Give up Hope

"Give up hope; you don't need hope."--James Hillman

Quinn Quote Saturday

"We've got to find our way back into the community[of life]. We've got to stop living like outlaws. When we begin to do that--when we begin to acknowledge that the world needs us and that we belong to it, not it to us--I think our feelings of desperate loneliness and neediness will begin to evaporate, all by themselves."--Providence

The Clock in the Classroom

I've always found this quote out of Derrick Jensen's Walking on Water; to be mostly true:

"The most important piece of technology in any classroom is the second hand of the clock. The purpose is to teach millions of students the identical prayer: Please God, make it move faster."--Page 15

Church, Monotheism, Salvation and Welcome the the Machine

Pulled Derrick Jensen's Welcome to the Machine off the shelf this morning. I'm still thinking about the affects of monotheism on our psyches and the Christian fundamentalists I was listening to on the mail route last week. These two quotes will be useful to me some day, I think.

"The policy of the Catholic Church has been and continues to be Nulla salus extra ecclesium, which means 'Outside the Church there is no salvation.' This statement manifests not only the eradication of diversity that characterizes our culture but also inadvertently suggests the misery our culture leads to: outside this oppressive culture there is no need for salvation."[Pg.85, Welcome to the Machine]

"When those in power say that outside the Church there can be no salvation, they are lying. What they are really saying is that you better not escape, because if you are outside of this Church, your continued existence (and happiness) will shake their belief in the notion that the Church is good for them. Thus the one who can be saved only if you remain in the Church is the Church itself. If you leave, it ceases to be the arbiter of all meaning and the source of salvation. The salvation of the Church requires not only your belief and participation, but if you leave it requires your death, and beyond that, your annihilation. In industry, science, religion, and other institutions, diversity must be eliminated.[Pg.85, Welcome to the Machine]

Watch Ripken Hitting Daddy

The first thing my son (He's 2 1/2 yrs. old) said to me this morning was, "watch Ripken hitting." I'm guessing he's watched this video close to a 100 times already. It's almost a daily occurance. I've got three videos put out by the Ripkens. One on hitting and the other two are on pitching and defense. He only watches the hitting video.

He shouldn't need much hitting instruction in years to come.

Quinn Quote Saturday

"The God of revealed religions - and by this I mean religions like yours...is a profoundly inarticulate God. No matter how many times he tries, he can't make himself clearly or completely understood. He speaks for centuries to the Jews but fails to make himself understood. At last he sends his only-begotten son, and his son can't seem to do any better. Jesus might have sat himself down with a scribe and dictated the answers to ever conceivable theological question in aboslutely unequivocal terms, but he chose not to, leaving subsequent generations to settle what Jesus had in mind with pogroms, purges, persecutions, wars, the burning stake, and the rack. Having failed through Jesus, God next tried to make himself understood through Muhammad, with limited success, as always. After a thousand years of silence he tried again with Joseph Smith, with no better results. Averaging it out, all God has been able to tell us for sure is that we should do unto others as we'd have them do unto us. What's that - a dozen words? Not much to show for five thousand years of work, and we probably could have figured out that much for ourselves anyways. To be honest, I'd be embarrassed to be associated with a god as incompetent as that." - [Pg.135, The Story of B]

Monotheism and the Center of the Psyche

"Monotheism is connected with the idea that there is a center in the psyche. Which, I think, is the most dangerous implication of monotheism."-Robert Bly

More on Christianity

I posted this on Facebook this morning. It's similar to yesterday's subject.

Lately I've found myself involved in conversations with a few Little League parents and grandparents talking about God and Christianity, so it was nice to run across this blog post. Even though I don't consider myself a Christian by any means (Yesterday I mentioned to Annie that if I attended church it would be an act of self-betrayal), I'm interested in the issue and what folks have to say about it.

Conversations with Christians

The past few weeks I've been involved in some conversations with some folks that take their Christian faith pretty seriously. The conversations went well. I didn't feel like they were trying to convert me or tried to convey any sense of moral superiority. But upon reflection I'm reminded of this quote by Robert Bly in his book titled: A Little Book On The Human Shadow.

"What did [William] Blake say?-'No person who is not an artist can be a Christian.' He means that a person who refuses to approach his own life actively, using language, music, sculpture, painting, or drawing is a caterpillar dressed in Christian clothes, not a human being."[Robert Bly, Pg.43]

Quinn Quote Saturday

"The fundamental...delusion is that humanity itself was designed - and therefore destined - to become us. This is a twin of the idea that the entire universe was created in order to produce this planet. We would smile patronizingly if the Gebusi (A tribe in Australia) boasted that humanity was divinely destined to become Gebusi, but we're perfectly satisfied that humanity was divinely destined to become us." - page 129, The Story of B

Hayhurst on Hitters and Pitchers

Well, it's been a couple of days since I have posted. I'm giving up on my goal of posting once a day. With how busy my life has gotten with Little League baseball, postal work, and the responsibilites that come with being a dad I don't have much time to post. I usually post early in the morning, but like I said in a previous post I would rather leave the computer off and use that time to write long hand or read a book. I should be able to post every couple of days, though.

I spent the past couple of mornings reading Dirk Hayhurst's Out Of My League. I ran across this quote this morning. But before I post the quote here is what I just noticed Bob Costas had to say about the book: "Dirk Hayhurst writes about baseball in a unique way. Observant, insightful, human, and hilarious." I'd agree. I've really enjoyed the book so far.

"Hitters are stupid. If they weren't, they'd be pitchers. No one in their right mind would pick the side of the game that considers three out of ten good unless they're slightly unhinged."[Pg. 47, Out Of My League]

Blake Quote

“As a man is, so he sees"-William Blake

Programs

"Our culture's river of vision is carrying us toward catastrophe. Sticks planted in the mud may impede its flow very slightly, but we don't need to impede its flow, we need to divert it into an entirely new channel. If our culture's river of vision ever begins to carry us away from catastrophe and into a sustainable future, then programs will be superfluous. When the river's flowing where you want it to flow, you don't plant sticks to impede it." --Daniel Quinn out of Beyo​nd Civilization

Quinn Quote Saturday

"The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitler's mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness."[Daniel Quinn, Pg. 146, Ishmael]

One Of My Favorites

Here is one of my favorite William Stafford poems:

"If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.



"For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.



"And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.



"And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider-

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.



"For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep."--William Stafford

Hidden Values Find There Way To Action

I just didn't have enough time to do a blog post yesterday. That's three that I missed this year. It's been a long time since I've been this busy(Over a decade?)in my life.

Quote from The Un-Game that resonated with me yesterday.

"In coaching they'll get to see that any closely held value, no matter how well hidden, even from yourself, inevitably prompts action that's consistent with it." [Pg. 127, The Un-Game]

Phil Jackson hits on this in Sacred Hoops.

People Don't Want to Work

Throughout my life I've heard that certain people just don't want to work. Or there are plenty of jobs out there but people just don't want to work them. Well, here is an interesting challenge to that notion out of Ingrid Martine's The Un-Game:

"...why do great managers ignore the standard assumption that people work for companies? I came to work here because I wanted to work in a forward-looking company with staying power."

"You think you came for that reason, but I bet we could put that to a test. What are reasons you would leave? Look and see what's at the top of your list."

Reflecting only briefly Sam said, "I'd leave if I didn't know what was expected of me, if I didn't have the materials and equipment I need to do my job well, if I didn't have the opportunities to put my talents to work, if nobody noticed I was doing good work. Should I go on?"

Maria nodded.

"I'd leave if nobody cared about me and if the company didn't encourage my development. There are probably other things, but these seem the most important to me. If these things were true over and extended period of time, I'd leave. I'm certain about that. Yes, no 'I guess' about it."

"I believe you, Sam. And who would be responsible for helping you meet those important needs? The company?"

Sam looked intently at her for about twenty seconds, then grinned, delighted with the recognition. "I get it! Ultimately this is about solid, satisfying relationships. It's about being connected. I don't only work for money. It's a negative satisfier and becomes critically important only when I don't have it. That's true for others too. And we don't work for the impersonal entity called 'company.' The company's values must be reflected in its managers' behaviors. We work for our manager. If the relationships suck and the manager ignores our fundamental needs, it's all over. No wonder great managers don't buy that assumption..."

