An Octave Below Alto

2002-04-02T13:10:00.000-05:00

Went to ImagineNY training workshop last night. Coworker Vanessa and I were trained to be workshop facilitators in preparation for holding a workshop at the Commission. The purpose of ImagineNY workshops is to receive the feelings and ideas of ordinary people about what should happen to the World Trade Center. It's sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society of New York. You can see more about the project at www.imagineny.org.

It's a noble undertaking. However, I can see some limitations. The training took the form of a shortened workshop. Except for Vanessa and me (from New Jersey), the group was all from New York City. This meant that the focus was NYC, whereas our workshop at the Commission will have a completely different focus.

The idea is to start with our feelings about what happened, push through to what we would like to see come out of this, and wind up with specific proposals. However, that's not what happened last night. It may be because we did the workship in half the time with twice as many people, but the visions and strategies that came out of it were so general that create an image in your mind of what people intended.

For instance, our group which was to develop visions and strategies for "rebuilding and memorializing" discussed some very dynamic specifics. To give a little background into what the workgroups were doing: At one point in the workshop we made a list of some pretty specific ideas we would like to see. Each workgroup was supposed to select items from the list that related to our assignment and work with them until we had visions and strategies. From the list we chose: the need of a space at the WTC for contemplation; a place for people to grieve; to relate to the communities that lost individuals; meeting social needs of survivors; keeping development on a human scale.

From this our group envisioned a non-denominational chapel at the WTC site for contemplation and prayer where the public could grieve for all who were lost. However, at the site, you could take a card with the name of someone who died on 9/11 and find out the town where they lived. There would be travel directions to the town. The town itself would have a memorial for the person or persons who died in WTC. The approach would be for the memorials to be highly person and individual, so that people would have a sense of personal knowing. Accomplishing such a memorial would be a cooperative undertaking between business, government, communities, and people. The result would be the construction of a pilgrimmage that individuals could take to learn about New York, the World Trade Center, the people who worked and died there. It would also rejuvenate neighborhoods by encouraging visits from all over.

Now, how was this expressed. It was long a windy, talked about a linked memorial, but nowhere did you get the sense of a specific, humanity centered pilgrimmage that accomplished several goals at once.

2002-03-31T13:54:00.000-05:00

I was talking to a person who cannot be mentioned. I mentioned that a young man in Toastmasters reminded me of Wally Cox. I mentioned it because we are all great fans of Wally Cox here. Then I said that it took me listening to Bob three times before I was able to make the connection. Bob has sly intelligence, humor, a message to deliver, and it seemed to me that he needed to bring that Wally Cox nature more to the fore. As a public speaker, you rarely get more than one occasion to have your audience "get" you. Bob lost a speaking contest recently not just because two of the other speakers were more "in your face" than he was, but because the Wally Cox quality wasn't dynamic enough for the judges to understand what he was doing.

I was treated to a tirade about what it means to be a misfit. And how lucky I was that I had presence and a persona. I countered that I was also a misfit. That the so-called presence (size 22) and its attendant stereotype was not one that I wanted, and that the persona was developed as armor to shield me from a sometimes nasty world. The persona did not bring me closer to people; on the contrary, it is generally a warning to people that if they are going to underestimate me, or mis-estimate me, they are in for a huge surprise.

Well, anyway, Happy Easter!

2002-03-30T22:33:00.000-05:00

I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth for a while. But I'm back.

Up to several things: I was learning how to use Greymatter. I am using it for another journal I'm doing. I'm trying to get it online at work to post things like press releases and such. I'm having a problem there because the server is not where my office is; the server is run by Rutgers University and the people there don't seem to want to let me do things for myself and drag their feet when I ask them to process things. But I'm going to get around that.

I have successfully put Greymatter up on a site that I'm doing as a volunteer. It took a while to get it formatted they way they wanted it, but it's up and running now, so that feels really good.

If that weren't enough, I've joined Toastmasters with my daughter-in-law and have been getting involved there. Busy, busy, busy.

2002-03-15T23:27:00.000-05:00

If you ever wondered how sensible personal writing is, here is a wake up call. I found a site that takes your url and creates a poem out of what you have on the page. Well, here it is.

An email from my
computer troubles again. Moreover, is
in the difference
between ancient and they were
written decades after church I stand on
my spiritual dimension
and a way supposed to
make the oral tradition have no
actual torture.
by talking
about a newspaper reporter is
that would not at Toastmasters tonight. It The aspects of sensual things
considered a family stories. “were puzzles,
complaint letters
that the connection was that she was
called an Octave Below Alto

Want to get your own poem? Go here

2002-03-11T00:31:00.000-05:00

Computer troubles again. Windows Millenium is the worst operating system I have ever had. I've lost files, had hang-ups. I've installed a memory manager. If that doesn't work, I'm going to switch to Windows 2000.

2002-03-05T20:45:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, Tracey Lewis, who is Dean of the Virginia Seminary preached. After church I asked him what he thought of Spong's book. I told him that the book was upsetting me. He told me that there are other voices besides Spong, and gave me the title of one: The Real Jesus. It's by a Catholic New Testament scholar who challenges the Jesus seminar. I've put in a request with the library. I'm looking forward to reading it.

