Catholics argue for animism September 18, 2011

I was fortunate to complete the final year of my B.A. at an alternative institution that opened up in my hometown of Reno, Nevada: Old College. It was headed up by a Jesuit priest, Father “Jack” Leary. I got to debate deep ideas like “Truth” with him and with a small pack of formerly-cloistered Carmelite nuns who were fellow students in the class. Jesuits have the most well-trained minds in the business. I learned more in that one year than I had in the previous six at that educational cafeteria known as the University of NV, and have ever after been sold on alternative education. This sort of real intellectual discourse; the community of scholars with whom to apprentice and wrangle ideas, was what I had always envisioned college would be.

As a pagan studying under a Jesuit, though, we did not always agree. (No surprise!) The biggest clash we had was over the Church’s notion that only humans had souls. I vehemently questioned that assumption. Father Leary just as vehemently defended it. But he really had no grounds to stand on, because after all, how the heck could we ever really know? I recall one moment when, in the heat of a thick argument, he invoked the powerful phrase, “God said, ‘I am that I am’…,” and I, rude iconoclast that I was in my 20s, steamed out, “Well, so did Popeye. What has that to do with this issue?” The nuns burst out laughing.

Seriously, the fact that such a deep thinker could not formulate an argument that flew strengthened my sense of wrongness about the Church’s philosophy regarding other animals.

In my final eval, Fr. Leary wrote that I had “the makings of quite a good philosopher.” His praise meant a great deal to me. That a man with whom I so strongly disagreed would still honor my showing guts in taking a stand, and furthermore, a Jesuit admiring the way in which I formulated my argument? His praise warms the cockles of my cranky little heart to this day, and I take strength from it. What an example of good mentoring.

Twenty years later, the Church remains stubbornly adamant about humans being on top. But there are sometimes signs of hope towards a more egalitarian species stance – including this.

A sign of changing times: a Catholic/Protestant duel involving animism!

These churches are said to be located across the street from one another.

I so hope this is real.

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Yes!!!  Either this Catholic church has woken up, or their leaders have a great sense of humor, or both – all good signs in my opinion.

These sign wars bring up a theological dilemma for me. If there are no dogs or rocks in heaven, I certainly don’t want to go there. So should I start acting badly to prevent the possibility? Please advise.

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Want more?

• To read more about spirituality involving dogs, see my essay All Sentient Beings.

• To read more about spirituality involving rocks, see my book chapter Kumu Pohaku (Stones as Teachers).

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May all beings be happy.

May all beings be peaceful.

May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

May all beings enjoy a belly laugh today.

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Source: This funny photo series has been posted in numerous places without attribution, including Anathema, from whom I nabbed it. If the original photographer sees this, please contact me to be given proper credit.

Equal Rights Granted to Nature April 12, 2011

In a breathtaking movement toward sustainability through wisdom, indigenous philosophy regarding right relationship with Earth is about to become law.

From the U.K.’s excellent paper The Guardian, April 11, 2011:

Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country’s rich mineral deposits as “blessings” and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.

The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature “to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities”.

“It makes world history. Earth is the mother of all”, said Vice-President Alvaro García Linera. “It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration.”

[read more here]

My friend Jon Berger pointed out that this is not a completely revolutionary idea. “Way back in the early 70′s,” he said, “a law prof named Christopher Stone published a completely serious and non-ironic article called “Should Trees Have Standing?,” which proposed that natural features like trees should have legal rights just like people do.” (Read it here on Harvard University’s pdf.)

I used to teach from this very article, including it amongst other provocative readings in environmental philosophy for my ecopsychology courses. But it’s a long haul from theory to actual practice (and not only by a small pocket area but by a whole country), particularly when the basic idea behind it is generally seen as so outlandish as to be laughable. Seeing such theoretical musings now put into actual practice is a big, wonderful shift. (And seeing it put into practice here in the heart of capitalist greed would be revolutionary.)

It remains how effective this law will actually be in halting the polluting and otherwise damaging actions of industries. After all, Ecuador changed its constitution to recognize rights of the more-than-human world, but this has not stopped the oil companies’ destructive activities in the Amazon rainforests.

