Merry Christmas to all! Thank you for gifts of insights. Here is an example of
how I have appropriated MoQ, for what its worth/value/quality. You may shelve
the essay, but, please, not the greeting and best wishes.
Paco
THE CHRISTMAS OF QUALITY
(Take off from Robert M. Pirsig and Emmanuel Levinas)
It the beginning was this event: The Lord said: “Let Quality
happen.” And Quality occured. Then he said: “Create boldly.” And dynamic
Quality, free, undivided and undefined, created light, wave and particle, it
is. It created the heavens and the earth and all they contain; then man and
woman. The Lord saw that all was of high quality. He gave to man and woman this
creation to care for and enrich. To them and their progeny the Lord gave a
special sense to experience and appreciate quality before they think of it,
reflect and analyze it in the laboratory of their rational minds, and so come
to the knowledge of the presence or absence of the truth, goodness and beauty
of things and of themselves.
In time dynamic Quality manifests its being over the horizon of
possibility. It says again and again: “I am value/worth of all. Experience me
as I create patterns of value of the inorganic world of quanta and chemicals;
of the biological world of flora and fauna and DNA; of the social world of
nests, people and their institutions; of the intellectual life of ideas and
insights of mind and “no-mind” mind.” All creation, all life is of
quality/value, and hence, moral. And so before Being, Quality is. Before Good
and True, Ego and Will, Idea and Spirit, Quality, therefore ethics, is.
Experienced pre-theoretically, quality is not a thing but an event at which
awareness of subjects and objects is made possible, Robert M. Pirsig tells us.
But man and woman sinned, and their children too. The high sheen of the quality
of creation is diminished by them, by us, on whom quality is dependent for care
and enrichment. But merciful Word was uttered that people could evolve to high
quality and help creation regain its former moral status in time and through
processes of personal, social and ecological struggles against the forces of
rationalism and empiricism, neoliberalism and empire that dichotomize subject
and object, thematize and totalize and even brutalize people and imprison their
freedom in the Same of self.
The human person, the you and me, and community, and most especially the
toiling masses of history, have had a long experience of struggle for high
quality patterns of value, especially social-intellectual (which includes
transpersonal/mystical) value. Is the goal of transformations to high quality
possible? The law of evolution says Yes! Everyone can recognize quality and
hierarchical degrees of quality -- inorganic, biological, social and
intellectual. Each pattern of value is to be respected at its level; lower
patterns are not to pull down higher ones to their level; but higher patterns
should lift lower ones to their level. Wine, food and sex are not meant to be
idols of a person of high social-intellectual value. Fascists are judged by
human rights. When the basis of peace and order is the inorganic values of arms
and capitalist profit at the top of the pyramid, all creation suffers. High
quality social-intellectual values must reign supreme; and
therefore too the human person as producer of ideas. Easier said then done in
sinful human condition?
Christmas is quality event enabling just and justing evolution of quality.
The Word-of-God-made-flesh; Emmanuel entering creation and human history is
supreme manifestation of dynamic Quality. His coming has given added-value to
nature, the human person and community, to you and me. Experiencing him as
Christmas event is experiencing the meaning of quality and possibilities of
high quality of life for all, even in situations of immoral dominance of
inorganic-biological values of pax romana, pax americana, pax gloriana, and low
social-intellectual values of ideological Same. Christmas empowers us to
struggle for high levels of quality.
Jesus disrupts scientistic and rationalistic metaphysical ways of thinking,
knowing and being to enable us to see the glory of stars and heavenly hosts,
cow, sheep and donkey, poor shepherds and questing magi, Marys and Josephs
everywhere, and above all, the high quality of the Other for whom he came --
the Other in his/her vulnerability who demands, calls, as Emmanuel Levinas
reminds us, for high quality justice and responsibility from me, that he/she
may enjoy abundance of life in the wholeness of infinity.
May we experience the human-divine Quality of Jesus of Bethlehem, and in his
event, enhancement of the value/worth of the Other and of our own.
A blessed Christmas to all! Grace and peace! #
Francisco R. Albano
[who prays his theological
accommodation makes sense]
May Yahweh bless you and keep you!
May Yahweh let his face shine on you, and be gracious to you!
May Yahweh look kindly on you, and give you his peace! (Num. 6:24-26)
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