Category Archives: Faith and Spirituality

A Summer Night

June 25, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

69 bar rises 29.80 0mph NNW dew-point 57 Summer night

Last Quarter of the Flower Moon

A soft summer night has fallen. As age piles on, the magic of summer nights seems to disappear, like the Other World of the Celts disappeared long ago from this world. As a boy, there was always hide and seek, army, watching and catching fireflys, sitting on the steps of other kids in our kid dense neighborhood on Monroe Street. The night time in those days did not end the day’s play; it provided another arena, one of darkness and stealth.

Hiding behind bushes, creeping along on your belly to get close enough to run and kick the can before being tagged, those games got an increased intensity at night. Play like that has vanished it seems, occluded by the television, the computer and busy schedules, even in the summer.

I had no schedule in the summer, no music lessons, no sports leagues, no advanced this or that. Instead I would get up and consider how to spend the day. Would we go the field and build on our fort? Ride bicycles down the hill by the Meyer’s house? Maybe baseball over at the Carver’s? We might get a wagon and collect pop bottles, take them downtown to Cox’s supermarket and redeem them for ice cream or comic book money. We swam at Beulah Park pool. In the afternoon around 3pm I would deliver my paper route. Go to the library. Read at home.

As a teen-ager with a driver’s license, the night opened up even more possibilities. There were dances in towns all around Alexandria, dances that happened each week on the same night, so we could go every night except Sunday and sometimes did. Our dances were at the National Guard Armory, I don’t recall the night. My friend Richard Lawson and I would get in the car and go somewhere the nights we didn’t work.

Richard died several years ago of wounds suffered in Vietnam.

Astronomy brings back the magic of the night. I went into that world for a couple of years, but over time it lost its appeal; still, I loved it for giving me back the night.

It’s time for me to reclaim the night, the childhood magic and wonder. It has become clearer and clearer to me that the secret to life is to retain as close a contact with the awe and marvel of childhood as possible. For to them belong the realm of the sacred.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics

Can We Count on an Escape to the Stars?

June 10, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

63 bar rises 29.81 0mph ESE dew-point 51 Beltane, cloudy and cool

First Quarter of the Flower Moon

“Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.” from a New York Review of Books article by Freeman Dyson

Here’s a bit from his own webpage: Freeman Dyson is now retired, having been for most of his life a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Dyson is a smart guy and no follower of the crowd. His article reviews books which count the cost of global warming. His real point, though, seems to be that those who would silence the critics of global warming may find themselves on the wrong side of history, much like the Catholic Church and Gallileo, for example.

Here’s another quote: “In the history of science it has often happened that the majority was wrong and refused to listen to a minority that later turned out to be right. It may–or may not–be that the present is such a time.”

He seems to look toward a more nuanced stating of the case along the lines of this quote from Ernesto Zedillo, editor of Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto. “Climate change may not be the world’s most pressing problem (as I am convinced it is not), but it could still prove to be the most complex challenge the world has ever faced.” Dyson has written elsewhere that he believe global poverty, starvation and epidemic treatable diseases like malaria, cholera and typhus are more important than global warming. These are, he argues, clear and present realities. We should not let climate change take attention away from them.

This is important stuff for me since I got word last night that I will serve on the Sierra Club’s political committee this year. I believe in the Great Work Thomas Berry describes in his book by that name, namely, that our generation is the one that will have to change the human presence on the earth to a sustainable one.

Still, I take the point of some conservative critics who wonder if the emphasis on the health of mother earth detracts from our specie’s self interest, i.e., our own survival. My belief is that the two have become, or, better, we now recognize that they always have been, intimately related. Only in the most optimistic space opera science fiction sense can we imagine scenarios in which our species escapes earth to colonize the stars. Short of that we have to dance with the planet we were given. This one.

Somehow we must make progress to mitigate the affects of climate change and to slow it down. We must make that progress, though, in a way sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the human inhabitants of earth, our fellow creatures.

Faith and Spirituality, Woolly Mammoths

Gotta Take That Wild Last Ride

June 10, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

61 bar steep rise 29.76 4mph W dew-point 53 Beltane, sunny and cool

First Quarter of the Flower Moon

Decided to cancel the Gettysburg leg of my trip. Need to be at home. Another time. Gettysburg is not going anywhere.

