Philosophically Speaking, "Is Suffering a Challenge to God's Existence?"

Ugh! (not the lady-- the song).

Here's a Leonard Cohen song I actually do like (the only one):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX0CfFdk-jw

Can we go back to Joni Mitchell now?

This one's about instinct and spirit, I think. Its resolution isn't exactly dualistic, but it plays with a lot of dualistic images, and it's a song about dualism. The "coward...coward...coward" business is about people who think like me (and in the song, either herself or a lover or both of them); but maybe it's about materialists, too. It's an interesting coincidence in terms of our discussion that they are described as "caught between yes and no." :)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vzGHOucTxY8

Great song by Cohen there, 'course it's not surprising because he wrote a lot of great songs.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nAK9Pj5-QXY

Anyway this one nearly makes me cry every time I listen to it, mostly because of some associated memories. Still, good song.

You know, I figured you'd like that song. It has a real Canadian feel to it (plus a "Clopin's sensitive side" feel).

This was my theme song 30-35 years ago when I was traveling around the world:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bulwl46vz9s

And this is how I ended up (so beware!):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=igj20M84hbo

"River" is one of my favorite songs as well.

I was not familiar with "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter". I was confused by the lyrics: http://www.metrolyrics.com/don-juans...-mitchell.html

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Originally Posted by YesNo

"River" is one of my favorite songs as well.

I was not familiar with "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter". I was confused by the lyrics: http://www.metrolyrics.com/don-juans...-mitchell.html

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See this is my problem with the poetry contests. It's all, "Um, that one was about hawks killing mice, right Pompey?" :) Anyway, this one seems pretty straightforward to me. What if the eagle/airplane images were about spirit/heart and the snake/train images were about instinct/body? Note that it's not something obvious and Freudian like: snakes are for boys and eagles are for girls. The narrator (presumably Mitchell herself) starts by owning her serpent:

But the split tongue spirit laughed at me
He says, "Your serpent cannot be denied."

I think the split tongue spirit is a lover (so in part the snake image is about sexual desire); or maybe it's just the fact that the tongue points in two directions: spirit and instinct. I think the two lovers may be traveling simultaneously by plane and train, or maybe that's just more symbolism (or maybe it's both). The spirit speaks in images (later referred to as spectrums) that show spirit and instinct separately, or in a kind of congress or dualistic relationship. So it's:

He says:
"Snakes along the railroad tracks."
He says, "Eagles in jet trails"
He says, "Coils around feathers and talons on scales
Gravel under the belly plates"
He says, "Wind in the Wings"
He says, "Big bird dragging its tail in the dust
Snake kite flying on a string."

You see? So maybe the lovers have quarreled and they are going apart from one another by plane and train; or maybe the "coward...coward" business is Mitchell berating herself for not being able to choose between the the instinctive and the spiritual (and in settling for giving into sexual feeling against her better judgement).

You're a coward against the altitude
You're a coward against the flesh
Coward, caught between yes and no
Reckless this time on the line for yes, yes, yes!

The dualism is later made explicit as a kind of human (or at least American?) condition:

We are all hopelessly oppressed cowards
Of some duality
Of restless multiplicity.

So symbolically:

Behind my bolt locked door
The eagle and the serpent are at war in me
The serpent fighting for blind desire
The eagle for clarity
What strange prizes these battles bring
These hectic joys-these weary blues
Puffed up and strutting when I think I win
Down and shaken when I think I lose

Then back to the lovers in their separate vehicles:

There are rivets up here in this eagle
There are box cars down there on your snake
And we are twins of spirit
No matter which route home we take
Or what we forsake

The resolution, which was anticipated by some of the original split tongue spirit images, is that the serpent and the eagle--spiritual and the instinctive must join and be equally acknowledged. This, as a Christian, is where I get off the train (or parachute from the plane). I think the eyes of clarity are the eagles bright eyes of spiritual light, while the beads of guile are the serpents beady eyes of materialist pragmatism/trickery. Note that the lovers must go up and come down:

We're going to come up to the eyes of clarity
And we'll go down to the beads of guile
There is danger and education
In living out such a reckless life style

That idea continued in a more sexual context (with some nice playful-sounding poetry):

I touched you on the central plains
It was plane to train my twin
It was just plane shadow to train shadow
But to me it was skin to skin

And the conclusion, which expresses various forms of the lovers' duality (and the final synthesis). I love "Crawl and fly." I wish it had been the title.

