Re - Ligio, Re - Connect

A TREE OF LIFE
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"Creation itself, the natural world, already believes the Gospel, and lives the pattern of death and resurrection, even if unknowingly. The natural world believes in necessary suffering as the very cycle of life: just observe the daily dying of the sun so all things on this planet can live, the total change of the seasons, the plants and trees along with it, the violent world of animal predators and prey....Only the human species absents itself from the agreed - on pattern and the general dance of life and death." (77)

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"For me, that is what makes something inherently religious: whatever reconnects (re - ligio) our parts to the Whole is an experience of God, whether we will call it that or not. . . . also reconnecting [our] outer journey to the "inland" or [our] interior world, which is much of the task of the second half of life." (xxxiv - xxxv)from Falling Upward:
A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
by Richard Rohr, OFM
Author, Spiritual Writer, Franciscan Friar

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Ordinarily, I record current reading and favorite passages on my book blog; however, upon reading the first few pages of Falling Upward, I knew right away that I needed to share Rohr's intriguing definition of religion and his emphasis on connection here on my Fortnightly blog of connection and coincidence!

Looking at the etymology that Rohr gives of the word religious, I realized for the first time that the first two letters are a prefix -- re; and the root is ligio -- as in ligament or ligature, as in to bind.

Pastor and spiritual director Matt Mirabile
makes a similar connection on his blog, Medium:

"Ligament also shares its root with religion and as such binds muscle to bone. I always get a kick out of the whole 'spiritual but not religious' thing. While one can be religious without being spiritual one cannot really be spiritual without being religious. Spirituality hangs on religious discipline as muscles hang on bone. This comes as much from a modern misunderstanding of spirituality as a misunderstanding of religion. Of course, we Christians have created this misunderstanding. We have failed to convey what genuine spirituality looks like and therefore have misrepresented the value of religion. If we would see religion as that which vitally connects us to God through the power of the Holy Spirit, a deifying discipline, as blessed John Keble called it, then we would value it as the great treasure that it is, for we would be made more divine by it." [emphasis added]

I have puzzled long over the distinction that Mirabile makes here: spirituality requires religion, but religion does not require spirituality. Yet religion goes beyond mere rules and dress codes (that always exclude) creating a tie that binds and includes, making a crucial connection between humanity and divinity. My thoughts return once more to Rohr's insistence on inclusion:

"If your notion of heaven is based on exclusion of anybody else, then it is by definition not heaven. The more you exclude, the more hellish and lonely your existence always is" (101).

At the end of the day, everything meshes together into one connected (re - ligious!) conversation. Connect, only connect!

Backyard Sunset ~ March 24, 2020
First time for a week that we’ve seen the sun!

Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, April 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Pi Day

A PIECE OF PIE, SADLY DISCORDANT
WHEN WILL IT BE ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS?

Maybe one day that big blue part of the pie
will be used to confront the REAL enemies
such as bacteria and coronaviruses.
**************

A timely thought from Richard Rohr -- and just a bit
uncanny when you remember that he wrote these words in 2011:

“ . . . mature societies were meant to be led by elders, seniors, saints, and ‘the initiated.’ They alone are in a position to be true leaders in a society, or certainly in any spiritual organization. Without them 'the blind lead the blind,' . . . Those who are not true leaders or elders will just affirm people at their own immature level, and of course immature people will love them and elect them for being equally immature. You can fill in the names here with your own political disaster story. But just remember, there is a symbiosis between immature groups and immature leaders, I am afraid, which is why both Plato and Jefferson said democracy was not really the best form of government" (9).

from Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
by Richard Rohr, OFM
Author, Spiritual Writer, Franciscan Friar

**************

March 14th is the day for both pie charts and pi charts.
Whether numerical or edible,
political, poetical, or pie in the sky,
we have pie of all kinds!

Lets start with a Pi Pie.

Pillsbury Pi Day Pie

A poem for Pi Day (3 / 14 / 20):

Pi (3.14)

No one gives pi much thought.
Even after it has been dutifully taught.
The numerical pi goes on forever,
Like the swish of a baseball,
Flying through outer space.

Three point one four,
For some it's a bore,
But NOT to me.
The transcendental number is the code,
To unlocking the perfect memory.

