Category Archives: Great Work

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Magnum opus

February 3, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Don’t know why it took me so long, but I know how to make America great again. It will not require red baseball hats or xenophobic bluster. No, it only requires listening to the ideas of a Passionate priest, Thomas Berry. Berry wrote a small book, The Great Work. It influenced a turn in my political activity from economic justice to environmental concerns.

This 258 page book is a quick read and it introduces The Great Work. Civilizations, according to Berry, have a quintessential role that only they can perform. The one he identifies for our civilization is this: Creating a sustainable existence for humans on this earth. That is our Great Work. It is the way to make America Great again.

The phrase, the Great Work, comes from medieval alchemy. The primary, original material of the universe, the prima materia, in the alchemist’s lab can create the philosopher’s stone. The philosopher’s stone could turn base metals into gold or silver and extend the alchemist’s life.

We can take the prima materia of the U.S., its citizens and its land, put them in the alembic created by our need for survival and our need for economic justice, and turn up the heat until we have our philosopher’s stone. When we have it, we can use it to heal the earth and create good-paying jobs for all.

Then, then America will be great. Not only again, but still and not only still but into the future as well. May it be so.

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Imbolc, 2017

February 1, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Feb

Imbolc, or in-the-belly, celebrates the time in Ireland when the ewes would freshen. Their pregnancies meant milk would be available after the long fallow season that had begun at Samain, Summer’s End.

Imbolc lies halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, what the Celt’s called a cross-quarter holiday since it falls between two quarters defined by the solar year. That milk is also a promise, like the gradual lengthening of days after the longest night of the year in late December, that spring and the growing season will come.

It’s easy for us in our refrigerated, grocery stored world to gloss over these signals of the natural world. It seems like we don’t require them anymore. After all we can buy milk, cow’s milk, at any time of the day or night, 365 days a year. And the growing season particular to our latitude and longitude also seems irrelevant since it’s always the growing season somewhere on earth. The occasional gaps that even modern transportation can’t resolve can often be filled by greenhouse or hydroponically grown produce. We’re good, right?

I’m afraid not. Celebrating Imbolc or any of the Great Wheel holidays will not resolve our alienation from the sources of our sustenance, the sun and mother earth, but this ancient tradition exists to call us back home. The Great Wheel is a reminder that the cycle of life continues, even when the fields and animals are barren. The power of the sun, working in harmony with the soil, with plants, with animals that eat the plants does not disappear. It can be trusted.

awakening

It is though, that alienation, evident in so many ways, that drives climate change, that creates produce modified for harvest and storage, not human well-being, that underwrites the paving over of cropland and wetlands. We imagine that somehow the droughts in California will stop there. We hope they’ll be confined to somewhere else, somewhere where we’re not. Global agriculture means we’ll be affected wherever the damage occurs.

Colorado River Basin

Right here in Colorado we have a key example of the interdependence for which the Great Wheel stands. Our snowpack, high in the Rockies where the Colorado River rises for its journey south toward its ancient destination in the Gulf of California, determines the amount of water available to nine states. Including California. Winter snowfall, melted by the increasing warmth of spring and summer, nourishes millions of people, cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

common ground

In the age of Trump and rising nationalist, right wing populism, the need for the Great Wheel has never been more profound. It softens our in the moment, human conflicts by lifting up the long term, the cycles of life in which all humans, all life participate. The Great Wheel reminds us that there is no other when it comes to living on this planet. We’re all here and bound to one another, connected. My hope is that someday, perhaps someday soon, we’ll all realize that and adjust our politics accordingly.

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A Druid and a Radical

January 31, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Valentine Moon

OK. I admit it. I occasionally take the quizzes that pop up on facebook. I mention this because one set of quizzes seems, well, accurate. The same quiz website offered two recently: What kind of ancient religion would you follow? What kind of philosopher are you?

Druids&Mistletoe — Druid Harvesting Mistletoe

Though I thought I’d saved the piece about ancient religion, I didn’t. Still. The ancient religion that matched my answers? Celtic Druidism. How ’bout that? In the year leading up to my leaving the Presbyterian ministry I was in spiritual direction with John Ackerman at Westminster Presbyterian Church. When I told him I no longer believed in Jesus/God/Holy Spirit, but was more focused now on how I fit into the natural world, he said, “Well, you might be a druid.” He meant it. Not a flippant observation. Prescient.

