On Hoops Within Hoops Within Hoops Within Hoops
There has been a discourse in a discussion group of which I frequent, in these past few weeks, of the personal spiritual journey experienced by those who have shared with the group and posted their stories and thoughts. And what a journey each has experienced, and expressed, and shared.
And the lurkers too have spiritual journeys.
For some, their spiritual journey has been staid, uneventful, predictable. Yet for others, a warp and weave of the Dinseyland-linear-herding-throng-control, the seemingly endless back and forth oscillation, the going forth and coming hither, only to reach an end point that may be somewhere between comforting and annoyingly close to the point at which they started.
And I too have a spiritual journey. And I have shared glimpses of it in other posts. But today, there are parts of my spiritual journey that I recognize as being somewhat congruent with the beauty and singularity of another’s spiritual journey. A journey expressed in the spirit-filled words of Black Elk . . . A Native American shaman.
And as I see layers and layers of concentric circles in my spiritual journey, Black Elk speaks so eloquently of that metaphor in his.
For he speaks in terms of a circle. Specifically, his word is “hoop.”
He never observed this earth from a geo-stationary satellite . . . he never witnessed this earth from any one of NASA’s earth-orbit shuttle vehicles, but his perspective was as visionary as if he were there himself.
I don’t know when he wrote this . . . I have no idea of his frame of reference. But no-matter, for what he says is without reference. It is transcending. And like a hoop, it has no point of reference.
The beauty of a hoop as a metaphor for The Spirit, for the spirit, for his people, for us, for our physical home, for our place in the reaches of the circular heavens . . . it is one awesome metaphor.
And the Native Americans and aboriginal peoples everywhere had no concept of the complexities and intricacies of the circles that actually formed their lives . . . but alas, only the predicable circles they were so intimately acquainted with. The circle of day and night. The circle of lunar regularity. The circle of the sleep of the winter, the awakening in the spring, the blush of the summer, the blessedness of the harvest, the sleep of the winter again. The circle of bright moving elements in the night sky. The circle of the conception of a life, the birth of an infant, the growth of a child, the maturity of man and woman, the death of an honored elder.
They had no need to know of other circles in their lives. They didn’t need to know that what they observed as the cycle of the seasons of the year was in fact a circuitous route around a minuscule star in a far-off corner of galaxy resembling a puddle of spilled milk. They had no need to know they were swirling in humongous circles, revolving like the swirling tea-cups in the ubiquitous tea-cup carnival ride. No need to fathom that the spilled milk itself was swirling as a miniscule part of a bigger swirl, and swirls within swirls within swirls within swirls . . . for as far as the Hubble telescope can possibly see. Black Elk didn’t need to know that. And if he did, it would have filled his soul with affirmation of the even greater magnitude of The Spirit.
Black Elk had no inclination to prick his finger . . . gaze into a speck of blood. See the electron micrograph profiles of carbons, nitrogens, oxygens, irons, phosphates, zincs, and 60 other components that are swirling in hoops. Nor did he study the swirling interactions of the electron clusters swirling around these minions of metal ions and biological molecules that are teaming in that speck of blood. He only knew that blood was sacred. That a Spirit was indwelling within that blood. It was a force to be honored. To be respected. To be trusted. He knew that blood within his world of life was meant to sustain other life. And when he killed an animal . . . it was a sacred gift of the Spirit, and that animal’s life was to be honored and respected in a Most Holy of ways.
Black Elk stood on a mountain:
Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round beneath me was the whole hoop of the world.
No, he couldn’t see his world as a blue oasis in a pitch-black abyss. He couldn’t see thousands of miles of swirling clouds. He couldn’t see entire oceans at one glance. It is likely he had never seen an ocean at any time. For what he saw was a horizon that curved. He recognized his visible world was an arc in a hoop. That he was a part of a circular whole.
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw.
