Upside Down Under

Shannon Stephens!

2012-01-18T11:52:00.001+11:00

Christmas, summertime, and cognitive dissonance

2011-12-21T17:16:00.000+11:00

This December has been my third Christmas season since moving to Oz in December 2009. I think for the first time since we moved here, I'm feeling settled enough to allow myself to notice the extraordinarily bizarre way in which Australians adopt all the practices and customs of the Northern hemisphere holiday in blatant disregard of the fact that we are approaching summer solstice.

I spoke to a mum from our kids' primary school today, and she confessed to having a surface sense of the strangeness of decorating with snowflakes. I believe, however, that most Australians are unable, and will always be unable, to appreciate the deep meaningfulness of all these customs in the same way as those of us who grew up north of the 45th parallel.

Some Melbournites spend a lot of hours affixing thousands and thousands of Christmas lights to their houses. I imagine having this conversation with any one of them:

You realize, don't you, that the POINT of putting up Christmas lights is to lift everyone's spirits in the coldest, darkest, most horrible time of year--when everyone is feeling suicidal because they're half frozen and and haven't seen the sun in 10 weeks?

Huh? Oh--I think I know what you mean. I remember once back in the winter of '79, there were like 3 days when the temperature dropped below 10 degrees (Celsius--that's 50 degrees Fahrenheit), in July. I wasn't old enough to really remember, but my parents were traumatized for years.

The other evening, about 6:30 PM, I was walking along past the coffee shop near my home. The sun was still high in the sky, and it was about 79 degrees F outside (that's 26 C). Blaring over the sound system from the coffee shop was some Christmas song the lyrics of which were about "frosty air". Most Melbournites, I assume, have never actually experienced frosty air. I certainly haven't seen any since moving here 25 months ago. Maybe when they fly for ski vacations to New Zealand or something.

The Australian church fathers, whoever they might be, should have done us all a favo(u)r and, having consulted with their magi/scientists, when they arrived they should have flipped the church calender about a 6 month axis. Then, even though it never gets cold and never actually gets properly seasonally dark either, and even though the days are still longer than they're meant to be at winter solstice, at least there'd be SOME sort of reasoning behind trying to cheer yourself up a little in June/July, using festive sparkly tinsel and bulbs and lights and feasts and so forth.

A narrative review of my experience upon visiting Arkhouse church (St Kilda) services this morning--an attempt to thoughtfully engage difference.

2011-12-18T14:57:00.000+11:00

(conversely, you can also read or respond to this review at churchrater.com)

This week I had a perhaps not-entirely-gentle-gracious-and-respectful email, blog, and facebook interaction with Pastor Dan Saunders and his wife Ali Saunders. See here, and here. Having written about the experience on churchrater.com, I thought that to give them a fair shake I should actually attend one of their services. So this morning off I poked to the Dick Whittington Tavern on Chapel street. Sunday morning traffic was light and it was very easy to find parking. I poked into the pub, where I ordered a coffee from the vivacious Cabrina, whom I asked “What’s it like having a church meeting in your pub?”. “Strange,” she replied with a big smile. I also met a lovely fellow from South Australia who was there ordering his first beer of the day. He shared with me that he was hungover from last night, and it was that time of year, which I found delicious.

Dan saw me and walked over and shook my hand making lots of eye contact, which I rather liked. There followed a longish (~15 minutes?) and I must confess not-entirely-comfortable-on-my-part conversation with Dan. He said he wanted to know my motivation for being there, and when I answered (as per above), he said he didn’t believe me, felt I had been deceptive, was afraid that I was there to cause trouble or disruption, and that he felt very offended by me and suspicious. When I reassured him that I wasn’t there to cause any trouble, and only wanted to sit quietly in the back and take notes, he continued to express disbelief and suspicion, and pressed me for my real motivation. He said that part of the reason he didn’t trust me was that I had emailed his wife “behind his back”. Here’s the text of the email I sent Ali this week, after she shared with me that she felt bullied by me:

Ali,

Just to say in case you didn't see it on facebook that I've deleted the email that you requested I delete. In the past, I've found it very frightening to be known, and thus found myself easily feeling bullied. Just wanted to say I am willing to accept and even delight in you being exactly where you're at, and I'm sending you good thoughts that you will get to exactly where you want to get to. Also I believe that love will bring you to a place, in the perfect time, where you are not frightened, and where you have such a delicious sense of freedom and inner strength that it will be impossible for you to feel bullied regardless of anyone's actions or words.

Here's a song I find delicious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e39UmEnqY8

Best,
Benjamin

I expressed to Dan that the very idea that it was possible to email a woman behind her husband’s back seemed very patriarchal to me. I also expressed to him that it seemed to me that people in positions of leadership who are easily frightened, offended, and suspicious are rather likely to hurt those with whom they are involved as leaders. At one point about 2/3 of the way through our conversation, Dan asked if I was recording our conversation, and insisted on seeing my phone to verify that I wasn’t. Near the end of our conversation, I started to ask about (genuinely wanting to understand, still) why exactly he was so distressed about my publishing of our email correspondence, but before we could begin to address this, Dan said he had to pull away from our conversation because he needed to begin the service.

During my conversation with Dan, another fellow named Nathan came and joined us and introducing himself, asked about my vocation. It felt delicious to have him show interest in me rather than discomfort toward me. When he learned my vocation, he shared that his wife Hannah, whom I met briefly later, was also a speech pathologist! Hurrah! This wee conversation felt SO normal and lovely =). I ended up sitting next to Nathan and Hannah during the service.

The service took place in one corner of the tavern, which had been set off from the rest of the tavern by one of those foldup faux walls. There were three rows of seats and a big flatscreen TV for videos and lyrics. Dan welcomed everyone and graciously said “Even Ben—we welcome you today.” (although I rather prefer “Benjamin”) I guess he decided to make the best of me being there. =). The service began rather later than the advertised time of 10AM—exactly at 10:28. But perhaps this is atypical because of Dan’s long conversation with me beforehand.

A lady named Selah came forward and shared about how she and her hubby Chris had been making friends in their apartment block and how God had been showing them that it wasn’t about making projects of people, but rather genuinely loving them, and praying for them behind their backs—something I first heard about from my friend Randy Seiver, and find delicious =).

There were about 15 adults and ~5 gorgeous little primary school age children in the gathering.

There was an incredibly cute video with a contemporary retelling of the Christmas narrative by gorgeous little children dressed up as the various characters—I’m pretty sure these were Dan and Ali’s kids. Lots of laughter during this video—it was very well done. I think they must have had a grand old time putting it together during the week.

A violinist, an acoustic guitarist, and an amazing female vocalist led several Christmas carols. It felt very acoustic and brilliant. I’m not a fan of Christmas carols, but if one must do them this seems exactly the way.

The sermon was from 11:05 to 11:40. 35 minutes is rather shorter than the average of over 50 minutes for Dan’s sermons. Scattered throughout the sermon were a few rather cheesy videos which were a play on the mac vs. pc theme, between Jesus and Bob, who plays Santa at the local mall, with Jesus exhibiting rather painfully high levels of earnestness, I thought. The first of these, with which Dan began, was (unfortunately, in my opinion) harping on the theme of saying “merry Christmas” vs. “happy holidays”. Regarding this, it’s perhaps interesting that the church is meeting in the geographical center of Judaism in Melbourne.

The sermon was incredibly instructive for me—I’ll explain how shortly. It seemed to me that there were two major themes. The first was (to radically rephrase) that people are basically completely fucked, and fucked up. Or to quote directly, “Nothing can quell our inner torment, caused by anger, hatred, lust, doubts, fears, and insecurities--the inner hole we long to fill.” There was reference made to many of the major disasters that had happened this year—tsunami in Japan, New Zealand earthquakes, Brisbane and Pakistan floods, Global Financial Crisis, wars of ideology, war on terror (that delightful phrase that’s both an oxymoron and a redundancy simultaneously) etc. “We all want happiness. The human spirit searches for inner purpose, peace, meaning, but in every part of life we still find dissatisfaction. Inner frustration when work doesn’t measure up--nothing seems to bring peace. Nothing satisfies.” He referenced popular culture memes along this line, such as the U2 song “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” “We still don’t feel satisfied/peace. We are slaves to [gadgets] that we know are empty.” He quoted Carl Jung

Nowadays more and more people, especially those who live in large cities, suffer from terrible emptiness and boredom, as if they are waiting for something that never arrives. Movies and television, spectator sports, and political excitements may divert them for a while, but again and again, exhausted and disenchanted, they have to return to the wasteland of their own lives.

The second major theme was that Jesus’ birth was this miraculous, amazing, delicious event in which God steps in to provide a solution to all this darkness, angst, etc., and that we mustn’t leave this amazing present from God as the unwrapped present left at the bottom of the Christmas tree. It set me to thinking of this lyric from the U2 song Dan referenced.

You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Oh my shame
You know I believe it

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

"God is offering through Jesus peace—real inner peace. Jesus birth is the greatest moment in human history. What Bethlehem did in ignorance—rejecting this prezzy (that’s Aussie for “present”), many Aussies do today willfully—but we really must accept and embrace this gift if we want meaning, joy, peace, etc., etc." He quoted Napolean

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.

Near the end of the sermon Dan referenced the Santa Clause myth, and talked about how this myth strongly affects us in our formative years by contradicting the biblical narrative that we are basically naughty and broken, instead proving to us every Christmas, when we get presents, that actually we have been weighed up and found to be basically good. He said “God’s gift rests on any person who through humble deep soul searching is willing to turn away from the hole filled with their own rubbish and ask Jesus to fill that hole with his peace.—the greatest gift ever.”

This sermon really helped me understand two things. Firstly, in a new way I’ve never quite experienced before, I came to understand my own past in a new light. No WONDER I suffered from depression, annihilating self hatred, and so forth for so many years! From the age of 9 until the age of 24, this was the milieu in which I was enstoried. The primary theme was the basic cursedness of the world and people, and the secondary theme was that God has deliciously and amazingly come up with a miraculous and wonderful solution to this. Secondly, no wonder Dan is frightened, suspicious, and offended. He believes that both I and he are basically fucked up.

My final note is this: this church could absolutely become the Mars Hill(Seattle)/Hillsong(Sydney) of Melbourne. They totally have the potential. I just don’t know if Melbourne is the sort of place where such a thing can exist at all. Kind of hope not. Guess we’ll see. =)

How I got off the fundamentalist ride, Exhibit A.

2011-12-14T19:06:00.001+11:00

Megs and I were wed in November 2000, in Port Macquarie, NSW, on the beach. It rocked. During the 3 months I spent in Australia in late 2000, a couple different things happened. On our honeymoon, we stopped in some little town and I got my ear pierced and a small earring. Also, during that time, I spent about 30 hours reading, trying to sort something out that I knew I needed to sort before we returned to my home church near Seattle. During my two years on LOGOS II, for very practical reasons, I had given up on the King James Version Onlyism of my home church (now Lifepoint Church NW). This because the small groups in which I participated, while operating in English, were composed mostly of folks from lots of nations who were operating in English as their second language. I quickly noticed that there was no way they could deal with the King James translation of the Bible. I suspected that this explanation wasn't going to fly with my home church, so I did some reading to figure out some better explanation. Also, I spent a few hours conversing with my wife and her two lovely sisters, and without quite realizing it my politics, which had already largely shifted anyway, were more or less cemented over to very left, while when I left Seattle they were very very right.

When we flew back to Seattle in early January 2001, it was with the understanding that I was probably going to be offered a staff position at that church. However, that first Sunday, I completely and utterly failed to appreciate the politics of the situation. Pastor Tom welcomed me back and asked me to share a bit. I came up to the pulpit with my new ear ring. I'm sure he and everyone were shocked, but I had no clue at the time. I'd been away for 2 and a half years, and didn't quite realize how much I'd changed and how much they'd stayed the same. In fact, I shared with them that I wanted to become a Bible translator, and read a longish section from The Preface to the Readers (that's actually a bit of a delicious read which I recommend) which was originally contained with the King James translation. In it, the translators do a rather deliciously excellent job of dismantling all the arguments of the King James Onlyists--arguments which they themselves were of course having to deal with because there were those at the time making similar arguments about earlier English translations. Again, I think I had no clue how deeply closed they were. I'm told that my pastor was sitting there in the front row obviously displaying barely controlled fury. I didn't notice it at the time.

After that, for a number of weeks, I had several meetings with Pastor Tom, during which we discussed various things, and he gave me lots of books to read which he believed supported his KJV only position, although it seemed to me that the books, written from very much inside the KJV only camp, instead made rather a spectacular case for the outright silliness of that entire camp (I think Revision Revised may have been among them). I was muddling along thinking/hoping that they would change/open enough to accommodate my views. My poor wife was muddling along feeling very very dismissed and ignored and generally shut out. No one at the church would talk to her. I think perhaps the guys were all a bit terrified of a gorgeous powerful women, and the women were all a bit cowed. No person had ever long been a member of that church who was not very much a white, right wing, fundamentalist American, and now here was this Australian, left wing, Anglican feminist Christian.

Anyway, after the it's a small world story I told you earlier, I decided, all of sudden, that they were never going to change, and I asked Pastor Tom for a meeting to share with him about why we were leaving. He took the liberty of inviting the entire board of elders--four middle age white guys. The same pastor who'd asked me the small world question, upon hearing of this meeting, suggested to us that we schedule something else for about an hour after the meeting in case we needed an escape excuse, which turned out to be very handy.

