[Marianne]

From The Four Immeasurables Traditional Tibetan Buddhist Prayer, this I pray for those affected by the fires and global warming and climate change:

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness.
May they be free of suffering and the cause of suffering.
May they never be disassociated from the supreme happiness which is without suffering.

I am not Buddhist, I do not associate myself with any one religion, but I do love this prayer which comes to my mind whenever I become aware of any suffering. I would wish this prayer could “reach” politicians who could help us on this earth heal from global warming. I wish more people would understand that their actions (inactions) cause others to suffer.

[Johanna Fisher]

Hello to All,

I am deeply disturbed that the landscape is changing in such devastating ways , not least of which is our impact in dismissing our responsibility to take care of our planet-Campbell says “fragile planet’  . Stephen, I am sorry to hear of your struggle, it seems so ironic given the focus on so many of our conversations this summer.

Here is western New York, people struggle with respiratory ailments on a grand scale-the left over effects of industrialization that once fed the economy. It is a place known for respiratory ailments and because there is wide-spread poverty, it is simply exacerbated.  Our ignorance and/or simply refusal to understand our connection to the earth-to this planet-to the universe makes it difficult to effectively respond to the need to change-change our thinking, habits, relationship to nature.

The myths must inform us again about such matters as sacredness, intuitiveness, respect and yes fear that there is something mightier than ourselves at work in all things.

I am back to teaching today and bring so many emotions about the past year with me-I seek solace in knowing there are people like all of you that foster conversations like these and exchange of knowledge beyond only what is given to us from so limited sources as we see each day or read each day in mainstream media.

Stephen-I am catholic and while that is troublesome on many levels it has given me some inkling into the magnificent and what is beyond our limitations to only accept epistemological evidence of what is. So-a prayer is held in my heart for your and your family’s safety in dealing with the conditions where you are.

Tranquillitas animi.

[Marianne]

Hi Joanna,

What you wrote above is so beautiful, about the sounds of life. It made me feel good, gave me peace. Overall, my favorite time of day (favorite sun) is dusk. I love the twilight. I also love the early morning light coming in through my east window, the way it softly lights the living room.

Twilight/dusk and dawn are the magical times when the half-light time brings the two worlds together of day and night and is the time then of fairie or magical consciousness. Before I ever heard that, I always felt best at dusk and the moments/hours just after dawn. The noon sun can be beautiful here too in its strength but not when it is overbearing and relentless–like most people, I would suppose!

Wishing you many blessings,

Mary Ann

[Marianne]

Thank you, Joanna for the furthered description of Odin as breath. It seems to me now as I think about it that some of the names for the 4 winds/Airs are similar to the name/word Odin. I will have to look that up again. Sorry for my delayed thanks–I was without internet for a couple weeks.

Wishing you blessings,

Mary Ann

[Marianne]

Does old Norse/Germanic have anything similar to this regarding the wind?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_compass_winds#:~:text=sunrise%20and%20sunset.-,Homer,wind%20and%20a%20southwest%20wind.

[Stephen Gerringer]

Johanna writes

Stephen-I am catholic and while that is troublesome on many levels it has given me some inkling into the magnificent and what is beyond our limitations to only accept epistemological evidence of what is. So-a prayer is held in my heart for your and your family’s safety in dealing with the conditions where you are.

 

Thank you, Johanna, for your prayers, which I will never discount. And though I understand what you mean when you allude to catholicism as “troublesome on so many levels,” nevertheless I am blown away by the accent on so much mythological imagery within that faith (more so, it seems to me, than most other Christian denominations, apart from maybe the Greek Orthodox communion).

My wife and I visited Italy two summers ago, our first trip there. Even apart from so many mythological artifacts from pre-christian cultures (Etruscan and Greek as well as Roman), and the mythological themes of so much Renaissance art, I was inspired by the Christian (as well as pagan) mythological imagery found in church settings. St. Peter’s was a mythic epiphany, as was the Sistine Chapel – who needs a sermon when everywhere one looks are mythological images that, to borrow a phrase from Campbell, “bypass the head and dilate the heart.” Mass at the Vatican was every bit as moving and profound for me as Buddhist, Hindu, and Native American ceremonies I’ve attended.

I wish you the best as you embark on the new academic year – and I share your fears, and your hopes, for the planet.