Math it involves,
Area and circumference of circles, it solves.
Pi never repeats itself,
Pi is smarter than that,
That is a fact.

Twenty-two over seven is the equivalent fraction.
But to me that fraction is a distraction.
I prefer the original,
The decimal version.
Three point one four.

Rachel Mac

And now for that other less abstract kind of pie:

1. Artfully described but lamentably executed is the fiasco of blueberry pie baking recounted by Bich Minh Nguyen in Stealing Buddha's Dinner:

I used to wish Rosa would make lattice-top pies and cool them on a windowsill, as I had seen in comic strips. I loved the construction of a pie, the swell of pastry cradling fruit. It was easy to bake a cake from a Duncan Hines mix, but no one in our household had ever attempted an actual pie. So it was bizarre to see Rosa hovering over the pot of blueberries, mixing in cornstarch and a stream of sugar . . . she scooped the whole mess into the pie shells . . .

Later, all four pies sat cooling on the kitchen counter. They were heavy and purpled around the edges, and a tough skin had formed over the tops. . . . I overturned a gloppy portion onto my paper plate and took a bite. . . . I could not get past two bites and neither could anyone else . . . (216 - 17).

2. Poet Grace Paley (1922 - 2007) has better luck in her luscious pie poem:

The Poet's Occasional Alternative

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time . . .

everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it . . .

. . . I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership I do not
want to wait a week a year a
generation for the right
consumer to come along

3. Paley may charm the reader into thinking that it's more gratifying to craft a pie than a poem, but contemporary poet and scholar Punya Mishra offers a clever rebuttal:

Poem or Pie:

I just read this poem
about a poet who chose to
bake a pie,
than write a poem!

It was weird, since in my hands
was a poem, not a slice of pie!

Was this the poem
That was not written?

. . . Because in my heart I knew
that poets will do anything . . .

To . . . make the reader smile . . .

But the truth is
I know it, and you do too,
that some days, a poem beats a pie . . .

4. And some nights the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie:

A Few Nights Ago:
The Full Worm Moon

Previous Pies
Kiss Pie & Safe Pie & Flag Pie
Peach & More
Mince & More
Pumpkin & More
Raspberry & Chocolate Pecan
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, March 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

The Place I Needed to Go

LEAP DAY
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS,
SPIRITUALLY SIGNIFICANT

from Expecting Adam
by Martha Beck
"I did, at long last, realize that it didn't really matter
what anyone else's opinion of my decision might be.
What mattered was that I had made a choice that felt as though,
in the end, it would bring me to the place I needed to go."
[emphasis added]

**************

Since the opportunities for celebrating Leap Day
are relatively rare and complicated, it would be
a shame to let the quadrennial chance pass by unobserved.
Thus, in the magical spirit of this expansive day of contemplation,
here is a selection of soul - searching, consciousness - expanding
mantras and connections. But first, a little joke:

Source: me.me

Thanks to my teleki - nieces and teleki - nephews
for all the good vibes & Empowering Tchotchkes!

Kinetic Carlie:

Chantel:

Corbin:
“If you want to be a good Hero, you
have to learn how to be a good Human."

Hans & Jerrod:

Jessi:

Aaron: On Patriotism & Feminism

More Autumn Fun

Dan:

Sara:

Anna:
No matter how serious the issues,
the nieces & nephews
never lose their sense of humor!

Amanda, Brittany & Kiyah:

Previous Leap Year Posts
Fortnightly: 2012 & 2016
Quotidian: 2016
And John Mulaney on SNL

Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, March 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Leap Day Nephews & Nieces
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Dreaming of Snow

THE ARRIVAL OF SNOW:
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

My Aunt Sue shared the drawing because it reminded her of my house, so I searched through my various snow / Christmas photos, trying to find a close match. I settled on the one below, because of the pine boughs hanging on the porch railings and the neutral tones of the background sky (once before on a Fortnightly post).

December 22, 2009

On this cloudy day . . . Snow added its cubits to the stature of the roof, the trees, the picnic tables spread as if with that hidden fabric called 'the silence cloth' by housewives who keep it under the finer damask one, to absorb the clatter of dishes and silver. Snow softened the bare limbs of the bushes.

Under its roof of ice, the river sent up bubbles: the telegraphed laments of the fish.

