Category Archives: Faith and Spirituality

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel

Not a Good Sign

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-6  68%  29%  2mph  WNW  bar30.24  steep rise  windchill-8  Winter

                              Full Winter Moon

“Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.” – Albert Camus

When I went out to get the paper this morning, the full winter moon again hugged the horizon, this time a bright silver coin visible through the bare trees of our woods to the west.  Our paper comes, like most of us in the ‘burbs, to a rectangular box below our mailbox, perched on the road so both paper delivery and mail delivery can happen from the seat of a vehicle. 

The trash man cometh at about the same time I goeth to get the paper.  As I stood and watched, the trucks long robotic arm moved out and away from the truck, gripped our black plastic trash container, moved a bit further out, then swept up and over the truck, inverting our container in mid-air causing the lid to fly open and the trash to spill out, white plastic bags full, into the maw of the truck.  The process reversed; I waved at the trash man as he pulled away, grabbed onto the handle and pulled the container on its ridiculous plastic wheels up the 100 foot incline of our driveway.  It scrunched in the below zero temperatures as it rolled and slid behind me.

On the paper’s front page I could see a picture of our central banker, Ben Bernanke, with his head in his hands.  Not a good sign.

Though I’ve done it less than Kate in recent months, getting the newspaper in the morning is an immersion in the weather and season at a point when it all seems fresh, just as dawn begins to break.  It is a meditation, at least for me, since I do it half asleep and therefore more open to the subtle messages of partially hidden moon, the screech of snow and the bite of the wind as it blows across my ungloved hands.

This morning finds me at work on a safari tour for 2nd graders.  2nd graders are great; they respond and most without an inner censor.  I plan to use:  Moche pelican, Benin leopard, (the mummy, because the teacher wants it), the Cambodian lion, Corot’s deer nibbling leaves in a tree, Copley’s Fishing Party, Gaugin’s Under the Pandanus, Picasso’s Baboon and, perhaps the installation of children’s photographs.  Also today I’ll plan a calligraphy tour for 4th graders who’ve used ink, inkstones and brushes while learning brush painting and calligraphy.  Both should be fun.

Faith and Spirituality, Woolly Mammoths

Cows With Guns

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4  65%  20%  0mph SWS bar30.06  steep fall windchll2  winter

                    Full Winter Moon

Here is a wonderful movie from the BLF, the Bovine Liberation Front:   Cows With Guns.  Thanks to Paul Strickland (and a Golden Plump Warrior Chicken Tip o’ the Hat to the Helgeson’s: Beware of the chickens with choppers.)

The Woollies met last night.  We discussed our memories of the Civil Rights movement and the time before it which we can remember well.  Paul remembered white’s only drinking fountains, segregated movie theatres and a grandmother who said of a man beating a dog, “I wouldn’t treat a nigger like that.”  Scott Simpson told of two and a half years as a member of an African-American Pentecostal church in north Minneapolis.  When he brought a lady friend home one evening, his mother quietly asked him, “You don’t plan to marry her, do you?”  I recalled the bitter and often painful days when white radicals like myself marched and acted in solidarity with Blacks.  We were all struggling to find our identity and we accomplished some of that in angry confrontations with each other. 

We debated how far the culture had come since those days.   Some of us thought we’d come a long ways, others (myself, for instance) thought not as far as it seems.  I cited this incident from that went to trial in September of  last year:

“Al Hixon installed some carpeting for his residential construction business one Saturday morning. Then he took his Jaguar out of winter storage and stopped for some fresh oil at a Sinclair station near his Golden Valley home back on April 2, 2005.

The next thing he knew, police officers were throwing him face down on the pavement, jumping on his back, handcuffing him, placing a boot on his neck and shooting pepper spray in his eyes and nostrils, according to his testimony at a federal excessive-force trial Friday in St. Paul.”

Warren told of an African-American friend who found an Eveleth restaurant accepting and a Virginia bar, only a few miles away, hostile and threatening.  It’s the randomness of these experiences, the not knowing when racism will rise up, that makes life still stressful and unpleasant, at the least for most African-Americans.

Oh, and we set up our calendar for next retreat, decided on a theme for the retreat and the next year:  All Themes Considered.   This is astonishing productivity for a group of usually slow to come to a decision men, but we liked it anyhow.

