I've held off writing this post for a while now; so long, in fact, that the USA has achieved 100% marriage equality since my last post! Wowza! Part of the problem is that I've been cooking up about five different posts in my head over the last few weeks, all on disparate topics, so sitting down to write has been a daunting task. I won't cover all of those topics with this post. This is more of a "response to crisis moment" piece, and as such comes straight out of experience. (Hah! I told myself that I needed to let experience guide me more!)
Some of my friends know that I've recently taken demonstrable steps to express changes in my identity - changes which are the result of several years of thinking and reflecting carefully. As I don't often sit down to talk about my identity-challenges with others (and rarely write about them), most of this has gone on in my own head, privately and invisibly to those who know me. My shift toward the Pagan path is only the newest change.
Since the beginning of this year, I have been far more open about my gender identity and sexual orientation. Now being "out" is a gradual process, especially so for me, as the visible part of all of this is the outgrowth of several years worth of internal work. I came out as asexual and aromantic; I started to identify as gender-fluid/gender queer/agender (still a work in progress), and to change my hair and dress to reflect this. (Not that a gender-fluid/queer person has to dress any particular way; sartorial choices and gender do not always coincide, nor should they!)
My political orientation hasn't changed much - I'm still an anarcho-municipalist - but my recent political statements concerning the upcoming US presidential race might sound odd, considering I've endorsed Bernie Sanders, a Socialist from Vermont. While I'd be much happier with a left-leaning Libertarian like last race's Gary Johnson (who is not running again), Bernie seems like the right choice this time. There are some issues that need his unique perspective, and his track record is vastly superior, in my mind, to Hillary Clinton's.
Now, I've been living away from my parents, independently, for almost four years - save for a few semesters after gradute school when I commuted from their house to work at two different colleges. I'm living on my own again, this time with an older housemate, and I've never felt more independent. For the first time in my whole life, I feel like I might be "a real adult." It is because of this situation that I have felt free to experiment, change things up, chop off my hair, shop in the men's department, and so forth. Not that my parents ever pressured me to be one way or another, but I seriously doubt they understand the concept of "normativity" and its subconscious influence.
Enter the argument with my mother, via text-message. She argues that I've drastically changed, for no good reason, and this scares her; I'm "lying to myself" in order to "fit in," she says. I'm not being true to myself. "I remember you as a child; you were happy with yourself. You never had problems with feminine things." "I don't know who you are anymore or how to be around you." "You can't just show up to dinner looking like a teenage boy and think we wouldn't notice!" "I feel like I've lost a daughter."
Ok, so that hurt. I tried to explain to her that identity is fluid, that we don't always know who we are, that some of us aren't "born that way," we grow into it organically as we come to better understand ourselves, our environments, and our world. My own self-realization has been rooted not so much in feelings of dis-ease or discomfort with my assigned gender, but in the comfort of expanding my gender expression to include things I once thought were off-limits to me.
Additionally, there has been my gender studies curriculum and my realization that, hey, I don't even know what gender is, so how the hell can I know what mine is?! To be honest, I don't even think I believe in gender. This is one of the reasons why the gender-assigned imagery in paganism is still such a big sticking point for me. WHY IS EARTH FEMALE? WHY IS SKY MALE? EXPLAAAAIN?!?! (Another post on this and my frustrations with the ancient Indo-Europeans and modern Wiccans in the future...)
Of course, the political issues were not easily explained either. She then gave me a rant about the ills of socialism, then slipped into a discussion on the value of religion in society ... I'm not sure why. (I'm pretty sure it wasn't the old "Socialism = Communism = Atheism" fallacy. At lest, pretty sure.) All about "surrendering to a higher power" and "my will conformed to God's" and "not being selfish."
Thankfully this all happened over text-message, so it didn't have the full emotional effect it might have had. The big error in this whole situation was that I failed to involve my parents in my long process of reflection. I didn't feel that they'd understand, and the whole process was so private, that I didn't tell them about what I was feeling two, three years ago, so of course how could they connect my current behavior with anything other than a radical jump into the queer end of the pool?
I don't know how or whether I'll integrate my parents into my path, especially considering all of the misunderstanding and judgment that has already been laid down. I think I didn't communicate any of this with them earlier for the previously stated reasons, and because I didn't want to say anything until I was sure for myself. Unfortunately, humans aren't mind readers, so there's that problem. A part of me also wonders if it's even worth it. Should I subject myself to more potential judgment and misunderstanding, just to exhaust myself by trying to offer up explanations rooted in years of study and theory that they will possibly reject anyway, on ideological grounds?
When I think about it that way, all I want to do is retreat into my cave as I've always done. In that, at least, I maintain continuity with my childhood!
But now that I'm walking this pagan path, I have to stop and think: what signs does this path offer? What guideposts offer me a sense of direction, and what guides are here to steer me?
Wisdom: Take the time to perceive the situation correctly; see all the sides before deliberating upon a choice or response.
Vision: Broaden my perspective in order to see and relate to the whole of my place and duty in time, space, and community.
Courage: acting appropriately and in line with my values in the face of fear.
Integrity: keeping my word; being honest with myself and others.
Perseverance: continuing on the journey (the ones laid out before me and those I've chosen) in the face of difficulty.
Hospitality: honoring the gifts others have given with balanced reciprocity; not taking relationships for granted.
What do I know right now?
I know I am happy as I am. I am happy mixing about with expectations concerning my gender assignment. I am happy ignoring those expectations. I am happy not being attracted to anyone. I am happy when no one is attracted to me. I am happy with the idea that romantic love is not for me.
I am confident I have thought carefully. I have blogged (elsewhere, now deleted) through this process. I have thought and conversed. I have pushed, pulled, twisted, and poked all of these concepts. I have challenged myself and my assumptions. I have done my due diligence.
I see a light ahead. Expressing my new self-realizations has opened up for me new futures, new interests, and new, uncharted paths. There can be no true progress without somewhere to move towards. The promise of novelty, the call of the unknown, these are not fads that I mimic, but gravity-wells of hidden meanings that draw me beyond the boundaries of my expectations and into true exploration.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Monday, June 22, 2015
Walking the Path: Am I Called? Live the Questions.
I've been digging through dozens of blog posts over at Patheos' Pagan Channel. There are so many different perspectives within the neopagan community (which, if you want to use the "large umbrella" sense of the term, includes Wiccans, Goddess devotees, and others). I find it exciting to encounter all of these points of view, and to consider them seriously and thoughtfully as I work out my own sense of the path I'm on, why I'm on it, etc.
Over at Heathen At Heart on Patheos, Molly Khan's recent post spoke to a concern that I've been muddling over for a while. One of the prevailing ideas that I've encountered among explicitly polytheist neopagans is the notion that we don't choose to worship the Gods, they choose us, call us, or pester us until we recognize them. One of my first blog posts on this subject jokingly used the metaphor of Eris "tailgating me" until I "switched lanes," but that's all it was - a metaphor. I consider myself spiritually tone-deaf, for the most part. Switching to the pagan path for me is a choice; the symbol system fits, the cosmology and ritual gives form to a set of existential and philosophical principles that I (more or less) consider to be valid.
Khan's blog post, while pushing back against the growing normative model of a "call" from the Gods, still spoke of a sense of connection, an implicit feeling of a numinous/sacred sense that only later in her life she came to recognize as Nerthus, the Norse goddess of the Earth. She ends the post with the suggestion to "Honor who you will, and don’t wait for deities to come knocking down your door – the choice is yours."
While I really appreciate the suggestion that it's ok to seek out a Deity and start seeking a relationship with Them, I still have this niggling feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Modern (and probably Paleo-) Paganism is very much about experience. In Jordan Paper's Polytheological work, The Deities Are Many, he points out the much-echoed sentiment among other Pagans that "Faith is both meaningless and irrelevant. We know what we experience; it takes no leap of faith to assume the reality of deities we have directly encountered. [...] Arising from encounters in rituals, visions, and so forth, our acceptance of the validity of the experienced deities is absolutely no different, except more certain, than knowledge gained from sensory experiences." (p. 13-14)
Remember when I said I consider myself spiritually tone-deaf? Perhaps it's my Protestant upbringing, but I don't think I've ever had a "sacred experience." Perhaps once or twice while singing lyrics that felt profoundly true, but they were very difficult to interpret. I've spent so long studying the sacred experiences of others, I think I may have stunted the growth of my own ability to have those experiences myself!
