A Brief Rant on Materialism

            Many people believe Americans to be lost in crass materialism, but I believe this is a misguided accusation.

Our fantasies of being a materialistic culture may be a defense against a true love of the material. In a culture that worships at the altar of Science; rationalism, empiricism, logical positivism, head over heart, thinking superior to feeling, we are more likely idealistic abstractionists, not materialists.

We are a consumer society in love with the idea of material and not material itself. How else can one explain fast food promoted via wonderfully sensuous and gustatory imagery yet leaving much to be desired in the actual eating? We eat the menu images in our head before we consume the food for our bellies.

How else do we account for plastics and synthetics disguised as real wood furniture and hardwood floors?

What about polyesters that mimic linen and silk, manufacturing clothing with so much more ease of care and disposability?

And what about faux stone masquerading as real rock on so many of our buildings?

This is all smoke and mirrors, fire and air, style without substance, appearance sans the material.

A true materialist loves the material world, cherishing the things of the world, repairing not despairing, recognizing that the world is not a simple commodity for our consumption but rather an animated, ensouled being of which we are an intimate expression.

When our dreams and fantasies no longer promise paradise in the ever after but rather plant us firmly in the present, and immerse us fully in the moment, then our lives, in tune now with the rhythms of soil and sea, sun and sky will truly blossom.

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The Astrological Birth Chart

The primary tool an astrologer uses is the natal or birth chart which is literally a stylized map of the solar system as seen from the particular place and time of a person’s birth. It has several features; the planets, the zodiac signs, the houses, and the aspects or angles of relationship between the planets. More imaginatively however, it is an image of psyche or soul, a mapping of the topography of our inner landscape. As a map it can be used for purposes of orientation, helping us fathom where we are in life, sounding out our centers, and getting our bearings. We can imagine life as a turning wheel of dynamic process with the nascent springtime of our youth, the summer fruition of our efforts, our inevitable fall and decline and finally, our demise into winter’s inactivity and dormancy.

            The birth chart provides a framework for imagining a profound intimacy between ourselves and our world. We hear this deep intimacy echoed in the words of early Church Father, Origen who wrote, “Know that you are another world in miniature and have in you Sun and Moon and even stars.”

But for our charts to say anything to us, astrology must of necessity hinge on the fantasy that our world is a living being capable of speaking to those who have the ears to hear and the eyes to see. Historically we find this in the Old Testament in psalm 19….

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world.”

What is this psalm but a faith statement about the world’s capacity to speak, to communicate with us, whether it’s the birds singing their message, the wind in the trees, the clouds on the horizon conveying the weather, the days becoming shorter, or the dance of the planets, the world affords us the opportunity to understand our situations. The world discloses itself to us and also reveals us to ourselves.

Emerson once wrote…

“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?... Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put.”

This “solution in hieroglyphic” sounds very much like the image of our birth map. If the universe is sacred as many traditions hold, then astrology is a form of living, sacred text.

There is no Muslim moon or Catholic sun, no Buddhist season or sign, the heavens do not play favorites. The sky is all inclusive, it speaks to everyone. It’s the perfect container for a global spirituality for it is something under which we all gather and share in common. So it would seem that the astrology chart is a hieroglyph; a sacred symbol reflective of the sky. It is a world infused with sacredness.

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An Astrological Spirituality

An astrological spirituality means living with a keen awareness of the differences within time and space. In our everyday mind, time and space are viewed as profane, homogenous, mundane, of no special merit. Typically they have little or no qualitative difference. Is it possible that the way we in the West consider space and time contributes to a sense of malaise and boredom which seems a permanent feature of American life?  Each day is fairly much the same as the next. The once set apart holy day of Sunday now affords me the same ease as any other day of the week for shopping, purchasing alcohol, and even working. Holidays (holy days) such as Memorial Day can be celebrated anywhere from the 25th to the 31st of May. Martin Luther King Day, President’s Day, and Labor Day float on the convenience of Mondays. Thanksgiving is the 4^th Thursday in November. These are not cosmically determined like the solstices, equinoxes, and cross quarter days. These cultural observances do not connect us to a living cosmos.