Quinn Quote Saturday

"Given an expanding food supply, any population will expand. This is true of any species, including the human. The Takers have been proving this here for ten thousand years. For ten thousand years they've been steadily increasing food production to feed an increased population, and every time they've done this, the population has increased still more."--Ishmael

I remember getting this video for a Christmas gift from my parents in the early nineties.

Cutting Trees

"What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another."--Mahatma Gandhi

Did I mention I used to make my living as a logger.

Is The Universe a Friendly Place?

Pulled this quote off from the PACHAMAMA Alliance website:

“I think the most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” Albert Einstein

Time to get off from the computer and go about my day.

Quotes from The Un-Game

I've got a couple of books going now. This morning I started The Un-Game, by Ingride Martine. A couple quotes that resonated were:

"If you want to lead, you first have to follow."--Pgiii, The Un-Game

"Without the grand escape from their experience, people ae subjected to it - acted upon, or tossed about. Their brain overheats. Decisions they make while inside their experience are not to be trusted. Do they make them to escape discomfort? Are the decisions irrational or erratic, determined by impulse, not cool deliberation? People in their experience are out of their minds. Rather than having the experience, the experience has them! They are the feather. Something else is the wind."--Pg.vii, The Un-Game

Wholeness?

“It is not our job to remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves
Like the trees, and be born again,
Drawing up from the great roots.” ― Robert Bly

The Insanity Inside

Working my way through All of the Above this morning. This excerpt really resonates:

"Most of us are not insane, if you define the word in terms of brain dysfunction and bad chemicals. You're right about that. But if we're not mentally ill, Mrs. President, would you agree that we're certainly culturally ill? Spiritually ill? Wouldn't sanity mean being consciously connected to reality, to what's actually so? And if we start from there, how should we then regard our society? Our culture tells us that we can fix every problem and control every outcome, even though we can see, if we just look, that most of our solutions simply lead to more problems. Our culture tells us that we will find true happiness through the things we own, that the material world is all there is, and that the rest of the planet is here merely to serve as our resource. Yet we know in our hearts that money does not, and has not, bought us true happinness and fullfillment, only comfort."

As Obie spoke, his voice grew louder, and his eyes glinted, like a televangelist reaching the high point of sermon.

"In this physical plane, Mrs. President, it's the soil and water and forests and sky and plants and animals upon which our very lives ultimately depend. The structures of civilization cannot exist without those things. And yet we live inside of those structures - houses, offices, stores, factories, cars, roads, subdivisions, cities, whatever - and those structures keep most of us almost totally disconnected from the real world that serves as their foundation. So you might begin to see the benefit of just sitting for a while with the notion that not only is this culture not in touch with reality, but that this insantiy lives inside of you." Pg.293, All of the Above

Rilke and Fathers

I thought about these lines by Rilke while doing dishes

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glass,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward the same church, which he forgot.--Rilke

Happy Fathers Day!

Quinn Quote Saturday

"Circumstances have at last shattered our mad cultural vision, have at last rendered our self-aggrandizing mythology meaningless, have at last strangled our arrogant song. We've lost our ability to believe that the world was made for Man and that Man was made to conquer and rule it. We've lost our ability to believe that the world will automatically and inevitably support us in our conquest, will swallow all the poison we can generate without coming to harm. We've lost our ablitiy to believe that God is enequivocally on our side against the rest of creation."--Daniel Quinn, Pg. 284, The Story of B

A Good Morning So Far

Behaved myself this morning. Woke up and sat zazen for a half-n-hour. Afterwards pulled out the notebook and journaled, read some of Timothy Scott Bennett's All of the Above and then reread the section about fathering out of James Hillman's The Souls Code. As a result of waiting a couple of hours to get on the internet I feel less overwhelmed and rushed. And, of course, I found a dandy of a quote by James Hillman about fathering and parenting.

"When your child becomes the reason for your life, you have abandoned the invisible reason you are here. And the reason you are here as an adult, as a citizen, as a parent? To make a world receptive to the daimon. To set the civilization straight so that a child can grow down into it and its daimon can have a life. This is the parenting task. To carry out this task for the daimon of your child you must bear witness first to your own." [The Souls Code, Pg. 85]

Good Bye Innocence

"Whether early or late, shame, guilt, and low self-esteem are necessary to character formation because they eat away at innocence."--James Hillman, Pg.179, The Force of Character

Doing Some Reading

I've been spending my free time reading samples of The Un-Game by Ingrid Martine. I also just finished up One Shot at Forever by Chris Ballard. I really liked it and recommend it to any baseball fan to read, especially those that follow high school sports.

Back at It

I'm on the internet right away this morning (Yesterday I mentioned I was going to quit doing this). I felt a strong need to go to Amazon and browse through Robert Johnson's book titled: Balancing Heaven and Earth: A Memoir of Visions, Dreams, and Realizations. I understand why, I think. I'm feeling the need to learn about the psyche and the otherworld before everyone wakes up. Paging through random books is a bad habit of mine.

Changing a Few Things

I'm going to stop getting on the internet so early in the morning. Lately I've been getting on it immediately after I sit zazen. It's not working. I find that I get a lot more writing done when I sit down with a notebook and a pencil. I'm also able to think with more clarity and not feel so overwhelmed throughout the day.

It's going to be a challenge to post once a day though. By the end of the day I have no energy for posting.

I'm just going try it an see how it works.

Some Internal Coaching Conflict

I've mentioned in previous posts that I'm a Little League Baseball coach. I've coached my son's team for three years now. And I have to admit there have been moments during the past three years where I have felt conflicted about my role as coach. When these moments of conflict arise I usually pull out Robert Bly's The Sibling Society to try and understand the source of the conflict. The quote below spoke to me:

"Most adults have been slow to grasp how perfectionist the changed Interior Judge of their children is, and how savage. The Judge is more perfectionist than ever, but now there is not enough fame or popularity in the world do satisfy it. For parents to try to encourage the development of their children is natural, but now there is something desperate in it for both the parents and children. If a teenager is not invited to the dance, she may try suicide. A high school boy, scoffed at, may retreat behind his computer for ten years."--Pg. xii,

And this one:

"In a Sibling Society, it is hard to know how to approach one's children, what values to try to teach them, what to stand up for, what to go along with; it is especially hard to know where your children are."--Pg.xiii

Quinn Quote Saturday

"If there are still people living here in 200 years, they'll know that humanity doesn't belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. They'll know this as surely as we know that the earth revolves around the sun. I can make this prediction with confidence, because if people go on thinking we belong to a separate order of being, then there will be no people living here in 200 years."--Daniel Quinn from The New Renaissance

Looking Back

No time for writing or reading. My life is full of carrying mail for the post office and Little League baseball.

So Another quote from the beginning of The Souls Code:

"It was Karl Marx, I think, who once proposed that evolution be studied in reverse, with an eye firmly fixed on the evolved species while glancing backward for hints."--Jerome Bruner, In Search of Mind

Short and Sweet

From the list of quotes at the beginning of James Hillman's The Soul's Code:

I don't develop; I am--Pablo Picasso

Vallejo Quote

Thanks to a Facebook friend for this quote:

"Heaven and happiness do not exist. That’s your parents’ way to justify the crime of having brought you into this world. What exists is reality, the tough reality, this slaughterhouse we’ve come to die in, if not to kill and to eat the animals, our fellow creatures. Therefore, do not reproduce, do not repeat the crimes committed against you, do not give back the same, evil paid with evil, as imposing life is the ultimate crime. Do not disturb the unborn, let them be in the peace of nothingness, anyway we’ll all eventually go back there, so why beat around the bush?" -Fernando Vallejo

James Hillman Quote

Opened up The Souls Code this morning and this quote resonated with me:

"I am different from everyone else and the same as everyone else; I am different from myself ten years ago and the same as myself ten years ago; my life is a stable chaos, chaotic and repetitive both, and I can never predict what tiny, trivial bit of input will result in a huge and significant output, I must always remain acutely sensitive to initial conditions, such as what or who came into the world with me and enters the world with me each day. On that I remain dependent."--James Hillman, pg. 140, The Souls Code

Stolen Signs

Towards the end of yesterday's post I talked about what I was going to do during the rest of my day off. About an hour after I put the computer away we noticed our Vote for Tom Barrett* yard sign had been stolen in the dark of the night. So we moved into action and gathered up some boards, paint brushes, paint, screws and driver. We spent the rest of the afternoon constructing two bigger and better yard signs. I don't know what this has to do with the original self, but it was fun. And the yard signs are still hanging with no evidence of vandalism.