The spirit talks in spectrums
He talks to mother earth to father sky
Self indulgence to self denial
Man to woman
Scales to feathers
You and I
Eagles in the sky
You and I
Snakes in the grass
You and I
Crawl and fly
You and I

I'm confused by whom the pronouns, "you" and "I", refer to in the poem.

I don't think she is confronting a lover, but rather tensions within herself. The cowardice refers to her inability to find peace with herself. There is also a spirit talking to her who seemingly keeps pointing her in conflicting directions of accepting first the eagle and then the serpent. If she succeeds then she and that spirit (who is neither the serpent nor the eagle) become united.

For example, these lines make me think of a kundalini enlightenment process, but I don't know if she was intending such a meaning.

We're going to come up to the eyes of clarity
And we'll go down to the beads of guile
There is danger and education
In living out such a reckless life style

The kundalini serpent (or train) rises from the base of the spine which represents security and sexual desire and moves up through the chakras above the head. Clarity is reached at the top (in the airplane or eagle). In the tantric process, the kundalini must go back down as well bringing the new-found clarity back to the earth. This up and down process is both dangerous and enlightening. One could call it reckless. It is not for cowards. The spirit is telling her to stop being a coward and make the journey.

That's how I read the lyrics. Of course, I could be full of it.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I'm confused by whom the pronouns, "you" and "I", refer to in the poem.

I don't think she is confronting a lover, but rather tensions within herself. The cowardice refers to her inability to find peace with herself.

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I know what you mean. I think the "you're a coward" section is at least partly self-directed. The second person pronoun keeps it powerful, but In a certain way, I think the point is being generalized: one is a coward against the altitude (that is, the implications of spirit); and yet one is also a coward against the flesh (that is, the implications of the physical). What makes me think she is also regretting/not regretting a casual sexual episode is (among other things) the next line: "Reckless this time on the line for yes, yes, yes."

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I don't think she is confronting a lover, but rather tensions within herself. The cowardice refers to her inability to find peace with herself.

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Well she is certainly doing that, but poems can work on more than one level. A lot of her songs at the time were about casual sex (it was the '70s); and the verses: "No matter which route home we take/Or what we forsake" even suggest something a bit illicit.

It also strikes me that, on the simplest level, this poem is about a woman in an airplane (casting a shadow on the plains), who is looking down on an train (also casting a shadow) and believing that her lover is on it. The touching of the two shadows resolves the duality between eagle/plane/spirit and snake/train/instinct; but it is also symbolic of their intercourse. Thus:

I touched you on the central plains
It was plane to train my twin
It was just plane shadow to train shadow
But to me it was skin to skin

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Originally Posted by YesNo

There is also a spirit talking to her who seemingly keeps pointing her in conflicting directions of accepting first the eagle and then the serpent. If she succeeds then she and that spirit (who is neither the serpent nor the eagle) become united.

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Yes, the split tongue spirit is interesting. On a metaphorical level (in any case) he--that is the pronoun Mitchell uses--is a spirit, and so presumably spiritual; but this spirit had a split tongue like a snake--a symbol in this poem for the physical/instinctive. So rather than "neither the serpent nor the eagle," I would say he is both. My question is whether this (curiously male) spirit is just a spirit, or also the lover, who laughs at her protestations and says: "Your serpent will not be denied." I suppose one could take it either way.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

For example, these lines make me think of a kundalini enlightenment process, but I don't know if she was intending such a meaning.

We're going to come up to the eyes of clarity
And we'll go down to the beads of guile
There is danger and education
In living out such a reckless life style

The kundalini serpent (or train) rises from the base of the spine which represents security and sexual desire and moves up through the chakras above the head. Clarity is reached at the top (in the airplane or eagle). In the tantric process, the kundalini must go back down as well bringing the new-found clarity back to the earth. This up and down process is both dangerous and enlightening. One could call it reckless. It is not for cowards. The spirit is telling her to stop being a coward and make the journey.

