A 700 Year Old Vindication

Today commemorates the 700 year anniversary of the downfall of the famed organization known now as the Knights Templar. It was Friday, October 13, 1307 that the Vatican conspired with King Philip IV of France to draw the Templars into a noose, leading eventually to the burning at the stake of Jacque de Molay and the retreat of remaining Templars and their secrets to Scotland and the greater British Isles.

The level of speculation surrounding this band of medieval warrior monks has become a kind of budgie-jumping historical sport, the rock-climbers version of academic fun. We have the Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail to convince us of its continued and presently heightened popularity. But nothing reaches the justifiable ground wire like the news coming out of the Vatican these past few days...

From Thursday's edition of the Guardian Unlimited:

A couple of years ago, one wintry morning in Hertford, I met a mysterious man who claimed to belong to the Knights Templar. As readers of The Da Vinci Code will know, this secretive Catholic organization had been officially disbanded in 1307 by Pope Clement V, who had accused them of being heretics and devil-worshipers; their leader, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake. This Saturday, October 13, marks the 700th anniversary of the day their persecution began: Friday October 13, 1307, which may be the origin of the idea that Friday 13 is unlucky. But the Templars didn't go away. Instead, they went underground - taking with them, it was whispered, the Holy Grail itself, the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper. Then, in late 2004, they resurfaced. A letter arrived at the Vatican, purportedly from the Templars' grand master, insisting on the knights' innocence, and demanding an apology. The Vatican said it would give the matter "serious consideration" - but for Templar-hunters, the exciting aspect was that the letter bore a Hertford address.

A reporter at the Hertfordshire Mercury tracked down a local Templar, who explained that treasures of "immense importance" were hidden in a secret network of tunnels beneath the city, extending from the council offices, via Threshers, to Monsoon and Accessorize. Which was how I came to visit. Was the most fabled relic of Christ hidden underneath two boutiques on Market Place in Hertford?

I never found out, despite the best efforts of Gemma, the manager. But the other part of the tale has a happy ending: later this month, the Vatican will publish a book based on the Chinon parchment, a rediscovered fragment of the trial proceedings against the Templars. According to Professor Barbara Frale - who found it in the Vatican's secret archive, where it had been misfiled - it absolves the Knights Templar.

Just after the 700th anniversary of the day their troubles began, the Templars will get their apology. "We pray that, at the end of seven centuries, the soul of Jacques de Molay may now rest in peace for ever," says Ben Acheson, who describes himself as a Templar. "The Temple now considers the matter closed."

Now all that remains is to find the Holy Grail. If you need me, I'll be underneath Accessorize.

So, after 700 years of supposed Templar heresy, they will finally be absolved. Fascinating how justice works inside the halls of the faithful.

Reese

Update: (From the Times Online)

VATICAN CITY The Knights Templar, the medieval Christian military order accused of heresy and sexual misconduct, will soon be partly rehabilitated when the Vatican publishes trial documents it has closely guarded for 700 years.

It is publishing only 799 copies of the minutes of trials against the Templars, Processus Contra Templarios - Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars, which will sell for €5,900 (£4,115).

The giant work will come in a soft leather case, with detailed reproductions of original Latin parchments and the wax seals used by the 14th-century inquisitors.

“Nothing before this offered scholars original documents of the trials of the Templars,” said Professor Barbara Frale, a medievalist at the Vatican’s Secret Archives.

The Templars were founded in 1119 by knights sworn to protect Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. Legends of their hidden treasures and secret rituals and power have featured in films and bestsellers such as The Da Vinci Code. (Reuters)

The Seattle Times: A Smooth Move

The Seattle Times: A Smooth Move

(Pacific NW 10/07/2007 | A Smooth Move | )

One of the interesting things about this article in the Seattle Times, Sunday Magazine, "Pacific Northwest", is a small clip in the article about the two hundred rhododendrons and plants, transplanted from their old residence. The new property was on a steep hillside where each and all had to be securely fastened to the ground. I am happy to say that though we did have some casualties along the way, the garden has achieved in the five years from its inception, (having been improved by many hands), has achieved that classic state, where the plants, the house and the architecture combine to what I would call a masterpiece, if we were talking about a work of art:

