Category Archives: Commentary on Religion

Aging, Art and Culture, Asia, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Friends

Yama

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Beltane                                                                                Waxing Garlic Moon

Still learning about fruit tree management.  Gonna go out and inspect the fruit trees one by one on a ladder this morning.  Then, mid-morning, the bees.  Later, tai-chi starts up again.

A busy week ahead so tomorrow is a Latin day.  I will be in the story of Pentheus for some time, Book III: 509-730.

Death.  A friend whose brother is dying and whose wife has been diagnosed with cancer said the other night, “I can feel them circling.”  This is, I imagine, a frequent sensation as we enter this last stage of life, no longer attending weddings so much as funerals.

The wonderful mandala and one thanka we have at the MIA speak to this.  They both celebrate Yama, the Lord of Death.  In Tibetan Buddhism Yama has a distinct role, he moves us toward enlightenment by teaching us how to reconcile with our own death.  A key move for Yama involves getting each person to embrace their own death, not shrink from it, or fear it, but understanding it as only the end point to this particular life.  In Tibetan Buddhism this has importance because the dying persons emotional state at death has a lot to do with the next incarnation.

In my (our) case I find Yama an important god because coming to grips with our own death does liberate us (can liberate us).  Yama represents that sacred force moving within us that wants us to live today because we know we may (will) die tomorrow.  When our fear of dying crimps our will to live (fully), then death has taken hold of us too early.  Instead, by accepting the eventual and definite reality of our own death, we can paradoxically gain new energy for living a full, rich, authentic life.

Asia, Commentary on Religion, Humanities, Politics, US History

How Might We Lose Our Freedoms?

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Beltane                                                                            Waning Last Frost Moon

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” – Abraham Lincoln

The tea-party folks and all those ronpaulites must love this quote from Lincoln.  I just did a quick search trying (unsuccessfully) to find its source.  The line came up  on such webpages as:  Patriot Watch, The RightWing News, Gunforum, Overkill, Professional Soldiers, SpearFishingPlanet and ChristianSoldiersCross.com among many others.  Until this search, I hadn’t realized a pernicious part of the search technology; that is, it’s capacity to put quotes out of context into everyone’s hands.  I’m sure most, all?, of these folks are confident Lincoln said this.  I don’t know for sure and couldn’t find the source in a quick search.  Context matters.  He may well have meant the apparent plain meaning of these words; he may well not have said them at all; or, he may have said them, but their meaning is different from the apparent meaning due to context.

This is just a specific instance of a general phenomena the web unfortunately promotes, an uncritical acceptance of information and attributions.  If you do not have training in critical thinking, it does not come naturally, you will not consider the possibility of false or inaccurate information; neither will you consider the possibility of attributions made in error, out of wishful thinking, out of malice, out of mistaken information.

Having said that.  Lincoln.  Well, of course, this quote represents nationalistic thinking on the level of the three year old.  Why?  It’s magical thinking.  (like Ayn Rand, see below)  It should read, “I hope America will never be destroyed from the outside.”  Forever is a really long time.  Who knows?  Canada and Mexico may form a Norte Americano Hockey league and decide to invade.  OK, that one’s easy.

With the next sentence I agree.  Please note, all right wing admirers of Lincoln, he did not say, “If we raise taxes, we will destroy ourselves.”

Hell, I’m not even sure he said this in the first place.  But let’s pretend he did until we know one way or the other.

How might we falter?  By restricting the freedom of others.  Who?  Gay and lesbian citizens, who pay taxes, vote, fight, raise children come to mind.  The people here first, now often consigned to the least desirable plots of land  on land once their sole possession, come to mind. All the Mexicans fighting to get across the border onto land that was once under their nations sovereign control come to mind.  Who are the true illegals here?

