Category Archives: Science

Faith and Spirituality, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, World History

Living in the Long Now

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Imbolc                                                 Black Mountain Moon

Between now and the time when Pipe Creek fills the lake that will cover all of human artifice here on earth there is a long interim. It may well be that humanity will fan out from this planet, seeking a home somewhere in space, perhaps on Mars or a moon of one of its sister planets, perhaps even out beyond the Oort belt, the furthest reach of Sol’s solar wind. I cannot see that far and, though I hope it turns out to be our destiny, I do not rely on such exploration in considering how far I can see.

We know from astrophysics that in about 7.5 billion years the sun will expand in its red giant phase, its bulk then extending past our orbit. That is a sure and certain end to the planet. Before that, though, several other extinction events loom. This brief Wikipedia article outlines several of them.

These future disasters (from a human perspective) limit the time of human habitation on earth, not by theological fiat, but by the laws of physics. In that they represent the working out of fundamental laws of this universe they are neither apocalyptic nor commentary on human failing. There are future disasters, perhaps of an extinction event level, that might have the human fingerprint, yes, but even these only advance the end of human life on earth, a certainty in any case.

Considering this certainty without placing an exact time frame upon it, we can then work backwards to consider faith, positioning ourselves in the world, however broadly you may define that term. We live in the long now between the emergence of life on earth and its end. Humanity is an extension of that true miracle, that enduring mystery, life’s creation ex nihilo from chemicals inert, as far as we know now, since the very birth of the universe.

Over our evolution, lengthy from the perspective of our species, but a wink in the time since earth’s creation we have developed into an animal capable of reflecting on its fate. That’s what I’m engaged in here. Does our fate really matter? Yes and no.

No because our duration as a species on earth has limits, ones we can define and foresee, even if we can not predict those limits exactly. Yes because our need to know ourselves as part of the universe, as part of life on this planet seems to be a human universal, most likely triggered by meditation on our own, individual limit: death.

If we accept (and you may not), that this world is wonder enough, miracle enough and, further, that any next world, no matter what its shape and character might or might not be, is hidden behind the pale of death and the inescapable veil created by our senses, then we must consider how we fit into that long now currently underway, the one between the creation of the earth and then life upon it and our emergence, and that certain end to this planet and its life which physics demonstrates.

That consideration will be the content of the next post in this series.

 

Science

OK. Wow.

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Samain                                                                      Closing Moon

This just posted on the NYT:

“The Philae has landed.

The European Space Agency’s ambitious attempt to place a spacecraft on the surface of a comet succeeded when a signal arrived at the mission control center at Darmstadt, Germany, just after 5 p.m . local time (11 a.m. Eastern time).

Cheers erupted.

“We’re there and Philae is talking to us,” said Stephan Ulamec, the manager for the lander. “We are on the comet.””

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

Something’s Happening Here

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Fall                                                                                       Falling Leaves Moon

50008 28 10_late summer 2010_0199I’m having these flashes of insight, as if some larger realization lies not far from view, but still below the horizon of awareness.

Raspberries have something to do with it: wading into the thorny brambles, canes curved low with hanging fruit and picking off the sweetness. So do those blue skies and the chill in the air while I engage in the oldest human method of obtaining food-gathering it from plants.  That symbiotic trade between the food value of the fruit and our inadvertent willingness to bear its seeds to a new place places me there, so firmly there. No where else but picking raspberries.

I will say it with caution, because I don’t want to be confused for a transcendentalist, but I do look into the raspberry when I pick it. But, I also look into myself. When I look into the raspberry, I see water siphoned up from the soil, having fallen in rain or come sprinkled in from the aquifer below our property. I see colors, beautiful and rich, each fruit a miniature, reminding me of those Persian paintings. The seed is evident there, encased in a small cell filled with water and nutrients, so that when it hits the ground it will have what’s necessary for a healthy transition from top of the plant to the soil which is its natural home.

The raspberry itself is the Great Wheel, all of it. It comes on the plant after Mabon, after Michaelmas and left on its own will fall to the ground, probably before Samain, where it will lie on or just under the soil through the cold months of Winter and the days of Imbolc. Sometime in Spring it will begin to move, to thrust a small green stalk toward the sky and another, darker filament into the ground, seeking stability and food for its above ground presence. Over the course of Spring and Beltane the stalk will grow and the root deepen and strength its grip on mother earth. In the heat of Summer the stalk will grow into a cane, thorns will pop out and leaves, all moving fast toward the sky, the sun. Then it will reach Lughnasa and the strength of the cane and the roots will be at their optimum, ready to press out on tiny branches, flimsy and delicate, heavy dark-red fruits which will, once Mabon is past, once again droop toward the ground.

And so in the raspberry is millions of years of evolution, an evolutionary path older even than the one we humans have made, an ancientrail indeed. When I see the raspberry, this is what I see. When I look through the raspberry, I do not find revealed another metaphysical layer, a layer transcending the mundane and making it somehow special. No, I find the story of this stuff, these elements, this reality, a story which spans billions of years for this universe (and who is to say how many universes there are?), a story which spans millions of light years of space (and who can say how many miles there are in places we cannot see?).

