Have you read Howl?  It's not for the faint hearted.  Written by Allen Ginsburg, one of the so-called Beats of the American Fifties, Howl is a singularly memorable slice of literature, a titanic coming out of the American culture, an honesty about feelings and viewpoints that had rarely heretofore been expressed.

 

    While some have rued the day Ginsburg broke into the cultural scene, in truth, America, and the world, may well be better off that he did.  Yes, Ginsburg penned some rather bizarre, even, by some standards, obscene literature, yet there is no doubt that he and his Beat compatriots shook up the staid world of the lily white American Fifties.  Though they probably didn't intend to do so, they reminded any who looked between the lines that, although a personal and pervasive sense of love and purpose exists, humanity must always seek to interpret, and re-interpret, this love and purpose for changing times.

    The challenge is understanding the balance:  the infinite in a finite world or the finite in a finite world?  Whatever else of which Howl may be accused, Ginsburg and his fellow Beats created, again, likely unwittingly, a path for, in the long run, a profoundly new window into understanding the meaning of God.

    And isn't this the most important thing?