Frazier Butte, Eagle Cap Wilderness

SCIENCE. ART. RELIGION.

Science begins when we are willing to drop a theory
when it is contradicted by fact;

Art begins when we are willing to tear down a museum
and put up a new one when it no longer fits what we
see as beautiful;

Religion begins when we are willing to drop rigid belief
and claims to absolute authority because we have seen
that they are the source of the barriers of barbed-wire
that divide us.

Although urgently necessary, attempting to unite Science,
Art and Religion in their present state of disarray would
certainly be folly. It would surely result in hedious hybrids
like a Mozart Mass pumped up with drums and bass guitar,
or a rank pseudo-science constructed consciously as a
smokescreen for the fundamentalist conditioning of the minds
of the young. And yet their fragmentation corrupts the
highcountry springs of our collective creativity. Better to
take down with great care and a sustained seriousness the
arbitrary dams of their division—one at a time and all at
once—and let them flow naturally of their own accord
together as one.

Hidden Lake,
Eagle Cap Wilderness,
Oregon, IX.8.2008