Category: Meditations

Venison

Yes, yes, I know, once you saw a Disney movie in which a deer was killed and now you can’t eat venison. However, from an ecological standpoint, deer are a native species that fill an existing ecological niche, unlike the soybeans in your tofu which are invasive exotic species raised in monoculture fields that wipe out countless acres of habitat. And if you’re a small farmer, like Carol’s friend Eva, deer are an herbivore pest in a landscape that now lacks large carnivores to keep their population in check. So eating low-fat, free-range, non-GMO, antibiotic-free, organic venison that is untouched by American Agribusiness is actually an environmentally sound act that lets us humans fill the ecological niche of the large carnivores we have mostly extirpated from North America. It’s nice when we humans can play a positive role in the ecosystem, instead of just replacing the existing ecosystem with our own suburban and urban ecosystems.

When she stayed with us earlier this week, Eva gave use part of a haunch of venison. Carol stir-fried some chunks of venison with onions and greens; it looked really good, but I decided I wanted plain venison. I sliced it thin, and gently fried it in a little butter for a late brunch.

Venison cooking

After gently frying both sides, I covered the pan and let it steam for a minute until the meat was just well-done, with no red in the center. It was fabulous: lean, tender, and very tasty. I re-heated some of the “Warthog” wheat berries in the pan drippings, and the combination of the nutty wheat, the butter, and the meat drippings was the perfect addition to a satisfying brunch.

Constructing God

Theology may not be what you think it is.

Theology used to be a Western intellectual discipline that tried to describe God, humans, and the world in an objective fashion, that is, as if these are objects that can be described. This kind of theology began with the making of myths, and persisted for centuries in the West as rational descriptions of the objective reality of God, humans, and the world. Call this kind of theology “first-order theology.” First-order theology went unchallenged until the Enlightenment, when Kant and others showed that we cannot treat the idea of “God” as an object of experience in the way that “tree” or “human” can be treated as an object of experience.

After Kant, theology entered a phase when it increasingly compared religions, and compared different theologies. This phase recognized that different human groups have different theologies, something that missionaries and colonial expansionists previously had known. However, theologians went beyond the missionaries and colonialists: they recognized that of the different possible theologies, none has an exclusive claim to truth. The chaotic proliferation of theologies in the West since the mid-twentieth century — theology of hope, theology of revolution, death-of-God theology, atheist theology, feminist theology, black theology, queer theology, etc. — has emonstrated clearly that no single theology has an exclusive claim to truth. Call this phase “second-order theology.”

Gordon Kaufman, in his An Essay on Theological Method (1975), has proposed what he calls third-order theology: theology that acknowledges that it is a construct of the human imagination, and moves on from the chaos of second-order theology to something new:

“The increasing encounter of world cultures, on the one hand, and the development of such sciences as cultural anthropology on the other, have produced a level of sophistication which makes first-order theology no longer a viable alternative…. Second-order theology, however, taken by itself is not adequate to meet the human needs for orientation in life: it leaves us with a chaos of conflicting claims and criteria rather than guidance in the order and orienting of our lives. It is necessary for theology now to move to the third-order of deliberate construction if it is to serve contemporary humanity….”

Kaufman is telling us that it is no longer adequate for a theology to describe what it believes to be true. This is the fatal flaw of both fundamentalist Christianity and unbending atheism: now you have to do more than just shout out what you believe to be true. Kaufman is also telling us that it is not adequate to compare and contrast competing theologies, “aware that all positions, including one’s own, are in large part imaginative constructions”; we have to move beyond comparison to the task of constructing something that provides meaning and direction to human life.

And in undertaking this construction of something new, Kaufman brings up two key points. First, the “proper business” of theology should be “analysis, interpretation, and reconstruction of the concept and images of God, as found in the common language and tradition of the West.” I think Kaufman is wise here to limit the business of theology to the West, and to religions that originated in the West: I strongly suspect that the business of theology does not apply the religions of Asia, Africa, and other regions; these religions have their own ways of doing things.

