reconnecting.calm

Re-Imagine

2006-11-24T12:35:00.000-08:00

Re-Imagine…

… no That. No Other to lay the blame upon; no Else to pine for. Only This.

… no There. No need to wander far in darkness; no search without end. Only Here.

… no Then. No past or future; no Original Sin or Great Hereafter. Only Now.

This. Here. Now

Response to Newt Gingrich; letter to Wall Street Journal

2006-11-24T12:33:00.000-08:00

The September 7, 2006 Wall Street Journal had an op-ed piece by Newt Gingrich in which he encourages President Bush, in effect, to take the gloves and get serious about fighting terrorists. Apparently the commitment of a quarter-trillion dollars over the last five years, and the loss of nearly 3,000 American lives, has been the half-hearted work of a woos in the White House. World War III has begun, he declares, and we should do to the Muslim world what General Sherman did to Georgia and what Grant did to Richmond. My response:

Letter to the Editor
The Wall Street Journal

In reply to Newt Gingrich's editorial, "Bush and Lincoln," (editorial page, September 7): The threat to the U.S. is very real, something often dismissed by the Left. But trying to win hearts and minds with shock and awe is a losing proposition, too.

Something in our national DNA says that every challenge can be overcome with sufficient firepower. Even our social undertakings ring of the battlefield: War on Poverty; War on Cancer.... But that model has consistently failed to make the world a safer place or, incidentally, cure poverty or cancer.

Mr. Gingrich approvingly quotes Abraham Lincoln, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present... As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.” Amen. Firepower is the problem, not the solution. Defend ourselves we must, but we can’t bomb people until they learn to love us.

Our superior firepower, and the occasional wanton use of it by us or by our clients, is perhaps a reason the US has become a target of many. And they have learned how to use a tiny fraction of our firepower against us with crippling efficiency.

Lincoln had a subtle mind, and while appearing plainspoken he knew how to use feints within feints to bring people around to his way of thinking. That subtlety is what’s needed now.

We honor Mr. Lincoln not because he finally got a worthy general in Grant. But because even as the war wound down, he could bring empathy and magnanimity to bear as he did in his Second Inaugural: “With malice toward none, with charity for all… let us strive on to finish the work we are in… to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Tom Mahon
Walnut Creek, Calif.

Time to let Father Abraham go

2006-08-16T09:17:00.000-07:00

The carnage in the Middle East this summer - the latest turning in a 4,000 year old cycle of bloodshed - forces us to confront a very basic question. Is it time to abandon the Abrahamic tradition. It is - at long last - time to move on...

We are taught that Abraham-Avraham-Abram-Ibrahim is the father of monotheism – belief in One God. But along with that came the notion of Chosen-ness – One Chosen People. If there is only One God, He must be ‘Our’ God.

Abraham had two sons – he cast one out to die in the wilderness, and he tried to cut the heart out of his favored one. Yet, incredibly, the entire Western belief system looks to this filicide as “our common father in faith.” And the children of his sons Isaac and Ishmael have been locked in a dance of death ever since, with the gentile world joining this ‘danse macabre’ in the Fourth Century.

Much of the carnage in Western history come from the theology of ‘Chosen-ness.’ “We...” (insert Hebrews, Christians, or Muslims) ”are the Chosen of God.” And all three traditions have understood this more than once to be a license to kill.

Is it possible God’s words were mistranslated or misunderstood? That instead of asking Abraham to clip off the foreskin of his penis, God told Abraham to get a vasectomy: “Since you are unfit for parenthood, I will find another.”

I do not mean to be flip – these are very serious issues but I never hear them raised. A ‘cradle Catholic,’ I stopped going to Mass after 50+ years because I could no longer worship a God who “From age to age gathers His Chosen People unto Himself, so that from East to West our perfect offering is made in His sight (and all others are rejected?).”

What broken God would make all the people, then arbitrarily select only some as His Chosen, refusing all others? Such a One deserves our pity or our anger, perhaps, but not our reverence and awe.

Maybe instead of asking how to bring the children of Abraham together in peace, the better question is to challenge the entire underlying assumption of “One God and His One Chosen People.” Perhaps the notion of Chosen-ness was valuable when it was ‘our people’ against a hostile world. But now, as the song says, we are the world. And perhaps the legacy of Abraham – this theology of Chosen-ness – has become a millstone around the neck of humanity. Maybe the time has come to move beyond the exhausted Old One who said, “I will be your God, and you will be My People.”

Old Gods (or rather, old notions of God) die all the time, and new notions are born. Maybe the natural sciences now have more to teach us about the inter-being of, and harmony between, all things, from subatomic to intergalactic, than those ancient books that perhaps served their time well, but now seem to be leading us inexorably to Megiddo.

Perhaps this is why there is a resurgence of fundamentalism in all three Abrahamic faiths: it is the death rattle of a corrupted theology. The horrific events of this summer are not only the reductio ad absurdum, but also the logical outcome, of a belief system based on “One God and His One Chosen People.”

Pray for peace; work for justice.

Da Vinci’s Other Code

2006-05-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

It’s unfortunate that so much of the discussion surrounding The Da Vinci Code has centered on whether Jesus of Nazareth married Mary of Magdala and fathered a line of children.

This is what Alfred Hitchcock called a MacGuffin – a side issue that distracts from the larger issue. In this case, how the Christian church subordinated women almost from the beginning, though rabbi Jesus treated women – even Samaritan women - as equals. In 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has not yet found ten mothers worthy of sainthood.

But Christianity behaves no differently than any other ‘religion of the book.’ Judaism and Islam likewise have a history of subordinating women, reflected in Miriam’s cry: 'Does God speak only to my brother Moses?'

This is a tragedy that many have begun to address in recent years. What has concerned me over this time is that parallel to Christianity's subordination of women, has been its subordination of the mother of all mothers – Nature herself. The belly of Mother Earth is seen as the place of damnation.

This meant that Christianity lost its voice during the two greatest developments of the last 500 years: the scientific revolution and the technological (industrial and information) revolutions.

To get a sense of how things might have been, consider the case of Leonardo Da Vinci. As a scientist, his curiosity led him to address a wide range of issues, including manned flight. In that spirit, he envisioned and drew working diagrams for a helicopter.

But Da Vinci was also in-formed with a moral compass, and so recognized that if such a machine were built, princes would use it against civilians in siege warfare. So he drew the plans, but did so using a code which took centuries to decipher. (Although the code was simplicity itself: hold the text up to a mirror and it becomes legible. The secret was hidden in plain sight.)

Da Vinci correctly understood that science is embedded in conscience, and tech-knowledge is the external manifestation of self-knowledge. In effect, he threw The Ring back into the fire before it could get out of the cave and do damage in the world. He was one of the last to act with such insight.

And because institutional Christianity — like many other religions -- had no appetite for studying nature and the appropriate use of its forces, it lost the authority to speak knowledgably regarding science and technology, or to encourage a Da Vinci-like attitude among the members.

(Ironically, the Catholic priesthood produced some great scientists, though most were silenced for their work: Roger Bacon, Nicholas Copernicus, Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaitre, Teilhard de Chardin).

In time, Christendom became ‘the developed world’ where science and technology are preeminent, but where issues of values and appropriateness are an afterthought, if they’re considered at all.

About 2,500 years ago, in a period known as the Axial Age, people in China, India, Judea and Greece independently came up with the notion that to be happy as individuals and as a society we need to develop universal compassion. How this developed in these four regions is the subject of an excellent new book, “The Great Transformation; The beginning of our religious traditions,” by Karen Armstrong.

Whether or not we are living in another Axial Age, we are certainly living in one of those uncomfortable times in history when the old gods are dead and the new ones haven’t shown up yet. Or, more accurately, the old answers seem inadequate for the new questions.

In every other respect, the Lord’s Prayer is a wonderful expression of petition, contrition, worship and thanksgiving. But the “Our Father who art in Heaven” part is a bone that many can’t chew anymore.

When the ‘new revelation’ comes – if there is still time – it will have to cut through centuries of dogma and institutional intolerance to return to the simple, core Axial insight: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

But now, beyond seeing ‘the face of God’ in our enemy as well as our friend, as the wisest Axial thinkers did, we must learn how to see that transcendence in the blade of grass and the grain of sand. We can no longer dismiss such notions as archaic, pagan or Wiccan, but rather as the marks of true wisdom, and essential to our survival and to our sanity.

The supernatural is found within the natural. And it is a mark of humanity’s developing maturity that we understand and act appropriately on that awareness.

Ecclesiastical laryngitis that echoes the silence of Shoah

2006-05-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

I happened to be traveling thru Europe this month and while meandering thru the alleys of Montmartre (the hill of martyrs) I was struck by how we honor martyrs of antiquity but often miss those in our own time.

If institutional religion cannot find its collective voice to challenge loudly the crimes of the Bush administration - initiating unholy war; taking from the poor to enrich the wealthy; promoting actions that poison the land, sea and sky - then at least it should hold public, interfaith services that honor our own martyrs: the soldiers of the Coalition killed or wounded in mind or body (who are not even recognized by our government), and the civilians and combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are long overdue in honoring all those innocents whose deaths have served to enrich the arms merchants, the energy providers and the bankers who are making a fortune off this moral and political catastrophe. The names of the real evildoers are hidden from us, but too often their faces are found in the front rows in our places of worship every week.

'Religion' made religion irrelevant

2006-04-07T13:02:00.000-07:00

"Mainline Protestant and Orthodox churches have been pounded into
irrelevancy by the media machine of a false religion," said the president of
the National Council of Churches…

It’s not the media that made religion irrelevant. The media have simply
rushed in to fill the vacuum left by our archaic dogmas and religious models
that still present the sacred as bearded shepherds and angels with feathered
wings to mall-rats who wouldn’t know a shepherd if one bit them in the
ankle.

The Hebrew, Christian and Islamic testaments were written between 1500 and
3000 years ago – addressing political, economic, cultural conditions we can
no longer imagine. Any more than the ancients could have foreseen our world
today.

And while virtues like justice, mercy and humility remain evergreen and
enduring, our theology – the overarching story of the universe and our place
in it – still seeks answers to questions no longer worth asking, like the
Roman Catholic Church’s recent decision to re-consider ‘limbo.’

Our Christian belief says that to be born into the world, without being
‘born again,’ is to deserve damnation under Augustine’s notion of Original
Sin. How can we feel at peace with ourselves or others in such a nightmare
universe?

We offer symbolic blood sacrifices to appease a desert patriarch of
unconscionable capriciousness. (‘You are my Chosen Ones; the rest of you can
buzz off.’ ‘You get a winning lottery ticket, and he gets brain cancer.’)

Believers in the 21st Century must still affirm the Nicene Creed, based on
Ptolemy’s flat-earth cosmology, yet that core belief statement makes no
reference to the Beatitudes, the Great Commandment or the Farewell Blessing.

When the landscape of our faith and the landscape of the world in which we
live and work and raise our kids bear no resemblance to each other, we end
up with personal, communal and global crises of historic magnitude.
Cognitive dissonance (holding opposite views with equal conviction) may help
get us through the night; long term it leads to madness.

When the human race was young, God (who can be imagined as a loving parent,
among other things) spoke to us as any good parent speaks to his or her
child: in fable, parable, myth, allegory. But we’re getting older as a
species now. And just as a wise parent eventually puts aside Dr. Seuss and
Goodnight Moon and gives the child a chemistry set, a computer and
eventually the keys to the family Chevy, so too ‘God’ is revealed to us now
in age-appropriate language through quantum physics, chaos theory and
exobiology research, among many examples. And with the atom smasher and the
gene machine we now have the keys to drive nature at the most fundamental
levels.

