Today, a new chapter, "Dereck", under "Hurricane River" in the website, after the chapters "Henry" and "Devil's Choice"   FK

Today, a reprint of the essay, "The Night My Father Shot Santa," under "Essays" in the website.

A brief one today, as we are all abuzz like most everyone else with Christmas.  This I could not pass up: while having breakfast, we listened to the music of our local avant-guard radio station, and this morning they had a Blue Grass Christmas.  We first head the sincere strains of simple country people (or so they represent themselves) singing about Bethlehem and the baby Jesus and such, all very good.  But then the selection veered to the "trailer park" red necks, with songs about houses dead cold from dead cold marriages, and one that I think is a bit famous, about a dysfunctional hick family's Christmas, where we repeatedly hear about more runs to the Quicky Mart for booze mixers, cigarettes and tampons.  "Noel, noel" our singer croones in sloppy, maybe even drunk Southern.  Ah, yes, a Christmas without enchantment, as dead as a holiday hangover.  

Yes, one of my greatest fears, this disenchantment, because it would be so easy to fall into it, like a drunk into a culvert.  Right now, it is dark with clouds outside, as it has been for two weeks straight, the temps in the mid-thirties, the ground thawed and the ice running out of the rivers.  Every now and then, the clouds spit out a little rain mixed with sloppy frozen stuff, and if there were a good game on now, it would be nice to simply pop a beer or three and forget about the whole Noel thing, as gray and lifeless as it is.  

For those raised Christian, we can recall what this season means, as historically inaccurate as it is (the timing of it to 25 December).  God on Earth, a reprieve from darkness, a way out of our conundrum of exactly what ails us, disenchantment.  Yet, disenchantment is oddly a product a civilization, for as filled with revenge and blood lust as many primitives were, disenchantment was never a problem. For them, life was full of spirits, even to the point of distraction and worry.  Magic was not only possible but probable and a regular occurrence.  Less so, but still alive in spirit were the peasants of near-present day and the medieval past.  Life by then was often a drudgery, but still, mystery filled the local woods and late nights - again, not always welcome, but alive none the less.  

For me, and for most of us I believe, we have to conjure this spirit of enchantment, for in daily life it is gone, lost to the world of sensibleness, of common sense.  That our common sense is dead wrong in the aggregate cannot penetrate our way of thought -  life is cause and effect, as predictable in most ways as billiard balls on a slate table.  What, then, do we of such sensibilities make of Christmas?  

We look to the children, and to our memories of ourselves as children.  They can believe in anything, even Elves - and even God on Earth.  For the rest of us, who knows?, for we can be of any religion in our current world and never act or feel as if the truths of these religions affect us.  We have, in large part, been made numb.  

Why this is so has been explored many times in this blog ,and will be again, for it essential to understand this if any re-enchantment of the world is to begin.  But for those of us who are Christians, and for those others who are close to the heartbeat of the cultural ethos, we know what Christmas calls for - not  a tear-filled admission of our sins for redemption, but a return to the time when we could feel enchantment.  In that way, Christmas is for everyone, for we all need this, this return, this break in the billiard ball mentality.  

And it should be noted that this naivete, this child-like wonder that we call back to, is more real than our dead world of function.  We know, really, almost nothing, and if we could admit it, we would have to admit that our collective knowledge is that of a small child still.  For still, we are as dependent on the forces around us as ever, and still as strangely protected, like children who have no idea why they have earned such protection.  

But we know why, and that is what Christmas proclaims: rejoice! In this vast turmoil of wind and sun and surf and stars, a spirit reigns to protect you, to guide you.  It lives through the world, in all things at all times.  Life is not dead, but alive, and ultimately, overwhelmingly good.  And if we can't see that always, then we must see it now and then, especially in the star of Bethlehem as the banjo pickers sing.  It is there and has always been there, and now is the time, once again, to begin our re-enchantment.  Merry Christmas, FK     
        

It's Christmas time again, the end of the year, and with that we always get a very interesting letter from one of our neighbors telling us all the things the family has done the past 12 months. The one I just received is little different from the ones before: there are several trips abroad, some to exotic places like the Galapagos; there are grandchildren born and hikes in the Appalachians and canoe trips in the Boundary Waters; there are meetings with friends and parties in odd places, snowshoeing in the Minnesota wilds, a river trip in the Peruvian Amazon, and more - lots more. Me, I could write about plowing the driveway in last year's blizzard, or building a woodshed in the UP, or making a batch of Scottish Ale. Oh, there's other stuff, but nothing more exciting. That's it for us. 

I have no idea how I came to be a fuddy-duddy, but that's what's looking back in the mirror.  Having just read the letter, I kind of resent it, too.  Heck, you only live once!

