Morning Light

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Among the Wheat

Image: Photographer unknown.

See also the previous posts:
• Hare in Field of Gold
• Hare in Summer Field
• Cutting the Hare

Boys of Summer

See also the previous posts:
• Boys of Summer (2017)
• Boys of Summer (2016)
• Boys of Summer (2015)
• Summer Boy
• Tan Lines

LeBron

LeBron Raymone James Sr. (born December 30, 1984) is an American professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Often considered the best basketball player in the world and regarded by some as the greatest player of all time, James' NBA accomplishments are extensive and include four NBA Most Valuable Player Awards, three NBA Finals MVP Awards, two Olympic gold medals, three All-Star Game MVP Awards, and an NBA scoring title. He is the all-time NBA playoffs scoring leader and has amassed fourteen NBA All-Star Game appearances, twelve All-NBA First Team designations, and five All-Defensive First Team honors.

James is an active supporter of non-profit organizations, including After-School All-Stars, Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Children's Defense Fund. He also has his own charity foundation, the LeBron James Family Foundation, which is based in Akron, Ohio. Since 2005, the foundation has held an annual bike-a-thon to raise money for various causes. In 2015, James announced a partnership with the University of Akron to provide scholarships for as many as 2,300 children beginning in 2021. In 2016, he donated $2.5 million to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture to support an exhibit on Muhammad Ali. In 2017, he received the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award from the NBA for his "outstanding service and dedication to the community." In November of that same year, the Akron School Board approved the "I Promise School," a public elementary school created in a partnership with the LeBron James Family Foundation to help struggling elementary school students stay in school. James later reflected that it was his most important professional accomplishment of his life.

Throughout his career, James has taken stances on controversial issues. On several occasions, he mentioned a feeling of obligation to effect change using his status. Those include the War in Darfur, the Trayvon Martin case, the now-former NBA owner Donald Sterling's racist comments in 2014, the Michael Brown verdict, and the death of Eric Garner. Following a racist incident at his Los Angeles home in 2017, James stated, "being black in America is tough. We got a long way to go for us as a society and for us as African Americans until we feel equal in America." Later that same year, in the aftermath of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, James questioned President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan by stating, "It's sad what's going on in Charlottesville. Is this the direction our country is heading? 'Make America Great Again,' huh?" and "Our youth deserve better!" James also called Trump a "bum" after the president rescinded a White House invitation to Steph Curry. On the other end of the spectrum, on February 16, 2018, Fox News journalist Laura Ingraham told James to "Shut up and dribble" as a response to his political agendas.

– Source

Last Friday, August 4, U.S. President Donald Trump took to his favorite medium, Twitter, and attacked LeBron James’s intelligence after CNN aired an interview in which the NBA star told anchor Don Lemon that he thought Trump was trying to divide the country by using sports as a wedge. Trump had apparently watched the rebroadcast of the interview, which originally aired Monday. Lemon’s questions mostly focused on James’s time off the court, covering James’s newly completed I Promise School in Akron, a public and nonprofit partnership designed to help underserved kids in his Ohio hometown.

The meme above is just one of many that were created in response to this incident and which criticizes Trump while praising James. An earlier meme (below) highlighted James' exemplary character and family life.

Above: On June 11, 2015 LeBron shared on national TV a bit more of his physique than he no doubt intended when he briefly exposed his penis as he tucked his undershirt into his underwear. (In the process, it should be noted, he validated all the "growers not showers" of the world!)

Notes The Hollywood Reporter about this incident: "The Internet may have been worked up into a frenzy over LeBron James possibly exposing his penis to millions of viewers on live television Thursday night, but the Parents Television Council doesn't think the potentially indecent footage, broadcast during ABC's live coverage of the NBA Finals, is that big of a deal and the watchdog group says it won't be encouraging its members to file complaints. 'After reviewing the video clip at issue, we find nothing that reasonably violates the spirit or the letter of the longstanding law against broadcasting indecent material over the public airwaves between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.,' PTC president Tim Winter said in a statement. 'We will absolutely not be encouraging our members to file complaints, as we feel it is much ado about nothing.'"

Well, not exactly nothing.


