Play, Fool!

So we're having this conversation about how we feel stuck in the psychic mud of making everything "productive" and "effective" and "meaningful", and one guy says, "hey, when was the last time you had fun? I mean ... REALLY had REAL fun?" So we all get quiet and think about this very serious question for several minutes. And the guy starts LAUGHING! Like, what the f***? And he says, "you know, if you were watching this drama of three men in deep, heavy cogitation about having fun, wouldn't YOU laugh?" Took a few seconds and we were all laughing.
So I write this blog stuff and try to write something every day, and sometimes I can't really think of anything to write about so I make stuff up. And I really count on readers to feed back to me what they get from this stuff. And to remind me not to take life or myself so damned seriously. It's Spring, time for golf and gardens. Mostly it's time to make serious time for PLAY! Anyone up for tennis, hoops or badminton?

Theologies of Scale

"Economies" - conceptual frameworks for thinking about and participating in a system of managing material resources - have long been understood in terms of "scale". You may be familiar with the phrase "economies of scale". What I think that means is that there are different rules that govern a household economy, a municipal economy, a regional, national or global economy. Because of the variation in their magnitudes, economists apply different formulae in their analyses and management of these economies.
"Theologies" - conceptual frameworks for thinking about and participating in a relationship with divinity - tend to presume that there is one Divinity, with a universal character and absolute attributes that apply everywhere and at all times. That is one of the reasons for the ubiquity of religious conflict. I conceive of God in a certain way, and immediately assume, since we are, of course, talking about God, there can be only one correct way to conceive of God.
I think that Hindu conceptions are probably closest to this. They conceive of mini-gods and mega-gods, and although these deities operate in their respective ways, they are really marginal to the human experience. Their divinity applies to the mini-worlds and the mega-worlds. There are human-scale divinities that operate ON the human scale, exhibit human qualities, and are able to engage with humans on human terms.
Not that any of this matters in some kind of meaningful way ... just one of the threads weaving it's dissonant harmonies through my resonant mind ...

Constellations

"Constellations are normally the product of human perception rather than astronomical realities." (Wikipedia)

It thrills me to gaze up into the night sky. A couple nights ago Robin and I sat out under the stars long after the house and the peepers were quiet. Ursa Major, the Great Bear and Big Dipper shone high in the dark dome above. I remembered some lesson from a visit to the Hayden Planetarium: "Follow the 'arc' of the handle in the dipper to the bright star Arcturus; connect the stars in the front of the dipper and follow them up to Polaris." It still works. Those nocturnal jewels haven't wandered from their cataloged locations one bit. It's about this time every year I have to locate the book I've carried around since I was a kid - H.A. Rey's __Stars__ (it's not in its usual place ... the search continues!) It's illustrated with drawings and cartoon images of constellations which have pointed me skyward for decades. In the back are double-page sky charts and maps so you can find your particular sky on any particular night.
Of course, the internet is full of resources. "Astroviewer.com" has an interactive map and does the same thing as my old book with a couple clicks. I did notice they've replaced the Zodiac names of constellations with more generic "astronomically correct" titles, e.g., "Pegasus" is "Winged Horse", and "Taurus" is "Bull".
And, yes, from the scientific astronomical point of view, all those clusters of shimmer we see from down here have no meaningful relationships with one another. But our perspective is the human perspective, and we humans are seekers after meaning. We create and tell stories, weave relationships among diverse elements of our experience, and make art. Night skies inspire me to live more deeply and more fully into my geocosmystic humanity. Tonight, I'll wish upon a star or two ... or a whole constallation!

