Tenative Confessions

I don’t think much about sin.  It may be hubris, but the definitions I've grown up with seem irrelevant.  However, a friend recently sent me an article with a meaningful definition of sin.  Paul Tillich defines it as separation:  “separation among individual lives, separations of a man from himself, and separation of all men from the Ground of Being….Before sin is an act, it is a state.” 

I love this.  It is relevant and describes so well my struggles.  Tillich says sin is a condition we’re born with—original sin with a difference.  It’s similar to the Buddhist idea that suffering happens when we reject what is.  Hearing this from a Christian and Buddhist perspective is helpful.  Since reading this article, I’ve been noticing when I separate myself and when I don’t.

Tillich then goes on to define grace:  “the reunion of life with life, the reconciliation of the self with itself.  Graces is the acceptance of that which is rejected.”  I assume there are different levels of this.  I’ve been hiking in the desert around Tucson and feel so connected to the beauty of nature.  Then, a human being annoys me, and I feel myself falling into that state of sin.  As with the sin of my childhood, there’s an urge to feel guilty.  I’m trying not to be separate from any of this.  Surely, if I can connect to a prickly pear growing in the desert, I can connect to a prickly person or a prickly self.  I’m not there yet, but nature is one teacher.

Music for Sunday Evening

"Everything is Holy Now" by Peter Mayer.

"This Is My Song," music by Sibelius, sung by Emiko Soltis.

That Could Be Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates, an African-American writer for the Atlantic, has an interesting perspective about the brutality involved in slavery and the cruel residue of racial prejudice never completely eradicated.  He is, of course, against it, appalled, but he doesn't take it personally and cites other instances of the human capacity for cruelty.

[During] the last years of the Thirty Years War…eight million people died, and the population of "Germany" (to the extent it existed) was reduced by a third….ten million Russians died in the first World War, and then 15 million more died in the second.

These examples are not comforting but offer a useful insight into human nature.  It reminds us that we all have to beware of a dark human potential for cruelty, especially if that cruelty is promoted by our culture.

The book Slaves in the Family came out in 1998, and I read it soon after.  In it Edward Ball examines the volumes of documents his slave-owning ancestors left behind including inventories of “property,” both material and human.  To me, one of the most shocking documents he found was a record of sending a woman slave to be beaten by a professional who punished slaves if the owners were unable to do the job themselves.  It was a terrible and shocking idea, and yet, something hit me when I read it:  if I had been a member of Ball’s ancestral family, there is a good chance I would have accepted this as normal and a much smaller chance that I would have had the courage to fight what was a deeply embedded cultural system.  It was a chilling insight.

Coates says “…I am subject to the same whims as any slaveholder. I don't feel that there is anything in my bones that makes me any more moral.”  It’s not just racism, but this human potential for cruelty.  He also says, “There is very little that "white people" have done to "black people" that I can't imagine them doing to each other. America's particular failings are remarkable because America is remarkable, but they are not particularly deviant or outstanding on the misery index…At some point you tire of yelling about the evils…and you settle into a much different frame. I believe…that I am subject to the same whims as any slaveholder. I don't feel that there is anything in my bones that makes me any more moral.” It requires a lot of contemplation for Coates to see that he is not totally different from those who would oppress him. It is knowledge both frightening and profound.  He concludes, “The question hanging over us though is this: Is this what we will always do?”

Dear Jackie

My House representative Jackie Walorski had a opinion piece earlier this month touting her common sense approach to government budgeting.  Here's my response from the South Bend Tribune February 22.

Jackie Walorski's Viewpoint in the Feb. 1 Tribune makes an important point that "Michiana families consider common sense principles to be a fundamental part of their proud Hoosier values." That's certainly true for me. However, she needed to add that for many Hoosiers, debt is part of common sense planning.

Personally, I have borrowed to buy cars and houses. I used student loans to get a college education and so did my daughters. These loans were common sense for us and benefited us greatly. Another thing that needs to be added to her report is the difference between common sense for a family and common sense for a government.

Many economists stress that during a big recession the government needs to spend more.
Walorski says she wants to freeze the wages of federal employees; I assume she means all federal employees or approximately 2.8 million people. She implies the top budget priority is cutting government spending.

This is a high priority after we reduce unemployment and strengthen the middle class and the economy. Debt can be alarming and stressful. Sometimes increasing debt is taking the easy and irresponsible way. But other times, increasing debt is an act of courage and faith that our debt will lead to a better future. I suggest we go easy on the cuts for a while longer.

A Fictional Betrayal

Warning, if you are a fan of Downton Abby and haven yet watched the end of season three, this post contains a spoiler.

They killed off Mathew.  I knew something bad was going to happen.  I watched it the night after it aired Sunday on PBS, so I had already seen a Monday morning Facebook post, “Downton Abby sucks.”  I watched ready for tragedy.  And then it finally came, that accident—like a cartoon show from my childhood with that ridiculous toy-like milk truck.  Downton is a mysteriously gripping show for many people I know and for me too.  That death was just wrong.  However, that’s not a very articulate critique.  Jace Lacob says it better:

[W]hat I found frustrating was how Fellowes orchestrated his demise, having Matthew run off the road by an errant milk truck after joyfully greeting his baby boy for the first time. It was maudlin and too predictable, especially compared with the way in which Sybil had just been sent out of the world a few episodes earlier. Sybil’s death rocked both the audience and the show itself,… Matthew’s death, on the other hand, was pure melodrama bordering on camp. As he revels in his newfound fatherhood, he’s driving his car…with an almost beatific pleasure. Carefree, ecstatic … and completely unaware that the massive milk truck is bearing down on him at roughly five miles per hour. Naturally, he drives off the road and the audience is treated to the sight of blood trickling down Matthew’s face, lest we think that he could have somehow survived this collision…The heavy-handedness of all of those elements detracts from the momentousness of Matthew’s death and how it will affect each member of the Crawley household and their staff….It also rings as particularly false, given the odd foreboding that filled the earlier parts of the episode, mentions of packed rifles, a drunken Molesley (Kevin Doyle), and deer stalking in Scotland.

The accident was a flaw in a fiction that is often so smooth and griping. It makes me ponder again the attraction of fiction in the first place.  Why and how did Downton become such an inordinate hit with so many in the PBS circle?  In a way, I pondered this in late December in a post I called “Inside My Reading Mind,” and I’m still pondering.  I’m also pondering another statement from Lacob which may be serious or sarcastic, but either way it poses questions about the construction of fiction.

[L]et’s be honest, the minute that Lady Mary gave birth to a son, ensuring the continuation of the dynasty and a rightful succession … Matthew was a goner. He had served his purpose, ensuring that the Crawley line would continue and that Downton Abbey—which he had absolutely and completely saved by dragging it and Robert Crawley into the 20th century—would not only remain in the family, but also turn a profit.  Matthew was, in essence, a stud bull. His only purpose was to father a son. With that act completed and Downton saved, what was Matthew’s future importance within the narrative? Other than potential squabbles with Mary, serving again to prove how headstrong she is, where would the drama have come from? His plots were tied up way too neatly for him to survive, in other words.

