Gaia Voices

"I wish you made sense to me"

Posted on May 25, 2007 by Richard O Fuller

In response to my last post, my friend Nils wrote:

“Dear Richard,
I value your friendship and love
and only wish you made sense to me. …”

I was thrilled. I wrote him back:

What a wonderful response!
I would like permission to quote you.
Really.
Either with your name attached or anonymously.
It has taken me so long to really start doing this Gaia Troubadour work because it hasn’t made sense to me either:
“Us, inside a living organism! Like e coli in someone’s intestine? You gotta be kidding!”

And I know it doesn’t make sense to lots of people.
Part of what I have been doing for these last decades is refining a personality and a place in my community that allows me to say things that people don’t feel they have to take seriously or “believe,” but they are still willing to hear from me —to entertain my thinking at some non-threatening level.
Your wonderful statement is a model of the relationship I want people to feel they can have with me. One where they find me to be a valuable friend, and we can speak frankly together about how this Gaia Troubadour stuff doesn’t make any sense to them.

Writing this to you allows me to realize that part of what the website is about is just getting the ideas out where people can see them, giving these weird ideas some months and years in the light of day, to discover that nothing terrible happens.
You, and many of my other friends, don’t even have to read them for this “light of day” time to be valuable. A few of the ideas will connect with a few members of our shared community; word will get around that while I may be odd I am not out of control, and that in fact the Gaia Troubadour can be entertaining. As a community (I hope) we will discover settings where I can speak my heart and people don’t need to feel threatened or challenged. (This is already true in meeting for worship.)
And then, when we (and especially I) have had time to be reassured that it is not actively dangerous just to say such outlandish things where everybody can see them, then in face-to-face conversations I can begin to make connections between what I have been saying and the inner realities I know people carry. Like “prayer.” That’s a nice example of something some people “believe in” and other people don’t, and that feels tricky to talk about.

And in the meantime your wonderful statement,
“I value your friendship and love and only wish you made sense to me”
is the perfect thing for my friends to be saying to me.

Nils responded:

Of course, quote me and use my name or not as you wish. I do understand your concept of us all being connected and as such part of something larger that our individual selves and e coli in an intestine is not a bad analogy. … In our meeting house in Pennsylvania there are many majestic trees that were fertilized by the horses of early Quakers, and the trees also used the carbon dioxide that those horses and Friends may have exhausted and so the trees are in part made up of “waste” products. …
Well, dear friend, we raised a chuckle from Peg in reading our mail, so our day has been a success.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

What IS Gaia exactly?

Posted on May 18, 2007 by Richard O Fuller

Prospect Hill Friends Meeting has invited me to present to them this Sunday.
Lyn and I agreed on the topic, “What IS Gaia exactly?”

Here are my current thoughts, in preparation.
Today I say:
Vision is an active and constructive process.
I learned about “vision” in junior high school science class. They taught, “the process of vision begins when light enters the eye…” with a diagram of a cross-section to the eye, and the image of a tree upside down on the retina.
I believe the explanation and diagram are accurate, but woefully inadequate. Fundamentally short-sighted.
What we “see”… –reality-creation– is a dance
and the eyeballs are only the dancing shoes.
The process of “seeing something” –of reality creation– is well described as
a story we tell ourselves.

And the fullest expression of human “seeing”
is culture, which is a many-layered fabric of stories.
The creation of culture is an amazing process. Archeologists report excitedly on the early stages of its development:
“We have found high concentrations of pollen grains among the skeletons buried in these ancient graves! This means these people from the dawn of the human era were buried with flowers. The creation of story, of meaning, of culture-mediated reality had begun.”
Culture includes stories which hold paradoxes. Example: a god, devoted to us, who punishes with death.

.: I thought your topic was
What IS Gaia exactly?
.: Thank you. That IS my topic.
Where I have gotten to, so far, in my presentation is:
I “see” Gaia.
If we are to “see” Gaia together, it will necessarily be a creative process, a dance between ourselves and unmediated reality, which we can know only by mediating it.
So far I’ve been talking epistemology: how we know what we know.
Talking Owen Barfield’s SAVING THE APPEARANCES
Talking Alfred North Whitehead and “process theology.”

Let me try to shift my focus from how we humans mediate unmediated reality
to the shape of reality my vision shows me:
Just as gestation is a process,
Just as the succession of forest types to a climax biome is a process,
I believe life on earth is a process.
A dynamic process we can recognize.
One we can try to work with, rather than against.
Indeed, I want to shout from the roof tops to the lost citizens of Industrial Civilization:
Here is organic wholeness!
Here is guidance for what ails us!
Here is a basis on which we can make our billions of choices.
And if we do
We will find
We will co-create
Our proper place in the world.

