Friday, September 25, 2009
A Childlike faith
If you send me your email address, I will send you the poem "A Childlike faith" about what in my experience is the essence of how we come into life already made (though not yet realized fully). This is the poem which attempted to capture for me the reality of yearling daughter as she encountered the world of nature. She has remained to this day the scientist that she was when she came into this life.
The Human Life from Conception to Grave
This blog is titled Glebewise because I want to provide a strong impetus to look at our materiality for signs and significance of things spiritual.
Ben Franklin as a youth steeped in Calvinism and drawn to deism in the Age of Reason started on a journey in which science did not prove adequate to proof of the existence of God to his way of thinking. I believe that Ben Franklin is much like my second daughter, drawn by nature and intrigued by science, and that probably from conception this was so of Ben and my daughter.
I know my daughter as a yearling exhibited the natural curiosity of the "child scientist." She gravitated to plants and then as she grew to the marsh and to lake and to estuary and to the sea. Today she is a marine biologist and environmental scientist and I could not be prouder of her journey and its inexorable march towards embracing the physical world. I believe that for her spirituality is an embrace of the natural world.
In contrast, I know my original impetus in life was toward the mystical world of Christian belief and as an adult am certain that it has been the keynote of my life in which I place myself not at the center of creation but at the foot of God. I think humility is the product of the quest for truth as we grow ever simpler and earthbound with each year.
I also sense that the ebbing tide of reduction into the material world is potentially and ultimately to be matched with a swelling tide of affirmation that is the result of feeling the embrace of God around and about us (regardless of how we as individuals can reach that point).
Ben Franklin as a youth steeped in Calvinism and drawn to deism in the Age of Reason started on a journey in which science did not prove adequate to proof of the existence of God to his way of thinking. I believe that Ben Franklin is much like my second daughter, drawn by nature and intrigued by science, and that probably from conception this was so of Ben and my daughter.
I know my daughter as a yearling exhibited the natural curiosity of the "child scientist." She gravitated to plants and then as she grew to the marsh and to lake and to estuary and to the sea. Today she is a marine biologist and environmental scientist and I could not be prouder of her journey and its inexorable march towards embracing the physical world. I believe that for her spirituality is an embrace of the natural world.
In contrast, I know my original impetus in life was toward the mystical world of Christian belief and as an adult am certain that it has been the keynote of my life in which I place myself not at the center of creation but at the foot of God. I think humility is the product of the quest for truth as we grow ever simpler and earthbound with each year.
I also sense that the ebbing tide of reduction into the material world is potentially and ultimately to be matched with a swelling tide of affirmation that is the result of feeling the embrace of God around and about us (regardless of how we as individuals can reach that point).
Santiago, a poem
If interested I will email you a copy of a poem entitled "Santiago" about the hope for a new marriage of spirituality and science. Send your request to my email address. Expect delivery in about a week.
A True Devotion to Progress for Humankind
I have often thought that for generations Christians have stood on a bridge between the shrouded past and a dim prospect of the human community to survive its own defeats and excesses (i.e. the various Crusades or Intifadas, the Inquisition, the Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, the bombing of Dresden, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
In my lifetime, creationists in our society want the proponents of the theory of evolution to take a backseat to traditional beliefs about origin of the human race and want the science curriculum degraded to a religious posturing. Modernism means we have arrived at the understanding that neither science nor religion has always been the servant of progress in the human community.
The firm belief I espouse is that recognizing and fostering true progress is a spiritual activity that requires education, political involvement, and values commitment. Degrading the role of science or religion is not ultimately consistent with mutual progress for humankind.
An active modernism means embracing a better future for ourselves and our children through the progress afforded by science married to spiritual values. This is our ultimate task of values clarification (i.e. you do not build more nuclear plants when you lack the means physical or political to safely store nuclear waste).
The metaphor that works for me is the pilgrimage. I am reminded of Geoffrey Chaucer's Caunterbury Tales about pilgrims on the way to the tomb of Thomas a Becket. They were fellow travelers who just happened to spend time on the road and in roadside inns telling self-revelatory stories to curb one another's character excesses and flaws. Saints and sinners, we learn from the Tales sometimes by ribald humor, are all in this together.
For me, the devotion of the pilgrimage is only relevant if it is transformative and leads to the pursuit of outcomes that lead the observer to conclude that God is Love.
Last spring while reading Iberia by James Mitchener, I came across the legends associated with James the Greater (to the Spanish Santiago) and his missionary journey to convert Iberia to Christianity. (The Epistle of Saint James is attributed to this saint and apostle as well.) Today as for generations past, pilgrims travel to northwest Spain to venerate this saint and seek his intercession.
