Edges

Sometimes we look for sacred spaces, and sometimes they find us. In my experience, these spaces are typically on the edges of things. The edge is a transitional zone where, for example, a residential area might transition into an open, natural area. Often these are the forgotten places, hiding in plain sight outside of our field of vision. Someone from a more mystical persuasion might call them "liminal" or "thin" places. They are portals between worlds, both here and elsewhere simultaneously.

On the edge of suburbia, on a wooded hill overlooking a shopping mall, we found the ditch and D.I.Y. skate spot pictured above. The ditch, I suppose, is meant to provide some sort of erosion control. It certainly was not intended to be a place of creative movement and freedom. This is the beauty of skateboarding in seeing the innate possibilities of a place. And of course, to the hard work and ingenuity of skateboarders in crafting the spot as a canvas for expression. Maybe this is the way that a sacred space is made...

Geological Stories

Recently I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful educational program with the California Chaparral Institute. This program was the Advanced Chaparral Naturalist certification course, and I found it intriguing because it had a great deal of focus on geology. Geology is one subject that I knew almost nothing about. Aside from some basic, middle-school level earth science knowledge about types of rock, I could not claim to have any knowledge of geology whatsoever.

I found that geology has a lot in common with philosophy and theology. Now I know that some of my naturalistically-inclined friends will scoff at this comparison, but bear with me. Geology, like theology and philosophy, is typically not the first choice of study for those interested in natural sciences. Studying rocks and dirt is just not quite as accessible as plants or animals. Sure there are impressive instances of geology, such as the massive granite cliffs and domes of Yosemite Valley, but these are rather simplistic examples in geological terms. Geology is much more of an intuitive pursuit. You cannot see the movement of tectonic plates and the formation and transformation of rocks in the same way that you can watch a plant grow.

Through the course, I found that my home region of Southern California has a particularly unique geological makeup. We are located at a sort of crossroads – the boundaries of tectonic plates, uplifted ranges from ancient subduction zones, and the proximity to the ocean have all contributed to the variety of the topography found around here. You can find specimens of many different geological ages in close proximity in San Diego County.

This impressed upon me most the idea that our topography is not just a matter of chance. The forces that have come into play in this region have each shaped our coastal bluffs, mesas and canyons, rolling foothills and boulder-studded highlands in specific ways. This variety of topography, in turn, has created watersheds and environments for the native plant and animal species that live here. You cannot have the life without the land.

One of the most significant parameters in the study of geology is that of time. Geological time is measured in terms of ages, epochs, eras – periods of time so massive that our minds can barely comprehend them. We speak of the uplift of continents and the movement of ranges along plate boundaries, and we are asked to picture and think of these things in real time, while in fact they take place over lifetimes longer than any species alive on the Earth. Imagining these things takes a shift in the way of seeing. It involves viewing the landscape and the places we know with whole new dimensions – time and motion among them.

Geology really is, at the root, a story of motion. And it is here that I find the most congruence with theology, at least the kind of theology that I espouse. The lands that we know are in constant motion. They were someplace else before, and they will be someplace else later. In 50 million years, San Diego county will be in Northern California (we are moving northwest at a rate of a few inches per year). Even the things we find most solid, rocks and mountains, are not so solid after all, but are moving and will be transformed again and again. Such is the nature of spiritual things as well. That dance of transformation, of birth, life, death, and re-birth, is inherent in the nature of the universe in both a spiritual and physical sense, and this is manifest even in the ground we stand upon. This is the profound mystery that geology reveals to me.

I can’t claim to have anything beyond the most basic layman’s knowledge of geology even after this course, but that’s beside the point. What I have gained is an appreciation for the story that geology has to tell. It is a story about the places that we live and move around in. The best theology is also more about stories than it is about doctrines or details as well. We need stories to frame our existence, whether we acknowledge this or not. I’m glad that I’ve learned, in a small way, to listen to the stories that the rocks, hills and mountains have to tell.  

The Wisdom of Sacred Spaces

How do we define sacred space? This article from On Being got me thinking about this question. While the article speaks specifically of built spaces like churches, I began to wonder about the places that exist all around us. What makes a place, especially a place in the natural world, sacred?

