Willing Away my Sin

Is there something about writing a blog that makes the hypothetical materialize? I mentioned that Cory Booker is my spotless hero, and suddenly he's ducking brickbats for saying hyperbolic attacks on Mitt Romney's venture capital experience are "nauseating."

I write that it is difficult to find a thoughtful "third way" to respond to personal attacks in the heat of an argument and BOOM... I find myself in a nasty fight with the neighbors over the hedgerow.

And, at the outset of this blog, I speak of wanting to pursue a way of grace through life -- "Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries." And abruptly find myself stewing over showing off by writing a blog; worrying about my legacy; worrying about not getting that freelance assignment I was so hoping for; constantly suspecting that if I'm not somebody, I'm nobody -- just taking up space on the planet.

Before claiming my hypocrisy, I'm going to let Cory Booker off the hook. Or, better yet, just point to a blog that does it ... what he (Scott Blakeman) says!

Cory Booker was right. All of this is nauseating. It is not treasonous for Democrats to call Mitt Romney a nice guy. It is the right thing to say, and the respectable term to use. And Mitt Romney should continue to refer to President Obama as a nice guy, despite the protests from mean-spirited supporters and some conservative pundits.

That certainly doesn't mean that Republicans and Democrats should pull their punches when it comes to the issues. An aggressive, spirited and factual debate on what is best for our country is the hallmark of a democracy. And it is fair and civil to passionately oppose cruel Republican policies that make the most vulnerable in our society carry the burden of budget cuts.

I am uncomfortable thinking about growing disparities in income; lower tax rates for the very wealthy; and ongoing cuts in government services that are making life incredibly difficult for the poor, the young, the unemployed. My instinct is to jump on the bandwagon trashing of Romney as another wealthy carpetbagger; his Bain Capital using another scheme to sell working people up the river through the (perfectly legal) money-making legerdemain of private equity partnerships.  Robert Reich, explains it a lot better than I can.

But then again, Booker's criticizing his own side is worthy. Surely Mitt Romney is not a horrible person. Not all venture capital is heartless and my tarring all that Bain did with the same brush as other economic travesties, such as the sellout of LandRover or the banking collapse is guilt by association. Possibly nauseating. Afterall, maybe people at the companies that went bust under Bain were helped, found new jobs, got severance packages? Maybe if elected president, Romney will not be be heartlessly dedicated to making more money for the wealthy at the expense of the working class. Maybe Bain was not a reflection of the values Romney would demonstrate were he President.

I think I've managed to smooth things over a bit with my neighbors. I've tried to make more effort to express my appreciation when things go well.

But with respect to the last-mentioned manifestation of my fears, I'm still coming to terms. That is the sense that in trying to "blog" about equipoise and grace, I am actually destroying these blessings and caving in to another of the sins that is always waiting to snare me, writer's vanity.

I find myself trying to reconcile being a good writer with being a good person. To be a good writer is to entertain, to dazzle -- ideally in the name of offering readers insight, understanding, beauty, laughter, truth. But when I'm honest with myself, I see little thought of others at the core of my writing, and an abundance of thought of myself.

I tell myself that I shouldn't care what others think; just be content that I am the very one that I am (or, translated into religion-speak, "a beloved child of God.") I tell myself the only person anyone really competes with is oneself. I tell myself my writing is just solving puzzles; creating something. What can be wrong with that? What can be wrong with wanting to make your writing as good as it can be?

I've stumbled across a new favorite scientific journal that seems to be full of psychological research on subjects that fascinate me these days: the forces that motivate people; positive psychology;  how people work best in groups; how to get people to cooperate; what correlates with happiness?

A report on a study in that journal described a series of experiments leading the researchers to conclude that being respected -- one's perceived standing in a group -- is more important to happiness /life satisfaction than socioeconomic status. This rings true to me. Studies of our closest animal relatives underscore the importance of dominance hierarchies. Social position ties into differences in hormones, brain chemistry, reproductive success and behavior for animals that live at different ends of the hierarchy.

