Happy Solstice

As this day literally flashes by us,

like the strobe of a lighthouse briefly hitting our sails as we try to make an unmarked harbor in the middle of the night 

and the long dark night sits heavy upon our homes, chilling the air, freezing the ponds 

we can have hope for the return of the sunny warm days that may yet come, 

as they have each year, for millions of years before.

Will mariner's taking noon sights

be repeating altitudes of the sun that they just took days and weeks before?

For them it is obvious that the sun is once again climbing in the sky

Happy Winter!

As another year ends, that point in the circle of days and weeks and months is arrived at again.

As shortest days push against the longest nights, we can now look forward to the return of the light. 

The coldest days are ahead still, but we can find hope and strength in the lengthening of the days and all that they might bring.

In our world, that is especially now so wrapped up in things virtual, things imagined, things conjured, and ideologies clung to, here is something that is obvious, something observable by all, something that has formed us and the lives we have lived since before time was recorded.

Something that connects us to all other things.

Here is a day that we can all be glad for.

As with each morning when we wake, the Northern hemisphere can celebrate

the new light, the new year.

No need for myth or magic, reality is a great thing to celebrate

The observable has it's own magical quality

We may choose to give little recognition, or importance to it, but what does our opinion of it do to change it, nothing at all.  

But it is an opportunity to celebrate something that is undeniable, not just to humans but to all beings, to all of the planet that is our home.

As this year past has been so very challenging for so many of us this is especially a moment that can inspire hope for what may yet come, and what we might be able to do with the days ahead.

It might also be a chance to reflect on our humble part in the larger cycle of things and to find peace with that understanding.

With that peace we might also find compassion for all the other beings whose parts are just as worthy, but also just as modest.

Hurray for the return of the light!

Happy Winter Solstice

Books for the path

Just read:

The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path

By

ETHAN NICHTERN

I learned a thing or two, or three, or four.........  Well written.  I recommend it to anybody curious about this topic.

Community

2011 Spring Harvest Dinner, Palisades, NY

Yesterday we attended the Harvest Dinner at the Palisades Community Center in Palisades, NY.  This dinner was a way to mark the end of their Winter Farmer's Market and a fund raiser for the Center.  Tables were set up long, end to end and tickets were sold that were used as money for the purchase of your food items.  A hot dog-2 tickets, BBQ chicken-5 tickets, glass of wine-3 tickets..........

It was an interesting experience to dine and mingle with folks I don't know, but in a setting that made it feel as if we were all part of some large family reunion.  The bell in the old school house rang to get our attention for the raffle.  Young people had matching aprons and helped out in many different ways, including a group of giggling "tweeny" girls selling the desserts.  After, when it was all closing down, many people stayed and help to put the place to rights, folding chairs, clearing debris, getting tables and everything else back inside or to owners.

I guess in a larger sense it was a family reunion.  Aren't we all of the same family?  The Humans, or an even larger family, the Earth's inhabitants.

This kind of event, this kind of experience is for me just what walking A reasonable path is about.  It is getting off of the expressway and enjoying a slower pace.  It allows for familiarity, and this familiarity can then breed affection, from affection we can make way for compassion. 

Yesterday we discovered another form of community:

3 of the Gang of Four (so far), named: Hall, Liv, Bath, Bed

Walking across the floor of the hallway, then the living room, then the bathroom, then the bedroom we discovered this little family of young mice.  Here is where the internet changes things in a large way.  Google search: feeding baby orphaned mice.


Last week after finding evidence of larger mice inside the house I set traps.  After a few days I had killed 3 mice and slowed the signs that anymore were around.  Until yesterday.

Some might say "Karma is".  I while warming these little guys in my hand and trying to get them to take the fortified water from a dropper I couldn't help seeing the irony of worrying, and wanting to save these little guys when I had probably killed their parent(s) last week.  I don't like killing anything, including the mice I wish would just stay on the other side of the walls or out in the 73 square mile of state forest that back my home, but our health has to be preserved and the mice just don't seem to understand the rules.

