Green Mama and The Angel of Fire

This morning I decided to put down my reading on Community Rights and pick up a book on The Soul. I Pulled Thomas Moore's "Original Self" off from the shelf and wasn't disappointed.

"What would it be like, I wonder, if we were born in some dramatic spiritual way. Say the soul like a sheet of silky gauze fell down from the heavens in a soft flutter? Would that be preferable to the birth of a human being at the fork in the legs amid blood, excrement, and waters? I don't think so, because we are given life by the green mama as well as the angel of fire, and the green mama doesn't think much about what she does. She loves and gives birth and then takes back to herself everything she has birthed." (Pg. 82)

I think it's interesting that me mentioned the green mama and the angel of fire in the same sentence.

Children, Celebrities and Madness

More on the theme of children and learning with a little depth psychology thrown in there:

"We educate our children to make a good living rather than to become thinking persons, and often we honor as celebrities those who have not made a genuine contribution to society but who mirror our own madness."-Thomas Moore, pg. 97, Original Self

I remember Thomas Moore saying in a talk that I have downloaded that people locked away in insane asylums are living our madness for us.

Religion and Sex

One of the Townships near me is working on banning any kind of adult entertainment within the township. I don't know where I'm at concerning the issue, but I've always like this quote by Alan Watts: "Religion without sex is a rattling skeleton, and sex without religion is a mass of mush." Or this one by Thomas Moore, "Sex and religion are closer to each other than either might prefer."

Patriarchy

"We have weakened the nobility of fatherhood in our time by mistaking imperialism in business and government for genuine paternal leadership. Mistakenly we complain about patriarchy instead of paternalism and weak-kneed authority. Patri-archy refers to the archetypal or original father, the ur-father, the father in heaven who permeates every created thing with his seminal possibilities."--Thomas Moore, Pg.51, Original Self

Masculinity and Gender

This is some of the best writing on gender and masculinity that I've seen in a long time. It also speaks to my experience.

"Gender is an aspect of our individuality. I am a man as no one else is a man. My masculinity is like my American spirit, a defining facet. The variations of gender are infinite, and so it is absurd to reduce gender to two categories and insist that everyone fit into one or the other. Besides, all dualisms doom us to division and conflict. They are simplistic descriptions of experience and tend toward easy literalism. Paradoxically, to become less certain about one's own gender may be the turning point at which one begins to discover the richness of one's masculinity and femininity."--Thomas Moore, Pg.55, Original Self

Anxiety and Collapse

"Anxiety is nothing but fear inspired by an imagined future collapse. It is the failure of trust."-Thomas Moore

A few questions come to mind after running across this quote this morning. What kind of future collapse do you imagine? Where should we put our trust to alleviate the general feeling of anxiety in this day in age?