Over the past few weeks I've been going to the Brownbagger's Lunch, a one-hour lunchtime free lecture sponsored by Acadia Lifelong Learning (ALL). I get regular notifications for this lecture series and for the most part have not seen anything that really grabbed me, but this month there were four lectures in a row that I wanted to hear.
The first was Marilyn Manzer's "In Search of a Moral Economy", the second Uwe Kaufman's "Kluscap, Blomidon and Wabanaki Mythology", the third Chris Mansky's "Blue Beach---Evolution's Greatest Mystery in Our Backyard", and the fourth Bill Zimmerman's "Finally, Free to Be!" The lecture this week is of less interest to me so I will happily take a break.
Of the four, Marilyn's was most inspiring and Chris's the most interesting (to me). Bill's was also interesting, his message was that as seniors/elders we are in a unique position to participate effectively in political life and have some impact on social justice issues. Uwe has done considerable research on Miqm'ah/Wabenaki mythology surrounding the character of Kluskap (Glooscap) and told a number of the stories he has gathered over the years about Kluscap. The Kluscap stories are interesting, they are not about a god but a being with supernatural powers in a time when supernatural was natural. Animals spoke, rocks moved. Each story is about some dilemma solved and the ramifications of that long ago solution. Kluscap is compassionate and caring but also just. He once had an evil twin, Malsum, but he killed Malsum in a kind of duel and regretted it ever after. One version of the story that I read was that Kluscap and Malsum lived in what is now Newfoundland, but after Kluscap killed Malsum he had to move away, to what is now Nova Scotia.
Locally, Cape Split is considered to be Kluscap's stone canoe, forever beached at the head of the Bay of Fundy. One day Kluscap will return.
Chris has created a museum of fossils he has found at Blue Beach and has done considerable research on these and related fossils. Blue Beach rocks date from the Carboniferous era, a time when vertebrates were first emerging from the water onto land. The "Greatest Mystery" that he refers to is about how that happened, there are large gaps in the fossil record that evoke a large amount of speculation as to how exactly the evolution from water-adapted to dry land-adapted vertebrates occurred. Blue Beach is a tidal beach of sedimentary rocks (mostly slate, some shale), and depending on the strength of the tides and the amount of mud, what is hidden or exposed on the beach changes daily.
I have an old photo from when my youngest son was about 3 years old; I was in first year university and enrolled in a Geology 101 course. A field trip to Blue Beach was organized by a couple of the Geology Dept profs one weekend, and I took my kids along. We got to see several sets of tracks in the exposed slate rocks, of early "tetrapods". One set of tracks was large enough for my youngest son to stand inside a single footprint while I photographed him. As I recall it looked like it had three toes.
The Geology profs said that they could tell by the positioning of each footprint in relation to the others in the track how the legs were attached to the body, a significant piece of evidence in determining whether one is looking at an amphibian or a reptile, and how developed or primitive it might be. I just thought that it was amazing to be looking at footprints created hundreds of millions of years ago, well before even the dinosaurs lived. Some living creature walked across the mud and left a permanent, almost eternal, record of its passing.
Marilyn's talk was more personal, she kind of told her autobiography and the development of her own thinking about the state of the world and her life in it. She referred to God a lot, and right at the start of her talk gave her personal definition of that word so as to avoid mistaken impressions of what she was talking about: "the spirit of love and connection between all living beings and the natural world."
Towards the end of her talk she recounted hearing a CBC radio show that really brought together her sense of what life was about. It put into words what she had been feeling and struggling with over most of her life. I had heard that same radio program and I remember that my own reaction to it was that it was revelatory, I had not thought of things in those terms before, but it made a lot of sense.
The program was "Beauty Will Save the World", an episode of CBC Ideas in June 2010. Marilyn took some notes of what was said in that program, and she does a remarkable job of capturing the essence of what was discussed, so I am going to repeat them here. The title of the program is a quote from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn used in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Here are Marilyn's notes.
Plato argued that beauty was the revelation of God in the here and now.
John Keats wrote, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all you know on earth and all you need to know." (Ode to a Grecian Urn)
Beauty has the power to redeem desperate and tragic situations. Beauty saves us from acts against humanity, against ourselves.
If I didn't sing, I'd have to take drugs, because drugs kill the pain but beauty is bigger than pain. (a recovering drug addict)
Transcendent beauty---a spiritual beauty---can come in the most obscene places. People searching for dignity and human respect is a beautiful thing. Anyone can exhibit immense grace.
Beauty brings you joy. Beauty dwells with wisdom and wisdom dwells with joy. People who have beauty and wisdom and joy are capable of enduring the most terrible things.
Acting out survival of the fittest diminishes us as human beings and we know it. We need transcendent beauty to save us.
People are afraid of beauty like they are afraid of real freedom. The price of real freedom is security. Beauty is like that too. You can't hang onto it or possess it. It opens your heart and soul and makes you vulnerable. It is scary. You are not in control.
The fate of the world depends on unleashing the beauty that will save the world.
