Maebius Musings

I recently talked about Perspectives in terms of seeing wildlife in your backyard as a boon, and a symptom of imbalance.  I had been pondering that lately, and realized that the two options were not mutually exclusive, and to look at them in terms of extremes was jsut as bad as ignoring one side of the question itself.

For today’s musing, I present to you this:

What is it?  

A few options present themselves to my mind.   For example, it’s an apple, Obviously.  Thinking further…

• A fruit.
• a red -skinned food-item
• a healthy snack
• a worm house
• the fall of mankind via Eve
• a potential tree
• a jpg file
• an electronic pixilated representation of a physical object
• …etc.

I could probably think of a few other increasingly esoteric and creative answers to “What is that?“, but I think the point has been made. The question of “which is the correct answer?” is somewhat moot.  They are all correct.

The same ‘thing’ like that apple pictured above, can be many many things depending on how you look at it.   It’s a less extreme example of the three blind men and the elephant.

Like our own concepts of Spiritual Truth, I believe that just about all of them are valid, for the honest practitioner.  Some may call a spade a spade, and others a shovel or a playing-card, but there is Truth behind the respective words, that has validity.

Think about that the next time you dismiss someone as “wrong” in some subjective topic.  They may be less Right to you’re perspective, granted.  We can also change our own minds in light of continued evidence.  Yet, I am finding that the idea of wholly Wrong-ness is the cause of most troubles in society lately.

Lets stop comparing those apples to themselves, and just make fruit salad with the oranges we find too.

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This week at the UU church I [still] attend, was an informal service whereupon members of the congregation had been invited to share a short excerpt from a favorite book, and how it inspired them.

One lady read from Grapes of Wrath, and shared how it changed her outlook on Humanity and Humility, reading of the horrid selfishness of people below their station. She had grown up in a wealthy NewEngland community, and formerly looked down her nose at “poor farmers” until that book made her re-think things.

One man shared a bit from Oral Microbiology and how it changed his view of our communal relationship with ‘the good microbes’.

Yet others shares inspiring sermons, quoted from Martin Luther King, Ghandi, and more traditional “English Literature” such as Flowers for Algernon, and Where the Red Fern Grows.

However, by far my favorite was an older lady who shared “The Hobbit” as her favorite book. She explained briefly that we adults are often told to get our heads out of the clouds, and how this “kids book” showed that even as an older adult, it was “OK to have an imagination”. She also referenced the new movie Avatar, as an example of world-building freedoms and whimsy-wonder.

Instead of reading an excerpt from The Hobbit, however, she admitted that she once submitted music to a “Fanzine” on Middle earth back in the 80s. She had set the first parts of Galadriel’s Song of Eldamar to music, and then launched into a lilting A Cappella song, the lyrics of which are below.

To say the fact I could honestly answer “heard a lady sing in elvish” to the question of What I Did on Sunday, is awesome.

This UU thing may not be entirely spiritually ritualistically filling, but it’s still a fun community to be growing a part of.

(My son also has now expressed interest in going as he misses the other kids. Also, he has learned not to jokingly blow out the small candle I light in the evenings after starting to understand the reasons for lighting a candle “Representing the Love and Mystery that some people call God/dess”)

Galadriel’s Song of Eldamar
I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:
Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.
Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the Sea,
And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden Tree.
Beneath the stars of Ever-eve in Eldamar it shone,
In Eldamar beside the walls of Elven Tirion.
There long the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years,
While here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elven-tears.
O Lórien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day;
The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away.
O Lórien! Too long I have dwelt upon this Hither Shore
And in a fading crown have twined the golden elanor.
But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?

Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
Yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lisse-miruvóreva
Andúnë pella, Vardo tellumar
nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
ómaryo airetári-lírinen.

The melody was vaguely akin to “Spancel Hill” (video link)

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I have been attending services at our local UU church for just about two months now, and have even helped out in the kids program after showing an aptitude/interest for “kid friendliness” playing outside with my own son after the services. It’s a nice place!