We depend on fiction writers to save us from the superfluous.  Was that what Matthew became?  I can’t decide and his death was deeply unsatisfying.

Something Doable

It's hard to read anything hopeful about the fate of the environment.  And all the things we can do seem like a drop in the bucket.  Here's another drop.  Stop using plastic bags.  When I go to the grocery story with my motley collection of bags, I notice that not many shoppers do this.  I do sometimes think "What's the use?" but I know I don't want to bring home anymore bags.  I wonder, if more of us were carrying our own bags, would more people follow suit.?

t's not that this will make a huge difference, but it's so easy--so doable.  The loveyourearth website gives these "Nasty Plastic Facts."

According to the Wall Street Journal, the U. S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually.  (Estimated cost to retailers: $4 billion)...

Plastic bags are made of polyethylene which is a petroleum product.  Production contributes to air pollution and energy consumption.

It takes 1000 years for polyethylene bags to break down.

The amount of petroleum used to make 1 plastic bag would drive a car about 11 meters....

As I said, it's a drop, but they use petroleum and they don't biodegrade.  They're nasty.

Why We Travel

My last post was about travel.  Here Pico Iyer says it so much better than I do:

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

This is the first paragraph in his article "Why We Travel," an article I keep coming back to because it's a stunning description of what many of us find when we leave home behind.  Here's one more sentence:

Yet for me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle.

Now, if you wish, read his article.

Falling in Love

The other night at a party a woman was telling me about Germany.  She had “only” spent a month there and was planning another trip there this summer.  For lack of a better description, she seemed in love with Germany.  I understand because I’ve been in love with Spain for years and just last year I fell in love with Ireland too.  I have a strong affection for Senegal as well.

For some of us, travel is a powerful experience, too mysterious to explain.  One description is, it seems to break me and open me.  It breaks up a sense of this-is-how-it’s-done; this-is-how-the-world-looks-sounds-tastes.  Before world travel, I knew the United States and South Bend were not the only lenses from which to view the world.  Travel helps me feel that.  It bursts open the walls that house my perception of the world and allows me to reside in a bigger more expansive place.

Travel also reminds me that there is much going on that I don’t understand.  South Bend is pretty predictable.  Travel abroad reminds me that the world is full of surprises and that I don’t know as much as I sometimes think I do even about South Bend.

I look forward to hiking in Scotland next September.

What do you think? Don't know. Couldn't care less.

My goal for 2013 is to go through every shelf, drawer, file, and closet and decide anew what to keep and what to toss.  It’s a touch job.  But I keep finding things I forgot I had, and often these things bring back good memories.  A photocopy of an essay in a February 6, 1995 New Yorker—“The Intellectual Free Lunch” by Michael Kinsley—was still mostly relevant.  Earlier this year, I wrote about my annoyance at a call from a poll taker.  This annoyance came partly from common sense and partly from internalizing Kinsley’s point in this essay:

The typical opinion poll about, say, foreign aid doesn’t trouble to ask whether the respondent knows the first think about the topic being opined upon, and no conventional poll disqualifies an answer on the ground of mere total ignorance.  The premise of opinion polling is that people are, and of right ought to be, omni-opinionated—that they should have views on all subjects at all times—and that all such views are equally valid.  It’s always remarkable how few people say they “aren’t sure” about or “don’t know” the answer to some pollster’s question.  (“Never thought about it,” “Couldn’t care less,” and “Let me get back to you on that after I’ve done some reading” aren’t even options.)  So, given the prominence of polls in our political culture, it’s no surprise that people have come to believe that their opinions on the issues of the day need not be fettered by either facts or reflections. 

It’s depressing and maybe even more of a problem now that when the article was written almost 20 years ago.  I think I’ll continue to say yes to the poll-takers who call so I can give my honest I-don’t-know answers.  Maybe from time to time, I should question a published poll, but I probably won’t.

Balance

From The Naked Now by Richard Rohr on nonduality in a dualistic world…

You cannot bypass the necessary tension of holding contraries and inconsistencies together…Everything created is mortal and limited and, and if you look long enough, always paradoxical….it is a holding of a real tension, and not necessarily a balancing act, a closure, or any full resolution.  It is agreeing to live without resolution, at least for a while….
 Dualistic people use knowledge, even religious knowledge, for the purposes of ego enhancement, shaming, and the control of others and themselves, for it works very well in that way.  Nondual people use knowledge for the transformation of persons and structures, but most especially to change themselves and to see reality with a new eye and heart.

Right or Wrong? Good or Bad?

This morning I’ve been composing a letter to my representative in the United States House of Representatives, and as I wrote I was thinking about the perils of dualism—the I’m-right-you’re-wrong mentality.  It’s tough to move beyond that perspective.  I took a break and went back to a book I’ve been reading lately:  The Naked Now by Richard Rohr.  The main theme of his book seems to be the need to move beyond dualism.  He tells the story of young Buddhist monks being trained in Tibet. 

During…the young novice’s training, he or she is presented over a period of three years with each and every one of the Buddha’s teachings.  During that time, she has to name all of the difficult and problematic consequences that would follow from observing this teaching.  After each answer, the older monks clap their hands in approval, and they smile at one another.  When all of the possible negative consequences are exhausted, they move onto the good consequences.  The same procedure is followed until all of the good consequences have been unpacked… There is no declaration of the perfect answer or the wrong answer.  The novice is quite simply being taught how to weigh and discern, see and understand the good and bad consequences—and from that open field, to learn himself and learn how to wisely advise others.  (43-44)

I’m letting these words settle before I complete my letter, but I fear it will still be  somewhat dualistic.  It’s difficult to distinguish between reasonable judgments and a closed mind.

Do You Remember This?

The reason I have such a good memory for names is because I took that Sam Carnegie
course.  –Anthony  Quinn

 If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.  –Giuseppe Di Lampedusa

I have a memory like an elephant.  In fact, elephants often consult me.   –Noël Coward

 I sometimes worry about my short attention span, but not for very long.   –Herb Caen

I was recently told I should work on improving my memory.  And of course I always do what I’m told.  A new and better calendar was a good start.  Now, this week, I have been checking out some books on the topic.  The goofy wisdom above is from one of those books.  Some of this advice appears to be stuff I've heard before.  I do think I shall make improvements.  But friends, don’t expect miracles.

Dear President Obama (a fantasy)

Please read Nate Silver’s new book.  Invite him to the white House.  So much of this budget business involves making predictions.  Silver knows predictions.  I’m sure you enjoyed his predictions last October and November (I sure did).  However he does more than predict election results.  His new book (as you probably already know) is called The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail—but Some Don’t.  We often mistake the noise for the signal he says—that is we confuse the information that can help us make predictions—the signal—with the irrelevant information that surrounds it—the noise that is often mistaken for the signal. 

Much of his book is about distinguishing signal from noise.  It reminded me that many of our legislators know little about economics and, it seems to me, often mistake noise for meaningful signals.  Before they plan a budget, they need information about how to think about the results of their actions—predicting.

