The Stromata of Death and Life

 The ‘Stromata’ of Death and Life (1)

 

Who am I? (2)

In this

All rolled into One

In the present?

Every line of this face

Becomes a Scar

That leads to the dark

Labyrinth of my heart (3) (4)

A line that reels you in

To a thousand faces –

Where you are lost…

And found again… Yet -

Who am I, but Legion (5)

Beneath mere appearance

And…

Your mind’s eye is forced

To behold

The presence of oblivion

Of death, itself…

Within me,

The “Destroyer of Worlds” (6)

Yes, those

Facets of your illusions

As to who I am… and

What is.

Here we are… here and now, (7)

Beneath placidity, 

The thrice distant

Sound of savage, snarling

Cerberus (8)

The barking consumptive

Hound of Hell. (9)

Your healing hand

And trembling steps

Piercing through

A thousand veils (10)

Into an unknown light

In which

You cannot leave unbroken

Or untransformed; (11)

Who then, are you now?

 

 

Notes

 

1. The Stromata (Στρώματα) or Stromateis (Στρωματεῖς, "Patchwork") is the third in Clement of Alexandria's (150 – 215) trilogy of works on the Christian life. Clement titled this work Stromateis, "patchwork," because it deals with such a variety of matters. It goes further than prior writings by the author and aims at the perfection of the Christian life by initiation into complete knowledge. It attempts, on the foundation of Scripture and tradition, to give an account of the Christian faith as shall answer all the demands of the learned, and conduct a student into the innermost realities of his belief. For me, the Stromata is the ‘Way’ of piercing all the complexities of existence and penetrating to the essence of being.

 

2. Jack Kerouac: “One distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was—I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel… all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost… Halfway… at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future…” On the Road, 1957

 

3. The labyrinth is not a maze. There are no tricks to it and no dead ends. It has a single circuitous path that winds its way into the center. The person walking it uses the same path to return from the center and the entrance then becomes the exit. The path is in full view, which allows a person to be quiet and focus internally. The labyrinth is a walking meditation, a path of prayer and an archetypal blueprint where psyche meets Spirit. It has only one path that leads from the outer edge in a circuitous way to the center. There are no tricks to it and no dead ends. Unlike a maze where you lose your way, the labyrinth is a spiritual tool that can help you find your way.

 

4. The Way of the (Spiritual) Heart - God taught St. Ignatius of Loyola about the heart though several mystical visions he received early in his spiritual formation. One such vision came upon him at a time when he was questioning whether he should say three or four prayers to our Trinitarian God—a prayer directed to each Person, Father, Son, and Spirit, and then a fourth prayer to the One God. He was praying outside on the steps of a monastery when he suddenly “heard” God the Trinity as the musical sound of three organ keys playing simultaneously. Another time he received a vision of God the creator as “something white out of which rays were coming.” Out of this whiteness God created light. “He did not know how to explain these things,” he writes of himself in the third person. But Ignatius responded with his heart: “This was accompanied with so much tears and so much sobbing that he could not restrain himself.” The spiritual journey is an attempt to answer the question, “What is life all about?” Here is Ignatius’s answer: a vision of God for our hearts, not our minds. It is a depiction of the Creator as a superabundant giver. He gives gifts that call forth a response on our part, a free choice to return ourselves to him in grateful thanks and love. It is a vision that only a heart can respond to…’ - David L. Fleming, SJ

 

5. A reference to the Gospel of Mark: ‘Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" "My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many”. (Mark 5:9) Every human is a multi-dimensional being, composed of intricate complexities, perhaps many souls, multiple characteristics that make a ‘personality’ –which in many faiths is the subject of ‘healing.’ This is a clear case of identity – who are you, and who are we? This is the ultimate existential question posed by Jesus in Mark 8: 27 – 29 – “On the way he asked them, "Who do people say I am?" And, “"But what about you?"he asked. "Who do you say I am?"

 

6. Reference to Robert J. Oppenheimer who, on the successful test of the first atom bomb on July 16^th, 1945 – quoted a line from the Bhagavad Gita in response; “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. The Bhagavad-Gita, a Hindu scripture, written in Sanskrit, that centers on a dialogue between a great warrior prince, Arjuna and his charioteer Lord Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu. Krishna teaches him about a higher philosophy that will enable him to carry out his duties as a warrior irrespective of his personal concerns. This is known as the dharma, or holy duty. It is one of the four key lessons of the Bhagavad-Gita: desire or lust; wealth; the desire for righteousness or dharma; and the final state of total liberation, or moksha. Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal his universal form. Krishna obliges, and in verse twelve of the Gita he manifests as a sublime, terrifying being of many mouths and eyes. It is this moment that entered Oppenheimer’s mind in July 1945. “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one,” – Robert Oppenheimer’s inability to accept the idea of an immortal soul would always weigh heavy on his mind. – What is the nature of identity or personality in the face of ultimate oblivion or death? Is there a soul, and if so, does it survive death?

 

7. The question of an absolute present in ‘A Philosophy of History in Fragments’ (1993) by Agnes Heller. The crisis of European philosophy of history is defined by the irresolvable contradiction between the absolute present of Hegel’s self-knowing subject of History and the consciousness of the sheer contingency of the historical present. Heller rethinks the meaning of the present as absolute, not in itself but in relationship to the past and future of our present. Our absolute present is thereby revealed as inescapably paradoxical. Just as we live from the afterlife of a departed absolute spirit so the self-consciousness of our post-modernity resides in the self-consciousness with which we endow the past. How do we stand absolutely in the present – even when we see the past, our own personal history melting away… and being forced to look into an indefinite future?

 

8. Greek mythology, Cerberus (Κέρβερος), - the "hound of Hades", (of Hell). A monstrous multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. Cerberus was the offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon, and usually is described as having three heads, a serpent for a tail, and snakes protruding from parts of his body. The fear of death – something which consumes us totally, can we persist at all?

 

9. In Norse mythology, Hel is a being who presides over a realm of the same name, where she receives a portion of the dead. Hel is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In addition, she is mentioned in poems recorded in Heimskringla and Egils saga that date from the 9th and 10th centuries, respectively… The Norse god Odin threw Hel into Niflheim (the ‘mist-world’ or a world of darkness), and bestowed upon her authority over nine worlds, in that she must "administer board and lodging to those sent to her, and that is those who die of sickness or old age." In this realm, Hel has "great Mansions" with extremely high walls and immense gates…

 

10. The Arabian Nights, or – ‘A thousand and One night’ - “A truth once seen by a single mind ends up by imposing itself on the totality of human consciousness.” – The changing of the mind through a deeper perception, it might be observed that throughout life we are in constant process of metamorphosis – form one state to another, constantly changing and being transformed.

 

11. Unchanged: Metamorphosis or transformation is a unifying theme amongst the episodes of the Metamorphoses of the Roman poet Ovid. Ovid raises its significance explicitly in the opening lines of the poem: In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas / corpora; ("I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities;"). Accompanying this theme is often violence, inflicted upon a victim whose transformation becomes part of the natural landscape. This theme amalgamates the much-explored opposition between the hunter and the hunted and the thematic tension between art and nature… The metamorphoses themselves are often located metatextually within the poem, through grammatical or narratorial transformations.

All Rights Reserved & Copyright David John Drew 2021