“How?” (You might ask.)
“Would this discovery of Gaia’s process take place in a laboratory?”
“Would we try to poll all of humanity, and maybe the animals too?”
“How would we learn what Gaia ‘wants,’ where she is headed, where she wants to go?”

Today, I say:
Just as the embryo is a pattern that becomes manifest through the process of gestation
So Gaia is a pattern
In the process of manifesting.

So, before a particular process of Gaia unfolds in the world,
(Like an El Niño winter or a monarch butterfly migration)
Before the manifestation of a particular Gaian process into material reality,
There exists already, a pattern, a set of likelihoods associated with the process that will be unfolding.

And we have access to parts of that pattern,
We can P A R T I C I P A T E,
through prayer, intuition, tuning to the non-material world.
Not that any of us
Or even a unified world culture
Could apprehend the whole pattern. We are too limited for that.
But we can know a lot we are currently ignoring.
And, as Quakers say, if we follow the light we are given, more will come.

You might say:
“True or not, this is too grand for me. I have a few hours next weekend, but I’d have to bring the kids.”

That’s where Quaker Community Forest comes in.
Come into the woods with us.
“See” nature anew
while refreshing yourself,
as you almost always do,
“in nature.”
Join in a community of shared experiences
Making stories that explain what we are coming to know,
Creating a culture
Large enough to hold paradoxes of Love, Nurture, Death
And continual Rebirth.
Recreate,
Re-create
Our Earth.

Posted in Guidance | 1 Comment

Summary, April `07

Posted on May 5, 2007 by Richard O Fuller

Whew!
I am being myself here, on my website, in a way I find very fulfilling. “This is what I need to do!”
Now, I have to admit, when I can get any distance on my material at all, when I imagine seeing what I have written with the eyes of others:

It looks pretty confusing
It’s a stretch to imagine Richard’s ramblings are part of a coherent picture.

My dear friends, I forgive you for not reading this closely.
I recognize that you may experience what you thought was my meaning dissolve before your eyes.
I really need to do this, to get it out there. And I am doing it, most of all to satisfy my own inner imperatives.
Don’t worry too much about it, at this point. Know that I am content with myself.

Here’s a summary of what’s happened on this website since my last summary, on March 30.
The month began with me introducing you-all to a meeting of my inner committee. We were arguing about whether I was creating expectations in my readers I would not follow through on.
We will wait and see who wins the argument, but the real accomplishment, from my whole-committee point of view, is that I am beginning to share my inner process. I think that’s important because it will form the foundation for conversations about “character” and “personal integration” and “guidance,” which I hope will come later.
Already on 4/13 the inner-committee faction that “had a plan” looks like it has thrown us into a funk.
.: “Our lives give us the same lessons over and over until we learn them.”
.: OK, I’m trying. Hopefully, having you watching will help.

I had opened the site to comments, and immediately I got two great ones! On 4/24 I responded to them with a statement of my faith that, even in the face of my confusion, that I am guided and am making “progress” as best I’m able.

This provoked another wonderful comment, asking how we, as individuals, might use an understanding of Gaia as strength and solace as we confront the inevitable losses that are the lot of living things.
I replied on 4/28.

If I thought I should understand what I am doing, I’d be worried.
I believe I am unfolding the mystery of my life.
I offer it publicly because I believe my experience has relevance for many of us, connected as we are in the unified field of Gaia.
And, as I said last week, I believe “something big is happening,” even as we speak.

Love,
Richard

Posted in About Richard, Periodic Summary | 1 Comment

Tragedy and Transcendence

Posted on April 27, 2007 by Richard O Fuller

James speaks with the voice of a poet, in his April 24 comment, responding to my last week’s post.
His closing paragraph:

So, how do we find our way, as individuals and as a species, between fully acknowledging the great losses that have taken place and will take place, working toward a better world as best we can, and recognizing our humble and temporary place in the whole grand scheme?

As long as you promise not to take me too seriously, I’ll try my answer to James’ question.

Something Big is going on.
Pierre Teilhard calls it “complexification.
Just as I am skeptical about the cosmological “Big Bang” as an extrapolation into our past, I’m skeptical about Teilhard’s Omega Point as our extrapolated future, but I think he has properly observed a process clearly active within Gaia. For instance, there were several phases of large dinosaurs, with herbivores and carnivores in each phase. There seem to me remarkable parallels between the big plant-eaters of the earlier ages and the big plant-eaters of the later ones (four big tree-like legs, for instance). Likewise, with the carnivorous dinosaurs (rear legs more powerful than the front ones).

AND, along with the similarities across the ages,
it seems to me the beings of the earlier ages were more basic and simpler, while those in latter ages are “finer,” more nuanced, less crude.