On page 22 Silver gives a short list of economists who predicted the end of the housing bubble:  Robert Shiller, Dean Baker, and Paul Krugman.  I think a seminar for legislatures would be good start to the coming budget talks, a seminar given by people who have a record for making good economic predictions.  Let Nate Silver help.

Silver can also help policy makers identify the phenomena that can be predicted.

Creating Another Self

My favorite blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates is learning French and, from time to time, he writes about it.  This morning he writes about how some things cannot be translated, that to speak French, he needs to ask, '"How would a French person express this?" or better still, "How would my particular French self express this?"'  At the end of the article, he concludes, “We are not so much learning a second language, as we are creating another self.  And that is incredibly exciting.”  My first response to that sentence was envy.  I’ll never create that other self.  Then I decided I was wrong.  I have created that other self; it just isn’t very fluent.  I've spent of lot of time in Spain with just a little Spanish.  I've bought food, found places to sleep, taken public transportation, and hiked hundreds of miles without getting permanently lost.  Even that is incredibly exciting.

Being Peace

Below are some thoughts on peace from Pema Chödrön:

• War and peace start in the hearts of individuals.
• We seek peace and happiness by going to war.
• War begins when we harden our hearts, and we harden them easily…whenever we feel uncomfortable.
• ...a good definition of peace:  Softening what is rigid in our hearts.
• First the heart closes, then the mind becomes hardened into a view, then you can justify your hatred of another human being…
• …the degree that each of us is dedicated to wanting there to be peace in the world, then we have to take responsibility when our own hears and minds harden and close.  We  have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid, to find the soft spot and stay with it.  We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility.  That’s true spiritual warriorship.  That’s the true practice of peace.


(From Practicing Peace in Times of War)

Changing Minds, continued

In his blog today, Ta-Nehisi Coates says, the purpose of his blog "is not the display of knowledge, it's about the acquisition of knowledge." 

Changing Minds??

I've seen this quotation (without a source) in a number of places:  "I don't share my thoughts because I think it will change the minds of people who think differently; I share my thought to show the people who already think like me that they're not alone."  A few days ago, I posted a little piece call "Got Hope?" addressing this issue of why we write and who we write for.  Maybe it's all of these reasons: to change minds, to share with those who agree, to figure out complicated issues, and to manifest hope.  Does writing for more than one reason improve our writing?  I think so.

Stupid Games!!

I have, at times in my life, been addicted to computer solitaire games.  Spider was the worst.  Presently, I'm in recovery, but I have to be careful.  Because of this, I was intrigued by the article "Just One More Game...Angry Birds, Farmville, and Other Hyperadictive 'Stupid Games'" by Same Anderson.  Anderson  tries to figure out why these games are so addictive; I'm not sure he succeeds, but I love this description of these damn stupid games.

Stupid games, on the other hand, are rarely occasions in themselves. They are designed to push their way through the cracks of other occasions. We play them incidentally, ambivalently, compulsively, almost accidentally. They’re less an activity in our day than a blank space in our day; less a pursuit than a distraction from other pursuits. You glance down to check your calendar and suddenly it’s 40 minutes later and there’s only one level left before you jump to the next stage, so you might as well just launch another bird.

Got Hope?

I’ve been cleaning out drawers and files this year.  A few days ago I came across a small piece of paper which said, “Writing is a sign of hope.”  I don’t remember writing it, I don’t remember the quotation, but it’s obvious I wrote it, probably years ago.  And it still strikes me as true, and one of the reasons I write.  I write in my journal for myself.  I rarely come back and read it, so it’s just the process of putting my thoughts on paper.  Yesterday, I spend a good chunk of the morning writing an op-ed piece for the local newspaper.  This piece is more outrageous than pieces I’ve written before, so I haven’t decided yet whether or not to send it.  And then there’s this blog.

That started me thinking about blogs, letters, and opinion pieces I read online and in the newspaper.  The writers often seem so sure.  Does anybody care unless they already agree?  Ta-Nehisi Coates is my favorite blogger.  I imagine he attracts those who lean towards his views, mainly liberal I’d say.  But the reason he’s my favorite is his openness to new ideas.  He writes interesting articles while still seeming unsure and reaching for a better answer.  Over and over, I’m moved by this in his writing.

Coates writes about some things I’m not interested in (of course), but over and over, he sends out his signs of hope.  You can find him here. 

I Am the Bird

Pema Chӧdrӧn tells this story of inmate Jarvis Master in her book Practicing Peace in Times of War. 

One day there was a seagull out on the yard in San Quentin.  It had been raining and the seagull was there paddling around in a puddle.  One of the inmates picked up something in the yard and was about to throw it at the bird.  Jarvis didn't even think about it—he automatically put out his hand to stop the man.  Of course this escalated the man’s aggression and he started yelling.  Who the hell did Jarvis think he was?  And why did Jarvis care so much about some blankety-blank bird?

 Everyone started circling around, just waiting for the fight.  The other inmate was screaming at Jarvis, “Why’d you do that?”  And out of Jarvis’s mouth came the words, “I did that because that bird’s got my wings. 

I think it’s a lovely story.  Also, maybe it explains my attraction to my bird feeder.

Managing the Paradox

About guns and the thinking after Sandy Hook, Dr. Ginny Whitelaw writes the comments below on a website I find to jargon-ish to link to.

For we’re dealing with a paradox here, and one that is core to the American psyche: that pits individual freedoms on the one hand and social safety on the other. Both are good and right and valuable things and, as we know from integral theory, both are facets of our humanity: we are both individual agents and social animals. We affect others through our actions AND we are affected by social context. Little wonder that if we ignore one side of our human equation and go to extremes on the other side, we get into trouble….

 Both individual freedom and social safety are valuable and, if we go too far in either direction, problematic. Too much focus on social safety and we get a police state that violates individual rights. We don’t want to go that far. But too much individual freedom, and we get nutcases wiping out swaths of society. And that, I submit, is where we are right now. We are not managing this paradox well.

To manage it better, we have to move beyond one-sided arguments and embrace what’s right and good about BOTH individual freedom and social safety, and use the tension between them to reach a higher level goal: a society in which we are more free because we’re safe, and more safe because we’re free. The process of managing this paradox would have us set some limits – what’s free enough? Or safe enough? And what are some thresholds below which we don’t want to sink? We might be able to largely agree, for example, that police confiscation of ordinary, non-automatic weapons would be going too far on the social safety side. And that two rampages in one year crosses the threshold on the side of overprotecting the individual freedom to bear arms.

What Do You Think?

Yesterday afternoon, (Sunday!!) I saw “Survey Center” on my phone’s caller ID.  I considered not picking up, but then I did, and I agreed to answer the survey questions thinking, my side needs to be heard.

But like many others surveys I’ve taken, it pissed me off.  It seemed designed to elicit certain answers.  How would I rate Congress on a scale of 1-100?  I already knew that we like cockroaches better than Congress; I read it somewhere on line.  However, some members of Congress I like very much; others I like as much as cockroaches.  I answered “50.”