Second, Kaufman reiterates that theology must now become a “constructive activity.” In the past, it was enough for theology to describe, then later to compare, but that’s no longer enough. Theology should be “a construct of the imagination which helps to tie together, unify, and interpret the totality of experience.” This new way of doing theology might be confusing for the fundamentalists and the atheists, and for many others who look at theology with the same delightful naivete — they may have to deal with the fact that theology is not what they think it is.

Elsewhere, Kaufman quotes Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: “Theology [is] grammar.” [The full quote reads as follows: “373. Welche Art von Gegenstand etwas ist, sagt die Grammatik. (Theologie als Grammatik.) — Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar.)”] And I think helps explain what theology can do. We need a way to make sense out of existence. We use ordinary language, ordinary words like “God” and “sacred” and “transcendent” to make sense out of existence. And we should understand that there is a grammar that governs how we use ordinary language to make sense of existence. Grammar does not restrict constructive theology, any more than grammar restricts poetry. Grammar provides structure for doing theology, just as it provides a structure for doing poetry.

I brought up poetry on purpose, because again and again I have found myself turning to poets for theology. For example, Margaret Atwood’s cycle of poems on the death of her father (in her book Morning in the Burned House) can be read as constructive theology that analyzes, interprets, and reconstructs “God” as it is found in common English language. Atwood, as it happens, does not find the traditional God of conservative Christians. But she doesn’t waste time in Christian-bashing, nor does she waste time comparing her theology against some other theology. She constructs a theology that helps me to understand the sacred and the transcendent and God (whatever those words mean), as she reflects on death and grief:

…Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside the sink,
which is beside the woodstove
with its grate and sooty kettle,

every detail clear,
tin cup and rippled mirror.
The day is bright and songless,

the lake is blue, the forest watchful.
In the east a bank of cloud
rises up silently like dark bread. …

This is how we construct a theology that provides a kind of grammar for our lives, a theology that tells us what kind of thing something is: If it is sad, how is it sad? If it is meaningless, how do we then create meaning? If it is sacred, what is it about a day that is bright and songless that imbues life with meaning and maybe even hope? Good sermons and good poems both use the words and grammar of common language to help us construct meaning in our existences. This is why I say: theology may not be what you think it is.

Letting go

My cousin N. was telling me about how she went to a “chalice circle” conversation with her father. The subject for conversation was letting go. That topic got me to asking myself some more specific questions: what are those things where I don’t have any choice but to let go? (a completed project at work, a car that is so rusted out it’s dangerous to drive, who I was in the past); what are those things that I’d like to let go but can’t bring myself to do it? (a book given to me by my grandmother, the bicycle that causes grinding sounds in my knees, a poorly-written journal I once kept); what are those thing that would give me great pleasure to get rid of? That last question was the one I wanted to ask myself today. So I got rid of several boxes of books that I haven’t looked at in years, some old shoes I can no longer wear, a three foot stack of old magazines I didn’t even know I had, several years’ worth of old appointment books. Let it go, let it go! I dusted the shelves these things used to sit on, and now I can breathe more easily.

Woman’s relation to religious freedom (1892)

Back in 1892, Rev. Celia Parker Woolley, a feminist, antiracism activist, and Unitarian minister, gave a short talk on the need for women’s intellectual and spiritual freedom. In this talk she places freedom before love, and for this reason I think Woolley’s talk remains relevant: she is telling us that the problem is not whether to put family or career first, or how to “lean in” and have it all; the problem, simply put, is that women must have the same kind of freedom that men have.

Woman’s Relation to Religious Freedom
delivered during the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the First Unitarian Society of Geneva, Ill., 11 June 1892; stenographically recorded

[At a Saturday evening collation, the Chair called on Rev. Celia Parker Woolley to respond to the toast “Woman’s relation to religious freedom.”]

