Serious Thoughts About Apology

Three pieces of the candy I bought Angus for Valentine's Day:
Fantastic News!

The Thomas Merton Society has accepted my presentation proposal for their Conference Climate of Fear/Commitment To Peace.

Jo-Ann and I will be going to Winnipeg in November.

I've been working on our materials - which will include presenting a paper and unveiling a work of art - since I found out.

My energy level has gone way up and I am so jazzed about my projects again.

After several hours of work on the presentation, I was struck with ideas for a couple of cartoons. Worked on one of them for an hour.

I have a CafePress site and if I can work out my idea to my satisfaction, I'll put it on a T-shirt.

For anyone wondering - no - my ideas have nothing to do with religion or with the protests over the Muhammad cartoons.

Regarding what's happening - although I am horrified at the violence and deaths - and now a reward posted for the execution of one of the cartoonists - what can Westerners expect? We have done nothing to understand Arabs or co-exist peacefully with them. Instead, everything in our attitude and actions indicates we think they need to change, need to "get with the program" and become westernized.

It's never been enough that they would leave us alone and let us be who we are. We wanted them to become like us.

To that end, the West has demeaned, ridiculed, manipulated and attacked. As a result, the whole culture has been hurt and angry for a long time.

They are reacting, in my opinion, much as a person does in response to a lifetime of bullying. Especially after the debacle of Iraq, this perceived insult to Mohammed has been the "straw that broke the camel's back." It's a symbol of how we have belittled and invalidated their religion and culture - doing whatever we want - until they are sick to death of it.

Worse of all, the cartoons contain an element of truth. And this violence - ironically in Mohammed's name - proves the point. Yet most Muslims can't see it. Or don't want to admit it.

They're too furious: furious at the West for decades of belittling and furious at themselves for their powerlessness, for their lack of ability to command respect, love, understanding and for the way the West has worked toward keeping them powerless.

So the protests are growing stronger, and violence is escalating.

It's because we're not hearing them.

Because attack of every kind is always a call for love and respect.

Bottom line, they have demanded apologies. They have demanded a show of respect and consideration and, with sincere apologies offered by the West and all governments of those involved, it's possible they could get past this.

But they haven't gotten the apologies they feel they need.

What does that say?

We're telling them how they should feel, just as they're telling us how we should think.

Who can deny that a goodly number of secular people think the Muslims - and all religious persons - are deluded fools and see this as a battle of wills? There is no way they are going to apologize for the cartoonists echoing what they think.

Who can deny that some Christians think of Muslims as heathen who either need to be converted or conquered?

Who can deny that the establishment of Israel - a tiny country - has wreaked havoc in terms of resentment and bloodshed? (While it may have seemed like a good idea, after the Holocaust, to give Jews a homeland in which they could feel safe, the establishment of Israel hasn't given them that.)

Who doubts that the U.S. government gives the impression that Middle-Eastern culture is inferior, backward and expendable or that American corporations are looking to expand their influence and markets in the Middle-East and would like to get rid of those pesky Muslim values that interfere?

The U.S. has stoked conflict in the Middle-East for over half a century in so many ways and has treated every Middle-Eastern nation - with the exception of Israel - as though it has no intrinsic value.

As long as I can remember - in my lifetime of fifty-odd years - Arabs have always been portrayed as "lesser peoples" with whom we, unfortunately, must do business because of their oil.

So who's going to say "I'm sorry" first?

Don't expect it to be the Muslims.

They, rightly, perceive that the West and non-Muslim countries have long degraded their values and refused to take their religion seriously.

I'm not saying we haven't had legitimate reasons to be appalled by things done by Muslims.

But appalling actions have been taken by Christians and Jews. If we start a list of the guilty, everyone's going to be on it.

Bottom line, if we want peace, non-Muslims have to apologize.

Sure, we're being bullied into it - since our hearts are not open enough to see how we've helped create this monster and that we're just changing places in this unholy dance.

For we bully, they bully.

We attack, they attack.

There are no victims, only volunteers.

So, are we going to be big enough to apologize?

Because the stakes are getting higher with every day that passes.

I wonder. Maybe I could start an "apology" campaign. People - identifying themselves as non-Muslims - could begin sending letters of apology to the U.N. with the messages to be conveyed Internationally.

Something has to be done.

A battle of wills is taking us to hell.

What have we got to lose by telling them they are our brothers and sisters and we are sorry they are hurt?

I'm going to sleep on it. I have so much to do, but what could be more important?

For now, let's see what Rumi has to say:

Look on the terrible and stupid things I've done
and cause herbs and eglantine to grow out of them.

The sun does this with the ground.
Think what glories God can make
from the fertilizer of sinning!

I know I'm ugly to you.

I'm ugly to me!

I'm perfectly ugly!