Cinema and Television, Faith and Spirituality

Shinto and the Tao

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7  75%  19%  0mph WNW  bar 30.38  falls windchill7  Winter

                     Full Winter Moon

Just purchased an online course of Taoism.  This is a subject I want to explore in greater depth and this will add to my knowledge. 

Spent a few hours today writing Transcendent Thinking, a presentation for Groveland UU.  Instead of recapitulating Emerson I decided to write as the free, transcendent mind I am.  This lead me quickly to Miyazaki, the anime master whose features rely on Shinto as their underlying ethos.  I  hopped to Shinto itself, then Taoism (which lead me to the course work).  This is more the direction I’d hoped to go with the Ge-ology, now I’ve got a beginning.

I’ve also written a ritual, a sacrament for the way of nature which I’ll post here at some point.

Woollies tonight.  The retreat.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel

Transcendentalism and the NFL Playoffs

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-5  61%  17%  0mph W  bar30.64  Windchill-5  Winter

     Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

Got out the discussion materials for the religious influence on art session with the docent book club, March 17th.  That’s one item finished.

While I watched first the Patriots beat the Chargers and, then, the New York Giants beat the Packers, I read snatches of material I printed out about transcendentalism.  Gotta admit, I’ve had a backward idea of it for a long time, unless I learned it once and forgot it.  Always possible, how would I know?  Here’s the backward part. I thought the transcendent was about leaping the surly bonds of earth and heading for the Platonic/Gnostic heavens.  Nope.  It was about opposing the empiricism and rationalism of John Locke, et al.  Transcendental refers to the Kantian notion that there are important a priori structures in the mind that allow it to function at all.  This rules out the empiricist idea that our understanding (reason) works only on data brought to the mind through the senses.  First, there is the mind and its structures like time and space that order and create intelligibility with sensory data.  Besides, Kant believed that we can never touch  reality, the ding an siche, the thing in itself, since all we ever really know are the data our senses bring to us; in other words we (our mind) never reaches the source of the sensory data which are secondary to the thing in itself.

There is, of course, much more to the debate and the idea, but getting this straight will help as I write a presentation on Transcendentalism for Groveland UU.  By happenstance I also read today an article about Shinto in the work of Japanese anime artist Miyazaki published in the journal, Religion and Popular Culture.  The close correlation between Transcendentalist treatment of nature and Shintoism was so obvious it took my breath away. Likewise, if we add Taoism into the mix we have a sort of triad of nature focused faiths that I think speak profoundly to our current reality.

The Giants/Packers game had my attention the whole way. (I read during the commercials.)  The two teams played more or less evenly for four quarters, though the Giants looked better.  With the score tied at the end of regulation the Packers won the toss and elected to receive.  Favre threw an interception, then Eli Manning took the Giants down to the field for a shot at a 47 yard field goal.  Tynes, the Giants field goal kicker, had missed two shorter kicks in the fourth quarter.  He hit it.  And the crowd went wild.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Weather +Climate

A Gospel for These Heavens and This Earth

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-10  59% 23%  0mph  WSW bar30.36  steep rise windchill-12  Winter

              Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

How low will it go?  Pretty low.  These are the days for staying inside, watching movies, drinking hot chocolate, reading and studying.  I’ll do all these tomorrow.

Driving into the MIA this week, on Monday and then again today, I saw sundogs.  A sundog creates a rainbow like lens, in this case pointing toward the west.  As I understand the presence of a sundog indicates ice crystals in the air which act as a prism.   Just checked, that’s right.  Also, it says they always form at 22 degrees on either side of the sun. 

Both days an earth centered faith was on my mind, as it often is these days, in fact, these last few years.  It is not, perhaps, most accurate to say earth centered, since the  sundog itself is a good reminder that any faith which grounds itself in the material reality of this world also relies, for life itself, on the heat and energy received from the sun.  So, I don’t know, perhaps a solar system centered faith.  The earth’s orbit around the sun orchestrates the seasons and the moon pulses the oceans through bays and onto beaches with tidal flows.  Even a rudimentary understanding of the creation of the solar system acknowledges the intimate nature of our relationship to other planets that share Sol.  So, there’s a puzzle here in terms of where to focus, but I don’t think the parameters are much wider than the solar system, although there is the whole star formation, interstellar dust cloud thing which makes us part of the ongoing galactic reality. Even so, those relationship are distant both in distance and in terms of direct affect, if any on our daily lives, where Sol makes our life possible and its planets are our neighbors.

