Category Archives: Faith and Spirituality

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Memories

Selfies

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Samhain                                                                         Winter Moon

Great warmup yesterday, eh?  I think we saw 33 here for an hour.  Take that nosnowbirds.

Off to downtown Minneapolis again today.  Third time this week.  I often go a month IMAG1188without getting there.  My first physical with Cornelia Massie, M.D.  No real concerns, just another benchmark on the road to the big check-up.  That’s the one when check-ups are no longer necessary.

(who’s in there?)

Listening to a lecture by Alan Watts yesterday had me wondering about the self.  As you may know, I’ve been an advocate of the Self, the unique bundle of experiences, gifts, body/mind and personal history that is you.  In my way of thinking, Self=Soul.

But.  I think I may have to balance that with the Eastern view of no-self.  Watts described each of us as the universe being conscious of itself, a game the universe plays.  We float along on the flesh bag that contains us, taking in sensation as it comes, changing, always, with it.

In addition to the high Western individualist Self I can see the Eastern argument, too. When I consider the young boy who ran up the concrete slope of a neighbor’s fence to walk higher than his mom for the length of their lot, I wonder how we can share memories.  We do, I know that.  But his reality, his experience of the world is so different from mine today that it makes him as alien to me as a stranger.  Or, an intimate for that matter.

And, if the child, then what about the adolescent?  Well, there, too.  That guy with the runny nose, a wet handkerchief in his pocket, going from class to class, working hard to keep up his status as the brain.  How about that 60’s radical with a placard in one hand, a joint in the other?  Geez, who was that guy?

And so it would go in a chain up until, well, when?  What about the man who sat with his brothers at the Nicollet Island Inn on Monday?  His time has come and gone, replaced with the one who types now.

Yet, I’m also dragging this ever changing body to the doctor because I feel a duty to it, to make it last as long as possible.  Why?  Well, I’m interested in seeing what the Self becomes.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Holidays, Woolly Mammoths

up north with friends

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Samhain                                                                Winter Moon

Here is a northern moment.  Good friends gathered in a small room with wine and steaks and snow outside, the cold.  The Holiseason has charged the air with angels and dreidels and long nights.  Ice on the streets and roads creates the kind of gentle confusion, and sometimes not so gentle confusion, that makes driving in Holiseason different from the rest of the year.

We gathered slowly, two Woollys walked up to the bar before I got there.  Mark in his silk Chinese tie and fancy sport jacket with high points on the collar sat with Charlie H. leaning back, comfortable around alcohol, the two smiling and talking.

The Sun Room at the Nicollet Island Inn was back through a labyrinth of halls, past the bar, stuck away from the rest of the place, a private area for ten or twelve, just right for the eight of us:  Warren, Frank, Mark, Charlie H., Paul from Maine, myself, Tom and Bill.

Tom made the evening special with a gift, the meal, a gesture toward the season and toward brotherhood, appreciated by each of us.  It was that special holiday gathering, one of friends genuinely glad to see each other, to listen, to laugh.  May we have as many more ahead of us as we have behind us.

 

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

Winter Is Coming

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Samhain                                                             Winter Moon

Winter Solstice.  It comes with silent steps, the moon shining through leafless trees, scattering the snow with shadows.  This is a moment between one turn and the next, a still point, a dark still point out of which will come light, enough light to thaw the ground, lure plants from beneath the earth, give them strength and plump up their fruits.  But now, this night, is the culmination of darkness coming toward us one minute at a time until we reach the longest night of the year.

This waning of the light has killed back the plants of summer, shucked the leaves off the trees, frozen the rain so it falls as snow.  This is the season that shows the other face of nature.  This is earth as a receiver of the dead, as a particle disaggregator, a rapacious devourer of life.  Earth as scavenger, cavern, dark sea bottom.  This is the earth as whole, not only giving, but also taking.

When Hades comes for Persephone, he takes life back inside the earth.  He changes her, makes her a part of his realm.  In this marriage of Hades and Persephone we see death preceding life as the Mexica poet said.