Impatient Bird

Cardinals and wrens, crows and finches awaken me on Spring mornings. Once in a while, there are new sounds ... fresh voices among the feathered chorus. At 5:00 a.m. their songs can sometimes be an abrupt introduction to the day. Robin heard impatience in the call of one bird yesterday morning. Endless repetition of the same pattern of notes - what the hell is he wanting? A mate? Food? Title to his territory? To piss off sleeping people?
Later, we joined friends to see the movie, "Earth". Our 13 year old son had gone to Waterbury with his class to see "Earth" the previous day, and reported his experience with little enthusiasm, which we read as a hopeful sign. I might have guessed what was coming when the movie opened with a tribute to Walt Disney and showed clips of "Bambi". I had listened to a radio interview with directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield that really had me juiced for something EXTRA extraordinary. I judge it to have been quasi-extraordinary. True to Disney-form, it was the human drama projected onto the globe, onto the cosmos, with whales and polar bears and elephants in the roles of mommies and daddies doing seasonal battle with the elements and ubiquitous predators, and the sun as Deus Ex Machina serenely carrying out its daily, supreme migration. Yet, there were truly extraordinary visual moments. One slow motion sequence of a cheetah's running attack on a gazelle revealed the cat's head motionless in absolute focus on its escaping prey, while every other part of its body is rippling with the exertion of a 60 mph run. I'd watch that clip again and again. And there were others.
Most of the birds have quieted their singing this morning, which is a signal to me that it's time to get along on the adventure of my day. Thanks, you feathery critters, for all you do, and all you give, to enrich my experience of life. May I always honor you for the beautiful beings you are, and not merely for what you give me. Aho.

Dirt

"Don't put that in your mouth, honey! Ick … it's dirty!" "She's a hard worker, and not afraid to get her hands dirty." "I'd have scored that point if the other guy didn't play dirty!" Lots of words take on lots of meanings as they get used, meanings that have nothing to do with their original meaning. I like to trace words back to their early meanings. The word "dirt" began as a synonym for "shit" (I'll trace that word at a later time). Today, it doubles for an unsavory truth about someone ("see if you can dig up some dirt on that guy") and the condition of being destitute ("dirt poor"). In my case, I grew up hearing "dirt" used to describe that which must be shaken or wiped off my shoes before entering the house, and to refer to the brown stuff out of which grass and trees grew, and from which rocks could be dug. "Dirt" was of no consequence, except to farmers and baseball infielders, neither of which pursuits I anticipated in my future. Those early meanings stayed with me for a long time. Along the way I heard expressions like "dirty old man" and "dirty tricks" and "dirty pool", and watched "Dirty Harry". It's not hard to see how the word "dirt" came into my vocabulary as "bad stuff". And also, how I early on developed fear about "the world out there", the world of "nature", and the ground beneath my feet as a dangerous and unfriendly thing, a place that would contaminate me with icky stuff, within which I didn't belong, and which didn't belong in me. I've grown in my understanding of dirt. I'm making dirt in my compost bin. I recognize the erosion of topsoil on the planet is one of the critical environmental issues of our time. I let some leaves decompose on my lawn, because they become a component of the dirt that supports the grass. Today I'm less afraid of "dirt". In fact, I'm working my way up to starting a garden. Getting my hands really dirty. And since I've been introduced to Milorganite, the link between dirt and shit has been forged once again!

Work: Round #2

When we read the word "slavery", I imagine most of us immediately think of the shameful buying and selling of Africans by plantation owners in the American South. We run some of the video narrative from "Roots" and "Gone With the Wind". Nearly 4 decades from the March on Washington and our national battle about civil rights for people of African descent, we consider slavery to have been a sad, unenlightened episode in American history.
Slavery has been around since the dawn of human civilization. Empires are built as one nation's armies occupy the lands of other people, and the indigenous people are classically denied the rights of citizens, and forced to work under penalty of physical punishment, building temples and shrines and other tributes to the greatness of the king, queen or other human to whom is ascribed absolute power.
And as we reach the outer limits of the Imperial Age, as ambitious demigods are running out of Earth frontiers to conquer; as we come to recognize how much freedom we have given up in our quests for greater and greater material comfort and acquisition; as we wake up to the truth that the public welfare or health or job satisfaction or happiness or meaning has never been a priority for the Emperor ...
... the word "slavery" takes on new meaning for me. As I listen to the national conversation about work and life, I hear people expressing chronic anxiety as the result of losing any sense of job security, let alone the jobs themselves. That psychic pain is easily as punishing as the whip. Of course, it's politically incorrect to make such an analogy. I hear my own voice saying "how dare you suggest any current psychic suffering could even compare with the 18th and 19th century experience of Africans on this continent?" It's that voice that keeps me frozen, keeps me from feeling my own "rage against the machine". And that's a much more effective form of slavery, in the long run. If I can plant the master's oppressive voice inside the people's hearts and minds, I've created a population of slaves who believe themselves to be free! They'll work themselves to exhaustion, not as the result of physical threats from the outside, but because they have believed that NOT to work is itself shameful, and because without work there is no provision, and without provision there is no ... no life! No matter how much rationalizing I do, my geocosmystical mind keeps saying "get up, stand up ... stand up and protest against the oppressor!" Resistance is not futile ... it is critical.

