tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28561820039732869962024-03-08T15:39:48.608-05:00After The Manner Of a QuakerRobinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-25680804335656270482013-11-21T19:31:00.000-05:002013-11-22T02:07:29.272-05:00Tales of Forgotten People:The Secret Travels of Those Who Were Devoted<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Imagine an obscure religious woman who lives in the forest battling her voices; she has the PTSD of being a brilliant female in 12th century England. She is a woman in a town, rebuffed by church officials and enclosing herself beside the church, refusing to budge. The church walls up her room, leaving her to die, yet she outwits them via a hole in the roof through which she emerges at night to forage in the town, always returning to her chamber to sleep through the day except for the occasional pranks she plays with them by making noises and loud prayers. She gains help from two monks who shield her activities from authorities and drop food to her when she cannot get out. After several years, the church officials open the wall to find her sitting peacefully at prayer, clothed in robes and a gown. They offer her a hermitage nearby and she insists that she be in charge, will accept young women who will be guided by her, they will live by their own means through weaving and small crops, and they will only accept the ministrations of priests that she picks. Big stonewalling, so she returns to her room and starts rebuilding the wall. By now townspeople know of her and revere her, and come to her defense, essentially a demonstration at her room. Church officials never relent but they do retreat, at least for a while. She determines that she will not be free of their meddling...after all, she has done miraculous things for several years and they are still unwilling or unable to see her as a free person in her own right. so she gathers supporters, prepares an expedition ostensibly for the Holy Land, but actually for a remote place. She makes a parting speech: “I tell you, a thousand years will pass before men will be able to loosen their heartstrings. Most men are so tied to their physical being that the things of heaven are remote to them and can be found only through the strictest control and suffering, which is such a shame since heaven is, in fact, here and now if one but gives up all to it without control, without pain, without wish for gain, with the greatest passion and devotion.” She and twenty others sail west and in fact land in America on what is now Long Island. She becomes a respected Algonquin priestess/leader and her followers settle with the tribe to disappear into their now forgotten history. She teaches the tribe about England’s ways and the local malcontents sail east, landing in Majorca and eventually getting to Portugal and Spain where they join the Basques in the high county. <br /><br /><br />A man from Italy walks to Afghanistan to find his grandfather who had traveled with Marco Polo; he finds his soul. He also finds a family left behind after his grandfather died (nod to Salman Rushdie). <br /><br /><br />A woman in colonial America walks out of her village and into the forest, following trails already formed over a thousand years. To one side she sees another trail, partially hidden in the bushes. Following that, she arrives in a little clearing with small bark huts around its edges. She builds herself one and waits. Eventually, the residents emerge from their hiding places. They regard each other silently and then all set to work making dinner together.<br /><br /><br />There are lives in history, real lives, individuals who found their own way, able to ignore society’s pressures and go with devotion until finding a sane way to live. They break cultural walls. Some of them are killed. Some survive to demonstrate that some can follow “right reason” and a devoted heart through all cultural insanity.</span></span>Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-51123964728551418852013-11-20T20:57:00.000-05:002013-11-21T19:38:35.047-05:00Dec. 2012<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Musing, wondering if everyone lives in a small private hell. If that is why we all spend our days working so committedly on other people’s chores, telling ourselves it is for the greater good, telling ourselves it means something that we do this. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What does mean something is that we don’t sit alone with ourselves, our fear, our lack of self-esteem. In fact, we live through others, using another’s, either employers’ or children’s or spouse’s, goals and plans to make meaning in our own lives. This makes sense, in a sad way, seeing the horrors in the land - children massacred, mayhem on poor streets and in far off lands at war, even in places at peace where mores, simple custom, prevents full personhood to all. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How does this happen? Why do we persist in fashion, custom, tradition that cuts into the sinews of humanity. Woven together, we become twisted up together into knots of little fascist thoughts of control and pride and honor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Maybe this is my own private hell. My little selfish life. Reading, thinking, despairing. I spend my time distracted with these things rather than with engagement with others, because I cannot fully enter into most forms of fellowship, cannot find it in myself to believe that the things we generally do together are real, honest, true, believably valuable. Except for the briefest of moments. In tiny encounters with others, openly shared or not, are quick glimpses of paradise here on earth, even in the midst of the loud, awful noise of our allegedly modern world. These alone are what sustain me.</span></div>
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Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-77072910344425119492013-11-20T20:54:00.000-05:002013-11-21T19:38:52.637-05:00Nov. 2012<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today, extreme language describes rather dumb, rather minor discussions. The looming “economic cliff” is perfect jargon for “let’s divert our emotions while ignoring the problem of, let’s face it, total and utter boredom within Western culture.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our passion for football, competition, devastating victories, adrenaline, being the best, all of these come from basic social and genetic imperatives that have been behind so-called Western progress. If we do not give young people (men especially) challenges equal to the drive and energy that we have bred for for the past several thousand years, we will continue to have it come out in our politics in ways that tear us apart rather than in ways that lead to “progress.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On the day after electoral loss, conservative angst translates in to war language: have to fight to protect freedom that is in jeopardy due to liberal thinking...etc. We continue to buy into crisis after crisis. None of us can find the essential juices that fuel lives. While we, none of us, believe we are facing life and death. What are our real needs? Do we know? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">While we scurry about arguing about markets, we fail to understand the true costs of those markets, confront the mathematics of overpopulation and climate change, consumption and need. Both liberal and conservative, we prefer mental mazes to that which might repaint our picture of the good life. We are obviously a species that gets caught in intellectual bubbles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How do we break out? Can we save ourselves? Because I fully believe that we are in jeopardy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, we have always been in jeopardy. What I am talking about is not another manufactured crisis, though, but rather a plea for us to reconnect with the inner knowing that has allowed the species to survive. Can we embrace jeopardy itself? To do that we have to put people back into the line of fire, so to speak:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Reinstate the draft, and fight our wars openly, shall I say, cleanly (if they have to be fought at all). Stop agricultural subsidies that produce, for example, high fructose corn syrup and ethanol instead of food with high nutritional content. Encourage people to grow food locally. Make clean water and healthy oceans an international priority. Help people use alternate transportation - bicycles, electric vehicles, walking - by down regulating car size, truck capacities, things like that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dislocate modern society in ways that engage people in their lives. Give up the idea of “career” and take up the idea of “living.” I would rather we risk it. I'll do without yearly Oscars and Monday Night Football. Can we risk experiencing actual life? If not, I believe we will not be able to awaken for the real crises that are coming towards us.</span></div>
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Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-53441909841586680842013-11-20T20:42:00.000-05:002013-11-21T19:39:11.743-05:00lost in america<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The threat today is not external. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In spite of trendy outward focus on terrorism, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Americans feel the shattered world reaching inward, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">verbal shards pierce hearts, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">and we wonder, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">was it real? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">did we really once believe in civil equality, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">we who once thought it possible,</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">how could we piss it away?</span></div>
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Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-46163893509729470322013-11-20T20:30:00.001-05:002013-11-21T19:40:01.745-05:00Shams i Tabrizi - quotes<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I wonder what these people think this way of friendship with God is! He is God who created the heavens and the earth, and who made the universe come into existence. They think that His love is easy - as if they could just sit with Him, and they talk or listen. Do you think this is some kind of beef soup you can just take, drink up, and leave?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">[Rumi’s Sun: The Teachings of Shams of Tabriz, tr. Refik Algan and Camille Adams Helminski]</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What harm comes to the dervish [seeker] from the sourness of others? If the whole world were swallowed by the sea, what would it matter to a duck?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometimes a person may have a single shameful aspect, and yet it veils all of the person’s thousand positive qualities; what one needs is a single positive quality capable of veiling a thousand disgraceful aspects.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There is a kind of person who has no defects except that he is resentful; this state veils all of his positive qualities. </span></div>
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Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-72659158940091950262013-11-20T20:26:00.002-05:002013-11-21T19:40:16.392-05:00On listening to SXSW on the radio<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What should I be listening for? The emotion behind the words? An accuracy of pitch? Tight execution of the song? Artistic overview? Should I be watching for a generosity towards the audience? A centered presence on stage? In short, am I looking for kinship or for some inner aesthetic pleasure when I listen to a band or watch some performance? Perhaps this is the question for all of my day: what do I recognize, what do I seek, what do I find?</span></div>
Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-87960629478799413872013-11-20T20:22:00.000-05:002013-11-21T19:40:30.921-05:00Stanislaw Lem's Cry of the Heart<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Somewhere, in one of his stories, Stanislaw Lem wrote about the <i>memento mori</i>, the shadow line of human life. He said something about how we are taken there outside of our control and “we, like children, argue as if we had a choice (sic)” Or something like that. It may have been in <i>More Tales of Pirx The Pilot</i>, though that, too, is a strange remembrance from insights long ago, constructed reality from faded, patched up mental debris. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I loved his sense that “enough is maturity,” that humans would remain adolescent if possible, that we argue as if we had a choice about growing old or dying. These were new thoughts for me then. I was just over forty, and aware for the first time that I was getting older, becoming an older person, in spite of feeling no different inside than I did at ten. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Perhaps I am an anomaly, but puberty made barely a dent on me mentally, emotionally, psychologically. I still feel as if I were eight and as if I were an agent of my own in very strange company, that the adult world looks alien and fairly stupidly bent on ignoring obvious stuff. I still think that clothes for women look silly, even demented, and that the grown men around me appear stiff and rigid as if their insides were squeezed all together into too small a space. There aren’t that many adult humans who seem grown, in these parts even still.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I remember agreeing that, yes, enough IS maturity and that I had enough of everything most of the time, a life of privilege considering the world at large, and that I was grateful, even for the aging that was taking me, unasked, into older age where, at the very least, I no longer had to worry if I was cool and I might dress as I like without forty-seven explanations.</span></div>