A single twig was now a thing of great beauty: a wand, a power, a glory. A sign.

~ from Things Invisible to See, 94
~ by Nancy Willard (1936 - 2017)

A couple of weeks ago (February 1), I heard an intriguing anecdote about someone who begins every New Year by rereading the novel Things Invisible to See. The title was new to me, but not the author: that name rang a bell, so I took a look through my files and anthologies. There it was, a beautiful, dreamy snow poem. Interestingly, the image of snow as tablecloth (emphasis added) appears in both the novel and the poem:

The Snow Arrives After Long Silence

The snow arrives after long silence
from its high home where nothing leaves
tracks or stains or keeps time.
The sky it fell from, pale as oatmeal,
bears up like sheep before shearing.

The cat at my window watches
amazed. So many feathers and no bird!
All day the snow sets its table
with clean linen, putting its house
in order. The hungry deer walk

on the risen loaves of snow.
You can follow the broken hearts
their hooves punch in its crust.
Night after night the big plows rumble
and bale it like dirty laundry

and haul it to the Hudson.
Now I scan the sky for snow,
and the cool cheek it offers me,
and its body, thinned into petals,
and the still caves where it sleeps.

by Nancy Willard

When I googled "The Snow Arrives After Long Silence" to see what I could learn about this poem, I was rewarded with the perfect wintry coincidence. I discovered a snowy reverie by novelist Alison McGhee, who mentions Willard's poem on her
poetry blog . McGhee is the author of one of my favorite novels, Shadow Baby, about twin girls, Clara and Daphne Winter, born in an Upstate New York blizzard.

Two great novels for a snowy winter weekend:
Shadow Baby & Things Invisible to See

******************

Another Favorite Card
This one is from my friend Steven,
"because it sort of resembles your house!"

Dreams of a White Christmas
brought to you by:
Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870): "During Charles Dickens’ childhood there was an unusually high number of white Christmas[es]. 6 out of 9 of his childhood Christmases were white." When he grew up and became a writer, these snowy Christmases were the ones that he described and recorded for posterity.

Irving Berlin (1888 - 1989): "No one dreamed of a ‘White Christmas’ before this song."

Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953): "One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six." ~ from A Child's Christmas in Wales

Numerous 19th & 20th C lyricists and composers, many of whom include visions of snow in their depictions of the first Christmas, an old - fashioned Christmas, or an ideal Christmas.

Children Skating by Percy Tarrant (1855 - 1934)
~ father of the artist Margaret Tarrant (1888 - 1959) ~

See also: "An Eternal February Day"
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, February 29th ~ LEAP DAY!

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Waiting for the Big Snow"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Do You Hear What I Hear?

A BLACK HOLE IN SPACE
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"Despite the hour, the Kremlin shimmered with electric light from every window, as if its newest denizens were still too drunk with power to sleep. But if the lights of the Kremlin shimmered brightly, like all earthly lights before them they were diminished in their beauty by the majesty of the constellations overhead.

"Craning his neck, the count tried to identify the few that he had learned in his youth: Perseus, Orion, the Great Bear, each flawless and eternal. To what end, he wondered, had the Divine created the stars in heaven to fill a person with feelings of inspiration one day and insignificance the next?” (p.125, emphasis added)

From A Gentleman in Moscow
By American novelist Amor Towles (b 1964)

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The Collision of Two Black Holes ~ Watch!
Four years ago, in February 2016, came the news that physicists had detected "ripples in the fabric of space and time called gravitational waves," the result of two massive black holes colliding, over a billion years ago.

Einstein’s right again: Scientists detect ripples in gravity
by Seth Borenstein ~ February 11, 2016

from the article: "It was just a tiny, almost imperceptible 'chirp,' but it simultaneously opened humanity’s ears to the music of the cosmos and proved Einstein right again.

In what is being hailed as one of the biggest eureka moments in the history of physics, scientists . . . have finally detected gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space and time that Einstein predicted a century ago.

. . . Because the evidence of gravitational waves is captured in audio form, the finding means astronomers will now be able to hear the soundtrack of the universe and listen as violent collisions reshape the cosmos.

It will be like going from silent movies to talkies, they said."

************************

“It is by far the most powerful explosion humans
have ever detected except for the big bang."

