Time

"How do you find the time...?"

"By not being in a hurry,"..."That's how you find the time."

-From "The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place" by E.L. Konigsburg

Shantyboat

Things great and small.

Harry Bryan's Shantyboat from the cover of WoodenBoat Magazine.

"Shantyboat is an account of life amid the elements; the backlands, and backwaters, weathers and currents that require human skill to be great, because human control is so small."-from the introduction by Wendall Berry to the book "Shantyboat, A River Way of Life" by Harlan Hubbard, the University Press of Kentucky, 1977.

Some of the joy of living close to nature, as some might call it, comes from the developing of ones mind and body and awareness.  As this quote from the book states, human control, in reality is so very small and to stand any chance at avoiding the tragedy that is waiting just around the corner, in every aspect of our lives, great attention and skill are required.

It is our great fortune that the greatest joy and fulfillment is also had by the developing of those skills and thru their direct application in attaining our daily sustenance and comforts.

Merry Christmas

A few seconds of the Cathedral Christmas concert that is held each year just for me.  Well it feels as though it is just for me, even though there are several hundred others in the great room.
I wish I could give everyone a chance to hear the beauty that is the voice of many in unison singing songs of praise, love, and peace.  In that special room, hearing those voices, one could almost be convinced that compassion, charity, peace and love might all win out over the challenges of our times.
Upon leaving that concert, and that place, and being thrust back out into the hustle and grit that is the larger city, the realization that if those qualities are to prevail, then dedication, perseverance, and unceasing work are going to be needed.  But those things to could be considered qualities, enlightened states of being rather than, just occupations to be endured.
So, for the New year, and with the return of the sun to warm our days and our hearts, I wish us all peace of heart, compassion for all living things, gratitude at the chance to know life, and the strength to endure it's trials and hardships.

Thanks for the chance to live and feel and to know.

Life could always be harder, but, it could never be better.

Respect for all Life

In the ancient Hindu Text, the Upanishads, it is written that

As water becomes water,

As fire joins fire,

As air blends with air,

So shall the mind become one with the infinite mind. 

earth & sky are one

And like the fire of the sun

can be found in the sea,

and the line between water

and sky can be lost,

so to can all living things,

be seen as one.

Tis the season

December Morning

December morning looking west

Rain, rain, rain.  Yesterday and last night rain, at least down at the house.  Up on top of the hill it snowed last night.  Only a dusting, but the north side of the trees still wore the white powder where it blew in hard and had not yet been melted by the morning sun.

The winter is coming in slowly, but steady.  The wood stoves, the rugs on the floor, the thick curtains on the walls make the little house a haven.

A news show on finance, yesterday, asked, "How much money do you need to feel rich?"
I ask the question, "What does money have to do with it?"

The scientists are talking about water on other planets, and other planets that are like ours, mean while, industry is poisoning our water supplies and polluting this planet.

Some people will never have enough.  Some have nothing and it is more than they require.  Some look at their place with gratitude and awe.  Some can't bother to stop for a moment and appreciate what they have, but only look at what else they can get.

Thank you for this morning, for this sunshine, for this cold wind, and for the body that carried me up to this look out.  I know I won't always have these things, but I am grateful for what is mine to live and love, while I am here.

Reflections in the Marsh

Rowing a small dinghy on a warm day in late November I am circled by the seagulls above.

The Mirrored Marsh 

I look down to look up and somewhere in the shadows of the reeds the line between sky and earth is hidden.

I have the marsh to myself, I have the work of my oars to myself, I have the squeak of the leather against the bronze oar locks to myself, and the sound of the small splash the wood makes as it pushes the water and the world away from us.

I am building an affinity with the marsh and the river so that I might build a wooden boat for use on the  marsh and river.

The distance I can row is not so great, but the world I am discovering by slowing down, by resting upon the looms and noticing the shore, the sky, the water's surface, my boat upon it, seems much larger than is possible.  It is looking into a microscope and discovering communities of life.  It is opening a book and discovering characters you never knew you knew.

The light signal at Stony Point.

I started in boats to be able to travel far and wide.  The river that runs to the sea and becomes the ocean, the oceans of the world, and then touches the rivers that cut thru interesting and beautiful lands and are born from tall mountains.
I am finding in boats that I live in interesting and beautiful lands with wooded, rocky shores, tall cliffs that drop straight into the water, fecund smelling marsh where animals hide from the Bald Eagles that show up late in autumn.

Barge approaches the narrows of Stony Point.

A tug pushes it's burden up the river against the falling tide.  I find a twelve foot long piece of lumber, in useful condition and I tie it up with the my line and with the tide helping me along, pull it down stream.

On the shore a deer watches me as I watch him.  A stone house sits on the point.  In the summer the leaves hide it, but now, with the leaves all gone it looks even lonelier with it's windows all shuttered.

I imagine being in that little house, with a fire place blazing and still feeling the cold walls of stone as the winter lays down a blanket of snow on the ground and on the floes of ice as they pop and crackle and move down river on a cold February night.  Even so, I dream of being able to live on that point of rock with only a foot path to service it and not even a decent landing for a boat on it's rocky edges.  

I would do it, I would take on that responsibility to maintain and keep that little stone house that watches over the Hudson and is never quite warm.  I would fashion a small landing for a boat, a small float that I could pull up above the tide line in the winter, lest it be crushed and carried away by the winter ice.  In the winter what a great and hellishly cold little place to be.  In the Spring, what a great and hopeful little place to be.  But in the summer what a great and magical little place to be.    In the Fall what a great and slightly sad little place to be.

I want to row to the shore and tie up my boat and go up to the house and find a way in and move the shutters and let in the low Fall light.  I want to gather downed limbs and twigs and light the fireplace.  I want to move a chair close to the fire and fall asleep as the cold November night falls.  I want to make the house lived in and see if it responds and becomes a home.

But I row on.  The tide gives a nice push so I can drift.  The water is so smooth and slick that I loose the horizon as the the swell that the barge gives off, long and smooth rolling waves, rise up to the sky and my view of the river becomes a fun house mirror, all curvy and bending and strange.

Double sun.

