Monet's gardens

Monet’s gar­dens

Rain at night. Deep in the for­est. Rain drops from branch to branch like a song scale, like an exer­cise in pro­gres­sive melan­choly. You’re safe inside the for­est hut, a fire­place smol­der­ing, remem­ber­ing. Last embers of the day, a month, a year. The night is as deep as the for­est and your sleep is a tun­nel. The rain drops on your dreams like notes in con­cert with the rev­o­lu­tion of the earth. Peace in the val­ley, in the moun­tains, along the river bed, inside the pro­jec­tion of your story across the years.

Do you see beauty in this life, here, now? Do you think and feel and look for beauty around you? In the stars, in their con­nec­tions, in the con­trast between dark mat­ter and plan­ets, suns, novas? On the shore, with the ocean pound­ing the sand with a kind of love that means eter­nal con­nec­tions, end­less rhythms, the ebb and flow of grace and sacred mois­ture? Do you rejoice in the laugh­ter of chil­dren, their quick­ness and their energy, their love of motion and play, their wonder-​​stretched eyes? Or the sight of a woman, at rest on the ground of that same deep for­est, read­ing for a moment, then look­ing off into her own dream-​​world, smil­ing, seek­ing answers, with patience and hope.

The long view. High on the moun­tain, over­look­ing seven val­leys. Broad the eyes, the vision, the sweep of life in con­text. Wide-​​eyed with a kind of gen­tle won­der. Peace. Beauty. Truth.

Here and now. This earth. This one life. Beauty is the cen­ter of the cen­ter of every­thing, every­where. It exists. We name it. We know it. In rare moments, inspired, blind­ing, rag­ing moments, we cre­ate it. In rare moments, qui­es­cent, serene, hov­er­ing, we make art. But mostly it sur­rounds us with or with­out us. The for­est always makes sounds.

Any reli­gion that does not push us toward the full embrace of beauty on this planet, at this time, within the span of our short lives, is in error. A ter­ri­ble error with mon­strous reper­cus­sions. Any reli­gion that does not focus our atten­tion on the sacred aspects of Nature, on its deep, rich com­plex­i­ties and vari­eties, its har­mo­nious and dishar­mo­nious pro­tean forms … is in error. Any reli­gion that does not push us into the embrace of the beauty cre­ated by humans within the larger con­text of Nature is in error. The hor­rific reper­cus­sions are obvi­ous, and they con­tin­u­ously take my breath away.

 

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Juan Gris

Violin and Checkerboard, by Juan Gris. 1913

 

Taking sides quickly or see­ing just two. Failing to walk in their moc­casins. Failing to see their shoes, their way. Failing to care that they have a point of view at all. One of many. A mul­ti­plic­ity of views. Beauty lies in that mul­ti­plic­ity, that vari­ance, that con­trast between all things. Contrast between then and now, front and back, up and down, depth and fore­ground. Contrast. A thou­sand lev­els of dif­fer­ence. A thou­sand sides, all shout­ing for atten­tion. Those who can see the most, win.

In Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, he talks about an exper­i­ment in Israel. Children were sep­a­rated into two groups. One group was read the story of Joshua and his slaugh­ter of all the inhab­i­tants in the city of Jericho as it’s told in the Old Testament. The other group was read the same story, but the names were changed. Joshua became a Chinese gen­eral, and the name and loca­tion of Jericho were changed. Same exact story, dif­fer­ent geog­ra­phy, dif­fer­ent names.

The chil­dren in the first group, in gen­eral, agreed that Joshua’s destruc­tion of the city was jus­ti­fied. The chil­dren in the sec­ond group said the Chinese gen­eral was guilty of atrocities.

Sides. Teams. Us ver­sus Them. Just two. Wrong and right. We can jus­tify almost any­thing in the name of that .…

 

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The accep­tance of tor­ture and the fre­quency of church atten­dance. The Pew Research Center has an inter­est­ing sur­vey regard­ing that link, and it’s not what you might expect. The cor­re­la­tion goes in the wrong direc­tion. The more church atten­dance, in gen­eral, the more sup­port for the prac­tice, though the kinds of churches involved also play a part in atti­tudes toward that prac­tice. Though it’s not explic­itly stated in the sur­vey, it strikes me as implicit in the results: if a per­son reads the Bible lit­er­ally, in a fun­da­men­tal­ist mode, he or she is more likely to sup­port torture.

Why? What are the exis­ten­tial ratio­nales for that cor­re­la­tion? What is it about some reli­gions, or some inter­pre­ta­tions of those reli­gions, that lead fol­low­ers to embrace hier­ar­chies of vio­lence and jus­tify them? I have some the­o­ries, and will write about them in the days ahead …


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