• Tag Archives Great Work

  • Imaginal Cells and the Afterlife

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    37  bar steady 29.86 k0mph WNW windchill 37  melting.  it’s melting!

         Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

    At times the days go by with little more than random patterns, but in these days after my return from Hawai’i there has been purpose in each one.  Today I worked with Transcendentalism and finished a brief summary using annotated links and edited my presentation, Transcendent Thinking, for this Sunday at Groveland. 

    This Sunday happens to be Easter.  Imagine my surprise as I edited this piece and noticed that it ended with an image entirely appropiate to the Easter concept.  I say surprise because I wrote Transcendent back in mid-January before my trip to Hawai’i and only recently learned this was to be Easter Sunday.  This is as early as Easter can be or within a day or two, so I hadn’t tumbled to it.  Here are the closing paragraphs:

    Death, though, is not the only truth, or perhaps better, it’s not the whole truth.  All faith traditions wrestle with the question of an after-life, not surprising since most anthropologists and historians of religion peg the development of spirituality-the inner world of faith and wonder-and religion-the outer, institutionalized world of beliefs and rituals-to questions about death. What was it?  What happened?  What did it mean?

    The mythopoetic stories of dying and rising gods like Osiris in Egypt, Jesus in the Middle East, Mithras and Attis represent a grappling with the question of life and after-life in terms of vegetative symbolism.  

    During the winter, more than once my thoughts turn to the daffodil bulbs, the tulips, the iris, the hemerocallis, the true lilies, the bug-bane, hosta, maidenhair fern and lady fern, peonies and bleeding hearts as they rest, buried beneath soil and snow.  Some, the garlic in particular this year, lie also beneath six inches of straw.  All this life adapted to winters during which the air temperature drops to -18, even -38 (three or four years ago). 

    There are so many miracles.  The sun shines, our heart beats and these hardy plants pull themselves in for a season.  Instead of wasting the cold months by feverishly working to stay warm or hunting for shelter outside themselves, they cast aside their above ground parts: stem, leaves, flowers and seed pods, leaving them withered in the face of harsh conditions. 

    The plants retreat inside their own, individual root cellars.  In them they have laid by sufficient nourishment to catch the wave of warm air when the soil around them rises in temperature enough to wake them from their slumber.

    When I think of this my heart goes out to the bulbs, corms, tubers and rhizomes.  As I often feel for my own sons and grandchildren, I feel a fondness for them that radiates joy in the durability of my offspring.  This is not some spring nostalgia at work; no, this is simple appreciation for the millions of years of evolutionary work that has preceded this winter and adapted these wonderful, colorful livelinessess to grace our land.

    It is not a stretch to consider death in the same way.  We wither and cast aside our above ground parts, the body, then go to some unknown equivalent of the soil to rest for a period, to wait until conditions are right for our return.

    If the advocates of string theory have it right, there are multiverses, multiple branching realities based on alternative outcomes to our daily lives.  It is possible that one of those multiverses is the metaphysical realm, literally a realm beyond our physics, beyond the reach of our senses, where the seed of our life goes, where it may blossom and grow and live in a form quite different from the one we now know.

    Here’s another way to think about it.  Go out into your garden this fall and find a wriggly caterpillar happily consuming your favorite flower or vegetable.  Watch that caterpillar over the next few weeks as it spins a cocoon.  What goes on inside?

    Here’s an explanation:

    The Imaginal Cell Story

    The caterpillar’s new cells are called ‘imaginal cells.’
    They are so totally different from the caterpillar cells
    that his immune system thinks they are enemies… and gobbles them up.

    But these new imaginal cells continue to appear. More and more of them!
    Pretty soon, the caterpillar’s immune system
    cannot destroy them fast enough.
    More and more of the imaginal cells survive.
    And then an amazing thing happens!

    The little tiny lonely imaginal cells start to clump together
    into friendly little groups.
    They all resonate together at the same frequency,
    passing information from one to another.
    Then, after awhile, another amazing thing happens!

