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Confronting Fear

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Perhaps piqued by surveys that reveal that nearly half of all Republicans believe that our president is secretly a Muslim, Barack Obama has published a conversation with his favorite Christian author, Marilynne Robinson. The first half of the essay ends as a cliff-hanger, with Obama responding directly to Robinson’s declared pessimism with his own declaration of faith in the Christian virtue of doing quietly what is right. This practice is now his only explanation for why, despite appearing unwashed behind the ears, the candidate in 2008 became President. In retrospect, he now recognizes an inexplicable resonance with the small-town electorates that lead the primary schedule.

Eager for the conclusion, I did a number of online searches before returning to the New York Review and discovering that the transcript was a prepublication release for coverage to be completed on November 12. Intrigued by his celebration of Robinson, I followed the links to her recent reflection on Christianity and gun violence.

Since Roseburg, I have taken this topic up a number of times, arguing that both sound public policy (and other posts on 10/2 through 10/8) and Christian ethics requires that we improve our regulation of gun acquisition. But in reading Robinson’s essay, I was immediately disturbed. That essay has a subtly chiding tone, contrasting the rebelliousness of America’s modern gun culture with the patient and non-violent endurance of Christians confronting political persecution during both its early years and the Protestant reformation. It celebrates Calvin, who was the tyrannical overlord of Geneva, applying the ultimate sanction against the Unitarian “heresy” of Michael Servetus. Finally, while declaring that we should tread lightly lest we allow our own views to color our understanding of the mind of Christ, Robinson’s innate pessimism is reflected in her selected passage from scripture (“He who lives by the sword dies by the sword”) and invocation of the Final Judgment, which she implies will involve the destruction of those that idolize fear in the form of a gun.

I finished the reading in somewhat of a panic, and spent a good half an hour trying to find contact information for Marilynne. Her author page on Facebook receives little traffic, and it appears that she no longer holds an academic posting. So I went back to the NY Review of Books and submitted a letter to the editor with a link to my post on the relationship between government and self-governance.

In motivating my effort to contact Marilynne, I offered that:

The men “prowl[ing] in the woods” will not be swayed by an argument framed against the great sweep of history, but rather in terms both visceral and personal.

The solution, as I think President Obama would agree, is to manifest the strength the arises from the discipline that settles upon us as people of faith:

Christianity resolves the tension between vulnerability and freedom through celebration of the evidence in Jesus of the divine power that supports our capacity to love.

When we confront and accept that evidence, there is simply no room left for fear.

Our Extraterrestrial Saviors

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Astronomers tout a “high-frequency” (every couple of years) flickering in the light emanating from the star KIC 8462852 as possible proof of extraterrestrial intelligence. The extent and frequency of the flickering rule out the normal cause of such variation: temporary occlusion of the star by a planet in its orbit. This leaves open the possibility that the occlusion is due to a planetary-scale artificial structure.

The possibility of such structures was first popularized by Larry Niven’s “Ringworld” novels. However, the stresses on a ring encircling a star are inconceivably large – no material imaginable would be able to sustain the strain.

Exotechnologists thus turned their attention to another possibility: the spread of huge tree-like lifeforms rooted in Jupiter-size planets. Natural seasonal cycles would cause the density of the canopy to vary over time, thus explaining the flickering.

Given the huge quantities of carbon dioxide transferred to the stellar wind from such growth, CO2 sequestration, long pooh-poohed as prohibitively expensive, now appears to have long-term market potential. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is leading commercialization efforts, beginning with leasing of the world’s largest radio telescopes in the hope that CO2 deliveries can be arranged before global warming exterminates life on Earth.

The SETI program, in reaction to this plan, reasons that “extraterrestrial intelligence must exist, because it is impossible that intelligence not exist somewhere in the universe.”

Dreams of a Worthy Man

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When I took my sons out to Georgia three years ago, my uncle led the way up the highway to his boat house. He pulled over at a wilderness station, and as I dropped down from the driver’s seat of his VW bus, I was immediately ravished by the lush exuberance of the woods. He made his way into the station for some purpose, my sons following, but I stayed in communion with the sense of life that had become so desicated in Southern California. Eventually, he came out and said, “You know, there’s an exclusive resort on the other side of the hill.”

I don’t know why, but I thought of that when my son started talking about Jimmy Carter. Since Mr. Carter’s illness was made public, I have had this urge to go out to Plains and sit in on his Sunday school. When I shared that with Greg, he said “Well, maybe you should.”

