Andrew Cort's Blog, page 39
September 9, 2011
PLATO'S "APOLOGY OF SOCRATES": A New Translation, in the Style of a Cinematic Novel
by Steve Kostecke (Today's PRIZE GIVEAWAY is a PDF Copy of Steve's Book. Leave a COMMENT to enter. See details below)
Tweet Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
In this new translation of Plato's Apology (Socrates' statement to the Athenian court that soon condemned him on trumped up charges of "corrupting the youth of Athens"), Steve Kostecke has recreated the monologue into a screenplay, complete with stage directions and flashbacks. The language of the translation has been modernized without any loss of meaning, and the cinematic format makes the entire presentation more alive and palatable to modern tastes (by adding visual content) while allowing other background factors of Socrates' life and work to fill out the context of the story (through flashbacks and other movie magic).
In the section I've excerpted, we see Socrates telling the court how his friend Chaerephon had long ago gone to the Oracle at Delphi and asked if there was anyone as wise as Socrates. The prophetess replied that no one was wiser than he. Socrates was troubled. "What can the god mean? I know that I have no wisdom, small or great."
So Socrates decided to search for someone who really did have some wisdom, and then to go back to confront the Oracle, hoping to learn the answer to this riddle. He started by questioning a well-known politician. But when he began talking to him, he "could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself." So Socrates left, thinking to himself that "at least I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know."
After this, Socrates went on questioning others who had pretensions to wisdom. He spoke with politicians, he spoke with poets, he spoke with merchants, but always with the same results. In the end he would conclude that the riddle simply meant that he, Socrates, who had no wisdom at all, was nonetheless as wise as anyone else on earth - since only God is wise, and what people think of as wisdom means nothing.
***
The Courtroom
[The court magistrate asks Chaerecrates to swear to the truth of his testimony by Zeus, Demeter, and Poseidon, which he promptly does. He then reports how Chaerephon did indeed go to the oracle at Delphi and ask if anyone were wiser than Socrates, and the answer was no. The jurors remain subdued, though constantly commenting among themselves in undertones and whisperings. The magistrate instructs Chaerecrates to come to the clerk's table in order to sign his testimony. Chaerecrates descends the three steps of the bēma as Socrates moves back to its center. Cut to a close-up of the copper spout of the water-clock as the plug is removed and time is again allowed to flow. Cut back to the view of Socrates alone on the bēma.]
Socrates: Understand why I have just related this account to you: I am about to provide a detailed explanation of how the barrage of attacks on me had its origin. After hearing Chaerephon's report, I took it to heart and thought it over in this way: "What on earth does the god mean, and what type of riddle is this? I am not aware of myself being wise in any way. What can he possibly mean, then, by proclaiming that I am the wisest man? He most certainly cannot be lying – that would be against divine law." And for the longest time I was puzzled and at a complete loss for what he could have meant. But then, in order to prove him right or wrong – and I did this with great reluctance, I must say – I set off on the following investigation.
[Cut to the court clerk as he uses the blotting cloth on the freshly-inscribed papyrus. He dips the reed quill into the inkwell again and hands it to Chaerecrates. Chaerecrates grasps the quill as he leans over to sign the document. Cut back to Socrates on the platform.]
I went straight to a man who is well-known for his wisdom so that right then and there – if anywhere – I could refute the oracle and declare to its giver: "This man here is wiser than I am, but you proclaimed that I should be the wiser."
So I questioned and examined him … [A juror shouts out 'who?'] … – a man whose name I would rather not say, Athenians, since it was one of our public men I was speaking with who made this impression on me. … [Socrates glances briefly at the bench for the prosecution. Cut to a close-up of Anytus's face.]
[Cut from the real-time of the courtroom. Flashback to a scene at Anytus's home many years earlier. The setting is the andrōnītis, the room in the household used for entertaining male guests. Socrates, Anytus, a young man named Meno and several others are gathered there. Some of them are reclining, some are sitting upright on the clinēs – the cushioned bedsteads, in this case ornately-decorated with the shapes of animal paws carved at the foot of each wooden leg.
They are engaging in a symposium – a drinking party – with drinking cups and food spread out on a low-rising table at the center. A handful of Anytus's slaves are stationed at different places in the room, waiting for their commands. Socrates is in the process of asking Anytus if Meno should seek out the tutorship of one of the sophists in order to be instructed on how to be virtuous in such matters as household economy or running city affairs. Anytus reacts with shock at the suggestion, stating that sophists are harmful men who bring nothing but corruption and ruin to those who listen to them. Socrates asks how is it, then, that Protagoras, the most-renowned sophist, could teach for forty years if his instruction brought such calamities to his pupils?
Anytus places the blame for this lack of retribution on the pupils themselves and their family members who allowed them to be taught by such a man. Socrates asks if a sophist has somehow wronged Anytus; and if not, why is he so hard on them? Anytus explains that he has never known any sophist, or ever spoken to one, and never will. Socrates inquires how it is, then, that Anytus can make such accusations against sophists without any personal experience of them. Anytus claims that what he has heard of them is enough.
So who can teach virtue, Socrates asks, if the sophists cannot? Anytus replies that any decent Athenian citizen can do a sufficient job of that. Socrates asks why it is, then, that virtuous men do not have virtuous sons – is it because they refuse to teach their virtues to them? Socrates glances at Anytus's son, who has been seated on a clinē against a far wall, observing the interaction with a respectful silence. His son is a young man who, instead of following in his father's footsteps as a public man, has remained in the traditional profession of his family – that of a tanner, working animal hides into leather.
Socrates, with a gleam in his eyes, looks back at Anytus and asserts that virtue can certainly not be taught. Cut back to the real-time of the courtroom and Socrates on the speaker's platform.]
While we were talking together I realized that even though this was a man who appeared wise to many other people, and especially to himself, in fact he was not. And when I tried to make him aware of this – that even though he might believe himself to be wise, that may not be the case, – at that moment he became enraged and began to hate me, as did many of the on-lookers who were there.
[Cut from the real-time of the courtroom back to the andrōnītis. Anytus, with a look of hurt pride on his face, is standing next to the clinē on which he had been seated. He criticizes Socrates sharply for speaking badly of people too easily and warns him that he had better be more careful and watch himself.
Close-up of the foreboding look on Anytus's face. Cut back to real time and Socrates on the bēma.]
I walked away from this encounter thinking to myself: "I have more wisdom than that man, at least, but probably neither one of us has any type of true or worthy knowledge. Unlike me, though, he believes that he does know the truth about certain things even if he really does not. But me, well aware that I do not have such knowledge, I do not believe that I do.
I seem, then, to have a slight advantage over him in just this respect: that whatever I do not know, I do not believe myself to know." ***
Steve Kostecke majored in English Literature (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1989) and studied Greek while earning a master's degree in Foreign Language Education (University of Texas, Austin, 1997). Since then he has taught English as a Foreign Language in universities in Japan, Korea, Thailand, and at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also one of the founders of the Underground Literary Alliance and was its editor-in-chief from 2000 to 2008, during which time he compiled the five editions of the group's literary zine, Slush Pile. He currently resides in Seattle and can be contacted at skostecke@hotmail.com .
TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!Steve is offering a Free Copy of Plato's "Apology of Socrates", in PDF, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE WEEK from posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of Steve's book from Amazon:
Tweet Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
In this new translation of Plato's Apology (Socrates' statement to the Athenian court that soon condemned him on trumped up charges of "corrupting the youth of Athens"), Steve Kostecke has recreated the monologue into a screenplay, complete with stage directions and flashbacks. The language of the translation has been modernized without any loss of meaning, and the cinematic format makes the entire presentation more alive and palatable to modern tastes (by adding visual content) while allowing other background factors of Socrates' life and work to fill out the context of the story (through flashbacks and other movie magic).In the section I've excerpted, we see Socrates telling the court how his friend Chaerephon had long ago gone to the Oracle at Delphi and asked if there was anyone as wise as Socrates. The prophetess replied that no one was wiser than he. Socrates was troubled. "What can the god mean? I know that I have no wisdom, small or great."
So Socrates decided to search for someone who really did have some wisdom, and then to go back to confront the Oracle, hoping to learn the answer to this riddle. He started by questioning a well-known politician. But when he began talking to him, he "could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself." So Socrates left, thinking to himself that "at least I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know."
After this, Socrates went on questioning others who had pretensions to wisdom. He spoke with politicians, he spoke with poets, he spoke with merchants, but always with the same results. In the end he would conclude that the riddle simply meant that he, Socrates, who had no wisdom at all, was nonetheless as wise as anyone else on earth - since only God is wise, and what people think of as wisdom means nothing.
***
The Courtroom
[The court magistrate asks Chaerecrates to swear to the truth of his testimony by Zeus, Demeter, and Poseidon, which he promptly does. He then reports how Chaerephon did indeed go to the oracle at Delphi and ask if anyone were wiser than Socrates, and the answer was no. The jurors remain subdued, though constantly commenting among themselves in undertones and whisperings. The magistrate instructs Chaerecrates to come to the clerk's table in order to sign his testimony. Chaerecrates descends the three steps of the bēma as Socrates moves back to its center. Cut to a close-up of the copper spout of the water-clock as the plug is removed and time is again allowed to flow. Cut back to the view of Socrates alone on the bēma.]
Socrates: Understand why I have just related this account to you: I am about to provide a detailed explanation of how the barrage of attacks on me had its origin. After hearing Chaerephon's report, I took it to heart and thought it over in this way: "What on earth does the god mean, and what type of riddle is this? I am not aware of myself being wise in any way. What can he possibly mean, then, by proclaiming that I am the wisest man? He most certainly cannot be lying – that would be against divine law." And for the longest time I was puzzled and at a complete loss for what he could have meant. But then, in order to prove him right or wrong – and I did this with great reluctance, I must say – I set off on the following investigation.[Cut to the court clerk as he uses the blotting cloth on the freshly-inscribed papyrus. He dips the reed quill into the inkwell again and hands it to Chaerecrates. Chaerecrates grasps the quill as he leans over to sign the document. Cut back to Socrates on the platform.]
I went straight to a man who is well-known for his wisdom so that right then and there – if anywhere – I could refute the oracle and declare to its giver: "This man here is wiser than I am, but you proclaimed that I should be the wiser."
So I questioned and examined him … [A juror shouts out 'who?'] … – a man whose name I would rather not say, Athenians, since it was one of our public men I was speaking with who made this impression on me. … [Socrates glances briefly at the bench for the prosecution. Cut to a close-up of Anytus's face.]
[Cut from the real-time of the courtroom. Flashback to a scene at Anytus's home many years earlier. The setting is the andrōnītis, the room in the household used for entertaining male guests. Socrates, Anytus, a young man named Meno and several others are gathered there. Some of them are reclining, some are sitting upright on the clinēs – the cushioned bedsteads, in this case ornately-decorated with the shapes of animal paws carved at the foot of each wooden leg.
They are engaging in a symposium – a drinking party – with drinking cups and food spread out on a low-rising table at the center. A handful of Anytus's slaves are stationed at different places in the room, waiting for their commands. Socrates is in the process of asking Anytus if Meno should seek out the tutorship of one of the sophists in order to be instructed on how to be virtuous in such matters as household economy or running city affairs. Anytus reacts with shock at the suggestion, stating that sophists are harmful men who bring nothing but corruption and ruin to those who listen to them. Socrates asks how is it, then, that Protagoras, the most-renowned sophist, could teach for forty years if his instruction brought such calamities to his pupils?Anytus places the blame for this lack of retribution on the pupils themselves and their family members who allowed them to be taught by such a man. Socrates asks if a sophist has somehow wronged Anytus; and if not, why is he so hard on them? Anytus explains that he has never known any sophist, or ever spoken to one, and never will. Socrates inquires how it is, then, that Anytus can make such accusations against sophists without any personal experience of them. Anytus claims that what he has heard of them is enough.
So who can teach virtue, Socrates asks, if the sophists cannot? Anytus replies that any decent Athenian citizen can do a sufficient job of that. Socrates asks why it is, then, that virtuous men do not have virtuous sons – is it because they refuse to teach their virtues to them? Socrates glances at Anytus's son, who has been seated on a clinē against a far wall, observing the interaction with a respectful silence. His son is a young man who, instead of following in his father's footsteps as a public man, has remained in the traditional profession of his family – that of a tanner, working animal hides into leather.
Socrates, with a gleam in his eyes, looks back at Anytus and asserts that virtue can certainly not be taught. Cut back to the real-time of the courtroom and Socrates on the speaker's platform.]
While we were talking together I realized that even though this was a man who appeared wise to many other people, and especially to himself, in fact he was not. And when I tried to make him aware of this – that even though he might believe himself to be wise, that may not be the case, – at that moment he became enraged and began to hate me, as did many of the on-lookers who were there.
[Cut from the real-time of the courtroom back to the andrōnītis. Anytus, with a look of hurt pride on his face, is standing next to the clinē on which he had been seated. He criticizes Socrates sharply for speaking badly of people too easily and warns him that he had better be more careful and watch himself.