    The clumps of imaginal cells start to cluster together!
    A long string of clumping and clustering imaginal cells,
    all resonating at the same frequency,
    all passing information from one to another there inside the chrysalis.

    Then at some point,
    the entire long string of imaginal cells
    suddenly realizes all together
    that it is something different from the caterpillar.
    Something new! Something wonderful!
    …and in that realization
    is the shout of the birth of the butterfly!

    Since the butterfly now “knows” that it is a butterfly,
    the little tiny imaginal cells
    no longer have to do all those things individual cells must do.
    Now they are part of a multi-celled organism-
    A FAMILY who can share the work.

    Each new butterfly cell can take on a different job-
    There is something for everyone to do.
    And everyone is important.
    And each cell begins to do just that very thing it is most drawn to do.
    And every other cell encourages it to do just that.

    A great way to organize a butterfly!”

    *Adapted Version of Nori Huddle’s story from her book, Butterfly

    These considerations lead me to an agnostic position when it comes to the afterlife.  The ancients may have known something we find difficult to approach with our highly rational, often scientistic take on such matters.  They knew the miracle of the grain that falls on the soil and springs to life, birthing a plant quite unlike its size and appearance.  And what a miracle!

    The ancients did not have string theory to propose multiverses, but we do.  It does not have to answer questions about the after-life, but it could.

    The ancients did not know about imaginal cells, but we do.  What if death is a process to ignite our imaginal cells, creating a flame version of  ourselves burning bright in another time and place?


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  • The Sons of the Soil

    Posted on by Charles Comment

     37  bar steady 29.78 0mph windchill 36

       Waxing Crescent Moon of Winds

     

    Below is a reply to my brother Mark about this e-mail he sent to me:

    Charles, This is pretty amazing. It really needed to happen. Mark ** Penang abandons pro-Malay policy **The Malaysian state of Penang says it will no longer follow a government policy favouring ethnic Malays.< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7289509.stm >In re:  the sons of the soil.  When I was in Hawai’i, I learned the natives call themselves kama’aina, literally children of the land.  Businesses offer a kama’aina discount and there has been some effort to get civil service preference to kama’aina.  In Hawai’i, where the indigenous population has experienced considerable oppression (plantation slavery for sugar and pineapples) and marginalization (numbers cut by 90% thanks to disease), it seems just.

    It made me think a lot about this notion of belonging to a land, or a place.  The problem with identifying one ethnicity or one particular population as sons of the soil is its ahistorical nature.  That is, at some point in time, virtually every population on earth, outside of a miniscule group in Africa, emigrated. In other words, kama’aina is not a permanent characteristic, rather it reflects an acquired relationship, one that reflects a love for this place.  Others, too, can become kama’aina.  That is the essential injustice in the Malaysian situation.It is, too, an injustice in Hawai’i, if Filipino, Japanese, Chinese and white inhabitants cannot, at some point, also be kama’aina.

     

    As I thought more about it, I realized I am kama’aina of the American Midwest, the heartland of the North American continent, yet I am also a son of immigrants.  Am I less wedded to this land than the Annishinabe or the Lakota?  I don’t think so.  My life depends on it. When I return, I see home in its lakes and forests.

    In fact, the whole notion of an ecological consciousness comes down to seeing ourselves, each of us, as kama’aina of the planet earth.

    Anyhow, thanks.  I agree, amazing and hopeful. 


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Great Work Politics Travel 📎and tagged

  • Getting Rid of All the People

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    12  bar rise 30.37  0mph NNE  windchill 12

                New Moon (of Winds)

    When I was young, I visited my mother’s parents in Morristown, Indiana.  My grandpa Charlie Keaton was a character and grandma, his wife Mabel, was a bit loony.   She had some very cool children’s books though and one, the title I can’t recall, involved a Weatherman who somehow let loose all the winds at the same time.  The book had pictures of him flying the skies trying to rebag the winds.  The bags had colorful ribbons and he was an old, gnarled white-bearded man.  March always reminds me of the Weatherman.  And Mabel.

