tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42550320145692886562024-03-05T04:26:26.891-08:00Welcome to UncertaintySearching for Meaning in the Liquid Fray of LifeMarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-40239563883156704902015-11-21T14:08:00.002-08:002015-11-21T22:07:04.286-08:00Meet the ExmosThis post is addressed primarily to my Mormon friends. I want to tell you all about some really cool people that you may not know much about: the Exmormons, a.k.a. the Exmos.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrWWskVVUvh8ZBRL6coWq5jal0vgqxi2T-bvpHBPaqAjyeVvp_SnFoO7RMTPVOtal9i2w-y6EduRBRt_VwJF8OaqV0fqzP-YQKO0gYbQxuztNY8R0orYyK62k3aBshXqq2vat4RkoIQAko/s1600/ExmosObservatoryPixelated.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrWWskVVUvh8ZBRL6coWq5jal0vgqxi2T-bvpHBPaqAjyeVvp_SnFoO7RMTPVOtal9i2w-y6EduRBRt_VwJF8OaqV0fqzP-YQKO0gYbQxuztNY8R0orYyK62k3aBshXqq2vat4RkoIQAko/s400/ExmosObservatoryPixelated.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(A photo of our Colorado Exmormon Superfriends family gathering in Denver in September,<br />
pixelated to protect those Superfriends who aren't ready for their secret identity to be exposed.)</td></tr>
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Some of you might recoil at the word "exmormon." So if that just gave you the heebie-jeebies, then this may not be the post for you. But then again, in that case I especially hope you'll read this, so please hang with me.<span id="goog_1762055792"></span><br />
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Because if "exmormon" carries for you a very negative connotation, maybe synonymous with "Anti-Mormon" or "Apostate" or "Anti-Christ", then my hope here is to show you there is a difference, as well as simply to give a shout out to my peeps, who don't get enough love and respect. Most of us don't consider ourselves anti-anything. We would prefer pro-equality, pro-truth, and pro-love. We don't care so much about "bringing the church down, and making all men miserable like unto ourselves!" as we do about empowering people, who may be trapped by culture, geography and religious dogma, to live their lives in harmony with truth, and to be their most authentic selves.<br />
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I don't want to persuade you to join us or believe that our way of being is the best way of being, so rest easy. But I do want to help you see us--this eclectic, vibrant, growing group to which many of your family and friends now belong, or will in the future--in a kinder light. We didn't leave for the cliches of sin, pride, or taking offense. This is not a group of morally bankrupt people, or people who have betrayed their birthright and sold their soul to the devil. In actuality, it's a totally amazing group. People of the highest intelligence and integrity. People I love hanging out with. People of incredible moral courage.<br />
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Seriously, imagine someone you love having to make the heart-wrenching decision to step away from their family and culture, with the threat of their eternal soul hanging in the balance, because they feel compelled to follow a higher truth they've reluctantly discovered. Imagine someone determined to "do what is right, let the consequence follow." Maybe you disagree with their decision, but hopefully you can at least see the courage and humanity in their choice. We celebrate fictional heroes like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show">Truman Burbank</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dances_with_Wolves">John Dunbar </a>and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)">Jake Sully</a> who leave their culture at great cost to embrace a new way of being. And real heroes like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson">Jackie Robinson</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_B._Anthony">Susan B Anthony</a>, and even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva">bodhisattvas like Jesus and the Buddha</a>, for their courage and grace in crossing cultural boundaries, for their unwillingness to passively persist in a stagnant status quo. These are all examples of frontier explorers, people with soul power, with strong medicine. Maybe you can find a way to consider the exmos in your life the way they consider themselves, at least a little bit, at least in our best moments: as humble followers of truth. Maybe even as, <i>ahem</i>, pioneers.<br />
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Exmormons don't aspire to perfection. It's safe to say we relish our imperfections. But as a group, we do tend to be principled, creative, witty, compassionate. Also, at times irreverent, damaged, erratic and angry. Regrettably, it sometimes happens that, once the constraints of religion are removed, some exmos flounder in the subsequent chaos and make poor life decisions, getting caught up in the excesses of things that were once taboo. (And can you blame them? They were told their whole life that drinking coffee was a sin grave enough to prevent their eternal salvation, only to find out <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/upshot/more-consensus-on-coffees-benefits-than-you-might-think.html?_r=0">that it's actually good for them</a>, not to mention totally delicious. So what else have they been missing out on???) I feel nothing but compassion for these wounded friends. There but for the grace of Gaia go I. But this proverbial "going off the deep end" happens much less than most Mormons are led to reflexively believe. Without a doubt, most exmormons I know would say their lives are exponentially better out of the church than in, despite the enormous social and family costs. (Don't believe me? Ask one of them!) We honestly feel that leaving the church was both the hardest and best decision we ever made. We lost so much, but the price was worth the reward of finally feeling comfortable in our own skin in this preciously short life that is the only one we have to live. So it's a mixed bag. Exmos are both fully human and fully divine, just like Jesus, just like Mormons, just like anyone. In short, exmos rock.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3qfaRmoCTapglSpqF_axJ1asiMP-NwFDwjuWGNAMnbGrkZhSvy2JuvYIdwA02MN6luYUouX-X8m7nKz0iEgLdlp5zIhoxQAjq6K-Kuq6mJQLMDCDMFhiuKsOjsnhX5x0BDGgoN_JcGLol/s1600/NovExmoPixelated.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3qfaRmoCTapglSpqF_axJ1asiMP-NwFDwjuWGNAMnbGrkZhSvy2JuvYIdwA02MN6luYUouX-X8m7nKz0iEgLdlp5zIhoxQAjq6K-Kuq6mJQLMDCDMFhiuKsOjsnhX5x0BDGgoN_JcGLol/s400/NovExmoPixelated.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More pixelated exmos at our November gathering.</td></tr>
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Even among this group, "exmormon" is a controversial word. Some prefer "Post-Mormon," or "New Order Mormon" or "Non-Traditional Mormon" or "Mormon In Transition." Many prefer to lose the Mormon moniker altogether and adopt something new: "Christian" or "Buddhist," or often "Agnostic" or "Secular Humanist" or even the dreaded A-word, "Atheist." I'm personally a fan of ditching labels completely. Forget Mormon or Exmormon, Republican or Democrat, American or Foreigner, Doctor or Lawyer. How about just "Mark, Human Being And Fellow Traveler On The Highway Of Life." (All right, so that's not specific or confidence-inspiring enough if, say, someone comes to me for medical advice about their hemorrhoids. I guess there are pragmatic reasons to use labels.)<br />
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For simplicity's sake, I typically use the term "exmormon." Because it's crystal clear. It instantly delineates our status in regards to the institution that, for the vast majority of our lives, enveloped us like our own skin, that taught us to believe from the earliest age that, in matters of self-identification, "<a href="https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2012-05-0603-preparation-of-joseph-f-smith-true-blue-through-and-through?lang=eng">I'm a Mormon, true blue, through and through</a>!" came before all else. So "exmormon" is in part a one-word declaration of independence from the church that we feel interposed itself between us and God, that claimed to be our "only pathway to salvation", and that demanded our adherence to its proscribed lifestyle as the unquestionable "manner of happiness." We've found that there are, in fact, other ways.<br />
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Like it or not, the cumulative burden of our lifetime of intimate interactions with the Church, in doctrine, organization, and culture--even underwear!--in both positive and negative ways, was and perhaps always will be a pivotal--perhaps <i>the</i> most pivotal--influence in our lives. Removing ourselves from it now, or twenty years ago, doesn't make that ubiquitous influence disappear. I've told my children, when they've asked why I can't just forget about it or move on, that it took me thirty five years to be so entirely wrapped up in it, body and soul, so immersed that I couldn't see heads or tails anymore, couldn't even tell who I was without it, or fathom a life separated from it, that I'm expecting at least another thirty five years to unwrap it all. (That'll put me at seventy, and then I look forward to a final fifteen blissful years in a truly post-Mormon world. Or dementia, which at that point may be indistinguishable.) But at least for my children, they won't have to spend a lifetime untying that knot. The point is that many of us find that the church continues to define us, at least for the time being, <i>in absentia</i>, although we look forward to the day when hopefully it won't.<br />
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Here's a pro-tip: one sure way of making any exmo mad is for a believing Mormon to reply to a critique we may offer towards the church with the tired, brain-freezing axiom: "You can leave the church, but you can't leave the church alone, eh, buddy?" Well, that doesn't cut it. Try engaging the issue next time. And consider that, in a way, our continued interest in church affairs is indicative of our prior level of involvement, and a reflection of how deeply we believed. Our roots are intertwined. Imagine ripping off your own siamese twin. That's gonna hurt, and you might want to talk it about for a while, although you might have to stop the bleeding first.<br />
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This continued interest in the church is also indicative of our ingrained missionary zeal to share truth once we've found it. (Now where would we get that idea from?) While we (most of us) freely acknowledge that many people will remain happiest within the church, we're aware that there are many, like ourselves, for whom the constraints are too suffocating, even <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14473137?nclick_check=1">life-threatening</a>. I concede that many of us exmos could benefit from better tools in dialogue (see Jacob's and my <a href="http://welcometouncertainty.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-third-space.html">Third Space </a>project). Unlike our proselytizing mission experiences and efforts to convert our neighbors, it would be good for us, now that we're exmos, to stop trying to change others' earnestly held religious beliefs. Yet I don't blame any of us for trying. We didn't create the dichotomous thinking, the dire stakes, the us vs. them mentality, that permeates Mormon doctrine and culture. "Each of us has to face the matter--either the church is true, or it is a fraud. There is no middle ground. It is the church and the kingdom of God, or it is nothing." (Gordon B Hinckley, LDS Prophet, in a 2003 general conference address.) <i>All right, so I just found out it's not true. So taking you at your word, President Hinckley, where does that leave me? Shouldn't I at least tell the people I care about . . . ?</i><br />
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So in a way, that continued interest and occasional antagonism is a way of honoring the depth of commitment and love we once held for the church, and of our family and friends still in it. Speaking personally, the church gave me a lifetime of good memories. It brought me a happy childhood full of warm family moments, it gave me structure, values, identity and purpose as a young man in a morally chaotic world, a blueprint for clean living and an aversion to (fear of) drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and premarital sex. It gave me my incredible experiences in Brazil, a second language, many of my very best friends, and even my beautiful wife, and by extension my kids. I'll always be grateful for that foundation. In a real way, I don't regret being raised in the church. I owe a lot to it. And yet I'm still so glad that I found my way out. It's complicated.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp76qzkFT9j4-B_utuEjphuF1FZn3Yl51-ldD3r75xIgQoKiMa9UrNZMtf2G3sKnySysYUgqSSx0LwylqE6LXPsIwxhDTzkXUngr0-C_Ll7h7Hv-MOHRMBPDE5lgp8cvtKPYogEXrLyB-3/s1600/fosterbroncos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp76qzkFT9j4-B_utuEjphuF1FZn3Yl51-ldD3r75xIgQoKiMa9UrNZMtf2G3sKnySysYUgqSSx0LwylqE6LXPsIwxhDTzkXUngr0-C_Ll7h7Hv-MOHRMBPDE5lgp8cvtKPYogEXrLyB-3/s320/fosterbroncos.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Here's an unpixelated, genuine exmo family, wearing the jerseys of the One True Team.)</td></tr>
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When Elizabeth and I left the church five years ago, we did so in total isolation. We had nobody to cling to but each other. It remained that way for well over two years. Then, through some harmonic convergence, I reconnected with my friend Karl, who lives locally and has walked many similar spiritual paths. This connection provided an outlet and sounding board for me to be able to process my experiences. Then I slowly began to engage in some internet forums, and was amazed to find that there were people like me out there. Thousands of them. Good people who saw the world the way I did. That saw their leaving not as a defeat, but as a bold, necessary step into a brave new world to keep their sanity and integrity. Through more harmonic convergence, we finally encountered a family just like ours, the Whitakers, who lived just a few miles away. Our two families kept our heads up, and soon began to meet more and more folks from Colorado. We planned a few get-togethers. College students, retired couples, recently divorced, newlyweds. Men and women, doctors and lawyers, and PhDs by the boatload. And lots of families with kids. Such a diverse group, yet so many similarities in our journeys, chief among them the fact that all of us had made at some point a soul-piercing, life-altering, socially-ostracizing decision, and were now seeking to rebuild a community out of that rubble<br />
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Eventually we formed a facebook group, which, after merging with some other existing groups, has grown to 168 members in under ten months, getting bigger every day, and representing well over 300 total people all over the state, because kids. Lots of kids. (Duh, we were all Mormon.) We get together at least once a month, and usually more. We commiserate, we console, we laugh, we share. It's incredibly accepting, supportive, funny, incisive and smart. Honestly, participating in the development of this group has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I have no idea where it goes from here, but we've got a good foundation and a lot of positive energy.<br />
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So if you're Mormon, now you know that we exist, and at least a little about who we are, and how we view ourselves. And if you live in Colorado and you're exmormon, or in some manner questioning your relationship with the church, and want to join us, give me a shout. I'll hook you up. And no matter where you are, I have great news. There is a now a website called <a href="http://www.mormonspectrum.org/map/">Mormon Spectrum</a> that contains information about similar groups all over the globe. Seriously, no matter where you live, there's probably a group somewhere close. These are in-person groups, like ours here in Colorado. Not only has the internet revolutionized the access to information, but as the global exmormon community has matured, it has now distilled back down out of cyberspace and into your local geography like the dews of heaven, giving you a chance to meet someone--a real live human who will accept you for who you are!--for coffee, or a hike, or a play date. Which doesn't replace that close-knit, all-inclusive community the church once offered, but it's a start, and you can be a part of it.<br />
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In summary, I repeat: exmos rock. I'm proud of you, and proud to be counted among you. It's good company to be in. And for believing Mormons who are still reading this, don't be afraid. In the end, labels aside, we're just people like you, trying our best to make sense of this short life while we scratch out a living. So if we can't agree on or even talk about religion, let's find a comfortable place, a Third Space, perhaps, where we can see each other not as enemies, but as people. Just people, trying to do our best and learning to get along. Fellow travelers on the highway of life. Or something like that.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV5975zr5P7haSmNdJhufA2_lhtgNCXRRDwE-2UL9UtUFDWMQDyaIyohYXTq8okXW8y3qJAaAvL9KBog6mYVYhPIVOeanQba5pxJZAuSoQKqOnJf2DB81mURhRoZXgGQgbxwrR3BcbRX0v/s1600/MarkandLiz+1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV5975zr5P7haSmNdJhufA2_lhtgNCXRRDwE-2UL9UtUFDWMQDyaIyohYXTq8okXW8y3qJAaAvL9KBog6mYVYhPIVOeanQba5pxJZAuSoQKqOnJf2DB81mURhRoZXgGQgbxwrR3BcbRX0v/s400/MarkandLiz+1.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(And lastly, here is a picture of a happy exmo man with his gorgeous exmo wife who has some sort of Age of Adeline thing going on, because he's getting older and she's not.<br />
