Summer Reading List

or,
An Account of my Absence

I realize that the last post I wrote here was one promising activity. It was written about a month ago. I can explain.

In early May I returned to Fort McMurray to visit friends and family. I've been here since then and will be here a little while longer before returning to the beautiful British Columbia. While here I have been treating reading and writing like a full-time job, putting in eight hours a day, five days a week. At first I wrote an early draft of an article for a journal which I have sent to a professor for feedback, and since then I've worked on creative writing. For the first little while I journalled and wrote letters on top of these eight hours, but after a while I realized that I could not physically take it: my eyes and knuckles were in pain by the end of the day. Since then I have absorbed journal- and letter-writing into this schedule.

Needless to say, with all of this writing my blogging has suffered drastically. While I have continued reading blogs and commenting periodically, I have not felt interested in or even capable of producing posts of my own. For this reason I will henceforth include blogging in those eight hours, so long as I do not exceed one day per week.

Because I cannot share what I have been writing, I will instead give you my reading list so far.

1. "Against Literary Darwinism" (Jonathan Kramnick, Winter 2011)
Because I doubt many of my readers care about literary theory, I'll try for brevity: Kramnick is arguing that a particular school of literary analysis which calls itself Literary Darwinism is bunk. LD claims to be trying to draw literary analysis out of relativist irrelevance and into hard, stable science. Sadly, says Kramnick, the science they are using as a base is an older form of evolutionary psychology which is far from universally accepted in the current scientific academy (it suggests that all traits are selected for rather than merely selected, failing to recognize the possibility of byproducts, or spandrels). Further, it fails on the literary end, since it is unable to isolate the universal formal traits of literature which it seeks to identify, instead slipping into universal themes of love and triumph which, the LDs say, rehearse evolutionary pressures. Universal themes are not universal forms and so they fail to provide what they claim to provide. It's an interesting article, but because it's written mainly for a literary analytical audience it doesn't go into what's wrong with universal themes (since any literary analyst worth her salt already knows why), so if you aren't immersed in this discipline's theory you might wonder why that isn't addressed.

2. One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest (Wade Davis)
One River details the travels of the author and his colleague Tim Plowman (an ethnobotanist) through the Amazong rain forest in search of the origin of coca, the plant used to make cocaine (and Coca-Cola); it also details the botanical biography of their mentor Richard Schultes and his own journeys in Oklahoma, Mexico, and the Amazon rain forest (I realize I'm jumbling catgories there; all I can say is that it reflects how Schultes travelled, not how I conceptualize these places). I spent a lot of time with this book; its seeming endlessness may unintentionally replicate the Amazon itself. Despite what the title suggests, it does not seem to be especially about one river. Each time Davis announced that someone will embark on an exploration of yet another uncharted river, I would reflect on the irony of this title. This book is not for the faint of heart. And, yet, it was absolutely worth it, not just because I learned a lot about psychoactive and medicinal plants in the Amazon basin or about the rubber trade during the Second World War (which is incredibly fascinating, by the way) or about the customs and contact histories of numerous aboriginal peoples, but because I learned a lot about knowledge production itself. One River is about, among other things, an enormous taxonomical enterprise, in which the description and classification of plants make their discovery. That is, it is only when you can describe a plant and then place it in a larger categorical web (taxonomy, bionomial nomenclature, genetic lineages) that you can claim that such a plant is known and further work on it can begin. In a sense, One River helped me understand how taxonomy, the part of biology I liked most in high school and was least respected by biology and biochemical student friends in undergraduate, is integral to the very basis of biology and is also that point which most reveals how the field is organized. But this book is also about the weakennesses of western, post-enlightenment science (anyone mind if I stop capitalizing "enlightenment" as a historical event?) next to the botany of the aboriginal peoples of the Amazon, the numerous inheritors of Incan science. While Schultes changed botany, Davis has changed ethnobotany: some of his encounters suggest that the vast pharmaceutical knowledge of the South American peoples was generated after the Spanish arrived on the continent. That is, this is not ancient wisdom passed down after millenia of slow growth, but a (relatively) rapid generation of new empirical knowledge in response to the new diseases that the conquistadores brought with them, a knowledge reflecting social conditions and resources. This casts the indigenous peoples not as passive recipients of inflexible tradition but active creators of working medicinal practices. This is an important distinction to make.
Anyway, I could keep going on about this book: I could launch a substantial argument that it is an ethnobotanical epic just as the Iliad is a Greek national epic and The Faerie Queen is an English national epic, or I could discuss homosociality and the gendering of science as it appears in the chapter entitled "The Blue Orchid," but I'll forbear. If you want to see other books by Wade Davis I've discussed, you can look at this post where I talk about The Wayfinders or this post where I talk about The Serpent and the Rainbow.

3. The Problem of Pain (C S Lewis)
I see that Leah has recently read this as well. I always feel calmer after reading Lewis, but I presume Lewis only has this effect on Christians, and even then only on those of a certain bent. I'm not sure I think that this is quite sufficient as far as theodicy goes (note: theodicy is the branch of theology which accounts for evil and/or suffering in the world), especially as I'm not willing to follow Lewis down particular paths. (I always have trouble when he starts talking about drives and instincts because, quite frankly, I can easily postulate models which overcome his objections--mere hierarchy of drives usually does it--and I'm sure cognitive psychology can do the trick quite fine and with more empirical clout than my postulated models have.) This being said, Lewis' book does have a lot of value in the observations and discussions that he develops alongside his theodicy. For instance, I was fascinated with his idea of the necessity of an impersonal, causal world outside of human control and not subject to frequent miracles; we require separation from the other to recognize the other as something outside of oneself. If we were all so perfectly psychic as to immediately experience our neighbour's thoughts, we would not recongize those thoughts as someone else's. This, I think, is fascinating. I also find it fascinating that in this book Lewis clearly comes down on the side of evolution (though he has a twist of divine intervention in his story which I suspect Pullman borrowed and inverted in his Dark Materials trilogy).

4. Howl's Moving Castle (Diana Wynne Jones)
In Howl's Moving Castle, the young protagonist Sophie is cursed by the Witch of the Wastes so that she appears to be an elderly woman and, in order to be free of the curse, must seek the help of the wizard Howl, owner of a moving castle and eater of young girls' hearts. What this book may lack in deep insights about human character and social ills is amply made up for in the inclusion of unique main characters: the female lead, while nominally young like in most young adult books, appears to be and acts as if she were elderly for most of the book; the male lead, a powerful and older but nonetheless young- and handsome-looking wizard, frequently emasculates himself and gets through the book primarily through dashing cowardice. Also included in the novel are Sophie's sisters who for the time being go by the same name and appearance, a dog which seems to have once been a human being, a very determined scarecrow, a petulant fire demon living in a fire place, and a young apprentice (about the only generically recognizable character outside the Witch of the Wastes). Given the similarity of many YA and fantasy protagonists, especially when compared within gender lines, these characters offer refreshing alternatives. If you want something that plays a lot with generic conventions while somehow fulfilling them, you may want to look at this book.

5. An Acceptable Time (Medeleine L'Engle)
Polly O'Keefe is visiting her grandparents in a house recognizable to readers of the Time Quartet (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and Many Waters), when Zachary Gray appears. With him seems to come a time portal, drawing Polly into the New England of 1000 BCE, where she interacts with the People of the Wind, an aboriginal group who have absorbed two exiles from Britain and their druidic teachings. Like all L'Engle books, Polly attempts to negotiate through a world both intellectual and relational, linking science, religion, literature, hope, and forgiveness. I quite enjoyed this book (notwithstanding the fact that my apparent taste in female-oriented YA continues to erode any sense of my own masculinty), though I am really starting to question L'Engle's protagonists' tastes in guys. I was a little uncomfortable in two places, though: first, the book tends towards a romanticization of indigenous peoples, though it's far better than many of its alternatives; second, Polly on occasion is taken for a goddess, and as uncomfortable as she says this makes her, she seems willing to use it to serve her goals. I'm not too keen on such behaviour.

