An Ontological Oncologist

Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Paul. Mark in K.L. Gettin’ stuff done. Snow. Cold. Back to working out. Aches to prove it. My Lodgepole Companion. That young Buck with the spike Antlers. Visiting again. Mary getting ready for Summer. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch. Thanksgiving in Songtan. His generosity. The Water Grill. 2:15. Ruth, Gabe, Jen, and me.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Thanksgiving

Kavannah: Perseverance and chesed

One brief shining: Opening a book and beginning to read starts a journey into the unknown, what if this paragraph changes my life, oh no, he didn’t, picked up one yesterday recommended by NYT conservative columnist, Ross Douthat, a dialogue between Olympian Gods favoring an idealistic, almost Bishop Berkeleyan, metaphysic in which all is mind or forms as mind pushes itself into forms. Or something like that.

 

Got my house cleaned yesterday. Ana wielding her dust cloth, vacuum, and other tools of her trade to give me that spiffy home feeling. Not cheap but Furball Cleaning, owned by my friend Marina Harris, shows up and on time, and does better than average work. Hard to calculate how much psychic difference a clean house makes, but it’s a lot.

 

That book I opened yesterday is All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life. Haven’t read a philosophy text in a while. This one is thick, thick, thick. As near as I can tell David Bentley Hart wants to make the case for something like Bishop Berkeley’s: Esse est percipi. To be is to be perceived. A solution, Hart believes, that could solve the four hundred old mistake in Western culture most often blamed on Descartes: The mind-body split.

I agree with Hart’s definition of the problem. And, how you define is how you solve so we’re halfway to agreement from the start. I might even agree with a version of his solution, but not one that ends up providing a comfortable berth for old fashioned Thomistic theology. Which is where I suspect he is headed.

My agreement with Hart lies in his insistence on a unitary metaphysic, it’s all one, and a rejection, because of this, with dualisms as final expressions of the nature of reality. My difference with him so far? I suspect him of having a static ontology. I may be wrong about that though. I’m a Whiteheadian, Jewish fan of the notion of all becoming new, every moment, in every instant.

BTW: This might be the place for Paul’s addition to my stable of oncologists: urological, radiation, and medical. Paul thought I should add an ontological oncologist. Perfect. Static ontologies are the cancers of a process metaphysic.

I know. I’m sorry. But it’s what I’m thinking about today.

 

Just a moment: So. 25% on Mexico and Canada. 10% on China. Tariffs. First day in office. Dictator day if I recall. Whatever. As the teenagers say. Or, said. Probably a while ago.

As a seed-keeper, I’ll continue reading Thoreau and Emerson, Dickinson and Melville. Madison and Monroe. Throw in a little Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.