Dunyazade

Last Post Here - Welcome to Place Keepers

2009-10-02T18:02:00.004-05:00

This is my last post on this blog, because I've moved everything over to my new Place Keepers site, where my mission is:

The experience of place can awaken the inner self and strengthen its connection with the outer world. I invite you to join me in exploring the nature of place through tools such as image and labyrinth.

Thanks for sticking with me here, and I look forward to your comments there.

Labyrinths 11-17

2009-09-16T13:38:00.001-05:00

I have updated the map of Labyrinths I Have Walked to include labyrinths from summer travels to Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New York, along with a couple in the Washington, DC area where I live. The labyrinth at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in Copake Falls, NY, is particularly beautiful, surrounded by a dry-stone wall and standing stones donated by the Onandaga Nation. I walked it at dawn.

The list counts only permanent outdoor labyrinths, but I also wanted to express my appreciation for the September 11 labyrinth walk for peace and remembrance at Trinity Episcopal Church in Manassas, VA.

View Labyrinths I have walked in a larger map

Inductive theology and the real world

2009-07-15T09:14:00.001-05:00

I'm not an Episcopalian, but I feel at home in Episcopal and Anglican churches in America and Europe, because they offer an open table -- some more explicitly than others, of course, but I never feel unwelcome at Eucharist. I also have several friends who are Episcopal or Anglican priests. Accordingly, I've followed with great interest the soul-searching that the Episcopal Church has undergone over the past few years, especially as it affected congregations close to me in northern Virginia.

Of all the articles coming out of this week's events at the Episcopal General Convention, the one by Otis Gadding III -- from St. Mark's in Washington, DC -- is to me the most profound and potentially powerful in its description of how theology can evolve through action. His specific topic is the resolution regarding the development of liturgy for blessing same-sex unions and, in states where they are legal, marriages. Redding uses that resolution to explain "inductive theology," a term that's new to me (not being even a wannabe seminarian), and how that was the method that led the early Church to accept fully its mission to the Gentiles. In a nutshell (and I do commend the entire article to you), Peter heeded God's call to move outside his safe, known space into forbidden territory and saw that action bear fruit over time. Only through those fruits was the theology developed that gave the Gentiles their place in the salvation story.

I think Gadding’s article appealed to me so strongly and rang so true, because I have seen this process in action in my own life, without knowing what name to give it. In fact, it was in an Anglican church, St. Andrew's in Moscow, that I saw for the first time an inclusive, liturgical church. People from a dozen denominations and probably a couple of dozen countries worshiped together, but each brought their own uniqueness. I can still picture the Russian woman at the back, keeping to the tradition of standing through the entire service. Samuel Witt, the greeter/usher from Sudan, taught me much about graciousness. ANZAC Day brought together in shared remembrance representatives of countries that had once been enemies. My lack of sight-reading skills were no impediment to joining in the choir for the annual Lessons and Carols service (which usually was more like 9 Lessons and 17 Carols -- a marathon). Through acts large and small, Father Simon Stephens, the chaplain during the last 2 years of my time in Moscow, reached out to the community to make St. Andrew's a welcoming place.

When I came back from Moscow, it was with a sense that this is what the Body of Christ really looks like, in all its multiplicity, and that led me to explore more fully both the nature of and the implications of radical hospitality, which has in turn led me to the Rule of St. Benedict, the writer and beloved teacher Esther de Waal, and beyond. Inductive theology has been working through my own life, taking the actions and experiences that I felt on a very deep level were spiritually true and building connections that not only explain their richness, but point toward what might be the next steps for me.

All of which is to say that perhaps a bit more inductive theology is what’s needed in many churches and religious institutions. Do what the Spirit seems to be calling you to do, and trust that the theological underpinning and other structures to sustain that Spirit-filled action will be revealed in good time.

10 labyrinths and counting

2009-06-13T22:15:00.005-05:00

After my latest trips, I counted them up and found that I've walked 10 permanent outdoor labyrinths in 9 states and the District of Columbia, 8 of them since just March of this year. That doesn't count the one constructed on the Mall in Washington, DC, for World Labyrinth Day or the one I drew on Summerland Beach near Carpenteria, CA.

View Labyrinths I have walked in a larger map. If you zoom in satellite view, you'll be able to see most of the labyrinths quite clearly.

My Status as of March 2009

2009-03-01T00:52:00.002-05:00

"What's next?" Enough people have asked me this lately that I feel compelled to summarize my current status, which is -- in a nutshell -- watching and waiting after having reinvented myself as a spiritual activist. Specifically, I have completed the work for a master's degree in Engaged Humanities, concentrating on the psychology of the unconscious and the power of narratives and images to touch the depths and connect with our most fervent aspirations and enduring wounds. I have been networking with others who advocate an interdisciplinary approach -- for example, injecting aesthetics into sustainability discussions or applying the mythological motif of the hero's journey to business scenarios. I expect eventually to find a place where my affinity for technology and my communications skills can bring reconciling, compassionate energy to bear on a key issue, perhaps related to the environment. (I also hold a certificate in Woody Landscape Plants – yes, trees and shrubs.)

So what did I learn in my two years' of study? I count these as the most important points:

How to teach, not just to train
That I am the only audience that my creativity needs
How to be a witness instead of a bystander
That the path of greatest growth may require moving toward the area of greatest resistance

Throw open the windows;
Let the breezes blow through.
I may stand with my feet in two realms,
But this house on the border is home.
Even if the wind lifts me,
It cannot carry me away
As I linger on the threshold.

Greetings from Seattle

2009-03-01T00:29:00.003-05:00

I am currently in Seattle to attend the annual MVP Summit at Microsoft's headquarters. "MVP" here stands for Most Valuable Professional, an award given to people around the world who help others in online discussion forums and user groups. This year's gathering brings together 1500 people, half from North America, half from other continents for a unique opportunity to learn about -- and potentially influence -- the next round of Microsoft products. Hot topics on my list are social networking and collaboration, especially collaboration among people who work for different organizations.

