AncienTrails

For Auld Lang Syne

December 31, 2007 on 11:24 pm | In Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel | No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »

11 72%  23% 0mph W bar 30.16 steep rise windchill10  Yuletide  New Year’s Eve

                                 Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon

                   

In the past I have sat down late in the night on New Year’s Eve, like now, and taken stock of my life.  Then, I have resolved to do things differently:  eat less, write more, focus on particular subjects for a year.  Sometimes, in some years, the resolutions have resulted in changed behavior, given me a sense of discipline and accomplishment.

As I pass now from the 60th year after my birth and head toward the 61st, I find myself unwilling any more to resolve.   Paul Strickland’s notion of leaving things unresolved is responsible in part.  It also seems sensible to me, at least where I am in my life, to feel that I am enough as I am.  Flawed.  Oh, yes.  Gifted.  In some ways.  Accomplished.  At some things.  Deficient, though?  No more than this time last year and this was a pretty good year.  A perfect year?  No.  A good enough year?  Yep.  At other points I’ve talked about being a good enough parent (a notion I latched onto from an NPR program) and a good enough gardener, even a good enough husband.  It now occurs to me that to lead a good enough life is just fine.

There is no need to scale the mountain of fame or fortune.  This notion of lasting recognition, the kind Homer gave to Ulysses and Achilles, say, is a hangover from the age of heroes.  It got an unfortunate injection of strength in the Romantic era when inspired genius like Beethoven or Wagner became iconic.   Is it still possible?  Of course.  Certain artists working now will survive as long as museums and recorded history.  Which ones?  I have no idea.  Does it matter if I’m one of them?  Not to me.  Hitler and Mussolini will survive, too.  Probably Henry Ford.   Yuri Gagarin.  Ghandi.  Mandela.  Most likely Madonna, Willie Nelson and certainly Britney Spears will sink beneath the tsunami of time.  Think how famous they are now. 

 So this year, I lift a glass of water for Auld Lang Syne, take a glance forward and backwards with Janus.  It’s enough this year.  Enough.

Masterpieces

December 31, 2007 on 2:58 pm | In Art, General | No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »

21  72%  25%  1mph WNW  bar29.95 steady  windchill19  Yuletide

                Third Quarter Cold Moon

Spent yesterday and this morning finishing up a Highlights tour for 5th graders.  This one happens on January 4th.  This time I’ve chosen a theme:  Masterpieces at the MIA.  I’ve chosen the following objects:  the Jade Mountain of the Ch’ien-lung emperor, the Japanese Jizo, the Ife terracotta shrine head, Humped Wolf’s Shield, Paul Revere II’s Templeman’s Tea Service, Beckmann’s “Blind Man’s Buff“, Poussin’s “Death of Germanicus” and Rembrandt’s “Lucretia.”  If these objects are unfamiliar, I have included a link to each on the MIA website.

                

I decided after my last few tours that I needed to devote more concetrated time to preparation, especially in regard to theme and open-ended questions.  So, I have done that.

Kate and I amended our Nutrisystem orders for next month.  Many of the dehydrated items like scrambled eggs and pasta entrees suffer from the reconstitution process.  Some things we just liked better than others.

Men Know My Name as the Green Chapel Knight

December 31, 2007 on 10:38 am | In Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel | No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »

16  85%  26%  2mph  NNW bar 29.91 steep rise  windchill 12  Yuletide

                             Third Quarter Cold Moon

           

“New Year’s eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.” - Hamilton Wright Mabie

“Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.” - John Steinbeck

 Our Yuletide lore for today and tomorrow will focus on the 15th century poem of magic, witchcraft, the Arthurian Roundtable, knights and the Great Wheel, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight.  Today, a bit of introduction and the first part of the story.

The tale of Gawain and the Green Knight probably rings a bell, perhaps you’ve heard it told or read a summary; but, if you’re like me, you haven’t read the entire poem by this anonymous 15th century poet.  It is one of the earliest English language poems after Beowulf and one of the great stories of our language.  The manuscript, the sole manuscript, which held this tale only came to light 200 years ago. 

