Personal Reflections « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Personal Reflections ... Philosophy ...

It occurred to me during my drive to work today that the month of June is a good time to ponder the idea and ideal of human freedom (I discussed freedom a bit in my post on May 25). Why? Because there are several historical anniversaries in June that relate strongly to freedom. Let’s start off way back in the mists of the Middle Ages, with the signing of the Magna Carta by England’s King John. That happened on June 15, 1215. The MC was an incidental byproduct of the political wrangling going on at the time between the King, the barons and the Catholic Church. However, it set a precedent that eventually inspired ideological and political developments, including the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

King John wasn’t doing so well at the time, so he agreed to formally promise the barons and the Church that he was NOT an absolute dictator and that the people of England (well, at least the richer people) had certain rights that the King could not take away. In the coming centuries, the various English kings and queens went back on this pledge, and Oliver Cromwell threw it out the window during his religious dictatorship in the mid-15th Century. But the idea of inalienable rights for English citizens (again, for the richer ones at first; the commoners had to wait) never died. They were like seeds that lay dormant for centuries, until the conditions became right in the Eighteenth Century for their resurgence, growing into what we know today as the Anglo-American ideal of freedom.

From the plains of Runnymeade in 1215, let’s zoom forward in time to Galveston, Texas in the year 1865. Do you remember the theme song from the TV show “F Troop”? The first stanza describes the situation in Galveston: “the end of the Civil War was near”. (Theoretically it was over, as General Lee had surrendered to the Union in April, 1865; but back in those days, communications were slow, and there were ongoing “pockets of resistence” in the South that had to be mopped up by Union forces). President Lincoln had already declared slavery dead in his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. However, life went on as usual on slave plantations throughout the Confederacy.

On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This was one of the last areas in the South to be “emancipated”. As such, June 19 became a local celebration amidst the former slaves and their descendents, known as “Juneteenth”. June 19 is still marked today as a celebration of the end of slavery in America. And the end of slavery certainly represented an advance in the realization of human freedom. There was obviously a long way yet to go in that “realization process” for the slaves and their future generations. But, as with the Magna Carta, it was a milestone along the road.

Next, let’s go to a land where Anglo-American ideals of human freedom never got much traction. I.e., China. As Prof. Rufus Fears and others point out, our ideal of freedom can be broken down into significant components, including personal freedom, political freedom, and national freedom. The Chinese have, over their many centuries, done fairly well with national freedom, and are doing a lot better lately with personal freedom (stemming mostly from the fact that a lot more people there are better off economically these days). But political freedom has just never been a significant part of their history. Can our American values regarding political freedom be transplated to that culture? Do these values represent something universal about humankind, or are they just a by-product of our own history and circumstances? Back in the spring of 1989, it seemed as though the notion of political freedom was finally taking root in China; a group of students and intellectuals were leading protests centered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

Unfortunately, in early June the Chinese government decided to put a halt to the whole thing at a cost of several hundred lives. However, the moving story of the “Tank Man” is still remembered by many Chinese and westerners, and will hopefully inspire an eventual flowering of political freedom in China someday, when the time and conditions are right. In a nutshell, a group of Chinese Army tanks were leaving Tiananmen Square on June 5, following the bloody battle fought over the previous week against the protestors. One brave man from the scattered protestors decided to stand in front of the tanks, halting their progress. Since there were a lot of journalists present taking pictures, the Army decided not to crush or shoot the guy on the spot.

For a number of hours, there was a brave stand-off; at one point, supposedly the “tank man” got into a conversation with the tank drivers and lectured them about freedom. He was finally escorted off the scene, and was probably killed shortly thereafter (western reporters and historians are unsure about what happened to him). But the pictures of his moment in the sun live on, and like the “blood of the martyrs” in the Second and Third Century Roman Empire [i.e., the early Christian leaders acting in defiance of the pagan Roman government], they may well inspire a future movement that will change the world. Or a big part of it, anyway.

In the USA, our big patriotic celebration is on July 4, the anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from England. But the month of June is perhaps the better time for Americans and westerners in general to reflect on our “heritage of freedom”. Oh, one interesting P.S. that fits in with this theme. In a recent presidential proclamation on the White House website, Barack Obama has proclaimed June as “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month”. Freedom is still a “work in progress” here in America, and the current movement towards full social acceptance and personal rights for gay or “gay-like” people is certainly a sign of progress. So it’s June — let freedom ring! (And may it ring someday in those Middle Eastern lands that our President so ironically decided to visit this month).

