Montague Whitsel's Blog

Rendering Out Truth: 3 Critiques of Creationism (11 Feb 2012)

2012-02-11T11:15:00.002-05:00

[A Pastoral Blog]

"What made Darwin such a greatscientist and intellectual innovator? Hewas a superb observer, endowed with an insatiable curiosity. … It was this ability to observe interestingfacts and to ask the appropriate questions about them that permitted him tomake so many scientific discoveries and to develop so many highly originalconcepts." (11)

- Ernst Mayr What Evolution Is(2001)

Tomorrow isDarwin’s birthday, and as usual I’ve been thinking about his journey toward thetruth of evolution; how he struggled with the data until he had that shiningmoment when it all came together and he ‘knew’ – even if he didn’t have all ofthe details worked out – that natural selection was the driving force behind theevolution of life on our planet! What anamazing moment that must have been! Sodifficult for him to assimilate; yet profoundly attractive—as the truth sooften is.
It took almost a hundredyears for all of the details to be worked out; it took the development ofgenetics and the discovery and exploration of DNA to confirm many of thosedetails at the cellular level. Todaythere is no doubt – for anyone who has studied the theory and examined theevidence without ideological prejudice – that evolution is a fact; that ithappened and it is the process by which we have come to be here. What a wondrous idea! What a boon for spiritual and philosophical reflectionand self-understanding; if only people would avail themselves of it.

It is unfortunatethat the truth of evolution has been so widely suppressed in our society bypeople with political and ideological agendas who have the money to back their prejudicialviews. It is unfortunate because the truth is always preferable to error. While it is perfectly legitimate to live outone’s life according to insights gleaned from fiction, film, art and from ancientmyths, to confuse these stories with the way the world actually is – in itsobjective dimension – is to fall into self-delusion, after which comesconfusion and error. Those who havetaken the two creation stories found in Genesis in the Bible as literalaccounts of the universe are missing the truth on two fronts. First, they are misunderstanding the Word ofGod; in which truths are often couched in fictional accounts of the past. Second, they are unable to appreciate how Godactually brought the Universe into being_ from the Big Bang until now_ as wellas how God brought life into being, including ourselves; that is, through evolution.

As I have meditatedon the problem of Creationism over the years, I have come to see it as false onthree fronts: First, it has becomean occult system of thought. Second, it is an escapist fantasy. Third,it is a form of self-deception; creationists can be likened to the people inPlato’s Cave who are sitting watching the shadows on the walls and taking theseto be true images of the world. I’d liketo explore each of these ‘fronts.’ I dothis out of compassionate desire to see people accept truth wherever it may befound; whether in the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Koran or the Torah, or inthe revelations of science.

“Truth cannot beranged again truth,” the ancient Church Fathers used to say, and therefore, ifone thing is true – i.e., the Gospel – and another thing is true – e.g.,evolution – then a person of faith cannot accept the first and reject thesecond out of hand. What is true istrue, and if you believe in a God who is all about Truth, Light and Love, thenif A is true and B is true, it is a fundamental spiritual error to accept A anddeny B, or vice versa. Part of thechallenge of living a spiritual life is to live with paradox; because we are not ‘God’ and therefore cannotunderstand everything as ‘God’ does. Accepting evolution and integrating it into a faith perspective on lifegenerates paradoxes, but someone who is an adult in faith should be able tohandle such things. I hope that you willthink devoutly about what I say in the following pages about the errors ofcreationism, and reject it as a false system of knowledge.

1. CREATIONISM AND THE OCCULT (14 FEB 2O10)

“One should accept thetruth from whatever source it proceeds.”

-Moses Maimonides, Eight Chapters (12^th century)

As I have meditated on the truth of evolution overthe years I have been given several insights into the problem and persistenceof creationism. In 2010 I had one ofthese ‘insights’ and saw it, so clearly, as an occult program. Let me explain.

The ‘Occult’ refers to ‘arcane knowledge;’ that is –‘knowledge’ that was more or less tenable in the past, but that is tenable nolonger. It is ‘obscure’ because a moreaccurate understanding of the workings of Nature has emerged; e.g., a betterunderstanding of human psychology has been shown to be true, a mass of evidencehas disproven an earlier theory, or an understanding of the human penchant forpattern recognition and meaning generation has rendered certain earlier beliefsuntenable.

You can see this if you look at 19^th centuryoccultism. It tended to draw on thesymbol systems and prognostic techniques of older and especially non-westernsocieties. The Tarot, the I Ching andthe Ouija board were quite in vogue among ‘occultists’ and were used to seekknowledge from mysterious beings, ancestors and the dead. Pseudo-scientific ideas – such as mesmerism –were also owned by those who were into ‘the occult.’ The idea of the 'aether' – which was originallya scientific hypothesis for explaining how light travels through space beforeEinstein’s brilliant synthesis and reinterpretation of Maxwell’s equations –was adopted by occultists and used in to explain how ghosts and other ‘etherealbeings’ – who were often associated with spiritual ‘light’ – travelled about. Once ‘the aether’ was shown not to exist, itbecame an occulted idea.

If you look at popular books on the Occult in the20^th century you find a long list of ideas and beliefs – from Tarotto ruminations about Atlantis and its Pacific sister continent “Mu” to “ancientastronauts” and Big Foot and pyramid power – that people have had a fascinationwith and that they embrace as part of their worldview. Most all of these ideas have been given apseudo-scientific gloss in an attempt to make them sound 'rational' anddefensible as beliefs in today’s world; given what we now understand to be trueabout the world via science. This kindof occultism can be seen especially in the spate of TV shows that promote theidea that certain scientific instruments are allowing us to track and listen to‘ghosts,’ without ever providing a sound scientific hypothesis showing why these instruments should be able todo this.

The insight I had about creationism is simply thatit is much like these other occult systems that people become fascinated with –and hold on to for dear life; as if they would have a less ‘meaningful’existence were they to be disabused of these arcane and outdated tenets ofknowledge, even though there is either evidence against them or for which thereis no positive evidence to be found.

Creationists have an arcane understanding of theworld based on a text that is about 2.5 – 3.0 millenia old; the Creation storyin Genesis 1:1 to 2:4a and the second Creation story – in Genesis 2:4b to 3:24– both of which have their origin in the 1^st millennium BCE. While many Christians and Jews before the 18^thcentury assumed that the story of Creation in these texts was the actual‘history’ of our world (and they had no reason not to assume this) –since the advent of geologic and other evolutionary sciences, it has becomeharder and harder for enlightened religious people to hold onto those ancientstories as ‘historical’ truths, though they are still valid for the deep spiritualtruths that they convey. And many wouldargue that it is the spiritual truths that are the inspired element in thesetexts; that God didn’t intend them as historical documents!

While many Christians, Jews and – I assume –enlightened Muslims still legitimately accept the Creation Stories as mythictales that tell us something about our relationship with the Divine and theUniverse; there are a certain number of people who have clung to the oldstories and still believe in them as ‘historical accounts.’ These are the creationists—and they are just like occultists in this way:they continue to hold onto an older system of ideas and persist in believing inthem, even though these ideas have been proven wrong by a vast body ofevidence. Do this analogy surpriseyou?

_It surprised mewhen I first realized it, and it keeps coming back to me as a rune ofinsight. People get used to the way theyunderstand the world to be, and as they get older, it becomes harder for mostpeople to alter their worldview. Unfortunately, creationism didn’t go away after the generation that was aliveat the time of the publication of Darwin’s Originof Species (1859) passed away. Acult of belief in what became a ‘creationist’ account of the world grew andpersisted, and – by the early 20^th century – was part of a largercult of resistance to a truer, scientific understanding of the universe called‘Fundamentalism.’

Another reason occultism persists is that it oftenreinforces very deeply held intuitions about the world. Occult systems seem ‘intuitively’ right tomany people; we ‘get it,’ and for a person to mature out of occult thinking,they have to find the courage to leave what is simplistic and intuitivelypleasing behind and enter into engagement with the world as it actually is; asscientists and philosophers – as well as devout theologians and artists – havediscovered it to be. For other people,creationism may remind them of other simple stories remembered from their childhood,for which they may still yearn, wanting a simplistic escape from thecomplexities of life. The evolutionarybiologist, Richard Dawkins, at one of his many insightful moments, said:

“Childhood is, for many people, a lost Arcadia, a kind ofheaven, with its certainties and its securities, its fantasies of flying to theNever-Never Land, its bedtime stories before we drifted off into the Land ofNod n the arms of Teddy Bear. Withhindsight, the years of childish innocence may pass too soon.” (142, Unweaving the Rainbow, 1998)

Holding onto their leather-bound Bibles and using them likea shield against the world as we now understand it to be, creationists – andfundamentalists in general – seem to me to be in a permanent defense modeagainst growing up and embracing the Earth & Cosmos as God created it; as a13.75 billion year old expanding wonder, in which life on this planet begansome 3.8 billion years ago. I caricaturecreationists in this way because I was once among them, and know the feeling ofsecurity such beliefs can give you.

Creationists attempt, on the basis of an arcanemyth, to make science say what they want it to say. They try to re-arrange the findings ofscience – if they do not deny the evidence outright – in order to show thatwhat science has reveled proves themright. I find this strikingly similar tothose who attempt to use current maps of the sea floor and our currentunderstanding of oceanic crustal movement to prove that Atlantis onceexisted! It is in almost the same categoryof error as ghost hunters attempting to give credence to their pursuits byusing instruments that measure things like temperature fluctuations in a roomto in order to 'show' that a ghost is present; without developing a sound scientifichypothesis as to why a ghost shouldaffect a room’s temperature in the first place!

It occurred to me after this revelation that a creationistis no closer to the truth than a flat-earther, or a mesmerist, or awater-witcher. The only thing that keepsus from 'seeing' this, is that they are practitioners of a wider, moreopen-minded religion (Christianity) that is still very much alive and integralto our culture; though they are ignorant and heretical in their use ofscripture; i.e., they have fallen into thefallacy of literalism, which even Augustine warned against in the 5^thcentury, saying that the literal level of Biblical understanding was only forbeginners and must not be seen to constitute a ‘real knowledge’ of God orChrist or salvation. For that, he urged,a believer must move on to deeper modes of interpretation; allegorical,metaphorical and symbolic modes, for instance. Despite this, creationists – along with all fundamentalists – claimproudly to be ‘literalists!’

In persisting in their occult tendencies,creationists are missing out on the riches of spiritual knowledge that areavailable to those who have accepted science and its revelations. My hope is that they will eventually wake-upand allow themselves to be led out of the darkness. Amen.

[Please see Part II of this blog [below] for the second and third parts of the critique]

Rendering Out Truth: 3 Critiques of Creationism II (12 Feb 2012)

2012-02-11T11:12:00.002-05:00

[A Pastoral Blog, Part II]

2. Creationism as an Escapist Fantasy (21 May 2010)

“Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find asecurity blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.”

- Isaac Asimov, quoted in
Richard Dawkins’
Unweaving the Rainbow
(1998), p. 142)

A couple years ago I was re-readingRichard Dawkins’ Unweaving the Rainbow,a wonder-book that he addressed to poets and artists. I had read it three times before, and on thisparticular read I was struck by the above quote from Asimov in the chapter onsuperstition and pseudoscience. Dawkinswas addressing how these belief systems hijack our sense of wonder and awe;side-tracking people into a pretense of knowledge that either has no foundationor that has been dis-proven outright. AsI read about the various systems of pseudo-knowledge, I was suddenly remindedof creationism; and saw into it at a much deeper level.

I had also recently heard aconservative religious person criticizing fantasy gaming. They were saying that the primary problemwith fantasy gaming – e.g., D&D and other games like it – was that itprovided an ‘escape’ from reality into which the gamer can flee and leave their‘real’ life behind. The conservativepundit urged that this is dangerous, and the newscaster interviewing them said“so you think people should always live in the ‘real’ world and not seek‘escape’ from it?” The pundit affirmedthis, and while the interview – which wasn’t more than 5 minutes long – quicklybrought up some interesting points about why some people may need to escape from their reality for atime, and how traumatic experiences may forcepeople to cocoon themselves in an imagined world for a while in order to heal,I was stopped in my tracks by the next insight that I was given: that creationism is itself an escapist fantasy!

I play a little D&D and afriend of mine has made me aware of the gaming world in many of itsparticulars. I have come to realize thatmost all gamers are completely awarethat the world in which their game is set is fictional, and that they are awareof the dangers of escapism. A littlerecreational escape from the trials and troubles of daily life can be a goodthing, and most gamers seem to be able to do this and then return to the dailyround of life and take care of what they need to take care of. They hold down jobs, they deal with ‘real’life, and they even glean insight from their gaming experience that allows themto function better in the ‘real’ world. Creationists,I would argue, are – as a group – more guilty of the kind of ‘escapistfantasizing’ than the great majority of gamers have ever been. I say this because it is an implicit part ofcreationism’s belief system that it isabout the real world. _And this is adangerous categorical confusion!

Creationists would not really becreationists if they saw the Genesis texts as stories out of which to gleanwisdom and insight into life. The gistof creationism is that the Genesis stories are historical accounts of the real world. And so, they live in the world, day by day,under the illusion that it was somehow recently created (6 – 12 thousand yearsago, depending upon how literalistic a particular creationist is), and that lifeforms do not evolve into one another. But as the Earth is actually over 4 billion years old, and as life hasbeen evolving for almost 4 billion years on this planet, the creationist is actually living in a fantasy world and mistaking that world for the realworld! So really, the pundit’scritique of fantasy gaming and its dangers applies more to creationists than itactually does to gamers! A sad irony, thoughtrue.

By turning to science andaccepting the truth of evolution, a person of faith leaves escapist fantasybehind and enters into an engagement with the ‘real’ world – the world that‘God’ has created (over the course of billions of years). They also accept the true nature of humanbeing; as an evolved species that has emerged – by divine nurturance – from theTree of Evolutionary Life. The person offaith who accepts the truths of science and of evolution in particular is alsoable to embrace Scripture as what it really is; a mythological source textinspired by God to help us understand our relationship to Earth, Cosmos and theDivine. To accept evolution – and all the revelations of science – is toawaken in the real world, give up thetemptation to fantasist escapism andembrace life as it is. It is to accepttruth on all fronts, and not deny onetruth in order to affirm another.

3. Creationists: Watching Shadow-Plays in a Cave (2 Sept 2010)

“God and truth cannotbe incompatible.” (xii)

- John Shelby Spong
Jesus for the Non-Religious (2007)

Then in December of 2010 I waslistening to a lecture on Plato’s dialogue “The Republic” and as the lecturer wasdiscussing the Analogy of the Cave, I had a sudden insight given to me. For those who may not be familiar with it,Plato’s analogy is a story about the state in which most of us find ourselvesbefore we begin seeking wisdom. We arelike people watching shadows dancing on a wall deep in the darkness of a cave,and mistaking those shadows for the real world. It then portrays a search for personal enlightenment, in which thephilosopher – i.e., anyone in love with wisdom – finds his way out of the cave,and then deals with the responsibility that comes with enlightenment;specifically—that the one who is enlightened must return to the cave and helpenlighten others, at whatever cost to him or herself.

While Plato had his own agenda intelling this story, it is more broadly applicable than he would probably haveallowed; and has become one of the touchstones of western philosophy andspirituality. What I saw in my imaginationas the lecturer (David Roocknik) was describing the cave and its inhabitantswas simply a group of creationists, all sitting in a row and watching variousscenarios about the beginning of the world being projected on the wall by powerful people who have the money and influenceto keep these people held enthralled by the illusions they had created. The captives were watching movies aboutNoah’s Flood and the Seven Day Creation story. They were watching propaganda films depicting falsified evidence thatdinosaurs and human beings were once on the earth at the same time. They were watching films in which a wholeworldview based on these erroneous fictions was being etched out. _And the creationists, having been keptignorant of science and a scientifically based worldview, were simply acceptingit all, because they knew no better.

This vision of creationists in thecave almost brought me to tears, as I know how sincere most religious peopleare, and I realize that they would be disturbed by being encouraged to give uptheir illusions as illusions andascend out of the cave into the Light. Ifeel for creationists, as I was once was one myself. Back in the late 1970’s, I joined up withevangelical and charismatic Christians on the campus of the college I wasattending, and was willingly deluded into believing in the Young Earth anddenying evolution for a couple of years, as I didn’t now any better. I was warned never to listen to evolutionistsand to walk out of classes where evolution was even mentioned. [Now, creationists in college classes aremore militaristic; but we weren’t back then.] I understand the unhealthy detachment from the outside world that creationistsgo through in order to block-out the revelations of science. I also know how hard it is to extricateyourself from these delusions, and find yourself in the Light with your faithin God intact. _But it is possible. And it is always better to embrace truth thanto willingly go along with what just ‘feels right’ and which makes you comfortable.

If you re a creationist, I urge youto seek the Light that you can find in the revelations of science.

If you are a religious person, Iencourage you to pray for creationists daily in love.

So be it.

Amen.

A Winter’s Day Meditation (14 January 2011)

2012-01-14T08:40:00.000-05:00

“In my mind a naturalist is someone who comes to understand thebiological life and ecological relationships of a particular place with somedepth and seeks to use this understanding to forge an appropriate relationshipwith earthly life.” (14)

- Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Pilgrimon the Great Bird Continent (2006)

I have been kept in the house todayby a beautiful flurry of snow and wind. Sittinghere, watching the snow falling, hearing its slight patter on the window andsmelling the snow-fresh air coming in at the crack under the door, I haveturned to devout thinking, and am inspired to wonder at Nature in all itsbeauty. Looking out the west window asthe lecturer on my laptop continues talking about inflation and how it solvescertain problems related to the Big Bang and cosmic evolution, I’m suddenly ledto reflect on the ways in which we interact with Earth & Cosmos.

As I have noted in other blogs, thereare subjective modes of experience and engagement that are known only to us asindividuals. Then there areintersubjective modes that arise through common experience and via the communicationof our own experiences with others. Finally,there are modes of interaction with the objective world_ and with the cosmos beyondour present horizons_ in which we interact with the universe, both intimate anddistant, relating to and hopefully coming to understand that which we cannotchange just by thinking about it differently.

Being a poet as well as a thinkerand an amateur science enthusiast, I find myself fascinated by all three ofthese levels. This morning, however, I’mdrawn toward an exploration of three ‘themes’ that seem to me important inunderstanding our ‘place’ in the given world; that ‘objective’ dimension thatdoes not depend upon us for its existence or its nature. The first theme concerns engaging with theparticulars of experience. This isextremely important to both the poet and the scientist, and has done more tofurther our knowledge of the world and ourselves than almost any otherpreoccupation. The second theme is theneed to link the intellectual and sensual dimensions of our experience, inorder to establish a holistic response to Nature. The third theme that occurs to me as Imeditate on the snowy scene outside my window is the nature of the space inwhich we live; its three dimensionality—which implies a certain kind of universeand pervades our ‘perspective’ as a species.

1. Dwelling in theParticulars

“Maintaining our sense of wonder at the world is not achievedby retreating from science but by engaging with it.” (81)

- Richard Feynman

“God is in the details,” a friendof mine once quipped. The expression wasalready cliché at the time, and so I said in response, “Ironic, as that’s whereour knowledge and understanding of Nature begins, too.”

How do we come to understandanything without paying attention to the details of it? Whether it’s a political issue, a poem or aflower, to know what it is we have toexamine it and engage with the details of its existence. It has always struck me as significant thatboth naturalism and poetics – i.e., the ‘practice’ of poetic thinking andpoetic engagement with life; though which poetry arises – emphasize dwelling inthe particulars of their subject. When anaturalist studies a particular ecosystem, a location – such as a creek, ahill, a wooded area – or even a plant or animal; a tree or a deer, a Red-HeadedWoodpecker or a Day Lily – observation of it in detail is the primary lines ofengagement.

To know the Red-Headed Woodpeckeror the Tulip Tree only by a name and a dictionary generalization is not to knowanything at all, really. When Thoreaulived at Walden Pond, he kept detailed notebooks on the flora and fauna, on hiswalks and on what he saw and heard and smelt and felt and tasted. It was from out of these detailedobservations and engagements with Nature that his philosophy and poetry arose,organically. Surprising insight can sometimesflow from sustained attention to the details of some phenomenon. Concerning the great naturalist CharlesDarwin’s attention to detail, Lyanda Lynn Haupt says, in Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent (2006), that:

“Darwin’s watching, as it matured, maintained an air of brightexpectancy – a sense that, were he to watch even the smallest creature foryears on end, it would still possess secrets beyond the reach of hisknowledge. Such watching centers on arecognition of unplumbable depth, on a belief that al living beings are richbeyond measure.” (86)

_This experience has been shared by many naturalists, fromAudubon to John Muir to Stephen Jay Gould (whose evolutionary articles strikeme as just as much in the naturalist tradition as in the tradition ofbiological science writing, which it may be said arose out of naturalism). While we must see a phenomenon as a whole;with all of its parts integrated and articulated, depth of understanding comesfrom engaging with the particulars and then dwelling in deep reflection uponthe whole, having become familiar with the details.

Poets likewise pay homage to the detailsof existence. I think of Wordsworthamongst the daffodils or sojourning at Tintern Abbey. I think of Robert Frost dwelling in the minutiaof rural human life of New England or meditating out in the snow and frostedlandscapes. They took in the whole scopeof a scene or a situation and then, through attention to the details, came toinsight that was then communicated in their poetry.

When I ‘research’ an idea I havefor a poem, I review journal entries I’ve written on the subject, I meditate onexperiences I’ve had relating to the topic, and I even search written sourceson the topic. I then let all of theseelements ‘percolate’ in my imagination, until the poem actual flows forth ofits own accord. Poets say profoundthings because they have ‘studied’ the details of the life situation, object ortale they are re-presenting, and they do not like to gloss over anything, ifpossible. Granted, there are poets whosimply effuse and write whatever comes into their heads, and a fair amount ofthis kind of poetry is good. But even here,the poet has to have had some kind of depth of experience in order to sayanything that will stand beyond the moment of utterance.

The religious poet and visionary WilliamBlake is known to have said that, “To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction ofMerit. General knowledges are thoseknowledges that Idiots possess.” (1810). This, so far as it goes, sums up what I am thinking by “dwelling in theparticulars.” When I read this, I hearthe praxis of the poet, and am also reminded of the naturalist and – byextension – the scientist. This runeapplies to all three of these major epistemic endeavors.

2. Intellect and Sensuality

“The best science is an integrated product of our emotional andintellectual sides. … The greatest eurekas in science combine both sensualaesthetics and conceptual insight.” (13-14)

- Sean Carroll

EndlessForms Most Beautiful (2005)

“Darwin felt, and enjoyed, his own residence in the creatureworld. From almost the very beginning,he refused the arrogance of human separateness, allowing himself an entranceinto wild life, a unique communion with the natural world that gave hisintelligence broad play. In Darwin’srare watching, every creature is allowed to stand as each of us stands – bothas a distinct individual, and with our edges blurred, in flowing lineage.”(125)

- Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Pilgrimon the Great Bird Continent (2006)

There are many different ways toexperience the details of a phenomenon. We can experience it via our senses. We can experience an emotional ‘reaction’ to it. We can experience it through study anddevotion, and we can also reflect on it and think about it. Thinking is an experience; we know what it islike to think devoutly and reflect on something, and it also has results thatwe can then experience; the end result of prolonged reflection on a naturalphenomenon or the details of a scientific theory is itself an experience. Whereas I have been both a Rationalist and anEmotivist in my life, I have come to fuse these two abilities – sensuality andintellect – into one holistic praxis of engagement with the world.

We are emotional and also intellectual animals who have thecapacity for both deep experience and heightened thought. We can theorize and mull things over, just asnaturally as we can dance in the daily rounds of life, experiencing all that wecan take in. Thus it seems we shoulddevelop a praxis in which each of these aspects of our being can be expressedand tapped. Human beings are more than‘feeling animals’ and also more than ‘thinking machines,’ to call up two ratherover-used metaphors. The strugglebetween Plato and the Romanticists must be overcome once and for all by anintegration of thinking and feeling, intellect and emotion, mind andheart.

Dwelling in the particulars providesa person with the fodder for an holistic response to experience, and it is ashame to see poets and naturalists locked into either the sensual or theintellectual mode. It is not enoughsimply to experience Nature. To be awaketo Earth & Cosmos and our place in it, we must also reflect, think, dreamand ponder over what we experience. Therung between these two steps is study. Weneed to explore what is known about Nature and ourselves, and integrate thiswith the patterns of our experiential knowledge. Experience is what interests me in the wideworld. Study deepens my experience; itfleshes out the sensed particulars and helps to give heft to my sensual andemotional responses to my experience in Nature. Reflective thought also deepens my experience of self and world, byintegrating the fruits of study and the potent images, sensations and feelingsthat I have had while engaging with Nature at some level.

I have found that the dynamictension between Intellect & Sensuality is what often drives the quest forWisdom forward. Experiencing the world in all its particulars and taking in its vast canvases has its richness and rewards. But a catalog of naked experiences is not as rewarding in the end as it might seem. You can be left asking, "what does it all mean?" Abstract thought without experiential content -- on each of the three-fold levels; subjective inter-subjective and objective -- can become dried out and lifeless. Nature is full of mysterious things andstrange events as well as a cornucopeia of ordinary phenomena that can inspire wonder and awe when considered seriously and playfully, and not just taken for granted. Devout Reflection on such phenomena may lead the seeker ondown the path toward Wisdom's Henge. Linking Intellect & Sensuality brings us to a moreholistic engagement with Nature and thus with ourselves and our own existence.

3. Perspective and the ‘Real’ World.

“Beauty is a threshold event; it may make use of ordinary anduncomplicated things, but these serve as the bridge to a domain of meaning andsignificance.” (xx)

- Robert P Crease

ThePrism and the Pendulum (2003)

“Pray, oblige me, by removing to this other bench, and Iventure to assure you the proper light and shadow will transform the spectacleinto quite another thing.”

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Main Street

One of the things that I find mostfascinating about Nature is that it varies according to one’s perspective. While it remains ‘the same,’ we perceive itdifferently, depending on many factors. I’m not here referring to the difference ofperspective that arises from personal bias or from varied life-experience andcultural background, but rather to the fact that things and beings in thethree-dimensional space that we inhabit can be viewed from various angles andcan be experienced in different conditions and circumstances. The variations in perspective arising fromcultural and personal experience are relative. The kind of variance that I am fascinated with here is an objective elementof the Earth & Cosmos and does not depend upon personal bias or eventheoretical orientation.

