The point at which the sun reaches its farthest point north of the equator is the Summer Solstice, well it is for the Northern Hemisphere. This occurs annually on June 20 or June 21, depending on your time zone.
Here in Southern Oregon, the moment of the Summer Solstice will be 22:04 Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) on the evening of June 20th and at 05:04 GMT/UTC on June 21 2013 in the United Kingdom.
A quick web ‘look-up’ finds that the word solstice is from the Latin solstitium, from sol (sun) and stitium (to stop), reflecting the fact that the Sun appears to stop at this time, albeit momentarily.
At the ancient stone circle of Stonehenge in Southern England, the prehistoric monument that took Neolithic builders an estimated 1,500 years to erect, for many years the Druids have celebrated the Solstice and, undoubtedly, will be doing so again.
AMESBURY, UNITED KINGDOM – JUNE 21: A man stands on top of Stonehenge as the sun rises over Salisbury Plain on June 21, 2006 in Amesbury, England. Police estimated around 17,000 people travelled to watch the sun rise over the 5,000 year old stone circle to start the longest day of the year. (Photo by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)
Sometimes applause seems just … oh, I don’t know …. just so inadequate!
If you, like me, was entranced by the music then thanks to a comment left by one Eugene Karry on the YouTube website, all is explained.
Eugene explained that the instrument is called the Armenian Duduk and that Armenian Duduk music is recognized by UNESCO.
It was only a quick search on the UNESCO website to find this:
The duduk, the Armenian oboe, is a single or double reed wind instrument made of the wood of the apricot tree and has a warm, soft, slightly nasal timbre. The duduk or tsiranapokh, which is also called the apricot tree pipe, belongs to the organological category of areophones, which also includes the balaban played in Azerbaijan and Iran, the duduki common in Georgia and the ney in Turkey. The soft wood is the ideal material to carve the body of the instrument. The reed, called ghamish or yegheg, is a local plant growing alongside the Arax river.
The roots of Armenian duduk music go back to the times of the Armenian king Tigran the Great (95-55 BC). The instrument is depicted in numerous Armenian manuscripts of the Middle Ages. The duduk accompanies popular Armenian traditional songs and dances of the various regions and is played at social events, such as weddings and funerals. Although there are also famous duduk soloists, among them Gevorg Dabaghyan and Vache Sharafyan, the duduk is mainly played by two musicians. One player creates the musical environment for the lead melody by playing a continual drone that is held by circular breathing, while the other player develops complex melodies and improvisations.
There are four major types of duduk, varying in length from 28 to 40 cm and in sound, ranging from one to fourth or third octaves. Therefore, the sound of the duduk can express various moods depending on the content of the piece and the playing context. The 40-cm long duduk, for example, is regarded as most appropriate for love songs, whereas the smaller one usually accompanies dances. Today, duduk craftsmen continue to create and experiment with different forms of duduks. Many Armenians consider the duduk as the instrument that most eloquently expresses warmth, joy and the history of their community.
Over recent decades, the popularity of Armenian duduk music has decreased, in particular in the rural areas where it originated. At present, most duduk players are concentrated in Yerevan. The duduk instrument is played less and less in social festivities, but more often by professionals as a staged performance. Duduk music risks losing its viability and traditional character and becoming just another facet of “high culture”.
Back to Eugene, who went on to write that Jivan Gasparyan and Gevorg Dabaghyan are famous duduk players among many others. The musical pieces played on the duduk are mostly armenian folk or spiritual tunes; many of them sad songs. Nowadays the duduk is very often played during funerals among Armenians but there are some dance songs as well.
Finally, Eugene offered these further hauntingly beautiful pieces of music.
Yesterday, I wrote a post I cry for the wolves. A comment from Jeremy Nathan Marks included this:
I have learned slowly that being an adult means learning to face and acknowledge the many horrors of our world. It also means -for me, anyway- recognizing that love is the one saving grace, the one remaining hope, the one promise that might be kept. And I mean love in the hear and now and not in any afterlife. Love is what animates beauty for me -a beauty that is about more than aesthetics.
Some people would perhaps think I am ridiculous for saying that I feel that wolves are my kin. But they are. To be kin doesn’t mean we have to think the same thoughts, speak the same spoken language, or even move through the world in precisely the same way. Being kin to me means that we recognize the life lived in one another. I see that life and its light and love in wolves, just as you have beautifully described. And I know people who have lived and worked with wolves have seen that mutuality in their encounters and interactions with wolves and their packs.
That is such a profound reflection.
Unwittingly, before I read that comment from Jeremy, I had added this comment:
Around 7am I went down to our pond just to enjoy the world Jean and I live in and there was a young deer grazing the field grass near the water. Slowly, I moved towards a bench seat by the edge of the pond and sat down. The deer strolled away, perhaps some 30 feet, and continued to graze. Thanks to Dordie and Bill this young, beautiful creature was perfectly comfortable with my presence.