The Suns on my left side are getting low in the sky and their warmth is dwindling.  It is time to pull to shore and take my little boat from the river.
During the winter I can think back on my little row or I can just come back down to the river.

A Wall of Yellow

The Maple trees still have their bright yellow leaves, or most of them.  Many have fallen off as the ground beneath the trees is also bright yellow.
One farmers Market is done for the year and another ends this weekend.  Gone are the corn, the melons, the peaches.  Gone are the days of short pants or nights without sweaters.
Gone are the cruising sailboats who travel south toward the warmer, longer days.
Gone are the Garter snakes that make the grass seem alive and keep the dog busy chasing them.
Now is the time of warm fires at night, layers of clothing and the wearing of hats.
Now is soup, roasted foods and bread.
Now is coffee, warm and strong.
Now is the time to drive down to the river and pine for warm days of sail.
Now is the time for long walks in the woods as boots crunch leaves and fallen twigs, until they soon crunch untrodden snow.
Now is heavy, thick books read by windows with blankets over ones legs.
Now is, projects in the shop that will be brought out in the Spring and floated upon the river, and projects that make the little house more, and more our home.

The new stained glass window, tile work and wood burning stove in the kitchen.

A simple path

I have stumbled on to something, and someone who I want to share with you.  Here is a link to her TEDx speech.  Listen and enjoy.

TEDx Inspires Me! - Sailing, Simplicity, and the Pursuit of Happiness
or
http://sailingsimplicity.com/tedx-inspires-me/

Inner/Outer Path

In a section of the Utne Reader online I read an article about Visionaries who are changing the world.  One article that spoke to me was an interview with Parker J. Palmer in which he spoke of the idea of living life on the "Mobius strip".  The mobius strip is a geometric idea where one takes a long rectangular strip, say of paper, and twists one end 180 degrees and then connects the 2 ends to make a loop with one continuous edge or side.  For Palmer the idea is that one might live so that the inner self blends into the outer self.


The path that I have been following has been a step to just that very thing.  The goal is to dissolve the distinctions between what I believe to be true, to be morally correct or ethically right, from what I practice in my everyday life.  From the smallest thing to the larger ideas.


Why kill when I don't have to?  So, I catch the fly, ant, moth, spider, and set them outside of the house.  I know they will die eventually and that death is a part of the life cycle, but it is not necessary for me to kill always and compassion, when practiced, brings different kinds of answers to the questions I face each day.


Life on the mobius strip would not have a vegetarian working at a butcher shop, nor would it have a person who believes money is at the root of our evils, making a large salary and having his taxes and savings funding the efforts of those who would corrupt his world.


Life on the mobius strip is another way of saying live what you believe.  It is a more logical and reasonable Path.

I just looked away for a moment!

How did this:

	"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
—United States Constitution, Preamble

Become this:

"We the Greedy Corporations of the United States, in Order to form a more

 perfect money machine, further injustice, insure domestic unrest, and provide for the defense

 of whats ours, compromise the general Welfare, and secure the resources of the land 

for ourselves and our investors, do corrupt 

and commandeer this Constitution of the United States of America." 

If we want it back we at least have to ask.  Maybe even loudly and more than once.

Twelve Steps on the path to "Occupy Earth"

Why stop at "Occupy Wall Street"?  Why not Occupy America, the Earth, Life?

In reading thru the Alcoholics Anonymous entry in Wikipedia, particularly the "Twelve Steps" program, after attending an Occupy Wall Street satellite rally last night, I was inspired to adapt them to a broader use.  Here's my attempt.


1.  Admit that we have a problem, that we are locked in an unREASONABLE life style, and that this live style has become unmanageable.

2.  Come to understand that a PATH greater than our individual paths can lead us to reason.

3.  Make a decision to accept our destination in the journey of living and dying that defines our world.

4.  Make a fearless, honest and never ending inventory of our motivations and desires, weakness and corruptions

5.  Admit to ourselves, our God, and to our community how we contribute to the corruption and exploitation of our planet.

6.  Become ready for our Community responsibilities, social conventions and ethical obligations to our fellow inhabitants of the planet to guide us in freedom from our self destructive ways.

7.  Humbly seek a reasonable path by involvement and discussion with other living beings.

8.  Make a list of all the ways we personally damage our earth, weaken our cultural heritage, block social exchange, discourage open mindedness, and allow hate, and be willing to make personal changes.

9.  Make amends and change in your own life where it is reasonable to do so.

10.  Be mindful of the way we go thru life and make continued efforts to live a reasonable and compassionate life.

11.  Spend time thinking about our part in our society and engage in the processes that shape our world.

12.  Experience an awakening as to how far off the path of reason we have wandered.  Try to carry this thought to other human beings.  Try to practice the principles in our lives, in personal habits and professional pursuits, in mundane chores and spiritual meditations, that help to restore us to a path of reason.

After the Smoke clears

Well, that last post was a bit dark and angry, but sometimes that is just the way it is.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Frances Moore Lappe's book, "Diet for a Small Planet", from the library.  A friend at the farmer's market did the illustrations for it way back when,(1971?).  The edition I picked up is the 20 year anniversary edition and includes a great introduction.  Reading it makes my rant in yesterday's post seem even more emotional and less thoughtful.  I am grateful for the timeliness of finding her words.

Earlier yesterday, a friend had expressed to me in an email that "the most powerful thing is an idea".  In FML's intro to "Diet" she states basically the same thing.  Again, I am grateful for both of their words finding me in a timely way.

In her introduction, Lappe speaks to the exact thing that challenges me.  I feel distressed by the lack of participation of the people of our country in deciding how their lives should be.  I am sure people feel a lack of ability to affect change.  I am also sure that many don't even think to try and affect change in their own life.  There are so many things that each of us has sway on in our everyday lives.  Instead of waiting for a government to pass a new law, or for a large corporation to create a new product that will give us a new way, I am desperate to hear and see each of us make our lives right, good, whole and rich.  It is possible.

