Dear Reader,
I need to give you a little
background. When I wrote yesterday about the orchestra in heaven, I had
two lenses in mind. First, the backdrop and metaphorical imagery of my
thoughts were draw from Tolkien's metaphor of the orchestra in heaven
as he described it in the opening of the The Silmarillion. Second,
in terms of the specific interpretation of that metaphor, I had in mind
the names of God revealed to us in prophetic tradition.
One
of the great obstacles we face as a collective, global, human family is
that we have a hard time achieving the breathtakingly beautiful harmony
of unity. And yet, this is our God given collective mission that we
must achieve at this stage in history. One of the primary things that
holds us back from unity is that we stumble over each others
differences. We are not good at realizing the potential for unity in
and through diversity like instruments blending beautifully in the
orchestra. Instead, we hear the stringed instruments say to the wind
instruments, "you are not expressing enough through the concrete
manipulation of solid objects, let me show you how to play music the way
I do." Meanwhile the wind instruments say to the strings, "no, that is
not right, you must focus more on your breath; music is not all
produced through your fingers, air is just guided through them." And
thus we fall into discord.
"But what," you might ask,
"are our musical instruments?" I will tell you. They are the names of
God that we are called to make manifest in our own lives. None of us
will manifest all of the names of God equally. As we spiritually
develop, we all reflect God's light, but at different wavelengths with
different colors. I reflect God's name THE OPENER or "Al-Fattah" more
than His other Names. That is who I was designed to be in the
circumstances of life that formed me. Like unto this name are the names
of God that reveal to us that He is THE CREATOR and THE ORIGINATOR. I
can offer myself up to God easily in these ways as well that He may Will
and Work through me to poor out his life giving nature to Open, to
Create, and to Originate in this world (For it is God which worketh in
you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Philippians 2:13 KJV). These are the Names of God I was designed to have breathed through my life.
However,
not everyone has to manifest the Names of God that I express and
reflect in my life more strongly than God's other Names. God has many
Names. I encourage you to explore them online as there are many
resources to help us such as this one:
http://sufism.org/foundations/ninety-nine-names
From
that website, and from my own knowledge of the Bible, I will share with
you some quotes illustrating what the three most important Names of God
in my life mean to me. When I wrote yesterday that I meet someone
recently with whom I feel a deep kinship in so much as I believe we will
sit next to each other in the orchestra in heaven, what I meant was
that she was able to play beautiful notes for me expressing the same
Names of God that I live into the most deeply in a way that helped me
tune my instrument, so that I could be relaunched all the more firmly on
the path with and into God that I am meant to walk. I hope you enjoy
the quotes I am copying down for you below to reveal for you more fully
what the three most intuitive Name of God for me mean to me. Feel free
to search for you connections to the Names of God and to share them with
me too. You will find 96 more names in the Sufi tradition, and 97 more
names in the Baha'i tradition. These below are just three:
Al-Fattah: The Opener
Isaiah 22:22 (KJV) -- And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he
shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.
James 4:13-17 (NIV) -- Now listen, you who say, “Today or
tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on
business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen
tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little
while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s
will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast and brag.
All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to
do and doesn’t do it, sins.
Revelation 3:8 (KJV) -- And to the
angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is
holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth,
and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth; 8I know thy
works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut
it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not
denied my name.
Al-Khaliq: The Creator
"God has the power to will anything"
God is He who has created seven heavens,
and, like them, the many aspects of the earth.
Through all of them flows down from on high, unceasingly,
His creative will, so that you might come to know
that God has the power to will anything,
and that God encompasses all things with His knowledge.
At-Talaq 65:12-13, tr. Asad
Al-Mubdi: The Originator
Who is it that creates all life in the first instance, and then brings
it forth anew? And who is it that provides you with sustenance out of
heaven and earth? Could there be any divine power besides God?
An-Naml 27:64, tr. Asad
1 Corinthians 13:8-12 (NIV) -- Love never fails. But where there are
prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be
stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in
part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect
disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a
child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways
behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we
shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully,
even as I am fully known.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
An Angel I'll Sit Next to in the Orchestra in Heaven
Isaiah 52:7 (NIV) How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good
news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim
salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!"
Dear Readers:
Before I share with you something overwhelmingly precious to me, let me give a few simple philosophic notes of the sound of perfect truth that made the following message I was given last night to ring so purely and absolutely through my entire soul:
If "A" = "C"
And if "C" = "B"
Then "A" = "B"
What she told me, in essence, was this:
"The more comfortable with change you are, the more comfortable you are with God. Being comfortable with change is being comfortable with the unknown, and God is ultimately the most unknowable. We can not contained God within the limitations of our knowledge--we can only embrace God fully in awe of His Mysteries."
The life blood of the Spirit runs very think between me and the one who gave me this message. I cannot remember any single statement ever said to me from anyone before that has ever freed me more. I am speechless.
The curse of continuous doubt and disapproval pronounced upon me from so many others for so long because of my choice to live life in the flowing river of continuous change and possibility has been broken. Thousands of curses hanging over me like a cloud have been turned into blessing and bright warm rays of light in these few words. Words cannot describe the depth of my relief in receiving this message.
Muy amable dear Sister in Spirit.
Dear Readers:
Before I share with you something overwhelmingly precious to me, let me give a few simple philosophic notes of the sound of perfect truth that made the following message I was given last night to ring so purely and absolutely through my entire soul:
If "A" = "C"
And if "C" = "B"
Then "A" = "B"
What she told me, in essence, was this:
"The more comfortable with change you are, the more comfortable you are with God. Being comfortable with change is being comfortable with the unknown, and God is ultimately the most unknowable. We can not contained God within the limitations of our knowledge--we can only embrace God fully in awe of His Mysteries."
The life blood of the Spirit runs very think between me and the one who gave me this message. I cannot remember any single statement ever said to me from anyone before that has ever freed me more. I am speechless.
The curse of continuous doubt and disapproval pronounced upon me from so many others for so long because of my choice to live life in the flowing river of continuous change and possibility has been broken. Thousands of curses hanging over me like a cloud have been turned into blessing and bright warm rays of light in these few words. Words cannot describe the depth of my relief in receiving this message.
Muy amable dear Sister in Spirit.
Friday, May 4, 2012
The Costume Makes the Clown
Dear Readers:
Synthesis happens. This New York Times article copied below lights up my whole heart and mind and soul. You to might hear the connection to Shakira's song "Costume Makes the Clown" when you this. If you don't know that song, I've copied the lyrics for you below.
God bless Julia Bluhm: down with the clown costume makers! And yes, I do love my wife best when she looks like a real woman--made out of HUMAN truth, not synthetics, dyes, silicon, or Botox. Seriously. Lip stick grosses me out. Shakira is right. The costume makes the clown!
Even if you like costume parties though, give girls a break sometimes in what they are told their models of appropriate public appearance are and let them leave the party. What is society all about anyway, living in "hotel California?" "You can check out, but you can never leave?" What kind of suffocation is this? Let girls have an option for Mother Nature's sake!
There are so many symphonic reasons that come together and say, yes, yes, yes, this is so right. Don't you hear all those higher callings coming together on this? Please sign Julia's petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/seventeen-magazine-give-girls-images-of-real-girls
IT MATTERS!!!
Sky
"Costume Makes The Clown"
Told you I felt lucky with my humble breasts
Well I don't
Said that I was sure the world was gonna change
Well I'm not
Before I didn't give a damn 'bout what they say
But I do
Promised that I'll never ever lie to you
But look at how
I'm taking the make-up off my face
Before I forget my own features
I'm not here to let you down
But the costume makes the clown
It's just life's anatomy
Don't be so hard
Don't be so hard on this
Synthesis happens. This New York Times article copied below lights up my whole heart and mind and soul. You to might hear the connection to Shakira's song "Costume Makes the Clown" when you this. If you don't know that song, I've copied the lyrics for you below.
God bless Julia Bluhm: down with the clown costume makers! And yes, I do love my wife best when she looks like a real woman--made out of HUMAN truth, not synthetics, dyes, silicon, or Botox. Seriously. Lip stick grosses me out. Shakira is right. The costume makes the clown!
