[MD] A theist appropriates MoQ

[francisco albano]

Merry Christmas to all! Thank you for gifts of insights. Here is an example of how I have appropriated MoQ, for what its worth/value/quality. You may shelve the essay, but, please, not the greeting and best wishes.
 
Paco
 
THE CHRISTMAS OF QUALITY
(Take off from Robert M. Pirsig and Emmanuel Levinas)
 
            It the beginning was this event: The Lord said: “Let Quality happen.” And Quality occured. Then he said: “Create boldly.”  And dynamic Quality, free, undivided and undefined, created light, wave and particle, it is. It created the heavens and the earth and all they contain; then man and woman. The Lord saw that all was of high quality. He gave to man and woman this creation to care for and enrich. To them and their progeny the Lord gave a special sense to experience and appreciate quality before they  think of it, reflect and analyze it in the laboratory of their rational minds, and so come to the knowledge of the presence or absence of the truth, goodness and beauty of things and of themselves.
            In time dynamic Quality manifests its being over the horizon of possibility. It says again and again: “I am value/worth of all. Experience me as I create patterns of value of the inorganic world of quanta and chemicals; of the biological world of flora and fauna and DNA; of the social world of nests, people and their institutions; of the intellectual life of ideas and insights of mind and “no-mind” mind.”  All creation, all life is of quality/value, and hence, moral. And so before Being, Quality is. Before Good and True, Ego and Will, Idea and Spirit, Quality, therefore ethics, is. Experienced pre-theoretically, quality is not a thing but an event at which awareness of subjects and objects is made possible, Robert M. Pirsig tells us.
But man and woman sinned, and their children too. The high sheen of the quality of creation is diminished by them, by us, on whom quality is dependent for care and enrichment. But merciful Word was uttered that people could evolve to high quality and help creation regain its former moral status in time and through processes of personal, social and ecological struggles against the forces of rationalism and empiricism, neoliberalism and empire that dichotomize subject and object, thematize and totalize and even brutalize people and imprison their freedom in the Same of self. 
The human person, the you and me, and community, and most especially the toiling masses of history, have had a long experience of struggle for high quality patterns of value, especially social-intellectual (which includes transpersonal/mystical) value. Is the goal of transformations to high quality possible?  The law of evolution says Yes! Everyone can recognize quality and hierarchical degrees of quality -- inorganic, biological, social and intellectual. Each pattern of value is to be respected at its level; lower patterns are not to pull down higher ones to their level; but higher patterns should lift lower ones to their level. Wine, food and sex are not meant to be idols of a person of high social-intellectual value. Fascists are judged by human rights. When the basis of peace and order is the inorganic values of arms and capitalist profit at the top of the pyramid, all creation suffers. High quality social-intellectual values must reign supreme; and
 therefore too the human person as producer of ideas. Easier said then done in sinful human condition?
Christmas is quality event enabling just and justing evolution of quality.
The Word-of-God-made-flesh; Emmanuel entering creation and human history is supreme manifestation of dynamic Quality. His coming has given added-value to nature, the human person and community, to you and me. Experiencing him as Christmas event is experiencing the meaning of quality and possibilities of high quality of life for all, even in situations of immoral dominance of inorganic-biological values of pax romana, pax americana, pax gloriana, and low social-intellectual values of ideological Same. Christmas empowers us to struggle for high levels of quality.
Jesus disrupts scientistic and rationalistic metaphysical ways of thinking, knowing and being to enable us to see the glory of stars and heavenly hosts, cow, sheep and donkey, poor shepherds and questing magi, Marys and Josephs everywhere, and above all, the high quality of the Other for whom he came -- the Other in his/her vulnerability who  demands, calls, as Emmanuel Levinas reminds us, for high quality justice and responsibility from me, that he/she may enjoy abundance of life in the wholeness of infinity. 
May we experience the human-divine Quality of Jesus of Bethlehem, and in his event, enhancement of the value/worth of the Other and of our own.
A blessed Christmas to all! Grace and peace!   #
                                                     Francisco R. Albano
                                              [who prays his  theological accommodation makes sense]
 
            
 
 


 
May Yahweh bless you and keep you!
May Yahweh let  his face shine on you, and be gracious to you!
May Yahweh look kindly on you, and give you his peace!  (Num. 6:24-26)