A couple of Saturdays back, as I was puttering around the house in the morning, I found myself visualizing what would happen in that event, finding myself guided into a role as interpreter of a passage of scripture. As is perhaps obvious from my writing here, it’s hard for me to couple my experience of life to the world of daily affairs. So I fumbled around with big picture issues – meaning of life and process of Christ abstractions – until I finally struck on “You know, what I really want to do is to celebrate you, and the contributions you have made to society.”

I haven’t gone out to price travel to Plains – I’ve been distracted by other issues. But it keeps on popping up, and became particularly pointed this morning. I found myself standing in a long line outside of the church, and realized that I didn’t actually need to be in the class. I went to the door and introduced myself to the Secret Service agent, saying that I just wanted to offer Mr. Carter my blessing.

So I was ushered into a waiting room. He sat calmly in a chair. I walked up and placed my hands on his shoulders, and then on his scalp, trying to feel the shape of the wound that he carried. A chair appeared behind me, so I sat to embrace him gently, rubbing my hand in circles on his back over his heart. As I laid my left temple against his, I felt this shaft of anger and fear piercing his mind – the anger and fear of those that had fought to sustain control against the influence of the tolerance and caring that Mr. Carter manifests so consistently.

I moved my hand so that my fingers interrupted the painful flow, and sent healing behind it. With the pressure relieved, his grace bloomed outwards into the conduit, relieving fear and pain as it went.

He was eager to leave at that point, but I held him still. “I want them to see your radiance,” I explained. I pressed our hearts more firmly together, and arched as the power of Christ filled him with joy. As he took the floor, I watched in the doorway as the gathering stared in awe.

Truth to Tell

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The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.

-Neil deGrasse Tyson

As a physics student, my undergraduate curriculum was dominated by physics and math classes. Even then, though, I had a penchant for philosophy that culminated with Paul Feyerabend’s course on the philosophy of science. I didn’t do terribly well in those classes, having a fundamental misconception regarding the purpose of the term papers. Rather than summarizing the text, I always set out to propound novel thought. The teaching assistants were not amused.

Feyerabend may have read some of what I had written, however, because he called on me in his final lecture and asked me to offer my thoughts on the scientific process. Never one to deny credit where it was due, I began “Well, my father says…” which caused the rest of the class to erupt in laughter. Paul waved his hand and told me “Write a book some day.”

deGrasse Tyson’s observation is representative of the philosophy of those inspired by the engineering marvels of the industrial age. The associated advances in the public welfare seemed to demolish all the works of the past. Philosophers did see the scientific mindset as a matter of concrete truth. But it is far more and less than that. “Less”, because the equations that we teach in introductory physics are wrong. A ball doesn’t fall in a parabola because it is subject to other forces than gravity – air drag is one. What the solution without drag offers is a sufficiently good approximation for most engineering applications. “More” because the engineers so empowered change the truth that we experience. They create microchips and vaccines, things that would never exist in the natural world.

What I had concluded, a few years after taking Feyerabend’s course, is that science is not important because it tells us what is true. It’s important because it guides our imaginings into what is possible. But if you talk to most scientists, that isn’t why science inspires them. Most of them study science because they want to do what others believe is impossible. That was certainly my case – when I went off to college, in the middle of “Whip Inflation Now” and the first OPEC oil crisis, it was with the stated aim of “figuring out how to break the law of conservation of energy.” I wager that many creative scientists feel the same – they actually don’t want to believe their science. They want to prove it wrong.

I know that was the conclusion of my own journey into understanding of the nature of spiritual experience (follow the menu to “New Physics”), and so see a certain myopia in Tyson’s statement. This came to the fore one Saturday afternoon during a workshop run by Tom Owen-Towles, the foremost modern theologian/philosopher in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. In responding to a point Tom made, I offered my observations of the nature of our engagement with the divine source. Before I could get to the main point, a loud, sneering snort came from the assembly behind me. I turned around to face the originator, a man older even than I, and then proceeded to make my point. For the next five minutes, I felt pressure building from my antagonist, and just let it flow into me, finally broadening the focus to embrace the community of atheists that he represented. When I had their full attention, I sent this thought: “And yet here I am.”

And so my response to deGrasse Tyson is this: “You receive love from an inexhaustible source. Whether or not you believe it, I am glad that it is true.”

T-Shirt Heaven

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I prepared an experiment last week by creating some t-shirts that tried to explain what is going on with the energy that surrounds me. It was pretty much an act of desperation. I accepted long ago that when you send love out into the world, you surrender control over what is done with it.