So one Sunday afternoon sometime in February 2001, Megan and I found ourselves sitting in the church office around a table with four rather serious looking middle age white guys. We spent about an hour beating around the bush. I explained that I'd realized that two and a half years earlier, my path and their path had diverged at perhaps a 10 degree angle. Not much of an angle, but over two years, we'd gotten further and further apart, so that now they were on path A, and I was on Path B, and I certainly wasn't going to come back over to their path, and it had become clear to me that they weren't going to come over to my path, so I thought we should just leave it at that, and part as friends. They were very dissatisfied with this explanation, and wanted to know about the exact nature of the stuff in between our two paths. I think they wanted to argue about it--to try to convince me to come back over to their path. I was extremely disinterested in doing this, and pretty much refused. We went back and forth for a long time. I felt very sad. At the end I was crying. It represented a big loss for me--they'd been my entire community from 87 to 98. They seemed angry rather than sad. I think they perhaps felt they'd made a big investment in me, and perhaps even had high hopes that I'd be a big cog in the machinery of their church which would help it grow and so forth.

Near the end of an hour, Megs, who had been very very quiet, finally spoke up and said "Look, Benjamin has realized that this church is never ever going to accept me, and he decided he loves and values his relationship with me more than his relationship with this church." At that point, Tom became visibly furious. He is about 6 feet 2 inches tall, and is a very muscular and heavy man, with bright red hair. He leaned over the table, right into Megs' face, and, slamming his fist down on the table right in front of her, he shouted "You should NEVER have put him in that position."

After that, I spoke up and said that alas we had another meeting we had scheduled and we didn't want to be late, so we'd have to be going. The youngest of the elders, Mark, then in his early 30's, I'd guess, found this outrageous, and said several times rather loudly "HOW CONVENIENT!!!". And of course he was right, it was incredibly convenient. Tom and the others strongly requested that we cancel the other meeting and stay until we could finish sorting everything out (to their satisfaction). We of course declined, and off we went.

After that we had relatively little interaction with anyone from that church--some of whom I'd known for years and been very good friends with. It wasn't the best parting. I'd do it somewhat differently now, but I think at the time, it was really the only way I could leave. It has seemed to me, in the past, looking at that church, that in some sense the leaders act in the role of parents, and the parishioners act in the role of children, and the only way for the parishioners to leave in a growing up sort of way is the way in which I left. Or something like that. I remember from when I was inside the church all those years--that others would leave in such a way---that somehow they'd just be gone, and the general sense was that they had fallen away out into the big dangerous world, where people believed things other than the safe prescribed beliefs of our church. The hope was always that someday maybe they'd come back into our safe little fold and be okay again. But they rarely did. In fact there was a very tiny core of long termers, and other than that the membership was mostly medium term revolving door type people.

Awesome story by E, aged 9

2011-11-24T19:27:00.000+11:00

My lovely daughter shared this story with us today.

The Never Ending Trail

by Eowyn Ady

Every day I saw it towering above me like a giant for the past 20 years, and now here I am ready to climb it. I took a step, then another, then another. I was just starting to feel more confident when suddenly something or someone grabbed me and began to pull.

I screamed for help. I was sinking into the ground. "Help!", I cried again, but I knew it was no use. People have died on this mountain. Nobody comes anywhere near it if they can help it. Then I realized something. I was no longer being pulled into the earth. Instead, something seemed to be tying my feet together. But that's not what was surprising me most. The rope felt very much like tree root. Then it hit me that it *was* tree root, tree root that was still connected to its sapling. They were going to grow the tree on top of me. I remember my mother once telling about these creatures. They wait for you to die then grow the tree on top of you then the tree eats you. There's only one way to get away--laughter! I thought, then I said a joke that made everybody laugh.

No More Shooting and Crying

2011-11-12T22:02:00.000+11:00

Acculturation into glorification of violence--why do we go to war?

2011-11-11T16:23:00.000+11:00

In my children's primary school's weekly newsletter today, this:

"This morning our grade 5/6 students visited the Shrine of Remembrance to join thousands of others for the annual Remembrance Day service. As part of the service, B______ and B__________ , laid a special wreath made by the 5/6 students on the steps of the shrine."

Here's a new's article about the service.

I see I shall have to keep my eyes and ears wide open, if I'm to have any chance of my children growing up not believing the myth of redemptive violence. I think I shall have to do some exposure to MLK and Ghandi.

Tonight I shall ask them "Why do people go to war?" then I shall examine, with them, their answers. =)

What do you think--why do people go to war?

Update on miscarriage

2011-10-29T18:07:00.000+11:00

Two weeks ago my lovely wife and I had a miscarriage. At the time, I thought I was fine with it, that it wouldn't affect me much if at all, etc.

I should have known better. One of the things I've noticed about myself in the past is that somehow these things gradually catch up with me, and affect me in big ways, but that it can take a bit. Maybe it's emotional stupidity. =) Like my emotions just take longer to get it.

So the thing I've noticed more than anything else over the past 2 weeks has been a rather steep decline in mental function. It's like my brain got switched over to half speed. I read papers--the whole paper, and as I'm reading I have this sense that the words and the sentences and the paragraphs make sense. But then when I'm done reading, I have NO idea what I've read.

I used to be able to complete a 1500 words essay in maybe 8 hours. Now it takes more like 20.

It's weird. Is this what all those undergrad students who got lower grades than me and seemed to be struggling while everything seemed so easy for me had to deal with?

It's weird just NOT being good at something I've always been good at. I've realized that I leaned on the fact that I had that particular sort of intelligence. I felt good about it--I felt good about myself because of it, plus it made a lot of things easier.

Maybe this is a brilliant experience for me. Maybe it will help me be gracious to people who are struggling. I hope so--it would be a nice benefit to counter the frustration I'm experiencing.

Memories of Grace Seattle

2011-10-29T15:25:00.000+11:00

From the age of ~8 until the age of ~31, I generally went to Sunday Morning Church® gatherings every single week, at least 45 weeks per year. The very last church I was ever involved with in this manner was Grace Seattle. Grace was the place where I nearly finished my journey out of Christianity and into Pastafarianism. I was thinking of Grace today. Here's a couple memories I have:

There was a truly charismatic and delightful fellow by the name of Dave Sellers who was interim pastor at Grace when we started attending there. They had lost their founding pastor due to some scandal about which no one would talk. Dave had been the associate pastor at the time of the scandal, and had stepped in as interim pastor while the pastoral search committee looked for someone new. He had also applied for the position, but the committee didn't choose to hire him. His response to my and Megs' perhaps-not-always-so-gentle negativity towards what we saw as bullshit was delightfully non-defensive and open and inviting. He told us that he was really glad we were at Grace because he felt the church had a lot to learn from us. I'm glad for his sake that the church decided not to hire him as permanent senior pastor.

My memory of the pastor they did end up hiring, John Haralson, revolves around two episodes. The first was one Sunday morning in the foyer of the church. John was clearly angry at me because I would write perhaps-not-always-completely-gentle-and-politically-correct notes on the response cards which everyone was invited to fill out. One Sunday morning I guess he'd had enough, because he came into the foyer, noticed my response card in the basket of response cards, picked it up, walked swiftly over to me, standing very much inside my personal bubble (perhaps within 6 inches), and in a perhaps-not-entirely-soft-and-gentle-voice demanded to know why I continued to write such things despite previous warnings. It's kind of funny, looking back, 'cause I was SO frightened of him, and he was clearly at least somewhat frightened of me. Sigh. Frightened leaders and frightened parishioners do not the most brilliant combination make.

My other memory of him is a conversation I had with him when I had decided to no longer be involved with the church. He was, again, quite frightened for my future prospects--not so much about leaving Grace, but more about the fact that I was deciding not to be involved in church at all anymore. He was fearful for the temporal and eternal consequences of that decision and the accompanying deconversion with which he rightly understood it to correlate. He tried to warn me off. I guess he was doing his duty as watcher on the walls, so he didn't end up with blood on his hands (there's a little Biblical language for you, with apologies to the uninitiated).

One other memory sticks out for me. When we were looking to get involved with a small group at Grace, early on, we had rather a lot of trouble. The first group we investigated said their group was closed for a while because some members were having some sort of intense difficulty. The second group we investigated shared with us that the group didn't have any other small children, and that they wouldn't feel comfortable with Megan breastfeeding our infant daughter in the group, although they'd be glad to set up a separate room in the house where she could take her daughter to breastfed her in private. Sigh. So very American, that. All hail our Puritan fathers.

ABA, spanking, gender identity, and suicide

2011-10-19T15:19:00.000+11:00

Came across this rather fascinating story today.

Ole Ivar Lovaas was a Norwegian born psychologist and researcher who was arguably the father and chief early proponent of Applied Behavior Analysis (hereafter ABA). ABA is at the time of this writing considered to be the only evidence based treatment for children with autism, and is by far the most extensively used and best funded treatment protocol for helping children with autism.

In 1974, Lovaas, along with his colleague George Rekers, published a paper in the journal of Applied Behavior Analysis in which they describe their experimental and apparently highly successful treatment of a 5 year old boy in California named "Kraig". Kraig's parents, specifically his mother, were concerned about Kraig's excessively feminine gender-identity and behavior--things like playing with dolls, preferring to play with girls rather than boys, and exhibiting "mother-like nurture" rather than "male aggression". In cooperation with his parents, Lovaas and Rekers designed and carried out an ABA intervention which involved reinforcing Kraig's "masculine" play and attributes, while punishing his "feminine" play and attributes. Kraig was beaten by his father for "feminine" behavior as part of this intervention. The result of the intervention was that Kraig became a typical boy's boy, indistinguishable from other little boys in terms of gender-identity and gender-related behaviors at 26 months post treatment.

In 2003, the person who had been given the pseudonym "Kraig", Kirk Murphy, then 38 years of age, committed suicide.

Miscarriage

2011-10-17T10:00:00.000+11:00

Over the weekend, my lovely partner, lover, and spouse was hospitalized with excruciating abdominal pain. Urine test suggested pregnancy, which we did not know about. She's been bleeding for a week or so, and we thought it was her period. Ultrasound found no signs of pregnancy. bHCG blood levels confirmed pregnancy, and bHCG levels 24 hours later confirmed loss of pregnancy.

Megs asked all of us for names, and so we named the fetus Ronan Elrond Samwise Isabella Pippen Ady =). Me thinks perhaps we would never saddle a living child with such a name =).

Fascinatingly, Saturday (October 15th) was Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. There's a lovely International Wave of Light in which folks light a candle on that day at 7PM in their own time zone in remembrance of lost pregnancies or lost infants. I think it shall be lovely in future years to participate in this in memory of Samwise =)

I've been reading and pondering a bit on what it all means. Following are some notes on things I've learned.

Apparently upwards of 20% of known-about pregnancies and up to 50% of all conceptions end in early spontaneous abortion (i.e. miscarriage). Apparently calling spontaneous abortion by that name is odious to some because the term is associate with induced abortion, about which lots of people have judgments.

The concensus reality seems to indicate that sadness an/or psychological distress is called for. The NIH says "many mothers and their partners feel very sad. Seemingly helpful advice like “you can try again,” or “it was for the best” can make it harder for mothers and fathers to recover because their sadness has been denied."

Here's a fascinating paper from the Journal of Clinical Nursing entitled "The experience of early miscarriage from a male perspective." The author says "there is a taboo in Western cultures surrounding sex, reproduction and death. Miscarriage embraces all three of these areas and is potentially a very difﬁcult issue to research."

I've decided to believe that the miscarriage is perfect. I love babies and children, and I would be super delighted for Megs to be pregnant and for us to have another baby. And this recent miscarriage is exactly the perfect thing for us right now, a gift from a benevolent universe. I feel completely awesome about it.

Having said that, I don't want to invalidate the experience of Megs, nor of any of you, lovely readers. In fact, I'd love to hear about your experiences of miscarriage, if any. Whatever your emotional experience, I believe that it is or was exactly the right emotional experience for you, and I'd love to hear about it if you're willing to share.

I'm especially curious to hear about the experiences of other men whose partner has experienced miscarriage. The literature seems to suggest that some men feel both grief and confusion about their role, as well as possibly a need to deny their own grief so they can 'be strong' in helping their grieving partner. Not that this necessarily matches any particular person's experience. What was yours?

Autism: ISM-ing and joining

2011-09-23T19:36:00.000+10:00

For those of you who don't know, one of my very favorite things to do in the world is to spend time playing with very amazingly beautiful children who are on the autism spectrum. Over the last 2 and a half years I've had the privilege of spending hundreds and hundreds of hours playing one on one with a number of these delightful little ones--children whose parents have chosen to use the SONRISE program to try to help their little ones learn to connect with themselves and other people.

My very favourite thing about the SONRISE program is it's unique perspective on the exclusive repetitious behaviors in which many children on the autism spectrum engage. In the wider autism community, these behaviours are often referred to as "stims", and inside the SONRISE community, we like to refer to them as "isms". My belief is that everyone, including neurotypical people, have isms--behaviors which we like to do more or less alone, that we do over and over again, because for whatever reason we find them comforting, or relaxing, or centering, or what have you. Like nail biting. Or zoning out on the internet (teehee).

