• Category Archives Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • Roots

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                                  Early Growth Moon

    “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”
    Simone Weil

     

     

    Not surprising this is an unrecognized need because for most people for most of human history being other than rooted was not an option.  You were born within the sound of a church bell or a muezzin or a farm dinner bell and never got beyond them.

    (Jean-Léon Gérôme. A Muezzin Calling from the Top of a Minaret the Faithful to Prayer (1879)

    It is only as the world has begun to urbanize that we have had to consider our roots, or the lack of them.  In the US only 5% of the population lived in cities in 1800, but 50% did by 1920.  80% do now.  This trend is global.  In 2008 for the first time in history over 50% of the world’s population live in cities.  Interestingly one website on urbanization made this point, since no more than 100% of a population can live in cities, urbanization will come to a foreseeable end.

    It is, though, this great hollowing of rural areas that underlines our need for roots just at the point when we realize we no longer have them.  Or, rather, it is this realization that makes the need for roots evident.

    Let’s stick to the vegetative metaphor.  Roots say where we are planted, where we have pushed organs for receiving nourishment deep into the soil, even into the subsoil of the place where we live.  Yes, you might want to talk about relationships and regular shops and schools and sports teams, yes, those things are part of a broad understanding of the metaphor, but I’m wanting to stay closer to the plant.

    (I worked in this factory when I was in high school, 1968.  Johns-Manville)

    If we eat local food, our bodies themselves become literally one with the earth in a particular locale.  Knowing where we are, not only in terms of street names and legalities, but also in terms of trees, food crops, fish, game, local meats, birds, flowers, grasses, even the so-called weeds is also part of having roots.  Embracing the weather, the local changes, as in part defining who you are, that’s having roots.

    It is, I think, these things that disorient us the most when we move away from our home.  We think it’s the people or the customs or the new boulevards and highways, but in a deeper place, in the place where you know you are, it’s the Indian paintbrush that no longer shows up, the alligator not waiting in the pond,  the summer that fades too soon or lasts too long, these things make us not only feel disconnected from the place where we are; they are in fact the evidence of our disconnection.

    (fall harvest, 2011, Andover)

    If we have roots, we usually don’t know it; if we’re missing them, well…

     


    Garden Great Work Humanities Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Weather +Climate

  • Overview Effect

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                                              Early Growth Moon

    “There have been household gods and household saints and household fairies. I am not sure that there have yet been any factory gods or factory saints or factory fairies. I may be wrong, as I am no commercial expert, but I have not heard of them as yet.”
    G.K. Chesterton

    The video below, 20 minutes long, came to me via friend and cybermage Bill Schmidt through his daughter, Moira.  I include the two quotes along with it to emphasize a subtle point.  Chesterton was looking anthropomorphically at the locus of fairies, gods and saints, ok as far it goes, but he neglects the much longer tradition of nymphs, dryads, fairies of the woodlands and fields, holy wells, sacred mountains, places of pilgrimage and, most tellingly underlined in this wonderful video, the dynamic, vital oasis in the midst of the vacuum of space:  Earth.

    (John Byam Liston Shaw  angel offering the fruits of eden)

    We live already, as Bill likes to point out, in paradise.  We are, unfortunately, working hard, very hard, through the godless, saintless and fairyless world of commerce–Chesterton surely had this right–to expel ourselves from paradise.  There is no east of Eden in space.  If we lose this paradise, there is not another for us to inhabit.

    “Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears  The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.”   NYT yesterday

    I enclose the second, seemingly far out of context, quote which comes from our money manager because it highlights a fall in the prices of copper, platinum and paladium.  This fact, falling commodity prices, rather than science or political will, are the main things that will work in favor of stopping the Polymet mine near the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area and its follow-on mines that await only its successful completion of its environmental impact statements.

    (expulsion, Masaccio)

    “PolyMet expects to mine copper by late 2015   One day after announcing plans to raise $80 million in cash, officials of PolyMet Mining Corp. on Thursday said they are moving headlong toward permitting and, eventually, construction of Minnesota’s first copper-nickel mine.”  Duluth Tribune

    We should not, must not, leave these decisions to the whims of the market.  We must develop the political and personal will to say no.  Hard?  Yes.  Necessary?  Listen to the astronauts and look at the thin layer of atmosphere that is all that protects us from the harsh reality of the space we inhabit.

    “Commodities markets. It wasn’t all bad in April: natural gas futures rose 9.0%, cocoa futures gained 9.1%, and wheat futures rose 6.3%. Now for the bad news: gold fell 7.8% last month to an April 30 COMEX close of just $1,474.00. Silver cratered 14.6% in April; copper fell 6.4%, platinum 4.3% and palladium 9.2%”

     

     

    OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo.