It’s as if Gaia had given these creatures a good first try, then had improved the newer models, having learned some things from the early experiences.

Something Big is going on.
And mammals! This whole coat of hair thing. And bearing our young live, rather than hatching them! Teilhard, and other paleontologists, could see life growing in subtlety and sophistication over the millions of years of the fossil record.

So, how do we find our way, as individuals and as a species, between fully acknowledging the great losses that have taken place and will take place, working toward a better world as best we can, and recognizing our humble and temporary place in the whole grand scheme?

(.: What might my mere words offer to the scope of all of this?
.: Metaphor.
.: Some orientation for the verbal parts of our selves.)

“We are part of the Dance,”
The Great Process of Gaia.
We are Gaia,
Dancing.
Now.

Not “then.”
And also not in James’
“…point where earth is done with us as a species.”

Now,
this few million years.
And, in my humble opinion,
During “our time” something important is going on with consciousness.
Self Awareness.

Before “now,”
many animals on the African savannahs were aware of a world teeming with opportunities and dangers.
They were also aware of themselves as individuals. Parts itched. Parts didn’t work the way they used to, perhaps due to trauma or age.
But for some of those animals, awareness folded back upon itself,
opening self-awareness.
And a sense of self.
And selves.

(Bet it was related to the development of language.)

And in the “now” of me and you,
the time since the end of World War Two,
During “our time”
another something important is going on with consciousness.
Self-awareness, not only on the individual levels,
but as a planet.

If maize-blight is widespread on the South American harvests,
North American farmers order more corn seed for planting than in years when the South American harvest is good.
And if other human or natural catastrophes strike a region, likewise, the ripples are world-wide:
Armies on alert?
More money to the Red Crescent?
American volunteers knitting thousands of sweaters for oil-soaked penguins?
A global knowing.

So, how do we … work… toward a better world as best we can, and recognizing our humble and temporary place in the whole grand scheme?

In James’ final paragraph, he’s not asking about the whole big picture. He’s asking about us. How are we supposed to relate to all of this: individual death, species death and a good life for those we love, all at the same time?
Aahh!

What I am offering, as Gaia Troubadour, is a replacement for the tribal unit that humans are hard-wired to look for and identify with.
Lady Gaia has been knitting into our awareness the idea of using Her Majesty as our frame of reference as we make choices.
As we do this, human life will remain human life, with its tragedies, whose emotional impact should accepted, not avoided.
Still, if we see ourselves as expressions of a planetary life-force,
that context can be orienting
as we make choices,
and can be a solace
when the results of those choices have negative personal consequences.

For instance, the most vivid experience of parenting I have is of watching my mother do her best with me.
I can put myself in her shoes and imagine that I have a rambunctious little boy who wants to explore everything. He does not have a very well-developed sense of distance, speed or inertia, and he has a poor sense of his own limits. Still, for where he is on the learning curve, he is remarkably skillful (or blessed) when it comes to navigating the world, and he is proud of it. I have done my best to give him a forgiving environment, getting a house on a secluded street, for instance. There is a river, across the street and down the hill, and he is fascinated with it. Our interactions around how he plays near and in the river have made me a virtuoso at estimating my own fears, his skills, the rashness of his playmates and the most dangerous features of his environment, like the ruined foot bridge stretching 40 feet above the creek’s mouth. He and I have danced through the range of parent-child relationships around what he is allowed to do and how many hours at a time he is allowed to be out of my sight. I know if I underestimate his genuine abilities (this year) and I unjustly forbid him something within his competence, he will write me off and I will be dealing (again) with outright disobedience or corrosive resentment. I have learned to listen to his adventures when he gets home, without expletives, and to make my own judgments about his reality, out there, based on what he tells me. Then, periodically, we negotiate an expansion of his limits.
It’s a dicey business. I don’t fully trust either him or me, and of course completely unforeseen accidents also happen. Like falling on a perfectly-known path, and poking his eye out on a broken-off sapling.
I know that, statistically, if there are a thousand parents in my situation, one of us is going to have a bad experience. Let’s say it’s me. Let’s say my son drowns today. Not in circumstances where I would be considered negligent, legally. A simple drowning, through innocent horseplay, or a boyish miscalculation on his part.
“It happens.”
“One chance in a thousand.”

