the image of everything

There's this surfer dude who's actually got a PhD in Physics who has published in the respectable New Scientist a theory of everything, as reported in Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything.

He bases his math on this 248-dimensional lovely object [here drawn in two dimensions], known simply as E8.









i like the resemblance to mandalas, such as this arabic mandala:





















or this tibetan one:


























or indra's net of pearls






















or bucky fuller's geodesic dome:


















or m.c. escher:

first day at brock

i share two offices at brock in the dept of applied linguistics: one with the teaching assistants, and one with the research assistants (where i am now). classes don't start til next week, but i'm here doing research for one of the profs. wes is plugging in to the special needs department and looking forward to starting at brock in the near future.

this morning i biked to the farmers market downtown and bought whole wheat bread, peaches, and granola. at 11 am i called vki in her vancouver hotel and played wake-up music for her and rowan. they are off to burningman in nevada today, via san francisco and a green tortoise bus. wes and i had our first walk uptown and bus ride to brock. it's such a beautiful summer's day here in st. catharines.

off to mariposa

in a few hours it's off to orillia to the mariposa folk festival to catch serena ryder and hawksley workman tonight, followed by two days in the sun and closing with the grandest canuck gordon of them all, gordon lightfoot

happy father's day; found some old friends

last night a friend from long ago and far away found me on facebook. a phone call later and we chatted for a couple of hours.

tonight, the kids had me over at karen's house for supper and aftewards while karen and darlene were out for a canoe ride, and while watching monty python and the holy grail with them, i came across a book i had bought from renee in the 80s: we are all part of one another: a barbara deming reader. so, i went looking online for more about deming (1917-1984).

this is from Barbara Deming: An Activist Life, by Donna McCabe:

"For Barbara, the task for all of us is to erase the so-called differences between the sexes, bring out the women in all men, the man in all women. By doing so, we are able to act not as atomized individuals, but as parts of a larger community. We join gender back into an singular noun. Barbara saw this leap as possible when discussing gender in a way she was not able to understand during her lifetime of activism. "I would say myself that our sexuality is given us so that we can commune with one another. It cracks our single selves. Without sexuality we would be impossibly isolated within our individualities. We could not experience community, could not experience in our flesh the truth that we are, all of us, members one of another" (244). Our sexuality is very damaged. Damaged by the attempt to split it into the so-called male and so-called female. This lie is what has weakened any possibilities of communion. "If society did not try to make us all heterosexuals - and if patriarchy were dispelled and, with it, the power inequities that make most heterosexual relationships so distorting - my guess is that we would find ourselves quite naturally attracted to either sex" (246). Barbara recognized the base opposition that created all others to be gender. A separation of our very be-ing."

how timely is that now that i'm going back to school to study language and social justice? it's as if it's all coming back to me, and i hope to give it all back.

excerpt from temporary insanity: a world in transition, by philip slater

i was following up on one of the sociologists referenced in my textbook, Philip Slater. i never heard of him, but it seems i should have --not only is he a sociologist, he's an actor and a playwright. in 1982 he was chosen by MS. Magazine as one of its "male heroes."

here's the conclusion to a essay on his homepage:

the whole essay is worth reading, (he has a lot to say about religious fundamentalists, for example) but i thought i'd get to the point: the world is changing from a control culture to an integrative culture, and slater is optimistic....

he writes:


If change happened slowly and smoothly we might be able to handle it more gracefully. But that's not what happens. As they sense an old cultural system dying around them, those who espouse it will assert its values more harshly, more stridently, more desperately. The most extreme forms of authoritarianism, for example, occurred in the 1930s, when democracy was a growing trend.

The growth of Integrative Culture and the simultaneous rise of fundamentalism around the world make us feel the world's going in opposite directions at the same time. We've never been more concerned about the environment yet never more destructive of it; never more distrustful of technology yet never more dependent on it; never more opposed to violence yet never more fascinated with it; never more ego-driven and never more hungry to lose ourselves in something beyond ego; never more health conscious yet never more unhealthy. And while we've never had more ways of connecting with each other, we've never felt more disconnected.

These are the predictable symptoms of a culture in transition. Old familiar habits have begun to seem irrelevant or destructive, while the emerging system still feels awkward and uncomfortable, like shoes that haven't yet shaped themselves to our feet.

[his conclusion;]

It will be decades before Integrative Culture achieves the kind of general acceptance that Control Culture enjoyed for thousands of years.

..