While reading Khan's post, I found myself thinking back to my childhood. (Queue future post about memory dynamics and their importance to identity - until I write it, you should check out this fine post over at Aedicula Antinoi.) I don't often think back that far. My mental space is generally filled to capacity by a number of simultaneously running "programs," most of which inevitably end up slowing down my processing speed. Inevitable result: Absent-Minded Professor Syndrome. (I actually dislike computational metaphors for the brain, but this seems to work. But I digress!)
I thought back to my early teens, when I would spend hours hiking alone in the scrub-brush-covered hills of my hometown, climbing rocks and letting myself wander. I'd let myself get lost, or "pixie-led" as I used to call it. (Thanks Ari Berk and Brian Froud.) When I got old enough, I'd ride my horse alone over the hills, through the washes, and over fields. My horse was old - nearly 30 and well-retired from his previous life as an endurance racer - but he and I had adventures like you wouldn't believe. I was in-tune with the natural world in ways that I can't even fathom anymore. One day, when my father and sister went out for a ride and didn't return home at the expected time, I attempted to track them, with a fairly decent degree of success (they returned home before I caught up with them).
All that changed when I went to college. I spent so much time in my head and indoors, that I lost touch with that world-sense, that connection to other beings beyond my human community. Even though I started studying religion, I now believe that I actually lost my capacity for religion. I assumed that religion required belief, and that this faith thing was about assent to doctrines on the basis of revealed scripture. (Protestant baggage) I never learned, in the first place, that spirituality and religion were (or should be) primarily rooted in one's experience of the Sacred. As I lost my sense for connection to the world around me, I didn't realize that I was, in fact, losing my religion. What I mistook for a failure in belief was really an experience of belief that failed to correlate with any meaningful experience.
It didn't help that I started to struggle with anxiety and depression as an undergraduate, which inhibited my ability (or even desire) to feel anything at all. I retreated into intellectual hyper-space and rode a knowledge-high all the way through graduate school, where I continued to study religion! It was in graduate school that I came into contact with Process theology/philosophy, with my first queer friends, and with parts of myself that I didn't know existed. The inner landscape of my own being terrified me; I stuck to "eh, I do what I do, I don't need to know who I really am" for some time. But the intellect-high was becoming unsustainable, and by the time I finished my M.A., that constant chasing of the "high" had failed to produce any of the expected results or benefits. I failed to get into any PhD programs. I floundered. My "Self" was entirely a product of my intellectual pursuits and capacities. If those pursuits and capacities failed to meet the (arbitrary, commercialized, socially-determined) markers of worthiness and value, then what value did I have? Zip. None. Zilch.
I got as low as I've ever been.
I started teaching, floundering still, and doubly-smacked by my former failings and my ongoing incompetence as a new teacher. Let's just say, it's taken a LOT of work to claw my way out of that hole. I think I've escaped (for the most part), but there's a difference between recognizing that you've stunted your emotional/spiritual growth and actually growing emotionally and spiritually.
I tried to pick up on Christian practices again, hoping that some of those flashes of feeling and connection I had previously experienced would start to fill the void.
They didn't. It isn't that the Christian symbol-system isn't "true" enough, or beautiful enough, or meaningful enough. That's what makes it all so frustrating; I understand Christianity extraordinarily well. It IS beautiful, meaningful, and "true" (in a sense). But now that I'm letting stunted parts of me grow, I find that the framework, the trellis, offered by Christianity (of various brands and flavors) no longer supports me. As a child, I thought I was a tomato. As it turns out, I'm climbing jasmine! (Or vice versa. This metaphor is extraordinarily superficial. Gardening metaphors are not my strong suit.)
But what is the right framework? How do I know which system "fits" best? My intellect keeps trying to form a logical argument, some kind of justification for why one is better than another. But now I know, or at least have a sense of, the fact that you don't "choose" a symbol system purely by intellect alone. You've got to let your vines reach out and grab onto those frames which best support them. It's a blind reach, but once you've got a firm hold, you know whether it will support you or not. The system I'm currently investigating (best described by the articles on the Ar nDraoicht Fein website) feels right. It doesn't just conform to certain intellectual positions (Process Philosophy being the strongest one). It clicks with deep needs and sensibilities, for reasons I can't quite articulate.
Is that the same as a "call"? I'm not sure. I'm not very good at this "heeding experience" thing. "Feeling" itself is difficult for me. But I know, deep down, that seeking to answer this question is worthwhile. The Pagan path has offered me the best tools I have encountered for doing so. Of course, it can't all be about the "answers." As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote,
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Over at Heathen At Heart on Patheos, Molly Khan's recent post spoke to a concern that I've been muddling over for a while. One of the prevailing ideas that I've encountered among explicitly polytheist neopagans is the notion that we don't choose to worship the Gods, they choose us, call us, or pester us until we recognize them. One of my first blog posts on this subject jokingly used the metaphor of Eris "tailgating me" until I "switched lanes," but that's all it was - a metaphor. I consider myself spiritually tone-deaf, for the most part. Switching to the pagan path for me is a choice; the symbol system fits, the cosmology and ritual gives form to a set of existential and philosophical principles that I (more or less) consider to be valid.
Khan's blog post, while pushing back against the growing normative model of a "call" from the Gods, still spoke of a sense of connection, an implicit feeling of a numinous/sacred sense that only later in her life she came to recognize as Nerthus, the Norse goddess of the Earth. She ends the post with the suggestion to "Honor who you will, and don’t wait for deities to come knocking down your door – the choice is yours."
While I really appreciate the suggestion that it's ok to seek out a Deity and start seeking a relationship with Them, I still have this niggling feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Modern (and probably Paleo-) Paganism is very much about experience. In Jordan Paper's Polytheological work, The Deities Are Many, he points out the much-echoed sentiment among other Pagans that "Faith is both meaningless and irrelevant. We know what we experience; it takes no leap of faith to assume the reality of deities we have directly encountered. [...] Arising from encounters in rituals, visions, and so forth, our acceptance of the validity of the experienced deities is absolutely no different, except more certain, than knowledge gained from sensory experiences." (p. 13-14)
Remember when I said I consider myself spiritually tone-deaf? Perhaps it's my Protestant upbringing, but I don't think I've ever had a "sacred experience." Perhaps once or twice while singing lyrics that felt profoundly true, but they were very difficult to interpret. I've spent so long studying the sacred experiences of others, I think I may have stunted the growth of my own ability to have those experiences myself!
While reading Khan's post, I found myself thinking back to my childhood. (Queue future post about memory dynamics and their importance to identity - until I write it, you should check out this fine post over at Aedicula Antinoi.) I don't often think back that far. My mental space is generally filled to capacity by a number of simultaneously running "programs," most of which inevitably end up slowing down my processing speed. Inevitable result: Absent-Minded Professor Syndrome. (I actually dislike computational metaphors for the brain, but this seems to work. But I digress!)
I thought back to my early teens, when I would spend hours hiking alone in the scrub-brush-covered hills of my hometown, climbing rocks and letting myself wander. I'd let myself get lost, or "pixie-led" as I used to call it. (Thanks Ari Berk and Brian Froud.) When I got old enough, I'd ride my horse alone over the hills, through the washes, and over fields. My horse was old - nearly 30 and well-retired from his previous life as an endurance racer - but he and I had adventures like you wouldn't believe. I was in-tune with the natural world in ways that I can't even fathom anymore. One day, when my father and sister went out for a ride and didn't return home at the expected time, I attempted to track them, with a fairly decent degree of success (they returned home before I caught up with them).
All that changed when I went to college. I spent so much time in my head and indoors, that I lost touch with that world-sense, that connection to other beings beyond my human community. Even though I started studying religion, I now believe that I actually lost my capacity for religion. I assumed that religion required belief, and that this faith thing was about assent to doctrines on the basis of revealed scripture. (Protestant baggage) I never learned, in the first place, that spirituality and religion were (or should be) primarily rooted in one's experience of the Sacred. As I lost my sense for connection to the world around me, I didn't realize that I was, in fact, losing my religion. What I mistook for a failure in belief was really an experience of belief that failed to correlate with any meaningful experience.
It didn't help that I started to struggle with anxiety and depression as an undergraduate, which inhibited my ability (or even desire) to feel anything at all. I retreated into intellectual hyper-space and rode a knowledge-high all the way through graduate school, where I continued to study religion! It was in graduate school that I came into contact with Process theology/philosophy, with my first queer friends, and with parts of myself that I didn't know existed. The inner landscape of my own being terrified me; I stuck to "eh, I do what I do, I don't need to know who I really am" for some time. But the intellect-high was becoming unsustainable, and by the time I finished my M.A., that constant chasing of the "high" had failed to produce any of the expected results or benefits. I failed to get into any PhD programs. I floundered. My "Self" was entirely a product of my intellectual pursuits and capacities. If those pursuits and capacities failed to meet the (arbitrary, commercialized, socially-determined) markers of worthiness and value, then what value did I have? Zip. None. Zilch.
