Click on photos to enlarge!A rarely seen image: Diamond Head under cloudy skies. Alert the tourism police!
"Art washes away the dust of everyday life."
Pablo Picasso
It's not enough to glory in the moment. We need to buy the t-shirt too!
"There's a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me."
John Erskine
Sally Field, TVs Gidget in the 1960's, has a new TV show in which we can watch as "Gidget Goes Senile."
"I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate."
George Burns
Nature, red in tooth, claw, and leaf!
Recently we have been hearing more "New Age" talk about angels, and animating nature-spirits like faeries, gnomes, nymphs and naiads. Any glimpse at shamanism immediately introduces us to a well populated invisible realm. . . We think of this merely as the childlike explanatory stories of immature humanity - never guessing the distilled wisdom behind it. We admire these artifacts, and pass the traditional stories on to our children as markers of ethnic identity, or multi-cultural enrichment.
For us moderns raised up in the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism ("The Lord Our God is ONE") Islam ("No God But Allah") and Christianity ("One Name, One Faith, One Lord") these mythologies of multiplicity can actually stir a vestigial anxiety: Idolatry. Just look at the parents who want to ban the Harry Potter books from their school's library! We must go, they remind us, to God (big "G") ONLY. Appeal to any other agency, or any exploration of the animate traits and personalities underlying worldly phenomena, feels like abomination. Jesus may have spoken of "powers & principalities" and confronted spirit beings, but western religion explains that the Age of Miracles has long since ended. Our world is now made up of "processes" and "rules" that we have largely discovered (Electricity!) and manipulate at our pleasure. Only very recently have mainstream churches advocated for stewardship, rather than domination of the formerly despised "natural" world. We don't care to be in harmony with the personalities of nature. God supersedes them and makes of them our mere servants . And so our world becomes more static and lifeless everyday. Our pets are the only place outside of ourselves where we routinely see companion hearts returning our gaze and regard. No wonder they are so dear to us. All of our relationship with "other" is now borne on their furred and feathered shoulders!
The ancients' discovery of Monotheism grew from their intuition of a Unity underlying, overriding, and running all through the world's sporting multiplicity. Their myriad animating nature-divinities were then revealed as more than capricious free agents; They too served a higher intelligence.
Today, the ancient small "g" gods have been further demoted. We have reduced them to mere "processes," and "explanations." We leave them to the mediation of calculating experts. Our seasonal celebrations bring only tourism dollars - not unity, collective catharsis, or bountiful crops at harvest time. We no longer claim friendship with a lovely water goddess, a loved and lively bringer of music, satiety, joy and life. We turn the tap expecting only a mundane commodity, and that's all that we get anymore. Nature seems listless because WE have bored her with our greed and pedestrian gracelessness.
We have journeyed from the glory of One Majestic God behind nature's dazzling animate multiplicity, to a distant God dogmatically locked behind a gate-keeping priesthood, to an abstract "God" who is more concept than threat or promise. Then, for a while, God was regarded as "Providence," a watchmaker who set all this in motion and then went out to a billion year lunch. Next we heard of God's demise. Then we ceased to think of God at all, except in the operating room, courtroom, or battlefield. Prayer became a public duty, or something to DO with our fear and pleading: holy chewing gum for our anxiety, more debased than any Shaman's familiar spirit . . . . Your thoughts? A L O H A! Cloudia
17 comments:
Thank you for your kind words on my blog Cloudia. Your are my friend too. I like each photo of your post.Unfortunately my english is not enough correct to understand all what you write, but I try. Aloha !
In this age if we must compartmentalize our world then let us at least place the correct labels on the drawer pulls.
In times past we simply called the reigning thoughts "Secular" and "Religious" but now we wish to subdivide and mingle for a greater understanding of the world around us.
Simply because we could not take lightening and understand it beyond God throwing a spear at mankind, does not negate the now explained science of what it is. The science of lightning is true whether we understood or understand it now.
So if then the god of thunder and weather is discounted for a scientific explanation this is right; for it is in understanding reality that we are able to understand the true mystical experience.
There is the true mysticism and the true scientific and one must agree with the other if we are not to be hampered with fallacious thinking.
To believe in monotheism is not discounting the others that inhabit the place without time, for lack of a better word I call that place eternity.
