Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shadow Mountain Midrash<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe need to reshape our religious languages\nin such a way that they will inspire the great collective act of teshuvah, \u201creturn\u201d\nor \u201crepentance,\u201d required of us at this moment.<\/em>\u201d Radical Judaism, Art\nGreen, p. 8<\/p>\n\n\n\n Green\u2019s book\nis honest and radical, character traits I admire. His rejection of supernatural\ntheology stated baldly and often, makes this a radical work. His commitment to\nremain, however, within the Jewish condition makes it honest. He is what he is.\nPerhaps the most radical claim in the book is this, \u201cAs a religious person I\nbelieve that the evolution of the species is the greatest sacred drama of all\ntime.\u201d[i]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to\nmake two moves that are different from Green. First, I want to push the scope\nof his sacred drama all the way back to whatever is the beginning, bereshit.\nThe Big Bang. Or, its equivalent as science and kabbalah press further into its\ntruth. I believe that evolution of the cosmos is the greatest sacred drama of\nall time. Second, I no longer have a pathway home, back to the tradition of my\nchildhood, or my professional ministry. I cannot follow him into a tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That means I\u2019m\nleft with my Celtic inflected paganism.[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m using\nthe word in its sense of outside religious institutions, or religious outsider.\nA Latin word for rustic, villager, or peasant pagan got its current\nconnotations in relation to the accelerating reach of the Roman Catholic\nchurch. As the church took hold in Europe north of Italy, it had to push out\nthe then existing folk religions to gain converts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This effort\nwas effective in cities and towns where churches and priests could divide the\narea up into smaller, easily manageable parishes. In the countryside, however,\nwhere the peasants and other rural folk lived scattered from each other, where\nrural agricultural traditions still held sway, the old religions tended to hang\non, resist assimilation. The Roman Catholics were relentless, however, and\neventually most traditional religions found themselves sequestered among\nstubborn believers who often had to hide the practice of their beliefs. The old\nreligions held on among villagers and peasants, pagans in the Latin usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paganism\nthen, as I use it, is a placeholder for those of us who share with Green his\nnotion of the sacred as \u201can inward, mysterious sense of awesome presence, a reality\ndeeper than we normally experience.\u201d[iii]<\/a>, but do not share his\ndevotion to tradition. Instead of panentheism, then, I\u2019m neologizing:\npanenpneuma. Spirit in all and all in spirit.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere is a love of wild Nature in\neverybody, an ancient mother-love ever showing itself whether recognized or no,\nand however covered by cares and duties.<\/em>\u201d \u2015 John Muir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Could there be a pagan midrash? A friend of mine often quotes a mentor, \u201cSee what you\u2019re looking at.\u201d[iv]<\/a> A good beginning for a midrash of the natural world.[v]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Is this even a sensible question to ask? I think so, since Green himself says: \u201cWe thus make the same claim for Torah that we make for the natural world itself: remove the veil of surface impressions, go deeper, and you will find there something profound and holy.\u201d Green, p. 116 If we look beyond the veil of surface impressions, go deeper, we\u2019ll find the profound and holy. How to do this in the natural world? Midrashim of the Torah rely on repeated words, etymological similarities and differences, gaps in the flow of a text, gematria, the meanings of individual Hebrew letters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The na\u00efve viewer of nature might, instead, see the wonderful cumulus clouds over Black Mountain and think, they\u2019re so high, so far away that they don\u2019t have any connection to me at all. She might, though, wait and watch. When the rains begin, she might wonder. Hmm. They water the forest, don\u2019t they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider the bumblebee and the butterfly. The bumblebee, according to aerodynamic theory, shouldn\u2019t be able to fly. So, which is right, aerodynamic theory or the bumblebee? Later information has sorted out the problem. Turns out bumblebees don\u2019t flap their wings up and down, but back and forth. This was learned in 2005 when high-tech cameras and robotic bee model investigated the question. See what you\u2019re looking at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What if you\nwere a child like me, who watched caterpillars intently? I followed them as\nthey munched on leaves, as they put themselves in splendid isolation, as that\nisolation got broken by a creature as light as the caterpillar was stolid. And,\nit could fly!