Rites of Spring 03/23/2011
I'm enjoying the daffodils that I bought for the Spring Equinox ceremony. Since I couldn't find the ceremony, I have the daffodils in my east window, which I face for my morning mediation. The springtime blooming of daffodils and other green things speaks of rebirth and new cycles, but I've also been considering the balance aspects of the equinoxes. Day and night are equal at this time of year. It's a time of balance of polarities: male/female, sun/moon, dark/light, etc. Some people think that polarities are resolved in a unification, a dissolving into one thing. Or else that their union results in a third aspect--a creative product that resolves them. In esoteric teaching, there's no movement or creativity without polarities. For example: men and women combine to create children. Take either men or women out of the equation, and there's no creative product. That seems to speak that they are unified in a sort of balance. Equal partners? Union with God/dess is the objective in many religions. Of course, we're always One in the sense that everything originates with Spirit, so how could we be anything else? I guess it's the fully aware consciousness and deep connection that we seek. On the internal level, our male and female aspects balance and combine to initiate and nurture creativity--to birth creative product. I found the first Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone" on a book-trade shelf in the RV park office and read it recently. I was thinking about how the Sorcerer's Stone was supposed to make the bearer immortal. I guess people generally fear physical death and wish they could avoid it, but if you're one with Spirit, could you ever really die? Why seek in a stone that which you already have? Why be obsessed with maintaining life on this plane--which is beautiful, but also full of suffering? Maybe it's better in some other realm of existence! Or if you want or need to, you may come back here in a rebirth or reincarnation. In either case, death is part of the process. "...to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure," Dumbledore told Harry after Harry's confrontation with death/Voldemort. Sounds like wisdom to me! Add Comment The Myth of Redemptive Violence 02/16/2011
“...The belief that violence saves; that war brings peace, that might makes right” is one of the oldest continuously repeated stories in the history of the world, according to “The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium” by Walter Wink. In a section called “The Myth of Redemptive Violence,” Wink posits that redemptive violence is the real world religion. This theology struck me particularly hard, since I’ve long wondered why the heros of TV shows, movies, comic books and video games are glorified for seeking revenge or waging some kind of shooting war against injustice--and why our society continues to act out this scenario in our relationships with the rest of the world. I believe courage is a virtue, but harming is not. Wink traces the myth of redemptive violence back to the Babylonian creation story, in which all creation comes from an act of violence. Marduk kills Tiamat, a senior goddess who is plotting revenge for the murder of her husband, and from her dismembered body creates the world. This story implies that the gods themselves are violent, and that we come from the blood of an assassinated God, so we naturally perpetuate violence. Our country, supposedly a “Christian” nation, accepts violence--even glorifies it. As a nation, we subscribe to the belief that violence is necessary and curative, but the New Testament tells that Jesus wouldn’t even let his disciples defend him when the soldiers came for him in the Garden of Gethsemane. He didn’t raise an army, he sacrificed himself. He would rather die than kill. He was showing us a God that was good and loving--not one who would want other countries invaded in his name. Wink says, “The myth of redemptive violence is the simplest, laziest, most exciting, uncomplicated, irrational and primitive depiction of evil the world has ever known. Furthermore, its orientation toward evil is one into which all modern children (boys especially) are socialized in the process of maturation. Children select this mythic structure because they have already been led, by culturally reinforced cues and role models, to resonate with its simplistic view of reality.” Children indoctrinated into this view tend to locate evil/error outside themselves and see in others, especially people unlike themselves, enemies who must be vanquished. This, to me, is a perversion of the need to vanquish our own inner “demons.” Instead of clearing the mote from our own eye, as Jesus taught, we project evil/error on someone else. That is indeed, simpler, lazier... Wink goes on to discuss how this scenario plays out in nation-states, where the survival and welfare of the nation is seen as the highest good. The domination system or nation-state cannot allow God/Gods to supersede it, so it sanctions a religion that perpetuates its own survival, or twists an existing one beyond all recognition. A certain religious viewpoint becomes patriotic and “the spirituality of militarism” takes over. The old faiths lose their power and are relegated to mere cultural traditions. Why do people allow this? The promise of earthly salvation--security and self-validation through identification with a strong and protective power. So, the nation supplants God. The nation speaks for God. It does not allow God to speak. I pray that God will help us to listen. We have to change this paradigm. I pray that we, as a nation and as individuals, will become a leader in the world in the best sense--by shining example of good--not by encouraging violence, greed and self-interest. Buy a Prius, or Eat Your Veggies? 04/02/2010
