Posted by giveawayboy on July 08, 2002 at 19:27:59:
In Reply to: interesting stuff posted by john on July 08, 2002 at 13:10:56:
: Anyone ever hear of sustainable economics or steady-state economy?
: Try these links and let me know what you think. These things are tools in our bag to be used in adjusting our lives. They are credible and doable.
i'm really glad you shared these links. I'm going to check them out in more detail, but what I like about them is that they seem like a small piece of a huge puzzle that we (whoever might be reading this) can try to put together or not. By the way, the puzzle doesn't have a certain image yet. Ultimately there is an image to it, but we don't have an exact picture to match it too. Instead we have some kind of symbolic, stylized representation, somewhat like the deer a caveman scratched onto the wall of his rocky home. We have all received at various moments throughout our lives little pieces of a an invitation. we are finally starting to see how those pieces fit together and then we are starting to realize that the invitation, though incomplete, is beginning to be complete enough for us to make a response. we are also beginning to see that the invitation is to join in with whosoever will respond to work on the task of putting together this giant puzzle. The pieces are all the things that come within our sphere of experience. And by extension, the peices also lie beyond us as the puzzle is cosmic as well as local. our local puzzle will intersect with other local puzzles as they eventually tend toward the cosmis puzzle that they are all subsumed in. this bit about money and sustainable economics can be a part of that puzzle if we have seen the invitation and if we choose to be a part of the work on the puzzle. One little note for those who like to solve puzzles and then glue them together permanently to mount them on the wall like some dead deer. There will be none of that. The deer is alive and running. It is stylized exactly because it couldn't be captured. The puzzle cannot be merely solved. The solution is not static. . The puzzle in one sense is already solved, but it is alive. Yet, it is a living puzzle. Our great priviledge is to see how the pieces work together. it is our simple joy to see how the puzzle functions as a whole. we are not just trying to dissect the deer, but to chase it, to hunt it, and perhaps to let it stalk us. we are not trying to finish the puzzle quickly and frame our trophy. we are simply invited to the process of working together to solve it, yet, knowing that the process is of prime importance. When we say I am solving this puzzle, what it implies is an active relationship of getting to know something that is not static, but dynamic and with varitian. We are not looking for the END of the puzzle, but the true nature of it, which breathes. We are not lookikng to fully know the puzzle, without also maintaining our sense of wonder, but we are seeking to know the puzzle as a concert of living pieces. Ultimately the puzzle speaks and calls us "further up and deeper in" (C.S. Lewis Last Battle). The puzzle isn't unsolveable in the sense that it is some form of cosmic denial. It is not constantly evading itself. However, it isn't solveable in a trite, simplistic way. Another thing, the nature of the thing is not flat or even cubelike. It is multidimensional yet it can be local, it can intersect w localities. it can intersect or even incarnate in communities of people. i have offerred potential pieces as well as john. it's not all about locking in on those pieces. some of those pieces might simply be pointers in an interdimensional, community-wide scavenger hunt. some of those pieces might be calling cards for other worker's on the puzzle. the main thing is to see outside of yourself long enough to get the invitation.....and to respond to that invitation, in whatever ways possible long enough to find the pieces and begin the work of DOING THE PUZZLE. then you need to settle into some stride. you need to realize that you are willfully and actively able to DO the puzzle. you aren't trying to finish it as much as you are ENJOYING the PROCESS of DOING it. Your desire to solve the puzzle is your desire to dance with the pieces and the players. You are inside the puzzle, you are a piece yourself. is there a mind behind the puzzle? is there a will behind it? is there a pattern? how can we think outside the box? how can we think circumspectly? i can give you some hints, but even these must be thought of as more than static hints, they must be living hints. i could tell you about marsupials or the coasts of great continental plates that look like the bodies of familiar lovers. i could tell you that about headlight fish or hope kachinas or the sargasso sea. heck, i could even tell you about the 15 mysteries of the rosary or the origins of the babushka doll, but what would those things mean to you? they might mean everything or nothing or exactly what they mean. they might mean something that has a starting point and an ending point, and turns on an axis but an axis that is something between a barber shop pole and the north pole. it is not just a pole though since it is the stylus of everything. it is the statement, the eternal statement, and everything in cosmis chorus identifies it in varigated response. everything suddenly becomes the universal anemone. and if you can see this anemone, if you can find a mystery in one of it's severed arms, and if you can see how there is continuity and flow even though you acknowledge that the severing is real, then you are already playing the puzzle, you are already there and you just need to progress from that fixed place. you need to stop and honor and celebrate that mystery and then actively work on the rest of the pieces which are already making up the puzzle, or which perhaps are made by it. remember, everything is not proceeding from itself and because of this everything can be a vehicle to something greater.