Word / Flesh
Fire Monkeys
Why do we accept the idea that human beings are fundamentally parasitic?
The Warrior Emotion
Seed
3 x 4
My Life So Far
Performed by Jamey Bulloch
Music by Jimmy LaValle (The Album Leaf)
A Dozen Days Midwinter
Our ancestors used the moon to know the weeks and seasons. But one odd knock-on effect of a lunar calendar is you wind up with eleven extra days (called an “epact”). A gift, of course! The ancients conceived of this unappropriated time as a small tear in the created world—a little pocket in the Cosmos. So naturally, in the northern hemisphere, they placed the extra days at the time of year when days are shortest: the Winter Solstice. The recognition of the darkest night extended into twelve days of feasting, bonfires, and merriment—rejoicing as the span of daylight began to lengthen.
The ubiquitous holiday rhyme, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” uses imagery from just such a feast beginning with seven days of fowl, poultry, and their eggs: the provision of forest, field, and farm. Next comes delectable dairy via the eight maids: milk, cream, cheeses, and butter. These represent the richest foods imaginable to our ancient mothers and fathers. Then come the revelers themselves: dancing ladies and leaping lords, celebrating fertility and a hope for spring to come again—and soon. Lastly, musicians—pipers and drummers—and a whole lot of them!
Before the middle ages, scholars from the east brought teachings from a new sort of reformed Judaism that had exploded throughout the Mediterranean and been amplified by the might of the Roman Empire. When these early Christians learned of the tear in the Cosmos that turned the deepening darkness into light—and the hope of salvation—they were quick to locate the mass of the Messiah during this grand feast. And so, by the time our joyous carol emerges, the dozen days have become Christmas, stretching from the end of Advent all the way to Epiphany.
There are many ways to sing the song and many things to mean by it. For us, the twelve days are the most lovely time of the year. We visit dear friends and family, open our best wine and spirits, sing merry songs (including this one) and gorge ourselves on the most succulent foods and sweets. We exchange gifts and extend whatever bounty we have to our neighbors and the poor. It’s also a wonderful time to meditate on the stories and traditions that anticipate and respond to the Nativity.
I originally made these illustrations as a meditation during a blizzard in 2021, drawing one each day of Christmas. In my research, I learned all sorts of interesting trivia (for instance, the four birds were likely “coal-ey birds” or blackbirds in the original rendering but evolved over the centuries into our “calling birds”) but was particularly captivated by the many ways the rhyme has been imagined as a catechism for Christians. Merry Christmas!
Why We Work Together
Humans are meant to work alongside other humans—ideally very different from themselves—toward a mutually profitable goal. And as we were reminded during the pandemic, this can be inconvenient if not downright risky. After months of government lockdowns, I’ll never take it for granted again.
A Month of Saturdays
The word Shabbat derives from the Hebrew verb shavat (Hebrew: שָׁבַת). Although frequently translated as “rest” (noun or verb), another accurate translation of these words is “ceasing [from work].” The notion of active cessation from labour is also regarded as more consistent with an omnipotent God’s activity on the seventh day of creation according to Genesis. Other related words are to shevet (שֶּׁבֶת) which means sitting or staying, and to sheva (שֶׁבַע) meaning seven. (Wikipedia)
I am in the second week of a month-long sabbatical and I have been trying to do shavat (ha!). Here are some things I’ve been up to:
- Waking up slowly with my children in a big pile.
- Visiting farm stands.
- Playing music.
- Enjoying long and meandering walks.
- Swimming in creeks, ponds, rivers, lakes, and oceans.
- Talking with my wife on the porch with no reason to stop.
- Sitting perfectly still.
And on we walked. Suddenly we heard a voice crying, “This is the sea. This is the deep sea. This is the vast and mighty sea.” And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur.
And my soul said, “Let us pass on. He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment.” (Kahlil Gibran, “The Greater Sea”)
A few days before my sabbatical began my phone went kaput. Everything gone. Long text threads. Contacts. Notes. Emails. Photos and videos. There are things I am grieving, but mostly it was a baptism.
I suspect this machine is mostly full of fragments. It’s as if I keep holding it to my ear listening to its murmur and crying, “This is a life.”
I went to visit my grandmother who lives in an eldercare facility in a nearby town. I don’t think she knew who I was but she was excited to see me and spoke continuously for a long time. Precious few words were discernible but she was expressive and she knew exactly what she was saying. It reminded me of conversations with my toddler son. She said my life was worthwhile. She is a saint and I sat with her until she fell asleep and then a little longer with nowhere else to be. It is a good place to practice sitting perfectly still.
On the seventh day of the month, I turned forty. I have been thinking a lot about Moses and his song. I have been feeling as though I am at least halfway.
Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90)
I quickly reverted to my (evidently) more natural state in at least two ways.
Working full-time in an office requires me to know what time it is and to be ready to do whatever the clock says I should be doing. Shabbat, for me, has not involved clocks of any kind. Nor calendars. Nor schedules.
That’s not to say I’m not dealing with time—quite the contrary. I’ve had the sense more than once that a way of being which relies on the sun and moon and the length of a candle or a conversation or the number of cold beers in the cooler is far more reasonable than sixty ticks.