Related Off-site Links:
A True American Hero – The Wild Reed (August 5, 2018).
In One More Career-Defining Moment, LeBron James Opens a School for At-Risk Kids – Tania Ganguli (Chicago Tribune, July 30, 2018).
What LeBron James Keeps Doing Is More Impressive Than You Think – Terence Moore (Forbes, August 2, 2018).
Trump Insults LeBron James’s Intelligence in an Echo of “Shut Up and Dribble” – Alex Horton (The Washington Post, August 4, 2018).
Twitter Explodes Over Donald Trump’s “Disgusting” Attack on LeBron James: “LeBron Puts Children Through School. Trump Puts Children in Cages” – Jeff Zillgitt (USA Today, August 4, 2018).
Sports World Reacts to Donald Trump’s Attack on LeBron James – Michelle R. Martinelli (USA Today, August 4, 2018).
Trump’s Tweet About LeBron Is Pathetic, Immature But Not Unexpected – Jeff Zillgitt (USA Today, August 4, 2018).
LeBron James Tweets Positive Message to Kids After Donald Trump Attacks Him – Hilary Hanson (The Huffington Post, August 4, 2018).
When Trump Attacked LeBron James, It Had an Unintended Effect: Other Athletes Speaking Out – Cindy Boren (The Washington Post, August 5, 2018).
Amid LeBron James Flap, Melania Trump Again Charts Her Own Course – Associated Press via MSN.com (August 5, 2018).
LeBron Shows Trump What Winning Really Looks Like – Dave Zirin (The Nation, August 6, 2018).
LeBron James: No, I Don't Regret Calling Trump a "Bum" – Mahita Gajanan (Time, September 25, 2017).
LeBron James' Penis Exposure Draws Hilarious Complaints – Jai Bednall (News.com.au, July 15, 2015).

See also the previous posts: Jayjay | Donald | Geremy | Jerome | Solomon | Colin | Luis | Nyle | Philip | Charlie | Sukdeep | Rafael | Mon Bel Ami

Images: Photographers unknown.

Harvest Blessings

Writes Terence P Ward at The Wild Hunt, a website dedicated to "modern pagan news and commentary" . . .

This week, many modern Pagans, Heathens and polytheists are observing the summer festival of Lughnasadh, also called Lammas, Lughnassa, and Harvest Home.

Typically celebrated on August 1, Lughnasadh is one of the yearly fire festivals and marks the first of three harvest celebrations. It traditionally honors Lugh, the Celtic god of light and many talents, and his foster-mother, Tailtiu.

In addition, it’s the time of the Ásatrú festival of first fruits called Freyfaxi. Both celebrations are include feasting, songs, games, thanksgiving, and the reaping of the first fruits and grains of the season.
There are many other late summer religious and secular holidays around the world, some of which are related to the harvest.

In Tibetan Buddhism, for example, followers celebrated Choekhor Duechen, or the first turning wheel of Dharma, July 27. The day marks the time when “the Buddha Shakyamuni first taught the four noble truths in Sarnath, India, and first turned the wheel of the dharma.”

During this time, members of several Native American nations celebrate the Green Corn festival. This was particularly true of “Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Timucua, and others, who used corn (maize) as their single most important food source.” The ceremony and festival, also called puskita or busk in English, was “an expression of gratitude for a successful corn crop.”

In the Southern Hemisphere, Pagans, Heathens and polytheists are readying for Imbolc, and other holidays focused on late winter and the coming potential of spring.

To read Terence P Ward's commentary in its entirety, click here.


Image 1: "Harvest Hare" by Nicole Fenwick.
Image 2: Artist unknown.

Thomas Moore on the Circling of Nature as the Best Way to Find Our Substance

NOTE: The following was first published July 28, 2018 at The Leveret's brother site, The Wild Reed.

The BBC recently reported that "skywatchers around the world have witnessed the longest 'blood moon' eclipse of the 21st Century." This eclipse took place last Friday, July 27, and as the moon rose that night it turned a striking shade of red or ruddy brown. The "totality" period, where light from the Moon was totally obscured, lasted for one hour and forty-three minutes. At least part of the eclipse was visible from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, most of Asia and South America.

To celebrate last Friday's beautiful phenomenon of creation's circling and cyclical nature, I share an excerpt from Original Self: Living With Paradox and Originality by one of my favorite spiritual writers, Thomas Moore. I've long wanted to share this particular excerpt and now seems a perfect time, or, as Moore might say, the appropriate season!

