The Calm Before the Storm

Tonight it is a beautiful clear moonlit night.  Yet there is a bit of an edge in the air everyone can feel.

Tonight our family and, I’m sure, many others up and down the East Coast are watching weather news and anxiously awaiting the coming of a monster hurricane.  There will likely be extensive damage and inconvenience from the storm.  People and business may not have power for weeks.  In these types of events, we are reminded that everything around us is transient.  Let’s look out for each other and help each other get through this storm.  Everything else can be rebuilt; what really matters is the people around us and making sure that everyone is safe and sound.

 

Photo credit: Johnson Space Center

We are Human; We Help Each Other

“‘Up in our country we are human!' said the hunter.” “‘And since we are human we help each other.  We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that.  What I get today you may get tomorrow.  Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.’” ~Peter Freuchen

As we approach a critical national election, every time I turn on a media device and every time I empty the mailbox, I am bombarded with political advertisements.  Some tell me what the prospective candidate is going to do, but most tell me what the other candidate did or what they will do in the most negative light.  It has gotten to the point where I just blank it all out and hope that it does not bias my decision-making.  It seems to get worse every election cycle – the hatred, anger, scorn, and ridicule; the polarization that marks this country.  It seems over the last 30 years that we have lost our way, that we have forgotten that we are one people.

In past years, when faced with crisis, people would set aside their differences and band together to overcome it.  Today, we face a financial crisis in the United States.  The United States is adding enormous amounts of debt that will have profound effects on the livelihoods of our future generations.  We are printing currency at rates never seen before to keep the interest rates on government debt near 0%, threatening inflation as well as the means of those living on a fixed income.  As the country goes more deeply into debt and the dollar loses value, we run the risk of a large country like China calling in our debt, potentially damaging our economy or even our freedom.  Today, jobs are scarce and millions of people are out of work.  This squeezes the middle class - those who used to have professional or skilled manufacturing jobs that were lost in the latest recession have joined the ranks of the new poor.  They as a result are forced to compete with numerous others for low-paying jobs in the service industry, and often become chronically unemployed.

In response to this crisis, the average person in this country has entrenched in their polarized camps.  In one view, the Republican Party represents the top 1% who want to hoard what is theirs whereas the Democratic Party wants the rich to pay their fair share to continue to fund the necessary social programs to ensure our old, poor, sick, and young disadvantaged have food, clothing, shelter, a good education, and a chance for gainful employment.  In the other view, the Democrats squander money on pork-barrel projects and support deadbeats who feel entitled to have what others have without working for it, whereas the Republicans support low taxes and job growth by keeping government out of the way of growing businesses and allowing hard work to pave the way to The American Dream.  And that is just the economic question.  There are many other questions on social issues that add to the polarization.  What scares me the most is the fact that both parties and most of the candidates running for office have forgotten that in order to successfully face a crisis, everyone must make the sacrifices necessary and work together to face the crisis head-on.

Some cultures, for instance the Innuits and Eskimos, have not forgotten the essence of our humanity, which is to help each other unconditionally, raise each other up, and become collectively something much more powerful than a group of individuals.  Quoting David Graeber:

“Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began comparing power with power, measuring, calculating and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt.” [1]

I hope that as a people, we can all remember our basic humanity and when we enter the voting booth, we make our decision based on humanitarian reasons, not power, greed, and hate.  And once our decision is made, those whom we elect make their decisions in the same fashion.  More importantly, we need to remember our humanity on a daily basis, give without expectation of receiving, uplift those around us, and make the world a little better.  This will be one little step in the direction to dealing with the current crisis of confidence in this country.

[1]        David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years,  Melville House Publishing (2011)

Thoughts at a Funeral

Recently, my Mother-in-Law died and on a sunny morning with a feel of autumn in the air, we attended a beautiful funeral service.  Prior to the service, a committal service was held where a portion of her cremated ashes were sprinkled in the memorial garden.  She was 88 when she died and by all accounts she had a full life, but suffered from dementia and painful arthritis the last few years of her life.  The thing that struck me most during our last several visits with her was how depressed she was, and I have to imagine that death was a welcome release for her.  Still, when I saw her ashes and the container that held them, it struck me how little of her being remained on the earth when just a few weeks ago, she was a living person.

A whole series of thoughts went through my mind during the services.  Where did she go?  Did she go to a good place?  I have to admit that death scares me a bit.  Now to frame this, most people, me included, believe that death leads to something amazing, whether we define it as paradise, heaven, the spirit dimension, as one with God, as one with the universe.  Accounts of near-death experiences validate this.  So why would it be scary?  I suppose it is fear of the unknown.  Was mom scared when she knew it was her time?  Did she see God, did God tell her it was ok, and did God help her cross the threshold?

The universe, certainly in mortal terms, is essentially infinite and eternal.  Given this fact, what is the purpose of mortal life?  Perhaps life, not death is the greater mystery.  Life is truly a miracle.  Are we here to somehow expand the universe?  To improve it in some way?  Mortality no doubt is a great motivator.  If we lived forever, would we be motivated to do anything?  Mortality drives us to greatness.  To take risks.  To love.  To do amazing things.  The purpose of life is to do all of this.  And when our souls return to the spirit dimension and we leave our ashes behind, the best legacy we can leave is a better world filled with more love.