Even if you like costume parties though, give girls a break sometimes in what they are told their models of appropriate public appearance are and let them leave the party. What is society all about anyway, living in "hotel California?" "You can check out, but you can never leave?" What kind of suffocation is this? Let girls have an option for Mother Nature's sake!
There are so many symphonic reasons that come together and say, yes, yes, yes, this is so right. Don't you hear all those higher callings coming together on this? Please sign Julia's petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/seventeen-magazine-give-girls-images-of-real-girls
IT MATTERS!!!
Sky
"Costume Makes The Clown"
Told you I felt lucky with my humble breasts
Well I don't
Said that I was sure the world was gonna change
Well I'm not
Before I didn't give a damn 'bout what they say
But I do
Promised that I'll never ever lie to you
But look at how
I'm taking the make-up off my face
Before I forget my own features
I'm not here to let you down
But the costume makes the clown
It's just life's anatomy
Don't be so hard
Don't be so hard on this
A Real Girl, 14, Takes a Stand Against the Flawless Faces in Magazines
By JIM DWYER
In Julia Bluhm’s ballet class, girls arrived and often declared that
they were having a fat day. Or that their skin was pimply or blemished.
Or that they looked disgusting. When she hears complaints in her middle
school, where she is in the eighth grade, Julia said, she has one
answer: “Are you crazy?”
Then, she said, she came up with another answer, thumbing through one of her favorite magazines, Seventeen.
“I look at the pictures and they just don’t look like girls I see
walking down the street and stuff,” said Julia, who turned 14 last
month.
A blogger for the last year with Spark,
a project that fights the sexualization of girls, Julia had given the
subject some thought, and talked it over with the other bloggers. Then
she started an online petition drive through change.org asking Seventeen to “commit to printing one unaltered — real — photo spread per month.”
“We brought Seventeen magazine to lunch and showed it to a bunch of kids
to see if they agreed with the petition,” she said. “A lot of them
signed it.”
Boys too?
“Actually some boys signed it, too,” she said. “I think a lot of them
just signed it because they thought it was cool that I was getting so
many people to sign.”
No kidding. As of Thursday evening, the petition had been signed by
46,000 people. Julia and her mother, Mary Beiter, came to New York this
week from their home in Waterville, Me., for a demonstration organized
by Change.org and Spark outside the
offices of Seventeen in Midtown. There, Julia and five other girls posed
for a mock photo shoot, with no retouching. A crew from ABC’s
“Nightline” followed her for the day. And the editor in chief of
Seventeen, Ann Shoket, invited Julia and her mother to visit the office.
The people at Seventeen were, it should be said, feeling slightly
aggrieved that they had been singled out for picture-doctoring practices
that are common in virtually all glossy fashion magazines, and, for
that matter, on the Facebook accounts of millions of people who retouch
photographs before posting them. At some magazines, the practices are
far more extreme than at Seventeen, which, Ms. Shoket says, does not
alter the body shapes of the girls in its pages, contrary to a charge in
the petition.
An article in the May issue includes pictures of girls with melanoma
scars; a regular feature, “Body Peace,” has a picture of a girl who has
drawn a peace symbol on a body part that she had been troubled by.
“I think we do a phenomenal job of celebrating the authenticity of real
girls, of celebrating them for all of their real authentic beauty, of
skin tones, of ethnicity, of body shape and size,” Ms. Shoket said.
“These are young girls. They look great.”
On Thursday, as Julia and her mom headed toward the airport, she said
she appreciated that the magazine was doing things to include girls with
many body types. She also gave an unvarnished description of what she
sees in its pages.
“I look at the girls, and a lot of them, like, they don’t have freckles,
or moles, anywhere on their bodies,” she said. “You can’t, like, see
the pores in their face, they’re perfectly smooth. Their skin is shiny.
They don’t have any tan lines or cuts and bruises or anything like
that.”
These ordinary features of human flesh, she said, can be disguised with
makeup and lights. “At the same time, they can’t cover up everything,”
Julia said. That leaves only digital retouching.
Back to Ms. Shoket: So, does the magazine airbrush pictures of the girls in its pages?
“I don’t want to get into the specifics of what we do and don’t do,” Ms. Shoket said.
Julia said the unreal pictures of girls were trouble for boys, as well.
“It shows them unrealistic images of girls,” she said. “Also, a lot of
the boys in Seventeen magazine have, like, 12-packs, and that’s
definitely not very realistic either.”
Both sides said they had agreed to keep in touch, but no promises were
made about publishing an unretouched photo spread. “I gave her my
e-mail,” Julia said.
Ms. Shoket, reeling from a barrage of unpleasant publicity that she felt
did not reflect the reality of her magazine, said she admired Julia.
“What power she has to have an idea and to make her mark on the world,”
she said.
As Julia returned home to the eighth grade, she said that people from home had kept in touch.
“Facebook and the school are flipping out,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/nyregion/seventeen-magazine-faulted-by-girl-14-for-doctoring-photos.html?hp&pagewanted=print
Thursday, May 3, 2012
I AM documentary by Tom Shadyac: Favorite Quotes
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.” (American Scholar)
“Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world…and learn that truth alone makes rich and great.”
“Nothing will bring you peace but yourself. Nothing will bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” (Self-Reliance)
“Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string.” (Self-Reliance)
“Men…seek money or power…for they aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleepwalking, they dream is the highest. Wake them, and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true.” (Self-Reliance)
“While he sits on the cushion of advantage he falls asleep.” (Compensation)
“Great souls are they who see that spiritual is stronger than material force, that thoughts rule the world.”
“Colleges…can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create, when they…set the heart of their youth aflame.” (American Scholar)
“All of life instructs.”
“Those who shut the door to heaven on others don’t realize they are shutting the door to heaven on themselves.”
“Hardly the bravest amongst them have the manliness to resist it successfully.” (Emerson on Wealth)
“What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.” (Spiritual Laws)
“When the act of reflection takes place in the mind…we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms…even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory… The soul will not know deformity or pain. If, in the hours of clear reason, we should speak of the severest truth, we should say, that we had never made a sacrifice… No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might… For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.” (Spiritual Laws)
“There is less intention in history than we ascribe to it… Men of extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have always sung, ‘Not unto us, not unto us.” (Spiritual Laws)
“When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence.” (Over-soul)
“God will not make himself manifest to cowards.” (Over-soul)
“A little consideration of what takes place around us everyday would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple and spontaneous actions are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine…” (Spiritual Laws)
“It is the vice of our public speaking that it has not abandonment.” (Spiritual Laws)
“The man may teach by doing, and not otherwise. If he can communicate himself, he can teach, but not by words.” (Spiritual Laws)
“The object of the man…is to make daylight shine thought him, to suffer the law to traverse his whole being without obstruction, so that, on what point ‘soerver of his doing your eye falls, it shall report truly of his character, whether it be his diet, his house, his religious forms, his society, his vote, his opposition…” (Spiritual Laws)
“…Our life might be much easier and simpler than we make it…Why need you choose so painfully your place, and occupation…? Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.”
“Look in thy heart, and write.’ He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public.” (Spiritual Laws)
“Let the great soul incarnated in some woman’s form, poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service, and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent daybeams cannot be muffled or hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly appears supreme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of human life, and all people well get mops and brooms..!” (Spiritual Laws)Hafiz:
“When all your desires are distilled
You will cast just two votes
To love more
And be happy”
*
“I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being.”
*
“Why go to sleep each night,
Exhausted from the folly of ignorance.”
*
“I
Have
Learned
So much from God
That I can no longer
Call
Myself
A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim,
a Buddhist, a Jew.”
*
“The
great religions are the
ships,
poets the Life
Boats.
Every sane person I know has jumped
overboard.”
*
“Every child has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts…
But the God who only knows four words…
“Come dance with me.”"
*
“Even after all this time
The Sun has never told the Earth
“You owe me,”
look what happens
with a love like that,
it lights the whole sky.”
*
“Die before you die,Thomas Merton:
Then do whatever you want.
It’s all good.”
“Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.”