It is not that I am exactly green with envy, although maybe a little pale yellow, but such tales of adventure bring a sense of longing - of a need to fulfill life.  The problem is certainly not a new one, and there are many old tales from fuddy-duddys like me that speak of the wisdom of place.  The book I recently read, Cathar's "Shadows on a Rock," depicts the way of life of 17th century French Canadians, where most resisted any change in life whatsoever.  What they had was "them" and all was right with the world just as it was.  A book by Thomas Merton on the desert fathers - those early Christians who lived severe lives in the deserts of Arabia and Egypt- contains a quote from a wise man saying that no one should go more than a few leagues, or some odd measurement, from his abode - ever.  Dorthy of the Wizard of OZ learns, as we all know, that there is no place like home. Closer to my own home, when I was a child and used to beg my father to take me or us on camping trips or hikes or any kind of adventure whatsoever, he would reply, "I have worked hard to have the place and bed I want.  Why would I give it up for another place or a sleeping bag?"  I can see me gritting my teeth even now.  

But of what interest are people of place?  Robert Luis Stevenson would have died a pauper had he written about a young Scottish lad who was born into a poor house, stayed in that poor house, and then died.  No - he wrote that the young fellow fell in with pirates, escaped, and came to have all their treasure, to return to his poor home a rich man.  It was then, I suppose, that he settled down, but nowadays, he probably wouldn't.  He would continue to jet-set to the Seychelles Islands or whatever place was hip for the well-heeled and continue to have adventures until his mysterious and portentous death.  He would be, as the commercial goes, "The most interesting man in the world." 

We read that the already wise eschew travel; they are content with place, for to them, one place is no less or more interesting or fulfilling than another.  And so we read of tales where the pilgrim goes round the world to find a dragon, only to discover after returning tired and disappointed that his house was built on an ancient mound depiction of a dragon - he had had his heart's desire there at home all along.  And so, I suppose, it is with us. On my greatest adventure, my fieldwork with the Amazon Indians, I had been looking for a dragon of sorts, a way of life that could tell me life's secrets.  What I found was not worthless, for in another way of life we can see an aspect of the whole that we did not know before, but I did not find the whole.  I know now that I would not find it in India either, or in the Australian Outback, or wherever.  I might find beautiful or inspiring scenery, interesting people or dangerous outings on mountain ridges or wild rivers, but I would be no closer to the whole.  The wise men, as always, are correct - the whole is right there with you and around you, the dragon in your very heart.  

But most of us aren't wise. If we have given up looking for Truth in the outside, then we continue to go out for diversion. We sleep in beds that are not our own and jiggle uncomfortably in old buses for adventure, for something to tell us that we are alive and not wasting our limited time.  My experience has shown me that if there is no discomfort, then it is not an adventure; and that if there is discomfort, I cannot enjoy the experience until I have returned safely to home, to tell my friends and myself about it. There is something perverse in that, this need, but there it is, this yellow envy and sense of in-completion, of losing the limited time that I have left.

In truth, the most notable experiences have come from the interior - the realization, that is, that we are set in a vast and intelligent universe, in a far stranger and more wonderful land than we could ever find on this earth or even this galaxy.  But the desire, the need continues, as do all other needs, basic or otherwise. A trip or two might be as simple as a need to recharge after long hours at a tough job, but the need could also come from the urge to discover the dragon.  For me, that is what it is.  I know where the dragon is, but I would rather the fantasy of Treasure Island over the reality of hard interior work; the fantasy of the returning hero rather than the reality of a weak self that ages, fears and dies.  Wealth and the leisure travel it can bring would then be the curse that the wise often say it is.  Ah, but still - if not the galaxy, why not the Seychelles?  Who knows what wonders work there that do not here?  As if a dragon were so easy to find, but still, the wander lust calls.  FK           
    

Sometimes, if you are a talking parrot like me, you have to give advice before you can realize it yourself.  This happened the other night as my son and I talked about his future options.  After 3 semesters of classes and a few very bad starts, he is still left wondering - what to major in?  If not, maybe trade school?  We have in the past gone over his assets and found, the hard way, his liabilities, and still the question lingers.  He had claimed he had hardly slept the night before, worrying about this.

Of course I had to give him the American guilt trip - hey, at least you HAVE a choice!  Why, a garbage picker in the Philippines can only look to the lowly career of his family for his future - or a lucky surge of money that will buy him a ticket to the US.  But that choice, like many things in this contrary life, is also a curse.  He would have no blame for his low status - my son or the garbage picker - in a world where there was no choice.  This is the way many nations and tribes have always lived - there is but one way. It is part of the reason for the French "art of living," and the centered spirituality of India, for in those nations there is a long history of stasis.  In the case of India, there is an actual caste system that officially relegates people to certain professions.  It is here that we can truly say, "if you are a garbage collector, be the best garbage collector there is!"