Is the desire to win the respect of respected others the human version of this? Is it so fundamental to our animal nature as to be inescapable--virtually hardwired into us? Part of the way of nature, not the way of grace.... something that comes to us naturally, spontaneously, intuitively.

But then again, perhaps it's something we can make efforts to push to the back burner while we intentionally pull other things to the fore. Perhaps I can acknowledge that I have this drive, am susceptible to this sin, but hold it in equipoise with motivations that I choose intentionally.

I will tell myself that I write not for status, but because (back to Rob Bell) it is how I pursue the happiness of creative "flow"; responding in-kind to the gift of The Creator. I will write because it helps me tune in more intensely to the world--to meet and read and see and think and find patterns that I wouldn't otherwise.  If my writing helps others... that's gravy.

My Heros-- Cory Booker, Dalai Lama, Sal Khan

As the Hair song goes, it's "Easy to be Hard" to rant about problems, evil, baddies, greedies. But heros? All too rare. I guess I would define heros as people wildly loaded with virtue, at least in the categories that the perceiver deems to be key. This of course reflects personal moral values--meaning your heros may not be my heros and vice-versa.

Perhaps going out on a limb here, I think calling out heros is more productive than calling out villains. But then again, holding people up for commendation may also expose their faults and subject them to condemnation. And sadly, where there are no real faults to be found, jealousy will assure people invent some. If you want a quick roll in the sludge, just look at the comments following articles or facebook pages, etc for your heros. There is sure to be some awful dreck hurled by people with nothing better to do than make others look bad. The popular catch phrase among my son's generation is, "Haters gonna hate." And here I am already condemning others as haters... Maybe we're all at least to some degree skeptical of purported heros. Maybe we've just been burned too many times by pseudo-heros, -- folks who appear amazing until their maggoty underbelly comes to light. Shoot, just gone negative again...

I admit that I looked reasonably hard for faults in Cory Booker, the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Since he's a public figure, there's lots online about him. I think the worst I could find (other than random, jealous, possibly racist hating) was that at some point a few years back he was going to close libraries or at least shorten their hours. But in the mean time he's managed to turn the once-disrespected city into a something of a magnet for donations by fashionable rich people (e.g. $100 million from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to help the schools).

 Booker identifies his faults as being an excessive fondness for books and difficulty forming a close personal relationship. Forget the sex, he says he would just like to wake in the morning, spooned up close with someone he loves. But he recognizes his intense schedule doesn't leave much time for a significant other. How fair is THAT? Talk about making virtues of your vices. I couldn't resist adding a few personal details to Booker's wikipedia entry.

A reporter following him around for a magazine article said Booker actually has no vices -- he's a vegetarian, an exercise nut, non-smoker, non-drinker... Trained as a lawyer, and no doubt taking down a fairly good salary, he continues to choose to live in a run-down part of town, in an apartment uncluttered by "stuff." His previous slum residence was torn down. And before that he lived in a camper parked on the worst drug-dealing corner of the city.

When Booker came home to find a neighbor's apartment on fire a month or so ago, he rushed in to carry her out of the flames (after pulling rank on his security guard who didn't want to let him do this), sustaining smoke inhalation and a burned hand in the process. In 2010 he personally shovelled the snow from the drive of a constituent with heart problems after his daughter texted a complaint to Booker. The mayor's personal action inspired a small gang of people to join him clearing sidewalks. (Quite a contrast with one former mayor of Washington, D.C. who famously remained out in sunny California when his city was buried by one of the worst snowstorms in history.)

The Rhodes scholar even has a sense of humor, bantering with late-night talk-show hosts who trash his city, for example. This week he stars in a video with New Jersey governor Christie, lampooning his own heroic image.