Anyhow, more thoughts on the notion of Ge-ology.  What I might write, rather than a Ge-ology, is a gospel for these heavens and this earth, a faith focused on the intricate and delicate and complex interdependence between and among life and the inanimate yet critical context in which it exists; a celebration of the wonderful and the awesome we experience each day.  Our heart beats.  The winds blow.  A lover or a child smiles.  The sun warms our face.  We recall times that seem long ago; we think and imagine.  The stars shine.  Snow falls.  These are miracles which do not require walking on water, a Pure Land or a night ride to Jerusalem.  No exodus or burning bush. 

Gospel means good news.  I see this faith as good news for all humankind and for all living creatures on our planet.  It means we can turn our face toward each other and our hands toward the earth in love, not lust. 

As I see it, this is the ur-faith, the one prior to all the others.  It came naturally to indigenous communities through faith traditions like Taoism, Shintoism, Native American faiths, the faith of those who painted Lascaux and who erected Stonehenge.  Are all these the same, no, of course not; are they all similar in their insistence on loving attention to the reality within which we dwell and move and have our being? Yes.  This is the ur-faith because it was one we all know in our deep heart; it is not exclusive, if you want to follow the path of this ancient faith and the way of Jesus or Buddha or Shiva or Mohammad, there is no conflict. 

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality

Buddha Natures Come Out

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-1  47%  24%  0mph WNW bar30.21 steady  windchill-5  Winter

          Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

Today I used the Templeman Tea Service and I went in early to find the damned thing.  It was in the hall where the period rooms are, not in with the other silver.  No wonder I couldn’t find it last week.  Well, now I know.  Two very different groups: white bread Catholics from Coon Rapids (near home) and a group of African-American, African, and Asian kids, three with headscarves.  The Catholics got the highlights tour and the diverse group wanted a Taste of Asia.

The diverse group, sixth graders, had a street-wise look and I wondered if they’d pay attention at all.  Turns out I had to pry them out of the Japan galleries.  They got interested in the Buddha and then the bodhisattvas, how to identify them, what enlightenment was.  They got me off my route entirely, so we went in the Wu family reception hall and spent time figuring out Chinese families lived.  By the Shiva Nataraja, the last object, their attention had begun to wane, but they were delightful.  Both groups were wonderful.

It’s cold now, the windchill has dropped to -8 and we’ll see lows of maybe -20 by tomorrow.  This is Minnesota.

A long nap and now some treadmill time. 

Faith and Spirituality, Family, General

I’m Feeling Born Again!

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20  65%  23%  1mph WNW bar30.04 steep rise  windchill 19  Winter

                    Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

The truck had to go in today for repairs to its CV boots.  Which were leaking.  And its sway bar linkage.  And some plug somewhere on the differential. But it’s all better now.  Carlson Toyota has some more cash.

Kate and I went to the grocery store together for the second time in a month or so.  I do the grocery shopping, almost always alone, so it feels strange when we’re there together.  OK, but strange.  She likes to drive the grocery cart, so my role changes.  I know the store better than she does so I go find things while she forages among the vegetables and fruits.

Back home I worked on an article for the Docent Muse, trying with some frustration to find objects with poems translated.  I didn’t write down the label copy on Monday when I did my research since I thought I could find it online.  Not so easy.  There’s plenty of material for another article on poetry.

If we accept prevailing health notions as a secular form of salvation (Latin root word, salve, to heal or make whole), then I’m feeling born again.  My weight is down.  My exercise schedule continues to work.  My eating patterns have become downright healthy.  I have interesting intellectual work and creative work.  The relationships in my life are at an all time calm.  Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!

Faith and Spirituality

Religion Is the Least Interesting and Most Common Expression of Spirituality

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21  59%  23%  1mph E  bar29.99  steep fall windchill20  Winter

              First Quarter of the Cold Moon

A friend from California called me to ask, “What is the difference between religion and spirituality?”  This is an often asked question.  In part its puzzle represents what I believe is a category mistake.  There’s an assumption implicit in the question that religion and spirituality represent aspects or spheres of the same thing.  They don’t, at least as I understand the terms. 

Religion, for me, identifies the institutional, external vehicle necessary for the transmission of religious beliefs, teachings, history and insititutional form.  In the instance of the Roman Catholic Church, a familiar example, then, religion is everything from the institutional forms like the parish, the episcopacy, the Vatican, monasteries and convents to the magesterium (teachings) to statues and artworks and liturgy.  It may also include the inner life of an individual when that inner life attempts to conform itself to those forms and teachings.

