Category Archives: Humanities

Aging, Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Humanities, Myth and Story, Politics, Sierra Club, Writing

How the New Year Might Look

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Winter                                           First Moon of the New Year

At an inflection point with the Latin.  Either I keep the pace I currently follow, maybe 6 hours a week; or, I ramp up, say to 10 or 12, maybe a couple of hours each day.  Some analysis of other texts–maybe Caesar or Suetonius or Julian, I have all of these in Loeb Library volumes–plus more translating of the Metamorphoses.  My inclination is to ramp up, do more, focus on Latin and the novel.  That’s what my heart tells me.

That other project, too.  The one I’ve got slotted for 5,000 word essays each month next year.  Where I’m going to give voice to my whirling ideas about the earth, about ge-ology, about what would help us help our home planet.  That one, too.

When you add these things together, they constitute real work and I feel good about that, not trapped or bummed.  Now all I need is a way of allocating my time so I can work them all in and still manage the art, the garden, the bees and family.

That may be my new year’s work.  Pruning activities and creating a new schedule.

 

 

Aging, Humanities, Literature, Myth and Story

Ovid. Again.

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Winter                              First Moon of the New Year

An Ovidian morning.  Holding words, conjugations, meanings, clause types, prepositions and adverbs in the head while whirling them around like a Waring blender.  It’s satisfying when a sentence finally pops up, like a good smoothie.  Not always a straight on logical process, though logic can critique the result.

About ten verses a week now.  Takes, hmmm, 4-6 hours.  So, if there are 15,000 verses, that’s 1,500 weeks or 6 to 9,000 hours.  Which is, what?  3 to 4.5 working years full-time or 30 years a week at a time, taking some time off for vacation.  Mmmm.  Don’t look for that book jacket anytime soon.

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Humanities, Myth and Story

Solstice Celebrations. What Might They Mean?

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Winter                                  Moon of the Winter Solstice

Something new seems to be happening.  Not sure if I’m reading the rustling in the ether of our culture right, but it feels like the Great Wheel may have begun to reemerge.  Not in a Wiccan or alt-pagan way, though that’s certainly there, but in a from the ground up way (so to speak).

A friend called me tonight to wish me a salubrious solstice.  Kate wants to do a fire tonight. First Universalist has a solstice celebration as do many UU congregations.  There has been, for a while now, solstice celebrations on the continent.  I’m most familiar with ones in Scotland and Sweden.

These celebrations, rituals whatever we might call them are not confined to the Winter Solstice though the spreading knowledge of Christmas’s relationship to the Saturnalia, itself a winter solstice holiday, has given the Winter Solstice a cultural leg up, as has a more general appreciation for the other festivals of light around this time:  Deepavali, Hanukkah, Christmas trees and home decorating–neither one of which has any obvious link with the Christian holiday.

I don’t know quite how to go about measuring the cultural penetration of solstice and equinox awareness, or the depth of its relation to individual’s religious yearnings, but my own sensibilities suggest the penetration has gone far past the surface and has, for some folks, like myself, reached the point of religious sentiment.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, in a somewhat ham-fisted way, changed its holiday traditions focus from a sort of Victorian dress up for Christmas to what is now called a Winter Lights celebration.

I’d be interested to know what you think, what you see from your standpoint.

Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Myth and Story

Winter Solstice 2011

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Winter                                           Moon of the Winter Solstice

Darkness has fallen.  The solstice has begun.  The longest nights of the year occur over the next few days.

The summer solstice, now a half year away in either direction on our orbit around Sol, has faded, faded, faded until the longest day of the year has become the longest night; in the other direction, toward which we move, the summer solstice is a half year away.

Starting now, we will begin, second by second, minute by minute, then hour by hour to turn ourselves toward the light until, at the moment of light’s triumph on June 20th at 6:09 pm, we will begin again a sure glide into winter.

On the Great Wheel it is neither the longest night nor the longest day by itself that matters, rather it is the certainty of their coming, light followed by increasing darkness, darkness followed by increasing light.  This reality, as metaphor, reminds us that no light is so fulsome that it is without darkness and no darkness so total as to be without light.

