Pole-Vaulting into Transcendence

When a young teen in P.E. one year, I ran and jumped the pole vault a few times. The anticipation for and mild fear of that run and leap, tensed us up. The vault didn’t rank with the sheer frighted fearfulness of the high dive in swimming, but it sure beat the boredom of doing pushups.

As difficult as it was to run and leap up balancing on the wobbly rise of the limber pole, in its back arch and then its swinging forward, up, and over the cross bar, I did manage to clear the bar at low levels.

The eventual goal was to set the cross bar higher and higher and yet still achieve the swinging leap up and over. But the higher the bar the more difficult the leap with the rise of the pole and the more dangerous the fall, even if one succeeded in clearing the bar.

Fortunately, pole vaulting lasted only a week for us P.E. students, was not required on a regular basis.

However, metaphorically I've been "pole vaulting" for at least 70 years (an unusual analogy similar to a poem by the metaphysical poet John Donne, the famous 17th century English writer).

Donne wrote very unusual analogies in his poems such as a romantic poem to his wife comparing his deep love for her to a geometric compass!.

In this case now, I'm comparing the all-pervasive meaning seeking action of humans of the last 200,000 years to the action of pole-vaulting--attempting to leap for hope in the mysterious cosmic reality.

Wikepedia photos

--
In the actual sport of pole-vaulting, if one doesn't scratch or cheat, the bar keeps being raised higher and higher--eventually incredibly high. Similarly, in humans seeking answers to the Mystery of Life, trillions of stars in the cosmos, and troubling confusions about what is true, what is morally good, what is fair and just--this spiritual seeking has been increasingly difficult.

For instance, one of the most difficult high raisings of the bar came for Christians when Jesus didn’t return in the ‘soon’ time of Paul and John (I Thessalonians and Revelation), but Christians attempted to adjust the bar down and up at the same time! Biblical theologians reinterpreted the word ‘soon’ to mean ‘rapidly’ rather than in the common sense definition of ‘in the near future.’

They said the return of Christ could happen thousands of years in the future, but when it did it come, it would be ‘rapid’. This seems a very dishonest scratching of language and history. It is more than an accidental rule violation, but a situation of dishonesty and delusion--straining the gnat and swallowing the camel.

To be continued in 2 days,

In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

The Cosmos Between Our Ears:-)

Photo by Craig Goodwin



“See, most Christians are taught that they are a part of a sweeping, cosmic drama with a story arc that spans all eternity.”
Neil Carter

When Roman Catholics and Protestants, Muslims, and Jews see this “sweeping, cosmic drama”
through the lens of literalism and fundamentalism, their view is delusional.

They adamantly reject most of modern science, especially physics and biology,
in order to hold onto a 6 24-hour-day creation, and that the universe is
only 6,000 years old, and that the Sun miraculously stood still for Joshua, etc.

Thinker Neil Carter is right to have abandoned such an unscientific,
untrue view of existence.

But in a different way, many modern scientists, including non-religious ones, do think
humankind is “part of a sweeping, cosmic drama with a story arc that spans all eternity.”

In the scientific cosmology book The View from the Center of the Universe,
physicist Joel R. Primack presents such a view of existence, of reality.

Joel R. Primack is a professor of physics and astrophysics at the University of California—Santa Cruz. His area of research includes relativistic quantum field theory, cosmology, and particle astrophysics.

And in How It Began, a book of the history of the universe back to the Big Bang,
the author Chris Impey, an astronomer and professor of the University
of Arizona, Tucson writes, “If the universe contained nothing
more than forces operating on inanimate matter,
it would not be very interesting."

"The presence of sentient life-forms like us (and perhaps unlike us) is the zest, or the special ingredient, that gives cosmic history dramatic tension. We’re made of tiny subatomic particles
and are part of a vast space-time arena,
yet
we hold both extremes in our heads.”

Yes, the cosmos between our ears;-)

So no one needs join the naysayers and nihilists who claim that reality
is "meaningless" and "purposeless."

We don't need to start describing homo sapiens as "puppets,"
"meat robots," "tumors all the way down," "bags of chemicals,"
etc. like many atheist leaders do.
--

Astronmer Chris Impey goes on to ask, “Are we nothing more than
cosmic flotsam, contingent outcomes of evolution,
collections of atoms that got a little lucky?

Or are we built deeply into the architecture of the universe?

Scientists can’t answer these questions..."

However, of course, scientists do speak out, do speculate on the ultimate nature
of reality, of whether there is a mulit-verse, of whether or not there is anything beyond
or transcending matter and energy.

Astrophysics professor Joel R. Primack:
“The history of the universe is in every one of us. Every particle in our
bodies has a multibillion-year past, every cell and every bodily organ has
a multimillion-year past, and many of our ways of thinking have multi-thousand-year pasts."

