[Oe List ...] Another offering

Wed Sep 10 12:44:40 PDT 2025

"so long as I was possessed by this spirit, it would be literally
impossible for me deliberately to injure another human being.' The quote
from Weigel from Auden.

One of my realizations from the Tillich game at the end of that RS1 seminar
(am I accepted Dr. Tillich?) has allowed me to see the relationship of my
behavior to the "I am-ness" of my life. The radical (as in root) state of
existence is our wholeness at every moment. When we choose between taking
this action or that action, we manifest how we have taken responsibility
for our behavior. We demonstrate what we pay obeisance to and how we alone
are to answer for our choice.

When I am at peace, well emotionally regulated, as I imagine Auden was at
the time of his experience, I have on occasion known my own wholeness-aware
of my own comfort (safety) in the moment at the same time seeing that in
the people around me.

I notice this feeling when my body, especially the emotional feeling state
of my body, is calm, what others would call regulated. It is only when
dysregulated that I choose behavior which is harmful to my neighbor. Ah,
and dysregulation can come from being in a state of joy or intimate
attraction, not just fear. (Although fear might be the
deeply buried underlying emotion which drives our reproductive urges)

Because of our colleague David Dunn, I have encountered Jacob Collier. He
has reminded me of the emotion altering power of music as well as
demonstrating how singing together creates a shared safe space. It may be
that singing together is the practice (as in spiritual practice) which most
quickly regulates us and encourages this feeling of connection Auden Wiegel
Laphear Hamilton and Hamilton speak of.

Don Bushman

828-292-9696

On Wed, Sep 10, 2025 at 8:47 AM Linda Hamilton via OE <
oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

> Yes the Haikus came first, then the music from an ai app. I asked for a
> tune that would fit the Haiku style and the mood of the six verses as a
> whole. I was also reminded me of the preschool song we used to sing “When
> I’m on my journey there is no one there but me .. etc.”
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Sep 10, 2025, at 4:52 AM, James Wiegel via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> wrote:
>
> In the land of the lonely — thanks for the song, Milan, are the verses
> really haiku?  Wow.
>
> your song addressed my life.  All your songs do:  putting verse out there,
> not just “watching all the world go by” and this one reminded me of the
> final solitude I am dancing around.  (Judy and I are both updating our
> living trust and hosting 2 grandkids — so full of life and energy and
> clearly living in a different, if not other world.
>
> Also, and only indirectly related, I had come across that statement from
> Auden and wanted somehow to pass it on.  The two got conflated, vs. dealing
> with the impact of each on its own.
>
> Thanks, again, and kudos to your writing group.
> Jim Wiegel
>
> “…the long work
> of turning their lives
> into a celebration
> is not easy. Come and let us talk“.
>
> The Sunflowers. Mary Oliver
>
> On Sep 8, 2025, at 9:34 AM, Milan Hamilton via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> wrote:
>
> Yes Nancy, I wasn’t sure of my response would be to what Jim responded
> with, but I have even found in these past few years that occurring in a
> “strange bedfellowhood group,” my writing group has a black former teacher
> and a Mexican American, a Brit, a woman who grew up in a village in Germany
> whose mother was killed in her house she was building by American bombers
> on the last days of the war, all of the former who are sympathetic if not
> enthusiastic with my political persuasions. Several Christians
> evangelicals, a couple of Seventh Day Adventists, and at least two MAGA
> Republicans, one who thinks Trump is the Messiah (my interpretation). The
> point of my lengthy context is that when the members of this group are
> writing their stories and talking about their lives instead of their
> beliefs, on a number of our two hour sharing sessions, what Jim and you are
> referring to seems to be present in the room. Milan
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Sep 8, 2025, at 12:03 AM, Nancy Lanphear via OE <
> oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>
> 
> Thanks Jim, for sharing this piece by W H Auden. I’ve  had a similar
> experience again and again with various configurations here in my
> community. Living in community and constantly meeting in groups or
> individuals “on the path” ….. it reminds me how fortunate I am to have a
> home in which to practice the experience of  “fellow hood” over and over
> again.
> Sent with love. ❤️
> Nancy
>
> On Sep 7, 2025, at 9:27 PM, James Wiegel via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> wrote:
>
> 
> 
> Thanks, Milan.  An abrupt ending.
>
> I ran across this from W. H. Auden last week.  I think it is somehow
> related . . .
>
> What we used to mean by fellowhood
>
>
> "One fine summer night in June 1933 l was sitting on a lawn after dinner
> with three colleagues, two women and one man. We liked each other well
> enough but we were certainly not intimate friends, nor had any one of us a
> sexual interest in another. Incidentally, we had not drunk any alcohol. We
> were talking casually about everyday matters when, quite suddenly and
> unexpectedly, something happened. I felt myself invaded by a power which,
> though I consented to it, was irresistible and certainly not mine. For the
> first time in my life I knew exactly — because, thanks to the power, I was
> doing it - what it means to love one's neighbor as oneself. I was also
> certain, though the conversation continued to be perfectly ordinary, that
> my three colleagues were having the same experience. (In the case of one of
> them, I was later able to confirm this.) My personal feelings towards them
> were unchanged - they were still colleagues, not intimate friends — but I
> felt their existence as themselves to be of infinite value and rejoiced in
> it.
>
> I recalled with shame the many occasions on which I had been spiteful,
> snobbish, selfish, but the immediate joy was greater than the shame, for 1
> knew that, so long as I was possessed by this spirit, it would be literally
> impossible for me deliberately to injure another human being. I also knew
> that the power would, of course, be withdrawn sooner or later and that,
> when it did, my greed and self-regard would return. The experience lasted
> at its full intensity for about two hours when we said good-night to each
> other and went to bed. When I awoke the next morning, it was still present,
> though weaker, and it did not vanish completely for two days or so. The
> memory of the experience has not prevented me from making use of others,
> grossly and often, but it has made it much more difficult for me to deceive
> myself about what I am up to when I do. And among the various factors which
> several years later brought me back to the Christian faith in which I had
> been brought up, the memory of this experience and asking myself what it
> could mean was one of the most crucial, though, at the time it occurred, I
> thought I had done with Christianity for good."
>
> ~ W. H. Auden, from his Introduction to
>
> 'The Protestant Mystics',
>
> ", edited by
>
> Anne Freemantle
> Jim Wiegel
>
> “We are all time travelers journeying into the future. But let us make
> that future a place we want to visit. “       Stephen Hawking
>
> On Sep 6, 2025, at 5:37 PM, Milan Hamilton via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> wrote:
>
> 
> My writing group, the Joslyn Joy Writers ( a bunch of seniors who meet
> weekly to share what they are writing. They thought this one was worthy so
> I am putting it out there. The assignment for the week was to write about
> the "Land of the Lonesome" but I took a liberty and wrote six "Haikus in
> the Land of the Lonely" and then put it to a simple tune and added my
> voice. We have to continue in poetry and song what we can't say any other
> way these days.
>
> https://youtu.be/Mq_uTYpDr28
>
> Mellow Milan Hamilton
> 80 North Center Street
> Redlands, CA 92373
> Phone: (909) 943-1667
> email: mellowmilan2 at gmail.com
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