How might we falter?  By refusing to honor the compassionate wisdom of our primary faith tradition, Christianity. Here are few quotes from the New Testament that show what I mean. Feed my sheep.  Let the little ones come unto me.  Again, I tell you it is easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.  “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

If you have a country where the rich get rich, richer, richest and the poor recede from economic sight, is that just?  If we are to feed Jesus’s sheep, don’t food stamps and aid to families with dependent children put our culture on His side?  What might be good news to the poor?  A job.  Affordable housing.  Decent medical care.  Food.

Do you see where I’m going here?  It’s possible, even probable, that Lincoln, who hated slavery and loved the nation would, if he had lived, have created a number of government programs to assure the reconstruction of the south.  Instead thanks to Booth we got Andrew Johnson, friend to the south and enemy of reconstruction.

We will lose our freedoms when we lose the compassion that has made us great, the compassion that opens our borders, feeds the starving and gives people a hand up and a handout when necessary.  We will lose our freedoms when a spirit of meanness triumphs and generosity withers.  We will lose our freedoms when we become the money grubbing, power hungry country many in the world already believe we are.

We will lose our freedoms if the narrow vision of the far right wing comes to dominate our land.  It is not taxes that is the issue, or the nature of the constitution, but the character of our country.  Much that is good here has its roots in New Testament Christianity.  That’s the same New Testament read by right wing religious folk.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Letters, Writing

I Shrugged

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Beltane                                                              Waning Last Frost Moon

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists … it is real … it is possible … it’s yours.” – Ayn Rand

Sounds pretty good at the start, doesn’t it?  Don’t let your fire go out?  Even the hero in the soul could be an archetypal reference, one that is pro-Self.  Then, Rand goes completely off the rails.  Lonely isolation because the life you deserved has been beyond reach.  The world you desire can be won.  It exists and so on.  This is the most specious sort of pseudo-logic.

First of all.  Life you deserve?  Oh, who said?  There is no metaphysical realm filled with wonderful fulfilling lives created especially for you and your desires.  That’s simply a happy talk version of heaven, the old pie in the sky idea, just not when you die, but delivered now, right now.  Fast food, fast destiny.  Delivered to your home.

A world you’ve never been able to reach?  So.  If you haven’t reached it yet, why not?  Because you haven’t believed in it enough?  Because you don’t have the right gender, color, sexual preference?  Could it be that the life you want and don’t have is one fed into the culture by vapid self-help gurus like Ayn Rand?  Who says you can have whatever you want?  What’s good about that?  That’s the adolescent girl screaming at a rock concert or an adolescent boy watching hockey or football, pumping his fist and imagining.  Is it possible that the dream you have is not your dream, but the dream of a culture with achievement as its number one value?

I’m no stranger to this thought.  I dreamed of becoming a published author, admired for my prose and my inventive fiction.  I wanted it.  I haven’t got it.  Is my life over because I don’t have what I dreamed?  Far from it.  My dream, and others I’ve had like it, came into my Self via a male focused culture, one that said, Be all you can be.  You can do anything.  B.S.

I can’t, for example, run a 4:00 minute mile.  I can’t, for example solve Fourier Transformations.  I can’t paint the next great American painting nor am I able to put on a white coat and figure out what’s the matter with you.  Would I like to be able to do these things?  Sure.  Is not desiring them what puts them beyond my reach?  No. It’s my limitedness, the peculiar package of skills and abilities I had from birth and have accrued over years of life experience.

We each have limitations; they make us unique.  The trick is not desiring a life you “deserve”, it is finding the life that only you can live, the peculiar, one-off life you have to offer to the world and to the rest of us.  The big difference here is the inward look goes toward self-knowledge, toward humility, toward knowing what only you can do.  This boot-strap, Horatio Alger, American mobility notion only pulls you further and further away from self-knowledge.  Instead, your life becomes an attempt to shoe-horn yourself into a cultural vessel, one not designed for you, not at all, but one designed to keep the culture moving in the direction it knows.

You are different.  You deserve nothing.  The hero in your soul will not perish in lonely isolation because you don’t get what you deserve.  The hero in your soul perishes when it uses its power and energy to cram you into somebody elses version of what you deserve.