The perspective that the SONRISE program takes on isms is very different from the perspective that many autism professionals as well as many families of those with autism take. We engage in something called joining. It means that when the child with autism is isming, we do the activity with them. We don't just mimic, however. We really get into it with them--whatever they are doing, we really try to understand it, and really do it with them, exactly as they are doing it, with the same real delight and enthusiasm and concentration with which they are doing the activity. It's our way of saying "We love you, and we think you ROCK, and we think whatever you do ROCKS, and in fact we feel that way so strongly that we want to do it with you.". It's also my belief and observation that when I really join a child with autism in their exclusive repetitious behaviour, I can in a sense almost make that behaviour more effective for them--so that whatever they are trying to get from that behaviour, for themselves, they actually somehow get more of it, faster. The end result is that they do the behaviour less. Many SONRISE mums and dads will bear witness to this--that when they started joining their children, their children's amount of isming went down. Of course there are no guarantees, but this makes a lot of sense to me. I'm much more willing and able to engage socially with others when my sensation is that they totally accept me and are totally stokishly happy to do whatever I want to do.

Anyway, today I was playing with a beautiful little boy on the spectrum, and he was doing this awesome ism for about 15 minutes, and I so enjoyed joining him that I wanted to share with you my experience:

N was standing on one side of the little wooden table, holding a shirt. He stayed standing, but he gently shifted position occasionally, as if to find the optimal position for what he wanted to do. So he'd move back from the table a little, and then move toward it a little. He'd move a bit to the right, and then a bit to the left. All the time during this he was deeply engaged in two things. Firstly he was deeply engaged in the tabletop. He was studying it like perhaps a master antique wooden table expert might study it, or perhaps a master lifelong carpenter who only ever built tables. Secondly, he was deeply engaged in the shirt he was holding, studying its texture, its edges, its shape and color and just deeply fascinated by it. It was as if he was looking for the perfect way and place to hold it in order to use it to engage with the table JUST SO. Then he would swing it in these perfect little circular swings against the table. Also during the entire time, he was vocalizing these beautiful vocalisms--kind of a fascinating vowel somewhere between "eee" and "aaaa". These vocalizations would go up and down in pitch and in loudness.

So I joined him in all these wondrous delightful things. I got a pink sari to use as he was using a shirt, and I got on my knees so I was about the same height as him from the table, and I became deeply absorbed by the patterns of the wood grain on the table top, and by the strange sweet music N and I were making, and by the shape and feel and colour and texture of my sari, and by how the shadows on the tabletop changed as I shifted, back and forth, left and right. Obviously I don't totally understand exactly what N is getting for himself from this exclusive activity, but I can say this--it feels deeply centering. I always feel somehow like I'm the lucky one, when N chooses to ISM while I'm the room with him--like he's sharing this profoundly beautiful experience he creates with me.

A dialogue

2011-09-05T16:13:00.000+10:00

I'm choosing to feel really angry.

How come?

Cause this person asked me a question that appeared to be sincere, and as soon as I answered it they attacked my answer and me personally.

And given that they asked you a question and then attacked you and your answer--how come you feel angry?

Cause it felt like a setup--like ... I felt excited that they were engaging me as a human being, that they wanted to know about my beliefs and experiences, and then when I shared myself, they said my answer was clearly wrong, and accused me of unkindness toward my wife.

So which part do you want to talk about--the statement that your answer was wrong, or the accusation of unkindness toward your wife?

Both, really--it was more the whole setup. I feel like I fell for it--like I should have ... been aware that this person wasn't a safe person, and thus I shouldn't have shared myself. I feel like I set myself up for being vulnerable to being attacked.

Given that you knew that this person wasn't a safe person, why did you make yourself vulnerable like that, Benjamin?

I feel like I was sucked in by the question. I had shared something about myself, and the question they asked about it was just so inviting--as if they really wanted to understand me.

Okay--so given that you saw the question and felt really invited to share, and then this person attacked you after you shared--how come you feel angry?

It doesn't feel so much like anger anymore--it feels more like a feeling of not being safe.

What do you mean by not being safe?

I mean ... it feels like there are just these people out there who are going to ask questions that look really inviting and curious and non-judgmental, and then when you stupidly go for the invitation, they attack you. It feels like this nasty setup like a clever fisherman making a really alluring lure, I feel angry that this person would treat me like that--pretend with the pretty lure and then take out a knife and gut and scale me.

So how come you're seeing this person's response that they believe you're wrong, and that they believe you're unkind to your wife--how come that bugs you so much?

It's 'cause I grew up in this system (haha--that's funny 'cause 3 weeks ago I decided to stop believing in systems). Anyway I was gonna say that I grew up in a system where I was treated like this a lot--there was this superficial niceness, but it was contingent on agreeing with the consensus belief framework. So ... I felt like I had to really fight to get out of that system(haha--there's that word again)/community, and now somehow that makes me vulnerable to this sort of thing.

What do you mean by "vulnerable"?

I mean that I feel like I'm a bit of a sucker for this sort of thing.

What do you mean by "sucker"?

I mean that I set myself up for the fall on these things. It happened last week too with another unsafe person. I open up a little bit and be authentic with people who are pretty clearly unsafe--the sort of people who just attack other people's beliefs and opinions willy nilly, and they inevitably respond by attacking me.

Why do you do that, Benjamin?

I don't know.

Take a guess.

I do it because I'm hoping/longing for genuine connection. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. ... I want to change them. WOW. there's a huge insight. Yep. I feel like somehow giving these people an opportunity to interact with me--a person who is self aware and safe, will help them come to understand what fucks they are, and thus enable them to become less of a fuck and more of a self aware safe person like me.

Why do you choose to feel unsafe around certain people?

It's the element of nasty surprise. Oh my God. I totally do that to my kids--that nasty surprise thing. Like everything will be going along hunky-dory, and then I'll see that they've caused some shocking mess somewhere, and I'll use anger to motivate myself and to get them to do what I want.

Why do you believe that this person saying they believe you're wrong and accusing you of unkindness toward your wife is nasty?

Because it's not what I expected. I wanted them to respond by either saying that my answer made sense to them, or else saying that it didn't make sense to them, but then follow that with another question. Or at the very least to respond by talking about their own experience. I massively dislike it when people talk about my experience in a judgmental way. Why can't they just shut their face?

Why did you dislike it and feel angry when this person talked about your experience in a judgmental way?

Because ... I think I disliked my own sort of instant response--it felt very sympathetic nervous system. You know that fellow who is the cello teacher in Boston, he talks about how his students when they make a mistake they have this judgement about it, and they can then freeze up and get all tight--like a rat gets when it's scared--that frozen, curl in on yourself thing. He makes his students who do that put down their cello and stand up and throw their arms out in the air and shout with exuberance "HOW FASCINATING!". He makes them do it every time, 'til it's habit. Wait a moment. What if I chose to have that response instead today to this person attacking me. I'm gonna try it--one second.

Wow that felt really good. I'm gonna imagine that I just had that experience where this person attacked me, and I'm gonna do that response immediately. Hold on.

OK. Hot damn that feels so good and so much better than my original response. In future, whenever someone verbally attacks me, I'm gonna do that right then and there. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!

Do you feel finished with that?

Yep! Thank you! =)

Mostly on facebook now

2011-08-25T20:25:00.000+10:00

Just a note. I'm mostly posting on facebook now. I might write here again more often eventually, but I see it's been a month and a half. You're welcome to friend/follow me at facebook.com/oxymoron

Notes on the death of my grandfather

2011-07-08T20:35:00.001+10:00

A gentle warning--this post touches on physical and sexual abuse. Please be gently forewarned if you suffer from PTSD around these issues.

I learned today that my grandfather David "Buddy" Eaton died on July 1st, 2011, one week ago. He is survived by four of his six children and seven grandchildren and a bunch of great grandchildren.

This is my story about my granddad.

I'm pretty sure I met my granddad three times during my lifetime--Once when I was very young, my family visited Boston--I remember being at his house, and seeing him with two of his beautiful fascinating colorful parrots, who were riding on his left and right shoulders. I remember he seemed to have a funny egg shaped bump on his forehead, and a funny egg shaped concavity next to it, and thinking they balanced each other out somehow. I remember him talking to me a little bit about birds, and learning that he was president of the local birding society. I remember his house, in which my mother grew up, seeming very large, with multiple floors going up and a basement going down. That would have been in Saugus, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. All this must have been around about 1980.

I didn't see him again until 'round about 2004. But first, I should tell you that I learned in ~2001 that my grandfather was a pedophile. He raped my mother many times during the years of her adolescence. He was also psychologically, verbally, and physically abusive toward all his 5 children. He used to hit the children in the face with a fork at dinnertime if they did something wrong. Apparently both my mum and all her siblings left home and got as far away as possible pretty much the moment they turned 18--all joining the U.S. military, I believe. In the intervening years, they all settled in the general vicinity of Seattle, Washington, pretty much as far away as you can get from Saugus, Massachusetts and still be in the contiguous U.S. At some point my lovely amazing grandmother learned some of the details of what her husband had done to her children and she divorced him and moved to the Seattle area as well.

Back to 2004. In 2004 the extended family heard from an old neighbor/friend that Buddy was very sick, was refusing medical treatment, and was probably going to more or less die in his own shit in his home in the near future if nothing was done. At this point, having been taught a rather toxic brand of forgiveness by the Christian church with which they were involved, my mum and dad flew to Saugus, helped my granddad, apparently more or less against his will, sorted his affairs, sold his house, and brought him back to live in their own home in the Seattle area.

Here's to inviting toxic monsters into your home in the name of God.

Having lived in the same home with her childhood nightmare for a year, in 2005 my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She died of it in June 2008. By the way, you can read my eulogy for my mum here. She was an amazing person.

Anyway, in 2004 when my grandfather was living in my parents' home, I went to meet him. I just wanted to tell him thank you for the $120 he had given to help start a college fund for me back when I was a very young child. I did tell him that, and he didn't seem to totally understand what I was saying, but we did have a little connection--he looked at me and verbally responded in some way. My dad overheard that conversation and explained to me afterwards that it was actually my godfather, a different man altogether, who had given that $120. Ah well.

After my mum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2005, the decision was made to place my grand dad in an assisted living facility in Monroe, Washington, close enough that my dad could still go take care for him there, but far enough that my dad could mostly focus on spending time with and caring for my mum. My granddad was at that facility from 2005 until ~2010, when the exorbitant monthly fees finally depleted his substantial life savings and he had to be moved to a government funded facility nearby. It was at that first facility, Merrill Gardens in Monroe, that I met him for the 3rd and last time. I decided to go spend father's day with him one year--I think 2009. I went and had dinner with him in the dining room, and hung out with him and some others who lived there. He was I think 82 years old at the time, and pretty much unresponsive. You couldn't really have any sort of conversation with him. I didn't see him again.

During 2004-2008, there were multiple instances where my mother's extended family were getting together for various occasions, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, when I had to clearly explain to all them that I and my little family with two young girls would not be coming if grand dad were invited, because I didn't want him around my young daughters. I was usually roundly castigated for this, and sometimes they agreed not to have him come, but other times he was invited and thus our little family didn't go.

Other bits and pieces: My understanding is that my granddad fought in WWII in Europe, but I'm not totally sure about that. Also, he worked for many years as a chemist, I'm pretty sure, for some petrochemical company in the greater Boston area, from which he retired when he got to the age for retiring.

It's also my understanding that he made inappropriate and illegal sexual advances and comments toward the young nurses who worked at the assisted living facilities he was at from 2005-2011, and that the police were called multiple times because of this.

I'm glad he has died. He was an ongoing financial and emotional drain on my dad, who has enough of his own stuff to deal with, but who promised my mum before she died that he would look after my granddad.

Finally, if you or someone you know is committing or has committed sexual abuse of children, please call StopItNow's free helpline at 1888PREVENT. The folks at stop it now have a lot of experience helping abusers find the help they need to stop abusing and become safe people. And if you know of a situation of ongoing abuse, please act now to protect the victims--the phone counselors at Stopitnow can guide you as to what steps you can take to protect the victims and prevent further abuse. Even if you're just suspicious and want to know how to tell, they can help you with that as well. If you're not in the U.S., please find an organization in your own country that can help.

Notes on my visit to Carmel Welsh Presbyterian Church, Sebastopol, Victoria, Australia

2011-07-05T14:32:00.000+10:00

I had a lovely walk through small-town Oz to the ancient-by-Aussie-white-person standards lovely old bluestone block church building—built in 1865. I came in a little late just as they were greeting one another. I was delightedly overwhelmed as person after person came up to me to introduce themselves, wish me good morning, and shake hands. They were using a karaoke machine to stream lyrics to a television set on a tall stand at the front so folks could sing along to praise songs. The regular organist was out sick, so the gray haired pastor, Bob Gray, played with gusto as everyone sang. There was a mixture of modern praise songs and seriously old-school hymns. I love singing and knew all the hymns from growing up in another old-school church, so I sang out, though I was slightly shocked at some of the lyrics.

Hanging from the rafters near the front was a Welsh flag—a gorgeous red dragon on a white and green background. There’s a fascinating Wales/Australia/Philippines connection here. The church was founded by the Welsh mining community hereabouts during the Aussie gold rush. They’re proud to bits about this, having last Sunday had their 150^th anniversary celebration with some 200 people in attendance. Today there were about 30 in attendance. There were various mentions of connection to the Philippines, and several of those in attendance were from there. In the bulletin there were top quality eggs on offer, $3/dozen, from Brenda, with all proceeds going to feed malnourished children in the Philippine city of Salamanca, the home village of Jun, Ailyn, and Ivy--all church members. This same Jun came up to me in the very back row during service to introduce himself and welcome me. A bit later, during the offering, 68 year-old Reverend Bob himself came back and asked all our names, giving Megan a gracious if perhaps slightly forward kiss on the cheek. A bit later, Bob welcomed the five of us by name from the pulpit in the most gracious, delightful, countrified way, acknowledging as Megan had told him that she had ancestors who attended this church in the late 19^th/early 20^th century. He seemed truly delighted to have us.

