Word: judeo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...second sequence, "Crux of Radiance," continues to develop the religious overtone of the book, grappling with the Judeo-Christian tradition and the image of God in poetry. Alternately sorrowful and biting, Schnackenberg derides a modern society that has lost touch with its historic roots. Ancient ruins figure prominently in this sequence, symbols of an artistic and spiritual splendor that once existed and has now been abandoned and forgotten. Poetry is described as "a gold thread...you feel your way along" in the search for memory...
Schnackenberg exhorts us to value that golden thread: "But really you must admit/You're lost/ But really you must not lose the way," she writes of the human condition. This can refer to losing the "way" of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but the poem suggests a further, broader meaning: by losing the connection of poetry to history, we lose a vital way of understanding our past...
...know. What about Tom + Jefferson's conviction that it is possible for a nonbeliever to be a moral person, "find((ing)) incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise"? Even George Washington must shudder in his sleep to hear the constant emphasis on "Judeo-Christian values." It was he who wrote, "We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land . . . every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart...
...colonies: Quaker women were burned at the stake in Puritan Massachusetts; Virginians could be jailed for denying the Bible's authority. They knew Europe had terribly disfigured itself in a religious war recalled now only by its duration -- 30 years. No wonder John Adams once described the Judeo-Christian tradition as "the most bloody religion that ever existed," and that the Founding Fathers took such pains to keep the hand that holds the musket separate from the one that carries the cross...
...religions are equal, but some are more equal than others: Judeo-Christian values and traditions are often included in litanies of oppressive Western paradigms. Catholicism (except liberation theology) is considered especially reactionary unless you openly denounce the Pope's position on abortion, and prochoice groups feel free to use anti-Catholic rhetoric to motivate their followers. Luckily, these problems are mainly confined to politically correct enclaves like Harvard Divinity school, which presents liberal Christianity as nothing but the sugar that adds extra sweetness to their New Age mushiness...