In summary:  I don’t like Ayn Rand.

Aging, Art and Culture, Asia, Commentary on Religion, Memories

A Long Time Ago

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Beltane                                                                              Full Last Frost Moon

Down to United Seminary for Leslie’s last leadership and development class.  The time with Leslie there was good; we developed a good rapport, even a friendship over the 9 months of conversations and I’ve come to care about what happens with her ministerial development.

The Seminary itself has all kinds of odd resonances.  Here are three.  uts-library

I parked in a parking spot near a side entrance, a parking spot I had used many times in the years in which I was a student at UTS.  When I got out of the car, I looked up at the library, my favorite part of the Seminary.  I could see the corner where my desk had been.  It was my desk because whenever I needed to study and remain at the Sem, I went to the same corner desk on the third floor, as far back in the stacks as the shelving went.  From my desk I could see New Brighton and Highway 694 to the north, as well as the student housing where I’d lived my junior year (first year) in 1971.

When I went into the room where the many interns and their mentors gathered, a lot of memories flooded back.  This was the old chapel, a lot of sermons, worship services, morning prayer services happened there.  In my junior year I organized an arts festival, a week long celebration of various mediums focused most on film.  This was 1971, long before even vcrs, and I discovered a foundation in Wisconsin, founded by, of all people, Albert Camus’s widow, that had both the films and film rights to many early Ingemar Bergman movies.  I arranged for four of them to be shown at UTS, including one I had not seen before, the Ritual*.

Attending the night I showed the Ritual was Dean Louis Gunneman and his wife.  At the time the Dean was 70 and his wife a distinguished lady of similar age.  The Dean had been instrumental in the creation of both the United Church of Christ denomination and United Theological Seminary.

During the scene of simulated cunnilingus the Dean rose in his elegant way and with his wife on his arm, left the chapel.

S’ing Long Lin, a Taiwanese native of Mandarin descent, was a tall lean Chinese man of perhaps 30.  I vividly recall the look on his face when I translated 20 degrees below zero–which it was that morning–into centigrade.  Quite a moment.

Rotten Tomatoes

*The Ritual is an alternate English-language title for Ingmar Bergman’s The Rite (Riten). Made for Swedish television in 1969, this short film was Bergman’s revenge against those who opposed his management of the Royal Dramatic Theatre. The storyline involves three actors whose recent production has been judged obscene by the powers-that-be. Bergman deliberately obscures the “controversial” quality of the production itself, forcing the viewers to assess their own opinions over what is obscene and what isn’t. Intending to shock and provoke his audience, Bergman was appalled that many viewers laughed at The Rite, misinterpreting it as a satirical comedy.

Commentary on Religion

Come on Guys.

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Beltane                                                                                Full Last Frost Moon

file under:  Convenient

Sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the United States is a “historical problem” that has largely been resolved and that never had any significant correlation with either celibacy or homosexuality, according to an independent report commissioned by Catholic bishops — and subjected to fierce attack even before its release on Wednesday.

The report blamed the sexual revolution for a rise in sexual abuse by priests, saying that Catholic clerics were swept up by a tide of “deviant” behavior that became more socially acceptable in the 1960s and ’70s.

As that subsided, and as the church instituted reforms in the 1990s and 2000s, the problem of priests acting as sexual predators sharply declined, according to the study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Humanities

Love, Sex and Scandal

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Beltane                                                              Waxing Last Frost Moon

Love, sex and scandal tour tonight.  We went from the Venus figurine, made 20,000 years ago, to the erotic work of Balthus, covering, in between nymphs and satyrs, heroes and centaurs, a raped Roman matron, a satirized French actress, a beloved 5th century Chinese singing girl and the Little Girl of Otto Dix.  The basic theme was the enduring nature of love and sex, probably scandal, too, thought that’s hard to read in the archaeological record.