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Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-68985612133601246972013-11-20T20:08:00.002-05:002013-11-21T19:42:56.589-05:00The Ascent of Man - a prose poem<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Silent streaming photons bathe the plant on all sides. It lifts its head towards warmth and it breathes. Tiny thrills of energy wave out along tender branching stalks and a sense of peace opens its internal pipes, throbbing with moistured nutrient earth particles. It drinks carbon from the surrounding air, and extracts minuscule ionic trace minerals which knit the carbon into long flows of new form. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The flower moves upward into air, day by day, and this day will be a good one. Its body grows from thin air and sunlight upward into free space and outward, shading tiny ecosystems beneath its leaves where molds and insects live and farm their own domains, destinies intertwined. It’s funny, but we humans don’t usually remember that organic growth is almost entirely from air and sun, free and clear of eco-nomic expert knowledge of proteins and fat. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Our eco-sense is mostly some nonsense about fertilizers, after the fact, once removed through the flesh of others. Yet, everything is given. We did not invent the sun and the air, the grass that makes our beef, nor the bacteria that allow cows to digest that grass. We grow independent of our thought, in spite of infantile wishes to remain small, dependent, fed, clothed, pampered by others. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">We gain stature and strength we did not ask for, but, once found, we revel and want more. Our lofty minds, so fluid, automatically assume shapes from ancestral dreams we do not even know. (By the time our minds discover ourselves, we have already lost them.) And yet, we grow. Our bodies drink air and the air that plants drank, water and the water that fell from that air eons ago.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We emerge upward, and climb and build and scale and challenge ourselves, each other. This is how it happens, I guess: the games that hone skills become life work, of course, and the life work become games, deception with each other, ourselves. </span>So wrapped up in skills we forgot. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">We forgot how it is all given, a given that we did not create. We grew out of thin air, after all, before we even knew it, and then we were there, playing with the pieces, stealing bananas from each other, at first perhaps for fun, but then in earnest.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Clouds form above the flowers, carrying virtual rain high across the heavens - it’s over our heads, that’s for sure - and then they vanish, all on their own, outside of our knowledge. We can telephone for help, for fun, to annoy or to comfort, but we cannot telephone for rain. Over our heads, clouds follow messages like virtual wires crossing the heavens, find special fields on which to pour their blessings with an inner eco-sensitivity foreign to us any more. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">We scratch our heads, looking up and down, how to manage this wild far field of moisture-bearing ether? No? Well then, we’ll dam the ground flows in concrete, taking and giving according to our own eco-sense of fair-play. Damn it all, we have visions of power generated from these hijacked waters and we’ll sell it to the ground. We have to mean something, don’t we?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The flowers have formed blossoms, attracted insect partners, and become full with pollen. The bees have drunk and flown sluggishly back to their villages, full of treasure. New seeds formed and petals blew away with the wind, in full maturity. Tiny ecosystems bloomed below in molds and insects harvested for later need. Man crouches where he was, pounding ground that is shifting beneath him. He struggles to stand upright, suddenly discovering that schoolyard struts are no longer adequate. He must support his own full weight now.</span></span></div>
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Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-90887846826563697112013-11-20T19:57:00.001-05:002013-11-21T19:40:58.617-05:00March, 2012<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Looking around Austin, I see business as usual, but there is no business as usual. The earth has turned toward a different star. Most people sense this but do not turn to look at what it means. I see cars driving about and people dressed for success, having lunch and buying organic on the way home from work, but they seem as if the dead walking. It is so sad, this Occupy time. And so hopeful. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Finally. Finally humanity has a moment again to reflect, to reassess, to reassemble perhaps, like after the plague or the fall of Rome. And so, my need. I feel as if all I can do is to wait, as if I were already dead myself, waiting for some greater good to place me where I can be of help, as if I cannot help without commission from outside, as if everything I might do, however good in itself, will be another form of personal ego.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I would like to see Safe Smiles Zones, painted into the sidewalks. Smiles Stores, where people leave and take useable goods without money. Sunshine Hats, which can be exchanged on the fly between strangers. Sidewalk Studies, where people can stop to sit and talk. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The next era will be one of connections, locality, smallness perhaps, networks. The time of individual ego has been exhausted into its logical endpoint: 1% owning 99% to no observable purpose other than because they could. Perhaps our species has become equally as useless, meaningless, as boring to the gods as the dinosaurs, living only to eat, create wastes, and die. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I long for meaning. It is time for magic and sacredness and joy, subtlety, the sublime. Perhaps the need now is to reach inside for these things, to dig past my conditioning, past the childhood dregs and accustomed responses, to look and seek for those connections, that magic, sacredness and joy. Time to go past fears. </span></div>
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Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-68449407888345293982013-11-20T19:53:00.000-05:002013-11-21T19:41:14.179-05:00Nov. 2011<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I am now posting stuff I wrote over the last two years, I hope vaguely in order, up to the present. It documents the growing sense of unreality I sense throughout our modern life and times. At times, I have felt great anger, sometimes over losing what feels like the lifeblood, the vital, primal, messy, daring, surging, stirring, sometimes scary, energy of the earth. That energy seems far away, muted, tied down, as if we little Lilliputians have nailed the gods of the planet to the ground under miles of thin plastic filaments, staked out the gods to perish under a hot sun, and then went off to dance around a campfire over which the last living mammoth roasts in pieces. Anyway, here's the first post (warning, it's a bit of a rant):</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">November, 2011</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">When I was laid off in 2008, I lost medical insurance. During graduate school, I was on the student plan (at $165 or so a year). Since being graduated, I applied and was turned down for private medical insurance, because I "had had cancer." Since I am 63, I cannot yet use Medicaire. Since I am 63 and had breast cancer 12 years ago, I am apparently uninsurable...though I have not actually used insurance and have had good checkups since then.