A Creative Bunch: Hopefully, divinity does not find that offensive

Posted on February 19, 2024 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

After almost two decades I’m rereading Daniel C. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon which seeks to explore the conceptual evolution of religion in general, tying it into, among other things, memetics (a concept that fascinates me). I find that rereading something after a long period of time, time during which one is changing, learning new things and reevaluating others, one frequently gleans very different meanings from those one originally perceived.

That is an experience in progress which, to date, has proven interesting. Religion and spirituality fascinate me, as do attitudes towards both, and despite a life-long quest for answers, I’ve only turned up more and more questions, but fascinating questions which keep me interested in my quest.

On the lighter side, a quote in the book I’m re-reading attributed to American actor Emo Philips both made me laugh and provided insight into our human nature. It deals with someone, a very young true believer, obviously a true believer with a sense of humor and a complex capacity for rationalization.

As a child this particular true believer kept praying to god for a bicycle, a prayer that was repeatedly ignored. Eventually, however, reflecting on the suggestion that “god helps those who help themselves” and rationalizing that “we are the instruments through which god works”, the young true believer stole a bike and then, concurrently, thanked god and asked him for forgiveness for the various sins involved, i.e., not only coveting his neighbor’s property but also satisfying that urge by making the property his own; perhaps not legally or ethically, but practically. A third sin, blasphemy, may or may not have been applicable.

We humans are a creative bunch.

Hopefully, Divinity, assuming it exists, has a sense of humor.
_______

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Epiphanies on an Otherwise Sad Winters’ Day

Posted on February 2, 2024 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

As in the case of Yeshua ben Yosef, or perhaps ben Miriam, Muhammad ibn Abdallah, a Quraysh of the Hashim clan, would, I believe, have been a friend, a respected friend, perhaps a beloved friend, although in neither case would I have been a worshipper of their visions of the Divine.

I would have had profound discussions with both, I would have grieved with them for the follies of those who ruled mankind, both in the name of the Divine or in their own names.

I would gladly have shared their suffering and their sacrifices, but I believe I would have remained true to myself as well, and in that, I sense no contradictions.

The same, of course, would apply to Siddhartha Gautama of the Sakyas clan.

I find it meaningful that each appeared amongst us about half a millennium apart.

What a trinity!!!!
_______

January 28, 2024

Posted on January 28, 2024 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Evil sits secure on its myriad thrones
smirking at the futile efforts
of its opponents;

hypocrisy reigns supreme
resting on pillars of popular naiveté,
as it almost always has.

The innocent are slaughtered
while the guilty rest secure in their impunity
laughing at all the ruckus.

And the gods?
Their minds on other things
ignore it all.
_______

Reflections on the Christmas Season, … 2023

Posted on December 23, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Charles Dickens’ “a Christmas Carol” has, since it was first portrayed on the stage and screen, resonated with very diverse segments of our population although now, more realistic Carols seem to focus on a new verse, one appended to the beginning of “the Twelve Days of Christmas”, one that starts six months earlier than the older verses and deals with “… myriad merchants a’ selling ….” So perhaps that older resonance is a bit dulled and in need of refreshing.

Perhaps a bit of reflection might help, a bit of introspection as the solstice skims by us and echoes of pagan Yule and Roman Saturnalia regale us with mirth to go along with the myrrh purportedly provided to an ostensibly special infant born in Palestine long before Zionists sought to destroy that part of the world; well, destroy it, then absorb it, and then turn it into an exclusive Palestinians-free paradise. One might be excused for wondering what use a newborn would have for myrrh, a fragrant gum resin obtained from certain trees and used, especially in the Near East, in perfumery, medicines, and incense, but, what the heck; … so the story goes and the gift of myrrh is not its least credible aspect.

