Andrew Furst's Blog, page 101
October 17, 2015
A Yellow Butterfly – Tiny Drops
Another summer recollection – a Yellow Butterfly.
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October 16, 2015
Ueshiba on Possession
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What If God Showed Up? – Modern Koans
Estimated reading time: 11 minute(s)
What If God Showed Up?
Question: Let’s say the Christian God showed up and proved his existence; all humans are left to follow and celebrate him without doubt. What would that be like?
Response: I struggled mightily with this question. So thank you, it is a great one. Questions like this help you break through all of the preconceptions you have about the world and force you to let the hypothetical chips fall where they may.
I’m going to add my own twist to the question. Doing this helped clear away some of the obstacles I was stuck on trying to conceptualize this.
My adjustment is to take religion out of the picture. I set aside my concept of God. This helped ease the pressure that my biases create.
Imagine that we lived in a world without religion. For one reason or another, our instincts led us to adopt the scientific method early in our culture and it never occurred to us that there was a God. And then, he showed up.
Then, God Showed Up
It’s Saturday morning. You’re watching cartoons with your kids and a news bulletin interrupts the show you’re watching. The President of the United States begins to read from the teleprompter:
“Today will be a day remembered long into the future. Today we have established contact with an alien being that appears to wield incredible power. Far beyond anyone’s imagination. This being has indicated that it is the creator of this planet, the galaxy, and the entire universe. It has demonstrated that it is responsible for and can exert control over the fundamental laws of nature.
Needless to say, we are in a state of bewilderment. Our defense minister, together with his colleagues around the world, has determined that any attempt to resist this alien would be disastrous to the planet and to all life on it.
The alien has provided a document, laying out its conditions for our complete surrender and outlining guidelines for all future conduct with it and amongst ourselves.
We would like to ask each and every one of you, to remain calm. Please go about your business as you would have before. We understand that you will have questions and concerns. We hope to be able to establish a continued dialog with the alien to further evaluate its intentions. “
Pretty surreal huh? I don’t think anything anyone could do or say would keep me from panicking. Terror would spread across the planet. After that, questions, so many questions. Then possibly factions vying for favor or improved living conditions. With the alien in residence, requests would come for immortality, increased pleasure and other adjustments to the universe.
Some might challenge the being on its claims, only to be rebuked or even killed for their insolence. Whole nations would be destroyed. Children’s lives taken in retribution for deviant behavior. Scourges and floods doled out as punishment. Seeing the being wield its power would forge permanent fear into our hearts.
The alien would assure us that it has nothing but love for us. But the punishment would continue. Certain death, scourges, personal tragedies, and natural disasters would continue unabated.
The alien would send representatives to check in on our behavior. They reassure us of its beneficent intentions and at the same time warn us of the consequences of non-conformity. The net result of this rhetoric is the status quo; seemingly random tragedies befalling the best and worst of us alike.
There is promise of benefit in an afterlife. This becomes our last vestige for hope. Seeing the alien wield its power, the possibility of afterlife seems reasonable; but, witnessing the beings indifference towards us in this life, this hope wanes.
A broken and defeated species, humans will ultimately submit themselves to eternal slavery in the service of this all powerful alien being.
I agree this is a pretty harsh conception. But for me, tying together the Bible’s description of Yahweh and the facts of everyday experience lead this little thought experiment to a pretty dark place.
Of course, it’s hypothetical – more of a straw man than a conclusion. You might end up somewhere completely different. If you do, I’d love to hear about it.
I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Modern Koans is an ongoing series that recognizes that good questions are often more important then their answers.
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ― G.K. Chesterton Get Each Week's Modern Koan in your email box
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October 15, 2015
Happiness
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One Minute Meditation – Autumn Drizzle
Collin Pond color
misted autumn foliage
left my heart sinking
These Meditation Videos Are Best Viewed In Full Screen
One Minute Meditations is an ongoing series of short videos, poems, and commentary intended as a meditation. Offered as an opportunity to step back from your cyber routine and settle into a more natural rhythm, if only for a minute.