I've heard this said in the US, but we all know that here it is not really true.  Few people suggest to their children to be the best garbage collector, for we have a status hierarchy, and garbage doesn't figure very highly in it.  "My son the doctor" is not just the boasting of the Jewish mother - it is the hope for one's children that most of us in America have.  But I cannot push too hard for status without being a hypocrite, nor can anyone with a commitment to higher truths.  And besides, some, like myself and my son, are not the nose- to-the- grindstone types.  Rather, like most of us, we wish to have a good life, a balance of work and play.  And why not be the best garbage collector?

It's true, but it's also true that many of us wouldn't last in that job, for a variety of reasons.  We'd be failures as garbage collectors, plain and simple.  And so we look for all sorts of ways to find our way, to what would satisfy our nature, not just our need for prestige.  With me, it came from out of the blue sophomore year, to be an anthropologist.  After years of side tracking and hurdling of obstacles, that is what I became.  That it didn't pan out in the end is not the point of this blog - and is of little interest to anyone besides myself.  But the truth is, I would have been good at it.  It fits my nature.  How, then, did this come to me?

On that night, I told my son: "You know, if you can't figure it out through thinking, you have to let it come to you.  Pray for an answer to whatever higher source you imagine, and then keep open.  Your question is often answered, usually first thing in the morning, but it could be at anytime.  Stop your frustration and anxiety and let it be.  If nothing comes, continue as you are. Maybe the time isn't ripe."  

As far as I know, the answer has not come to him, and perhaps he thinks my advice is hogwash.  However, it did work on me - not the answer, but the truth of the advice which, after all, is simply borrowed wisdom.  Yes, it is true - it is no use to worry continually about that decision.  Think of it and then leave it to a higher power, or interior self if you prefer to call it that.  That is how we come to the Eureka moment so often experienced by the greatest thinkers.  For me, it is a spiritual thing, and in letting it go, peace is allowed.  If nothing else, that peace will allow one to think more clearly.  The answer will probably not come as a Eureka moment in this case, but as something clear and obvious. Oh, yeah, sure, how could I have missed that?  Success is not assured with this answer; rather, one is given something that one could do well, given the attributes one has.  

Is freedom of choice worth the effort?  I have read that arranged marriages and chosen ones have about the same probability of success, but I do not think it is a wash.  Free choice gives us the possibility to discover more, to go deeper.  It also allows us to throw everything we have away, or be swept off our feet by a big bank account or a pretty face.  In the "art of living" world, we are given the choice to make beautiful whatever we have been given; in the world of free choice, we are able to choose what we can make most beautiful.  It seems the latter is the best alternative, although Indians would disagree.  As far as I now know, maybe my son would, too.  But I believe the answer, the real answer to a greater path, is there and best served by freedom.  To find it takes, as with anything good and lasting, faith and at times a certain courage, to give things we cannot grasp over to faith.  Now, if only an answer will come for my writing career...FK  
  

Today - Two new chapters posted under "Hurricane River" in the website, "Henry" and "Devil's Choice."  These follow last week's chapter "A Sweater."  

Nearing the end of Willa Cather's "Shadows on the Rock," this son of change and glitz (me) learned of the French "art of living."  We have as a central character Cecile, who at this point is just 13 years old, on the final step of childhood.  Here she is taken to the Ile d' Orleans, an island in the middle of the St Lawrence River below the rock of Quebec.  For years now, she has never been, although she has longed to go, looking at it daily from her perch in Quebec.  It is an island of fruit and honey, where the best lands of the region are and where much of the fresh food for Quebec comes from. Her ferry man is Pierre Charron, a fierce but good man of the woods, and although he gets her there safely, she is shocked by the manner of life there.  While the flowers and trees and grass are lush, the food in the house where she stays is coarse and, to her, almost inedible. She is to sleep with three other smaller girls of the house, and she notes that they do not wash their legs before bed, but jump in, bleeding mosquito bites and mud and all.  She is horrified by the dirt, but she is no brat - she simply stays up, starring out the window, waiting for dawn.  After two days, Pierre notes her tired composure and asks what is wrong; it is then that she pleads with him to take her back to her home, which he does.

When she arrives at the Rock, she feels like kissing the ground (but does not - she is not given to theatrics).  Once home, she immediately goes about the chores and cooking, which has become her lot since the death of her mother three years before. After a bit, she understands something that she had not before; while before she had thought her chores were for her father and the memory of her mother, she now discovers that they are for her, too.  She loves the life she has, loves the house she cares for, and loves her habits and chores.  They are, she realizes, not just what she does and has, but who she is.  She now understands, while not thinking it, contentment and place, her meaning and duty in the world one and the same.

It is, as the French are fond of saying, the essence of the "art of living."  It is that each thing, every meal, every room or house cleaning, is a ritual, the ritual of life.  For Cecile in her time, it is also a ritual with God included, what she does a part of God's design, but the idea of a specific god is not necessary - rather, it is the notion that one's place is integral to the whole, and as such one's life work much be treated with respect and even reverence.  In that, one does reverence to one's self and to life.