Close-up of the foreboding look on Anytus's face. Cut back to real time and Socrates on the bēma.]
I walked away from this encounter thinking to myself: "I have more wisdom than that man, at least, but probably neither one of us has any type of true or worthy knowledge. Unlike me, though, he believes that he does know the truth about certain things even if he really does not. But me, well aware that I do not have such knowledge, I do not believe that I do.
I seem, then, to have a slight advantage over him in just this respect: that whatever I do not know, I do not believe myself to know." ***
Steve Kostecke majored in English Literature (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1989) and studied Greek while earning a master's degree in Foreign Language Education (University of Texas, Austin, 1997). Since then he has taught English as a Foreign Language in universities in Japan, Korea, Thailand, and at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also one of the founders of the Underground Literary Alliance and was its editor-in-chief from 2000 to 2008, during which time he compiled the five editions of the group's literary zine, Slush Pile. He currently resides in Seattle and can be contacted at skostecke@hotmail.com .TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!Steve is offering a Free Copy of Plato's "Apology of Socrates", in PDF, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE WEEK from posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of Steve's book from Amazon:
September 8, 2011
COLOR ME POMEGRANATE
by Zayra Yves (Today's PRIZE GIVEAWAY is a PDF of Zayra's Book. Leave a COMMENT to enter. See details below)
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Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
In Color Me Pomegranate, poetess Zayra Yves takes us on a journey through the many levels of Woman: Eve, Aphrodite, Medusa, Persephone, Athena, Gaia, Sophia, Kali, Mary, even Anne Sexton, Marilyn Monroe and Sylvia Plath -- and so many more. Beginning with the 'Fall', enduring all the experiences, joys, and sufferings on the path to self-discovery and spiritual evolution, the collection ends with a poem of transfiguration: today's Excerpt, "I am SHE".
Zayra's poetry is filled with passion, raw sensuality, darkness and light, love and death, psychological depth and mystical wisdom. And it is all taking place within you.***
I am SHE
I am the red throne of Kali, the orange flames of Sekhmet.The dancing diva of Durga come to call your spiritback into your body.
Rise up your tired bones to move, sway, rock in the halls of perception.
I am here in the ceremony of removing obstacles from the caves of memory.
I am Vulture Crone. I am Maat.I am the midwife birthing you into ferocious truth,progressive intuition and powerful right action.
I am the lioness licking salt from the salted state of your flesh;of the wounds that you need to heal.I am here as your sixth sense. As the doorway of discoveryto awaken you to the journey you came here for;to awaken you to universal balance.
I am the High Priestess, Luna of the moon. I am Nephthys.
I open the gateway to submarine gardens.Listen to the secrets of the butterfly starfish and embrace all people.Embrace your sister, your children, your ex's and step families too.I am here to encourage you to make amends and let go permanentlythe grievances you hold.
I am the wisdom of Sophia, the strength of Athena, the gates of hell.
You are the shape shifting vertigo of bodies, of many life times.You are the migration of millions.You are the sorrow of the seas,the sands of change, the receptacle of all lifeand the willingness to do it again.I am here inside of the image you have of yourself.
Look closely:I am Radha, Laksmi, Hathor, Isis, Venus and Mary Magdelaine.
I am the elements of absolute love that rise up from your hipsand speak from the heart of truth.
This is not the idolatry of self, neither the desecration of self.You are not here to cherish the false but to awaken beyond theillusionyou previously chased and sacrificed for.
I am the Mother of Heaven, the flowing inspiration of Sarasvati.I am come to you as the whispering winds of change,as living chaos, summoning the fates, summoning your destinyto rise up and greet you in the mirror.
Rise up and know yourself by heart.Ask the stranger you have become to be a stranger no more.Express the love you have hidden,free the hostage of yourself in the unseen, unheard,held captive in un-fulfillment.Welcome yourself home.
Honor the love you feel.I am SHE. I am you.You are me. Love yourself.Embrace me.
***
Here is Zayra reading another selection from "Color Me Pomegranate"
***
Zayra Yves' mystical love poetry has been published in numerous print journals, anthologies, on-line e-zines and magazines, including Panhandler Quarterly, Voices for Africa, Eyes of the Poet, Kreativ, Edge Life Magazine, Poetry Life & Times, Astropoetica, Alehouse Press, 34th Parallel, Feeling is First, and The Enchanting Verses International Journal.Her books and audios include Leaving You Unpainted, Ordinary Substance. Empty as Nirvana, Sleep in the Sea Tonight With Me, Crowned Compassion, and her latest book, Color Me Pomegranate. All her works and more information are available through her website at www.zayrayves.com.
TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!Zayra is offering a Free Copy of COLOR ME POMEGRANATE, in PDF, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE WEEK from posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of Zayra's book from Amazon:
Tweet
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
In Color Me Pomegranate, poetess Zayra Yves takes us on a journey through the many levels of Woman: Eve, Aphrodite, Medusa, Persephone, Athena, Gaia, Sophia, Kali, Mary, even Anne Sexton, Marilyn Monroe and Sylvia Plath -- and so many more. Beginning with the 'Fall', enduring all the experiences, joys, and sufferings on the path to self-discovery and spiritual evolution, the collection ends with a poem of transfiguration: today's Excerpt, "I am SHE".Zayra's poetry is filled with passion, raw sensuality, darkness and light, love and death, psychological depth and mystical wisdom. And it is all taking place within you.***
I am SHE
I am the red throne of Kali, the orange flames of Sekhmet.The dancing diva of Durga come to call your spiritback into your body.
Rise up your tired bones to move, sway, rock in the halls of perception.
I am here in the ceremony of removing obstacles from the caves of memory.
I am Vulture Crone. I am Maat.I am the midwife birthing you into ferocious truth,progressive intuition and powerful right action.
I am the lioness licking salt from the salted state of your flesh;of the wounds that you need to heal.I am here as your sixth sense. As the doorway of discoveryto awaken you to the journey you came here for;to awaken you to universal balance.
I am the High Priestess, Luna of the moon. I am Nephthys.
I open the gateway to submarine gardens.Listen to the secrets of the butterfly starfish and embrace all people.Embrace your sister, your children, your ex's and step families too.I am here to encourage you to make amends and let go permanentlythe grievances you hold.
I am the wisdom of Sophia, the strength of Athena, the gates of hell.
You are the shape shifting vertigo of bodies, of many life times.You are the migration of millions.You are the sorrow of the seas,the sands of change, the receptacle of all lifeand the willingness to do it again.I am here inside of the image you have of yourself.
Look closely:I am Radha, Laksmi, Hathor, Isis, Venus and Mary Magdelaine.
I am the elements of absolute love that rise up from your hipsand speak from the heart of truth.
This is not the idolatry of self, neither the desecration of self.You are not here to cherish the false but to awaken beyond theillusionyou previously chased and sacrificed for.I am the Mother of Heaven, the flowing inspiration of Sarasvati.I am come to you as the whispering winds of change,as living chaos, summoning the fates, summoning your destinyto rise up and greet you in the mirror.
Rise up and know yourself by heart.Ask the stranger you have become to be a stranger no more.Express the love you have hidden,free the hostage of yourself in the unseen, unheard,held captive in un-fulfillment.Welcome yourself home.
Honor the love you feel.I am SHE. I am you.You are me. Love yourself.Embrace me.
***
Here is Zayra reading another selection from "Color Me Pomegranate"
***
Zayra Yves' mystical love poetry has been published in numerous print journals, anthologies, on-line e-zines and magazines, including Panhandler Quarterly, Voices for Africa, Eyes of the Poet, Kreativ, Edge Life Magazine, Poetry Life & Times, Astropoetica, Alehouse Press, 34th Parallel, Feeling is First, and The Enchanting Verses International Journal.Her books and audios include Leaving You Unpainted, Ordinary Substance. Empty as Nirvana, Sleep in the Sea Tonight With Me, Crowned Compassion, and her latest book, Color Me Pomegranate. All her works and more information are available through her website at www.zayrayves.com. TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!Zayra is offering a Free Copy of COLOR ME POMEGRANATE, in PDF, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE WEEK from posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of Zayra's book from Amazon:
September 7, 2011
YO-YO MA, MESSENGER OF PEACE (A 'Spirituality and Religion' Tribute)
"This is about acknowledging what is precious to someone, and the gifts that every culture has given the world"
- Yo-Yo Ma
(Today's PRIZE GIVEAWAY is a CD of Yo-Yo's 'Songs of Joy and Peace'. Simply leave a COMMENT to win. See Details below.)
Tweet
Appointed a CultureConnect Ambassador by the United States Department of State in 2002, Yo-Yo Ma has met with, trained and mentored thousands of students worldwide including Lithuania, Korea, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and China. He has performed with and conducted master classes for members of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra.
Yo-Yo Ma plays the prelude from Bach´s Cello Suite No. 1
In 2006, Secretary General Kofi Annan named him a U.N. Messenger of Peace, and in 2007 Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon extended his appointment.
In this video, Paula Zahn interviews Yo-Yo about the "Silk Road Project." Silk Road Project, Inc., initiated by Yo-Yo in 1998, promotes collaboration among artists and institutions, promotes multicultural artistic exchange, and studies ideas among different cultures along the Silk Road. (From the second century BCE until the 14th century, the Silk Road was a vast network of trade routes that connected China to the Mediterranean through Iran. Ideas, objects, and people traveled the Silk Road, making it a major conduit of culture and civilization.)
You can find out more about Yo-Yo Ma at his personal website , and more about The Silk Road Project here .
The winner of today's contest will receive the CD Songs of Joy & Peace, Yo-Yo's collection from the worlds of popular and classical music -- some sacred, some secular, some traditionally seasonal, some simply beloved -- connected in their sense of wonder and appreciation of the holiday season. Songs of Joy & Peace celebrates the universal hopes, dreams and good cheer animating seasonal festivals -- Christmas, Hanukkah, Eid, Kwanzaa, Yuletide, Winter Solstice, New Year's, Ramadan -- the world over.
TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!
Today's Prize Giveaway is a Free CD of Yo-Yo Ma's Songs of Joy and Peace.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE WEEK from posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of SONGS OF JOY AND PEACE from Amazon.
TIME OF THE QUICKENING: Prophecies for the Coming Utopian Age
by Susan B. Martinez, Ph. D (Today's PRIZE GIVEAWAY is a Paperback of Susan's Book. Leave a COMMENT to enter. See details below)
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Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
This is a book about the Art of Prophecy. Most prophecy is rather morbid and full of dire warnings about a coming catastrophe or apocalypse. But Susan Martinez has a different take on the subject, and as Stanley Krippner says, "she has presented a unique and uplifting message of hope in a world gone awry."
Martinez discusses the history of prophecy, and why so many predictions do not come true. She writes about everything from ancient biblical times, to Nostradamus, to Edgar Cayce, to Jeane Dixon. She goes on to cover contemporary issues, including the current economic disaster and the threat of climate disaster, but in a context of hope! Martinez' aim is to revive the lost art of prophecy -– the future-predictive kind and the wisdom kind -– as brought to light in the 'Oahspe Bible': a nineteenth century set of Scriptures that revealed ancient Egyptian Tables of Destiny. She shows readers how to use these Tables to make their own predictions, and she demonstrates that we are not heading toward a Rapture or Armageddon: rather, we are moving toward a "Quickening" – the embryonic stage of a coming Utopian Age, a time of global unity, global religion, global peace, and the awakening of the world-soul.
Here's an excerpt from the Introduction to this fascinating book: ***
Why Wait for Apocalypse? Nation is against nation; king against king;
merchant against merchant; consumer against producer; yes, man against man,
in all things upon the earth! - Oahspe, voice of man 36* *Oahspe is a set of scripture written in 1881 by Dr. John Ballou Newbrough, founder of the modern Faithist movement, by the process of automatic typewriting. Selections from Oahspe, like the one above, will be included throughout this book.
In 1790, a Polish monk wrote extraordinary prophecies stating that the twentieth century was destined to be the most "remarkable of all [times]. All which is appalling and terrible will befall the human race . . . princes will revolt against their fathers . . . children against their parents, and the whole human race against each other." The prophecies that a universal war, moreover, would begin in 1938 (only one year off for World War II). "Devastation . . . will overtake whole countries . . . destroyed will be the greatest and most respected cities." (And such cities were destroyed, like Dresden, which Kurt Vonnegut eulogized so poignantly in Slaughterhouse-Five.)
At last count, more than thirty-five countries are at war today. This great new era of science, invention, industry, and laborsaving conveniences has simultaneously hatched a litter of Fascist regimes, violent coups, military dictatorships, invasions, and civil wars around the world. As the twentieth century progressed, so did the staggering number of refugees and disenfranchised people. As a result of recent conflicts, much of the thirdworld landscape is dotted with land mines, some of them disguised to look like children's toys, the better to maim and mutilate the coming generation of the "enemy," demonstrating conclusively "the singular viciousness," according to Newsweek, "of the 20th century."
This is apocalypse.