This is a tragedy.
It is properly a loss that will mark me and the rest of my family for a lifetime. An extended period of grief is completely understandable and a partial neglect of some of my other responsibilities is forgivable.
And then there are my doubts about my own culpability. I am implicated. I was not perfect. Because of a misunderstanding yesterday and some time-pressures this morning, I did not focus quite as directly as usual on burdening my son with my adult perspective, which he had learned to carry with him, albeit grudgingly.
Would it have made a difference? No reason to expect so, but it’s an area of weakness that is an entry point for self blame.
How am I going to live, with him gone?
Live with myself? With my other children?
This will be a year of agony, just for starters.
And a tragedy that will leave marks that may be traced for generations.
I accept this.
I do not counsel against feeling the loss.
I do not try to minimize it’s significance.
AND
If I believe my child was and is in God’s care, there is a solace in it. He is gone now, and a billion possibilities are foreclosed, but if I understand his life in a context that preceded his birth and carries on after his death, that makes it easier.
Having a “cosmic” or “planetary” or at least “tribal” or “family” context for loss (or joy) is helpful for human beings.
Throughout history, all over the globe,
we insist on it.

And if I cannot believe in God?
Either because I find the stories I’ve been told unbelievable, or because I fear falling into the tribal wars I see waged all around, in the name of religion?

Am I on my own then, with my grief?
An existentialist staring in cold affirmation at a reality that cares not a whit for my sense of loss?
And not just a SENSE of loss. A genuine loss, dammit, perhaps not on a cosmic scale, but a death of meaning, none-the-less. A death of REAL things. And of realities that might have been.

The Gaia Troubadour says,
Just because humans have the ability to see the universe from a point of view that is devoid of human meaning does not mean the universe is devoid of human meaning.

And here I turn to the concept of co-creation.
“We” and “Gaia” co-create “our” reality of her, who she is to us,
We co-create “What it all means.”
Not a creation “out of whole cloth.”
We are doing more than producing figments from our imaginations.
But we must be active in the making of our meaning. The transcendent immensity of
“something Big going on”
must necessarily be represented to humans in human terms.
That’s what humans do.
As best we can,
and will continue to,
expressing our best (largest, most whole-body) understanding
of the immensity
of which we are a part.

So, how do we find our way, as individuals and as a species, between fully acknowledging the great losses that have taken place and will take place, working toward a better world as best we can, and recognizing our humble and temporary place in the whole grand scheme?

We make the road by going.
Not like power-line cuts, going in a straight line, with no sensitivity to the contours of the underlying geography.
We make our way, feeling along an underlying reality, some of it material, much of it not.
We make our way, putting our sense of things in human terms when we can, and using that to shore up the best of our humanity.
Hopefully.

And, when satisfactory meaning in human terms does not present itself,
accepting,
affirming
the larger planetary context out of which we arise.

It helps.

Fondly,
Richard

P.S. We can nurture and cultivate this mindset.
A mindset of fostering self and ‘family,’ which simultaneously accepts that Gaia’s priorities may work against our personal selves.
This
“loyalty to the group,
being brave in the face of risks,
while being ready to accept personal tragedy in the service of the larger effort”
is sometimes called “the mind of a warrior.”
It is also close to my thinking about mychrist.

Posted in About Richard, Mammalian | Leave a comment

My Faith

Posted on April 19, 2007 by Richard O Fuller

A question that comes to me is, what kind of faith is it that you have, or hope to have, in this work or elsewhere?
Is it a confidence in some positive outcome, eventually?
Is it “faithfulness”, or a willingness to act as your truest and deepest impulses lead you, even if you don’t have confidence in a positive outcome?
Or something entirely different?
(Comment from James, Posted 14 Apr 2007)

(Ah! James knows how to ask questions that get to the good stuff!)

I remember being surprised and impressed with myself some years ago when I was talking with a co-worker who was sharing about her sister’s recent stillbirth.
I said: “It has got to be OK.” I’m not sure the remark had any value to her, but it certainly helped me recognize one of the tenants of my thinking.
1. There’s the life of the individual, with a proper focus on staying alive, and giving birth, and being happy, and not getting too bent out of shape by pain and upcoming death.
2. There is the larger life, the life of the community, the life of Gaia.
We live in both. It is silly to think that somehow “me and my child” have existence or meaning apart from community, from Gaia.
Of course the loss of a child is horrible, for those involved, and I don’t mean to counsel against experiencing the pain. (Thinking here of Betsy’s comment, just after James’.)
I think the issues James raises have to do with the over-arching themes like “justice,” “love” and “grace.
But this answer has lost its way. Let me try again.

A question that comes to me is, what kind of faith is it that you have, or hope to have, in this work or elsewhere?

I have started a response to your questions twice before. Each beginning left me with a sense that my answer refers to context I had not provided, and that I needed to start with reference to a larger framework.