I sat there and my mind wander back to some far-off time when a curious young wolf might have let curiousity compell it to come a little closer to a human, perhaps nibble at the bone that the human threw in its direction.
There’s a theme here. “Love in the here and now ..” from Jeremy and me being lost watching that deer; the love of that moment.
A couple of evenings ago, Jean and I watched a truly wonderful and inspiring film. The film was called What about me? 1 Giant Leap The embedded link takes you to the website for the film.
Here’s the trailer.
Following the success of their first double Grammy nominated film & album, What About Me? is the latest offering from 1 Giant Leap. This visionary project took Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman to over 50 locations as they explore through music, the complexities of human nature on a global scale, and aims to reveal how we are all connected through our creativity and beliefs, but most of all through our madness.
Through music and film, “1 Giant Leap” explores the universal complexities of human nature. Jamie Catto (Faithless co-founder) and Duncan Bridgeman set out on their journey recording musical jewels and words of wisdom with the cream of the world’s thinkers, writers and entertainers along the way. The duo traveled to the farthest corners of the planet, to ensure immense cultural diversity in this time capsule of humanity at its most inspirational.
Covering universal topics such as God, Sex, Death and Money, What About Me? features an incredibly diverse collection of collaborators from Noam Chomsky to Will Young, Maxi Jazz to Tim Robbins, Billy Connolly to Michael Stipe, Eckhart Tolle to Baaba Mal, among many others.
Encompassing a TV series, film and album, this is a poignant, emotional and entertaining time capsule of humanity at its most inspirational.
I can’t recommend too strongly that you watch the full-length film – I doubt that you will watch it and remain unchanged.
Reflections on the launch of George Monbiot’s new book Feral.
In my recent post, Dealing with Madness, where I referred to the launch of this new book there were comments from Jules that included him saying:
George is appearing at the Hay Festival to sell his book and do a talk this Saturday and it is only a few miles away so may be I will pop in and buy the book.
all the best
Jules
Jules, who has his own blog Bollocks2012, did go across to the Hay Festival and most generously agreed to write up his visit as a guest post.
So I am delighted to offer you Jules’ report today.
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George at Hay
by Jules Bywater-Lees, 1st June, 2013
The small Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye in Powys is just a few miles from where I live. It went from a little backwater with a failing rural economy to become, in the words of Bill Clinton, ‘the Woodstock of the mind’. All through the vision of eccentrics!
Hay-on-Wye
The town of Hay-on-Wye is pretty. It is set in the most beautiful Welsh countryside and even has its own tumble-down castle. However, back in the 70’s, like so many other small market centres, the town was in decline. That was until an eccentric bibliophile moved into the castle. The name of that eccentric was Richard Booth.
Richard Booth established a second-hand bookshop in town and, as a publicity stunt, on 1st April 1977 proclaimed himself King of Hay and Head of this new Independent Kingdom! Hay-on-Wye subsequently became a magnet for the second-hand book lover and trader, and now every other shop is a bookshop giving the town a healthy economy serving the many visitors.
Books, books and more books!
The Hay Literary Festival was devised by Norman and Peter Florence in 1988 and had become sufficiently established internationally for the highlight of Bill Clinton being a speaking guest in 2001. It is rather a corporate festival now attracting big names but the town has developed fringe events, that are both cheaper and more fun.
The reason this back story is relevant is that Hay-on-Wye has always been a gateway town between the urban English and rural Welsh. It is only a few hours drive from London and the nearest ‘wilderness’ for day trippers and holiday makers. A few miles further west and the uplands, or mountains as we call them (few are higher than 1000 feet), are considered by most people to be wild.
George Monbiot lives another 60 miles away to the West on the coast in what is considered deepest Wales where the hills have a barren beauty and the locals speak Britain’s ancient first language. But it is not all that it seems; the moors and hilltops are not natural they are a product of over-grazing. They are the degraded shells of a natural ecosystem. A shadowland; a ghostly memory of a former landscape.
View from Hay Bluff, just a few miles from Hay-on-Wye, and a powerful example of a bald hill.
Back to this year’s Festival. I coughed up the £8 ticket price and went with friends to have a day of culture. Those friends who came to hear George Monbiot speak were sceptical; for them the hills are beautiful and it is the denuded ‘wildness’ and prancing Spring lambs that gives the landscape so much value.
George makes frequent appearances on television and is very much a leading commentator on the environment and climate change, and his Guardian articles, see postscript, cover his views well so I wasn’t expecting any surprises. If anything I felt sceptical! You see while in principle I agreed with Monbiot’s message of rewilding and supportive of his views on the wide range of subjects he covers, the concept of rewilding appeared to be woolly and vague and lacking the practicalities of how this vision would be achieved. I even prepared a question for the session after his presentation.
