• Category Archives Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • Are You Trying To Start a Movement?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lugnasa                                                        Garlic Planting Moon
    Presented Homecoming:  Faith of a Pagan at Groveland UU this morning.  They’ve honored me by having me come regularly for over 20 years.  Fewer and fewer times as I’ve moved away from the ministry, but still, each year, at least once, often twice.

    There’s something about an immediate audience that makes writing fresher, harder, cleaner.  During the discussion after the presentation I found myself explaining my reimagining faith project and the more I said, the more enthused I became.  Strange, I know, but that’s what happened.  Partly I could see connections, heads nodding.  This was taking root as an idea.

    “Are you trying to start a movement?” one long time Grovelander asked.

    Made me stop and think.  No, I’m not.  But I’m trying to get clear enough to write down my thoughts, make them into a book, because I feel  this reimagined faith needs to be part of everyone’s inner tool kit.  I don’t mean it needs to replace your Buddhism or Christianity or Judaism or Sikhism.  It can be an adjunct, a both/and.  Or, like me, it can be whole deal.

    An essential awareness of and responsiveness to the world in which we live, the planet on which we depend has too often been lost, especially in developed countries.   Now, too, developing countries like the BRIK nations.  Unfortunately, those are the very spots where this kind of earth mindfulness is most needed.  These countries are the ones that make decisions large and small that effect the future of human life on this planet.

    Another Grovelander, a young Macalester student, challenged my pushing off against Christianity as an example of a metaphysic that distances us from the world.  She was right.  This message needs to penetrate especially religious and economic ideologies, be attractive rather than repulsive.  Yet still strong enough to bite.  Not an easy task.

    But, hey?  If it was easy, someone would have already done it.

    (illustration above:  The Green Knight Gesso tells the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the Green Knight’s perspective. The old ways are parting for the new, yet in the ancient there is wisdom to learn and to be retained. The Green Knight is symbolic of ancient wisdom.)


    Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel Great Work Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • Our Ordinary Wonder

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lugnasa                                                          Garlic Planting Moon

    What to say?  The wound so deep, the insult so grievous.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.

    I remember that elevator ride with my mother, she on the gurney her face tortured by her brain in agony.  She had already begun to move away, fast, from the one who walked with me to the ice cream shop not far from our house and bought me a sundae for my good grades.  Who held my hand when I was scared.  Who taught me to watch the spider out our kitchen window as a wonder of the universe.

    The phone call.  Unexpected in February.  My sister, normally in Singapore, here for a visit.  A call from Alexandria, long abandoned home.  Dad died.  Just died there sitting in a chair.  Winked out.  Gone.

    None escape. None. It is this truth, underscored with bright black lines by the death of the one’s we love, that creates the wonder.  Our lives.  Brief.  Random.  Often, as the Odyssey says, filled with pain and suffering, yet still.  Still. Glorious.  Radiant.  Precious.

    Sometimes I think these things.  Feel them.  But do not say them.  Now, now I do.

     

     


    Faith and Spirituality Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • To Eat or Not to Eat? That Is Not a Question.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                     Hiroshima Moon

    When they announced the demolition of the Bennigans at Riverdale Mall, it surprised me because it felt like the whole mall just arrived a year or so ago.  It surprised me, but I wasn’t sad, because the Bennigan’s menu had gone from interesting to boring over the last couple of years.

    As a result, the imminent arrival of a Chick-fil-a to replace it intrigued me.  I’d never eaten in one of these deep south fried chicken sandwich places, but I looked forward to the opportunity.

    Not now.  Now I plan to walk in when they open, tell them I live close by, that my wife and I eat out once a week or so, and that they will never get our business, in spite of the fact that I love chicken.  Bigotry has no place in our community.  None.  Just ask the Anoka-Hennepin School Board or the Anoka High School.


    Commentary on the news Politics Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. US History

  • I’m So Glad

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                     Garlic Moon

    Be Glad You Exist, the Greek inscription I mentioned a few posts ago, got me thinking.  A persistent prod in American culture is the I’m not doing that well enough, or fast enough, or soon enough or with the right attitude.  Not studying enough, eating too much, not working enough, not working out enough, not relaxing, not being charitable enough or financially successful enough.

    It’s an argument from lack that has as its premise that jockey metaphor I came up with a month or so ago.  In case you forgot, I did until just now, I suggested that many of us take on board, sometime in childhood, a jockey who rides us, rides us hard, always pushing us toward the next, the better, the hoped for, the not yet achieved.

    This argument from lack is the jockey’s prod, his quirt that comes out when he senses flagging will or decreasing purpose.

    But, what if Be Glad You Exist was the baseline?  Just that.

    Then we might start not from a place of lack but from a place of adding, of completing, of maturing, of enriching.  Moving ourselves not with the lash, but with a model more like Maslow’s where the underpinning opens new possibilities, like the emergence of the butterfly, say, from the caterpillar.  A caterpillar is not a lesser butterfly, but its necessay precursor.