~ Kip Thorne, gravitational theorist ~

Thorne said that when he heard about the wave
“it was just sort of a sigh of happiness.”
[emphasis added]

************************
Three years after the "chirp" of the gravitational wave, came another historic moment. In April 2019, scientists around the world were rewarded, after two years of collaborative research, with direct pictures of two black holes.

Here is the first photo of a black hole.
by Nsikan Akpan ~ April 10, 2019

from the article: "Black holes are the architects of stars. Black holes 'are sinkholes in spacetime,' said Sera Markoff, a member of the Event Horizon Telescope science council. 'They’re helping mold the shape of galaxies and clusters of galaxies.'

". . . Black holes have captivated scientists for two centuries. Despite decades of indirect evidence supporting their existence, black holes have never been captured by camera — until now. Aside from helping to resolve Einstein’s theories, this first image of black hole may reveal how the universe started and how it might end."

************************

Another way of perceiving gravitational waves:

Photo by Joe McNally
In this time-exposure shot of one of
LIGO’s interferometer arms in Livingston, Louisiana,
the red lights symbolize gravitational waves,
producing "a tiny, almost imperceptible 'chirp'"

The combination of red and blue light in the gravitation wave brings to mind my favorite feature at the Indianapolis Airport: the ceiling light installation on the covered pedestrian walkway that joins the parking garage to the main terminal:

Title: Connections [Click to watch!]
Artists: Cameron McNall and Damon Seeley
From: Electroland ~ Los Angeles, California
Installation: 2008 ~ Category: Permanent
Materials: Interactive lights with sound; 140 feet by 28 feet
Location: Pedestrian Bridge ~ Indianapolis Airport

As described on the IND website, in the light installation entitled Connections, "Cameron McNall and Damon Seeley have composed orchestrated patterns of color punctuated with blips, dings and other digital sounds actively 'responding' to human movement . . .

"The artistic duo leading the L.A. based firm Electroland, was enticed by the human dynamics and traffic moving throughout the walking bridge at all times. McNall and Seeley set out to create what they call animated art – a combination of light, sound and proprietary movement-tracking technology. When someone enters the pedestrian bridge at Indianapolis International Airport (IND), a path of lights overhead follows that person's steps; once another person enters from the opposite end, the lights form a pattern spanning the distance between the two, serving as a visual cue of their 'connection' by virtue of inhabiting the same space at the same time." [emphasis added]

************************
In conjunction -- coincidence and connection! -- with the gravitational audio and the black hole visuals, I came across a couple of other posts concerning our aural perception of the universe and the music of the spheres. Coincidentally, despite their celestial nature, these narratives seem connected to our daily worries and methods for managing anxiety and sensory overload.

Life Beyond the Mind
by Eckhart Tolle ~ April 8, 2019

"How can we define ourselves
beyond our continuous mental noise?"

************************

Kundalini Yoga: The God Syllable "AUM"
by Joseph Campbell ~ April 12, 2019
also available on amazon

"What is the sound that is not made
by any two things striking together?
It is AUM.
It is the sound of the energy of the universe
of which all things are manifestations."

The three letters of AUM represent the three vibrations inherent in creation:
the energy to create, the energy to preserve, the energy to dissolve.

************************
Echoing the words of Count Rostov above -- "inspiration one day and insignificance the next" -- one dear reader has observed that this chain of connections, from gravitational waves to black holes, from Eckhart Tolle to Joseph Campbell, is a great reminder of "both how small we are (as personalities) and also how big we are as an expression of this infinite symphony of existence."

Music of the Spheres
Pachelbel Canon in D Major ~ Fantastic Version
The Voyager Golden Records

May the Fourth Be With You! ~ 2013

Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, February 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Chirps, Blips, Dings"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

At the Heart of the Well

THE SACRED WELL AT CHICHEN ITZA
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Ancient Mayan Sacrifice
by archaeological painter, Herbert M. Herget (1885 - 1950)
for National Geographic Magazine (1936)
Artist's impression of Cenote [say-NO-tay] Sacrifice
~ not necessarily historically accurate ~

~ At The Mouth of the Well of Magic Water ~

***********************

Picking up where we left off last time with
Margaret Atwood's story "The Resplendent Quetzel":
The story's focal point is an ancient sacrificial well, a pre - Columbian ruin whose imposing presence governs the private thoughts of both Edward and Sarah. Edward, for example, imagines "picking Sarah up and hurling her over the edge, down into the sacrificial well. Anything to shatter that imperturbable expression, bland and pale and plump and smug, like a Flemish Madonna's. . . . But it wouldn't work: as she fell she would glance at him, not with fear but with maternal irritation" (148).

