[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

In order for the muse to represent creativity's origin "somewhere else," one must either believe that the metaphysical realm of "somewhere else" actually exists, or that an individual's own unconscious mind is a realm so foreign to the conscious mind that it might as well be "somewhere else."

Julie,

I've been deeply troubled by this lately, almost as much as I've been troubled by trying to find a distinction between Grace and Mercy. Here's my dilemma: should I deny and disregard my own experience, because there's no room for it in systematic theology?

I accept the testimony of others, all of them rational and sincere beings, who recount the intervention, and even the nearly physical presence, of the divine in their lives. I know people who say Christ came to them, and even if this has never happened to me, I have no reason to doubt their word. I also know many people, who are reluctant to ever talk about this, who have felt the presence of Mary. That's a phenomenon I can personally attest to, although I've simply felt a presence, the experience of which filled me with joy... and anguish, because even as it happened I knew it couldn't last. There was such a sweetness to the feeling I wanted it to endure forever.

On the other hand, that's a rare occasion. Visits from the Muse are much more frequent, and there's always a very intense sense of obligation on my part. Wordlessly, she makes me promise to do things... mostly to write, as if each poem were a kind of offering, and she hungered for it.

We see similar visitations in other religious traditions, and I'm reluctant to say they don't come from the same source, seen through different prisms: Green Tara, the golden woman of the shining lake, Erzulie Freda, Pomba Gira, etc. But no prism allows for the equivalent of both the Muse and Mary, so I'm left with a troubling and unresolvable dichotomy: on the one hand, my lived experience, on the other, any reasonable system of theology.

Perhaps this is precisely what made Graves attractive to me: the working outside systemic considerations, the search and evidence gathering, even if some of his assumptions and conclusions were the result of less than positive predilections on his part? I don't know, this stuff is all a mystery to me, I can't make sense of it. But I have a feeling something's there, something we've all been missing.

Best,

Bill