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EVERY ANGEL IS TERRIFYING

EVERY ANGEL IS TERRIFYING

Duino Elegies–Ranier Maria Rilke

More About Me

More About Me

The Rilke heading for the home page, is a fragment from the Duino Elegies.

Every angel… Angel is a metaphor that indicates a divine messenger. To be fair the term sometimes is used as an address of endearment for a partner or a child. Meanings vary according to use. Still even when used ‘lightly’ as a term of endearment, the idea is worth exploration, to consider the origin, its literary uses. A dawn of insight about yourself, or receipt of an inspired solution to a vexing problem often comes as a divine-like illumination. “Every angel is terrifying” wrote Rilke.

Obvious correct answers apply to simple realities, such as the abstractions of mathematics.  But life, ah life is messy, and much is hidden beneath the surface. Certainty is the stock-offer of a charlatan, a con who desires your money, or your loyal support for a cause.

It matters that we keep asking questions, fearlessly, patiently…

Oh yes, I was raised a Christian fundamentalist in North Carolina.  I now live west of Chicago in Batavia.

Sources influencing my thinking, my sense of self are:

Plato/Socrates, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lao Tsu, Jean Baudrillard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Aristotle, Albert Camus, James P. Carse, Michael Polanyi, Wendell Berry, Paul Feyerabend, Wallace Stevens, and T. S. Eliot.

Spiritual orientation:

  • Full time human being
  • Part time Christo-Buddhist

Tales that I love:

  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
  • Gladiator directed by Ridley Scott.

Music that I love: Rock ‘n Roll.

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