Hunting

"Beginnings - Natural Light"

Acrylic on Canvas 16" x 20"

Recently met a "hunter". He only kills what he eats. Another friend asked me "what attracts him to killing". My reply was, "family tradition - how he was raised". This subject took me back to 2006 and Dan.

From: dan
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006

"Hiding is deliberate concealment engaged in to gain an advantage, such as protection from a harmful or unwelcome attention, or a destructive force. Hiding is also an aspect of stealth, one of the skills of a successful hunter, again, it is a maneuver of concealment aimed at gaining an advantage, and it may be enhanced by the use of a deception or camoflage. This is ancient and it precedes human knowledge by aeons. Like any activity it can be utilized to preserve life, or destroy it. In the case of hunting, the activity that precedes eating, it both preserves and destroys in one act. (it is a common lie that plants or animals willingly give up their lives to become our food.) The Yorubans call this Ogun. Or in the ballads, John Henry.

Not revealing, is a decision to retain rather than disclose information. Such a decision may have a number of motivations, or may be the result of no motivation at all. Humans are under no reasonable compulsion to reveal "everything they know," and most people are incapable of revealing much in a meaningful way. Someone once told me, "you don't have to tell everything you know." They had asked me why there was an echo on the phone when you talked to someone in China, and I explained to them the speed of sound waves and how bats use that principle to orient themselves and locate their prey. Too much information.

In the tea ceremony one refrains from revealing as an act of humility, in the hopes that it will be perceived as a gift to the person one is serving, to give them a quiet space for their sense of peacefulness to develop in, understanding that there can be charm in half light, that the magical world of imagination is nourished not only by what can be seen, but especially by what is not seen. It is a gift of space, and time. This happens when a person has the inner discipline to take care of their own needs well enough that they have energy to spare, and to share, with another. One does not draw attention to oneself in the tea ceremony.

Wisdom is not just having information, or revealing it, but practicing discernment in its use. Knowing when revealing is welcome or useful, and when it is not.

Igor Stravinsky, my favorite composer, set these words to music late in life:

"For what a man sees, why does he yet hope for it?"'

The substance of things hoped for;

the evidence of things not seen; is faith."

And our Lord is a consuming fire.""