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.
Ah, lovely -- thanks so much for sharing this, Shari!
"Blueberries underfoot and chickadees overhead / Green, violet, and yellow of wilderflowers, ancient" -- a beautiful string of lively images, and rhythmically in tune with the reality in nature that the poem is recalling -- I love it!
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.
All this is quite good to sift through. Sylvia, the essay on the heels of your own thougts in this thread kicked off something in me that I value a great deal. I wonder if it is ok to try to capture what wells up in a post as it seems a bit much for a comment box. It ties in with Martin's post on colors and I do love the idea of all of this echoing and counterwording through our work. If is ok with you and it doesn't seem too over the top I would post it a bit later this week. A the very least it can point a couple more companions of the flotsam to your shore.
I will confess that I rather dug the story about the Miriam who Yeshua loved facing the Empire and bringing the red. I see your point Graham yet still there is just a taste of Kali energy in the image of this She-Moses before the Pharoah-Caesar that appeals to the roundness of the feminine who needs no borrowing from the masculine to face force with the trueing portents of justice.
I hear you on the safe for the human, period business as well Graham. Yet, something sticks in the throat if I try to bless the church or her theologies on that score without a bit more....something. Or maybe rather someone. The texts themselves camp on hillside where the safety of the recognition of the holy in men is a downward roll and that for woman more pf upward levering against the gravity of the centuries. I do recognize the counterword toward shekinah and the feminine of G-d in between the lines and, like Sylvia said, in the wellspring of Yeshua himself but I don't feel it as something demanded in what comes down through so-called tradition as much as something that is wrested up from the Under. Less a testament safeguarded for the mothers, sisters, and daughters than a coral-crusted treasure salvaged by the sheer hunger for Her after so long an exile.
Sylvia, your disclaimer for the pedigree of this string of images and dark songs that directly took me through the blood and water and wind of it all to the deep black-blue Sea of it all and the White deeper still was that you don't talk theology. G-d forbid you ever trade such as this for such as that. Yeshua, time and again, saying you heard it said, but I say unto you....Theology paling before Story from the God-man's mouth.
The shibboleth of the piece you shared called out at the threshold not in timbre of the idea but in that of the bond. It is in the same key as Graham's fetching wish toward aYeshua waist deep in the petals. I found both those cries at the checkpoint in the mother-tongue. Salut the return of the Exiled. And companions of the flotsam to watch with.
Also, I just want to echo what Andrew said above -- "Sylvia, your disclaimer for the pedigree of this string of images and dark songs that directly took me through the blood and water and wind of it all to the deep black-blue Sea of it all and the White deeper still was that you don't talk theology. G-d forbid you ever trade such as this for such as that. Yeshua, time and again, saying you heard it said, but I say unto you....Theology paling before Story from the God-man's mouth" -- I want that to echo forever and ever, to be followed forever by a thousand amens.
Well *now*! When you call her a "She-Moses"! When you describe her as "the Miriam who Yeshua loved facing the Empire and bringing the red" -- then suddenly the story's on fire, and I want to bow down, surrender to its mysterious voice -- but not before! (Which illustrates one of the main problems I'm interested in, the problem that fidelity to tradition can really only come about by infidelity to the words)
I don't like that it was the Emperor's arbitrary idea, but I do like that the Magdalene was like, OK: Here's your damn egg, then.
But listen, I know a true story that sounds even stupider than this one, so I don't know where all these obstructions are coming from -- I know someone, who knows someone, who at one point could have cared less about the Divine, but was somehow dragged to church -- and, somehow, something burned in his heart that made him pray, "Dear God, I will not believe in you, ever, unless I see someone in this church get down and start doing pushups in the middle of the service, amen" -- and, sunnovabitch, some other dude -- like during the singing of hymns or something -- just started doing pushups for no reason! True story!
So...I mean...like, the Mary Magdalene story could win the Nobel prize in world mythology compared to that garbage -- that very true garbage.
