Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephen W. Redding grew up on a large family farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he lived with his parents and fourteen brothers and sisters. Following years of university study, he moved to a 35-acre homestead in rural Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where he currently resides with his wife and their four children.

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More or Less

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Foreword.....................................................ixIntroduction.................................................xiPerspective..................................................xiiiChapter 1 In the Beginning..................................1Chapter 2 Touching Base With Creation.......................3Chapter 3 The Story.........................................19Chapter 4 We Are Not Alone..................................43Chapter 5 Seeing............................................67Chapter 6 Awakening.........................................121Chapter 7 Becoming Lost to Life.............................171Chapter 8 Mustardo..........................................233Chapter 9 Connecting: The Space Between.....................267Chapter 10 Who Are We?.......................................301Chapter 11 The Tentacle......................................339Chapter 12 The Darkness is Served............................373Chapter 13 What Time Is It?..................................419Chapter 14 What's Next for Us?...............................451Conclusion...................................................493Glossary.....................................................503

Chapter One

These Times

These times in which we presently live cry out for our understanding and ask that we reconsider our relationship with our living world. Along with the longer and broader view of life as given to me by so many edge experiences, has been a deep, deep regard for our world and the experience of living upon her. In fact it is right here, right now where we are so critically needed to renew our relationship and loving regard for our earthly world of existence. Not as a place to get past, or ascend above, but as a highly valued part of creation.

As we begin opening windows and doors to the More of our lives, life's wonder will be revealed. Compelling experiences and perceptions of where we are now, as well as other spaces and places, will affirm for us the length and splendor of our lives. As this experience and discovery unfolds we will be reminded of who and what we are. Along with these revelations and discoveries we will appreciate the need to care for this world to which we now belong. When we can trust what is before us while embracing where we are, we will indeed be touching base with creation.

And if, in fact, we will not give the necessary standing to our world of earth, then we will lose the very vessel critical to our passage toward a wondrous and beckoning horizon.

There is a sense among many that something valid is missing from us.

We may open our discovery of More by taking a candid look at our present day world. Less seems to be begetting Less with consequences that are subtracting from the health and vigor of life. Many of these consequences involve taking from the More side of life. This then becomes the less side of things, as we are withholding so much of value from ourselves.

These consequences are not unavoidable. In fact, they have causes that we can do something about. We will attempt to identify and illuminate some of the causes that seem so predominant in the threat to the More of life. With the more side of this work given to a much longer and broader view of life, it is hoped that we may begin to see our place in all of this very differently. Passions may be awakened within us, with life-caring consequences leading to life-giving motives. Passions stoked by emotions of joy can have enormously giving consequences. With this awakened value in ourselves we will be able to supplant so much of what we think we need with the much that we already are. When life is given a longer view, taking away can be replaced by getting along as it pertains to one another and our world.

As a boy I noticed that feeding the beef cattle back on the farm had very different consequences from season to season. In inclement weather hay was delivered to them in the barnyard. Their rations were always the same, but they were much more aggressive toward one another in the winter. They were more inclined to fight with one another over their food when their range of vision was winter white or brown. Springtime brought green meadows into view and their demeanor showed great improvement. In either season they were confined to the barnyard, but what they could see beyond it made all the difference. How much more impulsive and contrary they would be when there was nothing more beyond their fenced in barnyard. For many of us the winter has been difficult and long, but the greening sprigs of spring are now asking us to enter the More before us.

Might the winter season turn quickly into spring for us? If we are allowed to glimpse the additional meadows of this creation, can personal choices with rational thought and behavior lead to consequences of More while holding back this time of subtraction?

When we refer to the time of subtraction, we are implying a precipitously low flow in life's river. The decline side of things overwhelms the up side of life as it pertains to a sustaining and living world. To better understand the tenuous relationship between growth and decline one might benefit by seeing these processes from a structure and function perspective. We may need to consider how both structure and function are vigorous and strong in the living or reclamation of life but express weakness in the decline of life. The history of existence upon our world has always involved a basic design of form and animation, often noted as structure and function. Form is the specific outline of individualized life such as people, trees, horses, and bees, which provides the structure where living is experienced. The animation of forms or structures is essentially equivalent to function, the other basic component of the existence experience.

For me, the tree is a good model from which to view the balance or imbalance between structure and function. It reflects so much about the success or failure of beings living in this existence. Looking from the long-lived and well-managed perspective of the tree, we may gain in understanding the entrapping webs of less, which are withholding so much from us. Before we start with the tree as a model, some may protest that trees do not have minds, are not inter-relational, dynamic, or cognitive, and therefore cannot be intelligent. Instead, they may argue, they are only reactive, static, and predictable.

While trees are not the same as humans, I feel very connected to them and have lived much of my life attempting to understand them. I do believe we can gain a great deal of insight into our relationship to one another and to our world from them.

If intelligence means expressing complex ideas and accumulating factual information, then perhaps the tree may not measure up as a comparable entity in some people's thinking. However, if being possessed of intelligence implies having an effective and staying integration into their environment, then trees are very wise indeed. In this case, intelligence is viewed from a holistic perspective emphasizing its life-giving and sustaining attributes.

The things that trees achieve and demonstrate speak to an intelligence that is fully integrated throughout their small beginnings as a sprouted seeds as well as their larger, mature manifestations. The way they manage their...