6. Disappearing Moon Cafe (SKY Lee)
Before I begin, I want to state that I'm not sure why the author insists on capitalizing all of the letters in her first name. But she does, so I'll follow suit. (The Wikipedia page is not as accomodating.)
The professor I had for my Asian Canadian Studies class first semester recommended Disappearing Moon Cafe when we complained that there was no literature on the curriculum. I bought it at the end of that semester but did not get much past the prologue until last week. It explores four generations of the Wong family, Asian Canadians located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, proprietors of the eponymous cafe. The narrative skips around time periods, structured not chronologically but rather revelationally, attempting to hold back the secrets which continue to trouble the narrator, Kae Wong of the fourth and last generation of the Wong clan's Vancouver branch. Only as the novel progresses do you discover the disturbing occurances lurking in the Wong family's past. It's a good book, if written in a perhaps over-ornamented style replete with modifiers. Some people like that sort of thing, of course. It's a little preoccupied with incest, however, so if that bothers you, you might want to pass. This is not an "easy" book either in prose or content, dealing as it does with feminist and Asian Canadian issues, and employing a lot of Asian Canadian colloquial language.

7. "Discourse in the Novel" (Mikhail Bakhtin)
I've started this but not finished it. It's the next installment in my literary analytical readings.
Bakhtin is an important and brilliant if sometimes underrepresentated and misunderstood literary theorist. His ideas about carnivalesque and heteroglossia have strongly impacted the English department but (at least according to my colleagues in my Reported Speech course) nonetheless remain poorly understood, having been twisted somewhat to fit the agendas or frameworks of contemporary theorists. As such, I have decided to become more familiar with this thinker. (I was also supposed to have read this for class and failed; further, I realize I lack the theoretical backing that many of my peers can profess and I think Bakhtin might be a good, more unique investment.) "Discourse in the Novel" outlines how a more dialogic understanding of the novel is necessary; this genre is situated perfectly, thinks Bakhtin, to reflect and use the contrasting unitary and heteroglossic forces in language and the perpetual fact of literature as located amongst other utterances. (If this seems rather technical, that's because it is.)

*sigh* You should never get me started on books, because then I tend to go on. I had planned to write more posts today but am running out of time. With luck I will get a few done.

7 Quick Takes (66)

1. After writing my 7 Quick Takes last week, I heard a knock on my door. I opened it to my housemate who wanted to go slack-lining. So out we went to the park, where he taught us (a friend of his and I) how to sword-fight and where we did some slack-lining. It was a deal of fun, and his friend apparently comes from near Fort McMurray. She grew up in Edmonton, but had family in Lac La Biche. It was a good night, but my feet ended up being pretty cold after the slack-lining. I am also better at sword-fighting after even one session. To the right is a photograph of me falling from the line that night. I did land on my feet, which tend to get pretty filthy when slack-lining.
It started snowing that night.


2. Snow and photography. An unseasonable amount for British Columbia. There is good news: winter photography is as excellent as spring, summer, and autumn photography. It can be especially interesting in British Columbia, with snow on lush ferns and palm trees. I am glad that I got some decent shots of totem poles with snow on them. As a result, I started worrying (again) of cultural appropriation and my own commission of it. This to an extent made it impossible for me to uncritically enjoy putting up photos of the totem poles. But I am still going to put some on here, I think. You can decide whether there is anything problematic with the practice of taking and distributing images of cultural artifacts in museum spaces. (It's also easy to read this as some sort of attempt at using these artifacts as Canadian national symbols, especially when snow-clad. I won't pretend that I don't think of snow in patriotic terms.)

3. On Saturday, after spending some time working, I went to a dance recital/ competition in which a friend was participating. Some other friends were going to accompany me, but one backed out for reasons I can't recall and the other, at the last minute, messaged that she was too sick. I went alone, therefore, to cheer for three. Given my general lack of physical coordination and my general ignorance of dance, it was a bit awkward. Most of the audience was composed of dancers. Nonetheless I enjoyed watching; skill is always fascinating to see.

3. On Wednesday I attended the last seminar of my Asian Canadian Studies course. In it we were to read a chapter of Judith Butler, this one on mourning and politics. Butler asks who we are able/allowed to mourn, and what it means to theorize mourning. It's really a good article. She problematizes the word "we" in her own ways (as well as problematizing "I"), but that got me thinking (and talking in class) about the inherent ambiguity of that pronoun. In speech, "we" can mean [I + you], [I + they], or [I + you + they]; regardless, a person who uses "we" in speech necessarily claims to be speaking on behalf (or at least to be speaking about the condition of) not just themselves but also another person. In writing there are other possiblities, including [I + I]. You'll see the [I + I] formulation when two or more co-author a text without indicating who wrote which portion. Then one imagines the voice of the text being their shared voice or something even more ambiguous. (If you watch the documentary on them, you'll learn that the Hensel twins use pronouns and third-person nouns in interesting ways when Instant Messaging.)
It seemed appropriate that in the last seminar of this course, in which we are often compelled to destabalize things we had previously been taking for granted, we ended the day with the destabalization of basic pronouns. We've broken so much down that we can't even describe "our" own action.

4. For the class for which I am a TA, we read Coetzee's The Life & Times of Michael K. I rather enjoyed that book, but I find it hard to access. Like lots of good books, it seems easy at first, perhaps because of the clean, clear prose. One of the most fascinating things about this book is that it is set in South Africa, and yet Coetzee never makes clear a) when it takes place (Apartheid? post-Apartheid? near future?) or b) what the protagonist's race is.

5. In the context of my research for my Asian-Canadian paper, I encountered the interesting idea of the American civil religion. Wikipedia has a brief and insufficeint description of it. The Wikipedia article (and perhaps the original coiner of the term) seems to imply that American civil religion is somehow an outgrowth of or intrisically related to Christianity, especially Protestantism. This is not always true. The article in which I discovered this idea (Jane Naomi Iwamura, "Critical Faith: Japanese Americans and the Birth of a New Civil Religion." Immigration and Religion in America. Ed. Richard Alba, Albert J. Raboteau, and Josh Dewind. New York: New York UP, 2009. Print.) has a good description:

"Civil religion," according to Bellah (1975: 3) is "that religious dimension found . . . in the life of every people, through which it interprets its historical experience in the light of transcendet reality." For many in United States, this "transcedent reality" is shaped by both the Christian tradition and Roman republicanism, which, in turn, lends meaning and justification to the principles of "democracy," "freedom," and "equality" before the law. Americans affirm their faith in these principles and to the nation through a shared set of "beliefs, symbols, and rituals" (e.g., the Bill of
Rights, the Lincoln Memorial, the inauguration of the president). Civil religious institutions are historical creations, yet they need no justification. For instance, the Constitution "does not call upon any source of sacredness higher than itself and its makers." Ultimately, civil religion has an integrative function and binds the individual citizen psychically and spiritually to her fellow Americans and to the nation-state (Albanese, 1992; Wuthnow, 1998b).

For some time I have struggled to understand the peculiar sort of patriotism and nationalism that certain American citizens hold; the idea of civil religion helped me come to some sort of terms with it. I have no problem with patriotism, but I do have a problem with American exceptionalism. The unquestioning appeal by many Americans to Constitutional documents, the founding fathers' intentions, and whether something is "American" or "unAmerican" (as if either is a remotely useful or definable adjective) has also baffled me for some time. Now I think I have a better grasp on the sort of sociological forces that undergird these phenomenon, but I still don't feel like I have a real grasp on the way this tendency is left unquestioned. Are there any American readers willing to explain the invocation of these ideas (Constitution, founding fathers, "American" v. "unAmerican") to me?
(Please note that I am aware that some Canadians are equally guilty of using strange adjectives, like "unCanadian," without a decent explanation of what they mean. It just seems more prevalent, and it seems to hold more rhetorical weight, in the United States than it does here.)