I got as low as I've ever been.
I started teaching, floundering still, and doubly-smacked by my former failings and my ongoing incompetence as a new teacher. Let's just say, it's taken a LOT of work to claw my way out of that hole. I think I've escaped (for the most part), but there's a difference between recognizing that you've stunted your emotional/spiritual growth and actually growing emotionally and spiritually.
I tried to pick up on Christian practices again, hoping that some of those flashes of feeling and connection I had previously experienced would start to fill the void.
They didn't. It isn't that the Christian symbol-system isn't "true" enough, or beautiful enough, or meaningful enough. That's what makes it all so frustrating; I understand Christianity extraordinarily well. It IS beautiful, meaningful, and "true" (in a sense). But now that I'm letting stunted parts of me grow, I find that the framework, the trellis, offered by Christianity (of various brands and flavors) no longer supports me. As a child, I thought I was a tomato. As it turns out, I'm climbing jasmine! (Or vice versa. This metaphor is extraordinarily superficial. Gardening metaphors are not my strong suit.)
But what is the right framework? How do I know which system "fits" best? My intellect keeps trying to form a logical argument, some kind of justification for why one is better than another. But now I know, or at least have a sense of, the fact that you don't "choose" a symbol system purely by intellect alone. You've got to let your vines reach out and grab onto those frames which best support them. It's a blind reach, but once you've got a firm hold, you know whether it will support you or not. The system I'm currently investigating (best described by the articles on the Ar nDraoicht Fein website) feels right. It doesn't just conform to certain intellectual positions (Process Philosophy being the strongest one). It clicks with deep needs and sensibilities, for reasons I can't quite articulate.
Is that the same as a "call"? I'm not sure. I'm not very good at this "heeding experience" thing. "Feeling" itself is difficult for me. But I know, deep down, that seeking to answer this question is worthwhile. The Pagan path has offered me the best tools I have encountered for doing so. Of course, it can't all be about the "answers." As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote,
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Monday, June 15, 2015
Walking the Path: Scavenger Hunt!
So I don't consider myself to be a Jungian in any sense of the term (I shudder at the gross over-generalizations of archetypes); however, today was filled with some rather interesting correspondences that may or may not be meaningful.
Despite having only just brushed the surface of my ADF Introduction to the Druid Path, and having spent only about 12 total minutes doing visualization work, and even though I have barely even begun to do the research and study required to truly understand my hearth culture, I decided that I really, really wanted to establish my home altar/shrine. I tend to jump the gun on things like this. Maybe I am just ready to stop thinking and start doing. Over-thinking has had a paralyzing effect on me in the past, and was one of the main reasons why I stopped practicing any path altogether. I have also been impressed by the commonly repeated notion in the ADF that paganism and druidry are far more about "doing than believing." I'm down with that!
So of course I read up on and refreshed my understandings of the basics. I knew I'd need a "cauldron," a "fire," and a "tree," or symbols thereof. Ok, cool. Gotchya. I tried to hunt down two of what I affectionately call "Woo Woo Stores" in my area, only to find that both were closed. Alright then. I decided to settle for Pier 1 and Home Goods. Who cares if said "cauldron" was originally intended as the centerpiece for a soccer mom's outdoor patio table? What matters is intent, not origin*.
So I gathered the raw materials, excited as much by the steps I was taking as by the opportunity to do some shopping and gather "pretty things." (I'm a red-blooded American. Capitalism is as much my religion as Christianity ever was, I'm sorry to say.)
I brought my items home and set them up on the plastic set of drawers currently set in front of my window, for lack of a better space. This is the time to mention that I rent a room in someone else's house, and my room is small. I'd love to use her fabulous backyard setting (complete with an area that would be perfect for ADF ritual), but I doubt she'd appreciate that use of her space. Or, maybe I'm just to nervous to ask!
I checked back in with the ADF guide about how to go about making this sucker (said altar) sacred. (Did I mention I'm sometimes just a little spiritually tone deaf?) Where should the water for the cauldron come from? What kind of "Tree" should I use? The guide suggested I gather the water from three different sources - preferably all from natural, running streams.
Ok. Whoah. Time out. I live in Southern California. There is no running water. If I tried to gather "free water" from three different sources, I'm afraid someone would come up and try to tax me for it. Thankfully, I happen to live in a town with a watershed running through it. There's a pleasant little stream in a little gully that bisects a local park. It was getting close to sunset, but I figured that this was magic time, and I could make it a kind of pilgrimage to gather water from the stream. I haven't gone out to walk in a while, being both out of shape and depressed, so I appreciated the challenge to get outside my comfort zone.
As soon as I stepped out of the house, things started to correspond. Two ravens cried at me as I walked out onto the sidewalk. Now it's Southern California. There are always ravens. But it seemed opportune, considering the grove I joined is called Raven's Cry, and I have started to form a connection with Odin, whose familiars, Hugin and Munin, were both ravens.
I walked through the neighborhood, happy for once to have my headphones out and my eyes open to the natural beauty around me. Then, in the midst of my path, a freshly dead raven. The ants had just started to get to it. I wondered what it could mean. It didn't shock me, and I didn't immediately take it as a "Bad Omen." *Lightning Crashes in the Background* Rather, I was reminded of the reality of death and change. According to Norse myth, even Odin will die one day, at the Ragnarok. I didn't know why the raven had died, but I was also reminded that most animals in urban and suburban areas die as a result of human impact. If non-human animals are also our Kindreds, then this could have served as a reminder of our responsibility to them, and our failures.
I walked on, and reached the park. The sign stood out to me as another correspondence. Norwegians.
Now, the first Norwegian settlers in the area, whose descendants founded my alma mater and current place of employment, were primarily Lutheran Christians. I started out as a Lutheran Christian. It was one of the reasons I attended that school (just down the road from the park) in the first place. But before that, the ancestors of these settlers (and my own!) worshiped many Gods, acknowledged many Realms, and honored the relationships between them all connected by the great World Tree, Yggdrasil, nourished by the Well of Urd, or Fate.
I passed the sign into the park and down into the gully, where I found a shady spot, not to be interrupted. Of course, the nice man watching his daughter play on the swings on level ground above wanted to say hello and chat. I had to stop and remind myself that humans are my Kin too. I must make space for them and offer hospitality. I opened the bottle I had and prepared to gather the waters.
Earth Mother, you offer up your waters to nourish us all.
Forgive us humans for taking more than our share.
Let these waters cleanse, sanctify, and nourish me
As they cleansed, sanctified, and nourished our ancestors.
Let these waters be for me as the Well of Wyrd.
In them let me see my fate unfold,
Let me see the unfolding Wyrd and shape my life accordingly.
I placed my bottle under a tiny fall created by a lifted root, and filled it with the surprisingly clear water. Then I braced myself against a tree, whose tangled roots were visible and which was nourished by the stream.
World Tree, Yggdrasil, you connect all the realms.
You shade, support, and center all creatures.
Offer us a path between the realms,
That we might have fellowship with all the Kindreds.
Further on my walk, I gathered plants and flowers I knew I'd offer to the Nature Spirits later. Two different kinds of lavender, some red seeds from a tree I don't know the name of, a pine cone, a sprig of ivy, and, go figure, a raven's feather.
But it was starting to get dark and I had a long walk home. I started to worry, "What the heck am I going to use as a World Tree?" Well, it was a good thing there was a Trader Joe's on the way home! I bought a tiny potted rosemary plant (small space, remember?). It was no "World Tree," nor was it a stately pole with the face of a God carved into it, but it was green, alive, and fragrant. Good enough for me!
I returned home to assemble my pieces. I have decided to wait until tomorrow to continue, as the ADF has an extensive hallowing rite that I want to be able to complete when my mind is fresh. It looks fairly good, if I might say so. Of course, intention and work are what matter, not flashiness or aesthetics. Michael J. Dangler of the ADF wrote about his first home shrine, constructed in his college dorm room, out of "three bowls and a stick." I am sure that the quality of Michael's devotions more than made up for the simplicity of his altar; perhaps his Gods admired his frugality! I don't know whether my own devotions and meditations will be pleasing to whatever Gods and/or Spirits are out there, Odin, Frigga, Baldur, Eris, Athena, Dionysus, or whoever else wants to show up. I only hope that it can serve as a space in which I can learn to kindle in my own heart a true fire of hospitality.
*Notes: Edited. I flipped the two! Fixed!
