As someone else has pointed out, QaR is a great way to wake up for the day and, because I have the consistent luxury of time for reflection, my careful attempt to form an answer is often enough the most meaningful thing I accomplish on days like this one. Questions seem to be my religion, if I can be said to have any religion at all. To me, they're synonymous with passion and, without passion, life doesn't endure. The satisfaction of answers is only ever temporary. Questions drive us, but answers do not. Answers point direction, but questions are the engine of life.

There's a continual struggle between those who worship their answers and believe in their finality and those who worship questions and believe answers are but a path to more questions. I'm one of the latter. I don't believe there are enduring answers - only enduring questions. Indeed, a workable answer is only possible through asking the right question but, of course, one's answer is only temporary. Change is inevitable, everywhere and everywhen. Questions remain, answers change.

I've become quite the collector of questions both of those here at Gaia's QaR and from many other sources because of the question's power to wake the mind, the body, the spirit, and keep us consistently present. One of my favorite collections of questions is Barbara Ann Kipfer's "4000 Questions for Getting to Know Anyone and Everyone". Her book is great for the purpose suggested by the title - and you'd be surprised how resistant most people are to this exercise - but, to me, the book is far more useful as "4000 Questions for Getting to Know Yourself". To deliberately ask yourself some of these questions is to actively form who and what you are rather than default to more passive and haphazard personal development. How can you know what you think unless you actively ask? How can what you think be properly rather than carelessly formed? Books like this one prompt you in just about every potential area of your life and, in my experience and as you might expect, the 4000 questions lead to thousands more not mentioned in the book.

Other books I'd suggest:

"The Book of Questions" by Gregory Stock
"The Conversation Piece" by Bret Nicholaus and Paul Lowrie
"If ... (Questions for the Game of Life)" by Evelyn McFarlane & James Saywell
"If 2 ... (500 New Questions for the Game of Life)"
"How Far Will You Go?" by Evelyn McFarlane
"Would You?: Questions to Challenge Your Beliefs" by Evelyn McFarlane

and many more like them.

All in all, it seems the quality of at least a human life is deeply related to the quality and quantity of its questions, its passions, its inherent curiosity. The power or influence of a life is measured in its breadth and its depth, both of which are attained through questions.

We at Gaia want to change the world actively rather than through our historical passivity. Questions and Reflections is one of the most obvious expressions of that intent. Deliberate questions breed deliberate lives which contribute to deliberate rather than accidental change.

My consistent intent in times spent with others is always to both give and to receive in kind through conversation, shared experiences, laughing and crying, noise and silence, good food, good drink, good music, etc. Neither giving nor receiving is sufficient alone. In solitude, I'm constantly exploring nature and the stories, ideas and wisdom of others contained in books or in any other sort of print, in movies, television, music, art, craft, the internet etc., and then spending more or less equal time in self-expression through art, crafts, music, and most especially writing. My practices in solitude are similar to my desired social life - I take in all I can experience, and I attempt to give back at least as equally, often preferably more. To me, this is the literal and most authentic meaning of spirituality - breathing. I see no reason at all why a truly healthy approach to one's solitary life ought not be appropriate for one's social life. But, of course, there is no true separation of the two. What our inner and outer lives share in common is "life". All life, human life being no exception, needs the complete cycle of breath - give and take. We cannot live exclusively in exhalation or as givers, nor can we live exclusively in inhalation or as takers. Both are anathema to life in isolation from the other. We absolutely must have an active inner life, but we must also have an active outer life which includes relationships with others of our kind. My assumption when with others is they sense the same truth, if not entirely explicitly in their own minds. We all wish to honor and share who and what we are at any one moment with those around us and, for the sake of essential balance, we must wish equally to receive from others what they have to offer in great appreciation.

It's perhaps easy to think of breathing as only a metaphor outside of a literal breath, however, breathing, which we so often associate only with our lungs, involves our entire selves in very literal ways. Perhaps, if we spoke of literal breathing more frequently than we speak of the more vague "spiritual", our individual and collective spiritualities would be more "down to Earth", more practical, more truthful. As a natural result, our daily lives, both inner and outer, would be healthier than they are.

Breathing is essential ... in all of its variants. For a full life, one simply needs to breath, to give and to take. It is more than metaphor for life - it's life itself. When with others, I prefer to authentically breath, to genuinely live. Balanced give and take.

