Accidental Politics

March 24, 2008

My hope is that this blog will be a reflection of my feelings and opinions and something more. Mostly my hope is to create an online journal that maybe someone will read. Posted comments are hoped for. Perhaps one aside will open a mental or spiritual door for me that will prove valuable. Maybe the door will be one I looked at briefly and then turned away from a long time ago. Perhaps the portal will be to a place or state I never knew existed. Serendipity that is the word isn’t it?

Jotting this entry I think of whether I should talk of the politics of the day. Body counts and milestones and people caught with their pants down. Seems just like every other day in the political world. Blogs that delve into the issues of contemporary discourse vis a vis who holds power, who should hold power and who will hold power garner wide readership. Still, when I surf those sights I rarely find the insight I am looking for. The insights I value are often caught by a sideways glance or picked up in a shred of overheard conversation.

An example comes to mind. As I was surfing the channels the other night looking for some science fiction I came upon a special on Ansel Adams. (Okay, if the thought of science fiction has distracted you, click here and go watch an episode of Eureka, I love this show http://www.scifi.com/rewind/ ). Anyway as I watched the special what I heard the narrator say struck me as profound. In that deep voice that all PBS narrators are mandated to have the speaker stated that Ansel Adams was political, but political in a sense that lay far beyond the boundaries of Republican and Democrat. It lay beyond even the gulf between democrat and communist.

The politics that concerned Mr. Adams were those focused not on temporal economic boundaries or even geopolitical boundaries. His politics focused not on man nor on nature standing alone, but rather on the total relationship between humanity and the natural order of our planet. His focus was on both bettering the welfare of humankind and the preservation of a livable world. Ansel Adams the speaker intoned matched nature with the growth and development of a dignity of spirit in the human race. I think the underlying thought actually came from LBJ, a person for whom Adam’s had helped edit a book of photos and conservation commentary. Still the narrator seemed to think it caught an important aspect of Adam’s persona. That though is good politics on a human scale.

Like I said my politics are those drawn from the sideways glance.

I am attaching here something else I though about a time ago. I put forms of this in a letter or two. If you have seen it before I apologize.

We long for that element so elusive, the taste of unlimited time. For the brief moment we actually possess it we do not realize that possession and it runs right through our fingers… There is song this is cribbed from. Surely the song cribbed it from the writings of a monk or a mystic. Surely the monk or the mystic drew it from his or her own experience, but sensation of this knowledge is dead on the mark. But what happens next, after the awareness comes is important. I think it matters a great deal.

When immortality and eternity are gone, what do we do next? I think it very, very important to make a wise choice. My life is at the point where immortality is long gone. I have been under the knife for cancer, and while I push the thought aside pretty readily now, I always have the sense that something nasty is just around the next corner. So what do I do, how do I live in this moment? I think I grabbed the following from Merton, but I lost the citation.

Early [Christian] writers loved to dwell on the paradox that the way to hell is pride, while the way to heaven is humility. Salvation to these mystics/monastics began with the ‘self-emptying’ (the ‘kenosis’) of Christ. In one of the most profoundly affecting passages of the New Testament St Paul wrote, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human form. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-8). Buddhists use the expressions ‘Buddha mind’, and ‘Buddha nature’.

In writing from the Providence Zen Center there is found this passage, “a child's mind is Buddha's mind. Just seeing, just doing is truth. Then, using this mind means when you are hungry, eat. When someone is hungry, give them food.” Simplicity.

Be empty and live with simplicity. Not real easy.