Too, we can see our lives as a turn of the wheel. In late winter we quicken, growing small within the mother.   We emerge during Beltane, the sun’s heat and the day’s length increases and we mature, grown into adults, as the turn moves toward Mabon and Samain, summer’s end.  Our lives develop fruit and we harvest; as Summer’s End moves toward the Winter Solstice, our hair turns gray and our bodies decline.  In Winter we move toward the darkness, back to the enveloping womb that is our mother, the earth.

Tonight we celebrate the winter season of our lives, the time when our life finishes its run.  This bears no sorrow, nor any fear, since we know that on the morrow, as it has since time begun, the light will again gain strength.  Living or not, it will shine on us, too.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Humanities, Myth and Story, Politics

The Death of an Honest Man

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Samain                                      Moon of the Winter Solstice

Christopher Hitchens died.  An honest man, Diogenes would have stopped searching.  He faced death as a non-believer, a man whose God Is Not Great made him a name in the theist–anti-theist debates of this millenia’s early days.

His angry anti-religious bias fit in well with the Richard Dawkin and Sam Harris crowd, agreeing with their totalizing, methinks-they-protest-too-much screed.  If religion is so bad, why has it persisted for so long?  A scathing atheist has backed himself into a metaphysical box, one much like the box he insists all religionists occupy.

To adamantly claim God’s non-existence is just as silly and unwarranted as the claim of God’s existence.  Neither can have, by definition, empirical validation, so, in each case we enter the realm of faith, of conjecture believed because it feels right, true.

Faith in its purest forms is a beautiful aspect of human culture, allowing us to transcend the often bleak realities of the day-to-day, finding a blissful reality where others see only pain and boredom.  Marriage, for example, requires faith in another human being, another human being as wonderful and amazing as yourself and as awful and horrible.

Monotheism as practiced in the dominant Western religious traditions is only one item on the menu of faith as offered by human culture and even it comes in three flavors:  Christian, Jewish and Muslim.  The ancient traditions of the West synch up better with the pluralist pantheons of India, Nepal, Tibet, Africa and the indigenous Americas.

Monotheism, rather than religion per se, seems the better target, since it makes definitive and often absolute claims, claims which sometimes pose as divine law, unbreachable and final.  The nature of monotheism’s claims rather than its actual content or institutional form are the problem.

With one deity and one book the temptation to sure knowledge, certain dogma too often overwhelms these believers, though in all three traditions there are, too, the more measured, more humble ways.  In fact, strange as it may seem given the all too charged dialogues of the past twenty years, the liberal orientation–former mainline Christianity, reform Judaism and the Sunni/Sufi mainstream Islam–is numerically dominant.

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Holidays, Humanities, Myth and Story, Travel

The Dark Time

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Samain                                   Moon of the Winter Solstice

Samain in Lima, Peru.  We came back through Lima from a point on the far side of the city just as evening fell.  Even there, Samain’s pale memory, Halloween, saw children in Mickey Mouse costumes, princess costumes, carrying plastic pumpkins, many of them walking toward a large shopping mall in one area, a Halloween party rocking the joint.

These Latin cultures have a certain affinity with Samain as a festival when the veil between the worlds thins and the dead can cross, come back to visit family or to haunt them.  Cemeteries had fresh flowers at grave markers, grass had been cut, masses said, loved ones remembered.  In the White City, the vast and prominent cemetery in Guyaquil, Ecuador, the mausoleums and the multiple, tall columbariums, the markers climbing the hill in the back all speak to an engagement with death, a sort of living and ongoing engagement with death, so very different from the sterile, hospital based, don’t look culture we’ve created here.

Next week, a week from Wednesday, comes the Winter Solstice and Samain will be at an end.  In sorting material about the Winter Solstice, about Yule, about Saturnalia and even Deepavali and Hanukkah the emphasis is mainly on Sol Invictus, as the Romans called him, the Unconquerable Sun.  An emphasis on the long march of daylight that begins on the longest night.

Another, equal concept celebrates the Winter Solstice as the longest night of the year, the culmination of a steady progress by darkness to push back the realm of light.  Both have their mirror in the human mind.  The light of reason shines itself on the questions we have about the way things are.  How things work.  Why this happens and that does not.  Yes.