            Astrological time however is very different. We can’t just move time around capriciously, changing holidays and birthdays willy-nilly to fit our daily schedules. Time is so important that depending on when a person is born is a fundamental key to understanding that life. Time is qualitative in that each moment is unique from any other, more propitious for certain kinds of activities and less so for others. Time is viewed liturgically, similar to the ritualized days and months of the church year. In other words, time expresses meaning.

            An astrological spirituality confers an appreciation for the daily round. Time is imagined as overlapping, interpenetrating shorter and lengthier cycles of change. To recognize the repetitiveness of time is to accept endings, gain the capacity to start over, to be born again, to face living with trust in the eternal returning. I’m not speaking here of simply spinning your wheels or going in circles, though that may be necessary at times, but rather the possibility of ever widening spirals of experience weaving more inclusiveness into life as we spin the fabric of our destinies.

            What about space? Modern life holds space and place with the near same indifference as time. Now of course, we can speak of beautiful or decaying spaces in America but overall, space is generally viewed as homogenous. If I am eating at McDonalds in San Francisco or NYC my experience of eating there has little qualitative difference. My experience of Walmart in Denver is fairly identical to the one in Cleveland. It used to be that traveling held great surprises in place but now we seek the shelter of Ramada Inns, Hyatts, and Hiltons guaranteeing that our experience in new cities is familiar. For the majority of Americans, modern America has no sacred space. Americans esteem no sacred rivers or trees, pilgrimage to no sacred mountains, pray at no sacred wells.

The astrological life however carries the fantasy that place matters, whether in relocational charts or in natal charts.  My birth place reflects the nature of my inner being. Sacred space and sacred time add depth, difference, and color, enriching what it means to be alive. The astrological view sees the classical transcendence of divinity translated to the immanence of  the Sacred in every place and in each moment. We live a sacred life and the birth chart is a sacred image.

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Winter Solstice part 2

I’d like to continue on the theme of the upcoming solstice. The solstice this year occurs next Saturday Dec. 21, 12:11 PM EST. This is one of the four critical turning points of the Great Round with its complement in the Summer solstice and the two equinoxes in Spring and Autumn. 

Moving toward this cosmic marker, the light is becoming less and darkness is increasing, gathering us together for the longest night, tucking us in, and readying us for the quiet display of its majesty. Once we are enclosed by this dark mother, in appreciation, we can then begin noticing the birthing of light as  days begin ticking their way toward greater radiance. But if not for this Great Darkness, this cosmic matrix, the stars could not be seen and we would not experience light. Darkness is the necessary ground for the possibility of any discussion about light.

Solstice is a holy day that is natural and cosmic. The cultural holidays; Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanza are human invention preferring membership in a group. Though solstice is honored by only a few, it shares its bounty with all, no membership required. It does not exclude on the basis of caste, class, creed, color, age, gender, or species. All beings are welcomed to the awareness of darkness in their lives.

In our increasingly manic, growth oriented, and light focused culture, we seem to devote great energy toward eliminating darkness, silence, and death from our lives. We deny death, trying to hide it away from view by placing dying people in hospital and hospice away from the bustle of life where they might be seen, away from the home. We apply cosmetics to our recently dead, wanting them to appear only asleep in their final rest. 

We eschew the quiet, leaving our televisions and radios constantly on, making noise to keep silence at bay. I find that I can’t even go to a sporting event without music blasting out in between the action. We find ourselves keeping our phones attached to us to keep the conversations going or information flowing, avoiding silence and solitude at all cost.

We light up our cities and towns causing light pollution, obliterating the night sky. We illuminate our homes to chase the darkness away from our lives, keeping nightlights and security lights burning to ward off whatever shadows may be lurking that we’d prefer not to meet.