Update, November 2012: With people left homeless and without electricity days after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, Booker continues to tweet and facebook with the best advice and tips for recovering from the storm. A neighbor tweets that her block is still without electricity. Mayor Booker invites her to stop by his place and join other neighbors who are chillin' at his place, recharging devices, listening to music and relaxing. Later he sends a take-out dinner for 12 to the house for neighbors who are relaxing at his house. Facebook description of the Huffpost article on Booker's very personal, hospitable approach to storm recovery calls him the "Best Mayor ever."

Then there's the Dalai Lama. Upon accepting the £1.1 million Templeton prize this week, he announced he was handing £900,000 of the prize over to "Save the Children " (click the appropriate flag at the bottom of this linked page to go to your country's STC page to make a donation), with the rest going to two other good causes. There are too many wonderful things in the Dalai Lama's life to repeat here, but I think one of the best things is his sense of fun and his laugh. Following an interviewed by the BBC's Sarah Montagu this week, tweeters and emailers wrote in to the Morning Show requesting a replay of the giggle that erupted from the Buddhist monk (I'm guessing that this was for the throaty laugh 11:20 into the interview).  I remember hearing that the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu greet sometimes by tickling each other.

Speaking on the BBC interview about his reaction to his "rockstar status" the Dalai Lama avers that he actually doesn't think he's any different than other 7 billion people on earth, who, like him, just want to be happy and see an end to suffering. Near the end of the interview he gives a mild chiding to Brits for their formality, saying he hopes to carry to his death his childish approach -- just jumping in wherever people are playing.

My third hero is one Salman Khan, founder of the "Khan Academy."  Formerly a hedge fund analyst, Khan started tutoring a cousin over the internet in 2004, using Yahoo's doodle notepad as his online blackboard. Other people wanted his tutoring help, too, so he started putting his voice-and-notepad lessons on YouTube. And things snowballed from there -- 3,000 videos are now available free online, with subjects ranging from art history to zoology -- especially economics, math, and science.

Khan's Wikipedia page says that as of this month, the Khan Academy channel on YouTube has more than 330,000 subscribers and Khan Academy's website claims "150,076,102 lessons delivered." A 60-Minutes segment on Khan and his Academy reported that some schools were finding innovative ways to use the lessons to enhance teaching and self-paced learning. Rather than replacing teachers, the show said, the online lessons and tracking of students' progress allow teachers to be intimately familiar with the finest details of students' understanding of a subject, freeing them to be coaches rather than lecturers. It's all free and there's even a (free) app for your iPad.

Fortunately, other folks think a lot of the Khan academy, too, with Bill Gates saying his friends and family use the learning site, and Google giving the Academy $2 million to rev up supporting hardware, software, and course offerings. MIT- and Harvard-educated Khan is just one person, but I bet he's made a huge difference in the world. In the time it's taken me to write these last two paragraphs, his academy has delivered another 5,325 lessons!

Give your Gas Can to God

Jonathan Haidt says we have some chance of resolving society's moral challenges successfully if we can bring together people of opposing intuitions in an environment where the charging elephants of emotion can be stilled and reason brought to bear.

Could that same process work, self-induced, in the even more incendiary, intimate realm of interpersonal conflict, such as the next fight with, say, your spouse?

I get the impression that even my great hero, preacher/teacher Rob Bell, feels the temptation of interpersonal conflict. In one of his Mars Hills podcasts he admits he's one who can't resist pouring a little gasoline on the glowing ember of conflict. I personally despise fighting, but likewise find it difficult not to react, not to defend myself in heated discussion. 

And over the years I've seen some couples who seem pacific in the presence of other people, but there's just something about them, some body language or telltale clues in the ways they react to one another that make me suspicious that their home life is a firepit.

