Category Archives: Writing

Writing

One More Line

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Spring                      Waning Seed Moon

“Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.” – Bernard Berenson

Friend Mark Odegard called from the Bly conference being held this weekend at the U. of Minnesota. “It’s  heavyweight stuff.  Come on down,”  he said.  Not gonna make it since I have garage cleaning and bee keeping chores today and Wishes for the Sky tomorrow.

The weather has turned cooler, we are 22 degrees off our high of 71 yesterday right now.  There may be some rain on its way, the humidity is up, as is the dewpoint.

One of things that struck me in the Mishima film was a press conference where reporters asked him if he planned to give up writing, “Well,” he said, “I find I have to write one more line.  Then, one more line.”  He paused, “Then one more line.”  A longer pause, “And one more.”  I know how he felt.

I find  writing satisfying at several levels.  It helps me organize my thoughts and assess them.  Writing also helps clarify and name my feelings.  The therapeutic value of this last has come home to me over and over.  Though this may surprise some I also find it satisfying physically.  My skill on the keyboard is one of the few physical acts I perform at a high level of competence. (I’m pretty good with chopsticks, too.)

The keyboard and a white screen quite literally call to me several times a day and I’m finding increasing pressure to get back to long works, novels, for instance, in addition to the shorter essays and thought pieces I do regularly.

One more line.  Then, another.  And another.  Followed by.  Another.

Aging, Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics, Writing

This Is The Question I Face Now. One I Have Not Answered.

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Spring            Waning Seed Moon

Agency.  There’s been a lot written in psychology and history about agency.  We have agency when we can affect the flow of events in our own lives or in the world around us. (No, I’m not going to get into the subtle no-free-will arguments floating around.)  A lot of the historical work has concerned how those without agency–say women, slaves, workers–get it or why they don’t have it.  In the case of the individual agency refers to our capacity to direct our own life.

A sense of agency underwrites our sense of self, or our sense of group identity.  Note that our agency or our group’s agency can be positive or negative.  A more negative sense of agency, that is, sensing that others or factors outside your control influence your life or your group, leads to a feeling of diminished capacity or is a feeling of diminished capacity.  A positive sense of agency promotes a feeling of active and successful engagement with the world, the ability to act in ways congruent with your self-interest or your group’s self-interest.

Here’s where I’m going with this.  In my regression back into the ministry after 8 or so years out I made the move because my writing career had not produced the hoped for results.  I had lost a sense of agency in the work area of my life and moved backwards on my psychological journey to retrieve it.  Going backwards to pick up something left behind is a key element of regression.  Its flaw lies in a return to a previous reality no longer relevant.  The ministy was what I had done, a minister what I had been.  The experience of return to the ministry produced missteps and a low level of energy for the actual work.

Now, about ten  years later,  once again I have reached back into my past, this time even further, to retrieve a sense of agency, the ur-agency, for me, the political.  This is the work with the Sierra Club. (hmmm.  just realized I did the same thing two years back when I studied Paul Tillich.  That was a return to life as a student, a potent form of agency for me.)

What the work with the Sierra Club, the study of Tillich and the ministry have in common is an attempt to regain a positive sense of self through a form of agency already well-established and presumably easily recaptured.  None of these activities in themselves is a bad thing, but that is the lure, the  seductive call of regression.

Back there, if only I could go back in time, and become the captain of the football team again.  Prom queen.  College radio jockey.  The actor I became after college.  My successful years as a bond trader or nurse or carpenter.  Back there I was strong, able.  I had a way with the world, a position of respect and self-confidence. Continue reading This Is The Question I Face Now. One I Have Not Answered. →

Faith and Spirituality, Writing

Then Again.

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Last day of Imbolc      Waning Moon o Winds

Since I was nervous last Sunday and wrote about it here, I thought I’d also post this reaction, printed in the Groveland E-Wire.

E-Wire, Vol. 11, March 19, 2009

What You Missed Last Sunday

American Identity in the Time of Obama, Presented by Rev. Charles Ellis

Charles Ellis based his talk on the book “Who Are We?” by Samuel P. Huntington.

Agreeing with Huntington’s analysis of US national identity from his book, Charles laid out Huntington’s assertion that this identity has four parts: race, ethnicity, ideology (or creed) and culture. Charlie explored these four parts and talked about their changes over time.

Charles disagreed, however, with Huntington’s assertion that “…Americans should recommit themselves to the Anglo-Protestant culture, traditions and values…”, saying that Huntington does not account for change, and that the America rooted in Anglo-Protestant traditions will not be the same if Latino culture rises up strong.