What's always missing - enough. I can think of nothing thoroughly missing in today's cultures save for those fresh insights we do not yet have and yet will find indispensible for surviving tomorrow. Nevertheless, there is much in our society of which we have far too little. First and foremost, collectively, we have too little lust for life, far too little passion, far too little love - of self above all else, and of other as the womb in which we live our entire lives. And too, we have far too little of the rational both individually and collectively.

These day, my consistent pet issue is cultural forgetfulness of the individual and their influences from the beginning of their lives and into the unknown future. I've said many time before - it is a continuing crushing tragedy that even a single human being's life passes into obscurity without easy discovery or any discovery at all. We remain sometimes unwillingly and too often willingly numb to the consequence of every single life upon our own. We minimize the literal miracle that is every life and, because we humans truly are amazing creatures, we ironically minimize the miracle that is every human life. Surely, we celebrate a few among us with the usual obvious reasons. Still, we ought to celebrate and preserve all that we can of every human life no matter its length or quality. Each of us creates and harbors experiences, learning, understanding, wisdom and creative insight possible only to ourselves and recorded only in our own minds. That a single one of our unique moments is lost forever to cultural memory is more than one can bear once one has realized the true value of it. That uncounted numbers of these priceless moments are lost forever is a loss of authentic treasure which cannot be absorbed and coped with in any single mind nor, I believe, absorbed and coped with by the collective mind of the species. Still, we must individually and collectively come to understand the nature of a single moment of a single life, the value of it, the enormous tragedy in the passing of it, and the inestimable value that is lost to us all that nothing can be gained in the future from that single moment of that single life because no discoverable record was made.

Our societies have little to nothing formal and fundamental in place in their cultures for preserving as much of each and every life as is practically possible for easy discovery, learning, understanding and integration into general wisdom by future generations. I do what I can to preserve the contents of my memory, my mind. It is far from easy and, even feeling as I do about the issue, consistent motivation is a challenge. There are certainly others who feel as I do, do as I do, feel more, do more. Still, there are genuinely only a few in our numbers who see what's true, see what's needed, and make an attempt to do what's needed.

That's what's missing. That's our greatest loss. That's our greatest tragedy as a species.

Even when I was very young, lest those feelings consume me completely and almost instantly, my response to sadness was to encourage and use the feelings to create something new in my world. Rather than the intensity of emotions driving me further into sadness merely in the knowledge of that intensity, I seemingly delighted in the darkness for its better power to inspire what I value most - intense passion for life, intense experience, the depth and power of my own heart, and a seeming gift for voicing it out into nature and history in ways somewhat accurate to the feelings, somewhat unique and sometimes interesting to others. If it weren't for a strong lifelong instinct to spend my moments and energies creating, extreme passions from light to dark would have driven me to my end long before now ... and almost nearly did on a number of occasions when I had briefly forgotten that safer way to look at sadness.

I now understand intellectually what before I'd only innately felt - If we genuinely believe life to be better than the absence of life, we must always welcome, even celebrate, whatever emotions come to us. We must be driven passionately to create anew no matter their nature. Just as we seek happiness and delight, and for the very same reasons, we must seek sadness and despair. As whole human beings, we have the gift of it all. To know ourselves as fully as is possible in our own lifetimes, we must deliberately explore and develop all that's true of us as individuals. In doing so, and because darkness and light are possible to us all, our personal explorations, discoveries, knowledge, wisdom and expression of ourselves has the very real potential to connect in authenticity with others like us and benefit them in ways almost entirely unpredictable by any.

In a word, I remain a partner to, even a worshiper of sadness by loving it as best as I'm able and denying myself fear of it. That fear is rooted in a false belief - a belief in eternity, in permanency, in "perfection", in an unchanging nature. I accept change, impermanence, imperfection, and the inevitability of the undesireable. I accept them as necessary to life as any thing other. I accept all of life because the alternative is no life at all. Anyone who claims to authentically love their life, must love it all - even its pains and sadnesses, miseries and madnesses - or cease pretending to authenticity, full love, and full life.

Sadness is life and, if one loves life, must be fed, cherished, and given voice in its time.

