Anderson, South Carolina
One of the most celebrated books of the science fiction genre has to be Jules Verne’s 19th century classic The Time Machine. In this fanciful tale an eccentric professor working in a Victorian lab constructs a machine that allows one to traverse the boundaries of time. A wishful traveler can pierce the mystery that is the future or return to the solidified history of the past and remake decisions. One can simply pull or push a polished brass lever on Verne’s temporal chariot and change the world.
How many of us would give anything to go back but a single time and redo a decision based on the knowledge we acquired with the passing of time? We could all become multi-millionaires simply by having the knowledge needed to plow all of our money into a single stock trade, knowing what the future held. We would find ourselves suddenly free of the boundaries of financial limitation.
Perhaps more significantly, we could take back bitter words of regret. How many of us would give anything to return a single time and take back searing angry words that set fire to precious relationships, leaving them forever a smoldering residue of ash? How many wars could have been pre-empted if angry words could be taken back?
To not have gotten on a doomed flight. The stories of chance surrounding the breakup and loss of Air France’s Airbus in mid 2009 were sobering. A business man is alive because his taxi made a wrong turn. Others died because they arrived in the Brazilian airport early and hopped on Air France to get home early. Every time we board a plane it seems we are entering into a strange sort of cosmic game of chance. If Jules Verne had been writing non-fiction instead of science fiction, perhaps our lives would be much better. We could go back and tell people to change their bookings, to take another flight, to marry someone else.
One of my favorite things to do is to set up computers and projection in a black box theater in an elementary magnet school and show fourth graders cosmic wonders. As part of their science curriculum, each year I am asked to come in the winter and do an eighty minute presentation on the curiosities and wonders of the planet Mars. Yes, one hundred twenty five kids stay rapt, attentive, and well behaved for eighty minutes without a break. It is true that children are the most prodigious learning machines in the universe, if given something to study that interests them. There is nothing like feeding the elation that comes across kids’ faces when they find the universe a really cool place.
Seventy or eighty years away there is another universe, one that is often dark, cold, lonely, and devoid of wonder. Here time takes on a different texture. Children are not reaching their potential, having long faded away into their occluded memories. A second tier nursing home houses those who did not make the jack pot stock trade in real time or got on the wrong career flight. Those who are medically indigent without the funds for a better facility come to this austere place that advertises, “Take your place in life.”
In five minutes I drove my old Toyota Corolla from the celestial magic of that magnet school to the dark reality of an ancient facility stinking of urea, feces, and age. There I found many anomalies. A man, rapt, who looked as if he once was a CEO, was sitting barefoot on the floor in the hall, exploring with his gnarled fingers the boundaries of a twelve inch floor tile. His universe had shrunk down to that 144 square inch speck of space/time, devoid of any dignity. I nearly wept.
Many darkened rooms contain mounds shrouded in thin semi-white blankets. Enshrined in each is an ossuary containing a lifetime of memories, dreams, and regrets. My ‘usual’ destination is on the far side of this nebula of despair and the wreckage of time, often giving me pause to learn far more about what matters in life than I ever could hope to teach those fourth graders.
Physicists like to tell us the universe is winding down and that one day in the distant future it will become essentially extinct in an entropyless void. Everything will have the same absolute zero temperature and all will be dark and frozen. A journey in Jules’ time machine to this era would be bleak at best. After navigating around the black holes of disability in the forsaken place across town, it would be easy to take the physicists declarations as harsh non-fiction. It would seem that our lives wind down to nothing.
Perhaps there is another deeper reality. I go to the far end of the galaxy to room 24, a tiny dim little cell containing a metal locker, battered dresser, old bed, and a small sink bolted to the wall. There I speak to a shroud in the bed, energized by 140 DB of deafening sonic pressure from an old TV. Arousing, finding the remote, she brings blessed silence to her tiny darkened cell. This shroud contains nearly a century of life, now-forgotten, a life once huge and vibrant, building community all around her. Now it’s just the two of us.
I proceed to do her ‘gardening.’ Bringing new flowers, weeding out dead ones from days gone by, washing out the vases, I challenge the physicists, raising the entropy of her region of the world. Her spirits rise just a bit. She hasn’t seen anything really alive in a while. Yellow and white daisies are hardy survivors, lasting three weeks or more in the harsh environments of the forgotten.
Perhaps even more energizing than flowers or 140 db of sound pressure is a little elixir of Hope. We have forthright conversation with the One who knows our future and our past. We remind each other of the promises that are beyond the reaches of The Time Machine. We are promised that all those things cast in stone in the past will be redeemed, that all those things veiled in the future will be revealed. Suddenly, my dear friend is seeing beyond the ninety-something paralyzed shriveled body that has imprisoned her. I see Hope and Joy erupt in her eyes. Gratitude for the Promises flood over us, washing away the tincture of despair that so easily besets us.
Perhaps Verne’s work is not fiction after all. I jumped time today in my old Toyota and found Hope in the future. So did an inmate, a prisoner of time.
I know the thoughts I have for you, thought for good, not for evil; Plans that will give you hope and a future.
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Winning the Struggle to Belong 2-25-10
Anderson, South Carolina
In the recovery world we speak of our desperate bids to belong and how these counter-productive efforts end up casting us into a prison of unremitting loneliness and isolation. We think we have to stand out in some fashion. So often we attempted to dominate people in order to get what we wanted from them and after a time these people had enough of our oppression and bolted for the exits. It really does prove to be lonely “at the top.” Other times some of us were like beaten puppy dogs crawling around the edges of groups, whimpering for attention. We used up many people with our profound neediness. These people simply could give no more to us and they left our lives, exhausted. We found ourselves alone and frightened once again. Our greatest efforts to belong had failed us completely.
We live in a culture that tells us that to belong we have to be number one. We subsist in a society where we need to be the survivor on a reality show, the fastest in the Olympics, the richest, the smartest, the most talented, the most what ever. We need to have the biggest, the newest, the oldest, the rarest. Only those who do really count. Only those who win get to belong. Silver medalists don’t get multi-million dollar endorsements, even though their times are within a hundredth or even a thousandth of a second of those winning the gold. Coming in second or even worse, being average, means almost nothing in our competitive culture. If one doe not have a trophy wife, a quiver full of kids and an even larger quiver full of grand kids, one does not count for much.
A young girl here in town is presently on one of the reality shows and every Monday night groups of people converge on a local pub and a playhouse to watch her on the big screen, trying to be the best and survive for another week. One of the contestants was so stressed by the experience that she was filmed vomiting before her performance of the week. Alas, there is always someone better, smarter, faster, richer, more talented, with better hair. All but one will be ignominious losers.
Even good things can become tyranny. I frantically build Habitat houses, serve Meals on Wheels, build sets for the theater, help people in recovery, write books, paint epic canvases, keep up correspondence, make calls, everything that might give me cause to think I merit space on the planet. I hope my performance will be judged worthy enough to allow me to stay on the reality show until next week.
As I sit here having watched my investments collapse, wondering if I will ever again have good employment, I speculate if I will ever again get to be part of what is going on, not realizing that most of what is going on is truly toxic to one’s serenity. I am facing up to the possibility that I am going to be second or even worse, just average.
Average? Perhaps there is vast freedom and belonging in being average. In one of the most beloved books of recovery, a quote states, “We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us.”
Our culture tells us we need to stand on top of the heap or to try and extract from the heap by being a bottom feeder in our neediness. We live in a conflicted culture of entitlement and domination.
One of the most beloved TV shows in recent decades was “Cheers”, a happy portrayal of regular people just getting together and laughing with each other and helping each other solve the daily crises of their lives. The characters were portrayals of average people living in the middle of the pack and enjoying a sense of belonging with each other. This comedy had a profoundly serious message that seems ever more lost on the culture. I myself have been a conspirator in the toxic message of the consumer culture to a far greater degree than I ever fathomed. I am just now coming into enlightenment as to how tyrannized I have been by this.
Perhaps we can recover a sense of community and belonging, if we are willing to just be average. I sense great relief in the offing from releasing my desperate bids to be above average. I am going to look for ways to be absolutely run of the mill and love other people in their middling ways, free of the tyranny to bludgeon them towards perfection.
Serenity is after all the great prize and it goes to all finishers, not just those who come in first.
In the recovery world we speak of our desperate bids to belong and how these counter-productive efforts end up casting us into a prison of unremitting loneliness and isolation. We think we have to stand out in some fashion. So often we attempted to dominate people in order to get what we wanted from them and after a time these people had enough of our oppression and bolted for the exits. It really does prove to be lonely “at the top.” Other times some of us were like beaten puppy dogs crawling around the edges of groups, whimpering for attention. We used up many people with our profound neediness. These people simply could give no more to us and they left our lives, exhausted. We found ourselves alone and frightened once again. Our greatest efforts to belong had failed us completely.
We live in a culture that tells us that to belong we have to be number one. We subsist in a society where we need to be the survivor on a reality show, the fastest in the Olympics, the richest, the smartest, the most talented, the most what ever. We need to have the biggest, the newest, the oldest, the rarest. Only those who do really count. Only those who win get to belong. Silver medalists don’t get multi-million dollar endorsements, even though their times are within a hundredth or even a thousandth of a second of those winning the gold. Coming in second or even worse, being average, means almost nothing in our competitive culture. If one doe not have a trophy wife, a quiver full of kids and an even larger quiver full of grand kids, one does not count for much.
A young girl here in town is presently on one of the reality shows and every Monday night groups of people converge on a local pub and a playhouse to watch her on the big screen, trying to be the best and survive for another week. One of the contestants was so stressed by the experience that she was filmed vomiting before her performance of the week. Alas, there is always someone better, smarter, faster, richer, more talented, with better hair. All but one will be ignominious losers.
Even good things can become tyranny. I frantically build Habitat houses, serve Meals on Wheels, build sets for the theater, help people in recovery, write books, paint epic canvases, keep up correspondence, make calls, everything that might give me cause to think I merit space on the planet. I hope my performance will be judged worthy enough to allow me to stay on the reality show until next week.
As I sit here having watched my investments collapse, wondering if I will ever again have good employment, I speculate if I will ever again get to be part of what is going on, not realizing that most of what is going on is truly toxic to one’s serenity. I am facing up to the possibility that I am going to be second or even worse, just average.
Average? Perhaps there is vast freedom and belonging in being average. In one of the most beloved books of recovery, a quote states, “We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us.”
Our culture tells us we need to stand on top of the heap or to try and extract from the heap by being a bottom feeder in our neediness. We live in a conflicted culture of entitlement and domination.
One of the most beloved TV shows in recent decades was “Cheers”, a happy portrayal of regular people just getting together and laughing with each other and helping each other solve the daily crises of their lives. The characters were portrayals of average people living in the middle of the pack and enjoying a sense of belonging with each other. This comedy had a profoundly serious message that seems ever more lost on the culture. I myself have been a conspirator in the toxic message of the consumer culture to a far greater degree than I ever fathomed. I am just now coming into enlightenment as to how tyrannized I have been by this.
Perhaps we can recover a sense of community and belonging, if we are willing to just be average. I sense great relief in the offing from releasing my desperate bids to be above average. I am going to look for ways to be absolutely run of the mill and love other people in their middling ways, free of the tyranny to bludgeon them towards perfection.
Serenity is after all the great prize and it goes to all finishers, not just those who come in first.
Convenience - At what Cost? 2-20-10
Anderson, South Carolina
In the distant past when involved in environmental activism, I was asked to make a survey of a 6,000 acre tract of land in central Alabama. Like many other southern states, a huge percentage of forest land is owned by corporate interests conducting monoculture of fast growing species of softwood, used as feedstock to make packaging for consumer goods. For example, International Paper is one of the largest land owners in North America, having title to almost seven million acres, mostly in the south east. Diverse forests have been transformed into bleak tree farms. Only four percent of the original 60 million acres of original longleaf pine forests remain. Vast tracts of once diverse forests have been eaten alive by giant chip mills, converting everything in their wake into oriented strand board (OSB), a splintery replacement for plywood that does not require high quality feedstock.
An archived 1952 document bragged on a single pulp mill in Louisiana that consumed the feedstock from the surrounding 68,000 acres. It states the company ”also seeks to make as large a profit as possible by cutting the mature trees into the most valuable products they are capable of yielding.” Today a significant portion of framing timber is imported from southwestern Canada and South America because many mature and old growth forests in the United States have long since been cut over and converted to mono-culture for paper products. If one looks closely at SKU tags, it becomes evident that much of so-called ‘white wood’ product in gray box retailers is often harvested in South America, even the Scandinavian countries. Nearly half of the trees felled in North America are converted into paper products. Forty percent of landfill waste consists of paper products.
Heavy goods industrial processes are equally demanding of resources, resulting in the liberation of toxic minerals such as arsenic and radon. Leachates from mining operations and atmospheric pollution from smelting and refining processes are vast. Occupational exposure to toxins during the production of consumer goods has produced legendary outbreaks of cancer. Entire towns have become contaminated, ultimately declared to be super-fund sites, and abandoned.
While wandering around on those 6,000 acres in Alabama on a sunny day, I noticed two young boys playing, both wearing Camp Sunshine T-shirts. Inquiry revealed these two boys to have been recent participants in this magnificent camp for children with cancer. As I watched, incredulous, they romped through a field littered with hundreds of containers filled with assorted industrial chemicals. Further questioning revealed these drums, barrels, bottles, and cans to contain poisons use to kill hardwood trees ‘contaminating’ the 6,000 acres. In a mono-culture ecology with low ambient timber prices, a magnificent two hundred year old oak tree is viewed as a contaminant. The contaminants used to remove old growth contaminants had contaminated the blood of these children, rendering them victims of rare forms of leukemia, but their abundant toys came in pretty packaging. The father of these children, who had a leasehold on this timber wasteland, could not see the connection between the dire health of his children and the clear cut chemical wilderness in which they romped. When I tried to connect the dots for him, I was quickly invited to leave his land. He did not want to be implicated.
While packing hot meals at Meals on Wheels recently, I was spooning up green beans next to a mother of four serving up helpings of Brunswick stew. Conversation wandered onto recent job creation incentives that will incite consumers to discard perfectly good ‘durable goods’ such as refrigerators, stoves, washer and dryers, and air conditioning systems and buy new ones. Like the cash for clunkers program that destroyed 700,000 serviceable cars, one can expect hundreds of thousands, even millions, of perfectly useable products to be destroyed and land-filled. This mother of four was fantasizing about getting a new washer and dryer under this incentive program.
Believing that all cancer will eventually be proven to be an environmental disease, either from industrial toxins or even viral mutations that damage genetic material, I wondered out loud if it was such a good idea for us to continue to use up our natural world and to keep replacing everything because some financial gimmick was making it enticing. Did this mother really need to replace two large appliances she admitted were still working. Did she have any concern that our consuming ways might just cause cancer in her children and grand children?
“I don’t care. At least they will have clean clothes.” I asked again. Same answer. How I wish I had a tape recorder to capture the vehemence of this mother’s declaration. Have we become so devoted to the religion of secular materialism and consumption that we are willing to practice human sacrifice to the neoplastic monsters of cancer and other occult neurologic nightmares? Are we that different than the ancient Aztecs and Mayans who regular conducted ritual sacrifice?
The United States has the highest annual incidence rates of breast cancer in the world; 128.6 per 100,000 in whites and 112.6 per 100,000 among African Americans. Rates in the US are as much as 700% higher than other regions of the world. If you have had six surgical mitigations for cancer and have had virtually everything cut off or cut out that makes you woman and each day wonder when you are going to get hammered again, statistics become insipid, meaningless. For the astounding number of my female friends who have been through this neoplastic nightmare, I just don’t remember any of them talking about their new appliances. I have heard them talk about their new prosthetics, but those are not being covered under these jobs creation incentives. I do hear employment in the medical field continues rather robust. Perhaps additional incentives are not really needed there.
Do cancer surgery patients sitting in chemo drip rooms really think “Life is really good, after all I have clean clothes from my new washer to wear here while I get infused with these poisons that will make me bald, exhausted, ancient, and miserable?.” Do you really want to send your kids to Camp Sunshine? Perhaps not? Are pretty packages, the newest conveniences worth it? Just ask my girlfriend? She’s been there, done that.
In the distant past when involved in environmental activism, I was asked to make a survey of a 6,000 acre tract of land in central Alabama. Like many other southern states, a huge percentage of forest land is owned by corporate interests conducting monoculture of fast growing species of softwood, used as feedstock to make packaging for consumer goods. For example, International Paper is one of the largest land owners in North America, having title to almost seven million acres, mostly in the south east. Diverse forests have been transformed into bleak tree farms. Only four percent of the original 60 million acres of original longleaf pine forests remain. Vast tracts of once diverse forests have been eaten alive by giant chip mills, converting everything in their wake into oriented strand board (OSB), a splintery replacement for plywood that does not require high quality feedstock.
An archived 1952 document bragged on a single pulp mill in Louisiana that consumed the feedstock from the surrounding 68,000 acres. It states the company ”also seeks to make as large a profit as possible by cutting the mature trees into the most valuable products they are capable of yielding.” Today a significant portion of framing timber is imported from southwestern Canada and South America because many mature and old growth forests in the United States have long since been cut over and converted to mono-culture for paper products. If one looks closely at SKU tags, it becomes evident that much of so-called ‘white wood’ product in gray box retailers is often harvested in South America, even the Scandinavian countries. Nearly half of the trees felled in North America are converted into paper products. Forty percent of landfill waste consists of paper products.
Heavy goods industrial processes are equally demanding of resources, resulting in the liberation of toxic minerals such as arsenic and radon. Leachates from mining operations and atmospheric pollution from smelting and refining processes are vast. Occupational exposure to toxins during the production of consumer goods has produced legendary outbreaks of cancer. Entire towns have become contaminated, ultimately declared to be super-fund sites, and abandoned.
