Finding the CENTER
"Strained by the mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence..."
"Within, is the beginning of true life."
"...a dynamic center, a creative life...a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the face of humans."
"Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center."
"From this holy Center we love our neighbors as ourselves and are stirred to be the means of their awakening..."
--Wise words from Quaker Thomas Kelly,
A Testament of Devotion and The Eternal Promise
The central difficulty though in finding this CENTER
and
living in the CENTER and becoming more and more who we truly can and ought to become
is
that many humans, including some Quakers, state that NO Center exists.
In so many ways, finding and CENTERING is like the story the Jewish prophet told about a seeker of fine pearls who found a wondrous pearl. One first needs to seek!
Then one needs to use her/his reasoning ability to identify and discard fake pearls and fraudulent ones that at first looked genuine.
Then one needs to compare average pearls to fine pearls--average facts to transcendent oughts and great truths.
And then comes the most difficult of all--when finding the ONE pearl of perfection,
we humans need to focus on that central wonder.
Each of us needs to give all in order to acquire the perfect gem.
Let us, in this dark present time of horrific suffering and confusion and delusion--
Seek that CENTER--seek what is true,
what is reasonable,
what is wise,
what is good,
what is just,
what is beautiful,
what is kind...
Live in the Reason which spangled the universe into becoming.
In the Light, in the Center,
--Daniel Wilcox
Posted by Daniel Wilcox at 9:11 AM No comments: Links to this post
Labels: A Testament of Devotion, burdens, Center, creative, destruction, Friends, God, hatred, Light, Quakerism, religious persecution, The Eternal Promise, Thomas Kelly, trials, troubles, war
Showing posts with label destruction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label destruction. Show all posts
Sunday, February 12, 2023
Thursday, September 7, 2017
the god of infinite evil and hurricane harvey, irma...
Cameron makes God look like, not only an abusing father, but a mass-murdering parent, infinitely evil.
"In video taken this morning at an airport in Orlando (Florida), Cameron explained how the natural disasters were obviously signs from God."
"One thing we know about hurricanes — and all weather — is that...This is a spectacular display of God’s immense power."
"And when He puts His power on display, it’s never without reason. There’s a purpose. And we may not always understand what that purpose is, but we know it’s not random. And we know that weather is sent to cause us to respond to God in humility, awe, and repentance."
"God wanted us to be humble, so he killed dozens of people in Houston, decimated an entire island, and is still creating chaos in the Caribbean."
--Kirk Cameron
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/09/07/kirk-cameron-the-hurricanes-were-sent-by-god-to-make-us-more-humble/#qTgVoSL2ubMcpKUl.99
On the contrary...
In the Light of Compassion, Equality, and Goodness,
Daniel Wilcox
Thursday, November 3, 2016
"NO FLAG LARGE ENOUGH...
Historian Howard Zinn down-dated to the 6 wars the U.S. is now waging, bombing, especially Syria:
"We live in a world in which we are asked to make a moral choice
between one kind of terrorism and another.
The government, the press, the politicians, are trying to convince
us that [the U.S. support and funding
of Muslim killers in Syria, etc.], our "terrorism is morally
superior to [President Assad's] terrorism."
"Of course, we don't call our actions that, but...congratulating
[our]selves that the world's most heavily-armed nation [the U.S.]
can bomb with impunity..."
"Modern technology has outdistanced the Bible. "An eye for an eye" has become
a hundred eyes for an eye, [by the U.S. government, with over 400,000 slaugtered
by our side and Assad's side]
which tried to wrap their moral nakedness in the American flag."
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing..."
"...terrorism...is a very old weapon of fanatics, whether they operate
from secret underground headquarters,
or from ornate offices in the capitols of the superpowers."
Howard Zinn
from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Tripoli_ZR.html
How great is the darkness of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Syria, Turkey, etc.
Please, for Aleppo's civilians, turn to the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Saturday, October 1, 2016
a short true story for when one is overwhelmed by the world's troubles
a true account for when you are overwhelmed, when events are going wrong,
from Swanee Hunt:
"Sophia...an old woman...lived in a little town in Croatia.
Every day she had one job, to go at noon to the church, to take the ropes
that were tied up on the wall, untie them, pull on the ropes,
and ring the bells in the tower.
During the war [Serbia-Kosovo-Croatian War] in village after village, when the Serb forces came in tanks, they would shoot up all the houses of the Catholics, the Croats, and then they would end up at the church.
They would go to the church and shoot up the church. At the very end they would shoot the tower.
Then they would roll out, and it would now be a Serb town.