So, I don't know!
There is something to be said just for being open to it all!
I think a full post is a beautiful idea Andrew, I look forward to reading it. I'm excited to see those colors come through it too, what a lively living weave is at work here! I like both of your perspectives about that red egg story— both its sort of ridiculous over-simplification and linearizing of something absolutely cosmic and mysterious, and on the other hand its folkloric old woman ancient as cave paint power and love. She-Moses; what a great phrase/image! Puts me in mind somehow of piece a Martin Shaw wrote a while ago where he shared an old Irish story about Brigid's involvement at Christ's birth as the midwife, and her prayers over him and her blessings on him; it glints with what I long to hear so much more of —https://martinshaw.substack.com/p/attending-to-the-fire-seed
Anyway what a rich conversation, thank you both for all these thoughts and I look forward to reading more of them on both of your platforms. Truly I'm totally out of my depth in terms of book learning/ scriptural knowledge here, there's so much I want to read and think about and also experience and participate in and weave with my hands and learn to sing, etc etc but step by step, as we all keep writing and dreaming.
I said I would come back later, and here I am -- I've come back: But still at a loss for words!
Even more so! "There is the whole green world in this yes, the whole animal world, the whole mineral world, the whole earth, the whole sky, all the waters, fertility and animal ecstasy and babies and loss and rebirth and renewal yes, and also this single specific man" -- all of it, all of it -- together, or not at all!
Which is one reason why I really with all my heart despise the "just so" stories, of the kind you quote as a non-reason for the redness of the eggs in your essay -- Mary Magdalene going up against the emperor, proving the resurrection by fulfilling his apropos-of-nothing insistence upon non-belief, unless someone were to perform the non-sensical.
It collapses all of that Yes into one, the most cerebral and political kind.
And, shall I say, the most stupidly masculine kind: a demonstration of meaningless power, to prove the correctness of an idea, divorced of its context, so I can have more power.
Why not let the red egg be the red egg and you hold it with your hand of flesh close to your body of flesh, and you either get it or you don't -- or your "getting it" unfolds, layer after layer after layer, for your whole life -- why ruin it with an obviously made-up story proving that this thing with roots so deep yes, they go into the body, yes, they stretch back to the pagan world, as all true things do -- an obviously made-up story that makes this deeply rooted thing appear as it were born yesterday, rootless?
Sylvia, your writing and thinking are so beautiful -- thank you so much for sharing.
I would love to take up Andrew's question -- and yours -- on the scarcity of the feminine, more fully -- the question of a Christianity that "feels truly safe to sit inside of as a woman." Without wanting to colonize the question at all, I just wish to say for now is that I see the one big quest I see myself on in these essays and poems -- the quest for a Christianity in which it feels safe and flourishing to sit inside of as an embodied human, period -- I see this question as a friend and companion to yours.
Graham, I really appreciate everything you've said here--" all of it, together or not at all"! Yes! And that image of the egg held in the body, peeling back layer and layer and layer for the rest of our lives; wow. And also I'm moved by what you wrote at the end, that your whole quest is " for a Christianity in which it feels safe and flourishing to sit inside of as an embodied human, period" — this is absolutely beautiful, and I feel you doing it in everything I've read of yours. Thank you for taking the time to respond so thoughtfully, and many blessings on the heart-bright way you and your family are following and sharing so beautifully x
I read this in the hour just before light here, having been woken abruptly by sleep just vanishing. Hard to imagine it wasn't the demand of the work/gift itself. Yeah... More later.
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.
Brother Christos, I have no knowledge, man -- at my best, I'm poetic dust, that's it. At my worst, I'm still at least dust, a son of Adam, just like anyone else, so that's at least something. I don't do philosophy, have no interest in grand classification schemes, nor rescuing the classical world -- though maybe in remembering bits and pieces of it, moreso the archaic world. I think if you have to think a lot about connecting with nature, it's the same as if you have to think a lot about connecting with a human being. It's the thinking that's constructing the glass wall. What I used to tell my nature observation students -- 7th grade boys, the kings of constructing imaginary walls -- is I want you to stop telling me what you think. As in, really -- just stop. And instead, take a very long, deep breath through your nasal cavity and literally watch the grass grow and you will see God.
