SunWinks January 11, 2015: Theme: Writing and Spirituality

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I need a new God. I need somebody to pray to. For a few years now, I’ve been working on emancipating myself from my poisonous Catholic upbringing (a ridiculously belated enterprise which I only undertook in my fifties) and building a new kind of personal integrity, one that allows me, among other things, to be a poet with courage.

But being a human being, I share the religious impulse, the sense of the numinous. I want to avail myself of the benefits of meditation and centering prayer. But who do I pray to?

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Essay: The Archetype of the Whore

The Archetype of the Whore

Queen Sheba journeyed to Judah bearing gifts and tribute to pay homage to King Solomon, and returned home bearing his child Menelek, who became the first king of the great Ethiopian dynasty.

Mary Magdalene carried Jesus’ child even as she watched her lover crucified for aspiring to the throne of David. Magdalene fled to Egypt with her daughter Sara disguised as a servant girl, but Peter shoved them off in a rudderless boat without oars, and they landed in the French Riviera where Sara’s descendants became the Merovingian line of kings.

Sarah could not give Abraham a child, so she gave to Abraham her slave, Hagar, who bore him Ishmael. Then God blessed Sarah, and to Abraham, Sarah bore Isaac.

It is a perilous thing being born to Abraham. Now Ishmael must not be allowed to inherit Abraham’s birthright, so Abraham banished Hagar and Ishmael to starve to death in the desert, Isaac being the one destined to be the ancestor of Jesus once he survives almost being sacrificed on his father’s altar. Continue reading