Chickenman Descends into the Universe #2, Pastel, by John Cummings
Neither theology nor outlines
It has nothing to do
with fancy written words,
or of history from the Old.
It has nothing to do
with the outlines of
your modern hand,
laid out in front of you,
or on your Apple Ipad.
Seems all you do is flaunt
your scholarly degreed knowledge.
Nothing worthwhile
for your congregation
to use in their daily
challenges of modern life.
Put your knowledge to rest.
Let us not waste our time
on historical knowledge,
and leave our afterlife behind.
Feed us with the Simpleton’s thoughts,
of how to make it through
a day without wronging another,
to show us how not to
be led into temptation,
show us how to be
thankful for our daily bread,
enlighten our simple minds
with the very, very basics.
Bring it from the new
contractual agreement,
bring it from the heart,
not the brain.
Make us feel
and not think.
Then we shall gather
and bring more to seek-
more to learn-
of this great simplicity,
called eternal, without end.
______________________
Edgar Ted Davis
Review by Terry Trowbridge
The paradox is that if I write too much about Ted Davis’s poem, then I will deny his intent. However, this poem’s call for simplicity and a radical re-evaluation of communities and their worship experiences is the opening theme of this issue of Triggerfish. The first several pages of poems are about worship as a route to transcendence (as opposed to, say, lonely meditation). They are also reflections about individual power. This is an issue about social (community), political (power), change (personal transcendence that requires sociopolitical change).
In support of this issue, then, I believe that future literary criticism should read the first several pages as a political document during this particular election. The poems are written about specific places, times, and experiences. Edgar Davis, however, is advocating for a simplicity that can have several meanings depending on the audience (for example, simplicity in the Quaker sense is not exactly simplicity in the Trappist monk sense). And his appeal for a sermon or a speaker who engages simplicity might also apply to the secular worship of worldly personalities and abstracted principles that engage us at campaign rallies.
The paradox for me to agree with this poem is that our institutions of power are constructed by people who have a high level of literacy (which diminishes to a null set of one-dimensional tweets, as we approach billionaires, apparently) and statistical toolkits that boggle even the most advanced high school students – even boggle the engineers that program blockchains and commodity market trades. How are we to simply address the moral problems of part-time minimum wagers, if we cannot use our vocabularies from the New Testament, the torah, or the Hadith, to guide us through rental market manipulation, the 21st century’s banking deregulation, and corporate monopoly power? How can we explain the aesthetics that propagate lies, if we keep our knowledge of algorithms to ourselves?
Of course, there are opportunities for Buddhas to channel all of us in our daily lives, especially those dharma writings where a Buddha, during life, must answer questions about how to give-to or call-in a neighbourhood monastery mortgage loan (as appear in writings from India), or where a parent must decide if it is time to discipline a child or let them navigate trouble (as appears in Herman Hesse’s interpretations of simplicity). Lao Tzu was a high-level imperial librarian before he quit his job out of exhaustion and disgust (according to The Book of Chang Tzu, anyhow). If this sounds familiar to any of us, then these examples prove Edgar Davis has identified a call to action, to activism, that is local, immediate, practical, personal instead of social, and that we need to know right away. And AI is hardly going help us, unfortunately for the tangle of easy-to-read, impossible-to-judge, attempt at corporate monopolies on reading and reflection that the USA’s Silicon valley is attempting to foist on us all.
Therefore, I submit that Edgar Davis’s poem is the hub of the extended-narrative Wheel of Fortune tarot card this issue of Triggerfish presents. Hopefully, thoughtful secular readers and weekly sectarian sermonizers alike will read and respond.
Review by Jared Pearce
While I like the general movement and idea of this poem, I can’t help but wonder if the two lines, “Make us feel / and not think” are sincere. For me the poem is asking for our spiritual leaders to help us to a different way of thinking? (I recognize my cautionary bias against those who ask me—and sometimes tell me—not to think.)
Review by Nathan E. Lewis
Davis captures these popular notions: pitting scholarly knowledge against homespun wisdom; elevating heart over mind (feeling over thinking); defining practical application as solely behavioral. At first the reader may assume that Davis is coaching any public presenter, let’s say, for delivering a TED Talk. But as the poem progresses, the reader discovers that Davis is advising those who preach the Holy Scriptures. The poem is full of an underlining tension felt with each line more intensely. It is rant-like (something most of us do not wish to hear in a pulpit). The poem is a nearly perfect slice of the North American cultural pie, which is only edible if the person with the fork in hand approves of its taste upon his/her palette. What is lost in these cultural notions is the idea that the text drives the sermon, not the audience. If the text gives the preacher apples then he must make an apple pie, regardless of the audience salivating for lemon meringue pie. Some of the text is simple; some of it complex. Some of it is theological; some of it historical; some of it scholarly; some of it practical. When the text is beautiful language, should not the preacher reflect such beauty in his/her rhetoric? The poem is powerful in its brevity – what we wish more preachers would master. The only language flaw in the poem is – “bring it from the heart/ not the brain.” Perhaps it should be, “bring it from the heart/ not the mind.” Nevertheless, this flaw, in my opinion, captures quite accurately some of our culture’s weaknesses. That’s what I love about this poem! It is spot on – not according to my agreement, but according to what is a prevalent cultural value we all bump up against. Davis’ phrasing allows for us to hear his voice, which for me, does not elicit an “Amen.” (I hate preaching to the choir.) As a preacher, who has been working for a little more than four decades on meeting the demands of this poem, the voice strikes deep, eliciting my response.