However, the more I am studying up on UU principles, the more I fear that initial “Yay My Group!” feeling I had towards them is shifting to a sideways “eh, nice group” feeling.

It is nothing against the church. The services are varied and interesting, and welcoming of all manner of faiths. Over the weeks I’ve met a “hardcore wiccan” and a muslim from Pakistan who all meet up for community and fellowship each sunday. The coffee-chatter time is enlightening, as are the somewhat open-ended “sermons”. Yet, for myself, that openness does not fill the void I am finding in my spiritual practice.

I initially started ‘going to church’ again in order to help my son experience a faith-based community and education. In this regard, things are Great. For myself, the lack of steady ritual, beyond a simple candle-lighting, feels almost shallow. As if there is definitely spirit there, but not quite the Divine Spirit (capital S).

I am thinking the flow and content of the services is intentional, to allow for all faiths to pray as they see fit, and the vague wordings towards “Spirit” or “Higher Power” are well suited for personal perspective. Yet, in allowing all paths in, the road is over-broad and unrestrained.

I find I miss my old Lutheran services, or at least parts of them. The hymns, the processions, and the Pageantry of it all is distinctly lacking in the UU church (by design?). Yet it is what which drew me to serve as an assistant minister as a youth. I felt the power and draw of United Ritual, and knew it to be Godly.

Later, when my Path led be outside definitive Christianity, I simply changed the image of God in my head. I realized, deep down, I still held on to the appeal of Ritual.

Perhaps this is why I love drum-circles so much. While the rhythms and ’songs’ are spontaneous, there is an almost standardized “flow” to them that seems ritualized, regardless of the participants. Likewise, some of my most powerful Spiritual Experiences have been during a more formalized ritual.

Going back to the topic of the UU church, I still get the sense that there are groups operating within the UU congregation/community, but have not integrated with them yet to feel welcome and invited. Almost every weekday, the church has something happening, yoga, Spiral Scouts, CUUPS, garden club, Bingo night, etc.

I still feel there is some potentized Spirit available within that church community, if I can shed my “visitor” feeling. However, the actual sunday services have gone from being spiritual meetings to Community meetings. This does not discredit them for what they are. It merely took me a few months to realize my own goals were slightly different than what I originally sought out by going to Church.

In summary, I’m discovering that I still need to find a “church” outside of “church”.

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Nettle tagged me for this:
What religions do you find most interesting apart from your own? Would you pick one of the major world religions? Say Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism or Judaism? Or would you pick something more obscure, like Wicca or Taosim or Rastafarianism or Gnosticism? Would you pick irreligion, say Atheism or Agnosticism? Or if you’re not Christian, would you say Christianity?

To participate, state your own religion (or irreligion) as your first preference, state the other religions that interest you most as your second and third preferences, then pass onto five others. If you’re feeling brave, say why they interest you.

My answers to follow.

Browsing the Blog-o-sphere, there are many awesome answers to this, so I feel somewhat redundant and like I’m saying the same thing here, or at least redundant, in my answers, but here goes:

Interestingly enough, while I think the entire Search for Spiritual Truth is interesting in it’s many manifestations, the most interesting general “religion” to me is Atheism.
The reason for this is probably that the concept as a [non]spirituality is so foreign to me that it intrigues me to no end. When growing up, I’d love getting into a deep and involved discussion on the lack of a Divine with anyone I could wrestle into chatting with me.
(Aside: I almost have to put Agnostics in a different category than Atheists. I know two very “Devout Agnostics” who reconcile themselves that the Divine is unknowable but not yet not unproven, which to me still has a slight Spiritual Path involved, even if simply cloaked in the term “Morality and Ethics”. Spiritual here being a path of self-improvement. I may be missing the connotation of the words and context of the original Meme though so I’ll stop digressing.)