Sir Robert Cotton owned it.  He also owned the Lindisfarne gospel and the only existing copy of Beowulf.  Here’s a quote from a page about him:

“The Library of Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631) is arguably the most important collection of manuscripts ever assembled in Britain by a private individual. Amongst its many treasures are the Lindisfarne Gospels, two of the contemporary exemplifications of Magna Carta and the only surviving manuscript of `Beowulf’. Early on in his career, Cotton had advocated the foundation of a national library of which his collection would form a part… he was always generous in the loans he made other scholars.

… the Restoration and the revival of a political culture in which disputes were solved by precedent rather than violence placed the Cottonian library again at the centre of the overlapping circles of scholarship and politics.” (SRCC)”

                                Sir Robert Cotton, antiquarian

The poem begins with the end of the Trojan War and the matters of the Aenead, then names Felix Brutus as the founding father of England.  After this, it switches focus to Camelot and the Christmas Feast of King Arthur and the knights of his round table.  In the midst of the revelry the green knight, a portion of whose description I posted last night, rides right into the feasting hall.  The image at the top is faithful, for the most part to the story.  This guy was green.  All over.  And, the horse he rode in on.

“No waking man had witnessed such a warrior

or weird warhorse–otherwordly, yet flesh

                 and bone…

 

Yet he wore no helmet or and no hauberk either,

no armored apparel or plate was apparent,

and he swung no sword nor sported any shield,

but held in one hand a sprig of holly—

of all the evergreens the greenest ever…

 

…what did it mean

that human and horse could develop this hue?

…they’d seen some sights, but this was something special,

a miracle or magic, or so they imagined…”

The Green Knight then issues the challenge, first accepted by Arthur, to give him a stroke at the neck with the great green axe he carried into the hall. 

“…it’s Yuletide—a time of youthfulness, yes?

So at Christmas in this court I lay down a challenge:

…strike me one stroke and be struck in return,

I shall give him as a gift this gigantic cleaver…”

Young Sir Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, steps in as Arthur’s champion.    Here’s what happens:

“The cleanness of the stroke cleaved the spinal cord

and parted the fat and the flesh so far

that the bright steel blade took a bite of the floor.

The handsome head tumbles onto the earth

and the king’s men kick it as it clatter’s past.”

The Green Knight then picks up his head and remounts his horse “with the ease of  a man unmarked, never mind minus his head!”

Gawain has requested to know his name and his home so he can find him when it comes his time to be struck:

“…You’ll rightfully receive

the justice you are due just as January dawns.

Men know my name as the Green Chapel knight…”

Tune in tomorrow for a few more excerpts from this developing story.  Tomorrow is, after all, the day January dawns.  I’ll also offer some thoughts on meaning (s) in this story from the time of Chaucer.

 Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, translated by Simon Armitage

“The most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves … is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital.” - George Steiner

He Has Cast His Anchor on the Furthest Edge of Bliss

December 30, 2007 on 11:25 pm | In Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel | No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »

23  89%  25%  0mph ENE  bar 29.77  steady windchill23  Yuletide

              Third Quarter of the Cold Moon

“…if any man delights in expense and effort                                                                                       

And sets in action high gifts shaped by the Gods,

…Already he has cast his anchor on the furthest edge of bliss.”  

       Isthmian VI, stanza 10, Pindar’s Odes

It’s not often I find, in one week, two different but powerful poetic forms; it happened this week.  The first was Pindar’s Odes.  They’ve sat on my shelf, waiting without complaint as I passed them by day after day, year after year.  On Friday I picked them up as something to read before bed, poetry I’d not experienced.  When I discovered they were poems about various competitive games in Greece, I jumped around, knowing that each piece had its own universe.  As I read Isthmian VI, a paean to Phylakidas, winner in the boys’ trials of strength, these verses leapt into my memory.  They’ve lodged there now like the center will not hold and on a darkling plain…ignorant armies clash by night.

That happens to me.  A phrase sinks like an arrow shot straight into the amygdla and will not come loose, not ever.  That is the power of poetry, to bypass the rational and trigger the primal.  Another favorite is this line from Beowulf.  As Beowulf burns upon his funeral bier, the poet says, “And heaven swallowed the smoke.”  Still sends chills down my spine.

