So in an AmeriCorp survey I took for my post experience interview, there was a question of What does the term "Ethic of Service" mean to you. This was an odd question. I think we all have been compelled to serve others, whether our boss, kids, spouse, or some sort of "social" service. But as I though about it, why is the reason behind a compulsion to serve.
My answer, as many of my answers for these kinds of questions are, is that we are taught that this is good, and that makes us good. But I don't think anyone doing something they don't want to simply because they feel it is the right thing doesn't make them feel good.
So my definition for this term came to this. Loving oneself such that service doesn't become a thing to do, but just a part of yourself that extends your understanding of the love that is in us all to everyone.
What do you think? Anyone reading this anymore? Would be interested in your opinion.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Modern Castles
I walk amongst parapets of steel and cement
Climbing and reaching to the sky
And between them corridors
That wind and bend
Sometimes emerging on a small shop
Sometimes emptying into a vast space
Often just meandering to seemingly nowhere
Until they emerge at a destination.
I may encounter a Christmas tree
Or a man playing guitar
All part of a downtown castle
A village of beggars and kings and waifs and merchants
Bound together by the corridors
And something else
That no one can really see
Or really wants to see.
For we are just part of a modern kingdom
And for all our fanciful toys
We are not really that advanced.
Climbing and reaching to the sky
And between them corridors
That wind and bend
Sometimes emerging on a small shop
Sometimes emptying into a vast space
Often just meandering to seemingly nowhere
Until they emerge at a destination.
I may encounter a Christmas tree
Or a man playing guitar
All part of a downtown castle
A village of beggars and kings and waifs and merchants
Bound together by the corridors
And something else
That no one can really see
Or really wants to see.
For we are just part of a modern kingdom
And for all our fanciful toys
We are not really that advanced.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Religious Thought
Just read a long book by Neal Stephenson called Anathem. Though slow at times it had some very interesting insights in it. I won't go into the details of the book as it is quite complicated. But somewhere towards the end, there was a response to a person who had embraced an old religious thought and held that as true, despite evidence otherwise. They represented a faction of the world who just wants a belief to hold on to to have things make sense, much like the comfort many of our religious organizations give us. The response can be paraphrased this way.
"He decided to continue his studies because he said that the more he knew of the complexity of the mind, and the cosmos in which it was inextricably and mysteriously bound up, the more inclined he was to see it as a kind of a miracle - not in the sense that the religious use the term, for he considered it altogether natural. He meant rather that the evolution of our minds from bits of inanimate matter was more beautiful and more extraordinary than any of the miracles cataloged down through the ages by the religions of our world. And so he had an instinctive skepticism of any system of thought, religious or theorical, that pretended to encompass that miracle, and in so doing draw limits around it."
Allowing my mind to be free to explore the "miracle", seeking the ways that I am bound up in the cosmos, and creating meaning seems to be the single most important thing for me right now. I am not looking for an answer, for as the above quote alludes to, an answer is fleeting. It only puts boundaries on the beauty of the miracle, and therefore limits ourselves to how far we can go.
What I really want to do is free my mind from the burden created by my own ego. I want to act from a place within, a place that touches the cosmos. I guess that is asking a lot. Perhaps someday I can get there. I do feel better about not needing to embrace a specific dogma now when it comes to religion. The "miracle" means to keep searching. Draw no limits, see no boundaries.
"He decided to continue his studies because he said that the more he knew of the complexity of the mind, and the cosmos in which it was inextricably and mysteriously bound up, the more inclined he was to see it as a kind of a miracle - not in the sense that the religious use the term, for he considered it altogether natural. He meant rather that the evolution of our minds from bits of inanimate matter was more beautiful and more extraordinary than any of the miracles cataloged down through the ages by the religions of our world. And so he had an instinctive skepticism of any system of thought, religious or theorical, that pretended to encompass that miracle, and in so doing draw limits around it."
Allowing my mind to be free to explore the "miracle", seeking the ways that I am bound up in the cosmos, and creating meaning seems to be the single most important thing for me right now. I am not looking for an answer, for as the above quote alludes to, an answer is fleeting. It only puts boundaries on the beauty of the miracle, and therefore limits ourselves to how far we can go.
