Discuss: Playing for Keeps

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.  Silence speaks. All that we need to know is around us. May we listen with our hearts.

Thank you for your writing, it speaks a truth that is refreshing to hear. You speak of many good points that those in the dominant culture could learn from if they were willing to listen. But far too often we dont listen to others that offer real wisdom. Instead our heads are wrapped up in meaningless dominant cultural activities. Most of these activities take us further from our true inner soul and further from the spirit of the earth/universe that provides everything we need to sustain life. The force of the dominant culture has not only destroyed other cultures but is in the process of destroying itself without even realizing it. Evidence of this destruction is all around us and the earth is absolutely screaming to our deaf ears.

I’m pretty old to learn a new language, one that is completely foreign to me, like listening to nature. 
But, actually, it isn’t a language foreign to me.  I haven’t used it for all of my adult life, but I still remember being a toddler and feeling and hearing nature out in my backyard with my mother near by.  I watched worms and felt the life in the grass and noticed the buzzing of an insect nearby.  I could feel the dampness of the rich soil.  It is a language that I once knew, and later forgot. 
I am going to try to remember that language, and lie in the grass and under the trees and watch insects soar and buzz and realize that THAT is life, and THAT is what is important to save.

Hale, friends.

I heard Jensen talk at the Tsunami Bookstore in Eugene—I am amazed he still walks our fair streets.  He is a dangerous man.

The NSA spends billions digesting e-mails and library records for hints of rebellion—meantime an army doctor advocates bloody jihad at a medical conference, and all avert their eyes.  How good we have gotten at that talent!

Give me a break, I want to say.  But that’s not the world’s way.

Maybe listen to Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac”  (he reports, you decide).  Today he taught me about Harold Ross, editor of the New Yorker.  “His signature phrases were: 

“Done and done!”
“You’ve got me there!”
and
“Get it on paper!”

When all seems hopeless, we can at least work at it; “get it on paper.”  Thanks Jensen for being brave and not sighing, “What’s the use?” like so many.

What a beautiful essay.  I’m going to forward it to my students in ENVS 101, which is the gateway humanities course for our Environmental Studies minor.  They are really starting to think about these things—and a few of them have been doing so for a long time.  On the other hand, with so many people texting and talking on cell phones all the time, it’s no surprise they can ignore the living world around them.  Drives me crazy.

I’ve been reading Jenson for awhile now and he has been important in the way I’ve been changing my thinking about the world.
Also, some other important works that have helped:
the DVD:  http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com
and Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
At sixty I am amazed that I can be still so enthralled with learning a new way of thinking about the world.

I love your lovemaking analogy. Let those who don’t know learn the art of love. Then let the art of love inform the art of life. Long lasting (sustainable) ecstasy. Listen !

EARTH ELEMENT
Robert Riversong 1990

I am rock.

I congealed from the nebulous primordial universe
and - giving back my heat - I coalesced,
turned inward, and took form.

My energy has returned to disturb me, erode me, and
shift me on the outside,
to cause me to flow and fold and fracture inside.

I am alive.  I move; I merge; I emerge;
I change.

I am the universe in its most compact form.
I am dense.  I’m heavy, cumbersome, static.

Yet I’m flowing in cosmic time and becoming,
always.

I become plants and animals, woman and man.
I participate in the wind, the movement of waters,
in the turnings of life and death and
rebirth.

I am introspection:  look within yourself
and you will find me in your body,
in your thoughts, even in your spirit.

For I am your connection to all that is:
to the past and the future.  But above all,
I am now - I am real.

Look into the shadows, into your shadow,
and there I will be in the obsidian passageways of
your soul.

Look through the shadows and you will find me still,
transformed and reborn.
I am fecund; I am fertile.

Touch me and you will be dirtied with reality.
Caress me and you will know beauty.
Sink into me and you will know love.