I'm rooming with my friend and fellow Outlook goddess, Diane Poremsky. We got things off to a good start with a visit to the Seattle Art Museum and dinner at my very favorite restaurant, The Brooklyn. I ordered my usual: country salad and a baker's dozen oysters.

Remarks for Ash Wednesday 2009

2009-02-25T16:54:00.003-05:00

(Homily delivered in a shorter version at Universalist National Memorial Church, Washington, DC)

Traditionally, Lent has been that time of the year when people search the rhythm of their lives to discover something suitable that they can do without for six weeks. But what is the real object of giving up chocolate, alcohol, soap operas, Internet games, or something else dear for Lent? Is it to care for body and mind, soul and spirit more purposefully? To make ourselves more holy?

To find the answer, just look toward the end of Lent. What looms there is the crucifixion and the resurrection— in other words, death and new life.

Recently I have had the privilege of studying with Esther de Waal, a much beloved writer on Benedictine and Celtic spirituality. In her short book Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict, she explains how death and rebirth are lessons so important that they are written in the very soil we walk upon:

The dying of the grain of wheat and the growth of the new has to happen to us all, and the ways in which it will happen will be secret, hidden certainly, and quite different for each of us. . . . Without ... separation, which is a small death, the new life cannot spring up. . . . In times of the deepest depression part of the pain of darkness is the feeling that it is utterly pointless and useless, and even worse than useless, that it is destroying, annihilating. Only later, perhaps months later, as the inner darkness starts to lighten do I begin to see that here too the pattern of death and new life is taking shape within. . . . (pp. 73-74)

The purpose of Lenten discipline is to give this pattern of death and rebirth an opportunity to work within and to create space for God to enter. On the one hand, we knock down the idols worshipped with our attention but empty of spiritual meaning. Yet on the other hand, we open ourselves up to failure, to the small daily deaths, because any attempt at discipline — whether it consists of giving up something or adopting a new spiritual practice — eventually comes face to face with temptation. It is not God who leads us into temptation, but ourselves, as we are bold enough to imagine that we can bypass it. What we think to avoid, we inevitably find ourselves confronting.

In that impasse, the only solution is not to exercise effort to become more holy or even more mindful, but simply to be who we are. That true Self that we may begin to see in the mirror of Lenten discipline is the one that comes from God and will return to God. I look again to Esther de Waal, who explains how such self-knowledge, with its recognition of shortcomings as well as gifts, is a necessary step toward transformation:

It is a sign of maturity to rejoice in what I have and not to weep for what I have lost or never had. . . . I must live in this moment, not looking either forward or back, or to right or left, but realizing that unless I am what I am, there cannot be any growth. If I promise myself that life will be better, that I shall be a more agreeable person, that I shall be closer to God on the next stage along the way, then I am failing to live as I am called to live because I go on dreaming of that ideal which does not exist. This past has brought me to this moment and if I begin today anew I can also begin tomorrow anew and the day after that, and so I shall be truly open to change. (pp. 74-75)

Lenten discipline is like an unwanted pebble in your shoe. Eventually, you will come to a place where you can stop, pause, and remove the pebble, but until then, you may be acutely aware of every step. You change your gait, shifting the weight on your foot in a way that you would not ordinarily do, experimenting to see whether there is a sweet spot that makes it more bearable. You become absorbed in the walking, allowing the destination to take care of itself. And so I invite you to walk with God for these 40 days, in whatever way you feel called to do. Accept that deaths — large and small — are fundamental to the growth of new life. Look to those little deaths as a way to understand how God is reaching out to you and seeking your collaboration in your own renewal.

Three Outlook Programming book chapters online

2009-02-25T16:45:00.002-05:00

Three chapters from my latest book, Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming, are now live online at Microsoft's MSDN site for developers:

Chapter 5: Introducing Form Regions -- basics on the new and improved forms extensibility model for Outlook 2007

Chapter 17: Working with Item Bodies in Outlook 2007 -- the inside details on how to work with formatted item bodies not just for messages, but also tasks, appointments, and contacts

Chapter 24: Generating Reports on Outlook 2007 Data -- many different ways to generate printable reports from Outlook data, including a complete project using Word 2007 content controls

About the Book

A word from Great Falls Park

2009-02-07T16:06:00.001-05:00

Maybe when the world seems dull and brown or gray, it's because we're rushing through it so fast that all the colors blur together. If you want to see the bluebirds through the trees, you have to be still.

Not quite ikebana

2009-01-31T18:05:00.009-05:00

Let's just say that ikebana -- or kado, the way of the flower -- is something I'd like to pursue more deeply, beyond the paper I'm writing for my Inner Awareness class. This is an attempt to echo the traditional New Year's arrangement, which would normally consist of bamboo, pine, and budding or just barely flowering plum -- three materials that have special significance in the dead of winter. Having no plum, I found that my mahonia had started to put out buds in wonderful cascades. Even though the greens are different textures, they're all roughly the same shade, which makes the composition a bit monotonous. I can see how plum blossoms would really make a difference.

This is also not ikebana, but it is the arrangement that got me started thinking that I'd like to learn more about ikebana:

I love having a class where I can play with plants as part of the process of writing a paper.

A two-way conversation

2008-10-30T21:00:00.004-05:00

Voices like that of the Greek poet Sappho that speak across the millennia affirm that no era has a monopoly on love or sorrow . The implication is that we can listen to those voices and hear echoes of our own. Does it work the other way as well? Can we speak to Sappho of our own trials and joys? Let me try: "A hidden egg the color of hyacinths": in spring, I've seen a child find such a thing and giggle with delight. Dear poet of Lesbos, tell Leda that children here in the future are just as beautiful as Helen -- and just as terrifying in their destinies. "The tortoise lyre": alas, we cannot spare our tortoises for song, for they are too few; we forgot to cherish them. Sappho, can you set aside some stanzas to remind us of such lowly creatures? Ah, thank you, dear, I hear that verse now: "The hearts in the pigeons grew cold / and their wings dropped to their sides": How did you know that we use gigawatts to power our technology, but have allowed our heart-fires to die down? Were you in our mean streets when you wrote: "We in the city feel its sharpness, boldness of a man." Did you feel the pain of alienation? We can read on to your prophecy that we may also "remember a fine small voice" and "remember one day those things we did in our youth, many and beautiful" when the world was new and bright. Dear Sappho, take your "saffron blouse and violet tunic from your chest" and set them in the sky that we might look up not with two arms that "could not hope / to touch the sky" by themselves but with billions, interlocked to lift us toward "beauty and light ... for me the same as desire for the sun."