None of what I write here is really that personal or hasn't been.  These are word and ideas that are out for discussion and dissection and rethinking where it applies.
Now for something personal.
I know 2 people who live lives that when described to others almost always get the same response.  The response is basically, "wow, I wish I could do that".  Both of those people live below what this countries government calls the poverty line.  Both are simple in their wants and pro active in the creation of the life each lives.  They decide how, what, and where, and often this is outside the conventional methods of our society.  Neither has a "new home" or a "new Car" or anything that is under warranty probably, but each has things that most people wish they had, things that would make you think they were pretty well off.  And each is pretty well off.  Not rich, not even moderately so by our societies standards, like I said each makes less money than is needed to consider them above the poverty level, but each is secure and happy with their lot.

I am one of those people.

Money, education, material goods, social status are not what brings happiness in my experience.
enough money, a life of continuous education, and social relations do help me to be happy.

There is more that can be said on the idea but not now, not here.  We each have our path.

Hammonasset, CT 2011

24hrs. of Reality

"24 hours of Climate Reality" is happening right now. 

/http://climaterealityproject.org/

I have watched and watched trying to get the messages to stay in my brain.  I am angered by the people we have allowed to lead us, politically and socially, angered by their greed, self interest, vanity. Their stupidity is insulting, or it would be, if we weren't even more stupid by taking their words as truthful and wise.

Even with out the threat of a changing climate, our world has become a discount shopping store with a blue light special going on at every mountain top, river, oil deposit, gas reserve, ocean, and forest.  The large corporations are the sale crazed shoppers that trample the slower moving people to get to what is left to buy.  They tear at the goods, ripping them from the hands of who ever was there first.  They leave the place a mess when they move on to the next aisle and flashing light.  The governments of our countries are the store managers who keep putting up the blue lights and announcing the next sale.  Your children are not safe, they will be trampled.  The hoarding of resources will keep them poor and hungry and dependent on others.  We have reason to be angry, reason to revolt, reason to change just in the manner that the way the earth, our home, is being treated right now.  The news says a lot about other possible earths out there, about technology that will answer all our need, all the while we shit where we eat.  We foul our world and call it progress, call it a better world.  It is a childish perspective, an irreverent point of view, a short sightedness that makes us seem unintelligent, when we pride ourselves on our evolution of intelligence.  We are becoming the joke that we laughed at.  Have you seen the movie "Idiocracy"?  If it weren't so sad, and true, it would be funny.

When we seek only to serve or save or further our individual selves, we fail to admit our real situation.  In the end we all die and before that we will all suffer.

If we choose to endeavor to serve our collective selves, our race, our ecosystems, our planetary whole, we can affect in a lasting matter, whether it is our children or the offspring of all living things.

If your neighbors house burns, your house too is threatened.  Your neighborhood is now blighted by the destruction.  We cannot live only for our own selfish advancement, and expect the suffering of those around us not to affect us.  We are all connected.

The crime and economic suffering of the countries next to us (in America this would mean Mexico) affects us.  It is in our own best interest that we all help each other and look forward in order to create a sustainable and improving future for us all.

The following is an excerpt from an email I wrote to a friend today.

........In truth, I feel beaten.  My hope is pretty much gone for the human race to rise up and realize that the direction we have let society travel in,( the excess, the greed...) is not only self destructive, but also self defeating.  We have given those who would stand on our necks the boots they wear.  I have become hopeful that the hurricanes will get stronger and more frequent, that the droughts will be more sustained, that the floods will be more widespread.  I have come to believe that this will be the only way that might make people rise up and wrestle the planet back from the large corporations and the governments that are polluting, destroying the planet and a decent human life.

Life is resilient.  Humans when compared to other life forms are weak, but invasive.  We have done a bit to influence the systems of the planet, but I think what we might have done is to "wake up the giant".  We aren't getting a Hollywood movie version that takes place in 90 minutes, but a real version, that is slower but steady.  You know how long it takes a tanker or barge and tug to slow to a stop or even to effect a turn.  We have started somethings that can't just be turned off instantly.  "Iceberg, Dead ahead".  I only hope.  Truthfully, I hope that the systems that don't recognize income status or political party affiliation, will clean off the virus that is human activity.  Flood, drought, blizzards, hurricanes....Money will protect some, for a while from the affects, but not ultimately.  Historically, humans who have been held down by the corrupt ruling classes have eventually risen up.  When the water gets high enough, the tempers will rise as well.  When people are hungry, they will eat the rich.  When the rich wall themselves off and post armed guards to keep out the common man, the walls will be torn down, and if a hurricane helps, so be it.  The climate will tax our food and economic resources to that point eventually.  When the lie that is this lifestyle that we have been sold looses it's effect people will rise up, first against each other, and then against those who sold it to them in the first place.

I believe it is that bleak, and I hope that the climate/weather/economy/satellites falling out of the sky will bitch slap us hard enough to get people to snap out of there apathetic coma and make some changes in their own lives, take back control and responsibility, and hang the politicians that they trusted and who sold them and their earth to the highest bidder, from the cell phone towers, and power lines.

I think that Gandhi was keenly smart in his ability to lead people in a peaceful resistance.  I think that, like his campaign to have "homespun" clothe, we could find a path by growing our own local food, developing solar and wind or geothermal power on each of our homes, driving diesel cars and making our fuel at home from vegetable oil, and many other ways.  We can disempower the few but powerful greedy and the rich by no longer buying what they have to sell.  But we have to be willing to loose our comfortable, overweight fat and diseased asses and take responsibility for ourselves.  I don't think this will happen and I am not as adept as the Mahatma, not even close, so instead of placing my hope in the peaceful way, even though I will live it, my hope comes in the violent and painful suffering of the bulk of humanity to bring about a meaningful change in the path of humanity.

So, in some ways, to climate change I say "bring it on" , flood the world, starve the crops, make species that our food systems depend on go extinct, give us new strains of disease, WIPE THE F##KING SLATE CLEAN OF HUMANITY and start over.   A few of us will survive, probably not you or I, but some will and for a time they will have fresh in their memory how we got to the horrible place we did and they might just choose a more reasonable path.  But before that happens we have what we have and are left to make our choices, to decide who we are and how we will walk thru the days that we are given.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest?