A new cultural system tends to be built around what was trivialized in the old one. Integrative values were never absent during the Controller era, they were simply assigned inferior status--something women concerned themselves with. Similarly, when Integrative Culture achieves a comfortable preponderance in our shrinking world, Controller values will have a niche—something men play with. The kind of consensus that will permit this is a long way off, but we can take some comfort from the likelihood that our descendants will enjoy it. Prophets of doom always attract an audience because people love drama, but the probable reality is more mundane: we can expect a long period of adaptation, during which violent flare-ups, like those of this decade, will gradually diminish in frequency as more and more of the world embraces the emerging culture. Life on our planet will then settle into an equilibrium--one that may not create any more happiness, but will at least be more stable.

Declaration of Interdependence

Declaration of Interdependence

Five members of the David Suzuki Foundation team wrote the following Declaration of Interdependence in 1992 for the United Nations' Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

In 2001, Finnish composer Pehr Henrik Nordgren wrote his Symphony no. 6 "Interdependence" based on the declaration, which also served as lyrics to the piece. It was performed for the first time in Sendai, Japan in December, 2001.

version française
Download the declaration as an Adobe PDF document.

This We Know

We are the earth, through the plants and animals that nourish us.

We are the rains and the oceans that flow through our veins.

We are the breath of the forests of the land, and the plants of the sea.

We are human animals, related to all other life as descendants of the firstborn cell.

We share with these kin a common history, written in our genes.

We share a common present, filled with uncertainty.

And we share a common future, as yet untold.

We humans are but one of thirty million species weaving the thin layer of life enveloping the world.

The stability of communities of living things depends upon this diversity.

Linked in that web, we are interconnected -- using, cleansing, sharing and replenishing the fundamental elements of life.

Our home, planet Earth, is finite; all life shares its resources and the energy from the sun, and therefore has limits to growth.

For the first time, we have touched those limits.

When we compromise the air, the water, the soil and the variety of life, we steal from the endless future to serve the fleeting present.

This We Believe

Humans have become so numerous and our tools so powerful that we have driven fellow creatures to extinction, dammed the great rivers, torn down ancient forests, poisoned the earth, rain and wind, and ripped holes in the sky.

Our science has brought pain as well as joy; our comfort is paid for by the suffering of millions.

We are learning from our mistakes, we are mourning our vanished kin, and we now build a new politics of hope.

We respect and uphold the absolute need for clean air, water and soil.

We see that economic activities that benefit the few while shrinking the inheritance of many are wrong.

And since environmental degradation erodes biological capital forever, full ecological and social cost must enter all equations of development.

We are one brief generation in the long march of time; the future is not ours to erase.

So where knowledge is limited, we will remember all those who will walk after us, and err on the side of caution.

This We Resolve

All this that we know and believe must now become the foundation of the way we live.

At this turning point in our relationship with Earth, we work for an evolution: from dominance to partnership; from fragmentation to connection; from insecurity, to interdependence.

stop heavy metal pollution

i don't mean led zep or metallica, i mean cadmium, mercury, etc.

here's a quote from david suzuki.

The simplest way to stop heavy metals: don't buy things you don't need, especially electronics. The sad fact is that all those great electronic devices usually go obsolete very quickly. (The average useful life for a computer is only five years, and about 18 months for cell phones.) If you must buy something, buy it second-hand. Here are some places to get used goods:

Freecycle: http://www.freecycle.org
Craigslist: http://toronto.craigslist.org/about/cities.html
Salvation Army: http://www.salvationarmy.ca/

and i didn't know that

coal-burning power plants are the single largest source of mercury in Canada. Reducing your energy use helps keep mercury out of the environment.

on this page there are links to more info: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/NatureChallenge/newsletters/Metal_June2007/page5.asp

"planning my day"

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.
E. B. White (1899 - 1985)

it's not about me: a review of the purpose driven life

the 40 days of purpose are presented in rick warren's bestseller, the purpose driven life, which is a well-crafted book, though sprinkled with cliches and rhetorical devices such as alliteration and acronyms, all tied up neatly with a bow. he develops quite a system of belief, quite an infectious ideology. the 40 days of purpose for me as it turns out is to confront my own ideology in the face of rick warren's and to ask myself, what do i find attractive about rick warren's purpose, what do i find repulsive, and why?

there are five main purposes, and the final purpose, as it turns out and as revealed by rick's father from his deathbed, is to "save one more for Jesus!"

