raining the rigours of love

i am watching rain pouring down and appreciating it's triumphant patter on the slate stones in the courtyard, contemplating faith. and therefore love. just read an article that reminded me of a 'symposium' we held once in college. ahh to be young and pseudo-intellectual and into philosophy and religion! our symposiums involved selecting a topic for serious discussion, meeting in the rodin sculpture garden on campus - in front of 'the gates of hell' sculpture - at midnight and engaging in socratic debate for hours while consuming copious amounts of decidedly mediocre red wine. (i believe the quality of the debate deteriorated (or improved depending on your perspective on such things) in direct correlation to the quantity of wine consumed. and if we were drinking wine in a box, all bets were off on whether the conversation was intelligible, let alone intelligent.) there were sometimes readings involved to prep for symposiums - such as the grand inquisitor section of the brothers karamazov.* there was one night we met to discuss the question: can you believe in love if you don't believe in god or some transcendent power? it was along those lines anyway. this is the article i was just reading while listening to the rain: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/the-rigor-of-love/. worth a read. here is possibly my favourite line: We might say love is that disciplined act of absolute spiritual daring that eviscerates the old self of externality so something new and inward can come into being.

i have been thinking about faith lately. i suppose i always am. it is so important to me. to who and why i am. but (i'd like to think) not in a showy or ostentatious way. it's more quiet, internal than that. more sacred if you will.

i've also been considering the importance of ritual and community of late. again, not new contemplations for me. but i suppose a necessary part of the meditation on love that i've now determined is my reason for returning to china. appropriate for examining context. on the recommendation of a friend - who took serious issue with my assessment of the priv-lit / eat pray love piece, btw** - i just downloaded joseph campbell's hero with a thousand faces or the power of myth, a transcript of his conversations with bill moyers of PBS. [i heart bill moyers.] according to my friend, campbell talks about how one of the reasons that we face existential crises these days is because we've lost the accumulated wisdom of tradition and the mystery of rituals and myths. we've got no greater context to situate ourselves in - not necessarily spiritual context mind you, but human context. oh joseph campbell and bill moyers chatting, i haven't even begun and i suspect that i could drink a case of you and sill be on my feet!

i am going to go for a long, rambling walk in the rain and rock out to a discussion of rituals, tradition, myth, context. all of which points to faith and love and the glory of raindrops and eternity. more to come on all of this. in other news, the all-female japanese punk band we saw last night - shonen knife - was incredibly awesome. may have to to first rock out to one of their songs to get the walk started with suitable rigour for thinking about the rigours of love.



*yes,this is what i did instead of going to frat parties in college. i am not kidding when i say i was a big dork. i still basically am. although now i prefer 'sexy nerd'. i don't think the 'sexy' bit had developed yet when i was an undergraduate. i wore bright colours and sparkles on a daily basis and had short, spiky electric blonde hair. please see the misfits from the cartoon 'gem & the holograms' (truly outrageous!) if you want an idea of my fashion sense. i also spent hours at a time by myself sitting under trees and reading hiedegger. yikes. sometimes i wonder how i managed to have any friends in college - and such wonderful amazing ones no less. i truly am blessed. and thankfully, somewhere along the way, some of these wonderful friends gently suggested that i lose the glitter. and that even rainbow brite embraced grey sometimes.

**he noted that men have always been encouraged to go off on spiritual quests or other adventures to find themselves, why not women? he has a point. and i agree. i think what i actually am concerned with is the commercialisation of that process and the mass-marketing of the need to find oneself and attendant industries that encourage women (read-society's real consumers) to spend money they don't have in the names of attaining some sort of inner peace that, in all honest truth, is already there within them. and they can access that spaciousness or calm or sacredness or whatever you want to call it, without the help of a life coast or a yoga retreat or such. it's just there waiting. in all of us. and there endth my sermon for saturday morning in the rain. om shanti.