Since then, the Great Wheel has become my liturgical calendar. I’m much more like what I would once have critiqued as a flat-earth humanist. That is, the metaphysical realms of the world religions seem like poetry to me rather than statements about ontology. I am not a new atheist, a scorner of faith and its many, many permutations. And, yes, I recognize the role religion plays in human conflicts, but I know that most of the time religions gather people of similar demographic characteristics. When conflict emerges, it often has roots in economic and political realities that align closely with religious preferences.

Thomas-Paine-Amazing-quote

I did save the note about which philosopher I’m most like.* This also seemed apposite. It surprised me, in both instances, how the 29 questions they ask managed to get somewhere close to how I see myself.

*Your mind works like the philosopher: Thomas Paine

An anarchist who championed reason and free thought, Thomas Paine was never afraid to speak his mind no matter how unpopular or revolutionary his theories were. Like Paine, you see life as full of possibilities and love to shake up the status quo by thinking outside the box. You are spontaneous and communicate confidently and fluidly. Could you write a post to inspire world-transforming events like Paine’s pamphlet ‘Common Sense’ influenced the start of the American Revolution? Who knows? (But we think it might be worth a try.)

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I suppose

January 29, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Valentine Moon

bagelry1

I suppose.

Kate and I supplied bagels, schmear and fruit for the bagel table at Beth Evergreen yesterday. The bagel table is a casual shabbat service that includes the prayer book and the torah reading. Yesterday the parsha was va-er, Exodus 6:2-9:26, for the most part the story of the plagues sent by God on Egypt.

Rabbi Jamie said that in one instance the verb usually translated as go, as in Go to Pharaoh, is actually come. The meaning shifts a good deal with this understanding. Come to Pharaoh implies, according to Jamie, that God will be acting through Pharaoh. This falls under the difficult to understand category for me.

Kate and I talked about this idea as we drove up Brook Forest Drive. After some conversation, we decided that if you pull back, look from a historical view, then the actions of Pharaoh do work as part of God’s efforts on behalf of the Jewish slaves. His hardened heart provides the impetus, eventually, for the Exodus.

Endurance

We then turned to our contemporary Pharaoh, the Trump. Could God (whatever you want to insert into this metaphysical placeholder) speak to us through the Trump? Jamie’s point was that we have to see the potential for God to speak us especially through those things or persons that we fear or despise. I suppose. Let’s try here.

Pulling back, taking the historical view, what possible liberating impulse could come from Trump’s presidency? (I take liberating impulse to equal God.) It’s true that Trump’s election highlighted the plight of the white working class, those with no more than a high school education. And, it may be, policies to address their concerns will lift all of the working class, high school educated folks. That would be an astonishing and welcome outcome, at least to me.

with her

Too, we might consider the orders to build the wall, block Muslim refugees from certain countries, repeal the ACA, gut environmental regulations as a hardening of the heart, a so-obvious step away from justice and fairness, a big step away from a sustainable future for humanity on this planet, that the reaction to them will part the climate denying sea and create the political will for single payer health care, a return to Ellis Island immigrant welcoming that so many of us yearn for. Maybe. I suppose it could happen that way. May it be so.

As you can tell though, I’m skeptical. But, if it can be, I’ll be the first in line to admit my skepticism unwarranted.

Commentary on the news, Great Work, Politics, US History

Train Wreck

January 25, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

Imagine a long train, 130 hopper cars filled with Wyoming’s Powder Basin coal, moving at 50 mph with roughly 19,000 tons total weight. Imagine Washington DC as its terminus. We’re in the observation room of the Washington Monument, watching this train come into town. In slow motion it hits the Capital, plowing right through and heading on down Pennsylvania Avenue taking out other government office buildings and finally spending the last of its considerable energy demolishing the White House and the Executive Office Building.

Olympus_Has_Fallen_poster

This is, I’m sure, a conservative fantasy, one being enacted now in the Oval Office. The orange old man with the wondrous toupee has, with Executive Orders, supported the Keystone and DAPL pipelines, begun the rending of the ACA, will soon appropriate money for the great wall of fear and has eroded abortion protections. He has also gagged several government agencies and his nominee for Secretary of State has effectively threatened war with China. He’s not even been in office a week. That train will get a chance to leave town, pick up speed and return to get other cabinet buildings and pick off a few journalists and protesters.

