Blog moved to Wordpress - July 2011.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
God's simple will
I am not so sure why it needs to be difficult: God's will is Reality, and God is none other than His Will. So God can only be found in reality.
In reality (hah!) this is harder than it should be. But the difficulty in accessing reality is what I would call Original Sin. These are the thoughts which drag us back into history with condemnations or vainglory, and push us forward into a lotus-eater cloud of poppy-induced stupor of fear or...vainglory...see the pattern? I do, I sure do. And I see myself repeating either the fear or the vanity subroutines over and over.
God is the most plainly obvious being that exists, if we but look. God speaks in the most plainly obvious ways, if we listen. Perhaps listen with the ears of our heart, as St. B. recommends.
Quite as obviously Reality does not speak using language, as Psalm 19 put it: They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them./ Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. At the same time it is not diffcult to understand at all. When I want to know someone's name I ask "What is your name?" When I want to know directions to a place I ask (sometimes my phone, sometimes the internet, but I ask!): "Where is such-and-such place?" I ask/type and I hear/read the answer. There is no reason to suppose it would ever be otherwise in a plain-and-simple world. And this is where we live. The world is very flat, and a brazen miracle. Yet we have penchant for the obscurities of pride.
And in this infection lies the very road to healing. It is through the fog and fever of vainglory that we must convalesce. It is so much easier to label difficulties as obstacles, as demons to be vanquished and exorcised. How much more interesting to develop a path of embrace and peacemaking. Why all this shouting of war? Why not embrace the demon which torments us?
In reality (hah!) this is harder than it should be. But the difficulty in accessing reality is what I would call Original Sin. These are the thoughts which drag us back into history with condemnations or vainglory, and push us forward into a lotus-eater cloud of poppy-induced stupor of fear or...vainglory...see the pattern? I do, I sure do. And I see myself repeating either the fear or the vanity subroutines over and over.
God is the most plainly obvious being that exists, if we but look. God speaks in the most plainly obvious ways, if we listen. Perhaps listen with the ears of our heart, as St. B. recommends.
Quite as obviously Reality does not speak using language, as Psalm 19 put it: They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them./ Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. At the same time it is not diffcult to understand at all. When I want to know someone's name I ask "What is your name?" When I want to know directions to a place I ask (sometimes my phone, sometimes the internet, but I ask!): "Where is such-and-such place?" I ask/type and I hear/read the answer. There is no reason to suppose it would ever be otherwise in a plain-and-simple world. And this is where we live. The world is very flat, and a brazen miracle. Yet we have penchant for the obscurities of pride.
And in this infection lies the very road to healing. It is through the fog and fever of vainglory that we must convalesce. It is so much easier to label difficulties as obstacles, as demons to be vanquished and exorcised. How much more interesting to develop a path of embrace and peacemaking. Why all this shouting of war? Why not embrace the demon which torments us?
I do not mean indulge the demon. But embrace the demon. It is just a mirage, a fantasy, a phantasm. How do we embrace a demon? You know you are facing a demon if you fear "it" (whatever it is). You know you are facing a demon if the mere thought of embracing "it" revolts you. You know you are facing a demon if despite the fear and the loathing you are aroused by its presence. You know you are facing a demon if there is a family curse. You know you are facing a demon if you feel weakened in will at the mere thought of it. You know you are facing a demon if you crave the shame of indulgence. You know you are facing a demon if you discover inhuman strength, supernatural cunning to feed it.
You are very well aware of all of the above (and more), but you anchor yourself in prayer, "Help me! God help me! Jesus help me!" The Jerusalem Community Rule of Life (JCRL) states: "To bring your prayer right into the city and to receive the city into your prayer. To live the link between action and contemplation, work and contemplation, the street and contemplation" (JCRL 2:14).
So, true prayer happens in the context of the reality of life. It is the LIVING of action AND contemplation. As the psalmist puts it "Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave?" (Psalm 6. See also 88, 115, etc). Praying is an action of living. True contemplation is just as possible in the car with your spouse as it is on retreat in a monastery or on top of a remote mountain.
In fact, the work which God has offered me as I sat idle in the marketplace, in the eleventh hour hour, the work which I have willingly accepted, is the very work of contemplation of God in the heart of Jesus Christ in the middle of this moment.
And it is a simple job, very simple.
Monday, July 4, 2011
A field guide to bullshit
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Scientists predict future actions based on brain activity
QUOTE: The team found that by using the signals from many brain regions, they could predict, better than chance, which of the actions the volunteer was merely intending to do, seconds later.
Evangelism
Reuters says: A coalition of major Christian churches including the Vatican launched a rule book on Tuesday for spreading their faith that aims to reduce hostility from Islam and other religions to efforts to convert their followers.
The World Council of Churches says: Christians reach broad consensus on appropriate missionary conduct.
The second sounds both more plausible and less aggressive - but that's journalism for you!
The word that first jumps out is "respect" - self, mutual and solidarity. Also respect for the process of conversion (which can be lengthy and complex). Now a bad list of suggestions.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Imago relationship therapy
Quote: we are born in relationship, we are hurt in relationship, we area healed through relationship.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Is male libido the ultimate cause of war?
QUOTE: Across four experiments Lei Chang and his team showed that pictures of attractive women or women's legs had a raft of war-relevant effects on heterosexual male participants, including: biasing their judgments to be more bellicose towards hostile countries; speeding their ability to locate an armed soldier on a computer screen; and speeding their ability to recognise and locate war-related words on a computer screen. Equivalent effects after looking at pictures of attractive men were not found for female participants.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Tale of a Slave
From Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 290-292: "Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you."