We live in a world where the concept of sacred space is misunderstood, and often simply dismissed. The idea that a place could have a sacred, spiritual dimension is thought of as a relic of another time. The very idea strikes hard against our Western way of thinking, with its faith in the empirical and its search for predictable certainty. Oddly enough, this sentiment comes not just from secular corners but from religious ones as well.

Modern religious thought, at least in the Christian tradition that I was brought up in, tends to accept the epistemological conclusions of a dualistic worldview without actually realizing it. It stresses the transcendent nature of God over immanence, and leads to the conclusion that a place can only be sacred if it has been properly set aside as such. Churches and cathedrals might be considered sacred spaces, but they are only sacred in the sense that they provide an escape from the outside world and remind us of our non-material, spiritual nature. Their intent is to turn us away from the world, not to dwell within it. To suggest that the place itself has a depth of sacredness that is inherent in its physicality is considered pagan or worse.

The consequences of such a view are profound. Such theology forces us to become “dis-placed”, to feel that we are not at home no matter where we are. This distancing from the stuff of everyday life means that we also become free to exploit the land on which we live without any further thought. And if we can treat the land like an object to be exploited, what is to stop us from dehumanizing its human occupants as well? Coming from a faith tradition that centers its theology on incarnation, on the physicality of the divine, these consequences seem especially ironic and tragic.

Still, I find myself unsatisfied with the opposite approach, which simply says “all the earth is sacred”, and leaves it at that. I don’t disagree with this statement, but are there certain places that hold a more sacred dimension than others? We certainly find this in more traditional indigenous religious thought. There are certainly sacred groves and places where the proverbial veil is thin, these liminal spaces where the spirits walk more visibly. What makes these places sacred?

I think that the answer can only be found by entering into a relationship with the land that removes any notion of treating the land like an object. The land must be assumed to have a voice and a language, and it is the imperative of the dweller on the land to learn it. Perhaps the definition is personal and individual, but I suspect that it best understood communally. That is the wisdom in religious tradition in the first place: passing on knowledge of the sacred places to preserve them for future generations. Wisdom is ultimately connected to place because it is most clearly manifest in knowing a certain place. Wisdom without connection to place is just disembodied knowledge.

In my last blog, I spoke about the tendency to only equate nature with the pristine. This is relevant here as well. To the extent that we do find spaces in nature sacred, we generally limit this to places that we consider impressive based on our aesthetic sensibilities. I won’t deny that the impressive places I’ve visited, like Mt. Hood or Crater Lake, have a transcendence to them that is apparent. It’s not hard to have a spiritual experience in such a place. But if only these places are sacred, then we find ourselves able to trample our own neighborhoods underfoot without much thought.

A place becomes sacred when it reveals to us, in its own time and manner of speaking, what it truly is. This isn’t some sort of gnostic hidden knowledge. This is the truth hidden in plain sight, the fact of the interrelated nature of all life and the unique way that each organism contributes to the whole. When we can learn this from a place, I think that we can call it a sacred space. The most sacred spaces are the ones that reveal this to us time and time again, often with different nuance each time. And these places also show us our own interdependence, our own place in this complex web of life. Their sacredness comes in the wisdom that they communicate. 

Back to the Garden

Not long ago I had the opportunity to visit my former home of New York City, and I found myself wandering around my old neighborhood of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. There is a park in Bay Ridge that runs along the west side of the neighborhood with a fantastic view of New York Harbor, Staten Island, and New Jersey beyond the bay. I went for a lunchtime stroll in this park and found myself in a lovely little spot called the Narrows Botanical Garden. The garden is small, volunteer run space within the park, nestled up against the busy Belt Parkway. I had walked though this garden many times when I lived in Bay Ridge, but had forgotten all about its existence until this moment.

The garden consists mostly of pretty ornamental plants and trees in lovingly cared-for arrangements, but it also contains a small native plant garden. When I lived in New York, I was far too immersed in the urban grit and grime to care much about native plants, but now that I have fully embraced my inner West Coast tree-hugger, I was very excited to see a native garden here. Of course, being very early spring in New York, there wasn’t much for obvious plant life beyond the empty branches of dormant, deciduous trees and shrubs. Still, the canopy of branches created an atmosphere of solitude that shielded me from the noises of the city all around.