So how about, THE NATURE OF HUMAN REALITY:
I have said several places on this site that Gaia and the larger reality in which she rests are immense beyond human understanding. Now I am going to address that same truth from the approach of my personal experience. One of the metaphors that came to me in meditation this morning was of navigating on the smooth surface of a freshly-frozen pond. “Simple walking” can be full of surprises. And, once you have achieved a certain level of youthful skill, you can run and slide, and move rapidly, even though your legs are immobile. What a wonderful paradox for the young imagination! My experience of reality is like that. Sometimes I try to walk and get only surprises. Other times I seem to move effortlessly. I think my experience points to the nature of human reality: we are amphibious, operating in a world where gravity applies with every step and also in a world where we can have a natural buoyancy, and it’s easy to go “up,” harder to go “down.”

As I try to speak to you out of my experience, I must resort to paradox: On the one hand, I have faith that there is a larger, orienting, context to which I can pay attention, an unseen world.
I believe that, aware or not, I am guided constantly by that context, that field,
and that I can make better choices, for myself and for the planet, if I try to harmonize more closely with it.
And I willingly join my fate with this larger context:
“Thy will be done, not mine.”

On the other hand, at the level of individuals, “life is suffering.” Babies die. Tens of thousands perish in a single earthquake. The world is not a safe place for individual lives, even though Life, as a totality, is tenacious.

Is it a confidence in some positive outcome, eventually?

I do not have confidence in a positive personal outcome. I will die, perhaps painfully, slowly, and disappointed by my friends and myself. I believe these can be “natural” outcomes rather than the result of divine retribution or a miscarriage of cosmic justice.

And yet my faith in –and sense of connection with– the cosmic order is more personal than Spinoza’s affirmation of the big-picture pattern of the universe. I have faith that somehow my human life joins together the individual and cosmic sides of the paradox in a unity too large for us to see clearly.
I have faith that it is worth trying to do things,
that there is meaning in our efforts, and that,
if the wind is right, our efforts may bring us into good fortune we would not otherwise have.

Is it “faithfulness”, or a willingness to act as your truest and deepest impulses lead you, even if you don’t have confidence in a positive outcome?

Yes, that’s what it is. Except that I would not call them “MY truest and deepest impulses.” I believe the impulses I carry are transpersonal. I do not identify them as “mine,” and I do not believe I act for myself alone.

I addressed these ideas a few years ago in the context of Jesus and Christ.

Posted in 'Divine Action' | Tagged About Richard | 1 Comment

Accepting the Darkness

Posted on April 13, 2007 by Richard O Fuller

OK, so I’m in a funk.
That’s probably the right place for me to be.
And I guess I’m going to write about it.
Industrial Civilization is going to be in a funk, too, in my humble opinion, and I’m claiming
“It’s about time,”
so I guess it’s appropriate to share my funk-process here.

This is not new ground for me.
And part of my inner committee is willing to trust it.
In meditation this morning I sang myself one of the songs I shared on my 50th birthday coming-out party. (Coming out as a Gaia Troubadour.)
I learned the song from a tape from Catherine Hall. She got the words from T. S. Eliot, and created the following song. I repeat it here with the running subtext from my inner committee.

I said to my soul, “Be still now, and let the dark come upon you,
Which shall be the darkness of God.”

3A: Oh no! I am not still! I don’t want to be still. I won’t be still! [This is the voice of one of my inner committee members, speaking for a faction of the committee.]

I said to my soul, “Be still now, and let the dark come upon you,
Which shall be the darkness of God.”

3A: Oh no! I heard this verse already. Do we have to sing it again? It’s so slow, and it takes so long to get to the end of the line!
3B: That’s the point, dear friend. Relax. Accept.

I said to my soul, “Be still now, and wait without hope,
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.”

3A: At last, something different.
3C: And it does have a ring of truth.

Wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing.

3A: Oh dear, I am afraid that this is true.

There is yet faith, but the faith and the love and the hope
Are all in the waiting.

3C: Oh, music to my ears

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

3A: Yes, I suppose it’s true.

And the darkness shall be the light.

3A: Could be. Could be…

And the stillness the dancing.

3C: Yes. I WANT this. This faith. This quiet.

I said to my soul, “Be still now, and let the dark come upon you,
Which shall be the darkness of God.”

3A: Oh dear. Are we going to sing this again?

I said to my soul, “Be still now, and let the dark come upon you,
Which shall be the darkness of God.”

3A: Alright. I can submit to this. It WILL pass, eventually.
3B: That’s the point, dear friend. Relax. Accept.

I said to my soul, “Be still now, and wait without hope,
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.”

3C: Yes, yes, I know that. It’s true.

Wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing.

3A: OK. You win. I accept.

There is yet faith, but the faith and the love and the hope
Are all in the waiting.

3A: And it is reassuring to think, to believe, that important, good, things are happening, and all I have to DO, is be patient.

