My writings - and those of others.
A ten year anniversary
2021 marks the tenth anniversary of the release of the film, Journey of the Universe. The documentary spends one day on the Greek Island of Samos. It takes a philosophical view of evolution and tries to answer the great questions: Who are we? How did we get here? Where are we headed? For those who want to move beyond the cosmology of western and other religions, it offers a perspective that widens understanding and puts humanity in its place within a larger context.
The film’s birth nevertheless has religious roots. Its genesis of came from the Riverdale Centre for Religious Research led by Thomas Berry, a Roman Catholic monk who studied world religions and was struck by a need for a more comprehensive cosmology. He wrote about a call for a new story as early as 1978 and continued to ponder the questions and write about them until his death in 2009. He found a willing collaborator in Brian Swimme, an evolutionary cosmologist. They collaborated to produce The Universe Story in 1992. But the strength of the story encouraged both to work on a more awe inspiring presentation which resulted in the more recent film, subsequent book, university symposia and educational materials. Released in 2011, the film was carefully vetted and verified by scientists in all fields - but its effect is not a quantitative verification but an awe inspiring one reaching into ever expanding educational opportunities.
The book by the same name, written by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, both students of Berry, tells the story in an engaging way that urges further reflection on the journey of the universe of which we are a part. “Wonder will guide us”, says Swimme at the end of the film. One of the most valuable part of the book is the chronology from the “great flaring forth” - an alternative to the Big Bang - 13.8 billion years ago - to the last entry - since 1990s thousands of extra solar planets have been discovered. Discovery of a 13.1 billion year old galaxy.
The book and film have generated studies by all the world’s major religions. They set an important context for where we go from here. They call for a major reassessment of how we look at our creation stories. Among the resources are podcasts and video courses showing how those in various fields - scientists, activists, indigenous leaders, teachers are living out their stories in the light of new understandings.
The new site offers resources for individuals and organizations and includes curricula, its own YouTube Channel, newsletter and events. It is an important resource for anyone who wants a wider context for the continuing journey of the universe and our place in it.
Polarization around climate change
Photo Credit::University of Virginia Race and Democracy Lab
A recent conversation with one of my sons centered on the importance of curation in the age of too much information. I’m interested in how what I read frames and changes my own knowledge. I came upon this video recently which tackles this important divergence. While the video is quite long I urge you to watch the whole thing. If you can’t because of your own information overload, you could use the trailer which I have also posted below.
We sometimes forget that any point of view in the present has a history of formation in the past as well as implications for how it plays out in the future. The University of Virginia created a Religion, Race & Democracy Lab and explored how these elements interface. It tells us:
“The video addresses decades of what it calls “religious polarization, political propaganda, corporate deal-making, and environmental injustice based on systemic racism.”
You can find the full version here.
Or view the trailer here
Musings
In spite of ignoring social media lately, I liked this image that a son recently published on his personal news feed. There were some flat earth indications on other things I have read recently.
The admirable EcoChallenge is sending me Thirty Days of Readings on Systems thinking with daily articles and videos. I intend to learn more from these and undertake a a study of a recent organizational situation that has gone badly to see whether there are lessons to be learned using this approach. But there are also connections with the flat earth thinking and other recent readings that I can make immediately.
Fareed Zacharia writing his weekly column in the Washington Post and also presents it as an introduction to his weekly show on CNN. His interviews are excellent and the introduction is worth a watch for its own sake. He asks:
“The current Republican congressional delegation includes people who insist the 2020 election was stolen, have ties to violent extremist groups, traffic in antisemitism and have propagated QAnon ideologies in the past. At the state level, it often gets worse. Mainstream Republicans have tolerated these voices and views for years. Can the party finally find a way to control them?” He goes on to say that in any political party or institution what has to be controlled is the outer fringes of the organization.
On Saturday, I read that there was a protest in Edmonton against Covid-19 health measures. It involved hundreds of people starting from Lethbridge. Global News noted:
“The protest was organized by the “Walk for Freedom Alberta” group. That group claims to stand up for rights and freedoms and “peacefully promote breaches to our civil liberties across Alberta.”
The Mayor of Edmonton protested the protesters by noting that the pandemic is not a hoax and that some behind the protest may be connected with known hate groups. Canadians can spare any self righteousness when we view our neighbours to the south.