6. Among other wastes of my time, I have been laughing a lot this week over at Reasoning With Vampires. (Anyone else think blog titles should be italicized?) I don't always agree with her comma vendetta, as in fictional prose the use of commas is justified if you are creating rhythm. One needn't always be as minimalist as a newspaper in fiction. In general, though, I think what this woman is doing is fascinating. She takes fierce grammatical, stylistic, and content editing and turns it into visual art. Paradoxically, I now want to read at least one of the Twilight books. It's sort of a detective-work thing. If the books are as bad as people say they are, and if they are as bad as Reasoing With Vampires repeatedly demonstrates that they are, then what I wonder is why they have the popularity that they do. They must supply some need or desire that their readers are not getting elsewhere (as distinguished from "cannot get elsewhere"). What is that need or desire?
And how can I harness it?

7. Below is the Grooveshark playlist I listened to while writing this post and trawling Facebook. It is akin to what I've been listening to all week and is not akin to what I would normally listen to (with the exception of Bear McCreary).

"Jacob's Ladder," Rush
"The Trees," Rush
"The Spirit of Radio," Rush
"You Really Got Me," Van Halen
"Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love," Van Halen
"The Call," Regina Spektor
"Love Affair," same
"On the Radio," same
"Lady," same
"Oedipus," same (really like this one)
"Us," same
"Eet," same (stuck in my head)
"Samson," same
"Fidelity," same
"Evelyn Evelyn," Evelyn Evelyn (stuck in my head)
"You Only Want Me 'Cause You Want My Sister," Evelyn Evelyn
"Love Will Tear Us Apart," Evelyn Evelyn
"Hurt," Johnny Cash
"I Hung My Head," Johnny Cash
"O Verona," Craig Armstrong
"Gaeta's Lament," Bear McCreary
"The Shape of Things to Come," Bear McCreary
"All Along the Watchtower," Bear McCreary
"Kara Remembers," same
"A Good Lighter," same
"Kara's Coordinates," same
"Admiral and Commander," same
"Baltar Panics" same

Poetry from the MoA

I am going to do something I will likely regret. Due to my continued absense from this blog, resulting in equal parts from overwork and procrastination, I feel the need to post something, even if it's not great. As such, I am going to present some shoddy poetry I wrote at the Museum of Anthropology. I thought it would be cool to go to the MOA and sit down in front of artifacts and just write free verse poetry on the objects I saw. And on this forum I am going to treat you to the poor poetry I wrote.


The Lion and the Owl (in the Koerner Ceramic Gallery of the MOA)
15 Oct 2010

Gold and baroque
--as baroque as a piped waltz--
the lion holds his shield and helm
which blends into his unruly chest
On the red shield is his little twin
rampant and roaring as silently as his larger self
Ornate golden lion, your glazed stare
plumbs the empty space before you

Smooth, blue, yellow, and white
--as plump as a jar--
the owl too looks wide-eyed into
the air, shining with the tinny chords
He comes to the lions shoulders,
his wings by his side hold no shield
His own flat plumes will do for his colours


Hamsalagamł (bumblebee masks) at the MOA
15 Oct 2010

Eight faces, eight dwarf cherub faces
their yellow seive-noses high between their eyes
cheeks sink down
and there is a man, a boy-man
looking at you across the room from an armchair
trying to see you with his poet's pen
seeing only your empty faces
But are your faces empty?
What history would those eyes dream
which looked through yours?
What do your eyes dance?


On Bill Reid's Haida Bear in the MOA
15 Oct 2010

the bear looks on
the canoe down whose length he stares is more polished than him,
worn with the grease of hands
but it is painted in the same colours, its prow the same red as his tongue
the man he sees through the arches is traced with the same black veins,
but these veins contain yellow and white,
unlike the bear's
the double serpent on the arch is the same weathered wood as the bear's long claws but they do not see that
the bear, from his corner, looks on


In the shadow on the chairs in the MOA
15 Oct 2010

there is a hummingbird
with a long beak
and folded wings still as wood
and it sits on a disc held by
seven stiff men who hold
their hands palms out against their many faces
--some faces shorn off--
and their small doll-feet hang suspended
above the eagle's cracked face
with a fissure running deeper than the frowns it cuts
past the pale end-less beak
over its chest and down its leg
into the claws that
clutch a disc sitting on
the heads of twelve men with unreadable expressive faces
and naked formless bodies and
who in their turn stand on
the head of a creature, human-like,
with no nose but a knotty hole
and the fault running through her eye
(she holds a child, damaged
in her sibilant asymmetrical arms)
and her knees turn together and that
crack still runs between them right down
to her crooked feet and vague toes
which hold the weight of them all.

Happy Thanksgiving!

...while I try to think of today as something other than a commemoration of horrific colonial violence.

The Fort Chip Adventure: Where I Play With Husky Pups and Go Dogsledding

On Saturday night we went dogsledding. The following a pictures taken from this event. Hopefully the video works.

The Secular Fallacy: Part I

or Why You Can't Separate Religion from Society (or Anything Else, for that Matter)

I think it's high time for another installment in my unofficial "Understanding Christians" series.

I don't mean to pick on Jon, but something he said once seemed symptomatic of a persistent myth about religion that I have encountered among the non-religious. I have been meaning to expose this particular myth for some time now, so I think its time has come. This myth I am calling "The Secular Fallacy."

The context of Jon's comment is irrelevant, so I'll leave it out. He suggested that I compose a list of moments during which I "felt infinite." He also specified that I try to avoid listing religious moments, but rather stick to non-religious ones. Jon went on to say that he realized I might take this as blasphemous, but then, "what do you expect from a heathen?" (His words.)

Of course, such an exercize is, for me, impossible. I wasn't even remotely insulted or offended by what he said for, I think, three reasons. 1) Jon himself pointed out that this might go against having a religion at all. 2) I know Jon, and I know that he isn't anti-religion, so I knew that his suggestion was not meant as anything offensive. 3) I recognized that the particular flaw in his suggestion was pandemic to contemporary areligious thought, so he can hardly be blamed for having committed it.* I would like to add a fourth reasons, that being that I do not get offended when people say silly things about religion, but that would be lying, which I generally file under "Don't Do This."

What, then, is that flaw? It's one that has been around for quite some time, at least as far as North America is concerned, one that is built right into the constitutions of both Canada and the United States. It seems to me as though most people who do not themselves follow a religion, well, religiously assume that a person divides their life into two distinct categories: the sacred and the profane.

"Wait," I hear someone cry from the back row, "don't most academics who have devoted their lives to the study of religion state that one of the defining features of a religion is the division of the world into two realms, namely the Sacred and the Profane!? And have they not provided solid evidence of this fact!?"

Yes. It is true that some religious studies scholars believe such a thing. It is true that there is some evidence pointing to such a division. It is also true that some people, perhaps many people (see the Gnostics, for instance), separate the realms of the world into the Godly and the unGodly, the holy and the carnal, the spiritual and the material, the visible and the invisible, the good and the evil. Many religions do have, implicit or explicit, a list of things that are holy or not-holy. But the thing is, it doesn't seem as though every tradition has this sort of ontological dualism (see, for instance, this essay I wrote on why some Aboriginal groups do not call themselves religious). So some scholars do not put the sacred/profane divide into their definition of 'religion'; rather, they talk about things like 'meaning' or 'transcendent reality.' If you want a really nice word for it, Otto once coined 'numinous.'