But, look, you'll be sad
when I die, won't you? You'll sit by my grave
and weep a little?

All I'm asking is
be with me that little bit of time
while I'm still alive.

---

From The Long String on pg. 81 of The Essential Rumi

The Stupor Bowl

Isn't this a beautiful scene? It's a small section of park-like area between our street and Stanley street, near the river.

There's a big old - must be over a hundred years old - apartment building that is quite stately which looks over it.

I walked past this to go to my hair appointment and to buy bread from the bakery in Wortly Village. We had a big snow storm about a month ago, then it all melted.

It was like Spring around here for a couple of weeks. We had some lashing cold rain - just like we can get in Springs - and then it warmed up, was sunny and beautiful. Angus actually hung up laundry outside on a couple of occasions.

Now we've had another storm.
The snow was so wet and heavy it brought down power lines in parts of Ontario. Fortunately for us, we have had heat and power. There was a scare about the water supply. The power outages had affected the water pumping station so there was a call to conserve water.


Here's the bakery.

I admire these people. It's a family. They come in early, bake about 14 kinds of breads, including sundried tomato, flax, whole wheat, olive, sour dough - you name it - and open at 6 a.m. 7 days a week.

A loaf of bread baked today sells for $3.50. You have to slice it yourself. I love it when I'm able to buy a loaf just out of the oven.

I won't buy mass produced bread any more, the kind that's full of preservatives and sits on the shelf in the grocery store for a week with a "stale" date. There's just no comparison.

Grateful to have water at all, I cut my shower very short on Tuesday morning. I hate to waste water anyway. But the call to stop using washers, dishwashers and cut down on water usage lasted less than 24 hours. We can now return to be our wasteful selves, if we choose.

These are photos I took while walking up and down our street. You can't see it, but sunlight glinted off the snow so it looked like an enchanted world.

Okay, I've got the tea. And I've got some thoughts, although I would expect the following to be about as popular with the general public as the Muhammad cartoons are with Muslims. [For my views on that, see my Feb. 2, 2006 Prayerforce blog.

Although it happened three days ago and in modern terms is ancient news, I find myself thinking about the Super Bowl. My brother-in-law calls it The Stupid Bowl.

I think a more apt name is The Stupor Bowl.

Honestly, isn't that name perfect? It demonstrates so well the stupor of unreality in which affluent Americans live. It typifies the mentality of kids who can't garden, couldn't sew a button on if their lives depended on it, but can surf the Internet all day.

It typifies the "it's all about me and what I want" attitude, the self-aggrandizing, self-promoting lie that corporations have sold us. They tell us we're special, our team is special, our lives have meaning through the mattress we use - have you seen the "Transform Your Life" (a trademarked phrase) commercial for a mattress?

We're special, all right, as long as we buy all the stuff they tell us we need. Poor people aren't so special. They have no voice at all. They're swept under the rug where we can't see them.

We're not about making a difference. We're all about living through technology, about living vicariously and being entertained. If the electricity goes off for two seconds people panic. Yet people in Iraq - and throughout the world - are not only without electricity, but without food, plumbing, heat or even shelter.

Why don't those wealthy corporations make a big deal out of that? Why don't they enlist our aid in alleviating misery? They're the ones shaping us, shaping our ideas, our needs, our wants. But they encourage us to be totally selfish, then say: it's what the public wants.

It's the easy road. Pander to the flesh instead of the spirit. It'll do this country in, in the end. We're like the Romans: decadent imperialists only concerned with ourselves and our petty desires.

Whatever happened to people playing on their own little teams instead of living their lives through the television?

The answer, of course, is we've been sold the idea. Our adrenaline gets falsely charged - add to it the copious amounts of booze people drink as part of "the celebration" - and there you have it.

The corporations are so good at selling escapism to us. And the more participants, the more money for them and all the advertisers.

I tried to watch the Stupor Bowl this year, but I just couldn't do it. I found it to be just so much pompous ado about nothing that I wandered off to bake a cake.

What really showed the perversions being ingrained by the Super Bowl was the total insensitivity to Motown musicians. Aretha Franklin wound up being a warm-up act for the Rolling Stones.

Imagine.


Why bring the Stones over at all? What do they have to do with Detroit? Or football? They're English, for heaven's sake.

Maybe I'm not the only one bored by this whole dog and pony show. Maybe getting the Stones involved was to generate interest.

But I think it backfired. It did with me. Making the Stones the headliners was a slap in the face to all the black musicians who put Detroit on the map via music.

Another thing that really hit home for me on this whole issue was the MVP saying something like he was "King of the World."

Maybe he meant he felt like king of the world, because helping to win a football game does not confer that title. If he or anyone else thinks he's a "king" in a real sense, they are kidding themselves.

