Thin Places

I just wanted to share this tonight...

Thin Places are ports in the storm of life, where the pilgrims can move closer to the God they seek, where one leaves that which is familiar and journeys into the Divine Presence. They are stopping places where men and women are given pause to wonder about what lies beyond the mundane rituals, the grief, trials and boredom of our day-to-day life. They probe to the core of the human heart and open the pathway that leads to satisfying the familiar hungers and yearnings common to all people on earth, the hunger to be connected, to be a part of something greater, to be loved, to find peace.

This sermon expands on the idea...

But thin places aren’t always literally places. The arts are sometimes thin places for some of us. Music. Poetry. People can be thin places. Marcus Borg believes one of the best ways of understanding Jesus is to think of him as a particularly thin place where the transcendent reality Jesus called the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of heaven shone through.

One of the emphases of the Celtic Christians about thin places is that they are porous and permeable. Marcus Borg says: “They are places where the boundary between the two levels becomes very soft, porous, permeable.”

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World AIDS Day

Click here for a listing of World AIDS Day events planned by members of the One campaign around the country.

From the UN Chronicle

World AIDS Day is an opportunity to raise awareness and fight prejudice about HIV/AIDS and express global solidarity with people living with the disease. Commemorated on 1 December every year since 1988, the Day provides an occasion to remind Governments and world leaders of their commitments to fight AIDS.

More here.

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Rehab-ing a Pine Grosbeak

Well, we've had QUITE the afternoon-evening!

A female Pine Grosbeak hit our upstairs window, leaving a few tiny feathers and a teeny red spot (I strongly suspect a hawk swooped through the yard, because ALL the birds dispersed.)
I went to the living room windows and spotted her under the (heated) birdbath, with one wing out a few inches more than the other.

I watched her from the window for a long time, while consulting Son*in*NC the wildlife biologist and Daughter-in-law*in*VT who graduated pre-vet.

After a really long time she hadn't expired; in fact she began to turn her head from side to side! But she didn't move around and the cold wind was blowing from behind her. So I set a box over her, cut open on one end so she could be free if desired.

About 40 minutes later she hopped out of the box! Then she proceeded to hop clear across the back yard, but, sadly, she could not fly. With the day dimming and a very cold night ahead, I set her into a box and brought her in.

I called the vet who had me call the VT Institute of Natural Science (VINS), who had me call a rehab-er, who had me call a different rehab-er, who had me call a third rehab-er who won't be home until this evening.

So we have Ms. Grosbeak all set up with seeds and cherries, and water. She is in the Guest Room and had enough warmth without being too warm (we want to keep her acclimated, if we can).

Hopefully she will wake up and be able to fly. If so, we'll watch for her mates to return to the cherry tree out back and release her to rejoin them. If she cannot fly she may need expertise and long-term care than we can provide.

I am encouraged that she was more alert when we moved her to the more spiffy box set-up. I had my thin leather gloves on and could feel her struggle a bit, and she felt stronger than earlier. Hope, hope!

Caring for Creation is a huge job! It's amazing how complex this world is.
Keep the hope coming! ♥ listener

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Special Election in IL-14: Is Everybody Confused?

by W.A. Thomasson

Dennis Hastert’s resignation from Congress, effective now, means there will be a special election to fill his unexpired term. The dates have not been officially announced, but it is anticipated that the special primary will be Feb. 5, to coincide with the regular primary, and the special general election will be sometime in April.

Although having the special and regular primaries on the same day will save money, it is also generating a good deal of confusion. Some things even the Illinois Board of Elections is unsure of. The special and regular primaries are technically separate elections. Does that mean voters will have to cast separate ballots? With duplicate sets of touch-screen and optical -scan counting machines at each polling place? What about election Judges? One set or two? And — OK, maybe this is a stretch. But since Illinois is an open-primary state, would it be legal for someone to take a Democratic ballot for the special primary and a Republican ballot for the regular primary?

One thing for sure, however, is that candidates will have to file new nominating petitions. The ones they filed earlier this month are only valid for the regular primary. That means they have three weeks to collect a minimum of 873 valid signatures from registered voters in the district. Since challenging nominating petitions is something of a tradition in Illinois, that means they really need 2000 signatures. Or maybe 3000 to be on the safe side. There is little doubt that all the current candidates will be able to do this, especially since Hastert’s resignation has been rumored for months and they have all had contingency plans. Still, it means that for the next three weeks they are going to have to focus on signature gathering rather than voter persuasion.

