The Promised Land Project: In the Realm of the Prophets: Moving into the Shaky Ground of Prophecy

Turning Vision into Action....at least hypothetically

Strike up the music of the band
We're blazing a trail for the promised land
Heaven on earth is within you.

Through the writing of stories, poetry, essays, and a novel, I’ve creatively contended with the consumer culture and the problem of the ideal in the modern era. This preoccupation in time would lead to a vision of cultural transformation and where I believe our democratic society needs to go to truly progress beyond the modern era. Conceding my limited credibility, this blog provides a synthesis of recognized visionaries, poets, and writers with the objective of making a credible argument. Ultimately, it is a certain feeling the project strives to inspire and sustain on a certain level, making more vital use of poetry and the arts; consequently whether one agrees or not is less important than whether one senses it and feels it over time.

Friday, September 17, 2010

In the Realm of the Prophets: Moving into the Shaky Ground of Prophecy

When addressing the subject of prophecy, my position is that one would be right to be skeptical but wrong to be dismissive. Before getting too far onto the subject, it would be prudent to review what is perhaps the most notable folly among humankind. As I cited in the earlier blog of June 19 in how it relates to our ability to reason, the following quote from the writer Montaigne is partiuclarly relevant to the phenomena of prophecy:

But reason has taught me that to condemn a thing thus, dogmatically, as false and impossible, is to assume the advantage of knowing the bounds and limits of God’s will and of the power of our mother Nature; and that there is no more notable folly in the world than to reduce these things to the measure of our capacity and competence.

As the year 2012 nears, because the Mayan calendar inexplicably ends at that year, interest in the prophecy and speculation about the end of the world as we know it has increased. Though one may not believe in a particular prophecy, the fact that others believe in it matters, affecting their actions and consequently your own: no man is an island, as John Donne put it. The prophecy of the second coming of Christ has particularly taken root in the collective imagination. But as 2012 nears, we should also note in American history what's referred to as "the Great Disappointment". At that time many nineteenth-century Americans expected the return of Jesus Christ in 1844 but, disappointingly, failed to show up, at least in physical form; and human history as we know it continues.