Category Archives: Faith and Spirituality

Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Narratives With Depth and Power

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Spring                                                           Bee Hiving Moon

Here is why I think the ironically evangelical atheists have it wrong.

Today is Good Friday (though I’m not clear how it ever got that name), the day Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth.  It’s also, this year, the first night of pesach, the night Jews celebrate the angel of death passing over the first born of Jewish households enslaved in Egypt.

No matter the metaphysics you claim, no matter the beliefs you hold, no matter the faith you embrace these are powerful, heart deep and deeper stories.  They are narratives you can build a life upon.  And millions, hundreds of millions have.

Take a working class man, a man who earns his living with his hands, let’s say a Toyota mechanic.  Imagine him struck dumb one night with the power of love.  So struck that he leaves the garage behind and goes forth into the countryside and into the cities claiming that before anything else we have to love one another.

Imagine, further, that he gets a following, a few at first, maybe 12, then a few more, Continue reading Narratives With Depth and Power →

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Great Wheel

A Force of Nature

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Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

In these months, when I go to bed, the full moon shines in our bedroom window.  It keeps me awake sometimes, gazing at it, feeling it, absorbing the ancient wisdom it offers.  All those prayers and hopes and wishes flung its way over the millennia.

The last two nights the full bee hiving moon has lit up the magnolia.  Its white blossoms have begun to droop and fall away but in the glow of the moon its fire blazes up again, a quiet torch illuminating the dark.

It’s cherry blossom time too.  One of our cherries blossomed yesterday afternoon,

Kate has been pruning, weeding, clearing away debris as I visited the eye doc, did tours and today worked on Latin.  She’s a full gardener now with her own expertise tied to her energy, her wonderful work.  She gets a lot done.  A lot.  And always comes inside with a sense of having left it all in the orchard or the vegetable garden or among the perennials.

Meanwhile I’ve kept glaucoma in check, showed objects related to communication and swept through 14 verses of Metamorphoses, Book III.  Work in its way, of course, but I can’t say I prosecute it with the same vigor as Kate.  She’s a force of nature, out in nature.

Mickman’s comes on Monday to start up our irrigation system.  We need the water to support the veggies that we plant.  Especially in this drought.  On Wednesday when I went to the eye doc I stopped by Mother Earth Gardens, across from the Riverview Theatre.

We now have four six packs of leeks, one of shallots, one of green onions and pots of rosemary, cilantro and basil.  The last couple of years I’ve started these myself, but not this year.  They won’t go in the ground until Sunday or Monday, so they can get watered right from the start.

Lots of tasks now:  clean the air conditioner, clean out the bee hives, install our new fire pit, cut down a few trees that impinge on other activities.  Some of them involve the chainsaw, so I’m happy.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work

Growing

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Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

Put in my seed order to seed savers yesterday.  This is the first year in a few that I’ve not started any plants.  We moved the hydroponics cart into the garage to gain room for consolidation of all our dog crates in the kitchen.  Not sure whether we’ll use it this winter or not.  Maybe.  But this year, we’re planting seeds or buying transplants.

I ordered 8 tomato plants and 6 pepper plants from seed savers.  I still need to pick up onion sets, leek transplants and kale, probably tomorrow at Mother Earth Gardens at Lyndale and 42nd.  Our potatoes will come from seed savers, too.

We’ve got raspberries, strawberries, apples, pears, plums, cherries, blueberries, currants, wild grapes and asparagus that are perennials, plus the overwintered garlic and some onions.  Even so, I’m glad we don’t have to survive off of our produce.  Gardening would be real work then, a chore.

Instead, our garden sustains us spiritually, maintaining that constant and close connection to the seasons, to the vegetative world, to the soil.  It also provides food throughout the winter and we’ve chosen to emphasize that aspect of our garden by planting vegetables that we can put up.

Plus the bees.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Retirement, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

A Third Phase Entry: I Don’t Have Friends Who Knew Me When

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Spring                                           Bee Hiving Moon

Sometimes realizations float up in conversation, product of a gestalt not possible without others.  That happened to me tonight at the Woolly regular first Monday meal.

Gathered at the Woodfire Grill in St. Louis Park, we began to toss around the topic of change.  Woolly change.  Some of us express excitement about change; some want to explore change, but do not want to lose what’s still valuable to them

At some point in the conversation I said, “Well, it’s not true for any of you, but for me, I didn’t go to high school here.  I don’t have those friends here who knew me when.  When I face down those final days, you’re those friends for me.”

Without even realizing what I’d done, I had laid a vulnerable part of me on the table, not a fear exactly, but a concern.  I don’t want Kate to have all the responsibility.  Nor do I want to have all of it for her.  Most of it, sure.  But not all.

Here then, was naked need.  A need for reassurance that these relationships will last.  Until death do us part.  That’s the realization.  I need to know that these guys will be there for me, as I will be for them.  It’s not often that an unexplored need strikes me, and rarely in public, but it happened tonight.