Numinosity refers to a quality of an object or place. This quality is hard to define. 'Holiness' comes close, but haunted things are also numinous. The best one can do, I think, is to say that a numinous object at once is whatever it physically appears to be, but also reveals or signifies a transcendent reality that lies behind it.** The lay lines are numinous, as are the sites (or paths) of pilgrimage. More importantly, numinosity demands an emotional and even physical response: a numinous thing provokes awe (according to Otto, "trembling") and commands attention.

What I think we can say with certainty is that all religions have some idea of the numinous. Each religion understands and frames itself around numinosity very differently, of course; some religions, like Buddhism, will eschew numinosity in the physical world, while others locate numinosity in virtually every aspect of our day-to-day lives. As a Christian who does not participate in the theology that the physical world is inherently evil***, I am willing to see God in everything. If you truly believe that God is both transcendent and immanent, that God works through the world, that God made the world both intentionally and lovingly, then I think you must say that all things reflect some element of God's nature. I'm not, of course, saying that everything is a sacrament, and neither am I saying that all historical events are as God willed them to be (the Holocaust is the most frequently cited example). What I am saying is that, to the person willing enough and blessed enough to see it, all things can be numinous. And every Christian who is trying very hard to have a relationship with Christ is, whether they know it or not, an amateur mystic. Practicing Christians are bound and bent on finding the numinous. To those who are looking, God is all over the place.

But I must concede that there are some people who do not see God in all things. I suppose, in truth, I don't myself. I may wish to see him in most things, but to an extent I must say things like, "Drunkenness does not for me contain a path to God." Thus we can say, provisionally, that someone like me puts sobriety under the sacred category and drunkenness under the profane category. There is some sort of a division going on after all. I think this is a fair thing to say. So, does this mean that my fallacy is not such a fallacy after all?

Of course not. And I'll tell you why in a later post.

See Part II.

-----
*Do not take this to mean that Jon is atheist. What it is that he does or does not believe had better be taken up with him, but the last time he mentioned it to me, he said, "Oh, I believe there's a God. I just don't know what he's like," or something like that.
**I realize "transcendent reality" is a big term. I'm sorry to say this, but we're dealing with big ideas--the biggest of all ideas, actually--and so sometimes all we have to work with are big terms. "The supernatural realm" is a very poor substitute for "transcendent reality." Basically, what I and most religious scholars mean when they use this term is that part of the world that is just so true, just so real, that we can't access it directly. This seems like a post-Platonic idea, but, if Huston Smith is right, that's exactly the sort of worldview that indigenous peoples hold, too.
***The physical world was made by God. This does not mean that it cannot be evil--Satan was made by God, too--but it does mean that the physical world started good, and since it was not omniscient upon its fall, it cannot be all evil. When it distracts us from our holy purpose, then it is acting for evil. But while we do not live on bread alone, Jesus did hand out a lot of it. Food as a general category has Jesus' stamp of approval, and that's good enough for me.

Fantasy:

I will be unsuspectingly solicited by people at St. Thomas' to write a book for them, beginning this April. It will be called The Canadian Christian Lifestyle(s). They will pay me to go and live with assorted Christian households to observe, interview, and participate. These households will largely be chosen because they represent a demographically unusual Christian population: Mennonites; a gay Christian couple; a polygamist Christian...quadruple?; a Dene-Christian shaman; a New-Testament-inspired commune; a household with converted conjoined twins; a mixed-faith family. I think you get the idea.

I would not be expected to provide much analysis, but neither would I be expected to take a journalistic approach. Rather, I would observe at my own pace. Perhaps I would have a co-author with me to provide her own, alternate perspective.

I was absorbed by the possibilities of this project while working today. You will notice that my dream job of the moment is prefaced by my not having to do any sort of work or research to get it. It also involved living with Mennonites, observing Christian-indigenous mysticism, and discussing theology with people who have significantly different sexual ethics from my own. And it is based around both cultivating relationships and writing.

My real job is somewhat interesting; I am almost finished, and perhaps entirely finished, at the Marine Park. I cleaned up today. If I do not start the virtual museum tomorrow, I at the very latest will the day I get back from my vacation next week.

Personal Resolution Not To Be A Blog Slave: Status = FAILED

I worked at Heritage Park today, helping set up for National Aborignal Day.

Yes, the government has set aside one day for the recognition of Aboriginal people. Before you get all antsy, I'll point out that the Earth gets an hour, and that's not even official. So a day isn't bad. Relatively speaking. Well, yeah, it's pretty bad, but that's beside the point. The point just so happens to be that I worked at Heritage Park today.

Considerations:

1) Cleaning the interiors of ships is not very hard work. Tedious, dusty, cramped, hot, finickety work, yes, but is not physically trying. At the end of the day I am sweating and dirty and my legs are tired, but I am not cardiovascularly exhausted. Preparing for NAD when you haven't been doing that sort of work for two months is. I was in much better shape by this time last summer than I am today. My perseverence is as good as it ever was (which is really the best thing I had going for me: I'd work past my "exhausted" point far longer than most of my coworkers, even if my exhausted point was sometimes sooner). My stamina isn't.

2) The fact that a girl is cute and cheerful and employed at the other site does not mean she is single. Rats. I'm not sure what I was expecting in Fort McMurray.

3) Working away at ships is good for contemplating literary theory, the philosophy of interpersonal relationships, and theology. Working away at events with loads of people is good for actually developing interpersonal relationships.

4) Drinking water when you're very thirsty can make you even thirstier for the rest of the day.

5) I haven't mowed lawns in four years. I haven't really had a lawn to mow, or at least not for more than two weeks at a time. Today was the first in that time. It's not that bad.

6) I am a slave to the computer screen. Or maybe I'm just a bit bored.

7) It's funny. I'm in a lieu period right now. My relationships are in stasus. I'm not developing new ones very much right now. I like my coworkers well enough, but I'm not making the step from 'coworker' to 'friend.' I have made that step once or so in the past, but it isn't really happening right now. And I'm sitting here re-evaluating all of my past friendships and maybe somewhat more than friendships, but I'm not discovering anything new or coming to terms with things I already new. I'm just...re-living it all interally. My isolation isn't really allowing me to develop; perhaps I am allowing my isolation to prevent me from developing. I'm cryogenically frozen, but stuff's still going on anyway. Not much of note, but stuff. Hence blogging all the time, except, unlike Kay or Cait or, I see recently, Roz, it's not really me processing anything. It's just me doing what I always do on my blog, which is keep everything at an even longer arm's length than with people and with myself. My only new discovery is this one: my laid-back approach to relationships is just an excuse to not feel anything, and that goes badly when I can't help feeling something anyway, as I have forgotten how to deal with it. As a result, I am not particularly upset that I am not growing in relationships, even though I suspect cerbrally that it's a bad thing. That is my one new idea, and it counts for absolutely nothing, because over here in stasus, knowing that I am not growing doesn't help an iota. Knowing how to grow might, but I haven't got that figured out yet, and I am feeling too lethargic to figure it out.

8) I need to blog less. It takes up time I could be writing or reading or doing something productive. But I think I enjoy it too much to give it up. And somebody will squawk if I let it slide.

9) A good old-fashioned-looking tipi is really cool. So are older native folks (often elders). And old people in general. I like being around them. Little kids are great too. A little kid came up to me today and we talked about what I was doing, and then about the bumblebee in the flowers. And earlier today an Metis elder helped us erect the tent for the event on Sunday, and we talked about the time he worked on the river boat at the Park and the D250 at my work site.

