Volatile Voltaire

Revered and sometimes ridiculed, he was a writer and philosopher who helped shape the world. He's commonly referred to as the father of the Enlightenment.

Voltaire wrote poetry and prose, history and philosophy, about civil rights and fair governance.  Too, he spoke out emphatically about Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as well.

Voltaire was a self-professed theist; his anti-church writings were focused on the practices of the church in his day and over the years. In his "The Philosophical Dictionary", he recounts the  bloody centuries of religious intolerance and the millions who died from it.  At the end of the writing, though, he declares to the spirit that has explained it all to him, "Well, if that is so, I take you for my only master."

Neale Donald Walsch is author of the
series Conversations with God.

Today's culture shares Voltaire's disdain for the narrow-mindedness that can rule a religion and the exclusivist mindset that typically persists there.  Public discussions equate such judgmental thinking with bigotry and suggest that bringing up a child in that context is abusive.  That same religious thought-path we tolerate in the west is carried a step further to violence and slaughter elsewhere in the world.  Both Voltaire's and today's observations are relevant; you'll note they are unrelated to the legitimacy of one's faith or an honest pursuit of knowing God.

How then shall people of faith go forward?
Curious what comes next?

Voltaire died today in 1778 after a long life in an extraordinarily corrupt world. The revolution in France came a decade later, perhaps precipitated to some degree by Voltaire's writings. The revolution spread across Europe and portions of Latin America.  I wonder what Voltaire would think now of how things have progressed; or more appropriately, how many things remain unchanged.

Memorial Day

There are no words to describe the sacrifice so many have made.

In our hearts, we know their offering was not lightly given.

Most went, not because they were told to, but for deeply personal reasons; perhaps because they chose to do their part, to do what needed to be done for the sake of others.

We who made it home remember all too clearly, all of it.

The loss of their presence among us is greater still, and we remember each one.

The memorial is fifty miles from here;

it's been there for thirty years.

Someday, I'll go.

Freedom of speech, of faith, of assembly, freedom of press, of tweet, of blog ...

Blog record, first half of 2015

I was surprised to find that this blog/journal might reach farther than just my friends.

Times have changed, issues have changed; now perhaps more than ever, we share ideas and concerns on a grand scale.  Our community is larger than it once was, and our perspective can be broadened by sharing our lives.  Such opportunity can be good in so many ways.

We are extraordinarily fortunate to share in such freedom.

Children Learn

Children learn from what they see, don't they. Today, they see perhaps the most divisive era yet in American history. They see anger and judgement, accusation and slander, and vicious separation. They see nothing of nobility or virtue. Nothing at all anywhere in the public arena.

When, by rhetoric and example and media exposure, we teach our children to fear and hate their fellow man, when we teach them that he is a lesser human because of his origin or beliefs, when we teach that those who differ from us are a threat to our freedom or our job or family, then we sow the seeds of a lifetime's conflict.  They will see not through the eyes of consideration but of conquest and with a goal of competition and mastery. 

At the end of it all, we look at our brothers and sisters as aliens, those with whom we share a world, but not a life, those bound to us in common place, but not in common purpose. We learn to share just our common fear - our common desire to retreat from each other - a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. In all of this, there is neither virtue nor justification.  It's the heart of fear.

We've got to see that our own children's good future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We have to grasp that this short life can neither be ennobled nor enriched by class or conquest.

Learn.  Change.  Share the lessons learned with your children. What a load will be lifted from both generations.

It's perhaps the most difficult of tasks to see our own bent thinking, our unreasoned bias, our preferential filtering of information.  Impossible.  Until it's done, of course.  Then, at least, we can see clearly.

Personal note: we both grew up in Texas; it was the whole world to us.  It was the width and breadth of our understanding, and it never occurred to us that there was more.  Working outside the country shattered our worldview, our personal philosophy and theology, and required us to thoughtfully rebuild it all, for which we're thankful.  We needed it.   
Ro.12.2 Don't conform.  Instead, by the rebuilding of your mind, be changed so that by inquiry you may recognize the will of God along with all that is good and just and magnificent in this life.