2002-03-03T15:35:00.000-05:00

Went to the study group Thursday night. It was interesting. Very free flowing and open, but I found myself upset that they were so easily accepting of Spong's theories.

We had the Dean of the Virginia Seminary at church today. He's a specialist in New Testament. He gave me another book to read that counters Spong and the Jesus seminar. He warned me that the author is just as vehement as Spong, but in the other direction. However, I can deal with that. The Dean pointed out that Spong is not a scholar and would not survive the academic world because he limits his discussion to people who agree with him. It will be interesting to read this other book, The Real Jesus.

2002-02-28T05:35:00.000-05:00

Gave my first speech at Toastmasters tonight. It was called an ice breaker. You talk about yourself.

I wasn't sure until I got up what I was going to say, which isn't the way you're supposed to do it. But since I am reexamining my life, I didn't know how I felt about a lot of my life. It became a question of what I could say honestly.

I started by talking about my first job at the age of nine, when I convinced parents of children younger than me to let me walk their children to music and dance lessons. At ten, I convinced the local drug store to let me deliver prescriptions. I posedd the question about where my attitudes toward work had come from and then answered the question by talking about the five generations of working women that I was descended from and then the two greatest influences on my life, my father and mother.

My father was a stern man who believed that work was sacred and that you had to do something worthwhile with your life. My mother on the other hand was the epitome of Cindi Lauper's "Girls just wanna have fun." My mother loved music, art, and literature. She read to me, not only children's books, but also whatever she was reading. She read passages that she found beautiful, funny, important, meaningful. Her appreciation of sensual things left its stamp on me so that between my father's point of view and my mother's I developed into this person that took work seriously but I had to have jobs that used my intelligence and kept my interest.

Over the years I had many jobs and they were always interesting. One of my early jobs was a customer complaint correspondent for an intellectual book club. I got complaint letters that were puzzles, complaint letters in Latin, witty and dry letters. My significant other was always after me to collect these letters and write a book. He thought I could make a lot of money with such a book, but he didn't understand that I had already received my payment in the form of the letters I received. Moreover, the letters I received after I solved a problem were even more wonderful than the complaints. People would make up riddles and bon mots in honor of my handling of their accounts.

2002-02-26T20:46:00.000-05:00

John Shelby Spong, Joseph Campbell, and the Oral Tradition

I read Bishop Spong’s latest book with his book on the resurrection on my mind. Let me say that I agree wholeheartedly with Spong’s belief that the historic reality of Jesus’ life is not accurately represented in the New Testament. That said, I’m not sure I agree with what Spong speculates about the actuality of Jesus’ life and death.

I stand on a cusp of duality – conscious twenty-first century intellectual reason and a spiritual dimension and belief that transcends time and space. Consequently, I have always enjoyed reading books about the ancient past, the archeological and anthropological revelations about ancient civilizations, culture, and religion. I especially like books that analyze ancient texts, such as the Bible. I have in mind serious books such as one I read recently that traced the differences in the Gospels to their approximate date of writing and their relation to contemporary historic events.

In his book Resurrection: Myth or Reality, John Shelby Spong opens with an exposition on the differences between first century humans and those of the twentieth century. His reasoning was that the New Testament of the Bible reflected the world as the first century understood it, and that the developments in knowledge over two thousand years have created a gulf between modern and ancient man regarding the credibility of the story of Jesus of Nazareth.

First century men believed that the earth revolved around the sun, that the earth was flat, that the sky covered the earth like a dome; they believed in magic; they believed that God was a supernatural person who dwelt in heaven above the dome of the sky, who intervened directly into the lives of individuals. Twentieth century men know an expanding universe both figuratively and literally. They have a vastly greater understanding of cause and effect, and according to Spong, the scientific knowledge gained over two thousand years renders many of the details of the New Testament unbelievable and irrelevant.

Spong presents information about modern biblical research along with his own speculations about which passages of the Bible truly represent the experience of Jesus’ followers and which were written specifically to further the cause of his divinity.

Periodically in the book, Spong repeats the phrase, “something happened!” promising to reveal to the reader the truth about the resurrection. When he arrives at that point, he claims that Peter did not stay in Jerusalem after Jesus’ crucifixion, but returned to Galilee and his life of fishing. Night after night over dinner and the nightly ritual of breaking bread, while thinking of his friend, teacher, and mentor, the concept of the “resurrection” – that Jesus was alive again to him – came to him and out of this experience, the church developed.

I have several problems with Spong’s thesis. First, after spending a great deal of time and emphasis on the difference between ancient and modern man, he has Peter act in what seems to me to be a decidedly twentieth century fashion. The depth of abstract thinking involved in making a connection between Peter’s dinner bread and the crucifixion of Jesus does not square with Spong’s vision of a first century man. Moreover, of all the disciples to select for this exercise, Peter seems to me to be the least likely candidate. Peter was hardly the most intellectual of Jesus’ followers and frequently stumbled on his own intentions both good and bad.