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:26 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, April 2, 2009

◊ Time for a Classic Cheap Watch

Personal Reflections ... Photo ...

I gripe every so often about things changing too fast. Let’s say that you buy something that works well and does what you need it to do. Eventually it wears out, so you try to buy a new one. But surprise, surprise, they no longer make it. Once in a very blue moon the newer stuff is better, but too often it just doesn’t work as well. That’s just another side-effect of our dynamic post-industrial capitalist economy (along with worsening distribution of wealth, sub-prime mortgages, the shuttering of Detroit and complex derivative investment instruments that defy mark-to-market accounting, or any other sort of accounting).

So it’s nice when you can still buy a classic. My Uncle Bruno passed away about 10 years and several months ago, and my brother and I had to clean out his apartment and settle his estate. We didn’t charge fees for our services to the other family members who inherited his net assets. But in return, we did pick out a few small-ticket, low-value items from his stash for our own use. My own booty included a Casio digital watch, the F28W. It was a rather low-budget watch, as my uncle was living a low-budget life (which was too bad, as he deserved better). It didn’t do much, but it did tell you the time and date. Also it was light and comfortable to wear, so I starting using it more and more. After a while it became my main wristwatch. I expected it to crap-out after a few years, but it kept on running as the new millennium progressed. About a month ago, the watch reached the ten-year mark with me.

But all good things must end, and my late uncle’s cheap-o Casio finally blanked out last week. I was told that it wasn’t worth having the battery replaced, as it would cost more than an equivalent new watch. So it was time to look for an equivalent new watch. As a starting point, I went on Google to see if anyone had a good recommendation for an F28W equivalent. It turned out that the most equivalent watch is the F28W! They still make it, and it looks the same. So I found a decent deal on Ebay ($14 with shipping) and punched in my order. And the package arrived today. So here’s the new watch on my wrist next to the old one, that had served me so well. The biggest difference is that the old one was made in Malaysia, whereas the new one comes from — where else? — China. We shall see if the Chinese do as well.

Sometimes simple is better, or so says the Casio web site. Most of the reviews on the Amazon site pretty much agree (but they’re correct about the plastic band breaking within two years; I’ll use the cloth band that I was using with the old one once it does). It’s nice, just for once, to find something old that the modern world still can’t beat. P.S., this isn’t the so-called “Casio terrorist watch”; that would be the fancier F91W. Mine came from some Jewish merchant in Brooklyn; the box was packed with Hebrew-language newspaper pages!

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:52 pm Read Comments (5) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, March 22, 2009

◊ Smells of My Youth

Brain / Mind ... Personal Reflections ...

Smell is a stronger form of sense than most of us realize. That’s probably because it goes way back in the chain of evolution. Before there was eyesight and hearing and taste, there were living things that could pick up chemical signals in the air. Our brains are like Microsoft Office software; they are not designed from scratch, but are “layered” from basic software designs drawn up many years ago. I.e., they still have the original programming design, but with a lot of additions and complexifications as to do more things. As such, we still have a brain that gives a lot of attention to smell.

Thus, it’s not surprising that smells can trigger dormant memories stored way in the back of the mind. I was thinking the other day about how certain kinds of smells can “take you back” to your childhood in just a second or two. You can be watching a baseball game or knuckling down on a math problem or reading an article about secularized sub-prime mortgage securities or pondering a vacation spot, and suddenly a whiff breaks your concentration; your mind wanders to far-away places from years and years ago.

So I drew up a list of some of the smells of my youth:

Seagrams rye whiskey (my parents and aunts and uncles always drank it during the holidays, mixed with ginger ale)

Balsam (from a Christmas tree in the living room)

Clove oil (from the dentist’s office)

Tar (the city was re-paving the local streets; and also from the Flintkote roofing-paper factory up the road)

Creosote (Railroad track ties — every male child ‘walked the tracks’ back then)

Perfumy flowers (funeral parlors and the local Catholic church at Easter time; for that, add the weird, resiny smell of beeswax candles burning)

Baseball glove leather and neatsfoot oil (ah, boyhood summer days)

Salt water (at the beach)

Yeast (pizza shops — back when they made their own dough)

Sweet baking smells (the local bakeries — we had two in my neighborhood)

Polished wood floors (the school gym)