He was not astro-physicist. He was not micro-biologist. He was not an agronomist. He was not economist. He was not sociologist. He was not a theologian. But he was gifted with the essence of The Spirit. And he knew what he saw. For he knew from whence his spiritual journey had come . . . to where it was to go.
For I was seeing in the sacred manner the shape of all things of the spirit and the shapes as they must live together like one being.
His spiritual journey was a journey of hoops. Of circles. Of spheres of things beyond the mortal.
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that make one circle, wide as daylight and starlight . . .
And he was humbled. He saw his place. He say the place of his people. He knew of the ways of His Spirit.
And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.
And I saw that it was holy.
Black Elk.
[The words of Black Elk are the responsive reading No. 614 in the Unitarian-Universalist hymnal, “Singing the Living Tradition.”]
Our worship service this past week, was in respect and “re-creation” of the Spirit-Essence of the natural world. Of the only text book of the Spirit that we all can read . . . for it is an equal testament to any and all that wish to read her story.
And what a story of salvation it reveals.
So far different from what so many people are engrained with today. So far different from the limiting literalization of the great and honored sacred myths from antiquity that exemplify the principles of spirituality. So far from the codified creeds of a barbaric pre-enlightened geo-centered theology. So far removed from the rigidity of a singular snow-bound musher’s trail.
Yes, what a story of salvation it reveals.
That we are part of a cycle. A grand cycle. Of hoops and swirls. And for as far back as one can look and for as far ahead as one can project . . . we are a part of one awesome grand cycle of hoops and circles.
For as deep within a living molecule as one can hope to peer, for as far as the strained eye of Hubble can see, we are made up of, and participate in one awesome grand cycle of hoops and circles.
As the miniscule, orderly, arrangement of nucleotides gives a three-dimensional structure of DNA swirling within the aqueous medium of a living organelle, as that three-dimensional structure is the essence of information, of knowledge itself . . . we are a part of that story of salvation.
As the biological molecules making up neurons and synapses of the brain are as physically hard-coded in biochemical structures and as real as the Rock of Gibraltar, they are nothing but three-dimensional purely physical structures.
And like software in your computer is also nothing, for it is nothing, but a metaphysical way of ordering the scintilla of magnetic elements of physical memory in a patterned way that imparts “life” and functionality, the soul is the software of human existence.
And what a story of salvation that is.
For a humanly indefinable Essence of Spirit is in control of both the biochemistry of life and the soul that gives it the spirit and animation.
And what a story of salvation that is.
And Black Elk would understand that. And he would see the workings of The Great Spirit in that. And he would honor and respect that. And like his fore-fathers for millennia before, he would provide sustaining stewardship for that.
And he is abhorrent of a mindset that rapes and pillages this earth for all it is worth.
And he has lost his story of salvation when that happens.
And we have lost our story of salvation when that happens.
And I find myself on spiritual journey of circles.
And my circle returns me to things primal. To a story told by the creation.
To a story that can be read without the necessity of relying on the “testimony” of others.
To a story that is not based on the spectral evidence of a deathly kind like that experienced by harmless women in a city of peace in the old Colony of Massachusetts.
We each have our spiritual journeys.
The journey is ours. Personal. We can plot and map and implement parts of our route. We can select our tour books, guide books, road-side attraction pamphlets. But we each inevitably must find our detours, and scenic side trips, our forced changes in plans, our delays. But no matter what, it is still our journey.
I pray that we don’t become mush dogs on the Iditarod trail. And for certain, not to become just anyone of the following dogs. For our spiritual journey can be so much more fulfilling than that.
For unless you are the lead dog, the view on that journey as all the same.
But there is yet another formation for mush dogs. And it doesn’t involve the linearity and rigidity of single path.
For each dog is independently tethered to the sled. And collectively, they fan out into an arc.
And the musher must have inordinate more skill to control this consist.
And The Spirit becomes even more infinitely awesome with the freedom yet gentle control of these free-spirited dogs.
And each dog gets his or her own view.
And each person experiences the beauty of their own spiritual journey.
