Category Archives: spirituality

Dignity

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I was reading a while ago about the idea that all anyone really wants from life, in terms of one’s existence within a social perspective, is dignity: the knowledge that one is recognized as being of value as a person, not just a member of humankind but someone of intrinsic worth.

I wonder, as we look out upon the people, we see on the street going about their daily tasks: bus riders returning from work, clerks, administrators, colleagues, if we take the time to see them as what they are, if we recognize our common humanity, afford them dignity.

We all are, after all, strugglers, strivers, driven to seek a modicum of success that will provide a sense of security for us and our families. It’s good, I think, to realize sometimes everyone’s in need. Cooperation, compassion, and empathy are things we can all provide and receive.

The Quality of Days

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I’ve been thinking lately that days, individual days, sometimes exude a quality of existence that transcends and imposes itself upon individual experience. A day may extend its identity to whole communities of individuals who suffer or exalt according to the qualities the day imposes.

One may awake, for instance, to sunrise beauty, freshness in the air promising positive experiences to come. As one walks through the neighborhood people smile and wave, friendly conversations with total strangers occur. All is right with the world.

Or the overcast morning weighs heavy upon one’s soul, extra effort is required to accomplish the most basic of tasks. People in the streets are sullen, unapproachable, lost within themselves.

Such days, pleasant or painful, impose themselves upon us. Our very being is captive to the quality of the day.

Landscape 4

Story Lines

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As people became more sedentary during the Neolithic era tribal groups united forming larger populations. These disparate groups, to form a functioning society needed to share a common sense of the way things are, a shared belief system. They needed a storyline that all could grasp, accept and believe in order to accept a hierarchical structure to deal with property ownership and exchange of goods.

A workable storyline would need to include reference to the supernatural. Human uncertainty requires connection to an entity that can be appealed to when crops fail, drought occurs, or outsiders threaten the groups existence.

As societal stability evolves, multiple story lines will develop, one flexible and open to new developments, another rigid, protective and resistant to change. Hopefully stable institutions will be in place at that point to accommodate such diversity of thought.

Stream of Consciousness

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I think i should prepare my skis for storage now that the skiing season is over, I think a coat of preserving wax should do the job, I think if I give the skis a good coat and I’ll not scrape them after, just use the waxing iron and apply the wax and let it cool and put them in storage above the cabinets in the furnace room where I always keep during the off season, I think is the best place for them so I can remember where they are next year after it snows enough for skiing I can take them out scrape off the old wax and get them ready to take to the trails, I think should be sufficient preparation if I do Chris’s skis too she’ll be ready to ski, I think she’ll be happy to go even though she felt a bit unsteady on her skis this year not having had much good skiing the past winter or for the past three winters for that matter climate change creating a warming climate that is not conducive to good skiing but I’ll prepare the skis anyway just in case to be ready for the snow next winter when snow will surely come at some point even if were both a bit hesitant to put on our skis feeling as we do a bit unstable on the trails that are often icy now that global warming raises the temperatures above freezing and then the overnight cooler air freezes the wet snow making it icy and unstable causing me to be uncertain about putting the skis on even though the temperature may be nice to be out in and I do enjoy being out in the winter if it’s not too cold although I think I’m less tolerant of the cold now that I’m older than I used to be when I would ski almost every day on the toughest trails and feeling quite good about my improving skill level although not as good I know as the young skiers on the school cross-country team I would see practicing skiing much faster than me using good technique I can only admire knowing I will never realize their skill level but can nevertheless admire their abilities and I do enjoy watching them move efficiently over the slopes as I wait for my turn to enter the trail and struggle up the first hill which is pretty steep and has me puffing a good deal by the time I reach the top and then can enjoy a brief respite on the slight downhill run only to have to climb again and Chris will be here soon to join me and we will go out for a hot chocolate and talk about next spring..

SL River (January)

Favorite Things

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I’ve been thinking about John Coltraine’s riff on ‘Favorite Things’: sixteen minutes of musical invention that captures the complexity of human emotion.

That’s what struck me the first time I heard it, but it occurs to me now that the way I am moved, the way the complexity of sound communicates a depth of meaning beyond words that I find so astounding, must in some way define the human condition.

No doubt, my life experience is nowhere near what JC lived, his alcoholism and growing up as he did in the 40’s and 50’s as a black man is so far removed from my white small-town existence, yet he communicates my sense of human experience so effectively I must bow to his genius.

Essence

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I’m wondering if species, creatures with life spans much shorter than ours, tiny beings with brains the size of pin heads, realize, given their brief existence, a rich and meaningful life.

Does a Wooly Bear caterpillar, struggling in moving water, feel angst, realize the probability of imminent demise while memories of hatching, eating and growing, the promise of evolution to flight slowly fades, the hope it’s brothers will survive to replenish the species and sensing these complexities while living a life that is only an instant of the life cycle we manage to waste away in insignificant concerns.

Such thoughts make me think I should pay more attention.

Mortality

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Having recently experienced deaths of a number of people close to me, I can’t help thinking about mortality and what may come next. Humankind has, of course conceived existence of some sort after death for as long as self-consciousness has been realized, and although the physical presence of those deceased will no longer be with us, they do live on in our memories even as we realize an emptiness in their absence.

Whether wishful thinking or a transcendental awareness, after life existence will never disappear as a concept, as widespread religious practice, dependent on such belief, affirms. Even the non-religious must harbor the notion of some sort of post-biological consciousness.

In any case, a healthy perspective will depend on reveling in the wonder of a fleeting daily existence.


Traveling

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I’ve been traveling lately to find warmer climes, to escape the cold of March in the north. To do this I spend long hours driving over a number of days through predominantly bland ecru nothingness, dry and uninteresting small, distressed nearly abandoned towns I find hard to believe anyone would willingly occupy.

In another time, at a younger age my imagination would conjure another reality in these places and allow there may be an underlying beauty to be found if I looked hard enough, where a living could be made, life could thrive in a sort of parallel universe.

I no longer entertain such thoughts.

Miracles

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I’ve been reading that Christian conviction, the truth of the doctrine, lies in the fore-told Christ and the miracles he performed, miracles being occasions of instantaneous healing or bringing to life the deceased, things that defy nature or rational expectation.

Our apologist warns us, though, that miracles ‘are not of such a nature that it can be said that they are absolutely convincing’, that miraculous events may or may not be miracles. If miracles are the foundation of doctrinal truth that separates Christian belief from heresies it would appear maintaining faith is no simple matter. Finding the truth will require relinquishing self-love and malice of heart.

If religious faith is more than the social support of the congregation it appears maintaining it will require some work.

An Uneasy Exchange

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I visited with a childhood friend recently. We have known each other since elementary school and over the years have shared numerous interests, developed common sensibilities. Things change with time and experience, of course, and my friend and I have found ourselves philosophically polarized.

He has been, for quite some time now, a committed Evangelical harboring the benevolent belief Christian faith will bring serenity and peace not to mention a heavenly afterlife. I on the other hand, remain philosophically open-ended believing a pluralistic world view will produce the greatest likelihood mankind will be able to come together, to unite in a common empathy, reduce sectarian conflicts and direct us toward a peaceful future existence.

I though, unlike my friend, harbor the anxieties of real time, am unable to adapt to the closed system of religious faith, even though the vision of a sunny after-life is pretty attractive.