Treehouses. I'm reminded of a conversation I had with someone just the other day about a woman in Hawaii who has lived in a treehouse there for years and almost entirely "off-the-grid". My reaction to the story was as it has been to such tales my entire life - one of envy. I've always had what some would call an authentic and deep spiritual connection with trees specifically and with dense forests more generally and, as a child, was frequently and easily carried away from the things of men every time I sat in one up as high in the branches as I was able to climb and the tree still support me. As I grew older, it was my dream to climb to the tops of several redwood giants in Northern California to experience what to me would be the ultimate spiritual exchange - the sharing of my heart with the trees. I remember regularly joking, of course, that if I ever made it to the top of one of those trees, I might never come back down. To spend even a single night perched at the top of such a tree must truly be a religious experience. Richard Preston, in his book "The Wild Trees" has revealed as much.

Unfortunately, I'm physically unable to climb even the shorter trees where I live and my dream of climbing a giant redwood may remain just a dream. Nevertheless, I continue to have an obsessive fascination with treehouses and the people who own them, enjoy them and even live in them. I've collected at least half a dozen large and well-illustrated books of treehouses around the world. For me, browsing through these books is an instant escape from the overly-complicated human world as I sit, live, and dream in many of those treehouses, if only in imagination.

Because I know there a many others who love treehouses and, perhaps very deeply, the trees themselves, I recommend these following favorite books for dreaming of your own:

"The Treehouse Book" by Peter Nelson, Judy Nelson & David Larkin
"Treehouses of the World" by Peter Nelson and Radek Kurzaj
"Treehouses - The Art and Craft of Living Out on a Limb" by Peter Nelson & David Larkin
"Treehouses: Living a Dream" by Alejandro Bahamon

As a caveat, I have to mention that, although I admire all treehouses for their charm, I personally advocate only the building of treehouses that cause no harm to the tree itself, assuming it is living.

Of course, as a lover of books and as a writer, I can't forget to mention I spend the bulk of my time in their pages or creating new ones. For my greatest and most beloved distraction, reading or writing high in a tree or, in the least, beneath one is heavenly.

Growing up listening to the conversations and storytelling of the adults in my family served to make me a passionate people-watcher, student of human nature, lover of story, story creation and storytelling. I'm love people-watching and love to listen to them talk. Every "stranger" I encounter is a priceless chance to learn more about us humans in general and about myself specifically. I love to be reminded as often as is practical of the seemingly endless diversity of life and, especially, of human life. There seems no limit to human complexity and the dynamics of our interactions with one another and the world who is our ultimate parent. I hope I'm authentically and consistently seeking the unexpected because it is only the unfamiliar that stretches the envelope of my own experiences, my own understanding, which stretches the boundaries of who I am, can be and will be. That's growth which is absolutely essential for human life's greatest potential quality. My belief is we have this one and only life. I have long and genuinely intended to explore all it means to be "human" and, perhaps, extend that meaning beyond its traditional limits in whatever ways I'm able. It's my right and, as I also believe, my responsibility to do so. Whether the experience is pleasant or unpleasant, there is always value in meeting or, in the least, in observing "strangers" and always a tragedy to deliberately avoid strange encounters.

Of course, of the greatest understandings possible to us is the truth that "strangers" aren't as unfamiliar to our own life as we typically think and, paradoxically, because a profound portion of the individual spirit is inaccessible to others, also more strange to our personal experience than we can genuinely understand in a single lifetime.

Still, we must try. I believe nature wishes us to make connections which have never before been made or have never before been possible.

I recently found an article written from a Christian perspective on what one ought to do during the coming election. The author makes the comparison of "bible-based morality" and "politically-correct secular humanism". This author has little to no understanding of what is secular humanism.

As she says:

"We live in a time where a great battle is taking place to determine America's future. Our world is divided between Bible-based morality and politically correct secular humanism. This divide manifests itself in almost every area of our lives."

No. We live in a time which continues the centuries-old battle between those happy with hindered thinking and those who desire freedom of thought. Morality or ethics can either be reasonable or unreasonable and every degree in between. The majority of the time, we all live a mixed bag of reason and unreason in our values.

Reasonable morality/ethics, i.e., reasonable values, is what secular humanism is all about. I invite you to read both its declaration and its affirmations to see for yourself. By setting Christianity opposite to Secular Humanism, this author is perhaps unwittingly saying "unreasonable Christian morality" versus "reasonable secular humanist morality".

Which do you choose? Which party and their candidate represents reasonable values to you? Do any of them? Which advocates genuine enhancements to our liberties and which is screaming for tighter reigns on freedom to exercise individual rights?

It's an eye-opening article. Let's hope very few take her advice. Let's hope unhindered minds win this particular day and many of those to come.

http://www.newssun.com/opinion/ltr-0829-griffin

Naumadd