This was a beautiful exchange! Thank you for sharing it publicly. This seems like the perfect place to quietly slip in a poem. Go easy on me, I’m not a great poet. Just a poet. This poem comes from shepherding my goats to different places on my property. This was one of their favourite places.
The Hidden Valley
Come! I call,
and they break into a run.
Bells tinkling like a chorus of tiny percussionists.
Come! I call,
and we walk together.
Through deep scented pine and fir.
Blueberries underfoot and chickadees overhead.
Green, violet and yellows of wildflowers, ancient.
Holding their secrets tightly, in pockets unseen.
Whispering them to each other, nodding,
as if blown by the wind.
Round and down,
the path meanders, through the thick pine grass,
into the hidden valley.
These goats.
They love it here.
Each claiming a shrub as their own.
These goats.
They love it here.
Water pools against the wall of the steep side hill.
Jun 12, 2023·edited Jun 14, 2023Liked by Graham Pardun
This is a very interesting conversation, and such beautiful writing, thank you both. There is a great deal to digest and sift through here... I was moved by the idea of the Earth bringing Earth and wildness back into Christianity, through us, instead of Christianity doing anything to itself. And compelled by this one— " as the stone temple of Christianity crumbles beneath the trees growing on top of it, it is actually becoming more truly itself." And Yeshua up to his waist in lilies at the end of the world is a very heart-rearranging vision, it's going to stay with me, so thank you.
I also so appreciate that question Andrew of the scarcity of feminine -- or rather room for the feminine to really flourish and feel welcome in full expression. I don't think it's fundamentally lacking from the original seed of Christianity, pre-monolith, certainly not from Yeshua in any way, in any of his teachings or his heart, not at all, but it certainly doesn't feel like the most hospitable landscape in a lot of ways for me as a woman now, and it's something that I find myself actively sitting with and fighting and longing to "solve" and then ignoring because I love all the Marys especially the Mother and my heart understands how to at least approach being with her and with Yeshua instinctively, but at the same time can't really navigate scriptural things well at all.... So I look forward to more conversation in all directions on that point, and any more thoughts you both have. I also recognize/ admit :) that I don't really know what I'm talking about theologically and often feel mightily intimidated to say a word, and yet am compelled to keep circling the conversation because my inner encounters with Mary/ the Panagia, and Yeshua have been the most luminous spiritual visions of my life.
Meanwhile I thought I'd share this essay of mine from a few months ago where I grapple through a little of that question... It's a lifelong-huge question, but a life-long important one too, because a Christianity that feels truly welcoming & safe to sit inside of as a woman (again, as I think it was in the very early days) and to therefore step beyond gender through, toward God and into absolutely radiating Love, feels like it could fundamentally and generously change the world.
You may have read some or all of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Four Arguments for the ELIMINATION of Television, The Shallows, The New Media Epidemic.
My signal contribution is that thread meeting wisdom literature and is concerned, as the previously mentioned titles are not, in how we can live a human life in a nexus where technologies are mandated. My magnum opus is the Hidden Price Tags series (https://cjshayward.com/hpt), with a shorter treatment in How Can I Take my Life Back from my Phone? (https//cjshayward.com/phone), and a still shorter sampling in A Pack of Cigarettes for the Mind (https://cjshayward.com/pcm). You can explore my website at https://cjshayward.com/.
I believe that my contribution to the conversation mitigates a deep drain on nature connection; checking a phone a hundred times a day squashes good impulses that are harmed a great deal less than if you mainly check emails once a day. And I believe the mitigation in question is important.
But I asked my previous question here because it is an area where my own knowledge falters and I may have in particular something to learn from the author of Lily Archipelago. I mention what I do contribute to underscore an area that I do not know very well, but is hinted at in pieces like “Physics” (https://cjshayward.com/physics).
I guess I need to dig into the archives, starting with Lily Archipelago, but I thought this might be a place to ask my genus / species question about nature connection. Part of the answer, I believe, is connected with the big picture of virtue as in classics the pre-eminent life in harmony with nature is that according to virtue. But I’m probably missing things about nature connection that were assumed in ancient understandings of virtue. I believe I have something about how to mitigate a drain on such a proper understanding, but I believe I ask things where Graham’s knowledge and that of his commentators extends further than my own.
Thoughts about other aspects of nature connection beyond that in Coyote’s image would be welcome.
I realized from the responses that I might be able to ask here something I’ve wanted to ask but haven’t had the circumstances to ask.
In Seeing Through Native Eyes and related work, nature connection is recognized as a genus that recognizes, for instance, the author’s generation being kicked out of the house after the kids’ TV show ended, and having “accidental nature connection.”
