Category Archives: Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

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A Purging We Will Go

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Lughnasa                                                     Lughnasa Moon

Over the weekend and as deep into this week as I need to go, I’m packing up my former study. I’ve purged one file cabinet and consolidated its content into boxes for moving. A horizontal cabinet awaits attention. A large plastic tub full of art supplies went into the move with care pile. One small bookcase has been emptied and moved. The shop work bench I’ve used for storage is empty, too. That old printer, the one I bought in 1994, is in the truck and ready to go to a recycler.  An HP laserjet, it still functions.  That leaves three larger bookcases and some miscellaneous things on various surfaces, plus the art on the walls.

(what I hope to create in Colorado, my own version of this.)

When this room has been tidied up, the next and last big push begins. My study. This room has walls of books. Many will go in boxes with red tape, but most will not. The other areas have gone well, but this one will present some difficulty. So many projects. Some of the past, some of the future, some of today. Which ones do I imagine I’ll continue in Colorado? Which ones have enough spark to be valuable in the final third of my life? These are hard decisions for me and packing this room will be both valuable and difficult.

This is a chance to prune my work over the last third of my life, clear out the branches that have grown across each other. Take out that large branch that flourished then died. Increase the circulation amongst the remaining branches so they have air, can breathe. Pruning gives renewed vigor to plants and I hope to achieve the same thing when I pack up these materials, those closest to my heart, leaving behind what I no longer need.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Nocturne

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Lughnasa                                                          Lughnasa Moon

There is the decreasing light, the gradual slide into darkness now over a month underway, heading toward a culmination in December. There are nocturnes. There are evening prayers and compline. There is sleep, rest from the day. There is darkness now, a world which would be, without electricity, lit only by fire and the light from celestial furnaces burning bright.

(Evelyn de Morgan (1855-1919) – The Sleeping Earth and Wakening Moon)

This time comes each day, in its repetitive way soothing, not unlike the liturgy of the hours. Call this the liturgy of light and dark. In composing these nocturnes the night becomes a moment for reflection, meditation, consideration. These sorts of routines can simple our lives, give us dependable pillars that can see us through the storms on which we ride.

My wish for you tonight is the peace of sleep, the refreshment and joy of awakening to a new day tomorrow. Earth speed.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Live the Questions

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Lughnasa                                                                   Lughnasa Moon

I must have had this insight at another point, or been taught it or read it somewhere, but I don’t recall any inkling of it from any source. That is, the study of religion is important not for the answers religions give, but for the questions they ask.

Buddhism, in its emphasis on enlightenment and liberation from the ensarement of the senses is asking questions I’m not asking. It sees, in other words, human dilemmas, yes, but not the ones that are important for me. This is not surprising since Buddhism arose as a response to the harsh laws of karma that bound early followers of the various Hindu faiths-Shaivite, Visnhuite, followers of Kali and Ganesh-to the priesthood and temple. Karma, in spite of its cultural adoption into English, means little to me. I do not feel bound to the karmic wheel, so I have no need of release from it.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam, on the other hand, and the various pagan faiths of the Western tradition have shaped questions in response to the urgent questions felt by those of us influenced by Greek and Roman thought. What does it mean to be alone, as an individual entity? What does death mean, since it is not followed by reincarnation? What is justice in a culture ruled by tyrants or oligarchs? What is the nature of human community in light of all of these?

This is not to say, of course, that Eastern traditions don’t ask questions relevant to us. They do. Guilt can be understood as a form of karma. Why are we guilty and what can we do about it? Is forgiveness possible? Does it cleanse the soul or unburden our conscience? Are those the same things?

Taoism, for me, asks the profoundest questions of all the religious traditions with which I’m familiar. Is it better to take action against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them, or does it make more sense to learn how to live with the energy of tides, adjusting our actions to their ebbing and flowing? Is life better served by intention or attention? Do we need to know the nature of reality or just how to accommodate ourselves to it?

And underneath the questions of both Western and Eastern traditions are the fundamental questions: does life have meaning? are there actions that are required of us? who or what can we trust? with our lives?

All of these questions are important not because some guru, imam or monk said so, but because they are the questions that occur to the conscious animal, the reflective species. And they arise because we know certain things: we are alive. we will not be. we are bunkered within bodies, walled off by flesh and inner life from all others, yet desirous of living with them.