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it does it still make sound.  Yes, it does.  In the wintertime it crackles and pops in my wood stove.

When a tree is alive and well it captures CO2 from the air and it gives off oxygen.  When a tree dies it stops giving up oxygen and starts releasing CO2 as part of it's decaying process.

To heat my home in the winter I have a small wood burning stove.  To fuel that stove I collect the downed trees from the woods. Each year quite a few trees come down during the storms.  I am grateful for the winter warmth.  It is a bit of work and best if I keep at it year round, that way I don't have to hurry the work, and the wood has longer to dry out.  It has just become a part of my daily work to sustain myself.

This is where I live.  This is part of my effort to be where I am and to live in it as part of it.  I use stones and rock for my building material because there is so much of it right here.  I use wood as my fuel because there is so much of it right here.  I watered my gardens from my water barrels during one week long period only because the rain did it the rest of the time.  I am trying to live where I am, not trying to make where I live into something it is not.

I know many people who live in a dry hot part of the country.  To me, they don't seem to live in that region, but rather in spite of it and they exert a lot of energy doing so.  Cafe's are out of doors and they use misters to keep people cool, the water evaporating before it falls onto the skin.  Yet, most people use clothes dryers that run on electricity or gas instead of hanging their clothes outside for an hour or so.
In that same place an open canal carries water across the desert to the big city, losing a staggeringly large amount to evaporation.  Meanwhile, that source for water has dwindled to the point that it no longer reaches the ocean as it once did.  All over are open swimming pools and golf courses that use a lot of water.  Once houses were built of adobe for it's cooling properties, now all are built of wood and use electricity to cool them.

I don't mean to pick on one place but this is what I personally have experienced, so I relate it here.  There are ways that we can live in the place that we find ourselves.  We can be more reasonable about what we ask of our surroundings, of the earth, of each other, of ourselves.

I sometimes stand at different places where I live and just look around.  I try to see what is here, where I am.  I try to see what I am not seeing, what I take for granted, what I look past.  I then try to see how I fit into this place, how my plans for my gardens, for my buildings, for any of my projects might be better thought out to make them fit into this place.  Sometimes, I realize that an idea I have had has no real place here and I have to come at the goal of my desire from a different angle so as to get at what I really want to achieve without forcing it upon the situation.  I have to find a more reasonable way of being in the place I live.

Water

When it rains, it pours.  When it pours, the creeks run.  When the creeks run, everything seems to come to life.  Between our home and the one next to us, about an eighth of a mile, these 2 creeks have been running.  They reshape the mountains, move rocks and did up the roots of trees, eventually pulling the trees down.

The sound of running water is the foundation of all sounds while the creeks run.  Wet is everywhere.  Hopefully some of this water is going to trickle down into the soil and eventually down into the aquifer that our wells all pull from.  It is a long process and it takes a bit of water to make it happen, but we have a lot of water.

Next summer, at this time of year, all of these woods could be dry with a lot less foliage.  It was like that our first year here.  That was what prompted me to establish rain barrels to catch water for the gardens.  They seem a little silly now, in someways.  But when the power was out after Hurricane Irene came thru, we had gravity pressurized water from these barrels, even though our well pump was out.  So I guess they make sense.

Many farms in New England have been either damaged or had entire crops lost due to the flooding.  How do I adapt to this cycle of life?  What do I see as my oppositions to this natural flow and how can I move with it.

The establishment of regional/local agriculture in every region or locale can create a food security by giving support to neighboring areas that go thru crisis.  When we get all of our eggs, or veggies, or meat, from one basket, then we make our selves vulnerable to the changes or hardships where ever that basket is.  We also become vulnerable to interruptions in delivery systems of those goods if they come from far away, and are delivered by only a few.

For us, the storm and being cut off from travel away from our home was novel, and a bit nice in it's quite and seclusion.  But, we were prepared.  For some it was not so good.  I suppose this is true of many situations.

Cedar Flats Island

The crest of this patch was 3 hours ago, and much higher!

     The road that passes in front of my house is named Cedar Flats.  Flooding from hurricane Irene turned the creeks into rivers and those rivers cut a couple of paths in the road, one to the north, one to the south, about two miles apart.  Cedar Flats became an island.
     The two temporary rives where running fast and wide.  Big standing waves made rafting down the water flow come to mind and then immediately the realization that it would get you killed.  Those waves were everywhere, born from stuck trees and lifted roadway.
     I did get a good feeling as I walked along our island.  It reminded me of the good feelings I have had while visiting real islands, Martha's Vineyard, Block, the Florida Keys.  I think is came from having my area of living reduced to a manageable size, "A reasonable Size."
  

entrance to the Parkway, the stream is to the left

  This area is populated with a few multi-generational families.  That kind of changes the feeling of the area.  Familiarity, and longevity breed tolerance and compassion, or so it would seem.
     The lack of motorized vehicles and the site of people walking and looking at the place where they live was very different.  Most days people drive by, fast, listening to radios, talking on cell phones, texting, but not looking at the trees, creeks, their environment.  Though people were taking pictures with cell phones, they were looking at the place where they lived.  We talked to and met some people we hadn't known.  We even met a couple who owned our house 30 years ago.  They moved a mile and a half away when they inherited their Grandmothers home.
     I had fantasized in the past about what it would be like if our road where cut off, usually on days when the cars or motorcycles came thru on mass, and at speed.  Thanks to Hurricane Irene, I got to experience it. It was good.  I am sure that long term, I might get challenged by getting things from the "outside world" transported over the water, but for the time, island living was a step down in pace and a step up in quality of life.  The quality came in the form of being able to walk the road with my dog and not worry about speeding cars coming around blind curves and threatening us.  It came from getting to know our community a little better.  It came from direct attention to our environment, local environment.  It came from the deep appreciation of the help we get from electricity to pump our well water and cool our freezer, though we got on fine without it.
     The 4 square miles of island that was Cedar Flats Island for a day was a small gift, a vacation, a disconnect from the faster larger world.  It was a day and an island of a reasonable size.