Garden, Great Work

Beep. Beets are ready. Beep.

January 15, 2017 Charles 1 Comment

Winter Cold Moon

For Bill: marrying horticulture and code

Great Work

Yes

January 14, 2017 Charles 1 Comment

Winter Cold Moon

Great Work, Politics, US History

DAPL

November 27, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Samain Thanksgiving Moon

I’ve not written here about the Standing Rock protests. At least not much. Neither have I posted about them on Facebook though many, many of my friends have. Several people I know, including ex-wife Judy Merritt, have been out there. She’s going a second time this week.

The issues are complex because they deal with pipelines, fracked oil, climate change and the string of broken promises that have been U.S./Indian treaty relations. The simple issue concerns the possible contamination of water for the Standing Rock Reservation. The current route of the pipeline takes it under the Missouri River near the res. Pipelines break. This is common knowledge and documented well. The objection is reasonable and has not been refuted by the developers of the pipeline.

Then, there are burial grounds. The Standing Rock folks don’t want the graves of their ancestors dug up for a project that will add to the growing carbon load in the atmosphere. What if the project’s economically feasible path took it through any of the many National Cemeteries around the country? Easy to see the problem from that perspective.

Building more pipelines and fracking in the North Dakota oil field for more oil actively contributes to the climate change problem. Keep it in the ground would solve the Standing Rock problem and aid in carbon sequestration.

Most poignant, of course, is the dismal Federal record of maintaining treaty accords, of forcing native children to go to “indian schools,” of slaughtering bands and tribes, of moving whole nations from their homelands, of keeping reservations poor. It is an even more original sin than slavery. I learned about it from my home state, Oklahoma, the end of the trail of tears.

The tragedy here is that the tragedy is not new. We’ve left a trail of broken promises and whatever happens at Standing Rock will likely reinforce that trail.

The promise and the hope of Standing Rock is the amazing national and international gathering of native peoples in solidarity with the water protectors. White allies, too. And, perhaps even more amazing, a contingent of former military folks going out to guard the water protectors. This may usher in a new era of cross-border alliances for native people all over the world.

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

A Thanksgiving Gift for you

November 24, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Samain Thanksgiving Moon

The Thanksgiving Prayer, Adapted from the Mohawk

November 24, 2016By Parabola Editors

Illustration by John Kahionhes Fadden

THE THANKSGIVING PRAYER
Adapted from the Mohawk by John Stokes and David Kanawahienton Benedict

The People

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one we give greetings and thanks to each other as People
Now our minds are one.

The Earth Mother

We are thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our Mother, we send greetings and thanks.
Now our minds are one.

The Waters

We give thanks to all the Waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength. Water is life. We know its power in many forms—waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the spirit of Water.
Now our minds are one.

The Fish

We turn our minds to all the Fish life in the water. They were instructed to cleanse and purify the water. They also give themselves to us as food. We are grateful that we can still find pure water. So, we turn now to the Fish and send our greetings and thanks.
Now our minds are one.

The Plants

Now we turn toward the vast fields of Plant life. As far as the eye can see, the Plants grow, working many wonders. They sustain many life forms. With our minds gathered together, we give thanks and look forward to seeing Plant life for many generations to come.
Now our minds are one.

The Food Plants

With one mind, we turn to honor and thank all the Food Plants we harvest from the garden. Since the beginning of time, the grains, vegetables, beans, and berries have helped the people survive. Many other living things draw strength from them too. We gather all the Food Plants together as one and send them a greeting and thanks.
Now our minds are one.

The Medicine Herbs

Now we turn to all the Medicine Herbs of the world. From the beginning, they were instructed to take away sickness. They are always waiting and ready to heal us. We are happy there are still among us those special few who remember how to use these plants for healing. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the Medicines and to the keepers of the Medicines.
Now our minds are one.

The Animals

We gather our minds together to send greetings and thanks to all the Animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us as people. We see them near our homes and in the deep forests. We are glad they are still here and we hope that it will always be so.
Now our minds are one.

The Trees

Now we turn our thoughts to the Trees. The Earth has many families of Trees who have their own instructions and uses. Some provide us with shelter, others with fruit, beauty, and other useful things. Many peoples of the world use a Tree as a symbol of peace and strength. With one mind, we greet and thank the Tree life.
Now our minds are one.