The theme of supposed unfairness continued this morning (Feb. 22) with and article in the Globe and Mail reporting on a defiance coming from a western church congregation. While many churches with limited reopening in Ontario have noted that there was not a single case of infection, the article begins with a story about a small church in Saskatchewan. On Christmas Eve 15 people gathered for an early service with all the proper precautions in place - and no masks, no singing. But afterwards one sick person discovered that more than 12 had contracted the virus. In Edmonton, a pastor remains in jail for opening his church in contravention to restrictions. His attorney is trying to make the case that that freedom of religion is more important than public health.
Public health has also led to similar conflicts in British Columbia. The Provincial Health Officer, Bonne Henry, argues that services of worship unfortunately have elements most likely to cause the spread of the virus. These are gatherings of people from different households - over an extended period of time, held indoors in buildings often with poor ventilation and activity can include singing. The congregation is also likely to contain elderly persons with pre-existing conditions. It’s a recipe for high risk - and that’s why I avoided any such opportunities in Ontario when live services still existed. I administered a registration system for one and was startled to see who wanted to attend - primarily the highest risk group. Perhaps they just didn’t care whether death came sooner or later.
Yes - sometimes rights are infringed upon. But it’s difficult to see a small number of people championing their own rights above those of a broader community. Generally Canadians see things differently than their American cousins and I find it depressing to see individualism topping (I refuse to Trumping or former-guying) society as a whole. I can understand making comparisons with bars or restaurants in Alberta - but why not advocate for their sharing concern for the common good by closing until it is safer.
When it comes to common good, there was better inspiration in the Globe’s business section with an article on leadership where Mi’kmaw educator Marie Battiste was interviewed. She is a retired professor from the University of Saskatchewan, an honorary member of the Order of Canada with four honorary doctorates and many other citations.
Her current research asks us to think historically and aims to assess the teaching of our history sad history of the treatment of first nations peoples and how to improve the teaching of indigenous knowledge. Here are some of her insights:
Understand your own skills and talents and how you can use them to best understand and serve your purpose.
Indigenous ways of life embrace a more holistic worldview, anchored in the understanding that we are all interconnected.
When we understand how we are related, we better understand our obligations and responsibilities to one another, to the earth and to the seven generations to come.
My father wrote a family history which told us of more than seven generations past - and part of that story is one of our white privilege in spite of many hardships along the way. I commend this wise indigenous leader’s reminder of our role in learning the truth in assessing our science and our society. A long view shows us the importance of the systems of which we are a part and the ones we determine.
Misinformation Wars
One of my favorite Dave Frishberg Songs is “Marooned in a Blizzard of Lies”. It seems to have been background music in the past two or three months, but even if we now have a twice impeached person in the American White House for a few more days, I am less confident that we have survived the misinformation wars - even with 20,000 troops assembled to reduce the risk of violence.
Misinformation has never been easier to produce. You can find an image and put a slogan on top of it and disseminate it on social media in less than two minutes and have others share it hundreds of thousands of times. Video editing is a bit trickier but possible. The effects can be visceral – immediate anxiety, increasing to anger and leading to violence. Words and images don’t always lead to violence – but when it occurs, they have almost always preceded it. That should give us pause.
Most us watching from a distance in Canada, but inundated with US news are still confounded by the actions of a rising star like Josh Hawley. How could someone with his credentials – Stanford, Yale Law School, clerking for the Chief Justice be seen raising a clenched fist to rioters and continue to claim a lost election? His local newspaper the St Louis Post Dispatch now claims he has blood on his hands and accuses him of blind ambition. His rise not be as easy for him now as he meets disgust from his own party and a lost book contract. But even blind ambition doesn’t seem to account for something so evil in either intent or consequence.
Katherine Stewart writing in the New York Times sees something deeper accounting for his actions. Citing an article that Hawley wrote for Christianity Today, she views him as part of a religious-right framework that wants America to return to religious roots that are endangered by liberal ideas of freedom. Who knew that the problem was that America had succumbed to the Pelagian heresy? Hawley says conforming to what religious leaders say is correct is how society should be governed – and that includes politics. My own response to that as a person who is still a member of a faith community (Anglican/ Episcopal) doesn’t land me in such a place – that it is okay for a lawyer to pretend an election is stolen to bring in some kind of religious oligarchy - just won’t wash.