While wandering around on those 6,000 acres in Alabama on a sunny day, I noticed two young boys playing, both wearing Camp Sunshine T-shirts. Inquiry revealed these two boys to have been recent participants in this magnificent camp for children with cancer. As I watched, incredulous, they romped through a field littered with hundreds of containers filled with assorted industrial chemicals. Further questioning revealed these drums, barrels, bottles, and cans to contain poisons use to kill hardwood trees ‘contaminating’ the 6,000 acres. In a mono-culture ecology with low ambient timber prices, a magnificent two hundred year old oak tree is viewed as a contaminant. The contaminants used to remove old growth contaminants had contaminated the blood of these children, rendering them victims of rare forms of leukemia, but their abundant toys came in pretty packaging. The father of these children, who had a leasehold on this timber wasteland, could not see the connection between the dire health of his children and the clear cut chemical wilderness in which they romped. When I tried to connect the dots for him, I was quickly invited to leave his land. He did not want to be implicated.
While packing hot meals at Meals on Wheels recently, I was spooning up green beans next to a mother of four serving up helpings of Brunswick stew. Conversation wandered onto recent job creation incentives that will incite consumers to discard perfectly good ‘durable goods’ such as refrigerators, stoves, washer and dryers, and air conditioning systems and buy new ones. Like the cash for clunkers program that destroyed 700,000 serviceable cars, one can expect hundreds of thousands, even millions, of perfectly useable products to be destroyed and land-filled. This mother of four was fantasizing about getting a new washer and dryer under this incentive program.
Believing that all cancer will eventually be proven to be an environmental disease, either from industrial toxins or even viral mutations that damage genetic material, I wondered out loud if it was such a good idea for us to continue to use up our natural world and to keep replacing everything because some financial gimmick was making it enticing. Did this mother really need to replace two large appliances she admitted were still working. Did she have any concern that our consuming ways might just cause cancer in her children and grand children?
“I don’t care. At least they will have clean clothes.” I asked again. Same answer. How I wish I had a tape recorder to capture the vehemence of this mother’s declaration. Have we become so devoted to the religion of secular materialism and consumption that we are willing to practice human sacrifice to the neoplastic monsters of cancer and other occult neurologic nightmares? Are we that different than the ancient Aztecs and Mayans who regular conducted ritual sacrifice?
The United States has the highest annual incidence rates of breast cancer in the world; 128.6 per 100,000 in whites and 112.6 per 100,000 among African Americans. Rates in the US are as much as 700% higher than other regions of the world. If you have had six surgical mitigations for cancer and have had virtually everything cut off or cut out that makes you woman and each day wonder when you are going to get hammered again, statistics become insipid, meaningless. For the astounding number of my female friends who have been through this neoplastic nightmare, I just don’t remember any of them talking about their new appliances. I have heard them talk about their new prosthetics, but those are not being covered under these jobs creation incentives. I do hear employment in the medical field continues rather robust. Perhaps additional incentives are not really needed there.
Do cancer surgery patients sitting in chemo drip rooms really think “Life is really good, after all I have clean clothes from my new washer to wear here while I get infused with these poisons that will make me bald, exhausted, ancient, and miserable?.” Do you really want to send your kids to Camp Sunshine? Perhaps not? Are pretty packages, the newest conveniences worth it? Just ask my girlfriend? She’s been there, done that.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Touch Someone - Turn the Phone Off 2-18-10
Anderson, South Carolina
During my childhood years I was entranced with the high-tech gadgets in the Dick Tracy comic strip. It was inconceivable to me that one could ever wear a device that would allow two-way communication. Even the invention of the transistor had yet to have any impact on the vacuum tube era I grew up in. If one had shown me an I-phone it would have been an absolutely stunning experience. Even here in our fiber-optic wired landscape with an atmosphere permeated by a billion Wi-Fi signals, so-called smart phones are pretty impressive. As I write this, I wonder how many Wi-Fi networks are beaming data packets through my cranium. Technology has evolved, allowing us to do things undreamed of five years ago and not even in the minds of the best sci-fi writers of my childhood.
As someone pointed out, “Technology has advanced so quickly that society has yet to attribute any manners or etiquette to the use of cell phones, pc, and I-pods.” As these devices become ever more powerful and offer greater functional capacity, they also offer greater opportunity to be profoundly disruptive. A number of countries have outlawed the use of these devices in vehicles. A number of spectacular commuter train accidents have been attributed to the use of cell phones by drivers.
The capability of these phones to be used as a modern portable version of the old telegraph has been problematic at best. It has been well-proven that texting while operating machinery or vehicles is twice as dangerous as doing so with twice the legal limit of blood alcohol.
One can find thousands of anecdotal stories of the amazingly rude behavior that is detonated by a cell phone ringer. Kent German writes about cell phone use for a living. He says “Though I write about cell phones every day, even I think it makes perfect sense that cell phones are continually cited in studies that say good manners have gone out of the window. You don't need a sociology degree to see just how handsets have changed how we relate to each other; and I'm not talking about their positive effects (though indeed there are some). Rather, I'm talking about how you can put a cell phone in an otherwise courteous person's hand and then watch how that person loses all awareness of the people around him.”
What is stunning to me is the degree to which this rudeness has pervaded many of our relational dynamics. Not infrequently I have answered my front door to find someone on a cell phone. It has happened numerous times that people will actually come into my house and continue a cell phone call for as long as fifteen minutes. It has become so problematic as for me to actually request some people to not bring their phones into the house. From hearing their conversations, there was no emergency medical advice being given, no mission-critical legal counsel being offered, no frantic calls from brokers asking clients to cover open positions in options trading, nothing whatever that would merit the grossest of rudeness. What is now most impressive about this behavior is the ubiquitous nature of it and its presence in otherwise well-mannered people. German’s columns on cell phone use chronicle these abrupt departures from civilized behavior. Perhaps saddest about the whole degradation of behavior that stems from mobile phones, is the sudden disruption of mindfulness from present activities and people.
It is one thing to exhibit rude behavior in front of strangers, in restaurants, movies, or gymnasiums. It is quite another to do it in front of dear friends in their own houses or after inviting them into yours.
One of my favorite things to do is to load up a box of a dozen vases of cut flowers and several boxes of chocolates and make one of my “spectral runs.” One of my callings in life seems to be to visit shut-ins and individuals going through various intense life crises and cheer them up with a bit of color and a bit of ‘forbidden fruit.’ I make visits, not selling anything, only wanting to give them a bit of good cheer.
Yesterday I made one of my journeys, for the first time taking a dear friend along with me as my assistant. Stopping at a number of places, some of her choosing and some of mine, we had an amazing set of experiences. It is almost passé to say that in every house the large flat screen TV was left on for the entirety of our visit. At every single one of the homes we visited, our visits were disrupted by multiple phone calls. My friend even commented out loud about the number of phone calls. In every case I terminated our visit early, rather than compete with phone calls, none of which were urgent. In every case we awkwardly left with someone engaged in a phone call. The cell phones took priority every time, even though I had flowers and a box of chocolates in hand, and a new friend to introduce.
Countless books have been written over the centuries about hearing the still small voice of God, gaining insight and direction for how to live our lives. In societies with no electronics, no mechanization whatever, hearing the voice of God was a major challenge. I wonder how it is possible to hear the still small voice of God in a Wi-Fi world when we cannot even hear the voice of one standing in front of us, even though with flowers and a box of chocolates in hand, and a new friend to introduce.
The isolation and loneliness in American culture has been the subject of thousand of academic studies and the grist for a number of best seller books. In our fiber-connected Wi-Fi world we seem to have come to some sort of major disconnect of civility. Is that phone call really so important? I might just not ever come back, even though standing in front of you with flowers and a box of chocolates in hand, and a new friend to introduce.
Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.
During my childhood years I was entranced with the high-tech gadgets in the Dick Tracy comic strip. It was inconceivable to me that one could ever wear a device that would allow two-way communication. Even the invention of the transistor had yet to have any impact on the vacuum tube era I grew up in. If one had shown me an I-phone it would have been an absolutely stunning experience. Even here in our fiber-optic wired landscape with an atmosphere permeated by a billion Wi-Fi signals, so-called smart phones are pretty impressive. As I write this, I wonder how many Wi-Fi networks are beaming data packets through my cranium. Technology has evolved, allowing us to do things undreamed of five years ago and not even in the minds of the best sci-fi writers of my childhood.
As someone pointed out, “Technology has advanced so quickly that society has yet to attribute any manners or etiquette to the use of cell phones, pc, and I-pods.” As these devices become ever more powerful and offer greater functional capacity, they also offer greater opportunity to be profoundly disruptive. A number of countries have outlawed the use of these devices in vehicles. A number of spectacular commuter train accidents have been attributed to the use of cell phones by drivers.
The capability of these phones to be used as a modern portable version of the old telegraph has been problematic at best. It has been well-proven that texting while operating machinery or vehicles is twice as dangerous as doing so with twice the legal limit of blood alcohol.
One can find thousands of anecdotal stories of the amazingly rude behavior that is detonated by a cell phone ringer. Kent German writes about cell phone use for a living. He says “Though I write about cell phones every day, even I think it makes perfect sense that cell phones are continually cited in studies that say good manners have gone out of the window. You don't need a sociology degree to see just how handsets have changed how we relate to each other; and I'm not talking about their positive effects (though indeed there are some). Rather, I'm talking about how you can put a cell phone in an otherwise courteous person's hand and then watch how that person loses all awareness of the people around him.”
What is stunning to me is the degree to which this rudeness has pervaded many of our relational dynamics. Not infrequently I have answered my front door to find someone on a cell phone. It has happened numerous times that people will actually come into my house and continue a cell phone call for as long as fifteen minutes. It has become so problematic as for me to actually request some people to not bring their phones into the house. From hearing their conversations, there was no emergency medical advice being given, no mission-critical legal counsel being offered, no frantic calls from brokers asking clients to cover open positions in options trading, nothing whatever that would merit the grossest of rudeness. What is now most impressive about this behavior is the ubiquitous nature of it and its presence in otherwise well-mannered people. German’s columns on cell phone use chronicle these abrupt departures from civilized behavior. Perhaps saddest about the whole degradation of behavior that stems from mobile phones, is the sudden disruption of mindfulness from present activities and people.
It is one thing to exhibit rude behavior in front of strangers, in restaurants, movies, or gymnasiums. It is quite another to do it in front of dear friends in their own houses or after inviting them into yours.
One of my favorite things to do is to load up a box of a dozen vases of cut flowers and several boxes of chocolates and make one of my “spectral runs.” One of my callings in life seems to be to visit shut-ins and individuals going through various intense life crises and cheer them up with a bit of color and a bit of ‘forbidden fruit.’ I make visits, not selling anything, only wanting to give them a bit of good cheer.
Yesterday I made one of my journeys, for the first time taking a dear friend along with me as my assistant. Stopping at a number of places, some of her choosing and some of mine, we had an amazing set of experiences. It is almost passé to say that in every house the large flat screen TV was left on for the entirety of our visit. At every single one of the homes we visited, our visits were disrupted by multiple phone calls. My friend even commented out loud about the number of phone calls. In every case I terminated our visit early, rather than compete with phone calls, none of which were urgent. In every case we awkwardly left with someone engaged in a phone call. The cell phones took priority every time, even though I had flowers and a box of chocolates in hand, and a new friend to introduce.
Countless books have been written over the centuries about hearing the still small voice of God, gaining insight and direction for how to live our lives. In societies with no electronics, no mechanization whatever, hearing the voice of God was a major challenge. I wonder how it is possible to hear the still small voice of God in a Wi-Fi world when we cannot even hear the voice of one standing in front of us, even though with flowers and a box of chocolates in hand, and a new friend to introduce.
The isolation and loneliness in American culture has been the subject of thousand of academic studies and the grist for a number of best seller books. In our fiber-connected Wi-Fi world we seem to have come to some sort of major disconnect of civility. Is that phone call really so important? I might just not ever come back, even though standing in front of you with flowers and a box of chocolates in hand, and a new friend to introduce.
Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.
Gratitude - The Grand Unifying Force 2-15-10
Anderson, South Carolina
In physics the Holy Gail has been the discovery of a single unifying force that would give context and understanding to the four known forces in the universe. For decades physicists have searched for a Grand Unified Theory, surmising that some underlying foundational force must exist, explaining how strong nuclear interaction, electromagnetism, weak nuclear interaction, and gravity relate to each other. We can describe gravity and these other forces to a degree but we really have little understanding as to why things like planets and people stick to each other, why gravity seems to be a strange property of atoms. Despite being the weakest of the four forces, gravity really does help keep things where they belong.
It is thought the so-called strong nuclear interaction is the interaction responsible for holding quarks together to form neutrons and protons, and for holding neutrons and protons together to form nuclei. The particle mediating this force is the gluon. Electromagnetic interaction is the familiar force acting on electrically charged particles. Photons mediate this force. Weak nuclear interaction is a repulsive short-range interaction responsible for some forms of radioactivity that acts on electrons, neutrinos, and quarks. It is governed by the W and Z bosons. Gravitational interaction is a long-range attractive interaction that acts on all particles with mass. The postulated mediating particle has been named the graviton.
It is suggested that energy levels required to confirm any unified theory is far beyond the capacity of current accelerators. The accelerators at CERN in Switzerland are currently being ramped up to about seven trillion electron volts but even these amazing levels are far below what is theoretically needed to make certain experimental confirmations.
There are some 2,600 employees at CERN along with some 8,500 academics from around the world conducting research. The annual budget well exceeds $1 billion. I have recently been conducting some experiments of my own, using a different kind of high energy particle at immensely lower cost. In my ‘work’ I am able to accelerate several kinds of particles at a cost of mere pennies and yet obtain consistent and gratifying results. My annual budget is measured in mere hundreds of dollars.
Using two plastic boxes containing particles of chocolate in assorted sizes and a third box containing red and white banded particles laced with peppermint oil, I am able conduct repeatable experimental series several times each week. A nearby institution allows me free access to its long corridors in which to conduct my experiments.
Valentine’s Day is a magical time of year and for those who are beneficiaries of good health, flowers, chocolates, fine dining, greeting cards, and the affections of others, it is a grand day of celebration and joy. For hundreds of individuals living out their last days in the nearby nursing home, with no options, Valentine’s Day is a difficult one, much like Christmas, New Years, and any of the other days we celebrate with those we love. Often having run out of high energy to embrace life, denizens of those long corridors often sublimate into despair from the unremitting loneliness and confinement.
In my experimental ‘work’ I have consistently found that injection of large numbers of chocolate particles, and more recently red and white banded ones, produces an amazing result. When one makes a journey into those corridors and brings tangible reminders to those living there that they still have great value, the result is sometimes astounding. Only last night, I think I achieved my greatest experimental results to date.
It seemed appropriate to spend Valentine’s Day conducting experiments, so it was that I found myself last night firing particles of chocolate and peppermint at all who entered those corridors. An ancient hunched over agitated woman struggling with her wheelchair showed little promise of making it to her destination. She desperately needed an energy boost. Several particles of Swiss Colony chocolate instantaneously increased her energy level, to an astounding degree. Immediately she was transformed from a morose angry hunch-back inmate into a radiant being full of life. She offered sincere effusive thanks for making her visible.
Based on this strong interaction I decided to modify our experiments. My assistant had a vase of daisies in her hand. We injected it into Elaine’s life. The result was instantaneous and simply wondrous. Standing up, Elaine suddenly overflowed with what has to be the most sublime phenomenon in the human experience, unbounded gratitude. This dear soul suddenly entered into a cascade of thankfulness and gratitude that transformed that cold institutional corridor into a warm cathedral of worship. We laughed, we prayed, we reminisced, we caught others up in the wonder of it. Strangers became dear friends faster than CERN can tear apart atoms. I was close to experiencing the endorphin high that normally only comes from very hard exercise. I think I probably had enough spare energy to get CERN ramped up to levels that would find the unifying force of the universe.
In the recovery world we learn that resentment is perhaps the greatest killer of all and that virtually all of the angst we experience in life derives from its infection in our souls. We are desperately afraid of losing something or not getting something we desperately want. Those with great wisdom tell us that the antidote to it, the anti-matter that will annihilate this most odious and consuming force is none other than gratitude - the very force that transformed this old haggard woman into a dear friend in seconds.
One of the most articulate speakers in the recovery world, Fr, Frank Martin, describes gratitude as the Queen of Emotions. I would suggest it just might be the elusive Grand Unifying Force we have been looking for, perhaps in the wrong places. Perhaps much earlier other authors long ago figured out the unified field theory and we just have been reading the wrong books.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known. But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
When you are out accelerating through life, are you diverting particles of transformation to those who need them, setting up your own experiments; transforming anger, resentment, loneliness, and depression into the wonder of gratitude, thanksgiving, and community? You don’t have to go to Switzerland to collect high energy particles. They are as close as your nearest candy store and florist.
In physics the Holy Gail has been the discovery of a single unifying force that would give context and understanding to the four known forces in the universe. For decades physicists have searched for a Grand Unified Theory, surmising that some underlying foundational force must exist, explaining how strong nuclear interaction, electromagnetism, weak nuclear interaction, and gravity relate to each other. We can describe gravity and these other forces to a degree but we really have little understanding as to why things like planets and people stick to each other, why gravity seems to be a strange property of atoms. Despite being the weakest of the four forces, gravity really does help keep things where they belong.
It is thought the so-called strong nuclear interaction is the interaction responsible for holding quarks together to form neutrons and protons, and for holding neutrons and protons together to form nuclei. The particle mediating this force is the gluon. Electromagnetic interaction is the familiar force acting on electrically charged particles. Photons mediate this force. Weak nuclear interaction is a repulsive short-range interaction responsible for some forms of radioactivity that acts on electrons, neutrinos, and quarks. It is governed by the W and Z bosons. Gravitational interaction is a long-range attractive interaction that acts on all particles with mass. The postulated mediating particle has been named the graviton.
