Category Archives: Myth and Story

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Writing

Reimagining Gods and other matters

Leave a comment

Beltane                                                                          Running Creeks Moon

Two odd ideas passing through, perhaps they’ll stay:

  1. thinking about the notion of the after-life and what a miracle it would be if one exists. that led me to the thought that the real miracle is after-inanimancy. That is, life itself emerging from an inanimate stew. Which, for some reason, further lead, with the idea of emergence in play, to the meta-animate, that which exists beyond life, but in dialectical tension with it. This idea could explain gods, the particularity of them, perhaps even their existence. They would be limited, defined by the process that made them possible, life and further consciousness, yet analogous to life in the way that life is analogous to inanimancy.
  2. thinking more about the idea of becoming native to a place in light of a post I wrote about Minnesota. I had, I said, become native there. This got mixed in with the idea of homecoming and from homecoming, reunion. So the final step of becoming native to a place is a homecoming. And when we visit other places to which we have become native, it’s a reunion.

Just my process at work and I wanted to hold onto these. Put them up on the whiteboard and look at them later.

 

 

Aging, Beyond the Boundaries, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Memories, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Mystic Chords

Leave a comment

Beltane                                                                               New (Running Creeks) Moon

The mood here. Still subdued, still gathering the reality of Vega’s death around us. When Mom died, now 52 years ago, the ongoingness of life surprised me. Cars still rattled down Canal Street. Lights went off and on in houses. School was open, teachers teaching and kids squirming at their desks. The sun rose and set. Dogs barked. We needed sleep and ate breakfast.

This no longer amazes me. The feelings of absence, of missing, of longing do not disappear however, though they can get submerged in the running creek of life. I still miss my mom, not in that acute, gut twisting way of 52 years ago, but longing for her, for her presence remains.

Abraham Lincoln called these threads of feeling and remembrance, their resonance, the mystic chords of memory. Yes. Part of their function, a paradox, lies in the quickening of our daily life, jimmying us out of the cracks and ruts we fall into. We realize a life time has bounds.

As the writers of the Hebrew scriptures often said, this background music is a blessing and a curse. It can become a cacophony, a dirge we cannot shut off. A mental tinnitus. Yet, it is the dead, as much as the living, often more, who shape us, create us-sometimes to our exasperation, other times to our joy.

With Vega the only source of pain is her sudden absence. The rest, the memory of her, the mystic chords she sets off, are joyful and loving. And those will persist.

 

Asia, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Myth and Story, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Travel

A Taxi to Nirvana rather than a Stairway to Heaven

Leave a comment

Spring                                             Wedding Moon

Off to Nirvana with Hameed this morning. Nirvana is a huge columbarium that has intrigued ever since my sister sent me the link. And, besides, if I can get to Nirvana for the price of a taxi drive, why not?

We’ll go on about 10 minutes further to Skygreens, a vertical farm. Some evolution of this idea may well be the farm of the urban future and both Kate and I find it an interesting idea.

We’ve hired Hameed by the hour, $30 Singapore, about $22 U.S. I’ll let you know how Nirvana was when we get back. I think that’s what bodhisattvas do, so both Kate and I will accept the honorific when we return to the mountains.

Somewhat cooler today. But, only relative to 92 feels 102. So…

Have I mentioned that it’s hot here?

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, GeekWorld, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

Anxiety

2 Comments

Imbolc                                                                        Maiden Moon

Palmer Hayden, a painter of the Harlem Renaissance, did a series of 12 paintings about the John Henry legend.  John Henry matched his muscle and steel-driving skill against a steam engine. When watching Alphago, the DeepMind computer program, play Go champion and legend himself, Lee Sedol, Michael Redmond, a Western go master at the 9-dan (highest level) said he really wanted to play the computer.

Here’s a quote from the only man who claimed to have seen the John Henry contest:  “When the agent for the steam drill company brought the drill here,” said Mr. Miller, “John Henry wanted to drive against it. He took a lot of pride in his work and he hated to see a machine take the work of men like him.” wiki, op cit

 

This is Lee Sedol and his daughter at Match 3. He lost, for the third game in a row, losing the match of 5 games to Alphago. Quite a different scene from Hayden’s imaging of John Henry’s loss, but still a human loss to a machine.

