Unexpressed Tolerance Felt as Hoplessness

I'm still immersed (captivated might be a better word to use) in the biography titled: The Ideas of James Hillman, by Dick Russell. There are so many new and refreshing ideas in his work I think it would take me a couple lifetimes to understand them all. Also, since I'm learning more about his life I've been inspired to listen to some of the talks I have downloaded of his. I have been delivering mail quite a bit the past couple of weeks so I've had plenty of time alone in the car for listening. I'll share a quote out of the talk titled Myths of the Family below.

"Family love allows family pathology. An immense unexpressed tolerance felt as hopelessness for the hopeless shadow in each. The shadow that we carry as a permanent part of our baggage and which we unpack when we go home."--James Hillman, 32 minutes into disc one of Myths of the Family

This is fascinating to me and I'll tell you why. He's expressed elegantly what happens when we go home to our family. For who better knows our shadow than our families? Robert Bly once said that you usually can't see your own shadow but your family and friends can. Also paralysis is the greatest form of acceptance there is because there is no attempt to change anyone. In other words, the regressive needs of the soul are contained within the family.

Character

"To make sense of later years and the often absurd predicaments and ridiculous degradations congruent with age, we do well to return to one of the deepest questions human thought has posed: What is character, and how does it force us into the patterns we live? What ages is not merely your functions and organs, but the whole of your nature, that particular person you have come to be and already were years ago. Character has been forming your face, your habits, your friendships, your peculiarities, the level of your ambition with its career and its faults."-- James Hillman, Pg. xv, The Force of Character

Pray To The Animals

Thinking about animals this morning.

Years ago I heard a story of an American Indian spiritual leader who was in a circle with a bunch of environmentalists who were drumming and singing. One of the environmentalists prayed, "Please save the spotted owl, the river otter, the peregrine falcon."

The Indian got up and whispered, "What are you doing, friend?"

"I'm praying for the animals."

"Don't pray for the animals. Pray to the animals." The Indian paused, then continued, "You're so arrogant, you think you're bigger than they are, right? Don't pray for the redwood. Pray that you can become as courageous as a redwood. Ask the redwood what it wants."-- Derrick Jensen, Pg.132, Thought To Exist In The Wild: Awakening From The Nightmare of Zoos

Thank You Mr. Mussolini

"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." - Benito Mussolini

Thank you Mr. Mussolini for summing up our current state of political affairs.

Hard Books

In the past my wife has given me a hard time about reading serious books all the time. For example, I read a half a dozen psychology books by James Hillman this winter. It used to bother me to a certain degree. I, of course, thought it was some kind of neurosis or obsession. There just aren't many people around me that read the stuff I read, at least that I know of. It sort of gives one the feeling of an expatriate. It also reminds me of an interview that I listened to with the poet Robert Bly recently. In it he mentioned how our culture has really fallen apart in the last 10 to 15 years. One of the reasons he gave was that no one tackles hard books anymore. It also takes me back to a comment that a guy I work with made a year or so ago: "I don't read because I don't have the time. I've got more important things to do. I'm too busy."

I wish I had more time to read. I don't because I've got responsibilities to my family. Or perhaps it's like I've heard Hillman say in one of his interviews: I'm stuck in family values. Something the republican part and new age Christians continue to hammer home to their followers. If you ever want to listen to a really good talk about family that James Hillman did well ever 20 years ago google: Myths of The Family. Or I could find a way to email it to you.

Here is a quote related to the subject at hand:

"Studying literature or other things is just study, but philosophy is living and is part of you. I sit and think about it all the time. I have tried to get back to reading a novel or two, but just can't [get] interested or started. It is the first time such a thing has happened, I usually have a lot of books I should read and want to read."-- Pg. 212, James Hillman writing in his early twenties, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

That quote resonates with me. I've always been really attracted to philosophy and can't find the time to start and get interested in a good novel.

Joy Forever

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."--John Keats

Man Of Action

"The saddest of all America's complexes is its idolatry of the man of action. Will we never leave the frontier stage?"--James Hillman, pg.169, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

Writing A Bit More These Days

And because of that this advice by George Santayana to James Hillman about writing interested me after running across it in my morning reading:

"If you to write it is not necessary to be complete (formal education, knowledge) but be in harmony with yourself, read what interests you."--Pg.160, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

Children and Childhood

The other day a friend of mine sent me Michael Meade's Alchemy of Fire lectures. And in it he mentioned an idea that I've heard repeated by others (Robert Bly, James Hillman) in the men's movement of the late eighties and early nineties: We Americans idealize childhood and hate our children. Perhaps this explains why funding is being cut for the arts and general education in the public sphere, or how we've made sex into a plaything.

Delivering Mail Again Today

My God, I'm living at the end of the Oil Age and my wife is delivering car advertisements to everyone on her mail route today. Most of the people I've talked to say they take those flyers and walk straight from the mailbox to the garbage can (Notice I didn't say recycling bin) or they take great joy in watching them burn in their burning barrels.

Also, here is a quote out of a 1973 mystery novel that a friend shared with me this morning:

"Our myth has been that our standard of living would become available to all the peoples of the world. Myths wear thin. We have a visceral appreciation of the truth. That truth, which we don't dare announce to the world, is what gives us the guilt and the shame and the despair. Nobody in the world will ever live as well, materially, as we once did. And now, as our materialism begins to sicken us, it is precisely what the emerging nations want for themselves. And can never have. Brazil might manage it. But no one else."--John D MacDonald, The Scarlet Ruse

Not Enough Death

"Our Culture is singular for its ignorance of death. The great art and celebrations of many other cultures--ancient Egyptian and Etruscan, the Greek of Eleusis, Tibetan---honor the underworld....The soul...desires to go beyond, to go ever inward and deeper."--James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld

The Bible and Last Sunday's Visit With My Grandparents

Last Sunday I was over visiting my grandparents (My mom's parents) and we got on the subject of gay marriage. Of course the conversation then moved to God and the Bible. The conversation was short. And to close it I repeated a statement that my grandmother (My dad's mom) was fond of saying when she was alive: The Bible was written by the hand of man, so I don't trust it. My grandpa smiled at me and said she was right.

I have never read the bible cover to cover. I've only read bits and pieces, usually opening it up when it has been quoted by an author that I'm reading at the time. Anyway, while reading James Hillman's biography this morning I ran across this quote by his grandfather. He was a Jewish rabbi during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"We recognize the truth in every religion...We discard the belief that the Bible was written by God, or by man under the immediate dictation of God, and that its teachings are therefore infallible and binding upon all men and all ages... it is the work of man and shares all the faults that characterize the religious writings of bygone ages; its self-evident contradictions, its conflicts with the indisputable facts of science, show conclusively the human and the primitive human mind." [Joseph Krauskopf, Page 66, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman]

A hundred years later his grandson went on to write in A Terrible Love of War (A book I highly recommend):

"To consider the events in the Bible as legends, myths, and stories, or as exemplary lessons for learning life's truths, opens the mind to imaginative speculation, shaking belief in the Bible's revelation of the true words of its God."--James Hillman, A Terrible Love of War

In other words, don't take it literally. I've heard Robert Bly say that angry people have forgotten how to think metaphorically.