Despite having only just brushed the surface of my ADF Introduction to the Druid Path, and having spent only about 12 total minutes doing visualization work, and even though I have barely even begun to do the research and study required to truly understand my hearth culture, I decided that I really, really wanted to establish my home altar/shrine. I tend to jump the gun on things like this. Maybe I am just ready to stop thinking and start doing. Over-thinking has had a paralyzing effect on me in the past, and was one of the main reasons why I stopped practicing any path altogether. I have also been impressed by the commonly repeated notion in the ADF that paganism and druidry are far more about "doing than believing." I'm down with that!
So of course I read up on and refreshed my understandings of the basics. I knew I'd need a "cauldron," a "fire," and a "tree," or symbols thereof. Ok, cool. Gotchya. I tried to hunt down two of what I affectionately call "Woo Woo Stores" in my area, only to find that both were closed. Alright then. I decided to settle for Pier 1 and Home Goods. Who cares if said "cauldron" was originally intended as the centerpiece for a soccer mom's outdoor patio table? What matters is intent, not origin*.
So I gathered the raw materials, excited as much by the steps I was taking as by the opportunity to do some shopping and gather "pretty things." (I'm a red-blooded American. Capitalism is as much my religion as Christianity ever was, I'm sorry to say.)
I brought my items home and set them up on the plastic set of drawers currently set in front of my window, for lack of a better space. This is the time to mention that I rent a room in someone else's house, and my room is small. I'd love to use her fabulous backyard setting (complete with an area that would be perfect for ADF ritual), but I doubt she'd appreciate that use of her space. Or, maybe I'm just to nervous to ask!
I checked back in with the ADF guide about how to go about making this sucker (said altar) sacred. (Did I mention I'm sometimes just a little spiritually tone deaf?) Where should the water for the cauldron come from? What kind of "Tree" should I use? The guide suggested I gather the water from three different sources - preferably all from natural, running streams.
Ok. Whoah. Time out. I live in Southern California. There is no running water. If I tried to gather "free water" from three different sources, I'm afraid someone would come up and try to tax me for it. Thankfully, I happen to live in a town with a watershed running through it. There's a pleasant little stream in a little gully that bisects a local park. It was getting close to sunset, but I figured that this was magic time, and I could make it a kind of pilgrimage to gather water from the stream. I haven't gone out to walk in a while, being both out of shape and depressed, so I appreciated the challenge to get outside my comfort zone.
As soon as I stepped out of the house, things started to correspond. Two ravens cried at me as I walked out onto the sidewalk. Now it's Southern California. There are always ravens. But it seemed opportune, considering the grove I joined is called Raven's Cry, and I have started to form a connection with Odin, whose familiars, Hugin and Munin, were both ravens.
I walked through the neighborhood, happy for once to have my headphones out and my eyes open to the natural beauty around me. Then, in the midst of my path, a freshly dead raven. The ants had just started to get to it. I wondered what it could mean. It didn't shock me, and I didn't immediately take it as a "Bad Omen." *Lightning Crashes in the Background* Rather, I was reminded of the reality of death and change. According to Norse myth, even Odin will die one day, at the Ragnarok. I didn't know why the raven had died, but I was also reminded that most animals in urban and suburban areas die as a result of human impact. If non-human animals are also our Kindreds, then this could have served as a reminder of our responsibility to them, and our failures.
I walked on, and reached the park. The sign stood out to me as another correspondence. Norwegians.
I passed the sign into the park and down into the gully, where I found a shady spot, not to be interrupted. Of course, the nice man watching his daughter play on the swings on level ground above wanted to say hello and chat. I had to stop and remind myself that humans are my Kin too. I must make space for them and offer hospitality. I opened the bottle I had and prepared to gather the waters.
Earth Mother, you offer up your waters to nourish us all.
Forgive us humans for taking more than our share.
Let these waters cleanse, sanctify, and nourish me
As they cleansed, sanctified, and nourished our ancestors.
Let these waters be for me as the Well of Wyrd.
In them let me see my fate unfold,
Let me see the unfolding Wyrd and shape my life accordingly.
I placed my bottle under a tiny fall created by a lifted root, and filled it with the surprisingly clear water. Then I braced myself against a tree, whose tangled roots were visible and which was nourished by the stream.
World Tree, Yggdrasil, you connect all the realms.
You shade, support, and center all creatures.
Offer us a path between the realms,
That we might have fellowship with all the Kindreds.
Further on my walk, I gathered plants and flowers I knew I'd offer to the Nature Spirits later. Two different kinds of lavender, some red seeds from a tree I don't know the name of, a pine cone, a sprig of ivy, and, go figure, a raven's feather.
But it was starting to get dark and I had a long walk home. I started to worry, "What the heck am I going to use as a World Tree?" Well, it was a good thing there was a Trader Joe's on the way home! I bought a tiny potted rosemary plant (small space, remember?). It was no "World Tree," nor was it a stately pole with the face of a God carved into it, but it was green, alive, and fragrant. Good enough for me!
I returned home to assemble my pieces. I have decided to wait until tomorrow to continue, as the ADF has an extensive hallowing rite that I want to be able to complete when my mind is fresh. It looks fairly good, if I might say so. Of course, intention and work are what matter, not flashiness or aesthetics. Michael J. Dangler of the ADF wrote about his first home shrine, constructed in his college dorm room, out of "three bowls and a stick." I am sure that the quality of Michael's devotions more than made up for the simplicity of his altar; perhaps his Gods admired his frugality! I don't know whether my own devotions and meditations will be pleasing to whatever Gods and/or Spirits are out there, Odin, Frigga, Baldur, Eris, Athena, Dionysus, or whoever else wants to show up. I only hope that it can serve as a space in which I can learn to kindle in my own heart a true fire of hospitality.
*Notes: Edited. I flipped the two! Fixed!
Walking the Path
Now that I've decided to embrace an Order, future posts here at Shrewd Speculations will tend to focus on my observations and reflections on the Dedicant Path. The path ahead is long (I definitely can't see the end of it from here, nor the stumbling blocks!) so I anticipate quite a few posts on this topic.
Stay Tuned!
(I promise not to disappear this time.)
Stay Tuned!
(I promise not to disappear this time.)
A New Year, a New Path (Or how the Goddess of Chaos tailgated me until I moved over into the right lane.)
Wow. Why did I abandon this blog? Possibly because I had Tumblr for a while, then I fucked up so badly that I left under a cloud of ignominy. I felt thrashed by the unfortunate situation that caused me to leave, and spent a lot of time agonizing over it. I did not then realize that those events, which I could only see as disastrous at the time, were in fact important omens of things to come.
During graduate school, I had been introduced to the Mysteries of Eris by a good friend. The Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric (or POEE) and the Principia Discordia seemed at the time to be silly and just for fun, even if they also offered up a particularly apt and helpful way of understanding Reality. I found appeals to Eris and Discordian philosophy to be helpful as I made sense of the challenges of graduate school, the collapse of my ego after PhD program rejections, and the unique, exquisitely painful realities of adjunct teaching.
I've been teaching undergraduates as an adjunct lecturer for one and a half years now. During that time, the seeds of doubt and confusion planted in me during graduate school began to blossom. I've studied religion for eight years, I told my students, but I still don't a) really know what it is, nor do I b) actually know what I believe. I started out as a Lutheran Protestant. Then, through an academic exposure to Greek & Coptic Orthodoxy, I fancied myself a mystic with a deep appreciation for High Liturgy. (I mean, hey, who doesn't appreciate High Church liturgy?) Discordianism, Existentialism, Process philosophy/theology, and a few attempts at teaching World Religions then spun me around so fast I hardly knew which way was up.
While I taught, many things changed: I had to stop and actually check in with myself, rather than flutter about in the realm of intellectual potentiality. I finally figured out my sexuality. (Asexual!) By extension, my gender-identity came into question. (Agender? Gender-Queer? IDFK.) I suppose the religion question was due to come back around eventually.
Enter Eris.
A few days ago, I made use of Discordian metaphors in a comical, cultural-critique performed at an eclectic artists' salon in Los Angeles, put on by San Peña Producciones. According to the feedback I got after the show, it worked. It worked really well. Not only was I actually funny (go figure!), but they got it. I started to feel that Eris' chaos-power was a useful way to think and talk about the absurdity of claims to the objective truth-value of particular models of the Order of Reality. Orders (or paradigms, or models, etc.) are never objectively verifiable or "True," but they can be evaluated - by their effects. Some Orders are more beautiful than others. Some are more likely to lead humans to responsible, ethical behavior than other models.
