How to Spend Kazillion $$

If it [the environment] is not a genuine problem . . . and we go and spend a kazillion dollars on that instead of feeding hungry people, then we have done a terrible, terrible, terrible thing. ~Michael Crichton

What do you think? Listen to Crichton and Wilber discuss this at http://www.integralnaked.org/whatsnew.aspx (with free month's trial). ~jpc

The Tranquil Sea

[T]he religious condition: simultaneously to be out on 70,000 fathoms of water and yet be joyful.

[The heart, like the sea] must lie calm, transparent to its depths.

~Kierkegaard

Note: listen to interview with James Howard Kuntsler, author of The Long Emergency on weblog below. Son John and Herman Greene brought him and this book(s) to my attention. John’s comment: “Although his view is not very hopeful, I am afraid that much of what he says may come to pass.” SK’s joy and calm out over 70,000 fathoms is an apt image. As Thomas Hardy suggested, might we “fling [our souls] Upon the growing gloom”? ~jpc

Tranquil Sea 

The Long Emergency

James Howard Kunstler is the author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.

http://www.suesupriano.com/article.php?&id=70

In this interview [with Sue Supriano] he . . . predicts epochal changes to our social relations, economy, and political system that today are unimaginable for us to grasp, though it would be to our benefit to do so in order to develop a smoother transition to the post-industrial age. . . . As he says . . . we will have to downscale every activity of everyday life. . . . In Kunstler's opinion, based on the true story of where we are on the downward slope of "peak oil," this process has already begun. ~Sue Supriano’s "Steppin’ Out of Babylon" radio interview series

Stark Reminder by Katrina

[Katrina] a reminder that we remain even at our most technologically imposing, mere gnats riding on the back of a gigantic Nature that could shrug us off at any time. ~Martin Sieff, “The strange 'mercy' of Hurricane Katrina,” Washington, Aug. 29 (UPI)

Frontiers of Human Development

Although most people don't know it yet, the age of personal or merely individual enlightenment is over. . . . At the frontiers of human development, consciousness itself seems to be leaping beyond the confines of individuation. ~A. Cohen

See picture of Wangari and part of an article. Reckon she has glimpse of new enlightenment? ~jpc

Wangari Maathai 

My Seven

My Seven by Wangari Maathai (via Lynda Cock)
National Geographic, September 1, 2005

She began a tree-planting campaign in 1977 to help reforest her native Kenya. Her Green Belt Movement is now an environmental and political force that has inspired the world. Once considered to be dissident, Maathai now works from within the government: She received 98 percent of the vote to win a seat in Kenya’s Parliament, and she’s also the nation’s assistant minister for the environment. “Protecting the global environment is directly related to securing peace,” she said after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. These seven areas of concern address her history – and her hopes for the future.
1. Environment
Many issues we deal with at a national level are actually symptoms of larger problems. Instead of worrying about such symptoms, we should worry about the causes. As a professor in the University of Nairobi’s faculty of veterinary medicine in the 1970s, I often went into the countryside. When it rained there, I’d see topsoil wash away. Then I’d hear rural women express need for firewood, clean water, and nutritious food. I realized these things were all connected. Kenya’s indigenous forests had been turned into plantations. Our country was so hungry for cash crops that too much vegetation had been removed to farm them. Degradation of land was widespread.
2. Empowerment
At a National Council of Women of Kenya forum I suggested we engage women in tree planting to solve these problems, since trees provide wood and food, and stop soil erosion. We later had resistance from the government then in power. We understood that its members fought us not because we’d planted trees but because we had organized and challenged the mismanagement of the environment.
3. Education
When people are educated to the link between environment and government, they can improve both. Through civic and environmental education programs, they lose their apathy and get involved.
4. Good government
5. Sustainable development
6. Employment
7. The future
As we work to create a world that honors and rewards women, we look to our daughters and think of the future. I hope that daughters, not only in Africa but all over the world, will be inspired and know that if they are committed and patient, they can achieve something worthwhile.

100 Percent Present Now

Somehow, no matter what your state, you are immersed fully in everything you need for perfect enlightenment. . . . One hundred percent of Spirit is in your perception right now. . . . [T]he trick . . . is to recognize this ever-present state of affairs, and not to engineer a future state in which Spirit will announce itself. . . . Spirit is the only thing that has never been absent. ~Ken Wilber

Statue of Responsibility

I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. ~Viktor Frankl

All You Can Do

Poetry and hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you. ~Winnie-the-Pooh (A. A. Milne) via Priscilla Wilson

All you can do is go where? And where’s that been for you lately? ~jpc

Heaven On Earth

How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God. ~Thomas Aquinas

Heaven on earth is when all expressions of religion and spirituality are united rather than divided by their images of the ultimate, mysterious power at the heart of all. ~jpc

Jesus' Kingdom Talk . . . and Walk

Without ceasing, Jesus talked about the spirit always at hand, within and without . . . and always coming, always creating the new now. That pretty well sums up the space/time dimensions of the “kingdom” he talked. The rest was about kingdom relationships, the primary ones having to do with neighbor and “father” – or the spirit of his father. Had he stopped there, though, he would have been just a better-than-average Jewish theologian from Nazareth, maybe on the par with Rabbi Gamaliel, St. Paul’s mentor, unknown to most of us. They didn’t hang Jesus because of his talk, but because he embodied it. All hell broke loose and some dared call him the King, which he naturally denied. He knew he was not the King of the Kingdom . . . though he knew deep down he was at one with the spirit of it all – the source of his talk and walk. ~jpc

Precious Decision

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide. ~Napoleon Bonaparte

Country Music re "God"

I love the stories. You know, about fallin' in love, and having love knock you around, and then the pressures of the world on you so tough it makes you feel small. You just want to give your soul to God. You might as well, your ass belongs to him. ~Ray Charles in movie “Ray”

Common Destiny of Creation

“We humans are really beginning to care for creation again – as did our ancestors – even as you trees and eagles and aborigines have never stopped doing. All of us are about one thing. . . . Only within the common destiny of creation are we unique beings, but each with the same purpose. Our history is the history of creation. Our future is the future of creation.” ~Peter – aka Journer – in Journer, a new spirit journey novel by jpc

Indonesian village mosque 

Our Muslim Neighbors

When we came back to Tennessee from Indonesia, Jeremiah was about two years, six months. As the sun set and the cooler evening air descended, Jeremiah, who had been brought up on the edge of a Muslim village, looked around and very seriously asked, "Where is the Hello Akbar?" (his understanding of the call to prayer that he had heard for two years coming from the loud speaker of the village mosque at the close of each day). Clearly he had noticed that time is marked in special ways. It reminded me of the Angelus that our forefathers used to mark time and to call the faithful to prayer at the end of the day. I was aware of the commonality that we experienced with our Muslim neighbors. It makes me sad to think how so many of these mosques are being misused and destroyed. ~Lynda Cock

New Christendom

[I] was enjoying [Phillip] Jenkins’ book [New Christendom] up until the part where he described the countries that were experiencing the most rapid growth of Christianity and Islam, and I realized that these are the very same countries that have the highest human rights abuses, the most horrid repression of their female population. . . . [E]very ethnic conflict is reduced to a religious conflict, whether it's the Balkans (how devout is Milosevich, really?) or East Timor. ~review on Amazon.com

Cosmic Neutrinos

[S]pace [is] flooded with cosmic neutrinos. Nuclear reactions in the Sun alone send 65 billion neutrinos a second through every square inch of Earth. . . . The nuclear reactions that produce the neutrinos also cause the Sun to shine. ~Dr. John Bahcall

Seems to me there’s a lot going on in creation. How can we be so bored? ~jpc

Worlds Within and Around

. . . a mountain stream, a cathedral, a tree-house, a park bench, a cozy restaurant. It might be a person. It can be anything. Anywhere. Anytime. It can be a song or a stranger, a loon or a lover. A night with a prince or a whiff of incense. A dance, drum, drug, drizzle or dream.

Almost anything can connect us with other worlds. Which offers the distinct possibility that these other worlds are actually within and around us already. And everything is part of it. It just might be that we’re each and all part of a grand and goofy myth… a myth which is always and forever pointing our time-locked, goose-stepping minds to the always and forever. To the infinite. To fullness of life. To the Divine. ~Howard Hanger, Jubilee Community, Asheville, NC

A Credit to Spirit

I am a credit to spirit at the heart of creation, not just to creation and humanity. The old catechism says that the chief aim of a person is to “love God and glorify him forever.” My chief aim as a member of the species and creation is to bow to spirit at the heart of all, thereby honoring that which spirit sacralizes. If you see me bowing to anything or anyone authentically as a thou, you will see me bowing to the eternal thou, to spirit. ~jpc

A Credit to Creation

I am a credit to creation, not just the human species – I yearn to be a credit to all the species and non-species, e.g., air and water. ~jpc

Religious Causes of Death

The conflicts in Palestine (Jews v. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v. Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v. Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims v. Timorese Christians) and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians v. Chechen Muslims) constitute only a few of the places where religion has been the explicit cause of millions of deaths in the last ten years. ~David Morris via David Zollars, "Religion and Politics"

A Credit to the Species

I am a credit to my species. Doesn’t matter if I am a poor old man who’s never had a day of school, or if I am in a wheelchair, have a cleft lip, or am brain damaged. It does matter if I see myself on behalf of all my species. I will cheer anyone who be’s a credit to my species, whether s/he’s on my side or not. “Way to go, Russian Sputnik astronaut!” If the label says made in Bangladesh, I will cheer my species. ~jpc

A Terrible Thing to Waste

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. ~Paul Romer

Most Dramatic Change

[T]he discovery of evolution by humans represents the most dramatic change in human mentality in the last two million years.  ~Brian Swimme

Faith in the Last Power (IV)

We do not say now that . . . faith in the last power is something men ought to have. . . . We say that it is given, that it has been given, that it is being given, and that when it is received very profound consequences follow. . . . The moral consequences of this faith is that it makes relative all those values which polytheism makes absolute. . . . A new sacredness attaches to the relative goods [and gods, I-III before] . . . [Faith’s "requirement"]: all beings . . . be met with reverence, for all are friends in the friendship of the one to whom we are reconciled in faith. ~H. Richard Niebuhr

Christian Good News (III)

[W]e confront in the event of Jesus Christ the presence of that last power which brings to apparent nothingness the life of the most loyal man. Here we confront the slayer, and here we become aware that this slayer is the life-giver. . . . Here the great reconciliation with the divine enemy [who has become "companion"] has occurred. And since it has occurred, there is no way of getting rid of it. It is in human history. ~H. Richard Niebuhr

Secular Good News (II)

[The secular good news is] reality . . . abides when all else passes. It is the source of all things and the end of all. It surrounds our life. . . . What it is we do not know save that it is and that it is the supreme reality with which we must reckon. . . . The strange thing has happened that we have been enabled to say of this reality, this last power in which we live and move and have our being, "Though it slay us yet will we trust it." . . . To have hope in this One is to have hope that is eternal. This being cannot pass away. ~H. Richard Niebuhr

The Twilight of the Gods (I)

[T]he private faith by which we live is likely to be a multifarious thing with many objects of devotion . . . sons and daughters, . . . home . . ., sex . . ., our country, our ideologies, our democracies, civilizations, churches, our art . . ., our truth . . ., our moral values, our ideas, and the social forces. . . . [But] our gods are unable to save us from the ultimate frustration of meaningless existence. . . . [W]e practice a kind of successive polygamy, being married now to this and now to that object of devotion. . . . The tragedy of our religious lives is that it not only divides us within ourselves and from each other. There is a greater tragedy – the twilight of the gods. ~H. Richard Niebuhr, "Faith in Gods and in God" (I-IV)

Life Animates both Science and Faith

After close on two centuries of passionate struggles, neither science nor faith has succeeded in discrediting its adversary. On the contrary, it becomes obvious that neither can develop normally without the other. And the reason is simple: the same life animates both. Neither in its impetus nor its achievements can science go to its limits without becoming tinged with mysticism and charged with faith. ~Teilhard de Chardin

"Thoroughly Used Up" Is Living

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. ~George Bernard Shaw

Despair Is . . . and Is Rooted Out

[D]espair is: despair at not willing to be oneself; or still lower, despair at not willing to be a self; or lowest of all, despair at willing to be another than oneself, wishing for a new self. . . .

The formula that describes the state of self when despair is completely rooted out is this: by relating itself to its own self and by willing to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the Power which established it. ~Kierkegaard

I combined a couple of translations. ~jpc

Globalization 3.0

Globalization 1.0 (1492 to 1800) shrank the world from a size large to a size medium, and the dynamic force in that era was countries globalizing for resources and imperial conquest. Globalization 2.0 (1800 to 2000) shrank the world from a size medium to a size small, and it was spearheaded by companies globalizing for markets and labor. Globalization 3.0 (which started around 2000) is shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time. . . . In Globalization 3.0, you are going to see every color of the human rainbow take part. ~Thomas Friedman

One Song

. . . All religions, all this singing,

one song.