There it is, a blog post by 8:30 AM. Now it's time to get a bite to eat, then go out and dig some fence posts in bone-dry, sandy soil. We desperately need a good rain. We haven't had a notable amount of rainfall since late June or early July I believe.

Ruling The World

"Male rule of the world has its emotional roots in female rule of early childhood."--Dorothy Dinnerstein

Started A New Book This Morning

This morning I started officially reading The Life and Ideas of James Hillman, by Dick Russell. In the past month or so I've been randomly opening it up and reading bits and pieces.

Yesterday I made it a point to tune into Wisconsin Public Radio and listened to local author Michael Perry. As always it was a pleasure to listen to an interview with him. There were a couple of things I took from the interview: One, he mentioned that he was an amateur fan of Montaigne. I'd consider myself an amateur fan of James Hillman. Secondly, he said that he'd never come out of the room that he writes in if given the chance. I often fantasize about that, but it's pretty much impossible right now given that I have three children. I help unschool our 14 year old son and have a 4 and 1 year old that demand a lot of my attention.

One of the quotes out of The Life and Ideas of James Hillman that gives me a better idea of what the soul is.

"Hillman's approach takes psychology back to its ancient origins where the word literally means 'study of the soul,' deriving from the Greek psyche. For Hillman, soul is not a substance but a perspective, 'an inner place...that is simply there even when all our subjectivity, ego, and consciousness go into eclipse.' It is also 'the imaginative possibility in our natures...that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern."[pg.xix]

I do a lot of reading of footnotes. I learned today that Hillman made a book proposal back in 2002. It's title: The World's Playground: How and Why America is a Child Among Nations. Sounds fascinating. I wish it would've seen the light of day.

Are Fantasies Alive?

I wrote down two quotes this morning. One out of Sit Down and Shut Up, by Brad Warner. The other out of The Life and Ideas of James Hillman, by Dick Russell. I'm confused by them. I'm hearing in them that Buddhists don't think fantasies are alive and archetypal psychology views them as living beings that are archetypal. Perhaps, here again, spirit is claiming itself to be superior to soul.

"'...through the imagination man has access to the gods: through the memoria the gods enter our lives.' So it might be that psychological language must 'find its kinship, not with the logics of scientific reason or with the exercises of a behaving will, but with the arts.' 'Why are our fantasies embarrassing to tell, and why are we embarrassed hearing the intimate tales of another's imagination?...The shame about our fantasies gives testimony to their importance.' Our will and intelligence do not embarrass us in the same way, yet 'the revelation of fantasies exposes the divine, which implies that our fantasies are alien because they are not ours. They arise from the transpersonal background, from nature or spirit or the divine, even as they become personalized through our lives, moving our personalities into mythic enactments."[pg.617, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman]

"To a Buddhist everything is alive, including wells. The only things that aren't alive are those fantasies we create in our heads." [Brad Warner, pg. 240, Sit Down and Shut Up]

I'm wondering if one denies that fantasies are alive then one is denying the existence of the gods. If you've read The Holy by Daniel Quinn you might have a better understanding of where I'm coming from. What I got from that book is that the gods and our fantasies are beyond our minds but yet influence our actions. So how could they not be alive? I thought the gods are eternal and immortal.

Getting Old

This 10 minute video is well worth the time it takes to watch. It helped me understand my grandparents (I lived with them for 5 years). It also helped me realize that aging is no accident and with it comes a level of vitality if one has the right perspective.

If I Had More Money

I donated $25 to the making of this film this morning. If I had more money I'd donate more. Thomas Linzey's work is truly inspiring. It has inspired me to do what I can to help challenge illegitimate structure of law that keeps communities from moving in the direction of sustainability.

Letter to the Editor

It was nice to take a 48 hour break from the internet. I finally got on to sit down and write a letter to our local newspaper's editor.

Sustainable Communities

It was a pleasure to read [Insert Name] letter to the editor last week. Why? Because a fellow citizen mentioned local government doing something about global warming in the first paragraph of his letter. Then that fellow citizen went on to point out that we can't expect federal and state government bodies to do much about the future of humanity on this planet.

A number of thinkers over the years, like Thomas Linzey from The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, have pointed out that state and federal environmental laws do more to protect the rights of corporations over the rights of communities and ecosystems. In other words, what environmental regulations regulate is environmentalists.

Perhaps this is why we're seeing militant environmentalism in the Penokee Hills. Maybe their actions are a result of the inherent injustice in the laws that have been written to protect the environment. As a result they've taken it upon themselves to do something about this in ways that most of us would not approve of. This is nothing new, of course. We've seen this throughout history surrounding many injustices. Slaves formed underground railroads and the Black Panthers fought back by any means necessary when faced with overt racism.

So this has got me wondering: If more citizens got together in their communities to lay out their visions of what a sustainable community is there would be no need for militant environmentalists because they'd have local laws in place to protect themselves and their landbase from destructive activities like the one being proposed in the Penokee Hills or the various frac sand mines to the south of us.

I think it's time for us to take the advice of Rene Diderot--the spiritual father of our American democracy-- when he said "If we look to the city rather than the state it's because we've given up hope that the state may create a new image for the city." That's what our country was founded on and perhaps that's what it is going to take for it to survive into the future.

What Family Is

Thank you to James Hillman for helping me understand what family is instead of what it ought to be.

"The measure of a family's magnanimity is not what it gives to charity but rather its capacity to shelter the shadows of its members." [Pg.199, A Blue Fire]

The desire to win and Lombardi

Vince Lombardi is on my mind today. I learned today from author Phil Cousineau that Lombardi is didn't say "Winning isn't everything but the only thing," but "The effort to win is everything." The latter having much more to do with the desire to excel.

Our Name

"No one knows our name until our last breath goes out."--Rumi

On My Own This Morning

I finished up Hardcore Zen this morning.

"It's a frightening thing to be truly honest with yourself. It means you have no one left to turn to anymore, no one to blame, and to no one look to for salvation. You have to give up any possibility that there will ever be any refuge for you. You have to accept the reality that you are truly and finally on your own. The best thing you can hope for in life is to meet a teacher who will smash all your dreams, dash all of your hopes, tear your teddy-bear beliefs out of your arms and them over a cliff."--Brad Warner, pg.184, Hardcore Zen

I wonder how alone we really want to be in this. I think of archetypal psychologist's James Hillman's statement that meditation feeds the capitalistic-individualistic, developing ego, and personal growth fantasy. In other words, the child archetype.