But we’re not listening. Where are the churchmen who understand these
issues enough to offer competent ethical guidance on arms control or energy
policy, or to say, “See how chaos theory addresses the age-old question of
suffering?” It is not enough to say: ‘It is new; it is wicked.’

The tension created by static theologies insisting on their teaching
authority in a dynamic universe is literally tearing world society apart.
In a universe where even the best physicists can’t give a complete
description of a single atom - where the physical universe is described with
terms like relativity, indeterminacy and uncertainty - we should be very
careful when we claim that we alone possess the Truth about the
metaphysical; that because we are right everyone else must be wrong.

What moral authority does any religion have that limits the locus of evil in
the world to a 15 year old girl getting an abortion, but never excoriates
the arms merchants, the drug merchants, the industrial polluters, those who
‘game’ financial markets and destroy 60,000 hard-earned pensions with a
pen-stroke?

The United Religions is, heroically, working to end religiously motivated
violence, as the National Council of Churches works to heal divisions within
Christianity. These actions are necessary but not sufficient. The core
issue is how much longer we will limit ourselves to addressing post-modern
dilemmas with answers from ancient texts. That Bible scholars have to
struggle mightily to translate an ancient Hebrew verb in Genesis to get
“stewardship over nature” instead of “dominion over nature” in order to
confront environmental issues is an obscenity.

One of the highlights of my life was to have been a delegate at a major
interfaith gathering at Stanford in 1997. And one of the biggest shocks of
my life was, at the end of the first session, to hear one of the dignitaries
proclaim to the assembled that the common enemy of all religions is
technology itself.

I introduced myself as the representative from the Church of St. Silicon
(our holiest shrine is Stanford where the electronics revolution began) and
said if that was in fact the consensus, then it would be best to close down
now and not waste any more effort. What institution can claim relevance
that sets itself in opposition to the underpinning of modern life?

Judaism and Christianity have major celebrations in the spring - Passover
and Easter – and I expect Islam does as well. But too often these are
merely nostalgic recollections of past events, rather than ongoing reminders
of how dynamic, evolving and expanding God’s universe really is.

We constantly set out on journeys to new places, and forever come alive to
new realities. The book of understanding, knowledge and wisdom is not
closed; it’s barely been opened. Scientists and technologists understand
this – in fact, that is the act of faith that drives their work. Why is it
so hard for churchmen to acknowledge this? Resolve this tension and I
believe you’ll find religion is no longer irrelevant. And you need not
waste time confronting the likes of Pat Robertson; such men eventually push
themselves off cliffs.

Because it’s not enough to be critical and then not offer suggestions, I
have an eBook that lays out an extended attempt to resolve some of these
issues, at www.reconnecting.com. It reflects my 30+ years reading and
reflecting on the passage I went through when I left the faith-based
community of my youth and entered the engineering world of my work years.
It was not written in tablets of stone received from Sinai. It is written
with electrons which are notoriously open-ended.

Nazis, Commies and Cappies

2006-03-10T15:15:00.000-08:00

National Socialism and Communism landed in the dustbin of history for believing that humans exist only to serve the State. Likewise, the ‘no-limits-to-free-enterprise’ Capitalists will see their brainchild disgraced for believing that humans exist only to serve the Market.

The New Feudalism

2006-03-08T18:50:00.000-08:00

We appear to be headed into a New Feudalism. But unlike the old Feudalism of a thousand years ago, when wealth was based on land, or real property, the New Feudal order is based on knowledge, or intellectual property.

It’s ironic that in the Information Age, knowledge is becoming private property. If you can’t afford to know, you don’t deserve to know.

No one begrudges an inventor or artist a fair return on an idea. But what we’re seeing is much more. The old humanist tradition seems to be dying before our eyes. The honorable liberal arts notion of pursuing and sharing knowledge is being replaced by the courts-sanctioned ownership of knowledge.

As in the old system, few have much and many have little. The new model threatens a return to what Carl Sagan called ‘a demon-haunted world,’ where superstition, magical thinking and ignorance are honored. Gullibility replaces faith; rhetoric trumps reason; sound bytes replace critical thinking.

Too often this ignorance and superstition is promoted by our institutions – government, business, religion – wishing to keep the electorate, the consumers, the faithful in a state of suspended superstition. Literally dumb-founded. What will you do about this?

Reflecting on the Death of a Younger Brother

2006-01-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

Timothy Kane Mahon, 1948-2006

To everything there is a season, says Ecclesiastes. Bullshit.
Last March we buried our 98-year-old mother. It was her season.
Now you’re in a morphine fog; chemotherapy and novenas equally useless. This is not in season.

Do we accept it patiently, the inscrutable act of a loving god? And so insult both men and god.
Or raise a fist to the heavens and cry, Revenge! And while we’re at it, tell the seas to go dry?
Or endure like Job, til we can suffer in silence no more?

Job asked, Where is your Justice? God bellowed, Behold my power!
Job said, Your power is evident. I asked, Where is your justice?
And with that, God is dumbstruck and never speaks in the Bible again.

What a fool I must have sounded last month, when I prattled on about the will to live.
You already knew the terminal diagnosis, didn’t you? And were too kind to shut me off.
So cruel when an oncologist is reduced to layman’s term: ‘The cancer exploded within you.’

How parallel our lives played out:
We each drifted as far as possible from our hometown,
To live by our separate seas, apart from the drifting snow.

We each enjoyed success as solo practitioners, possessing dad’s Irish way with words.
You arguing cases before the INS; me describing deeper-denser DRAMs,
In abbreviated, abbreviation-filled careers.

We’ve each remained married to lovely women for over thirty years,
And each of us watched three rugrats become splendid young men and women.
We even had common vices: short fuses, hollow legs, and no time for the company of fools.

Then with all that in common why could we never talk? Beyond the conversational.
What led up to that weekend in August ’63 when a curtain came down between us?
Lifting only towards the end, and then only some?

We were close once, eh Timmy. Tykes at the toilet bowl, sword fighting with pee streams.
I envied your natural batting stance and your cool crowd of Cub Scout cronies.
And your wit, when you told the folks that Election Day: Vote for John Kennedy or ‘that other guy.’

Once I knew, but now I feel, the pulse of the exchange between Zorba and the poet:
~ What’s the use of all your books if they don’t tell you why that good person died?
~ They recount the agony of those who cannot answer that question.

It is humbling, after a lifetime with words, to see how useless they really are.
Maybe they’re the best we have, but they’re paltry at best. It happened because it happened.
There’s a void here now, amid the noise. Beyond is silence. But I believe, no void.

Au revoir, Tim. Rest in peace. You certainly earned it.

Love,
Tom
1/6/06

Of religions-yet-to-be

2005-12-28T21:57:00.000-08:00

The United Religions Initiative (www.uri.org) correctly reserved space for religions-yet-to be, mirroring the foresight of the Athenians who reserved a place in their temples ‘for a God unknown.’

Religions rest on two pillars: an overarching creation story that accounts for the origin and destiny of the people, and guidelines for living a happy life in a stable community. These two foundations are also called faith and morals, or orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

Creation stories vary greatly from civilization to civilization while the guidelines for successful living are remarkably common to all times and places: respect life, act honorably, speak honestly, and be kind to one another.

And while the virtues are evergreen, creation stories should be open to change as new discoveries are made about the cosmos.

Ninety percent of history’s scientists are alive today providing these new insights into the nature of nature. But 90 percent of our creation stories were set in place over 1,500 years ago, based on primitive perceptions of the cosmos.

What would a religion look like if we could start with a clean slate, based on what we now know of nature? The marks of this religion-yet-to-be might include:

1. A recognition of the continued unfolding of this-which-is: Big Bang theory holds that all that was, is and will be – everything, everywhere, everywhen – was contained in a singularity of zero mass and infinite density. Every atom has been here from the beginning and will remain until the end – the core of a long-gone sun, the gleam in a dinosaur’s eye, the tip of your finger, the center of a black hole to be.

2. Acknowledging that the natural and supernatural are one. A century ago, Albert Einstein showed that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Mass and energy (including information and intention) are the same thing factored different ways. What mystics once intuited, scientists now reveal. This is a uni-verse (one poem) not a bi-verse, and all the dots connect.

3. An embrace of ambiguity. Scientists now describe the universe with terms like relativity, uncertainty and indeterminacy, and cannot give a complete description a single atom. The unfolding cosmos is an ongoing revelation of this-which-is, with surprises at each turn. Who could have foreseen roses or goldfish in the first fiery act? Who can foresee where this is going?

4. A finer discernment between freedom and determinism. Chaos is complex order. Perhaps the same can be said of free will and destiny; even evil and good?

5. Awe at the existence of existence. The real wonder of this cascading creation is not how the eye came to be, or who designed the liver, but the sheer improbability of existence itself. And whether by intelligent design or random fluctuation or some other primal factor, the whole unlikely and elegantly coordinated universe had all its internal workings present in the beginning.

6. That reason and faith are interdependent. Reason rests on the faith the world is ultimately knowable. And faith is a leap from reason into the unknown.

7. That within and without are one. The uncertainty principal holds that the act of observing determines what we observe. At some profound level we create reality.

8. That the universe is a hologram. Since the 1930s, a growing body of rigorous tests gives evidence that each part of the universe contains the whole of the universe.

9. That we belong here, and are here for the duration. We are stardust, sunshine and seawater come alive and become aware; the conscious holograph of the unfolding this-which-is. As we perceive the universe, the universe perceives us. We are the cosmos!

10. And that the membrane between body and soul is very porous. We are happiest when the patterns of thoughts, the habits of heart, and the works of our hands are in balance. So with our minds and our hearts let us pray for peace, and with our tools and new technologies work for justice. And so we manifest and magnify this-which-is…

When the salt loses its flavor

2005-12-03T12:18:00.000-08:00

The leaders of the Roman church are in no hurry for Jesus’ Second Coming. They know that on that day he will vent on the Vatican with the same anger he showed in the Temple on Palm Sunday. The cardinals and curialists have committed the sin of many religious leaders in numerous demonimations: they put man’s law above God’s.

Catholics are taught that salvation is only available through the sacraments. Today tens of millions of Catholics can no longer receive the sacraments regularly due to the priest shortage. And now it will only get worse, as every year millions more will die without benefits of the Last Rites.

Yet this pope and his predecessor have said, clearly and unequivocally, that the salvation of the many is secondary to preserving their clubby, clerical celibate clique. This points to one of two conclusions: either the sacraments are a fraud, or the church leaders are a fraud. Take your pick.

The worthy rabbi said, ‘Take this all of you and eat...’ The Roman church interprets that to mean only as long as the bread of life is delivered by those in possession of a penis who promise never to use it, and only as long as the recipient never thinks about sex, practices birth control or wears patent leather shoes. How did such a sweet, simple message – be at peace with yourself and love one another – ever become this miasma of Greco-Roman gobbledygook?

Educated in the Catholic school system from K to B.A., and having met several priests whose MMPI psychological profiles were off the charts, I try to be as understanding of the two percent who caved, as I am respectful of the 98 percent who were true to their Orders.

Consider the bind a priest is put in on the day of Ordination: commissioned to preach a gospel of love, he’s then forbidden any love in his own life. (I distinguish between the increasingly useless hierarchy and the increasingly demoralized local priests forced to transubstantiate baloney into the bread of angels.)

The developed world is in moral meltdown, and the leaders of the largest denomination this week turned their attention to the pressing issue of reviewing the church’s teachings on limbo. The tragedy is that in turning away from such institutional self-righteousness, many also reject the notion of righteousness itself.

