Rocky Goes Out for a Morning Run

I don’t want to think about how long ago it was that I watched this scene from Rocky 2--almost another life.  Last week, Andrew Sullivan posted this clip on his blog.  My first response was amusement.  Would such a corny scene work in 2013?  My second response was a sort of automatic emotional feeling.  I found myself being moved by the combination of music and effort.  My emotions seem to have an inconsistent mind of their own.  

Can we have peace in our hearts and still care about politics and what it stands for?

Kindness Matters

Two weeks ago I was returning home after twelve days in Scotland.  My first stop in the U.S. was Philadelphia.  So tiring and tedious, one curling line after another.  The good part was, all of the people who directed me through these lines, examined my passport, and patted me down, all were friendly and polite.  My favorite was the guy who looked at my passport, looked up at me, smiled,  and said, “Somebody’s having a birthday soon; Happy Birthday!”  I’ve thought of these people more than once, especially the Happy-Birthday-guy.  Human kindness does make a difference.  Today’s my birthday.  Wish I could thank that nice guy in Philadelphia.

Belief Is the Enemy of Faith

From the magazine UUWorld: 

The good news is that people, at least in the developed world, are rejecting cultural and religious exceptionalism. By religious exceptionalism I mean the conviction that my religion possesses the truth and, by extension, yours is false. When I grew up I was taught that religion was about what we believed. What made my denomination different (and correct, of course) was our sound doctrine. We were right. This made religion too much about being right, about us and them. Too much attention then goes into defending our beliefs.

I am now convinced that “belief,” in the way we usually use the word, is actually the enemy of faith, religion, and spirituality…. When we dwell on beliefs we ask all the wrong questions. My faith is much more about what I love than about what I think.

Vote for "Obamacare"

“… the right has dominated the Obamacare public debate through blunt rhetorical force,” says Jonathan Chait.  While mainstream health analysis publications are cautiously optimistic about the benefits of the bill, realizing they cannot predict the future, a large group of conservatives express no doubt as to their predictions.  Chait worries that these doomsday predictions of the right may contribute to its failure. He says, "The predictions of a train wreck are intended to precipitate one."

 To me, this extreme effort to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act seems like a repudiation of democracy.  I have written my house representative and requested she drop this obsession and move on to more creative governing endeavors.  I don’t have high expectations for this, but I believe in voting, even when I think my candidate or issue will lose. 

 It’s easy to contact your representative. Google their names and go to their gov website. Usually they have a “contact me” option. Write a few sentences and click send.  That’s it—interesting how long I can procrastinate dong such an easy little thing.

Not Prepared

Ian Leslie writes about our understanding of privacy for the online magazine aeon.  He describes one study conducted by George Loewenstein where college students were asked to make choices about their privacy online.  Leslie says, 

The students were using their instincts about privacy, and their instincts proved to be deeply wayward. ‘Thinking about online privacy doesn’t come naturally to us,’ Loewenstein told me when I spoke to him on the phone. "Nothing in our evolution or culture has equipped us to deal with it."

Adam Gopnik continues to speak eloquently about the problems of guns in the U.S. He points out that in this latest mass shooting the people in the building were not schoolteachers but trained members of the military, many of them armed. The main point of his piece however, is despair.  He believes we will eventually come around to policies that will reduce this violence.  Read his entire piece.  

Hello

It was my first morning in Edinburgh.  I was standing on the balcony outside our rooms when I saw an official looking building flying three flags: the UK flag, the Scotland flag, and…and…a white flag with black letters spelling “Hello.”

It got my attention, but I had no idea how such a strange grouping of flags came about.  During our stay in Edinburgh, I continued to see the Hello-flag flying atop buildings.  It was an enjoyable curiosity.

Today, back in the U.S., I Googled it and discovered it was to welcome visitors to the annual arts festival.  The flag was the idea of Peter Liversidge who specializes in performance art. There was something cute as well as goofy about that flag. It was an incongruous and sweet welcome to my first full day in Scotland and a light-hearted memory to store with the incredible dramatic scenery of the Scottish countryside.

Not Again!

It has happened again—another mass shooting in the United States. There are many other shootings as well, single deaths that don’t make national headlines.  Just a few days ago, the South Bend Tribune, reported the death of three-year-old as the result of a game being played between the mother’s boyfriend and the child.  The boyfriend forgot the gun was loaded.

From time to time, I look at the Slate site’s, “How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?”  The answer as of September 16 was 8,259. I don’t know whether or not that includes the latest spree.

Yesterday David Frum posted the following: 

Resonance

Some friends of mine from here in South Bend attended the 2014 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Louisville, Kentucky, and found themselves listening to Eboo Patel, a Muslim from India, tell this story about an experience he had at a Catholic University in South Bend, Indiana. 

