Category Archives: Great Wheel

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

A Gospel for These Heavens and This Earth

Leave a comment

-10  59% 23%  0mph  WSW bar30.36  steep rise windchill-12  Winter

              Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

How low will it go?  Pretty low.  These are the days for staying inside, watching movies, drinking hot chocolate, reading and studying.  I’ll do all these tomorrow.

Driving into the MIA this week, on Monday and then again today, I saw sundogs.  A sundog creates a rainbow like lens, in this case pointing toward the west.  As I understand the presence of a sundog indicates ice crystals in the air which act as a prism.   Just checked, that’s right.  Also, it says they always form at 22 degrees on either side of the sun. 

Both days an earth centered faith was on my mind, as it often is these days, in fact, these last few years.  It is not, perhaps, most accurate to say earth centered, since the  sundog itself is a good reminder that any faith which grounds itself in the material reality of this world also relies, for life itself, on the heat and energy received from the sun.  So, I don’t know, perhaps a solar system centered faith.  The earth’s orbit around the sun orchestrates the seasons and the moon pulses the oceans through bays and onto beaches with tidal flows.  Even a rudimentary understanding of the creation of the solar system acknowledges the intimate nature of our relationship to other planets that share Sol.  So, there’s a puzzle here in terms of where to focus, but I don’t think the parameters are much wider than the solar system, although there is the whole star formation, interstellar dust cloud thing which makes us part of the ongoing galactic reality. Even so, those relationship are distant both in distance and in terms of direct affect, if any on our daily lives, where Sol makes our life possible and its planets are our neighbors.

Anyhow, more thoughts on the notion of Ge-ology.  What I might write, rather than a Ge-ology, is a gospel for these heavens and this earth, a faith focused on the intricate and delicate and complex interdependence between and among life and the inanimate yet critical context in which it exists; a celebration of the wonderful and the awesome we experience each day.  Our heart beats.  The winds blow.  A lover or a child smiles.  The sun warms our face.  We recall times that seem long ago; we think and imagine.  The stars shine.  Snow falls.  These are miracles which do not require walking on water, a Pure Land or a night ride to Jerusalem.  No exodus or burning bush. 

Gospel means good news.  I see this faith as good news for all humankind and for all living creatures on our planet.  It means we can turn our face toward each other and our hands toward the earth in love, not lust. 

As I see it, this is the ur-faith, the one prior to all the others.  It came naturally to indigenous communities through faith traditions like Taoism, Shintoism, Native American faiths, the faith of those who painted Lascaux and who erected Stonehenge.  Are all these the same, no, of course not; are they all similar in their insistence on loving attention to the reality within which we dwell and move and have our being? Yes.  This is the ur-faith because it was one we all know in our deep heart; it is not exclusive, if you want to follow the path of this ancient faith and the way of Jesus or Buddha or Shiva or Mohammad, there is no conflict. 

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel

And then I knew: earth is the “Blessed Sacrament,” and always has been.

1 Comment

28 93% 25% 0mph ESE bar 29.66 steady  windchill27  Yuletide

            Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon

We have come to the Twelfth night of Yuletide.  Epiphany is tomorrow and tonight is the end of the Yuletide season.  Our neighbors, the Perlicks, are Orthodox Christians.  They celebrate Christmas according to the old liturgical calendar which put the nativity on the same day as the Epiphany.  We bought cheese, bread and wine for their Christmas gift today at the grocery store.

Tips for the day

Preparing for Twelfth Night: For generations, at least since medieval times, Epiphany has been the day the season of Christmas traditionally comes to an end. A final night of feasting and merriment, gift-giving in some cultures to echo the gift-giving of the Three Kings, plays and mummery that echoed ancient ways. Then the decorations come down and we set forth into the new year.

And in a custom dating back to at least to the 12th century, and possibly as far back as Saturnalia, a King Cake is baked, containing a pea or a bean. This traditional continues in New Orleans with King Cakes baked from now through Mardi Gras (February 5 this year). Candlegrove contains one such recipe, here are others.

Next year I want to be more intentional about two seasonal things:  celebrating Yule and sending holiday gifts in time for New Years.  Both will reduce stress and deepen the occasion for me.

Here is an interesting paragraph from MythingLinks, by Kathleen Jenks.  It tells of her spiritual journey, which feels, and has felt for some time, a lot like my own.  The whole essay gives the context:  

And then I knew: earth is the “Blessed Sacrament,” and always has been. When Jesus, born in Bethlehem (bet lehem, “house of bread”), later took bread from earth’s threshed grain and wine from earth’s fermented grapes, and said, “This is my body which will be broken for you…this is my blood which will be shed for you,” there was no transubstantiation after all. That would have been an unecessary extra step. I think he meant it literally. Like the ancient Egyptian male earth-god, Nun, I think Jesus was saying that he is earth, and all that comes from it — thus, the wheat, the grapes, the olives, the maples, the sparrows, the fishes are literally his body and blood. They are, and always have been, of the substance of the divine, manifesting some 2000 years ago on the temporal plane as a specific male, Jesus, who was Earth’s emanation, avatar, deva, or emissary, for only a few decades, but now, since he has been “transubstantiated” back into the earth which birthed him, earth has grown as anguished as he once was — torn, abused, polluted, ravaged, broken and bleeding-out at a perilous rate.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel

The Sun Stands Still

Leave a comment

                                     jjwsolstice250-0.jpg

 A Winter Solstice shot by Jim Johnson from the plains near Hecla, South Dakota

23 88% 30% 0mph windroseWNW  bar 29.86 steep rise windchill21   Winter Solstice

     Winter Solstice began at 12:08 AM this morning

While doing some reading and meditating late last night, I came across something new to me.  Solstice comes from the word solstitial, to stand still in Latin.  This explains a phenomena I noticed in the day and night lengths on the calendar for the next 5 to 6 days, that is, they remain about the same; the sun seems to stand still, to pause at it’s northern apogee, then slowly begin to slide more toward the south, granting a slighter longer slice of daylight with each arc of change. 

In the same reading I also discovered that the Zuni and the Hopi both have men whose duty is to mark the reemergence of the sun.  The Zuni man does it with a low, deep moan.  When I read this, it gave me a chill.  Imagine a situation where the sun begins to hide longer and longer each day; the days and nights grow colder and the plants are long dead.  The only food comes from stores and animals caught in the hunt, but they are leaner too for their food sources have diminished.  The longer dark brings families together around fires, the smoke spiraling toward heaven emphasizes the blackness outside; the  fear the sun may never return.  A priest who knows the heavens climbs to the peak of a village structure or a sits on a mesa one night late in this season.  Based on faith and knowledge, his familar voice fills the air, a wailing that recognizes the grief in your fear, yet its persistence, its calm creates hope within you.  You know he has seen, in his spirit life, the promise of the sun to rise and rise and rise, bringing again the warm days.  What a moment.

Last night I also realized that this is my holinight, not a holiday, or even a holiseason, but a particular night, a special night, a night filled with holy wonder.  As John Matthews said in his book, The Winter Solstice, the quiet of Christmas, that moment in the dawn when commercial activity has ceased, children shiver eagerly in their beds and no one moves, is the later adaptation of the Christian community to the stillness of this Solstice night.  It is a calm we need all year, one we can drink in with our senses in these 6 nights while the sun stands still.