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.
I don't know, brother, but even framing it as "nature connection" presupposes -- to my mind's eye, anyway -- that "nature" is out there, and I'm over here, and we're disconnected, but we need a technique for getting re-connected.
I'm with Andrew in what I think I hear him saying which is, whoever we are, the roots are already there, and they go way back -- so maybe we just sit down and pay attention and see what enters our own circle. For St Seraphim of Sarov, it was bears. For Andrew, sounds like deer.
We never left the Earth, and the Earth never left us.
Human nature is one and the same everywhere.
The "technique" from the Orthodox perspective, as I see it, is to stop thinking there is a "technique" and, with Messiah's help, to get down into the heart, whose darkness is the thing scaring the animals away.
Reminds me of Wheaton College, where professors at least were advised to do some digging towards “integration of faith and learning.” One professor suggested it might be better to think in terms of “desegregation of faith and learning.”
Hey Christos. Lovely question. Another book I don't know though it looks like he is a student of Tom Brown. In a moment where we need to work together to face the coming age of consequences, we find communication and trust fracturing to a point of plague. It might be that we have plenty of Trickster at the wheel.
Myself, I find the suggestions of Stephen Jenkinson to accept our poverty and, rather than ransacking the mythologies of others, get to work in our own mythical deposits a compelling directive. And there is the ancestral ties to be taken in to account as well when it comes to cultural re-membering including any reapproach to right relationship. I think the species that come into your circle or you into theirs is a great place to start. But maybe you are asking something different.
My own particular keyholes have lead me to into a series of exchanges with the Deer. I also find Yeshua rich with Deer sign. If the messiah had a totem my bets would be placed their but I wouldn't necessarily use that Ojibewe word or even the anthropological term totemic to nail it down. I am working on a essay on this but it is not an easy one for me.
I haven't given that book the attention it really deserves, but just skip about -- that passage is beautiful. As a complement, I think of my favorite hymn to Mary:
All creation rejoices in thee, O full of grace
The assembly of angels and the race of men
O sanctified Temple and spiritual paradise
The glory of virgins, from whom God was incarnate
And became a child, our God before the ages
He made your body into a throne
And thy womb became more spacious than the heavens
All of creation rejoices in thee, O full of grace,
Nice excerpt here, Nathan. The book is new to me. Will be looking for it. It is hard to overestimate how fetching the idea of a feminine incarnation wombing whatever burned in the branches on Moriah. I know how strongly many here about Three. I understand border I look in from without with such. But if you are going all in with such, given the murderous last centuries something is extra breathtaking in this Jewish peasant being the doorway to the many-mothering-emantions of the Holy. Different from what you quote here. I hope a harmony.
Thanks CJS. I confess I don't read the tea leaves of our now like this John. I see a multitude, unpredictable and each one packing natality under the folds of her trance. Forgiveness and promises leaking from every stitched seam. I find the rumors of the collapse of gender in most cases a child's first steps after its too tightly bound feet have finally been loosed on the shore. It is early yet. She will come to her own senses and find a place for the poles and the in between places. Do no harm, certainly. But something categorical in that song is foreign to me. Always every wakening has its madness, yes? Amnesty is a poor moment for manners. Honey and hospitality is the balancing cure not the monstering. Grendel tore the mead hall open after he was left outside in the night. "I have other sheep who are not of this fold"...Not saying there are no tares just wheat but rather that any ideology that can call balls and strikes on this side of the Not Yet may be whistling down the wrong end of the sacred pipe. I hope you welcome this honest reaction. Happy to hear if I have transposed the melody into an unflattering key.
Cascading on nothingness, You Who have been called Everything and Nothing..."