What I really want to do is free my mind from the burden created by my own ego. I want to act from a place within, a place that touches the cosmos. I guess that is asking a lot. Perhaps someday I can get there. I do feel better about not needing to embrace a specific dogma now when it comes to religion. The "miracle" means to keep searching. Draw no limits, see no boundaries.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Talking to Myself
I just realized that when I post blogs, I post really long ones. I don't know if I would read them myself. Why do I ramble so? Perhaps because I know I am just talking to myself. And is this a bad habit? No, of course not. Who knows you better than you?
Try asking yourself questions someday and then answer them in a spontaneous way. Don't think about how stupid the guy who asked you the question is. Just respond. It's amazing what one will tell one's self, and it is even more fascinating in that you will actually listen.
This is a good practice. Challenge yourself constantly and respond without thinking. You'll be amazed at the insights you have of yourself.
Surprise, I kept it short.
Try asking yourself questions someday and then answer them in a spontaneous way. Don't think about how stupid the guy who asked you the question is. Just respond. It's amazing what one will tell one's self, and it is even more fascinating in that you will actually listen.
This is a good practice. Challenge yourself constantly and respond without thinking. You'll be amazed at the insights you have of yourself.
Surprise, I kept it short.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Room for Expansion
I believe long ago I wrote about the universe speaking to me, telling me I needed to expand. I have been contemplating this and today came to understand an aspect of this message.
I have often mentioned that I have been blessed with skills and capabilities that have brought me to a point in life where I am comfortable in both material and emotional comforts. I am in a position that not many people (percentage wise) in the world can get to. Given where I am at, I have the freedom to make choices others don't.
Looking at things that way, I realize that I have several directions to head in my field of life. There is my parent's paradigm of retirement, there is a paradigm of complete devotion to a cause, there is giving up on life completely, there is... ; let's just say infinite possibilities.
Expansion at this point means to take my freedom and expand beyond my parent's paradigm and move towards something different. Take the rare opportunity given to me (or some would say created by hard work, depending on your epistemological view) and expand it into something more.
My goal now is to detach myself from thinking of life as linear and observe it more as circular. My father was in the same position I am right now at some point in his life. He made his choices, which were all perfectly fine. It has circled back to me. In some ways I am in an even better place than my dad was. What will my choices be? If I choose the same as my dad it will truly be circular. Perhaps a helix is a better way to think of it.
Circling around yet not to the same spot. As threads in a screw. Almost as a strand of DNA. Goodness where is my mind taking me now. The beginning is never the same as the end, and yet we come back to a spot very close and start over.
Oh well, expand as a helix. Circle around and learn so we don't keep repeating life but advance it in a positive way. I like that a lot. Oh yeah, and live in the moment. And I forgot, don't take anything personally. And....
There a thousand axioms and theorems to live by. Try one, learn, come back, learn some more.
Love all
I have often mentioned that I have been blessed with skills and capabilities that have brought me to a point in life where I am comfortable in both material and emotional comforts. I am in a position that not many people (percentage wise) in the world can get to. Given where I am at, I have the freedom to make choices others don't.
Looking at things that way, I realize that I have several directions to head in my field of life. There is my parent's paradigm of retirement, there is a paradigm of complete devotion to a cause, there is giving up on life completely, there is... ; let's just say infinite possibilities.
Expansion at this point means to take my freedom and expand beyond my parent's paradigm and move towards something different. Take the rare opportunity given to me (or some would say created by hard work, depending on your epistemological view) and expand it into something more.
My goal now is to detach myself from thinking of life as linear and observe it more as circular. My father was in the same position I am right now at some point in his life. He made his choices, which were all perfectly fine. It has circled back to me. In some ways I am in an even better place than my dad was. What will my choices be? If I choose the same as my dad it will truly be circular. Perhaps a helix is a better way to think of it.
Circling around yet not to the same spot. As threads in a screw. Almost as a strand of DNA. Goodness where is my mind taking me now. The beginning is never the same as the end, and yet we come back to a spot very close and start over.
Oh well, expand as a helix. Circle around and learn so we don't keep repeating life but advance it in a positive way. I like that a lot. Oh yeah, and live in the moment. And I forgot, don't take anything personally. And....
There a thousand axioms and theorems to live by. Try one, learn, come back, learn some more.
Love all
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Don't Cry For Me
This weekend while up on the north shore (see the pictures in my collection) I had the opportunity to complete two totally unrelated books. The first "Moretta, Dragonlady of Pern" is one of the series by Anne McCaffrey. The second "The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth in Bush's America" by Frank Rich was written just a while ago and is very scary story indeed.