As I sit here looking out throughour west window, I see the bird-feeder swinging in the wind. I see the Dogwood tree in the middle of ourlittle back yard, with all of the birds trying to alight on its branches; fromthere hoping to get to the birdfeeder. _I am surprised they are being so determined with the snow falling ashard as it is! I see the bird-feeder andthe Dogwood and other things as framed by the window from this vantagepoint. If I now go upstairs and look outone of the west windows onto the lawn below, I see the Dogwood from a differentvantage point. I see it from the twigsand branches down, instead of side-on. It is the same objective tree, but it looks very different from thisperspective. If I now boot up and put onmy coat and go out into the snow, I can go to the Dogwood and see it from otherperspectives as well. I can walk aroundit, and what I see of it ‘changes’ as I do so. But it is the same tree.

I’ve always taken NathanielHawthorne’s quote above from Main Streetas being about the subjective and intersubjective dimensions of life. He was, after all, writing family andinter-personal dramas out of which epiphanic moments arose. Since turning to science as the basis of myexperience and a main taproot of my spirituality and mysticism, I have come torecognize that Hawthorne was using a physical change of perspective – “Pray,oblige me, by removing to this other bench,” he says – to illustrate or pointtoward the change of perspective he would use in his stories to render outinsight and wisdom’s runes. Yet is it notinteresting to pay attention to this physical basis for the allusion? If I were to sit watching and feedingsquirrels from one bench in a park – as I see many people doing – and then‘remove’ myself to another bench, perhaps one all the across the green or thecommons, and sit there; everything changes. I see another set of particulars, my scene has another back-drop (treecovered hills, perhaps, rather than the park facilities), and I see a differentside of the trees up and down which the squirrels are scampering. Yet the objects I see are the same as theywere before, from an objective perspective.

I think it’s rather amazing tothink about this, and reflect on it. Weare – and now I’ll use a cliché –like fish in water where the three-dimensionality of space is concerned. We know of no other way it could be; we don’treally know what it would be like to live in more than three dimensions (I’mnot forgetting about time, here, as the fourth dimension; I’m just focusing onspace). Or less? There have been literary and philosophicalattempts to describe a two dimensional world and what it would be like to‘live’ in such space, but I always find them straining at the bit of themetaphor and importing, almost unavoidably, three-dimensional references andmodes of action, thought and experience. When the fascinating experiment is over, I always think, “but life as weknow it could not exist in two dimensions! Cells and everything else associated with life requiresthree-dimensionality.”

You might laugh at this meditationon the three dimensions of space, but I ask you to try it out for a while. I think it is important to reflect on, from a spiritual as well asphilosophical point of view. We are whatwe are because we exist in three spatial dimensions. Even a thought – conceived of in physicalterms as the result of a series of neurons firing – exists in three dimensions. Could a 2-dimensional being have a thought? What about a being existing in a 5 or 6dimensional universe; assuming there could be such a thing—could they have a‘thought?’ Part of what makes us – andeverything else in this universe – unique stems from our three dimensionality.

Look up from where you are readingthis. What do you see? If there is an object near you that you canpick up; do so. Look at it. See what you see. Turn it around, and look at it from anotherside. Unless it is a regular solid –like a box or a sphere – it will look different from each angle you observeit. William Blake claimed that he couldlook at something ordinary – like a knot in a tree – until he saw somethingwonderful and visionary. A similarreverie of revelation can occur from reflecting on the particulars of thingsfrom a naturalistic perspective. Wedon’t need to see angels and hear heavenly choirs to be stunned and amazed byNature. Practice experiencing thethree-dimensionality of our universe, and I believe that you will haveinteresting reflections.

A PHENOMENOLOGY OF WINTER’S SOLSTICE (Parts I & II)

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Part I: Experiencing the Seasons

“Days and nights, seasons and tides cycles of fertility, rest and activity: all are reflections of the rhythms imposed upon us by celestial motions. They have influenced where, and how, people may live; the elements that they must overcome; the shelter and dress they must construct, and the stories that they tell about it all.” (114)

- John D. Barrow The Artful Universe (1995)

Every season has a poetic as well as an experiential gist. There are stations that we find in each passing season where we are able to come to terms with what that season might mean to us, existentially, subjectively and inter-subjectively—as well as how it is constructed, objectively; i.e., in terms that science and rational engagement with Earth & Cosmos can discover and then explicate. In touch with our experiences, natural and personal, inward and outward going, we travel around the Circle of the Seasons, moving from one station to the next.

Dwelling in Earth & Cosmos, we must nurture an intentional awareness of the Seasons if we want to discover their symbolic ‘meaning.’ Intentional engagement with Nature leads to vivid reflections on life as lived. In each season the intentional sojourner discovers poetic touchstones of the gist of our existential flux & flow in time & space; our living-of-life as it is ‘given’ and also as we make it. We come to realize that the natural seasons have backgrounded our experiences as we grew up; even if we were largely unaware of them; at least until an awakening¦ happens. Once awake, dwelling in the circle of this ever earthen existence, deepening toward a fully naturalistic consciousness, we hope to come to experience glimmers of our true relation to Earth & Cosmos. The Earth is full of mysteries; the cosmos is wonderfilled and awesome. Life is too short to plumb the depths of Nature fully; yet we must begin do it—in order to come to anything like a full realization of who we are, where and when we are in the universe.

How do we come to understand things that are at once so familiar and yet so mysterious?

We do it by going out into Nature, following our intuitions as well as more rational directives, seeking knowledge as much as experience, aesthetic engagement as much as deeper insight. We travel purposely and deliberately through the turning gyre of the year, vividly experiencing our surroundings, both natural and cultural. We do it by reflecting devoutly on what we experience; both in the present and as the culmination – moment by moment – of our own personal history in the journey of life. We do it fully immersed in honest thinking, always open to the draft of creativity’s touchstones, listening to our emotions as markers of our experience and the guideposts of our needs. We do it by accepting that we are Nature trying to understand itself—that we are connected to the diverse array of natural beings; plants, animals and etc. – that populate this planet. We are animals; Nature is our mother—our source as well as our destiny. We are earthen creatures.

Our experience of Nature is demarcated by the Seasons; which are the annual ‘phases’ of the year through which we move as intentional sojourners and journeyers. The seasons depend on the relationship of the Earth to the Sun in its orbit; they occur because our planet is oriented to its star in a particular way; the Earth is tilted 23 1/3° from the plane of its orbit around the sun. This creates the varied climates that our planet experiences; the seasons that we pass through annually. Between these phases of the year are ‘turnstiles;’ i.e., events at the boundaries of the seasons known as solstices & equinoxes. In many cultures, each of the seasons and its turnstile has been endowed with specific symbolic content. Such symbolism arises as people focus on the turning of the year and what it means for their existence.

As delineated by natural signs of the seasons, the Poetic Naturalist’s year has its most likely arche at Winter’s Solstice, from which it proceeds through the Vernal Equinox, the Summer Solstice and then on and through the Autumnal Equinox and back to Winter’s Threshold. These four ‘events’ – arising as they do out of the interrelation of Earth & Sun – are the naturalistic ‘stations’ that demarcate for all sentient creatures the turning of the Wheel of the Year. Using these four ‘events’ as sign posts, we may make a path for ourselves through the year, existentially, poetically and creatively—always seeking a deeper understanding of the cycles out of which our consciousness has arisen and continues to arise.

The Winter Solstice has long been seen as the ‘origin’ of the year; in traditional northern hemisphere cultures it is connected to and represents death & rebirth. The Vernal Equinox represents the first flowering of fertility. It symbolizes the fecundity of the Earth as well as the fruition of what was ‘born’ at the Winter Solstice; the coming into its own of life. The Summer Solstice represents the culmination of the year’s fecundity. The Autumnal Equinox represents harvest and the gathering-in of energies in preparation for death and another renewal at Winter’s Solstice. This ‘symbolism,’ is, of course, contingent upon one’s place on the Earth, in terns of latitude.

Part II: Preluding the Winter Solstice Season

“There are clear imprints of an annual period in life-cycles of animals. Evolutionary adaptation will favor the survival of innate ‘clocks’ that time the birth of offspring to coincide with times when the chances of survival are highest, especially in the temperate regions where the seasons change abruptly.” (115)

- John D. Barrow The Artful Universe (1995)

As we come around the circle of the year to the Winter Solstice, what do we make of it? If we begin the year at the Winter Solstice, what might we take it to mean, existentially, philosophically, poetically? What does a poetic Naturalist celebrate – or observe, or participate in – as the Winter Solstice approaches? What constitutes an experience of the Winter Solstice?

Behind all of the religious and mythological associations long garnered to the Winter Solstice, one finds an experiential event tied into the orbit of our planet around the Sun; the tilt of the Earth on its axis, an event that arises out of the way in which Earth & Sun are situated with regard to each other. It is also determined by our geographical position on the planet as open, authentic experiencers. The first thing we must meditate upon is that the Winter Solstice is a geographically determined by where one lives; e.g., in the tropics, in the temperate zones or the arctic zones of the northern and southern hemispheres.

There is nothing ‘universal’ about the Winter Solstice.

Yet Winter’s Solstice is not just an arbitrary event. It is a physical happening; a phenomenon to be observed and experienced in our particular situation on this planet-home of ours. It is available to every sentient being; regardless of beliefs, culture or traditions (so long as these don’t blind a person to Nature). It is an event dependent upon a particular aspect of the arrangement of matter and energy in our solar system. There would be no Winter Solstice, in either hemisphere, if our planet were not tilted on its axis. There might well be solstices & equinoxes if the Earth were tilted a little more or a little less. But a lack of tilt would have resulted in a whole different planetary ecology, and thus a whole different array of evolved life forms! We are here, in part, because the planet is tilted on its axis in such a way that we get four seasons in temperate zones and two seasons in both equatorial and arctic zones. As such, the Winter Solstice – like the other three stations of the earthen year – is dependent on naturalistic conditions.

If you move further north or further south, from any position on the planet, your experience of the solstices & equinoxes will be different. The days & nights are almost equal at the equator while, at the poles, there is a diurnal year—half of which is spent in daylight and half in darkness. Thus I reiterate the point that any person’s experience of it will depend upon where in the world they are! My experience of this particular season of the year is conditioned by the fact that I live in western Pennsylvania, in a specific temperate ecology, with distinct flora & fauna in my environs. The weather that we get here, and the terrain in which I move; both of these factors play into my experience of Winter’s Solstice and anything I might celebrate as a result of my experiences.

Science can tell us why the Winter Solstice happens and how it is experienced – physically and environmentally – in all latitudes on the Earth where four seasons exist. Must you have four seasons to have a Winter Solstice Season?

At the poles, where the year is divided into two six month stretches; one of darkness and one of light—would there be some experience corresponding to solstices and equinoxes? There would be ‘dawn’ and ‘dusk’ – six months apart. Then, I suppose, one might calculate to a point halfway through the dark period – the “darkest day” – that would correspond to Winter’s Solstice? The other point of the year – half way through the daylight months – would correspond to Summer’s Solstice? These dates would probably correspond to the Winter and Summer Solstices in their respective hemispheres. As I don’t live in these regions, I have no first hand experience of this. If anyone living in these climes would care to share their experience with me, I would appreciate it.

At the equator, and within the zone of latitudes between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, there would be two days of most intense heat and light corresponding to the equinoxes in the two adjoining hemispheres. On the vernal & autumnal equinoxes, the earth is positioned relative to the Sun in such a way that the Sun’s rays are striking the planet dead-on at the equator. Alternate to these two dates, there would be two dates – 21 December and 21 June – when the Sun’s light would fall directly on one of the Tropics (Cancer or Capricorn). Between the Tropics, there could be no Solstice and equinoxes as there are above and below these latitudes. Equatorial peoples, therefore have a quite different experience of seasonality. Even people at the poles have a correlate experience to Winter and Summer Solstice; at the equator there must be a very different sense of the seasons. As I have never lived there, either, I would welcome reflections on the seasonality of the tropics from anyone who has lived there long enough and who has though about this.

If this analysis is accurate, then the Winter Solstice is really an experience possible only above and below the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. This must be figured into any phenomenology of the Winter Solstice that we attempt to construct. We must also allow that any phenomenology of this season is going to be dependent upon one’s particular location in the Earth; latitude and topography will alter the experiences that we have, and thus alter the symbols, metaphors and stories that seem appropriate to the season.

¦ How do we awaken ourselves? How do we come to be waeccan? It often happens by accident. We have an experience or someone says something that stirs our consciousness to the fact that we are walking through life as if asleep. We are sleep-walkers on our feet, going through the motions. Though we chafe at the realization, we sometimes fall back asleep again. Yet, there may come a time, when the impetus to wakefulness takes root in us, inspiring in us a struggle toward fully waeccan consciousness. The fortunate is always a fortunate one; it is always a fortuitous experience that lures us toward wakefulness—It is an epiphany. The moment of awakening is often so subtle and yet so surprising that it becomes a turnstile on the path that we eventually realize that we are on; seeking wisdom and wholeness, becoming who we are. Once we have taken hold of such a moment, our course is irrevocably changed; we begin moving toward waeccan consciousness.

A PHENOMENOLOGY OF WINTER’S SOLSTICE (III)

2011-12-14T22:28:00.001-05:00

Part III: A Naturalist’s Phenomenology of the Winter Solstice

Once we have explored the naturalistic parameters of the Winter Solstice, what can a more subjective and aesthetic experience tell us about it? As someone open to Earth & Cosmos, the entire cosmos comes into play in my meditations. Participating in Nature at a particular season constitutes the novitiate for poetic creation. The Winter Solstice Season is replete with deep sensory and experiential associations. This is an existential experience. It is constituted by:

1. Colors of the season: Blue & Gray, Black, brown and Green

The colors of this season here in western Pennsylvania constitute a background (a kind of ‘palette’) for other experiences. Blue and Gray are prominent, as are browns, black and greens. As the last of the leaves fall from the trees during early November, the Winter Wonderland is revealed, even before snow comes—in the shapes of trees and the presence of the land emergent from out behind the summer foliage in which it had been clothed. Naked – exposed to our view – we now see the lay of the land itself for the first time since Spring. We see the contours of the earth – and it is colored brown, black and green.

The skies are often clouded, here in western Pennsylvania, and their color has a distinctive array of winter shading from blue and white to gray, grayer and dark gray. Slate blues and slate grays are prominent at the tides of Winter’s Solstice. Whenever I begin seeing these distinctive colorings, I intuitively start anticipating Winter’s Solstice.

2. Long, ever Lengthening Shadows

Ever since the end of August, more or less, the lengthening of shadows can be noticed. This lengthening is due to the declining altitude of the Sun as it passes across the sky. When I see the shadows lengthening, over a watchful course of days and weeks, I know that we are on the downside of the Wheel of the Year, heading ultimately toward Winterwoodmas. By November the length of the shadows at dawn and dusk is one of those phenomena that inspires me to start thinking of Winter’s Solstice and getting in the mood for it! The shadows will lengthen until the eve of Winter’s Solstice, after which they will begin to shorten again over a course of days and weeks of watchful waiting.

3. Snow

Though there is no telling – in western Pennsylvania at least – when the snow will come or how much will fall, it is still an iconic phenomenon of the Winter Solstice Season. The first spitting snow in October or perhaps early November signals, for me, the end of the Autumn. At that moment I know that the beautiful season of many-colored leaves and the harvest, strange tales and pleasant warm days on the verge of the chill – is passing away. As November’s gloom (what the Celts called “an dudlach”) is transformed into a more snowy time, we know that Winter’s Solstice is hearkening to us. Some years the snow doesn’t come until sometime in December, extended our dwelling in the beauteous “the Gloom.”

4. Animals

While there are wild animals in the woods all through the year, there is more of a tendency to see them at the end of the Autumn and before Winter really sets in, as the fallen foliage opens and a clearer view of the wide woods becomes possible. Visibility increases, and then we may better have a sighting of the animals that were hidden by summer’s rich, green cloak! Rabbits, squirrels and deer become iconic of the season leading up to Winter’s Solstice.

5. Evergreens

Once the summer foliage has fallen, the presence of evergreens also begins to be noticed. No wonder people associate evergreens and pine trees with the Winter Solstice Season! During the summer months, the evergreens are often inconspicuous; they blend-in with the rest of the green that so magnificently clothes the woods! As Winter’s Solstice approaches, however, evergreens stand-out from the background of browns and blacks.

As Winter comes on and Autumn passes away, I am drawn to evergreens in the woods. When driving out country roads I notice patches of evergreen trees on the ridges, along the creeks that come close the road or in towns that I pass through. Out hiking olden trails, I am struck by the presence of a pine or fir tree along the way as I come around a bend. It is a vivid reminder of the summer that has gone. I often stop to behold the evergreens. I am reacquainted with old friends and discover new ones.

Pines and Firs are not the only evergreens. There are also bushes and shrubs that hold their needles or leaves; Holly, Mistletoe, and Bayberry. I look at the ground and see the mosses – the lycopodia, seven species in all – amongst the brown leaves covering the rich, black earth in the woods and along the roads. Everywhere you look, in the Winter Solstice Season, green presences in Nature; much more precious now than perhaps we thought it was in the summer, when everything was greened and fecund.

6. Creeks and Streams

As with the animals, all of the smaller waterways now come out of the cover of foliage and presence to us in the woods as Winter’s Solstice approaches. I often see portions of streams and creeks that were totally obscured during the summer, and go to renew my friendship with them. These creeks and streams will be visible throughout the winter months, but they are especially noticed right after the fall foliage falls and an dudlach characterizes the landscape—until the weather changes and they are obscured again under ice and an overburden of snow.

7. Constellations

Turning our eyes skyward at night, we see a specific set of stars and constellations. Winter Solstice – like every other season of the year – gives us access to a particular vista on the universe beyond our planet. Our situation in orbit around the Sun reveals constellations like Orion, Taurus, Canis Major, and the Pleiades to our view in the northern hemisphere. Orion dominates the Winter sky, followed by Canis Major. Betelgeuse in Orion and Sirius in Canis Major are stars of interest that we can meditate on while observing the skies at this time of the year. Aldebaran in Taurus is about 150 times as luminous as our own Sun, and is bright orange to the naked eye. If we meditate upon the earth during the day, perhaps at night we should meditate upon the heavens.

All of these phenomena would be implicit to any poetic description of Nature at the tides of Winter’s Solstice at the latitude where I dwell. As meditation on accumulated experience gives rise to a phenomenology of the season, each of these phenomena plays their part in the opening of consciousness to the meaning of this season for our lives as naturalists, poets and mystics grounded in the revelations of science.

In addition to these phenomena, there are more subjective experiences that also characterize, for me, the Winter Solstice Season. Many of these are connected to the natural phenomena I have just described. Most of them are related to the increasing darkness in which we sojourn as the Winter Solstice approaches. These include:

1. Life at a slower pace—

The year is winding down. The days are growing shorter. Thus, we naturally slow down and take our time more; or – at least – we should. The lessening of the light tells our senses that it’s time to sleep. Thus, there is a natural tendency to be sleepier and to grow quieter at this time of the year. Many people experience frustration and exhaustion – physical, emotional and mental – at the Winter Solstice because they are doing too much. It is a time for rest and repose; but our culture turns it into one of the most exhaustively extroverted times of the year; i.e., the Christmas season—with all of its shopping, socializing and bingeing (both religious and secular; i.e., emotional and materialistic). A natural phenomenology of the Winter Solstice Season would inspire people do no more than they need to do at this time of year; it should be time to stop and experience the growing darkness. If our schedules do not permit this, we should at least try and find quiet times (an hour here and there) to retreat from the hubbub and center ourselves in ourselves.

2. Repose—

I also see the Winter Solstice Season as a time to take repose. This means more than just becoming a couch potato! It is not about being lazy, but rather turning inward and seeking renewal. It is time to recoup our energies and review our lives. What have we done for the last year? Where are we? What might we want to do or change in the coming months? It is no accident – from a naturalistic point of view; understanding the symbolic import of the season – that Winter Solstice has long been a time for resolutions, reconciliation and restitution. As we take time for repose, we may realize just how far our lives are out of sync with Nature and what we might do to right our path. Repose is a matter of quiet self-evaluation and a re-tying of connections with ideas, beliefs, ideals, and personal purpose.

3. Existential Intimacy—

As a result of the reduction of horizons brought on by the increasing darkness and shortened daylight, we experience our worlds as ‘reduced’ in existential length and breadth at Winterwoodmas. This reduction in ‘experienced space’ – rooted in physical, sensory factors – can be allowed to result in an increased sense of intimacy with our surroundings.

Just as dinner by candlelight adds a romantic tinge to a get-together, so the decreasing light at this time of the year creates a similar mood. Instead of it characterizing a couple of well-chosen hours, however, it engulfs the whole of our lived-experience. It can be treated as a boon or a curse; the choice is ours to make.

For some people, this experience induces a kind of claustrophobia, though this can be alleviated by meditation and by embracing the reality of the season as a naturalistic fact. We can either experience the growing darkness as a restriction – which leads in some people to an existential anxiety – or we can experience it as a natural cloistering. As the Winter Solstice approaches, we go into our cell and find our self; alone in the four-fold of existence.

At Winter’s Solstice we enter into the cloister of ourselves by way of our senses. Enclosed more and more in darkness, we can experience a kind of bio-peace that comes from slowing down and being stilled in the growing night.

4. A Yearning for Light—

Accompanying this growing existential intimacy with our surroundings and ourselves is a natural yearning for light. It is for this very naturalistic reason – a response to darkness that arises out of our senses – that many northern cultures have associated fire with Winter’s Solstice. Our habit of putting up decorative electric lights and candles and other decorations that illuminate our place of dwelling through December stems from this yearning for light that we experience as the days grow dark.

5. A Profound Earthen Intimacy—

As an extension of a general existential intimacy; the shrinking of our horizons—we often experience a deep intimacy with Nature at this time of the year, though one that is very different from the natural intimacy we experience in the other seasons. This can be experienced by going to natural places – nemetons, for instance – and sojourning there; participating in them and experiencing them according to the growing darkness that is increasingly embracing us. Places we love in Nature during the Spring, Summer and Fall will be very different at Winter’s Solstice.

Intimacy with our environs is, of course, characteristic of any season; yet the kind of intimacy we experience at Winter’s Solstice is just as unique as at any other season. At this tide of the year I often feel drawn into places that have a natural intimacy to them, such as nemetons in the woods enveloped in grape vines or encompassed by evergreens. I also go out to vistas with aesthetic views of the landscape. I like to experience sunrises and sunsets in places where, in the summer, I cannot see the Sun coming up or going down. Views of fog covering or sailing across a landscape always inspire in me a wintry melancholy

6. Aesthetic Contemplation—

As we are led into existential and earthen intimacy, marking time by the lengthening of shadows, meditations may well lead to an experience of aesthetic contemplation peculiar to this season. There is an aesthetic contemplation characteristic of every season. At Winter’s Solstice it focuses on the physical and natural characteristic particular to this time of the year.

Earthen meditation may lead to contemplation. The aesthetics of our winter surroundings will stimulate a state of contemplation with a particular tenor and temper to it. We commune with Nature via the aesthetics of particular phenomena as well as the aesthetics of whole “systems” of phenomena.

Contemplation is a state of utter passivity that is also an active engagement with what we are meditating on; scenery, icons of a season, as well as ideas inspired by these phenomena. Contemplation can happen naturally, when our senses get ‘suspended,’ in that state religious mystics have called ‘the prayer of quiet.’ This state has healthy, natural correlates; a ground within the biology of consciousness. An intensified version of normal consciousness, it can be induced via chant, rhythmic breathing, dancing, sex and meditation. Aesthetic contemplation is induced by our immersion in the aesthetics of our environs.

7. A Revelatory Experience of Darkness—

This is more or less a culmination of the Winter Solstice season as a whole. As we journey into the darkness, abide and revel in it, we come to an intuitive and poetic grasp of the meaning of darkness in our lives. From one perspective, everything emerges out of darkness and returns to it; we come from the womb and end in the grave. Existentially we are sourced in darkness; then we awaken—to begin our quest for wisdom, leaving Plato’s Old Cave.

By experiencing the darkness we come to an appreciation of how important our sight is. Unless we are used to it, a limitation of our usual range of sight is usually experienced as a limitation on our being-in-becoming. In the darkness we can become reacquainted with our other senses—especially hearing, touch and smell. To sit in the darkness and meditate is a very different experience from meditating in lighted settings, and at Winter’s Solstice I try and experience a range of settings for my meditations, from well lit rooms on sunny days to candle and decorative light-lit rooms in the evening, to meditation in a totally darkened room—i.e., my bedroom before the sun comes up.

8. Existential Homecoming—

By participating fully in Winter’s Solstice, I often experience a sense of “coming home to myself,” in the sense that a lot of my extraneous and unnecessary activity is limited by the growing darkness. I begin to ask, “What’s really necessary?” “What can I do without doing?”

In this way, we may come to a kind of existential centering; a “homecoming” in ourselves. We come home to ourselves as we intentionally dwell within reduced existential horizons. This facilitates – when appropriated positively – a spiritual self-(re)discovery. Whereas through the year we can get more or less lost in activity, at Winter’s Solstice we have the opportunity rediscover our true selves, even our ‘best’ selves. Then, after Winter’s Solstice, we can venture out again, into the light, renewed and refreshed.

9. An Experience of Death & Rebirth—

Meditating on the turning of the season, we notice that there is, at a specific point, a shortest day and a longest night. Following this, the night begins to grow shorter as the days get longer. Being aware of this transition and meditating on its meaning for us enables us to experience it more profoundly than if it comes and goes without notice. At the actual Solstice Event, if we have reflected on the symbolism of the Solstice Event, we may actually participate a symbolic death & rebirth for ourselves; an existential ‘ending’ and a ‘new beginning’—and this can happen for us every year at this time, if we treat the Winter Solstice Season as an intentional, spiritual journey. The longest night can be experienced as like a ‘death.’ As the light starts to return; we can then experience a reinvigoration of our energies and a revivification of our best ideals and aspirations.