I've heard the Buddha once said "work at your salvation with diligence." Why can't this be a community activity? Perhaps that's what the Sangha is for. I don't know that much about Buddhism to say for sure.

Brad Warner asks on page 184 of Hardcore Zen: "Why is it that we prefer fantasies to what our life really is?" I think of Carl Jung's statement that "Fantasy creates reality everyday." The goal in Zen Buddhism, the way I understand it, is to get beyond your fantasies and see reality for what it is. But I'm hearing thinkers like Jung and Hillman say there is nothing more powerful than fantasy, it creates our reality. It is reality. Perhaps they're speaking from the perspective of soul and Brad Warner is speaking for the perspective of spirit. And, like I've heard Hillman say many times, spirit posits itself as The Truth. Or to use another quote from Joseph Campbell, “The only problem with Yahweh is he thinks he's. God!" It's an old Gnostic saying.

Just some random thoughts this morning...

How Old?

"How old are we before we realize someone inside doesn't wish us well?"--Robert Bly in The Sibling Society

When?

A few minutes ago I was trying to figure out what to post then out of the blue my son said this:

"I wonder how many times they have to predict the end of the world before it actually happens?"

I often wonder this myself.

What's Right

Ran across this gem in Hardcore Zen, by Brad Warner. "Never let your sense of morals keep you from doing what's right."-- Isaac Asimov

Some Rumi On A Sunday Morning

I haven't cracked open my daily readings of Rumi in awhile. I decided to this Sunday morning. Yesterday's poem resonates.

Now I return to the text.

And He is with you,
wherever you are.
(Qur'an 57:4)

But when have I ever left it?

Ignorance is God's prison.
Knowing is God's palace.

We sleep in God's unconsciousness
We wake in God's open hand.

We weep God's rain.
We laugh God's lightning.

Fighting and peacefulness
both take place within God.

Who are we then
in this complicated world-tangle,
that is really just the single straight line
down at the beginning of Allah?

Nothing.
We are emptiness.--Rumi (Pg. 216, A Year With Rumi, Coleman Barks translator)

Vico and Universali Fantastici

"The basic layer of mind is poetic, mythic, expressed by universali fantastici, which I translate as acrchetypal patterns of imagination."--James Hillman, Pg.7-8, A Terrible Love of War

Some Questions To Ponder Before Bed

"Every event and circumstance in this world is dependent on complex causes and conditions that are constantly arising and disappearing. The pleasures, conditions, beliefs, and relationships that I rely on — which of them is genuinely reliable and lasting? What am I taking for granted? As I observe the world about me, I can see that everything changes — nothing stays the same. The inhabitants of the world come and go. Every one of them will die. Though I see change, impermanence, and death all around me, I act as though I were going to live forever — but I too will die. My death will definitely come, and I have no idea when. I may live a long time, or I may die today. What I do know is that each day brings me one day closer to my inevitable death. Nothing — not wealth, intelligence, strength, power, friends or family — will prevent me from dying. Where in my life do I ignore change? What am I trying to cling to? What is really important to me? Am I living the life that I want?"-- George Draffan

Peter Pan and Puer Projections Of The Future

"Hopeful Greening: A New Age of Aquarius. Global village, self determination of ethnic cohesive societies like Slovakia and Slovenia. New conflict-resolution models. Billions of trees reforested like a thousand points of light; biotechnology for 'cleaning up' after environmental disasters. Racial and gender equality. Community care, hospices, day-care centers, parental leave, integrated schools, rebirth of the arts with spiritual and social purpose. Peace dividends. Permissive suicide, permissive sexual affiliations. All the walls tumbling down. Legalized prostitution, legalized marijuana. Creative education. Universal access for the impaired and deprived. Health care and wealth share." James Hillman, Pg. 228, Kinds of Power

Still Riding Rilke's Wings

No matter how deeply I go into myself
my God is dark, and like a webbing made
of a hundred roots, that drink in silence.--Rainer Maria Rilke

Digging Up Rilke

I had to dig up this Rilke poem this morning:

Sometimes a Man Stands Up

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 glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.--Rainer Maria Rilke

A Poem By A Crazy Japanese Monk

You do this, you do that
You argue left, you argue right
You come down, you go up
This person says no, you say yes
Back and forth
You are happy
You are really happy--Ikkyu

Happiness Happens

"Robert Johnson wrote that the word happiness comes from to happen. Our happiness is what happens. That's different from the Declaration of Independence, which states that each person has the right to pursue happiness, meaning that if we don't have it we have a right to go after it. But Johnson says that as soon as we pursue it, we lose it." -- Jeff Bridges, Pg.33, The Dude and The Zen Master

This isn't the first time I've come across this line of thinking. James Hillman has said the right to pursue happiness should be taken right out of the Declaration of Independence.

The Wild Man Then The Witches

"The burning of the Wild Man preceded the burning of the witches by several centuries, and it proceeded from the same fear and anger."-- Robert Bly, pg. 246, Iron John

Enemies Keep You Sharp

"Plutarch declares enemies keep us on guard and sharp...the ability to have enemies keep us on guard and sharp...the ability to have enemies might be a sign of a sound ego."-- Pg. 476, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

Men Moving

"Men do unite by moving toward each other directly but only by losing themselves in the same god."-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Inside and Outside

"Are you able to remember yourself at age five, seven, nine, ten? Do you recall yearning to be allowed to sit in a classroom for six hours a day? No, neither do I. Do you remember where you wanted to be? Or can you imagine where you might have wanted to be? Well, yes, certainly out-of-doors, not in a school, but..."--Daniel Quinn, pg. 122, Providence

A Man After My Heart

"I said we were addicted to innocence, we're also addicted to newness. Every bloody thing in America has to be new, why?...Why are we talking about emergence, evolution...Why are we talking about what the hell's coming, let's face that right off the bat. We know what's here, and it's pretty bloody serious...we are in a very serious destructive phase, and it doesn't do us any good to be wishful and hopeful, it does us a lot more good to be faithful to what is, what really is, and to struggle with it."-- James Hillman in a 2005 debate with Deepak Chopra

It's A Good Fight

"A [Psychiatric] clinic was opened in NY City. In the first 31 months, 10,750 individual people came for free or cheap psychotherapy! Strain is the best thing we have. The breakdowns, strains, cracks are the ultimate answer to the big technological machine. The machine gets better and better and the people crack...either the machine will slow to a halt because the people can't manage it any longer, or the machine will win and the fittest people (i.e. most mechanized and oiled) will survive. It's a good fight." James Hillman in a letter to Mike Donleavy

It Can With Courage

"The soul can become a reality again only when each of us has the courage to take it as the first reality in our own lives, to stand for it and not just 'believe' in it."--James Hillman, Pg. 100, Suicide and The Soul

No Need To School

For a couple of days now I have been trying to come up with a post to express my frustration with other homeschooling parents that I've come into contact with in my community. Why? Over the years every parent I've talked to assumes that we keep our kids out of public school based on Christian values. In other words, they think that we think there needs to be more Christianity taught in our schools. That's not the case. And here is where I think my frustration is coming from: I don't think children need to be schooled (Daniel Quinn convinced me of this back in the late nineties), but I never say it. That would be blasphemy. And I think it would open up can of worms that I don't want opened.