I love that part...stay tuned for my conclusion to "Gods of the Future Will Be Machines" in a couple of weeks -- I'm going to be right here with you, brother...
Interesting Akido (Shaw) in that hymn, CJS. I have always thought of solipsism as the lonliness Ein Sof sought to subvert with creation. But I see you have a midrash that would flip it into company. Do your shapeshifter just change clothes or does body account for more than that in such a wondering?
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.
Thanks Gregory, so glad you enjoyed -- would be a blast, all three of us to sit around a campfire in the woods, passing the peace pipe, reflecting on human life, our approach to the Divine.
But also -- if you were to sit and listen to me and Andrew, you'd hear days of silence :) This took us a couple of months, I think...
We are all beacon fires of what emenates from the Wonder crosstalking, over the wires if necessary. Mythopoesis is the what warms us. It is symbiosis.. No corrections in that biome. Just exchange, memory, and love. The fire is here, too. Listening. Thanks.
(Somehow my response was doubled; when I tried to delete one, it deleted both -- some kind of quantum entanglement wormhole kind of thing, fit for a Star Trek episode)
Anyway -- what I said was: If there must be wires, then let this be the kind of thing we send through those wires; also, this was a blast -- let's do another one sometime!
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
Ah, lovely -- thanks so much for sharing this, Shari!
"Blueberries underfoot and chickadees overhead / Green, violet, and yellow of wilderflowers, ancient" -- a beautiful string of lively images, and rhythmically in tune with the reality in nature that the poem is recalling -- I love it!
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
All this is quite good to sift through. Sylvia, the essay on the heels of your own thougts in this thread kicked off something in me that I value a great deal. I wonder if it is ok to try to capture what wells up in a post as it seems a bit much for a comment box. It ties in with Martin's post on colors and I do love the idea of all of this echoing and counterwording through our work. If is ok with you and it doesn't seem too over the top I would post it a bit later this week. A the very least it can point a couple more companions of the flotsam to your shore.
I will confess that I rather dug the story about the Miriam who Yeshua loved facing the Empire and bringing the red. I see your point Graham yet still there is just a taste of Kali energy in the image of this She-Moses before the Pharoah-Caesar that appeals to the roundness of the feminine who needs no borrowing from the masculine to face force with the trueing portents of justice.
I hear you on the safe for the human, period business as well Graham. Yet, something sticks in the throat if I try to bless the church or her theologies on that score without a bit more....something. Or maybe rather someone. The texts themselves camp on hillside where the safety of the recognition of the holy in men is a downward roll and that for woman more pf upward levering against the gravity of the centuries. I do recognize the counterword toward shekinah and the feminine of G-d in between the lines and, like Sylvia said, in the wellspring of Yeshua himself but I don't feel it as something demanded in what comes down through so-called tradition as much as something that is wrested up from the Under. Less a testament safeguarded for the mothers, sisters, and daughters than a coral-crusted treasure salvaged by the sheer hunger for Her after so long an exile.
Sylvia, your disclaimer for the pedigree of this string of images and dark songs that directly took me through the blood and water and wind of it all to the deep black-blue Sea of it all and the White deeper still was that you don't talk theology. G-d forbid you ever trade such as this for such as that. Yeshua, time and again, saying you heard it said, but I say unto you....Theology paling before Story from the God-man's mouth.
The shibboleth of the piece you shared called out at the threshold not in timbre of the idea but in that of the bond. It is in the same key as Graham's fetching wish toward aYeshua waist deep in the petals. I found both those cries at the checkpoint in the mother-tongue. Salut the return of the Exiled. And companions of the flotsam to watch with.
Also, I just want to echo what Andrew said above -- "Sylvia, your disclaimer for the pedigree of this string of images and dark songs that directly took me through the blood and water and wind of it all to the deep black-blue Sea of it all and the White deeper still was that you don't talk theology. G-d forbid you ever trade such as this for such as that. Yeshua, time and again, saying you heard it said, but I say unto you....Theology paling before Story from the God-man's mouth" -- I want that to echo forever and ever, to be followed forever by a thousand amens.
