You'd generally get to somewhere Else if you ran very fast for a long time...

 as it was told to Alice in the Wonderland she encountered:

'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.

The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little now.'

Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'

'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?'

'Well, in our country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.'

'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!' 

Live and Become .. so hard to do in so many places...

What a powerful movie...  full of history we either never hear or forget too quickly...full of feeling for what happens to children as people groups tear at each other...

I watched this tonight and I don't want to spoil the story line.  In 1980 the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as Jews and airlifted secretly from a camp in the Sudan to  Israel. This is the story of a  9-year-old Christian boy  who is put on that plane by his mother to live and become.   


This movie touches on many primal aspects of individual and social becoming. It is about heart for life, it's about loss and overcoming, it's  about family, nations, identity.  It is about purpose and it is about faithfulness in the heart of a child.  It is a French film and it adroitly gives credit to many people of various leanings when they care, take a stand, tell their story, tell the truth or help others.




I think this movie came out in 2005..but I am always behind the times when it comes to movies. 


This is however a movie that I can get behind.  I recommend it highly.


Just the title 


is a lot to think about...

LIVE AND BECOME

it is what we should always want 

for others...yes?

When the movie was over...I saw an article that a friend had posted on her facebook...about a woman in Libya named Eman al-Obeidy


who approached some cloistered foreign journalist in a hotel to tell what abuse she had suffered.