It is the Buddhist way, and the way of all saints, and it is something that I do not come by naturally.  A chore to me is something to get over.  The house can get messy, the food can be from the freezer to the microwave, my dress only adequate for the weather.  Life is not art, nor is place - I have moved so many times in life that I still confuse phone numbers and zip codes. Life is to have enough money, and if I am lucky, enough time to watch a game or play guitar.  That is the point - to get past the annoying necessities of life.  For those of us looking for more, we might have hobbies or church or something to bring us to a more meaningful place, but much of life is something to get done with so we can enjoy the evening or the weekend.  TGIF would not be the motto of Old France.

I do not say this to inculcate guilt: we have our reasons for thinking as we do.  But there is something to learn here, of others and how we might make our lives more content.  As such, the book itself drifts back and forth, from daily life to the life of the Church, and we see how the connections and the order and meaning of life were once maintained.  As a cathedral was the dome of the celestial sky writ small, so life was to be the life of sacred meaning writ small.  In a way, a wonderful way of life, if one can find it in oneself.  A good notion, I think, to keep in mind.  FK       

Imagine a world of perfect order: where God rules from a heaven just beyond the fixed stars, where rulers govern according to God's will, where every action is met with a proper response, even if we do not understand it; a world that is divinely guided, and where one's place and one's culture is held in high esteem and without question; a world where the family is supreme, the father at the head, the woman the support of the children, the children obedient to the parents, with all a microcosm of the one orderly universe.  

This is the world painted beautifully by Willa Cather in her book, "Shadows on the Rock," the Rock being Quebec City in the 1690's.  Having read more than half, I have been waiting for some slant, for some more modern intrusion into this world from the author, but this has not come.  Instead, she leaves an impression of what the people she depicts would approve of.  It would not be a bustling world of novelty, but rather one of custom, for this has been tested by the genius from centuries before.  Steadiness of character and humility, as well as attention to work and aid to the less fortunate would trump novelty and excitement every time.  

It is the way of the French at the time of King Louis the XIVth, the era of the Sun King as he radiates his greatness throughout his Kingdom and beyond, even to the far-flung corners of darkest Canada.  Yet, in spite of this, there is excitement: a big snowstorm,  a new war with England, the military engagements with the Iroquois, personal hardships and sickness - and the miracles.  It is this last that the French people of Canada look for most, for in their unchanging world, it is the direct signs from God that most inspire - that give anyone inspiration.  And miracles abound: angels come and fix spinning wheels, a touch of a bone relic converts a pagan, and religious vocations are pronounced through incredible acts of personal abnegation. This is the world of New France, of custom, of tradition, of God's implacable rule, and of His divine exceptions to the rule, for with Him everything is possible under a ceaseless sky.

It is an odd book for me to read, for its pace reflects the slow and steady ethos of the times, punctuated by acts of God, or so the people believe.  It is not full of excitement, but it builds, slowly, giving us this different world, a fascinating one so different from our own.  And it makes me think: would I like such a world?  

In the book, there is a rebel, a woman who does as she pleases, which means sleeping with whichever man she wants, having children without accountable fathers, and taking off for a river jaunt while her young child stays home, alone.  She is haughty towards the town folk, because they all know what she is, and she must uphold whatever she can of her dignity by showing the world that no one is her boss.  Rebellious she is and without virtue, the bad woman in town.  While the rest humble themselves to their betters -and they all know who they are - and all humble themselves before God and (their version of) His morality, she throws it away, and is poor and wretched for it. In our society, she would be Madonna (no pun intended) or Miley Cyrus, reviled by the elders and esteemed by many of the young. 

Except that this image is not really true.  Social rebels are like genetic mutations - most end badly, while a very few work out for the better.  Even in our society, where individualism reigns and no one is appointed by God, it is the go-alongs, the conservative of action (not political conservatives necessarily) who have the nice house, the new car, the kids who go to college, the 401K plan.  They have boring lives, but they survive well.  They stay in their marriage and give up luxuries and desires of the moment for their perceived responsibilities.  They are the back bone of society, still.  We talk of freedom but we know that in freedom, we must limit our freedom.  It is not just for the security, even, but rather the right thing to do. 

The world is no longer the center of the universe, and god is not often seen in the workings of everyday life and politics.  Chaos is all around us, and we know it.  Change is happening before our eyes, as if it is dictated by a foreign agent; as if God is, instead of the center of a changeless universe, the center of a cyclone, of disruption and novelty.  


This brings me back to that question - would I like the world of New France in 1697? Personally, I was a rebel for most of my youth, and wouldn't have taken it then for a minute.  I could still not stand the idea of a monarch and royalty that was accepted as better than I by birth.  On the other hand, the quiet way is, really, the way of the Universe.  As our author noted, whatever thing new that humans do, it had better be slowly tested beforehand. Novelty for the sake of change can be extremely damaging, even fatal.  Fashions, ideas, recreations, drugs, whatever may be the thing of the moment, is more like the rebel - most probably harmful, and most probably doomed.  The calm person of duty, of care, of harmony with his work and land and family and neighbors, this is what endures; this, it seems, is what causes the greater happiness.  