As I have reflected on the Winter Solstice Season over the years, these are the experiences that come to the fore and seem to drive my sense of what the Season is all about. You may have other experiences that characterize your devout experience of this Season, and I welcome your account of them. There are ways of experiencing each season that refresh, uplift, inspire and transform us. Nature provides us with enough substantial fodder for spiritual growth and transformation, that we should not need the warp and woof of superstition to succor and sustain us! I hope that in these blogs I have offered you food for thought, and helped illumine possible pathways for an enjoyment of the Winter Solstice that is grounded in naturalism and science. Blessed be!

Earthen Spirituality & Storytelling (26 November 2011)

2011-11-26T19:24:00.001-05:00

“What we call fiction is the ancient way of knowing, the total discourse that antedates all the special vocabularies.”

- E. L. Doctorow Esquire, August 1986

“We learn who we are through the stories we embrace as our own. – The story of my life is structured by the larger stories (social, political, mythic) in which I understand my personal story to take place.”

- Sallie McFague Speaking in Parables (1975)

“The stories scientists tell are not simply bedtime tales. They place us in the world, and they can force us to alter the way we think and what we do.” (49)

- Thomas Levenson Ice Times (1989)

As we adventure though the seasons, meditating and reflecting on our experiences, a narrative inevitably emerges. “Remember when x happened?” “Last year, at about this same time …” When did we last go to x (i.e., a particular place)? Want to go again today?” “All of the things that have happened there!” The longer we immerse ourselves in Nature’s cycles, going deep and ever deeper into what the round of the seasons presents us, the more insightful will be our stories; even our anecdotes of ‘this hike’ or ‘that visit’ to a certain natural vista that has inspired or that sill haunts us with intimations of meaning.

While there are stories that can be told about every aspect of our lives; and these should be told and culled for their meaning—I want to focus on the stories that emerge from our hiking and sauntering, sojourning and dwelling while out and about in Nature. What stories are we moved to tell ourselves (in a journal or audio record) after a hike? What tales do we want to share with others _and why? By weaving stories out of our experiences our in the woods and fields, we gather ourselves toward the discernment of the meaning of our lives, in increments of moments that yet may seem like a giant’s steps.

Meaning is definitely tied to experience and is cultivated through reflection and meditation on what has happened to us. We are each a complex association of experiences; a pattern of things remembered – those that have impressed themselves upon our souls – and thus we express ourselves via the impact our experiences have had on us, for better or for worse. This expression often has a narrative dimension. Part of the gist of a spiritual life is learning how to discern which experiences contribute to our overall well-being and which detract from it—and then to choose the experiences that best facilitate us in our becoming. Becoming is the work of the spiritual adventurer; the charge is to imagine what you might be at your best. The stories we tell ourselves may either help or hinder our self-realization. (Yes, I know_ whole blogs could be written on this subject alone; but I’ll stop there, for now).

One of the prime venues in which stories arise is in our experiences of Earth & Cosmos. While out on the hoof, things happen; we see animals and plants that fascinate and amuse and inspire us, we experience natural phenomena – waterfalls, creeks, rivers, clouds, trees, groves, fields, storms, wind, fragrances and magnificently colored scenes – that lift us out of the ordinary rounds of our daily experiences; even our experiences out in the woods and fields – and that may propel us toward the very thresholds of self-transcendence. We occasionally have epiphanies; the beauty and awe of which we may recount to ourselves and others for years to come (I still tell the story of a strange experience a friend and I had one October night on a country road in 1982 _Ask me about it, sometime.). We awaken to the Earth aesthetically, and then we want to communicate what we have experienced, whether to ourselves alone or to others as well.

It has always interested me that all of the stories of our hikes and saunters, all of our time spent dwelling in Nature and sojourning at fascinating, intriguing, inspiring vistas, are set within the wider framework of the story of the walk itself. A walk is structured like a story; it has a beginning, a middle and an end. In fact, a story – however ordinary – could be told about every single hike we have ever taken. (My journals are suffuse with accounts of hundreds of walks I’ve been on, in which I record whatever I experienced that characterized or was peculiar to that particular walk). The aesthetic experiences we have and the natural wonders we witness, as well as the epiphanies we occasionally have while out on walking, form the incidents in the plot of our story of going “there and back again.”

But we must learn to tell stories about our experience. Recounting events and experiences comes naturally to our species, yet there are good and bad ways to weave tales, as well as good and bad stories. If we are going to grow toward Wisdom’s Henge, we must learn to discern which stories are best told, and which ones, while acknowledged, should perhaps not be over emphasized. _Or maybe they need to be related in a particular way; a certain context, or told under a specific tone. There are stories that kill the spirit and the deaden the soul, as well as stories that uplift and encourage. While we must not deceive ourselves about the nature of life as lived in this world, and so stories of tragedies and corruption, greed and violence must be acknowledged and told in the right settings and for the best of reasons. Ultimately, a spiritual praxis requires that we develop a ‘hermeneutic’ – that is, an interpretive theory – by which to cull out the stories that edify while not neglecting the stories that reveal the ways in which life is broken and lives ruined, potential lost and gifts squandered.

Most of the stories of things that happen to us while out on the hoof, hiking in whatever natural vistas are available to us, will be of the uplifting and edifying kind; though terrible things can happen on a hike. Spiritually considered, the purpose of hiking should be to experience Nature and learn about it, seeking those touchstones that will inspire us and help us to keep on living toward the goal of self-realization; i.e., flourishment. Nature is a reservoir of awe-inspiring and mysterious phenomena, and by immersing ourselves in Nature we hope to discover vibrant sources of self-revelation. Yet make no mistake about Nature; it is not ‘there’ for our edification, and ‘cares’ nothing for us! Hikers can and have been injured and maimed and have even died while out in Nature. So care must be taken; yet the experiences we glean from our hikes and sojourns are fecund with the seeds of meaning.

I have found that spiritual storytelling in response to hiking and sauntering, sojourning and dwelling in Nature has three main thrusts. First, we may use stories to help us understand a natural phenomenon, as when observing some insect or bird or plant closely, attempting to understand its behavior or markings, its place in the ecosystem or its relationship to other creatures, etc. This is naturalism at its best, and is a doorway to scientific engagement with Nature. Second, we may generate stories out of our experience in Nature that illumine our life situation; helping us discern our character and understand our behavior, our hopes and beliefs. Getting out in Nature – away from town and people; crowds and noise – can be a denuding experience as well as a refreshing and recreating one. Insights sometimes arise out of the silence and solitude of a walk unbidden. This is personal illumination. Third, spiritual storytelling helps us discern and keep to our path through life. Life is a journey; metaphorically – an extended ‘walk.’ I find the metaphor of a walk to be closely related to the question of the life I am leading. And so my experiences in Nature are often a primary locus wherein I may gain insight into where I am going, not just who I am. After a potent walk, I may see the next few steps along the path I am traveling more clearly than I did before going out on the hoof.

It is enough to get out into the woods and experience Nature at first-hand. You must go responsibly and take care in your going and coming home again. The experience of walking is refreshing to both body and spirit; just being out on the hoof will often help release stress, as it exercises muscles that need to be freed of their torpor. Walking enhances your breathing. But then, once you have been out walking for a while, reflecting on what you have experienced, others benefits may come. I find that these stem directly from being out of my daily rounds; out of the patterns of my ordinary responsibilities. After being in the woods for an hour or so, moving ever forward, breathing more deeply than I often do while sitting at this screen or doing what I do at work, my whole body sometimes tingles_ coming awake. My shoulders un-stress and I begin to sweat more freely. There is a sense of liberation; followed by a quieting of the senses and the mind—I find myself in a state of walking meditation.

Sometimes it is harder to get to this point; perhaps too much is going on in life’s rounds, and the body is ‘clenched’ and so the spirit is stifled. On days like this, it sometimes takes the experience of a beautiful scene or a specific encounter with some phenomenon to bring on the release that leads to full openness and physical refreshment. The sudden sighting of a deer or the hearing of a certain bird, or the coming upon a field of vividly colored flowers or a patch of ferns, or perhaps coming up to a cliff or steep hillside that allows a broadened view of rolling hills or a valley below – these then become the vehicles of the release and genuine refreshment I crave and need. It is a health-inducing experience.

Beyond the act of hiking out in the natural world, reflecting on and sharing the narratives of our walks and experiences extends and deepens their impact. Learning how to tell stories in a way that is spiritually edifying and that increases our store of knowledge, as well as revealing who we are to ourselves and others, is an art that must be nurtured with great patience and an acquired discernment that grows as we move along a spiritual path consciously taken. Telling tales from the seasons as the years pass becomes a way of remembering our experiences and re-connecting with the impact that particular experiences have had on us. Telling tales from the seasons also helps us stay our course; through them we direction ourselves in Earth & Spirit toward Wisdom’s Henges.

∫

I’ve been adventuring though the seasons for 40 + years, now, and the stories I have gathered have filled books (literally; each of my published books represents a cache of stories and ideas grounded in if not more directly gleaned from my walks in the woods). My book, Tales from the Seasons (2008) came out of the same era in my life as WellSprings of the Deer (2002) and The Fires of Yule (2001), and is composed of stories and poems that I long used in spiritual instruction and direction. It is constructed as a series of cycles through the seasons, with stories and poems set at particular dates. The stories and poems represent moments in time and experience that resonate with some sensed meaning connected to Earth & Spirit.

Adventuring Through the Seasons (20 November 2011)

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"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.” (29)

- Carl Sagan The Demon-Haunted World (1996)

“Days and nights, seasons and tides cycles of fertility, rest and activity: all are reflections of the rhythms imposed upon us by celestial motions. They have influenced where, and how, people may live; the elements that they must overcome; the shelter and dress they must construct, and the stories that they tell about it all.” (114)

- John D. Barrow The Artful Universe (1995)

“The practice of observing the natural world – of getting down on one’s hands and knees before a tide pool, a lichen, a quail, a silent stone, learning from such wild things all one can about their place, their life, their needs, and doing this over and over again, over days and years – is humility’s medium. In such moments, our vision is renewed, our sense of proper place in the world is both strengthened and deepened.” (110)

- Lyanda Lynn Haupt Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent (2006)

Life is an adventure; spiritually understood. While there will be quiet times as well as stormy ones, and though we are sometimes more at home and at ease with ourselves and our path than at others, living is always a matter of negotiating the choices and maneuvering around or through the obstacles that come to be ‘in our way,’ whether by accident or intent. We make plans, and think we know where we are going, but we don’t usually end up exactly where we intended. This is the adventure_ to path consciously; not to be drawn along by the crowd; to be awake in the flux and flow—not to be a pawn of circumstances, if we can help it.

This is what spirituality is all about, from one vantage point; awakening, living intentionally, staying in the moment while remaining open to possibilities and nurturing an awareness of the ‘big picture’ as it unfolds and a it is ‘disclosed’ to us as we live. Given who we are, any genuine spiritual adventuring today is also going to be characterized by an attention to Nature; for we are manifestations of the Earth & Cosmos. Like every other human being, and every other living thing on this planet, we are each an end result of the processes of evolution that have brought us into existence.

That we are of the earth makes us ‘earthen;’ to acknowledge this inspires us to live life close to the Earth; to experience being in the Earth (not merely “on” it); to express our being as of the Earth. As the Earth is tilted on its axis, our planet is characterized by seasons that are different at different latitudes, so to be spiritually awake to where we are, we must experience ourselves and moving through the seasons. As the seasons are different at different latitudes, a naturalistic spirituality will not be some monolithic thing; it will not be the same for everyone everywhere. It is specific to your location in the Earth; what latitude you live at, and thus what kind of seasons you live through each year in the turning of the wheel. I have always lived in a temperate zone; where there are four seasons. Thus, for me, life is characterized by an awareness of my movement through the cycle Winter—Spring—Summer—Autumn.

As a spiritual adventurer, I strive to experience each season as deeply and vividly as possible; to go through each year with anticipations of what is coming as well as with an acceptance of what-is. When it's winter, it's winter—and I allow myself to experience that. When it's summer; it's summer—and I likewise allow myself to experience that. To live awake within the Earth & Cosmos is to seek to always be in-touch with what's going on in the natural world and to live-out-of that experience, not in denial of it. There is beauty and sublimity in each season that we can experience; if we allow ourselves to be awake to it. There may also be something about each season that frustrates us; something we would rather avoid or 'wish' weren't part of what is 'given' to us in that season. In response to this, I find it healthy to accept what cannot be changed, to try and learn to live with it; embracing as I am able as part of what it means to be dwelling in the Earth where I am.

However we live and whatever path we are on, we are always in the Earth; we are creatures who have evolved on this planet – in these particular bio-systems – and have specific life histories, going all the way back to the Archean Period (2.5 – 4.6 billion years ago). Any genuine spirituality – not to mention any religion – must take account of this deep history of our being-in-becoming, or else be engulfed in illusion. As the quest for truth is a part of any genuine spirituality, to persist in believing things that have been proven untrue, is to be spiritually self-deceived; or even worse – deluded by spiritual mentors and teachers who teach these falsehoods. Creationism is one of the worst lies being perpetrated by so-called spiritual leaders today—it alienates people from how the Earth & Cosmos have actually come into being, and – if you believe that a Divine Being ‘created’ the universe, this lie blinds you to that Divine Creator’s actual creativity.

To understand the Earth & Cosmos, we must have at least a basic comprehension of the ‘Big Story’ implied by the revelations of the various sciences. About this story, Eric Chaisson once commented, in Cosmic Evolution (2001) that:

“The evolutionary epic … is as ennobling as any religion—enlightening, majestic, awesome, providing a sense of the “ultimate.” Material reality, when scientifically analyzed in both depth and breadth, brings to mind not only elegant grandeur and a sacred narrative comparable to any religious tradition, but also enriching empiricism and a genuine connection to the cosmos extending into deep history much older than most religions.’ (221)

“Put bluntly yet magnanimously, the scenario of cosmic evolution grants us unparalleled “big thinking,” from which may well emerge the global ethics and planetary citizenship likely needed if our species is to remain part of that same cosmic-evolutionary scenario.” (224)

Beyond this, an earthen spirituality must also embrace our aesthetic and personal experiences of Nature, as well as the stories that emerge from our own wanderings, engagement with natural phenomena and our enjoyment of particular places in Nature. Coming to consciousness of our place in Nature requires both (1) experiencing Nature for ourselves and (2) a devotion to studying the Earth & Cosmos from a scientific vantage point. An aesthetic appreciation of Nature and ourselves as manifestations of Nature complements these two elements, and enables us to move from understanding to felt significance; that is, ‘meaning.’

Being open to Nature from an aesthetic and experiential standpoint brings our emotions into play. This is spiritually rewarding and beneficial, as we are emotional as well as rational beings. To live spiritually, you must incorporate all that you are; everything that would make you a healthy human being—from physical to emotional to mental health—into your vision of what it is possible to become in this life. Spiritualities that deny part of human nature usually end in distorting the human soul and killing the spirit; they may have the a traditional ‘form’ of spirituality, yet they neglect the ‘power’ that is possible, because their understanding of human nature is truncated or distorted. A spirituality grounded in our experience and understanding of Nature and in what science has revealed to us about ourselves has the potential to avoid such distortions.

Adventuring though the seasons ultimately leads – almost inevitably – to depth experience and epiphanies; i.e., those moments when the extraordinary emerges from the ordinary. Those who dwell deeply in their earthen condition; open to Nature and all of its nuances—become able to 'see' more than those who just go through life at the surfaces of things. Depth experience is the result of immersion in Nature over many years; it leads one on toward wisdom’s henges. For those who live awake to beauty and mystery of Earth & Cosmos, what can be called 'extraordinary' experiences periodically emerge out of the ordinary background in which we immerse ourselves as naturalists.

As you path through each season where you live, experiencing the ordinary things that are characteristic of it, you sensitize yourself to be ready for 'unique' or 'epiphanic' experiences when they happen. Standing out from the ordinary daily rounds and experiences with which you have become intensely intimate; these experiences – these sudden moments of brighter awakening or ‘self transcendence’ in which an insight or a sensed meaning may be couched – are vivid surprises, and they may only last a few moments, perhaps minutes, before fading. You cannot make them happen, but if you are adventuring through the seasons in a spiritually open way, you will be more likely to be ‘present’ to them when they do happen.

Another fruit of adventuring though the seasons is the tendency to gather up symbols, natural ‘icons’ and themes along the way that characterize each season for you. As you get below the surface experience of your surroundings and begin to gather touchstones of depth, certain things will come to be closely identified with each season. Over the last couple of years I have discussed in these blogs various symbols and imagery that have come to characterize each season for me, as an earthen adventurer. I have my “Hut of Dwelling” to which I go in meditation during the Winter, as well as the “Dolmen on the Heath” that I visit in the Summer. There are places out in the woods that I associate with each season, as well as themes – such as “Emergence” in the Spring and “Harvest” in the Autumn. By ‘collecting’ these symbols, themes and places, we can intensify our experience of Nature and distill meaning from it.

Eventually, an earthen seeker of wisdom will have a cache of experiences, symbols, memories, themes and imagined scenarios to draw upon for spiritual succor and sustenance. Adventuring through the seasons becomes the ‘nourishment’ that one needs to keep going; to continue living life and discovering ever more touchstones of meaning and self-understanding in the truths of Nature—of which we are manifestations. Meditation on Nature – in general brush strokes as well as in its particulars – becomes the praxis that sustains, keeps one alert and generates new insight and understanding. A return to the woods or a walk along a familiar trail becomes the desired re-creation that is needed to refresh the senses, re-enliven the soul and help engender flourishment; one of the primary goals of any genuine and life-affirming spirituality. Ultimately, an earthen spiritual adventurer will have their entire self-understanding transformed by their experiences, studies and meditations—they will see themselves as they truly are, and therein find the key to wisdom’s henges. So mote it be.

“In nature we never see anything isolated; everything is in connection with something.”

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ruins & the Harvest: Autumn Themes (23 September 2011)

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“Beauty is a threshold event: it may make use of ordinary and uncomplicated things, but these serve as the bridge to a domain of meaning and significance.” (xx)

- Robert P Crease

The Prism and the Pendulum: The Ten Most beautiful Experiments in Science (2003)

In the turning of the seasons there are many thresholds; many events that mark the passing of time in its spiral dance; the onward movement of existence through the inevitable march of moments. These moments may pass without ceremony; our lives slipping into the void slowly without notice or remark. Or, we can mark these moments of transition; thresholds in the pattern of the annual cycle—and make our lives more distinct, more earthen, more tied to Earth & Cosmos. By establishing markers for these thresholds, we can note time’s passage, nurture a quality of self-awareness that enables us to remember seasons that have passed, and plot out future directions and explorations for ourselves with conscious intent. This ‘active pathing’ lends vivacity to life in its inevitable passing, and facilitates the generation of meaning out of what-is.

We are now on the cusps of Autumn, and I am marking time by various touchstones, icons and familiar experiences. The turn towards Autumn usually begins, for me, with the coming to fruition of wild apples in the fields & woods through which I path in late summerwood saunters. The smell of ripening apples is an early ‘sacramental’ of the onset of Harvest. Then, in the latter part of August, I will always find that ‘first’ leaf that has gone red and fallen onto the path, as if to say, “time is shifting; Autumn is coming.” It’s always a leaf from the same specie of tree – a longish, oblong leaf with barely discernible ‘teeth’ along its edges. I pick one up, bring it home, and insert it in a book that I’m currently reading. As I go back to books I’ve read over the years, I find these relics of earlier Autumns, dried between the pages where I left them, sometimes slightly discoloring both paper and text. A final queue in Fall’s overture is when I come across the first ripening acorns in early September. I always retrieve three or four of them and put on my meditation table, where they stay until just after Samhain (31 October).

These experiences lad me into reflection on two themes that I’ve long found to be indicative of Autumn: Harvest and Ruins. The summer is coming to a close; the natural world around us has gone through Flourishment, Fructification and Fruition – a triad of Summerwood themes – and now Fruition is giving way to Harvest. Summer is a time for ‘growth,’ ‘ripening’ and ‘bearing fruit.’ The natural consummation of this process is Harvest, followed by dormancy and death. Life ends, but first – if conditions have been right – there can be a culling of all that has been gained, a ‘gathering up’ of the fruits of living, and a storing away of its bounty in anticipation of the cold, dark journey to come; Winterwood – which looms on a not so distant horizon.

Though there is a ‘coming to fruition’ all summer long; many fruits and vegetables ripening and periodic gleanings from gardens and fields – of berries, summer wheat, etc. – many crops have a longer growing season and only come to fruition in August, September or October. Where I live, the crops most indicative of this consummate harvest are wheat and grain corn, soybeans and pumpkins. Beginning at the end of August, mechanical reapers can be seen moving through the fields. All through September, what has been growing all summer long is being harvested.

I experience a deep paradox between bounty & consummation in seeing corn and other crops being harvested. Nature’s fecundity is evident in the way that seed, once put in the ground, grows to maturity and bears fruit—assuming the right environmental conditions prevail. Bounty, however, is always coupled with consummation. While there can be repeated consummations through the growing season each year, there is an final harvest (at least in the temperate zone where I live), in which a sense of mortality comes to the fore. Harvest is a time for celebration; especially in farming communities. Those of us living in towns and cities should remember where our food comes from, and acknowledge the harvest taking place each year. At the same time that we celebrate the harvest, however, an awareness of the consummation that it implies foreshadows the dormancy and death that inevitably follows the harvest.

While ‘Harvest’ describes what is happening in the external world, it also ‘represents’ a fact of our lives. We have our own cycles of growth & fruition, followed by a settling into repose and finally death. The seasons – Spring—Summer—Autumn—Winter – have oft been used as metaphorical of the full cycle of human life, but it may also accurately describe different phases within the space of a life. Many of us go through cycles as life unfolds. When we start off on a particular path; we are ‘born’ to it. We path as far as that direction may allow, and then we may change course. We may find that some other direction in life is more fruitful, or we may be forced into a different life course by circumstances beyond our control. We may then ‘die’ to the previous phase of our life, and experience a new birth to a different direction. Life, in this metaphorical sense, is full of small births—deaths—rebirths. A human life, however, ultimately goes through a final consummation and ends in repose and death.

After Harvest each year, Nature comes to rest in the darkening, shortening of the days, until Winter commences. It is this ‘coming to rest’ that inspires my reflections on Ruins. Ruins are to human culture what the reaped fields, denuded trees and bushes of wildwood & field are to Nature. The red leaf that I pick up each Autumn is an intimation not only of the coming Harvest but of mortality. The leaf is dead. The chlorophyll in the leaf has stopped processing sunlight and thus stopped reflecting light from the ‘green’ range of the spectrum. Thus, the leaf takes on the color characteristic of its material structure; yellow, red, orange or brown. The death and falling of the leaves can be taken as symbolic of the death of all of the vines and stalks of all the growing things that have made Summerwood green and lush. It is also be analogous, symbolically, to the ‘death’ of human structures. When humans let go of things they have made_ when they are abandoned or become neglected—they go into decline and become ‘ruins.’

BIRTH—LIFE—DEATH is the way of all animals. We are animals, and so we undergo this journey. In the wider frame of human culture and history, what our species brings into existence also goes through stages like that of a life. We build, we dwell in what we have built, and then we abandon our constructions and move on to new ones. Once we have moved on, what we have built dilapidates_ and becomes a ruin. Entropy wins out_ just as it eventually does with animal and plant life_ and what we have built returns to the Earth. Everything comes from the Earth, and returns to it, eventually.

I’ve always been fascinated with ruins, and after many years I finally realized that ruins are an apt metaphor of mortality. They are an analog of human life. A ruin is a structure that has been let go; it is no longer being kept up, or it simply cannot be kept up any longer. It has been ‘handed over’ to entropy. Nature brings about the ruin of human artifacts once they are abandoned, and to reflect on this process of decay in its various stages is to find an analogy for our own eventual decline, decay and death. As we come from the Earth, so we will someday be reunited with it in post-conscious states, the nature of which we can only speculate on until we experience it – or not – for ourselves. A house or other structure, abandoned and returning to the Earth, goes through Stages of Decay, recognizable to anyone who has long visited some particular ruin, and that are as indefatigable as they are beautiful, in a certain ‘melancholy’ sense of that word! Many ruins decay over time scales longer than a human lifetime (stone structures especially) while others seem to age and decay and fall to Earth even as we do ourselves, or even more quickly.

Ruins inspire in me what artists and writers have long called ‘melancholy.’ The melancholy is a ‘beautiful sadness.’ It is an emotion characteristic of spiritual reflection on mortality. It is not mere ‘sadness,’ nor it is a state of ‘depression.’ It is a manifestation of our awareness that all things must pass; that nothing is permanent—not even ourselves, much less the things we leave behind after we are gone (children, great works, etc.). Nothing is immortal in the Earth & Cosmos—maybe not even the Universe itself. Death is as natural as birth. I have occasionally had the good fortune to find a ruined structure that I could visit periodically, and have learned a great deal from these abandoned places. There was once an old tool shed on the edge of a local wood, near where I grew up, that became a frequent haunt. I stayed with it through several years as it dilapidated and collapsed, ultimately being covered in leaf mulch, eventually to become a small ‘mound’ in the landscape. The shed became an old friend; and I missed it once it was finally gone. It had simply been left behind when the property it was on was sold, and was no longer worked as a farm.

Ruins not only represent a ‘natural’ mortality but sometimes reference a more tragic scenario; a letting go of something at the height or in the prime of its existence. A house that has burned down, for instance, and now stands lonely in ruins on an abandoned property, ignored and nearly forgotten, may remind us that life doesn't always end well, and that many things can befall us that we wouldn't have wished for. Not everything in life works out for the better; disasters and disease undermine our existence and our ability to flourish. Some people get caught in cycles of self-destruction or victimization from which they unfortunately never escape. Many human lives have been wasted or are so tragic as to inspire only despair upon reflection. Such has been the human condition. Much of human existence has been lost or wasted that might have been saved, had the right set of circumstances prevailed. Ruins sometimes inspire reflection on this darker dimension of the human situation.

To visit ruins is one way I’ve long found of engaging actively in a meditation on the decay and death that ultimately overtakes us. Hopefully, it comes after a live lived to the full; a fortunate flourishment and a culling of everything one can gather from one’s life. Yet we will always find an icon of ourselves in the ruined structures we visit. Just like the structures we have built and dwell in, we may keep ourselves fit and healthy so long as we can, but – at some point – all our self-maintenance will fail, and death will become our imminent destination. Not to recognize our mortality – the fact that we will die – is, ironically, spiritual suicide. For not to know that we are going to die; not to be conscious of it and not to acknowledge it—is not to be able to live life as what-it-is.

