As I told my father, who called me with the news, in tears, YOU CAN DO MORE THAN CRY. WE can ALL do more.
We, you, I, can support, and call on others, to support groups working against hate.
My father was struck by this event because he and my mother lived two blocks from the Tree of Life Synagogue when I was a newborn. I also lived nearby while attending Carnegie Mellon University in the late 1970’s.
The biggest and most effective group working against hate, as far as I can tell, is the Southern Poverty Law Center. You can Google them, or click on their underlined name above. They are the ones who put the KKK out of business, among other ongoing useful work. They track hate groups, generally work for justice, and teach tolerance with their program for school teachers, “Teaching Tolerance.”
Just like the Parkland High School students turned their grief into action, it is imperative that we all do the same.
If we don’t feel that we are in a position to go and attend, or organize, demonstrations, we can financially support those who put their real skin and guts into the work of uplifting humanity.
“Reminders about tolerance are as old as the first pages of the Testaments, but the lack of attention to them makes them as new as though they were meant for tomorrow. What little effort is required in order to turn this tomorrow into a radiance of many achievements, which are possible in the case of hearty co-operation!
Even in our days of extreme intolerance, such unifying institutions as the World Postal Union and International Red Cross are possible. Even the most intolerant hypocrites do not protest against these institutions. Then, what slight expansion of consciousness is needed to reach co-operation and trust! And is this so difficult?”
The preceding quote from Nicolas Roerich, a famous Russian artist and philosopher, active as a public dialogue leader in the time between the first two world wars, could have been written yesterday. Even our American president is suddenly calling for unity, as a result of the simultaneous kicks to his perception of the structural integrity of his posterity, resulting from the killing of a Saudi journalist who worked for the Washington Post, and the package bombs mailed to his predecessor and former political opponent. I say resulting from the killing, rather than what the president says, which is related to the Saudi coverup of the killing.
How can we listen to the words of Nicolas Roerich? How can we truly listen and use the resonance of these words in our hearts to uplift our spirits in these troubling times? Maybe something symbolic, like mailing a paper letter to someone in a foreign country. Maybe making a donation to an international charity. Maybe posting this little piece of writing on the internet. Maybe sending the link to this little piece of writing to a friend.
The Saudis are not our friends, and they never have been, my esteemed father’s opinion to the contrary. His flawed single criteria method of determining that the Saudis are good guys is based on their support for Israel. Israel’s friendship with the Saudis is even more unintelligible than our own. Working for clarity and tolerance of our fellow humans does not mean that we endorse their sins. But working together on projects that we can all endorse, the World Postal Union, for example, lets us experience the fact that individual people on the opposite side of any particular political issue are probably just as likely to be otherwise suitable companions as those on “our side.”
Having this experience of being able to see the truth of the randomness of the sources of our political leanings will tend to soften even the most die-hard bigot. If you don’t understand the previous sentence, just try it out. Do SOMETHING for an organization where you will be brought into contact with someone from the other end of the political spectrum. Just do it. And then just think about it. We’re all humans, even if our political reality and the enforcing sword of justice have not yet caught up to the high minded rhetoric of the United States of American Declaration of Independence. Hey, we’ve only had 240 some years to clothe the words with flesh. As Americans, that seems like a long time, but the fresh start we all think we got when we or our ancestors came to the shores of the nation is not as fresh as we are led to believe. It takes work to excavate the layers of subconscious myths that keep us at each others’ throats.
Born of the rain, this mushroom only exists after enough rain produces the right conditions for its parent mycelium to fruit!I think these mushrooms are good for making some kind of medicinal beverage, but am not sure. But they are well socialized, not lonely!
This was from two prompts in today’s writing group:
Pluviophile and Alone versus Lonely
In my early youth, I was no pluviophile. But in college, I bought a Totes brand umbrella that had a beautiful design of those 1920’s popular bathroom decor colors of coral and turquoise, with accents of lavender and grey. I loved the colors of that umbrella so much that I actually enjoyed walking in the rain, even if I won’t claim to have prayed for rain just for the chance of using it. Thanks to Totes lifetime warranty program, when a rib bent, I sent it back for repair. But those evil people didn’t repair it the second time. Nowadays MAYBE they would have sent me email asking my preference. Then, they trashed my beloved work of art, and sent me a smaller, new-fangled automatic opening black and boring replacement. I was crestfallen. Fortunately I kept the cover, so still have a tiny sliver of memory of the colors.