And thanks, of course, to Nelson Mandela whose life and words were more noble than most, and to RFK who challenged us to think about such things. 

Non-Stop Flight

If you've ever jumped out of an airplane, you'll appreciate this.  The little swift takes off from its nest and spends months in the air ... without landing anywhere.  Months!  Some spend nine or ten months continuously airborne in their migration, living off bugs in the air.  At night, they'll rise up to perhaps ten thousand feet on terrain-provoked air currents.  They probably nap while gliding, scientists suspect.

Swifts arrive in South Africa from Europe in October and November.  They'll head for home between January and March, all without having landed anywhere.

Nesting, when it happens, is always tucked away above the ground; chimneys are popular.  Swifts rarely land at ground level, although they will occasionally skim along the surface of water for a drink or a bath on-the-fly.

The common swift is beautifully designed with a torpedo-shaped body around six inches long, or about sparrow-size.  Its wingspan is wide in proportion at around sixteen inches, about twice that of a sparrow.  An impressively efficient metabolism and refined physiology make being continuously airborne possible.  They can top 100 mph in level flight.

So just for fun, imagine launching out your front door and into the air on a beautiful morning.  You notice the days are getting shorter, so you head south.  You cruise comfortably down to the Mediterranean and far beyond into southern Africa.  Meals are available along the way.  After a warm few months, lazing along in the warm southern air, you turn for home.  You'll spend a couple of months there relaxing and maybe raising some little swifts.  And next year, you'll bring the kids along to enjoy the view.  And the bugs.

Breeding grounds for the common swift (apus apus) include Europe, Asia, China, and Northern Africa. Their migration habitat includes all of sub-Saharan Africa. They have a stable population of perhaps 25 million which is enough, I guess.

Sometimes the world seems filled with interesting things I hadn't known.





Thanks and a hat-tip to Science Friday on NPR.

Life Hurdles

Poverty is perhaps the greatest impediment to a good life.  The second greatest is wealth.

Poverty inhibits life, health, education, family, relationships, and every meaningful thing.
Wealth does the same, and more.

These are key elements.  The absence of any detracts from
our lives.  Notice those affected by poverty and wealth.
At the social foundation:
Rights
Health
Safety
Structure
Resources
In the course of life:
Personal control
Healthy relationships
A voice in the community
Work and place options
Leisure

Wealth gives you fast food and packaged foods and soft drinks and desserts.  It gives you entertainment and distractions from life and relationships.  It gives you a flood of meaningless information to occupy your mind and emotions.  It can fill your life with work, and few find themselves doing something that is deeply satisfying.

For the wealthy, there's perhaps little time sitting on the porch, talking with dad after working together on some task.  There's probably few weekends spent with extended family in the sunshine, and little time for neighbors.  It's perhaps too easy to plug the kids into the television while you do your own things.  Wealth means a life full of busyness and distractions, and there's perhaps a measure of loss.

When we measure quality of life, we think about comfort and security, health and well-being.  We think about how happy we are with our lives.  Some find themselves with plenty of everything and remain somehow strangely incomplete.  Why might that be?

We understand that extreme poverty is deadly and that quality of life improves with increased income.  What is hard to grasp is that increasing income only improves our lives up to a point, beyond which it can ruin everything that was important to us.

Some interesting folks are pursuing the question.  What are the things that make life good?  Their work suggests there's much more than just economics.  Not surprising.

Depending on place and culture, economy and politics, needs can differ, and there are things that wealth cannot provide.  Of course.

Then there's that part about a camel passing through the eye of a needle.  There's probably a wealth of truth behind that comment, about how wealth can be an impediment to a good life.  Ever sat down with a friend to talk about it?  👪