Voltaire on his deathbed

Passed along in email:

giving and taking orders

What makes a good soldier?

I suppose those who have been there will know far better than I, but that doesn't stop me from speculating.

This weekend, my younger son is/was off on Cape Cod doing his once-monthly weekend stint with the Army National Guard. The National Guard trains its troops for two weeks in the summer and one weekend a month for the rest of the year over a period of six or eight years. They are backup troops to regular army forces.

This weekend as well marks remembrances of the June 6, 1944, D-Day landings by the allies during World War II. The TV has been full of documentary footage and commentary about the allied counterattack against Nazi Germany, which, during the preceding five years, had rolled up much of western Europe.

The assault on Normandy was a bloodbath. More than 150,000 American, British and Canadian troops came from the sea and assaulted dug-in German positions. Guesstimates place the number of allied dead at over 4,000 and the total casualties at something in the neighborhood of 10,000. It's largely guesswork but whatever the count, documentary films verify that the lapping ocean was literally red with blood and the bodies littering the shore were complemented by those bobbing in the water.

Bits and snippets of the TV stick in my mind:

-- The navy ships bombarding the shore were afraid they might be grounded and so stood away ... so far away that the salvos of rockets and shells did not reach the German lines, but instead landed among friendly troops. When they realized what was happening, the captains brought their ships in close -- and the hell with grounding -- to aid the troops that were getting mauled.

-- One man who survived the day said he was just a plain soldier, someone trained to take and obey orders.

-- And one unquantifiable statistic showed that the officers and non-commissioned officers charged with giving orders were frequently killed under the same withering fire that claimed their men. This meant that the confusion of the mayhem was redoubled: Who will lead when the leaders are gone?

And it was at this point that it occurred to me that a good soldier is often trained to take and carry out orders but that without the ability to give orders, s/he is probably not yet a very good soldier. It may be a delicate matter, but the fact remains -- the ability to give orders is a necessary aspect of the willingness to take them.

And I think the same is true in spiritual life. Taking orders is part of the training ... but so is giving them.

clogged toilet solution

Passed along in email:

having come so far

"You have come far."

Isn't that the way that others can feel in the mind -- people who have done and seen and lived what is writ large on my blackboard or yours?

Imagine having done so much, accomplished so much, survived so much ... it's impressive. Or anyway I know I can be impressed: Made a fortune, traveled the world, was credited with much wisdom, caught alligators, married the most wonderful gal/guy, built a skyscraper, wrote a concerto, flew a Spitfire .....

You have come far.

And yet, except for the deluded, it never really feels far to the person who has come so far. It was what it was and is what it is.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Which casts a curious light on those who, in the mind, "have come so far."

leavings

Yesterday, my younger son packed his camouflaged ruck sack, tossed it in the back of his car and set off for a National Guard weekend on Cape Cod. What would he be doing, I wondered. "Setting ambushes," he replied.

An ambush is a surprise attack, the kind of thing military and business spear-carriers learn. Is something a surprise when everyone learns to spring a similar trap? I don't know. I do know that I sometimes marvel at the things my kids learn as they venture forth and I am left behind.

Meanwhile, my older son sits often silent in front of his computer screen, sifting, shifting, entertaining himself and looking for a job that his college education in computer wizardry might make him suitable for. It's hard, looking for work. I wish I could relieve my son of some of that stress, but I am left behind ... every (wo)man has to learn ambushes and anxiety on their own.

My son-in-law received a firm offer for a new job yesterday -- something down along the
Rhode Island border. In engineering, his chosen field. It will be his third -- or is it fourth -- job since he got out of school a couple of years ago.

I would have thought such bouncing from job to job would be a minus on a resume, but everyone tells me that this is the way the game is played these days ... migrating, changing jobs, moving on. The housing market -- people who actually buy houses -- is taking a hit from this new reality.

My daughter and son-in-law will be moving out after moving in several months back. They're excited. I am excited for them. And yet feel strangely left-behind once more. It's nothing rational or even that intense or self-pitying ... just sort of confusing: I am the wake of a speedboat that has sped on.

why you have a last name

We were batting back and forth the surname "Sixsmith" when a friend emailed me a genealogical appreciation of the name.