It is suggested that energy levels required to confirm any unified theory is far beyond the capacity of current accelerators. The accelerators at CERN in Switzerland are currently being ramped up to about seven trillion electron volts but even these amazing levels are far below what is theoretically needed to make certain experimental confirmations.
There are some 2,600 employees at CERN along with some 8,500 academics from around the world conducting research. The annual budget well exceeds $1 billion. I have recently been conducting some experiments of my own, using a different kind of high energy particle at immensely lower cost. In my ‘work’ I am able to accelerate several kinds of particles at a cost of mere pennies and yet obtain consistent and gratifying results. My annual budget is measured in mere hundreds of dollars.
Using two plastic boxes containing particles of chocolate in assorted sizes and a third box containing red and white banded particles laced with peppermint oil, I am able conduct repeatable experimental series several times each week. A nearby institution allows me free access to its long corridors in which to conduct my experiments.
Valentine’s Day is a magical time of year and for those who are beneficiaries of good health, flowers, chocolates, fine dining, greeting cards, and the affections of others, it is a grand day of celebration and joy. For hundreds of individuals living out their last days in the nearby nursing home, with no options, Valentine’s Day is a difficult one, much like Christmas, New Years, and any of the other days we celebrate with those we love. Often having run out of high energy to embrace life, denizens of those long corridors often sublimate into despair from the unremitting loneliness and confinement.
In my experimental ‘work’ I have consistently found that injection of large numbers of chocolate particles, and more recently red and white banded ones, produces an amazing result. When one makes a journey into those corridors and brings tangible reminders to those living there that they still have great value, the result is sometimes astounding. Only last night, I think I achieved my greatest experimental results to date.
It seemed appropriate to spend Valentine’s Day conducting experiments, so it was that I found myself last night firing particles of chocolate and peppermint at all who entered those corridors. An ancient hunched over agitated woman struggling with her wheelchair showed little promise of making it to her destination. She desperately needed an energy boost. Several particles of Swiss Colony chocolate instantaneously increased her energy level, to an astounding degree. Immediately she was transformed from a morose angry hunch-back inmate into a radiant being full of life. She offered sincere effusive thanks for making her visible.
Based on this strong interaction I decided to modify our experiments. My assistant had a vase of daisies in her hand. We injected it into Elaine’s life. The result was instantaneous and simply wondrous. Standing up, Elaine suddenly overflowed with what has to be the most sublime phenomenon in the human experience, unbounded gratitude. This dear soul suddenly entered into a cascade of thankfulness and gratitude that transformed that cold institutional corridor into a warm cathedral of worship. We laughed, we prayed, we reminisced, we caught others up in the wonder of it. Strangers became dear friends faster than CERN can tear apart atoms. I was close to experiencing the endorphin high that normally only comes from very hard exercise. I think I probably had enough spare energy to get CERN ramped up to levels that would find the unifying force of the universe.
In the recovery world we learn that resentment is perhaps the greatest killer of all and that virtually all of the angst we experience in life derives from its infection in our souls. We are desperately afraid of losing something or not getting something we desperately want. Those with great wisdom tell us that the antidote to it, the anti-matter that will annihilate this most odious and consuming force is none other than gratitude - the very force that transformed this old haggard woman into a dear friend in seconds.
One of the most articulate speakers in the recovery world, Fr, Frank Martin, describes gratitude as the Queen of Emotions. I would suggest it just might be the elusive Grand Unifying Force we have been looking for, perhaps in the wrong places. Perhaps much earlier other authors long ago figured out the unified field theory and we just have been reading the wrong books.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known. But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
When you are out accelerating through life, are you diverting particles of transformation to those who need them, setting up your own experiments; transforming anger, resentment, loneliness, and depression into the wonder of gratitude, thanksgiving, and community? You don’t have to go to Switzerland to collect high energy particles. They are as close as your nearest candy store and florist.
Life - A Blur at the Speed of Light 2-12-10
Anderson, South Carolina
The nearest spiral galaxy to earth is the Andromeda Galaxy, located some 2.5 million light years from us. The distance is so vast that light travelling at 186,000 miles per second takes two and a half million years to traverse the span between Earth and Andromeda. The image of Andromeda we see in the night sky is how the galaxy appeared millions of years ago. It is most likely that some of the stars we ‘see’ have since exploded into stellar novae and no longer exist. No one turned off the light headed our way.
About 6,500 BC a star in the constellation of Taurus exploded in a fiery nuclear death. More than seven thousand years later this fact made itself evident in the skies above earth. In the year 1054 AD, sometime in late April or early May, Chinese and Arab astronomers reported the sudden appearance of a strange object in the sky, increasing in brightness until July, when it was brighter than anything in the sky except the moon. It was so bright as to be visible at mid day. Today the inconceivably beautiful filaments of this star are known as the Crab Nebula.
A rather curious property of the universe is the compression of time that occurs when the observer travels at near light speed. The mathematics describing general relativity and specific aspects of quantum mechanics suggest that someone travelling at the speed of light to the Andromeda galaxy would only age 54 years. If one is willing to make a speed of light journey to Andromeda and back, one would have aged ‘only’ 108 years. For the rest of us, 50,000 centuries would have come and gone during your interstellar voyages. Don’t plan on anyone leaving the light on for you.
A good friend of mine once made the acerbic observation that he saw his son as a two-year old infant and then suddenly he had graduated from university. Everything in between was lost in a blur. He wondered out loud what happened. He went on to berate himself for having worked impossible hours for thirty six years in a little windowless cell of an office in a textile plant and having missed the biggest chunk of his son’s life. My friend was in essence moving at the speed of light, chasing the mirage of material satisfaction; collecting houses, cars, commercial buildings, and too few images of what really mattered. Moving so fast towards material success, time nearly stood still for my friend, while time moved forward for the rest of the universe in normal fashion. Years later those possessions are sources of great stress and challenge.
His son went on to launch a spectacularly successful career in management, only to be sucked into the black hole of alcoholism, fueled by an unrequited anger. At age 36, his pancreas did the same thing as the exploding progenitor star in the Crab Nebula. A father watched his son die in the garden at his lake house. Suddenly, all the resources in the universe meant nothing. The filaments of that explosion have rippled through nearby lives for nearly a decade.
Science fiction writers for decades have fantasized over the possibilities of travelling at or beyond the speed of light. What they don’t usually do is focus on the liabilities of doing so. The smart people doing physics for a living have pretty good evidence to suggest that travelling at the speed of light is going to result in missing out on a lot of what really matters in life.
The American culture is a bit like an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction without any control rods to slow it down. In a certain sense American life and economics are dependent on an ever increasing rate of expansion and consumption. The reality is these increasing rates of expansion are simply not sustainable. Like the progenitor star that created the Crab Nebula, we are imploding in ever increasing numbers. Millions of families are shattering from divorce. Ever greater numbers are caught up in using the fissile materials of alcohol and drugs. Millions work frantic hours in high stress jobs to earn more so they can spend more. Millions more are being rendered homeless in their breakneck efforts to outspend and outlive those around them. One third of home owners are ‘under water’, they owe more than they are worth. Millions are fleeing the explosion of debt that has welled up around them, causing filaments of foreclosure and homelessness to spread across the land. Unlike the inconceivably beautiful filaments of the Crab Nebula, there is nothing beautiful about the carnage taking place around us, here on earth.
It is reported that every nation in Europe has collective bargaining agreements guaranteeing minimum paid vacations ranging from four to five and one-half weeks. In most cases, mandated vacation periods range up to six weeks. In Sweden, it goes as high as eight weeks. In the United States, vacation time for most workers remains limited to two weeks. I once worked with a nurse who bragged on not having taken a vacation in fourteen years. Millions of workers are on part-time contracts in which case they get no paid vacation at all.
Most people from the United States can honestly say that they often feel rushed. This may be partly due to the fact that many Americans strive for the “American Dream,”- the epitome of success, luxury and happiness. The concept is often regarded as an illusion; yet pressuring its citizens to constantly do more, earn more, and consume more - in order to achieve more - the ideals of American society drive people to constantly be in a hurried state of mind. Time decides when Americans make their appointments, when they do their work, and even how they spend their leisure time. “For many Americans the ‘free moments’ that once glued a busy life together have almost disappeared”. In the United States, time is undoubtedly in control of the everyday lives of most people.
The Pirahã Tribe living in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has an extremely limited language of humming and whistling. There are only three pronouns and it is the only language in existence that does not use subordinate clauses. It is an astoundingly spare language. Using no numbers, letters, or art; they have no concept of time. Specialists such as linguist Daniel Everett at Manchester University have traveled to isolated Pirahã villages to teach the tribe how to read, write, to count; such attempts have generally failed. To even consider introducing the concept of time to this tribe would be foolish, as their concept of numbers is non existent. Extensive attempts to teach them to count to ten failed, not a single person was able to do so after eight months of intensive coaching. They have no specific religious beliefs—no reference to ancestors or heroes of the past. There is no past tense because everything exists for them in the present. When it can no longer be perceived, it ceases, to all intents, to exist. The linguistic limitations of this "carpe diem" culture explain why the Pirahã have no desire to remember where they come from and why they tell no stories. This tribe has presented an ultimate challenge to linguists.
Eventually Everett came up with a surprising explanation for the peculiarities of the Pirahã idiom. "The language is created by the culture," says the linguist. He explains the core of Pirahã culture with a simple formula: "Live here and now." The only thing of importance that is worth communicating to others is what is being experienced at that very moment. "All experience is anchored in the present," says Everett, who believes this carpe-diem culture doesn't allow for abstract thought or complicated connections to the past -- limiting the language accordingly.
For those of us living fast complex lives in Western Europe, North America, or Japan, it is inconceivable that anyone could live this way, outside the tyranny of time. Our entire way of thought and life is not even conceptualized by the Pirahã. Even though it may be difficult for people in time-dependent cultures to understand Pirahã ways, there is an important lesson in their relaxed lifestyle -encouraging people to live every moment for what it’s worth.
Let the batteries die in your clocks; you might just be in time for life.
The nearest spiral galaxy to earth is the Andromeda Galaxy, located some 2.5 million light years from us. The distance is so vast that light travelling at 186,000 miles per second takes two and a half million years to traverse the span between Earth and Andromeda. The image of Andromeda we see in the night sky is how the galaxy appeared millions of years ago. It is most likely that some of the stars we ‘see’ have since exploded into stellar novae and no longer exist. No one turned off the light headed our way.
About 6,500 BC a star in the constellation of Taurus exploded in a fiery nuclear death. More than seven thousand years later this fact made itself evident in the skies above earth. In the year 1054 AD, sometime in late April or early May, Chinese and Arab astronomers reported the sudden appearance of a strange object in the sky, increasing in brightness until July, when it was brighter than anything in the sky except the moon. It was so bright as to be visible at mid day. Today the inconceivably beautiful filaments of this star are known as the Crab Nebula.
A rather curious property of the universe is the compression of time that occurs when the observer travels at near light speed. The mathematics describing general relativity and specific aspects of quantum mechanics suggest that someone travelling at the speed of light to the Andromeda galaxy would only age 54 years. If one is willing to make a speed of light journey to Andromeda and back, one would have aged ‘only’ 108 years. For the rest of us, 50,000 centuries would have come and gone during your interstellar voyages. Don’t plan on anyone leaving the light on for you.
A good friend of mine once made the acerbic observation that he saw his son as a two-year old infant and then suddenly he had graduated from university. Everything in between was lost in a blur. He wondered out loud what happened. He went on to berate himself for having worked impossible hours for thirty six years in a little windowless cell of an office in a textile plant and having missed the biggest chunk of his son’s life. My friend was in essence moving at the speed of light, chasing the mirage of material satisfaction; collecting houses, cars, commercial buildings, and too few images of what really mattered. Moving so fast towards material success, time nearly stood still for my friend, while time moved forward for the rest of the universe in normal fashion. Years later those possessions are sources of great stress and challenge.
His son went on to launch a spectacularly successful career in management, only to be sucked into the black hole of alcoholism, fueled by an unrequited anger. At age 36, his pancreas did the same thing as the exploding progenitor star in the Crab Nebula. A father watched his son die in the garden at his lake house. Suddenly, all the resources in the universe meant nothing. The filaments of that explosion have rippled through nearby lives for nearly a decade.
Science fiction writers for decades have fantasized over the possibilities of travelling at or beyond the speed of light. What they don’t usually do is focus on the liabilities of doing so. The smart people doing physics for a living have pretty good evidence to suggest that travelling at the speed of light is going to result in missing out on a lot of what really matters in life.
The American culture is a bit like an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction without any control rods to slow it down. In a certain sense American life and economics are dependent on an ever increasing rate of expansion and consumption. The reality is these increasing rates of expansion are simply not sustainable. Like the progenitor star that created the Crab Nebula, we are imploding in ever increasing numbers. Millions of families are shattering from divorce. Ever greater numbers are caught up in using the fissile materials of alcohol and drugs. Millions work frantic hours in high stress jobs to earn more so they can spend more. Millions more are being rendered homeless in their breakneck efforts to outspend and outlive those around them. One third of home owners are ‘under water’, they owe more than they are worth. Millions are fleeing the explosion of debt that has welled up around them, causing filaments of foreclosure and homelessness to spread across the land. Unlike the inconceivably beautiful filaments of the Crab Nebula, there is nothing beautiful about the carnage taking place around us, here on earth.
It is reported that every nation in Europe has collective bargaining agreements guaranteeing minimum paid vacations ranging from four to five and one-half weeks. In most cases, mandated vacation periods range up to six weeks. In Sweden, it goes as high as eight weeks. In the United States, vacation time for most workers remains limited to two weeks. I once worked with a nurse who bragged on not having taken a vacation in fourteen years. Millions of workers are on part-time contracts in which case they get no paid vacation at all.
Most people from the United States can honestly say that they often feel rushed. This may be partly due to the fact that many Americans strive for the “American Dream,”- the epitome of success, luxury and happiness. The concept is often regarded as an illusion; yet pressuring its citizens to constantly do more, earn more, and consume more - in order to achieve more - the ideals of American society drive people to constantly be in a hurried state of mind. Time decides when Americans make their appointments, when they do their work, and even how they spend their leisure time. “For many Americans the ‘free moments’ that once glued a busy life together have almost disappeared”. In the United States, time is undoubtedly in control of the everyday lives of most people.
The Pirahã Tribe living in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has an extremely limited language of humming and whistling. There are only three pronouns and it is the only language in existence that does not use subordinate clauses. It is an astoundingly spare language. Using no numbers, letters, or art; they have no concept of time. Specialists such as linguist Daniel Everett at Manchester University have traveled to isolated Pirahã villages to teach the tribe how to read, write, to count; such attempts have generally failed. To even consider introducing the concept of time to this tribe would be foolish, as their concept of numbers is non existent. Extensive attempts to teach them to count to ten failed, not a single person was able to do so after eight months of intensive coaching. They have no specific religious beliefs—no reference to ancestors or heroes of the past. There is no past tense because everything exists for them in the present. When it can no longer be perceived, it ceases, to all intents, to exist. The linguistic limitations of this "carpe diem" culture explain why the Pirahã have no desire to remember where they come from and why they tell no stories. This tribe has presented an ultimate challenge to linguists.
Eventually Everett came up with a surprising explanation for the peculiarities of the Pirahã idiom. "The language is created by the culture," says the linguist. He explains the core of Pirahã culture with a simple formula: "Live here and now." The only thing of importance that is worth communicating to others is what is being experienced at that very moment. "All experience is anchored in the present," says Everett, who believes this carpe-diem culture doesn't allow for abstract thought or complicated connections to the past -- limiting the language accordingly.
For those of us living fast complex lives in Western Europe, North America, or Japan, it is inconceivable that anyone could live this way, outside the tyranny of time. Our entire way of thought and life is not even conceptualized by the Pirahã. Even though it may be difficult for people in time-dependent cultures to understand Pirahã ways, there is an important lesson in their relaxed lifestyle -encouraging people to live every moment for what it’s worth.
Let the batteries die in your clocks; you might just be in time for life.
Community - Life at Slow Speed 2-11-10
Anderson, South Carolina
In the early 1980s I was referred to as ‘our second dad’ by four little kids living in Birmingham. For one that never married or fathered children, this was a rather august title for me to hold. I have vivid memories of spending time with this amazingly happy and ‘successful’ family, a family that could measure its success by things such as the number of times a large red dinner plate was put out on the south end of the kitchen table, proclaiming to its user “You are Special Today.” I left that table well satisfied many times. When I went through the nightmare of a catastrophic neurological diagnosis, this family was with me through the Valley of the Shadow. The distance of twenty years has given me a sense of safety from what was a wrong diagnosis.
Alas, that same twenty years has reduced this once vibrant chapter of my life to little more that a rare group forward in one of my e-mail accounts. My personal e-mails are unanswered for the most part. I just received another one of those group e-mails on behalf of one of their now-grown sons, one recounting a recent move to a little paradise in the southwest of France to take up a new life there. From reading the assorted links in this e-mail I have a sense that this new life includes a fine wife, originally from the Lyon region of France. The dimming effects of time, speed, and distance make my present image of this family murky at best.
Embedded within a linked blog was a message of absolute clarity; one about the secret to building true community, about finding a way of life that will scratch the deepest itches in one’s soul. Sometimes e-mail can be really redemptive and clarifying. Jeff comments. “As an inhabitant of Auch put it himself, if life in Toulouse is lived at 200 km/hour, life in the Gers is lived at 50 km/hour. To that I would add: put life in the US in general at 500 km/hour, to get a real picture. What a change! We came from the States with the old adage clearly printed in our minds: “time is money,” only to find that it did not hold true here... or so it seems, at least. People are clearly not so much time-oriented in the Gers, but more so people-oriented and “quality of life - oriented”, if you will. They work very hard and have a good work ethic (a lot of farmers, small-business owners, and artisans) , but I would suggest that their productivity does not so much depend on time as it does on good relationships and quality of life.”
