clearness, clarity, and correcting cluttered thinking

Space or spaciousness seems to be a key part of spirituality. The European gothic cathedrals changed the worldview of those worshipping inside. Earlier the architecture was constrained by the limitations of building techniques simply they could not build upwards and outwards without incredibly thick walls and lots of pillars. But the development of the buttress and flying buttress brought height, width, and light. Windows as vast surfaces of glass through which light filled this space opened things up. At the same time it is claimed that humans in their literature became more self -aware and self-reflective.

In the post-rock era of music, I am noticing a significant parallel. Recently I came across Natural Snow Buildings, a french duo who produce huge ambient landscapes using large audio palettes of sound. Their The Dance of the Moon and the Sun, an earlier work, reveals much of their origins but their recent release The Centauri Agent is more electronic and processed. The interesting thing is they are not commercial. Their recent issue is free for download through their label Vulpiano Records. Much of their previous work has been through incredibly small releases. It is clear they are not trying to make money. They are not flooding the world with cd's and bits of plastic.

In that collision of ideas I'm currently reading The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard, which is a detailed taking apart of our worldview of the need to acquire more and more stuff. She says "I'm not against stuff", "I'm not romanticizing poverty", "I'm not bashing the United States." But everything is connected in fact interconnected and the current global problems are linked to stuff. In this respect we need to understand our stuff i.e. how we got our stuff and where it came from, in terms of extraction, production, distribution consumption, and disposal. She paraphrases Einstein, saying "problems cannot be solved within the same paradigm in which they were created."

Last night in our Bible study we discussed what made you famous for more than 15 minutes. One person in my group said by changing the way people think. I think there's a little more than that, by changing the way people think by correcting cluttered thinking the world can be changed. We have at least to suspend thinking from within our current worldview.

Recycle and simplicity

I was reading an article on Lifehacker and one respondent claimed

A cd/dvd is considered a class 7 recyclable plastic. To manufacture a pound of plastic (30 CDs per pound), it requires 300 cubic feet of natural gas, 2 cups of crude oil and 24 gallons of water. It is estimated that AOL alone has distributed more than 2 billion CDs. That is the natural gas equivalent of heating 200,000 homes for 1 year. It is estimated that it will take over 1 million years for a CD to completely decompose in a landfill.

I'm so glad I no longer back my data up onto CD and DVD roms. But the issues remain about the nature of our garbage. The clutter I've been hanging onto is crazy, but perhaps the music industry's hanging onto CD's and the movie industries to DVD's is worse. I'm currently reading Henry David Thoreau's Walden. A very interesting book written in the first half of 19th century. It's a fascinating read not just because Thoreau is a Transcendentalist - a pre-industrialization proto- ecologist but because he challenges unbridled acquisition. In order to research and write, he built a little house by Walden Pond and farmed a few acres and claimed that "I found that ... it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one." He grew his own food and built his own shelter and sold a little excess to cover his costs. He lived at Walden for 2 years 2 months and 2 days. The fascinating thing is I've been reading this on an iPod touch which has been gifted me by grace as a pass-me-on. It isn't, for me, a hand-me-down because it has raised me up. What if I had bought a book?

It occurs to me that it might possible to live your life more simply where technology is used especially where distribution is digital and virtual. Thoreau seems to be for me at the moment a 19th century hippie, jailed for refusing to pay his taxes in protest over the Mexican War. There is no doubt of his intellectual ability and insightfulness. (A graduate of Harvard.) I'm interested in where these thoughts go in the collision of ideas between Thoreau's and the distribution of digital media through the internet as possibly a lighter carbon footprint .

How does this relate to spirituality and faith? I believe we tend to simply accept cultural trends and marketing. We buy into an unbridled consumption model. if we do this it is extremely difficult not to end up with cluttered lives, physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. We need enough space to think and to think critically. I'm about to read yet another book about decluttering. I am amazed not that I reading another one but that I can find yet another one. This one published 2008!