Britain is a little country and our national parks are not the same as those elsewhere in the world, a better description would be regulated areas of private ownership. There are a few parks in Wales notable Snowdonia, which amounts to 2,200 square Kilometres (850 square miles), Brecon Beacons, 1,300 Km2 (502 SqM) and larger ones in Scotland such as the Cairngorms of 4,500 Km2 (1,737 SqM). But all of these are tiny compared to Yellowstone National Park with its 9,000 km2 (3,475 SqM and about 100 wolves!). Is it possible to have viable populations of wild animals in such a small area?
My concern is that Britain actually does have a wild landscape of both international importance and scale, with mega fauna, diversity and rare ecosystems that put it on par with the rainforest. It is truly huge with a conservative estimate of 50 to 100 thousand Km2 in area (19,305 to 38,610 square miles) but it is hidden: It is the 31,000 Km (19,260 miles) of coastline and the waters that extend from it. Surely we should be concentrating on its protection rather than allowing the hill tops to grow pretty common native woodland that could support a few hundred wolves, Lynx and beavers at best?
George live, as it were, was a lot more engaging than his appearance on telly and his spoken words a lot more passionate than his written words. I was surprised, and interested. Like all good story tellers he started off with a mystery. Why do British native trees appear to thrive when they are hacked about into hedges, why do blackthorn trees have thorns so tough and sharp they spike industrial leather gloves and why does the yew and holly have roots so extensive they could hold up a tree twice as big? The answer: Elephants!
Much of what he spoke about is found in his last three Guardian articles so I will spare you the detail but what struck me was his passion. Initially the cynic within wondered if George was just another celebrity seeking a cause. But such thoughts were dispelled as soon as George started to speak. What was communicated resonated strongly with this idealistic former self who was sufficiently passionate about nature enough to have studied zoology and yearned a human desire for wilderness and, indeed, danger but whose life has otherwise been engaged in more civilised necessities.
Such was the passion expressed by Mr. Monbiot that even I could overlook the practicalities and details; they can be sorted out when they need to be. My friends were impressed and even they were able to see that letting the hills go wild or a least a few of them would enhance their appreciation of our countryside.
But I didn’t buy a signed copy of the book! At £20 for the hardback version I thought it best to order one from my local library or at least wait for the paperback edition on Amazon.
Until modern humans arrived, every continent except Antarctica possessed a megafauna. In the Americas, alongside mastodons, mammoths, four-tusked and spiral-tusked elephants, there was a beaver the size of a black bear: eight feet from nose to tail. There were giant bison weighing two tonnes, which carried horns seven feet across.
Even before you start reading the devastating State of Nature report, published today, you get an inkling of where the problem lies. It’s illustrated in the opening pages with two dramatic photographs of upland Britain (p6). They are supposed to represent the natural glories we’re losing. In neither of them (with the exception of some distant specks of scrub and leylandii in the second) is there a tree to be seen. The many square miles they cover contain nothing but grass and dead bracken. They could scarcely provide a better illustration of our uncanny ability to miss the big picture.
The dam is beginning to crack, faster than I would have believed possible. Britain, one of the world’s most zoophobic nations, is at last considering the return of some of its extinct and charismatic mammal species.
While wolves, lynx, bears, bison, moose, boar and beavers have been spreading across the continent for decades, into countries as developed and populous as ours, and while they have been widely welcomed in those places, here we have responded to this prospect with unjustified horror.
As Edinburgh Zoo’s panda freakshow continues to captivate the witless and the infantile, a real Scottish animal has been allowed to die. Under the noses of Scottish Natural Heritage, which likes to be known as the nation’s leading conservation body, the Scottish wildcat has all but been extinguished from the Highlands. The importance of this news may be deemed worthy of a mere footnote on the schedule of important issues with which Scotland is grappling but it ought to rank much higher. For the wildcat’s demise seems to be part of the neutering and emasculating of our wildest places. That which was previously held to be a quintessential part of what Scotland was originally meant to look like and smell like and sound like is now, it seems, unimportant.
I never imagined being 52. As I grew up catching lizards and newts, rummaging through hedges to find birds’ nests, or prodding flattened hedgehogs with my scuffed Clarks lace-ups, the world was ripe with natural riches. Every scrap of wasteland revealed yet more gems: tadpoles, fox cubs and a confetti of butterflies. And when at the weekends the family Ford Anglia trundled off to the countryside, I strode in shorts into a wildlife nirvana, a utopia, and I explored what I imagined would be a never-ending world of beautiful and exotic creatures.