It is, after all is said and done, the way of the wise.  Even Jesus commanded us to give to Caesar what is Caesar's.  The IChing, too, tells us to move with the current, to not fight the battles that are only battles of our ego.  And yet, I have lived the quiet life, far off from society with the forest Indians.  I became bored, my life seeming to pass by without purpose.  In this I was not a rebel, but an American, a man of the modern world who needs forward momentum, change and lively entertainment.


It seems we stand at the crossroads, between the tottering old and the ruinous young, between the closed heavens of Old Europe and the frantic pace of the growing industrial world. In 2001:A Space Odyssey, it is shown that we are casting off the old world as well as the new, the old social order as well as the technological glitzy (HAL, the computer), to emerge into a new world, one we can barely perceive now.  This leap to "something new"  will not be the handmaiden of the careful and conservative, but not that of the rebel, either.  Whatever vision there is now of a New Order, it has not yet been well defined. Perhaps we will have to wait before it is upon us - or perhaps it will never come. It will not be old, but not hasty either - rather, something just right. Old Jacques of old Kebec would be as perplexed as I, and perhaps like him I must wait - or pray - for a miracle, for what only 'that which is beyond us all' can give.  FK                 


         

We took our neighbors out this weekend for minding our dog when we travel, and on the return after wining and dining, a book the man had lent me came up.  "I have to remember to return that book [lent two years ago] because it's just too paranoid.  Sure, I can believe that bankers and kings and queens and such have conspired, but not so thoroughly throughout so much time.  I mean, they make mistakes and they fight among themselves.  And that thing about the dragon living in a cave in central Europe and eating babies..."  I was a little too blunt, I know, and I blame the wine, but that thing about the dragon was really in there. There are limits to credulity, after all.

What are the limits, though?  I use the IChing, on the notion that any time is the right time, the complete time of Heaven, and as such, the using of an augury taps into that time.  Or so I have reasoned, along with a few thousand years of Chinese philosophy.  Odd coincidences also happen, and I often wonder - what is the meaning of this (in a greater sense)?  While looking for academic transcripts last summer to renew my resume, for instance, I found the notebook I had taken along with me when hitchhiking in the mid 70's (the core of my book, Dream Weaver.) I had thought it lost almost 40 years before.  Why would I find it now?  And then, just yesterday, I found a birthday card to me from my parents dated 1997.  It had a check in it for 35 dollars, which for some reason I had never cashed.  And there it was - a little joke written inside by Dad and his signature on the check. He has been dead now for something like 10 years.  My mother will join him very soon (not a curse, just an observation.  I don't think she'd mind), or so it seems.  Why find that letter after 17 years, now?  My father, as a matter of fact, died just before Christmas - maybe on the date, yesterday, when I found it. Coincidence?

I believe I have written of this before, known generically as the "pennies from heaven" phenomena, made famous (I think) by the lovelorn syndicated columnist Ann Landers.  Every now and then, she would print a series of letters from readers who talked of finding pennies in odd places, suggesting communication with the dead.  The rational among us insist that such things are wish fulfillments, our minds actively seeking out such pennies (or letters) subconsciously to give us the comfort of that link.  

On the face of it, that sure seems a comfort, too, to not have odd things popping around us.  On the other hand, I was not looking for that letter, and did not realize that finding it coincided with my father's death until writing this blog.  Who knows?  But what we do know, fight it as we might, is that the totality of what we know of our world cannot even measure on a delicate physicist's scale. We have no idea of infinity, little of time and of space, and next to nothing concerning the reason for this or that or anything beyond the most simple of things.  All we have for sure is what we can observe from our extremely limited perspective.  Just as surely, though, the reality of our paranoid thoughts are limited - again, because they derive their meaning from an even smaller perspective.  

I am currently reading a book written in the 1920's about late 17th century French Quebec.  It is historical fiction on a small scale, its focus primarily on the everyday person, but it does have an old Catholic bishop in it who might be an historical figure.  In one chapter, he finds a 4 year old child freezing to death on the steps of a great ecclesiastic residence built by his successor and too- worldy rival.  The child has been looking for his "bad" mother who has gone off with some men to dog sled the St Laurence River for fun, forgetting in the process, and along with much brandy, her young child.  "Ah," thinks the bishop.  "Surely the Lord has meant this as a message, sending me this young child on the eve of Christmas week on the steps of my rival."  So far in the novel, it does look as if the child is destined.  I don't know if he will become a real-life famous person or not, but the thought processes of the bishop are expressed well.  

