Say "No" to RapidRise Yeast!

I am a birder.  For those of you who may not understand what that implies, it is a subset of "bird-watcher".  And both of those are subsets of the science "ornithology".   Many bird-watchers exercise their passion by feeding birds in their yard, and paying close attention to when, in the year, certain species arrive and depart.  They watch yard birds build nests and fledge young.  That kind of bird-watching is NOT me.  I am a birder; I am a "lister".  I want to build lists of birds I've seen.  Listers do this in many ways.  Some will keep geographically-based lists (e.g., yard, county, state, national, and world) or time-based lists (day or year are the most common), or some combination of those.  Others are more interested in building the number of species as high as it might be.  I am one of those.  And, because of that passion, I've been known to travel hundreds of miles in a weekend simply to see a rarity, and add it to my list.        You might have gathered that there is a bit of a competitive edge to the kind of birding I do.  And there is, although I'm not as competitive as some.*  Mostly I'm competing against the clock -- I want to see as many different birds as I can before I'm unable to watch any more.   So, if I'm out looking for a rarity, I want to know WHERE to look and WHEN to look (and usually if there is a rarity, other birders have pinned those details down).  In other words, I want to get to the location, see the bird (maybe even "watch" it for a few minutes), and check it off in my bird book.  Then I can move on.  The idea of sitting still for a long time waiting for the bird to appear is almost anathema.   Patience may be a virtue. and it may be a virtue for great birders, but it is NOT mine!       I've been musing on "patience" for the last week or so.  I recently ran across a quotation from Buddhist teacher Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron:  When you plant seeds in the garden, you don't dig them up every day to see if they have sprouted yet. You simply water them and clear away the weeds; you know that the seeds will grow in time. Similarly, just do your daily practice and cultivate a kind heart. Abandon impatience and instead be content creating the causes for goodness; the results will come when they're ready. I loved the image of planting, and letting the seeds grow without daily check-ups. Simply to tend the good seeds, weeding out the bad, and trusting that the good will grow. It's similar to the advice given to dieters: "Don't weigh yourself every day; once a week will do. More often than that won't yield any better, more healthy, results. I will only feed some unhealthy behaviors."        I'm a victim of my culture; I admit it!  We are told to speed things up, to get things done -- preferably quickly (as a bread-baker, I'm especially grateful for "RapidRise Yeast").   How counter-cultural, then, it is to refuse to be sped-up! And, of course, the counter-cultural nature of many religions is highlighted by teachings such as Chodron's.  A quick glance at the Wikipedia article on "Patience" suggests that religions have thought on this much more than any other discipline.        Many western Christians are now observing the season of Lent (it began last Wednesday).  It is a season of preparation for the great feast of Easter, and is often marked by various spiritual exercises or disciplines.  As someone as driven as I, it made sense for me, after reading Chodron, to simply work on one of the most difficult disciplines for me:  patience.  I'm going to go sit somewhere occasionally and let the birds come to me.  And I'm going to say "No" to RapidRise Yeast when I next bake bread! Blessings, Gary *If you want to see how this can run amok, watch the recent movie "The Big Year", with Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson.

Confused? Carry on

     Relatively early in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, protagonist-burglar Bilbo Baggins and his companion dwarves leave Rivendell, the elf-lord Elrond's dwelling, known as the "Last Homely Home".  As they journey from there, their next obstacle are the "Misty Mountains."  Tolkien writes:

There were many paths that led up into those mountains and many passes over them.  But most of the paths were cheats and deceptions and led nowhere or to bad ends; and most of the passes were infested by evil things and dreadful dangers. . . .  Long days after they had climbed out of the valley and left the Last Homely House miles behind, they were still going up and up and up.  It was a hard path and a dangerous path, a crooked way and a lonely and a long.    Now they could look back over the lands they had left, laid out behind them far below.  Far, far away in the West, where things were blue and faint, Bilbo knew there lay his own country of safe and comfortable things, and his little hobbit-hole.  He shivered.*