Pacific NW 10/07/2007 | A Smooth Move | Seattle Times Newspaper

...and of course the non sequitor:

like the donkey approaching the last few stumbling blocks,
to the lowest part of the road,
having stretched its legs upon the long journey,
like a summit to the bottom of the canyon.

the grand canyon.
and the colorado river, like everests
stretching their tendrils upon the earth,
like overarching theories.

i wish that mr. bush wouldn't torture people
or torture people by making them torture other people.
the central intelligence agency, like a rock upon the earth,
cannot redefine itself; or its country.

the impulse to desire a fleeting thought:
like the rapture of noah's dove,
is a peace;
the purpose of which is peace.

the elephant in the room,
is the elephant in the room.
and the donkey is still going south,
like the geese this time of year.

Mass Ascension

Fiesta is the harbinger of fall, of lanterns and pumpkins. It is a smooth transition into the season of the fallen. Usually.

This morning was cold. We launched around 7 am, and immediately drove south for the chase. Upon stopping at a traffic light a few miles from the launch site, I commented to Adam (the other crew on our balloon) that the balloon flying directly in front of us was too close to the power lines. Moments after I said that a line lodged into the side of the balloon's gondola.

For fifteen minutes I watched as the tragedy unfolded, powerless to help in the face of it all. The tension on the wire was so great that it was literally tearing away at the basket. The pilot tried to negotiate a drop line hitched to a truck to pull him out of it, but the line snapped and sent the balloon careening away from both the drop and power lines, dumping a passenger in the process. She died upon impact, from 60 feet up.

Powerlessness in the face of tragedy is at best humbling. Death came today, as it does, creeping in from the corners of our lives, the places we least often look. Death came today, and its questions remained unanswered.

Reese

Rapunzel

Along hairline
Gargoyle

Gypsum vertebrae
Basalt backbone
Cobble belly

Heels of pumice
Breast marble
Neck flint

Even blue bells between
Turn schist

No more fragility of aspens
Or golden staircases

I sprout baleen
To make ribbing
Stay corsets

I am Jaw line finally
Translated to jet—

Yet still you come
Begging hair

Still I purge
Heavy confluence

And you swim up
Swollen-whaled breathy

Pulling the roots of my home

Letter of the law, or spirit?

Is really just the difference between a copy editor and a conceptual one. I am currently in Denver at the Mountains and Plains regional trade show. Today there was a panel with Morrow and Houghton Mifflin. Editors from both publishers were there. Both conceptual editors. They are responsible for taking that little bundle of raw material, keeping it absolutely true to the voice of the author, and making sure the ideas and character developments align. They do not edit line for line--they leave that to the copy editors: the folks who rake the whole thing with a fine tooth comb, in the name of one consistent template, namely the Chicago Manual of Style.

And really, if I were to choose I would be probaly go conceptual. Yet, copy editing is absolutely essential to the precision and finesse of a manuscript.

In my own sermon on the mount near the Bodhi tree, I would perhaps call both necessary. And, if I wanted my sermon published, well, I couldn't say one was more important than the other.

Why are so many against Iran?

I am perplexed. I listened to the president of Iran when he spoke to the students at Columbia University in New York. He made some really adroit points.
We are taxing the Iranians with our contempt, and they are not represented in our parliament.
The president of Iran wants sovereignty. He wants the holy land to also have sovereignty. The people who live there should have the right to govern themselves. Why can we not get our fingers out of the middle east?
Our president, Mr. Bush has plans to make a library when he retires. oh the irony. It is to be called something like the Freedom library, to advance freedom and democracy in non freedom and democracy loving nations. But for now he wages war with Iraq; Iran. When he does not have the power to shove it down their throats, he will build a library to accomplish his purposes.

