76\u00a0 bar rises 29.89\u00a0 0mph NE dew-point 67\u00a0 sunrise 6:02 sunset 8:35\u00a0 Lughnasa<\/p>\n
Waxing Crescent of the Corn Moon<\/p>\n
I saw the dentist today, oh boy.\u00a0 He unscrewed a couple of fillings, refilled them, then closed what he insists on calling an “open contact.”\u00a0 Does that sound like an oxymoron to you?\u00a0 Does to me.\u00a0 Dr. Mahler comes into my mouth unbidden, the occasion the retirement of the redoubtable Dr. Moghk, may he golf in peace.\u00a0 Dr. Mahler is good, fast and communicative.\u00a0 Sure of himself. Just what I want in a dentist.\u00a0 No, seriously.\u00a0 He’s a keeper.<\/p>\n
The closing words of my last post have rung like a bell in my head since I wrote them: \u00a0 This whole enterprise needs a rethink, a radical redo.\u00a0 We have gotten thin and liberal, instead of profound and prophetic.<\/p>\n
What to do? Part of the responsibility rests with me.\u00a0 I have the task of articulating what I believe and have faith in right now.\u00a0 This articulation must be clear and emotionally compelling.\u00a0 And it is work I feel I can do, am ready to do.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That’s all right.<\/p>\n
The later maturity came because my individuation and maturation occurred more slowly than it might have thanks to alcohol and neurosis.\u00a0 I regret the years I gave to anger, disappointment, drinking and smoking.\u00a0 I regret the hurt I caused then and the overhang it left me.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Now it remains for me to tease out the pagan lovesong that courses through me when I\u00a0 touch a lily or eat an onion grown in soil I have prepared.\u00a0 There is an ancient language of love and awe for the natural world and for ourselves as part of and dependent on it.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Like all gifts it can cause great good or great harm. \u00a0 Over the next few years I will slip from time to time into the dreamtime and let you know what I find there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
76\u00a0 bar rises 29.89\u00a0 0mph NE dew-point 67\u00a0 sunrise 6:02 sunset 8:35\u00a0 Lughnasa Waxing Crescent of the Corn Moon I saw the dentist today, oh boy.\u00a0 He unscrewed a couple of fillings, refilled them, then closed what he insists on calling an “open contact.”\u00a0 Does that sound like an oxymoron to you?\u00a0 Does to me.\u00a0 … Continue reading Teasing Out the Pagan Lovesong<\/span>