Adagio

Adagio: plural of adage. Adage: memorable saying which holds some important fact of experience that is considered true by many.

I am very amazed at the beauty of Wallace Stevens’ Adagio. While reading, I got the feeling that it was very real. Adagio exemplifies Wallace’s belief system: to him life and poetry are like a religion. Even though Stevens poetry is secular, is not altogether without the belief in a higher power. Stevens states that “it is the belief and not the god that counts. Stevens is in love with life, which is the inspiration for his poetry and his poetry is his belief system, as he states that “poetry is like prayer.” Stevens poetry reminds me a bit of Rastafarianism. Rastas believe in a higher power, Jah, but instead of reaching Jah through attending church they feel closer to him through nature and living life in a certain way. So nature, life, and everything around them are like their religion rather than holy books and temples. I really love Stevens’ poetry because of his love of life, the world around him, and the pleasure found in the here-and-now moments.

Sunday Morning

When I hear secular religion, I think of contradiction: how can anything secular be considered a religion and how can this definition be so open? Professor Smith cleared my confusion of the definition of secular religion in class on Wednesday. Secular religion does not mean that anything can be considered a religion, such as smoking weed. What differentiations secular religion from an obsession or habit and enables it to be compared with religion is that it offers an individual a concept of reality and motivation in life, without being selfish or harmful to the individual in nature. Wallace Stevens’ poem, Sunday Morning, can be considered secular religion because it exemplifies Stevens’ concept of reality, which is different than a traditional religious view of reality. Most traditional religion believers live their lives on Sunday morning with attending church to save their souls, but Stevens views soul-saving as having enjoyment, peace, and happiness for the body and mind such as staying at home on a Sunday morning while drinking coffee and eating oranges. So Stevens’ concept of reality is based off of living in the here-and-now only for the benefit gained from that moment’s experience whereas traditional believers live their lives for the benefit that they will gain in the afterlife. Yet Stevens does show a belief in a higher power because he mentions religious concepts in his poem, such as the “holy hush of ancient sacrifice” and “things to be cherished like the thought of heaven.” I feel that Stevens has this view because he does believe in a higher but a traditional religious belief did not seem to work for him, so he sought out another belief in life that was in tune with his mentality and concept of reality, which is what makes his poetry to be defined as secular religion.

Response to Annemarie's Blog

From Wednesday's class, I realized how difficult it can be to discuss secular religion...or religion in general I guess, in reference to art because art by itself is so interpretive. Discussion is especially hard when the item up for grabs is a work by Jackson Pollock. A few people seemed to think that Pollock's work has nothing to do with religion, secular or nonsecular but I beg to differ.
I really like what Annemarie had to say about symbols. One hard thing about discussing Pollock's work in a religious context was that people were trying to find a disintguishable picture in the chaos, which works at times but I think there's a different way to go about it and that's through symbols. Annemarie stated that art is the greatest symbol of all because it invokes a visual stimulation followed by a visual response in the individual. I completely aggree with this notion. While looking at Pollock's work it is not the title that matters or what one can decipher from mass of drips...but it is what the painting as a whole provides for viewers emotionally. For example, a viewer might not be able to distinguish one of Pollock's drip paintings but may be drawn to it becuase it may provide him/her relief from what is going on in the world at that moment. For example, when I look at Pollock's "No. IA" I get lost in it and feel as though I'm inside my brain instead of in reality. This provides a relief for me from the stress of life on earth and I get a sense of transcending reality...which is what religion provides for people.
So, to sum up I think an important thing to consider when looking at Pollock's paintings is to not expect something definit but to just focus on what it does for an individual's emotions and mental state.

Secular religion within "Red"

I found the relationship between the old judge and Valentine an interesting one. I also found something religious in it. In the beginning of the film Valentine is seen as a romantic, constantly waiting for her boyfriend's phone call and tells him how much she misses him. Even though viewers only hear the boyfriend's voice, we get a sense that he is controlling, paranoid, and withdrawn from her in that he does not love Valentine as she much as she loves him and that he may be cheating on her. But she is oblivious to all of this because she is stuck in her idealized view of the world.
When she meets the judge she is surpised at his blunt personality and automatically judges him as a numb old man who is dead to the world without a care for humanity. In reality, he does have a care for humanity, etc. but the thing that differs he from Valentine is his acuteness to reality. When he spies on people, he is actually allowing himself to face the tragedies and hardships of life rather than attempting to cover them up in a soft, cotton blanket which Valentine does...she shields herself from the real unfairness and tragedies of life. When she returns Rita, the old judge asks what her motives were for doing such a thing: did she return it because she actually wanted to (seeing reality) or because she was afraid of the guilt (a shield from reality). This, I think is secular religion: living a raw life, without a barrier from anything. Lots of times religion provides people with a metaphysical, transcendent feeling but secular religion allows people to be humanitarians, to find identities while living life on earth and seeing it for what it is.
This relates to what Golding said in his article on Jackson Pollock in "Paths to the Absolute," Abstract Impressionists saw themselves as "belonging to the here and in a more self-concious way" (116).