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today talked for three hours to an insurance company which offered to give me insurance at twice the normal premium. They decided that I am hypertensive, use tobacco, and that I require medication for high cholesterol...all incorrect. My blood pressure averages about 120/75, I do not use any tobacco, and, while my LDL is and has been about 215, the HDL/LDL ratio is terrific. They, however, diagnose me over the phone, overruling my doctor, whom I saw last week. Anything for a bigger premium. am angry and frustrated, underneath the sense of health and well-being, eroding me somewhat. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I did not ask to be laid off (the month that I turned 60). I did not really love working in corporations but was willing and able, and expected to continue for 10 more years. Now, it seems that insurance companies have decided that, since I did not die from breast cancer 12 years ago, they will helpfully create the situation where that could still happen. Good times! (The medical system declared me free and clear of cancer after 10 years of good health, but what do they know?).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was laid off, in part, because the work I was doing (high performance microprocessor design) went to India. Remember voting about that? Neither do I. If you think that politicians are protecting “good jobs” (remember that slogan?), think again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hey, I never asked for a health system run by insurance companies with Wall Street values. I bet you didn’t either. I left medical school (years ago) because I could see that doctors were becoming irrelevant... That is the case now, as my case demonstrates. Feel warm and fuzzy now?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">None of us has had a choice about either how the medical system works or who has access. Same with the food industry. We spend twice what other rich countries do on health care and yet are unique in leaving millions of citizens without access to it. The nutrient density of our food had dropped significantly over the last 50 years, as processing and agribusiness has taken over the food supply. None of us has had a direct say in any of this. If you are not upset about these things, WHY NOT?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Enough kvetching. Life is grand. Too bad that our country isn’t, so much.</span><br />
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Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-469598837148191252013-11-19T17:07:00.000-05:002013-11-21T19:41:47.568-05:00Well, I'm back.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Well, after four years I am back. I have written a lot during this time, and will post some of it in succeeding posts. From August, 2008, until May, 2011, I attended Earlham School of Religion, a Quaker seminary in Richmond, Indiana, and received an M. Div. with an emphasis in writing. The program was intensive, varied, and, for the most part, really interesting. My goals at the start were (1) to study the greatest mystery we know about, (2) to learn writing within a non-competitive, non-gimmicky, say-what-you-mean-as-much-as-possible framework, and (3) to learn a lot more about liberal, unprogrammed Quakerism. I would say that I achieved (2), made progress on (1), and, to put it bluntly, lost interest in (3).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">During the fall of 2011, throughout 2012 and much of 2013, I rejoined my Quaker Meeting, serving on committees, going to Yearly Meeting, serving as Recording Clerk, and teaching classes on Quakerism and on the Bible. I spent some time at Pendle Hill at an FGC consultation. I read more Quaker books and I transcribed many (over two hundred) pages of early Quaker writing from Early English Books Online. I came to the conclusion that, at least in my case, modern Quakerism has lost its convincement.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Between 2006 and 2011, I participated in a group that calls itself Sufi, learning Arabic prayers, going to dhikrs (chanting prayer sessions) and gatherings. Due to misconduct at the leadership levels, I left that group and approached another, more grounded, less doctrinaire Sufi group. (Yes, yes, these are my opinions...just settle down). </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So now it is almost 2014. I am sixty-five years old, retired with a smallish, but workable income, relatively healthy (so far), and free to divest, to jettison baggage, baloney, and bullshit dreams. It feels pretty good.</span><br />
<br />Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-43850638475328869302009-07-06T23:43:00.007-04:002009-07-07T00:11:17.573-04:00postmodern desertI am spending this summer at home from seminary, thinking about it all, reading, and hoping for clarity. My heart has indeed unlocked somewhat during this year, in spite of some painful family complications.<br /><br />After seeing Serene Jones, Gary Dorrien (Union Theological School), and Jonathan West on Bill Moyers' last show, I went running to the UTS web site. Drs. Jones and Dorrien were talking about how their students differ from previous years, they demand what is 'real,' are breaking the old theologies and rituals, committed to social justice and love, matters of the heart. These professors seemed proud of this. I was excited - a lot of what they were expressing seemed to match my own inarticulate searching as a seminary student, and it is not clear if my own school is as enthusiastic about this emerging redefinition of religious activity.<br /><br />What I do know is that there are people who are uncomfortable, dissatisfied, with the expression of spirituality that is possible within the current form of our Meetings and churches. Many new forms of 'worship' groups are appearing, experimental groups of people from all denominations across the U.S.<br /><br />What I also know is that I am still a bit lost in terms of how I want to express my own spirituality. As soon as I start to put words to it, my mind starts complaining about lack of content while my heart shrinks back a bit. It is as if I am afraid to hope.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-72478062677317164612009-03-06T23:51:00.005-05:002009-03-07T00:16:07.535-05:00The World Of BeingLess than 2 weeks after the last post, I applied for and was accepted into seminary. Since I am a member of a Quaker Meeting that does not use Pastors or formal Ministers, this is perfect. I have been practical for far too long. I have completed one semester and am about half way through the second, with no major mishaps so far, as far as I know.<br /><br />This is a different world from the large multinational corporations I was used to. Ten people in the incoming residential class with about 15 in the 'remote' classes. I am getting used to having a name and face again. And I am remembering what it means to live according to conscience and heart instead of corporate policy, though, of course, a school is a corporate body and there are rules and things. This is actually a hard adjustment to make. My heart has been locked up for so long that it is unwilling to emerge quite yet.<br /><br />At the time I wrote that last post, I had no idea what I would do with myself. Now that I am in school, the question is temporarily answered. In the longer term, though, I still have no idea what I will do, but somehow it seems less important a question. All I have to do is be. And that is the point of this post. We all of us really need to 'be' ahead of 'do' if we want to make a world that we can stand to live in, it seems to me.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-59173239883172368532008-07-22T04:14:00.002-04:002008-07-22T04:18:58.407-04:00WowWell, I have been relieved of my job and career. In 11 years of odd jobs and 26 years of cpu (computer) design, I survived many rounds of layoffs. In the last 2 positions, however, I was laid off after less than 3 years each. <br /><br />There are certain disadvantages to being someone like me in a competitive high-tech environment. The longer one works, the more one is expected to rise up into quasi-administrative, 'leadership' roles. These roles are, quite frankly, awful for one's health. I did not want to take them on. I do not dissemble very well, and so became less and less able to pass, as they say. My self presentation became pretty terrible as I lost respect for the current theory, to put it generously, of corporate structure and policy.<br /><br />In short, my main objective for the past 10 or so years has been to remain employed while avoiding rising too high in the organization, and the game has finally played itself out. I am relieved, though grateful for the interesting technical work and good salary given to me during this ride. I worked hard to produce the technical results needed by the companies and enjoyed many of the people in them. The exchange has been fair throughout, and all benefited from it.<br /><br />It has now taken me 3 months to figure out that (1) I don't have a job, and (2) I now have the opporutnity to make whatever I want out of the rest of my life. Wow.<br /><br />I am still pretty much speechless about this.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-75211404771843775332008-04-14T03:04:00.002-04:002008-04-14T03:10:36.263-04:00Reality is ... what?For the most part, humans do not create the conditions into which they become conscious. Persistent consciousness, that is, processing of events, thoughts, and sensory input with persistent memory of same, does not begin until well after initiation of life for almost all people (allowing for extraordinary cases reported in Buddhist literature). <br /><br />This interesting observation leads to the conclusion that consciousness is not essential to human life, much as we might forget this at times. Beyond that, as we go through our lives, we are often unconscious. We sleep. We daydream. We look at one thing and walk into something else. <br /><br />We cannot pay attention to all sensory input at every moment, but must continuously select that part to which we attend. It has been said that, of the million or so inputs to our senses every moment, we attend to about 70.<br /><br />Thus, one might say that we are mostly unconscious.<br /><br />Ahem. This puts things in perspective, doesn't it? The only way to use our consciousness is to focus, or, in other words, to become unconscious of many other things. <br /><br />So, then who/what is running the show?<br /><br />[pause for reflection]<br /><br />What, then, is consciousness? This part of us does not seem to be that connected to a massive part of our surroundings each moment.<br /><br />Awareness seems to us to be continuous and organized, in general. We seem to be in control of our actions and, sometimes, our thoughts. We seem to form opinions on our own. We think we're pretty smart most of the time.<br /><br />But we're also mostly unconscious.<br /><br />This reminds me of the fact that solid materials are overwhelmingly empty of 'hard' substance, being made of molecules which are 99+% space in which tiny wave-particles fly about at indeterminate (sic) speeds.<br /><br />Reality is not what it seems, it seems.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-72888143499383353632008-02-10T15:06:00.000-05:002008-02-11T23:04:18.279-05:00Are you a believer?All I can say is that I do not and cannot know the circumstances that led to my consciousness. The physical body I inhabit and the planet upon which I walk are an abundant vessel for this consciousness, supplied by some agency that is beyond my control and outside of my personal knowledge.<br /><br />There are arguments between those who favor evolution as an explanation of all that lives and those who favor a divine entity as one who created this rich environment and our overactive mentalities. There are those who think that these arguments have substance. I do not.<br /><br />I am awed by the possibility that I am part some greater whole than is apparent on Earth. I am equally awed by the thought that I might not be part of anything beyond the apparent senselessness of our daily struggle for bread, water, mental and physical procreation.<br /><br />The only certain knowledge that I have is that I cannot be sure how thoughts occur to me nor where they originate. My efforts to generate clear thought are merely those of removing obstacles. They are not generative; I cannot set about to manufacture a line of thinking as I might, say, set about constructing an article of clothing. All I can do is to follow the thinking that presents itself to myself, assuming that I can understand its merit and remember the point long enough to make note of it.<br /><br />Scientists tell us that the physics of our known universe indicates that less than 0.00000001 percent (sic - some very small number) of our personal space actually contains 'matter.' We are beings largely composed of empty space; our bodies are held up by mutually repelling forces of elementary particles standing aground the same mutually repelling force fields.<br /><br />This is extraordinary, and should, one would think, lead a person to consider the equally extraordinary gulf between our everyday experience of human existence and its physical reality.<br /><br />It occurs to me that this may be the only subject worthy of religious examination. This massive discrepancy in our perceptive apparatus indicates that we are apparently beings inhabiting force fields rather than 'solidness' and that we do not generally relate to this fact. Thus, humans, by this one fact, can be defined as belief generators, living in the belief that we are situated with a solid "physical" reality.<br /><br />Once this is established, notions of higher beings are just more of the same, generated by a talent we cannot suppress nor avoid. There may be truth to these beliefs or not. Whether we conceive of personal gods or impersonal natural forces, they are constructed as part of the act of consciousness and as unavoidable as life/death itself.<br /><br />So, yes, I am a believer, just as you are.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-56771363360394626512008-02-08T23:32:00.000-05:002008-02-09T00:13:35.910-05:00EntrophySeveral converging threads of my life have together dampened my urge to write things for public consumption in this blog. The near death of a family member coincided with what I experienced as another deep disappointment with a beloved religious body. These, among other things, have left me without a place to stand, in terms of public discussion and inquiry. I can find little energy to offer thoughts, questions, and opinions. I do not sense that the endeavor will be fruitful.