up to that point i was attracted to the daily revelation of purpose: turn from worldly pursuits, serve your community, be inclusive (at least, of believers and their faults).

while warren does not overtly come out for or against homosexuality, he does use patriarchal language in refering to god only in the masculine, he opposes abortion, and he avows that he is a conservative christian. i infer that his personal stance on homosexuality falls in line with other conservatives.

however, none of these views is mainline to his purpose, nor me seeking my purpose, and i read on through the 40 days' deluge. but when i heard that death-bed cry of salvation, i realized that the real purpose of a christian is to espouse the unique moral superiority of being christian and save every nonbeliever from the sinking ship SS Humanity.

which has bothered me for decades. and it continued to bother me this past year as i returned to church. moral superiority is a sin with which i'm well-acquainted; it is a paintbrush with which i've painted myself many times in the past, and am sure to do so again. i might be doing it right now, as i wonder if warren's Salvation-Only-Thru-Christ is morally bankrupt in our multicultural and pluralistic world. there are many people, non-christians, who live devout, self-sacrificing lives. their evident faith and action are integrated. if they were christian, they'd be sainted, they'd be saved.

and do i paint myself again when i wonder if i'm morally superior to hypocritical Christians who deny full communion with their fellow christians on the grounds of their sexual orientation, or their gender?

in the beginning, the real purpose of warren's book is stated in the first paragraph. here it is in its entirety:

It's not about you.

it's not about me, it's about god. or at least my search for god. to a degree, i agree with warren that the purpose-driven life of a christian seeks five things: (1) worship god, (2) grow in fellowship with others in god, (3) serve god, (4) grow like christ, and (5) move in this world driven by worship and fellowship and service and growing. the last is my re-interpretation of warren's fifth, evangelical purpose: "to be on a mission with God in the world," because i don't like the context of 'mission,' which is loaded with that "solo Christos sola" (Spanish for 'Only Christ Saves") evangelism, that dying battle-cry, "Save another one for Jesus!"

over time, my moral superiority, whether as an atheist or as an ardent christian, has hurt a lot of people. in many ways i prefer the humbleness of my agnostic days, when it wasn't about me and god was ineffable and i was more open to the mystery of the universe and the love that is all around me.

perhaps that is my path as a christian, a path of humility, to worship, to serve, to commune, to grow, and to move.

be an ontario peakbuster!

"The Ontario Clean Air Alliance is challenging communities across Ontario to reduce the need for dirty coal by reducing their use of electricity in peak periods. We will recognize the communities that do the most to use the least in October 2007, so make sure your community is an energy winner!

"Find out how you can be a Peak Buster and Challenge Your Community"

Canada, Africa, and the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany

Dear Prime Minister,

Regarding Canada's participation in this year's G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, June 6-8. Africa's issues with development are on the table, and I believe Canada can play a significant role:

• Enabling sustainable economic growth in Africa by improving economic policies,
debt, and strengthening local markets and businesses;
• Promoting democracy by supporting African institutions that foster citizen participation;
• Establishing peace and security by strengthening the peace building and conflict-
abilities of African regional organizations;
• Fighting disease by strengthening national health systems, improving AIDS prevention
treatment, and designing programs to retain African doctors and nurses.

I call upon you and our government for Canada to work unilaterally and as a mediator between the other nations:

Canada must renew its promise to double aid to Africa by 2008-2009 by creating a timetable for increasing our official development assistance to 0.7% of gross national income.

The AIDS pandemic may be the greatest crisis of all. Seventy-five percent of the world’s 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS are in Sub-Saharan Africa. The 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit promised universal access to HIV treatment by 2010, but is falling short of this goal.

Canada can work towards the creation of a comprehensive plan to address the health crisis by increasing funding for prevention and treatment programs, strengthening infrastructure, retaining local health-care workers, and improving management and access to information. At the same time, Canada can guide the G8 to ensure that such broad approaches do not let donors influence national policy-making in ways that citizens cannot.

Furthermore, Canada can use its experience as a major food-producing and resource-rich nation to advise the G8 summit to find ways to strengthen regional markets in Africa that support local agriculture and food supplies. We must also advocate for stronger corporate responsibility guidelines for international mining companies, and trade laws that allow developing countries to stabilize their economies by regulating imports and exports and setting environmental standards.

There are also significant problems with the debt cancellation agreement signed at the 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit. Very few countries are eligible, and those that are must agree to a set of harsh conditions from the World Band and International Monetary Fund (IMF) that have already been shown to worsen poverty. Canada must live up to the spirit of Gleneagles and support full, unconditional debt cancellation for 62 of the world’s poorest countries so they can redirect their resources towards health, education, and economic development on their own terms.