Quotations are from Barnstone, W. (Trans.) (1988). Sappho and the Greek lyric poets. New York: Schocken.

Explore sacred spaces with me

2008-10-13T12:27:00.005-05:00

I've just created a new Meetup group, the DC Metro Labyrinths & Sacred Spaces Exploration Group, to visit labyrinths and other spiritually renewing spaces, especially outdoor spaces, in the Washington, DC, area.

Our first Meetup will be indoors, though, on Tuesday, October 28, at the Washington National Cathedral, which has a monthly labyrinth evening.

Tips for email discussion lists

2008-09-11T14:04:00.002-05:00

In the process of helping my Pacifica Graduate Institute classmates start an email discussion list, I collected some what I've learned over the past decade as a participant in and moderator of several such lists and thought those insights would be worth sharing with a wider audience.

Each list should have a "mission statement" that explains the list's purpose and, by extension, who the potential list members are and what discussion topics are welcome. It doesn't need to be anything elaborate, and it will likely change over time. Such a statement serves two purposes: It provides is a standard against which to measure whether the list is doing well as a whole. It also gives list members a benchmark to help them decide whether a message should be posted to the whole list or sent to an individual.

Many discussion lists have rules that are enforced, sometimes arbitrarily, by a mysterious unseen entity ("the moderator"). If the list's rules and moderation policy are something beyond common sense standards like no spam, no profanity, and no off-topic posts, they should be posted somewhere so that all list members can refer to them easily.

Almost no one reads every word of every message. The chances of your message being read all the way through are inverse proportional to its length. Also, you should not assume that someone understands the context if you refer to some other message, unless you quote the text that you're referring to. Furthermore, if your message requests some response or other action, you might want to put that in the first paragraph, because fewer people will see your request if it appears farther down.

From time to time, someone will send a reply to the list that contains personal material that probably should have gone directly to the original sender. It's embarrassing, but it happens. If you're taking someone to task over their opinion on an issue, for example, think about whether you want that conflict to play out where everyone on the list can watch or whether you want to make it a private conversation. Remember that, when you reply, you can change the To address to reply to an individual, rather than to the entire list.

It can take quite a while for a discussion list to find its collective voice. It's less a matter of making rules than experimenting to see what "fits" – what kinds of messages develop into the kinds of discussions that list members enjoy enough to engage in. The one list in which I've participated for 10 years has been successful, I think, because it found the right balance of subject-matter content (questions, comments, and answers on the topic around which the list was organized) and personal content. We've supported each other through job losses, house moves, divorce, death, serious illness, children with problems, and children getting married – and at the same time, we've ranted and raged with great passion about technical topics.

Finally, Richard Tarnas, author of The Passion of the Western Mind and Cosmos and Psyche, has some very useful things to say about email that, I think, apply particularly to discussion lists. He urges anyone who is serious about their writing to make every email message count: Proofread it, and examine it for feeling tone and possible misinterpretation. That discipline, he says, will make your "important" writing (what you write besides email) come that much easier. In my opinion, such care also shows how much you honor the recipients. In the context of discussion lists, I would add one other thing – consider how your message contributes to the purpose of the list.

All the love in the world

2008-05-08T21:23:00.009-05:00

I’m finishing up my 5th quarter in Pacific Graduate Institute’s program leading to an M.A. in what they’re now calling “engaged humanities.” The most difficult class this quarter has been “The Psychology of Compassion and Tolerance.” My final discussion post reflects how it has expanded my understanding:

This quote from Marie-Louise von Franz (1978/1980) sums up the meaning of this course for me: “In this world created by the Self we meet all those many to whom we belong, whose hearts we touch” (p. 177). Here is the true goal of individuation: The drive toward wholeness is not a selfishly motivated desire to attain whatever heights our fate might have in store, but the longing to join at the deepest possible level with our eternal companions. I understand now so much better what Jerry Wennstrom said at our residential session, “True individuality is a one-on-one relationship with that mystery.... Marilyn [Jerry’s wife] and I were nothing, and in that nothing, we could be together.” In the ego’s surrender to the Self, we find not only our true selves but all the love in the world.

Reference:

Franz, M.-L. von. (1980). Projection and re-collection in Jungian psychology: Reflections of the soul. Peru, IL: Open Court. (Original work published 1978)

End of Quarter 4

2008-02-23T18:03:00.007-05:00

I am now halfway done with my M.A. Humanities degree at Pacifica Graduate Institute and figure it's way past time to post synopses of some of the work I've been doing. For the quarter just finished, I did research into cultural misappropriation and drew a mandala representing my process of responding to social justice issues. I also wrote these two final papers:

Finding Grace in the Concrete: Little Marlene Redeemed

Joseph Campbell once observed, “Eternity is in love with the forms of time.” In the strange fairy tale “The Juniper Tree,” concrete objects are crucial to the transcendent experience that redeems a little girl from following in her mother’s overly materialistic footsteps.

Making Room for Domestic Ritual

Because the home is such an integral reflection of the Self and its path to individuation, transition events within a dwelling deserve as much attention as other life events, with rituals of healing, belonging, and celebration. Ritual can also honor domestic space as a collection of rooms where the soul grows, through everyday activities such as family meals. When designing a ritual for home use, begin by framing the purpose of the ritual. Then, find a suitable space and meaningful objects. Call for the participation of whatever deities, spirits, or values are most meaningful to the occasion, in recognition of the unifying story that brings the participants together. As an example, I present the house farewell conducted for my parents before they moved from their home of 51 years into a senior complex.