<br /><br />Maybe this is the best place to start. I don't know, frankly. What I do know is that there is a better way for all of us to arrange our lives, our medical care, our politics, our economics, our nourishment, our use of resources, our interactions with each other. I think that this way is to tell the truth, to feel our disappointments, to give up competition, to feel our imagined humiliations, to stare into the face of the unknown. Simple things, done simply. Genuine things, done genuinely. <br /><br />Maybe this is also the best place to end. I don't know, frankly.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-26654238118870720192008-01-01T16:32:00.000-05:002008-01-01T17:05:21.610-05:00Disjoint NecessitiesFor the past 2 1/2 months, I have had the opportunity to study our American medical system in some detail. Spending time visiting a family member in Intensive Care, critical care units, rehabilitation hospitals, and skilled care rehabilitation units has simultaneously increased and decreased my respect for the quality of medical care in our fine country.<br /><br />The one word that stands out to me in thinking about this experience is disjoint. Every aspect of the medical care is disjoint from every other. Doctors are disjoint from their institutions, each other, the nursing staff, the patients, and, of course, the patient's families.<br /><br />Institutions are disjoint from each other. Medical priorities are reset at every transfer, and transfers are often done to satisfy non-medical priorities. Care givers change every day, even within one institution, and thus the patient is confronted with an interpersonal environment that is chaotic and confusing - especially bad for those with head injuries, memory and perception problems.<br /><br />Some of the disjointness is due to the "Patient's Bill of Rights." Under this law, people are not allowed to talk to each other, to put it crudely. In order to avoid breaking patient confidentiality, communication is limited to 'need to know' which, IMO, cuts down on options presented to patients, for patients, and which forces family members to execute "Medical Power Of Attorney" for people who are temporarily incapacitated. This, in itself, is somewhat traumatic,for patient and family, possibly causing further disjointness.<br /><br />All in all, I am humbled by the care with which all of the medical staffs have worked on behalf of the our patient, and by the quality of the medical decisions made at times. The medical care itself has seemed to be quite good, done diligently and with care and respect.<br /><br />On the other hand, I am somewhat mystified at the medical system we have, in which every action is made into a commodity, weighted, measured, and doled out through distant invisible money agents through medical agents that are constrained in what they can say to others due to confidentiality and also due to fear of later lawsuit. Calling it a system is generous, being an impossible collection of competing interests.<br /><br />Longer term questions are neglected - institutions can cherry-pick what procedures they want to provide - leaving the overall trajectory of the patient's care up to the family, who are generally informed enough to make those decisions only after the care has been rendered.<br /><br />My family member is recovering, but, in the process, my family has become somewhat sick at heart, exhausted, and in great fear of ever ourselves needing critical medical care. This is less due to projected pain and suffering than to the prospect of being at the mercy of a mindless set of financial and legal strictures that possibly override our own best interests.<br /><br />Profit motive is not good medicine.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-23419561553131671422007-10-11T22:13:00.000-04:002007-10-11T22:22:12.946-04:00Imagining Reality - Part 2In our modern, alert times, imagination, if it is considered at all, is considered to be a matter for leisure, play, the arts or is a suspiciously watched activity within research organizations.<br /><br />This was not so for almost all of human history. For the larger portion of human history, images from imagination gave us meaning, truth, and clarity in a sometimes undeciferable world.<br /><br />In Part 1 of this essay, I spoke about the prevailing mythology of modern times as that of the warrior culture, glorifying war, expressed as either a conflagration of weapons or as a purely internal struggle, but which is some form of a fight between good and evil.<br /><br />I think that this is no mistake. We have been mired in a morality play for a few thousand years now, in my opinion. Are we good or bad entities?Do we add value to the universe or are we a scourge that badly needs re-education, reform, and a cosmically directed culling of the herd?<br /><br />Somewhere, I imagine, as a species we internalized a significant trauma. Somewhere something so horrific was done to the planet and its life forms that the self-aware had little choice but to realign with a new paradigm that jettisoned earlier non-competitive forms of value and meaning.<br /><br />That or our ancestors thought that they did something so horrific that they could visualize escape from its guilt only by adopting the mythology of struggle against evil.<br /><br />In any event, in a distant, though still recalled, process, mythologies of fertility, magic, natural alignment, and collectivism were suppressed, even obliterated. Born were individualism, militancy, hyper-alertness, expansionism, a kind of twitchy dissatisfaction with ourselves as a species, and each other as individuals.<br /><br />This is all written into our sacred texts quite explicitly.<br /><br />Interesting. I would say that it looks like a massive case of post traumatic stress disorder.<br /><br />But what is more interesting to me is looking at the relative poverty of our remaining ability to create meaning. Humans used to find great value in their personal relationships to the life-forms of nature. Vitalism animated everything, giving us a way to relate meaningfully to everything.<br /><br />Once vital essence was removed from nature and representations of nature(idols), we lost the ability to relate positively to it. Once value was relegated to things beyond Earth, things of the Earth (dust) were considered only for their ability to serve our physical needs and comfort.<br /><br />It is debatable whether we gained a higher moral stature by this. In fact, it appears that we became more willful, less compassionate, and much less sensitive to life force in general, through this change in attitude.<br /><br />We lost our companions, but also did not find we could include each other in our immediate family. We instead had become obsessed with control, of ourselves, each other, and the natural world.<br /><br />So look at this reality: we are stuck in a paradigm (good vs evil), looking backward, hoping for atonement. Think this is too dark?<br /><br />We're definitely steeped in the culture of struggle, avoiding our deepest selves, afraid of truth. Our prophets have told us repeatedly that our eternal survival depends on love, starting with loving one another, but we somehow do not seem to be able to relate to this. It is like the thought keeps bouncing off our collective consciousness.<br /><br />What can we do about this? Can we relearn how to create rich myths about the mysteries of our lives? Can we even imagine celebrating the bountifulness of our existence? Or are we stuck, world without end, in some tired paradigm of struggle with survival?