A bit more about radical individualism. Last night I proposed, as I wrote here yesterday, that civilization, especially through work and love, constrain the unfettered, natural–wild part of us. There was good criticism of that position, i.e. part of the natural state of humanity is life in family, in relationship. Another position asserted that deconstructing (I’m not sure about this use of the term, but it is what was used.) ourselves so that wildness could break out denies the process of integration of the mature person. (individuation, perhaps?) Wildness, in this view, must somehow come together with all of psyche’s zoo or, better, pantheon (my terms) to define a full person.

It is true that the very nature of what it means to be human gains its definition in a social context. In that sense, yes, to be human is to be in a family, a clan, a community. It is also true that the integration model of maturity requires a delicate balancing and harmonizing of disparate impulses, desires and drives into a well-functioning individual.

Even so. A first reaction over against both of these arguments is this: we all die alone. This is the existentialist’s key and, to my eye, keen observation. It can be pushed back through life itself. We are all born alone, that is we are the only one to emerge from the womb as that distinct individual. Even triplets are born into different bodies, at a slightly different time, and have unique life experiences. In life we inhabit our body and no other. We may, more or less, empathetically walk in another person’s shoes, but we can never get in there while their foot is in the shoe. You are unique and, whether you wish it to be the case or not, can have it no other way.

Second, the Jungian model of individuation, which I embrace, calls us to live into our Self, to become, that is, whom we already are. This may involve harmonization and balancing, but it may also include embracing aspects of our Self heretofore submerged or repressed. The journey is not to maturity in this view, rather it is toward the clearest and most distinct realization of our uniqueness.

As a note I read moments ago by James Hillman said, the individuation process prepares us to die. Last night I did not mention my final thought on wildness. The last wild act of our life is death. It is that moment most natural, most terrifying, most awesome, least understood and never tamed. Death is, for each of us, our wildest moment. Individuation ensures that we come to that last natural divide, that last wild place, as who we are, shorn of cultural convention and psychological repression. That we come dressed only in the clothes which our psyche had for us to wear from the very beginning. That we come to the most wild moment in our life, in other words, as the natural, wild Self into which we were born.

This journey, this ancient trail, is the ancient trail. It is one we walk alone from birth until death. It is this realization that makes me a radical individualist, proud and happy to live in community, yes, but as a person free and unfettered.

Faith and Spirituality, Family

Circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and that shall be the mark of the covenant between you and me.

June 6, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

68 bar falls 29.22 2mph SSW dew-point 62 Beltane, cloudy and rainy

Waxing Crescent of the Flower Moon (English)

Coming back from a journey throws the traveler back into daily life, matters that have been suspended on the road. This trip is no exception. Stefan’s wife, Lonnie, has surgery today for her adenocarcinoma. Kate’s got some problems at work. The tomato plant has not fruited. E-mail to catch up on. That pesky novel still calling to me. That sort of thing.

Let’s go back to the bris for a minute.

Here is the passage from the Torah that provides the theological rationale. It comes from Genesis 17:

1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said: “I am God the Almighty. Walk in my presence and be blameless. 2 Between you and me I will establish my covenant, and I will multiply you exceedingly.” 3 When Abram prostrated himself, God continued to speak to him: 4 “My covenant with you is this: you are to become the father of a host of nations. 5 2 No longer shall you be called Abram; your name shall be Abraham, for I am making you the father of a host of nations. 6 I will render you exceedingly fertile; I will make nations of you; kings shall stem from you. 7 I will maintain my covenant with you and your descendants after you throughout the ages as an everlasting pact, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land in which you are now staying, the whole land of Canaan, as a permanent possession; and I will be their God.” 9 God also said to Abraham: “On your part, you and your descendants after you must keep my covenant throughout the ages. 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you that you must keep: every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 Circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and that shall be the mark of the covenant between you and me. 12 Throughout the ages, every male among you, when he is eight days old, shall be circumcised, including houseborn slaves and those acquired with money from any foreigner who is not of your blood. 13 Yes, both the houseborn slaves and those acquired with money must be circumcised. Thus my covenant shall be in your flesh as an everlasting pact. 14 If a male is uncircumcised, that is, if the flesh of his foreskin has not been cut away, such a one shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

Verse 10 and 14 have the operative language. (no pun intended) First, circumcision is a sign of the covenant between Yahweh and the descendants of Abraham and Sara. Second, Gabe, in order to not be cut off from his people had to have his foreskin circumcised.