Disputing Dawkins IV

So far I have dealt with Dawkins' attempts to demonstrate that religion is unlikely. I will no longer deal with this at length because Dawkins has nothing more to add on the topic. Dawkins tries to demonstrate that religion could have evolutionary origins. If you want to read a better account of such speculation than Dawkins, you can read Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer. This doesn't really worry me at all, though, and I'm not going to deal with it. Instead, I will move on to Dawkins' discussion of morality. Namely, Dawkins argues for

Religion's Disconnection from Morality

The general direction of Dawkins' arguement is that religion does not generate morality, and therefore appeals to morality are not sufficient to argue in favour of religion. He also claims that major religious traditions are somewhat immoral, and he uses Christianity as an example.

Of course, Dawkins presupposes here that there is no God. Unlike in previous posts, I will not accept Dawkins' premises for the sake of arguement. I will try as much as possible to refrain from religious explanations, but there are particular points where I will demonstrate that Dawkins' logic falls apart if these premises are not adhered to.

To begin, I will look at the following statement: "the only reason that you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment" (p 226). I'm going to clarify that Dawkins isn't saying that approval-seeking is the only reason people are good; he's more implying that this is the religious sense of ethics. One of his criticisms is that morality of this sense isn't really moral at all, but strictly self-interested. First, I'm going to emphasize that, even if this were true of Western religions, it's not true of all religions--Confucianism, for instance, or traditional Native beliefs do not even suggest that there is a personal reward for goodness, or anyone's approval to seek. Second, the Western religions do not universally support this either. Certainly, there is a sort of popular, media-based belief that Christians are moral in order to please God and receive his blessing by means of a ticket into heaven and perhaps worldly goods. First off, this is not a particularly Protestant view, nor is it even an entirely Catholic view. Islam perhaps espouses this philosophy more, but it is far more nuanced than that. So, what is the Christian view?

The grass-roots theology that I have heard is that we are good as a way of giving thanks to God. We are grateful for our life, for God's love, and for our undeserved salvation. Therefore, as a way of paying back, even though we know it does not come close to matching that which we received, we act in ways we believe please God. Do you see the difference? Dawkins suggest we are cashing in morality tokens for rewards; Christians believe we already have all the rewards and are behaving morally as a response.

Obviously this requires that the practitioners believe in God in order for this to be at all sensible. But note that, if you yourself do not believe in God, this doesn't mean that the Christians are only moral for self-interested purposes. So long as they believe that God has already rewarded them, morality of a non-self-interested nature can follow; the actual existence of God is not necessary for this to be true.

As an aside, the Zoroastrians are good because good behaviour saves the universe from destruction; the Confucians are good because proper relations ensure social harmony; those adopting Native beliefs are good because proper conduct prevents illness in the community and disorder in nature. Again, we see non-selfish motives for morality.

Now, Dawkins does concede that there are more sophisticated moral arguements than the caricatures he provides. Good for him. The question then is, why doesn't he refute them? Because he does not have the time? If this is the case, why did he spend so much time attacking the caricatures? Is it because he does not have the knowledge? Then why doesn't he gain the knowledge? Or it it because he does not know how to refute them? My supposition is that it is for some combination of the three: he hasn't sufficient time, knowledge, or ability. Regardless, he can hardly have considered the case closed (as he seems to do) if he doesn't deal with the objections that he acknowledges exist.

Dawkins also structures an arguement as follows: if you will not follow all of the religious text but will instead only choose those parts you agree with and those parts you don't, then can you really say morality comes from that text? In other words, what are the criteria by which you choose which passages to follow, and why not simply adopt those criteria as your moral standard? Dawkins suggests removing "the middle man," as it were.

This is where Dawkins' atheism comes in. This only makes sense if you already agree that there is no God--or, in this case, Holy Spirit. Christian theology, you see, has an answer for this. St. Paul, in fact, provides it. This is that the Holy Spirit moves us through our conscience, prompting us to do what is right and to avoid what is wrong. This even applies to deciding whether or not it is right to follow particular instances of the Jewish law. Biblical scholars suggest that Paul did not want to make authoritative judgements on certain issues (ie. whether to eat meat from pagan sacrifices) but to tell people to follow the Spirit; he only made these judgements because early Christian communities wanted a firm hand. Obviously many Christians will dispute this claim, but I think the point remains: the criterion used is nonetheless a religious one, so even if you dropped "the middle man," what you have is the Holy Spirit's hand.

Unlike my previous arguement, this one may seem to require religious belief in order to be valid. This is not quite true: it requires that the reader at least concede that a Holy Spirit might exist. This is different from believing in that doctrine. Dawkins, of course, is unwilling to concede this. I hope that by now any readers I have will be more inclined to concede it by dint of my other arguements. Even more importantly, it seems to me that Dawkins is trying to use this idea--that by picking and choosing parts of the Bible, we implicitly indicate that we have a morality not derived from God--to convince people yet again that religious claims are internally contradictory. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit provides an explanation for this problem by positing an entity, 'powered' by God, that helps us make the correct selections. Dawkins' attack on Christian doctrine through implicit concession of a non-religious morality is thus blocked by the Holy Spirit. I understand that other religions have similar features that will provide the same internal explanation. I know that Islam posits an inherent, God-given, human capacity for goodness, among other things.

Dawkins does provide some explanations of how morality could have evolved as an innate capacity in humans. Again, if you want a better account of it than Dawkins provides, you can turn to Boyer. However, I want to emphasize quite clearly that if you're a Christian (or other religious person) who accepts evolutionary biology, you'd generally consider that evolution is guided by the Divine. Therefore, there is nothing inconsistent in saying that we evolved to be moral and that God made us moral. If you're not a religious person who accepts evolutionary biology, then I don't suppose Dawkins' explanations mean anything to you at all. The up-shot is that an evolutionary account of morality does not effectively de-couple morality from religion unless you are already of an atheistic (and closed-mindedly so) mindframe.

Dawkins goes one further in his separation of religion and morality: he actually claims that Jesus' moral wisdom is exclusive to the in-group. Dawkins says, "'Love thy neighbour' didn't mean what we now think it means. It meant only 'Love another Jew'" (253). This is patently ridiculous...but my explanation belongs in a post of my own. Dawkins Delusion has a strong refutation of it, so I may not need to deal with it. I likely will, however, when I have the time.

So, a summary:
1) Dawkins claims that religious 'versions' of morality are not moral, but inherently selfish, because they are a based on a reward-punishment system; while some religions may have such a system, Christianity 'proper' and most other traditions I know of do not; Dawkins' criticism is invalid.
2) Dawkins claims that religions which have sacred texts practitioners 'pick and choose' through must have a criterion for said picking and choosing, and this will do for a moral standard without the sacred text; at least one tradition in which practitioners sometimes pick and choose explains this phenomenon through a particular mechanism called 'the Holy Spirit'; removing the sacred text makes the morality no less religious; Dawkins suggestion is invalid.

Any questions?

-------------------------------
To Directory.

Religion or Spirituality: Aboriginal Peoples and a Choice of Vocabulary

[My apologies if you find this essay boring. I wrote it for a Rels class once--The Religion of Native Peoples--and I had thought some people might find it interesting, either because they themselves trouble over whether they should call themselves religious, or because they might want to know what we actually do in religious studies. This would answer both questions poorly, but would give at least a start at it.]

In a world describing itself as secular, where faith’s role in society is questioned, the debate over religion has challenged the use of the word itself. Not only are there those who eschew anything outside of rational materialism, some people who refuse to refer to themselves as part of a religion still engage in what others would call religious actions or beliefs. Many American Aboriginal people describe themselves as ‘spiritual’ but not ‘religious’. There are a number of possible reasons for this, primarily involving historical and theoretical connotations. Specifically, associations of the word ‘religion’ with colonization, dogma, and the separation of the sacred and profane have led some North American Aboriginal people to describe themselves as ‘spiritual’ and not ‘religious.’