A pragmatist might think the bishop a dinosaur, and of course he is to many- but his thinking went in line with those of his profession in that age.  For them, they understood that the mystery of their god was all about them, and that His intentions would be revealed in time, or anyway His unlimited knowledge decided. The importance is that the fundamental premise of these priests, and probably of most people of that day, was that God is actively at work behind a screen which shields us from the whole truth, for ignorant we are.  To buttress this idea, there is another character in the book, a pharmacist, who resists the idea of "bleeding from the feet" to cure a host of diseases.  He correctly sees that this practice is at best useless and at worst, debilitating.  Yet it is the fashion of the rich to have it done, and he nearly goes broke by refusing to practice it.  The learned consider him a stuck in the mud fool.  We know better.  But what of the bishop?  In other words, where, then, do we draw the line between superstition and reality, and between reality and paranoia?  Is the pharmacist right because we now know better, but the bishop wrong because we now know no more about God and such than before, and are willing to give it up as hopeless? 

We have a shared reality that is, at least, built on the shared perception of the senses (although what we see and so on is often dictated by what we consider important).  Beyond that, though, we must make sense of it.  Conspiracy theories are largely inadequate because they rely on a group of people acting in harmony at a level far above average, and keeping quiet about it for decades or centuries.  And forget about the baby-eating dragon (I hope).  But pennies from heaven?  Is not God (which itself is beyond definition) as good an explanation as any sometimes, or even better?  For unless we admit to knowing the fundamentals of everything, we must admit to not knowing the fundamentals or fundamental premise(s) that hold(s) the universe together.  If we must admit to ultimate ignorance, then, how can we be so proud as to reject that which we know nothing about? 

This brings us no closer to a practical knowledge of how things work - but perhaps a finer edge is given us to decide between the "holy' - that which is unknowable and beyond us - and the paranoid - that which is knowable and highly unlikely.  Letters from Dad?  Notebooks from heaven?  Really, I don't have any better idea.  FK 


 


  
   

Another night of football, and I'm feeling the rebuke of the Protestant Ethic, but there is nothing parsimonious about football. It is all vainglory, especially the adds.  We can be anything if we try (sure we can), and success will bring us never-ending happiness - especially when we drive a new car.  

Besides beer, nothing is more advertised than cars during the game.  There was one add that had a waiter pouring coffee all over the table of his clients because he couldn't stop looking at the great shiny new car driving by the window.  The clients weren't upset because they, too, were staring at this mechanical wonder.  And not because they simply admired its chic design and shiny  exterior, but because they envied - with a capital E - the owner.  You, that is; you, if you are successful enough to be able to buy this car.  And thus You can be happy, not  just because of the smooth ride, but because everyone will know you are successful and envy you for it, and that will make you very, very happy.  Thus the one- in -a -million stars of the game and you have something in common - you are both successful and envied.  A perfect marriage of game, greed, and insecurity.

Something we all know, I think, and we have to wonder if anyone is buying this type of sell - unless the subliminal aspects of social insecurity are more powerful than we think, and that might be the case.  However, it made me reflect on what I envied, and for me it is not cars - I never had the panting desire for one other than the practical need for transportation; nor do I have a desire for a mansion or a jet or a big pool, although if I could afford a pool I would like that.  Still, no envy; and now, in my dotage, I don't even envy success, which I once was very needy for.  No.  In fact, a story about a man who lives in a little cave in California or some such and who makes beautiful observations and sketchings in a notebook while living on wild nuts and bread crumbs catches my attention more than the rich guy who owns the top three stories in a ritzy apartment building in New York City.  Sure, I would admire his art collection and neat gadgets that I could never afford, but I'd rather live in a cabin in the woods.  Truth.  The advertising apparently doesn't work on me.

But these musings got me to thinking about Thomas Merton and the impossible hurdles he wrote about in our efforts to reach God, the Ultimate.  Ah, he says, one must not even be satisfied with one's fasting and poverty, for in that one raises self-pride and proves himself as far from God as the common sinner buying his new car for prestige.  As such I realized he was talking about me.  Yes, I shrug at the rich guy, don't have class envy, and it only matters to me that the other guy has money if he is buying the next round.  Yes, to me, the things of the mind and the spirit matter more - does one have good ideas or talent?  Has one hiked the Appalachian Trail or lived in the wilderness off nuts and berries?  These things I admire much more, but find in thinking about it that with such thoughts, I feel superior; I feel that the great "I", me, is reaching up to the heights while the poor slob on the street is reaching out for a stupid car.  Arrogance?  You bet.  

So I'm not holier than thou after all, and Thomas Merton is right: the road to the Ultimate is not a matter of shifting one's feelings and desires and self-image from one thing to another, but rather in abandoning them all together.  Anything else only puts one in another exclusive club, where if one is not envied, it is only because of the stupidity of the other.  This can be the Club of the Yachts just as well as the Club of Jesus, or of Meditaters, or of Hobo Hikers.  Same arrogance, same selfishness, same childish need to feel superior to someone else.  