In the dark and the quiet of the Winter Solstice night we can draw near to this truth.  We can know that even our own death will do no more than take us back to the earth from which we came and that even that death will not be final as our consciousness is born anew with each birth and our physical self is born anew as plant and animal.  What more wonder do we need at this time of year, in this, the Holiseason?

(Hades and Persephone:  King and Queen of the Underworld)

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Woolly Mammoths

Fed

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Samhain                                                     New (Winter) Moon

Drove into Minneapolis in driving snow as far as Coon Rapids, then rain.  The Woolly’s met at Gorkha Palace, a Tibetan-Nepali-Indian restaurant near Surdyk’s Liquor store in Minneapolis.  Tom, Bill, Scott, Mark, Frank, Warren and I had a pleasant meal together.

Each time I go to a meeting I come away nourished in body and soul.  The body is fed.  And so is the soul.  What do I mean by soul?  I mean much the same as I do when I use the word Self, that fluid yet somehow distinct sense that the I in this sentence is a peculiar, particular entity and one always with me, one with me.  That last is tricky because to be one with me implies a separation between me and the I, a separation that does not, I believe, exist.

How does the soul get fed?  By being seen, validated by others who recognize me as a peculiar, particular entity.  It’s important to note though that the soul, the Self that I experience is not the same as the one recognized by others.  Yet, it is fed by others who see me and respond to me as a continuing presence from one time to the next.

It helps the tricky move of the I seeing the Self.  There is a difficulty here.  What part of me sees the Self that is also me?  I know there must be answers to this, but right now they’re escaping me. Ha.

What I’m trying to say here is that this soul is fed by the souls of others, especially others key to his ongoing story.  The Woollys are such people for me as I am for them.  We help each others Selves stay alive and well.

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays

Following the Great Wheel

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Samhain                                                       Thanksgiving Moon

The Thanksgiving Moon has become a crescent, my favorite shape of the moon.  When it matches up with Venus or Jupiter in the evening sky, what a wonder.  As the Thanksgiving Moon wanes, we are in the middle of Samhain, the cross-quarter holiday beginning on Summer’s End, October 31st, and running through the Winter Solstice.  Samhain covers the first 8 weeks of the fallow time.  Winter the next 8 weeks.  At least on my sacred calendar.

Following the Great Wheel as it rolls through the sky, a human, mythic rendering of the earth’s orbit, helps me stay in touch with the seasonal nuances.  Following the moon through its phases adds a wheel within the larger wheel, two eccentrics moving through the universe and around the sun together.  This would, in itself, be enough for me.

The other holidays though, Deepavali, Easter, Boxing Day, 4th of July, the Eve of St. Agnes, the Posada, Christmas, Hungry Ghost, the various new year’s dates add spice, are the flavors of others sacred sight added to the earth tones of my own observances.  And I love them, too.

We can experience this life as a series of holidays, one after the other.  Delightful and evocative.  Why not?  Perhaps one year, maybe my 70th, I will decide is a holiyear and try to celebrate as many festivals as I can over the course of a year.  Could be fun.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, Holidays

Be Glad You Exist

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Samhain                                                            Thanksgiving Moon

Thankful.  Grateful.  Still here.

Yes, that’s the  prerequisite to all that follows, my living presence to write these words. And, yes, damn it, I’m grateful to be alive.

When I visited Constanta, Romania a year and a half ago, I went there as a pilgrimage to the place of Ovid’s exile.  This is a city that has Roman (Romania!) roots.  Outside an excellent museum of Roman and Greek antiquities (it was a Greek trading port first.), there was a collection of grave markers.  On one of them was this line:  Be Glad You Exist.  That’s what I would call ur-gratitude.  Thankfulness for living.

It’s where I’ll start.  Beyond consciousness and good health in my own case I’m thankful for the same in Kate, the dogs, family, friends and even a few others.  Our home.  Our buddies and colleagues the bees, the soil and the plants which grow in it, those past and those to come.  The orchard and the trees in our woods.  All the critters, sleeping and active that call it home.