Sadly, this guy left the church and <a href="http://markvscancer.blogspot.com/2011/12/living-dream.html">got cancer.</a> :(<br />
But then his cancer was miraculously (or at least robotically) cured,<br />
which isn't sad at all, so there's that.)</td></tr>
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-34392498276932632732015-11-01T17:15:00.000-08:002015-11-01T20:50:08.361-08:00The Third Space<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwxM2uX0JTdceKZbvRRpot7iQu9WA02UoY8EcPR-_CUXgA4eWTk5BhuuoPbTv6YMkpESQCAKHhxJMLmMbiy491YqVk-O3haMJY_dsJEqtJl4a6QhOp9eYPEgbLhMsuzvaQy8tKlc1h9sSM/s1600/Third-Space-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwxM2uX0JTdceKZbvRRpot7iQu9WA02UoY8EcPR-_CUXgA4eWTk5BhuuoPbTv6YMkpESQCAKHhxJMLmMbiy491YqVk-O3haMJY_dsJEqtJl4a6QhOp9eYPEgbLhMsuzvaQy8tKlc1h9sSM/s400/Third-Space-logo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Going to change direction for a little while with this blog. I'm going to start a "cross-blog dialogue" with my friend and sometimes-collaborator Jacob Hess, discussing primarily how Mormons (like Jacob) and former Mormons (like me) can have productive conversations and fulfilling friendships in spite of religious divisions. Jacob and I both have experienced--acutely and painfully--this divide in our own lives, and we've both made big mistakes in trying to bridge it. Fortunately, we think we may have learned a thing or two in the process. Through this project, we're hopeful we might sneak up on a practical framework that others could utilize as they try to navigate these choppy waters in their own lives. We envision a "big tent" where family and friends can put aside religious differences and focus on the people and relationships beneath them, experiencing deep connection, understanding, and unconditional acceptance. We're calling this tent "The Third Space." </div>
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We don't see Third Space like a Venn diagram, where we have "my world view" over here, and "your world view" over there, and their overlap is where we meet to discuss, leaving the outlying parts alone. While that's a framework that has some practical merit, discussing areas of overlapping interests is not exactly what we're describing. </div>
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We envision Third Space more like a family cabin. Not my home. Not your home. It's a separate but complete living space where we each have a stake in joint ownership. We have to pack our own bags, but only with what's most essential. We have to vacate the comforts of our own home, where everything is just the way we like it, and travel some rocky roads. And then we have to sit together on that tattered old couch, look into the face of a person we once thought we knew so well, and figure out if and how we're going to respect, understand, and love each other in this new space. </div>
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Third Space isn't going to work for everybody. In fact, it's probably not possible or even desirable for many people or circumstances. Sometimes, relationships are frayed enough, histories so complex, vulnerabilities so pronounced, that everybody is better off staying at home for a while, or even forever. That's okay. But for those of us who want something more, who want to feel that closeness and acceptance we once felt from our family and friends, we think a weekend in the Third Space cabin might do us a world of good.</div>
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Jacob and I have been talking about this stuff for several years now, but our acquaintance precedes that by a decade. We first met at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah many years ago. I was teacher there: a BYU student and former LDS missionary recently returned from Brazil. I taught Portuguese, gospel doctrine, and missionary skills to Jacob's class of new Mormon Elders headed to Brazil. We fell out of contact after that, then reconnected by chance at a conference in North Carolina on alternative mental health care over a decade later. A lot had changed in that timeframe. I was now a practicing family physician; Jacob had attained a PhD in community psychology. Due to the nature of the conference, we found areas of instant rapport. In the years since, we've worked on several projects and papers together in the mental health arena.</div>
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But perhaps the biggest thing that had changed was that I was no longer Mormon. When this came up in our first conversation, I was struck that Jacob, unlike virtually every other Mormon I had known up to that point, wanted to dive deeper. This came instinctively to him. He wanted to understand my reasons. He expressed empathy and support, without compromising his own convictions. This was highly unusual--and welcome--stuff.</div>
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This had led since to numerous discussions via email and phone on the subject of faith and family across the Mormon/post-Mormon divide, often very intense and occasionally bordering on confrontational. But even when the ride has gotten rough, we've "stayed in the saddle." We seem to have developed a level of trust that allows us to know that the other person is genuine in their motives and intent, and keeps the other's best interest in mind, even when that conflicts directly with what seems like crucial parts of our own worldview. In other words, Jacob can think I'm totally wrong about really important stuff, and yet I'm confident he still respects me. And vice versa.</div>
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Due to this friendship and shared experience, as well our individual training and natural interest in exploring boundaries and seeking harmony, we've happened upon some things that might be useful to others. We learned how emotions, logic and language can both connect and divide. We know personally many--dozens, hundreds, way TOO many--people who are currently suffering from fractured relationships across this divide. There is a need for better tools, a better framework, in how to handle it, because it's not going away, and life is short. That we can all agree on. </div>
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So we're going to give Third Space a try. And rather than just tell you about it, we're going to try to demonstrate, by engaging in substantive, earnest, challenging dialogue about this highly polarized subject.</div>
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It's an experiment. So, Jacob, let it begin, my friend.<br />
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(<a href="http://mindfullymormon.org/2015/11/02/can-former-current-mormons-have-vibrant-and-beautiful-relationships/">Here's a link to Jacob's blog.</a> Please read it, too!) </div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-82065159938806554982015-10-11T10:44:00.001-07:002015-10-11T10:44:30.941-07:00Why Some People Reject Their Belief System<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-27615277293309924412015-10-11T10:28:00.001-07:002015-10-11T10:28:22.867-07:00The Power of the Scientific Method<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Feelings are great. I love feelings. But I propose that they're unreliable as a means of discerning things that are true. I have a favorite flavor of ice cream. I love it. I feel happy and hungry just thinking about it. But that doesn't mean Cookies & Cream is true.</span></div>
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So what's our best method for telling if something is true? When a truth claim is made, such as "the sun revolves around the earth" or "the human race is only 6,000 years old," we test it. We scrutinize it. We try<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"> to disprove it. We revise our ideas when our results don't match our prior hypothesis. And in the end, the things that are left standing we can say with confidence are true, at least within our current reference frame, and within our limits to discern and understand them. And this is always open-ended, ready to be revised if new evidence arises. </span></div>
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So my friends, don't doubt your doubts. Embrace them. Take them on as a challenge. Put them to the test. Every great advance in human history has been made because someone had the intelligence, courage and integrity to challenge the status quo, to question what everyone else accepted unquestioningly as true. </div>
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Science is not "true." It's a way of thinking about the world. The scientific method is a tool, and the best one we have for discovering what is true.</div>
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<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-14315088764363256802015-09-11T20:33:00.000-07:002015-09-11T20:34:38.215-07:00The Search For Meaning Requires Tension and Suffering<div class="_209g _2vxa" data-block="true" data-offset-key="c60kk-0-0" data-reactid=".1y.1.0.1.0.0.$editor0.0.0.$c60kk" style="color: #373e4d; direction: ltr; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; position: relative; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjld5EIhHnLuqpMI4dWgKuMVu5cYHn8jMGmBMtGZgGB_Esj5mxp3jiM9eHE7U_zGFEuu5wNvVVxibgeffL6rfd2VZ9qcgeMjPCA-1U-m_5_BEI6zTXlirOSBFICg4bngystyVyjPzTmYb-/s1600/viktor-frankl1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjld5EIhHnLuqpMI4dWgKuMVu5cYHn8jMGmBMtGZgGB_Esj5mxp3jiM9eHE7U_zGFEuu5wNvVVxibgeffL6rfd2VZ9qcgeMjPCA-1U-m_5_BEI6zTXlirOSBFICg4bngystyVyjPzTmYb-/s320/viktor-frankl1.jpg" width="214" /></a><span data-offset-key="c60kk-0-0" data-reactid=".1y.1.0.1.0.0.$editor0.0.0.$c60kk.0:$c60kk-0-0">"Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon . . . suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration. Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient's existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs. It (should be) his task, rather, to pilot the patient through his existential crises . . . To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. In the Nazi concentration camps . . . those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive. I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, 'homeostasis,' i.e., a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him." </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="7egcn-0-0" data-reactid=".1y.1.0.1.0.0.$editor0.0.0.$7egcn.0:$7egcn-0-0">--from "Man's Search For Meaning" by Viktor Frankl</span></div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-91934499903020669712015-08-29T07:28:00.000-07:002015-08-29T07:28:01.487-07:00Beauty and Uncertainty"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don't have to know an answer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me." -- Richard Feynman, "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out." (<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/DCARead?standardNo=0738201081&standardNoType=1&excerpt=true">Full text of the interview</a>)<br />
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-51071236850401261172015-08-23T09:39:00.002-07:002015-08-23T12:37:03.595-07:00You Are Already That Which You Seek<br />
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Today I turn forty one, which was supposed to mark the end of this year-long spiritual quest. It's been a good run, folks. A crazy year. Beginning with stability. Ending in turmoil. One marathon down. One new job on the horizon. One less appendix. Twelve fewer months on the ticking clock. I've learned a ton, had some great experiences, enjoyed precious time with my wife and children, developed some new connections, written some new songs, dreamed some new dreams.<br />
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But I've got to be honest with you. In terms of ultimate answers, I've got nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada.<br />
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To anyone with a shred of self-awareness and wisdom, this should come as no surprise, like it was to me. I'm actually okay with it now. More than okay. The lack of answers gives me tremendous relief, a heightened awareness of the preciousness of my own life. One might even call it a sense of enlightenment.<br />
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This isn't for lack of trying. In fact, all the striving for meaning seems to have had the opposite effect. Digging a deeper hole and consistently coming up empty, the disappointment always increasing with the depth. I searched, pondered and prayed. I meditated and yoga-ed, attended churches and Buddhist temples. I read like a man on fire, starting with Lao Tzu, ending with Shakespeare. I tried to build structural dams--programs, schedules, goals--to contain and harness the free-flowing river of my life. But they didn't hold.<br />
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And now I'm staring at another twelve months, another forty-four years (if I'm lucky), with less hope for answers than I had a year ago. But also one less question.<br />
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In a great and wholly predictable irony, I have found that in the quest for meaning and purpose after Mormonism, there is none to be found, not in any ultimate sense. So time to stop asking the question. It's sort of like asking what happened before the Big Bang. To ask the question is to fundamentally misunderstand the material.<br />
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This doesn't mean that life is meaningless. Au contraire. I feel that my life is profoundly meaningful, in an entirely subjective way. But in the ultimate sense, it is not. Or if there is ultimate purpose, it is ultimately unknowable, and therefore irrelevant. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.<br />
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More succinctly put: "The meaning of life is to give life meaning." Maybe the most important part of that lovely turn of phrase is the period at the end. No caveats. No afterlife to make sense of it all. No man in the sky (or on Kolob, as the case may be) to correct your error, speak truth as with the voice of thunder, or judge the quality of your life.<br />
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Give your life a meaning, and that shall be the meaning of your life. Thus saith the Lord, whoever you conceive that to be.<br />
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This actually gives me more empathy towards Mormonism and other religions. They are systems of values and meaning. They work for a lot of people, bringing them happiness, stability and community. They may be completely incongruent with reality, but what is reality? We all see it through the glass darkly. And if the dark glass you're looking through is religion, and if it's working for you, then great. Don't rock that boat. I remember the old dream of "dying with your testimony intact and your eternal salvation assured." Seemed like a good idea at the time. That sense of certainty is a tough thing to let go of. It's a long hard fall from there.<br />
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(The rub is when you discover that your system of values is incongruent with reality AND causes harm to other people. In a truthful and just society, that should prompt a recalibration. But that's a discussion for another day . . .)<br />
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I do believe that most everyone is doing the best they can to see accurately through the glass they've been given. But for many, that glass will one day break, the walls will collapse, and you will be forced to confront a new paradigm of reality. You will be cast out of the garden of Eden and must enter the lone and dreary world. Now, with enhanced metaphorical power, you will be separated from what you believed to be God, and must find your way back through mists of darkness towards the Tree of Life. But upon arrival, you may find that tree, even the wilderness you are traversing, is just another pane in another stain glass wall, like all those others broken behind you.<br />
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And so it goes. We frustrate ourselves by breaking glass wall after glass wall, never arriving at the center of the maze. I guess that's okay. Gives us something to do. But maybe sometimes--due to a prick of conscience, a life experience, sheer boredom--we become inclined, for a brief moment, to stop the mad striving. In that place of respite, once our breath stops fogging the glass, we see the wall for what it is. And then maybe, instead of breaking it, we pause, stop looking beyond it, and finally see ourselves reflected.<br />
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Thus shall I bringeth this to a close. In spite of all I've just written, this quest is not going away, neither the blog. (Sorry.) With all of these epiphanies also comes a measure of self-awareness, and there is simply something hardwired within me that must strive. I am a seeker, and a quintessential American. The rugged western individualist who must bend the world to his will. Always going, never arriving, but still blogging about it, and newly unburdened by the nagging sense that there is still a holy grail somewhere from which I must drink.<br />
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I can think of no better way to close this year's spiritual questing than with the words of that spiritual giant, the great Eminem, who once said, "I can't tell you what it really is / I can only tell you what it feels like / And right now it's a steel knife in my wind pipe / I can't breathe but I still fight while I can fight." Or more pertinently, "Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment, would you capture it? Or just let it slip."<br />