And tucked into that appreciation was the contextual observation:

Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation.

Identification? Sure.

But identification for what?

I guess it has ever been thus: If there is a buck to be made, there will be someone wanting to make it.

PS. I wonder if the Occupy Wall Street movement might get a boost from encouraging people to change their last names to ... nothing.

Not a change from "Smith" to "Jones," but rather a change to no surname whatsoever. Most people know the people they want to know and when not, are capable of seeking out whom they wish. Most of my friends and acquaintances know me as "Adam" and that suffices. Why should I continue to lug around the extra baggage of "Fisher?" Sure, there might be some difficulties, but would those difficulties outweigh the benefits?

along the river

A story told before but I found myself retelling elsewhere and I was happy to remember it:

Born under a water sign, I guess it might be called understandable that I find water magical. Not that I want to get all ooeey-gooey about it, but, whether in a pool, a river, a lake or the ocean, there is something that speaks my language.

One of my favorite water experiences came a lot of years ago, when I found a bushy nook up a hill from a bubbly, flowing river. I built a small fire, cooked a piece of meat and ate dinner to the melodies from below. Soon enough, the sun was down and I curled up in a sleeping bag. 

At first, it was a bit spooky because the bubbling water sounded, here and there, like human voices that I could not quite understand. Why I should be afraid, I'm not sure, but there was an element of fear that somehow ... what? ... I might be found out and dislodged from my small lair ... perhaps because I had built a fire without permission.

Bit by bit, I got used to my environment and finally went to sleep.

The next morning came bright and clear. I could see the blue sky up through the branches, but the sun had not entirely reached down to the river I planned to travel ... up towards the place where sheer granite cliffs dropped down into deep pools where swimming was no longer allowed. In my youth, kids had jumped from the cliffs into those pools -- a daring feat -- and sure enough the unseen rocks below the water had claimed a life or two.

Over time, the cliffs had dropped great flat slabs of rock into the river and you could rock-hop up into the no-swimming gorge and feel as if you had entered some woodland castle, surrounded by huge protections that made you feel small. I used the slabs and whatever other protrusions presented themselves as I made my way up the river. I had to watch my footing. No one was there to help. The rocks were sometimes slippery and sometimes not firmly set, so paying attention was important. I watched the rocks carefully.

But then, just below the point where the cliffs rose up, I stopped to look further forward and plot a course and there, in the demi-dawn light, halfway out in the river, on a great slab of fallen rock, utterly natural and completely in tune with the water and the beauty of the surroundings, I saw a naked woman lying peacefully on her back. The sun was slowly advancing on her rock, like some cat come to nuzzle and purr. She just lay there and I felt strangely blessed. I wanted to say thank you, but being strangely blessed was all I could do.

Strangely blessed and completely unsure about what I should do. I looked at the scene and liked looking and was blessed by looking and yet I did not want to disturb the woman's time and place and being. I wanted to continue my walk but did not want to embarrass or otherwise distract her from her ... what shall I say? ... her is-ness, maybe. I felt consumed by a strange combination of scrubbed-clean gratitude and all-thumbs clumsiness.

Finally, I found a klutzy compromise, turned my back to the woman, lifted a largish rock and threw it so that it would clatter among the other river rocks. I stood in a place that would allow the woman to see me and, back turned, busied myself with some investigative chore that did not really exist. I kept my back turned, kept busy for a few moments....

And when I turned, she was gone.

a silly

Passed along in email:

striking a pose on D-Day

World leaders and a few surviving veterans are gathered today in Normandy, France, to commemorate the June 6, 1944, D-Day landing assaults of World War II. It is a day of earnestness that will overlook all the wartime deaths since that time -- deaths that might call into question the honor being heaped on those who sacrificed so much so that such sacrifices would not be necessary again ... and yet rose without much honoring of things past.

Meanwhile:

(Reuters) - China used the 70th anniversary of World War Two's D-Day landings on Friday to praise Germany for its contrition over its wartime past and slam Japan for what Beijing views as Tokyo's continued denial of its brutal history.