Jesus said to the first bishops, “You are the salt of the earth, but the time may come when the salt loses its flavor and is to be tossed out and ground under foot.” That day has long since arrived.

Woe to you, doctors and lawyers of the church - you pious frauds. You mince about in your scarlet capes and ermine collars and look forward to your mansions in the Kingdom. Gentlemen, you have received your rewards.

Woe to you, doctors and lawyers of the church - you whitewashed tombs. You took a living faith and reduced it to a monumental irrelevancy. You took a gospel based on the law of love and transformed it into a pathological love of the law. You claim to walk in the shoes of the fisherman. Be advised, Simon Peter will hock a lugie on your loafers before you see daybreak inside the Pearly Gates.

Repent, gentlemen. And reflect carefully this Advent on the humility of the virgin, the faith of the shepherds, the integrity of the magi, and the innocence of the babe. And give serious thought to those lovely hermitages in Capadocia just waiting for your humble presence.

Ethics 101

2005-11-17T13:48:00.000-08:00

Do not lie.
For when you die
Up to the sky
You will not fly.
But rather, fry.
Oh my!

And do not steal
Neither cow nor wheel.
But here’s the deal,
If you feel
You need a meal
You can appeal.

Nor should you kill.
Not Ahmed or Bill.
A bitter pill
You will instill.
And others will
Your blood spill.

Instead be kind
And you will find
‘Twill calm the mind
Of all mankind
So often blind
And in a bind.

I have opined.

From 20 to 60 in no time flat

2005-10-09T12:53:00.000-07:00

There’s a man in the street in the moonlight
And he speaks tho there’s no one to hear,
As he single-sound steps in the city night:
“How I’m aching for someone who’s near.

“All the lights in these windows are heaven
With a sky and four walls strong as winds
Open hearts, steaming food and a blanket -
A warm place to come in from the sins.

“Ah, the man with some food and a woman,
And her autumn-night tucked-under legs,
Has the world and a reason for grinnin’
Tho he wears what the city calls rags.

‘When teeth touch and her ‘yes’ has been given,
With the following erotic rites,
Then to fall and keep falling to morrow
Til the end of spring rain and its lights.”

But the man in the window above him
To his wife on the couch gives a yawn:
“Who’s that peacoat who walks in the rainlight
Like he’s mad that the night will turn dawn?

“Is he out of a Conrad or London
Or his mind it could well even be?
Has he done all the deeds that he should have,
And in wandering seen all to see?

“Down the street half a mile is the skyway
Will he take it to see where it winds?
He could travel so far in his free way
And in doing so leave us behind.

“What a thrill not to know where he’s sleeping
When old Morpheus touches his head,
With a doorway or country pine weeping
When the world chances him with a bed.”

-Tom Mahon
Spring, 1968

A letter to Bill

2005-10-07T15:31:00.001-07:00

March 2003

Bill,
If you have a minute, let me share with you an experience I had in Vietnam in 1967 that came back to me during Saturday’s walk against the impending war in Iraq.

I dropped out of school in ‘64 and was immediately called up by Selective Service. The year before Tonkin they weren’t as aggressive in taking people, so I got a 4-F rating for health issues that might not have kept me out of service the next year.

But wanting to see what it was all about, I got seaman’s papers and shipped out to Vietnam as a civilian in the Merchant Marine.

I became friends with the chief engineer – not much older than me but a very experienced world traveler. One evening in the port of Qui Nhon, about halfway between Saigon and the DMZ, he invited me to join him and visit a local sight. We ambled through the town and out into the countryside on a beautiful summer evening. You would never know this was a war zone; it was more like a stroll by the bandstand at Lake Harriet.

We got to the place he wanted to see; a Buddhist temple. He went in, lit a joss stick and placed it before the Buddha with reverence. Then he handed me his matchbox. I was shocked. “No way! I’m not praying to a false god. Let’s get out of here before anybody sees us,” I said, concerned perhaps that Fr. Ozark might amble by with an eraser in hand.

He began to explain to me that the Buddha is not a god, but a mortal who was fully aware. “Aware of what?” I asked. “That’s what we’re here to find out,” he said.

I figured I’d have a hard time explaining this to St. Peter when my time came. As we debated, a short man with a shaved head and saffron robe came into the temple. He spoke flawless English, welcomed us and invited us to join him and his fellow monks for tea.

We followed the monk-who-spoke-English into the dining room of the multi-building complex. . As he went off to prepare the tea, the room filled with a dozen other men whose saffron robes shimmered against the pale blue wall with a hallucinogenic intensity. My friend told me these were businessmen and family men who take a year off to devote to the Buddha; none of them spoke English.

After the tea was served, the monk-who-spoke-English leaned across the table and said to my mate and me, with an intensity belying his meek demeanor, “The Christ and the Buddha teach the same thing: that all men are brothers.”

Suddenly the room was ripped with a violent wave like a combination earthquake and tornado. An enormous rush of wind, leaves and dirt blew into the room from the courtyard outside. I got up and looked out the door to see an Army helicopter emptying its machine gun into the bushes along a nearby wall. Figuring someone had seen Vietcong in the area, I turned back to the room and yelled above the downwash to the monks seated at the long table, “There’s enemy activity outside!”

The monk-who-spoke-English had a different take on what I’d just said. “Yes, there is,” he replied. “And they do this to us every night.”

“No!” I shouted at the monk. “These are Americans. We don’t do that.”

I went outside and, foolishly, stood only a few yards from the bushes that were convulsing from the fusillade they were absorbing. I looked up into the helicopter and felt a wave of nausea. I recognized the pilot. Not literally, but I knew him. He was me. An earnest, clean-cut young guy who ten years before had worn a coonskin cap, and five years before donned a white sport coat and a pink carnation. And now he felt he had an honorable mission, playing havoc with the heathens every night at teatime.

I came back into the room, and the monks looked at me as if in sympathy for what they knew I was going through. The monk-who-spoke-English got up, came over to me and touched my shoulder, “It is best if you leave now.” And he led us out a different way through the compound, down a long dark corridor to a door. He opened it and the streetlight that entered showed a face both serene and tormented. He looked at my mate and me and said again, “The Christ and the Buddha teach the same thing: we must be kind to each other.”

We stepped through the door and were back in town, with the blare of a thousand Honda scooters; the passing women in their ao dais; the men going about their business as merchants or saboteurs; who knew?

St. Paul fell off his ass on the road to Damascus. I fell on my ass on the road out of St. Paul, Minnesota.

I recalled this last Saturday, because I hope none of our children or grandchildren ever faces such violence directed at them. And I hope, too, that none of our children and grandchildren is ever in such circumstances that they rain fury like that on innocent men and women.

Our institutions are failing us – Bernie Ebbers, Bernard Law, Bill Clinton and so many other institutional leaders are badly in need of moral compass implants. More and more it seems that it’s only as individuals and small communities that we can keep alive the honorable part of the tradition we were educated in – of reason over rage; civility over salaciousness; magnanimity over mendacity.

We may not quite be Gandalf or Dumbledore, but we are becoming the greybeards of a society in deep trouble, and with the skills at our disposal we need to leverage our collective energy and be heard. We’ve all come a long way, and each in our own way paid our dues, to gain a much deeper understanding of the angel’s words we heard fifty years ago at the Christmas pageant in second grade, “Peace on Earth!”

-Tom

The Song of the Still Man

2005-10-07T15:07:00.000-07:00

My pension fund’s been plundered by the men who run the show.
Got eighteen years already in, with seven more to go.
The anger wells up in me and I joke about the pain,
Determined not to play the fool, but know I will again.
Still I’m a hard-working man.

Our president’s like ‘Tommy:” deaf and blind as he can be.
He’s focused on the evil axis; numb to poverty.
“Safeguard infinite consumption of our dwindling resources!’”
So to the world’s wretched poor he sends our mighty forces.
Still, I’m a patriotic man.

My Bishop, he forgave the man who fractured my grandson.
Says it’s the Christian thing to do; I’m sure he don’t have one.
Says I can’t confront him, ’cause he’s God’s elect anointed.
Then he tells me to confess as sin the fact I’m disappointed.
Still, I’m a man of faith.

Every leader has betrayed us: my wife, my kids and me.
Telling us to ‘shut up’ and enjoy our liberty.
If we don’t, they’ll take it from us; that’s the message of their song.
So I’m sitting her and wond’ring: Lord, how long; Oh Lord how long?
Still, I’m a patient man

I’m forced to bend the rules from time to time while I’m alive.
Not so me and mine can thrive, but only to survive.
My world’s made up of many diff’rent shades of black and grey.
But I live in hope that for our kids it won’t turn out this way.
Still, I aim to be an honorable man.

Fractured, bifurcated; pulled in many an odd direction,
But hoping yet the world achieves a needed course correction.
I read about the Christ, the Buddha and that old Lao-Tzu,
How did they achieve it; what’s someone like me to do?
Man, I’m seeking to be still.

The real Science vs. Religion issue: A Farewell to Arms

2005-10-06T15:49:00.000-07:00

The current debate over evolution by natural selection or intelligent design is ultimately a futile exercise. Even if it was possible to prove the issue from either side - and it isn’t - whatever processes shape life don’t need our endorsement.

Where we can and should affect the outcome of the science and religion debate is the issue of weapons of mass destruction.

An advisory board task force, commissioned by the Department of Energy, has recently recommended the U.S. redesign its Cold War-based nuclear arsenal so as to meet this deeply religious president’s vision of smaller, more dependable and more lethal weapons. (See www.seab.energy.gov/news.htm, but take a deep breath first)

Never mind that we face adversaries who carry bombs in tennis shoes, that we have already burdened our descendants with unconscionable debts, and that even nature appears to be tiring of our presence on the planet (expressed by tsunamis, hurricanes and bird flu). Now the neo-Strangelove’s among us want to start a new arms race (against tennis shoe-clad adversaries), but are conscientious enough to suggest moving the operation away from Livermore, California so as to avoid ‘a threat to the civilian community.’ (No point harming civilians til the weapons are used.)

Between1945 and 1990, the U.S. and Soviet Union between them spent, by some estimates, over $10 trillion to research, design and produce 50,000+ nuclear warheads, many still in place and on hair-trigger alert. And from the U.S. side, all of those dollar bills bore the inscription “In God We Trust” (though apparently not enough). And all of those dollars and rubles came at the expense of the public’s health, education and well-being.

If we want to make the science/religion debate meaningful, this is the arena where we must put a stake in the ground. For sixty years, we have all been too silent in the face of this unconscionable waste of natural, intellectual, financial and moral resources. It must stop, once and for all. Even the Cold War argument that “They have them, so we need them” is meaningless today.

Ninety percent of wars now are religiously motivated, and 90 percent of the victims are civilians. There are no more ‘just wars.’ The only way war will stop is to make it so unprofitable that the merchants of death will have to look elsewhere for investment opportunities. We must hold personally accountable the bankers, the politicians, the warriors, the churchmen and the others who promote and profit from the very real risk of biocide – the death of life itself on the planet.

The lines are oddly drawn. Many military men, scientists and engineers are against this DoE project, even as some clergy favor it as hastening the ‘rapture’ and the end-times.

In every pulpit, every classroom, every public square, and in a tsunami of emails to representatives, we, the people must at last say ‘Enough. This stops now!’

The path will no doubt parallel what Gandhi noted in his struggle: first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they beat you up, and then you win.

But if we do not shut down this undertaking, the issue of further evolution of life on the planet, either by natural selection or intelligent design, will be moot.