There were a lot of questions about the EPA.  The caller said some people were worried that the new bill the EPA wants to see passed would raise gas prices to $9 a gallon though others felt it would help asthma sufferers.  Since I knew nothing about the bill I told her I wasn’t qualified to have an opinion.  She answered with something like, “Everybody is entitled to an opinion.  Poor woman.  That caused me to get argumentative—I said an uninformed opinion is worthless.  Of course it’s not her job to think about such things.

But these surveys ask questions as if we will (and should) have an opinion whether we’re informed or not.  Be very wary of poll results.

Americans for Responsible Solutions

The title above is the name of a new organization started by Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly.  Two years ago today, Giffords and others were shot at a Tucson parking lot.  Today they started an organization that will " invite people from around the country to join a national conversation about gun violence prevention, will raise the funds necessary to balance the influence of the gun lobby, and will line up squarely behind leaders who will stand up for what's right."

They have introduced their organization with an op-ed in USA Today.  In their article they ask that we reverse the position that " gun owners are less responsible for the misuse of their weapons than they are for their automobiles."

I'm in.

So Close and Yet so Far

Some of us remember the TV show from the 50s, I've Got a Secret.  If you don't remember it, your parents or grandparents do  Here's a clip from a 1956 broadcast. The guest's secret is that he saw Lincoln's assassination.  It helps bring home the fact that we aren't that far removed from the Civil War and slavery.  Maybe it helps explain why we haven't overcome it yet.

Why so Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't

Nate Silver is the guy who predicted, with startling accuracy, the last two elections.  It has also made his ideas intriguing.  So I picked up his book The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail—but Some Don’t from the library yesterday.  I thought at the time it would be a book I would skim through reading only the most interesting parts.  However, after reading the introduction, I predict I will read the entire book. 

Silver repeats what we all know—information has drastically proliferated in this computer age (something that started with the printing press), and we don’t know what to do with it all.  He quotes Alvin Toffer on how we often respond:  

…in 1970 [Toffer] predicted some of the consequences of what he call “information overload.”  He thought our defense mechanism would be to simplify the world in ways that confirmed our biases, even as the world itself was growing more diverse and more complex.(12)

He ends his introduction with this:

The world has come a long way since the days of the printing press.  Information is no longer a scarce commodity; we have more of it than we know what to do with.  But relatively little of it is useful.  We perceive it selectively, subjectively, and without much self-regard for the distortions that this causes.  We think we want information when we really want knowledge.

The signal is the truth.  The noise is what distracts us from the truth.  This is a book about the signal and the noise. (17)

In the Game of Life, What Difficulty Setting Are You Given?

John Scalzi lists this most read post of 2012 for his blog "Whatever." The post "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is" is number one.  It's an interesting reflection, from a straight male, as to why this is an advantage without using the dread word "privilege." 

Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

A Modest Proposal

Hendrick Hertzberg proposes this counter-proposal to the NRA's suggestion of armed guards in every school:

Here’s a better idea. Let’s put a police officer in every gun shop—there are slightly more than fifty thousand—in the United States. That would be half as expensive, and much, much more to the point.

Inside My Reading Mind

The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts is a reader’s autobiography and a lament for the lost importance of literature.  I’m not sure I’ve read all 14 chapters, but I love chapter six so much, I wish I had written it.  Called “The Shadow Life of Reading,” Birkerts reflects on the relationship between our mind in a book and our mind away from the book, a relationship that intrigues me, puzzles me, amazes me, and moves me.

I just recently finished Room by Emma Donoghue, a novel that describes the life of a young woman imprisoned in a 11 x 11 windowless room by an abductor.  The story is told through the voice of her five year old son Jack.  Jack was born in captivity and has never been outside the room.  The reader could focus on the hideousness of the crime that brought and keeps Jack and his mother in the room, but it is written in such a way that the reader can also focus on how the two perceive the world through their restrictive lenses.  I never managed to really imagine myself in their shoes, but I did get so immersed in what it was like for them; it was as if I had entered another world.  And at times, when I wasn’t reading the book, something would happen to suddenly thrust me back into the world of Jack and his mother.

Birkerts says,

When we read, we create and then occupy a hitherto nonexistent interior locale.  Regardless of what happens on the page, the simple fact that we have cleared room for these peculiar figments we now preside over gives us a feeling of freedom and control.  No less exalting is the sensation of inner and outer worlds coinciding, going on simultaneously, or very nearly so.

Birkerts doesn’t completely describe these two worlds as they exist for me.  Maybe no one can.  But he acknowledges it and attempts to describe it with words.  For me, this is reassuring and exciting.  My intuition tells me that the better I can describe this sensation of living in a book, the deeper I will experience it.  Birkerts goes on to explain that this world exists not only as I read but after I put the book down, hence his title “The Shadow Life of Books.”  He says, once he has opened the gate into that “ulterior realm,” he has entered a “place I will at least partially inhabit as I go about my daily tasks.”  Later he says, “Now I have occupied the book and the book has begun to occupy me…I carry the work everywhere…for the duration of my reading—and maybe less vividly after—I will shift between two centers of awareness…I find the back-and-forth movement—an abstract sort of friction—invigorating.”

Reading Room, I found myself returning to the room while dealing with outer world of daily life.  This visit to the inner world of a book is somewhat like visiting a new country where I can enjoy the experience all the while knowing that a part of me is outside it.  There is too much about this place that I don’t understand.  But I treasure the shadow life of both my travels to new lands and travels to new books.

It’s not surprising that some novels create a more memorable shadow than others.  Some novels may be hard to put down as I rush on to find out what will happen next.  But when I put the book down to enter again the outer world, the shadow is faint, and when I get to the end of the book, when I finally find out what happened, there is no shadow left at all.  There have been a few times in my life that I was so taken over by the world in the book that I had to read it again.

Right now, I’m trying to figure out why some books leave such a big shadow and some don’t.  Does a vivid shadow mean the book had value beyond entertainment?  I somehow think it does, but I’m not sure why.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo left a big shadow for me.  But I can’t figure out its value beyond entertainment.  Maybe it is like a vivid dream.  I may not know where it came from, but something in my psyche thinks I need this story.  Right now, I want to read novels that leave a strong and vivid shadow.  That’s how I’ll continue to study this phenomenon.

From "Amazing Peace" by Maya Angelou

...
It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.

On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.

At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.
All the earth's tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of Peace.

We, Angels and Mortal's, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.

Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Maya-Angelous-Amazing-Peace/2#ixzz2G59QXq8R

How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

160.

What It's All About

Here's an interesting explanation about the gun issue from Alec Wilkinson in the New Yorker:

I don’t think there is any mystery to understanding the passionate feelings people have for guns. Nobody really believes it’s about maintaining a militia. It’s about having possession of a tool that makes a person feel powerful nearly to the point of exaltation. What argument can meet this, I am not sure, especially since the topic isn’t openly discussed. To people who support owning guns, the issue is treated as a right and a matter of democracy, not a complicated subject also involving elements of personal mental health. I am not saying that people who love guns inordinately are unstable; I am saying that a gun is the most powerful device there is to accessorize the ego.

