Daily Archives: August 11, 2008

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Literature

Colma, California City of the Dead

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69  bar falls 29.80 1mh SSE dew-point 53  sunrise 6:11 sunset 8:25  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon    moonrise 1816  moonset  0130

Finished Alive in Necropolis. A fascinating book, part ghost story, part coming of age story, part police procedural set in Colma, California.  Colma, California is not just anywhere; it is where San Francisco chose to bury its dead.  There are way more dead people in Colma’s 17 cemeteries, 1.5 million, than citizens, 1, 280.   This one I read almost straight through.  It kept what John Gardner calls the fictive dream alive.

Feels good to have read the last two nights rather than watch TV.  I might let it become a habit.  I love fiction, write fiction.  That’s not to say I don’t pick up non-fiction, in fact, I do.  Quite a bit.  Some folks I know rarely read fiction.  I rarely read non-fiction books through in the same way I do novels.  I tend to treat them as resources, reading them more in the manner of college reading.  I seek the big ideas, the general arc of the argument.  Sometimes, I’ll finish them, but rarely.

Kate is home, the night is pleasant.  The kids are healthy, the grandkids, too.  And the dogs.  The gardens productive and the flowers are beautiful.  A good now.

Family, Garden

Bubil Plucking

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74  bar falls 29.85  0mph NNW dew-point 56  sunrise 6:11  sunset 8:25  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon

The punk hairdos of our Country Gentlemen corn now resemble pubic hair, albiet a dark purple.  Sex and the country gentlemen.  Though I’ve seen corn grown all my life, I’ve never done it myself.  The simple, elegant sexuality of these green giants intrigues me.  The tassel pops out of the top, spreads its stamens.  The developing ears–seed pods–push out this delicate female part, the silk, to receive the pollen which falls down as wind rustles the tassel.  Each seed on the ear has a silk that runs straight to it.  A gravity based system.  One of the tiny miracles in a garden of major miracles.

There is nothing on the planet so miraculous as the photosynthetic driven production of carbohydrates.  Without this marvel the food chain has no beginning link.  No beginning link, no chain at all.  It would not be out of place to stop by a plant tonight or tomorrow, put your hands together, bow a bit and say Namaste.  A gracias, too, perhaps.

Kate’s home.  She had fun with the grandkids.  She’s really become a grandma and a good one.  A pleasure to see.  She cooked tonight.  Spaghetti squash, tomato cucumber and onion salad, fish.  All but the fish from our place.

This evening I plucked bubils from the leaf junctions of three of my lilium.  After dipping them in some root  hormone, I took a pair of pick-ups and slotted them into soil pellets.  The pellets went into small plastic six packs.  The whole went out to the garden to receive water and sun.  After they’ve grown a bit, I’ll transplant them to the second tier bed down by the patio.  I’ve never tried propagating lilies this way before, but it was common in the 19th century according to my lily culture book.

Faith and Spirituality, General, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays

The Earth, a Sacred Place

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79  bar falls 29.96  0mph NE  dew-point 56  sunrise 6:10 sunset 8:25  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon

I got this off the Permaculture listserv.

“(I find this is a good reminder to recite every morning.)
Diadra

A Prayer for Gaia by Rose Mary O’Malley

As I breathe in your air, eat your fruits and drink your water, let me be sustained and nourished so that I may serve.

As I use your resources for clothes, shelter and warmth, let me be strengthened so that I may give back more than I have taken.

As I drink in the beauty of your oceans, flowers, blue sky and stars, let me be so filled with beauty that I will bring only love and joy to your inhabitants.

As I am nourished, taught and loved by your inhabitants, let me so filled with love and knowledge that I joyfully work to assure a fair distribution of your treasures.”

It is an example what I believe to be true, that is, many many people consider the earth a sacred place and have the intention of reverence and worship toward her.  The whole neo-pagan movement with its mix and match invocation of Europe’s ancient pantheons and perhaps some Egyptian influence does not reflect the rootedness of this sentiment in American soil. (That is, the American manifestation of it.  I believe this is a global phenomenon.) It is also not the case that the Native American reverence for the earth is other than a salutary reminder since their experience is so different from that of us boat people.

