Category Archives: Great Wheel

Athletic Pinnacles, All On A Friday Night

August 16, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

69 bar steady 29.96 0mph NE dew-point 64 sunrise 6:17 sunset 8:17 Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon

The Japanese have tea parties. They sit on special decks built for one purpose. Their artists have perfected its illustration. The moon. Moon viewing. We have the same moon, but our utilitarian perceptual field notes the brightness. Or, the sentimental connections of blue moons or harvest moons or over the moon, but we do not honor the moon sui generis. If you have time the next night or two, take a moment, maybe more. Look at this silvered neighbor, our closest ally, a chunk of earth separated now from home by 250,000 miles. Full moons and crescent moons spark the fire in my heart, wonder.

I watched three Olympic events tonight and each one in its way affected me. The Romanian woman, Constantina Tomescu-Dita, ran away from the field at the ten mile mark. She ran away, ran away, ran away home in an inspiring individual effort. At 38 she was the second oldest contestant in the field. I got caught up in her bravery, her grit and finally her perseverance. When she ran into the bird’s nest stadium, I cheered along with everyone else.

Michael Phelp’s 8th gold medal. It was no gimme with a strong Australian team and a scrappy Japanese team right on the heels of the US, but Jason Lezk swam another anchor lap with great energy. He’s 32. Do you see a theme here? Dana Torres, US silver medalist in the 50 metre dash (swim), is 41. Phelp’s is in his prime and has done something no other Olympic athlete has ever done. 8 gold medals. In one Olympic. Some say it may never be done again. Maybe not. Maybe so. What ever happens, nothing will ever detract from the disciplined, humble swimmer from Maryland.

Ussain Bolt ran a 9.69 100 metre dash. He did it with ease and elegance. He, on the other hand, is 21. This was his first Olympics. He was so far ahead of the field that he thumped his chest and opened his arms palm up to the crowd–while he headed toward the finish line, speeding up.

3 riveting athletic feats. Makes you proud to be a human being.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work

Corn Mother

August 16, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

82 bar falls 30.06 2mph N dew-point 65 sunrise 6:16 sunset8:17 Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon

This comes from wise woman Susan Weed and her website.

Her presentation of Lammas (Lughnasa) and especially her explanation of the link to the Eleusinian mysteries gives me chills. Why? Because I have corn growing in the garden right now. Lughnasa is in essence a celebration, as I said in my post on the Great Wheel page, of the neolithic revolution, a celebration then, of wise women, since most archaeologists agree that women began the practice of horticulture. It is also, and this is what gives me chills, a celebration of the corn that grows now here in Andover in 2008. As the neo-pagans say, Blessed be.

Lammas, or “Loaf Mass,” is the Feast of the First Harvest, the Feast of Bread. This Holy Day honors the women who created agriculture and bred the crops we cultivate, especially the grains, or corn. In the British Isles, celebrants make corn dollies from the last of the newly-harvested wheat. The corn dolly holds the energy of the grain Goddess and, when placed above the door or the mantle, will bring good luck to the household all year.

When we think of corn, we think of succulent cobs of crisp, sweet, buttery yellow or white kernels: immature Zea mays, Indian corn. You know, corn. As in sweet corn, popcorn, blue corn, decorative corn, corn bread and corn chowder. Corn!

But, did you ever wonder why it’s corn? “Korn” is an old Greek word for “grain.” Wheat and oats, barley and even rice, are korn. This usage is preserved in the song “John Barleycorn must die.” When Europeans crossed the Atlantic and were introduced to the beautiful grain the Native Americans grew, they, of course, called it “corn.” And nowadays we think of corn as only that, but corn is Kore (pronounced “core-a”), the Great Mother of us all.

Her name, in its many forms — Ker, Car, Q’re, Kher, Kirn, Kern, Ceres, Core, Kore, Kaur, Kauri, Kali — is the oldest of all Goddess names. From it we derive the English words corn, kernel, carnal, core, and cardiac. “Kern” is Ancient Greek for “sacred womb-vase in which grain is reborn.”