To which Al-Jazeera retorted:

It is ironic that China, a country that commits human rights abuses today, focuses so much attention on Japan’s misdeeds 80 years ago

I don't know history well enough to gauge whose militaristic/nationalistic arrogance was greater -- Hitler (who at least could point with some reason to the financially ruinous Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I) or Japan, whose invasions of Korea and China (1937-1941) was ostensibly based on a kind of Manifest Destiny not unlike America's westward expansions. Japan needed raw materials abundant in China and Hitler needed lebensraum ... but both adventures were cloaked in a grandeur of vision that seldom, if ever, referred to plain old greed.

As ever, there is/was a sweeping vision and a 'necessity' and people died for it and now, today, in Normandy and elsewhere, there are heartfelt memories that do not remember enough.

Smile for the camera.

identity

Friday's paper arrived today as Thursday's had before it. But Friday is the day, in the local paper, that a magazine pull-out has articles about various events and arts available over the weekend. Usually, as well, it contains a one-page "ID" feature ... a picture of some person who, in the surrounding copy, answers questions like "where were you born," "who lives under the same roof with you," "what's your favorite book/movie/TV series/sports team," "pets," "profession," "biggest mistake you ever made," "best advice you ever got," "what gives you the creeps," and some parting bit of wisdom.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I always read the "ID" page. It's unpretentious, even when the pretensions shine through. It has an ordinary feel to it, even when the person sounds duller than dish water. It's like doing a crossword puzzle in which I am left to fill in around the brief answers and create a perhaps-false-but-nonetheless-enjoyable persona. More often than not, it's not as confining as an article about someone who builds houses or plays guitar or gardens or writes poetry. It's just a more or less blank canvas on which anything might be painted.

And I get cranky when, as today, the "ID" column is replaced by some more substantive money-maker. I miss the diaphanous clothing that any person might don when there was nothing special to say. It's as if the person were almost-but-not-quite naked ... just like the rest of us. True, it doesn't dig down into profound joy or dismal sorrow but it's a quick sketch of how a person gets by in life ... pretty ordinary stuff. The rest of the paper may cry out with one bit of importance or another, but "ID" seems to specialize in the unimportant ... which, when push comes to shove, is pretty important.

I guess my bias is often, if not always, angled towards people. Everything boils down to people, so it is nice to stop dithering about how to confine those people in what they do or think or say. What are things like when the fireworks stop going off and all that's left is a fascinating night sky?

I really can't nail down why I like "ID," but I know I like it, however confused my portrayal of "why."

the gnat's ass

There is no gnat's-ass answer to the question, "How many miles of coast does the United States have?" but like most questions, it wants answer, gnat's ass or otherwise.

Not that anyone cares much, perhaps, but the question crossed my mind yesterday and so I tried to look it up. When you think about tides and other factors, you can see why there are only ballpark answers (general coastline, 12,383 miles; tidal coastline 88,633).

Strange to think that when it comes to something like coast lines, a "true-ish" answer is acceptable but where other answers are sought, the gnat's ass persists... the one-and-only, enduring, no-bones-about-it "truth."

In the mathematical system most commonly employed, 2+2=4. And there is no question that when anyone puts two rocks by another two rocks, the conglomerate is four rocks... assuming anyone uses the most-commonly-employed mathematical system.

Assuming....

Is there a question with a gnat's-ass response?

I doubt it.

"True-ish" seems to be our lot and the gnat's ass is just the gnat's ass.

the 2nd largest religion in each state

Appended to an interesting Washington Post article about the second-largest religion in each American state was this comment/joke:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?" He said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are you christian or buddhist?" He said, "Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you catholic or protestant?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me too! Are you episcopalian or baptist?" He said, "Baptist!" I said,"Wow! Me too! Are you baptist church of god or baptist church of the lord?" He said, "Baptist church of god!" I said, "Me too! Are you original baptist church of god, or are you reformed baptist church of god?" He said,"Reformed Baptist church of god!" I said, "Me too! Are you reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off. -- Emo Phillips

Washington's [literal] vultures

Two vultures have found a home in a Washington, D.C., neighborhood populated by lobbyists and other high-powered scavengers, according to The Washington Post.

humanoid robot

As if taking the next most-obvious step after Facebook, the Japanese have developed a humanoid robot that is calibrated to recognize and respond to human emotion. Uses envisioned include care of the elderly. Does anyone else feel, as I do, that this is just another heart-warming advance that serves to sever honest human connections?

off-duty priests

Lord love a duck!