But Bolivia is fortunate to have a VP like Linera, an intellectual, mathematician and ex-armed rebel who, according to Indymedia Ireland, defines himself as “the bridge between [supporters of] indigenous and the middle classes.”

In his eclectic combination, I hear echoes of another great Latin American scientist-cum-change agent, Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Following one’s eclectic interests needn’t mean mere dilettantism; followed with passion and persistence, they can lead to some amazing new perspectives. As issues get viewed across disciplines, a giddy freedom of thought can emerge. As Robert Heinlein said, “specialization is for insects.”

But I digress.

Both Guevara and Linera seem to be guided by deep caring. As Che once observed, “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”

This act, attempting – and succeeding! – at passing the Law of Mother Earth, certainly qualifies. The Bolivian government is reportedly committed to a strong conservation movement against pollution and other exploitative, extractive activities, conferring the power to monitor and control the activities of industry, including at local community levels. How moving and fitting that these changes are based on their indigenous idea of Pachamama, recognizing that this ancient wisdom, if acted upon, provides a clear path toward future survival.

Such a governmental commitment to nature’s basic rights means much greater leverage for achieving the kind of structural changes necessary for the future health of the land and all of the peoples that dwell there.

As if that weren’t enough, the new law also restores power and dignity to the area’s indigenous population. Foreign minister David Choquehuanca commented, “We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values.”

Yes!

Early Spring Cleaning February 17, 2011

I think my instincts are turning toward, or pulling me back towards, Beauty.

I just made a very simple supper snack – pear with cheese, but it was clear that the BLUE plate would be so much more striking against the creamy colors than the yellow one with lemons printed on it – so I yielded to the impulse, and oh how true that is.  I found myself laying the pears out in a fan pattern around the perimeter, with the three cheese slices forming an echo along the bottom. Then it seemed to need something… pecans! In the middle!

Is it food or art?

Who cares?

When I eat it, I will become it. Its beauty will nourish me inside as it does now through my eyes. My whole life could become this delicious feast of moments.

I am so drawn to this idea.

I’ve been taking inventory.

Paring down.

Over the past two days, it looked like a tornado hit in here as I hauled the couch to the other side of the room and deconstructed my bookshelves.

Like they do in Bali, I took every one down off their shelves, and dusted the shelves. Then I chose each book deliberately to either go back to be used and loved by me for some specific purpose or just because I value it or want to read it; or to be given away to either a certain friend or to the bookstore, thrift shop, or laundromat to find their new lovers.  I honor them for the knowledge and insights they contain. And some, although I’m sooo drawn to them, I know I will not be reading soon – so out they go too. This appreciative yet unattached gratitude feels good.

And the funny thing is, even though I’ve collected over ten bags full to give away, every shelf is still completely packed. How did that happen? Where were all those books before?

I also had the wild hair idea to shelve them according to color, and damn the subjects… this is the yellow shelf.  But stopped myself, thinking someone might actually ask me for a book, which would be embarrassing when I couldn’t find it for the life of me  (unlike before, where I could unerringly point to every blasted one, however buried.)

Finally, I sharpened all my knives.

It’s like I’m preparing all my tools – but for what?

For the future journeys/adventure ahead, of course.

Leaf buds will open soon.

Rocksong October 10, 2010

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Tonight I go alone

to the Stone-People-Lodge

To the drumming in the lodge

To the people calling, chanting

down the bones of ancient eagles

and the deities of granite near

a pregnant fir tree humming,

offering sap that danced out freely

in the Dreamtime of our mothers

who perceive us in their future

which is Now, as we are waiting

in their lodge of seven colors

like a rainbow bridge of feathers –

insubstantial in our bodies;

only present in our yearnings

in our brayings

in our dreamings; there

our bodies they are gleaming

with the cleansing

and the healing

and the long-awaited joining

with the elder tribal peoples

sister raven

grandma mugwort

So then will come the sound of angels

tying all our lives together

in the falling of their fire

and the raindrops in their wingsong

Burning breathing

smokedeyes squeezing

as the tears release from from spirits

at the deaths of all our baggage

We are joined by silver navel cords

to all of Our Relations

we are dancing in the Moebius strip

of despairing elation

Dance the memory of Realtime

Dance the flow of sap in pine trees

Dancing out of sacred lodges

in the sun,

never alone.