There are two Republican and four Democratic candidates. On the Republican side, archconservative State Sen. Chris Lauzen is p;ositioning himself as Hastert’s heir. Dairy magnate Jim Oberweis, who finished second in both the 2004 senatorial primary and the 2006 gubernatorial primary, is a flaming radical rightist. He and the state Republican leadership openly loathe each other. Oberweis was not named the senatorial candidate after the primary winner withdrew because he had campaigned explicitly against George Bush and his “soft-on-immigration” guest worker proposal. And after the gubernatorial primary, he described the winner as “another Hilary.” Oberweis won’t win this primary if the party leadership has anything to say about it. But given the current state of Illinois Republican politics, they may not.

There is a really excellent diary at Prairie State Blue that gives a lot of detail on the Democratic candidates as well as other aspects of the special election. I think there is a great deal to like about each of the candidates, although in different ways. John Laesch, the 2006 candidate against Hastert, is the most progressive on the issues. He’d probably agree that he’s basically in the Kuchinich mold. Jotham Stein has the most innovative ideas on the issues and is running a strong campaign. I have donated to him simply because he personally called me, even though I am dozens of miles outside the district. Those things matter. I like Bill Foster both because of his scientific background and because of his emphasis on fiscal responsibility, a la Howard Dean. Additionally, he is in a position to put a lot of his own money into the campaign and, even though a first-time candidate, has a lot of political savvy from the 10 months he spent as a volunteer staffer with Patrick Murphy’s campaign in Pennsylvania. Those sorts of things will matter in April and November. I don’t know much about Joe Pera, the 2004 candidate, because he got into this year’s race very late. That may make it hard for him to catch up to campaigns with established momentum.

A lot of people are looking to this special election as a barometer of how well Democrats will do next November. It’s maybe a biased barometer, since Bush carried the district 55-45 in 2004. But between declining GOP fortunes, shifting demographics, an open seat, and maybe even an Illinoisan at the top of the Democratic ticket, it could be winnable.

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Heart Radio

A post by Subway Serenade/Astral Technician (who is celebrating his birthday today).

Imagine that you're driving in your car listening to your favorite music from your favorite radio station. If you live in a major city, thousands of people are listening to the same song you are and all of your hearts are beating to the rhythm of the music. Your brainwaves are also keeping time. As the songs change, so do your internal rhythms. I demonstrated this principle at the mini DeanFest in Vermont earlier this year.

Now, if you didn't have a radio, you wouldn't be able to hear the music. Songs of all sorts, from every station would be passing through you unnoticed, and your internal rhythms would be going their own merry way.

However, those who hear the music share a bond, a focal point that has all of the hearts dancing to the same tune, even though they don't realize it. I have found in practical terms that not only do the internal systems receive waves and react to them, but we also broadcast waves of our own to which others react. We are in fact, exchanging waves of various sorts all the time. Not only that, but we and everything around us are just a series of complex, but simply ordered waveforms.

Today I was thinking of how so much of the world seems to be listening to some radio station that plays nothing but Rush Limbaugh droning on and on. Yet we don't realize that a really beautiful music station is just a few stations up the dial. What if Peace on Earth were made possible simply by having enough connected hearts reaching up and changing the channel?

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Howard was right, example 4597

From the comments...

Howard was right, as usual. We need to appeal to people with Confederate flags on the backs of their pickup trucks. But who would have thought an African-American would be the person to do it?

Story from last night's Obama for President/Democratic Party of Oak Park Meetup: Rob Baren, the local party's political director, has been visiting his father in the hospital in Dayton. He couldn't quite believe everybody telling him everyone they knew was voting for Obama. But driving back through rural Ohio, a guy in one of those big, fancy pickup trucks waved as he went past. And in the back window of the pickup were three signs:

Nitional Rifle Association

Confderate flag

Obama for President
Bill Thomasson | 11.27.07 - 11:15 am |

I am currently in the middle of end-of-the-quarter craziness, by the way, so I'm probably not going to be posting much. Remember, if you'd like to do a guest post, you can e-mail it to me at ohiorenee(at)gmail.com.

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Changed comment settings

I just remembered that it was possible to choose "new posts have no comments" under the comment settings. This way, I can still have the traditional Blogger-integrated comments available for use when Haloscan is messed up--for a while there, Haloscan seemed to be messed up on a regular basis, if you'll recall. But with this change, people won't be coming to this site and commenting in the wrong place.

