76 bar rises 29.89 0mph NE dew-point 67 sunrise 6:02 sunset 8:35 Lughnasa
Waxing Crescent of the Corn Moon
I saw the dentist today, oh boy. He unscrewed a couple of fillings, refilled them, then closed what he insists on calling an “open contact.” Does that sound like an oxymoron to you? Does to me. Dr. Mahler comes into my mouth unbidden, the occasion the retirement of the redoubtable Dr. Moghk, may he golf in peace. Dr. Mahler is good, fast and communicative. Sure of himself. Just what I want in a dentist. No, seriously. He’s a keeper.
The closing words of my last post have rung like a bell in my head since I wrote them: This whole enterprise needs a rethink, a radical redo. We have gotten thin and liberal, instead of profound and prophetic.
What to do? Part of the responsibility rests with me. I have the task of articulating what I believe and have faith in right now. This articulation must be clear and emotionally compelling. And it is work I feel I can do, am ready to do. Looks like I was off about ten years when I hoped for intellectual maturity in my early 50’s, it has come instead, in my early 60’s. That’s all right.
The later maturity came because my individuation and maturation occurred more slowly than it might have thanks to alcohol and neurosis. I regret the years I gave to anger, disappointment, drinking and smoking. I regret the hurt I caused then and the overhang it left me. Even so, I also know that regret is an emotion with no purpose, no forward motion, so I acknowledge it and set it to the side. Today, the only time I have ever had and will ever have, is the day in which I take up this challenge, perhaps I could have ten years ago, but I didn’t.
Now it remains for me to tease out the pagan lovesong that courses through me when I touch a lily or eat an onion grown in soil I have prepared. There is an ancient language of love and awe for the natural world and for ourselves as part of and dependent on it. This vocabulary of seasons, lunar changes, life’s stages, friendship and family has no nation, knows no creeds and depends on no books, yet it is as particular as the street on which you live and the air that you breathe.
This dream, what Thomas Berry called the Dream of the Earth, is a dream in the sense of the aboriginal dreamtime, it is a way of dreaming worlds into being and it is our great and primary gift as a species. Like all gifts it can cause great good or great harm. Over the next few years I will slip from time to time into the dreamtime and let you know what I find there.