Suggestions for engineers in their 50s and 60s

2005-09-20T15:54:00.000-07:00

In response to a request from an engineering publication to offer some advice to engineers in the 50s and 60 who face layoffs, downsizing, outsourcing or burn out, I provided the following. Parts of it were excerpted in "Onward and upward: Crafting a late-stage career" by Patrick Mannion in Electronic Engineering Times on September 19, 2005: http://www.eet.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=170704169

In spite of all the uncertainties in the profession today – downsizing, outsourcing, layoffs – pull back on a regular basis and get some distance from these immediate issues (knowing from personal experience how hard that is when livelihood is threatened).

Pause, to think about what you do have – family, health, experience, network, friends… Even if some of these are missing, you still have strengths that are uniquely yours.

Appreciate those strengths and inventory them: which will help you in your worklife, and which can be shared with others. Leverage them to maximum benefit for yourself and others.

Pray or meditate. Whether religious or not, take time to reflect that we are each part of a big universe; not like cogs in a machine but like cells in a living organism. One day a week, take a data sabbath – disengage from the virtual and reconnect with the authentic.

Participate in service. There are many opportunities; here are two that are uniquely for engineers:
Engineers without Borders (http://www.ewb-usa.org/) – like Doctors without Borders.
And Charity Focus (www.charityfocus.org/) - helping others help others.

There is much more on these four topics at www.reconnecting.com. See Part Three under Table of Contents.

Time for a Buddhist Defense Secretary

2005-09-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

Some look forward to our first Latino Supreme Court Justice and/or first woman President,
Worthy ambitions, to be sure.
I look forward to our first Buddhist Secretary of Defense
Who will bring the Great Metta on the battlefield.

Resign now, Mr. Bush!

2005-09-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

A Letter to the Editor published in the Contra Costa Times, September 20,2005
George W. Bush should resign and take his confederacy of dunces with him. Their incompetence is matched only by their arrogance.

He has filled the highest administrative offices in the land with religious zealots and party hacks. His approach to every problem is either to bomb it and/or reduce taxes. He surrounds himself with lackeys and sycophants. He works hard to show not that he knows not.

Better to leave a vacant White House for a time, than endure the moral, intellectual and spiritual vacuum currently in place.
Tom Mahon
Walnut Creek

Of Yoda, YHWH and Yeheshua

2005-08-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

Since the Biblical creation story is causing so much agitation these days, maybe a better understanding of creation is found midway through George Lucas’ "The Empire Strikes Back," when young master Luke goes to the Dagobah System to meet Yoda, his teacher, guru, rabbi, sensei, to begin his career as a Jedi.

The first thing Yoda instructs him to do in the garden/swamp is approach and enter the Tree of Knowledge. So Luke climbs down deep into the roots, passing slithery snakes and slimy subterraneans who harm him not.

Then deep within the Tree of Knowledge, Luke confronts his mortal enemy: Darth Vader. He fights the Dark Lord to the death, and with his Light Saber flicks off the mask to reveals Luke’s true enemy: himself.

For Yoda, the Tree of Knowledge is the path to self-knowledge. For YHWH, having given mortals a mind, it is the path to damnation.

Thus enlightened, Luke is told by Yoda to lift his Incom T-65 X-Wing from the swampy muck into which it crashed. No fool he, Luke says it can’t be done.

Yoda, the wise fool, insists Luke do it. Eventually worn down, Luke relents and says he will try. “Try not! Do or do not! There is no try.”

So Luke gives it the old college try and, as expected, fails. At which point, Yoda focuses his mind wonderfully and lifts the craft from the swamp.

“I don’t believe it!” exclaims Luke in wonderment. “And that is why you failed,” his teacher says in rebuke.

This is the message of the true Messiah, Christ, Mahdi: believe and there is nothing you can’t do. “What you’ve seen me do, you will do that and even more,” said Yeheshua (Jesus).

So Luke learns from Yoda and in time defeats the Empire, as Gandhi, Walesa, Mandela, King and others would do.

Whether called Messiah, Christ or Mahdi, the Anointed One is not a crutch or an idol. Rather, such a one in turn anoints us with a slap on the cheek, catapulting us to do the undreamed of. There is nothing we can’t do if we believe – not in another, but in ourselves.

The Song of the Stones

2005-08-28T16:58:00.000-07:00

We assume awareness sets at with the organic.
The inorganic is mute, dumb and inchoate.
Maybe not.

Compass needles talk with the magnetic north pole.
Geologists read the history of the earth in rocks.
Maybe more.

Do stones sing and rocks raga and we’re not listening?
Do Precambrians brag about the old days and Triassics tell them to get with the times?
Maybe so.

Do stones weep when the tide carries off a boulder’s sand?
Do waves wish they could stay to listen to the elegy?
Maybe.

Intelligent Evolution

2005-08-23T21:56:00.000-07:00

The decoupling of meaning from measurement, of faith from science, continues to haunt us; most recently in the claim that ‘intelligent design’ has equal academic standing with the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Both scientists and theologians wear self-imposed blinders, but at least scientists acknowledge their findings are provisional – subject to change as new information is available. This is less so for theologians who struggle to shove the square pegs of new discoveries into the round holes of ancient insights.

Both sides are arguing over rounding errors (how did vision begin); neither seems willing to address the improbability of existence itself.

Something accounts for being being. Whether we call it God, or Tao, or String Theory, or Chaos, or Quantum Flux or Randomness or Elmer’s Glue, this cosmos is held together with an elegance and subtlety so profound that it puts all other systems, scientific or theological, on an equal footing. That is to say, eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, nor has it entered the mind of time-bound beings to conceive what preceded or surrounded or underpinned or caused ‘the initial condition’ when time was naught (T=0) and all that was, is and will be was contained in a singularity of zero mass and infinite density.

We are all as Sir Isaac Newton once described himself with uncharacteristic humility: children exploring pebbles on the seashore ‘while a great ocean of truth lays all undiscovered’ before us.

The problem for those of us raised in the Biblical tradition is that we are trying to fit new discoveries of the universe and our place in it into archaic templates.

It’s not that there is no god (a placeholder word for a reality we can’t fathom). It’s that we refuse to abandon the image of a static, unmoving, implacable God even as we discover we live in a fluid, dynamic, evolving, expanding, big-bang, quantum, relativistic, uncertain, indeterminate universe.

In fact, we should be grateful for big-bang cosmology and the theory of evolution by natural selection for offering a way past some of the problems with the Biblical God.

In our traditional stories, God is continually trying to correct his earlier efforts. He gave Adam and Eve a mind and curiosity, then punished them for eating from the Tree of Knowledge. He gave humans hands with which to make and use tools, and speech to communicate and coordinate tool-use, then punished the people at Babel for using those tools to reach up to him. He made humanity in his image and likeness, then seeing his image and likeness sent the flood to wash it all away. Even sending a Redeemer is an acknowledgement by an omniscient being that the Human Project didn’t work as planned.

The intelligent design claim parallels this – it presents a God who has to keep interposing in the process to do mid-course corrections; what software designers call ‘bug fixes.’

Theists should embrace a new understanding of a more elegant god (the placeholder word for a reality we can’t fathom), not run from it. The Biblical God had to make each thing piecemeal – fish here, birds there, cattle over there. The big-bang god made everything from one thing; everywhere from one where; and everywhen from one when.

That a single explosive release of energy of whatever origin could, when cooled over time, produce bougainvillea, hummingbirds, the star-spangled nighttime sky and W. C. Fields speaks to a far more awesome cosmos than the ancients could ever have imagined. (And so they can be forgiven for not accounting for what they didn’t know. We can no longer claim ignorance as our excuse.)

Evolution posits a far more interesting and endearing god that our inherited story of devolution does. We’ve been taught we’re fallen angels who need to apologize for our existence and claw our way back, inch by painful inch, to God’s good graces – a hard and bitter story that has often produced hard and bitter societies.

Far more awe-inspiring is that we are very, very, very highly evolved starstuff, seawater and sunshine, come alive and become aware. And a god that could factor all that into a really, really, really hot ball of gas from the outset is a wonder to behold.

And furthermore, to do all that without having to make mid-course corrections, and beyond that, to make the whole she-big-bang out of little niblets of energy whose next moment is unpredictable… now that’s a god (the placeholder word for a reality we can’t fathom) worthy of our reverence. That’s a reality before which or whom we all stand equal in our awe. That is truly mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

True reverence then might consist in emulating the quanta; that is, having properties both substantial (science) and insubstantial (faith): exalting in the awareness of which we, and indeed the entire cosmos, partake; simultaneously humbled by the certain knowledge that this is still the first day of school.

“Let him be anathema!”

2005-08-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

When I attended parochial school the nuns and priests used to warn us against moral sins – actions so perverse they deaden the part of a person that is most truly that person.

Unfortunately, the examples given were so trivial (like kissing your date for more than three seconds) that by age 15 most of us gave up on the whole idea.

But indeed there are mortal sins, and they can be committed by institutions and by administrations, as much as by individuals.

George W. Bush’s war in Iraq is a mortal sin.

It is, by all three conditions:
Grievous matter: all wars – even ‘just wars’ – are very serious matters;
Sufficient reflection: war plans were in the works even before 9-11;
Full consent of the will: and then some, in Mr. Bush’s case.

This transcends Catholic or Christian moral theology; it goes way beyond political, economic or cultural issues. The Bush administration has sinned gravely by every moral and ethical standard: against God, against humanity, against nature.

Against God, by waging unholy war in God’s holy name;
Against humanity, by stealing from the neediest to enrich the haves and have-mores;
Against nature, by encouraging ever-more rapid despoliation of the land, sea and sky.

The early Christian church dealt with such a one by invoking: “Let him be anathema!”
Such a person was no longer a member of the community;
Such a king no longer had moral authority;
Such a one’s time to confess, do penance and be redeemed grew shorter with each day.

The deadliness of mortal sins is in how they kill the sinner, not those sinned against. The more one persists in wickedness, the more difficult it is to show remorse or acknowledge the inflicted suffering. Faust had only to cry out for redemption and the bond with Mephistopheles would have been broken. But by then his pride would not allow it.

And it is this growing arrogance and consequent death of empathy we see hardening in the president’s eyes each night on the news. His criminal ineptitude and ‘bring ‘em on’ carelessness make one shudder at what karmic fury awaits him and his inner circle.

It’s time for people of every faith to declare this administration anathema.
It’s time for George W. Bush to publicly repent, do penance and seek redemption.
For if our president’s eternal destiny is to be a burning Bush, what does that say about us?

A Life Lesson

2005-08-06T14:08:00.000-07:00

In the highest moments of life – when you feel you have it all –
Never forget you are but part of The One.

In the lowest moments of life – when you feel you have lost it all –
Never forget The One abides in you.

Beyond that, there is nothing of consequence we can gain.
And nothing of consequence we can lose.

So be at ease, and in your composure be kind to all others.
Thus is wisdom born in the space between rapture and despair.

On the occasion of my inauguration as President of the United States

2005-06-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

My fellow Americans, and our distinguished guests… President Bono of the United States of Europe… Today should be a day of great rejoining. We begin a new chapter in our national story, in the tradition of the New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, Great Society, Silent Majority, Morning in America, Thousand Points of Light and Compassionate Conservatism.

I say we should rejoice. But we cannot. During my campaign I told you what you wanted to hear - that we are the greatest country in the world. Favored by God, virtuous, well educated and well provided for. You’ll remember my campaign was based on a platform I called The Four American F’s – faith, family, fear of foreigners, and freakin’ unlimited firepower.

You also may have noticed how my nose grew during the campaign.

So now that I am in the Oval Office… and backed by the 82nd Airborne… I can at last speak the truth. We are in deep shit. And it’s getting deeper by the day. I’m sorry I had to tell so many whoppers to get your attention. But now that I have it, I ain’t letting go.

