Making a Gift to God

In order to make something that feels truly “alive” at the deepest level it can help to imagine that you are “making a gift to God.” At each step of the making process you evaluate which option is the most authentic or “true” by evaluating how well it brings out the spirit of the thing

Celadon chrysanthemum cup repaired with gold

Kintsugi, an Art that Goes Beyond Repair

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with lacquer mixed with gold. The repair doesn’t hide the damage – it accentuates the fractures and makes them a focal point, creating a more interesting and potentially more valuable object than the original. Part of the aesthetic of kintsugi is to acknowledge the damage and

Repair to Create a New Wholeness

An act of creation is not just about making something new, something that never existed before. It’s also about the impact that the created object has on its surroundings. Think about public sculpture that is placed on a highway median simply because the space is available and the city council believes that art will “class

small child examining a clump of soil in a garden

Maintaining the Garden

To me maintenance feels like a chore. It’s something you have to do, but it detracts from all the things you could be doing. But there’s another way of looking at maintenance. You are keeping something alive.  In this sense you aren’t simply maintaining. You are gardening. The Garden and Desire A garden is a

Back to the Garden

There seems to be something in the human heart that longs for a garden. Perhaps a garden is an analogy for wholeness. Maybe it’s something more. We are stardustBillion year old carbonWe are goldenCaught in the devil’s bargainAnd we’ve got to get ourselvesback to the garden Joni Mitchell – Woodstock This devil’s bargain, at least

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

In this fictionalized account of a real two-week motorcycle trip that Robert Pirsig took with his son Christopher and two friends, Pirsig explores a number of philosophical themes through informal observations that he calls “Chautauquas.” At the start of the story Pirsig sets up a conflict between two mindsets, the Romantic and the Classical. The

“Just fixin'” is the Mechanic’s Way of Buddha

In Zen Buddhsim there is an idea of “just sitting”. One is not trying to attain enlightenment or achieve any goal other than sitting. One aspires to sit completely. Robert Pirsig makes an connection with motorcycle repair, that it can be “just fixing.” One is completely absorbed in the work of repair, to the point

A man and two women backpacking in Sespe Creek where there is no trail

Adventure

Wild Rye has gone through a couple of phases, including a stint as a sort of adventure blog. There were trail notes, gear reviews, and survival tips. Well, Wild Rye isn’t really an adventure blog now. But some of these posts are still informative and if you’ve gotten this far, by all means take a

Cover illustration of Christopher Alexander's four volume The Nature of Order

The Nature of Order by Christopher Alexander

Early in his career as an architect Christopher Alexander began to notice that certain buildings, plazas, and parks had a transcendent quality. They were more interesting to look at, and felt better to be a part of, than many other buildings. There was a vibrancy and presence to this structures that set them apart. But

The Nature of Order, Book Four, The Luminous Ground

This is the fourth part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this fourth book introduces a second aspect of living structure, and that’s the essence of the “Self.” When a building or a work

The Nature of Order, Book Three, A Vision of a Living World

This is the third part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this third book he presents practical examples of projects that he has participated in. He shares experimental processes and methods. At the heart

The Nature of Order, Book Two, The Process of Creating Life

This is the second part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this second book he goes into more detail about the unfolding process and how certain changes of form will preserve the inherent structure

The Nature of Order, Book One, The Phenomenon of Life

This is the first part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this first book he explores this quality of life, and how it can be found in everything from forests to minerals. For example,

The Difference Between Life and Alive

There is a distinction between life and things that are alive. Life includes things that are are alive, cats. It also includes things that are not alive but are the byproducts of life processes – sofas. And in between are viruses – organisms that have no homeostasis and cannot reproduce without host cells – meaning