The answers to these questions are so various and so different that a thinking person cannot credit anyone as the truth. So, it is not the answers that are finally important, but the questions themselves. Are the answers important? Sure. They can point us toward a glimmer on the horizon. They can flash in our personal heavens as bright aurora, illuminating for a time our night sky. But in the end, unless capitulation is your thing (and it is for very, very many) you will be left wondering about the answers. But never the questions.

And it is the questions that bind us together. It is the questions that define the ancientrail of pilgrimage through this chance occurrence we share, life.

Again, I’ll quote Jim Morrison of the Doors. Into this world we’re thrown…riders on the storm.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Lughnasa 2014

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Lughnasa                                                                      Lughnasa Moon

In times before the pagan revival this holiday had the name Lammas, even among witches. Lammas, a modern English transliteration of an Anglo-Saxon word for loaf-mass, was celebrated on August 1st. The Roman Catholic imperial strategy of subjugating, then eliminating rival religions moved forward in part by absorbing and renaming other faith’s holidays.

It is not so easy, though, to stamp out folk religions. The old ways were held tight in rural areas and those doing so were called heathens (on the heath) or pagans, from the Late Latin paganus, or country-dweller.

Here’s an example. On Lammas parishioners would grind the first of the wheat harvest, then bake loaves of bread and take them to the church for blessing. According to this wikipedia site, many would then take the bread home, break it into four pieces and put them at the four corners of the grain storage building for protection against spoilage and rodents. So Lammas remained a first-fruits harvest festival, even under the Roman Catholics, but they replaced celebration of the grain itself with incorporation of the grain into the Catholic eucharistic symbology.

(a welsh corn dolly)

As the wheel turns, so does the nature of belief and faith. In this more pagan friendly world most neo-pagans, though not all, have returned to the original Celtic, Lughnasa. While I don’t align myself with any of the contemporary pagan splinters like Wicca, neo-paganism or Asatru, I do align myself with the impetus for the Great Wheel, the changing seasons themselves, and with the value of holidays to celebrate those changes. The Celtic holidays come from within my genetic heritage, so they make sense for me.

Sitting on the counter upstairs is a large laundry basket, the plastic kind that can be IMAG0382carried on the hip, filled with collard greens and chard. In the shed, drying, are yellow onions and garlic of different varieties. Downstairs, in the pantry, Kate has already stored bright orange jars of carrots, blood red jars of beets and jars the solid green of green beans. We have, too, eaten onions, chard, carrots, beets, green beans and collard greens already, so this is a good time to thank the land and the weather and the plants for the food they’ve already produced.

(onions and garlic, 2014)

In Celtic lands Lughnasa would have seen a corn maiden brought in from the fields in the first grain cart holding harvested wheat. (corn, in the British use, being wheat) And corn dollies would represent this symbol of the land’s fertility throughout the long, fallow months.

These holidays were not a single day (as we tend to celebrate them now, if we celebrate them at all), but were market weeks, when produce and crafts would come into a town and villagers and farmers would shop. Games were played, dances held, and marriages, of a 3-month or a year-and-a-day length could be entered. Both were considered trial marriages, the 3-month trial up at Samhain or Summer’s End.

Since these markets enjoyed the first fruits of many harvests, they were occasions tied to the rural life. In the United States Celtic peoples continued the Lughnasa heritage with county fairs and state fairs. Though the Minnesota State Fair is a much more expansive event than the typical Lughnasa festival, the Anoka County fair held recently or the 4-H fair held annually in my hometown of Alexandria, Indiana were probably similar.

In my world Lughnasa is much as it always was in terms of intention, a moment to stop and consider the strong bond between our land and our stomachs, our land and our survival. If nothing else these holidays make us pause and reflect on what’s happening in a world, the plant and animal world, that we might otherwise ignore. It’s for this reason chiefly that I think broad awareness of the Great Wheel and celebrations of its holidays could be a balm for an overheated world.

 

 

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

What Is This Faith?

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Summer                                                            Lughnasa Moon

So, continuing the subject from below, we might ask, what is faith? I will bring in my favorite definitionary, the O.E.D., but before we get to that I want to offer a couple of other observations. In the simplest, and therefore perhaps best, sense, faith is what gets you up in the morning. When you first wake, it comes to you that another day has started (another micro-life). What is it, on reflection, that makes getting out of bed worth it? Or, better, that makes getting out of bed seem possible at all?