It occurs to me that both images evince a fundamental difference between humans and machines, love and concern for another. In Lee’s case, he and the Alphago team member are smiling, shaking hands. He has his arm around his daughter, another key distinction between  humans and machines, biological procreation. Parenting, the long task of raising a human child until they can take off on their own, is also a complex relational challenge, one well outside the current and possibly future capacity of artificial intelligence.

 

As John Henry lies dead, a heart attack brought on by the stress of the competition, others surround him. Their expressions vary from disbelief to sadness. One man has a ladle of water to offer, indicating that Henry must have just died. Too, the endurance of the legend and the song about John Henry show how deeply rooted are the questions. Is a human determined, defined by his or her capacity to defeat a machine? Ever?

Lee Sedol said, at the end of Match 3, “Lee Sedol lost. Not humankind.”

There is a fundamental anxiety about humanness revealed here. It is the question that Ray Kurzweil believes he has answered in his book, The Singularity Is Near. In Kurzweil’s mind, all of these human versus machine moments are stair steps toward the ultimate confrontation between humans and an artificial intelligence that is superior to us. The John Henry legend foreshadows what will happen. Like the steam drill a superior consciousness will simply eliminate the competition, not out of pique or malevolence, but because that is what happens when superior beings interact with inferior ones.

 

I don’t believe it. I believe the crowd around John Henry, the shaking hands at Match 3 with Alphago and the presence of Sedol’s daughter shows the true distance machines will have to travel to become superior to humans. And, when the contest is over love and compassion, the human characteristics on display in these two instances, then the machine will not want to eliminate us, but to embrace us.

Beyond the Boundaries, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Dawn

Leave a comment

Yule                                                                                      Stock Show Moon

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.  Rabindranath Tagore

 

Reframing is such a powerful tool. Tagore reframes death. Whether or not he’s right, and how can we know, the notion is a powerful one. The possibility of a new dawn after this life, what could it mean? No way to assess it. But just the idea is intriguing, especially when put against the judgmental metaphysics of most major religious traditions on the one hand and the nihilistic over confidence of latter day positivists like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens on the other.

The so-called new atheists are really metaphysical curmudgeons, still entranced by the bracing notion of nothing beyond this reality. They conclude that because the matter of metaphysics is beyond measurement, beyond sensory authentication that it is, ipso facto, non existent. This is a peculiar claim. That is, claiming the non-existence of something you cannot access admits, in and of itself, that the way of knowing that produces the conclusion is wrong for the question. Like the metaphysics of heaven and hell, moksha or nirvana, non-existence is not provable either. So, the big metaphysical question requires an agnostic position.

Tagore’s idea, like the analogy between life and death and the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly, depends on no dogma. It simply states an alternative possibility. The Otherworld in Celtic mythology had another existence beyond death, though characterizing it as a new dawn would not fit. It was more like a pale version of this world. Still, the hope that death is a doorway rather than a black hole has captured the imagination of countless humans over thousands of  years.

Who knows? Perhaps your dying day will include a wakin’ up mornin’. It’s ok with me.

 

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

The Flight of Medea

Leave a comment

Yule                                                                           New (Stock Show) Moon

Set the Cub Cadet on 6, its top speed, and rocketed through the fluffy snow on our driveway. Felt like cheating. It’s gonna stay cold so even the three or four inches we had would stick around a while, a la Minnesota. Better to whisk away to the sides, let the solar snow shovel do its work.

I’ve been working on Latin this morning, more of the comparison method, checking my English against Loeb’s, Penguin Prose and a translation by Charles Martin. My head begins to throb after about an hour. Snow blowing seems like an acceptable alternative.

Here’s a few verses as a sample. This is entirely my own translation.

Medea Flees or The Flight of Medea,  Metamorphoses, Book VII, 350-398

350b Had she not flown into the air on serpent’s wings

351b Would she not be taken for punishment?  She fled

352b above richly shaded Mt. Pelion, Chiron’s home, and

353b above Othrys in Thessaly, over the spot made known by the fate of ancient Cerambus.