__________________________________

Humans often have a preference for straight lines. We think of evolution and human development as following an uncrooked path toward perfection. We expect our neighbors to walk the straight and narrow. We don't approve of deviancy (de via), which is nothing more than veering off the straight line. Furthermore, we understand that the best straight line of evolution and development moves forward. We don't think much of regression.

It's interesting, then, that alchemists of old, who saw their work with metals and chemicals as a reflection of the soul's processes, described the task as one of cycling and circling. The opus, the work of alchemy, was called rotatio or circulatio. The vessel in which the work took place, shaped like a bird with its neck bent over plucking its breast, was sometimes described as a pelican, This shape allowed the material to circulate endlessly.

I see my own life as a recycled version of my family's quirks, strengths, and weaknesses. I look at my hands sometimes and see my father's. I feel a strong reserve in my approach to people, and I sense my mother's sensitivity. I feel my grandfather's humor in me and my uncle's unlimited tolerance. I do the family blush about sex, and I have its homebound view of the world.

In therapy, several men and women who had been married more than once or had had many lovers told me of their resolution to finally straighten out and move on. They were tired of the cycles in which they repeated destructive choices. But I didn't have much faith in their resolutions. It might have been better, I thought, if they reflected positively on the repetitions that fueled their desires rather than hoped for a release from the bondage of their nature.

One sometimes sentimental way of redeeming the soul's circlings is to insist that they are, after all, spirals. We are getting someplace even if we're going in circles. But I don't trust this clever spin on circles either. A circle is a circle, and there is no reason to believe that human life is correct only when it straightens out. Maybe at root we are coils of possibility in constant rotation.

Rainer Maria Rilke said, "I live my life in widening rings." It may well be useful to note the expanding of the circles in which we live, but it is also important not to lose the sensation of cycles, which may be painful to anyone living in a culture dedicated to the extending line. Maybe in life we never really develop, but only expand the rotations that give us our firm identity. Maybe we should expect always to get into familiar trouble and to repeat both the glorious and the defeating themes that are embedded in our soul.

Traditional peoples apparently honor the cycles of nature, communities, and persons with as much fervor as we honor developments and growth. I sense escape in theories of expansion, because it may be that the soul finds its way by not going anywhere. The circling of nature, inner and outer, may be the best way to find our substance.

We might know ourselves better and be closer to our nature by honoring these cycles rather by running away from them in sentimental philosophies of growth. I don't grow, I am. I don't change, I merely manifest differently the prime material with which I am born. Perhaps if we got off the demanding belt of change and growth, we might relax into the circumambulations of life that turn us over and over, polishing the arcane stone of our most essential selves, revealing more and more of who and what we are.

Modern psychology tries to tell us that we are constantly developing creatures, but I prefer to think of us as seasonal beings. We have our summers of sunny pleasure and our winters of discontent, our springtimes of renewal and our autumns of necessary decay. We are essentially rhythmic, musical. As the ancients used to say, our emotions are in orbit, like the planets. Patterns that define us return again and again, and in these returns we find our substance and our continuity, our original nature and our identity.

– Thomas Moore
Excerpted from Original Self:
Living With Paradox and Originality
pp. 62-64

For more of Thomas Moore's writings at The Wild Reed, see:
• Thomas Moore on the "Ageless Soul"
• At Hallowtide, Pagan Thoughts on Restoring Our World and Our Souls
• Christmas 2014: Thoughts and Celebrations

See also the previous Leveret posts:
• A Super Blue Blood Moon
• Lunar Deity
• The Hare and the Moon
• Moon-Struck

Image 1: Artist unknown.
Image 2: Anthony Duff.
Image 3: Book cover design by David Bullen; artwork by Joan Hanley.
Image 4: Alexandre Riabko in John Neumeier's 2000 ballet, Nijinsky; photo by Holger Badekow.
Image 5: Michael Jackson, Jr and Sean Carmon of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre; photo by NYC Dance Project.
Image 6: Foztography.

Jayjay

See also the previous posts: Donald | Geremy | Jerome | Solomon | Colin | Luis | Nyle | Philip | Charlie | Sukdeep | Rafael | Mon Bel Ami

Images: Chonlawas "Jayjay" Khumkoet. Photographer/s unknown.