The church was focused on temperance—a fascinating experience for me, as I grew up in a teetotalling church, and never drank a drop ‘til the age of 26, when my much freer Anglican-raised Australian wife brought me to a pub for the first time, during our courtship in Italy! =). There was bragging about the church having been at the cutting edge of temperance in Oz for nearly 100 years. “How far ahead of their time were they, standing up against drinking and gambling—ahead of us in this modern Victoria that we live in where you can’t walk down the street in Melbourne without getting bashed by some drunk”, said Reverend Gray from the pulpit (more on which later). A lady who didn’t look a day over 50 proclaimed “I’ve got a card at home that I signed in 1941 that I would never drink—and I’ve never drunk!”

The sermon was drawn from Exodus 33, with myriad other proof texts thrown in. There were three points, all answering the question “How can we know God?”: 1. Faith in his word. 2. Focusing on his way. 3. Full surrender to him. I found the sermon to be an endless series of delightfully shocking quotations. It was almost as if a caricature of fundamentalism had come alive and was standing before us. I include a few below, with my favourite bits bolded.

“Moses knew that knowing God is tied up with national security. We have divorced, of course, state and church, in our so called democracy, and we do this of course at our eternal peril”
“We live in this evolutionary age that says there is no god. You can’t get a book on plants and animals today that doesn’t mention evolution. Been around for millions of years—rubbish—no wonder our children don’t know God. Even those who claim to be Christians don’t want to stand on the truth of God’s words and tell these evolutionists they’re wrong. Any medical doctor will tell you that Monkey blood has no comparison with human blood! The Bible says very clearly the life of the body is in the blood.”
“My guilt and shame--Jesus took it all on Calvary. Exactly what are we without him?: the heart of man is desperately wicked. That heart needs to be broken. We need to be focused not on saving the planet, but on saving souls.”
“365 Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in the New Testament. Many of the Old Testament prophecies are being fulfilled today. ‘There shall be wars and rumours of wars.’ II Peter 3 talks about meltdowns in nuclear reactors! The time for Christ to return is growing very close. The book of Revelation warns of 666 on forehead/hand. They’re practicing on animals at this moment. That’s why councils are insisting on dogs getting these implants. They’re preparing so they can do it to humans next.”
(Finally, in reference to the wine and bread for Communion, and just in case any stray Roman Catholics were in the building) “At no point do these elements become anything other than what they are: bread and wine.”

After the service, Reverend Gray came and talked with us a bit. I gently mockingly told him we were from Melbourne, and (referring to his quote above about Melbourne and drunks) that we were regularly accosted by drunks in the street. He replied by sharing with us a story. When he was 13 years of age (that is, in 1956) his father, an engineer, was bicycling home from work and was hit by a drunk driver, leading to many years of back problems and back pain as well as (according to Bob) an aneurism which eventually killed him. Since then he’s had “no truck” with alcohol nor with those who do have truck with it. I expressed sympathy for Bob and his father, though his story leads me to conclusions about driving and drinking rather than about alcohol generally.

After that, we all retired to the church hall for tea, coffee, and cake. I got to see the small but growing church library, and met and talked for a bit with Peter and Gracie and their lovely family of three girls—about my own girls’ age. Peter gave the children’s sermon during the service, using (seriously old-school) a felt board! He told the story of Zaccheus, whose name he pronounced, much to my delight “ZAK key us”, which is rather different from the “zak KEY us” which I learned as a child. Peter recently finished his bachelor of ministry at Bible College, and works for a company which provides assistance devices such as wheel chairs. He wants a full time ministry position, and I think it would be lovely if he became minister at Carmel Welsh when Reverend Gray retires. His telling of the story of ZAK-key-us was connective, almost post-modern, delightful, funny, and he had all the adults and all the children, who had gone up front to sit and listen, raptly listening—in the palm of his hand. During the service Peter told everyone about the small library, which is his project, and asked folks to donate books, as apparently there is no theological library anywhere in Ballarat for those interested in studying more deeply. Hurrah for education and opening minds!

Joe asks an interesting question

2011-06-16T23:21:00.001+10:00

In this post, he asks "How many cups of coffee does a man have to drink alone before he is a failure?"

What do you think?

It pays off

2011-06-14T22:17:00.001+10:00

Love and hatred

2011-06-06T17:37:00.000+10:00

Today I visited, for the first time, the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. It's an edifice to the Myth of Redemptive Violence. At its heart is The Stone of Remembrance, upon which is written the phrase "Greater love hath no man". To me this represents an astonishing wresting of Jesus words in John 15. Jesus' point is that "the world" is going to hate Christians because of the revolutionary way they love. The Shrine of remembrance is about loving people for the violent way they hated. There's a vast difference between laying down your life for your friend (see for instance Rachel Corrie, or Jesus) and losing your life while attempting to kill other people for your friend (see for instance the world arms industry).

Hmmmmmmmm

2011-06-02T13:47:00.001+10:00

Cleanliness and Depression

2011-05-16T22:49:00.001+10:00

This is how it works for me.

The Grains

2011-05-14T17:18:00.000+10:00

Today I gained a deep insight into my lovely Megsie's world, with an astonishing and delightful make-believe called "The Grains".

This conversation at our house today:

Meg: Did you put all the bowls I washed back in with the dirty dishes?

Bens: Yes. They weren't clean.

Megs: Yes they were. Why did you do that?

Bens: They had stuff on them. I can't put them away like that. I tried--I just can't bring myself to do it.

Megs: Oh! They're really actually clean. That stuff you are talking about is just the grains. You wouldn't be able to get them off either.

Bens: I think I could. Would you like me to show you?

Megs: No. Could you not do that anymore? It makes more work.

Bens:. Sweetie, I was just making space in the drying rack so I could wash them and all the other dishes. Sorry I don't mean to make more work. I really just can't bring myself to put them away. If you are going to wash them like that, could you just put them away yourself--I'm fine if you do that--I just can't actually put them away with 'the grains' on them.

Megs: Okay, lovely (puts stack of bowls away in cupboard where they go).

Filed under "New Words in English"

2011-05-11T13:20:00.001+10:00

Overheard this week in spoken conversation: "I was just rofling".

Random thoughts on Osama bin Laden

2011-05-09T21:18:00.000+10:00

I have found myself over the past several days growing increasingly attracted to the image of Osama bin Laden. He seems to have a very beautiful and gentle face and eyes. This might merely be a case of exposure leading to liking.

The recent killing of Osama by forces loyal to the Empire and the massive news exposure which followed seems to me to have provided those of us in the west with an amazing and beautiful opportunity to put a face on the ultimate failure of the myth of redemptive violence. It also provides us with a beautiful opportunity to consider the final repercussions of the make-believe we call "justice".

A word about make-believe may perhaps be in order. I mean something incredibly simple by this phrase. I believe that all our feelings and all our actions spring from our beliefs, and that all these beliefs were constructed by each of us at various points in our lives in order to do the best we can to take best possible care of ourselves. Some we constructed when we were very young. Some we constructed later. But we constructed each and every belief we hold, each one of us, for our own selves and for our own reasons. What this means, among other things, is that we can at any time, for our own reasons, choose to reaffirm or to discard any of the constructed beliefs--these make-believes, as well as to construct new ones.

Sometimes lots of people come to hold more or less similar make believes, all together, in a sense. Justice is one such make believe which seems to me to be rather widespread. To me, the make-believe of justice is a belief people construct in order to justify wanting what they want. To me, it's actually preferable to simply allow myself to want what I want, without feeling a need to justify it by constructing make-believe called justice. The reason I prefer to choose not to need a make believe of justice in order to want what I want is that it seems to me that this make believe called justice is very much a driver of the great majority of the violence and war in the world. Both sides are using violence to go for what they want, and they are both, fascinatingly, appealing to this same make believe called justice--a make believe which strongly justifies their use of violence in pursuing what they want.

This brings us back to Osama. His beautiful gentle face is, in one sense, the face of one side of a war. Both Osama's side and Empire's side strongly appeal to the make believe of justice in pursuing what they want. I wonder how many of you, lovely readers, have a real sense of Osama's legitimate wants--the ones underlying his violent rhetoric? Have you ever read his two fatwa? Here's his 1996 fatwa. Its language so strongly appeals to the make-believe of justice.

I wonder how many of you, dear readers, have considered the wants of Osama bin Laden--the wants which motivated his attacks on September 11 and prior to that against U.S. embassies, U.S. warships, etc.? Have you been able to dispassionately consider what was driving him?

Wikipedia has an interesting article on motivations for the September 11 attacks--drawn from Osama's fatawa and interviews with him. He was concerned about, among other things: U.S. sanctions against Iraq, U.S. forces deployed in Islam's most holy nation (Saudi Arabia), and U.S. support of Israel against the Palestinians.

What's really fascinating is that all these actions by Empire (the U.S. et al.), and the violence which accompanied them, were motivated identically to Osama et al.'s motivation--appeals to justice. Sanctions against Iraq were statedly in pursuit of justice for Kuwait. U.S./Empire support of Israel grew (arguably) out of pursuit of justice for Jews after World War II.

That is to say--all the violence on both sides was, and continues to be, in response to previous violence, with strong appeals to justice. Obama has himself strongly appealed to justice over the last several days since Empire killed Osama. The problem with the make believe of justice is that what looks like justice to one side never looks like justice to the other. Osama's friends and associates don't see his death as justice, and are calling for and will doubtless carry out more violence in pursuit of justice regarding Osama's death. Similarly, America/Empire didn't see it as justice when Osama and associates carried out violent death on 9-11, or in embassy bombings etc. The ongoing violence is never going to end with a justice which everyone feels is just. The only way it is ever going to end is when someone decides to forgive. But that is a subject for a different post.

My main point here was that somehow, for me, Osama's face, so plastered all over the news recently, has come to powerfully represent this whole make believe of justice, and its futility, and the futility and self-perpetuating nature of the myth of redemptive violence, which percolates somehow through both of these major cultures (Western and Arabic) and both of these major religions (Christianity and Islam).

Surprised by Weeping over me.

2011-03-21T12:04:00.001+11:00

I recently had a kind of strange experience which reminded me of another similar experience a while ago.

A (new to me--now my friend but formerly just Megs' friend) friend came over recently and spent the day--she's from out of state. In the course of our conversation, the subject of prayer came up, and I matter of factly told her I don't pray any more (all hail, by the way, Lucius Shepard's brilliant Handbook of American Prayer, which I massively recommend). She responded to this initially with gentle disbelief--the assumption that I must be joking. However I gently persisted, and when she realized I was serious she seemed a bit shocked, and said she wanted to hear more. So I shared with her a bit about my deconversion experience. She was genuinely and warmly listening, which is a really lovely experience, but then in the middle of my story she suddenly had tears streaming down her cheeks. I found this really surprising and interesting, and suddenly wanted to hear some of her story rather than telling her any more of mine. Alas, she was somewhat reticent to answer my questions, and despite gentle persistence I ended up getting only the very vaguest (I love that--"vaguest") of answers from her about why she was weeping. Maybe next time she visits I'll learn more. I hope so! =).

It felt astonishingly strange to me to have someone weep over my experience when my own feelings about that experience of are ones of delight, gratitude, and wonder. This strangeness feels very delicious--I want more of it. This is also a bit fascinating as my previous feelings about that same experience were also ones of pain and sorrow--ah the delight of switching over to happy-making make believes!

I see from the experience that I've changed a lot over the past couple of years--because it reminded me of a similar experience I had a little over 2 years ago. My mother had recently died, and my story about it at that time was one that had me feeling a lot of painful emotions--I suppose you might describe my experience at the time as being a bit raw. During that time, another friend/acquaintance (someone I used to know but hand't been in touch with for years--really more a friend of my parents) had a vaguely similar reaction. My amazing sister had expressed (on facebook) that she was no longer a Christian. This former friend responded by saying that my mother must be weeping in heaven (shitty version of heaven, right?) to know that both of her children were no longer Christians. At that time, my response was one of almost overwhelming anger. In fact, my written response to her on facebook was pretty much the unkindest thing I've ever said to anyone, from my point of view. I say from my point of view because of course unkindness is a totally different experience for the giver and the receiver of said unkindess, based on their own make believes. But from my point of view, what I said to this friend was me bringing my perhaps not-inconsiderable mental and emotional resources to bear, along with my knowledge of this person's make believe, to say the very meanest most unkind and outrageous thing I could possibly think of to say--I wanted to hurt her, because I was blaming her for the way in which I had hurt myself in response to her words. I'm pretty sure it worked really well too, as I heard reports that she spent the entire day weeping.

Under my previous make-believe, I would end this story by judging what I did as "bad" and saying I was sorry to have done it. But now it's simply really fascinating to me.

Have you ever been surprised by someone weeping over you? Tell me a story!

Pirsig's Church of Reason

2011-02-24T23:53:00.000+11:00

Tomorrow I am starting back to Uni, and I see that among other things I need to reread Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (also because the last time I read it, 20 years ago, I had never ridden a motorcycle).

Here's his introduction of the idea of the Church of Reason (clearly it's a little long, but well worth reading, in my opinion):

That night, for the next day's lecture, he wrote out his defense of what he was doing. This was the Church of Reason lecture, which, in contrast to his usual sketchy lecture notes, was very long and very carefully elaborated.