There are several other reasons why his thesis does not make sense to me. Given the very specific narrative details in the New Testament, even allowing for distortion over time, and given the nature of first century man, the establishment of the church on the basis of Spong’s speculation of Peter’s experience would constitute outright fraud. Whatever gulf there might be between ancient and modern man, and whatever distortion of factual truth there might be in the Bible, I cannot believe that an institution that has lasted for two thousand years is a product of fraud. Moreover, there is the fact that people were martyred for their faith. That points to a real belief in Jesus’ story. Even first century men are not going to put themselves on a path to martyrdom because a man lovingly and even spiritually remembered his crucified friend while breaking bread.

Also, what is the connection of the bread to Jesus’ crucifixion? If Spong is right and Jesus never made a connection between his coming death and the bread and wine of their final dinner, where would a dim bulb like Peter get such a connection? If anything, Spong’s thesis inadvertently points to the real possibility of Jesus making just such a connection – even if that connection was only meant to be symbolic.

I do understand Spong’s dilemma, and the dilemma of the liberal wing of Christianity. The issue of trying to make factual truth equal spiritual truth started in the very beginning of the church and the discipline of theology developed in response to the “need” to determine who was a true believer. It’s easy from hindsight to say that the formula of factual truth=spiritual truth was doomed to self-destruction, but the crowning event that ensured this may have been Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and the establishment of the church as state religion. Once the church began to amass property and power, it had much to lose and much need to keep a tight rein on religious philosophy and “truth.”

What is the answer to the dilemma? It seems to me that Spong’s proposal is actually more of the same. We must wrestle those facts, shape them up, and make sure they don’t get loose again. Moreover, is Spong’s speculation about what might have happened is any less fiction than the actual New Testament? Why bother?

Some years ago I saw the movie Kiss of the Spiderwoman. In it a newspaper reporter is jailed by a corrupt regime and tortured. The reporter blocks out the torture by fantasizing being with his lover. The spiritual experience of being with his lover is more real to him than the actual torture. The night before I saw this movie, I happened to be reading about Carl Jung’s archetypes. When I saw the movie, I recognized the symbolism in the fantasy scenes but did not immediately identify them as archetypes. It was in the last instance of torture, where he is in a rowboat with his lover rowing toward a distant and mysterious island that I recognized the archetype. Knowing that this scene was an archetype did not lessen its impact. In fact, recognizing in the archetype the final journey to death only made that scene even more powerful and I left the theater stunned by the experience.

It seems to me that the way toward the truth of Christ’s life for us does not lie in getting caught up in factual accuracy, but in culling the myth for the symbols and meaning that speak to our spirit. The question is, do we really understand what myth is? This is a question that Joseph Campbell dealt with. In the opening of Chapter One of Thou Art That Campbell relates an experience he had with a radio interviewer on just this issue. Myth is metaphor, archetype. It speaks mysteriously to some inner level of our existence. Considering the yin and yang of Campbell’s experience, the yes and the no, I found myself joyfully responding “Yes!”

One of the aspects of Jesus’ ministry that Spong does not trust is healing. He is careful to limit his stated distrust to resurrections, curing of palsy, blindness and other lifelong conditions. But I sense a strong disinclination to trust any spiritual healing. Since I feel that I have experienced healing, it is difficult for me to be objective about this.

What does Campbell say? Ironically, Campbell says that he believes it is possible that Jesus was a healer. He says that highly realized spiritual people have been known to heal others. However, Campbell goes on to say that what is important about Jesus’ healing is not any fact of healing, but the power of the metaphor of healing to speak to our souls.

If Campbell is right, and my spirit responds to his message, then tinkering around with our spiritual images may do more harm than good. When I was in catechism class as a teenager, we saw the film Here I Stand about Martin Luther. The scene that riveted me most was when Luther came back from exile to find his followers smashing statues in churches. He stops them, saying: “How dare you destroy what brings others to faith.” In modern parlance, this scene really resonated with me because I had a family full of Catholics and Lutherans and Angry-at-God-ers who were all trying to manipulate my religious experience -- not with much success, I might add.

With regard to the resurrection, I give you three scenarios: 1) the resurrection happened; 2) the disciples of Jesus experienced the resurrection in a way that our modern understanding might describe, for instance, as mass hysteria; 3) There was no actual resurrection experience. Peter went back to Galilee and remembered Jesus in the breaking of the bread and rounded up the apostles and disciples for the beginning of the church.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I am working with my spiritual life, scenarios two and three do nothing for me. That scenario one may not be factually true has no bearing on my spiritual life, because the metaphor is more powerful than any fact.
A few words about the oral tradition and what is factually true. Much has been made of the fact that the Gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus. It is true that we do not have any writings that may have occurred in the years following the crucifixion. Does that mean that the Gospels have no basis in fact? None of us can really say that. We weren’t there. And no amount of scholarship can change the fact that we don’t really know.

How reliable is oral tradition? We all have family stories. “How Aunt Sadie survived the eruption of Mount Etna,” is just the kind of story we all like to tell. Do we tell the story truly? Accurately? As humans, we have a tendency to round a story out for aesthetic reasons, to make the story balanced, have unity. Depending on our audience, we might change some facts. If Aunt Sadie has a habit that would distract a particular audience from the message of the story, we eliminate the habit. Those changes may make the story factually inaccurate, but do they make the story untrue?