The same years that saw the advent of thermonuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles also saw the Jewish Holocaust in Germany, followed by other genocidal sweeps, especially in Africa. Multinational monopolies, made possible by an American-born brand of hedonistic consumerism, took command of the planet in lockstep with the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, and quite a few other "complexes," including unprecedented mental ones, singularly bred by the twentieth-century disfigurement of so much that is human and natural, decent and sane, rational and good . . .
This is apocalypse. Within a brief twenty-year period (1948–1968) five of the most promising and charismatic leaders of the century (indeed, of the new era), starting with Mohandas Gandhi, were shot down by assassins' bullets. Today, anarchists and terrorists only continue to escalate their activities, creatively deploying our most recent lethal inventions and technology. It is a known fact that Osama bin Laden masterminded and coordinated the 9/11 attack largely by means of satellite phones and fax machines. The American century was capped by his apocalyptic personality and his statement that "Jihad will go on until the day of Judgment." He became the embodiment of all that can go wrong when the world is in the hands of a single superpower. This is apocalypse. Back in 1995, the horrendous nerve-gas attack in the Tokyo subway used the deadly substance called sarin, developed by Nazi scientists during World War II. The Buddhist extremist group behind the gas attack managed to kill seven people and sicken one thousand. Radio host Art Bell compared the attack to those of other groups such as November 17 (Greece), the Corsican National Liberation Front, the Red Brigades (Italy), and neo-Nazis throughout Europe. As he says, "What is disturbing is that these activities are now occurring in countries such as Japan which historically have not had these problems. Clearly this is a trend of the Quickening. Each of these groups have resorted to terror . . . [demonstrating] how powerless the people of the world are to defend themselves. . . . No one—in any society in the world . . . can ever feel completely safe."
No, a world of "shock and awe" is not a safe world—for anyone, nor is a world of AIDS, of car bombs, school shootings, street gangs, satanic cults, serial killers, burning oil fields, South American death squads, and "the disappeared"—all of which carry the distinct flavor of the American century. What other era could have seen shockers such as the Jonestown mass suicide debacle of 1978, the Chernobyl disaster, or the unparalleled 9/11 event?
None of those things could have happened if modern man had possessed a genuine moral sense or harmonious mind. As Nobel Prize–winning physiologist Alexis Carrel saw it, "Most civilized men manifest only an elementary form of consciousness. . . . They produce, they consume, they satisfy their physiological appetites. They also take pleasure in watching, among great crowds, athletic spectacles, in seeing childish and vulgar moving pictures. . . . They are soft, sentimental, lascivious, and violent. They have no moral, esthetic, or religious sense. . . . [Their] intelligence remains rudimentary." The Other Side of the Coin Out of all things comes some good.
- Oahspe, book of saphah, qadeth iz 5:8 I am convinced there will be mutual understanding among human beings . . . in spite of all the suffering, the blood, the broken glass.
- Pablo Neruda, Memoirs
At the very same time, the American century—side by side with its insults and horrors —gave birth to a new prospect for mankind, an estate it could only inherit upon the death and demise of its predecessor. Heir apparent to a golden age, humanity in the third millennium stands at the threshold of its cosmic legacy. This is no dream. It is the reality given to all men. Graduation day for the human race has arrived (though commencement may take a few centuries). Many began to understand this new beginning when the Berlin Wall came down, soon followed by the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. We could and should expect from this time forth the inevitable collapse of tyranny and oppression of every kind.
But this emancipating process, this steady climb toward the elimination of false and mean barriers, was already more than a century old, beginning with the extraordinary global revolutions of 1848 that marked the birth year of the era called Kosmon (see chapters 1, 6, and 7). "The missing factor of prophecy," Anderson wrote "has been found in the year 1848, for this date gives us a known point in time from which to work. Application of the cycles used by the ancients in their time-tables of prophecy . . . [give us] this date as being the first year of the new age."
It was a new age with new standards and new values. Then, barely fifteen years into Kosmon (Anno Kosmon [AK] 15), on January 1, 1863, came the Emancipation Proclamation, which paved the way for the thirteenth amendment in 1865, wherein slavery, an institution that was thousands of years old in the world, was overthrown in the United States.
"Pluralism," "diversity," "tolerance," these became the passwords of the new era, right along with "woman's liberation" and "equal opportunity." Then, on the first centennial of Kosmon, AK 100, after seven long cycles (seven solar years, see chapter 1), the Jews were restored to their homeland, inspiring the world with the humble but daring experiment, the kibbutz. At the same historic moment, India was liberated and the United Nations was established, proving that the comity of nations and the yearning for brotherhood were strong in the heart of the world.
Then, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, more than thirty countries abandoned authoritarianism for democracy. That generation also saw the conquest of space. With a "future of interplanetary space travel . . . the present is the most exciting and wonderful time to live, of all the ages since the beginning of the world," wrote author Og Mandino. Liberation, exploration, space science, radio, television, telecommunications, the Internet, technology, revolutionary inventions, all identify this chapter in the life of man as the culmination and end of a grand cycle of the ages.
But it's also a beginning.***
Susan B. Martinez, Ph.D., is a writer, linguist, teacher, paranormal researcher, and recognized authority on the Oahspe Bible with a doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University. The author of The Psychic Life of Abraham Lincoln and The Hidden Prophet, she is the book review editor for the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies. She lives in Clayton, Georgia.
TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!Susan is offering a Free Copy of TIME OF THE QUICKENING, in Paperback, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE WEEK from posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of Susan's book from Amazon:
Tweet
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
This is a book about the Art of Prophecy. Most prophecy is rather morbid and full of dire warnings about a coming catastrophe or apocalypse. But Susan Martinez has a different take on the subject, and as Stanley Krippner says, "she has presented a unique and uplifting message of hope in a world gone awry." Martinez discusses the history of prophecy, and why so many predictions do not come true. She writes about everything from ancient biblical times, to Nostradamus, to Edgar Cayce, to Jeane Dixon. She goes on to cover contemporary issues, including the current economic disaster and the threat of climate disaster, but in a context of hope! Martinez' aim is to revive the lost art of prophecy -– the future-predictive kind and the wisdom kind -– as brought to light in the 'Oahspe Bible': a nineteenth century set of Scriptures that revealed ancient Egyptian Tables of Destiny. She shows readers how to use these Tables to make their own predictions, and she demonstrates that we are not heading toward a Rapture or Armageddon: rather, we are moving toward a "Quickening" – the embryonic stage of a coming Utopian Age, a time of global unity, global religion, global peace, and the awakening of the world-soul.
Here's an excerpt from the Introduction to this fascinating book: ***
Why Wait for Apocalypse? Nation is against nation; king against king; merchant against merchant; consumer against producer; yes, man against man,
in all things upon the earth! - Oahspe, voice of man 36* *Oahspe is a set of scripture written in 1881 by Dr. John Ballou Newbrough, founder of the modern Faithist movement, by the process of automatic typewriting. Selections from Oahspe, like the one above, will be included throughout this book.
In 1790, a Polish monk wrote extraordinary prophecies stating that the twentieth century was destined to be the most "remarkable of all [times]. All which is appalling and terrible will befall the human race . . . princes will revolt against their fathers . . . children against their parents, and the whole human race against each other." The prophecies that a universal war, moreover, would begin in 1938 (only one year off for World War II). "Devastation . . . will overtake whole countries . . . destroyed will be the greatest and most respected cities." (And such cities were destroyed, like Dresden, which Kurt Vonnegut eulogized so poignantly in Slaughterhouse-Five.)
At last count, more than thirty-five countries are at war today. This great new era of science, invention, industry, and laborsaving conveniences has simultaneously hatched a litter of Fascist regimes, violent coups, military dictatorships, invasions, and civil wars around the world. As the twentieth century progressed, so did the staggering number of refugees and disenfranchised people. As a result of recent conflicts, much of the thirdworld landscape is dotted with land mines, some of them disguised to look like children's toys, the better to maim and mutilate the coming generation of the "enemy," demonstrating conclusively "the singular viciousness," according to Newsweek, "of the 20th century." This is apocalypse.
The same years that saw the advent of thermonuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles also saw the Jewish Holocaust in Germany, followed by other genocidal sweeps, especially in Africa. Multinational monopolies, made possible by an American-born brand of hedonistic consumerism, took command of the planet in lockstep with the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, and quite a few other "complexes," including unprecedented mental ones, singularly bred by the twentieth-century disfigurement of so much that is human and natural, decent and sane, rational and good . . .
This is apocalypse. Within a brief twenty-year period (1948–1968) five of the most promising and charismatic leaders of the century (indeed, of the new era), starting with Mohandas Gandhi, were shot down by assassins' bullets. Today, anarchists and terrorists only continue to escalate their activities, creatively deploying our most recent lethal inventions and technology. It is a known fact that Osama bin Laden masterminded and coordinated the 9/11 attack largely by means of satellite phones and fax machines. The American century was capped by his apocalyptic personality and his statement that "Jihad will go on until the day of Judgment." He became the embodiment of all that can go wrong when the world is in the hands of a single superpower. This is apocalypse. Back in 1995, the horrendous nerve-gas attack in the Tokyo subway used the deadly substance called sarin, developed by Nazi scientists during World War II. The Buddhist extremist group behind the gas attack managed to kill seven people and sicken one thousand. Radio host Art Bell compared the attack to those of other groups such as November 17 (Greece), the Corsican National Liberation Front, the Red Brigades (Italy), and neo-Nazis throughout Europe. As he says, "What is disturbing is that these activities are now occurring in countries such as Japan which historically have not had these problems. Clearly this is a trend of the Quickening. Each of these groups have resorted to terror . . . [demonstrating] how powerless the people of the world are to defend themselves. . . . No one—in any society in the world . . . can ever feel completely safe."
No, a world of "shock and awe" is not a safe world—for anyone, nor is a world of AIDS, of car bombs, school shootings, street gangs, satanic cults, serial killers, burning oil fields, South American death squads, and "the disappeared"—all of which carry the distinct flavor of the American century. What other era could have seen shockers such as the Jonestown mass suicide debacle of 1978, the Chernobyl disaster, or the unparalleled 9/11 event?
None of those things could have happened if modern man had possessed a genuine moral sense or harmonious mind. As Nobel Prize–winning physiologist Alexis Carrel saw it, "Most civilized men manifest only an elementary form of consciousness. . . . They produce, they consume, they satisfy their physiological appetites. They also take pleasure in watching, among great crowds, athletic spectacles, in seeing childish and vulgar moving pictures. . . . They are soft, sentimental, lascivious, and violent. They have no moral, esthetic, or religious sense. . . . [Their] intelligence remains rudimentary." The Other Side of the Coin Out of all things comes some good.
- Oahspe, book of saphah, qadeth iz 5:8 I am convinced there will be mutual understanding among human beings . . . in spite of all the suffering, the blood, the broken glass.
- Pablo Neruda, Memoirs
At the very same time, the American century—side by side with its insults and horrors —gave birth to a new prospect for mankind, an estate it could only inherit upon the death and demise of its predecessor. Heir apparent to a golden age, humanity in the third millennium stands at the threshold of its cosmic legacy. This is no dream. It is the reality given to all men. Graduation day for the human race has arrived (though commencement may take a few centuries). Many began to understand this new beginning when the Berlin Wall came down, soon followed by the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. We could and should expect from this time forth the inevitable collapse of tyranny and oppression of every kind. But this emancipating process, this steady climb toward the elimination of false and mean barriers, was already more than a century old, beginning with the extraordinary global revolutions of 1848 that marked the birth year of the era called Kosmon (see chapters 1, 6, and 7). "The missing factor of prophecy," Anderson wrote "has been found in the year 1848, for this date gives us a known point in time from which to work. Application of the cycles used by the ancients in their time-tables of prophecy . . . [give us] this date as being the first year of the new age."
It was a new age with new standards and new values. Then, barely fifteen years into Kosmon (Anno Kosmon [AK] 15), on January 1, 1863, came the Emancipation Proclamation, which paved the way for the thirteenth amendment in 1865, wherein slavery, an institution that was thousands of years old in the world, was overthrown in the United States.
"Pluralism," "diversity," "tolerance," these became the passwords of the new era, right along with "woman's liberation" and "equal opportunity." Then, on the first centennial of Kosmon, AK 100, after seven long cycles (seven solar years, see chapter 1), the Jews were restored to their homeland, inspiring the world with the humble but daring experiment, the kibbutz. At the same historic moment, India was liberated and the United Nations was established, proving that the comity of nations and the yearning for brotherhood were strong in the heart of the world.