“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity, and love.”
“To hope is to risk frustration. Therefore, make up your mind to risk frustration.”
“Do not be one of those who, rather than risk failure, never attempts anything.”
“As if the sorrows and stupidities of the world could overwhelm me now that I realize what we all are. I wish everyone could realize this. But there is no way of telling people they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
“What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?”
“The humble man receives praise the way a clean window takes the light of the sun. The truer and more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass, and the more you see of the sun.”
“What is serious to men, is often very trivial in the eyes of God. What in God might appear to us as play, is perhaps what He Himself takes most seriously.”
“The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance, which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood whether we want it to or not…And the fact remains, we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the wind, and join in the general dance.”
“Finally, I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am…”
“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy…this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.”Mary Oliver:
“We do one thing or another, we stay the same or we change. Congratulations if you’ve changed.”
“We all have much more listening to do.”Rumi:
“What keeps us from joining the dance
The dust particles do?…”
*
“We should split the sack
Of this culture
And stick our heads out.”
*
“I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I’ve been knocking from the inside!”
*
“Because of this love for you
My bowl has fallen from the roof.
Put down a ladder and collect the pieces, please.”
*
“Hear what Sanai said:
Lose your life, if you seek eternity.”
*
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
“Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
“If you’ve opened to…love, you’re helping people you don’t know and have never seen.”Wendell Barry:
“When I hear the stock market has fallen, I say, Long live gravity!”
“Intellectual property names the deed by which the mind is bought and sold and the world enslaved.”
“Nor do I believe artistic genius is the possession of any artist.”
“Ceaseless preparation for war is not peace.”Henry David Thoreau:
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
“We make ourselves sick, that we may lay up something against a sick day.”
“What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can…”
“What everybody echoes as true today… may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow.”
“Age is no better qualified for an instructor than youth… for it has not profited so much as it has lost.”
“I am always regretting the fact that I am not as wise as the day I was born.”Gandhi:
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
“My life is my message.”
“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.”
“An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.”
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
“Live simply so that others may simply live.”Albert Einstein:
“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.” (1945)
“You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.”
“Try not to let school get in the way of your education.”Saint Francis of Assisi:
“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”
“Preach the gospel wherever you can and when all else fails, use words.”Walt Whitman:
“Whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral.”
“I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God no the least…”
“Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others…
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book;
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul;
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”
*
“Swiftly arose around me the peace and knowledgeMother Teresa:
that pass all the argument of the earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,
And that all men and women ever born are also my brothers…”
“The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis…it is the lack of love and charity; the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbor.”
“It is not how much we do, but how much love we put into what we do.”
“Intense love does not measure; it just gives.”
“I do not agree with the big way of doing things, to us what matters is the individuals, if we wait till we get the number then we will be lost in the numbers.”Kahlil Gibran:
“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.”
“Doubt is too lonely a pain to know that faith is his twin brother.”The Alchemist:
“Before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.’”
“Every search begins with beginners luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”
“His heart whispered: ‘Be aware of the place where you are brought to tears. That is where I am, and that is where your treasure is.’”
“Thy lot or proportion in life is seeking after thee, therefore be at rest from seeking after it.” (The Alchemist, The Kalif Ali)Mother Meera:
“When you know that you are eternal you can play your true role in time. When you know you are divine you can become completely human. When you know you are one with God you are free to become absolutely yourself …”
“One common mistake is to think that one reality is THE reality. You must always be prepared to leave one reality for a greater one.”
“In silence one can receive more because all one’s activities become concentrated at one point. There is only one real rhythm; in silence you hear it. When you live to the rhythm of this silence, you become it, slowly; everything you do, you do to it.”Abraham Lincoln:
“I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend.”
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.”Emily Dickinson:
“For Occupation – This – the spreading wide my narrow Hands to gather Paradise.”Martin Luther-King:
“Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve… You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”Buddha:
“If you want to know the past, look at your present life. If you want to know the future, look at your present.”Marianne Williamson:
“When we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”John-Michael:
“When we live our life contrary to the inner guidance of our Soul, our actions often have a disharmonious effect upon ourselves, others and the Earth. This is why the evolution of individual human consciousness is intimately linked with the future of this planet. In light of this, the crisis of all physical illness, emotional imbalance and planetary upheaval has but one ultimate purpose: to provide an opportunity that will motivate us to realign our body, mind and emotions with the infinite love, wisdom and healing of our Soul. Therefore, whenever we gather the courage to do whatever it takes to end the war within, we contribute directly and immediately to our own healing and transformation as well as to the peace that our world cries out for.”St. Augustine:
“Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others”A.L. Kitselman:
“The words ‘I am…’ are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you’re claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you.”Goethe:
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”Galileo:
“The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the Universe to do.”Talmud:
“We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”Albert Schweitzer:
“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”Vanderleeuw:
“When we have seen Reality, there is not a grain of dust which has not a sublime meaning.”Edgar Cayce:
“Don’t feel sorry for yourself if you have chosen the wrong road – turn around!”Thomas A’Kempis:
“Study to overcome that in yourself which disturbs you most in others.”Jesus
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
“Do not store up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but store up treasure in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
“What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul.”
“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
“The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; nor will they say unto you, ‘Lo here, or lo there!’ For the kingdom of heaven is within you.”
“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
“Consider the birds of the air, they do not sew or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them. Look at the lilies of the field; surely Solomon in all of his splendor was not arrayed like one of these… So if God so clothes the grass of the field… how much more will he care for you…? Therefore, do not choose to be anxious, saying: ‘What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and what shall we wear?’ Your Heavenly Father knows that you need these things. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow; for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.”
“Unless you become like these little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
“Do not judge, that you may not be judged.”
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who endure persecution for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
“If you bring forth that which is within you, that which within you will save you. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will destroy you.” (Gospel of Thomas)
“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me…Truly, I say to you, that which you did for the least of my brothers, you did unto me.”
“Whoever would be great amongst you must be your servant, and whoever would be first amongst you, must be last.”
“Whoever will save his life will lose it, and whoever will lose his life…will save it.”
“Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own?”
“You can not serve two masters, for either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can not serve God and money.”Napoleon Bonaparte
“Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.”Thomas Carlyle
“A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.”
“Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.”
“A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for with out kindness, there can be no true joy.”
What's Really Happening in Tunisia?
Dear Readers:
After reading the front page Washington Post story from Sunday, April 29th, 2012, I don't believe the crisis in Tunisia is really about religious conservatives. I believe it is really all about jobs and resources. This seems clear to me as I listen to this story through interpretive paradigms that I derive from a combination of Peter Turchin's book "War and Peace and War" (about people in a society splitting up into competing groups) and Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" (about what happens when societies face dwindling resources and increasing population). Unless the population decreases or the resources increase in Tunisia to give more people jobs and a life that meets their needs, I am afraid the situation in Tunisia and across the entire world of the Arab Spring will get much worse, not better.
If you'd like to take a glace at Peter Turchin's book you can "look inside it" on Amazon at this link: http://www.amazon.com/War-Peace-Cycles-Imperial-Nations/dp/0131499963
The Washington Post article is found here as well as being copied below: http://www.nola.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/in-tunisia-after-arab-spring-islamists-new-freedoms-create-muslim-divide-tunis/c2ce3e9adfdeec4fae20526f69cfa4b6
In Tunisia After Arab Spring, Islamists' New Freedoms Create Muslim Divide (Tunis)
April 28, 2012, 6:13 p.m. CDT
The Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News
(c) 2012, The Washington Post.
TUNIS, Tunisia — Upstairs, Ibrahim Amara and his friends gather around the computer to watch YouTube preachers offering a vision of Islam that rejects democracy and elections. "Democracy's freedom is absolute," Ibrahim says, "and we don't accept that. In our religion, freedom is limited to the freedom God gives you."
Downstairs, Ibrahim's father, Saleh Amara, explodes in frustration over his son's new, post-revolutionary passion. Saleh and his wife have gone along with some of their 27-year-old's new restrictions — okay, they'd stop watching soap operas and "Oprah" on TV, because there was too much sexual content — but Saleh says his son goes too far. Growing the long beard of the pious is fine, though it will probably limit his job opportunities. And if Ibrahim insists that his secular-raised, college-educated wife cover her hair and wear gloves, well, that's his business. But how can he spurn free elections, the sweetest fruit of Tunisia's revolution?