"I'm not in the least favor of home schooling, Julie. It's not merely linguistic whimsy that connects the schooling of children with the schooling of fish. Schooling of any kind is unnecessary and counterproductive in human children. Children no more need schooling at age five or six or seven or eight than they need it age two or three, when they effortlessly perform prodigies of learning. In recent years parents have seen the futility of sending their children to regular schools, and the schools have replied by saying, 'Well, all right, we'll permit you to keep your children at home, but of course you understand that your children still must be schooled, you can't just trust them to learn what they need to learn. We'll check up on you to make sure you're not just letting them learn what they need to learn but are learning what our state legislators and curriculum writers think they should learn.' At age five or six home schooling might be a lesser evil than regular schooling, but after that it's hardly even a lesser evil. Children don't need schooling. They need access to what they want to learn--and that means they need access to the world outside the home."-- Daniel Quinn, Pg.166, My Ishmael

Facts and Essences

"He who begins with facts will never arrive at essences." --Jean Paul Sartre

Inspired by The Theory of Truth

I found myself inspired by this small excerpt out of The Theory of Truth, by Robinson Jeffers.

Because only
tormented persons want truth.
Man is an animal like other animals, wants food and success and women, not truth. Only if the mind
Tortured by some interior tension has despaired of happiness:
then it hates its life-cage and seeks further,
And finds, if it is powerful enough. But instantly the private
agony that made the search
Muddles the finding.--Robinson Jeffers

Children and History

"I do endorse the teaching of everything, because everything is what children want to know. What children very deeply want to know of history is HOW THINGS GOT TO BE THIS WAY--but no one in your culture would think of teaching them that. Instead they're overwhelmed with ten million names, dates, and facts they 'should' know, but that vanish from their heads the moment they're no longer needed to pass a test. It's like handing a thousand-page medical text to a four-year old who wants to know where babies come from." -- Daniel Quinn, pg.148, My Ishmael

Depth and World

"Think lightly of yourself and think deeply of the world."--Miyamoto Musashi

This advice would've helped in my early twenties. Perhaps this is why male initiation is so important. Oh well, I'm alive to talk about it now.

American Marriages

A curious thing:

"American marriages are the saddest in the whole world, because the man does all his fighting at the office." -- Carl Jung

Who Cares About Gays, Guns or Abortions.

Forget about gays, guns and abortions for a minute and ask whether or not our actions are fostering life.

The Law of Life

Here’s a more general statement of the law as it’s followed by goats: "If your resources are of doubtful sufficiency for two offspring, then you’re better off giving ALL TO ONE than giving HALF TO EACH.” Among goats, it’s the mother who enforces this law.

Among eagles (and many other bird species) the law is similar, but it's not enforced by the mother. The female eagle will typically produce two eggs a few days apart, which is naturally a better survival policy than producing a single egg. It's when the second egg hatches that the law comes into effect, and it's the first-born chick who enforces it. The law is: "Kill the newcomer," which it does by pecking or starving the second-born to death. By living through the first few days, the first-born has a survival value that is PROVEN. The survival value of second-born is UNPROVEN and so it must not be allowed to reduce the first-born's resources. (If the first-born DOES NOT survive the first few days, then the second-born will be unharmed and allowed to have its own chance to live on.)

In lions and bears, females will often abandon a litter that has only one survivor—even if this one survivor is in perfect health. This isn’t "good for the species" in any way. Rather, it’s good for the individual’s lifetime reproductive success. Her representation in the gene pool will definitely improve if she invests exclusively in litters LARGER THAN ONE.--Daniel Quinn

Some Things Never Change

“We are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is. All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society.”--Thomas Jefferson

Fishing and Essence

Henry David Thoreau once said, “The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover that it was not fish you were after.” Carl Jung, I think, was getting at the same thing by saying, "In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted."

I remember hearing someone say that Carl Jung thought that this is what the second half of life was about. James Hillman didn't think so. He thought it could be realized earlier (The Souls Code describes this well), especially in adolesence. It just takes the right person to see that fish or essence.

Control and Influence

"We overestimate our control and underestimate our influence."--George Draffan

Sooner Or Later It'll Collapse

"But all too many people--most people, I'm afraid--tend to think, 'Well, so what? Humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. Since we're separate, it doesn't matter how many species we destroy--and since we're superior to them anyway, we're actually improving the world by eliminating them!'

"We're like people living in the penthouse of a tall brick building. Every day we need 200 bricks to maintain our walls, so we go downstairs, knock 200 bricks out of the walls below and bring them back upstairs for our own use. Every day. . . . Every day we go downstairs and knock 200 bricks out of the walls that are holding up the building we live in. Seventy thousand bricks a year, year after year after year.

"I hope it's evident that this is not a sustainable way to maintain a brick building. One day, sooner or later, it's going to collapse, and the penthouse is going to come down along with all the rest."-- Daniel Quinn out of The New Renaissance

Play or Pay

The other day the library sent me Phil Jackson's new book Eleven Rings. Outside of coaching two baseball teams, practicing with my sons, and taking care of life's other priorities I've had the opportunity to read twenty pages or so out of ER. This morning I was taken by this quote by Lao Tzu:

The best athlete
wants his opponent at his best.
The best general
enters the mind of his enemy...
All of them embody
the virtue of non-competition.
Not that they don't love to compete,
but they do it in the spirit of play.

This is probably one of the biggest challenges I have noticed when I'm coaching, especially in tight games. The spirit of play (I don't know if play necessarily needs to be light) turns into a must-win situation. I don't think this is a bad thing. It's just an observation, I guess.

There is something deeper that I got from the Lao Tzu quote, though. As a culture we don't keep that spirit of play in mind when we engage The Community of Life. We annihilate our competitors in the biological community. If they're competing with our food and our food's food we are at war with them. And we're going to go extinct if we don't stop this.