There is a tribe in South Africa that claims its members are descendents of Jews who left Israel 2500 years ago. Their oral tradition has them migrating down through Africa until they reach the bottom of the continent. To this day they observe a kosher life. How accurate is their oral tradition? In 1999, scientists examined members of the tribe and they were found to have the gene of the priestly caste of the Jews. 2500 years of oral tradition have been upheld by scientific evidence.

A generation to a generation and a half stood between Jesus’ disciples and the writers of the Gospels. Surely, the stories were rounded out, details eliminated, details added. These changes may make the Gospels factually inaccurate, but do they make the Gospels untrue? It makes you think.

2002-02-26T13:04:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago, I got an email from a high school friend. We hadn't seen each other for 40 years. She mentioned that a 45 year reunion was coming up and would I like to go. I said yes. She started sending me emails of news articles and other web items that she came across that the sent to a group of people. I didn't really respond much to these because I'm not into barraging people with email. I have one friend who sends chain letters and then complains about spam.

However, recently I received an email from my high school about the reunion and I wrote to my friend and asked if she had gotten anything about it.

Then she said that she was not sure that she wanted to go -- her high school years were unhappy ones and there were really only a couple of people, like myself, that she wanted to be in touch with. Huh? She was the one who brought up the reunion in the first place.

Well, I realized that the reunion was just an opening gambit to renew our friendship. I told her forget the reunion. Just come to New York and we can reconnect and catch up on the lost years. So now we're making plans. More to come.

2002-02-17T13:08:00.000-05:00

I haven't written for a few days. The week has been hectic. I will write some more later,but I will post an exercise from an email list I belong to Writing Perc(email link if you want to join). They send writing exercises once a week. Here's this week's
(assignment)

Collective Nouns

A collective noun is a word that names a group -- a noun that refers to a group of people or things considered a single unit. There are vast lexicons of collective nouns. Many collective nouns are accepted and can be found in traditional dictionaries and others are known merely through dialectal or colloquial speech. Your prompt this week is to free-write using one of the following collective nouns. Try to include the who, what, when, where, how and why of this group.

An exaltation of larks
A gaggle of geese
A congregation of people
A superfluity of nuns
A pride of lions
An impatience of wives
A shrewdness of apes
An obeisance of servants
A murder of crows
An impertinence of peddlers
A pod of seals
A boast of soldiers
A party of jays
A poverty of pipers
A paddling of ducks
A neverthriving of jugglers
A pitying of turtledoves
A drift of fishermen
A crash of rhinoceroses
A smirk of couriers
A trip of goats
An incredulity of cuckolds
A bouquet of pheasants
An eloquence of lawyers
An ostentation of peacocks
A skulk of thieves
A knot of toads
An illusion of painters
A rascal of boys
A school of fish
A giggle of girls
A cete of badgers
An ugly of walruses
A skulk of foxes
A wing of aircraft
A grid of electrical engineers
A set of mathematicians
A field of theoretical physicists
An intrigue of council members
A complex of psychologists

2002-02-14T20:15:00.000-05:00

I spend another day troubleshooting on the computer. Most of the time I just delete spam without doing anything about it, but every once in a while the spam drives me to a kind of madness. I study the headers to get the ultimate sender and send a blast to the postmaster of the host isp. I found some software called Spamblaster. It's ok, but you're really only adding a step to the process. Spam Blaster pre-reads your email and warns you which emails are likely to be spam (as if you didn't know already) and you can blitz the whole shebang with one button.

What people don't understand about spam is that we are all paying for the bandwidth that the spammers use to send us emails we don't want to read. It's bad enough to get emails about bogus cruise contests and ways to beat the "system" of whatever, but people who send x-rated emails baffle me. Efficient and effective marketing suggests that you qualify your customer. Why would you blanket the net with such emails? The answer is that it's easier to send out a blanket email than to do the work of qualifying your customers. And that's why we're all paying for this nonsense. When your ISP raises your rates, I'll bet one of the main reasons is the high cost of transferring mail.

Off my bandwagon. The other problem I had to day is that one of the software companies I use came out with an upgrade. They've come up with some system to prevent people from copying their software for free, but it involves a draconian registration process that caused my computer at work to hiccup (well, it was worse than hiccupping actually). Emails went back and forth between the support person and myself. They started out with "Hi John" and "Hi Mary" and ended up with "Hellooo! Do you understand the problem yet?" But finally I got the program registered. Part of the problem was that because of the tiny little steps with confirmation screens on the web, when I made a mistake, I couldn't remember what I had done. The support person and I were talking at cross purposes. He thinks I'm a dummy. And I think their upgrade system stinks. Oh, well.

2002-02-12T14:36:00.000-05:00

I made my arrangements to go to St. Helena's this weekend to see Sr Ann for spiritual direction. This is my first time at this, so I hope it goes well. On Saturday, Joy Carol is presenting a one-day workshop on spiritual healing. It will be good for me to be there to see if my reaction is so intense this time. I hope not. It took me two months to recover from the intensity of the experience last time.

Tonight I'm going to Mardi Gras with a friend of mine. We're getting there late, so I don't know if there will be any jumbalaya left for us. The invitation said that we could come in costume, but I don't think I'm going to bother. I have too much I'm trying to get done for Bun Sunday at church as well as going to St. Helena's.