Ruins, for me, are intimately linked with the Autumn. They each evoke meditations on mortality. Though I visit ruins all the year long, during the Autumn I intentionally make time for this kind of ‘pilgrimage.’ Then, at the mid-point of Autumn – Samhain (called Halloween in contemporary culture and turned into yet another excuse for self-indulgence and happy whimsy) – this memento mori on ruins and harvest culminates in my visiting graveyards, remembering those I’ve known who have passed, and communing with the symbols of death that I find there. _I find this a deep and fitting transition into the bleak gloom of November and the entry into Winterwood.

A few years ago an old student of mine emailed me pictures of a ruined church that he and some of his friends had come across near where they were in the habit of hiking. He reflected in his email on the many times that we had gone hiking together down the railroad tracks south of the town where I was living at that time, to an old house, abandoned and decaying. There, we would sit on the weathered and moss-stained stairs of the back porch, and talk about the spiritual life and mystical experience. My reflections on that house – dilapidating over the course of the 30 years that I visited it regularly, became the inspiration for the Whittiers – the central family in all of my storytelling – and the main focus of my book, Heart and Hearth (2009), which explores the subject of loss and reclamation; both of a house, a property and of a family’s lives.

Out of ruin there sometimes arises new life; a resurrection; a reformulation of life and a regeneration of hope and energy and possibility. Symbolically, this can be seen in Spring following Winter after the death of Autumn. This is what is chronicled in Heart and Hearth (2009), which I often think of as a very ‘autumnal’ book. The basic story of the Whittiers is that they built a house on Deer Hill near the fictional town of Wickersfeld, PA in 1894. They lived in that house for just over fifty years in a way that was somewhat unique. They are, for me, an example of what it is to live life intentionally. They had a life philosophy that was grounded in the Earth & Cosmos, and that was fleshed out with ideals and creative aspirations that they worked hard to fulfill. Despite tragedy and the ups and downs of the American economy through the first half of the 20^th century, they managed a vision of life of which they were proud. They worked hard and were fortunate enough to be successful at their various employments.

Then, the first Whittier House burned down in October of 1949, and though the family intended to rebuild, their business commitments and other factors prevented the realization of their plan. They ended up living separately, in various households around Ross County, PA until 1979, when four old friends of the family took a night hike down to the ruins of the old burned-out house. This walk inspired the Whittier reunion, a return to Deer Hill, and the reigniting of the family’s vision of a life together in Earth & Cosmos. Heart and Hearth (2009) explores the ruins of the family’s past, then traces the process of return, finally exploring the new life the Whittiers have created for themselves on and around Deer Hill, as through remembrance and storytelling they rediscovered the elements of the life philosophy that had inspired the previous three generations of Whittiers on Deer Hill. It has always been my hope that Heart and Hearth might inspire reflections on genuine human dwelling and intentional living in those who come to read it.

[Heart and Hearth (AuthorHouse, 2009) is available online at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and at Authorhouse.com]

Naturalist Meditations (Focusing Exercises)

2011-08-25T22:28:00.001-04:00

“I’ve found that you can come to know the universe not only by resolving its mysteries, but also by immersing yourself in them.” (21)

- Brian Greene The Fabric of the Cosmos (2004)

This afternoon, having gotten off early from work, I went for a walk in a local wood. The days are getting shorter, and I was out on the cusps of eventide. All around me, there were subtle signs of Autumn’s approach: I saw green acorns fallen on the ground and, as I was coming down off the ridge, a single red leaf on the ground. I picked up an acorn and the leaf and brought them home to use as foci in meditation this evening.

Focusing is a crucial part of a mature meditative praxis. It is what gives depth to our meditation and fleshes it out. To focus is to ‘meditate on’ some thing; some object or idea or phrase or quote—it is to allow oneself to dwell ‘with’ the object or idea; to ‘participate’ in it, sensually and intellectually—and thereby to allow its potential meanings to infuse us. Thus it is very important to pick your foci well; it is difficult to undo the intimacy you will accrue as you ‘meditate on’ an object or idea that fascinates you over a period of time.

The practice of focusing involves memory and remembrance. It may begin as a series of memorizations, but on a deeper, intuitive and experiential level than mere mental memorization. I often use mental memorization to ‘fix’ the object or idea that I am going to focus on in my mind, bringing it before my attention. Then, I go deeper into it over a period days, weeks or months, returning to the idea or object and allowing reflection and devout study to enhance my experience of what I initially just ‘memorized.’ Once you have used something as a focus in meditation, you usually need only bring it to memory to re-experience the meaning of it or the benefit you have derived from focusing upon it in earlier meditations. Focusing may be said to be a way of placing meaningful objects or ideas in our memory’s treasure case.

Religious traditions utilize sacred texts, sacred words, prayers and icons in their focusing exercises. As a Naturalist, I have developed a retinue of foci that I use to situate myself in Nature; in the Earth & Cosmos – ‘placing’ in my memory truths about reality that science has revealed to us. It is truths about Nature and our place in it that I want to situate in my soul; in which I want to situate my-self. It is the revelations of modern science that I first want to call up in remembrance when I ruminate on the meaning of life. These truths reflect the objective dimension of reality; they concern things which cannot just be changed by thinking about them differently. Once grounded in the objective truths, it is then possible to move on to the more subtle and changeable truths; the intersubjective and subjective truths that enrich our lives in various ways.

Though naturalistic meditation of this sort can be sufficient unto itself, it can also ground religious meditation in the objective world; i.e., the Earth & Cosmos. No religion that denies the truths revealed by science can be a true religion; it can only be a superstition and an illusion. If you have to deny the fact of evolution or the laws of physics in order to believe what you believe, your belief system has become occult; it is out of alignment with what is known, and is therefore a self-deceptive system. By grounding religious belief in what is actually known about the Earth & Cosmos – i.e., The Creation – through science, a believer runs less risk of self-deception and of losing touch with reality. If God exists and acts in the world, it is the world as revealed by science that God is acting in; no other world is real in the objective sense.

As I said in the last blog, meditation begins with the practice of “breathing well.” It then enters into the second phase of “centering,” in which we detach ourselves from distraction and from the ebb & flow of our lives; coming to peace in a personal ‘nemeton’ – allowing ourselves to come to a place of silence & solitude. Rest restores the self. Focusing then allows the self to be immersed in something – and object or idea – that can deepen its experience of reality. For the Naturalist, focusing deepens one’s understanding of the Earth & Cosmos.

There are a series of naturalistic foci that one can use in meditation. The first ones are simple and usually derive from one’s local environment. Then, as a person becomes familiar with what is immediately around them, he or she should move on to foci with a wider scope or import. Ultimately, it is possible to meditate upon the Universe as a whole, as we now understand it to be. The wider one’s scope, the more background research one should do to try and understand the object of one’s meditation. Here, focusing and devout study go hand in hand. In the early steps of focusing, experience and our aesthetic response to external stimuli in Nature is sufficient. Later, it is necessary to educate ourselves about the world in order to go deeper and experience self-transformation.

I will here describe a series of naturalistic foci that I have used, beginning with found objects and ending with the Milky Way. There are other foci at various levels that can be used, and where you live will determine what foci you may be led to use, especially with regard to found objects. These have all worked for me, and so I recommend them as a kind of ascending ladder of scope and inclusiveness, beginning with personal foci, and ending with our place in the universe.

1. Found Objects – I have always urged students to begin focusing with “found objects,” things that one discovers along the way while walking or sojourning in natural places. Leaves, rocks, twigs, pine cones, seeds, flowers, and many other objects attract us while out hiking in natural places. When you see something that fascinates you, stop and look at it more carefully. I always carry a camera with me so I can photograph found objects; it is impractical – not to mention undesirable – to always be carrying things away from the woods back to one’s room!

The point here is to find something that speaks to you and experience it in enough detail and with sufficient attention to be able to call it to mind later, either from memory or via a photograph. I have taken pictures of leaves, butterflies, spider webs, and rock formations that, when downloaded and displayed on my computer screen, provided sufficient detail for several days to weeks of productive meditative focusing. Occasionally, I do bring small objects away from the woods – like the acorn and leaf today – and put them on my meditation table. These are often symbols of the seasons, and function in a unique way in my meditations, in that they can be held in the hand; seen and smelt and – if not toxic – tasted as well as seen. The other senses add a unique quality to meditation on these objects that you cannot get from photos.

For a Naturalist, meditative focusing is deeply tied to walking, which immerses us in the weather and in the seasons. We go through the changes in the seasons in our pathing here and there; we walk at different times of the day and night (walks at dawn and dusk are especially fecund of memorable experiences) and in different weathers. The aim is to come to an understanding of ourselves as creatures of the Earth, beings in the Cosmos and always part and parcel of it. We are Nature having become aware of itself. We are Earth, and to the Earth we will return. A Naturalist’s meditations facilitate a growing awareness of our earthiness; which is what it means to be humble—to be aware that we are “of the Earth,” and thus know our place in Nature.

Once you have meditated on found objects for a time, it is good to move on to meditative foci with more scope. These will take you beyond your local environment; they will take you deeper in time and into the basic physical realities of the stuff of Nature – rocks and air, water and light – that is all around you. Whereas with Found Objects you will have a different set of foci, depending on where you live, as you get into foci with more scope, you will approach knowledge of things that are common to all human beings living on the Earth. No matter where you live, the following five exercises will deepen your experience and understanding of Earth & Cosmos and your place in Nature.

2. The Periodic Table of the Elements – This is the chart that most of us remember from our grade school or high school years, and may not have seen since, unless we are somehow involved in science. The chart depicts all of the elemental constituents of the physical universe at the atomic level. Beginning with Hydrogen and climaxing in the elements beyond Uranium that exist only momentarily during collisions of particles in super colliders or else exist only under extreme conditions not normally found anywhere our local universe, this table is a great key to the nature of Nature. Taking each element on its own and learning something about it will reveal your surroundings in a unique and profound way. From the food we drink to the clothes we wear, from the plants and animals that live all around us to our own bodies – everything is constituted of combinations of the elements on the Periodic Table. They come together in compounds and can be rearranged and recombined through various forces. Life is based on the Carbon atom in various combinations with other elements. To learn this chart is to learn the basic ingredients of reality as we now understand it.

“If the atoms that make up the world around us could tell their stories, each and every one of them would sing a tale to dwarf the great epics of literature.” (1)

- Marcus Chown The Magic Furnace (2001)

3. The Geological Column – As biologists & paleontologists have uncovered the 3.8 billion year history of life on our planet, a depiction showing the major periods of life has been put together. You can usually only find this image of the history of life in textbooks or on websites devoted to the study of life, as it is not really a well-known cultural icon. I have copied very detailed ones from geology textbooks and I have also used smaller, summary images of the Geologic Column. The one I am using in my earthen meditation these days comes from the Burke Museum in Seattle WA. It was sent to me advertizing one of their programs on evolution in 2010, and it briefly but artistically sums up the history of life. I use it to meditate on the various ‘eons’ and ‘ages’ of life on our planet.

The Geologic Column is broken down into five ages. Listed from youngest to oldest, they are:

Cenozoic (65.5 billion years ago – the present)

Mesozoic (252.2 – 65.5 billion years ago)

Paleozoic (542 – 252.2 billion years ago)

Proterozoic (2.5 billion – 542 million years ago)

Archean (4.5 – 2.5 billion years ago)

Each of these ages is broken down into more specific periods. It is good to familiarize yourself with when various life-forms first emerged; when they first appear in the fossil record. I have collected images of various life forms, from Stomatolites to Trilobites to Dinosaurs to early mammals and then artists’ reconstructions of our ancestors – from Australopithecus to Homo Erectus and early modern Homo Sapiens. I like to focus on the transitions in the fossil record – from fish to amphibians, or from Dinosaurs to birds, for instance, having collected information on the transitional forms we now know of, and use these to reflect on the processes of evolution. [I hope to do an entire blog on this focusing exercise at some point.]

4. Once you have meditated on the Earth’s history and the chemical constituents of the physical universe, I would suggest moving up another level and find yourself an Image of the Earth that appeals to you. Ever since we left the Earth and travelled to the Moon, images of the Earth from space have fascinated and astounded people all over our planet. I remember seeing the series of pictures of “Earthrise” taken by the astronauts on Apollo 11 for the 1^st time, and the unusual effect it had on me. No longer an artist’s conception of what our home planet might look like from a distance away, we now have actual photographs. I have another picture of the Earth with the Moonscape in the foreground hanging on my bedroom wall. It is something inspiring to wake up to; I look at it each morning, just to remind myself – in a spiritual way – of where I am.

One aspect of the Earth that I also find valuable to meditate on is what is called “the Thin Blue Line,” an image of our atmosphere as seen from the edge of space with the light of the sun shining behind it. It impresses me just how slim and fragile this layer of gases is, and possibly how vulnerable it might be as well. In the pictures I’ve seen of it, it almost glows as the sun rises or sets behind it. Recently I saw it dealt in the BBC series called “Wonders of the Solar System,” in which Professor Brian Cox went up in a jet to a very high altitude in order to see the “Thin Blue Line” for himself. Watching the program was like taking an imagined pilgrimage. Seeing the Thin Blue Line filmed from the cockpit of the jet was more dynamic than just seeing it in a still photograph, as I usually do. It was like ‘being there,’ and it had a deep effect on me.

Another startling image of our planet is what has come to be known as “The Pale Blue Dot,” a photograph of our planet taken by Voyager 2 when it was out beyond the orbit of Neptune. I first saw this image in Carl Sagan’s The Pale Blue Dot (1994). The photograph shows our planet as a small blue speck against a black background of space, subtly illuminated by a sunbeam. In a passage that I have often used in meditation, Sagan says:

“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely indistinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

With regard to this photo, Sagan concluded:

“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

To use this photograph in meditation is an exercise in earthen humility. It shows us our place from a vantage point where all our striving and violence seems petty. If enough people meditated upon this picture as an icon, might we someday be able to overcome our arrogance and be at home together in the Earth & Cosmos?

5. An Image of the Solar System would be the next logical step after meditating on an image of the Earth. Granted, we have no photograph of the Solar System, as not even the Voyagers are far enough out, nor are they at the right angle to ‘take a picture’ – and even if they were flying away from the Solar System more or less perpendicular to the general plane of the planets, I doubt a photograph would show much beyond a small fuzzy light (the sun) and possibly some slight reflections (made by the planets). But we have a good idea of how the Solar System is structured, and there are good artist renditions around; in books and on the Web.

I use an image of the Sun and planets that shows them according to scale with each other, but not in scale with regard to their orbits in space and how far apart they are. The Sun in this image is a bright yellow arc along the left hand side of the page. It is too big in comparison to the planets to be depicted at this scale – a 8 ½ x 11 piece of cardstock – in relation to the planets. Jupiter takes up much of the center of the page, with Saturn, Neptune and Uranus to its right. To the left, between the Giants of the Solar System and the Sun are the three inner planets, Mercury, Venus and Earth; very small and diminutive.

One way of adding depth to meditations on the Solar System, is to find images of the planets and meditate on them individually. This exercise should be enhanced and deepened by devout study. Collect data on the Sun and the planets and even their Moons, if you want to go into that much detail. As with the Periodic Table, you might want to find cards depicting astronomical objects – or else make them yourself – and use them as a lectio – a devout reading – during meditation. When I was doing this, I would take a planet’s card and read some stats about it – its size, its general make-up, its distance from the Sun, its distance from us, how long it takes to rotate on its axis, how long it takes to go around the sun, etc. – and then gaze at the image of the planet while reflecting on the stats. After a while, you develop a familiarity with these celestial objects that is emotional and aesthetic as well as mental. They become part of your experience and contribute to wisdom (knowledge about the way things are that enhances or deepens our ability to live life well), and as such they contribute to the education of your soul.

Though we do not yet have a photograph of the Solar System, it is possible to see most of the planets in the night sky. Thus you can augment your meditation with observation as well as devout study. Our Moon is easily observable with the naked eye, but is greatly enhanced by a pair of binoculars. Venus appears as the Morning and Evening Star. A small amateur telescope will enable you to see most of the other planets, except Mercury, which I think is only observable in a solar transit with the right equipment (never look at the sun directly!). Jupiter and Saturn are especially wondrous seen through a telescope. I have always liked seeing Saturn’s moons and rings, and imaging the thrill Galileo had when he first discovered them. In general, observations of the night sky will greatly enhance your experience of your place in the Cosmos at this level of naturalistic meditations.

6. At the highest level of inclusiveness and scope, using an Image of the Milky Way takes you well beyond our Solar System, situating our planet in a broader cosmic organization. As with the Solar System, all we have are artists’ depictions of the Milky Way; no photographs yet. Find an image that is both as scientifically accurate and aesthetically appealing as possible. I find it edifying to use one that depicts our galaxy “edge on” as well as one that shows it as if “from above.” As with the other foci, gather basic data on our galaxy and use it for lectio in your meditations at this level.

You can augment your meditation on the Milky Way by going outside at night, venturing out to some vantage point where you are away from the lights of town, and looking for it above you in the night sky. It appears as a white, ‘milky’ band across the dark night sky and I always find it stops me in my tracks when I see it. I can get a crick in my neck from staring up at it, if I’m not careful! On very clear nights, I have once or twice lain down in the grass of a field and meditated while looking up at the hazy band of light that is the glow of billions of stars reaching us after x number of light years. As with the planets, this outdoor meditation complements meditation on artists’ images of the Milky Way and reveals our place in the local universe.

This is as far as I have gone in this kind of naturalistic meditation, though I hope to one day find a way of meditating on the Universe as a whole. There are no doubt other naturalistic foci you can use profitably in your meditations. I would like to close by urging that you not let the scope of the universe, the galaxy or even the Solar System make you feel ‘unimportant’ or that your life has no meaning. This is the reverse of what I experience as I ascend from found objects up to the Milky Way, meditating on physical reality; experiencing it through images and data at each level. While the universe is not ‘made for us,’ and while we are not the ‘center’ of the universe, we are here, and thus have the chance to live our lives as fully as possible. It is rather remarkable that we are here at all; and so being here, we have a chance to live life as fully as possible. I will end with a quote from Michio Kaku from his book Hyperspace (1994) that sums up my own feeling in this regard:

“Instead of being overwhelmed by the universe, I think that perhaps one of the deepest experiences a scientist can have, almost approaching a religious awakening, is to realize that we are children of the stars, and that our minds are capable of understanding the universal laws that they obey. The atoms in our bodies were forged on the anvil of nucleo-synthesis within an exploding star aeons before the birth of the solar system. Our atoms are older than the mountains. We are literally made of star-dust. Now these atoms, in turn, have coalesced into intelligent beings capable of understanding the universal laws governing that event.” (333)

In meditating on Nature and the universe we find ourselves at home; even if the Universe doesn’t ‘care’ for us. Through naturalistic meditation comes the advent of wonder and awe at the way things are. This threshold is, in turn, the gateway to genuine earthen wisdom. _But this must be the subject for some future blog.

What is Meditation? (A Naturalist's Perspective)

2011-08-01T15:43:00.013-04:00

“Meditation is really very simple; there is not much need to elaborate techniques to teach us how to go about it. ... Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life.”

- Thomas Merton

Contemplative Prayer (1969)

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual." (29)

- Carl Sagan

The Demon-Haunted World (1996)

Perhaps because I’ve written a lot in my blogs about meditation, a couple people have recently asked me, “What is meditation?” I’ve practiced meditation – under one guise or another – for forty years, and I would now say that meditation is a procedure for centering oneself in oneself, as well as a process through which to come to peace in one’s body and in one’s life in the Earth & Cosmos. Though I first learned meditation under the guise of wicchan mysticism in the 1970’s, and later learned both Celtic and a monastic meditative practices, I have found meditation to be, at root, a naturalistic experience; i.e.,—there is nothing 'supernatural' about the process itself. If you are religious, meditation will play into your spirituality and contribute to your adventuring toward whatever goal your religion prescribes for you. But meditation itself is not a religious practice, and does not need to be expressed in religious terms.

There is also nothing anti-religious about the practice of meditation, and so I quote Thomas Merton at the head of this blog, along with Carl Sagan, because Merton taught me a great deal about the depth and breadth of meditation and contemplative experience at a time when I was immersing myself in the western monastic tradition. I might also have quoted the Goddess-centered work of Starhawk, whose book The Spiral Dance (1989) deepened my spiritual praxis and gave me a more mature Pagan framework for meditation than I’d been using up to that point. I employed her exercises for meditation on the Circle and the four cardinal directions for several years, before moving on to a more thoroughgoing Celtic mythological framework for meditation. Yet, none of the traditions represented by these writers has an exclusive claim to meditation.

Meditation is practiced in a great many human religious and philosophical traditions, and at root meditation is something human beings have a propensity for; many people 'meditate' without any training. Others have had moments of profound silence and peace that simply emerged from the ordinary flow of their lives. Before it is ever incorporated into a religious framework, meditation is something we are capable of because of the wiring of our brains and our nervous systems. The practice of meditation is about honing this natural capability and benefitting more from it than we might ordinarily do.

When I think about the nature of meditation, I often reflect on an experience I had in the late 1980’s that has become a touchstone for my current perspective. At that time, I was striving to develop an ecumenical approach to faith and the divine, and I had the good fortune to meditate in a group that consisted, first, of two Buddhists, three Christians and myself. We had good experiences, and in group meditation sometimes a kind of ‘group state’ of peace embraced all of us. We had this ‘group’ experience three or four times, at which point I was moved to invite two wicchan friends of mine into the circle to meditate with us. Everyone used their own symbols and chanted words and did imaging exercises appropriate to their own tradition. There was often cacophony at the beginning, and then a kind of harmony would emerge, leading ultimately to peace in silence and a deep sense of love and togetherness. For Buddhists, Christians and Witches? Together? Yes. It seemed to prove to us the ecumenical tenet that all religions are variations on the One Theme and that what one calls God and another Nirvana and another The Goddess are all human – if also revealed – ways of expressing the Truth of the Divine-Beyond-Names.

Once or twice an atheist friend of mine who was learning to meditate, sat in on the sessions, and the second or third time he was with us, to our amazement, he came to a profound peace and silence in his own self, and felt, so he himsefl said, “at one” with the rest of us and with “the universe.” It was a sublime moment for him – being in a circle full of religious people who were being as open as they could be to his non-belief. It was a sublime experience for us! The problem arose when someone suggested that even atheists -- because of our common experience -- must ultimately be partcipating in the Divine-Beyond-Names and that my atheist friend was, somehow, experiencing the Divine. After that, he left our circle and never returned to it, and I fully understand why! We were co-opting him, even if with the best of intentions and out of a sense of wonder that he might have been experiencing the same thing as we were; namely “the Divine,” by whatever name we might call it. We just didn’t understand how this was possible!

For years this experience nagged at me. On the one hand, I wanted to affirm the ecumenical ideal that all religions can lead their adherents to the Truth and to the Divine-Beyond-Names (God, Allah, Yahweh, the Goddess, Buddha, etc.). _I still affirm this, by the way. But my atheist friend’s experience was a fly in the honey. Over the next few years I shed my religious aspirations and beliefs. Along the path to which I felt called, ‘God’ led me into a study of science as a way of re-grounding myself and my spirituality, and then 'God' -- or perhaps the experience that I thought of as the Presence of 'God' -- ‘vanished,’ whatever that might mean. Since then, I prefer to study Nature seeking Wisdom, and as such I don’t spend much time talking about ‘the Divine,’ under whatever guise. My journey from religion into science has inspired in me a desire to re-frame the wisdom of religious traditions in naturalistic terms, as I learned a great deal about being and becoming human from my religious experience; whether I was wicchan, Celtic or Christian in my orientation.

I still meditate; almost every day. And I have come to I see the solution to the conundrum of my atheist friend’s experience all too clearly. It’s not primarily that by meditating we were all brought into communion with the Big Something; the Divine-Beyond-Names, but that by meditating in a genuine way we each ended up in a similar bodily state; one of peace, in which we were unstressed, revivified physically and mentally, and were feeling very good together as a result. It has been true – at least in my experience – that meditating in a group can generate a positive ‘group’ experience. Everyone is feeling good, and you can sense that the people around you are feeling good. I now understand that this is what was happening in that circle 30 years or so ago. I don’t mean to say that those of us who were religious in that circle weren’t experiencing the Divine. I’m saying that the experience of peace and silence that was the result of meditating was a naturalistic, bodily state, and that we were wrong to conflate that with an experience of the Divine.

So, given my journey and where I am now, how do I answer the question, “What is Meditation?” First, it is a procedure for centering oneself in oneself. Meditation begins with three preparations and then unfolds according to three basic steps. The three preparations are: (1) Finding a place to meditate, (2) Establishing a time to meditate, and (3) Choosing a ‘posture’ for meditation. In the beginning days and months of meditation you should use a single place, set aside for the purpose of daily meditation. You should also start off by meditating at the same time every day. To meditate is to re-train our bodies; ourselves--and regularity reinforcing repetition is one of the best methods. Once you find a place and pick a time, you need to decide how best to posture yourself. Most people sit on a chair or on the floor. I’ve known one person who could meditate standing up, but I think it was an acquired taste; something he didn’t do regularly or in the beginning when he was learning to meditate. I’ve also known two or three people who lay down to meditate; but the great danger there is falling asleep. Sitting is the most usual posture, and if you sit on a chair, choose one that will allow you to sit comfortably with your feet flat on the floor and your spine relaxed. Whether you sit on a chair or on the floor, position yourself so that your torso is ‘balanced’ over your hips, so you are not struggling to sit still or to maintain your balance. You don’t have to get this right at the very beginning. Just do your best; over time, the ‘right’ posture will emerge as you let go of stress and your body comes to peace.

The three basic steps to meditation are (1) Breathing, (2) Centering (sometimes called Detachment), and (3) Focusing (sometimes called Attachment). By breathing correctly, inhaling and exhaling neither too shallowly nor too deeply, we create an ‘environment’ in our body conducive to the release of stress. It is good in the beginning to count while breathing in, and then again while breathing out. If you breathe too deeply or too fast, you will hyperventilate. If you breathe too slowly or too shallow, I’ve read you run the risk of passing out; though I’ve never known anyone who has actually gone this far wrong. The point of breathing well is to slightly raise your oxygen levels in the first minute or two of meditation, as this will help your muscles unclench and relax. Then, you should settle into a rhythm of breathing that quiets you and brings you to silence. Only by practice will you learn how to do this.