My memories of southern France are not unlike Jeff’s. It amazed me that the entire country shuts down everyday from noon until 2 PM, that it still does. Dining is an epic event, a destination, not an intermediate stop. Most vivid in my memory is the sense of public space where everyone congregated, just sitting and chatting, men playing their form of giant adult marbles, no thought being given to the next place to be or the next task to be torn into. Mindfulness to one’s present moment was fully evident.
Some twenty years ago Bernt Amadeaus Capra produced an amazing film called “Mind Walk”, filmed entirely on a glorious tiny island off the coast of France, a speck of medieval wonder called Mont Saint Michel. Based on the bestselling physics book, The Turning Point, by his brother Fritjof Capra, the viewer was taken into an amazing world where changing one’s perspective could produce an entirely different life experience. Liv Ullmann portrayed an intense Norwegian quantum physicist who mused out loud about the transformative effects of systems theory and systems thinking. The film was well seasoned with entrancing concepts from quantum mechanics and particle physics.
The whole concept of systems theory is nearly anathema to a culture based on individualism and ever increasing competitiveness. In her role, Ullmann nearly begs an American presidential candidate to consider a world view, one grounded in the hard science of physics, in which all things and all beings are part of a greater fabric, one in which none of us live as islands. As a frustrated communitarian and idealist, this film was therapy to my soul the many times I viewed it. Alas, in the blur of life, my copy of it has long since disappeared.
A great source of angst for me has long been this sense that we in America live on a journey consisting of a chain of uncounted intermediate stops, never arriving at a meaningful destination. I am reminded of travellers caught in red tape, trapped for years, living in airport terminals in France. In a celebrated case, a stateless man lived in Charles De Gaulle Airport for seventeen years.
This sense of people living in terminals is no more obvious than in American churches. The largest church in my county (13,000 members) cancelled its Sunday evening service so that people could watch their plasma screens and joint 107.5 million others in watching the Super Bowl. Some Catholic parishes made the unprecedented move of cancelling masses. A church in my neighborhood has each year been shortening its mid-week programming because of pressure from members to do so, citing a million things needing to be done elsewhere. My own church did away with its midweek service due to lack of interest. The midweek dinner is a hurried affair with serving beginning at 6 PM and the room usually cleaned and empty by 7 PM. Our annual breakfast was allotted little more than twenty five minutes. There is an articulated sense that there are simply too many other urgent things to be taken care of ‘out there’.
I think of those warm evenings in France where the best conversations are just getting started at 7 PM, where meals might last four hours, relationships last for decades. Here in the 500 km/hr American culture meals are fifteen minute refueling stops, friendships have degraded to group-forwards.
In recovery there is a sound byte, “A drunk will get you drunk a lot sooner than you will get him sober.” I can only hope that the people living in that grand little town in southwest France will have a lot more influence on Jeff than he will on them. Perhaps he can come back one day and teach us that time is not money, rather instead life itself. Perhaps, even how to live.
In the early 1980s I was referred to as ‘our second dad’ by four little kids living in Birmingham. For one that never married or fathered children, this was a rather august title for me to hold. I have vivid memories of spending time with this amazingly happy and ‘successful’ family, a family that could measure its success by things such as the number of times a large red dinner plate was put out on the south end of the kitchen table, proclaiming to its user “You are Special Today.” I left that table well satisfied many times. When I went through the nightmare of a catastrophic neurological diagnosis, this family was with me through the Valley of the Shadow. The distance of twenty years has given me a sense of safety from what was a wrong diagnosis.
Alas, that same twenty years has reduced this once vibrant chapter of my life to little more that a rare group forward in one of my e-mail accounts. My personal e-mails are unanswered for the most part. I just received another one of those group e-mails on behalf of one of their now-grown sons, one recounting a recent move to a little paradise in the southwest of France to take up a new life there. From reading the assorted links in this e-mail I have a sense that this new life includes a fine wife, originally from the Lyon region of France. The dimming effects of time, speed, and distance make my present image of this family murky at best.
Embedded within a linked blog was a message of absolute clarity; one about the secret to building true community, about finding a way of life that will scratch the deepest itches in one’s soul. Sometimes e-mail can be really redemptive and clarifying. Jeff comments. “As an inhabitant of Auch put it himself, if life in Toulouse is lived at 200 km/hour, life in the Gers is lived at 50 km/hour. To that I would add: put life in the US in general at 500 km/hour, to get a real picture. What a change! We came from the States with the old adage clearly printed in our minds: “time is money,” only to find that it did not hold true here... or so it seems, at least. People are clearly not so much time-oriented in the Gers, but more so people-oriented and “quality of life - oriented”, if you will. They work very hard and have a good work ethic (a lot of farmers, small-business owners, and artisans) , but I would suggest that their productivity does not so much depend on time as it does on good relationships and quality of life.”
My memories of southern France are not unlike Jeff’s. It amazed me that the entire country shuts down everyday from noon until 2 PM, that it still does. Dining is an epic event, a destination, not an intermediate stop. Most vivid in my memory is the sense of public space where everyone congregated, just sitting and chatting, men playing their form of giant adult marbles, no thought being given to the next place to be or the next task to be torn into. Mindfulness to one’s present moment was fully evident.
Some twenty years ago Bernt Amadeaus Capra produced an amazing film called “Mind Walk”, filmed entirely on a glorious tiny island off the coast of France, a speck of medieval wonder called Mont Saint Michel. Based on the bestselling physics book, The Turning Point, by his brother Fritjof Capra, the viewer was taken into an amazing world where changing one’s perspective could produce an entirely different life experience. Liv Ullmann portrayed an intense Norwegian quantum physicist who mused out loud about the transformative effects of systems theory and systems thinking. The film was well seasoned with entrancing concepts from quantum mechanics and particle physics.
The whole concept of systems theory is nearly anathema to a culture based on individualism and ever increasing competitiveness. In her role, Ullmann nearly begs an American presidential candidate to consider a world view, one grounded in the hard science of physics, in which all things and all beings are part of a greater fabric, one in which none of us live as islands. As a frustrated communitarian and idealist, this film was therapy to my soul the many times I viewed it. Alas, in the blur of life, my copy of it has long since disappeared.
A great source of angst for me has long been this sense that we in America live on a journey consisting of a chain of uncounted intermediate stops, never arriving at a meaningful destination. I am reminded of travellers caught in red tape, trapped for years, living in airport terminals in France. In a celebrated case, a stateless man lived in Charles De Gaulle Airport for seventeen years.
This sense of people living in terminals is no more obvious than in American churches. The largest church in my county (13,000 members) cancelled its Sunday evening service so that people could watch their plasma screens and joint 107.5 million others in watching the Super Bowl. Some Catholic parishes made the unprecedented move of cancelling masses. A church in my neighborhood has each year been shortening its mid-week programming because of pressure from members to do so, citing a million things needing to be done elsewhere. My own church did away with its midweek service due to lack of interest. The midweek dinner is a hurried affair with serving beginning at 6 PM and the room usually cleaned and empty by 7 PM. Our annual breakfast was allotted little more than twenty five minutes. There is an articulated sense that there are simply too many other urgent things to be taken care of ‘out there’.
I think of those warm evenings in France where the best conversations are just getting started at 7 PM, where meals might last four hours, relationships last for decades. Here in the 500 km/hr American culture meals are fifteen minute refueling stops, friendships have degraded to group-forwards.
In recovery there is a sound byte, “A drunk will get you drunk a lot sooner than you will get him sober.” I can only hope that the people living in that grand little town in southwest France will have a lot more influence on Jeff than he will on them. Perhaps he can come back one day and teach us that time is not money, rather instead life itself. Perhaps, even how to live.
Community - Recovering the Stories of Life 2-9-10
Anderson, South Carolina
When I am sitting in my little computer room in my basement I have very little contact with the outside world. The heat exchanger fans in a large buck stove in the next room mask just about any exterior sounds whatever. The assorted drives and ventilator fans of computers fill in any remaining specks of silence. Thus it is amazing that I could even hear the doorbell on the next floor at all, more of a subliminal sensibility than actual hearing.
Curious, I went upstairs wondering who could possibly be at my door at first light. Door-to-door salesmen went out sometime after the Great Depression of the last century. Neighborhood kids selling cookies and gift wrap work in the afternoon. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons don’t ply their trade until a bit later in the day and not usually much during the sharp chills of winter. What I found instead was a smiling messenger with physical evidence of the profound friendliness of the universe.
I have been working a couple of months to archive all my intellectual materials - photos, essays, book manuscripts, letters, and journals. While working on this process yesterday, one of the transfer drives I have been using to do this failed, taking several years of my life with it. I figure somewhere around twenty thousand files were in that drive. Long under the impression that these transfer drives were essentially indestructible, I was astounded that it simply died, that it even could. For those of us that justify our existence by writing about the world, by capturing its essence in digital images, to lose a couple years of work is disquieting, to say the least. Sleep was fitful at best.
After my personal catastrophe at 10:45 PM last night, I called a dear friend. Unable to really pay attention to her, I asked her to listen as I said a short immature prayer, one bargaining with God to give me my stuff back if I would give him my forever; not unlike those prayers people utter when facing catastrophic illness. I wondered if my friend really knew what a big deal this was to me.
She was just at my door with an ordinary piece of 20 pound copy paper. On it a small paragraph and a website URL suggested a solution to my problem. My friend described being in near tears over my loss and had gone on a mission during the night to find me a data recovery solution and to bring it to me on her way to work. As priceless as this information may prove to be, the intangibles she brought had infinitely greater value. What Diana told me was that life works much better when we care about each other and when we make thoughtful contributions to the journeys of those around us. In community we can do those things we cannot do alone.
It is not likely that I will ever be able to articulate the affective catharsis I felt when confronted with this innate friendliness of the world. I can get on the wire services and find out what is wrong with most everything in seconds. What my friend did was show me what is right about the foundations of the universe. That little piece of photocopy paper reached into a deeper place in my soul by far than even winning the world last year in an airline’s essay contest, a prize that granted me first class travel anywhere in the world for thirty days. I was just now able to experience the very best our world has to offer us, never having to even board a jet.
Standing in my front hall, I was again reminded of the promise “I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil, plans that will give you hope and a future.” If God really pays attention to what are actually tiny details in our lives, then he might just pay attention to the big ones like notes on the kitchen table from a departed spouse, pronouncements from oncologists that therapy has failed, a pink slip from the boss indicating our services are no longer needed, a notice from the mortgage banker telling us we should go to the post office and get a change of address kit.
For certain, this is not Polly Anna thinking on my part. The one who brought me this message of hope, friendliness, and care has sat in front of the oncologist’s desk more times than I can count, to be told there was some very strong turbulence ahead. She put on her seatbelt and has continued her successful flight through life. For the dozens of friends around me who are going through the clear air turbulence of shattered marriages and long-term unemployment, perhaps there is a message for them, that despite the rough ride a safe landing can be had, if they simply keep their seatbelts on.
If we can simply trust the Pilot to know what He is doing, then we can actually have confidence that we will arrive at our chosen destination. In recovery we are told, “As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy Will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves".
As if to confirm that when we seek God with all out hearts we will find him, my dear friend also brought me a Tupperware container filled with peanut butter hay stacks. When we attempt a nearly impossible search for something important to us, a needle in a haystack, a lost spouse, vital health, the home of our dreams, lost data files, we come to learn that in our own strength we cannot find that which has been lost. If we just believe, then all things are possible, finding God, even getting back one’s stories of life. Answer the door, a messenger might just be there to help dispel your doubts.
When I am sitting in my little computer room in my basement I have very little contact with the outside world. The heat exchanger fans in a large buck stove in the next room mask just about any exterior sounds whatever. The assorted drives and ventilator fans of computers fill in any remaining specks of silence. Thus it is amazing that I could even hear the doorbell on the next floor at all, more of a subliminal sensibility than actual hearing.
Curious, I went upstairs wondering who could possibly be at my door at first light. Door-to-door salesmen went out sometime after the Great Depression of the last century. Neighborhood kids selling cookies and gift wrap work in the afternoon. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons don’t ply their trade until a bit later in the day and not usually much during the sharp chills of winter. What I found instead was a smiling messenger with physical evidence of the profound friendliness of the universe.
I have been working a couple of months to archive all my intellectual materials - photos, essays, book manuscripts, letters, and journals. While working on this process yesterday, one of the transfer drives I have been using to do this failed, taking several years of my life with it. I figure somewhere around twenty thousand files were in that drive. Long under the impression that these transfer drives were essentially indestructible, I was astounded that it simply died, that it even could. For those of us that justify our existence by writing about the world, by capturing its essence in digital images, to lose a couple years of work is disquieting, to say the least. Sleep was fitful at best.
After my personal catastrophe at 10:45 PM last night, I called a dear friend. Unable to really pay attention to her, I asked her to listen as I said a short immature prayer, one bargaining with God to give me my stuff back if I would give him my forever; not unlike those prayers people utter when facing catastrophic illness. I wondered if my friend really knew what a big deal this was to me.
She was just at my door with an ordinary piece of 20 pound copy paper. On it a small paragraph and a website URL suggested a solution to my problem. My friend described being in near tears over my loss and had gone on a mission during the night to find me a data recovery solution and to bring it to me on her way to work. As priceless as this information may prove to be, the intangibles she brought had infinitely greater value. What Diana told me was that life works much better when we care about each other and when we make thoughtful contributions to the journeys of those around us. In community we can do those things we cannot do alone.
It is not likely that I will ever be able to articulate the affective catharsis I felt when confronted with this innate friendliness of the world. I can get on the wire services and find out what is wrong with most everything in seconds. What my friend did was show me what is right about the foundations of the universe. That little piece of photocopy paper reached into a deeper place in my soul by far than even winning the world last year in an airline’s essay contest, a prize that granted me first class travel anywhere in the world for thirty days. I was just now able to experience the very best our world has to offer us, never having to even board a jet.
Standing in my front hall, I was again reminded of the promise “I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil, plans that will give you hope and a future.” If God really pays attention to what are actually tiny details in our lives, then he might just pay attention to the big ones like notes on the kitchen table from a departed spouse, pronouncements from oncologists that therapy has failed, a pink slip from the boss indicating our services are no longer needed, a notice from the mortgage banker telling us we should go to the post office and get a change of address kit.
For certain, this is not Polly Anna thinking on my part. The one who brought me this message of hope, friendliness, and care has sat in front of the oncologist’s desk more times than I can count, to be told there was some very strong turbulence ahead. She put on her seatbelt and has continued her successful flight through life. For the dozens of friends around me who are going through the clear air turbulence of shattered marriages and long-term unemployment, perhaps there is a message for them, that despite the rough ride a safe landing can be had, if they simply keep their seatbelts on.
If we can simply trust the Pilot to know what He is doing, then we can actually have confidence that we will arrive at our chosen destination. In recovery we are told, “As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy Will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves".
As if to confirm that when we seek God with all out hearts we will find him, my dear friend also brought me a Tupperware container filled with peanut butter hay stacks. When we attempt a nearly impossible search for something important to us, a needle in a haystack, a lost spouse, vital health, the home of our dreams, lost data files, we come to learn that in our own strength we cannot find that which has been lost. If we just believe, then all things are possible, finding God, even getting back one’s stories of life. Answer the door, a messenger might just be there to help dispel your doubts.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Contrails 2-3-10
Anderson, South Carolina
It is the 3rd of February with grand cerulean skies and a balmy 54 degrees. All the doors are open with a fine breeze blowing out the stagnancy of winter that has accreted in the house during the past three months of seasonal darkness. The sky is crisscrossed with contrails, which have always inspired and enthralled me, giving me the inspiration for some of my best poems. I derive grand pleasures from ruminating about the possible dreams people are being carried to on them, especially the vermillion ones at sunset. Living one hundred thirty miles east of the busiest airport in the world, most twilights afford a view of as many as a dozen of these translucent heavenly wakes at any given time; that hundred and thirty miles giving jets time to climb seven miles or more above me into the last gleaming remains of the day.
As far as I know, February 3rd has no grand significance in our recent history. What is true is almost no one seemed to notice the significance of yesterday’s date in history. There was nothing whatever on the wire services that I could find. What is absolutely certain is that for at least seven families, perhaps many more, Feb 2nd will forever remain one of the most significant days in their lives. No reminders needed; one wonders about the incredible varieties of life experience that can co-exist. For me it was an ordinary day with my greatest decision being about what to order for lunch. For others it is a day of inconceivable angst and bewilderment, every year.
Seven years ago on the date, at midmorning, contrails lost some of their luster. We all watched a large high one as it pulsated in the cobalt Texas sky and split into multiple streams at Mach 18. Another one of those seminal images had been etched into our memories, only too soon. It proved to be a harbinger of doom as America and Israel lost seven of their best high-flyers, just sixteen minutes before a happy reunion with family and those that dreamed and dared to do big things, impossible things.
Tragically, both of our countries have become expert at suffering hideous losses. One can only hope that one day we will all be able to simply picnic on warm fields of spring grass rather than search out our fallen comrades and the detritus of their once gleaming chariots and towers.
Be honest with yourself. Did you even notice the date? Remember to pray for them?
It is the 3rd of February with grand cerulean skies and a balmy 54 degrees. All the doors are open with a fine breeze blowing out the stagnancy of winter that has accreted in the house during the past three months of seasonal darkness. The sky is crisscrossed with contrails, which have always inspired and enthralled me, giving me the inspiration for some of my best poems. I derive grand pleasures from ruminating about the possible dreams people are being carried to on them, especially the vermillion ones at sunset. Living one hundred thirty miles east of the busiest airport in the world, most twilights afford a view of as many as a dozen of these translucent heavenly wakes at any given time; that hundred and thirty miles giving jets time to climb seven miles or more above me into the last gleaming remains of the day.