Tolkien doesn't write it, nor does Bilbo voice it, but the reader (at least this reader) can sense confusion and uncertainty.  Bilbo had been uncertain from the moment the quest began, especially in his assigned role as the group's "burglar".  Yet he had found himself carried along on the beginning of this adventure.  And now it was really changing.
      They had left the "Last Homely Home" and, now, up on the crooked path--one of many--on the Misty Mountains, he could look back and recall "his own country of safe and comfortable things".  That, and the cold, was enough to make him shiver.  It was a point, a time, of confusion.  And we, when confronted by uncertainty, yet with a summons forward are often prone to look back, and perhaps to follow that gaze, to where things were safe and comfortable.
      Maybe not the wisest, or best, choice -- to hunker down, or circle the wagons.  Certainly that safe, comfortable, home had qualities that made it so.  But circumstances change.  And that change may imply that the old comforts are inadequate for the new times.  These are opportunities for us to be stretched, to be changed, to grow.  Great spiritual/religious leaders consistently have called us to leave places of comfort.  They may promise an attractive future security, or an equally compelling future with NO security--but the promise is usually enough to galvanize followers to leave their "Last Homely Home" to try to create a better one.
       My sense is that times of confusion, of seeing a myriad of roads going everywhere, or nowhere, are times to collect what we love about the "Last Homely Home" and pack it up for a journey, or in Bilbo's case, an adventure.  As the hobbit learned, the journey over the Misty Mountains wasn't the only challenge he and his companions would face (he did know, certainly, that there was a dragon to encounter).   But he didn't turn back.  The promise of the adventure contained within the confusion was enough to convince him to carry on.
       Spoiler alert:  he made it over the mountains, met the dragon, acted as a burglar . . . and was changed!   Better than staying home, huh?


Blessings,

Gary

*J.R.R. Tolkien. The Hobbit or There and Back Again.  Rev Ed.  (New York:  Ballantine Books, 1974), 64.

Heaven, let your light shine down!

      Okay, so I wear reading glasses.  And, when I'm not wearing my contact lenses, I wear bifocals.  It' not a big deal for me, more of an inconvenience.  Of late, however, I've started noticing something.  It has probably been true all the time, but sometimes I'm a bit slow on the uptake.  The insight?  There are times when it's not the amount of magnification, or even clarity of focus, that is key.  Rather, it's the amount of available light.  Turning a brighter light on the object of my examination often reveals the answer to whatever mystery/problem I'm trying to solve.  And musing on that minor revelation took me down some other semi-dark paths.

        Illumination is one of those things that we often crave.  We seek answers.  Those answers may be clarity of purpose, a showing of the way.  A song entitled "Shine" by the 1990's band Collective Soul begins:

Give me a word, show me a sign

Show me where to look -- Tell me what will I find

Lay me on the ground and fly me in the sky

Show me where to look -- Tell me what will I find

Oh -- Heaven, let your light shine down!

Oh -- Heaven, let your light shine down!*

The band denies that the song is "Christian", but the song certainly suggests some religious, or at least universal, longings for answers, for reasons, for clarity.  And religions often use the image of "light" to suggest that their teachings will provide that light.  Through the prophet Isaiah, God tells Israel that they are to be a "light to the nations" (42.6, 49, 6), that nations will com to that light (60.3).  The Buddha is described as manifesting light.**  Jesus claims that he is the Light of the world", that "whoever follows him will never walk in darkness" (John 8.12).  Surah 24 of the Q'uran states that "Allah is  the Light of the heaves and the dearth."  The light shines out, drawing others to itself.

      But the "enlightenment" experience I recounted above is a bit different.  The light was NOT shining ON me, nor was it directing me or drawing me towards itself.  In other words, the light was not drawing attention to itself; the light was shining on the object of my observation.  And I begin to see that the light of all those traditions, aside from illumining us, helps bring into sharp relief the situations around us.  And, for those of us who adhere to these traditions, who claim to reflect, or refract, the light of the divine, if that light shines through, us, it, too, helps bring into relief our surroundings.  

      The light is mediated by our experiences, as well as our current context.  To use the image of a prism, different angles or distances (as well as the shape of the prism) will bring the color combinations to bear in slightly different ways, even if the light entering the prism is the same.  Our challenge, recognizing those differences, is faithfully to reflect/refract that light for the benefit of all.

      

Blessings,

Gary

*"Shine", Collective Soul, from the album Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid, 1993.

** "The Land of Bliss," in The Buddha-Karita of Asvaghosha, trans. by E.B. Cowell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), 28-29.

