some distance from feeling the reality of sinner but as a father of grown children , no longer. You see loss of the path play out, even in the best of parenting, and something that cannot easily be retrieved, lost. So no problem on that front necessarily. I appreciate your address of the potential imagery of violence which was weight of the drag on my approach. And I have no problem feeling the honesty in your vision (not against flesh and blood) and I dig the spell/prayer if your final shot there. But I still wrestle with the histories inked in blood and soaking up through the palimpsest of these etymologies. I recently heard Rune Harjo (a scavenger/scholar in the fields of Nordic Animism you might know) speak about how some runes had been so corrupted by their use the Nazi and Nazi adjacent circles that practictioners find them now unusable. My own people's history as both sinner and enemy and the resulting murderous lines stretching back through the various Christendoms kicks this up for me despite the admitted beauty of teh sounds and the visible spirit of the singers. I am not making a case here. Truth is I know very little about the particular piece and maybe it walked between the raindrops of storms of domination behind us. Maybe it was never ushered onward by the very powers you speak of. Honest maybe here. Maybe redemption comes exactly as you lay it out here. The continuation of the song, the polarities of it healed by the refusal of the violences by the singers. I dunno. Ancestrally, something turns me back though. Not from the word of life, but from the patina on the container as I imagine it. Recently this has been challenged by a close look at Black Elk's embrace of the catachism alongside the Sundance and is causing a rethink. Tricky business. Plenty of blindspots on display on my end. Thanks for the space to rant even if it turns out to be just my trip. Of course the kind words on the poems was deeply encouraging. Thanks for that.
No, no -- not at all! I'm just slow and forgetful.
Speaking of forgetful -- and also "the histories inked in blood" you fairly raised -- I don't quite know how to articulate this, but we're very, very early on in the experiment of civilization, and especially with offloading our memories into the environment in the forms of texts. I wonder if we actually want to remember how much we think we want to remember. In Essay #1 I praised the lilies of the field, because "theirs is a history of the body, rather than that of the mind." There's 4 billion years of working out harmony remembered there, and that memory looks like a flower; when we remember stuff on paper, it's never that beautiful. So your runes get corrupted by violence, etc -- then what do you do? Genesis talks about the whole Earth being corrupted by violence, and being wiped out with a flood -- memory erasure, the Mesopotamian clay tablet wiped and ready to begin anew. I see poetry as simultaneously a crystallisation of a certain kind of memory -- but also, just as importantly, a kind of forgetfulness, letting go -- saying almost nothing. I hear you on the legacy of unthinkable violence in Christianity. Over here in Orthodoxy we didn't have anything like the almost total decimation of indigenous populations across a whole continent, but we've had many an inglorious moment. Dr. Timothy Patitsas on why there's no such thing as "just war theory" in Orthodoxy is very illuminating; war, even when necessary, is sin, because slaying others is really also slaying oneself; we're one body. So war always requires catharsis and forgiveness. Part of that is poetry -- deciding what memories to keep, and how to keep them, and which to let go. I see my tiny little efforts at writing to be sort of in that vein. Mostly letting go, mostly not keeping. Hey, speaking of Black Elk -- one, I make a prostration to his memory -- and two, I think also of how quickly, effortlessly, and almost universally Alaskan natives embraced Saint Herman...in Orthodoxy, which goes beyond words to the heart of things, there is plenty of space; there still is.
I've been listening to that particular Georgian hymn over and over. Last Pascha I combed the Internet to find all the recordings of it I could, so I could learn it. A few of our men sang it in English at the end of Paschal Vespers this afternoon. It's the best. Christ is risen!
Christ is risen! A blessed Paschaltide to you, Graham!
Christ is risen!
I've loved this since two years ago when some friends were singing it around Pascha, and shortly after we found out my niece had cancer. She made it through, God bestowed life on her alleluia. Now this spring I grieve a dear friend, and I still find this hymn a balm.
Honest question here, trying to stay on the tightrope of curiosity without certainty: When you run the words through your body about sinners perishing and enemies melting and such, what do you imagine you are naming in the world? Seems like it would be hard to stay clear of all the ancient magnetic bits, the iron filings of ancestral violence that must still have some presence in such ambiguous spells?
Andrew, first of all -- your poetry's awesome.