Breath

2008-02-23T17:59:00.002-05:00

The secret of breath is so simple. In that natural act, what is outside comes inside, and what is inside goes outside. The transfer sustains life and creates a liminal moment in which anything can happen.

Does BookMooch need more rules?

2008-02-07T09:29:00.002-05:00

I've been using BookMooch for about a year now and have found it invaluable in making the switch from desktop software guru to mythology & psychology grad student in preparation for whatever comes next. BookMooch works very simply: You post a list of books you want to give away and search or browse other people's inventories to find books that you want to "mooch." The transactions use a point system. The only out-of-pocket cost is the postage required to mail a book to a moocher.

BookMooch founder John Buchman asks in his blog whether the site needs more rules to define acceptable reasons for rejecting a mooch. He cites three recent incidents -- an author who rejected mooches of copies of her new book because she thought the moochers were selling it and two members who rejected mooches for political reasons related to the moocher or the moocher's country. Explaining why he and the other administrators have come up with a short list of acceptable reasons for rejections, John says:

I didn’t want BookMooch to become a free-for-all, where anyone could make up any personal reasons for accepting or rejecting a mooch. That could get nasty.

That's the point where I decided that I needed to respond, and so I've posted this response on the BookMooch discussion forum (or at least I've tried to; I don't see it yet):

John, BookMooch *is* a free-for-all, whether you want it to be or not, and that's what makes it so lovable. One of its most appealing features is that it is a simple concept that requires very few rules because of its overall transparency. The offer of a book and the acceptance of a mooch take place in an environment where both sender and moocher can see each other's transaction history. A sender who engages in a lot of unexplained rejections (or rejections for purely personal reasons) is eventually going to find that they're no longer getting mooches. I believe that the values embodied in the principle of free exchange of ideas will win out over those of repression, without the need to impose any detailed code of conduct.

That said, I would like to offer two action items for you to consider. There's no reason not to try to guide people toward the type of behavior that will further the free exchange of books. Therefore, I like the suggestion that another person made to add a drop-down list of rejection reasons, just as we have a simple drop-down list of ratings for a mooch. The rejection drop-down could include:

I can't afford to pay to ship that book to you
I can no longer locate that book (which should automatically remove it from inventory)
Other
The Other choice should have a box for entering an explanation, and the explanation should be required. That would end the issue of unexplained rejections.

I would not put "bad behavior" on the drop-down list, because that's a subjective judgment by one person of another. It deserves more of an explanation than a drop-down list choice would allow.

The second action item would be for you to consider publishing synopses of any instances in which a BookMooch member's account was terminated. The Terms of Service already allow you to do this with or without cause. If you want to highlight what abuse looks like in an objective fashion, providing information on these (hopefully rare) cases, would be one way to do that.

For the record, feel free to read my BookMooch history. I've rejected three mooches -- two because I did a bad job of managing my inventory and couldn't find the books when it came time to send them and one because the moocher had a lot of pending books to send. In the latter instance, I invited the moocher to try again when he'd cleared his backlog. You can see by reading the history details that he later did so. That's what I mean by transparency.

While you're there, maybe you should check out my inventory and mooch some of those old Microsoft Exchange books from me.

Coffee for a cause

2008-02-04T10:20:00.003-05:00

In my Leadership Skills for Social Justice class this quarter, we were asked to respond to the question, “How do my consumer practices contribute to oppression?” It would be naïve for me to answer with a simple “They don’t,” because it is impossible to know who makes each product, how it is transported, and what other factors go into getting it to my doorstep. Therefore, any honest answer to that question must reflect at least the possibility that I contribute to oppression every day, through almost everything that I eat, wear, read, and otherwise consume.

But, if my every act as a consumer contributes to oppression, then doesn’t the term oppression itself become meaningless or at least less potent? That’s the problem I have with this question—that it is too like the proverbial “When did you stop beating your wife?” in its inescapable accusation. So what if I am an oppressive consumer? How am I supposed to eat, etc. in the middle of a major metropolitan area without depending on the unseen industrial, agricultural, and transportation workers who make my lifestyle possible?

Perhaps it’s time to take a cue from the environmental movement, which has also been plagued with similar problems of scale—complex issues that seem too big for any one person to mitigate. In the face of such issues, it is all too easy to complain that there’s nothing to be done, that things simply are they way they are.

However, I am a child of the environmental movement. I participated in the first Earth Day, following in the footsteps of my mother, who is still an active conservationist at age 80. One thing I’ve learned in watching the environmental movement evolve over the past 35+ years is that it is possible for individuals to make a difference. They can do it in two ways—band together with like-minded others to effect specific changes or, at the personal level, start making conscious choices about consumption and lifestyle. We’ve seen in just the past few years how a small group of people buying organic products has led to the wider availability of such products. The same goes for products made from recycled plastic and glass. The latest trend, at least here in the Washington, DC, area, is people choosing to bring their own shopping bags to the store. A few people do it, and then suddenly many more people perceive that it’s a good idea.

My current understanding of the issues surrounding oppression and social justice is such that I’m not ready to join any movements, but I am capable of thinking more about what I buy. Given the interconnections between social justice issues and environmental issues, it makes a lot of sense to learn about what goes into the creation and transportation of the products I use, especially those I purchase frequently.

Let’s start with coffee. It fuels my day. It’s not so much the buzz as the fragrance, flavor, and warmth that help me set a good pace for my work or study. I am fortunate to live in an area where not only is shade-grown coffee readily available, but I’ve even heard fair trade coffee advertised on the radio. That doesn’t avoid the possible oppression of the people who ship the coffee and build the boats that carry the coffee, but if I worry about the entire production and transportation chain, I will quickly find myself paralyzed. What I can do is choose fair trade, shade-grown, organic coffee as often as I feel I can afford it. It is heartening to read that such a choice may have a definite positive effect.:

If coffee sells as a complexly marketed specialty beverage like wine rather than an anonymous, price-driven commodity like branded supermarket coffee, and if some of the premium paid for those complexly marketed specialty coffees actually makes it back to the pockets of subsistence growers rather than staying in the hands of marketers and dealers, then specialty coffee becomes part of a self-regulating, market-oriented solution to the rural poverty that haunts many parts of the tropics.