<span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: center;">Listen to what Eminem is teaching us: </span><span style="text-align: center;">Lose yourself . . . to find yourself. </span><br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">Or what so many other sages throughout time have concluded:</span></div>
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<ul>
<li>The road ends where the sky begins.</li>
<li>The course of the Lord is one eternal round.</li>
<li>Now is forever. Forever is now.</li>
<li>The kingdom of God is within you.</li>
<li>You are already that which you seek.</li>
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And while I'm not labeling myself anything particular, <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/when-i-was-a-child-i-spake-as-a-child#.qnxQnY2W3">here's a bunch of humanist/atheist folks </a>who share this central insight much more eloquently than me.<br />
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And here's a link to <a href="http://welcometouncertainty.blogspot.com/2014/08/welcome-to-uncertainty-my-preamble.html">my first post</a> a year ago, a preamble, which strangely makes today's post seem more like a reformulation. I am glad to have written what I've written this year. It's my journey. These have been some of the way stations. I'm hopeful someone somewhere got some benefit.<br />
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I think all of this--these few paragraphs today, these last twelve months--has been a way of saying something that, in the end, nobody else cares about. Not really.<br />
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But I care, so I'll say it. Hey, Mark Elliott Foster and anyone else out there of like mind and spirit in this incomprehensibly vast and beautiful universe, welcome to uncertainty.Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-29187183241223263042015-08-18T18:14:00.003-07:002015-08-18T18:50:03.089-07:00Appendicitis and the Narrowed Clarity of PurposeThis past Thursday, at the stroke of midnight on our sixteenth wedding anniversary, I awoke from surgery, cleared the anesthetic cobwebs, and was overcome by one singular sweet sensation that flooded my mind as both a thought and a feeling: the pain was <i>gone</i>. That awareness, the exquisiteness of that recognition of relief, brought a sudden halting laugh and a few tears along with it, thus announcing to the battle-hardened PACU nurse that I was indeed alive and well, and rather loopy.<br />
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It wasn't just the drugs--though I had some good ones on board by then that I'm sure obliterated any residual pain and augmented my loopiness. But between closing my eyes in the OR and opening them an instant (actually forty-five minutes) later, the poison had been removed. My festering appendix that had reduced me to a moaning quivering shell of a man was gone, surgerized by the expert Dr. Quan and her staff. With the appendix gone, so was my pain.<br />
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And my next thought was even more sweet: where's Elizabeth? She had suffered with me, staying by my bedside on a most unromantic evening for a good seven hours while I waited for surgery, a bright angel on a dark night. I just wanted to hold her hand again. Happy anniversary, sweetheart.<br />
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I don't mean to present my appendicitis as some sort of true catastrophe. No, in the big scheme, this is small potatoes. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendicitis">Actually, about the size of a green bean, a vestigial hollow piece of colon attached like a stalk at the base of the cecum.</a>) It's a common condition and a safe surgical procedure, done laparoscopically so all I'm left with are three pencil-width wounds on my belly. Five days later and I'm feeling almost back to normal. I'll be back at work tomorrow.<br />
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But in the context of my normal life, the timing and setting could hardly have been worse or more dramatic. The pain was as severe and unrelenting as anything I've ever experienced, so I'm going to call it a mini-catastrophe. And within this mini-catastrophe, something surprising but altogether welcome occurred: a swirling vortex of impending and seemingly weighty life decisions and their accompanying angst just drifted away.<br />
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Without going into details, I've had a stressful few weeks concerning the future of my clinic and my career. This is my prime excuse for not writing recently, for not expounding upon this quixotic spiritual quest I embarked on nearly twelve months ago. (I know, you've been biting your fingernails waiting for the next installment.) But I've had no available bandwidth to engage deeper existential questions. On the spiritual <a href="http://welcometouncertainty.blogspot.com/2015/04/spiral-dynamics.html">spiral</a>, I've of late regressed into contemplating more mundane problems, namely, how am I going to steer my career, chase my dreams, and still put food on the table. (Or last Thursday night, how am I going to get some dang pain relief?) I haven't been sleeping well, feeling on edge, flailing in the uncertainty of it all, which perhaps suppressed my immune system and allowed the appendicitis to develop . . . ? Nah, I've had way more stressful times in which the appendix held up just fine. I think in the end this was a random lightning strike, no matter what meaning I might attribute to it. But the fact is that this event did occur, most strangely, at a time of heightened anxieties, and what feels like a crossroads.<br />
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But suddenly none of that mattered. Well, not suddenly. I had woken up Thursday morning after a nearly sleepless night due to a) worry and b) what I thought was indigestion. Dull ache right around my belly button. Greasy hamburger the night before. No big deal. I was consumed with thoughts about my clinic and staff. But as the morning progressed, so did the belly pain. Maybe just constipation? I thought it would fade. I was still hoping to pull off the romantic anniversary trip that I had planned for Elizabeth, which unceremoniously ended thirty minutes after checking into the hotel, when I found myself laying on the floor next to the toilet, moaning, dizzy, feverish, nauseous, strong indications that a) this was more than just constipation, and b) our impending couple's massage was not going to happen. I pushed on my right lower abdomen. Yowzers! So that's McBurneys! At this point, any halfwit second year medical student could have made the diagnosis. My wife explained the situation to the hotel manager, who graciously offered us a raincheck, and we headed to the ER, a torturous twenty minute stop-and-go ride hitting every possible bump through rush hour traffic on the way to Swedish Hospital.<br />
<br />
By the time we got there, my pain had crescendoed. I staggered into the waiting room, barely able to compose a complete sentence to the completely unimpressed triage lady. "Why are you here?" Uh-uh-abdominal pain. "On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain, ten being the worst pain imaginable?" (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP4zgb9H3Cg">At this point, a Brian Regan skit came to mind.</a>) Eight. No, no . . . nine.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Before long, I was in a room with the IV running, pain meds on board, but still writhing in pain. My incredible primary doctor and friend, Dr. Groce, came personally to the hospital to deliver the news. White blood cells, 16.8. CT scan positive showed a fecolith, fat stranding, and dilated appendix. I met the nice surgeon, Dr. Quan who would soon ride to the rescue, but . . . it was going to be another six hours before an OR suite became available. I would be moved to a room upstairs and brought back down to pre-op in about five hours.<br />
<br />
This was most disappointing news ever. In spite of powerful meds, my pain had actually gotten worse, and now seemed inescapable. They gave me another and then another dose of potent narcotics. I became somewhat sedated, but still with the awareness of this bone-deep ache in my belly that hurt with the slightest movement. There was a poison wreaking havoc inside of me that nothing could mask. In all seriousness, in that <i>extremis,</i> death did not seem an unpleasant alternative. I gripped Elizabeth's hand, and began counting down the hours. Absolutely nothing else mattered to me. The operating system of my brain had frozen on the word PAIN. I had regressed all the way down the spiral, my brain a ball of red hot neurons. I was white-knuckling it and just hoping to outlast the pain until relief came.<br />
<br />
And then . . . I was whisked to the OR, closing my eyes and quite literally before I knew it (so weird how anesthesia renders the passage of time instantaneous) I was awakening to that most glorious, definitive relief of pain. Hallelujah. Cue the laughter and tears.<br />
<br />
We have friends, Megan and Rick, whose home burnt down this week. (<a href="http://www.gofundme.com/rdvy4zns">Here is a website where you can help their recovery.</a>) I was speaking this weekend with Megan's mother, who relayed to me that two nights after the fire (coincidentally on the same night as my appendectomy), Megan and her kids celebrated Rick's birthday in a hotel room, newly aware that everything--photos, clothes, appliances--in the home had been destroyed and that their family would be displaced for at least six months. And yet as they ate birthday cake while sitting on the floor, they looked at each other and began to cry, but tears of relief. They had lost everything, and yet they had everything--each other, their kids, their dog, their health, their lives. Everything of value. Everything they needed. Their community had reached out to them in love and relief. They would survive this Catastrophe (this one with a capital C.)<br />
<br />
As she shared this story, it resonated acutely with me. I've just experienced a similar unexpected life simplification, induced by a mini-catastrophe. I'll call this disruptive epiphany the Narrowed Clarity of Purpose.<br />
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<br />
All this other stuff that has seemed so weighty? The job negotiations? The search for meaning and purpose? So first-world. I'm honestly grateful for this experience, for the brief respite it has provided in my ongoing mental and spiritual exertions, for placing in sharp relief what matters most. I've got a wife and children I love. I'm going to have a job. Food will be put on the table. (No greasy burgers for a while, just to be safe.) Life is good, and in a way that has much more meaning than a week ago, I'm pain-free. What a relief. I'm also appendix-free. One less thing to worry about.<br />
<br />
Though there's always the gall bladder . . .Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-45779169010251044292015-08-08T12:51:00.000-07:002015-08-24T09:42:37.248-07:00The Perfect Skipper<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(a relevant, refurbished original poem about anticipation, disappointment, and resilience)</span></i></div>
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<br />
The wilderness traveler<br />
happened upon the stone<br />
and stooping seized it so to skim<br />
out over the slow bend in the river.<br />
<br />
The canyon walls were growing dim.<br />
The blue stripe of sky had kept<br />
for a day's time the cirrus clouds bound,<br />
but now they ignited and burned<br />
rose and apricot into their native chalk tone,<br />
and seemed to unravel, or<br />
suddenly grow fonder of infiniti and forever,<br />
for without so much as a sound<br />
they surrendered to the loftiest winds and dissipated.<br />
<br />
Out along the river he merrily stepped,<br />
and in his hand the thin flat rock turned.<br />
Such a skipper as this,<br />
he anticipated,<br />
seven or eight times might kiss<br />
the green and silver surface<br />
yet still reach<br />
the purple shale slides strewn<br />
along the opposite beach.<br />
And if on impact it should splinter?<br />
Well, then--<br />
it will have fulfilled its purpose.<br />
He grinned,<br />
cradled then gripped<br />
his perfect skipper--<br />
and with precision let it fly.<br />
<br />
The downstream rapid's din<br />
nearly disguised the <i>kerplunk</i>.<br />
It skipped<br />
not once, and then it was sunk.<br />
<br />
Were it winter,<br />
even late autumn,<br />
it might have skated across like a hockey puck.<br />
But swollen with the melted waters of June,<br />
the green river bend<br />
offered no such luck.<br />
It absorbed the stone like a coin,<br />
conducing it to join<br />
its rolling gravel at the bottom.<br />
<br />
For a long time he stared where the stone had gone.<br />
It's just as well, he thought,<br />
then looked to the deepening night sky,<br />
taunting with its iridescent Dipper.<br />
<br />
He spat, ambled on,<br />
and soon forgot.Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-17328188637586531652015-06-28T14:50:00.001-07:002015-06-28T15:07:34.718-07:00People Paradox<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A wise physician once gave me these words of wisdom: "I went into family medicine because I wanted to work with people. Trouble is, people aren't all they're cracked up to be."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A wise nurse I worked with had this refrain, "There is a very thin line between love and hate."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It's no secret that our human relationships provide us with both with our greatest joys and greatest sufferings.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It's the romantic in me that often wants to reach out and embrace everyone and everything, pouring out unconditional peace, love and joy on this suffering world from my tender bleeding heart. But that well runs dry quickly, and that sort of reach leaves one's guts exposed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It's the introvert in me that often wants--needs--to retreat within, to my fortress of solitude, to find my peace and presence there, my <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drishti_(yoga)">drishti</a>, in something that's not moving, something more stable than these fickle human beings everywhere. But that sort of withdrawal usually leads to isolation and stagnation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There's an incredible communal power that comes from being in an arena packed with U2 super fans and singing in unison, "I want to run, I want to hide, I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside, I want to reach out and touch the flame, where the streets have no name . . ."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And there's the misanthropy that is the inevitable result of elbowing your way through Walmart at 4 am on Black Friday as you try to get that HDTV for $299 but come away instead with a blender you don't need for $12, which maybe wasn't actually such a good deal after all?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I feel frequent tension between these two poles. I think most people are the same. It's what makes us both anticipate and dread reunions. It means that there is a great table of brotherhood that we all sit down at together, and there is a lonesome valley that we all must walk alone. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I don't think these oscillations make us selfish or needy or unstable. It's a continuum of our life experience. It all comes in one package. It means we need intimacy as well as elbowroom, society as well as solitude. It means we're human.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">(But as we know, humans aren't all they're cracked up to be.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-65596662700671334782015-06-28T13:52:00.002-07:002015-06-28T14:00:58.980-07:00<h1 class="page__title title" id="page-title" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; font-family: 'Poets Electra Web Italic', 'Poets Electra Web', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 38px; font-weight: 500; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 1.20301em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px;">
When I Heard the Learned Astronomer</h1>
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<span class="node-title">Walt Whitman</span>, <span class="date-display-single" content="1819-05-31T00:00:00-05:00" datatype="xsd:dateTime" property="dc:date">1819</span> - <span class="date-display-single" content="1892-03-26T00:00:00-05:00" datatype="xsd:dateTime" property="dc:date">1892</span></span></h2>
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<pre style="font-family: 'Poets Electra Web', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; margin-bottom: 1.26316em; margin-top: 1.26316em; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,
and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with
much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.</pre>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>(Special thanks to Jeff, who has this posted on his studio wall.)</i></span></div>
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-26457390456050719442015-06-14T11:44:00.005-07:002015-06-14T17:02:17.932-07:00Sunday Morning RoutineYoga and coffee. Throw in a little spiritual wisdom from Pastor Steve.<br />
<br />
That's the way Elizabeth and I spend our Sunday mornings now. It's the best.<br />
<br />
