Nov. 16 Hopkins' "Terrible Sonnets."Hopkins' "terrible sonnets," and the disappearance of God
Please, no offense. Again I say: Are you there God? It's me, Noël!
This has been my lamentation since an odd, creeping
transformation that took hold in early middle school. My mother never was very religious, and at a
very young age I took a keen interest in church, and she obliged my will. For as long as I could recall, I believed
very much in a Christian God, and then suddenly, out of nowhere...I couldn't
sleep. I couldn't eat. I would cry for no reason. I was plagued with a worry, a "what if?" What if there isn't anything at all? Why should I believe what these people tell
me when they all tell me contradicting mandates? What PROOF is there? That's what people would call faith" an understanding that you may
never know, and yet you chose to believe.
I always found faith very appealing.
It made it easier for me to sleep at night knowing I was going to
heaven. Praying would save all of my
family and friends from harm, and if I failed to study for a test, well, if I
prayed hard enough, things should turn out all right. This is what I had been led to believe, but
as one grows, you are faced with deaths and misfortunes, and this faith is
challenged more and more. Let's skip ahead several years.
I had fallen out of the good graces of the Lord, and I had survived a good
6 years without any sort of Holy punitary consequences. It seemed that I was doing well on this track
of agnosticism, and yet I was still plagued by the unknown. Entering college, I was very much like those
students who "are also looking for meaning in life" and for God. (920)" Over the years my
Christian religious beliefs were chipped away by each new understanding of all
sorts of things! It's not just
science. I don't think Charles Darwin
had anything to do with it because I didn't know enough about the bible to
realize that if you were to follow the Good Book, you would have an unwavering
conviction that the world was a little over 5000 years old. Nope, Chuck didn't do it for me. I'd agree in many ways with Miller that the
modernity of our society is somewhat to blame, with our man-made structures and
our burgeoning cities, and thus the people as a byproduct of such
development. I do find it very telling what the
response on the bottom of 922 had to say about the accuracy of the article "God
and Freshmen." He points out that most of his students
put "spirituality, friends, self-development, education" on the tops of their
lists, but really spend the least amount of time cultivating "their professed
values (922)." When asked about this
discrepancy, their preoccupation with material wealth, television, and
partying, the students "just shrug their shoulders (922)." It's this dilemma, this sort of hypocrisy
that is created by a materialistic world with a disappearing God that made me
throw in the towel for organized religion.
In Who can we blame? There isn't an immediate source of blame, and
philosophers and poets have conflicting ideas.
However, in some instances, the immediacy to believe in God is no longer
felt. God no longer has control of every
aspect of our life, and serves as a comfort to those who'd like to be certain
about the future than as a truly ever-present being. People often go through the motions of
religion in order to stay in the good graces of society and just to pacify that
nagging "what if?" in the back of their minds.
So as "the old system of symbols binding man to God has finally evaporated
man finds himself alone and in spiritual poverty. (902)" Man, "in the midst of one culture" is "aware of all the other
possible attitudes toward life. These
tend to cancel on another out and leave him with a mere empty sense of infinite
potentiality. (904)" I know I can't
speak for people, but I feel this can attribute to one aspect of the
disappearing God. "No way of looking at
the world is perfect or complete," and therefore, instead of "seeking some
absolute perspective," I have been looking,
and have come to college, in hopes to find a belief that suits my understanding
of the world. I don't believe I can ever
again yield to a religion "which consists in an assured belief in the Divine
forgiveness of all your sins, and the Divine correctness of all [its] opinions"
when so many cultures in the world have their own perfectly acceptable forms of
beliefs (915). Miller, in discussing God's disappearance, claims that God "no
longer inheres in the world as the force binding together all men and all
things;" however, in what little religion I have, I believe that is what God is
(900). There is this "disconnection
between man and nature, between man and man, even between man and himself" that
greatly troubles me (900). I still
believe in a god, just as the Romantics did, but like the Romantics, I
disbelieve in the sort of god that supports the beliefs of the hypocritical
masses. It is not enough to proclaim
your religion and put on a façade; it is necessary to incorporate your religion
into everything you do and make it your own.
I find romanticism quite reassuring: one is the "creator or discoverer
of hitherto unapprehended symbols, symbols which establish a new relation,
across the gap, between man and God. (905)" In the end, to each his own. For my own sake, I chose to take another
path, and I would like to forge my own connections that will be influenced by
not only the people I meet in college, but the new modes of thought and forms
of knowledge I will acquire. |