It began with reference to a newspaper article about a country church building with an electric beer sign hanging right over the front entrance. The building had been sold and was being used as a bar. One can guess that some classroom laughter started at this point. The college was well known for drunken partying and the image vaguely fit. The article said a number of people had complained to the church officials about it. It had been a Catholic church, and the priest who had been delegated to respond to the criticism had sounded quite irritated about the whole thing. To him it had revealed an incredible ignorance of what a church really was. Did they think that bricks and boards and glass constituted a church? Or the shape of the roof? Here, posing as piety was an example of the very materialism the church opposed. The building in question was not holy ground. It had been desanctified. That was the end of it. The beer sign resided over a bar, not a church, and those who couldn't tell the difference were simply revealing something about themselves.

Phædrus said the same confusion existed about the University and that was why loss of accreditation was hard to understand. The real University is not a material object. It is not a group of buildings that can be defended by police. He explained that when a college lost its accreditation, nobody came and shut down the school. There were no legal penalties, no fines, no jail sentences. Classes did not stop. Everything went on just as before. Students got the same education they would if the school didn't lose its accreditation.

All that would happen, Phædrus said, would simply be an official recognition of a condition that already existed. It would be similar to excommunication. What would happen is that the real University, which no legislature can dictate to and which can never be identified by any location of bricks or boards or glass, would simply declare that this place was no longer ``holy ground.'' The real University would vanish from it, and all that would be left was the bricks and the books and the material manifestation.

It must have been a strange concept to all of the students, and I can imagine him waiting for a long time for it to sink in, and perhaps then waiting for the question, What do you think the real University is?

His notes, in response to this question, state the following: The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.

In addition to this state of mind, ``reason,'' there's a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address. It owns property, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative pressures in the process.

But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at all.

It is just a church building, the setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist.

Confusion continually occurs in people who fail to see this difference, he said, and think that control of the church buildings implies control of the church. They see professors as employees of the second university who should abandon reason when told to and take orders with no backtalk, the same way employees do in other corporations.

They see the second university, but fail to see the first.

I remember reading this for the first time and remarking about the analytic craftsmanship displayed. He avoided splitting the University into fields or 150 departments and dealing with the results of that analysis. He also avoided the traditional split into students, faculty and administration.

When you split it either of those ways you get a lot of dull stuff that doesn't really tell you much you can't get out of the official school bulletin. But Phædrus split it between "the church" and
"the location", and once this cleavage is made the same rather dull and imponderable institution seen in the bulletin suddenly is seen with a degree of clarity that wasn't previously available. On the basis of this cleavage he provided explanations for a number of puzzling but normal aspects of University life.

After these explanations he returned to the analogy of the religious church.

The citizens who build such a church and pay for it probably have in mind that they're doing this for the community. A good sermon can put the parishioners in a right frame of mind for the coming week. Sunday school will help the children grow up right. The minister who delivers the sermon and directs the Sunday school understands these goals and normally goes along with them, but he also knows that his primary goals are not to serve the community. His primary goal is always to serve God. Normally there's no conflict but occasionally one creeps in when trustees oppose the minister's sermons and threaten reduction of funds. That happens.

A true minister, in such situations, must act as though he'd never heard the threats. His primary goal isn't to serve the members of the community, but always God.

The primary goal of the Church of Reason, Phædrus said, is always Socrates'
old goal of truth, in its ever-changing forms, as it's revealed by the process of rationality. Everything else is subordinate to that. Normally this goal is in no conflict with the location goal of improving the citizenry, but on occasion some conflict arises, as in the case of Socrates himself. It arises when trustees and legislators who've contributed large amounts of time and money to the location take points of view in opposition to the professors' lectures or public statements. They can then lean on the administration by threatening to cut off funds if the professors don't say what they want to hear. That happens too.

True churchmen in such situations must act as though they had never heard these threats. Their primary goal never is to serve the community ahead of everything else. Their primary goal is to serve, through reason, the goal of truth.

That was what he meant by the Church of Reason. There was no question but that it was a concept that was deeply felt by him. He was regarded as something of a troublemaker but was never censured for it in any proportion to the amount of trouble he made. What saved him from the wrath of everyone around him was partly an unwillingness to give any support to the enemies of the college, but also partly a begrudging understanding that all of his troublemaking was ultimately motivated by a mandate they were never free from themselves: the mandate to speak the rational truth.

The lecture notes explain almost al of why he acted the way he did, but leave one thing unexplained...his fanatic intensity. One can believe in the truth and in the process of reason to discover it and in resistance to state legislatures, but why burn one's self out, day after day, over it?

The psychological explanations that have been made to me seem inadequate.
Stage fright can't sustain that kind of effort month after month. Neither does another explanation sound right, that he was trying to redeem himself for his earlier failure. There is no evidence anywhere that he ever thought of his expulsion from the university as a failure, just an enigma. The explanation I've come to arises from the discrepancy between his lack of faith in scientific reason in the laboratory and his fanatic faith expressed in the Church of Reason lecture. I was thinking about the discrepancy one day and it suddenly came to me that it wasn't a discrepancy at all. His lack of faith in reason was why he was so fanatically dedicated to it.
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.

The militancy of the Jesuits he somewhat resembled is a case in point. Historically their zeal stems not from the strength of the Catholic Church but from its weakness in the face of the Reformation. It was Phædrus' lack of faith in reason that made him such a fanatic teacher. That makes more sense. And it makes a lot of sense out of the things that followed.

That's probably why he felt such a deep kinship with so many failing students in the back rows of his classrooms. The contemptuous looks on their faces reflected the same feelings he had toward the whole rational, intellectual process. The only difference was that they were contemptuous because they didn't understand it. He was contemptuous because he did.

Because they didn't understand it they had no solution but to fail and for the rest of their lives remember the experience with bitterness. He on the other hand felt fanatically obliged to do something about it. That was why his Church of Reason lecture was so carefully prepared. He was telling them you have to have faith in reason because there isn't anything else. But it was a faith he didn't have himself.

It must always be remembered that this was the nineteen-fifties, not the nineteen-seventies. There were rumblings from the beatniks and early hippies at this time about ``the system'' and the square intellectualism that supported it, but hardly anyone guessed how deeply the whole edifice would be brought into doubt. So here was Phædrus, fanatically defending an institution, the Church of Reason, that no one, no one certainly in Bozeman, Montana, had any cause to doubt. A pre-Reformation Loyola. A militant reassuring everyone the sun would rise tomorrow, when no one was worried. They just wondered about him.

But now, with the most tumultuous decade of the century between him and ourselves, a decade in which reason has been assailed and assaulted beyond the wildest beliefs of the fifties, I think that in this Chautauqua based on his discoveries we can understand a little better what he was talking about -- a solution for it al -- if only that were true -- so much of it's lost there's no way of knowing.

A lament for cancelled science fiction television

2011-02-12T01:17:00.001+11:00

Referencing SGU and Caprica (and for me also Flashforward, SCC, Dark Angel, and alas too many others), Carmen says it so beautifully in this well written piece.

"Science fiction is one of the most thought-provoking genres out there with the potential to tell good stories—which, among other things, explore what it means to be human. It gets at who we are and why we do the things we do and takes us down the roads those choices lead. It tells us something about ourselves, the reality we live in, the people around us. It invites us to reflect on our lives, provokes us to examine what we believe and why, and helps us think through the issues facing us in our own lives"

miniaturization, and "eighth"

2011-02-11T23:04:00.001+11:00

I totally owned one of these. It was about 6 inches long and half an inch thick. (I realize that this latter sentence leaves me open to certain snide remarks being made.)

Now I own one of these. It's about an inch wide and about an eighth of an inch thick. It holds exactly 1 million times as much information as the first one (yes, it's a different sort of memory, but it still works out.)

By the way--when you say "eighth" out loud, do you pronounce it "tth", that is, with a hard t followed by the th sound? Or do you simply pronounce it with the th sound?

Bummer

2011-02-11T09:32:00.000+11:00

A Day in the Life of Palestinians in Hebron

2011-02-05T20:06:00.000+11:00

Brooke shares a story from CPT

The intersection of Whingers and Wankers

2011-02-05T18:51:00.001+11:00

Help me out--What label goes in A? I'm still trying to learn Australian.

shall soon be reading!!

2011-02-03T18:22:00.001+11:00

(Click on the picture for a bigger more legible version)

I'm a millionaire! Woot!

2011-02-01T08:09:00.000+11:00

receieved today in my facebook inbox:

Subject: Please reply to my private email ID: sksandrakossi@gmail.com for more informations
ATTORNEY MRS SANDRA KOSSI
Senior Advocate, International Legal Practitioner
Sandra chambers & Financial ATTORNEY

Dear Benjamin Ady,

I‘m sorry if this proposal or information of mine may be a disturbance or harassment, Mr.P.A.Ady was a senior engineer here in Togo West Africa and he was my client as well, he died by car accident and he also left some funds with Commercial Bank of Togo before he died so contact me for the claim trough this address below and for more information because you have the same last name with him.

NB: The funds left by your late relation which was my late client with Commercial Bank of Togo is $6.5 millions dollars

Please reply to my private email ID: sksandrakossi@gmail.com for more informations.

Remain bless
Best Regards
Mrs Sandra Kossi.Esq
+2286066302

comparisons

2011-01-24T10:39:00.000+11:00

Ivan Frederick got ~~eight~~ three years in prison, while Cathleen Miller got ten. Karl Rove got zero.

When I was intentionally unkind

2010-11-23T21:40:00.001+11:00

I can remember only one occasion when I was intentionally mean to someone--I got very very angry, and then coldly decided to say the meanest thing I could possibly say. I wanted them to feel worse than I felt when they said something very mean to me. The difference was that their unkindness was unintentional. Astonishingly ignorant, but nevertheless unintentional.

I was pretty effective--the person cried all day, or so I heard. I'm glad that now I feel so much safer in the world than I did then, and now I have an internal place-to-stand from which I can notice my reaction and be accepting and fascinated about it.

It's totally fascinating to me that the great majority of other people feeling pain in response to my words and actions has been besides, rather than because of, my intention--that is, that generally I hadn't set out wanting them to feel pain.

What is joining?

2010-11-20T00:12:00.000+11:00

Joining is like this: I work with 5 beautiful little children who have autism, aged 3 to 7. Some of them have behaviors which we call "isms". For instance, one of my children, N, does an ism where he paces/prances around his room holding a shirt in his hand. He waves the shirt in intricate and fascinating and repetitious patterns back and forth and up and down, and he studies the shirt and the carpet upon which he is pacing/prancing/dancing with enormous concentration and focus. While he's doing all this he vocalizes--usually sounds that we generally can't understand to be words. Sometimes N can ism for 45 minutes without a break. Sometimes for 2 hours. It used to be that he wouldn't look at anyone at all while he was doing that. Now he tends to glance over regularly while he's isming.

His parents used to use a program for helping N. called ABA. That program called for the parents to do their best to stop N from doing the ism--they would interrupt him, physically manipulate him, very insistently demand that he do what they wanted, pay attention to them, etc. etc.

Now his parents use a program called the SonRise program. I am part of the team of volunteers who works with N. When he isms, we join him. We carefully observe his behavior, and try to understand what he is getting out of it--why does he enjoy it so much--by doing it with him--sometimes on the other side of the room, and sometimes closer. We match him step for intricate step, wave of shirt for intricate wave of shirt, vocalism for vocalism. We do this with delight, as he clearly delights in it. We do it with joy and energy, because we are doing our absolute best to say to N "If you are unable to come into our world, then it is our delight and privilege to join you in your world. You rock and we want to be with you."

We are being kind to N, and in so doing, because we love him and love being with him so much--we are also being kind to ourselves. N's parents really rather disliked the ABA program they were using before, but they believed it was the best thing at that time. In finding the SonRise program, they have grown in their ability to be kind to N and kind to themselves. They and N are in the process of growing in their ability to be kind to themselves and others. I find this is a brilliant beautiful amazing delight.

I'm chainless. I don't have the power now. and my Hoorays list.

2010-10-27T20:44:00.000+11:00

My motorcycle is chainless, and has been towed to Pablo's for repair. Woooohoooooot that nothing worse happened when the chain broke! I mean what if I had been desperately needing to accelerate at that moment in order to avoid a collision? Hooray for perfect timing of broken chains! Hooray for (barely (but honestly, who ever needs more than just enough?)) enough money to get it towed and repaired! Hooray that I get to commute on a motorcycle, which makes my day ever day (excepting on days when it's in the shop, in which case I get to make my own day in other ways (I was sorely temptly to purposely misspell "excepting" as "accepting" there)! Hooray that Jack Mason-Goodall is coming to Melbourne in something like less than 3 months! Hooray Hooray Hooray Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was touched by his noodly appendage!

2010-10-23T10:12:00.001+11:00

More notes on Melbourne: clocks and Mt. Rainier

2010-10-19T17:02:00.000+11:00

One thing I've noticed over the last few weeks is that there are rather a lot of big, public, analog clocks in Melbourne--on the tops of towers, outside buildings, etc., and that as far as I can tell None of them ever have anything remotely like the correct time. This seems strange and pointless to me.

Today I was driving home in the beautiful sunshiny spring afternoon, and out of the corner of my eye I caught a whitish something up above the horizon over that way. I immediately looked over fully expecting to see the lovely vaunted vaulted snowladen top of the beautiful Mount Rainier.

When it turned out to be a bit of wispy cloud, my heart jumped into my throat and my nose got all tingly in that way it does when I am about to weep. FSM I miss Seattle.

Internal basement and balcony people, and power.