Suddenly, I didn't feel so anxious about picking a model.
Sometimes, it takes an experience of Chaos to push (poke, prod, provoke, prick, etc.) us into adopting more authentic, more genuine, more beautiful models of Order. Sometimes, Chaos bites us in the ass if we linger too long between Orders, refusing (out of laziness) to adopt one. Refusing to adopt an Order doesn't make you more "tolerant" or more "enlightened" than anyone else; it casts you adrift; it removes you from a context; it leads you into apathy; it disorders your relationships with others an the world. Order is as necessary as Chaos. Chaos isn't evil, nor is Order. I tend to value Chaos over Order, generally because I associate Order with domination or control. But this doesn't need to be the case. Only shitty and ill-conceived Orders/Frameworks/Paradigms lead to Domination. The trick is to recognize that Order and Chaos are not separate "things," but potentialities inhering in all human beings. We are the bridges between Chaos and Order, and with those two powers we can make the world. But we most do so carefully, with a deep sense of responsibility for the consequences of that Order, for ourselves as well as for others - human and non-human, as well as for the planet.
....
So what is the Order for me? What Framework will I adopt as I step out onto a new Path, one hopefully characterized by careful, well-intentioned steps, a clear goal, and a sense of responsibility?
I love Christianity. Truly. If this seems in doubt, realize that I've spent the last 8 years studying it, and four of those were spent almost exclusively obsessed with MONKS. Really. I learned two dead languages to try to better understand these amazing people from the past.
But as I've been kicked about by Chaos and its many minions, as I have started to integrate the vast amount of data I have accumulated about religion over the years (that's going to take a while!), I have found that the monotheistic, creedal paradigm just doesn't work for me anymore. I don't know if it ever really did, or if I was just fooling myself. (As a counterpoint, Eris would fart in my face and chortle: "You're ALL just fooling yourselves!")
I had the great pleasure to attend two rituals held by my local Druid grove, affiliated with Ar nDraiocht Fein, or ADF. I went out of sheer academic curiosity during Imbolc and had a ball. The second time was for their Skirophoria ritual, a Greek "first-fruits" celebration. This second ritual happened the day AFTER my Discordian-themed rant at the San Peña salon. A friend of mine from graduate school and her BF were there as well. Unlike me, they have long identified with neo-pagans.
In the midst of the dance offering, one of the offering bowls to the omphalos (axis mundi/World Tree) was overturned. An apple was kicked aside, and I swear, when that apple rolled, it was like a flash bang. It knocked me back, blinded me, deafened me; but in that dark silence there was a ringing in my ears then a faint laughter. Gotchya Bitch! ... Thanks, Eris.
If you know anything about the myth of the Apple of Discord, the apple was the equivalent of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand for the ancient Greek world. It helped kick off the Trojan War. The instant I picked up the apple, I shared a horrified look with my friend. HOLY SHIT. Was this a sign?
Now, if you know me, you know that I don't put much stock in "woo woo" stuff. Really. I'm pretty skeptical. I also happen to be spiritually tone deaf. But in this moment, when the Gates were open and the Sacred Space centered us all within a truly meaningful Cosmos ... I felt connected.
So you know what? Maybe Gods and Goddesses do exist. Maybe they don't. But what I do know is that in my initial studies into the cosmology and assumptions held by the ADF, I finally feel like I've found an Order that centers me. So I'm going to read my ADF guide. I'm going to work with and support my local Grove. I'm going to pray, which is something I haven't done in nearly a year. Not just that, but I'm going to follow the ADF's Order of Ritual for the Solitary as I pray. This former-Protestant is going full Catholic Pagan!
You know what? I'm actually excited. For the first time in a while, I've got a path. Why not walk for a while, enjoy the scenery, and see where it goes?
During graduate school, I had been introduced to the Mysteries of Eris by a good friend. The Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric (or POEE) and the Principia Discordia seemed at the time to be silly and just for fun, even if they also offered up a particularly apt and helpful way of understanding Reality. I found appeals to Eris and Discordian philosophy to be helpful as I made sense of the challenges of graduate school, the collapse of my ego after PhD program rejections, and the unique, exquisitely painful realities of adjunct teaching.
I've been teaching undergraduates as an adjunct lecturer for one and a half years now. During that time, the seeds of doubt and confusion planted in me during graduate school began to blossom. I've studied religion for eight years, I told my students, but I still don't a) really know what it is, nor do I b) actually know what I believe. I started out as a Lutheran Protestant. Then, through an academic exposure to Greek & Coptic Orthodoxy, I fancied myself a mystic with a deep appreciation for High Liturgy. (I mean, hey, who doesn't appreciate High Church liturgy?) Discordianism, Existentialism, Process philosophy/theology, and a few attempts at teaching World Religions then spun me around so fast I hardly knew which way was up.
While I taught, many things changed: I had to stop and actually check in with myself, rather than flutter about in the realm of intellectual potentiality. I finally figured out my sexuality. (Asexual!) By extension, my gender-identity came into question. (Agender? Gender-Queer? IDFK.) I suppose the religion question was due to come back around eventually.
Enter Eris.
A few days ago, I made use of Discordian metaphors in a comical, cultural-critique performed at an eclectic artists' salon in Los Angeles, put on by San Peña Producciones. According to the feedback I got after the show, it worked. It worked really well. Not only was I actually funny (go figure!), but they got it. I started to feel that Eris' chaos-power was a useful way to think and talk about the absurdity of claims to the objective truth-value of particular models of the Order of Reality. Orders (or paradigms, or models, etc.) are never objectively verifiable or "True," but they can be evaluated - by their effects. Some Orders are more beautiful than others. Some are more likely to lead humans to responsible, ethical behavior than other models.
Suddenly, I didn't feel so anxious about picking a model.
Sometimes, it takes an experience of Chaos to push (poke, prod, provoke, prick, etc.) us into adopting more authentic, more genuine, more beautiful models of Order. Sometimes, Chaos bites us in the ass if we linger too long between Orders, refusing (out of laziness) to adopt one. Refusing to adopt an Order doesn't make you more "tolerant" or more "enlightened" than anyone else; it casts you adrift; it removes you from a context; it leads you into apathy; it disorders your relationships with others an the world. Order is as necessary as Chaos. Chaos isn't evil, nor is Order. I tend to value Chaos over Order, generally because I associate Order with domination or control. But this doesn't need to be the case. Only shitty and ill-conceived Orders/Frameworks/Paradigms lead to Domination. The trick is to recognize that Order and Chaos are not separate "things," but potentialities inhering in all human beings. We are the bridges between Chaos and Order, and with those two powers we can make the world. But we most do so carefully, with a deep sense of responsibility for the consequences of that Order, for ourselves as well as for others - human and non-human, as well as for the planet.
....
So what is the Order for me? What Framework will I adopt as I step out onto a new Path, one hopefully characterized by careful, well-intentioned steps, a clear goal, and a sense of responsibility?
I love Christianity. Truly. If this seems in doubt, realize that I've spent the last 8 years studying it, and four of those were spent almost exclusively obsessed with MONKS. Really. I learned two dead languages to try to better understand these amazing people from the past.
But as I've been kicked about by Chaos and its many minions, as I have started to integrate the vast amount of data I have accumulated about religion over the years (that's going to take a while!), I have found that the monotheistic, creedal paradigm just doesn't work for me anymore. I don't know if it ever really did, or if I was just fooling myself. (As a counterpoint, Eris would fart in my face and chortle: "You're ALL just fooling yourselves!")
I had the great pleasure to attend two rituals held by my local Druid grove, affiliated with Ar nDraiocht Fein, or ADF. I went out of sheer academic curiosity during Imbolc and had a ball. The second time was for their Skirophoria ritual, a Greek "first-fruits" celebration. This second ritual happened the day AFTER my Discordian-themed rant at the San Peña salon. A friend of mine from graduate school and her BF were there as well. Unlike me, they have long identified with neo-pagans.
In the midst of the dance offering, one of the offering bowls to the omphalos (axis mundi/World Tree) was overturned. An apple was kicked aside, and I swear, when that apple rolled, it was like a flash bang. It knocked me back, blinded me, deafened me; but in that dark silence there was a ringing in my ears then a faint laughter. Gotchya Bitch! ... Thanks, Eris.
If you know anything about the myth of the Apple of Discord, the apple was the equivalent of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand for the ancient Greek world. It helped kick off the Trojan War. The instant I picked up the apple, I shared a horrified look with my friend. HOLY SHIT. Was this a sign?