Well *now*! When you call her a "She-Moses"! When you describe her as "the Miriam who Yeshua loved facing the Empire and bringing the red" -- then suddenly the story's on fire, and I want to bow down, surrender to its mysterious voice -- but not before! (Which illustrates one of the main problems I'm interested in, the problem that fidelity to tradition can really only come about by infidelity to the words)
I don't like that it was the Emperor's arbitrary idea, but I do like that the Magdalene was like, OK: Here's your damn egg, then.
But listen, I know a true story that sounds even stupider than this one, so I don't know where all these obstructions are coming from -- I know someone, who knows someone, who at one point could have cared less about the Divine, but was somehow dragged to church -- and, somehow, something burned in his heart that made him pray, "Dear God, I will not believe in you, ever, unless I see someone in this church get down and start doing pushups in the middle of the service, amen" -- and, sunnovabitch, some other dude -- like during the singing of hymns or something -- just started doing pushups for no reason! True story!
So...I mean...like, the Mary Magdalene story could win the Nobel prize in world mythology compared to that garbage -- that very true garbage.
So, I don't know!
There is something to be said just for being open to it all!
I think a full post is a beautiful idea Andrew, I look forward to reading it. I'm excited to see those colors come through it too, what a lively living weave is at work here! I like both of your perspectives about that red egg story— both its sort of ridiculous over-simplification and linearizing of something absolutely cosmic and mysterious, and on the other hand its folkloric old woman ancient as cave paint power and love. She-Moses; what a great phrase/image! Puts me in mind somehow of piece a Martin Shaw wrote a while ago where he shared an old Irish story about Brigid's involvement at Christ's birth as the midwife, and her prayers over him and her blessings on him; it glints with what I long to hear so much more of —https://martinshaw.substack.com/p/attending-to-the-fire-seed
Anyway what a rich conversation, thank you both for all these thoughts and I look forward to reading more of them on both of your platforms. Truly I'm totally out of my depth in terms of book learning/ scriptural knowledge here, there's so much I want to read and think about and also experience and participate in and weave with my hands and learn to sing, etc etc but step by step, as we all keep writing and dreaming.
I said I would come back later, and here I am -- I've come back: But still at a loss for words!
Even more so! "There is the whole green world in this yes, the whole animal world, the whole mineral world, the whole earth, the whole sky, all the waters, fertility and animal ecstasy and babies and loss and rebirth and renewal yes, and also this single specific man" -- all of it, all of it -- together, or not at all!
Which is one reason why I really with all my heart despise the "just so" stories, of the kind you quote as a non-reason for the redness of the eggs in your essay -- Mary Magdalene going up against the emperor, proving the resurrection by fulfilling his apropos-of-nothing insistence upon non-belief, unless someone were to perform the non-sensical.
It collapses all of that Yes into one, the most cerebral and political kind.
And, shall I say, the most stupidly masculine kind: a demonstration of meaningless power, to prove the correctness of an idea, divorced of its context, so I can have more power.
Why not let the red egg be the red egg and you hold it with your hand of flesh close to your body of flesh, and you either get it or you don't -- or your "getting it" unfolds, layer after layer after layer, for your whole life -- why ruin it with an obviously made-up story proving that this thing with roots so deep yes, they go into the body, yes, they stretch back to the pagan world, as all true things do -- an obviously made-up story that makes this deeply rooted thing appear as it were born yesterday, rootless?
Sylvia, your writing and thinking are so beautiful -- thank you so much for sharing.
I would love to take up Andrew's question -- and yours -- on the scarcity of the feminine, more fully -- the question of a Christianity that "feels truly safe to sit inside of as a woman." Without wanting to colonize the question at all, I just wish to say for now is that I see the one big quest I see myself on in these essays and poems -- the quest for a Christianity in which it feels safe and flourishing to sit inside of as an embodied human, period -- I see this question as a friend and companion to yours.