This old woman whose church had been shot up, every day you would find her in the churchyard at noon.
There was wood splintered everywhere, but in the middle of the debris, the big bell
that had been in the bell tower
was lying on its side on the ground.
Sophia, this eighty-year-old woman,
was bent over with her old gnarled hands
grasping the clapper
and swinging her arms,
ringing
the bell.
I carry Sophia inside of me,
and I hope you will.
No matter what the circumstances
in which you are working,
in which you are living,
your job is to keep
your hands on that clapper,
ringing the bell."
by Swanee Hunt, diplomat, ambassador, founder of Hunt Alternative Fund,
for advancing innovative and inclusive approaches to social change
at local, national, and global levels, and professor at Harvard
from Global Values 101: A Short Course Edited by Kate Holbrook,
Ann S. Kim, Brian Palmer, Anna Portnoy
--
Remember the classic words:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
--
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
by John Dunne
--
And here's a little throw-away punning for those who need a laugh,
as well as a wing and a prayer:
To misquote the old Zen question--
What is the sound of one hand clappering?
In the light of hope and truth,
Daniel Wilcox
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Compassionate Listening and the Parliament of the World’s Religions
From a news clipping in my files concerning the Parliament of World Religions:
Allegedly, “it was a celebration of religious unity, but last week’s Parliament of the World’s Religions at times resembled a controlled brawl lurching from argument to argument with almost embarrassing regularity. Police had to break up a shouting and shoving match among Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim delegates.”
"The presence of pagans so offended Orthodox Christians that they left the gathering. Later four Jewish organizations followed them out of Chicago, objecting to the presence of...the Nation of Islam. Evangelical Christians boycotted.”
Chuck Lindell, Cox News Service
Hopefully, there was less rancor and more compassionate listening at this year's meeting.
However, “religious disagreement is inevitable...I think what most often blocks friendly disagreement is that we don’t know people of other religions, and we misunderstand them.”
Terry Muck
On the contrary, more often than not, the problem isn’t that we don’t "know people of other religions" and that we don't understand other religions or other ideologies, but that we, oh so tragically,
DO!
As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details.
Outwardly, on first glance, looking at their forward advertising, most religions and ideologies smile and pronounce the usual platitudes--follow the Golden Rule,
be nice,
kind,
and don’t step on others’ blue suede shoes;-)
Repeat--but the devil is in the details!
The horrors are in the very real twisted philosophy and theology of these various belief systems that cause and or lead to so much suffering and harm and destruction of others in our world.
Yes, there are distorted cliches. Once upon a time, before the hurricane of adulthood, most of us were children of hope and innocence, well, naivety.
But even then, there were the generic labeled bad guys--from the communists to the Catholics.
Raised in moderate Baptist fundamentalism, my parents and church taught my sister and I the usual Nebraska 1950 prejudices--that Catholics weren’t Christians, liberals were awful, hard fundamentalists mean, and Pentecostals (which included our dear uncle and aunt) confused.
But as kids my sister and I didn’t know the details. Later as we grew and encountered these enemies, we learned that other worldviews were sometimes much better than the bad descriptions but, too often, actually much worse.
The demon was in the details of the religions' central beliefs and destructive actions.
Real Examples:
God will call you to sometimes commit immoral actions because God is sovereign will and so decides what is good and what is evil.
God created evil.
Malaria and cancer aren’t wrong.
Those humans who criticize our God and our holy book, and our leaders ought to be arrested, jailed, and executed.
God planned the Jewish Holocaust and 9/11.
God is sovereign and before creation planned for the eternal damnation of most human beings. He creates every infant at conception, “in essence, evil.”
Murder and rape and molestation can easily be forgiven but not failure to believe in our creed.
Husbands can beat their wives and women must submit to men.
Women must wear coverings over all of their body and hair.
Little girls should have their private parts mutilated.
Every human is born totally depraved because of what Adam did.
The atom bomb is "God's gift to America."
There are many Gods; there are no Gods.
Killing others for God is good and makes us heroes and "martyrs."
God is both good and evil.
God is only concerned with his own glory and planned all evil to give him glory and "good pleasure."
All other religions are of the Devil.
Etc.
It is difficult to listen with compassionate and empathetic listening, when the person opposite from you spouts horrific beliefs and supports unjust actions which are leading to great suffering, harm, and tragedy for others.
Even seemingly caring religious leaders can disconcert and confuse. Consider this caring quote: “Compassionate Listening is a process rather than a product. It is healing precisely because it does not pretend to ‘have the answers.’ Rather, it engages the participants in processes that have each side seeing the humanity of the other, even when they disagree.”