Green Conscience

How many of my modern conveniences would I be willing to give up in order no longer to contribute one iota to the erosion of the global eco-system? I have grown rather attached to this computer, and I know the plastic casing, the metals and other chemically produced materials that make it work are not biodegradable. There's probably a computer I could use that is made entirely out of recycled materials, and that contains only components that were made without hurting the environment. But I expect it costs as much as a car. Which is another of those things I've grown very dependent upon. Maybe addicted to. Riding on oceans of asphalt that keep me blissfully oblivious to the living systems struggling beneath me or whizzing past me. Then there's my cell phone. Five years ago I bragged that I'd never use one, let alone make it my #1 wardrobe accessory, file cabinet and relationship manager. So I try to forget that certain minerals that are critical to cell technology are mined in gorilla territory, and even though it's illegal to hunt gorillas, there's enough money in poaching to attract plenty of risk takers.
And I'm still living on the grid, sucking up kilowatts to run everything, and barely mindful of the creatures, human and other, who live in the foggy shadows of the steaming, belching, white hot monsters that spew my electricity. I barely consider the habitats - rivers for hydro electric, mountains of coal, native human lands with veins of fissionable materials - that no longer exist because I need my juice.
Of course, you know this all gets me feeling guilty, which is why I don't like to look at it very often or for very long. But I'm striving to be a more courageous geocosmystic, which means looking at things as they are, and feeling what I need to feel. Writing this blog is one way I do that. Maybe I can't change the world, but I can change myself, and I can be the change I dream of. Awareness, consciousness, courage to face the truth - these are honorable beginnings. Next steps to come. Aho!

Shadow

There are days when shadows are really dark. Those are days when the sun is particularly hot and high. I like those days because I can see the shadows vividly. Their outlines are sharp enough to mistake for solid objects, and I know where to go for shelter and shade.
There are days when shadows are not so clearly visible. Days like today. Overcast days that create no sharp contrast between light and dark. Days like this challenge me to know where the boundaries are, what direction to take. Even the line between life and death is blurred.
This is soul-terrain. Important dimensions of my life are hidden among the mottled greens and browns of my inner landscape. I wander, a zombie in my own dreams, with no vision, no clarity of mind, somnambulistic.
I covet the eyes of the hunter, the tracker, the wilderness guide, who sees the subtle traces of previous passers-by, recognizes danger before stumbling into it, and reaches into what looks barren to my sight, and draws forth fruit.
There are days when it's really good to pay close attention to the shadows.

Corporate CEO Pay

Let me know if I'm way off the mark here. I'm no economist. I never took a real economics class. But here's what I think. I think the guys (yeah, most of them guys) who are making 100s of millions and billions of bucks by buying and selling money really believe that's their job in a free market, capitalist system. I also think that belief has percolated up into the minds of the likes of Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner. They believe that in order for the system to do what the system is designed to do, the wealthy and powerful MUST exploit EVERY opportunity to make the greatest profit. Every artificial restraint on those ambitions (regulations) are impediments to these objectives, and so must be removed or resisted at every turn. If citizens start chafing at apparent inequities, then the media can be bought and put to work "educating" the population about how they just need to wait until the economy "turns around". My point in all this is that the longer the majority of us wait to organize ourselves and become politically active toward reclaiming our power as "the people", the more likely it is that we will be further disempowered, and the likelihood of violent revolution increases.

Changes

What is changing in your life? What are you changing ABOUT your life? There are changes I want to make in my life. Those kind of changes seem to have to always begin with changing my mind. A change of my consciousness. A decision to reorient my thinking, modify my habits of thought. Spring is the season of transformation, the "Via Transformativa". An opportunity to connect with the Divine as the "agent of "change" in my life. Holy Spirit fire comin' to burn the deadwood of my soul, lick my conscience with tongues of flame, and ignite a fresh passion for creation and creativity. Too often I yawn into the face of the Green Man as he's crying out to me to awaken and dance in his soil. Not this season! I'm digging in and relishing the richness of the ground upon which I have settled for a time. Smelling flowers, climbing trees, shaping growing places for food. This is a change I choose!
What are the changes you are choosing?