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

3A: Yes.

And the darkness shall be the light.

3A: I feel it.

And the stillness the dancing.

3C: Yes. I dance with my stillness.

I said to my soul, “Be still, and let the dark come upon you.”

3A: I will. I do. I accept.

I said to my soul, “Be still, and let the dark come upon you”

3s: [silent, accepting, waiting]

I said to my soul, “Be still, and let the dark come upon you,
Which shall be the darkness of God.”

There.
Now that I’ve calmed down a little, I can tell you about my last week.
Putting things up on the Quaker Community Forest (QCF) website offers new challenges.
For one, I need to learn how to work with photos on the website, both technically, and how I can use them to best advantage.
And then there’s the pressure of promised performance: I said I would do it. Can I come through?
However difficult getting the photos and text up on the QCF website may be, at least here, on this website, I can share my process:
When I’m in a funk, when I can’t see how to get where I think I need to go, and wonder even if my destination is a proper one, I typically go (am going) through these steps:

Look at what needs to be done
Identify a next step
Set ourselves the task of doing it (for me a separate step from the above).
Try to do the task.
Do of it what I can.
Identify the stopping points, where we can’t do what seems to be needed.
Wait.
Wait in prayer, with longing for THE solution, or at least, for A solution.
Hold onto first principles; have faith in the process.
Move forward, as led.

(3A: Alternatively, far too often, we simply get distracted, forget what we were trying to do, and go do something else, instead.
3B: Oh well.)
4: I think something like the above process is what we –groups of us– will need to go through as Industrial Civilization itself goes through the process of shaking down into a post-industrial state.

Faith in the larger process;
longing for what we want but can’t see how to achieve;
a prayerful attitude and a willingness to accept the truth of “what is, as best we can co-create it,”
rather than getting stuck on the loss of “what was.”

Posted in About Richard, Guidance, Industrial Civ. | 3 Comments

An Open Moment, a Divided Self

Posted on April 7, 2007 by Richard O Fuller

Dear friends,
This is an open moment for me, with this website successfully announced and underway.
I dedicate myself to harmonic resonance with Gaia.

(But, of course, it’s never simple. [And what follows may not be easy reading.])

I think my next steps are to focus on Quaker Community Forest (but simultaneously I am suspicious of myself).

[Begin digression to some necessary background.]

This layered awareness is characteristic of my life, and I’m going to try to explicate it within our shared awareness:
Making some arbitrary cuts on an infinite continuum, I’d say I experience at least these four different levels of awareness:
Awareness Level 1: Look at that!
At this level of awareness, I assume my point of view is the only one there is.
At the next level of awareness, I no longer assume you and I see the same thing, and so the “that” in the level-one statement, above, must be replaced by something more ambiguous. I will assume that our shared world contains phenomena, even if we perceive them differently [Barfield’s ‘unrepresented’]. Let me experiment here with rephrasing the awareness-level 1 statement above, as:
Awareness Level 2: Look at phen! (one or more phenomena).
At this level of awareness, while I am excitedly calling your attention to something, I know that you may not perceive it as I do. At awareness-level 2, I realize that “phen” may have different qualities for me than it does for you.
Awareness Level 3. At this level of awareness, which I regularly experience, I recognize an inner paradox, a seam in my understanding of reality. I see a phen, but I have two ways of looking at it. That is, within myself, I see it from two points of view and I experience the apparent tension between them. (An example follows shortly, a level-3 conversation.)
Awareness Level 4. I hold the contradictions within a unity. I see this apparently-contending part of my world with a single eye.

[End digression.]

Now that this website is up and running in our shared awareness, I believe my next steps are to return to my neglected work on Quaker Community Forest (QCF).

In the time ahead, as I work on the QCF website, I will be looking in two directions at once. I will be looking back to report our accomplishments over the last six months and over the last nine years, and I will also be looking ahead to two presentations Ralph J. and I will be doing at the FGC 2007 Gathering in River Falls, Wisconsin, during the first week in July.
What I hope to be doing on this website, between now and July, is making the Gaia-connections to our Quaker Community Forest work. I feel these connections strongly, but I have hardly bothered to articulate them, in the QCF context.

[What follows begins with an Awareness-Level-3 conversation.]