Love and Acceptance

I've been hearing about Far from the Tree, a book by Andrew Solomon about parents who have children who don't fit with mainstream expectation (deaf, Down's, gay, transgender...) with minimal interest.  However, today Andrew Sullivan's blog contains an excerpt which makes me want to pick up the book and have a look.

[B]efore I started on the book, I hadn’t drawn the distinction—which has become important to me since—which is between love and acceptance. You know, I feel as though when I was in the process of coming out of the closet it was upsetting for my parents, especially for my mother, and they weren’t very accepting of it. And I experienced that as their not being very loving. And actually, what I recognized writing the book, is that parents of children who have some kind of difference almost always have to struggle with it, and often manage to come through, and it’s their love that motivates them to come to terms with the strangeness or difference or whatever it is that’s extraordinary in their children. And having looked at all these other families I was able to say: Okay, my family didn’t throw me out, they didn’t want nothing to do with me, they weren’t actively rejecting. It just took them a while to get used to it.

Looking for Answers from the NRA

Juan Cole posts ten ways the NRA speech was stupid.  Here's number three:

Urged creation of 100,000-strong new Federal bureaucracy of armed school guards, which implies big tax increase. Thanks, Wayne! (And did not mention that Columbine had an armed guard or that Virginia Tech has its own police department.)

New Ideas

The Atlantic proclaims there are "10 Ideas that Changed the World in 2012."  I find this one especially interesting:  "Trial and Error Experiments Could Improve Public Policy."  Briefly,

 "Businesses conduct hundreds of thousands of randomized trials each year. Pharmaceutical companies conduct thousands more. But government? Hardly any. Government agencies conduct only a smattering of controlled experiments to test policies in the justice system, education, welfare and so on. Why doesn't government want to learn?" 

Guns Represent Opportunities

Adam Gopnik writes "The Simple Truth about Gun Control."

...the central insight of the modern study of criminal violence is that all crime—even the horrific violent crimes of assault and rape—is at some level opportunistic. Building a low annoying wall against them is almost as effective as building a high impenetrable one....What the New York Police Department found out, through empirical experience and better organization, was that making crime even a little bit harder made it much, much rarer. This is undeniably true of property crime, and common sense and evidence tells you that this is also true even of crimes committed by crazy people (to use the plain English the subject deserves). Those who hold themselves together enough to be capable of killing anyone are subject to the same rules of opportunity as sane people. Even madmen need opportunities to display their madness, and behave in different ways depending on the possibilities at hand. 

Guns and Hubris

Ta-Nehisi Coates addresses another issue involved with gun ownership:  self-control.  He writes about Jovan Belcher, the football player who killed his girlfriend and himself.  Two months before the shooting Belcher had said to a friend that he would shoot her if she didn't leave him alone.  Coates says

It would seem to me that part of responsible gun ownership would not simply involve a knowledge of guns, but a knowledge of oneself. It's not enough to keep your piece on safety and under lock, if you are not employing such protections for yourself. If I have ceded control over my anger to my significant other, and have had thoughts of shooting her, perhaps I should not have guns in my house. 

Research on Guns

I've been doing gun research in response to the lasted mass shootings, and I'm attaching some links to articles I found helpful.

Here Jeffry Toobin explains the evolution of second amendment interpretation:

In this article, you are reminded that your mutual funds may contain companies that manufacture guns.

In this different approach, Weigel proposes regulating bullets because "ammo has a shelf life," and "guns are forever.

Who owns guns?  CNN says "a decreasing number of american gun owners own two-thirds of the nation's guns and as many as one-third of the guns on the planet."

Te-Nehsi Coates reminds us that gun ownership should include self knowledge and self control here and here.

Here are suggestions for change from This Week.

Next--
Write letters.
What about mental health?
What about gun safety?

Just How Goofy?

Am I crazy?  The passage below makes me feel hopeful:


"The goofiness you must get yourself into to get where you have to go, the extent of the mistakes you are required to make! If they told you beforehand about all the mistakes, you'd say no, I can't do it, you'll have to get somebody else, I'm too smart to make all those mistakes. And they would tell you, we have faith, don't worry, and you would say no, no way, you need a much bigger schmuck than me, but they repeat they have faith that you are the one, that you will evolve into a colossal schmuck more conscientiously than you can possibly begin to imagine, you will mistakes on a scale you can't even dream of now - because there is no other way to reach the end."  (Philip Roth from Sabbath's Theater)

Home

Arrived in Santiago September 29th around 1:00 P.M. Left the next morning for Palma in Mallorca (also spelled Majorca). Mallorca is a change--sunny, tropical, and balmy. I´m sorry to admit I only heard of this island after Grace got a job here teaching Engish. Tuesday, I´m taking a ferry to Barcelona. Wednesday I´ll arrive, after a few airports, in South Bend, and I am ready. It´s been a good trip, and now it is time to be home.

Weed, Water, and Enjoy

One night at an albergue dinner, Grace spoke with a French man who explained that separation from his wife and family while walking the camino was good because each individual has a secret garden that needs tending. Grace was amused and considered his remark a bit over the top. However, I´m thinking it is a pretty apt analogy for this strange and lovely individual inner life. Also, I loved The Secret Garden book when I was a kid.

More Sentence Fragments

Last Wednesday--can´t believe it´s been that long--we crossed O´Cebreiro, the little town on the top of a beautiful mountain with a breath-taking, jaw-dropping view of other mountains, towns, roads, and clouds. I like this spot more than Santiago. We toured for an hour, ate some cake, drank some cafe con leche, and started down the mountain.

Today, spending the night in Arzua. It is not charming. Grace and I are happy the whole of Spain isn´t charming. We didn´t want to go home with a big inferiority complex.

We have entered the Galician region, land of cows. When we don´t see them, we see or smell evidence of them. There is something sweet and calm about them, and twice we have shared the path with them for a short time. Ban CAFOs.

This morning the albergue served breakfast, and one of the other pilgrims gave Grace a little birthday candle to put on my toast. He lit it with his lighter, everyone sang, and I blew out the candle. It was one of those candles that keep lighting back up. Funny that he happened to have a candle in his pack. I don´t even know his name. Apparently, he overheard me say it was my birthday.

Later today, on the path, I met a woman originally from Spain but now from California. It was her birthday too. Happy Birthday to us.

One of these days I´ll decide whether to write about this strange experience of staying in albergues. Can´t imagine doing it in the U.S., but in this context, it´s okay. Sometimes, much better than okay.

Reasons for Walking

Two nights ago, Grace and I enjoyed an interesting dinner at the albergue. We ate at a table with two Italians, one Slovian, and two men from Holland. One of the Dutch men is walking from Holland to Santiago. He should finish in two days and will have walked 2550 km when he arrives. He is walking to raise money for AIDs orphans in South Africa. His picture is here and if you really want to read it, there is some way to get a rough translation into English.