Responsibility To The World

I downloaded and listened to this interview on the mail route yesterday. JCP said something that really resonated with me: "We're not responsible for the world but to the world."

In my experience keeping this attitude has been easier said than done.

Not Looking Up

If you see the Buddha on the road kill him.

"On Problem with the sibling society is that, in its intense desire to get away from hierarchy, it unintentionally avoids all vertical longing."-- Robert Bly, pg. 213, The Sibling Society

I'm Not A Believer In Evolution

The other day I had a family member tell me that they believed in evolution. I bristled. I almost responded by saying I don't believe in anything. But then I thought do I really know that? There must be a belief somewhere up there that I believe in. Anyway, like usual, I ran across a quote in a book that I'm currently reading that speaks to this. The idea of believing in evolution, or anything for that matter, just doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

"Everything exists in the moment. This moment is the basis of all creation. The universe wasn't created the Biblical six thousand years ago or even the scientific fifteen billion. The universe is created right now and right now it disappears. Before you have time to recognize its existence, it's gone forever. Yet the present moment penetrates all of time and space."-- Brad Warner, pg. 80, Hardcore Zen

Saving The World

"Saving the world can only mean one thing: saving the world as a human habitat. Accomplishing this will mean (must mean) saving the world as a habitat for as many other species as possible."--Daniel Quinn, Pg.6, Beyond Civilization

The Schooling Question

Our kids don't go to school. When asked about it I usually say we homeschool our kids. From now on I'm going to differentiate and tell them we unschool.

I have to admit unschooling is tough to deal with at times. The very idea of allowing our children to follow their nose in their pursuit of learning can be frightening. Being a parent who has spent close to 14 years in the public compulsory schooling system probably has something to do with it. Given that most adults around me keep telling me that kids need structure and schooling probably has something else to do with it. Of course, there's the fact that my grandma was a grade school teacher who grew up during The Great Depression and came of age during The New Deal may be a factor too...

My First Day of School

This morning I found myself sitting on the couch looking out the front window at our birdfeeder. There were cardinals, nuthatches, pine siskins, and various other birds (Even a few chipmunks) that were feeding on black sunflower seeds and playing around. As I was doing this a thought came to mind: This really lightens the heart. Generally, in the morning, I'm pissed off about some aspect of our way life. I don't know why. It could be the coffee or it could be the books I read. Who knows.

While doing this it occurred to me that the kids in my community were on the school bus on the way to school at that moment. Then it occurred to me the same was true for me when I was child. At that time in the morning I was either on the school bus or in my parent's car on the way to my grandparent's house, and if not their house then the babysitters. Then I was taken back to my first day of grade school. I spent the first twelve years of my life growing up in a trailer court. And on school mornings all the kids of the trailer park would meet down at the bus stop at the main entrance of the park. On that morning the school bus pulled up and the kids that have done this before were getting in line to await the opening of the sliding door. As they did this I took off running down the highway that ran along the front of the court. It wasn't planned, it just happened. My mom had to run down the highway and drag me back to the bus. I was in tears. I did not want to go to school. I hated the idea of being away from home all day.

Eventually the bus driver and my mom got me calmed down. I ended up sitting in the front seat of the school bus that day. The bus driver assured me everything would be okay and she'd take care of me.

Throughout my life I've looked back on that experience simply as a young boy not wanting to be away from his mother. But it occurred to me this morning that it wasn't just about a young boy being too attached to mom. I may not have wanted to leave my family. And I'm not just talking about my parents and my sister. I'm taking it beyond mom and dad and sister. I'm thinking about the frogs in the crick alongside the house, the baseball diamond just a few hundred yards away, the old abandoned camper that used to sit in the field, the red recliner that my dad used to sit in after work, the old basketball hoop in the yard behind the house.

There was something inside of me that morning that just didn't want to go to school. And there are days like today when that something is alive and well.

Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty?

"Another way to put it is that people under thirty-five cannot teach themselves or others to eat the shadow. The initiation rituals hinted at in 'Iron John' imply and suppose old men who teach younger men how to eat the shadow. That teaching did not appear in the sixties, and it's not appearing now. Old men like Reagan, in fact, are teaching younger males how to project their shadow, not how to eat it."--Robert Bly, Pg.56, A Little Book on The Human Shadow

Not Innocence But Beauty

Once and awhile, as a father, I'm able to remember this.

"Not its innocence makes the child's psyche so susceptible to corruption of its desire, but its attachment to beauty. Eating disorders, media addiction, hyperactivity and victimization by exploiters are based in the child's native desire for beauty in this world comparable to the richness of its fantasy in the unconscious soul."--James Hillman, pg. xv, Inscapes of the Child's World

Tribal Denial

"People are fascinated to learn why a pride of lions works, why a troop of baboons works, or why a flock of geese works, but they often resist learning why a tribe of humans works. Tribal humans were successful on this planet for three millions years before our agricultural revolution, and they're no less successful today wherever they manage to survive untouched, but many people of our culture don't want to hear about it."-- Daniel Quinn, Pg.12, Beyond Civilization

Separate

"International trade and the whole corporate state are based on a set of delusions that have been institutionalizing and hemming us in for six thousand years. We weren't always so destructive. But for some reason maybe six thousand years ago we began to see ourselves as separate from the world, separate from--and set against--other tribes, other cultures, other species: others. How you behave depends on how you see and feel your self. Once we see ourselves as separate from the rest of the world, we start to see every other being as a mere thing, and we begin to believe that we can get away with working our will on the world, that there wouldn't be negative consequences for attempting to do so, for pretending we're separate. But as you once wrote, Derrick, ignorance or denial of ecological law in no way exempts us from consequences of our actions."--George Draffan

Melancholy, Madness, and Morning Coffee

For years now I've made it a habit to get out of bed before everyone else does in my house. I sit alone with a book, pencil, notebook and coffee. This morning I found myself sitting at the kitchen table with a black cup of coffee reading this passage out of A Blue Fire.

"We find the senex in our solitary taking account, sorting through, figuring out; alone behind the wheel on the way to work; head under the shower, under the dryer; alone at the kitchen table looking down into black coffee, in bed staring into night--the senex mind tying together the unraveled fringes of the day, making order.

"Here is our melancholy trying to make knowledge, trying to see through. But the truth is that the melancholy is the knowledge: the poison is the antidote. This would be the senex's most destructive insight: our senex order rests on senex madness. Our order is itself madness."[James Hillman, pg. 215, A Blue fire]

I sit here frozen and distant with my cup of coffee...

What To Do, What To Do

A smart insight into depression.