I have no idea of wether or not they will survive, or what I will do with them if they do.  I know that if they do not survive I will be very sad.  If the do survive I will be very troubled as to what comes next.  I suppose letting them out to become food for the local wild life is probably what will happen.  They could just end up coming back into the house and eventually cause me to set traps once again, only to kill them later.  Life is not always easy to understand, at least for me.

Yes, I have tried the live traps but no country mouse around here seems tempted by those things.  I suppose a cat could be considered, but my 8 year old socially dysfunctional dog would try to eat it, I believe.  My dog is a little scared or intimidated by the mice, go figure!

Come passion

How beautiful it seemed for me in moments small, as when the sunlight that filtered thru the trees and then the window lit onto my face just before I woke up in the morning and was the first thing I saw in the new day.  How awesome as when I lay against the warm granite of Half Dome and look out at Yosemite Valley 2500 feet below me with the mass of that great rock pushing up on my belly and out towards space as the force of the spinning planet tries to throw it off like a kid on a merry go round.

At some point the realization of the wonder of this life had born in me a deep and passionate love for Life itself.

As I stopped putting me at the center of all I believed meaningful, as I let go of the measures of humans and started trying to take up the measure of earth and time beyond my life, the miracle of the cycle that is Life began to sound a song, pure and familiar, from a composer who's orchestra was surrounding me, above, below and within me.  Not only was I the listener, but also one of the players.  I have no score in front of me but can hear the notes that want to be played when I listen to the sound all around me.  I long for harmony, to be harmonious, to play my part loud and committed and well, with passion.

Come passion, come pain.  How hard it is to love and know that all things change.

As I begin to comprehend the magnitude of the wonder that is this awareness, I am also challenged by the understanding that life and death are not separate, that they are parts of a larger cycle.  Suffering is an inescapable part of this cycle.  I begin to see suffering equal to effort, equal to struggle, equal to awareness.  I start to feel a seemingly unlimited compassion for all things.  All things struggle, suffer in the effort to be and at some point all things change from one awareness to something else.  All things die.

 "Friendship to all living forms, 

delight in the qualities of the virtuous ones, 

unlimited compassion for all suffering beings, 

equanimity toward all who wish me harm, 

may my soul have these dispositions now and forever."

-- Jain prayer

(a friend told me that some of the Jain's have starved to death rather than kill another living thing by eating it.  I have to admit that it is a logic that has bounced around in my head, a conclusion to a line of thought.  In that perspective it makes the end of ones own life much more acceptable. )

I would like to treat and be treated with compassion, with kindness, with love.  I haven't always been, nor will I always be treated so. I haven't always treated other's so.   Life is hard enough just to exist.  Nobody, no thing, needs to be treated with other than compassion.


I have a life to live out.  The cost of my life will be that of other life.  I can take that other life with respect and gratitude while also nurturing other life, or, I can be ungrateful, unaware, and propagate suffering.

To kill is easy, all one has to do is exist.  But to nurture life and celebrate Life one has to live.

Selfless awareness allows familiarity. Familiarity allows affection.  Affection allows love.  Love allows compassion.


A road is a cut thru an existing environment, forced upon the landscape, in spite of what was there before.  A Path will wonder around a rock or tree or a field of flowers, or along a stream and is influenced by everything that was there before.  It becomes a familiarity, like a whistled, or hummed tune. (a concept put forth by W. Berry)

Not life in the fast lane, but rather, A reasonable Path.

Growth

Slogan about Gross National Happiness in Thimphu's School of Traditional Arts. Photo by Italian writer Mario Biondi, September 2010, taken without permission from Wikipedia.

It has been said that one can have "To much of a good thing".  We want our children to grow from little babies to adults.  We want to increase our knowledge and understanding of our world.  We go from making what we earn with an after school job to what we earn in our careers.  Growth can be perceived as good.  We also become Obese.  We become dependent on advancing technology.  We base our economies, personal and national, on concepts of infinite growth.  When a bubble grows to large it bursts.