Still no true pluviophile, in early middle age, having moved to the country and acquired a small flock of geese, I tried to learn to merge my consciousness with theirs when it rained. Especially when it rained enough to turn the shallow depression outside the barn into a small pond. The geese were clearly pleased when this happened, and they provided one more step on the road to my achieving equanimity with regard to the state of the atmosphere.
In late middle age, at least according to the Hindu system of life segmentation, I was less bothered by rain, unless it seemed endless. Back in 2009, the first summer of The Great Recession, it never got warm and we saw the sun and blue skies only occasionally in Michigan. The two worst state economies were California and Michigan. Miraculously, my personal economy was saved by my being hired by a company in Tennessee which was managing an investigation in the Mojave Dessert. When we did the radiographic inspection of the steel component, everyone else sat in their air conditioned vehicles. I eschewed even the shelter of the canvas tarp the radiographers had brought along. I stood basking in the sun, trying to make up for the grey Michigan summer all in one day. That night, I had no appetite. Couldn’t even finish the salad I ordered at Denny’s. Even through the migraine, I never regretted my worship of the sun that day.
Now, in early old age, I am still no pluviophile. But my new hobby of mushroom foraging gives me a small push in that direction. These last few weeks however, have been a bit much. When at last a few hours of free time presented themselves in a time frame dried out enough for me to feel like venturing into the woods with my camera and net bag, I did find a lot of mushrooms. I MAY have even found some new edible varieties in quantity sufficient for a nice side dish. But many of the shrooms were well past their prime. Some even had fungi growing on them. Fungi on the fungi! Unfortunately, I did not find any lobster mushrooms, or aborted entolomas. If a new mycologist wannabee wants to be sure that it is an edible lobster, it is advised to only take it from a patch where both normal white and the red aborted lobster forms are found together. The red comes from another fungus that grows on the main mushroom, which changes its color, and somehow detoxifies or otherwise renders it edible. The mysteries of the mushroom are amazing.
Maybe some Russula Viriscens mushrooms
The Green Quilted Russula’s that I think I found, Russula Viriscens, were the reason I went back in the woods last Sunday, after getting attacked through half a gallon of Deep Woods Off, by hordes of mosquitos on Saturday. I had seen the green capped mushrooms and thought “those can’t be edible.” Wrong, as David Arora, master mycologist says, there is no visible trait that distinguishes toxic, inedible and edible fungi. But I am still not sure, even after looking at the spores in my scanning electron microscope at up to 18,000x (see below), whether it is an R. Viriscens or an R. Crustosa, or something else. I am fairly confident it is one of those and all are supposedly edible, although only Viriscens is supposedly choice. But keeping to the advice of smart mushroom hunters that “There are old mushroom hunters, and bold mushroom hunters, but no old bold mushroom hunters,” I have promised only to eat those I am highly confident of the identity. Maybe next year I’ll be singing with Sam, that yes I do like Green Eggs and Ham, with good Green Mushrooms and a side of Spam.
Perhaps R. Viriscens Spore GroupSingle spore with presumed attachment stem at arrow
And now, to the second prompt, the beauties of aloneness. Yes, I do enjoy my aloneness. Most people are more aggravating than enlightening, so I find it easier to enjoy my aloneness when I can find friendship in the pages of a book, even if the author is dead. Mushroom foraging is a challenging hobby that takes my mind off of the fact that I am alone. The fear of painful death by organ damage, usually not starting until 24 hours after ingestion, sharpens my powers of observation. As I learn, I add new experiences to the collective consciousness. Mushrooms, unlike people, minimize my loneliness, rather than magnifying it.
By No machine-readable author provided. Miskatonic assumed (based on copyright claims). [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
Barefoot. I rarely do that anymore.
Too many thorns and sharp spines.
It takes too long for the little itchies to heal.
And drives me nuts at night.
Last year it was January
before the scabs finally stopped reforming.
No. And rarely even flip flops.
I remember when my mother stepped on a bee.
She had to soak her foot in a bucket for
what seemed like a long time to a seven year old.
But in India, on my first trip back in 2001,
I was taken to a mountain. Walking up
the rocky trail, I passed
scores of women walking down, huge bundles of
wood on their backs, their feet protected only
by cheap flip flops. Mostly blue and white rubber.
