Charles Baudelaire's “Correspondences” in An Anthology of French Poetry from de Nerval to Valery, trans. Angel Flores.
Nature is a temple from whose living columns
commingling voices emerge at times;
Here man wanders through forests of symbols
Which seem to observe him with familiar eyes. (21)
Monday 15 August 2011
Sunday 14 August 2011
Spaciousness Inside: Formlessness Spawns Form
Anthony Lawlor's "Re-imagining the Architecture of Healing" from Imagination & Medicine: The Future of Healing in an Age of Neuroscience, eds. Stephen Aizenstat & Robert Bosnak.
Architecture promotes renewal when it reinforces primal connections. By studying how various forces shape and reshape the natural world, we can discover renewing patterns of form and function. These insights can then be translated into architecture that encourages active wholeness in mind, body, nature, and culture. Though spaciousness cannot be seen, heard, or touched, it pervades every aspect of design and construction. “We build the floor, walls and roof of a house, but it is the space inside that makes it livable,” explains the Tao Te Ching. Within spaciousness, formlessness spawns form, darkness sparks light, and silence resonates sound. (202-203)
Architecture promotes renewal when it reinforces primal connections. By studying how various forces shape and reshape the natural world, we can discover renewing patterns of form and function. These insights can then be translated into architecture that encourages active wholeness in mind, body, nature, and culture. Though spaciousness cannot be seen, heard, or touched, it pervades every aspect of design and construction. “We build the floor, walls and roof of a house, but it is the space inside that makes it livable,” explains the Tao Te Ching. Within spaciousness, formlessness spawns form, darkness sparks light, and silence resonates sound. (202-203)
Saturday 13 August 2011
Remaking Our World; Making the World More Human
Arthur Kleinman, Professor of Medical Anthropology in Social Medicine and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, from The New Medicine, eds. Ronald H. Blummer & Muffie Meyer.
Dr. Kleinman advocates for the opportunity that patients and doctors have to "reaffirm their humanity:"
[With] the understanding that life is important not just for the repairing of our broken bones and the fixing of our broken hearts, but because we deal with what is serious, what is most at stake for us, what matters most in living [...] two people [doctor and patient] have the rare privilege of coming together in the context of that interaction. (111)
This realized interaction is “a fantastic way of remaking our world, of making the world more human."
Dr. Kleinman advocates for the opportunity that patients and doctors have to "reaffirm their humanity:"
[With] the understanding that life is important not just for the repairing of our broken bones and the fixing of our broken hearts, but because we deal with what is serious, what is most at stake for us, what matters most in living [...] two people [doctor and patient] have the rare privilege of coming together in the context of that interaction. (111)
This realized interaction is “a fantastic way of remaking our world, of making the world more human."
Friday 12 August 2011
The Biology of Hope
Jerome Groopman, Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, from The New Medicine, eds. Ronald H. Blumer & Muffie Meyer
Dr. Groopman advocates that hope is central in the experience of illness and in the path to healing (98):
People often confuse hope with optimism. Hope is different. Hope is clear-eyed. It sees all the reality that you face, all the obstacles, all the problems, all the potential for failure. But through that, it sees as well a possible path to a better future. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s possible. (98)
Hope is realistic because it sees medicine for what it is; as an uncertain art. When physicians stop cutting themselves off from their patients’ emotions, medicine becomes an art, not just science. (98-99)
Healing means that the patient is made whole again, emerging from the experience of illness having been restored as a person. (98)
There is “a biology of hope” and this has a powerful effect on the body. (99)
Dr. Groopman advocates that hope is central in the experience of illness and in the path to healing (98):
People often confuse hope with optimism. Hope is different. Hope is clear-eyed. It sees all the reality that you face, all the obstacles, all the problems, all the potential for failure. But through that, it sees as well a possible path to a better future. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s possible. (98)
Hope is realistic because it sees medicine for what it is; as an uncertain art. When physicians stop cutting themselves off from their patients’ emotions, medicine becomes an art, not just science. (98-99)
Healing means that the patient is made whole again, emerging from the experience of illness having been restored as a person. (98)
There is “a biology of hope” and this has a powerful effect on the body. (99)
Thursday 11 August 2011
Power = to be Vulnerable
Joanna Macy's "Working through Environmental Despair" from Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, eds. Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner.
Power, which is the ability to effect change, works from the bottom up more reliably and organically than from the top down. It is not power over, but power with; this is what systems scientists call "synergy." Here power, far from being identified with invulnerability, requires just the opposite---openness, vulnerability, and readiness to change. This indeed is the direction of evolution. (256)
How does power as process---"power with" rather than "power over"---operate in our lives? We don't own it. We don't use it like a gun. We can't measure its quantity or size. We can't increase it at our neighbor's expense. Power is like a verb; it happens through us. (257)
Power, which is the ability to effect change, works from the bottom up more reliably and organically than from the top down. It is not power over, but power with; this is what systems scientists call "synergy." Here power, far from being identified with invulnerability, requires just the opposite---openness, vulnerability, and readiness to change. This indeed is the direction of evolution. (256)
How does power as process---"power with" rather than "power over"---operate in our lives? We don't own it. We don't use it like a gun. We can't measure its quantity or size. We can't increase it at our neighbor's expense. Power is like a verb; it happens through us. (257)
Sunday 31 July 2011
Now It Is Time
Rainer Maria Rilke's Now It Is Time That Gods Came Walking Out
Now it is time that gods came walking out
of lived-in Things…
Time that they came and knocked down every wall
inside my house. New page. Only the wind
from such a turning could be strong enough
to toss the air as a shovel tosses dirt:
a fresh-turned field of breath. O gods, gods!
who used to come so often and are still
asleep in the Things around us, who serenely
rise and at wells that we can only guess at
splash icy water on your necks and faces,
and lightly add your restedness to what seems
already filled to bursting: our full lives.
Once again let it be your morning, gods.
We keep repeating. You alone are source.
With you the world arises, and your dawn
gleams on each crack and crevice of our failure…
ReMything the World Anew
James Hollis' Tracking the Gods: The Place of Myth in Modern Life
We are called to reread the world around us, and this includes the daily dance of images provided by the newspaper, by television and by pop culture. The gods are never far away. When we begin to read the world anew, we see that there are spiritual currents in all things, even the most banal. There are energies which, coming from below, drive and distort the culture. Using the Jungian principle of compensation, we can often see the pathologies of our time, both personal and collective, as the outer compensation for the inner wound. We may then understand our wounded comrades rather than judge them. And we will find that the world is a very rich place. (147)
We are required to accept that there is no parent to lead the way, no guru, no ideology to save us from the complexity and ambiguity of life. The measure of our personal development will hinge on two factors: our willingness to accept responsibility for finding our own myth, and our ability to sustain the ambiguity that always precedes a new experience of meaning. This task is critical for the health of both individual and society. (147)
We are called to reread the world around us, and this includes the daily dance of images provided by the newspaper, by television and by pop culture. The gods are never far away. When we begin to read the world anew, we see that there are spiritual currents in all things, even the most banal. There are energies which, coming from below, drive and distort the culture. Using the Jungian principle of compensation, we can often see the pathologies of our time, both personal and collective, as the outer compensation for the inner wound. We may then understand our wounded comrades rather than judge them. And we will find that the world is a very rich place. (147)
We are required to accept that there is no parent to lead the way, no guru, no ideology to save us from the complexity and ambiguity of life. The measure of our personal development will hinge on two factors: our willingness to accept responsibility for finding our own myth, and our ability to sustain the ambiguity that always precedes a new experience of meaning. This task is critical for the health of both individual and society. (147)
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