Ho Ho Ho

 "Now Cinderella don't you go to sleep
It's such a bitter form of refuge
Ah, don't you know the kingdom's under siege
And everybody needs you
Is there still magic in the midnight sun
Or did you leave it back in sixty-one
In the cadence of a young man's eyes
Out where the dreams all hide"

Brandon Flowers - Dustland

"When everyone is up front and they're not playing tricks
When you don't have no freeloaders out to get their kicks
When it's nobody's business the way that you want to live
I just have to remember there'll be days like this

When no one steps on my dreams there'll be days like this
When people understand what I mean there'll be days like this
When you ring out the changes of how everything is
Well my mama told me there'll be days like this"

Van Morrison - Days like this

I keep thinking back to a high school "back to school night"for my child Aidan. Their debate teacher was talking about topics for the year and said something like.." you as parents can opt out of a specific topic if you don't want your child to discuss it, as YOU OWN YOUR CHILDREN." Later I said to her that I did not own my children. She just shrugged, like she knew that, but most parents acted like they did.

I am thinking about it because I have been watching in amazement at how many people, in the face of ever entangling contradictions between what they believe and what is actually happening, choose not to attempt to disentangle themselves, but rather, dig in their heels deeper and become dogmatic, even at the cost of their own or their community's health or well being. I have been a witness to this for years (and probably a participant in it too as we all have our own blindnesses), but it seems to have accelerated in the last generation. This may be in part because of the widespread easy accessibility of information (and misinformation) but also may be because successive generations are becoming bolder in proclaiming their desire to be themselves.  It is certainly being exploited by political leaders.

 As we know, much of this has to do with fear. We are so afraid of being rejected by our clan ( read: political party or other community of believers), that rather than showing the kindness and compassion we know should be at the core of any belief system., we make the "others" out to be monsters to justify our own beliefs and actions.  This is a known psychological phenomenon, but why is it so entrenched in people right now?

I go back to the "you own your kids" mentality. If you believe you can and should shape the beliefs of your children to conform with your own (or your groups), rather than allow and encourage them to follow their own paths (which can be scary to watch and do), then you raise a group of people that are entrenched in fear of being rejected for being themselves. 

And combine that with all of the above factors, mix in some greed, and here we are...

In response to my perceived lack of ability to persuade anyone of anything and my own rising dismay and fear of sinking in to the morass of placing others into preconceived pigeon holes, I think I might try something new for a while here. There are so many people making noise out there, and nothing new seems to be said. People just listen to themselves and demonize others.  It just makes me sad that anger and hatred seem to be the currency of the day and I don't want to be angry anymore.

The one thing I will keep trying to promote is literacy. Just read. Read to your kids, read on your own. Read for pleasure or to gain insight or knowledge. Facts matter!  But the ability to think critically matters more than just accepting information at face value. Stories also matter. Stories can cut to the heart of what it means to be alive in this world- as a certain type of being, in a certain physical landscape, with a certain point of view. Books help you see into worlds besides the one in your own head which is only your one interpretation of the world you live in perceived with the senses you possess...

So read, please. More and more I feel like it is humanity's last hope.

With that being said, dear reader (ie my one follower:)), I plan to use this forum for a little while to talk about what I "learned" from the books I am reading in the form of direct quotes from the books to hopefully entice you to read either these books or others you find on your own. Feel free to comment, suggest, or point out my own blind spots. I am a fairly prolific reader and choose from fiction and non fiction but don't really read a great number of books from the YA and science fiction genres that are pretty popular today. I have no system for picking my books. Last year, "Honest Dog Bookstore" in Bayfield Wisconsin picked out a book for me each month which was really fun. I had already read 2 of the 12 they sent, but that just meant they "got me" and I regifted the duplicates in my LFL or to a friend. The others were not ones I would've picked on my own, and while I loved some, I only liked a few, but I read them all and in the process opened my mind a bit and broadened my horizons. So yay.

The last 4 books I read were pretty remarkable: 

1. "Finding the Mother Tree" by Suzanne Simard 2021

2. "Conversations with Barry Lopez: Walking the Path of Imagination" by William Tydeman 2013

3. "The Plover" by Brian Doyle 2015

4. "The Witch of Portobello" Paulo Coelho 2006

Where do I start? I think for this first one, I will start where I will end with a few quotes from Mr Lopez from his 2003-2007 interviews: 

On the importance of stories:

"If you and I witness the same event and remember it differently, that's an expression of a difference in our personalities. In an ideal society, instead of asking who remembers what happened, we'd say, "Will everyone who saw what happened tell us what they remember?" That's what a library does. That's why there are so many books in the library." 

On "nature':

" When I hear geese pass over, they excite a sense of the vertical dimension of life here for me. It's just a few calls, but they're moving much higher in the volume of space we occupy together. That's what I mean about the ordinary--it opens directly into the extraordinary. What I'm after is how the numinous transits into the divine. I think "nature writing"---that term I hate---is, some of it, a deliberate attempt to re-infuse the ordinary with the extraordinary, to re-infuse material life with the spiritual life-- to return metaphysics to physics." 

"Stewardship for me implies that the cards have been dealt in static time, and that humans hold all the aces...A different concept, one that I would be more comfortable with, is responsible participation. You could say that all animals participate in the world. But what culture and consciousness combine to give human beings is the concept of the responsible behavior of the participant."

"I've had these feelings since childhood, that there is something on the other side, that nature was animated in a way Western culture rejected. Nobody ever disabused me of the idea. When I left Notre Dame, I still believed strongly in the nonrational foundation, the spiritual dimension, if you will, of the physical world we call "nature." And when I became acquainted with Native American metaphysics,...I thought "Here are people who approach this the way I do." 

"Some people would say I am no respectful enough of science. No careful reader, I think, would ever say that. What I will not do is promote a hierarchy where one group of people claims to possess the truth and tells others they must become believers or else, whether it's in religion or some hierarchy of human epistemologies or a brand of fundamentalism in politics. I don't see that life is in any way diminished by immersing yourself in the insolubility of its mysteries."

"Frankly, I feel like I'm living in a time of entrenched and catastrophic ignorance. The number of people who don't want to consider some other way, for whom science is an enemy, is terrifying. The degree to which religious dogma has affected the discourse about human fate is chilling."

On dehumanization with globalization:

"I see the power of institutions, the way they gravitate towards a dangerous kind of mediocrity, as a strong indication that a large scale institutions can't ever be effective. The environmental issues that need to be addressed, simply can't be addressed in the time available by institutions-by federal governments, by banks, by big business. They are too timid, too mired in and antiquated Western folklore of superiority, too wedded to the idea that any regulation signals their end. The only successful ways in which these large problems are being addressed is through the sharing of information and the sharing of ways of acting that are effective."

Oh I could just quote the whole book. There is so much more about these topics...if you care to find out more:)

Peace out, and Best Wishes for a happy, healthy 2022-

*PLEASE get your covid vaccine. Your friends are depending on you.