3A: I want to write about QCF and its connections to this website.
3B: Any time I hear you talk like that I’m suspicious. When you are planful like that you are in great danger of “not coming under the guidance of spirit,” as some Quakers like to say. How is this different from setting yourself up to develop a Student Grove curriculum, with funding from grants, and then falling flat on your face?
3A: I believe it is different. It has a “rightness” in me, a settledness, that the other did not.
3B: “Right…” sure it does.
3A: No amount of words will get you and me to the same point of view on this. We are having this conversation in public so that our friends can watch over the next months and see who is right.
4A: Yes, because no matter which point of view prevails, with this conversation we open a discussion of character:

* How do we experience guidance?
* How do we hold ourselves ready to receive it?
* And to follow it?
* 3A is saying, “I feel guided in my next steps.”
* 3B says “you love to claim that your intent is in harmony with Gaia’s, but you are operating out of a ‘rationalism’ which is not willing to wait for an unmistakable nudge of guidance from Gaia.”
* And, however the argument between you 3s comes out, we will have a “case in point” which we can talk about, with our friends.

Dear Friends, I’m glad you love me. The above makes sense to me, and it feels necessary to share it in this form. I believe I am working on something important, and that as things develop I will be able to be clearer.
Love,
Richard

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End of March ’07 Summary

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Richard O Fuller

Well! A lot has happened, including things not happening, and I am feeling satisfied.
The things that have not happened are that I posted no summary at the end of February, and last Friday I posted nothing at all, despite indicating that I would do both of those things.
I have asked myself, “Richard, why aren’t your undies in a bundle at falling down on these commitments?” The answer surprises me: “I feel I have been ‘faithful.’ While I may have fallen down on the letter of my commitments, I am convinced I am fulfilling the spirit of them.”
My feeling is of having been a faithful servant.
.: Now, that’s interesting. Which of my new, non-theistic words can I use to describe this?
.: “In alignment with the field of higher potential?”
.: Kind of awkward.

I had a wonderful meeting with my elders this last Tuesday, the first since October.
Highlights from that meeting:

My core message has not yet been expressed. I am doing what I can to open myself to it, and this opening continues to happen.
Unlike Al Gore, with his fine work on climate change, I’m calling for a change of heart, indeed, for a spiritual transformation.
One benefit of talking about my problems with alcohol is that I am not in a “holier than thou” position.
It’s time to open my site to comments.
I will never be able to name the/my truth in words. Quakers know this about words. The most I can hope for is to try over and over to grasp it from different angles. People can observe me trying to catch it, and they can find within themselves what I seem to be reaching for.

Here’s a summary of what’s happened on this website since my last summary, February 9th:
It’s been quite a time, centered around the “Grand Opening” of this Gaia Voices website.
For months I had been writing out of the swirls of my inner life.
In preparation for sending out an announcement to many of my friends, I re-focused on the larger picture of where does this current effort fit in my life, with “My Story”.
Then, in late February, I devoted myself to preparing four invitational emails, to 1) Quakers I know, 2) Family & friends outside my Quaker context, 3) my old crowd in Movement for a New Society, and 4) My Science and Spirituality book group. These went out in early March, and were warmly received. Many emails of encouragement, some significant conversations (one of three hours) and some helpful suggestions, like “Why don’t you tell us ‘Who is this Richard,’ stated in terms someone reading the back flap of a book jacket might understand?” In addition to “My Story”, already mentioned, I answered that question with “a semi-formal bio” and an overview of my (now) three biographical statements.

Having accomplished all this, I could return to my neglected part of our Quaker Community Forest work, establishing a website for it. That’s still just a lick-and-a-promise, but it’s underway! (Thanks again, James!)

And then –oh wondrous movement of the Spirit– in mid-March I felt led to share my struggles with a core difficulty in my current personality, an aspect of myself I call “needy-greedy.” With this, I feel I am preparing –being prepared– for the hard work that is ahead. I want to speak deeply, personally, intimately, about our current situation and about the ways we are out of harmonic alignment with Gaia. To do this well, with you, dear readers, there is no flinching from a serious examination of myself.
Not that I “planned” to offer this painful aspect of myself, but there it was, work that needed to be done, and I was faithful to the task, plunging through my shame to honor the truth as I currently understand it.

Today, Ralph J. and I head to Sandhill for a weekend of Maple Syruping with Quaker Community Forest folks. I’m expecting 20 people to join us on Saturday, despite the prediction of serious rain. We’ll be ready!

In Love,
Richard

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My Broken Self, My Impassioned Plea

Posted on March 17, 2007 by Richard O Fuller

I want to start by saying two wrong things.

I am weak, broken, and not to be relied on.
I carry a message from God.

With this paradox, I offer myself
as an example of being human.

If I want you to take my message seriously, I need to be up front with you about my brokenness.

My friends we are in this together.

(Ok, the broken self)
I want no pretense in our conversation as we go forward. If I am failing, and I know it, I want you to know it.

This is not about me, this is about us,
a spiritual community, living and finding its way in the late stages of Industrial Civilization.