Soooo, … let’s reflect away to the tune of “Jingle Bells”, or perhaps, the Jose Feliciano version of “Feliz Navidad”:

On an individual basis, the Christmas season is delightful, at least for people blessed with positive familial harmonics supplemented by ties of easily accessible meaningful friendship, but it is deeply depressing for those not so set apart. The latter group concerns me deeply because it is comprised of the forgotten and of those who for one reason or other, never seemed to matter. Those with whom the Nazarene, whose birthday so many purportedly celebrate during this season, would be most concerned, assuming he existed and was as beneficently described rather than the angry Pauline version. Of course, while in the modern “Western” world the season focuses on the Nazarene, the season’s traditions are primordial and have been, in many cases, usurped through manufactured syncretism with far older and more complex cultures, cultures which in some cases have refused amalgamation.

Perhaps the foregoing might serve as a thought bandied about among the ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present and Christmas future, a thought we might all want to take into account and perhaps, about which we might even consider doing something positive. And if so, why limit it to this particular season?

Bah humbug!!!! I wonder what exactly, using linguistic analysis and perhaps philology that is meant to mean.
_______

On Equatorial Solstices and Balancing Harmonics

Posted on December 21, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

The solstices which take place in the arbitrarily denominated months of June and December (at least in what is commonly referred to, for inexplicable reasons given the nature of directions, as “western” culture) generate complex emotional vortexes, emotive textures woven of delight and depression, both inter and intra-personally.

Topographically, in the northern hemisphere, the December solstice marks the end of lengthening nights and the beginning of longer days, in the south, the opposite is true. The inverse occurs in each north-south hemisphere in June. But what happens right on the equator?

Perhaps a bit of confusion as to what all the fuss is about. Or perhaps the solstices are at their most unique, most special and most profound on the equator, especially if one were to set one foot in the northern hemisphere and the other in the southern, something possible in southern Colombia and in the other twelve countries which the equator bisects (Ecuador, Brazil, Sao Tome & Principe, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, the Maldives, Indonesia and Kiribati). The so called Coriolis Effect based on the consequences of the earth’s rotation, makes storms swirl clockwise in the southern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere, thus, physically, unlike the arbitrary denominations of east and west as static points, or the arbitrary temporal division into months of varying lengths, the concepts of “north” and “south” have actual physical consequences. But what happens at the equator, especially during the solstices?

One would think the equator would be the site of special ceremonies during the two annual solstices in each country through which it passes. There are, of course, myriad festivals related to the two solstices almost everywhere (other than on the equator itself). Think, of course, of Christmas, originally celebrated on or about the exact date of the solstice until Pope Gregory XIII shifted dates around and the law of unintended consequences extracted astronomical significance from that festival. Of course, like east and west and calendar months, the placement of the Christmas season in December was completely arbitrary, counterintuitive and incoherent given available evidence, apparently seeking primarily to obscure the date theretofore assigned to the Zoroastrian god Mithras (born of a virgin on December 25) and perhaps the Roman festival of Saturnalia as well as a plethora of “pagan” solstice related festivals (whatever “pagan” means). Like the foregoing, other solstice related festivals are generally focused on climactic consequences in one of the two north-south hemispheres. In Ecuador for example, Inti Raymi (the Fiesta del Sol) has been long celebrated on June 21 to the south of the equator rather than exactly along the border, that exactitude being infinitesimal and difficult to set with exactitude, other than through, for example, striding it. The Inti Raymi was a traditional religious ceremony of the Inca Empire in honor of the god Inti (Quechua for sun), the most venerated deity in the Inca religion. It was declared a festival of “intangible cultural heritage” on June 29, 2016, and it is still celebrated throughout the formerly Incan Andean region due to its association with indigenous cosmogony and with the bounty provided by the Pacha Mama (a Gaia-like indigenous deity popular in the Andes).

Oddly, festivals set exactly adjacent to both sides of the equator during the solstices do not appear to exist, at least not formally, which is surprising. It would seem a perfect trajectory and day, perhaps a perfect instant, for reflection and introspection, for seeking a perfect balance, for merging the negative and the positive, the ying and the yang, for celebrating the similarities in things that seem opposed. To acknowledge the harmonics possible in polarization and how they can generate dialectic evolution. An instant to pray for peace and harmony.