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Finally, back to me and all I want to add is that the blogsite for more information on the book Feralis here.
So how to close? Well having given this post the title of a well-known saying, let me close with one perhaps less familiar but, boy oh boy, so relevant.
“When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns
What an expanse of learning is out there in this modern interconnected world!
I try to limit my following to those organisations and writers who offer me the opportunity of learning. Whether something I was previously unaware of or a sight of the world from an unfamiliar perspective, it’s a rare day when something doesn’t ‘pass my screen’ that offers an ‘Ah, ha’ moment.
Such as the following essay by Dave Nussbaum that recently appeared on the Big Think website. Cheekily, I asked permission to republish and promptly and generously both Dave and Daniel Honan, managing editor of Big Think, said yes. Thank you, gentlemen.
A quick web search finds that Dave Nussbaum is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science, University of Chicago Booth School of Business. (I couldn’t avoid wondering if the learned Professor requires extra-large business cards! Sorry for that!) To fill in a little more about the Professor, one can easily read that:
I am currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. I received my PhD in Social Psychology from Stanford in 2008, working primarily with Claude Steele and Carol Dweck. I recently completed a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Waterloo with Steve Spencer. My research is primarily focused on how people manage and defend their self-image in the face of threats, and how this affects their beliefs and behavior. I also explore how social contexts and psychological processes can either exacerbate threats to self-image or attenuate them. I have found that defensively managing self-image threats can often lead to negative consequences, including academic disidentification, missed learning opportunities, the avoidance of important medical tests, and persistence in failing investments. I believe that by identifying contexts and processes that attenuate threat, individuals and organizations can employ strategies to prevent these maladaptive outcomes.
So moving on past my quip about the length of Professor Nussbaum’s title, the summary above shows that this is one smart cookie! Just go back and reread “My research is primarily focused on how people manage and defend their self-image in the face of threats, and how this affects their beliefs and behavior.” Then reflect on the range and scale of ‘threats’ facing millions of us across the world. So research into “how social contexts and psychological processes can either exacerbate threats to self-image or attenuate them“, seems particularly appropriate for these times.
OK, without further ramblings from yours truly, here is that essay.
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Odysseus Nudged: How Limiting Our Choices Can Give Us More Freedom
According to legend, the Sirens were beautiful women whose voices were so alluring that when sailors heard their song they could not resist approaching and were drowned on the rocky shores of the island where the Sirens sang. No sailor had heard their song and lived until Odysseus, who, on the counsel of the goddess Circe, had his crew tie him to the mast of his ship. When he heard the Sirens’ song he begged to be released, but his crew, their ears plugged with beeswax, would not unbind him and saved him from his own desires. Odysseus was lucky – he knew that he would be unable to resist the Sirens and had himself bound – but people often have difficulty foreseeing their weakness from a distance. Sometimes they need help.
I love watching my not-quite-two-year-old son learn about the world from his mistakes. I look on with sympathy at his falls and bumps and spills and I try to restrain myself from interceding. But when he’s about to tumble down a flight of stairs I step in. It is difficult to balance preserving his freedom to explore and make his own mistakes with the desire to keep him safe. There’s a lot to be said for giving kids autonomy and letting them learn from experience, but sometimes you have to behave paternalistically and tie them to the mast (or at least install safety gates).
When you start treating grown men and women like you’re their father, though, the charge of paternalism becomes a more serious one. There may be cases in which a heavy-handed approach is necessary (particularly when people’s actions harm others), but we should be careful about using it. A more circumspect approach is libertarian paternalism, described by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in Nudge (and re-articulated more recently by Sunstein in his Simpler) as a way of influencing people to make decisions that they themselves would consider beneficial, without restricting their freedom.
Here, we are not tying Odysseus to the mast – the more appropriate analogy would be to the beeswax that Odysseus had his sailors put in their ears. The wax prevented the sailors from hearing the Sirens’ song and saved them from being lured to their deaths, but it also left them free to remove the wax if that is what they wanted to do. This sort of intervention is an acknowledgment that the sailors’ freedom is important, but also that people are not always perfectly rational. As Carnegie Mellon economist (and psychologist) George Loewenstein recently explained to me, “When people have problems exercising self-control, restricting their choices can, in some cases, leave them more freedom to choose.”
On its face, Loewenstein’s claim may seem paradoxical – isn’t a person most free when presented with all her options and allowed to choose among them? But as the mythical Sirens make clear, there are some options that we are not truly free to resist. Without beeswax in their ears Odysseus’ crew would have been doomed; the wax gave them the freedom to choose.
Take the recent attempt by New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, to forbid stores from displaying cigarettes to their customers. Just like the beeswax did not prevent the sailors’ from choosing to hear the Sirens’ song, hiding cigarettes from view doesn’t prevent people from buying them. But, as Loewenstein explains, it makes it easier for those who may be trying to quit to avoid being lured back in.