Charles ended on a passionate note, saying “Never, ever let it be said that love of country and dissent from governmental policy are contradictory. Never, ever let it be said that we cannot form a new perfect union, a new nation conceived in the fires of Latin culture and Asian values, yet a nation neither Latin nor Asian, but American, not an Anglo-Protestant America, but a new nation, one never seen before on the face of the earth.”

He got a standing ovation.

Faith and Spirituality, Our Land and Home, Politics, Writing

After the Service

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Imbolc            Waning Moon of Winds

To follow up on the morning jitters.  At the end of my American Identity sermon I received an unusual and rare compliment: everyone clapped.  I took time on the way in to center myself and become part of the beautiful day underway.  As I got more centered, I remembered that I had never served and never intended to serve as a parish clergy.

Why?  Because my views occupy one end of a spectrum, the far left edge.  In the Presbyterian community they perceived me as a prophet, so much so that when I left back in 1990, the Presbytery bought a large print of a Jewish prophet and gave it to me in a nice frame.  Oh, yeah.  That was my place.

I recall a 1972 sermon at Brooklyn Center United Methodist Church on July 4th.  After I got done calling the congregation to patriotic resistance to the war, I went back to stand by the door and shake hands.  The congregation split like the Red Sea and went everywhere but where I was.  I’m that guy.

This sermon has a radical message to and it received resistance today, but in a much gentler and more dialogical way than that one 37 years ago.  I’ve learned some and this community of people knows me well, so we can disagree and still remain friends.

As Popeye used to say, I y’am what I y’am.

Faith and Spirituality, Our Land and Home, Writing

Listen to the Rhythm

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Imbolc            Full Moon of Winds

We’ve had snow all afternoon and into the evening.  Don’t know how much we got, but it’s not the 6-8″ predicted.  Still, the landscape looks nicer.

I’ve got a rhythm going.  Breakfast, write one and a half to two hours, study, lunch, nap, collate research and write, workout, supper, watch some tv, read, come downstairs and do a little more writing.  Sometimes, like Monday, I write all day until I finish a project’s first draft.  This is a good rhythm.  I am productive, creative and learning.

Kate and I have the re-fi bug.  She’s done the research, the hard part of meeting with the mortgage bankers–pawns of the stupid rich.  Now we have to pick a package at an interest rate below 5% and go through the hurdles of appraisals, credit checks, underwriting and closing.  It will help our monthly nut in a big way.

Tomorrow or Thursday I’ll edit American Identity, remembering to add in the impact of national identity (it changes our political behaviors and the policies we support) and perhaps a teaser about geographic components.

A full moon, snow coming down and darkness all round.  And to all a good night.

Art and Culture, Writing

I’m Baaaack!

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Imbolc      Waning Wild Moon

Gosh, my numbers have shrunk this last week.  I know I’ve neglected this space in an attempt to keep up with other blogging, like the Sierra Club and the Star Tribune weather site and I apologize.

Not to mention that I fell into a bit of a slump with the retreat followed by vertigo and a week of feeling sub-par after that.  No excuses, just the truth, Ruth.

This morning finds me once again alert and awake, feeling on top of my game.  ‘Bout time, if you asked me.

Today the textile tour for Anne will come together, aided in part by an insight I got yesterday at the research workshop.  I learned about the directories function on the MIA website.  It shows a complete list of objects on display by type, artist and location.  This makes it easy to plan a tour route knowing exactly what’s on exhibit.  No time wasting trying to figure it out.  The information is just there.

The On Dragon’s Wings tour for Friday will also get assembled today.  I have an 8 dynasties tour, an idea created by Bob Marshall.  In this tour I go through the Shang, Zhou, Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties using one object from each.  As Bob suggested, I try to select the finest example of the most well-developed art form in each of those dynasties.  That means starting with the bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou, moving to a Han ceramic piece, perhaps then to a Tang three-color glaze, then either a Song dynasty landscape painting or a ceramic piece, for example.

I have dynastic maps and a precis’ of the dynasties character.  This allows for a quick over view of Chinese history and associating with each dynasty a particular art form, one that reached its height at some point during that dynastic period.

At 5 p.m. Kate and I will head out to Roseville for another Chinese New Year celebration with the Collection in Focus guides.  I look forward to this each year because it is often the only time I see some of my old colleagues from that program.

Art and Culture, Weather +Climate, Writing

Life-Long Learning

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7oaks250Imbolc    Waning Wild Moon

My weatherblog has been up for almost a month now at the Star-Tribune Weatherwatchers site.  The weather has not been interesting.  It has been either really cold or not so cold.  Little snow.  No storms.  Some days gloomy, some days not.  It taxes me metaphorically to comment.  I never appreciated how difficult attending to relatively stable conditions could be.  It makes the whole concept of news make a lot more sense.