As far as I know, February 3rd has no grand significance in our recent history. What is true is almost no one seemed to notice the significance of yesterday’s date in history. There was nothing whatever on the wire services that I could find. What is absolutely certain is that for at least seven families, perhaps many more, Feb 2nd will forever remain one of the most significant days in their lives. No reminders needed; one wonders about the incredible varieties of life experience that can co-exist. For me it was an ordinary day with my greatest decision being about what to order for lunch. For others it is a day of inconceivable angst and bewilderment, every year.
Seven years ago on the date, at midmorning, contrails lost some of their luster. We all watched a large high one as it pulsated in the cobalt Texas sky and split into multiple streams at Mach 18. Another one of those seminal images had been etched into our memories, only too soon. It proved to be a harbinger of doom as America and Israel lost seven of their best high-flyers, just sixteen minutes before a happy reunion with family and those that dreamed and dared to do big things, impossible things.
Tragically, both of our countries have become expert at suffering hideous losses. One can only hope that one day we will all be able to simply picnic on warm fields of spring grass rather than search out our fallen comrades and the detritus of their once gleaming chariots and towers.
Be honest with yourself. Did you even notice the date? Remember to pray for them?
The Fissioning of Community 2-2-10
Anderson, South Carolina
In the 20th century a source of inconceivable power was discovered. Earnest Rutherford, a New Zealander, successfully split an atom in 1917 at Manchester, England. Building on this work, Enrico Fermi and his colleagues in 1934 explored the consequences of bombarding uranium with neutrons. In 1944 Otto Hahn received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with his discovery of nuclear fission. Meantime, Frédéric Joliot-Curie in Paris figured out that secondary neutrons are released during uranium fission, thus making a nuclear chain-reaction feasible. Underneath the stadium seats at the University of Chicago in 1942 ominous scientific advances allowed the development of a ‘successful’ nuclear chain reaction.
It was not long before we were seeing haunting images of mushroom clouds roiling up into themselves, sucking the known world into Cold War, spawned by the advent of the Atomic Age. Run-away nuclear chain reactions in the skies over Nagasaki and Hiroshima convinced the world weapons of mass destruction were not the stuff of hyperbole or science fiction. The world became paralyzed with fear after opening Pandora’s Box. Atomic bomb drop drills in elementary schools became de rigueur.
One can be certain that the chemists and physicists doing the early explorations of the often surreal nuclear world had not set out to find ways to vaporize Japanese cities. Sadly, the Law of Unintended Consequences often takes over. A cascade of events and behaviors can produce radically different outcomes than originally intended. The Law of Unintended Consequences is the outgrowth of many theories, but best defined by sociologist Robert K. Merton in 1936. In his landmark article, The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action, he described five ways that actions, particularly those taken on a large scale by governments, may have unexpected consequences. These may be positive, negative or merely neutral, but they veer off, sometimes radically, from the intent of the initial action.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is foundational to economic theory. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” the most famous metaphor in social science, is an example of a positive unintended consequence. Smith maintained that each individual, seeking only his own gain, “is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention,” that end being the public interest.”
Most often, however, the law of unintended consequences illuminates the adverse unanticipated effects of legislation and regulation. In the case of physics and chemistry research, it led to the run-away reactions over Hiroshima. Much of foreign policy for seventy years has centered on attempts to gain control of unintended consequences that threaten our very existence.
In the early part of the 20th century divorce was a rarity in the United States. In many countries divorce was not even permitted by law. A number of countries still prohibit divorce. The Law of Unintended Consequences has been clearly seen in the case of legislation and regulation affecting divorce. The Divorce Reform Act of 1969 in the United Kingdom is credited with a doubling of divorces from 1961 to 1969. The number doubled again from 1969 to 1972. The number increased further in the years following. In the United States in 2008 46% of all marriages involved a remarriage for one or both spouses.
In the United States, 49 states permit no-fault divorce. Neither partner has to give a reason for wanting out. In some foreign jurisdictions, electronic divorce is permitted. Summary judgment in uncontested cases is granted in as little as one hour after filing, less time than it takes to get a book shipped overnight from Amazon. In the United States one can go online and file for uncontested divorce for $90, but one will get the Amazon book before summary judgment is granted.
Good observational science requires a lot of field work. Observational work in physics is inconceivably expensive. Yet, it doe not take billion-dollar colliders to assess the consequences of what has become a run-away reaction in the relational lives of married people. In sociology it often takes little more than the ability to ask the right questions and keep track of the answers. High energy neutrons tend to bust up certain kinds of atoms with some decidedly unhappy consequences. The consequences of high-energy easy divorce have shredded the fabric of American society.
Judith Wallerstein wrote a landmark book, Second Chances, describing the devastating impact of divorce on children, consequence that last a lifetime. As the son of a mother married four times, it was not necessary for me to read an academic book to validate Wallerstein’s conclusions. There are no winners in this kind of fission and I have been paying the price for a run-away reaction my entire life.
At present, I am watching the run-away reaction of easy divorce running through many of my social circles. A long-time friend of twenty years has just walked from her marriage of three decades into the arms of another friend who has walked from his faithful wife of three decades. They have given up a third of a century of relational history, challenge, and financial security for that ill-defined chemistry that does not produce anything sustainable. Instead they have set off a chain reaction that will only further contribute to the shredding of our social fabric, to the collapse of community as we know it. Already this chain reaction has severely disrupted a social circle that until recently was a great source of joy for many of us. I have lost at least two, perhaps several, very good friends as a consequence. The neutrons of divorce continue to split the building blocks of community. Another in this circle has filed for divorce and the disruption and consequences of this failure are only now beginning to be felt. The secondary disturbances to relationships with those around her are substantial. It is easy to surmise that this social group will dissipate within days.
Perhaps most disquieting is the reality that these relational perturbations are being felt in what would have once been safe harbors - churches. A number of relational failures in my church have seriously disrupted parts of the social fabric that once had much more substance to it. In my immediate experience, these perturbations are affecting my place in the church, enough so that I wonder how viable my long-term tenancy in the church might actually be.
People I know only at great distance are experiencing devastating consequences when the neutrons of violence, lust, infidelity, pornography, materialism, and financial recklessness split their marriages and dreams into sub-atomic fragments. There seems to be no containment for the carnage. Every day I hear the vast pain.
One of the most critical considerations in nuclear physics is the ability to stop a run-away chain reaction. Unintended failure to stop a reaction will cause the catastrophic melt-down of a nuclear power plant, as we saw at Chernobyl. Willful failure to stop a run-away reaction resulted in the immolation of two Japanese cities. The only way to stop run-away fission reactions is to sop up excess neutrons careening through fissile material. Curiously, plain old graphite was found to be an effective sponge for too many neutrons. Control rods of graphite are a safe and effective means of keeping fission reactions in nuclear power plant warming my house, rather than producing China Syndromes. Alas, no one has ever thought to put any kind of control rods in nuclear bombs. Once launched, the intent is for the run-away reaction to consume the dreams of thousands.
Divorce in America is a run-away reaction splitting asunder millions of lives. One wonders if there are any control rods of reconciliation that can be inserted into the frayed fabric of our society, stopping this wanton waste of dreams, possibilities, and hopes once wrapped in the white satin of nuptial bliss. At one time there appeared to be control rods of moral and relational expectation in place that contained the errant neutrons. Even the larger secular culture sopped up errant neutrons with its expectations of right conduct. The compelling and urgent challenge before us is finding effective ways to re-install the rods that will stop the run-away carnage.
I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil. Plans that will give you hope and a future … Call unto me and I will show you great and mighty things which you knowest not.
In the 20th century a source of inconceivable power was discovered. Earnest Rutherford, a New Zealander, successfully split an atom in 1917 at Manchester, England. Building on this work, Enrico Fermi and his colleagues in 1934 explored the consequences of bombarding uranium with neutrons. In 1944 Otto Hahn received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with his discovery of nuclear fission. Meantime, Frédéric Joliot-Curie in Paris figured out that secondary neutrons are released during uranium fission, thus making a nuclear chain-reaction feasible. Underneath the stadium seats at the University of Chicago in 1942 ominous scientific advances allowed the development of a ‘successful’ nuclear chain reaction.
It was not long before we were seeing haunting images of mushroom clouds roiling up into themselves, sucking the known world into Cold War, spawned by the advent of the Atomic Age. Run-away nuclear chain reactions in the skies over Nagasaki and Hiroshima convinced the world weapons of mass destruction were not the stuff of hyperbole or science fiction. The world became paralyzed with fear after opening Pandora’s Box. Atomic bomb drop drills in elementary schools became de rigueur.
One can be certain that the chemists and physicists doing the early explorations of the often surreal nuclear world had not set out to find ways to vaporize Japanese cities. Sadly, the Law of Unintended Consequences often takes over. A cascade of events and behaviors can produce radically different outcomes than originally intended. The Law of Unintended Consequences is the outgrowth of many theories, but best defined by sociologist Robert K. Merton in 1936. In his landmark article, The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action, he described five ways that actions, particularly those taken on a large scale by governments, may have unexpected consequences. These may be positive, negative or merely neutral, but they veer off, sometimes radically, from the intent of the initial action.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is foundational to economic theory. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” the most famous metaphor in social science, is an example of a positive unintended consequence. Smith maintained that each individual, seeking only his own gain, “is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention,” that end being the public interest.”
Most often, however, the law of unintended consequences illuminates the adverse unanticipated effects of legislation and regulation. In the case of physics and chemistry research, it led to the run-away reactions over Hiroshima. Much of foreign policy for seventy years has centered on attempts to gain control of unintended consequences that threaten our very existence.
In the early part of the 20th century divorce was a rarity in the United States. In many countries divorce was not even permitted by law. A number of countries still prohibit divorce. The Law of Unintended Consequences has been clearly seen in the case of legislation and regulation affecting divorce. The Divorce Reform Act of 1969 in the United Kingdom is credited with a doubling of divorces from 1961 to 1969. The number doubled again from 1969 to 1972. The number increased further in the years following. In the United States in 2008 46% of all marriages involved a remarriage for one or both spouses.
In the United States, 49 states permit no-fault divorce. Neither partner has to give a reason for wanting out. In some foreign jurisdictions, electronic divorce is permitted. Summary judgment in uncontested cases is granted in as little as one hour after filing, less time than it takes to get a book shipped overnight from Amazon. In the United States one can go online and file for uncontested divorce for $90, but one will get the Amazon book before summary judgment is granted.
Good observational science requires a lot of field work. Observational work in physics is inconceivably expensive. Yet, it doe not take billion-dollar colliders to assess the consequences of what has become a run-away reaction in the relational lives of married people. In sociology it often takes little more than the ability to ask the right questions and keep track of the answers. High energy neutrons tend to bust up certain kinds of atoms with some decidedly unhappy consequences. The consequences of high-energy easy divorce have shredded the fabric of American society.
Judith Wallerstein wrote a landmark book, Second Chances, describing the devastating impact of divorce on children, consequence that last a lifetime. As the son of a mother married four times, it was not necessary for me to read an academic book to validate Wallerstein’s conclusions. There are no winners in this kind of fission and I have been paying the price for a run-away reaction my entire life.
At present, I am watching the run-away reaction of easy divorce running through many of my social circles. A long-time friend of twenty years has just walked from her marriage of three decades into the arms of another friend who has walked from his faithful wife of three decades. They have given up a third of a century of relational history, challenge, and financial security for that ill-defined chemistry that does not produce anything sustainable. Instead they have set off a chain reaction that will only further contribute to the shredding of our social fabric, to the collapse of community as we know it. Already this chain reaction has severely disrupted a social circle that until recently was a great source of joy for many of us. I have lost at least two, perhaps several, very good friends as a consequence. The neutrons of divorce continue to split the building blocks of community. Another in this circle has filed for divorce and the disruption and consequences of this failure are only now beginning to be felt. The secondary disturbances to relationships with those around her are substantial. It is easy to surmise that this social group will dissipate within days.
Perhaps most disquieting is the reality that these relational perturbations are being felt in what would have once been safe harbors - churches. A number of relational failures in my church have seriously disrupted parts of the social fabric that once had much more substance to it. In my immediate experience, these perturbations are affecting my place in the church, enough so that I wonder how viable my long-term tenancy in the church might actually be.
People I know only at great distance are experiencing devastating consequences when the neutrons of violence, lust, infidelity, pornography, materialism, and financial recklessness split their marriages and dreams into sub-atomic fragments. There seems to be no containment for the carnage. Every day I hear the vast pain.
One of the most critical considerations in nuclear physics is the ability to stop a run-away chain reaction. Unintended failure to stop a reaction will cause the catastrophic melt-down of a nuclear power plant, as we saw at Chernobyl. Willful failure to stop a run-away reaction resulted in the immolation of two Japanese cities. The only way to stop run-away fission reactions is to sop up excess neutrons careening through fissile material. Curiously, plain old graphite was found to be an effective sponge for too many neutrons. Control rods of graphite are a safe and effective means of keeping fission reactions in nuclear power plant warming my house, rather than producing China Syndromes. Alas, no one has ever thought to put any kind of control rods in nuclear bombs. Once launched, the intent is for the run-away reaction to consume the dreams of thousands.
Divorce in America is a run-away reaction splitting asunder millions of lives. One wonders if there are any control rods of reconciliation that can be inserted into the frayed fabric of our society, stopping this wanton waste of dreams, possibilities, and hopes once wrapped in the white satin of nuptial bliss. At one time there appeared to be control rods of moral and relational expectation in place that contained the errant neutrons. Even the larger secular culture sopped up errant neutrons with its expectations of right conduct. The compelling and urgent challenge before us is finding effective ways to re-install the rods that will stop the run-away carnage.
I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil. Plans that will give you hope and a future … Call unto me and I will show you great and mighty things which you knowest not.
The Half Life of Community 2-1-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Last night a man full of life came to my house with his son to celebrate his 90th birthday. Not worrying about his cholesterol, Bill enjoyed a truly decadent double chocolate cake made by another well-wisher. I’m told it had several sticks of butter in it. We had the satisfaction of asking many questions about life by ‘mining’ Bill’s nearly century old memories; wondering if the world has really changed. He described a world, a sense of community, of connection that is hard to fathom in the transient disconnected culture America has become. Could there have really been a time when people put down deep roots and connected firmly to those around them?
Bill’s son Andy must be about fifty. He now lives three thousand miles away. Still, Andy has the vast luxury of knowing where home is. His father has lived in the same place since World War II. Andy gets to board a plane and come home in the literal sense of the word. He is able to bring his own children to ‘the old home place’ on the south side of town.
Another friend in her mid-fifties also has the grand luxury of knowing where home is. Her mother and father lived in the same house since the Korean War, perhaps even a bit earlier. Joanne never knew any other house as home. On all of my visits to a small town of nine hundred people outside of Pittsburgh, I have always been in awe at the sense of history, place, and connection to be found among several large extended families. For the most part these extended families have stayed put, never dispersing on the winds of economic opportunities. Perhaps they knew where true wealth was to be found.
There must be no greater comfort than knowing where home is. Perhaps that is why I am asked to drive a wheel chair van to this little oasis in southwest Pennsylvania a couple times a year. I have often wondered if one can really gain ex-officio membership in places like Brigadoon.
By the time I was fourteen I had lived in twenty-two places, always being the new kid in school, never being able to relax into the familiar. Mom never felt at home in her own skin, seeking consolation in men, bottles, and pills, therefore we lived in places for as little as ten days. I have no personal concept of home and family other than what little bit I have been able to buy into with birthday cakes or long-distance driving services. The miracle is that I actually managed to graduate from high school.
Nearly three weeks ago the world entered into a curious form of community, one borne out of catastrophe. When ever disaster washes onto the shores of public consciousness we enter into a form of solidarity with the afflicted, mesmerized by the images and sounds of cataclysm. For some days we think of little else but the tenuousness of life; becoming arm-chair voyeurs of tragedy.
When the twin icons of American prosperity fell to earth on a September day, an amazing sense of solidarity swept the world. The night images of candles lit throughout the world suggested that we were all in this together, that we truly needed each other. For a season we were no longer afraid of each other, only of some vague ‘they’ who brought this carnage to pass. After perhaps six or eight weeks, the flags were taken down, the images faded, we got back to business as usual.
Five years ago the earth convulsed under the Indonesian archipelago and the dreams of millions were washed out to sea by a tsunami of destruction that spread across Asia. The day after Christmas in 2004, a 9.3 magnitude subduction earthquake lasting 8.3 minutes precipitated other earthquakes as far away as Alaska. 230,000 people died and millions were left homeless. For weeks the world was transfixed by images of naturalized Armageddon. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.
Four years ago Katrina showcased our powerlessness. On August 28, 2005, a category three hurricane breached levees in fifty places, producing a storm surge that washed six miles inland, reducing an entire city to a moldy cesspool of despair. Looters and gangs of armed gunmen pillaged the city. For weeks the world was again transfixed by images of the end of the world, your world if you lived in New Orleans. Many made fortunes selling defective trailer houses. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.
Three weeks ago the earth again convulsed. One January 12, 2010, a rupture of the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden Fault sixteen miles west of Port-au-Prince provoked a 7.1 magnitude side-slip earthquake that leveled a city of three million. Millions lost their tenuous hold on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 170,000 bodies were counted and buried by the end of January. We entered that curious solidarity once again. For two weeks the world was transfixed by images of naturalized Armageddon, Haitian style. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.
When I went onto the news services yesterday morning there was not a single reference to Haiti. There was a large photo and plenty of commentary about the nocturnal exploits of a $55 million football player booted from the Pro Bowl for failing to fulfill his obligations to his team mates. Perhaps one does not have to be able to pound little white balls into tin cups in the ground in order to join in the august over-paid ranks of professional athletes who have forgotten that others are looking for heroes in a convulsant world. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.