An Inexplicable Gift

On Sunday this week I learned from the map that there would be much up and down hiking on our day´s walk. I decided I needed to find a walking stick.

There weren´t many choices, and finally I stepped down from the path and picked up a five-foot stick with many little branches sticking out. I started pulling off the branches and asked Grace to help when two hikers came by. One of the young men had a set of metal Nordic hiking poles, and he reaced down with one of them and handed it to me. I took it, thanked him, and asked if he would be in Rabenal that night so I could return the pole.

He said yes and took off down the path. At the time, I had a feeling I would never see him again, and I haven´t.

Nancy says you find what you need on the Camino de Santiago. I´ve scoffed, but when I think about this gift, it has a certain otherworldly quality that makes me a little uneasy.

Reflections on the Cathedral in Leon

When I enter this place I am immediately overcome by awe.

To those of us media sauvy, this building is still so amazing. How did the ordinary people of the 15th centure respond? It was built from 13th to 15 centuries.

How did they do such sophiticated architecture and art at this time? There are 2000 cubic meters of stained glass.

What was--in all ways--the cost of this building?

Sentence Fragments

Grace arrived yesterday and we are now traveling together.

No walking since Thursday. A relaxing break and chance to get more acquainted with Burgos.

Coming closer to pronouncing Burgos with a Spanish u.

Staying tonight in an albergue that reminds me of a mansion in slight decay. Charming but a bit shabby.

Find myself saying ¨charming¨more often than when home.

Cooked dinner for Grace and me in kitchen of the charming arbergue.

Meeting people from Germany, Czeck Republic, Australia, Scandanavia, Canada, and more. Lots from Canada.

People who don´t speak English low on my radar. Reminds me of the joke about the word for a person who only speaks one language: an American.

Sentence Fragments

Today, staying in Burgos close to the cathedral (which is amazine). Meet Grace in two days. I love Burgos!

Monday, stayed in the most charming albergue yet--a 14th century renovated pilgrim hospital. Tuesday morning did the first 30-40 minutes of the walk by moonlight. Very lovely.

Tuesday, stayed in a funky albergue where we moved in two hours before the host-manager arrived.

The last few days have taken us past many fields of wheat stubble, fields on steep, sloping hilsides. Often there will be a huge pile of straw bales in the field. Only once did I actally see the bales being made. Just like home.

Contemplating the Obvious

Traveling at the rate of 14-18 miles per day is, in a way, weird. David Orr speaks of slow knowledge as opposed to fast knowledge. This slow traveling is a way to understand what he means by slow knowledge. And what I conclude is that slow knowledge allows us to know how much we do not know. Of course the fact that I travel a country where I understand so little of the language exacerbates the sense of not knowing. However, it also seems symbolic of how life really is.

There are limits to our understanding our world, each other, even ourselves. Yet, we all keep walking along together trying to complete the journey in an honorable and satisfying fashion. How hard this is--to remember what slow knowledge it is.

All are different; all are the same.

Each is one; all are one.

It is so obvious and so illusive.

It´s just like meditation

I am in Najara tonight. Hiked 20 km today. It´s been a day full of excitment, beauty, frustration, physical exhileration and exhaustion, peace, community, lonliness, and boredom. Passed many vineyards full of fruit. Looks ready to harvest to me, but what do I know?

Also, passed a pomegranite tree. Some blooms the color of the fruit and some fruit. Very beautiful. Fig trees too. And a wonderful green bean dish as the first plate at lunch.

This afternoon sat by the river with friends from Canada and South Africa. One Canadian commented. This scene could be anywhere--the river, the trees, the birds and plants, the sounds of children.

Adios

En-lighten-ment

I was told by another hiker that two aluminum walking poles could bring 30% enlightenment.

Affirmation

An Italian hiker told me yesterday that he admired the U.S. Science is not so corrupted as it is in Italy; we have such potential for discovery. And electing a black president was touching and inspirational. It was a sweet affirmation during discouraging times. (I am going to enjoy this break from American politics!)

Close to the Food

I noticed once, while visiting Linda in Tucson, that one thing I don´t like about Arizona was that so little food could grow there. Growing up in Indiana, I was used to being close to the source of food even though in recent years Indiana has almost become a monoculture (close to the source of ethanol and high fructose corn syrup).

Yesterday and today I´ve walked approximately 45 km through Spain. I have enjoyed being close to the food source: Wheat stubble, indicating recent wheat/grain harvest. Fields of sunflowers, their petals gone and their droopy, seedy heads apparently awaiting harvest. Olive trees and alamond trees. Pear and apple trees. Many vegetable gardens, some with strange-looking plants that might be an artichokes. Last night, beside a small back yard vegetable garden, was a fenced in yard including a fence on the top. It housed a few chickens and a few turkeys. A rabbit hutch was on a low roof. I heard a rooster crow in Pamplona.

I passed, so far, a few vineyards and have sampled a few grapes--very nice and delicately flavored, not at all like the Concord grapes we used to grow. Wild raspberries grow along the path and I have eaten a few. Other berries I don´t recognize and don´t eat. The countryside eems to be an Eden for humans and birds.

Pay Attention

From Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach: Whenever we wholeheartedly attend to the person we're with, to the tree in our front yard or to a squirrel perched on a branch, this living energy becomes an intimate part of who we are....Krishnamurti wrote that "to pay attention means we care, which means we really love." Attention is the most basic form of love. By paying attention we let ourselves be touched by life and our hearts naturally become more open and engaged.

Grounds for a Long Walk

The Ideal

From Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust: Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.

About Now

From Chögyam Trungpa: The principle of nowness is also very important to any effort to establish an enlightened society. You may wonder what the best approach is to helping society and how you can know that what you are doing is authentic or good. The only answer is nowness. Now is the important point. That now is a real now. If you are unable to experience now, then you are corrupted because you are looking for another now, which is impossible. If you do that, there can only be past or future.

Democracy??

"A nation that hates politics will not long thrive as a democracy." E. J. Dionne

Hate and Love (again)

From an essay by Patricia J. Williams: The prevalence of how givingly social divisions are transmitted was brought home to me in an essay written by one of my former students: She described her father as a loving family man, who worked six and a half days a week to provide for his wife and children. He always took Sunday afternoons off; that was sacred time, reserved for a “family drive.” Yet the family’s favorite pastime, as they meandered in Norman Rockwell contentment, was, according to this student, “trying to pick the homosexuals out of the crowd.”…Hate learned in a context of love is a complicated phenomenon. And love learned in a context of hate endangers all our family. (115)

Needing Each Other

In The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, Cutler describes is reaction to the Dalai Lama’s idea that happiness come from our appreciation of our reliance on others:

As “Our Dependence on Others” was not my favorite topic, my mind started to wander again, and I found myself absently removing a loose thread from my shirt sleeve. Tuning in for a moment, I listened as he mentioned the many people who are involved in making all our material possessions. As he said this, I began to think about how many people were involved in making my shirt. I started by imagining the farmer who grew the cotton. Next, the salesperson who sold the farmer the tractor to plow the field. Then, for the matter, the hundreds or even thousands of people involved in manufacturing that tractor, including the people who mined the ore to make the metal for each part of the tractor. And all the designers of the tractor. Then, of course, the people who processed the cotton, the people who wove the cloth, and the people who cut, dyed, and sewed that cloth. The cargo workers and truck drivers who delivered the shirt to the store and the salesperson who sold the shirt to me. It occurred to me that virtually every aspect of my life came about as the results of others’ efforts. My precious self-reliance was a complete illusion, a fantasy. As this realization dawned on me, I was overcome with a profound sense of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all beings. I felt a softening. Something. I don’t know. It made me want to cry.