An odd, somewhat rancid damp smell (wet raincoats and galoshes stored in the school classroom closet on a rainy day)

Burning tree leaves (in October and November, back when everyone burned autumn leaves)

“Beerwood” (the smell in an old bar or restaurant where everything was wood, and was marinated in spilled beer)

Many of these smells are mostly gone, because times have changed (e.g., pizza places now buy pre-made dough; dentists don’t use clove oil anymore for pain relief; you can’t burn leaves in autumn; and most Christmas trees sold are not balsam firs, or were cut months ago and have lost their smell by late December). It just shows that I’m getting old. But it’s still nice when an occasional smell takes me back for a quick mental visit with my youth, the days of long ago.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:44 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Friday, March 13, 2009

◊ Ash Wednesday in the Hospital

Personal Reflections ... Religion ...

As noted in my recent blog entries, my mother spent about 7 weeks in the hospital over the past 3 months. As a result, I spent a fair of number of hours there myself during that time. One of the hardest things to get used to was being surrounded by broken, decaying bodies. Yes, I mean the patients. Most of the patients in the intensive care unit and the recovery wards were old. And those who weren’t old were often in pretty bad shape anyway. Each day as I strolled past the rooms, I occasionally peaked in; a bit of entropic voyeurism (everyone does it). It’s like whistling past the graveyard, trying to ignore the fact that all these sick and weak people are ultimately no different from me; that in all too few years, I could be where they are now. It takes a bit of the bounce out of one’s steps.

During the long hours watching my mother slowly heal (mostly while sleeping), I occasionally gave in and watched some TV with my brother. TV is a celebration of youth and vigor; what with all the sports coverage and all the shows and commercials that try to lure one’s attention with sex (or at least sexual innuendo). It’s quite a juxtaposition; pretty women and men with taught, fully potent bodies on the screen, and broken old bodies everywhere else you look. It’s quite a reminder that youth and strength are temporary, fleeting things; that decay is inevitable and eternal.

The Roman Catholic Church has a ritual that acknowledges this. It’s called Ash Wednesday. Interestingly enough, my mother got out of the hospital on Ash Wednesday. The rite of ashes is accompanied by one of the most wisdom-packed incantations that I’ve every heard in a mythical / mystical ritual: “remember man that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”.

As much as I hate to admit it, the Catholics are on to something there (although they lose points for the fact that Ash Wednesday is a relatively minor occasion for them). I can’t dig all their stuff about salvation and god / man trinities and transsubstantiation and deposits of faith. It’s all too complex, all too disanchored from what we now know about the universe and ourselves from critical thinking and observation (i.e., from modern science). But on Ash Wednesday, which is not a mandatory holiday, “the Church” latches on to a really big truth. I remember Ash Wednesday ceremonies of my youth being rather solemn and dignified affairs; no gold chalices, no fine linens, no embroidered vestments. Just ashes and a bit of wisdom. Yea, too bad that the other 99.9% of ecclesiastical life isn’t like that (although some of the Catholic monastic rituals also have an austere beauty to them; flickering candles and chanting during a 3 am vigil service is not a thing easily forgotten).

Well, I don’t attend any Catholic rituals these days; I seek wisdom in other ways. Seven weeks on hospital grounds is not an easy path to wisdom, but wisdom is certainly there, if you take it in a certain way. As I’m trying to do, on reflection.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:00 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, March 7, 2009

◊ Alcuin — Eternal Soul of an Eternal Student

History ... Personal Reflections ...

I have proclaimed myself on this web site to be an “eternal student”, which means that I have an affinity for the ideals of learning and scholarship, even though I’m neither a student nor an academic scholar. Some people are sports fans; I’m a learning fan, a fan of academic prowess and advancement. Even if I’m not in the big leagues, I still like to participate as I can. So I read a lot, I look things up, think things thru, and write about them (mostly on this web site; I just can’t get myself together to write a big article or a book, as I’m just not ready for all the publisher rejection). But I’m not an “eternal student” as the term is mostly used on the Internet; it is generally a self-reference used by 20-somethings who are in grad school and don’t want to get out into the real world; or who do want to get out into the real world but aren’t having much luck.