In the living room of Jon and Jen’s home the mohel, Jay Feder, set his instruments on a wooden table top. I asked him questions and in the process he and I bonded over our shared knowledge. Educated in several yeshiva and, for the purpose of the bris, in Jerusalem, Jay, a full time jeweler, is a bright and learned man. He’s also very funny.

His shtick included these off hand remarks, “Oh, I see Adrian (a six month old boy) is here. I hope he doesn’t remember me!” When Jon laid Gabe on the pillow (where Jay performs the circumcision), he laid him with his head toward Jay, who said, “So. Do you like his nose? You’re ok with it shorter?” Jon turned Gabe around on the pillow. He then turned to Jon and said, “All right. The father performs the bris. Are you ready?” And so on.

The chair in front of the table with the cloth on it is the Elijah chair. I asked Jay the significance of the Elijah chair. He told me the story of Elijah. You may remember Elijah. He challenged Ahab and his priest, Obadiah, to a contest of efficacy, their gods, Baal and Ahserah, against his, Yahweh. Long story short. Yahweh sends down fire and burns a sacrifical bull, and not only the bull, but the altar as well. Baal and Asherah did not. Later on, however, Elijah complains to Yahweh that the people of Israel have not been keeping the covenant. After this comment, Elijah suffers a demotion and has to anoint his student, Elisha, as his successor.

Later, Elijah leaves earth for heaven in a whirlwind, on a chariot of fire. He is the only character in the Tanakh who does not die. Rabbinic scholars have made much of the study of Elijah and they conclude that Elijah became a perpetual witness to those events in Jewish ritual life that affirm the covenant. “The rabbis say this may be a reward or it may be a punishment.” Elijah’s chair, then, gives concrete expression to Elijah’s presence at this most basic of all affirmations of the Abrahamic covenant.

This is Jon (my stepson) and Gabe with his knitted yarmulke. I wore one, too, but I don’t have a picture. Asked about the significance of the yarmulke, Jay said, “There are many answers, but one I like is that it shows where we stop and God takes over.”

After the bris itself, Gabe received his Hebrew name, Gavriel. This is Jon and Jen, Ruth and Gabe with Jay giving Gabe several sips of sweet wine.

Why wine? Glad you asked, Jay said. “The body starts deteriorating from the moment of birth until it finally gives up and dies. It is the reverse in the spiritual life. As life goes on our spiritual life becomes richer and richer until we make the transition after death. Wine is one of the things we know that follows the same path. As it gets older and older, it gets better and better.”

One of the things I admire and respect about Judaism is its emphasis on home-based worship and ritual. This event sacralized Jon and Jen’s living room. While Jay sang some of the blessings, I saw many of Jon and Jen’s neighbors pass by on the street. It was an interesting blend of cultures.

Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Great Work

Mechanist or Vitalist?

May 24, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

58 bar steep fall 30.12 7mpn ENE dew-point 41 Beltane, Sunny

Waning Gibbous Hare Moon

“The aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittegenstein is a notoriously opaque, but very influential philosopher. His Tractatus is a seminal work of 20th century philosophy, amazing for its brevity. In this quote, though, I grasp his line of thought. How often do you consider the solidity of a table, for example? The beating of your heart? The exquisite elegance of your hands? The comfort of darkness? The revelation in sunlight?

Have you ever considered, I mean really considered, the wonder of life itself? We are animate, moving through the world with intention. So are dogs, mosquitoes and groundhogs. The seed listens to its own voice, expresses itself and its genome through time and space. Alive. But. What is life? We see the results of life around us all the time; we experience it within ourselves, but what is it? What is the difference between the elements in my body–the same as those in a rock or in soil, or in the air–and their inanimate counter parts still locked in the fiery cauldron of a star or the massif of a mountain range?

A book I purchased recently, but have not yet read, argues against what the author calls the Gallilean conspiracy. I’ve forgotten why he calls it that, something about Gallileo’s approach to science, but the point is this: even if we knew all the laws of particles and quantum mechanics and could apply them with precision to all the matter in the universe, we could still not predict the future, though there is strong element of what he calls scientistic thinking that suggests just this possibility.

