Category Archives: Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Art and Culture, Humanities, MOOCS, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Enlightenment’s Dark Side

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Fall                                                                                  Samhain Moon

It was wet and chill, but the red and gold fruit warmed me as it slid off.  The raspberry canes grabbed at me as I moved among them as if wanting me to stay awhile longer, to chat or linger.  Once in a while I threw an over ripe berry over the fence to Rigel who watched my progress with head moving up and down, patient, waiting.

Before the berry picking I spent a couple of hours reading 34 pages, the introductory chapter to Adorno and Horkheimer’s, Dialectic of Enlightenment.  As this MOOC moves toward the end, we come closer to the current time and to thinkers with whom I’m familiar not through academics but through the politics of the 1960’s.  Adorno and Horkheimer are part of the Frankfurt School philosophers, most of whom emigrated to the US during WW II.  I was most familiar with the work of their colleague Herbert Marcuse, but I have come to know the work of Jurgen Habermas, too.

This is dense material and the argument is provocative, far from obvious.  In essence Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the enlightenment has become an instrument of oppression.  Some characterize the enlightenment as a movement designed to make the earth a home for humanity.  Instead of moving toward freedom and liberation the focus on repeatable natural laws and the tools of technology enabled control and domination, both of the planet and citizens of nation-states.  I’ll do better with this at another time, but this is heart of it.

 

 

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

God is the zocalo of Western religious life.

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Fall                                                                     Samhain Moon

 

Last night I dreamed of a place where reality could be reconfigured only by imagining.  Though I don’t remember many specifics, I do remember that at the close of the dream I wondered if the same process could put us in different historical eras, not just different places in current time.

This led, after waking, to a continuation of the dream space to the matter of the modern and post-modern, much on my mind these days thanks to the two MOOCs I’m taking. Having read Wittgenstein on language games from his Philosophical Investigations and his attendant critique of the really real as inaccessible at best since words do not hook onto reality, only other words (a paraphrase), somehow the Zocalo came to mind.

Kate and I visited Mexico City in the 1993.  It impressed me then that at the very center of the Federal District, with the National Cathedral on one side and the National Palace on the other was a vast empty space, the zocalo.   The idea of a country with a vast open square at the very heart of its national culture appealed and appeals to me.

Mexicans fill the zocalo often.  On September 15th at 11 pm, the President comes out on a balcony of the National Palace and delivers a grito, a cry that remembers the “grito de Delores” or the cry of Mexican independence first heard in the small town of Delores.  At other times the military parades through the zocalo.  Recently it has been filled with striking teachers trying to turn back education reform.  Each spring equinox Mexico’s ethnic groups, la raza, fill the zocalo with a celebration through which they assert their critical importance to the nation as a whole.

With Wittgenstein in the background and in particular his emphasis that meaning is use, that is, we learn the meaning of our language from the contexts in which we use it, the zocalo and God suddenly merged.  God is the zocalo of Western religious life.

What do I mean?  God is the empty square at the heart of Western religious and political culture.  Over the course of two thousand years various groups from Judaism to Christianity to Muslims and many, many diverse splinters of all these groups have gathered in the square to give their grito.  At the time they fill the square they occupy the center of the culture’s awareness. (Note:  this is not at all, to the contrary in fact, a truth claim about what they say there.)

This same square also receives those who would fill it with alternative metaphysical or anti-metaphysical ideas.  Nietzsche, God is dead.  The square was empty and continues to be empty.  Nature is god.  The pantheists.  Even those who would entertain the world of many gods, contemporary polytheists like Wiccans and Astruans, have to enter the God/zocalo to make their proclamations over against this central Western idea.

This means that God is, for the group occupying the God/zocalo, what they say God is. That is, the way they use the concept of God in the square is what God is to them.  Use gives meaning.  Context gives meaning.

How is this helpful?  It helps me understand that faith, that word I’ve been trying to reimagine over the last couple of years, is not about a transcendental claim at all, but rather is a pledge to walk into the God/zocalo with a particular group and, while there, to abide by their understanding.  Faith is an initiatory passage into culture, not a passageway to the really real.  Said another way faith is agreement with claims about the really real made by a particular group when they inhabit the God/zocalo.