Associated with this breathing is what can be called “Centering.” We are often a bundle of disparate intentions, going this way and that; we need to do ‘this,’ we need to get ‘that’ done--and as a result we are all over the place! Centering is the use of an image or a word or phrase to collect the mind and let go – at least for a few minutes to a half hour daily – of all the things that are making demands on our time and our attention. When I talk in blogs about “The Dolmen on the Heath” or “The Hut of Dwelling,” these are images of ‘places’ that I go to imaginatively where I can experience myself in myself; where I can come to stillness in the solitude of myself—and not be my usual outwardly directed spiral of intentions and interests! Centering is a process of letting go; of coming to rest; of being still and experiencing my-self as I am in my-self. It is always a more or less transient state, but it is a valuable state to achieve.

Focusing is the third step in meditation, and this usually involves “meditating on” something. When I spoke in the last blog about meditating on the Periodic Table of the Elements, I was describing a focusing exercise. Focusing involves using something with a bit of content that you find edifying or that you feel contributes to your knowing and understanding of the Earth & Cosmos – or perhaps Jesus or the Goddess, etc., if you are religious. It should be edifying; it should remind you of the goodness of Nature or of a truth about human nature or be some kind of rune of wisdom. The things we focus on in meditation will become deeply encoded in our minds and in our being. So, we need to chose the things we focus on with care!

Meditation is a process through which to come to peace in one’s body and in one’s life in the Earth & Cosmos. The basic steps I have outlined here are but the barest summary of the praxis, but they should be sufficient to start you on your way, if you are interested. While I don’t have time to discuss even these basic in any more detail here, please feel free to question me about them, if you are interested in meditation. I would gladly write another blog on meditation, if anyone is interested, in which I could go into there things in more detail, and even touch upon more advanced techniques and practices.

Meditation on the Elements (revelatione natura) – 12 July 2011

2011-07-20T07:57:00.002-04:00

- Michio Kaku

Hyperspace (1994)

Ever since turning to science in the late 90’s as the primary resource and touchstone for a lived spirituality, I’ve sought new meditative foci to orient me to the objective dimensions of reality. As I moved out of mythology and ancient mystical ideals into an experience of reality infused and informed by the revelations of the modern sciences, I became inspired to meditate on the Periodic Table as a way of reflecting on Nature at a fundamental level; i.e., as a naturalistic form of lectio divina (i.e., the monastic habit of devout reading) – and through it come to a deeper communion with the Earth & Cosmos and ourselves as an expression of the universe. The “Table of the Elements” has come to replace the “Ancient Four” elements on which I had meditated for 30 years prior to my ‘conversion’ to science from various religious quests.

As I understand and practice it, meditation centers the self in the self and creates a quiet place out of which our actions may then more genuinely flow. It is useful in meditation to ‘go’ to an ‘internal place’ – an imagined ‘nemeton’ (such as “The Dolmen on the Hearth” or “The Cave of the Heart”) – where we may discover the self we are at our best and which then nurtures our becoming that self over the arc of a lifetime. I’ve always thought it interesting that I learned this from both Pagan and Christian mentors. Though my ‘internal nemeton’ has been imagined under several guises over the last 40 years, I’ve always set the nemeton within a ‘sacred’ circle, imaginatively ‘cast’ around me. Around the outer circumference of that circle I ‘mark’ the four cardinal directions: North – East – South – West—each time I sit down to meditate. This action orients me in the Earth wherever I am, whether at home or out journeying, here and there, questing and adventuring.

Many things are associated with these ‘cardinal’ points in mystical systems, including trees and flowers, birds, and a variety of mythological creatures and characters. The primary underlying association, however, is always with the Four Elements. In the Celtic tradition, North is associated with Earth; East with Air, South with Fire and West with Water. Though I still refer to these ‘poetic’ or ‘experiential’ elements in meditation, my understanding of ‘the Elements’ has now been deepened through naturalistic revelations of the basic constituents of the universe; bringing me to the place where I now am—where I can see the Periodic Table as a set of naturalistic ‘runes’ through which to understand and ‘commune’ with Nature.

The old ‘Four Elements’ arose out of ancient philosophy and mysticism. It may well have been the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles (5^th century BCE) who first discussed these ‘Elements,’ which were thought to be fundamental to all of reality; i.e., they were thought to be irreducible to other ‘substances.’ Thus, the Four Elements can be seen as an early ‘rational’ or even ‘scientific’ hypothesis, as they were intended to describe ‘objective’ reality; they were the best theory going at the time. The idea of the Four Elements as fundamental to the Cosmos persisted through the Middle Ages and on into the Modern Period, until elements much more fundamental than the Ancient Four began to be discovered. The empirical exploration of the material world led to the supplanting of the ancient schema of ‘Four Elements’ with numerous fundamental ‘substances’ that were eventually arranged – by Dmitri Mendeleev (1834 – 1907) – into a ‘table’ based on their atomic weights. Mendeleev’s ‘table’ then became a ‘touchstone’ for the discovery of further elements.

I started meditating on some of the natural elements after watching “Stephen Hawking’s Universe” in 1999; it was the episode dealing with the origins of modern chemistry and the consequent demise of alchemy that really got me interested in this exercise in natural devotion! It was not until reading Cathy Cobb and Monty Fetterolf’s The Joy of Chemistry (2005), however, that I actually put together a set of descriptions of the elements that could be read in meditation; a lectionis natura (“naturalistic readings”) that would facilitate reflection on these most basic constituents of our physical reality; the fundamentals of Earth & Cosmos. Once I started down this path, it became anachronistic to meditate on the Four Elements as anything other than a poetic expression; a description of reality referencing four prominent ‘phenomena’ what we experience in our day to day lives. While that poetic description is still valid as metaphor and symbolically, the Periodic Table has become a much more fascinating way of leaning about and communing with the objective level of reality.

What surprises me is that even these elements have an experiential dimension to them; like Earth—Air—Fire—Water – and they have a ‘hidden’ component. The ‘elements’ of modern chemistry are defined at the atomic level. These atoms are made up of smaller ‘particles’ called electrons, protons and neutrons, which are in turn made up of quarks, etc., according to the Standard Model. While defined at the atomic level, these natural elements also exist in aggregates that we can experience, either in pure form or in compounds. We are able to experience them with the use of tools, such as microscopes or by lighting up a sample of them with an electric current, and they come together to create all of the different compounds that go into making up everything in our environments, both organic and inorganic. We can hold samples of sulfur, iron, and aluminum in our hands, we can fill flasks with gases and distill many other elements from solution and thus experience them. This is something worth meditating upon; a ‘fact’ of Nature and our own being that has supplied me with more than one epiphany along the way and that I hope is contributing my ‘wisening’ in the world.

This Spring I found Theodore Gray's "The Photographic Card Deck of The Elements" (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers; Crds edition; October 27, 2010) and have been using it in meditation. Every day or so I take a new element. I began with Hydrogen and I just reached Iron – Element 26 – the other morning. I take the card in hand, look at the image presented on it, read the statistics (atomic weight, percentage in the universe, in our planet, in the oceans and in us, etc.), and then finish with the little ‘summary’ on the back of the card. I then sit and reflect on the image on the card and think of it in ways inspired by the description on the card. This exercise is very much like the meditative exercises I used to do when I was still religious; e.g., the meditations of St Ignatius of Loyola – one source through which I learned this particular form of meditation and became aware of the benefits of imagistic praxis coupled with readings!

Many of the elements are fairly innocuous, and I wonder at them – how and when they were formed in the origin and expansion of the universe. I can imagine that many of these elements – some of which have few or no practical uses that our species has yet found – just came into being as one possibility in the universe we inhabit, forming according to its laws and physical properties as the expanding universe cooled down. Others have startling characteristics. A pure sample of Sodium (11), for instance, apparently turns white in seconds when exposed to air and when “exposed to water … generate(s) hydrogen gas and explode(s) in flaming balls of molten sodium” (!). Some of the gases can only be seen with the naked eye when an electric current is passed through them; which causes them to glow a characteristic color. Some of the lighter elements I’ve meditated on are essential for life as we know it; carbon is the basis of all organic molecules and oxygen is the gas that our lungs turn into energy for our cells.

I just got to the element Iron the other day, and was reminded of something that I either read or saw in a science program; that all of the elements from Helium up to and including Iron were first formed in the furnaces of the earliest stars in our expanding universe. As Michio Kaku suggests in the header quote, we would not be here were it not for this stellar process of ‘burning’ which produced these lighter elements. I went looking for quotes in my notebooks that describe this further, especially how stars burn Hydrogen, Helium and create the heavier elements until they reach Iron, and then come to their end—but couldn’t find one. However, I did find two other excellent quotes for lectionis natura on this subject. John Gribbin once said, in The Birth of Time: How Astronomers Measured the Age of the Universe (1999), that:

“[T]he Sun cannot be the oldest star in the Universe. The Solar System contains heavy elements which cannot possibly have been made in a star like the Sun, but must have been made in stars that were around before the Sun was born. The Sun and Solar System were made out of the debris of at least one generation of preceding stars, which ran through their life cycles relatively quickly and exploded, scattering the raw materials from which we are made out into space.” (50)

I next found this quote – which I’ve meditated upon frequently over the years – by Marcus Chown, from The Magic Furnace: The Search for the Origins of Atoms (2001), who noted that:

“Every breath you take contains atoms forged in the blistering furnaces deep inside stars. Every flower you pick contains atoms blasted into space by stellar explosions that blazed brighter than a billion suns. Every book you read contains atoms blown across unimaginable gulfs of space and time by the wind between stars.” (1)

When I first read these passages, the perspective was new to me, and I experienced a naturalistic revelation (revelatione natura)! I was lifted a little further out of the darkness of mundane existence and inherited presuppositions, and there glimpsed something of the enigmatic beauty of the Earth & Cosmos. Now, as I meditate upon each element in turn, and move beyond Iron (Fe 26) to Cobalt, Nickel, Copper, Zinc and beyond, I hope to find myself just a little better articulated with the natural world at every element than I was before taking up this form of “naturalistic devotion.” The study of Nature holds revelations in store for us, and this is one of the draws of science; the sense that we are on a great journey of revelation, opening at every turn to the Earth & Cosmos through investigation, observation, experiment and the collation of data.

Meditation on the elements has nuanced the depth of my ongoing experience in the world and also connected me to the entire cosmos in a way that stirs me toward what I cam only call ‘cosmic communion;’ a sense of being One with the All. Every time I reflect on the fact that distant stars and nebula are made of some of the same material elements as the air I breathe, the rocks I touch, the water I drink, as well as my own flesh and blood, I become enlivened with an earthen wonder that inspires and energizes me. When I reflect on the fact of our having arisen from the ‘stuff’ made in early stars, I find myself both humbled and ennobled. For me, this is what all genuine religions and spiritualities have sought to do; they show us our proper place in the scheme of things (i.e., they humble us), and then they inspire us to live life – the real life that we have to live – to the fullest. For me, meditation on the Periodic Table has become a genuine ‘spiritual’ experience in this sense.

“Not unlike music and literature, chemistry is described in terms of its elements and has a theory based on fundamental principles. And, as with music and literature, there is much in chemistry that is art as well.” (41)

- Cathy Cobb and Monty Fetterolf’s
The Joy of Chemistry (2005)

A Dolmen on the Heath – A Summerwood Meditation (21 June 2011)

2011-06-21T20:24:00.000-04:00

“Wonder is our human reaction to the exuberant and astonishing power of things to be – that is, their sheer is-ness.” (76)

- Paul Brockelman

Cosmology and Creation (1999)

The natural world around us is greening to its fullness_ coaxing me into verdant meditations on the nature of Summerwood; drawing me to reflect on the spiritual themes appropriate to this time of the year. Summer Solstice stands at the pinnacle of Nature’s resurrection each year; it is the height of the ‘Olden Wheel’; the ever-repeating earthen cycle. It is the longest day of the year, embraced by the shortest nights. Traditionally, Summer Solstice was associated with ‘luck’ and ‘fate,’ as at this point fields, gardens and forests were fecund with the promise of bounty, yet people could not predict the outcome of the summer growing season—whether it would come to fruition or not, or how fully. There is also an inner ‘contradiction’ in Summer’s Solstice; that while this is the longest day and life seems to be flourishing, and although the plant world will continue toward fructification and fruition for the next couple months or so, from here on out the days will get shorter and shorter. This irony portends an intimation of mortality amidst all of the delicious ripening and fullness; a first hint that Autumn and then Winter will yet come again. But for now_

Dance! Sing! Play! Revel!

For years I’ve engaged in a vigil at Summer’s Solstice, staying outside in the evenings as Solstice approaches, only retreating indoors once I allow that day is gone and it is finally ‘dark.’ Weather permitting, I like to go to the woods and wander about until dark on Solstice Night. If there’s a Full Moon on or around 21 June_ I may even stay out after dark and enjoy a night hike in the moonlight! In the week or two after Summer’s Solstice, there always comes a point at which I say, “well, the days are getting shorter, once again.” Only at this point will my annual vigil come to an end. The rest of the summer is left to be enjoyed, though always with this perhaps nagging awareness that day by day the light is diminishing, and soon enough darkness will overwhelm it. There is always this ‘mortal tension’ in any deep spiritual engagement with Summerwood. _There cannot be life without an awareness of death; and in this particular setting we must enjoy the vivacity of life as summer passes with a touch of regret for its eventual demise.

As Summer Solstice approaches, I am drawn in meditation to a potent poetic place that I call The Dolmen on the Heath. Dolmens are old stone structures found across northwestern Europe, included England, Scotland and especially Ireland. They are typically comprised of three or four standing stones atop which a large flat stone is ‘resting.’ While these structures have excited much imaginative speculation over the centuries, archeological investigation has suggested in recent decades that these lithic monuments are what remains of prehistoric burial mounds. The theory is that a body was once placed in the hollow between the standing stones and then dirt was piled up all around them. At the last, the cover-stone was moved into place. Over the passing millennia, the dirt eroded away along with the remains of the person buried within the dolmen, leaving only the standing stones and the cover-stone accidentally in place. As such, they make a great place for earthen meditation, as – sitting within the dolmen – one can look out across the local landscape in three or so directions, and affirm life, while sitting in a place associated with mortality.

For many years I’ve used images of dolmens in verdant settings as icons in my summerwood meditations. As May turns to June, I begin to ‘visit’ the dolmen in meditation, imagining myself sitting in the ‘hollow,’ turning from one ‘portal’ to another to look out at verdant landscapes. I feel the coolness of the stones, even on the hottest days, and am refreshed while also being reminded of the ‘chill of death.’ Mortality is always awaiting us on our most ultimate horizon, whether it is close by or afar off. I ‘listen’ for the sounds of the insects and birds that I know are out and about at the onset of High Summer. I’m occasionally visited by symbolic animals, such as snakes, bears or deer. I experience the Dolmen on the Heath in different weathers; one day hot and sultry, and then at other times being beset by a rain storm—the weather at the dolmen often reflects the actual weather outside, but this is not a requirement. My moods, and what I need at any particular moment, may do as much to determine the ‘weather’ at the dolmen as what is going on in my external environment. I will sojourn at his dolmen in my meditations until Autumn comes.

I envision this Dolmen as established upon a Heath from which I can see farther than I would from down in a nearby vale. I use this artifice to remind myself to always be seeking to peer beyond the horizons that I now inhabit and that now define me. I resist imagining the dolmen as set upon a high mountain, as that seems to betray a lack of humility. One’s horizons are usually not pushed out very far from their previous station in a single earthen season, and so sitting in a dolmen on a heath; a more or less small hill – seems appropriate to actual natural and personal revelation and transformation. Over the course of a summer – or any other season – a mortal may hope to see somewhat further – through study, reflection and one’s active, waking experience in the world – but not necessarily to be ‘enlightened’ all at once. If startling insights come or self-transforming epiphanies occur, we should accept them_ but I don’t think it good to ‘expect’ them. This is, for me at least, consistent with an earthen humility.

What do I see from within this dolmen? Flourishment.

Living things all around us at this time of the year are ‘flourishing.’ That is, they are on their way to fruition. This is the season of their glory_ their fulfillment. Though the degree of flourishment differs from year to year, it always comes. Sometimes it comes through peaceful stages of growth, while in other years storms and weather and sometimes even natural disasters mar the fruition we expect from the resurrected world. Yet it comes_ and will until the end of Nature as we know it, whenever that will be. At Summer Solstice I look for the first-fruits of the summer growing season. While these are dependent upon the latitude in which I live, I think of blueberries and the varieties of flowers in bloom at this time of the year – both domesticated and out in the woods & fields – as symbolic of the fructification yet to come. First there is resurrection and rootedness, then there comes the green flourishing of leaves and finally the bearing of fruit.

This annual pageant in the natural world has spiritual ‘analogs’ that we can make use of and benefit from for, like Nature, we all go through cycles in our lives, and come to bear fruit and reach fulfillment, season by human season, through the different stages of our lives. While Flourishment is a general goal in human life; something to be sought throughout the year and through all of our life’s phases—the flourishing of Nature all around us in the summer months provides a vivid tapestry against which to reflect on our own flourishment, or lack thereof. When I see Nature flourishing all around me, I’m led to reflect on my own spiritual progress; whether or not I’ve reached any better degree of flourishment—material, aesthetic or psychological – since the last time I passed through Summerwood’s shadows.

For me, the idea of ‘flourishing’ is connected back to the old Greek idea of eudaimonia; a term usually translated as ‘happiness,’ but which means so much more than what that word has been reduced to in our culture’s lexicon. In literal translation, eudaimonia means to have a good (“eu”) “daimon”— a word referring to the general energy that drives us to live life well—our ‘spirit’ in a naturalistic sense. When we have a “good daimon” we have a desire to live our lives to the fullest; we are more prone to find ways to become the best person we are capable of being; we long to to ‘ful-fill’ ourselves. In this sense, eudaimonia is ‘happiness’ in a deeper, philosophical sense of ‘reaching our full potential.’ It is the state of ‘happiness’ represented in psychological terms as ‘being self-realized.’ Being ‘happy’ in this profounder sense requires that we are free to self-realize. Such freedom results in the unleashing of our passions; in the positive sense of the word—resulting in our having the necessary verve to live life as fully as possible. We cannot flourish if we are prisoners of opinion or fashion; mere mask-wearers trying to get ahead in ‘the world.’ Mere conformity to the forms we are presented with as ‘options’ for our lives breeds boredom, frustration and ultimately the loss of potential that characterizes so many lives no longer lived.

Like trees and bushes and flowers and vines, having the right ‘growing conditions’ is essential to our ultimate flourishment. According to ancient Celtic saints, one of the grounding directives in the spiritual life was that you must find the place of your own ‘resurrection.’ I discussed this in an earlier blog this Spring. Here, I suggest that this implies that, in order to live in a spiritual way, we cannot just go through the motions. We have to make the place in which we dwell into a ‘nemeton’ – a ‘sacred place’ – that is, a place where we are nurtured in our daily lives. For some, to find the place of their resurrection may necessitate having to ‘uproot’ and ‘replant’ themselves in a new place in order to flourish.

Looking around at the natural world, you see plants everywhere coming to fruition, growing greener and bearing fruit. Do some struggle? Do others wither? Some are planted well; others may need transplanted to better soil or to a place with a more agreeable balance of light & dark. At Summer Solstice, it is fitting to reflect on your own state and ask, “Am I flourishing?” In meditation, you might discover that the answer is a more or less simple “yes.” Less simply, you may find you are in a better state than you were a year or two or three ago—and thus you can say with confidence, “I’m flourishing more now than I was then.” If the answer is a more or less complicated “no,” however, ask yourself what you might reasonably do to better flourish in your circumstances? What might you need to do to reach a deeper, fuller state of being in becoming. Do you need refreshed by having new soil spaded into the soils in which you grow? Might better – or different – spiritual food benefit you? A more regular diet of spiritual practice? _Or perhaps something more drastic_ like removal to a new setting? These are incisive and life-directing questions, and should not be asked lightly_ nor should decisions about them be made rashly. Yet flourishing may require us to ask them, from time to time.

While I love using the whole of Nature as a metaphorical template against which to understanding our own flourishment or lack thereof, I’ve long found ‘gardening’ a more focused metaphor; one that some people prefer. We garden ourselves; together and in solitude. Thinking of your own ‘being’ as a ‘garden,’ perhaps set within the larger tapestry of gardens that represent your family, friends and your wider spiritual community, might help you discern what needs done in order to bring your Self to fruition. We can ‘till’ the ‘soil’ of ourselves; we can ‘feed’ ourselves or seek a place where we can be fed, hopefully choosing the ‘nutrients’ (what we study, what we do, how we experience the wider world in which we live) wisely. We can ‘spade’ and ‘weed’ the garden of ourselves, and eventually harvest what has come to fruition in our own little plot. While this harvest need not coincide with annual harvests on farms and in gardens in the wide world, meditating on tending our own earthen ‘plot’ is one way of coming to be_ and remaining_ awake in our lived circumstances; i.e., the place where we act out our spiritual desire to be and become what we are at our best. To flourish in this sense is to achieve ‘happiness’ as eudaimonia.

The Dolmen on the Heath is the spiritual counterpart of the Hut of Dwelling, to which I’m always drawn from November through March. Over the course of the Summer, the Dolmen on the Heath is like a second home to me; an interior nemeton that enlivens me and brings me restoration, symbolic sustenance spiritual succor. Visiting it daily in meditation, I discover myself centered within it. Likewise, Flourishment is to Summerwood what Enclosure is to Winterwood; these are twin focal themes for spiritual praxis and progress that orient me to the particular season in and through which I’m currently adventuring. We need guiding metaphors such as these if we are going to live our lives well and dwell deeply in Earth & Spirit. By identifying themes and iconic places in each season, we anchor ourselves and our spiritual quests in the external experience of Nature and thereby provide a more or less stable context for interpretation and reflection for our internal, subjective journeys. Grounded in the experience and understanding of Nature, we will find our inner lives enriched. If these metaphors that have guided me help you in your own pursuit of flourishment; happiness—so be it.

Blessed be!

Resurrection and Rootedness (A Beltaine Blog; 1 May 2011)

2011-05-15T08:47:00.000-04:00

For almost a month, between wind & rain storms, I’ve been working outside whenever possible, preparing flower beds and repairing my little bit of lawn. Spring inspires in me a savoring of the natural world as plants come back to life from their winter ‘sleep.’ Stepping carefully through flowerbeds, pulling weeds and transplanting the less fortunate drifters, I’m struck with the sense that everything around me is reviving from a mysterious dormancy. While we can understand it in scientific terms, the revival of the plant world each Spring still inspires awe and wonder. Scientific understanding does not do away with mystery; it deepens our appreciation of the mystery of all that is. Walking in natural places – along field-side paths and through the woods – fills my meditation with images of soil, buds and new leaves, early flowers – crocuses, daffodils and tulips – and the scents of Spring – Black Cherry and now Forsythia. Each Spring, I become enraptured with New Life!

If Enclosure is the spiritual theme for Winter and the theme for the early weeks of Spring is “Emergence,” I find the twin themes of Resurrection and Rootedness to be especially evocative as Spring unfolds and life comes back into its flourishment. When kneeling in the garden, breaking up the winter-hardened soil and spading around flowers & bushes, I’m struck by the fact that these plants have lain dormant through the winter. Last year’s stems and leaves may still be in evidence; browned and now decaying – even as the new sprouts come pushing up through the dirt from the root stock an inch or two or three below the surface. The delicate stems that are reaching up into the sunlight will come to maturity over the summer, and then die in their turn. This annual cycle of birth, growth to maturity and death followed by rebirth is well worth meditating on. At this time of the year, I revel in Resurrection and reflect on Rootedness.

It’s in the High Spring we most fully experience resurrection in the plant world – a ‘world’ in which we animals find ourselves immersed, though we often become forgetful of this fact! We should remind ourselves that we animals need plants to survive—whether as the source of food or of materials for shelter or as providers of shade and – most primeval of all – for the very oxygen we breathe, every minute of our lives. The breath you just took and the one you are about to take you can thank the plants for_ Without plants, the earth would still be sheathed in a toxic atmosphere. It was early single celled creatures that could photosynthesize sunlight and turn it into energy that generated much of the oxygen in the atmosphere of our planet that we and other animals now depend on for our very survival. Plants ‘use the carbon dioxide in the air and ‘exhale’ oxygen. We use the oxygen in the air we breath and exhale carbon dioxide. Forests are major recyclers of the carbon dioxide that we breathe out, thus helping keep our planet cool, by keeping CO₂ levels in the atmosphere low. _Which is why deforestation is such a problem.

When we think of evolution and its implications for spirituality, we should note our inter-dependence with the plant world. All of life constitutes a web in which every living thing exists and finds sustenance and its particular ‘fulfillment.’ We animals live once and then we die. Birth—Life—Death is our more or less linear path through Nature. Most plants, by contrast, are ‘planted’ and then grow, mature, and – in temperate latitudes, at least – ‘perish’ and ‘sleep’ through the winter months. Then, much to the surprise of conscious animals like ourselves, they spring up again, and live – going through the cycle all over again. It is this ‘mystery’ in the plant world that inspired the idea of ‘resurrection’ that is expressed in many human spiritualities.

Easter, for instance, happens at this time of the year because it is tied to the Vernal turning. Easter takes its name from the old European earth goddess ‘Eostre’ and its calculated according to the rule, “the Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox.” In this way, it is linked back to the Jewish Passover, which is also tied to the Vernal Equinox and is likewise calculated by reference to the Full Moon. On the secular side, the ‘Easter Bunny’ and colored eggs and so forth are all linked back to old European myths and rituals associated with the coming of Spring. The original of the ‘Easter Bunny’ was the Pookah; a man sized rabbit that came around from village to village, leaving eggs and other symbols of fertility and renewed life on people’s doorsteps. The egg is ‘potent’ with life and is connected symbolically with rebirth and with resurrection. The Pookah’s sacred night was the first Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox; a night for festivities and either symbolic or actual planting of seeds. These traditions offer us a storehouse of symbols that speak to the annual experience of resurrection in the natural world.