Buying a Prius might not be the most effective thing you can do to reduce greenhouse gases. Cutting back on meat or eliminating it from your diet may have more impact than driving a hybrid car. Leonardo di Caprio's famous Prius will cut carbon dioxide emissions, but its effect is slow. Carbon dioxide spreads its warming effect over about 100 years, but methane gas, produced by livestock cycles in about a decade. If you want to have an quicker effect, or if you're not in the market for a new car, eat your veggies and cut back on the meat, eggs and dairy. Researchers at the University of Chicago found that feeding animals for meat, dairy and egg production requires ten times the fossil fuels to produce a calorie of meat protein than would be required to produce a calorie of vegetable protein, plus more people could be fed with the same resources. "If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million," according to David Pimentel, professor of ecology in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Animal agriculture takes up as much as 70 percent of the agricultural land in the United States and producing meat for food takes up to 10 times as much fossil fuel as raising vegetables. About 70 percent of the rainforest decimated in South America is used for animal-related agriculture. One source says it takes the equivalent of 78 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of beef protein; 34 for 1 calorie of pork; 22 for 1 calorie of poultry, but the ratio of fossil fuel to soybeans is 1 to 1. In restricting meat intake, you would be in good company. Paul McCartney, who turned vegetarian after watching lambs playing in a field, encourages everyone to at least observe meat-free Mondays. Al Gore has acknowledged the environmental impact of raising meat for food and severely restricted his own meat consumption. Like Al Gore, some people aren’t ready give up meat entirely, but cutting back to one meat meal a day could benefit the environment and their health. The United Nations produced a report in 2006 that showed that raising meat for food was a prime contributor to greenhouse gas production.The report says almost a fifth of global warming emissions come from livestock. Carbon dioxide is thought to be responsible for about half of our contribution to global warming, but methane gas and nitrous oxide, produced by farmed animals' digestive processes, are very damaging to the atmosphere. Methane is 20 times as powerful as carbon dioxide in trapping greenhouse gases, and nitrous oxide is about 300 times as potent. Animal agriculture is believed to emit two-thirds of the ammonia that falls to earth as acid rain. Livestock production produces an estimated 5 million tons of manure a day, much of which runs off into our rivers and streams, polluting our water and endangering aquatic life. Reducing or eliminating meat can also be good for your health. Many meats contain a lot of saturated fat, which science shows is bad for heart health. Internet sources say that more than 20,000 drugs can be used on livestock, including steroids, growth hormones and antibiotics. Meat also contains potentially dangerous bacteria. Meat, when cooked, can produce benzenes and other carcinogenic compounds. If you’re still not convinced, consider the tests that indicate a relationship between meat consumption and degenerative diseases such as osteoporosis, kidney and gallstones and arthritis. Last, but surely not least, there's the cruelty to animals angle. Sources estimate 10 billion land animals and billions of aquatic animals are killed for food each year in the United States alone. A majority of the chicken, cattle and pigs raised for food are subjected to factory farming practices, in which they may be kept in torturous, unsanitary conditions-- as in the case of veal calves that are chained in tiny pens and don’t even get room enough to turn around-- from birth until they are slaughtered for their tender meat. I won’t even mention what goes on in slaughterhouses. We all need to be more aware of the far-reaching consequences of our individual choices, and choose alternatives that promote the highest and best life--not only for ourselves, but for our fellow creatures and our planet. So.... think about transitioning to vegetarianism. It’s a better choice. Disaster Averted 01/10/2010
“Disaster Averted” has been the theme of my preparations and of my actual journey back to Mexico this winter. At every step it seemed like something was about to go terribly wrong-- even dangerously wrong--but at the last second the situation would resolve in a positive way. One dramatic example would be the flat tire I had about 750 miles into Mexico. That could have been a real disaster, since most businesses were closed on New Year’s Day. BUT, I had barely pulled off the side of the road before two Mexican “angels” in a pickup truck came to my rescue. I’ve been thinking about one of Dolly Parton’s lines in “Steel Magnolias.” It went something like “that woman’s life has been an experiment in terror.” I suppose that’s true of many people. Fear is part of the human experience, but some people seem to let it rule them. I’m not focusing here on the justifiable and immediate surge of fear you might feel if a car veered across the road and was on course to hit you head-on, or if you were attacked by a lion, or if you were trapped in a burning building--those fears let loose a surge of adrenaline that might save your life. The fears that I’m thinking of are the everyday fears that eat you alive, but in tiny bites. Living in fear saps the life from you. It is debilitating. Your organism seems to think it’s protecting you by being overly cautious, but in fact, you may be living in a state of anxiety that is counterproductive to your spiritual, mental and physical health. The ultimate and foundational fear is the fear of DEATH, which is just “loss” in capital letters. We can fear the loss of relationships, property, status; the potential suffering of sickness or injury; the dissolution of ego-identity--the ideas we construct about ourselves and who we are-- and the list goes on. The loss of any of the things we value, or to which we have become attached, can be like a death. I’m still working on resolving certain fears, but the process has become much more subtle. Failing to live authentically out of fear of rejection is just as debilitating as being housebound because of fear of mugging. It limits our sphere and scope. It’s a life-killer. It seems like the more we can trust God/Spirit/the Universe/the Source of Life, the more potential disasters ultimately become demonstrations of the love that is directed toward all of us. That love supports us, if we let it. If what we fear should somehow come to pass, we can draw upon that Love to help us handle it. And that’s a real fear-killer. The Broth 11/13/2009