The Goddess of Grain is the mother of civilization, of cultivation, of endless fertility and fecundity. To the Romans she was Ceres, whose name becomes “cereal.” To the Greeks, she was Kore, the daughter, and Demeter (de/dea/goddess, meter/mater/mother) as well. To the peoples of the Americas, she is Corn Mother, she-who-gave-herself-that-the-People-may-live. She is one of the three sister crops: corn, beans and squash. In the British Isles she was celebrated almost to the present day as “Cerealia, the source of all food.”

Honoring grain as the staff of our life dates at least as far back as Ancient Greece. Nearly four thousand years ago, the Eleusinian mysteries, which were regarded as ancient mysteries even then, centered on the sacred corn and the story of Demeter and her daughter Kore or Persephone. Initiates, after many days of ceremony, were at last shown the great mystery: an ear of Korn. Korn dies and is reborn, traditionally after being buried for three days. Corn and grain are magic. The one becomes many. That which dies is reborn.

Faith and Spirituality, General, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays

The Earth, a Sacred Place

August 11, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

79 bar falls 29.96 0mph NE dew-point 56 sunrise 6:10 sunset 8:25 Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon

I got this off the Permaculture listserv.

“(I find this is a good reminder to recite every morning.)
Diadra

A Prayer for Gaia by Rose Mary O’Malley

As I breathe in your air, eat your fruits and drink your water, let me be sustained and nourished so that I may serve.

As I use your resources for clothes, shelter and warmth, let me be strengthened so that I may give back more than I have taken.

As I drink in the beauty of your oceans, flowers, blue sky and stars, let me be so filled with beauty that I will bring only love and joy to your inhabitants.

As I am nourished, taught and loved by your inhabitants, let me so filled with love and knowledge that I joyfully work to assure a fair distribution of your treasures.”

It is an example what I believe to be true, that is, many many people consider the earth a sacred place and have the intention of reverence and worship toward her. The whole neo-pagan movement with its mix and match invocation of Europe’s ancient pantheons and perhaps some Egyptian influence does not reflect the rootedness of this sentiment in American soil. (That is, the American manifestation of it. I believe this is a global phenomenon.) It is also not the case that the Native American reverence for the earth is other than a salutary reminder since their experience is so different from that of us boat people.

We need a way of following the seasons that respects our American experience of this vast and wonderful land. We need a way of honoring mother earth that borrows, yes, from other cultures, but does not presume to make their ways our ways. We need, as Emerson said, a religion of revelation to us, not the history of theirs. And that revelation comes from two sources: our experience of the outer world–this land, its peoples and our experience of other peoples and other lands; and, our experience of our inner world and its own universe, added to our resonance with the outer world.

This is the pagan lovesong that I hear in the hearts of so many people, one that needs articulation and expansion. This is like Brian Swimme’s work, too.

This faith, this reverence and worship of the earth, as in Ms. O’Malley’s prayer, is an ur-faith, or a proto-faith, a faith that comes prior to others, a faith whose acceptance does not contradict the Mulism or the Buddhist, the Taoist or the Christian, but complements, supplements them. For some, like me, it is an adequate faith, enough to sustain me on my journey and as I contemplate the life after this one, or others, it is not enough, but one that needs some salvation instrument or some philosophical cleanser. That’s all right.

Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays

Remember The Sabbath Day And Keep It Holy

August 11, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

76 bar steady 29.97 0mph NEE dew-point 58 sunrise 6:10 sunset 8:25 Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon moonrise 1633 moonset 0040

Strange how I have to relearn, sometimes again and again, simple home truths. A day of rest is good for the soul. The Jews knew it. The traditional Christian community knew it. It may be a Western contribution to humanity. I’ll have to check, but I don’t think the Asian communities have a similar notion. Yes, they have festivals and holidays, that’s for sure shared, but the notion of a weekly day of rest? I don’t know. Those of you who read from Southeast Asia, what do you know?