                          

The second poetic form I encountered for the first time this weekend was Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a translation by Simon Armitage.  This translation has the old English text on one page and the translation on the  other.   Jon, my stepson, sent it to me as a holiday gift and it fits so well with Yuletide.  Here’s just a foretaste, a bit of description as the Green Knight intrudes on King Arthur’s Christmas feast:

             The fellow in green was in fine fettle.

             The hair of his beard was green as his horse,

             Fine flowing locks which fanned across his back,

             Plus a bushy green beard growing down to his breast.

Death By Mistletoe

December 30, 2007 on 9:43 am | In Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel | No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »

17  82%  26%  0mph E  bar29.88 steady  windchill 17  Yuletide

                   Last Quarter Cold Moon

  Balder’s Bier            

Our Yuletide lore today comes from Old and Sold.  It tells the sad story of fair Balder, beloved of all the Gods, save Loki, Lok in this account.

“There in the Temple, carved in wood,
The image of great Odin stood,
And other gods, with Thor supreme among them.”

As early as two thousand years before Christ Yule-tide was celebrated by the Aryans. They were sun-worshipers and believed the sun was born each morning, rode across the upper world, and sank into his grave at night.

Day after day, as the sun’s power diminished, these primitive people feared that he would eventually be overcome by darkness and forced to remain in the under world.

When, therefore, after many months, he apparently wheeled about and grew stronger and stronger, they felt that he had been born again. So it came about that at Hweolor-tid, ” the turning-time,” there was great rejoicing at the annual re-birth of the sun.

In the myths and legends of these, our Indo-European ancestors, we find the origin of many of the Yule-tide customs now in vogue.

According to the Younger Edda, Wodin or Odin, the pioneer of the North, a descendant of Saturn, fled out of Asia. Going through Russia to Saxland (Germany), he conquered that country and left one of his sons as ruler. Then he visited Frankland, Jutland, Sweden, and Norway and established each one of his many sons on a throne.

This pioneer traveler figures under nearly two hundred different names, and so it is difficult to follow him in his wanderings. As Wodin, he established throughout the northern nations many of the observances and customs common to the people of the Northland to-day.

The Edda gives an ancient account of Balder, the sun-god, who was slain because of the jealousy of Loki (fire). Loki knew that everything in nature except the mistletoe had promised not to injure the great god Balder. So he searched for the mistletoe until he found it growing on an oak-tree ” on the eastern slope of Valhalla.” He cut it off and returned to the place where the gods were amusing themselves by using Balder as a target, hurling stones and darts, and trying to strike him with their battle-ages. But all these weapons were harmless. Then Loki, giving the twig of mistletoe to the blind god, Hoder, directed his hand and induced him to throw it. When the mistletoe struck Balder it pierced him through and through and he fell lifeless.

“So on the floor lay Balder dead; and round’ Lay thickly strewn swords, ages, darts, and spears,

Which all the Gods in sport had idly thrown At Balder, whom no weapon pierced or clove; But in his breast stood fixt the fatal bough Of mistletoe, which Lok the Accuser gave To Hoder, and unwitting Hoder threw - ‘Gainst that alone had Balder’s life no charm.”

From Matthew Arnold’s ” Balder Dead.”

Great excitement prevailed among the assembled gods and goddesses when Balder was struck dead and sank into Hell and they would have slain the god of darkness had it not occurred during their peace-stead, which was never to be desecrated by deeds of violence. The season was supposed to be one of peace on earth and good-will to man. This is generally attributed to the injunction of the angels who sang at the birth of Christ, but according to a much older story the idea of peace and good-will at Yule-tide was taught centuries before Christ.

According to the Edda, gifts from the gods and goddesses were laid on Balder’s bier and he, in turn, sent gifts back from the realm of darkness into which he had fallen. However, it probably is from the Roman Saturnalia that the free exchange of presents and the spirit of revelry have been derived.

The Beauty of Folded Metal Blades

December 29, 2007 on 10:58 pm | In General | No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »

20  87%  27%  omph  ESE  bar29.95 falls windchill 20 Yuletide

                Waning Gibbous Cold Moon

Kate and I bought ourselves a new knife set for the holidays, Japanese knives made of beautiful folded metal.  Boy, are they sharp.  My fingers bear the proof.  The slightest contact with skin and these knives cut.  Of course, that is the point (or the edge); still, I wonder how long it’s going to take for me to learn how to use them well?

