If Kant is correct
If Tillich is true
God can be good
God can be delightful
But God is not beautiful
For we cannot be
Disinterested in God
Unconcerned with Being-Itself.

God is being-itself.
After this has been said
Nothing else can be said
About God as God
Which is not symbolic.
God as being-itself
Is the ground of the ontological
Structure of being
Without being
Subject to this structure
God is the structure;
Having the power to
Determine the structure
Of everything
That has being
Therefore
If anything beyond this
Bare assertion
Is said about God
It is no longer a direct and proper
Statement, no longer a concept.
It is indirect pointing to something
Beyond itself: Symbolic.”

“What is being itself?
What is that which is not a special being
Or group of beings, not something concrete or
Abstract but rather something which is always
Thought implicitly and sometimes explicitly
If something is said to be?”

“It is impossible to speak of being
Without also speaking of becoming
Becoming is as genuine in the structure
Of being as that which remains
Unchanged in the process of becoming”

“What is the content of our ultimate concern?
What does concern us unconditionally?
Our ultimate concern is that which determines
Our being or not-being
Nothing can be of ultimate concern for us
Which does not have the power of
Threatening and saving our being.”

To which we belong
In which we become
On which we depend as
Our ultimate ground of
Being

“Cognitive eros is born out of
Poverty and abundance
Driving us toward reunion with that
To which we belong and which
Belongs to us.”

V. Tillich’s Take

“Knowing is a form of union
In every act of knowledge
Knower and that which is known are
United; the gap between subject and
Object overcome”

I need not approve of beauty
Nor agree with beauty
I ought not – cannot – need the
Truly beautiful; But it is right to
Needlessly heedlessly like it.

When disinterested the beautiful descends?

“Taste is the ability to judge an
Object, or a way of presenting it,
By means of a liking or disliking
Devoid of all interest. The object of
Such a liking is called beautiful.”

“All interest either presupposes a
Need or gives rise to one; and
Because interest is the basis for
Approval it makes the judgment
About the object unfree.”

“Only the liking involved in
Taste for the beautiful is
Disinterested and free, since
We are not compelled to give
Our approval by any interest.”

What is this emotion
Mere sentimentality
Aflame with birth aging death
Or an unveiling of reality
Realized and regnant

Not so impressed I turn left and am still moving from
One room to the next when I stand breathless
Tears welling before three men by Rembrandt
A young man (is it him?) the artist as an old man and
The Rabbi proud penetrating self-possessed.

Downstairs we come face to face with ourselves
Young couples courting, old couples eating by
Van Mieris, Metsu and Steen. Flirting singing
Conspiring desiring far from Olympus or Zion
Happily building polder Haarlem to the Hague.

Upstairs ancient ideals restrain revelation
Deciding what is known or to be shown
Botticelli is chaste even with Aphrodite
Caravaggio’s catamites – child prophets or
Young gods exuding ruddy innocence.

Given to artisti stranieri (foreign and
I Hear strange or strained) it is a sudden
Shift from spring to autumn – south to
North– light to dark – spiritual to
Something much more personal.

IV. Geschmacksurteile

It is a small room with no windows
One floor below the sun wrapped corridor
Where confronted by a dense swarm of
Yellow t-shirts we took the stairs
Escaping more than exploring.

Not for lack of opportunity
We fail to escape the banal
Ignoring the invitation accepting
Expectations that others decide
Should mark our start and stop.

Ending before truly beginning.

But mostly I don’t and won’t
Because I am too busy to notice
Too distracted to hear or see
Too anxious to even RSVP
Too busy to become or be

These are our out-of-the-ordinary commons
Wonder full if we will but notice but pause
But put away the distractions but embrace
Today’s invitation but join in the joy of knowing
Intimate connections this with that you with me.

Beauty surrounds in the raucous sound of a
Saxophone with clarinet duet coming from a
Groaning subway escalator, or the rising
Chorus on 92nd Street pulsating to a patois of
Gossip laughter accusation exaltation.

Beauty abounds in moonlight meadow and the
Reaching tendrils of a spiny vine, in a cicada’s
Golden birth mask clinging to the tree trunk
In intricate lines on an inch-wide rock formed
From clay sand and shell of a long lost sea.

Banality deadens communal experience
Pretending there are orders (sacred or secular)
Superseding the ordinary distribution of skill
Strength insight creativity beauty opportunity
Best and worst widely disseminated

III.      Back Home

If banal is bad, can common be good?
Both lean into what’s ordinary
But banal begins as compulsory
While common is free for all
Banal conforms: common informs.

Then sugary sentiment becomes
Hard cold sharp steel ready to
Sacrifice innocence especially their own
On a baroque altar of self-righteousness
Bloody bathos brutal banality

Bless me please with uncertainty.

The banal are deaf to dialogue
Blind to beauty but generally
Harmless except to themselves
Unless their delusions are
Nationalized, worse sacralized

The banal build barns and fill them
Construct houses on sandbars
Do not consider the birds of the air
Cherish the log in their eye and the
Speck in the eye of their neighbor

The banal prefer repeating
Half-heard petty pieties
Unchanging litanies of self-
Congratulation and complaint
Elaborate confections of conceit

Creating involves doing
Failing learning – thinking
 Observing complications
Considering contradictions
Traipsing the light fantastic

The banal find comfort in
Any orthodoxy that claims to
Contain the perpetual paradox
Emerging from our experience
Of constant creative change