These stories made me ask myself questions, in light of certain celebrity deaths, of why I cried for whom. So in the last few weeks my inventory is as follows.
Walter Cronkite. Who in my generation or earlier didn't love Walter Cronkite. I trusted in his integrity and honesty and whatever evil was ever found out about him, I never heard it. He symbolizes to me the death of something very important in our culture. Trust in the media. Which is why Frank Rich's book hit me so hard. There are good journalists out there, but you have to dig to find them. Which is sad. Our news anchors are perfect portraits of the perfect people. We get our news in small snippets, getting smaller and less detailed as time goes on.
We don't have time to read, we need it in 120 characters or less it seems to make it worth our ever so valuable time. The media knows it. It wants ratings and success. But Walter never worried about that when he gave us his editorials. He questioned presidents, heads of state, anyone whom he felt had crossed the border of proper behavior. And that is what the press did for us. It made us confident that there were watchdogs out there, making sure our elected officials played it straight. And we trusted they did this for us.
But Bush turned this whole thing upside down. And now with Walter dead, I am not sure what media outlet I can really trust. The golden age of journalism has given way to the age of marketing. Liberal or conservative, we should all be after truth.
Moretta. Okay so she is a fictional character. But she died doing a duty that was forced upon her by other leaders. I guess I read this before Rich, but at the time, crying over the death of Moretta I realized I had never really mourned the death of all who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and others who have died in service of our country in recent years. I have shed tears over Vietnam, those who died and were inflicted with so many emotional and physical wounds. But not so with Iraq.
Why, why, why.
And then I read Rich. I never thought about it much, though I had read about it in many alternate press publications. Bush blocked those images of death very effectively. The Iraq war until recently was a simple cleanup operation. No one was dying there. But even old liberal, don't believe a word of what they tell you me, got caught up in his own life enough to let myself forget that there even was a war. At least now there is a backlash, at least now our government admits mistakes, but it is certainly not front page news.
So then I cried for our country's armed forces. The people who have elected service and are subject to the decisions of leaders tucked safely away. One can argue they chose the life, but it doesn't mean we can't honor them with our tears. And then for the Iraqi people whose life was miserable before and may be worse now. And then all the victoms of war, be they the fighters or the public. For none of the decisions to do this are theirs. They are made by leaders with no real concept of the cost. Modern war is meaningless, petty, and downright sucks. It is about power or wealth or both. There is no real good reason for it, given the cost.
So who didn't I cry for? Michael Jackson or Farrah Fawcett for sure. Though I cry easily, these people are not people that I think matter much for the world. Their deaths are just part of a culture that spends more time on its media icons than on things that matter. Like war. Like healthcare. Like feeding the hungry. I would guess our government will likely grant someplace a bit of money for a Michael Jackson memorial way faster than figuring out how to help our vets or fix up healthcare.
Why? Look at what America cares about, and then ask "If I were a politician, what would get make the most people like me in the least controversial way?" Answer, anything but what really matters.
These stories made me ask myself questions, in light of certain celebrity deaths, of why I cried for whom. So in the last few weeks my inventory is as follows.
Walter Cronkite. Who in my generation or earlier didn't love Walter Cronkite. I trusted in his integrity and honesty and whatever evil was ever found out about him, I never heard it. He symbolizes to me the death of something very important in our culture. Trust in the media. Which is why Frank Rich's book hit me so hard. There are good journalists out there, but you have to dig to find them. Which is sad. Our news anchors are perfect portraits of the perfect people. We get our news in small snippets, getting smaller and less detailed as time goes on.
We don't have time to read, we need it in 120 characters or less it seems to make it worth our ever so valuable time. The media knows it. It wants ratings and success. But Walter never worried about that when he gave us his editorials. He questioned presidents, heads of state, anyone whom he felt had crossed the border of proper behavior. And that is what the press did for us. It made us confident that there were watchdogs out there, making sure our elected officials played it straight. And we trusted they did this for us.
But Bush turned this whole thing upside down. And now with Walter dead, I am not sure what media outlet I can really trust. The golden age of journalism has given way to the age of marketing. Liberal or conservative, we should all be after truth.
Moretta. Okay so she is a fictional character. But she died doing a duty that was forced upon her by other leaders. I guess I read this before Rich, but at the time, crying over the death of Moretta I realized I had never really mourned the death of all who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and others who have died in service of our country in recent years. I have shed tears over Vietnam, those who died and were inflicted with so many emotional and physical wounds. But not so with Iraq.