Concern about my mother floods me this morning. As a result of osteoporosis, she has compression fractures in her thoracic vertebrae and is in a lot of pain. The back brace prescribed for her depresses her, causes more pain and restricts her breathing, which creates a danger of pneumonia in her weak lungs. Anti-inflammatory drugs create a danger of bleeding ulcers, which could lower her blood pressure and cause a stroke. The pain makes it difficult for her to get out of bed and to move around, so her circulation could become sluggish. It’s a multiplication of complications. No clear way out. At nearly 88 years old, most of it in good health, my mother has lived well. She loved her God, family, and friends. She cooked a multitude of wonderful meals. Her generous spirit, ready laughter and enduring child-likeenthusiasm for life was an inspiration. She is determined to continue to be an inspiration in this final test--the end of life, when age strains out the flesh and leaves only the broth, the essence of who we are. When people reach a crossroads in life and are confused about which direction to take, I sometimes suggest they think of what they would like to say about their life in their last years. As they sit in that rocking chair on the porch and dream of days past, what were the important things--the things they remember with pride and satisfaction? Family? Relationships? Work well done? Creative product? Accumulated wisdom? A legacy of service to God and other beings? The positive and negative effects of our thoughts and actions live on after we pass out of this life and into another dimension. When your life is done, what will be it’s essence? In Mama's case, a nourishing brew. I Believe 10/31/2009
In my Druid training, one of the exercises was to write out the fundamentals of your personal belief system. It's a clarifying exercise for anyone to attempt! Here's what I came up with: I believe:
Don't Look Down 10/16/2009
I love a fresh start. Just thinking about a big change gets me buzzed. I realize I am probably in the minority here. Most people seem to fear change. They find a comfortable spot, or at least one they are familiar with, build a fortification around it, and defend it against all assault. That’s not how I’m built. I enjoy my castle, but I’m driven to don my shiny armor, mount my horse, grab my banner and sally forth on new adventures, and that right frequently. I believe it’s good to be flexible, adaptable and welcoming toward change--at least to a point. We all need to have some sort of “center” that locates us in time and space and anchors who we are. If that changes, it should change slowly, hopefully with spiritual awareness and careful consideration. Traumatic events can change us abruptly. That’s why they’re traumatic. They jerk us away from our center and we have to find our way back. Or find a new center. Sometimes we lose pieces of who we are when we experience traumatic events, and we have to find and re-integrate those pieces. What if they’re scared to come home? We have to reassure them that they’re safe--that as whole persons we can handle living in the world, with all its beauty and grief. I was given a new mantra for when I'm metaphorically charging out the castle gates and I get scared: "Don’t look down." You can borrow it if you want. Christmas in October 10/07/2009
Some members of my family believe that Jesus wasn’t born in December. They say that the census that motivated Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem took place around the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, which happens in September-October, depending on the moon or something. So, to distinguish the celebration of Jesus’ birth from the more pagan associations in December, they host a big dinner and give gifts at Tabernacles time. I can respect their beliefs, but I miss Christmas. I love the lights, the music, the family gatherings, the holiday parties with friends--and I particularly love it that people at least make an attempt to consider others’ needs and hopes at that time of year. Christmas has definitely been commercialized--like nearly everything in this country--but it’s also a major time of year for charitable giving. As I understand them, the old Celtic traditions around the Winter Solstice on Dec. 21 celebrate the return of the light. It’s the time when the days begin to lengthen--almost imperceptibly at first. Like a candle lit in the window. The hope of the Sun/Son returns to us. The light grows stronger and begins to overcome the darkness. To me, that’s beautiful. And meaningful. I’m not a traditional Christian, but despite my focus on nature spirituality, I still love Jesus. I’m not sure it matters much when he was born, or that we could ever know for sure. Perhaps the important thing is that he came among us, lived an extraordinary life, and continues to touch hearts with his example of love, forgiveness and compassion--not rules, creeds and dates. I think the day to celebrate is the day when that love and compassion are born in your own heart..... First Post! 10/01/2009
Rain Silvery drops of rain splash on my deck railing in the half-light of early morning. It’s fascinating to watch them break apart on impact, then re-merge in new combinations of the same element. Water has a kind of coherence--an ability to merge with the larger “Water” and become something at once the same and new. It makes me think of sitting on a riverbank watching the flow of it. It’s the same river, but not a bit of it that would pass by in your lifetime would likely be the same water. In esoteric traditions, water represents the emotions--especially love. In that context, the breaking apart and merging takes on new meaning. Our relationships have a similar kind of flow. Even if we’re in a stable, loving relationship, there are small breakings apart and re-mergings in our day- to- day life. Sometimes we experience them as difficulties, but perhaps it’s more useful to think of them as the natural flow of things. We’re just like drops of water--seeking connectedness, and often finding that we have to bond in new ways in order to maintain it. | AuthorGale is a writer, artist and mystic. She lives in a cabin in the woods, and loves trees, herbs, animals and stars, friends and family. ArchivesMarch 2011 Categories |
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