Which, perhaps, explains the dearth of related ceremonies. The military industrial complex which rules us all the way that Tolkien’s “one ring” ruled the rest would never permit such a festival.

Still, if that impediment could somehow be overcome, what about a semi-annual ceremony along the equator, once for each solstice, where a line of people one person wide, alternating men and women perhaps, is formed along the entire land portion of the equator, with every participant straddling the equator and holding hands with those before and after them, all assembled several minutes before the solstice and disbanded several minutes afterward to assure coincidence with the instant of the solstice, all focusing during that time on a world at peace, one where all opinions respected, one seeking continuing evolution towards harmonious unity and perfection.

Wouldn’t that be something? Perhaps it’s something to consider.
_______

Or So They Say

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Alabaster and indigo, or is it, … “or” indigo. Negative entropy blues, anyway.

It’s said, albeit in an all too unreliable source, that “for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven”. Perhaps there’s a bit of truth there. Perhaps not.

It’s approaching the Ides of December in an odd-numbered year, a year preceding one in which February will be a day longer. An illusion of course, as are all months in a solar year. But, at any rate, it’s at least a metaphorical season, a season for memories as another galactic solstice approaches.

A season for melancholy and nostalgia, for yule logs and the revels of Saturnalia and little drummer boys not yet blasted to shreds; a season for wistful bagpipes and for sanguine guitars, Arabic music melding with Keltic. A season for reflecting on the pasts we’ve lived and on those we might have lived, for good or ill. A season for introspection and for reflection on feelings of love we’ve shared and for speculation on loves we should have shared but let slip away, and perhaps, for regretting some that might best have been avoided.

A season, perhaps, for discarding enmities and hatreds, although that’s all too often much too hard to do. A season for remembering friends who’ve passed beyond the veil and for regretting the time not found to spend with them. Perhaps a season for wondering whether there’s a state of unity that might make everything worthwhile (if, in fact, “for everything there [really] is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven”) or, a season for lamenting that the purported prince of Peace was an illusion.

Introspective reflection is as dangerous as it is beneficent. Perhaps more so.

Reflections are all too often more bitter than sweet. So many regrets, so many mistakes, so many paths not taken. So many twists and turns into obscure shadows, flashing echoes drawing us further and further into a dark abyss where terror dwells as others, thundering, warn us away. Cherished memories more and more quickly fading; more and more tarnished with each passing day as things in which we once took pride turn out to all too often have been mere delusions.

Here and there, barely noticed and all too often ignored, unexpected rainbows play with fireflies and tiny birds buzz in place sipping sweet nectar from flowers blooming in myriad tones and hues. Clouds form shifting tapestries on azure fields above swirling waves of peaks changing from greens to greys then from blues to purples and, every once in a while, tipped with gleaming cones of winter’s bright white; peaks interspersed with golden fields and silvered river valleys, all doing their best to ignore intrusive asphalt roads and cement cities. Transient monuments to imagined triumphs slowly but surely returning to the dust from whence, like us, they came.

The Ides of December are upon us, … again. Then the solstice will arrive, winter in half the globe, summer in the rest. Cycles continue. Divergent rites of passage form myriad wakes woven into strange tapestries by disinterested fates, one a crone, another a mother and the third barely a lass. All the while, Alekto, Megaera and Tisiphone, the Eumenides, curious but patient, continue to watch, certain that all things, good or ill, will come to those who wait.

Or so, the ubiquitous “they”, say.

Alabaster and indigo, or is it, … “or” indigo. Negative entropy blues, … anyway.
_______

Vincent, an Ode to Van Gogh

Posted on December 10, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

If this is not the most beautiful song ever, there are none more beautiful: Don McLean’s Vincent, an Ode to Van Gogh. More beautiful as poetry than as music and, set to prose it might read like this:

Starry, starry night, paint your palette blue and gray, look out on a summer’s day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul.