"Dame Melancholy may also appear as the embodiment and vision of depression, where she brings wisdom, as she did to Boethius, who was betrayed and thrown into prison when not yet forty. There his suicidal melancholy conjured the feminine figure of Wisdom, who dictated to him his Consolation of Philosophy. Depression and the awakening of one's genius are inseparable, say the texts. Yet for most of us there is much depression and little genius, little consolation of philosophy, only the melancholic stare--what to do, what to do." -- [James Hillman, Pg.212, A Blue Fire]

My experience with depressions have been plagued with ideas like: You're born with a chemical imbalance. This is just the way your great-grandfather was. What sin have you committed? You've got to get out of this and get yourself together.

Perhaps the consolation of philosophy wipes those away.

Chainsawing Brush

Chainsawing brush out of fence rows this morning. Body sore before and afterwards. Now I turn to The Te of Piglet for some inspiration. A few minutes later it's found:

"High winds do not blow all morning;
Heavy rain does not fall all day.
Are not these made by heaven and earth?
If the power of heaven and earth
Cannot make violent activity last,
How can you?" --Tao Te Ching

Time to start gearing up for baseball practice.

Believing in Fictions

“The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else.”--Wallace Stevens

I pulled this quote from this blog post titled: Real Presences. A big thank you to Thomas Moore for keeping James Hillman's work present.

No Need To Remember

"The story is held in your soul, and the soul has no need to remember."--Daniel Quinn, At Woomeroo

Work and Pleasure and God

As a child I was told by a family elder that "God put you on earth to do one thing: Work. And don't you forget it." If I could go back in time I would've responded with "Work is a beautiful thing if it brings you pleasure."

Perhaps that should be the final measure of your work's worth. In other words, maybe the question that should be asked: Does my job bring me pleasure?

Rules and People

"The longer I live the more I worry about people and the less about rules."--Ingrid Maritine

Brief Comment on Gayness

I don't understand the problem with Jason Collins (NBA center) coming out of the closet. If you don't like gay people then don't date one. It's pretty simple to me. The day we get sex and our sexual orientation under control it's all over for us.

Got The Old Journals Out

Penciled in on July 7th, 2009:

"Peoplehood is impossible without cultural independence, which in turn is impossible without a landbase."--Vine Deloria Jr., Pg. 180, Custer Died For Your Sins

Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I've posted this before. Oh well, it's worth posting again.

The Food is Locked Up

"Making food a commodity to be owned was one of the great innovations of our culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key--and putting it there is the cornerstone of our economy, for if the food wasn't under lock and key, who would work?"--[Daniel Quinn, Pg.5, Beyond Civilization]

Our two hanging birdfeeders were raided last night. The black sunflower seeds have been emptied out of one and the brand new suet cake missing out of the other. While walking out to the mail car this morning Annie noticed fresh bear tracks in the crusty snow. So, I'm assuming it was a black bear that had itself a snack last night. The interesting thing is that it didn't knock down any of the feeders or bend over our pole. In other words, no damage was done. I don't think a human could have made less of a mess.

It's the opening day of the Wisconsin fishing season today. There is still ice on a lot of lakes around here. I noticed on the front page of one our local newspapers one of the headlines read "This will probably be one of the latest ice outs ever recorded in modern history."

Pain and Pulpwood-Cutting

The quote below speaks to me. Why? I had to decide who I was when I was eighteen, and I did. I became a pulpwood cutter. I went numb from the neck down. But it wasn't about being comfortably numb, it was painful as hell.

"As adolescence ends--if there is no effective initiation or mentorship--a sad thing happens. The fire of thinking, the flaring up of creativity, the bonfires of tenderness, all begin to go out, It's as if the Army Corps of Engineers channels wild rivers into concrete banks. This happens to many boys, perhaps most. They become consolidated. They take what is around them--the pulp-cutting job, the few local opinions, the drinking culture, the 'Vocational School'--and they consolidate. They feel they have to decide who they are right now. They have no time to feel the traumas; and now that numbing of pain takes over; that numbing often becomes the essence of male life, much more of essence than domination or power over others. They adopt their dad's way of 'holding it in.' They store anger in their bodies, but worse, as John Lee has said over and over, the men do not learn how to express the anger in healthy, eloquent, or fruitful way. They experience anger but don't know what to do with it. There is a continuum that runs from experiencing anger to expelling anger in two seconds, skipping over verbal expression completely, and the result for some men will be domestic violence, hitting wives and children."

"Most men will not be violent. They will live in this state of expressionless consolidation all their lives, without violence, but without spontaneity or creativity either. The numbing of anger and grief will be the primary task of their psyches.

"The man who remains creative will make art for the rest of his life out of the remnants of infantile and adolescent conflicts. For other men, the end of adolescence means a shutting down of expressiveness and a fading of the fires. That is the way it has been for hundreds of years."--[Robert Bly, Pg. 127, The Sibling Society]

Close To A Foot Of Snow

There is close to a foot of snow on the ground here in northwestern Wisconsin, and it's still falling. I just got off the phone with my nearly eighty year old grandfather. He said that he's never seen anything like this in the seventy years that he can remember. He said that he has seen four inches on the 5th of May, and that has been gone by noon. He also holds the offices of Town Chairman and County Board Representative. In his twenty years of serving in those capacities he's only had to order the roads to be plowed once in the month of April. Today will be the fifth time since the beginning of April he's had them plowed.

Yesterday I visited with a neighbor who'd mentioned that the United States will be the world's biggest producer of oil in at least five years. He of course was talking about the fields they are currently fracking out in North Dakota. He said it in a calm and matter-of-fact tone. There was no mention by either of us of climate change.

A couple of weeks back my mother-in-law called to let us know that she'd recently watched a documentary that pointed out that with the recent oil discoveries we now have the ability to consume oil at our current rate for a couple of decades. They also predicted that in fifteen to twenty years the human species could become extinct because we will not have cut back on our consumption.

Our batting cage that we recently bought from a family near Minneapolis has collapsed under the weight of the snow. We've had it up for only a week or so. We've had a chance to hit balls in it three or four times. I would have taken the net down, but I never expected this much snow. I'll be going out in a few minutes to start digging the wreckage out from underneath the snow.

The overall feeling in the house this morning is sadness. Personally, I'm pissed and sad that our cage is laying ruined and flat on the ground. But there is much deeper grief that has set in. Why? It's been said for at least a couple of decades now that if we continue to emit the amount of carbon dioxide that we have been into the atmosphere we're going to experience more extreme weather patterns. We've been warned about it, we didn't do anything about it, and now we're in it. I can only imagine what it will be like in ten years,

Political Feminism and The Absolutism of Equality

"Wherever we would do something as agents, power appears, and where power appears so does our Western history in the word. We dominate in the image of our God, Dominus.