Why can’t we predict the future based on fundamental laws of nature? Because of complexity. As things grow more complex, the complexity itself inserts a new dimension, something that does not obey the fundamental laws: intention. Intention and complexity reach an apex in the phenomenon of life. You could not analyze the physical elements within my body, apply the laws of relativity and Newtonian physics to them, and predict what I will choose to have for breakfast. Why? Because consciousness adds intention, guided by will, and none of these added realities of complexity follow the laws of thermodynamics, say. Is the action of complex entities constrained and guided by laws of nature? Of course. Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, will snuff out the complexity that I am. But not right now. While I’m upright and consciousness, and yes, you, too, I can choose to defy entropy by taking my blood pressure medication and staying on that good cholestrol lowering drug. Exercising. Good diet. None of these, nor my decision to go to the grocery store this morning have a necessary predicate in my constituent parts.

In part this all boils down to a divide which remains an abyss between, say, the Richard Dawkins and Sam Harrises of the world, and those of us who insist on considering the divine: vitalist or mechanist? That is, is any organism merely the sum of its parts–mechanist, or, is it the whole more than the sum of its parts–vitalist. I side with the vitalists.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden

Another Outside Day

May 21, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

55 bar steady 29.78 4mph NNW dew-point 31 Beltane, Sunny

Full Hare Moon

My Taoist studies have proceeded more slowly than I had hoped, but the regular appearance of material thanks to the online classes has kept me involved. I’m on my last course now.

Another sunny day. Work outside today, and perhaps tomorrow, too, then I have to devote some time to managing inside matters, get back to full-time writing.

Later.

Faith and Spirituality

Finding My Place among the 10,000 Things

May 20, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

59 bar steady 29.77 4mph NW dew-point 37 Beltane Sunny and cool

Full Hare Moon

Want to say a bit more about mastery (or, as Stephan said, maybe it’s anti-mastery) as living into the Self. It has become clearer and clearer to me that I offer more impediments to the Movement of Heaven through me than I do channels. I’m not being modest here, only stating a not too unusual fact. This opening and emptying of the ego so that my Self can flow through me out into the world is the big task ahead for me. Yet, it is an ironic task, a task that only be realized in the negation of tasks. It is a goal that has as its objective, an empty vessel and, to compound the irony, an empty vessel that will be filled, but this time not by the culture’s values, but by the values of the movement of heaven. I believe a Taoist might call this finding my place among the 10,000 things.

I prefer this approach because it negates the notion of mastery as an over and above phenomenon, something that effort can achieve, and opens the way to mastery of the ego by the Self, the larger you that participates in the archetypal realm. Let go and let Self, perhaps. I envision this as a congested field filled with objects of desire and presumed needs suddenly cleared so that the plants natural to the immediate ecosphere can flourish. It is the garden filled with native plants who require no artifice to grow; rather, they rely on the soil that the past has created, the rain a season brings and the sunlight that can reach the soil. Native plants do not care if it is hot or wet or cold and dry, they have developed a lifeway that follows the rhythms of the seasons where they bloom.

How much simpler our life would be if we could open ourselves to the rhythms native to our Self; then we would not have to worry about dignity, accomplishment, status or desire. We, too, would not care whether it was hot or dry, cold or wet, yet we would act, and act effectively because our actions would shape themselves to the movement of the Tao.

That’s how I see right now.

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Seeking Mastery Within

May 20, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

54 bar steady 29.78 1mph NW dew-point 44 Beltane, sunny and cool

Full Hare Moon

The weather remains cool. This is not a long spring; it’s a long late March or early April. The gardening upside has been longer lasting blooms on the tulips and the daffodils and the scylla. This weather has also proved excellent for transplanting, reducing transplant shock to a minimum and resulting in little wilting after a move. The downside has been slow germination (no germination?) for some vegetable seeds planted and slow growth for the ones that have sprouted. From the humans who live here in Andover perspective it’s been a great season. Cool weather to work outside and to further many landscaping projects.

Last night’s conversation about mastery at Tom’s lingers today. At one point we asked each person to claim what mastery they found in themselves, then we offered evidence of mastery we found in them, too, from an outsider’s perspective. Various Woolly’s were masters of soulfullness, love, living, listening, communicating, design, the big picture, and drawing others out to see the best in themselves.