Science is now investigating time and it's constraints and may yet find a way to peek into the eternal place. A place where I think we may find the demigods of our understanding.
When older cultures worshiped in front of trees or objectified animals what were they becoming prostrate to? The leaf or the god that allowed the leaf to grow? Of course it is the latter but Monotheism states God, not some lesser creature is to be the object of adoration.
Yet I know of no where in science or religion that says man can not hold that such lesser creations exist, only that whatever they produce is because of the one that created them.
Ergo that one who is the father of creation can, at will, uphold the duty of the "angel" tasked with it.
Furthermore simply because man has separated time into "boxes" with labels does not necessarily mean the labels are correct identifiers.
We can understand the concept of hundreds and trillions of years yet it appears we can not fully appreciate life without the constraint of time, so the labels we place on boxes are not necessarily the true ones.
Only God has the right label, not a lesser creature, not a naturally occurring instance and certainly not man who doesn't have the knowledge.
All that said, in my personal monotheistic belief, I say worship who or what you will because God looks at intent not nomenclature.
Western religion has held God hostage to our egos. Somewhere during the Industrial Revolution we became literalists, scientists who dismissed metaphor and every other aspect of poetry from what we called reality and then gave what remained a timeline. The whole notion of perfectability rests on this linear view of time.
It is such a shame. I see the increase in the number of people looking into Buddhism, Taoism, and the like as a sign that we are starving on this old view of God. That we screwed up!
We are so afraid of change, of variables, of the unknown. We try to write them out of the story. But they find us. God finds us.
I love your blog Cloudia, it's full of so much stuff :)
And I love being called a sprite! Thank you!
You should read books about near-death experiences. True stories. People with no religious beliefs before dying, return to life believing in God.
I like "little g" gods - and goddesses
In my mind - and heart and soul - I have created them from nature and art and humanity - they lead me ...
my definition of spiritual
now on to important stuff!!
love the Obama shirt
and Gidget goes senile!? Oh No!! lol
Some are working hard to demote the big "Gs" as well. But there is a huge amount of resistence. God seems more popular than ever, at least in some quarters.
As always thought provoking AND a lure to come see the amazing place that is Hawaii ... thanks, Cloud!
An absorbing post, as always.
We reserve our deepest worship for the magic we see in those we fall in love with. Perhaps worship is the way we see things. And some can see magic in even a stone.
You always pack so much into your posts Cloudia and it is always interesting, thankyou. xx
Really enjoyed this "dissertation" on a topic that both emcircles and divides!
Hello Cloudia,
I wanted to say thank you for your e-additions to the e-world...
Thanks.
I have given you an award here:
http://e-cuneiform.blogspot.com/2009/01/premio-dardos-award.html
No need, though, to do anything at all. I just wanted to thank you publicly.
Tschüss,
(Sepiru) Chris
Claude, Bonjour!
Walking Man: Thank you for your carefully thought comment. It was illuminating.
Sandy C: "God finds us." I have found that too! Thanks for being a friend!
Braja: Thanks! I love your blog and your view!
Gigi: Thanks.
Diane: Love the cut of your jib!
Charles: Right you are. It's a growing yearning, I think.
Daryl: I could say the same of your blog. I love my daily visits to your NYC.
Dave King: I love that word; thanks!
Brother T: "We reserve our deepest worship for the magic we see in those we fall in love with. Perhaps worship is the way we see things. And some can see magic in even a stone." Amen, Brother!
Ake: YOU Rock-AY! I'm glad we're friends.
Deborah: Mahalo, Sistah.
Chris: You honor me! I feel the same about your unique blog, and really get SO much from you, and from my fellow web-izens that visit here. Thank You ALL for your kind Aloha.
beautifully said, cloudia :D
Sorry Cloudia,
Fixed the text and my understanding.
Credit is now more equitably distributed.
Chris
It's not nice to make bad jokes about Gidget.
Books, spiritualism, new agers, religions and those who have near death experiences have not been able to get the facts straight about a divine existence. They only hint at what was experienced.
Until a person has a divine moment, it is very difficult for anyone to explain that moment to others. This results in scepticism.
To answer your question Cloudia: one God with many helpers.
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