Daily Archives: August 7, 2008

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Weather +Climate

It Forces Me Into the Present

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60  bar steady 30.03 0mph NNW dew-pooint 54  sunrise 6:06  sunset 8:31  Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon    moonrise 1219  moonset 2200

If you’ve ever wondered why I put all this weather and astronomical data first, good question.  The immediate answer is because I can.  My weather station gives me all the top line data with the exception of the Celtic calendar period, but I know those by heart now.  The moon names fascinate me so I have several lists of names from all the over world, and I choose one that feels right for the next month.  The lists that usually have the one I want are the Celtic, medieval English, and neo-Pagan, although I always feel a little strange with the last one because I don’t understand the roots.  The moonrise and moonset I got from a Naval Observatory website that creates a list for your location.

The secondary answer lies in weather history.  When I read back over my entries, I want to know what the conditions were like on the day in question.  Again, you ask, why?  Sometimes for gardening reasons.  Sometimes to jog my memory.  Sometimes just for fun.

The tertiary answer, though it may be the primary one, is this: it forces me into the present, right down to the temperature and barometric readings.  I like the reminder that this moment is this moment and no other.  Right now is right now.

Kate’s in Denver.  The dogs are asleep and the HD box has a so-so sci-fi movie on record so I can finish when and if I want.

A wonderful night and a good looking day tomorrow.  See you then.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Writing

Moving

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78 bar falls 30.03 4mph NNW dew-point 53  sunrise 6:05 sunset 8:31 Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of them are stupider than that.  George Carlin, RIP

Finally.  The first drafts of Heresy Moves West and Heresy Moves West II are in the digital file cabinet.  They did not end where I had  hoped though they cover in very broad strokes the topic I set myself in the beginning.  There is a third, unwritten piece that will continue the Heresy, adding one of my own, or, at least, one articulated in my own voice.  I will not start on that one anytime soon, however.

Tomorrow AM I plan to take shovel in hand and get to work moving day lilies.  This is so I can clear a raised bed of its iris and true lilies by moving them where these hemerocallis live right now.  Kate wants hemerocallis to fill the bed out front because she’s tired of weeding that large island east of the driveway.  Can do, and I’ll get a start on the morrow.

Onto the treadmill.

Faith and Spirituality, Writing

A Romantic Hymn to the Universal and the Particular

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72  bar rises 30.07 1mph N  dew-point 57  sunrise 6:05 sunset 8:31  Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon

“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” – Virginia Woolf

In this case you have to remember that Virginia put rocks in her pockets and drowned herself in the closest flowing water.

Here are some notes.  A new direction for liberal religion.  Cosmology:  a nature centered (including humans) faith that has local manifestations, i.e. this galaxy, this solar system, this planet, this nation, this province, this place, this particular location. (Our Town)  Anthropology:  we are universes,   one self, many selves.  Whitman.  We grow toward a Self that can contain and nourish all of our many selves, yet paradoxically extinguish them all.  Existentialism.  Nexus.  Ethics:  the Iroquois medicine man at Theology in the Americas.  Soteriology-see ethics and anthropology.  A decadent salvation, from stardust to stardust.

We must answer the thin faith of the empiricist, the sad faith of the secular humanist, the mad faith of the fundamentalists and the mind-only faith of those outside the faith traditions of their youth.  Our response, our new direction folds together the empiricist and the humanist with a pagan lovesong, a romantic hymn to the universal and the particular.  Its flower symphony trumpets forth from home altars all across the globe, a fragrant and colorful melody that weaves us all together, a magic fabric with each individual, yet each part.

This has legs in my heart, it wants to run and jump and play with others.