    Orienting ourselves this way (I realize I’m writing about myself here, but maybe a bit about you, too.) does not require the scorched earth of bad diet, bad language skills, inadequacy of any kind; rather, it could have Be Glad You Exist as the ground of our being.  Sounds like a good thing to me.


    Aging Faith and Spirituality Feelings Humanities Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase

  • Be Glad to Exist

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                         Garlic Moon

    A Greek bowl in the alternately wonderful and frustrating Constanta musuem of archaeology and history had this inscription:  Be Glad To Exist.  Those Greeks.  Had it going on so early.  And now?

    Be glad to exist and carpe diem amount to a satisfactory life philosophy.    I finished the book Masters of the Planet, an excellent summary of current findings and theories about human evolution.  The author added this to a summation of cognitive theory:  “We are ruled by our reason, until our hormones take over.”  Fits with the Greco-Roman fortune cookie life path.

    While on my way to Constanta Tuesday, I returned to Bucresti Nord and ate breakfast there.  As usually happens to me at some point on a trip like this, I do something I never do at home:  eat at McDonald’s.

    It felt like being in American terrarium, eating a sausage McMuffin and drinking the still not very good version of coffee.  Inside the terrarium I looked out at a Romanian world:  a board of all the departures and arrivals for Bucresti Nord, a currency exchange shop, Schimb Valutar, Romanians going about their mornings off to work, running, sitting, waiting, flirting.

    The cut of the suits, the occasional very Slavic physiognomy: eyebrows, squared off jaws, thick necks, serious all remind me of the latter days of the Soviet Union when apparatchiks still roamed the countryside, conducting the business of a centralized state and a planned economy.

    It occurred to me, as it has before and like my hero Scott Nearing proposed, that the middle way would be best, a place between the grim and often inefficient (therefore grim?) Soviet communism and rapacious, winner take all, screw the little guy late stage capitalism now regnant.

    In other words, let capitalism have the non-essentials designer cloths, fancy watches, restaurants, but not groceries, hotels but not homes, minute clinics but not personal health care, boutique education but not public education, a gated community or two, but not urban planning.  Give capitalism the margins and let the money enchanted compete and scrabble and become rich there.

    The rest of us, whose lives themselves are our focus, those of us glad to exist, could read, write, paint, sculpt, build cars, houses, care for the health of others, teach, grow and distribute healthy food.  We might, probably would, have less material wealth, but we would have life itself.  And think how short that is.

     

     


    Commentary on the news Faith and Spirituality Family Politics Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Travel

  • A Consolation of Philosophy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                         Garlic Moon

    The philosophy department at Ball State resided in a brick building littered with the remains of other days.  Religion was there too.  The chair of the Philosophy department Robert (his last name has fled for the moment), a buzz cut positivist, an ornery, no see it, no believe it kinda guy.  Let’s just say metaphysics were taught under sufferance in this department.

    Bob drove me out of philosophy, convincing me that the most pressing questions of the day were what hot meant, or cold.  Couldn’t see it.  Not then, not now.  But then I didn’t explore much more, now I’ve been in the wide world and know there are more things than that dreamt of Bob’s dreary positivistic philosophy.  Much more.

    In fact, if I’d listened to my self, I would have known it then, did in fact, but didn’t know I knew.

    Many of us disenchanted with postivism found a real ally in Alfred North Whitehead, the creator of process philosophy.  I used to think I understood it, now I’m not so sure; but, I knew this about it, Whitehead said the universe was alive.  And that made sense to me.

    Still does.  In some deep place it made a whole lotta sense, because one October morning a chill hit me as I left that brick building, a class in metaphysics just finished.  The next step, the one over the threshold into the quad, never happened, at least not in my consciousness, because my consciousness was otherwise occupied.

    My heart filled up, my mind expanded, the whole of myself plugged itself into the throbbing matter of the cosmos.  I was one with the whole and it with me.  A sensation of light and vastness and yet intimacy became my reality.  Just for a moment.  I don’t know how long it lasted and at this remove, some 45 years later, I couldn’t reconstruct that aspect if I had to.

    Since that time, if I remember to recall this, I have never felt alone.  The universe can be known through one flower, one bird, one puppy, one rock, one college sophomore, that much I learned for sure that day.  And more.

    The universe can not only can be known (or felt); it knows (feels) back!  Now this is not revolutionary nor advance news.  Mystics before and after me have had similar experiences, remarkably similar, in fact.  The positivists and their ilk might explain this away through brain chemicals, but even if that were to turn out to explain this experience, it would only serve to under write its power.

    It just occurred to me today that long ago moment on the quad, in the chill of an October morning, might have hints for how to live my third phase.


    Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel Great Work Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • True North

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                     Beltane Moon

    Went outside a moment to look at the stars.  A clear, calm night.  Darkness may blanket the earth, but in the heavens the lights are on.

    Right now ursa major hangs upside down, pouring its contents over polaris and down to earth.  As I continue to wonder and ponder reimagining faith, I’ve looked into a Buddhist sect that worshiped the north star.  Hokusai, the early 19th genius of the ukiyo-e print, followed this belief, which originated in China.

