The Great Puzzle: The School of Choices

Here on Earth living in physical bodies, we are growing, learning, evolving souls in the greatest of all schools. In this school are many classrooms… enough to offer the lessons needed by each soul. And there are many grades, accomodating the very youngest in experience, and all, up to the most advanced. 

The most advanced student in one curriculum, however, may be in preschool for some other line of study. It is not a linear system like a ladder.

We are all embarked, some say, no matter the field of concentration, on the most important scholarship: learning to make choices.

Now, some might make the most successful choices, those that lead towards the Divine rather than away from It, by nature, requiring no thought. That is a characteristic of infancy. But from that point on, the infant learns from the hardness of life in a body that other things factor into the choosing. What was once a clear and unconsidered action becomes confused, shadowed, distorted, distracted…  Alternate choices come into play, different options to choose from as the world becomes more complicated. 

What’s the point, if we as infants make the best choices from our inborn wisdom, our sense of connectedness? Why go through all the hell of the next decades, as we do, disconnected, uncertain, making choices that steer us away from Divinity?

It’s because the point is not the choosing: It is the knowing choosing, the exercise of our free will to choose what is connecting and affirming in the long run, rather than what gratifies, or solves problems in the short term. To do right by instinct is easy, is automatic, requires no thought or will. That is not what being human is about. 

So we go through our lessons, we enter classrooms and choose our teachers, we choose paths to follow for as long as they take us where we believe we want to go… Some of us will abandon a path that seems to be failing; some will follow a path to perdition because they choose with faith, but not necessarily with awareness of truth or the ability to distinguish it from lies. 

Lies, deliberate or not, simply misguide our expectations and distort our understanding. Learning to trust our own hearts’ wisdom, to listen to our own connection with the Divine–that is a difficult path, and it is easy to lean on a guide who claims to know the way. In fact, the path the guide follows may be the correct one for the guide, but not for the guided. 

The Cats Decline

The cats have run away to hide.
They do not wish to go for a ride.
Oh, no I won’t! the wise cat sings–
Rides generally arrive at unpleasant things
like trimming of claws and shots in the ass
and minor surgeries… Thanks, I’ll pass!
The cats are crouching in unlikely places
with wide opal eyes and resentful faces: 
Under the sofa they’d rather abide
than companionably get in the car for a ride.

2000

Tolkien Tribute w/ a nod to P. Jackson: DUET

 Merry to Pippin

You are a menace, Pippin Took,
the way that mischief follows you,
as impulse prompts the things you do–
Sometimes you’re begging to be shook!
Oh, Pippin, you are such a lad!
You’re never meaning to be bad,
You’re into every niche and nook
without a thought of what comes next
and when it does, you’re so perplexed!
You can’t not touch, you can’t not look!
You’ll burn those fingers, Pip, m’dear,
and mine as well, I truly fear,
And yet whatever schemes you cook,
you know I always will be there
to join the fun and have my share!
By me you’ll never be forsook:
I’m with you to whatever end,
your best and ever-lovin’ friend!


Pippin to Merry

Merry, my friend, great heart, old son–
easy for you to scowl and chide
but you can’t say you’ve just complied!
My deeds pale next to some you’ve done!
When you think up some loony scheme,
I go along ’cause we’re a team.
It’s you gets bored and wants some fun
exploring where we don’t belong,
or doing things that might be wrong.
Leisurely strolls turn into “RUN!”
when you’re involved, and that’s a fact!
I’ll try to say this with some tact:
Though, I admit, you’re second to none
at coming up with things to do,
this point I must make clear to you:
Merry, you’re not the tallest one!
But you know me, and come what may,
we’ll stick together all the way!

2005

The Great Puzzle

I’ve been asking the Universe to explain itself to me since I was about 11 years old. I asked at that age, specifically, how to reconcile God with Science. I was raised in the household of a scientist and of a mystic, and both truths they offered made sense to me. I felt, even at 11, that there must be a reconciliation possible between them. All that is must have a place in the whole.

Over the course of my life–and I am now well into my 60s–answers to my question have emerged, undoubtedly more than I noticed. It’s a great, borderless, multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, with pieces coming from many sources, often from the collections of others on their own quests, solving their own portions of the Great Puzzle.

All that I write under this heading represents not Truth, but what I believe to be true. I have my reasons, and I like to believe, my reason. I offer my puzzle pieces for your consideration: some may be of use, some not so much. Take what you will, as the saying goes, and leave the rest.

Courteous comments and conversation are welcome, as ever!

Justice and Time

I was watching the CADFAEL series again, from PBS some years ago.

CADFAEL is set in the times of the war between King Steven and Empress Maud over the succession to the English throne after the death of William the Conqueror. Cadfael, played by Derek Jacobi, is a brother in the abbey of Shrewsbury who solves mysteries and does his utmost to see justice done.  Coming late in life to the cloister, he brings a more worldly wisdom to problems others would solve with faith and biblical precedent alone.

And this brings me to my point for this blog. 

Consider what medieval justice entailed: physical trials to determine God’s will, applying to God’s prescience to determine good from evil, right from wrong, truth from lies. Sometimes one-on-one combat settled legal matters.

In one episode, the disputants, blind-folded, each opened the Bible and set a finger on a verse, and from this, the will of the Divine was known.

And it was well-known that casting a miscreant into a pond would determine guilt or innocence, particularly in the case of witches: If you float, you’re guilty. Because God wants it that way.

As centuries have passed, we’ve considerably upgraded our skills and tools for determining truth, and we have set standards that must be met to determine guilt: actual and not merely circumstantial evidence. We have jury trials, not just the opinion or whim of the ranking lord or sovereign. 

