Metacentricities

… is that the question?

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry a while ago, I applied for a “real job” - the first “real job” I’d applied for since I applied to teach at Hampshire College in 1989 (academia is only arguably “real” - if that doesn’t count, it’s the first “real job” I ever applied for.) I found out today that I didn’t get that job (it was for the Executive Director of the Maezumi Institute.) When I first saw the job advertisement, it almost seemed like someone had designed the job for me and my relatively unique set of skiils - it combined education with activism with spirituality, and other things. I would have enjoyed it. But, the job obviously wasn’t really designed for me. I wish the person who did get the job all the best. I’d love to see the Institute flourish.

I hadn’t expected to apply for a job at all - I was continuing to do technology consulting, even though it felt somewhat unsatisfying. I was “working” part time coordinating NOSI (the quotes are due to the lack of remuneration, not the lack of work,) which I am still doing. The process of applying for this particular job was, in some ways, useful, although excruciating. Why excruciating? Because it made it much more clear to me the kinds of things I want to be doing, and the directions I want to be going. It made it so clear, in fact, that I decided to stop doing technology consulting, to open up time and focus for other things. And it also made clear that there is what feels like an overwhelming obstacle course between me and those things.

The obstacles are of my own making, of course. It’s my own unique set of doubts, misconceptions and illusions. My very own personal ball of suffering. There is nothing quite like feeling suspended in mid air, not really feeling like you know how it is you are supposed to get from here, to where you are meant to be going. Talk about twisting in the wind.

I remember vividly, when starting seminary, and hearing so many people talk about their “call” to ministry - the sense of clarity I had, and the sense of knowing I was in the right place. There is still, a clear sense of real knowing of where I’m supposed to be. But unlike just going to seminary, I haven’t figured out yet how to get there from here. And I can’t help thinking that probably, what’s true is that aphorism in a Maine accent “you can’t get there from here…” there are other places that I yet need to go before I get to where ever it is I’m supposed to be going.

Photo by QFamily



As you know if you live on the East Coast - it’s snowing. A lot. We just went out to shovel our walk, and a bit of the driveway, and by the time we’d finished one pass, it was time to start shoveling again.

It is beautiful, though. The trees are picking up the snow, and have that winter wonderland look about them. But now, as it gets dark, and the snow is flying furiously - it kind of looks like a blizzard. We already decided we needed to out before bed and shovel again. But we’re supposed to get 11 to 15 inches tonight, then sleet and freezing rain on top of the snow early tomorrow morning. What fun.

But, we remembered we’re warm, have wood for the fireplace, lots of food, and books, and things to keep us occupied while we’re snowed in. So that makes us very fortunate.

Technorati Tags: noreaster, shoveling, snow

Photo by jimmywayne22

I never went to Greenfield much when I lived in Amherst. I did a little work for an organization there a long while back. But it never really drew me much, except I did always like the People’s Pint (which, I notice, has a website running Joomla).

Ruth and I spent the afternoon in Greenfield, which is now our closest metropolis (by only a hair - Amherst is almost as close - but Greenfield has the closest supermarket, and the closest Staples, etc.) We spent time at this very sweet little Thai take-out restaurant (they have one table) that had really good food.

Greenfield has always, in the time that I lived in the valley, had an interesting combination of dying mill town, rural poverty, agricultural influence, and sort of saavy cultural grooviness - although it seemed the grooviness was always lower key. Well, Greenfield appears to be groovying up. I suspect it’s the growing edge of gentrification (there’s some interesting new, and expensive looking stores on the main drag.)

Anyway, it will be fun to explore it more, and watch it change, if it does.

Technorati Tags: greenfield, massachusetts

There is an interesting paradox that I have been thinking a lot about lately. It’s one that I’ve been exposed to in many different spheres - personal growth, social activism, and organizational dynamics. It’s the paradox that it’s necessary to hold two apparently opposing views about a difficult situation: a deep and complete acceptance that a situation exists as it is in the present moment, as well as a passion to change it.

Often times, especially in activist circles, "accept" feels like "condone." If we accept that, for instance, innocent people are being killed in Iraq today by the US, isn’t that condoning it? But, acceptance of something is totally possible without condoning something. We have no real choice but to accept that this is happening now, or that people don’t have what they need to survive, or that we’re in environmental peril. It doesn’t mean we are codoning it - it just means that we deeply know they are happening, and accept that it is happening now.

And the passion for change - I’ve found that, in many personal situations, the way to change something comes from acceptance. Once I fully accept a situation for how it is, the way to change it becomes much more apparent to me, than when I just wanted it to go away.

Wanting a situation to go away is neither accepting it, nor, really, a passion to change it. It’s a kind of magical wishful thinking, that, in my experience, doesn’t really get anywhere, and, in a Buddhist paradigm, leads to suffering.

Paradoxes have always been of interest to me, because I think it is within paradoxes that we often find truth. This is another one of them.

So, it appears there is a bit of new juice coming out of the Venus Magazine story that I blogged about last month. I noticed this because the search terms “Venus Magazine” jumped up in my stats when I looked today, and that blog entry became the second most popular. Also, I was interviewed yesterday by someone who writes for Curve magazine. She’s writing a story about the change in Venus Magazine.

Some new coverage in the internet world has come out since I wrote about this. Ex-gay watch, a blog I’d not known about before, had a story, with some more information in it that is pretty interesting (like an organization getting 200 unsolicited copies of the magazine.) LifeSite News, a Canadian pro-life, pro-Christian news site, has a very positive story about the change in the magazine. Southern Voice, a gay website from Atlanta, has a story which fills in some of the history of Venus Magazine that I hadn’t known (the mag was named after a lesbian who was murdered.)