War in South Bend/Notre Dame

President Obama has been invited to speak at Notre Dame graduation, and it has started a raging controversy as to whether this should be allowed at a "premier Catholic university." The headline in day's South Bend Tribune is , "Foe of Obama Visit Ratchets Up Fight." The first sentence of the article says, "Pro-life activist Randall Terry vows to create a 'political mud pit' over President Barack Obama's scheduled May 17 commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame, making the situation so uncomfortable that the president's advisers persuade him to cancel the visit."

The Tribune is full of letters both pro and con. Here is an excerpt from one of my favorites:
[These anti-abortion protestors] should take one week and ask absolutely everyone they come in contact with “are you pro-choice?” Then remove them from their lives.

I don’t believe in abortion, but I honor the choice of other people. If we didn’t, we’d have very few choices of friends, doctors, lawyers, insurance salesmen, etc.

From Jack Kornfield

The past is over: Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.

The Live You Can Save

Diane Rehm's show was interesting yesterday. Here is the description from her website: "Peter Singer: The Life You Can Save (Random House)--Philosopher Peter Singer believes ending world poverty is within reach. However, it will require a new perspective on what it means to live an ethical life. He offers a plan for giving, and explains why it is ethically indefensible not to help those in need."

You can listen to the radio interview here:
http://wamu.org/programs/dr/09/03/12.php#24961

You can visit Singer's website here:
http://www.thelifeyoucansave.com/index.html

A Little Homily from Rev. M.A.

Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone, tells of being a child soldier. The violence he committed between the ages 13-16 is horrifying. Becoming a soldier was basically an alternative to death for him. He was brainwashed, drugged, and encouraged to avenge the deaths of other family members. When he was rescued from life as a soldier by UNICEF, he and other child soldiers had to be rehabilitated. They were uncivilized with fighting their main method of communication.

One of the social workers who helped rehabilitate Beah was a woman he calls Esther. One day he shared with her a particularly violent dream. Here’s how he describes the conversation:

At first she just listened to me and then gradually she started asking questions to make me talk about the lives I had lived before and during the war. “None of these things are your fault,” she would always say sternly at the end of every conversation. Even though I had heard that phrase from every staff member—and frankly I had always hated it—I began that day to believe it. It was the genuine tone in Esther’s voice that made the phrase finally begin to sink into my mind and heart.

It was a touching reminder that the things we dislike in other people, often, are not their fault. Often, the things we hate in ourselves are not our fault either. That is a good insight to let sink into our minds and hearts.

Extreme Love

Jack Kornfield writes this story in The Wise Heart(42-43). It’s a serious tale of the old “make-me-one-with-everything joke.

Perhaps we can better understand this through a story of a Palestinian named Salam, one of my good friends….In the late 1960s and 1970s Salam had lived in Jerusalem as an activist and a journalist. Because he was writing about creating a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem and the establishment of a Palestinian state, he was regularly arrested. He spent nearly six years in Israeli prisons. He was frequently interrogated and periodically beaten and tortured. This happens on every side in war.

One afternoon after he had been badly beaten, his body was lying on the floor of the prison and he was being kicked by a particularly cruel guard. Blood poured out of his mouth and as the police report later stated, the authorities believed he had died.

He remembers the pain of being beaten. Then, as is often reported by accident and torture victims, he felt his consciousness leave his body and float up to the ceiling. At first it was peaceful and still, like in a silent movie, as he watched his own body lying below being kicked. It was so peaceful he didn’t know what all the fuss was about. And then Salam described how, in a remarkable way, his consciousness expanded further. He knew it was his body lying below, but now he felt he was also the boot kicking the body. He was also the peeling green paint on the prison walls, the goat whose bleat could be heard outside, the dirt under the guard’s fingernails—he was life, all of it and the eternal consciousness of it all, with no separation. Being everything, he could never die. All his fears vanished. He realized that death was an illusion. A well-being and joy beyond description opened to him. And then a spontaneous compassion arose for the astonishing folly of humans, believing we are separate, clinging to nations and making war.

Two days later, as Salam describes it, he came back to consciousness in a bruised and beaten body on the floor of a cell, without fear or remorse, just amazement. His experience changed his whole sense of life and death. He refused to continue to participate in any form of conflict. When he was released, he married a Jewish woman and had Palestinian-Jewish children. That, he said, was his answer to the misguided madness of the world.

Got Empathy?

In the P. K. Dick’s science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the world is populated with human beings and androids. The androids are so lifelike, there is only one way to distinguish them from humans—give them an empathy test. The testers believed that only humans had empathy. Hate requires that we extinguish our empathy. Sometimes that’s unbelievably easy to do. I hate that, or as the old joke goes, I hate hate.

Let It Begin with Me (Love and Hate Reflections)

Seems like I’ve heard a lot of versions of love and peace that say you have to begin with yourself. Ghandi said, “You have to be the change you wish to see in the world.” I think it is Confucius who says that peace in the heart begets peace in the family, peace in the family begets peace in the city, peace in the city begets peace in the nation, and that peace in the nation begets peace in the world. There is the song that says “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.

That all sounds so mysterious—so abstract, so impossible. If I get peaceful, the world will get peaceful? If I get more loving, the world will get more loving? However, I see how hard it is to be loving and peaceful as soon as some minor annoyance pushes one of my buttons. I don’t respond exactly with hate, but it isn’t love either—mini-hate maybe? Or just everyday, mundane, lack of love? So I try to be more loving while trying to love myself when I fail. I can’t say that I’m terrifically successful. It’s a crazy theory.

If I were “perfectly” loving, I’d probably be a self-righteous, obnoxious bitch. Do our mini-struggles with love and hate, teach us about the larger struggles of love and hate in the world? I think so, but the lesson is a difficult one to understand.

Reflections on Love and Hate

In the last few weeks I have seen the movie Milk and finished the book A Long Time Gone.

Milk is the story of gay activist Harvey Milk in the sixties and seventies, and it shows the emotional response to gay activism and success. Laws would be passed to allow gay people equal rights and anti-gay groups would move into the area to get those laws repealed. The anti-gay movement seemed—and still seems to me—filled with hate.

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah describes his life during the civil war in Sierra Leone. This includes the period after he loses his parents (at age twelve) and wanders the country at night with other children, looking for his family and avoiding danger. He also describes his time as a child soldier, a time during which he was indoctrinated in hate and committed terrible acts of violence. He was rescued by UNICEF and had to be “rehabilitated” and de-programmed.