 

Photo courtesy morguefile.com

The Gentle Call of Your Heart

“Trust the process of the subtle push toward art and creative expression from inside you – it is the gentle call of your heart and renewed search for soul. It is an opening to expansion of your expressive abilities and the discovery of hidden limitations ready to be challenged. Be open to what it means, it has many possibilities for action in every part of your life. Ultimately it will lead to significant personal changes – to living life in a new way with new tools of creative expression.” ~Donald William Mathews

A Lesson Learned?

 

In the fall of 2010, things looked great with respect to my career.  I was running a project that would lead to a major new product line for our company.  Although there was a momentary curtailment of external marketing efforts while a regulatory issue was being checked into, I was riding the wave of two technical breakthroughs that would make the new product a huge success.  I thought everything was ok and as a result, became complacent.  Somewhere along the way, I lost the drive.  I did not embrace some other tasks that were given to me that would have allowed me to broaden my experience.  When I look back at that fall, there were numerous warning signs that should have motivated me to action, but I was blind to them.  I allowed myself to be deluded into thinking everything was fine.

That winter, I had a project review meeting go terribly wrong.  I was under the impression that the meeting went well until I started receiving negative feedback from others that attended the meeting.  After the shock wore off, I snapped fully awake.  I realized I was “a deer in the headlights” - at minimum in trouble if not in danger of losing my job.  Based on an assessment of the career risks as well as the project risks, I made the decision to look aggressively for a new job, drew up a plan of action, and executed it.  Fortunately for me, I found several opportunities.  It was not a minute too soon, for I learned toward the end that two internal opportunities I thought I had a good chance at did not materialize.  Seven weeks later senior management deemphasized the project and, on the eve of the second interview for the job I now hold, I was laid off.

Although the story had a happy ending, I wonder what would have happened if I had maintained my drive and embraced what was given to me.  Instead, I easily could have joined the ranks of the chronically unemployed given my age and narrow skill-set.  Today, facing a change in business conditions and a challenging reassignment, I reflect on this lesson and use it to reenergize myself.

 

Photo courtesy morguefile.com

Scientific Knowledge and the Nature of God

This week I read an article on Livescience.com [1] that suggests that scientists would eventually understand everything and, by that fact, there would be no room for God.  To put this into a historical perspective, supernatural powers have been invoked as the cause for anything that could not be answered.  Two thousand years ago, God was responsible for just about everything: for the weather, the quality of the harvests, for plagues, good health, and for winning or losing battles.  Even into modern times, a common perception was that God was a grandfatherly figure living in Heaven who meted out rewards and punishment.  As human knowledge increased and science proceeded to explain many of the mysteries of existence, God’s role in everyday life diminished.

Today, scientists are making new discoveries that continue to diminish the mystery.  Astronomers with the power of the Hubbell Telescope and other modern tools probe to within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang and continue to add to the understanding of the workings of the universe.  Physicists recently discovered the Higgs Boson, the final missing particle in the Standard Model, the model which describes the building blocks for matter and the fabric of the universe.  Yet, as Natalie Wolchover reports in the referenced article, physicists can describe the universe going all the way back to an infinitesimal fraction of a second after the Big Bang, but can’t describe the state of the Universe at the zero point or, for that matter, what existed before the zero point.  Physicists are attempting to create models in the hopes of answering that very question, and current physical theories already allow for an infinite number of universes, together which comprise the multiverse.

The phenomenon of life continues to be a great mystery.  Despite their modern understanding, no one has been able to create life in a test tube from inanimate matter.  Likewise, there is no universally accepted theory for the emergence of the very first life forms from non-living matter.  That by no means suggests that biologists won’t unlock that mystery in the future.  Even if biologists determine how life emerged and, for that matter, learn how to create life in the laboratory, there will still be deeper mysteries to investigate.  Even if physicists come up with a universally accepted theory for how the Big Bang happened and what the state of affairs was before the birthing event of the Universe, there will still be unanswerable questions, two major ones being “where did the multiverse come from?” and “why are we here?”

I have no doubt that scientists will continue to unravel these mysteries.  And every time a major discovery is made in science, new mysteries are encountered.  I do not believe that their journey of discovery will rule out the existence of God.  To put this into perspective: before Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, the world was believed to be flat, the Sun, Moon, and Stars revolved around the earth, and God in Heaven was “up there” in the sky.  Learning that the world was round and was no longer the center of the Universe did not disprove the existence of a Higher Power.  As scientists continue to learn how amazing the Universe is and how amazing the phenomenon of life is, it speaks of how immense reality is.  It makes the answers to the existential questions grander.  Even one who doubts the existence of a Higher Power can look at the Universe, the order of natural law, our remarkable planet, and the spark of life on that planet, grasping the true miracle of our existence.

Reference: http://news.yahoo.com/science-someday-rule-possibility-god-115945479.html

 

Photo credit: Hershel Observatory via Wikimedia Commons

The Value of Mentoring

“Mentoring brings us together – across generation, class, and often race – in a manner that forces us to acknowledge our interdependence, to appreciate, in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, that ‘we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny.’ In this way, mentoring enables us to participate in the essential but unfinished drama of reinventing community, while reaffirming that there is an important role for each of us in it. ~Marc Freedman

Microsoft clipart photo