So...may she and the others she was pleading for Live and Become.
~that's my prayer~
~~~

Why Do We Do the Things We Do? Basic Assumptions: A Paradigm to Use and Share.

I was reminded lately of a model, a simple paradigm, which has been helpful at times in thinking through things.

What got me going was an exchange between a man and a woman, fortunately they weren’t married to each other, about typically hot topics all having to do with control: sex, choice, population, babies, birth.

They came at each other from diametrically opposed viewpoints. It wasn’t the content of their attempts to influence each other’s stance that triggered my thinking; I was only privy to a description of it by one party, but rather an image that formed in my mind of two people with their feet definitively planted trying to change each other’s posture by whipping each other’s heads around, or suggesting a different tilt of the hips.

                             ( I am resisting popping in pictures of Indian wrestling here. How about just a small picture of attitude from an Engelbeit birthday card?)

Although I have shared this framework, this paradigm with others, it was always shared in person and I could draw charts and crisscross them with arrows and ask questions to employ examples to make sure the applicability of the connectedness was getting through. It will be a good challenge for me to simply write about it but don’t be surprised if I wind up sticking pictures in here and there.

THE PARADIGM

Here’s the rough framework: Basically, out of underlying assumptions we develop values, which are in turn directly tied to more specific concepts and beliefs. Beliefs shape our methods and methods, ideally, are focused on achieving particular goals which would themselves be in sync with our basic assumptions.

GOALS

METHODS

SPECIFIC CONCEPTS & BELIEFS

VALUES

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

You can approach this paradigm from either end. In some ways it makes most sense to me to explain it from the ground up. It’s the way one builds a house and the concreteness of that image makes it memorable for many.

So that’s how I will explain it from the bottom up.

However, I’m typing at a word processor and we read top to bottom and one could as easily make the argument that before you lay the foundation to build a house you first need a vision and a plan. As soon as you ask what the structure is for, you are at the top of the chart with goal and purpose. Both goals and primal assumptions have operative and transforming power directly over each other.

How you wring any value out of the line up might depend on your own style of learning, but in as much as I have conceded that the approach is arbitrary, perhaps you’ll suspend whatever your preferences might be and look at the bottom of the list above.

Basic Assumptions:

?? Is it a created universe, is there a creator or is it just a material world? How we answer primal questions about reality, time and space and what we think of human nature, it is out of such basic or underlying assumptions, even if our assumptions are sometimes fuzzy or obscure, that values develop.

Of course we have assumptions about smaller questions in life as well. I was taught about this way of exploring things in the early eighties in a university class focused on designing effective lesson plans. Bernice Goldmark emphasized offering students alternative ways to learn. She hypothesized two teachers where one assumed that all people can learn the same way and the other who assumed that there are variations in how people learn. It is relatively easy to anticipate the different values, core concepts, and teaching methods likely to emerge from such different basic assumptions, even if both teachers’ goals were ostensibly the same.

I don’t remember if Professor Goldmark attributed the basic assumptions paradigm to anyone in particular, but as I wrote this post I found online the work of MIT professor Edgar H. Schein whose work on cultural awareness and organizational behavior explores these concepts at depth.   Not that these ideas belong to anyone in particular, they are laced throughout the lives and writings of  many.  Studying  the life of  President Lincoln  to elucidate executive strategies for current times,  Donald T. Phillips, in his book, Lincoln on Leadership,  encounters these same concepts. Phillips wrote that Lincoln's understanding of decision making was backed by solid visions, " not simply a string of individual orders.  Rather...a continuous, uninterrupted process that is similar to the beating of a heart that sends blood throughout a body."( p 97)
In the concluding chapter of his book, Phillips writes of Lincoln, "He lifted people out of their everyday selves and into higher level of performance, achievement and awareness." (p 173)

I suppose one reason I think the paradigm  I am sharing is helpful in making one more conscious in  thinking and relating in our complex world, is that of the many things over the years I have studied, I remembered it and found myself, in various settings, putting it to use.

As with many houses, the foundation of why we say and do the things we do isn’t always visible but  a foundation determines the footprint and bearing capacity of the structure built upon it.

Values often reflect what we think should happen, how we think things ought to be. Whether or not we articulate them, what we have learned and chosen to value under girds and shapes our more specific concepts and beliefs in life.

I know I'm not always fully tuned into what  I actually value.  For example, I can say I value fitness, and that I believe that it would be good for me to walk as much as possible everyday, but I didn’t walk today. In reality, in my free time, I valued the other things I wanted to do more and now it is way too dark and cold and … well you get the point. While my espoused value was fitness, my behavior valued comfort or productivity in another realm. I didn’t value fitness in a way that was expressed in a solid actionable concept such as “I will walk whether I am inclined to or not.” Maybe I really believe that I can get away without taking care of myself? That belief could certainly shape my daily choices, my daily method. Actual values and specific concepts and beliefs can become visible in scrutinizing one’s methods or way of life.