    Commentary on Religion Commentary on the news Faith and Spirituality GeekWorld Great Wheel Great Work Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • Growing Up

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                   New (Early Growth) Moon

    Cold, wet and occasionally sunny the short Minnesota growing season has finally begun.  Our cold weather planting is done, sometime in the next week we’ll put in our tomatoes and peppers.  Then, we wait for the sun to warm the soil, the rain to nourish the roots, carrying nutrients from the soil into the plants, elevatoring it up to the leaves where that true, abundant and necessary miracle photosynthesis will transubstantiate solar energy into the real body and blood.  Each leaf a priest, each plant a diocese.  A garden the whole catholic universe.

    It is in here, somewhere, that reimagining faith will finally come home, right down here at that literally elemental level where the chemicals and elements of earth, soldered by sunlight make the essentials for life.  No photosynthesis, no life, at least on the surface of the planet where we live.  I understand there are different processes in the deep sea vents, strange creatures with arsenic in their veins, but up here, in the green world, we depend on–what a weak word–we live or die by this vegetative marvel.

    It’s not as if there might not be gods, there may be.  There may be.  But I can think of no god that does more to sustain my life than the least of the leaves.  Here’s the nexus where sin and redemption must occur.  Sin makes our planet less hospitable for these; redemption conserves the planet’s soil, assures the availability of sun light.

    (Gods Pantheon.  Ratteau)

    Think of the crucifixion each year as soils leach out their nutrients, become so friable that they can blow away in the wind.  Think of the top soil, made fertile over hundreds of years, wasted in a season or two.  Think of the aquifers, draining themselves for our sake with no hope of replenishment in a hundred hundred human lifetimes.

    How will we roll away the stone on this deep crime?  Who will stand at the tomb, that fine rising’ up mornin’, when the world cares for its soils and its forests and its lakes and its streams as if life of very life could not do without them?  Someday.  I hope.  Someday.


    Commentary on Religion Garden Great Wheel Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Weather +Climate

  • Cancer in the morning, the numinous in the afternoon

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                                 Planting Moon

    Got up with the sun this morning, needing to pick up Kona between 7:00 and 7:30 am in Blaine.  Having the sun out and being up early both put my mood into high in spite of the significant cash outlay for Kona’s needed care.

    Imagine my surprise when I looked at the weather report.  6-8 inches of new snow.  Tonight!  Then, maybe 70 by the weekend.  OMG!

    Had Kona over at the vets by 9:40 am where I got the good news that her heart murmur has disappeared and the bad news that her tumor was cancerous.  Kate was in the room from Denver, Colorado via Verizon wireless and my Droid phone.  We discussed the options with Roger and decided to go ahead, as I wrote below, to have it removed.

    Back home.  Nap.  A long nap since my back, unconvinced by the meds and the rests I’d taken, continued to ouch.  A lot.  Couldn’t take the best meds because I had to drive out to Stillwater, then into St. Paul and home after that.

    Stillwater was the bee pickup.  My two pound package of Italian hygienics are now buzzing on top of the dryer in the basement.  I sprayed them with sugar water, will do so again before bed, once more in the morning, then again just before I hive them around 6 pm tomorrow.  That way they have full tummies when hived and are less likely to go adventuring. Which would serve no good purpose right now anyhow.  I had planned to hive them tonight, but the snow.  Comes down hard and wet right now.

    St. Paul was to see John Desteian, my longtime Jungian analyst, I started to see him in 1986 or ’87 and saw him for a long time after my divorce from Raeone.  I’ve seen him off and on over the years, last in 2006.

    I want to see what I’m trying to tell myself through my dreams of loss and being lost.  As I imagined, we headed in the general direction of faith, though not retrieving a lost faith so much as redefining faith, Reimagining Faith, in light of the pagan, existentialist, flat-earth metaphysics of my current world view.

    As always, John asked the good questions.  Pointed me, this time, toward an essay by Heidegger called “The Last God” and understanding the essence of the numinous.  I’ll have a month to ponder that since my next appointment is on May 23rd.  He’s been a useful, valued guide and Jung my chief spiritual adviser.  Sounds like that run will continue.

    Back home to an oxycodone, spraying the bees with the sugar water, crating the dogs and relaxing.  Quite the day.  Cancer in the morning, the numinous in the afternoon.  A lesson there.

    Oh.  Had a vicarious feeling of pride when I learned John now runs an international training institute for Jungian analysts based in Zurich, the Mecca and Jerusalem of Jungian thought.  Here’s the link.