Also on the wire services was a piece about the top destinations for Americans to migrate to for higher paying jobs and good houses. More money and bigger houses are viewed as end points. At this point, Haitians would just like to have gotten out of the house alive. 170,000 didn’t. Millions of Americans are on hoof, looking for greener grass elsewhere.
An important number in nuclear physics is ‘half-life,’ the amount of time it takes for half of a radioactive substance to decay into an inert compound. In twice the time, only a quarter of the active compound will remain. In three times the half life only 12.5% will remain. The rate of decay is all important in nuclear medicine and in running nuclear power plants. It is even more critical if one does sinister things like making atomic weapons
In a recent five year period nearly half (45.9%) of Americans moved their place of residence. 120,347,674 of them. More than 22 million changed states of residence. 25,327,355 changed counties of residence. 7,495,846 changed countries. Some cities in the north have seen nearly half their populations disappear. The half life of community seems to be around five years, excepting in Southeast Asia where it was reduced to 8.3 minutes. In Haiti we saw it was shortened to about twenty-two seconds.
If every five years 45.9% of the American people move, in only twenty years we will be living with less than one out of ten people we once lived with. Ninety percent of our active dynamic neighbors will have been replaced with inert faceless strangers.
I have been living in my present house for nineteen years. My street is a real-life confirmation of the sobering demographic statistics I gleaned from Census Bureau data. I now live in a street of total strangers who have interiorized themselves in front of flat screen panels, dwelling in Internet social networks. Gone are the neighborhood block parties, Sunday afternoon potluck dinners, and outdoor games. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.
I have no idea who lives around me. Those who left here for bigger palaces in the hinterlands are also living among isolated strangers, if the census data is correct. As they say, the neighborhood is changing, and it is not for the better. Asians, Haitians, and Louisianans did not want to move on, yet they were given no choice in the matter. Most of us who move do so by choice. More than half of those moving do so independent of employment demands, staying within their counties but disrupting their neighborhood social fabric. Do we honestly think we are going to find what we really want for our souls if we move to a strange land filled with strangers who have as little sense of place and history as we do?
One of the most celebrated stories in the industrial psychology/empowerment literature is one called “Acres of Diamonds”. In the account, the protagonist dissipates his meager resources and decades of his life making desperate bids to find diamonds. He comes home in old age, exhausted and broke, only to find the equivalent of the Cullinan Diamond in the streambed behind his shack. He was wealthy beyond measure but never enjoyed his largesse, being too busy grazing on the other side of the fence.
Perhaps you will find the diamonds you seek in the old ranch house next door and not in the Georgian brick pile with Palladian windows out in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps you can extend the half life of your community by staying put. Bill and Joanne’s families figured that out. For them, the images of community never faded. For them it was business as usual.
Last night a man full of life came to my house with his son to celebrate his 90th birthday. Not worrying about his cholesterol, Bill enjoyed a truly decadent double chocolate cake made by another well-wisher. I’m told it had several sticks of butter in it. We had the satisfaction of asking many questions about life by ‘mining’ Bill’s nearly century old memories; wondering if the world has really changed. He described a world, a sense of community, of connection that is hard to fathom in the transient disconnected culture America has become. Could there have really been a time when people put down deep roots and connected firmly to those around them?
Bill’s son Andy must be about fifty. He now lives three thousand miles away. Still, Andy has the vast luxury of knowing where home is. His father has lived in the same place since World War II. Andy gets to board a plane and come home in the literal sense of the word. He is able to bring his own children to ‘the old home place’ on the south side of town.
Another friend in her mid-fifties also has the grand luxury of knowing where home is. Her mother and father lived in the same house since the Korean War, perhaps even a bit earlier. Joanne never knew any other house as home. On all of my visits to a small town of nine hundred people outside of Pittsburgh, I have always been in awe at the sense of history, place, and connection to be found among several large extended families. For the most part these extended families have stayed put, never dispersing on the winds of economic opportunities. Perhaps they knew where true wealth was to be found.
There must be no greater comfort than knowing where home is. Perhaps that is why I am asked to drive a wheel chair van to this little oasis in southwest Pennsylvania a couple times a year. I have often wondered if one can really gain ex-officio membership in places like Brigadoon.
By the time I was fourteen I had lived in twenty-two places, always being the new kid in school, never being able to relax into the familiar. Mom never felt at home in her own skin, seeking consolation in men, bottles, and pills, therefore we lived in places for as little as ten days. I have no personal concept of home and family other than what little bit I have been able to buy into with birthday cakes or long-distance driving services. The miracle is that I actually managed to graduate from high school.
Nearly three weeks ago the world entered into a curious form of community, one borne out of catastrophe. When ever disaster washes onto the shores of public consciousness we enter into a form of solidarity with the afflicted, mesmerized by the images and sounds of cataclysm. For some days we think of little else but the tenuousness of life; becoming arm-chair voyeurs of tragedy.
When the twin icons of American prosperity fell to earth on a September day, an amazing sense of solidarity swept the world. The night images of candles lit throughout the world suggested that we were all in this together, that we truly needed each other. For a season we were no longer afraid of each other, only of some vague ‘they’ who brought this carnage to pass. After perhaps six or eight weeks, the flags were taken down, the images faded, we got back to business as usual.
Five years ago the earth convulsed under the Indonesian archipelago and the dreams of millions were washed out to sea by a tsunami of destruction that spread across Asia. The day after Christmas in 2004, a 9.3 magnitude subduction earthquake lasting 8.3 minutes precipitated other earthquakes as far away as Alaska. 230,000 people died and millions were left homeless. For weeks the world was transfixed by images of naturalized Armageddon. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.
Four years ago Katrina showcased our powerlessness. On August 28, 2005, a category three hurricane breached levees in fifty places, producing a storm surge that washed six miles inland, reducing an entire city to a moldy cesspool of despair. Looters and gangs of armed gunmen pillaged the city. For weeks the world was again transfixed by images of the end of the world, your world if you lived in New Orleans. Many made fortunes selling defective trailer houses. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.
Three weeks ago the earth again convulsed. One January 12, 2010, a rupture of the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden Fault sixteen miles west of Port-au-Prince provoked a 7.1 magnitude side-slip earthquake that leveled a city of three million. Millions lost their tenuous hold on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 170,000 bodies were counted and buried by the end of January. We entered that curious solidarity once again. For two weeks the world was transfixed by images of naturalized Armageddon, Haitian style. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.
When I went onto the news services yesterday morning there was not a single reference to Haiti. There was a large photo and plenty of commentary about the nocturnal exploits of a $55 million football player booted from the Pro Bowl for failing to fulfill his obligations to his team mates. Perhaps one does not have to be able to pound little white balls into tin cups in the ground in order to join in the august over-paid ranks of professional athletes who have forgotten that others are looking for heroes in a convulsant world. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.
Also on the wire services was a piece about the top destinations for Americans to migrate to for higher paying jobs and good houses. More money and bigger houses are viewed as end points. At this point, Haitians would just like to have gotten out of the house alive. 170,000 didn’t. Millions of Americans are on hoof, looking for greener grass elsewhere.
An important number in nuclear physics is ‘half-life,’ the amount of time it takes for half of a radioactive substance to decay into an inert compound. In twice the time, only a quarter of the active compound will remain. In three times the half life only 12.5% will remain. The rate of decay is all important in nuclear medicine and in running nuclear power plants. It is even more critical if one does sinister things like making atomic weapons
In a recent five year period nearly half (45.9%) of Americans moved their place of residence. 120,347,674 of them. More than 22 million changed states of residence. 25,327,355 changed counties of residence. 7,495,846 changed countries. Some cities in the north have seen nearly half their populations disappear. The half life of community seems to be around five years, excepting in Southeast Asia where it was reduced to 8.3 minutes. In Haiti we saw it was shortened to about twenty-two seconds.
If every five years 45.9% of the American people move, in only twenty years we will be living with less than one out of ten people we once lived with. Ninety percent of our active dynamic neighbors will have been replaced with inert faceless strangers.
I have been living in my present house for nineteen years. My street is a real-life confirmation of the sobering demographic statistics I gleaned from Census Bureau data. I now live in a street of total strangers who have interiorized themselves in front of flat screen panels, dwelling in Internet social networks. Gone are the neighborhood block parties, Sunday afternoon potluck dinners, and outdoor games. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.
I have no idea who lives around me. Those who left here for bigger palaces in the hinterlands are also living among isolated strangers, if the census data is correct. As they say, the neighborhood is changing, and it is not for the better. Asians, Haitians, and Louisianans did not want to move on, yet they were given no choice in the matter. Most of us who move do so by choice. More than half of those moving do so independent of employment demands, staying within their counties but disrupting their neighborhood social fabric. Do we honestly think we are going to find what we really want for our souls if we move to a strange land filled with strangers who have as little sense of place and history as we do?
One of the most celebrated stories in the industrial psychology/empowerment literature is one called “Acres of Diamonds”. In the account, the protagonist dissipates his meager resources and decades of his life making desperate bids to find diamonds. He comes home in old age, exhausted and broke, only to find the equivalent of the Cullinan Diamond in the streambed behind his shack. He was wealthy beyond measure but never enjoyed his largesse, being too busy grazing on the other side of the fence.
Perhaps you will find the diamonds you seek in the old ranch house next door and not in the Georgian brick pile with Palladian windows out in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps you can extend the half life of your community by staying put. Bill and Joanne’s families figured that out. For them, the images of community never faded. For them it was business as usual.
Dancing - Two Stepping to Community 1-31-10
Anderson, South Carolina
One of the greatest joys in life must be gazing into the china blue eyes of a dear friend while dancing, lost in the wondrous strands of melody carrying us to a shared musical epiphany. For many years contra dance has provided a magical form of community, hundreds of us gathering in the mountains to dance away the night, sometimes for days on end.
Some of my happiest memories are with a dancer, Elaine, who lived three hundred fifty seven miles from me in a distant city. Meeting at dance weekends, we were lost in the music and each other, enjoying our own secret fugue states. Our fugue states even led us to explore the mysteries of Norman castles and Cistercian abbeys in Wales. The contra dance community has always been a nexus of relational delights. People come from amazing distances for dance weekends - sometimes driving twenty hours one way to get lost in each other’s eyes.
Over the years I have had several long-distance romances, spawned in that magic space in front of a caller and a group of gifted musicians creating states of flow in our collective psyche. One of the ways Elaine and I coped with those three hundred fifty seven miles was to get on the phone while we were in our respective kitchens and pretend to be dancing with each other. Alas, the distance conspired against us and Elaine eventually found a dancer close to home who didn’t have to pretend and could be part of her daily world. I never have forgotten those images of dancing around the kitchen table.
My church struggles greatly with being user friendly. I have often observed when members are on any sort of mission, my attempts at conversation with them are often rebuffed or ignored. During the course of a fund-raising luncheon this past week I made the mistake of asking one of the church employees if I could use a computer for a couple minutes to print out some signs to put on some sale items. One would have thought I had made derogatory comments about her mother and genetic history. I received a profoundly acerbic uncivil response, and this was not the first time by a long shot. I thought about going home right then but did not want to have to pack up the 24 pots of flowers I had just put out on the tables. Others in the church would not return the Peace when I offered my hand. I dealt with the cockleburs of the day by staying out in the parking lot by myself, telling six hundred seekers where to put their cars and where to find good soup. I didn’t figure much relational risk would be incurred by them just eating soup so I kept a happy face in place.
Over the years I have struggled with how I can make the place more user friendly. One of the strategies I have found effective is to give people the idea that we actually want them to stick around after services and get to know each other. Amazingly, I have fought others vehemently over this issue. As recently as the past week it was suggested to me by several members that we ought to abandon our social hour and tell people to go home and eat. One of the things I do to give people the idea they are wanted is to feed them, anything, at precisely the right moment.
In my attempts at keeping the refrigerators and freezers unclogged and the archeological digs in good order, I harvest old ossified hamburger buns, hot dog buns, and other breads of uncertain vintage and slather them with cardio-protective butter, margarine, and whipped spread. Broiled in a convection oven they become irresistible. When presented to people about to head out the door at 8:55 AM, the impulse to evacuate the premises is suddenly oblated. People who used to be gone within seconds are now hanging around an hour or more, accreting at several tables in the parish hall where I ply them with juice, seconds and thirds on carbs, and coffee. On bonus days they get chunks of fresh fruit. Some days there will be fifteen or twenty there doing their carb loading and building a bit of community. I get my kitchen archeology done. We are all winners.
It has often been said the kitchen is the heart of the home. Some of my well-worn kitchen towels even have this sound byte printed on them. Perhaps the church kitchen could have a similar role in catalyzing community. Thinking that if dance works so well at maintaining long-distance affections, I thought it might work for local ones in the church. A couple weeks ago on a Wednesday night I grabbed a fellow parishioner and made the cardinal mistake of dancing with her in the kitchen. The parishioner thought this a rather grand idea but one of the newly emergent kitchen bosses thought it a decidedly bad one. I was amazed at the astringent flavor of the acerbic uncivil response that erupted.
As if to insure my negative experience was multi-faceted and complete, I was firmly admonished for even thinking about doing something useful with the left-over food from dinner. I found this succulent catered food in the trash the following day. While doing archeology for recyclables in the trash cans, next to the fine teriyaki chicken, vegetable medley, and russet potato casserole that would have fed twenty Haitians, I found ceramic dishes, stainless steel cutlery, and my enthusiasm for building ecclesiastical community.
The subject of my daring to dance in the kitchen came up again yesterday, more than two weeks after I committed this felony against efficiency and sensibility. I asked if it really was true that projects were more important than building relationship. In front of five witnesses I was told emphatically ‘yes!’ I was told several times, “There will be no dancing in my kitchen!” Stupid me. I thought that kitchen was built and given to the glory of God; at last that is what the plaque on the wall says.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Can someone give me a compelling reason why I shouldn’t just stay home and do e-church and go to the dance hall
One of the greatest joys in life must be gazing into the china blue eyes of a dear friend while dancing, lost in the wondrous strands of melody carrying us to a shared musical epiphany. For many years contra dance has provided a magical form of community, hundreds of us gathering in the mountains to dance away the night, sometimes for days on end.
Some of my happiest memories are with a dancer, Elaine, who lived three hundred fifty seven miles from me in a distant city. Meeting at dance weekends, we were lost in the music and each other, enjoying our own secret fugue states. Our fugue states even led us to explore the mysteries of Norman castles and Cistercian abbeys in Wales. The contra dance community has always been a nexus of relational delights. People come from amazing distances for dance weekends - sometimes driving twenty hours one way to get lost in each other’s eyes.
Over the years I have had several long-distance romances, spawned in that magic space in front of a caller and a group of gifted musicians creating states of flow in our collective psyche. One of the ways Elaine and I coped with those three hundred fifty seven miles was to get on the phone while we were in our respective kitchens and pretend to be dancing with each other. Alas, the distance conspired against us and Elaine eventually found a dancer close to home who didn’t have to pretend and could be part of her daily world. I never have forgotten those images of dancing around the kitchen table.
My church struggles greatly with being user friendly. I have often observed when members are on any sort of mission, my attempts at conversation with them are often rebuffed or ignored. During the course of a fund-raising luncheon this past week I made the mistake of asking one of the church employees if I could use a computer for a couple minutes to print out some signs to put on some sale items. One would have thought I had made derogatory comments about her mother and genetic history. I received a profoundly acerbic uncivil response, and this was not the first time by a long shot. I thought about going home right then but did not want to have to pack up the 24 pots of flowers I had just put out on the tables. Others in the church would not return the Peace when I offered my hand. I dealt with the cockleburs of the day by staying out in the parking lot by myself, telling six hundred seekers where to put their cars and where to find good soup. I didn’t figure much relational risk would be incurred by them just eating soup so I kept a happy face in place.
Over the years I have struggled with how I can make the place more user friendly. One of the strategies I have found effective is to give people the idea that we actually want them to stick around after services and get to know each other. Amazingly, I have fought others vehemently over this issue. As recently as the past week it was suggested to me by several members that we ought to abandon our social hour and tell people to go home and eat. One of the things I do to give people the idea they are wanted is to feed them, anything, at precisely the right moment.
In my attempts at keeping the refrigerators and freezers unclogged and the archeological digs in good order, I harvest old ossified hamburger buns, hot dog buns, and other breads of uncertain vintage and slather them with cardio-protective butter, margarine, and whipped spread. Broiled in a convection oven they become irresistible. When presented to people about to head out the door at 8:55 AM, the impulse to evacuate the premises is suddenly oblated. People who used to be gone within seconds are now hanging around an hour or more, accreting at several tables in the parish hall where I ply them with juice, seconds and thirds on carbs, and coffee. On bonus days they get chunks of fresh fruit. Some days there will be fifteen or twenty there doing their carb loading and building a bit of community. I get my kitchen archeology done. We are all winners.
It has often been said the kitchen is the heart of the home. Some of my well-worn kitchen towels even have this sound byte printed on them. Perhaps the church kitchen could have a similar role in catalyzing community. Thinking that if dance works so well at maintaining long-distance affections, I thought it might work for local ones in the church. A couple weeks ago on a Wednesday night I grabbed a fellow parishioner and made the cardinal mistake of dancing with her in the kitchen. The parishioner thought this a rather grand idea but one of the newly emergent kitchen bosses thought it a decidedly bad one. I was amazed at the astringent flavor of the acerbic uncivil response that erupted.
As if to insure my negative experience was multi-faceted and complete, I was firmly admonished for even thinking about doing something useful with the left-over food from dinner. I found this succulent catered food in the trash the following day. While doing archeology for recyclables in the trash cans, next to the fine teriyaki chicken, vegetable medley, and russet potato casserole that would have fed twenty Haitians, I found ceramic dishes, stainless steel cutlery, and my enthusiasm for building ecclesiastical community.