My wondering about the possibility of finding a moment of reason and perspective, an "equipause" amidst interpersonal conflict, was prompted the other day, when I came across this quote, in a different context:

Much of the root of conflict resolution resides in our own selves – in dealing with our own unresolved hurts and biases, as well as finding personal balance, so that we can control the urge to jump to conclusions and react without thinking. And so that we can have the courage to stop in the moment, take a deep breath, and think about how to control our default thinking to be able to react with compassion instead of anger and defensiveness. -- from Personality Differences Matter by Rita Brhel (I added the emphasis.) 

Thinking about this possibility, I remember that on one of his lecture tours a few years ago, Bell overturned my view of Jesus' response to injustice. I'd thought of "turning the other cheek" and "going the extra mile" and "giving the shirt off your back" as meaning people should just passively endure abuse.

No, Bell said. If a first way of dealing with abuse was returning fire with fire, and a second way was passivity, then Jesus' response was a "Third Way," which essentially introduced an "equipause" into the conflict -- a moment in which the perpetrator could see his or her actions from another viewpoint -- a moment in which to find courage and 'react with compassion instead of anger and defensiveness.'

Turning the other cheek, Bell said, would force the perpetrator to use the "unclean" left hand for the second face-slap. In Jesus' time, this would have been deeply demeaning to the person doing the slapping, rather than the person being slapped.  Equipause... Do I really want to do this???

Going the extra mile, Bell said, sprang from the law at the time, which said a Roman soldier could ask any native of a conquered country to carry his gear for one mile. But any further was strictly forbidden. "Going the extra mile" would force the soldier to break this rule and get in trouble with his superiors. Equipause... Do I really want to do this???

And giving the shirt off your back, Bell said, would have been deeply embarrassing -- not to the person who was nude, but to the person who forced and looked upon the nudity. Equipause... Do I really want to do this???


It is hard, especially in the heat of argument, to come up with such brilliant "Third Way" responses. But  what Brhel suggests, just pausing, taking a deep breath, and trying to control the charging elephant of emotional reaction -- that seems a little easier. And who knows -- maybe in that moment of stillness, a creative Third Way will appear. Or maybe the aggressor will have a playback moment in which to see him- or herself from another viewpoint.

I should stop here, but this reminds me of a brilliant passage in Fingerprints of God by Barbara Bradley Hagerty. She recounts the near-death experience of a man named Edward who found himself at the feet of God. There, he recalls, he saw

... memories spanning from his childhood to just a few days before the accident. He relived the memories from a 360-degree perspective, not only what he, Edward, had done and thought and felt, but how his actions affected others. He saw the girl in elementary school who had a lisp, and he recalled teasing her because he wanted to be accepted... 'I not only recalled the experience, I felt how she felt. I experienced the consequences of my behaviors...'

Could we somehow force our brains to take in God's 360-degree view in that invoked moment of stillness? And if not something so lofty as God's viewpoint (or if you don't believe in God) could we at least aim for the relentless practice of love?

I facebooked this great quote last week from blogger and Presbyterian minister Mark Sandlin:

Hate will never be conquered by anger.
Ignorance will never be defeated with judgment.
Love will not prevail until it is practiced relentlessly.
from All MEANS All - Amendment One and Bad "Righteous" Anger -- 05/09/2012, The God Article Blog 

Again, I'm using this quote in a different context than its author. Sandlin was writing about "righteous anger" in response to the North Carolina vote against gay marriage. But isn't the relentless practice of love even more important in our own homes and personal relationships? Is it possible to resist the temptations of responding in anger in favor of reason, a broader perspective, or at least a deep breath?

Prayers for an atheist pastor

I was so sad to read about the atheist pastor, Teresa MacBain, interviewed on NPR (http://www.npr.org/2012/04/30/151681248/from-minister-to-atheist-a-story-of-losing-faith), but maybe not sad for the reasons others were sad.

My immediate reaction was astonishment that MacBain, as a pastor and one who would have spent some years studying faith, had so late encountered her disbelief. Is there really a thoughtful Christian who hasn't had moments, days, weeks, even years of doubt? Then there was the sadness of her broken relationships with colleagues and congregation (but fortunately not with her husband, bless him, who remains a believer.)