A friend who was recently told he has cancer described the time following his diagnosis as thick. This is the right idea. Eye-contact. Savoring food and drink. Setting it right. Lingering. Permitting a thought to spool all the way out before you let it go. Numbering days, I suppose.
The second way I’ve reverted is that I am almost always outside. Working full-time in an office involves—as you might suspect—being in an office. And when it comes to offices, no one has a finer one than me. It would be impossible to exaggerate how much I love being there and doing what I do with the people with whom I get to do it. The space is truly wonderful, but it it still unavoidably indoors.
Realistically, I’d say I’m averaging about twelve to fourteen hours per day outside. It’s really good.
Nature is orderly. That which appears to be chaotic in nature is only a more complex kind of order. (Gary Snyder, “The Practice of the Wild”)
One simple outcome of all this outside time is that I’m falling in love with our little piece of earth all over again. To be here at all hours of the day means I’m seeing new light and plants and insects and hearing new birdsongs. This evening as dusk was dimming I sat in the field and watched two bats wheeling far overhead—flirting or fighting or feasting, I don’t know. They kept colliding and one would zag the way they do and they’d flutter apart and then collide again.
I’ve become aware of a shift in my thinking about our place and my participation with it. For many years now I’ve been thinking of it terms of a farm. Nothing industrial or even conventional, but a place where the application of traditional knowledge and thoughtful engagement can and occasionally does yield good food.
It seems that now—at forty or whatever—I am thinking of it mostly in terms of preservation. More like a nature reserve. It may sound subtle but, for me, this shift has been profound in terms of planning and practice. My friend and I were camping at Back Bay and late one night after surfing we rewatched Fools & Dreamers and something just clicked: this is it.
So I’ve been studying the Sami people in Norway and Sweden. Their woodland way—moving the deer. And also the Swedish concept of fäbod—of summer pasturing. I’m fascinated by this particular work of girls and young women—high in the boreal forest. Their way is comprehensively aesthetic. (Did you know this ecosystem, what in Russian is called the taiga, is the largest forest on Earth—bigger even than the Amazon!)
Next, I will spend time with the Basques.
Rachel Carson wrote, “I am not afraid of being thought a sentimentalist when I say that I believe natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of an individual or a society. I believe that whenever we destroy beauty, or whenever we substitute something manmade and artificial for a natural feature of the earth, we have retarded some part of our spiritual growth.”
This idea of substitution has been looming large in my thinking. And I wonder: what makes something artificial? Is it a question of material? Of the amount of time invested? I’ve rewatched An Invitation for Wildness a couple times during my sabbatical and believe there’s something important in the idea that what Carson calls “natural beauty” is not antithetical to what she calls “manmade.” Might it be that participation is the path to the sort of beauty that leads to spiritual development?
Participation in such wild and natural systems—as a contributor, not merely the beneficiary—is a remarkably pre-industrial way of being. For me, it is at least a part of the answer of what we should be doing when we are actively ceasing from our labor. Modern humans are so dislocated and we’ve lost so much Traditional Knowledge, it leads Susan Ertz to say, “Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
I suspect the remedy for this dis-ease is the unique spiritual growth unlocked by what we might call the natural features of the earth.
I have been spending time sweating in our garden. I’m building a small stream to hold and provide water. This is such a good collaboration with the shape of the earth and with gravity. The will of water is clear and constant—it is orderly in its nature. This work brought to mind a favorite passage from a Berry essay:
“The difference between a path and a road is not only the obvious one. A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual of familiarity. As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape. It is not destructive. It is the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place; it obeys the natural contours; such obstacles as it meets it goes around.”
There are thunderstorms rolling past to the north and east. I cannot hear them, but I can see the lightening in the clouds. The sound of the frogs is almost overwhelming—their lust drowns out any distant rumbling. The pony is tossing her head in the paddock, irritated by the electricity in the still, heavy air. Here’s to the active cessation from labour. Here’s to the whole I cannot grasp. Here’s to gaining a heart of wisdom.
Let tomorrow come tomorrow. Laugh. Sleep. Not by your will is the house carried through the night.
Order is only the possibility of rest. (Wendell Berry, “Healing”)
(re)formed
The restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ.
Essential Work
The fuller the narrative, the greater the hope. Even in the midst of a terrible season, and without wishing to diminish all of the real suffering, there has never been a better time to be alive. Our governments are becoming more accountable, our corporations more responsible, our lifestyles — and the places that enable them — better integrated.
Stacking the Deck
To a person, we’ve changed and then changed again. Each of us has moved in and out of seasons of high productivity and then (understandably) anxiety about the state of the world. I’ve seen us adapt in particular ways to what each member of the team is doing in real-time, like players sitting around a card table. I’ve taken to using the symbolism of the traditional playing card suites to think about these periods. Sometimes we make big bets, sometimes we fold. The point, of course, is to stay supple… to stay loose… to stay in the game.
Select your default skin tone
Recently, applications and operating systems have begun offering a skin tone setting for what is increasingly (and perhaps woefully) our common tongue: very small pictures of stuff thoughtlessly transmitted. As a point of comparison, avatars are projections of identity and rightly rooted in physical attributes. You may deign to select a signature hair style, a favorite accessory, etc. But I’ve always conceived of emoji as symbols, and symbols are at their best when at their most universal.