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RE: Poem of the day. William Blake - The Tyger
Ah William Blake! One of my all time favorites! My favorite phrase in the poem: When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
I think he smiled.
You believe in a cruel God?
No. A vastly creative God.
I thought you were saying He would smile at the suffering wrought by his creation. It must be with sympathetic eyes.
No, I think creation is immense, wonderful, awe-inspiring, terrifying, and many other adjectives too numerous to mention!
Why then do you think He in Heaven would "smile His work to see"? I don't understand.
I think God or the gods have a great sense of humor. Which would explain why humans, made in their image, also have a sense of humor. We make labels like good, bad, ugly; God rejoices in creating and I don't think he labels things.
Imagine the confessor come to the bed of a child in the delirium of scarlet fever to offer such comfort. Isn't the senseless pain and death of a child a definitive evil?
"Why do I hurt?" "It is God's will" "What did I do to die?" "Nothing" "I'm scared" "Rejoice!" [Weeping] [Laughter]
What cruel comfort! don't you think? Malevolent.
Many sad and frightening things happen in our world. Does this mean there is an evil god or devil behind the events we see? You think the death of a child is "senseless". Yet, from all we hear about near death experiences, where people die and then return, they don't want to come back here. Perhaps this earth is a sort of "spiritual boot camp" where a soul is challenged with very difficult experiences. Death is not punishment, nor is it annihilation. It is transiting from this world to another. A life can last 30 seconds or 100 years. Are you so sure that on a divine level the latter is "better" than the former? An Indian sage once told me that if I knew how happy a soul was to quit its earthly body, which it views as a prison, I would never again cry over the death of someone. He also said that when the soul has accomplished what it came for, it will leave, no matter what the age of the individual.