However, prescriptions and proposed solutions to promote nature connection are exclusively one species within that genus, that promoted by Coyote mentoring and falling under Coyote’s auspices. While other forms of the genus of nature connection are given full-fledged status, prescriptions are limited to the species.
I wanted to ask people here what, if any, other means of promoting nature connection are available that do not fall under Coyote’s totem. There is basic nature connection in my preferring to read and write books outside, and I spent more money for a computer with. sunlight-readable display than I have for a car, a decision I do not regret in the least. However, there has got to be more, and more outside of Coyote’s auspices.
What means and what species of nature connection are recommended here? I would welcome comment here or Graham taking my question into consideration when choosing his own writing.
Thank you so much for sharing that conversation! I'd love to settle beside a fire and listen to you guys chat. Of course, I'd want to ask questions and speak so I could be corrected. I believe we could all be brothers.
There was a thread (I couldn't track it down) in which someone talked about a Buddhist Old Testament to the Christian New Testament.
I've posted a "New White Post" (see https://cjshayward.com/new-white-post/), "Orthodoxy today" intended Christian New Testament to the Four Noble Truths as "The Four Noble Truths, Revisited" at https://cjshayward.com/four-noble-truths/.
This was a beautiful exchange! Thank you for sharing it publicly. This seems like the perfect place to quietly slip in a poem. Go easy on me, I’m not a great poet. Just a poet. This poem comes from shepherding my goats to different places on my property. This was one of their favourite places.
The Hidden Valley
Come! I call,
and they break into a run.
Bells tinkling like a chorus of tiny percussionists.
Come! I call,
and we walk together.
Through deep scented pine and fir.
Blueberries underfoot and chickadees overhead.
Green, violet and yellows of wildflowers, ancient.
Holding their secrets tightly, in pockets unseen.
Whispering them to each other, nodding,
as if blown by the wind.
Round and down,
the path meanders, through the thick pine grass,
into the hidden valley.
These goats.
They love it here.
Each claiming a shrub as their own.
These goats.
They love it here.
Water pools against the wall of the steep side hill.
Towering trees disperse the light.
Everything lives,
everything grows and grows lush.
Everything considered.
Everything lives for the other,
and the other lives for everything.
Here there is no despair,
no unmet need.
Here there is only flourishing,
only hope.
-Shari Suter
This is a very interesting conversation, and such beautiful writing, thank you both. There is a great deal to digest and sift through here... I was moved by the idea of the Earth bringing Earth and wildness back into Christianity, through us, instead of Christianity doing anything to itself. And compelled by this one— " as the stone temple of Christianity crumbles beneath the trees growing on top of it, it is actually becoming more truly itself." And Yeshua up to his waist in lilies at the end of the world is a very heart-rearranging vision, it's going to stay with me, so thank you.
I also so appreciate that question Andrew of the scarcity of feminine -- or rather room for the feminine to really flourish and feel welcome in full expression. I don't think it's fundamentally lacking from the original seed of Christianity, pre-monolith, certainly not from Yeshua in any way, in any of his teachings or his heart, not at all, but it certainly doesn't feel like the most hospitable landscape in a lot of ways for me as a woman now, and it's something that I find myself actively sitting with and fighting and longing to "solve" and then ignoring because I love all the Marys especially the Mother and my heart understands how to at least approach being with her and with Yeshua instinctively, but at the same time can't really navigate scriptural things well at all.... So I look forward to more conversation in all directions on that point, and any more thoughts you both have. I also recognize/ admit :) that I don't really know what I'm talking about theologically and often feel mightily intimidated to say a word, and yet am compelled to keep circling the conversation because my inner encounters with Mary/ the Panagia, and Yeshua have been the most luminous spiritual visions of my life.
Meanwhile I thought I'd share this essay of mine from a few months ago where I grapple through a little of that question... It's a lifelong-huge question, but a life-long important one too, because a Christianity that feels truly welcoming & safe to sit inside of as a woman (again, as I think it was in the very early days) and to therefore step beyond gender through, toward God and into absolutely radiating Love, feels like it could fundamentally and generously change the world.
https://sylviavlinsteadt.substack.com/p/the-bells-of-good-friday
There is something else I wanted to mention.
You may have read some or all of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Four Arguments for the ELIMINATION of Television, The Shallows, The New Media Epidemic.