Marilyn's talk has been published and is available on the Argenta Friends Press website (Canadian Quaker Pamphlet No. 71). Look for "In Search of a Moral Economy" by Marilyn Manzer, in the pamphlet section.
Showing posts with label mythology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mythology. Show all posts
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Again with the AGO
I love Toronto. I don't want to leave.
When I am in Vancouver, I love Vancouver and don't want to leave.
When I am in Wolfville, I love Wolfville and don't want to leave.
Anyway, I love being here in Toronto.
I go to the dogpark every morning and see some of my favourite neighbours and their dogs, it's a great way to start the day. However a couple of days ago, three of the dogs---including Dobby---were chasing each other around the field and simultaneously ran into Barbara from the rear, bowling her over and breaking her ankle. The dogs of course were oblivious and careened off as if nothing had happened, but Barbara was left lying on the ground in considerable pain. One of the dogs that knocked her down was her own dog, we are now taking turns walking him since Barbara is confined to home in a cast.
Today I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario and spent a few hours wandering around the different galleries. There were special exhibits of Henry Moore and Shary Boyle, as well as the regular exhibits. I especially wanted to see the African gallery since I didn't get there on my last two visits, however it was somewhat reduced due to the Henry Moore exhibit.
I have never had any particular interest in Henry Moore, I know him only as the sculptor who did The Archer in front of Toronto City Hall. But I learned two things of interest about him that made me a little bit more interested in his work. One was that he studied aboriginal and African art and took a lot of inspiration from those sources, and the other was that he was the survivor of a gas attack during World War I. Of his battalion of 400 men, only 52 survived and Moore was marked for life by the ghastly experience. These two things were great influences in his art, and after learning those facts about him I could see that it was true when I went into the gallery where his sculpture was displayed. His figures have distinctively African appearances, and some of the imagery seems to me a little haunted.
In the African art gallery I watched part of a video of a West African artist talking about his work. He talked about his mother and how she had joined the ancestors, he said how fundamentally different the African view of life and our position in it is from the conventional western view. When I was walking around the AGO that idea reverberated everywhere for me.
Sometimes it seems to me that our conventional view of what constitutes reality is but a thin sliver of what is possible. When we look at things from the point of view of different cultures, we get a glimpse of things we hardly can imagine. Listening to that African artist speak about his mother joining the ancestors, I caught a view of life that is endless, and tried to imagine what it would be like to live within that framework as my everyday reality. Looking at works of art by aboriginal artists who worked within mythological frameworks very different from our European-centred western mythology, I tried to imagine worlds of strange gods and goddesses, spirits and myths that might permeate my everyday life. Where the spoon I ladle soup with is carved in the shape of some totem animal or spirit with a meaningful story I might think about every time I served a bowl of soup. Or not. I might use that spoon so often that I don't even see the carving.
I don't know how well I am communicating what was going through my head looking at all this art, but it seemed like in every gallery I was transported to a different way of looking at the world. When I walked through the European galleries, my conventional worldview came into focus, but I could see it as just another way, one of many.
There were a couple of interesting quotes on the walls of the art gallery. One was that when aboriginal people saw European artists going around painting what they saw in North America, they perceived it as a way for Europeans to possess the land, that by painting it they were tacitly expressing ownership of it. I would guess that European artists didn't see it that way, they probably simply saw it the same way we see taking photographs. Although, isn't it funny that when painting or photographing something we talk about "capturing" it?
The other was a quote from Ansel Adams the great American photographer:
"Myths ... are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth of the world."
A couple of galleries of European art were devoted to Biblical subjects, a good deal of one gallery centred on the story of Jesus' crucifixion. There were also quite a few paintings around the birth of Jesus, and I was thinking about the focus on birth and death so obvious in these paintings. There were no works of art devoted to what Jesus actually taught. I was thinking about how that particular religion, Christianity, seems to focus on a very mythological birth story and a rather horrific death story, and that very little of what Jesus taught seems to be central to the faith. If you want to be considered an official Christian, you need to acknowledge a creed of belief in those two events plus a third, a very mythological resurrection story. I remember once attending a class on the basic tenets of Christian belief, and the major lesson I learned was that the point of Jesus' life was to "die for our sins", which always struck me as a very odd purpose in life. I have great respect for the teachings attributed to Jesus, but not a lot for the strange slant subsequently applied to his life and unfortunate end.
I'm rambling. But thinking about all this in the context of the Ansel Adams quote, that myths are heroic efforts to understand the truth of the world, I just wonder what kind of truth we are getting at in the mythology of Jesus' life, which seems to be the fundamental myth of our European/western worldview. Not that the myths of other cultures aren't equally horrific. There was a painting by Emily Carr of Sonoqua, a kind of northwest coast Wild Woman of the Woods that mothers used to scare their kids into good behaviour ("if you don't behave, Sonoqua will get you!"), and another of an Inuit sea goddess who performed a similar role in their culture. And in one gallery there was displayed a buffalo robe of a 19th century Plains' Indian that was inscribed with pictures relating the exploits of his life, killing one Indian after another and managing to steal a herd of horses. Quite the heroic life.