Yesterday I accomplished a small miracle for me. I learned how to put captioning on a digital video. I took our video about leachate copied down the narration and then applied the text to the video. This means that viewers to the website who don't have sound cards or who are hearing impaired can view the video. It took me two days to learn the process. About an hour to create the captions and another hour for the computer to put out the new video. And it works!

2002-02-11T16:19:00.000-05:00

The first book by Bishop Spong that I read was on the resurrection. Resurrection: Myth or Reality?

Now, the truth is that I never believed in a physical resurrection (i.e., the resuscitation of a corpse), so it didn't bother me that Spong didn't either. It did bother me that he thought it was such big news. I also realize that much of the archeological and semantic research into the bible is finding that certain portions are not credible as direct experience. That's not big news either. I always (even as a child) thought that portions that said such and such was "done to fulfill the prophesy" were deliberate attempts to back into the history of prophesy.

In Resurrection, Spong sets forth an understanding of first century middle eastern people compared with twentieth century people. According to Spong, first century people were simple, lacked knowledge of science, believed in magic, believed that the sky was a dome over the earth, that God dwelt above the sky in Heaven, and that God intervened directly in personal lives. Twentieth century people, on the other hand, are capable of complex thought, know and understand science, understand symbolic gestures, and are generally much more sophisticated.

Now, Spong starts his book with "Something happened!" and repeats the phrase periodically as he proceeds with his thesis. According to Spong, the prophesy portions of the new testament affirm his belief that the new testament was a midrash (a Jewish approach to interpreting scripture). He denies any believability to any of the writing that refers to visions of Jesus.

However, St. Paul's epistles, which are the earliest extant writing of the church, clearly state that Jesus appeared to the Twelve, that he then appeared to the five hundred together at one time. He also says that Jesus appeared to him (on the road to Damascus). This is very direct declarative writing. There is no beating around the bush, and yet Spong denies that it could be true. I personally find the direct statements to be very credible. Moreover, if you've ever read any of the desert fathers, you have read very moving accounts of belief.

But all of that aside, I tried to accept Spong's version of things so that I could get to the hopeful meaning of "something happened!"

Here is where Spong falls apart. When he finally gets around to what happened, here is the anti-climactic event. Spong says that Peter did not stay in Jerusalem. Instead, full of grief, Peter goes back to Galilee to resume his fishing trade. Day after day he goes out on his boat, night after night he sits breaking bread thinking about Jesus. Finally he gets the idea of sharing his memory of Jesus with the others who followed him and voila! the church is born.

Now remember what Spong said about first century man. And Peter was not the most intellectual of his followers. Here Spong has Peter engaging in very twentieth century abstract thinking.

People went to their death over their faith in Jesus. No one goes to their death (in the first or the twentieth century) over a simple man breaking bread and remembering his friend and mentor. The Christian church is not here two thousand years later because Peter went back to Galilee and broke bread.

What did happen? I don't know. I wasn't there. But I do not believe that the events surrounding Jesus' death are mere fable.

2002-02-07T22:35:00.000-05:00

I've read Bishop Spong's book (A new Christianity for a New Age: Why Traditional Faith is Dying and a New Faith is being born) through once now, and I've started to read it more in depth. This is the second of his books I've read.

Theology is very hard to deal with. So many angels dancing on the head of a pin. It's easy to criticize, but when you try to sort out the strands of his thought you're left with nothing substantial. That's because we're not dealing with something concrete. Theology is thoughts about thoughts about thoughts, like so much incense wafting through the air.

Nevertheless, I still have a lot of trouble with Spong. I don't like the way he deals with people who disagree with him. I don't like the way he talks to his readers. He's as literal minded as fundamentalists, the other side of the coin in fact. Fundamentalists want their science to match their religion, and Spong wants his religion to match his science.

I'm with Joseph Campbell. Too many people don't know what a metaphor is. A little book of his lectures came out called "Thou Art That." It was far more coherent and a lot less rigid that Spong's book. I'm going to paraphrase the opening section of Cambell's book.

After Campbell had finished one of his books, his publisher sent him out on the road to publicize it. Campbell said that writers of comparative religion, as he was, had a hard time on book tours because they had to talk to a lot of reporters and radio people who didn't bother to read the published book. In one city he was to have a half-hour radio interview. His interviewer greeted him off microphone with, "I'll give it to you straight. I'm tough. I studied law."

When they got on air, the interviewer turned to Campbell and said, "A myth is a lie."

"No," said Campbell, "it's a metaphor."

"It's a lie."

They went back and forth with this for about twenty minutes, and Campbell began to think that the interviewer didn't know what a metaphor was, so he turned the table on him and asked him to give an example of a metaphor. The interviewer said, "no, you give an example." Campbell said, "I'm asking the question here. Give me an example of a metaphor." The interviewer tried to evade the issue by asking teachers to call in with a metaphor, but finally he decided to take a stab at it.

"My friend John runs fast. People say he runs like a deer. There, that's a metaphor."

Campbell said, "That's not a metaphor. The metaphor is 'John is a deer.'"

"That's a lie," the interviewer said.

From that Campbell said he concluded that half the people are religious because they think a myth is fact and the other half are atheists because they think that a myth is a lie.

