Category: metaphor, symbol

The Origin of Evil

5 May 2023
apocalypsearms, guns, weaponsdeath, mortality, the deadethicsfood, meals, eatingmetaphor, symbolpassagepeace, conflict, warritual, festivaltheoryworldview, ontology
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Long, long ago the first animal ate the second animal. Then the first animal became food for the third animal. All animals hungered, hunted, ate, and became food for other animals. The world was an epic food orgy—a bone-crushing, blood-drinking drama unburdened with self-consciousness or guilt. Over eons and eons animals evolved into primates, then…

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Crowbait

4 April 2023
apocalypsearms, guns, weaponsbodygender, sexualityhealinghumormetaphor, symbolreligion, spiritualityviolence
2 Comments

by Ronald L. Grimes Shirley snapped the pearl buttons on the cuffs of her ragged western shirt as she stepped out of her Airstream into the dark at Spirit Hill Trailer Park. The gravel crunched under her boots.  A flutter of wings. She stops. Listens. Peers over a clump of scrub oak bushes. Whispers, “Angels…

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The Barn and the Lab

9 February 2023
dialoguesethicsillnesslandmetaphor, symbolperformance, play, entertainmentreligion, spiritualityritual, festivalthings, objectswater
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                                   Community Restoration and Ritual Experimentation                                                 Ronald L. Grimes and Susan L. Scott   Below is a conversation between Susan Scott, founder of the award-winning Walkerton Water Stories Project (WWSP), and Ron Grimes, Director of the Ritual Studies Lab. Susan, a writer, and Ron, a ritual studies scholar, contemplate the possibilities for ritual…

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Sacred Space and the Southwest

29 May 2021
ecology, environmentimagination, creativitylandmetaphor, symbolmoving, mobilitynature and ritualtheorytime, historyworldview, ontology
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Sacrality is, above, all a category of emplacement. –Jonathan Z. Smith A few years I saw a map of Christendom put forth by a Protestant Reformation Society in which the catholic countries were painted black, and the protestant countries in a light color. The black was the Kingdom of the Beast where the children of…

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Sitting in a Sandbox

19 April 2021
apocalypseecology, environmentfuturehumorimagination, creativitymetaphor, symbol
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As a kid I spent hours, days, and years exiled to a sandbox a few miles south of Clovis, New Mexico. A drought eventually forced us off the land because we didn’t have the money for an irrigation well. Indoors, Mom was baking chocolate-chip cookies. I wanted to be indoors, but she said I had…

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The Lord & His Woman

12 April 2021
apocalypsecreativitydeath, mortality, the deadessays, articlesgender, sexualityhealingimagination, creativitymetaphor, symbolrites of passageviolence
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  The Gospel according to C. J. Jung   I’ve written a series of articles that transform scholarly articles into the stories they imply. This is an example.  No person owns a sacred story, because a story is sacred only if it is the story of Everyperson. Though the story of Lord Yahweh, the Holy Antinomy, sounds…

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Rockin’ the Coffin

23 October 2020
death, mortality, the deadfilmfuneral, commemorationimagination, creativitymetaphor, symbolperformance, play, entertainmentquestionsritual, festivalthings, objects
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How does creativity help us cope? What role does the imagination play in allaying our age-old fears of loss and separation?  Filmmaker Cailleah Scott-Grimes leans into these questions in the short doc she’s made in collaboration with her father. Rockin’ the Coffin, a contrarian’s guide to the good death, was made possible by the CBC’s Creative Relief…

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bull

1 January 2020
art & imageliteraturemetaphor, symbolpoetry

The ten ox-herding pictures represent stages of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism. Below is my idiosyncratic rendition and interpretation of the pictures. The art is Japanese ink-brush on paper towel. Follow this link to Tricycle  to see more traditional ox-herding pictures.   searching bitching the while away, i sniff pasture and sky for what i do…

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Why build your house on sand?

8 November 2017
metaphor, symbolreligion, spiritualityspace, territory

In the parable of the wise and foolish builders, Jesus says, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall,…

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