Both of these works have me thinking of love and hate. It’s interesting that soon after these two stories, my yoga teacher, Jamie, read these passages from Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Hatred paralyses life; love releases it.Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.""I have decided to stick with love.Hate is too great a burden to bear."

I have been trying to live with these words and see how they shed light on both hate and love.

An Email from a Student

I received the following email about 2/3-3/4 into last semester. I still haven't figured out if the sender was serious or not. He never came back to class.

Hey mrs. Hardy so this is kinda a weird email. with the snow falls tonight reaching a foot i doubt ill be in class tomorow, i drive a sports car and it is actually going to be moved down to atlanta next week, since i will b e moving there in about 4 weeks. but the point is that it cant drive in this snow. i know this isnt a big worry for you but with me having a few accidents last year in the snow im too scared to drive in it. and since im moving sooner than usual my parents wont buy me the SUV i want for some reason. With me already having taken 131 im full aware of the expectations for essay four and since i will pass this semester i was wondering if i can mail you a hard copy and email you a copy. This would allow me to not have to come to class again unless the weather permitted. I guess this is me hoping my request is persuasive enough for you to grant me such a prvielage. I do appretiate alot that you have taught me this year and as english teahcers go you have been one of my favs. Hope to get an aswer from you soon. sorry for the inconveniece and weather permitting ill be in class tommorow. ill just see how bad the roads are early tomorrow. thanks for your time

Together

"Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood [or sisterhood]. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured."

From "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," delivered by Martin Luther King at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1968.

Why We Do Theraphy

...There, paying dearly for fifty minutes, the client gropes for a sense of coherence and mattering. The therapist listens, not so much explaining as simply fostering the possiblity of resonance. She allows the long pauses and silences--a bold subversion of societyal expectations--because only where silence in possible can the vertical engagement take place.
(from Sven Birkets in The Gutenber Elegies)

But if you desire to see into your own depths and interpret them more adequately, then you will have to talk to somebody who has seen those depths before and helped others interpret them more adequately. In this intersubject dialogue with a therapeutic helper, you will hold hands and walk the path of moe adequate interpretations...and the more clearly you can interpret and articulate this depth, the less baffling you will become to yourself, the clearer you will become to yourself, the more transparent you will be.
(from Ken Wilber in A Brief History of Everything)

War

There's no such thing as a "just" war anymore, if there ever was. You can't defend bombing children and innocent people. It isn't right to teach people how to torture and kill each other. Wars never end, really. The Crusades aren't quite over yet. Our Civil War certainly isn't over yet. I don't think we can afford this kind of behavior anymore.

From an interview with Wendell Berry in the July 2008 issue of The Sun.

Yes

Language...has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone.

Paul Tillich

Secrets

In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable--which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live...

Above is a passage from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. The narrator is a 77-year-old, dying minister who is writing a book to young son, and this is some of what he wants his son to hear when the son is an adult.

Don't You Be Making a List

It has occured to me that when I start getting judgemental about people, I'm kind of like Santa, making a list. How silly of me to butt in. Let Santa make the lists!

This Might Be True

Disappointment, embarrassment, and all the places where we cannot feel good are a sort of death. We've just lost our ground completely; we are unable to hold it together and feel that we're on top of things. Rather than realizing that it takes death for there to be birth, we just fight against the fear of death.

From Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chödrön.

I Don't Believe in Astrology Either

My horoscope for this week according to freewill astrology:
At Salon.com's forum "Table Talk," participants were urged to come up with a six-word sentence that captured the essence of their lives. One person wrote, "Broke. Payday. Broke. Payday. Broke. Payday." Another said, "Oh, no, not again. Again. Again." But the testimony I really wanted to call your attention to is this: "I never learned how to swashbuckle." Why is this pertinent for you? Because I believe that if you have a similar regret -- that you've never mastered the art of swashbuckling -- you will have an excellent chance to fix that problem in the coming months. In fact, I'm tempted to name 2009 as the Year of the Swashbuckle for you Libras. If I could give you a symbolic holiday gift to get you started, it might be a superhero's costume created by a top fashion designer. Happy Holy Daze!

Six Word Speech

The guys at the NY Times Freakonomics blog asked this question: "If Barack Obama’s inaugural address could be just six words long, how would it read?" The winning answer was “Our worst critics prefer to stay.”

Right versus Wrong and Right versus Right

The world, unfortunately, faces plenty of right-versus-wrong questions. From cheating on taxes to lying under oath, from running red lights to inflating the expense account, from buying under-twelve movie tickets for your fourteen-year-old to overstating the damage done to your car for insurance purposes—the world abounds with instances that, however commonplace, are widely understood to be wrong. But right-versus-wrong choices are very different from right-versus-right ones. The latter reach inward to our most profound and central values, setting one against the other in ways that will never be resolved simply by pretending that one is “wrong”. Right-versus-wrong choices, by contrast, offer no such depth: The closer you get to them, the more they begin to smell. Two shorthand terms capture the differences: If we can call right-versus-right choices “ethical dilemmas”, we can reserve the phrase “moral temptations” for the right-versus-wrong ones…[Right versus right dilemmas] are genuine dilemmas precisely because each side is firmly rooted in one of our basic, core values. Four such dilemmas are so common to our experience that they stand as models, patterns, or paradigms. They are:
• Truth versus loyalty
• Individual versus community
• Short-term versus long-term
• Justice versus mercy

The above passage is from How Good People Make Tough Choices by Rushworth Kidder.

Plastic--Yuk!

Last week a friend sent me a PowerPoint about the evils of plastic. I tried to attach it here, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. However, today I stumbled across this blog with the ridiculous name of "Fake Plastic Fish." It's by a woman trying to get rid of plastic in her life and studying the problem. Probably everything the PowerPoint said is at her site too. I haven't had time to read much of it, but it's intriguing.

Slow Cars

The three paragraphs below are from an editorial by Elizabeth Kolbert in the December 8, 2008 issue of The New Yorker. Be sure to read through to the punch line in paragraph three.

The Secretary of Transportation’s report to Congress begins on a dark note. “Over the past year, the domestic auto industry has experienced sharply reduced sales and profitability, large indefinite layoffs, and increased market penetration by imports,” it states. “The shift in consumer preferences towards smaller, more fuel-efficient passenger cars and light trucks . . . appears to be permanent, and the industry will spend massive amounts of money to retool to produce the motor vehicles that the public now wants.” The revenue to pay for this retooling, though, will have to come from sales of just the sort of cars that the public is no longer buying—a situation, the report observes, bound to produce “financial strain.”

“To improve the overall future prospects for the domestic motor vehicle manufacturers, a quality and price competitive motor vehicle must be produced,” the report warns. “If this is not accomplished, the long term outlook for the industry is bleak.”

The Secretary’s report was delivered to Congress in 1980, a year after what may soon become known as the first Chrysler bailout. Depending on how you look at things, the report was either wrong—three years later, Chrysler returned to profitability—or prescient....