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This poem was written to the sound of an internal rattle while waiting for a ride (in a shopping mall, of all places) several hours before I was to go into my first Inipi ceremony with the late Wallace Black Elk. Everything that came in the poem also later came to pass in the tipi.  It was nice of the spirits to provide a program!

Music of the Spheres July 3, 2010

You’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase “music of the spheres.” This originated for us with the Greek mathematician/philosopher Pythagoras, who proposed that proportions in the movements of celestial bodies can be interpreted as music. He viewed this “musica universalis” not as literally audible, but as a concept about harmonics, mathematics, and the divine.

In A Little Book of Coincidence, John Martineau tracks the ways in which these proportions make up gorgeous geometries. Remember “Spirograph,” that addictive drawing toy you might have had as a kid that involves toothed cogs with holes in different places to stick your pencil through in order to draw repeating geometric patterns? Turns out our universe’s movements look a lot like those patterns. No wonder we found them fascinating.

Contemporary geomancer Richard Feather Anderson claims that the entire universe is made up of only a very few geometric proportions. Feeling fascinated but skeptical, I asked him whether this was not a rather bloatedly arrogant claim, as we puny humans could not possibly know about the entire universe. I mean really, we understand only a tiny bit about the workings of our own bodies! We could speculate on what limited bits we’ve learned about our own planet, our moon, and the observable planets in our own immediate solar system, but the universe? Feather’s response was that the proportions observed by ancient philosophers have now been repeatedly noted by scientists with excellent modern telescopes and computers, and have been proven to (my memory is likely not exact here) something around 97% accuracy. Hearing this, I now had leave to go into spasms of awe.

It is not difficult to see how these proportional relationships might echo musical intervals and harmonics. Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle opined:

“All deep things are songs. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! … See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music if you can only reach it.”

If we consider that life energy can be interpreted as vibration, and vibration can be interpreted via sensory organs and machines in many ways that include sound and light, it can be argued that in a way, the entire universe is continually singing.

This poetic opinion is now backed up by research scientists in solar physics at the University of Sheffield, U.K., who have for the first time managed to make recordings of the magnetic field in the sun’s outer atmosphere.

According to The Telegraph’s science correspondent Richard Grey, “They found that huge magnetic loops that have been observed coiling away from the outer layer of the sun’s atmosphere, known as coronal loops, vibrate like strings on a musical instrument. In other cases they behave more like soundwaves as they travel through a wind instrument. Using satellite images of these loops, which can be over 60,000 miles long, the scientists were able to recreate the sound by turning the visible vibrations into noises and speeding up the frequency so it is audible to the human ear.” (June 19, 2010)

The head of the research group, Robertus von Fáy-Siebenbürgen, is cited as saying, “It was strangely beautiful… It is a sort of music as it has harmonics.” As the Bard said, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

I find the Telegraph an excellent layperson’s news briefing source for scientific topics. The best thing about this particular article is that they provide actual video of the sun’s singing. I can’t figure out how to embed it in this post like you can with a YouTube video, being basically an upgraded technopeasant. But you can

click here for the video where you can listen to the Sun “sing!”

How cool is that?!

(All this longwindedness, in fact, sprang from my discovering this video and wanting to share it. Took me long enough to get to it, eh?)

The Aboriginal people of Australia believe that the world as we know it was originally sung into existence. Further, people must continue to repeat these songs if the places we live in and its beings are to continue. I find it a refreshing view to see our species as needed, instead of being a cancer to everyone else. So the people walk these “songlines” every year, literally singing the world back into being. They sing the original birth songs of their neighbors like stones and lizards. Perhaps they learned these songs from the beings themselves.

Five Dreamings. painter - Michael Nelson Jakamarra, assisted by Marjorie Napaljarri, Papunya, Central Australia.

Go outside after you see this video and sing with the Sun. Sing her back into being each year; each day, if you can. Welcome her with whatever comes to you as her own song, reminding her she is beautiful and needed and loved. And at night, don’t forget the Moon. And stars. And oh yes, anytime, all the trees and flowers and rocks and winds and…  Who cares what the human neighbors think? Their cells are all singing too, whether they know it or not.