The differences are just illusion and vanity. Sunlight

looks slightly different

on this wall than it does on that wall and a lot different

on this other one, but

it is still one light. . . .

~Rumi

The Proof Is In the Pearl

And the doors are open now as the bells are ringing out
Cause the man of the hour is taking his final bow
Goodbye for now.

~Pearl Jam lyrics from "Man of the Hour" (movie: "Big Fish")

Where did the name for the band "Pearl Jam" come from? This is Ed’s take:

"[A] pearl comes from . . . taking excrement or waste and turning it into something beautiful. This is how our band began, taking emotions that we wrestled with personally and letting them evolve into songs. In this way the songs became vehicles . . . to deal with it all. . . . [I]t wasn't just shit anymore. It was kind of beautiful, powerful, ‘uncultured.’ . . . The proof is in the pearl."

Whether you like the band Pearl Jam or this take on its name, the point is, the power of our life experiences expressed in transforming story is the bottom-line of culture. We can’t really live without this power of symbol. It is pure gospel to say, "Your life is a pearl." If nobody says it to you, you say “My Life is a Pearl”” at least once on your holy day and three times every other day. ~jpc

To the Illumined Mind

To the dull mind nature is leaden [M-W: "dull gray; lacking spirit or animation"]. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

And how does "the illumined mind" come about and what is not included in "the whole world"? ~jpc

Saintliness

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners. ~Kierkegaard

In spite of the old language of the quote, consider the point: only broken, separated people are made whole and are reunited, therefore saintly. Further, we are sacred because creation is sacred, ever created by that mysterious power many call "God." ~jpc

The Relationship

[W]e can only grow in our relationship with God by cooperating with other members of the human family in caring for each other and for creation itself. ~Ignatius of Loyola (paraphrased and adapted by Jesuit retreatants)

I would like to help folks unpack this statement in a retreat. ~jpc

O, Wonder

Wonder is my second favorite condition to be in, after love. . . . Wonder is like grace in that it's not a condition that we can grasp. . . . Till wonder descends, truth is unable to reveal itself. . . . Wonder may be the aura of truth. . . . [W]onder is the letter "O" our eyes and mouths make when the state itself descends. . . . Wonder is anything taken for granted suddenly filling with mystery. . . . I believe it is wonder, not just fidelity, that keeps marriages alive. I believe it is wonder, not just courage, that conquers fear of death. ~ David James Duncan

Deep Faith

"Without risk, there is no faith. . . . If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty [of God], so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy fathoms of water, still preserving my faith."

Kierkegaard is saying one cannot know about God objectively, but one can know God subjectively through the risk of faith out over the deep. In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard plays the absurd with his character Johannes Climacus: by law in Denmark at that time everyone had to be a Christian; in reality, Climacus was saying he could not be a Christian, meaning he could not stand the risk. Do you reckon they put all the Climacus-like Christians in jail? No, but Kierkegaard makes his ironic point. ~jpc

Your Name for It

"The Diaphany of the Divine at the heart of a glowing Universe, as I have experienced it through contact with the Earth – the Divine radiating from the depths of blazing Matter": this is what Teilhard de Chardin says he wants to write about in The Heart of Matter.

"The Diaphany of the Divine" [literally, "the divine shows through"] talks of creation being transparent to the divine, when spiritful eventfulness enlightens consciousness. Maybe we all are mystics in this sense. We all, from time to time, are given to see meaning in life in creation. What creates the meaning? More than mind or consciousness. But what? You name it. We all name it something, and what we name it indicates much about our relationship to creation. "[T]he Divine radiating from the depths of blazing Matter" is one of Teilhard’s many names for it. ~jpc

I'm Watching Green Acres

[Angelina] Jolie, [Billy Bob] Thornton says, is "so brave. She's braver than I could ever be. I always feel like such a loser next to her. She's saving people's lives and I'm watching Green Acres [1965-71 corny TV show]." ~Donna Freydkin

What is "I'm watching Green Acres" for you these days? ~jpc

To Be

We mostly spend [our] lives conjugating three verbs: to want, to have, to do. Craving, clutching, and fussing on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual – even on the religious – plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs has any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in the fundamental verb, to be. ~Evelyn Underhill

Joseph Mathews said that in the intensification of our knowing and doing we discover being; therefore, being is discovered in our "material, political, social, emotional, intellectual, and religious" living. We have one life, and being is at the heart of it all. ~jpc