I began yesterday a protracted period of study.  I need to get up to speed on the Sierra Club’s issues for the blog.  I have a special tour for Annie to put together, a piece on textiles and crafts.  In order to learn more about the weather I’ve decided to devote the next two or three weeks to cloud research since the type of cloud helps make the blog more weather savvy.

After my wondrous sheepshead night last week, I’ve also decided to read my two sheepshead books and see if I can pick up some tips for my play.  A big one:  14 trump, not 13.

On March 15th I have a presentation I’ve titled American Identity in the Time of Obama.  Work to do on that one, too.

Faith and Spirituality, Letters, Writing

A Bit More on the Humanities. OK, Maybe a Lot More

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 Winter    Waxing Wild Moon

I reproduce part of a David Brooks column here because it relates to the humanities thread I began a few posts ago.  He seems to counterpoise the liberal education as defined by Harvard against the institutional life devoted to what I would call a vocation.  This seems wrong-headed to me on a number of fronts, not least that the liberal arts education received its birth within the church and there is not much more institutional a creature than the church.

Vocation and its fit within an institution has been part of my life.  Ministry qualifies as one of the oldest professions, vocations, that exists.  Ordination confers upon you a responsibility to a particular institution, a responsibility defined by my Presbyterian vows to uphold the peace, unity and purity of the church.  The role of clergy specifically demands nurture of the institution and the tradition which it serves.  While in the Presbyterian church, I followed that vow with energy.

Brooks does not speak of the demand within any vocation and the institution they support:  law, medicine, education, even journalism for the prophetic voice.  This voice recognizes that traditions, in order to survive, must live and in living they must be constantly weighed in the crucible of every day practice.  Sometimes they fall short; the rote learning of the nineteenth century has given way to  learner centered education.  The church’s ministry, previously open only to men now has women in equal to greater numbers.  Continue reading A Bit More on the Humanities. OK, Maybe a Lot More →

Myth and Story, Weather +Climate, Writing

Brooding Over the Landscape

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Winter

Waning Wolf Moon

(note:  Weather reporting has moved to the Star-Tribune WeatherBlogs and my two weather websites, all of these have links under Andover Weather + on the right hand side bar.)

Last night I watched a bit of the Ravens and the Steelers.  As a Midwesterner my sympathies were with the rust bucket team from the Steel City.  They won. Now I have a half-hearted dog in the superbowl.  No, wait.  That was Michael Vick.  Anyhow.

Weather has become unremarkable.  Ordinary, garden variety winter in gray clothes, brooding over the landscape.  Though the temperature is more bearable, 10 degrees feels quite nice, the weather itself has taken on a dull tone.  We like variety here in the Upper Midwest and  our position in the center of North America gives it to us.  There are no mountains or oceans here to mediate or moderate; we get what rolls down from the north or blows up from the Gulf or over from the west.

We thrive on change.  When the weather becomes dull, it throws us back on other projects like work or chores.  Come on sky!

I wrote four pages yesterday on Red Earth, my first person account of what it was like to become Adam.  More today.

Of late, I’ve begun waking up at 6:00 AM.  I do not want to get up until 7:00 AM, that’s the whole point of my new routine.  At least for now I’ve chosen to lie there and think.   It’s quiet, I’m fully rested and an hours worth of thought seems a useful way to occupy myself until 7:00 AM.

Now onto the mind of Adam.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Myth and Story, Writing

American Identity: What Is It?

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2  steep rise 30.30 WNW9  wchill -5  Winter

Full Wolf Moon

Got my copy of the Mahabarata today, four doorstopper sized books.  You read a long book the same way you read a short one, one page at a time.

The seed database has most of the seeds entered with planting dates, inside and/or outside.  It will make the process of following the garden this year much easier.  It will also make evaluating the varieties and their production much simpler.  The garden has a straightforward demeanor this time of year.  It resides in the realm of fantasy, hard to even imagine with several inches of snowcover and windchills really cold.   The windchill just changed to -9.

Tomorrow I’m going to cover a meeting of the MN Senate Energy, Utilities, Technology and Communications Committee. The Sierra Club’s Government Relations person, Michelle Rosier, has a meeting in New Orleans until late in the week.  (Windchill now -10. )  This meeting has an interesting focus: Discussion of anticipated federal stimulus package.  In a state with 5B+ deficit, the conservation should reveal some lines of attack.

Emerson’s American Scholar contains his usual wise bits and some extraneous thoughts, but I’m half-way through it and he has not gotten to the American scholar yet.  I’m starting here on American identity piece:   American Identity in the Time of Obama.   Emerson’s time set about with clear intention to create an American character, an American identity.  If they could, we can, too.  But first I want to know what they did.

BYB:  I’m interested in the ex-pat perspective on American identity.