Anyhow, I woke up today recharged and ready to go. This in spite of my lingering doubts yesterday. Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. Quite a while back I got interested in the idea of sacred time, my commitment to the Celtic calendar is an example. I also observe a week long retreat at the end of each year thanks to the Mayan concept that the last five days of the year are best left alone in terms of work.

I took from the Spanish cultures, especially Colombia and Mexico, the siesta. A nap a day continues to be a cornerstone of how I live daily.

The religious communities with whom I shared a vocation for a time convinced me of the value of regular retreats. The retreats and the Sabbath day have been honored more in the breach than the observance, but I believe that is about to change. Our body needs sleep, perchance to dream, and, it turns out, our mind does, too. Recent research shows that the mind sifts, weighs, analyzes and interprets the days events while we sleep. I suspect the same thing occurs when we take a regular caesura from the usual rhythms of our week and our year.

Please note I’m not talking about vacations here. Those exist for a different reason, I believe. Vacations allow us to vacate the norm and experience another world. They are more for fun and for education seen as fun.

The holy rhythms of which I write here are different. They focus on the spirit, the care and maintenance of our soul. Our doubts about such a metaphysically evanescent idea may have contributed to our immersion in and the stickiness for us of the material, outer world.

Well, time to put this regathered energy to work. See you on the flipside.

Asia, Garden, Great Wheel, Weather +Climate

An Existential Chill

August 10, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

66 bar steady 30.06 1mph NE dew-point 48 sunrise 6:09 sunset 8:27 Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon moonrise 1533 moonset 2334

We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket. George Carlin, RIP

The drum tower in Beijing. Anyone who’s gone on the one week quickie tour of Beijing and environs has at least had a chance to climb it. As early as the Han dynasty (206bce to 220ace), these towers used drums and bells to mark dawn and dusk. Kate and I climbed the drum tower when we visited Beijing in 1999. (I think it was 1999.) I recall it as a dusty place with open areas used for storage, like an old barn. Three stories high it had a commanding view of a market and one of the old style Beijing neighborhoods. We were there at the end of December and the drum tower was cold in the way only bare, featureless spaces can be cold. A sort of existential chill. Maybe Kate didn’t go up, I do not remember now.

The death of Todd Bachmann, CEO of the premier garden center corporation in the Twin Cities, shocked me. Many of our plants started their life at Bachmann’s. Long ago in another life I was in a year long class with a Bachmann who had chosen the Lutheran ministry. Then, too, there is the somehow stronger link with the site itself.

So often when events happen abroad, they happen in a place that is at best abstract: Darfur, say, or Baghdad, Ossetia, even Jerusalem. Once you have been there, walked those streets, seen the heaped up spices and vegetables in the market near the drum tower, then what happened is no longer abstract or far-away because the context is available to your own sensorium. My feet recall the climb in the cold December weather. My eyes recall the sights of the market and the small shops.

A strange sense of lassitude has come over me today. On Sunday I do not work out, so there is a feeling of expansiveness, but also relaxation, a similarity to the sabbath. The weather is perfect, moderate, sunny, low dew-point. A great day to work outside, but digging out the firepit seems to have used up that motor for right now. Even so, I’ll probably pick up the spade and spading fork and begin removing day lilies to new locations.

