Creative Event / Created Good

First posted Feb 2010

This is from a post in Reflections of a Happy Old Man June 12, 2006.

"He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sun rise."
(Songs and Balads, Eternity, (E 470))

Only the creative event is to be worshiped.

The Bible is the created good.
All tribes are created good.
Religious organizations are created good.
Theologies, ideologies are created good.

These things are all manmade artifacts.

What is to be worshiped?

The Creative Event!!

Not the Bible: George Fox: "we have heard what Jesus and the Apostles say, but what doth thou say?"

Not a tribe: Joseph Campbell: their chief attribute is the limit of positive affect to members and of negative affect to non-members.

Not a religious organization: Gandhi: "if I ever found a truly Christian church, I'd join it."

So what should you worship: "the Vision of God that thou dost see...." (from Everlasting Gospel, Erdman 524)

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Posted by ellie Feb 2010 

TIME / ETERNITY 

Wikipedia Commons

Gates of Paradise

Plate 3

Larry recently published a post concerning the Created Good and the Creative Event. This is a follow-up on the concept of the Created Good presented in Wieman's book.
 
Quotes from The Source of Human Good, by Henry Nelson Wieman:

"The mere passing through the mind of innumerable meanings is not the creative event. These newly communicated meanings must be integrated with meanings previously acquired or natively developed if the creative event is to occur. This integrating is largely subconscious, unplanned and uncontrolled by the individual, save only as he may provide conditions favorable to its occurrence." Page 59

"The creative event is one that brings forth in the human mind, in society and history, and in the appreciable world a new structure of interrelatedness, whereby events are discriminated and related in a manner not before possible. It is a structure whereby some events derive from other events, through meaningful connection with them, an abundance of quality that events could not have had without this new creation." Page 65

Milton, Plate 28 [30], (E 125)
"But others of the Sons of Los build Moments & Minutes & Hours
And Days & Months & Years & Ages & Periods; wondrous buildings
And every Moment has a Couch of gold for soft repose,
(A Moment equals a pulsation of the artery) ,
And between every two Moments stands a Daughter of Beulah
To feed the Sleepers on their Couches with maternal care.
And every Minute has an azure Tent with silken Veils.
And every Hour has a bright golden Gate carved with skill.
And every Day & Night, has Walls of brass & Gates of adamant,
Shining like precious stones & ornamented with appropriate signs:
And every Month, a silver paved Terrace builded high:
And every Year, invulnerable Barriers with high Towers.
And every Age is Moated deep with Bridges of silver & gold.
And every Seven Ages is Incircled with a Flaming Fire.
Now Seven Ages is amounting to Two Hundred Years
Each has its Guard. each Moment Minute Hour Day Month & Year.
All are the work of Fairy hands of the Four Elements
The Guard are Angels of Providence on duty evermore
Every Time less than a pulsation of the artery
Is equal in its period & value to Six Thousand Years.
Plate 29 [31]
For in this Period the Poets Work is Done: and all the Great
Events of Time start forth & are concievd in such a Period
Within a Moment: a Pulsation of the Artery."

This is the creative event, Eternity exploding into time's framework.

James Rieger in Sublime Allegory, Page 272, in trying to explain Los' work, has this to say:
"Narrative time is a mere device in Milton and Jerusalem, a sequential representation of two eternal moments that by definition lack extension. Nevertheless, Frye correctly regards one as Resurrection and the other as the Last Judgment, corresponding to the first and second coming of Jesus. Each is its own split-second but one follows the other."

Not the created good but the creative event! Recurring whenever Eternity breaks into time!