I ask myself, why am I writing this essay?  I am sitting down to do it, I could be out taking a walk with my cat.

As with all tools, this paradigm has its  proper uses and limits; generally speaking I might use it to help myself read carefully. Or when listening to people argue and I am trying to make heads or tails of what is going on, it helps me to pull back and try to find a path into what either person’s priorities might be, and ask myself if I can begin to understand how life looks for them and out of what assumptions  they might be operating.

Well…it’s all up to you in the comment section now…

What say you? Let me know if this gestates any new ideas…or awareness about your wiring or helps you decode an encounter, a book or even if you got to the finish line here!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Civility: treating others with dignity, compassion and respect can save lives

On September 22, 2010 at Rutgers University, a young man who had apparently been pitilessly spied upon, videotaped and broadcast on the World Wide Web ( later reporting did not confirm this) in private dorm room moments, left a one-sentence suicide intention note on his Facebook page and subsequently jumped to his death.

Whatever glorious potentials his life may have held for him are now ended and his parents and others near and dear must weather his loss the rest of their days.

Who are all the actors in this forlorn story? Transitions in general and developmental leaps in particular are times when many of us need help. Various aspects of coming of age, such as leaving home for the first time, living amongst strangers, intense exposure to new people with different backgrounds and values, becoming sexually aware or active, loss of a first love, school or other performance pressures, unwieldy group dynamics or being singled out for differences, can put a strain on the most well adjusted young person.

Who can calculate the added complexities or intensities of one's privacy being shared on social networks?

The danger that is created in such circumstances of vulnerability should never be underestimated. People sometimes enact in one moment of despair an irreversible end even if every other moment of their lives and the instincts of their being would stand against the threat they, in their pain, suddenly pose to themselves. For reasons perhaps forever beyond knowing, Tyler Clementi did jump from the George Washington Bridge to his death in the Hudson River. Tyler Clementi was eighteen years old.

The alleged tormentor, Dharun Ravi, is eighteen years old. As he faces his capacity for hard heartedness toward his roommate, what other depths of feeling will he reel through? He’s out of school now, but likely learning about how fast things can spin out of control and how unintended consequences can leap in a single bound from the shadows of our deeds.
Was Ravi’s alleged partner an active participant or did she just witness the travesty and do nothing? If she did just stand by, Molly Wei, may be realizing how dangerous it can be to be complacent about other’s bad ideas, and what it can cost to be passive or afraid to stand up for what is right.

And what of those individuals who tuned in and watched and wrote about the invasion of Tyler Clementi’s privacy without concern for him or the principles, ethic and laws violated? We err in commission, but there are also errors of omission.
Mr. Clementi’s family statement has been quoted in several news stories I have read:

"We understand that our family's personal tragedy presents important legal issues for the country as well as for us," said a statement from the family.

"Regardless of legal outcomes, our hope is that our family's personal tragedy will serve as a call for compassion, empathy and human dignity," the statement said.

We are already a land of many laws. Even if it weren’t illegal to invade another’s privacy, to do so is gross disrespect of others; and ultimately we cannot disrespect the lives of others without diminishing our own. What we need to enact is heart for others, not just for people like us, or for people we understand, but for everyone....for  we are the  people, that hold  such truths "to be self-evident, "  that is to say, to be part of natural law.  Person by person, will our social institutions affirm that development of character evidenced by respect for others is of primal importance and the foundation of any real education?   I hope so.

Life is fragile and civility, treating others with dignity, compassion and respect, can save lives.

I want to believe that the Clementi’s are not asking for the impossible.
                                                                  ~~~~

Tangled up in Time : Memory, Loss and Hope Make History -dedicated to 9/11/2001

A Memory offered in Memorium of the Lives Lost and Changed by September 11, 2001

I stopped in the town of Benicia the other day. Popping in there once in a while helps remind me of the child I was before I took my first hard blow.  I never lived in Benicia, but my younger brothers and I were, without our older brothers or parents, once left to stay a few nights with family friends. 

Benicia, California

 Until I was five years old, I had lived in the city, San Francisco,where I couldn't go anywhere without escort. Then I lived in a wonderful valley where I became well versed in the creek that marked the back of our property, the blackberry patches and apple trees in the empty lots, the uppermost climbable limbs of the buckeye trees that grew strongest at the west edge of the valley, the rocky bluffs and caves of the grassy hills between us and Muir Beach on the Pacific Ocean.  I was happy in Tamalpias Valley to roam around on my own.  As often as not I had a book with me.  What more could a kid want?