This is a task that has a window, a window created by the ideal time to transplant iris, August. In this way my time must conform to the garden. It is a happy bondage, though, and one to which I willingly submit.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Writing

How I Work

August 8, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

76 bar falls 30.01 0mph SW dew-point 58 sunrise 6:06 sunset 8:30 Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon moonrise 1326 moonset 2226

“More Americans are likely to suffer kidney stones in the coming years as a result of global warming, according to researchers at the University of Texas.” Agence France-Presse, July 2008

N.B. All these quotes about global warming come from this website: The Warmlist. Here’s the webmasters explanation:

“This site is devoted to the monitoring of the misleading numbers that rain down on us via the media. Whether they are generated by Single Issue Fanatics (SIFs), politicians, bureaucrats, quasi-scientists (junk, pseudo- or just bad), such numbers swamp the media, generating unnecessary alarm and panic. They are seized upon by media, hungry for eye-catching stories. There is a growing band of people whose livelihoods depend on creating and maintaining panic. There are also some who are trying to keep numbers away from your notice and others who hope that you will not make comparisons. Their stock in trade is the gratuitous lie. The aim here is to nail just a few of them.”

So, don’t say I didn’t fess up. The Star-Tribune turned me onto this site.

Shifted focus. Gonna work on that firepit. I decided Kate can help me transplant day lilies when she gets home and I’ll still have time to transplant the iris. I get on a task and sometimes don’t lift my headup to check whether it makes sense. Heresy Moves West is an example.

The research alone would take a good bit of time, I knew that. That meant I could not hope to research and write it in the week prior to September 14th. Knowing that I began to develop this knot in my to do lobe. It began to insist, get it done. Get it done now. Right now. This even though the date was 8 weeks away at the time. Anyhow, I finally opened up and let the lobe have its way.

Once begun, research and writing, at least for me, need to be one fluid motion, the research followed by the writing. In my case this is because as I research various ways of slicing and dicing the information comes to me throughout. At night before I go to sleep the data often floats up and demands consideration. Sometimes I make note of these patterns, sometimes not. Often I don’t because I want the order and interpretation fungible to the last possible moment.

Why? In between the research and the writing there is a creative time in which the data and the various arrangements of it begin to pull other information, other paradigms out of my memory. This process can change the data’s relevance. Let me give you an example.

At first I imagined a straight chronological presentation. The Unitarians began at such and such a place at such and such a time. The westward expansion of the US began in this time period. It rolled out according to these stages, in this place at this time and another place at another time until the whole shebang ended up encountering Minnesota. This came to me first because historical movement often seems cleanest presented in chronological order.

Soon though, as the pieces began to swirl, it became clear to me that the historical progression would have to start earlier, then even earlier. I wrote about this a while back, my need for context. When I realized there were big ideas at play here, the order of things changed again. Then it was a history of ideas approach that made more sense, capturing the development of the peculiar notion of religious freedom in the US. As that became clear, a second important dynamic rose to the top, the rolling dialectic between orthodoxy and heterodoxy.

To highlight the ancient character of this dynamic I decided to find its beginnings in the Abrahamic tradition with Abram’s call away from polytheism to allegiance to YHWH.

Both of these decisions meant that the data in the presentation would have to show how the westward movement of heresy (the rolling dialectic of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in Unitarian history) advanced thanks to the first amendment and how it continued the long arc of dogma challenged by new thought. This lead to the realization that the westward expansion of heresy intensified in the atmosphere of freedom and pioneer energy found on the frontier. So, when we end up in Minnesota, the presentations show how religious freedom and the rolling dialectic not only manifest themselves here, but in fact gain strength and intensity.

Finally, that lead to a desire to push the dialectic one step further, beyond the bland everything’s in bounds soup of current day Unitarian-Universalism to the articulation of a new heterodoxy, one opposed to the dogma of one size fits all faith-lite. This piece is the unwritten one at this point.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Weather +Climate

It Forces Me Into the Present

August 7, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

60 bar steady 30.03 0mph NNW dew-pooint 54 sunrise 6:06 sunset 8:31 Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon moonrise 1219 moonset 2200

If you’ve ever wondered why I put all this weather and astronomical data first, good question. The immediate answer is because I can. My weather station gives me all the top line data with the exception of the Celtic calendar period, but I know those by heart now. The moon names fascinate me so I have several lists of names from all the over world, and I choose one that feels right for the next month. The lists that usually have the one I want are the Celtic, medieval English, and neo-Pagan, although I always feel a little strange with the last one because I don’t understand the roots. The moonrise and moonset I got from a Naval Observatory website that creates a list for your location.