There are quite a number of blog posts about it - it seems mostly in the category of “see what God can do!” There seems to be a lot of chatter in the conservative Christian blogosphere about this. (By the way, there is another Venus magazine - a women’s indie music/culture magazine - so don’t get too confused)

I don’t know what the fallout of this will be, eventually. Ex-gay watch has a question about “whether Cothran has received new funding as a result of her new-found ex-gay identity…” That’s something to ponder.

Technorati Tags: africanamerican, exgay, glbt, religion, venusmagazine

• Antioxidant supplements may not be all that good for you. Hmmm, might be time to trim the doses of Vitamin A.
• Most Americans want universal health care. Looks like accusations of “socialized medicine” that conservatives throw about aren’t going to work.
• Michael Jackson converted to Islam.
• Republican candidates who governed left-leaning constituencies (Guliani and Romney) try their best to convince conservatives that they are on their side.
• A new magazine, called “Conserve” is launched, which proposes to be a voice of “doing more with less.” Um, a new magazine? Don’t magazines make their money with advertising? Don’t advertisers expect people to buy stuff? What’s wrong with this picture? (It reminds me of the magazine “Real Simple.” Why do people need to buy a magazine to make their lives simpler, or do more with less?)
• The graphs are a bit eye-bending, but check out this post in the Oil Drum about the decrease in Saudi Arabian oil production last year. By the way, Saudi Arabia has 1/4 of the world’s oil reserves. Looks like we’re at Peak Oil. There are, by the way, some very interesting comments in that post.
• The USDA preliminarily approved the production of rice engineered with human genes, which are hoped to help treat diarrheal infections in the developing world, but could have completely unpredictable effects. In addition, the genes won’t stay in the rice fields they originally put them in.

I was reading a Salon piece about a blogger who refused to blog for the Edwards campaign. I imagine you heard about the brouhaha around Amanda Marcotte, who was, quite briefly, an Edwards campaign blogger.

In parallel, I had to fill out the Shutesbury town listing for our household, which includes a line about “Occupation,” which stopped me cold. What is my occupation, really? I’m not a student as of December. I’m not really a technology consultant anymore (more on that in a future post). I’m opening myself up to think much more about working with people either individually or in groups in spiritual capacities. I’m wanting to do a lot more writing. I coordinate NOSI, but I’m not sure how to categorize that work (nonprofit management? cat herding? preaching?) Surprisingly, I applied for a “real” job (more on that too, in a future post.) So, I put down “blogger.” (I imagine the Shutesbury town person is going to have a laugh at that one.)

Actually, there are increasing numbers of people who are, for their livelihoods, bloggers. The line between journalism and blogging is getting thinner.  I’ve never actually made any money blogging (although I am considering putting a ‘tip jar’ on my blogs), but I guess, at this moment in time, it’s as much my “occupation” as anything else I’m doing.

So what are my plans for the coming presidential election? I’ve never been a purely political blogger. And I’ve also never been a pure partisan. I have almost always voted Democratic (when I didn’t, it was Green, or Democratic Socialist, or some such.) The democratic primary is always way more interesting than the actual election - because at least there are often some candidates in the primary that are much closer to my perspective than the final nominee is. As a progressive faith blogger, I’m going to try and weave in the issues that are important to me, and the ways that the candidates address (or, much more often, don’t address) the issues that are important to me. I also want to talk about what’s not being talked about. How the candidates never really talk about what really is at issue.

I hope it will be fun, and informative, and will give you a little different spin on the candidates and the election process than what you’ll find elsewhere. Anyway, my first post on the Democratic candidates is coming up soon…

Technorati Tags: bloggers, democrats, election2008, politics

People say they “know the truth” about Jesus and the press hypes it. Christians get up in arms because this “truth” goes against their belief. Actual real authorities in the field suggest that this “truth” isn’t supported by any real evidence.

The DaVinci Code? No. The DaVinci Code rewarmed. Recently, a documentary filmmaker takes the old news (ossuaries found in 1980 in Jerusalem) and decides that the idea that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, and had a child, was, well, so compelling, that they’d twist the truth. There were ossuaries found, with the names of Jesus, Mary, and Judas son of Jesus. Sounds mighty convincing, except, well, it’s not. An archeologist weighed in:

She said Jesus came from a poor family that, like most Jews of the time, probably buried their dead in ordinary graves. “If Jesus’ family had been wealthy enough to afford a rock-cut tomb, it would have been in Nazareth, not Jerusalem,” she said.

Magness also said the names on the Talpiyot ossuaries indicate that the tomb belonged to a family from Judea, the area around Jerusalem, where people were known by their first name and father’s name. As Galileans, Jesus and his family members would have used their first name and home town, she said.

“This whole case [for the tomb of Jesus] is flawed from beginning to end,” she said.

What I find so fascinating about the whole thing is how much it seems to matter to people. Christians who believe in the literal biblical account feel that their faith is being attacked. A lot of people (honestly, me included) think that the idea that Jesus had an actual family life is kinda interesting and worth thinking about, and certainly doesn’t, in my mind, take one iota away from the impact of his words. Of course, in the end, it’s all about money - the money that the filmmaker and the Discovery channel can wrangle out of advertisers who think (rightly so) that people will watch the documentary, then go out and buy stuff.