• Tag Archives death

  • Critiquing Salvation

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                     Waning Cold Moon

    OK.  To finish up the thought that got strangled as Morpheus took over my body last night.

    Salvation through technology has infected our thinking, a direct consequence of the relentless application of reason to larger and larger spheres of knowledge.  Astronomy, physics and chemistry, geology, later biology all have had their mystery peeled away to reveal orderly, predictable processes.  As mystery drained away from the natural world–though note that mystery is not gone.  It lurks still behind quantum mechanics, life, consciousness, unified field theory–a slow build of an irrational hubris grew in inverse relation.  Because we knew some, we believed we knew enough.

    Salvation through economics has infected our thinking, a direct consequence of the relentless application of reason to the idea of value and its diverse manifestations.  The ancien regime has been replaced by capitalism in many flavors, Marxism, socialism and even state socialism.  Again, as mystery drained away from the field of economics–though note that mystery is not gone.  It lurks still behind market crashes, the failure of planned states and the strange amalgam called socialism with Chinese elements–an irrational hubris grew in inverse relation.  Because we knew some, we believe we knew enough.

    Salvation through religious dogma has infected our thinking, a direct consequence of an aversion to the application of reason to matters of faith.  The axial age faiths continue and have split, many claiming exclusive paths to human redemption.  They have not been replaced and  the mystery is why?  The strong brew of metaphysics, gods and goddesses and an answer to the perennial question of death keeps reason at bay when it comes to matters of faith and belief.  Because we believe we know enough, we believe.

    The only way to examine these outsized claims lies in the disciplines that fall under the broad rubric of the humanities.  Only by going deep into the ways humans have lived their lives and responded to it through the arts and through historical reflection can we critique those splinters of our humanness that clamor for our attention.  Technology, economics and religion seem to offer hope for the future if only we can subjugate ourselves to their demands.  The unexamined aspect(s) of our lives poses the greatest threat to control us.

    It is to this project that I have donated my life, the project of never taking anything for granted, of trying to see as many sides as possible of a claim, of using unexpected tools.  Poetry as a defense against the outsized claims of economics.  Music as a foil to the reach of technology.  History as a way to place religious systems within their proper context.

    In that sense, then, yes, knowledge is the fuel and I do know where I’m going.  I also know I will never find the end of this ancientrail.  Its end lies beyond all of us, perhaps beyond the gates of death itself.


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities Letters 📎and tagged

  • A Thought on Extinction

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring     Waning Moon of Winds

    Quick notes for some future thought.  Often I carry a notion around for days before I set it down and I’ve had one banging around for a week or so.  On Monday last at Frank Broderick’s I offered a view of legacy that featured, as I posted here, Shelley’s poem Ozymandias.  The more I’ve thought of that poem and the sinking in to the sands of time of 99.99999% of us, often not even name remaining for long, I’ve felt strangely liberated by it.

    Let me extend  the notion.  Not only will even the best and the brightest of us fade from view, as have all but a very few, but given time even the starship on which we travel will die away, too.  Long before that humanity will have ended its time here on earth, perhaps we will go out to the stars, perhaps not, but at some point the planet we know, that humanity has known as its only home, will disappear from the universe, swallowed by an expanding red giant.

    This cheery line of thought led me backwards then to our self-awareness.  We know we will die.  This is said to be the ur-fear, but I think is not.  The ur-fear is not death per se, but the question of extinction.  Somehow extinction makes us uneasy, as if we should be an exception to what we expect for dogs, cows, trees and frogs.  This winking out of aware life carries a potential and, I think, actual message of nihilism.  That is, life has no overriding moral purpose when seen in light of death.

    Does this mean no ethical system has roots, punch.  No, of course not.  Camus felt that death made us all brothers and sisters, committed to each other and to as smooth and happy a course of life for the other as for ourselves.  Ethical systems validated only by post death rewards or punishments do fall by the side.  But they are no great loss.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality 📎and tagged

  • Say a Little Prayer for the Miracle of Mother Earth

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    70  bar steep fall 29.80  6mph NW  Dew-point 62   Summer, a thunder storm watch until 6PM.  One’s already rolled through our area.

    First Quarter of the Thunder Moon

    The Thunder Moon has seen its first storm even before it became gibbous.   When I went downstairs today to shut off and unplug the computer, as I always do before a storm, it made me think.

    In cities it is possible to live a life pretty isolated from the natural world.  Yes, you get wet when it rains if you can’t drive from covered parking to covered parking, but it’s usually a short term experience.  Out of the car.  Dash across the parking lot or sidewalk into the shelter of a building.  Yes, up here in the northland you can’t avoid the snow and the cold, but there again, unless you go outside with snowshoes or hiking boots, your exposure does not interrupt your day very much.

    Out here in the exurbs, where the cities reach has become tenuous, houses have 2 acres, 5 acres, 10 acres between them.  When the thunderstorm looms, it looms over you.  A lightning strike on or near the house would send a surge throughout our circuitry blowing out sensitive devices.  The computer holds so much of my life and work that I protect it.  But, from what?