Extending all that in a generally cosmic direction, I am grateful for the physics that allow us to exist at all, the sun for its energy, the planet for its hospitable climate (sorry about that hot pack, Gaia) and the North American continent for its wildness and its cities and towns.  Yes, the suburbs, too.  Even Andover.

Language.  English.  Being able to communicate with each other, even through such a flawed and miraculous medium.  What would life be without language?  Western medicine.  Often maligned, but my fav.  Western civilization.  Also often maligned, but mine and yours.  At least most of you who read this.  And just as worthy a human artifice as anyone else’s.

Of course the internet.  Cyberspace.  What a wonder to an old man raised with bakelite phones, 6 digit phone numbers, a time before tv.  So much.  So much to say thank you for. More than can be expressed in any list, no matter how long.

How about, for example, oxygen?  Or the properties of water?  We are made of stardust, animated elements spun out so long ago at the birth not of our nation, not of our planet, not of our solar system, not of our galaxy, but of our universe.  And now they walk, talk, consider their origin.  How damned amazing is that?

So.  Thanks.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Memories, Woolly Mammoths

Absence

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Samhain                                                    Thanksgiving Moon

Driving home from the grocery store today I went past the street down which Dick Mestrich used to live.  Used to live in the sense that he died a couple of years ago.  It felt like there was a hole there at the end of the street, a place where my knowing went and came back with a false report, an absence.

It led me to think what it would be like if I still lived in my hometown of Alexandria, a town of around 5,000.  I knew people on most streets, classmates, friends of classmates, friends of my parents, business owners, people from church.  By now, at age 66, I can drive past many homes where my knowing would report an absence.  Jim Ragsdale out on Harrison Street.  Pancreatic Cancer.  Richard Lawson and Richard Porter out south on Harrison, Alexandria’s main street.  Richard Lawson from injuries sustained in Vietnam, Richard Porter from a fast-moving disease.  Sherry Basset.  Dennis Sizelove, diedClass of 1965 Float (2) in Vietnam.  Even Karl Kyle the owner of the funeral home that sat diagonally from our house and where my mom’s funeral was held.  Mom and Dad, of course.

As we get older the list gets longer, places where our knowing no longer functions, a hole in our social fabric.

Regina Schmidt, too.  Here.  Moon.  I’m aware that this is how it has been and how it will be.  Death changes life even for the living.  Why this came up for me today, I don’t know. But it did.

One more thing.  It feels ok.  Death taught me its deeply personal lesson long, long ago when my mother died.  I’ve known since then that life is a precious gift, one that can be lost with no forewarning.  This life, this unexplainable awareness and mobility and love, is ours on loan.  The universe wants its elements back, has another use for them.

This holiday I’m thankful for their organization in myself and the people I know, and in the people I’ve known.  A deeply weird opportunity, life.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Memories, Music

Holiseason Begins to Put the Pedal Down

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Samhain                                                              Thanksgiving Moon

We’re in that pre-holiday time when the air begins to take on a certain quality.  It’s part hope for a Thanksgiving (this time) that we both recall and imagine, a desire for an ideal time with family, with busyness, with good food and good memories made.

There are those other times, the times before, when the magazines had turkeys in their ads and the Whitehouse spared a turkey.  This year it will be a Minnesota turkey.  The times when we all had to put on our Sunday clothes even though it was Thursday and drive to an Aunt’s or to Grandma’s or to a friends.  Football and stuffing, a browned turkey and mashed potatoes.  Too many people around a too small table.  That drowsy, sleepy feeling, a tryptophan haze.  The turkey drug.

Those times mesh with hope, give it a flavor, a scent, a sound, a cast.  Those are, for me at least, good memories.  They give the time, this time, a pleasant before hand buzz, a family inflected smile.

This is holiseason.  It has these moments one after the other.  Times when others and the world of commerce and the world of religion and the world of small children all begin to bang into each other, making the world merry.  Yes, it’s chaotic and capitalistic. No doubt of that.  But it’s also fun, filled with good songs and lights.  Gifts and cold weather.  At least here.  Not so much in Singapore and Muyhail.