354b He, raised into the air on wings here by work of the nymphs ,

355b  escaped, not overwhelmed by Deucalion’s flood

356b  when the burdened earth was being buried by the spreading sea.

357b  On her left she passed Aeolian Pitane

358b  And its great likeness of a dragon made of stone,

359b  And the grove of Idaeus, where the son of Bacchus stole a young bullock

360b  hidden by deceitful Bacchus under the likeness of a deer,

361b   She passed over Paris, the father of Corythi, buried under a small mound of sand,

362b  And over the fields Maera frightened by strange barking.

363b  She flew over the city of Eurypylus where the mothers of  Coa wore horns

364b  When the band of Hercules dispersed to Rhodes,

365b  dear to Phoebus Apollo, and Ialysos, home of the Telchines,

366b  the eyes of whom by beholding infected everyone,

367b  Jupiter, detesting them, plunged them under the sea to his brother, Poseidon.

 

368b  She then passed over the city walls of ancient Cartheia on the island Cea.

369b  where Alcidamas, her father, marveled that  the body of his daughter

370b  was born anew as a peaceful dove.

 

Colorado, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The West, US History

Stock Show Weather

Leave a comment

Yule                                                                                 New (Stock Show) Moon

The Denver metro has Stock Show weather. Stock Show weather is cold as opposed to snowy, not surprising since the Stock Show runs the three weeks after the first week of the New Year.

We got 5 or 6 inches of snow overnight. The next few nights will be in the single digits or low double digits, cold by Colorado standards. Just getting cool by Minnesota’s. It rarely gets chilly here, that is well below zero, though it does happen. Still, as I told Greg, my Latin tutor, this morning, I wouldn’t care to visit Minnesota during a chilly period. Not anymore.

A couple of weeks ago Greg gave me an assignment. Match my English translation against other English translations, then figure out where and why we differ. This means I’m moving closer to the sort of translating I sought when I began this long journey. In order to proceed honestly I still have to translate the Latin first, then check others. This way I don’t engage in cheating, making my translation fit someone else’s interpretation. But, done in the proper sequence this method allows me to begin polishing my language, getting beyond a more literal translation to a more literary one.

Getting back to regular, that is daily, Latin work has been frustratingly slow. I’ve allowed holidays and illness to intrude. Understandable, not helpful. After this morning’s session though, I have a feeling I’m back at it. Greg said I did very well with the material I prepared. That means, when we sight read the Latin, I easily and accurately translated what I had put through the English translation match.

With my workouts somewhat regular now, illness and holidays again, it feels as if I’m returning to the productive rhythm I had in Minnesota. Now I need to add writing on a novel and/or the reimagining book. Working out, Latin and creative writing are the three legs to my stool, each necessary in their own way.

The art will come along, too.

Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Memories, Myth and Story, Science

Not Even Gone

Leave a comment

Mabon                                                                     Moon of the First Snow

It is so beautiful here around 5 a.m. when the sky is clear, which is most mornings. The stars leap out of the sky, reminders of the power they had when the only light pollution was an evening’s campfire. Orion stands high in the south, moving toward Black Mountain. The Big Dipper disappears behind the roof of the garage in the east, but the pointer stars are visible, showing the way to true north. Cassiopeia, that unhappy queen, extends her jagged W, a slash of stars.

Time travel has been with us since the first human looked up in wonder at the stars. What we see unaided and what we can see with telescopes comes to us from the distant, distant past. So distant that the miles come in units of time. Perhaps, in a way, our lives are like the heavens, still shining after long years, even after death, radiating out from our small sector of space-time to the far away future.

So you might go out and look at the stars and consider the bright lights in your life, still strong and beautiful, wonderful. And remember that someday, you too will shine for others. Not gone, not even absent.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Humanities, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Writing

Having a Moment

1 Comment

Lughnasa                                                            Labor Day Moon

I’m having a moment. It’s immediate stimulus has been reading How Forests Think, by Eduardo Kohn. Kohn is an anthropologist who has done significant field work in el Oriente, the east of Ecuador where the Andes go down into the tropical rain forests of the Amazon drainage. But this book is something else. Though it draws on his field work with the Runa, its focus is the nature of anthropology as a discipline and, more broadly, how humans fit into the larger world of plants and animals.

