Category: Culture

Categories
Religion

Belief

My whole life has been, in some ways, a journey into understanding belief, particularly as it is defined within religion. Perhaps in spite of how it is defined in religion.

When I was young I lived in a small town and in my earliest years attended a small church of the Pentecostal faith — tent meetings, laying on hands, speaking in tongues, the whole thing. However, my mother felt I should explore other religions so I attended Lutheran and Methodist and Catholic churches with my friends, particularly liking the latter because I could wear cool hats and scarves (forgive me, I was young). However, until I moved away from the small town, I stayed with the “bible thumpers”.

(And the members of this church were exemplary examples of their faith — once I left twin kittens with one member to care for while I was away. She left them outdoors during a cold snap and they froze to death. When, at the tender age of 12, I displayed grief and anger at their loss, she stated that after all, “…they were only cats.” And when the minister of the church who basically built the church with his own hands admitted to making a mistake and having an affair and asked for forgiveness, his flock had him disbarred from his church and literally drove him out of town.)

When I moved to Seattle, my quest for “belief” in the nature of religion continued, except I started to follow more esoteric paths.

I tried out Yogi, primarily because I was such a Beatle’s fan. I stayed in Salt Lake City for a few months and learned about the Mormon faith. I also sat quietly by the side of a close friend as she rediscovered her Jewish roots, and watched, enviously, as she gained such inner strength from her newly refound faith. How incredibly ironic that she fell in love and had a child with an Iranian. Perhaps he and she found a common thread in their mutual beliefs. Or perhaps they just fell in love.

I tried out the gentle beliefs of the Wicca as well as the way of Peyote with Carlos Castanada.

My most interesting path followed was my tenure in the infamous Children of God, known today as the Family.

It’s difficult to have freedom of belief when your every move is watched, your every utterance listened to, and carefully corrected. A senior member would be with me always, including when I went to the bathroom. I was literally never alone.

Once I wrote a question about what I was hearing in my lessons in my Bible, only to have the head of this particular group sit beside me, open my bible, and proceed to tell me that the Devil always seeks to make us question our faith. Considering that I was in my teens, impressionable, and at the time in love with this particular person, I was profoundly impacted. My belief was firmly molded.

The only thing that saved me from the cult was one day when I was called into the main office to take a phone call. I looked around the room as I was speaking (with my father, who was not happy with my decision), and saw the loot “donated” by the members of the flock, piled so high it reached the ceiling at one point.

Didn’t Jesus throw the moneychangers from the Temple?

Once a crack appears in a belief, unless the belief is founded on solid ground, it crumbles quickly.

Do I believe there is a God? There is a soul? That we are on earth for a purpose?

I believe in all religions, and I believe in none of them. I believe we have a soul, and I also believe that what we are is what we have today and nothing else exists. I believe in all of these things, contrarian as they are, because I have the ability to believe and the freedom within me to practice my belief as I prefer…

…in the privacy of my own mind, body, and whatever I hold to be “spirit”.

Categories
Connecting

Control

Leaving the parking garage for my lunch appointment on Tuesday, I found the exit blocked, yet again, by the construction crew of the new condo across the street. I tapped my horn and when a couple of members of the crew turned towards me, I pointed to the pallets blocking the way. One of the guys holds up his finger in a gesture of “one moment”, walks over and moves the pallets — but not the huge truck behind them, basically giving me just barely enough room to turn the corner and not scrape the sides of my car.

As I fought to move the car around the obstacles, other construction crew members stopped working to watch and laugh at my efforts.

Last week when I took my car into the Ford service center, I missed the regular entrance and ended up driving through the actual center itself. At the center exit, a car blocked the way out, with a mechanic standing beside the car talking to another mechanic driving the car. I waited, not saying anything, not sounding the horn — I was a stranger in a strange land in this place. Eventually, the two guys finished their conversation, the car started to move, and I started to go…

…when I was stopped because the mechanic who had been standing by the car walked directly in front of me, slowly, looking at me, making sure I realized that he “owned” this territory, and that I pass by at his sufferance.

These two acts go beyond issues of courtesy. They were about power. These two individuals were the gatekeepers and I had to pay toll.

With the construction crew, my toll was to be humiliated as I tried my best to drive around the obstacles. At the service center, my toll was being made aware of the fact that I didn’t belong in this place, and I had best remember it.

There are well established (though often ignored) laws about driving to ensure we don’t kill each other. There are roads to enable driving from any point A to any point B. There is also a mapping and addressing scheme that works remarkably well in regards to location of same.

All of which can be arbitrarily shut down by one person who, in a moment of ultimate power, controls my only access to the organized but open system of the road.

Categories
Connecting Weblogging

The heartless thing cont…

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Jonathon I don’t know how you could think I would stoop to trading my favors for your cookies?

Links for Tim Tams! Indeed!

Jonathon, Jonathon, Jonathon, Jonathon, Jonathon. How could you think that of me? The Bird that Burns, of honesty and integrity?