My fellow Americans, we have grown fat, dumb and dopey. If we bothered to read what others think of us, we would see we are no longer the envy of the world, or even perceived as the enemy of the world. We have become the laughingstock of the world.

I have only to point to last summer’s Olympic games where we won 30 percent of the gold medals. Urged on by the cheerleading media, corporate sponsors and national officeholders we shouted til we were hoarse about USA Pride! We missed what everyone else in the world knows, that 30 percent of our athletes now are Chinese, Indians or Kenyans who come in on H-1B visas and are then sent home.

We pay lip service to our hallowed Constitution, but if I had a hammer you’d hear an echo it’s now so hollow. Does anyone really believe the Framers foresaw AK-47s?

I was elected by skillfully manipulating red-state against blue-state, in the finest tradition of keeping have-not’s fighting have-not’s so the have’s get more. In truth, we are not a nation of red-state and blue-state. We are, rather, in a sorry state.

I am bone-weary hearing pious references to Isaiah’s ‘wealth of nations.’ I urge you instead to consider the words of the prophet Pogo: ‘We met the enemy; he’s us.’

We have nothing to fear, but ourselves. ‘He’ is not the enemy. ‘She’ is not the enemy. ‘They’ are not the enemy. My friends, you and I are the enemy. We have squandered our birthright as freeborn men and women in exchange for gee-gaws, doo-dads and imperial ambitions. For that, we deserve neither freedom nor gee-gaws.

My administration will not finish its work in the first hundred days, or the first thousand days, but we will begin in the first 40 days.

I am today directing the Attorney General to institute and enforce a 40-day period of prayer, fasting, almsgiving and abstinence. Abstain from television, from movies made after 1980, from anything with a commercial message, and anything that runs under Windows (to cut down on workplace profanity and road rage). And especially from junk in all forms – whether in our guts, our veins or our brains

And after that, I will direct the establishment of a New Sabbath, although to avoid the appearance of favoring any one religion, it will be on Wednesdays. On that day all airports, filling stations and shopping malls will be locked down and secured by the National Guard who will, forthwith, be brought home from overseas service for which they did not volunteer.

Our long national nightmare is over; the Age of Ironic Detachment is kaput. As commander in chief, I am directing all of you to engage in Mindful Attachment, beginning with a prohibition on electric garage door openers. Henceforth you must park on the street and say hello to your neighbors on both sides before going in to sit down to dinner your family.

Go and taste, touch, smell, see and hear each other and this land of ours with no 1’s and 0’s mediating the encounter. God designed us to experience the world directly.

And speaking of God, my predecessors have undertaken many ungodly actions then clothed them in piety by proclaiming God Bless America. Turning on this day from triumphant to supplicant, we pray instead, God help America! And recall that God helps those who help themselves and don’t fear others.

And the winner is... Saddam Hussein

2005-06-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

The greatest irony of this tragic war in Iraq is that the man at the center of it is the most secure Iraqi alive. Saddam Hussein is well-guarded, spared the street violence, get three squares a day and freshly laundered white shirts. And he’ll probably live to die in his sleep. With enemies like us, who needs friends?

The Stone which the builders rejected…

2005-05-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

There was once a boy – a thoughtful, insightful boy - who carried a great weight. He was the village bastard in a town that had no tolerance for illegitimacy. And so the other boys could not play with him; the girls shunned him knowing his descendants for ten generations would share his shame; and the adults refused to allow him into their place of worship. All this for a sin he had not committed.

As he grew, the hurt turned to anger. He saw how the children and adults of his community accounted themselves as blameless in the eyes of the law. They observed all the commandments of the Great Lawgiver, and were fastidious in performing the rituals, the duties, the responsibilities. And they broke his heart.

And as he grew, the anger turned to rage. How can this be, this thoughtful boy wondered. How can the whole community refuse to acknowledge my existence and still count themselves as blessed? My God, why do they abandon me!

And as he grew, the rage became all-consuming. Until at last he reached the end point. The community outcast cast himself out into the wilderness. And said he would never look upon a human face again until he either destroyed himself or made himself whole.

And alone, in the dark place where the traveled road ends, he began to see light. He realized that the Great Lawgiver Moses was only half right. It is not enough to avoid evil; for those who do so can still cause great suffering. It is necessary, rather, to undertake that which is good.

It is not enough not to kill; we must love, even the enemy. It is not enough not to steal; rather, we must free ourselves of our possessions. It is not enough to abstain from adulterating the bond of trust in another’s family; for to even look at a woman or a child with abuse is to violate them.

So the young man came in from the wilderness, but refused to return to his hometown where the broken people would never forgive his becoming whole. The stone which the hometown rejected became the cornerstone of the region’s social life. Henceforth, if there was a party or a gathering anywhere in the surrounding county, he was the center of attention.

He went about doing good; mostly by telling others they were not bad: “You are not fallen angels who must apologize for your existence. Rather, you are worthy by the very fact of your existence. You manifest This-Which-Is to those around you; as they to you. So be at peace with yourself, and in your composure be kind to others. That’s it! It’s no more complicated than that.”

Now at that time, a wicked king ruled the land. And the people responded in different ways. Some entered the wicked king’s service; others withdrew into the desert; still others took up crude weapons against the imperial steel. The young man said there is a better way: “Set against the Kingdom of Evil is the Kingdom of Good. The Kingdom of Evil is ruthless, rapacious; setting one against another. The Kingdom if Good balances on three pillars of wisdom: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless. Do these things and you already dwell in the Kingdom. If you have not yet begun, make haste! For behold, the Kingdom of Good is made more real by one person’s act of kindness, than by a legion of true believers straining at gnats, splitting hairs, setting one against all, in an effort to avoid error. Go in peace, your very existence marks you as a child of the Good. Amen. Alleluia!”

The Siths among us

2005-05-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

Revenge of the Sith: Concerning Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, President George W. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI

“Only a Sith thinks in absolutes” - Obi-Wan Kenobi to Darth Vader

An early review of Revenge of the Sith, the final installment of George Lucas’ Star Wars saga, appeared in Sunday’s The New York Times http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/movies/16star.html?8hpib

It’s a very positive review of a film which completes a cycle that opened the weekend our first child was born, and ends the spring he got married and finished graduate school.

But it’s precisely because I have children that the Lucas film most on my mind now pre-dates even the first Star Wars.

When it opened, the ads for American Graffiti asked “Where were you in ’62?” As it happens, I was in that high school graduating class. And parallel with the uncertainty of picking a college then, and the awkwardness of first dates, and the embarrassment of being caught with a fake ID, there was such a breathless sense of optimism then.

In 1962, President John Kennedy held out the vision of a ‘New Frontier’ that promised expanding opportunity, that invited individual best efforts, and that foresaw a footprint on the moon. Pope John 23rd threw open the windows of the Vatican (aggiornamento) to let fresh air in to halls that had been too silent 20 years before. And Bob Dylan croaked, “But for the sky there are no fences facing.”

And now the center falls apart. I do not comprehend how, in the arc of my adult life, we traversed from such optimism to such grim prospects. Is this the legacy of our generation, to leave a world with such reduced horizons?

With a stroke of a pen, a Bush-blessed judge wipes out the pensions of 100,000+ United Airlines employees, with other defaults certain to follow. A lawsuit against the State of California maintains it’s unconstitutional to withhold any coastal land from private development. Nothing – not the environment, worker safety, community health, the common weal, nothing – can impede the god of the free market.

The new pope has written that only Catholics will be saved, and his new head of the Office for Orthodoxy, the former Archbishop of San Francisco of all places, says homosexuality is an intrinsic disorder. (Oh really, dear! And who designed all those fierce lavender chasubles for Lent and Advent?)

How did it happen that on our watch stiff-necked, stonehearted dogmatism replaced affable compassion, and property rights came to trump human rights?

However it happened, what we see is the triumph of fear over hope; of spinmeisters setting the have-little’s against the have-less’s; of uncertainty and warp-speed change creating a desire for certainty and absolutes. And whither will we wander?

So back to Star Wars, what does myth have to teach us about our time and circumstances?

How much more direct can it be than in Sith when Padmé Amidala, the wife of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader and the mother of Luke and Princess Leia, observes timid senators handing all power to Supreme Chancellor Palpatine thus making him Emperor: "This is how liberty dies - to thunderous applause.”

The power of myth to speak to the contemporary events was there too when J.R.R. Tolkein wrote prophetically in the late 1930s of the threat to the shires from a rising evil in the East, and of a power so absolute it would ‘rule them all and in the darkness bind them.’

And it’s in Harry Potter’s struggle to break free of the Muggle world, where the letter crushes the spirit and dull-wittedness is a civic and moral virtue. And let’s face it, the Muggles are all of us who think in red-state and blue-state terms, preferring to score points off each other than confront our common adversary, an ever-shrinking clique of grinchly gremlins whose hearts are two sizes too small.

And it’s even there in the long-ago story of Arthur: king that was, king that is, king that will be again. (The Broadway musical Camelot [The Once and Future King] is how some still remember the Kennedy years.) Forced by destiny and his own frailty to war with his best friend, Arthur cries from the heart “Merlin, how did I stumble into this agonizing absurdity? Make me a hawk so I can fly away!”

So now we ‘boomers,’ raised in optimism and prosperity, approach retirement and the prospect of our own agonizing absurdity: that our children and theirs will live crimped lives paying off the trillions in debt run up by this imperial administration; that faith in things unseen is simply a vehicle to assert our superiority over all others in the global village (a view not limited to the Catholic church).

But like Arthur we cannot fly away from this, nor should we try.

Rather, the greatest gift we can give now, under these present circumstances, is to assume the role of wise elders. To keep alive the awareness that all is cyclical, and this too will pass if we will it and work for it, and that hope is symbolized by green for a reason: what was still is, and will bloom again.

As Merlin was to young Arthur, as Obi-Wan to Luke, Dumbledore to Harry, and Gandalf to Frodo, so in the second act of our adult lives we should keep alive – vividly, visually and verbally - the was-ness and the will-be-ness of hope, optimism, integrity, composure and compassion. And set out markers that are straight and true for those children and grandchildren now setting out on their own way, path, search, tao, journey.

So then let us go fo’ward with great vig-ah, and instill in the young a healthy skepticism for those who grasped the reins of power from under our noses, striking their pretentious poses of piety and patriotism.

May our children be blessed with the wit to know that a true and living faith is not found in servile obedience to a catechism. And a signature on a loyalty oath is not the mark of a patriot.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be…

Faith-based Technology

2005-05-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

This appeared in the May 2nd issue of Electronic Engineering Times at http://www.eet.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=161601595

There is much talk today about faith-based science. That is, should we accept as scientific that which best conforms to ancient texts, or that which is observable, verifiable and repeatable.

It may be tempting for the engineering community to say we are above all that. After all, we deal only with the measurable and the quantifiable – hard facts - as found in data sheets, specification documents. PowerPoint presentations and news releases.

But in fact, we may be taking a lot on faith – more than we realize. For example:

Faster is better. The original typewriter keyboard was designed for maximum efficiency. It was so efficient that a skilled typist would often jam the mechanical keys in the gate and so have to stop and reset the keys. In effect, machine efficiency frustrated human efficiency. So a new, kludgy keyboard was created (the QWERTY system we still use) to adapt the machine to the pace of the typist. We don’t do that anymore. We expect people to double their output every year because machines double their output every year. Let’s face it, we can longer physically keep up with our ingenuity; there is no shame admitting that.

Smaller is better. Yea, kind of. But we’re stuck with fingertips the size of fingertips. There’s a point where miniaturization will reach a wall and we’ll have to surgically implant our digital devices if we are to keep up with Moore’s Law which God apparently gave to Moses after the Torah went to press. Tapping into our neural networks is sure to be the next step in cool thing; the next big thing. But if having our PCs hacked seems an inconvenience, imagine having our brains hacked.