One year after the uprising that sent autocratic leader Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali packing to exile in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia stands divided between two visions of its future. Last year's street clashes in this sun-spangled city by the sea have morphed into a different kind of battle — more intimate confrontations in which many families struggle with essential questions of identity.
Secular parents, surprised to find their daughter covering her hair in public, worry they are losing their child to extremism. Moderately religious families argue over a son's decision to grow a beard and demonstrate against aspects of Tunisian life they have always taken for granted: beer and wine, bikinis on the beach, Hollywood movies on TV. In workplaces, kitchens and sidewalk tearooms, one question dominates: Can and should Tunisia's blend of Western and Islamic values and practices be maintained under the North African country's new freedom, or has that freedom unleashed a religious extremism that threatens to push this land of 10 million people toward a new kind of dictatorship?
Sixteen months after a humiliated Tunisian fruit vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi poured paint thinner on himself, lighted a match and sparked a wave of revolutions across the Arab world, the birthplace of the Arab Spring is in many ways better off than the other countries where rulers were toppled. Tourists are starting to return to Tunisia's Mediterranean beaches, there is relative peace on the streets, and fair elections were held, bringing to power a coalition of Islamist and secular parties led by Ennahda, an Islamist movement that asserts its moderation at every turn — even as many secular families don't believe a word of it.
But Tunisians are anything but flourishing. Jobs remain scarce, and the sense of hopelessness that led to the uprising is little abated. Hardly a day goes by without some new confrontation between Islamists and secular Tunisians.
In a country that is nearly 100 percent Muslim, a growing rift over religion threatens — in the view of the secular president of the new parliament — to throw Tunisia into "chaos."
"For 30 years, we had no freedom or democracy," says Mustapha Ben Jafar, who presides over the country's Constituent Assembly in a baroque, mirrored office from which the Ottoman Empire once ruled Tunisia. "Now, our situation is so fragile and sensitive because we are caught between two forces — one that wants progress and one that wants to go back in time."
Ben Jafar — who won his position when Ennahda sought to show it would share power with secular parties — argues that "freedom always has its costs. Before the revolution, these extreme movements existed but they were forced underground. Now everything is in the open, and thank God for that."
But followers of an austere version of Islam known as Salafism, including Ibrahim Amara, are not satisfied merely to exercise their new right to demonstrate. "We must adopt sharia law," making the Koran the law of the land, Ibrahim tells his family in their stucco house in the working-class suburb of Le Kram. If the state "tries to silence us, we will use any means — violence, too."
Ibrahim's older brother, Ahmed, who is 29 and sports a fashionable goatee, shudders at his brother's anger. "Ibrahim used to be normal — go to clubs, go to parties, not just pray all the time," he says. "I'm more open. I still think we can have that balance, to be both Western and Islamic."
Why Ibrahim, an educated young man from a middle-class family, turned to Salafism is not clear to his family. What they do know is that, like many well-educated young Tunisians who have had trouble finding work in recent years, Ibrahim found structure and purpose in a movement that paints the rest of society as hedonistic and directionless.
Ahmed gets exasperated just looking at his brother's scowl as he stares at the floor during arguments with their father, who calls himself a "normal, moderate Muslim." "People like Ibrahim — they're just so . . . I don't know. They close themselves off," Ahmed says. "I mean, Ibrahim doesn't even have any photos from his wedding. He wouldn't allow any pictures. He said it was against Islam."
Two neighborhoods away from the Amaras' place, amid driveways full of Mercedes-Benzes and Audis and a block from the Mediterranean beach where French tourists sunbathe in bikinis, the Ayed family gathers with relatives and friends for Sunday brunch. The chatter flits seamlessly from French to Arabic to English.
The Ayeds — Adnen Ayed spent years in various world capitals as a top executive for Sony, and his wife, Houda Cherif, is a former teacher who co-founded one of Tunisia's secular political parties — came home from Japan a year before the revolution. Then, in January 2011, on what Cherif calls "the dream day," she and Ayed joined the huge crowd downtown, got chased by security police and celebrated with strangers at news of Ben Ali's flight.
Ayed got a face full of tear gas and Cherif lost her car keys, but their joy at the prospect of life after dictatorship overwhelmed any inconvenience. Within a few months, however, that thrill began to yield to worry over growing division. "We are all Muslims, but we were starting to separate into one kind of Muslim and another," recalls Cherif, 42.
In the campaign leading to October's elections and in the months since, small but violent demonstrations by Salafists have frightened many Tunisians.
Islamist preachers calling for sharia law, a return to polygamy and a reduced role for women do not represent a majority but are making headway, some secular Tunisians worry. At brunch, over spicy tuna salad and brik — Tunisia's fried phyllo snack — served on Royal Albert china, Cherif tells of a well-educated friend whose mother chastised him for voting for a secular party. "You voted against Allah," the mother said.
"How do you fight against that?" Cherif asks. "How do you educate people about our mild Tunisian brand of Islam when Islamist parties are telling voters that their path is the only one to paradise?"
In downtown Tunis, on the grand Avenue Bourguiba, a thousand well-dressed people appear one afternoon and plop down on the sidewalk, against tree trunks, on the steps of the National Theatre, each person intently reading a book.
It's a read-in, organized by secular parties to warn against the ignorance they believe leads to religious extremism. Cherif takes her place on the theater steps, reading a sociology book about rampant egoism. Around her, professors, students, physicians and engineers read Camus, Balzac, Beckett and other classics — almost all in French.
A professor of French literature, Maatallah Gleya, looks up. "See, everyone is reading a different book," she says. "If you went to a Salafist demonstration, everyone would be reading the same book."
Ali Gaidi, a college student who happens by the read-in, gets the point. "They're saying we shouldn't just read Koran," he says. "But the extremists these people are so afraid of won't pay attention to this. All they would see is elitists reading French."
What secularists don't realize, Gaidi says, is that "even people who wear the veil read books. These people are so afraid of the extremists that they don't see we are all Tunisians. We will stay moderate, as we have always been."
Cherif and her friends wish they could share that confidence. In some ways, the country is embracing a Western openness. In the ancient Roman city of Carthage, Tunisian designers this month staged a Fashion Week show with thumping house music, daring displays of skin and designs that poked fun at the hijab, the head scarf that some religious women wear.
In other ways, hard-line Islamist values are spreading. A mother at brunch tells of girls at her daughter's school who informed a secular classmate they would no longer speak to her, because she did not wear the hijab.
After the revolution, elite lawyers, academics and businesspeople scrambled to form political parties — 110 of them, including Afek Tounes (Tunisian Aspiration), which Cherif and friends created to focus on defending civil liberties.
"The secular message was aimed at the elite," says Cherif, a slim, elegant woman who drives a big sport-utility vehicle, a rare sight in Tunis. "We targeted the brain, and the Islamists went for the heart. They talked about honesty, faith and justice — and jobs. We were completely wrong." Her party won only four of 218 seats in the parliament.
Ennahda, which won a plurality of seats, put hundreds of volunteers to work writing pro-Islamist, anti-secular comments on Tunisians' Facebook pages. Ennahda portrayed the secular elite as dominated by intellectuals who had spent too much time outside Tunisia or as affluent capitalists who had remained silent under Ben Ali and were complicit in his reign.
Now, with what some secular Tunisians call "the beards" on the rise, some in the new government worry that Tunisian democracy could prove brittle. "The people are losing patience, waiting for jobs," says Yadh Ben Achour, who ran the country's constitutional commission. "The risk is that protests could lead to chaos, which could take us right back to dictatorship."
But if the ruling coalition cracks down on extremists, he says, it can buy time to rebuild the economy. "Radicals in Tunisia don't have deep social roots like in Egypt," he says. "The average Tunisian already has democracy in their heads."
Cherif beams as her 16-year-old daughter tells of an Islamist man who stood outside her high school, a French private academy, and told students not to drink Coca-Cola, because it's American and against Islam. The kids laughed at the man until he went away.
