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Wonder of the World

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 Greek Tragedian Adapted to Gospel music style by Bob Telson and Lee Breuer (text from a chorus in Antigone ).

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Wonder of the World

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  1. Wonder of the World HMXP102: Who am I?

  2. 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)

  3. 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

  4. Earth, holy and inexhaustible Is graven where his plows have gone

  5. 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

  6. The wild horse resigns to him

  7. Numberless are the world’s wondersBut none more wonderful than man Words and thought rapid as air He fashions for his use

  8. And his the skill that deflects the arrows of snow The spears of winter rain From every wind he has made himself secure

  9. From every wind he has made himself secure From all but one … all but one In the late wind of death he cannot stand

  10. 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

  11. 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?

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. HMXP102 • Providing you the more explicit means of recognizing what you, we are. • From “hm, gee” to “<insert articulate expression of human experience here>”.

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