Then, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, more than thirty countries abandoned authoritarianism for democracy. That generation also saw the conquest of space. With a "future of interplanetary space travel . . . the present is the most exciting and wonderful time to live, of all the ages since the beginning of the world," wrote author Og Mandino. Liberation, exploration, space science, radio, television, telecommunications, the Internet, technology, revolutionary inventions, all identify this chapter in the life of man as the culmination and end of a grand cycle of the ages. But it's also a beginning.***
Susan B. Martinez, Ph.D., is a writer, linguist, teacher, paranormal researcher, and recognized authority on the Oahspe Bible with a doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University. The author of The Psychic Life of Abraham Lincoln and The Hidden Prophet, she is the book review editor for the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies. She lives in Clayton, Georgia. TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!Susan is offering a Free Copy of TIME OF THE QUICKENING, in Paperback, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE WEEK from posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of Susan's book from Amazon:
September 6, 2011
THOMAS BERRY - DREAMER OF THE EARTH: The Spiritual Ecology of the Father of Environmentalism
Edited by Ervin Laszlo and Allan Combs (Today's PRIZE GIVEAWAY is a Paperback copy of THOMAS BERRY - Dreamer of the Earth. Leave a COMMENT to enter. See details below) Tweet
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
Thomas Berry, writes Ervin Laszlo in his Foreword, "was truly a man not just of the twentieth but also of the twenty-first century: the relevance and meaning of his ideas, his warnings, and his vision become more manifest in the new century than they did in the old. Few thinkers have been as far ahead of their time as Thomas Berry."
Our challenge, Berry believed, is nothing less than to create a new sense of what it means to be human. After all, "[W]e are just emerging from a technological entrancement. During this period the human mind has been placed within the narrowest confines it has experienced since consciousness emerged from its Paleolithic phase." Contrary to the widespread belief that the modern world is infinitely superior to the world of the past, it is only in the rarest and most primitive of peoples that there remains a great vision of the universe, a great vision of the Earth, a great vision of the human soul. He called upon us to reawaken that inner vision.
This wonderful collection of essays describes and honors Berry's near-century of work. It includes a chapter by Matthew Fox on Berry's contributions to the western spiritual tradition, a chapter by Joanna Macy on what the Earth Community tells us about faith and power, contributions from Stanley Krippner, Bill Plotkin, Paul Devereaux, and many others, including the chapter "The Double Life of Thomas Berry: Emergence and Evolution" by Duane Elgin, from which today's excerpt is taken.
Thomas Berry was one of the 'Greats', and this collection by Laszlo and Combs is a wonderful tribute.
***
AN EMERGENT UNIVERSE IN WISDOM TRADITIONS
When we turn to the "inner sciences," what have sages across cultures and across the centuries discovered with regard to the universe? When men and women from divers spiritual traditions invest years in deep meditation and contemplation, do they discover the universe to be a place of grey indifference withou feeling qualities? Alternatively, does the universe reveal itself to us through the "spontaneities in our own being" as a place of ever-emerging mystery, vitality, and wholeness?
The understanding that we live in a living, regenerative universe is found in all the world's major spiritual traditions. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, indigenous traditions, and more, all speak to the idea of a regenerating universe. Here are a few, illustrative quotes:
God is creating the entire universe, fully and totally, in this present now. Everything God created…God creates now all at once.
Meister Eckhart,Meditations With Meister Eckhart
God keeps a firm hold on the heavens and earth, preventing them from vanishing away.
Islamic Qur'an, 35:41
Out of himself he brought forth the cosmosAnd entered into everything in it.There is nothing that does not come from him….You are that … you are that.
Hindu, Chandogya Upanishad
My solemn proclamation is that a new universe is created every moment.
D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture
The Tao is the sustaining Life-force and the mother of all things;
from it, all things rise and fall without cease.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
You have a death and a return in every moment…. Every moment the world is renewed but we, in seeing its continuity of appearance, are unaware of its being renewed.
Rumi, The Essential Rumi
Evolution presupposes creation…creation is an everlasting process - a create continua.
Pope John Paul II
At the heart of Buddhist cosmology is … the idea that [multiple world systems, including our own universe] are in a constant state of coming into being and passing away.
Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom
Based upon decades of research described in my book The Living Universe, harvesting the wisdom of human experience is like watching a picture gradually come into focus and seeing an extraordinary image of the universe emerging before our eyes. Within each major tradition - Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, Indigenous, and more - we can find remarkably similar descriptions of the universe and the life force that pervades it: Christians affirm that God is not separate from this world but continuously creates it anew, so that we live, move, and have our being in God. Muslims declare that the entire universe is continually coming into being, and that each moment is a new "occasion" for Allah to create the universe. Hindus proclaim that the entire universe is a single body that is being continually danced into creation by a Life force or Brahman. Buddhists state that the entire universe arises freshly at every moment in an unceasing flow of interdependent co-origination where everything depends upon everything else. Taoists state that the Tao is the "Mother of the Universe," the inexhaustible source from which all things rise and fall without ceasing. Confucians view our universe as a unified and interpenetrating whole that is sustained and nourished by the vitality of the Life force or Ch'i. Indigenous peoples declare that an animating wind or Life force blows through all things in the world and there is an aliveness and sacred power everywhere. A stream of Western thinkers portray the universe as a single, living creature that is continually regenerated and is evolving toward higher levels of complexity and consciousness. Overall, beneath the differences in language, a common reality is being described - our life is part of a larger life.
Despite our great diversity and differences of history, Thomas recognized that, when the world's wisdom traditions penetrate into the experiential depths of existence, a common understanding emerges about the universe that is in accord with insights from science. We live within a living universe that arises, moment-by-moment, as a unified whole. The universe is continuously sustained by the flow-through of phenomenal amounts of energy in an unutterably vast and intensely alive process of awesome precision and power. We are beings the universe inhabits as much as we are beings who inhabit the universe. The unity of existence is not an experience to be created; rather, it is an always-manifesting condition waiting to be appreciated and welcomed into awareness.
***
Ervin Laszlo is a pioneer is systems philosophy and general systems theory and founder of the field of general evolution theory. A rare combination of scholar, theorist, and activist, Laszlo is former Director of Research for the United Nations and advisor to the Director-General of UNESCO. He is also the author of a major Club of Rome study on goals for humanity. He is the author of over 100 books and articles dedicated to sustainability and the future of humanity.
Allan Combs is Professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. And the author and coauthor of over 100 publications on consciousness and ecology, including Synchronicity: The Radiance of Being and Consciousness Explained Better: An Integral Understanding of Consciousness.
Duane Elgin is an internationally recognized visionary speaker, author, and educator. His books include: The Living Universe; Promise Ahead; Voluntary Simplicity; and Awakening Earth, He has worked as a senior staff member of the Presidential Commission on the American Future and as a senior social scientist with the think tank SRI International where he coauthored numerous studies of the future.
TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!
Today's Prize Giveaway is a Free Copy of Thomas Berry - Dreamer of the Earth, in Paperback, for today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE WEEK from posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of THOMAS BERRY - DREAMER OF THE EARTH from Amazon.
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
Thomas Berry, writes Ervin Laszlo in his Foreword, "was truly a man not just of the twentieth but also of the twenty-first century: the relevance and meaning of his ideas, his warnings, and his vision become more manifest in the new century than they did in the old. Few thinkers have been as far ahead of their time as Thomas Berry."
Our challenge, Berry believed, is nothing less than to create a new sense of what it means to be human. After all, "[W]e are just emerging from a technological entrancement. During this period the human mind has been placed within the narrowest confines it has experienced since consciousness emerged from its Paleolithic phase." Contrary to the widespread belief that the modern world is infinitely superior to the world of the past, it is only in the rarest and most primitive of peoples that there remains a great vision of the universe, a great vision of the Earth, a great vision of the human soul. He called upon us to reawaken that inner vision.
This wonderful collection of essays describes and honors Berry's near-century of work. It includes a chapter by Matthew Fox on Berry's contributions to the western spiritual tradition, a chapter by Joanna Macy on what the Earth Community tells us about faith and power, contributions from Stanley Krippner, Bill Plotkin, Paul Devereaux, and many others, including the chapter "The Double Life of Thomas Berry: Emergence and Evolution" by Duane Elgin, from which today's excerpt is taken.
Thomas Berry was one of the 'Greats', and this collection by Laszlo and Combs is a wonderful tribute.
***
AN EMERGENT UNIVERSE IN WISDOM TRADITIONS
When we turn to the "inner sciences," what have sages across cultures and across the centuries discovered with regard to the universe? When men and women from divers spiritual traditions invest years in deep meditation and contemplation, do they discover the universe to be a place of grey indifference withou feeling qualities? Alternatively, does the universe reveal itself to us through the "spontaneities in our own being" as a place of ever-emerging mystery, vitality, and wholeness? The understanding that we live in a living, regenerative universe is found in all the world's major spiritual traditions. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, indigenous traditions, and more, all speak to the idea of a regenerating universe. Here are a few, illustrative quotes:
God is creating the entire universe, fully and totally, in this present now. Everything God created…God creates now all at once.
Meister Eckhart,Meditations With Meister Eckhart
God keeps a firm hold on the heavens and earth, preventing them from vanishing away.
Islamic Qur'an, 35:41
Out of himself he brought forth the cosmosAnd entered into everything in it.There is nothing that does not come from him….You are that … you are that.
Hindu, Chandogya Upanishad
My solemn proclamation is that a new universe is created every moment.
D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture
The Tao is the sustaining Life-force and the mother of all things;
from it, all things rise and fall without cease.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
You have a death and a return in every moment…. Every moment the world is renewed but we, in seeing its continuity of appearance, are unaware of its being renewed.
Rumi, The Essential Rumi
Evolution presupposes creation…creation is an everlasting process - a create continua.
Pope John Paul II
At the heart of Buddhist cosmology is … the idea that [multiple world systems, including our own universe] are in a constant state of coming into being and passing away.
Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom
Based upon decades of research described in my book The Living Universe, harvesting the wisdom of human experience is like watching a picture gradually come into focus and seeing an extraordinary image of the universe emerging before our eyes. Within each major tradition - Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, Indigenous, and more - we can find remarkably similar descriptions of the universe and the life force that pervades it: Christians affirm that God is not separate from this world but continuously creates it anew, so that we live, move, and have our being in God. Muslims declare that the entire universe is continually coming into being, and that each moment is a new "occasion" for Allah to create the universe. Hindus proclaim that the entire universe is a single body that is being continually danced into creation by a Life force or Brahman. Buddhists state that the entire universe arises freshly at every moment in an unceasing flow of interdependent co-origination where everything depends upon everything else. Taoists state that the Tao is the "Mother of the Universe," the inexhaustible source from which all things rise and fall without ceasing. Confucians view our universe as a unified and interpenetrating whole that is sustained and nourished by the vitality of the Life force or Ch'i. Indigenous peoples declare that an animating wind or Life force blows through all things in the world and there is an aliveness and sacred power everywhere. A stream of Western thinkers portray the universe as a single, living creature that is continually regenerated and is evolving toward higher levels of complexity and consciousness. Overall, beneath the differences in language, a common reality is being described - our life is part of a larger life.Despite our great diversity and differences of history, Thomas recognized that, when the world's wisdom traditions penetrate into the experiential depths of existence, a common understanding emerges about the universe that is in accord with insights from science. We live within a living universe that arises, moment-by-moment, as a unified whole. The universe is continuously sustained by the flow-through of phenomenal amounts of energy in an unutterably vast and intensely alive process of awesome precision and power. We are beings the universe inhabits as much as we are beings who inhabit the universe. The unity of existence is not an experience to be created; rather, it is an always-manifesting condition waiting to be appreciated and welcomed into awareness.
***
Ervin Laszlo is a pioneer is systems philosophy and general systems theory and founder of the field of general evolution theory. A rare combination of scholar, theorist, and activist, Laszlo is former Director of Research for the United Nations and advisor to the Director-General of UNESCO. He is also the author of a major Club of Rome study on goals for humanity. He is the author of over 100 books and articles dedicated to sustainability and the future of humanity.
Allan Combs is Professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. And the author and coauthor of over 100 publications on consciousness and ecology, including Synchronicity: The Radiance of Being and Consciousness Explained Better: An Integral Understanding of Consciousness. 
Duane Elgin is an internationally recognized visionary speaker, author, and educator. His books include: The Living Universe; Promise Ahead; Voluntary Simplicity; and Awakening Earth, He has worked as a senior staff member of the Presidential Commission on the American Future and as a senior social scientist with the think tank SRI International where he coauthored numerous studies of the future.TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!
Today's Prize Giveaway is a Free Copy of Thomas Berry - Dreamer of the Earth, in Paperback, for today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE WEEK from posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of THOMAS BERRY - DREAMER OF THE EARTH from Amazon.
September 5, 2011
DEVELOPING A MYSTIC CONSCIOUSNESS
by Carol Batey (Today's PRIZE GIVEAWAY is a PDF copy of
Developing a Mystic Consciousness
. Leave a COMMENT to enter. See details below)
Tweet
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
In Developing a Mystic Consciousness, Carol Batey reminds readers that we are never alone, that higher forces are always there for support: Holy Spirit, spirit guides, angels. I would note that in earlier, more primitive cultures, their presence was part of everyone's day-to-day experience. The gods of Homer's Greece were part of daily life. God spoke to Abraham and Moses. He sent His messenger to speak to Mary. The sharp difference that we ascribe to secular matters and sacred matters would make no sense to a Shaman. In these times and cultures, people were immersed in the sacred, and felt a direct participation with higher levels of existence. "During the last three or four centuries, however," writes Douglas Sloan, "this participatory awareness of a meaningful world has dimmed almost to the point of extinction."
