Yeah I fell off the planet. Again. To be honest I believe the whole forest is owed an apology. Now where did I leave the village and the idiot meme.
I found it but now that I think about it they're all pretty much negative. I'm not trying to be a Pollyanna but there is more than enough "I laughed but why am I laughing" out there. More than I need right now.
Well, I'm back in business sort of.. Had to replace my portable keyboard. Kind of hard to type very many words without i, o, or u. It was one of those keyboards with number lock for certain right hand keys. Number lock came on and I couldn't turn it off. Broke down and picked out a portable, full sized keyboard. Probably has more bells and whistles than I will need but is sure is cute.
Been reading a lot. Rereading a lot. Heading back into Wendell Berry and Mary Renault country.
A favorite author is Mary Renault and her series of novels tracing the stories from Theseus to Alexander the Great. The world of Gods and Goddesses. Festivals and ceremonies and to be honest sacrifices to honor the Gods and Goddesses for good harvests, for the safety of the cities for the safety of the people. Berry was writing from a Christian perspectives. It could just as easily be thanking Athena for the olive, Dionysus for the grapes, Demeter for the barley and wheat.
Whatever is foreseen in joy must be lived out from day to day. Vision held open in the dark by our ten thousand days of work. Harvest will fill the barn , for that the hand must ace\he, the face must sweat.
And yet no leaf or grain is filled by work of ours; This field is tilled and left to grace, that we may reap great work is done while we sleep.When we work well a Sabbath mood rests on our day and finds it good.
Wendell Berry 1973 in This Day
I don't know if this picture fits the story. It's an image titled Spiral Sun by Alice Mason. It does give the feeling of earth to plants to sun and back again. And I really wish that Blogger's formatting would work at least twice in a row.
June sun well up. Whispy white clouds moving slowly towards the east. Haze on the horizon. Inversion or smoke? Can't be sure. Checked out the currrent fire map, nothing much in Oregon but there looks like three or four small ones in Idaho. With no wind to speak of the last couple of days the smoke sort of settles in and sticks around until another front moves in.
A couple of squawking scrub jays accompanied about half of my early morning excercise. Jays don't chirp, twitter or cheep. They skreek. And it's a rusty skreek. A sort of fingernals on the blackboard skreek.
With it getting light so early it's hopeless trying to get back to sleep, especially since the sun is coming through my window until at least six thirty this time of year. Might as well the first, longest, session out of the way.
Read in reverse order. Candles first, then the Universe and then Trees and Stars.
When I first wrote the Candle piece back in September of 2007 I tried to conjure up a mental candle or lamp because I knew I’d want to say it in times when I didn’t have a real candle handy. Well I asked for one and got a room full. Big ones, little ones, short ones, tall ones. All reflecting off each other. And this is where it got a little weird. Ok, really weird. Those “imaginary” candles tended to do crazy things, like zip out of the room when I thought about someone who needed a little extra “hey look out for ……” And go in the right direction I might add. One of our old J Land buddies was having some problems. And about the time I was thinking “I wish I could…” one of those little candles set out for
Anyway, I got lazy for awhile and didn’t get back to it as often as I really should have. And at the same time I was working on the idea of a world tree. Well I went to my little candle room. Only it wasn’t a room anymore. It was night and the stars were shining. Glowing with brilliance I’ve never seen in this life. And then the
Anyway, as I read through the piece and let my candles light up, they weren’t bunched up in a room. They were in a line stretching away from me and going up, as if they were climbing up the side of a mountain. At the top of the mountain was a great tree, black against the stars. And the candles climbed up into the branches of the tree until it was filled, overfilled even, and it rivaled the stars.
Um, I still don't think I was responsible for all those lights. I just think I tapped into a whole lot of people doing the same thing, and that's how my mind interpreted it. And just think how it would look if the whole six plus billion people on this little ball lit a candle whether they had a real one to light or not. Heck for all I know they were. Keep them lit folks, we still need all the help we can get. In fact we need it more than ever.
This one grew, eventually, out of the earlier ones. Believe me when those candles took off no one was more surprised than me.
The prayer that ended up in the entry in I Offer This started out as a more traditional litany. I wanted to use it at work, but I couldn't use a real candle so I decided to try to imagine one. I had a Christmas card that I had scanned in to use for my own cards. Just wanted one little ol' candle. I ended up with a whole room full. Without asking for them by the way.
OK I've got candles. Lots and lots of candles. Blazing candles. And this is where the universe got just a little bit wierd. This was back in the AOL Journals world when there was more interaction between bloggers. Anyway one of the guys who was following was having a hard time. If I remember it right I was commenting along the lines of "gee I wish I could help" when the universe did its thing. The candles popped up and one of those little beggers took off. A sort of US map was in the back ground and I swear that little flash of light headed in the right direction.Without any help from me. OK.