Why do we hold it so high in our society, to grow with out a goal to be achieved by that growth?  Our nations economy is a very good, bad example of this concept.  Maybe it is that we have just lost sight of what should be the real goal, securing the tools needed to allow each citizen to create a good life.  Measures of GDP are simplistic and don't reflect the true quality of life for the majority of citizens or the geophysical entity that is our country.  What good is it to be the richest nation in the world but can't and don't feed your people from your own land, your own labor?  The largest military in the world is now needed to pacify other peoples instead of creating security from our ability to be self supporting.  That same enormous amount of resource that supports our military could, I suppose, support a network of small local agriculture, and business that could provide for all who are taxed for it, AND, create a system of support for other countries and people to find ways of doing the same, and probably have money left over to keep some kind of military going because the reality of life necessitates such.

Growth is good to achieve a goal,  and then it should give way to maintenance and reason, gratitude and peace.

Their is social pressure to have an ever increasing income, or at least, to make as much money as one can.  But to what ends?  I read that studies were done that pointed out that after people made ENOUGH money to provide the basics of a good life, that having MORE money did not really make their lives happier, or less stressful.  You can read many accounts of people who have won a lottery and then not have a life of ease and happiness that you'd expect to be the result.

I have heard it said, "I want it better for my kids than I had it."  I found this to be a idea that I easily agreed with at first, but now it seems a bit strange.  I guess defining "better" would have to be done first.  Most often in our society the definition is linked to a financial or material meaning.  I find that definition lacking.  How bad did those people have it that say this?  I can see the side of those coming from histories of severe repression or violence.  But those things can and do exist for people of all income classes.  If you have lived a decent lifestyle, especially in this country, and been able to raise a family, afford the basic needs of life, food, and shelter then you've had more than most of the human beings on the planet have.

I was not born into privilege.  The people living next door to me as a child had no electricity and bought their water from my family and filled up their pales with it each day.  I do not wish more for my children than to know the richness of life, love and health of mind and body.  All the rest is the experience that makes life interesting, an education that can only be got in living, and that is steeped in truth's that the university can not teach as well, if at all.

I wish my children to have lives as rich.  Growth, the idea that I would must give them more than what I grew up with doesn't allow for true gratitude for the life I have been able to experience.  It might say that I am dissatisfied with who I am, or embarrassed by my place in life, and that I wish them to have better.  this is not the case.  I want for them to have good lives, as I have had a good life.

For every challenge in my life that I can think of, I have survived and received something.


In exchange for growing up in a family that didn't have a lot of money I learned how to work and earn money when needed.  I learned that I didn't know I was poor until the world told me so, meaning, I did not want for food, shelter, love.  I learned that my identity comes from within, not from a corporate logo or a fashion trend.  I got time with my family instead of things to occupy my time.

I couldn't afford many things I wanted in my life.  This was formative in much of my path in life.  I never could have planned the richness and experience that I got from that circumstance.  Because of that path I met people I will always hold dear in my heart.  In the end, I still went on to achieve much of what I wanted , and have dreams remaining to inspire me on in the rest of my journey.  This is not, and will not be everybody's experience, but to some degree, I think we are all capable of making our lives truly wonderful.

I want to help my children in pursuit of their dreams and let them live out their lives as they choose to make them.  I have no dreams for my own for them other than being happy and capable of dealing with what comes in a way that will allow them to one day say, "It was a good life".

Not more, but enough.

When you look at the rest of the world you will see that nothing grows infinitely, that in fact, most systems and organisms, great and small, may gain and lose to some degree, but have a greater stability.  The ones that don't usually die out.

My first home was small, the second one is just about the same size, maybe smaller in usable space.  It is enough.  At one point my income swelled to what would be considered really good.  With that growth came an inverse amount of happiness and satisfaction with my life.  Now money is not what brings happiness or peace.  This is a growth that I desire.  I have read that in Bhutan, Gross Domestic Happiness is of greater importance than Gross Domestic Product.

The Earthy Mind

Being that about 72% of the earth is covered in water, maybe the idea that something is "earthy" should include that element.