Entrepreneurship beats craftsmanship. Today’s business model rewards only a very limited skill set – that of the entrepreneur - and indeed those who succeed there are rewarded wonderfully. Those with other skill sets – such as craftsmen – are rewarded by seeing their jobs go offshore. How long before this bubble pops? Recall how in March 2000, investment bankers were masters of the universe; 18 months later firemen were the new heroes. This isn’t to argue that we need one or the other – we need the one and the other.

Intellectual Property is paramount. IT (Information Technology) depends on IP (Intellectual Property) protection. This goes along with the notion that entrepreneurship is inherently superior to craftsmanship. Curiously, the people history deems the greatest are those who freely gave away KT (Knowledge Technology) and WT (Wisdom Technology).

There is too a free lunch (and a perpetual motion/anti-gravity machine). Every technical advance grows out of a felt need. Invariably, however, that advance creates a situation requiring a further ‘fix,’ which in turn will need yet another fix, each more energy-intensive than the one before. There really is no free lunch. We must get better at doing inventories of technical effects beforehand, and the first step is to acknowledge we should even undertake that effort.

Can is more important than should; as in, if something can be done it should be done, and if there’s a market for it, must be done. The classic case is the atomic bomb, a unique convergence of science and technology; politics and morality. True, it was wartime, but the decision to deploy such a device was too far-reaching to be made by only a handful of men. For all their brilliance, Dr. Oppenheimer, General Grove and the others apparently never considered the folk saying, What goes around comes around: one day such a weapon could be aimed at us, and be small enough to carry in a shopping bag.

Which brings us back to faith-based science. What if those who deal in certainties decide that science should not depend on theories based on relativity and uncertainty? How is it the most advanced technological society in history is even asking these questions? If quantum physics goes, where does that leave electronics? But even aside from that, the technology community has its own faith-based notions that deserve some reconsideration.

A Gospel of life

2005-04-21T12:10:00.000-07:00

As a practicing Roman Catholic for over fifty years – raised in an Irish household bedecked with images of then-Pope Pius XII – I take the occasion of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s elevation to the Throne of Peter to look at the core problem facing the Church.

The tempest besetting the barque of Peter is not the division between liberal and conservative theologians. Nor is it the sex scandal, as serious as that is. Nor the exclusion of women and married men from the priesthood, even though that means tens of millions of Catholics can no longer receive the Sacraments regularly.

It’s much deeper than that. The Roman Catholic Church worships a false God. Dogmatic Catholicism is a ritualized exaltation of death, and mocks the living imagination that holds the living universe in thrall.

Enter any Catholic Church in the world and every sign and symbol is death-centric: the crucified Christ; 14 Stations glorifying torture and humiliation; statues of virgins, celibates and martyrs who departed the world early and left no offspring; the clergy in funereal black. Even the baptismal font testifies that we must die to this life.

The Church venerates bones, and celebrates bloodshed, beatings and beheadings. But there is no feast of the Great Commandment or the blessing of Peace; no veneration of the Beatitudes. The Nicene Creed says of Jesus’ life only that he was born of a virgin and suffered under Pilate – none of his teachings are deemed worthy of recounting by the same Romans who crucified him.

The one feast that does celebrate life, the Nativity, is immediately followed on December 26th by the feast of Stephen Martyr. And the homilist solemnly intones, “Holy Mother Church in her wisdom wants to remind us that even amid the joy of birth we will soon confront the anguish of inevitable death.”

God is locked in heaven and the Pope alone has the keys. Jesus is locked in the tabernacle and the parish priest has the keys. What sort of God is this that he has to be kept under lock and key? Is it to protect us from him, or him from us? Mr. Pope, unlock these doors!

Everything barren, sterile, celibate, virginal, martyrish is a source of grace in the Catholic Church. Everything warm, moist, juicy and fertile is an occasion of sin. In 2000 years only five or six mothers have been formally admitted into Catholic heaven: preeminently, ever-virgin Mary who is a special case. Wouldn’t a living God give first preference to those who were the most godly, bringing life from life? Instead, to be a Catholic mother is to give up any hope of canonization.

We may take comfort in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, but behind that story is a nightmare. Our God is a God at war with himself, creating a bi-verse that mirrors his own bipolar disorder, setting natural against supernatural, which we must internalize as body vs. soul.

All the world’s peoples have creation stories. Ours is unique in maintaining that God does not dwell within his world. Our Father way off in Heaven spent somewhere between six days and 14 billion years creating a cosmic dungeon to serve as a place of exile and banishment from his presence, and even obstruct our journey to him.

To be conceived in the belly of a woman is to deserve eternal hellfire in the belly of mother earth. Only those who repudiate their birthmother, and are born again in Jesus’ mystical blood, will be saved; though not in this universe but in the great beyond.

It is any wonder that the adjective usually bolted before our God’s name is Almighty. And the highest compliment we pay each other is God-fearing? We live in raw terror of one who, depending on his whim, can send a winning lottery ticket or brain cancer. But in any case we must shout Hosanna! This is not reverence; it is passive aggression. This is not conducive to peace within ourselves, or compassion to others, as our history has repeatedly shown.

None of this is rooted in the Gospels. Jesus is neither God-fearing, nor is Abba (‘poppa’) fear-inducing. On the contrary, rabbi Jesus manages to use everything around him to point to deeper insights: lilies of the field, mustard seeds, birds in the air, even bowel movements and menstrual flows. The Gospel stories are deeply rooted in nature.

Old gods die and new ones are born all the time. Or, more accurately, old notions of God become stale and outworn and are replaced as new information is available to us.

The God of the Mass did not create this universe. Dominus Deus Sabaoth – the god of battlefields – could not have made a cosmos of such exquisite harmony. A God who from age to age gathers his chosen ones to himself, accepting our sacrifice and rejecting all others, is not dead; he never existed except in our nightmares. A God who would make all the people and then arbitrarily choose some as favored, and reject all others, deserves our pity or anger but not our awe and reverence. Such a being lacks the subtlety of mind to come up with anything as elegant as quantum chromodynamics.

The natural sciences of the 20th Century have shown us a universe far more interconnected than ever imagined. Not just between plants, animals and minerals, but between matter and mind. Substance and spirit do not inhabit separate realms; it’s all one field and only our fears and uncertainties – often promoted by religious institutions, and not limited to Catholicism - have fractured it, yielding broken minds prone to sanctified bloodshed.

So where does that leave us? Atheists in a godless void? By no means. Something holds all this together, and whether we call it God or Tao or Supersymmetry or Elmer’s Glue is irrelevant. It’s a reality so profound that language is annihilated; words turn into gibberish. The truly enlightened are those who acknowledge they can never be fully enlightened, and are left silent, humble and awe-filled. Only the fool claims to fully understand. Jesus, asked by Pilate what truth is, was silent.

So there abide faith, hope and charity. But underlying these is the conviction we exist in a coherent creation. To think or believe otherwise is to reduce science to mere measurement, and technology to a profit center. And this we see all around us, and no amount of archaic dogmatizing will turn that around.

The smartest physicist in the world cannot completely describe the state of a single atom in the universe; who then can presume an infallible understanding of the mind of God?

This is not to say there is no truth or no God; only to say that those who claim a monopoly understanding of either are usually the furthest from both. And that’s the God’s truth.

Such arrogance is not unique to Catholicism or even to religion. As the natural sciences increasingly use worlds like uncertainty, indeterminacy and relativity to describe the substantial, physical world, our leaders – religious hierarchies, presidents, corporate executives – rework our institutions ever more on the model of certainty, rigidity, and command and control. They no longer serve us; we must serve them. Even as their moral authority withers; their demand for obedience grows.

Movement beyond this dying paradigm will not be initiated at the top, but like all living things will grow from the ground up. Are you ready?

In defense of Hope

2005-04-11T22:18:00.000-07:00

For over fifty years I’ve live with a very disabling disease. It has many names – Churchill called it his black dog; some call it the darkness at noon. The medical term is clinical depression.

It afflicts over 15 million Americans and yet is still not talked about in polite society, much as cancer and tuberculosis were never mentioned by name until recent years. Many still consider depression to be a character defect or a sign of God’s displeasure, rather than the shortage of neural transmitters that it is.

In my first bout as a young student, I mistakenly went to a confessor instead of a therapist, thinking I was suffering the moral failure of despair rather than the medical condition of depression.

The confessor told me that my despair was a sin against the Holy Spirit, and therefore unforgivable. In the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church I was damned. The Church in its infinite wisdom considers despair to reflect doubt in God’s infinite mercy, so therefore God in his infinite justice must damn the person.

I assure you, the certain knowledge of one’s eternal damnation is not the best way to treat a depressive episode.

I go into this for two reasons. First, to add one more voice to the growing chorus of people stepping forward to admit to the disease, to help destroy forever the medieval notion that there is something shameful about depression. It’s as ‘shameful’ as diabetes or heart disease. We’re here; we’re ‘blue;’ get used to it!

And secondly, because over the years this condition has forced me to learn something about discernment. When I see a bleak or hopeless situation, I have to ask myself – is this the disease speaking or is this really as bad as all that?

And I bring this up now because I hear more and more people, especially young people, speak of the future in despairing terms. The Bush administration is bankrupting the future for its short-term political gains. The God religions, with their insistence that ‘for us to be right all others are wrong,’ are proving themselves to be not the path to salvation, but the sire of warfare. And the business world has elevated the ‘free market’ to a theology. Nothing - not the environment, not social justice, not the rage of the many left behind - must hinder the perfect mechanism of free enterprise.

Which brings me to the notion of hope. Nothing is more galling to one in a depressive state than to be told, Just cheer up! Be perky!! Gosh darn it all, let’s see ya smile all the while!!!

If we had the energy, we’d tell such fools to shove their sunshine up where the sun don’t shine.

But that’s not hope - the virtue of hope - any more than wishing for a really nice birthday present is true hope. Hope is a tough slog. It means staring into the face bad news and still finding a reason to keep muddling through. Hope is, as Father Thomas Berry said, being cheerful even when you know all the facts.

Hope can even come from the study of history, believe it or not. For all the horrors of the past, we endure. Good men and women still make babies in the conviction the world will be better for their children.

Gandhi-ji pointed out the truth that no evil regime has ever endured and asked us to think about that. There seems to be something in the nature of evil itself that brings about its own destruction.

This could turn out to be a very bad moment in history. The bad news may in fact be that this is the end of civilization as we’ve known it. But, of course, that would also mean this is the end of civilization as we’ve know it, so we should find some comfort in that.

Hope is not easy, nor supercilious, nor the benighted bliss of the twit who knows not but knows not that he knows not. Hope is as hard won as the ability to forgive one’s enemy or to pray for those who profit from injustice.

But if we don’t exhibit it, who will?

Having spent maybe 25 percent of my life in a state of paralyzing despair, and having one afternoon spent two or three minutes glimpsing an abyss so profound it made Dante’s poem read like a Hallmark card, I’ve come to understand the need for, and the saving grace of, hope.

True hope is not passive – “I hope someone will come along and bail me out.’ Hope is active, get-off-your-ass, this-is-my-moment-my-karmic-my-sanctifying-graceful-moment. Plug in!

So there abides Zoloft and Prozac and hope. And the greatest of these is hope.