"We can immediately see why political feminism has focused on hierarchical organization as the keystone of 'patriarchal consciousness.' Hierarchy subordinates; power becomes domination and despotism. So, dismantle the table of organization and the declension of power downward from above. Restructure, either in utter equality or into flexible, cooperative, leaderless groups--production gangs, assembly teams, task forces--so as to remain horizontal and not pinnacle upward.

"For this radical shift in direction, sideways rather than up and down, new sins replace the old. Ruthless leveling--no head dare stick up too high. No one to look up to is the price of not looking down on anyone. Respect, admiration, awe go by the board. Other kinds of conformism and political correctness begin to dominate. A new tyranny emerges: the absolutism of equality."--James Hillman, Pg. 99, Kinds of Power

The Golden Rule

The way you make love
is the way God will be with you.-- Rumi

(Coleman Barks says this is Rumi's variation on the golden rule.)

Candy Wrappers, Children and Enjoyable Animism

"Instead of the old punishing moralisms about dropping litter on the street, we need a new and enjoyable animism that children would be the first to understand. 'Don't throw that candy wrapper on the street'--not because it's dirty or bad manners; not because it's wrong; not because 'what if everybody did that?'--but instead 'because your candy wrapper doesn't want to lie around in the gutter or be stepped on; it wants to be in the trash basket along with all its friends."--James Hillman, Pg.89, Kinds of Power

Living a Sincere Life

"To live sincerely is to live your own life, not your father's life or your mother's life or your neighbor's life; to spend soul on large concerns, not to waste your life as a kind of human ant carrying around small burdens; and finally, to live sincerely is to 'live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.' as Thoreau declares in WALDEN. That may require unsociability. Thoreau noticed that at certain age boys remain in shadows and corners of rooms, look a little wild, make up their minds about a given grownup in a second, and may come to supper or not. Thoreau values that unsociability in both boys and girls. But those moments soon disappear, replaced by an old anxiety to please."--Robert Bly, Pg.26, The Winged Life: The Poetic Voice of Henry David Thoreau

The Hand of God

"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 live 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

Solidarity and Moral Purity

A quote by Brad Warner:

"The moral high ground is a lonely place. It seems like there’s only ever room for one up there. I used to try to stay there. But it was too sad. So I came back down."--Brad Warner in THIS blog post.

I've always admired Stephanie McMillan's clarity (quote below). I think she's done a great service by defining what solidarity means. This is useful to anyone involved in any kind of political struggle, which is most of us whether we know it or not. I think it was Aristotle who once said: "Man is my nature a political animal." In other words, we're animals and were of the polis, or city.

"Someone asked me to explain what I think solidarity is. True solidarity goes beyond building support for someone else's struggle (though it includes that). It is to identify that struggle as your own, to grasp your common interests, and to take responsibility for fighting your common enemy on your own battlefield. And to do this in a way that is collective, mutually supportive and mutually strengthening."

Neither Patriarchy Nor Matriarchy

"The patriarchy is a complicated structure. Mythologically, it is matriarchal on the inside, and a matriarchy is equally complicated, being patriarchal on the inside. The political structure has to resemble our interior structure. And we know each man has a woman inside him, and each woman has a man inside her.

"The genuine patriarchy brings down the sun through the Sacred King, into every man and woman in the culture; and the genuine matriarchy brings down the moon, through the Sacred Queen, to every woman and every man in the culture. The death of the Sacred King and Queen means that we live now in a system of industrial domination, which is not patriarchy. The system we live in gives no honor to the male mode of feeling nor to the female mode of feeling. The system of industrial domination determines how things go with us in the world of resources, values, and allegiances; what animals live and what animals die; how children are treated. And in the mode of industrial domination there is neither king nor queen." [Robert Bly, pg. 98, Iron John]

A couple of thoughts occurred to me while typing this out:

1. The idea of male and female modes of feeling means that you accept the premise that there are certain masculine and feminine traits that you inherit genetically. In other words, this is the gift of our ancestors. It's a genetic inheritance that is not culturally determined.

2. Daniel Quinn made a genius move by explaining to his readers why the problem of good and evil doesn't exist for him. He simply stated that he has peopled his world with gods that have an equal care from anything from a wood tick to a wildebeest. In other words, if a wolf takes down an old whitetail deer it was good for the wolf and bad for deer. Perhaps when one is in the mode of industrial domination they can't see this. In a sense Quinn has softened the mode of industrial domination. He's made it easier to fall in love with the world.

Nine Inches of Fresh Snow

Close to nine inches of fluffy snow on the ground this morning. It's April 23rd, and I would have never expected to be driving over to my dad's to pick up the snowblower. At this point in time only one question remains for me: What will the weather be like when it becomes more extreme. Out of all the climate change literature that I've read one scientific prediction that has always stuck with me is that of more extreme weather conditions. I wonder what the weather will be like 10 or 20 years from now.

Off to blow snow that'll be melting in a few days.

Re-Imagining Us

"Imagine our ancestors [primitive tribal peoples] enacting a different story from ours. Not a story about man mastering his environment. Not a story about man's conquest of the world. Not a story in which products and productivity figured at all."--Daniel Quinn, The Book of the Damned

Snow Falling In Northwestern Wisconsin

Snow is on my mind. Six inches or more (It's still falling) of fresh heavy, wet snow to drive through on the mail route today. Maybe this is what we get for having Senator Ron Johnson in town last week saying he thinks man-made global warming is a farce. I don't know. I'm done trying to figure it out.

Transparent Man

"Transparent Man, who is seen and seen through, foolish, who has nothing left to hide, who has become transparent through self-acceptance; his soul is loved, wholly revealed, wholly existential; he is just what he is, freed from paranoid concealment, from the knowledge of his secrets and his secret knowledge; his transparency serves as a prism for the world and the not-world. For it is impossible reflectively to know thyself; only the last reflection of an obituary may tell the truth, and only God knows our real names."--James Hillman

On the home front: Spring is here and so are the ticks and the diseases they carry. I don't think it's an exaggeration to call it an epidemic, especially in northwestern Wisconsin. We found a deer tick dug into our 3 year old son's head last night. It's obviously been there for over 24 hours. Now it's either get him on antibiotics immediately or wait it out to see if he starts showing symptoms for any on of the tick-borne diseases.

What's The Matter, Don't You Wanna Work?