People like me (i.e., old people; at least relative to the great majority of people using the web) are also called “life-long learners”. But I don’t like that term either. It sounds too quaint and too lame, sort of like “senior citizen”. Besides, when I say “eternal”, I really mean eternal. I believe that learning is something existentially profound, something with metaphysical bite to it, something that will still have meaning when our earth and our universe are no more. But aside from the ontological aspects, perhaps “learner” is a better term than “student”. Student is a passive word, whereby learner seems more active. A learner is a person who wants to learn, not someone forced to sit in a classroom. You can certainly be a student, in the modern sense, and not be a learner. In fact, the colleges and universities are filled with students whose main inspiration is getting a good job, and not learning and understanding important things about the world.

So maybe I should call myself an “eternal learner”. But hey, what’s in a name. What matters most is what you do in the world with your learning. I was reading the other day about an all-star “eternal learner and educator” from the past, and I thought I’d give him his due. His name was Alcuin, and he lived in Europe back in the 8th Century. Those days were known as the Dark Ages, and learning was a tough sell at the time; most people kept busy trying to avoid famine, plague, and roving vandals. But King Charlemagne decided that there was more to life than war and plundering in the name of the church, and so he decided to use the religious infrastructure of the time to spread learning throughout his kingdom (what we now know as Italy, France and Germany).

The religious infrastructure of affiliated monasteries was about the only infrastructure going at the time. So Charlemagne recruited Alcuin, a church deacon and scholar from England, to set up a school within Charlemagne’s court, and to follow up with a system to spread learning throughout the Frankish Kingdom. Before long, Charlemagne himself was taking classes. And priests were being trained and sent far and wide to work with the local monasteries to set up abbey schools, as to offer elementary education to both the nobles and the common folk.

Alcuin did a pretty good job in making education commonly available in Europe once again, setting up curriculums and teaching methods and tending to many bureaucratic issues. One of his contributions to the teaching of mathematics was the classic and often-hated practical math exercise. You know, the ones that go like this: “a man drives due east at 50 miles per hour, while from the same starting point his wife leaves 30 minutes later and drives due west at 40 miles per hour . . . ” Alcuin was interested and involved in many things, including theology, historical research, and the writing of poetry; he was a Renaissance man well before the Renaissance. His arguments for freedom of conscience helped to convince Charlemagne to abolish the death penalty for paganism.

Alcuin died in 804, and on his tombstone it says: “Alcuin my name, wisdom I always loved, Pray, reader, for my soul.” Alcuin thus assumed that he had an eternal soul, and that learning was at the root of its being. I’d like to think that he’s right, and that all true “eternal learners” like him never truly die.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 6:43 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, February 26, 2009

◊ Smiles For Getting Home

Personal Reflections ...

If you’ve read any of my recent posts, you know that my mother has been in and out of the hospital of late. In early December she had a severe respiratory arrest which landed her in the ER and then the intensive care unit, hooked up to a ventilator via a breathing tube. She managed to cheat the angel of death, though, and after 39 days was sent home. My brother is very dedicated to my mother, and each day put in 8 or even 10 hour vigils at her bedside. I tried to keep working half-days at my job, but still spent an average of 6 hours in the hospital. I was there on the day she was put on a gurney for the ride home; she looked as happy as a kid being pulled for a ride in a Radio Flyer wagon (or flying downhill on a Flexible Flyer sled). It was great to see that smile, and it was also great to get my life back (admittedly my brother bears the brunt of her home care needs, which increased because of what happened).

Things seemed to settle down nicely over the following three weeks. Then suddenly, my mother had another attack and was back in the ER with the ventilator pipe back in her throat. She survived the hit once again and was soon back in the intensive care ward. And for me it was back to working half days and spending long hours in a hospital room doing nothing (my brother again went the extra mile and pretty much stopped going to work).

Right away, it was apparent that this was going to be worse for me than the first time (although my mother regained consciousness fairly quickly, so it was not as bad for her — albeit, it was still bad). It seemed like being put in prison. Your freedom is taken away; hospital staff tell you when you can and can’t be in the room, and you’d best take their orders. If you stay past visiting hours, sometimes a guard comes over and tells you to leave. There are no computers to get things done on, no gym to work out in, no interesting places to walk, and not much in terms of eating places offering food that’s worth eating (I mostly brought my own snacks to survive on). I really dreaded all the hassle in driving to the hospital every day, trying to find a parking space, then just sitting there until ordered to move by a nurse or doctor, with little solace other than a book to read under dim, eyestraining light. (The one consolation was that I did get some reading done.) Yes there’s TV, but most everything on was uninteresting.