Why, why, why.
And then I read Rich. I never thought about it much, though I had read about it in many alternate press publications. Bush blocked those images of death very effectively. The Iraq war until recently was a simple cleanup operation. No one was dying there. But even old liberal, don't believe a word of what they tell you me, got caught up in his own life enough to let myself forget that there even was a war. At least now there is a backlash, at least now our government admits mistakes, but it is certainly not front page news.
So then I cried for our country's armed forces. The people who have elected service and are subject to the decisions of leaders tucked safely away. One can argue they chose the life, but it doesn't mean we can't honor them with our tears. And then for the Iraqi people whose life was miserable before and may be worse now. And then all the victoms of war, be they the fighters or the public. For none of the decisions to do this are theirs. They are made by leaders with no real concept of the cost. Modern war is meaningless, petty, and downright sucks. It is about power or wealth or both. There is no real good reason for it, given the cost.
So who didn't I cry for? Michael Jackson or Farrah Fawcett for sure. Though I cry easily, these people are not people that I think matter much for the world. Their deaths are just part of a culture that spends more time on its media icons than on things that matter. Like war. Like healthcare. Like feeding the hungry. I would guess our government will likely grant someplace a bit of money for a Michael Jackson memorial way faster than figuring out how to help our vets or fix up healthcare.
Why? Look at what America cares about, and then ask "If I were a politician, what would get make the most people like me in the least controversial way?" Answer, anything but what really matters.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The End Is the Beginning
Life is about decisions. Or is it? Recently I read that making a decision is just the start of the path that decision takes you on. This is particularly fascinating to me, as I am someone who has always belabored decisions. Am I making the right one? Where will it lead? Always trying to make sure my decision is a good, informed one. And once it is made, I am done.
Not so. Making the decision is only the beginning, not the end. I understand this more clearly than I ever have (if I ever have). No matter how we try to make the "right" decision, the path that it leads us down is entirely unpredictable.
For a simplistic example, take our recent refrigerator purchase. We looked at different brands, debated what would work best, and ended up with a new refrigerator. All done. Not really. What if it is a lemon, what if it leaks some odd gas that makes me deranged, what if....
The reality is I don't know. My decision to purchase a refrigerator could result in a multitude of things. Did the actual decision matter that much? No. Whatever I purchased or if I made no purchase would of probably worked out fine though the path with the different refrigerators MAY be different.
So I am starting to think that belaboring decisions may as likely to lead to disappointment as success. In feeling we made the best decision, we try to force the results we want that decision to come up in. We can't. And so we feel we failed.
The journey caused by each decision will continue until the next decision needs to be made. That decision may come very quickly on the heels of the last one, such as "that decision didn't work out, perhaps something else will be better".
What is all this rambling mean for me? I am going to start moving forward with my life by listening to my heart. I will make a decision based on what I feel is the right thing for me, and then leave it behind so I can experience the journey it leads me on. No more belaboring, just living at each moment. The decision is not the end but only the beginning to a journey of unknown results. There is no wrong decision if we allow ourselves to live and learn about life from these results and not let them make us sad.
Not so. Making the decision is only the beginning, not the end. I understand this more clearly than I ever have (if I ever have). No matter how we try to make the "right" decision, the path that it leads us down is entirely unpredictable.
For a simplistic example, take our recent refrigerator purchase. We looked at different brands, debated what would work best, and ended up with a new refrigerator. All done. Not really. What if it is a lemon, what if it leaks some odd gas that makes me deranged, what if....
The reality is I don't know. My decision to purchase a refrigerator could result in a multitude of things. Did the actual decision matter that much? No. Whatever I purchased or if I made no purchase would of probably worked out fine though the path with the different refrigerators MAY be different.
So I am starting to think that belaboring decisions may as likely to lead to disappointment as success. In feeling we made the best decision, we try to force the results we want that decision to come up in. We can't. And so we feel we failed.
The journey caused by each decision will continue until the next decision needs to be made. That decision may come very quickly on the heels of the last one, such as "that decision didn't work out, perhaps something else will be better".
What is all this rambling mean for me? I am going to start moving forward with my life by listening to my heart. I will make a decision based on what I feel is the right thing for me, and then leave it behind so I can experience the journey it leads me on. No more belaboring, just living at each moment. The decision is not the end but only the beginning to a journey of unknown results. There is no wrong decision if we allow ourselves to live and learn about life from these results and not let them make us sad.
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