The most controversial pieces were the final two, Little Girl and The Living Room.  The one we decided was not pornographic though it appeared that way, the other was pornographic though it does not appear that way.  The mutable nature of art.  Along the way we spoke of the shadow museum, things we own, but do not display like shunga, the erotic prints from Japan, that our idea of propriety still carries over the Victorian sensibilities of now three centuries and a millennium past.

We spoke openly about these things and, I think, surprised each other.  In a good way.  I enjoyed the group and the tour.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Great Work

Real Religion

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Beltane                                                     Waxing Last Frost Moon

“The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men – from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Especially true if you insert mother earth for mothers and nature for women, viz.  The real religion of the world comes from nature much more than from men-from mother earth most of all, who carries the key to our souls in her bosom.

I am just back from seeing Leslie give her final presentation at Groveland.  Ran into Bill Mate.  He’s been doing work for the Methodist Church in New Orleans.  Sounded fun.

Wow.  No nap yesterday plus 5 hours driving, then up early for going into St. Paul to see Leslie.  Got hit by a sudden need to lie down and sleep.  Did so.  Better now, less foggy.

When I got back, Kate was in the front, raking and planting, earth mother to mother earth.  I made pizza, then crashed.  Still waking up.

Light rain, warm.  80’s in the forecast.  Spring, it seems, may have finally arrived, well after it has come and gone as a Celtic season.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Myth and Story

Beltane 2011

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Beltane (May 1)                                                        Waning Bee Hiving Moon

A bit about how I got interested in the auld religion, the ancient Celtic faery faith and from it, the Great Wheel.

23 years ago I left the Presbyterian ministry and wandered off into a life I could never have anticipated.  The writing turn I took then led me to investigate my Celtic past, the heritage of my Welsh and Irish ancestors.  I learned about Richard Ellis, son of a Welsh captain in William of Orange’s army who was stationed in Dublin.  After his father’s death, his mother paid Richard’s fare to America, to Virginia, where he was to become heir to a relative’s land, a common practice at the turn of the century since children died so often.  This was 1707.

Also a common practice at the turn of the century was a ship captain’s larceny, stealing Richard’s fare and selling him into indentured servitude in Massachusetts.   Richard went on to found the town of Asheville, Massachusetts and become a captain in the American Revolution.

My own other Celtic ancestors, the Correls, were famine Irish, part of the boat loads forced out of Ireland by the failed potato crop, or an Gorta Mór it is known in Gaelic, the great hunger. (Incidentally, this was due to planting potatoes as a mono-culture, much like we plant corn, soybeans and wheat today.)  They came to this country in the mid 19th century.

I did not go into the history of Wales at the turn of the 18th century, nor did I investigate the an gorta mor and its aftermath.  Instead, I went further back, into ancient Ireland and Wales; in fact I looked at all the Celtic lands, Isle of Mann, Scotland, Brittany and Galicia as well.  What fascinated me then, and still does now, was the auld religion, the Faery Faith, as represented in The Fairy Faith by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, more famous as the translator of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Not long after leaving the Presbyterian ministry I packed my bags for a week + at St. Denioll’s, a residential library in Hawarden, Wales.  While there I wandered northern Wales, visiting holy wells, castles and Welsh villages.  There was also an extensive collection of Celtic material at St. Denioll’s. Continue reading Beltane 2011 →

Bees, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden

Celebrating in the Way of the Bunny

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Spring                                                           Waning Bee Hiving Moon

When I pulled the grass plugs out of the entrance reducers, it was as if the bees had lined up, just waiting for me.  They streamed out, headed for nearest blooming thing.  Well, maybe not.  My understanding is that bees take short flights, then incrementally longer ones, then longer ones, until they’ve built up a knowledge base about the hive’s location.  Only then do they head off for the pollen and nectar available.  They vector using the sun, landmarks and the hive’s appearance.