Here’s my answer and I’m going to take a risk here and suggest that my answer is, roughly, universal. The body/mind that rises as you has confidence (Latin for with faith) that oxygen will be available. That food of some kind, either plant or animal, will also be available, if not today, then soon enough to sustain life. That your feet will land on the floor or the earth or the stone and not float up into the sky. That when your eyes open the visible world will flood into them once again so you can guide yourself.

Let’s extend this confidence. That the earth will spin and so the sun rise and set, the moon come and go. That our earth will speed its way around our star, tilted, with seasons appropriate to our place on it following as a consequence. That as those seasons come and go, the vast waters of our world will rise into the heavens and fall back to earth, splashing and rejuvenating all they touch. That as those seasons come and go, certain crops will grow and be harvested. Certain animals will be fed and will give their lives in a sacrifice for others so ancient as to be one of earth’s most holy acts.

This is the kind of faith that I believe we all, all native Terrans, share. It may sound trivial and inconsequential compared to the Book of Job or Genesis, the Rig Veda or the Diamond Sutra, but consider its great virtue: we know it to be true. We have to consult no wise men or women. We need no book or ritual. No institution decides whether gravity and the sunrise and the taste of tomatoes, the sweetness of cherries are correct. These are, quite literally, our birthright.

Now is the time for the O.E.D.

Faith, in its form understood from the Greek and Latin is:

1. Belief, trust

2. That which produces belief, evidence, token, pledge, engagement.

3. Trust in its objective aspect, troth; observance of trust, fidelity.

You may say, well. This is trivial. Obvious. And besides, faith, as Paul said, is faith in things unseen. Life is neither trivial nor obvious. Neither is its continuation. The wonder of this planet, so tiny compared to the vastness of the universe, swinging its way around Sol, only one star among a hundred octillion stars, nested inside one galaxy of ten trillion galaxies, is not trivial at all. Neither is it, speaking from the universe’s perspective, obvious.

And what, to agree with Paul, is more unseen than the future? Yet I have faith that these same matters which encourage me to rise each morning will sustain me, into and through the future. Even if that future is only this day, or this hour, or this minute.

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

The Song of the Earth, Herself

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Summer                                                            New (Lughnasa) Moon

croppedZOE_0022At first, as I dug my way into a new faith, it was about a symphony: the early crocus, snowdrops, grape hyacinths followed by tulips, then iris and hosta and bleeding hearts, giving way in July to a the bold notes of the asiatic lilies until the daylilies and clematis, both bushy and climbing, the liguria and the snakeroot began to dominate followed by the soft crescendo of asters and chrysanthemums. This literal rising and falling, in palates of color always framed by many shades of green, played out in my mind, a curious analog to the mental images inspired by listening to Mozart or Haydn or Pachibel.

Then, with Kate’s guidance vegetables came to have more and more importance. They too come in their own season, following their own melodic lines, as do the fruits and the nuts. Even, I would later learn, so did honey and the concerto of the honey bee.

Amending the soil with compost and peat moss and decayed leaves and hay, finding the 06 27 10_beekeeperastronautheirloom seeds for the vegetables we grow and the beautiful varieties of perennials like the iris and the lily, made the whole a process laced with memory and filled with change.

It is no surprise that the Great Wheel, the ancient calendar of a people whose blood runs in my veins, came into this earthy process as a celebration, as a sacred abstraction of a very real lived experience. This was not systematic theology. This was neither dogma nor holy book. No, this was and is the song of the earth herself, composed in her own medium, the plants whom her body supplies with nutrients and her body which receives their dead bodies to replenish herself.

So this is a material spirituality, a spirituality that lives in the praxis between human awareness and the earth’s ordinary wonders, a paradoxical sacredness created by the essential, the necessary bond between the human body and the plant body and the earth’s body. It may be, probably is, that paradox exists here only when seen against the various gnosticisms of the world’s many religions. In fact, a faith rethought and reimagined without religion entering into the mix needs no spirituality other than that mysterious, miraculous link that binds the entire web of life into one interdependent whole.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

Into This World We’re Thrown

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Summer                                                             New (Lughnasa) Moon

Into this house we’re born
Into this world we’re thrown…
Riders on the storm             The Doors, “Riders on the Storm”

Reimagining faith. This has been a project of mine for over ten years. It started as an attempt to create a ge-ology as opposed to a theo-logy. (which, I just recalled, began long after a faith focus which saw me out in the woods and wild places of Anoka County for Celtic holidays.) My idea then was to put the earth in the place of God in a value system, a philosophical system for understanding life and its choices. In that vein I took a course on the systematic theologian Paul Tillich. If I could understand in close detail how a thinker like Tillich went about creating a theology, I might follow a similar path toward a ge-ology.