2010-10-14T22:08:00.000+11:00

Some time ago, I learned a metaphor for thinking about people who either tear one down or build one up--basement people are people who suck the life right out of one, with various toxic, draining, unkind methods-of-relating--balcony people are people who somehow channel energy, life, joy, hope, encouragement toward one with their amazing kindness, graciousness, excitement.

Today I realized in a new way that actually the reason any of those things work on me is because I have my own internal basement and balcony people, who love to pick up on the things those external basement and balcony people are saying and doing and use that as further evidence that actually they are right, I should listen to them, etc. etc.

Also noted--my internal balcony person is generally (these days) much more powerful than my internal basement person. When I say powerful, I mean something very specific. My internal balcony person is able to listen with love and without judgment. My internal basement person is pretty much composed of judgments--if he tried to listen without judgment, he would discorporate. I find that the ability to listen nonjudgmentally is astonishingly powerful.

More things I miss about Seattle:

2010-10-12T22:47:00.000+11:00

India Pale Ale on tap everywhere. Little did I know I was drinking especially hoppy pale ale

Also noted recently--someone invited me to an upcoming Christmas Party. The days are getting longer, and much warmer, and we recently sprang ahead with daylight savings time, and ... WTF? It's impossible for Christmas to be approaching.

I continue to be regularly surprised at new things which I have to price and learn that yes, they too are much more expensive than they would have been in Seattle. Recent examples include: hot water heater, washing machine, and helicoil thread repair kit.

However, I can now confidently cross the street with relatively high assurance I know from which direction the cars will be approaching. There's something to be said for this. There's also something to be said for Christmas, which is clearly one of the most depressing days of the entire year, happening on a day when there likely to be lots of sunlight--or at least many hours of daylight. I *shall* learn to love this place. It's happening to me and for me, in spite of myself =). Hooray!!!

Extra terrestrials and human television

2010-09-29T23:54:00.001+10:00

The People and The New People.

2010-09-16T19:08:00.001+10:00

Early in our marriage, we were friends with a really lovely couple who among other things did a little couples marriage counseling with us. During that counseling, they taught us one thing which has really stuck with us--something which has been useful multiple times over the past ten years.

As often happens, this couple sort of drifted out of our lives. We've not seen either of them in several years, and although we are still vaguely in touch with them on facebook and such, we don't really know them anymore.

A funny thing happened at some point. One of use, in a conversation, found ourselves temporarily unable to remember their names, and instead referred to them as "The People". The first time this happened, of course, it took some explaining for the other of us to understand to whom we were referring. Strangely, this name stuck, and gradually over the years we stopped using their names altogether when we were referring to them in conversation, instead simply calling them "The People", or when referring to one of them "The Husband of The People" and other variations on this theme.

Tonite The People came up in our conversation, and I realized I could no longer access their names. I have a sense that I could probably find them in my list of facebook friends and thus be reminded, but as it stands, I honestly can't remember their first nor last names. They have permanently become "The People".

Perhaps even more interestingly, since we moved to Australia a new couple has begun to vie for the name "The People". I can, of course, still totally remember *their* names. However "The New People" also works now, in conversation--Megs and I both know about whom we are talking. =)

Your turn--tell us about a bit of private jargon which you use.

First they came for the ...

2010-09-09T18:51:00.000+10:00

terrorism suspects.

So my guess is something along these lines: In light of developments (or lack thereof) with Guantanamo Bay, and in light of the fact that Obama is pretty much the least bow-to-the-military-establishment guy we are going to see elected president in the next 20 years and he has done pretty much zilch re: Patriot Act, Extraordinary Powers, etc. etc., the ACLU may as well close it's doors, and basically it's sayonara the U.S. ever again being the world's bastion of civil liberties, freedom, etc. etc (if we ever were). Only 39 months until I'm eligible for Aussie citizenship. Wooooot!

Gun Safety

2010-09-04T14:28:00.001+10:00

When I went to my father's house in rural Washington state 2 weeks ago, one thing I noticed was that leaned up against the piano was a 22 caliber rifle, and sitting next to it on the piano was a small box with about 30 live rounds in it. I naturally picked up the rifle and checked to see if there were any rounds loaded, opening the bolt action chamber and removing the small clip. Then I naturally pointed it out the window and took sights on the well house out in the paddock. It took me a while to notice this as anything other than completely normal. I remain a product of my upbringing. Perhaps it's not so strange, in the end, that I accidentally shot myself in the hand with a BB gun at the age of 17.

I found myself in a discussion, later in the day, with my amazing lovely dad and my very kewl brother in law, both of whom thought it would be totally fine, in terms of safety were I to bring my 8 year old daughter to the property to visit, to simply place the guns (yes, the perhaps as many as 2 dozen guns in the house) under my dad's bed. In the end they agreed to get them out of the house altogether before she visited, but they still thought my boundary was unnecessarily stiff.

Just as an FYI, even the National Rifle Association, which is more or less the biggest group of civilian gun crazies in the world, recommends that gun owners keep their guns and ammunition physically/mechanically inaccessible to children and other unauthorized persons.

I find it wonderful that here in Australia we as parents don't so much have to inquire, with new friends, about guns in the house before we can bring our children or let them visit. It's just not an issue. In Australia gun owners are legally required to store their guns in a safe, bolted down, and locked, and to store the ammunition in a separate bolted down locked safe. Furthermore, there just aren't anything like as many guns in general circulation as there are in the U.S. Woooohooooot!!!!!

Benjamin's wants for September

2010-09-02T07:00:00.000+10:00

list of wants for september.

1. to find out I'm going with Shelley Hackett to Max Impact in October
2. to walk 50 miles
3. organize a SonRise info night for parents in melbourne
4. to be bigger and more loving than I am now
5. to read "younger next year"
6. to go for a family bicycle ride down the coast
7. to turn toward and fully embrace my fears about money
8. to do at least 4 option process dialogues
9. to write a poem
10. to do 2000 pushups.
11. to go on a yacht ride with my friend John.
12. to find out someone's amazing secret.
13. to compose a new song.

What are your wants for September?

Darleks

2010-08-11T19:40:00.000+10:00

My children backward engineer language. So ... they have figured out that in Aus, many words that have an "r" sound in them have the "r" sound more or less dropped. Hence for instance here, for the word "here", people say "heeuh" rather than the Seattle pronunciation "heer". The backward engineering sometimes misfires for them, such as, for instance, with the Daleks from Doctor Who, who have now become "Darleks"--because they haven't seen the spelling--they're working from what they hear. How kewl is that?

Hooray!

2010-08-07T19:56:00.001+10:00

bits of my time in Tacoma.

2010-08-02T00:55:00.001+10:00

I used to live in this little house, for about 1 year, with my mum and my sister, while my dad was away fixing angels of death for the U.S. air force in Turkey. The people in the house just to the left, which you can't really see here, used to have loud drunken parties on weekends, which my mum found quite scary. I went up to the Cub Scout day camp at Wapato park, a few blocks from here, where I learned this song.

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While we lived there, we started attending this church, Bethesda Baptist, where one Sunday I went into a little room with a Sunday School worker and confessed my sins to Jesus and asked him to forgive me and come live inside my heart. 17 Years later, when I was raising funds to spend two years as a missionary on LOGOS II, I called the pastor of this church to ask if I could come tell them about what I was doing--I thought it would be nice for them since I "got saved" at that church. But the pastor at that time was hypercalvinist and a bit sectarian, and he told me on the phone that I certainly wouldn't be allowed to come speak to anyone at the church unless I believed certain very specific things, which of course I didn't believe =).

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Also while there, I attended this school, McCarver Elementary. It was 1984. There was a classroom full of truly ancient personal computers which we went into once a week to do stuff on them. My homeroom teacher read aloud to us. She read "Sounder" and "Pippi Longstocking" and "The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. The whole school got together occasionally to watch a movie in the auditorium. The only one I remember was the animated version of the Hobbit. My awesome cousin Kelly went with me to this school, and we got off at the same school bus stop on the way home, after nearly an hour's ride. She would often have to remind me to get off the bus because I would be so engrossed in a book. After school I'd go home and watch Nickelodeon on TV, and dukes of hazard and Fall Guy and A Team and Greatest American Hero. It was the last year of my whole life that I ever lived in a house which received broadcast television.

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Double Rainbow

2010-07-31T12:50:00.000+10:00

this

and then this

a list of American heroes

2010-07-31T11:43:00.000+10:00

Daniel Ellsberg, Joe Darby, Bradley Manning, and if it turns out not to be Manning, the person who turned over the Afghan War Diary to Wikileaks.

People like this make me proud to be an American. I hope that if the opportunity arises, I can emulate their courage.

Crown Casino Meblourne--worse blackjack ever?

2010-07-24T19:53:00.000+10:00

I poked through Crown Casino Friday evening for a couple hours, and wonders if people in Melbourne are just far less informed than people in ... Vegas, for instance, or even Seattle. I counted 80 people playing blackjack at 6 to 5 tables, H17, dealt from a CSM, double hard 9, 10,11 only, when just downstairs and over that way there were open spots at 3 to 2, H17, double anything, dealt from a shoe with decent pen tables. I would be embarrassed to work as a dealer or floor at the former tables/pits.

From reading to watching to ....

2010-07-17T13:31:00.000+10:00

I really enjoyed this article from Kevin Kelley in Smithsonian magazine about the past and the future of reading. He says:

In books we find a revealed truth; on the screen we assemble our own truth from pieces. On networked screens everything is linked to everything else. The status of a new creation is determined not by the rating given to it by critics but by the degree to which it is linked to the rest of the world.

Just as technology in some ways followed, and in some ways caused, the shift to modernism, so also technology both follows and causes the shift to post-modernism. Fascinating stuff. (H/T Daniel Martin)

Thoughts after seven months in Melbourne

2010-07-15T21:49:00.001+10:00

We've been in Melbourne for 7 months now. I'm gradually getting a handle on what we gave up, and on what we are gaining.

I'm glad we moved. I believe it was exactly the perfect thing to do. And WOW there are some amazingly beautiful kind gracious fascinating glorious people in Seattle who loved us so very well from geographical closeness, and who still love us from geographical distance--the former a far more intensely delightful experience than the latter, in my opinion.

Yesterday for the first time I can remember I automatically looked right first rather than left first when I was about to walk across a street. Upon realizing what I'd done, I felt a certain sense of joy and loss.

My thoughts about the transition were, and continue to be, that it's a three year process to feel at home again. so we've accomplished one sixth of that, and one sixth of something huge and amazing is in itself huge and amazing.

Today a stranger was putting her metcard into ticketing machine on the tram the wrong way 'round, and getting a little frustrated, and I gently told her how to do it correctly. She then asked me how to get, via the tram system, to the a certain location in the city, and I was able to tell her quite easily. However, at least 2 or 3 times a week I still experience people mentioning suburbs in conversations and having no sense at all of the location--something that rarely happened to me in Seattle.

I LOVE knowing I can get out in the sun pretty much every day even though it's winter. Conversely, I never ever had to use chapstick during Seattle winters.

People I'm thankful for in Melbourne: John and Tami and Phoebe and Tom and Georgia and Avak and Anita and Mark and Melissa and Phil and Shelley and David and Kerry,and Nevilleand Toddy and Louise and Arlette and Javier and Becky and Phil, and Sal and David and Gretta and David Nicholas and Rachel and Seren and Tim and Emma and Ann and Kobe and Thomas and Nicholas and Campbell and Kevin and Kate and Gaby and Nyrie and Will and Aiden.

I've almost adjusted to having a limited quota of data associated with my DSL every month.

I can tell you 4 places to go in Melbourne for really yummy free lunches and dinners. But unlike Seattle, I know of exactly zero good dependable dumpsters in Melbourne.

29 months to go until I can expect to feel fully at home here. and 41 months to go until I can apply for Aussie citizenship.

"Denial helps the bystander"

2010-06-26T20:40:00.000+10:00

I found this article about the new book from Jessica Stern, terrorism expert and rape victim, totally readable. Jessica says:

Denial helps the bystander. We don't want to know what the boys we send to Iraq have done to others out of terror, or what others have done to them. We would rather not know about terror or be confronted with evil. This is as true about Abu Ghraib as it is about personal assaults and more private crimes, the crimes that occur inside families. But the victim, too, cannot bear to believe. She may bury or disassociate from or disown her pain.

So much for the U.S. Constitution

2010-06-25T23:50:00.000+10:00

But of course we already knew that, didn't we?

Cory Doctorow writes as fiction what is actually happening--the U.S. government's right to abduct, and torture, innocent people--with impunity.

You can hereby officially cancel out Article 1, section 9, and Amendments 4, 5, 6, and 8.

Only 42 months until I can apply for Aussie citizenship =).

Leaving gracefully

2010-06-19T17:33:00.000+10:00

is not always possible. And that's okay.

From the age of 9 until the age of 24, I was deeply involved in a very sectarian Christian church--so much so that they supported me and sent me off in 1998 for a 2 year missionary trip with a huge worldwide Christian missions organization called Operation Mobilization.

I geographically returned to that church in early 2001, having married, and having changed enormously in a lot of ways.

A couple months later, my super awesome wife and I left that church--discontinued all association with it. We did not do so super gracefully.

Here's what I have to say about that: There is no scenario better than the one that happened. I'm *stoked* that we left--one of the best decisions in my whole life. I most certainly would not and could not be doing the amazing delightful work I'm doing now if I were still involved with that church. And we left in the best way we possibly could, as the people we were at that time and place.