Right now, my biggest quandary is about decaffeinated coffee. One of the ways I manage to drink coffee all day without getting the jitters is that I mix regular and decaffeinated beans. I visited a coffee plantation in Costa Rica about six years ago and was shocked to learn that the decaf coffee they sold on site was actually shipped to Germany to be decaffeinated and then shipped back to the plantation to be sold to tourists. What extra economic “inputs” go into the making of my decaf coffee? This may be more of an environmental issue of which process is the least harmful than it is a social justice issue, but it illustrates the complexity of the consumer’s dilemmas.

What’s next? Well, it’s winter, so maybe it’s a good time to think about buying fruits and vegetables appropriate to the season, rather than eating strawberries from South America. Parsnips, anyone?

Story Field Conference

2007-08-09T08:19:00.000-05:00

I am excited about attending the Story Field Conference later this month in Colorado. One question I will have in mind is: Do we already know our shared stories?

Pull up a chair, and let's talk about it.

Does Gilgamesh grow up?

2007-08-03T11:18:00.002-05:00

The epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest known. Recently made more accessible in a fresh version by Stephen Mitchell, it tells the story of an arrogant king who takes advantage of his subjects, despoils nature, and offends the gods. When his best friend dies under a god's curse, Gilgamesh seeks the secret of eternal life, hears the story of a flood that almost destroyed humankind, and finally finds, then loses a plant said to have the power of restoring youth. The story in Mitchell's version ends with Gilgamesh arriving home and describing the wonders of his great city.

The ending is disappointing. It doesn't answer the key question: Does Gilgamesh grow up and change his ways?

Did facing up to his friend's death and wandering in the wilderness in search of eternal life bring about some great alteration in Gilgamesh's behavior? The verses don't say explicitly. Some subtle clues suggest that, on his return, he at least has the potential for humility (sadly lacking in his early life) and a more neighborly attitude toward both his subjects and the gods.

Clue #1 is how Gilgamesh reaches the "island of the blessed" where dwell his ancestor Utnapishtim and his wife, who survived the great flood. (I picture them being played in the film version by Billy Crystal and Carol Kane, reprising their roles as Miracle Max and his wife in The Princess Bride.) Gilgamesh glides down a river, uses dozens of poles to push a boat across a stagnant sea, then stands up and holds a robe so that the boat can sail the last distance. In other words, first he coasts -- which is what he's been doing all his life, and then he uses his own brawn -- still in keeping with how he has always lived.

However, the other shore cannot be gained by Gilgamesh's own effort; he must allow the wind to glide the boat to its landing. In the Sumerian pantheon, the wind god is Enlil, the same god who decreed that Gilgamesh's friend, Enkidu, must die. Gilgamesh stands as a mast. A mast would come from a tree, and trees were prized in Mesopotamia as spoils of war (Roberts, 2006). (Earlier in the text, after slaying a monster, Gilgamesh celebrates his victory by chopping down all the trees in the forest that the monster was guarding.) Standing in the boat, Gilgamesh offers himself to the wind, to Enlil, as a conquered state might offer trees as tribute. When he arrives at the home of Utnapishtim, he is no longer keen to do battle, but is ready to listen to his ancient ancestor reveal the secrets of the gods. A man of action, not of words, in his early life, Gilgamesh is showing signs of change.

Clue #2 is how Gilgamesh loses the magic youth-restoring plant. He lays it down while he bathes in a pool at the end of a day's traveling, and a snake smells it and carries it away, shedding its skin to show that it has been transformed (or will be, once it eats the plant). Bathing in a pool of water is also a symbol of transformation, much older than Jesus' baptism at the hands of John the Baptist. Gilgamesh is truly frustrated and sad when he dries off and realizes that his journey to the edge of the world has been in vain. But in my imagination, I can see him watching the snake's theft and deciding to do nothing about it. After all, he was having second thoughts about this "secret of youth" idea. How long would the youth last? When it wore off, would he look his actual age? Or would he still be younger, just not exactly youthful? If he ate the herb many times, would he finally turn to dust when the last dose wore off? Once the pool has revived him, he may decide that the magic plant isn't the solution after all.

Clue #3 is that, at the gates of Uruk, Gilgamesh praises the beauty of Ishtar's temple, rather than railing at her, as he did earlier in the story after she propositioned him. He is no longer angry at the gods, but I don't think he feels subservient to them either. I can imagine him sprucing up the temples, as Book I of the epic describes, not as an offering, but just as one good neighbor would help out another.

This change toward a less insular and more constructive attitude is supported by the text in Book XII, which Mitchell does not include in his translation. The additional material includes the story of the huluppa tree, which Gilgamesh cuts down for Ishtar, to make her a bed and a throne. Yes, he's still cutting down trees, but for a purpose, not in an emotional frenzy. Maybe he and Ishtar have both found that they need someone to talk to.

Whether Gilgamesh becomes a great and wise king, I can't say, but I do see him as a changed man, more ready to listen, perhaps ready to give up bluster and arrogance for a more neighborly relationship with both the gods and his own people. As Book I relates, he finally shows some concern "for the welfare of the people and the sacred land." He has at least the potential to grow further.

References:
Mitchell, S. (2004). Gilgamesh: A new English version. New York: Free Press.

Roberts, J. (2006, July). "Centering the world": Trees as tribute in the ancient Near East. Transoxiana: Journal Libre de Estudios Orientales, 11. http://www.transoxiana.org/11/roberts-near_east_trees.html

Comfort for a necessary crime

2007-05-24T17:01:00.000-05:00

Psalm 139 has taken on new meaning as I have reconsidered the concept of duality in the context of my readings on psychological development. This great hymn to God's omnipresence and omniscience contains such powerful images as in verse 8 (That God May Be Glorified):

If I climb the heavens, you are there.
If I lie in the grave, you are there.