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The kids sleep in. We go to Monique's yoga class. It's a mixed level class, always packed with thirty or more people. For Elizabeth, it's a welcome chance to be a yoga student again, after having been an instructor all week. For me, it's a chance to stretch my super-tight hamstrings, strengthen my flabby core, and still my monkey mind. Monique brings an energy and gentle wisdom to her class, which always hums with a communal vibe. When we get to the final relaxation, <a href="http://welcometouncertainty.blogspot.com/2014/10/shavasana.html">shavasana</a>, I'm ready to be fully present in that moment, in that darkness that "has no concept of space or time." It's the melting of the walls of mind, spirit, and body. It is a profoundly spiritual moment for me, one that I look forward to all week. "The light in me honors the light in you which is the light in everything."<br />
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But the serenity is only just beginning. Elizabeth and I then go to Atlas Coffee, a little local coffee shop that opened just down the street about a year ago. We order from the friendly young owner and the talented baristas. I get a pastry and a banana and make a meal of it. Then Elizabeth and I sit and chat about the week that was, and the week to come. There's no time pressure. All around us are other folks relaxed and visiting on a lazy Sunday morning. Again, that humming communal vibe.<br />
<br />
When we get back to the kids, they're usually just stirring, watching baseball highlights or eating cereal. (So nice to have kids that are increasingly independent at home.)<br />
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Then, on weeks when I'm able, I head off to Columbine United Church to hear my friend, Pastor Steve, preach. It may seem strange that I go to church when I'm more agnostic than religious now. But it's not your normal church, and Steve's not your normal pastor. His theology and heart is open wide to the wonders of the Cosmos. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coxhHX5pZlw">Here's a link to his most excellent sermon today.</a>) He and I meet monthly for coffee, too, and our topics range from our relationships with our fathers to the the destiny of the Universe. He's one of my good friends and mentors, and I always come away from his sermons and our chats enriched with some true spiritual wisdom. Not only that, but on Sundays I get to enjoy the musical genius of Mitch Samu, their jazz pianist virtuoso music director, and his assembly of talented musicians. (And once in a while, I get to play some of my music there, too.)<br />
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Then I come home to my wife and kids, and we play chess, go fishing, watch baseball, or do home projects.<br />
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This is what I do now on Sunday mornings. In the post-Mormon community, this is often referred to as "Second Saturday." I love it. I feel spiritually enriched and recharged. I feel community. I feel freedom to think and breathe. It's a great way to end the old week and begin the new.<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-28590806841848253722015-06-12T18:11:00.000-07:002015-06-12T18:28:44.860-07:00"Sometimes A Man Stands Up" by Rainer Maria Rilke<h1 class="quoteText" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;">
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Sometimes a man stands up during supper<br />and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,<br />because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.<br /><br />And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.<br /><br />And another man, who remains inside his own house,<br />stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,<br />so that his children have to go far out into the world<br />toward that same church, which he forgot.</span></h1>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-37670398267344156252015-05-22T14:42:00.002-07:002015-05-22T20:26:29.861-07:00Writer's BlockI haven't posted in nearly a month, and I doubt anyone has been on the edge of their seat waiting for this one. My primary excuse: between work and family, life has been hectic. But that's nothing new. Not many extra hours to devote to writing. I've sat down multiple times to try to hammer something out, but nothing flows.<br />
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In my former life as an English major and wannabe best-selling-platinum-rock-star-novelist, I have become well-acquainted with writer's block. But I think there is something else going on. Namely, I've found myself a bit tired and bored with this whole "40th year quest" thing, to the point that I'm rethinking it all.<br />
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But it has occurred to me that whatever mental/spiritual fatigue I'm struggling with at the moment is probably relevant to the whole journey, and so while it may not be very interesting, you, dear reader, now get to read a post about my spiritual writer's block.<br />
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A little perspective: When I set the terms for this twelve month journey, starting with my 40th birthday, it was as "a spiritual quest for meaning after leaving Mormonism"--intent being to express my own experiences and insights, and hopefully to reach fellow seekers who may be struggling in their journey, to provide hope and perspective. I've wanted it to be primarily forward-looking, as in, "Okay, so where do we go from here?"<br />
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Initially, I felt a lot of energy for this, which surged again after my meditation retreat, and then again after a couple of rear-view-mirror posts in the dead of winter that were more widely read. I feel good about my intentions, the changes I've made in my life, what I've written about, and the overall direction I'm headed. But nine months in, and I'm starting to question some of my underlying assumptions:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chaos Theory</td></tr>
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<ul>
<li>Books. I've done a lot of reading, and yet the stack on my nightstand grows larger by the week. So much to read, so little time. But does it make a difference? Does it make one iota of difference for me to read another book? Another ancient text or some book by a New Age-y guru who thinks he's got it figured out? I get it, we're all connected. Live in the moment. Create your own meaning, blah blah blah . . .</li>
<li>Or meditation and yoga. I had some phenomenal experiences with it, felt like I had really turned a corner, but guess what? I come out of it, the kids are still fighting, I forgot to pay the electric bill, and there's a basketball game on. Back to the same old, same old.</li>
<li>Exercise. This has been pretty consistent. I enjoy it and feel like I'm in good shape. I've lost some of the belly fat, set a personal record for 10K in the Colfax Marathon Relay last week . . . but I'm still scrawny up top, still can't touch my toes in yoga, still aware that this machine is getting older by the day, that the clock is ticking down now, and doubtful that my health and fitness will ever be substantially better than what it is at the moment. </li>
<li>What about the big ticket items? Finish a marathon and pass board exams--check (barely) and check (grrrr). But then what? I've found myself, per usual, greatly anticipating upcoming vacations and events, to the detriment of whatever else is going on right now.</li>
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<b><i>Right now</i></b>. Hmmm. Part of my ennui seems to be emanating, paradoxically, from my recent reading of a phenomenal book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577314808/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1432329050&sr=8-1&keywords=the+power+of+now"><u>The Power of Now </u>by Eckhart Tolle</a>. I'll be reviewing that soon. (Something to look forward to, eh?)<br />
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The irony is that this book has indeed filled me with perspective and excitement about living fully in the present, practical ways to disassociate from my monkey mind, and how to simply bask in Being. I love it. It feels as simple, clear and true as anything I've yet read. And yet . . . these Nows just keep coming, don't they? Bills due. Patients to see. Deadlines to meet. So is there really any practical transcendence in being wholly in the Now, while life progresses relentlessly before and after that? We live in world where we survive by the sweat of our brow, that demands preparation for tomorrow, for the summer harvest or the winter famine, for another downturn in the economy, for our children's college educations, for the zombie apocalypse. Not going to let my children starve or my patients die just because I'm living blissfully in the Now. And so, reading a book that appears to approximate The Answer has become paradoxically frustrating, because it seems impractical and unattainable. (Unless of course we win the $1,000,000 sweepstakes from Albertsons this month, in which case I'll devote all of my time and energy to the pursuit of Pure Enlightenment.)<br />
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This is not surrender. This is my description of a difficult phase that is probably part and parcel with whatever journey I'm on, coming out at a time when I can't think of anything else useful to write. Breaking through this barrier will take some hardheadedness and tenacity. I'm kinda good at those. But this spiritual block also might be forcing a recalibration.<br />
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Here it is: I ain't gonna figure nothing out in the next three months, or the next three years, or the next thirty. There is no grand epiphany coming, no ascendance to a higher plain. There is the daily slog, and there are the intermittent joys, thrills, sorrows and absurdities. There is the journey. And I think that's all.<br />
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Maybe the simplest description of the Ultimate Grand Meaning of All Life and the Cosmos is this: <br />
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Now, just through writing here, I'm feeling a bit of the writer's block crumbling. Maybe priming the pump, and I guess this is called "powering through." I'm going to keep at this. I've got a few good things planned. I'm going to be reviewing soon the Tao Te Ching, the Baghavad Gita, and The Power of Now. I was hopeful to review War and Peace (seriously) and Moby Dick, but those aren't happening any time soon.<br />
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I have some funny moments in parenting and doctoring that I want to share. I want to share my awakening to the world of coffee and wine. I want to get out in nature and do some writing about the night sky. I have planned some more of my occasional diversions into the cosmic meaning of it all.<br />
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I also want to share some exciting developments in regards to the post-Mormon community here in Colorado. We're trying to help re-create community and support structures among those of us who've had our spiritual and social worlds collapse upon leaving the church.<br />
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My most exciting project is something I've been bantering about with my friend Jacob Hess, who has a PhD in community psychology. He's a believing Mormon and a good friend. We've engaged in a long "conversation about the conversation": why is it so hard for Mormons and post-Mormons to have intelligent, compassionate dialogue? We've discussed the need to create a "Third Space" where we can leave behind preconceptions, prejudices, pretensions to authority, and inflammatory rhetoric, and focus on listening, understanding, and loving each other. Is it possible? I honestly don't know. But I'm willing to give it a try.<br />
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So the big journey inexorably continues, as well as this little journey within it. We live to fight another day. at least up to some point, hopefully at least another 45 years or so in the future.<br />
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To be continued . . .Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-23728880900419926382015-04-26T08:59:00.002-07:002015-04-26T09:03:33.943-07:00Living Fully Now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-32343629069299174552015-04-19T11:02:00.001-07:002015-04-19T11:02:08.660-07:00Plato's Cave<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
An oldie but a goodie . . .</div>
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<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-31935597593931999332015-04-15T21:26:00.002-07:002015-04-15T21:39:17.227-07:00Spiral Dynamics<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"What I am proposing is that the psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process, marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems."--Clare Graves</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">For those unfortunate enough to engage in a "deep" discussion of some variety with me over the past five years, chances are I've pressed on you a reference to the book <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Spiral-Dynamics-Mastering-Values-Leadership/dp/1405133562"><b>Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change</b> </a></span>by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan. I happened upon this book a few years ago, and it's had an impact on how I view the human condition and my own journey within it. Due to a serendipitous encounter with my friend and mentor <a href="http://cowboyjesus.tumblr.com/">Pastor Steve Poos-Benson,</a> I've recently re-read it, at what seems an ideal juncture. I think about it often, and how it applies in my life. Is the conceptual model it describes coherent with reality? I think so. I think it's generally considered a valid framework with a proven track record in implementation. It's a psychology book, a self-help book, a leadership manual. It's about evolutionary psychology, applied to both individuals and to civilization. It's a tough book to summarize, but I'm a-gonna try. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><b>Spiral Dynamics</b> </i>seems to resonate with holistically-minded people, describing in a useful format some elusive and profound insights about the ever-progressing nature of human (and cultural) psychology and spiritual development. It presents a schema that facilitates useful conversation about people and societies going through periods of growth, change, and turmoil. It jives with my experiences and observations. </span>In particular, the last section of the book, "The Spiral Wizard's Field Manual," gives a good application of how this whole model works. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Beck and Cowan based their model on the work of their mentor, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_W._Graves">Dr. Clare Graves, PhD.</a> Here is a citation from wikipedia about Graves' foundational theory, "The Emergent Cyclical Levels of Existence Theory":</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Graves created an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Epistemology">epistemological</a> theory that he hoped would reconcile the various approaches to human nature and questions about psychological maturity. He collected pertinent data from his psychology students and others (in total a diverse group of around 1,065 men and women aged 18 to 61) in the seven years from 1952 to 1959.<sup style="line-height: 1;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_W._Graves#cite_note-1" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;" target="_blank">[1]</a></sup> He gathered conceptions of the mature personality and conducted batteries of psychological tests using recognized instruments. His analysis of this data became the basis for a theory that he called, among other titles, "The Emergent Cyclical Levels of Existence Theory" (ECLET).</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Graves theorized that in response to the interaction of external conditions with internal neuronal systems, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Human">humans</a> develop new bio-psycho-social coping systems to solve existential problems and cope with their worlds. These coping systems are dependent on evolving human <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Culture">culture</a> and individual development, and they are manifested at the individual, societal, and species levels. He believed that tangible, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Emergence">emergent</a>, self-assembling <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dynamic_neuronal_systems&action=edit&redlink=1" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Dynamic neuronal systems (page does not exist)">dynamic neuronal systems</a> evolved in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Human brain">human brain</a> in response to evolving existential and social problems. He theorized "man's nature is not a set thing, that it is ever emergent, that it is an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_and_closed_systems_in_social_science" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Open and closed systems in social science">open system</a>, not a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_system" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Closed system">closed system</a>." This open-endedness set his approach apart from many of his contemporaries who sought a final state, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Nirvana">nirvana</a>, or perfectibility in human nature. His inclusion of the bio-, psycho-, social, and systems theory as vital co-elements also described an inclusive point of view that continues developing today.