Debating debating

     There's a story that's told about a preacher new to a congregation.  At his first service, he gave a top-notch sermon -- everyone thought so.  The following week, he preached exactly the same sermon.  People were a bit perplexed.  The following week, he preached it again.  The next week the same.  This time, one of the congregational leaders took him aside and said, "People are confused; you've preached the same sermon word-for-word four times in  a row.  Don't you have another sermon?"  The preacher responded, "It doesn't seem like y'all have heard it.  Nothing's changed."
       I recall, too, the movie Groundhog Day in which poor Bill Murray has to live the same day over and over and over and over . . . every day being awakened to Sonny and Cher singing "I got you babe" on the clock-radio.
      On Tuesday of this week, I was listening to radio reports out of Florida as the Republican primary election was occurring.  One of the comments I remember hearing more than once was that the voters were SO grateful that the election had come, so they wouldn't be subjected to more attack advertisements, robo-calls or debates.  In other news items, I heard references to our "national debates" about this issue or that issue.  And, in the discussion we had this week over Anne-Marie Slaughter's book The Idea that is America, we noted how she refers to the need for conversation/discussion/debate about various American values.
       And I began to ponder "debates."  I remember formal debates when I was in high school; forensic societies still exist both in secondary and higher education.  Each side has an opportunity to make a case, and then rebut the opposition, regarding a specific proposition.  At the end, a winner is declared -- by different mechanisms, depending on the venue.  I recall debates being the marshaling of facts, persuasive argumentation, even some cleverness on the part of the debaters.  A far cry from the way "debate" seems to have devolved in our public discourse.
      Yes, debates probably should have winners or losers.  But what we see on TV seems a far cry from any decent debate; they seem to be more a public forum for airing a position and attacking the opponent (or the media).  And when we translate that kind of "debate" to a national (or local) issue, it seems we seldom have a discussion of substance where we can learn from one another and arrive at compromise or consensus.  Civility is lost, rancor increases, animosity results.  Nothing changes.
      Research shows that attack ads work, even though no one reportedly likes them.  And cries go out -- apparently unheeded -- for a change in the way we conduct ourselves in public discourse.  Why do we keep doing what we don't like?  Is is just because we have to satisfy our own need to be "right" -- even if it comes at the expense of another person?  I've intimated this before, but what if we actually respected our opposition and learned from them rather than demonizing them and discounting them?  What if we inhabited their world and they ours?  What if we accepted the fact that their ideas had as much merit as ours, and that, together, we might forge something new and worthwhile?
      In the meantime, can we declare a moratorium on the word "debate" unless it really it really has something to do with forensics?  Can we return to discussion/conversation as a means of discourse?  We've got so much to do as a society -- so much more than name-calling, polarizing, and demonizing.
     I believe we must; I believe we can.  And I'll keep saying it from time to time, in different ways, hoping . . . . someday we'll really wake up.
     
Blessings,

Gary

I don't like that answer!

      Wednesday morning I went out to the garage to get into the car to drive to work.  I put my things in the trunk and, as I was walking to the driver's door, I looked down and noticed that the rear tire was flat.  At that point, my day began to deflate as well.  Luckily I had a "Plan B" for getting to and from work (that didn't involve a bicycle!).  Triple-A came and swapped the flat for the spare, and my wife took it to the tire shop, where she was told "The puncture is in a place where the tire cannot be repaired.  But it may be under warranty if you can tell us when and where it was purchased."
       I didn't like that answer!  It's not because I thought that the shop was playing a game with my wife, but rather because it didn't fit into my schedule for the week.
      Yesterday, I returned to the shop, receipt in hand.  I got a further explanation on the damaged tire ("Okay, I believe you!").    I agreed to have the tire replaced and was ready to go while away an hour while the work was done when the manager said, "Wait, let's see if I have those in stock."  It turns out that the answer was not only "No", but that NO-ONE in the country had them (this is/was a snow-tire, and inventories are depleted, and nobody is restocking in the middle of January).  "What are my options?" I asked.  It seems that the best idea the manager could come up with was to do the seasonal switch-over early (that is, replace all four tires with my summer set).  Coloradans know that we can expect snow over the next several months, and sloppy snow at that.
      So, I didn't like that answer!  Not only were we going to have to drive with less traction beneath us, but my schedule for the week took another body blow!
      This morning, I went to a different shop, hoping for a different answer.  "Perhaps THEY will have a different patching system," I thought.  "No," was the next shop's answer as well.  I didn't like that!  It's a vast conspiracy against my schedule!
      Well, no, it had nothing to do with me.  The folks at both tire-repair shops were simply telling me the truth.  I can hear Jack Nicholson shouting at me "You can't handle the truth!"* I certainly didn't want the truth!  The truth was going to be very inconvenient; it was going to interrupt my life in uncomfortable ways.
       But that is the way of individual truths or capital "T" Truth.  Our lives will be interrupted, inconvenienced, changed with our encounters with that which is true.  What my most recent run-in with it showed me was what was at the root of my resistance:  my control-freakism.  And, for me, that was the take-away:  when I find myself resisting some news I don't want to hear, I should first seek the source of my resistance.  Most often, I suspect, the resistance is an indicator of something I need to change.

Blessings,

Gary

* The quotation is from the early 90's film "A Few Good Men".  It is reportedly one of the most famous lines in film!

**  By the way, I finally DID get an answer I liked.  But it took compromise.  At my suggestion, approved by the tire-guy, I'm only swapping over the front tires, so I still have snows on the back for the rest of the season!  It will, however, have to wait until tomorrow -- another blow to my schedule!

Glasses on!