Sincerely,

Peter Ladage
Midland, Ontario

with information from make poverty history

malalai joya needs your help!

you can read and view this courageous young woman's struggle at http://www.malalaijoya.com/index1024.htm. she needs all the international exposure she can get right now to protect her from those who want to kill her and silence her. on the site there are email addresses for the president of afghanistan and other officials. here is the letter i wrote:

Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 22:03:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Peter Ladage
Subject: Concern for Malalai Joya
To: president@afghanistangov.org
Cc: aquddus@supremecourt.gov.af, hasib-n786@yahoo.com, moinews@gmail.com,
wahed.moi@gmail.com, info@moj.gov.af, hidayatr@moj.gov.af,
mj@malalaijoya.com

Dear Mr. President,

I am greatly troubled to learn of the expulsion of one of the members of your parliament, Malalai Joya, and that death threats are being uttered against her.

I am sure that your great country honours the will of the people who elected Ms. Joya to represent them. I understand that she has done much good for the poor and the children of Farah, and that she is much loved and respected.

As you know, Malalai Joya is greatly respected around the world, and her humanitarian efforts bring much respect to your great country.

I am sure that as President you will do everything in your power to protect this honoured citizen and restore this parliamentarian to her seat in your legislature.

Most sincerely and humbly,

Peter Ladage,
Canada

i also wrote to our government.


who is malalai joya?

from Human Rights Watch (http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/05/23/afghan15995.htm):

The Afghan parliament should immediately reinstate Malalai Joya, a member suspended for criticizing colleagues, and revise parliamentary procedures that restrict freedom of speech, Human Rights Watch said today.

Joya, 28, is the youngest member of the Afghan legislature. As a 19-year-old refugee in Pakistan, she taught literacy courses to other Afghan women. During the Taliban years, she ran an orphanage and health clinic in Afghanistan. In 2003, she gained international attention for speaking out publicly against warlords involved in drafting the Afghan Constitution. Two years later, she was the top vote-getter from Farah province in Afghanistan's parliamentary elections, and was easily elected to the lower house of the legislature.

Since her election, Joya has continued to be an outspoken defender and promoter of the rights of Afghan women and children. She has also continued to publicly call for accountability for war crimes, even those perpetrated by fellow parliamentarians.

Joya has survived four assassination attempts, travels with armed guards and reportedly never spends two nights in the same place.

Birdsong & Coffee

i know some of you are planning to go to cellarman's friday night to enjoy my band, blind mary.
but before you do, i urge you to see the SHARE Film Presentation of Birdsong & Coffee.

"Coffee drinkers will be astonished to learn that they hold in their hands the fate of farm families, farming communities, and entire ecosystems in coffee-growing regions like Costa Rica. In this film we hear from experts and students, from coffee lovers and bird lovers, and-most importantly-from coffee farmers themselves. We learn how their lives and ours are inextricably linked, economically and environmentally." http://www.olddogdocumentaries.com/vid_bsc.html

THEN come on out to cellarman's and enjoy the band. we'll be there till midnight, and we can stay till 2 a.m. talking about coffee and birds and the rest of life.

if you want to go to the film, please call ahead so that sue knows how many are coming.

that's what men are good for

wars rage on in israel and palestine and around the world
at home and in the forests and oceans

"now words i think are just a noisy dirty wind
makes the trouble we get in so why do we speak
now we made another war that's what men are good for
men with stupid insecurities not a lot more"
-- hawksley workman, merry christmas (i love you), almost a full moon

who killed the electric car?

saw who killed the electric car? last night at SHARE.

really, really good. i never thought i'd feel weepy about a car.

check out the website.

rent the dvd.

the source of pollution

moses said:

11-16 Make sure you don't forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don't become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God,

the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness, those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions;
the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock;
the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.

17-18 If you start thinking to yourselves, "I did all this. And all by myself. I'm rich. It's all mine!"—well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.

19-20 If you forget, forget God, your God, and start taking up with other gods, serving and worshiping them, I'm on record right now as giving you firm warning: that will be the end of you; I mean it—destruction. You'll go to your doom—the same as the nations God is destroying before you; doom because you wouldn't obey the Voice of God, your God.

Deuteronomy 8:11-20 (The Message)

the thing is, at the root of it, i believe this is the cause of global warming: people forgetting their spiritual source, whether buddhist, abrahamic, shinto, daoist, hindu, shamanist, whatever.

chief seattle said 153 years ago:

A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.

... Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.

Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.

in all things, praise god, remember her first, walk in her ways, then go out and combat global warming and all manner of social injustice.

jesus said:

6-8... "Isaiah was right about frauds like you, hit the bull's-eye in fact:

These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
but their heart isn't in it.

They act like they are worshiping me,
but they don't mean it.

They just use me as a cover
for teaching whatever suits their fancy,

Ditching God's command
and taking up the latest fads."

20-23He went on: "It's what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness—all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution."

Mark 7:6-8,20-23 (The Message)

happy easter

on good friday, i began 40 days towards a purpose-driven life, reading through rick warren's the purpose driven life. days 1 and 3 are okay; i've had some reservations about day 2: "[God ] planned the days of your life ... God left no detail to chance ... Nothing in your life is arbitrary. It's all for a purpose." (p. 23) i don't have a problem with god having complete control of my life. but I need to know more about how free will and evil work within that framework.

city of love - poem

building a city of love
one person at a time
love, the only building code
each person a unique architecture
all the styles
all the colours
all the songs and dances
in our city of love
city of love

in this city of love
the streets are always changing
forever rearranging
paved with love
street lamps shine so bright
light conquers night
in our city of love
city of love

in this city of love
the walls are living gardens
hedgerows of trust and bushes of respect
grown with care, watered and trimmed,
nurtured with love,
birds nest in their shelter
flowers bloom and fruits ripen
in our city of love
city of love
city of love

29 march 2007, paris

cairo, cairo - song

cairo, cairo
here i am watching the nile river flow
listen to the traffic of the city far below
think of the days we were in ancient cairo

when moses was just a tiny little babe
wrapped in cloth and in a reed basket laid
floating down the river, in the hand of god
found by pharoah's daughter, raised by a mother's love

cairo, cairo
feel in my bones the ancient joys and sorrow
from the lowly hebrew slave to the mighty pharoah
think of the days we were in ancient cairo

moses killed a man and had to run away
found a new life like the bedouin today
but the lord told moses to return to pharoah
'lead my chosen nation and let my people go'

cairo, cairo
we've seen your wonders, more than we could know
but if you wonder where we came from and how this is so
think of the days we were in ancient cairo



27 march 2007, ramses hilton, cairo

community of celebration

mum was a lay member of the community of celebration, which includes the music of the fisherfolk. more than music and communal living, the community of celebration reaches out to the larger community:

"In addition to our principal work of prayer, our local ministry includes:

The Aliquippa Community Enterprise (ACE) Women's Training Program
Participating in programs to support anti-drug, anti-crime, and domestic violence initiatives in Aliquippa and Western Pennsylvania
Supplying chaplaincies for the City Council, the local police and fire departments, and the FBI in Western Pennsylvania
Providing affordable, quality housing to low-income families"

read more on their ministry to the town of Aliquippa, "bereft after the fall of the steel industry, [...] viewed as a place of discouragement and fear"

in an essay on the dedication of their new chapel, one member writes

"Most of the sayings of Jesus are so radical when set against the way life is lived in a modern industrial society that it seems impossible that anyone could fulfill them. Maybe this is why a lot of religious enthusiasm nowadays concentrates on the person of Jesus rather than his sayings, as if his ‘lordship’ could somehow be separated from what he said. At any rate, when we give ourselves to God and to one another, all of a sudden the sayings come within the realms of possibility."

mum was involved in more than the ministry of praise. she counseled others on bereavement and cancer. she was mightily involved in the church's breakfast program, providing meals to the hungry and homeless in downtown st. catharines.

the squeeze of rhymes - poem

as i write this poem
and i think of you
i struggle to make sure
every word is true
for life is like art
and often times
true reasoning's squished out
by the squeeze of rhymes

070228 midland

trip itinerary

Mar 15 - Canada / Tel Aviv

We depart Canada, bound for the Holy Land via Paris on AirFrance.

Mar 16 - Tel Aviv

On arrival at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, we meet our guide and depart for our hotel. Dinner and overnight in Tel Aviv.

Mar 17-18 - Galilee

We start our tour at Jaffa , the ancient port city just next to Tel Aviv. Here, Peter raised Tabitha from the dead. We visit the place of Simon the Tanner, the clock tower, the artist's quarter and view the Harbour . We drive north to Caesarea Maritima (where Peter met the Roman centurion Cornelius). We visit the amphitheatre and aqueduct built by Herod. Continue North to the port city of Haifa for a visit. Then to Beit She'arim, the 200 AD unofficial Jewish capital, home of the mishna. On to Muhraka (on Mount Carmel, where Elijah challenged the false Gods of Ba'al). Off to Megiddo (the source of our word Armageddon) where we peel off the layers of civilization. We drive to the Galilee, descending to the shores of the lake and its spiritual history.

After a ride to Ginnosar on a boat designed to resemble fishing boats of the time of Jesus, we stop at Magdala (home of Mary Magdalene), Tabgha (miracle of the swine), and the Mount of Beatitudes (Sermon on the Mount). We visit Capernaum, where Jesus centred His Galilean ministry, and stayed in the home of Peter. Lunch is included at a seaside restaurant that features "St. Peter's Fish." We continue to Korazim, Bethsaida and Kursi (miracle of the swine). We drive through the Golan Heights around the Sea of Galilee. We drive to the Dan Nature Reserve to Banias (Caesarea Philippi) where Peter declared that Jesus is the Son of God. We see Mount Hermon, and stop at Nimrod Crusader Castle.

We drive to Mt. Tabor, traditional site of the transfiguration and where Deborah and Barak commanded the armies of Israel. We study the Jezreel Valley from this spectacular viewpoint. We drive to the home town of the Holy Family. We visit a grotto under a church that is thought to be the home of Joseph and Mary (Annunciation Basilica), we visit Mary's Well at the Orthodox Church, and we visit Precipice Point (Chapel of Fright). Then, on to Cana (place of the first miracle). We stop in Zippori (Sepphorus).

Mar 19-22 - Jerusalem

After breakfast, we start another fascinating day at Belvoir. We stop at the Jordan River (Yardenit - to tell the Baptism story and to baptize those pilgrims who wish to be baptized). We drive to Beit She'an (city of the Decapolis). We drive to the oasis of Jericho where we visit the excavation. We see the Wall of Temptation and visit Elisha's Spring. On to Wadi Qelt and the Monastery of St. George ending with a visit to Bethany. We look at the ancient walls that are the remnants of the Inn of the Good Samaritan. In Bethany, we tell the story of Simon the Leper and Lazarus. We catch our first glimpse of the Holy City as we check into our accommodation in Jerusalem for dinner and overnight .

You are introduced to the old walled city of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. On the Mount of Olives we visit the Chapel of the Ascension and the Church of the Pater Noster (commemorating the teaching of Jesus to his disciples). Walk down the Mount of Olives (after viewing the Old City) toward Gethsemane and the walled city of Jerusalem. On the way down visit the chapel of Dominus Flevit, the traditional spot where Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Continue to Gethsemane and the commemoration of the prayer of Jesus before he was arrested. We enter into the old city through the Lions' Gate. At each site there will be a reading of appropriate biblical passages. We spend time inside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. View the Temple Mount, the place where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac and the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim mosque built on the site of the first and second Temples. Continue to the Western (Wailing) Wall. Continue along the Via Dolorosa (the Sorrowful Way or the Way of the Cross) stopping for a visit at Pilate's Judgment Hall, also called the Antonia Fortress and the Lithostrotos, where Pilate condemned Jesus to death. Continue along the Via Dolorosa to the church of the Holy Sepulchre to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus. We visit the Upper Room for the commemoration of the Last Supper and Pentecost.

Drive to Bethlehem to visit the Church of the Nativity to commemorate the birth of Jesus. Visit the Church of St. Catherine under which is the ancient monastery of Jerome and his companions, who lived there in the 4th century. After departing Bethlehem, view the Shepherd's Fields which commemorate an angel's announcement to the shepherds that a Saviour was born in the City of David. Drive to Ein Karem to see the birthplace of John the Baptist and the visitation site (Mary and Elizabeth). Visit the Israel Museum to see the Shrine of the Book which houses the original manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Monastery of the Cross, where tradition holds that the wood for the Crucifix was hewn. We drive past the Knesset and other main sites of modern Jerusalem.

Today we descend through the Judean Wilderness to the shores of the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on the Earth. Visit Qumran, where the Essenes lived an austere lifestyle away from the city life of Jerusalem and where a Bedouin boy discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. Travel along the water's edge to Masada and ascend via the cable car to King Herod's fortress/palace built in the midst of the desert and the last hold out of Jewish resistance to the Romans in 70-73 AD. Continue to Kibbutz Ein Gedi to sample the unique buoyancy of the highly therapeutic Dead Sea waters.