I have been wondering, Mr. Chairman, whether you stopped to consider the amount of moral dynamite in the selection of this subject, the combination of two such words as “woman” and “freedom.” It is a rather serious subject to me and I fear I shall not be able to treat it with that lightness and ease that belong to after-dinner efforts of this kind. It has prompted me to take a text, not from the Bible, but from one of our modern prophets, Olive Schreiner. It is from one of the shorter allegories in her latest volume of Dreams, and is entitled, if I remember aright, “The Angel of Life,” and runs as follows:

“The Angel of Life approached a woman sleeping, bearing a gift in each hand [Freedom in one hand, and Love in the other], and saying to the woman ‘Choose.’ The woman waited long and finally chose— Freedom. The Angel smiled and said ‘That is well. Hadst thou chosen the other I would have given thee thy choice, but I should have gone away, not to return. Now I shall return, and when thou see’st me again, I shall bear both gifts in one hand.’ (Note 1)

There is a profound truth in this little fable whether you regard the sleeping woman as typical of the entire race of men and women together, typical of both as truth-seekers, or whether you take the figure as standing for woman alone, in her search for a higher and more complete womanhood. It leads us also to think of the comparative merits of love and freedom as factors of growth. I don’t know that I would go so far as to say that a broader and truer synthesis is reached in the word Freedom than the word Love, but I certainly feel that the last word is used in often a very injurious and misleading way. I hear much preaching of love in the pulpits that offends both my taste and judgment, still, undoubtedly love is the grander, more inclusive word than any other in our human speech, when rightly used. What the allegory means to teach is, I think, that if Love is the word defining the spirit that governs all things, Freedom is the word which defines that method of growth by which we reach the truest conception of love and become its helpful ministers.

Historically, the allegory does not speak the truth. Historically, as a matter of fact in her own personal experience and that of her race, woman has never chosen freedom before love. On the contrary, all her choices have been those of love, those choices represented in the various relations in life which she has been called on to sustain, of society, the family, the church. So that when we try to talk about woman’s relation to freedom, or to religious freedom, we seem to have little to say. We should find a great deal to say if we were to speak of woman’s relation to religion. Then we could speak of her zeal, her devotion, her piety, the large numbers she has always brought to the support of the church compared with man. But when we remember how often that devotion has been purchased at the cost of real intelligence on her part, how her zeal has generally stood for bigotry and ignorance, then we see the difficulty of saying much in her favor on this special subject. But the past is one thing, the future another, and my subject is justified by the hope and the promise held out to woman and to the world through her, in this era of awakening intelligence and responsibility in which we live.

Today, we stand at that point in the development of religious thought, or rather in the development of all thought, when freedom is seen to be a necessary condition of intellectual life. Socially, religiously, domestically, woman never enjoyed that degree of liberty that is given her to-day, freedom to use her own mind and heart in solving the problems of life, that comes to her not as a woman but as a human being. To be of great worth to the world and to man she must cultivate all her powers unhindered, must make the most and best of herself. She must choose freedom first, before love, or love will be unworthily chosen. As I think of this, and remember how complex are all the relations of life, see how much of pain, misunderstanding and seeming wrong such choice on woman’s part means, I see how the strain and pain of new growth must be felt by man as well as by her, how she has in some respects the easier task, since she has but to choose for herself; while man who has so long held the reins of privilege, influence and authority must make her choice his, choosing freedom for her with freedom for himself. Men have much to learn and suffer here.

In their religious life women have had a voice and influence only on the lower plane of the church’s practical work. Woman has contributed too little to the thought the higher spirituality of the church. Men will be her natural leaders here for a long time to come. Not until she has learned to think independently as well as reverently will her relation to the coming creed founded on perfect mental liberty, be established.

— ed. T. H. Eddowes, Frances Le Baron, and George Brayton Penney, Fifty Years of Unitarian Life: Being a Record of the Proceedings on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Organization of the First Unitarian Society of Geneva, Illinois, Celebrated June Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth, 1892 (Geneva, Ill.: Kane County Publishing, 1892), pp. 122-124.

Celia Parker Woolley

 

Notes

Note 1:

(The story as actually printed in Schreiner’s book reads as follows:)

Chapter VIII: Life’s Gifts

I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift — in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, “Choose!”