Not that they needed them, I remember thinking.
The soles of their feet protruded outward a bit.
Almost like hooves.
Years of hardening.
Their feet told the stories of their hardened lives.
Later, riding in my Ambassador tourist taxi,
we passed a woman, bundle of wood on her back,
sitting on one of the short tapered concrete
cylinders used to mark the outer edges
on the switchbacked mountain roads.
She was taller than average. Young. Well,
younger than I was at the time. Maybe
thirty. Stronger than average. Built strongly
with robust bones and muscles. Maybe our
eyes met.
She sat on the edge of the road. I will never
forget the look on her face. “Is this all there is?”
She, nameless woman of north India, probably
remains one of the biggest factors in my belief
that even if all of us don’t get reincarnated,
some of us do.
Where am I going? North, south, east and west
have no meaning.
Where am I going? Up and down, out and around
are equally meaningless.
I am fenced in by my freedom. Because the
geographical direction, and distance from the
center of the earth are not the point.
The real point is that since I newly don’t know
who I am, there’s no I to go anywhere, so the
invisible, non-existent fence is all it takes to
hold me in place.
I used to think I knew who I was. Cowardly in
the outer world, powerless, I try to use the
little freedom that is my lot.
Tried to use it and thus fertilize it. Let it grow.
So who am I?
The swallowtail chrysalis appears unchanged from
last week. It had turned brown,
to match the coffee filter it was looking
at when it shed its skin, after first revealing the green of
the parsley it had consumed.
The monarch chrysalis has no such tricks up its sleeve.
It doesn’t need to. Its nature is to transmute itself in
place, on the milkweed, while the swallowtail needs to
be flexible, in case it’s caught by chill, and needs to
overwinter on dry vegetation.
My current confusion, I hope, is another step on the
road. The apparent inactivity of the chrysalis.
The swallowtail still hangs, brown, from the drying
parsley stem it chose, rather than the sturdier plastic
spoon I offered it. But the monarch chrysalis, overnight,
or at least since yesterday morning, has turned black.
That means that the chrysalis has actually clarified.
Become its namesake’s material, while the insect
within has formed, its black and orange pattern now
visible within, if you know how to look.
This year I have found BOTH a Monarch and a Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar.
I could not figure out why the Monarch mother laid her eggs on some parsley that I nearly put in the blender to make vegetable juice, before noticing the caterpillar. Lucky for both of us, I did not have extra protein in my juice!
I finally did research and realized this was NOT a Monarch, but that the dill and parsley I had planted had succeeded in attracting a Swallowtail. The next day I found a Monarch.
I had them both for about a week when they spun threads to hang their chrysalli, and then shed their skins. The Swallowtail matches its color to the surroundings, in this case an unbleached coffee filter!
Eastern Swallowtail chrysalis above the coffee filter I had used to make it easier to clean out its “frass.” But it soon stopped eating and pooping, and went into this phase.Detail of swallowtail chrysalis. Eyes are at right. Note the threads anchoring the pupa at both the tail (left) and abdomen areas.
Spiritualist First Church of Truth August 19, 2018
Here’s a recording of the sermon:
Here are some notes, which are more extensive than what I had time to talk about. 🙁
The Evolution of the Concept of The Chosen People.
My dad was sorry he did not have time to loan me his tee-shirt from the synagogue in Alaska which claimed the members of the congregation were “The Frozen Chosen.”
But where did the concept of the Chosen People come from? Most of us might think that the Hebrew Bible was the origin of this idea, but this is probably wrong. Every people over the course of pre-history and history has probably believed that their god loved them best.
But in Western history, this all changed with Sargon.
Let’s take a step back to understand the Bible in the CONTEXT of the CULTURE in which it originated. Newly developing spiritual and religious systems are always trying to solve the current problems.
For example, Hinduism developed to try to manage a society that was made up of conquered and conquerors.
Often conquered were “recently” displaced people who were of a totally different ethnic stock and had a totally different way of life from the sword waving and horse riding conquerors.
Conquered had followed a more or less peaceful, mother centered sedentary lifestyle, while conquerors were militaristic partriarchs who made their women second class citizens.