A few days a later a good friend was having some problems. And gee I'm sorry I'm down at the bottom of the valley and you are up north. Repeat performance. Only the candle headed north and it didn't go quite as far as the first one. The first one looked like it ended up around Kansas. The second one ended up just west of Portland.
I believe that's enough about the universe attempting to get my attention, at least for now. And frankly I've never really been sure about how I feel about this. Call me a Work in Progress.
Please be patient with me here. That last entry sent me back a few years and I can't get from A to C without some reposting of some material. The candle litany went through several incarnations before I finally arrived with this one.
We kindle this flame in honor of the Creator of Creation. We are grateful for the plenty that blesses us. In a world where many walk hand in hand with hunger we have abundance. In a world where too many walk in fear we can speak as our hearts lead us and show our faith freely. In a world where too many are alone, even in a crowd, we are rich in family and friends.
We kindle this flame in honor of the earth and the star that warms it.
We kindle this flame in gratitude for the changing seasons, for the coolness of rain, for the shifting mists and warmth of sun.
We kindle this flame to ask healing for our battered world. May we learn to use only what we need and to respect what we use.
We kindle this flame in gratitude for theplants, animals, air and waters that sustain us. Their infinite variety is wondrous.
We kindle this flame in honor of all who share this little world with us.
We kindle this flame in gratitude for our fellow travelers. We kindle this flame in gratitude for birdsong, the glory of infinite colors of flowers and trees, for the seas, the rivers, the rolling hills and the soaring peaks.
We kindle this flame to honor the infinite variety of our brothers and sisters.
We kindle this flame to ask for healing for those who lash out in fear.
<BSTYLE="MSO-BIDI-FONT-WEIGHT: normal?>We kindle this flame to ask for healing for those who lash out in anger.
We kindle this flame to ask healing for those who lash out in ignorance.
We kindle this flame to ask for healing for those who are ill in body or spirit.
We kindle this flame to ask for healing for their caregivers, family and friends.
We kindle this flame in honor of the river of faith. Help us to remember that many streams enter the river of faith that sustains us. Help us to remember that this river has many wells to refresh our thirsty spirits.
We kindle this flame in honor of our family and friends.
We kindle this flame in gratitude for their love and support.
We kindle this flame to ask for healing for any sickness or injury. We kindle this flame to ask that they may find the love and support to live the lives they were meant to.
We kindle this flame in faith that we can return the love and support that has been so freely given to us.
I posted an earlier version of this last year. I haul it and re read it periodically. And something a little unexpected happened after I finished it. I like to re read it, but you don’t always have a lamp or a candle handy. So I tried imagining one. Well I got my candle all right. I got a whole room full of candles. Candle after candle after candle.
And this is where it starts to get, strange doesn’t really describe what I’ve had happen. I’m not sure I have the right words. Anyway, one of our fellow bloggers was going through a tough time and I was repeating the line asking for healing and suddenly I had a vision of one of those candles breaking away from the group and heading out. In the right direction.
Granted, what I saw may owe more than a little to the movie Fantasia. At least as a way for my brain to put this in a way I can understand. But, the thing is, I wasn’t thinking about road crew candles. That puppy took off on its own. It’s happened a few times since then. I can’t explain it and I’m not sure that it can be explained, in words at least.
This started out as just a few notes and it grew and grew. Then it took its bit in its teeth and headed for the tall timber.
OK. I'm just spitballing here. I was raised Methodist. And never really felt like it fit. Wasn't especially comfortable in my own skin, if that makes any sense. Currrently identify as Quaker sort of. Imagine my surprise a few years ago when I discovered believers who identify as Quaker Pagans or even Quaker Cahtholics.
I've spent time exploring pagan paths and some of the less well known Christian communities, especially the Celtic church. Fruitful. Especially the history of Western Catholicism and some of the Protestant offshoots including the Methodists. All of them proving over and over again the all too true the suspician that once you have an organization most of the energy (and money) goes to protecting the organization and the hell with the souls you claim to be serving.
I find myself truning more and more to the mystical side of the faith. Ahhhh, mysticiam aond contemplation. Google anything even resembling centering prayer, meditaiton, mysticism and you will find dozens of entrues warbubg you to keep out, the demons will get you. I suspect that what these commentatos are really afraid of is what the Catholic church calls private revelation.
How you gonna keep 'em funding those private jets and jumbotrons if the believers realize that, within careful limits, they don't need you prancing up and down the stage yelling into your microphone probably won't answer their questions.. Or that claims of turning away hurricanes are so much hot air. That gays who love each other getting married won't or shouldn't affecct your marriage. That recognizing the rights and humanity of others does not decrease my rights or humanity unless I choose to let it.