The Aboriginal people preferring ‘spirituality’ over ‘religion’ could be acting in a trend popular to many people across many demographics. ‘Spirituality’ is defined by David Yamane in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society as “a quality of an individual whose inner life is oriented toward God, the supernatural, or the sacred” (Yamane, 492). As William James contrasts personal experience with inherited tradition, many people are making distinctions between spirituality and religion. Spirituality is considered to be pure, while religion is corrupted by social, political, and economical influences; spirituality is considered to be between the sacred and the individual, while religion originates from human traditions and interferes with direct connection to the divine (492). Both practitioners of spirituality and researchers of it have assumed this distinction: Dean Hamer, a molecular geneticist who has studied the possible inherited predisposition to faith, says that “the self-transcendence scale tries to separate one’s spirituality from one’s particular religious beliefs by eschewing questions about belief in a particular God, frequency of prayer, or other orthodox religious doctrines or practices” (Hamer, 10). Hamer needs, in the course of his research, to identify a trait that is not determined by the content of religious traditions, and so his search for a distinction is expected; however, that he calls this trait ‘spirituality’ rather than ‘religiosity’ implies that he connotes the word ‘religion’ with the doctrines and dogmas of a particular tradition and not only with an individual’s relationship with the divine. Therefore in both popular and academic realms, ‘religion’ is coming to necessarily connote connection with a particular tradition’s details while ‘spirituality’ refers to an unmediated relationship between the individual and the sacred. Some Protestant evangelical groups in Canada are avoiding the word ‘religion’ and privileging the word ‘faith’ in order to disassociate from this idea. It is possible that Native peoples are engaging in this understanding of these words.

Many faiths originating and developing in Western Asia and Europe have centralized authorities—institutions such as the papacy, synods, or schools of law, texts such as the Torah, the Bible, or the Qur’an, and individuals like ayatullahs or bishops—which define them as religions in the religion-spirituality dichotomy. Alternately, the religions of some Native peoples do not have similar centralizing authorities over sacred practices and beliefs. For instance, according to Professor Marie-Francois Guédon, traditional Inuit have local spiritual leaders—healers or shamans—that give guidance to the community (‘Far North’). There is no authoritative text, office, or individual that can make decisions for all Inuit everywhere, and so ‘spirituality’, under the above definition, may apply more aptly to this relationship to the sacred than ‘religion’ does. Similarly, the Dené people all have access to gifts involving relationship between the individual and the sacred and tend to have individual rituals rather than group rituals, though communities do have healers (Rabinovitch, ‘Eastern Sub-Arctic’). This again indicates a connection to the sacred world on an individual level, with no external institution or office mediating or interfering with it. Thus it is possible that Indigenous individuals who call themselves ‘spiritual’ but not ‘religious’ could be observing this difference.

Even accepting the distinction between ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’, it is not so clear that Aboriginal people are not religious because of centralized authorities in some peoples and the presence of received tradition in all cultures. Certain groups have a centralized authority or figure, especially since European contact. Many people, especially among the Inuit, have converted to a form of Christianity (Guédon, ‘Western Sub-Arctic’), and thus follow a Western Asian tradition with a central authority—in this case, the Bible. Many of the Six Nations people, though not the Mohawk, follow Handsome Lake’s Code, based on the teachings of a Seneca prophet known in English as Handsome Lake (Rabinovitch, ‘Woodlands’); the teachings of a single individual could reasonably constitute a central authority. If ‘religion’ is distinguished from ‘spirituality’ by the presence of a central authority, then some Native traditions and many Native individuals are religious.

Not only do some peoples adhere to a centralized authority, but most maintain inherited traditions, which are distinguished from personal experiences in William James’ theory and from spirituality in modern understanding. These traditions, though not located in a central office, still normalize individuals’ understandings and practices through generations. Stories and practices are passed down through generations, and though they sometimes change (Gill, 131), they still exert influence into the lives of practitioners. The elders are charged with this knowledge and ensure its continuation; within the Cree people’s Six Core Values, which are inherited tradition in their own right, is the necessity of listening to elders (Rabinovitch, ‘Eastern Sub-Arctic’). Another of the Six Core Values is the gift of language, and included in this idea is that language is meant to teach the Cree ways of life (Rabinovitch). That listening to elders is important and that there are ‘Cree ways of life’ indicate the presence of inherited tradition. Thus ‘religion’ may apply just as well as ‘spirituality’ in many or all cases if the distinction between the two words is one of inherited tradition with centralized authority versus personal unmediated experience. There must be other reasons, therefore, for choosing ‘spirituality’ over ‘religion’.

The history of the word ‘religion’ could have contributed to Indigenous people’s avoidance of it. In most Native American languages, there is no word that translates as ‘religion’ (Gill, 8). This word, or any translation of it, was first introduced by European colonizers. In this case it was considered equivalent to Christianity, and so neither colonizer nor colonized used ‘religion’ to refer to anything the Aboriginal people did or thought. The colonizers then committed “flagrant violations of their [the Native people’s] privacy and way of life” (8) by outlawing important rituals (Rabinovitch, ‘Eastern Sub-Arctic’), kidnapping children and putting them in residential schools (Rabinovitch, ‘Plateau’), and interfering with their use of sacred land (Rabinovitch, ‘Plains’). Much of the time, the colonizers committed these transgressions in the name of ‘religion’. These events have unfortunately given ‘religion’ a negative connotation. As a result of the misunderstandings and initially narrow definitions of religion, Native people have generally avoided using the word ‘religion’ in reference to themselves (Gill, 8). The word ‘spirituality,’ offers a possible alternative, which they have accepted.

Beyond its history, certain assumptions in the word ‘religion’ do not accurately describe Aboriginal practices and beliefs. In its chapter on ‘Sacred’, the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society defines religion as “that which has to do with the sacred” (Bailey, 443), which is elaborated in the chapter on Émile Durkheim, who pioneered the theory that religion is the “system of beliefs and practices relative to the sacred, ones that united their followers into a moral community” (Nielsen, 147). These ideas of religion operate on the idea of ‘the sacred’. The sacred is difficult to define. The Encyclopedia defines it as possessing four characteristics: it is special to the point of being unique when experienced; it is important to the point of being all-demanding; it is fundamental to the point of being primordial in human consciousness; it is dynamically communicated while being ineffable (Bailey, 444). In its chapter on Durkheim, however, the Encyclopedia defines it as that which is part of universal truth, as opposed to the ‘profane’, which are activities or objects that are routine or not a part of universal truth (Nielsen, 147). Thus religion, according to this line of thought, is that which concerns those things that are not routine, fundamental, ineffable, all-demanding, and part of universal truth. Religion operates on the understanding that there is a difference between the sacred and the profane. If this is religion, then Aboriginal peoples, who usually have no such distinctions between sacred and profane, have no religion.

Indigenous peoples can be seen to have no distinction between sacred and profane. Words that, in English, denote either the sacred or the profane no longer do so in Aboriginal languages: ‘spirit’ refers to distinctly sacred entities, but its Dené equivalent also means insects, eels, worms, dragons under the mountains, and a number of other beings (Guédon, ‘Far North’). The Dené see all animals as people, and there is no ‘sacred land,’ as in a church, because all land is sacred; along the same lines, the land of the dead is located in ‘real’ geography (Guédon, ‘Western Sub-Arctic’). Almost universally, according to Gill, the items contained in a medicine bundle are commonplace: feathers, bones, plants, rocks and pebbles, and other items frequently found outside of large cities. These fairly simple items, however, are very important. The owners understand that the items in the bundles may heal, provide certain power, or aid in hunting, war, or love. Further, they believe that the bundles are alive (Gill, 49-50). Similarly, the peoples of California did not distinguish between animate and inanimate, or natural and supernatural, because all things had residual creative power (Rabinovitch, ‘California’). There is no distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ objects, actions, or places because everything is sacred and nothing is profane.

