Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex...

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Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?

Transcript of Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex...

Page 1: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

Wonder of the World

HMXP102: Who am I?

Page 2: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

Gospel at Colonus

• From Oedipus cycle:– Oedipus Rex– Oedipus at Colunus– Antigone

• by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient Greek Tragedian

• Adapted to Gospel music style by Bob Telson and Lee Breuer– (text from a chorus in

Antigone)

Page 3: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

Numberless are the World’s Wonders

Numberless are the world’s wonders

But none more wonderful than man

The stormgray seas yield to his prows

Huge crests bear him high

Page 4: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

Earth, holy and inexhaustible

Is graven where his plows have gone

Page 5: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

Numberless are the world’s wondersBut none more wonderful than man

The lightboned birds clinging to cover

Lithe fish darting away

All are taken, tamed in the net of his mind

Page 6: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

The wild horse resigns to him

Page 7: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

Numberless are the world’s wondersBut none more wonderful than man

Words and thought rapid as air

He fashions for his use

Page 8: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

And his the skill that deflects the arrows of snow

The spears of winter rain

From every wind he has made himself secure

Page 9: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

From every wind he has made himself secure

From all but one … all but one

In the late wind of death he cannot stand

Page 10: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.
Page 11: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

Human Wonders

• Navigation: knowledge of terrain; superior to that of other animals

• Agriculture: freedom from reliance upon available food

• Technology (ships, plows, nets, shelter): knowledge of nature enables its manipulation

• Domestication of animals: for labor, food

Page 12: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

Greater Wonders

• Reason: the capacity for conceptual representation (thought)

• Language: shared means of conceptual communication

• Memory: far superior to most animals (accounts for above?)

• Life: what is it?

Page 13: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

A Limitation

• Mortality (death): for all our technological ability, our very nature (biological) entails that our being is temporary.

• Death is perhaps at once the single worst and single best thing about humanity.

• Worst, insofar as we must all say goodbye to the exquisite living of life.

• Best, insofar as the temporal limit is perhaps responsible for our time being exquisitely valuable.

Page 14: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

Some Connections• Plato: appearance is distinct from reality.

– Songs such as this help to reveal the wonders of humanity lying just beyond the surface of our attention.

• Bohm: communication is often a creative process in which community and new ideas are formed.

– The song may inspire in each of us a somewhat different response, invoke in each of us new ideas.

– Discussion of this song may result in a “communal” moment.

• Mill: truth is elusive, multifaceted, and requires the stimulus of criticism to be “living”.

– Death is final. (Is that true?)

• Socrates: the unexamined life is not worth living.– Examinations such as Telson and Breuer’s remind us of the value of human being.– Death reminds us of how little we know about our ultimate situation.– Humility is an appropriate response in the face of increased awareness of what we

are.

Page 15: Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?. Gospel at Colonus From Oedipus cycle: –Oedipus Rex –Oedipus at Colunus –Antigone by Sophocles, BCE 495-406; Ancient.

HMXP102

• Providing you the more explicit means of recognizing what you, we are.

• From “hm, gee” to “<insert articulate expression of human experience here>”.