But Batey wants to reassure us that they are still here. She wants to encourage us, in the words of Charles Fillmore, to develop "an intimate first-hand acquaintance with God." To develop this keener spiritual awareness of a Higher Power, she says, "we may try stillness, silence, spiritual practice, mental prayer, or mystical meditation." All of this can be done in this world , as we will see in today's excerpt: we do not have to run off to a convent or a hidden monastery in the Himalayas.
Mystics, of course, continue to experience this awareness, which is why Batey shares mystic literature from Saint Clare, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Theresa and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Her book is very thoughtful and inspiring. **** Spiritual Literature "The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it." - Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932-1996)
Seekers of enlightenment are looking for a higher spiritual awakening into a higher calling of devotion to their Creator; they are looking for blueprints. Just like a builder who builds homes or buildings, they too follow a blueprint. As a result, as the builder follows clear directions, the project is completed. However, most people only know God the Creator through another person or media – parents, close relatives, minister, or a book. Mystics are those who are called to experience God in sense, feeling, and the wisdom of Spirit first-hand, not far away in a distance. Authors Ronald Hennies and Sonia Weiss (2004) describe it this way: "a mystic is one who practices or believes in mysticism." Mathew 22:14 states, "For many are called, but few are chosen." Everyone on earth is called to understand and integrate with Spirit; it is a personal choice. Spirit teaches mystics on a deep level within their consciousness. Mysticism is found in every religion, culture and age on this earth from the North, South, East and West of the continent. Thus, faithful "mystical travelers" are led to move and go here or there without knowing why. Nonetheless, they later learn why they were called to serve mankind and develop an inner knowing. These people are not afraid to dare to uncover their different spiritual paths.
Mother Teresa was a high school teacher before answering her call to God. The call came on the 10th of September 1946, the day their Catholic church celebrates "Inspiration Day." From the book, The Joy of Loving, she is on a train to another city when she is told by Jesus: "I want you to serve Me among the poorest of poor" (Chalika and Le Joly, 2000). The authors claim this movement and encounter with Jesus changed her life.
Sylvia Browne describes in her book, Phenomenon (2005), the "mystical traveler said to God about their soul's journey is, 'Whatever in this Universe you needs me, I'll willing go.' Mystical Travelers … devote themselves to maintaining the divine spiritual connection between us and God as a thriving, viable force." Browne continues, "Mystical Travelers have a peaceful acceptance of sacrifice and discomfort when it comes to going forth with their mission on earth" (p. 190). This person is often likened unto Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Thomas á Kempis, an Augustinian monk to name a few (Foster and Smith, 1990). This may be your path. This poignant information will be valuable to them, knowing that their attachment is to God, not to persons, places, and things.
Listening to the Universal God
Various times, people are often pursued by others to seek other destinies, not to fulfill their spiritual paths their inner calling from the Universal God. Nonetheless, there have been those who neglect to listen to a prompting of their soul's nudging from Spirit. Hence, procrastination happens by making their passions, desires, and goals a priority in their lives. Thus, they are afraid of making a commitment to prioritize spiritual goals, allowing fears to prevent them from saying "Yes" to the Universal God. Once an individual can identify their fears, overcome them, and subsequently decide what they are willing to leave behind, then growth can occur in their life. Numerous seekers are so afraid of losing out on material things and going places, that they forgo the spiritual journey. Therefore, to make it easy, there are blueprints available from the Saints who have gone before us in this life.
When seekers are unsettled in their spiritual life, their spirit and souls are drawn to another level, growth, or stage of spiritual devotion. This process may leave them feeling uncomfortable and unsettled. When that feeling happens, the masterpiece of mystical literature and blueprints of the sixteenth century, Carmelite Mystic Priest, Author Saint John of the Cross and others may come as a guide. In his book, Dark Nights of the Soul, Saint John equates two different phases the first phase is a purification process; the second is spiritual. This means as one develops and enhances their devotion of spirituality, they begin to become purified, cleansed, and then their spiritual eyes are awakened. In one stanza of Dark Nights of the Soul, he writes: "On a dark night, kindled in love with yearnings oh happy chance! I went forth without being observed, my house being now at rest."
The house was his soul! ***
Carol Batey is a Writer, Minister, Metaphysics Teacher, Art Lifestyle Coach, LMT, Licensed, Esthetician, Professional Model, Reflexologist, Massage Therapist, and Mother of Six! She is a Member of the National Speaker Association of Tennessee. Her website can be found at www.artlifestylecoach.com.
TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!
Caedem is offering a Free Copy of DEVELOPING A MYSTIC CONSCIOUSNESS, in PDF format, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE week following posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of DEVELOPING A MYSTIC CONSCIOUSNESS from Amazon.
Tweet
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
In Developing a Mystic Consciousness, Carol Batey reminds readers that we are never alone, that higher forces are always there for support: Holy Spirit, spirit guides, angels. I would note that in earlier, more primitive cultures, their presence was part of everyone's day-to-day experience. The gods of Homer's Greece were part of daily life. God spoke to Abraham and Moses. He sent His messenger to speak to Mary. The sharp difference that we ascribe to secular matters and sacred matters would make no sense to a Shaman. In these times and cultures, people were immersed in the sacred, and felt a direct participation with higher levels of existence. "During the last three or four centuries, however," writes Douglas Sloan, "this participatory awareness of a meaningful world has dimmed almost to the point of extinction."But Batey wants to reassure us that they are still here. She wants to encourage us, in the words of Charles Fillmore, to develop "an intimate first-hand acquaintance with God." To develop this keener spiritual awareness of a Higher Power, she says, "we may try stillness, silence, spiritual practice, mental prayer, or mystical meditation." All of this can be done in this world , as we will see in today's excerpt: we do not have to run off to a convent or a hidden monastery in the Himalayas.
Mystics, of course, continue to experience this awareness, which is why Batey shares mystic literature from Saint Clare, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Theresa and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Her book is very thoughtful and inspiring. **** Spiritual Literature "The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it." - Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932-1996)
Seekers of enlightenment are looking for a higher spiritual awakening into a higher calling of devotion to their Creator; they are looking for blueprints. Just like a builder who builds homes or buildings, they too follow a blueprint. As a result, as the builder follows clear directions, the project is completed. However, most people only know God the Creator through another person or media – parents, close relatives, minister, or a book. Mystics are those who are called to experience God in sense, feeling, and the wisdom of Spirit first-hand, not far away in a distance. Authors Ronald Hennies and Sonia Weiss (2004) describe it this way: "a mystic is one who practices or believes in mysticism." Mathew 22:14 states, "For many are called, but few are chosen." Everyone on earth is called to understand and integrate with Spirit; it is a personal choice. Spirit teaches mystics on a deep level within their consciousness. Mysticism is found in every religion, culture and age on this earth from the North, South, East and West of the continent. Thus, faithful "mystical travelers" are led to move and go here or there without knowing why. Nonetheless, they later learn why they were called to serve mankind and develop an inner knowing. These people are not afraid to dare to uncover their different spiritual paths.
Mother Teresa was a high school teacher before answering her call to God. The call came on the 10th of September 1946, the day their Catholic church celebrates "Inspiration Day." From the book, The Joy of Loving, she is on a train to another city when she is told by Jesus: "I want you to serve Me among the poorest of poor" (Chalika and Le Joly, 2000). The authors claim this movement and encounter with Jesus changed her life. Sylvia Browne describes in her book, Phenomenon (2005), the "mystical traveler said to God about their soul's journey is, 'Whatever in this Universe you needs me, I'll willing go.' Mystical Travelers … devote themselves to maintaining the divine spiritual connection between us and God as a thriving, viable force." Browne continues, "Mystical Travelers have a peaceful acceptance of sacrifice and discomfort when it comes to going forth with their mission on earth" (p. 190). This person is often likened unto Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Thomas á Kempis, an Augustinian monk to name a few (Foster and Smith, 1990). This may be your path. This poignant information will be valuable to them, knowing that their attachment is to God, not to persons, places, and things.
Listening to the Universal God
Various times, people are often pursued by others to seek other destinies, not to fulfill their spiritual paths their inner calling from the Universal God. Nonetheless, there have been those who neglect to listen to a prompting of their soul's nudging from Spirit. Hence, procrastination happens by making their passions, desires, and goals a priority in their lives. Thus, they are afraid of making a commitment to prioritize spiritual goals, allowing fears to prevent them from saying "Yes" to the Universal God. Once an individual can identify their fears, overcome them, and subsequently decide what they are willing to leave behind, then growth can occur in their life. Numerous seekers are so afraid of losing out on material things and going places, that they forgo the spiritual journey. Therefore, to make it easy, there are blueprints available from the Saints who have gone before us in this life. When seekers are unsettled in their spiritual life, their spirit and souls are drawn to another level, growth, or stage of spiritual devotion. This process may leave them feeling uncomfortable and unsettled. When that feeling happens, the masterpiece of mystical literature and blueprints of the sixteenth century, Carmelite Mystic Priest, Author Saint John of the Cross and others may come as a guide. In his book, Dark Nights of the Soul, Saint John equates two different phases the first phase is a purification process; the second is spiritual. This means as one develops and enhances their devotion of spirituality, they begin to become purified, cleansed, and then their spiritual eyes are awakened. In one stanza of Dark Nights of the Soul, he writes: "On a dark night, kindled in love with yearnings oh happy chance! I went forth without being observed, my house being now at rest."
The house was his soul! ***
Carol Batey is a Writer, Minister, Metaphysics Teacher, Art Lifestyle Coach, LMT, Licensed, Esthetician, Professional Model, Reflexologist, Massage Therapist, and Mother of Six! She is a Member of the National Speaker Association of Tennessee. Her website can be found at www.artlifestylecoach.com. TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!
Caedem is offering a Free Copy of DEVELOPING A MYSTIC CONSCIOUSNESS, in PDF format, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE week following posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of DEVELOPING A MYSTIC CONSCIOUSNESS from Amazon.
September 3, 2011
THE PATH HOME
by Caedem Marquez (Today's Prize Giveaway is a PDF copy of
The Path Home
. Leave a COMMENT to enter. See details below)
Tweet
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
A chance meeting in a bookstore between a shy, likable, 40-year-old man and a beautiful, friendly woman who knows what she wants, and we have all the makings of a pleasant enough love story. But there's a problem. The man is a priest! And he's so confused by all the heady new sensations he's feeling, that he can't get himself to tell her. More than hearts are going to be broken.
The book soon opens up into a tale about the conflicting pulls of God, Career, Family, and Home, and how they can all, perhaps, be balanced.
Caedem Marquez writes in a clear, almost staccato style. The book is a quick and enjoyable read (and just 99 cents on Kindle.)
***
From THE PATH HOME
"Father!" Christopher rushes up to me as he pounds down the steps of St. Michael's. "I'm going to be an altar boy today."
I smile and laugh. It feels like years since he and I played on the beach. I have to remind myself it was just yesterday. "Are you?"
"Yes. Bishop Marquez said I would get the honor because I am so special." "Do you know what to do?"
He nods. "Tommy, the other altar boy, said he's going to help me."
I ruffle his hair. "Good."
The bells ring, and Christopher runs off to get in his robe. I turn to the forty monks who are all lined up and ready for the procession. They fidget, all nervous at the honor they have at being in the presence of Cardinal Rouche.
Why am I so antsy? I can't put my finger on it.
The bells chime and ring. It is time for the procession into the great sanctuary of St. Michaels.
Side by side, the monks walk two deep down the aisle. I am at the back. The great choir sings Ave Maria, and once again the beautiful song shakes me to my bones.
While not a fast and hard rule, we traditionally look ahead, staring at the back of the heads of the monks in front of us. I don't know why, but my eyes begin to wander. I look up at the cross of my Savior hanging there, and I say a silent prayer of thanks for his sacrifice. Looking to my left, I gaze at the stained glass windows and marvel at their beauty.
Finally, I look to my right, and for a moment it doesn't register.
It can't be. I think that if I ignore it, it will go away.
The world is about to end.
Toni sits in the middle row, her eyes on me.
I stare at her. I take a deep breath, knowing I am about to break. I no longer hear the song. There is a silence all around. Then a rushing sound, as if a great wave is crashing, thunders through my head.
She holds my gaze for one more moment. Her expression is confusing. I can't discern her thoughts. Then I see her first tear fall.
I never see the second.
She stands, and runs out of the church.
Dumbfounded, I find my seat. I am left sitting in the front row of the church as mass continues on, my mind a thousand miles away.
"Did you see me up at the altar?" Christopher bounds up to me after the mass. I do my best to smile. It is harder than I thought. The pain in my throat overpowers any thoughts of happiness. "Yes, Christopher. You were wonderful."
He beams. "Are you proud of me?"
I kneel next to him, trying to fight back the tears. My voice is choked as I speak. "Yes, I am so very proud of you."