I suspect that for many, it is such earthly relationships--rather than belief in an admittedly unknowable God--that sustain the practice of religion. If she couldn't believe in God, could MacBain at least believe in the value of loving her congregation? Couldn't she at least go through the motions of following Jesus in his very human actions? Binding up wounds, listening to people, helping people find their ways through the valleys...

The part of Jonathan Haidt's book (see previous post) I am reading now is about human "groupishness" -- not our selfishness, but our inbred propensity to form and fortify groups, then to work to gain resources for them, punish traitors, reward cooperation.... The way MacBain flamed out of her faith seemed to reflect several aspects of Haidt's thesis. It sounded like MacBain's departure from her faith was driven by emotion and instinctive groupishness, rather than logical deductions about God.

Rather than discussing her doubts with others from her (Methodist) faith, MacBain just popped up at an atheist convention in Bethesda and gave her testimony of instant conversion to atheism. She describes how good it felt to be so warmly received by the atheists.

I can certainly imagine MacBain's old group (the Methodists) would feel this as a slap in the face, a betrayal. She didn't trust their Chritian love (agape) for her as she encountered doubt. She didn't give them any help in understanding what was happening. She seemed to do everything to assure that her conversion came as a sharp, sudden blow.

I pray MacBain's old group back in her home town can forgive her and embrace her again, despite her disbelief. This is one of the wonderfully counterintuitive,  nonsensical, completely unnatural things Jesus asked us to do -- embrace those who aren't part of your group, even when they're face-slappers. Try to understand. Love anyway. Equipoise.

I love this quote from Thomas Jefferson:

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

MacBain's move, though bold, seems to be more the homage of emotion rather than reason. 

A silver lining post script for me was that in the process of trying to find a link to the NPR story about MacBain, I found this wonderful blog from a Mennonite pastor. This writing IS a magnificent homage of reason: 

http://oleyvalleymennonite.org/blog/?p=133
Who knew? I can't say I know much about the Mennonite faith, but this makes me want to hear more, and it's expanded my suspicion that there are more people out there living in equipoisse.

The Righteous Mind (Part 1?) Lemonade, Blackbirds, and mental programming

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs. -Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719) 

I am in love with this book:  The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. Pantheon Books, 2012.

[For once I wish I hadn't got it on the Kindle, because I am marking it up like crazy (and it would be nice to be able to vary the desecration with highlighters, double underlining, etc -- options that aren't possible with an e-book). Besides, the pictures aren't that great on a reading device, and sometimes I have kinesthetic longings to see and touch the bigger structure of the book than can be displayed an e-page at a time. This book is essential equipoise reading and has changed my perspective on humanity, life, and all that stuff. And, my Kindle tells me, I'm only 35% of the way through it. That's why I've hinted that this may just be the first of several blog entries on this book.] [Late addition: It's not just my imagination -- there IS something about a physical book that makes its content sink in better than reading something on a reading device or a computer screen, science is now finding!]

Haidt (rhymes with 'Light' not 'Late') begins with the idea that our minds, fundamentally, are propelled not by logic or reason, but by emotions, intuitions, and the instinctive judgments we make many milliseconds before our rational brains have even started their deliberations. The research that undergirds this is fascinating, ingenious, and its description worked magically to make me trust Haidt  at a gut level, many pages before my rational brain was on-side.

One of Haidt's ways of making the arguments memorable is a poet's trick: He gives us a strong image  personifying the abstract concept. The first of these images, capturing this idea of the dominant emotional/intuitive brain, is an elephant with a human rider. In this model, our gut reactions are like the 10-ton beast being "driven" by a puny 10-stone person. The "control" exerted by the elephant-driver is laughable. Basically, the rider is going to go where the elephant chooses. Our logical brains, Haidt says, are also like "inner lawyers," or "inner public relations departments," finding good justifications for the snap decisions we have already made.