In the specific context of the dance celebrations that I enjoy so much, what happens is that people channel it into sex. I’ve gotten to be much better, over the years, at controlling the reflection of that corrupted energy, but it’s been pretty exhausting. The political consequences are also disruptive to my life. A lot of men are visibly angry when I come into a club and start dancing by myself while the women stare in wonder at me. My son shared with me once that his female friends described it as “like discovering fire.” I kept on hoping that the men would be inspired by the beauty that wells up in a woman when she encounters a man that doesn’t want to dump poison into her, but in most cases the male reaction is rather to try and beat me down.

I thought that I was going to have to postpone the first trial this Sunday. I’ve been shifting energy in my yoga practice. It started three weeks ago when I held balancing stick posture beyond my normal point of collapse, and I felt energy emanating from my root Chaka and flushing up along my obliques, the wave cresting just under my ribs where the nerves erupted in burning. I knew that I had displaced something, and it manifested more recently in vertigo focused on the right side of my head. It was different from the normal cochlear vertigo (stimulated by a trapped air bubble), and finally shifted to the top of my head, directly over my foremen. I was a little panicked by that change, and was relieved when one of the ladies in class reassured me that “It’s just trying to work its way out.”

But with my obliques fully active, I’ve been building strength in them, which has led to stiffness in the area. That culminated on Saturday when I strained my right side during standing head-to-knee posture.

I wasn’t sure that I could actually dance – I could barely get in and out of the car on Sunday morning – but I went down to Culver City anyways. When an acquaintance asked me how I was doing, I explained my situation, and he jumped right in, rubbing, pulling, and massaging the right side of my back from hip to shoulder. I didn’t realize how much blockage I was dealing with, and when he was done, I was far looser that when he started.

So I went in to change and came out with my t-shirt on. He approached me almost immediately, sharing that he was an engineer and offering where he had heard similar thoughts. It was the first meaningful conversation that I have had in that community.

But what was most amazing was that people didn’t struggle against the energy that I organize when I dance. This was most evident in a young Filipina. She caught my attention, and we kind of skirted each other for a while. When I left the center of the room to rest against the stage, she took up the space I had vacated and began waving her arms gracefully in the energy there. Surprised, I pointed my finger to push energy into her heart, stilled the sexual response that came back, and then connected her cerebral cortex to the community of thoughts that was celebrating her courage.

When I had done this in the past, one among a group of men always approaches the woman to steal the gift from her. This happened next, and this lady just ignored him, staying focused on her dance. Finally, she turned to me, building a ball of energy in the air with her right hand, and pushed it back my way.

There was more – much more – and some of it wandered down the familiar pathways to sex. But as I laid Sunday evening on the couch trying to relax my abused muscles, I felt this great glow of energy enter my heart through the channel of the world. I’ve just kept on sending this message out: “Don’t focus on me. I don’t need more of it. Look rather into the world, and liberate people into the healing of it. It’s from there that the energy is magnified.”

Surely You’re Putin Me On?

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Desperate to bury the cumulative effect of the Bengazi persecution, fratricide against current and potential House Speakers, the mendacious Planned Parenthood hearings, the onrushing consequences of global warming, and bellicosity from the Chinese state to which we have outsourced our electronics manufacturing – well, the Republican Party is doing what it does best.

It took almost a year before POTUS 43 declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. But with Russian and Chinese entry into the quagmire of the Middle East, Chris Christie and others have declared victory in less than a week. Russian victory, of course.

Let’s look at the beneficial side-effects of this development.

First, we’ll have to diversify our manufacturing sources. India has rushed into the 21st century with all wombs at full capacity, creating a labor glut that is consciously intended to undermine the economics that have made China the world’s manufacturing powerhouse. Given India’s position as a leading supplier of information technology services, India is ideally positioned to rapidly take up the role we must shift from China.

Of course, with a newly assertive Chinese navy operating in the South China Sea, the choke-point for most of Asia’s container shipping, we’d be well advised to bring our manufacturing back to the US. That will require an about-face from conservatives trying to destroy American unions. Then again, given Chinese dependence on Windows XP, the NSA might be able to force our adversaries to their knees in less than a week.

Secondly, we’ll have to limit our dependence on foreign oil. That will involve an “Apollo Program” style investment in renewable energy supply. Let’s hope the Koch Brothers are completely blind-sided by the opportunity.

Thirdly, we’ll have to relocate all of Israel to the United States. This innovative and educated community will spark a boom in our high technology industry.