The legendary stories of James in Iberia on an apostolic journey remain without factual or historical basis. The devotion of the pilgrims to his shrine is real. The devotion I would foster is that we all journey together towards human progress.
In my lifetime, creationists in our society want the proponents of the theory of evolution to take a backseat to traditional beliefs about origin of the human race and want the science curriculum degraded to a religious posturing. Modernism means we have arrived at the understanding that neither science nor religion has always been the servant of progress in the human community.
The firm belief I espouse is that recognizing and fostering true progress is a spiritual activity that requires education, political involvement, and values commitment. Degrading the role of science or religion is not ultimately consistent with mutual progress for humankind.
An active modernism means embracing a better future for ourselves and our children through the progress afforded by science married to spiritual values. This is our ultimate task of values clarification (i.e. you do not build more nuclear plants when you lack the means physical or political to safely store nuclear waste).
The metaphor that works for me is the pilgrimage. I am reminded of Geoffrey Chaucer's Caunterbury Tales about pilgrims on the way to the tomb of Thomas a Becket. They were fellow travelers who just happened to spend time on the road and in roadside inns telling self-revelatory stories to curb one another's character excesses and flaws. Saints and sinners, we learn from the Tales sometimes by ribald humor, are all in this together.
For me, the devotion of the pilgrimage is only relevant if it is transformative and leads to the pursuit of outcomes that lead the observer to conclude that God is Love.
Last spring while reading Iberia by James Mitchener, I came across the legends associated with James the Greater (to the Spanish Santiago) and his missionary journey to convert Iberia to Christianity. (The Epistle of Saint James is attributed to this saint and apostle as well.) Today as for generations past, pilgrims travel to northwest Spain to venerate this saint and seek his intercession.
The legendary stories of James in Iberia on an apostolic journey remain without factual or historical basis. The devotion of the pilgrims to his shrine is real. The devotion I would foster is that we all journey together towards human progress.
In an Age of Materialism and Want
As a youth I was enamored of stories of saints and mystics. Lately, in James Mitchener's Iberia I came across the enormous and continuing devotion to St. James, apostle, who is believed to have traveled to Iberia (Spain) and converted persons to Christianity in the First Century. Was this the same James who led the Jerusalem church and was martyred in the holy land?
More importantly, the Bible has an Epistle attributed to James which has a distinct quality. This Epistle of James is especially sharp about his own generation which was not unlike our own in which materialism is rampant in society. The author of the epistle encourages those who live in want to not live in spiritual want. This epistle is attributed to James the Greater. The epistle in my thinking has long been an important touchstone piece of literature and in part explains why I write poetry in an age of rampant and degrading materialism and also choose certain images over others.
While living in North Dakota as a young teacher, I walked on hillsides in the hills east of Binford (not too far from mystical Red Willow Lake) on a visit to Leroy and Bernice Alfson's farm (my wife's relatives and my all time favorite Aunt Barney). These hills are glacial moraine and were for the most part in use as pasture. You could see the flat farms running to the horizon in all directions. On our walk, I remember suggesting to my daughter Kendra, age three, that she pick the wild flowers and bring them down to her mother during our visit.
At that time, my wife Jean, daughter Kendra, and I lived in a school board house rent free with one caveat: we had to heat it. The bills were so exorbitant that we began to understand why it was rent free. Eventually, the home was reinsulated in part because of the skyrocketing fuel oil prices during the Carter Presidency. One of the three winters we lived in Grace City, one family, two of whom were my students, tore siding off of their home to burn in the wood stove. I was not all that shocked because as a youth I had spent two summers for a couple of weeks on Fort Totten Indian Reservation working at a Catholic Youth Organization at Seven Dolors Mission. At that time reservation families were beset with rampant alcoholism and teenagers having babies. At that time,I was shocked to see housing with the siding stripped for firewood.
Oddly, while I seemed to have first hand experience of rural poverty, I wrote a short story about a family in a new housing development in Fargo in which the family was being torn apart by materialism, not poverty. I sent the story into the state fair and nothing came of it. I wonder why I didn't write a story about rural poverty. I think I probably was in it and just didn't realize it. Farm families in some parts of North Dakota live in housing on the farmer's land and probably experience the same rural poverty I was witnessing, but I didn't write about their plight either. The Twentieth Century for many rural families was spare but the families I met were hard working hands or tenants. Most of us were glad to have employment and a roof over our heads.