In a piece of eye-watering argumentation, a lawyer for the Roman Catholic Church has implied that priests are not priests -- and hence the Vatican is not responsible for their activities -- when they are not on duty.

“How do we determine when a priest is and is not on duty,” one justice asked.
“Well,” the diocese’s lawyer explained, “you can determine a priest is not on duty when he is molesting a child, for example.”

The case in question centers on molestation said to have occurred when a priest was on outings in Delaware. The possible implications for the wider Vatican priest-abuse scandal are clear.

PS. I have no way to corroborate the quote cited in the link, which was authored by "The Star-Ledger Editorial Board."

PPS. And here is a background story on the man whose case inspired the legal remarks.

"the chosen"

Elsewhere, the topic came up and I realized that I took it pretty seriously -- the implicit or explicit use of the phrase, "the chosen," to designate a group or group-think. It's rattling around in my mind like a bunch of bingo balls so ... here are some, however disjointed, thoughts.

First of all, I see nothing unusual or necessarily harmful about choosing companions with whom to consort. For friendship, for protection, for procreation, for singing, for spiritual adventure, for ... whatever. In each venue, whether social or mental, there is comfort and support and occasional rough patches. Give or take a little, this can be summed up in "man is a social animal."

Second, individuals run into the delight or horror of seeing themselves as "unique." There simply is no other snowflake that is precisely like "me." This understanding may flicker around the corner or flash full-bore into the eye, but it's there, in one way or another -- beckoning, goading, inspiring both delight and distress. One of the ways of  describing this uniqueness might be, "Your life is so difficult that it has never been tried before." Another might be, "No one gives a shit." "Unique" means alone. Companionship means not-alone ... at least on the surface. In one sense, "unique" is special. In another, it is lonely.

Third, all sorts of groups or mental configurations reach out for reassurance in the implicit or explicit use of the term "the chosen." Christians, Jews, Nazis, communists, Buddhists, wealthy people or poor, adults or children ... the list goes on and on, offering reassurance and elevation and comfort. If you want to write a sure-fire best seller, just write another one about what happens when the other-worldly shit hits the fan: "the chosen" catch a break; those who are not chosen get fucked. And the same stuff goes on in the mind.

Fourth, it is a very small step in the mind to move from recognizing uniqueness to gathering with companions who likewise recognize uniqueness and from there to posit a "chosen" status.

But I am running out of energy and interest here. The point I am after is this: There is nothing wrong with imagining some "chosen" status as long as it is accompanied by or preceded by a recognition and responsibility for who is making the choice. Creating an overarching source that does the choosing is comforting, perhaps, but it is a recipe for a life of doubt and underlying sorrow. The group or god or central authority or airy-fairy whatever-it-is can dull the fears of uniqueness, but it simply cannot extinguish the fact that you choose or I do and until there is some peace in this realm, there is no way of attaining peace. First, I choose; later I can diddle around with "who am I?"

Written down, this all sounds impossibly difficult or boring or whatever. But I think it is necessary on the one hand and impossibly simple on the other. I choose ... now what. How difficult could blue sky possibly be? Abdicating responsibility may be pleasant, but for how long and how reliably? The advantage of addressing the issue is that choice is a matter of verifiable fact whereas trying to obscure or override that fact is endlessly unsuccessful and not very happy-making.

The blood-letting that various "chosen" entities can loose on the population at large is everywhere paralleled by the blood-letting that can go on within.

Does it work?

Is it worth it?

I choose to think not.

"Upstream Color"

I just finished watching a beautifully-photographed 2013 movie called "Upstream Color," a movie in which the characters were clearly affected and yet seemed to lack coherent affect.

If someone knows what it's about, perhaps they will tell me.

It reminded me of one of my mother's writing dicta: "If you want to write a story about boredom, you don't make it boring."