Even though we are animals with a Birth—Life—Death path through existence, we can think of the subjective patterns of our lives metaphorically in terms of the Birth—Life—Death—Rebirth cycle of the plant world. Like plants, we all go through fallow and fecund periods in life. Just as forests & fields spring to life after the Vernal Equinox, and then grow to maturity over the summer, so may we at times ‘spring to life’ after a good rest or after a ‘fallow’ period in which we are not doing much, and embark on a new project, start a new job, or simply start a new day. We have times when we are more productive, creative and inspired, as well as times that are more characterized by ‘rest’ from endeavor. Productivity and creativity need to be followed by rest and sleep. This is true whether it occurs daily or on a weekly or perhaps longer scale. Sleep can be likened to the dormant period of the plant cycle, and waking from sleep likened to a daily rebirth after dormancy We must have periods rest as well as devoted times of work and play; times for being productive and creative. To allow this is to establish healthy cycles in our own lives.

Resurrection is one way of describing what we experience after a period of rest or after a fallow season in our creativity or productivity. Resurrection is akin to awakening; in its more potent or dramatic instances it can be like ‘rising from the dead.’ Each year as I emerge from my Winter Hut and begin going out and about, I remind myself of the resurrection that will soon be happening all around me in Nature. Indeed, as I take my early walks, wandering hither and thither in natural places, I look for the signs of Resurrection and take note of them. I reflect on the first flowers that I see – especially the Coltsfeet; which is a very archaic flower with scales instead of leaves. It looks like a Dandelion, but if you look close, you will see the difference. As I witness to the resurrection of the plant world, I turn to my own life and seek for touchstones of personal resurrection; a revival from dormancy or a release from the deadening of the senses that is a constant spiritual problem for our species. We ‘fall asleep’ to easily, and walk about as the living dead_ not really living or experiencing, but merely surviving. As the Spring unfolds, I hear the call of the plants all around me, saying “Awaken, sleeper!”

To reflect on Resurrection in the natural world is to be led – by tendrils and vines of thematic connection – to Rootedness. For what enables a plant to survive the winter and then ‘rise again’ in the Spring to live our another season in the Earth? Its roots; simply put. Many plants have a root ball just under the ground from which their stems are put up, and other plants actually have bulbs that store nutrients during the long winter months. This central ‘ball’ or ‘bulb’ is the hub of a root system that allows the plant to draw in nutrients from a distance. A healthy plant above ground usually implies a healthy root system below ground. As we reflect on resurrection in the plant world each Spring, we should consider the rootedness which makes this resurrection possible. If we are going to experience resurrection in our own lives and wake up from torpid slumbers, we also need a ‘root system’ – a pattern of connections, across time and space, that tie us into the things that make life worth living; the things that nourish us, spiritually. To rise up we must be connected deeply to what matters to us and what has made us the person we are at our best.

The idea of Rootedness is found in many spiritual traditions; including Celtic mysticism and monasticism—in which I was immersed for many years. It may be expressed as a love of place or as a tendency to return to places that have meant something in one’s life. When Celtic mystics – whether Pagan or Christian – found themselves going astray, they oft returned to places where they had found their vocation in life. These places might have been symbolic or places where they had actually lived, at one time or another. The Celts – like mystics in many other traditions – saw the importance of being where you are and loving what you have gained through a positive spiritual praxis. The idea was that a person, to know what they are about, must have an 'anchor' somewhere in the wide-maned world—they must have a ‘place’ where they know who they are and from which they may draw spiritual succor. To have a place like this is to be ‘rooted.’

Rootedness was the Celtic way of expressing the more general monastic ideal of "stability;" which was considered one of the four major monastic ‘virtues.’ Yet rootedness implies much more than just committing yourself to a particular monastic house and staying there, "God willing," the rest of your natural life. Rootedness involves finding the place where you are most likely to flourish and mature into the person you are best prepared to become. Thus, becoming better rooted may entail a journey or even a peregrinatio (see my recent Blog, “Wandering with Intent”) during which you search for the best place to put down fresh roots! Celtic saints often said that they were out looking "for the place of their resurrection." This old idea implies that sometimes the roots we have may not be the best for us, and we must put down new roots! Once rooted, the resurrection sought becomes metaphorical of one’s own awakening and – in due time; after devout living –even deep self-realization. In naturalistic terms, to be ‘resurrected’ is to realize your true self and to be on the way to attaining that self-hood that best exemplifies being your true self. The better rooted you are, the more genuine will be our experience(s) of resurrection.

Being rooted does not ultimately mean that you are limited to an actual, physical place. It’s possible that your ‘place of resurrection’ may be carried around metaphorically within you; in your ‘Heart;’ i.e., the spiritual term for the ‘center’ of your existential being (not the seat of ‘emotions’ – as in pop culture). Your place of rooting might be an imagined place that you have constructed over time, or even an abstract idea. Yet having such a portable place usually flows from many years of either living rooted in a specific place in the external world, or else searching for such a place. We must draw upon memory and experience in order to become aware of our roots as to put down new roots; to discover where our soul’s nourishment really comes from—and then we must connect with those memories and experiences in order to strengthen our ‘root ball’ and the network of connections that define us and through which we have become the best person we can possibly be.

I find meditation on Resurrection & Rootedness to be helpful in my engagement with the world, where everything seems to be so in flux and where our lives are so often cast out upon a sea of change or else en-mired in a panoply of more or less superficial ‘options’ and meaningless ‘possibilities’ in the mundane 'here and now.' To search for the ‘place’ where you can genuinely be rooted is to seek the place of your own self-realization – i.e., your “resurrection” in a more ‘ultimate’ sense. We grow and change; we mature—for better or for worse, depending on the decisions we make and the paths we take. Where we chose to put our roots down; the roots we decide to acknowledge and those we let go of—each of these choices will either make or break us. So we must choose as wisely as we are able. To be rooted involves becoming aware of our roots as much as finding a place where we can now ‘plant’ ourselves and flourish. Being rooted makes the experiences of resurrection we have along the way both more potent and more meaningful. To be well-rooted is to have a wisening place – i.e., a 'perspective' – from which to evaluate, make choices and seek to become the best you can be in this one short life that we have. Seek for those roots that feed into the best version of yourself at this point and then seek the ‘place’ where what you are at your best can be nurtured and deepened. This is the way to the ultimate resurrection; to self-realization in the midst of life.

Wandering with Intent (An Eostre Blog)

2011-04-17T16:34:00.001-04:00

Spring has come, and over the last month I’ve been going out-of-doors as much as my schedule permits, wandering and seeking out new experiences in Nature as well as in my Imagination. It is time for “Emergence,” for breaking with our Winter-long practice of “Enclosure.”

Tonight is Eostre; an old Pagan name for the night of the first Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox—and I long for a night hike! To be out in the light of the Full Moon is a naturalistic experience that I’ve long valued; it is linked symbolically with the source of creative Inspiration and with Poetic Praxis—the creation of stories and poetry out of living dreamed scenarios. As I wait for the skies to clear and the Moon to rise this evening, I find myself reflecting on the nature of ‘wandering’ from a spiritual and philosophic point of view.

The themes of journey, quest and ‘perpetual wandering’ have long been found in human literature, music and art. They complement and augment the themes of dwelling, homesteading and the idea that we find meaning in places where one’s family or one’s ‘people’ have lived for a long time. These are all spiritual themes, having to do with deep rooted experiences of our species. To explore them is to discover touchstones of more personal disciplines, such as “Enclosure” and “Emergence” (which I have discussed in earlier blogs).

Ever since our species first appeared on the evolutionary stage, about 200,000 years ago, we have been prone to both stability and being on the move. Groups of early Homo sapiens obviously stayed near where their ancestors had lived, while others left Africa in waves and spread out, eventually coming to in-dwell every habitable ecosystem on the planet. Humans have both been a ‘homesteading’ species, establishing villages and towns and other kinds of community, as well as a ‘journeying’ species; never staying in one place for very long. We settle in a place. We live there for a time; perhaps for mny generations—and then we move on, seeking ‘greener pastures.’

I think the tendency to establish a ‘home’ and to create communities is just as typical of our species as is the wandering, journeying, questing tendency. The one must always be balanced against the other. During the Winter, when I'm more or less housebound, I focus on the themes of dwelling and sojourning; caring for the ‘hearth,’ wherever I am dwelling, as well as nurturing the idea of 'the hearth of my own heart'—which I carry with me when out on the hoof, walking, wandering and wayfaring. Once Spring comes, and I am free to leave my ‘Hut of Dwelling’ and go out on the hoof more or less at will, I turn to meditations on the themes connected to wandering. I’ve found these themes in secular as well as sacred literature; I have meditated on them in the context of Celtic myths and the lyrics of contemporary music, as well as in the Bible and in the writings of mystics from various traditions.

In Celtic myth and literature, the journey theme is ubiquitous, being developed and embellished in various ways, practical and spiritual, according to the need or inspiration of the storyteller and his or her audience. The Pagan Celts were often on the move, seeking a new home; oft because of population and environmental pressures, but just as often because of a ‘roving’ spirit that was written into their spiritual sensibilities through centuries of life-experience.

As the Celtic tribes, moving westward across Europe in the late 1^st millennium BCE, reached the Atlantic, their wandering was brought up against an awe-inspiring horizon; the Atlantic Ocean. Over the next few genertions, many wanderers -- with the gleam of inspiration in their eyes -- took to the sea, leaving villages and farms, venturing out across the waters to islands and even further destinations. It is thought that some Celtic questers may even have reached the shores of Nova Scotia. Though the majority of Celts finally settled down on the western fringes of Europe, the idea of the journey remained strong, becoming internalized as well as localized; it became a matter of playing out various symbolic scenarios for a range of spiritual and mystical purposes.

Individuals seeking spiritual renewal, wisdom or healing oft went on purposeful journeys – called immrama or peregrinatio – that set them on a course wending them – with luck and discipline – toward some desired spiritual goal. These journeys could be internal and imagined or else undertaken as wanderings to actual sacred locales in the landscapes in which they dwelt. Some of these wanderers went a short ways to visit a local nemeton, dolmen or cairn, eventually returning home, while others left on quests, only to return many months or years later, if at all. Many of these questers were never heard from again!

There were three ‘classes’ of journey in the Celtic world. There were pilgrimages, which established a definite destination, and that were usually undertaken over the course of a few days to a few weeks or months. Then there were quests, which were motivated by some deeper need. The quest would inspire the seeker to travel beyond the horizons of the familiar, and would put them in the path of possibly perilous experiences. Quests were sometimes mapped out as a series of ‘tasks’ which needed to be performed, or as a search for some lost sacred object (e.g., the Grail Quest; a story with deep affinities to Celtic myths). Finally, there was “perpetual wandering,” which was a state of life or perhaps a “vocation” that a person chose willingly. The wanderer would leave home, seeking wisdom or perhaps redemption, never expecting – much less intending – to return home again. In the Celtic Church, there were wandering saints whose vocation was ministry to whomever they met along their wandering way. They would journey from one place to another, living off their own labor, local hospitality and devout offerings. In Latin, this state was known as peregrinatio.

Though often well-planned, a person going off a-journeying was wise not expect to end up where they intended to be! Wandering has a random factor in it, and it is for this reason that pilgrimages and quests, at least, were supposed to be planned out ahead of time. A ‘map’ or ‘itinerary’ is necessary to keep the journeyer from wandering off into oblivion. Discipline is necessary in order to make some progress toward the desired end. Yet all the discipline and planning in the world cannot insure arrival at your destination. Life is often a series of accidental encounters and unanticipated events! Yet to set out responsibly, one needs to at least ‘intend’ to reach some specified goal. Even the person on peregrinatio has a goal; but it is achieved in transit—to experience what one finds and minister to whomever needs help along the way.

The theme of wandering in Celtic spirituality gives us incentive to undertake the journey; but to be intentional about it. The adept Celtic wanderer would have instructed you, "Do not let yourself be blown about haplessly by the forces at work around you! Chart a path, as best you can, and go forth upon it! Accept wisdom wherever you find it!" As Spring comes once again, and I wander out, moving from Enclosure into Emergence as my primary seasonal motif, I take this advice as a rune for my own experience. We must make choices that will edify and inspire ourselves and those whose lives we influence. We must move forward into the future as pathers seeking wisdom’s touchstones and runes. To go with intent is more fruitful than to be tossed about by the forces buffeting us on all sides. This applies to taking an afternoon or night hike as much as it does to the living of life in general.

There are ‘sacred’ sites in the natural landscapes wherein I usually walk. There is the “Bridge of Meditation” down in the gulch in the wood closest town. There is the stone spring out at the State Park east of town, and then there are the various waterfalls I’ve found in my wanderings, both larger and smaller ones, that I like to frequent. All of these sites and more make for good day-journeys; earthen pilgrimages that lead me out; there and back home again. Finally, there are more distant destinations, pilgrimages to which are necessarily more potentially refreshing and even revelatory because less often frequented. [I think of Mc Connells Mill State Park!] If I go for a night hike, this has to be especially well planned, as going about in the woods in the dark is an easy way to get lost, not to mention injured! I will have to see what adventures the advent of dusk may suggest to me tonight_

In any case, blessed be!

May the Pookah visit you on this Full Moon night, and leave you eggs of wisdom!

[An earlier version of this blog was published at my now defunct author website in April 2008]

CAVES AND THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY (1 April 2011)

2011-04-17T08:27:00.000-04:00

Caves have long been a theme in human spiritualities. Almost any tradition you look at will have some mention of caves and the role they play in personal transformation and spiritual self-realization. In the traditions of the West, caves have been used by spiritual communities and individual seekers since the Paleolithic (between 40,000 and 11,000 BCE). Some of the earliest members of our species to venture into Europe, used caves for what appear to be rituals pertaining to hunting, initiation and spiritual rebirth. As some of the first known examples of human art are preserved in these same caves, questions about the origins of art have long been tied up with questions about human ritual and religion (if you would like to explore these caves and their art, see Randall White's Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind, 2003).

In historic times, the ancient Celts -- both Pagan and Christian -- were wont to use caves as places of meditation and mystical transformation. One cave -- on an island in the middle of a lake in Ireland -- called Saint Patrick's Purgatory -- has evidence in it of pre-Christian as well as Christian use (see Nigel Pennick's Celtic Sacred Landscapes, 1996, p 124 for one discussion). Since the Middle Ages it has been used as a place of retreat and as a destination for pilgrims. Individuals and sometimes groups on a spiritual quest would go into the cave at dusk and remain there overnight. Many came out in the morning having dreamt dreams or seen visions or -- if things didn't go as well -- being more or less on the mad side of sanity.

Later, Saint Francis of Assisi went into a cave to pray and center himself after he had 'left the world' and decided to follow Christ as His Vagabond. There he had divinely gifted dreams and experienced the presence of his God in prayer. After his cave experience he went out and began his ministry, but he returned periodically to the cave for personal refreshment and spiritual succor. Many people before and since the time of Francis have found such nurture in caves.

It would take a book to detail all of the historic and prehistoric examples exemplifying the role of caves in the lives of mystics, questers, saints and pilgrims. I chose these three simply to illustrate the point that caves have been experienced as powerful places, where the person venturing into them is likely to have experiences that transform them, and where they have found the strength which then enabled them to help transform the world in which they found themselves.

Caves have been symbolic of many things in human spiritualities. The air that moves in and out of some caves has been thought of as the 'breath' of the earth; whether the earth was understood as divine (i.e., as the Goddess) or as the creation of some God. Caves have about them an aura of mystery, owing to the fact of the human aversion to being in total darkness. They have been places where dreams and visions have transpired, and where strange beings, whether natural or supernatural, human or not, may be encountered. This experience may be grounded in the fact that light deprivation affects us in very specific ways. After being in total darkness for more than an hour, for instance, a sense of disorientation will set in, making it difficult for you to find your way around. More severe forms of disorientation may transpire the longer you are immersed in total darkness, and most of the lore about visions and the experience of monsters, saints and demons in caves may stem from this very basic biological response to light deprivation.

Caves have been symboled as "the womb of the divine" out of which a person entering into them can emerge 'reborn.' To go into a cave is seen in various spiritual traditions as analogous to dying. Re-emerging is seen as rebirth. Caves have also been used as metaphors for solitude, as in "the Cave of the Heart," -- a monastic metaphor that alludes to the solitude the monk is seeking in their own "heart," the deep root or the "center" of their being. At first, the mystic goes into an actual cave to find solitude (as Saint Francis did). Later on, the mystic goes into themselves and finds the solitude they once experienced in the cave.

Today, caves still play a role in human spirituality and mysticism. As symbols they may guide us in our quest for solitude; that place of quiet wherein our 'soul' can be restored; our full 'powers' returning to refresh us. As metaphorical of the existential 'center' of the person, the image of the cave may help to provide us with a deep mooring in our own becoming, bringing clarity to the mind and the heart. Dwelling in this 'center' may lead to thresholds of self-transformation necessary to make possible a new stage in our life's journey.

The experience of actually going into caves is still attractive to many people today, and this is just as true for secular people as it is for those of a more traditional 'religious' inclination. Organizations of Cavers exist almost anywhere in the world where there are caves to explore. These organizations are devoted to mapping, studying and preserving caves. They study the caves scientifically and experience them for various reasons, most having to do with personal edification, stemming from the adventure involved in caving as well as the wonder and awe experienced in caves.

Going into caves today requires a knowledge of the often fragile ecosystems that caves represent, coupled with an understanding of how to venture into them and come out without causing damage or being injured in the process Any human intrusion into a cave brings with it consequences, but there are more and less contaminating ways of exploring caves. It is the spiritual duty of those who explore caves today to go in and return in such a way as to leave the cave in as unmolested a state as possible.

If you want to have an experience of being in a cave, try visiting one or more of the commercial caves that are open to the public, such as Mammoth Cave in Kentucky http://www.mammothcave.com/ or Indian Echo Caverns http://www.indianechocaverns.com/ in eastern Pennsylvania. Commercial caves allow people without training as cavers to go underground and experience the beauty and strangeness of caves. Make an attempt to understand the geology of the cave you visit; how old the rocks are out of which the cave has been sculpted, how long ago the cave began to form, how old the various formations – stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, 'cave bacon,' and etc. – are, and how they formed. Find out what animals – if any – live in the cave (bats are a common resident in caves; though their populations are now under threat from a condition known as "White Nose Syndrome"). Once you have prepared for the journey and taken the tour, you can use the experience in meditation as a source of images and bodily sensations to guide your own cave meditations.

When I first started getting into geology and going to commercial caves, I had the good fortune to be on a tour where, to give us the sensation of total darkness, the tour guides turned all of the lights off for a short time. Though it only lasted a few minutes, and though we knew the lights would soon come back on, the experience was eerie and had the effect of heightening my senses. When the lights came back on, my shoulders were tingling, and I knew I had tasted of what it might have been like for Francis or Patrick or the cave painters of the Paleolithic to be in total darkness, ether simply communing with it or else on a spiritual quest.

Whether or not you can have the experience of actually being in a cave, if you are seeking for spiritual renewal or insight, or else yearning for silence and solitude, making a study of caves and then using the imagery of caves in meditation can be a boon. In WellSprings of the Deer (2002) I made reference to caves as one possible destination for a pilgrimage or quest; and such a cave can be either imagined or actually existing. If you find yourself drawn to the theme of ‘caves,’ following your inspirations may bring you to a rewarding place.

Scientific Cosmology and Eschatology

2011-03-27T14:16:00.002-04:00

“One does not have to be especially spiritual to experience awe at the infinity of galaxies we can see in the night sky. Our human consciousness does not merely make possible the question Why? It insists that the question be asked. The urge to know is a defining feature of humanity: to know about the past; to understand the present; to glimpse what the future may hold. ... The night sky is full of unanswered questions.” (389-340)

- Richard Leakey Origins Reconsidered (1992)

Meditating on the Universe and this planet from the perspective of a scientifically grounded cosmology, I often center down and reflect on the nature of life itself. Understanding Life requires an existential hermeneutic; it requires poetic reflection upon what is known and what is hoped for, what is dreamt and what is already proven. Life arises out of the processes set in motion at the Big Bang. It has come into being on this planet as a logical though not necessary consequence of the various particulars of the dust & gases that were available when our sun began to coalesce coming together and then, as planetary bodies – perhaps dozens of them in the early days of our solar system – began forming, either being blown out of existence by collisions with other bodies being formed or else being drawn into the creation of larger bodies through gravitational attraction. Soon after our planet came into being, the potential for life must have existed as a matrix in its material systems. Life did not have to happen. Yet it did, and in that becoming many wondrous beings have come into existence and then passed away again into extinction, over and over, down across the eons of time since the genesis of life on Earth some 3.8 billion years ago.

When I meditate on my life as a manifestation of this great web of being & becoming that has been evolved by natural forces on this planet, I stagger in amazement! There are billions of people on this planet; each one of us a manifestation of Nature. I am a ‘child’ of Nature. You are, too. We are Here. Yet Nature is not just here for us. When I think of life like this, I’m given over to both spiritual and philosophical wonder. What are the implications of life in such a universe as science now describes? How are we to grapple with our own existential horizons, and what meaning can be gleaned from understanding the processes of cosmological formation and extinction? I’m fascinated with the scientific understanding of the cosmos! That science has come to the place where it can posit both a beginning and an end to the universe means that it has finally reached the point where it can rival religions for an explanation of our being here; for existence as we experience it.

Most religions posit a beginning and an end to the cosmos. In the Christian tradition there is the account of “Genesis” and various accounts of “the end of the world” as laid out in its scriptures. While I used to live within those mythological bounds, I now find myself much more at-home in the Cosmos as constructed by scientific observation, experimentation and explanation. It is within the scientific understanding of the Cosmos, its beginning and end, that I now live and breath and have my being. My own spiritual horizons have shifted significantly in the last few years, as a result of this shift from a mythological to a scientific cosmology. I’ve gone deeper, spiritually and existentially, than I ever have before. Both the beginning and the end of all that is or ever shall be is being revealed by scientific inquiry and the empirical exploration of the cosmos.

There is much to meditate on in the scientific story of the universe. Most people are aware of the Big Bang as the cosmic beginning, However, astronomical observations have also revealed various major events in the future of our planet, our solar system and our galaxy. To contemplate these ‘eschatological’ events is a profound exercise in the spiritual tradition of ‘reflections on our mortality.’ Like monks meditating on the fact of their death and consequently seeking the ‘place’ of their own ‘resurrection,’ I find myself desiring to participate imaginatively in the cosmic adventure of “finding a new home” where humankind can go to expand its existence. Will we go to Mars? Will we create great ‘ships’ in space where humanity can survive? Will we terra-form one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn or Neptune, taking a dead world and making it into something habitable by our species and by other creatures; plants and animals – that we would need to sustain life on another world? While such a future seems improbable, it may be necessary, if we are going to survive the fate of our planet. Eventually our Sun will age and become a Red Giant. At that point, it will grow large enough to engulf the Earth_ making life here impossible. Facts like this constitute the stuff of a naturalistic 'eschatology' -- a study of 'Last Things.'

While my own end will come long before such a ‘cosmic’ event as the end of our planet in a solar holocaust, meditation on this fact contributes to my sense of finiteness in a way that parallels the effect that meditating on the Christian version of the end of the world had when I was grounded in Christian mythology. I will end, with my own death; and everyone else alive on the planet today will also eventually die, and then their descendants will die, too. But beyond even that mortal horizon, our planet itself will not go on for ever. If that were not enough, the Andromeda galaxy – our nearest neighbor in the cosmos – is on a collision course with our home galaxy; the Milky Way. The two will start to ‘interact’ between 3 and 5 billion years from now, bringing an end to ‘the galaxy as we know it.’ If we are still around by that distant time, unforeseen experiences may await our descendants. There are also closer threats at hand. There are comets and asteroids with which to avoid collision. Then, as we fly in the galactic arm of stars in which we are held by gravitational forces (or is it dark matter and dark energy?), we may be on a near-miss or even collision course with black holes that we can’t yet see and won’t see until we get close enough to them that they “become active” and start eating the outer planets and then our own world. Our solar system makes one complete circumnavigation around the center of the galaxy about every 225 million years, so the last time we were near our current position was in the middle of the Age of the Dinosaurs! As we’ve made some 16 to 18 trips around the Galaxy since our planet formed, it is likely that a lot of the cosmic dangers have already been experienced. Still_ there may be unknown dangers lurking. Everything comes to an end; even planets, stars and galaxies. If that doesn’t constitute a ‘meditation on our mortality,’ I don’t know what would!

As I reflect on the cosmic origins and expansion of the universe, I am also struck by the fact that everything is in flux; everything is in motion – even things that appear to be ‘stationary' are actually moving, as the Earth is moving, the solar system is moving within our galaxy and the galaxy is also moving! The universe itself is expanding. Newton was right; Aristotle was wrong. Movement is the natural state of things in the universe, not stasis. _And in a similar sense this applies to life on our planet as much as to the ‘heavenly’ bodies. One of the defining characteristics of life is that living things ‘move.’ Life is ‘animated.’ This motion is relative. Sponges, for instance, do not seem to ‘move’ much at the macro level; but when you peer into them with a microscope, their internal workings become evident! They are feeding, removing waste, fighting off intruders and reproducing. I am moving right now_ typing these words. All living things ‘move.’ In another sense, our species is ‘on the move.’ Our ancestors left Africa in waves and colonized every habitable continent. We have, today, populated the planet to what may be ‘the groaning point,’ and many people imagine that a movement away from our planet is the next logical step in our evolution as a species. Whether this is possible or not is the subject of much scientific investigation, science fiction and ordinary speculation. What would it be like to live on another planet? _To live in space on a ‘star ship’ or on a constructed ‘world’ like a huge space station?

When I consider the scientific understanding of cosmic genesis and eschatology, I am reminded just how urgently humanity’s vision needs broadened by a cosmic education. I am struck by how far we have to go, and I often don’t feel in the least proud of ‘how far we have come’ since the beginning of the modern scientific age, though the ‘progress’ is certainly genuine. There are still so many people lost in outmoded forms of superstition; who are easily deceived by charlatans of every ilk; religious, political and secular—pop-gurus of every possible persuasion. Education in the United States has come to be more and more chained to what people already believe; “you can’t teach that to my kids_ because its not what we believe!” _This prejudice has put a stranglehold on general education in America and is threatening to undermine higher education. There are so many ways in which we have not yet outgrown the ‘tribal’ mentality that was once a survival tactic, but which now leads to wars and threatens us all with extermination at our own hands. I wonder_ Will we ever get off our own planet and go to dwell on other worlds in humane and sustainable ways; ones that won’t just transplant all of our imperfections from here to there?. How can we get our act together so that we can do what will ensure the humane survival of our species? 'Survival at any cost’ is not what we should be aspiring to_ We need a new philosophy; one that will enable us to let go of our faults and avoid the fate that seems to be waiting for us if we don’t soon change course.