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Open Thread

Going to an early service tomorrow, so I thought I'd go ahead and post a new thread before turning in tonight.

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Finding the right fit

Originally posted at My Left Wing

For much of the past year I've been way too busy with work and family in one form or another to be able to write a proper essay about anything of substance. At least, I assumed that was the reason I wasn't writing. And, when I occasionally did have a bit more free time, well, I really needed that to actually be free time, you know? But it's actually way more complicated than being busy. I've been doing a lot of thinking, when I went on an overnight retreat at the beginning of last month, and every time I get a few minutes to myself. I think about all sorts of things, but those things revolve around the big picture question of "Where do I fit?"

Where do I fit in the political world?

Where does political involvement fit into my life?

What kind of political involvement?

How can I live more intentionally--acting rather than reacting, choosing where to invest my energies and talents? How can I find balance in all of this--remembering who I wanted to be and making choices that are in keeping with my core values?

While I've done a lot of thinking along these lines, I haven't come up with much that I can write about yet. But Maryscott remarks in the Daily Rant about this site "dying" moved me to try to put at least some of this into words.

I have been revisiting the reasons I started to frequent political blogs. In a nutshell, the emergency of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and later the 2004 election changed me from someone who tuned out most of politics and never watched the news to someone who had to get involved because the stakes were so high.

There's a book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. I was telling my class about it not too long ago. Zebras don't tend to have chronic stressors. They have the sorts of stressors that end quickly, for better or worse. Either they are captured by the lion or they escape. The classic "fight or flight" situation. One of the reasons humans are prone to ulcers (among other things) is that we deal with more chronic stressors.

I'm sure someone reading this will find flaws with this analogy and want to point them out to me. Just this once, please don't. Whether or not my zebra comparison makes sense or seems appropriate to you, I'm telling you the truth as I see it. Which is this...it is not healthy or adaptive to be in "emergency response mode" for an extended period of time. I do believe that it is part of my "calling" (for lack of a better word) to be doing something toward healing the world. Even just a little part of it. My hunch is, that's something I have in common with a lot of people here, even if we express it differently.

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Thanksgiving food for thought

Many people across the country today w,ill be having their Thanksgiving dinner at thousands of locations that serve meals to the poor and homeless. But this would be largely unnecessary if our priorities were a little different.

From the Washington Post:

Food banks are a dominant institution in this country, and they assert their power at the local and state levels by commanding the attention of people of good will who want to address hunger. Their ability to attract volunteers and to raise money approaches that of major hospitals and universities. While none of this is inherently wrong, it does distract the public and policymakers from the task of harnessing the political will needed to end hunger in the United States.

The risk is that the multibillion-dollar system of food banking has become such a pervasive force in the anti-hunger world, and so tied to its donors and its volunteers, that it cannot step back and ask if this is the best way to end hunger, food insecurity and their root cause, poverty.

During my tenure in Hartford, I often wondered what would happen if the collective energy that went into soliciting and distributing food were put into ending hunger and poverty instead. Surely it would have a sizable impact if 3,000 Hartford-area volunteers, led by some of Connecticut's most privileged and respected citizens, showed up one day at the state legislature, demanding enough resources to end hunger and poverty. Multiply those volunteers by three or four -- the number of volunteers in the state's other food banks and hundreds of emergency food sites -- and you would have enough people to dismantle the Connecticut state capitol brick by brick. Put all the emergency food volunteers and staff and board members from across the country on buses to Washington, to tell Congress to mandate a living wage, health care for all and adequate employment and child-care programs, and you would have a convoy that might stretch from New York City to our nation's capital.

But what we have done instead is to continue down a road that never comes to an end. Like transportation planners who add more lanes to already clogged highways, we add more space to our food banks in the futile hope of relieving the congestion.

We know hunger's cause -- poverty. We know its solution -- end poverty. Let this Thanksgiving remind us of that task.

Something to think about as we give thanks for the harvest.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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Unbelievable this is not butter

Can't seem to fall asleep, so I decided to get out of bed for a bit rather than just lying there feeling frustrated.

Popped over to BBspot to see if today's Daily Links had been posted yet. They had, and I found this one rather amusing. Products whose names were variations on the "I can't believe it's not butter" theme. I thought I'd go ahead and post it now, because I might forget by the time I eventually fall asleep and eventually wake up again...