It does not have to be that way, of course - we can admire something without self-aggrandizement, but Merton is right to have us beware; the car makers know what they're talking about. We feel a need to set ourselves apart, however that might be. This might not sell cars, but it might sell a hipster or intellectual or artsy lifestyle that is no closer to the Real than the shiny objects sold in between plays on Sunday Night football.  Damn, and I thought I was doing so well!  FK 

[A new chapter has been added to "Hurricane River," listed in the website, entitled "The Sweater." It is after the new chapter posted last week and still on, "Three Amigos."  Another will be added next week and so on as a serial, with the former chapters deleted with each new chapter placed.]

Two questions were raised after the last few blogs: One: what are the prospects of Gaia, really, in protecting our earth?  And two - what's wrong with meaningless recreation?  

On the first - Gaia, as said, is not an earth goddess but the ecological collective of all species.  Humans alone, as far as we know, are (or might be) the only one to have free choice.  Yet we are part of the overall species continuum.  Gregory Bateson, an anthropologist and biologist, argued that, as we are part of the continuum, we only have to reconnect with our deeper natural selves to live ecologically sound lives.  But he was restricted by the profane nature of his profession, while I am not.  It seems to me that morality was given to us as a counter to our natural tendencies of over-exploitation - an ability that is not held in check by the very same reason that we have morality- because we are abstract thinkers and introspective beings.  That is, our thinking abilities made us rise above natural limitations, while also giving us the ability to have cultural and personal morality systems which would limit over-exploitation.  Gaia, then, has been given a self-reference through us, and also a way to upset its balance.  It is, to my way of thinking, a spiritual gamble on the part of the Absolute that gives us a tremendous insight into the meaning of ourselves and our place in the universe.  On the other hand, we are but one of millions of planets.  The gamble, for God, is not a make or break one.  Of course not.  But it is for us and could go either way. I believe the Cosmos is literally pulling for us, but we must slay our dragons first - those dragons being the parts of us that allow gross exploitation (and anihilistic warfare) in the first place.  We are helped by our reference moralities and our sense of beauty and balance, but we have to subdue our 'animal side' because of our enhanced cognitive abilities.  It is, to me, a morality play in the flesh on a cosmic scale.

As for recreation, yes, we have a tendency towards self-righteous workaholism.  I just read Thomas Merton's "The Sayings of the Desert Fathers" and was confronted again and again with the importance of hard work for the servants of the lord.  Recall the saying, "an idle mind is the Devil's playground."  Tell me about it, for how much guff I've gotten for being a writer.  My retort is, "the only thing that defines what I do as work or as an idle waste is the money.  The work is the same." To no avail, but that is a side issue.  Overall, it has been understood by Northern Europeans that it is God's command to suffer to make a living - and to appreciate the suffering. For the desert fathers, I believe they were reacting to the idle rich of the era, the same demonized by Jesus.  For the more modern Northern European model, we look to the Protestant Ethic, which affected northern Catholics too. We are to work but not appreciate the fruits of it, for as sinners we must sweat and toil but not indulge.  This, as it is now understood, gave rise to Capitalism, for the hard-working Protestants had nothing more to do with their money than to reinvest (to capitalize).  

Paradoxically, this produced the richest, most profane general culture since the time of the late Roman Empire.  We might say, then, that while being idle by living off of someone else's sweat is not morally correct, neither is it to work beyond what is necessary.  Rather, self-sufficiency and attention to the quality of the work and to its place in a greater plan is the better attitude.  
So I'd say, enjoy. Maybe I can better, too, when my big break comes.  Then again, there can never be too much humility.  FK   

[Note: tomorrow I will add another chapter to the novel, "Hurricane River" found in the website under that name.  With that, I will erase all but the latest two chapter, to fashion a weekly serial.  If the reader wants to get in on the beginning, today is the day to do it.]     

For the last few days, the Milwaukee Journal has been running a series on the ecology of fish in the Great Lakes.  They have used up nearly all their front section space with it, and it was a good decision: the story is fascinating as well as frightening, a real page-turner.  It starts with the opening of the canal that allowed ocean liners to steam directly up the St Lawrence River into the Great Lakes system.  With that, a host of invaders came on the hull and ballast of the ships, most notorious among them in the 50's and 60's being the lamprey eel and the small, sardine like alewife. I remember the eel well from my Weekly Reader, for that is a gruesome tale of a monster that attaches itself to a fish and slowly sucks out its blood - and guts if it can, like an ET horror film.  Much worse, though, were the innocent looking alewives. They have an enzyme in them that keeps the native lake trout from reproducing, and with the collapse of the native big fish because of the this and the lamprey, the alewives were left with no predators.  Their population mushroomed to such an extent that net fishermen caught them to use as fertilizer and animal food; beaches were overwhelmed with their rotting carcasses; and clots of the dead fish, so overcrowded, reached miles in extant, like algae blooms.  

