Wednesday, October 22, 2008

god of fiesta

The Amerindian ancients looked to beauty as a reflection of the presence of the divine. Their intuition survives in the Spanish phrase 'flor y canto,' flower and song, a translation of the pre-Columbian Náhuatl metaphor for the truth of the spiritual world. Not only did beauty signify the blessing of divine presence, but indigenous ancestors historically used flower and song to communicate back with the Sacred. This approach reveals an aesthetic conception of the universe that approaches philosophy through poetry, conflating truth with beauty. Rather than arriving at truth through universal, abstract concepts governed by linear logic, the mind grasps truth intuitively through the imagination of the heart: "to know the truth was to understand the hidden meaning of things through 'flower and song,' a power emanating from the deified heart" (Léon-Portilla).
Elizabeth A. Johnson, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, 2007. 146-47

1 comment:

ms said...

are not all important truths intuitive and for that reason so easily denied as we are taught from the beginning that we are not to be trusted -- not even our selves by our selves? logic it seems is the quintessential human creation, the stuff of inecure little men whose worth and raison d'etre lies in showing their superiority by way of logic, obscure snippets of irrelevance, and complicated mathematical models. They and their proteges and the whole world -- or the larger part of us it seems -- are entranced and befuddled by these mind games, all of it better or so we believe than accepting the wholeness of which we are a part. Why do men find it necessary -- why are we so hell bent -- on setting ourselves apart from the whole and tucking ourselves away in the dark corners? ok, that I know the answer to: fear, but where did it germinate? what is it that makes us invite the fear and fear the wholeness that is truth and real?