[Stephen Gerringer]

Johanna writes

I am deeply disturbed that the landscape is changing in such devastating ways , not least of which is our impact in dismissing our responsibility to take care of our planet-Campbell says “fragile planet’  . Stephen, I am sorry to hear of your struggle, it seems so ironic given the focus on so many of our conversations this summer.

Thank you for your kind words, Johanna.

Just this weekend, after a month of unbreathable air, blue skies appeared and the local air quality index finally registered in the green zone. It’s only a temporary respite – as the winds shift, the AQI forecast places us back in the unhealthy red zone by tomorrow morning – so I’ve taken advantage of this brief window to “un-trash” my backyard: hose the ash off the patio (which reeked like the inside of a full ashtray the moment the water hit it), rinse off the foliage, clean the cogged air conditioning filter, drain the hot tub and suck up the black wet ash, etc.

At the time of my last post (August 31), the fires and smoke were mainly impacting our part of northern California, including the San Francisco Bay area (with its 7 million inhabitants), where the atmosphere glowed a translucent red for two days; since then the skies have appeared overcast and the atmosphere varying shades of gray, with the sun but a rumor the last several weeks.

And the prevailing theme, re “the air we breathe,” has in that time once again moved center stage as fires ignited up and down the west coast, placing up to 10% of Oregon’s population under emergency evacuation orders and swamping Washington and Oregon as well as California skies with unbreathable air, affecting some 50 million people!

Oddly enough, I find the prevalence of that pattern reassuring. Breath, as noted in the essay that generated this discussion (and as you and Mary and Richard and others have underscored with your contributions to the conversation), is a core motif reverberating throughout all mythologies of the world, even hidden in the language of secular societies that have seemingly moved beyond myth (re pneuma, spirit, Odin/Wotan as breath, etc.) … so when that theme keeps surfacing throughout 2020 (including what Covid does to respiration, or George Floyd’s last words inspiring a mass movement, or the effect of global warming, or the hazardous, unbreathable blanket of smoke settling in over a thousand mile span north to south), it evokes a powerful mythic resonance that allows me to associate and make sense of otherwise seemingly unrelated traumatic collective events

. . . which brings me back to myth, and the power of story.

Joseph Campbell draws on Schopenhauer, who speaks of how, once one reaches the age of fifty, sixty, and beyond, and looks back over one’s life, it all seems one grand, unified narrative. Events that were experienced as random and confusing at the time they occurred now seem essential plot twists that help move the story along.

Schopenhauer asks who is writing that story – and answers that you are the author of your life story – not the conscious you, the “you” you think you are, but a deeper aspect of your Being.

Campbell’s point is that you can trust the Story you are living. Yes, conflict and pain are present, as they are in every story – but that’s what makes the tale worth telling.

I remember somebody asked Ramakrishna one time, ‘Why is there so much evil in the world?’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s to complicate the plot.”‘

(Joseph Campbell, in a question and answer session at Esalen)

We are living through one heck of a plot twist in the grand global narrative – hard to make rational, logical sense out of it when we are still caught in that bubble – but, in the long run, I trust the Story.

Doesn’t mean I like everything that happens to me over the course of that story (including the likelihood that, at some point, I’ll be written out of the narrative) … but that brings me back to another poignant point Campbell makes:

I will participate in the game. It’s a wonderful, wonderful opera–except that it hurts.”
(Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers, p. 66)

 

[Stephen Gerringer]

Mary writes

Twilight/dusk and dawn are the magical times when the half-light time brings the two worlds together of day and night and is the time then of fairie or magical consciousness.”

Though my response is really a bit of a tangent, not directly related to Breath as a core archetypal motif in myth, that sense of the liminal has been very much present during the fires here on the West Coast.

Have to admit there have been many days when the sun is but a rumor – but we have also experienced several spectacular sunrises and sunsets. And the last full moon appeared, over the course of three days, a blood amber color (for lack of a better description I’m afraid that’s the best I can do), which I have never seen before and hope I never see again – a surreal, otherworldly presence. That was around the time the sky (and really more than the sky, but the air surrounding us) was a deep red. Though the sense and feel has been more of an eerie, post-apocalyptic hellscape than a more traditional faerie-like sunset, I can definitely report being pitched into a liminal, dreamlike, mythic zone.

[Author]

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