The Old New Testament

2005-04-10T22:27:00.000-07:00

Laws stated in the negative only go so far. Rabbi Jesus’ insight was to say, “With a thousand years of experience since Moses, it’s time to go beyond what to avoid and work on what to do:

It’s not enough not to kill... we must love; even our enemy.
It’s not enough not to steal... a wise person gives away his possessions, realizing they in fact possess him.
It’s not enough not to adulterate trust in another’s household... to even look at another with violence is to do the deed.
It’s not enough not to lie... speak the truth, or keep still.

The greatest tragedy in Christian history is how, from early on, the focus shifted from living the teachings to a fixation on the teacher. None of the new commandants – nor ‘Peace be with your,’ nor ‘Love one another’ – is contingent on an empty tomb.

In their defense of land and possessions, the Commandments affirm property rights. In their promotion of individual peace and social justice, the Beatitudes (Matt 5; Luke 6) affirm human rights.

Rather than argue before the US Supreme Count about posting the Ten Commandments, better to post the non-sectarian Beatitudes in public places:

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice – on Wall Street
Blessed are the peacemakers – at the Pentagon
Blessed are the pure of heart – in Hollywood
Blessed are the meek – at the White House.

The Culture of Constructive Confrontation

2005-04-10T22:16:00.000-07:00

The Culture of Constructive Confrontation
Comments for a panel on "Managing Chaos in the Workplace"
Embedded Systems Conference, San Francisco, Calif., March 10, 2005

I’d like to share with you my experiences living inside the maelstrom of the high-tech workplace.

About 15 years ago I was hired as public relations manager at one of the largest and best-known firms in Silicon Valley. On the first morning, I joined all the other new hires to attend an employee orientation session meant to introduce us to the corporate culture.

At that meeting, we were told the culture there is based on ‘constructive confrontation,’ which they described as encouraging the clash of good ideas so the best idea would come forth.

At last, I thought, corporate America has finally adopted the Socratic Method. This is great! In the clash of good ideas, the best ideas will be heard. This is wonderful!

When the orientation session was over at noon, I headed to the company cafeteria for lunch. As I went down the line I picked up a salad and the guy behind the counter yelled at me, “WHAT KIND OF DRESSING DO YOU WANT!!”

Uh... French?

WHY DON’T YOU WANT BLEU CHEESE?

Uhh… okay, bleu cheese is fine…

After lunch I went to settle in to my new cubicle and met my supervisor for the first time. She told me she had read my writing samples and had some ‘issues.’ “YOU WRITE USING SENTENCES!’

Uh, yes,” I said. “Is that a problem?”

WE DON’T USE SENTENCES HERE!

Ahh… well that will be a hard habit to break. What should I use?

BULLET POINTS. WE ONLY COMMUNICATE IN BULLET POINTS HERE!

Later that first afternoon, I went to the bathroom and a manager passed me.

WHERE ARE YOU GOING!

Uhhhh…the bathroom?

WHERE’S YOUR READING MATERIAL!

My reading material…?

YOU CAN’T GO TO THE BATHROOM WITHOUT READING MATERIAL. IT’S A WASTE OF COMPANY TIME. LEARN TO MULTI-TASK!

On my way home that night, I realized that what I’d entered was way beyond the Twilight Zone. Constructive confrontation, as practiced there, was not about the clash of good ideas producing the best idea. It was about the clash of personalities producing the biggest jerk.

A phrase kept going thru my mind, ‘Square peg… round hole. I can’t go back there.’

Then reality set in: There’s a recession; jobs are scarce; I have three young kids at home.

I also remembered how they told us that morning that nobody was fully hired til they’d served a nine month probation period. And I realized I’d never been in a group where I’d had to test my manhood before. I was never in the Marines or the Green Berets or the Jesuits, or any of those groups that have a ‘take no prisoner’ attitude.

So I determined that I would tough it out for nine months to see if I was man enough to make the cut. Besides, I thought, it would be a good excuse to use those great movie phrases I’d only said to myself in front of the bathroom mirror.

The next day, I swaggered to my cubicle greeting people with, “YOU TALKIN’ TO ME!” “YOU GOTTA PROBLEM WIT’ THAT! YOU WANNA PIECE OF ME! HASTA LA VISTA, BABY…

In fact, once I gave myself leave to act like this, there was no stopping me. At the end of a 12-13 hour workday, I still hadn’t had enough constructive confrontation so I decided I’d learn to drive in a constructively confrontational manner… HEY, WATCH OUT THERE… GET OUTTA MY WAY, YOU JERK…!”

In fact, I got so good at this, I’d practice on weekend so as to keep in fighting trim. I’d go into a dry cleaner and harangue the proprietor til she was in tears. And I didn’t even have any dry cleaning there.

I’d go to snooty restaurants in San Francisco and reduce those haughty waiters to yelping pups. “GARCON… MY SHICKEN IS COLD AND MAH WINE IS HOT. TRANSPOSE THESE THERMAL VARIABLES, NOW!’

I got so good, I’d practice on my own kids. To toughen them up for the world they’d inherit. I said to my daughter, WHERE IS YOUR HOMEWORK! I WANT TO SEE YOUR HOMEWORK!’

“But daddy,” she said, her tiny cheeks quivering, “I’m only four and don’t go to school yet.”

NO EXCUSES! AND I’M GONNA PUT A DICTIONARY IN THE BATHROOM SO YOU LEARN TO MULTI-TASK!

The only person I couldn’t practice on was my wife. As I recall, her exact words were, “You want constructive confrontation? I’ll show you constructive confrontation.”

Well, by now the nine months were nearly up. And tho I hated what I was becoming and couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror as I practiced my put-downs, still a part of me was hoping I’d made the cuts.

And sure enough, on the nine-month anniversary of my signing on, senior management came up and congratulated me. WELCOME, TOM. YOU HAVE THE MAKINGS OF A WORLD CLASSS HORSES-ASS. WE WANT TO WELCOME YOU TO THE COMPANY FULL TIME.

At which point I said, ‘You don’t know the half of it. I QUIT’

WHAT (stunned silence)? AHHH, YOU’RE JUST JERKING US AROUND, RIGHT! THAT’S JUST WHAT WE WANT TO SEE. WHAT DO YOU WANT! RENEGOTIATE YOUR SALARY? RUNNING WATER IN YOUR CUBICLE?

No, I said, I mean it. I’m leaving. In fact, why are you staying? Underneath all your bluff and bluster there’s still some ember of the decent guys you once were. Get out before it goes out.

They looked at me like the village idiot, and I went on my way. The recession was over and jobs were opening up.

What did I learn from this? Keep your exit strategy and your resume up to date. You’re not a slave; you can always walk.

Oh, and KEEP A SENSE OF HUMOR…!

For more, visit www.reconnecting.com and www.reconnecting-calm.blogspot.com

###

Second thoughts on the Fourth of July; limits of independence

2005-03-28T22:13:00.000-08:00

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to reconnect the institutional structures which have separated them from one another, a decent respect for the opinions of humankind requires they should declare the causes that impel them to that action.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all communities are formed by their creators with certain unalienable goals, that among these are civility, comity and the common good.

Those to secure these goals, institutions are formed, deriving their just power from the consent of the community. But when a long train of institutional abuses and usurpations evinces a design to reduce the life, liberty and happiness of the community – when institutions serve no purpose other than their own self-perpetuation - it is the community’s right, its duty, to move beyond such institutions and provide new guards for their future security.

For we are here as on a Cartesian plane,
Swept by confused coordinates of faith and reason, left and right
Where ignorant institutions clash by night.

Pulling at the top of the y-axis are faith institutions still held in thrall to archaic cosmologies and their real-estate deities. Where the Chosen are divinely sanctioned to pummel and humble the God-abandoned (whether goy, pagan or infidel).

Dragging down from the bottom of that axis is the scientific and technical enterprise, maintaining that only the measurable matters; profiting equally from smart weapons and cool stuff. Where intellectual property replaces real property to shape a new feudalism.

Moving left on the x-axis is the party that says a child in the uterus has no essential right to exist, being contingent on the convenience of others. But, once born, that child should live in a risk-free world.

And stretching further right on the x-axis is the party that says a child in the womb is the most precious thing in the world. But, once born, is a victim of market forces where it’s dog-eat-dog. (Yet somehow both parties are beholden to the same puppeteers.)

And we the people, our communities increasingly ragged and raw, are pulled in every direction by religious, economic and political institutions modeled on the wedge of division.

Every substantive improvement in human affairs has come from the bottom up, not the top down. In that spirit, let us mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor in the task of reconstructing our institutions on the model of the web not the wedge; recognizing each node is necessary for the whole, and the holes exist only because of the nodes. Independence depends on interdependence, and the happiness of one is secured only by the well-being of all.

July 4, 2004

Wanted: A zoom lens mentality for the engineering enterrpise

2005-02-20T17:23:00.000-08:00

(This op-ed appeared in the February 7th issue of Electronic Engineering Times: http://www.eet.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=59300573)

As an average student I was always curious as to what made smart kids smart. So when I came to work in Silicon Valley as an adult, amid so many bright people, I decided to explore this further.

I noticed that some people have an amazing ability to look at a complex problem, zero in on the key issue, and by addressing that, fix the surrounding issues too. So that’s it! Focus on the heart of the matter; the rest will fall into place.

If only. The more I looked, the more I noticed the downside of this single-minded focus. By zeroing in on a specific problem there’s a risk of not seeing how this-here connects to that-there; of not being able to then stand back and connect the dots.

Eventually, I saw that the really sharp people are those with a zoom-lens mentality: able to discern when bit-level focus is required, and when the 10,000-foot view is necessary - to shift focus effortlessly from the nano to the giga level, and back again, as required.

I was reminded of the need for this recently at CES. It was mind-numbing to walk the 1.5 million square foot show floor and navigate the tsunami of new, cool gadgets, then later watch the evening news with the horrific images of the Indian Ocean tsunami. The very technology enabling us to witness this event, empathize with the victims and make contributions in unprecedented amounts, looked inappropriate on the Las Vegas show floor.

This disconnect between Vegas and Phuket drives home the urgency of developing a zoom lens mentality within the engineering enterprise:

• Although consumer electronic devices can be cool, let’s zoom back and remember they are means to an end, not the ends themselves; they are a method of communicating, not the message;

• for all the convenience of digital devices – gathering, storing, manipulating and transmitting information – they’ll never replace the authentic analog world. Nature spent 14 billion years designing us to experience the world in waveforms (sound, light, heat and even oceanic); we are woven into the warp and woof of Nature’s web;

• for all the cachet of the virtual lifestyle, we’re embedded in nature, and like the poet said we’re all involved in humankind. When our gadgets facilitate community they’re a blessing; when their purpose is to deluge us with images of violence and salaciousness, to hold our attention til the ads come on to excite our greed and envy, they’re an affliction.

We who know enough about these new tools to write the user manuals, should also be able to comment knowledgeably on how to use them sanely and humanely, so we don’t find ourselves and our communities subsumed into a digital, virtual, soul-less environment where weapons are smart, our products merely cool, and anxiety is a way of life. The products of our ingenuity now dominate the center of society; we can no longer claim we are divorced from their effects under the doctrine of ethical neutrality.

We’re told to think outside the box; we must learn to think outside the box factory. At its core, engineering is about making things better. In that respect, engineering is a subset of the moral order. And there appear to be four steps to help sharpen that effort:

• Start with a data Sabbath – spend at least 12-15 percent of the week unplugged, backing off from the digital to the analog. For all the benefits of digital processing, nature designed us to experience the world in waveforms. And nature bats last.