    The north star does not move; aligned with earth’s axis it sits over the north pole and is the center point of this time lapse photo. (above)  Since it did not move, and since the other stars seemed to rotate around it, especially ursa major, some Chinese believed it was the center of the universe and transmitted its messages through ursa major.

    We nod toward the same sentiment when we talk about our true north, our pole star.  Gazing up at polaris, seeing the stars pointed at it, knowing the revolution ursa major is always in the process of making, I could imagine the north star as the center, the hub of meaning.

    One of the virtues of a pagan perspective lies in its simple access to wonder.  Stare at the north star, imagine its constancy, see its relation to, say, vishnu, to your need for a still, calm place at the focus of your soul and embrace it as the message the universe has offered, high up in the darkness, a light that holds its place.


    Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. 📎and tagged

  • What Now?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                Beltane Moon

    Now what?  First draft put to bed.  In Kate’s hands now.

    Kate asked how I was doing this morning during our business meeting.  I’m not an immediate answer to that sort of question kind of guy.  So, I paused, reflected.

    “I always knew I would mature late,” I said.

    Long ago I read a monograph on the development of people in various fields.  The longest was the philosopher/theologian, somewhere in the 50’s.  Since I’ve battered my through more than one field, I figured I’d be later.

    “With Greg (Latin tutor) asking me to collaborate on the commentary (Ovid’s Metamporphoses) and the completion of Missing’s first draft, I’m feeling like I may be hitting my maturity at last.”

    I’m beginning to feel grown up, as if I’ve retrieved my birthright from the convoluted labyrinth of my life.  This is not, interestingly, about achievement, but about individuation, about becoming who I am and who I will be.

    “So,” I told Kate, “I’m feeling pretty good.  Not jump up and down, yippee good, I’m too northern European for that, but pretty good.”

    That’s how I am this morning.


    Aging Faith and Spirituality Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase Translating Metamorphoses Writing 📎and tagged

  • Bee Diary 2012: Hiving the Packages.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                       Bee Hiving Moon

    “Sometimes, you have to step outside of the person you’ve been and remember the person you were meant to be. The person you want to be. The person you are.”
    H.G. Well

    Drove out to Stillwater and picked up my California girls.  About 16,000 of them.  Sprayed’em down with sugar water when I got home.  Unloaded a 5 gallon pail of prosweet, a food supplement for this early period when nectar is in short supply, and two gallon pails with holes in the top for feeding (turned upside down).

    Later today, around 5 pm, I took the packages, the two gallon pails filled with syrup, a pollen patty and went out into the orchard.  There I took the hive’s copper tops off, then the hive box cover and removed three frames from the center of the hive box.

    Rain, a light rain fell.  And Rigel came in through a gate I had forgotten to close and ate the first pollen patty.  In spite of not being a bee.  Sigh.

    So, back down to the refrigerator for another pollen patty.

    Back up to the orchard and out to the packages.  I pried the syrup containing can out of the package, sprayed the bees again with plenty of sugar water, removed the queen cage and put it in my pocket, then rapped the container sharply on the remaining frames and 7,000 to 8,000 bees fell onto the floor of the hive box.

    I spread them around with a bee brush, then took the queen out of my pocket.  First, check that she’s alive.  Yep.  OK.  Pull back the small screen on her cage while placing the cage in the hive box.  Tap it and make sure she falls into the bees.

    Replace the three frames, gently.  Not killing the queen is an important part of this whole process.

    Put a pollen patty on top of the frames, away from the hole in the hive cover since that’s where the syrup will come into the hive box and put the hive cover back on the box.  At that point invert the white plastic pail over the oblong opening in the hive cover, place a medium sized box over the pale and the copper top over that.

    That’s it for the first day.

    There were a couple of moments.  A bee crawled up into my glove.  I removed it.  All the time saying, if I’m calm, the bees are calm.  This is sort of true though even now, four years in, I still get an adrenalin pump when the bees hit the mesh on my bee veil.

    I didn’t get all the bees out of the packages, most, but not all.  It was those stragglers that took off after me.  They were not a problem.  But, they could have been.

    The hives look great in the orchard; they give it a productive, yet homey feel.

     


    Bees Faith and Spirituality Great Work Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. 📎and tagged

  • Narratives With Depth and Power

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                           Bee Hiving Moon

    Here is why I think the ironically evangelical atheists have it wrong.

    Today is Good Friday (though I’m not clear how it ever got that name), the day Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth.  It’s also, this year, the first night of pesach, the night Jews celebrate the angel of death passing over the first born of Jewish households enslaved in Egypt.

    No matter the metaphysics you claim, no matter the beliefs you hold, no matter the faith you embrace these are powerful, heart deep and deeper stories.  They are narratives you can build a life upon.  And millions, hundreds of millions have.

    Take a working class man, a man who earns his living with his hands, let’s say a Toyota mechanic.  Imagine him struck dumb one night with the power of love.  So struck that he leaves the garage behind and goes forth into the countryside and into the cities claiming that before anything else we have to love one another.

    Imagine, further, that he gets a following, a few at first, maybe 12, then a few more, Continue reading → Post ID 16401


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