As long as you remain within that group, their language will be useful to you as a shared agreement about what spreads outward from the zocalo.  In Mexico City it is Mexico and Mexicanness.  In the Presbyterian occupation of the zocalo it is the presbyterian form of church government, John Calvin, local presbyteries and congregations, the Book of Order, ordination exams, elders, presbytery meetings, General Assemblies.

 

 

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

Darkness Approaches

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Lughnasa                                                            Harvest Moon

The night takes on a different quality as fall approaches.  In my study I’m half below ground with windows opening out at waist level, the lawn sweeps toward me.  An animal safe in a warm burrow, protected from the storm and cold, or, I would be if there were any storm and cold.

(Giovanni Battista Ciolina – Melancholy Twilight (1899)

The change in light, the lower night time temperatures, the scudding clouds like there were today change the seasonal tone from brightness and beaches and growing things to  darker and more forbidding shades.  As this shift deepens and the night begins to overtake the day, as happens at Mabon, the Fall Equinox, most of us feel a bit uneasy, perhaps even a good deal.

By late November and well into December this uneasiness has intensified, perhaps that paleolithic fear that the sun would no longer rise at all, or that it would remain in its pale and weakened state, never again to warm us and encourage the plants.  So we fight back with bonfires and candles and festivities, lamps and decorations, gifts and food, celebration in spite of the vague menace.

Thus, by some wry twist the darkest and bleakest days of the year have the most joy, the most song, the most brave gestures we know.  We will move, around Thanksgiving, into Holimonth, a season stretching from then until Epiphany that features many of the best loved days and nights of the whole year:  Hannukah, Christmas, Posada, Winter Solstice, New Years, Deepavali.

Perhaps I would even go so far as to declare a Holiseason beginning on September 29th, the feast of the archangel Michael and lasting from then right through Epiphany.  All of October, November and December months of special observance with holidays as peaks lifted up from a plateau of enhanced sensibilities that lasts the entire time.  Why not?

Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Why Faith?

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Lughnasa                                                                Honey Moon

Another positive aspect of going into the MIA today was the drive time.  Although the constant in and out with the docent work and the Sierra Club had begun to wear me out, the occasional drive in offers a lot of time for contemplation, thinking.

Today the reimagining faith project popped up.  I began to think about the function of faith, its origin, rather than a new content for it.  This opened some interesting paths of thought.  In the first instance I realized faith is a bridge from an individual to some grounding, centering, certain, transcendent, smooth, calm, assured place.

But why?  What does faith bridge?  It bridges a deep void, a chasm, chaos, an abyss, a gap between us as individuals and a something we feel missing in our life.  What might that thing be?

These are a few of the things that could drive us to see a gap between our present experience and our desired experience:  aimlessness, rootlessness, meaninglessness, isolation, alienation, terror, roughness, even fatelessness.   In their own way each of these symptoms opens a gap between what we have and what we want.

And the landscape across the abyss has the antidote:  smoothness, confidence, destiny, transcendence, calm, assurance, certainty, community.   How to get there?  A movement, as Kierkegaard called it, a leap, of faith.

In this line of thought there is a rich vein, a path through the wilderness, it seems to me, that led me to the reimagining faith project in the first place.  More on that later.

 

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

At The Limit

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Ancientrails hit its size limit on my host, 1&1, and has to be moved to a larger venue.  Bill Schmidt is working on that right now.  It took a bit of time to realize what was wrong.  I’ll be back online as soon as possible.  Thanks

 

Soul

Lughnasa                                                                      State Fair Moon

The soul. As probably understood most of the time (in the West):  a non-material component of the body-mind-soul combination that makes up all human beings.  This third component floats free at death, off to any number of possible outcomes depending on your belief:  heaven, reincarnation, nirvana, Elysian Fields, Valhalla or hell.  Usually the soul’s journey after life is believed to have some correlation with adherence to one moral code or another.  Might be karma, might be sin, might be courage and bravery, might be heroic stature.