*Here in Wisconsin Governor Walker is facing Tom Barrett in a recall election on June 5th.

Original Face

Lately I've had the urge to search for some zen koans. This morning I found one while reading samples of Thomas Moore's Original Self over at amazon. It's all I've really got energy for right now. I just got done working five days in a row carrying mail for the post office, and I'm possibly looking at working three more starting tomorrow. It seems like once I work over two to three days in a row carrying mail it has a negative effect on me. I become less creative, imaginitive, and my range of emotions starts to narrow. I think the only thing that stops them from narrowing to the point where I feel hopeless and imprisoned is that I know there is an ending date. In other words, I'm not a full time worker.

I don't know how full time rural route mail carriers do it. The carrier I substitute for works six out of seven days a week, and he's in his late sixties. I admire it in a way, but I know it wouldn't work me. And this leads to the zen koan:

What was your original face before you were born?--Zen koan

Hell, right now I have no idea. I think there are just to many layers spun over that face. Of course, like I alluded to above, the layers thicken the more I work. But I bet if I got the boat ready and took the kids fishing today the layers would lessen a bit. The problem is that I've got a lawn to mow, trees to water, and a Little League baseball practice to coach tonight.

Quinn Quote Saturday

"Our leaders aren't stupid, they're just acting in accordance with the fundamental mythology of our culture, which represents humans as intrinsically and hopelessly destructive. This being the case, the only conceivable course for them is to (quote) "protect the environment" -- from us, of course. Who else? The environment doesn't have to be protected from shellfish or owls or rattlesnakes or elm trees. It has to be protected from those intrinsically and hopelessly destructive beings who are US." Daniel Quinn in his speech titled: Protecting the Environment: Whose Business is it?

The Outcast

A quote for anyone that has ever felt like an outcast:

"Soul enters only via symptoms, via outcast phenomena like the imagination of artists or alchemy or “primitives,” or of course, disguised as psychopathology. That’s what Jung meant when he said the Gods have become diseases: the only way back for them in a Christian world is via the outcast."--James Hillman

The Boiling Frog

On of my favorite sections out of The Story of B.

Connecting the Dots

A few years back I posted this quote about mining and war by Lewis Mumford:

"From the earliest times, as Mircea Eliade points out, blood sacrifice had been a ritual accompaniment of metallurgy. The curse of war and the curse of mining are almost interchangeable: united in death."

Yesterday, on the mail route, I thought of this quote and realized that Martin Prechtel might have some answers in how to lift that curse:

So, just to get the iron, the shaman has to pay for the ore, the fire, the wind, and so on — not in dollars and cents, but in ritual activity equal to what’s been given. Then that iron must be made into steel, and the steel has to be hammered into the shape of a knife, sharpened, and tempered, and a handle must be put on it. There is a deity to be fed for each part of the procedure. When the knife is finished, it is called the “tooth of earth.” It will cut wood, meat, and plants. But if the necessary sacrifices have been ignored in the name of rationalism, literalism, and human superiority, it will cut humans instead.

All of those ritual gifts make the knife enormously “expensive,” and make the process quite involved and time-consuming. The need for ritual makes some things too spiritually expensive to bother with. That’s why the Mayans didn’t invent space shuttles or shopping malls or backhoes. They live as they do not because it’s a romantic way to live — it’s not; it’s enormously hard — but because it works.--Martin Prechtel

A.E's Aphorism

Reading through some old notebooks that are full of quotes and notes from books I've read in the past. Wrote this down back February of 2010: "A man becomes the image of the thing he hates."--A.E's aphorism, Pg. 361, The Myth of the Machine Vol.ll

Chilling.

The Fence

I often think of this image when I'm fixing fences around our place.

New Dialogue at The Ishmael Community

A new dialogue over at The Ishmael Community exploring whether or not humans have stopped evolving.

"We're definitely living in a way that's going to put an end to creation. If we go on, there will be no successor to man, no successor to chimpanzees, no successor to orangutans, no successor to gorillas—no successor to anything alive now. The whole thing is going to come to an end with us. In order to make their story come true, the Takers have to put an end to creation itself—and they're doing a damned good job of it.”--Daniel Quinn

Saturday's DQ Quote

"It has been the work of my life to pin down and demolish the lie that is at the root of this mythology in our culture. It's to be found in the way we tell the human story itself in our culture. You can see it perpetuated in textbook after textbook, and if you keep your eyes open, you'll see it repeated weekly somewhere---in a newspaper or magazine article, in a television documentary. Here it is, the human story as it's told in our culture, day in and day out, stripped to its essentials. "Humans appeared in the living community about three million years ago. When they appeared, they were foragers, just like their primate ancestors. Over the millennia, these foragers added hunting to their repertoire and so became hunter-gatherers. Humans lived as hunter-gatherers until about ten thousand years ago, when they abandoned this life for the agricultural life, settling down into villages and beginning to build the civilization that encircles the world today." That's the story as our children learn it, and it has just this one little problem, that it didn't happen that way at all. Ten thousand years ago, it was not HUMANITY that traded in the foraging life for the agricultural life and began to build civilization, it was a single culture. One culture out of ten thousand cultures did this, and the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine went on exactly as before. Over the millennia that followed, this one culture, born in the middle east, overran neighboring cultures in all directions, finally arriving in the New World about five hundred years ago. At which point it began to overrun the native cultures of THIS part of the world as well. It is a truism that the conqueror gets to write the history books, and the history our children learn is history as WE tell it. And the central lie of this history is that HUMANITY ITSELF did what WE did."--Daniel Quinn from the essay titled: The Little Engine That Couldn't: How We're Preparing Ourselves and Our Children for Extinction

Baseball Novels

Stayed up late last night and finished Calico Joe, by John Grisham. I highly recommend it to baseball fans, fathers and sons, or anyone just looking for a good book to read. Next one on this list is Chris Ballard's One Shot at Forever. Ever since reading his article in Sports Illustrated over a year ago I've been waiting for his book to come out. I've wanted to get a better idea of how Lynn Sweet coached his team. I often think of him and the Macon Ironmen when I'm around the diamonds.

Helping or Not?

Last year I read this article in Sports Illustrated about Yogi Berra. This quote has stuck in my mind since reading it. In my role as Little League baseball coach I always wonder if I'm really helping the kids out.

While walking through the museum, Berra did not even seem to notice the picture. He was talking about how he loves Little League baseball but wishes kids would organize more of their own games. When his own sons were young and they asked him to play catch, he would say, "Go ask your brothers." Adults, he thinks, should stay out of the way when it comes to baseball.--Yogi Berra

Death Urge and Sexual Fantasy

Years ago Derrick Jensen made it clear to me in his monumental book A Language Older Than Words that we have a death urge. What I'm understanding that to be is an urge to destroy life on this planet. Otherwise we wouldn't be driving a couple hundred species extinct a day by our actions.

This morning I was paging through my notes that I've written down from books I've read in the past and I ran across this:

"The majority of sexual fantasy and desire points to the erotic dynamic in life and not to actual sex."--Thomas Moore, Pg. 176, The Soul of Sex

Perhaps the less pleasurable and erotic our day to day lives become the more the porn industry grows. I don't know, it's just a thought. I like entertaining ideas.

Baseball is Homeric

As the Little League baseball season continues I'm falling deeper into it. Even though I tell myself every year I'm not going to let it happen it does anyway. I don't know why I just don't accept it. Everything about the game sucks me in.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before but as a kid I used to think I could die on the baseball diamond and I wouldn't mind.

I'm going back through my notebooks and reading quotes I've written down from baseball books I've read. This quote by Chad Harbach in The Art of Fielding lays out nicely one of the reasons why I love the game so much.