It was in high school, in 1979, that Samir Layouni started to pray. His parents were not religious; like most Tunisian women, his mother eschewed the hijab. But Layouni found peace and fulfillment — and a sense of rebellion — in the open expression of faith that Tunisia's government declared dangerous, even seditious.
Prayer, Samir says, "helps you disconnect from the material world," and when he stands up from five minutes of afternoon prayer with his wife and two daughters, he seems lighter in manner and step than when he began.
For most of his life, Samir, 50, lived in three worlds — in the mosque, where regular attendance brought regular encounters with the security police; in secular Tunisia, where his customers and colleagues often took overt signs of devotion as evidence of extremism; and in the underground cells of Ennahda, where Samir as a college student joined other Muslim men who were organizing for political revolution and religious awakening.
It's all in the open now: His political work. Wife Hela's decision to wear the head scarf again, after 12 years of going uncovered so she would not be harassed by Ben Ali's security forces. Their regular visits to the mosque in their village of Sidi Bou Said, known for its artists colony and spectacular views of the sea.
Still, when fellow Tunisians learn of his Ennahda background, they often seem frightened of him, he says. People like Houda Cherif see Ennahda supporters as stalking horses for extremist clerics preaching intolerance. People like Ibrahim Amara view Samir and his comrades as sellouts, suspiciously clean-shaven captives of the West.
Samir has no beard — just a trim mustache. He says those who insist on a narrow version of Islam will fall by the wayside as Tunisia matures.
As for secularists, "our challenge," Samir says, "is to show we are not what they think. We do not want to oppress women or make them stay at home or let people have four wives."
Like Samir, Hela grew up in a secular home; she didn't even pray regularly. Her parents, suspicious of Samir's activism, asked: Why would you want to marry a zealot? Especially one who is in prison, which is where Samir was sent after he joined the banned Ennahda party.
But Hela fell in love with Samir and his life of prayer. She remains the only veiled woman in her family.
Samir escaped from custody and spent four years underground, moving from one hideaway to another, missing his son's early childhood. Later, after turning himself in, he was regularly summoned by police interrogators who beat and tortured him, he says.
When Samir set up a cheese factory, he says, he refused entreaties to bribe regime officials. He figured they could not do anything to him that he had not already survived. That same reasoning led him last year to defy his mother and join the anti-government demonstration, despite her fear of violence.
The revolution turned out to be mainly peaceful because "Tunisia's different," Samir says. "The secular opposition and our party spent years in prison together. We're not out to change each other. This is not an Islamic country — it's a Tunisian country."
One wall of the Layounis' living room is covered with souvenir plates from places Samir has visited — from Istanbul to Venice to London. In an ornate, Ottoman-style room of deep red brocade, tasseled tablecloths and prayer rugs, the plates stand out as a sign of worldliness. As a businessman who sells his Gouda, Edam and pate to all, he moves easily among Tunisia's different factions. But some in his party live more isolated lives, a separation many secular Tunisians find alienating.
Bridging that divide is the task facing Rachid Ghannouchi, Ennahda's 70-year-old spiritual leader, who spent more than two decades in exile in London after his party was banned. Now, from his spacious office atop Ennahda's headquarters, he contends the party is more moderate than secularists or hard-liners believe.
"When you want people to come together, you have to be in the center," he says.
Ghannouchi has steered Ennahda in a different direction from Muslim Brotherhood-related groups in Egypt and elsewhere in the region.
He made a show of meeting with Jewish leaders after an extremist cleric called for the murder of Tunisian Jews. He says he supported excluding Islamic law from Tunisia's constitution because "we want to bring the hoo-ha over sharia to an end and get on to the most pressing problem — unemployment."
Ghannouchi sees extremism on either side of him. In a rumble so soft as to be barely audible, he talks of "inheriting an extremist secularism where the hijab was banned. In Tunisia, we need time to get used to the idea that the citizen is free to choose his own way of life."
He says he wants Tunisia to become "a model of compatibility between democracy and Islam — the Switzerland of the Arab world."
That Tunisia is a long way off, Samir knows. But he and Hela are emerging from a life led behind closed doors. She goes to the mosque now without worrying that someone will call her a terrorist. He goes to party meetings without taking circuitous routes.
"For the first time after 50 years, I am free," Samir says. "I can breathe."
One suburb up the coast, Cherif feels her freedom slipping away. She wants her children to grow up in her homeland, where her grandfather fought against French colonizers. Now the opponents are religious extremists. "We must stay and fight," she says.
And one village in the other direction from Samir's house, Ibrahim Amara works on converting his family, and then his country. "Every Muslim will reach our phase and be like us," he says. "Our duty is to convert others, and if they don't let us express ourselves, we will have to fight."
bc-tunisia (TPN)
After reading the front page Washington Post story from Sunday, April 29th, 2012, I don't believe the crisis in Tunisia is really about religious conservatives. I believe it is really all about jobs and resources. This seems clear to me as I listen to this story through interpretive paradigms that I derive from a combination of Peter Turchin's book "War and Peace and War" (about people in a society splitting up into competing groups) and Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" (about what happens when societies face dwindling resources and increasing population). Unless the population decreases or the resources increase in Tunisia to give more people jobs and a life that meets their needs, I am afraid the situation in Tunisia and across the entire world of the Arab Spring will get much worse, not better.
If you'd like to take a glace at Peter Turchin's book you can "look inside it" on Amazon at this link: http://www.amazon.com/War-Peace-Cycles-Imperial-Nations/dp/0131499963
The Washington Post article is found here as well as being copied below: http://www.nola.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/in-tunisia-after-arab-spring-islamists-new-freedoms-create-muslim-divide-tunis/c2ce3e9adfdeec4fae20526f69cfa4b6
In Tunisia After Arab Spring, Islamists' New Freedoms Create Muslim Divide (Tunis)
April 28, 2012, 6:13 p.m. CDT
The Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News
(c) 2012, The Washington Post.
TUNIS, Tunisia — Upstairs, Ibrahim Amara and his friends gather around the computer to watch YouTube preachers offering a vision of Islam that rejects democracy and elections. "Democracy's freedom is absolute," Ibrahim says, "and we don't accept that. In our religion, freedom is limited to the freedom God gives you."
Downstairs, Ibrahim's father, Saleh Amara, explodes in frustration over his son's new, post-revolutionary passion. Saleh and his wife have gone along with some of their 27-year-old's new restrictions — okay, they'd stop watching soap operas and "Oprah" on TV, because there was too much sexual content — but Saleh says his son goes too far. Growing the long beard of the pious is fine, though it will probably limit his job opportunities. And if Ibrahim insists that his secular-raised, college-educated wife cover her hair and wear gloves, well, that's his business. But how can he spurn free elections, the sweetest fruit of Tunisia's revolution?
One year after the uprising that sent autocratic leader Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali packing to exile in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia stands divided between two visions of its future. Last year's street clashes in this sun-spangled city by the sea have morphed into a different kind of battle — more intimate confrontations in which many families struggle with essential questions of identity.
Secular parents, surprised to find their daughter covering her hair in public, worry they are losing their child to extremism. Moderately religious families argue over a son's decision to grow a beard and demonstrate against aspects of Tunisian life they have always taken for granted: beer and wine, bikinis on the beach, Hollywood movies on TV. In workplaces, kitchens and sidewalk tearooms, one question dominates: Can and should Tunisia's blend of Western and Islamic values and practices be maintained under the North African country's new freedom, or has that freedom unleashed a religious extremism that threatens to push this land of 10 million people toward a new kind of dictatorship?
Sixteen months after a humiliated Tunisian fruit vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi poured paint thinner on himself, lighted a match and sparked a wave of revolutions across the Arab world, the birthplace of the Arab Spring is in many ways better off than the other countries where rulers were toppled. Tourists are starting to return to Tunisia's Mediterranean beaches, there is relative peace on the streets, and fair elections were held, bringing to power a coalition of Islamist and secular parties led by Ennahda, an Islamist movement that asserts its moderation at every turn — even as many secular families don't believe a word of it.
