Monday, March 2, 2015

Deuteronomy: Chapter 12

Whose eyes do you follow
now that you see?

What is chosen
consecrated 
named
never quite yours
bound to Here.

Let desire roam 
fleeting as water 
over the endless Theres

Only the consecrated is bound and gathered.



[For full chapter, click here
In the previous chapter, the Promised Land was "the land that God watches from the beginning of the year until the year's close. Now the relationship between God and Land becomes more specific: there will be "a place that God chooses." The key word of the chapter is "place" (makom) and "there" (shama): "to there you will bring it" "you shall come there" you shall ascend there." 
As in the case of the covenant with Israel, the choice of a "there" redefines the relationship to the infinity of other "theres." Relationship is built of specificity and commitment. Even when speaking of the relationship to God Himself, it in not about qualitative difference, but rather about the exclusion of other options:"You shall destroy  their altars, and break their sacred stones, and burn their wooden images... you shall not so to God your Lord, but you shall seek the place that God your Lord chooses from all your tribes, to dwell his name, and you shall go there." 
As in the case covenant, one must "guard" against non-monogamy. The choice of a place must exclude other places from worship. No longer will it be permissible to worship "whereever is right in your eyes";  rather, Israel must to "what is good and right in the eyes of God."
Here, however, a place is set aside for the non-specific, for the non-sacred. The relationship to place becomes two-tiered. While sacrifices can only be offered in the "place that is chosen," meat can be eaten anywhere. There is a space for unfettered human desire outside of relationship to God: "as your soul craves, you may slaughter and eat flesh in all your gates." The key is not to concentrate this desire: "the pure and impure may eat it together, only you shall not eat the blood; you shall pour it on the earth like water." 
Eating non-sacred meat is repeatedly compared to eating the flesh of wild animals--"like a gazelle and  a hind." Non-consecrated meat remains undomesticated; its "blood  which is its soul/life spirit" still roaming free "like water on the earth." In the many "theres", the "desire of your soul/ life-spirit" can roam, so long as it does not attempt absolute possession of another's "soul / life force". 
It is only absolute, "chosen" place,  where the blood "life-force" can be "offered" to God, and "purged" on the altar.
The sacred and non-scared delimit each other, in an anophara of "only" rak. The non-sacred must remain untrammeled and free; the sacred is bound and absolute. ]


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