Second of all, what a great question. Living inside the Orthodox life, singing and dancing -- not just reading about or watching -- songs like this, it does not at all feel resentful, petty, hateful in my body -- and I try to be very watchful of those emotions. "Sinner," as you may know being a badass word guy yourself -- in Hebrew literally means something like "one who goes astray." Not necessarily a moral dirtbag, not necessarily someone you can self-righteously hate. Primarily the ones that have gone astray -- in the context of this song about resurrection -- are the various cosmic powers which have arrayed themselves against life. (That may sound sentimental and lazy; I hope you know what I mean). These rebellious powers, in the resurrection, have been defeated -- that's what the song is about. It's not about the Georgians defeating the Russians or something, or about Us Good People Over Here being better than Those Bad People Over There. And these cosmic powers manifest themselves at all levels of reality on Earth, too -- the boot of empire stomping on our human face forever, etc; Monsanto. All these vast and seemingly superhuman irreversible life-destroying processes -- let them be scattered, let them melt like wax, like the nothing that they ultimately are.
Thanks for the two kindnesses here, Graham. I may have once had some distance from feeling the reality of sinner but as a father of grown children , no longer. You see loss of the path play out, even in the best of parenting, and something that cannot easily be retrieved, lost. So no problem on that front necessarily. I appreciate your address of the potential imagery of violence which was weight of the drag on my approach. And I have no problem feeling the honesty in your vision (not against flesh and blood) and I dig the spell/prayer if your final shot there. But I still wrestle with the histories inked in blood and soaking up through the palimpsest of these etymologies. I recently heard Rune Harjo (a scavenger/scholar in the fields of Nordic Animism you might know) speak about how some runes had been so corrupted by their use the Nazi and Nazi adjacent circles that practictioners find them now unusable. My own people's history as both sinner and enemy and the resulting murderous lines stretching back through the various Christendoms kicks this up for me despite the admitted beauty of teh sounds and the visible spirit of the singers. I am not making a case here. Truth is I know very little about the particular piece and maybe it walked between the raindrops of storms of domination behind us. Maybe it was never ushered onward by the very powers you speak of. Honest maybe here. Maybe redemption comes exactly as you lay it out here. The continuation of the song, the polarities of it healed by the refusal of the violences by the singers. I dunno. Ancestrally, something turns me back though. Not from the word of life, but from the patina on the container as I imagine it. Recently this has been challenged by a close look at Black Elk's embrace of the catachism alongside the Sundance and is causing a rethink. Tricky business. Plenty of blindspots on display on my end. Thanks for the space to rant even if it turns out to be just my trip. Of course the kind words on the poems was deeply encouraging. Thanks for that.
Didn't mean to end the conversation. Hope old internet manners didn't come through.
No, no -- not at all! I'm just slow and forgetful.
Speaking of forgetful -- and also "the histories inked in blood" you fairly raised -- I don't quite know how to articulate this, but we're very, very early on in the experiment of civilization, and especially with offloading our memories into the environment in the forms of texts. I wonder if we actually want to remember how much we think we want to remember. In Essay #1 I praised the lilies of the field, because "theirs is a history of the body, rather than that of the mind." There's 4 billion years of working out harmony remembered there, and that memory looks like a flower; when we remember stuff on paper, it's never that beautiful. So your runes get corrupted by violence, etc -- then what do you do? Genesis talks about the whole Earth being corrupted by violence, and being wiped out with a flood -- memory erasure, the Mesopotamian clay tablet wiped and ready to begin anew. I see poetry as simultaneously a crystallisation of a certain kind of memory -- but also, just as importantly, a kind of forgetfulness, letting go -- saying almost nothing. I hear you on the legacy of unthinkable violence in Christianity. Over here in Orthodoxy we didn't have anything like the almost total decimation of indigenous populations across a whole continent, but we've had many an inglorious moment. Dr. Timothy Patitsas on why there's no such thing as "just war theory" in Orthodoxy is very illuminating; war, even when necessary, is sin, because slaying others is really also slaying oneself; we're one body. So war always requires catharsis and forgiveness. Part of that is poetry -- deciding what memories to keep, and how to keep them, and which to let go. I see my tiny little efforts at writing to be sort of in that vein. Mostly letting go, mostly not keeping. Hey, speaking of Black Elk -- one, I make a prostration to his memory -- and two, I think also of how quickly, effortlessly, and almost universally Alaskan natives embraced Saint Herman...in Orthodoxy, which goes beyond words to the heart of things, there is plenty of space; there still is.
I've been listening to that particular Georgian hymn over and over. Last Pascha I combed the Internet to find all the recordings of it I could, so I could learn it. A few of our men sang it in English at the end of Paschal Vespers this afternoon. It's the best. Christ is risen!
Thank you for the choral singing. Very grateful. Moving.
Truly He Is Risen!
Wow!