Visiting the town of Benicia in 1962 I found  no lack of nature to explore and the parents temporarily  in charge of us were content to let us wander about freely.  School had been out for ten days and  I had just finished seventh grade.  The little town was, back in the early 1960s, poor and small, already diminished from what it had been, but for me the small scale of the streets and houses made everything feel accessible. Life felt so available. I ran here and there, a miniature tourist, content to wander from the muddy flats and back up the streets of the town that hadn't yet had its hundredth birthday.

The history of Benicia is one of  greatness passing through and as quickly moving on. Benicia was   established by three men. The year was 1874.  Dr. Robert Semple, who was a newsman from Kentucky, a Bear Flag revolter and a politician and Thomas Larkin, the first United States Consul to California, a traveler, storekeeper, a trader and man of Monterey renown.  Together these two bought land from Comandante General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo who asked that the town be called Francisca after his wife, Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo.  But Yerba Buena had just become San Francisco and claimed the name. Francisca could not be used.  The lady's middle name would have to suffice.  

After the cities of Vallejo and San Jose,  Benicia was chosen to be the third capitol of California and reigned as such for 379 days, from February 11, 1853 to February 25, 1854.  Around that time the founders had a falling out and went their separate ways leaving the town to create its own destiny. 

Inland waterways are an opportunity for confluence. It was at Benicia in the 1860's  that Pony Express Riders who had missed their connection on the Sacramento River Delta steamers could  ferry across the waters blocking their trail. In the 1870's  a leg of the transcontinental Central Pacific Railroad established a major railroad ferry across the Carquinez Strait from Benicia to Port Costa.  Benicia became home to the largest ferries in the world, transporting entire trains across the inland waters of the San Francisco Bay.

It was in Benicia  in 1901, where the world's first long-distance power line was stretched across the Carquinez Straits.  When wheat was the big crop, it was stored in Benicia, but when railroad bridges replaced ferries and the early 1900 wheat crops declined, Benicia declined too, mouldering without economic purpose on the back waters of the bay.

 Not until World War II,  did the little town grow again when it served as a military arsenal. The war boom economy doubled  the population quickly to 7,000 residents.  The arsenal closed in the 1960s.  Later in that decade, oil refineries were built northeast of the town's residences. Eventually, as more bridges were built connecting the bay area's various ports and towns by roads, the little town of no longer as important trains and ferries became what all towns near big cities are destined to become, a  bedroom for 28,000 locals and commuters and a weekend diversion destination for city dwellers. 

But that is not the town that was back in those few days of my summer vacation.  Then it was just a  small modest town with no great current boons, but the confluence of its waterways and flying birds, its child  friendly streets, cushioned me with hospitality while hope and longing opened in me in the first bright days of the summer of my thirteenth year.

  

And then on the third afternoon of our visit, my father and older brothers returned unexpectedly. I blindly ran to the murky waters that day in disbelief, wanting to shake off as dream or lie what we'd 

been told. Our mother had died.

Here I am tangling my history up with the early history of this little town. I don't often tell my story. I know for everyone its often a  struggle to keep clear angles of perspective in this life. I make an effort to pay attention to current events and history.  So I've reminded myself, with a little history lesson of a few of the events that have come and gone and shaped this town, of some perspective, and yet it's true that even at my age, as I briefly walked about the edges of Benicia the other day, what I can see best is what had once  happened there to me. I can't even hear the name of the town and not remember, palpably receiving that first wrenching.

How true might this be for those who lost family and friends in New York, Pennsylvania, the Pentagon. Today is September 11, 2010, the anniversary of a great tragedy of terror and the loss of many lives.  So many people heard that day or the next,  how they would have to go on in  their world carrying love lost; heard that they had entered a forever- changed- reality.  At some level, we all did, didn't we?

I offer this tangled memory of mine in  memoriam with my personal acknowledgement of how deeply the loss of loved ones is, how enduring our losses are.

I was also reminded at the water's edge the other day by these lovely little mallards sunning on a log amongst relics of Benicia's past, that there is One who does have all his little ducks in a row. 

We need not grieve as ones without hope. 

In Search of a Bottom Line Ethic of "Good Fences"

In search of that really bottom line almost everyone could see and agree upon as an ethic of boundaries…I woke thinking of the conflicts that abound on our round spinning world.

In the quiet time, newspapers still on the ground outside the gate, computers still dark for the night, I scribbled thoughts not only of physical boundaries, heated political boundaries - the Middle East, the boundary between the United States and Mexico - but also boundaries in nature, species boundaries, genetic boundaries. I recently saw videos of experiments now common in research fields, the extraction of the genetic material of a cell or an egg of one species being replaced or combined with genetic information from another.

I thought of seeds I encounter everyday, the sesame seeds on the crust of my morning toast and the kale seeds I just planted in my garden. Seeds are astounding blueprints. Is it wise to alter the very nature of things wild? Will altered seeds, their altered plant forms alter all their neighbors? Will originals be lost?