If you're going to tell a tale that invites the listener to crawl out on the spindly, quasi-sci-fi branches of human sensibility and understanding, you have to provide obvious points of purchase if you want someone to share and applaud your view. Without such points, the exercise becomes smugly private, however lush.

That said, I did watch all 96 minutes.

spiritual caveats lite

It's several years old, but this laundry list of spiritual caveats was passed along today in a Huffington Post article:

The following 10 categorizations are not intended to be definitive but are offered as a tool for becoming aware of some of the most common spiritually transmitted diseases.
1. Fast-Food Spirituality: Mix spirituality with a culture that celebrates speed, multitasking and instant gratification and the result is likely to be fast-food spirituality. Fast-food spirituality is a product of the common and understandable fantasy that relief from the suffering of our human condition can be quick and easy. One thing is clear, however: spiritual transformation cannot be had in a quick fix.
2. Faux Spirituality: Faux spirituality is the tendency to talk, dress and act as we imagine a spiritual person would. It is a kind of imitation spirituality that mimics spiritual realization in the way that leopard-skin fabric imitates the genuine skin of a leopard.
3. Confused Motivations: Although our desire to grow is genuine and pure, it often gets mixed with lesser motivations, including the wish to be loved, the desire to belong, the need to fill our internal emptiness, the belief that the spiritual path will remove our suffering and spiritual ambition, the wish to be special, to be better than, to be "the one."
4. Identifying with Spiritual Experiences: In this disease, the ego identifies with our spiritual experience and takes it as its own, and we begin to believe that we are embodying insights that have arisen within us at certain times. In most cases, it does not last indefinitely, although it tends to endure for longer periods of time in those who believe themselves to be enlightened and/or who function as spiritual teachers.
5. The Spiritualized Ego: This disease occurs when the very structure of the egoic personality becomes deeply embedded with spiritual concepts and ideas. The result is an egoic structure that is "bullet-proof." When the ego becomes spiritualized, we are invulnerable to help, new input, or constructive feedback. We become impenetrable human beings and are stunted in our spiritual growth, all in the name of spirituality.
6. Mass Production of Spiritual Teachers: There are a number of current trendy spiritual traditions that produce people who believe themselves to be at a level of spiritual enlightenment, or mastery, that is far beyond their actual level. This disease functions like a spiritual conveyor belt: put on this glow, get that insight, and -- bam! -- you're enlightened and ready to enlighten others in similar fashion. The problem is not that such teachers instruct but that they represent themselves as having achieved spiritual mastery.
7. Spiritual Pride: Spiritual pride arises when the practitioner, through years of labored effort, has actually attained a certain level of wisdom and uses that attainment to justify shutting down to further experience. A feeling of "spiritual superiority" is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests as a subtle feeling that "I am better, more wise and above others because I am spiritual."
8. Group Mind: Also described as groupthink, cultic mentality or ashram disease, group mind is an insidious virus that contains many elements of traditional co-dependence. A spiritual group makes subtle and unconscious agreements regarding the correct ways to think, talk, dress, and act. Individuals and groups infected with "group mind" reject individuals, attitudes, and circumstances that do not conform to the often unwritten rules of the group.
9. The Chosen-People Complex: The chosen people complex is not limited to Jews. It is the belief that "Our group is more spiritually evolved, powerful, enlightened and, simply put, better than any other group." There is an important distinction between the recognition that one has found the right path, teacher or community for themselves, and having found The One.
10. The Deadly Virus: "I Have Arrived": This disease is so potent that it has the capacity to be terminal and deadly to our spiritual evolution. This is the belief that "I have arrived" at the final goal of the spiritual path. Our spiritual progress ends at the point where this belief becomes crystallized in our psyche, for the moment we begin to believe that we have reached the end of the path, further growth ceases.

Made in America?

First, the U.S. couldn't ship its business out of the country fast enough. Lower wages abroad meant more money at the retail level. American businesses went belly-up as the sweat-shops of Asia and the lower costs of Mexico took hold.

Now WalMart, America's largest retailer, is trying to "reshore" goods ... and the "Made In the USA" label has gained a revived cachet. But there's a problem:

"A lot of the tribal knowledge and skill sets are gone because the humans who used to do that work have either retired or died," says H. Kim Kelley, the CEO of Hampton Products International....