But Tunisians are anything but flourishing. Jobs remain scarce, and the sense of hopelessness that led to the uprising is little abated. Hardly a day goes by without some new confrontation between Islamists and secular Tunisians.
In a country that is nearly 100 percent Muslim, a growing rift over religion threatens — in the view of the secular president of the new parliament — to throw Tunisia into "chaos."
"For 30 years, we had no freedom or democracy," says Mustapha Ben Jafar, who presides over the country's Constituent Assembly in a baroque, mirrored office from which the Ottoman Empire once ruled Tunisia. "Now, our situation is so fragile and sensitive because we are caught between two forces — one that wants progress and one that wants to go back in time."
Ben Jafar — who won his position when Ennahda sought to show it would share power with secular parties — argues that "freedom always has its costs. Before the revolution, these extreme movements existed but they were forced underground. Now everything is in the open, and thank God for that."
But followers of an austere version of Islam known as Salafism, including Ibrahim Amara, are not satisfied merely to exercise their new right to demonstrate. "We must adopt sharia law," making the Koran the law of the land, Ibrahim tells his family in their stucco house in the working-class suburb of Le Kram. If the state "tries to silence us, we will use any means — violence, too."
Ibrahim's older brother, Ahmed, who is 29 and sports a fashionable goatee, shudders at his brother's anger. "Ibrahim used to be normal — go to clubs, go to parties, not just pray all the time," he says. "I'm more open. I still think we can have that balance, to be both Western and Islamic."
Why Ibrahim, an educated young man from a middle-class family, turned to Salafism is not clear to his family. What they do know is that, like many well-educated young Tunisians who have had trouble finding work in recent years, Ibrahim found structure and purpose in a movement that paints the rest of society as hedonistic and directionless.
Ahmed gets exasperated just looking at his brother's scowl as he stares at the floor during arguments with their father, who calls himself a "normal, moderate Muslim." "People like Ibrahim — they're just so . . . I don't know. They close themselves off," Ahmed says. "I mean, Ibrahim doesn't even have any photos from his wedding. He wouldn't allow any pictures. He said it was against Islam."
Two neighborhoods away from the Amaras' place, amid driveways full of Mercedes-Benzes and Audis and a block from the Mediterranean beach where French tourists sunbathe in bikinis, the Ayed family gathers with relatives and friends for Sunday brunch. The chatter flits seamlessly from French to Arabic to English.
The Ayeds — Adnen Ayed spent years in various world capitals as a top executive for Sony, and his wife, Houda Cherif, is a former teacher who co-founded one of Tunisia's secular political parties — came home from Japan a year before the revolution. Then, in January 2011, on what Cherif calls "the dream day," she and Ayed joined the huge crowd downtown, got chased by security police and celebrated with strangers at news of Ben Ali's flight.
Ayed got a face full of tear gas and Cherif lost her car keys, but their joy at the prospect of life after dictatorship overwhelmed any inconvenience. Within a few months, however, that thrill began to yield to worry over growing division. "We are all Muslims, but we were starting to separate into one kind of Muslim and another," recalls Cherif, 42.
In the campaign leading to October's elections and in the months since, small but violent demonstrations by Salafists have frightened many Tunisians.
Islamist preachers calling for sharia law, a return to polygamy and a reduced role for women do not represent a majority but are making headway, some secular Tunisians worry. At brunch, over spicy tuna salad and brik — Tunisia's fried phyllo snack — served on Royal Albert china, Cherif tells of a well-educated friend whose mother chastised him for voting for a secular party. "You voted against Allah," the mother said.
"How do you fight against that?" Cherif asks. "How do you educate people about our mild Tunisian brand of Islam when Islamist parties are telling voters that their path is the only one to paradise?"
In downtown Tunis, on the grand Avenue Bourguiba, a thousand well-dressed people appear one afternoon and plop down on the sidewalk, against tree trunks, on the steps of the National Theatre, each person intently reading a book.
It's a read-in, organized by secular parties to warn against the ignorance they believe leads to religious extremism. Cherif takes her place on the theater steps, reading a sociology book about rampant egoism. Around her, professors, students, physicians and engineers read Camus, Balzac, Beckett and other classics — almost all in French.
A professor of French literature, Maatallah Gleya, looks up. "See, everyone is reading a different book," she says. "If you went to a Salafist demonstration, everyone would be reading the same book."
Ali Gaidi, a college student who happens by the read-in, gets the point. "They're saying we shouldn't just read Koran," he says. "But the extremists these people are so afraid of won't pay attention to this. All they would see is elitists reading French."
What secularists don't realize, Gaidi says, is that "even people who wear the veil read books. These people are so afraid of the extremists that they don't see we are all Tunisians. We will stay moderate, as we have always been."
Cherif and her friends wish they could share that confidence. In some ways, the country is embracing a Western openness. In the ancient Roman city of Carthage, Tunisian designers this month staged a Fashion Week show with thumping house music, daring displays of skin and designs that poked fun at the hijab, the head scarf that some religious women wear.
In other ways, hard-line Islamist values are spreading. A mother at brunch tells of girls at her daughter's school who informed a secular classmate they would no longer speak to her, because she did not wear the hijab.
After the revolution, elite lawyers, academics and businesspeople scrambled to form political parties — 110 of them, including Afek Tounes (Tunisian Aspiration), which Cherif and friends created to focus on defending civil liberties.
"The secular message was aimed at the elite," says Cherif, a slim, elegant woman who drives a big sport-utility vehicle, a rare sight in Tunis. "We targeted the brain, and the Islamists went for the heart. They talked about honesty, faith and justice — and jobs. We were completely wrong." Her party won only four of 218 seats in the parliament.
Ennahda, which won a plurality of seats, put hundreds of volunteers to work writing pro-Islamist, anti-secular comments on Tunisians' Facebook pages. Ennahda portrayed the secular elite as dominated by intellectuals who had spent too much time outside Tunisia or as affluent capitalists who had remained silent under Ben Ali and were complicit in his reign.
Now, with what some secular Tunisians call "the beards" on the rise, some in the new government worry that Tunisian democracy could prove brittle. "The people are losing patience, waiting for jobs," says Yadh Ben Achour, who ran the country's constitutional commission. "The risk is that protests could lead to chaos, which could take us right back to dictatorship."
But if the ruling coalition cracks down on extremists, he says, it can buy time to rebuild the economy. "Radicals in Tunisia don't have deep social roots like in Egypt," he says. "The average Tunisian already has democracy in their heads."
Cherif beams as her 16-year-old daughter tells of an Islamist man who stood outside her high school, a French private academy, and told students not to drink Coca-Cola, because it's American and against Islam. The kids laughed at the man until he went away.
It was in high school, in 1979, that Samir Layouni started to pray. His parents were not religious; like most Tunisian women, his mother eschewed the hijab. But Layouni found peace and fulfillment — and a sense of rebellion — in the open expression of faith that Tunisia's government declared dangerous, even seditious.
Prayer, Samir says, "helps you disconnect from the material world," and when he stands up from five minutes of afternoon prayer with his wife and two daughters, he seems lighter in manner and step than when he began.
For most of his life, Samir, 50, lived in three worlds — in the mosque, where regular attendance brought regular encounters with the security police; in secular Tunisia, where his customers and colleagues often took overt signs of devotion as evidence of extremism; and in the underground cells of Ennahda, where Samir as a college student joined other Muslim men who were organizing for political revolution and religious awakening.
It's all in the open now: His political work. Wife Hela's decision to wear the head scarf again, after 12 years of going uncovered so she would not be harassed by Ben Ali's security forces. Their regular visits to the mosque in their village of Sidi Bou Said, known for its artists colony and spectacular views of the sea.
Still, when fellow Tunisians learn of his Ennahda background, they often seem frightened of him, he says. People like Houda Cherif see Ennahda supporters as stalking horses for extremist clerics preaching intolerance. People like Ibrahim Amara view Samir and his comrades as sellouts, suspiciously clean-shaven captives of the West.
Samir has no beard — just a trim mustache. He says those who insist on a narrow version of Islam will fall by the wayside as Tunisia matures.