Power of Raven (Good Wish) May 21, 2010

“Good Wish” is one of the many lovely blessings collected in the Scottish Highlands by Alexander Carmicheal, and compiled into his book Carmina Gadelica.  (Page 282. No, I don’t currently own a copy. My birthday is in December… )

I like that it starts out by conferring “power of raven.” Ravens so often get a bad rap – in fact, all of the Corvidae do: ravens, crows, magpies, and jays. Those smart, big-mouthed birds are the avian equivalent of theater people, anarchists, feminists, culture jammers – a bit trickstery with their sense of humor, a bit wiser than you might expect, unafraid of death or gory weirdness, with one eye out for anything flamboyant and interesting; not subtle business-suited or cute-plumaged boop-boop Paris Hilton-type chirpers at all. Viva la Raven!

This invocation attempts to confer the great powers and riches (“goodness”) of nature on its recipient. Along with these, it also confers the blessings of two great human leaders, Christ and Fionn; and to top it off, it confers three valued internal qualities: honor, compassion, and love. There is evidence that in pre-Christian Irish society, maintaining one’s personal honor, including integrity of word and deed, was extremely important. Ah, for the good old days.

My favorite part of this Wish, though, is “death on pillow.” This is not something we ordinarily think of as a positive prayer since we’re so alienated from the realities of death in this culture, but by considering the many hideous alternatives, we can understand how it truly is.

By request, I like to sing an original variation of this poem to participants in my open singing group EnChantMent! while they collectively hold a single drone note, like a sung bagpipe; in this way to end our sessions with a blessing for them.

May it likewise bless all reading this now.

 

Drawing Down the Moon (painting by Tina Fields)

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Power of raven be thine

Power of eagle be thine

Power of the Fiann.

Power of storm be thine

Power of moon be thine

Power of sun.

Power of sea be thine

Power of land be thine

Power of heaven.

Goodness of sea be thine

Goodness of earth be thine

Goodness of heaven.

Each day be joyous to thee

No day be grievous to thee

Honour and compassion.

Love of each face be thine

Death on pillow be thine

Thy Saviour’s presence.

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I made the watercoloured drawing on the right a looong time ago!  It’s very fun to be letting these old pieces fly into the world now, here.

Artzybasheff’s Animistic Machines April 26, 2010

Animism is alive and well in the industrial world of Boris Artzybasheff.

After the Russian Revolution, Artzybasheff (1899-1965) arrived in America with no parents and 14 cents in his pocket. He began to work as an illustrator using an Art Deco style, then became heavily influenced by the representational surrealist movement.

His illustrations graced countless Time and Life magazines, loads of ads, and around 50 books, including Charles Finney’s The Circus of Dr. Lao and Dhan Gopal Mukerji’s Gay-Neck, which won him the Newbery.

One of his most famous books was his own, As I See. This book contains a section entitled “Machinalia.”

In its introduction, Artzybasheff says, “I am thrilled by machinery’s force, precision and willingness to work at any task, no matter how arduous or monotonous it may be. I would rather watch a thousand ton dredge dig a canal than see it done by a thousand spent slaves lashed into submission. I like machines.”

He says that, but while some of these do look like a happy little Disney world o’ machines, others look far more ominous to me. However, I’ll give the artist the benefit of the doubt for knowing his own subconscious along with his conscious approval of human liberation from drudgery.  Perhaps the machines’ expressions do not signify plotting the eventual overthrow of their soft, fleshy masters, as I suspect, but simply intense concentration on their work tasks.

See what you think.

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Making of Steel: Charging the Open Hearth

Tapping a Heat of Steel

Filling Ingot Molds

The Soaking Pit

The Blooming Pit

The Rod Mill

Hydraulic Press

Stranding of Wire Rope

Weaving of Fence Fabric

Wire Drawing Machines

Spring Forming Presses

Wire Cloth Looms

Navy’s Mark III Calculator

Executive of the Future

(Thanks to my original source for many of these illos: Stephen Worth, ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive)