Rumors of Far Despairs

Of Frost and Fog and Giants

Posted on November 11, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine, –
like no leaf that ever was –
edge the bare garden.

William Carlos Williams, Approach of Winter

Yesterday saw the first serious frost of the year. At day-break, I looked from our library windows to find our pines netted in rime and incomprehensible runes written in silver across our fields as if some form of tablature for an unknown instrument capable of being played only by giants. The asphalt of our driveway was relatively untouched, but haphazard traceries appeared higgledy-piggledy in its shadiest nether regions as if drawn by a giant’s child wielding a hesitant pen – a child uncertain of his art or his muse.

The frost was accompanied by a substantial fog, the kind that defies the essence of form at the expense of detail. Reduced to silhouettes, the pines grew in bulk and hovered on the very edge of mist-powered mobility. As I watched, I became convinced that if I were to turn my head for an instant, enormous piney shapes would, in balletic unison, take quick, tiny, covert steps – only to become pinned in place anew should I quickly look back.

As the sun rose and gave of its warmth, the frost and fog disappeared: the fog fading to transparency in an ancient ritual invisible to the eye; the frost visibly flying away in ghostly vapors rising from the edge of our roof.

And the pines were, once again, intricately needled and freed from enchantment, the giant and his child having returned to their lair.

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Humptulips County | 2 Comments

What Would I see, If I Could See God?

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

God is in the roses,
The petals, and the thorns.
Storms out on the oceans
Souls who will be born
And every drop of rain that falls
Falls for those who mourn.

Roseanne Cash, God Is In The Roses

Mankind has spent its time on Earth seeking God in every nook and cranny of the visible world and in the invisible reaches of space and time. We seem obsessed with the idea that God must have a definable nature, so much so that many of the explanations for God’s nature are simply nonsensical from the standpoint of physical laws.

True believers would scoff at the conclusion reached in that last sentence, for the simple reason that they believe that without “faith” (and by “faith” they mean your willingness to suspend disbelief so that you become able to believe as they believe), God cannot be appreciated. By so arguing, they turn the concept of faith into the missing ingredient necessary for their view of God to exist outside the realm of physical laws.

I find arguments for an improbable nature of God which are ultimately based upon faith alone not to be compelling. This skepticism of mine often gets me into trouble when I am discussing religious matters with true believers. I once told an earnest Mormon friend of mine bent upon my conversion that I was simply unable to believe in a “god” that dismissed 90% of the world’s human population. He was horrified and responded that I was not allowed to say such a thing. Given his faith in his beliefs, he was surely certain that I was bound for Hell in the afterlife, and that my comment would be remembered, recorded, and eventually read out as evidence of my apostasy when I make my appearance on the Mormon judgment day.

I have thought much about that conversation, and have discussed it with many of my other friends. Since most of my friends aren’t Mormon, many found the story amusing or a condemnation of the brutality of organized religion. And yet, when most of my acquaintances think of God, I strongly suspect that they envision an anthropomorphic God; that whatever their cultural equivalent of the Sistine Chapel ceiling might be, its art determines their internal visualization of God. For it is in art that faith renders the nature of God visible to humanity, since God remains ineffable.

I recently found myself wondering how my cat would view God. I suppose that an argument can be made that a house cat views God in human form, since it is a human hand that feeds it. But what of a feral cat? From a feral cat’s vantage point, would God assume feline form? Or is the mere asking of such a question nothing more than an anthropomorphization of the issue? As a life-long cat owner, I have long since given up trying to determine what cats stare at much of the day, so I am hardly in a position to know what – or even how – they think. I only know that they do think and that they are quite capable of emotion. I know, also, that those who would deny cats a soul for the simple reason that a cat is not human, understand nothing at all about cats – or, indeed, any animal other than humans.

I suppose I am a bit of a Jainist when it comes to all forms of life, for I believe that all forms of life have individual sanctity. I have gotten to the point where I have difficulty killing the occasional insect that wanders into our house, preferring, instead, to toss it back out the nearest open window into its normal habitat – without first having maimed it, if possible. In fact, I have come to believe that all life is a variant of a single force, a life force which invigorates each living thing and whose name is God.

Mine is not the life force of George Bernard Shaw, for he saw the life force as an experiment in increasing complexity that would ultimately end in the creation of God. He saw humanity as a step along the way and gave humanity primacy of place in its time.

“What you have got to understand is that somehow or other there is at the back of the universe a will, a life-force. You cannot think of him as a person, you have to think of him as a great purpose, a great will, and, furthermore, you have to think of him as engaged in a continual struggle to produce something higher and higher, to create organs to carry out his purpose; as wanting hands, and saying, “I must create something with hands”; arriving at that very slowly, after innumerable experiments and innumerable mistakes, because this power must be proceeding as we proceed, because if there were any other way it would put us in that way: we know that in all the progress we make we proceed by way of trial and error and experiment. Now conceive of the force behind the universe as a bodiless, impotent force, having no executive power of its own, wanting instruments, something to carry out its will in the world, making all manner of experiments, creating reptiles, birds, animals, trying one thing after another, rising higher and higher in the scale of organism, and finally producing man, and then inspiring that man, putting his will into him, getting him to carry out his purpose, saying to him, “Remember, you are not here merely to look after yourself. I have made your hand to do my work; I have made your brain, and I want you to work with that and try to find out the purpose of the universe; and when one instrument is worn out, I will make another, and another, always more and more intelligent and effective.” “

George Bernard Shaw, The New Theology (1907)

Shaw concluded his argument in this manner:

“The object of the whole evolutionary process is to realize God; that is to say, instead of the old notion that creation began with a God, a personal being, who, being perfect, created something lower than himself, the aim of the New Theology is to turn that process the other way and to conceive of the force behind the universe as working up through imperfection and mistake to a perfect, organized being, having the power of fulfilling its highest purposes. In a sense there is no God as yet achieved, but there is that force at work making God, struggling through us to become an actual organized existence, enjoying what to many of us is the greatest conceivable ecstasy, the ecstasy of a brain, an intelligence, actually conscious of the whole, and with executive force capable of guiding it to a perfectly benevolent and harmonious end. That is what we are working to. When you are asked, “Where is God? Who is God?” stand up and say, “I am God and here is God, not as yet completed, but still advancing towards completion, just in so much as I am working for the purpose of the universe, working for the good of the whole of society and the whole world, instead of merely looking after my personal ends.””

George Bernard Shaw, The New Theology (1907)

He was basically arguing that God couldn’t have built from the top down as suggested in biblical texts, since, once he had created angels, why would he create a lesser being (man) and then other lesser beings? He did not believe that an intelligent God could think that way. Instead, he preferred to believe that the Life Force was constantly seeking to build to a higher level, and that humanity was but one step along the way to the goal of “God.”

But what if the life force is content to be what it is and has no higher goal? In the words of Dylan Thomas:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

I prefer to think of God as Thomas’ green fuse: a pulse that first invigorates and then takes away individual life while moving in no particular direction by means of each individual life begetting another which, in turn, begets yet another such that each species survives – and so on until the end of time. If correct, this would mean that once we understand all of the physical laws of nature, space, time, and the universe (if we ever do), we may catch the merest glimpse of God.

And so it is that I believe I can see something of God. I can see God every day in the lanes and fields of Humptulips County. And, if I were there, I could see that same God in the Amazon jungle, in the starkness of Dartmoor, in the mountains of the Himalayas, in the vibrancy of a Paris street, in the depths of the sea, in the nooks and crannies of the desert.

And I wonder whether, if I were able to stand far enough away in the vastness of space and had the requisite wit, I might look down and see the same force, writ large, at work upon the Earth as a planetary entity, and come to the realization that those things which, when viewed up close, seem inanimate, are really invigorated by the same force as we are on a much grander scale previously unappreciated and incomprehensible from the puny viewpoint of our humanity.

What would I see, if I could see God? I would not only see all that I see now when I walk the roads and fields of Humptulips County or look out the windows of my home, but I would also be able to see the energy that binds each tangible thing, visible and invisible, together and renders us mutually interdependent. And I would realize we were of a comprehensible whole, and I would know that whole is bound together by God.

A Formative Friendship Remembered

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

I am in the air on my way to Ann Arbor, Michigan to attend a football game with my oldest son. Don was born in Ann Arbor a few days following my graduation from law school. Shortly after his birth, I returned to Humptulips County to begin my career and have lived here ever since. Don has been back to Ann Arbor on at least one occasion, but has never been inside the Big House to see a Michigan football game. He and I decided it was time to remedy that lack, and the icing on the cake is that we chose the game with Michigan State – a prime rivalry.

I truly enjoyed my three years in the Midwest. The people are very friendly and the education I received at the University of Michigan Law School was first-rate. Law school served as my introduction to another level of scholarship and intellectualism. Not many law students seem to really enjoy the experience, but I have to admit that, for me, it was wonderful. The professors were approachable while intent on scholarship, and the resulting tone was perfect for a young man seeking a higher place in the world.

The Law School is steeped in beauty and tradition and sets an intellectual tone, modeled as it is after many of the colleges in Oxford. It comprises a stand-alone unit of lecture hall, library, visitor facilities and residence halls. New structures added to the Law School over time have been sensitively designed to integrate with the original buildings and not destroy their integrity and beauty. In the middle of the buildings is the Law Quad, a wondrous outdoor space of grass, trees and walks which fosters reflection and rest. The Michigan Law buildings were all built from the substantial donations to the school of one man, William Cook, a railroad/cable company lawyer in the late 1800’s. The size of his donation allowed the original architects to achieve unity of design and function for the complex of buildings.

I hadn’t been back to Ann Arbor for 38 years before my return two years ago. In the interim, the city had grown, many of the buildings were new, and the Michigan campus had become decidedly more urban. At first I did not recognize the Law School from its exterior, as it no longer is as isolated as it was when I was in school, space being at a premium in central Ann Arbor. But the instant I walked into the front door of Hutchins Hall, memories flooded in. The main building, the Law Library and the Law Quad are as much a part of my life as Humptulips County – in fact, are a part of my Humptulips County.

The purpose of my 2010 visit was to attend a 40^th Law School class reunion, the only reunion I have managed to make. While there, I discovered to my delight that Doug Kahn, one of the professors from my era, was still teaching. To my surprise, I discovered that he has been designated the Paul G. Kauper Professor of Law. I was able to speak briefly to Professor Kahn about Paul Kauper and those far distant years when I attended the school. We both enjoyed a few moments remembering Paul Kauper with great mutual fondness. When our relationship began, Paul was a somewhat skeptical boss who had hired me because of his needs rather than my abilities, but by the time it ended due to his untimely death from leukemia in 1974 he had become my true friend and mentor.

I clerked for Paul Kauper for two and a half years, and was fortunate to co-author a Michigan Law Review article with him following my graduation. He was a highly regarded constitutional law scholar who specialized in First Amendment issues relating to church and state. While working in a ball bearing plant in June following completion of my first year, I learned that Paul had an opening for a researcher due to the unexpected departure of his previous clerk. I quickly applied, ball bearings not seeming to be a critical part of my future. I was immediately hired, quit the plant, and began the role as his clerk that would last until graduation. The friendship we eventually forged lasted well beyond graduation. My last conversation with him was in the Spring of 1974 by telephone when he was in the hospital from which he would not return. His voice was weakened, but his will and his friendship were strong. I think of that phone call as one of the best I’ve ever initiated, since it gave me one last chance to thank a man who unselfishly offered me his hand and his powers of critical analysis and advice.

Why it was that a senior member of the Michigan Law faculty took a chance on a young man from another public university to the West – not the East – of Ann Arbor, is a mystery I may never divine. He probably did so since he was free of the usual academic bias toward Eastern private universities, but more likely my initial hiring occurred simply because I was available and he was in need. I was one of a handful of students remaining in Ann Arbor when his previous clerk quit, and the only one aware of his need. The decision to go to work for him and give up my sovereign rights to the broom I wielded on the floor of the ball bearing plant was one of the best I ever made – and a no-brainer.

Some time during that first Summer, we became colleagues with regard to his passion for church/state matters. I worked hard on his assignments, finding myself strangely attracted to the world of the free exercise and establishment clauses of the First Amendment. The work was fun both because it was challenging and because the more I did of it, the more I learned about an esoteric discipline. It was work that lasted two and half years; it was work that never seemed work. I suspect that Paul may have been surprised by the dedication I gave to matters and, hopefully, by the quality of the research I, the accidental clerk, performed for him.

I spent many hours cocooned in the Law School stacks during those years, hours in which the world whirled by outside. During this period Martin Luther King, jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, the Viet Nam War constantly roared from afar, and anti-war crowds roared from nearby –across the street for the most part and, on one memorable occasion, within the Law School itself. And while all of these things screamed for my attention without, within the stacks I was immersed in world of scholarly pursuits free from their stretching, grasping fingers. Within the stacks, I was safely ensconced in the world of church property disputes, annual reviews of the preceding session of the Supreme Court, and scholarly research in support of Paul’s varied and prolific writings.

Seen from now, that time has a golden tinge. I thoroughly enjoyed the work, was gratified by my ever-increasing responsibilities, and satisfied that I was learning a great deal in and out of class. But I appreciated his friendship and mentoring more than the learning, for he began to take a personal interest in my welfare and my family that went well beyond the usual professor/law clerk model.

As much as I recall the scholarly pursuits with pride and satisfaction, I better remember the personal moments. For example, one day, after seeing a tax textbook on his bookshelf with his name on the spine, I asked if he had once taught federal income tax. He replied that he had. When I asked when he quit, he gave me a one word response in his typical deadpan style: “1954”. He said nothing further, and simply stared at me. The penny took only a moment to fall. Congress produced a major overhaul of the tax code in 1954, and he clearly had taken the occasion to turn his attention to something of far greater personal interest. So I returned his stare with one of my own and said: “I got it.” To this reply he gave one of his trademark small smiles – the ones that involved just the corner of his lips – his eyes alight with his joy over my connection of the dots. No more was said about the matter or needed to be said. I think that may have been the moment we became friends.

In my senior year, Helen Hayes, Jimmy Stewart and others of the original cast of the movie version of Harvey revived the play and gave it an off-Broadway try out in Ann Arbor. Paul was as excited as I by the news and made me a proposition: if I would be willing to stand in line to get tickets for both of us, he would pay. So stand I did – for 8 hours in a line that snaked upstairs and down before reaching the cashier. When I returned, he asked what had happened to me as he had expected me hours earlier. Following my explanation, he expressed great regret over what he had asked of me. I quickly assured him it didn’t matter as I was delighted to be able to see a play I couldn’t otherwise afford (which, by the way, was a roaring success).

He continued, however, to feel bad about my experience in line and later, by way of intended recompense, gave me tickets to the opera Carmen, to be performed in English by the Canadian National Opera Company. The performance was, to say the least, unfortunate. My wife and I left at intermission, after the first act closed with a tenor running up a ramp while loudly singing “What next?” Thinking this a good question, I pondered a bit and took the opportunity to extricate us from the horror of the performance. Paul read the terrible reviews the next day and apologized anew. He asked what else he might do in reparation. When I opined that he had done “quite enough,” his eyes crinkled and the corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. We never spoke of that matter again either.

During my senior year I took a Church/State seminar from Paul and wrote a paper about the history of incorporation of churches in America. He seemed intrigued by the subject matter (he likely suggested it), and asked me, following graduation, if I might be willing to collaborate with him on a law review article. I quickly agreed. For the next two years we made desultory progress given the distance between us and the fact that I was a young associate with a new job. He grew somewhat impatient and asked whether I could take a month off and come to Ann Arbor to work on the paper if he were able to secure a place and a stipend for me.

And so I returned to Ann Arbor in the Summer of 1972 and worked with him on the paper we subsequently published. It was a rich time for me, but I became increasingly homesick for my wife and young son and left about a week earlier than planned. I think Paul was disappointed, even though he understood that I missed my family. It was probably the moment when I elected active practice over a life of scholarship, but I had my doubts about whether I could succeed in the latter. We finished the article shortly thereafter and upon its submission to the Michigan Law Review it was quickly accepted for publication.

When I returned home two years ago following my 40^th reunion and the conversation with Doug Kahn, I found the correspondence file I’ve kept all of these years about our collaboration on the article. My initial intent was to re-read Paul’s many letters to better recall the experience of authoring the article. I quickly noticed bright shards of personal advice and humor amid the dry exchanges of scholarly collaboration. I soon realized that I had rediscovered the correspondence of a friendship, a realization that reinvigorated my long-held love and respect for this man. As I re-read everything, I found myself once again immersed in a kinship with this quiet, stern, caring man who had taken a chance on, and an interest in, me so many years ago.

And I remembered again, his response to my query about how I might ever repay him for all he had done for me: “When you are older and have more experience, pay me back by mentoring others in the profession. In that way you will help me repay those who assisted me many years ago, people you never met but who are important to me.” Paul, I have tried to do so and I continue to try. I can only hope you somehow know this.

I miss Paul. I miss his smile and his crinkly eyes. I miss his enthusiasm for his scholarship and the intense energy he spent upon it. I miss his incredible analytical skills. I miss his mentoring. His friendship lives on inside of me.

So when I visit the Law School with Don later today and show him the scene of a vital part of my life, I know Paul will be walking beside us – unseen to Don, but visible to me, his eyes crinkling in joyous appreciation and approval of the young lawyer my son has become, the young man I had to return to Humptulips County to be with that long ago Summer of 1972.

Posted in Friendship | 2 Comments

A Raggedy Autumn

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

Robert Frost, October

Fall has come to Humptulips County. Its appearance is tatterdemalion, not opulent as in years past. We’ve had too little rain, and the leaves, tired for the lack of it, wrinkled early on the branch and do not reflect the smokey light in their normal manner. Some began falling in mid-August, leaving their hosts partially undressed and challenged to display the full glory of their usual autumnal raiment.

The Virginia creeper residing in the pine outside our kitchen window is an off-shade of its usual deep burgundy, a shade not quite up to full capability. The pine survives as pines always seem to do, apparently unaffected by the dry weather. The annual blooming of their symbiosis continues to inspire, but more for the effort each is making to appear normal than for resulting visual effects.

We expect rain this weekend – perhaps just enough to trick a little more color into the unfallen leaves. What color we have is less vibrant than usual, as if faded by prolonged exposure to too much sunlight. More color would be nice, for we can never have enough: even if we were to be blessed with a more colorful Autumn, our Northwest hearts would secretly yearn for the more glorious displays of the Northeast.

But nothing is truly lost. For those colors we do enjoy remain sufficient to stoke the hearts’ fires, the fires that light the cloistered hearths of the coming season and yield the passions necessary for overwintering.

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Bending To One Another

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

“As I might have foreseen, the visit was rather a spectacle than a conversation, of no use beyond the satisfaction of my curiosity. He was old and pre-occupied, and could not bend to a new companion and think with him.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits.

I recently acquired a first edition of Emerson’s English Traits, published in 1856. The book is a series of vignettes about people, places and culture in England that Emerson observed during his two trips to England preceding the book’s publication. I usually collect fiction, but this book was discounted by a dealer with whom I have a long, trusted history and I couldn’t resist it when I saw it advertised. As it turns out, I am pleased with the purchase. The book has reconnected me with the fascination for life that was Emerson’s and the sweetness of phrase that he used to describe his passions, and I am truly enjoying it.

Emerson first visited England in 1832. During this visit he went to visit Samuel Coleridge, who, when Emerson first arrived at 10:00 A.M., was still firmly ensconced in bed and advised Emerson, through a servant, to return at 1:00 P.M. Emerson did so, only to be treated to a diatribe by Coleridge against Unitarians and their beliefs. Emerson finally interrupted and advised Coleridge that he, in fact, was Unitarian, to which Coleridge, undeterred and undismayed by this fact, only briefly interrupted his ongoing diatribe to mutter something to the effect of “I thought so”. Emerson eventually excused himself, having become bored with the lack of dialogue. The above quotation was Emerson’s published summary of the visit.

A number of things strike me about this vignette. First, it is interesting that Emerson could simply appear and present himself to a personage of considerable note in English literature. The piece does not say whether Emerson had been given an introduction to Coleridge, but at this time he was not yet 30 and, insofar as I can tell, had yet to publish. The piece reads more as if Emerson was simply curious about Coleridge having read his work and thought, since he happened to be in England, that it might be edifying to meet the great man. It is hard to imagine the ease of access to a celebrity that this suggests might have been true in England at that time. Since other vignettes about the same trip talk of his meeting Wordsworth and other English worthies, I assume that such unexpected celebrity visits were not as actively discouraged in Emerson’s day as they would be today.

More importantly, Emerson’s description of the visit made me consider how I might appear to those considerably younger. As I wrote to my fellow blogger Eliot Mentor after reading this vignette, if I ever begin to come across in the manner in which Coleridge did to Emerson, I hereby instruct my sons to have me shot. For to fail to engage with those younger than yourself is to deny yourself the prospect of further education. While it is easy for an older person to rail constantly against the extravagance of youth and the inherent cultural changes suggested by their conduct, dress and opinions, such activity is simply akin to loudly chanting the nonsense phrase “la-la-la” while covering your ears in an attempt not to hear the recital of some unfortunate fact or opinion which renders you profoundly uncomfortable.

It is a principal role of youth to challenge the conventional wisdom of their elders. And while the young don’t enjoy a monopoly upon truth or correctness, they often possess a point of view that is heretical to long-held notions of the old and from which their elders may find it possible to learn. By engaging in a dialogue with youth, those of us who are older are forced to examine our own beliefs and consider whether they might be fallible due to our inability to step outside them and look at them anew without the prejudices acquired over a life-long journey. In this way, the fresh, challenging eyes of youth may well serve as a catalyst by which those of us who are older can challenge that which we think immutable.

I enjoy these types of exchanges for the simple reason that I wish to continue my education. For the concept of “truth” in a historical sense seems relative to the time in which it is uttered. For example, the bombing of Hiroshima seemed, to the eyes of a young man growing up in the 50’s, a necessary means of ending World War II in the Pacific in order to save many lives. This “truth” has increasingly been challenged of late by many growing up in the 80’s and 90’s as an act of gross inhumanity, approaching the sin of genocide. Which viewpoint is correct? Both have a ring of truth when viewed from the particular perspective of their adherents. But more important than the question of which of these diametrically opposing views is correct, is the possibility that there is a lesson yet to be gleaned from the ongoing debate about them – a possibility that some new form of ethical understanding or belief may yet be harvested from this dialogue which might eventually be put to mankind’s advantage.

No generation has a monopoly on truth, and the older I get the more I wonder if there is such a thing as immutable Truth, with a capital “T”. The truth seems to be that there is always more to be learned, both from the perspective of science and the history of our species. Whether, as a species, we are capable of learning to take history’s lessons to heart in such a manner as to avoid repetition of our most persistent historical errors is a matter of much concern to me, but perhaps it is true that we get a just a bit better from an ethical vantage point each time we repeat the same historical mistake. I have seen this argument recently made in print and I want to believe it, but I am not yet wholly convinced it is so. Can a species that both inflicted and suffered the Holocaust have learned anything material if it later engaged in the Rwanda genocide? Or is it fair to treat mankind as a monolithic species, such that one can argue Rwandans should have learned from the most horrific mistake of mid-twenty first century European culture?

Only a continuing dialogue between different human perspectives can move us, as a species, toward “universal truths” – for the kinds of truth we seek are those conveniences that will allow us to cohabit more comfortably upon a crowded planet, rather than some universal mathematical truth, the proof of which is demonstrably formulaic. And for these types of cultural “universal truths” to be first identified and subsequently refined, wide-spread continuing debate is required. I base this conclusion upon my perspective that, as a species, we are basically hard-wired to be aggressive and combative, and debate is the only form of overtly aggressive behavior that might allow for the emergence of such truths without bloodshed.

In this regard, I find it interesting that in the literature of science fiction we are obsessed with the concept of aggressive aliens who may eventually visit Earth with the intention of enslaving us. Has anyone ever considered the possibility that such alien life forms as exist elsewhere in the universe may well have reason to fear us as the aggressor species intent upon their enslavement? Given the near-universal history of earth-bound “advanced societies” rooting out and replacing the “first peoples” resident within their particular geography, it seems to me a far more likely scenario is that our first encounter with an alien culture will feature our spaceships as the ominously looming invaders rather than those of the aliens.

In other words, are we able to see beyond our own entrenched fears and the survival skills with which we are genetically endowed to consider the worthiness of opposing points of view? This is difficult to do, and reasoned debate seems the most likely path to discovery. And whether rational reasoning is a successful debate tactic when pitted against the muscularity of our emotions is but another ongoing philosophical debate yet to be resolved. For we are still learning the rules of debate even as we conduct one among widely diverse human cultures in a world of technologically shattered boundaries.

What I do know is that such dialogue, such debate, is important to our learning who and what we are, and who we are capable of becoming in the fullness of time. So far such debate as has occurred has been rigorous, difficult and internal to the species, but we are rapidly learning that other life forms have a stake in its outcome and will make themselves heard after their own fashion. I consider it possible, for example, that global warming is the only form of “debate” by which the Earth, if it may be considered as a living organism, may be heard. Can we listen to, and learn from, such an argument put forth in an alien, wordless medium which we have yet to translate effectively? To do so, we will have to first welcome Nature as a legitimate debate participant and expand our discussion beyond the species.

In the meantime, perhaps we can practice skills for a wider debate by learning from our young; perhaps a few of us who are older can avoid becoming a spectacle and bend to new companions and think with them. And perhaps we, as a species, can learn to do so with other forms of life as well, no matter how alien they first appear.

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off

The Mysteries of Spectator Sports

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

When I arrived at my office building this morning, the next block South was covered by numerous police cars surrounding a large, centrally located big blue van parked perpendicular to the direction of normal traffic flow. Police were out in force, all intently focused away from my direction of travel. I noted with surprise that none of them paid any attention whatsoever to me as I turned downhill immediately in front of them to the entry to my building’s parking garage. I had expected to be waved away by some supercilious cop, but not a single one of them paid me the slightest attention as I turned in front of the yellow crime scene tape strung across the street.

Frankly, I was pleased to discover that I could enter my garage, since, from afar, it had appeared that I might be turned away before reaching my objective. I confess that pleasant relief in my success was my overriding emotion, not speculation about the doings in front of me.

Through news reports, I have since learned that a suspected explosive device was found and detonated by the Seattle Police Department. The reports even show a bomb robot traveling in and out of a building’s columns, something I completely missed from my street-level perspective. It is still unclear as I write what that device might have been or what its purpose was. Speculation abounds on the news, but hard fact remains elusive. That is likely to remain the state of affairs until officials deem it appropriate to release further information.

At 4:30 AM, there aren’t a lot of people on the streets of Seattle, but what folks there are all seemed to be in attendance this morning. Numerous TV station vans dominated the street, but when I got to my office and checked the websites of local television stations they offered nothing in explanation. So, I contented myself with looking out the window of my neighbor’s office 20 floors above the scene, only to discover that the view from this perspective differed not one bit from that at street level. With that, I shrugged and went to my office to conduct my morning routine.

When I left the office at 5:30 to go to my morning’s workout, the street was simply empty. By contrast to the earlier cacophony of flashing red and blue lights, fluttering yellow tape, and intent, massive official concentration toward some unseen danger not apparent to me, the scene was Kafkaesquely normal: no tape reflecting street lamp light while flapping in the breeze; no massive accumulation of police cars; no precariously parked big blue van with its tail gate lowered to the pavement; no scurrying robot moving in and out of the columns that front the neighboring building. Nothing other than the ever-present busses that ply their trade at such an hour, and remote-broadcast vans populated with bored technicians winding cable in anticipation of departure, their reporters not in evidence and probably drinking stale coffee from a thermos or fresh coffee from the few Starbucks outlets open at that hour.

For me, the only thing noticeable was the smell of the salt air off Elliott Bay. There was nothing left to add the spice of excitement to the morning’s breeze. So, I took a deep breath of the salt air, registered the amazing lack of everything that had been, and went about my business.

I confess to an aversion to being a spectator at events such as this. I see no reason to interrupt the police when they are so intensely engaged. Any questions I might have would not only fail to assist them in their activities, and might well prove to be more than a distraction. I know for a fact that any attempt at interruption at such scenes would not be well received, and the best I might expect would be to be told to move on or stay back. Since I assume the police are professionals, I stay out of their way and await the news reports. And since I know this news will be endlessly recycled throughout the day – first as tenuous fact and increasingly as filler as the 24 hour news day wears monotonously on – I am assured of learning whatever there is to know whenever it is I might decide to refocus upon the morning’s disappearing crime scene.

I am always irritated by the massive slow downs that occur on the freeways caused by the mere presence of a police vehicle. Slow downs occur at everything from routine traffic stops to serious accidents. Why a traffic stop should elicit anything other than relief that some poor schnook is getting a ticket rather than me is wholly beyond my comprehension. Gawking at a serious accident is not only in poor taste, but may well interfere in attempts to assist the injured. Accordingly, I assume people slow down purely from their prurient interest, and I prefer not to demonstrate my personal deviant behavior in such a way.

I appear to be in a minority when it comes to such things, but, quite frankly, I found far more interest in the mysterious cleansing of a hyper-active crime scene in one short hour than in what the police might have been doing there in the first place. How did all those people so quickly put to rest the palpable, official intensity that caused them not to notice my passing? And where did they go when they, their cars, the robot, and the big blue van left, and how many hours will they devote to writing reports speculating officially about who did what and why they did it?

I certainly know where to find the news media’s speculation about the “what-might-have-been” element of the matter, but I would much rather be a fly on the wall listening to the rest of the official process play out – the part undramatized by flashing lights, yellow crime scene tape, busy robots, and big blue vans; the part that seeks explanations.

Meanwhile, I content myself by wondering how a scene of such intensity turned so quickly into the routine of city busses at their daily chore, and knowing that I am probably the only person at this moment mentally enjoying the theme from “The Twilight Zone“. If only Rod Serling might now appear, my wonder would be complete.

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Family Time

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

The last few weeks of life in Humptulips County have not been pleasant. We’ve had stereophonic construction between the replacement of a gas transmission line behind the house and the installation of new windows on its far side. While the east side of the house was festooned with scaffolding and workers noisily at play, we were stereophonically treated on its west side to the comings and goings of numerous varietals of the heavy equipment species, one of which was utterly lacking in ascertainable purpose and mysteriously heron-like in appearance. In the midst of this construction fervor, I underwent what should have been a minor medical procedure which turned, instead, into the “Procedure from Hell” due to the chemicals our current medical profession so fervently worships – the chemicals that seem to be as central to a modern doctor’s beliefs and practices as the application of leeches was to doctors of yore.

But all of that pales into insignificance alongside the fact that my entire immediate family will be present by day’s end. Don, Sarah, Chloe and Emma are in Seattle for a wedding and will be coming to the house after a wedding brunch, and Peter and Amanda, his girlfriend, will arrive sometime this morning after camping out in a state park last night and the night before. So, by this evening we will have 8 people at the farm, with not enough bedrooms, some very tired children who were up far too late last night at the wedding, the lingering paint smell from the installation of the new windows, the swath of raked and tamed dirt that signifies a recently buried, refurbished transmission line, and the last-minute efforts of Helen and myself to finally right the house from its former slightly capsized condition.

This is not, however, a recipe for disaster. Instead it is a recipe for joy. I cannot remember the last time we were all together, and I am eagerly anticipating the kind of melodious hubbub that only an extended family can produce within a confined space. Will we have the right kind of food for young palates, or have they acquired a taste for something new about which we old fogies are unaware? Will everyone be on their best behavior or will tiredness reign? Can we find enough places for everyone to sleep comfortably in a house with not enough bedrooms, and will Chloe and Emma still enjoy sleeping on futons in the library?

The list of minor anxieties is far longer, but who really cares?

For the truth is that none of the bad possibilities matter, since none of the “bad” possibilities are truly bad. What does matter is family and the interaction among family members. This will be a rare time of direct person-to-person communication, rather than the usual indirect means of communication from son to parents to other son and family and back again.

Every time our family gets together, new stories are written – some of them funny or occasionally hilarious, some of them sad or an occasion for regret, some of them simply recitals of current events and emotions of the sort which significantly reduce the span of the continent over which our family is spread. What all of these stories will have in common, however, is that they will add to the family lore in large or small measure, and the ties that bind us together will be just that much stronger when the visits end.

As I grow older and suffer the associated aches and pains that accompany the process, I have learned to value these visits more – both because they happen far too rarely (alas, not for us the extended annual family visits I associated with Thanksgiving and Christmas as a child) and because they are food for my soul. During such visits, I often find myself sitting quietly and simply watching the activity and listening to the conversations with one ear, while marveling internally over the complexity of the warp and woof of this living entity called family. The resulting tapestry is truly amazing, graced as it is by Helen’s ability to see through any complexity to the simple essence at its heart, Peter’s straightforward, good-humored determination to ignore things nature has thrown in his way and to get on with his life as if those things had never been, Don’s obvious love and caring for Sarah and the girls and the depths of his compassion for others, Sarah’s loveliness of face, character and temperament and her desire to accomplish as much as she can in all arenas of life, and the ongoing intrigue of the true nature of Peter’s and Amanda’s relationship.