Watched the Patriots beat the Giants.  A battle down to the end.  Randy Moss looked great, just as I remembered him.  He floats up, puts out his hands and the ball gravitates toward him.  I should say, almost as I remembered him.  In this game he blocked.

A quiet time now, meditative.  The windows which during the day show me 7 oaks now reflect back the rooms interior.   The night can bring us to our inner selves, reflected back in the mirror of a calmed soul, a soul often too busy in daylight busyness, focused on the world outside the window.

Christians Sued for Use of Allah

December 29, 2007 on 4:07 pm | In Faith and Spirituality, News of the Strange | No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »

22  82%  25%  0mph ENE bar 29.95  windchill 22  Yuletide

                  Waning Gibbous Cold Moon 

My brother Mark sent me this one.  He’s on his way to Malaysia this week to renew his Thai visa.

From a BBC Online article:  Malaysian row over word for ‘God’  (Religious freedom is guaranteed under Malaysian law)

“A church and Christian newspaper in Malaysia are suing the government after it decreed that the word “Allah” can only be used by Muslims.In the Malay language “Allah” is used to mean any god, and Christians say they have used the term for centuries. Opponents of the ban say it is unconstitutional and unreasonable. It is the latest in a series of religious rows in largely Muslim Malaysia, where minority groups claim their rights are being eroded. A spokesman for the Herald, the newspaper of the Catholic Church in Malaysia, said a legal suit was filed after they received repeated official warnings that the newspaper could have its licence revoked if it continued to use the word. “We are of the view that we have the right to use the word ‘Allah’,” said editor Rev Lawrence Andrew.”

Here’s my reply to Mark:

Thanks for sending it over. Irony comes to mind. After all, the so-called Abrahamic religions all claim to worship the same God, so why wouldn’t the names be interchangeable? Stupid also comes to mind.

And Mark’s back to me just moments ago: 

“Indeed. A Muslim lawyer was complaining in the Malyasian Star, a local paper, that the Muslims were being way too sensitive. Indeed, I read further that the Catholic paper is suing whomever gave that ruling. The lawyer pointed out that Al means the and lah means God in Arabic. It seems futile and yes, dumb. The God of the Jews, Muslims and Christians is the same. It seems especially dumb to have the dispute around Christmas, but there you go.”

The Stomach Has Its Desires

December 29, 2007 on 12:37 pm | In Family, General | 1 Comment

 22  85%  26%  0mph  NNE  bar 29.97 falls  YuleTide

          Waning Gibbous Cold Moon

 Excerpt of a poem by William Stafford, Choosing A Dog

Your good dogs, some things that they hear
they don’t really want you to know —
it’s too grim or ethereal.

And sometimes when they look in the fire
they see time going on and someone alone,
but they don’t say anything.

Bill Schmidt sent this poem along from Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac.  It is a touching work, especially for those who live their lives in the company of dogs.

A morning filled with errands.  Took packages for New Years to the Anoka Post Office.  It’s sure easier to mail stuff now than it was a week ago.  Geez.  Practically walked right up to the postal clerk.  One clerk, on the other end of the counter, bald head and heroic biker beard, helped a man set up a General Delivery account.  I looked at the man, fiftyish with black hair laid flat on his head.  His used trench coat sagged with the bow of his shoulders.  His pants looked polished from wear and the boots old.  What had happened in his life?

At the library I donated several Teaching Company courses on audio tape.  As I walked in with the sacks, I began to think about libraries, how important they’ve been to me at each stage of my life: a refuge in an Indiana small town, a place of scholarship during college and my two post-grad degrees, sources of reading material when my funds were low and most recently a source of audio books.  There are two places in this world where I’ve always felt comfortable:  Catholic churches and libraries. 

Donating these courses made me consider charity.  Charity always makes me think of Frank Broderick who seems to incarnate charity.  I always feel less than in the presence of his generosity to others, less than because that’s not what I do.  Then I thought, wait a minute.  I’m not Frank Broderick; I’m Charlie.  Charlie’s generosity focuses on his passions:  art, libraries, dogs, gardens and, for some reason I can’t quite define, water.  These are the places where my volunteer energy, cash and other resources go.  And that’s just fine.