When we pass laws that forbid the sale of cigarettes to minors we are being paternalistic. We are tying Odysseus to the mast, whether he likes it or not. But when we ban cigarette advertising that targets children – as the FTC did when it banned Joe Camel ads – we’re not tying anyone down. We are merely acknowledging that children are vulnerable to influences that may lead them to act contrary to their own interests and that they may not be in a position to resist these influences. Banning the display of cigarettes in stores is merely acknowledging that children aren’t the only ones who are vulnerable. The cigarettes, like the sirens, draw us in against our will. Putting them out of sight is like putting wax in our ears – we can easily still give in to temptation if we choose to, but we’re less at its mercy.
In my last essay on love that was published on Friday, I quoted Carl Sagan, “For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.Carl Sagan” My conclusion about love was:
… that if we don’t love our planet with all the ardour and passion of a teenager’s first romance, all those other loves in our lives will ultimately become irrelevant.
In researching for that essay, I visited Carl Sagan’s website, a rich source of information and materials for anyone interested in the far Cosmos right down to our future on this planet.
Just a little over three months ago, I wrote a post with the title of Carl Sagan with the objective of promoting his beautiful and awe-inspiring film called Pale Blue Dot.
Back to the present. On YouTube I came across this short video that seems so relevant to our need to love the only planet we have.
Carl Sagan explains the immensity of space and time in this clip is from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos episode 8, “Journeys in Space and Time.
“Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there’s a succession of incidence, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time.
And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch-point in the history. What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidity we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance.
But we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars.”
Today, in the USA it is Memorial Day. The day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. It doesn’t seem out of order to reflect that all those courageous men and women died with a belief in the future. That belief in the future surely must embrace “… using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet.“
Five days of writing about love and none the clearer!
So here I am penning Friday’s post about love. You will recall that on Monday I wrote:
In last week’s telephone conversation MaryAnne spoke so easily about love that I promised her that I would dedicate a post on Learning from Dogs to her.
In fact, rather than one post, I’m setting myself the challenge of writing about love for the entire week, i.e. Monday to Friday. I will readily admit that over and beyond today’s post, I don’t have more than the vaguest inkling of how the week will pan out. You have been warned!
Ironically, up until yesterday things fell into place pretty easily. But I must confess that today’s post has been a struggle. I read the love quotes over on the Brainy Quote website to find some inspiration. None found. Not that there weren’t many, many beautiful sayings but the incredible spread of quotations just magnified the difficulty of pinning down something to write about.
Then I did a web search for ‘love stories’. Came across the story of The Lost Wallet. It was moving but seemed too perfect a love story – try it yourself if you want.
Then back to the Brainy Quote website and once more meandered through the love quotes. Saw this one.
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.Carl Sagan
That struck a chord. A few hours earlier I had been sorting out my photographs and came across this one.
The Herschel Horsehead Nebula.
I had grabbed this image a month ago from the announcement on ESA’s website:
19 April 2013 New views of the Horsehead Nebula and its turbulent environment have been unveiled by ESA’s Herschel space observatory and the NASA/ESA Hubble space telescope.
The Horsehead Nebula lies in the constellation Orion, about 1300 light-years away, and is a popular target for amateur and professional astronomers alike. It sits just to the south of star Alnitak, the easternmost of Orion’s famous three-star belt, and is part of the vast Orion Molecular Cloud complex.
The new far-infrared Herschel view shows in spectacular detail the scene playing out around the Horsehead Nebula at the right-hand side of the image, where it seems to surf like a ‘white horse’ in the waves of turbulent star-forming clouds.
It appears to be riding towards another favourite stopping point for astrophotographers: NGC 2024, also known as the Flame Nebula. This star-forming region appears obscured by dark dust lanes in visible light images, but blazes in full glory in the far-infrared Herschel view.
The image is staggeringly beautiful yet a potent reminder that man, even the totality of our planet, is such an irrelevance in the scheme of things. We are surrounded by beauty both within and without, yet the fragility of our existance is a ‘vastness’, both literally and psychologically.
Guess what! Writing that last sentence brought to mind a photograph that I took Wednesday afternoon. As part of the Land Stewardship course Jean and I are taking, the class had gone to the Limpy Creek Botanical area in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest not far from Grants Pass, Oregon. Here’s that photograph.
Reflect on the delicate beauty and vulnerability of that small wild flower. A perfect metaphor for the entire natural world.
So I am going to close this week’s perambulation through love with the thought that if we don’t love our planet with all the ardour and passion of a teenager’s first romance, all those other loves in our lives will ultimately become irrelevant.
Yesterday, I explored love across the species; back to that first encounter between wolf and early man.
