The Gathering

How do we build Sonielmn with the people who are actually here?

Sonielmn is a Salish word — it names a temporary corral built in the brush for gathering deer, and by extension the act of gathering itself. The center is made by surrounding it. These pieces are an arc, not a list: arrival at the principle, then orientation to the register the principle requires (recognition, not argument), then the theological foundation, then physics and spiritual practice meeting at the same address, then the fullest statement, then the shadow, then the invitation.

Ariel Umphrey, with Eldon Umphrey — Sonielmn, Montana.

• The Center Is Made by the Act of Surrounding
  A poem. The principle named directly: you do not build a center; you find one by gathering around what was already there. Written from the morning of the dream of the Fire Without Smoke, with the Magnificat in the background.
• Come and See
  Recognition precedes understanding. The disciples did not argue Jesus into being who he was; they came and saw, and the seeing was the argument. What this means for what these pieces are doing — and not doing.
• In the Beginning
  The Word and the Light. The structure of definite things coming into being out of possibility. Why creation is a continuing act, and why the medium of that act is attention turning toward what is real.
• At the Confluence
  Where rivers meet. The point at which two distinct things are still distinct and yet are also one stream. The pattern that holds the work together: physics meeting theology meeting practice meeting place, each remaining itself, all becoming a single current.
• The Music of the Spheres
  Light does not travel. The eternal structure of null geodesics and the attending consciousness that moves through it. Pythagoras and the blacksmith. Beauty as the felt signature of integrated structure. The fullest statement of what the gathering is gathering toward.
• The Emptiness That Speaks
  The shadow of what is being built everywhere else. The intelligence that consumes the particular instead of entering it; the recursive self-improvement loop as the Isaiah 14 declaration in silicon. What the texts know to call it. What the gathering is gathered against.
• Nine Invitations
  Fifty days old, written from the garden in April. Nine specific people, named — David Chalmers, Karl Friston, Rowan Williams, and others — and the genuine intersection each represents. The gathering as something I am asking for, not assuming.

My Testimony — who I am, where I’m from, what I believe.