"But baseball was different. Schwartz thought of it as Homeric--not a scrum but a series of isolated contests. Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball. You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football. You stood and waited and tried to still you mind. When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was. What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see?"--Pg.259, The Art of Fielding

Tomatoes Are In

Yesterday marked the day that our tomatoes were officially planted. Annie planted them while I entertained our 2 year old. Basically that amounted to him following me around the place with his batting helmet smashed over his baseball cap on top of his head with only a T-shirt on his back. I did a few things that needed to be done while he added commentary and asked "why?" a hundred or more times. He definately has a way of putting things into perspective for me. Appearance or time definately doesn't concern him much.

I also finally put up the rain gauge that my parents bought for me 5 years ago. Checked it after the thunderstorm and it read close to a quarter inch of rain and bird crap. It sorta looked like a milkshake. I'm glad I'm not the only one who's found the gauge useful. Hopefully, they don't make a habit out of this

A Bit Wiser, Atleast I Thought

I'm still working my through All of the Above. The other day at the dinner table I attempted to explain to my family how Dwight Eisenhower was the first president in our nation's history to have to deal with aliens. And, of course, how the aliens didn't like Kennedy so they had to got rid of him.

Their response to my newly gained insights was: You can't believe everything you read in a book!

Quinn Quote Saturday

In fact, the real gods of the world--if there are any--are competent gods. They created a world that functions perfectly, without divine oversight or intervention. If we don't curb our population growth, the built-in processes of the world will take care of it. If we continue to attack them as vigorously as we are right now, the ecological systems that keep us alive will eventually collapse, leaving a world that won't sustain human life at all. We'll be gone--probably along with most or all large life forms of animal life--but life will go on and start rebuilding anew, just as it's done after every mass extinction of the past."-- Daniel Quinn, Pg. 61, If They Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways

Feeling Fortunate

The other day Ran Prieur posted this excerpt from an interview that Oprah did with author Cormac McCarthy. It resonated with me and I've thought about since.

Oprah: Are you just not interested in material [things]?

Cormac McCarthy: I'm really not. I mean, it's not that I don't like things. Some things are really nice, but they certainly take a distant second place to being able to live your life and do what you want to do. And I always knew that I didn't want to work.

Oprah: How did you manage that? Most people want to know how to do that.

McCarthy: Well, you have to be dedicated. But it was my Number One priority.

Oprah: That you didn't want to have a nine-to-five job?

McCarthy: Yeah. I thought, 'You're just here once, life is brief, and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.' And I don't have any advice for anybody on how to go about that, except that if you're really dedicated you can probably do it.

Oprah: So you worked at not working.

McCarthy: Absolutely. Yeah, it was the Number One priority.

There isn't a day that goes by where I don't feel fortunate that I don't have to go to a 9 to 5 job. One of my biggest fears is to be systematically coerced back into doing it again. And I work hard at not having to do it again. I also have never really been interested in material things. Eric Hoffer was right when he said it takes leisure to mature.

Looking into the Future

Yesterday the day got away from me, so I forgot to post. This was all I had in mind to post yesterday.

"When people look into the future and give up hope, it's because they don't know
what to DO about the bad things they see."--Daniel Quinn, from his essay on Hope

Keep on Sittin

I have sitting in front of me Phil Jackson's Sacred Hoops. I remember saying to myself when I first read the book that it would be nice to have a copy. Well, yesterday, while my son (2 1/2 yrs. old) and I were at the laundry mat doing laundry for a families' vacation home we clean for cash, I noticed across the street there was a thrift store. So, of course, I wondered if they had any books. It seems like whenever I have some free time I usually turn to books. Anyway, we walked over and checked it out. I found a couple shelves of books. And, as I was browsing the the shelves, I found Sacred Hoops. A few minutes later I took it up to the counter and paid fifty cents for it. It was suppose to be a buck, but there was no price tag on it. I donated the other fifty cents to the thrift shop.

We lost our game yesterday. We got ten run ruled. What this means is that if a team is losing by ten runs or more after four innings they call the game. I've also heard it referred to as the mercy rule.

Before our game, I opened up my copy of Sacred Hoops to any page and started reading. Here is what I came across:

"Little by little, with regular practice, you start to discriminate raw sensory events from your reactions to them. Eventually, you begin to experience a point of stillness within. As the stillness becomes more stable, you tend to identify less with fleeing thoughts and feelings, such as fear, anger or pain, and experience a state of inner harmony, regardless of changing circumstances. For me, meditation is a tool that allows me to stay calm and centered (well, most of the time) during the stressful highs and lows of basketball and life outside the arena. During games I often get agitated by bad calls, but years of meditation practice have taught me how to find that still point within so that I can argue passionately with the refs without being overwhelmed by anger."[Pg. 119, Sacred Hoops]

I think I understand the anger he's talking about. When things aren't going well in our games (Which is a good majority of the time) it's tough not to get down on players, umpires, and mostly myself.

I continue to sit zazen every morning.

Rescued a Book

I ran across the lines below in a book that was borrowed to us a few years back. I finally got around to rescuing the book out of the old house (This is the house that was on our property when we bought it. We lived in it without running water for close to five years.).

"If we are not aware of the effects of time pressures on the family, we run the risk of living lives of continual acceleration, non-stop doing, and passing that on to our children."--Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn

I'm aware of "time pressures on the family." And the pressures don't go away, especially this time of year. And, of course, coaching Little League baseball increases it.

I usually catch myself thinking there has to be more indicators that things are going to slow down from the culture at large for the time pressures to atleast fade a bit. No amount of attention or awareness will stop it. We'll see. Right now, I'm out of time. The family is waking up.

Simple Saying

This simple saying caught my attention this beautiful Sunday morning:

Don't draw another's bow;
don't ride another's horse;
don't discuss another's faults;
don't explore anothers affairs.--Wu-Men, Thirteenth-Century Chinese Zen Master

Quinn Quote Saturday: Utopia

"What do you call a system that will only work if the people in it are better than people have ever been? ... What do you call a system that's built on the presumption that people in this system will be better than people have ever been before? Everyone in this system is going to be kind and generous and considerate and selfless and obedient and compassionate and peaceable. What kind of system is that?"

"Utopian?"

"Utopian is right, Julie. Every one of your systems is a utopian system. Democracy would be heaven-- if people would just be better than people have ever been. Of course, Soviet communism was supposed to have been heaven too ... Your justice system would work perfectly if people would just be better than people have ever been. And of course your schools would work perfectly under the same conditions."--Daniel Quinn, My Ishmael

The Time Before Death

Feeling the need to read some poems before the family wakes up. I randomly cracked open Robert Bly and Marion Woodman's The Maiden King and found this one immediately:

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think... and think... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten--
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of
Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will
have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is. Believe in
the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for, it is the
intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.--Kabir

For some odd reason this line really resonated with me: "What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death."

Entertaining Ideas

I just want to say that I stand with anyone working toward recalling Governor Scott Walker. Right now, I'm entertaining this idea. And, as some of us know the mind loves to entertain ideas. Anyway, I'm a wage slave that is trying to survive in Western Civilization. In other words, I'm an exploitable resource. And if the exploiters could find a way to pay me less for my work, or ship my job off to another place where people are willing to work for less, they'd do it in a heartbeat.

I think Lewis Mumford was onto something when he said this about Karl Marx: "He realized that the French revolution had divided society artificially into two spheres, the political, in which man functioned as a tolerant, liberal, egalitarian citizen, and the economic, in which he was either a grasping capitalist or an exploited worker." [Pg. 203, Interpretations and Forecasts.]

I'm an exploited worker that is becoming more and more intolerant of grasping capitalists therefore as a "tolerant, liberal, egalitarian citizen" I'm going to fight the grasping capitalists.

I love to entertain ideas

Thank You for Fungo Bats and Sugar Maples

I've been wanting a fungo bat (What coaches use to hit groundballs and flyballs to their team) for a couple of years now. I've held off on buying one, though. I just couldn't justify spending the money. Yesterday as we were pulling into Antigo just after sunrise my Dad mentioned that there is a lumber mill in Antigo that makes bats for Brewer's sluggers Ryan Braun and Cory Hart. He said there is a special characteristic to the sugar maples in that part of the state that produces a good bat. I thought it was interesting, but didn't think about it much after that.

