Staying Open

I just spent a frustrating hour chasing down blogs with an interest in "animism" and found most of them had stopped writing years ago. I don't want that to happen here. Even though I've been crazy busy and distracted, I am still on the path, and still hoping to connect with like-minded others. If you stumble on this blog, through whatever topic interests you, I hope you will leave a comment and we can connect!
Love!
Lilly

So, what exactly did you mean by that?

I read in a book about the historical Jesus that when Jesus admonished his followers that they were not “of the world” he meant the human-created world. I call this the “manufactured world.” The manufactured world is to be distinguished from the God-created world, the Earth. So, I would agree with Jesus that those who follow his path of love must live in the created world and not in the manufactured world.

This definition is just one tiny piece of my struggle with definitions as I work to consolidate my understandings into some kind of cohesive system of belief.

Humans do not live in a static, scientifically-provable “real world.” There may be a static, scientifically-provable world out there, but we cannot directly experience it. Humans simply don’t have the capability. First, we have to experience it through our physical sensory equipment. Then we might use various tools to extend the reach of our senses. More than that, and more important than that, are the internal models and other mental tools we use to make sense of what we see.

Can we see without making sense of what we see?

If, for example, I see a ghost and the ghost is real, I might still only “see” a wisp of smoke, a shimmer of light. I don’t believe in ghosts. They don’t make sense in my internal model of reality. I cannot and never will see one. But in some models of reality, in some cultures, ghosts are very real and people see them all the time.

One can only imagine what infants experience: a chaos of sensory input. Without the models and mental tools that give this input meaning, humans would never be able to sort out the sensory input, connect it to other input, make sense of it, store it, retrieve it, or interact with the world using it.

I believe that we live inside our models of the world. I call these models culture, but only for lack of a better word. Culture is still associated with the “high culture” of the arts and music, or with the interpersonal culture of manners and morals. But culture is more than that. Culture is also understood as location-, religion-, or group-related world models, such as “French Culture,” “African-American Culture,” “Islamic or Christian Culture.” But culture is more, even, than that. It is the experiential water in which we swim. Everything we do, say, believe, how we understand our bodies, our souls, the meaning of life, our medicine, education, transportation, and all the multitude of systems that define and control our lives is culture.

We don’t notice culture, unless we make a serious effort to do so, and even then, there are parts of culture that appear to be related to the human instinct, that appear “cross-culturally,” such as the a priori models of space and time (a la Kant). Confused yet? Me, too!

But I can’t begin to point out to people that they live in a variation of the Dominator Culture — or should I call it the Dominator Reality? — unless I can define my terms. I can’t point to an alternative reality, the possible world of the Animist Culture, unless I can define the words dominator, culture, animist, reality, internal models, and so on. My readers might understand these words in typical ways, for example, “reality is what is.” But they won’t understand them as I seek to define them, for example, “reality is the meaningful model of the world in which we live, which exists inside of an unknowable mystery.” God is another of those words. The soul is another.

Argh! It’s been years working on definitions. And all I want to say is “Come on, human people! There’s another world out there and it’s a good one! Open the gates. Walk on through into the garden!” No wonder Jesus had such a hard time getting people to understand him. He, too, was challenging the reality of the Dominator Culture in his own time and place.
Love,
Lilly

Musings on a winter day

Hello online friends,
It's not officially winter, but it sure feels like winter. We had a first snowfall last night and woke up to a white wonderland. Our little apartment felt cozy enough to bake a peach pie.

Now, I don't have it in me to continue to wax pedantic about immigration. I'd be preaching to the choir anyway. So, I'll let go of the post about contemporary immigration and NAFTA, and the post about who the real terrorists are. I'll skip right to the question that's important to me:

Why would any Christian be afraid of a terrorist anyway? What's with this orange alert bullshit for the heaven-bound? Jesus admonished us to be not afraid of those who would harm the body. He said we should fear the men who can steal our souls. I would say, therefore, that we should be more concerned about the soul stealers of our time: the fear mongers and those who make war in our name, the profiteers, the corporations that carelessly damage our one-and-only earth-nest, as well as the TV shows and other media messages that turn us into weak, selfish, lazy, materialistic, empty shells of humanity.

