D. Ryan Foster- Searching for Religion as a Religion

April 21

Few people think they have all the answers when it comes to religion. I see so many people with so many views and I think to myself how can I know what is right and what isn't? I struggled with this for a long time until I found this conglomerative faith that is based in the teachings of Christ but hardly follows the perceived tenets of Christianity. I never had a name for what I truly longed to be, beyond the Ancient Greek definition of a natural man (which has very little to do with what people percieve as nature now.) The mention in class of the perpetual pilgrim interested me and spawned this idea in my head of a search for religion being a religion unto itself. It gave new definition to what I believed my personal religion might become.
Where a normal pilgrim may be searching for a definite place or a constant known, the pilgrim who searches for the sake of searching revels in what is unknown and inconstant. As such the idea of change and growth of knowledge is likely to correlate expanding perspectives and viewpoints. This lends this type of pilgrim to travel and expanding their physical boundaries in order to gain the perspective for their spiritual knowledge to expand as well. This inconsistency of place seems to fit nicely with the joy of having inconstant knowledge and to learn new beliefs in order to expand your own. When I apply this idea to myself, I ask that if I'm piecing together the beliefs of everything I travel and find and keep what speaks to me and leave the rest than am I not playing God in creating this patchwork religion? I think that would be egotistical on my part but also presumptuous on the part of anyone who would accuse that. I feel that a guiding hand shows you what you need to see, perhaps what Christians might define as The Holy Spirit, that emotions and an inexplicable (potentially divine) force drives individuals toward believing what they believe in order to better themselves. You begin to see religious leaders not as symbols of divinity but as guide posts to whatever else there is to learn about the human experience with the divine.
In the idea of travel, incongruity, and expansive knowledge lays the integral idea of wilderness. The concept that there is something that is beyond what mankind can teach in words and actions that can only be learned in the fleeting concept of untamed creatures and flora, perhaps even an idea of the communal spirit of a land that allows a better connection with whatever it is divine. However, a pilgrim of this type, while appreciating nature's abilities does not back seat the human and its culture to some chaotic sinful abyss while putting the natural world on a pedestal. This type of pilgrim reveres all facets of learning in order to expand and enhance themselves on three levels, mind, body and soul. And perhaps compare it body to earth mind to the heavens, and the soul to the axis mundi that binds it all. In this a whole person relates to their cosmos as a microcosm in and of to themselves with the borders of each ever expanding and ever changing to include as much of the whole. At this point in my life I feel that whatever that whole may be that it is love, in all its forms, given, received, observed; no matter how far I search I do not believe I'll ever find too much love or too many guises in which it lies.

Amanda DeSalme, reflections on a Gary Snyder excerpt and today's class discussion

from Snyder's The Practice of the Wild:

"The lessons we learn from the wild become the etiquette of freedom. We can enjoy our humanity with its flashy brains and sexual buzz, its social cravings and stubborn tantrums, and take ourselves as no more and no less than another being in the Big Watershed. We can accept each other all as barefoot equals sleeping on the same ground. We can give up hoping to be eternal and quit fighting dirt" (Snyder, 25-26).

I enjoy that Snyder phrases the lesson from the wild to be the "etiquette of freedom." It seems so paradoxical. One definition of the word "etiquette" from Dictionary.com is "conventional requirements as to social behavior." And yet, with the word "freedom," I feel that there is no convention necessary, that people are able to make decisions independent of any expected social behavior. I suppose he is trying to say that the conventions of freedom are exactly that---to be free, and accepting of all beings. We are all "barefoot equals sleeping on the same ground" (Snyder, 26). The whole picture set up in my head is of jovial people letting loose and dancing around outside somewhere in the wildnerness, barefoot, not worrying about dirt or mosquitos but just enjoying life and the company of others. Why can't we always just accept other beings, no matter how different they are?

