To See The Universe in a Snow Flake
The fresh snow was the perfect canvas for my mother’s ashes where she loved to paint with her dear friend sharing a oneness with the universe and the total experience of a place my father wrote about below.
Kathleen Norris, a contemporary poet from North Dakota in her book, Dakota, uses the term "spiritual geography" to describe how a sense of the divine can be rooted in a sense of place. She describes how the deserts of the world have been places where men and women seeking truth may come face to face with the experience of the divine, citing the early Christian desert fathers as well as her own experiences in the Dakotas as examples. She also writes about the importance to spiritual growth of communities where the environment strips bare the social pretenses and people are forced to learn to love each other despite the fact they have grown so close they can't stand one another. For her, the community is essential for spiritual growth.
A Muslim sect in North Africa call their holy men "Remembrancers," whose meditation discipline is called "practice of the presence of God." The goal of their meditation is to remember who they really are. Which reminds me that one meaning of remember means literally to re-member, that is, taking something apart and putting it back together in a new form. To make whole or holy.
I can remember several times in the past when I have had the experience of one ness with the universe. First, in Colorado at the age of five or six, when walking in the early morning on a summers day down an alley in Golden under what some have called "that exquisite Persian blue bowl of clear sky," I had felt one with the whole Cosmos and could even hear it hum in the early morning stillness like a dynamo! Second, walking on the beach on Key Biscayne, reflecting on the marvelous variety that sea life takes in form and color, I again experienced the same oneness and resolved to become a seeker.
Some more experiences of one ness. . . . . . .
Mowing the alfalfa field on the farm in Missouri. . . . the dog happily chasing small creatures fleeing from the mower. . . . . reading Moby Dick .. . . . . the spiral repetitive pattern of mowing . . . . a good meal of country ham and red eye gravy. Many experiences coming together.
During the silence of Friend's meeting during a float trip on the Current river.
What these have in common is a total experience of place.
Something to do with what Gary Snyder calls being "the people of the place."
How do we become the people of the place when we are all over the place.
How is south Florida different than the deserts? The same? What is the relationship of spirit to climate and topography?
And so I have become a "remembrancer," trying to re member the pieces of my experience into a wholeness.
For me, as I sit here in the Miami meeting house, surrounded by the lush growth of the tropics, this area of Florida is full of ghosts . . . memories from my past fifty four years, off and on, of being in these tropics.
From the short grass high prairies of Colorado where I was born to the tropical hardwood hammock of Coconut Grove to the rolling hills and limestone bluffs of Missouri and back again. My memories are multi-layered. This place means many things to me. What does this place mean to you?
I can remember when the Grove was a real place, the aviation capital of the world, full of all classes of people mixed together, instead of the yuppie fantasy of eternal life and omnipotence which is seems to be now. A food court for the rest of Miami as one writer has observed!" -Hank Koch.
Photo by_Art Koch_IMG_0211
To See The Universe in a Snow Flake
The fresh snow was the perfect canvas for my mother’s ashes where she loved to paint with her dear friend sharing a oneness with the universe and the total experience of a place my father wrote about below.
Kathleen Norris, a contemporary poet from North Dakota in her book, Dakota, uses the term "spiritual geography" to describe how a sense of the divine can be rooted in a sense of place. She describes how the deserts of the world have been places where men and women seeking truth may come face to face with the experience of the divine, citing the early Christian desert fathers as well as her own experiences in the Dakotas as examples. She also writes about the importance to spiritual growth of communities where the environment strips bare the social pretenses and people are forced to learn to love each other despite the fact they have grown so close they can't stand one another. For her, the community is essential for spiritual growth.
A Muslim sect in North Africa call their holy men "Remembrancers," whose meditation discipline is called "practice of the presence of God." The goal of their meditation is to remember who they really are. Which reminds me that one meaning of remember means literally to re-member, that is, taking something apart and putting it back together in a new form. To make whole or holy.
I can remember several times in the past when I have had the experience of one ness with the universe. First, in Colorado at the age of five or six, when walking in the early morning on a summers day down an alley in Golden under what some have called "that exquisite Persian blue bowl of clear sky," I had felt one with the whole Cosmos and could even hear it hum in the early morning stillness like a dynamo! Second, walking on the beach on Key Biscayne, reflecting on the marvelous variety that sea life takes in form and color, I again experienced the same oneness and resolved to become a seeker.
Some more experiences of one ness. . . . . . .
Mowing the alfalfa field on the farm in Missouri. . . . the dog happily chasing small creatures fleeing from the mower. . . . . reading Moby Dick .. . . . . the spiral repetitive pattern of mowing . . . . a good meal of country ham and red eye gravy. Many experiences coming together.
During the silence of Friend's meeting during a float trip on the Current river.
What these have in common is a total experience of place.
Something to do with what Gary Snyder calls being "the people of the place."
How do we become the people of the place when we are all over the place.
How is south Florida different than the deserts? The same? What is the relationship of spirit to climate and topography?
And so I have become a "remembrancer," trying to re member the pieces of my experience into a wholeness.
For me, as I sit here in the Miami meeting house, surrounded by the lush growth of the tropics, this area of Florida is full of ghosts . . . memories from my past fifty four years, off and on, of being in these tropics.
From the short grass high prairies of Colorado where I was born to the tropical hardwood hammock of Coconut Grove to the rolling hills and limestone bluffs of Missouri and back again. My memories are multi-layered. This place means many things to me. What does this place mean to you?
I can remember when the Grove was a real place, the aviation capital of the world, full of all classes of people mixed together, instead of the yuppie fantasy of eternal life and omnipotence which is seems to be now. A food court for the rest of Miami as one writer has observed!" -Hank Koch.
Photo by_Art Koch_IMG_0211