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| The gift of the new day |
I didn't post yesterday, Sunday, because it's a day of rest, a day of contemplation, a day for reflection. Judy and I hiked a five mile loop right from the campground. It was cool, sandy soft, and filled with so many Saguaros, I got dizzy contemplating their personalities. This morning I took Judy to the airport for her three day grand baby fix. The photos are already flying through the ethernet, and I must say, "That Falcon may be the cutest baby ever." After I dropped Judy off, I spent a large part of the day trying to find a copy of Leon R Kass's new book: How to Essay the Upright Man. No luck. But I spent much of my Sunday considering Kass's opening salvo as related by reviewer, Ryan Shinkel: "How should we think about the good life? A proper understanding of human flourishing needs an account of human nature in its metaphysical context. This kind of moral anthropology makes possible judgments of moral excellence. Thus, to "What is man," the Psalmist answers, he whom God made " a little lower than the angels" and "crowned" with "glory and honour." Man officiates other creatures due to his godlike origins. Here, human purposes evince natural law: "the heavens declare the glory of God" and "the firmament sheweth his handiwork." Both reflect the "law of the Lord, converting the soul." Ethics accordingly means an orientation to a higher cosmic harmony. "Upright man," Ovid verses, "made in image of commanding Gods," alone has rectitude o gaze at heavens (i.e we stand upright, unbowed). "On earth the brute creation bends its gaze, but man was given a lofty countenance" and "commanded to behold the skies" so he "with upright face may view the stars."...Our wonder at the heavens with upright posture signals our fusing the spiritual and physical. So that's it. We're stuck in the battle of whether to "live freely in relation to the Lord, in Who's image humankind was created, or be a slave to Pharaoh, a human being who rules as if he were himself divine." These are the kinds of cosmogonal thoughts I had Sunday as we walked in the desert, trudging mostly on "freeway" trails of wide soft sand, but occasionally my revelry was interrupted by some stubborn granite knobs edging their hard noses from the ground. It's ironic, the places we find our grounding, but as always we're lucky enough to say, "Life is good, especially today."
Saguaro of the day. "Quite" a bit older than my Bunny.
It's easier for me to cheat when she's distracted.
So far we have covered twenty miles of the White Tank trails, which amounts to maybe a third.
Selfie of the day.
This barrel cactus patch seems quite happy living where it is (Good advice for us all).
Mimi will take Falcon any way she can get him, even just waking up.
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