After a week it wasn’t so bad. You can get used to most anything, I suppose. And my mother started getting better once again. She was finally transferred to a private room in the recovery ward, where things are quieter and you don’t get bossed around as much. And then yesterday, the guys with the gurney and the van came again to bring her home — alive, and if not completely well, at least a good bit better. She was pretty sleepy this time, but once she got home and was back in her room, she managed to break into a beatific smile. And that was my reward once more. It all makes some sense once you see that.

Of course, I don’t want to do this again anytime soon! Thus, my brother and I purchased a home breathing machine for my mother, a bi-level “P.A.P.” with timed breathing options (just like the hospital ventilators). We’re hoping it will forestall another respiratory inflammation attack and keep her home.

Barack Obama has expressed regret that he wasn’t with his mother in her final days (which were largely spent in a hospital ward). My inbred reaction to that is “yea, right; a skilled politician like you will say anything to get sympathy and keep from appearing cold and heartless, which you probably are, like most other politicians”. But for now I’m going to put my cynicism aside. President Obama is right to regret never having seen the relieved and satisfied look on the face of an aging relative coming home after a grueling hospital stay. And also never having had the knowledge that he had something to do with it. They also serve who only stand and wait, as John Milton said; and on rare occasion we waiters even get to feel good about it.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:09 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, December 27, 2008

◊ Caught In A Twilight World

Brain / Mind ... Personal Reflections ...

My mother has been in the intensive care unit at St. Marys Hospital in Passaic for the past 18 days, following an unexpected respiratory arrest that brought both her lungs and heart to a halt. Thus, I’ve gotten to know something about hospital life; there’s nothing like hanging around an ICU for 6 hours each day (following a few hours in the emergency room at the start) to get a feel for things.

I must say that I’ve been impressed with many of the people working there. I’m still not a big fan of doctors, but the emergency room MD was pretty amazing in his low-key fashion. He was dancing his way through a non-stop chorus of chaos, making it all look well-rehearsed. The ER med tech guy who helped him was an amazingly intense young man. And most of the ICU nurses and technicians have done pretty well too.

I’ve been going back to my office for half-days during this time, and many of the people there are minor-league by comparison. The combination of human caring and professional intensity is entirely lacking amidst much of the support staff. Myself included, unfortunately.

I probably am romanticizing the hospital situation somewhat; there are problems and pettiness and employee gripes at St. Marys. It’s hard and sometimes nasty work, but when these folk go home they certainly are entitled to feel good about what they do for a living.

Next thought: since her respiratory incident, my mother has been in something of a coma, to a varying degree. She does open her eyes a fair amount, and sometimes seems quite aware of what is going on around her. But most of the time, she is not experiencing what we call “consciousness”. This is ironic to me, given the academic interest that I’ve taken on the topic of mind and self-awareness. I’ve read quite a few books and have devoted part of this web site to reviewing what I’ve learned from scientists, psychologists and philosophers about the complex interactions between brain, mind and self (and let’s not even get into stuff like “free will”). But I didn’t imagine that my own mother would soon be caught in the twilight world where those around her can only guess “what it is like” for her right now.

All of those good words and learned thoughts by the experts, professing to have a grasp on what our minds are and what goes on within them . . . You’d think I’d be well prepared to understand what my mother is going through. But no. When something really happens to the brain and mind of a real person, all of the learned thoughts and conceptual paradigms about our innermost life are “like straw” (as St. Thomas Aquinas said late in his life about the many words he had written trying to capture the essence of God).

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:42 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, December 14, 2008

◊ Life As A Learning Experience

Personal Reflections ...

This blog has pretty much been “off the air” lately, as my time has been diverted to a family situation. I.e., my mother experienced a “respiratory arrest” last Tuesday afternoon that effectively shut down her lungs and heart. The EMT and ER people managed to keep her going and get her stabilized, and she’s been in a hospital intensive care unit since then. We’re not sure how this situation is going to play out; my mother’s condition is “touch and go”, you might say. There’s been some progress, but also some set-backs. She is fighting incredibly hard to keep going, however, and most everyone involved seems rather impressed by her sheer willpower.