Enter the biologists.  Convinced that they could not mess up the eco system any more than it was, one man thought to stock coho, and then Chinook salmon.  They thrived on the alewives, and for the next 20 years a great new fishing tradition - along with a great new money generator for the lakes - was born.  But the salmon soon reduced the alewives, and with the addition of new invasive species like the zebra muscle, the food source of both alewives and (by extension) salmon became scarce.  In Lake Huron, the salmon population collapsed; in Lake Michigan, it is barely hanging on.  

And yet - a new small invasive fish, the gobe, also entered the system.  They have molars and are able to eat the zebra muscles (they both come from the same region of the Caspian Sea).  The remaining larger native fish learned to eat the gobe, and suddenly, without planning, Lake Huron, and to a lesser extent, Lake Michigan, came nearer to their natural ecological balance than they had been in decades.  

What is mind-numbing about this is that marine biologists still wish to keep the salmon populations up in Michigan, because of its popularity with the fishermen.  Fishermen, they say, bring in the fishing fees and support Great Lakes efforts to maintain its waters.  But what could be better for the lakes than a natural balance once again achieved?  Is it possible they fear more for their jobs and salaries than the lakes? 

I can't really answer that question, and it is not to the larger point. Rather, I wonder at this: how is it that humans, as we are now, are so capable of destroying ecological systems that, for the most part, are not really that delicate?  They are, after all, made from a rough and changing planet.  I also wonder at this: does the Gaia hypothesis really work? Is the planet like an organism, with self-correcting mechanisms? 

Many authors, mostly ecologists, have dealt with the first issue, condemning mechanized man for his blindness to the natural processes.  But this condemnation is unjust; all species exploit the environment they have to the fullest, without moral compunction.  Deer, when too dense, will destroy forests by eating saplings; locusts are infamous for their devastation; and rodents of various species have a boom and bust cycle that deeply effects the environment.  It is true, however, that the Great Lakes did not fall because of the alewife and lamprey, but because humans made it  possible for species that were not part of the balanced system to enter.  Nature, like American politics, does not count on moral restraint; it has built-in checks and balances, the greed of one, if we can call it that, limiting the greed of the other.  Introduce one species into a novel environment and it may run roughshod, until it, too, is discovered by other species which cancel its destructive hegemony.     

On to humans: we exhibit the same elemental greed to expand and consume as other species.  What sets us apart is not our fundamentally different level of greed, but our ingenuity at expanding our grasp with technology.  This is possible because of our ability for abstract thought (and, of course, hands to carry out this thought into action).  But it is this same mental quality that allows us to erect moral systems that might ameliorate our natural rapaciousness.  On cue, the very ability to cause massive destruction to the world is coupled with the ability of self-restraint. Our god-like powers over nature, then, are held in check (or can be) by our ability to conceive of gods or God, who have justified the moral imperative for thousands of years.  Not by chance, this ability and these beliefs lead into the reality of supernatural power itself, and to the idea of Gaia, the self-sustaining earth.

The notion of Gaia to a scientific mind seems silly on the surface of it - what mind, what brain does the Earth have that may direct such a complex process, such as living beings have?  We may look to the natural balances of nature, after all, and claim they came about by natural selection and resource competition, and there are many diagrams made by naturalists to show how this can or did happen.  But if we look at humans, we see something strange: a new ability to destroy the earth as no other creature can, coupled with the ability to regulate his own behavior by choice.  The choice not to destroy is seldom couched only in practical terms, either, but in more compelling moral ones: it is the right thing to do.  We have beauty to consider, after all, and this is something we all need - and beauty depends in part on the balance of nature.  What other creature thinks like that?  And how fortunate that our ability to destroy can be balanced with our ability to not destroy because of such abstractions as beauty?

There, then, is where we find the mind of Gaia - not in the core of the earth like an ancient god, but in all things according to their abilities.  For where raw nature no longer rules, as in human behavior, another abides or can abide, one that also restrains and leaves us capable of fitting in to the ecology of the world.  Where, one might ask, is the mechanistic selection process of classical Darwinism here?  To have a species that can rise above standard species competition, only to be subdued by a moral consciousness that no other creature before, as far as we know, has possessed?  This seems far more than coincidence. 

The mind, then, of Gaia, is no only in all things, but beyond all things, a hidden thing found in an exquisite order that not only reacts but anticipates.  Human morality, after all, was well in place long before bulldozers and bombs made the human such a dangerous species.  Yes, everything co-evolved with society, but all so neatly, so elegantly, that one cannot help but look to Occam's Razor and conclude that a design, not just a print but an evolving one, does exist.  As Fr. Teilhard de Chardin said, we are not pushed by evolution so much as pulled by it.  It is a system with meaning, and we are being pulled towards its source in the strange drama of Gaia.  FK