Monthly Archives: April 2012

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Spring                                                Bee Hiving Moon

from Nakedbrowneye:

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.” That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

— Dead Poets Society
Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work

Growing

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Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

Put in my seed order to seed savers yesterday.  This is the first year in a few that I’ve not started any plants.  We moved the hydroponics cart into the garage to gain room for consolidation of all our dog crates in the kitchen.  Not sure whether we’ll use it this winter or not.  Maybe.  But this year, we’re planting seeds or buying transplants.

I ordered 8 tomato plants and 6 pepper plants from seed savers.  I still need to pick up onion sets, leek transplants and kale, probably tomorrow at Mother Earth Gardens at Lyndale and 42nd.  Our potatoes will come from seed savers, too.

We’ve got raspberries, strawberries, apples, pears, plums, cherries, blueberries, currants, wild grapes and asparagus that are perennials, plus the overwintered garlic and some onions.  Even so, I’m glad we don’t have to survive off of our produce.  Gardening would be real work then, a chore.

Instead, our garden sustains us spiritually, maintaining that constant and close connection to the seasons, to the vegetative world, to the soil.  It also provides food throughout the winter and we’ve chosen to emphasize that aspect of our garden by planting vegetables that we can put up.

Plus the bees.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Retirement, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

A Third Phase Entry: I Don’t Have Friends Who Knew Me When

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Spring                                           Bee Hiving Moon

Sometimes realizations float up in conversation, product of a gestalt not possible without others.  That happened to me tonight at the Woolly regular first Monday meal.

Gathered at the Woodfire Grill in St. Louis Park, we began to toss around the topic of change.  Woolly change.  Some of us express excitement about change; some want to explore change, but do not want to lose what’s still valuable to them

At some point in the conversation I said, “Well, it’s not true for any of you, but for me, I didn’t go to high school here.  I don’t have those friends here who knew me when.  When I face down those final days, you’re those friends for me.”

Without even realizing what I’d done, I had laid a vulnerable part of me on the table, not a fear exactly, but a concern.  I don’t want Kate to have all the responsibility.  Nor do I want to have all of it for her.  Most of it, sure.  But not all.

Here then, was naked need.  A need for reassurance that these relationships will last.  Until death do us part.  That’s the realization.  I need to know that these guys will be there for me, as I will be for them.  It’s not often that an unexplored need strikes me, and rarely in public, but it happened tonight.

Let me quickly say that I don’t doubt these relationships.  It’s just that I didn’t realize how important, crucial even, they are for me.

Garden

Spring Cleaning

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Spring                                                   Bee Hiving Moon

The so-warm March got folks cranked up about the garden, but this is Minnesota.  Our last frost date is still May 15th, six weeks away.  It’s no time for annuals.

(where we’re headed  2010 harvest)

Kate and I have started peeling away leaves, dead branches and stems, prepping our various beds for the warmer weather ahead.  None of what we uncover is frost sensitive.

I spent time moving limbs I had pruned in the colder weather, raking mulch off our onions and garlic and getting the planting plan for 2012 down.  We’ve decided to focus this year on crops that we put up or store for the winter:  beets, onions, garlic, leeks, potatoes, tomatoes, kale, chard, collard greens.  We’ll also put in some herbs and some peppers and some sugar snap peas, but those we’ll use during the season.

Working in the garden, a tactile spirituality, balances out the indoor heavy lifting that has occupied–and tends to dominate–the winter season.  It feels good to be engaged again.

 

Great Work, Humanities, World History

Old Flames

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Spring                                                  Bee Hiving Moon

Masters of the Planet.  Started reading this book by Ian Tattersall, a paleoanthropologist.  A popular narrative about the evolution of the human species, Tattersall covers ground I learned well over 40 years ago when I majored in anthropology.   Trouble is, the ground has shifted a lot since I learned about australopithecus and paranthropus robustus and all the other hominids.

(Logo Institute of Human Origins)

When I finished my study,  the time line of human evolution ended about 3 million years ago.  Now it stretches to more like 7 million.  I learned bipedalism was a way to hunt for game and watch out for predators in the grasslands of the open savannah.  Hmmm.  Problem with that theory is that more recent finds show the first bipedalists hung out at the edge of forests and often went back into the forests.  Lots of experiences like that for me.

The book did relight those old flames, the reason I added anthropology to my already in place philosophy major.  Something about the human story, that long arc of time when we differentiated from the ancestor we held in common with the great apes.  How it happened.  What it means for us, now.  All the different disciplines necessary to be a good anthropologist:  ethnology, linguistics, archaeology, physical anthropology.  It was just so much fun.

I’d recommend this book, but I think calling it a popularization is misleading.  Tattersall is a good writer, clean prose, very logical, that’s all good, but the subject matter often veers into the apparently esoteric.  If this stuff fascinates you, it’s a good way to catch up the last 40 years or so.  And they have been amazing years in the project of learning our story.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Humanities, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Religion Collapse Disorder

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Spring                                                           Bee Hiving Moon

Had a chance to speak to Groveland UU this morning, a regular event each year for me for over 20 years now.  Some years more, some years less, always congenial.

The Reimagining Faith piece (see Current Work at the top of this page) resonated in a way a bit different than I had intended.  The conversation was not so much about reimagining faith as it was about the falling away of religious life and what that might mean.  That’s where the discussion led.

The Reimagining Faith project needs to deliver a fuller account of what I call religion collapse disorder.  Better documentation of this accelerating trend in the US and more on its implications for individual and group spirituality will be important.  I had sort of skipped over that and gone directly to the challenge facing deinstitutionalized Americans.

Between now and the Summer Solstice I’m going to start investigating possible Asian resources.  I’ll look especially at Taoism, Shinto, and the ukiyo-e artist Hokusai who belonged to a Buddhist sect that worshiped the north star.

There is also more work to be done on tactics, or methods, of constructing a new faith and I think the constructive theology exercise lined out below will be fun and a good step in this direction.

Realized, with a bit of surprise, that I’ve spent a lot of my life putting myself in front of people:  preaching, organizing, acting, touring, writing.  Never thought of it all like that before and it made me wonder what drives it.  Don’t know.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality

What Is Your Core Religious Conviction?

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Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

Challenge to a seminary class in constructive theology.  Sounds fun.  Think I’ll do it.  Not right now because I have to go give my presentation on Reimagining Faith.

“In 3500 words or less, please answer the following questions: What is your core religio-moral conviction, and how does it inform or give shape to your understanding of the theological norms of your society? What is your organizing theological framework? What do you mean when you speak of God? Please include an account of God’s power, creative act, presence and providence, and the question of evil. Or, if you are non-theistic, how do you take account of the beginning of life, the creative power that sustains us all, the web of relations, and the question of suffering? Who and where are human beings in the scheme of things: in relation to the holy, to other humans, to other creatures, to the earth? How do you see the human predicament and the notion of sin? Finally, how shall we dwell together?”