I suppose I have developed a reputation as being somewhat disengaged at times during these visits, but the opposite is really true despite outward appearances. These visits are life-blood to me, and to immerse myself within the family’s ebbs and flows heals many an ache or a pain. So when I appear withdrawn, I am really fully absorbed within the life force of the family; I am, instead, watching, pondering, analyzing, and bathing in these waters of replenishment and renewal. These visits are both the family as art and the family as continuum, and I revel in all of their aspects.

And so I await this day, aches, pains, construction displacement and aggravation firmly pushed aside and forgotten in the unvarnished joy of anticipation.

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The Password to Neverland Retrieved

Posted on August 26, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

In my little town
I never meant nothin’
I was just my father’s son
Saving my money
Dreaming of glory
Twitching like a finger
On the trigger of a gun
Leaving nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town

Paul Simon, My Little Town

As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1

Facebook is not a tool of my generation’s creation, but I have learned to enjoy its benefits. It is a wonderful tool for keeping up with family scattered to the winds and reacquainting yourself with seemingly lost friends and colleagues. I came to it at my youngest son’s urging and for that I thank him.

I have several “friends” on Facebook, most of whom are people I have known in my adult life. I do have Facebook friends from my childhood days in Eastern Washington, but they number in the minority. I suspect this is because my memories of growing up in an isolated valley are not the kindest I possess, for while the countryside was beautiful and the sky a thing of magnificence, the culture of my small hometown was materialistic and treated those of us of lesser means with a kind of swaggering contempt. Since I possessed a decent mind, however, this treatment gave me the necessary escape velocity to find my way to success elsewhere.

Consequently, I haven’t focused my Facebook efforts at finding too many friends from childhood. Given the extreme isolation of those long ago days, we were little more than fellow travelers on a small boat not of our own choosing, but that of our parents. We didn’t have the means of getting to know anyone beyond those who started kindergarten together at approximately the same time. The town’s physical isolation kept our circle of acquaintances small, and as I grew into adolescence that circle came to seem one of Dante’s seven circles of Hell – perhaps Gluttony or Greed. Whichever it was, I decided at an early age that I needed to escape and move on to some place where I could be who I wanted to be rather than having to remain fixed in a role others had assigned to me.

This is probably a common reaction to high school by those who were unpopular but possessed of a working mind, and I claim no special status because of it. It has, however, colored my actions on Facebook in finding friends from that time of life. Even those few friends from that era that I have are mostly those I have come to know as an adult, and I have shied away from those whom I don’t know or care to know on the principal that childhood was a dark time and they would remember me only in the role they had assigned to me so long ago – a role I no longer can or care to play.

So, imagine my surprise when I finally sent a friend request to the younger sister (Margaret) of one of my few childhood Facebook friends, and received, in return, a tongue-in-cheek message accusing me of having ruined her life through a childhood prank I once played upon her (one which I remember being played upon me first by my older siblings). Margaret’s tone was light and I could well imagine the twinkle in her eye as she wrote her message, even though we haven’t seen or spoken to one another for at least 50 years.

Margaret’s message brought back a flood of pleasant memories, not the least of which was playing hide and seek in her parents’ and their neighbors’ back yards in a Summer when daylight lingered long onto the evening and twilight seemed endless. Our group consisted of Margaret, her two older brothers (one of whom was my best friend and classmate), and a neighboring, fellow classmate. There might have been other participants as well for all I can recall, since most details of those evenings have long faded. I can only clearly recall the wonder and delight a childhood Summer evening of deepening shadows can convey: the mysteries of deepening shadows forming under trees and shrubbery well-known to us in daylight; a disembodied voice shouting “ally, ally in free” as someone found his or her way to safety without having been discovered. These were the Summer nights of Titania, Oberon, Puck and Nick Bottom. Magic was afoot.

Since these were pre-adolescent Summer nights, Margaret, who is several years younger, would have been a participant for only the earliest of these hours so endless in memory due to the requirements of an earlier bedtime. These evenings happened during a time when I felt accepted for who I was, especially by her family. Her father was my family’s doctor, and when their family first came to town he and my father conspired to bring her oldest brother and me together at the beginning of our first grade year. We quickly became fast friends and companions, sharing a camaraderie of the sort enjoyed by our folk heroes of choice, King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. We fought many a mythic battle together, using wooden swords and trash-can shields to ward off dragons and evil knights.

Adolescence, with its endless hormonal churnings, put an end to those adventures, our Summer evenings, and our special closeness, and put its permanent stamp upon my memories of my home town. Another layer of magical memories lies hidden underneath those of adolescence, and it took Margaret’s message to quicken them to life. I have always known those memories existed and have spoken of them fondly, but I had forgotten the compelling force that innocence and simplicity play in a child’s life. It took Margaret’s complaint that I had damaged her sense of self-worth after she subsequently recited to her mother the “Siamese” phrase I taught her (“O-wa ta-goo si-am”) and her mother laughed aloud.

That Margaret can recall such a thing these many years is suggestive of the power of simple things. As much as I enjoy Facebook, I prefer to recall the days when it was non-existent. Imagination ruled those days and we were the better for it. We were taught to dream for ourselves, rather than to seek the written approval of others.