And the woman waited long: and she said, “Freedom!”

And Life said, “Thou hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, ‘Love,’ I would have given thee that thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand.”

I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.

— Olive Scheiner, Dreams, “Author’s Edition” (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1891), pp. 115-116.

Peach Blossom Spring

“Peach Blossom Spring,” or “Peach Blossom Fountain,” is a well-known Chinese story by T’ao Yuan-ming, whose literary name was T’ao the Hermit (or recluse). I put part of this story on an earlier blog post here, and am finally posting the whole story, in this translation Herbert Giles, Gems of Chinese Literature, pp. 107-108:

Somewhere around the year 390, when the north of China had been conquered by the Mongol invaders from central Asia, and refugees from the invasion filled the south, there lived a fisherman in the village of Wu-ling. These were the years when the emperors of the Ch’in dynasty sat on the throne of China. The Ch’in emperors were powerful, and while some people said they did what had to be done in the face of barbarian invasions, there were others who said that government officials were too often vain and greedy, and did not have the interests of the ordinary people at heart.

To get back to the fisherman of Wu-ling:

One day, this fisherman was out on the river, and he decided to follow the river upstream. When he came to a place where the river branched, he took the right or left branch without paying attention to where he was going.

Suddenly he rounded a bend in the river and came upon a grove of peach-trees in full bloom. These peach trees grew close along the banks of the river for as far as he could see, until the next bend in the river, with not a tree of any other kind in sight. The fisherman was filled with surprise at beauty of the scene and the delightful perfume of the flowers. He continued upstream, wondering how far along the river these trees grew.

At last he came to the end of the peach trees. By now, this branch of the river was scarcely bigger than a stream, and here also the river ended, at the foot of a hill. But in the side of this hill there was a cave. A faint light was coming from the cave, so the fisherman tied up his boat to a tree, and crept in through the narrow entrance of the cave.

 

So he made fast his boat, and crept in through a narrow entrance, which shortly ushered him into a new world of level country, of fine houses, of rich fields, of fine pools, and of luxuriance of mulberry and bamboo. Highways of traffic ran north and south; sounds of crowing cocks and barking dogs were heard around; the dress of the people who passed along or were at work in the fields was of a strange cut; while young and old alike appeared to be contented and happy.

One of the inhabitants, catching sight of the fisherman, was greatly astonished; but, after learning whence he came, insisted on carrying him home, and killed a chicken and placed some wine before him. Before long, all the people of the place had turned out to see the visitor, and they informed him that their ancestors had sought refuge here, with their wives and families, from the troublous times of the House of Ch’in, adding that they had thus become finally cut off from the rest of the human race. They then enquired about the politics of the day, ignorant of the establishment of the Han dynasty, and of course of the later dynasties which had succeeded it. And when the fishermen told them the story, they grieved over the vicissitudes of human affairs.

Each in turn invited the fisherman to his home and entertained him hospitably, until at length the latter prepared to take his leave. “It will not be worth while to talk about what you have seen to the outside world,” said the people of the place to the fisherman, as he bade them farewell and returned to his boat, making mental notes of his route as he proceeded on his homeward voyage.

When he reached home, he at once went and reported what he had seen to the Governor of the district, and the Governor sent off men with him to seek, by the aid of the fisherman’s notes, to discover this unknown region. But he was never able to find it again. Subsequently, another desperate attempt was made by a famous adventurer to pierce the mystery; but he also failed, and died soon afterwards of chagrin, from which time forth no further attempts were made.

Giles claims the story is really about how childhood innocence can never be recovered, and I suppose that’s a valid interpretation, but I don’t find it a compelling interpretation. The story could also be read as being related to Hesiod’s Age of Gold (Works and Days, ll. 109–201), that time when humankind was in an ideal state; or a story related to the ancient Hebrew story of a Garden of Eden; but both Hesiod and the ancient Hebrew story make it clear that the early age of innocence ended at some point, while in the country of the Peach Blossom Spring that age continues. I prefer to interpret this story as a utopian vision, and thus as a critical commentary on contemporary political realities. Or the story could mean all of these things, or none of them, and really we will never know for the way to the land beyond the Peach Blossom Spring has been lost.