The subject of my daring to dance in the kitchen came up again yesterday, more than two weeks after I committed this felony against efficiency and sensibility. I asked if it really was true that projects were more important than building relationship. In front of five witnesses I was told emphatically ‘yes!’ I was told several times, “There will be no dancing in my kitchen!” Stupid me. I thought that kitchen was built and given to the glory of God; at last that is what the plaque on the wall says.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Can someone give me a compelling reason why I shouldn’t just stay home and do e-church and go to the dance hall
Perception - Putting Community at Risk 1-30-10
Anderson, South Carolina
In the United States we spend trillions of dollars each year to alter the perceptions of those around us. Desperate to have those around us think well of us, we spend fortunes on cosmetics, designer clothes, cars, plastic surgery, hair dressers, boats, even vast houses in remote locations we occupy but two weeks a year. In fact, much of the American economy is driven by the manufacture and sales of consumer goods intended to enhance personal image. The opinions of others, often complete strangers, drive us to sacrifice the serenity and soulfulness of our live in order to project an image of success.
The best selling car in America for some years has been the Toyota Camry. Its success has long been due to a combination of pricing, style, reliability, and crash-worthiness. It is rated at 22 MPG in town and 32 MPG on the highway. A new 2010 Camry retails for $21,195. With special care, one can acquire a new one for less than $16,000.
One of the icons of American success, paradoxically, is a German-made BMW 7 series sedan. It is rated at 13 MPG in town and 19 on the highway. A new 2010 760 sedan retails for $140,425. With care, one is going to pay $140,425 for this vehicle that has one steering wheel, four tires, four doors, one trunk lid, and one engine. Its reliability is not even close to the Toyota Camry. Crash-worthiness is similar for the two cars. One can easily debate if its appearance and functionality are worth a $119,230 premium over the Toyota. An astute shopper can purchase nine new Camrys for the price of one of these 7 series sedans.
For most of my adult life I have driven an admixture of Toyotas of one sort or another - old Corona Mark II wagons, nearly new Camrys, and adolescent Corollas. Most recently I have been driving a Toyota Corolla bought four years ago for the princely sum of $750. That price included a new stereo and fresh tires and 39.4 MPG. Current annual property taxes are in the region of $17.
Buying into the trap of perception, I am now the unhappy owner of one of these BMW 7 series sedans. Late last year an opportunity presented itself to acquire one of these icons at what seemed to be an astounding price, mere pennies on the dollar. In a moment of weakness I took the bait, wondering how I could go from driving a fifteen year old Corolla to driving one of these emblems of success. I didn’t. In the months I’ve owned the car, I have driven it a mere 200 miles and approximately 150 of those miles have been to assorted garages and dealerships in two cities, attempting to prevent an aneurism from rupturing somewhere in the engine. The car has been slinging a combination of oil and other assorted fluids since the day I first brought it home. Several times I have risked burning the house down by using gasoline to clean the car’s assorted exudates off the garage floor, but only on semi-warm days when I could leave the garage doors up and did not have the wood stove fired up.
As disconcerting as my experience with the car has been, even more so is the apparent lack of expertise to diagnose and repair it. There has never been a problem finding guys working under shade trees who can easily fix things in my Toyotas, at a fair price. So far I have been unable to find a dealer or garage able to make a proper diagnosis of what ails this German symbol of cash flow, yet I have found all of them willing and competent to swipe credit cards. Most recently, quotations to attempt repairs, even without certainty as to what is wrong, now exceed my original purchase price. Three mechanics and three garages and a BMW dealership concede it is ‘normal’ and expected for these sedans to require such extensive repairs. Right now I am considering which local charity might get my phone call asking it to send someone to come get the car - but I wonder if that would be a charitable thing to do. Scrap a German/American icon? It just might happen.
The Holy Grail in the recovery world is serenity. Those in recovery are routinely asked if anything is disturbing their serenity or sobriety. It is well known that any chance at regaining and maintaining a meaningful life filled with purpose, joy, and peace requires a foundation of serenity. An inner world of chaos only leads to an outer world of dysfunction and disorder and often a complete failure of one’s relationships and life itself. Having been through a ‘bottom’ of my own, it is astoundingly clear to me that without serenity, life does not have much quality at all. When serenity is disrupted, relapse is often forthcoming, and life is again shattered. Too often I visit funeral homes to remember those who were not paying attention to their serenity and emotional sobriety. Life shattered and there was no gluing it back together, one more time.
What is not so clear at all is why I would risk my serenity for a mere pile of metal, glass, and plastic, knowing this. Have I really failed to progress in my spiritual journey to a point where it doesn’t matter in the least as to what I drive, as long as it is reasonably safe and reliable? Have I progressed far enough to cut my losses knowing that the greatest prize of all is beyond price?
A dear friend of mine has lost her serenity and emotional sobriety because she underwrote a small second mortgage on a house. The owner of the house has gone into default and my friend is going to lose her mortgage in the foreclosure process. It has been stunning to see her sacrifice a full meaningful materially and spiritually abundant life over a relatively small sum of money. The idea of losing this mortgage has been unacceptable to her and it may end up costing her absolutely everything, including life itself. She no longer is able to offer community to those around her.
In recovery it is often pointed out that we are free to learn from those around us. We do not have to relapse, give up our serenity, or lose it all, in order to grow into the promises of recovery. I can choose to sacrifice my serenity in my attempts to get this American icon roadworthy or I can practice acceptance, realizing that some things in life just aren’t as they seem. I might end up with a worthless mortgage or a car that does nothing but sling muck all over my garage. It is my choice as to what I do about it. I can accept it or fight it.
Can I accept that I might just be a regular ordinary kind of a guy who is no longer tyrannized by what others think of me, who no longer is concerned with what I drive? “Can we accept poverty, sickness, loneliness, and bereavement with courage and serenity? Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet sometimes more durable satisfactions when the brighter, more glittering achievements are denied us?” Can I be happy driving an old Toyota instead of a 7 Series sedan?
In one of the most revered paragraphs ever written we are told that “acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake.”
In the United States we spend trillions of dollars each year to alter the perceptions of those around us. Desperate to have those around us think well of us, we spend fortunes on cosmetics, designer clothes, cars, plastic surgery, hair dressers, boats, even vast houses in remote locations we occupy but two weeks a year. In fact, much of the American economy is driven by the manufacture and sales of consumer goods intended to enhance personal image. The opinions of others, often complete strangers, drive us to sacrifice the serenity and soulfulness of our live in order to project an image of success.
The best selling car in America for some years has been the Toyota Camry. Its success has long been due to a combination of pricing, style, reliability, and crash-worthiness. It is rated at 22 MPG in town and 32 MPG on the highway. A new 2010 Camry retails for $21,195. With special care, one can acquire a new one for less than $16,000.
One of the icons of American success, paradoxically, is a German-made BMW 7 series sedan. It is rated at 13 MPG in town and 19 on the highway. A new 2010 760 sedan retails for $140,425. With care, one is going to pay $140,425 for this vehicle that has one steering wheel, four tires, four doors, one trunk lid, and one engine. Its reliability is not even close to the Toyota Camry. Crash-worthiness is similar for the two cars. One can easily debate if its appearance and functionality are worth a $119,230 premium over the Toyota. An astute shopper can purchase nine new Camrys for the price of one of these 7 series sedans.
For most of my adult life I have driven an admixture of Toyotas of one sort or another - old Corona Mark II wagons, nearly new Camrys, and adolescent Corollas. Most recently I have been driving a Toyota Corolla bought four years ago for the princely sum of $750. That price included a new stereo and fresh tires and 39.4 MPG. Current annual property taxes are in the region of $17.
Buying into the trap of perception, I am now the unhappy owner of one of these BMW 7 series sedans. Late last year an opportunity presented itself to acquire one of these icons at what seemed to be an astounding price, mere pennies on the dollar. In a moment of weakness I took the bait, wondering how I could go from driving a fifteen year old Corolla to driving one of these emblems of success. I didn’t. In the months I’ve owned the car, I have driven it a mere 200 miles and approximately 150 of those miles have been to assorted garages and dealerships in two cities, attempting to prevent an aneurism from rupturing somewhere in the engine. The car has been slinging a combination of oil and other assorted fluids since the day I first brought it home. Several times I have risked burning the house down by using gasoline to clean the car’s assorted exudates off the garage floor, but only on semi-warm days when I could leave the garage doors up and did not have the wood stove fired up.
As disconcerting as my experience with the car has been, even more so is the apparent lack of expertise to diagnose and repair it. There has never been a problem finding guys working under shade trees who can easily fix things in my Toyotas, at a fair price. So far I have been unable to find a dealer or garage able to make a proper diagnosis of what ails this German symbol of cash flow, yet I have found all of them willing and competent to swipe credit cards. Most recently, quotations to attempt repairs, even without certainty as to what is wrong, now exceed my original purchase price. Three mechanics and three garages and a BMW dealership concede it is ‘normal’ and expected for these sedans to require such extensive repairs. Right now I am considering which local charity might get my phone call asking it to send someone to come get the car - but I wonder if that would be a charitable thing to do. Scrap a German/American icon? It just might happen.
The Holy Grail in the recovery world is serenity. Those in recovery are routinely asked if anything is disturbing their serenity or sobriety. It is well known that any chance at regaining and maintaining a meaningful life filled with purpose, joy, and peace requires a foundation of serenity. An inner world of chaos only leads to an outer world of dysfunction and disorder and often a complete failure of one’s relationships and life itself. Having been through a ‘bottom’ of my own, it is astoundingly clear to me that without serenity, life does not have much quality at all. When serenity is disrupted, relapse is often forthcoming, and life is again shattered. Too often I visit funeral homes to remember those who were not paying attention to their serenity and emotional sobriety. Life shattered and there was no gluing it back together, one more time.
What is not so clear at all is why I would risk my serenity for a mere pile of metal, glass, and plastic, knowing this. Have I really failed to progress in my spiritual journey to a point where it doesn’t matter in the least as to what I drive, as long as it is reasonably safe and reliable? Have I progressed far enough to cut my losses knowing that the greatest prize of all is beyond price?
A dear friend of mine has lost her serenity and emotional sobriety because she underwrote a small second mortgage on a house. The owner of the house has gone into default and my friend is going to lose her mortgage in the foreclosure process. It has been stunning to see her sacrifice a full meaningful materially and spiritually abundant life over a relatively small sum of money. The idea of losing this mortgage has been unacceptable to her and it may end up costing her absolutely everything, including life itself. She no longer is able to offer community to those around her.
In recovery it is often pointed out that we are free to learn from those around us. We do not have to relapse, give up our serenity, or lose it all, in order to grow into the promises of recovery. I can choose to sacrifice my serenity in my attempts to get this American icon roadworthy or I can practice acceptance, realizing that some things in life just aren’t as they seem. I might end up with a worthless mortgage or a car that does nothing but sling muck all over my garage. It is my choice as to what I do about it. I can accept it or fight it.
Can I accept that I might just be a regular ordinary kind of a guy who is no longer tyrannized by what others think of me, who no longer is concerned with what I drive? “Can we accept poverty, sickness, loneliness, and bereavement with courage and serenity? Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet sometimes more durable satisfactions when the brighter, more glittering achievements are denied us?” Can I be happy driving an old Toyota instead of a 7 Series sedan?
In one of the most revered paragraphs ever written we are told that “acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake.”
Mostly Cloudy 1-29-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Expectation is a fascinating thing to observe and even more so to experience. I got up this morning and went outside, a full month after the winter solstice, with the expectation of a wintry blast that would chase me back into the confines of the house. My mission had been to drag the city trashcan back into the garage. Imagine my surprise when I found it to be precisely 64 degrees. An expansive sensibility erupted in my soul and I immediately put up both garage doors knowing I would be ‘let out’ for the day. I was going to be on bonus time, and I would actually be able to glue up cabinets and do painting tasks that don’t fare well in winter temperatures.
How could something as benign as 64-degree air seem wondrous, nearly numinous in nature? I grew up in Southern California, where 64-degree air in January was as ordinary as the dense smog that sealed off the stars and sun from my view. I expected it be mild in California every day. It rarely was otherwise. We denizens of the stucco jungle never gave the weather a thought. The only ‘weather’ we ever thought about was the kind that caused waves to pass along fault lines during earthquakes. Certainly, the world is presently especially aware of the consequences of waves passing along fault lines under cities.
In the South we think about weather often. It is highly variable. I recall May 8, 1993 when 68 inches of snow fell just north of here on Mt. Pisgah. This blue white wonderland was absolutely unexpected and it brought out the child in thousands of us. In May in the Deep South we normally start thinking about the emergency of feisty Asian Tiger mosquitoes and super-saturated humidity. A blue white wonderland was a big time bonus. I celebrated it by taking a hike up Mount Pisgah and having a picnic lunch with friends on top, where we enjoyed stewed fruit in stemmed glasses along with hot croissants. Dinner was shrimp scampi in the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway. A rumor of hot water problems cause cancellations of room reservations and a friend and I were actually able to get a room, at a discount no less! Mind you, this is one of those places you book a year ahead. The next day we ate a picnic lunch under a sunny sky on the grounds of the Biltmore Estate outside of Asheville, not thirty miles away. Air temperature? Almost 75 degrees.
We think about weather in this part of the world. Sometimes it is rather frightening such as when a three-inch crust of ice takes down half the trees and all the power lines. Winter storm warnings are up and I might just be out taking pictures tomorrow morning of a world enshrined in crystal. I always marvel at how the incredible beauty of a world that looks like it is clad in Baccarat crystal on a clear morning can be so deadly. Looks are deceiving. I’m chopping a pile of wood today just in case that crystal shatters the infrastructure that keeps my house warm around winter solstice.
Wind? An F5 tornado will instantly suck the tranquility right out of your world. It might actually suck your world out of existence. I don’t want to do one of these again. Hugo and Andrew are not names often given to newborns any more in this part of the world. I’ve ‘done’ a category 4 hurricane in late November at sea; making me really glad this water world we live on has some solid parts to it.
We think about weather in this part of the world. Sometimes it is magic. Today the air is calm and warm. There is no golden sunshine today but you won’t find me griping. I’m going back outside to ‘play’. The forecast is for snow and ice tonight.
Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. PS 36:5
Expectation is a fascinating thing to observe and even more so to experience. I got up this morning and went outside, a full month after the winter solstice, with the expectation of a wintry blast that would chase me back into the confines of the house. My mission had been to drag the city trashcan back into the garage. Imagine my surprise when I found it to be precisely 64 degrees. An expansive sensibility erupted in my soul and I immediately put up both garage doors knowing I would be ‘let out’ for the day. I was going to be on bonus time, and I would actually be able to glue up cabinets and do painting tasks that don’t fare well in winter temperatures.
How could something as benign as 64-degree air seem wondrous, nearly numinous in nature? I grew up in Southern California, where 64-degree air in January was as ordinary as the dense smog that sealed off the stars and sun from my view. I expected it be mild in California every day. It rarely was otherwise. We denizens of the stucco jungle never gave the weather a thought. The only ‘weather’ we ever thought about was the kind that caused waves to pass along fault lines during earthquakes. Certainly, the world is presently especially aware of the consequences of waves passing along fault lines under cities.
In the South we think about weather often. It is highly variable. I recall May 8, 1993 when 68 inches of snow fell just north of here on Mt. Pisgah. This blue white wonderland was absolutely unexpected and it brought out the child in thousands of us. In May in the Deep South we normally start thinking about the emergency of feisty Asian Tiger mosquitoes and super-saturated humidity. A blue white wonderland was a big time bonus. I celebrated it by taking a hike up Mount Pisgah and having a picnic lunch with friends on top, where we enjoyed stewed fruit in stemmed glasses along with hot croissants. Dinner was shrimp scampi in the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway. A rumor of hot water problems cause cancellations of room reservations and a friend and I were actually able to get a room, at a discount no less! Mind you, this is one of those places you book a year ahead. The next day we ate a picnic lunch under a sunny sky on the grounds of the Biltmore Estate outside of Asheville, not thirty miles away. Air temperature? Almost 75 degrees.
We think about weather in this part of the world. Sometimes it is rather frightening such as when a three-inch crust of ice takes down half the trees and all the power lines. Winter storm warnings are up and I might just be out taking pictures tomorrow morning of a world enshrined in crystal. I always marvel at how the incredible beauty of a world that looks like it is clad in Baccarat crystal on a clear morning can be so deadly. Looks are deceiving. I’m chopping a pile of wood today just in case that crystal shatters the infrastructure that keeps my house warm around winter solstice.
Wind? An F5 tornado will instantly suck the tranquility right out of your world. It might actually suck your world out of existence. I don’t want to do one of these again. Hugo and Andrew are not names often given to newborns any more in this part of the world. I’ve ‘done’ a category 4 hurricane in late November at sea; making me really glad this water world we live on has some solid parts to it.
We think about weather in this part of the world. Sometimes it is magic. Today the air is calm and warm. There is no golden sunshine today but you won’t find me griping. I’m going back outside to ‘play’. The forecast is for snow and ice tonight.
Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. PS 36:5
Seeing Heaven 1-23-10
Anderson, South Carolina
We get used to ourselves, we get used to our world, taking for granted what makes up the normal human experience, processing our physical environments and relational experiences through a set of sensory and cognitive resources built up over a lifetime. Six week old infants are not able to tell what their immediate environment looks like, lacking the neurological and linguistic resources needed to do so. Eventually the occipital cortex and associated neurological structures for visual processing come on line and infants learn to see accurately, eventually gaining the ability to interpret their physical world. Some of us were lucky to get telescopes in childhood and got to see further than most, but usually the business of life relegated those wondrous telescopes to dusty corners, eventually to be ‘junked’ in garage sales. We lost our vision.