• When we do back off from the work-shop-entertainment matrix, appreciate what we’ve got; where we are; who we’re with. The naturalist John Muir observed, “If I touch anything in the world I find it’s connected to everything in the universe.” There are a lot of dots still waiting to be connected;

• Just as every technology innovation leverages the physical part of us – muscles, senses, brain – there’s also a portfolio of tools designed over centuries to leverage our mind, awareness, soul, spirit, atman, pneuma, rhuah, anima. These tools are called prayer, meditation, yoga, chi gong, tai chi, dance, song… They are free for the using. No one has IP protection on them, and never will.

• And if it’s not possible to exercise the zoom lens mentality in one’s present workplace, and circumstances don’t permit a graceful exit right now, we can still plug in to the analog, natural web of being by contributing our skills on our own time. Here are some places to start the exploration:

o CharityFocus (www.charityfocus.org), a celebration of the spirit of service;

o Engineers without Borders (www.ewb.ca), like Doctors without Borders;

o National Center for Appropriate Technology (www.ncat.org), providing the needy with access to beneficial technologies;

o Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org) fostering efficient use of resources;

o Association for Conflict Resolution (www.arcnet.org), non-violent problem solving.

o And there is more information at www.reconnecting.com.

We could all stand to sharpen our zoom lens mentality if we want to maintain a human handle on the systems we’re creating, allowing us to shift as needed from bit level issues of design tools, verification and wafer fabrication, to the larger issues of healing, teaching, building and mending.

Canticle for a Quantum Creation

2005-02-20T17:11:00.000-08:00

In the beginning was the Void…
… not cold dark empty space; but nothingness to the infinite power.
Except for the shimmering EggSeed, which occupied no space in the Void.
Yet all that was, is and will be - everything, everywhere, everywhen –
Was there when there was no ‘there;’ back then when there was no ‘when.’

Then, the Unfolding; the cosmic chord cluster. And being became. I-am is

Since there were as yet no photons, no light flashed.
Since sound can’t travel in non-existence, the Void was silent and grasped it not.
But in the expanding envelope of existence, the echo still rings from all those eons ago,
As you can hear at www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994320
And of all the questions that confound and perplex us, there is none like this:
What immortal hand or eye conceived this all-filled symmetry?

God, Tao, Brahma, superstring, demiurge, nada who art in nada?
Intentional; self-generated; random quantum fluctuation?
Nested in an infinite Russian doll-like cosmos; or a bubble on the froth of the multiverse?
Can potential will kinetic? Can evolved beings reach back to initiate their own emergence?

As the super-dense, super-hot cloud of being expanded, it began to cool.
And as it did it wrinkled and fractured wonderfully, like shook foil,
To rupture the plasma-smooth surface of space-time.

Quarks and leptons came to be; positive and negative charges.
It was the beginning of The Other: antagonism, tension, anxiety.
Til forces came to be: strong, weak and gravity.
The beginning of the bond with An Other, without which there is no harmony or balance.
No quarks and leptons? No strong and weak force? Then no Hydrogen or Helium.
So no Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Iron.
Or Molybdenum, Thulium, Unnilquadium, or even Ytterbium.

Energy cooled enough to become stuff; stuff became alive; life became aware.
And the universe is still in its teens. What’s next?
Who could foresee energy forming as suns to fuse chemicals? A hard night’s journey into day.
Or heavy chemicals blasting out of first-generation solar furnaces,
And organic molecules forming in planetary pools?
And when amino acids appeared, who foresaw hummingbirds, bougainvillea, W. C. Fields?

Rub your fingertips together: everything you feel and everything you feel with,
Every quark and lepton in every atom in every molecule in every cell,
Still oscillates from the first Unfolding, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

Did things have to be as they are? Is there a universe where π has no remainder?
It’s enough to know this-which-is simply is. In the face of that, language is annihilated.
We are enfolded with a subtlety and elegance accurate to 15 places right of the decimal.

Stand naked before the mirror, navel next to sex in the center of our being:
Behold the bond with all ancient mothers; the catapult for all generations to come.
We are living nodes on the web of being, woven into the warp and the woof of the world.
We are not links in a hierarchic chain,
Nor are we fallen angles, condemned to a lifetime apologizing for our existence,
Meant to suffer this corruptible world until we reach our true home in a great beyond.

We are stardust, sunshine and seawater come alive, and become aware. Really and true.
We are exquisite antennae with eyes, ears, skin to sense the spectrum at so many frequencies.
And the star-spangled sky is blown-out debris from a still-unfolding event,
Of which we are the conscious fraction whose observations, in fact, make it real.

In the face of all this, words and creeds are meaningless.
Better to stand in silent awe than speak of certain truth. And that’s okay.
It’s when we claim ultimate knowledge of the ultimately unknowable, we get in trouble.
So strive, seek, find and never yield….
But in the meantime, better to be humbled by the utter stupendousness of it all.

Here’s to all the forms our elements took in ages past:
Sunburst, seashore, child’s eye; learning from each iteration.
Here’s to all the forms yet to be:
White dwarf, supernovae, and beyond the infinite; growing in wisdom, age and grace.
Septillions of atoms in our bodies; septillions of stars in the sky.
On a logarithmic scale we are midway between a quantum and the cosmos:
The better to see in all directions, and understand that nothing’s not connected.

So alone, or with a trillion other civilizations, we ask:
Is the cosmos – visible and dark - self-aware?
Is the uni-verse truly one singer, one singing, one song?
If we’re conscious - accumulated quarks and leptons - why not the whole she-big-bang?

Bell’s theorem; Geller’s bent spoons; quantum weirdness, spooky action at a distance…
The universe is even stranger than we can imagine imagining.
And each quantum is a hologram of the cosmos;
And the cosmos is a single wave function, the EEG of a self-aware universe.

We’ve been here from the beginning; we’ll be here til the end.
Rest easy with yourself and others. We belong here. We are at home in the universe.
Look into the evening sky: witness our genesis; behold our destiny.

In the beginning was the Womb…
… warm, dark, moist and fertile.
Then a pulse, the Unfolding of energy into emptiness.
And suddenly, the quivering EggSeed in its blissful singular self.

It floats in fluids filling belly and lungs; its insides are out; its outsides are in.
No search for nutrition, no strain for relief, no stress for tomorrow, just becoming-to-be.
Until the womb-universe collapses in the cataclysmic crunch.
The head enfolds; fluids flush; the endtime is at hand.

And isn’t over until it’s clear that bliss is gone.
Now squeezed into a place of opposites:
Wet/dry, held/released, full/empty, sound/silence.
The wondering one looks back along the umbilical thread.
And sees two, like Cherubs of old, the flaming red gates of The Garden fold.

And all we’ll ever take from this, until we grow much older,
Is the primal urge to regain the serenity when all was one, and one was all.

Our ancestors sought that on the Westward Walk, from the Fertile Crescent to the Golden Gate.
And they recounted their discoveries along the way:
Exodus, Odyssey, Acts of the Apostles, Koran, Gawain, Divine Comedy, Don Quixote;
Leatherstocking, Huck Finn, Grapes of Wrath, On the Road, Zen and the Art…
Some gave a name to Truth: ‘the one who is anointed of God.’

And they came from the East; from the Ganges, the Bo tree, the Yangtze, Mount Fuji…
And some of them gave a name to Truth: ‘one awakened from within.’
Tribal beliefs from three great river cultures were universalized in the lives of two men.
It only remained to harmonize the awakened Buddha and the anointed Christ
To form a global yin-yang of wisdom.
‘Truth enlightens from within.’ ‘Yes, and Truth anoints from without, as well.’
Instead, silos of sanctity were sown; worse, grace was decoupled from nature.

The ancient walks are over now; there were no new lands to explore.
So we stand on the verge of a new frontier, one that goes downdeep and farout:
SETI, COBE, rDNA, µp, nanobots, biochips, tachyons, branes and black holes.
Yet we’re taught to see a Sunday School God, twenty miles above us on a marble throne.

The awesome is revealed now in deep space and deep time, but in language stripped of awe,
While the sacred is still portrayed to us as bearded shepherds and angles with feathered wings.
And we manipulate the atom, gene, bit and synapse in a ‘value-free context.’ We are meshuga!

Ancient assurances are blasted by uncertainty, indeterminacy and relativity.
The nucleus falls apart, the core cannot hold. Mere radiation is loosed upon the world.
The best lack all conviction; the worst are filled with polarized intensity.
“The world is black and white, and we are on the side of the angels!”
(Okay, but better check with Schrödinger’s cat first.)

December is the coolest month, and I sit here on a Western shore.
Once, the Ohlone and the Esselen hunted in these hills and fished these abundant bays;
Tool-less, Stone Age people who lived to give, dancers on the brink of an enchanted world.

Now in these parts, Dr. Moore’s 1965 technical prediction has become a moral imperative:
The pace of life must double every 18 months if we are to keep up with our ingenuity!
Lacking boundaries, yet en-cubed, we work late to buy gee-gaws and gadgets for un-held kids,
Then collapse before images of violence and salaciousness, titillated by wars and rumors of war.
And a single September morning showed us we are as much victims as managers of our tools.
Not even a crisis could bring the golden mean and the golden rule to a silicon society.

The green trees, the blue sky, the red blood of the young; all sacrificed for the sake of numbers.
A disaster bears down on us, but don’t think twice, it’s all right. It’s the way of the world.
Nessun Dorma! Nessun Dorma! (Fall not asleep! None must sleep!)
Like dawn, the egg of history regularly cracks open to punctuate the equilibrium.
And the wretched of the earth will be graced for their clean hands and straight eyes.
Divine justice and the karmic wheel always return to sunny side up.

Here where the mountains of light meet the sea of peace, it seems so clear:
If mass and energy are the same, just measured different ways…
If chaos is simply unrecognized order…
If time is both arrow and boomerang…
If the cosmos is both open and closed…
Then natural and supernatural are the same, too.
Hidden from those who only see and hear; made manifest to those who look and listen.
How could it be otherwise? Then this would be a bi-verse, not a universe.

The Ancients understood that science and technology are simply the means to:
Seek the truth, make the beautiful and do good. We’ve made them ends in themselves.
Yet if energy is measured along the electromagnetic spectrum, and kindness is energy unfolding,
Then we must include kindness in our science.
If empathy is evident in the envelope of existence (remember those quarks and forces),
We must not frustrate the nature of nature itself.
If technology can so powerfully leverage our muscles, our senses, our brains,
Then it can also leverage the yearning for serenity and the inclination to compassion.
If beauty, truth and goodness are revealed in art and song, so also in science and technology.
But capability, absent responsibility, neither anoints nor enlightens, only afflicts.

It comes to this: the cascade of creation, the longing for reunion, reconnect with each breath.
The in-spiration of wonder, the ex-halted ‘äh’ of reverence, are expressed down all the years:
Heard as yähweh, äbba, alläh, täo, ä-om, brähma, äsher, sophiä; seen in the double-slit test.

We shall not cease from exploration, but though we climb to the dome of the sky to find it,
And swim to the ends of the sea to retrieve it, that which we desire most is with us all the time.
For by us and around us and within us and without us and through us and over us and under us, Grace and nature are Unfolding as one. We need only recognize that; then we are truly home.

Tom Mahon
Silicon Valley/Big Sur, California
December 2003

The beggar and the troublemaker

2005-02-20T13:46:00.000-08:00

If you give a beggar a dollar, they’ll call you a philanthropist.

If you ask why some go hungry while others are stuffed, they’ll call you a troublemaker and an agitator.

Why is that?

Left, right, and out of step

2005-02-20T13:05:00.000-08:00

The right says a child in the womb is the most precious thing on earth. But once born the child is merely a victim of market forces where it’s dog eat dog.

The left says a child in the womb has no essential right to live; its existence is contingent on the convenience of another. But once born, the child deserves to live in a risk-free world.

Where’s the party that says a child in and out of the womb deserves a decent life?