Ceremonial deity, Phillippines

Ceremonial Deity, Philippines

Above: Sketch of a “ceremonial deity,” Philippines, c. 1930. Wood and shell. Asian Museum of Art.

One of delights of going to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco is seeing the diversity of depictions of deities. Today I particularly noticed the unnamed deities — like this sculpture of an unnamed ceremonial deity, made in the Philippines around 1930. Why do we not know the name of this deity? Is it because it is a minor deity, and thus not widely identifiable (though perhaps readily identifiable by a devotee)? Did it never have a name that could be spoken by humans? Or was this a deity like the Roman Lares familiares, the household gods, who don’t seem to have had names, or whose power was so geographically restricted that their names perhaps were known only to the household they protected?

I think that the end of Christendom is allowing us to see such minor deities more clearly. In the worldview of Christendom, only the major deities — the wildly transcendent deities, Jehovah’s direct competition — were worthy of serious attention. Now maybe we can pay a little more attention to the many minor deities who inhabit the metaphorical space between those distant transcendent deities and mortal creatures.

Photographing butterflies

I took a break from curriculum development on Tuesday and drove down to Pinnacles National Park. Of course I looked at the incredible rock formations for which the park is famous. But as spectacular as the scenery was, the highlight of the trip was watching butterflies in Bear Gulch. In particular, I spent about ten minutes watching one Western Tiger Swallowtail visiting larkspur blossoms. I took a great many photographs of this one butterfly, getting as close as I could. With a photograph, you can capture narrow slices of time: the position the butterfly’s wings take as it balances on a flower; the way it clings to the flower with its legs and arches its head towards a blossom; the moment when the butterfly is just approaching the flower:

Papilio rutulus

But sometimes what sticks in your memory is not what you actually saw, but the photographs of what you saw. After I left Pinnacles, I drove to Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve. When I saw butterflies there, I made a point of trying to sketch them in my field notebook rather than just photograph them, like this common butterfly:

Vanessa atalanta

This sketch, as an end product, is not nearly as attractive as a photograph (and I did take a photograph of this insect as well) — it’s not as attractive, but I learned more about butterflies by making this sketch. By comparing my sketch to a field guide, by seeing what I left out, I learned what I don’t see when I look at butterflies. I suspect making less attractive sketches like this does more towards sharpening my powers of observation than does taking a great many very attractive photographs.

Web of relationships

Today I was at Pescadero Marsh to look at live birds, but the dead things proved more interesting. It was just after low tide, and I saw two empty crab shells (prob. Red Crabs, Cancer productus), looking as though they had been eaten by gulls; interesting, but a pretty common sight, and it’s more interesting to actually see a gull eating a crab. Then I found the empty shells of two small crustaceans, organisms I’d never seen before. Here’s one of them:

BlogMar1215a

I have no idea what species this is, though I suspect it’s a fairly common organism.

Later, I walked along the dike near Butano Creek, and came across a dead mole (the notebook next to the mole is marked in inches):

BlogMar1215b

Given the size of those front feet and the short tail, I’d say it was a Broad-footed Mole (Scapanus latimanus). This is the third dead mole I’ve found in six months.

What interests me when i see dead things in the field is trying to figure out how they died, and how they are tied in to the ecosystem. The Red Crabs were easy to figure out — probably eaten by gulls. But why did that little crustacean die? it didn’t look as though another organism had tried to eat it, so was it simply left high and dry at low tide? As for the Broad-footed Mole, there was a definite hole in the other side of the animal, which could have been made by a bird’s bill; I saw Red-tailed Hawks and Northern Harriers hunting in the marsh; perhaps a raptor killed the mole, then got scared away before it could eat.

These are just possible scenarios; I’ll never know what really happened; but what I do know is that somehow these dead creatures reveal something about the web of relationships between organisms.