Graham, I really appreciate everything you've said here--" all of it, together or not at all"! Yes! And that image of the egg held in the body, peeling back layer and layer and layer for the rest of our lives; wow. And also I'm moved by what you wrote at the end, that your whole quest is " for a Christianity in which it feels safe and flourishing to sit inside of as an embodied human, period" — this is absolutely beautiful, and I feel you doing it in everything I've read of yours. Thank you for taking the time to respond so thoughtfully, and many blessings on the heart-bright way you and your family are following and sharing so beautifully x
Ah, bless you both, that's very lovely :)
I read this in the hour just before light here, having been woken abruptly by sleep just vanishing. Hard to imagine it wasn't the demand of the work/gift itself. Yeah... More later.
My lord, how beautiful! Everyone read this - please!
(More later)
Sorry, didn't realize that was a paid/locked post! I've freed it now :)
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…
Brother Christos, I have no knowledge, man -- at my best, I'm poetic dust, that's it. At my worst, I'm still at least dust, a son of Adam, just like anyone else, so that's at least something. I don't do philosophy, have no interest in grand classification schemes, nor rescuing the classical world -- though maybe in remembering bits and pieces of it, moreso the archaic world. I think if you have to think a lot about connecting with nature, it's the same as if you have to think a lot about connecting with a human being. It's the thinking that's constructing the glass wall. What I used to tell my nature observation students -- 7th grade boys, the kings of constructing imaginary walls -- is I want you to stop telling me what you think. As in, really -- just stop. And instead, take a very long, deep breath through your nasal cavity and literally watch the grass grow and you will see God.
They thought I was crazy.
And I thought they were crazy!
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
Brother Christos, thanks for this.
I don't know, brother, but even framing it as "nature connection" presupposes -- to my mind's eye, anyway -- that "nature" is out there, and I'm over here, and we're disconnected, but we need a technique for getting re-connected.
I'm with Andrew in what I think I hear him saying which is, whoever we are, the roots are already there, and they go way back -- so maybe we just sit down and pay attention and see what enters our own circle. For St Seraphim of Sarov, it was bears. For Andrew, sounds like deer.
We never left the Earth, and the Earth never left us.
Human nature is one and the same everywhere.
The "technique" from the Orthodox perspective, as I see it, is to stop thinking there is a "technique" and, with Messiah's help, to get down into the heart, whose darkness is the thing scaring the animals away.
Thank you. Food for thought.
Reminds me of Wheaton College, where professors at least were advised to do some digging towards “integration of faith and learning.” One professor suggested it might be better to think in terms of “desegregation of faith and learning.”
Hey Christos. Lovely question. Another book I don't know though it looks like he is a student of Tom Brown. In a moment where we need to work together to face the coming age of consequences, we find communication and trust fracturing to a point of plague. It might be that we have plenty of Trickster at the wheel.
Myself, I find the suggestions of Stephen Jenkinson to accept our poverty and, rather than ransacking the mythologies of others, get to work in our own mythical deposits a compelling directive. And there is the ancestral ties to be taken in to account as well when it comes to cultural re-membering including any reapproach to right relationship. I think the species that come into your circle or you into theirs is a great place to start. But maybe you are asking something different.
My own particular keyholes have lead me to into a series of exchanges with the Deer. I also find Yeshua rich with Deer sign. If the messiah had a totem my bets would be placed their but I wouldn't necessarily use that Ojibewe word or even the anthropological term totemic to nail it down. I am working on a essay on this but it is not an easy one for me.
Thank you.
Could you tell me if and when you’ve written the essay?
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.
Love it, Nathan, thanks for sharing that.