(Johann Wilhelm Cordes: Die Wilde Jagd” – Skizze zum Gemälde 1856/57)

The course was instructive, but not in the way I had imagined. Tillich’s work was too systematic, too neat and tied together with multiple logical bows. It was a product of the enlightenment, a philosophical system built on a clever and sensitive reading of the Christian theological tradition. It was not something I wanted to emulate, perhaps could not emulate. (Tillich was a really, really bright guy.)

After various fits and starts, I eventually set aside the ge-ology idea and turned toward reimagining faith. This idea came from feedback to a long ago post in Ancientrails where I referred to my spirituality as a tactile spirituality. Somebody appreciated this paradox, a material spirituality rather than an ethereal, post-Platonic soul based spirituality.

The starting point for both the idea of the ge-ology and reimagining faith is the Great Wheel. I’ve spoken elsewhere about how the Great Wheel has influenced my life and faith, but the short version is that following this ancient Celtic calendar through the seasons, and following through the season not as an intellectual abstraction but as a lived reality with flowers, vegetables, fruits and other plants subtly changed my understanding of faith.

I say subtly because it took me a long while to notice how deeply I had embraced it. Reimagining began as a second grand intellectual experiment like the ge-ology, but one focused on the Great Wheel. Not the Great Wheel as a pretty round calendar, nor as a neo-pagan liturgical calendar, though it is both of those things, but as experienced by the earth, through the changing seasons. It would not, in other words, proceed from the mind out, but from the ground up. Literally.

How was that going to happen? Didn’t know. Still not sure, but I did change the project a sun calendarthird time to reimagining my faith. Trying to be less grand, less global, more in a realm for which I have both responsibility and authority.

Then, recently, I came across an article in Foreign Policy magazine. It’s premise was a rethinking, a reimagining of the U.S. military. What if we designed a military for today’s reality, was the question it asked.

Aha. That’s the question at the root of my quest. What if we designed a faith for today’s reality? This is similar to Emerson’s notion of a religion of revelation to us, not to them, but it is not the same. I’m not necessarily interested in religion, especially religious institutions which serve to fossilize and deaden lived faith. A religious institution is anathema to a lived faith since lived realities change constantly and religious institutions live to fight change.

So, I’m not interested in revelation since revelation is a Christian idea. What I’m trying to do is rethink, reimagine what faith can look like in a world shorn of classical metaphysics, in a world moving toward a dystopian climactic future, in a world… Well, that’s just the point, I think. We’re rethinking now in a world context, not in a given ethnic enclave, not even within with the broad outlines of Western and Eastern, but on the rough and watery surface of our planet. All of us now, together. What can carry us forward, help us understand who we are and what we need to do, for each other and with each other? For the planet and for the future of all living things.

I’d love to think I could answer those questions. But the truth is I can only make my best effort at answering them for myself. That’s the project I’m engaging right now, reimagining, rethinking my faith for today’s reality and for the future toward which and for which we live.

 

Aging, Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Nocturne

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Summer                                                            New (Lughnasa) Moon

It’s not a new idea, I know, but tonight I’m feeling the truth of each day as a microcosm of a life. We wake to begin our day from a state of unconsciousness, born anew into a world that has no mark on it. Our life goes on with or with out loved ones, with or with out work, with or with out health, just as a new born babies must.

It’s that element of being thrown into the world (I love this idea of Heidegger’s.) that gets repeated each day. The wonder and the vibrancy of life comes from just that unpredictability. What will this day bring? What will this life bring?

As the day goes on, our efforts are strong and effective or not, are loving and compassionate or not, are creative and exciting or not. And as night falls, our body grows weary and demands sleep.

Just as it will do one day for the last time. And on that day, it will have been a day just like any other. Except, as far as we know, we’ll not be thrown into this world again. Mayhap another. Or not.