Aboard Uncas

Traditionally, while voyaging upon the ocean, the sailor will be sailing 2 boats at once.  The first is the one that rest between him and the deep blue sea.  This is the "real" or tangible, yet frail, vessel that literally supports him.

The second, is a 2 dimensional boat that exists on a chart, or in his mind.  This is the intellectual understanding of where, and when, he exists in the world.  This boat can also be understood to be fixed, and the understanding is more about where and when the world exists around it.  Included in the identity of this little ship, or big ship, or simple raft, is the understanding of it's state of existence.  For instance, "this ship is 27' long it has full sail up and the wind is force 3, the hull is sound and without leaks or other known weakness, the tanks have water and the lockers are full of oatmeal cookies."

These two boats exist at once and are often thought of as one.  To sail successfully and comfortably it might be required that they are though of as the same.

And so it goes with me on my journey.  It was an important realization that the imagined division between my intellectual self and my physical self really was not very satisfying or helpful.  I have come to see that the division between physical and spiritual and intellectual is a limitation, and maybe even a destructive misconception.  I found this to be especially so when it pertained to action.  You must have heard the saying "Walk the Talk",  I think more so I needed to  "Walk the Thought".

I suppose the reasonable path I am on has allot to do with joining together of my "charted course" with the one that surrounds me.  One of the important things to think about when setting out on an ocean voyage is provisioning, sustenance, or food and water.  With out these the trip will not be good or lasting, or it might end up being the last.  So it goes with the rest of my life.  This seems to have been the beginning of my path, getting my supplies in order, my food and where it comes from, how it is attained.  This has become it's own path or at least I find it much more satisfying to give it a very great importance, because, it is of great importance.  Thus, began the steps to growing my own food.

2010 garden patch

People have asked me why I choose to be a vegetarian, "Is it an ethical choice or a health choice?"  In truth it is both, and more.  It is economic and political.  It is pleasurable and educational.  I am sure there are even more reasons, including a rebellious and subversive quality to it.

It is not convenient being a vegetarian in this country.  Right now, it is the energy corporations and the insurance corporations and the pharmaceuticals who have the sway and who are making the big dollars.  Once when the American cowboy was becoming a formative part of our identity in this country, it was the cattle industry.  That influence has never really left.   It is still the driving force in how we in this country seem to define a meal.  "meat makes the meal!"

During one weekend, after reading the book "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins, and seeing a movie about a corporations doing drug experiments on poor African people, and one other book or movie, that I can't quite remember now I am sad to say, I just made a decision to change the way I ate.

There was a health influence.  There was a political influence.  There was also an ethical influence.  Only later did I realize that all these influence really were absolutely connected and even stronger when seen as such.

It is a similar situation with my decision to try to grow as much of my own food as possible, and to use as much of my lawn and property to do it.  This choice cannot be reduced to one simple answer, but it can be expanded to many good reasons.

Today we turned the green manure (peas, vetch, alfalfa) into the soil and mixed in some compost from the local municipal facility in order to build a healthier soil.  That will sit for a few weeks before planting the crop for the season.  It is a little late but it seems that everything on our property happens a few weeks later than the rest of the region.  We live in the woods and have tall trees that limit our sun.  We have to adapt our growing patterns to what this property can support.  It is different from properties a mile away.  Eat local, grow local. 

GILT by association

The title of my blog "A reasonable Path" got it's influence from a book by Ferenc Mate', entitled, "A Reasonable Life".  I found Mate' thru boating.  He has written several beautiful and informative books on fitting out yachts, but for me his best work was the book about living a simple but rich life.  I don't mean to plagiarize his title and I think the emphasis of my writing is not the historic look at ideals, but at the actual attempts, both failed and achieved, at walking a reasonable path in this life.  It is a given that mistakes have and will be made.  It is also a convention that I follow that the pendulum swings both ways.  As such, it is a  given that great triumphs and success will be achieved.