Haidt is a professor of social psychology. His interests in the book range into philosophy, anthropology, and, as the subtitle suggests, religion and politics. But the book's concepts could equally well be aimed at many other questions and aspects of life -- a rich source of Ph.D. theses for decades to come: "The Moral Psychology of characters in the poetry of Robert Frost." "The Moral Psychology of the Women's Movement." "Evolutionary foundations for the interplay of sexual attraction and moral disgust." "Poetry as a Confounder of Moral Psychology." But I'm also hoping to see (later in the book? In subsequent treatises?) the relationship of Haidt's ideas to older brands of psychology and newer frontiers of neuroscience. How do the elephant and rider relate to Freud's ego and id, or the right-brain left-brain dichotomy, for example?

For people like scientists and lawyers, who pride themselves on being guided by reason, evidence, and logic, the prospect that--like everyone else--we're just following our instincts (then dressing them up in the posh clothes of logic) could be rather depressing. But I'm hoping some hope will emerge later in the book. For example, perhaps the rider can work very hard to train the elephant to be responsive to commands, rather than its own will. Or perhaps the rider can learn tricks to assure the elephant will just naturally follow a desired course.

Afterall, in experiments that show the power of the subconscious mind to overwhelm reason, scientists can trick people into making a non-rational judgments by flashing an emotion-laden word or image extremely briefly before the judgment. The subconscious brain takes in this prompting, propelling the emotional brain in one direction without the slow-reacting senses even knowing what's gone down. Just then the experimenters ask for a judgement. The response is very likely to be dictated by the subconscious emotional propulsion.

Except when it isn't. And clearly some people in the experiments ARE able to hit the mental "PAUSE" button -- able to recognize or induce an equipoise moment -- the equipause??? -- and ask themselves what's going on? I feel this, I know that; let's go with what we know and want to believe rather than what we're feeling at the moment...

Haidt says in his book that one way to achieve truly rational decision-making is via genuinely honest, and open exchange of ideas with non-like-minded people. This is what Haidt mentioned in an infuriatingly short interview one morning on BBC Radio-4's Morning Show last month. Sadly, discussions of politics and religion are so polemic these days, that environments for such discussions between non-like minded people may not exist any more.

Could this ever be a do-it-yourself proposition? How would an "equipause" be intentionally invoked by a strong-minded elephant-driver? Isn't that actually one goal of positive psychology -- to help us use our logical brains to program against negative emotionally-driven decisions in favor of positive emotionally-driven decisions? And would it be possible for people to use the experimenters' tool of subliminal programming or other devices to redirect our emotions?

Thus we come to lemons and cherries. Consider the adage: if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or the quote I start with--older but in a similar vein.  Perhaps in Haidt's moral psychology-speak, the lemons and cherries mindset is akin to our inner lawyers telling us that we really did want lemonade and blackbird singing rather than cherries -- redefining what might be an unfortunate direction on the elephant ride of life to enjoy the experience. There's some joy and cheering sense of control in that.

I wanted to start with love

The place I wanted to start was with love.

Finding a working definition of love, a bit less than 20 years ago, maybe, was the start of my growing up (yes, at age 45 or so). It hit like a lightning bolt, so maybe it was more like bringing Frankenstein to life.... And I think love is where it all begins and ends...

But the place I find myself at the moment is not back at that beginning, which I fully intend to loop back to in this blog, but rather thinking about how to make people's lives better.

Having been trained as a scientist, and living in a foreign country, and having heard so many stories of people hurt by or fed up with the church, I put this out shyly, tentatively, humbly. I ask that people who think the church is pointless bear with me, just for a moment. I ask that people for whom the church is everything also to bear with me. I'm thinking out loud here.

Is it possible that we could rethink "church" (and/or perhaps rename it, or "reboot" it?) and declare it to be nothing but a group of people who strive to live within a common set of principles, namely working to minimize the view of oneself as the center of the universe, and loving neighbor as yourself? How would we go about it? Is organized effort necessary? Is that where we would begin? And who is the "we" that would accomplish this rebooting?