His eyes scan the church for something. "What are you looking for?" I ask, although I already know. Emotions boil to the surface, and I have to fight them back down.
"Toni," he says. "I invited her. I wanted her to see me at the altar."
My heart hurts and all the pain boils to my mouth. "Why didn't you tell me?" My tone is harsh, and I immediately regret it. Christopher looks up, scared. "I… "
"I'm sorry, Christopher. I'm just tired. That was wrong of me to snap at you. I just can't believe you didn't tell me Toni was coming, or that she didn't tell me she was coming."
Christopher, still looking a bit nervous speaks. "I told her to keep it a secret. I wanted it to be a surprise."
"It's okay, Christopher.
"Did I do something wrong?"
I grab him and hug him close, knowing that this is the end of the dream for us.
"No, Christopher. You are perfect. You are absolutely perfect."
"I just wanted her to see me up at the altar." His voice breaks. "I just wanted her to be proud of me."
Taking a deep breath, I try to hold back the tears. "I know, Christopher, I know. And you were great up there today. You did everything perfectly."
The world is broken and falling apart.
Christopher knows something is wrong. I can't hold back my broken heart. He understands that whatever is going on has to do with Toni, or rather, a lack of Toni.
I choke and heave. Pressing him close to me, I try to push the tears back in. It doesn't work.
"I just wanted her to see me up at the altar… " Over and over he says it as my tears begin to fall. His high-pitched voice begins to crack as he repeats the sentence again and again. I shake as I realize Christopher is blaming himself for my sadness. He understands that if he hadn't asked Toni to come, I wouldn't be crying. I want to tell him it's not his fault. I want to tell him everything will be okay. I want to tell him that no matter how bad we both feel, in one week we will both go back to Toni's house and play on the beach and eat hamburgers once again.
I want to tell him the dream is still a reality.
But as my tears fall, and Christopher's tears fall, and the crowd begins to gather around us, I know none of that is true.
***
Caedem Marquez spends his time reading, writing and enjoying life. He has traveled to South America and over half of the states in the United States. One of his favorite trips was up Highway 1 in California. He has made a 1,200 mile road trip on a whim, given his hand-made coat to a homeless man, saved a friend that was about to drown, and eaten 42 chicken wings in one sitting. His greatest delight is meeting fans and sharing a laugh.
TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!
Caedem is offering a Free Copy of THE PATH HOME, in PDF format, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE week following posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of THE PATH HOME from Amazon.
Tweet
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
A chance meeting in a bookstore between a shy, likable, 40-year-old man and a beautiful, friendly woman who knows what she wants, and we have all the makings of a pleasant enough love story. But there's a problem. The man is a priest! And he's so confused by all the heady new sensations he's feeling, that he can't get himself to tell her. More than hearts are going to be broken.
The book soon opens up into a tale about the conflicting pulls of God, Career, Family, and Home, and how they can all, perhaps, be balanced.
Caedem Marquez writes in a clear, almost staccato style. The book is a quick and enjoyable read (and just 99 cents on Kindle.)
***
From THE PATH HOME
"Father!" Christopher rushes up to me as he pounds down the steps of St. Michael's. "I'm going to be an altar boy today."
I smile and laugh. It feels like years since he and I played on the beach. I have to remind myself it was just yesterday. "Are you?"
"Yes. Bishop Marquez said I would get the honor because I am so special." "Do you know what to do?"
He nods. "Tommy, the other altar boy, said he's going to help me."
I ruffle his hair. "Good."
The bells ring, and Christopher runs off to get in his robe. I turn to the forty monks who are all lined up and ready for the procession. They fidget, all nervous at the honor they have at being in the presence of Cardinal Rouche.
Why am I so antsy? I can't put my finger on it.
The bells chime and ring. It is time for the procession into the great sanctuary of St. Michaels.
Side by side, the monks walk two deep down the aisle. I am at the back. The great choir sings Ave Maria, and once again the beautiful song shakes me to my bones.
While not a fast and hard rule, we traditionally look ahead, staring at the back of the heads of the monks in front of us. I don't know why, but my eyes begin to wander. I look up at the cross of my Savior hanging there, and I say a silent prayer of thanks for his sacrifice. Looking to my left, I gaze at the stained glass windows and marvel at their beauty.
Finally, I look to my right, and for a moment it doesn't register.
It can't be. I think that if I ignore it, it will go away.
The world is about to end.
Toni sits in the middle row, her eyes on me.
I stare at her. I take a deep breath, knowing I am about to break. I no longer hear the song. There is a silence all around. Then a rushing sound, as if a great wave is crashing, thunders through my head.
She holds my gaze for one more moment. Her expression is confusing. I can't discern her thoughts. Then I see her first tear fall.
I never see the second.
She stands, and runs out of the church.
Dumbfounded, I find my seat. I am left sitting in the front row of the church as mass continues on, my mind a thousand miles away.
"Did you see me up at the altar?" Christopher bounds up to me after the mass. I do my best to smile. It is harder than I thought. The pain in my throat overpowers any thoughts of happiness. "Yes, Christopher. You were wonderful."
He beams. "Are you proud of me?"
I kneel next to him, trying to fight back the tears. My voice is choked as I speak. "Yes, I am so very proud of you."
His eyes scan the church for something. "What are you looking for?" I ask, although I already know. Emotions boil to the surface, and I have to fight them back down.
"Toni," he says. "I invited her. I wanted her to see me at the altar."
My heart hurts and all the pain boils to my mouth. "Why didn't you tell me?" My tone is harsh, and I immediately regret it. Christopher looks up, scared. "I… "
"I'm sorry, Christopher. I'm just tired. That was wrong of me to snap at you. I just can't believe you didn't tell me Toni was coming, or that she didn't tell me she was coming."
Christopher, still looking a bit nervous speaks. "I told her to keep it a secret. I wanted it to be a surprise."
"It's okay, Christopher.
"Did I do something wrong?"
I grab him and hug him close, knowing that this is the end of the dream for us.
"No, Christopher. You are perfect. You are absolutely perfect."
"I just wanted her to see me up at the altar." His voice breaks. "I just wanted her to be proud of me."
Taking a deep breath, I try to hold back the tears. "I know, Christopher, I know. And you were great up there today. You did everything perfectly."
The world is broken and falling apart.
Christopher knows something is wrong. I can't hold back my broken heart. He understands that whatever is going on has to do with Toni, or rather, a lack of Toni.
I choke and heave. Pressing him close to me, I try to push the tears back in. It doesn't work.
"I just wanted her to see me up at the altar… " Over and over he says it as my tears begin to fall. His high-pitched voice begins to crack as he repeats the sentence again and again. I shake as I realize Christopher is blaming himself for my sadness. He understands that if he hadn't asked Toni to come, I wouldn't be crying. I want to tell him it's not his fault. I want to tell him everything will be okay. I want to tell him that no matter how bad we both feel, in one week we will both go back to Toni's house and play on the beach and eat hamburgers once again.
I want to tell him the dream is still a reality.
But as my tears fall, and Christopher's tears fall, and the crowd begins to gather around us, I know none of that is true.
***
Caedem Marquez spends his time reading, writing and enjoying life. He has traveled to South America and over half of the states in the United States. One of his favorite trips was up Highway 1 in California. He has made a 1,200 mile road trip on a whim, given his hand-made coat to a homeless man, saved a friend that was about to drown, and eaten 42 chicken wings in one sitting. His greatest delight is meeting fans and sharing a laugh.
TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!
Caedem is offering a Free Copy of THE PATH HOME, in PDF format, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for ONE week following posting. The winner will then be chosen by random drawing and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of THE PATH HOME from Amazon.
September 2, 2011
TRIUNE
by Andrew Bowen (Today's Prize Giveaway is a PDF Download copy of
Triune
)
Tweet
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
Andrew Bowen's novella, Triune, is a timely story of religious hatred, its effect on people's lives and psyches, all the lunacy, violence and misery it engenders in its wake, and the utter waste and foolishness of it all.
Triune begins as the story of an eponymous rock band comprised of an irreverent young Jewish man (Jaron), an enigmatic young Christian man (Noah), and a half-traditional/half-progressive young Muslim woman (Sam). The three are on a mission to show the world that just as they can make music together, so could we all make peace together.Their naivete and youthful enthusiasm is played out against a background of bigoted parental figures and the endless war in the Middle East. Just as they are about to achieve the long-wished-for dream of a music company contract, Jaron's brother is killed in Israel, the band breaks up, and (evidently to please his grieving parents) Jaron returns to Israel and joins the army. Not, however, before he unknowingly impregnates Sam with a son, Gabriel, causing her family to disown her.
She has no way of knowing that Jaron, who doesn't write to her, has latched on to a twisted and dangerous interpretation of the familiar childhood remonstration: "If you two can't share it, then neither of you can have it!" The final section of the book, in which Noah tries to find and rescue Jaron, reads like a Dan Brown story, in which spiritual ideas become the basis for great, if disturbing, adventures.
Here's an excerpt from the section called,
THE BOOK OF NOAH
I hadn't been to Israel in years. Anxiety bubbled up inside of me as the blue waters of the Mediterranean turned into the green, western band of the tiny, smoldering country. We landed in the coastal city of Tel-Aviv at 2:45 P.M. Israel time. My heart dropped as the plane's tires struck the tarmac. I tightened my grip on my backpack and looked out the window. "Hello, old friend."
Due to my experience in the region and fluency in Arabic and Hebrew, my job in the Red Cross was to monitor Palestinian prisoners and provide community support to war-torn sectors around Jerusalem. The plan was for me to use my Red Cross mission as a cover to glean information about Jaron's location. I would be in the country for one month. It was a long shot; Jaron could have been anywhere. If I was discovered, I'd be sent packing. I didn't know what was more dangerous: Sam's wrath or being in the middle of a war between people who had hated one another for thousands of years.
A convoy of Red Cross vans shuttled international volunteers and me to one of three hotels in Western Jerusalem with two Israeli Humvee escorts. We twisted through the foothills of the mountainous spine that separates Israel from the Jordan Desert and the rest of the eastern world. Most vegetation was sparse due to generations of settlement, agriculture and war. I gazed up at the rocky ground where gnarled pines, oaks and shrubs wrapped their roots to whatever foothold they could manage. It was late May. We had just missed the rainy season, and the forecasted summer looked hot.
The hairs on the back of my neck tingled. I glanced sideways at the girl who sat beside me. She quickly looked away from my scar. I tugged the white Red Cross hat over my face, leaned back, and tried to catch a nap along the rocky road.
We bunked four to a room in a small hotel on the western edge of Jerusalem. The location provided centrality for our two responsibilities: prisoner care at the Israeli frontal POW camp near the limestone quarry at Ma'oz Tsiyon, and relief aid to the city's interior.
I laid my duffle bag over a fold-out cot and walked to the window. The air was saturated with dust and the tinge of sulfur from expended mortar rounds and rockets. A plume of black smoke curled up toward a blue sky from the east.
'Unreal, isn't it?" a college student said from the other side of the window.
I bit into a red apple. The crunch boomed in my head and sounded like a neck being broken. The shockwave of another mortar shook the floor.
"Whoa," the young man said and stepped away. His mouth hung open as he pointed. "You see that?"
My hand shook with the apple in my grasp. I heard screams in my head, the echo of the bark of my own commands. I could taste sand, smell sweat. It was time for my meds
.
I set the apple on the sill and grabbed the anti-depressants out of my bag, silently praying that Sam hadn't switched them with Ibuprofen again.
***
…. Our first task the next day was prisoner visitation near the limestone quarry. We were charged with enforcing the recognition of Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which ensures the humane treatment of prisoners.
Frontal POW camps are temporary camps set up in about four days during times of war. Run by about three platoons of Israeli madaks, or prison instructors, they're designed to house 500 inmates and serve as distribution centers for prisoners that eventually end up in larger, permanent regional camps. Each POW is absorbed, processed and distributed within 72 hours.We counted over 600 POW's.
I overheard Mr. Pascal, the director of our mission, speaking with the rav-seren, an Israeli Defense Force major, in charge of the camp.
"There's no way you can sustain and accommodate this number of inmates, major. It's unsafe and unsanitary."
Major Halutz, a tall, stern man with sunken cheeks and blue eyes, dismissed an enlisted soldier and faced Mr. Pascal. "We are doing all we can with what we have, Mr. Pascal." He laced his hands on the small of his back and looked over his shoulder at the line of eight Palestinians in front of a medic awaiting inspection. "I‟m not going to ask our men to stop capturing the enemy. Perhaps your organization could lend us workers to help with the construction of additional camps." *** …. With the first day under my belt, I began to understand my chances and opportunities for success. I initially thought I'd be able to interact with the POWs more and ask questions about Israeli captives but that was a no-go. With prisoner rotations every 72 hours, it would be impossible to build enough trust to harvest intelligence.
I opened my laptop that evening as the three other guys in the room watched international news. Internet access was sketchy, but existent. I logged onto my Skype account and hoped Sam would be online. She was.
