Category Archives: Great Wheel

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

A Consolation of Philosophy

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Beltane                                                         Garlic Moon

The philosophy department at Ball State resided in a brick building littered with the remains of other days.  Religion was there too.  The chair of the Philosophy department Robert (his last name has fled for the moment), a buzz cut positivist, an ornery, no see it, no believe it kinda guy.  Let’s just say metaphysics were taught under sufferance in this department.

Bob drove me out of philosophy, convincing me that the most pressing questions of the day were what hot meant, or cold.  Couldn’t see it.  Not then, not now.  But then I didn’t explore much more, now I’ve been in the wide world and know there are more things than that dreamt of Bob’s dreary positivistic philosophy.  Much more.

In fact, if I’d listened to my self, I would have known it then, did in fact, but didn’t know I knew.

Many of us disenchanted with postivism found a real ally in Alfred North Whitehead, the creator of process philosophy.  I used to think I understood it, now I’m not so sure; but, I knew this about it, Whitehead said the universe was alive.  And that made sense to me.

Still does.  In some deep place it made a whole lotta sense, because one October morning a chill hit me as I left that brick building, a class in metaphysics just finished.  The next step, the one over the threshold into the quad, never happened, at least not in my consciousness, because my consciousness was otherwise occupied.

My heart filled up, my mind expanded, the whole of myself plugged itself into the throbbing matter of the cosmos.  I was one with the whole and it with me.  A sensation of light and vastness and yet intimacy became my reality.  Just for a moment.  I don’t know how long it lasted and at this remove, some 45 years later, I couldn’t reconstruct that aspect if I had to.

Since that time, if I remember to recall this, I have never felt alone.  The universe can be known through one flower, one bird, one puppy, one rock, one college sophomore, that much I learned for sure that day.  And more.

The universe can not only can be known (or felt); it knows (feels) back!  Now this is not revolutionary nor advance news.  Mystics before and after me have had similar experiences, remarkably similar, in fact.  The positivists and their ilk might explain this away through brain chemicals, but even if that were to turn out to explain this experience, it would only serve to under write its power.

It just occurred to me today that long ago moment on the quad, in the chill of an October morning, might have hints for how to live my third phase.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Memories, Politics

Beltane 2012

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Beltane                                                          Beltane Moon

May Day.  Brings up cold war images for me.  If you’re of a certain age, you remember black and white television with Kruschev or Brezhnev in the reviewing stands as long flat bed trucks pulled even longer missiles, whole large squares of soldiers trooped after them, some tanks, armored personnel carriers, probably some air displays, too, but I don’t recall those personally.

This was the worker’s holiday to celebrate the successful revolution, the now sad story of a mad man who killed millions and used a centralized state to justify it all, and those who came after him, company men with broad shoulders, craggy faces, phenomenal eyebrows and bad tailors.

If, however, you’re of a certain ethnic heritage, or inclined to join us on certain holidays like May Day, I can conjure a different picture.  Fair maids dancing with ribbons, winding them around and around the tall May pole.  In other spots women and men jumping over bonfires to quicken their fertility.  Herds of cattle driven between two bonfires to cure them of disease.

On a mythic plane the goddess as maiden takes the young greenman for her lover, offering their fertile energy to the fields, to the animals  and to the people.  Villagers take to the fields at night for bouts of lovemaking.

A fair, running perhaps a week, finds persons contracting for field labor, trying out handfast marriages, and surplus goods being traded. This was a joyous time, the long winter lay in the past and the fields had seeds in them.  The air was warm, there was milk and meat.  A good time.

A mood much different than the other great Celtic holiday, Samain, or Summer’s End, which marks the end of the growing season, the final harvests before the fallow and the cold time began.  In that holiday the dead got gifts of food and spirits in hopes that they would at least not do harm.  Those of the fey might cross the barrier between the worlds and snatch a child or even a grown man or woman, taking them back to the sidhe.