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Say What?
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These videos are produced for those of us who spend an inordinately large amount of time in the cyber-world. They are not a substitute for unplugging from your devices and taking a stroll near trees, water, or a patch of unkempt grass. Getting out into the world - touching, smelling, hearing, and seeing nature is the best way to reconnect with our prime purpose.
What is our prime purpose? We are feeling and sensing machines. We are the universe looking back on itself. We are witness to the wonders and dangers of living in this corner of the cosmos. We are the seekers looking for connection a little further beyond yesterday's borders and boundaries.
But sitting and staring at the screen robs us of the sustenance that we rely upon for wonder and sanity. These videos are an opportunity to bring the sensations of nature to you, while you're in the cyber-world. Its an opportunity to relax your gaze, resettle your posture, and regain some depth in your breath. Listen and watch the video and allow your self to open up and recharge.
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October 14, 2015
Ten Word Story I – Verse Us (Poems by Me)
Enlightened machine, a perfect mirror of the world, say cheese
Verse Us - Poems I write: haiku, senryu, mesostics, free verse, random word constructions, I might even use rhyme or meter once and a while.
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Mobile Site Is Working Now
I noticed the other day that my mobile version of this site was displaying some very old content. After a little digging around I discovered the WP-Supercache plugin which I deleted a few months ago was still causing problems. Well, hopefully that’s all rectified now and those of you who use mobile devices to view www.andrewfurst.net can view it without problems.
Please let me know if you notice any issues with the site.
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The Ride Home – Tiny Drops
An interesting and perhaps disturbing cinemagraph of the ride home from Maine.
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October 13, 2015
Why Worry? (continued) – Say What?
Say What? is an ongoing series of laconic exchanges on Buddhism in the format of a comic strip.
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Pachyderm by Sherman Alexie – Compass Songs
1. Sheldon decided he was an elephant.
2. Everywhere he went, he wore a gray t-shirt, gray sweat pants, and gray basketball shoes.
3. He also carried a brass trumpet that he’d painted white.
4. Sometimes he used that trumpet as a tusk.
5. Then he’d use it as the other tusk.
6. Sometimes he played that brass trumpet and pretended it was an elephant trumpet.
7. Every other day, Sheldon charged around the reservation like he was a bull elephant in musth.
8. Musth being a state of epic sexual arousal.
9. Sheldon would stand in the middle of intersections and charge at cars.
10. Once, Sheldon head-butted a Toyota Camry so hard that he knocked himself out.
11. Sheldon’s mother, Agnes, was driving that Camry.
12. Agnes did not believe she was an elephant nor did she believe she was the mother of an elephant.
13. And Agnes didn’t believe that Sheldon fully believed he was an elephant until he knocked himself out on the hood of the Camry.
14. In Africa, poachers kill elephants, saw off the tusks, and leave the rest of the elephant to rot.
15. Ivory is coveted.
16. Nobody covets Sheldon’s trumpet, not as a trumpet or tusk.
17. On those days when Sheldon was not a bull elephant, he was a cow elephant.
18. A cow elephant mourning the death of her baby.
19. In Africa, elephants will return again and again to the dead body of a beloved elephant.
20. Then, for years afterward, the mournful elephants will return to the dead elephant’s cairn of bones.
21. They will lift and caress the dead elephant’s ribs.
22. By touch, they remember.
23. Sheldon’s twin brother died in the first Iraq War.
24. 1991.
25. His name was Pete.
26. Sheldon and Pete’s parents were not the kind to give their twins names that rhymed.
27. In Iraq, an Improvised Explosive Device had pulverized Pete’s legs, genitals, ribcage, and spine.
28. Sheldon could not serve in the military because he was blind in his right eye.
29. In 1980, when they were eight, and sword fighting with tree branches, Pete had accidentally stabbed Sheldon in the eye.