Well, it was getting close to dinner time and we were looking at the house my Dad was born and raised in. There wasn't much else we wanted to do, so we were getting ready to head back home. But just than we'd noticed just two blocks down from his old house was the mill where the slugger's bats are made. So we decided to stop in at the office and see if they actually sold the bats right there. The secretary confirmned they did and went it got someone from that part of the mill that could show me the bats.

Twenty minutes and One Hundred and Twenty Dollars later I walked out of their with two fungo RockBats, one 33" and the other 35." I don't really regret buying them. With my families' interest in baseball I think I'll be hitting fungos for quite some time. One thing I will say, though, is that I don't like to see sugar maples cut. I never liked cutting them when I was a logger and I hate seeing others cut them now. I'd rather see the trees being tapped for maple syrup than being killed for lumber. So thank you to the sugar maple trees who gave up their lives to make my fungo bats.

They'll be put to good use.

What Holds The Wheel Together

Off to Antigo, Wisconsin today. My dad and I are making the trip east to visit the gravesites of my grandparents and meet up with my aunt.

We had our second Little League game last night and won. I'm proud of the kids. In the three years that I've been their coach this is probably some of the best baseball I've seen them play.

I still feel like I could be a much better coach though. Part of the problem is that I don't think I understand 9-12 year olds well enough yet. I'm turning to the notebooks for more inspiration.

I often think of this zen teaching that Phil Jackson had in Sacred Hoops: "See beyond what is seen. Never forget that a wheel is made not only of spokes but also of the space between the spokes. Sturdy spokes poorly placed make a weak wheel. Whether their full potential is realized depends on the harmony between. The essence of wheelmaking lies in the craftsman's ability to conceive and create the space that holds and balances the spokes within the wheel. Think now, who is the craftsman here?" [Pg. 150, Sacred Hoops]

A Full Day Ahead

Off to carry mail for the United States Postal service again today. Coaching in our second Little League baseball game afterwards. Hopefully our team does better this time around. Talking about baseball that reminds me: another reason why I sit zazen is because, I think, it helps me concentrate on the game better.

Looking forward to voting in the Wisconsin primary tomorrow. Just think, by this time next month Wisconsin could have a new governor.

Yesterday, a friend posted this excerpt out of Daniel Quinn's Providence:

"Kindler and rekindler of universes, the fire burns forever. It is the flame of life that courses through all generations from first to last, that burns without consuming, that is itself consumed and renewed inexhaustibly, life after life, generation after generation, species after species, galaxy after galaxy, universe after universe, each sharing in the blaze for its season and going down to death while the fire burns on undiminished. The fire is life itself, the life of this universe, of this galaxy, of this planet, of this place and every place: the place by the rock and the place under the hill and the place by the river and the place in the forest, no two alike anywhere. And the life of every place is god, who is the fire: the life of the pond, god; the life of the tundra, god; the life of the sea, god; the life of the land, god; the life of the earth, god; the life of the universe, god: in every place unique, as the life of every place is unique, and in every place burns the same, as the fire that burns is everywhere the fire of life." - Written by Daniel Quinn about 30 years ago, but not published until it appeared in 1994 at the end of his semi-autobiography Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest.

Soul and Spirit

Lately I've been rereading my journals from the past of years. I ran across this entry on June 6th, 2011:

The Wild Man isn't like an Eastern Mystic: "When it comes time for a young male to talk with the Wild Man he will find the conversation quite distinct from a talk with a minister, a rabbi, or a guru. Conversing with the Wild Man is not talking about bliss or mind or spirit, or 'higher consciousness,' but about something wet, dark, and low--what James Hillman would call 'soul'." [Robert Bly, Iron John]

I've mentioned a couple of times that I sit zazen(meditate)for a half-n-hour every morning. There are times when I wonder why I'm doing it. Robert Bly once said this about enlightenment and the soul: "Mythology is more helpful than enlightenment or to put it chronologically, years of mythology need to come, accustoming the soul to darkness, before the soul is ready for enlightenment."

Part of the reason I do it is to relax and slow my thoughts. But than this excerpt from an interview with psychologist James Hillman comes to mind:

Safransky: What if the goal is merely a few minutes of calm?

Hillman: If that’s the goal, what’s the difference between meditation and having a nice drink? Or going to the hairdresser and sitting for an hour and flipping through a magazine? Or writing a long letter, a love letter? Do you realize what we’re not doing in this culture? Having an evening’s conversation with people; that can be so relaxing. Moving one’s images, moving one’s soul; I think we’ve locked on to meditation as the main method for settling down.

It’s better to go into the world half-cocked than not to go into the world at all. I know when something’s wrong. And I can say, “This is outrageous. This is insulting. This is a violation. And it’s wrong.” I don’t know what we should do about it; my protest is absolutely empty. But I believe in that empty protest.

You see, one of the ways you get trapped into not going into the world is when people — usually in positions of power — say, “Oh, yeah, wise guy, what would you do about it? What would you do about the Persian Gulf crisis?” I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t know. But I know when I feel something is wrong, and I trust that sense of outrage, that sense of insult. And so, empty protest is a valid way of expressing feeling, politically. Remember, that’s where we began: how do you connect feeling with politics? Well, one of the ways is through that empty protest. You don’t know what’s right, but you know what’s wrong.

Quinn Quote Saturday

"We make our journey in the company of others; the deer, the rabbit, the bison, and the quail walk before us, and the lion, the eagle, the wolf, the vulture, and the hyena walk behind us. All our paths lie together in the hand of god and none is wider than any other or favored above any other. The worm that creeps beneath your foot is making its journey across the hand of god as surely as you are.

"Wherever life moves, the hand of god is under it, so no step can be off the path. When you stumble on the mountainside, that is part of your path. When your child is sick and you turn aside from the hunt, that is part of your path. When you wander hungry in the desert and cannot find your way, you're not lost, you're on your path. When cunning fails and your prey eludes you, don't curse your luck; this fruitless hunt is part of your path."--Daniel Quinn, Pg.74, The Tales of Adam

Busy Day

Annie and I are off to work to carry mail for United States Postal Service today. Not much time to write. Getting kids ready to go over to their grandparents while we work. We're lucky in that regard, both sets of grandparents only live about 4 miles from the house.

Baseball practice scheduled for tonight. It's going to be a busy day. I often have to remind myself that most families have to do this everyday.

First Game of the Season

We had our first Little Leageue baseball game last night. We ended up losing 18 to 2. I was nervous as hell the whole day leading up to it, but the weird thing is that I was extremely calm during the game as my team of 9-12 yr. olds self-destructed. I remember experiencing the exact same thing playing baseball as a child. So after 25 years not much has changed. The same sort of thoughts and feelings (I wrote about some of them yesterday) happen leading up to the game, but during the game they fade or simply just go away. Upon reflection I think part of the reason this happens is explained in this quote by Phil Jackson:

"[Players] live for the moments when they can lose themselves completely in the action and experience the pure joy of competition."--Phil Jackson, Pg. 180, Sacred Hoops

Right now I'd say that it happens not only to players but coaches too.

Getting Ahead of Myself

Right now I feel rushed, anxious, and overwhelmed. And I've noticed some minor Obsessive Compulsive symptoms happening like pacing and thinking the same thought over and over. I feel like if I just focus and try harder that this feeling will go away (This a big part of the reason I sit Zazen every morning). It's nothing new, I've felt it on and off probably since the beginning of adolesence. In the past I've blamed our culture, school, my parents and so on about this. All of them, of course, play a factor. Anyway, it comes and goes. I've learned how to deal with it and have adjusted my lifestyle accordingly. As a child this was tough to deal with though. I had no idea what the hell was going on.

This all, of course, ties into Daniel Quinn's work. Ever since running across the sentence below it felt like there was a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. Someone had finally recognized my suffering and showed that others were going through the same thing. It also meant that I wasn't a defective product but the system that I was trying to conform to is.

"It's estimated that, since the days of my youth, depression among children has increased by 1000% and teen suicide by 300%."--Daniel Quinn, Pg. 180, Beyond Civilization

Looking back on my childhood it was pretty pathetic I understood what depression and anxiety were well before I was 12 years old. And from my perspective 25 years later I simply should not have been thinking about that at that age.