A Glass half full of Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

It's all about perspective isn't it?  The rule of the Jungle is "Eat or be Eaten."  The reality is that we Eat and are eaten.  It isn't a competition but a collaboration, a dependance, a relationship and an undeniable truth.
     In America, we seem to have embraced competition as our driving force.  Our economics are based on it, our recreation is steeped in it, even our educations are now ruled by it, and sadly our religions seem to be of this mind too.  The only problem I have with this is that in competition there is always a loser as well as a winner.
     If the rule of the jungle is the standard by which we operate, then how do we justify the simple fact that we all die eventually.  One way might be to step back and take a wider view, to look at the success of the race as opposed to the individual.  Ahhhh, now we are getting somewhere.  Our race has progressed and now the lions and tigers and bears, (oh my!) are moved down the food chain, though we don't really eat them, but they are threatened by man and man's technology.
     The wider view would also have us see that the advance of man and technology has allowed us to be at the top of the food chain, it has also threatened the other links on the chain, lions, tigers and bears included, and that with out those other links, it ceases to be a chain.  We do not, have not, and cannot as far as we can tell, exist independent of the rest of the natural world.  What we do unto it we do unto ourselves.  It will take a wider, more patient view, a less egotistical view to see this but once it becomes apparent, it will be as if we suddenly stepped back and where only then able to understand the scale of that thing we were standing next to.
     The reality is we are not in a competition with the rest of the flora and fauna of the planet, or with the rest of creation.  The reality is that we are in league with the rest of creation and dependent on it for the sake of all creation.
     For ages man has been working to remove himself from this undeniable fact of being a part of something greater than ourselves.  From taking our bodily wastes, our household waste, and our own bodies, after they have served us,  out of the system, we have desperately attempted to separate us, from the rest.  In the end, in a longer measure of time than just one human life, even those things that we have directed away from the natural cycles will eventually be reunited with the rest of the decay and rebirth, life and death that is our reality.
     When we have attempted to work around, or outside, or in spite of the reality of the cycles of nature, we have always created some kind of problem for ourselves and others.  The problems always seem to be greater issues to resolve than the original one that spurred our "innovation".
     One example, an easy one, is transportation.  The cheap fossil fuel that we use has created a huge problem that can be seen in the health of the air, earth and water as well as in our own personal health.  The previous methods of transport, horses, sail boats, human locomotion, all worked.  Their impact was not threatening to the life as a whole and in some ways supported it.  But, we wanted faster and farther.  Never grateful, never satisfied, never happy now.
     If one of us suffers, then we are all less for it.  True progress would not come in the way of faster, and farther for some, but might be more inclusive of all.  Isn't that what the foundations of our beliefs say?  Equality for all.  All are loved by God.  Doesn't the law of the jungle just reduce our existence to something like a football game for the Creator to watch?  Haven't our beliefs in the nature of God's creation been more like that of an artistic work rather than sporting event?
     We live and die and after us there is other life.  This is what we know, what we can witness as reality.  The scramble to compete becomes an uninformed and pointless path when seen with a lens that looks beyond our personal existence and realizes our connectedness to all things, before, now and in the future.

Foundations

Thomas Jefferson, who in turn shaped the way many nineteenth-century American homesteaders understood ownership of their farms. Jefferson wrote in 1785 in a letter to John Jay that

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, & they are tied to their country & wedded to its liberty & interests by the most lasting bonds.".

I'll Take My Stand

In reading a WB (Wendell Berry) essay, I found him mention the book "I'll Take My Stand" and specifically this introduction as the summary of agrarian principles vs. industrial principles.  I am not prepared to state myself as an "agrarian" (I don't want to limit myself), but I will say that it makes the most sense to me that we should, and need, to look in this direction of attitude in order to find "A reasonable Path" thru this world/country/life.  The piece gets going in the 3rd paragraph and if you are not aware of the Twelve Southerners, just wiki them.  This is from 1930.  I believe it is absolutely relevant today.  Here it is:





I'LL TAKE MY STAND
The Twelve Southerners

INTRODUCTION: A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES

THE authors contributing to this book are Southerners, well acquainted with one another and of similar tastes, though not necessarily living in the same physical community, and perhaps only at this moment aware of themselves as a single group of men. By conversation and exchange of letters over a number of years it had developed that they entertained many convictions in common, and it was decided to make a volume in which each one should furnish his views upon a chosen topic. This was the general background. But background and consultation as to the various topics were enough; there was to be no further collaboration. And so no single author is responsible for any view outside his own article. It was through the good fortune of some deeper agreement that the book was expected to achieve its unity. All the articles bear in the same sense upon the book's title-subject: all tend to support a Southern way of life against what may be called the American or prevailing way; and all as much as agree that the best terms in which to represent the distinction are contained in the phrase, Agrarian versus Industrial.

But after the book was under way it seemed a pity if the contributors, limited as they were within their special subjects, should stop short of showing how close their agreements really were. On the contrary, it seemed that they ought to go on and make themselves known as a group already consolidated by a set of principles which could be stated with a good deal of particularity. This might prove useful for the sake of future reference, if they should undertake any further joint publication. It was then decided to prepare a general introduction for the book which would state briefly the common convictions of the group. This is the statement. To it every one of the contributors in this book has subscribed.

Nobody now proposes for the South, or far any other community in this country, an independent political destiny. That idea is thought to have been finished in 1805. But how far shall the South surrender its moral, social, and economic autonomy to the victorious principle of Union? That question remains open. The South is a minority section that has hitherto been jealous of its minority right to live its own kind of life. The South scarcely hopes to determine the other sections, but it does propose to determine itself, within the utmost limits of legal action. Of late, however, there is the melancholy fact that the South itself has wavered a little and shown signs of wanting to join up behind the common or American industrial ideal. It is against that tendency that this book is written. The younger Southerners, who are being converted frequently to the industrial gospel, must come back to the support of the Southern tradition. They must be persuaded to look very critically at the advantages of becoming a "new South" which will be only an undistinguished replica of the usual industrial community.

