Lughnasa Harvest Moon
While out preparing beds for bulb planting later this fall, I thought over the post I’d made below. Spirituality is not the best word for describing what I was talking about, I realized. At least it’s not in metaphysical terms. I’m talking about a here and now, sensory delivered experience.
In a broader sense, and as I think it is often used, spirituality refers to a mode, event, ritual that makes present, even if momentarily, our connectedness. In traditional religious circles that connectedness links up to what Kant would have called the noumenal realm, the realm beyond our senses. Nietzsche put a stop sign to philosophical consideration of the noumenal, a problem for Western philosophy since the Platonic ideal forms, when he said God is dead. That is, the noumenal realm is not and never was accessible. If it ever was at all.
Using spirituality in this latter sense–the revelation of connectedness however it comes–then my use of it was just fine.
Just now I looked out my study window and to the north the sky was black and to the east a sickly green cast hoovered near the horizon. When my eyes read that green, my stomach sank, just a bit, the fear engendered by growing up in tornado alley struggling to assert itself, demand my attention. Survival at stake! Red alert. This was a moment of awe, a reminder of the power nature can bring to bear. It was a spiritual moment in its sense of immediate connectedness between my deepest inner self and the world within range of my vision.
These are small epiphanies, yes, but they are available. This coarse, material spirituality, tactile in its immediacy reminds me, in definitive manner, of who I am and of what I am a part. Do I need more?