Starstuff

Once in a while I call to mind some fact that helps me sustain a perspective of joy and fascination with being alive. There aren’t many things I call “facts”. But I do call it a fact that no thing in the known universe is ever created or destroyed. Things change. Matter becomes energy, becomes matter, and on and on.
So I think to myself that the stuff that has taken the present form I refer to as “me” was once something else, and will be something else in the time to come. And all the stuff that is me right now was at one time 14 billion years ago part of the cosmic hiccup that set galaxies and supernovas spinning in space.
I think that’s a fact. I also believe, and feel a certain yearning to re-connect with that world “out there”. When I gaze into the night sky at stars and constellations, I feel my heart drawn upward and outward, as if there were a whispering song luring me back to dance among the planets. That’s the “cosmystic” part of me.

Exile

There are lots of directions I feel led to go with this. Lately, I’m intrigued by this word. Exile. Webster’s says it’s about self-imposed absence, or enforced removal from “one’s native country”. The way I’m thinking about it, it has a more expansive definition. “Exile” for me, is the spiritual and emotional experience of being separated from my home, my abode, or from my “homeland”.
Archetypally, the Garden of Eden represents the homeland from which humans were once and for all sent into exile. The Bible describes periods when the people of Israel were taken out of their “promised land” into exile, to live “dispersed” among the nations. The phenomenon of Zionism within the Jewish tradition is the conviction that God will return the people from their exile and once again restore them to that land of promise. The creation of the nation of Israel in the 20th century is seen by many as the fulfillment of that promise.
I’m considering lots of other kinds of exile in the world today. The Native Americans driven off their rich, ancestral lands to live in places they have no relationship with. The people of Tibet violently chased away from their homeland by the Chinese. Africans captured from the land that sustained them for millennia, and shipped to the western hemisphere to fuel the industrial age. There are many more examples of people who have become exiles as the result of war and conquest.
Sometimes people are exiled because of natural disasters. People become refugees – seeking “refuge” from floods or pestilences or political dangers. But just moving from one’s hometown to a strange city can feel like being “in exile”. Today I’m thinking sadly about the growing population of homeless people in our country who have been evicted from their homes, their abodes. We have an entire lexicon of words to describe many kinds of exilic experience: eviction, displacement, marginalization, expatriation, immigration, emigration … you can think of others.
Christian tradition has picked up this idea and effectively taught that the earth is not our home; that we can’t count on living safely and securely in relationship to the material world; that we must hope (and work!) for a place in our real home, in heaven. Certainly that’s how the modern era has shaped our experience. But Jesus taught something different. “The ground upon which you stand is your home; The Earth is the domain of Divinity”.
I think this religious mistake is largely responsible for leading us to this critical moment in global survival. I want to see it corrected.

Original Instructions

President Obama has made education reform one of the three top priorities of his first 100 days, along with health care reform and the economy (or is it the war on terror?). Our education system is certainly broken. In America’s 19th and 20th century scramble to get and preserve our imperial advantage, education has been strictly about programming children and youth to compete for more power and more stuff. The ideal of democracy (which was long ago superseded by the ideal of an ever-expanding consumer market), included the proposition that every citizen, in order to be an equal participant in a democratic republic, was entitled to a publically guaranteed education. Genuine democracy cannot work when the citizenry is trained to think of ourselves as consumers. The Obama administration appears to be using the internet to recover some semblance of an active, educated national citizenry. I applaud the effort.

On the other hand, I wonder if schools – private or public – can prepare people for living as citizens of the cosmos, or the Earth, or the land.

A favorite book of mine is entitled Return to Creation, written in 1991 by Manitonquat (Medicine Story). “Story”, as he is respectfully addressed by friends, is an elder, and the spiritual leader of the Assonet band of the Wampanoag nation, whose ancestral lands were once what is now the area of Newport, Rhode Island. I spent a weekend with him and his wife at Rowe Conference Center in 2004.

As Story tells it, the land of the Wampanoag was shaped by Maushop, the principle Hero-deity of the people. Maushop slept in the curve of Cape Cod, and gouged out the sound with a shovel made of an iceberg. Then, Maushop made the people – four races of people from the four colors of clay. “He mixed them in shades of brown, some with more red or white, more black or yellow.” Once the gift of the body had been given, Maushop gave people the gift of mind, the gift of heart and then asked Creation itself to give people the gift of Kishtannit, part of Creation’s own Spirit. “Then Maushop taught the human beings what they needed to know in order to survive and add their music to the great Song of Creation.”