Nation to nation neighborliness has grown so complicated, but then so can garden variety neighbor relations. If your neighbor lets tall strong thistles grow along his border, you too will have thistles and you will either have to entertain them or labor to weed and scour them out. If you poison the thistles, your poison will drift into the air and the water and the soil, yours and your neighbor’s.
At times we resort, rather than working out these dilemmas where unique boundaries and communicative cooperation are needed, to dishonoring our neighbors and spreading complaints abroad.

“Look at that neighbor, he doesn’t even clean his land of thistles,” says one man.
“Look at my neighbor, he denudes the land of all that is wild with poisons,” says another.

Of course the most important place we usually need to look is at ourselves.

An old saying is often summarized as “good fences make good neighbors…”

Exploring the origin of the phrase in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs I found the first noted reference to be from a 1640 letter written by an E. Rodgers in the “Winthrop Papers.” “…a good fence helpeth to keep peace between neighbors; but let us take heed that we make not a high stone wall, to keep us from meeting.” So while the fence is seen as vehicle to help keep peace, once clarity of boundary is defined, there is an emphasis on meeting across the fence on positive terms.

In Modern Chivalry, 1815, H.H. Brackenridge is quoted: “ I was always with him (Jefferson) in his apprehension of John Bull…Good fences restrain fence breaking beasts, and …preserve good neighborhoods.”

This version emphasizes the dangers that good fences can protect us from and that the need for boundaries and clarity is very real in this world where beasts of many species do indeed roam.

Robert Frost wrote “Mending Walls” in 1914. In this famous poem, he describes how hunters have dismantled the fences and how he and his neighbor walk the boundaries of their adjoining land together in the springtime mending stonewall fences to contain their respective cows and protect their crops and gardens. Frost knows he needs fences but as he lifts and rebalances the stones he also longs for openness, earth without a boundary. Perhaps the fence does not need to be continuous: “My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines.” Not meeting the same opinion in his neighbor, as Frost watches his neighbor lift another stone in place Frost imagines him as “an old-stone savage armed.” Frost too has armed himself. He is armed with words; judging his neighbor for fencing all his land, as less sophisticated and thinking than he is. As the neighbor continues the line of the fence he repeats what Frost now calls “his Father’s” saying, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Our fathers’ sayings might be a way to reference traditions, culture; even the laws that represent what G. K. Chesterton called “ the democracy of the dead.”

"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead." Chesterton goes on to say: "Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father." Orthodoxy, Chapt 4 "The Ethics of Elfland."Page 48 Doubleday Image

Frost apparently didn’t fight with his neighbor about the fence; he went home and wrote a poem about it. In his poem, he reveals an internal dilemma. He knows that he himself, a self he perhaps imagines as having little in common with the stone-age, a self unarmed and perhaps even a self free of his and other fathers’ precepts, this self still needs some fences, some boundaries. It is a dilemma.
A dilemma, by nature presents competing needs, horned alternatives, which are perhaps best met when there are two clauses in answer. Often times people breathe both clauses but join them with a “but.”

If one says, “We need to communicate but we need to maintain strong boundaries.” is it not different from saying, “We need to communicate and we need to maintain strong boundaries.”?

We do need strong fences and neighborly kindness.

Boundaries exist; they are part of a hierarchy found in the most primal realms of life. As a family therapist, my model for boundaries in relationships came to me from the biology classes of my youth and university days.

A living cell is a working model of boundaries. A cell wall is defined as a semi-permeable discerning membrane. A healthy cell wall can let what is needed in and release that which is no longer viable. Families are healthy when they flexibly both shelter and expose vulnerable members to experience. Dynamic tensions, such as the balance between rights and responsibilities are paramount in development of competence and integrity.

Discernment in a cell is a process of maintaining equilibrium. Stable laws govern the passage of molecules through the cell barrier and the concentration of solvents in the cell interior, unless damaged by trauma, physical or chemical.

Every house has a door, and every good fence a gate; every land has laws as to how people may come and go and what rights and responsibilities we bear to each other.
As it is written in Psalm 85:10: Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed [each other].
Some realities cannot be separated, and some realities should not be teased apart. Boundaries in the ideal bear these merged qualities. “…a good fence helpeth to keep peace between neighbors; but let us take heed that we make not a high stone wall, to keep us from meeting.”

Memorial Day

A Tee Shirt Vendor Hero in New York

Truly he is a a good model...for how often do people see things and figure it isn't their business to attend to or rationalize that someone else will take care of it, or maybe it isn't really a big deal anyway.  Just walk on by...

I hope New York finds a way to thank the man who the news reports that I have read currently only identify as a Viet Nam Vet who is a Tee Shirt Vendor in Times Square.  

I'd be glad to buy a tee shirt from this man. 

A Common Thread