In what grave can a living human being experience the presence of God? Psychologist Edward F. Edinger (1972) called the development of consciousness "a necessary crime" (p. 25), because at each stage, it involves a transgression that generates conflict, leading to a new level of consciousness:

What is a crime at one stage of psychological development is lawful at another and one cannot reach a new stage of psychological development without daring to challenge the code of the old stage. Hence, every new step is experienced as a crime and is accompanied by guilt, because the old standards, the old way of being, have not yet been transcended. So the first step carries the feeling of being a criminal. (p. 21-22)

To put it another way, as we become more conscious, we suffer as we sacrifice a bit of our old selves. If we do not die incrementally in this manner, we remain dependent and unable to undertake effective action in the world. Where Psalm 139 provides so much comfort is in its vision of a God whose thoughts reach out equally to those walking in the light and those hiding in darkness, even the night of their own "necessary crime." Consider verses 10-11 (The Saint Helena Psalter):

If I say, "Surely the darkness will cover me,
and the light around me turn to night,"
darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day;
darkness and light to you are both alike.

As a longtime optimist, I am anxious about encountering the more negative aspects of my personality. Certainly, I may find untapped strengths there, but doubtless I would also encounter stumbling blocks that could hold me back. But I am assured by Psalm 139 that God will be with me throughout the process.

References:
Edinger, E. F. (1972). Ego and archetype: Individuation and the religious function of the psyche. New York: Penguin Books.

Schauble, M. (Ed.). (1998). That God may be glorified. Erie, PA: Benet Press.

The Saint Helena Psalter. (2004). New York: Church Publishing.

The Egyptian eye for nature

2007-05-05T17:17:00.000-05:00

In his application of Jungian analysis to Egyptian civilization, Michael Rice lauds the ancient Egyptians for their skill in drawing, accompanied by their keen eye for and love of nature. It's easy to see these combined in several small limestone panels from the Freer Gallery in Washington, DC. Some panels have human images, but others show a falcon, a crocodile, and other animals, such as this bird:

Fragment: A young bird in low relief. Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Soft limestone H: 11.0 W: 10.7 D: 1.7 cm Egypt
Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1908.59

The description from the gallery's web page explains:

Fragments such as this one carved in low relief have been identified as "sculptor's trials" or "sculptor's models," and were used in Egypt from the Third Dynasty to Ptolemaic times. The reliefs were used to aid sculptors in instructing apprentices about the canonical Egyptian grid. The models are often "framed" by L-shaped borders, which could have been used as depth measures. The human subjects of the sculptor's models were most often idealized versions of royal heads with headcloths or uraeus crowns. The animals used in hieroglyphic writing (the alphabet and royal titularies) were most commonly modelled.

Some of the models apparently also have edges incised at regular intervals, suggesting that they could have been overlaid with a grid, and the image then used to make larger or smaller copies by working with a different size grid.

Reference:
Rice, M. (1997). Egypt’s legacy: The archetypes of Western civilization 3000-30 BC. New York: Routledge.

Spring 2007 Bookpile

2007-05-04T13:07:00.000-05:00

I thought this would be fun -- pile up all the texts, research materials, and other extra readings from the three classes I just finished:

The other happy event of this week is that my 7th book on Microsoft Outlook went to press, due for release the first week in June.

End of Quarter 1

2007-05-03T17:17:00.002-05:00

Today marks the end of my first quarter in the M.A. Humanities program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. The final papers that I turned in for my three classes are a good indicator of the breadth of this program:

Incoherence in the Cloud: Flexibility and Vitality in Social Cataloguing

The Egyptians were not confounded by their religion's proliferation of gods, overlapping iconographies, and relative lack of detailed myth stories. Likewise, the lack of an externally imposed categorization scheme need not obscure the layers of significance on a social cataloguing Web site such as del.ico.us. If there is a lesson to be learned from the balance between disorder and order achieved by the Egyptians in their religion, it is that the process of maintaining order is never-ending and requires the attention of the highest personages. Social cataloguing Web sites must invest in the work of software engineers, information analysts, and psychologists. These skilled professionals tend the temple fires behind the scenes at social cataloguing sites, constantly revising the applications that build tag clusters and other mechanisms for bringing coherence to the tag cloud.

Spiritual Rebirth Revealed: The Virgin in the Burning Bush

By combining natural vegetation with transforming flame and the sign of the divine taking on human form, the Virgin of the Burning Bush icon, a type that originated at the St. Catherine Monastery at Mt. Sinai, personifies the essential spiritual journey, in which the material world and the unseen, spiritual world may be discovered to be intertwined and interdependent. The hope and promise for each pilgrim on this journey is the possibility of being reborn as a unique and individual Self, allied with the divine wisdom and energy that powers the universe.

Identity, Fidelity, and Initiation in "The Wild Swans"

The task and trials of the heroine in Hans Christian Andersen's story The Wild Swans can be read as an extended rite of passage that concludes with her embracing a new role as wife and queen. Her success comes through the attainment of the ego strength of fidelity, described by Eric Erickson as part of his model of identity versus role confusion as the key crisis of adolescence.

Lunch with a bird of prey

2007-04-20T09:40:00.001-05:00

In a chat last night, Mercurius put a bug in my ear about using active imagination. I decided to give it a try in the context of what I've adopted as my primary (although somewhat haphazard) spiritual practice -- hospitality. I invited Horus for a visit.

At first I was anxious about which aspect of the god would appear, but I quickly realized that he had already given me an indication a couple of weeks ago, when a dove flew into our window and was stunned, to immediately fall prey to our neighborhood hawk. This image was still fixed in my mind, and so I knew which Horus I would meet.