But.  A child lives in the warm dark for nine months before coming to the light.  Ideas often lie hidden, tucked away somewhere in the darkness of the mind, back there fermenting, gathering weight.  Dreams sometimes pick those ideas up and play with them.  Too, our life is not all rational, not all light, perhaps not even very much so.

Most of life comes from the irrational, the emotional, the intuitive and to worship the light can be a denial of these important elements in our everyday life.

The Great Wheel shows us the way.  We need the fallow time, the restfulness of winter and the cold, just as we need the sunny time, the growing season, the time of thinking.  These needs are not occasional but persistent, coming into our lives again and again and again just as the earth wheels through the sky, repositioning the sun’s light.  Blessed be.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Holidays, Humanities, Weather +Climate

Hello, Darkness

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Samain                                   Moon of the Winter Solstice

The holidays.  We’ve got no decorations up.  No Christmas or other holiday music plays here.  We did all of our shopping online.

When I was at Best Buy a week or so ago while hunting for a device to download pictures to Kate’s i-pad (no joy on that front even now), Christmas music played and, as I said here after that, I responded, singing along, even getting the little uptick in the heart that comes with the commercial or family holiday all Americans celebrate at this time of year.

I do miss some of the over doing, present wrapping–ok, I don’t miss present wrapping, decorating the tree–well, I don’t miss getting the tree, putting up the tree or the occasional nasty surprise like the one my friend Mark discovered when he watered and watered this year’s tree only to discover the pan had cracked and water had leaked out under the tree skirt, nor do I miss taking down the tree, cleaning up the fallen needles, Christmas music–responding in the store meant something to me, but only because I’d spent 40 days away from the US and this is one strong cultural tradition, over saturation spoils the effect, church services–well, I bailed on those a long, long time ago.

So, maybe I’m not too sad about our ascetic approach to the holidays.  Besides, the holiday that now means the most to me, the Winter Solstice, comes along now, too, and I do celebrate that one with candles, meditation and writing.

There is, though, a powerful need for reflection, for love, for warmth in all its manifestations.  Sergio, our guide on a tour in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the Americas, explained that winters there, where the nights are long long long, often results in depression.

Another argument for a Ge-centric faith, one that acknowledges the darkness, relishes its nurturing power, rejoices at the return of the light and doesn’t have to get overly metaphysical about it.

These brave festivals of the light like Deepavli, Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule and even New Years all respond to the same fundamental astronomical fact, the lengthening of night and the ancient fear that the sun may not return.  In that sense they’re all good, but why not acknowledge, first, the fundamental reason for the season, axial tilt?

Aging, Humanities, Politics

An Old Draft Horse, Trained To The Plow

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Samain                                          Moon of the Winter Solstice

My first Latin day since before the cruise.  Today and probably next week, too, I’ll be getting myself back in the spirit and form of translating Ovid, refreshing vocabulary, looking at translations past and checking on the translations Greg and I have not gone through yet, refreshing my memory about what I did in those translations, that sort of thing.

Getting back to my novel has become another force in my life right now.  I intend to start carving out time this week and next, getting a regular schedule going again.

The urge to act, have agency, as I wrote here before, is still strong, young Jedi.  When the Republican debates occur, when the Rick Perrys and the Michele Bachmanns and the Nude Gingrichs start to yap, my blood begins to boil.  When Obama starts echoing the arguments of the Occupy crowd, a certain part of me, instinctive almost, wants to take up the message, too, remind this country that class discrimination comes before and reinforces every other form of discrimination.

At the Christmas Tea the other night I talked with Scott Searles, the minister at Shepherd of the Hills.  He’s got some work going in Hopkins, 65% rental!  Three buildings there, one with East Indians, one with Somalis and the other with Latinos.  The city has an interest in greater stability, more home ownership.  Made this ol’ affordable housing activist lean into his bit.

But, when he asked me if I wanted to come advise, I said no.  I felt guilty.  That’s the draft horse in me, trained to the plow.  If I can contribute, I should contribute.   Still, my current work load with home, the MIA, the Sierra Club and the novel is full.  I need to be honest about that.

It did give me an idea though.  There was no internet, no e-mail, no cell phones when I worked for the Presbytery, but there are all three now.  In a minute, in casual conversation Scott had two new resources:  MICAH (Metropolitan Interfaith Coalition for Affordable Housing) and Common Bond, the Catholic housing arm.

