Gnomad

Looking east at sunrise and west at moonset this morning. I often mention solstice and equinoxes but haven’t talked about the 18.6 year lunar cycle. In the lower picture you can see the moon above the now-bare ginkgo trees. This is where the sun sets at summer solstice. The lunar movements are much more complicated than the sun’s, its rising and setting changing in the course of each month, but the larger lunar cycle means that within a year and a half it will reach lunar standstill and I’ll see the moon set even further right/north, probably over those conifers behind the old Martin Guitar factory, and then slowly proceed to the left/south back down Main Street.

The holidays can be a time of happiness and strength. However, those of us with religious trauma often can be bombarded by feelings of guilt and shame during this “loving” time. This month we are breaking away from our normal discussion to enhance our perspective of the holidays, and uncover our intentions during this time in relation to religious trauma.

On November 29th, Open Doors Counseling Center, LLC and I will be hosting another monthly religious trauma support group. Due to the great need for this in our community, we have decided to make this a regular occurrence on the last Wednesday of the month.

Religious trauma is defined as, “The physical, emotional, or psychological response to religious beliefs, practices, or structures that overwhelm an individual’s ability to cope or return to a sense of safety.” This will be a safe space to discuss our past experiences with religion/spirituality with hopes to understand some of these challenges and heal from them. This is a free support group that is open to the public.

Today, I am grateful a resource like this exists in our community and can be utilized to heal from pain. 💙

“As giant camphor trees often appear in films of mine, such as My Neighbor Totoro, many people assume that I have childhood memories of such trees, but it’s not true.

[…]

In thinking about how I came to love trees, it occurs to me that it may be related to a memory I have of gazing from my classroom window at a Chinese evergreen oak during middle school. It was a tree growing in the sports field next to our school, and it seemed wonderfully big and pleasant looking. I recall thinking that perhaps I could draw it sometime.

There was also a period when I simply loved to draw big things above all else. This wasn’t limited to big trees; I also drew steel pylons and anything tall, for I probably dreamed of climbing them. I must have been psychologically attracted to anything big and tall at that age.

I became fascinated by the world of plants because it seemed to best symbolize the complex and varied world we live in. When creating animation and trying to draw big trees in the background, it’s really difficult to make it look as though the wind is truly blowing through them. A single photograph has far more impact in this case. But every tree has many things that live in it or are parasites on it. Images may in fact be best at capturing the totality of this relationship. Although it might not be possible, I’ve always wanted to make a film about a tree from the perspective of the tree’s own world. Humans have their own sense of time - so do birds, insects, and even bacteria. Each sense of time is different, but to each form of life it is also equivalent, at the same time exisiting within the gigantic space of a single tree. The bird sees one scene when it flies by, barely missing a group of leaves; the caterpillar sees photosynthesis happening up close. And then there is the view from the rocks next to the tree. If we look at the tree from all these perspectives, a single, very ordinary tree in a wooded area starts to seem like a truly incredible world. From the perspective of humans, the tree starts to look not like a purely pleasant and comfortable place, but something quite different, where insects prey on weak plants and where, if humans rudely interrupt the lives of these insects and pests, all hell can break loose. From the perspective of insects, a single drop of rain looks like a giant and mysterious transparent ball with amazing properties of surface tension. The film that I would like to make would show this - it would develop around a single tree and show the tree from a totally different sense of time and perspective.

[…]

Because I would love to make this sort of film, it may sound as though trees have a special significance for me. Rather than symbolizing a quest for personal memories, however, I think trees represent something I inherited from far, far in the past.”

I wonder if there is such a genuine comfort in one’s own skin — if the moon’s grace can be emulated in the human psyche. There’s no anxiousness in its movement, no sudden lowering of the eyes when it chances upon another. There is no sense of confrontation. The moon is, as it is, in its colours, in its solitude.

In its own space, pirouetting gently towards the other end of the stage. Between the stars there’s always it’s vaporous glint, foreshadowing it’s gleam as it reveals itself from under the clouds. There’s this sense of presence, of time that stays till. An ageless truth, warmed by the earth’s shifting tapestries.