Ibn Arabi

Abū 'Abdillāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī  (July 28, 1165-Nov. 10, 1240)

I follow the religion of love: whatever path love's camels take,

 

that is my religion and my faith

         --Ibn Arabi (anonymous translation)

                                                                          

The Petroglyph and the Symphony

A bighorn sheep stares at me.  I cannot tell from its profoundly inscrutable eye if it is alive or dead.  Three arrows stick out from its body.  The one that protrudes from its chest, where the heart would be, has probably inflicted the fatal wound.  It stands on a hill surrounded by snow-capped blue mountains that encircle it like a sacred hoop.  This is the center, the place of unity and wholeness, the intersection of the six holy directions.  The bighorn sheep was pecked on a basalt boulder by a Jornada Mogollon artist between six and nine hundred years ago.  The drawing was made by scratching through the patina of desert varnish that coats the boulder to expose the lighter-colored rock below.  Desert varnish, a sooty coating that covers nearly all of the rocks on this hill, is of organic origin.  Billions of bacteria living on the surface of the rock have left behind a coating of manganese and iron oxides.

     The bighorn sheep resides at the Three Rivers petroglyph site in southern New Mexico.  He shares a hill of intrusive igneous rock and hardy chaparral with at least 21,000 other petroglyphs carved by people living in a nearby village.  The Jornada Mogollon lived in pit-houses clustered as small settlements throughout the arid landscape of southern New Mexico.  They built their homes partially underground, which made them cool in the summer and easily heated in the winter.  They were also inveterate artists.  Their petroglyphs and pictographs are found at sites throughout their homeland, often in astonishing numbers and using a wide array of colors or etching techniques.

     As I contemplate the artistic talents of the person who created the bighorn sheep, this person who, through his or her work, allowed me to see the dead or dying animal centuries after its death, the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, so familiar from the films and even commercials that have used it as background music, comes to mind.  In this carving there is so much: the eternal struggle between life and death, the complex and contradictory relationship between nature and humanity, and the mystery, captured with almost unbearable power in that enigmatic, staring eye, of the animal mind, which—most frightfully—is also our mind.  All the terror and wonder of our naked human nature is revealed, as it is in Beethoven’s music.

     Beethoven wrote music because that was his trade.  He wrote for his contemporaries, and, ultimately, for himself.  Perhaps he dreamed that his music would still be able to touch people centuries after his death, but he had no assurance of immortality.  That was humanity’s gift to him.  In his time, Beethoven had his critics, but he knew the worth of his music.  He experienced the joy of success, of adulation and love for his work.  Irascible fellow that he was, he often complained that these things mattered little to him.  And yet, he would undoubtedly have felt most gratified, in all of his solitary brilliance, had he known with certainty the extent to which his work would be treasured and revered by future generations; had he possessed the knowledge that his work would be rediscovered and re-imagined with devotion by subsequent hosts of musicians and music lovers for centuries to come.

     My thoughts return to the artist who created the bighorn sheep.  I am aware of the fact that there are people who actually know what his motivations were in carving this work.  His or her descendants have kept alive the secrets of this place, those members of certain modern Pueblo clans who can claim an unbroken lineage with the blood of the Jornada Mogollon, and with their culture.  But those secrets are not for me.  I do not seek to desecrate that which should remain hidden.  Those mysteries belong to the realm of the sacred.  But I can’t help speculating about the artist, because his work—as art—moves me so powerfully.  Priest, historian, or whatever else he was, he was also, intentionally or not, an artist.  He or she created these works for his or her own people.  I do not ask why.  I do, however, wonder if this unknown artist could ever have imagined that hundreds of years hence, a man not of his own people or time, not of own his race or worldview, would be so moved by this expression of a universal human vision, of the universe itself.  For me, his work has withstood the corrosive properties of both time and nature, to be rediscovered in an age unimaginable to him, like the mysterious and profound and purifying light from a long-departed star.      

Día de Las Casas

Fray Bartolomé de las Casas

Defensor de los Indios
(c. 1484--18 July 1566)

Pocas vidas da el hombre como la tuya, pocas

sombras hay un árbol como tu sombra, en ella

todas las ascuas vivas del continente acuden...

              --Pablo Neruda “Fray Bartolomé de las Casas” 

St. Benedict

"Abnegare semetipsum sibi ut sequatur Christum."
                                  --Rule of St. Benedict 4:10

Benedict, who can express in words your contribution to humanity?  You have left us with a guide to the cross and resurrection, a school of the spirit, a continuing golden age.  Those who faithfully follow your rule have chosen the better part.  Art, architecture, science, philosophy, music, and so much more flourished as a side result of your simple ora et labora.  Perhaps the West would have by now torn itself to pieces were it not for the flame that your children have kept alive.

The Dreamtime

When one lives long enough, and in the same general place, the dreaming time becomes real.  A Ngalyod (Rainbow Snake) planted red water lilies in a billabong; they grow there to this day.  In fact, the Ngalyod still dwells at the bottom of the billabong, and his presence keeps the lilies red.  Another Snake seduced four sisters at their campsite.  The sisters still dwell in that spot, as trees.

     So, too, for me, the landscape of the neighborhood overflows with places that can only be fully experienced anagogically, as shrines and sanctums where spirits dwell.  The circle of grass where we sat, and Libby took my hand, still holds her form.  There is a gully where my children danced; the pressure of their feet making contact with the earth causes the gully to deepen each summer.  And I, myself, the boy who studied fossils in the rock of a wall, now dwell in that stone, young among the tiny Paul Klee spirals, cones, and wheels of the Ordovician Period.   

Birthday of Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse hat dem Geiste gedient, indem er als Erzähler, der er ist, vom Widerspruch zwischen Geist und Leben und vom Streit des Geistes gegen sich selber erzählte. Eben dadurch hat er den hindernisreichen Weg wahrnehmbarer gemacht, der zu einer neuen Ganzheit und Einheit führen kann. Als der Mensch aber, der er ist, als der homo humanus, der er ist, hat er den gleichen Dienst gedient, indem er stets, wo es galt, für die Ganzheit und Einigkeit des Menschenwesens eintrat.
     Nicht die Morgenlandfahrer und Glasperlenspieler allein grüßen dich heute in aller Welt, Hermann Hesse. Die Diener des Geistes in aller Welt rufen dir mitsammen einen großen Gruß der Liebe zu. Überall, wo man dem Geist dient, wirst du geliebt.

Hermann Hesse has served the human spirit through the fact that he, as a storyteller, has spoken of the contradiction between spirit and life, and of the conflict of the spirit against itself.  In this way he has shed light on the obstacle-laden journey that can lead to a new wholeness and unity.  Being the human that he is, being the homo humanus that he is, he has also served by reminding us of the need to honestly and fully reconcile the contradictions of our human nature.  It is not only the The League of Journeyers to the East and Glass Bead Players who greet you throughout the entire world today, Hermann Hesse.  All of the world’s servants of the spirit together acclaim a grand greeting of love.  Everywhere, where one serves the spirit, you are loved.
                                                         --Martin Buber, Neue deutsche Hefte, August 1957