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#1627 - Tuesday, November 25, 2003 - Editor: Jerry
Some Quotations of ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879-1955)
Imagination is more
important than knowledge. The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art
and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can
no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as
dead: his eyes are closed.
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal
God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit
of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a
painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious
indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of
humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual
understanding of nature and of our own being.
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy,
education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man
would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear
of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is
blind.
...a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light
but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on
mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their
struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the
stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give
up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such
vast power in the hands of priests.
I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures
or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves.
Neither can I--nor would I want to-- conceive of an individual
that survives his physical death. Let feeble souls, from fear or
absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the
mystery of the eternity of life and a glimpse of the marvelous
structure of the existing world, together with the devoted
striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the
Reason that manifests itself in nature.
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though
nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a
miracle.
I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly
harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with
fates and actions of human beings.
When I examined myself, and my methods of thought, I came to the
conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my
talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a
faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the
servant and has forgotten the gift.
I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I
consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no
superhuman authority behind it.
The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The
religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If
there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will
be Buddhism.
from Clyde Butcher's Muck About Journal: http://www.clydebutcher.com/newsletter10.cfm
St. Joesph Dragon
We came across
another image to photograph that needed overcast lighting in
order to achieve depth and texture…a scrub oak with
palmettos. The texture of the two together is always stimulating
to the eye.
After several more days of rain, a clear day brought
Paula Allen, DEP Environmental Administrator of the Aquatic
Preserves, out to join Elam and Clyde on a boat trip to the point
of St. Joseph state park. The light was marginal, but while they
were enjoying their time at the point it cleared up with just a
few clouds in the sky allowing Clyde the opportunity to take some
nice photographs of the point.
Clyde, Paula, and
Elam
Having a picnic with everyone
St. Joseph North
Then it started to rain once again. It
rained for another couple of days before a morning arrived with
partial clouds. We drove to a scene we had located earlier and
spent the morning photographing it. We spent a long time waiting
for the clouds to dance in the sky giving the image depth and
rhythm. The scene appealed to Clyde and I so much that Clyde set
up both his 4x5 camera with a 55 mm Grandagon wide-angle lens and
his 5x7 camera with a 72 mm Super Angulon XL lens. The 4x5
had a wider angle lens than the 5x7 so that he’d have the
best of both worlds when he developed his film!
Clyde with his 4x5 and 5x7 view
camera
Clyde using his changing tent to reload film
St. Joseph Bay #3 is the photograph that
was selected to be the “Living Waters” – Florida
Aquatic Preserves poster. Poster will be available soon.
St. Joseph Bay #3
"A
hero is one who pierces the veil
that separates one individual from
another – in effect, a manifestation
in real life of the realization
that All are One.
The hero acts in recognition of
'…the breakthrough realization that
you and that other are one,
that you are two aspects of the one life,
and that your apparent separateness
is but an effect of the way we experience
forms under the conditions of space and time.
Our true reality is in our identity and unity
with all life.' This is a metaphysical truth
… according to Schopenhauer, the truth of your
life. The hero is the one who has given his life
to some order of realization of that truth."
~ Joseph Campbell, Power of Myth, p. 82. 
~ image by Jim Gasperini
The purpose of seasonal festivals
is periodically to revive the
topocosm. Gaster coined this word from the
Greek - topo for
place and cosmos for world order. Topocosm
means "the
world order of a particular place." The topocosm
is the entire
complex of any given locality conceived as a living
organism -
not just the human community but the total community
- the
plants, animals and soils of the place. The topocosm
is not
only the actual and present living community but also
that
continuous entity of which the present community
is but the current manifestation.
~ Dolores La Chapelle, Ritual is Essential
Gardens, scholars say, are the first sign
of commitment
to a community. When people plant corn they are saying,
let's stay here. And by their connection to the land,
they are connected to one another.
~ Anne Raver
One of the most delightful things about
gardening is the freemasonry it gives with
other gardeners, and the interest and pleasure all gardeners get
by visiting other
people's gardens. We all have a lot to learn and in every new
garden there is a
chance of finding inspiration - new flowers, different
arrangement or fresh treatment
for old subjects. Even if it is a garden you know by heart there
are twelve months
in the year and every month means a different garden, and the
discovery of things
unexpected all the rest of the year.
-~ Margery Fish, We Made a Garden, 1956
The true meaning of life is to
plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
~ Nelson Henderson
It's the flock, the grove, that
matters. Our responsibility is to species,
not to specimens; to communities, not to individuals.
~ Sara Stein, 1998, Noah's Garden
If the earth is man's extended
body, to be loved and respected as one's
own body, those who do no greening of themselves will
hardly bring
about the greening of America. The idea
of 'greening' involves color,
flowering, freshness of spring, and, above all,
respect for what is
organic and vegetative as distinct from the
mechanical and metallic.