Kingdom Animalia, on the other hand, was out in full force. Sparrows perched on the branches and sang while robins fluttered about and dug in the dry foliage looking for worms. Squirrels skittered about through the undergrowth, and small turtles floated about in a little pond. The scene was a beautiful, peaceful contrast to the busy freeway right next door. Sure, not all of these were native birds or critters, but the exuberance of life was clearly evident in this place.

I reflected on the fact that I never felt very connected with nature when I lived in New York, and I can imagine that the sentiment is probably widely shared among city-dwellers. Yet here, all sorts of life abounded, right in the midst of all of the chaos, seemingly indifferent to being surrounded by the largest mass of industrialized humanity in the United States. It made me wonder what exactly we are seeking when we go looking for “nature.”

For most people, the word “nature” carries with it a connotation of wilderness untouched by human hands. Never mind the fact that only a small percentage of us actually get to experience such places at all, much less on a regular basis. We think of nature as something that exists somewhere else, somewhere other than the “human world” where we live and move and have our being.

I see this all the time in my native Southern California. We are blessed here to be surrounded by large, beautiful open spaces that often surround our communities, especially here in San Diego County. But I have found that few people pay much attention to our vibrant native shrublands. Even our language reinforces this sense of value.  These lands are just “brush”, waiting to be devoured in firestorms, without much other use. Real “nature” is considered more appropriate to places like the Sierras, where the beauty is more obvious to the casual observer, at least based on a preconditioned sense of beauty.

Is our concept of nature is based on some sort of platonic ideal, a vision of some sort of Edenic paradise that is very difficult, if not impossible, to find? I’m not sure, but I’m not sure if the cultural approach to natural beauty is much of a help. Art that is inspired by nature, whether visual or literary, usually attempts to present pristine, unspoiled wilderness in reverent tones. We see or read about majestic places: deep forests, cascading waterfalls, snow-capped mountain precipices. We hear the words of wise wilderness mystics like John Muir, using almost-Biblical language to describe the sacred cathedrals of nature. There is nothing wrong about how these things stir our souls, but do they create a dichotomy between nature that is “out there” and the world that is all around us?

My fear is that, in seeking some sort of ideal of nature that is separate from the world of our actual daily experience, we place ourselves in a context for life that is outside of the natural world. And as any ecologist will tell you, this is a dangerous place to live because it doesn’t actually exist. We are no more separate or unconnected from our bioregions than the creatures of the garden, except that we erect cities around us to try to live in denial of this fact. But we can only live in such denial for so long before the consequences will catch up with us.

As naturalist and writer Robert Michael Pyle said so well, “What is the extinction of a condor to a child who has never seen a wren?” If we lack the ability to see the natural world around us, it is doubtful that our worldview will be affected enough to really care about the rest of the wild places of the world. This is not to say that pure wild places are not valuable, or that we should not be working as hard as we can to preserve them. We just need to recognize the sacredness of these everyday places of life and beauty, as much if not more than the lofty cathedrals of unspoiled wilderness. The wild should not be confined to only the places we decide, and our imaginations must certainly follow the same path.

So I want to thank people such as the volunteers who keep special places like the Narrows Botanical Garden preserved in the midst of our crowded urban environments. Let’s all do what we can to notice the life that is all around us, and to begin to realize that we don’t always have to travel far into the wilderness to experience a connection to nature.  

Genealogy of thought - Skateboarding

I cannot discuss the formation of my worldview without talking about skateboarding. This might seem like a strange thing to say. After all, I am speaking about an activity that involves rolling around on a wooden toy. However, the fact that I am still skateboarding as I near age forty bears witness to the importance it has had in my life. This idle pursuit has formed me as an individual in many ways.

As I look back, I can’t quite pin down the moment that I realized that I didn’t really fit in. From an early age I was a very happy, well-adjusted child that got along well with everyone. I had a vivid imagination and loved to read and write. This led to a lot of favorable treatment from teachers, but as I got older it brought about a certain amount of scorn from my peers. Also for whatever reason, I always found myself in closest kinship with other kids that didn’t really fit into the mainstream very well. I suppose that my gift and my burden has been to be a fan of the underdog in most situations.

