Category Archives: Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

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

Cancer in the morning, the numinous in the afternoon

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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.

 

 

 

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

Fish Skin Lanterns

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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.

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

And Now, Reverse Field and Head Home

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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.

 

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

the wall

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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.

 

 

 

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

A Life Long Passion

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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.

Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Reimagining Faith

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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.

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

A Productive Day

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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.

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

Are You Trying To Start a Movement?

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Lugnasa                                                        Garlic Planting Moon
Presented Homecoming:  Faith of a Pagan at Groveland UU this morning.  They’ve honored me by having me come regularly for over 20 years.  Fewer and fewer times as I’ve moved away from the ministry, but still, each year, at least once, often twice.

There’s something about an immediate audience that makes writing fresher, harder, cleaner.  During the discussion after the presentation I found myself explaining my reimagining faith project and the more I said, the more enthused I became.  Strange, I know, but that’s what happened.  Partly I could see connections, heads nodding.  This was taking root as an idea.

“Are you trying to start a movement?” one long time Grovelander asked.

Made me stop and think.  No, I’m not.  But I’m trying to get clear enough to write down my thoughts, make them into a book, because I feel  this reimagined faith needs to be part of everyone’s inner tool kit.  I don’t mean it needs to replace your Buddhism or Christianity or Judaism or Sikhism.  It can be an adjunct, a both/and.  Or, like me, it can be whole deal.

An essential awareness of and responsiveness to the world in which we live, the planet on which we depend has too often been lost, especially in developed countries.   Now, too, developing countries like the BRIK nations.  Unfortunately, those are the very spots where this kind of earth mindfulness is most needed.  These countries are the ones that make decisions large and small that effect the future of human life on this planet.

Another Grovelander, a young Macalester student, challenged my pushing off against Christianity as an example of a metaphysic that distances us from the world.  She was right.  This message needs to penetrate especially religious and economic ideologies, be attractive rather than repulsive.  Yet still strong enough to bite.  Not an easy task.

But, hey?  If it was easy, someone would have already done it.

(illustration above:  The Green Knight Gesso tells the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the Green Knight’s perspective. The old ways are parting for the new, yet in the ancient there is wisdom to learn and to be retained. The Green Knight is symbolic of ancient wisdom.)

Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Our Ordinary Wonder

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Lugnasa                                                          Garlic Planting Moon

What to say?  The wound so deep, the insult so grievous.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.

I remember that elevator ride with my mother, she on the gurney her face tortured by her brain in agony.  She had already begun to move away, fast, from the one who walked with me to the ice cream shop not far from our house and bought me a sundae for my good grades.  Who held my hand when I was scared.  Who taught me to watch the spider out our kitchen window as a wonder of the universe.

The phone call.  Unexpected in February.  My sister, normally in Singapore, here for a visit.  A call from Alexandria, long abandoned home.  Dad died.  Just died there sitting in a chair.  Winked out.  Gone.

None escape. None. It is this truth, underscored with bright black lines by the death of the one’s we love, that creates the wonder.  Our lives.  Brief.  Random.  Often, as the Odyssey says, filled with pain and suffering, yet still.  Still. Glorious.  Radiant.  Precious.

Sometimes I think these things.  Feel them.  But do not say them.  Now, now I do.

 

 

Commentary on the news, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History

To Eat or Not to Eat? That Is Not a Question.

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Summer                                                     Hiroshima Moon

When they announced the demolition of the Bennigans at Riverdale Mall, it surprised me because it felt like the whole mall just arrived a year or so ago.  It surprised me, but I wasn’t sad, because the Bennigan’s menu had gone from interesting to boring over the last couple of years.

As a result, the imminent arrival of a Chick-fil-a to replace it intrigued me.  I’d never eaten in one of these deep south fried chicken sandwich places, but I looked forward to the opportunity.

Not now.  Now I plan to walk in when they open, tell them I live close by, that my wife and I eat out once a week or so, and that they will never get our business, in spite of the fact that I love chicken.  Bigotry has no place in our community.  None.  Just ask the Anoka-Hennepin School Board or the Anoka High School.