But there are many other minority communities opposed to industrialism, and wanting a much simpler economy to live by. The communities and private persons sharing the agrarian tastes are to be found widely within the Union. Proper living is a matter of the intelligence and the will, does not depend on the local climate or geography, and is capable of a definition which is general and not Southern at all. Southerners have a filial duty to discharge to their own section. But their cause is precarious and they must seek alliances with sympathetic communities everywhere. The members of the present group would be happy to be counted as members of a national agrarian movement.

Industrialism is the economic organization of the collective American society. It means the decision of society to invest its economic resources in the applied sciences. But the word science has acquired a certain sanctitude. It is out of order to quarrel with science in the abstract, or even with the applied sciences when their applications are made subject to criticism and intelligence. The capitalization of the applied sciences has now become extravagant and uncritical; it has enslaved our human energies to a degree now clearly felt to be burdensome. The apologists of industrialism do not like to meet this charge directly; so they often take refuge in saying that they are devoted simply to science! They are really devoted to the applied sciences and to practical production. Therefore it is necessary to employ a certain skepticism even at the expense of the Cult of Science, and to say, It is an Americanism, which looks innocent and disinterested, but really is not either.

The contribution that science can make to a labor is to render it easier by the help of a tool or a process, and to assure the laborer of his perfect economic security while he is engaged upon it. Then it can be performed with leisure and enjoyment. But the modern laborer has not exactly received this benefit under the industrial regime. His labor is hard, its tempo is fierce, and his employment is insecure. The first principle of a good labor is that it must be effective, but the second principle is that it must be enjoyed. Labor is one of the largest items in the human career; it is a modest demand to ask that it may partake of happiness.

The regular act of applied science is to introduce into labor a labor-saving device or a machine. Whether this is a benefit depends on how far it is advisable to save the labor The philosophy of applied science is generally quite sure that the saving of labor is a pure gain, and that the more of it the better. This is to assume that labor is an evil, that only the end of labor or the material product is good. On this assumption labor becomes mercenary and servile, and it is no wonder if many forms of modern labor are accepted without resentment though they are evidently brutalizing. The act of labor as one of the happy functions of human life has been in effect abandoned, and is practiced solely for its rewards.

Even the apologists of industrialism have been obliged to admit that some economic evils follow in the wake of the machines. These are such as overproduction, unemployment, and a growing inequality in the distribution of wealth. But the remedies proposed by the apologists are always homeopathic. They expect the evils to disappear when we have bigger and better machines, and more of them. Their remedial programs, therefore, look forward to more industrialism. Sometimes they see the system righting itself spontaneously and without direction: they are Optimists. Sometimes they rely on the benevolence of capital, or the militancy of labor, to bring about a fairer division of the spoils: they are Cooperationists or Socialists. And sometimes they expect to find super-engineers, in the shape of Boards of Control, who will adapt production to consumption and regulate prices and guarantee business against fluctuations: they are Sovietists. With respect to these last it must be insisted that the true Sovietists or Communists-if the term may be used here in the European sense-are the Industrialists themselves. They would have the government set up an economic super-organization, which in turn would become the government. We therefore look upon the Communist menace as a menace indeed, but not as a Red one; because it is simply according to the blind drift of our industrial development to expect in America at last much the same economic system as that imposed by violence upon Russia in 1917.

Turning to consumption, as the grand end which justifies the evil of modern labor, we find that we have been deceived. We have more time in which to consume, and many more products to be consumed. But the tempo of our labors communicates itself to our satisfactions, and these also become brutal and hurried. The constitution of the natural man probably does not permit him to shorten his labor-time and enlarge his consuming-time indefinitely. He has to pay the penalty in satiety and aimlessness. The modern man has lost his sense of vocation.

Religion can hardly expect to flourish in an industrial society. Religion is our submission to the general intention of a nature that is fairly inscrutable; it is the sense of our role as creatures within it. But nature industrialized, transformed into cities and artificial habitations, manufactured into commodities, is no longer nature but a highly simplified picture of nature. We receive the illusion of having power over nature, and lose the sense of nature as something mysterious and contingent. The God of nature under these conditions is merely an amiable expression, a superfluity, and the philosophical understanding ordinarily carried in the religious experience is not there for us to have.

Nor do the arts have a proper life under industrialism, with the general decay of sensibility which attends it. Art depends, in general, like religion, on a right attitude to nature; and in particular on a free and disinterested observation of nature that occurs only in leisure. Neither the creation nor the understanding of works of art is possible in an industrial age except by some local and unlikely suspension of the industrial drive.

The amenities of life also suffer under the curse of a strictly-business or industrial civilization. They consist in such practices as manners, conversation, hospitality, sympathy, family life, romantic love-in the social exchanges which reveal and develop sensibility in human affairs. If religion and the arts are founded on right relations of man- to-nature, these are founded on right relations of man-to- man.

Apologists of industrialism are even inclined to admit that its actual processes may have upon its victims the spiritual effects just described. But they think that all can be made right by extraordinary educational efforts, by all sorts of cultural institutions and endowments. They would cure the poverty of the contemporary spirit by hiring experts to instruct it in spite of itself in the historic culture. But salvation is hardly to be encountered on that road. The trouble with the life-pattern is to be located at its economic base, and we cannot rebuild it by pouring in soft materials from the top. The young men and women in colleges, for example, if they are already placed in a false way of life, cannot make more than an inconsequential acquaintance with the arts and humanities transmitted to them. Or else the understanding of these arts and humanities will but make them the more wretched in their own destitution.

The "Humanists" are too abstract. Humanism, properly speaking, is not an abstract system, but a culture, the whole way in which we live, act, think, and feel. It is a kind of imaginatively balanced life lived out in a definite social tradition. And, in the concrete, we believe that this, the genuine humanism, was rooted in the agrarian life of the older South and of other parts of the country that shared in such a tradition. It was not an abstract moral "check" derived from the classics-it was not soft material poured in from the top. It was deeply founded in the way of life itself-in its tables, chairs, portraits, festivals, laws, marriage customs. We cannot recover our native humanism by adopting some standard of taste that is critical enough to question the contemporary arts but not critical enough to question the social and economic life which is their ground.