    Watched an hour’s worth of “Aftermath:  zero population” on Nat Geo.  Kate has the book The World Without Us which has the same premise.  Both imagine the world if humans just vanished, what would happen.  Toxic chemicals would release, zoo animals and pets would escape or die, nuclear reactors would melt down and so on. 

    The concept has me riveted right now, but as I watched the program I began to feel uneasy.  Granted we are anthropocentric. Granted that anthropocentrism has caused a hell of lot of problems for the planet and especially other animal species we eat.  Granted that we could and must find a way to flow with the movement of nature rather than push against it.  Having stipulated all that I can’t help but stand up for my species.  Humans are a successful animal. That may not be all we are, but it is certainly what we are.

    These programs feel anti-human to me and that steps over the line.  We have a responsibility to ensure our own survival just like every raccoon, cockroach and hippopotamus.  With our level of consciousness and awareness of our impact on our environment we have a positive ethical responsiblity to live with rather than against the planet, yes; but, we need to eat and breed and grow, too.

    The Great Work is not to eliminate humans, but to figure out a way for us to turn ourselves in alignment with Gaia rather than against her.


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  • The True Radicals of Today Are Conservatives

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    7:45AM.  Bright sun.  Blue water.  Breeze off the ocean.  Mourning doves coo.

    The mourning doves have had it goin’ on the last week.  Males walk up to a female, bow, stomp their feet, then spread their tail feathers.  Oh, yeah.  I saw that move before.

    Last post from Da Fish Shack.  My bags are packed and I’m ready to go.  Just 12 hours until my jet plane.  Da Fish Shack check-out is 10AM and my flight doesn’t leave until 8:15 PM so I have time to do some more sightseeing, shop, visit the museum in Lihue, have lunch and dinner.

    One point of comparison I forgot between Da Fish Shack and the Hyatt was showers.  At the Hyatt the shower was an ordinary shower in a tub, found in most hotels.  Here at Da Fish Shack showers are al fresco although with appropriate screening.  Kate suggested I use flip-flops when I used the shower.  Although I would not want to take showers outside at home, here in Hawai’i’s wonderful climate, it provides a note of adventure to a routine task.  You can hear the surf and feel the wind all over.

    On driving back last Sunday night to Da Fish Shack after supper in Wailua, I turned on NPR.  Guess who was on?  Garrison Keillor and Prairie Home Companion.  Right here on route 56 headed north toward Princeville and Hanalei.  This morning I read the NYT while I ate breakfast.  Lead story in travel?  Skiing on the Gunflint Trail.  

    Something I’ve started rolling around.  It appears to me that the true radicals of today are conservatives.  No, not the George Buckley, Russell Kirkland variety or the neo-con versions that got us into this damned war, but conservatives who focus their conservative tendencies on species and eco-systems, on cultures and life ways.  These eco-conservatives are in fact conservative over against enlightenment liberals,  free-market economists and raging bull capitalists of multi-national corporate organizations.

    In tandem with this thought, which still percolates, is another.   Rather than the nexus of evil, the world’s faith traditions are vast resources that represent the human heart and mind at its most integrated, its most daring and its most compassionate.  Yes, the religious institutions that accrete around these faith traditions often become like the coral reef, rigid and sharp, but the faith traditions themselves preserve the world’s oldest stories and humankind’s most radical dreams. 

    When anti-religion dogmatists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens rail against these institutions, all they are doing is raising the enlightenment flag of REASON.  Well, here’s the big news guys, REASON is not all there is.  In fact, reason works its magic by dividing and parsing, by reducing the world to manageable portions, to forumlas and laws.  Not a bad thing as far it goes, but turn the process on its head and move out toward the whole, toward life and the solar system, the galaxy, the cosmos. 

    These things are.  And, they were before science and reasons and they will be after science and reason has passed away.  They do not need to consult either Newton or Einstein to go the speed of light or engage gravity.  It is this whole, the buzzing, blooming whole that is most precious and it will not be dissected because there are too many variables, too many data points moving in too many disparate directions.