Bees see color, though they see it in the infrared spectrum.  The colony, essentially a female commune, depends on the different tasks performed by workers, most of them dependent on age.  The  youngest bees serve as nurse bees, checking on larvae (instar), pupae health, cleaning the frame and building up comb if necessary.  The forager and defensive bees are the oldest bees in the colony with the exception of the queen.  They are also the crankiest, the most likely to sting and the fuddy-duddies who, if a new queen is not properly introduced, take offense and smother her.

(see the Guardian article on the pagan roots of Easter)

I wrote the first draft of Leslie’s end of the year evaluation today, too.  She has made great strides.  Though I would have thought it happened long ago, this likely will be the last time I have a working relationship with the seminary and, with the exception of the occasional sermon, Groveland.  It’s been fun to work with Leslie, but the church just does not hold the juice for me anymore.  Liberal religion is an interesting thought world, an anti-faith faith and for most of its adherents, a godless religion.  A strange animal indeed.

After the nap I went outside to finalize the planting scheme for this year.  I have a small moleskine notebook in which I record my planting schemes, primarily to keep my memory clear about rotation planting.  It can get complicated.  This was a blue sky, yellow sun day.  Birds sang and a light breeze blew through the trees, still leafless.  Writing in my notebook, I felt  a connection to the other gardens we’ve planted, the ones from which we probably still have tomatoes, beans, onions, chutney, sauces.  Each gardening year is its own event, never duplicated.  There are averages and likelihoods, but mother nature does not repeat with slavish devotion to detail, rather in the large strokes, warmer and wetter in summer, colder and drier in winter.

Later Kate came out and I consulted her about how many tomato plants she wanted, where she wanted the beans and the peas to go.  We marked them with the wonderful tomato cages we purchased three years ago, thick metal rods enameled orange, sturdy.  She set out to string netting for the sugar snap peas and I planted carrots, then leeks.  Mark smoothed out last year’s potato bed where this year we will plant beans and onions.  He put in several rows of white onions and when I left him was planting red onions.  Kate planted the sugar snaps and the dwarf peas, too.

I came inside to get ready for tai chi.  I’ve made a decision, at least for right now, about resistance work.  I’m going to continue my intensive aerobic work, focused on cardiovascular health, but I’m going to set aside the resistance work for now in favor of tai chi.  My reasoning is that the primary gain I wanted from resistance work is strength to avoid falls.  Tai chi, carefully cultivated and practiced, approaches the question of balance from a different perspective, whole body balancing and leg strengthening, movement centered over the foot.  I just don’t have the willingness to do 45 minutes + of aerobics plus tai chi plus resistance work.  At least not right now.  I will get some resistance work naturally during the gardening season.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Humanities, Politics

Walking Toward the Bomb

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Spring                                                           Waning Bloodroot Moon

Last night, in conversation with Bill Schmidt, cybermage and nuclear engineer, the Sheepshead group turned to Fukushima.  Bill built an identical plant on the west side of Honshu, across the sea of Japan from Korea.  That lead the conversation to Hiroshima and Dick Rice’s story of a Jesuit who picked up a medical bag and walked into ground zero after the blast to help the injured.  Since then, Dick said, all Jesuits have “walked toward the bomb.”  May all of us do the same.

p.s.  Bill sent me a note about Father Arrupe, S.J.– He was the man referred to above and a former Superior General of the Jesuit order.

(Visitors walk toward the Atomic Bomb Dome, at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, western Japan, Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010. Hiroshima will mark the 65th anniversary of the world’s first atomic bomb attack on Aug. 6. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama))

Not joining protests of the policies that will soon affect poor Minnesotans disproportionately, gives me a sense of not walking toward the bomb,  sitting on the sidelines as our state turns its back on those most vulnerable.  Four years ago I chose to throw my political effort behind the Great Work, moving humanity to a benign relationship with the earth.  I’ve done this because the Great Work, to me, weighs in on the side of our species as a species, conserving a safe place for us in a cold universe.  This is a very long range perspective, the seventh generation view of the Iroquois, and it comes with some pain.   I’m glad others are there to carry the fight to the capitol about health care and human services cuts.

Gotta get ready for the Institute.