30. When they were children, Sheldon and Pete often played war.
31. They never once pretended to be killed by an Improvised Explosive Device.
32. Only now, in this new era, do children pretend to be killed by Improvised Explosive Devices.
33. Pete was buried in a white coffin.
34. It wasn’t made of ivory.
35. At the gravesite, Sheldon scooped up a handful of dirt.
36. He was supposed to toss the dirt onto his brother’s coffin, as the other mourners had done.
37. But Sheldon kept the dirt in his hand.
38. He made a fist around the dirt and would not let it go.
39. He believed that his brother’s soul was contained within that dirt.
40. And if he let go of that dirt, his brother’s soul would be lost forever.
41. You cannot carry a handful of dirt for any significant amount of time.
42. And dirt, being clever, will escape through your fingers.
43. So Sheldon taped his right hand shut.
44. For months, he did everything with his left hand.
45. Then, one night, his right hand began to itch.
46. It burned.
47. Sheldon didn’t want to take off the tape.
48. He didn’t want to lose the dirt.
49. His brother’s soul.
50. But the itch and burn were too powerful.
51. Sheldon scissored the tape off his right hand.
52. His fingers were locked in place from disuse.
53. So he used the fingers of his left hand to pry open the fingers of his right hand.
54. The dirt was gone.
55. Except for a few grains that had embedded themselves into his palm.
56. Using those grains of dirt, Sheldon wanted to build a time machine that would take him and his brother back into the egg cell they once shared.
57. Until he became an elephant, Sheldon referred to his left hand as “my hand” and to his right hand as “my brother’s hand.”
58. Sheldon’s father, Arnold, was paraplegic.
59. His wheelchair was alive with eagle feathers and beads and otter pelts.
60. In Vietnam, in 1971, Arnold’s lower spine was shattered by a sniper’s bullet.
61. Above the wound, he was a fancy dancer.
62. Below the wound, he was not.
63. His wife became pregnant with Sheldon and Pete while Arnold was away at war.
64. Biologically speaking, the twins were not Arnold’s.
65. Biologically speaking, Arnold was a different Arnold than he’d been before.
66. But, without ever acknowledging the truth, Arnold raised the boys as if they shared his biology.
67. Above the wound, Arnold is a good man.
68. Below the wound, he is also a good man.
69. Sometimes, out of love for Sheldon and Sheldon’s grief, Arnold pretended that his wheelchair was an elephant.
70. And that he was a clown riding the elephant.
71. A circus can be an elephant, another elephant, and a clown.
72. The question should be, “How many circuses can fit inside one clown?”
73. There is no such thing as the Elephant Graveyard.
74. That mythical place where all elephants go to die.
75. That place doesn’t exist.
76. But the ghosts of elephants do wear clown makeup.
77. And they all gather in the same place.
78. Inside Sheldon’s ribcage.
79. Sheldon’s heart is a clown car filled with circus elephants.
80. When elephants mourn, they will walk circles around a dead elephant’s body.
81. Elephants weep.
82. Jesus wept.
83. Sheldon’s mother, Agnes, wonders if Jesus has something to do with her son’s elephant delusions.
84. Maybe God is an elephant.
85. Sheldon’s father, Arnold, believes that God is a blue whale.
86. Some scientists believe that elephants used to be whales.
87. Sheldon, in his elephant brain, believes that God is an Improvised Explosive Device.
88. Pete, the dead twin, was not made of ivory.
89. But he is coveted.
90. If Jesus can come back to life then why can’t all of us come back to life?
91. Aristotle believed that elephants surpassed all other animals in wit and mind.
92. Nobody ever said that Jesus was funny.
93. Then, one day, Sheldon remembered he was not an elephant.
94. Instead he decided that Pete was an elephant who had gone to war.
95. An elephant who died saving his clan and herd.
96. An elephant killed by poachers.
97. Sheldon decided that God was a poacher.
98. Sheldon decided his prayers would become threats.
99. Fuck you, God, fuck you.
100. Sheldon wept.
101. Then he picked up his trumpet and blew an endless, harrowing note.
Compass Songs is an ongoing series of works by poets that I enjoy. Poetry, as the Zen Masters have said, is like a finger pointing to the moon. It speaks the unspeakable.
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Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
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