Spirituality, on the other hand, is always an inner journey, but never one in which the goal is forcing that journey down a certain path.  Spirituality is about the freedom of the human spirit to search where it will for nourishment.  It may be that some of that path will include methods conceived by others:  contemplative prayer, zazein meditation, dream work,  psychoactive drugs or ecstatic dancing for example.  The end, though, cannot be forseen for the spirit is the essence, the heart, the soul of freedom and its seeking can never be constrained.  This is why spirituality is often seen as inimical to religion; it refuses boundaries and escapes from dogma like air leaving a punctured tire or a deflating balloon. 

In this understanding it is possible that religion and spirituality have nothing to do with each other, though I think the reality is otherwise, but the reverse of what most people imagine.  Spirituality, as I said, is often seen as an aspect or sphere of religion, when, in fact, religion is the least interesting and most common expression of a vital spirituality.  In this I follow Max Weber who referred to religion as institutionalized charisma.  The Christian church in all its expressions, according to Weber, represents the institutional accretions that grew up around the extraordinary work and teaching of the man Jesus.  According to Weber, the further and further we get from the original charismatic individual or group, the less and less vital and more and more bureaucratic a religion becomes.

 Let me know what you think.

Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld

BMI 25.1, Blood Sugar 98. Yes!

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22  82%  28%  2mph NNW bar30.06  wincdhill21  Winter

            Waxing Crescent of the Winter Moon

These next three weeks are, on average, the coldest weeks of the year.  I’m glad to see them come.  I love the snug as a bug in a rug feeling of very cold days, work I love and a home place to do it.

Weighed in this morning.  My BMI is now 25.1 and my blood sugar is 98.  I’ll continue on with the nutrisystem at least for the rest of this month, then I’ll have to have a good maintenance plan in place because I will head off for the Dwelling in the Woods, then 3 weeks in Hawai’i.  Hawai’i should be ok because the fish, fruit and vegetable type menu is common there.  It would not be the same if we were headed to, say, England or Austria.  I feel good about this effort so far.  The challenge now will be a healthy long term eating plan, one I strayed from too far for too long.

Still no joy on the sound system.  I had the DVD player sending signals through the five speaker set up, so I know I have them connected and working.  When I exchanged the Toshiba HD DVD player for a Panasonic Blu-Ray player, however, I eliminated the sound success I had made.  Since I won’t get the Blu-Ray until next week, I don’t know yet whether I can convince it to communicate with the speakers.  I know, right now, that the coaxial cable I got to connect the DVR/HD box to the receiver did not produce instant results.  Sigh.  I may have to talk with the folks at Ultimate when I go in to pick up the Blu-Ray.  This is part of the learning curve, less steep now than when I opened the first box, but steep enough to block my vision so far.

Today is more work on the Faery Tale and garden planning.  This is the work I love.t

Faith and Spirituality

Off to Dreamland

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20 88%  27%  0mph WSW bar29.87 windchill20  Winter

             Waxing Crescent of the Winter Moon

Day is done; gone the sun. 

The time before bed has a peculiar poignancy.  We lay down the work of this day, set it aside for a period of sleep.  We give up our apparent agency in the waking world for a sleeping world in which we seem to become passive participants in jagged scenes made up of pieces of daily life intermingled with invented plot lines and sometimes extreme emotion.

The dream world has always fascinated me and I’ve gone through parts of my life where I kept nightly dream journals.  Sometimes I would work with these dreams with a Jungian analyst.  Other times I worked with them on my own in a journal keeping process I learned in workshops designed by Ira Progroff, an American Jungian who believed in self-directed forms of analysis and self-care.

A couple of years ago I participated for a full year in the Jungian Seminar, an intense Saturday long class that runs during the academic year.  It is taught by Jungian analysts for the most part and can serve as part of certification for Jungian analysts in training.  A wonderful, rich time, one I gave up when I took up the docent training program as too much, for me a lot like too much chocolate cake.  We worked on dreams a lot.

In spite of my project manager I try to keep the activities of the day confined to that day.  I’m not always successful, like early this morning, but I try to resolve differences of opinion or strong feeling before bedtime if it is at all possible.  We never have more than this day, this hour, this minute, this moment. Ever.  Hard to keep that up front, but I try.

Good night, and as Edward R. Murrow used to say, good luck.

                                           -30-