What I did do to help me mark the passage through the low income years was to write a poem for Sunday school class using the image of wildflowers, Prairie Roses. Flowers like the ones that Kendra and I had seen as we walked that day in the hills. This poem and its attitude about life helped me live those years on a rural English teacher's salary without much ado. Don't feel sorry for me though as the cooking at home was satisfying and the relatives always had great feasts too. The Grace City School had produce from gardens and locally raised beef and deer sausage in home cooked meals. Hot lunch was the highlight of everyone's day in that school.
Don't remember sharing my "Prairie Rose Volunteers" poem it with anyone until I sent it out as a Christmas greeting some years ago. The poem is available upon email request to this blogger. I'd like to think that the author of the Epistle of James would like my poem.
More importantly, the Bible has an Epistle attributed to James which has a distinct quality. This Epistle of James is especially sharp about his own generation which was not unlike our own in which materialism is rampant in society. The author of the epistle encourages those who live in want to not live in spiritual want. This epistle is attributed to James the Greater. The epistle in my thinking has long been an important touchstone piece of literature and in part explains why I write poetry in an age of rampant and degrading materialism and also choose certain images over others.
While living in North Dakota as a young teacher, I walked on hillsides in the hills east of Binford (not too far from mystical Red Willow Lake) on a visit to Leroy and Bernice Alfson's farm (my wife's relatives and my all time favorite Aunt Barney). These hills are glacial moraine and were for the most part in use as pasture. You could see the flat farms running to the horizon in all directions. On our walk, I remember suggesting to my daughter Kendra, age three, that she pick the wild flowers and bring them down to her mother during our visit.
At that time, my wife Jean, daughter Kendra, and I lived in a school board house rent free with one caveat: we had to heat it. The bills were so exorbitant that we began to understand why it was rent free. Eventually, the home was reinsulated in part because of the skyrocketing fuel oil prices during the Carter Presidency. One of the three winters we lived in Grace City, one family, two of whom were my students, tore siding off of their home to burn in the wood stove. I was not all that shocked because as a youth I had spent two summers for a couple of weeks on Fort Totten Indian Reservation working at a Catholic Youth Organization at Seven Dolors Mission. At that time reservation families were beset with rampant alcoholism and teenagers having babies. At that time,I was shocked to see housing with the siding stripped for firewood.
Oddly, while I seemed to have first hand experience of rural poverty, I wrote a short story about a family in a new housing development in Fargo in which the family was being torn apart by materialism, not poverty. I sent the story into the state fair and nothing came of it. I wonder why I didn't write a story about rural poverty. I think I probably was in it and just didn't realize it. Farm families in some parts of North Dakota live in housing on the farmer's land and probably experience the same rural poverty I was witnessing, but I didn't write about their plight either. The Twentieth Century for many rural families was spare but the families I met were hard working hands or tenants. Most of us were glad to have employment and a roof over our heads.
What I did do to help me mark the passage through the low income years was to write a poem for Sunday school class using the image of wildflowers, Prairie Roses. Flowers like the ones that Kendra and I had seen as we walked that day in the hills. This poem and its attitude about life helped me live those years on a rural English teacher's salary without much ado. Don't feel sorry for me though as the cooking at home was satisfying and the relatives always had great feasts too. The Grace City School had produce from gardens and locally raised beef and deer sausage in home cooked meals. Hot lunch was the highlight of everyone's day in that school.
Don't remember sharing my "Prairie Rose Volunteers" poem it with anyone until I sent it out as a Christmas greeting some years ago. The poem is available upon email request to this blogger. I'd like to think that the author of the Epistle of James would like my poem.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
President Obama on Healthcare Plan
Last Saturday I took the city bus from St. Paul where I live to Minneapolis. I stood in line for two hours and waited over two hours to hear the President. He provided his personal encouragement to those who would reform healthcare. He said the insured are statistically dwindling with the status quo as is the actual liability of the insurance companies for those that are insured. He is dealing with the realities of rampant capitalism in charge of funding healthcare outside of government funded healthcare such as veterans care, medicare, and medicaid. I recommend you follow honest brokers in the healthcare debate. For example see my brother's blog: HTTP://vftl.blogspot.com
Glebewise Blog and my poetry
I have had a facebook inquiry as to whether or not I will publish my poetry on this site. If I reference a poem from the past, I will respond to requests for the poem to be sent to the requestor's email address. I will also publish to the blog poems which are relevant to blog topics.
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