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Graves' work observes that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Emergence">emergence</a> within humans of new bio-psycho-social systems in response to the interplay of external conditions with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Neuroscience">neurology</a> follows a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Hierarchy">hierarchy</a> in several dimensions, though without guarantees as to time lines or even direction: both progression and regression are possibilities in his model. Furthermore, each level in the hierarchy alternates as the human is either trying to make the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_environment" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Natural environment">environment</a> adapt to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(psychology)" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Self (psychology)">self</a>, or the human is adapting the self to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Existentialism">existential</a> conditions. He called these 'express self' and 'deny self' systems, and the swing between them is the cyclic aspect of his theory. Graves saw this process of stable plateaus interspersed with change intervals as never ending, up to the limits of the brain of Homo sapiens, something he viewed as far greater than we have yet imagined.</span></i></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Spiral Dynamics</i> builds on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs">Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.</a> It proposes that human psychology and society continuously adapt to existing Life Conditions (which they call LC). LC1 means the most basic life conditions are present--food, shelter, etc--but there is no time or capacity for deep existential questions. LC5 represents what many First Worlders experience today: material success, technological acheivement, scientific knowledge, along with a sense of alienation, ennui, and deep existential questions about our relationship to the earth and our purpose in the universe. The Orange v-Meme (keep reading, explanation forthcoming) got us to this point, but it can't get us past it. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwc2mLAsHbRpHNXY2d9_Bl-ZHrlTerw04n5d5O4NdmJ9K4udjz7TWsZmlG-aMDrDeFSyFZtFlx6HIkwzAH5xTqamoMQO0SnSjHxbD_S5WWRk3Z3T7VPiDuET542zZtdnIY4hNUV18Wwjo2/s1600/Spiral+dynamics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Oty8Ubr0jEk8OJ2e77soGaNOt1DoTudL6LBGpkB-IlCyjpQFxt7NUenDV_ObryGY7rvyGlD7YiFh4s84NYmoMX5iopj1i_nty5YR1FPgDRdm_EUD-DPYTyi2TiHxf15Cast1LM2j9Wum/s1600/Einstein.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Oty8Ubr0jEk8OJ2e77soGaNOt1DoTudL6LBGpkB-IlCyjpQFxt7NUenDV_ObryGY7rvyGlD7YiFh4s84NYmoMX5iopj1i_nty5YR1FPgDRdm_EUD-DPYTyi2TiHxf15Cast1LM2j9Wum/s1600/Einstein.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">As life conditions continually change, then new paradigms of thought are required to meet new challenges. Beck and Cowan have a name for these paradigms/thought patterns/worldviews: v-MEMES. The v-MEMES are "</span><span style="text-align: center;">unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling," and in this schematic representation, they are conveniently color-</span><span style="background-color: white;">coded, starting with BEIGE, the level of basic survival instinct, and ascending through PURPLE (tribalism) to RED (egocentric power) to BLUE (deference to orthodoxy) to ORANGE (independent entrepreneurism) to GREEN (global equality), and then eventually arriving at YELLOW and TURQUOISE, which are "second-tier" v-MEMES, where systemic thinking, integration, and holism come to life. As these v-MEMES sequentially manifest in the mind and in society, they oscillate between "self-expression" and<span style="color: black;"> "self-denial" tones: sometimes the ego needs to assert itself, sometimes the ego needs to take one for the team. Below is an excellent pictogram of the key components of this model, and how each level is differentiated:</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwc2mLAsHbRpHNXY2d9_Bl-ZHrlTerw04n5d5O4NdmJ9K4udjz7TWsZmlG-aMDrDeFSyFZtFlx6HIkwzAH5xTqamoMQO0SnSjHxbD_S5WWRk3Z3T7VPiDuET542zZtdnIY4hNUV18Wwjo2/s1600/Spiral+dynamics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwc2mLAsHbRpHNXY2d9_Bl-ZHrlTerw04n5d5O4NdmJ9K4udjz7TWsZmlG-aMDrDeFSyFZtFlx6HIkwzAH5xTqamoMQO0SnSjHxbD_S5WWRk3Z3T7VPiDuET542zZtdnIY4hNUV18Wwjo2/s1600/Spiral+dynamics.jpg" height="640" width="494" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: black;">Importantly, none of these levels is bad, or inferior. In fact, each is essential, and represents a stage in the development of the individual or society, often revisited in new iterations borne of necessity or from regression. (Think "red" in they terrible twos, again in the early teens, perhaps again in a mid-life crisis.) These levels reflect the continual growth of the human brain and society. You can't really healthily skip through levels. You have to experience them, then "transcend and integrate" each level as you move upward. It happens naturally and predictably as one ages and as life conditions fluctuate, though many people get </span>stuck primarily in one particular level. Also, some levels may manifest circumstantially: at church, you may need to appeal to Blue to stay in the boat; at work, you may need to pull from Orange to get the job done; at that awkward family reunion, you may need to reach for Green to keep the peace. The authors speak frequently about the "health of the whole Spiral." It's a spectrum of thinking patterns that need to be balanced, transcended and integrated, and perhaps pulled out of the hat when life conditions demand it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When a person (or society) is on the brink of engaging the next level of the Spiral ("a paradigm shift"), there is a predictable period of turmoil. Beck and Cowan call this the Gamma Trap. Here's how that works: a person is at an Alpha State in their v-Meme, where they reside comfortably, and the world appears in harmony with their thinking patterns. "It all makes sense." But inevitably, new Life Conditions and problems emerge, and their present v-MEME cannot adequately address them. They feel discomfort--here called a Beta State. "Nothing makes sense anymore." They feel pulled towards a new Delta--the new way of thinking that will allow the brain/spirit to engage on a higher level and solve their new problems. However, they must first pass through Gamma--this is the existential desert, the dark night of the soul. The guideposts aren't there anymore. The map is leading you in circles. Many people (and cultures) reject the discomfort of Gamma and retreat to the seductively familiar (and falsely reassuring) Alpha state, and thus remain trapped in their old comfort zones--and old problems. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Great quote, apparently misattributed to both Einstein and Ben Franklin.) But for those that "lean into" the Gamma Trap--if they survive--they make it to the Delta and engage a new v-MEME which empowers them to think in new ways and thus solve their emerging problems: "transcend and integrate." This Delta becomes the new Alpha State, and they resonate peacefully for a while until the LCs catch up and they encounter new problems that even their new v-MEME can't handle. They are thus compelled to progress further up the spiral, if they can cross their new Gamma Trap. Sounds like "eternal progression" to me. :)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One flaw of any model of human development like this (such as <i>Seven Habits</i>, which also had a big impact on me at another time in my life) is that they can be overly schematic and rigid. ("They've mastered these seven discrete habits, and thus they are highly effective. Congratulations! You, however, having mastered only four of the seven, are only moderately effective. So sorry . . .") Of course no individual or culture resides solely in one level of the Spiral. It's a spectrum. Not every individual has the capacity (instrinsic traits + life conditions + experiences) to progress all the way up the Spiral. As life conditions change, people can slide up or down the Spiral in peak phases, or regressions. Even people in the highest levels of thinking can become fixed and rigid. Yet some individuals are much more adept at moving up and down the spiral, meeting other people wherever they are at, helping them to adapt to their LCs, and helping them take the next step--or half step, or to survive a back step--up or down the Spiral. These people are referred to as Spiral Wizards. They are essential to helping maintain balance and the "health of the whole Spiral."</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Q0isVum7CO3JJNb_Cx_94EaZ9y89I39cQDTlmjcHS4ev-XsGHCssE66062QtJhw8-PS_brDIam3famnCFWBUt7hAJZmSFWV0I55imOMvGYBh4Kk3n6u5hIFAVqqij2Nu-HrwpQruwJZ3/s1600/Einstein2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Q0isVum7CO3JJNb_Cx_94EaZ9y89I39cQDTlmjcHS4ev-XsGHCssE66062QtJhw8-PS_brDIam3famnCFWBUt7hAJZmSFWV0I55imOMvGYBh4Kk3n6u5hIFAVqqij2Nu-HrwpQruwJZ3/s1600/Einstein2.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Despite being more fluid, perhaps the biggest critique of this model is that it is still hierarchical, and unapologetically so. While making no judgments of absolute superiority or value (people are where there are, society is where it is, everybody is just doing the best they can), Spiral Dynamics does suggest that as the human mind and civilization progress forward through time, there is a natural and beneficial ascendance up the Spiral. The thrust is upward, onward, inward and outward. Here's a final quote from Clare Graves that I think summarizes this idea. </span></span></div>
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<i><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"I am not saying in this conception of adult behavior that one style of being, one form of human existence, is inevitably and in all circumstances superior to or better than another form of human existence, another style of being. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What I am saying is that when one form of being is more congruent with the realities of existence, then it is the better form of being for those realities. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And what I am saying is that when one form of existence ceases to be functional for the realities of existence then some other form, either higher or lower in the hierarchy, is the better style of living. </span></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>I do suggest, however, and this I deeply believe is so, that for the overall welfare of total man's existence in this world, over the long run of time, higher levels are better than lower levels and that the prime good of a society's governing figures should be to promote human movement up the levels of human existence."</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">--Clare Graves</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So if you're moving through the Spiral, and find yourself caught in a Gamma Trap . . . don't despair, my friend! Lean into the change. You will survive, and things will get better. It's constant movement, adaptation, evolution. Resurrection and reincarnation. (Please don't take that literally.) It's the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis again and again, this continuous ascending Spiral of the human mind and society. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_fh3Zuha8zSr-24XcPUEpFekukCpwc0z8QUW-iV0kBR3MUd-N4BicgIsJkDg2W3BCNcgR1kEDS7x5UrMnKpACIRFWPNyZ7z9JZIyctNfZN9MH-WV9cd9kS44Sq6r4BVSOJDVdrsjIOWfa/s1600/From-Caterpillar-to-Swallowtail-Butterfly-Emerging-from-Cocoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_fh3Zuha8zSr-24XcPUEpFekukCpwc0z8QUW-iV0kBR3MUd-N4BicgIsJkDg2W3BCNcgR1kEDS7x5UrMnKpACIRFWPNyZ7z9JZIyctNfZN9MH-WV9cd9kS44Sq6r4BVSOJDVdrsjIOWfa/s1600/From-Caterpillar-to-Swallowtail-Butterfly-Emerging-from-Cocoon.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">(Here are some more resources, excellent summaries of the Spiral Dynamics model.)</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.rationalspirituality.com/articles/Ken_Wilber_Spiral_Dynamics.htm"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">www.rationalspirituality.com/articles/Ken_Wilber_Spiral_Dynamics.htm</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.aubynhoward.com/SpiralDynamicsIntro.html">www.aubynhoward.com/SpiralDynamicsIntro.html</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.spiraldynamics.com/book/SDreview_Dinan.htm">www.spiraldynamics.com/book/SDreview_Dinan.htm</a></span></div>
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<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-12937144664569258012015-03-28T09:42:00.002-07:002015-03-31T16:15:36.549-07:00Letting Go . . .<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"The hardest to learn was the least complicated."-- Indigo Girls</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK6eOqQnDATA-40Dph_wRgKpZWTkLSasYem1u1nncxsUmj4SYjW0w0hoynLxk9Cb4mBvrhr3SxgyeiCHqQ1IQJxXEOiLve_Vug5vRPw8vjnsPuidSi0bvPeRyU1FZFcJY2CqiSU8aY_U1m/s1600/letting-go1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK6eOqQnDATA-40Dph_wRgKpZWTkLSasYem1u1nncxsUmj4SYjW0w0hoynLxk9Cb4mBvrhr3SxgyeiCHqQ1IQJxXEOiLve_Vug5vRPw8vjnsPuidSi0bvPeRyU1FZFcJY2CqiSU8aY_U1m/s1600/letting-go1.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A few years ago. I had an email conversation with a friend, who like me had discovered some affinity for Buddhism, but couldn't quite go all in for it. She had the sense that her present suffering was secondary to her attachment to a difficult relationship, to her yearning for a child, to the idea of love. She (ironically) felt some guilt over this, and her inability to "let go" of her attachments.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As the conversation progressed, I responded: "If we were all Buddhas or Christs, then we wouldn't <span class="il">attach</span> ourselves--and our sufferings and our sense of fulfillment--to other frail human beings. But being mere mortals, we crave the closeness and fulfillment that comes from sharing our lives with somebody else. And while I am enamored with many aspects of Buddhism, this is why I think in the end it's not a practical philosophy for me. Because I LIKE my attachments. I don't want to let go of them--my wife and kids, ambitions, desires, ice cream and pizza. I'll let go when I die--that will be soon enough--but while I'm alive I'm going to <span class="il">attach</span> myself to the things that are meaningful to me. And I realize that this refusal to let go is an invitation for suffering. But suffering is part of the human experience, and in the great karmic scales, you need the pain in order to experience the joy. It's all part of one big mystery, and it's beautiful and terrifying, both empty and full. I guess that's just . . . life."</span></span><br />
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</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmk-xKGyxjhytKmKwerCLtK_n7nVJ_owKaEPk9fpYfVN4qIQeI008hAXYUMt2F27FuucVli3rBZiILOzG_qg8HVycTzCSAwGTMZmEpy1PldQTt4myqfzanFkKryfIswH8jx_AwpGgSWFkB/s1600/invitation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmk-xKGyxjhytKmKwerCLtK_n7nVJ_owKaEPk9fpYfVN4qIQeI008hAXYUMt2F27FuucVli3rBZiILOzG_qg8HVycTzCSAwGTMZmEpy1PldQTt4myqfzanFkKryfIswH8jx_AwpGgSWFkB/s1600/invitation.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">This was not so much wisdom from me as protest. I'm not sure what the Buddha would say to it. But I know what a woman named Oriah Mountain Dreamer thinks. She wrote a famous poem called "The Invitation," which is a call to do the exact opposite of letting go. The poem is a challenge to live life to the fullest, to experience the exquisite thrills and aches of life and relationships. She seems to have a particularly robust capacity for Carpe Diem. It's a beautiful poem.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><b style="background-color: white;">The Invitation</b></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;">by Oriah Mountain Dreamer</i></span><br />