To all of you headed over the hills and through the woods.  Have fun.  Eat too much.  Laugh a lot.  Drive safely.

 

Cooking, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Holidays, Travel

Over the Plains and Through the River

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Samhain                                                               Thanksgiving Moon

Beginning to get that over the river and through the woods feeling.  This coming Sunday we head out for Denver.  Kate discovered, in a drive to Denver that she made this spring, that if she drives, her back doesn’t give her fits.  So, she’ll drive and I’ll watch.  Lot of good book thinking between here and the Rockies.

Holiseason has begun to assert itself more and more.  I’ve heard the occasional Christmas song, seen the articles about Hanukkah and Thanksgiving, been asked what we’re doing for them.  Now the feelings, those old, yet always new feelings, Holiseason feelings have begun to bubble up.  They’re positive for me, though I know they aren’t for a lot of folks.

As a pagan these days, I focus on the lights, the many festivals of light, the Christmas tree, the Yule log, the Thanksgiving medieval banquet, the turn of yet another new year, but reserve my real longing for the Winter Solstice.  It has become my favorite and most significant holiday of the sacred year.  I’ll be writing more about it as it approaches.

Now it’s Thanksgiving.  When growing up in Indiana, we went to my Aunt Marjorie’s for Thanksgiving.  She was the acknowledged queen of the kitchen in the Keaton family universe, consistently turning out great meals.  The kids got the card tables in the family room while the adults had the dining room table.  After the meal, the men would retire to watch football and smoke cigars.

I would read comic books, generally try to huddle in a corner somewhere, usually overwhelmed by the mass of people.  Too many and too little chance to escape.  Even so Thanksgiving was a strong part of the glue that held the Keatons together, me and my 21 first cousins.  It’s now a shared memory, several blocks in the quilt that covers our generation.

Later on Kate and I cooked many Thanksgiving dinners here in Andover, for many different configurations, but those days have waned with the movement of the kids to lands far from here.  So now we pick up and go to Jon and Jen’s who cook in their renovated kitchen.

We’ve done a couple of family Thanksgivings at Lutsen and I hope we can again.

And I don’t even like turkey.  Go figure.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Latin, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Weather +Climate, Writing

Everything You Need

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Samhain                                                                                                         Thanksgiving Moon

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
Cicero

I’m set.  The library surrounds me as I write this and the garden is two weeks into its winter slumber.  Cicero and I agree about life’s necessities, books and a place to grow food and flowers.  Between them they service the body and the mind.

It’s a dull, grey November day. Rain dribbles out of the sky, unwilling to commit.  The temperature remains in a warmer trend, 45 today, a trend our weather forecaster says will remain until early December.  I hope so since we’re headed out across the plains a week from tomorrow, exposing ourselves to the wind driven weather coming down, with no topographical resistance, from the Arctic.

Finishing up ModPo and getting off the Latin plateau I had inhabited for many weeks has left me in a satisfied Holiseason state of mind.  Before them Modern and Post Modern ended and the garden got put to bed, the Samhain bonfire held.  So this is a time of endings, as Samhain celebrates, and festival season beginnings.  The unusual confluence of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving means the whole last week of November will be celebratory. In December then we can focus on Yule, the Winter Solstice and the pagan side of Christmas.

In the coming weeks I look forward to finishing Missing’s 5th revision and getting it off to the copy editor, learning Dramatic Pro and using it as I develop Loki’s Children while I continue to work in the new “in” the Latin style that Greg pushed me towards.  This will also be a time when I consolidate my understanding of the Modern and the Post Modern and do some more writing around that, especially as it changes and informs my Reimagining My Faith project.

Reading poetry more regularly will also be part of the next few weeks, too.  I want to continue my immersion in poetry.  One of the ModPo teaching assistants, Amaris Cuchanski, said poetry is the leading edge of consciousness and I believe she’s right.