Old photos and movies came to mind while reading last night. One I recalled is of my grandparents with his family in front of his grandmother's house in New Haven @ 1910. He is standing there with a cousin (I think), he in knickers, she in a pinafore (I think that's what those little girl dresses are called), their hair done too neatly, a look of mild annoyance on their faces. Of course we first look to the people in such photos, this of my long-dead grandfather when he was years younger than my own son. But what grabbed me after inspecting the oddness and sameness of my relatives in a time long gone was the size of the trees in the yard. Probably maple, or so I see in my mind, with girths almost as broad as the children are tall. It first struck me that "those were the days" when trees were grand, but on second thought, understood that 1910 New Haven was no outpost of a recently claimed wilderness. Its trees should be no greater than ours today. And it is true. Look at any older house with a yard and you will see those same great trees. But why did they look so special in the picture?
In fact, I have several pictures of myself and family in the woods and the trees often strike me in the same way - huge, towering presences that make us look small and insignificant. I have found that this is the same with those "small" movies, the artsy ones that are done for the art rather than the big-box, and how the cameras capture the scenery. There is one that was something of a hit, "The Last of the Mohegans", the modern one with Daniel Day Lewis that brings us into the forest primeval. Nature towers above man in all but the most action-packed scenes. We see this more so in the quiet lesser movies - "Nebraska" for instance, where it is not the trees but the space, the expanse of land and the sky. There is one point at which the main character visits his old farm house, now in ruins. About runs the corn to the horizon, and the sky, limitless of floating clouds, give a sense of the infinite in its remote quietness.
These pictures seem special, but they are not. Beyond the city, nature is always overwhelming, far greater than any of us, but we seldom notice it. Those big trees are in my back yard. That big sky is just beyond my driveway. I do not usually notice them because they are normal, and they do not draw attention to themselves. Unlike the dog or the family or friends, they simply are. It is because they require no response from us that they are seldom noticed. But when they are we are amazed, as if something new has come into our lives.
They are always there, however, all around us - sky, sea, trees, hills. They are not special, so much so that we do not notice them, but they ARE special exactly because we do not normally notice them. They are our backdrop, our reality, which is so seldom seen from our busy social minds - from the False Mind, as Richard Rohr calls it. But this presence is there, not only within us, but without. It is within stillness that we see them and ourselves more for what they and we are - these great, impossible, portentous creations that sit in the silence of the vastness - of truth.
It is this that we find in the stillness of deep ritual - the treating of even the small as a great miracle, a gift. And it is from seeing from silence, from the stilled mind, that we understand our impossible sacredness, not only in ritual but everywhere.
It is this that the film director sees - at one point, the tombstones against the great, silent, beautiful sky of Nebraska. They, these reminders of our mortality, are nothing compared to the vastness of life. And it is in this that we see what is our true self, for in understanding the presence of the vastness, we intuit to ourselves that we know the truth and have always known the truth. The tomb stones are our false selves that die, and the sky, our true selves that live in limitless and timeless freedom.
So my grandfather is long dead, his picture a mere curiosity, but the trees behind him tell the story. He is beyond the fashion and customs of his time and among the greatness that was once only a whisper in the unnoticed witness of the trees. FK
In fact, I have several pictures of myself and family in the woods and the trees often strike me in the same way - huge, towering presences that make us look small and insignificant. I have found that this is the same with those "small" movies, the artsy ones that are done for the art rather than the big-box, and how the cameras capture the scenery. There is one that was something of a hit, "The Last of the Mohegans", the modern one with Daniel Day Lewis that brings us into the forest primeval. Nature towers above man in all but the most action-packed scenes. We see this more so in the quiet lesser movies - "Nebraska" for instance, where it is not the trees but the space, the expanse of land and the sky. There is one point at which the main character visits his old farm house, now in ruins. About runs the corn to the horizon, and the sky, limitless of floating clouds, give a sense of the infinite in its remote quietness.
These pictures seem special, but they are not. Beyond the city, nature is always overwhelming, far greater than any of us, but we seldom notice it. Those big trees are in my back yard. That big sky is just beyond my driveway. I do not usually notice them because they are normal, and they do not draw attention to themselves. Unlike the dog or the family or friends, they simply are. It is because they require no response from us that they are seldom noticed. But when they are we are amazed, as if something new has come into our lives.
They are always there, however, all around us - sky, sea, trees, hills. They are not special, so much so that we do not notice them, but they ARE special exactly because we do not normally notice them. They are our backdrop, our reality, which is so seldom seen from our busy social minds - from the False Mind, as Richard Rohr calls it. But this presence is there, not only within us, but without. It is within stillness that we see them and ourselves more for what they and we are - these great, impossible, portentous creations that sit in the silence of the vastness - of truth.
It is this that we find in the stillness of deep ritual - the treating of even the small as a great miracle, a gift. And it is from seeing from silence, from the stilled mind, that we understand our impossible sacredness, not only in ritual but everywhere.
It is this that the film director sees - at one point, the tombstones against the great, silent, beautiful sky of Nebraska. They, these reminders of our mortality, are nothing compared to the vastness of life. And it is in this that we see what is our true self, for in understanding the presence of the vastness, we intuit to ourselves that we know the truth and have always known the truth. The tomb stones are our false selves that die, and the sky, our true selves that live in limitless and timeless freedom.
So my grandfather is long dead, his picture a mere curiosity, but the trees behind him tell the story. He is beyond the fashion and customs of his time and among the greatness that was once only a whisper in the unnoticed witness of the trees. FK
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