“Those teachings are the Original Instructions. Most people who have an ancient oral tradition speak of such instructions, or the instructions are implicit in the tales and legends of the people. These instructions are very similar throughout North America.
“It is this concept of Original Instructions that most profoundly distinguishes native spiritual belief from all the man-made religions of the world. The Original Instructions are not ideas. They are reality. They are actually Natural Law, The Way Things Are – the operational manual for a working Creation.”

Indian people believe the Original Instructions are written on the soul of every creature, including human creatures. The role of teachers is not to edit those instructions, let alone re-write them. Rather, a teacher’s job is to awaken the student to what is already known within her. Thus, as the “original people” believe, those Original Instructions continue from generation to generation to guide and sustain tribal life.

Pink Floyd had it. “Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone!” Let’s recover a sense of why it is we educate our young people. Are we pressing them from the bleachers to compete harder and score more points than the other kids? Or are we willing to allow them to discover the Original Instructions? Seems to me we need more than education reform in America. We need to relearn the Original Instructions.

Work: Round #1

"History is governed by those overarching movements that give shape and meaning to life by relating the human venture to the larger destinies of the universe…The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner." Thomas Berry, The Great Work "And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done." Genesis 2:2 God made a freakin' universe. I want to make something as awesome as that! I lost my job last fall, and joined tens of millions of Americans currently "unemployed" in the U.S. I had to attend two hearings in order to fight my employer's effort to deny me unemployment benefits (thanks, Robin!) During the past eight months, I've been reconsidering what it means to "get a job", "go to work", "earn a living" or "provide for my family". One of the thoughts that continues to pop into my head is that "work" is synonymous with "survival" in our current world. "In the morning, we do our work. The rest of the day, we make things." These are the words of an indigenous African woman whom Matt Fox has often quoted in his writing and his talks. My dad had a similar saying: "There's a time for work, and a time for play." But it didn't take long in this culture before training for work, applying for work, getting to work, doing my work and keeping my job began to take up all my time. It's taken losing my job to remind me that "work" is not the same as "life" or "living". There are activities that communities must perform in order to function effectively, and to survive. For indigenous people, these activities do not so consume the time and energy of people so as to detract from anyone's opportunity to "make things". The hidden truth is that in "making things", humans discover the joy of living. Too many of us wind up having to "make do", "make amends" or "make up for lost time". Even "love making" has become "who did whom?" Nobody taught us that we have a birthright of creativity, a deep tradition of "people making" (thank you, Virginia Satir), to remedy our "human doing", and to accompany our "human being". The legacies of imperialism and industrialism turned "making" into "manufacturing". "Productivity" replaced "satisfaction", and "deadlines" took over for rhythms and cycles and seasons and singing and dancing. Now is the time to recover the joy, the fun, the ecstacy of work. Now is the time to make beauty, make community, make songs and pictures and fresh images of the abundant life! Consider the "things" you "make", or that you've "made". Were you the school girl who "made the grade" (or didn't "make the grade")? Or the young soccer forward who "made the goal". Maybe you're the preacher who effectively "made his point". How about the salesman or the cop who "made his quota"? Or the reporter who "made his deadline". I know the socially responsible guy who asks himself regularly, "Did I make any difference today?" I try to remember to ask myself this question daily: "Did I make anything … anything at all … today?" What do geocosmystics "make"? What is the "Great Work" of Geocosmysticism?

