Re-enchantment relates to joy in everyday life

Thomas Moore tweets now about joy. Thang Nguyen blogs "Reading Re-Enchantment" about Moore's book The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life. Nguyen writes, "I am reminded via Mr Moore’s work that it doesn’t take much money to extract pure joy from Nature, from objects of sacredness (even graffiti is a cry for validation)."

Nguyen connects Moore's work to current events: "Building lobbies are for job seekers waiting for an interview. These days, that’s most of us, and soon, one of the Presidential candidates and a host of Olympian athletes after London, as well as Penn State athletes. His chapter on our fixation on Martian motif was right on (I was talking about violence within each of us the day before the Denver shooting). Hollywood certainly did not let these human behaviors escape unnoticed."

This blogger emphasizes Moore's focus on "magic in everyday life" as he takes comfort that a rock, a tree, and poetry will remain after our short lives.

Desire and death accompany us in this life

Yesterday's blog post "Life goes on" by Barque friend, Julianne Davidow addresses Eros and the soul’s approach to death. Davidow attended a workshop, The Path of Eros, offered by Thomas Moore at the New York Open Center on April Fool’s Day this year during which he said that Eros may show up when least expected. Davidow also quotes Carl Jung about a vivifying perspective as one approaches the end of this particular life. She opens with the quote, "In the life of the spirit, we are always at the beginning."

Agape: not banking love for deposit or withdrawal

Writing in the Sand by Thomas Moore helps to fuel today's blog post about l-o-v-e, the kind that ancient Greeks called agape. Tom Rapsas writes "Greater than sex? The amazing power of 100 percent pure, unlimited agape" for Elephant Journal. He defines agape as "a love that’s distinctly different from erotic love or romantic love, as it exists on a higher, more spiritual plane. It’s the unselfish love you give to everyone and everything around you, while expecting nothing in return. It’s love simply for the sake of loving." Rapsas describes its divine source and unconditional nature.

Patriarchy may help leaders to express authority

Do "women have a problem making friends with their own authority, their own ability to be in charge?" Kath Walters of Leading Company, an Australian newsletter for business executives, considers this question in her post, "Women have trouble making friends with their own authority". After referencing "Jennifer Garvey Berger, a coach and a senior facilitator with the Leadership Circle Asia Pacific" who "says that women have a problem making friends with their own authority, their own ability to be in charge," Walters writes:

The author Thomas Moore has a fascinating take on authority, and on patriarchy. In his book Care of the Soul (now stay with me here — I’m not going to go all ooga booga), Moore describes a true sense of authority as "the feeling that you are the author of your own life, that you are the head of the household in your own affairs." His rather radical view is that authority is the father aspect in all of us — men and women.

Moore’s take on patriarchy is also a challenge to the patriarchal politics: true patriarchy is an 'absolute, profound archetypal fatherhood', he writes. It is possible, in Moore’s view, for our social patriarchy to be like a benevolent father: providing a sense of direction, order, security, fairness, and a buttress of solid opinions and debate.”

Walters continues, "I mention these ideas because of Berger’s point that women are searching for new ways to interpret authority; they do exist." Read this post and the comments. Hamis Hill contributes, "With economics being derived from the ancient Greek word for household management, which in those days was the province of women, perhaps the template for strong women leaders has already been set."

Barque coverage:
Feb 14 2012 "We need a return of patriarchy in a deep sense"

Ruminate about the unfolding mysteries of life

The Anchorhold site encourages spiritual expressions of gay and bisexual men. Today David Townsend blogs "Signs and Wonders " about consulting Tarot cards before setting out yesterday. After describing cards he turns over, Townsend writes:

"Then I settled into the slower, more ambiguous search for what these cards could tell me, digging into the uncertainties, looking in the shadows cast by hesitation for what I might otherwise fail to see. Reading your cards, or having them for you, requires a kind of faith. You have to trust that a series of random occurrences has something to teach you — that hovering just behind pure chance is a sign that points to something you'd do well to notice. You have to get past calculating the odds in order to embrace what Thomas Moore has called 'the re-enchantment of everyday life.'

You don't have to believe deeply. You just have to behave as though you do. You have to give yourself permission to imagine and play with the possibility that the randomness of the world is speaking to you. You can use the Tarot as a technology for the expansion of your soul. You could just as well use astrology; or the I Ching; or ink blots; or the pattern of the flowers that have opened this particular summer day, in this particular meadow. The truth isn't in the cards, but in the dialogue you have with them — a dialogue that can both take you out of yourself and invite you to enter more deeply into yourself."

Townsend concludes, "There's no objective, 'scientific' truth to the Tarot, as far as I'm concerned, but there is what it calls forth in us as we play with what it offers. The chance happenings of my day aren't direct messages from a God who has nothing more pressing to do than send me personal telegrams; but I can choose to take them as evidence of a Mystery that unfolds before me, and, sometimes, an invitation to allow it to unfold within me as well."