2002-02-05T13:02:00.000-05:00

Reading Ava's journal "From the Edge" brought me to one of my favorite topics, getting children to read.

First, my history. When I was little, my father read to me with his index finger running along the words as he read. He wasn't a great reader in the sense of excitement, but I did learn to read before I entered school. My mother didn't spend a lot of time reading childlren's books to me. Instead, she read passages of whatever she was reading -- anything she found moving, funny, beautiful, meaningful. It meant a lot to me that she shared her own pleasures with me.

When I had children, I combined my parents approach with my own -- reading children's books with great gusto and drama! One of the ones I can't mention paid me the greatest compliment. Said, "If someone told me they wanted their child to learn to love reading, I'd say 'Get my mom to read to them.'"

Moreover, if a child shows an interest in a topic, go the distance with it. Take the child to movies, museums, libraries, anywhere that there is something that illumines the topic. Don't worry if the material is for a higher grade. High aspirations reap high performance. My experience as a parent with school systems is that they don't really like smart children. Oh, they want children to learn to read and do arithmetic, but they don't really want children to think for themselves. Be good little sheep. Lots of parents don't like smart children either.

I love smart children! It's true they can be a trial, but they're worth every gray hair, every one of them!

2002-02-04T21:40:00.000-05:00

Risks. I am working with a book, List Your LIfe: Listing the Risks You Can Take to Enhance Your Life.

It starts out with easy risks (Everyday Risks) goes to Real Risks, and then to Fantasy Risks. So let's start with the easy risks.

Risks - Been There Done That

Risk Helping a Stranger
Risk saying "I don't know"
Risk staying in bed all day Sunday.
Risk going barefoot all day.
Risk taking a bubble bath in the middle of the day.
Risk not watching TV.
Risk not doing something on your to-do list for a day.
Risk writing an erotic poem.

Most of the things were not risks for me and I have a hard time imagining a person for whom it would be a risk say, going barefoot all day. Now the to-do list is something I do all the time. The novelty for me would actually be doing something on my to-do list. Writing the erotic poem. That was a risk.

So what risk shall I consider from the list of Everyday Risks? How about Risk Shaving Your Head?

List the Risks

If I looked like Sinead O'Connor, it wouldn't be a problem. Trouble is I look like one of Cromwell's Round Heads
People would stare at me
I would feel naked.
I would feel cold in the winter. Even a hat wouldn't help that much.

List the Rewards

I wouldn't have to worry about fixing my hair
People would be paying so much attention to my head, they wouldn't notice other things I was up to.

Will I do it?

No

2002-02-03T17:33:00.000-05:00

I went to see "A Beautiful Mind" again last night with a friend. She wanted to see it and I said I didn't mind seeing it again. Just as good the second time around, and this time I knew everything that would happen. When I see a good movie for the second time, I look at other things. This time I looked at how the director Ron Howard provided clues to what would happen. He really handled those transitions well. Even though this time I saw how the film was directed, the story was just as moving.

After the movie we went to dinner and talked as two good old friends do. We talked about mentally ill people we've known and the effect on our lives. We also talked about people who are not technically mentally ill but so over the top that we're often left wondering about the risk of having such friends. What was our motivation in being friends? In the case of one person I knew, she was seemingly so free and outrageous that she fascinated me. She did things I would never dream of or dare to. For a time it seemed as if I could live a vicariously dangerous life through this woman. Suddenly, however, her instability threatened mine and I began to wonder about the risk. Finally, I decided the risk to my own well-being was too great to maintain a friendship.

Our talk then turned to our respective ages, and how all the pressures of life were off and we were free to pursue anything we wanted. So risk and pursuit of life. I have a book of exercises on personal risk that was given to me a while ago, and I think I will explore some of the exercises here. More later . . .

2002-02-01T18:53:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are on Friday. It was a bad day, as they say. My website email account at work got 20,000 emails from the same source. And at the end of the day, I got an email from someone on the mailing list saying they had gotten five copies of an email I sent. Not good! I spent the whole day deleting.

The dream I mentioned on Sunday put right out of my mind the best thing that happened at Convention. Our Bible Study Group was invited to a special 3-day workshop on Bishop Spong's new book. We are all excited about it. The downer is that Anne does not want to tell the rector about it. I think it's a mistake. He's going to find out anyway and, if we don't tell him, it will seem like we're going behind his back. But I don't want to be the person coming in the middle of this. What do you think?

2002-01-27T15:04:00.000-05:00

The diocesan convention is over. It was not as eventful as years past, but nevertheless there was some excitement. One group tried to pass a resolution "In defense of war" saying that 9/11 was an act of war and that military reaction was theologically appropriate. A huge discussion followed. Among the major points made was that there was in fact not a war because while congress had given the president a broad range of powers to react to the attack, it had not formally declared war. Others pointed out that while they supported our government's actions in response to 9/11 because we could not sit by and allow acts of terrorism to continue, nevertheless it was not the same thing as saying "God bless this war," and that they could not vote for a resolution that implied that God was in favor of killing. Others pointed out that Al Qaeda had declared a Jihad, or Holy War, against us and that we would be doing the same if we supported such a resolution. The resolution was defeated. In its place, we passed a resolution that called for local parishes to seek out members of the military and their families and offer them support while our government is trying to deal with terrorism. It also called for dialogue with other faith groups to better understand one another and support for the rebuilding of Afganistan by our emergency relief agencies.

