Hope, a Myth Reawakened

Lillian Moats

Description

Springing from ancient Greek mythology, HOPE, A MYTH REAWAKENED invites the reader on a journey that is both epic in scope and deeply intimate in the questions it prompts us to ask ourselves about the nature of hope in a fragile world.

Both a love story and a modern philosophical investigation, even the essential question of who is narrating the story draws the reader in. We take this journey on the wings of allegorical figures Hope and Despair, as we see through their eyes millennia of human love and loss, and confront today's pressing and personal questions.

As with her four previous books, Lillian Moats asks of her reader a quiet attentiveness, and amply pays back that gift. The rhythms of her writing propel us through this timely allegory, in which we meet characters wholly familiar to us, yet encounter them in ourselves as if for the first time. Full of suspense and insight, this book will speak to readers who think about a world in crisis, about the meaning of life and death, and who seek authentic hope in an age of denial.

This is the 5th book by Lillian Moats, writer, artist, and filmmaker.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la psychologie
• Social
• Philosophy
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 19 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780966957662
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A NOTE TO THE READER
Hope, a Myth Reawakened was written with intentional line breaks. In order to see the formatting as the author intended, we encourage you to calibrate your settings by using the line below to optimize the line length and character size on your reading device. Please adjust the size of the text on your viewer so that the words below appear on one line, if possible:

to see her stroke his indigo feathers with her fingertip,
Viewing this title at a larger font size or on a device too small to accommodate the longest lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered; that is, a long single line will be displayed as multiple lines. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a shallow indent.
Thank you for taking the time to adjust your settings. We hope you enjoy Hope, a Myth Reawakened.
HOPE,
A MYTH REAWAKENED
HOPE,
A MYTH REAWAKENED
LILLIAN MOATS

Downers Grove
Illinois
THREE ARTS PRESS
1100 Maple Ave.
Downers Grove, IL 60515-4818
threeartspress.com
Text © Lillian Moats, 2014
Published 2015 by Three Arts Press. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication
(Provided by Quality Books, Inc)