If I wanted to introduce the religious into this conversation, I would tend toward the Hindu pantheon with Brahma the stretched out space in all its extensions and Shiva as the creator and destroyer of worlds and universes and maybe I would add in Vishnu so that this time in which I exist has an image of stability and permanence, even though such an image is an illusion. For which there is, of course, a wonderful Hindu idea, Maya.

I find Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu only useful as metaphor, as analogy but I do find them valuable in that way-as stand-ins, avatars, for the mystery that is what all this is.

These flashes, just out of sight. Something’s coming. And I’m satisfied to wait on its arrival.

Garden, Great Wheel, Our Land and Home, Science

Blood Moon Risin’

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Fall                                                                                   Falling Leaves Moon

 

Add blood moon to the adjectives in front of the Falling Leaves Moon for October 8. These lunar eclipses reflect light from sunrise and sunset giving the moon a russet color. Blends in well with the changing leaves. On my weather station I notice a small symbol I’ve not seen for awhile. A snowflake. Means it could snow.

We’re going to make use of the cooler weather with a work outside day today and perhaps a couple of other days this week. First task, start a fire in the firepit so the laborers can warm themselves. Then, the harvest. After that move old aluminum siding to the garage for recycling. Yes, this is stoop labor.

Gotta get out there.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

The Original Pentecostal

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Fall                                                                                   Falling Leaves Moon

Listen to the languages calling out to you. From the lilac bushes, from the way vehicles move on the freeway, from the body movements of people in a crowd, of the clouds as they scud overhead or stop, gray and wet. Watch dogs as they wag their tales (tails, I meant, but I like this homophonic error) or smile or lean in or bark or whine. Watch their eyes move. Babies reaching, reaching. From the insects as they buzz the late season flowers, the wasps flying in and out of their nests, the birds high in the trees or walking across the road. The turtles when they walk miles to find a proper place to lay their eggs. So many tongues.

Mother earth is the original pentecostal, speaking in so many tongues. She also speaks in the movement of continental plates, the upwelling of magma, the process of evolution, the deep sea vents and their often alien seeming life forms. Or look up. Into the milky way and see the language of origins spread out before you on velvet, the most valuable jewels in all of creation. Each of these languages has a syntax, a grammar, meaning. The speakers of these languages want to reveal their purpose.

But we have to have ears to hear. Listen.

(Pentecost, El Greco, 1596)

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Third Phase

Mabon 2014 and the Springtime of the Soul

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Fall Equinox                                                                      Leaf Change Moon

Today the earth’s celestial equator (the earth’s equator projected into space) passes through the sun’s ecliptic (the sun’s apparent path throughout the year, actually caused by earth’s orbit.) You usually hear this put the other way around; that is, as the sun passing through the earth’s celestial equator, but that represents the stuckness of paleolithic astronomy that assumed the earth was the center of the solar system. From the diagram above you can see the sun’s declination (degree above or below the celestial equator) is 0 on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

This same diagram is very clear about the solstices, too. You can see that when the earth’s orbit tilts the northern latitudes toward the sun, the sun is highest in the sky-the summer solstice.  When the sun is lowest in the northern sky-the earth tilts away from the sun and gives us the winter solstice.

Since the summer solstice day time has exceeded night time. In theory the autumnal equinox is the point of equilibrium between light and dark, but at our latitude that day actually occurs on September 25th this year. This is, however, the day the Great Wheel celebrates and it does so because of the sun’s zero declination at earth’s celestial equator.

This week then the victory of the sun, made complete on the summer solstice, begins to wane. The dark god of deep winter gains greater and greater authority as the sun’s rays spread out over a larger area of earth, thus weakening them, and the number of hours that the sun is in our sky, even in its weakened condition relative to the soil, decrease steadily until the night of the winter solstice. Thus comes the fallow, cold time.

It is no accident that the harvest season is now. Over the 475 million years (give or take a hundred million) since plants made it out of the oceans and onto land, plants have adapted themselves to the conditions that work with their particular genetics. Key aspects of a plant’s life include carbon dioxide, soil nutrients, available fresh water, adequate sunlight and temperatures adequate for all these to work with the plant’s life cycle.

Thus, as the earth’s orbit carries it to different relationships with solar strength, temperatures change along with it.  At its maximum when the earth tilts toward the sun and the sun is highest in the sky, the sun’s rays fall on a smaller area of land. Here’s an excellent simulation. University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Plants have had the past 475 million years to refine their growing season so that it takes maximum benefit of the sun’s strength. In a very real sense the growing season is a clock, or an astronomical observatory directly correlated to the earth’s orbit around the sun–The Great Wheel.

On a spiritual level, if we follow the ancient calendar of the plants, the season of external growth, flowering and seed making, is waning now. Just as the plant either dies out and anticipates its rejuvenation from scattered seed or goes dormant and waits with stored energy below ground in roots or corms or bulbs, so we might consider this season as the one where we shift inward, away from the external demands upon us and the expectations put on us there.