The discussion in class today about tourism and the staged authenticity reminds me of this acceptance of others. Yes, we try to accept other cultures, and yet we are not really seeing the true culture since we are simply buying modified versions of what they think we want to see. My advice to those trying to truly experience other cultures is to simply go, don't plan things out, just go and see. Skip the touristy bus and touristy markets. Last winter, my family went traveling around some of the Caribbean Islands. My sister and I got absolutely SICK of the commercial glitz and glam that was constantly being flashed in our faces. One day, as we landed on the island of St. Thomas, we decided to experience the island on our own, skipping everything touristy. We explored the island by foot. After a nice long hike, we eventually found a little cove of paradise. It was so silent, away from any tourist-combed beaches filled with things to buy. It was a simple little beach, white sand and clear blue water. Tropical plants and living creatures crawling around. We swam in water so clear we could see the fishes nibbling on our toes, under a vast beautiful sky of warm caribbean sun. There was a family nearby, enjoying the nice day just walking along the beach, and picnicing. We saw a flautist playing into the wind. Eventually the sky clouded up and as we were leaving this haven of beauty, the clouds tore open into a torrential downpour. My sister and I headed towards the side of the island where our boat would be waiting, braving a long walk in the warm tropical rain. A local drove up beside us and offered us a ride. It was incredibly harmless; I know parents teach us not to talk to strangers, but this lady had every good intention. She showed us around the island in her car, telling us about her day and asking us about ourselves. She dropped us off near a marketplace when the sun came out and the torrential rain stopped. My sister and I walked some more and found a delicious little vegan restaurant, where we sat and ate a satisfying meal prepared by wonderful loving people while talking to the flautist we saw on the small beach (who just so happened to be in this restaurant.) We spent almost the whole time talking about jazz and music, because he was a jazz flautist. This excited my sister and I because she plays flute and I am studying jazz, and we both love music in general. Anyways, my point of this whole story is that we had the most amazing experience just going by foot and spontaneous whim, conversing with people and having a true cultural exchange simply by accepting each other as human beings sharing this world with us, rather than as beings who are selling or buying something commercial. As Buber would put it, we had I-you relations with the locals we came across rather than I-it relations.
If you want to experience the world for what it really is, you must accept everyone as your "barefoot equal." You just might discover that you have a surprising amount in common with a vast assortment of people.

Megan Nisbet-Synder: Good, Wild, Sacred

April 8, 2008

Our discussion on April 1, 2008 made me think a lot about humans and the way we treat other humans and animals. The discussion was about our reading of Gary Snyder’s chapter called Good, Wild, Sacred, which is about how disrespectful we are to nature and animals. We use them as a means to our end, instead of an end in themselves. We use nature and animals for what we think is good for us, but what about what is good for them? We have gone too far with our ventures, and we are taking everything for granted. What if they go away and don’t come back one day? Where will we be then?
I thought about this discussion, and I realized that this treatment towards animals and nature is also analogous to how humans treat other humans. When we want something bad, we don’t worry about someone else feelings, or what they want—we want the thing now, and will ignore others or step over others to get it. This is especially true on Black Friday when parents wake up at 3:30 in the morning to go to the store and stand in line for hours to get the latest toy for their children for Christmas. This isn’t the problem, but the problem is the things that sometimes result from these lines. Fights break out, sometimes physical, and the police must sometimes come to break it up. People attempt to bribe others, or pay hundreds just to make sure they get the toy. This happens because people just see others as a means to their end. They want the toy for their children, and they don’t see the people around them as people, but as things in the way of what they want. They don’t realize that they all have the same goal—to make their children happy—they just want to get the toy. This is cliché, but they all need to stop and look around, and realize we’re all people who deserved to be treated like people.
While I have never been a part of these crazy Black Friday parents (and have actually avoided ever shopping on Black Friday), I personally witnessed this kind of behavior the other day when I went to McDonalds to eat. A man was throwing a fit about his order being wrong, and though the woman in the back was already re-making his food, he kept going with his attention rant and ended up degrading her personally by saying that he wouldn’t be here yelling at her if she had gone to college and gotten an education. This made me so angry! Who was he to judge this woman whom he had never met and knew nothing about? It is a perfect example of how badly humans treat other humans—simply as a means to their end. He was hungry, and she was just the thing making his food. He completely ignored the fact that she is a person with feelings, just like himself, and, despite her small mistake, he wouldn’t be eating anything if it weren’t for her. So take a step back from the world for a second, and think about all the people you encounter in a day and how you treat them. Not so good sometimes, huh? Learn to appreciate them as a You, instead of an It (Martin Buber).