It does not matter if I fail. I will fail, that is, I will fall short of my aspirations. But even our failures can be valuable if we are paying attention.
And if we hold them in love.

I’m not saying what I’m doing is right for anyone but me. I am saying “this is really important stuff to talk about.”

All right, already! My confession:
(Ugh! Wouldn’t you know that after my success with the grand opening of this site, that I would be called upon to address my alcohol problem here!)

Let me say that, in the last year, my drinking has less of a problem than it used to be. Still, I need to be careful. And I need to further improve, not backslide.

For over a year I have been seriously watching my drinking, with some help from a program called “Moderation Management”(MM). On their website, if you click on *Abstar* Online Drink Counters & Support, under “Tools for Moderation,” you will find a list of us who are counting our drinks each day and recording them, right there on the internet. The page also allows us to share our goals for the days ahead, green for abstinence, blue for moderate consumption. MM advises us not to use our real names on this page. My name on this page is “Rosboler.” Since January a year ago I have been counting my daily drinks and recording them here. Recently, I’ve been following the MM program pretty well. I started 2007 with a “30-day dry,” which is a standard MM practice, and my goal after those 30 days was “drink no more than three nights a week, and have no more than three drinks in a night.” My deal with myself was that if I exceeded either of those limits, I would immediately begin another 30 day dry.

Well, last Saturday I drank for the fourth time in that week, so now I’m on the wagon.

I share this partly because I want to up the ante, knowing my friends might be following my progress on the MM page, but also because I believe, as a society, we desperately need new ways to talk about the issues I’m raising. We need to talk about how our addictive tendencies and behaviors may arise out of a failure to follow “our path,” denying the importance of the guidance we are being given. (I have come to believe this has happened to me, many times.)

I ashamed to say, after that slip on Saturday, although I didn’t drink on either Sunday or Monday, I did not immediately re-commit myself to another 30 day dry. Then last Monday night I had a dream. It was rather unpleasant, and as I lay there pondering what it meant, it came to me, “Richard, you are going to rot, like that thing in the dream, if you slip out of doing another 30-day dry!”

My friends, that dream helped! I’m now firmly set on a period of abstinence which goes through April 11.

The big news here, for me, is that I was able to feel the importance of the dream.

My friends, many of us regularly take our dreams seriously. And many of us, like me, are reluctant to do so. “Dreamer,” “dreamy” and “you’re dreaming!” are generally put-downs in our culture. I was raised to want it “hard and fast,” with “facts and figures.” And yet, if ever there was a place to look for messages, to look for guidance from the invisible fields, our dreams are a prime candidate.

I come with a message which transcends us, which can unite us!
I am stepping upon Lady Gaia’s stage.

She has bidden me perform.

She has prepared me.

I know I will not win first prize in the state tournament, but I need to show you what I have. I know that some of you have been touched by my efforts, because you have indicated so, in large and small ways, and this gives me courage to offer myself.

This is about us. I offer myself as an “entertainment*” so that we may come together and discover together a wonderful, holy, thing. I am not a leader in the sense that I can tell people what to do. I am a poet with a message from on high.

And it’s my message is that’s important, not me.

And my message is important only to the extent that it quickens meaning in your hearts.

I believe my message is about us, and is in us. I am confident some of what I am saying makes sense to some of you, that you know something similar to what I know.
And I call it forth from your hearts, as you are ready.

Friends, this
reality-of-which-we-have-a-sense

needs to be acknowledged and shared.
As a community forms around this understanding I believe we, as a society, can find the guidance to lead us out of the dire circumstances we are in.

But this will take
an intimacy,
a trust,
a willingness to endure the brokenness of ourselves and others.
As Quakers (and Christians? and children of Abraham?) we are called to do this. We have been practicing, and at times we do it pretty well.
In the name of Gaia, I re-call us to this effort.

And to those of you, my friends, for whom this makes little sense, I say, “that is fine too.” I invite you to this, my performance, trusting that if it seems silly to you, you will be kind. If my attempts at subversion seem dangerous to you, I beg you to entertain them in love, as I offer them, and I invite you to come to me or to my elders, with your concerns.

——————
*”Entertainment” derives from Middle French, meaning to stand or hold between, as in the legal phrase, the court refused to “entertain” his plea. The act of being entertained calls for a temporary “holding between,” the suspension of laws, rules and judgment of and by all concerned. (source)

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Early Enthusiastic Acceptance

Posted on March 9, 2007 by Richard O Fuller

Wow!

How gratifying your responses to my Grand Opening have been, already in the first days!

I have not yet had a chance to respond properly to some of you.

I already have 25 people signed up to receive summary emails, and I know several others are following with RSS feeds.

In response to Friend Liz, I have added a little bio of myself.

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