How are you gonna keep 'em following your rules when your former believers have discovered that you are pretty much full of hot air. That you may be asking them to believe that dinosaurs were on the ark with Noah or that the Grand Canyon probably wasn't created in the great flood or that the Cascades were built over millenia by volcanic eruptions. Or in the case of North east and South east Washington were largely created by flood basalts on the Columbia Plateau between fourteen and sixteen million years ago.
My personal unfavorite is the so called Prosperity Gospel. Followers are encouraged to give generously, whether thay can afford it or not, and God will reward them with greater wealth and riches. All you have to do is believe. And if it doesn't happen it's your fault. Your faith wasn't strong enough. In the meantime your pastor may be living rent free in a multibedroom parsonage, may have purchased a private jet or even ANOTHER private jet. More than one televangelist has used the excuse that they have a lot of places to be and don't have time to wait in airports, or they don't like being recogized with fellow passengers pester them with questions. And so on.
Oops. I started out A and ended up in the briar patch. Again. Just don't be surprised if things get even weirder for awhile. Comments are welcome. Feel free to call me a blithering idiot. I won't be offended. I suspect I may be there already. Or offer suggestions. Who have you been reading and did it either help or offend?
Well, awake at four (that's am folks). Did my morning routine, got my pain meds, tossed in an Aleeve for good measure. (dear undear tablet just because your word list doesn't include what I just typed doesn't mean it doesn't exist) looked outside and decided I might as well start the exercise routine. Watched color come in as the sky turned from indigo to pearly white. There was a quail calling in the courtyard and a jay calling the tree as the leaves turned from dark gray to green to gold as the rose higher. The finches and chickadees are telling the that they are awake too.
This time of year the sun shines right into my eyes for over an hour. Yes, I could put down the blind. But I would miss the world waking up. Two twenty minute stepper sets and a total of about twenty minutes getting used to the elliptical routine. If we weren't on daylight savings time the sky would be getting light at 3:15 not 4:15. On that note I believe I will squeeze. In a short snooze before breakfast.
That's how I feel sometimes.
" It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassionits message becomes meaningless."
Rabbi Joshua A Heschel The intro to God in Search of Man
Perhaps because most Christians aren't taught to look at the world that way. We're supposed to search for God, by the rules, as laid down by the powers that be, not the other way around. Perhaps that's why most denominations have trouble accepting mystics. We can't prove what we've seen or heard. And ususally we have trouble describing the experience in the first place. The words we have to work with just don't fit somehow.
The Catholic Church in the west calls that Personal Revlation. The guardians at the gate who attempt the enforce the rules frown on that. Oh, yes, do they frown on that.
but I can't wait to get there.
I pulled this up from an old entry from 2011. It's odd. I was raised, sort of, Methodist. Working on the family tree I discovered several branches of Quakers. Exploring them I discovered their beliefs echoed mine. Quakers are, or were, mystics. Probably why there are so few of them after all these years and probably why the families were some form of Methodist by the time we hit Oregon.
I have to admit there are damn few mystics in any branch of the tree. I may be jumpimg to conclusions but I believe that most mystics are born mystics who didn't run scared the first time the universe, or whatever is out there, tapped them on the shoulder and invited them to join the dance. It's scary and inviting and a whole list of words I don't even know. Yet.
"f they ever take away our radio, suspend our newspaper, silence us, put to death all of us priests-bishop included, and you are left alone-a people without priests-then each of you will have to be God's microphone. Each of you will have to be a messenger, a prophet. The church will always live as long as one baptized person is left alive."
Oscar Romero, quoted in Messengers to the Kingdom by Jon Sobrino S.J.
I begin to understand by Romero scared the bejeesus out of some of the Vatican Curia in the three years he was archbishop of San Salvador. And I wonder how closely Morris West, author of the Clowns of God, followed the persecution of the church in Central America. Because he echoes that message in the novel. When the time comes, the little people, the lay people will have to carry on the work and the sacraments of the church whether they are ordained or not. Imagine how well that went over with old men who had spent their lives climbing the ladders of power.
This is probably true of most of the major denominations that seem more concerned with following the fules than caring for their people. So, in seventies I am basically starting from almost the beginning. I would apprecitae feed back if anyone cares to comment. You don't have to agree with me. In fact I was so surprised when I ran across Evangelical Quakers hired minister and all the trappings.
If this entry seems a little, or a lo,t mildly crazy that's pretty much where I am right now. Mildly crazy.
Mea Culpa. I did fall off the planet for awhile. Sort of. More about that later. To be honest some of it will be much later. I've been reading, no surprise there. Rediscovering the likes of Meister Eckhart.When I try to wrap my brain around this and it doesn't fit, quite.
"Every creature is a word of God.
If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature-
Even a caterpiller-
I would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God is every creature."