If your belief aligns with any of these understandings, then the third phase, as the one we know for certain ends with the terminal phase and the terminal moment, becomes critical, a blessed time when spirituality and spiritual attentiveness prepares you for the afterlife.  Not gonna say how you might do this because it entails too many variables but the menu certainly includes:  retreats, meditation, reading, prayer, perhaps engagement with a community of fellow travelers. It also includes attention to the past if you feel making amends or restitution or penance is part of your journey.

And if you’ve been so engaged prior to the third phase, congratulations.  Now this kind of personal work can become a key thread in your life.

The soul:  As I understand it at the moment.  Roughly equivalent to the Self, a holistic view of the you that is body-mind-soul.  Now.  In this understanding the third phase stands as a blessed time when you can become more of who you already are.  It can mean jettisoning the persona-pack you’ve carried in the world of work for a persona more consonant with the Self.  If you’re lucky enough to come into the third phase with a persona and Self in healthy dialogue, you’re in good shape.  This time can then be an extended exploration of the unique gift you are to this world.

Soul work:  These two perspectives, one tied if loosely to religious tradition, and the other tied closely to the humanist tradition in Western culture are not exclusive of each other.  That is, both ancientrails can overlap in any one individual.

Next time:  what then might we do?

Humanities, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., World History

Sapere aude

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Lughnasa                                                        Moon of the First Harvests

A slower day today.  We both needed a little less activity.  Nice to be able to ratchet back and not worry about it.

Did spend an hour plugging the new credit card number into those accounts that need it. Our card got stolen by someone who bought a hotel room and flowers.  A romantic thief. A bit of a hassle but not too bad.

I’ve also been reading Jean Jacque Rousseau for the Modern and the Post Modern MOOC.  Kant, too.  Kant’s essay What is Enlightenment began the course.  It contains his Dare to know idea.  That is, trust your own reason and act on it.

The two Rousseau essays are very interesting, one on the arts and sciences which I plan to give more time here at some point, argues that the arts and sciences represent culture at its most decadent, at its furthest remove from the state of nature.  It’s a very interesting argument.

The second, which I’m reading right now is on the origin of inequality.  Here a couple of quotes from it:

Nature speaks to all animals, and beasts obey her voice. Man feels the same impression, but he at the same time perceives that he is free to resist or to acquiesce; and it is in the consciousness of this liberty, that the spirituality of his soul chiefly appears…

(Henri not Jacques)

It is by the activity of our passions, that our reason improves…and it is impossible to conceive why a man exempt from fears and desires should take the trouble to reason.

The first language of man…was the cry of nature.

…as to adjectives, great difficulties must have attended the development of the idea that represents them, since every adjective is an abstract word, and abstraction is an unnatural and very painful operation.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Outside Inside

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Beltane                                                                          Solstice Moon

Bagging apples again this morning.  Another hundred done, a hundred yesterday, at least that many, maybe more to go.  I don’t know how practical this would be for a commercial operation but for our purposes, it’s time well spent.  I have noticed that there are leaf rollers on many leaves and some of the baby apples have already been eaten into by either an insect or something else, but for the most part the trees are healthy and the baby apples are, too.  I also noticed that apple production seems heaviest on branches off branches that attach to the trunk.  Not sure what that means.

Outside and inside.  So this was outside, working with the apple trees, individual apples, leaves, watching as the sky grew cloudy and dark, feeling the heat begin to build.  Using my hands, opening the ziploc bag, placing it around the apple, sealing it with two fingers, checking the seal, moving on to the next apple, checking for fruit I missed.

All the time, too, I thought about how to create a ground cover that would keep the orchard neat, beautiful.  We had clover, but it didn’t fight off the grass and the grass keeps coming. Kate fights it, but the battle is a losing one.  We need a different solution.  I’m thinking suppression with high quality landscape cloth and thick mulch.  Javier, maybe.

Inside.  I’m writing this, reflecting on the time outside.  Trying to fit together a foreground/background idea that has popped up over the last day.  That is, when outside, my thoughts often turn inside, I become meditative, while inside, I often stay on task, up at the conscious level and it takes an effort to get inside.  So, in a sense, when I’m outside I’m inside and when I’m inside I’m outside.  Just a curious bit right now.

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

Roots

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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…

 

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

Overview Effect

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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, Garden, Great Wheel, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate

Growing Up

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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.