What does this have to do with skateboarding? As it turns out, quite a bit. You see, I tried to go with the typical young male route of acceptance through physical prowess, particularly in sports. I was a pretty good basketball and volleyball player, having experienced a fairly early growth spurt in height. But much to my chagrin, I also happened to attend middle and high schools that prided themselves on turning out sports champions. I found that I had neither the talent nor the desire to excel at even the baseline level for my hometown. Not to mention, I had a pretty big issue with jocks and the alpha male mentality that pervaded the jock culture. So I was doomed, it seemed, to nerd-dom and obscurity.

This was until skateboarding came along. I had actually begun skateboarding much earlier, in the mid-80’s heyday of the sport when I was about eight years old or so. But I never took it very seriously, and for the most part just rolled around on my driveway when I got bored of doing other things. My sophomore year in high school, however, I discovered skateboarding all over again. I happened to start flipping through a skate magazine at my orthodontist’s office while waiting for an appointment. What I found in those pages changed the course of my life.

This was the early 90’s, and skateboarding was going through a serious transitional moment in its history. The glory days of the 80’s, with neon-clad half-pipe contests and prime-time media exposure, were coming to a close. Skateboarding was moving back to its birthplace in the streets, and its subversive nature was being highlighted in more subtle ways. This transition also led to an explosion of creativity among the vanguards of the movement that spilled over into visual arts, music, and more. I was instantly captivated by what seemed to be an all-encompassing lifestyle, and exercise in personal freedom and carefree expression. This was as far from the jock realms of “sport” as anything could be.

But more than anything else, skateboarding changed the way that I looked at the world.

You see, in street skateboarding, the entire built environment is there to be exploited for purposes of movement and expression. Street skaters grind on ledges and curbs, ollie down sets of stairs, and carve surf-like turns on concrete banks. Just as skaters in the 70’s turned empty pools into never-breaking waves, street skaters find purpose in things that were never intended to facilitate skateboarding.

This approach changes the way you look at everything. I found that my vision of reality had been forever altered. The smallest details became apparent, hidden in plain sight among the monotonous suburban landscapes. The telltale signs of waxed curbs (for easier sliding) stood out like hobo signs or tribal boundary markers. They spoke a language to those willing and able to read it, and created a sense of invisible community even when no one else was around. You knew that this was a legitimate skate spot, and that others of your tribe had been there before. The blinders of normalcy fell from my eyes like scales, and I found myself deep in the study of curb cuts and slight concrete inclines that flashed by the bus window on the way to school.

The culture that surrounded skateboarding also provided me with a place to call home. In the pages of skate magazines and in skate videos, I found like-minded weirdos with incredible taste in music. I was inspired by the art of  brilliant, creative folks such as Mark Gonzales and Neil Blender. I first learned about existentialist philosophy from reading an interview with Rodney Mullen. The aesthetic touched every corner of life. It was about the actual act of skateboarding first, but it was also about so much more than that.

Little did I realize it then, but this gift of vision that skateboarding gave me would not go away. Even more, it would adapt, in time, to a way of seeing not just places but people also, a keen eye for the ignored and the forgotten ones who remained invisible to the eyes of the comfortable and conventional. I call this a blessing and a curse, because like all great gifts it brought with it a great sense of responsibility. Once exposed, I could never be the same.

I recently had the privilege of writing an article for the Luchaskate zine where I tried to explain the connection, for me, between skateboarding and religion. This might seem like an odd and possibly mutually exclusive pairing, but for me they have been complimentary threads that have woven themselves together continually in my life. You could say that my theology has been deeply influenced by skateboarding, probably more so than theology influencing skateboarding. This angle of vision, this desire to see the hidden and tiny things, has never left. Through the pain and pleasure and ridiculousness of it all, I cannot imagine life without it. 

Genealogy of thought - Introduction

One of the best things about being inspired to write again is the opportunity to dig into my own thought process. All of us are thinking all of the time, yet seldom do we actually take the time to reflect on where those thoughts and ideas are coming from. Writing works like a flashlight in a cave. It brings to light those things that are there, but not visible without some outside source of illumination.

I’m the type of person who thinks about “big” things primarily, and I have lots of ideas about the way that things work and how they fit together. This isn’t to say that my thoughts are more profound than other peoples’, just that I have a different area of focus. If you’re looking at the detailed subject of a picture, I’m probably more interested in the blurred background. I’m always on the hunt for the context of the text.