The tempo of the industrial life is fast, but that is not the worst of it; it is accelerating. The ideal is not merely some set form of industrialism, with so many stable industries, but industrial progress, or an incessant extension of industrialization. It never proposes a specific goal; it initiates the infinite series. We have not merely capitalized certain industries; we have capitalized the laboratories and inventors, and undertaken to employ all the labor-saving devices that come out of them. But a fresh labor-saving device introduced into an industry does not emancipate the laborers in that industry so much as it evicts them. Applied at the expense of agriculture, for example, the new processes have reduced the part of the population supporting itself upon the soil to a smaller and smaller fraction. Of course no single labor-saving process is fatal; it brings on a period of unemployed labor and unemployed capital, but soon a new industry is devised which will put them both to work again, and a new commodity is thrown upon the market. The laborers were sufficiently embarrassed in the meantime, but, according to the theory, they will eventually be taken care of. It is now the public which is embarrassed; it feels obligated to purchase a commodity for which it had expressed no desire, but it is invited to make its budget equal to the strain. All might yet be well, and stability and comfort might again obtain, but for this: partly because of industrial ambitions and partly because the repressed creative impulse must break out somewhere, there will be a stream of further labor-saving devices in all industries, and the cycle will have to be repeated over and over. The result is an increasing disadjustment and instability.

It is an inevitable consequence of industrial progress that production greatly outruns the rate of natural consumption. To overcome the disparity, the producers, disguised as the pure idealists of progress, must coerce and wheedle the public into being loyal and steady consumers, in order to keep the machines running. So the rise of modern advertising-along with its twin, personal salesmanship-is the most significant development of our industrialism. Advertising means to persuade the consumers to want exactly what the applied sciences are able to furnish them. It consults the happiness of the consumer no more than it consulted the happiness of the laborer. It is the great effort of a false economy of life to approve itself. But its task grows more difficult even day.

It is strange, of course, that a majority of men anywhere could ever as with one mind become enamored of industrialism: a system that has so little regard for individual wants. There is evidently a kind of thinking that rejoices in setting up a social objective which has no relation to the individual. Men are prepared to sacrifice their private dignity and happiness to an abstract social ideal, and without asking whether the social ideal produces the welfare of any individual man whatsoever. But this is absurd. The responsibility of men is for their own welfare and that of their neighbors; not for the hypothetical welfare of some fabulous creature called society.

Opposed to the industrial society is the agrarian, which does not stand in particular need of definition. An agrarian society is hardly one that has no use at all for industries, for professional vocations, for scholars and artists, and for the life of cities. Technically, perhaps, an agrarian society is one in which agriculture is the leading vocation, whether for wealth, for pleasure, or for prestige-a form of labor that is pursued with intelligence and leisure, and that becomes the model to which the other forms approach as well as they may. But an agrarian regime will be secured readily enough where the superfluous industries are not allowed to rise against it. The theory of agrarianism is that the culture of the soil is the best and most sensitive of vocations, and that therefore it should have the economic preference and enlist the maximum number of workers.

These principles do not intend to be very specific in proposing any practical measures. How may the little agrarian community resist the Chamber of Commerce of its county seat, which is always trying to import some foreign industry that cannot be assimilated to the life-pattern of the community? Just what must the Southern leaders do to defend the traditional Southern life ? How may the Southern and the Western agrarians unite for effective action? Should the agrarian forces try to capture the Democratic party, which historically is so closely affiliated with the defense of individualism, the small community, the state, the South ? Or must the agrarians-even the Southern ones-abandon the Democratic party to its fate and try a new one? What legislation could most profitably be championed by the powerful agrarians in the Senate of the United States? What anti-industrial measures might promise to stop the advances of industrialism, or even undo some of them, with the least harm to those concerned? What policy should be pursued by the educators who have a tradition at heart? These and many other questions are of the greatest importance, but they cannot be answered here.

For, in conclusion, this much is clear: If a community, or a section, or a race, or an age, is groaning under industrialism, and well aware that it is an evil dispensation, it must find the way to throw it off. To think that this cannot be done is pusillanimous. And if the whole community, section, race, or age thinks it cannot be done, then it has simply lost its political genius and doomed itself to impotence.

1930

reasonable Energy

Responsibility for oneself
Clean up your room
If you want something work to get it
No pain, no gain


And yet, we live in a society that seeks to do as little as possible in the way of seeing to ones own needs.  The hight of success is to have servants that do all of your work for you, to not have to work. We are all seeking a life of endless recreation.
Now I am all for having a good time, but a bit of reason, balance, moderation, REALITY, might be a bit in order.
For a very short time we have been able to avoid doing our own work in attaining our sustenance.  Cheap energy, has given us this "pass".  Before that, a few of us were using the work of other humans (slavery) to avoid the same work and individual responsibility.
A spin on the situation has gotten many of us to join the team of cheap energy, and industrialization, but the real benefit has been for very few.  The spin was that we too could become one of the wealthy and get someone else to do our work for us, while the reality is that most of us spend most of our lives chasing that idea and never ever really attain independence, economic security, or wealth.  Don't think that is true?  Do you own everything you poses, outright, no Debt????  If the stock markets crash tomorrow will your future still be secure???  If some corporate board decides to downsize, will you be fired? Lose you medical care, your kids education fund, your means for making an income, your energy source, your phone service, your internet access?......the list goes on and on and on.
This is not security, this is not freedom, this is not sensible.
Maybe a growing population, and an infinitely growing economy, and a industrial based society don't really fit well into the scheme of things on this particular planet, at this particular time?




reasonable energy


http://www.wunderground.com/blog/RickyRood/archive.html?year=2011&month=08

Posted by: RickyRood, 5:38 PM GMT on August 14, 2011

Climate, compost, and those plastic cups: Sustainability and Climate Change (1)

"It became self evident that forests and whale oil were not going to support a growing population, an industrial society, and a growing economy. (A nice history of energy, and interestingly Dolly Sods Wilderness.) These sources of energy were replaced with coal and oil."






Extractive ways of existing as a foundation for any species means that at some point, finite resources will be exhausted and that foundation will collapse.  The justification that technology will save us from technological emergencies is a great way to keep power and independence away from the individuals of this country, and planet.