Tom and I were wrong in our assumption that individual Woollys would find it difficult to claim a sense of mastery. And delighted to be wrong, too. We affirmed what each Woolly saw as their area of mastery and added ones they hadn’t seen or chose to ignore, e.g. mastery of forensic engineering, computer skills and sheepshead, making the complex accessible, letting go, the body in motion.

In my case, for example, I admitted I couldn’t find anything to claim since I’ve lead such a curiousity driven life, often running full speed down divergent paths at the same time. Then, I said, “Well, I guess I could claim being a master student.” That got modified in the eyes of the group to seeker after essential, radical truth. OK, I can see that. “You’re a master teacher, too.” Hadn’t occurred to me, but that’s become a theme in various areas of my life of late, so it must be there in spite of my opacity to it.

Tom initiated a get together for designing the evening and having me as a co-facilitator, rather than a servant lackey. He made the food simple, sandwiches and soup followed by a big, really big, cookie. Others seemed to appreciate the act of co-operation in design of the evening. Tom and I wanted to introduce better time managment, and we did; but, that was not appreciate by everyone. “Felt forced.” Well, yes. But every time together has its limits and therefore its limits on contribution.

As we closed, Tom observed that the Woolly’s as a group are a master that each of us can turn to for guidance in life. I nuanced that a bit by suggesting that as a group, over 20+ years together, we have mastered groupness. We are a living community, best evidenced, as someone said, by the fact that we show up.

I have signed out for the summer at the Art Institute. I need the break. I’ll use the time for writing, family and our land.

Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Literature

A Vivid Imagination

May 15, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

59 bar steady 30.02 1mph WSW dewpoint 42 Beltane, sunny

Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

“The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.” – Sir R. F. Burton

Burton is an interesting guy. He traveled the world and did a translation of the Arabian Nights. He is, however, not much of a theologian. His genes must have cascaded down to Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. They, too, seem to believe that if you betray your ignorance loudly, then others will agree. All faith traditions are far more subtle, more nuanced that mere projection. Do they each have their problematics? Absolutely. Do the problems justify the kind of reductionist argument deployed by religions cultured despisers (to borrow the phrase from Frederick Schleiermacher)? Not at all.

The simplest argument against them is this. Have you ever seen a love? Have you ever smelled justice? Yes, you have seen or smelled their physical manifestations, but have you seen the complex of emotions and judgment that produce them? No. Why not? Because they are constructs of the mental world. What constitutes the mental world? Is it just the firing and stimulation of neurons? Oh, how do you know? Because the fMRI tells you so? How does the fMRI tell you its information? That’s right, through sight.

I’m with Kant here. The ding an siche, the thing in itself, is unknown and unknowable due to the mediation of the senses. Therefore how Dawkins and Harris can claim to reach beyond their sensorium and know a negative is beyond me. Does the trashing of their fundamental argument make them wrong? Unfortunately, no.

By the by, if you’ve never read the Arabian Nights, The Thousand and One Nights, then you’ve missed something. Find a complete edition because the Muslims who wrote it had a vivid imagination. I mean, really vivid.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden

A Lot of Growing Around Here

May 7, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

52 bar rises 29.78 0mph W dewpoint 34 Beltane

A very beautiful Waxing Crescent of the Hare Moon

More garden work tomorrow. It feels so good to be back out there. Kate planted Ireland Creek Annie and Cherokee Trail of Tears and Dragon Tounge beans today. Also some mixed gourds.

A cool evening, a warm day. Perfect.

Tomorrow I’ll dig in three tomato plants. These are plants I’ve grown from seed. They’re now about a foot high. It will be nice to see my babies go into the soil. I’m keeping one back for my kitchen garden which will have tomatoes, lettuce, basil, cilantro, peppers and egg plant. The latter three I’ll start from seed sometime soon. Kate’s gonna pick up some seeds at the Green Barn tomorrow.

Got a nice note from Jon saying they’ve turned Gabe’s lights off and taken him upstairs to his room. I passed on the e-mails and comment from Tristan’s mom, too. We’ll gradually weave a web of support around them and the little guy so he can grow up to move on and do what he needs to do in this life.

A lot of growing be done around here right now.