And that's my say for a winter day. Let's go sledding! Sending love to all,
Lilly

The Melting Pot in Action

The following tidbit about immigrants was brought to my attention by the Liberator Online, a Libertarian newsfeed. Libertarians are making more sense to me than the fascist-leaning Republicans. Never thought I would come to that!

"Immigrants contribute nearly one-fourth of the
economic output of New York State, and outside of New York City, they are
overrepresented in some of the most critical occupations, including higher
education and health care, according to a study to be released today. In the
suburbs north and east of the city, about 4 of every 10 doctors and more than
one-fourth of college professors were foreign-born, the study by the private
Fiscal Policy Institute found. In upstate New York, where just 5 percent of
residents are foreign-born, immigrants accounted for about one-fifth of the
professors and more than one-third of the doctors, according to the study. The
study, conducted over the past year, concluded that the contributions of people
born outside the country have spread far beyond the low-wage, low-skill work
often associated with immigrants."

-- "Immigrants Pull Weight in Economy, Study Finds," New York Times, November 26.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/nyregion/26report.html?ref=todayspaper

The New Colossus

The New Colossus
by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Like every Jewish school child, I learned about Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) in Hebrew School and felt pride that these words, which grace the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, were written by a fellow Jew. It was the violent anti-Semitism of the Russian and German pogroms in the early 1880s that radicalized Lazarus’ poetry, and led to the passion about immigration that she expresses in her seminal work.
Love,
Lilly

Immigration

A friend recently sympathized with my daughter’s experience, but added that she didn’t know much about the immigration issue. “Wouldn’t it be like opening our borders to terrorists to allow just anybody in?” she asked. Here is my answer to her, in three parts.

1) We are the immigrants.
Every citizen of this country, except for the Indians, came here within the last few hundred years as immigrants. After the first import of British colonials, who began the genocidal sweeping out of the native population, great waves of immigration subsequently brought Jews, Catholics, Irish, Germans, Slovaks of all kinds, Asians of all kinds, Latin Americans and a marvelous variety of other ethnicities, languages, races and religions to our shores. The African-Americans, of course, were originally forced here as slaves. I believe my friend’s background is Italian. None of us can claim “nativehood” except those who immigrated ten thousand or more years ago across the land bridge from Siberia.

Every time a new kind of immigrant came to the United States seeking freedom or financial gain, those already here complained. Sometimes, as in the case of the KKK, we complained violently. Mostly, we complained because we were afraid the newcomers would bring disease or bad religion, or would take our jobs, or would act in un-American ways. They sounded different. They looked different, and we feared difference. But in truth, the newcomers brought fresh energy, took jobs we disdained, worked hard, enriched our culture and cuisine, and integrated fully. Why, now, do we close our doors, except out of the same old fear? And who is fear-mongering now?
Love,
Lilly


My response here is, by its blogging nature, simplistic and incomplete. For more information, please check out these websites.

Immigration History offers the basics.

For the more erudite among us, try the Immigration Research Center at the University of Minnesota.

Immigration Debate Links from the Constitutional Rights Center offers this page of links at the high school reading level.

No Borders Camp. Who are the terrorists, here?

Last week, my daughter was at the No Borders Camp at Calexico, at the Mexican border. As they have at walls around the world, our kids met to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall and share their ideal world: one in which no person is illegal, in which love prevails, in which we need no walls to wall people in or out.


They threw food over the wall and kissed through the wall. They cried shame to the border police and their weapons and hate-contorted faces. They danced and banged on drums, made music and art. For most of the “action” everything was quiet, even though it was tense to be surrounded by armed police and their vehicles, and sleeping under their kleig lights. Then, at the last moment, 100 police brutally attacked a group of about 30 kids, ganging up on them, beating them with heavy sticks and shooting them at close range with their pellet weapons.

Three young men were severely beaten and arrested, and ironically, charged with attacking the heavily armed federal officers. Please go to the No Borders Camp website to see video of the attack as well as scenes from the peaceful week of action. Although the No Borders Camp has met at other locations around the world, here in the United States is the first place they were attacked by representatives of the national government.