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
I bought into it lock, stock and barrel. Leslie Van Houten
A truly extraordinary and desperate call. What must have occurred in someone’s life, in a whole congregation of devotees, to abdicate, delegate, renounce what is believed to be the most precious gift from God, judgment, knowledge, and free will?
This poem/prayer/petition reminds me of Matthew 18 in its preaching for a radical (perhaps fundamentalist is the word we’d use today) way of avoiding temptation and sin: at the first sign of misuse, eyes, hands, ought to be cut out and thrown away. Matthew 18 also speaks of a childlike humbleness that one could be tempted to interpret as simpleton’s thought. Even understanding the metaphorical and provocative language, and trying not to take the resolve in these verses too literally, to me, this sounds very much like swapping one golden calf for another. Decades of professional experience in the field have taught me that there is nothing fortunate or blessed or remotely cute in being simple-minded and/or governed by unfiltered, unvetted emotions. In this sense, it bears reminding that the opposite of a wrong turn is a right turn, never an engine failure. I’m sure the writer is at some level aware of this, which just makes his distressed call even darker.
We are trying to come to terms with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden or, not to put it in biblical terms, with our undeterred, unrepented effort to turn this world into the right opposite of any garden; we are trying to rebalance our course on track for the existence we’d like to think we are entitled to. As much as I personally share the state of shock (some days are particularly hard to bear) with how far off the mark we still are on so many topics, if I had one (!), I would urge my congregation to remember that the modern hand that with its wicked ingenuity keeps putting obstacles in the way is also the only hand that can remove them – the real sin would be to cut it off. Or, to quote a book from a dear family friend, dehonian Padre Giuseppe Moretti, La stessa acqua fa galleggiare la nave o la affonda, the same water makes the ship float or sinks it.
Review by Dave Mehler
So called head knowledge versus heart knowledge, both necessary and of value, but the speaker of this poem perceives imbalance, and it’s true, the head is easier in this regard and should never become the default cop out, or be all. Shepherds offer their flock either gold, silver or straw, or false teaching, Paul talks about in Corinthians (he, who is less than the least of all the apostles). For a shepherd to lead and instruct as he uses his own experience to ‘outline’ teaching from Holy scripture (God’s Word and two-edged sword) which also happens to be a Person (the Logos)–faith is relational!–one’s teaching is only as good as one’s lived and relational experience AND their understanding of a body of ancient texts not only in translation (or if they may have the benefit of studying original languages), but requires knowledge of the historical and cultural context of the people being spoken to thousands of years ago, and then to attempt to apply that to a context of needs and lives today in a global diversity of cultures? It would be an impossible task, if God (the Holy Spirit) weren’t there directing and guiding one by the hand. This would imply the shepherd is open and listening, and not self-motivated, isolated or exhausted by flawed and evil (but largely and hopefully redeemed and gradually transforming) human beings, who are their charges, living and dying in a depraved (but transforming) world the Church is responsible for transforming. A pastor statistically lasts about 10 years before being burned out and either tailspinning and crashing to the ground in a fireball of personal failure, or changing careers quietly, or departing the faith entirely in discouragement or disgrace. No one wants this job, and you better be called to it, like the prophets of old who were often beheaded or sawn in two? If a pastor or shepherd succeeds in this lifelong calling and sticks with it, it takes a life-time of being conformed slowly into the image of one’s God, getting intimate relationally, before one can pass on valuable felt and lived wisdom that edifies and draws others to Himself? Be aware that wisdom is a gift from God, scripture tells us, but also largely earned through blood, sweat and tears (these are the means through which the gift is relayed?). Even the most earnest young pastors can do a lot of damage along the way toward wisdom with their heartfelt, well-intentioned but untested words and lives. This job really requires grey hair (even in a young person)–forty years in a wilderness of herding sheep will do it, but even Moses in a weak moment near the end fucked up, wasn’t allowed into the promised land–only glimpsed it from afar after an entire generation had passed away, and his right hand man virile to the day he died because he was a perfectly obedient killer, gets to take the people on in. This is the job! God has to be with you before and behind, or you better run, and don’t walk. Remember, the Person you’re pointing to (the ultimate mediator between God and man) died betrayed, naked, tortured and humiliated on the worst execution device the Romans could devise. He willingly chose to surrender Himself to this death for His and our future glory, and out of love for His Father. Two specific verses–though there are more–speak of this glory: Hebrews 21:2, Looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God, and 2 Corinthians 4: 17, For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
I surmise Ted must’ve spent some time in the pews, or behind the pulpit. I get all of this from his poem. He takes me there, myself nominated for ruling elder twice and deacon twice, but never quite crossing the threshold any of those four times for different reasons each time. This too can become a shame.