Why do such views gain traction at all? Hawley was not alone. In another article Stewart wrote, the religious right is estimated as 28 percent of the US population who identify as white evangelical or born again Christian; 76% of them voted for Trump. Stewart cites several reasons why they prevail and why they are likely to continue to do so. Economic inequality exists and it can be used to foster discontent. Paradoxically much of this is financed by wealthy individuals who fund the religious right to protect their own wealth. Persons in smaller communities receive much of their news through local or regional religious publications that reinforce their views. Religious organizations of all types are well organized and networked. For these reasons, views on subjects like abortion, appointment of judges and religious freedom and can become key issues to organize around. A president’s appointment of 220 court judges and three to the Supreme Court is worth overlooking obvious shortcomings of misogynous bullying, racial tweets or conspiracy narratives of stolen elections.
Stewart notes:
“While many outsiders continue to think of Christian nationalism as a social movement that rises from the ground up, it is in fact a political movement that operates mostly from the top down. The rank-and-file of the movement is diverse and comes to its churches with an infinite variety of motivations and concerns, but the leaders are far more unified. . . . (They promote) a radical ideology that is profoundly hostile to democracy and pluralism, and a certain political style that seeks to provoke moral panic, rewards the paranoid, and views every partisan conflict as a conflagration, the end of the world. Partisan politics is the lifeblood of the movement.”
Are there solutions for the rest of us? Another Times writer suggests we can ask questions such as:
Who is the author?
What is behind the information provided?
What is the evidence?
What do other sources say?
When we encounter a meme that seems suspicious, we can check the original image. We can avoid using social media as a news source. We can also resist the impulse to “share” and “like” which enhances dissemination. We can also make decisions about what we choose to be our trusted sources of information.
But how do we convince others to do this? David Brooks, writing this morning is somewhat pessimistic:
“The split we are seeing is not theological or philosophical. It’s a division between those who have become detached from reality and those who, however right wing, are still in the real world.
Hence, it’s not an argument. You can’t argue with people who have their own separate made-up set of facts. You can’t have an argument with people who are deranged by the euphoric rage of what Erich Fromm called group narcissism — the thoughtless roar of those who believe their superior group is being polluted by alien groups.”
He goes on to cite another writer whose prescription is to separate leaders from the group. If Stewart’s analysis is correct this may produce some hope in a new era of government.
Solstice - A Universe Birthday
This is the solstice, the still point of the Sun . . .
where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath.
— Margaret Atwood
The Canadian poet and novelist kicks off the site of the Deep Time Network, a place that celebrates the larger creation story than the one usually told in European traditions and the countries that emerged from it. The Christmas ritual relates to it in terms of timing.
As the Network site notes,
“From time immemorial, humans have honored the winter and summer solstices, as sacred and rich times, to align our personal and collective lives with the movement of celestial bodies. Some of us are heading into the darkness of winter while others are headed into summer and longer days. Wherever you are, the solstice is a planetary event.”
A solstice occurs when the Sun reaches its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the equator. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21.
The term solstice can also be used in a broader sense, as the day when this event occurs. The day of a solstice in both hemispheres has either the most sunlight of the year (summer solstice) or the least sunlight of the year (winter solstice) for any place other than the Equator, where the days and nights are equal in length all through the year.
The word solstice is derived from the Latin sol (“sun”) and sistere (“to stand still”), because at the solstices, the Sun appears to “stand still”; that is, the seasonal movement of the Sun’s daily path (as seen from Earth) pauses at a northern or southern limit before reversing direction.
And this year there is an added bonus, if you are in a location with a clear night. There are likely to be meteor showers but there is also the best chance in 400 years to see two planets, Jupiter and Saturn, appear closer than usual – not that they are actually close to us. Saturn is 1.6 billion km. from earth, while Jupiter is about 885 million away. They appear to meet in the night sky. The last time this happened so visibly was in 1623. Binoculars may make it visible in the south west sky just around sun down. Through right now, and for the rest of December, they will appear to be super-close in the post-sunset night sky.
And though it’s a shorter interval, the great Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City has celebrated the solstice for the past 41 years with a performance by the famed Paul Winter consort. I sang in the chorus when they came to Toronto for a performance of the Missa Gaia in 1989 and it still happened again this year at the Cathedral. NPR offers a reprise of the 2019 concert and you can listen and watch excerpts of it here..