Meister Eckhart
Got a weird notice, at least weird to me, yesterday that a post "Let America be America Again" had been unpublished for violating community guidelines. I checked the entry, it's still there. The entry was at straight copy of the poem of that title by Langston Hughes. He was a writer, social activist, novelist, playwrite of mixed African American and European descent active from the thirties to the early sixties. BTW this is the notice. This post was unpublished because it violates Blogger Community Guidelines. To republish, please update the content to adhere to guidelines.Doesn't say which, if any, guidelines were violated and I don't plan to read the whole thing since the following poem does not have any cussin', say anything bad about anybody or their parents or their families ect.
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
So there it is. Poem by Langston Hughes. I was careful to identify the original writer. Bless me if I can identify anything that would violate any guidelines anywhere unless the while idea of pointing out the Dream of America and Fact of America are so far for many of our fellow citizens that they might as well be on different planets. How dare a person of color point out that the America of oligarchs is not their America butthey still dare to hope that it can become their America. I'm going to use the same title and see what happens. See if a bot flags me again.
Ran across these gems thins morning on a FB post. You have to have a decent command of the English language to come up with anything in the same class.
These insults are from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words. Insults then, had some class!
No I haven't fallern off the face of the earth. Although it seems like it. Reading. A lot. Other things going on that are, well best left off. Curently working my war through one of Michener's giant novels, The Covenent. The story of South Africa up until the late seventies. And a couple of related non fictions to be mentioned later. When I work out how in the name of heaven I'm going to present them. Historical note. It's most interesesting how manydictatorships like the the Apartheid regime of South Africa had to change after the Soviet Union, as the Soviet Union, fell. The old "we may be assholes but at least we aren't Communists" excuse.
Two of the main supporters of the Afrikkaner majorit government were Saint Ronnie and that iron lady Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher was replaced as Prime Minister in 1990 and congress passed legislation imposeing economic sanctions on South Africa in the mid eighties over a Reagan veto. He called it econimic warfare. Damn straight, sir. That it would just make the situation worse for Black south Africans. I suspect that most of the Black, disenfranchised, under a system of segregation that makes the US south look almost like a paradise the just might have said "what took you so long." Apartheid was pretty much dismantled by 1994.
Does the country have problems? Yes. Are they working to solve those problems? Yes.
I don't know when I discovered Alan Paton's novel Cry The Beloved Country. Probably the early seventies when I was taking Peoples of Africa for an Anthro major. The first paragraphs of the book are some of the most beautiful prose, at least for me. If you have a love of the land it may also be one of the saddest passages you'll ever read.
A note some of the words. Ixopo is the name of a village. The x is pronounced with a ck sound. The veld is an open plain. The pronunciation is almost like fvelt. A kloof is a steep sided gully or small valley. The tithoya is a small bird like a plover and the name sounds like the birds’ call. Ingeli, Umzimkulu and Griqueland are pronounced pretty much as they are spelled. The style in this novel is unlike anything I’ve ever read. It’s almost as if someone is writing down a spoken story. It probably breaks half the rules of conventional writing and that may be why I love it so much. The book is about people, the land, love, loss, forgiveness and acceptance.
So, here goes.
There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them, to Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is not mist, you can look down on one of the fairest valleys of Africa. About you there is grass and bracken and you may hear the forlorn crying of the tithoya, one of the birds of the veld. Below you is the valley of the Umzimkulu, on its journey from the Drakensberg to the sea: and beyond and behind the river, great hill after great hill; and beyond and behind them, the mountains of Ingeli and East Griqueland.
The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. It holds the rain and the mist, and they seep into the ground, feeding the streams in every kloof. It is well-tended, and not too many cattle feed upon it; not too many fires burn it, laying bare the soil. Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.
Where you stand the grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. But the rich green hills break down. They fall to the valley below, and falling, change their nature. For they grow red and bare; they cannot hold the rain and mist, and the streams are dry in the kloofs. Too many cattle feed upon the grass, and too many fires have burned it. Stand shod upon it, for it is coarse and sharp, and the stones cut under the feet. It is not kept, or guarded, or cared for, it no longer keeps men, guards men, cares for men. The titihoya does not cry here any more.
The great red hills stand desolate, and the earth has torn away like flesh. The lighting flashes over them, the clouds pour down upon them, the dead streams come to life, full of the soil that is left, and the maize hardly reaches the height of a man. They are valleys of old men and old women, of mothers and children. The men are away; the young men and the girls are away. The soil cannot keep them any more.
So I'm not sure sure where this is going or how I'm going to get there. I'm assuming that most folks are not familiar with South Africa. It's a crazy quilt nation that well, just sort of happened. Unlike the British Colonies the Dutch didn't start out to colonise anyone or anything. The Dutch East Indiia Company was looking for profits in the spice trade and the little settlement on the tip of the Cape of Good Hope was meant to be a supply station and only a supply station.