Today, I want to revisit what we mean when we use the word ‘love‘ and feel the emotion. I say revisit because it’s not the first time I have dipped my toes into this particular pool. Last August, I wrote a piece What is love? It opened thus:
How the relationship that we have with domesticated animals taught us the meaning of love.
This exploration into the most fundamental emotion of all, love, was stimulated by me just finishing Pat Shipman’s book The Animal Connection. Sturdy followers of Learning from Dogs (what a hardy lot you are!) will recall that about 5 weeks ago I wrote a post entitled The Woof at the Door which included an essay from Pat, republished with her permission, that set out how “Dogs may have been man’s best friend for thousands of years longer than we realized“.
The following day, I wrote a further piece introducing the book and then commenced reading it myself. Please go there and read about the praise that the book has received.
What I want to do is to take a personal journey through love. I should add immediately that I have no specialist or professional background with regard to ‘love’ just, like millions of others, a collection of experiences that have tapped me on the shoulder these last 67 years.
The challenge for us humans is that while we instinctively understand what emotions represent: love, fear, anger, joy, grief, sadness, happiness, et al, we really have no way of knowing precisely what another person is feeling and how that feeling compares to our own awareness and experience of that emotion.
Stay with me as I explore how others offer a meaning of love.
As it happens, this week’s Sabbath Moment from Terry Hershey was much about love.
If you judge people you have not time to love them. Mother Teresa
Where there is great love there are always miracles. Willa Cather
Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness… the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world man will have discovered fire. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Then some further reflections:
Here’s my take: Life is complicated and at times, very, very challenging. And sometimes, overwhelming. Bad things can happen to good people. Decisions can be thorny and disconcerting. However. Even in the midst … where there is great love, there are always miracles.
and
Here’s the deal:
Love is not always where I predict it will be.
Love can grow and blossom even in the face of striving and anguish.
If we judge we cannot love. Just because I see something one way, doesn’t mean that I am right and you are wrong.
When we do love, we are present. When we are present, there is always a thread. The good news is that we are in this together. One day you may be that thread for me. And one day, I may be that thread for you.
Powerful words! Words that will have many nodding. Yet still nothing absolute that offers a definition of love that would be universally understood. Because there can be no universal definition. That is the magic of all emotions – they defy the ‘science of life’. So let’s just treasure that magic.
Last night I wrote this poem, its been a while since I posted one, so as my pen flew across the page I was inspired with these words.. Maybe due to the recent Solar flares, but my ears have been ringing ever louder as the energies have intensified.. The Silence space within is a place to reflect and absorb the peacefulness of Oneness with the Universe…. A place I often go, where we can just close our eyes to the constant noise as the Planet cries with yet more pain… Meditation helps centre our minds. If you would like to follow a meditation I often do… You can find it Here on a post I did back in 2008 .
Silence booms in an explosion of sound
Splintering static high pitched and loud
Morse Coded downloads in intermittent bursts
The Cosmos is talking-Do you hear its verse?
~~
I escape to the mountains and I run to the sea
But its chatter surrounds me as I long to be free
I hear cries of children, laments from the old
Each on a journey their stories to be told
~~
The Elephants and Dolphin their cries go unheard
Yet I hear their low rumbles and clicks how absurd
Each voice in the matrix – every thought in the mix
A Planet in Crisis – will it ever be fixed?
~~
So I turn down the volume as I shut the outer door
As I meditate inward finding higher-self law
Here I seek Peace in the stillness I find
The Key to the Cosmos we turn in the mind
~~
All things are great and all things are small
The Mind gives them power and shall overcome all
The Universal Plan- I am part and unique
Each one is searching to fit the pieces they seek
~~
And the answer is simple- but we make is so hard
With the choices we choose as we shuffle life’s cards
How to close it for today? Frankly, I’m not sure. So I’m going to ‘cheat’. By which I mean republish something else from last August. A guest essay about the loss of love. Because it seems to me that one way (the only way?) to experience what love truly means is when we lose it. As Eleanore MacDonald describes below in the most heart-rending and beautiful fashion.
oooOOOooo
one of the seven great dogs
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” Anatole France
Djuna Cupcake, my heart of hearts, photo by Breelyn MacDonald
A great squall came upon us here on our farmlet a week ago. I saw it first from a distance, in that dawning of the morning when Djuna usually announced the coming day with his gentle, breathy ‘woooof’, his polite plea to join us on the bed. Mysteriously disturbing, it surely was a sign of things to come, but we didn’t know how dangerous it really was until it was upon us.
And when it was suddenly there, a Great Joy was sucked from our world and an overwhelming sadness took its place … a raging stillness, hot and stifling, no breath, no heartbeat.
