"Calculating God" by Robert Sawyer

This is the fourth book by Sawyer that I have read and he never fails to leave me in awe of his imagination and vision in the construction of plausible explanations for some of life's biggest questions. "Calculating God" continues the course of "Starplex" to consider wonderfully complex intelligent life forms from other worlds and the speculation regarding the nature of dark matter that comprises so much of our universe.

However, "Calculating God" takes a surprising twist in presenting the reader with life forms that are vastly superior in intelligence to human beings and who take the existence of God as a scientific certainty. However, their "search" for God has nothing to do with religion even though they are searching for answers to questions that have vexed humans throughout history and for which we have constructed religious answers such as "original sin" and "the fall".

This book is probably the most emotionally moving of Sawyer's books as the reader can easily identify with the main character, Thomas Jericho, a paleontologist and non-believer, facing his own mortality and who, in his final hours, comes face to face with a "God" he can comprehend and realizes how the cancer that has ravaged his body fits within the larger picture of the universe.

Reconnecting with friends

My final stop on the Seeking Balance Tour took me to London where I spent three days renewing a very important relationship in my life. I met Jim Linthicum on my first day at Wesley Seminary in Washington DC and we fast became friends. We shared common interests in rock and roll, sub-cultures, and being on the fringes of church and ministry. We may be best remembered at our seminary, if at all, for the grant proposal we wrote and secured funding for a happy hour bar ministry in Old Town Alexandria for two years. We actually got paid to drink beer and talk about life with bar patrons twice a week. Our Sunday mornings that first year of seminary usually consisted of rocking away at the Marble Bar on Franklin Street in Baltimore until 2 a.m. then grabbing a bag of Little Tavern Burgers on the way home and maybe a few hours of sleep before heading off to the little rural church Jim served where he preached sermons from his favorite rock song lyrics like "Cosmic Debris" by Frank Zappa.

Jim's parents were very generous in welcoming me into their home on many weekends and holidays as I was long way from home that first year of seminary. I remember having a problem securing a ticket at the bus station when I was about to ride the Greyhound from Baltimore to Wichita. It seems they would not take my personal check, but Jim's father very graciously came down to the bus station and paid for the ticket so I could be on my way home to get married.

Jim and I did not spend as much time together after I got married. We took a road trip to Boston that was memorable, but I started working for two congregations in DC so our Saturday night routine became more difficult and we started to drift apart. I got to visit him in Baltimore once after graduation and before he left for the UK where he works now as a chaplain at a children's hospital in London. So it had been about 28 years since we had seen one another and it was a bit of a challenge recognizing each other at Heathrow Airport.

Jim was probably the first really good friend that I ever had in my life. He is a great listener, he accepts people for who they are, he has a gentle way of suggesting different perspectives on things, to name just a few of his fine qualities. I am sure that many families have been able to better manage very difficult situations in the lives of their children due to Jim's ministry.

The past year was incredibly difficult as anyone who has gone through a divorce knows what I am talking about. Yet at times when I felt most alone and despondent I have been blessed with the presence of friends old and new. In the past year I have been able to reconnect with friends from high school, college, and my seminary roommate. I have been able to rely on the support of friends here in Kent and I had the opportunity to make several new friends on this trip around the world. I have also had the opportunity to meet and get to know someone very special with whom I have many shared interests and a desire to travel with together on this wonderful adventure of life.

So here I am at the beginning of a new year with a wealth of new experiences to draw from, a great group of friends to share with, a new perspective on the journey that lies ahead, and a renewed yet tenuous balance on the teeter-totter of life. Thanks for reading.

Kolkata: Where to Begin?

How to begin writing about my experience in Kolkata, India is a challenge I have struggled with for several days and that is a pretty good indication of how incredibly complex and overwhelming I found this city and its people to be. In my personal quest for balance I encountered this mysterious place where life appears to be both alarmingly out of balance and yet serenely stable at the same time. The social, religious, political, and economic forces that all work together, sometimes at odds with one or another and other times in harmony, to weave the beautiful and moving tapestry of this city are more than I can hope to write about much less to understand in one or more blog posts.

Once again I had the good fortune to meet nice people and make new friends. I was very fortunate to make the acquaintance of Dr. Kakoli Sengupta who teaches at Jadavpur University in the International Relations department. Dr. Sengupta graciously took the time to show such sites of interest to me as the Ganges River, the National Library, one of the several temples of Kali who is the patron goddess of Kolkata. We talked about the caste system and its historical role in defining social identity in such a way that seemingly leads the poorest of the poor to accept their position in life as destiny. We also talked about the recent Right to Information Act that is empowering the powerless to obtain justice against those persons who have abused their more powerful positions in society to the detriment of others.

I also had the pleasure to meet several faculty members from the School of Library and Information Science at Jadavpur University. It was an honor to receive their gracious hospitality while we visited about such library science pioneers as S.R. Ranganathan from their country and Jesse Shera from mine and the collaborative work they did for our field towards the end of their respective careers.


