Live Oak
Posted on | January 25, 2012 | 2 Comments
At a certain age numberless Americans and Canadians turn into snowbirds as the icy winds pour down from arctic climes, bringing with them snow. The snowbirds come 
to Florida and walk the beach, putter in the shops, and eat too much. This January we joined the flock to go to Melbourne, forty miles south of Cape Canaveral. It’s not a great place for woodworkers, but in compensation there is one tree that hovers over all the others, spreading monumental arms out over sandy soil – the live oak. Walking through the pathways of a lovely park near us, we discovered some that the park supervisor told us were five hundred years old. Nifty signs along the boardwalk circling among them spoke of plants with Latin names the botanists use, but there is nothing like the awe of looking up in their massive trunks, festooned with Spanish moss and air plants. Here’s a poem I wrote to try to catch the spirit of these mighty oaks within a constant cycling of life.
This oak
this live oak
resplendent
epiphatic life erupting on its arms
brings cooling shade to torpid creatures
crawling on the mossy floor and rattling leaves.
This oak
this live oak
recumbent
necrophatic life in banquet underneath its trunk
becomes a pelican for fungal nutrients
to feed new oaks
that rise again
garlanded with gossamer bromeliads
to seek the sky.
Dust
Posted on | January 21, 2012 | No Comments
As I walked down a sandy path the other day, stepping on crushed leaves and unseen pulverized insect bodies, not to mention ashes and decomposed paper, I realized how we are constantly surrounded by dust. Indeed, the whole earth is constantly tending toward dust and emerging from it. Or so it seemed to me at that moment. So here’s the latest of my “metaphysical poems.”
The universe
they say
is full of dust
a mother’s bin of was and will
shaken out in frustrate mischief.
We are
they say
the smoky iridescence of some sun
composed of sub-atomic
electrostatic
dancers
in the cracks between God’s toes.
Every thing is destined for the nameless clutter
in the gutters of existence.
Every thing is but
a beach of pounded sand.
Yet there is a shimmering
a dustball floats across the floor
gives body to the light
as spectral auras
fill the galaxies.
The dust delights divine design
in what was refuse of some wandering souls.
Conservatives and Liberals?
Posted on | January 13, 2012 | 3 Comments
Like most of you I look out at the political landscape in America and see only “the One” and then the circus of opposition hopefuls, feeding on each other. How did it come to this? The Republican party of my parents – Ike, Rocky, Stassen, even Taft – descended to outrageous irrationality, lies, and sheer truculence. Here’s one line I’ve been thinking about that comes out of my earlier work – the ever-changing meanings of Conservatism. The fractious debacle that is the present Republican Party claims to be the heir of Conservatism, but which one?
In the nineteenth century conservatism meant defense of old orders against the Enlightenment-fed revolutions of 1776, 1789, and, later, 1848. It meant the defense of patriarchy, monarchy, and order based on biological privilege over against republics animated by reasoned argument about the common good of all. For Edmund Burke, it meant change through evolution rather than revolution. The Liberals, against which Conservatives fought, defended the release of entrepreneurs, corporations, and markets from governmental and aristocratic control. How ironic that today, with the rigid dichotomy of Liberals vs. Conservatives dominating our political spectacles, the positions are in most senses reversed. Today’s Conservatives are nineteenth century Liberals, but perhaps with one exception – paternalism and patriarchy.
Still burning bright behind John Locke’s scathing attack on political patriarchy in 1690 is a familial patriarchy of the emerging bourgeois household. The patriarchal monarchy of the entrepreneurial capitalist household remained in place until the late 20th century. It is this form of patriarchy, wedded to “liberal” laissez faire capitalism, that today’s Conservatives seek to defend, with their attacks on women’s right to decide on matters of abortion, for instance. It is the conservatism of the “Baron” of corporate capitalism. What today’s “Liberals” have done is reject the entrepreneurial patriarchy of the industrial order, along with its barons.
However, the unregulated circulation of financial capital around the globe inevitably undermines familial patriarchy. It demands ‘free labor’ to follow capital, including the labor of women. Thus, a powerful contradiction begins to emerge between the classical liberalism of today’s Conservative politicians and the familial forms and values they fervently espouse. The effort to hold together constituencies committed to these two conflicting value systems is foundering. The front runner has to uphold both sides of the contradiction, his only credibility lying in the voters’ amnesia. The verbiage of his opponents for the nomination is no longer in touch with the actual way most people are trying to live their lives, including their concerns for the common good of environmental sustainability, education, and public health.
What is clear is that most Americans are “liberals,” in spite of the opinions they give to pollsters. The question for most is how to maximize their autonomy and, for the parents, that of their children. While corporations provide the false autonomy of consumer choice, governments can also cut down every intermediary institution of family, church, profession, club, and university to secure the rights of individuals. Many people, however, are seeking some sort of “mixed” or “pluralistic” way that finds both liberty and common good in the complex “covenants” among institutions. Here we find, I think, the confluence of Tea Party and Occupiers.
Obviously, politics is a sub-violent struggle among groups for power over government. Ideas are propagated as they seem helpful for beguiling marginal constituencies who might decide the outcome. But it’s also clear to me that ideas matter, and confused ideas eventually bite the hand of those who spread them.
Well, that’s one thread to follow. I’d be delighted to hear about yours as you try to make your way through the bombast and perils ahead of us.
Collaboration in Time and Space
Posted on | January 4, 2012 | 2 Comments
Two events involving my son Eric coalesce to begin our new year. The first involves his trans-Atlantic collaboration with my god-daughter Anja Decke to put on a multi-lingual version of his ecology musical for children, “Animal Party.” Anja’s father, Gerd Decke, is a long-time friend of fifty years who opened the door for me to the German church world and collaborated with me on translations of some of my
writings as well as working with me on many research projects over the years. Now Anja, who, like Eric, writes and produces theater for children in German-English learning situations, has collaborated with Eric to introduce his work to audiences in Berlin. You can find an extensive pictorial story about it at her website, www.kidstheatre.de under “Aktuelles.” Don’t let the German intimidate you. Just follow the links to the Sonnenblumen-Grundschule for colorful pictures. Her German text picks up the spirit of Eric’s original “Animal Party” in a lively manner and conveys it to a wider world. To see this second generation of trans-Atlantic cooperation is indeed heartening. Congratulations to Eric and Anja!
At the same time, Eric has been helping me construct some new furniture for his reconstituted household in Asheville. So here we have an intergenerational collaboration with a very practical outcome. The bed employs several pieces of walnut laid in together between the cherry pieces to make a headboard reflecting the mountains around us.
So the year starts off with two forms of collaboration representing space and time. Now there’s something a philosopher can blog about! Meanwhile, savor the thing itself (Ding an sich).
William J. Everett
In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to a poetically written novel to probe the issues of ecological and human reconciliation.
When I am not writing, I create furniture for worship settings. For more about my work, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River. READ MORE...
Red Clay Blood River
Red Clay, Blood River is a story told by Earth about two brothers from Germany and an enslaved South African woman whose lives bind together America’s “Trail of Tears” and South Africa’s simultaneous “Great Trek” of 1838.