I don't know how many times I've had that question asked of me or have heard it asked of others. It occurred to me this morning, after reading some excerpts out of James Hillman's Blue fire, that it could be the person asking the question perceives work to be a duty. They do not associate work with pleasure but as their ethical duty. They also might not find much pleasure in their own work. Anyway here is the excerpt that set me off on this train of thought:

"We moralize work and make it a problem, forgetting that the hands love to work and that in the hands is the mind. That 'work ethic' idea does more to impede working...it makes it a duty instead of a pleasure. We need to talk of the work instinct, not the work ethic, and instead of putting work with the superego we need to imagine it as an id activity, like a fermentation, something going on instinctively, autonomously, like beer works, like bread works...."--James Hillman, Pg.171, A Blue Fire

Perhaps

Perhaps" by Shu Ting

Perhaps our cares
will never have readers

Perhaps the journey that was wrong from the start
will be wrong at the end

Perhaps every single lamp we have lit
will be blown out by the gale

Perhaps when we have burned out our lives to lighten the darkness
there will be no warming fire at our sides.

Perhaps where all the tears have flowed
the soil will be richer

Perhaps when we sing of the sun
the sun will sing of us

Perhaps as the weight on our shoulders grows heavier
our faith will be more lofty

Perhaps we should shout about suffering as a whole
but keep silent over personal grief.

Perhaps
Because of an irresistible call
We have no other choice.

(Again, thank you to naturalawareness for this one.)

Daydreaming, Kids, and Homeschooling

A good article HERE on daydreaming. If I can give my kids one thing hopefully it is enough time to daydream. Now that I think of it that is one of the main reasons why we homeschool or unschool.

Thank you to Naturalawareness.net for sharing this.

Environment, Religion, and War

"Environmental battles are where the wars of religion are fought today, showing the old pagan nature Gods have not altogether been subdued by the world unification plans of god, the Economy."--James Hillman, pg.4, Kinds of Power

It's Time To Set The Record Straight

"We belong to the world. We belong to the community of life on this planet--it doesn't belong to us. We got confused about that, now it's time to set the record straight."--Daniel Quinn, Pg.174, Providence

Spring?

We began as a mineral.
We emerged into plant life and into
the animal state, and then to being human.

And always we have forgotten our former states,
except in early spring,
when we dimly recall being green again.~Rumi

Not recalling "being green again" today, Rumi. Snow is falling. There is well over two inches of fresh snow on the ground, and we're closing in on 10 days of no sunshine here in northwestern Wisconsin.

Oh how different it is from last year at this time.

The Souls Code and Tiger Woods

If you've read The Soul's Code then this statement by Earl Woods to Sports Illustrated in the summer of 1996 about his son Tiger will make sense. If you haven't read TSC, than you'll probably think he's a nutcase.

"I was personally selected by God himself...to nurture this young man....Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity."--Earl Woods

Hillman makes the argument in The Souls Code that our daimon chooses our parents before we come into this world. So, I think in a sense Earl Woods is onto something. It may not necessarily have been God that selected him, but Tiger's daimon. It knew Earl would be the one to nurture it.

It's also interesting to note that I read this about Earl Woods in ESPN magazine a few months back.

"After two weeks of swinging his plastic club lefthanded (this is, again, according to Earl) Tiger apparently grew dissatisfied with the motion. As the father looked on, in the part of the tale that always engaged Earl the most in the telling--switched his hands, moving the right below the left, intuitively finding the proper grip. Earl called to his wife Kultida, elsewhere in the house: 'We have a genius on our hands!'"--ESPN Magazine, Pg.76, 2/4/13

Tiger was about a year old when he did this. He was simply copying Earl's swing, so the story goes. But that's not why I mentioned the quote above. The reason why I did is that Earl recognized Tiger's genius. I think a lot of people go through life without their genius being recognized by anyone. Perhaps it takes a trained eye to see it, the problem is we live in a culture where most of is don't even think it exists.

New Essay And Interview With Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn has a new interview and essay coming out. This morning I pulled Beyond Civilization off from the shelf to read the section titled, "The Invisibility of Success," again. It's one of my favorite sections of the book. Below a quote from that section:

"The basic laws of ecology have the beauty and simplicity of a fairy tale, but their existence only began to be suspected a century ago."-- Pg.11, Beyond Civilization

Vitality of a Culture

"The vitality of a culture depends less on its hopes and its history than on its capacity to entertain willingly the divine and daimonic force of ideas"--James Hillman

Uecker is Authenticity

"His head didn't bobble on that one!" Said Bob Uecker after Norichika Aoki's second hit of four hits on Norichika Aoki bobble head day at Miller Park. That, to me, ranks right up there with him saying the proper place for a Jason Kendall bobble head would be a hood ornament on a demolition derby car.

I don't think there is a Brewer game that has gone by where I haven't asked where does he come up with this stuff?

Sunday And No Church

It's Sunday morning. I just finished up listening to an hour long talk titled: The Educated Heart, by Robert Bly. I've been to church less than a handful of times in my life. As a child, whenever I asked mom about attending church, she always told me that as long as you kept God in your heart you'd be just fine. So, we didn't go. Anyway, Bly's talk is more valuable to me right now in my life than any church service will ever be.

Do Schools Work?

"Our entire program [ Compulsory Schooling] is based on this argument: 'We know kids learn effortlessly if they have their own reasons for learning, but we can't wait for them to find their own reasons. We have to provide them with reasons that are not their own. This doesn't work, but it's the only practical way to organize our schools.

"What? How would I organize the schools? To ask this question presupposes that we must have schools, doesn't it? I prefer to think about problems the way engineers do. If a valve doesn't work, they don't say, 'Well, we must have valves, so let's try two valves.' If a valve doesn't work, they say, 'Well, what would work? Their rule is, if it doesn't work, don't do it more, do something else.

"We know what works for children up to the age where we ship them off to school: Let them be around you, pay attention to them, give them access to as much as you can, let them try things, and that's it. They'll take care of the rest. You don't have to strap small children down and teach them to speak, all you have to do is talk to them. You don't have to give them crawling lessons or walking lessons or running lessons. You don't have to spend an hour a day showing them how to bang two pots together, they'll figure that out all by themselves--if you give them access to the pots."--Daniel Quinn, Pg. 121, Providence

Men and Women

"It appears that neither man nor woman want to be so dependent on each other as they have been in the past. Each gender aims for independence, and that seems natural for us. But as the obligatory dependence between men and women lessens, dependence itself if not lessening, dependence on the state increases." -- Robert Bly

The Holy In The Ground

I received this book in the mail yesterday. When a new book lands in my hands I usually open the book up and start reading a few lines or just page through it. Here are the first lines that I ran across after opening it:

"Civilization could probably be defined as humans with lapsed memories who live forgetting that people in the long run are not in charge, nor are they truly ever going to be. Whereas the Indigenous mind does not give the direction of the world to the 'will' of God, but to the desire of the Holy in the ground to continually unfold as nature."--Martin Prechtel

Good stuff.

It's Opening Day!

It's Opening Day! Looking forward to hearing the voice of Bob Uecker through the car speakers as I pedal mail on this first day of April.

“[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.” ~ A. Bartlett Giamatti