The Birds

We put our minds together as one and thank all the Birds who move and fly about over our heads. The Creator gave them beautiful songs. Each day they remind us to enjoy and appreciate life. The Eagle was chosen to be their leader. To all the Birds—from the smallest to the largest—we send our joyful greetings and thanks.
Now our minds are one.

The Four Winds

We are all thankful to the powers we know as the Four Winds. We hear their voices in the moving air as they refresh us and purify the air we breathe. They help bring the change of seasons. From the four directions they come, bringing us messages and giving us strength. With one mind, we send our greetings and thanks to the Four Winds.

Now our minds are one.

The Thunderers
Now we turn to the west where our Grandfathers, the Thunder Beings, live. With lightning and thundering voices, they bring with them the water that renews life. We bring our minds together as one to send greetings and thanks to our Grandfathers, the Thunderers.
Now our minds are one.

The Sun

We now send greetings and thanks to our eldest Brother, the Sun. Each day without fail he travels the sky from east to west, bringing the light of a new day. He is the source of all fires of life. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Brother, the Sun.
Now our minds are one.

Grandmother Moon

We put our minds together and give thanks to our oldest Grandmother, the Moon, who lights the nighttime sky. She is the leader of women all over the world, and she governs the movement of the ocean tides. By her changing face we measure time, and it is the Moon who watches over the arrival of children here on earth. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Grandmother, the Moon.
Now our minds are one.

The Stars

We give thanks to the Stars who are spread across the sky like jewelry. We see them in the night, helping the Moon to light the darkness and bringing dew to the gardens and growing things. When we travel at night, they guide us home. With our minds gathered together as one, we send greetings and thanks to the Stars.
Now our minds are one.

The Enlightened Teachers

We gather our minds to greet and thank the enlightened Teachers who have come to help throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to these caring Teachers.
Now our minds are one.

The Creator

Now we turn our thoughts to the Creator, or Great Spirit, and send greetings and thanks for all the gifts of Creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Mother Earth. For all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the Creator.
Now our minds are one.

Closing Words

We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the thing we have named, it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.
And now our minds are one. ♦

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Life does, in fact, go on

November 15, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Samain Thanksgiving Moon

In spite of the political upheaval life, as it always does, continues, mostly in its old grooves. Here on Shadow Mountain for example the divorce process has entered its waning days. Final orders will be issued late this month though the outline for them, largely fair and equitable is already known. Jon’s anxiety level has receded. Good and heartening to see.

We had Asplundh tree service here on Friday and Monday clearing out the tree cover from the power line easement. I spoke with the workers, current day lumberjacks operating outside the timber industry.

“That’s hard work,” I said.

“Yes, but it’s honest. No shortcuts.” replied the bearded young man in charge of the crew. He’s right about that.

The utility bills from IREA, Intermountain Rural Electric Association, have been, since May, $10, a line fee that supports such work as the Asplundh team. The electricity we use has been produced by our solar panels.

I continue to write, now upwards of 63,000 words (I was a little too early when I said I’d reached 60,000 last week.).

Kate and I are becoming more and more a part of Congregation Beth Evergreen. It’s an interesting experience for me. I’m a participant, not a leader. I like it, being part of a community but not being responsible for it. I can help in modest ways and that feels appropriate to me for right now. That may change though with the political work that is brewing.

It’s dry, no snow. According to the weather services, this could reach a record snowless period for Denver. We’ve had a little snow on Shadow Mountain, but only two instances, rare. This, plus the winds and the low humidity, means the potential fire situation here remains at an elevated risk.

This morning at 10 I have my pre-op physical for my December 1st total knee replacement. The pain in the knee worsens, it seems, by the day. That’s good, I tell Kate, because it’ll feel so much better after the new knee. I’m grateful there’s something that can be done about it.

And, improbably, it will be Thanksgiving next week. There is no hint of over the river and through the woods weather to stimulate that Thanksgiving feeling. We may get a storm on Thursday. That would help.

We’re going to smoke a small turkey. Annie will be here from Waconia, Jon and the grandkids. Unlike the nation we’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving on Wednesday because the grandkids go to their mom’s for Thanksgiving this year. Under the new divorce terms holidays alternate and this year is Jen’s Thanksgiving. It will be good once again to have family (and dogs) underfoot during the holiday.

Just realized in all the election fun I’ve allowed holiseason to get started without any remarks. Look for that to change as we head into the most holiday rich season of the year.