My springs of Joy are dry … (a sentiment stolen in part from that great old song, Long Time Traveler)
Djuna Cupcake was one of the Seven Great Dogs. If you’ve seen the film ‘Dean Spanley’, you will know what I mean. If you have loved and been loved by a dog of pure heart … one who was a great teacher of presence, of patience, one who was the dispenser of unconditional love and the blessings of an incomparable joy … one who was a great listener, guardian, and the embodiment of Buddha, Coyote, the Goddesses Eleos and Kuan Yin all in one soft coated body … one who was your loving shadow because he or she felt that it was their job to see you safe at all times … you will know what I mean.
He died quite suddenly. Like that squall, his death came with no warning and for days after Paul and I were sucked deep into that great black hole of grief. The dread attacked us at every turn, where we would always see him but now only a glaring emptiness stood. I felt as though my heart and soul had a raw, oozing, gaping, searingly painful wound where he had been torn away from me. Stolen. We cried a lot.
Some people will never understand. I try to feel compassion for them, rather than issuing the big ‘EFF YOU”, but I am only human. What is this BS about a ‘three day’ rule? What? Because he was ‘just a dog’ we should be over it all in 3 days? Djuna was surely a better person than most Humans and I will never stop missing him. I feel so deeply sorry for those people who have overlooked having such grace and beauty bless their lives –– the companionship of a great dog (or cat or horse, or human person) –– so that, when the monumental end comes and they’ve come through the great fires of sorrow, and have been washed by the flush of a million tears, they come through to the other side where they are able to see the remarkable love, joys and lessons they’d been gifted by that companionship. I can only hope now to ‘be’ the person Djuna thought me to be.
3 days and 3 more and 3 million more and even then more just won’t do it.
Paul and I were with Djuna on our bedroom floor when he died. I lay with him next to my heart, whispering love, my arm draped over his neck … and as he was leaving us, I saw him standing just beyond Paul. Alert, ears akimbo, head cocked, eyes bright, a wad of socks in mouth, standing in his particularly great exuberance, as he did each morning when the time for chores presented itself – “Come on! It’s time to go! Get with it you silly humans! There’s work to be done, there’s a barn to clean and a day to sniff, there’s delight to be found!” And then he left.
My ‘joyometer’, my daily dispenser of mirth, and my constant reminder of the importance of presence, has gone missing – his lessons of ‘Be Here Now’ measured in doses of ’Oh, sense the beauty in the music of the wind!’, ‘Let’s just run in circles and laugh’, ‘I love, love, love you!’ … gone. It is wholly up to me now to remember to stay in each moment, to just be a nice person, cry whenever I must, to laugh as much as possible and dance for the sheer joy of it. And when the cacophony of the deafening silence has quieted and the colors of sorrow have muted and gone transparent and I’ve had some time to let the Aegean clean up those bloodied wounds in my heart and soul, there will be room again here for another one of the Seven Great Dogs. And the cycles will continue on.
Almost every evening Djuna and I took an evening stroll down our quiet lane. I loved watching him dance his great joy, nose to the ground scenting all of the news of the day or nose to the sky, sensing what was coming on the breeze. On our walks I watched the seasons change, the rising of the full moon, the greening of the new spring and the evening skies, like snowflakes, no one ever alike … I watched the Canadian geese come and go, the Red Tail hawks courting in the air above me, and let the build up of my day fall away as I tread softly with my gentle friend. It took me several days after Djuna’s death for me to realize that here was yet again another gift he had left for me in his wake, and one I should continue to enjoy. The sky was black to the West, we’d had heavy winds and rain all day, but when there was a break I set off on ‘our’ walk. Wrapped tightly in sadness and hardly breathing with the missing of him, I shuffled along about a 1/2 mile and turned for home before the rains started up and the chill wind began to blow, fierce again, from the south. That wind battered and bashed me until it freed the tears from my eyes, and the freezing rain lashed my face until I grew numb. As though suddenly realizing I was about to drown, I surfaced, taking in great gulps of air as though I’d not been breathing for several days, and began to climb free of the suffocating bonds of my sadness.
Part of our family
My Djuna, my Cupcake … My Heart of Hearts who knew my soul, my every thought; great lover of Paul and I, and of Breelyn; great lover of his mare and his pony, of socks and his furry toys and his GWBush chew doll; great lover of his evening walkies and of riding in the car, and feeding the birds; great lover of sofa naps and sleeping in late with us on the bed and chasing BALL and rolling on the grass and of eating horse poop; bountiful bestower of stealthy kisses; joyful jokester, Greek scholar (he knew about 15 words and understood several phrases spoken to him in Greek; something we did only after he’d begun to understand words and phrases *spelled out* in English! ‘Car’, ‘dinner?’, ‘play with the ball?’, ‘feed the birds’, water, pony, get the goat, etc!); Djuna, beloved Honorary Cat, our timekeeper, our guardian angel, our boss, our playfully dignified friend (thanks for that Marija) and family member, and one of the Seven Great Dogs – we will love and miss you forever.