"Can you hear me?"
"Noah! Oh my god I was getting worried. How are you? How was the flight?"
The others peaked over their shoulders at me. I hooked up a set of headphones.
"I‟m okay. How‟s Gabriel?"
Static. "—fine. He misses you." She went quiet for a few seconds. I could hear Gabriel cooing.
"So, what do you think?"
I quieted my voice. "Not sure. I've got some limitations to work around but I think I can manage."
"Okay well, please hurry and be safe."
"I will. Email me some pictures of Gabriel will you?"
"Be happy to. Take care, Noah."
I wanted to touch her face, look into her eyes when I spoke. I wanted to tell her how much I missed her. I wished I could take back my answer about marriage, but that was a dream.
"Goodnight, Sam."
Her name went gray on the screen and she was gone. I closed the laptop and sighed as I took out my pills.
"So, your name's Noah," the lanky kid from the window earlier said from his cot.
I nodded, reclined against my pillow and opened my Bible.
"That your girlfriend or something?" He had an accent, probably from Manhattan.
"Friend."
"Oh, cool." He set down a copy of Arabic learning software and offered his hand. "Name's Joseph. I'm an ambulance driver. Nice to meet you."
I shifted my eyes from the Gospel of John to Joseph as I took his hand and shook. "Likewise."
A mortar went off.
***
For Andrew Bowen, theology is a playground. His fiction and essays splash in the often murky waters of religion and spirituality, and have appeared in over a dozen venues like decomP, Metazen, Pulp Metal Magazine, Sheldon Lee Compton's Bent Country, and Not From Here, Are You? He is the creator of Project Conversion, a year-long immersion into and adoption of 11 distinct world faiths.
TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!
Andrew is offering a Free Copy of TRIUNE, in PDF format, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for 72 hours, from now until September 6th at midnight (so comment right away!) The winner will be chosen by random drawing the next day and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of TRIUNE from Amazon:
Tweet
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
Andrew Bowen's novella, Triune, is a timely story of religious hatred, its effect on people's lives and psyches, all the lunacy, violence and misery it engenders in its wake, and the utter waste and foolishness of it all.
Triune begins as the story of an eponymous rock band comprised of an irreverent young Jewish man (Jaron), an enigmatic young Christian man (Noah), and a half-traditional/half-progressive young Muslim woman (Sam). The three are on a mission to show the world that just as they can make music together, so could we all make peace together.Their naivete and youthful enthusiasm is played out against a background of bigoted parental figures and the endless war in the Middle East. Just as they are about to achieve the long-wished-for dream of a music company contract, Jaron's brother is killed in Israel, the band breaks up, and (evidently to please his grieving parents) Jaron returns to Israel and joins the army. Not, however, before he unknowingly impregnates Sam with a son, Gabriel, causing her family to disown her.
She has no way of knowing that Jaron, who doesn't write to her, has latched on to a twisted and dangerous interpretation of the familiar childhood remonstration: "If you two can't share it, then neither of you can have it!" The final section of the book, in which Noah tries to find and rescue Jaron, reads like a Dan Brown story, in which spiritual ideas become the basis for great, if disturbing, adventures.
Here's an excerpt from the section called,
THE BOOK OF NOAH
I hadn't been to Israel in years. Anxiety bubbled up inside of me as the blue waters of the Mediterranean turned into the green, western band of the tiny, smoldering country. We landed in the coastal city of Tel-Aviv at 2:45 P.M. Israel time. My heart dropped as the plane's tires struck the tarmac. I tightened my grip on my backpack and looked out the window. "Hello, old friend." Due to my experience in the region and fluency in Arabic and Hebrew, my job in the Red Cross was to monitor Palestinian prisoners and provide community support to war-torn sectors around Jerusalem. The plan was for me to use my Red Cross mission as a cover to glean information about Jaron's location. I would be in the country for one month. It was a long shot; Jaron could have been anywhere. If I was discovered, I'd be sent packing. I didn't know what was more dangerous: Sam's wrath or being in the middle of a war between people who had hated one another for thousands of years.
A convoy of Red Cross vans shuttled international volunteers and me to one of three hotels in Western Jerusalem with two Israeli Humvee escorts. We twisted through the foothills of the mountainous spine that separates Israel from the Jordan Desert and the rest of the eastern world. Most vegetation was sparse due to generations of settlement, agriculture and war. I gazed up at the rocky ground where gnarled pines, oaks and shrubs wrapped their roots to whatever foothold they could manage. It was late May. We had just missed the rainy season, and the forecasted summer looked hot.
The hairs on the back of my neck tingled. I glanced sideways at the girl who sat beside me. She quickly looked away from my scar. I tugged the white Red Cross hat over my face, leaned back, and tried to catch a nap along the rocky road.
We bunked four to a room in a small hotel on the western edge of Jerusalem. The location provided centrality for our two responsibilities: prisoner care at the Israeli frontal POW camp near the limestone quarry at Ma'oz Tsiyon, and relief aid to the city's interior.
I laid my duffle bag over a fold-out cot and walked to the window. The air was saturated with dust and the tinge of sulfur from expended mortar rounds and rockets. A plume of black smoke curled up toward a blue sky from the east.
'Unreal, isn't it?" a college student said from the other side of the window.
I bit into a red apple. The crunch boomed in my head and sounded like a neck being broken. The shockwave of another mortar shook the floor.
"Whoa," the young man said and stepped away. His mouth hung open as he pointed. "You see that?"
My hand shook with the apple in my grasp. I heard screams in my head, the echo of the bark of my own commands. I could taste sand, smell sweat. It was time for my meds
.
I set the apple on the sill and grabbed the anti-depressants out of my bag, silently praying that Sam hadn't switched them with Ibuprofen again.
***
…. Our first task the next day was prisoner visitation near the limestone quarry. We were charged with enforcing the recognition of Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which ensures the humane treatment of prisoners.
Frontal POW camps are temporary camps set up in about four days during times of war. Run by about three platoons of Israeli madaks, or prison instructors, they're designed to house 500 inmates and serve as distribution centers for prisoners that eventually end up in larger, permanent regional camps. Each POW is absorbed, processed and distributed within 72 hours.We counted over 600 POW's.
I overheard Mr. Pascal, the director of our mission, speaking with the rav-seren, an Israeli Defense Force major, in charge of the camp.
"There's no way you can sustain and accommodate this number of inmates, major. It's unsafe and unsanitary."
Major Halutz, a tall, stern man with sunken cheeks and blue eyes, dismissed an enlisted soldier and faced Mr. Pascal. "We are doing all we can with what we have, Mr. Pascal." He laced his hands on the small of his back and looked over his shoulder at the line of eight Palestinians in front of a medic awaiting inspection. "I‟m not going to ask our men to stop capturing the enemy. Perhaps your organization could lend us workers to help with the construction of additional camps." *** …. With the first day under my belt, I began to understand my chances and opportunities for success. I initially thought I'd be able to interact with the POWs more and ask questions about Israeli captives but that was a no-go. With prisoner rotations every 72 hours, it would be impossible to build enough trust to harvest intelligence.
I opened my laptop that evening as the three other guys in the room watched international news. Internet access was sketchy, but existent. I logged onto my Skype account and hoped Sam would be online. She was.
"Can you hear me?"
"Noah! Oh my god I was getting worried. How are you? How was the flight?"
The others peaked over their shoulders at me. I hooked up a set of headphones.
"I‟m okay. How‟s Gabriel?"
Static. "—fine. He misses you." She went quiet for a few seconds. I could hear Gabriel cooing.
"So, what do you think?"
I quieted my voice. "Not sure. I've got some limitations to work around but I think I can manage."
"Okay well, please hurry and be safe."
"I will. Email me some pictures of Gabriel will you?"
"Be happy to. Take care, Noah."
I wanted to touch her face, look into her eyes when I spoke. I wanted to tell her how much I missed her. I wished I could take back my answer about marriage, but that was a dream.
"Goodnight, Sam."
Her name went gray on the screen and she was gone. I closed the laptop and sighed as I took out my pills.
"So, your name's Noah," the lanky kid from the window earlier said from his cot.
I nodded, reclined against my pillow and opened my Bible.
"That your girlfriend or something?" He had an accent, probably from Manhattan.
"Friend."
"Oh, cool." He set down a copy of Arabic learning software and offered his hand. "Name's Joseph. I'm an ambulance driver. Nice to meet you."
I shifted my eyes from the Gospel of John to Joseph as I took his hand and shook. "Likewise."
A mortar went off.
***
For Andrew Bowen, theology is a playground. His fiction and essays splash in the often murky waters of religion and spirituality, and have appeared in over a dozen venues like decomP, Metazen, Pulp Metal Magazine, Sheldon Lee Compton's Bent Country, and Not From Here, Are You? He is the creator of Project Conversion, a year-long immersion into and adoption of 11 distinct world faiths.TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!
Andrew is offering a Free Copy of TRIUNE, in PDF format, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for 72 hours, from now until September 6th at midnight (so comment right away!) The winner will be chosen by random drawing the next day and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of TRIUNE from Amazon:
September 1, 2011
THE WEB IN THE SEA: Jung, Sophia, and the Geometry of the Soul
by Alice O. Howell (Today's Prize Giveaway is a Paperback Copy of Alice's Book)
Tweet
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
Filled with warmth and wisdom ("Sophia"), as well as insights from Jung and her own extraordinary personal insights, The Web in the Sea by Alice O. Howell unravels the inner meaning of numbers, shapes, and other symbols, and in the process deepens our awareness and appreciation for life, mystery, and our essential unity and oneness. A companion to her earlier work, The Dove in the Stone, the book is illustrated with drawings, charts, and figures, and includes an entertaining workbook to help readers explore the Sacred Geometry of life for themselves.
Rather than telling her readers what is so and what they should understand and believe, Howell (like all genuine Teachers) encourages and guides her readers humbly to discover answers for themselves. Her main method is to simply share a part of her own path of discovery, in conversations with her husband during a visit to the Isle of Iona off the coast of Scotland.
The book is a treasure, both learned and inspirational. Here is an Excerpt from her introductory material in Chapter One:
*****
Sophia's Secrets
The name Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, Holy Spirit, is becoming more familiar to people everywhere. According to various prophesies Sophia has a special connection to the isle of Iona. In the Old Testament, Wisdom is called cocreator of the world, which implies that she is a feminine principle or "goddess." Such a term may shock some Christian sensibilities – it would have mine in the past – and so it is essential for me to define "gods and goddesses of old" as personifications of universal processes or archetypes. Since they are universal, humanity has considered them to be "divine." They were symbolic and descriptive extensions of that great mystery we name God. To look at gods and goddesses this way opens us to greater compassion, tolerance, and understanding of humanity past and present. To understand this specific definition at the outset is most important.
When I was a child, my mother explained to me that she could be a daughter, a wife, a mother, a neighbor, an author, and on and on, and yet essentially remain herself. The various terms given were based on her relationships. We used to play a game extending ourselves to dog-owners, bread-eaters, tax-payers, and on and on. I learned in this way to see how one person could by extension become many, and later on it helped me to grasp the multiple names and extensions given to the mysterious One God, Light of Lights, that we struggle to grasp and to name and cannot. I learned early on in this fashion that we need not limit or reject the different ways we and others may relate to the sacred.
Here in the West we tend to fall too easily into literalizing and concretizing. So to call wisdom by the name "Sophia" might imply to some that this separates her from the same archetype that goes by other names in other cultures. Naming and personifying wisdom, in this instance, gives her life in human experience. We ourselves are personifications of our essence. We come from somewhere and return somewhere, leaving that personification behind; yet we can hope to continue. A so-called god or a goddess, being archetypal, is for keeps. The names may change, the idols built in their honor may be smashed, but the essential nature of what they personify remains. One cannot kill an archetype. Archetypes are living principles of a kind that move the world, but they come closer to our understanding if we can relate to them in a personal way by naming them. And yet we can remain in awe of their mystery when we perceive them in a transpersonal way.At the very outset, it is vital to understand what Hagia Sophia represents here: the loving, intimate, kind, helpful, and practical aspect of Holy Wisdom in each individual and, at the same time, the great ordering principle of the physical creation of the cosmos. The function of her archetype is to unite both of these principles through greater consciousness and love. She is the anima mundi, the soul of the world, for some, or the lumen naturae, the light within nature, for others. At the simplest level, for the child in us, she may even disguise herself as the Fairy Godmother or the beloved guardian angel. To Socrates, her name was the daemon. Jesus called her the Paraclete, the Comforter. Early Christians called her Hagia Sophia, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. Her symbol then and now is the dove.Hagia and Sophia are Greek words. They were translated into Latin Spiritus Sanctus, a masculine proper noun, requiring a masculine pronoun. So Wisdom's essential feminine nature in both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament got lost in the Latin translation. This eventually turned the Christian Trinity or triangle of the Godhead into a totally masculine one, leaving out the feminine, women, and Mother Nature completely. Mat[t]er became an "it" to conquer, rape, and manipulate through power.I am not a theologian, but perhaps somebody could bring this to the attention of some. Oddly enough, a friend sent me word of one, a Professor Jurgen Moltman, who wrote the following in the Scottish Journal of Theology, citing the work of Macarius the Egyptian/Symeon: Hebrew and Syriac are languages which themselves make it easy to call the Holy Spirit "the heavenly Mother" for both ruach and ruho are feminine words. But Macarius has two essential theological arguments for the motherly functions of the Holy Spirit: 1. He links John 14:26 with Isaiah 66:13 – the Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, the promised Comforter…. 2. Only the person "who is born anew" can see the kingdom of God. And people are born anew from the Spirit (John 3:3-5). So believers are "children of the Spirit." The Spirit is their "Mother."… The motherly image makes it possible to grasp the personal character of the Holy Spirit more precisely than other images. The motherly image makes it more possible to understand the unique community of the Trinity better than other concepts of the Spirit. Incidentally, the dove as symbol for the Holy Spirit is also a feminine image and points in the same direction. "The fellowship of the Holy Spirit" in its feminine and motherly character operates sympathetically on men and women, healing them and liberating them.Now that's my idea of a theologian!As archetypal Comforter, Sophia speaks to us – if we will listen – within our souls and wakens us to remembering who we really are. Her motto is "Ego coniungo," I unite. ***
Alice O. Howell is a former faculty member of the C. G. Jung Institutes of Los Angeles and Chicago. A widely known lecturer, she is known as a pioneer in linking a psychology and astrology. She is also the author of The Dove and the Stone, Jungian Symbolism in Astrology, The Beejum Book, and many others which are all, in the author's words, "easy to read, as my mission in life, is to convey serious ideas as simply as possible with humor and delight." Ms. Howell lives in a tiny village in the Berkshires of New England surrounded by beauty.
TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!Alice is offering a Free Copy of THE WEB IN THE SEA, in Paperback, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for 72 hours, from now until September 5th at midnight (so comment right away!) The winner will be chosen by random drawing the next day and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of Alice's book from Amazon:
Tweet
Andrew Cort's Mini-Review:
Filled with warmth and wisdom ("Sophia"), as well as insights from Jung and her own extraordinary personal insights, The Web in the Sea by Alice O. Howell unravels the inner meaning of numbers, shapes, and other symbols, and in the process deepens our awareness and appreciation for life, mystery, and our essential unity and oneness. A companion to her earlier work, The Dove in the Stone, the book is illustrated with drawings, charts, and figures, and includes an entertaining workbook to help readers explore the Sacred Geometry of life for themselves.
Rather than telling her readers what is so and what they should understand and believe, Howell (like all genuine Teachers) encourages and guides her readers humbly to discover answers for themselves. Her main method is to simply share a part of her own path of discovery, in conversations with her husband during a visit to the Isle of Iona off the coast of Scotland.
The book is a treasure, both learned and inspirational. Here is an Excerpt from her introductory material in Chapter One:
*****
Sophia's Secrets
The name Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, Holy Spirit, is becoming more familiar to people everywhere. According to various prophesies Sophia has a special connection to the isle of Iona. In the Old Testament, Wisdom is called cocreator of the world, which implies that she is a feminine principle or "goddess." Such a term may shock some Christian sensibilities – it would have mine in the past – and so it is essential for me to define "gods and goddesses of old" as personifications of universal processes or archetypes. Since they are universal, humanity has considered them to be "divine." They were symbolic and descriptive extensions of that great mystery we name God. To look at gods and goddesses this way opens us to greater compassion, tolerance, and understanding of humanity past and present. To understand this specific definition at the outset is most important.
When I was a child, my mother explained to me that she could be a daughter, a wife, a mother, a neighbor, an author, and on and on, and yet essentially remain herself. The various terms given were based on her relationships. We used to play a game extending ourselves to dog-owners, bread-eaters, tax-payers, and on and on. I learned in this way to see how one person could by extension become many, and later on it helped me to grasp the multiple names and extensions given to the mysterious One God, Light of Lights, that we struggle to grasp and to name and cannot. I learned early on in this fashion that we need not limit or reject the different ways we and others may relate to the sacred.
Here in the West we tend to fall too easily into literalizing and concretizing. So to call wisdom by the name "Sophia" might imply to some that this separates her from the same archetype that goes by other names in other cultures. Naming and personifying wisdom, in this instance, gives her life in human experience. We ourselves are personifications of our essence. We come from somewhere and return somewhere, leaving that personification behind; yet we can hope to continue. A so-called god or a goddess, being archetypal, is for keeps. The names may change, the idols built in their honor may be smashed, but the essential nature of what they personify remains. One cannot kill an archetype. Archetypes are living principles of a kind that move the world, but they come closer to our understanding if we can relate to them in a personal way by naming them. And yet we can remain in awe of their mystery when we perceive them in a transpersonal way.At the very outset, it is vital to understand what Hagia Sophia represents here: the loving, intimate, kind, helpful, and practical aspect of Holy Wisdom in each individual and, at the same time, the great ordering principle of the physical creation of the cosmos. The function of her archetype is to unite both of these principles through greater consciousness and love. She is the anima mundi, the soul of the world, for some, or the lumen naturae, the light within nature, for others. At the simplest level, for the child in us, she may even disguise herself as the Fairy Godmother or the beloved guardian angel. To Socrates, her name was the daemon. Jesus called her the Paraclete, the Comforter. Early Christians called her Hagia Sophia, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. Her symbol then and now is the dove.Hagia and Sophia are Greek words. They were translated into Latin Spiritus Sanctus, a masculine proper noun, requiring a masculine pronoun. So Wisdom's essential feminine nature in both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament got lost in the Latin translation. This eventually turned the Christian Trinity or triangle of the Godhead into a totally masculine one, leaving out the feminine, women, and Mother Nature completely. Mat[t]er became an "it" to conquer, rape, and manipulate through power.I am not a theologian, but perhaps somebody could bring this to the attention of some. Oddly enough, a friend sent me word of one, a Professor Jurgen Moltman, who wrote the following in the Scottish Journal of Theology, citing the work of Macarius the Egyptian/Symeon: Hebrew and Syriac are languages which themselves make it easy to call the Holy Spirit "the heavenly Mother" for both ruach and ruho are feminine words. But Macarius has two essential theological arguments for the motherly functions of the Holy Spirit: 1. He links John 14:26 with Isaiah 66:13 – the Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, the promised Comforter…. 2. Only the person "who is born anew" can see the kingdom of God. And people are born anew from the Spirit (John 3:3-5). So believers are "children of the Spirit." The Spirit is their "Mother."… The motherly image makes it possible to grasp the personal character of the Holy Spirit more precisely than other images. The motherly image makes it more possible to understand the unique community of the Trinity better than other concepts of the Spirit. Incidentally, the dove as symbol for the Holy Spirit is also a feminine image and points in the same direction. "The fellowship of the Holy Spirit" in its feminine and motherly character operates sympathetically on men and women, healing them and liberating them.Now that's my idea of a theologian!As archetypal Comforter, Sophia speaks to us – if we will listen – within our souls and wakens us to remembering who we really are. Her motto is "Ego coniungo," I unite. ***
Alice O. Howell is a former faculty member of the C. G. Jung Institutes of Los Angeles and Chicago. A widely known lecturer, she is known as a pioneer in linking a psychology and astrology. She is also the author of The Dove and the Stone, Jungian Symbolism in Astrology, The Beejum Book, and many others which are all, in the author's words, "easy to read, as my mission in life, is to convey serious ideas as simply as possible with humor and delight." Ms. Howell lives in a tiny village in the Berkshires of New England surrounded by beauty. TODAY'S PRIZE CONTEST!Alice is offering a Free Copy of THE WEB IN THE SEA, in Paperback, to today's lucky winner.Today's Prize Giveaway has the same rules as the other giveaways:
1.To enter to win, simply COMMENT ON THIS BLOG, leaving an email address so we can contact you if you win. All names of commenters go into the 'hat'.
2.The giveaway period runs for 72 hours, from now until September 5th at midnight (so comment right away!) The winner will be chosen by random drawing the next day and contacted.
3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Daily Giveaway Contests as you want!)
If you don't win this one, be sure to order a copy of Alice's book from Amazon:
August 31, 2011
Let the Festivities Begin!
TweetI've picked September as the time for this 'Celebration' as a way to commemorate the Tenth Anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, by taking one small step to promote
Peace, Brotherhood and Sisterhood among people of different faiths and beliefs
.
What I've done is to contact Authors, Filmmakers, Musicians and Artists, who are creating work in support of Unity, Friendship, Spiritual Wisdom, and Intercultural Understanding, and I've asked them to contribute a little of their work to this Celebration. So for the next few weeks they will be sharing Book Excerpts, Film Clips, Audio Recordings, and Artwork.
Some of our contributors include:
Alexandra Villard de BorchgraveErvin Laszlo and Allan Combs (writing about the late Thomas Berry)Louise HayCheryl RichardsonKell KearnsPhoenix DesmondSaleem AhmedAlice O. HowellZayra YvesCaedem MarquezThomas WyllieRay ComeauJocelyn RoseCarol Parrishand many more (including some surprises)!!
I hope you'll come every day to celebrate with us, and please spread the word!
One last thing:
To make the celebration even more fun, there will be a GIVEAWAY CONTEST held Every Day to win a Free Prize (a book, a DVD, an Audio, etc.) from the contributor whose work is being featured that day. All you have to do to be entered in that day's contest, is to take a moment and write a Comment about the work they've posted. That's it! One winner's name will be drawn randomly.
Good Luck to everyone!
We start tomorrow with an excerpt from Alice O. Howell's wonderful book,
The Web in the Sea
*******
To hold you until then, here's a brief, relevant excerpt from my own book, THE PURPOSE OF RELIGION: Enlightenment, Meaning and Love in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Symbology, about Christ's Sermon on the Mount, as a way to open our program:
"Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the sons of God"It is said that Moses' brother Aaron was an outstanding mediator who could make peace between angry neighbors and quarrelsome spouses. This made him greatly beloved by the Israelites, and it is the reason for his selection as High Priest, the Steward of the Mysteries, the Mediator between God and Israel, between 'Being' and 'Becoming'.To make peace is to forge a state of harmony where there were formerly contradictions and disturbances. But 'peace', which in Hebrew is 'shalom', means more than just the absence of discord! Shalom represents everything positive that is good for the soul's evolution. Most importantly, this refers to creating the right relationships (1) with other people, (2) with oneself, (3) and with God. Jesus here is blessing the level of the Teacher, the level of the 'Son' of God who mediates between the 'Above' and the 'Below' and brings peace to the soul – God's peace, Shanti, the peace that surpasseth understanding.
Shalom everyone! See you tomorrow! - Andrew Cort
What I've done is to contact Authors, Filmmakers, Musicians and Artists, who are creating work in support of Unity, Friendship, Spiritual Wisdom, and Intercultural Understanding, and I've asked them to contribute a little of their work to this Celebration. So for the next few weeks they will be sharing Book Excerpts, Film Clips, Audio Recordings, and Artwork.
Some of our contributors include:
Alexandra Villard de BorchgraveErvin Laszlo and Allan Combs (writing about the late Thomas Berry)Louise HayCheryl RichardsonKell KearnsPhoenix DesmondSaleem AhmedAlice O. HowellZayra YvesCaedem MarquezThomas WyllieRay ComeauJocelyn RoseCarol Parrishand many more (including some surprises)!!
I hope you'll come every day to celebrate with us, and please spread the word!
One last thing:
To make the celebration even more fun, there will be a GIVEAWAY CONTEST held Every Day to win a Free Prize (a book, a DVD, an Audio, etc.) from the contributor whose work is being featured that day. All you have to do to be entered in that day's contest, is to take a moment and write a Comment about the work they've posted. That's it! One winner's name will be drawn randomly.
Good Luck to everyone!
We start tomorrow with an excerpt from Alice O. Howell's wonderful book,
The Web in the Sea
*******
To hold you until then, here's a brief, relevant excerpt from my own book, THE PURPOSE OF RELIGION: Enlightenment, Meaning and Love in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Symbology, about Christ's Sermon on the Mount, as a way to open our program:
"Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the sons of God"It is said that Moses' brother Aaron was an outstanding mediator who could make peace between angry neighbors and quarrelsome spouses. This made him greatly beloved by the Israelites, and it is the reason for his selection as High Priest, the Steward of the Mysteries, the Mediator between God and Israel, between 'Being' and 'Becoming'.To make peace is to forge a state of harmony where there were formerly contradictions and disturbances. But 'peace', which in Hebrew is 'shalom', means more than just the absence of discord! Shalom represents everything positive that is good for the soul's evolution. Most importantly, this refers to creating the right relationships (1) with other people, (2) with oneself, (3) and with God. Jesus here is blessing the level of the Teacher, the level of the 'Son' of God who mediates between the 'Above' and the 'Below' and brings peace to the soul – God's peace, Shanti, the peace that surpasseth understanding.
Shalom everyone! See you tomorrow! - Andrew Cort