~ Alan Watts, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown,
1968, p. 111
You ask how many friends I have?
Water and stone, bamboo and pine.
The moon rising over the eastern hill is a joyful
comrade.
Besides these five companions, what other pleasure should
I ask?
~ Yon Sun-do (1587-1671), Korean Poet, Sijo
Translation by Larry Gross
The true spirit of conversation
consists in building on
another man's observation, not overturning it.
~Edward Bulwer-Lytton
A garden is a public service and
having one a public duty.
It is a man's contribution to the community.
~ Richardson Wright, Truly Rural, 1922
A garden is an expression of Man
in a state of society.
Friendship is a sheltering tree.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The community stagnates without
the impulse of the individual.
The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the
community.
~ William James
The object in America is to avoid
contact, to treat all as
foes unless they're known to be friends. Here
you have
a million crabs living in a million crevices.
... But the
garden's greatest benefit, I feel, as not relief to
the
eyes, but to make the eyes sees our neighbors.
~ Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks
Go often to the house of a friend;
for weeds soon choke up the unused path.
Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a
sorrow.
~ Swedish Proverbs
The best things that can come out
of the garden
are gifts for other people.
~ Jamie Jobb
Friends are like the pillars on a
porch. Sometimes they
hold you up, sometimes they lean on you, and
sometimes
it's just enough to know that they are standing by.
~ Author Unknown
I have been much afflicted again
lately by visitors . . . and they
gave me to understand that if they had had the
arranging of the
garden it would have been finished long ago - whereas
I don't
believe a garden is ever finished. They have
all gone now,
thank heaven.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth & her German Garden,
1898
Gardening can be a compelling
cooperative activity.
Your best harvest may be the pleasure you get from
working
with family and friends. There's never a shortage of
things to
do, no limit to the lessons that can be learned,
especially for
children, and there's always plenty of credit to go
around,
even for the mistakes.
~ Steven Willson
Snowflakes are one of
nature’s most fragile things,
but just look what they can do when they stick together.
~ Vista M. Kelly
But there's more than just solving
the how-to problems.
I've often said that if we're going to have a real
rural
renaissance, I'd just take the solving of the how-to
problems for granted. The first thing I'd
provide
would be festivals.
~ Ralph Borsodi
Joseph Campbell on -- The immovable spot, the absence of ego
The
immovable spot.
It is a psychological relationship status with respect to your relationships to the forms of the world around you.
The biological urges to enjoy and master (with their opposites, to loathe and to fear), as well as the social urge to evaluate (as good and evil, true and false), simply drop away, and a rapture in sheer experience supervenes, in which self-loss and elevation are the same.
Such an impact is "beyond words," for it is not such as can be explained by a reference to anything else. The mind is released--- for a moment, for a day, perhaps forever---- from those anxieties to enjoy, to win, to be correct which spring from the net of nerves in which men are entangled.
Ego
dissolved, there is nothing in the net but life--- which is
everywhere and forever.
The Zen masters of China and Japan call this state the state of "no-mind."
The classical terms of India are moska, "release," bodhi, "enlightenment," and nirvana, "transcendence of the winds of passion."
Joyce
speaks of "the luminous silent status of esthetic
pleasure," when the clear radiance of the esthetic image is
apprehended by the mind, which has been arrested by its wholeness
and fascinated by its harmony.
"The mind," he says, "is that mysterious instant Shelley likened beautifully to a fading coal."
So the esthetic vehicle, the instrument of the rhythm and beauty that induces esthetic arrest, is the revealing powers of maya.
~Joseph Campbell, "Reflections on the Art of Living."
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~ Mushroom People living harmoniously under the living room window (Remember an old sci-fi flick called, "The Mushroom People?)
I and Thou
two figures with one soul,
we're a garden with plants and birdsong
moving through us like rain.
The stars come out.
We're out of ourselves,
but collected.
We point to the new moon,
it's discipline, and slender joy.
We don't listen to stories of
frustrated anger.
We feed on laughter,
and a tenderness we hear around us
when we're together.
And even more incredible,
sitting here in
we're this moment in Korasan and
We have these forms in time,
and another in the elsewhere that's
made of this closeness.
~Rumi by Coleman Barks
| "ScruTiny in
the Great Round is an interactive work of art on CD-ROM. It is a meditative collage of images and sounds; a wandering through our collective imagination. Each scene is a painted animated landscape embedded with symbols, artifacts, poetry and sounds from cultures and religions around the world. The story has a dream-like sensibility as it follows the encounters of male and female, each portrayed in various guises and transformations. Taking place in a background of chlorophyll and blood and in the mystery between the body and spirit, are episodes of he and she enduring the dramas of sex, marriage of birth. An international jury headed by composer Jean-Michel Jarre awarded ScruTiny the "Grand Prix du Jury Milia d'Or" at the third annual Milia conference in Cannes, France."
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