Megan Nisbet-Annie Dillard and the Frog

April 8, 2008

While reading Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I came across a few pages that really interested me. In pages 4-6, Dillard talks about a special place she goes while she is at Tinker Creek. It is “a little island shaped like a tear (4).” This section interested me because I would love to have a little place to go and read, especially during the summer. As I sit here at my desk, freezing on this 50 degree day, I can’t help but long for a nice, sunny, warm place where I can read.
Pages 5 and 6 also really caught my attention. Here, Dillard talks about how she likes to scare frogs during the summer. Her imagery is amazing here—she writes so that I can see the entire scene playing out in my head. Frogs are my favorite animals, and I’ve even ordered a license plate that says “FROGGG” for my green beetle that also reminds me a little of a frog. But, I digress.
I realized that, though I think frogs are cute, I don’t actually know much about them, besides the fact that they eat by catching bugs with their extremely long tongues. I had no idea that they shed their skin, which I could’ve easily found out by paying more attention to nature. If I took time out of my busy life to actually enjoy the world, I would learn so much more than I would in school. Granted, this knowledge of nature and natural things wouldn’t help me make any money or get a good job, but I would have more knowledge about the world around me even if I only took two hours a week to spend in nature. I have a nature park literally three minutes from my house, where I could walk on the trails, and get a little exploring in. They even have a few lakes where I can observe animals there, and may even be able to observe a few frogs or turtles.
It’s funny to me that I used to be a “tomboy,” and used to play in the ditch, trying to catch tadpoles when I was younger, but now I cringe when the wind messes up my hair when I’m on my way to somewhere important. I used to catch ants and try to “feed” them in my backyard, and used to think bugs were “cool” just ten years ago. Now, I scream and get my boyfriend or little brother if there is a spider within five feet of me. I truly have become “nature illiterate” as Gary Snyder says in his book. I claim to like frogs, but I have no real knowledge of them, or many other animals. By going out into nature just a few hours a week, or even a month, I can become more comfortable with nature, and may even be able to at least tolerate bugs again. ;-)

Abigail Thomas, (04/02/08 ? discussion)

When Dr Redick was describing where he lived and how there was an area around or near that had once been woods that had been mowed down for potential housing (and Dr Redick told us about his sons efforts in protesting that). I just thought it was interesting that as I’m picturing the story, my personal reference that I’m implementing as the setting is this area on an off-road from my road in Louisa. At first it was just some woods with a few houses lining the road with their driveways connecting in for access. The driveways meandered in such a way that it looked like the way the people designed them were to just cut a car-size path around the trees as oppose to just plowing through for a straight and direct driveway to the road. But then about a year later (I had come back from school after awhile), acres right behind that line of a few houses were completely mowed down of trees. There were acres of gap where there had once been acres of trees. I thought it was interesting that as Dr Redick was telling us about the land around his house I used that little neighborhood on that small road in Louisa as the setting of his story in my imagination.
I think this is an interesting perception method that’s been used many times before by me: to have someone tell me about a place or just say the name of a place and my mind takes on a setting from my own sights and memories to explain this place. I remember one of my first major realizations of this method; in elementary school there was a girl in my class that had said the place name, Jamaica. She had visited there and when she said that word the setting that came to mind and was adopted as to explain what Jamaica must look like, I pictured a big black marble platform or stage and there was overcast. I knew that her facts weren’t all adding up with what I was picturing but somehow I maintained how what I was imagining was convincingly reasonable with what she said. She mentioned ‘beach’ and I pictured shallow, black-marble steps descending into dark water and there were a few red-orange crabs around and my classmates for the people on the beach. I decided that this must be based on some previous view I had and decided this was not unlike what I guess I see the Regency Square Mall in Richmond as (during my elementary school years).
I just think the mind’s attempt at substituting what you have seen for where you’ve never been is an interesting way that people interpret and try to map out where you’ve been and then beyond where you’ve been.