As a fan of Nietzsche, I like to look into the genealogy of my ideas.  I felt that it would be valuable to examine the history of my worldview, and where I came to the place that I am today. By acknowledging the pieces that formed the puzzle, I can get a better idea of where I am going. This isn’t an exercise in navel-gazing. I want to truly understand and appreciate the various influences that have led me here, and see what I can do to take what they have given me and move it along in my own particular way. Isn’t that what all of us are trying to do?

My history of thought is a peculiar one, because it is shaped in large part by forces that seem to be opposed. I have been influenced in equal parts by spirituality and skepticism, tradition and radicalism. I frequently struggle to understand how the pieces fit together, and whether they should fit at all. But I remain convinced that they do and that they should.

My worldview is influenced most significantly by what you might call the punk rock ethos. By this, I mean not just the music and fashion particular to a certain counterculture movement that began in the late 1970’s. I mean the whole aesthetic and ethic that came out of this era and continues to influence life and culture today. But punk is, of course, just an example or manifestation of a movement that has existed for as long as there have been mass societies.

This movement has gone by many names over the course of history. In any society where a certain culture dominates and enforces norms, there will be those who feel they do not connect, in large part, with those norms. In our modern-day society this displacement is largely symbolic and emotional, but in the past it has resulted in actual physical ostracizing of the people in question.  The various movements have shared a common view from the outside.

It is for this reason that I can find, for example, a kind of kindred spirit between monastic movements in the early Christian church and punk rock in the 1970’s and 80’s. There is a spirit of resistance and removal. The goal is to resist the powers that be, and a removal of oneself from their influence. This movement is usually communal, and it is almost always viewed with great negativity by the segments of society that benefit most from the status quo.

There is also a belief common to these movements that another way of living is possible. In other words, the status quo as given is neither inevitable nor eternal. This requires a type of imagination, to see possibilities of things before they exist. Often this imagination comes to life in art forms and language that challenge the powers and are met with disdain by the majority of the society. But the goal of such acts of speech and art is to, in the words of Dorothy Day, “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

So this is the starting place for a lot of my thinking. I am operating from an interpretive stance that takes mistrust of power structures as a given, and looks to possibility as a paradigm. In the next series of posts, I plan to explore some of the specific influences and manifestations of this paradigm and how they continue to inspire and challenge me. 

Moving through places

I’ve always had an obsession with places. Ever since I was a kid, I have loved spending hours upon hours staring at maps, recalling places that I have been and imagining places unseen. I pride myself on having an impeccable sense of direction, and I can usually find my way to my destination wherever I am. Something about places intrigues me – not just the physical geography or the man-made overlay, but what has been described as the “psychogeography” of places. Every place has its own unique feeling, its own unique spirit. We cannot simply pass through places without being affected by them, and in turn affecting them with our presence as well.

So it’s not a stretch to imagine that one of my favorite pastimes is travel. I love to travel, but for different reasons than most. I travel to accumulate places. I am a collector of places, of impressions of places. Sometimes this passion can reach the point of addiction, where I am always longing to visit someplace new or somewhere that I have not been in a long while.

My connection to places is often tied very closely to my means of traveling to and through them. I think that this goes back to a childhood spent exploring my hometown by means of foot, bike, and skateboard. Travel by car, at least in the US, disconnects us from place much more than it connects us. Car travel is concerned first and foremost with efficiency above aesthetics or any other aspect of experience. Freeways seldom travel through places with deep meaning and history, or even through places with nice views. To truly experience place, one must travel by much slower, simpler, and less efficient means.

Walking, biking, and skateboarding allow a person to interact and react to the landscape. Instead of being sheltered behind glass and steel, I am open to the elements in all of their fury and beauty. I can notice the small and insignificant elements that make up the reality of a place. I can interact with people I see along the way, even if it’s just with a quick moment of eye contact or a simple head nod. In a spiritual sort of sense, I can become one with the place through which I travel.

My goal is to explore the power, beauty, and meaning of place and the means we use to move through it. Places are never static. Motion is a fundamental property of matter. The connection between places and movement is essential – if places are not alive with motion, they are not really alive at all. Even seemingly still places like the heart of the desert are teeming with motion, if one only takes the time to look and listen closely. I want to find the movement in the heart of places, whether in built-up places or natural ones. I want to challenge the tired dichotomy between journey and destination, since they are both one and the same.