When I was young and ignorant of how wise I thought I was, spring would bring forth allergies, early-morning hymns that went on and on --low melodious man-rumbles and spooky vibratous descants from church ladies-- until I declared "I descant do this anymore."
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I recall feeling relief at abstaining from church later on, except on Easter, especially after reading Paul Tillich, "Christ the sacrament of the encounter with God." Also read Martin Buber. In "I And Thou", wrote, "The world and I include each other reciprocally."
So how do I, from such foundations, explain Easter? I don't. I get my cane and shuffle out to the barn. I contemplate junk, like the fragments of a decoy duck Norma's enate great grandfather carved 100 years ago. It has the craquelure of wood long wet, then dried for many years. Poor duck's head fell off years and years ago.
With the thirty-year-old purchase on the Pumphouse shelf of OATEY pvc cement-- immortally waterproof, which was so sealed I needed 2 pipewrenches to open, I spooned enough waterproof glue to recapitate the duck. Then went at him with a collar of acrylic paint.
What did I learn? If we want to meditate upon resurrecting ourselves, our species, reading, church, it's going to take a lot of practice, treks out to the barn, avoiding prejudgement, skills that can raise from injustice what can be raised --and OATEY.
Good old OATEY in a time of need.
ReplyDeleteWhere outdoor repair is needed, waterproof adhesive outdoes ELMER's, which I suspect is mainly cow milk.
DeleteI also like Duct Tape as the fix-it of choice.
ReplyDeleteI was tempted to use Duct Tape for phonetic reasons (Duct --Duck) but was indifferent to the look of silver.
DeleteMaybe we should think of Easter as a kind of cosmic OATEY, putting us back together in accord with the universal rebirth and new life of spring. I like to think of the resurrection as the beginning, the start of something better. When the tomb is empty, the real work begins, nothing is ever the same. BTW Tillich had an influence on my journeys. Peace!
ReplyDelete"cosmic OATEY", Love it! I discovered Paul Tillich shortly after his demise and read "Dynamics Of Faith". My mind --here in my 70s--is somewhat less facile but sure connected with the book back then. Resurrection? Even a recapitated duck is a new beginning: symbolically the real work is always beginning.
DeleteYou and OATEY did a good job on that duck. Your description of how you opened the OATEY made me smile. That's the downside of adhesives. The better they are, the harder they hold around the cap after first use.
ReplyDeleteAnd, once again, you have given me a new word: enate. Thanks, Geo. I hope all is well with you and yours.
O_Jenny, That duck began back in the misty past, got a pot-rim hook (partly visible in photo) from Norma's Dad, got recapitated by me --and OATEY-- on Easter because us devout Panpsychists believe resurrection is harder if your head is off. I hope all is well with you too.
DeleteGeo
ReplyDeleteI remember around the 4th grade having too many questions about transubstantiation, and wondering aloud why we all can't rise from the dead. Too many questions for St. Francis's nuns. I do like the idea of easter being the possibility of second chances. We all need a few of those occasionally, eh?
Best to you and Norma and the duck.
Mike
Dear Mike, me too. As children, the transformation of gametes into 4th graders is a tremendous mystery. Odds against getting to be anybody in particular are unimaginable. Yet, here we all are. I suspect this season reminds us that we are all products of 2nd chances. Best to you too.
DeleteYeah. In 5th grade, my ambition was to be a USFS Forest Ranger in Oregon. Alas, didn't happen.
DeleteDear Mike, Twice in the past 20 years I was gravely ill. I did not seek help from forest rangers but from another kind of hero, like you. To those who chose your profession, "alas" does not apply.
DeleteI really think Easter is the biggest joke of religious holiday of all..really? ...3 days and poof? really?..nah..
ReplyDeleteDear Jackiesue, It's an ongoing thing, venerating "3 days and poof" as spiritual enigma as well as temporal. We all know what "3 days" are but "poof" has always been under investigation.
DeleteThank Jesus you held onto that OATEY for 30 years, and it worked! Perhaps that's the true miracle of Easter? I dunno, but that duck is lucky you re-headed and revived it.
ReplyDeleteBe well, friend.
Love to you.