And Black Elk then sees another hoop.
And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father . . . And I saw that it was holy.
The Refectory Manager
And the lurkers too have spiritual journeys.
For some, their spiritual journey has been staid, uneventful, predictable. Yet for others, a warp and weave of the Dinseyland-linear-herding-throng-control, the seemingly endless back and forth oscillation, the going forth and coming hither, only to reach an end point that may be somewhere between comforting and annoyingly close to the point at which they started.
And I too have a spiritual journey. And I have shared glimpses of it in other posts. But today, there are parts of my spiritual journey that I recognize as being somewhat congruent with the beauty and singularity of another’s spiritual journey. A journey expressed in the spirit-filled words of Black Elk . . . A Native American shaman.
And as I see layers and layers of concentric circles in my spiritual journey, Black Elk speaks so eloquently of that metaphor in his.
For he speaks in terms of a circle. Specifically, his word is “hoop.”
He never observed this earth from a geo-stationary satellite . . . he never witnessed this earth from any one of NASA’s earth-orbit shuttle vehicles, but his perspective was as visionary as if he were there himself.
I don’t know when he wrote this . . . I have no idea of his frame of reference. But no-matter, for what he says is without reference. It is transcending. And like a hoop, it has no point of reference.
The beauty of a hoop as a metaphor for The Spirit, for the spirit, for his people, for us, for our physical home, for our place in the reaches of the circular heavens . . . it is one awesome metaphor.
And the Native Americans and aboriginal peoples everywhere had no concept of the complexities and intricacies of the circles that actually formed their lives . . . but alas, only the predicable circles they were so intimately acquainted with. The circle of day and night. The circle of lunar regularity. The circle of the sleep of the winter, the awakening in the spring, the blush of the summer, the blessedness of the harvest, the sleep of the winter again. The circle of bright moving elements in the night sky. The circle of the conception of a life, the birth of an infant, the growth of a child, the maturity of man and woman, the death of an honored elder.
They had no need to know of other circles in their lives. They didn’t need to know that what they observed as the cycle of the seasons of the year was in fact a circuitous route around a minuscule star in a far-off corner of galaxy resembling a puddle of spilled milk. They had no need to know they were swirling in humongous circles, revolving like the swirling tea-cups in the ubiquitous tea-cup carnival ride. No need to fathom that the spilled milk itself was swirling as a miniscule part of a bigger swirl, and swirls within swirls within swirls within swirls . . . for as far as the Hubble telescope can possibly see. Black Elk didn’t need to know that. And if he did, it would have filled his soul with affirmation of the even greater magnitude of The Spirit.
Black Elk had no inclination to prick his finger . . . gaze into a speck of blood. See the electron micrograph profiles of carbons, nitrogens, oxygens, irons, phosphates, zincs, and 60 other components that are swirling in hoops. Nor did he study the swirling interactions of the electron clusters swirling around these minions of metal ions and biological molecules that are teaming in that speck of blood. He only knew that blood was sacred. That a Spirit was indwelling within that blood. It was a force to be honored. To be respected. To be trusted. He knew that blood within his world of life was meant to sustain other life. And when he killed an animal . . . it was a sacred gift of the Spirit, and that animal’s life was to be honored and respected in a Most Holy of ways.
Black Elk stood on a mountain:
Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round beneath me was the whole hoop of the world.
No, he couldn’t see his world as a blue oasis in a pitch-black abyss. He couldn’t see thousands of miles of swirling clouds. He couldn’t see entire oceans at one glance. It is likely he had never seen an ocean at any time. For what he saw was a horizon that curved. He recognized his visible world was an arc in a hoop. That he was a part of a circular whole.
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw.
He was not astro-physicist. He was not micro-biologist. He was not an agronomist. He was not economist. He was not sociologist. He was not a theologian. But he was gifted with the essence of The Spirit. And he knew what he saw. For he knew from whence his spiritual journey had come . . . to where it was to go.