Feeling a little more confident that I could handle the situation, I opened the front door and in flew Horus as his full falcon-self. Everything seemed to slow down as he nodded appreciatively at the airplane models shelved over the stairwell and swooped to a perch on the top shelf of the cats' climbing structure. I touched my hand to my breastbone and bowed, as I often do when entering a sacred space. Then I looked into his eyes, which were warm and intelligent. The ceiling fan was turning, rippling his beautiful feathers ripple with a slight breeze.

He gave a couple of annoyed cries. I hadn't planned what to feed him. We'd just returned from a trip and there was no fresh meat in the refrigerator. In any case, I didn't think he would find cold flesh very appetizing. He turned to look out the window at the bird feeder, and I knew what to do. I opened the window. He hopped down from the cat shelf to the window ledge and glided swiftly and silently toward the feeder, snaring a dove in his talons. Then he carried the dove to the table on the deck, which was suddenly covered not in pollen, but in rushes reminiscent of Horus' birth and upbringing, hidden on the Nile shore. He devoured his lunch as I pulled up a chair to watch at a respectful distance, but feeling surprisingly at ease. The cats sat tall (and safe) on the screen porch overlooking the deck, Agador as usual a little restless as his natural hunter-self thought about what he'd like to do with a dove. Dymka was more serene.

A noise startled Horus and he flew away with the rest of the dove's body, leaving behind just a pile of gray feathers. I swept them and the bloodied rushes into a brown paper bag for the spring brush pickup, happy that they would be recycled back into someone's garden in a year or two.

Some useful observations from this experience:

You can issue invitations, but you can't control who will actually come.
Even with invited guests, you can set boundaries. I wasn't going to let Horus bring his prey into the house. He had to consume it outside.
Guests may leave suddenly and without ceremony. Still, be grateful for the time you had in their company.

Strange night at Roxy's café

2007-04-19T09:02:00.001-05:00

Horus, Coyote, and Thor went to their favorite café one evening this week. Prometheus had planned to join them, but he went to bed early -- it's hard to get a good night's sleep when your liver is healing from being torn by an eagle all day long. They were all hoping to get a mega dose of magnificent mocha from Roxy, the star barista, but the café atmosphere was rather odd.

It's not that big a café, just a couple of rooms, and hardly busy at 10 at night, but Coyote was told he couldn't get in because he was already in. The same thing happened to Thor: He couldn't enter the café because he was already inside. How very odd! To be in, but not in. And too bad, because they'd both dressed up for the occasion. Coyote was in a fine black suit, and Thor sported a new helmet and armor obtained at the Nebula.

Horus was able to enter the café, but when he didn't see either of the other two there yet, he went off to the bathroom to change into a different aspect -- it's hard to sip coffee when you have a beak for a mouth. He chose his Harpokrates (Horus-the-child) look, an athletic youth with a fashionably long side lock and a touch of eyeliner to suggest the udjat eye.

"Blue is a nice change from my usual black eyeliner," thought Horus. (Photo by BrittneyBush)

Horus ordered a cup of mocha java from Roxy and then noticed the sign over the espresso machine: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, we have no fresh coffee. All the coffee is made from old beans, batch number 7. We had to destroy our most recent coffee shipments because they produced a hallucinatory brew that makes you feel like you're in, but not in."

Bewildered, the three friends exchanged text messages and confirmed that they were all indeed at the right café. (Fortunately, this didn't happen the night of the Blackberry blackout.) Horus found a private room that had a back door and opened it to let Thor in. Thor found another room and let Coyote in, but there was no way all three could be in the same room.

I asked Horus later why the three of them, with all their divine powers, couldn't have just opened a door between the private rooms. He said that even gods have limits, that they still have to play by the rules of the universe. The main difference between humans and gods, he explained, is that humans see only part of the rules, while gods know them all. What keeps the gods so aware of these universal truths is the way humans keep retelling creation stories, constantly adapting them to fit new surroundings and new cultures. It's like Marie-Louise von Franz wrote in Patterns of Creativity Mirrored in Creation Myths, "The unconscious re-tells part of the creation myth to restore conscious life and the conscious awareness of reality again." We humans aren't aware of what we're doing when we keep the gods alive in this way.

Visions of Horus

2007-04-09T09:51:00.000-05:00

When a god has more than a dozen different identities and takes on a part-animal form, I think Eric Hornung (1996/1970) again summarizes the challenges well:

Evidently a single image is not adequate for the metalanguage, which depends on continually changing combinations of many signs. The outward form of these signs is not decisive. The Egyptians are not concerned to give them as pleasing a form as possible, but to show what they wish to express.... We may feel that the mixture of the animal and the human is grotesque, but we should recall the saying of Christian Morgenstern: 'The material manifestation of God is necessarily grotesque.' (p. 257)

I consider myself among the graphically challenged, but I'm content with the way this image conveys the majesty of Horus as sky god as well as the immediate, concrete presence of Horus in the world, incarnate in the Egyptian king, both centered on the locale of the Temple of Edfu, where the annual drama of Osiris, Isis, Horus, and kingship was reenacted each year. It was tedious to do masking and transparency in OpenOffice Draw, which was the tool required for this assignment. The original images were all public uploads from Flickr, from photographers MykReeve and Lenka P and illustrator flondo. (I'd like to see flondo draw Hathor for Horus to hook up with!)

Reference:

Hornung, E. (1996). Conceptions of god in ancient Egypt. (J. Baines, Trans.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Original work published 1970)

Computer-mediated social insignia

2007-03-14T01:35:00.000-05:00

If you could ask the world's richest man, one of its most prominent philanthropists, a question about the interaction between technology and mythology, what would you want to know? Microsoft chairman Bill Gates got such a question after his keynote speech to a conference of 1700 people from 90 countries who have received the company's Most Valuable Professional award for their contributions to various user communities for Microsoft products. (I have been an MVP since 1994.) This question from one of my MVP colleagues sure made my day:

If we take a long view of society, over 100,000 years, we see that tools fairly quickly transition from a utilitarian artifact into some form of social insignia. The war club becomes the king's mace, for example. Now, if we look at the information products out there, you're wondering how will the Microsoft products of the future become useful social insignias to identify groups, clans and members of the species. I'm wondering if you're addressing that question.