After this, groceries, where my stomach spoke to me down each aisle.  Each time I saw an old food friend like cheese or chips or Kashi cereal my stomach growled and I felt deprived.  The stomach has its desires, its attachments and communicates them; but, those are attachments learned over years of a certain kind of eating.  The process I’m in now is one I’ve gone through before, reeducation.  I’m reeducating my stomach to growl for lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes.  To speak to me of yogurt, right-sized portions and sourdough bread.

A morning full of errands, and, of learning more about myself.  A good morning.

Mother’s Night

December 29, 2007 on 9:39 am | In Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel | No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »

18  89%  28%  omph WNW bar 30.00 steady  Yuletide

                Waning Gibbous Cold Moon

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

This has been one of the most beautiful Decembers I can recall.  We have had snow cover for almost the whole month and several days, like today, have featured a slow falling, fluffy snow.  Think snow globe, Currier and Ives, Victorian Christmas, ‘Twas the Night before Christmas.  It’s been that kind of December.

I don’t vouch for the literal truth of some of this material; but, it does have poetic or mythopoetic truth. That is truth enough and all the truth I need.

Thou descended from the stars,
Oh, my bambino.
Here I see you now,
Here a-trembling,
Do not tremble so
for here is your mother.

Traditional Italian carolMother’s Night The Scandinavian and Germanic tribes of Europe originally named their months of December and January Yule. Their great midwinter feast occured in January, but the 24th or 25th of December was known as Mother’s Night. This night–with slight shifts in the calendar over the centuries–was Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. It is this night before which every evening becomes ever darker, and after which daytime light slowly grows until peaking at Summer Solstice.The night was sacred to the triple Goddess who created (maiden), sustained (mother) and took away life (crone), but most especially to the great Earth Mother who labors all night on Solstice to give birth to the sun baby, thereby returning light to the world. Christian imagery of the Mother and baby shining with halos of light, as well as the holy star directly descend from ancient Goddess religions.

On Mother’s night, one family member baked “Care Cakes,” ( to the Romans–placentae) which they served to the rest of the family still in bed. This celebratory role play served to dramatize the laboring and birthgiving that the Great Mother had done. As the Swedes believed the maiden aspect of the Goddess is the light bringer of mid-winter, Mother’s Night gradually became the Swedish feast of St. Lucia: whereby one honored daughter of the family, dressed in white and wearing a candle-lit crown of greenery on her head, brings Yule breakfast to her fresh-woken family. Younger siblings wear tall pointed caps decorated with stars, playing the newer children of light. Much older Norse myths describe Fenrir the Wolf swallowing the sun and giving birth to it after the Solstice. Other connections exist between Yule and Mother/Child in France, where into the 1960’s, women gathered together on Christmas Eve to sew baby wear for pregnant friends and for the local poor.

What Passion Still Moves You?

December 28, 2007 on 11:22 pm | In Family | No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »

11 85% 26%  0mph NNW bar 29.96 steady windchill11  Yuletide

Waning Gibbous Cold Moon

We are now in the dead days, the useless days according to the Mayans and other traditional cultures.  It is perhaps no accident that the Yuletide traditions and the twelve days of Christmas carry us from the Solstice/Incarnation through the New Year and into its first week.  This creates a sacred counter to the aimless, lost in between time feeling.

Spoke with Joseph this evening.  He recalled the stories I read to him, the old stories, the Greek and Egyptian and Roman myths.  He remembered how they linked up with astronomy, with the stars.  “I remember now why I loved space in the first place.”  All this because he had prepared himself to lead a star-gazing evening in Breckenridge.

I teared up realizing that we don’t know the linkages our children make from the often random seeming things we do with them.  He put together those stories, the many afternoons at the Minneapolis Planetarium and the Adler in Chicago and nights we spent outside with the telescope.  Out of them he wove, unbenownst to me, a life way, one headed toward space, a dream that has seen him through the difficult math, physics and astrophysics classes and a dream that has kept him dogged in his pursuit of the Air Force, in his mind the most realisitic path to space.

He has learned an adult lesson tonight; the lesson that we can lose sight of the passion that moved us in the first place in the details and the everydayness of working toward a dream; but, that the passion is not gone, just set aside for a moment and it can re-emerge, even stronger in unexpected moments.