Corpus mysticum, Stefan Rossbach essay

Carlton Clark's avatarSocial Systems Theory

Stefan Rossbach has a wonderful chapter in Observing International Relations: Niklas Luhmann and World Politics, edited by Mathias Albert & Lena Hilkermeir, 2004. The essay is titled “‘Corpus mysticum’: Niklas Luhmann’s Evocation of World Society.”

Rossbach, in discussing Luhmann’s links to early mystics and Gnosticism, has helped me realize why (despite the difficult, often dry reading) I felt an immediate affinity for Luhmannian theory. Back in the early 1980s, I was reading things like the Meister Eckhart, The Cloud of Unknowing, and St John of the Cross, as well as Zen Buddhism and other Eastern mysticisms.  As a 20-year-old, I found St. John of the Cross‘s negative theology, or via negativa, particularly fascinating.

Rossbach links Luhmann to mystics such as Jakob Boehme and Nicholas of Cusa. Here is one passage from Rossbach’s essay:

Contemplating the history of Western philosophy, Luhmann noted that 2,000 years of searching for “essence” had…

View original post 735 more words

Tea with Anna Brinton at Pendle Hill

anna-brinton
At Pendle Hill, in 1964, Anna Brinton would have afternoon tea. She had a huge, Russian type samovar. One would add milk or water, but even then, it would taste like tea. Tea bags, even the expensive ones, are like colored water.
I need a teapot to make tea with tea leaves. Let it steep till it’s good and strong. Keep hot water on the stove to add.
Here’s a sketch I did of her, probably winter of ’65. She was in her 80’s. If you’ve been to the Friends Center in Philadelphia, you’ve seen the statue of Mary Dyer–hung from the gallows in June, 1660 by the Puritans in Massachusetts. Anna Brinton modeled for that as a young woman. I am grateful to have known her–a strong, courageous woman–a great human.
I keep thinking I should frame this and send it to Pendle Hill. I wonder if anyone there remembers her?

Call for a National Day of Reparations

imagesI‘m a son of parents who were children of immigrants, not a native of this continent, even so, knowing what I do about Columbus, this holiday deepens my depression and angry indignation. We can’t undo history, but neither will be free of its burden until we collectively, without reservation, acknowledge our complicity in what we have done and vow to make a new beginning. That goes both for the genocidal theft of land that was the mother of our indigenous peoples, and for the theft and enslavement of humans from the lands where their mothers bore them into the world.
Because so much of the wealth of this nation was purchased by their deaths and suffering, there is no, can be no, meaningful acknowledgement without reparations.
Let this day be known, not only as Indigenous Peoples Day, but The Day of Reparations for all those we have wronged.