The poet says we all have an inner Gandalf knocking at the door. The question is whether you say yes to the call to adventure. But we all also have both a Samwise Gamgee and a Frodo inside us; one part of us that returns after the adventure to take up one’s place in the presence of those who know us, and one part that is so broken open by the terror of the magnitude of the task to be accomplished, regardless of whether one succeeded or failed, that we faint and fall into the release of the Elvin land of perpetual dreams.
I am in a cottage kitchen and Bruno Ganz, the German actor who played the lead angel in Wim Wenders magnificent 1987 film, Wings of Desire, is sitting on a kitchen stool eating a bowl of soup. He looks up and smiles as if he were expecting me . . .
An essay commemorating one year of the global pandemic lockdown by looking at the Welsh writer John Cowper Powys and his “defiant and undefeated self.”
We all could use a Samwise Gamgee right now. This global pandemic has plunged everyone into a place we could not have dreamt of a year ago. Then we all had the luxury of imagining our own lives and solitary plans as being meaningful and worthy of our full attention and energy. Now it has become clear that unless we are able to scale the mountain and get high enough on the path to see how all roads meet, we may very well perish. The interconnectedness of all life on this planet has never been made so plain. Frodo, we feel for you!
He stood up there gripping the railing and he was furious at the effrontery of this (our protest), and I guess he could already see that his plan was in danger, because he was saying, ‘There is nobody against us – nobody, nobody, nobody but a bunch of… A bunch of mothers!’
…Brahma had lectured on the necessity of distance, difference and horizon as the secret cause of history….
A poem 65-years in the making . . . my response to the Armstrong Family anthem. (Thanks to Kathy Cowan and George Drury whose beautiful summer home in Maine I was staying at when the first glimmer of a line appeared!)
As someone trained in the subtle shifts of the collective psyche - the shared mythos of the times - it seems to me that the torrents of music let loose upon the land when the genius of rock ‘n’ roll struck its staff upon the rock in the desert of the American wasteland of the 1950s, watered seeds deep in the heart of America.
So much of the time we are dying to be in control of what happens to us, when we would do better to let go of that vanity . . .
The experience that I want to share today is one that concerns the competition - perhaps the most compelling and long-lasting competition for mortals – between the needs of the physical entity and the wonder of the inquiring imagination.
The set up was this: it was evening and I was sitting in a chair near the French windows that overlook the backyard. I was holding the infant in my hands and rocking her gently so that I could gaze into her face...
Jean Erdman Campbell, wife of the famed mythologist, Joseph Campbell, and a famous dancer- choreographer in her own right, passed away at age 104 on May 4th of 2020. Although she is now eclipsed by her more-famous husband, for the greater part of their marriage it was Jean who was the famous personality. Hopefully, her own enormous contributions to the world of dance and theater will come to the fore again as we remember a century of glorious creativity.
I sat up in bed and reread the paragraph and realized that the paintings and photographs of waves were pushing towards this same idea: that point where the wave begins to swell up is that razor’s-edge, the point between something being imagined and something spilling into objective manifestation. The ocean – married to the moon and the wind and gravity - creates the possibility of waves and causes them to form. The wave is like the outer expression of the ocean imagining, dreaming, thinking...
In my dream I am a refugee. I am in a city in old Europe. I have absolutely nothing – no home, no family, no visible means of support. There's a sense of quiet desperation in my actions. I go into a printer’s shop with two handfuls of sand that I scatter on the green tile. Then I take a blunted stick and calligraph some words in the sand on the floor to show my skill.
I had a dream that I downloaded a biotech app called a Heart Radar that allowed me to detect anyone in the vicinity who was feeling sad or alienated....
Since I know better, why can't I live better?
We are justified in returning to this troubling question again and again – it is certainly at the heart of ethics - and the core of my teaching thus far has been to acquaint students with the discrepancies between what we say we value, by our language, and what we demonstrably value by our actions, both as individuals and as a nation.
At first glance the story of the dream feels isolating and certainly "unromantic" for someone engaged in ministering to couples during their wedding planning and nuptials. But the more I sat with the images and feelings of the dream, the more I came to feel that this understanding is actually a necessary prelude to the capacity for genuine love
I've been thinking about the many different ways that we show our love, concern, affection, interest, passion and care for the other beings in our experience. The diversity of relationships that we engage in every day mandates that there be a diversity of forms with which to express our relatedness - and finding the right form to fit, perfectly, the kind of relationship we have with each person, plant or pet is one of the arts demanding of human beings.
In the next scene I am climbing up a steep but very small hill towards a tiny house that perches at the summit. It almost feels like a children’s book illustration of a little house on a hill. Once inside I see my maternal grandmother. [She had passed away the year before, but looked her usual, well-groomed, slightly severe self.] She beckons to me to come forward and says, conspiratorially:
“I will tell you the three principles that hold your world together.”
Eagerly, I lean in to catch this wisdom from the elders.
Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive . . .
I am climbing down a ladder that is just metal rings bolted into the side of a steep stone wall. It seems to be some kind of chamber, or maybe the cavern left over after mineral excavation. It's enormous, silent and eerie.
On my way down I glance over my left shoulder and am shocked to see a life-size crucifix that is also bolted into the stone wall. Hanging from the crucifix is a skeleton wearing the crown of thorns . . .