But now – there’s work to be done, there’s a barn to clean and a new day to sniff, there’s delight to be found!
This saying was offered in a creative writing class that Jean and I attended when we were living in Payson, Arizona. It came to me spontaneously as I started today’s post. Because feeling what is going on around us is the only way to write it, to share it, to bring it to the attention of all.
These are tough times for so many that love the world around us and having the odd weep is a perfectly rational, and healthy, thing to happen.
So as you listen to the following just feel it. And if a tear comes to your eye … embrace it.
Hopefully, you listened to the full seven minutes before reading on! Because to end the post at this point would be to leave out some great connections.
Put this on in the background and let it creep up on you.
Elizabeth Shepherd performs Live-to-Air with Michael Occipinti’s Shine On: The Universe of John Lennon
Toronto, June 1, 2012 CBC Radio
UPDATE: by popular demand, the original below.
Secondly, a quick dip into WikiPedia reveals that the song was recorded by the Beatles in February 1968 at the famous Abbey Road studios and released on the 12th December, 1969. It was written by John Lennon, and credited to Lennon–McCartney.
Abbey Road Studios, 3 Abbey Road, St. John’s Wood, London
Thirdly, that Wikipedia reference includes the background to the composition of the song, some of which I will share here:
One night in 1967, the phrase “words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup” came to Lennon after hearing his ex-wife Cynthia, according to Lennon, “going on and on about something.” Later, after “she’d gone to sleep—and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream,” Lennon went downstairs and turned it into a song. He began to write the rest of the lyrics and when he was done, he went to bed and forgot about them.
“
I was lying next to my first wife in bed, you know, and I was irritated, and I was thinking. She must have been going on and on about something and she’d gone to sleep and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream. I went downstairs and it turned into a sort of cosmic song rather than an irritated song, rather than a “Why are you always mouthing off at me?”[1]… [The words] were purely inspirational and were given to me as boom!. I don’t own it you know; it came through like that.[2]
”
The flavour of the song was heavily influenced by Lennon’s and the Beatles’ interest in Transcendental Meditation in late 1967 – early 1968, when the song was composed. Based on this he added the mantra “Jai gurudevaom” (Sanskrit: जय गुरुदेव ॐ) to the piece, which became the link to the chorus. The Sanskrit phrase is a sentence fragment whose words could have many meanings. Literally it approximates as “glory to the shining remover of darkness,”[3] and can be paraphrased as “Victory to God divine”, “Hail to the divine guru”, or the phrase commonly invoked by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in referring to his spiritual teacher “All Glory to Guru Dev.”[4]
Finally the lyrics.
“Across The Universe”
Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind
Possessing and caressing me
Jai Guru Deva OM
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes
They call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe
Jai Guru Deva OM
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Sounds of laughter shades of live are ringing through my open ears
Inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on, across the universe
Jai Guru Deva OM
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Jai Guru Deva
Jai Guru Deva
Jai Guru Deva
Jai Guru Deva
Jai Guru Deva [fade out]
Footnote
The title of the song was given a new dimension when NASA beamed the song into space.
“On 4 February 2008, at 00:00 UTC, NASA transmitted the Interstellar Message “Across the Universe” in the direction of the star Polaris, 431 light years from Earth. The transmission was made using a 70m antenna in the Deep Space Network’s Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex, located outside of Madrid, Spain. It was done with an “X band” transmitter, radiating into the antenna at 18 kW. This was done to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the song’s recording, the 45th anniversary of the Deep Space Network (DSN), and the 50th anniversary of NASA. The idea was hatched by Beatles historian Martin Lewis, who encouraged all Beatles fans to play the track as it was beamed to the distant star. The event marked the first time a song had ever been intentionally transmitted into deep space, and was approved by McCartney, Yoko Ono, and Apple Corps.”
Thus those feelings so beautifully expressed in the song will be echoing around the universe for time immemorial. Now that is a legacy!
Learning from Dogs 
Eugene explained that the instrument is called the Armenian Duduk and that Armenian Duduk music is recognized by UNESCO.
It was only a quick search on the UNESCO website to find this:
Back to Eugene, who went on to write that Jivan Gasparyan and Gevorg Dabaghyan are famous duduk players among many others. The musical pieces played on the duduk are mostly armenian folk or spiritual tunes; many of them sad songs. Nowadays the duduk is very often played during funerals among Armenians but there are some dance songs as well.
Finally, Eugene offered these further hauntingly beautiful pieces of music.
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oooOOOooo
Just beautiful.