Rabbi David Zaslow, Ashland Oregon
Sounds so good. But then consider what the Rabbi also wrote! In his book, Jesus, First Century Rabbi, he states that God created evil and is also the opposite of love and the opposite of light!
Then Zaslow quotes “God says, ‘I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the LORD do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7 in the Jewish Bible). According to him, “...and always the satan is sent by God for us to overcome.”
Now, Zaslow does backtrack and contradict himself in later pages, but such initial statements are still troubling and confusing—definitely not helpful toward compassion or good listening.
Evidently, he emphasizes the extreme statements to shock the reader, but he also really believes them!
How so unlike other modern American Jewish leaders such as the endearing, caring Rabbi Albert L. Lewis, in Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom or the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who focused on the positive and abhorred what is wrong.
Declaring God started evil and sends evil! That is very troubling.
However:
“Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.”
Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation
--
And:
A January 2002 Interview with Gene Knudsen Hoffman
(1919-2010)
Gene Knudsen Hoffman, founder of Compassionate Listening, after being influenced by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for his work with opposite sides in the Vietnam War.
Interviewer: "What is the nature of nonviolence?"
Hoffoman: "I don't like the term nonviolence any more. I feel closer to Gandhi when he says truth force, God. I'm a Quaker and I've been involved with peace for fifty years."
Interviewer: "What makes peacemaking so slow a process?"
"First of all, people don't believe in peace, in my opinion. We have never known peace. We don't even admit that we have been in many wars, so why should we make peace? We have talked about ourselves, at least Americans, as being a peaceful people until we believe it no matter what we do. It's a shocking thing. It's a practice of denial."
"Just not facing the reality. We are always calling other people war criminals, yet we're the ones who dropped the first atom bomb."
"We don't live with that reality. It is always the other person, like an untutored child who is always blaming someone else. We're in great denial about it."
"I discovered something in 1985 as I was going around the world looking for new peace initiatives and touring peace centers. I went to a Quaker meeting in London and outside the meeting was a huge sign, 'Meeting For Worship For The Torturers And The Tortured.'"
"I'd never heard of anything like that; I mean, listen to the torturers? Then I decided that I was going to listen to everyone and everything. I started listening to both sides. We can never make peace until we can listen to both sides. No matter who is the enemy."
Interviewer: "If then peacemaking is such slow work because it is the continual struggle to face reality, and also a continual struggle with self-interest, how do you get opposing people to listen to each other?"
Hoffman: "I maintain that we must listen to the oppressor as a human being. The oppressor has grievances, suffering, and we have to listen to both sides. An enemy is a person whose story we have not heard."
"In the beginning you have them listen separately. They get their anger out. They get out everything they feel. They talk about it for a year before they do anything."
"What happens is that as you listen, you change. It's a transformation. People are never listened to as much as they need to be, [especially] children and certain criminal types. It doesn't mean the oppressors are right."
"It doesn't mean you agree with them, and the people have to know this before you go in. It doesn't mean you agree with them, but you look for the truth. You have to discern the truth. It's a process of discernment and intuition and listening."
http://www.peaceheroes.com/PeaceHeroes/jeanknudsenhoffman.htm
So am I willing to listen to those who claim God wills evil, who predestines most humans to eternal torture, who consider little infants, "in essence, evil," who are prejudiced against women, minorities, and other humans as inferior, who advocate that nuclear weapons are good, that life is meaningless and purposeless, that ethics are only "personal preference," etc.?
I try. But it's difficult!
Because I've lived where Muslim jihadists shot up innocent people, personally known many individuals who tragically suffer and are allegedly eternally damned by others, have seen the destructive results of prejudice, injustice, and human rights violations and saw the destructive results of determinism and of the denial of objective ethics by various religious and ideological groups.
But we do need to listen, or we become in our own way, like our enemies.
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Allegedly, “it was a celebration of religious unity, but last week’s Parliament of the World’s Religions at times resembled a controlled brawl lurching from argument to argument with almost embarrassing regularity. Police had to break up a shouting and shoving match among Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim delegates.”
"The presence of pagans so offended Orthodox Christians that they left the gathering. Later four Jewish organizations followed them out of Chicago, objecting to the presence of...the Nation of Islam. Evangelical Christians boycotted.”
Chuck Lindell, Cox News Service
Hopefully, there was less rancor and more compassionate listening at this year's meeting.
However, “religious disagreement is inevitable...I think what most often blocks friendly disagreement is that we don’t know people of other religions, and we misunderstand them.”