<br /><br />Can you imagine peace? Can you touch the source of your being, celebrate the bounty and purpose of your life?<br /><br />Instead of our almost reflex urge toward comparison, which instantly depletes meaning, changing the subject from intrinsic value to struggle between relative values, can we pause, and appreciate the largely unknown nature of our physical existence?<br /><br />In our modern, alert times, have we lost the ability to relate to the heart of energy and life?Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-812492998684552932007-09-28T04:57:00.000-04:002007-10-01T21:46:39.489-04:00Imagining Reality - Part 1I was thinking about Santa Claus lately, wondering what role this concept could possibly have played in human psyches to have grown into a cliche in modern life, and by what route did it become a symbol for the unreliability of belief.<br /><br />And then I remembered that I am breathing. The sun is shining. Life abounds on all sides. Food and water are plentiful. I am blessed and live in abundance.<br /><br />Some agency has arranged a miraculous creation all around me and I can appreciate that fact. Human bodies have very specific requirements for viability, and those requirements are met exactly, right here every day. The more I think about the probabilities of this, the more astounding it seems.<br /><br />It makes no difference if one prefers to think of our circumstances as the endpoint of a non-directed evolutionary process set in motion through purely physical processes, or if one prefers a personified deity, a personal God, or other kinds of religious ideation to explain it all. It has been arranged that we live and prosper.<br /><br />And one way to wrap up the whole concept is to celebrate an image of someone who arrives in the middle of the darkest, coldest part of the year bringing gifts overflowing.<br /><br />I wonder how many layers of meaning and truth were compressed into this one image through the millenia, in storytelling around winter fires.<br /><br />So, how did belief become attached to this image, which, on some level, describes pure fact? And why is it now an almost dead symbol?<br /><br />Are we still creating rich images of the mysteries of our lives? Or are we killing them all off, allowing them to be subverted into commercial props?<br /><br />Are we the same species as the one which created the original archetype of Santa?<br /><br />I think that we are. I think that we need and want these rich images that live just at the boundary between hard physical reality and the intangible realms of idea, spirit, mind. I think that they are essential nutrients in a system of meaning, truth, and clarity that re-balance our psyches, reminding us that our circumstances are largely beyond our control, reminding us to honor the unknown.<br /><br />We are, in fact, in the same position as our distant ancestors: what we know is far, far outweighed by that which we do not know.<br /><br />As far as we understand, humans living just beyond the limits of history had mythologies involving cycles and fertility. Modern day mythologies generally involve warrior cultures (c.g. Star Wars) fighting over methods of control (centralized vs. democratic) using differentiating technologies (mass produced vs. eclectic, non-uniform).<br /><br />Circles have flattened into straight lines. Fertility has become its opposite: warfare. Now, which is more primitive, a culture making rich images of its truths, or a culture which glorifies its interest in destruction?<br /><br />Maybe human history is actually running backwards. Wouldn't that be a shock? After all, it occurs to me that, in our curved universe, circles are natural while straight lines are theoretically impossible.<br /><br />So, maybe we don't actually exist, but are precursers of ancient humanity, a sort of nightmare before dawn, figments of their imagination, theoretically impossible.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-57858030476060755742007-09-15T17:31:00.000-04:002007-09-15T18:05:59.441-04:00Possibly Irreconcileable Differences (?)There is a split, rather a large gulf, separating some Friends in our Meeting from others. One would think that this split would revolve around some aspect of belief or belief content, but it does not. <br /><br />As far as I can tell, this split between Friends originates from differences in the personal experience of internal 'voices,' for want of a better word.<br /><br />My sense is that there is a big difference between Friends who seek deep interpersonal values and Friends who seek to discover the truth of their everyday existence. <br /><br />Those second Friends might be described as perplexed about the contradictions of conscious life - being aware of one's self implies two entities, yet both are one - so that they wish to understand the facts of their existence. Or they may be walking a path to God, seeking Unity with the Divine. In any event, their search involves subtlety, personal humility, submission to forces larger than their consciousness, among other things.<br /><br />The former Friends seem to be in the position that there can be little or no understanding of these things, so one should seek human contact and human goodness to the best of one's ability and leave off the rest. They may also be of the present condition that they do not have the luxury of earnest spiritual seeking at this time, and thus wish soley for comfort, solace, society. These Friends may be involved with morality, integrity on a social level, and communal sharing, among other things.<br /><br />Almost everyone has had the experience of internal promptings which seem to push one in some direction or another, and, most certainly, almost everyone has had the experience of conscience.<br /><br />There are some Friends who would describe this internal guidance as coming from something other than their consciously perceived self. These Friends sit with expectation, almost as if waiting for a lover, during Meeting For Worship, waiting for very subtle forces.<br /><br />Other Friends state that they believe that the inner promptings and wisdom that they experience is either self-generated (or at least explanable that way) or given by God. There is thus no need for a more complicated explanation than the workings, possibly as yet not understood, of the material world, or the workings, unable to be understood, of God. These Friends sit in Meeting to become quiet, to lose the jangling complications of everyday life, to find peace for a bit of time.<br /><br />[Of course, there are many other motivations and ideas about what people are doing during Worship. But I am trying here to articulate a problem that has been present in the Meeting for some time now. Please try to fit your ideas to my line of reasoning for a moment (only).]<br /><br />This is all exceedingly ironic. The two ideas about what constitutes worship involves not whether God helps us (or is there), but instead is totally a difference in expectation. Friends who sit expectantly in Meeting may be looking for subconscious promptings to give them wisdom, may be attempting to take an evolutionary step forward in terms of extending human consciousness, may be waiting for the gift of God's messages to speak to their condition. <br /><br />Those who seek peace, quiet, and human contact in Meeting For Worship want vocal ministry that is uplifting, enheartening, and possibly a bit entertaining, may wish to have their children present with them, may engage in inspirational reading or prayer or other forms of centering behavior. They may invoke God or not.