The sword waver’s answer was the caste system, and they put themselves at the top of the social hierarchy. Eventually, the top caste, the priests, developed a stranglehold on everyone else and rituals took up far too much time. The original spiritual aspect of the Hindu traditions, their search for truth was lost.
Judaism developed to try to get back to a more democratic social structure in the context of the land we now call Iraq, perhaps the first civilization. God’s first recorded instruction to Abraham, his first follower, was “Go To Yourself.” God then told him to “Get out of Sumer.” God was not, at that time, trying to overturn the second class status of women, but the fact is that at that time, 3500 years ago or so, women in Sumer didn’t have it that bad. Sumer’s most powerful traditional deity was Ishtar, a goddess, and Sumerian women had similar legal rights to men.
But Sumer was the place where the first historically known King and eventually the first Emperor emerged.
But how did the King convince the people that they should obey him? People in primitive tribes kept a close watch on the head man, to avoid his taking more power than they were ready to give.
One of the King’s strategies was to CLAIM THAT HE WAS CHOSEN BY GOD TO BE KING. Of course it wasn’t just a king and everyone else. The whole idea of civilization works as a result of a multi-level social hierarchy. Civilization allows a small group of people to basically lord it over everyone else. God was apparently not too happy about this human development.
So Abraham had to get out of Sumer, to clear his head, and realize how much better life is when each person has his own direct line to God. Even later in Judaism, the priests were there to do the rituals, but were never considered to be more beloved by God than the “regular” people. Abraham’s god had a new idea. Instead of choosing the KING to be on top of everyone else in the country, God CHOSE the ENTIRE POPULATION OF ABRAHAM’S DESCENDANTS.
But somehow, within a short time (Well short in terms of ancient history) the Jewish people, with an edited Bible, managed to turn this Divine Democratization into a Divine Elevation. The Jewish way was not better because GOD LOVED EVERY JEWISH PERSON. The Jews turned the commandment to be a light to the nations, perhaps meaning that everyone on Earth was eventually to realize that all of HUMANITY was made up of CHOSEN individuals, into a belief that Jews were special. This caused a lot of pain and anxiety and push back. I think it is probably a significant factor in the prevalence over the centuries of Anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism used to nominally mean Anti-Jewish, but Arabs are also Semitic. It should be noted that Islam also has this idea that every Muslim has the spirit of Allah within, and Islam has no priests at all!
I don’t know if I can adequately emphasize that the Jewish idea of the Chosen PEOPLE was intended to be a BROADENING from the CHOSEN KING.
Jesus came along and Jesus was a Jew, and from what I can tell, he bought into the idea of the Jewish people being specially loved by God. Of course the Torah repeatedly quotes God telling the Children of Israel how he’ll give them the land of milk and honey and feed them with fat wheat. But carrot and stick psychology was all they had at the time. There was no Maslow’s Hierarchy of progressive motivation.
Nevertheless, I still think that one of God’s main intents with his support for the followers of Jesus was to BROADEN the group of chosen. To make the Jews from the theoretical, someday, light of the world, into the actual people who demonstrate how to live with a personal relationship with an all powerful God. What was Jesus’ message? He did not promote giving up ritual, but he did promote seeing in a new way, being in a new way.
One example was the way that Jesus taught people to honor their parents. This was by following him in a new way of life, based in spiritual truth revealed to each individual rather than staying at home to comfort them by bringing their slippers when they wanted to put their feet up. Were the parents of the disciples honored by their offspring’s action? We can’t know, but if it weren’t for their offspring’s following Jesus, they would most likely be deeper in the darkness of the forgotten than they are. At least there are millions of Christians who remember their children every day, and bless their sainted memories.
But getting back to the chosen people idea… Think of the ramifications of having an all powerful God on your side, always ready to help out. You better be pure of spirit, or bad things will happen to others. As the belief in their God’s power increased, the importance of ethics became more important. Even Sargon, the first emperor of Sumer, claimed that GOD PICKED HIM BECAUSE he was just, and treated the widows and orphans in a just manner.
And now, getting back to Jesus, once he was gone, and Christianity became a separate religion, rather than a sect of Judaism, in order to enlarge the fold, the original Christian leadership needed to embrace broadening the promise of “chosen-ness.” Although I am not convinced Jesus wanted to start a new religion, clearly Paul did. “You don’t have to have been born Jewish, you just have to accept Jesus, and you will be a part of community of the chosen.” Of course within a short time, the Jewish idea of Jesus being the Messiah, the Anointed, the one who brought an end to war and injustice, was seen to be incorrect. The followers of Jesus were compelled to come up with a new idea: INDIVIDUAL SALVATION.