If there is no distinction between the sacred and the profane in a society, then there is no religion under Durkheim’s definition. It is clear that a culture with no recognition of the sacred has no religion, but in this understanding, a culture with no recognition of the profane also has no religion. Religion, as a word that describes something, requires that there could be something outside of it. If there is nothing outside of religion, then such a word is meaningless. Since religion is often defined as “that which has to do with the sacred”, if there is nothing that has to do with the opposite of sacred, or profane, then there is no religion. Aboriginal peoples believe that everything is sacred, and therefore there is, to them, no religion. It makes sense in this light for them to regard themselves as spiritual—engaged with the spirits in the world—but not religious—heavily engaged in the parts of life dealing with the sacred and not the profane.

There are problems with this understanding of religion, as well. Many other traditions that consider themselves religions make no distinction between the sacred and the profane. Pious Christians who stress God’s immanence often see all objects in the world as part of God’s creation and therefore sacred; Muslims affirm that all things, including animals, rocks, and mountains, have souls and worship God for all time, though only human and jinn souls have the ability to deny this (Jahanbakhsh); Buddhists believe everything is part of the same illusion. The Christians and Muslims in these examples consider all things to be sacred, and the Buddhists in the example give this distinction no meaning. However, all of them developed within societies that did make this distinction, so that they deny it is relevant within their context. Aboriginal traditions developed within a context that did not make these distinctions and thus ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ had no relevance until European contact.

None of these explanations will account for every Aboriginal person who prefers ‘spiritual’ to ‘religious’, but the whole set of connotations arriving with the word ‘religion’—colonization, centralized authority, dogma, distinction between sacred and profane areas of life—has acted to make it unpopular with many people, both Native American and immigrated. It would be unfair to assume that those who choose to refer to themselves as ‘religious’ include this connotations in their self-image, or to assume that all of these connotations—particularly those involving central authority or dogma—are necessarily inferior to their opposites. However, these connotations cannot be ignored and, in light of them, it is easy to understand why people seek alternative vocabulary.

Works Cited

Bailey, Edward. “Sacred.” Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. Ed. William H. Swatos, Jr. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 1998.

Gill, Sam D. Native American Religions: An Introduction. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2005.

Guédon, Marie-Francois. “The Far North – Where Land and Water Do Not Mix.” Ellis Hall, Kingston. 21 Sept. 2007.

Guédon, Marie-Francois. “The Western Sub-Arctic – Athapaskans Rebuilding Identity.” Ellis Hall, Kingston. 28. Sept. 2007.

Hamer, Dean. The God Gene. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

Jahanbakhsh, Forough. “The Qur’an.” Ellis Hall, Kingston. 4. Oct. 2007.

Nielsen, Donald A. “Durkheim, Émile.” Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. Ed. William H. Swatos, Jr. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 1998.

Rabinovitch, Shelley. “California and the Western Coast – The Forgotten Peoples.” Ellis Hall, Kingston. 16 Nov. 2007.

Rabinovitch, Shelley. “The Eastern Sub-Arctic – Algonquians of the Swamplands.” Ellis Hall, Kingston. 5 Oct. 2007.

Rabinovitch, Shelley. “The Eastern Woodlands – Where Democracy Was Born.” Ellis Hall, Kingston. 30 Nov. 2007.

Rabinovitch, Shelley. “The NW Plateau – Fur-Trading Peoples.” Ellis Hall, Kingston. 2 Nov. 2007.

Rabinovitch, Shelley. “The Plains – More Than ‘Dances With Wolves.’” Ellis Hall, Kingston. 26 Oct. 2007.

Yamane, David. “Spirituality.” Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. Ed. William H. Swatos, Jr. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 1998.
[1] Primarily Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, though also Zoroastrianism and other less prominent traditions.

Exhaustion

I should go to bed, but I'm writing this instead.

I just figured out that I've worked 15 of the last 16 days. Where days straight is concerned, it's 10. And it hasn't been just cleaning or papercrunching or screwing around, but lots of hauling tables and wooden boards and logs and burnted out shopping carts and easles/sandwich boards. By which I mean, it's been harder work than usual, and more of it. Which means I'm exhausted

I wish I had awesome pictures of the event (maybe I will later?); this event, of course, being Heritage Day. It was enjoyable, except that I was on my feet for most of the day. I was on garbage duty. There was a giant crane with flags dangling from it; a petting zoo with a llama and a wallaby, among other things; vendor booths for various ethnic or service groups; a BBQ; entertainment, including children doing Hindu dances and the Rezz Dawgs, a rap group from (I think) Fort McKay; lots of children's games and contests.

Tomorrow, though, we have Communities in Bloom judges coming to the park, and I'm stressed about the work we have to do before that...and the tour I have to give them afterwards. The fact that I just want a day off doesn't help, but I know I'm needed at work at least for one more day. That helps. But I know it'll be hard.

So I'm off to bed as soon as I'm done this post. Oh, I've added a Blog List, and changed a photo around. And at the moment I'm looking out the window, seeing the clouds dark against the twilit sky. The view from our deck isn't bad.

Here's a picture of one of my dogs, just to break things up:

The Tipi

Hey.

At work we have a tipi. It went up a month or more ago, but I didn't take pictures until very recently. For no reason at all, here they are:

Moonstone the Skunk

Do you remember the guest professor I was talking about before? Professor G? Well, my regular professor had told us another story about her, which I will relate to you instead of going to bed, like I should.

Prof. G. once had a pair of companions living in her home. She has a particular affinity for animals, and in the summer leaves her door open for animals to come and go. At one point, she had a groundhog and a skunk living in her home. Specifically, they slept in her armchair. At dusk or so, the skunk would crawl out of the arm of the chair and wander outside. A few moments later, the groundhog would come in, pull a wad out of the arm of the chair, crawl in, and go to sleep. In the morning, the groundhog would come out of the chair, stretch, and wander outside. A few moments later, the skunk would come back in, stuff the wad back into the arm, crawl in, and go to sleep.

Now, both animals were wild. They weren't tame, and they certainly weren't pets. Prof G did, however, christen the skunk "Moonstone."

Moonstone liked to go for car rides (I'm not sure how Prof G and Moonstone discovered this). When Prof G went to lecture at university, she would wake Moonstone up and show him the cat carrier. If Moonstone felt up to a ride, he'd get in the carrier and away they'd go. When they got to the lecture hall, she'd put Moonstone's carrier behind the podium so nobody got nervous. No one ever knew...until the one day she didn't latch the cat carrier properly.

Prof G. was giving a lecture on Native North American worldview, and she hadn't noticed until Moonstone was halfway across the floor between the podium and the first row of seats. She kept quiet about it, knowing that if she pointed Moonstone out, there'd be a panic and he might spray. Moonstone wandered up to the front and started sniffing students' backpacks at their feet. Once Moonstone was satisfied, he sauntered back to his carrier and got in. Quickly, then, she latched the cage so he couldn't get back out.

Then she asked the class, "Did anyone just see anything unsual?"

At first no one put up their hand, but then one girl did: "Well, this sounds weird, but I thought I saw a skunk...except it can't be that, because there can't be a skunk in here."

Prof G. picked up the cat carrier, put it on the podium, and opened the door. A little black-and-white stripped nose poked out...and the class went into a panic, grabbing their bags and running from the room.

The moral, according to my professor, is that the post-Enlightenment way of thinking, for all of its benefits, has several problems, one of which being that we literally do not see something if we don't believe it is possible...and this has reprecussions in the study of religion, particularly Aboriginal religions. This theory may not be terribly interesting, so I'll leave it at that. You can post if you want more info.