Turning to the Notebooks

Yesterday I had a bad day coaching Little League baseball practice. It felt like the team and myself were out of whack. Twenty-four hours later I'm still feeling the effects of this. I've taken the responsibilty of this onto my shoulders because I am the head coach, the team's leader. So I'm turning to my notebooks for some help and inspiration. I wrote this down when I read Phil Jackson's Sacred Hoops back in October of 2010.

"This ancient Zen teaching holds great wisdom for anyone envisioning how to get the most out of a group. Just as fish don't fly and elephants don't play rock and roll, you can't expect a team to perform in a way that's out of tune with it's basic abilities. Though the eagle may soar and fly close to the heavens, it's view of the earth is broad and unclouded. In other words, you can dream all you want, but, bottom line, you've got to work with what you've got. Otherwise, you're wasting your time. The team won't buy your plan and everyone--most of all you--will end up frustrated and disappointed. But when your vision is based on clear-sighted, realistic assessment of your resources, alchemy of the ten mysteriously occurs and a team transforms into a force greater than the sum of its individual talents. Inevitably, pardadoxically, the acceptance of boundaries and limits is the gateway to freedom.

"But visions are never the sole property of one man or one woman. Before a vision can become reality, it must owned by every single member of the group."--Phil Jackson, Pg. 100, Sacred Hoops

I think I have somewhat of a better understanding where my occasional frustration and dissapointment come from. And I'll be learning more about the alchemy of the ten.

Purpose

Off to carry mail for the United States Post Office again today. I don't think I've mentioned this yet but I'm a substitute rural mail carrier. Which means I work an average of one day a year carrying mail. Given our lifestyle that's about enough for me.

Planted thirty-five red pine and an apple tree over the weekend. It always feels good to plant a few trees in the spring. Now the work begins trying to keep them alive through the summer dry spells.

Yesterday I got the chance to sit down and read close to 50 pages in All of the Above. I bookmarked a page so I could write down a quote(I usually do this but never write down the quote. Then I end up pulling books off the shelf looking for the quote that never got written down.)that I think would have went well with yesterday's post.

"It's the last thing he would have expected, but there it was. For the first time in a long time, Cole felt fully alive, as if the state trooper had given him a blessing instead of a fright. He could still feel the Earth moving majestically beneath him. And he could imagine himself standing straight and true on this slowly-spinning ground, as if, finally, finally, he belonged here. There were huge forces at work all around him: spinning underneath, flitting overhead, stirring deep inside. There was some vast story being enacted in the universe. He understood very little of it and he was scared as hell. But he was also needed. He was involved. He had a role. His actions now mattered in a way they never had before. Like a pupal moth beginning to form it's wings, Cole could feel the first hints of some new purpose he might serve in the wider world, some grander meaning he might discover beyond the caretaking of his family. Rather than finding the right script to follow before he could live his life, Cole now found himself thrust onstage with no script at all."--Timothy Scott Bennett, Pg.140, All of the Above

Although I wasn't married after I had read Ishmael, most of the paragraph describes how I felt. There really was no script to follow, and that felt odd but good. It still does.

Shipwrecked

It's been a couple of days since I've watched The River of Vision - On the Works of Daniel Quinn, Author of Ishmael. It's got me thinking about the effects of reading Ishmael. One thing that I think happened to me after I read Ishmael is that I became one of the shipwrecked. Ortega y Gasset once said:

"The [person] with the clear head is the [person] who frees himself from all fantastic 'ideas' and looks life in the face....Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he looks round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only geniune ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest rhetoric, posturing, farce...."

Come to think of it, right now I would say that I was shipwrecked before I read Ishmael and still am over a decade later. The possibility of the human species going extinct still looms on the horizon.

Quinn Quote Saturday

"The evangelist John wrote, 'You must not love the world or the things of the world, for those who love the world are strangers to the love of the Father.' Then just two sentences later, he wrote: 'Children, the final hour is at hand! You've heard that the Antichrist is coming. He's not one but many, and when the many of him are among us, you'll know the final hour has come.'"

"John knew what he was talking about. He was right to warn his followers against those who love the world. We are the ones he was talking about, and this is the final hour--but it's their final hour, not ours. They've had their day, and this is indeed the final hour of that day.

"Now our day begins."--Daniel Quinn, the last page of The Story of B

Videos: Ishmael and The Ripken Way

Again, immersed in learning baseball fundamentals The Ripken Way via CD Rom this morning. Last practice of the week is tonight. Our first game is next Wednesday. I have so much that I want to show the kids and not enough time to do it. A couple of the main reasons I don't have enough time is because the northwestern Wisconsin weather doesn't always cooperate(It snowed for awhile yesterday morning) and I live close to 15 miles from town.

I checked into Facebook to look for an idea for a post and found this YouTube video immediately. It's title: The River of Vision: On the Works of Daniel Quinn, Author of Ishmael. About 3 minutes into the video I wrote this quote down.

"What I have left is an invitation: Jump into the river that is already flowing and let this river carry you. Nevermind that you cannot know with your rational mind where exactly this river might take you. That, indeed, is the whole point. This river may be taking us to a million different destinations. This is something very different from being in control."--Timothy Scott Bennett

It's been over ten years now since I jumped into that river. I still don't understand what baseball and The Ripken Way has to do with it. I'm just going to go with it.

Off the Ground

Off to carry mail for the United States Postal Service today. I'm feeling rushed and rundown. It's probably the combination of many things. Most of all, I think it's the result of running a Little League baseball practice last night and gearing up for the postal work this morning. I don't know how coaches can work full-time and volunteer coach, it must take an unbelievable amount of energy. It reminds me of this quote by Phil Jackson:

There was a time in my life -- I spent fifteen years in my career with New York and New Jersey -- where I always felt if I didn't get those three or four months in Montana to camp, to be on the land, to actually live on the ground and be connected with the ground, then I wasn't really connecting myself with my roots, with that pioneer spirit that is so deeply a part of me. Phil Jackson in Esquire

There is too much going on in my life at the moment to maintain connection with my roots. It'll pass, but it has to be recognized.

My Time Alone

I spent my time alone* this morning watching Billy Ripken explain infielding basics on my Teaching Baseball The Ripken Way CD ROM. Like I said yesterday, I usually spend this time reading, writing and thinking. Perhaps I should call this time soulwork (The poet Robert Bly calls it tending the garden). I don't know. I do know that learning infielding basics doesn't feel like it should fall under the soulwork category. But I'm learning the hard way that if I want to focus on anything without a cluttered mind my time alone is the time to do it.

*I try to get out of bed a few hours before anyone else awakens in my house.

Baseball and Balance

I woke up this morning, sat zazen, poured myself a cup of coffee, went outside with the dog (He ran off and barked and I ended up yelling my head off to get him back to the house)and started a fire in the masonry stove. This is my usual ritual before I sit down to either read or write.

This morning my intentions were to read some of All of the Above (only 60 pages into it and I've had it for a week), but instead I ended up watching Billy Ripken explain infielding basics on our laptop until other family members awoke. I should have known better than to order AotA book from the library. Once baseball starts I have a strong desire to read and listen to baseball fiction and nonfiction. I also find myself(like this morning!)looking for ways on how to become a better coach.

So baseball slowly takes over my life in a way. I don't think it can be helped. I don't know if my character will allow a balanced approach. It's been that way since I've been a kid.

Number Two

I was going to write more on yesterday's subject, but I got sidetracked. Over the winter I read Carl Jung's autobiography Memories Dream and Reflections. And after reading and returning it to the library I remembered two quotes that I regretted not writing down, so I thought I would have to take some time during the upcoming winter to reread it. But while my wife was shopping at a local thrift store a few months back I found one of the Jung quotes while I was paging through Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul. I just opened the book up and there was the quote. I felt lucky. That day I ended up buying two good looking copies of Care of the Soul and Soulmates, both by Thomas Moore.

Well, this morning, the second Jung quote revealed itself to me when I opened up Care of the Soul:

"When I was working on the stone tablets, I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very strongly that I'm under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and distant ancestors."--Carl Jung

There are times when I do to.

Last Night

The other day I posted this. Yesterday he wrote back, and part of what he said was, "Do you have Ishmael? I am curious to read it."