You choices are 
a) to continue on and feed the monster what it eats and your future,  your money, your freedom 
or 
b) to remove sustenance from the very thing that holds you captive by spending your money locally, barter, conserve, or just do with out.


Corporations are not People.  Their mission is to make money.


People are people.  Our mission is to have a good life, be happy, serve our families, our God, our society.


Our Congress is selling our rights as people and our futures to the highest bidders, the large corporate interests of the globe.
Let your Congressmen know that you don't approve.  How you let them know is up to you.


Peace

The way of Ignorance

I just got another great book of essays by Wendell Berry entitled "The Way of Ignorance".  He continues to put into sensible, intelligent, and often artful words the thoughts and concerns of many of us who are troubled by what seems a country and world gone a bit crazy.  He is always hopeful in his essays while being firmly honest and concerned about our current path.  He is a voice of reason in a time of unreasonable directions and attitudes.  Reading his words often clarifies ideas and feelings I have, but have not yet been able to articulate.  I think that a copy of much of his work should be read by every one of our leaders and much of our citizenry, because it would be hard to continue on in the irresponsible direction that our government and each of us does each day, while someone has openly stated what it is we are doing to ourselves and our futures and the future of any who come after us.   I highly recommend reading these essays.


Peace

Sunday thoughts

I'd like to pass this along.  I found it in the Huff Post and I really appreciated it:
Fr. Richard Rohr: Nature and the Soul

Here is a cut and paste of it.

Fr. Richard Rohr Founding Director, Center for Action and Contemplation Nature and the Soul

"Just pay attention, and then patch a few words together, and don't try to make them elaborate. This isn't a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak." --"Praying" by Mary Oliver

We looked too long for God and truth through words alone. The fruit for humanity has been rather limited, it seems to me -- especially when I observe every day the extraordinary amount of unhappy and angry people in well educated and "religious" countries. How could this happen? Was salvation for the next world only?

I do not fault any one group, person or explanation, but on all of us together as we failed to pay attention. We removed ourselves from the Circle of Life and ended up talking in circles instead. This is so strange coming from a religion that believed "the word became flesh" (John 1:14), yet we have always seemed to prefer words to enfleshment, for some reason. As my very orthodox Church History professor put it, the church has usually followed Plato (body and soul are enemies of one another) much more than Jesus (body and soul work together as one). Sadly and tragically, that says it in one phrase.

It was a giant misplacement of primal attention to what was right beneath our feet, all around us and flying through the air. Enfleshment, embodiment, physicality -- the material world is the only home we know. Yet, we really "could not see the woods for the trees," and even worse we did not see the woods or the trees, but just our ideas about them and how they could be useful to us. They made paper for our books and shade for our reading, after all!

We all started reading books rather broadly once the printing press was invented (almost 600 years ago), and since then we have largely substituted ideas and words for observation and participation in life itself. Now I am afraid it will become texts, videos and screens that will shield us from reality. This leaves us all at least one step removed from The Real, and we get caught up in a static of ideas instead of the basic and healing symphony of life itself. To use Teresa of Avila's shocking phrase, we find ourselves undefended and alone and become willing to "sell our souls for a sardine"!

Words and ideas work in the short run to get you through school and to impress educators and employers. But they do not work in the long run or in the deep run. We soon find ourselves separate and without wonder. We find ourselves companionless (com-panion = one you share bread with) and lonely in a fully participatory universe, without bread to eat when bread is, in fact, everywhere.

"For what can be known about God is perfectly plain, for God has made it plain. Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity is there for the mind to see in all the things that God has created" (Romans 1:20). That is a pretty amazing quote that has not been given the immense importance that it deserves. In fact, read it again! It says the essential message is written everywhere and all the time.

Yes, the natural world is the first and primary Bible. We have not honored it, so how could we, or would we know how to honor and properly use the second Bible, when it was written. We mangled the written word of God for our own group purposes, instead of bringing to it reverence, silence and surrender, which the natural world "naturally" teaches us and also demands of us. If the word surrender scares you, let me tell you that surrender is not giving up, as we usually understand the term. Surrender is entering the present moment, and what is right in front of you, fully and without resistance. In that sense, surrender is almost the exact opposite of giving up. In fact, it allows you to be given to! 

For some reason, the whole created world, the animals and the seasons of nature allow us to surrender and trust much more than sermons, words or people do, where we seem to be much more defended, in our heads, and even afraid. Now we are learning that abused children can tell their story if they are touching their dog and those who are autistic and stutter do not hesitate or stutter when they are with their horses or cats. One starts to wonder who is taking care of whom? Who is the healer and who is the healed? Who has soul and who does not? It is not as neat and clear a distinction as humans once presumed.

So I entreat you to trust and learn from the awesome authors in this edition of "Radical Grace," not for their words, but because their words point beyond themselves to what is, to creation itself, to the natural world, to what is all around you -- all the time. The "first Bible" of nature is well written, filled with Mystery and invitation and has all that you need to know God, to know yourself, to know life and even to trust death. Reading reality from inside this circle of creation, and with the eyes of nature, you will inherently know you are already in sacred space, you will know that you belong and you will know that it is OK.

Creation is our first and final cathedral. Nature is the one song of praise that never stops singing. The world is no "contest" any more, but as Mary Oliver says, "the doorway into thanks."

"Nature and the Soul" by Richard Rohr, OFM, copyright © Richard Rohr 2011, Radical Grace, Summer 2011, Vol. 24, No. 3. Used with permission.

Fr. Richard Rohr, the Founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is an international speaker and teacher. The author of numerous books, he is a regular contributor to Radical Grace. Fr. Richard will be presenting together with Bill Plotkin at the CAC-sponsored, 2012 year beginning conference, Nature and the Human Soul.

And there is this that I found in a piece written by Sogyal Rinpoche, also in the Huff Post religious section:

chu ma nyok na dang,

sem ma chö na de.

It means roughly, "Water, if you don't stir it, will become clear; the mind, left unaltered, will find its own natural peace, well-being, happiness and bliss..."

Peace