America has brought its workers to financial heel, but now the question is, can these slave laborers produce what is needed in order for profits to remain ... uh ... healthy?

Made in the USA?

What USA?

making sense of things

Yesterday's fat and fetid stranglehold let go in the overnight rain and today is more humanely cool... easier to think, easier to move, easier to be.

While my older son, who graduated from college last month with good marks in computer wizardry, is chewing the inside of his mouth looking for some kind of work, my son-in-law is awash in job offers in his chosen field of engineering.

The latter has held several jobs, each better paid than the last, since he got out of college a couple of years ago. On the one hand, it's a delicious predicament -- which job to take. On the other, I wonder whether someone who skips from job to job is a desirable employee.

Isn't there something to be said for the wisdom gained and quality produced through sticking with something? "That's not the way the game is played these days," my wife said. And she is probably right, but there is something flimsy about it in my mind, something that doesn't speak well for whatever the product is... butterfly executives sipping briefly at one flower before moving on to sip at another. They will tell you things are getting "better," but the product itself often tells a quite different tale...everything sleek and smooth and tinny.

As a personal matter, I think it is good to do one thing well. It doesn't matter what the one thing is. It matters that for once a person puts heart and soul into something and sees it through. It is not a matter of rounding up applause and agreement and comforting company: Heart and soul are beyond social pleasures.

Just one thing.

For once.

Because that one thing will make sense of everything else.

smiles, tears, music

Done it before, do it again just for the smiles ... "The Log Driver's Waltz"



... and do it again, just for the tears of joy .... Beethoven's 9th ode

800 dead babies

It's all "history," of course, but without ingesting and digesting the past, how can anyone get anything more than a blurred understanding of the present?

In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam.

And it was on this site at a septic tank or cistern crammed with the bones of at least 800 babies has been unearthed.

early trousers discovered

Passed along in email: Archeology reveals that trousers were in use/fashion at least as early as 3,000 years ago.

the superstition of reason

Humanists and others who delight in the realm of reason may smile smugly at the course charted by Sanal Edamaruku, an Indian living in exile in Finland after being accused of blasphemy back home. His crime? Debunking various claims and demonstrations by holy men and institutions of his native soil.

Time after time, Edamaruku has unmasked as superstition what others held near and dear -- beliefs that were strong enough so that the debunker has been threatened not just with legal proceedings, but also with death threats.

In the realm of reason, the ability to kill by chanting or the miraculous bleeding of a statue, deserve to be questioned and unmasked. In the realm of reason, "superstition" won't do.

But the smile of reasonable satisfaction so rarely examines the full implications of the beliefs in question. These are beliefs that people are willing to kill others for. They are very, very, very serious about them. Blood-letting serious; freedom-taking serious. They are not as easily dismissed as the elevated intellectual mind might like.

And more than that, does the intellectual mind that pooh-poohs childish superstition take much time to examine why anyone would feel so strongly? What need is involved here? The mind of reason, after all, has the capacity to examine and investigate not only with an eye to dismissing, but also with an eye to understanding.

An article passed along in email this morning quotes Edamaruku:

I would do it again. Because any miracle which has enormous clout at one moment, is simply gone once explained. It's like a bubble. You prick it and it is finished.

It sounds very reasonable, but leaves open the question of the pain suffered by the one whose bubble has been burst. Belief is so fierce. Belief is so defining. Belief is so connecting and consoling. Do ... not... fuck...with... my ... beliefs.

The world of reason will not be denied, no should it be, for my money.

But it is interesting: The implicit and sometimes explicit promise of the world of reason is that a person of sufficient reason will be a happy (wo)man: Once you know the facts, the facts will set you free and that freedom brings contentment with it.

But is this actually so? Are facts and proofs actually enough to assure contentment and peace? Or is it more the case that fact heaped upon fact and truth heaped upon truth merely results in a variety of heaps that assure little more than heaps. This is not to disdain reason, but rather to see it for what it is -- a very good tool, but not the tool destined, ipso facto,  to assure contentment. To imagine that reason could assure such an outcome strikes me as hardly less superstitious or under-informed than the beliefs held by people who might want to kill or condemn Sanal Edamaruku.

