I feel strapped to a hot rock, hurtling through the dense carpet of space, struggling just to hold on. With badgers chewing on my ankles. Which is all to say – I haven’t had the opportunity to think much about posting.
Thus, in the meantime, while the hot rock spins and ricochets between the burning stars, I make a small space, here, to remind myself. Of what my Work is. The Work of Being in my body, wholly, holy, wholly, holy. Forever and ever.
And to that end I can only insist that David Abram is perhaps one of the most critical thinkers and writers in the contemporary ecospiritual movement:
Actually, when we are really awake to the life of our senses – when we are really watching with our animal eyes and listening with our animal ears – we discover that we experience nothing in the world as a passive or inanimate object. Each thing, each entity meets our gaze with its own secrets, and if we lend it our attention we are drawn into a dynamic interaction wherein we are taught and sometimes transformed. In the realm of direct sensory experience, everything is animate, everything moves (although, to be sure, some things – like the rocks and the hills – move much slower than other things). If while walking along the river I find myself suddenly moved, deeply, by the luminous wall of granite towering above the opposite bank, how then can I claim that the granite rock does not move? It moves me every time I encounter it! Shall I claim that this movement is entirely subjective, a purely mental experience that has nothing to do with the actual rock? Or shall I admit that it is a physical, bodily experience induced by the powerful presence of this other being, that indeed my body is palpably moved by this other body – and hence that I and the rock are not related as a mental subject to a material object but rather as one kind of dynamism to another kind of dynamism, as two different ways of being animate, two very different ways of being earth?
The whole article, “Returning to Our Senses,” is amazing. Abrams is the author of Spell of the Sensuous, a book which rocked my world.
It is so easy for me to become wrapped up in the neurotic contortions of my mind – spinning out word after rapturous word and neglecting the fundamental knowledge of my body – who speaks to me in her beautiful, delicate, raw and wild relationship with the Mama and all the creatures and spirits that inhabit Her. Yet, this is the bedrock, here in my legs and my guts and my throat. My tongue is a wealth. My nerves are my priests and my saints, communicating to me the language of gods and spirits on the expanse of my remarkable, resilient, miraculous skin.
In these moments then, when the world demands more than I have to give, it may be that it is, actually, when it comes down to it, really and truly our saving grace to stop…and smell some roses. To sip some catnip tea. To listen to the ways in which the body is speaking, and speak to it in turn. To engage the world in its rapturous conversation, its Deep Relationship, through the senses. To witness, in luxurious revelry, the state of perfect glory that is the World.
And then strap yourself back onto the hot rock and challenge a star to a drag race.
mahud » Mythology and Mysticism said,
August 22, 2007 at 6:54 am
Retuning to my animal senses is one of my desires. Perhaps not permanently, but just enough to catch glimpses of the wonders of sacred landscapes, I encounter on my future travels. I think I’m need an animal guide or something to show me the way
I once sat alone on a hill in Wiltshire during the summer, 12 years ago now, and I knew then that I had found a sacred place and I never wanted to leave. Wiltshire and Cornwall are my two favorite places on earth
During the Cornwall total eclipse of August 1999, I had a piper at the gate of dawn experience (from Wind in the willows/also Pink Floyds debut album). Instead of Pan playing on his pipes, it was a guy standing in the middle of an adjacent field, playing really hauntingly beautiful (kinda Arabic) melodies, that I wouldn’t normally associated with that instrument.. I listened alone from the cliff overlooking a river for hours listening to the pipers magic. I enjoyed that more that the eclipse itself (although from our location it was too cloudy to actually see the sun)
I’m living in Canada at the moment, but the British Isles for me is a landscape of continual mystery. When I return I’m going to travel the ancient paths and re-discover Mythical landscapes of the megalithic past..
Mythology Blog: Between Old and New Moons » Blogger Reflection Award said,
August 22, 2007 at 7:32 am
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Cynthia said,
August 22, 2007 at 6:28 pm
*laugh* we just can’t seem to help ourselves, we must strap back on now and again. Thanks for the peek into your world, I enjoy your writing immensely. And I’ve requested David Abram’s book from the library, thanks for the tip.
Thalia said,
August 23, 2007 at 2:46 am
Mahud, yes yes about Wiltshire. Someday I’m going to leave New England and live in that part of Old England.
I’ve had a similar piper experience–one Midsummer’s I went across the street to the park to gather mulberries for a tart to bring to my coven’s celebration; there in the middle of the field was a piper playing something marvellous. He kept it up for the hour or so I picked the fruit and it was a very magical experience. Right in the middle of Boston, too!
Though I gotta say I usually consider bagpipes an instrument best heard from a distance.
mahud » Mythology and Mysticism said,
August 24, 2007 at 8:08 am
lol, usually I think bagpipes sound awful. I would never of guessed that the music I was hearing was coming from that instrument untill I had a quick peek into the field. Perhaps he was using some kind of effect pedals or something!
Michael BrightCrow said,
August 26, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Sara,
The David Abram quotation is fantastic! I’ll have to read more of him.
And your words: “…what my Work is. The Work of Being in my body, wholly, holy, wholly, holy….” Yes!
This afternoon, sitting at Starbucks, I’ve been having that paradoxical experience of reading alternate bits from Christocentric blogs and Pagan blogs…with doses of my favorite nontheist, Stephen Jay Gould, thrown in.
So…from Simon St. Laurent’s Light and Silence: Reflections on Quakerism, I get George Fox’s classic language about how the Divine shines a light into one’s mind to reveal ego’s troublesome machinations:
“The Lord doth show unto a man his thoughts, and discovereth all the secret workings in man. A man may be brought to see all his evil thoughts and running mind and vain imaginations….”
Then you give me David Abram:
“…when we are really awake to the life of our senses – when we are really watching with our animal eyes and listening with our animal ears – we discover that we experience nothing in the world as a passive or inanimate object. Each thing, each entity meets our gaze with its own secrets, and if we lend it our attention we are drawn into a dynamic interaction wherein we are taught and sometimes transformed.”
I seem to be walking a karma of digesting “illusory pairs of opposites”–opposites in religious traditions and languages, that is.
It reminds me of what a kooky friend of mine years ago called a “breadless peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” You take a jar of peanut butter and a jar of your favorite jelly and a spoon. Then you put alternating spoonfuls into your mouth until you get the balance just the way you like it.
Somehow, I’m convinced, it all comes together right.
And so it is.
Blesséd Be,
Michael