The universe is a huge and wondrous place, filled with great and awesome danger, beauty and sublimity. There is enough out there – as well as right here at home on Earth – to inspire us to change our minds, mend our hearts, and begin to think of life in ‘bigger’ terms; to get over our parochial biases and prejudices, if we would be let it inspire us. After immersing myself in scientific cosmology for well over a decade, I now think in cosmological terms when I think about spirituality, ethics, and aesthetics. “Nature” isn’t confined to this planet! Ecology must be broadened to begin to take into account the possibility of our eventual migration ‘off-world.’ In the future, we will need to become “cosmic naturalists” or perhaps “trans-planetary ecologists.” As a spiritual species, we need to consider the problems that will be involved in making some other planet our home, and to do it before we get out there. Yet I realize that the chances of our survival as a species are slim_ even given our great ingenuity and intelligence and our ability – instilled in us by evolution – to adapt readily to new environments.

Thinking about terra-forming other planets, I once had an engaging conversation with a friend about the “shake and bake colonization” of Mars (mentioned in a television program about 10 years ago called Hyperspace hosted by Sam Neill) and how rarely we see this kind of thing portrayed in sci-fi shows. My friend said that “they always portray life on Mars in static ways, in atmosphere suits and bubble cities.” We noted the exceptions, but they were few. When I thought about why this might be, I suggested that perhaps to think about transforming Mars or some earth-like Moon of another planet into a more habitable place for our kind, the writers would have to face the possibility of evolution (Oh dear, the ‘E’ word!) happening elsewhere in the universe. Perhaps the portrayal of Mars and other planets in static ways hides a subtle underlying bias against evolution?

What if we introduce life on other planets as part of a terra-forming effort; assuming that was an ethically accepable course to take? What if we introduce plants and animals in controlled environments – in ‘bio-domes’ – while we ‘shake and bake’ a planet the make it habitable? If possible, what would happen once we introduced those plants and animals into the new planetary environment (after probably hundreds of years of terra-forming)? The only logical outcome of such an experiment would be evolution! Any life that we would introduce on Mars, for instance, or any other world, would evolve in time to become better adapted to environments and the forces of Nature as manifest on that planet! As any environment we might create on another planet will never be exactly like the environments life has inhabited on Earth – consider the gravitational differences, just for instance? – there’s no way any species would remain static! Over even a few generations they would likely change, as selection pressures would be high! People living on Mars over a period of possibly a dozen or so generations would also adapt. Once whole generations are born on Mars – or on some other world – natural selection would influence the survival of individuals and of groups. What would evolve?!? How would the descendants of the original Martians – perhaps several thousands of years down the temporal road – be different from their human cousins still living on Earth? And then it’s startling to have to think that if we colonize Mars – or even some Moon in our solar system – we will eventually also have to leave that planet and move on, because of the aging of our Sun.

I find these kinds of questions spiritually as well as philosophically fascinating! They raise my sights above the immediate and the ordinary, and I find their influence to be transformative. I’ve never slept the same since discovering the parameters of the current scientific understanding of the universe; I dream differently! So much beauty, so much sublimity, and so much to reflect on with deep spiritual passion. What is our place in this cosmos, as we now understand it? We are nothing more nor less than enticed observers and revelers with a vested interest in understanding what goes so far beyond us that it leaves us breathless. Yet our very existence depends upon knowing all we can about our cosmic neighborhood and eventually finding a way to eventually leave our Eden-like home. Will we rise to this challenge?

Mythology, Spirituality and Fundamentalism

2011-03-13T10:04:00.001-04:00

“Humans need stories—grand, compelling stories – that help to orient us in our lives and in the cosmos. The epic of evolution is such a story, beautifully suited to anchor our search for planetary consensus, telling us of our nature, our place, our context.” (174)

- Ursula Goodenough The Sacred Depths

of Nature (1998)

“What does mythical-narrative language contribute? Something that, although it is contained in my empirical reality, is usually not visible. I use the gospel, or other religious traditions, to say something that is vital to me. I use myth and mythical speech because I need it.” (151)

- Dorothee Soelle The Window of Vulnerability

(1990)

"At the root of myth is a praxis, a way of being within the world that expresses itself in a corresponding way of feeling and approaching reality, including the Supreme Reality that wraps all things around; God.” (215)

- Leonardo Boff The Maternal Face of God (1987)

“We do not particularly care whether Rip van Winkle, Kamar al‑Zaman, or Jesus Christ ever actually lived. Their stories are what concern us: and these stories are so widely distributed over the world ‑‑ attached to various heroes in various lands ‑‑ that the question of whether this or that local carrier of the universal theme may or may not have been a historical, living man can be of only secondary moment.” (230‑1)

- Joseph Campbell The Hero with a

Thousand Faces (1968; 2nd Ed)

It was once thought that ‘myth’ referred only to stories that weren’t ‘true.’ In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the rise of science and scientific history (a researched account of the past, as opposed to traditional stories about the past) threw what we now call ‘mythology’ into question; its truth value was investigated and found wanting—at least as regards its account of things that might actually have ‘happened’ at some point in the past. In the last half of the 20^th century, however, there was a reconstruction of the value and meaning of mythology; as evidenced in the quotes above. ‘Myth’ came to be seen as something much deeper than a mere account of the actual historical past. It was seen to be a vehicle for human self-understanding and as a repository of cultural wisdom about the human situation. Mircea Eliade, Ernst Casirrer and Joseph Campbell were among the most popular promoters of this move to rehabilitate the idea of myth. I would argue that this ‘rehabilitation’ was actually a reclamation of an earlier understanding of the stories that constitute mythology; an understanding that was fractured by the rise of the historical sciences and their emphasis on ‘what actually happened’ in the past. While the contribution of the historical sciences is important for understanding the objective world in which we live, the return to mythology in the late 20^th century reaffirmed the existential, subjective and spiritual value of these stories.

This reconstruction has often been embraced by theologians and spiritual writer and used to re-assert the value of the stories and poetry and narrative prose found in the Bible. Writers such as Leonardo Boff, Sallie McFague and Dorothee Soelle were among the writers that I read in the 1980’s and 1990’s who used the idea of ‘myth’ as a way of reclaiming the Bible as a narrative about ‘big’ questions; the Bible as a symbolic and metaphorical text that revealed the nature of the human spiritual quest in ways that worked in a realm well beyond the question of its ‘historical’ accuracy. These writers all accepted the Enlightenment critique of the Bible as ‘myth’ in the sense that it wasn’t ‘true’ in the scientific historical sense—most of what is related in the Bible never happened. What they argued, however, is that the Bible is true as myth in the rehabilitated sense of that term of stories from which we can glean truths about human nature, our subjective experiences of growth, brokenness and salvation, and our existential experience of the world around us.

This reclaiming of myth also happened in Neo-Pagan circles and in writings on Celtic spirituality. In The Once and Future Goddess (1989), Elinor W Gadon said that “Myth is a paradigmatic narrative by which a community tells the story of its beginning.” (146). Moyra Caldecott said in Women in Celtic Myth: Tales of Extraordinary Women from the Ancient Celtic Tradition (1992) that:

“Myth is multi-layered, like life, and to get the most out of it we have to be aware of many different elements at once. ... In fact, the myth-maker’s truth is just as valid [i.e., as that of the scientist or historian] but of a different kind. It carries the conviction of a true note in a beautiful melody, and it illustrates the true dynamic of our lives behind the superficial structures..” (1)

“Like a detective, the myth-reader follows clues eagerly, learning all the while. Unlike a detective, however, we very rarely solve the mystery, for that is not what the myth-maker intends us to do. His or her task is to make us notice the mystery – to make us stop taking things for granted, to look, to question, to wonder.” (2)

In neither of these writers – as in their Christian counterparts – is there any pretense that the stories in the mythologies in which they are seeking meaning and gleaning wisdom are in any way ‘historically’ or (worse yet!) ‘literally’ true! The a-historical nature of myth is accepted and wholeheartedly embraced. While there might be historical events alludes to in myths, this is the least important dimension of the tales. It is from this starting point that these writers are able to seek and find wisdom and insight into the human condition in the myths they are studying and accepting as the narrative anchoring of their spiritualities.

Unfortunately, there was another movement afoot in the 20^th century that reacted negatively to the Enlightenment critique of mythology and that then did not participate in its reconstruction in the late 20^th century. That movement is called Fundamentalism. From the outset, this fanatic’s ideology set itself against the wisening discoveries of the Enlightenment. Finding their sacred texts attack by historical science, those who became Fundamentalists simply refused the insights of the Enlightenment and would not allow that their Bible was in error when considered as an historical text. In response, they promoted an interpretation of the Bible as ‘non-mythological’ and as ‘literally’ true. Ironically, Fundamentalism also seemed to accept the Enlightenment’s bias toward the value of researched history over ‘mythology’ (i.e., uncritically received texts’) but were unwilling to see that the Bible was a mythological text like so many other ‘scriptures’ from around the world. While Fundamentalism was perfectly willing to see other cultures’ and other religions’ texts as ‘myth’ and therefore as ‘untrue,’ they separated the Bible out and put it on a pedestal; they attempted to isolate their own mythology and keep it untouched by scientific historical evaluation. They created a literature of self-justifying analysis of the Bible that portrayed all the major events in the Bible – from the Creation through the Exodus to the Death and Resurrection of Jesus – as ‘proven historical facts’ (as one young campus evangelist insisted to me a few years ago). In this way, Fundamentalism locked its adherents into a spiritual as well as a cultural ghetto that has had an incredibly negative impact on 20^th and now 21^st century religion and spirituality. The politics of Fundamentalism has had a devastating impact on everything from education and the arts to the public’s understanding of science as well as social and economic policy.

Fundamentalism has now arisen in other religions, such as Islam and Hinduism, and there is no gauging the ill effects this is likely to have on humanity’s religious and spiritual progress in the coming decades. Cultural isolation and religious elitism are always a manifestation of Fundamentalism; ‘our’ culture’ – because it reflects ‘our religion’ – is better; more sacred, more worth promoting—than ‘yours.’ It always strikes me as ironic that Augustine in The Confessions wrote that the literal interpretation was just the beginner’s way of getting to know what the words and sentences meant, and that a deep spiritual understanding of Scripture only arises once you get the literal level down and move beyond it, into metaphorical, symbolic and allegorical interpretation. Yet the 20^th century saw the emergence of a whole movement that prioritized the idea that Bible as ‘literally’ true, and now the 21^st century will have to deal with the crippling spiritual and socioeconomic fallout from Fundamentalisms in all three of the major western religions. What is this slavery to the literal word of the text? Why does it seduce so many people?

These questions are too much to be dealt with in this blog. However, what I’d like to do is to approach the issue of mythology from an earthen and scientific spiritual standpoint, and say a little about how mythology – even the mythologies of major religions like Christianity – can contribute to our post-supernaturalist spiritual quest. The religious re-appropriation of myth that I summarized at the beginning of this blog respects the Enlightenment’s praxis and critique of mythology. My particular interest is in how we can tap into the wisdom that is encoded in mythology in the service of a naturalistic mysticism and an earthen poetics and philosophy. Once you move out of Plato’s Cave into the Light of the Sun; i.e., once you give up your superstitions and learned misconceptions about Earth & Cosmos and embrace the revelations of science—what role might mythology play in your life? Do you discard it completely; as merely reflecting ancient belief systems that are no longer valid or valuable, or do you glean mythologies for the sparks and embers of wisdom that they may contain?

I think that to totally eschew mythology – which includes the Bible, the Torah and the Koran as well as the texts of all other religions, living or dead – is to loose three thousand years of spiritual reflection on what it means to be human. Granted, this corpus of texts generally encodes and reflects a supernaturalist view of the ‘Creation’ and human nature, yet behind this façade, I argue, is preserved basic insights into what it has meant for the writers of these texts and the tellers of these stories to be human. Because we are all human beings – animals dwelling in the physical world; the Earth & Cosmos – whether or not we hold to supernaturalist or naturalistic beliefs, the stories told by religious cultures must have had some relevance to the human condition for them to be edifying and inspiring. Religions that loose sight of our being biological creatures in a world made up of matter and energy, tend to be dysfunctional and therefore unhealthy for their adherents. Extreme sects tend to burn themselves out, and loose their appeal when their lifestyle is shown to be unhealthy. Religions that have survived for a long time, despite their problems and the social and existential ills that have stemmed from their practice and institutionalization, must have been on the whole ‘healthy’ for their adherents to practice, or they would have died out. The mythologies of successful religions may well encode sparks and embers of a very human wisdom, despite the framing of the stories in supernaturalist assumptions and the veil of superstition explanations for various phenomena.

What I hope to glean from mythology – and this includes the Bible as much as Homer or the myths of the Celts – is not any insight into a supernatural being or beings, but insight into the human condition. I seek tales and poetry that say something about the choices we human beings have to make in order to live a spiritually positive and healthy life. Some of these stories are dark and deal with distressing and tragic themes. Others deal with human culpability and responsibility in the face of overwhelming odds or in the face of ethically difficult choices. Not a few are good at revealing the dimensions and pervasiveness of human brokenness. Many of mythological stories inspire me to a new openness to possibilities and urge me to new heights of consciousness. They tend to break through my insensitivity to the familiar and show me that it is possible to encounter the mysterious and the sublime in the course of my day to day existence. Epiphanies may arise out of the ordinary if we are awake to the possibility. Good mythic stories help us deal with loss, grief and suffering. They also allude to what a transformed self might look like and how we might experience a transformation. Then there are those stories that insist that self-transcendence and self-transformation is possible and give us symbolic and metaphorical ciphers for that experience. Ultimately, a mythological canon of stories will inspire those who read and meditate on its tales to the thresholds of wholeness and integration; i.e., the essence of the experience often referred to as ‘salvation.’

I never ask of such stories if they ever ‘happened,’ unless I’m actually engaged in historical study. That is, I never concern myself with whether they constitute an ‘historical’ account of some event on some day in some particular year, as that is the least important dimension of a mythology. But this is what Fundamentalists fail to see! And this failure is what is ruining so much religion today. It is certainly valid to ask of mythic stories “did this ever happen?” When you do an historical analysis of the Bible without the blinders of self-justifying piety on, you soon come to realize that most of the stories in the Bible never happened; at least in the way that they are related. One of the milestones in the spiritual life is to see and accept this—and then to move beyond that question to the more important issues that should be concerning you. The study of mythology – like the study of great literature – can be a boon to spirituality and actually improve the quality of our lives, but only if we can avoid the seduction of literalism and the trap of Fundamentalism. The texts of human mythologies are so much richer than the Fundamentalist will allow—and religion will only survive if it turns away from that fallacy and returns to a more literary, aesthetic and spiritual reading of its texts.

A Revel Toward Spring! (27 February 2011)

2011-03-06T14:59:00.000-05:00

SPRING IS COMING_

It is near, but not quite here_ I can sense it! The days have grown almost long enough for it to be declared ‘Spring’_ but not quite. Three weeks until the Vernal Equinox! Though we are still in the grip of wintry weather_ I can sense the turning of the Wheel of the Year in my bones, in my ever-chilly flesh. Who will dance with me in anticipation?

The time for Enclosure is passing; I am moved toward Emergence; that bodily desire for movement outward_ for being out on the witch; out on the path_ leaving the solitude of the Hut of Dwelling for three seasons! I’ve been hearing the ice around my Hut melting for the last week_ despite the storm we had last Moon Night—and though more snow is in the forecast_ something within me cries, “It is time to end this hibernation!

To the Woods! _If only I could_ brave the ice-laden and slippery paths and skate my way to a new place of insight and inspiration!

Awaken!

Look around you!

The Daffodil heads pushed up through the soil to peek out by the back door last week; they are yet buds; tiny ‘knobs’ at the surface of the Earth; organic periscopes – yet even they sense that the time is nearing for Emergence, and all my senses are steering me in the direction of release from this momentum-quieted sojourn called ‘Winter.’ While there has been activity in this Hut of Dwelling for the last three months; meditation, srudy, thinking and dancing and singing—the time for pathing out into the Cathedral of Nature is once again at hand, and so I shall soon leave my table, my desk and my chair and go a-wandering_ ever here and there!

At this cusp, I stand and look backward and forward. I remember the Winter Solstice and its quiet solitudes. But now_ my flesh thrills and my soul sings at the prospect of going afield! Three weeks! Then, we may celebrate the Feast of Saint Patrick and stop to dwell at the Vernal Equinox, then watch for the Pookah – that 6-foot tall gray rabbit of olde – who will come with his whisperings and his whiskers flitching_ inciting us to vernal dances, while leaving us eggs of wisdom’s prospect!

Ahhh_ Who will dance with me?

Raising the Bar: Evolution and Evangelism (12 Feb 2011)

2011-02-13T10:19:00.001-05:00

Last summer I had a visitor at my front door. I heard the bell ring and went to see who it was, only to find myself confronted with two well-dressed strangers who were anxious to speak with me. Each was well-dressed and beaming with apparent enthusiasm over something they wanted to share, and after introducing themselves, proceeded to blurt out the well-rehearsed question, “Well, sir, we were wondering if we could speak with you about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? Do you yourself know Jesus?”

I was struck by the formality of their presentation and by the meticulous way in which these two believers spoke. One man and one woman, they smiled at me with a coaxing simplicity that covered more covert intentions; they were – most assuredly – praying for me ‘inwardly’ as they confronted me. I, too, was ‘praying’ for guidance, and suddenly found myself asking them if they understood and accepted the truth of evolution? _I was rather surprised by these words coming out of my mouth, but it felt ‘right,’ and so I beamed at them with a hopefully less duplicitous enthusiasm.

“No_ I mean_ we do not subscribe to the ‘doctrine’ of evolution. Do you, sir?” the man asked me. I could see that the woman had taken a submissive step back from the door, and had fallen into the ‘supportive role’ in relation to her male companion. It was obvious he was the dominant person in this team; especially when confronted with the ‘e’ word. I had no doubt at that point what kind of ‘church’ they represented; a sexist, traditionalist, literalist, and therefore anti-scientific body of people retreating from the world into the security of a like-minded fellowship, from which they might never emerge again.

I said, with honest conviction and, I hoped, compassion, “Evolution is not a doctrine, sir; it is a well substantiated theory about the world. It is a ‘fact.’”

“It is a lie!” the man said adamantly, his eyes suddenly turning severe, looking to me like those of a wounded fiend.

“No, actually it’s a well established truth about the world,” I said, “about you and me and everyone else. Evolution is true, and if you don’t accept it, then how can I hear what else you have to say, especially about Jesus?”

“How’s that?” the man said, now in a rigid stance, obviously suppressing anger and possibly violence.

“If you haven’t opened yourself to the truth of evolution, can I really trust what you say about Jesus? I mean, evolution is a spiritual as well as an empirical fact; it is the empirical truth behind the myth of ‘Creation;’ it describes the ‘what actually happened’ whereas the creation stories in the Bible tell us more about our relationship to God, the Creation and each other. If you reject the truth of evolution, then you reject something God has done—something that’s been going on for billions of years. Evolution is established as the way in which all life on this planet arose; and if God is the Creator, as you no doubt believe, then evolution is the process by which God has created us. If you don’t accept evolution, how can I possibly trust that you have a handle on the truth of other things; such as salvation and the human condition?”

“I don’t follow you,” was all the man could say. The woman was by this point distressed; looking at the porch floor and shaking her head, muttering softly to her version of ‘God.’

“The point is simple,” I continued, “but I’ll rephrase it. As evolution is a fact and you don’t accept it, can I really trust that you are in possession of revelation about the way things are? What you have to say about more ultimate questions—such as sin and salvation—is suspect, because you apparently aren’t listening to God very closely.”

“Why would you say that?” the man asked, now getting angry – I could feel the violent emotion directed at me.

“Because God knows that evolution is true, as He is behind it. And if you haven’t had that confirmed in you_ by the Spirit_ then you are obviously not listening to God. God can’t tell you that evolution is a ‘lie’ as God started it all and is the force behind the entire unfolding of the universe—including the evolution of life. If you are being told by God that evolution isn’t true, I fear for you, as you may be listening to a Liar rather than to the real God.”

The man said, simply, “good day,” turned and walked off the porch with the woman following behind him, still with her head bowed.

I was somewhat thrown by this interaction, as I’d not planned to take this tack with my visitors. They were not the usual Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormon missionaries. They said they were from a “new church” starting up somewhere in the area, and I suspected they were going door to door, trying to drum up converts. After I thought about our exchange for a while I realized that I’d hit upon a position from which to evaluate the claims of evangelists; I had found a scale to weight their truth claims upon, and because of this it seemed I’d come away from the encounter at my own front door more or less unscathed.

I’ve often asserted that I have no problem with religion, per se. I have a problem, however, with any religion or philosophy that rejects the established findings of science, amongst which evolution is now well ranked. _I had just never put my criteria into practice in quite this way before. I wasn’t trying to be ‘smart’ much less ‘mean’ to my two visitors. I would have invited them in, and offered them iced tea or water had we gotten beyond this initial interaction, but as I sought guidance in the first few moments of the visit, I realized I really wanted to know whether or not they accepted the truth of evolution; whether – in their worldview – life has been evolving on this planet for billions of years, or if they still held to some version of the old Iron Age myths (e.g., the creation tales from Genesis).

They were probably going to talk to me about revelation in the Bible and the knowledge of God as they understood it, based upon their own experience of Jesus as constrained by a certain amount of “received knowledge” (i.e., the particular religious traditions they held to be valid.) Experiences of Jesus and of God vary according to the traditions that people accept. My problem with their intended presentation was simple: If they could not accept something as well-established as the fact of the evolution of life on this planet, then their take on ‘deeper’ spiritual issues (like the state of human affairs, the nature and role of God in our lives, and the ‘plan’ of salvation) was suspect.

It seems to me that truth – all truth, small ‘t’ and capital ‘T’ truth – is something that concerns the God of the Bible and is implicit in the story of the Jesus. What is the point of revelation, after all, if not to communicate to humankind something that is true; either about God, our relationship to each other and to God, or about the universe in which God is acting? If revelation isn’t ‘true,’ then those who accept it are being deceived, right? If believers are being led to accept falsehoods, then their religion can’t be ‘true,’ can it? If a believer isn’t more in possession of truth – both small ‘t’ as well as capital ‘T’ truth – than the non-believer, what’s the difference; why be a believer? Why accept a religious system or the revelations of some deity, if you aren’t any closer to knowing the truth about things than you would be otherwise? Doesn’t that make sense?

Now, there are more or less central claims in religious systems, and a major problem with a lot of religion today is that it has gotten out of step with what we know about the world and it has therefore allowed these central claims to remain framed in an ancient worldview that is no longer a valid way of understanding the world. Unique revelations about the Divine and ourselves are still for the most part being ‘framed’ in a worldview that is out-of-date and essentially nonsensical at this point. The key point of the Gospel, to take Christianity as an instance, is not how God made the world, but the fact that God came to Earth, became one of us – through the ‘virgin birth’ – and then died for us, so that we could be ‘saved’ from the broken state in which we find ourselves. Within the Bible, the Gospel is set within the larger narrative that includes the Old Testament, the Letters of Paul and the book called “Revelation,” which outlines a vision of the end of the world. ‘The Gospel’ is thus framed in a Big Story that includes the beginning and end of the world. The problem is that so many religious people today cannot – or will not – tell the difference between a myth and an empirical understanding of events in the world. They mistake one for the other—and thus become ‘Creationists,’ for instance.

I’ve often argued that, from a Christian point of view, a Creationist is someone who has failed to discern the nature of God’s Word. They have taken a story with deep mythical dimensions and interesting literary nuances; a sacred depth that is symbolic, parabolic and at times allegorical, and mistaken it for a news story; i.e., an account of something that ‘actually happened,’ in the banal, ordinary sense of ‘everyday events.’ They have traded in the rich stew of the Word for a mess of literal pottage (to use a biblical metaphor). They have given up a twenty-century long tradition of spiritual understanding and accepted in its place a commercialized, easy to grasp, clichéd version of the Word that can be put on placards at sporting events, plastered all over leaflets left in public places and in other ways used as crass advertizing. Creationism is part of the Christian ad campaign called Fundamentalism; an insidious commercialization of the Gospel that robs those who ‘buy the product’ of not only the Wonders of the Word but the Wonders of Creation as well!

My interaction with the two visitors last summer was not an attempt to be mean, but to shine a light on the situation. They came bearing what they believed to be a message of truth; it was being offered – to give them the best of motivations – in the hopes of my salvation. However, if someone accepts this kind of narrow, literalized message; by falling prey to the commercialization of the Gospel and the Bible – they will fall out of communion with the Creation; which we now realize came into being about 13.75 billion years ago through a process called “the Big Bang” and in which, on this planet at least, a diverse menagerie of life forms have been and are being evolved, with our own species emerging quite recently (only some 200,000 years ago in Africa) from the ever-branching tree of life. What my two visitors were offering me was an interpretation of the human condition; one that – metaphorically at least – I accept.[1] However, the cost of accepting their version of the story would be too great, because of the literal nature of their understanding of it, and because of all of the wonders of Creation that it leaves out.

Thus I return to my original question, and pose it to anyone who has a religious truth to share: Do you accept the truth of evolution? If not, can I really trust that the rest of what you are going to share with me is true? It might be true, yet if there is a disjunct between your truth and what is now generally known about the Earth & Cosmos, what you know must either be (1) skewed by being out of touch with the real, objective world (and to that extent misleading and essentially a ‘fantasy’ in the negative sense of that term) or (2) too narrowly understood (and to that extent simply false). I still affirm that the truth that religions have to offer is not to be rejected out of hand. However, it must be articulated with the truths about the world that enlighten us – as to our earthen home and our cosmic origin – for them to situate us better in the world where we actually find ourselves. Creation myths are tales that tell us something about what it is to be human. However, they are stories; they are not histories (in the modern scientific sense of an actual account of things that happened in an actual past). Creation stories are myths; truths about existence and our relationship to the divine. Science has revealed the actual history of the universe and of life on our planet; and by accepting what science has revealed, religionists can better frame their questions concerning deeper issues, such as sin and salvation, etc., all of which may well contribute to our sense of the meaning and purpose of life, when properly understood.