Now I'm going to go try that thing where I'm horizontal with my eyes closed again and see if it works this time.

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Short attention span theater

I am slooowly getting over a yucky cold, but it's been gray outside all day, so that's amplifying the usual virus-induced bleariness.

"Distractibility" has been the name of the game for me today, and I've been hopping around various sites on the interwebs, but not really accomplishing anything.

Found this article about the science of cooking interesting. As I was reading it to Demetrius, he said that Alton Brown of Good Eats had addressed some of the same issues. Turns out that Harold McGee, who I'd never heard of before today, was a major influence on Alton Brown. He's got his own web site, Curious Cook, which I will check out when I have a longer attention span.

But from there I moved on to this geography quiz, which I liked because you actually get points for being "close". So I ended up wasting a fair amount of time on that as well.

Eventually, I did manage to get myself out the door to run a couple of errands. While I was out, I thought of a blog essay I wanted to write, and had every intention of starting once I got home. So now that I'm home, I should get to work on that. Actually, I should work on lecture prep first. But...

Look! Some bouncy balls!

Bounce, bounce, bouncy, bouncy--will you look at that? All bouncy and yellow...like the sun that's hiding behind the clouds today. In that the sun is yellow, I mean, not that the sun bounces. At least, I don't think it does...

Now, what was it that I was going to do next? I'm sure it was important...

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Colds suck

Just sayin'.

Cold virus image courtesy of Purdue News.


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Open Thread

A picture of Michael Jackson graces the cover of the current issue of Ebony magazine. I don't know about you, but I find that just a teensy bit ironic.

Thriller was 25 years ago...wow.



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Happy birthday, Howard Dean!

(Photo from DemFest 2007)

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Open Thread

I hear there's a debate tonight.

Use this thread to discuss the debate, or anything else that's on your mind.

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"Unanswerables" from Snopes.com

On my way to bed, but thought I'd post something silly first, and share this page from Snopes. Some oddly funny stuff...

They say that if a person has a pet cat and dies, if the person's body is not found fairly soon after death, the cat, having not been fed, will become ravenously hungry and eat the dead person's face off - JUST the face!

Is this true? My cat often looks me in the face. I used to think he was just being friendly. Now I know he's just sizing me up, like a chef at a butcher shop, waiting for "the big day". Since hearing this rumor, every time my cat licks his chops it gives me the willies!

Made me think of this...

moar funny pictures

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Zimbardo on "nurturing the heroic imagination"

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo (photo courtesy of The Lucifer Effect web site) came to speak at a community college here in Columbus last month. I recorded the whole talk, which was an hour long. The whole thing was fascinating, but I set myself the modest goal of transcribing only the last eight minutes. Those last minutes of the lecture were the uplifting, hopeful part, and, I don't know about you, but I sure could use more of that in my daily life.

"The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being", says Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. ... "It's a decision that you have to make every day in various ways."

So what I want to do, is I want to end on a positive note, because I know I've depressed you. When I was writing this book I was so depressed, going through all this horrible stuff, and being immersed in this "evil shit", if you will. (Laughter) But the positive note is, heroism as an antidote to evil, by promoting what I call "the heroic imagination" in every man, woman, and child in our nation.

What I mean by that is, here's Joe Darby. He's the guy who exposed the Abu Ghraib abuses. His friend gave him a CD with those pictures and more--he looked at them and said, "This is terrible! We're supposed to bring democracy to these people, and we're humiliating them!" He took that CD and brought it to the senior investigating officer. He was a private in the Army Reserves. That's a thing you never do. And he knew that his buddies were going to get in trouble. But he said "I had to do the right thing." They had to put him into protective custody along with his mother and his wife, because everybody wanted to kill them. ...He is the most ordinary person, G.I. Joe, and he did the right thing.

And there's also the guy in China, in Tiananmen Square, where students were having a peaceful demonstration to promote more freedom, and here was a line of tanks trying to crush them. He jumped in front and said, "We are all Chinese, we all want freedom! We want the same things--please don't do this!" And he turned around. And so here's a powerful physical hero. Darby was a whistleblowing hero. So I want to refocus away from evil to understanding heroes.

Hannah Arendt, in her analysis of the banality of evil said, you know what, evil monsters like Adolf Eichmann, who orchestrated the deaths of millions of Jews, before he went to Auschwitz, was normal. When we see him in this trial, he's normal. You put him in a situation, and give him power, and permission to kill, you know what? He does his job very well. And she said, the problem with evil is that the perpetrators of evil look like your next door neighbor. They don't look like the comic book monsters that we're led to be afraid of as kids. That's the danger--that they're terrifyingly normal.

So I extend her concept to the "banality of heroism". There are two kinds of heroes: there's Nelson Mandela, there's Gandhi, there's Mother Teresa--but these are the exceptional heroes. They built their whole lives around heroic deeds. They had a call, a mission, to serve humanity. They are the exception. Most heroes are like Joe Darby--ordinary guys, who only once in their lives do a heroic deed. And never again--almost every hero is a one-time hero. And so I'm going to argue that everyday heroes are ordinary people who do extraordinary deeds. There's nothing special about them. And I want to argue that the same exact situation that inflames the hostile imagination in some people, and makes them do bad things, that same situation inspires the heroic imagination in other people.

And for most other people, it renders them passive. I call that "the evil of inaction". Most people do what your mother said, "Mind your own business and don't get in trouble!" You have to say, "Mama, in this case, you're wrong, because humanity is my business."

And so, with the psychology of heroism, we want to encourage children, families, everyone, to develop the heroic imagination. To think about yourself as a "hero in waiting". And that, to be a hero, you don't have to be more religious, you don't have to be more compassionate. All you have to do is be ready to act when others are not, or when some people are doing bad things, and you have to be ready to act on behalf of other people. Being sociocentric...you have to stop thinking about yourself and what will it cost you or what will you gain. To be a hero you've got to act, and you've got to act on behalf of other people--that's all you need.

And so what we want to do is have curriculum--I'm working with people to develop curriculum, starting in the fifth grade, getting kids to think about what it means to be a hero, who are the heroes in your life, what have you done that's heroic. What skills do you need--because some kinds of things you really have to know something, like first aid skills. So when the time comes--and I tell you, it's only going to come once in your life!

So I want to end with this wonderful story that some of you know about. A guy named Wesley Autrey, who's the New York subway hero. He was in a train station with 75 other people. A white guy falls on the tracks. The train is coming, and it's going to cut him in half. He's (Wesley) got a reason not to get involved--he's got two little girls. He's got no personal connection. Instead, he jumps on the track to try to save the guy. The train was coming, it could wipe him out. So I'd like you to actually see this in action.

(He showed this video)

So one day, you will be in a new situation, and there's going to be three paths before you. Path 1: you join in and become a perpetrator of evil. Not Abu Ghraib evil, but teasing, bullying, spreading rumors, spreading gossip. Path 2 is you become guilty of passive inaction. You're home at Christmas, and Uncle Charlie starts telling a racist or sexist joke, and you don't say, "Uncle Charlie, please don't." Or you're in a cab in New York, where they do it all the time, and you say, "I find that insulting. Please stop." If you don't do that, you allow this person to think "Everybody likes it. Everybody thinks it's funny." You have to take action.

Path 3 is to go straight ahead and do the heroic thing. You challenge authority, you challenge the system. And so I hope we are all ready to take that path and celebrate being ordinary heroes--heroes in waiting. Waiting for the right situation to put our heroic imagination into action. We have to think it--by thinking it, it increases the probability of doing it. We know from psychology that if I convince you that everything we know about you means that you're really more generous than most people. Next week there's a blood drive--you know what? You're going to give more blood than him. Next week there's a charity drive--you know what--you're going to give more money than somebody else.

I think that promoting a heroic imagination in our schools--just thinking about it--because it's only going to happen once! Wesley Autrey never did it again, he never will--he's not going to be in that particular situation. Joe Darby, never did it before, and he's not going to be in that situation again. So the point is, you always want people to be primed--ready for the situation where things are going to happen, you're prepared, and you're going to be the one to take the action.

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Remember little Knut?

Some new pictures of Knut here.

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Gooses! Geeses!

Unlike the geese in the song from the original Willie Wonka movie, these geese weren't laying golden eggs. But they were definitely making their mark, so to speak. While I was changing clothes at the gym today, I overheard people complaining about the sheer quantity of the geese around the pond near the rec center. And the noise they made. And all that poop. Can't something be done about them?

Um, who is encroaching on whose territory with all this urban sprawl?

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