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<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px; text-align: center;">It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. </i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;">It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;">It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;">I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;">It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"><i style="background-color: white;"><br /></i></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;">I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"> </span></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"><i style="background-color: white;"><br /></i></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;">I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”</i></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;"><br /></i></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;">It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"> </span></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"><i style="background-color: white;"><br /></i></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;">It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"> </span></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"><i style="background-color: white;"><br /></i></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;">It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"> </span></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"><i style="background-color: white;"><br /></i></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white;">I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.</i></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.7150000333786011px; line-height: 22.8799991607666px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I've been reading a companion book she wrote exploring these ideas. I enjoy it, but hers seems like an invitation to what? To suffering. To joy as well, of course. But the ultimate purpose of it all gets lost in the ecstasy of the moment. It's dancing for the sake of dancing. Hurting for the sake of hurting. We live, we laugh, we cry, we die. Hope it meant something to you. Is that it? Isn't there more? Why do I feel programmed to believe there is?</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9MqSUAiYIlXYKbKA5xYe3MCa1FK_Hyo1nAiWiEmU-9L9Mg-O5IkSwWftj5n2JtAf99JuPa4-RrtAlQI3-717Q9-oRHmoLDLE9kXLhTv0vhohIR6B5qJxtPBWn3GIDug9g5T5BVKKgM0OH/s1600/tightrope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9MqSUAiYIlXYKbKA5xYe3MCa1FK_Hyo1nAiWiEmU-9L9Mg-O5IkSwWftj5n2JtAf99JuPa4-RrtAlQI3-717Q9-oRHmoLDLE9kXLhTv0vhohIR6B5qJxtPBWn3GIDug9g5T5BVKKgM0OH/s1600/tightrope.jpg" height="275" width="400" /></span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Which brings me back to letting go. I've had a few coffee-house conversations recently with other friends (looking at you, Steve and Scott!) where we've discussed this same thread: holding on versus letting go. It seems like there is a tightrope to walk, and the tension between the two provides the ballast. Hold on too tight? Life becomes exquisitely joyful or unbearably painful, but ultimately for naught, 'cuz we all gonna die. But let go of it all? Then what's the point of being alive in the first place. Either way, ultimate meaning evaporates. But being stuck in the middle of ambition and surrender seems to be a place to claim a speck of human dignity and purpose within this infinite cosmos.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It's a daily struggle, and a daily reprieve. Yin and yang.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">For me, here are the biggest things I'm trying to let go of:</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My need to control the outcome</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My need to know the end game</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My need for approval from others</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My need for ultimate meaning</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Will I succeed? And why this blog? I don't know. I'm still holding on to hope that I'll figure something out. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Still holding on . . .</span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCmBUkAZAeumwlOYJ2vwwJXEHpsm-eFi_O92WRepJtMm8zQzBnnICQPfYMGf3dv9wc3mcUTiuBz74XeE5mvE3PScWruKybgVHryeIbQApkvOLv_U2j8swaWutH4HT4-isrycV8LTmsZ57P/s1600/contact-03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCmBUkAZAeumwlOYJ2vwwJXEHpsm-eFi_O92WRepJtMm8zQzBnnICQPfYMGf3dv9wc3mcUTiuBz74XeE5mvE3PScWruKybgVHryeIbQApkvOLv_U2j8swaWutH4HT4-isrycV8LTmsZ57P/s1600/contact-03.jpg" height="166" width="400" /></span></i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="background-color: white;">"You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other."<br /> --from Contact, by Carl Sagan.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-25628428061845693832015-03-04T10:54:00.002-08:002019-12-27T11:01:22.471-08:00The Four Cs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
When we left the Mormon church, and especially after telling our children, there was a sense, almost literal, of leaping into an abyss. Was anything real? Was anything solid? Through years of conditioning, we feared that without the backbone of the church and its moral structure to support us, we would be abandoning our kids' spiritual welfare to "mists of darkness," to destinies of crime, drugs, and teenage pregnancy, and even worse, coffee.<br />
<br />
(This attitude emanates from the highest levels of Mormondom even today, with <a href="http://www.donotlink.com/framed?648492">an article in this month's Ensign</a> by apostle Elder Dallin Oaks stating explicitly that secular humanists, atheists, and our ilk are Anti-Christs, foretold in the Book of Mormon as part of the great and abominable whore of the whole earth. Ouch, Dallin! I'm seriously just trying to do the best I can to live by truth and with integrity. Sorry to upset you so much!)<br />
<br />
As we treaded water early in this journey, my wife and I struggled with how to instill core values and socially conscious behavior in our children without invoking the threat of supernatural consequences. For those who haven't tried it, especially those with very bright and strong-willed children, this is no easy feat. Much easier to tell them that God will punish them or withhold favor or salvation.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTM18-fugyeU9Z7TW7lT1yMrRa8t3UrfnCHL4PIO4P8nbL_kFjnUV9V-j4VH4LKVaemI0tQ6MJYH_LKqhXm0Fk7TLITsXn21O7A8G-AEY-9qcPZBb-UbwOj9Y_KfRNd-H0m9UKYI6nZyNB/s1600/maybe+right.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTM18-fugyeU9Z7TW7lT1yMrRa8t3UrfnCHL4PIO4P8nbL_kFjnUV9V-j4VH4LKVaemI0tQ6MJYH_LKqhXm0Fk7TLITsXn21O7A8G-AEY-9qcPZBb-UbwOj9Y_KfRNd-H0m9UKYI6nZyNB/s1600/maybe+right.jpg" width="207" /></a>In the years since, we've come across a number of amazing resources. Here are just a few:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Maybe-Right-Wrong-Dan-Barker/dp/0879757310#">Maybe Right, Maybe Wrong</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Maybe-Yes-No-Dan-Barker/dp/0879756071/ref=pd_sim_b_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=0AJ7FBPE8JE7N8Q7CV0W">Maybe Yes, Maybe No</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Beyond-Belief-Raising-Religion/dp/0814474268/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425491510&sr=1-1&keywords=parenting+beyond+belief">Parenting Beyond Belief</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Freethinkers-Practical-Parenting-Beyond/dp/0814410960/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425491535&sr=1-1&keywords=raising+freethinkers">Raising Free Thinkers</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mindful-Parenting-Powerful-Solutions-Creative/dp/125002031X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425491716&sr=1-1&keywords=mindful+parenting">Mindful Parenting</a></li>
</ul>
<br />
But at the time, we were flailing for anything solid. After all, we had been raised in a strong (and overall positive) structure of family values, yet we had no personal experience of how to do it without religion, and not another soul on planet earth with whom to discuss it. Of course, example always screams louder than any words, and we hoped that by being honest, kind, curious, joyful and brave ourselves, we would instill those values in our kids.<br />
<br />
One day as we were discussing a specific problem, we felt some inspiration. This is what we came up with on the spot, and it stuck:<br />
<br />
The Four C's<br />
<ul>
<li>Courage</li>
<li>Compassion</li>
<li>Creativity</li>
<li>Commitment</li>
</ul>
We developed small, fun lessons about each of these values. We identified examples of when our heroes, both real and fictional (Jesus, Lincoln, Luke Skywalker, etc.) displayed them. We stenciled these words onto our dining room wall. For several months, every night at the dinner table we would ask the kids about how they manifested these values during the day: "Billy fell at the playground and hurt his knee, and I helped him get to the nurse" (compassion); "I scored the winning touchdown at recess!" (courage); "I built a new spaceship with legos today!" (creativity); or "I finished all my homework this afternoon" (commitment). We made a color-coded paper chain, and added as many specific accomplishments as we could each day. This involved parents, too. It was fun as we watched the chain grow rapidly. The initial goal was to make it long enough to wrap around our house, though we never quite got that far.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlVj92GBJddmn4FoCg7KEelq8tcwQcGXuu2SPySNUpLhd1axzF3e270l38v8DppMnO5a4lxJws5solj5d2Y5YXRtLnB69d1MXrNWEn6CM-NRIExs4VAM6v7gVe6X0oMEFFME3qssQbv3OX/s1600/dinner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlVj92GBJddmn4FoCg7KEelq8tcwQcGXuu2SPySNUpLhd1axzF3e270l38v8DppMnO5a4lxJws5solj5d2Y5YXRtLnB69d1MXrNWEn6CM-NRIExs4VAM6v7gVe6X0oMEFFME3qssQbv3OX/s1600/dinner.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
It was a good framework for us. These universal values seemed to capture most of what we felt was essential to pass on to our kids so they could live happy, productive, fulfilling lives, without needing to invoke a deity. Fairly, all of these values in some measure were instilled in us through our Mormon upbringing. The trick, of course, is separating the value from the vehicle, and all the collateral baggage a faulty vehicle might bring with it.<br />
<br />
Here's a brief discussion of each value:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Courage:</b> I think this is the most important value of all. Moral courage, physical courage, spiritual courage. If a child has the courage of his or her convictions, they can make brave choices, overcome failure and disappointment, stand up for themselves when challenged, and take a stand for truth and justice when others are turning away. Also encompassed in this value are confidence and self-esteem. </li>
<li><b>Compassion: </b>Understanding our connectedness to each other, as well as to animals and the earth, that we are all bound in a common fate as humans on this planet, instills a sense of kindness, empathy, and gentleness towards others. Finding opportunities to reach out to the sad, distressed, lonely, impoverished is not difficult. Always much more difficult to offer the same compassion to those within the walls of your own home, but nevertheless the house is an infinite laboratory for this. Also encompassed in this value are charity and service.</li>
<li><b>Creativity: </b>Leave your mark on the world! Do something unique! Let your light so shine! Elizabeth and I are creative people, and my experience is that nothing is more motivating or fulfilling than the act of creating something unique and expressive about your experience on this planet. Also encompassed in this value are critical thinking, innovation, and independence.</li>
<li><b>Commitment: </b>Do what you say you're going to do. Persevere through hard times. Take a chosen task all the way to its completion. "A job worth doing is worth doing well." Also encompassed in this value are honesty and loyalty.</li>
</ul>
So there you go: our alliterative mnemonic that created opportunities for conversation around the dinner table, and a guidebook of sorts for dealing with problems and growth opportunities inside and outside the home. We found that most other essential values were able to be placed within this framework, but two others deserve special mention--although not as conveniently "Cs."<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. This simple maxim has stood the test of time, and creates an easy framework for kids to understand the social consequences of their actions. "Would you like it if Billy threw dog poop at you? No. So let's not do that, okay?"</li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqly0gm7IJAC4LDLg4wxQA0Cri4l2Wb-lg7o0RA-cwifQeVhj6XoC0oBRK2k2d8JHxyrkaFWn_UAZezE_WdX64_ypuCvPz31PAX1DKpzAH-3qdrRCDr8zUuQISIc2h5P861vUNhleWZMgF/s1600/golden-rule.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqly0gm7IJAC4LDLg4wxQA0Cri4l2Wb-lg7o0RA-cwifQeVhj6XoC0oBRK2k2d8JHxyrkaFWn_UAZezE_WdX64_ypuCvPz31PAX1DKpzAH-3qdrRCDr8zUuQISIc2h5P861vUNhleWZMgF/s1600/golden-rule.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<ul>
<li>Resiliency: The ability to bounce back from failure. Closely tied to courage, is there any more valuable trait to instill in our children? Failures will come. It's okay to experience that, feel it, grieve it. But then, son, time to get right back on that horse! (Thanks for that one, Mom and Dad!) Life is a long journey, and weathering the storms that come with courage and commitment is essential to our happiness and fulfillment. Three particular phrases that have helped ameliorate the sting of failure, disappointment, betrayal or pain: "Everything's going to be alright, "This too shall pass," and "Brighter days ahead!"</li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2KMz0HpACPM4hbbpHLqEVZrTKRl-HOsN-kG04KXZYm0oFArIz_jRMsL7DFE3jPN5Np64AUpCm95Bb-zX4BrqCp4P9qbwDeW_bsce2wxsXx-RenP_4gMs60fAAfidohbdqiJh-SfWYYk42/s1600/resilience+definition.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2KMz0HpACPM4hbbpHLqEVZrTKRl-HOsN-kG04KXZYm0oFArIz_jRMsL7DFE3jPN5Np64AUpCm95Bb-zX4BrqCp4P9qbwDeW_bsce2wxsXx-RenP_4gMs60fAAfidohbdqiJh-SfWYYk42/s1600/resilience+definition.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Or my kids' favorite: "Hey, guys, I just realized something! Today is the first day of the rest of my life! And it's the last day of my old life! AND . . . it's only minus one days until yesterday!"<br />
<br />
(Okay, so that last one doesn't make much sense, but it's funny, and it gets to another core value: developing a good sense of humor, and a healthy sense of the absurdity and exquisiteness of life. Always good to keep these kiddos and their developing wits on their toes.)Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-63885037703645614282015-03-03T07:08:00.002-08:002015-03-03T07:11:13.538-08:00Be Open To New Truth<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Nice quote attributed to the Buddha:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4VaEIfZGa6Jtl93cwGnRe2XHj1R39ABT05cqYEjlgpMGNc6Krg5GKP2fvnjbIifCMotKBwUP4vEG6rXm12JK-RE09Wy6Aek5obzlWUZTkaSu9LmwcYQyycjY77vaZCm4KoO3VGxfP2nl4/s1600/Buddha+Quote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4VaEIfZGa6Jtl93cwGnRe2XHj1R39ABT05cqYEjlgpMGNc6Krg5GKP2fvnjbIifCMotKBwUP4vEG6rXm12JK-RE09Wy6Aek5obzlWUZTkaSu9LmwcYQyycjY77vaZCm4KoO3VGxfP2nl4/s1600/Buddha+Quote.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 16.799999237060547px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"If at some point in your life you adopt an idea or a perception as the absolute truth, you close the door of your mind. This is the end of seeking the truth. And not only do you no longer seek the truth, but even if the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you refuse to open it. Attachment to views, attachment to ideas, attachment to perceptions are the biggest obstacles to the truth."</span></span></div>
</div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-60279752186425699782015-02-18T12:49:00.001-08:002015-02-19T19:56:57.223-08:00Breaking It To The Kiddos<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinCelCQ2MiDr_j7r05V3HUL2P9X6Oim4rf0CE1pVEG3_fhwKS8OZ7NfKdobb2WiXfq08LbIxsyDLw0nYN_izBgYwFlJeCA13JIpdKfBUbuGR2Q0JVOQ8qHfBZjivVTgJA1apQ-cs5La9-X/s1600/mt+falcon+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinCelCQ2MiDr_j7r05V3HUL2P9X6Oim4rf0CE1pVEG3_fhwKS8OZ7NfKdobb2WiXfq08LbIxsyDLw0nYN_izBgYwFlJeCA13JIpdKfBUbuGR2Q0JVOQ8qHfBZjivVTgJA1apQ-cs5La9-X/s1600/mt+falcon+3.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">Four and a half years ago, on a Sunday morning in mid-September, Elizabeth and I got our young family ready for the day. Our kids were ages nine, seven, and three. For the first time in their lives, we didn't get them ready for church. No frantic scramble to comb hair and pile in the car. No screaming parents or crying kids. Instead, we put on hiking shoes, packed sunscreen, water bottles and a lunch, and headed off for </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;"> mountains.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdYyQpcJWcO1L5g0S8_NKSBhntBRIU3SVcwcfmRwX4NJWvKK1HQJV5sNUikTXQ1_g8chicgZKc6Ol12xntm38Z4h_3ulw9qi9shNe0zsfAxAqeSq5tOGWBDuEh6A6pE7ieGTI4RNw7EK9n/s1600/walkersdream.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdYyQpcJWcO1L5g0S8_NKSBhntBRIU3SVcwcfmRwX4NJWvKK1HQJV5sNUikTXQ1_g8chicgZKc6Ol12xntm38Z4h_3ulw9qi9shNe0zsfAxAqeSq5tOGWBDuEh6A6pE7ieGTI4RNw7EK9n/s1600/walkersdream.jpg" height="254" width="320" /></a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">We went to Mt. Falcon park, an iconic Front Range foothill overlooking Denver, Red Rocks Amphitheater</span></span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">, and our own neighborhood in Littleton. A couple miles of trail stretches from the parking lot towards the peak. Halfway along this hike there are ruins of an old stone house, and then the trail continues to some other ruins once intended to be a summer residence for U.S. presidents. Both of these homes had been repeatedly struck by lightning until they were eventually abandoned to ruin. Now they make interesting hiking destinations for Colorado weekenders.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 22.85714340209961px;">Along the trail, there is a pull out among some pine trees, with a cluster of large granite rocks. This was a resonant spot for me and Elizabeth. We'd had our first kiss right there about fourteen years previously. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDFaA_7rB7kdga-xdBd351VcHJYTuLc6Bwg9pbs6tU40zIXqbCjxwSzIG8nMrYVPHRLNma31rgoCN41GiVxxxGA64KveGPjiK7ydwMZ0rUaj-AQWa46J20ZFX5-pPKdOGcniH7AAYWXeRp/s1600/mt+falcon+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDFaA_7rB7kdga-xdBd351VcHJYTuLc6Bwg9pbs6tU40zIXqbCjxwSzIG8nMrYVPHRLNma31rgoCN41GiVxxxGA64KveGPjiK7ydwMZ0rUaj-AQWa46J20ZFX5-pPKdOGcniH7AAYWXeRp/s1600/mt+falcon+2.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 22.85714340209961px;">We sat the kids on the rocks looking out over the city, pulled out the lunches, let the littlest toddle around. We told them that this was the spot where Mommy and Daddy had our first kiss. We reenacted it, which they thought was both funny and gross. Eventually we asked, "Did you guys notice that we didn't go to church today?" "Yeah," they responded, "but this is way funner!"