I dislike having to categorize where one day's writing goes versus another. Organizing my journal feels like splitting hairs. There's just one of me, why did I sprout twenty-two labels on this blog and why do I have two blogs? As diverse as the thoughts, feelings and happenings are that prompt me to write, there's a part of me that resists categories and acknowledging divisions. I don't like politics of any kind. For years I managed to pretend politics were of no account, but there is no realm where they do not seem to penetrate. School yard, grocery, bookstore, doctor's office, church, where can one go? Yes, even my notebooks...but I long to just spin and weave with a common thread... I say...with my own embroidery in mind.

Don't get me wrong about wanting to ignore divisions, boundaries are good things. For your visual and mental convenience, I've even started a new paragraph here, hoping to protect all of us from blurry thinking. I see boundaries in nature....niches of functional richness, spatial and temporal and seasonal variations of an environment both allow and limit what grows, and who sings or crawls in any particular place.

Gretchen Johanna at Gladsome Lights leaned on George Bernard Shaw to solve her dilemma of categories : "Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of organized life..." wrote Shaw and so G. J., acknowledging her debt, labeled her archive of posts "Crude Classifications." That helps me, remembering that many of our divisions are but "crude."

Here is an example of the ubiquitous nature of politics: I recently read an interview of a young author, editor, publisher who among other literary efforts, compiled and edited a book of birth stories. Here she is discussing feedback she's received.

Despite the fact that I didn't have a political agenda when I edited the book, I've noticed that people do have a political response to the book. I didn't have any criteria for the essays except that I wanted each essay I selected to reach the highest literary standards. I've found Christians who like the pro-natal aspect of the book but object to the fact that I've included a couple of essays by lesbians. Natural or home birth proponents have objected to the fact that I include hospital births in the book. And hospital birth proponents have argued that the book is biased towards natural birth. Whatever. About half the births in the book are hospital births and half are natural births so I don’t see how there could be a “bias” from either side. And I included essays by Christians, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and who knows what. I honestly didn't care about that part of it. I just wanted to show that whatever TYPE of birth a person experiences, and no matter what spiritual persuasion a person has, the process of giving birth is life-affirming (even when a baby dies, as happens with one of the birth stories in the book) and that process changes men and women in profound and measurable ways.

I take her at her word, she either didn't have an agenda or was not fully conscious of it, but either way she has set out on an up hill battle. I see her desire; she's looking for a common thread and she, not a mother herself, chose to edit a book focused on something that we each and all do in fact have in common, being birthed. Other of her ventures reveal that she is neither unaware of nor ignores the divisive facts of life; it's more like she's willing to head into the eye of the storm in hopes of transcending them.

But of course it is very political to write about anything primal because the body politic wants control and claim over anything of the essence. That is a very old story. It does no good to proclaim our innocence, even if sitting home sewing crib quilts for peace, the critics, representing a full spectrum of goodwill to skulduggery are likely to come and point out how one's underlying assumptions are revealed by every choice, by what one has deigned to include or exclude. It is out of our assumptions that our more specific and concrete beliefs arise. And our beliefs do shape our methods and if we are worth our salt, so to speak, then our methods ought to line up and bring about our goals. Not to just circle about here, but those goals, in a life of purpose should be a practical reflection of the most primary assumptions, the foundation of our being. As tempting as it is to try and ignore politics, there is a war going on.

Divisions themselves are full spectrum, ranging from positive and purposeful to destructive and profligate. Within one side, one division, other divisions often occur; while occasionally ( and happily) reunions or offers thereof, also happen.

The wires of communication are hotly lit of late with news and opinions about the the recent offer that the Roman Catholic Pope has made to priests and parishioners fleeing the Episcopal Church. While some focus on the divisions that exist between these two ( three, four ?) bodies established over the last four hundred plus years, I read one analysis that explores some of the forces in the world that these entities struggle with. Richard Fernandez describes, in Lighting of the Beacons, some of the division and competition he sees this way: "From one side, there is the religion which pretends to be a political movement — socialism/communism. From the other flank there is the political movement which pretends to be a religion — Islam. Both religions have massive amounts of money, heavy weaponry and great cultural power."

It's an impressive essay, but I won't quote more of it here because it needs to be read in its entirety to be appreciated. Fernandez receives hundreds of comments within hours of posting on his web log. Many of the comments are essays unto themselves, some quite worthy of attention.

As I said, the thoughts, feelings and happenings that prompt me to write are diverse and as tempted as I am to resist nailing things down categorically, there is a difference between splitting hairs and seeing the real fissures in the world. It's a big conversation to enter and I never do so without trepidation but I trust that ultimately, whether in the wild or the civilizations of man, not one bird is forgotten and the hairs on our heads are counted. And I aim to lean into the word found in a letter to the Romans 12:18:

In as much as it is up to you, be at peace with all men

In other words, while standing among clear distinctions, it's also up to us to find a common thread.

