Monday, June 4, 2007
The Retreat
Here are some of my notes from class about The Retreat. There are two different meanings of the title. The first meaning is a physical trip to get closer to God. One where you would normally go with some sort of church group. The second is a step backwards as in a millitary retreat but one where you retreat your mind to an early point in your life where you were innocent about God and the whole concept of religion. You have the best relationship with God when you are youngest in life because you know not of sin or temptation in an evil sense. As you get older temptation for sin becomes apparent to you and you can easily stray from having a strong relationship with God. The greatest glory in one's life would be to go our of your life as you had come in. Being innocent of all things of the world and having a strong relationship with God. There are also three different races which one goes through before during and after their life. THe first is before you are born. That is time spent your soul spends with God in heaven. This is the closest one will get with God. The second is your departure from God to come and live on this Earth. The third race is where you depart this Earth, hopefully innocent again, to hopefully reunite with God. You are never the same however, after living a life of sin on this Earth. I think this poem is very interesting and makes one think about the metaphysical world we live in.
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3 comments:
This poem is definitely unique. However, in my opinion, the one definition of the retreat that strikes me as the most accurate is the actual physical trip to get closer to God. The poem talks about a second trip. I feel that the journey to God's paradise takes place in cycles. The first stage is when the souls are created when God created the universe. The second stage is when the soul is born into another human being, and the person lives out his or her life. And finally, the third and final stage is when the body dies and the soul is free to fly back into heaven.
The main thing I can get out of it is that the speaker wants to go back (he wants to live in retreat). Because if we could live in retreat we'd be able to die innocently. The actual life we're living is the "second race", the "first race" we're in is before we're born and our souls are up in heaven with God (very close to God). So in all actuality our second race (life) is our departure from Hod because we go from being a baby (innocent- no sin) to as we get older sinning and moving farther from God. The "third race" we enocounter is the reuniting with God, but in reality we'll be a different being.
i wonder if vaughn had anything in his life that made him want to go back to innoncence. i know his general point is that everyone desires to go back to being young and pure but i wonder if anything that happened to him in his life where he experienced something or saw something that evoked him to write this poem.
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