...more recent posts
Jan 15, 2001
Martin Luther King Day
...and the occasion for one last year-in-review. This time to treat diversity not through variety, but in the way the same place differs over the course of the year. A lot of our identity problems stem from...well, our identity, or our insistence on the sanctity of the same. And I mean “same” literally. Our faith that our ever changing selves, no less our social or racial groups, represent a continuity, and a signal truth: that while all may change around us, we remain ourselves; the same. All else must be measured by its failure to be us. Maybe we’d feel less proprietary if we changed our looks from season to season, the way so many plants and animals do. Race is just a way of dealing with local circumstances, but we are the great generalizers, learning to deal with these through cultural and technological means, while our bodies have not caught up with our languages. Our forms retain biological solutions to specifics of environments we have left behind. But we are still the same people, Black or White, as a bird, the Loon, say, is the same, though in its different plumages, of Winter or of Spring. An Oak is an Oak, with or without leaves. All of which brings up the point that in order to really know an Oak, or any tree, you’ve got to know its variant faces: its naked limbs; its Winter buds; its leaves, both green and red. Just so, we won’t learn all that Humanity might be, unless we are willing to learn more about it than we know about ourselves. The only ones who can teach us this are the Others.Give them a chance.
Jan 06, 2001
Epiphany
By definition, an epiphany is a manifestation, a showing forth, of the divine. In the parlance of the perceivers, it has come to mean the recognition, more than the showing. Not all that’s shown is seen, or, at least, not seen by all. Certainly that’s the case with the birds in the Park. No matter how hard I look, how many birds I see, there is invariably some unseen wonder noted in the Log Book, reminding me that there are people out there seeing more than I am. Seeing something different, anyway. I doubt that anyone else sees exactly what I do in the Park, but it’s evident that a lot of seeing gets done, well beyond what the average stroll-in-the-parker takes in. Still, I don’t think all the possible sights are exhausted. I’ve wondered if the birds keep a log of species that were in the Park, but went unseen. One wants to see everything, but in this World, contingencies are such that it just doesn’t work out that way. Which makes each fragment, every flitting bird, or briefly focused sunbeam, an epiphany of its own. The recognition that there’s something special going on here sanctifies our vision. Just as the Magi, with their arcane knowledge, saw more than a baby, we may learn to see, verified against the field guide of the heart, more than a bird.Happy Holidays,
and now, back to Winter...
Jan 05, 2001The Twelfth Day of Christmas
Jan 04, 2001The Eleventh Day of Christmas
Jan 03, 2001The Tenth Day of Christmas
Jan 02, 2001The Ninth Day of Christmas
Jan 01, 2001The Eighth Day of Christmas
is also New Year's Day.
Dec 31, 2000The Seventh Day of Christmas
Dec 30, 2000The Sixth Day of Christmas
Dec 29, 2000The Fifth Day of Christmas
Dec 28, 2000The Fourth Day of Christmas
Dec 27, 2000The Third Day of Christmas