I felt that Jackson Pollock is a mix of both Jane Addams' religious style and his own unique belief system. Pollock is similar to Jane Addams in his intent to, through his belief system, reach the community and bridge the gap between rich and poor/people of different ethnic backgrounds. This is seen in his interest in anthropology and, as author Golding describes, his "attempt to resolve the clash and collision between Mexican and indigenous native American art with the mainstream of European modernsim" (118).
I see Pollock as definitely secular although he uses secular religion as an attempt to fulfill the holes in his life, which nonsecular religion (as a definition) provides such as an identity and comfort during tragedy.
Golding states that Pollock was not an intellectual but that his "reactions were visceral [feelings rather than reason] and he did his learning visually" (128). So, any sort of belief of Pollock's had to be something that he would relate to, which was visual/abstract are and Jungian symobls all of which can be interpreted according to one's own thoughts and feelings rather than reason. For example, when one looks at abstract are one says what comes first to mind, which may be what is in one's subconcious. Abstract art does not have to mean one thing, the title only suggests what the work meant to the artist.
From art, Pollock wished to find some sort of identity (such as skater's find with skateboarding). Golding describes this as a "dichotomy between the search for self and the longing to identify with an absolute- the greater than the self"' (116). This is where I see secular religion differing from nonsecular religion because in a nonsecular religion practitioners usually search for a personal identity but not an identity with a higher power because that crosses invisible status lines. For Pollock, his search for a personal identity failed. This is where I think secular religion fails in that people attempt to identify themselves with a higher being which they cannot achieve because they are only human, not gods.

Beyond Institutional Religion

From reading chapters 4-6 of Hull House, I gained a better sense of who Addams is and what her concerns and goals in life are. These chapters are written after Addams is finished with her first years of college. Already she seems like the type of person who is more “hands-on” rather than strictly academic. She chastises the student who has more and more schooling and only plans to save the world rather than going out into the world, seeing the reality of it and actually doing humanitarian work.
I noticed that, at this point in Addams’s life, humanitarianism is firmly established as her religion, yet it is based in Christianity. I wonder then…it is my belief that religion does not have to be considered truly as institutional, that it goes beyond going to a place of worship, fellowshipping, and reading from a holy book…but does religion have to have some sort of base/root in an institutional religion? For example, social service acts as a religion to Addams because it gives her an identity and a motivation in life, but she reminds readers of her Christian humanitarian goals through Hull House, for example she writes sentences such as “I believe that there is a distinct turning among many young men and women toward this simple acceptance of Christ’s message,” “renaissance of the early Christian humanitarianism,” and “express in social service and in terms of action the spirit of Christ.” So I wonder if her goal was not rooted in Christianity, would social service still be considered a religion in her case and would her goals be the same? For an abstract thing to be considered a religion for someone, does it have to be rooted in a belief in a higher power?

The Calling to Social Service

Two things stood out to me while reading the first three chapters of Jane Addam’s “Hull House:” the story of how she was called into social service/her persona, and her relationship with her father.
Jane Addams describes herself as sensitive to the moral concerns of life. She noticed this about herself at an extremely young age. It seems that she as an extremely acute conscious and therefore very sensitive to disobedience and the evil side of life. Addams recalls her first encounter with poverty. She states that she had her “first sight of poverty [and] felt the curious distinction between the ruddy poverty of the country and that which even a small city presents in its shabbiest streets.” Addams was of course surprised at this because it was unlike anything she had ever seen before since her dad was a wealthy mill owner and ensured the stability and success of his family.
This reminds me of the early life of Siddhatta Gotama, before he became the Buddha and I realized that he and Addams shared similar callings in life. At his birth it was predicted that Gotama would either be the next ruler or a monk. Since his father wanted the former, he shielded Gotama from the harsh realities of life. One day Gotama was able to walk in the streets and was appalled at the poverty that he saw. Like Addams, he decided to do something about it…he did not try to save the world and eliminate poverty but he tried to work with it, which is what Addams did with Hull House. Hull House is a place to educate the poor and to provide shelter and company. So I guess I saw Addams as a 19th century Buddha of sorts.
I found the relationship that Addams had with her father an odd one. To me it seemed that, as a young girl, Addams treated her father like a religious figure, almost like her personal god because she was fearful of him and obeyed him in every way. Yet it seems that once she found her calling for social service she did not view her father is this strict sense anymore. Even though she always had her Christian faith it seemed that something was lacking, that an institutional religion could not solely fulfill her. When she was younger, she thought that her father would fill this void but she found out that social service was a better fulfillment. This just shows that religion is a multitude of things, not solely the idea of going to church and reading from a holy book.