Now we have to have a criterion for who is saved and who isn’t.
This is definitely NOT a Jewish idea. Jews believe that everyone is saved, everyone goes to Heaven. The only difference between the saints and the jerks is that the saints are remembered well and the jerks are probably cursed. But the souls of saints and jerks alike end up happily co-existing in heaven. As Jesus said, “My father’s house has many mansions.” The sign above the platform at the synagogue where I grew up said “This is the house of prayer for ALL the people.” On the holiest day of the year, the Day of Atonement, Jews make a COMMUNAL confession of every sin in the book. Literally. There are around three or four sins listed for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and every member of the congregation pounds his or her heart in contrition for EVERY ONE OF THOSE 75 or more sins. Judaism has no individual salvation. Everyone is saved in advance by the merciful God.
It’s really amazing, amazingly SAD, how quickly the Christian idea of broadening a chosen group of people, making the only entrance requirement a claim to be chosen, was so rapidly changed into a huge, millennia long argument about what you have to do, or not do, believe or not believe, to be saved.
And how many lives have been lost over this argument?
Certain groups of Muslims are now the one’s most vocally claiming to be the chosen, and killing each other over what it takes to get to Heaven. Again and again we see the idea of the chosen people being distorted and weaponized.
Hinduism had a similar revolution against the privilege of the priestly caste. Its name is Buddhism. The Buddha taught that freedom from suffering was available to anyone who could properly follow his Eightfold Path. The Buddha did not think that more than one person in 10,000 would be able to follow the path, or even be interested in trying to follow the path, but after his own hard won liberation, he spent the rest of his life trying to help those who were willing to try. Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, do not so much focus on being saved by a personal God, but on following an ethical life to increase the chances that you will be able to control your mind, make it your servant, so that the spirit may readily merge with the All. While this does not eliminate pain, it has the potential to eliminate suffering. The Buddhist and Hindu paths to liberation do not result in the body’s personality sitting at Jesus’ feet, but they result in unification with God, or the Ultimate Consciousness, an idea that many religious people find blasphemous. People who truly understand the nature of spirituality understand, whatever their religious affiliation, that this is the ultimate peace and joy.
Early August, and I and a friend decide to take off for the north. I’ve lived in Michigan for 33 years, and never been more than a mile or so past the north end of the Mackinac Bridge. This time, we got as far north as Whitefish Point. We rode in separate cars, and I had to wait while he finished a business meeting before we hit the road. I went to the poor, rocky “private” beach advertised by the cheapest motel we could find by the time we tried to reserve for the last minute trip. And there awaited a Monarch sipping nectar from a thistle. What a beautiful site. I took some photos with my phone, as I hadn’t bothered to bring my good camera while I killed time. Slowly, I moved closer, expecting Mona to fly away at any moment. But she did not.
Monarch on a thistle, undisturbed, for the moment, by the human.A wider view!I think these are the “thick webbing” patterns, indicating female. But now I know what to look for. Time to sip some daisy juice!
Pictured Rocks along shore of Lake Superior. Photo credit Peter P. Ried of Portage, MI
Walking along the lakefront stores opposite the boardwalk in St. Ignace, we passed a mannequin. A male mannequin. It was dressed in a suit. An old fashioned suit. For some reason, the store owner left its top hat upturned, slightly to the side and front of it, rather than on it’s head. The skin tone was gold. As we approached the mannequin, I looked at its face. Incredible detail. No model’s super-smooth skin here. Real pores. Accentuated by the gold color. Two steps past, I turned back for another look, and spoke to my companion. “That’s a live person.”
Then the mannequin bowed, and swept his hand toward us. I don’t know how long he had been standing there. The street did not have a lot of foot traffic, despite this being Saturday night of the peak weekend of the tourist season. I somehow got the impression that he was informing me that not many people realized that he was one of us, not a plastic doll. Perhaps only his skill at acting, hoping I would put the fiver I now realize he deserved, in his upturned hat. I’m known to be gullible. But I’m sorry I didn’t give him the fiver. Because when we walked back to the hotel after the fireworks, he wasn’t there.