     

     

     


    Aging Dogs Faith and Spirituality Great Work Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase Weather +Climate

  • Fish Skin Lanterns

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                       Planting Moon

    Kona’s temp is down and she’s resting comfortably.  I’ll pick her up in the am.

    Went over to Cecil’s Deli in St. Paul for dinner with Joy and Ginny, two docent friends.  That was fun. Cecil’s is an old Highland Park hangout from our days on Edgcumbe.  It’s an authentic Jewish Deli and always a fun place to eat.  I had a pastrami omelette.

    After the dinner, we went over to O’Shaugnessy on the University of St. Catherine’s campus to see Emily Johnson and her collaborators perform Niicugni. Niicugni is a Yu’pik word meaning Pay Attention, Listen.

    This is the second part of a trilogy, the first one focused on home, what it is, how we know it and experience it.  This performance focuses on the land and our always relationship to it, yet how we can become distanced from it so easily.  Reminds me of the quotes I posted from Chief Luther Standing Bear just below.

    Emily and her co-dancer and collaborator, Aretha, (one of 5 members of Catalyst) tried to imagine how they could be in two places at once on the land.  Much of the movement in the performance grew from improvisation based on that idea.  The idea behind it, the intention of the piece, was to memorialize the fact that at any one point in time the land beneath our feet is connected to some other land, all other land, yes, but in particular land that may hold special meaning for us, like home if we are not at home.

    Much of the work had little to no narrative line and included collaborators from three groups:  urban farmers, (I forget right now.) and people who learned the Yu’pik art of fish lantern creation.

    Allison, also a docent friend and a dancer, learned how to sew the fish skin lantern and made one that hung in the lobby of the auditorium.  Many of the some 50 fish skin lanterns were the main lighting for the entire hour long performance.  Salmon are a primary food source for the Yu’pik in Alaska, Emily’s people and her home.  To make the fish skin lanterns the sewers skin the fish, then scrape all that could rot off, a process that can take up to 16 hours for each skin and four are used in the making of the lanterns.  So, a lot of work and work related directly to living from mother earth.

    The intriguing part of the performance with the collaborators from the three different groups is that she gathers different groups together each place she performs the piece and choreographs their involvement so it integrates with her work.

    In case you’re interested here’s a video on making fish-skin lanterns.

    Emily Johnson Makes a Fish Skin Lantern from Emily Johnson on Vimeo.


    Art and Culture Faith and Spirituality Great Work Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • And Now, Reverse Field and Head Home

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                          Bloodroot Moon

    Everything’s rolled up and in the bag, ready to check out, then board the metro for Reagan International.

    This was a trip where I had to confront some unpleasant truths about traveling.  For me.  My physical stamina, which I rate as pretty good, is still less than it was.  And that matters for my planning.

    Also, not new, but apparent during this trip, too, was the easy slide into OMG, what am I doing?  This is a neurotic pattern that I recognize, having largely learned to slip its bonds, but in a foreign place, separated from my regular routine, wife, friends, dogs it can and does easily return.

    On the up side I have learned that my new interaction with art will include embedding art history within the larger history of ideas, letting these two large disciplines bump into each other, suggest questions and directions for each other.  One place I know these streams will converge is in Reimagining Faith.

    There is, too, a renewed interest in early American history, especially the Revolutionary war period and its immediate aftermath.  Not sure how strong this is, though it did occur to me that it might be a good journey to take with our Western raised grandkids.

    (Hotel fire stairs.  1910 vintage)

    There is, as well, a definite sense of my own regional identity, an Upper Midwesterner, and the way that identity differs from and could inform the culture of national policy.  This is an odd phenomena since I feel very much a man of the North, of the continent more than the country; yet I feel more and more like a citizen of the planet, also more than the country.  Whether this is a personal experience or a more broadly shared one interests me.

    Specifically I wonder if the internet intensifies globalization of perspective while reinforcing local identity.  I wonder if think global, act local and the whole locavore movement might feed this pattern, too, making the local the touchstone not for national identity, but for Terran identity.

     


    Aging Art and Culture Great Work Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase Travel 📎and tagged

  • the wall

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                          Bloodroot Moon

    Hit the museum wall today.  No, not neuromuscular, psychic.  Standing, moving from painting to painting, trying to follow the multiple threads in my own inner discourse.  Plus.  Muscle fatigue from yesterday’s long walk, much of it on concrete.

    Together, they moved me out of the galleries and onto Constitution Avenue.  Which, I learned yesterday, is a covered canal from an original scheme to move goods throughout the capitol by barge.  The railroad did it in, the canals lost money, a lot of money, and so, they filled them back up.  What Schumpeter would call creative destruction.  Me, just destruction.