Terry Muck
On the contrary, more often than not, the problem isn’t that we don’t "know people of other religions" and that we don't understand other religions or other ideologies, but that we, oh so tragically,
DO!
As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details.
Outwardly, on first glance, looking at their forward advertising, most religions and ideologies smile and pronounce the usual platitudes--follow the Golden Rule,
be nice,
kind,
and don’t step on others’ blue suede shoes;-)
Repeat--but the devil is in the details!
The horrors are in the very real twisted philosophy and theology of these various belief systems that cause and or lead to so much suffering and harm and destruction of others in our world.
Yes, there are distorted cliches. Once upon a time, before the hurricane of adulthood, most of us were children of hope and innocence, well, naivety.
But even then, there were the generic labeled bad guys--from the communists to the Catholics.
Raised in moderate Baptist fundamentalism, my parents and church taught my sister and I the usual Nebraska 1950 prejudices--that Catholics weren’t Christians, liberals were awful, hard fundamentalists mean, and Pentecostals (which included our dear uncle and aunt) confused.
But as kids my sister and I didn’t know the details. Later as we grew and encountered these enemies, we learned that other worldviews were sometimes much better than the bad descriptions but, too often, actually much worse.
The demon was in the details of the religions' central beliefs and destructive actions.
Real Examples:
God will call you to sometimes commit immoral actions because God is sovereign will and so decides what is good and what is evil.
God created evil.
Malaria and cancer aren’t wrong.
Those humans who criticize our God and our holy book, and our leaders ought to be arrested, jailed, and executed.
God planned the Jewish Holocaust and 9/11.
God is sovereign and before creation planned for the eternal damnation of most human beings. He creates every infant at conception, “in essence, evil.”
Murder and rape and molestation can easily be forgiven but not failure to believe in our creed.
Husbands can beat their wives and women must submit to men.
Women must wear coverings over all of their body and hair.
Little girls should have their private parts mutilated.
Every human is born totally depraved because of what Adam did.
The atom bomb is "God's gift to America."
There are many Gods; there are no Gods.
Killing others for God is good and makes us heroes and "martyrs."
God is both good and evil.
God is only concerned with his own glory and planned all evil to give him glory and "good pleasure."
All other religions are of the Devil.
Etc.
It is difficult to listen with compassionate and empathetic listening, when the person opposite from you spouts horrific beliefs and supports unjust actions which are leading to great suffering, harm, and tragedy for others.
Even seemingly caring religious leaders can disconcert and confuse. Consider this caring quote: “Compassionate Listening is a process rather than a product. It is healing precisely because it does not pretend to ‘have the answers.’ Rather, it engages the participants in processes that have each side seeing the humanity of the other, even when they disagree.”
Rabbi David Zaslow, Ashland Oregon
Sounds so good. But then consider what the Rabbi also wrote! In his book, Jesus, First Century Rabbi, he states that God created evil and is also the opposite of love and the opposite of light!
Then Zaslow quotes “God says, ‘I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the LORD do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7 in the Jewish Bible). According to him, “...and always the satan is sent by God for us to overcome.”
Now, Zaslow does backtrack and contradict himself in later pages, but such initial statements are still troubling and confusing—definitely not helpful toward compassion or good listening.
Evidently, he emphasizes the extreme statements to shock the reader, but he also really believes them!
How so unlike other modern American Jewish leaders such as the endearing, caring Rabbi Albert L. Lewis, in Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom or the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who focused on the positive and abhorred what is wrong.
Declaring God started evil and sends evil! That is very troubling.
However:
“Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.”
Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation
--
And:
A January 2002 Interview with Gene Knudsen Hoffman
(1919-2010)
Gene Knudsen Hoffman, founder of Compassionate Listening, after being influenced by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for his work with opposite sides in the Vietnam War.
Interviewer: "What is the nature of nonviolence?"
Hoffoman: "I don't like the term nonviolence any more. I feel closer to Gandhi when he says truth force, God. I'm a Quaker and I've been involved with peace for fifty years."
Interviewer: "What makes peacemaking so slow a process?"
"First of all, people don't believe in peace, in my opinion. We have never known peace. We don't even admit that we have been in many wars, so why should we make peace? We have talked about ourselves, at least Americans, as being a peaceful people until we believe it no matter what we do. It's a shocking thing. It's a practice of denial."
"Just not facing the reality. We are always calling other people war criminals, yet we're the ones who dropped the first atom bomb."
"We don't live with that reality. It is always the other person, like an untutored child who is always blaming someone else. We're in great denial about it."
