"So you want to be a writer?" -- Charles Bukowski

"Find What You Love," Steve Jobs' at Stanford University

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, who stepped down as CEO of Apple Wednesday after having been on medical leave, reflected on his life, career and mortality in a well-known commencement address at Stanford University in 2005.


Here, read the text of of that address:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

What Motivates You?

Commas in a List

As a university lecturer of English one of the subjects I teach is basic composition. I do not teach grammar, but grammar and syntax often make out part of essay writing. It is inevitable. One thing that the American style textbooks we use advocate is not having a comma before the final “and” in a list. This comma is sometimes referred to as the “serial comma.” In the following example we see how American English neglect the final serial comma: “I like apples, bananas, lemons and gooseberries.” In British English the comma is required: “I like apples, bananas, lemons, and gooseberries.” This is known as the Oxford comma.

Some people would probably say that it doesn't matter and that it is merely a question of geographic preference, such as the pronunciation of tomato as either to-may-to or to-mah-to. While I'm usually fairly flexible with language, I think the extra comma just before “and” serves a very important purpose and leaving it out can causes confusion, especially when the list contains combined items. For example: “I like apples, bananas, lemons, and gooseberries and blueberries.” Notice how the meaning and feel of this sentence changes when we remove the final comma: “I like apples, bananas, lemons and gooseberries and blueberries.” Without the final comma in the latter sentence, lemons, gooseberries, and blueberries are combined as one syntactical unit, which differs from the former sentence where “lemons” is differentiated from the two berries; with “gooseberries and blueberries” forming one syntactical unit and “lemons” forming a separate syntactical unit, like “apples” or “bananas.”

For a while now I've omitted the final comma in much of my writing in an attempt to practice what I preach (or rather to practice what the textbooks from which I teach preach). However, having thought about it for some time, I am resuming the British custom as it communicates meaning better in my opinion, as illustrated above. Now, I'm not saying that one ought never leave out the final serial comma. There may be poetic value in its exclusion. Commas not only separate items, they also indicate a natural pause in language and the writer (poet) may wish to leave out that comma for the sake of rhythm or tempo.

Mythos & Numinous: Two “Profitable” Things for the Christian from Romantic Poetry

By Sanko Lewis

To confirm my understanding, I asked Pastor Maberly if he wanted me to give a sermon about Romantic poetry. “No, not a sermon,” he said, “a talk. A literary talk.” So this is what I am purposed to do this Sabbath morning: an academic talk on poetry to a Christian audience.

The assumption is that there is something from my discipline—that is literature, poetry in particular, and specifically Romantic poetry—that an audience like yourself may find of value. You may ask if there is actually something you can gain from a talk on poetry? It is probably worth being reminded that large portions of the Holy Scriptures are written in poetic diction. There are the obvious culprits: the book of Job, the Psalms, the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. Apart from these, many other sections of the Bible are also poetic, for instance the very first chapter of the Bible, the Creation account, is a poem—something that may be missed by most readers of Genesis. So obviously an understanding of poetry in general could be useful when approaching the Bible's poetic texts, but is there anything to be gained by consulting extra-biblical poetry? Christians have the Bible and we are told in the words of the Apostle Paul to Timothy, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16), so that any additional non-canonical material—that is, anything from outside of the Christian Bible—is usually considered obtuse, superficial, redundant and even profane. Secular poetry, unlike the biblical psalms, is not thought of as “given by the inspiration of God,” and one would be tempted to argue therefore not “profitable.” Note, however, that Paul was speaking of Scripture specifically, not of other texts. It is not insensible to consider other texts, like poetic texts, to also be profitable, but, of course, in different ways. Secular poetry is not the Christian's first oracle of choice “for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,” although some poems do ponder such matters. Rather, the Christian approaches literature as one would approach other sources of instruction where the godly-minded person may perceive glimpses of the Divine, such as nature, philosophy, the sciences, and yes, also the aesthetic arrangement of language chosen for their meaningful, figurative and lyrical qualities. The latter, of course, being a simple definition of poetry.

So what is it that a Christian can learn from poetry? I hope to discuss with you two “profitable” things that we can derive from poetry in general and Romantic poetry in particular: first, a rediscovery of Mythos; and second, a reawakening to the Numinous.

Romanticism

Before I speak on these points I feel it necessary to momentarily digress and first explain what I mean by Romantic poetry as it is possible that some may misunderstand the term. Romantic poems are not poems about romantic feelings as we generally use the word “romantic” today. While Romantic poetry is in a sense quite emotional, those emotions are not limited to feelings of love or lust for a romantic partner. Romantic poetry is generally passionate, but the passion is not by default devoted to a lover; in fact, very few Romantic poems are love poems. Devotion in Romantic poetry are frequently for something other than a loved one; Romantic poetry could be in praise of a daffodil or a rose, a sheep or tiger, a star or the west wind, or virtues like truth and bravery. Romantic poetry refers to the poetry, particularly English poetry, written during the Romanticism, aka Romantic Era, that started in the 1780s and continued well into the 19th century, coinciding with the many revolutions of that period, such as the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the revolutions in the United States and elsewhere. Romanticism was in a sense also a revolution. It revolted against the obsession with the rationalization and industrialization of that period which considered human beings little more than automatons—robots. Although this was a time of wonderful scientific discovery and industrial progress, it was those in power—the aristocratic state and its supportive religions—that seemed to enjoy true benefit, while the common man continued to suffer greatly; hence the revolutions. (Hence, also, the revolutions we see in our own time.) Percy Bysshe Shelley describes the England of his time as follows:

England, 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,--
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An army which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed,--
A Senate--Time's worst statute unrepealed,--
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst to illumine our tempestuous day.

The leaders are “dregs,” “leech-like.” The army that should protect liberty destroys it. The Church is “Christless” and “Godless.” (Descriptions quite fitting for our day as well.) People were not merely oppressed physically—“starved and stabbed in the untilled field,” but also mentally; the Romantics would probably say spiritually as well. The poet William Blake described their minds as “manacled.”

The emphasis of the time on rationalization and industrialization praised a stern, mechanical, and overtly rational—i.e. logical—intellectualism focussed on left-brain thinking, which was scornful of the free expression of emotions, inhibitive of passionate feelings and, restrictive of the imagination—i.e. right-brain thinking. Yes, this rational obsessiveness provided wonderful scientific advancement and industrial progress, but these would become the forge that would eventually bring us the destructive power of the great world wars. The science that brought us the engine also brought us the sweatshop, the tank, and eventually the atom bomb. The Romantics revolted with a near prophetic insight. They recognized that the human being cannot be viewed as a mere automaton, a soulless, machinery. They understood that something in our souls die in city and factory. They grasped the importance of nature and her ability to quicken our spirits. They intuited the value of the imagination and its mystical ability to rise us up above our miseries. They appreciated the value the subconscious, of the inner-man, as part of the whole person. They put their hope in some “glorious Phantom” (A rediscovery of man's connection with nature? A new Zeitgeist? A spiritual reawakening? God's divine Spirit?) that would “burst” forth and illuminate the “tempestuous” time that they lived in.

One can talk about Romanticism, but in the end it really needs to be felt to be understood.

Musical Interlude: Chopin's Prelude in E-Minor (Op. 28, No. 4)



It is with this backdrop of the Romanticism, that we will look at the two “profitable” things that I believe the Christian can gain from Romantic Poetry.

1. A Rediscovery of Mythos

The Enlightenment and resultant scientific age did a very good job at dispelling superstitious fiction and replacing it with enlightened scientific fact. That this was a good thing cannot be denied. We know today, for instance, that epilepsy is not caused by demon possession but by abnormal brain wiring or a disturbance in normal neuron activity and we can treat it with appropriate scientific treatments, not with mumbo-jumbo exorcisms. People of old knew nothing about brain wiring and neuron activity so they came up with an explanation, such as demon possession. We could say that they came up with a myth. “Myth,” in this sense, means something that is not scientific; an untruth. The assumption is that any explanation that is not scientific is not true, and therefore a myth; however, this is not necessarily the case. Let me give you an example: “The sun came up this morning.” This statement is true, but it is not scientific. You will all agree with me that the sun did come up this morning, but scientifically that is not true. Rather, the earth rotated around it's axis and our part of the planet became exposed to the sun's rays and as our position to the sun changes as the earth rotates through its 24 hour cycle we notice the sun at different positions relative to us, giving the illusion that the sun is moving across the sky.

There is therefore a type of myth that is scientifically untrue—like the sun coming up—but which is nevertheless true—the sun did come up. Raffaele Pettazzoni, in his article “The Truth of Myth” talks about “true stories” and “false stories.” The sun coming up is a story—a myth—but it is a true myth. The reason we can accept both the earth rotating on its axis and the sun coming up as true accounts of the same event is because, as Pettazzoni puts it, “. . . human thought is mythical and logical at the same time” (107).

The ancient Greeks used two words to describe these two types of knowledge: Mythos and Logos. Logos, of course, is the etymological root for our English word “logic,” referring to rational reasoning. Mythos refers to those “true stories” that Pettazzoni spoke about; stories that reveal truths that although not necessarily scientifically accurate are nevertheless true. Karen Armstrong, in her book The Case for God (2009) explains that in ancient times both Logos and Mythos were thought of as “essential and neither was considered superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complimentary” (2). She continues to explain that “Logos ('reason') was the pragmatic mode of thought that enable people to function effectively in the world. It had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality . . . But it had its limitations: it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggles. For that, people turned to mythos or 'myth'” (3).

In our scientific age Logos have become the only acceptable truth. When something cannot be verified scientifically, it is regarded as an untruth. Myth, in our time is put aside as mere fiction, i.e. fantasy. This resulted in a loss of Mythos – a major resource of truths put aside and unexplored.

Today, when most people read the old myths, they read it from a scientifically indoctrinated paradigm that can tell you much about biology but little about life. All they see is fantasy, but fail to see the Mythos, the truth embedded in the fantasy. For this reason people read the old myths of gods dying and being reborn and think that the Christian story is just another one of these fictional fantasies. Because they could not see the Mythos, neither could they recognise the myth became Logos. In his essay “Truth Became Myth” C. S. Lewis explains it as follows:

Now as myth transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the dying God without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens – at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical person crucified . . . under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. 

The Old Testament Bible as well as some of the pagan mythologies tell similar myths: the Mythos of the “dying God” that through his sacrificial death makes a way of salvation for mankind. In the Old Testament it is typified in the Levitical sacrificial system, in the prophetic words of Isaiah and Daniel, in the poetic language of the Psalms, and so on. When the Mythos became Logos, when the mythical God became a factual person, when Jesus came as the Word incarnate (John 1:14) and lived as a real man at a specific time and place, it was those that rightly recognized the Mythos that could accept him. If you understand “the sun came up this morning” it is easier to recognize “the earth is turning on its axis.” Religion is not “pure rational thinking which knows nothing of myth . . .” says Pettazzoni (107), nor is it pure myth that knows nothing of rational thinking. Mythos and Logos should not be seen as in “conflict but complimentary.” It requires a combination of both to get the whole picture: “To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more necessary than the other is,” explains C. S. Lewis.

Jesus underscored the importance of Mythos during His earthly ministry. Most of Jesus' teaching was in the telling of stories. He taught truths through Mythos. He could tell us the fact—the Logos—that God loves us, but it is the Mythos through the parable of the prodigal son that returns home and is unconditionally received, loved and forgiven by the father, that gives us a true sense of God's love towards us. Logos alone is not enough to understand religious truths.

Poetry can help us rediscover Mythos, for poetry is ultimately a 'mythical' use of language, concerned more with connotative meaning (Mythos) than denotative meaning (Logos).

To the Evening Star – William Blake

Thou fair-hair'd angel of the evening,
Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light
Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the
Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,
And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,
Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,
And then the lion glares through the dun forest:
The fleeces of our flocks are cover'd with
Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence!

One cannot understand this poem from a purely rationalistic paradigm. The speaker is talking to the evening star. Why would anybody want to talk to the planet Venus, the second planet from the Sun, with an atmosphere made up of mostly carbon dioxide and clouds consisting of sulphuric acid? Of course, the speaker is not talking to the planet, but to Venus, the goddess of love. Yet this is not it either: the speaker is evoking the myth of the Grecian goddess of love, but as we have discussed earlier, the myth is merely a story. Embedded in the story is the Mythos—a truth. The speaker is praying not to the planet Venus, nor to the Grecian goddess, but to the Ultimate Reality of Love. Because science fails to describe God and logic comes short, we need a myth, to reveal to us something of the Mythos, the mythical truth, of God. Mythos helps us see the God of Love that “smile upon our evening bed” and protect our loved ones from “wolf” and “lion.” These, of course, being neither just a factual wolf (canis lupus) nor just a factual lion (panthera leo), but whichever frightening and dangerous thing there may be that intends to harm our “flocks.” The poem “To the Evening Star” is a prayer to the God of love to protect our “flocks”—our loved ones, our children, our property—against the “wolfs” and “lions” of this world, particularly during the night time, those times of darkness when we are at our most vulnerable. We can sleep peacefully when we know that God's “influence” is protecting those whom we care for.

2. A Sense of the Numinous

Musical Interlude: Chopin's Funeral March (Final section: 6:56-9:33)



Not only did the obsessive rationalism, the industrial age, science's hijacking of all truth, and city-life deprive us of Mythos, it also took away from us any sense of the numinous.

In his book The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto described the numinous experience as mysterium tremendum et fascinans, “a fearful and fascinating mystery.” A numinous occurrence is a mysterious experience leaving you in fear-and-trembling, but also in awe. When was the last time you stood in fear and trembling before anything? When last did you experienced something of awe: simultaneously awful and awesome? I remember once standing on a pier in Durban, South Africa, hundreds of meters into the ocean. Standing at the edge I looked down at the waves below me, the emerald apexes two-three-four meters above the base of the wave. I was overcome by a feeling, not merely vertigo, but a sense of awe at the fearsome power of the ocean. When you saw the footage of the recent tsunami, what emotions rose in you? Did you also stand amazed and terrified at the unimaginable force that swept away buildings, uprooted trees, flicked over trucks, extinguished lives, all in a seemingly effortless display of power? When you see satellite pictures of hurricanes big enough to cover half of a continent, what feelings are ignited in you? Living in cities few people get a chance to experience the majesty of the night sky and fewer still have ever experienced the mindbogglingly vastness of the heavens, a vastness that makes you realise how infinitely small you are by comparison.

Something that the Romantic poets realized was that the modern era with its scientific explanations that negates all mystery and living so removed from nature, causes one to lose a sense of the numinous. Without a sense of the numinous it is difficult to have a sense of the majesty of God, which is greater still than the oceans and the heavens. To the Romantic poets, mystery is a key element to being truly human. For this reason they put emphasis on the creative act, on the subconscious, on dreams, on the imagination, even on death: the mysterious things. But it is in nature where they feel that special ingredient—where the mysterious seem to touch the soul, where the numinous can be felt.

William Blake's poem “The Tyger” is considered one of the most anthologised poems in English. I think part of what makes it so popular is that it gives a sense of the numinous:

The Tyger – William Blake

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The speaker describes a tiger—a ferocious magnificent beast. The black stripes on its orange hide creates the image of tongues of fire, making the animal seem to be burning. It's eyes glows like coals. It's muscles and sinews seem to be forged from steal. An adult tiger can weigh 300 kg (660 pounds), be three meters in length (around 11ft), with canines of about 10 centimetres (four inches) long. They can reach a speed of over 60 km per hour (nearly 40 miles an hour) and can jump horizontally nearly 10 meters. Imagine you find yourself sitting right next to this ferocious predator while it is asleep. It may wake up at any second and find you there within striking distance of its giant, scalpel-sharp claws. A strike with a tiger's paw is strong enough to fracture your skull or break your back. Dread, fantastic dread, is the emotion that comes to mind. The tiger is at once mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans—mysteriously fearful and fascinating. But even greater than the tiger, is the Creator of the tiger, the mythical blacksmith in the poem that forged the tiger, using mythical blacksmith's tools, a “hammer,” an “anvil,” a “furnace,” with which to make the fearsome predator. The blacksmith retrieved the fire from which the tiger's eyes are made from some mythical far-off place, “distant deeps or skies.” The blacksmith twisted the sinews of the tiger's heart like one would twist wires; he moulded the tiger's brain in a furnace. And when the ferocious beast began to live, when its “heart began to beat,” the blacksmith feared it not. The poem introduces us to a being even more fearful than the tiger. In this poem we are confronted with the numinous.

...ooOoo...

We live in a time of “myth busting.” The skies are so polluted that stars cannot inspire us. These days it sadly requires tragic natural disasters to instil in us a sense of the numinous. The poets, particularly the Romantic poets, reminds us of both Mythos and the numinous. From Mythos we learn truth that science cannot articulate. C. S. Lewis was of the opinion that “men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed.” From the numinous we are reminded of that which is wholly other and greater than us. We are reminded of how awfully awesome God is.

Like the accomplished photographer that helps us see better the beauty or tragedy that is all around us, poetry's purpose is to remind us to look at the world with a reawakened sense of the great themes of life. I finish my talk with the hope that you feel inspired to rediscover both the mythical and the numinous. While the Romantic poets are concerned with both, they are not the only place—or maybe not even the best place—to be exposed to either Mythos or the numinous. If we were to ask the Romantic poets where to find Mythos or the numinous, I think they would tell us to get out of the cities and into nature. Good advice. And Shelley would probably admonish us that our religion should not be “Christless, Godless,” and with “a book sealed,” so let us search for the mythical-factual Christ, for the Numinous God and let us open the Book. We return to the Scriptures “for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,” but we can also find in the Scriptures great examples of both Mythos and the numinous. Read the poetic books and the prophecies for Mythos, the Torah or the final chapters of the book of Job for a sense of the numinous and go to the Gospels to see their culmination. In the life, death and resurrection of Christ we see Mythos become Logos, myth become fact. Before the empty tomb we are confronted with a mythical, numinous, nevertheless factual Being that is killed, yet conquers death and lives again, and whom invites us to share in His triumph.

Amen