I guess we humans are fundamentally fascinated by birth and death, beginnings and endings, and the question of whether that's all there is or if there is some greater context for our finite lives.
When I am in Vancouver, I love Vancouver and don't want to leave.
When I am in Wolfville, I love Wolfville and don't want to leave.
Anyway, I love being here in Toronto.
I go to the dogpark every morning and see some of my favourite neighbours and their dogs, it's a great way to start the day. However a couple of days ago, three of the dogs---including Dobby---were chasing each other around the field and simultaneously ran into Barbara from the rear, bowling her over and breaking her ankle. The dogs of course were oblivious and careened off as if nothing had happened, but Barbara was left lying on the ground in considerable pain. One of the dogs that knocked her down was her own dog, we are now taking turns walking him since Barbara is confined to home in a cast.
Today I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario and spent a few hours wandering around the different galleries. There were special exhibits of Henry Moore and Shary Boyle, as well as the regular exhibits. I especially wanted to see the African gallery since I didn't get there on my last two visits, however it was somewhat reduced due to the Henry Moore exhibit.
I have never had any particular interest in Henry Moore, I know him only as the sculptor who did The Archer in front of Toronto City Hall. But I learned two things of interest about him that made me a little bit more interested in his work. One was that he studied aboriginal and African art and took a lot of inspiration from those sources, and the other was that he was the survivor of a gas attack during World War I. Of his battalion of 400 men, only 52 survived and Moore was marked for life by the ghastly experience. These two things were great influences in his art, and after learning those facts about him I could see that it was true when I went into the gallery where his sculpture was displayed. His figures have distinctively African appearances, and some of the imagery seems to me a little haunted.
In the African art gallery I watched part of a video of a West African artist talking about his work. He talked about his mother and how she had joined the ancestors, he said how fundamentally different the African view of life and our position in it is from the conventional western view. When I was walking around the AGO that idea reverberated everywhere for me.
Sometimes it seems to me that our conventional view of what constitutes reality is but a thin sliver of what is possible. When we look at things from the point of view of different cultures, we get a glimpse of things we hardly can imagine. Listening to that African artist speak about his mother joining the ancestors, I caught a view of life that is endless, and tried to imagine what it would be like to live within that framework as my everyday reality. Looking at works of art by aboriginal artists who worked within mythological frameworks very different from our European-centred western mythology, I tried to imagine worlds of strange gods and goddesses, spirits and myths that might permeate my everyday life. Where the spoon I ladle soup with is carved in the shape of some totem animal or spirit with a meaningful story I might think about every time I served a bowl of soup. Or not. I might use that spoon so often that I don't even see the carving.
I don't know how well I am communicating what was going through my head looking at all this art, but it seemed like in every gallery I was transported to a different way of looking at the world. When I walked through the European galleries, my conventional worldview came into focus, but I could see it as just another way, one of many.
There were a couple of interesting quotes on the walls of the art gallery. One was that when aboriginal people saw European artists going around painting what they saw in North America, they perceived it as a way for Europeans to possess the land, that by painting it they were tacitly expressing ownership of it. I would guess that European artists didn't see it that way, they probably simply saw it the same way we see taking photographs. Although, isn't it funny that when painting or photographing something we talk about "capturing" it?
The other was a quote from Ansel Adams the great American photographer:
"Myths ... are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth of the world."
A couple of galleries of European art were devoted to Biblical subjects, a good deal of one gallery centred on the story of Jesus' crucifixion. There were also quite a few paintings around the birth of Jesus, and I was thinking about the focus on birth and death so obvious in these paintings. There were no works of art devoted to what Jesus actually taught. I was thinking about how that particular religion, Christianity, seems to focus on a very mythological birth story and a rather horrific death story, and that very little of what Jesus taught seems to be central to the faith. If you want to be considered an official Christian, you need to acknowledge a creed of belief in those two events plus a third, a very mythological resurrection story. I remember once attending a class on the basic tenets of Christian belief, and the major lesson I learned was that the point of Jesus' life was to "die for our sins", which always struck me as a very odd purpose in life. I have great respect for the teachings attributed to Jesus, but not a lot for the strange slant subsequently applied to his life and unfortunate end.
I'm rambling. But thinking about all this in the context of the Ansel Adams quote, that myths are heroic efforts to understand the truth of the world, I just wonder what kind of truth we are getting at in the mythology of Jesus' life, which seems to be the fundamental myth of our European/western worldview. Not that the myths of other cultures aren't equally horrific. There was a painting by Emily Carr of Sonoqua, a kind of northwest coast Wild Woman of the Woods that mothers used to scare their kids into good behaviour ("if you don't behave, Sonoqua will get you!"), and another of an Inuit sea goddess who performed a similar role in their culture. And in one gallery there was displayed a buffalo robe of a 19th century Plains' Indian that was inscribed with pictures relating the exploits of his life, killing one Indian after another and managing to steal a herd of horses. Quite the heroic life.
I guess we humans are fundamentally fascinated by birth and death, beginnings and endings, and the question of whether that's all there is or if there is some greater context for our finite lives.
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