In childhood it is the rare individual who is able to step back and see the world in a deeper more profound way, something that goes beyond the normative information processing most of us do to survive. That some adults have the ability to see beyond the obvious is even rarer. A select number of deeply gifted individuals seem able to see beyond, individuals of tender age who can show us their own unique flavors of Heaven; ones who don’t even need telescopes to do so. Occasionally, even an adult remembers the larger world as it was during early childhood.
Garth Stein stepped back and used the device of an anthropomorphized dog to make some brilliant observations about human nature. By writing an entire novel in the first person perspective of a mixed breed dog, Garth’s The Art of Racing in the Rain, was able to bring into focus many of the behavioral and relational dynamics in modern American culture. His findings clearly reveal humans to be an admixture of base greed and occasionally awe-inspiring endurance and commitment. He is ‘spot-on’, as the British would say, in his ability to be concise and on-target. Stein shows the reader how to see far beyond the immediacy of a circumstance, into possibilities for a better way, a way to finish the race of life in first place, by simply first finishing. He suggests through his fiction that there might just be more than meets the eye, perhaps a lot more.
Oliver Sacks, the celebrated British Neurologist has enjoyed a spectacularly successful career by observing human nature though the lens of catastrophic neurologic disease. Able to articulate himself with profundity, his best seller, Anthropologist from Mars describes the life journeys of ten people struck by congenital and acquired neurologic disorders.
A pair of institutionalized twins in Mississippi have the ability to do mathematical computations faster and more accurately that the fastest super computers on earth, yet these two siblings would be hard pressed to tell time on an analog clock or navigate outside of their institutional universe for more than a few minutes. Scientists have no idea as to how these two ‘children’ process information in such incredible fashion. For several hundred pages, Sacks takes the reader through an entrancing world in which individuals with severely compromised neurological capacities have in some unknown fashion been able to compensate, sometimes in extraordinary fashion. They have developed a stunning ability to see deeply into our universe, performing specific tasks far beyond the ‘normal’ among us.
Idiot savants are special individuals who seem to be way short on the general skills required to navigate daily life, often lacking the social skills and cognitive capacity to interpret their daily environments, yet able to perform specific tasks at astounding levels of excellence. Individuals appear in our midst with the astonishing ability to articulate the human experience through a very specific expression of music, art, math, or word. These expressions are at times sublime and inspiring beyond conception, almost functioning as windows to Heaven.
I have been led to wonder at times if we have each been given a fixed amount of creative/intellectual resources and have in some cases ‘decided’ to allocate all of them to a single task rather than spreading the resources out to the doing of many normal activities at usual levels of performance. How it is possible to perform a profoundly difficult task with spectacular ease while being unable to perform even the most mundane activities of daily living is a great enigma to those of us entranced with observing human experience and performance potential.
Some of the greatest observers of the universe and articulators of Hope are not only short on neurological resources; they are completely deficient in life experience, being mere children, perhaps only two or three years old. How is it possible for a three year old to articulate the deepest feelings and experiences of adult life, yet have no obvious personal knowledge of it?
Mattie Stepanek was born in 1990 with a rare disorder known as Dysautonomic Mitochondrial Myopathy. It ultimately took his life at age 13. For most of his short life he was in and out of hospitals enduring torments most of us cannot fathom, even in our darkest moments. Yet, he began writing short stories and poems at age three, bringing a profound message of love and reconciliation to the world. When he died he left a legacy of six published books of poems and a best selling collection of peace essays. His poems have been set to music and a number of CD’s created. In the words of Mattie's mother, Jeni Stepanek, who posthumously published Reflections of a Peacemaker at her son's request, "In reading these poems we enter Mattie's world and gain insight through a child who somehow balanced pain and fear with optimism and faith." Through Mattie’s work we really do get a clear glimpse of Heaven.
Sahara Sunday Spain, born in 1991, has her neurologic resources intact but at age four she did not know how to write. She figured out how to dictate her poems into a telephone answering machine so they would not be lost. At age nine she was described as a seasoned traveller and author, having been around the world, meeting many spiritual luminaries. Bill Cosby described her as having “an imagination that brings love, peace, and harmony to all souls, both young and old”. Much like Mattie, she was empowered to see beyond her present realities, into a world filled with love and reconciliation. Mattie and Sahara both illustrated their books of poems with expansive visual images of a world filled with laughter, joy and community, perhaps even Heaven itself.
Helen Keller is perhaps the best known writer in the past hundred years to overcome massive deficits and describe clearly a world she never saw or heard with her physical senses, having been robbed of sight and hearing in infancy. Helen was gifted with the ability to see through her silent darkness and show people the way to a world filled with profound beauty and possibility, perhaps a foretaste of Heaven. In her case, the blind led the sighted into visions of numinous clarity.
Akiane was born to a stay-at-home atheistic mother in Illinois in 1994. At age four she began drawing, at age six painting. At age seven she was writing aphorisms and poems. She speaks Russian, Lithuanian, English, and American Sign. At age four she had a profound spiritual experience that resulted in her atheistic family embracing God. With no art training whatever she is described as one of the twenty most accomplished visual artists in the world and is considered by some to be the only true binary genius in the world. Her website says that her life goal is “to share her love for God and people around the world.” One has only to read her words or view her paintings to be absolutely certain that this prodigy can see far beyond - perhaps even to Heaven. The technical excellence and compositional aspects of her written and visual work are simply staggering. To the best of my knowledge she does not own a telescope.
One certainly might wonder what was going on in the early 1990s that a number of such profoundly gifted individuals came into our world. Unlike prodigies who have sheer intellectual horsepower gifted to them to perform at high levels, these individuals have an additional spiritual capacitance that turbocharges their creative expressions to a world that is in desperate need of seeing Heaven, a place of serenity and beyond the turbulence and chaos of daily life. These messages of hope and vision can be transformative, if we but stop, look, and listen.
The ability to imagine life from a dog’s perspective, to calculate impossible equations without benefit of pen, paper or supercomputer, to craft words into shimmering prose at age three, to paint vivid images of a sublime world at age six, to capture the essence of the human experience, good and bad at age three, to describe the world without benefit of eyes or ears; all of these suggest One who wants a message of love, hope and reconciliation to be heard by all of us who share this world.
Recently NASA brought the orbiting Kepler telescope on line. This specialized telescope has a single job - finding planets, hopefully ones of the right size, composition, and temperature to support carbon-based life as we know it. Almost immediately Kepler started finding planets, lots of them. Alas, all of them are considered ill-suited to life. For up to six years this telescope will stare at the same region of the sky and monitor the light from 100,000 stars, hoping to find suitable candidates. Analysis of fluctuations of the light from each of these stars can be highly suggested of planets orbiting them. It is straight-forward mathematics to deduce the size, orbit, and temperature of these planets. It is heady stuff to think that we might actually have the ability with our present technology to sleuth life-giving planets in remote solar systems. Yet, analysis only allows us indirect inferences about the worlds that orbit these remote unnamed stars. We cannot really see these planets directly.
As stunning as it may be to find hundreds of planets in remote solar systems scattered across the galaxy, perhaps far more compelling is the ability of gifted individuals, untrained children yet, to see far beyond the capabilities and range of Kepler. Inexplicably, we find they are able to create stunning visual and linguistic visions of unseen regions of the universe, images the equal or greater than any of those produced by multi-billion dollar orbiting telescopes. Perhaps we are really seeing Heaven through the eyes of children.
Barbara Hagerty has recently written a compelling book that demands we consider the possibility these children are seeing more, much more, perhaps even Heaven. In Fingerprints of God she posits the question that has tormented her and many others “Is this all there is.?” A lifetime of questioning boiled down to this. “I wondered about my own brief brushes with something numinous, and the gnawing suspicion that there might be a reality this hides itself except in rare moments, or to rare people.” Over several hundred well-written pages Hagerty reviews scientific evidence highly suggestive of the veracity of claims made by such rare people of visions of another realm, of Heaven, of God.
The Revelation of John describes something akin to what these children are seeing and reporting with their incredible gifts. John was one of those rare adults gifted with a profound vision of Heaven. It has been a bestseller for twenty centuries.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth disappeared, and the sea vanished ... There will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain. The old things have disappeared … Then the one who sits on the throne said, "And now I make all things new!" He also said to me, "Write this, because these words are true and can be trusted." And the city itself was made of pure gold, as clear as glass. The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. Rev 21
The apostle Paul, who was granted authorship of a big chunk of the New Testament, admits that we are not seeing directly or very clearly.
What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face. What I know now is only partial; then it will be complete---as complete as God's knowledge of me. I Cor 13
Perhaps one way for us to see with greater clarity and vision is to make sure all children have access to kindness, safety, pencil and paper, brushes and paint, and pianos, especially when they are young and still able to see the world clearly
Craig C. Johnson
We get used to ourselves, we get used to our world, taking for granted what makes up the normal human experience, processing our physical environments and relational experiences through a set of sensory and cognitive resources built up over a lifetime. Six week old infants are not able to tell what their immediate environment looks like, lacking the neurological and linguistic resources needed to do so. Eventually the occipital cortex and associated neurological structures for visual processing come on line and infants learn to see accurately, eventually gaining the ability to interpret their physical world. Some of us were lucky to get telescopes in childhood and got to see further than most, but usually the business of life relegated those wondrous telescopes to dusty corners, eventually to be ‘junked’ in garage sales. We lost our vision.
In childhood it is the rare individual who is able to step back and see the world in a deeper more profound way, something that goes beyond the normative information processing most of us do to survive. That some adults have the ability to see beyond the obvious is even rarer. A select number of deeply gifted individuals seem able to see beyond, individuals of tender age who can show us their own unique flavors of Heaven; ones who don’t even need telescopes to do so. Occasionally, even an adult remembers the larger world as it was during early childhood.
Garth Stein stepped back and used the device of an anthropomorphized dog to make some brilliant observations about human nature. By writing an entire novel in the first person perspective of a mixed breed dog, Garth’s The Art of Racing in the Rain, was able to bring into focus many of the behavioral and relational dynamics in modern American culture. His findings clearly reveal humans to be an admixture of base greed and occasionally awe-inspiring endurance and commitment. He is ‘spot-on’, as the British would say, in his ability to be concise and on-target. Stein shows the reader how to see far beyond the immediacy of a circumstance, into possibilities for a better way, a way to finish the race of life in first place, by simply first finishing. He suggests through his fiction that there might just be more than meets the eye, perhaps a lot more.
Oliver Sacks, the celebrated British Neurologist has enjoyed a spectacularly successful career by observing human nature though the lens of catastrophic neurologic disease. Able to articulate himself with profundity, his best seller, Anthropologist from Mars describes the life journeys of ten people struck by congenital and acquired neurologic disorders.
A pair of institutionalized twins in Mississippi have the ability to do mathematical computations faster and more accurately that the fastest super computers on earth, yet these two siblings would be hard pressed to tell time on an analog clock or navigate outside of their institutional universe for more than a few minutes. Scientists have no idea as to how these two ‘children’ process information in such incredible fashion. For several hundred pages, Sacks takes the reader through an entrancing world in which individuals with severely compromised neurological capacities have in some unknown fashion been able to compensate, sometimes in extraordinary fashion. They have developed a stunning ability to see deeply into our universe, performing specific tasks far beyond the ‘normal’ among us.
Idiot savants are special individuals who seem to be way short on the general skills required to navigate daily life, often lacking the social skills and cognitive capacity to interpret their daily environments, yet able to perform specific tasks at astounding levels of excellence. Individuals appear in our midst with the astonishing ability to articulate the human experience through a very specific expression of music, art, math, or word. These expressions are at times sublime and inspiring beyond conception, almost functioning as windows to Heaven.
I have been led to wonder at times if we have each been given a fixed amount of creative/intellectual resources and have in some cases ‘decided’ to allocate all of them to a single task rather than spreading the resources out to the doing of many normal activities at usual levels of performance. How it is possible to perform a profoundly difficult task with spectacular ease while being unable to perform even the most mundane activities of daily living is a great enigma to those of us entranced with observing human experience and performance potential.
Some of the greatest observers of the universe and articulators of Hope are not only short on neurological resources; they are completely deficient in life experience, being mere children, perhaps only two or three years old. How is it possible for a three year old to articulate the deepest feelings and experiences of adult life, yet have no obvious personal knowledge of it?
Mattie Stepanek was born in 1990 with a rare disorder known as Dysautonomic Mitochondrial Myopathy. It ultimately took his life at age 13. For most of his short life he was in and out of hospitals enduring torments most of us cannot fathom, even in our darkest moments. Yet, he began writing short stories and poems at age three, bringing a profound message of love and reconciliation to the world. When he died he left a legacy of six published books of poems and a best selling collection of peace essays. His poems have been set to music and a number of CD’s created. In the words of Mattie's mother, Jeni Stepanek, who posthumously published Reflections of a Peacemaker at her son's request, "In reading these poems we enter Mattie's world and gain insight through a child who somehow balanced pain and fear with optimism and faith." Through Mattie’s work we really do get a clear glimpse of Heaven.
Sahara Sunday Spain, born in 1991, has her neurologic resources intact but at age four she did not know how to write. She figured out how to dictate her poems into a telephone answering machine so they would not be lost. At age nine she was described as a seasoned traveller and author, having been around the world, meeting many spiritual luminaries. Bill Cosby described her as having “an imagination that brings love, peace, and harmony to all souls, both young and old”. Much like Mattie, she was empowered to see beyond her present realities, into a world filled with love and reconciliation. Mattie and Sahara both illustrated their books of poems with expansive visual images of a world filled with laughter, joy and community, perhaps even Heaven itself.
Helen Keller is perhaps the best known writer in the past hundred years to overcome massive deficits and describe clearly a world she never saw or heard with her physical senses, having been robbed of sight and hearing in infancy. Helen was gifted with the ability to see through her silent darkness and show people the way to a world filled with profound beauty and possibility, perhaps a foretaste of Heaven. In her case, the blind led the sighted into visions of numinous clarity.
Akiane was born to a stay-at-home atheistic mother in Illinois in 1994. At age four she began drawing, at age six painting. At age seven she was writing aphorisms and poems. She speaks Russian, Lithuanian, English, and American Sign. At age four she had a profound spiritual experience that resulted in her atheistic family embracing God. With no art training whatever she is described as one of the twenty most accomplished visual artists in the world and is considered by some to be the only true binary genius in the world. Her website says that her life goal is “to share her love for God and people around the world.” One has only to read her words or view her paintings to be absolutely certain that this prodigy can see far beyond - perhaps even to Heaven. The technical excellence and compositional aspects of her written and visual work are simply staggering. To the best of my knowledge she does not own a telescope.
One certainly might wonder what was going on in the early 1990s that a number of such profoundly gifted individuals came into our world. Unlike prodigies who have sheer intellectual horsepower gifted to them to perform at high levels, these individuals have an additional spiritual capacitance that turbocharges their creative expressions to a world that is in desperate need of seeing Heaven, a place of serenity and beyond the turbulence and chaos of daily life. These messages of hope and vision can be transformative, if we but stop, look, and listen.
The ability to imagine life from a dog’s perspective, to calculate impossible equations without benefit of pen, paper or supercomputer, to craft words into shimmering prose at age three, to paint vivid images of a sublime world at age six, to capture the essence of the human experience, good and bad at age three, to describe the world without benefit of eyes or ears; all of these suggest One who wants a message of love, hope and reconciliation to be heard by all of us who share this world.
Recently NASA brought the orbiting Kepler telescope on line. This specialized telescope has a single job - finding planets, hopefully ones of the right size, composition, and temperature to support carbon-based life as we know it. Almost immediately Kepler started finding planets, lots of them. Alas, all of them are considered ill-suited to life. For up to six years this telescope will stare at the same region of the sky and monitor the light from 100,000 stars, hoping to find suitable candidates. Analysis of fluctuations of the light from each of these stars can be highly suggested of planets orbiting them. It is straight-forward mathematics to deduce the size, orbit, and temperature of these planets. It is heady stuff to think that we might actually have the ability with our present technology to sleuth life-giving planets in remote solar systems. Yet, analysis only allows us indirect inferences about the worlds that orbit these remote unnamed stars. We cannot really see these planets directly.
As stunning as it may be to find hundreds of planets in remote solar systems scattered across the galaxy, perhaps far more compelling is the ability of gifted individuals, untrained children yet, to see far beyond the capabilities and range of Kepler. Inexplicably, we find they are able to create stunning visual and linguistic visions of unseen regions of the universe, images the equal or greater than any of those produced by multi-billion dollar orbiting telescopes. Perhaps we are really seeing Heaven through the eyes of children.
Barbara Hagerty has recently written a compelling book that demands we consider the possibility these children are seeing more, much more, perhaps even Heaven. In Fingerprints of God she posits the question that has tormented her and many others “Is this all there is.?” A lifetime of questioning boiled down to this. “I wondered about my own brief brushes with something numinous, and the gnawing suspicion that there might be a reality this hides itself except in rare moments, or to rare people.” Over several hundred well-written pages Hagerty reviews scientific evidence highly suggestive of the veracity of claims made by such rare people of visions of another realm, of Heaven, of God.
The Revelation of John describes something akin to what these children are seeing and reporting with their incredible gifts. John was one of those rare adults gifted with a profound vision of Heaven. It has been a bestseller for twenty centuries.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth disappeared, and the sea vanished ... There will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain. The old things have disappeared … Then the one who sits on the throne said, "And now I make all things new!" He also said to me, "Write this, because these words are true and can be trusted." And the city itself was made of pure gold, as clear as glass. The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. Rev 21
The apostle Paul, who was granted authorship of a big chunk of the New Testament, admits that we are not seeing directly or very clearly.
What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face. What I know now is only partial; then it will be complete---as complete as God's knowledge of me. I Cor 13
Perhaps one way for us to see with greater clarity and vision is to make sure all children have access to kindness, safety, pencil and paper, brushes and paint, and pianos, especially when they are young and still able to see the world clearly
Craig C. Johnson
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