"Each of us is a kind of nerve center where these various cosmic histories intersect.
Time is one key to appreciate what we are. Ancient creation stories
[such as the Genesis account of the Bible of Jews, Christians, and Muslims] reflected
the universe as people saw it with the naked eye through the lens of their cosmology.

"But humans have gone far beyond in discovering what exists, how it works,
and new ways to think about it. We can measure time not only by seasons and years
but by radioactive decay, by the life cycles of stars, and by the expansion of the universe."

Our theories, such as relativity, illuminate the whole cosmos conceptually,
letting us think productively on an awesome range of scales and phenomena.”
The View from the Center of the Universe
Physicist Joel R. Primack and co-writer Nancy Ellen Abrams,
professors at the University of California, Santa Cruz
--
Yes, our perspective has changed from a very tiny one of a 6 24-hour day creation
and a cosmos only about 6,000 years old to the almost impossible to imagine
but factually-proven cosmos of the Big Bang.

That blast into being and becoming started about 14 billion years ago
and now the universe covers trillions and trillions and trillions of miles out
every which way, and is continually expanding space and time far beyond
our intellectual understanding
and imagining.

But when we study and think and hold onto the accumulation
of all these facts and proven theories it can all reside, yes, between our ears!

How amazing our human consciousness, searching and reasoning abilities,
and yet so limited.

Within our finite mind, we conceptually understand a little of the distant
past and the infinite future, and we are here at midpoint—
an infinitesimal conscious primate given
the ability to conceive and to search out
and to try to understand
a teaspoon-full of the Milky Way.

A shot-glass of infinity!

No metaphor can't begin to hold
the breathless incredible expanse of it all.

To be continued—

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Living Toward the Garden

Murray Rose won six Olympic medals, including 4 Gold, 1 Silver, and 1 Bronze and held the world records in 3 different swimming races.

Because of his vegan lifestyle, he was nicknamed the “The Seaweed Streak.” And according to a biography written by his father, the meatless health food diet was largely responsible for Murray’s athletic success.

As a young adult, I was deeply impressed—I wanted to be very healthy and strong, too. How could emulating an Olympian’s health regimen not lead to a robust healthy life?

Furthermore, the main person who opposed my new way of eating was medical-nurse chain-smoker. Obviously, didn't know anything.

Besides, the deeper motivation was that a friend, who I wanted to bcome my girlfriend, had just embarked on the vegetarian life. And didn't Genesis speak of a meatless Garden before humans chose to do wrong?

“And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Genesis 1:29-31 ESV

Yes, “got to get us back to the Garden” like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young sang.*
So I launched pell-mell into a healthy program of nuts, fruit, vegetables and grains, ostracizing ham, chicken, and beef.

Did I become an Olympic star? Hardly.

I lost about 50 pounds, dropped down to around 112 pounds at 6’3’’—looked like a pale, bony Gandhi…became malnourished…and so eventually forsook “health foods" living.

Oh, and the girl quickly quit vegetarianism, long before me, and dropped out of my emaciated life.

So much for youthful error and illusion. How had Rose achieved the opposite? Who knew?

Fast-track 35 years forward and I again decided to move down the food levels toward the Garden. Only I was going to do this slowly, not as a fundamentalist convert to "health foods," like in my disastrous past, but carefully and quietly.

Why this time?

Ah, that’s a another narrative…except to say I've become a fish-atarian this time around
and that our doctor thinks it’s wonderful, me eating all that salmon. Now if I would just stop the midnight doughnuts;-)

To be continued

*”Well I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road
And I asked him tell where are you going, this he told me:
(He) said, I'm going down to Yasgur's farm, going to join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land, and set my soul free.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
by Joni Mitchell


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Twisting of Social, Religious, Political, and Sexual Discourse

The biblical leader so much admired by Jews, Christians, and Muslims--David murdered/slaughtered/killed and mutilated 200 men in order to gain (buy) a woman in marriage who he didn't love, for his own political advancement.

So much for Godly love as spoken of in Genesis.

Scripture speaks nothing of David’s caring for her (even though it does say the woman, Michal, loved him and that she protected him from her father). But because of danger, David abandons Michal, and then takes many other women in marriage (polygamy).

Later, David captures Michal back, stealing her from her lawful second husband.

But when she criticizes him, David gets revenge by shunning her for the rest of her life, leaving her childless, while he spends all of his time with his other wives and concubines (I Samuel 18: 17-30; 19: 11-18; 25: 39-42; 25: 43-44; 2 Samuel 6: 20-23 ESV.

So much for the holy institution of marriage 3,000 years ago in the Bible!

Yet Christian conservatives now are claiming that marriage has been a hallowed institution for many centuries. What historical tome have they been studying?