The evolution of computer-mediated insignia doesn't seem that farfetched at all, and indeed Gates had an answer. He said that Microsoft is studying how what he called "reputational marks" contribute to the growth of a "trust hierarchy," especially within a social network. As an example, he cited the importance of Xbox achievement records to that game system's community.

Microsoft Research also has been investigating such things as how to make online avatars more realistic by directing their eyes' gaze, how to make sharing mechanisms more manageable by understanding how people abstract others into different trust levels, and how to visualize the "experts" and "hot topics" in an online community and how they change over time.

In hero myths, a key moment comes when the hero chooses to accept the help of an ally, often an animal or a supernatural being. Knowing who to trust also is the key to successful online social networking and perhaps is the crucial question behind all spam filtering software as well.

I saw Raven

2007-03-09T10:45:00.000-05:00

Violence between clans, lust for power, fidelity to the tribe -- it's all there in Macbeth, especially when performed by the Perseverance Theatre from Juneau, Alaska, in Tlingit and English, with dance and music.
The presence of Raven, brought by storyteller/dancer Gene Tagaban/Guuy Yaaw, gave the story an extra edge. If you're in the Washington, DC, area, a few tickets are still available for performances at the National Museum of the American Indian through March 18, but some shows are already sold out.

We were particularly struck by the similarity between some of the Tlingit dance postures and movements and those of the Maori haka from New Zealand/Aoteroa. A case of shared origin and diffusion by migration? Or independent invention by projection from the collective unconscious?

Raven photo from http://genetagaban.com/

The measure of a god

2007-03-08T15:40:00.001-05:00

I came seeking the Eye of Horus,
that I might bring it back and count it.
I found it [and now it is] complete, counted and sound,
so that it can flame up to the sky
and blow above and below ...

When I ended my last post with the thought that "the observer (me) must choose a place to stand to take the measure of the falcon-headed god," little did I know that the chief symbol of Horus itself is a measuring tool. The six individual shapes that comprise the eye of Horus are the signs used by the ancient Egyptians for fractional portions -- 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, and 1/64 -- of the hekat, a standard unit of grain or flour.

What does the eye of Horus have to do with a unit of measure? The eye plays a central part in the story of how Horus ruthlessly fought against his uncle, Set (or Seth), who had killed Horus' father, Osiris. Horus bore qualities amalgamated from his identity as the sky god, his right eye representing the sun and his left eye, the moon. Seth ripped out Horus' left eye and tore it into six pieces. Thoth, the god of mathematics and the moon (which also appears to shrink and grow by fractions each month), magically restored Horus' eye, and the chief gods granted Horus kingship over a united Egypt.

The role of the sound eye of Horus as a symbol of healing and wholeness was reinforced by another myth in which Horus brings the restored eye to his father, Osiris, who consumes it as an offering meal and is regenerated. The Horus eye appears frequently on tombs and temples as a protective sign and offering. Tutankhamen's mummy was found to bear a gold, lapis lazuli, and glass eye of Horus amulet, which the pharaoh may have worn in real life.

The resemblance of the healing eye of Horus, with its fractional component shapes, to the form of the letter R is given by some as an explanation for how the Rx sign came to be associated with prescriptions from Roman times until the present day. Even more interesting is the suggestion that the Egyptians may have recognized that the geometric series 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ... converges toward but never reaches unity, thus bridging the finite world of weights and measures with the infinite world of the gods and strengthening the role of the eye of Horus as a symbol of order.

To learn more about the eye of Horus, check out these articles:

Hymn of Thoth from the Coffin Texts, III, 343, as cited in Rundle Clark, R.T. (1959). Myth and symbol in ancient Egypt. (London: Thames and Hudson), p. 225.

Horus eye fraction image by Benoît Stella licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license versions 2.5.

Pick a Horus, any Horus

2007-02-26T11:48:00.001-05:00

Trying to make sense of the Egyptian myth of Horus, my first question was, "Which one?" E. A. Wallis Budge listed 15 different Horus gods in his The Gods of the Egyptians (1904), and George Hart's A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses (1986) lists 14!

Happily, I'm not the only one baffled by this profusion of overlapping deities. The nature of Egyptian polytheism has been a challenge to scholars since classical times. I'm reading Erik Hornung's Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt (1970, trans. 1981 by John Baines) and am grateful for his citation of this passage from Philippe Derchain's Le papyrus Salt 825 (1965), which suggests that it's possible to think of the Egyptian deities in a way that is completely different from Western monotheism or Greek polytheism:

A god is combined with another and becomes a new being with new characteristics, and then at the next moment separates into a number of entities. What he is remains hidden, but his luminous trail can be seen, his reaction with others is clear, and his actions can be felt. He is material and spiritual, a force and a figure, he is manifest in changing forms that should be mutually exclusive, but we know that within all this something exists and exercises power.

Derchain's extended simile from particle physics is intentional. The answer to "Which Horus?" may be "Who's asking ? When? Where? Why?" as the observer (me) must choose a place to stand to take the measure of the falcon-headed god.

Welcome to my world

2007-02-23T15:14:00.000-05:00

I am earth and water. Every boulder draws me with its strength and warmth. Every stream invites the dip of my hand.

I have lived in nine cities on three continents.

I have been a writer and editor all my life. I worked for 20 years in broadcasting, mostly in news and news technology, and then spent 13 years as a desktop software guru, before taking on my latest adventure, which is studying mythology, depth psychology, and their practical applications at Pacific Graduate Institute.

My favorite painter is Cezanne, my favorite sculptor Barbara Hepworth. The best novel I've read so far this millenium is William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

I draw energy from the landscape and from the creative work that I do within my spiritual community as a worship leader and facilitator ... and every single day, from my family.

Welcome to my world! On with the story!