[lit-ideas] Re: Druids

  • From: Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2016 06:52:42 -0800

Thanks, Chris, for the comments -- also for reference to the error. I hadn't decided which word to use and so seem to have used them both. I think though I will use "its".

Also in reply to John I will say that this subject was personally felt -- just not as urgently so (but maybe that's what he said -- don't have his note in front of me) as Susan. I had studied my way through various things and though I had previously rejected Christianity (based upon my mother's pressure to accept the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong) had decided to give Christianity another look -- was riding the bus to McDonnell Douglas reading a commentary on the Book of Acts when a young lady sat down next to me, looked at the title of my book and asked if I was a Christian. That was my introduction to Susan.

Lawrence


On 2/7/2016 1:29 AM, epostboxx@xxxxxxxx wrote:

On 07 Feb 2016, at 01:05, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
… This one doesn't work as well for me as your ones about Susan …
I, on the other hand, was struck by this poem in two ways:

firstly (and trivially), by its coincidence with my reading this morning of a 
novel on the topic of Druids, Stonehenge and bloody sacrifice — so badly 
written that I would be embarrassed to mention its name; and

secondly (and much more deeply), because I am one who definitely could not 
‘slip away’ without some rather deep wounds … (To this day I am of two minds 
about the benefit and detriment of organized religion, and come to no 
conclusion — except for recognizing that sadists and masochists with no 
religious channel through which to work their psychic mutilations, would soon 
find some other means of erecting, or participating in some existing, social 
institution which allowed for similar abuse of self and others.)

I especially appreciate the ‘how you bow and sing and suppose’ — especially 
that ‘suppose’.

Chris Bruce,
licking his psychic wounds, and
finding no need to specifically name
social institutions of equal perfidy
(given my country of residence), in
Kiel, Germany

P.S. Is there an extra, or a missing, word in the line “Against the its 
Legions”?

On Feb 7, 2016, at 3:00 AM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

   Finding the cache of bones,
   Spear-points and skulls,
   Seeing the large bones
   Split for marrow
   Convinced the archaeologists
   Of ritual sacrifice
   Midway through

   The Roman invasion.
   Force was of no avail
   Against the its Legions.
   Blood needed to be
   Shed to appease the
   Gods; then even so
   The Romans won.

   Who can say what they
   Would have done given the
   Coercive sway of priests?
   Some would no doubt
   Slip away to avoid a
   Bloody end as today
   Occurs symbolically:

   The insistence on religious
   Rules, bowing one’s head
   To God or God’s priests
   And how you bow
   And sing and suppose.
   Don’t think you’ll slip
   Away without a wound.
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