Any academic historian can show the institution of marriage in many past centuries seldom had anything to do with Godly standards. Instead marriage often oppressed and, even, abused women. Usually, in the aristocratic strata of society, marriage was for politics, money, and power. If in doubt read any scholarly book on the aristocrats and their marriages of the last one thousand years in Europe.

So much for marriage being a sacred and holy institution…

Yet modern secularists get blamed for distorting and destroying marriage by trying to change it.

So much for media distortion and Christian hypocrisy…

The God of the universe (as described by Jesus) has nothing to do with such a historically corrupt, insincere, and manipulative institution, other than in the sense of God first creating the ideal relationship of communion and fellowship at the start of the human race—which humans have consistently distorted through sexism, greed, and pride.

Indeed, Jesus emphasized 2,000 years ago how humans, especially religious people, are the ones who corrupt and destroy marriage!

Strangely and most ironically, the Christian conservative movement which claims marriage is a sacred institution that modern secularists are trying to destroy, has it itself a high divorce rate equal to non-Christians—33%!

So much for the sacred institution of marriage being changed by modern secularists…

Furthermore, one of the leading Christian presidential candidates who condemned “gay marriage” has been married three times. So much for the holiness and unbrokenness of marriage…

This Christian leader divorced his first wife when she was seriously ill because he had begun an adulterous affair with another woman, then later he began a second affair and divorced this second wife of adultery, to marry a third, etc.

What about Jesus’ condemnation of divorce and the Hebrew Bible’s declaration that God hates divorce?

Were Jesus walking in the halls of Congress and the churches across the U.S. no doubt he would say to the religious conservative leaders:

“Hypocrites, blind guides…” (Matthew 23).

Only when Christians first live loving, pure, and sacred lives with their spouses in life-long marriage, only then they may they speak to others about the sacrament of marriage.

What might they say in love and truth and humbleness?

To be continued,

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Meaning of Human Sexuality

Surely, I must be joking? Thinking I can take on the herculean (adam-evesques) task of explaining the meaning of human sexuality? That would be like climbing Niagara Falls or trying to explain the theological significance of Viagra;-).

The meaning of human sexuality is so deep and so transcendent and so complicated and so controversial, it would first be better to tangle with the behemoth or leviathan mentioned in the Book of Job. But since none of us can get away from the topic (and I seldom have ever wanted to except when revoltingly sick).

Here goes—

A little introductory humor:
How can you tell if a man is thinking about sexuality? Is he breathing? LOL

A few quotes to set the tone before the texted tome, and to show the inexplicable contrariness and contradictory outlook of various human beings toward this incessantly fascinating topic:

And God created the human in his image,
in the image of God…male and female…
And God blessed them, and God said to them,
Be fruitful and multiply
…and, look, it was very good.
Genesis 1:27-31


"The [marriage] vows should be written like a dog's license that has to be renewed every year…I think vows should be changed because they've been in existence for 600 years when people used to live until they were only 35. So they only had to be with each other for 12 years, then they would die anyway. But now it's a big commitment because you're going to be with someone for 50 years. It's impossible…It's such a rarity for people to stay together that 68% of marriages fail. I don't want to urinate on the party, but one must consider that before getting married.
Rock Musician Rod Stewart


“Sex is like pissing. People take it much too seriously.
Painter Diego Rivera

“If I ever loved a woman, the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her. Frida was only the most obvious victim of this disgusting trait.”
Painter Diego Rivera


“Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”
Yeshua, the Messiah (Anointed One)


“Chastity: The most unnatural of the sexual perversions."
Aldous Huxley


"I think I could fall madly in bed with you."
Anonymous


“Vanity, revenge, loneliness, boredom, all apply: lust is one of the least of the reasons for promiscuity."
Mignon McLaughlin


“To me heaven would be…two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.”
Ernest Hemingway


“The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.”
Philip James Bailey


"Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.
John Ciardi


"I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love."
Henry Ward Beecher


Roman and Grace are a married Spokane Indian couple. He is standing close to her with his basketball between them, as if the ball represents the expectant infant they will soon create…
“Michael Jordan is coming back again,” he said.
“You can’t fool me,” said Grace. “I heard it. That was just a replay.”
“Yeah, but I wish he was coming back again. He should always come back.”
“Don’t let it give you any crazy ideas.”
Roman pulled the basketball away and leaned even closer to Grace. He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love—it just happens!—but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch of happy horseshit. Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn't choose, you ended up with what was left—the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together.

In their marriage bed, Roman chose Grace once more and brushed his lips against her ear.

From “Saint Junior” by Sherman Alexie


To be continued in Part 2: Since sex only has three letters, how did it become a four-letter word (the "plow" word and the "love" word)?

In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox