CLIMBING LADDERS TO NOTHING

Have I spent too much time climbing those ladders to Nothing?

I have just three things to teach:

 simplicity, patience,

 compassion. —Lao Tzu  

Most of us have grown up with a capitalist worldview which makes a virtue and goal out of accumulation, consumption, and collecting. It has taught us to assume, quite falsely, that more is better. 

But it’s hard for us to recognize this unsustainable and unhappy trap because it’s the only game in town. 

When parents perform multiple duties all day and into the night, it is the story line that their children surely absorb. “I produce therefore I am” and “I consume therefore I am” might be today’s answers to Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.” 

These identities are all terribly

 mistaken, but we can’t discover

 the truth until we remove the

 clutter.

The course we are on assures us of a predictable future of strained individualism, environmental destruction, severe competition as resources dwindle for a growing population, and perpetual war. 

CULTURE OF NEVER ENOUGH

Our culture ingrains in us the belief that there isn’t enough to go around, which determines most of our politics and spending. In the United States there is never enough money for adequate health care, education, the arts, or even basic infrastructure.

 At the same time, the largest

 budget is always for war, bombs, 

and military gadgets. I hope we

 can all recognize how the tragic 

consequences of these decisions 

are being played out right now.

E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977) said years ago, “Small is beautiful,” and many other wise people have come to know that less stuff invariably leaves room for more soul. In fact, possessions and soul seem to operate in inverse proportion to one another.

 Only through simplicity can we find deep contentment instead of perpetually striving and living unsatisfied. Simple living is the foundational social justice teaching of Jesus, Francis and Clare of Assisi, Dorothy Day, Pope Francis, and all hermits, mystics, prophets, and seers since time immemorial.

We must let go, to recognize that there is enough to go around and meet everyone’s need but not everyone’s greed. A worldview of enoughness will predictably emerge in us as we realize our naked being in God instead of thinking that more of anything or more frenetic doing can fill up our infinite longing and restlessness. 

Francis did not just tolerate or endure simplicity; he loved it and called it poverty. Francis dove into simplicity and found his freedom there. 

Francis knew that climbing ladders to nowhere would never make us happy nor create peace and justice on this earth. 

Too many have to stay at the

bottom of the ladder so we can 

be at the top. 

 

Epigraph: Tao Te Ching, 67. See Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, trans. Stephen Mitchell (Harper Perennial: 2006, ©1988), 67.

SOME CONTRADICTIONS THAT HAVE HARMONIZED FOR ME

PART ONE

SCIENCE VS. RELIGION



AS I  got older and  more educated, some of my  beliefs seemed to b coming into  question by the  things I was learning in  Science classes and Political Theory and History classes.

 ALSO  my own experiences as I saw that I was no longer  the Catholic  conservative that had prayed for Joe McCarthy.  I remember when Joseph Stalin died in 1953 and the nun in the  6th grade asked us all to pray for his soul.
I said "I thought he was bad." AND she said "all the more reason to pray that he receives the Mercy of God. You know he once studied to be a priest--so he could not be all bad."

And those experiences began to enable me to see the mixedness of all things human. No one is  perfectly good or even perfectly bad.  The question is ---how is the state of our souls when we die and must face judgement.

When God manifests spirit through matter, then matter becomes a holy thing. The material world is the place where we can comfortably worship God just by walking on it, loving it, and respecting it. Everything visible, without exception, is the outpouring of God. What else could it really be? The incarnation is not only “God becoming Jesus.” It is a much broader event, which is why John’s Gospel first describes God’s presence in the general word “flesh” (John 1:14). This is the ubiquitous Christ that we continue to encounter in other human beings, in a mountain, a blade of grass, a spider web, or a starling.

When we can enjoy all these things as holy, “the world becomes a communion of subjects more than a collection of objects” as the “geologian” Fr. Thomas Berry (1914–2009) said so wisely. [1]

When we love something, we grant it soul, we see its soul, and we let its soul touch ours. We must love something deeply to know its soul (anima). Before the resonance of love, we are largely blind to the meaning, value, and power of ordinary things to “save” us and help us live in union with the source of all being. In fact, until we can appreciate and even delight in the soul of other things, even trees and animals, we probably haven’t discovered our own souls either. Soul knows soul through love, which is why it’s the great commandment (Matthew 22:36).

AS I  learned more and scientists learned more, I was fascinated by the BIG BANG.
Then confused when it was not embraced in my Theology classes in college.  So I left that college and stuck with the BIG BANG. 
It took me several decades of living and learning and then I came  to my conclusion.
The Big Bang is just another way of saying how GOD managed creation--it is not as if we need to fear SCIENCE--After all GOD is TRUTH -- SO when Science advances and finds out more about our reality, it is just showing us God's work in more detail.

There is no  contradiction between true

 science and true God.

ANNIVERSARY OF DEATH OF A GREAT FRIEND

Thinking today of one of the many sad JUNE deaths that happened two years ago.  

Here I discuss my decades long  friendship that started in grad school.

REMEMBERING RICHARD GREENBERG

Norma Jenckes

June 17, 2018

NOW ALL WE CAN SEE  IS HIS BEAUTY

Saddened to hear of the death of an old friend. I met Richard in Urbana in 1967 when we were both attending the University of Illinois as graduate students. Although in different departments, we were introduced by a mutual friend and instantly clicked. Richard had a great sense of humor and also he was quite philosophical in an almost mystical way.

 Our time together at Illinois was only a few years, but through the good offices of that same mutual friend, we continued to keep abreast of the developments in each other's lives. I offer my condolence to Richard's children and their mother. Richard was extremely supportive of my son Joe whom he encouraged and helped after his graduation and move to NYC.

 In those years in the 80's I sometimes would also run into Richard and was always warmly welcomed to the Greenberg Associates offices in the city.  Richard with his brother Robert had started a  design firm RGREENBERG ASSOCIATES that soon became world famous for their extraordinary  design of film titles.

I do recall several lunches in Los Angeles in the 90's when I was visiting family. Richard's creativity was enormous and wide and he had taken his talents to LA. Once over a late lunch in a place in Venice Beach we both noticed the mist beginning to envelop the scene. And I recall Richard in his poetic way saying,

 "At times like this in the misty afternoon fog the dirtiness and sadness of LA seem to disappear and in the fog one can't see much but what we do see is finally beautiful,"

 I have not met Richard for several years, but I am certain that as the late mists came into his life as they do to us all, anyone who looked could see his beautiful soul shining.

UPDATE IN A DOWN TIME

QUESTION?
WHERE AND WHEN IS IGNORANCE  BLISS?
ANSWER--
RIGHT HERE IN THE BUCKET AND SURROUNDING "PLANTATIONS"


Certainly the corona virus and the upsurge of  violence has combined to create an atmosphere of anxiety here. We have not gone out for several months and all appointments with doctors have been cancelled, postponed or turned into virtual visits.

On the creative side I am feeling some more energy to work on a play  for the Blue Cow entry into the PROVIDENCE FRINGE. SO there is a kind of busyness.  But my poetry activity  has stalled.
Guess I have too many pots  on the fire.



As usual strange things are happening in RHODE ISLAND.


The SPEAKER OF The HOUSE  admitted that he didn't know there was slavery in Rhode Island's history.


 Rhode Island  made and sailed the majority of vessels in the slave trade . There were slaves on Aquidneck Island.

  He then capped that performance by saying that he did not know what  JUNETEENTH was about.


Now maybe this is  an indictment of the way history is taught but it is also a naked and almost gleeful
 display of amazing ignorance.

WHO MAKES THE MAPS?

I use a question to  title this blog entry.
WHO MAKES the MAPS?
  And I can  follow it up with another.
WHO WRITES THE HISTORY BOOKS?

The winners --that  would be the answer to both questions.

Do you know this statement?

"treason never prospers
because if it does none dare call it treason."
By Sir John Harrington

Race riots are not new in American history--they are simply not mentioned.  The neighborhoods are  disappeared and the people who lived there are scattered. 

Here is David Brussat reminding us of two   disappeared places in Providence, Rhode Island.

Riots of Providence, 1824, 1831 by David Brussat The original photograph from my 2005 column on Hardscrabble and Snowtown. Here is my Feb. 24, 2005, column in the Providence Journal, headlined "Hardscrabble and Snowtown of yore": *** HARDSCRABBLE and Snowtown are old Providence neighborhoods that have fallen off the map. In 1824, Hardscrabble was a poor enclave of houses owned or rented mainly by free African-Americans along Olney's Lane (now Olney Street) and North Main Street. Before blacks moved in, the sparsely populated area was known as Stampers Hill or Addison Hollow. Later, it was called Constitution Hill, and then Lippitt Hill. Lippitt Hill, the city's oldest black neighborhood, was razed and its residents were dispersed, in 1962-68, to construct University Heights, an innovative shopping/residential complex designed by America's first major architect of malls, Victor Gruen. By 1831, Snowtown had arisen to the west of Hardscrabble, across the Blackstone Canal (the Moshassuck River), beneath the bluff of Smith Hill, possibly right where Waterplace Park and Providence Place are today. It's hard to know for sure. Snowtown isn't labeled on old maps, or precisely located in accounts of old history. It appeared and disappeared long before the State House was completed in 1901. By then, Snowtown, not to mention Hardscrabble, had been forgotten by, I daresay, as many citizens of Providence as possible. Why? Perhaps because they were the sites of two race riots. Their role in bringing about the town of Providence's incorporation as a city -- a step aimed chiefly to strengthen police power -- is described in the Winter 1972 issue of the Rhode Island Historical Society's quarterly, by Brown Prof. Howard Chudacoff and master's candidate Theodore Hirt. Quoting from a report of the trial that followed the Oct. 18, 1824, Hardscrabble riot, they write: "[S]ome blacks had tried to 'maintain the inside walk in their peregrination in town,' in obvious defiance of racial taboo, and the usual 'bickerings and hostilities' ended in a sort of 'battle royal.' The following night a large number of whites, incensed by the incident, assembled on [Weybosset] Bridge and 'after some consultation' invaded the black section known as Hard-Scrabble 'which they almost laid in ruins.' " The mob of about 50, cheered on by some 100 spectators, pulled down seven houses and heavily damaged four others. Nobody tried to stop them. Only two were convicted, of minor charges. Then  it was white people   destroying  the Black homes and  neighborhoods. We are now living through another period of   daily race riots and they are  taking place in   most American cities It is as if  a great violence that has  been seething  like an inactive volcano has finally   risen  to the surface and blown its  top. Maybe the  months long world wide pandemic  has generated the energy and now it has found  an outlet.   The pandemic has exposed so  many of the  inequities  of our  society.  Black people and poor  people and the  old, warehoused in   nursing homes and rehab  places,  have borne the brunt of the terrible  and deadly virus. Poor people often live in crowded  quarters.  They do not have private bedrooms  and baths .   They cannot maintain social  distance. And do recall that this most prosperous country   supposedly in the world still has not seen its way  to providing universal health care to all its citizens. So people simply cannot afford to seek medical help. That is the stark reality. WE have sown the wind with  injustice and racism and now we  are reaping the  whirlwind. MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON OUR  SOULS.