~~~~~~~~

Global Consternation

Sometimes I begin to post and either I think better of it or I get interrupted...I found this lurking in the drafts dated August 2, 2009:

Journal entries gliding out easily at the end of the day are not as likely for me as capturing first thoughts in the morning light. Before the rumble of the day, before I've girded myself up for people and activities, to think and feel and release a page in one smooth uninhibited scroll is natural, like an uncoiling, a spring released. Not that most of those pages are ever written to share, but they open the doors of perception to use Huxley's coinage, and then sometimes other writing follows.

When it's quiet, and I am too, I can access the inner realm with fewer twists and turns than it takes on an average day. It's evening now, the sun has set in obscurity and it's relatively quiet. I'm hunting and pecking for "what it is..."

Under the duress of intense emotions, words at work in me flow out easily, but that's more as if something is leaping out of me, rather than I entering in to meet and shape and retrieve and carry out a gestalt of thought. Or if it is an entry to within, it's more like Alice falling down the rabbit's hole.

Wonderland is where we live. When it is wonderful, as it often is close to home...I wonder and marvel. But of course we also live in a great wide world and in larger realms, trouble brews and many mad hatters would pour us a cup. And it isn't just that there's no room at the table and one must move down, make room, it's that the table itself is often needed to stage a makeshift emergency room.

So it's October now, I know this thought wasn't finished; it is terrible to spell out the problem and not even lean toward something that one can do. There are so many needs out in the big world. We can pick areas and send what help we can if we can't lay our own hands directly where the pressure is needed. I know I stay pretty busy just listening to people directly in my life, being there for them as best I can, doing my job every day, taking care of our health...you know trying to cook like I know something about nutrition and taking time to exercise and then also exercising that big muscle on top of my shoulders and...well... then before I know it the sun goes down. But I can't read the paper, or the web or click past the televised sound bites and not care and not have something to do or say about what's going on...can you?

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The Guard was Down

You have seen today's headlines...dressed as a diplomatic guard a man asks to use the toilet facilities in the lobby of the World Food Center in Pakistan. Hidden behind his vulnerable sounding request was 16 pounds of explosives. As I first read the story I am thinking in normal human terms, this person has a primal need, we all have these needs, someone took pity on him. It takes me only a moment though, as touching as my first thoughts may have been, a guard had to let him pass.

People need to eat and five people who made it their job, their focus to feed displaced and hungry people in Pakistan, have been murdered. The survivors, those workers who live on and the neighbors of the compound in the surrounding residential area in Islamabad are traumatized. Whether the guard let his guard down or was part of the plan...all human relations are challenged by such treachery.

They were feeding the displaced, those who themselves have no accommodations of their own, those who are daily hungry. To the memory of those killed, in their honor, I paraphrase from the Epistle of James: Pure religion is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction...

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Government Run Programs - Good Track Record ?

The Monterey County Herald Newspaper has an OPINION page and here is a letter to the Editor and the Reading Public printed Tuesday, September 8, 2009 written by a citizen named Ron Phoebus and titled, which I believe the News Editor does, as:

" Government-run programs don't work "

The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775—234 years later, it's broke! The government has also run: Social Security for 74 years—broke! Fannie Mae,71 years—broke! War on Poverty, for 45 years and more than $1 trillion wealth transfer to the "poor"—didn't work! Medicare/Medicaid, government-run for 44 years—broke! Freddie Mac after 39 years of government sponsorship—broke! Eight-hundred billion in pork filled TARP—not working. Cash for Clunkers: Here's a real winner. We (taxpayers) give ourselves $4,500 to buy a car from a factory we own (nationalization of GM and Chrysler), with money we have to borrow (from Communist China) at interest rates our great-grandchildren will still be paying. Most of the cars purchased were Japanese! What was the contribution to productivity? Now, there's another fine government program. And you want government-run health care? Go ahead, bet your life on the government's track record!

Thank you Mr. Phoebus. While Mr. Phoebus may use a few too many exclamation points, I imagine that he had to get a little excited to motivate himself to get involved in this debate. It's not that people like Mr. Phoebus are unwilling to pay for postage, pay into social security, loan money for housing, fight poverty in our midst, resuscitate the code blue economy, have safe economical cars on the road and a chicken in every pot too, but it's daunting to gather up those big numbers( how many zeros does 8 hundred billion have?) and summarize the history, all the while thinking about the hopes of each of those government program versus the actual reality. Of course he used all those exclamation points.

We do need reform in the laws and ethics of the Health Care Insurance Industry. Our hospitals need protection from misuse of services. Tort Reform...Eligibility Law, Health Care Portability...changes need to be made...but the government does not have to become the provider.

It does take getting a little excited, a little worked up to vest yourself in the public realm, to communicate or do anything about the events in the world around us. So in lieu of getting worked up myself, rather than staying focused on the work I have to do, and in an effort to thank this local stranger, I reprint his letter to the local news editor in hopes of multiplying his efforts by whatever number my modest readership represents.

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Classic Cars in Carmel Clunkers ? No Way.

It was a little chilly out, August 13th, and I had lots of other draws on my attention, but I did snap a few of the classic cars that were driving in the Pebble Beach Tour d'Elegance. Capturing moving cars was a section in my new camera book I hadn't read yet. Why post them here on my Write Purpose Blog? Well, I'm just glad that these automobiles were not deemed clunkers!

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

This one had some trouble tracking the lane. Must have been a bit of work getting out to Big Sur and back.