The Bible

Gotta get this out of my system. There's this book. You probably know the title. Might even have an old copy around the house. Maybe you've read it, or parts of it in the course of your life. If you're of my generation, maybe you spent some time in one kind of church or synagogue. In that case, you probably know some of what's in that book. Right – the Bible. By the way, the English word "Bible" comes from the Greek word biblios (biblios) which simply means "book". Why would I need to write a piece on "The Bible" in a blog about "geocosmysticism"? Two reasons. 1) I grew up in a Bible-reading and preaching church, learned to enjoy reading and studying the Bible as a student of religion and literature in college, immersed myself in biblical scholarship in seminary school, and spent a decade and a half of my life preaching and teaching from Bible texts. I have been formed in a Bible culture, and even though I have separated officially from the Christian ministry, and my beliefs have shifted away from those of the "confessional" Church, the language, stories and images from the Bible live in me and continue to sustain me upon my spiritual journey. I continue to believe there is wisdom to be mined in the Bible, and in other ancient, sacred texts. 2) The majority of my community today are self-described "pagans", "witches", "animists" and atheists, groups that have not been welcomed … no, let me speak plainly ... groups that have been (and continue to be) identified as "enemies of God", by "Bible-believing" people and churches, and persecuted by "Christian society" with the intention of conversion, marginalization or extermination. Others of my friends and family, for any number of reasons, have concluded that the Bible, as a key symbol of "organized religion", is irrelevant at best, dangerous at worst. When I quote the Bible, which I do infrequently, I can feel them withdraw from me. I guess, if I'm honest, I feel hurt by that. But I also understand this ambivalence or antipathy toward the Bible. The book has been misused to justify abuses from wife beating to slavery, from witch burning to apartheid. My "dear people" are fully justified, in my opinion, to be suspicious, if not hostile, toward a book that continues to be used by many to fuel prejudice and worse. So, I may mention Jesus or Moses or St. Paul from time to time in this blog. Please let me know if I come off like a "Bible thumper". It's the last thing I want to be, and it's way more important to me to continue to be engaged in a geocosmystical conversation than to provoke hostility from anyone. By the way, Jesus was more than the first non-violent revolutionary (Stephen Stills). He was a very radical geocosmystic!

Resurrection

Resurrection David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He recently published a book entitled, Sum – Forty Tales from the Afterlife. Robin and I recently listened to Tom Ashbrook interview Eagleman on his NPR "On Point" radio program. We bought the book. Following is one of the forty I liked. This is a long quotation, and perhaps I shouldn't include it, but all credit belongs to the author, and if you buy the book, maybe he'll overlook my wholesale co-opting of his worthy text. "Egalitaire" "In the afterlife you discover that God understands the complexities of life. She had originally submitted to peer pressure when She structured Her universe like all the other gods had, with a binary categorization of people into good and evil. But it didn't take long for Her to realize that humans could be good in many ways and simultaneously corrupt and mean-spirited in other ways. How was She to arbitrate who goes to Heaven and who to Hell? Might not it be possible, She considered, that a man could be an embezzler and still give to charitable causes? Might not a woman be an adulteress but bring pleasure and security to two men's lives? Might not a child unwittingly divulge secrets that splinter a family? Dividing the population into two categories – good and bad – seemed like a more reasonable task when She was younger, but with experience these decisions became more difficult. She composed complex formulas to weigh hundreds of factors, and ran computer programs that rolled out long strips of paper with eternal decisions. But Her sensitivities revolted at this automation – and when the computer generated a decision She disagreed with, She took the opportunity to kick out the plug in rage. That afternoon She listened to the grievances of the dead from two warring nations. Both sides had suffered, both sides had legitimate grievances, both pled their cases earnestly. She covered Her ears and moaned in misery. She knew her humans were multidimensional, and She could no longer live under the rigid architecture of Her youthful choices. "Not all gods suffer over this; we can consider ourselves lucky that in death we answer to a God with deep sensitivity to the byzantine hearts of Her creations. "For months She moped around Her living room in Heaven, head drooped like a bulrush, while the lines piled up. Her advisors advised Her to delegate the decision making, but She loved her humans too much to leave them to the care of anyone else. "In a moment of desperation the thought crossed Her mind to let everyone wait on line indefinitely, letting them work it out on their own. But then a better idea struck Her generous spirit. She could afford it: She would grant everyone, every last human, a place in Heaven. After all, everyone had something good inside; it was part of the design specifications. Her new plan brought back the bounce to Her gait, returned the color to Her cheeks. She shut down the operations in Hell, fired the Devil, and brought every last human to be by Her side in Heaven. Newcomers or old-timers, nefarious or righteous: under the new system, everyone gets equal time to speak with Her. Most people find Her a little garrulous and oversolicitous, but She cannot be accused of not caring. "The most important aspect of Her new system is that everyone is treated equally. There is no longer fire for some and harp music for others. The afterlife is no longer defined by cots versus waterbeds, raw potatoes versus sushi, hot water versus champagne. Everyone is a brother to all, and for the first time an idea has been realized that never came to fruition on Earth: true equality. "The Communists are baffled and irritated, because they have finally achieved their perfect society, but only by the help of a God in whom they don't want to believe. The meritocrats are abashed that they're stuck for eternity in an incentiveless system with a bunch of pinkos. The conservatives have no penniless to disparage; the liberals have no downtrodden to promote. "So God sits on the edge of Her bed and weeps at night, because the only thing everyone can agree upon is that they're all in Hell."

