A Mazeppist Credo

"The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his."

--Hugh of St. Victor

More Reflections on Turkey

Istanbul continually celebrates Europe and Asia, past and present, sacred and secular...

It is hard to imagine that such a place can exist, here in the Land of Burger-Death and Endless Imperialist War, of what Tolstoy rightly called "stupefication." To spend a month in a place that honors traditional modes of conviviality while embracing modern conveniences and inconveniences is to see a future beyond anything that the self-anesthetized in the U.S. can ever imagine.

We have already been surpassed by our cultural superiors. It is only a matter of time before we arrive at the station to see the caboose of the train that passed us by fading into the distance. The little glorious run of the Evening Lands (the last 500 years) is all but finished. Bankrupt. Exhausted. Only the fire-works remain...

Difficult As It Is for Hard-Core Jesus-Landers to Accept...

there really are people in this world, the humble Mazeppist among them, who love Jesus too much to ever accept being mistaken for a Christian.

When my dental-hygienist here in Jesus-Land wants to tell me about the many, subtle ways that God has blessed her in her life, I am thankful that her fingers are in my mouth so that all I can do is grunt and nod.

Not that I doubt for one moment that God has indeed blessed her in many subtle ways; I do not question such an assertion. What I question is why she feels compelled to share such things with me while she is scraping the plaque from my teeth.

No doubt she feels that "God" has moved her to "witness" to me. But I just think that such behavior reflects a lack of cultural sensitivity at best (and, my God, we share the same culture, at least in theory); at worst, it is an exhibition of her ego-driven desire to tell me that she has something that I need. She "has" Jesus in a way that I don't "have" Jesus.

I truly doubt that she could ever appreciate the fact that I not only "lack" Jesus in the way that she "has" him, but I thank God that I lack Jesus in such a way.

I have no desire to make Jesus my personal savior, my private deity. I have too much love and respect for the man I meet in the Gospels (canonical and otherwise) and in the Qur'an to ever wish to appropriate his memory in such a fashion.

It was through my love for Rabbi Jesus that I was able to find my way out of Christianity and the Christ-idolatry it tragically entails. May I never so dishonor my Rabbi as to worship him as a god.

Reflections on My Recent Month-Long Sojourn in Turkey

Kipling's axiom that "east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet" is conclusively refuted.

Istanbul is a city of 20 million people out of a country of 70 million. I have never been to any urban metropole where the people were more friendly or more kind. One should take children there, if you have them; Turks love children and will dote on yours, even if they do not know them.

Coming from a country of uncouth barbarism as I do, the general level of hospitality and conviviality is a little disconcerting at first; you have trouble believing it is genuine. I was in Turkey for a month. It is genuine.

Constantinople was the capital of a Europe united as a Christian empire. The Turks take pride in their entire heritage and the historical remains scattered throughout the city of Istanbul are reason enough to spend 2 weeks there--in the vain hope of scratching the surface.

The brilliant humanist and Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan designed the most amazing mosques...No photograph can do them justice...In addition, every human being should visit the Agha Sofia and stand at the world navel. Then look straight up.

Pictures of Turkish artists and poets adorn park benches and bus stops. Like ordinary Arabs and Iranians, Turks will often quote a line of poetry when attempting to explain something.

Thanks be to Allah that the EU could not get past its prejudices and admit Turkey when Turkey was interested in membership. The Turks, being Turks, found another way and now the EU needs them more than they need the EU. There really is justice in this world.

The Future of the U.S. is Written in Blake

As a culture ages, its wars become an increasingly explicit symbol of its growing death impulse and reversion to nature.

--Northrop Frye, FS, p. 223.

Northrop Frye on Revolution

Revolution is the sign of apocalyptic yearnings, of an impulse to burst loose from this world altogether and get into a better one, a convulsive lunge forward of the imagination. There is thus a connection far deeper than a resemblance of sound between revolution and revelation.

Fearful Symmetry, pp. 201-202.