It was only after reading Margaret’s message that I realized that somewhere along the line I became transformed from John Darling to George, his father, and that the keys to Neverland, at least within my family, have been passed through my oldest son to my granddaughters. For when I have the luxury of visiting my granddaughters, I am always struck by their power to imagine entire worlds. Sometimes those worlds exclude the adults around them and sometimes we become folded into their embrace – all at the whim of a child. For Chloe and Emma, Peter Pan is real and not a character in novels and a play written by an adult. For Chloe and Emma, Tinker Bell is a force to be reckoned with.

And I must pause here to note that in An Afterthought, a scene written for Peter and Wendy after the play’s first production, J. M. Barrie suggests that with Wendy’s death and the death of her daughter Jane, Wendy’s granddaughter Margaret took Jane’s place, in turn, as a resident with Peter in Neverland. Could this be coincidence? I wonder.

I hope that my granddaughters will continue their shared imaginings, incomprehensible to me, an adult, as they sometimes are. For in their innocence lies the possibility of magic, in the resulting magic lies the power of dreams, and in dreams lie the means for them to transform themselves into who they want themselves to be.

And so it seems to me that the password to Neverland and innocence is “O-wa ta-goo si-am.” Thanks, Margaret, whichever one you may be.

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The Stillness of a Summer Evening

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

It is very hot in Humptulips County, with temperatures in the mid-90’s. Hot spells never last long in the Northwest, since we are too far North and too close to the sea for them to be sustainable for any appreciable time. When they do occur, they encourage locals to engage in traditional forms of sun-worship common to the tropics in a self-conscious manner, since such acts seems vaguely louche in a region where bare human skin is not a common outdoor sight. All of our hot spells are inevitably accompanied by a Greek chorus complaining about the difficulty of sleeping in homes without the benefit of air-conditioning, and even the most ardent sun-worshippers may be found among its loudest participants.

Last night I sat for several minutes in the shade of our back patio simply for the pleasure of soaking in the evening’s heat. Our patio is shaded by the overhang of the library and is a quiet place where fair-skinned persons like me can enjoy a Summer evening. Unlike the expansive views from our front porch across our fields, the view from the back patio is much more intimate, consisting as it does of Helen’s white garden and the small patch of yard which serves as a visual doormat to the forest of alders and pines covering the hillside immediately behind our home. Because of its intimacy, I often sit here for a few moments on nights when I am feeling introspective, for it is a perfect place in which to consider my own thoughts and to speculate whether they possess any merit.

My attempt at reflection last evening was almost immediately disrupted by my startled recognition that absolutely nothing, except insects, was moving in the oppressive heat. Only the faint, occasional twitch of a plastic ribbon hanging from a nearby boundary stake gave any hint that the heavy, viscous air might be amenable to some form of movement. The stillness was life-stealing, as if all living things in my backyard were congregants of an Egyptian temple dedicated to Ra sharing a time of rapture – a moment of communal epiphany so profound as to render each individual life form into an impersonal, objectified representation of its own genus incapable of either movement or speech. I, too, was rendered motionless in the presence of a stillness deep enough to freeze-frame life, with only my thoughts demonstrating any vitality.

And in this stillness flew insects going about their daily rounds, seemingly immune to the life-stealing aspects of the heat. Being the only apparent movement, the insects became focal points upon the canvas of the evening, calling attention to its various components by their attendance: bees investigated Helen’s flowers, calling attention to the variety of their colors and shapes; butterflies flitted randomly about, contrasting nicely with the subtler greens of the bushes and low-growing plants; a lone dragonfly engaged in pointless pursuit, gracing, en passant, intermittent blocks of sunshine and shadow with its neon colors. Occasionally an insect would alight upon one of Helen’s longer-stemmed flowers, causing its stalk to dip with the insect’s weight – a form of enforced movement strikingly at odds with the flower’s otherwise adamantine stillness.

All moments such as this have their fleeting aspect, and I eventually returned indoors to the pleasures of my current book after several minutes of sharing this rapture. But it is equally true that all moments such as this possess a persistent vitality which compels close examination of one’s place in the hierarchy of living things, an examination which suggests that all life is sacrosanct and that the worth of any individual form of life, whether that of a single-celled organism or that of a multi-cellular aggregation, is wholly dependent upon, and wholly derived from, its assumed role within the community of all living things.

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A Seattle Summer Morning

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Gavin Stevens

It was a beautiful Summer morning today in Seattle, warm and cloudless, backlit by sunsparkle off the bay, and flavored by a light, salty breeze. Bright sunlight simultaneously played a solo game of hopscotch across glass-sheathed high-rises and hide-and-seek with the shadows among the brick protuberances of our older, low-rise buildings, both games umpired by silent gargoyles resident among the brick who are seldom acknowledged by those of us walking underneath.

On at least two occasions during my morning walk, solitary seagulls cried raucously and loudly from directly overhead, accompanied by faint choruses of their cousins soaring along the not-so-distant waterfront. Instead of being overwhelming, the brisk, Friday-light traffic served as a continuous grace note to the gulls’ cries echoing between the walls of the shadowed, street-level canyons down which I traveled.

Walks such as this are not an everyday occurrence in Seattle, for perfect weather conditions must coincide with a perfect mood in the beholder for any day to become filled with such pleasures. While the chance that all of the necessary ingredients for a magical day will come together in just the right proportions is not high, days such as this happen sufficiently often in Seattle that they cannot be considered a rarity. And this time of year, their frequency is higher because the clouds are fewer and the days are longer.

There is something in the trick of the morning light among the brick-and-glass-walled canyons of any major city that reminds us that rudimentary, ageless pleasures are just as much a part of the warp and woof of urban life as more sophisticated things and delights. Perhaps it is the evanescence of its cool promises which quickly fade as the temperature rises toward the Noon and the city quickens with the lengthening day.