Imagine

2010-06-13T11:56:00.000+10:00

From Bears Kaufman:

BE A STUDENT OF OURSELVES: The idea of studying ourselves (not politics, not medicine, not carpentry, not driver education) as a PRIMARY PATH to self-understanding and change (individually and globally). A Five Step Process: Step #1, SELF-AWARNESS. What do I think (believe), what do I feel (emotions), what do I do (behave).

Imagine the universe has a heart-beat and that heart-beat within each of us. Imagine that by really knowing and understanding ourselves, we will also get magnificent insights into the universe (at least, how we operate in the universe and how the universe mirrors us). Imagine that the path of self-understanding is also a pathway not only to our own clarity but to the most spiritual embrace of ourselves. Imagine, just imagine, we came into life fully equipped – consciousness, thoughts (beliefs), choice and humanity. Therefore, we don’t have to go anywhere to jump into the heart of the universe – because we are that heart. Let’s get to know who we are and how we operate. It begins by sincere and serious study of our OWN thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Step # 1. Yeah!!!

Stupidest. Headline. Ever.

2010-06-10T23:34:00.000+10:00

US Lowers Expectations for Quick Success in Taliban Stronghold.

'nuff said.

More "Make Believe Defines Reality"!

2010-06-10T20:01:00.000+10:00

Wendy Wright, president of the Concerned Women for America, totally cracks me up in this article about a study which showed that the children of lesbian couples are better adjusted than children in the general populace. Wendy said

"You have to be a little suspicious of any study that says children being raised by same-sex couples do better or have superior outcomes to children raised with a mother and father. It just defies common sense and reality."

Brooke on the The Gaza Flotilla

2010-06-07T00:56:00.000+10:00

In this post, Brooke writes so beautifully, perfectly, clearly, passionately, self-awarely. Thank you Brooke! In part, she writes:

how rather than learning how not to oppress, those who have been oppressed learn how to oppress. it’s a powerful comment and drawing from my experience in the LGBTA community i can see it. i can see the oppression in my own behavior and language. when we are powerless, we want power, and we express that power in the ways we learned. thus it makes sense, to me at least, that israel would act the way it does, and for its spin machine to spin as fast as possible so that it can legitimize its actions. the state of israel, and my own state, needs to be right.

Memorial Day Weekend

2010-05-29T20:58:00.000+10:00

Memorial day weekend in the U.S. is beginning. There shall be buckets and barrels and bushels of praise, glory, etc. heaped on war, war veterans, violence as a means to peace, etc. etc. Meanwhile U.S. vets shall continue to kill and torture people abroad, and shall continue to commit suicide at double the rate of others, and shall continue to struggle for the rest of their lives with combat related PTSD, depression, and a host of other problems. It's our annual culture-wide homage to the (caca de vaca) myth of redemptive violence. Here's to the country that spends 60% of the entire planet's violence budget.

Suppose

2010-05-29T19:21:00.000+10:00

Suppose that the universe is actually set up in such a way that you don't necessarily get the best possible outcome for you.

OR

Suppose that the universe is actually set up in such a way that you necessarily get the best possible outcome for you.

AND suppose that (regardless of the above) you choose to believe that the universe is set up in such a way that you necessarily get the best possible outcome for you. Then:

1. Are there any downsides to such a choice?

2. And if so, what are they?

3. And if not, then ... are you going to make such a choice?

4. And if not, why?

Chuck Colson is a dork

2010-05-28T10:43:00.000+10:00

I mean that in the nicest possible way. This is hilarious. He should try out stand up comedy.

Words/phrases from this commentary:

a savage, covered head to toe in tattoos.
the continuing applicability of Old Testament law (especially re: shellfish) (note: parenthetical comment is my own)
pagans
gentiles
raw material on which we simply carve graffiti.
Even young women who mark their bodies with flowers or butterflies
Tattoos last a lifetime—unless they are painfully removed.
the higher and the lower, the superior and the inferior
a tattoo or, even worse, a body piercing

Full of yes

2010-05-25T18:50:00.001+10:00

What would it feel like, I wonder, if I were able to arrange my life, thoughts, and words in such a way that if a person were to follow me around 24/7 and record every time I said "yes" or "no", the ratio of "yes"s to "no"s were 100 to 1? I wonder what my current ratio is? My guess is that it's around 5 to 1. How about you?

Is Autism the greatest gift for your [autistic] child?

2010-05-24T16:13:00.001+10:00

In response to this question, my awesome friend Avak said today:

"YES ABSOLUTELY, coz he is perfect the way he is and happy the way he is, he IS making his own choices, he is not yelling out to us saying "please help me, i am struggling with autism" and his choices are fine with us, our effort and energy is now spent on showing him that he can make other choices that we typically make...loving & accepting him the way he is, has been the NUMBER 1 FACTOR for Nicholas growing and developing over the last 14 months, especially in the areas of eye contact, interactive attention span, & fleixibility...verbal communication is a working progress too...after having met many, many parents over the last 3 years with children with ASD...the major stumbling block that they all had in relation to their child (including my wife and I) was that they had a tough time accepting, REALLY accepting their child as they are, they are very uncomfortable that their child is not "normal" like all other kids...once you LET GO of that, your child's potential is limitless...;))))"

Things I used to believe

2010-05-18T18:17:00.000+10:00

A partial list

I am designed by God with a melancholic personality.

Not getting what I wanted makes me unhappy.

I can't get what I want.

It's not okay to be unhappy (Damn these last three are sort of a deadly trifecta).

My misery is both inevitable and my own fault.

Getting angry helps me get what I want.

When people are frightened of or repulsed by me, it's about me.

Masturbating is bad.

There is an objective reality more real than what I believe or don't believe.

I'm not very good at relating to people.

The world is a generally dark place--there is way more bad news than good news.

I should feel guilty if people are starving while I have plenty to eat. etc.

People are inherently bad.

I'm naturally good at spotting the things that are bad in other people and organizations.

If I negatively criticize myself out loud, that will help other people like me.

Other people are disgusted by my body, and that matters.

I can't draw very well.

The best way to not feel a negative emotion is to avoid touching it or looking at it.

Wow. I am so glad I don't believe any of those anymore. Wooohooooot!!!!!

She will not go behind her father's saying.

2010-05-17T13:29:00.001+10:00

Sarah Palin is quoted today as saying "We're all Arizonians now" and "Mr. President, do your job--secure our border!".

I say Frost understood better. In "Mending Wall", he describes Palin perfectly:

He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors.

What I miss in Seattle

2010-05-15T22:02:00.000+10:00

Bag End. Thornton Creek. The Floating Meadow. Meadowbrook Community Center. A certain Bar on Lake City Way. Russell.

Chris, Laurel, Eric, Tony, Diana, Jennie, Jay, Mike, Ted, Renee, James B., Kindlings Muse, Seth, Russell.

Jim, Kat, Dad, Tracy, Saeid, Lily, Travis, Heather, Aliya, Sofi, Russell.

Knowing that pretty much anyone I met is going to think George Bush was a ******* of the worst sort. Seattle Weekly. Nathalie. Knowing automatically which way the cars would come from when I crossed the street. Knowing I could be in a foreign country in two hours. Knowing the city council would never actually do anything. Getting to watch Dino Rossi get squashed again =). Russell.

Christmas in winter. Spring in late May. Real Mountains on both sides. Alpine lakes. Shitty rocky "beaches". The generally awesome people selling Real Change for only a buck. Being able to find anything I wanted super cheap locally on craigslist. Chou Chou. Not paying international shipping from Amazon. Russell.

Knowing MHGS was just over there, in case I ever decided to go. A rain forest within a 2 hour drive. A natural hot springs in the snow within an hours drive, plus another one within a 2 hour drive. Knowing there was a town up that way called "Concrete". Knowing there was a horrifying thing over that way called "the gum wall". the waterfront. The terrifying Alaskan Way Viaduct, with the view northbound unbeatable. The Bat Tunnel. Floating Bridges. Russell.

Unlimited Internet downloading and uploading for a reasonable monthly fee. Knowing if anything went slightly or badly wrong there were at least 5 people who could and would come and help me in the next hour. Knowing where the good dumpsters were. Having a car. Knowing how to get out of a speeding ticket. Knowing how to avoid a speeding ticket in the first place. Being able to talk like other people talked. Knowing the local second language. Knowing the librarians. Knowing the University campus, and where the Pastafarians met, and knowing of a reasonably safe, postmodernish church (or two (or three)) that I could attend if I ever wanted too. Knowing where to go to buy something if I wanted to buy it. Having a multilayered full map of the city and surrounding areas instantly at my mental fingertips. Russell.

There. Done it--what I set out to do with this blog post. Having a good old cry, I am. Excellent.

Build a Tower, Build a Team. Kewl!!!!

2010-05-13T20:34:00.000+10:00

or see: http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower.html

Rather be in Seattle?

2010-05-11T17:25:00.000+10:00

These two are doing their annual crossover, as Melbuourne temps drop and Seattle temps rise.

All temps are degrees C (as civilized people use).

Forecast for St Kilda Vic this week:

Day, Min, Max

Tue, 9, 14

Wed, 8, 14

Thurs, 9, 15

Fri, 10, 18

Sat, 8, 18

Forecast for Seattle, WA, this week:

Day, Min, Max

Tue, 8, 17

Wed, 9, 19

Thurs, 10, 20

Fri, 9, 18

Sat, 9, 17

Mother's Day

2010-05-08T22:00:00.000+10:00

My mother is dead. Nearly 2 years ago, some technicians burned her body, and the ashes got put in Salmon Creek near Oriole Campground and in a nasty cold box at Tahoma National Cemetery.

Please indulge me as I choose to link to the eulogy I wrote for her.

One of my internal voices says that for Mother's Day I should be instead writing about Megan. This voice, when questioned about the "should", appeals to principles with which I mostly agree. And yet ...

Call it a sort of closure with regards to the death of my mother.

I feel sad and happy. Awesome.

The Diary of Tristram Shandy

2010-05-08T21:03:00.000+10:00

Tristram Shandy, the hero of a novel by Laurence Sterne, writes his autobiography so conscientiously that it takes him one year to lay down the events of one day. If he is mortal he can never terminate; but if he lived forever then no part of his diary would remain unwritten, for to each day of his life a year devoted to that day's description would correspond.

Coming Soon

2010-05-08T10:13:00.000+10:00

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

Fill in the blank

2010-05-01T13:37:00.000+10:00

This headline caught my eye today:

Arizona deputy shot by alleged undocumented immigrant

Other variations of the headline in today's news:

Arizona Pinal county deputy shot by suspected illegal
Arizona Deputy Shot By Alleged Illegal Immigrants

My first thought--what other labels could we put in, in place of "illegal immigrant", "undocumented immigrant" or the more evocative "illegal"

Arizona Pinal county deputy shot by suspected __________

Here's a few:

African American

Hispanic

Native American

Communist

Terrorist

Homesexual

Gay

Lesbian

Atheist

Muslim

Christian

Pastafarian

Nazi

Cambodian

WASP

Mormon

Palestinian

Baptist

Catholic

Iranian

Englishman

midget

rock climber

formula one driver

airline pilot

violinist

shrubber

Gotta watch out for those alleged shrubbers.

My story about the BB formerly in my left hand

2010-04-26T21:43:00.001+10:00

(Note, if you're reading this on facebook, click on this note to see the whole note, and then click on "view original post", and then you'll be able to see the pictures!)

Many years ago, when I was aged 17 and less thoughtful and aware than I am now, I used to own a BB air pistol. It looked like this

I have always been one who likes it to be pitch dark at nighttime when I'm sleeping. Outside my home in Esperance (now part of Edmonds) Washington, directly outside my bedroom window, there was a street light (In fact, it's this exact street light right here (give it a second to load)). I had a relatively inexpensive blind on my bedroom window, and lots of light seeped in from the street light. One of my greatest desires at that time was to have the street light stop working. Toward this end, I used to occasionally, in the middle of the night, get out my BB gun and shoot BBs at the light. I would hit it, but it didn't really hurt the light that much. It had a very very thick plastic lens.

The BB gun runs on compressed CO2, which comes in a little canister which one places inside the handgrip and then forces into a needle/valve setup at the top by winding on the little screw at the bottom of the handgrip. When one winds it far enough, the needle inside the valve punctures the top of the CO2 canister, allowing the pressurized gas to enter the gun and provide motive power for shooting the BBs. The canisters and BB's look like this:

As you can see, the BB's are about 1/8 inch (3 millimeters) in diameter. They are steel with a copper coating. My gun held approx 17 BBs, which could be fired on semiauto. One CO2 canister was good for 250-300 shots. When it started to run out of CO2, the shots would become weaker and weaker, with the BB's falling well short of their intended target.

It should be noted that A: I had been through a certified gun safety course, and had regularly handled actual firearms with powder based munitions for years at this point and B: The prefrontal cortex does not finish developing until the early to mid 20's.

So on the particular night in question, I noticed that: A. My BB gun appeared to be out of bullets, and B. My BB gun's CO2 canister seemed to be winding down to empty. At this point I hit upon the brilliant idea of figuring out just exactly how empty my CO2 cartridge was by pointing my unloaded BB gun at my left hand and firing, and then judging the emptiness of my CO2 cartridge by the intensity of the air (minus the BB, mind you--just air!) that blew against my hand.