It is now the end of this day, of this smaller life, this 26th of July in the year 2014 by Western reckoning. My body needs to rest. And so I shall. Good night.

Asia, Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., World History

Aurora

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Summer                                                               Most Heat Moon

Well. The dogs have encouraged me to see another dawn. No, this is not some heroic clawback from the edge of terminal illness attained by the promise of canine companionship, rather it’s occasioned by canine demand for outside and food. So, here I am posting an Aurora just after a Nocturne. This might not be unusual for many, but for me, it’s downright odd.

The front page of the three papers I read consistently all feature the Malaysian Airlines disaster. The New York Times follows it with a long story about preparation by Israel for a ground assault on the Gaza Strip. Grim news from a part of the world that has been and continues to be a flashpoint for international conflicts.

Crimea, a major part of the Ukrainian/Russian violence, has featured in many wars and as part of the Great Game, the struggle between Great Britain and Russia for control in Central Asia. The Middle East, not far away, and its oil resources has become more prominent of late, particularly since the partition of Israel and Palestine. No one covers themselves with glory in any of these disputes and the politics are intractable, the product of ancient grudges coupled with the very modern demand for oil.

The ancient grudges often have their roots in this region’s other primary export, monotheistic religions. Though there were many polytheistic faiths in cultures there-from Babylonia to Assyria to Persepolis-it was with the Abrahamic covenant and the Egyptian diaspora of his descendants that monotheism began its ascendancy. In sequence came Christianity, then Islam both variants of that original turn toward one god.

The bitter soup concocted from petroleum and theological certainty, endemic to all three faiths, has bloodied nations and peoples over the whole globe. Where will it end? Oddly enough climate change might bring a peace of sorts in both central Asia and the Middle East. As the world backs away from its dependence on carbon based fuels, the relative importance of the oil rich regions and their conduits to markets (much of Central Asia, with pipelines headed toward China and toward the West) will decline.

Could be.

Commentary on Religion, Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Humanities, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Theogony

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Summer                                                             Most Heat Moon

“Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.”      Iliad opening lines, Fagles translation 1990

Let’s see. What I was trying to say in the post below was this: political life and our opinions, our proclivities do not have to be all one thing or another. We confuse ourselves and others if we pretend it is ever other.

We make a similar error with individuals (and with ourselves). We define people based on what we see of them, usually just a small slice, and that is true of even our closest friends. We imagine that the clues, the defining moments we know of, adhere in a package that makes some sort of sense.

No. People are not one thing or another. They are as Walt Whitman observed of himself, “multitudes.” To say it philosophically we are one, we are many. I’m not identifying a psychological pathology here, rather stating that even the most rule bound of us violate our own rules and sense of duty, probably daily. The least rule bound among us may stagger through life from one interest to another, one opinion or another, one activity to another. And all this is usual, normal.

Coherence is a naive tool for understanding. We have our reasons, yes, we do, but our reasons often contradict each other. We know this when we are honest with ourselves. And our emotions. Well, they come unbidden, sometimes riding us like storms, other times calming us in periods of upheaval. Notice, too, that we try to guide ourselves both by reason and by emotion, when in fact these two faculties are not two, but one, or if not exactly one, then inextricably woven together, woven so closely that we cannot without great effort separate one from the other.

It is no wonder, when we consider these complexities that there is the saying, African I believe, that when a person dies, so does a universe. What I take from all this is to be easy with myself, forgiving, since the universe that I am does contain multitudes and at times this version of the universe holds sway, at other times this one.

It may be, probably is, that such an observation reveals the origin of the gods. There are those within us, anger for example and its more intense cousin, rage, that can take control of us, organize our lives in ways surprising to ourselves and to others. (see the opening lines of the Iliad above.) Or, grief. Or, love. Or, fear. Or, vengeance. Or, delight. Or, abandon. Or, control. Or, poetry. Or, thought. To go against Hillman I would say not that we meet our gods in our pathologies, but in our inner selves.

(Banquet of the Gods, Frans Floris)

In Voudoun the practitioners talk of being ridden by the god, an enraptured state brought on by intoxication and dance and openness. I say we are ridden by gods and goddesses all the time. To our great joy and our great sorrow.

To paraphrase Whitman, “I contain within me many gods, I am a pantheon.”