We need a way of following the seasons that respects our American experience of this vast and wonderful land.  We need a way of honoring mother earth that borrows, yes, from other cultures, but does not presume to make their ways our ways.  We need, as Emerson said, a religion of revelation to us, not the history of theirs.   And that revelation comes from two sources:  our experience of the outer world–this land, its peoples and our experience of other peoples and other lands; and, our experience of our inner world and its own universe, added to our resonance with the outer world.

This is the pagan lovesong that I hear in the hearts of so many people, one that needs articulation and expansion.  This is like Brian Swimme’s work, too.

This faith, this reverence and worship of the earth, as in Ms. O’Malley’s prayer, is an ur-faith, or a proto-faith, a faith that comes prior to others,  a faith whose acceptance does not contradict the Mulism or the Buddhist, the Taoist or the Christian, but complements, supplements them.  For some, like me, it is an adequate faith, enough to sustain me on my journey and as I contemplate the life after this one, or others, it is not enough, but one that needs some salvation instrument or some philosophical cleanser.  That’s all right.

Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays

Remember The Sabbath Day And Keep It Holy

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76  bar steady 29.97  0mph NEE dew-point 58  sunrise 6:10 sunset 8:25  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon    moonrise 1633 moonset 0040

Strange how I have to relearn, sometimes again and again, simple home truths.  A day of rest is good for the soul.  The Jews knew it.  The traditional Christian community knew it.  It may be a Western contribution to humanity.  I’ll have to check, but I don’t think the Asian communities have a similar notion.  Yes, they have festivals and holidays, that’s for sure shared, but the notion of a weekly day of rest?  I don’t know.  Those of you who read from Southeast Asia, what do you know?

Anyhow, I woke up today recharged and ready to go.  This in spite of my lingering doubts yesterday.  Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.  Quite a while back I got interested in the idea of sacred time, my commitment to the Celtic calendar is an example.  I also observe a week long retreat at the end of each year thanks to the Mayan concept that the last five days of the year are best left alone in terms of work.

I took from the Spanish cultures, especially Colombia and Mexico, the siesta.  A nap a day continues to be a cornerstone of how I live daily.

The religious communities with whom I shared a vocation for a time convinced me of the value of regular retreats.  The retreats and the Sabbath day have been honored more in the breach than the observance, but I believe that is about to change.  Our body needs sleep, perchance to dream, and, it turns out, our mind does, too.  Recent research shows that the mind sifts, weighs, analyzes and interprets the days events while we sleep.  I suspect the same thing occurs when we take a regular caesura from the usual rhythms of our week and our year.

Please note I’m not talking about vacations here.  Those exist for a different reason, I believe.  Vacations allow us to vacate the norm and experience another world.  They are more for fun and for education seen as fun.

The holy rhythms of which I write here are different.  They focus on the spirit, the care and maintenance of our soul.  Our doubts about such a metaphysically evanescent idea may have contributed to our immersion in and the stickiness for us of the material, outer world.

Well, time to put this regathered energy to work.  See you on the flipside.

GeekWorld, News of the Strange

Scientists closer to developing invisibility cloak

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OK.  I gave you a link to the jetpack last week.  We have robots on Mars.  Voyageur is in the Oort cloud, beyond the solar system.  We get most of our communication via satellite links.  The best telescope in the world is not on the world, but above it. My destktop computer is more powerful than the big, room-sized computers of yesteryear.  Cameras no longer require film.  Movies and music come on frisbees.  People carry their telephone with them and have their own numbers.  There are many cars on the road that no longer run exclusively on internal combustion engines.

Not to mention Booger and his mistress willing to ski down Everest nude with a carnation in her nose.

We’re living in the future.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible.

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.

The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.

People can see objects because they scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it back to the eye. Cloaking uses materials, known as metamaterials, to deflect radar, light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

Metamaterials are mixtures of metal and circuit board materials such as ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite. They are designed to bend visible light in a way that ordinary materials don’t. Scientists are trying to use them to bend light around objects so they don’t create reflections or shadows.

It differs from stealth technology, which does not make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track.