Leafscapes.
01-Nov-09
Dreaming of summer…
27-Oct-09
From Overlook Mountain. Life is just so succulent and juicy all summer, and somehow we never seem to quite realize. The picture looks astonishing to me, who have in my eyes the barren mountains as November sets in.
Kill Your Television.
27-Oct-09This is all so obvious, but still worth a thought, considering how electronic raising of kids is only getting more prevalent. From Movie Mom, via Andrew Sullivan, on the expose of the Baby Einstein fraud:
The academic studies show that what infants learn from watching a family member once takes them four times as long to absorb in a DVD. And the very act of watching a DVD with the pulsing refresh rate of the screen can be at the same time soporific and stimulating, making it more difficult for them to get restful sleep. The only thing they learn from these DVDs is how to watch television.
Every now and again while teaching I would run across students who were curious, alive, interested in the world, active, outdoorsy, interested in certain hobbies, etc. … they seemed like children, full of sap and bright and thoughtful. The number one thing they shared? No television at home. It’s not a sufficient or even a necessary precondition – I watched a lot of t.v. as a kid – but I bet it helps.
Molokai.
21-Oct-09
The leper colony Kalaupapa.
The Vatican just canonized Fr. Peter Damien, which gives me a great excuse to remember some of the good parts of my trip to Hawaii last year. I spent most of my time on Molokai, the small island where Peter Damien lived. Really all I need to show are images, which are extraordinary enough. And if the other parts of my life don’t work out, remind me to hop on a plane and get a job at any burger joint in Hawaii. I can flip burgers in that paradise.
Kalaupapa, the old leper colony, is a broad tongue of volcanic land accessed by an incredibly steep footpath. Its inaccessibility was the reason why lepers were imprisoned there.
Molokai cloud forest. Astonishing.
All I wanted to do was botanize. You can see why!
Silence and Rejection
20-Oct-09Astonished by a piece about the writer Shusaku Endo, about the role of failure and rejection and suffering in Christianity.
This he sees as the sense of failure in life and the subsequent shame and guilt that leave a lasting impact upon a person’s life. Such theological notions as love, grace, trust, and truth are intelligible only in the experience of their opposites. Endo sees them incarnate in the person of Jesus through his own experience of failure, rejection, and, most of all, ineffectualness. Only rarely has modern Christianity presented the story of Jesus as the one to whom those who had failed, were rejected, lonely, and alienated could turn and find understanding and compassion. Endo argues that it is our universal human experience of failure in life that provides us with an understanding of Christian faith in its depth.
Read the whole first two sections of the link. Their succinctness is quite extraordinary.
The experience of failure is what opens the door. Something must strike you from your horse, or all you do is get to Damascus. We see it again and again (most recently we spoke about it in relation to Andrew Sullivan). Probably the whole meaning of the “male spirituality” idea is that men in particular need to be told that success is not the point – they need to be taught some way to break through the lie of endless progress and ascent.
Monastic Life.
18-Oct-09When I arrived on top of Giant Ledge late this afternoon I found three people enjoying the view. Their conversation had some strange inner weight to it which I could not quite fathom, but I could tell that there was some real experience behind it, despite their obvious youth. It turns out all three were residents at Zen Mountain Monastery, in the heart of the Catskills. They were three young (early twenties), energetic, lovely people, not strange or bound as often we see in today’s Christian monks. A visit to Zen Mountain’s website similarly seemed to radiate some kind of healthy approach to the spiritual life. And how is it that the beautiful Catskills – I mean the mountains, the real mountains – have no Christian monasteries but two Buddhist monasteries? The Buddhists clearly know what they’re doing. I’m going to have to visit Zen Mountain sometime soon.
And what a name! “Zen Mountain.” Simple, profound, descriptive; in a word: Zen.
Those Who Live By the Law…
18-Oct-09
The man in the photo with the Leviticus quotation tattooed on his arm, who clearly sees it as a justification for violence against gays, got some great treatment from a pastor who reads Andrew Sullivan’s blog:
Too bad the guy with the passage from Leviticus tattooed on his arm didn’t read the next chapter:
“You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead or tattoo any marks upon you; I am the LORD”Or in the King James Version:“Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.”
And what will happen to this poor fellow? How about James 2:10:
For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
How much more obvious can it be, that the Law is to be an indication of your own insoluble imperfection, rather than be an immutable code of conduct by which you can judge others? “For with the measure you measure, so will it be measured unto you.”
But this fellow really is not very different from the majority of church hierarchs, who disregard most of the laws of the Old Testament, except the ones that refer to sex.
“God hath consigned all men to unbelief, that he may have mercy on them all.” And then man comes along to whittle it down: except those who are gay; divorced ; die outside a state of grace; don’t accept Jesus as their “personal savior” (try translating that into Latin or Greek or Aramaic, to make it clear how distant a concept that is from the world Jesus lived in); vote Democrat; etc.
Beeches.
18-Oct-09
Quote of the Day
16-Oct-09“All real living is meeting.” – Martin Buber
Bat Boy Guns Down Baby Sasquatch In Catskills!
28-Oct-09Bat Boy was stopped by Department of Environmental Conservation officers on Route 42 in the Catskills with the carcass of a baby sasquatch tied onto his roof – but then was waved by when officers saw his hunting partner: former Vice President Dick Cheney! Their 2009 Chevy Tahoe was later seen entering Area 52, a remote area in the Catskills just west of Frost Valley.