Between dog and wolf . . .
In Odin’s mailbox this morning . . .
Members of The Writers Guild of America are staging Hollywood’s first strike in 15 years.
Today is the 111th anniversary of the birth of May Sarton, in 1912 Wondelgem, Belgium.
That selfhood which is our torment and our treasure and our humanity does not endure. It changes, it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself? Would you give up the craft of your hands and the passion of your heart, and the light of sunrise and sunset, to buy safety for yourself, safety forever? – Ursa Le Guin, in her novel The Farthest Shore.
Entre chien et loup, is a French term literally translated as “between dog and wolf. “ The metaphor, used by shepherds and photographers , describe a specific time of day, just before night, when the light is so dim you can't distinguish a dog from a wolf. It also expresses that limit between the familiar, the comfortable versus the unknown and the dangerous (or between the domestic and the wild). It is an uncertain threshold also referred to as liminal space. Threshold in latin is limin.
The eddies of the Watercourse Way provide liminal space.
Liminal space is an inner state and sometimes an outer situation where we can begin to think and act in new ways. It is where we are betwixt and between, in transition, having left one room or stage of life but not yet entered the next. We usually enter liminal space when our former way of being is challenged or changed . . . The very vulnerability and openness of liminal space allows room for something genuinely new to happen. . . so-called normalcy is called into creative question. – Richard Rohr
"You choose to be a novelist, but you're chosen to be a poet. This is a gift and it's a tremendous responsibility. You have to be willing to give something terribly intimate and secret of yourself to the world and not care, because you have to believe that what you have to say is important enough." – May Sarton
May Day, may day
Today is May Day, the first of May, a date that may have more holidays than any other. Here's a partial list courtesy of Garrison Keillor.
May Day in many countries is a celebration of Labor Day and as such has also come to be associated with communism; It's been a celebration of spring and fertility in places like Egypt and India; in pre-Christian Rome it was the time of the festival of Flora, the goddess of flowers; in medieval England, people gathered flowers to "bring in the May" and erected a maypole bedecked with garlands. It's also the date of Beltane, a Celtic calendar festival celebrating the start of summer, known for its bonfires, and has been revived by neo-pagans all over the world as a major religious holiday; it's known as Lei Day in Hawaii; and Walpurgisnacht is celebrated in parts of rural Germany as a kind of Valentine's Day.
I used to think that things were real, and change was something that happened to them over time. Now I think that change is real, and things are events that happen over time. Change is the constant and things come and go, appear and disappear. —Brian McLaren
Some geologists predict that North America will become part of a future supercontinent, that Europe and Africa, Asia and Australia will all coalesce together as they did when Pangea existed, and then the hillside on which my little house stands will be long gone, buried under layers of strata, or on the floor of a mighty ocean. – Ed Simon
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.– Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass.
The mystery of new beginnings . . .
In the mailbox this full-Spring final day of April Sunday . . .
Today is the birthday of Annie Dillard, the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. A prolific writer, she was born on this date in (1945) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Today is also the 146th anniversary of Alice B. Toklas' birth. Born in 1877 San Francisco, she was lover, companion, and secretary of Gertrude Stein for 39 years in Paris.
And John Crowe Ransom, the poet and founder of the Kenyon Review was born on this date in 1888 Pulaski, Tennessee.
We are amid a necessary decentering of we humans in the cosmos. We are now aware of and opening to a “planetary sapience”— the synthesized intelligence of all lifeforms that are part and parcel of one self-regulating system and to which human technological capacities must align. . .this revelation will anchor the spiritual condition of humanity in the centuries to come.
The mystery of transformation more often happens not when something new begins, but when something old falls apart. It is then we are invited to listen at a deeper level, and sometimes forced to go to a new place. We will normally do anything to keep the old thing from falling apart, yet this is when we need patience and guidance, and the freedom to let go instead of tightening our controls and certitudes. “Letting go”confronts us in order to “treat others as you would like them to treat you.” – after Richard Rohr
Chaos has an order all its own. It is a natural part of the apparently infinite and eternal unfolding and enfolding of the universe which gives the impression that it knows exactly what it is doing amid the illusion of time.
Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the Mystery. – Ram Dass