So, I will be back before long, and I’ll have some interesting things to talk about. I’ve been in the “belly of the beast” of the American health care system, and may still have a ways to go through those awful entrails. I’ve had some time to reflect on my family relationships. I’ve been in an urban hospital mixing with people from all parts of the globe. I’ve had my life upset a bit, giving me a chance to look at it from a different angle. It’s all been quite upsetting, and awfully tiring; I’ve lost 5 pounds over the past week (which takes me down to around 120 — but on the bright side, that’s a good excuse to start eating more!). But it’s also been a learning experience. Life as a learning experience; that’s what being an “eternal student of and for life” is all about. I hope to share some of my new lessons on this page very shortly.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:25 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, November 30, 2008

◊ In Search of Good Beer and Good Religion

Food / Drink ... Personal Reflections ... Religion ...

It’s Sunday and a lot of people have gone to church today to participate in services meant to worship some form of divinity. I wasn’t one of them. I haven’t attended a regular church worship service in almost ten years. In some ways I miss it. I still believe in a divinity, and there’s no reason why the divinity that I believe in doesn’t deserve my participation in a communal worship service honoring that divinity. But one of the things that turns me off about church worship, such as it is available in my community, is that it seems to be about more than just divine worship. Much more. Too much more, in my book.

Let me be honest here. It’s also a matter of personal economics. Church don’t come cheap around here. Most congregations will hit you up for money once they see you as a regular. And that’s legitimate; it costs money to heat and maintain church buildings, and hire ministers and other staff, and buy songbooks and such. But for now, my parental support responsibilities make me do cost-benefit comparisons for any major purchase I might consider. And the typical costs for belonging to a typical church just don’t outweigh the benefits, in my book.

Why not? Well, the churches (and mosques and synagogues and whatever else might be out there, including Quaker meeting houses) just don’t deliver the kind of intellectual stimulation that I’d like. I am an eternal student, after all, and the subject of God for me is not a settled one (and never will be). So there’s never a lack of thirst for intelligent things to be said about the question of God, and of how we should live our lives in light of that huge question. But most of the churches that I’ve been part of (and I sampled quite a few back when I was younger) seemed to focus on repeating the same things over and over.

Sure, someone usually gives a sermon with a few thoughts on how the ancient scriptures and confessions of faith relate to current events. But they have to walk on eggs, they can’t question whether the ancient writings and creeds might be wrong in some ways or whether someone else’s ancient writings and creeds might fit better given the issue of the day. They can’t be very open minded. And I’m not in the mood to spend scare money on closed mindedness.

And what else bothers me is the focus on “the founders” and the history of the sect. When I was hanging out with the Quakers, it was suggested that I get to know Matthew Fox and Quaker history (which I did, somewhat, as it is worth knowing about). When I was an Episcopalian, I was expected to know something about Bishop Cranmer and Anglo history. The Roman Catholics of course have their many saints and popes to learn about (but only up to a point; they don’t want the average Joe to know too much about the old popes, given some of the less-than-stellar leaders the Roman Church has had over the centuries).

And then of course there are the worship rituals and all the time and effort needed to support them. And then the basic grounds-and-facilities issues and the business stuff, like fixing the leaky boiler and balancing the budget. Then there are the social customs, the picnics and dinners and bake sales and youth activities and such. All well and good. Oh, and then also the social activism that some congregations engage in. Even better. But as to getting back to the basic question: why should we believe in God, and live our lives as though God really does exist – everyone seems almost embarrassed to consider it. As though it’s all settled, bringing it up implies lack of conviction.

Maybe the problem – or my problem anyway – is that churches are about worship, and not about ongoing existential dilemmas. Worship implies that you’ve gotten past the existential of believing in God, and are ready to start acting out your belief. At least during the hour allotted for worship services. I guess that existential dilemmas regarding faith are not easy to share and discuss and deal with. So we don’t. At least no where in my neck of the woods. And that’s too bad. I could see pulling out a twenty and losing an hour or two on a Sunday morning if there were a group format nearby that mixed discussion, learning, meditation and singing, along with comparisons of the many ancient and modern thoughts on God and faith from throughout the world, personal reflections on the crisis of belief and faith, and sharing of ways to enact faith in daily life and social life. And no requirement to memorize the founders and past history of the movement! I.e., no Moses, Mohamed, Buddha or Saint Peter to bow down to.

(The Unitarians claim that they do this, but they fail to make it to first base with me, as they don’t presume belief in God or even interest in belief in God; the latter would relate to those of us – most of us, actually – who entertain doubts amidst our hope. The Unitarians don’t even require hope for a loving divinity, you can be an atheist and be fully accepted in that community. Not my cup of tea, a bit too weak of a brew.)