"My dear friends and scholars, distinguished participants, science and wisdom can also be misused, a misuse caused by selfishness, corruption, material desires and material interests, as well as individual and group interests. Material desires place humans against the realities of the world. Corrupted independent human beings resist acceptance of reality and even if they do accept it, they do not obey it.

There are many scholars who are aware of the realities but do not accept them. Their selfishness does not allow them to accept those realities. Did those who in the course of human history wage wars not understand the reality that lives, properties, dignity, territories and the rights of all human beings should be respected? Or did they understand it but neither have faith in nor abide by it?

My dear friends, as long as the human heart is not free from hatred, envy and selfishness, it does not abide by the truth, by the illumination of science and science itself. Science is the light and scientists must be pure and pious. If humanity achieves the highest level of physical and spiritual knowledge, but its scholars and scientists are not pure, then this knowledge cannot serve the interest of humanity, and several events can ensue." Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Barack Obama said in the democratic debate tonight not to be afraid of people who are different. Because I am different, I liked it when he said this.

....be seeing you.

Return With Dust on Your Shoes

Because that is where you were born—
next to the old milk barn, the one with the red roof.
You were given to believe from a young age,
that the farm didn’t wash off. That you’d always smell
like the cow you milked that morning
or the hay you baled over the weekend.
That the dust on your shoes exposed your class—
each under-bellied embarrassment from the social strata
that molded you. And, that farm–free people always
looked shinier than you, in their farm-free clothes.

But, there will come a time when you wear alfalfa,
like essential oil on your skin and walk into the wetlands
where the cows graze. You will reach toward the arbor
of grapes in the fall and pick them, willingly;
and make grape juice with mom. You will return to the farm
in winter with Great Horned Owl or in the spring
with the Canadian Geese. And when you get a little dust on your feet
you will look down and smile. You will carry the dust
back to the sterilized world, where cleanliness,
next to godliness, gratefully, becomes its own dead maxim.

And so, dreams.

They have been epic and long of late. Sometimes I live someones lifetime from birth to death. I awake in review every morning. I arise from another living, to concrete awareness--awakeness. Fragments of each nights episodes stick to my day. At work, the fragments hum those other awarenesses and cause smile.

Last night there was a scaffolded structure called the Unago. It was either 4200 or 7200 feet tall. It was built in the desert on Indian Land. There was an audience who stood in back of the structure awaiting a show. My friend Jessica jumped from the platform at the top, with the help of bungie ropes, down into a small hole in the ground that was filled with water. The hole was small but the water was deep. She went all the way down the depth of the water, and was then pulled out with the bungies and swung into the air, like a trapeze artist. The crowd was awed. Later, the tribal elders provided a meal for everyone. Jessica sat down, and composed an essay about her experience jumping. I awoke with the essay, like a mantra, repeating in my mind.

And so, dreams.

Lucid Dreaming

I came across this article in the New York Times a few days ago that has me thinking. Whether it is by some psychosomatic reflection or pure coincidence, the idea has been in my head recently. Do you ever fly in your dreams? Do wield a sword and fight the good fight? Some new studies in the area of dream theory might give us all a moment of pause.

Established sleep researchers say lucid dreaming is occasionally reported by subjects, though it is difficult to validate scientifically. “Yes, lucid dreaming exists,” said Dr. Rodney Radtke, the medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Duke University. “Yes, people certainly can, within their dream, realize ‘this is just a dream’ and continue to participate.”

The article in the Times goes beyond this, suggesting we have ultimate power over dreaming, that it is a universe of pure will...

Do I believe that someone could potentially alter or interact with their dreams in such a way that they could change the dream? Yes,” he said. “Do I think that you could essentially design a dream — ‘Oh, I want to go to Honolulu and have this big hunk hit on me’? It’s a bit of a stretch. But I can’t say it can’t happen.”

The article also suggests some lucidity aids, provided by institutes dedicated to lucid dreaming. But, there is no better aid than being conscious of this potential. Point in case, I've been willing flight in my dreams lately, and its been happening at a lot more frequently than ever before. Will is important, consciousness is key.

So, happy dreaming.....