A resource website for congregations and other activists, one that would list current organizations active in certain key areas:  affordable housing, health care, economic justice, environmental advocacy, say, could be used by many and it’s something I could put together and maintain.  That way, I could get my expertise out there and make it available to others without getting involved in round after round of meetings and phone calls.

Worth pondering.

Bees, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Humanities, Hydroponics, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Politics

Reimagine

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Samain                          Moon of the Winter Solstice

Jon sent these two links.  Wish I’d had’em when I owned that farm up near Nevis, Minnesota.  I might still be up there, motoring around on some of these very clever inventions.  They show what an ingenious mind can do when rethinking what appear to be over and done with ideas.

http://opensourceecology.org/
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/marcin_jakubowski.html

Makes me wonder what other ideas need a complete rethink.  Computers have followed a pretty standard architecture up to now, one based on a central processing unit.  I read an article in Scientific American last week about a neural computer which, in essence, gives each unit of a computer a cpu, allowing for massively parallel processing as an integral part of the design. It’s modeled on, but not attempting to replicate, the human brain.

How about housing?  Cars?  Or, my personal quest and long time obsession, religion?  The family?  Electrical generation?  I’m interested in distributed generation where a cul de sac or an apartment building or a couple of blocks city residential units might get their electricity from, say, a combination of wind, solar and geo-thermal units sited in their immediate vicinity.

Here’s another one that could use a complete overhaul, reimagining:  nations.  The nation state is a relatively new phenomenon, most experts date its rise somewhere around 1800, perhaps a hundred years earlier in the instance of Portugal and the Netherlands.  In the wake of the globalization of economic life national boundaries have much different meanings that they did, say, 50 years ago.

Let’s go back to religion for a second.  Over the last several years, 23 to be exact, I’ve wrestled with the hole left by Christianity in my life and sought to fill it through what I call a tactile spirituality, one wedded to the rhythms of the seasons, of flowers and vegetables, of bees.  This direction took its initial impetus from an immersion in Celtic lore while I sifted for writing topics.

Then, I began to follow the Great Wheel of the seasons, a Celtic sacred calendar focused on 8 seasons, rather than four.  That led me to integrate gardening with my sacred calendar.  In the wake of these two changes in my life, I began to see the vegetative and wild natural world as more than tools for food or leisure, rather I began to see that they were my home, that I lived with them and in them, rather than having them as adjuncts to my anthropocentric life.

This whole change, this rethink of what sacred and holy mean, what the locus of my spirituality is and where it is, has had a long maturation, much thought and experimentation.  My hope is that my reimagining might provide a common religious base, a sort of ur-religion, which all humans everywhere can embrace.

As in times past this base religion could certainly have others layered on top of it, its essence after all is to be non-exclusive.  What I hope further is that reasserting, inviting, even luring others to see the sacred and the holy in our planet and its other living beings, they will be more likely to join in to see it healthy and vital.

Art and Culture, Great Work, Humanities, Politics

Art and Politics

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Samain                              Moon of the Winter Solstice

 

In to the city to meet with Justin, Sierra Club’s lobbyist and policy wonk.  We’re putting together a campaign strategy for this upcoming session.  I love the ins and outs of politics, the practical, no nonsense nature of the analysis, the calculations.  The realities of power, not its dreamy possibilities.

It is though, at this stage of my life, not as exciting as taking in a new painting, wandering through a new exhibition, revisiting a print I’ve seen many times.  Even so,  politics are deeper in my life, started earlier, continued throughout my life while the arts have been only a once in a while thing until the last ten years.

The man I am now, the man I am becoming, loves the museum gallery more than the legislative chamber, the exhibit hall more than the voting booth, research for a tour more than campaign planning.  Part of me is not sure what to make of this change, but that it has happened there is no doubt.

Perhaps these later years have bent the knee toward beauty rather than the lady justice.

No, of course it’s not either art or politics, of course not.  There is, though, a real matter of how much time I want to devote to life outside our home, how much energy I want to give to projects for others and how much I need to spend on my own work.

These are not easy matters for me, questions I’ve juggled my whole life, but I’ve always tried to remain true to what my inner life tells me.  Just now, it says open that new book with all the paintings in the Louvre.