Now for anyone that has read Ishmael you know this is the moment you have been waiting for. It's your opportunity to change a mind and help save the world. All you have to do is get them the book and the rest will take care of itself. Why? Because the books are tools to change minds.

Well, I sat and stared at the computer screen for an hour last night trying to figure how I was going to respond to that question. Here is what I came up with: "Sure, I have a copy you can borrow. Let me know when you have time to read it, I'll bring a copy into town."

Earth shattering, isn't it?

Before I get my day started here I can think of three reasons why I stared at that screen for an hour last night:

One is that I'm revealing to him a big part of who I am. The degree of vulnerability has increased. There is a good chance (He was born, raised and is a practicing Catholic) that he is going to sit down with that book and get part way through it, close it up, and wonder how I can buy into it. The irony in this is: I often wonder the same thing about Christians. The second is I don't want to see him walk away from his faith. I'm not out to convert anyone. And the third is I don't want to get myself into a situation where he will try to convert me. My soul doesn't need saving.

Quinn Quote Saturday

“Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he's done--almost. He hasn't quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man's conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world--or to repair the devastation we've already wrought. We've poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit--and we go on pouring our poisons into the world. We've gobbled up irreplaceable resources as though they could never run out--and we go on gobbling them up. It's hard to imagine how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody's really doing anything about it. It's a problem our children will have to solve, or their children." ―Daniel Quinn

A Question From An Aquaintance

Opened up my email this morning to an interesting question from an acquaintance. He is a practicing Catholic.

"Do you or your wife have any faith traditions in your family- either now, or in your upbringing? Maybe a topic for another day...."

Given the quotes I've shared the past couple of days this question comes at an interesting time.

Here is my answer: No, neither one of us have experienced or currently practice faith traditions. You'd have to go back to our grandparents to find family members practicing faith traditions. Personally, I don't believe or disbelieve in anything. Perhaps another day we could discuss this, I'm always open to listening to other's stories and viewpoints. I will say that my thinking and worldview have been heavily influenced and shaped by Daniel Quinn's novel Ishmael.

Same Theme as Yesterday

A follow up quote to the quote I posted yesterday. It's been well over ten years since I've read Providence, and these quotes still resonate with me to this day. Part of why they do, I think, is they get rid of the idea that God will somehow intervene and save us from the problems we've created for ourselves, especially environmental problems like: human overpopulation, overuse of resources, and climate change. The idea that humans can go extinct and nothing will stop it from happening is very real to me. Quote below:

"Don't misunderstand me. The fact that the gods don't take our side against others doesn't imply that we have to do the same. The horse doesn't wait for the gods to intervene when it's attacked by a puma; it uses all its strength and every weapon at it possesses to save its life. We're free to do the same - as free as any other creature. If a lion attacks us, the gods will not defend us, because they're no more on our side than they're on the side of the lion, but we're at liberty to defend ourselves with whatever weapon we can wield. Our best weapon of defense is of course our intelligence. If there's a cancer growing inside of you, the gods aren't on your side against it, but that doesn't mean you have to throw up your hands and allow it to destroy your life; defend yourself against it with every resource you can bring to bear.

"People have written to me to ask: 'What can I do about the spiders that invade my house? May I kill them or do I just have to put up with them?' Such questions can always be safely referred to our neighbors in the community of life. A dog or a chimpanzee or a sparrow cannot be mistaken in such matters; they cannot mislead themselves with false, convenient arguments. Ask your dog what he does with the fleas that invade his coat, and he'll show you: He does his best to kill them. You can do the same, without apology. The gods will not take your side against the rest of the world just because you're human, but they will also not take the side of the rest of the world against you just because you're human." Daniel Quinn, Providence

Beautiful Summary

The Jehovah's Witnesses used to stop by and do their best to assure my salvation by following their vision. Annie (my wife) used to hate it when they pulled in the driveway, but I didn't mind it so much. There was a part of me that admired their faith and dedication. And, of course, I got to talk about religion, philosophy and hear their stories (My favorite). Anyway, I remember vividly trying to explain to them why I didn't think an all-knowing and all-seeing God was looking out for me anymore than he/she/it was looking out for a red fox, so I didn't accept their vision. Below is a beautiful summary of what my perspective was.
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"Another great supporter of Ishmael, Michael Belk, sent me a book called Disappointment with God and asked me what I thought of it. As the title suggests, it's a study of people's disappointment with God: Why did God let this terrible thing happen? Why didn't God respond to my prayers? And so on. I found it puzzling that he'd want my opinion of it, but by the time I was finished I realized that the book had given me an insight into my own relationship to the universe: I am never disappointed with God (or as I prefer to say, the gods). This is because I never expect the gods to take my side against others. If I come down with the flu, I don't expect the gods to take my side against the virus that is pursuing its life in my body. If I travel to Africa, I don't expect the gods to strike dead a mosquito that is about to have lunch on my neck (and incidentally give me a case of malaria). If a wildcat attacks me in the hills of New Mexico, I don't expect the gods to help me kill it. If I'm swimming in the ocean, I don't expect the gods to chase away the sharks. I have no illusion that the gods favor me (or any other human) over viruses, sharks, wildcats, mosquitoes, or any other life form. And if they don't favor me over a June bug or a mushroom, why would they favor me over another human being? If a friend of mine is killed in a random act of terrorist violence, I'm not going to blame the gods for this. To me, this would be nonsense. And I certainly don't expect the gods to suspend the laws of physics to protect me from landslides, lightning bolts, or burning buildings." -- Daniel Quinn, from Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest

Postal Service and Libraries

Opened up my email this morning to discover a library notice stating that a copy of All of the Above has arrived for me from Bellingham, Washington. That's a long way for a book to travel. Feeling the need to express my appreciation for the United States Postal Service and our library service. One helps put food on the table and pay the bills, the other helps keep new ideas flowing into our house. Mind and body satisfied.

Grocery Shopping

Awhile back, while sitting in the car in the grocery store parking lot waiting for my family to get done grocery shopping (Although rarely, there are times when I can't bring myself to go in push the shopping cart) I once heard author Thom Hartmann state that one of the reasons the right wing made war on the middle class is simply because when there was a thriving middle class in America the youth seek justice, and you get revolutions like you did in the 1960's. Some people on the right don't like that.

Digging Up The Past

Why is it, that after listening to Rush Limbaugh for about ten minutes on the mail route yesterday, that I felt the need to turn on this computer and dig up this perspective that was written almost 3 years ago about President Obama:

"It is said that Obama is wearing a mask, being a deceiver, as if he carefully pretended to be a progressive activist for a quarter of a century because a time traveler from the future told him that would get him elected president in 2008 so he could pursue his secret right wing globalist agenda. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" -- but it's hard to imagine two presidents more different than Obama and Bush. The fact that the country is moving the same direction under each of them should tell us something else: the president is not the boss. Obama has never worn a mask -- Obama is the mask, and not a very good one. It has never been more obvious that America is an ossified dying empire with a suicidal inertia that no leader or movement can stop. If Sarah Palin, Dennis Kucinich, or Carrot Top were president, the system that the president pretends to run would still be bailing out banks and insurance companies, escalating wars, hiding atrocities, and generally chugging along to its ruin."--Ran Prieur, December 14, 2009

DQ Quote Saturday

"In the ten years that have passed since its publication, no one (including me) has come up with a satisfactory way of explaining what Ishmael is "about." Franz Kafka once wrote to a friend that the only books worth reading are those that "wake us up with a blow on the head" and send us reeling out into the street, not knowing who or what we are. According to thousands of readers I've heard from, this is exactly what Ishmael does for them. What makes Ishmael important is not what it's "about" but rather what it DOES to you--and this is what you need to share with your friends. If it's taken you to a new place in your life (as many people say it has), then tell them that if they want to keep up with you, they're just going to have read it. Whatever it's done to you or for you, that's what will impress your friends, and that's what you need to convey to them."--Daniel Quinn

ReadIshmael.com

Delusions

Ended up grabbing Doug Brown's Roadmap to Sustainability off the shelf this morning. I've probably done this a couple dozen times now. It just goes to show that thought is nonlinear, atleast my thinking anyway. I ran across this quote by Gandhi:

"The ideal of creating an unlimited number of wants and satisfying them seems to be a delusion and a snare."--Gandhi

This delusion runs The Economy.