</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">Here's some context: the previous week we had decided, after a particularly painful testimony meeting, that we were finally done with being Mormon. This was a huge decision, not made quickly or easily. We had agonized over </span><span style="line-height: 22.85714340209961px;">it for</span><span style="line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;"> seven months. We had already come to the conclusion that it </span><span style="line-height: 22.85714340209961px;">wasn't true, not in the way it had been presented to us, but we still hoped that we could find enough good there to salvage something useful. (And I acknowledge that there is still truth and value there for many.) But for us, the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual compromises required of us to stay became untenable. Mostly, we were scared and confused. We didn't have a relationship with another soul on planet earth who had ever left the church. There was no roadmap, nobody to talk to. We guessed--correctly--that there would be huge ramifications amongst our family and friends, that we would be ostracized, vilified, patronized, fasted-and-prayed for. That seemed a hefty price to pay, and for what? There was no clear direction for us to follow beyond the church. It seemed like all paths were shrouded in mists of darkness. Yet those twinkling lights of truth kept beckoning from beneath the mists.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 22.85714340209961px;">One day, my daughter had come home from church with a coloring page of a polygamist-looking pioneer woman with the caption, "I Will Be A Mother In Zion." (This was not too long after the raid of the FLDS compound in Texas, and all of the polygamist women appearing brainwashed on TV asking for their children back.) Whoa. I suddenly saw something through my daughter's eyes that I had never seen before: the suffocating weight of social and doctrinal pressure on women to fulfill first and foremost their divine destiny to bear children. For sure, I wanted my daughter to someday experience the joy of motherhood and family. But not as her final, ultimate goal. This was my brilliant, beautiful, compassionate, witty, precocious, precious daughter! She could do anything she wanted in life. No limits! Yet here I was, allowing well-intended others to wrap these chains of "roles and duties of women" around her young, impressionable brain. </span></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn2c4giaf4ayXjJBRpImn7ivRowjK8e5ImeJc_KqKJLCAbcHwwM_YSFdfnylXW7pP5hKNffYn9Z-xhLz9YLAFBr1WDqOXfOTXsuodW9J2Jib0FRMr3uEts17dOm3IR_-FKV86kJg6EwmKW/s1600/polygamy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn2c4giaf4ayXjJBRpImn7ivRowjK8e5ImeJc_KqKJLCAbcHwwM_YSFdfnylXW7pP5hKNffYn9Z-xhLz9YLAFBr1WDqOXfOTXsuodW9J2Jib0FRMr3uEts17dOm3IR_-FKV86kJg6EwmKW/s1600/polygamy.jpg" height="176" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 22.85714340209961px;">We realized that we were playing a dangerous game. In order to elude the imminent pains of us leaving, we were continuing to subject our children to a belief system and all of its ramifications that we no longer held to. We were not being authentic to ourselves, to fellow church members, and mostly to our children. The concern of "What will happen to our kids if we leave?" suddenly inverted to "What will happen to them if we </span><i style="line-height: 22.85714340209961px;">stay</i><span style="line-height: 22.85714340209961px;">?"</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 22.85714340209961px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">We decided that we owed it to them to lay it out on the table, and to let them know that our decision was not an act of weakness, but of strength, courage, intelligence and integrity. That there were going to be some hard feelings with relatives and friends. That nobody else in their world would understand our decision, but that we (the five of us) would stick together no matter what.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">And that's how we arrived at that spot in the pines on Mt. Falcon on a Sunday morning in September. "Well, kiddos, the reason we're not at church is because Mom and I have decided that we are no longer going to be Mormon." This surprisingly didn't seem to carry the shock waves that we thought it would. My middle son asked, "So that means we don't have to go to church anymore? Yes!" </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">Thus began for the next hour a powerful, open, loving discussion with our young children that ranks in the top ten best moments of my life. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">We told them that we had believed so strongly in the church our entire lives, that we had built everything around it, believing that it was exactly what it said it was, the only true church and the only way to salvation. We went on missions, to BYU, married in the temple, paid tithing, served in callings. It was an honor to do all of this because we believed it was the most important thing in the world. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">But as we got older, we started to see things in a different light, and we learned that the church had not been truthful with us about some very important things. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN0JWDS7fse0DAQ2aW75r4hcfDr7BmzZaHZtoXQSyTNUChoXYGed23Dyy9PjVTKEczYWXFjuVvNJLXnkLFlRk3qkAOV-jj2jV2EjT1_K6dwecGR8gIMmLg1a3mUwjyLTPDzVX_n_Ug5qbm/s1600/Joseph+Smith.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN0JWDS7fse0DAQ2aW75r4hcfDr7BmzZaHZtoXQSyTNUChoXYGed23Dyy9PjVTKEczYWXFjuVvNJLXnkLFlRk3qkAOV-jj2jV2EjT1_K6dwecGR8gIMmLg1a3mUwjyLTPDzVX_n_Ug5qbm/s1600/Joseph+Smith.jpg" height="320" width="205" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joseph Smith's rampant polygamy and polyandry,<br />
represented in this chart, is now officially<br />
acknowledged by the Mormon church.<br />
Sorry, but as a father of a 13 year old girl,<br />
that's just not something I would want<br />
to defend as moral or divine.<br />
.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">In an age appropriate way, we then told them about polygamy/polyandry. Joseph Smith was married to 34 women, while 11 of them were married to other men, and a few of them were fourteen year old girls. To which my nine year old daughter said, "That's weird, why would anybody want to be married to 34 women?" Exactly. And to make it worse, he lied about it, and the church lied about it for him. Then we talked about the Book of Mormon being a fairy tale that was disproven by science and historians, and said, "It's got some great stories that we all love, but wouldn't that be weird if we built a religion out of Dr. Seuss?" And lastly we addressed blacks and the priesthood, and said that we refused to believe in a god who would judge people by the color of their skin, because even if the church didn't treat people that way now, it did for 150 years, and if they were wrong about something as important as that, then maybe they were wrong about being the only true church.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">Then I gave them an analogy that apparently stuck, because they still bring it up today and laugh about it. I said, "Imagine if the Pepsi Center (sports arena in Denver that seats 20,000 people) were filled with everybody who had ever lived. Everybody has lived a full life, filled with happiness, sadness, adventure, boredom, family, sickness, friends, faith, etc. Now they're dead and waiting in the Pepsi Center, like it was a prison for spirits. Most of them are confused, and don't know where they are or why they're there. Then with lights and trumpets, Jesus walks into the arena, and a few thousand people cheer, while everybody else wonders, 'Who is this guy?' Then Jesus takes a microphone at the center of the floor and says, 'Alright, all the good Mormons, stand up and follow me! You get to live in heaven and be gods. The rest of you wait here and I'll come back some time to visit you.' So he waves his hand, and six people stand up and follow him out the door. When the door closes, the arena goes dark again, and the other 19,994 all look around in confusion and say, 'What the heck just happened?' Now, would that be fair, kids?" <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfyiCBkatdNtKj5757BVqssFRvWdSeHTVSpu19CjxmT3dN7ecANCCCY98QUo4EAdanRkIEt-EqGQrIsdljb3qO88Zxr-y8tMUZOJCw2hs0eAMG525a2jAG8qwV9VMF1zS17u-tftc6UHf/s1600/Jesus-TheSecondComing____-e1301682949187.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfyiCBkatdNtKj5757BVqssFRvWdSeHTVSpu19CjxmT3dN7ecANCCCY98QUo4EAdanRkIEt-EqGQrIsdljb3qO88Zxr-y8tMUZOJCw2hs0eAMG525a2jAG8qwV9VMF1zS17u-tftc6UHf/s1600/Jesus-TheSecondComing____-e1301682949187.jpg" height="254" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This was the image I had of Christ returning in his glory<br />
to claim those whom he would save in the Celestial Kingdom.<br />
It's a beautiful picture, but I always thought it unfortunate<br />
that so few were going to even know who he was,<br />
and only the tiniest fraction would be going with him.<br />
But how lucky was I!</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">"No, that's not fair," they said, "Why wouldn't Jesus take them all with him?" They got it. They of course couldn't articulate the nuance, but they understood that a God who would save only a chosen few out of the innumerable human masses was not a God of justice, equality, or love, and to believe so devalues the </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">actual </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">lives of almost everyone who's ever lived.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">We finished by telling the kids that we believed in love, honesty, equality, justice, science and truth, and that we could no longer trust the church to teach us or them those things. We said that we were a little scared ourselves, but that we were going to be brave and honest rather than continue to teach them things we had </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 22.85714340209961px;">come to know were not true</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">. We reassured them that we loved them and that they would always be safe and loved in our home.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">Then we asked how they felt about it and if they had any questions. I specifically asked my daughter, since she had been baptized, if she felt comfortable leaving the church. She looked at me full of trust and said, "I'll do whatever you think is right, Dad."</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">Gulp. That's a lot of pressure on a Daddy. Was I certain of my decision? A few doubts still bubbled in the back of my mind. What if I'm wrong??? (This was before "doubt your doubts" became a thing.)</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">In a world of uncertainty, how could I be so certain of these conclusions? I </span><span style="line-height: 22.85714340209961px;">couldn't go back to pretending again that I knew things "beyond a shadow of a doubt." Yet</span><span style="line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;"> failure to act, or acceptance of an inherited status quo, is still a passive kind of action. Based on all the evidence before me, combined with my own intuition and countless hours of pondering, prayer, meditation, and listening for answers, I came to a seismic decision, jointly with my wife: our family was moving on. I felt certain of my earnest intentions and yearning for truth, and certain that even if I was wrong, a loving and just God would honor them. There was that compass again, an invisible magnetic field orienting me, pointing me towards something beyond. In a world where everything else seemed fluid, I still trusted it. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.4285714285714286em;">Our family got up, hugged, and headed back down the trail together, towards the parking lot, towards the unknown, towards hidden light, like seeds in the soil, straining toward the sun. </span></span><br />
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-87365114203543431112015-02-09T17:25:00.005-08:002015-02-09T17:26:17.428-08:00Why Silencing A Dissenting Opinion Is A Bad Idea<br />
From John Stuart Mill:<br />
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-87045649227056852972015-02-05T21:43:00.002-08:002015-02-07T21:03:37.966-08:00Eppur Si Muove<br />
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<i>Eppur si muove . . .</i></div>
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In 1633, Galileo Galilei was brought before the Inquisition, charged with being "vehemently suspect of heresy" and forced to "abjure, curse and detest" his scientifically-derived conclusion that the earth moved around the sun. Under threat of torture and perhaps death, he recanted, yet managed to quietly stamp his foot and mutter to the ground,<i> </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves"><i>"Eppur si muove." </i></a></div>
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Translation, <i>"And yet it moves . . ."</i><br />
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What he meant, of course, was that the facts spoke for themselves. No matter what he (under duress) or the Church might proclaim to the contrary, the truth was the truth: the earth revolved around the sun. He knew it. He was still convicted of heresy, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. In a beautiful irony, after his death <a href="http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/galileos-middle-finger">Galileo's right middle finger</a> was eventually preserved and now sits in a museum in Florence, flipping the bird towards the Vatican for all of eternity.<br />
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Which brings me to a discussion of Truth (with a capital T). My stated objective of this year's spiritual quest has been "My Search For Meaning After Mormonism." Are meaning and Truth synonymous? I would propose that while objective <i>Truth </i>does exist, we then construct subjective <i>meaning</i> out of it--or around it. I've accepted that we live in a universe of quantum uncertainty. But I still feel the pull of my compass needle towards some bedrock magnetic vector of truth. Man, I want to unearth that magnet, press my face to it, and then live in accordance with it. Once unearthed, how broad will it be? What will it be its shape, its texture, its shine? No, we'll never know it all, perhaps not even the slightest part. So within all of this "not knowing," can we know <i>anything</i>? Is anything certain in this uncertain existence?<br />
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One of my favorite Mormon hymns has always been, "Oh Say, What Is Truth?" by John Jaques.<br />
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<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh <span class="il">say</span>, <span class="il">what</span> <span class="il">is</span> <span class="il">truth</span>? ’Tis the fairest gem</span></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That the riches of worlds can produce,</span></i></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And priceless the value of <span class="il">truth</span> will be when</span></i></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The proud monarch’s costliest diadem</span></i></i><br />
<i><span class="il" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span class="il">Is</span> counted but dross and refuse.</i></span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></i>
<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Yes, <span class="il">say</span>, <span class="il">what</span> <span class="il">is</span> <span class="il">truth</span>? ’Tis the brightest prize</i></span></i></div>
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<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To which mortals or Gods can aspire.</span></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Go search in the depths where it glittering lies,</span></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or ascend in pursuit to the loftiest skies:</span></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">’Tis an aim for the noblest desire.</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="color: #222222;"><br /></i>
<i style="color: #222222;">The sceptre may fall from the despot’s grasp</i></span><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When with winds of stern justice he copes.</span></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the pillar of <span class="il">truth</span> will endure to the last,</span></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And its firm-rooted bulwarks outstand the rude blast</span></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the wreck of the fell tyrant’s hopes.</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="color: #222222;"><br /></i>
<i style="color: #222222;">Then <span class="il">say</span>, <span class="il">what</span> <span class="il">is</span> <span class="il">truth</span>? ’Tis the last and the first,</i></span><br />
<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the limits of time it steps over.</span></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tho the heavens depart and the earth’s fountains burst,</span></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="il">Truth</span>, the sum of existence, will weather the worst,</span></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eternal, unchanged, evermore.</span></i></div>
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Beyond the sometimes archaic language of this hymn (firm-rooted bulwarks, costliest diadems, fell tyrant's hopes--huh?), here lies the articulation of my concept of objective truth: it doesn't matter what we think of it, it simply is. It is the brightest prize, should be sought after to the ends of the earth, should weather the worst, and should be left standing even when the heavens depart and the earth ceases to be. Eternal, unchanged, evermore. When I used to profess my faith and testimony, it was in the service of this framework of truth. A hope in things not seen by my weak, fleshy eyes, but which yet were in some objective way True--verifiably, eternally True. (See Alma 32:31)<br />