For I was seeing in the sacred manner the shape of all things of the spirit and the shapes as they must live together like one being.
His spiritual journey was a journey of hoops. Of circles. Of spheres of things beyond the mortal.
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that make one circle, wide as daylight and starlight . . .
And he was humbled. He saw his place. He say the place of his people. He knew of the ways of His Spirit.
And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.
And I saw that it was holy.
Black Elk.
[The words of Black Elk are the responsive reading No. 614 in the Unitarian-Universalist hymnal, “Singing the Living Tradition.”]
Our worship service this past week, was in respect and “re-creation” of the Spirit-Essence of the natural world. Of the only text book of the Spirit that we all can read . . . for it is an equal testament to any and all that wish to read her story.
And what a story of salvation it reveals.
So far different from what so many people are engrained with today. So far different from the limiting literalization of the great and honored sacred myths from antiquity that exemplify the principles of spirituality. So far from the codified creeds of a barbaric pre-enlightened geo-centered theology. So far removed from the rigidity of a singular snow-bound musher’s trail.
Yes, what a story of salvation it reveals.
That we are part of a cycle. A grand cycle. Of hoops and swirls. And for as far back as one can look and for as far ahead as one can project . . . we are a part of one awesome grand cycle of hoops and circles.
For as deep within a living molecule as one can hope to peer, for as far as the strained eye of Hubble can see, we are made up of, and participate in one awesome grand cycle of hoops and circles.
As the miniscule, orderly, arrangement of nucleotides gives a three-dimensional structure of DNA swirling within the aqueous medium of a living organelle, as that three-dimensional structure is the essence of information, of knowledge itself . . . we are a part of that story of salvation.
As the biological molecules making up neurons and synapses of the brain are as physically hard-coded in biochemical structures and as real as the Rock of Gibraltar, they are nothing but three-dimensional purely physical structures.
And like software in your computer is also nothing, for it is nothing, but a metaphysical way of ordering the scintilla of magnetic elements of physical memory in a patterned way that imparts “life” and functionality, the soul is the software of human existence.
And what a story of salvation that is.
For a humanly indefinable Essence of Spirit is in control of both the biochemistry of life and the soul that gives it the spirit and animation.
And what a story of salvation that is.
And Black Elk would understand that. And he would see the workings of The Great Spirit in that. And he would honor and respect that. And like his fore-fathers for millennia before, he would provide sustaining stewardship for that.
And he is abhorrent of a mindset that rapes and pillages this earth for all it is worth.
And he has lost his story of salvation when that happens.
And we have lost our story of salvation when that happens.
And I find myself on spiritual journey of circles.
And my circle returns me to things primal. To a story told by the creation.
To a story that can be read without the necessity of relying on the “testimony” of others.
To a story that is not based on the spectral evidence of a deathly kind like that experienced by harmless women in a city of peace in the old Colony of Massachusetts.
We each have our spiritual journeys.
The journey is ours. Personal. We can plot and map and implement parts of our route. We can select our tour books, guide books, road-side attraction pamphlets. But we each inevitably must find our detours, and scenic side trips, our forced changes in plans, our delays. But no matter what, it is still our journey.
I pray that we don’t become mush dogs on the Iditarod trail. And for certain, not to become just anyone of the following dogs. For our spiritual journey can be so much more fulfilling than that.
For unless you are the lead dog, the view on that journey as all the same.
But there is yet another formation for mush dogs. And it doesn’t involve the linearity and rigidity of single path.
For each dog is independently tethered to the sled. And collectively, they fan out into an arc.
And the musher must have inordinate more skill to control this consist.
And The Spirit becomes even more infinitely awesome with the freedom yet gentle control of these free-spirited dogs.
And each dog gets his or her own view.
And each person experiences the beauty of their own spiritual journey.
And Black Elk then sees another hoop.
And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father . . . And I saw that it was holy.
The Refectory Manager
posted by The Refectory Manager | 8:56 PM
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