Imbolc and the Full Leap Year Moon<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Didn’t change a lot, but I did make some significant alterations.<\/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. The Roman Catholics were relentless and traditional religions found\nthemselves sequestered among stubborn believers who often had to hide the practice\nof their beliefs. The old religions held on among villagers and peasants,\npagans in the Latin usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paganism, as\nI use it, is a placeholder for those of us who share with Green his notion of\nthe sacred as \u201can inward, mysterious sense of awesome presence, a reality\ndeeper than we normally experience.\u201d[iii]<\/a>; and, his commitment \u201c(to)\u2026trying\nto understand our relationship to the evolving truth of the natural\/divine\norder: \u2018We discover, it reveals; it reveals, we discover.\u2019\u201d[iv]<\/a> Instead of panentheism, then, I\u2019m neologizing:\npanenpneuma. Soul in all and all in soul.[v]<\/a> You might have a better\nidea.<\/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\nbe a pagan midrash? Is this even a sensible question to ask? I think so, since\nGreen himself says: \u201cWe thus make the same claim for Torah that we make for the\nnatural world itself: remove the veil of surface impressions, go deeper, and you\nwill find there something profound and holy.\u201d[vi]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n A friend of\nmine often quotes a mentor, \u201cSee what you\u2019re looking at.\u201d[vii]<\/a> A good beginning for a\nmidrash of the natural world.[viii]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n How to do\nthis? Midrashim of the Torah rely on repeated words, etymological similarities\nand differences, gaps in the flow of a text, gematria, the meanings of\nindividual Hebrew letters. Can we make these same creative moves in relationship\nto nature? Perhaps, but we need to look at the spirit of midrash, which as I\nunderstand it is to find connections where no apparent connections exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The na\u00efve viewer\nof nature might, for example, see the wonderful cumulus clouds over Black\nMountain and think, they\u2019re so high, so far away that they don\u2019t have any\nconnection to me at all. She might, though, wait and watch. When the rains\nbegin, she might wonder. Hmm. They water the forest, don\u2019t they? They soak my\nclothing. Cool the air. Shade out the sun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider the\nbumblebee and the butterfly. The bumblebee, according to aerodynamic theory,\nshouldn\u2019t be able to fly. So, which is right, aerodynamic theory or the bumblebee?\nLater information has sorted out the problem. Turns out bumblebees don\u2019t flap\ntheir wings up and down, but back and forth. This was learned in 2005 when high-tech\ncameras and a robotic bee model investigated the question. See what you\u2019re\nlooking 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\nscientific observations in one way or another, but they meet Green\u2019s criteria,\nat 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>. At Samain the veil between the worlds\nthins and creatures can pass both ways, out of the Other World to our world and\nout of this world to the Other World.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the\nmorning of the closing I went out on the rocky soil behind our new house. There\nstood three mule deer bucks. I looked at them. They looked at me. I moved a bit\ncloser and they didn\u2019t shy away. I\u2019m not sure how long we stood there, but it\nwas long enough to establish a wordless communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I\nconsidered this remarkable (at least to me) event, I decided the mountain had\nsent these angels (messengers) to say Kate and I were welcome on Shadow\nMountain. I\u2019ve felt 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 had come to reassure me, calm\nme. 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\nlooked up muism, or Korean shamanism, I found Sansin, a guardian spirit residing\nin mountains. 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>\nGreen, p. 119<\/p>\n\n\n\n [v]<\/a>\nI\u2019m not happy with the word soul. It has a lot of baggage, too, just like God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [vi]<\/a>\nGreen, p. 116<\/p>\n\n\n\n [vii]<\/a>\nCarey Reams<\/p>\n\n\n\n [viii]\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 Full Leap Year Moon Didn’t change a lot, but I did make some significant alterations. 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 … Continue reading Second Draft presentation<\/span>
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