<\/p>\n
I have been <\/p>\n Armstrong That said, how do Myth is about the Geologist and Reading about a Vermeij is Modern poetry The bounds between Myth seeks to Myth Today<\/b><\/p>\n Most of us have I have been In 1982 as her Williams writes<\/p>\n Just then a small Williams coaxed Towards the end of The land holds The skeptic will
\nstruggling with better understanding what Karen Armstrong calls mythos<\/i> in her book <\/span>The Battle for God<\/a><\/i>, <\/span>on religious fundamentalism worldwide.
\n<\/span>I think it is essential towards developing a deeper appreciation of what
\nPagan spirituality brings to the spiritual table, among many other things.
\nPagan spirituality is filled with myths, and is I think an essential part of
\nour spirituality, one in many ways barely rediscovered.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\ncontrasts mythos <\/i>to <\/span>logos<\/i>, arguing the “fundamentalisms” are quite modern in
\nrejecting myth in favor of literalistic understandings of scriptures, as modern
\nas science. <\/span>Because they argue on
\nthe same turf, they are incompatible, and because the fundamentalisms have
\nchosen to argue on science’s turf, they get the worse of the encounter, and
\nhence fall back on irrationality and, when they have the power, violence. <\/span>I think she is profoundly right on
\nthis. Fundamentalism is the religious version of secular nihilism.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwe regain an appreciation of mythos<\/i> as a
\nmeans of knowing?<\/span><\/p>\n
\ninterior meaning of things, particularly their meaning within the largest
\ncontext of meaning. <\/span>Read from the
\noutside myths are fanciful stories reflecting the times and cultures where they
\narose. <\/span>But this misses their essence,
\nlike analyzing a book by reflecting on its cover design.<\/p>\n
\nevolutionary biologist Geerat Vermeij in The Evolutionary World<\/a><\/i> starts us off. <\/span>Blind since the age of four, Vermeij
\nused a different set of senses to make important contributions to his field,
\nalong the way writing over 200 papers and five books. I learned a lot from his fine book. <\/span>Describing his experiences on two islands, one in Panama and
\nthe other in Puget Sound, he writes<\/span><\/p>\n
\nplace is by necessity a sequential act, filtered through someone else’s
\nsensibilities. <\/span>On one page we
\nmight read about trees; on another there is a vivid description of the termites
\nor the frogs or the birds. <\/span>Being
\nin the forest one experiences everything at once, and one notices things that
\nothers overlooked or considered too trivial to mention. <\/span>Shapes, sounds, smells, and
\nweather come together to offer the prepared mind an emergent conception of the
\nwhole. <\/span>The forest is like a city .
\n. . whose living parts . . . interact with one another and with their inanimate
\nsurroundings to create an integrated structure with properties none of the
\nconstituents possesses. . . . As I observe the whole . . . comparisons run
\nthrough my mind, not gradually or serially, but as multidimensional, disordered,
\nyet memorable thoughts. <\/span>My task as
\na scientific natural historian is to make sense of all this sensory and mental
\nferment. (167)<\/p>\n
\ndescribing wonderfully well the difference between direct encounter and the
\nlogocentric approach to communicating facts and insights about that encounter.
\nBut Vermeij’s description deals with a certain kind of surface. <\/span>That is, what is communicated
\nscientifically deals with what can be impersonally observed, measured,
\npredicted, or experimented on. <\/span>It
\ndeals with objects and their mutual relations as objects. <\/span>To do this he has to separate out from
\nthe initial experience he described so well what is scientifically interesting.
\nThe emotional impact of the whole is not communicated.<\/p>\n
\nfocuses on meaning as perceived by the poet, the world created by the poet’s
\nsubjectivity. It uses parts of the experience, say of being in a forest that
\nVermeij describes, in order to carry us just-beyond-what-words-can-say that the
\npoet is taking us to. <\/span>A poem is
\nmore than its literal meaning, given from the poet’s point of view, or at most
\na human point of view as translated through the poet. Poems are personal. Myths
\nare not.<\/p>\n
\npoetry and myth are porous, and a poet like Robinson Jeffers<\/a> or J. L. Stanley<\/a>, can straddle that line. But in our world today these efforts are considered
\npoetry and only poetry.<\/p>\n
\ndescribe the meaning from the standpoint of the world in which the poet\/myth
\nteller lives. As such it seeks to connect us with something that cannot<\/i> be communicated in a narrative, and yet <\/span>must
\n<\/i>use narrative to do so. Like ritual, myth
\nseeks to cross the border between this world and others. <\/span>It seeks to connect us with the meaning
\nof the world from the world’s point of view, which means myth assumes the world
\nhas a point of view. <\/span>This world is
\nanimate, it has interiority. And as such we enter into better or worse relationships
\nwith it. <\/span>Myth seeks to help us
\nensure those relationships are good ones, ones appropriate for us as human
\nbeings in a more-than-human world.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhad at least a sense of being immersed in patterns of meaning of which we can
\nonly grasp a part. <\/span>In that sense
\nthe world myth seeks to help us encounter is not so very far away. <\/span>But at the same time we have forgotten
\nhow to take our encounters seriously as a society, and so usually stick them
\naway in very private recesses of our mind as special, or dismiss them as “mere
\nsubjectivity.”<\/p>\n
\nreading and relishing <\/a>Pieces of White Shell: A Journey to Navajoland<\/a><\/i>, by Terry Tempest Williams. Not one of her newer works, I had discovered it while browsing a bookstore in
\nMoab this past November. <\/span>In it she
\ndescribed an event at her grandmother’s Christmas celebration in Utah. <\/span>The family tree is ornamented with
\ndecorations that tell the story of her family’s life, new ones being added
\nevery year honoring grandchildren and major events. As the years passed the
\ntree and its ornaments became a history of the family.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ngrandmother began reciting the story of the tree beginning with the observation
\n“You see, this tree is alive….” <\/span>As
\nshe continued Williams heard the sound of wings. <\/span>She mentioned it, but no one else heard. <\/span>Her grandmother picked up her
\nnarrative: “So you see why we think this tree is alive – (7)<\/p>\n
\nbird flew down the chimney, through the flames of the fire, and onto a branch
\nof the tree. <\/span>It was a weaver
\nfinch. <\/span>No one could speak. <\/span>A living ornament. <\/span>He stood on the bough as though it were
\nhis favorite perch in the forest.
\n<\/span>He then circled the tree three times, flew over to a corner of the
\nliving room, hit the copper chimes, and landed back underneath the tree with
\nall the animals.<\/p>\n
\nthe bird into her hands. <\/span>He was
\nunharmed by the fire. <\/span>“The next
\nthing I remember is crouching barefoot in the snow with the finch underneath a
\nyew bush. <\/span>I waited for some time
\nsoftly speaking to the little bird.
\n<\/span>And then he flew. <\/span>The night
\nwas crystalline. <\/span>As I walked back
\ninto the warm house, my grandmother out her arms around me as my grandfather
\nquietly said, “The story’s been written.” (7-8)<\/p>\n
\nher book Williams returned again to this account.<\/p>\n
\nstories. We can learn the stories natural history has to teach and marvel as a
\nchild over its simple design. <\/span>We
\ncan begin walking, trusting our own experience and thinking about all the
\nimagination can bring. <\/span>It is here
\nthat a small bird can land on a Christmas tree with a fire burning. <\/span>It disappears and we are left holding a
\nfeather.” (136-7)<\/p>\n
\nsimply say a bird got confused, flew down a chimney, landed in a Christmas
\ntree, bumped into a chime, was stunned, taken out of doors, and flew away. <\/span>End of story. <\/span>Williams is wiser.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n