The secondary answer lies in weather history. When I read back over my entries, I want to know what the conditions were like on the day in question. Again, you ask, why? Sometimes for gardening reasons. Sometimes to jog my memory. Sometimes just for fun.

The tertiary answer, though it may be the primary one, is this: it forces me into the present, right down to the temperature and barometric readings. I like the reminder that this moment is this moment and no other. Right now is right now.

Kate’s in Denver. The dogs are asleep and the HD box has a so-so sci-fi movie on record so I can finish when and if I want.

A wonderful night and a good looking day tomorrow. See you then.

Dreams, Great Wheel, Great Work

Hoosier Bodhisattvas

August 4, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

79 bar steady 29.85 5mph NNW dew-point 67 sunrise 6:02 sunset 8:35 Lughnasa

Waxing Crescent of the Corn Moon

“What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?” – Langston Hughes

To continue the raisin metaphor the next line might include the fact that raisins are nutritious and can, with adequate moisture, grow plump once again.

The corn tasseled out last week late and tiny ears of Country Gentlemen have begun to form. The corn stalks soar an elegant, but seemingly fragile 7 to 8 feet above the garden bed. Though there are only three rows and the rows extend only 8 feet or so in length, still it calls up all those corn fields of my youth, green jungles that flashed by as we drove on crushed gravel roads, spreading a fine chalky dust behind us. There was, in that time, a union between the maturity of the corn and our maturity, both green, filled with promise, but not yet ready for the harvest. Corn, of course, has a shorter life span than most teenagers, but some of my Alexandria classmates were dead soon after our senior year, their maturation hastened by the fertilizer of war.

Though those afternoons and nights are long ago, 43 years at least, the marriage between my faith and the earth finds its true roots there. The farms around home and the 4-H fair in late July gave the life of the land a prominence even to those of us who lived in town. The sheds at the fair had rows of corn, tomatoes, beans, beets and cucumbers among many others, set out for the judges to assess. Not the judgments, but the pride and the reality of these fruits imprinted on me those Madison County fields and the seasons through which they passed.

The family farm outside Morristown, which I visited and on which I stayed from time to time as a boy, had the same effect. The corn shed with its slanted, open sides filled with the hard yellow ears of field corn had a mystery to me. This shed found late fall and winter made one, the harvest stored for later use. I loved the cool moisture of the concrete pools that held the milk pails until the milk truck came. This was like a Celtic holy well, a place where the water burbled up from the ground, plentiful and free. In the late summer the hay mow would have bale after bale of alfalfa hay, sweet and pleasant.

Below the hay mow the Holsteins would stand patiently waiting to be milked, their placid ways suggesting a Hoosier Bodhisattva.

Not far down the road, visible from the hill on which the Keaton family home stands even today, is Hancock Cemetery. There the harvest of generations of Keatons and Zikes lay, row by row, in family groups. Not all that different from the hay mow in late summer.

Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, World History, Writing

Teasing Out the Pagan Lovesong

August 4, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

76 bar rises 29.89 0mph NE dew-point 67 sunrise 6:02 sunset 8:35 Lughnasa

Waxing Crescent of the Corn Moon

I saw the dentist today, oh boy. He unscrewed a couple of fillings, refilled them, then closed what he insists on calling an “open contact.” Does that sound like an oxymoron to you? Does to me. Dr. Mahler comes into my mouth unbidden, the occasion the retirement of the redoubtable Dr. Moghk, may he golf in peace. Dr. Mahler is good, fast and communicative. Sure of himself. Just what I want in a dentist. No, seriously. He’s a keeper.