So for now, I stay home on Sundays. But I maintain my hope that there’s something out there somewhere like this. A church of eternal students on the road, searching for faith within their lives.

BEER REVIEW: Here’s a quick review of two new beers currently being pushed on the masses by the giant American brewers, Budweiser and Miller. They both involve lime. I personally like lime, and I was intrigued by the notion of how limey flavors would go with beer. Well, Bud and Miller, in their infinite wisdom, decided that lime flavor would go best with a watery light beer. So they have given us Bud Light Lime, and Miller Chill. Of the two, I like Miller Chill better. It still tastes just a bit like beer; and the lime flavor is subtle, not all that far from fresh lime juice. On the other hand, Bud Light Lime tastes more like lime-flavored candy, liquid style. Too much cheap quasi-lime flavoring in it. So Miller has the better entry in the lime beer war, for now.

WEB SITE REVIEW: There are plenty of useful little web sites that you don’t notice or look at until you specifically need what these sites do. One of those sites is www.filleritem.com I came across it the other day when ordering something from Amazon and just missing the $25 threshold for free shipping. That’s when you want to know what can you buy from Amazon for a buck or two that would put you over the top and avoid the $5 or more for shipping. It’s not easy to to that directly on Amazon, as they don’t have a price-range search (which further selects out those items sold directly by Amazon; a lot of listed items are sold by affiliated vendors, and thus are irrelevant to the free shipping offer for goods purchased directly from Amazon). But filleritem.com does indeed allow such a search. Only problem: the site needs updating. Some of the cheap items listed aren’t available anymore, and others have gone up in price. I hope that they do keep this site updated; if you do business with Amazon, sooner or later you’re going to need it! (PS, there’s also www.slickfillers.net)

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:33 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

◊ Atheistic “Comedy”

Art & Entertainment ... Personal Reflections ... Spirituality ...

Every now and then it’s good for me to go back to the question as to whether to believe in God or not. I recently revisited the question, and I still come down on the side of belief (if not by a landslide). Around the same time, I noticed an interesting article in the current Atlantic Magazine about comedian Bill Maher and his atheist beliefs (or anti-beliefs, as atheism is belief in non-belief). Mr. Maher has made a film documentary about religion (called “Religulous”), and the believers he talks with provide enough comic material as to render Mr. Maher’s jokes unnecessary. Since much of the faithful has not rethought their belief since childhood, they often don’t do very well with Maher’s signature question, i.e. “what is the difference between believing in God and Santa Claus”.

I won’t claim that my beliefs are ready for a Maher interview, but I just had some interesting thoughts regarding the more troubling challenges to belief; i.e., the problem of pain, the prevalence of randomness in the quantum world and in the process of evolution, the “trial-and-error” aspect of evolution and possibly of the reality behind the Big Bang, and the incredible hugeness of the Universe compared with the tiny specs in it where sentient life might exist. In sum, it hardly looks like there is an intelligent designer behind all this, despite Aquinas and his various rationales. It looks like something mostly accidental.

But then again – perhaps it depends on how you look at it. Pain, death, randomness, inefficiency and wastefulness; what would be the point of all that? Well – these things certainly would set a benchmark as to what God and the ultimate principal of being, goodness and awareness are NOT. What if we are somehow in a process of becoming more and more like God? If so, the stakes would be huge, the lessons involved enormous. And they could not be learned without pain, huge and mindless pain, terribly dark and crushing pain. Perhaps we have to be pushed to not-being, in order to fully appreciate being. We certainly do take our existence for granted too often. Perhaps God-ness is the ultimate awareness and appreciation of being. Most of us are hardly ready for that.

If we assume that we will always be human, even if there is life after death – which is what most religions teach – then the atheists will have a good argument. I.e., consider those ideas of heaven as a huge country club where we will be continually pampered and never bored, with God up in the head office running the place. Maher could certainly take that apart on SNL or the Comedy Channel. But if we, in our messy lives, are somehow in training to become part of God – if that’s what the stakes are – and if there is an after-life process whereby we consolidate and contextualize all of the pains and defeats and disappointments from our earthly life; then perhaps the God argument makes more sense. Perhaps one could then answer Maher’s “Santa Claus” question by saying that old St. Nick leaves temporary delights that soon break or are eventually stored in the attic and forgotten; but God is the Santa Claus of eternal being, a being that can be attained only by giving up all of the imperfect ways of being that we know, an ultimate being that is something like sex without end. Only so much more. Amen.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:58 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

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