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Now, a person may believe, with every fiber of her being and beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the sun revolves around the earth, or that the first humans came into existence 6,000 years ago in Missouri, or that the Book of Mormon is a historical record of the ancient peoples of America who descended from Jews. But that doesn't change the fact that those things are objectively false. You're free to believe them, just like you are free to believe in Santa Claus. But the case is closed on their truthfulness, and someone's fervency, or claims to privileged evidence or authority, does not persuade them to become true.<br />
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Are there relative truths within those claims? Perhaps. The sun sure looks like it moves around the earth. There are relative truths in Mormon doctrine, sure, and many objective truths, too. But what is the definition of Christ-like love? What constitutes a family? What is the purpose of life? These are relative interpretations or constructions. We create lists of things we believe to justify our preferred narratives of Manifest Destiny or God's Chosen People or whatever paradigm seems to best fit our current agenda. We create scriptures, have visions, promulgate legends, idolize leaders, build temples, all symbols which are eventually accepted as literal depictions of some essential facet of this mystery of life. But are these things <i>True?</i> Well, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD0KfvuJSFWqCNIg5d_IWgsbslgdw8govp_7QpXf2K6p6QwtJZM0SPLvG8df2r0wf5nyBz-Cjz3qkk7xTO1q1KHzDXV5EVGV4WeDKfi0NkQTM5juq6Qjk3jh14oW4M_0P-0aETel6U-8l2/s1600/greek+humoral+medicine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD0KfvuJSFWqCNIg5d_IWgsbslgdw8govp_7QpXf2K6p6QwtJZM0SPLvG8df2r0wf5nyBz-Cjz3qkk7xTO1q1KHzDXV5EVGV4WeDKfi0NkQTM5juq6Qjk3jh14oW4M_0P-0aETel6U-8l2/s1600/greek+humoral+medicine.jpg" height="400" width="238" /></a>And yet . . . I do believe in <i>objective</i> truth. Please note that this is an open-ended belief: our understanding of what is true will continuously evolve. I'm committed to evolving with it. But gravity was always true, the speed of light was always constant, even before we had the slightest notion of what those concepts meant. In the end, I believe the Truth will always rise to the top, damn the Inquistion. Not immediately, but over time, through the application of the scientific method, the false will be winnowed away, and the truth prevail, thrusted upon the firm-rooted bulwarks of the fell tyrants' s costliest diadems. What cataclysm would have to befall civilization for us to regress to believing in a flat earth, or Greek humoral medicine? In the big scheme, the Truth Train moves in only one direction. Objective truth exists--within our agreed upon reference frame-- independent of the attitude and inclinations of the observer. 2+2=4. Gravity. DNA. These things exist. There are equations that define them that were just as true at the Big Bang as they are today at M.I.T. They are observable, quantifiable, verifiable, predictable, reproducible facts of existence. The fact that human minds have discovered, articulated, and harnessed these scientific truths inspires reverence. And the corollary of this is equally important: things can be proven false. And why devote your precious life to something false?<br />
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Religion was held up to me by my well-intended parents and church leaders as a fountain--the <i>only</i> trustworthy fountain--of <i>real </i>truth, everlasting truth. The rest of the world was decaying into moral relativism, science was deceiving people with things like evolution and dinosaurs, but the Church would always stand firm in defense of God's absolute truths. In fact, on my way out of the church, I was given by a bishop, counter-productively, a talk given by the Mormon prophet of my youth, Spencer W. Kimball, titled <a href="http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=947">"Absolute Truth</a>." This talk is an exercise in fallacious logic, spiritual hubris, and bullying. In it, he delineates certain truths which he deems in the most emphatic way beyond contention or corruption. Among these are Adam and Eve, the Great Flood, the Resurrection, the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. Oops. Was he just confused, or was he lying?<br />
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Speaking of relativism: interestingly, Albert Einstein did not want to call his most famous theory "Relativity." In fact, he initially called it "The Theory of Invariance." What a different connotation that has! Einstein had discerned that observations (such as time, length, and mass) were relative but predictable, yet only because there existed fundamental constants and laws, such as the speed of light, whose constancy transcended reference frames.<br />
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Here's an explanation of how these semantics have had philosophical implications:<br />
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<i><span style="background-color: white;">"Albert Einstein was unhappy about the name 'theory of relativity'. He preferred 'theory of invariance'. The reason is that [one] cornerstone of his 1905 theory of relativity is that the measured velocity of light is the same (invariant) regardless of any relative motion between a laboratory and the source of light. What Einstein feared came to pass when the popular catchphrase of his theory became 'everything is relative.' It was snatched up by people not acquainted with the scientific context, who regarded the theory as evidence in support of their own social views."</span> </i></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white;">--from "Social Theories First" by Arthur Miller, New Scientist, Jan 2006</span></blockquote>
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Einstein never said or believed that "everything is relative." He once said, "Relativity applies to physics, not ethics." But even for his physics of relativity, the backbone was always invariance and constancy. Therein lay objective, predictable, verifiable Truth. And that Truth--the predictable order of the universe--was God to Einstein. (And then quantum came along and blew that up, introducing uncertainty, another frequently misapplied term. Getting over my head now, so will save that for later.)<br />
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To be blunt: to me, the contextual truth of Mormonism has become, like Galileo's middle finger, a tremendous irony. It is a religion founded on and justified by the claim that God chose and spoke directly to Joseph Smith, revealing to him the unadulterated absolute truth of his One True Church and "things as they really are." <a href="https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/jacob/4.13">(Jacob 4:13)</a> And yet as those ostensibly absolute truths revealed by Joseph and his successors are systematically shown to be false through modern science and research (<a href="http://cesletter.com/apologetics/the-book-of-abraham-except-for-those-willfully-blind-the-case-is-closed.html">see: Book of Abraham)</a>, there is, in my opinion, only one recourse for the believer who desires to maintain his faith: retreat to the relative. Who can penetrate that subjective realm to disprove a person's faith, which is, by definition, irrational?<br />
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This retreat to the subjective is on full display in the church's recently released, official yet unattributed <a href="http://mormonessays.com/">essays</a>, which attempt to spin the church's plethoric dirty laundry in a positive direction. (How do you put positive spin on God's prophet secretly marrying other men's wives under threat of destruction by an angel with a sword?) Yet all the spin in the world can't disguise the obvious conclusion: the Church, no matter how well-intentioned or beloved, is simply not True. Not like it defines itself, as "the only true and living church on the face of the whole earth." <a href="https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/1.30?lang=eng">(D&C 1:30)</a><br />
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A believer may protest, cry heresy, shun the heretics, cast them out, censor their speech. But truth marches on. And there is only one way this ends, my friends. As Martin Luther King once said, "The moral arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice." And may I add, good Reverend, towards Love and Truth.<br />
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Eppur si muove.<br />
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(As inspiration for this post, I'd like to acknowledge this <a href="http://www.blog.tomgrover.net/2015/02/the-real-actual-reason-john-dehlin-will-be-excommunicated/">excellent essay</a>, written by a believing Mormon, about John Dehlin's impending excommunication set for Feb 8th, a modern-day trial of heresy.)Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4255032014569288656.post-64404378954917895642015-01-30T16:17:00.001-08:002015-06-28T16:46:20.522-07:00CheckmateSince right around my 40th birthday, I've unexpectedly found myself immersed in a new craze: chess.<br />
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I've played chess my whole life, always enjoyed it. But until now, I had never put much thought into how to play, never studied tactics or strategy, never studied grandmaster games or analyzed my own strengths and weaknesses as a player. I played wild, intuitive, Captain Kirk-style chess. Always attacking, occasionally pulling a brilliant checkmate out of thin air. But the simple truth was that I wasn't very good, and I didn't even know it. Better opponents had their way with me, much to my bewilderment. They seemed to have method to their games, whereas I had none.</div>
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I'm still not very good, but I'm twice the player I used to be. (What's 2 x 0?) But there is the semblance of method to my madness now, and I owe this to two people: my son Grant, and his chess coach, Ann. </div>
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If Chess-Craziness were a disease, then Grant and I caught it from Ann, whose genuine enthusiasm for chess is both boundless and contagious. Seriously. This woman eats, sleeps, breathes chess. When she teaches chess, an irrepressible joy radiates into her speech and body language. Ann was a grade school teacher and the chess club supervisor at Grant's school until she retired last year. But she saw great promise in my mathematical, competitive son's chess-playing. And she's harbored a lifelong dream of starting a chess school.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiezpa2-3zyfnkfYUajeYDwWUOD7VHvAJ4kKof-LK5Mh975WAF9pvVt0JbBVPEd_i_rzaRoE32I76-QHEViDkmKtK2qqBholOGey-BVnMGHG5rR9McBYYV6no94gf55Y9AZzltQckpqyBLZ/s1600/Ann+and+Grant+Chess+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiezpa2-3zyfnkfYUajeYDwWUOD7VHvAJ4kKof-LK5Mh975WAF9pvVt0JbBVPEd_i_rzaRoE32I76-QHEViDkmKtK2qqBholOGey-BVnMGHG5rR9McBYYV6no94gf55Y9AZzltQckpqyBLZ/s1600/Ann+and+Grant+Chess+1.jpg" width="320" /></a>So Ann reached out over the summer and offered to be Grant's chess coach. Once a week for the last five months, we've met for a couple of hours at a local Barnes & Noble to learn the finer points of the game. I started out as a parent chauffeur, but soon became totally transfixed by the lessons myself. How can one become transfixed by watching someone else explain and demonstrate chess moves? Well, if you're asking that question, you've obviously never been afflicted with Chess-Craziness, nor had Ann as your teacher.<br />
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Ann has taught tactics to which my mind was previously blind: openings, exchanges, skewers, forks, and end game calculations. What a difference it makes to have a game plan other than "I'm gonna catch my opponent by surprise!" Ann calls this Hope Chess. I was the Hope Chess Master.<br />
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Now the chess virus has spread to my other son, Justin, and even to Elizabeth and Joy. The most frequent activity at our house? Chess games and puzzles. (Chess puzzles are little worksheets or apps asking you to guess the best move.) All of this chess immersion has culminated in a couple of small tournament championships and trophies for our boys, both Grant and Justin. But the biggie is the state-wide scholastic tournament in two weeks. Ann thinks Grant has a chance. He has a naturally aggressive style, probably picked up from playing his wildly attacking daddy so often. But he sees several moves ahead, engineering complex multi-piece attacks, setting and springing traps, taking the initiative and never letting go. Grant and I have been keeping track of our games since Christmas. Through seventy-five games, we're neck and neck, me clinging right now to a one game lead. He and I typically engage in throwing haymakers from the back ranks. They're slugfests. They tend to be fun and pretty quick games. Perhaps you'd like to come and watch us play sometime? Maybe if your paint has already dried?<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKgKzzegBldsDkCVU7EEiW8Mb-F6lJvZuLSx-UOKSgFxHQQqlKOY_u1BEpimRbglQMrWPBUdUw4j3ukMO-H3kGgFRhSqsPNsGKsSZsZ5669i2lGKKM26g8Tl6nEZWrGTc0nMzbgYE32g3F/s1600/Grant+Chess.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKgKzzegBldsDkCVU7EEiW8Mb-F6lJvZuLSx-UOKSgFxHQQqlKOY_u1BEpimRbglQMrWPBUdUw4j3ukMO-H3kGgFRhSqsPNsGKsSZsZ5669i2lGKKM26g8Tl6nEZWrGTc0nMzbgYE32g3F/s1600/Grant+Chess.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
They say that there are <span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">10</span><sup style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1;">123 </sup>potential variations of a chess game. This is called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number">Shannon number</a>. That is a number way way bigger than the number of <i>atoms</i> in the <i>entire universe. </i>Think of all of the grains of sand on every beach and desert in the world. There are something like 10 quintillion atoms in every grain of sand. Now think of all of the grains of sand on every planet and rock in the entire universe. And of course you haven't even made the smallest scratch in the surface of all of the atoms in every galaxy, nebula, star, planet, moon, ocean, organism, bacteria, etc. We're talking incomprehensibly big numbers. But think of it. If you wanted to count every possible chess game variation, and you wanted to assign one atom in the universe to stand for each possibility--you simply couldn't it do it. You'd run out of atoms before you ran out of chess variations. Dude. All this possibility emerging from an 8 x8 chess board with 32 pieces.<br />
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And this is why I think chess has really grabbed me, and why I'm bothering to write about it in my post-Mormon spiritual quest blog. It is order from chaos. For something so infinitely complex, it is also a competition with set goals, boundaries and rules. There are a bazillion bazillion variations, but only hundreds of possible moves from each position. Of those, only a dozen or so are decent moves, and only one or two are best moves. Computers making millions of calculations a second still take a few seconds to sort these moves out. But the human mind surveys, calculates, extrapolates, devises. And then, if it's my mind, it throws the queen deep into enemy territory only to have it captured by the knight it was somehow oblivious to.<br />
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But the point is that it is a system of order and strategy. Very little is left to random chance. A superior player, such as Ann, will lead you along inexorably towards a checkmate. She sets the tempo, grabs the initiative, gets inside your head, and then springs the trap. Yet even she considers herself a middling player, of course comparing herself to chess masters.<br />
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In a year in which I'm trying to discern--or create, or imagine--order emerging out of spiritual chaos, chess has exerted a powerful hold over my mind. I like to play it. I like to think about it. Heck, I even like to watch other people play.<br />
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I have a dream of sitting on a beach somewhere when I'm eighty, with nothing to do other than play game after game with my children and grandchildren. I'll have honed my skills to a razor's edge by then--or at least learned enough gimmicks to give that impression. I'll lure the little grandchildren in, set the trap, and then beat them with a brilliant queen move from the back ranks. "Checkmate," I'll announce. Playfully absorbing their awe, intending to assuage their pain, I'll reach my hand out in victory . . . only to watch them reach for their knight instead. Bye bye, queenie.<br />
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This game, with its simple structure and infinite permutations, promises to fascinate, torment, and humble me forever. Or at least another forty to fifty years. Sounds like a fun way to pass the time.<br />
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCbyigFG0_7l3N3UfmJG_f05bn4dfKnUVyeXXiDXtxFZAvnEmKc9Rk1YjlGF9gnH3nkVLaEexCPFGzJNgQTzEtgRXcxthRFHunTVm1p7x-NT_6Xf-bScB5X9tJYs6Ccs530jqQFkzAXBFP/s1600/Simultaneous+Chess.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCbyigFG0_7l3N3UfmJG_f05bn4dfKnUVyeXXiDXtxFZAvnEmKc9Rk1YjlGF9gnH3nkVLaEexCPFGzJNgQTzEtgRXcxthRFHunTVm1p7x-NT_6Xf-bScB5X9tJYs6Ccs530jqQFkzAXBFP/s1600/Simultaneous+Chess.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">Ann whooping all of the Foster boys simultaneously, called a "simul."</td></tr>
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17710337880486481120noreply@blogger.com0