The closing words of my last post have rung like a bell in my head since I wrote them: This whole enterprise needs a rethink, a radical redo. We have gotten thin and liberal, instead of profound and prophetic.

What to do? Part of the responsibility rests with me. I have the task of articulating what I believe and have faith in right now. This articulation must be clear and emotionally compelling. And it is work I feel I can do, am ready to do. Looks like I was off about ten years when I hoped for intellectual maturity in my early 50’s, it has come instead, in my early 60’s. That’s all right.

The later maturity came because my individuation and maturation occurred more slowly than it might have thanks to alcohol and neurosis. I regret the years I gave to anger, disappointment, drinking and smoking. I regret the hurt I caused then and the overhang it left me. Even so, I also know that regret is an emotion with no purpose, no forward motion, so I acknowledge it and set it to the side. Today, the only time I have ever had and will ever have, is the day in which I take up this challenge, perhaps I could have ten years ago, but I didn’t.

Now it remains for me to tease out the pagan lovesong that courses through me when I touch a lily or eat an onion grown in soil I have prepared. There is an ancient language of love and awe for the natural world and for ourselves as part of and dependent on it. This vocabulary of seasons, lunar changes, life’s stages, friendship and family has no nation, knows no creeds and depends on no books, yet it is as particular as the street on which you live and the air that you breathe.

This dream, what Thomas Berry called the Dream of the Earth, is a dream in the sense of the aboriginal dreamtime, it is a way of dreaming worlds into being and it is our great and primary gift as a species. Like all gifts it can cause great good or great harm. Over the next few years I will slip from time to time into the dreamtime and let you know what I find there.

Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays

Primal Eating

August 2, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

71 bar rises 29.87 0mph NE dew-point 58 sunrise 6:00 sunset 8:38 Lughnasa

New (Corn) Moon

A vegetarian meal tonight. Spaghetti squash, golden beets, cucumber tomato and onion salad and cooked whole onion. Colorful and healthy. All but the tomatoes were from our garden, including the garlic and cilantro sauteed in olive oil as a dressing for the squash. After the OMG tomatoes the plants have settled into production with many fruits, but none mature right now.

I know some perhaps many of you who read this cook things straight out of your garden or meat from your stock, but I haven’t done it much. Flowers and shade plants, shrubs and trees have occupied my time. I love them and will always tend them but the vegetables now have my attention.

Primal eating happens when you go pluck five beets out of the earth, take them into the sink and wash them off, trim the leaves and roots away, then slice these hardy roots into smaller pieces, add tarragon and balsamic vinegar, some salt, cook and eat them. The same tonight with the spaghetti squash, the cucumber, the onion, both in the salad and the one I cooked whole. I knew these plants when they were tiny seeds, barely bigger than the lead in a pencil or when they were small potted specimens. The onions and the garlic went into the ground as what they would become, only larger. In each case though the same hands that harvested them prepared for eating.

10,000 years ago some hunters and gatherers first planted seeds and tended crops. The effect on human culture still gathers momentum even today. Nomadic life began to disappear for those people. Settled villages sprang up around the fields. The keeping of animals for food was more predictable than the hunt. In both cases though our ancestors had to give up the moving from place to place depending on season and game patterns. Our bodies, developed in the paleolithic to survive predators and hunt for prey, found themselves out of place.

They still do. So, while gathering and cooking goes far back in our history, it does not go all the way back to that earlier phase of the moveable feast. This fall, however, when Kate and I pick wild grapes that grow in our woods and turn them into jam we will travel back to those ancient times, the ancient trail of seeking food where it decides to be rather than where we care for it.

This meal tonight was a Lughnasa meal, a meal of first fruits, the harvest we do not plan to store either through drying or canning. As a Lughnasa meal, it put us in contact with those early Celts whose gardens might spell the difference between survival and starvation. We live in a wealthier time, but not in one any less dependent on the gifts of mother earth.