Lughnasa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Grandchildren Moon<\/p>\n
Came back home from the Black Forest tonight with the moon roof open and both windows rolled (ha), electronically pushed, down.\u00a0 It was humid warm evening and it reminded me of similar nights in Indiana, nights of driving with the windows down, Radio 890 from Chicago blasting out the latest Beatles or Stones or Dave Clark Five, dust from gravel roads flowing in contrails behind our family’s 57 Ford.\u00a0 A night for nostalgia, for reentering old places and memories of cows upside down in the road, corn stalks talking in whispers, a moon too big for the sky illuminating it all.<\/p>\n
Got on a line of thinking.\u00a0 I don’t listen to much these days on the radio or lectures, I just drive and think, or just drive.\u00a0 In this case the matter of religion floated to mind, as it often does for me, this time in relation to the way other Woollys are in the world.\u00a0 It’s so easy for me to wonder why I don’t have the compassion of Frank or the commitment to my body that Stefan has to his, or the serious way with which Warren approaches his reporting and his care taking for his parents, or Bill’s detachment.<\/p>\n
How this related to religion in my thinking was this.\u00a0 It dawned on me that religion depends on taking who you are already and changing it, molding it this or way that:\u00a0 away from desire, toward your neighbor, making duty to family or state most important, making rituals done right critical and the list goes on and\u00a0 you know the others.\u00a0 Don’t sin.\u00a0 Do justice.\u00a0 Meditate.\u00a0 Retreat.\u00a0 Don’t do this or do that.<\/p>\n
Then, this thought crossed the frontal lobe.\u00a0 I’ve had a major struggle just becoming who I am.\u00a0 I want to become more of who I already am, not what another person has made themselves into over time.\u00a0 The last half of this is not a new thought to me, but the first, that I want to become more of who I am rather modifying myself in some way, is new.\u00a0 It’s fine that others have valuable aspects to their personality that I don’t have.\u00a0 I need to have the ones I have, to be who I am, as well as I can be.\u00a0 This means accepting parts of me that I would prefer to push away:\u00a0 impatience, diet, elitist thinking, racist attitudes.\u00a0 Please note:\u00a0 accepting them doesn’t mean endorsing them or not attempting to undo their harmful effects, it just means not beating myself up over who I am.\u00a0 Who I really am.<\/p>\n
The oracle at Delphi had “know thyself” and “nothing to excess” inscribed in the forecourt of the temple of Apollo. To know thyself means owning the strong and the weak, the pleasant and the unpleasant, the uplifting and the degrading within ourselves.\u00a0 That is, I believe, enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lughnasa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Grandchildren Moon Came back home from the Black Forest tonight with the moon roof open and both windows rolled (ha), electronically pushed, down.\u00a0 It was humid warm evening and it reminded me of similar nights in Indiana, nights of driving with the windows down, Radio 890 from Chicago blasting out the latest Beatles … Continue reading Gnothi Seauton<\/span>