     When I was growing up, one of two popular science fiction television shows was "The Outer Limits"; the other was "The Twilight Zone".  Both were popular enough that they were revived decades later, either in movie form ("Twilight Zone"), or as another TV series ("Outer Limits").  The original "Outer Limits" began with a shot of an oscilloscope with a voice over:*

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to - The Outer Limits. 

- Opening narration, The Control Voice, 1960s 

As "The Control Voice" would speak of the image softening or fluttering, the picture on the screen would obligingly mirror those effects.  And, of course, this was in the day when many of us had to fiddle with knobs on the front of our television sets to fine-tune the focus, contrast and brightness -- so, for the Voice to tell us NOT to worry wasn't that out-of-line with our lived reality.

     Over the course of the recent holiday break, I had occasion to remember this old TV show (all of the episodes, by the way, are available on Hulu).  During those weeks, I went to see two current movies and the "Blossoms of Light" display at the Denver Botanical Gardens.  Both movies were 3-D, and required special glasses to view them.  At "Blossoms of Light", special glasses were available that would, theoretically, enhance the experience.

     In the first case (the 3-D movies), the films were primarily a blur unless one was wearing the glasses, in which case, the picture was almost alive.  In the second case ("Blossoms"), without the glasses, everyone pretty much saw the same thing; with the glasses, the viewer might see twinkles or halos or something else.  In both cases, the wearer had a different, more expansive, view of reality than someone without the glasses.

     "Seeing differently" is something, I think, that many religious/spiritual traditions encourage.  Buddhists speak of enlightenment, an understanding that what we see isn't necessarily the way the world is.  Muslims recognize that, all appearances and desires to the contrary (i.e., contrary to human understanding), whatever happens is the will of God.  Many of the accounts of Jesus' interaction with people suggest that he recognized possibilities in them that the rest of the population did not.  Likewise, Ghandi saw in the "untouchables" of India a more profound humanity than the dominant caste system would admit.   Those alternative ways of seeing then translated into alternative ways of acting.

     A religious, or spiritual, vision -- and I'm going to pun here -- is BOTH a different sense of what the future might hold, but also a different way of seeing the present.  It is, as The Control Voice puts it, "participating in a great adventure"of making real what we see.

      Glasses on!

Blessings,

Gary

*  You can see this opening scene on YouTube at:  http://youtu.be/8CtjhWhw2I8 

Mild or Spicy?

      A number of years ago, I was part of a committee at UC-Berkeley planning a campus-wide student leadership symposium.  The committee was still in its formative stages, so every meeting needed to start with an ice-breaker.  One day, the ice-breaker was called "Mild or Spicy".  Basically, each person would declare "mild," "medium", or "spicy" -- these would indicate the kinds of questions that any of the other members might ask.  "Mild" would be something like:  "What's your favorite color?"  "Medium" would increase the potentially embarrassing nature of the question, one can imagine the nature of "spicy" questions.  Each member would have two minutes to answer questions from anyone else.
     As it would happen, the questioning began with the person on my right and proceeded in that direction, i.e., away from me.  Given the number of people in the room, and the time set aside for this exercise, when it came to me there was about 30 seconds for me to answer questions.  Wanting to be "hip" and somewhat confrontive, I declared "Spicy".  The room went quiet; no-one had any idea how to ask a chaplain a spicy question.  After a moment, I said, "The clock's ticking!"  One of the committee chairs, a student I had worked with before, asked, "So why ARE you involved in religion, anyway?" I responded, "In 30 seconds or less?"  Laughter erupted.
      I then looked at the student, and said, "You asked a great question.  You deserve a serious answer."  I thought for about five or ten seconds (the clock WAS ticking, after all), and finally responded, "I guess it's because my religion provides the best way I know of making meaning in the world."  After a few seconds of silence, he simply said, "Thank you."  And we returned to the agenda.
      I've told this story a number of times in the years since that meeting; clearly that brief exchange had an impact on me.  I have no idea if the questioner remembers anything at all of that meeting, let alone his "spicy" question to me.  But that question rocked my world, and crystallized a lot of things for me.  I realized that I had a "Sacred Canopy" (in the words of sociologist Peter Berger).  Very little of that canopy had to do with dogmas or practices; it was more about a framework, a structure from which I could navigate my world.  And so it often is, we find ourselves in unexpected situations where some sort of clarity descends upon us.  The moments may be positive or negative, times of stress or calm.  And sometimes the pressure of the moment will occasion incredible insight.
      A couple of things this week reminded me of that meeting:  an interview with physicist Arthur Zajonc who was discussing the "process" of discovery, and reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist.  Remembering the meeting always makes me revisit my answer, and the content behind it.  And that's a good thing.
      I assume we all have those moments . . . mild or spicy.

Blessings,

Gary