Shadows on the hills, sketch the trees and the daffodils, catch the breeze and the winter chills in colors on the snowy, linen land.

Now, I understand what you tried to say to me and how you suffered for your sanity, and how you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they did not know how; perhaps they’ll listen now.

Starry, starry night, flaming flowers that brightly blaze, swirling clouds in violet haze reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue; colors changing hue, morning fields of amber grain, weathered faces lined in pain are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand.

Now, I understand, what you tried to say to me, how you suffered for your sanity, how you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they did not know how, perhaps they’ll listen now.

For they could not love you, but still your love was true and when no hope was left inside on that starry, starry night, you took your life as lovers often do. But I could have told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls, frameless heads on nameless walls with eyes that watch the world and can’t forget, like the strangers that you’ve met; the ragged men in ragged clothes, the silver thorn of bloody rose lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now, I think I know what you tried to say to me, how you suffered for your sanity, how you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they’re not listening still, perhaps they never will.
_______

Reflections on Thanksgiving Day, 1621 – 2023

Posted on November 23, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Another strange Thanksgiving Day is on the horizon. They’ve all been strange though.

It’s always been a day in which descendants of European colonists enjoy gorging themselves in banquets and eventually, watching football games, but one in which indigenous people in North America reflect on how their generosity was repaid with ethnic cleansing and genocide.

North American indigenous people can probably empathize with Muslims who sheltered and protected Jewish people for over a millennium but were then rewarded with the theft of Palestine and, of course, with ethnic cleansing and genocide as well.

Thanksgiving Day will probably be remembered this year by indigenous people everywhere, remembered but not celebrated. Indigenous people whose lands were stolen and who were subjected to ethnic cleaning and genocide, a day like Columbus Day. One in which to reflect on the hypocrisy inherent in colonialism, whether in the Americas, in Africa or in the Middle East.

Today, this year, 2023, it’s a day on which to reflect on the hypocrisy associated with the phrase “never again” and with other days remembering holocausts. Holocausts as ancient as Jericho and as new as the one during World War II. Or the one that has been occurring in Palestine since 1948.
_______

Hiraeth

Posted on November 21, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Nostalgia for primordial places to which we can’t return;
for long lost times. For things that might have stood but never were;
for lost loves and loves that might have been.

Echoes from long lost places in our souls for which we mourn.

Wind and rocks and waves. Trees and cliffs, flowers and blades of grass.
Willows o’ the-wisp.
Omnipresent nowheres lying in wait.

Ubiquitously melancholic whispers yearning wistfully for a home that never was.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved. Inspiration thanks to Carl Butler of the Dark Poetry Society. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Not in our Name

Posted on November 19, 2023 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Israel, the land of nine million Eichmanns who can’t grasp that Palestinians rightly feel for them the emotions that survivors of the Holocaust felt for the worst of the Nazis, and that those feelings are spreading to people all over the world, but especially in the Global South. And that those feelings are not expressions of antisemitism but of disgust with Israeli genocide, mass murder and ruthless ethnic cleansing.

Too many people of Jewish descent respond to criticism of the new holocaust, the one perpetrated by Israel on Palestinians, by asserting that only Jews can understand the justification for what are to others obviously crimes of lesse humanidad, but how would they answer a Nazi sympathizer who made a similar claim to a Jew, that not being a German Nazi, a Jew could never understand the justifications for what the Nazis did.

Too many people of Jewish descent may feel that way but far from all as a resounding echo answers loudly from far and near: “not in our name!”
_______

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Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Author, Academic, Political Analyst, Political Commentator, Poet, Linguist

Category Archives: Spiritual

A Creative Bunch: Hopefully, divinity does not find that offensive

Epiphanies on an Otherwise Sad Winters’ Day

January 28, 2024

Reflections on the Christmas Season, … 2023

On Equatorial Solstices and Balancing Harmonics

Or So They Say

Vincent, an Ode to Van Gogh

Reflections on Thanksgiving Day, 1621 – 2023

Hiraeth

Not in our Name

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