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lodgepole\npines on my property have a clever snow removal trick. When the snow gets too\nheavy on a branch, the branch dips down, the snow falls away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those are all scientific observations in one way or another, but they meet Green\u2019s criteria, at least to me, of revealing the profound and the holy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s\nanother midrashic method for nature. When we bought our house on Shadow Mountain,\nI came here from Minnesota for the closing. It was Samain, Summer\u2019s End, the\nCeltic New Year. October 31st<\/sup>. I mention that because at Samain the\nveil between the worlds thins and creatures can pass both ways, out of the Other\nWorld to our world and out of this world to the Other World.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next morning, on the rocky soil behind our new house, there were three mule deer bucks standing on what I now know is our leech field. I looked at them. They looked at me. I moved a bit closer and they didn\u2019t shy away. I\u2019m not sure how long we stood there, but it was long enough to establish a wordless communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I\nconsidered this remarkable (at least to me) event, I decided that the mountain\nspirits had sent these angels (messengers) to say we were welcome here. I\u2019ve\nfelt welcome among our wild neighbors ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second\nevent. I have prostate cancer and am right now going through a recurrence. Last\nJune I started radiation therapy, five days a week for seven weeks. The morning\nbefore I started radiation two elk bucks jumped the five-foot fence around our\nback and began eating dandelions. They stayed in our yard that night and left\nthe next day. They were the only wild animals I\u2019ve seen in our back since the\nmule deer visitation five years ago. The mountain spirits had come to reassure\nme, calm me. It worked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A friend\nchallenged me to find a name for our property. I\u2019d thought about it before but\nmost of what I considered seemed corny or pretentious or just silly. Then my\nKorean daughter-in-law came for a long visit. Her presence led me to pay more\nattention to things Korean and I realized the person she\u2019d called her mentor\nwas in fact a Korean shaman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I looked up muism, or Korean shamanism, I found one of the mountain gods was called Sansin. Seemed right for our house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From another,\nvery different angle. Transubstantiation. The Catholic doctrine that the host\nand the wine are the body and blood of Jesus Christ. OK on the mythic level,\nsure, but in reality? Odd at least. There is, however, transubstantiation of a different\nsort. When you eat bread, the wheat becomes you. That steak. You. Brussel sprouts.\nYou. Even chocolate. You. Everyday we transform food into our own bodies. How\namazing, profound, holy is that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\nmidrashim do you have about the natural world? What methods could we identify\nto help people see what they\u2019re looking at?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Creating\na sustainable presence for humans on this earth is the Great Work for our time<\/em>.\nThomas Berry<\/strong><\/strong> [i]<\/a>\nGreen, p. 16<\/p>\n\n\n\n [ii]<\/a>\nNeo-paganism, Wicca or Druidism or Asatru (Nordic), for example, has shallow\nroots, most in nineteenth century Victorian fancy. I\u2019m not referring to this\nsort of paganism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [iii]<\/a>\nGreen, p.. 4 <\/p>\n\n\n\n [iv]<\/a>\nCarey Reams<\/p>\n\n\n\n [v]\nI\u2019m using natural world here in a restricted sense, that is, the non-artificial\nworld, the non-humanbuilt world. This is wrong on the face of it since humans\nare of the natural world and our homes, for example, are no different than a\nswallow\u2019s nest or a bear\u2019s den in meeting our particular requirements. I\nbelieve we should avoid anthropocentrism if at all possible, as Green says we are\nneither the pinnacle nor the end of evolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon Shadow Mountain Midrash \u201cWe need to reshape our religious languages in such a way that they will inspire the great collective act of teshuvah, \u201creturn\u201d or \u201crepentance,\u201d required of us at this moment.\u201d Radical Judaism, Art Green, p. 8 Green\u2019s book is honest and radical, character traits I … Continue reading First Draft Presentation<\/span>
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