As Swami Vivekananda once observed, "The mind [he meant intellect] is a good servant and a poor master." The observation asks the question but does not impose an answer: Who/what is the good master?

speak up for net neutrality

There's an email address at the end of this quasi-comical presentation:

gods, guns and wonderfully weird photos

A Seleka fighter adjusts a broken guitar in a village between Bambari and Grimari, Central African Republic May 31, 2014.
REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

 

 

A pro-Russian rebel from the Vostok Battalion stands guard at a checkpoint in Donetsk June 1, 2014.
REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

 

 

A child runs past a grand piano that has been left by the East River underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, in the Manhattan borough of New York May 31, 2014.
REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

 

 

sins of omission and commission

My mother, who was not a Sunday-go-to-meetin' religious person, once observed that she preferred sins of commission to sins of omission.

And, roughly speaking, you can see her point: Sins of commission teach. Sins of omission gnaw.

Of course, anyone might get all Jesuitical and parsing about the matter, but in general, I see her point. At a personal level, there is nothing like a fuck-up to drive the lesson home.

I once went to a Zen Buddhist monastery in pursuit of whatever it is people who go to monasteries are in pursuit of. I came away devastated (for a while) by the outcome. Today, I wouldn't trade that experience for all the tea in China.

And I suppose there are myriad other examples.

Jesus joke

Passed along in email:

A burglar broke into a house one night. He shined his flashlight around, looking for valuables when a voice in the dark said, 'Jesus knows you're here.'

He nearly jumped out of his skin, clicked his flashlight off, and froze. When he heard nothing more, he shook his head and continued.

Just as he pulled the stereo out so he could disconnect the wires, clear as a bell he heard 'Jesus is watching you.'

Startled, he shined his light around frantically, looking for the source of the voice. Finally, in the corner of the room, his flashlight beam came to rest on a parrot.

'Did you say that?' he hissed at the parrot.

'Yes', the parrot confessed, then squawked, 'I'm just trying to warn you that he's watching you.'

The burglar relaxed. 'Warn me, huh? Who in the world are you?'

'Moses,' replied the bird.

'Moses?' the burglar laughed. 'What kind of people would name a bird Moses?'

'The kind of people who would name a Rottweiler Jesus.'

ranchers vs. tortoises

Given the intractable slide of journalism into the cheap-date sincere-outrage-is-a-credible-substitute-for-veracity, it is really nice to read something that is well-researched and well-written and not full of self-referential pomposity. I suppose I should enjoy it while it lasts because it seems unlikely it will last long....

Jonathan Allen's story for Reuters about the faceted conflict between Nevada ranchers and tortoises banged my chimes. Kudos to Allen; kudos to his editors; and kudos to Reuters. It may be too long for the Tweet-minded, and the topic may be off anyone else's radar, but I really enjoyed it.

The lead reads:

(Reuters) - When the U.S. government declared the Mojave desert tortoise an endangered species in 1989, it effectively marked the cattle ranchers of Nevada's Clark County for extinction.

Warning! Good news

It may seem parsimonious or nihilist or some other form of crabby, but "good news" is worth a look, I think.

By way of inspiration or encouragement, good news moves the spiritual ball along. Virgins with grapes, angels with harps, pools of ineffable serenity, endless understanding, utter relief ... who wouldn't be willing to put a little energy into it?

But as a long-term matter, a matter of unending credulity and sweat, "good news" has a way of barring the door to any honest good news. Why? Because "good news" relies on and asserts by definition the "bad news" it hopes to elude or reshape or revise. If this is true, "good news" is imbued with a constant uncertainty and doubt ... and doubt is not precisely what anyone would call "good news."

For starters, "good news" is fine. But further down the road, I think it can best serve as a warning: If "good news" is the only good news that spiritual endeavor might provide, would it really be worth the effort? Does the doubt that inspires a spiritual effort in the first place really hope to reach a time and place and understanding that is riven by still more doubt?

Is there any good news in spiritual adventure? I think there is, but I also think that "good news" serves more as a warning than a worthwhile destination.