My experience in Kolkata has led me to do some thinking on the inter-relationships between fear, uncertainty, information, and religion. I awoke on my first morning in Kolkata with a great deal of uncertainty and an inability to access information that would have helped to reduce this uncertainty. I was a stranger in a strange land, isolated and cut off from information and communication tools that I took for granted. I was way out of my comfort zone and found myself suddenly realizing what all could go wrong over the next three days and afraid that I might not be able to get any help at all. Thankfully, I was able to stay calm enough to seek out the assistance I needed in order to feel safe and somewhat in control of my life again.

However, I came to a much greater appreciation for the fact that far too many people in this world live with levels of uncertainty that I cannot begin to comprehend. This, in turn, reminded me that my sense of control is an illusion and that we are all equal in that we live but from one moment to the next. My smug feeling of not needing to believe in a higher power to intervene on my behalf is a luxury made possible only with the security blanket of a socio-economic position in life that affords me access to education, health care, job security, and so on. But when my access to those resources is removed, and smugness is replaced with fear, I can find myself easily identifying with the throngs at the Temple of Kali petitioning for her divine intervention and holding on to whatever is available in the hope that things will get better.

I am thankful for the experience and also that it was short lived. The impact and memory of the experience will be with me for a long time to come.

Never pass up a chance to talk with strangers and always be generous

I flew into Bangkok Tuesday evening, December 21, not knowing a single person in the whole city – what was I thinking? I had read somewhere that Bangkok was an easy city to see by bicycle. That may have been true once upon a time, but I did not see a single bicycle in the two days I was there and I cannot imagine trying to navigate the streets in such a way. I did however see a bike rental stand in one of the quieter areas that I visited.

This is my first visit to a third world nation and it is rather difficult knowing where to begin. I am not sure of the official definition of a third world nation, but I am going to go with two criteria: drinking the tap water and breathing the air can make you sick and there is evidence everywhere of neocolonialism. I define neocolonialism as a system of economic warfare that subjugates a large and growing number of people to a life of poverty and indebtedness from which they have hardly any chance of ever escaping. However, they are fed a steady stream of information that promises a better future either in the afterlife, through incarnation, or simply by working harder and spending less. Bangkok strikes me as a place where both the best and the worst of religion and capitalism are readily apparent.

This leads me to share the story of four people I met in Bangkok who touched me deeply and made the smog, humidity, and crowded sidewalks all secondary experiences. The first person was the guy in the picture here. I had just bought a ticket to visit Wat Pho, a Buddhist temple with a famous statue of a reclining Buddha. I cannot remember his name exactly, but it is close enough to “Chuck” that I am giving him the name for this posting. Chuck asked me if I would like to have a personal guided tour of the Temple. I thought the price was a little too high, but he was very persuasive so I agreed and am glad that I did. I learned much more about the temple and Thai culture than I ever would have without him. Sure, he tried to twist my arm into buying some overpriced souvenirs from a woman that I suspect was his mother, but that is to be expected most anywhere. I am not sure how many guides like Chuck were there to cater to the large number of tourists, but I am a believer in serendipity and I am going to make it a point to always look for Chuck whenever I am a stranger in a strange land.

Later that evening I went to eat at a sidewalk café that I had discovered the night before. No one spoke English, but I was hoping someone could tell me just a little about a particular dish on the menu. An American couple at the next table told me they had never had the dish in question, but that everything was good. We struck up a conversation and it turned out they were flight attendants staying at the same hotel as mine. They were regular customers of this café and complimented me on my courage to give it a try since most people they knew who stayed at the hotel never ventured outside for a meal. They were married, based in South Korea, and flew into Bangkok at least once a month so they were a perfect and willing resource to ask questions regarding all that I had observed and experienced that day. We quickly learned that we were kindred spirits in many ways including a shared sense of helplessness at the systemic poverty that was all around us and anger with the unbridled capitalism that was also all around us and which exacerbated the systemic poverty. I believe their names were Tina and Tom, but I cannot be sure since I was enjoying a liter of Leo with my dinner, but I told him that I thought he looked like Anthony Bourdain and he took that as a compliment.

Finally, I met a young man the next morning on my last little expedition before leaving for India. I was walking down a random street filled with jewelry stores and guys on the corners trying to steer me towards one store or another. The jewelry in the windows was beautiful, but not anything that interested me. I was getting anxious to get back to my hotel, finish packing, shower, check out, and get to the airport, when I nearly stumbled over a young man who was selling rings and bracelets made from an organic material woven into fairly simple geometric designs. I am not sure if this young man did the weaving or not because he had only one good arm and hand. The other looked to be malformed from a birth defect and he was missing both legs. He was not like other people I had encountered on the sidewalks. He did not call out to me or rattle a coin cup, but simply used his good hand to call my attention to his wares. I took a few moments to admire his handiwork and bought a couple of rings and a bracelet for less than $2. This ring will be my daily reminder of Bangkok, its beauty, its poverty, and its people.