"I discovered something in 1985 as I was going around the world looking for new peace initiatives and touring peace centers. I went to a Quaker meeting in London and outside the meeting was a huge sign, 'Meeting For Worship For The Torturers And The Tortured.'"
"I'd never heard of anything like that; I mean, listen to the torturers? Then I decided that I was going to listen to everyone and everything. I started listening to both sides. We can never make peace until we can listen to both sides. No matter who is the enemy."
Interviewer: "If then peacemaking is such slow work because it is the continual struggle to face reality, and also a continual struggle with self-interest, how do you get opposing people to listen to each other?"
Hoffman: "I maintain that we must listen to the oppressor as a human being. The oppressor has grievances, suffering, and we have to listen to both sides. An enemy is a person whose story we have not heard."
"In the beginning you have them listen separately. They get their anger out. They get out everything they feel. They talk about it for a year before they do anything."
"What happens is that as you listen, you change. It's a transformation. People are never listened to as much as they need to be, [especially] children and certain criminal types. It doesn't mean the oppressors are right."
"It doesn't mean you agree with them, and the people have to know this before you go in. It doesn't mean you agree with them, but you look for the truth. You have to discern the truth. It's a process of discernment and intuition and listening."
http://www.peaceheroes.com/PeaceHeroes/jeanknudsenhoffman.htm
So am I willing to listen to those who claim God wills evil, who predestines most humans to eternal torture, who consider little infants, "in essence, evil," who are prejudiced against women, minorities, and other humans as inferior, who advocate that nuclear weapons are good, that life is meaningless and purposeless, that ethics are only "personal preference," etc.?
I try. But it's difficult!
Because I've lived where Muslim jihadists shot up innocent people, personally known many individuals who tragically suffer and are allegedly eternally damned by others, have seen the destructive results of prejudice, injustice, and human rights violations and saw the destructive results of determinism and of the denial of objective ethics by various religious and ideological groups.
But we do need to listen, or we become in our own way, like our enemies.
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Friday, February 12, 2016
Finding the CENTER
"Strained by the mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence..."
"Within, is the beginning of true life."
"...a dynamic center, a creative life...a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the face of humans."
"Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center."
"From this holy Center we love our neighbors as ourselves and are stirred to be the means of their awakening..."
Wise words from Quaker Thomas Kelly,
A Testament of Devotion and The Eternal Promise
The central difficulty though in finding this CENTER and
living in the CENTER and becoming more and more who we truly can and ought to become
is
the contradictory points that humans, even Quakers, declare about whether the CENTER even exists.
In so many ways, finding and CENTERING is like the story the Jewish prophet told about a seeker of fine pearls who found a wondrous pearl. One first needs to seek!
Then one needs to use her/his reasoning ability to identify and discard fake pearls and fraudulent ones that at first looked genuine.
Then one needs to compare average pearls to fine pearls--average facts to transcendent oughts and great truths.
And then comes the most difficult of all--when finding the ONE pearl of perfection,
we humans need to focus on that central wonder.
Each of us needs to give all in order to acquire the perfect gem.
Let us, in this dark time of suffering and confusion and delusion--
Seek that CENTER--seek what is true, what is reasonable, what is wise, what is good, what is just, what is beautiful, what is kind...
Live in the Reason which spangled the universe into becoming.
In the Light, in the Center,
Daniel Wilcox
"Within, is the beginning of true life."
"...a dynamic center, a creative life...a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the face of humans."
"Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center."
"From this holy Center we love our neighbors as ourselves and are stirred to be the means of their awakening..."
Wise words from Quaker Thomas Kelly,
A Testament of Devotion and The Eternal Promise
The central difficulty though in finding this CENTER and
living in the CENTER and becoming more and more who we truly can and ought to become
is
the contradictory points that humans, even Quakers, declare about whether the CENTER even exists.
In so many ways, finding and CENTERING is like the story the Jewish prophet told about a seeker of fine pearls who found a wondrous pearl. One first needs to seek!
Then one needs to use her/his reasoning ability to identify and discard fake pearls and fraudulent ones that at first looked genuine.
Then one needs to compare average pearls to fine pearls--average facts to transcendent oughts and great truths.
And then comes the most difficult of all--when finding the ONE pearl of perfection,
we humans need to focus on that central wonder.
Each of us needs to give all in order to acquire the perfect gem.
Let us, in this dark time of suffering and confusion and delusion--
Seek that CENTER--seek what is true, what is reasonable, what is wise, what is good, what is just, what is beautiful, what is kind...
Live in the Reason which spangled the universe into becoming.
In the Light, in the Center,
Daniel Wilcox
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