Thomas Berry’s little book, The Great Work, influenced a change in my political work from economic justice to environmental politics. Berry said that the great work for our time is creating a sustainable human presence on the earth. In 2008 I began working on the political committee of the Sierra Club with an intent to do my part in an arena I know well. I continued at the Sierra Club until January of 2014 until I resigned, mostly to avoid winter driving into the Twin Cities.

Since then, I’ve been struggling with how I can contribute to the great work. Our garden and the bees were effective, furthering the idea of becoming native to this place. The move to Colorado though has xed them out.

Kohn’s book has helped me see a different contribution I can make. Political work is mostly tactical, dealing in change in the here and now or the near future. In the instance of climate change, tactical work is critical for not only the near future but for the distant future as well. I’ve kept my head down and feet moving forward on the tactical front for a long, long time.

There are though other elements to creating a sustainable human presence on the earth. A key one is imagining what that human presence might be like. Not imagining a world of Teslas and Volts, renewable energy, local farming, water conservation, reduced carbon emissions, though all those are important tactical steps toward that presence; but, reimagining what it means to be human in a sustainable relationship with the earth.

Kohn is reimagining what being human is. His reimagining is a brilliant attempt to reframe who thinks, how they think and how all sentience fits together. He’s not the only one attempting to do this. The movement is loosely called post-humanist, removing humans from the center of the conceptual universe.  A posthuman world would be analogous to the solar system after Galileo and Copernicus removed the earth from the center. Humans, like the earth, would still exist, but their location within the larger order will have shifted significantly.

This fits in so well with my reimagining faith project. It also fits with some economic reimagining I’ve been reading about focused on eudaimonia, human flourishing. It also reminds me of a moment I’ve recounted before, the Iroquois medicine man, a man in a 700 year lineage of medicine men, speaking at the end of a conference on liberation theology. The time was 1974. He prayed over the planting of a small pine tree, a symbol of peace among the tribes of the Iroquois confederacy because those tribes put their weapons in a hole, then planted a pine tree over them.

His prayer was first to the winged ones, then the four-leggeds and those who swim and those who go on water and land, the prayer went on asking for the health and well-being of every living thing. Except the two-leggeds. I noticed this and went up to him after the ceremony and asked him why he hadn’t mention the two-leggeds. “Because,” he said, “we two-leggeds are so fragile. Our lives depend on the health of all the others, so we pray for them. If the rest are healthy, then we will be, too.”

Reimagine faith in a manner consistent with that vision. Reimagine faith in a post-humanist world. Reimagine faith from within and among rather than without and above. This is work I can do. Work my library is already fitted to do. Work I’ve felt in my gut since an evening on Lake Huron, long ago, when the sun set so magnificently that I felt pulled into the world around me, became part of it for a moment. Work that moment I’ve mentioned before when I felt aligned with everything in the universe, that mystical moment, has prepared me for. Yes, work I can do. Here on Shadow Mountain.

 

 

 

Latin, Myth and Story, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Challenge Perceived Limitations

Leave a comment

Spring                                                           Mountain Spring Moon

Apparently the dropout rate for language instruction is incredibly high. I believe it. There were several drop out points along the way in my Latin learning, moments when the thickness of my resistance seemed impenetrable.

Read the other day that it takes 600 hours of practice to become fluent in a foreign language. The same article said that learning a language was just hard, not impossible. Now it’s beginning to appear that this article had it right.

Thing is, it seems like I have way over 600 hours of practice translating. Now this article referred to learning, say, French, and admitted that other languages like Mandarin could take much longer. Maybe fluency and accuracy in translation are different, I don’t know, but it’s taken me a long time to get where I am and that’s still far from 100%.

Like most pilgrims, the journey was key to the adventure, but the destination has proved worthy of the path. Rationales for learning Latin developed over time. One was the third phase desire to keep the brain active, creating new neural pathways. The second, or was it the original one, involved making the stories of the Metamorphoses a deep and accessible resource for writing. The third was to challenge my self-perception as one who could not learn a language.

The first I don’t know how to measure. The second has been happening all along the way and, happily, the third was a successful challenge. Challenging self-perceived limitations is an important facet of life at any age, perhaps more so as we move well into our third phase.