If football was used to settle conflicts between nations and avert war - if the players in the NFL were, in a sense, real warriors instead of pretend warriors - then it would have a higher purpose. As it is, its purpose seems to be to distract everyone from what really is important.

It's nice, of course, that the players get to use their talents and succeed on a grand scale. But, again, what are they doing that merits all this celebrity? Solving crises? Eliminating polio? Eliminating a perceived need for war?

What is it that they really do? Catch balls and knock people down.

What empty heroes.

There are 25 to 30 million slaves in the world. Is the purpose of the NFL to eliminate slavery? A billion people are starving. Is the purpose of the NFL to eliminate starvation?

It is so telling in regard to where do we put our money. We put it into acquiring things and diversions, not making the world a better place. A football player makes more than a Nobel Peace prize winner.

It sure seems like this is a screwy world of upsidedown priorities, priorities that a five-year old might have as opposed to a full-fledged adult.

Speaking of upsidedown, the cake I baked was pineapple upsidedown cake and was delicious. Gave away most of it away.

The secret of making a truly delicious golden cake is cream. Instead of using all skim milk, use half cream. If you're worried about cholesterol or calories, give away half of it to people who can afford the calories. Eat less of the cake. But, trust me, what you do eat will just melt in your mouth.

Finished reading The Spiritual Universe

I just don't seem to be able to blog early in the evening. And when I blog this late (it's nearly 1 a.m. my time) it wakes me up so I wind up going to bed around 4!

Angus and I are supposed to get up at 6 a.m. and go to breakfast - this is my idea - since he's not working tomorrow. For over a year we've talked about going to this great eatery called Billie's for breakfast. Now we'll finally do it - if I'm not comatose five hours from now. Let's see - I have 8 minutes to finish this blog, change the date on my website, brush my teeth, get into my jammies and crawl into bed.

What are the odds I'll make that? Especially since I have photos to upload?

I've been working on redecorating the kitchen. I'm through, for the most part. I have a few things to touch up here and there. Also want to put up the border in our bedroom that has been sitting around for two years.

My real work, of course, is creating my Peace/Forgiveness Collage and finishing the edit of my novel, The Loved One's Club.

Tonight I finally finished a book I had been reading: The Spiritual Universe: One Physicist's Vision of Spirit, Soul, Matter and Self by Fred Alan Wolf.

It was not easy going. Reading examples that demonstrate principles of quantum physics - and having trouble understanding them - made me feel senile.

I know age plays a big role in how open one's mind (and neural connectors) are to new thoughts and concepts, but, really, I was shocked at the resistance my mind was giving me to understanding what I was reading.

Fortunately, most of the book was understandable to me - it didn't contain completely new concepts. But in regard to the mathematical/conceptual explanations that were completely foreign to me, I felt like my brain was like a brick wall - it refused to understand!

Otherwise, I found the book exciting, for Wolf is a reputable physicist who has presented a quantum model that explains how the soul works and how spirit is the flip side of matter. In addition, he gives a detailed history of how science has viewed God - being first reliant upon the idea of God and then moving into a purely materialistic perspective.

The problem is that science cannot verify consciousness. We know we're conscious, but, according to science - since consciousness can neither be located in space or time nor verified in experiments - for all intents and purposes, consciousness does not exist!

Clearly science can't provide all the answers through its current methodology. Yet its methodology of reproducible results is a sound basis for research.

What was most extraordinary for me is that Wolf has come to the conclusion - and he explains how this is a function of quantum physics - that there is only one mind and all our minds are part of it.

This is a relief. It explains so much. It explains why Master Minding works, why prayer works, why the 100th monkey phenomena exists.

It also gives credence to my intuitive feeling that if we can calm our own minds - bring peace to our own inner selves through resolving our conflicts - we actually create peace and resolve conflicts in society as a by-product.

There is so much I could say about this book, but it's late. I've used more than my 8 minutes.

I took two more books out of the library: The Hebrew Alphabet - because these letters are considered to contain sacred energy and I want to understand something about what they mean and what energy they are supposed to carry - and The 72 Names of God.

This latter book practically jumped off the shelf and into my hands - I kid you not - so I knew as soon as I held it that it was coming home with me.

Things do hold energy. I know that, but every once in a while it seems I need a tangible reminder.

Wolf also wrote about a film called Wings of Desire. Note to self: see if I can find it.

So - shall I get a few kitchen photos up?

Here's just one.

I need to put the rest in PhotoShop, cut them down, resize them, flip some of them. But here's the new border above the fauxed wall. It really is fun.

I think, instead of quoting Rumi, tonight I'll quote a portion of one of my own prayers:

Through me, truth is spoken.
Through me, wrongs are righted.
Through me, bravery survives.
Through me, a free spirit lives.
Through me, compassion has a voice.
Through me, love prevails.

I am a force for good.

Amen.