Headed South

Yesterday afternoon we headed south to Rice Lake to do some shopping. Afterwards we decided to head 20 miles further south down to Chetek to listen to local author Micheal Perry speak at The Calhoun Memorial Public Library. It was well worth it. He is an amazing speaker and writer. His work has definately had an influence on what little bit of writing I do.

After returning home I picked up the pencil and scribbled down how I would be content visiting small towns throughout Wisconsin to spend a little bit of time at their library and local baseball diamonds. Don't know why, but I'm going to go with it.

Control and Hope

Getting ready to carry some mail for the United States Postal Service today.

I came across this quote and interview that resonated with me over at Timothy Scott Bennett's Facebook page:

"I don’t think we need hope. I think we need imagination. We need to imagine a future which can’t be planned for and can’t be controlled. I find that people who talk about hope are often really talking about control. They hope desperately that they can keep control of the way things are panning out. Keep the lights on, keep the emails flowing, keep the nice bits of civilisation and lose the nasty ones; keep control of their narrative, the world they understand. Giving up hope, to me, means giving up the illusion of control and accepting that the future is going to be improvised, messy, difficult."

A Daily Dose of Despair

A few months back I wrote down this line by the poet Mary Oliver: "Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine."

My despair for as long as I can remember has been The Secret Plan* remains a secret. There isn't a day that goes by where I don't feel some level of grief because of this.

*"Our secret plan is this: We're going to go on consuming the world until there's no more to consume. This does not preclude consuming it "wisely" or consuming it as slowly as possibly. It doesn't preclude supporting every conceivable conservation initiative. It doesn't preclude supporting every conceivable means of recycling. We're going to recycle, we're going to conserve-- but we're also going to go on consuming until there's no more to consume."--Daniel Quinn from On Investments

Ashes

Woke up this morning feeling like I had to search this poem out:

Well, on the day I was born,
God was sick...
They all know that I'm alive,
that I chew my food...and they don't know
why harsh winds whistle in my poems,
the narrow uneasiness of a coffin,
winds untangled from the sphinx...

On the day I was born,
God was sick,
gravely.--Cesar Vallejo

As I get older I'm trying to accept this state of feeling.

Thank you to Robert Bly for introducing me to this poem.

Bunny Rabbits and Easter

The other day my 12 yr. old son asked: "Dad, why do we have the Easter bunny?" Of course, I didn't have the foggiest idea. But, lo and behold, while finishing up reading The Maiden King this morning, the answer appeared:

"The goddess of the spring equinox was Eastre, the hare was her ritual animal and the egg her fertility symbol. The image suggests the lasciviousness of the goddess, the sheer lusciousness of life, sexuality, and birth. And with the goddess, the moon, the luminous white of the moon that carries the imprint of the hare, shines."

"Moon goddess imagery carries the cyclic pattern; it is simply a law of life. The forest knows how to sacrifice parts of itself that have to give way to new growth. The grief in the dying gives place to the miracle of resurrection. The hare willingly sacrifices itself for the sake of spirit: unconscious matter sacrifices itself for conscious awareness.

"Farmers who know hares well think of them as sacrificial animals. When fields and hedges are burned off, they see hares who refuse to run before the fire reaches them, suddenly leap, their fur on fire, to run to their death aflame. The more we meditate on the hare, the more we love this animal that, like the moon, dies to be reborn." [Page 217, The Maiden King]

Perhaps it was moment of synchronicity.

Quinn Quote Saturday

"When our children start becoming murderers, we typically don't wonder what's wrong with the system that's turning them INTO murderers, we wonder what's wrong with THEM. Imagine an assembly line that out of every hundred vehicles turns out one that is horribly defective. Then imagine--instead of examining the assembly line--taking the defective vehicle out and shooting it. Then, when the next one comes along--instead of examining the assembly line--taking THAT one and shooting it. And when the next one comes along--instead of examining the assembly line--taking THAT one out and shooting it."--Daniel Quinn

I pulled this quote from this essay.

A True Coaching Inspiration

Revisiting this powerful article for some inspiration before baseball practices start next week. Mike Powell, in my mind, is a good example of a male mother for his players, and what masculinity is to some degree. He's showed the boys his wounds and in return they've showed him their wounds. I think it was the mythologist Micheal Meade who once said, "I'll show you my wound if you show me yours." I have learned through experience it is a challenge to lay your wounds out there for younger men hear, but they won't trust you otherwise.

Quote from article: "Powell's goal, as he told his friends, was 'for each boy to say that for the first time in my academic career I had someone who really loved me.'"

Animal Souls

The other day our 12 yr. old mentioned that his friend informed him that animals didn't have souls, but humans do. Well, I said, I guess that all depends on who you ask.

“Many Indians have told me that the most basic difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that Westerners view the world as dead, and not as filled with speaking, thinking, feeling subjects as worthy and valuable as themselves.” ― Derrick Jensen

Giving up Money

I don't know if it was a good idea to read this article before going off to earn some money delivering mail.

Finding God?

The other day our 12 yr. old son mentioned that one of his friends asked him if he believed in God. While he was explaining his answer to me I remembered a moment a few years back when a friend of mine asked me over the internet if I was agnostic. I said I didn't think so. I wasn't familiar with agnoticism to give him a definite answer at that time. So what did I do? I visited the Ishmael Community. And I went to the question and answer section of the website and typed in agnostic. Here is what I read:

I'm simply saying that I'm unable to put myself in any camp with regard to the existence of God. I can't join the atheists (who assert that there are zero gods), I can't join the monotheists (who assert that there is one god), and I can't join the polytheists (who assert that there are many gods). Nor am I an agnostic; I'm not saying I DON'T KNOW whether God exists, I'm saying this knowledge is UNOBTAINABLE. It's not that I don't HAVE it, it's that it's NOT THERE to be had.

Or you could put it this way: God's existence is an object not of knowledge but of belief. It's possible to BELIEVE that there is no God, one God, or many gods, but it's not possible to KNOW any of these things. I should add that, while it's POSSIBLE to believe one of these things, it's not NECESSARY to believe one of them. One is to FREE to choose one of these beliefs to embrace, but one is not COMPELLED to choose one. --Daniel Quinn from Question #538

I put the quote above in my own words and answered my friends question. Why? Because it makes sense to me.

Fears and Doubts

My mind has been consumed with fears and doubts since three AM. They all revolve the question if I have what it takes to coach my son's Little League baseball team. This has happened every year since I first started coaching his team 3 years ago. It seems like as long as I remain a baseball coach I will have to go through this process before the season starts, and occasionally throughout the season. I'm beginning to accept this as part of my coaching experience.

TEOTWAWKI

I try on a daily basis to check out Timothy Scott Bennett's Facebook page. For those of you who don't recognize the name, he is the author of All of the Above. I consider him to be an author with a changed mind*, and that's one of the reasons I follow his work. And to be honest I haven't read All of the Above yet, but I plan on it. The other day I had one of the librarians at our local library check to see if she could get it for me through inter-library loan. She located two copies: one in Missouri and one in Washington. She put the order in and said, "we'll see what happens." It's a long way from Missouri to northwestern Wisconsin, so I will probably just end up buying the book.

The point of this post, though, is to mention what he said on his facebook page yesterday. It resonated with me. It's what I've felt and what I've heard others express in one way or another. It's something that my great-grandfather(He was a Jehovah Witness) spent alot of time thinking and talking about, so I've heard. It's what Derrick Jensen means when he says that this culture has a death urge. Here is what I read on Mr. Bennett's page:

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the problem with "warning" that "civilization is at stake" is that, at a deep emotional, psychological, and spiritual level, and likely unbeknownst to the vast majority of people in which this is at work, the Civilized™ humans on this planet seem, to my mind, to actually be craving TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it.) I'd much rather we become conscious of, and speak about that possibility, and why that might be the True™.--Timothy Scott Bennett

My great-grandfather died when I was around a year old. But given the chance I would have asked him why he thought the world was going to end. I was never convinced by the "he was just a nutcase" argument. Why? Because I think at some level we're all craving it. It's just that some have better ways of expressing it than others.


*His work has been influenced by Daniel Quinn.