Now, if you know me, you know that I don't put much stock in "woo woo" stuff. Really. I'm pretty skeptical. I also happen to be spiritually tone deaf. But in this moment, when the Gates were open and the Sacred Space centered us all within a truly meaningful Cosmos ... I felt connected.
So you know what? Maybe Gods and Goddesses do exist. Maybe they don't. But what I do know is that in my initial studies into the cosmology and assumptions held by the ADF, I finally feel like I've found an Order that centers me. So I'm going to read my ADF guide. I'm going to work with and support my local Grove. I'm going to pray, which is something I haven't done in nearly a year. Not just that, but I'm going to follow the ADF's Order of Ritual for the Solitary as I pray. This former-Protestant is going full Catholic Pagan!
You know what? I'm actually excited. For the first time in a while, I've got a path. Why not walk for a while, enjoy the scenery, and see where it goes?
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Why Myths Matter
Jenny and Tommy, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in a baby carriage! That’s not all, that’s not all, then ….
Someone does something rhyming with –all.
I bet you predicted that. If you grew up in public schools in the United States (can’t speak for other places), and no one ever sang this annoying jingle at you or a close personal friend, then you’re extraordinarily lucky.
This post is about the importance of myth or story in the construction of our cultural episteme. This matters because the episteme isn’t just a body of available knowledge, it’s the apparatus by which we judge what ideas are and are not acceptable “Truths” within our particular cultural context. The jingle above is annoying and extremely catchy (two values young children seem to treat as gospel), but it also represents accepted ideas within our cultural episteme in a way that young children can internalize and repeat without even knowing they’re doing it.
Any child exposed to this jingle and others like it will undoubtedly concurrently be forming expectations about the typical format of opposite gender interaction (and unless playgrounds are becoming more friendly places to be, opposite-gender relationships are being reinforced as normative). There’s a reason why sexual education in schools simply cannot keep up with the norms already repeated and enforced on the playground, and I think that reason has everything to do with the method by which those norms are conveyed. A jingle someone heard on the playground in third grade, or better yet, a circulating rumor, has a stronger and longer impact on a child’s mind than some pedantic lecture about their bodies, given in dry, scientific language.
Why is this? I have no true cognitive science background, aside from some investigation into the relationship between cognition and religion, but I think it’s safe to say that images and narratives are easier to process than abstract, subject-specific language. For example, I think one of the reasons so many people find it hard to let go of the Genesis narrative, as the defining “picture” of the origins of the planet, is because the evolutionary model is just that, a scientific model. It isn’t a story. I think it has started to take on some narrative elements in popular discourse, but the danger is that the intentionality that is often ascribed to actors in a story causes misunderstandings about the theory itself, which puts scientists’ teeth on edge (for good reason).
I read a fantastic chapter today by Richard Valantasis on spiritual guides of the 3rd century (in various contexts), in which he proposed that semiotic analyses were required to truly understand the “underlying structures (the mutually understood context) which makes communication possible” in the ancient texts which describe a spiritual teacher from the perspective of the student.(1) He explored ancient semiotic theory, which was a way to search for underlying meanings within a text, utilizing theories of language and interpretation. (2) Aristotle’s poetics “explored ‘the nature of meaning and metaphor and the relation between literal and non-literal discourse.’”(3) For Valantasis’ purposes, a semiotic study “[discovers] … cultural systems that lie behind communication.”(4) These cultural systems are the “keys” which allow us to decode the underlying systems which allow the multilayered literal and non-literal images and “signs” within texts to signify meaning; that is, a particular meaning understood by both writer and reader, because of their shared access to an underlying meaning-system.
What was striking and alluring about Valantasis’ chapters was the fact that the communication of a student about his spiritual teacher was so “encoded,” that cultural and religious (or esoteric, as in the case of Hermeticism) fluency were absolutely necessary for “decoding” the deeper meaning of the text or oration. Those that shared this fluency were “insiders,” who were able to perceive the deeper “truths” the speaker wanted to convey about the signified, the guide, by correctly interpreting the signifiers which constituted that characterization within text, because of their concurrent fluency and engagement with a larger, shared episteme of meaning.
All of this complex jargon helps, in my opinion to explain why stories and myths are extraordinarily effective, efficient, and “capacious” teaching tools. I say “capacious” because stories/myths are able to “hold” an enormous amount of meaning because of the relationships between language and culture which allow for a multiplicity of meanings contained within the “vessel” of a single story. (For a great example of this, The Prologue to Origin’s Commentary on the Song of Songs is helpful)
This evening at our weekly symposium, my fellow graduate students and I discussed the problems of post-modern deconstruction, especially as regards the devaluation and elimination of meaning, value, and truth. My friend So (whose blog you can find listed on the right sidebar, “That Green Stuff”) and I arrived at the notion that post-modernism is a tool like any other, and what can be deconstructed to its most basic elements can also represent or “signify” a plethora of other meanings within a number of contexts. What post-modernism deconstructs, ecological theories of emergence, complexity, and novelty can help to flourish and expand according to its own internal logic, pressing on in a non-linear growth pattern that cannot be predicted by its original conditions.
Myths and stories matter because they can function as cultural “short hands” for accepted notions of morality, social cohesion, virtue and self-development, the purpose of knowledge, cosmogony and anthropology. But because these myths can also help reinforce particular “norms,” great care must be taken when it is recognized that they no longer adequately function as descriptors of the human experience and self-understanding in a given context, or if they are exposed as promoting an unhealthy vision of self and society. If these occur, the myths must change.
What myths do we assume as “normative” for our Western, hetero-normative, primarily Christian context? What myths have fallen from their meta-regulatory status because they no longer suit the self-understanding of people in a post-Christian world? These are questions to ponder.
I was going to cite more examples of how stories engage in the kind of signifying described by Valantasis above (Spencer’s Faerie Queene came to mind), but any story that has achieved the status of “national literature” would work just as well. Milton, Shakespeare, and Dickens do more to explain what it means to be English than any cultural study on English norms and customs, but only to “insiders” who share the cultural “reference-text” that allows them to recognize the signifiers of meaning in the texts and decode them. This is why I think academics really need to start writing more stories. So much of academic research is lost on those who would truly benefit from the findings because the information is caught up within language that does not signify to casual readers because they do not share the experience of academic “training” which gives them access to the vocabulary limited to those who have experienced the same paraskeuhv (practice, preparation, arrangement, training, etc.). I’m not talking about boiling down Foucault into a children’s book (readers age 17 and older only, please), but rather about recognizing that (important point!) the multiplicity of meanings that can be “carried” within the vessel of a story or myth allow for an implicit portrayal of the problem of multiple meanings explored by post-modern theory. In a text read in light of its possible underlying, symbolic associations, multiple meanings are free to coexist alongside one another, regardless of their compatibility. The form of the myth (or poem, for that matter) contains all of the essences that can be possibly signified by the particular signifiers within the text.
This is an extraordinarily difficult thing to accomplish once you’re thinking about it and concerned about all of the processes and details. Since semiotics is descriptive rather than prescriptive, I’m hoping much of this comes naturally to us, as we are myth-making creatures. I will be keeping this in mind as I attempt to start crafting my own myths, in order to signify truths of my own experience in a way that is truly multivalent and “makes room.” If we apply emergence and complexity theories to literature and the processes of conveying meaning, then construct myths that are accessible to a wide and imaginative audience, how much more competent (and comfortable) will we become in our navigation of a world in which multiple meanings coexist side by side?
(1) Richard Valantasis, Spiritual Guides of the Third Century: A semiotic study of the Guide-Disciple Relationship in Christianity, Neoplatonism, Hermetism, and Gnosticism (Harvard College, 1991) 6.
(2) Ibid. 7
(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid., 9
Someone does something rhyming with –all.
I bet you predicted that. If you grew up in public schools in the United States (can’t speak for other places), and no one ever sang this annoying jingle at you or a close personal friend, then you’re extraordinarily lucky.
This post is about the importance of myth or story in the construction of our cultural episteme. This matters because the episteme isn’t just a body of available knowledge, it’s the apparatus by which we judge what ideas are and are not acceptable “Truths” within our particular cultural context. The jingle above is annoying and extremely catchy (two values young children seem to treat as gospel), but it also represents accepted ideas within our cultural episteme in a way that young children can internalize and repeat without even knowing they’re doing it.
Any child exposed to this jingle and others like it will undoubtedly concurrently be forming expectations about the typical format of opposite gender interaction (and unless playgrounds are becoming more friendly places to be, opposite-gender relationships are being reinforced as normative). There’s a reason why sexual education in schools simply cannot keep up with the norms already repeated and enforced on the playground, and I think that reason has everything to do with the method by which those norms are conveyed. A jingle someone heard on the playground in third grade, or better yet, a circulating rumor, has a stronger and longer impact on a child’s mind than some pedantic lecture about their bodies, given in dry, scientific language.