Now we shift toward the interior life, the Self becomes more of a focus, our spiritual life can deepen. We can see this shift in the human life cycle if we compare the second phase of life with its emphasis on family creation and nurture and career, to the third, with its pulling back from those external expectations. The third phase is a post growing season time of life, not in the sense that growth ends, but that its focus is more down and in rather than up and out. The third phase is the fallow time.  Michaelmas on the 29th of this month is known by followers of Rudolf Steiner as the springtime of the soul.

The third phase marks the beginning of the springtime of the soul for the individual.

Bees, Garden, Great Work, Science, Sierra Club

This Should Stop. Now.

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Lughnasa                                                                        College Moon

The Northrup King building in Northeast Minneapolis houses artists, floors and floors and floors of studios: potters, painters, metal workers, collage artists, sculptors, print makers. 5 years ago a docent group did an event there during Art-a-whirl. The room in which the event was held had remnants of the building’s original purpose. Slick concrete columns fat as oil drums flowered toward the top, supporting the weight of feed grains that would come into the top floor of the building, then get separated below through the chutes still visible in the large open area.

While the band played, memories of another time, in the late 1970’s swirled around. Back then Northrup King was still an independent seed company, selling seed to farmers. But in the mid-1970’s a specter stalked the seed industry. Large pharmaceutical companies had become aware of the great concentration of power available for those who controlled patents on seeds, on their genetic makeup. A huge buyup of seed companies was underway.

A group attempted to stop the buyout of Northrup King by Switzerland’s Sandoz corporation, but failed. Northrup King, or NK, became a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical company and was later sold to Sygenta, an agrochemical and seed company.

You may recall a post here on July 12th of this year that contained this quote: “Today, humans rely on fewer than 150 plants for nourishment, and just three cereal crops—wheat, rice, and corn—make up more than two-thirds of the world’s calories; along with barley, they own three-quarters of the global grain market.” Wired This could be the strategy statement for that buyup, which went unchallenged.

The result has been the concentration and subsequent manipulation of genetic material for many of those 150 plants and an even tighter focus on the big three: wheat, corn and rice. An article in today’s Star-Tribune mentions just one small outcome of this process, but one with big consequences for those of us who raise bees, the use of neonicotinoids. This pesticide-slathered on the seed before it is sold to the farmer for planting-has a role in colony collapse syndrome which has led to hive losses as high as 20% even for professional bee-keepers. It weakens the bee or kills them outright, geometrically increasing the effects of habitat loss (often created by the same agrochemical folks through “round-up ready” crops), mites, bee strains unprepared for the hygienic requirements these changes produce.

More than trouble for bees is exposed in the article Bees on the Brink. Here is the true problem (which is not to trivialize the problems for bees, but to see its place in a much larger and more insidious problem):

“Though they represent just 2 percent of Minnesota’s population, farmers control half its land. And their embrace of the monocultures and pesticides that form the basis of modern industrial agriculture has been implicated in the decline of bees and pollinators.

But as long as farmers sit at the receiving end of an agri-chemical pipeline that fuels the nation’s rural economy, not much is likely to change…“

The centralized control of seed genetics, with its beginnings in the mid-1970’s, has now become the apex of a command and control apparatus that dictates how over 1/2 of Minnesota’s land is used. And that’s just Minnesota. That control is hardly benign. Witness the Minnesota river and its agricultural runoff polluted waters.

The payoff, the ransom for which these lands are held in thrall by big pharma and big agrochem, of course, is higher yields. This however only reinforces a decades long collusion between agriculture scientists at land grant universities like Purdue, University of Minnesota Ag campus and Iowa State. Long before big pharma got involved crops have been manipulated not for better nutrition but for higher yields and crops that are easily harvested, shipped and processed.

The result? A farm sector which pollutes our waters, uses huge amounts of petroleum products in fertilizers and fuels, kills our bees, diminishes genetic diversity and worst of all produces food with less nutritional value. This is criminal and should stop. Now.

 

Garden, Great Wheel, Science

Nocturne

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Summer                                                                  Lughnasa Moon

The days continue to grow shorter. The yellow orb in the middle of the round calendar has begun to pull away toward the center, indicating less sunlight during a 24 hour period. This change is not far advanced, though we have already lost 50 minutes of sunlight since June 25th. The sun’s recession from our day will continue until December 21. On that day we will have 8 hours and 47 minutes of sunlight compared to June 25th’s 15 hours and 35 minutes.

(Hay Harvest, Camille Pissaro, 1901)

The harvest points to the same outcome. The plants we grow here have to fit their reproductive lives into this change, utilizing the sun’s fullness during June, July and August. Then, the flowering and making of seed bearing fruits or pods or increased roots needs to be finishing, otherwise the seeds and their containers will not be ready for September’s chill and October’s frost.

The vegetables are a calendar, too, marking time with their cycles of growth, fruiting and decay. Many of our onions are drying in the shed. About half of the garlic and another large batch of onions are curing in the sun, then they’ll go in the shed, too. The sun, the winds, the temperatures, the weather all change, too, bringing with them the seasons we know. This is the source of the ur-faith, the one before all others and the one common enough and true enough to do even if nothing all else is added.