<br /><br />These two groups of Friends, while so similar in intention, are opposite poles from each other in practice, having divergent expectations of Meeting For Worship. <br /><br />I am now quite sure that there will not be a way to overcome this kind of difference in expectation. For each, the entire point of Worship is invalidated by the other's point of view and behavior.<br /><br />And yet, neither point of view is invalid. They are simply incompatible.<br /><br />It may be damaging to all to try to force communal values in this case. I do not know. I only know that we have no vocabulary at present to use in attempting to understand each other, being separated by the common language of Quakerism, which rides serenely over the gulf of widely divergent expectation.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-50004786567891352672007-09-04T23:38:00.000-04:002007-09-05T00:02:56.845-04:00Horses and Carts, Chickens and EggsI may have been on Mars for the past few years, but it is only very recently that I have come across the fact of people calling themselves NonTheist Friends, with their siblings the Theist Friends. Apparently, there has been conflict in some Meetings over the issue of whether one believes in God or not while acting after the manner of a Quaker.<br /><br />Oh my. I hope that I am not asked whether I am a theist or non-theist Quaker.<br /><br />One of the brilliant innovations in George Fox’s inspiration was that doctrine is not truth, regardless of content. I believe that he even said “stay with the experience of the life within you, and this will free you from a dependence on words.” (from Rex Ambler’s Truth of the Heart)<br /><br />Yes, I understand that Fox was steeped in the theist traditions and that the vocabulary and interest of the early Quakers was rooted in Jesus and the Scriptures. But none of them defined what they meant by God, while all of them rejected the notion of a creed or a formal declaration of the content of one's belief, as far as I know.<br /><br />So my experience says to me that to be or not to be Non/Theist is a matter of taste, since we have no idea what the words actually mean anyway. Since they are a description of experience, the words come later, it seems to me. If at all.<br /><br />I do not aim to be divisive here, nor to be flip. I am actively concerned by Quakers who change focus from experience to conceptual doctrine.<br /><br />I am neither a theist nor a non-theist Quaker, nor am I agnostic, nor atheist. I do not reject the idea of divinity - though I am also pretty sure that I cannot accept many, if not most, of the commonly used descriptions of God.<br /><br />All these are just words.<br /><br />What's beyond the words? Talk to me about that.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-69714551793637664912007-08-24T23:27:00.000-04:002007-08-25T00:00:53.178-04:00Understanding AcceptanceIt finally occurred to me that acceptance is not something done passively. It is an active decision to not overreact. It is the condition in which one takes the energy usually powering reactions and puts it into searching the situation for truth.<br /><br />To achieve this, one has to make a decision to give up emotional attachments, and the attachment to one's unthinking exercise of emotions.<br /><br />No wonder it's so rare.<br /><br />And precious.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-88280343737063522002007-08-24T01:10:00.000-04:002007-08-24T02:13:11.690-04:00Warfare for GodChristiane Amanpour's documentary on "God's Warriors" is quite difficult to watch if one is spiritually inclined. Why militancy has a part in anyone's religion is quite beyond me, but to have it becoming associated with spirituality literally defines blasphemy: offense against the sacred.<br /><br />Part of my long ambivalence about organized religion stems from the imperialism of large organizations. Humans have again and again proved themselves incapable of organizing large groups of people without creating equally large opposing groups of people. Maybe that's why we have periodically had Prophets, people who would remind us of this fact, offer an alternative, and try to demonstrate this alternative.<br /><br />But as a species, we're just not so smart. So far, we have not shown that much capacity to listen and learn.<br /><br />A wit once said that human history is "just one damn thing after another." Yes, well, recorded human history <em>is</em> a catalogue of repeated and massive warfare, a record of just how far we are from the sacred, of how we have repeatedly damned one another and ourselves through violence and expediency (which are probably identical).<br /><br />For some reason, there are lots of people who think that we should continue on this path.<br /><br />So, I would say that, if one is truly searching for the sacred, run, run quickly from compelling speakers of any persuasion. Reject emotional appeals to self-serving causes like religious partisanship, any activism that creates divisions between people, and all hierarchies of people. Even patriotism is suspect. Reject any cause or creed that excludes anyone.<br /><br />Now that's a challenge I can get excited about.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856182003973286996.post-65943616160631945592007-08-14T19:40:00.000-04:002007-08-14T20:25:11.734-04:00Everyday Life And DeathA couple of weeks ago, my mother fell at her home and could not get up. She is 84 years old and lives alone now. A neighbor came to her aide, after several hours.<br /><br />She is very much attached to staying at her home, in a small town in Maryland, To this end, her focus, for the last 10 years, has been to create community around her, something that is as surprising to her children as it has been spectacularly successful.<br /><br />My family has never been known for its, uh, social abilities. We all tend to be somewhat reclusive, though this is due more to discomfort than to active avoidance of others. We have never been a cozy, happy group, and have never truly felt that we truly belonged anywhere, as far as I know. We have all been individually plagued with extreme social anxiety.<br /><br />So my mother came up with an amazing ability to create a nurturing community about her, just as she came into the need for it. I am sure that this was partly a conscious effort on her part, but this does not diminish my admiration for her achievement. <br /><br />She has neighbors who mow her lawn, take out her trash, and drive her to appointments when she cannot drive herself. There are members of her church who show up with food or offer to weed her prized rose garden. Her former singing group (Sweet Adelines) visit every week and another family includes her in all major holidays as part of their family.<br /><br />In short, she has established herself as a part of people's lives, just by being there. I believe that this is partly because she supplies people with a reminder of their own mortality, a living example of gentle decline. She awakens people's compassion and love, giving people a chance, all too rare in modern life, to act from their better nature. <br /><br />It is beautiful and heartbreaking. I love her very much.Robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12960838530929396196noreply@blogger.com1