Moats, Lillian.
Hope, a myth reawakened / Lillian Moats.
pages cm
LCCN 2015902533
ISBN 978-0-9669576-5-5
Ebook ISBN 978-0-9669576-6-2
1. Hope--Fiction. 2. Despair--Fiction.
3. Allegories. 4. Prose poems. I. Title. PS3569.O6523H67  2015 813'.54   QBI15-600057
Edited by Pamela Livingston Gifford
Author photo by JP Somersaulter
Prepress by John Lord at Graphics Plus Inc.
Printed in USA on acid free archival quality paper by BookMobile
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
First Edition
Also by the Author:
The Letter from Death
Speak, Hands
Legacy of Shadows
The Gate of Dreams
Books and eBooks
are available from major booksellers
and threeartspress.com
Distributed by Itasca Books, Minneapolis
itascabooks.com
ISBN 978-0-9669576-5-5 paperback
ISBN 9978-0-9669576-6-2 eBook
To family …
Michael and David and Chris
And “family” …
JP and Paula, Pamela and Pam
A NOTE OF INTRODUCTION
At this moment in history we find ourselves well beyond the consolation offered by the proverbial Chinese sentiment that we might live in “interesting times.” Ours is rather a time of terror, a time when natural systems and social systems are collapsing before our very eyes, a time when optimism has become a symptom of delusion. Hope is elusive, even in the best of times, but among the informed of our age it is nearly unimaginable. Yet we know deep down that there is no hope without Hope.
Lillian Moats aspires to reawaken in us a sense of hope in an age dominated by confusion, trepidation and despair. Her allegory seduces readers into serious reflections on the nature and sources of hope. The language herein is inviting, the insights are abundant, and the suspense is captivating. Perhaps you will detect, as I did, hints of Dante and Plato as the author engages Hope and Despair in constructive dialogue. This book is inspiring, and you are to be envied if you can find something better to do than to read it.
Loyal Rue
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Religion
Luther College
PREFACE
If you have picked up this little book and thumbed through a few pages, the arrangement of lines might prompt you to regard it as poetry; I don’t think of it as such. The format reflects the writing process I use to remind myself to be concise and attend to the rhythm of language. If I were reading aloud to you (which would be fun for me since I’m a one-to-one person) I would not pause to indicate line breaks as poets often do. So be my guest and read right through.
On a deeper plane, where did the idea of such a book come from? Most of us speak of hope frequently—cheerfully, nervously or fervently—and yet in our more somber moods we ask ourselves and each other, “Is there any hope?” I am one who has struggled hard with that question, especially in the last decade or so as I’ve become more painfully conscious of the condition of our world.
But perhaps my unease, and yours if you feel it, may be as old as humanity. This is what led me to turn to a classical myth and let my own allegorical extension of it reach into the present. The ancient Greeks expressed the conundrum of hope in the multiple and contradictory myths of a fateful “gift” from the gods to the first humans.
The gift was contained in a storage jar or urn. (In the Pandora myth it was translated as “box” centuries later). Did this gift from the gods contain evils as collective punishment, or blessings? Who let the contents escape? The first woman, cunning and curious, or a foolish man?
Hope is a central theme in these ancient myths, for in each rendition it is the only element not released from the jar. Scholars still debate whether hope’s perpetual containment conveys optimism or pessimism.
HOPE, a Myth Reawakened is an invitation to join me in an allegorical adventure, grappling with the age-old question that has taken on pressing relevance in our contemporary lives: Is there hope for the world?
Lillian Moats
2015
I. HOPE, FORLORN
Now that I’ve grown in understanding,
I will tell you my mother’s story:
hers was the longest solitary confinement
in the history of the world.
Held without charge, without recourse
to any system of justice, still she could not die.
Forlorn. How could she have been otherwise?
Yet, I cannot say my mother was “without hope”
for she is Hope. She does not know whose hand
pried off the lid—the roof of her prison—
only to shut it before she could escape.
You might guess Pandora, believing Hesiod,
but in another version it was a “foolish man”
who opened the gift from the gods,
a jar not full of Hesiod’s “plagues and demons”
but of the finest Qualities.
They escaped into the world and disappeared—
all except Hope. We will never know
whose hand it was that pried and shut the lid,
for Mother tells me she saw only fingertips
silhouetted against stunning light.
She had never seen before, never been before—
not as a separate self. The Qualities had been
but scattered elements of themselves
dispersed in the All-in-All contained in that jar.
It was an All-in-All teeming with untried energy,
held in a fragile balance.
She had never known this before.
She had never had word-thoughts
before she coalesced into this unfamiliar form.
Words were coming to her only singly
and she hardly knew what they meant,
but she felt what they meant:
sifting, culling, shrinking, parting, becoming.
What was this boundary of skin … these fingers ?
What was this face that she could not see,
but only feel with her fingers?
What were these wings that she could move
and that could move her?
This metamorphosis could not
have been happening to my mother alone.
But who, she wondered, were these others ?
If, until the seal was broken,
the jar had contained only the finest Qualities—
empathy, compassion, tolerance, patience —
how could there have been such contentious kicking,
jabbing, buffeting of newfound legs, elbows, wings
at the rim of the jar?
But if she had been dispersed in a demonic brew,
why did one of these now embodied demons
pause to search her eyes,
press a kiss to her forehead
as if to borrow something before he escaped?
My mother knew nothing of her own myth,
only that the Qualities with which she
had been suspended were clearly disparate;
and now they were gone.
The forceful shutting of the jar chipped the rim
so that in rays of sunlight shining
through chinks large and small,
she could make out feathers wafting down to her
from wings nearly caught.
II. IT WAS NOT LIKE THAT
If ever you have imagined her story,
you may have pictured Hope
striving to escape the urn like the others—
perhaps only a hairsbreadth from freedom
when the lid shut.
It was not like that. She felt no urgency.
Little did she suspect the possibility of escape
would be lost so quickly.
But none of the Qualities could have known.
My mother Hope explains she was
taking in the changes; and of course, she would be
less inclined than most to expect the worst.
She has had ample ages of confinement to regre—
she would say ‘to revisit’ that day.
(Regret is such a wasteful emotion.)
For ages, she measured days as humans do,
in the perpetual revolution of light and darkness.
Her only light came from the movement
of rays through chinks in the earthenware rim.
Spotlights—now intense, now faint, now flickering—
glanced off the walls of her cell, day after day.
She was certain she would be freed.
But would her freedom come at the hands
of the one who released the others?
Or would one of the others return for her?
Whatever All they once constituted
could never be whole without her.
Perhaps that Quality who looked so intently
into her face would recognize her absence.
At first, her eyes were trained on the rim.
From time to time she flew there—
if those few strokes of her wings
could be called “flight.”
She hovered long at each cleft but could make out
only the changing sky and stars,
a glimpse of sun or moon.
As she grew accustomed to the patterns of light
over the interior of the urn,