As for secularists, "our challenge," Samir says, "is to show we are not what they think. We do not want to oppress women or make them stay at home or let people have four wives."
Like Samir, Hela grew up in a secular home; she didn't even pray regularly. Her parents, suspicious of Samir's activism, asked: Why would you want to marry a zealot? Especially one who is in prison, which is where Samir was sent after he joined the banned Ennahda party.
But Hela fell in love with Samir and his life of prayer. She remains the only veiled woman in her family.
Samir escaped from custody and spent four years underground, moving from one hideaway to another, missing his son's early childhood. Later, after turning himself in, he was regularly summoned by police interrogators who beat and tortured him, he says.
When Samir set up a cheese factory, he says, he refused entreaties to bribe regime officials. He figured they could not do anything to him that he had not already survived. That same reasoning led him last year to defy his mother and join the anti-government demonstration, despite her fear of violence.
The revolution turned out to be mainly peaceful because "Tunisia's different," Samir says. "The secular opposition and our party spent years in prison together. We're not out to change each other. This is not an Islamic country — it's a Tunisian country."
One wall of the Layounis' living room is covered with souvenir plates from places Samir has visited — from Istanbul to Venice to London. In an ornate, Ottoman-style room of deep red brocade, tasseled tablecloths and prayer rugs, the plates stand out as a sign of worldliness. As a businessman who sells his Gouda, Edam and pate to all, he moves easily among Tunisia's different factions. But some in his party live more isolated lives, a separation many secular Tunisians find alienating.
Bridging that divide is the task facing Rachid Ghannouchi, Ennahda's 70-year-old spiritual leader, who spent more than two decades in exile in London after his party was banned. Now, from his spacious office atop Ennahda's headquarters, he contends the party is more moderate than secularists or hard-liners believe.
"When you want people to come together, you have to be in the center," he says.
Ghannouchi has steered Ennahda in a different direction from Muslim Brotherhood-related groups in Egypt and elsewhere in the region.
He made a show of meeting with Jewish leaders after an extremist cleric called for the murder of Tunisian Jews. He says he supported excluding Islamic law from Tunisia's constitution because "we want to bring the hoo-ha over sharia to an end and get on to the most pressing problem — unemployment."
Ghannouchi sees extremism on either side of him. In a rumble so soft as to be barely audible, he talks of "inheriting an extremist secularism where the hijab was banned. In Tunisia, we need time to get used to the idea that the citizen is free to choose his own way of life."
He says he wants Tunisia to become "a model of compatibility between democracy and Islam — the Switzerland of the Arab world."
That Tunisia is a long way off, Samir knows. But he and Hela are emerging from a life led behind closed doors. She goes to the mosque now without worrying that someone will call her a terrorist. He goes to party meetings without taking circuitous routes.
"For the first time after 50 years, I am free," Samir says. "I can breathe."
One suburb up the coast, Cherif feels her freedom slipping away. She wants her children to grow up in her homeland, where her grandfather fought against French colonizers. Now the opponents are religious extremists. "We must stay and fight," she says.
And one village in the other direction from Samir's house, Ibrahim Amara works on converting his family, and then his country. "Every Muslim will reach our phase and be like us," he says. "Our duty is to convert others, and if they don't let us express ourselves, we will have to fight."
bc-tunisia (TPN)
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Cognitive Dissonance is an Existential Crisis
Dear Readers:
I posit that the growing sense of looming disaster in the world understood as a direct consequence of the wholesale irresponsibility of our competitive self-interest seeking model of civilization -- I posit that this sense of rightly deserved looming punishment for our collective misbehavior is spawning an ever expanding variety of both psychological disorders and learning disabilities. The soul is compelled to self-sabotage. Why keep the train running at full speed when you see it heading headlong into the rock wall of a mountain and a colossal train wreck?
The fundamental schizophrenic break into two opposing cognitions is therefor this: to be successful is unsuccessful. We know that the world values our individual economic success and that we will be rewarded for our competitive intellectual, academic, social, and emotional brilliance. So we say to ourselves, "the world values my success within it's systems, therefor I must be successful." However, at the same time, we have developed an ever growing collective sense that the success of our system is like the success of cancer: our system will eventually destroy the environment on which is depends so that life as we know it "in the system" cannot continue. Therefor, the more successful we all are "in the system" the sooner we will bring TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) down on our own heads.
The onslaught of daily reminders is relentless in telling us that in doing the right things to be successful in our lives we are actually doing the wrong things to remain successful. Here is a case in point from the front page of today's New York Times:
"By midcentury, the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is
expected to double compared with the value that prevailed before the
Industrial Revolution. At the low end, computers predict that the earth
could warm in response by another 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The likelier
figure, the analyses say, is 4 degrees. At the high end of projections,
the warming could exceed 8 degrees. In all possible outcomes, the
warming over land would be roughly twice the global average, and the
warming in the Arctic greater still."
"Even in the low projection, many scientists say, the damage could be
substantial. In the high projection, some polar regions could heat up by
20 or 25 degrees Fahrenheit — more than enough, over centuries or
longer, to melt the Greenland ice sheet, raising sea level by a
catastrophic 20 feet or more. Vast changes in rainfall, heat waves and
other weather patterns would most likely accompany such a large warming."
“The big damages come if the climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases turns out to be high,” said Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, a climate scientist at the University of Chicago. “Then it’s not a bullet headed at us, but a thermonuclear warhead.”
see link for full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/science/earth/clouds-effect-on-climate-change-is-last-bastion-for-dissenters.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp&pagewanted=print
So, got anxiety disorders? Got sleep disorders? Got motivational problems in school? Got procrastination problems? Got undefinable depression issues? Got learning disabilities? Do you find that certain CALP functions (cognitive academic linguistic proficiency) don't work properly? Why is it getting so much harder for lots of people to think logically in math? Why is it getting so much harder for others to process written language or to even speak properly? Could it have anything to do with side effects from a MASSIVE UNIVERSAL LIFE-ALTERING STRESSOR? Could it be that the cognitive dissonance of success being unsuccessful at the core of our entire civilization is creating an internal drag of core existential crisis in all of us? What do we know about existential crisis?
From Wikipedia:
"There is no one given therapeutic method in modern psychology known to coerce a person out of existential despair; the issue is seldom, if at all, addressed from a medical standpoint."
From Richard K. James, Crisis intervention strategies
"An existential crisis is a stage of development at which an
individual questions the very foundations of his or her life: whether
his or her life has any meaning, purpose or value."
All of this distills for me into a single simple Proverb. I paraphrase it as this: "The people perish for lack of vision." (Proverbs 29:18) I am not, however, interested in perishing for lack of vision. I've got vision. I've a dream of a new future. I've got a dream of paradise post-apocalypse. I've got my religion. And I'd argue, that we all need to find our religion, our inner light that can guide us yeah, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, so that we will not have to fear any evil. If you've got the right religion for you, you know how you, and your children, and your children's children can make it through all of this into a world of green pastures by still waters. Do you have your religion? Do you have your vision? If you don't, get one. That, more than anything, is what you need in order to be successful.
Be blessed,
Sky Thoth
Monday, April 30, 2012
Stay at Home Dad
At breakfast this morning Grandma challenged me to explain to her how I was going to accomplish my goals as usual. I had told her that in Harrisonburg their were all kinds of linguistically diverse communities that I could engage with to help my daughter grow up speaking many languages--possibly 7 total with the new people I met this weekend raising their children to speak German and Persian in addition to English.
"How are you going to do that while you are in a Ph.D. program?" Grandma challenged. "You don't have either the time nor the money," she asserted.
As usual, I refused to be pinned down with serial thinking. "There is so much you can do with symphonic thinking--you don't always need time or money." "For example," I explained, "what if I started a co-op with 7 like minded families who have children my daughter's age who all bring different linguistic resources to the table?" "I could take all the children one day a week to play with them and teach them Spanish or English while each of the other parents did the same one of each of the other days of the week." "So there is at least one example of how I can raise my daughter the successful polyglot I want to raise her as without a lot of time or money!"