Mar 23-25 - Sinai / St. Catherine's

Cross the border into Egypt to see the Sinai Desert, the land of the Exodus, the parting of the Red Sea, and the land in which Moses received the Ten Commandments. Your excursion will be to the barren wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula and to St. Catherine's Monastery where God spoke to Moses through the burning bush. We will make our way by bus to the Orthodox Monastery Santa Katarina which is at the foot of Mount Sinai. As we traverse the desert we will reflect on the Exodus experience, the Victory Chant (Exodus 15) and certain texts that speak of the Israelite's time in the desert. That evening, you are free for your own interests, or we will discuss the Sinai Covenant.

In the early morning hours (around 3 a.m.), we will climb the mountain and arrive at the summit for sunrise, where we will celebrate the Eucharist (led by our spiritual leader).

Mar 26-27 - Cairo

This morning we visit the three great Pyramids of Giza, considered to be one of the seven wonders of the world. Visit the 5000 year old Sphinx and the Temple of the Valley. Proceed to visit the ruins of the ancient capital of Egypt, Memphis, where the monumental statue of Ramses II is located. At Sakkara you visit the Step Pyramid of Zoser, representing a staircase to heaven, the Tombs of Sakkara and the amazing City of the Dead.

Spend an exciting day of sightseeing in Old Cairo. Visit the famous Egyptian museum which houses the Tutankhamen exhibition. Stop at the Citadel, the Alabaster, Sultan Hassan Mosque and visit the noisy and colourful Khan El Khalili Bazaar.

Mar 28 - Paris

Mar 29 - Fly home

coming full circle

a year or so ago, i was swimming in the seas of spirituality and cosmology and consciousness when i put into port at knox church and during holy week 2006 came to christ.

now, as lent begins and my mother struggles with cancer and i prepare for an unexpected trip to the holy land, my navigator points my way to grace and grit by ken wilber.

"I wasn't always a Christian."

"In a room in a pension in Stockholm, Jesus came to me with an overwhelming rush of joy and love and faith in the future. I saw the risen Christ in all things -- in the sea, the sky, the scarred faces of people passing...

All the diamonds in this world
That mean anything to me
Are conjured up by wind and sunlight
Sparkling on the sea

I ran aground in a harbour town
Lost the taste for being free
Thank God He sent some gull-chased ship
To carry me to sea

Two thousand years and half a world away
Dying trees still grow greener when you pray

Silver scales flash bright and fade
In reeds along the shore-
Like a pearl in sea of liquid jade
His ship comes shining
Like a crystal swan in a sky of suns
His ship comes shining.

The flashes, of course, aren't constant, and don't last forever, being only temporal/temporary incentives to encourage and strengthen faith. The real growth goes on behind the scenes, glimpsed only rarely, without God consulting us about the work He is doing.

On the edge of a ceaselessly shifting universe our lives wink in and out of being. The Kingdom, though, is always coming, always flowing, for whoever of us will take a chance on being part of it."

-- Bruce Cockburn, from "For what time I am in this world": stories from Mariposa (1977), pp. 92-93.

luke - song

an r&b tune

i am the doctor, i'll heal your body
i am the doctor, i'll heal your body
i am the doctor, i'll heal your body
i am the doctor, i'll heal your body
who is the healer, who'll heal you whole?
who is the healer, who'll heal you whole?

i am the writer, i write the story
i am the writer, i write the story
i am the writer, i write the story
i am the writer, i write the story
who is the author, who knows us all?
who is the author, who knows us all?

(drop D)
Em D
Em D
Em D
Em D
Am G
Am G

a spiritual tension...

... exists in me between a mystical sense of the ineffable creator and doctrinal understanding of the scriptural person of jesus.

alpha 2

topic: who is jesus?

weather: snow squalls kept several away

music: mike couldn't make it, so we banded together, found the music, and mary lee helped us figure it out. i played the 12string tonight.

food: more choice of salads! more veggie options, though i picked out the bacon from the caesar's.

small group: i'm in red group (as mary lee said, because red is evidently my colour). 7 of us tonight, including the 2 leaders; 4 of us go to knox. discussion was halting, as i'd expect on the first night.

note: to respect the privacy of the small group, i won't relate any details or hints of what was discussed or who is in the group.

infinite love

walking through blilzzardy downtown this evening, it occurred to me that material progress is based on a false premise of infinite material resources; only love is infinite; even hate is finite, for hate is not life-sustaining.

j.r.r. tolkein

i watched the fellowship of the ring this past weekend with my nieces, including many of the extras, in which i was reminded that tolkein "came to think of the internal combustion engine as the greatest evil ever put upon this Earth." he also didn't like fridges, adds bill hammack, a.k.a. engineerguy. he concludes: "In many ways the great theme of the Lord of the Rings is that no one should have dominion over the world. The Lord of the Rings is an anti-quest, with its goal to destroy universal power forever." had he read tolkein's The Silmarillion , which is the backstory to the creation of middle earth, perhaps he would have amended his statement to "no one creature should have dominion over the world" for there is only one universal power in tolkein's cosmology, eru illuvatar

i myself dislike the internal combustion engine as much as i like hobbits.

upside down

christianity

it confuses people

some reject it, it's non-sensical

radically all the values are different

but it works

like in that seinfeld episode where george realizes that since everything he does turns out wrong, if he started doing things the opposite way, maybe things'll turn out right

still learning to stand on my head

(image source: www.cgmarshall.com/images/Photos/head_stand.jpg)

alpha 1

before dinner: practiced the evening's two songs, mike on acoustic, me on the strat; met my new friend, spike, from last week and we visited our friends in out of the cold who are in 'the dungeon' tonight since alpha is in the gym -- the dungeon is cozier and warmer; and talked with shell for a bit who helped with ootc supper.

gathering and dinner: met some new people and some familiar faces, including rumblyvoice and his wife, whom i'll call miami, and huck finn's mum and dad, who i'll call ma finn and pa finn (inventing aliases on public blogs is such fun!). at the dinner table sat between j-brit and jordana, spike next to her, and across the table from rumblyvoice and miami.

the singing was strong, mike's a good leader, and those present responded enthusiastically. mike wisely chose a call and response song to start, 'you're worthy of my praise' followed by the upbeat 'holy is the lord.'

i saw the first video last year with scotsman and adrian. it's still fresh and funny and engaging. not a bad start.

dear god

Dear God,

Are boys

better than

girls. I know

you are one

but try to

be fair.

Sylvia


Child's letter from
Children's Letters to God

kairos

"War, hunger, poverty and ecological degradation—when we pick up the newspaper and read the signs of the times, it is a perplexing and sobering experience. In this complex world, interpreting the present time without confusion or despair is an immense challenge. And, as people of faith, not only are we to see and judge, but to dare to act for justice—a task ever more urgent and yet ever more risky and demanding. If we are to discern wisely, speak boldly, and act decisively, where will we find our hope and strength? Who will be our companions?"

KAIROS Canada, with a nod to Katrina for pointing me this way.

genuine wealth

"Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of things . . . Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead . . .

"Yet the GNP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate, or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."

Senator Robert F. Kennedy, 1968

The David Suzuki Foundation, among others, offers a pragmatic and achievable economic and political definition of Genuine Wealth in Sustainability within a Generation: A New Vision for Canada.

we are not alone

Arthur Van Seters, Principal Emeritus, Knox College, Toronto, in his inspiring essay "Evangelical Faith and the Radical Compassion of Love for the World" from the PCC Social Action Handbook, writes:

"Such stories [Jesus' parables] are sometimes introduced with the phrase “the Kingdom of heaven (or God) is like…” which signals a new order where God’s reign is everywhere evident. The parables, in other words, picture another way of being where the rejected and the unworthy are included, where evil systems are undermined and where generosity reaches beyond merit to grace.

How might the agenda for the church reflect this new order? Back in 1997 the World Alliance of Reformed Churches met in General Council in Debrecen, Hungary. It published a far-reaching Declaration which begins with a theological affirmation:

“We belong – body and soul, in life and death –not to ourselves but to our faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.”

This is followed by a confession of moral failure and complicity in adding to the world’s burdens and allows for a movement to claim new life that relies on the promises of God to break the chains of injustice.

Finally the statement moves to a litany that links the phrase “we are not alone” with a set of affirmations.

We are not alone - we will be stewards of creation.
We are not alone - no human ideology or agenda holds the secret of history.
We are not alone - we are in solidarity with the poor.
We are not alone - human beings are not commodities.
We are not alone - we are called to build a new community with a simple lifestyle.
We are not alone - we do not despair for God reigns.
We are not alone - with all God’s people we welcome and proclaim God’s glory."