I haven't given that book the attention it really deserves, but just skip about -- that passage is beautiful. As a complement, I think of my favorite hymn to Mary:
All creation rejoices in thee, O full of grace
The assembly of angels and the race of men
O sanctified Temple and spiritual paradise
The glory of virgins, from whom God was incarnate
And became a child, our God before the ages
He made your body into a throne
And thy womb became more spacious than the heavens
All of creation rejoices in thee, O full of grace,
Glory to thee
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohi04L6vSoQ)
Oh, I missed this! What a song. And powerful poem shared above.
"He made your body into a throne
And thy womb became more spacious than the heavens" — has just rather undone me.
One more to think about -- do you know this one? "O Queen of All Creation" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0k8LAf71gY)
I love these lines so much:
"O Mother, sweetest Mother, Mother of loving care; take pity on all those in bitterness and sorrows; accept their heartfelt prayer...."
Bella!
Nice excerpt here, Nathan. The book is new to me. Will be looking for it. It is hard to overestimate how fetching the idea of a feminine incarnation wombing whatever burned in the branches on Moriah. I know how strongly many here about Three. I understand border I look in from without with such. But if you are going all in with such, given the murderous last centuries something is extra breathtaking in this Jewish peasant being the doorway to the many-mothering-emantions of the Holy. Different from what you quote here. I hope a harmony.
Thank you both, I loved reading this.
Thanks, Lucy.
You're so welcome, Lucy -- thanks for reading it!
Thank you all for your welcome.
I thought you might also like “Singularity” at https://cjshayward.com/singularity/
Thanks CJS. I confess I don't read the tea leaves of our now like this John. I see a multitude, unpredictable and each one packing natality under the folds of her trance. Forgiveness and promises leaking from every stitched seam. I find the rumors of the collapse of gender in most cases a child's first steps after its too tightly bound feet have finally been loosed on the shore. It is early yet. She will come to her own senses and find a place for the poles and the in between places. Do no harm, certainly. But something categorical in that song is foreign to me. Always every wakening has its madness, yes? Amnesty is a poor moment for manners. Honey and hospitality is the balancing cure not the monstering. Grendel tore the mead hall open after he was left outside in the night. "I have other sheep who are not of this fold"...Not saying there are no tares just wheat but rather that any ideology that can call balls and strikes on this side of the Not Yet may be whistling down the wrong end of the sacred pipe. I hope you welcome this honest reaction. Happy to hear if I have transposed the melody into an unflattering key.
I’m thinking you might like “A Canticle to Holy, Blessed Solipsism” at https://cjshayward.com/solipsism/.
"That I may reach you through six billion prisms,
The royal race of men,
And made in Your Divine Image.
And may this love bubble over,
Cascading on animals because I love men,
Cascading onto plants that are also alive,
Cascading onto rocks that exist in some measure,
Cascading on nothingness, You Who have been called Everything and Nothing..."
I love that part...stay tuned for my conclusion to "Gods of the Future Will Be Machines" in a couple of weeks -- I'm going to be right here with you, brother...
Interesting Akido (Shaw) in that hymn, CJS. I have always thought of solipsism as the lonliness Ein Sof sought to subvert with creation. But I see you have a midrash that would flip it into company. Do your shapeshifter just change clothes or does body account for more than that in such a wondering?
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.
Thanks Gregory, so glad you enjoyed -- would be a blast, all three of us to sit around a campfire in the woods, passing the peace pipe, reflecting on human life, our approach to the Divine.
But also -- if you were to sit and listen to me and Andrew, you'd hear days of silence :) This took us a couple of months, I think...
...my kind of conversation!
peace
-g
We are all beacon fires of what emenates from the Wonder crosstalking, over the wires if necessary. Mythopoesis is the what warms us. It is symbiosis.. No corrections in that biome. Just exchange, memory, and love. The fire is here, too. Listening. Thanks.
(Somehow my response was doubled; when I tried to delete one, it deleted both -- some kind of quantum entanglement wormhole kind of thing, fit for a Star Trek episode)
Anyway -- what I said was: If there must be wires, then let this be the kind of thing we send through those wires; also, this was a blast -- let's do another one sometime!