Let me quickly say that I don’t doubt these relationships.  It’s just that I didn’t realize how important, crucial even, they are for me.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Humanities, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Religion Collapse Disorder

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Spring                                                           Bee Hiving Moon

Had a chance to speak to Groveland UU this morning, a regular event each year for me for over 20 years now.  Some years more, some years less, always congenial.

The Reimagining Faith piece (see Current Work at the top of this page) resonated in a way a bit different than I had intended.  The conversation was not so much about reimagining faith as it was about the falling away of religious life and what that might mean.  That’s where the discussion led.

The Reimagining Faith project needs to deliver a fuller account of what I call religion collapse disorder.  Better documentation of this accelerating trend in the US and more on its implications for individual and group spirituality will be important.  I had sort of skipped over that and gone directly to the challenge facing deinstitutionalized Americans.

Between now and the Summer Solstice I’m going to start investigating possible Asian resources.  I’ll look especially at Taoism, Shinto, and the ukiyo-e artist Hokusai who belonged to a Buddhist sect that worshiped the north star.

There is also more work to be done on tactics, or methods, of constructing a new faith and I think the constructive theology exercise lined out below will be fun and a good step in this direction.

Realized, with a bit of surprise, that I’ve spent a lot of my life putting myself in front of people:  preaching, organizing, acting, touring, writing.  Never thought of it all like that before and it made me wonder what drives it.  Don’t know.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality

What Is Your Core Religious Conviction?

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Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

Challenge to a seminary class in constructive theology.  Sounds fun.  Think I’ll do it.  Not right now because I have to go give my presentation on Reimagining Faith.

“In 3500 words or less, please answer the following questions: What is your core religio-moral conviction, and how does it inform or give shape to your understanding of the theological norms of your society? What is your organizing theological framework? What do you mean when you speak of God? Please include an account of God’s power, creative act, presence and providence, and the question of evil. Or, if you are non-theistic, how do you take account of the beginning of life, the creative power that sustains us all, the web of relations, and the question of suffering? Who and where are human beings in the scheme of things: in relation to the holy, to other humans, to other creatures, to the earth? How do you see the human predicament and the notion of sin? Finally, how shall we dwell together?”

Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Humanities, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Reimagining Faith: The Chauvet Cave Art

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Spring                                                            Bee Hiving Moon

32,000 years ago.  In Europe.  When the Alps had glaciers 9,000 feet thick, in a valley in what is now France, in a cave concealed by an ancient rock slide, these astonishing works remain, a galleries of ancient art, a museum with no light, no movable images and nothing between us and the artists who worked here but time.  These are the oldest works of art.  Period.  And their lines flow from one place to the next, moving with the grace of an angel in flight, creating forms with ease, with economy of line.

Werner Herzog makes strange and wonderful films.  He finds human narratives in fascinating places.  That the French allowed him to film Chauvet testifies to his reputation and he only enhances it with this work.

He interviewed a man, I didn’t get his name or profession, who said to understand the photograph below there are two attributes of life then that could help make sense of it.  The first he said is fluidity.  That is, trees talk, rocks talk, entities are not fixed, they are fluid, one can change into the other, so a woman can become a river, a tree can become a man.  The second is permeability, the forms are not fixed, a woman might have the head of a bull, or a horse the head and upper body of a human.

He suggests, and it certainly makes sense to me, that this drawing from Chauvet Cave illustrates exactly that first example of permeability.  It doesn’t take much to get to Picasso’s Minotaurs or the Labyrinth in Knossos.  Or, Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Imagine living in a world where life, sentience, spirit embedded itself in everything.  More, image a place where the boundaries of your form and your life were not firm, where the boundary between this place and the Other World seemed always thin.  More, imagine lions with the head and forearms of a cave bear.  Or, a woman turned into a tree by a stream.  A hunter turned into a stag and eaten by his own dogs.

This is a world where neither faith nor belief are necessary because the world is as it is.  Magical.  Changeable.  Wonderful.  Horrifying.  Unpredictable.  Just imagine.

 

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Humanities, Poetry, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Step Outside

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Spring                                                    Bee Hiving Moon

Boy, have you caught the sliver moon with Venus above it and Jupiter below?  Soon there will be tulips and crocus and snow drops.  The magnolia already lights up our patio.  A soft torch of white burning quietly.  Round Lake just a quarter mile from our house looks great right at sunset and in the dark with stars and the moon reflecting in it.

The climate may be playing havoc with the seasons but the inescapable beauty of the natural world remains.

Keats may have stretched it a bit, but not too far.  Truth is beauty.