I never had that thought before this morning, but I am incredibly pleased with the idea now that Grandma forced me to spit in out to defend the feasibility of my ambitions. Moreover, to add to the thrill of this idea, I stumbled across a magical coincidence just now reading the news. In the corner of a completely unrelated CNN article on the new construction milestones at the World Trade Center site, I encountered a link to another article about stay at home dad's in America. And this is the shocking and immensely pleasing statistic I encountered:
"Among fathers with a wife in the workforce, 32% took care of their kids at least one day a week in 2010." (see http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/30/pf/stay-at-home-dad/index.htm?iid=GM).
Wow! Isn't that great! I think this idea I've had this morning just might work and happen. And the 7 languages Mariem will practice on the 7 different days of each week look like they will be: 1-English, 2-German, 3-French, 4-Spanish, 5-Persian, 6-Arabic, and 7-Hebrew. That's what I see ample community support around me in Harrisonburg for. Here's the full news article about this growing trend with Dads--who I hope to involve equally with mothers in the project of a polyglot co-op with me:
NEW
YORK (CNNMoney) -- Before Jessica and Lance Somerfeld had their baby,
they decided it would make the most financial sense for one of them to
stay home to raise him. Since Lance made a fraction of Jessica's
earnings, he was the obvious choice.
With wages at a standstill and child care costs skyrocketing, Somerfeld is just one of a growing number of dads who are staying home with the kids.
Among fathers with a wife in the workforce, 32% took care of their kids at least one day a week in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which looked at families with children under 15 years old. That's up from 26% in 2002.
Of those with kids under the age of 5, 20% of dads in 2010 were the primary caretaker.
Not only has it become more necessary for men to pitch in at home, but fathers have also become more available to do so. "It's a combination of mothers going to work and fathers being out of work as a result of the recession," said Lynda Laughlin, a family demographer at the Census Bureau.
Men were particularly hard hit by the steep job losses during that time, losing 4 million jobs since 2007, while women lost just over 2 million during the same time period, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While men have since gained back a majority of those jobs during the recovery, their unemployment rate -- at 8.3% in March -- is still above the national average of 8.2%.
Many find that having one parent at home does have its advantages, especially as child care costs continue to climb.
Couples do the math and realize that it makes more financial sense for one spouse to stay home with the kids. And while it's often the woman who decides to drop out of the workforce, more men are taking on the responsibility of child care as well.
A lot of that has to do with who makes the most money in the household. Even though the wage gap between the sexes persist, a growing number of women are out-earning their husbands. In 2008, 26% of women living in dual-income households had annual earnings that were at least 10 percentage points higher than their spouse, up from 15% in 1997, according to the Families and Work Institute's latest data.
As a New York City school teacher, Somerfeld said he made a fraction of his wife's salary. "She was probably making 80% of our household income and I was 20%," he said. Her career as a corporate actuary for an insurance company "was on a really good track and it made more sense for me to stay home."
But the decision they made wasn't strictly a financial one. "Too often, we hear that it's the economy that forces dads into these roles and that's certainly a part of it, but I would love to shatter that stereotype," Somerfeld said. "Being my son's primary caregiver is something I have truly cherished and embraced and never looked back."
Three years ago, Somerfeld started the NYC Dads group to connect with other fathers in a similar position. The group now has over 550 members.
"There are a lot of guys out there that had remote relationships with their own fathers and they don't want that with their kids," added Jeremy Adam Smith, a one-time stay-at-home dad and author of The Daddy Shift. "It's not just stay-at-home dads -- fathers in general are participating more in their children's lives."
Regardless of their employment status, nearly half of the men surveyed by Families and Work Institute said they take most or an equal share of child care responsibilities, up from 41% 20 years ago.
Just don't call them "Mr. Moms," said Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute. "Like it's a female task, I've never understood that."
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the unemployment rate among men as 8.9%. The seasonably adjusted rate is 8.3%.
"How are you going to do that while you are in a Ph.D. program?" Grandma challenged. "You don't have either the time nor the money," she asserted.
As usual, I refused to be pinned down with serial thinking. "There is so much you can do with symphonic thinking--you don't always need time or money." "For example," I explained, "what if I started a co-op with 7 like minded families who have children my daughter's age who all bring different linguistic resources to the table?" "I could take all the children one day a week to play with them and teach them Spanish or English while each of the other parents did the same one of each of the other days of the week." "So there is at least one example of how I can raise my daughter the successful polyglot I want to raise her as without a lot of time or money!"
I never had that thought before this morning, but I am incredibly pleased with the idea now that Grandma forced me to spit in out to defend the feasibility of my ambitions. Moreover, to add to the thrill of this idea, I stumbled across a magical coincidence just now reading the news. In the corner of a completely unrelated CNN article on the new construction milestones at the World Trade Center site, I encountered a link to another article about stay at home dad's in America. And this is the shocking and immensely pleasing statistic I encountered:
"Among fathers with a wife in the workforce, 32% took care of their kids at least one day a week in 2010." (see http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/30/pf/stay-at-home-dad/index.htm?iid=GM).
Wow! Isn't that great! I think this idea I've had this morning just might work and happen. And the 7 languages Mariem will practice on the 7 different days of each week look like they will be: 1-English, 2-German, 3-French, 4-Spanish, 5-Persian, 6-Arabic, and 7-Hebrew. That's what I see ample community support around me in Harrisonburg for. Here's the full news article about this growing trend with Dads--who I hope to involve equally with mothers in the project of a polyglot co-op with me:
Stay-at-home dads: More men choosing kids over career
@CNNMoney April 30, 2012: 10:58 AM ETWith wages at a standstill and child care costs skyrocketing, Somerfeld is just one of a growing number of dads who are staying home with the kids.
Among fathers with a wife in the workforce, 32% took care of their kids at least one day a week in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which looked at families with children under 15 years old. That's up from 26% in 2002.
Of those with kids under the age of 5, 20% of dads in 2010 were the primary caretaker.
Not only has it become more necessary for men to pitch in at home, but fathers have also become more available to do so. "It's a combination of mothers going to work and fathers being out of work as a result of the recession," said Lynda Laughlin, a family demographer at the Census Bureau.
Men were particularly hard hit by the steep job losses during that time, losing 4 million jobs since 2007, while women lost just over 2 million during the same time period, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While men have since gained back a majority of those jobs during the recovery, their unemployment rate -- at 8.3% in March -- is still above the national average of 8.2%.
Many find that having one parent at home does have its advantages, especially as child care costs continue to climb.
Couples do the math and realize that it makes more financial sense for one spouse to stay home with the kids. And while it's often the woman who decides to drop out of the workforce, more men are taking on the responsibility of child care as well.
A lot of that has to do with who makes the most money in the household. Even though the wage gap between the sexes persist, a growing number of women are out-earning their husbands. In 2008, 26% of women living in dual-income households had annual earnings that were at least 10 percentage points higher than their spouse, up from 15% in 1997, according to the Families and Work Institute's latest data.
As a New York City school teacher, Somerfeld said he made a fraction of his wife's salary. "She was probably making 80% of our household income and I was 20%," he said. Her career as a corporate actuary for an insurance company "was on a really good track and it made more sense for me to stay home."
But the decision they made wasn't strictly a financial one. "Too often, we hear that it's the economy that forces dads into these roles and that's certainly a part of it, but I would love to shatter that stereotype," Somerfeld said. "Being my son's primary caregiver is something I have truly cherished and embraced and never looked back."
Three years ago, Somerfeld started the NYC Dads group to connect with other fathers in a similar position. The group now has over 550 members.
"There are a lot of guys out there that had remote relationships with their own fathers and they don't want that with their kids," added Jeremy Adam Smith, a one-time stay-at-home dad and author of The Daddy Shift. "It's not just stay-at-home dads -- fathers in general are participating more in their children's lives."
Regardless of their employment status, nearly half of the men surveyed by Families and Work Institute said they take most or an equal share of child care responsibilities, up from 41% 20 years ago.
Just don't call them "Mr. Moms," said Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute. "Like it's a female task, I've never understood that."
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the unemployment rate among men as 8.9%. The seasonably adjusted rate is 8.3%.
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