Abigail Thomas, on the Noland Trail for class (03/24)

We were standing on the trail and my friend picked up what I think was an old hazelnut shell. It was well powdered and dusted or the trail sand. She placed it on her thumb like a thumb helmet. Then she put it on my thumb but then it fell. As I recovered it I noticed a tiny bug crawl out like it was frustrated. It was about as small as one fourth the size of a small black ant.
After some lecture time we were allowed to wonder further down the trail. I decided to visit a tree that wasn't incredibly tall but looked well aged. It had thick deep rutted brown bark and had thick twisted and curvy branches and roots. The bark reminded me of black walnut bark, only brown. The twisted, curvy branches and roots had the growth behavior like Crate Myrtles. The tree was giving west shade at this time. There was a random dug-up of potting soil and a sprinkler nearby. The tree was amongst ivy covered ground, which was part of an ivy-covered region in the woods. Thick hairy poisen ivy vines grew up and around the trunk forbidding me to even think of climbing the tree (would have been too perfect otherwise).

Abigail Thomas, Axis Mundi interaction

From the introduction, I don’t know what “center of focus” is. It’s a reference to place, but what would be the “focus”, what are the trekkers suppose to be focusing on, and why the ‘center’, what is the center.
I realize that in reading so many professional writers’ and their professional definitions, and discussions of definitions, and etymology of the word “wilderness,” that are pages and chapters long that it’s almost no longer about the wilderness but just another writing exercise or subject that professional writers can write about. I don’t mind reading these accounts and arguments on wilderness but I’ve read enough now that I’m to the point where it’s no good anymore. It’s to the point where someone might as well be describing to me something that I’ve never seen before, and the words and descriptions the explainer is using don’t even have a chance to do the description of this something justice. There needs to be different medias in exploring wilderness and spiritual journeys from one chair in a little white classroom. I might as well have never seen the light of day and have lived like a mole my whole life and now have come across a class that’s trying to describe and teach me about the sun and life outside and above the ground without any field trips to these places, and I have no previous experiences that I can relate to and imagine this outside world. But outside the mole metaphor and as a person taking this ULLC class on the wilderness as a sacred place, I would have thought I had some previous experience to relate this to, because it’s title and description caught my interest and now the class is keeping it. I’m fairly sure I have previous experience, but all these writers writing their exercises and being professional writers confuse me. I think, as Roderick Nash researches the meaning of the word to include the definition of wilderness as a place “where a person is likely to get into disordered, confused...condition,” that reading writings on wilderness, is a wilderness itself for me, and it’s not spiritual. This class is in dire need of a field trip (best media in the world, with maybe a journal in hand).
I almost don’t distinguish between symbol and a word for something (a word for a definition). In action they’re both the same to me as a word is picked out to stand for, and represent a definition just as a symbol is to stand for and represent a definition. And about Michael Frome, and him saying “wilderness is a state of mind.” Of course wilderness is of the mind the word was born of mind, there were words of other languages and descriptions and experiences, in which someone came up with the word wilderness. The word is a meeting point in discussions of experiences that wilderness and its etymologies represent.
Wilderness in Judaic and Christian scripture is just a bunch of those religions’ stories the Dr Riddick interprets as God choosing wilderness and people of wilderness as favored over developed and urban places. That’s very interesting though about the pattern of how whenever the people made artifacts of God themselves that they tended to be punished and the objects destroyed. Almost as if what people didn’t create and what God must have created, in these bible stories, the wilderness, that God may be teaching that promote what he made not man-made worship “artifacts.” And that the meaning of wilderness for Israelites is that wilderness is something that’s thought of as “bewildering domestication.”
I like the description of time, I can imagine what a nod, blink day....is and when its described that those perceptions are switched around, brings out my curiosity, I think i’d go hiking on the AT just for the different time perception.