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?  👪

Thank you

"Thank you, Lord, for all the gifts you've given to me today.

Thank you for all I’ve seen, heard, and received.

Thank you for the shower that woke me up, for the soap that smells so good, for the toothpaste that refreshes. Thank you for the clothes that protect us, for their color and their style. Thank you for the newspaper so faithfully there, for the comics, for my morning smile, for useful meetings, for justice done, for big games won. Thank you, Lord for the street cleaning truck and the men who run it. Thank you for their morning shouts and all the early noises.

Thank you for my work, the tools, my efforts; thank you for the metal in my hands, for the whine of the steel biting into it. Thank you for the satisfied look of the foreman for the load of finished pieces. Thank you for Jim who lent me his file, for Danny who shared his lunch with me, for Charley who held a door open for me.

Thank you for the welcoming street that led me here, for the shop windows, for the cars, for the passersby, for all the life that flowed swiftly between the windowed walls of the houses.

Thank you for the food that sustained me, for the glass of water that refreshed me. Thank you for the car that meekly took me where I wanted to go, thank you for the fuel that made it go, and for the wind that caressed my face. Thank you for the trees that nodded to me on the way. Thank you for the boy I watched playing on the footpath opposite. Thank you for his roller skates, thank you for his comical face when he fell.

Thank you for the morning greetings I received and for all the smiles. Thank you for my mother who welcomes me at home; for her tactful affection, for her silent presence. Thank you for the roof that shelters me, for the lamps that light me, for the radio that plays and for the news and for music and for singing. Thank you for the bunch of flowers so pretty on my table. Thank you for the tranquil night, for the stars, and thank you, Lord, for silence….

Thank you for the time you've given to me, Lord. Thank you for life, thank you for grace, thank you for just being there and listening to me and for taking me seriously. Thank you for gathering my gifts in your hands to offer them to your father. Thank you, Lord, thank you."

Source unknown, far away, many years ago.

Captain John Brown

By 1860, 12.5 million slaves had been shipped to the Americas. 

Only 10.7 million survived the voyage.

He was hanged one hundred and fifty years ago today.

There is much to his life and work that is perhaps not remembered today.  His goal was to free the slaves which he did, but he didn't live to see it.

Brown led the raid at Harpers Ferry.  It triggered secession and civil war that nearly destroyed the nation.  In the century and a half since then, we have indeed made progress, but the root of discrimination Brown was fighting against still persists despite our best efforts for change.  Why might that be?

Brown is an interestingly controversial figure. Depending on who you read, he was either a heroic martyr or a zealous lunatic.  Unlike many northern abolitionists, Brown advocated an armed insurrection.  He viewed the passive resistance of the many as inconsequential and without effect.

Brown being led to his hanging.

Kansas was up for statehood; Brown hoped to bring the region into the union as a free state rather than a slave state.  He hoped, with the help of Harriet Tubman and others, to raise an army, but lack of consensus plus layers of intrigue among abolitionists prevented the uprising of many on which Brown depended. At Harpers Ferry, the team captured the armory of 100,000+ weapons, but they couldn't withstand the counter assault.  He and most of his men were captured, and Brown was tried for murder and treason along with two others.  They were convicted and hanged.

On the morning of his hanging, December 2, 1859, Brown wrote: 

"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."

The North and South lost 620,000 soldiers, plus another 870,000 were wounded or missing.

At the heart of it all is a conflict of principle -- one person either is or is not more human than another.  Whether discrimination is based on the color of their skin, their upbringing, their education, or their economic status, that's the principle at risk.  How might we have acquired such flawed thinking?  At the time of the Civil War, there were 3,950,000 slaves in the U.S. held by 390,000 slaveholders.

The methods of enslavement and oppression have changed, but for many in our culture and others, the same heart remains. What position might a thoughtful person of conscience take on the issue of persistent and enforced inequality?