Jonathon, Jonathon, Jonathon, Jonathon, Jonathon, Jonathon. I’m hurt al-most beyond belief by your accusation.

JonathonJonathonJonathonJonathon, Jonathon, Jonathon, Jonathon, Jonathon. How could you bring me up before our associates at Blog U?

Jonathon, Jonathon, Jonathon (…what’s the count?)
Jonathon, Jonathon.

I would never think of trading my favors for something like cookies.

Categories
Connecting

On being a parent

In a quiet moment of sharing, Jonathon Delacour wrote:

Though I don’t believe in regrets, I have just one: that I don’t have a child. All my closest friends have children and every time they invite me to their homes, I feel a sense of gratitude that I’ve been able to share the intimacies of family life. I’m well aware that I’m getting many of the pleasures with none of the pain, but the rewards seem so great that I’m always left wondering at what point I took the wrong turn.

Making the decision to have a child or not is the single most defining moment in our lives. No one act we take can have greater impact. No one act we take should have greater impact in our lives.

Think about it — when you have a child, you’re bringing a new person into the world. You’re teaching this new person love and happiness and sharing and the values and beliefs you think are important. You have the front seat of a show starring this new person, watching as she or he grows and becomes something unique and special. From my own childless perspective, I can’t imagine that there isn’t a parent anywhere who doesn’t sit down daily and marvel at what they’ve done.

However, with the marvel also comes the complexity in raising a child. When I watch my brother with his kids, it looks to me as if there is a daily negotiation between him and each child about what rules apply, because every day new circumstances occur and new rules need to be made to meet these circumstances. Even the rules themselves have rules — when should the parent intervene, when should the parent step back and let the child learn the lessons they need to learn?

In my own field, I have had difficulty working with neural networks; a child is the greatest neural network there is. The thought of all that complexity, frankly, scares me.

Adding to the complexity is the issue of maintaining your own individuality, separate from your role and identity as “parent”. You want to provide what the child needs, but you’re also a unique person with needs of your own. Again, as an observer, it seems to me that you have to walk this delicate balancing act of being “you” the parent and “you” the unique individual.

I made the decision years ago not to have children. The reasons were many, and complex, and beyond the scope of this posting. I don’t have regrets about not having a child, but I do wonder sometimes about where I would be and what I would be doing today if I had children. Of course, being in my 40’s it’s still not too late to have children, though the risk of complications increase as you get older. Sometimes I even think about the possibility of adopting an older child, raising him or her as a single parent.

However, I think there are people, such as myself, who just weren’t meant to have children. I genuinely feel I wouldn’t make a good parent. In fact, the thought of being a parent scares me to death

Categories
Diversity Political

SFSU 2

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I did have a chance to talk with people directly familiar with the SFSU peace rally. Additionally, The Jewish Bulletin provided expanded coverage of the email that generated so much discussion.

I rather liked the Bulletin’s coverage. It makes no apology that it has a bias — it is a Jewish publication. However, within that framework, it seems to go out of its way to present the facts. That has earned my respect and it is a publication I will pay close attention to.

From my understanding, there was unwarranted ugliness, and difficulties associated with the counter-demonstration:

Sophomore Dikla Tuchman, an organizer of the pro-Israel rally, said she and others in her group were cleaning up and saying their goodbyes when the event was “sabotaged” by pro-Palestinians, armed with whistles and bullhorns. Although the rally had ended at 1:30 p.m., Hillel had reserved the campus space until 2 p.m., so “it was still our time” when the pro-Palestinians demanded that the Jewish students clear out, she said.

However, it would seem as if the events weren’t quite as “drastic” as was originally reported:

The conversation was getting heated on both sides,” explained Polidora (SFSU Public Relations Director). “Our goal was to keep everybody safe.”

But Polidora also pointed out that much of what happened is based on perception. “Everyone has a unique perspective depending on where they’re coming from,” she said. “Everyone saw it differently.”

Ultimately, the focus about this event should have been about the positive aspects of the rally:

Cohen (International Hillel’s senior consultant) said he was personally disappointed that the controversy undermines the fact that throughout 90 percent of the day, “this was the most successful rally for peace in Israel at SFSU for years.”

Anti-Semitism is not to be tolerated — I may not agree with the Bulletin’s unqualified support for Isreali policies, but I can agree with it’s battle against anti-Semitism. And based on this, I plan on attending as many of these events as possible in this area, in order to fight anti-Semitism. However, this does not change my viewpoint on the policies inacted in the Middle East — it only reflects what I’ve known and felt all along: that all racism and bigotry, including anti-Semitism is wrong, and to be stopped wherever it occurs.

I’ve also sent the link to the Bulletin’s article to Mike Sanders, Meryl Yourish, and Glenn Reynolds. Considering that the article was written by people who were there and directly involved, I would think that they would be interested in hearing what it says.

I do ask that my interest in finding the truth about this event not be misrepresented. At most I ask you to write that I sought the truth. And printed it when I found it.

End of story.