The good news here is that no .5%’er will ever corner the market on sliver moons or magnolia blossoms or reflections in that pond near your house.  These, the original art works, the masterpieces of our everyday world, belong to the commons.  All we have to do is step outside.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Reimagining Faith: Tree of Peace

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Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

The essence of the Peacemaker legend follows as told by Mohawk chief Jake Swamp at the planting of a Tree of Peace in Philadelphia in 1986. “In the beginning, when our Creator made humans, everything needed to survive was provided. Our Creator asked only one thing: Never forget to appreciate the gifts of Mother Earth. Our people were instructed how to be grateful and how to survive. But during a dark age in our history 1000 years ago, humans no longer listened to the original instructions. Our Creator became sad, because there was so much crime, dishonesty, injustice and war. So Creator sent a Peacemaker with a message to be righteous and just, and make a good future for our children seven generations to come. He called all warring people together and told them as long as there was killing there would be no peace of mind. There must be a concerted effort by humans for peace to prevail. Through logic, reasoning and spiritual means, he inspired the warriors to bury their weapons and planted atop a sacred Tree of Peace”

It is said that the Tree of Peace given by the Peacemaker symbolizes the Great Law of Peace. The symbol is a great white pine, and it is said to shelter all nations who commit themselves to Peace. Beneath the tree are buried the weapons of war of the original five nations. Above the tree is an eagle that sees far. Also, four long roots stretch out in the four sacred directions, and they are called the white roots of peace. The Peacemaker invited any man or nation desiring to commit to the Great Law of Peace to trace the roots to their source, and take refuge beneath the Tree of Peace. The Peacemaker’s teachings stressed the power of reason to assure righteousness, justice and health. Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, an Onondaga, states that the Great Law of Peace includes freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right of women to participate in government.

The seed-idea underlying all Iroquois philosophy is that peace is the will of the Creator, and it is the ultimate spiritual goal and natural order of things. The prayer below comes from the people of the Iroquois Confederacy. The prayer is based on the tradition of interconnectedness that the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee possess. This prayer is said to be the backbone of the Iroquois culture. The prayer expresses the belief that rather than take the world for granted, it must be respected, and that we must thank all living things in order to align our minds with creation and the Creator. Usually, a faithkeeper is selected to share the prayer of thanksgiving at the opening and closing of social, government, and ceremonial events. The prayer is comprised of three levels:

 

Spiritual Forces on the Earth, Spiritual Forces in the Sky, Spiritual Forces beyond the Sky

The Spiritual Forces on the Earth are:
the People, our Mother Earth, the Waters, the Fish, the Grasses, the Plants,
our Sustenance, the Animals, the Trees, and the Birds.
Throughout the year we bring our minds together as one
We give thanks to one another
All year long she gives us all that we need

We give thanks to our Mother Earth
Everyday it quenches our thirst
We give thanks to the waters In winter it replenishes the lakes.
We give thanks to the waters

During the year they purify the lakes
We give thanks to the fish
When the wind turns warm a green blanket appears
We give thanks to the grasses
In early summer the flowers turn sweet
We give thanks to the medicinal plants
In early summer they help us survive
We give thanks to the food plants
In midsummer we dance for the green corn
We give thanks to our sustenance
In midsummer we dance for the red beans
We give thanks to our sustenance
During the winter their pelts warm the soul
We give thanks to the animal creatures
Since early times they have been our companions
We give thanks to the animal creatures
In early spring we are glad they reappear
We give thanks to the animal creatures
At one point in time it became a symbol of peace
We give thanks to the trees
At the end of spring the sap will flow
We give thanks to the trees
In early morning they carry messages
We give thanks to the birds
In times of danger he warns the people
We give thanks to the birds
In the summer they sing sweet songs

We give thanks to the birds Spiritual Forces in the Sky are:
the Four Winds, our Grandfather Thunder, our Elder Brother Sun, our Grandmother Moon, and the Stars
Throughout the seasons they refresh the air
We give thanks to the Four Winds
In early summer they bring the falling drops
We give thanks to our Grandfather Thunder
Every morning he brings light and warmth
We give thanks to our Elder Brother Sun
Every night she watches over the arrival of children
We give thanks to our Grandmother Moon
In the night their sparkle guides us home
We give thanks to the stars
The Highest Spiritual Forces beyond the Sky are: our Protectors, Handsome Lake, and the Creator
All the time they remind us how to live
We give thanks to our protectors
At one point in time he brought back the words of the Creator
We give thanks to Handsome Lake
Everyday we will share with one another all of these good things
We give thanks to the Creator.
– Prayer of Thanksgiving, Iroquois Confederacy

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays

Spring 2012: Were You Around for It?

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Imbolc                                                      Woodpecker Moon

Spring.  Whoa!  A season that came and went on the day of its inauguration.  A high of 79 here yesterday.  79!

Yes, that’s right, it’s the Spring Equinox again, we’ve reached that point halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Summer Solstice, the time when light begins to dominate in the division between night and day.

Bruce Watson and his son, local weather geeks, publish an annual meteorological calender with lots of nifty data.  Just pulled it out for grins and looked up the Summer Solstice, that’s right, exactly three months from now–IN JUNE–and checked out the average 30 year high for June 20th.  Yep.  79.5.  Now wow.

However the season came and went this year, I’ll always remember spring as a spunky little season that used to hang around and tease with gentle breezes one minute and foot-high drifts the next.  We don’t need to get all weepy, but those were good springs weren’t they?  Hockey and blizzards, they just sort of go together.

Not this year.  Nope, it’s a couple a rounds and a Bud at the 19th Hole.  Outside.

Ostara in the pagan calendar, this holiday nods toward the fertility spring carries in its changeable weather. Continue reading Spring 2012: Were You Around for It? →