Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Thomas Moore inspires panentheism blog

Kay has a blog Songs of Unforgetting: The Meandering Thoughts of an Eclectic Panentheist, crediting Thomas Moore with inspiring the blog's title while offering quotes by Moore in the site's archives. Panentheism is defined as "The belief that the universe is contained within a deity that is greater than the universe." (Kay offers diagrams of theological constructs). In a post today, Kay suggests Thomas Moore might differentiate between two types of mysticism described, "spirit mysticism" and "soul mysticism."

Elsewhere on the site, Kay offers a quote about enchantment from Moore’s writing:
"Some forms of spirituality aim infinitely high and we see them reflected in towering buildings and church steeples. But there is a spirituality that is more like a lowly emanation from the most humble and earthbound things - a particular house, a garden, a neighborhood, a grove of trees, a pristine beach, a holy well, a field of wheat.

Here spirituality is indistinguishable from enchantment, for in an enchanted world the things of nature and even of culture reek of holiness. Enchantment is nothing more than spirituality deeply rooted in the Earth.

It is particularly exciting to encounter such exalted expressions of spirituality connected to plants, rocks and earth, for there we find the marriage of heaven and earth, and the reconciliation of the infinite with the finite.

Human life stands between these two realms, for human life is defined essentially by the soul, which is the mediating element that enjoys both the aspirations of the most transcendent spirituality and the lowliest devotion to nature and human endeavor."
Perhaps someone could invite Kay to post to thomasmoore.ning.com?

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Monday, May 28, 2007

Author of Leap! mentions Moore and mid-life

Earlier this month, Susan Whitney wrote an article about mid-life changes for the Deseret Morning News. In the piece, she quotes Sara Davidson, 64, who wrote Leap!, a book about baby boomers, over a three-year period. According to Whitney, Davidson says, "The truth, I must acknowledge, is that I'm not in the same place I was when I began; the incidents and accidents of the past three years have made me half in love with uncertainty. Once again, I have no idea what work I'll do next or what companions will be with me, but I'm not fighting and raging against it. Expectancy is in the air."

"Certain points have clarified, the first being that we are more individuated than when younger, and what becomes clear for me may be utterly different than for you. I'd like to stay as healthy and attractive as I'm able, to do simultaneously what Thomas Moore suggests: accept age and cultivate the Venusian. I'd like to mentor a young person and work for progressive change. I intend to live with people of shared affinity in some form of community, let down barriers to love, and find sensuality in unexpected places. I want to treasure wildness and spontaneity and take surrender as a daily practice."