Fourth, we’ll have the opportunity to seize interest payments on our Chinese debt, at a single stroke balancing the federal budget.

Sadly, we’ll accrue none of these beneficial outcomes. Russian victory in the Middle East is no closer than it was when Bush made his speech on the USS Independence. The bellicosity of the “Axis of Evil” – Russia, China, Iran and North Korea – reflects desperation in the face of unified action by the G20 to oppose their aggression with economic sanctions. They are playing 20th century great power politics, and will discover in due time the true cost of their adventurism: restless and demoralized populations at home, loss of markets, and attrition of military might and geopolitical stature in asymmetrical conflict against suicide bombers.

We’ll see how long it is before the oligarchs in the two countries organize the replacement of their military despots. And whether greedy American CEO’s will ever recognize the stupidity of outsourcing to dictatorships for the purpose of driving down global labor costs.

The Practice of Freedom: Speech vs. Abusive Speech

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In response to this conversation:What is Abuse? I was inspired by the intellectual ping-pong across the U.S.-Canadian border.

I’ve been working through the issues relating to freedom out on my blog for the last two months, in ways sometimes veiled and sometimes overt. It’s been coming up in my conversations with friends, so it’s obviously a sticking point for me.

The exercise of freedom comes with responsibility. Abuse on the internet often reflects the decoupling between our actions (writing of strongly-worded statements) and their psychological consequences to the reader. In the worst case, some manage to create whirlpools of angst that they use to suck psychic energy out of others.

It is that pure spiritual experience – clicking on a link and feeling the energy drain out of me – that causes me to shy from the American celebration of “freedom of speech.” Speech is an action that generates a psychological context that creates a social dynamic. We need to ask ourselves “What kind of society are we generating with our speech?”

In all except a very few cases, Jesus did not attack the powerful. He built a community of disciples around him – the weak and dispossessed. When his teachings were contradicted by the religious authorities of the day, he would expose their hypocrisy, but always for the benefit of the understanding of his disciples. So I think that the it is necessary to focus first on trying to use our words to lift up those that have been beaten down, and only turn negative when deconstructing the conventions of thought that hold them down.

THE REVOLUTION OF GREEN – WONDERFUL WEDNESDAY PODCAST – WEEK 3

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I discovered Monique just last month and she projects a wonderfully fresh and genuine sympathy. Please check out her podcasts!

Monique's avatarMonique Amado

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Hi friends,

Take a gentle time out and listen as I read the words of one of my poems which honors change and seasons and autumn.

I hope it blesses you.

Thanks for listening…

Monique

** Image credit: Ian Wang

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Tea Party Bluish on the Future

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Incredulous regarding claims that the Koch Brothers could be savvy enough to run the nation’s largest privately held corporation but still stupid enough to ignore the onrushing debacle of global climate change, this blogger delved deep into the records of Heartland city council meetings to discover the true goals of the freedom fighters in the Tea Party.

Tired of dominance of federal politics by the high-density “blue” states on the nation’s coasts, the Tea Party reflects the unification of the jealous red states to enjoy all the privileges of their coastal neighbors. Trained to literalism by generations of fire-breathing bible-thumpers, the freedom fighters seek to accomplish their goal in concrete terms: actually flooding the coastal states with the rising oceans generated by global climate change.

The Koch brothers, leading financiers of fundamentalist libertarians, were inspired in their childhoods by the title of their paper products company: Georgia-Pacific. The geographical oxymoron inspired a whimsical vision of uniting their lumber empires. The climate scientists in their pay have produced detailed projections of the final outlines of the US coast once Greenland and Antarctica have shed their ice.

These projections are mirrored in the placement of fracking installations across America. Confronted by the daunting barrier of the Rocky Mountains, Koch geoengineering specialists realized that accomplishment of their vision would require significant lowering of the nation west of the Mississippi.

Deep-well extraction of oil through fracking is a major part of the engineering effort. Not only is it intended to allow the Pacific to breach the Rockies, it is also being conducted to shape the coastline to ensure that the heartland states share equally in the benefits of their future status as coastline states.

This blogger, eager to relocate to friendlier climes, is now considering opportunities in the neo-coastal “blue-to-be” states.

Dying in the Face of Reason

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The latest assault on public safety: On the Chris Hayes show last night, an opponent of gun control stated that “nothing that proponents have suggested will work.”

Simple fact: America’s death rate by gun violence is three times the rate in any other advanced democracy. Our rate is forty times the rate in the United Kingdom.

So if you won’t do what we say, do what they do.