In Cadfael’s day, justice was based on what people at all levels of life believed about God. They could not question the logic of a condemnation, lest they be questioning God’s disposition of the matter. Because God did that. This was the way God acted in the lives of humanity. That was how they understood God.

We can look back at the absurdities and horrors of medieval justice, and we understand that no matter how all-powerful God may be, we still have to find truth, and determine guilt by scientific methods like forensics, and through thorough police work, and in a courtroom according to the Rule of Law. Temporal law is our problem, not God’s.

Vigilantism is no longer a valid or acceptible way to mete out justice. Emotional perception no longer sets the standard for condemnation. We have learned that more often than not, emotions lead us astray, that the wrong people are held responsible for the wrong reasons. 

But in the 12th Century, by 12th Century beliefs and understandings, that kind of justice was entirely valid. Few questioned it, despite what we see now as pure absurdities and misunderstandings of how the physical world works. 

So… finally, ’round Robin Hood’s barn, I come to my actual point here: 

Centuries from now, what will people look back at and be amazed by in our 21st Century understandings, beliefs, and ignorances of how the spiritual world works?  What absurdities will they scoff at, or be horrified by? And what medieval notions will even then survive on the basis of “No, no, our spiritual teachers could not have been so wrong!”  

Just Sayin’…

The colonial powers paved the surface and built on shallow foundations, trying to negate and overcome the Earth. They have plowed down a few inches, they have shaved off the forests, they have killed off what they found troublesome and inconvenient. They believed they needed nothing and no one but themselves to prosper, never looking beyond immediate profit, never counting its actual cost.

The indigenous nations are the earth, their roots go deep, and–like the Earth itself–will outlast the shell the European conquerors and colonizers have laid over it.

The surface may change, and though some things are killed and lost, the world that taught its truth to those who lived in it still has that truth, still teaches to those who pay attention, whatever place their ancestors came from.

Aotearoa


 
Silver
The ferns, of course
but too the sky
the clouds and air between
Sun on misty rains:
Silver graced
with rainbows…
silver-bright the sun,
the sharp-cut shades
edges of trees
against the blue, grey, white…
Silver the stars
Southern Cross and Milky Way
on deepest night…
Silver
the moon in all its phases
dashing across the waters,
inviting path…
Silver the waters
day or night–
moving, gleaming, glittering…
Black swans flying
over the satin moire
Silver reflecting dawn pastels
and the fires of sunset…
Silver
I will remember
the Long Cloud Land.

2009

Tolkien Tribute: Suddenly, You

In the shadow
of the forest
lost,
and hiding,
running
from the echoing
anguish.
chaos
clashing
of armies embattled
besieging my mind…
suddenly–
sundered
all of it…!

O Nightingale!
You–
singing,
dancing in the glade
in gladness
draw me
from war’s clamour,
it’s darkness
it’s despair…
The whole of my world
they were
but suddenly–
You
are there! 
Dancing like down,
upon the air,
upon the melody
of the Nightingale,
in moonlight–
casting shadow out,
making room
in my heart
to hold the wonder
the mystery
the  magic
of your music,
of your dance
and
You.
All that was my life–
in this moment,
in this meeting,
parts from me,
fleeting and
dissolved
into your grace
O Nightingale!

Suddenly–
only
You
are all my world…

and all the rest
must wait.

2008

Self Portrait: Inside Out

I am not who you see
walking about smiling
or not…

This surface is not who I am
It is barely mine
at all in the mirror…
You do not know me
if you never ask:
whatever you surmise,
you cannot see the essence
without the deepest
clearest looking…
I dance, I laugh, I sing
and joy is in my every line and move!

Lithe and slender, graceful…
Shining with love and mischief,
With youth and health and wholeness…

Unafraid, unashamed, unbound
by all the trepidations that crease this face
and tighten flesh and heart…
that shrink all that I am
into this awkward package
that does not want
to know itself…

Hunter’s Moon

a paleolithic winter’s tale

Wind rises, the sun is pale;
Leaves go brilliant and finally pall;
Wise creatures burrow deep
seeking the peace and safety of sleep
and the snow begins to fall… 

The People see the summer fail
and gather closer to the fire;
Meat is smoked against the days
when going to hunt no longer pays:
The blue smoke rises ever higher. 

Winter is deep in drifts, and dark:
Hunger grows but meat is gone.
Around the fire,  the People are dying
gnawed by darkness and hunger, crying
The oldest, the youngest, one by one.
 
Under thin light of the sun’s shallow arc,
in the day’s still-decreasing length
the last of the hunters seeks a track.
Empty-handed, he can’t turn back
For this is the very last of his strength. 

Miles away from hearth and Clan,
an old stag stands at the edge of sight
Gaunt and weak as the one who stalks,
the animal stumbles as it walks–
He pursues it into the night… 

Predator, Prey; Wild Animal, Man–
the Hunter takes the old stag’s  life.
He cuts and skins in the light of the moon
and knows he cannot return too soon
For the sake of his child and wife. 

The Hunter sings to the animal soul
its sacrifice he thanks and praises–
with gratitude balancing need to kill–
then finally descends the distant hill:
Towards home a hopeful eye raises.

Under new snow, his own track is cold,
he’s not certain of every turning–
But flame is a beacon in the night
to desperate Hunter, a beckoning light
where the Clan’s hearth-fire is burning… 

The People welcome the Hunter home,
with smiles and songs, they greet him.
They shut the howling weather outside,
and relish the hope one hunt can provide,
that Winter will not yet defeat them.