    Yes.  Mother nature.  She’s whimsical and unpredictable.  No matter what we do somewhere the river rises.  Electricity coming in a storm carries a voltage of 100 million to 1 billion volts.  It can reach 50,000 degrees fahrenheit.   Four times as hot as the sun’s surface.  A hurricane generates unbelievable power and as they intensify they endanger increasing amounts of our wealth and health as a country.

    Just think back over the last couple of months.  The cyclone in Burma.  The earthquakes in China.  The worst natural disaster in our history, Katrina, was not long ago.  These events kill and or disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.  The earthquake in Pakistan or the Kobe earthquake in Japan.  Huge, nation altering events.  The tsunami in the Indian Ocean.  We remember these not only for their human suffering and property loss, but because they remind us that we are not in control of the planet.

    Our own little apocalypse, death, comes from the evolution of life.  Life comes with a sell-by date.  We are not in control even of our own lives.  This is either frightening or invigorating.

    I choose invigoration, so when I head downstairs to shut off the computer I say a little prayer of thanks for the miracle of mother earth and my chance for a brief stay here.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality GeekWorld Great Work Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • RIP Aunt Dorothy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Aunt Dorothy was a bright, vital, strong presence in our family and remained so until her death.  A loss for us all. 

    The last of my aunts and uncles (with the exception of a divorced uncle by marriage).   My cousins and I are now the older generation, that body of relatives standing between the young ones and death.  A sobering, bracing position.  I like it.

    Dorothy Louise McGregor Brown, 100, passed away January 16, 2008.  She was born October 26, 1907, in “Wheatland Territory,” Indian Territory, to Charles and Jenny Ellis.  She was the oldest of two brothers and three sisters.  Growing up, she worked hard on her grandparent’s farm, milking, harvesting wheat, corn, hay, and apples, and canning vegetables and fruits.  She loved music and played the piano for her church and funerals, played basketball, and was on the debate team.  She was the high school class president at Union City.  Dorothy watched her mother teach and chose teaching as her career too.  She attended both Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma to receive her teaching certificate.  She began teaching in a one-room school house in Lone Star, OK, then taught in Mustang.  She received her lifetime teaching certificate from Edmond’s State Teacher’s College, before taking a teaching position in Bartlesville.  In Bartlesville, she met and married James Wilson McGregor and they had four children, three sons and a daughter.  She was active in the church, teaching Sunday School and attending Women’s Guild, in the lives of her children, serving as scout leader and helping at school, and in the community, volunteering for the Mutual Girls Club board.  In the 1964, she received her bachelor’s degree from Tulsa University in History.  She resumed her teaching career in Bartlesville and taught a total of 14 year there.  After 37 years of marriage, she was widowed in 1972.  Always adventurous, she began attending church camps, traveling abroad extensively, and participating in Elderhostels, with her sisters and friends.  In 1980, she moved to Norman to help with her grandchildren.  She joined the First Presbyterian Church where she soon was recognized as an Outstanding Presbyterian Woman.  She continued her travels and learning adventures.  She audited carefully selected (choosing only the best professors, she shared) University of Oklahoma college classes.  She wrote a book about her life and dedicated it to her children.  She met Dr. Harley Proctor Brown at First Presbyterian Church and they were married on October 26, 1997, her ninetieth birthday.  They continued to travel, learn, and enjoy plays and concerts together, then moved to Rivermont Retirement Community in 2005, and to the Gardens at Rivermont in 2007.  She celebrated her centennial birthday and tenth wedding anniversary in October, 2007. 


    📂This entry was posted in Family 📎and tagged

  • Death, Disaster and Deck the Halls

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    10  80%  24%  0mphESE  bar 30.02 steady  windchill 10   Winter

                             The Full Cold Moon

    Since Kate came back from a disaster preparedness event at work in May, we’ve had a manila folder marked death and disaster.  After a couple of postponements (and, I’m glad to say, neither death nor disaster), we got around to it today.  An odd choice for Christmas Eve, but it fit our schedule.

    We now have a plan and a kit with those things they always tell you to have somewhere.  You know, matches in a waterproof container, blankets, first aid material, things like that.  It’s a large kit, stowed in a plastic container and destined to live in our coat closet until that moment.  My own analysis tells me that fire, tornado and lengthy power outage are the most likely disasters to hit us here in Andover.  I have a hard time imagining Al Qaeda having an interest in Anoka County.  Any of it.  We’re on the high point for some miles, on sand, and far from any body of water that acts up.  Minnesota has no history of hurricanes; but, the folks that did Kate’s event claim we have a moderate risk of earthquake.  Geologically I suppose that’s true, but it seems improbable.

    We also have insurance documents, financial papers, wills and power of attorney stowed in our safe. (No, I won’t tell you where it is.) 

    While Kate dug out the stuff we needed for the kit, I spent time looking up material on cremation and donating a body to the U of M Medical School.  Cremate or donate.  I’m leaning toward donating my body since it seems like a worthwhile thing to do and I do have some anatomical oddities, my ear bones in particular, that my ENT asked me to preserve.  This raises another question though and that is where do kids, grandkids, friends go to remember?  Haven’t solved that one yet, but it’s on the list.  Hope we get to it before its necessary.

    And a merry christmas to you, too!


    📂This entry was posted in Family 📎and tagged