That's an important phrase in my life. Look for the resonances. It was actually formative in my own development as an interfaith leader. It's something that my father told me when I was really just a boy. My family is in this country because a Catholic University in Indiana, Notre Dame, allowed a somewhat wayward Indian Muslim student into their MBA program in the mid-1970s. That man would be my father.

Coming Home

I arrived home last night after two weeks in Scotland.  Nine of those days were spent hiking.  Getting to Scotland, coming home—tiresome and tedious.  Being there—beautiful and wonderful.

A few posts down I quoted Pico Iyer saying, 

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….And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. 

He also says, 

[F]or 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. 

If I could write like Pico Iyer, I might be truly able to describe what this trip meant.  Scotland is not a country with a different language—not too different anyway.  The culture is much the same as here.  But the landscape is so much more dramatic than Indiana.  I would round a corner or step up higher on the trail and enter a scene that would stop me in my tracks.  Now, back home again, this world seems new and fresh.  Wonderful trip; good to be home.

Music for Sunday, "Loch Loman" on Bagpipe

Many of these scenes in this video look very familiar to me now--one I think even shows the foot path of the West Highland Way.  I discovered that there a lot of theories as to the meaning of this song.  One common interpretation is that the singer is going to die because of Jacobite uprising in 1745 (a bit of history I haven't quite figured out), and so, the low road was death.

Green Reads

Wendy Becktold writes in Sierra about owning sorting books:

Clearly, there are just too many books.  E-readers were supposed to solve this problem, but they are hard to bond with and aren't necessarily better for the environment.  I'd have to read a minimum of 40 volumes on one for it to be the greener choice, according to a life cycle assessment by Daniel Goleman and Gregory Norris in the New York Times.

What serious reader can't read 40 volumes?  Becktold does this idea for book shelves.

More than "I Have a Dream"

This is one of my favorite passages from this speech: 

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."
 But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children. 

I turned on the radio for the last piece of the Diane Rehm Show today.  There was a good conversation going on with Isabel Wilkerson (!), David Garrow, and Anthony Cook about how well the “bank of justice” is doing today.  I plan to go back and listen to the first part.  (The listening link isn't up yet, but I assume it will be there soon.)

West Highland Way

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.  (Pico Iyer, “Why We Travel") 

I have posted the above passage before.  It has touched me deeply.  But now, as I prepare for hiking the 95-mile West Highland Way slightly northwest of Glasgow, I can only have faith that this is true.  I have been upping my walking miles for months and getting things sorted out for weeks, and I have felt a lot of stress.  In a few days, I expect my heart to open, etc., etc.

Daisy, Daisy...

Two years ago--before I knew there would be a new movie version of the story--I reread The Great Gatsby.  I hadn’t remembered what a grim story it is.  I continue to read reviews of the film but can’t bring myself to see it.  Today I came across this interesting critique of Daisy Buchanan: 

Daisy isn't awful, [as many reviews proclaim] she is trapped and scared -- and that is how Mulligan plays her, timidly. Raised a debutante in Louisville, she is expected to marry as a teenager, and she does, to the alcoholic, racist, chronically unfaithful Tom Buchanan. Daisy hasn't had the chance to go to college, or travel the world in the army, as the male characters have. She has a baby before she becomes an adult, and thus is hardly prepared to be an attentive mother. If there are opportunities out there for Daisy to live a more exciting, fulfilling life, she is only dimly aware of them. Is it any wonder she idealizes her first, adolescent romance, with a sweet young officer? Her brief affair with Gatsy is probably one of the only things Daisy has ever done fully by choice. Look at her wrists, bound by diamond cuffs. She is shackled by her own privilege. 

(From the blog of Dana Goldstein)

Haiku by Wendell Berry

And I Beg Your Pardon

The first mosquito:

Come here and I will kill thee

Holy though thou art.

Song for Sunday

It's interesting to see what some of the "professional"
bloggers  post on their sites.  This song was posted on http://www.3quarksdaily.com/  The clothes are fascinating.

Facing the Past, continued

When will we achieve the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr.?  Joshua DuBois offers a different perspective from the last post.  

My first instinct has always been to answer that open-ended inquiry with an equally squishy response, one that we will hear again and again from politicians, preachers, and activists during the next week: “We’ve come so far, but we have so much further to go.” I’ve said this line myself, as recently as this past Wednesday, in the pulpit of a Black Baptist church. 

It’s a phrase that sounds practical, realistic, and even useful. But the problem is: I think it’s wrong. And more than just wrong, it is perhaps the primary barrier to real racial progress in this nation…. 

A Night in the Sky

A week from today, I'll be flying to Scotland.  As I get ready for the trip, I'be been thinking of Sylvia Boorstein's description of spending the night on a plane.  It's comforting.