a reflection in 3 parts. part 2

It doesn't have to be spoken of so mystically. Its something that farmers are very familiar with, especially those that still plant with their hands, harvest with their bodies, and eat to survive. There is no question about the connection between the grain of rice and the body which it nourishes. But there has come about such a disconnection between most people (western civilization especially) between our food sources, our life sources, and our every day lives that we forget that the fresh mozzarella cheese and tomato basil on rye sandwiches that some of us may miss so dearly come tomato farms, and cows, and basil plants, and fields of rye that were harvested, and milked, and picked by other human beings, put on trucks by other human beings, stocked on shelves by other human beings, bought, and sold, and washed and cut, and combined, and salted and flavored by other human beings. Its just so simple to give 5 dollars and get the sandwich… but the process… its somehow worth so much more than 5 dollars. How do I pay all those people that have done all that work with just so little. And of course it works cause there are lots of tomato mozzarella sandwiches being bought, and they use tomatoes in other delicious things like papa john's pizza. But what are we losing be being only consumers and not producers. What has disappeared from the human experience when the majority of us consume but do not draw forth any sort of life. We call it a "division of labor" so that some can be teachers, and others basket ball players, and others rock stars, and others stay at home moms, and we can still eat hamburgers, and rice, and lentils, and fish. But this division of labor, I think, has gone to some sort of bizarre extreme that leads to some division of worlds. The world inhabited by the Mexican tomato picker is not the same as the world inhabited by the tomato grower or eater. Well shoot. So along with all of the other problems that come from this including bursting populations that are still somehow starving, an elimination in the diversity of food that exists and that is cultivated, a reduction in general holistic health etc., we get a division of worlds. There are so many divisions between people that we almost think that we are supposed to see another as the other. There is a movie called "I heart huckabees: an existentialist comedy" and at one point a psycho-therapist (or something like that) is talking about the imaginary divisions we have between us, and that they don't really exist, and in the movie the particles of his nose and the main characters nose start free flowing in the air and mixing until the main character snaps out of it pointing out the endless holes, spaces, and divisions that exist between everything, even within the smallest atom. And he's right. But he is looking at it too fundamentally and not mystically enough. We are all one. Our struggle is all one. I'm sure Jung or someone else would say that we stop believing that sometime around when our mothers had a younger child and we realized that there is a competition for attention or something sexual. And they are probably right in most of the western world. But let us remember that our cultural perspective is just one of many cultural perspectives and that the heart of humanity lies much deeper. Where? I think somewhere in the relationship between people. In community and communities. Outside of this an individual is lost, but within a community an individual is given the chance to freely become that which God desires.

a reflection in 3 parts. part 1

this is something i wrote in response to a question by a good friend, and as that i have been failing in updating you on anything actually going on in my life, i thought this would be a legitimage thing to share. more or less about any thoughts I might have on the pressing matter of the self-destructive mindset of the human race and if only I even thought of other things once in a while I would be saner. But as that it is close to all that I think about, it really depends on the day in which one catches me as to how optimistic or cynical I am… how much it's the individual or the institution… and some days I contradict what I have thought and said on other days. As a self-aware hypocrite, I find this the best way to be (don't we always) and I rationalize it by saying that I am constantly learning, growing, changing and trying, like nhat hanh says, to be aware that I can learn from all life (rain to republicans) and that my perspective is never ultimate. But from all of this confusion, a few themes are rising to the surface as I write to you. They are the lack of community and communities, the human disconnect from our sources of life: food, water, shelter, work, etc., and the loss of the sacred. These are all, of course, interconnected, and in a probably confusing manner I will scribble my way along some of these lines of thinking, starting from the end and working my way back there, and ignoring all contradictions and gaps in thinking.

How often do we stop and realize that the ground that we walk upon is sacred? This is a thought that Margaret has triggered in my head and that I can't get out. Annie Dillard tells me that some 70 to 90 BILLION people have died on earth. wow. Here's the issue. I believe that humans are sacred beings. Vessels of the divine spark. And while I'm not sure what happens when a person dies my religion teaches me that at the end times we'll be resurrected body and soul. My only confusion is who gets the dibs on the carbon particles that first made up their body? Because when I think about it, I realize that some 80 billion dead people have disintegrated, broken down, turned into dust, soil, been taken up as nutrients in grass, wheat, apple trees, eaten by worms and rodents, and then birds and bigger eater things like people. So I'm pretty sure that within my constantly changing body are particles that once made up other human beings. Wow. We get so reverent around graveyards and then I look at the back of my knee and wonder how many of those little hairs once existed as teeth somewhere in Africa. And the whole world of interbeing (to continue stealing from hanh) flows out and all around me and I see that the paper used to print the national geographic that I so thoroughly enjoy carries not only clouds and trees and sunlight and dark matter (maybe) but also my ancestors from long long ago whose bodies will someday be taken in the second coming, or so I'm told. Which makes me hope that it happens person by person and I can watch books and couches start disintegrating as these temples of the holy spirit are called back by the one who breathed and spoke life. And I'm only being half serious. But seriously, to recognize the sacredness of all 'things' and beings and "no-things" all around us and within us is a part of being human.