    And so forth.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Great Work Politics Travel 📎and tagged

  • The Tao and the Islands

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    7:41AM  Cool breeze.  Overcast. Calm ocean, no surf. 

    Last full day in Hawai’i.  Time has passed more slowly for me than usual.  Often, I go on vacation and the next thing I know I’m back on the plane headed home.  This trip a variety of circumstances have slowed things down, among them Kate’s illness and my decision to get the full resort experience at the Hyatt.

    When I arrived last Saturday at Da Fish Shack, I was already on Island time.  Having a place this close to the ocean did, as I’d hoped, attune me to its rhythms.  Surf comes in, goes out, comes in, goes out night and day. 

    Nighttime breezes off the ocean cool the land to perfect sleeping weather and mountain breezes move the air during the heat of the day.  The slow warming of the day gives way to pleasant, dark nights with no traffic and no metro glow to dull the view of the stars.

    Last night I realized the true character of this little place.  It’s a Hawai’ian hermitage, a small cell on the ocean where the soul can come for a rest and rejuvenation. 

    The immediacy of ocean, mountain and lush plant life call out for malama ‘aina.  It’s not surprising that the first Hawai’ians heard the call.  Our home in Andover gives me the same sense of connection to the land, a place where Kate and I have, over years of gardening, become na kama’aina. 

    The Tao almost becomes visible here on Kauai.  That is, the ebb and flow of the cosmos, its inevitable course, has so much evidence on this ancient island, already long eroded and heading toward a new life as an atoll, then its permanent one as a seamount. 

     Here in Hawai’i land emerges from the ocean with hot rock and vitality.  Rain and the ocean combine with the wind to create soil.  On the soil plants take hold, sending out roots which further fracture the lava, creating more soil.  The island moves off the hotspot and this erosive process takes over as the primary shaper of the land. (excluding bulldozers and cement) As furthest along in this process of the main high islands, Kauai has the feel of a hermit, ravaged by time and wrinkled, yet bearer of the earth’s wisdom. 

    A few weeks here is only enough to catch a glimpse of the message Kauai has for us as we hurtle forward in our terraforming experiment.  The message may be, whatever happens, the earth herself will survive.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Great Work Travel 📎and tagged

  • Malama ‘Aina

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    When night comes, Maui or Pele or one of Them pulls the curtain fast.  Dark.  Stars.  Where there was light.  Fast.

    The Hawi’ians Great Work (see Thomas Berry’s book of the same name) was to manifest Aloha in their treatment of the land.  Malama ‘aina means to care for the land as one would a family member. 

    The land provides taro, the staple of the Hawi’ian pre-contact diet.  As a taro plant matures, offshoots known as ‘oha grow up around the plant and, in time, create new plants.  This gave Hawai’ian the word ‘ohana, family.

    The pre-contact kama’aina (kama=children, ‘aina=land, therefore, native born) “honored nature and the ‘aina as a possession of their gods.” from the Limahuli Garden self-guided tour booklet.  Over time this took the form of ahupua’a, a method of land division that ran from the coast into the heights of the mountains.  In essence an ahupua’a divided the islands by watershed.  This division allowed for self-sufficiency since each ahupua’a had fresh water from its source, usually a waterfall high in the mountains, land suitable for various kinds of agriculture and living along the gradient from mountain to shore and a spot from which to set out into the sea to fish.

    At the Limahuli gardens the NTBG wants to restore the Limahuli ahupua’a.  The gardens begin near the ocean and continue, in three large reserves, all the way to the source of the Limahuli stream which runs through the garden on its way to the sea.  On the garden tour the NTBG has recreated a large section, 5 beds, of taro irrigated in the traditional manner through small ditches connected to the stream, the guided through a series of waterfalls and sluice gates onto the taro beds.  As I walked among them today, the sound of the running water melded with the quiet but energetic plants to create a sense of peacefulness and abundance. 