Why is this? I have no true cognitive science background, aside from some investigation into the relationship between cognition and religion, but I think it’s safe to say that images and narratives are easier to process than abstract, subject-specific language. For example, I think one of the reasons so many people find it hard to let go of the Genesis narrative, as the defining “picture” of the origins of the planet, is because the evolutionary model is just that, a scientific model. It isn’t a story. I think it has started to take on some narrative elements in popular discourse, but the danger is that the intentionality that is often ascribed to actors in a story causes misunderstandings about the theory itself, which puts scientists’ teeth on edge (for good reason).
I read a fantastic chapter today by Richard Valantasis on spiritual guides of the 3rd century (in various contexts), in which he proposed that semiotic analyses were required to truly understand the “underlying structures (the mutually understood context) which makes communication possible” in the ancient texts which describe a spiritual teacher from the perspective of the student.(1) He explored ancient semiotic theory, which was a way to search for underlying meanings within a text, utilizing theories of language and interpretation. (2) Aristotle’s poetics “explored ‘the nature of meaning and metaphor and the relation between literal and non-literal discourse.’”(3) For Valantasis’ purposes, a semiotic study “[discovers] … cultural systems that lie behind communication.”(4) These cultural systems are the “keys” which allow us to decode the underlying systems which allow the multilayered literal and non-literal images and “signs” within texts to signify meaning; that is, a particular meaning understood by both writer and reader, because of their shared access to an underlying meaning-system.
What was striking and alluring about Valantasis’ chapters was the fact that the communication of a student about his spiritual teacher was so “encoded,” that cultural and religious (or esoteric, as in the case of Hermeticism) fluency were absolutely necessary for “decoding” the deeper meaning of the text or oration. Those that shared this fluency were “insiders,” who were able to perceive the deeper “truths” the speaker wanted to convey about the signified, the guide, by correctly interpreting the signifiers which constituted that characterization within text, because of their concurrent fluency and engagement with a larger, shared episteme of meaning.
All of this complex jargon helps, in my opinion to explain why stories and myths are extraordinarily effective, efficient, and “capacious” teaching tools. I say “capacious” because stories/myths are able to “hold” an enormous amount of meaning because of the relationships between language and culture which allow for a multiplicity of meanings contained within the “vessel” of a single story. (For a great example of this, The Prologue to Origin’s Commentary on the Song of Songs is helpful)
This evening at our weekly symposium, my fellow graduate students and I discussed the problems of post-modern deconstruction, especially as regards the devaluation and elimination of meaning, value, and truth. My friend So (whose blog you can find listed on the right sidebar, “That Green Stuff”) and I arrived at the notion that post-modernism is a tool like any other, and what can be deconstructed to its most basic elements can also represent or “signify” a plethora of other meanings within a number of contexts. What post-modernism deconstructs, ecological theories of emergence, complexity, and novelty can help to flourish and expand according to its own internal logic, pressing on in a non-linear growth pattern that cannot be predicted by its original conditions.
Myths and stories matter because they can function as cultural “short hands” for accepted notions of morality, social cohesion, virtue and self-development, the purpose of knowledge, cosmogony and anthropology. But because these myths can also help reinforce particular “norms,” great care must be taken when it is recognized that they no longer adequately function as descriptors of the human experience and self-understanding in a given context, or if they are exposed as promoting an unhealthy vision of self and society. If these occur, the myths must change.
What myths do we assume as “normative” for our Western, hetero-normative, primarily Christian context? What myths have fallen from their meta-regulatory status because they no longer suit the self-understanding of people in a post-Christian world? These are questions to ponder.
I was going to cite more examples of how stories engage in the kind of signifying described by Valantasis above (Spencer’s Faerie Queene came to mind), but any story that has achieved the status of “national literature” would work just as well. Milton, Shakespeare, and Dickens do more to explain what it means to be English than any cultural study on English norms and customs, but only to “insiders” who share the cultural “reference-text” that allows them to recognize the signifiers of meaning in the texts and decode them. This is why I think academics really need to start writing more stories. So much of academic research is lost on those who would truly benefit from the findings because the information is caught up within language that does not signify to casual readers because they do not share the experience of academic “training” which gives them access to the vocabulary limited to those who have experienced the same paraskeuhv (practice, preparation, arrangement, training, etc.). I’m not talking about boiling down Foucault into a children’s book (readers age 17 and older only, please), but rather about recognizing that (important point!) the multiplicity of meanings that can be “carried” within the vessel of a story or myth allow for an implicit portrayal of the problem of multiple meanings explored by post-modern theory. In a text read in light of its possible underlying, symbolic associations, multiple meanings are free to coexist alongside one another, regardless of their compatibility. The form of the myth (or poem, for that matter) contains all of the essences that can be possibly signified by the particular signifiers within the text.
This is an extraordinarily difficult thing to accomplish once you’re thinking about it and concerned about all of the processes and details. Since semiotics is descriptive rather than prescriptive, I’m hoping much of this comes naturally to us, as we are myth-making creatures. I will be keeping this in mind as I attempt to start crafting my own myths, in order to signify truths of my own experience in a way that is truly multivalent and “makes room.” If we apply emergence and complexity theories to literature and the processes of conveying meaning, then construct myths that are accessible to a wide and imaginative audience, how much more competent (and comfortable) will we become in our navigation of a world in which multiple meanings coexist side by side?
(1) Richard Valantasis, Spiritual Guides of the Third Century: A semiotic study of the Guide-Disciple Relationship in Christianity, Neoplatonism, Hermetism, and Gnosticism (Harvard College, 1991) 6.
(2) Ibid. 7
(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid., 9
Monday, October 17, 2011
A New Story
I'm moved by the need to tell a new story. Or maybe just tell our current story differently. The conflict of worldviews (or perceived conflict) seems to be my constant ideological companion as I traverse the realm of graduate literature. Even in my Inter-Religious dialogue class, our studies of conflict resolution and overcoming cultural differences seems to take on that old, familiar, stomach-sickening binary cast; individualist vs. communitarian, diffuse vs. specific, high-context vs. low-context. Individualists aren’t prone to service and are not concerned about their communities. The trend toward the specific is scientific and objective, while those who engage in a diffuse communication style are more holistic, more organic, and more in touch with spirituality.
These are generalizations, and to be fair, the author of this particular text continually reinforces the notion “that all individuals are multicultural, sharing identities and meanings with people from a range of other groups, and that cultural generalizations are not manifested evenly within groups or across times but change with specific context…”(1) Still, it is easy to see how this conceptual binary has infiltrated our shared cultural imagination. I take issue not only with the fact that these categories are never completely appropriate or applicable, but also with the underlying assumption that an individualist perspective is theoretically inseparable from its “origin,” the Newtonian scientific worldview, and that the underlying framework for all individualism is an atomistic, determined, objective reality.
I take issue with these binaries (individualism vs. collectivism, science vs. spirituality, specificity vs. diffuseness, mechanical efficiency vs. aesthetic quality), which are in my opinion simply symptoms of one all-encompassing, flawed super-binary, because I do not think that the problem lies in the fact that we see reality in many different ways, but in the fact that we think these views are incompatible, or even that they are two different ways to see the world.
A metaphor from LeBaron’s book might help. Akio Morita, a founder of Sony, provides an illustration of the difference between specificity and diffuseness (categories LeBaron is using to help explain sources of conflict in cross-cultural communication). He likens the specificity view to a bricklayer, and the diffuse to a stonemason. The bricklayer has a closed set of specific tools and materials, which he arranges according to a predetermined plan. The creation of the bricklayer emerges in a predictable, orderly way. The Stonemason, on the other hand, “chooses stones that approximate the general size and appearance desired and then chisels them until they fit together perfectly.”(2)
What are the two products of these approaches? A brick wall, or some other rigid, linear structure, and a beautiful cathedral, monument, or other more aesthetically pleasing construction.
The Bricklayer is mechanistic, determined, specific, and follows an orderly and predictable plan. What comes out of this? Nothing exciting, but at least something dependable.
The Stonemason is diffuse, artistic, visionary, non-linear, and aesthetically driven. What emerges? Something beautiful, awe-inspiring, and atypical, though usually through an inefficient and fairly unpredictable process.
It’s a great setup, but it’s ultimately misleading. Stonemasons are just as mathematically and scientifically informed, driven, and restricted as bricklayers. What differs in these two stories is the material, not the process. Bricks have predetermined shape, stones don’t. Realistically, the Stonemason and the Bricklayer follow very similar sets of physical and mathematical rules.
