Friday, May 19, 2023
When We Abandoned Eden...
I have written about the 'abandoment of Eden' as the time in which our human intellect outpaced and replaced instinct as our primary means of interacting with the world around us, particularly the physical world. I have suggested that choosing intellect and self-reliance was something to be celebrated, not to be ashamed of. But then, perhaps striding willingly, willfully out of Eden also cost us something. In that time, while we remained animals in form, our minds took us into a place beyond...
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Saturday, March 4, 2023
It has never been about skin or hair.
It's all about fear: fear of people whose cultures and ways of seeing reality, whose values and imperatives are unknown and mysterious, fear of offending from the place of ignorance, fear of being called to account and condemned for unawareness of boundaries and sensitivities... And looking like the people who violently kidnapped and enslaved and treated as not-quite-human their ancestral families. Humans of different cultures take such shortcuts, superficial 'evidences' like color to decide who...
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Saturday, December 31, 2022
Making Choices
Decision-making has never been my best thing. Difficulties with making decisions has led to many impulsive ones which have turned out badly. Wait... Let's reframe 'badly' to 'having painful consequences.' But infelicitous results are not always a bad thing: They are what shapes the next opportunity in decision making. They limit or skew options, shutting some out, opening the way to others. It isn't about good or bad, it's about options and directions. If we, as evolving souls, are indeed here...
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Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Nostalgia
So many pathways drear and close, or bright and magical through woods and hills and neighborhoods, I now will never walk... Trails to wonders, mysteries, unmet friends and scenes, destinations and discoveries that once may have been... Pictures still and moving are now my way to wander, to remember the feel of forest airs across my face.
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Monday, October 17, 2022
Questioning 'Personhood'
This is a conversation from Facebook a couple of years ago in response to my question: How do you define ' personhood'? What are the qualities that make someone a person? Don Logan: There is a Radio Lab episode where a man suffered a brain trauma and lost all his emotions. As a side effect he was un able to make even the smallest of decisions. He was effectively a sound bodied invalid at that point. There are countless Sci-fi stories where the machines 'decide' to revolt. From the above I...
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Saturday, October 15, 2022
In Praise of Patience
I was cold in the morning, shivering, but I knew the day would warm with the rising sun. Hearts broken by humankind unkind, humanity inhumane, we bear the meaness of our worlds plodding on, plodding on... between the shadows cast by obstacles half-seen, mistaken, misinformed, misunderstood-- we go on seeking truth with our broken hearts. Beset by grief, taught guilt and shame and fear by all its names, even so we plod yet sometimes also dance. We weep and mute ourselves yet sometimes also sing...
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Wednesday, September 14, 2022
How history looks from other eyes
It is said that the winners write the histories. I disagree. In fact, everyone writes the history, but only the winners' version gets into the official books, the school books. This is evidence of that. It is a long read, but I found it fascinating! Black Elk's full account of the Battle at the Little Bighorn, June 25-26, 1876: Crazy Horse whipped Three Stars on the Rosebud that day, and I think he could have rubbed the soldiers out there. He could have called many more warriors from the...
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Wednesday, August 3, 2022
the futility of debating Universal Truth
Some Baptists came to my door the other day, and we engaged in a short conversation/debate which has led to some further thoughts: We invest so much energy in arguing and persuading and trying to prove who is right and who is wrong about something we can never actually know in our lifetimes. We can believe all sorts of things, we can explain and analyze and logic and intuit... but no matter how much we believe in any of it, we can't actually know. There is only one thing that matters: to love...
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Saturday, July 2, 2022
Watch what you say
Words matter. The subconscious hears every word, every meaning, and is behind every word choice. So, when we speak, it is useful to listen to our own words and consider why we chose those particular words, and what messages lie quietly among them. Our chosen word reveals us to others, and trains our own inner understandings and beliefs about ourselves. Because we shape our self-esteem and our sense of personal power with the words we use about ourselves, it is useful to make more mindful...
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Monday, June 27, 2022
Decisions, decisions, decisions...!
Decision-making has always been one of my worst things. Choosing to read this article today was one of the better ones: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220627&instance_id=65116&nl=the-morning®i_id=59481346&segment_id=96890&te=1&user_id=8608bdb29cfaa859469ba5cd238706d8 I believe that the most important thing we, as souls, come here to the physical world/classroom to learn, is how to make decisions. It is the whole...
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