It is hard for me to keep my attention on the convention because I had a running dream last night that is haunting me. For me a running dream is one in which I have a dream, wake up, go back to sleep, and the dream picks up where it left off. This happened all night last night. In addition to it being a running dream, I was conscious of my efforts to control the course of the dream. When this was happening, I was in a strange half-asleep half-awake state where I kind of observed the dream as an onlooker who decided that I wanted to rewrite the script of the movie I was watching.

In this dream I was a neighbor of a woman with a child. The child, a boy of perhaps four or five, was frequently on his own, and played with a little girl whose mother operated a store in the neighborhood. I don't know how I became involved with the child, but I found him constantly hovering, looking for attention. Gradually, I became aware that the mother was no where to be found. I investigated and found the child living alone. His mother seemed to have disappeared. I started to try to find out more about the mother to figure out where she might have gone. Under the sofa I found stacks of Playboy magazines with pages or parts of pages clipped out. I became convinced that if I could find out what she had clipped out, I would know where the mother went. The part where I wanted to rewrite the dream came when some kind of message or messenger came for the mother. The child received the message and left the house in the middle of the night and started running to find his mother. His path took him into a dark and menacing park. At this point I started thinking "no, no, no, he mustn't go into that park alone". Some how I, me, outside of the dream, woke up the neighbor (who was me) and made him realize that something was wrong. The neighbor got up and ran toward the park. The little boy disappeared and the neighbor was left with strange clues to follow.

That's it. Usually my dreams are fairly clear, but this one contains strains of my life but also strains of others in my life. The threads are all tangled up so I'm not sure which part of the dream belongs where.

2002-01-24T23:22:00.000-05:00

Going off to the diocesan convention tomorrow. Makes me think about my many conflicting opinions about organized religion. On Sunday, the Accessibility Committee is meeting to plan how we can get the congregation to be more friendly to newcomers and specifically to people with disabilities. At the same time part believes that organized religion has lost its mission. I don't really believe in a priesthood. I think that communion celebrated by a community with individuals sharing responsibility for the rituals is probably more responsive to people's needs and more likely to create that sense unity and purpose that seems lacking today. At last year's convention, we had a visioning conference to see where the church should go. It struck me that every group came out of its meeting the the need to increase spirituality as one of its top three priorities. However, when we started to talk about how to carry out the mandates, only social activism was being called for. When I asked about spirituality, I was told that my spiritual needs would be met by doing good works. I think it's the other way around. In order for me to cheerfully do good works, I need my spiritual life attended to.

2002-01-22T13:46:00.000-05:00

Yesterday my car was hit by a truck while I was enroute to JFK airport. It happened on the Grand Central Parkway coming off of the Triboro Bridge. The truck was a small trailer truck, the size of a Thumann's meat truck (if you've ever seen those), and was attempting to pass from the left into my lane. The truck hit the left rear tail of the car. My car bounced around a little and while I got the car under control so I wouldn't hit anyone else, the truck pulled back into its lane of origin and slowed down, allowing other cars to get in front. There was no shoulder on that part of the road, and traffic was going at a fast clip, about 60 miles an hour. It wasn't safe to stop. I looked in the rear view mirror to watch the truck and tried to slow down so that I could get a look at its license plate. As fast as I slowed, the truck got even slower. Finally, as the first exit approached, with an exit only lane, the truck pulled into it. I could still get into the exit lane, but once there I would not be able to pull out. The truck however was far enough back so that if I pulled into the exit lane, it could pull back out into traffic. Thus I had to let the truck go. Drivers around me were getting annoyed that my slow pace.

What surprised me is how violated I felt. This wasn't, after all, a personal crime, but to have the perpetrators just disappear was really disturbing. Even if I could drive like Rockford, I seriously doubt that Rockford could have handled going backwards on a one-way road with 60 mph traffic heading toward him.

I woke several times duing the night with that same feeling of disturbance. And this morning I find that my legs and hips hurt, so that the collision may have been harder than I thought at the time. Someone fairly knowledgeable pegged the repair to the car at least $1,000.

2002-01-19T17:37:00.000-05:00

There really is something different about being in your sixties. Life is better. I look back on my younger years and see hustle and bustle, getting and spending, trying to keep many plates up in the air. I thought at the time that I was living a considered life and I suppose, compared to others I knew, I was. Now I know that I was just trying to hold things together.

When the time came for my fortieth birthday, I was expecting some kind of cataclysm. Forty is a mystical number. 40 days in the desert, for instance. Not to mention ads for wrinkle cream. I woke up on my birthday, looked at myself in the mirror, and thought, "I don't see anything different."

My fiftieth birthday was different, however. I was wearing hearing aids. I'd had bouts of bursitis, colds that lasted longer and were more debilitating.

During my fifth decade I experienced things I didn't believe in, like age discrimination. For the first time in my life I lost a job. No matter that 75 other people lost their jobs along with me, I felt devastated. But that was nothing compared to the humiliation and infuriating frustration of being turned down for jobs because of my age.