However, is this not an awesome story? I now keep hoping for the day that I see a skunk in class, wandering around at my feet. If it happens, I plan to stay very quiet, and maybe I'll have the chance to pet him...and hopefully I won't get sprayed when the class freaks out and runs away.

Dream Walking

Well, I heard this some time ago; I'm really not sure why I haven't posted about this before. However, now is as good a time as any.


Last semester, I was in a class called The Religions of Native Peoples. Perhaps you'll read more later. It was a fascinating class, but I left the notes back at school, so I won't be able to refer directly. The prof specializes in this field and, while not First Nations herself, has great sympathy and in many cases belief in these religions.

Two of the lectures were given by a fairly reknowned scholar in the field named Marie-Francois Guedon. If you're in the field and don't know her name, it's possible because she's a French-Canadian scholar, and therefore doesn't publish in the English language.

Our professor later told us several stories about Marie-Francois' experiences as sort of case studies for assorted lessons. The following is one such lesson.

The Dene have a fascinating worldview that I will maybe get into some day. Dreaming is very important to the Dene. They believe that they can walk through the world in their dreams...but they see the world differently when dreaming. The Dene also believe that they can walk into other people's dreams to talk to them. This is a learned ability, but not something you could get from a book; a person can only learn how by having it done to them repeatedly. Children often stay with their aunts when very young in order to learn this skill. When someone walks into your dream, according to my prof, they can't see what you're dreaming, but you see them and they can talk to you.

According to the prof, Professor Guedon learned to do this during her work with the Dene. Generally, she studies the religious traditions of a native group by living with them for extended periods of time. In the case of the Dene, she 'became' Dene, and learning to walk into dreams was necessary in order to be truly Dene. The prof says that Guedon once walked into her dream. The prof was in a perfect summer meadow, and suddenly, a door opened in the sky, and Guedon's head poked through. The prof said, "Marie-Francois, is that you?" Guedon said, "Yes," and giggled. The prof said, "Well, what is it?" Guedon said, "Phone me tomorrow." "OK," said the prof, and then the door closed. The next day, the prof phoned Guedon and asked if she has spoken to her in her dream. Guedon, according to the prof, giggled in response.

Now, I'm not asking you to believe this. I generally follow the axiom that "there are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," but that's between my and God. I would ask, however, that you give this some thought. If nothing else, it makes for an interesting story.

When I've spoken of this to Christian friends, I sometimes get some concern--disbelief and devil worship are common refrains. In the latter case, I'd refer you to the Dene prophets who develop Dene versions of Christianity. An Orthodox Christian might not like the looks of it, but it's certainly interesting to me. On top of that, Christian mystics often have dream-visions. No reason to think that dream-walking isn't a genuine miracle, if you can follow me down that alley.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting story, and figured I'd pass it on. I've kept that professor's name anonymous for my privacy and hers. Guedon...well, I think she's fairly public about this.

Journal #2: An Analysis of "True" and "False" Wit, and Amphibiousness

The Lives of Amphibians and Chimæras:

Journal #2

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An Analysis of "True" and "False" Wit, and Amphibiousness

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Joseph Addison defines 'true' wit as involving the resemblance of ideas (my mistress' breast is as white as snow--and as cold, too) and 'false' wit as operating on the resemblance of letters, syllables, words, or sentences (as in anagrams, doggerel rhyme, puns, or concrete poetry). He then defines mixed wit, which combines the two. This mixed wit is praised to some degree, called "more or less perfect" at one point, while at others I get the feeling that he prefers 'true' wit on its own, especially when regarding Cowley; however, it is the names of the wits and not their practitioners that interest me.

Addison seems to take a Platonic stance on truth in his discussion of wit. In reality, 'true' wit is hardly closer to truth than 'false' wit; false wit is not false because, as Sir Philip Sidney would say, what affirms nothing does not lie. What Addison is really trying to say is that he approves of the concordance of ideas more than he approves of the concordance of sounds or shapes. He thus attributes "true" to that of which he approves and "false" to that of which he disapproves. In a way reminiscent to Plato, he attributes goodness to truth and truth to goodness, and badness to falsehood and so forth. That, at least, is my take on it. Perhaps he considers something devoid of meaning to be false (and then I am upset to think of what his opinion of 'Jabberwocky' must be), but this is really a logical impossibility. Nonsense cannot be false (thankfully) just as it cannot be true.

This throws an interesting slant on "mixed" wit, belonging half of the time to falsehood and half of the time to truth, a sort of amphibian. I would think automatically that this is the best form of wit of all. However, in the connotation of wits' various names, mixed wit must fall below true wit. This, then, may be the source of the confusion I reas in Addison's article (whether the confusion should be attributed to Addison or myself is debatable and likely irrelevant): wit that uses both resemblance of idea and sound seems best and most skillful of all, but the names require that it is less desired than wit using resemblance of idea alone.

I, of course, prefer the amphibious nature of mixed wit. The amphibian, incidentally, is a useful symbol for many things; in some cases, Christ is represented by a mermaid, which is both human and piscean and thus amphibious, as a symbol of His being both human and divine. In my Religions of Native Peoples class, I learned that Inuit believe those who cross both halves of the world (defined by dualities in Inuit cosmology) have power, especially those raised as the opposite gender until puberty (which is socially acceptable in that culture). Mixed wit, like these others, should have a sort of power that a pure-bred with would not. Among other things, mixed wit is easier to remember.

Lakotah Nation

I just saw this on Wikipedia, and I think it's interesting news.

On December 25, 2007, a man named Russell Means and, presumably, supporters of his idea declared the Lakotah peoples withdrawn from their treaties with the United States of America. According to him, the Republic of Lakotah is an independent sovereign state within the geography most of us recognise as part of the States. He discusses issuing passports and driver's licenses in the nation's name.

(Note: in case you don't know, Lakotah are Native American people, part of the Sioux. They occupy land mainly in North and South Dakota.)

The Republic of Lakotah would be run as the post-contact Lakotah nations were: this is described as a libertarian, decentralised government with caveat emptor (buyer beware, loosely) and posse comitatus (the right of a sherrif to conscript abel-bodied men for police duty) legal systems. Taxation would be local and strictly consentual. They likely would not operate under a currency system like that of Canada or the US.

As it stands, the Republic of Lakotah has no where been recognised as a sovereign nation, though Means claims Ireland and a few other countries are interested--whatever that means. The some of the elders of the other Lakotah reservations have said that Means has made this declaration without their consent, and in fact has done so despite the lack of support from the Lakotah people themselves. The US government's official stance is that this declaration is irrelevant coming from Means because he has no authority to make the decision. In my ill-informed opinion, I suggest that this will blow over sometime in the fairly near future because the declaration has no real sticking power.

This event instead serves to highlight the mistreat of Aboriginal peoples by the American government--and, need it be said, by the Canadian government as well. It asks that we re-examine our relationship with previous sovereign nations (though the system of sovereignty has left them out, I suppose because they were not part of its founding in Eurasia) of our continent. I will state clearly that I do not suggest that it is possible or even necessary to grant sovereignty to Native American tribes or attempt to return all claimed land. Land return is problematic because a) the nomadic lifestyles of pre-contact American society does not mesh well with borders and b) the original territories are under dispute be parties that warred pre-contact. Further, I don't care for the idea of disinheriting people who, in their own actions and not of their ancestors, have done no ill in the acquisition of land. However, that being said, the relationship is strained and needs examining, and this incident shows this well.

For my sources of information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Lakotah
http://www.republicoflakotah.com/
http://www.canku-luta.org/PineRidge/laramie_treaty.html