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November 25, 2004
Thanksgiving
20002001
2002
2003
Thanking is where practicality and spirituality meet.
“Thank you” is part of a utilitarian social etiquette, lubricating our necessary interactions, but it is also the most basic form of prayer, one step up from the utter prostration of sheer worship and awe; “thank you” is the voice of the Ego in the face of the Mystery. The functionality of the “real world” thank you is a reflection of its appropriateness as an existential attitude. At least I argued this line in 2001 by way of a birdwatching story, and the follow-up validation provided the next year represents exactly the sort of on-going dialogue of discovery that I hoped to cultivate in the Arboretum. Not so much proof of the ineffable as a day list of its observable consequences.
The face is off the pumpkin now, and Autumn orange and red and brown are the colors of the day, conjuring their mundane magic. Warm earth-tones, even as the Earth grows cold, remind us that when the sun sinks south we must kindle our own warmth, drawing on last season’s stores. The colors also offer the last great seasonal display before the whiteness of Winter writes us a new page. So naturally Thanksgiving has provided the platform for Fall photo essays, as in 2000, even though that year’s entry, and the one for 2002, were posted from abroad, as part of DMTree’s ongoing (if occasional) effort to spend this New World holiday in the Old.
Last year I offered thanks for the first-ever harvest of the Chestnut renewal program in the Park, but one thing I’ve never really done here is to give a specific round of thanks for the Arboretum itself, its inspirations and its support structure. It may read more like an Oscar acceptance speech than a prayer, but I’m not expecting any awards and who’s to say that either form is inherently insincere? I just thought that after five years the occasion has earned something more than philosophizing. And here no one can hurry me off stage.
Now if you’re going to go thanking people, you must start with your parents. I’ve always posted on the parental holidays, and I’ve mentioned my esteem for my mother, but I’ve said much more about my father, as the act of writing about the events surrounding his death in 2000 transformed my understanding of how the weblog space would work for me. That passage past, I remain eternally thankful to both of my parents for their nurturing of me. They opened me to the beauties of art and nature, to the pleasure of learning, and to the duty of intellectual honesty. If I’ve accomplished anything in the Arboretum, it flows from there.
But I can’t even talk about the Arboretum without thanking the one person most responsible for empowering the project. Jim Bassett provides the server space and the programming expertise behind the digitalmediatree site and its roster of blogs. He also provides a positive vision of the possibilities of computer technology and culture, and makes DMTree a great place to be on the web. The vision will, by its nature, always outstrip the reality, but Jim has realized a significant degree of his vision, and sustained it for five years, which is a long time in cyberspace. This has made for a special time in my life as well, and I thank Jim for his generosity in creating this unique community.
And DMTree is nothing if not a community. I’m thankful to everyone who reads my page, or any of the pages on the site. Mostly I’m talking about my good friends, but the tree has grown to encompass a broader audience than that, and it’s been gratifying to establish new relationships or receive the occasional nod from a passing stranger. But in the end it pretty much comes down to my friends, the new ones, and all those good folks who have put up with, and even encouraged me, for years. All I can say is “thanks.”
Of course there’s Central Park itself, for which I’m thankful. But I’m really thanking people, and I’d be remiss to neglect the people of the Park. They’re not usually the focus of the Arboretum, but I regularly intersect with a number of people, mostly birdwatchers, who have enriched my experience of the place. Mention must be made of Tom Fiore, birder deluxe, and Mike Freeman, proprietor of my “other” website, the NYC Bird Report.
As far as the content of the Arboretum goes, it grew out of my increasing involvement in Central Park, played out against my understanding of what I think of as Traditional spirituality. To the extent that I have any understanding, it’s rooted in experience. What I’ve written is an attempt to express what I’ve felt, from listening to folk music as a child, to trying to paint landscapes as a student, to involvement in actual ecstatic ritual practice. Or just walking in the Park. But experience benefits from guidance, and there are a few guides I’ve been overlong in acknowledging here; people who have influenced the posture I’ve taken in the Arboretum and the practice I’ve followed.
The late Terence McKenna was a great inspiration, and is sorely missed. He had a talent for making outlandish thinking credible. He didn’t just talk to plants; he listened to them, and related their vegetable wisdom back to the rest of us. His psychedelic dialectic linked techno-futurism to ancient shamanic mysticism in what he termed the Archaic Revival; an evolving consciousness to which I like to think this page contributes.
McKenna was a true visionary, an eschatological prophet even. But I’m also beholden to a somewhat more conservative group of traditionalists from the British Isles. John and Caitlin Matthews, as expositors of the Western Mystery Tradition, have been helpful to me, in particular with regard to the uses of the holidays as doorways to the Mysteries. I’d also like to note R. J. Stewart’s recovery of initiatory practice through the deconstruction of folk ballads, and Adam McLean’s insight into alchemical imagery.
All of these authors are marketed as “New Age,” often in a “how-to” format offering practical exercises in what amounts to magic. This is not exactly the most intellectually respectable genre, but these folks represent the best face of a movement that shouldn’t be trivialized, despite its excesses. Beyond the nonsense and the frauds, there is a genuine spiritual desire being addressed here. These writers ply the contradiction of a rational approach to the Spirit: that to fairly apply the rigorous standards of rationality to first hand experience, such a study must of necessity cross the border into a world beyond rationality. I’m thankful for these voices that report back on the Mystery in terms that resonate with, and expand, my own understanding.
I’ve only tried to do the same thing in my own way. I’m thankful if anything I’ve written has struck a chord out there. I’m not without some confirmation to that effect, which is always gratifying, but even to the extent that I’ve failed to communicate, I’m thankful for the chance to try. We call that chance Life, but in my life I have a special venue in this Arboretum, and for that, and to all who have contributed to it, in whatever way, I give my heartfelt Thanks. Let that sentiment initiate once more the Holiday Season.