Re: Things that don't evolve

On 3/14/06, Michael Roberts <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Iain, you are lowering the tone of this list.
>
> Then the Americans can enjoy the 16th June.
>

OK, perhaps some T.S. Eliot might raise the tone?

Seriously, evolution could be seen as "change through time". In the
following passage from "Burnt Norton" from "Four Quartets", which is one of
the greatest pieces of Christian literature that repays studying over and
over, T.S. Eliot reflects on the nature of time, mortality, and the sense of
time_less_ness, seeing the spiritual states as an escape from time, and a
just "being" at the "still point", where, presumably no evolution occurs.

An old lady of 91, who is not a Christian, living near us whom we look after
a bit, wants to read "The Wasteland" with me because she finds people who
like T.S. Eliot few and far between. I'm hoping to graduate her onto Four
Quartets..

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, *there* we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
*Erhebung* without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Received on Tue Mar 14 17:02:42 2006