[1] I do in fact accept the existential import of the Biblical story as a whole; which implies that we each begin in a state of innocence in our lives (The Garden of Eden), that at some point we all come to an awareness of our ‘brokenness’ and have to realize that we are imperfect and mortal (The Fall). At this point we ‘leave the Garden.’ Then the long journey of self-realization really begins (as depicted metaphorically and symbolically in the Torah and in the Gospels) during which we work on ourselves and seek wholeness (i.e., salvation). In this life, we each attain more or less self-realization, and then reach our ultimate end in death (The Eschaton). There are also many other levels on which the stories of the Bible speak – metaphorically and allegorically – to our existential situation and the need we have to ‘work on ourselves’ in order to realize our fullest potential (this ‘working on ourselves’ is what spirituality is all about).

Symbolic Reflections at MidWinter (2 February 2011)

2011-02-11T07:03:00.000-05:00

It is time to revel in the waxing of day light; the lengthening of the days!

This evening as I was walking home after work I noticed just how much lighter it is at 6 PM than it was a month ago, and was thus reminded that we are at Mid-Winter; that time of the year commemorated in myths and stories as a time for ‘awakening’ as the light of the sun grows ‘stronger.’ Standing about half way between Winter’s Solstice and the Vernal Equinox, I turn to reflections on the symbols, stories and rituals that have been used to mark this turnstile in the Wheel of the Year, in both Pagan and Christian traditions. The first days of February have long been occasioned by the lighting of fires, hearths and candles. It has been connected with spiritual awakening; waking up and turning toward the light that is growing day by day—in the hopes of wisening in our ways.

In ancient Europe, 2 February was called “Imbolg;” a word that has pastoral associations and that alludes to the lactation of ewes. In Celtic traditions, this day was known as Bridgetmas (Pagan) or The Feast of Saint Bridget (Christian), and was associated with wisdom, arts & crafts, and the hearth – all of which have something to do with ‘light;’ i.e., wisdom is light to the mind, the inspiration necessary to engage in arts and craefts is sometimes spoken of as ‘illumination,” and the hearth of course contains the fire that lights the house as well as providing heat. As Bridget was a goddess/saint of the hearth, this was also a time for the blessing of home and hearth. The Mediaeval Church dubbed this day “Candlemas,” celebrating it as a time to light candles and meditate on the Light of God illuminating the world in and through Christ.

Here in western Pennsylvania, “Ground Hog’s Day” has become a popular event. On this day participants get up early in the morning to go out and see whether a ground hog ‘sees its shadow’ or not, as this is supposed to tell us whether there is going to be six more weeks of winter or not. (LOL) To which I usually say, of course there is going to be six more weeks of winter; because there are still six weeks or so left until the Vernal Equinox! Duh? But, whatever! Even this commercialized superstition marks the Mid-Winter point; of course with all of the mythic associations and spiritual significance – much less naturalistic awareness of the season – drained out of it.[1]

As I flesh out an earthen spirituality, I find that the old symbolic associations of the seasons and old festivals continue to be relevant, reconsidered in naturalistic ways. For instance, though I have no connection with farms and therefore no experience of the lactating of ewes, I am able to reflect on milk as a symbol of sustenance; both physical and mystical nourishment—seeing it as symbolic of a boon which helps us get through winter’s deprivations. Bridget used to be associated with the milking of the cows, and some stories symbol the tasting of fresh milk as a foretaste of wisdom. It comes ‘from the source’ and thereby awakens us to primal things; a prerequisite for wisdom.

In keeping with the traditions of Bridgetmas and Candlemas, I light candles on my meditation table and elsewhere in the house on the nights of 31 January, 1 February and then 2 February. I use Yellow and Purple as colors especially appropriate to this tide of the year. Yellow stands for sunlight and all of the deep mythic resonances of the Sun and of Light. The use of purple is often symbolic of penance, self-denial and self-discipline. Use of purple as a symbolic color in the last half of winter probably stems from the fact that in agrarian societies the last half of the winter was often a time when food stores and reserves were running low, and so fasting sometimes became necessary. Self-discipline was required in order if people were to survive through to the Spring. This is the likely the source of the custom of fasting during Lent, and one of the liturgical colors for Lent happens to be purple.

I took a different way home tonight so that I could walk down the street by the Catholic Church and see – along the creek below it – the old Willows standing there that I have known since childhood. There they were, still hanging onto the bank, all encrusted in snow and ice, and I was pleasantly surprised to notice that the catkins were out, even in this harsh weather! Catkins are small flower-like structures that bud out on the branches of certain kinds of Willows. They are the ‘first flowers’ (though they are not flowers in the technical, botanical sense) of Spring—and thus an old folk sign that winter is passing. Catkins apparently bud out on Willows in response to the angle of light from the sun, not in response to warmth—thus they come out about the same time every year. Willows, in Celtic symbolism, stood for wisdom, fire, and the inspiration to create music (as the wind blowing through their long, supple branches often produces sounds which can be, under the right circumstances, somewhat like music).

After supper, while listening to lectures, I sat and watched the light from our electric fireplace (an insertion that simulates the appearance of a hearth fire) dance about the room, and as it did I meditated on the significance of the hearth in more rustic times; as a place to cook food and as a place to gather together on cold, dark nights. The hearth still symbolizes for me our ‘inner fire’ (metabolism; the fire of life) as well as functioning as a metaphor for inspiration and spiritual succor. The room was lit by nothing but yellow and purple candles, the light of the electric hearth insert and the glow of my laptop screen. It was an aesthetic setting that was inspiring of poetic reflection. As the wind continued to blow outside, whipping around the walls of the house, I immersed myself in this symbolic ambiance, and reflected on the ebb the flow of each season in is natural course. The winter might be harsh or easy, but Spring does not come until the Vernal Equinox. To believe otherwise is to be frustrated with the natural course of things!

I do all this to remind myself that we are about half-way through winter’s course. I revel in the light! Seeing the candles lit about the house is especially refreshing this year, as we’ve had ice and blowing winds and rough roads for the last couple of days. Candle and hearth light leads me to think about warmer days to come and also about spiritual illumination. Sitting here tonight in the Hut of Dwelling (see my blog, 23 Nov 2010; “Enclosure”), I meditate on the fact that we can find much of the inspiration we need to persist and flourish in our experiences of the natural world. Recalling the symbols of Mid-Winter has refreshed me and prepared me for the ongoing journey. Watching the dimming away of the day as I made supper and as the birds at the bird-feeders outside our windows got their last meal of the day, opened me to night-time possibilities, just as the rising of the sun tomorrow will ‘awaken’ me to the day’s possibilities and responsibilities. A naturalistic spirituality accepts the flux & flow of time and of light & dark as inevitable, and rejoices in it. We do what is possible and make the most of every turn in the tides of days, seasons and years.

At Mid-Winter it is good for the soul to acknowledge that Winter is half as long as it was at Winter Solstice, and revel in response to the growing light. Whether you like, love or dread winter, it will always – under ordinary circumstances – pass and give way to Spring. To revel in the light at Mid-Winter is to remind yourself of this fact. _And it is always good to be lifted out of our ordinary rounds of work, play, and rest by contemplation on the ‘bigger’ patterns in which our lives are lived, and in which they will play out their course. Such is the purpose of ‘holidays.’ We make a day ‘holy’ by the way in which we relate to it; by an acknowledgement of its symbolic import as well as its practical implications. This is no less true for a naturalistic spirituality than for a religious spirituality.

[1] The ground hog is associated with the Earth considered as a Goddess; it is one of her ‘manifestations,’ like the rabbit at the Vernal Equinox and other animals more generally – the bat and the snake, the frog and the owl, etc. The ground hog is a hibernating animal, and watching for it to come out of its winter sleep was the naturalistic basis for associating the animal with this time of the year, when winter is half finished. The idea that whether it sees its shows or not has anything to do with how long winter is going to last, is just another superstition. Yet even that hearkens back to the Pagan wisdom about Nature and the seasons: the shorter the animal’s shadow when you first see it, the higher up in the sky the Sun is, and the shorter the time until Vernal Equinox.

Some Musings on Naturalistic Ethics (16 January 2011)

2011-02-02T21:48:00.004-05:00

“It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject permits and not to seek an exactness where only an approximation of the truth is possible.”

- Aristotle

Nichomachean Ethics

I was out in the woods walking through winter landscapes yesterday, wondering as I went, when an inspiration came over me, and I said to myself, ‘there just seems to be no reason, at this point, that we can’t ground an understanding of morality and ethics in naturalism.’ Moving amidst the snow covered deciduous trees denuded of their leaves and the conifers with their snow laden boughs, with the afternoon sunlight making the landscape shimmer and shift as I went, I wondered seriously why it is so hard for people to give up the ‘skyhook’ of God as the justification for their morality?[1] Why do we think that we can’t be moral on our own?

There seemed to be something in the beauty of the day and the freshness of the air – chilled as the day was (– 3° C); that gave me confidence that Nature really is the source of our 'nature,' and that out of Nature arises the basic inspiration for for us to be the best we can be. The beauty and wonder of Nature is an inspiration; an impetus to a higher consciousness of ourselves, and this seems to me to be the unadorned touchstone of all ethical systems and moral choices. Though Nature has also endowed us with all of the faults that make us what we are at our worst, the choice remains with us, and a spiritually driven choice it always is, whether we are religious or secular in our approach to life. We have evolved as beings with an ability to choose one behavior over another. Ethics is always about making the choices that best edify and sustain us, individually and as a species. Even religious morality – when it isn’t dysfunctional and dehumanizing – is about self-realization and the creation of edifying, sustainable human communities.

A naturalistic ethics starts, so far as I can tell at this point, with the fact of our having an evolutionary history; we live on a planet where we are related to every other person of our own species and where we are more distantly related to every other life form in the biosphere. Scientists have discovered no living thing – from microbes up to the largest plants and animals – that would indicate descent from more than one ancestor (the recent news about a life form that substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in some of its DNA does not appear to challenge this basic fact). All living things are descendants of a common life form (or perhaps a life-community) in the now long-distant past; all life on Earth shows a family resemblance.

This relatedness offers a good starting point for thinking about how we should behave. We are not ‘strangers’ here in the Earth. We are not ‘above’ other species. We are not ‘passing through.’ We belong here; we have evolved here, and we will ultimately play out our fate here on this planet or on some other planet where we have found or created an environment enough like our home planet to sustain us. Whether or not there is a God; whether or not there are supernatural beings, ghosts or an afterlife--makes no difference to this basic ‘earthen’ reality of our being the children of Nature. Even religious systems of morality have to make it possible for us to play out our lives in the bioshphere of this planet. We are Nature reflecting on itself! If a God has created us, then (s)he has done so by evolutionary processes and made us the animals we are; who are at-home in this biosphere!

This common ancestry with all other indigenous life forms on the planet is ennobling. Yet, there is a uniqueness to our species that makes us wondrous in a very special way. Every species has something that sets it apart; and while certain groups of species share more or less of their uniqueness with others, there are some really spectacularly unique species around, in both the plant and the animal world. I don’t think it a species bias to say that humankind is unique in a very secific way. Just as the long arms of a macaque monkey makes it unique, or the ability of an octopus to change colors make those species unique, the very fact that I can sit here thinking about these questions sets me apart from every other plant and animal on the Earth (so far as we know). It doesn’t make us ‘better,’ but it does make us unique. We are Nature thinking about itself, reflecting on itself, and even altering the direction of Nature's changes!

This way of looking at things makes me feel very different about moral and ethical questions than does a religiously grounded system of morality, which is almost always motivated by an ‘external’ criteria; whether a deity or some kind of spooky ‘force.’ Naturalistic ethics locates the responsibility for either acting well or behaving badly in me; I cannot blame anyone else -- either within or outside of our species -- for what I do, whether good or bad. As I see it, in naturalistic terms I must accept that what I do reflects my own moral progress – or lack thereof. Furthermore, a naturalistic ethics is going to be grounded in facts – cosmological & biological – that are verifiable and that can be trusted because they have been substantiated; facts about the human mind and our nervous system, facts about our environment and the impact – for good or ill – that we have had and will continue to have on it, etc. Science does not make us ethical; but it does provide the information about the objective dimensions of reality that make moral decisions and ethical thinking successful.

Choice is an important touchstone for a naturalistic ethics. The fact that we are able to ‘choose’ one thing or another is an ability fostered in us by evolution; by the specific path that our species and its ancestors have travelled through the deep past. Whether or not ‘free will’ is objectively real, subjectively we all know what it means to make choices, and we experience the consequences of these choices, day after day. Who and what we are at any point in our lives is the sum total of the choices we have made, whether good or bad, since we came to the age where we were able to choose on our own. A naturalistic ethics is made possible by the fact that we have evolved as animals that make choices and can decide to do ‘this’ or ‘that’ – and we know that some of those choices are better for us, while others are harmful. From an evolutionary standpoint, morality is simply part of the toolkit that we Homo sapiens have inherited from our ancestors.

So why are people ‘bad’? Simply because we can choose ‘this’ or ‘that,’ and we sometimes choose things that harm rather than helping or edifying ourselves or others. So then, don’t we need someone (a big ‘S’ someone in the sky?) to tell us what to do? Not at all. Whether or not there is a certain “Someone” to appeal to, we are fully capable of figuring out what’s good for us and what’s not, even if allways provisionally and imperfectly. We’ve been doing it for at least a couple hundred thousand years! And if we as individuals cannot figure it out, there are plenty of moral traditions and ethical systems handed down across many generations that we can consult for help. So why would people want to be moral? Because, ultimately, it will improve their quality of life and make them better able to realize their full potential. Why is morality a communal as well as a personal issue? Because the individual will always live in a larger community on which he or she depends for sustenance and the social bonds that deepen our ongoing experience. From birth to death (and beyond, if there is such a place).

While long justified by religions and grounded in supernaturalism, I believe this moral ‘tool-kit’ can now be expressed in naturalistic terms, because (1) it is rooted in the desire for survival and (2) it promotes human flourishment (Gk, eudaimonia). A naturalistic morality is not relative; neither is it absolute. There is a middle way that arises out of living life listening to the wisdom of our elders and ancestors and then deciding how best to apply the most insightful intuitions about what it means to be human and be ‘happy’ (in the Greek sense of eudaimonia, ‘fullfullment’ or ‘flourishment.’). While it has been expressed in unique ways in various cultures and societies down across time and all around the globe, and while some cultures have valued some tenets over others and ignored various ‘tenets’ (beause their culural context didn't force them to consider certain questions) it seems there is a general ‘core’ of more or less ‘universal’ dispositions that all human groups would basically accept. I like the idea that the reason there are universal moral imperatives – like the injunction against murder and the ‘Golden Rule” – is because our ancestors found some behaviors more beneficial to themselves and more likely to result in healthy group and individual life than others. To kill others of your group generally reduces survival fitness. To treat others in ways that would be disadvantageous to you likewise generally reduces group fitness (if it harms you, it would probably harm someone else).

Though there are always exceptions, we human beings usually know what pleasures and benefits us, as individuals. Human groups are also usually able to figure out what is in their own best interests. _And if they don’t, they go extinct! The behaviors that we generally call ‘moral’ have been discovered, over and over again, throughout human history. They are generally not ‘new.’ People who think that the moral injunctions they value are unique to their own culture or religion, have simply led a too-closeted life; they have not studied other cultures or their religions!

Then I think about our morality being passed down from one generation to another, and how this gives it a kind of ‘authority’ that transcends the individual and present circumstances.[2] Yet we are able to take what is handed down to us, and either accept it or re-think it in terms of (1) present contexts and what is beneficial to us here and now, as well as (2) a deeper insight into what makes us human than our ancetors were aware of. For instance, though we in the Euro-American West inherited a morality that denigrated women and kept them tied to “kirche, kuche, kinter" (in the old German formula), we have altered our ethical thinking by gaining deeper insight into being human and as a recult have enfranchised women (for the most part); acknowledging their personhood and rights, granting them freedom to be just as self-determining as men. We are also transfiguring the moral landscape where race and sexual preference are concerned.

Ultimately, I think, our species will create a pan-human planetary ethics, and this thought stuns me. To reach that point, the moral traditions of various cultures will have to come into dynamic conversation even more than they have done to date. Ethical thinking is always evolving, owing to our changing circumstances and the expansion of our existential and technological horizons; morality following – if only slowly and hesitatingly – where it leads. But we can all take the moral and ethical traditions we have inherited, and work them out for best effect in our present global circumstances. Science reveals the objective world in which we all live; whether we are Americans, Africans, Asians or Europeans, Australians or from any other place on the planet. As such, the revelations of science should be treated as the ground for our ethics and moral all systems as well as for our various spiritualities. We must transform our cultures from within, in order to become a truly planetary species. We can do this on naturalistic terms, and come to a new horizon for human potential and possibilities, if we can but liberate our spirit and imagine it!

We will need a spirituality to accompany such a consummation of consciousness! _But this is enough musing for one day!

“In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.” -- Richard Feynman

[1] Daniel Dennett’s term from Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, 1995

[2] I first came to understand this by reading Michael Shermer’s The Science of Good and Evil (2006).

Science and Spirituality (Epiphany 2011)

2011-01-09T15:11:00.004-05:00

- Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World (1996)

A spirituality is a set of disciplines, rituals and stories that facilitate what certain philosophers have called "the good life;" that is, a life lived as well as we can live it, given our abilities, situation and the conditions in which we find ourselves. A spirituality is a pattern for living life to the hilt; to the fullest – a praxis (i.e., a theory united with practice) that helps us make the most of the brief time we have in this world as mortal animals. To facilitate the ‘good life’ a spirituality must (1) identify paths for realistic personal and social transformation and (2) situate the practitioner in the world as it is known to be (for how can you affect real personal and social transformations, if you don’t have a realistic grasp of the world?).

One primary starting point for a genuine spirituality is the realization that we are not perfect; that we are not ‘complete’—that each of us requires some more ‘work’ to become the person we really already are, if only implicitly. Family and society make us into a person, and then—at some point in our lives, we become aware of the incompleteness of who we are and the fact that the person we think we are is flawed. All spirituality, I would urge, faces this imperfection in ourselves and implements a plan to bring us to wholeness. Once the impetus to the spiritual life has been realized – once the desire has arisen in us to set out upon the path – it is important that we seek our own completion (whether it is called “salvation,” “self-realization,” “redemption” or by some other term) in relation to the world as it actually exists.

As I noted in a blog last summer, I’ve always been impressed by the fact that ancient Christian leaders in the 2^nd through 5^th centuries often attempted to frame what they believed about Jesus and salvation in legitimate philosophical and ‘scientific’ terms. Believing that their message was true and hoping that they could bring others to faith in Jesus, they constructed what became orthodox theology within the parameters of what they thought was the best philosophy and science of their time. As I see it, all genuine spirituality – whether secular or religious in orientation – will do this! It will frame the truths it is attempting to communicate and fashion its belief-world on a foundation of accepted knowledge about the Earth & Cosmos.

Today our knowledge of the world is dynamically fueled by the physical sciences. While a wealth of intersubjective and subjective knowledge flows from the social sciences, humanities and Fine Arts, it is the physical sciences that have driven the major revolutions in our worldview over the last 500 years, changing how we think of ourselves; as human animals and spiritual beings. Because of their great success in ‘finding things out,’ the physical science have become the primary fount of our knowledge about the objective world; the Earth & Cosmos.

Any genuine spirituality today must therefore be grounded in the revelations of the physical sciences. A spirituality informed-by and sourced-in science will embrace all that science has revealed to us about ourselves, the Earth & Cosmos. It is not that everything scientists say or claim to have discovered must be immediately embraced. What I am referring to here is that body of knowledge about reality that is so well substantiated that it is not likely to be overturned. So, for instance, no genuine spirituality today can reject that we live in an amazingly old universe. Current evidence makes it about 13.75 billion years old! The exact estimate of the age of the Cosmos may change in response to new data and new experiments, but the general idea of an old universe is firmly established at this point. Also, no genuine spirituality today can reject the fact of life's evolution on this planet. To understand life – to understand that you are a living being – you must accept and understand evolution. The details of life’s evolution will be refined, year after year, as more and more evidence is uncovered, discovered and analyzed. But evolution is a ‘fact’ that at this point cannot reasonably be denied. To deny it is to be out of touch with reality – our reality as living, breathing beings – at a profound level.

Over the last hundred years, we have discovered that the universe is much vaster and stranger than anything imagined in old-time religious paradigms. Iron Age cosmologies (such as those of the so-called "World Religions") cannot hold a candle to contemporary cosmology for its grandeur, strangeness and its ability to inspire awe and wonder. We live in an expanding universe, on a planet circling what is probably a third generation star. All of the materials so important to the origin and evolution of life on our planet came from the nuclear workhouses of stars in the first two stellar generations. To learn the story of modern, scientific cosmology is to re-discover yourself as one of many culminations of a process that has been unfolding in grand and orderly fashion for billions of years. Once I learned enough about cosmology, I was inspired to chant, in my morning meditations, the following rune:

“I am in the World and of the Earth,

a child of the universe;

a descendent of stars long ago gone supernova.”

Over the last hundred and fifty years we have discovered that life is much older and also stranger than anything codified in the "creation stories" of old-time religions. Life's origin on this planet happened rather early: currently available evidence places it at about 3.8 billion years ago; less than a billion years after the origin of the solar system and our planet's coalescence out of the swirling dust and debris that circled our young sun! Simple, single-celled organisms dominated the emergent biosphere for nearly two billion years before more complex life forms evolved, leading to the succession of menageries that we see recorded in the fossil record of the last 600 million years as well as those we see around us on the planet today. By some accident of evolutionary succession, every life form so far discovered on Earth today is related; we can all trace our history back to a common ancestor. (For an excellent tour of the family of life’s history, see Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale [2006]).

To meditate on these facts – the age of the cosmos and the evolution of life – is to be confronted with deep mysteries; to contemplate them is not only to realize that we are sojourners in the midst of that mystery, but that we are products of it! Human beings are a manifestation of the Cosmos; whatever else we are, we are Nature becoming aware of itself. To deny these facts is to be ignorant of the world in which we actually life, and thus to be out of step with truth at the empirical, objective level. Any spirituality that is out of touch with truth on any level cannot provide us with a genuine path. If we deny the nature of reality as it is known to be and then attempt to realize our own wholeness; if we seek salvation while denying what we are – what science has revealed about human biology and psychology – then we will end in frustration if not in ruin. We are real, living beings in a real, objective world. Of course we have subjective inner lives and we exist within intersubjective social networks, but our subjectivity is conditioned and structured by the physical reality of our bodies, our brains and the environments in which we have evolved.

Science has shown us that we are integral to the world; that we have arisen – like every other species – out of natural environments by way of selection forces that prospered some species and sent others spiraling or crashing down into extinction. As such we can say, "We are Nature; reflecting on itself." If this fails to inspire you, all I can say is perhaps you aren't yet deeply comprehending it. Far from leaving us feeling ‘small’ and ‘meaningless,’ the current Cosmic Story and the Tale of Evolution provide us with a "Big Story" worthy of the telling and of sustained spiritual reflection. It is the basis of an earthen mysticism. Any spirituality worthy of our practice today is going to embrace these "revelations of science." Beyond this starting point, spiritualities can teach many things, propose a variety of disciplines, rituals and stories for the edification and transformation of their practitioners and our society. Because spirituality helps us to live life in the real world where we must find ourselves if we are not self-deluded, any genuine spirituality will be first grounded in the revelations of science.

We are, now as ever, in need of spirituality. Many people sense their brokenness and imperfection; they know they have a need for self-improvement and self-correction. The impetus of the spiritual journey is often a desire that arises in the face of our imperfection to better ourselves. A spirituality may be secular or religious in its logic; what initially matters is that a spiritual praxis first acknowledge the world in which we are actually living. Otherwise, the person adopting that spirituality is living in a fantasy world [in the negative sense of ‘fantasy.’ There is a positive sense of ‘fantasy,’ but that will have to be the subject of another blog] . The age of the universe and the fact of evolution are not a matter of ‘opinion.’ They have been substantiated well beyond the point of simple-minded refutation. Whether you are religious or secular doesn’t change the fact of evolution or the age of the universe; only new evidence could change what we know about the Earth & Cosmos and ourselves as biological organisms, and all of the new evidence being gathered from year to year has only clarified the truths of modern cosmology and evolution, not overturned it. As spiritual beings, therefore, we need to affirm what is known about our world before adding-on what else might exist – i.e. gods or goddesses, spirits, souls, God, etc. Acceptance of what is known about Earth & Cosmos does not dictate either a secular or a religious worldview. It does, however, make impossible certain beliefs.

To be a creationist at this point, for instance, is spiritually absurd and probably damaging to the soul. It is as irrelevant and misguided as being a flat-earther. Creationists often strike me as childish, in the sense that it is children who tend to take things literally and who imagine that everything has a ‘design’ and was therefore ‘made’ by someone. As we grow older we realize that personal intention is not the only reason behind things coming into existence and being what they are; there are natural forces and processes that can create things that are structured and seem ‘designed.’ Their designer, however, is Nature. Creationists hold onto the childish view, however, that ‘God’ has ‘made’ everything. As such, is creationism an instance of failed spiritual development? To use a biblical image, I see the creationist as guilty of continuing to sustain themselves on ‘spiritual milk’ and to be refusing ‘spiritual meat.’ For Paul, this was a sign of spiritual immaturity and also spiritual impudence. Everyone must be weaned from mother’s milk; to refuse to be weaned is to refuse to grow up. An understanding of modern cosmology and evolution is the spiritual meat that we need to grow up and be able to handle life in all of its nuances and conundrums; yet the creationist goes on whining and complaining that it is milk that they need for their sustenance.

There is a great need for genuine spirituality today, but there isn’t much available in the way of guidance that is grounded in what is actually known about the reality in which we live and breath and have our being. The ‘temptation’ is always to return to the old Iron Age religions (e.g., Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.) and their out-dated cosmologies. Yet a better option awaits us, if we can but have the courage to take the New Step Forward (instead of retreating backward) and reflect, deeply and mystically, on what science has revealed to us about ourselves and the world around us. Once we begin to do this in earnest, we will begin the transformation of our spiritualities, our religions and our societies into new forms that, we can hope, will be more humane and humanizing than the old worn out forms of the past. Understanding science alone will not effect this transformation, but to reject the revelations of science is to cast oneself into an unnecessary darkness and cripple all of one’s spiritual aspirations.

[An early version of this blog was posted at MySpace on 20 January 2008 under the title “Science and Spirituality”]