Feast of Fools 2015
Mardi Gras
Mahashivaratri
Chinese New Year

Is it ever anything less than a persistent whirlwind? We got to the Midi farmstead from Paris on the 29th of December. The next day Carlo and Jean-Christophe arrived for one night, Annie and Steve for six, and Barbara and Patrick for 13. Ralph and Francis were here for four nights from the 4th of January. Barbara returned on the 15th and stayed until the 6th of February. We spent New Year’s Eve at Liliane and Renaud’s, and the next day attended Sybille’s New Year’s Day garden party. Two days later, there was Penny and Hamish’s bangers and mash gathering. Eventually we got into our various projects, and I am now online teaching my World’s Religions from a Pagan Perspective class for Cherry Hill Seminary. Each class I have had for CHS is completely different from the next. This one began with seven students – each of whom is in some way a favourite, but one had an unexpected death in her family and another an unexpected illness, and both have had to withdraw.

Much of our weather has been incredibly sunny. Frigid nights, but the Goudin stove works well, though we have been diminishing our wood supply close to rapidly. There have been some fun dinners with Pierre and Catherine, Jim and Joanne. Liliane and Renaud both at our place and theirs. The kitchen sink ceased draining, and for several weeks we have been tossing water outside from buckets until Jean-François and Paris dug us a new and expanded septic pit. Meanwhile, the septic tank in Amsterdam began to back up, and almost as soon as that was repaired, a water mains in the street broke and re-flooded the basement yet again. Fortunately Woody and Lily have handled that. And the Rhode Island residence is still not repaired and finished from its water pipe rupture a year ago from January when there was that arctic freeze. That remains the most alarming as well as tenuous concerning any future financial security.

Scott had to cancel on his trip over and shipped my new laptop instead. Marco came down from Amsterdam for a night to help install it. We are now into our last week here for this round. We see Marguerite tonight; Joanne, Jim, Penny and Hamish tomorrow; and Renaud and Liliane on Friday. Saturday and Sunday will be our Michael Mosley 5:2 days, and on Monday we are off to Paris.

We pursued our February nefastus cleansing since the first of the month which ended with the Quirnialia or ‘Feast of Fools’ celebration. We were not overly stringent this time – a new approach as we are now in our autumn years. We celebrated the other festivals which fell within it as well as our occasional soireés with friends and loved ones. Nevertheless, we are glad the abstinence period is over. The following are my musing for when it concluded:

Could it probably be that because we/the people of the world as a whole are so extreme ourselves, the POP becomes itself ever increasingly extreme? If, as Aristotle said, there is a 50/50 draw between the haves and the have-nots, the decisive vote should go to those with property and the most to lose. Marx of course wanted the people themselves to be the property owners. But the POPers have done their best to thwart any communist wish. The 50/50, however, remains the most volatile and dangerous of possibilities. That’s when revolutions occur – not when there is a huge gulf between peasant and landlord but when there is a business-oriented middle class that has gained the taste for power, and the gulf is consequently diminishing.

So I wonder: If we ourselves could become less extreme, more relaxed, tolerant and open – and somehow able to steer gently the post-history stage of human development, might we obtain a time of collective ecological consciousness and thinking and doing? Am I saying awareness other than thought? Or am I saying awareness as the ground of thought and gardening the earth? Is that not what we are actually here for – or at least could be here for?

On a sunny afternoon in the Midi, the cemetery works as a launching pad for these reveries while knowing that we will ourselves be here soon enough.

I have come to recognize one thing that appears as the spiritual undercurrent to valid religiosity. And increasingly I feel, though I have felt this way for a long time by this point, that this is what is most needed to move our world into a well-being and away from divisive and destructive waste. Maybe consciousness survives our mental demise (http://higherperspective.com/2015/01/consciousness-death.html?utm_source=HP), but if it does and there is any choice in the matter, I am definitely coming back, even if in some disembodied form, to exert my utmost for the establishment of telluric awareness.

For the rest – or for the immediate, my feelings for America are at their lowest. Could the world come to accept that American culture has given such treasures as Gershwin, Hollywood, Broadway-42nd Street, jazz and some genuine artistic achievements? Could this become our legacy in place of some blemish of imperial aspiration past its sell-by date? To replace the dead-end systems that have taken form from Napoleonic and Anglo-Saxon to Sharia, might we have a (new) system of law – one based on ‘just fairness’, one that is dedicated to finding that balance for every person who is in some contentious position? Let punishment and revenge not be the first course of action, but rather let a generous judgment and judiciousness take precedence in our considerations and finding what works best for all involved!

This is the train of thought for a current moment of sacred repose – one that terminates the February nefasti limitations and anticipates the termination of the old sacral year, the hidden but ancient carnival/nemotemi, and the start of the next and new sacral round. Living for the day five times per week! It is continually the attempt to move yet in the space that coalesces around us – not knowing which frontier will close next and, proximity-wise, where. What moves are left on this chessboard known as life? Certainly, it’s a playing on the margins.

But I can still be aghast and ask one and all to look at what we have done!!! We have created a world in which a small group of people become super rich by sponsoring a profit industry that lives and thrives alone on war – all with the aim of cutting as much of the pie for themselves! To a degree all Americans are complicit in this – even we renegade ex-pats. How much I wish it could be the beauty of America that earns the gratitude of the world; how much I wish we could honestly face our shame and begin to redress in some rational, honest and mindful way! Where are the path openers? Where is effective thought? Where is the global consensus to support the transformation and re-arrangement necessary for our planet and our children? Where is and when comes telluric awareness?