GCM - The Return

Ok, so I got some of the major pressure points addressed this past week, and there's still more to be addressed, but I can give some time to this blog adventure again. It's true - I enjoy expressing myself this way, and also enjoy the interaction with others who find my musings interesting) or at least a-MUSE-ing. I've got some pieces in the hopper - topics like "The Bible", "Atheism", "Exile and Return", "Dirt" and "Starstuff". Thanks to everyone who's encouraged me to stay at it! Go, GeoCosMystics!

Time

Given currently more pressing issues, I'm hereby giving notice that my daily blog posts will be discontinued for the forseeable future. I hope to return to the project, but ... we'll just have to see. Thanks to everyone who has been following this.
With love,
Bob

Nature

Jordan's comment back a week or so has gotten me thinking a lot about this notion of "nature". All the reading I've been doing lately uses that word liberally with an assumption of its common meaning. In fact, it has various meanings and nuances. It's tough to miss that I'm a philologist of sorts, loving words and their range of meanings and etymologies. So if you're not into that, apologies ahead of time. "Nature" is, of course, used to describe the world around us as it exists without the technical interventions of human beings. That usage is fairly recent, largely the result of our invention of more and more complex and powerful tools ("tekne" is Greek for "tool"). Technology has radically modified our environment. Humans have evolved an advanced capacity for objective thought, the ability to see ourselves as "other" than "what is out there", and can readily think of ourselves as "outside of nature". It was in the 70s when I read Desmond Morris' book, The Naked Ape. It was my introduction to the very notion that my own body, my appetites and impulses, could be understood in relation to my "belonging to nature". For me, it was a freeing insight, an "aha!" moment. Up to that time I'd simply not perceived that connection. It had never occurred to me that I was "part of the world out there". It certainly wasn't a welcome idea for everyone. It was tremendously controversial, and disturbing to what was then a small but reactionary Christian fundamentalist population. In some ways, it was this popularization of evolutionary biology that gave a boost to what is now the "intelligent design" rear-guard actions. These folks continue to REALLY resist the notion that human beings belong AMONG the natural orders and phyla, and insist on our "unique status" among "God's creatures." For me, in this regard, the work is to more deeply experience myself as belonging WITHIN "Nature". There are also other meanings for "nature" I would like to explore. The word "nature" can also be interpreted in light of its relationship to "native". The meaning is something like "original". What is "natural" is that which was "in this place from the beginning", or "as far back as memory can see". The creation myths and stories of most peoples include allusions to "the time before time", when nothing was here. Then, in the stories, there is the introduction of "the original people". Our human history, particularly modern history, is filled with grand movements of populations, colonialism, migrations and displacements. Indigenous populations have been decimated by the industrial age, and we are only coming to understand the wisdom that comes from living in a particular place for tens of thousands of years. One could say that "native" people are the "natural" people, in that they have "deeply inhabited" the land. Finally (for this post), "nature" can be defined in terms of the opposite idea, that of "artifice". Artifice conveys both the sense of "craft" and "crafty", a clever means of out-maneuvering natural phenomena. Sealing a seagoing vessel's hull with pitch is an "artificial" means of forestalling the "natural" tendency of wood to leak. Insulation in your home or outerwear is an "artificial" means of preventing "natural" heat loss. For the most part, I'd argue that crafty means of outsmarting "nature", in this sense, are to be applauded! In any case, the idea of "Nature" and "the natural" is a dynamic one, and an important one for geocosmystic consideration! Rev. Bob Werme, M.Div., MAHRM 203-437-2468

Inspiration

I've said that this blog project is a personal exercise, a discipline to keep me writing. I tend not to exercise much discipline. In fact I recently began recruiting some of my friends to help me better structure my time. There are tasks I avoid, duties I procrastinate in doing, and responsibilities I shirk. I easily let my mind meander through the lists of things I need to do, flaccidly and limply resting on one item, and then rolling off it like a sleeping drunk. Today, several themes have received more than their share of keyboard clicks, and none has yielded MUSE-ic. Today, I'm not going to push the river. I'm going to let my spirit "lie fallow" for a day, and trust (in that uniquely geocosmystical way), that leaving it alone for a while will raise again the creative juices from the aquifers of my soul. Metakye Oyasin. Shalom. Blessed Be. Namaste. Amen. See ya!