That's how I read the lyrics. Of course, I could be full of it.

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That's very interesting. Mitchell probably knew about some kind of pop Tantrism (everyone did in the '70s), so she may have been alluding to something like that. The snake could also be interpreted as the tempting serpent in Eden that ultimately led to the Fall of spirit into material/instinctive existence. That's the meaning I bring to the text, although I don't know if Mitchell had it in mind. Snakes (and airplanes) turn up in Mitchell's poetry from time to time, so they seem to have had some kind of special meaning to her. But like most art, finding the interface with one's own thoughts and feelings doesn't necessarily make anyone "full of it" (except for those damned intellectuals, of course :))

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

That's very interesting. Mitchell probably knew about some kind of pop Tantrism (everyone did in the '70s), so she may have been alluding to something like that. The snake could also be interpreted as the tempting serpent in Eden that ultimately led to the Fall of spirit into material/instinctive existence. That's the meaning I bring to the text, although I don't know if Mitchell had it in mind. Snakes (and airplanes) turn up in Mitchell's poetry from time to time, so they seem to have had some kind of special meaning to her. But like most art, finding the interface with one's own thoughts and feelings doesn't necessarily make anyone "full of it" (except for those damned intellectuals, of course :))

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Your interpretation works as well. That is why I don't like this song as much as I do River or Little Green. There is too much ambiguity. The line "I made my baby cry" in River is not explicit about what she did, but it is easy to guess. When little Green's parents wished her to "have a happy ending" that resolved the entire ballad very nicely. These rank for me among the greatest poems ever written.

To bring this back to the OP, you mentioned the serpent in Eden. From this story we get original sin and our freedom as a group initiating what we perceive as evil today. This is represented as a "fall", but it could be a second story of the creation of the universe after the first one at the beginning of Genesis where everything was "good".

I see this story as Eve offering to Adam sex through the apple. It is interesting that Adam does not come up with this idea to eat the apple first and offer it to Eve. There is a similar (at least to me) story of Shakti (female) trying to get Shiva (male) to stop his self-indulgent meditations and do his job and create the universe. She has a hard time convincing him, but ultimately she succeeds. My views on Tantrism and Goddesses come from Sally Kempton's Awakening Shakti although I might have misunderstood Kempton's descriptions.

So where does evil come from? It might be an illusion. If that is the case there is no need to blame someone for it. That does not mean we should not act to remove suffering and be content with meditating as Shiva was.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

To bring this back to the OP, you mentioned the serpent in Eden. From this story we get original sin and our freedom as a group initiating what we perceive as evil today.

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Another way to look at it is that the story reflects the reality of what came to be called Original Sin more than 1000 years later, and shows what the authors and redactors of that part of Genesis thought about the phenomenon.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

and our freedom as a group initiating what we perceive as evil today.

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Original Sin is more than a freedom to initiate what we perceive as evil today. Per Augustine, it is a tendency toward actually doing evil, inherited from the first human beings. Augustine viewed this as a continuation of the "original sin" of Adam and Eve. As I've said, for me, it is instinct inherited from our evolutionary ancestors through natural selection. That is what I mean when I use the term.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

This is represented as a "fall", but it could be a second story of the creation of the universe after the first one at the beginning of Genesis where everything was "good".

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Well, to be very clear, I see the Fall story reflecting an ontological reality (although the version we have has obviously been worked over theologically). Although I am not a Biblical literalist, I believe that the story captures the predicament of zoe--life--imprisoned in flesh. But to take your suggestion that the Fall might actually have been more of a move upstairs, let's see where the myth goes with it:

14 So the Lord God said to the serpent:

“Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”
16 To the woman He said:

“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
In pain you shall bring forth children;
Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.”
17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:

“Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
18 Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.”

If it's all the same to you, YesNo, I'll hold on to my downstairs office. :)

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Originally Posted by YesNo

So where does evil come from? It might be an illusion. If that is the case there is no need to blame someone for it. That does not mean we should not act to remove suffering and be content with meditating as Shiva was.