Worth chewing on this one! At which point is it no longer slavery? From my perspective as long as there was no consensual relationship than it is slavery. No matter how "free" (or democratic) - if I cannot choose, and do not have the power to or the means to, end the relationship, then it is slavery, no?
There is much we are slaves to. Some quite willingly we enter into contract, and as long as it gives us benefits (pleasure, security, etc) then we will continue enthralled. But the moment the requirements of a contract are distasteful (or even detestable) to us, then we will look for ways to break the contract.
Where does that leave us?
Worth chewing on this one! At which point is it no longer slavery? From my perspective as long as there was no consensual relationship than it is slavery. No matter how "free" (or democratic) - if I cannot choose, and do not have the power to or the means to, end the relationship, then it is slavery, no?
There is much we are slaves to. Some quite willingly we enter into contract, and as long as it gives us benefits (pleasure, security, etc) then we will continue enthralled. But the moment the requirements of a contract are distasteful (or even detestable) to us, then we will look for ways to break the contract.
Where does that leave us?
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Experimental Theology: "Jesus Stopped": On Interruptibility
Experimental Theology: "Jesus Stopped": On Interruptibility
Interruptibility, the idea that you are more important than me, is a critical component of Desert Father wisdom. Over and over again they practice hospitality. It is also, of course, a cardinal virtue for Benedictine spirituality.
Of the many many stories of hospitality in the desert tradition there is this one, which I strive to make my own: "A Brother came to a hermit. As he was taking his leave he said, 'Forgive me, abba, for preventing you from keeping your rule.' The hermit answered, 'My rule is to welcome you with hospitality, and to send you on your way in peace.'" (in "Desert Fathers" by Benedicta Ward)
In doing that you fulfill all the law and the prophets, as it were.
Interruptibility, the idea that you are more important than me, is a critical component of Desert Father wisdom. Over and over again they practice hospitality. It is also, of course, a cardinal virtue for Benedictine spirituality.
Of the many many stories of hospitality in the desert tradition there is this one, which I strive to make my own: "A Brother came to a hermit. As he was taking his leave he said, 'Forgive me, abba, for preventing you from keeping your rule.' The hermit answered, 'My rule is to welcome you with hospitality, and to send you on your way in peace.'" (in "Desert Fathers" by Benedicta Ward)
In doing that you fulfill all the law and the prophets, as it were.
The Art of Narcissism
QUOTE: "In the self-portraits, you can find a lot of stereotypes and icons from movies, advertising and the music industry. Somehow, this network of self-portraits is a mirror of society."
I do not get it, not fully. Of course I understand that we are infinitely interesting to ourselves. How could we not be? We are the primary source of pleasure and pain in our lives. We are the source of cravings and source of satisfaction. We are for ourselves like we cannot be for anything or anyone else.
I know this insight sounds profoundly idiotic. My point precisely. It is as idiotic as narcissism.
Why do we love ourselves so much? Why would we turn the camera at ourselves, over and over?
First a confession: I have not ever, to the best of my recollection, done a self-portrait. At least not for the pleasure of it. I have had my picture taken for various official documents and other means of identification. But I fail to see the need of capturing a self-portrait. A collolary confession: I do not find self-portraits of other people particularly interesting. Portraits I really do like. It is self portraiture which is uninteresting to me.
Still, like everyone else, once shown a group picture, my eyes first scan it looking for myself. And only then will I look for others.
Do I not remember the event which is being pictured? Was I not there? It must be something about having a chance to see me through another's eyes which is interestinng, perhaps. So this is how I look to you!
Because it is very very hard to break out of myself and see me as an "other." I would not say it is impossible, but it is a difficult trick. I live in this bubble of "me" which filters, tints and taints all that I am and do.
Self-portraiture might be either a way to increase the strentgh of this "me-field," reinforcing my self-esteem (a la the Twitter revelations of (in)famous celebreties and politicians), or it could be a way to help my egocentricity to lose its hold, to allow me to see myself as other, and thus weaken the grasp of the ego in defining my self-importance.
Perhaps.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Why I Am Not a Conservative - Hayek
The only Old Viennese that is worth reading at all times...obviously not (ever) Sigmund, but rather Friedrich. Together with his cognate from Prussia they form a great vaccine against most of what passes for thinking.
QUOTE: "What the liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move. In fact, he differs much more from the collectivist radical of today than does the conservative. While the last generally holds merely a mild and moderate version of the prejudices of his time, the liberal today must more positively oppose some of the basic conceptions which most conservatives share with the socialists."
And, a little earlier, this zinger that explains more than is possible to ask: "Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments."
Bingo! "Conservatism" is the breaks, not the steering wheel or the engine of any area of knowledge. it's sole function is to "delay gratification" (or change). This is an important function, but let us not ask for direction from a conservative.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
What colour is your breast-stroke? Or why synaesthesia is more about ideas than crossed-senses
The interesting thing is how my oldest son has started a "campaign" (among friends and family members) to label "traingles" a color. One of his (less synesthetic) friends tut-tuts the idea saying "traingles are a shape." Since I am always looking for creative versions of things, I wondered out loud if triangle wasn't secretly a scent, which meant it was a taste...something on the more acidic side of things, perhaps lime?
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