    (Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810)

    A Durer show opened today, too.  Lots of people.  His work demands such close looking that the crowds made it unfruitful.  I imagine they will calm down in the coming weeks.

    In looking back over the questions I wrote down here a few days ago my main interests have popped into clear relief.  I’m interested in the history of ideas from the Renaissance on through today, in particular the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Modernism, Post-Modernity.  Painting styles interact with these broader philosophical and cultural trends, but in complex ways.

    As I move forward in my work with art, I plan to make my history of ideas interests a more central part of my art historical research.  Without going into it at any length I find direct correlations between, say, Romanticism, and my project on Reimagining Faith.  That realization can trigger art historical research.  There are, too, issues of economics and politics at play.

    (The-Bard-1774-by-Welsh-artist-Thomas-Jones)

    This may be why the museum work had begun to move too slowly for me.  It wasn’t addressing a broad enough range of my interests.  It wasn’t the museum; it was me.

     

     

     


    Art and Culture Humanities Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • A Life Long Passion

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                                            Cold Moon

    “A mythology is the comment of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind…”                                                                                                                                            H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

    A life-long fascination with mythology and its companion fields, ancient religions and folklore, can be explained by this quote.  We have multiple ways of understanding the world, of asking and answering big questions.  In our day science is regnant, queen of the epistemological universe, but it is not enough.  Not now and not ever.

    (Charles Le Brun, Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1685)

    Science cannot answer a why question.  It can only answer how.  Neither can science answer an ethical question.  It can only speak to the effects of a course of action over another in the physical world.  This is not a criticism of science, rather an acknowledgment of its limits.

    Mythologies (usually ancient religions), ancient religions, legends and folklore are our attempts to answer the why questions.  They also express our best thinking on the ethical questions, especially folklore, fairy tales in particular.

    Where did we come from and why?  “1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”  NRSV

    (edward_burne-jones-the_last_sleep_of_arthur)

    Want to live a good life?  Live like Baldr or Jesus or Lao Tze or Arthur.

    How can we tell a just society from an unjust one?  Look at the 8th Century Jewish prophets.  Look at Confucius. (not a religion, yes, but functions like one)  Look at the Icelandic Sagas.  Different answers in each one.

    I fell in love with these complex, contradictory wonderful narratives when I was 9 years old, maybe a bit younger.  Aunt Barbara gave me a copy of Bullfinches’ Mythology.  I loved Superman and Batman and Marvel Comics.  I was an attentive student in Sunday School and later in seminary.  Over time I’ve come to recognize this fascination as a ruling passion in my life, one that guides life choices with power in my inner world.

    It will not, I imagine, fade.  It means writing fantasy is a work of great joy and a hell of a lot of fun.


    Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Humanities Latin Myth and Story Poetry Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Translating Metamorphoses Writing

  • Reimagining Faith

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                                                                   Cold Moon

    Among several reasons I had for moving north, away from my southern roots, was to avoid sleety, cold rain in January.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s the one weather form that has no redeeming qualities.  It’s chill, wet and without atmosphere.  Drear.

    (seasonal round of the Umatilla nation, Oregon)

    That’s what we drove home in this afternoon from the Red Stag.We had brunch there after my presentation at Groveland.

    Feels like the Reimagining project may finally be gaining some traction.  Folks liked the seasonal round and found beginning one illuminating.  At the end I was asked if I did classes on my faith journey.  No, I said, but then I haven’t been asked.

    Made me consider what a class structure would look like for the reimagining work.  I’m not anywhere on it right now, but it’s something to put in the reimagining bucket.

    Now the sleet has turned to heavy snow, wet and clingy.  Much better.  Temperature went down a bit.


    Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • A Productive Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                                                          Cold Moon

    Kate spent the day at a sewing retreat.  All day.  From 9 am to 9 pm.  She came home exhausted, achy and smiling.  “I got a lot of work done.”  That’s Kate for I had a really good day.

    Meanwhile I worked upstairs reading the Eddas and editing my presentation for Groveland tomorrow.  The dogs tend to get a bit rowdy if one of us isn’t upstairs with them.  With Kate gone, that needed to be me.

    We did our dance together, the dogs and me’ I napped and worked out.  Watched a TV series on Netflix.  A laid back but productive day for me, too.

    I have posted a link to Living in Season here.  It’s yet another segment in my continuing work on reimagining faith.  This one focuses on developing a pagan liturgical year.


    Dogs Faith and Spirituality Family General Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Writing