My signal contribution is that thread meeting wisdom literature and is concerned, as the previously mentioned titles are not, in how we can live a human life in a nexus where technologies are mandated. My magnum opus is the Hidden Price Tags series (https://cjshayward.com/hpt), with a shorter treatment in How Can I Take my Life Back from my Phone? (https//cjshayward.com/phone), and a still shorter sampling in A Pack of Cigarettes for the Mind (https://cjshayward.com/pcm). You can explore my website at https://cjshayward.com/.
I believe that my contribution to the conversation mitigates a deep drain on nature connection; checking a phone a hundred times a day squashes good impulses that are harmed a great deal less than if you mainly check emails once a day. And I believe the mitigation in question is important.
But I asked my previous question here because it is an area where my own knowledge falters and I may have in particular something to learn from the author of Lily Archipelago. I mention what I do contribute to underscore an area that I do not know very well, but is hinted at in pieces like “Physics” (https://cjshayward.com/physics).
I guess I need to dig into the archives, starting with Lily Archipelago, but I thought this might be a place to ask my genus / species question about nature connection. Part of the answer, I believe, is connected with the big picture of virtue as in classics the pre-eminent life in harmony with nature is that according to virtue. But I’m probably missing things about nature connection that were assumed in ancient understandings of virtue. I believe I have something about how to mitigate a drain on such a proper understanding, but I believe I ask things where Graham’s knowledge and that of his commentators extends further than my own.
Thoughts about other aspects of nature connection beyond that in Coyote’s image would be welcome.
On to the Sabbath Empire archives…
Thank you.
I realized from the responses that I might be able to ask here something I’ve wanted to ask but haven’t had the circumstances to ask.
In Seeing Through Native Eyes and related work, nature connection is recognized as a genus that recognizes, for instance, the author’s generation being kicked out of the house after the kids’ TV show ended, and having “accidental nature connection.”
However, prescriptions and proposed solutions to promote nature connection are exclusively one species within that genus, that promoted by Coyote mentoring and falling under Coyote’s auspices. While other forms of the genus of nature connection are given full-fledged status, prescriptions are limited to the species.
I wanted to ask people here what, if any, other means of promoting nature connection are available that do not fall under Coyote’s totem. There is basic nature connection in my preferring to read and write books outside, and I spent more money for a computer with. sunlight-readable display than I have for a car, a decision I do not regret in the least. However, there has got to be more, and more outside of Coyote’s auspices.
What means and what species of nature connection are recommended here? I would welcome comment here or Graham taking my question into consideration when choosing his own writing.
Thanks,
Br. Christos
Thanks, gents. We need more of this kind of dialogue. Also, when the feminine first came up this passage from "Christ The Eternal Tao" came to mind:
“The Valley and the Spirit do not die,” said the Ancient Sage.
“They form what is called the Mystic Mother,
From whose gate comes the Origin of heaven and earth.”
And “this gate shall be shut,” said the Ancient Prophet.
“It shall not be opened, and no one shall pass through it;
For the Lord shall enter by it.”
The Mind spoke, and through His Word
Answered the earth’s elemental moan.
Above that roaring cry
He answered with a still, small voice:
I will come. Will you receive me, then?
But no man heard that voice.
Only a small young woman,
Who had lived, unknown, in silence and purity in the Great Temple
Was given to hear it.
And in a still, small voice She gave voice to the whole earth.
She answered for all those beings and created forms who could not speak;
She answered for al the people who could not hear.
And to the question of the Uncreated Mind,
She answered: Yes,
I will receive You.
Be it unto me according to Your Word.
In Her the Way had found the lowest place in the entire earth—
The nadir of the Valley,
The supreme humility, lowliness—
And there He came and made his abode.
He took flesh of Her whom He loved above all others who dwelled on the earth,
Who was meek and humble like Himself.
And lowering Himself, emptying Himself, in His love, to the lowest place,
He became a tiny child within Her, the Mystic Mother.
Because of her profound and intangible humility,
Her gate, opened by no man,
Through which no one had passed through,
Became the gate from which came the Origin of heaven and earth.
Because She had returned to the state of the uncarved block, the pristine simplicity,
She became the “mountain unhewn by the hand of man,”
Whom the Ancient Prophet had foretold.
and the Spirit, the Breath of Heaven,
Rested upon Her, the Valley of humility, as He had upon the first-formed world.
Thank you both, I loved reading this.
Thank you all for your welcome.
I thought you might also like “Singularity” at https://cjshayward.com/singularity/
I’m thinking you might like “A Canticle to Holy, Blessed Solipsism” at https://cjshayward.com/solipsism/.
Thank you so much for sharing that conversation! I'd love to settle beside a fire and listen to you guys chat. Of course, I'd want to ask questions and speak so I could be corrected. I believe we could all be brothers.