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.

Here’s a better look at the place we all live, care of NASA’s newest satellite composite images.
Animated: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/4401845574/

Technically, it is more related to a personality trait called self-transcendence. Self-transcendence “reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one’s self as an integral part of the universe as a whole.“

http://www.livescience.com/health/spirituality-brain-link-100211.html

My thoughts on this study are a bit divided. On one hand, it’s always kinda interesting to me how Science keeps tapping away at the walls of our unknown in search of the hollow passages and studs behind them.

On the other hand, while the physiology is described here as a deficit, could it not be that lessened Ego is actually better, and those unspiritual types are less adapted? (like having webbed feet, which are cool, but not most efficient at perambulating around town?)

I still think there’s not enough details here to really base a potential-filled claim like “Brain Bits that cause Spirituality” so I’ll simply choose to ignore and gloss past that particular facet of the headline. The study itself holds some nugget of muse-worthiness at least.

Food for thought, but I’m not sure of there’s empty calories here, or whole grains.

It may sound gruesome to some, but we kept the deer and are in the process of preparing it for venison this week.

Additionally, I have plans for a number of bones (and the skull) if I have success in cleaning/preparing them, which is a learning process for me. Prior animal bones I have had access to were found outside and pre-bleached by time, weather, and biological processes.

My pondering now, (and question to any readers here) is how to best preserve the animal remains, both in the literal physical sense, and a more spiritual/shamanic/etc sense.

I’ve honored the spirit of the deer with a quiet candlelit ritual saturday evening, but I’m completely learning-as-I-go in the idea of actually ‘harvesting’ the other parts respectfully. Wish me luck!

My dog has already requested a leg bone, and another is destined for a “talking stick” type of scepter. One rib popped up in my dreams last night as Useful, but no details as to the final use. The skull will hopefully preserve well and be gifted to a friend of mine with a great affinity to Deer. The rest, will most likely join the compost pile and garden for added calcium and to treat the nibbling field mice in our barn.

The car will be repaired, my own physical health is unharmed. I’d like to make the most of the noble animal who was ’sacrificed’ in the accident.

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)

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
-G. K. Chesterton