All other religions of the world, from Hindu, to Asatru, Yazdi, to Gypsy, all have at their core a belief in Something Other. The names and practices are changed across the spectrum, and the Myths are sometimes as immiscible as oil and water. Yet at their heart, most spiritual practice, by definition, contain the concept of Other. This I understand, and can relate to both intellectually in studying their trappings and ritual, and on a deeper harmonic level as a facet of Truth.

The true Atheists. Scientists or otherwise, totally baffle me.
In college I was a physics and astronomy major, and I ascribe to the Scientific Method with the best people. Yet even as I can quote kinematic equations and offer Darwinian experiments to explain evolution, I can not distance myself from the idea that Life and Love resonate beyond the physical world. We are bundles of neurons and biochemical flesh-sacks, yes, but we are also Alive and Divine.

My own Religion is something that probably could be called Christian Mystic Druid Pantheist Pagan. If you want more details, I’ll mirror Nettle’s comments and say there’s a whole bloggy Archive here on this very site. Feel free to browse it!

Also, as per the meme, I should pick two more Religions that interest me. For this, I’ll choose the Catholic Church, for being immensely popular yet strange to me for it’s guilt-ridden focus and exclusivity clauses. Third choice would be the eastern practices of Shinto/Zen, mainly because they sound so interesting and useful for day-to-day living, but are so different from my western upbringing that they feel “false” when I try to practice their tenants.
Yet here again I seem to be repeating Nettle’s answer regarding dogmatic vs Gnostic religions. I think the quest for Personal Growth is a universal drive among us humans, and it’s all pretty interesting from a cerebral standpoint to consider the myriad methods that different groups have formed that drive into a collective culture, which is what Religion is at it’s heart. Religion is the trappings and ritual and beliefs laid over the Searching-for-Divinity that I call Spirituality.

Similar terms, but much different connotation in my mind. It’s all semantics, and you are welcome to argue them anytime.

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As the sun is reborn, I hope the light of your lives shines brightly and strong, wherever and whatever that Light shines with for you.

As a musical interlude here’s three awesome songs. First, one that was performed by a wonderful brother&Sister act in church this past Sunday:
The Christians and the Pagans”

Next, two songs by the band Gaia Consort (whom I love), with the first being more Christmas-y and festive, one I listened to while standing outside under the stars and invoking Awesomeness.

Father xmas.mp3

Gathering.mp3

Enjoy!

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I was typing up a short musing on the holiday spirit, and how to re-find it in hte midst of crazy work schedules and crass commercialized holiday culture-spam.

Then in the course of cleaning out my feed reader, I stumbled upon this bit of wisdom.

I’ll admit it stuck a nerve and I just sat in my desk here at home, closed my Warcraft game, and almost wept for …um.. joy? remorse? inspiration?    Not sure what emotion it drew out of me but it was such a profoundly cathartic thing, I had to share.

http://domesticwitch.blogspot.com/2008/12/santas-wisdom-to-pagans-author-unknown.html

Strange, isn’t it?   There’s no one phrase I can pick out of this posting that set me off, but after I read it, things just sloooowly clicked and rushed aside, like some sort of “Kundalini rising” energy movement.

Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!

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At church yesterday, the theme was of the coming Harvest Holiday, we here in the USA call Thanksgiving.  As part of this, our UU Minister read a few words from Rev. Max Coots, relating to friendship, community,  and gardens.  I’d like to share that here, since it really was awesome.

Garden Meditations

by Rev. Max Coots

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people.

For children who are our second planting, and though they
grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may
they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where
their roots are.

Let us give thanks;

For generous friends…with hearts…and smiles as bright
as their blossoms;

For feisty friends, as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers,
keep reminding us that we’ve had them;

For crotchety friends, sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and
as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as
potatoes and so good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and
as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes;

And serious friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle
as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as
dill, as endless as zucchini and who, like parsnips, can be
counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time,
and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold
us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past
that have been harvested, but who fed us in their times that
we might have life thereafter.

For all these we give thanks.

So, for all of you reading this, be ye garlic or rhubarb, or corn or zucchini. Thank you, and may your Thanksgiving season be as blessed and bountiful as possible.

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