This one apparently took best of show...it is a 1937 Horsch 853 Voll & Ruhrbeck sport cabriolet. It usually lives in Sparks Nevada. Can you imagine it got shipped out to the Kahleefohrnya coast!

My favorite of the parade and I didn't get the picture I wanted.

That's all folks.

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Cash for Clunkers?

It's not that I haven't been writing, it's that I haven't been posting here much. I have been doing a lot of reading. There is so much to pay attention to these days.

In my family it was a given that you took care of things and made them last and reused and recycled and preserved things, so the cash for clunkers program goes against the grain for me.

I saw a comment on a news article that really summed it all up for me:

I hope "Robertshaw: 8/8/2009 2:11:00 AM " doesn't mind that I share his thoughtful words with whatever few people read my blogs, because I think he has it right.

The trade-in cars are being characterized as disgusting, beat-up, rusted-out,pollution-spewing, smoke-billowing, coughing, belching pigs; running only on three out of eight cylinders; guzzling the bulk of the North American refined petroleum supply; and posing a danger to neighboring motorists owing to their utterly dilapidated state of repair, the precariousness of their baling-wire and
duct-tape fasteners, and the parts which consequently are falling off the cars and onto the road -- when, in truth, most of these so-called "clunkers that shouldn't be on the road" aren't doing too much worse than their brand new counterparts gas-mileage wise, are more solidly built, offer greater protection for their occupants, have a good deal of serviceable life left on them, and eventually provide good, used parts to others who are trying to extend the lives of THEIR cars. Not only does the so-called "cash for clunkers" program benefit only those who are able to afford to buy new cars and the dealerships which sell them, it also punishes the poor and others who are trying to practice thriftiness and good stewardship by trying to get the most life from their cars and who rely on these affordable, used parts to keep their cars running. Under this horrible program, these parts are destroyed so that no one else can benefit from them. Those lacking a car but who cannot afford a brand new one -- or who have no business buying a new car and who instead should be doing wiser things with the money -- are not able to buy any of these "clunkers" which typically have years of good life and service left on them. These now are destroyed -- again in the name of taking these "Dracula monsters on wheels" off the road. It is unwise, a crime, a waste!

Thank you again, citizen Shaw.
Our tax dollars at work?

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A Squeak for Voices Stolen

Stolen, it's a common word in our world. Riots break out in Iran with cries of a stolen election. Is it true? Can we know? Or has our trust been stolen in the sources of news that can reach us so quickly and sometimes mislead us. Should I trust the headline that says the election was "fair and healthy"?

Identities are stolen. Innocence can be stolen, but don't let them steal your hope.

Yes, your thunder can be 'stole.'

Or your pig...."he stole a pig and away he run..." What happened to that guy or the pig? "The pig was eat and Tom was beat and Tom went howling down the street." Perhaps Anonymous wasn't telling us an actual true story in "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" but it's a believable story.

Much thieving occurs under the mighty drug of self delusion. What a classic character Tolkien created in the whispers of Gollum, "It's mine, all mine, my precious."

As Woody Guthrie sang in his Pretty Boy Floyd :

As through this life you travel, You'll meet some funny men
Some rob you with a six gun And some with a fountain pen.

I've been learning about some pen and ink "t" crossing and some "i" dotting that may line right up to spell a "thief" in my personal realm. Once I have the facts, I might squeak about it a little bit, although I suspect that pig has already been "eat." Most probably I'll arm myself with the reminder I need...or maybe I'll remind myself of the armour I need.
"Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal." (Gospel according to Matthew 6:19)

All right, I'll work on that. I may need to steal away a little quiet from this noisy world to hear aright, but I'll work on that. And it's also good to remind myself to keep my own word true in all realms; a form of not stealing from myself. Truth is alchemy - a transformer of the common into the precious.

If someone does steal your voice, if your one vote is stolen, that's a hard thing; which is one of the reasons it's hard to read about the elections in Iran and wonder who did have a say? There are over 42 million young people in Iran. From Tehran ( APF):

"The main mobile telephone network in Iran was cut in the capital Tehran Saturday evening while popular Internet websites Facebook and YouTube also appeared to be blocked."

If the elective voice of the Iranian people was stolen, I hope they won't lose hope. Because I am able, I'm just squeaking a little here for those who may may not currently be able to squeak for themselves or may be in danger when they do. No matter where you stand, bad things can happen in the street, look at Tom and the pig. You can read the Tehran APF story here.

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