In my undertaking to walk a certain path I have learned to rely on the "maps" drawn by others who have ventured out before me.  There have been so many, and so often they have drawn beautiful maps and kept informative logs of their journeys.  In my attempts to eat and grow real food and live as a part of this world I have been greatly influenced by the cultures of primitive peoples, especially those who still live simply and as part of the earth.  The writings of Wendell Berry are very thoughtful and prescient, though I believe he might say they are strictly observational.  I have also tried to be mindful of sacred texts from as many different religions as possible.  This has promoted an understanding of the themes common to all religions and to us now.

For me, the two strongest sources of information seem to be the elders and nature.  The elders are those who have lived and risen and fallen and experienced life already.  This is another way of saying history, but has the benefit of becoming personal and taking on a tangible human form.  The other, and the strongest source of education for me seems to be what most of us call "The Natural World".  This too is another way of saying history.  It is a history we as a society have forgotten how to listen to.  This was deliberate in some cases.  The terms nature, or physics, or reality and even the term life, all seem inadequate in addressing this very complex and interconnected event and condition.  It is something that is greater than the sum of its parts, unobservable from our vantage point, mysterious and yet completely accessible to us and inclusive.
A tree can show us our way.  It's own life supports and is supported by other lives.  It is powered by the sun, and reaches toward that obvious source adapting its life to the light available from it.  Its roots are in the earth, from where it came and to where it will return but always in contact with it.  It's strength comes with it's ability to bend with the forces that push against it, it gives in order to get and to remain.  By branching out it acquires character and by aging it's bark becomes beautiful.  Straight and smooth it would just be a stick.
  Any thing I say or think I am sure has been said or thought of before.  By associating with those who have lived before me I can achieve some sort of polish or beauty even, my "gilt".  There have been so many and I will try to mention them not only for your benefit, but so that I will never stop honoring them and being grateful for the maps they have drawn to help me find my own  reasonable path.

In Sedona, Arizona while there for my sister's wedding, I came across a vegetarian restaurant.  On the counter by the cash register was a sticker, like a bumper sticker, that read "Attitude of Gratitude".  I got one and I put it on my motorcycle but I carry that phrase in me and repeat it as often as I can.  I think it informs the way I want to eat, sleep, walk, love, work, and treat other people and all things.  I am even approaching the hard and painful times with the thought that "It is better than to never have been" and "with out the pain I would not know the extent of the joy".  I believe it was in the movie with Anthony Hopkins about the life of the writer C.S. Lewis in which he expresses this beautifully when faced with the death of his wife, Joy Gresham.

If the thought of rapture happening tomorrow frightens you then read some Buddhist text or thought.  If it excites you by all means read the Bible.  If you feel it is all just crazy talk then read the news of what is
going on in the world, (not just sports and entertainment, and this includes US politics) and then look at history.  Once you've done that you might want to read either Buddhist text or the Bible.

As a friend said of his trips down the ICW, "every mile is a mile", every step is a step and the sum of them all is my path.  I shall try to choose each step deliberately and try to be aware of the tracks I leave behind.

Inertia, the end of an affair

It was my little sister who gave the "push".  I woke up this morning to find, not only her email, but a link to her blog.  Now we will have, not dueling, but co-operating blogs about our paths to a better living, home, family, community, country, world, or, at least, paths to some fun and adventure.  Today, will be one of my worst days of the year for energy consumption, as I have to travel into the city to light a event.  This means that I will be burning petrol to get to the job, and it means that tens of thousands of watts of electricity will burn all day and into the night because of what I design.  I am trying to design with less light but there is a limit to how little one can use to light the largest Gothic Cathedral in the world.  Working in the Arts & Entertainment industry has had it's part in the "push" as well.  When one see's, or is part of the wastefulness that takes place in that endeavor, it raises many questions about the benefit to soulful side of the human condition, when it costs so much to the physical side.  Can we really separate the two?  A few years ago I began to feel the need for change in the way I lived.  Now, still in the beginning of that hunt for a more reasonable way, I am so very far from where I began.  Now, I will share some of that strange trip and hopefully some of what is yet to come, what can be seen ahead from where I am now.  Thanks to my little sister, who's path is different but parallel.  It is an amazing age we live in that we can all write and share and possibly even converse, in a way, the globe over.