Daily Archives: September 21, 2009

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Woolly Mammoths

Bio-Char and the After-Life

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Lughnasa                             Waxing Blood Moon

The Woolly’s met at the old Cenacle in a new retreat center.  We’ve met there three or four times this year.

The focus was views on the afterlife.  The conversation revealed a surprisingly conservative undertone with several Woollys hedging their metaphysical bets.  Immanuel Swedenborg got a mention as did reincarnation as a proven reality.

Some, like me, took a more existential stance.  “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”  I believe that was Carl Sagan.  The questions death raises have confounded humanity since at least the time of the Neanderthals.  There is something about a void after death, an extinctionist perspective I saw it called recently, that unsettles many people.

It is, as much as anything else, I imagine, such a stark contrast with the vitality and hereness of life.  That this magical adventure, this ancient trail might end in nothingness seems like a cheat.  But by whose perspective?

To me the wonder is this life, this one chance we have to experience whatever we can, to do what we can.  To be who we are.

On another note Mark Odegard had two words for today’s graduates:  bio-char.  New to you?  Me, too.  It’s worth a look though and here’s a website that will help you get up to speed.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work

The Afterlife

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Lughnasa                                Waxing Blood Moon

The energizer box, a low impedance model, has a connection to the rope.  There is not enough high capacity underground wire left to do the grounds so I’ll stop by Fleet Farm on my way to Wayzata tonight.  The Woolly meeting convenes on the grounds of the old Cenacle retreat center, now an addiction treatment center.

Tomorrow morning we’ll power up and see if the damn thing works.  My best guess right now is that it will.  Then we wait for word from Rigel that it has begun to serve its intended function.

Warren has posed a question about the afterlife for tonight’s Woolly meeting.  What do we believe about it?

A few years ago I used this  analogy for the question of the afterlife.  It still expresses what I feel.

Think of the universe as a great tapestry woven from the life and death of stars, the solar winds, the orbits of planets and the emergence of life, especially on the planet we know intimately.  Our life, lived as best we can, blinks on at some point in this tapestry and adds color, texture, intensity and vitality to the design.  This tapestry never loses anything and it extends as far as the Great Wall of Reality extends.  Without your life the tapestry would be a poorer, less beautiful creation.

This is my Credo:
From the very stuff of this cosmos we were made.

Each life is a unique, energetic organization of this stuff.

Human life is neither less nor more unique than any other, with one exception (maybe):  consciousness.

Each of us has a Self into which we try to live.  The Self pulls us and prods us to be who we are.

You are a special and important contribution to the story of the Universe, so you must live as who you are.  If you live as you believe others would have you be, then the world loses your unique and precious story.

Economic justice is a means of assuring each persons chance to be who they are.  Therefore, political action in support of economic equity is important to the universal story.

We need the world of plants and animals, oceans and sky far, far more than they need us.  So, work to protect them, and you will protect your loved ones.

The human family and friends we love and support in this life will, in all likelihood, be our primary legacy.

An open heart and an open mind keeps the Self fresh, defeats stagnation, and assures a vital life at any age.

Learning from our gardens, our children, our friends, our spouses or partners, and from the collected wisdom of others connects us to the past and links us to the future.

Art, children, dogs, jazz, and travel have the capacity to jolt us into new perspectives.