Sitting in the shade near the well, Sarah hears a tour guide explain that "archaeologists have dived down into the well. They have dredged up more than fifty skeletons, and they have found that some of them were not virgins at all but men. Also, most of them were children. So as you can see, that is the end of the popular legend" (156). Before arriving at the village, Sarah had imagined that the well would be "smaller, more like a wishing well" (144), three coins in the fountain and all that. But, no, it is more impressive than she expected, much deeper, historically significant, part swamp yet part sacred orifice, repulsive yet mysterious. The mood of the vacation -- the myth - shattering well, the Mexican village, the shabby restaurant, the motley Nativity display, the misplaced baby doll -- has inspired Sarah to proceed with a purification ritual of her own.

Much to the reader's surprise, she withdraws from her purse the plaster Christ Child that, the narrator now reveals, she had stolen from the creche the night before. Even Sarah is surprised at herself: "It was inconceivable to her that she had done such a thing, but there it was, she really had. She hadn't planned it beforehand. . . . She'd just suddenly reached out her hand, past the Wise Men and through the door of the stable, picked the child up and put it into her purse" (156). Sarah's act of petty theft is motivated by an instinctive urge to categorize the doll as a miniature, inanimate replication of humanity. She lifts the doll from the manger in an impulsive moment of vision, and it becomes a participant in the drama of human existence.

Remembering how enormous the doll had looked in the sacred yet vulgar setting of the Nativity, she now perceives it differently: "Separated from the dwarfish Virgin and Joseph, it didn't look quite so absurd". She "placed the baby on the rock beside her . . . stood up . . . picked up the child and walked slowly towards the well, until she was standing at the very brink." The narrative shifts abruptly to Edward's perspective. He sees Sarah standing "at the well's edge, her arms raised above her head." He fears that she is preparing to jump in, "but she merely drew back her right arm and threw something into the well" (158).

The reader knows, as Edward does not, that the hurtled object is the Baby Jesus, sent to release them all -- father, mother, and stillborn child -- from the limbo in which they hang. As the tour guide explained previously, the early Mayans did not perform this ritual out of cruelty, nor does Sarah. She has sent the inanimate surrogate of her own child as a messenger to the liquid gods who live in the watery paradise at the bottom of the ancient well. Perhaps Edward and Sarah's quest for the Resplendent Quetzal -- the Holy Grail, the jewel, the precious feather -- has not been in vain.

Will all be well for Sarah? Not clear. She has looked into the abyss of abjection, the frighteningly deep sacrificial well, the land of oblivion. The story does not end optimistically, but somehow the unlikely grouping in the Mexican bar -- the headless Wise Man, the St. Nicholas night - light, and the whimsical Fred Flintstone -- have enabled her to confront the haunting memories of disappointment and loss. Mary and Joseph may be well out of their depth with their elephant - sized baby, yet the sight of this disproportionate Holy Family has shifted Sarah's sense of perspective.
***********************

"On the bar beside the television set there was a creche, with three painted plaster Wise Men, one on an elephant, the others on camels. The first Wise Man was missing his head. Inside the stable a stunted Joseph and Mary adored an enormous Christ Child which was more than half as big as the elephant. Sarah wondered how the Mary could possibly have squeezed out this colossus; it made her uncomfortable to think about it. Beside the creche was a Santa Claus haloed with flashing lights, and beside that a radio in the shape of Fred Flintstone, which was paying American popular songs, all of them ancient." (152)

from "The Resplendent Quetzel"
in Dancing Girls and Other Stories
by Margaret Atwood (b 1939)
Canadian activist, novelist, poet

Previous Fortnightly Post
At the Heart of the Creche

Frosty and Abominable Bring Gifts for Colbert

[Click to see many more funny nativities]
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, January 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ All ~Hallowed~ Nativities
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com