Dear Robyn, I DID thank Jesús for OATEY when we were working irrigation around Sloughhouse many years ago --replacing old galvanized field pipes with PVC. I ran out of cement and thanked him for a can of OATEY from his tool pouch. He replied, "Por nada para eso estan los amigos, but my name is pronounced Hey-soose." We are old men now, but still young gardeners, still learning a trade, an identity that transcends retirement.
DeleteI envy you, dear George, for having a barn to retreat to. The world is getting awfully loud and a lovely barn with trinkets of yesteryear is a wonderful church for the mind.
ReplyDeleteDear Arleen, So glad to hear from you! Indeed, the barn I built 40 years ago has become a repository of seasonal machines, hallowed tools and tarps, odd (some very odd) family relics --oh, and a corner of blanketed benches reserved for "Community Cats", usually 4 to 7 (twice that on stormy nights), who compose my security patrol. Like human body-guards They are specially trained in Racoon Intimidation.
DeleteDear Geo., that is a lovely restaurated duck! (My auto-correction corrected "restaurated" (again!!!) to "restarted" - well, that might work too.
ReplyDeleteYour OATEY might prove as a miracle glue for keeping soldiers in their own land, especially if one man has lost his head.
Easter here in Germany is the important feast for believers (they become fewer and fewer, as the Church is still in the middle of many awful scandals - a Church with many lame ducks - will they land in the Slough of Despond, as John Bunyan describes it in Pilgrim's Progress?:
"This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond: for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place; and this is the reason of the badness of this ground."
As far as I know Tillich believed in "reason and revelation" - let's hope that in these depressing days at least "reason" will get again into the brains of men.
"[…] Das, was uns unbedingt angeht, ist das, was über unser Sein oder Nichtsein entscheidet. " (Tillich)
I hope that "our Being/existence" will survive.
Greetings from your normally optimistic friend Britta
Dear Britta, beautiful comment. Thanks. Closing paragraph, with Tillich quote translates (to one who took German in high school) approximately:"What absolutely concerns us is what determines our being or non-being." I liked Tillich because he got right to the point of "Ultimate Concern" and remained there. Like you, I trust and hope that reason will obtain.
DeleteI also hope there is some metaphysical-miracle OATEY that can repair that "one man" who has lost his head (very careless of him) and set him to fixing what he broke. Slough of Despond is a good metaphor. I feel Pootin is falling head-first into Bunyan's Bog and there are limits even to what Oatey can do.
I'll bet Norma appreciated your resurrecting the duck her enate great grandfather carved duck, Geo. Objects that come down to us from the past often have special meaning.
ReplyDeleteI was reading the comments and "panpsychists" jumped out at me. I've spent the last three or four weeks struggling through the book "Galileo's Error" by Philip Goff. I have about 10 pages to go, and then I'm going to have to read it again. Some parts I've had to read over and over and over. When it comes to philosophy my head is as dense as that dried out duck decoy is.
Goff is a proponent of panpsychism. My blogging friend Baili in Pakistan lured me into reading it. It was hard enough to read without adding the challenge of reading it with one eye only. My double vision is so bad that it is very difficult to read and to write by hand. My solution, until my thyroid is stable and I can have my eyes fixed, is to use an eye patch, one night the right eye, the next night the left.
Goff is using panpsychism as a foundation for a new science of consciousness. I haven't sorted out how I feel about everything he says. I'm more of a dualist myself because I can't shake the belief I have a soul, even though Goff trashes dualists. I do think consciousness extends well beyond humans though. And how can you not like a book with Schrödinger's cat in it? I certainly wasn't expecting to find my favorite cat in a philosophy book ~ lol!
At any rate, Baili has ruined me. I even bought a magazine on metaphysics a couple of weeks ago. You are the first person I ever recall using the term "panpsychist," except for discovering it in Goff's book. So, if I'm having a hard time understanding something I know a devote panpsychist who can help me out.
Dear Louise, That silly word, panpsychist, is pretty useful in describing everything from irreducible subatomics to tremendous operations of the cosmos --us included-- involved in creating a single, almost unimaginably huge moment in time that we always perceive as the present. Cosmos, briefly, is that bit, that part of the infinite universe that we understand and live in --beyond that is the boundless expanding universe speeding toward no end of nothing. That's all I know at the moment, but we are very thinky beings who don't know what we'll think up next!
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