The reason I ask is because this week, Holy Week 2012, has been packed with high-vis shucking of the traditional church. The latest is from the Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Wilson, in his blog, which then was quoted in the Guardian:

"The Church of the future may be less a civil service or conventional business, and more a movement like Alcoholics Anonymous, the ultimate locally delivered life-changing non profit. The job of the hierarchy will be to enable this, not to represent it or control it."

Hmmm. a movement, locally delivered, functioning as a life-changing non-profit. Then there was the coverstory from Newsweek magazine: "Forget the church and Follow Jesus." The author, Andrew Sullivan, says increasingly people are doing as Thomas Jefferson did and literally or figuratively cutting out of their Bibles (or their faith) all the parts that don't have to do with what Jesus said and did getting back to the purist form of his doctrines:

 ”What were those doctrines? Not the supernatural claims that, fused with politics and power, gave successive generations wars, inquisitions, pogroms, reformations, and counterreformations. Jesus’ doctrines were the practical commandments, the truly radical ideas that immediately leap out in the simple stories he told and which he exemplified in everything he did. Not simply love one another, but love your enemy and forgive those who harm you; give up all material wealth; love the ineffable Being behind all things, and know that this Being is actually your truest Father, in whose image you were made. Above all: give up power over others, because power, if it is to be effective, ultimately requires the threat of violence, and violence is incompatible with the total acceptance and love of all other human beings that is at the sacred heart of Jesus’ teaching. That’s why, in his final apolitical act, Jesus never defended his innocence at trial, never resisted his crucifixion, and even turned to those nailing his hands to the wood on the cross and forgave them, and loved them."

It's possible that in 2012 too many people have too many issues with the church for that to be a starting place for any sort of significant change to begin bubbling up. Maybe the 1% movement, the encampments on Wall Street and elsewhere around the world... but again, too many people with too many issues. The young vs the old; employed vs unemployed; haves vs have-nots; the return of Robin Hood to take from the rich and give to the poor. No, that's not it, either.


"IT" has to do with improving human existence in 2012, embracing all we now know -- much of it new knowledge from psychology, anthropology, game theory -- about how human beings behave and why;  how they are motivated; what broad common features make life worth living and what forces have the opposite effect. In spite of its being "new knowledge," I see it simultaneously as "old knowledge" -- a new scientific understanding and explanation -- biological grounding-- of things that great minds -- including Jesus, Buddha, and other mystics and moral leaders -- have told us were true all along.


"IT" has to do with embracing grace and nature simultaneously -- for example by recognizing that the way to maximize your own selfish personal happiness might very well be by choosing to abandon greed, materialism, and self-advancement in favor of loving and serving others;  intensely tuning in to the here and now; getting passionately caught up in your work and play.


That brings me back to the place I meant to begin, with love: Loving others by listening, really listening to them; and loving life (or God, if you are a believer) by being completely present to the world around you.

My hopes for Equipoise

All well and good, but what's this blog really about?

What I think a lot about, and intend to expound upon, is the opposites I try to embrace: science and faith; poetry and the hard realities of aging; the quest to continue to grow into better versions of ourselves amidst the sad truth of our human imperfections; being serious and "grown-up" without pomposity or losing a sense of humor.

The film The Tree of Life has this quote:

"...there were two ways through life - the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow.
... Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries.
... Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things."

Is it possible to believe passionately in BOTH the way of nature AND the way of grace? To believe in Darwin, genetics, and selection; but also to be transfixed by the incredible beauty and holiness of individuals who transcend our animal origins? To hold the way of grace and the way of nature in equipoise? Can a bounding right brain and an exacting left brain ever be perfectly yoked?

I guess that doesn't really answer what the blog's about, just the seeds of hope from whence it may spring. You'll just have to see for yourself.