Here’s where the fun, symbolic stuff starts. And this is why I love Freemasonry.
The Stonemason’s craft can function as a symbol of the unity of physical/mathematical rules and the aesthetic drive to create something beautiful, unpredictable, and undetermined.
Here’s the kicker: following a set of rules and guidelines (“laws” if you will), whether physical, mathematical, or moral, does not produce a deterministic set of results.
Look at the physical laws of the universe (and forgive me, for my scientific literacy and fluency nominal at best), and then look at the universe. Does the product shaped by these “determined” forces look mechanical, at all? No, I don’t think so either. The universe is a beautiful, dangerous, chaotic, illogical, diverse, constantly changing place.
The Stonemason is bound by the determining rules of geometry and physics, and yet creates breathtakingly beautiful buildings. Even more importantly, the awe and power of these constructions, especially in their aesthetic appeal, would have been impossible to achieve without those rigid, determining rules.
Thesis: deterministic “laws” do not prevent the emergence of variety.
Back to the binaries. I stated above that the problem with the binaries was “the fact that we think these views are incompatible, or even that they are two different ways to see the world.” The premise that the Stonemason and the Bricklayer follow fundamentally different processes was flawed. Stonemasons are just as rigidly constrained by the same mathematical and physical rules as the bricklayer. The difference is in scale.
Building a wall is not that complicated. A brick house is higher up the scale, but there’s not much you can screw up there. Building a cathedral is enormously complex. There are multiple kinds of labor, materials, spaces, etc. to consider, but one still has to follow the same basic rules as the bricklayer. Proportion of height and weight, gravitational forces, wind resistance, stress factors – all of the mathematics are the same. Kicker #2: the farther up the scale of complexity you go, even operating with the same rules, the more variety, difference, and (dare I say it?) freedom you have.
The freedom of aesthetic expression is a high-level function of the determining laws that provide order, stability, balance, and a certain amount of predictability. Therefore, both “fundamental views” of reality, interpersonal/communal relationships are two sides of the same coin. You cannot understand one without the other, nor is one superior to the other. Both must be recognized and allowed to operate. Aesthetics and diffusion are not antithetical to determinism and specificity.
Here’s where the “new story” comes in.
I keep running into these two different ways of weaving the story of reality and it’s starting to bother me. I’m getting tired of it. So in a time honored Existentialist tradition, I’m going to re-tell the story. I’m going to weave the tapestry of reality as I see it and cast it like a net into the world. These aren’t just the mad ramblings of my own brain, of an isolated individual; all of my own thoughts are shaped by my interaction with other minds. Relationality is hugely important to me. I hardly know what I think until I have shared a few whispers of thought over a glass of wine or coffee and watched those whispers slowly gain form in the matrix of conversation.
The story is already taking shape and will likely take mythic form, as I feel that’s the best way to convey meaning in a non-linear, non-imposing way without making ultimate truth claims. This (I think) is the same principle behind the Freemasonic use of drama and ritual in their instructional ceremonies and degrees.
Stay tuned for the next installment!
1 Michelle LeBaron, “Bridging Cultural Conflicts,” p. 54.
2 Ibid. 67
These are generalizations, and to be fair, the author of this particular text continually reinforces the notion “that all individuals are multicultural, sharing identities and meanings with people from a range of other groups, and that cultural generalizations are not manifested evenly within groups or across times but change with specific context…”(1) Still, it is easy to see how this conceptual binary has infiltrated our shared cultural imagination. I take issue not only with the fact that these categories are never completely appropriate or applicable, but also with the underlying assumption that an individualist perspective is theoretically inseparable from its “origin,” the Newtonian scientific worldview, and that the underlying framework for all individualism is an atomistic, determined, objective reality.
I take issue with these binaries (individualism vs. collectivism, science vs. spirituality, specificity vs. diffuseness, mechanical efficiency vs. aesthetic quality), which are in my opinion simply symptoms of one all-encompassing, flawed super-binary, because I do not think that the problem lies in the fact that we see reality in many different ways, but in the fact that we think these views are incompatible, or even that they are two different ways to see the world.
A metaphor from LeBaron’s book might help. Akio Morita, a founder of Sony, provides an illustration of the difference between specificity and diffuseness (categories LeBaron is using to help explain sources of conflict in cross-cultural communication). He likens the specificity view to a bricklayer, and the diffuse to a stonemason. The bricklayer has a closed set of specific tools and materials, which he arranges according to a predetermined plan. The creation of the bricklayer emerges in a predictable, orderly way. The Stonemason, on the other hand, “chooses stones that approximate the general size and appearance desired and then chisels them until they fit together perfectly.”(2)
What are the two products of these approaches? A brick wall, or some other rigid, linear structure, and a beautiful cathedral, monument, or other more aesthetically pleasing construction.
The Bricklayer is mechanistic, determined, specific, and follows an orderly and predictable plan. What comes out of this? Nothing exciting, but at least something dependable.
The Stonemason is diffuse, artistic, visionary, non-linear, and aesthetically driven. What emerges? Something beautiful, awe-inspiring, and atypical, though usually through an inefficient and fairly unpredictable process.
It’s a great setup, but it’s ultimately misleading. Stonemasons are just as mathematically and scientifically informed, driven, and restricted as bricklayers. What differs in these two stories is the material, not the process. Bricks have predetermined shape, stones don’t. Realistically, the Stonemason and the Bricklayer follow very similar sets of physical and mathematical rules.
Here’s where the fun, symbolic stuff starts. And this is why I love Freemasonry.
The Stonemason’s craft can function as a symbol of the unity of physical/mathematical rules and the aesthetic drive to create something beautiful, unpredictable, and undetermined.
Here’s the kicker: following a set of rules and guidelines (“laws” if you will), whether physical, mathematical, or moral, does not produce a deterministic set of results.
Look at the physical laws of the universe (and forgive me, for my scientific literacy and fluency nominal at best), and then look at the universe. Does the product shaped by these “determined” forces look mechanical, at all? No, I don’t think so either. The universe is a beautiful, dangerous, chaotic, illogical, diverse, constantly changing place.
The Stonemason is bound by the determining rules of geometry and physics, and yet creates breathtakingly beautiful buildings. Even more importantly, the awe and power of these constructions, especially in their aesthetic appeal, would have been impossible to achieve without those rigid, determining rules.
Thesis: deterministic “laws” do not prevent the emergence of variety.
Back to the binaries. I stated above that the problem with the binaries was “the fact that we think these views are incompatible, or even that they are two different ways to see the world.” The premise that the Stonemason and the Bricklayer follow fundamentally different processes was flawed. Stonemasons are just as rigidly constrained by the same mathematical and physical rules as the bricklayer. The difference is in scale.
Building a wall is not that complicated. A brick house is higher up the scale, but there’s not much you can screw up there. Building a cathedral is enormously complex. There are multiple kinds of labor, materials, spaces, etc. to consider, but one still has to follow the same basic rules as the bricklayer. Proportion of height and weight, gravitational forces, wind resistance, stress factors – all of the mathematics are the same. Kicker #2: the farther up the scale of complexity you go, even operating with the same rules, the more variety, difference, and (dare I say it?) freedom you have.
The freedom of aesthetic expression is a high-level function of the determining laws that provide order, stability, balance, and a certain amount of predictability. Therefore, both “fundamental views” of reality, interpersonal/communal relationships are two sides of the same coin. You cannot understand one without the other, nor is one superior to the other. Both must be recognized and allowed to operate. Aesthetics and diffusion are not antithetical to determinism and specificity.
Here’s where the “new story” comes in.
I keep running into these two different ways of weaving the story of reality and it’s starting to bother me. I’m getting tired of it. So in a time honored Existentialist tradition, I’m going to re-tell the story. I’m going to weave the tapestry of reality as I see it and cast it like a net into the world. These aren’t just the mad ramblings of my own brain, of an isolated individual; all of my own thoughts are shaped by my interaction with other minds. Relationality is hugely important to me. I hardly know what I think until I have shared a few whispers of thought over a glass of wine or coffee and watched those whispers slowly gain form in the matrix of conversation.
The story is already taking shape and will likely take mythic form, as I feel that’s the best way to convey meaning in a non-linear, non-imposing way without making ultimate truth claims. This (I think) is the same principle behind the Freemasonic use of drama and ritual in their instructional ceremonies and degrees.
Stay tuned for the next installment!
1 Michelle LeBaron, “Bridging Cultural Conflicts,” p. 54.
2 Ibid. 67
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