    Watersheds as a political unit is an idea that’s been kicking around the environmental movement for some time now, but has not gotten much traction.  I’ve always liked it and the ahupua’a gives a real world for instance of how it could work.  I worked out the watershed for Andover.  It begins in Lake Mille Lacs and focuses on the Rum River as it heads into the Mississippi at Anoka. 

    Think what it would be like if that watershed was a state senate district and two state house districts.  Imagine congressional districts composed not of gerrymandered counties and chunks of counties, but as an agglomeration of watersheds.  Imagine the citizens of these watershed districts imbued with malama ‘aina.  Don’t know about you, but that sounds substantial to me.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Travel 📎and tagged

  • Gulf Streams Stops

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    -3  44% 17% 1mph WSW bar30.24 rises windchill-5  Winter

                     Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

    The day continues cold.  We reached -15.8 this morning at 6:24AM.  Since then, we’ve gained about twelve degrees. The windchill all day has been brutal. 

    Kate finished cushions for the window seat in the kitchen.  I put Hilo on it while it was on Kate’s worktable to see if she would like it.  She seemed nervous.

    This week I’ve slept like a rock.  An odd phrase, but apt in the nothing till morning meaning I intend here.    

    Yesterday I finished Fifty Degrees, the second in Kim Stanley Robinson’s eco-thriller/near future sci-fi trilogy which begins with Forty Days of Rain and ends with Sixty Days and Counting. His Mars trilogy is better as science fiction; it’s wonderful; but, this trilogy strikes closer to home and imagines a time period when we pass some of the tipping points talked about in the news these days.  The Gulf Stream stops because the thermohaline barrier breaches.  Weather patterns swing wildly from one extreme to the other.  The West Anarctic Ice Shelf begins to leave land and drift into the ocean, causing several centimeters of sea level rise. 

    The book imagines a loose team of scientists, policy wonks and politicians who in their various spheres create solutions and fight to realize them before the worst becomes worse.  There is also some Buddhist material, too.  The characters are interesting and make the books worth reading, as was true of the Mars trilogy.  Robinson imagines, however, a science  triumphant, even dominant which I find suspicious.  It was industrialists and technocrats who got us in this mess, with our individual complicity, and to imagine that rationalism, their primary tool, will dig us out seems suspect at the core.

    The facet of it that rings true to me is the paradigmatically American approach of, keep trying until solutions come.  That the scientific will play a necessary and perhaps even lead role I don’t question.  I just don’t want an approach that leaves aside the many individual decision makers, those of us in our cars and at home with our dishwashers.  This is science-fiction, not political-fiction, or a novel of manners (though it has some aspects of this genre), so the focus is congruent, yet I want to see us stretch all the way out for solutions.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Politics 📎and tagged

  • What is the Great Work?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    54  44%  37%  2mph windroseW  bar steady dewpoint32  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon   Ordinary Time

    Thomas Berry, an ecological visionary and Passionist monk, has written several books concerning the way forward to a healthy planet.  He summarizes his ideas in The Great Work. In this wide ranging, readable book, Berry, a cultural historian, defines a great work.  The Greeks had a great work in applying reason to the natural order.  The Romans had a great work in bringing order to their known world.  The Chinese have a great work that has created a humane and human scale culture.  Native Americans have a great work in their symbiotic relationship with the natural world in which they live.

    Our Great Work, the work of our generation, lies yet before us.  It is this:  create a  relationship between human beings and the planet in which our presence is at least benign and at best a positive good.   I have begun work, in fits and starts, on this, because in the end it has to be each of us, acting in concert, who will call this new world into being. 

    There are many actions we can take, but they need to move beyond recycling and buying green products at the grocery store.  Here a few I’m trying to work into my life:  being a locavore (eating food grown in our region), rationing trips by car and plane, planning for a hybrid car as our next purchase.  In the main though I believe I need to become political again, working on my old issues of economic justice, but this time in a way that will move a double agenda forward, justice for those left behind captialism and rethinking our economic order so that it develops positive signals for ecologically friendly business decisions.  More on this at another point.


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