Unfortunately, there was exactly one BB still left in the gun. There was enough CO2 left in the cartridge to propel this BB through the inside wall of my palm, but NOT back out through the top of my hand. My immediate thought at the time was along the lines of "SHOOT (I didn't even think cuss words, back then--really), now I'm going to have to wake up my dad and tell him exactly what a stupid thing I've done, and he's gonna be furious". Funnily, my dad was very matter of fact. I suspect looking back that considering all the shit he saw in Vietnam, it was actually fairly low key and amusing for him.

He drove me to the Emergency Room, where a (in hindsight) fairly incompetent GP did surgery on my hand with local anesthetic. She sliced open my hand and tried for nearly an hour to remove the BB. I asked her why she didn't use a magnet, and she said they didn't have one. Then I asked what's the big deal--can't she just reach in and grab it? She said "nope, it's very complex and delicate in there--I could cause more damage". Finally she asked me what was it made of. Steel, I answered. She asked was I sure. Yes, I answered (I was wrong--it has a copper coating). "Okay," she said, "I'm going to leave it in there."

At this point I should have said "The Hell you are. You're staying here until it's out.". But being young and somewhat less aware and thoughtful than I am now, I acquiesced.

This led to about 3 weeks of physical therapy (Physio in Australia), regaining of full motion in my hand, and basically completely forgetting, most of the time, that I was partially a man of steel.

Fast forward 18 years, to about 8 days ago. My hand starting hurting, and I started losing range of motion. This got worse and worse as each day passed, until finally the pain was unbearable and I could hardly open or close my left hand at all. Finally, on Friday, I found myself being operated on by really nice plastic surgeon named Sofie, who afterwards said the BB was ensconced in a fibrous shell and the surrounding tissue was so inflamed and infected it was like "muck"--her word, not mine. Unfortunately I was basically asleep for the operation, and by the time I woke up they had disposed of the BB in such a way that it couldn't be recovered. Bummer.

So now I'm doing a little physical therapy on my own, have about 60% of the motion back in my left hand, and should be fine.

That's my story about the BB. Lesson learned--never point a gun at something you don't intend to shoot, even if it's just a BB gun. And perhaps also don't let people under 25 handle guns unsupervised. =). I mean there's a reason the car rental companies insist you be 25 before they rent to you, isn't there?

why my week is going to rock

2010-04-19T10:31:00.001+10:00

Monday: Megan, E, C, Emma, Eileen, Harald, Ian, Becky, Neville

Tuesday: Megan, E, C, Melissa, Thomas, Kieran, Will, Avak, Anita, Nyrie, Nicholas, Lucy, Kerry, Campbell, Gabrielle,

Wednesday: Megan, E, C, Avak, Anita, Nicholas, Nyrie,

Thursday: Megan, E, C, Melissa, Thomas, Kieran, Will, Avak, Anita, Nyrie, Nicholas, Arlete, Kerry, Campbell, Gabrielle, Neville

Friday: Megan, E, C, Shelley, Kobe, Kate, Luke, Phil,

Also: Russell, Kat, Jim, Dad, John, and ... I could do this all morning. HURRAH!!!!

Where I came from.

2010-04-18T01:13:00.000+10:00

These two books both touch on what it means to be hurt during one's experiences with the institutional church. Mansfield's book will get more press and sell more copies, but Ulstein's book is 100% guaranteed (by yours truly) to be more readable and truer in the best sense of the term. Plus you can get a used copy of Ulstein's book delivered from Amazon marketplace for around $5 (in the U.S.--the delivery is going to cost slightly more in other countries).

Plus ... reading Ulstein's book will help you understand where I came from.

Rohan Williams remarks re: child abuse by Catholic priests

2010-04-04T10:35:00.000+10:00

I wouldn't have apologized. Credibility has *obviously* been lost. Admittedly "all" is one of the very large words. But comparing the pope's and the church's experience of criticism re: sexual-abuse-of-children-by-Catholic-preists to the experience of Jews during the holocaust? Seriously? One can charitably assume the pope's preacher, who said this, was serious. I would love to have a coffee with him and ask some questions--see where he's coming from.

I'm really mystified at the reaction to Williams' remark. It feels very much like a (desperate) attempt to protect those who have protected and enabled the perpetrators. Why are people afraid that the church has lost, or will lose, credibility? What if it's the best possible thing for it to lose credibility?

To me, a relevant question might be something like: Will Williams' remarks have a sum effect of (for instance) leading to more or less abuse of children by Catholic priests? And how does one's answer to this question affect one's reaction to the remarks?

Or another question that interests me: Is the Roman Catholic Church (and/or the institutionalized church as we know it) as an institution worth salvaging (in it's current form)? To me this might be related to the question: Is Applied Behavioral Analysis worth salvaging (as a treatment for autism)?

Thoughts?

General McChrystal accurately characterizes U.S. foreign policy since World War II

2010-04-03T09:14:00.000+11:00

"We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat" (from here)

"Irregardless", and "opposite" of "antagonym"

2010-04-02T01:25:00.001+11:00

I'm always tempted, when using the word "regardless", to instead use the (non)word "irregardless", as a means of gently poking fun at people who actually do say "irregardless".

This reminds me that "flammable" and "inflammable", strangely enough, both mean exactly the same thing. There should be a word for this category of word pairs--pairs which sound opposite, but are actually identical. A sort of kitty-corner opposite for "antagonym"

Forgiveness, or Non-judgment?

2010-04-01T18:05:00.000+11:00

from Barry Neil Kaufman (today on his Facebook Page):

" 'WE WOULD NOT HAVE TO FORGIVE PEOPLE IF WE DIDN'T JUDGE THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.' When I first said & wrote those words, it was controverial for some. If I seek to understand and love rather than judge, then "forgive" would be odd. In order to forgive, we first have to judge (even though you did something wrong/bad, I embrace you). We could love people and embrace people...anyway."

attitude transplants

2010-03-29T01:48:00.001+11:00

click on the photo for a larger version.

Earth hour 2010--today, Saturday march 27

2010-03-27T17:07:00.000+11:00

Join more than 1 billion people in turning out your lights for one hour, at 8:30 PM. Watch your whole city go dark! See the web site: Earth hour

BIG REACTIONS for what I want!

2010-03-24T20:29:00.000+11:00

Learned via SonRise and recently re-learned via Jonathan Levy's brilliant book "10 things you can do right now for your child with autism":

Big reactions work out to a reward. Big reactions to negative stuff, and big reactions to positive stuff--they almost always cause a repeat of the behavior. So why were we trained to react BIG negatively to stuff we don't like our kids doing, and only react moderately positively to stuff we do like?

Tonite I heard via channels that one of my lovely girlikins had been pushing other children at school this term. She had mentioned a couple weeks ago that she sometimes pushed people even though she didn't want to--she felt she couldn't help it. I failed to stop and have a talk with her about it then. So tonite I asked "So, lovely little one, remember how you said you had been having trouble with pushing people and not being able to stop? Would you like to have a talk to see if we can help you find a way to stop?"

And she said, with a big delighted grin, "Oh! I've stopped! I tried and tried really hard and now I don't push people anymore!"

I figured it was time for a BIG reaction. So I made my facial expression BIG, and my voice BIG, and my body movements BIG, and I picked her up and squeezed her and said in my BIG voice "HOORAY!!!!! YOU ARE AMAZING AND AWESOME.". Then I started shaking my body all over, and scrunching up my face. She was looking at me a little wonderingly and curiously. I said "I'M SO PROUD AND PLEASED WITH YOU I'M ABOUT TO BURST BURST BURST WITH AMAZING JOY! HURRAH!!!!!!! I LOVE IT THAT YOU WERE ABLE TO STOP PUSHING PEOPLE. WAY TO GO!!!!"

She loved all this. Here's to BIG reactions to get more of what I want. Thank you, Bears, Samarhia, Tracey, Saeid, Jack, Kim, Kate, Caroline, William, Avak, Anita, Shelley, (WOW THIS LIST COULD GO ON AND ON!) all you super amazing beautiful SonRise people in my life. YOU ROCK ROCK ROCK ROCK ROCK!!!!!

Love is our resistance

2010-03-21T15:07:00.000+11:00

This is my favorite of the 10 songs at the top of Billboards top rock songs right now:

Victoria

2010-03-21T11:32:00.001+11:00

Google's web index seems to be tilted toward Canada over Australia, so that regularly when I'm searching for things in Melbourne, Victoria, I get very high search results located in Victoria, BC, Canada.

I like "wierd" people

2010-03-20T19:22:00.001+11:00

Yesterday on the tram, there was a lady in her mid 20's isming a little bit--tapping on the window in a repetitive way, and doing little repetitive vocalisms to herself, but loud enough to hear and sound a little strange. I was watching her and wanting to join her. She got up and looked a bit distressed, and then she said quite loudly, addressing noone in particular "Where is Saint Kilda???" So I looked her in the eye and said "Just stay on this tram--St Kilda is the last stop on this line". She lit up with a huge beautiful smile and looked right back at me and said "Thank you *so* much!" Hooray!

Dinosaurs

2010-03-17T23:57:00.000+11:00

"You may wonder why we find no bones from dinosaurs from this era, and rightly so. But keep in mind that dinosaurs don't actually have bones—the whole dinosaurs had bones thing is all an elaborate hoax planned for His own divine amusement. Real dinosaurs, as any enlightened paleontologist—or bone doctor, as they prefer to be called—will tell you, were able to stand erect by engorging selected muscles with blood, making the once flaccid limb rigid. By alternating which muscles were engorged in the correct sequence, a very effective locomotion and rudimentary skeletal structure was achieved. Perverted readers may recognize that this mechanism is similar to what happens in the male penis. Dinosaurs were, in essence, not much more than a massive collection of penises (penii) under a thick skin. While very few accurate descriptions of these creatures have existed into present times, we can be pleased to learn that awareness of them has propagated generationally in our culture. Most men don't even realize that when they exaggerate the size of their penis—referring to it as "monstrous" or "dinosaurlike"—they are helping to keep alive the hidden truth of the strange and horny beasts

we know as dinosaurs."

~From "The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster; A Condensed History of the World"

summary justice, American style

2010-03-17T18:25:00.000+11:00

ala Eric Holder.

So much for Mr. Vincent's signature. (yeah, ok, that signature is already pretty much toast anyway.)

Learned lately:

2010-03-16T18:43:00.001+11:00

There is a big difference between wanting something and being unhappy if I don't have it or get it.

What I want right now

2010-03-14T18:53:00.001+11:00

I want someone or several someones to help pay the US$3500 that it's costing to send Megan to this conference in the United States in May.

In the Beginning

2010-03-12T20:30:00.001+11:00

In the Beginning was the Word,

And the Word was "Arrrgh!"

-Piraticus 13:7

un-angry injection--Would you take it? why or why not?

2010-03-11T20:37:00.001+11:00

A thought experiment from Raun Kaufman.

Close your eyes, and imagine for a few moments that a substance has been invented which comes as an injection, and prevents you ever getting angry for the rest of your life. The shot is totally safe, it's free, and you only need to get it once, and you will simply be incapable of feeling anger for the rest of your life.

Would you take it?

Why or why not?

See: http://www.option.org/media.php?mediatype=video&mediaid=1&part=0

JUNGLE GIRL

2010-03-07T10:50:00.000+11:00

6 year old C. walked into the kitchen last night without a stitch of clothing, preceded by her big voiced announcement "NOW PRESENTING .... JUNGLE GIRL!!!!!!"

Afterwards she explained in a smaller voice "Jungle people are naked."

From whence? and where? and who?

2010-03-04T19:55:00.001+11:00

From where do the weapons come--the ones which kill all the people who die due to the use of weapons?

How many people, among the ~180,000 who die each day, are killed by weapons of warfare?

Who gets the money spent on these weapons? And who spends it?

Who builds the weapons? And where are they built? And how much does the building of them prop up or contribute to the local economy, in those places? And do they/we realize this, or have answers to any of these questions?

prayers/good thoughts/etc. requested

2010-03-01T12:30:00.001+11:00

My father is going under general anesthesia ~12 hours from now (1:30 PM GMT Monday) for total right shoulder replacement. He has a standing do not resuscitate order, and various other health problems, all of which together makes me slightly apprehensive. Please send prayers/good thoughts/etc. his way, if you are willing to. His name is Ben. Thank you =)

The Five Finger Rule

2010-02-21T15:28:00.001+11:00

From C's Year One (1st Grade) class--for dealing with other people doing something you don't like.

1.Ignore

2.Walk Away

3."Stop it, I don't like it"

4."STOP IT, I DON'T LIKE IT"

5.Tell the teacher.

Benjamin's Corollary to the Five Finger Rule: Become (almost (but not quite) obnoxiously) curious about and fascinated by the other's behavior.

"Black people" as "species"?

2010-02-15T09:59:00.001+11:00

An anti-abortion billboard campaign in Georgia has put up billboards announcing "Black children are an endangered species." to draw attention to the fact that "black" women are far more likely to have abortions than "white" women.

I put the terms in quotes because I'm not quite sure what they mean, in this context.

I wish I could ask someone who believes this what they mean.

How to get small and big

2010-02-12T23:11:00.000+11:00

Today in the playroom with super amazing K. I had this conversation:

K: We can get very small and get into the truck (looking over at small truck on floor of playroom).

Benjamin: How shall we get very small?

K: We can look at the stars to get small.

Benjamin: Wow! what a great idea! That's an amazing way to get small!

K: And then we can go back to our normal sizes.

Benjamin: And how shall we get back to our normal sizes?

K: We can play with our friend to get back to our normal sizes!

Benjamin: Wow! I *love* it that you told me we can get back to our normal sizes by playing with our friend! And what friend shall we play with?

K: I'll play with you--you're my friend!