In our family, in addition to the beauty of Christmas honoring the birth of the Light of the World out of darkness for Christians, we've always celebrated the winter solstice. We generally have many lights (votive, candle, incandescent) lit in the room in which we gather then slowly extinguish each light and doing readings about darkness (we have even sung solstice carols on occasion). When the light has been removed, we sit in darkness for a few minutes and each share the value of the dark in our lives. Then we slowly return illumination to the room, relight the tree, and open one gift. In gratitude, we may even make a toast to darkness as that which contains, holds, and brings forth light. It is a simple ritual to honor that element to which our culture pays so little positive attention.

Let me close with Rilke’s words about the dark…..

You darkness, that I come from,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes
a circle of light for everyone,
and then no one outside learns of you. But the darkness pulls in everything:
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! —
powers and people —
and it is possible a great energy
is moving near me.
I have faith in nights.

Wishing you a meaningful solstice and a merry Christmas!

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Winter Solstice

            This is the season in which we celebrate the Winter Solstice, the longest night. That time of the year when we can observe the power and necessity of darkness in our lives. Though I am not comfortable with this matter of darkness, I recognize that it comprises a significant portion of my life and to attempt to ignore it, to make it go away, to keep it in the background is to deny its existence and by extension, deny a part of my own existence. Our culture seems to try to ignore this darkness, calling it the shortest day, by focusing attention on light and the birth of the Sun or the Son (Christians) during this time of the year.

            I am not at ease in the dark, on the shadowy paths which twist and wind in my life. Darkness is an unknown where things are unlit and ill defined. It is where security is at a minimum and risk and uncertainty rule. I prefer the sense of knowing who I am, of seeing with clarity, of being in control by manipulating a well-lit environment. Who likes to be left in the dark about matters? I am a creature who faces the light but in so doing I see nothing behind or beyond the spotlight of my narrowed awareness. I miss so much in my unwillingness to trust the dark. If I truly believe that creation is blessing, then darkness as an integral part of creation contains blessing within itself.

            I am reminded that I am the fruit of an encounter that quite likely occurred in the soft darkness of a winter’s eve, reminded that I am sprung from the darkness of a loving womb. I am reminded that in the darkness I can sleep and be renewed from the labors of the day. I am reminded that when I am bleeding, I bandage my wound, cloaking it in darkness in order that the healing process may begin, and that injured creatures retire to dark out of the way places to allow nature to work. I am reminded that the seed begins it germinative activity in the darkness of the fecund earth.

            The dark contains as the womb contains, holding mystery, numinous in its depth. It is a matrix, maternal, holding billions of stars in its vastness. It is imbued with the power for transformation, filled with potential, shape shifting the contents of life, bringing forth anew that which has hardened and dried under the glare and heat of a bright consciousness.

            Darkness is half of creation ebbing and flowing in an eternal dance with light. T.S. Eliot wrote,

I said to my soul be still, and let

the dark come upon you

which shall be the darkness of god.

As, in a theatre,

the lights are extinguished for the scene to be changed.

With a hollow rumble of wings

with a movement of darkness on darkness...

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.

            When I am in rhythm with this cosmic dancing then I flow with reality, rather than distorting or denying it. Without this Holy Dark, there can be no creativity because there is no gestation leading to birth. 

            Additionally, if everything in my life must be exposed to the light of thorough scrutiny, then I am less able to express tolerance for things which cannot be understood in the clear light of consciousness. Uncertainty, anomaly, mystery, vagaries, even slow growth brings anxiety. When I try to force the bloom of my life with excessive light, I lose the ability to savor life itself. Forced blossoms are never quite as fragrant as the ones slow grown on the vine.   

            Being attached to light, I am only half a person. To reclaim wholeness, darkness needs a new honoring. We must allow ourselves to be in the dark about things. The Kentucky poet, Wendell Berry writes,

To go in the dark with a light is to

know the light.

To know the dark, go dark.

Go without sight, and find that the

dark, too, blooms and sings, and is

traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

            I hope we can all find time to celebrate this Holy Darkness.

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