These two, Beltane and Samain, were, in the oldest Celtic faith, the two holidays.  The beginning of summer, or the growing season, and summer’s end.

In Beltane we have all the hope of fields newly planted, cattle quickened, perhaps wives or lovers pregnant, warmth ahead.  This is the holiday of hope, of futurity, of anticipated abundance.

No missile laden trucks, no marching soldiers.  No, this was a festival for rural people celebrating the rhythm of their world, a highpoint in the year.

Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays

Rhythm

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Walpurgisnacht                                                             Beltane Moon

As our northern European friends threw the wood on the bonfires and stripped off their clothes, I planted 100 green onions, 6 asparagus crowns and two rosemary plants.  Tomorrow morning I’ll dig up the potato bed and toss in some composted manure.

In this time between spring and mid-fall my life has a rhythm dictated in part by the weather.  Today I checked the bees and planted because this morning’s paper predicted thunderstorms tomorrow.  Now they predict afternoon which leaves some morning time available for digging potato beds.

When it rains and storms, I’ll do Latin and read.  As the summer progresses, I will move my outside work earlier and earlier in the day to avoid the heat and the direct rays of the sun.  I have a delicate Celtic skin that burns easily.  Kate has a Norwegian cover that laughs at the sun. Except for the heat part.

Who knows?  I might throw some chard and carrots in the soil tomorrow, too.  We’ll see what the weather says.

 

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.

 

Bees, Great Wheel

On Our Land

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Spring                                                             Bee Hiving Moon

Well.  Those bees I saw earlier.  That got me excited about a successful overwintering.  They were scavengers.  Robbing the honey left over.  So, now I will have two hives, as I imagined I would.  Moving them them to the orchard. The bees will be closer to the house.

Also, a rite of spring today.  I walked the fence line, about 2000 feet, looking for trees fallen on the fence (2, but not bad), holes dug under the fence (none) and anything else that compromises our dog security barrier.  Nothing that can’t be fixed with a chain saw.

A cedar split a live, large branch.  It hangs now, a fresh wound in the tree about 8 feet up.  I can’t figure it.  Healthy.  Not really in the path of the winds.  Yet there it is, a finish to half the tree.

Bright green grass, translucent in the near noon sun.  Tiny shoots also bright green carry leaves still bound toward their date with the light.  All round the forest has begun to wake up.

One of our apple trees will blossom this week, two cherries seem ready to burst into bloom, too.  All over our property the land has shaken off the winter, mild though it was, and changed out its somber browns for productive green.

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.

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.

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.

 

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? →

GeekWorld, Great Wheel, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Timely

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Imbolc                                               Woodpecker Moon

In case you feel confident, assured, certain about your worldview, I invite you to read the current Scientific American special issue on Time.

 

You know all those hard working physicists whose thought power smells like burning transistors in your really fast computer?  Yeah.  Those guys.  Einstein.  Feynman.  Hawking.  Turns out they can’t find time.  Nope.  Not there.

 

Turns Xeno and that arrow business was right.  You know, you shoot an arrow and it covers half the distance to the target, then half that distance, and then half that distance and so on?  Ad infinitum. Yep.  That’s right.  Stuff happens.

Time has fascinated me for, well, a long time.  Or not.  Western folks, you and me, got stuck on chronos, or linear time, while the pagans and many Asians stayed with cyclical time.  Like the Great Wheel.  Both, according to current thinking, are conventions we use to order our sensory experience.

I haven’t seen in these pages yet a response to Kant’s idea that both time and space are a priori categories, that is, they are part of the way the mind functions and are, as a result, prior to experience, not inherent in experience.  Still makes sense to me.

This may seem like a so-what problem since we already think we know how time works.  Now is now and will be past in a moment when the now now becomes what was future reality only a moment ago.  Yet it turns out that time stands between quantum mechanics and the theories of relativity, frustrating their unification.  Time is relative in Einstein’s constructs and probabilistic in quantum mechanics.  Trust me.  It’s a big deal.

Well, that’s all for this time.