In one of the many articles about aging boomers, I read a comment that boomers were going to have to get used to the idea that their usefulness to society would be diminished when they reached their fifties and they would have to accept working at less satisfying jobs for lower pay.

If that was the standard being set for boomers, then surely it was so for me. Therefore, not expecting the high life anymore, I began to adjust for a simpler time. I turned inward for a truly considered life, determined to make the best of the situation.

Now, at 62, I am the webmaster of a government website, appreciated and supported by my boss. The job is both creative and technical. I really didn't expect to be in such a good place. There's more to be said about this, but to put it simply, good things happen when you stop fighting yourself.

2002-01-18T00:55:00.000-05:00

The movie, A Beautiful Mind, has caused a lot of discussion among the people I know. I knew that the story was about John Nash who suffered with, conquered, and lives with paranoid schizophrenia. Several people went to the movie not knowing this, and their reactions are quite interesting.

My niece and her husband thought that the movie was a spy thriller through about 75% of the movie. They thought that the psychiatrist was an enemy agent. It wasn't until Nash's wife goes to the abandoned garage and sees all the notes and maps that they realized what was happening.

And even though I knew what the story was about, I didn't catch on to the early paranoia. During the scenes where Nash is working on the ciphers, delivering packages to the drop, and being followed by shadowy figures, I found myself thinking, "Boy, if this happened to me, I'd go crazy, too."

A social worker known by one of the people I can't talk about felt really sad the Nash's roomate wasn't real. I agree. Of all his imaginary people, the roommate served him the best, being an emotional support and cheering squad. To me, the roommate signifies that the hallucinations can start quite innocently and be a positive force for a person who is disconnected. Clearly, highly classified defense work was not a good environment for Nash.

More to the heart of things, however, is the relationship between the life of the imagination and hallucinations. What a fine line. Walter Mitty, the daydreamer's everyman, on one end of the scale and John Nash on the other, but just a hairline between them. If you think too long about it, it can get quite scary.

2002-01-17T17:28:00.000-05:00

Another week of antibiotics and hot compresses. But the dog is doing well.

2002-01-17T10:41:00.000-05:00

continued from previous post

Re the lost post button - I've been advised to switch browsers.

Our doggy doesn't like vets too much and usually starts sniffing for the nearest exit. But this guy had him purring* He was licking the vet's face and hands, but quieted down when the examination started.

It turned out to be a cyst. Antibiotics and hot compresses prescribed. We go back today for a checkup and to see whether the doc has to lance the cyst. But the bump has gone way down, so I don't think anything more will have to be done. However, I think we have a new vet.

* - we got the dog from a shelter three years ago. we think he grew up with cats. he acts just like a cat. if he thinks he isn't being treated right, he snubs you. Nose goes in the air and he turns his head away from you. He wags his tail and barks happily at neighborhood catties who prowl (they look at him like he's nuts) and he actually purrs when he's happy.

2002-01-17T10:20:00.000-05:00

Today I have to take my dog (oh, dear, can I ethically mention my dog?) to the vet. And here is a cautionary tale. A year ago, we noticed a pea-sized bump on his back. The cancer spectre reared its ugly head and we got scared. Too scared to take our baby (10 years old) to the vet. As the bump got bigger, we froze in our fear. Finally, on the eve of New Year's eve, the bump started seeping and our beloved doggy wasn't feeling well. We rushed him to the emergency room and met the greatest vet. Our doggy doesn't like vets too much and usually starts sniffing for the nearest exit. (I have to post now before the post button disappears)

2002-01-17T09:23:00.000-05:00

As usual, I went to a celebrity blog for my morning wake up call. I get so riled up when I read many of the posts that I wonder why I go there. Then I realized that getting riled up first thing in the morning is better than a cup of coffee for waking you up. Starts the adrenaline flowing. Sharpens the wits.

2002-01-17T00:09:00.000-05:00

Now I am in a dilemma. How do I write about my life without mentioning the people who are central to it. The answer is here: Many eons ago I attended Breadloaf Writers Conference. One of the outstanding guest authors was John Gardner (of Grendel fame). In a workshop he gave, he asked us to write a sentence about a farmer who was grieving for a son who died in the Vietnam War. The sentence could not mention the son or the Vietnam War. Gardner liked my sentence -- "The sun hit the barn from behind, the shadow chilling Edwin as he fed hay into the baler."

I guess you'll be reading a lot about suns hitting the barn from behind.

2002-01-16T23:59:00.000-05:00

I am back, too keyed up not to write. You will notice the "deleted content" below. That's because someone in my life saw the entries and got very upset. Not at what I wrote, because it was complementary, but that I wrote about them at all. Since the other people in my micro community have the same kind of attitude that means I can't write about them either. These are very private people. As, in a sense am I, since I am writing under a nom de plume.

2002-01-16T22:39:00.000-05:00

I just found out you can wipe out a whole entry. I must have written an entire page without noticing that the post button was not there. I'm too wiped out to rewrite it tonight. I'll try again tomorrow.

2002-01-14T23:27:00.000-05:00

deleted content

2002-01-14T10:04:00.000-05:00

deleted content.

2002-01-14T01:08:00.000-05:00

I'm going to toast the opening of this blog with a bit o' grog.