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Or it might be a moral reality. In either case, the need is to be saved, not to blame someone else. It's "Forgive me, for I am a sinner," not "Don't blame me, the devil made me do it!" (remember Flip Wilson? :)) "Removing suffering" sounds great, but human beings have a pretty poor track record on that score. And again, human evil is not an illusion to those who have to suffer it.

What other Joni Mitchell do you like?

Isn't Joni Mitchell suffering from some bizarre and gruesome disease?

And speaking of Canadian anthems and folk singers from that era, how about "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" by Gordon Lightfoot (of course it's not a Jon Mitchell song, but what is?). I blast it from the car stereo whenever I go to Canada.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzo6Otpgj-E

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

Isn't Joni Mitchell suffering from some bizarre and gruesome disease?

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I guess she had an aneurysm. I heard she was in a coma, but now I'm hearing that was just a rumor. I think she's in pretty rough shape, though.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_7690018.html

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Well, to be very clear, I see the Fall story reflecting an ontological reality (although the version we have has obviously been worked over theologically). Although I am not a Biblical literalist, I believe that the story captures the predicament of zoe--life--imprisoned in flesh.

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I pick and choose what parts I want to accept much like the Redactor did. I don't even mind modifying them.

Harold Bloom thought J (or Bathsheba, as he suggested) was a comic author. I can see that in the way David Rosenberg translated the fall in "The Book of J". Yahweh took a rib from Adam and created Eve. After they ate the fruit, she was punished with "pain increasing, groans that spread into groans: having children will be labor". That didn't stop her from seeing the bright side of things. After she had her first son, she didn't complain about the pain as Yahweh predicted, but remarked with an evident sense of accomplishment, "I have created a man as Yahweh has." (page 65)

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

What other Joni Mitchell do you like?

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I mainly know the album "Blue". There is "Both Sides Now" from an earlier album and "Help Me" From "Court and Spark" that I remember.

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Originally Posted by Melanie

Your post, Virgil, is about what you believe to be God's plan for our "worthiness" via suffering, and your belief that our suffering is a gift from God, and using St. Therese's writings as a foundation…but to a non-believer that is not compelling evidence for God's existence,

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I didn't say that was evidence for believing in God's existence. My point was that it was not proof that God didn't exist. That's the claim: because suffering is in the world God is ether malicious or doesn't exist. That does not follow and is incorrect.

If you already come at this as a non-believer, and no argument is going to change your mind, then why are you having this discussion?

I always hated the religious threads here at Lit Net. It's a waste of my time.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

What other Joni Mitchell do you like?

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I've started listening to other Joni Mitchell albums. Yesterday's was "Both Sides Now" (2000)

The best songs on this album were the two she wrote: "A Case of You" and "Both Sides, Now". The others were old love songs. She was singing them in a bluesy-jazzy way that made me realize that what I like about her songs is not the music so much as the lyrics.

Another thing that struck me is that she seemed to think these songs fit together in terms of quality or why would she put them into one album? That made me wonder if she felt the same way about her songs as her fans do. I would not have matched these songs together.

And that brings me to the OP. Do we really know what someone else is suffering? There are some cases where it seems obvious, but in most cases I wonder. Do we really know suffering at all?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I didn't say that was evidence for believing in God's existence. My point was that it was not proof that God didn't exist. That's the claim: because suffering is in the world God is ether malicious or doesn't exist. That does not follow and is incorrect.

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Isn't that what we have been saying on this thread for some time, Virgil?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

If you already come at this as a non-believer, and no argument is going to change your mind, then why are you having this discussion?

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That's hardly fair to Melanie, if that is who you are talking to. She, YesNo, and I all believe in God, and Ecurb, who says that he does not, is open to argument and more theologically informed than many believers. Melanie and I disagree strongly in many aspects of our approach, but she is an extremely devout Christian, and so am I.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I always hated the religious threads here at Lit Net. It's a waste of my time.

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You of course are the best judge of that. Hate, though, can be a disagreeable traveling companion. I may be wrong, but I get the feeling you are judging us without having read much of this thread. Another approach (and in my opinion, a better one) would be to give it a try. You are welcome to join us in any case. :)