The conference that I came to Perth to attend was the fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture. It was quite a learning experience for me, especially as an American, to be around people who are so focused on environmental issues often from a religious perspective. While I am generally concerned about the future of our planet, I came to realize how woefully uneducated I am in terms of what is going on and what is at stake. Just a couple of examples include understanding the differences between the disciplines of ecology and environmentalism and the concepts of world and planet. The cost of electricity in Australia has gone up nearly 50% in the past two years. There seemed to be a pretty concerted effort to conserve energy, but I did not really see much evidence of green energy technology.

I attended and presented at the conference because of the significance that religion is given in this society (ISSNRC) as it relates to nature. The opening session included a welcome from Dr. Richard Walley, an elder of the Nyoongar people, who blessed us with stories, songs, and teachings to help us understand the spiritual connection between the land upon which we were gathered and his people. I came away with a much deeper appreciation for the animism of the indigenous peoples that connects them to all of life. This was fascinating from both a religious and information science perspective. One goal that I take away from this conference is to develop a workshop on information from the perspective of indigenous peoples.

One of the final things I did at this conference was to watch a movie called "Our Generation" about how the Australian government is making a concerted effort to move indigenous peoples off their homelands in the Northern Territory in order to provide easier access to ore deposits for the corporate mining interests. When the people refused to "lease" their lands for 99 years, the government suddenly discovered "widespread child abuse" among the indigenous people and this was the excuse to begin forced relocation. This action is referred to as "The Intervention".

I watched former Australian PM John Howard looking and sounding very much like George W. Bush with the same uncanny ability to keep a straight face while telling lies in order to justify injustice. For a society with countless symptoms of a general lack of appreciation for life as evidenced by abortion, drug abuse, sexual disease, alcoholism, obesity, child pornography, etc., to manufacture such outlandish charges against a people is indicative of how essentially evil our white western values can be. By the way, just like the supposed weapons of mass destruction, an extensive investigation proved that the "wide spread child abuse" was also a lie. Four possible cases were discovered.

I was also surprised to learn that in Australia there is no such thing as a bill of rights. Also, there was never a treaty with any of the indigenous people of that country. The abuse of power, even by a democratic government, is a real and constant danger for anyone who loves freedom and respects life.

I do want to say that I loved my time in Australia and that I am already missing hearing the magpies and other birds that were constantly calling me to pay attention to nature. The tree in this picture is located on the campus of the University of Western Australia. I find it to be a great symbol of the interconnectedness of life.

Stop Two: Perth Australia - Joy, Pleasure, Fear, and Guilt

I arrived in Perth, Australia Tuesday evening, December 14, in order to attend and present at a conference of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture. It is a rather small conference with less than 100 people attending and most of us are staying in a dormitory at St. Catherine’s College across the road from the University of Western Australia, which is the location for the conference sessions. The “U-Wah” campus is spectacular with Spanish Mediterranean architecture and tropical foliage full of beautiful birds.

Such a small conference is a great opportunity to meet new people. I have made the acquaintance of scholars from across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Pakistan, Canada, Japan, and the Netherlands. I spent my first full day here with two new friends, Genny Blades from Victoria and Michael Newton from Newfoundland, taking a bus to Freemantle, then a ferryboat to Rottnest Island several miles off the west coast into the Indian Ocean. The government used the island at one time to quarantine aboriginal peoples. Now it is a vacation location. We rented bicycles and spent the afternoon touring the beautiful yet harsh island. It was a wonderful time enjoying breathtaking views, wading in the ocean, and being conscious of the need to ration drinking water.

It is a joyous occasion to make new friends that I hope to meet again at some point in the future. Introducing myself to a total stranger is something that comes pretty easy to me and I can strike up a conversation with most anyone. It is much more difficult for me to take advantage of pleasurable opportunities that arise and which may never present themselves again. Michael and I are going to attend a U2 concert here in Perth tomorrow evening. I have never paid as much to attend a concert as I have for this one, but it is a wonderful opportunity that I am sure I will always remember. This opportunity and my hesitation to incur the expense gave me pause to consider my long-term hesitance to pursue, embrace, and enjoy pleasure.

I remember hearing a sermon as a teenager in which the preacher was speaking about the terrible lack of morals in society and how it was summed up in a popular phrase at the time “If it feels good, do it”. The preacher deplored the phrase as irresponsible, shallow, and that such an attitude would surely lead to the downfall of society. The implication being, at least in my young impressionable mind, that if it feels good, it must be wrong, it must be sinful, to be resisted at all costs. I know that I am not alone in having such a predisposition about pleasure imprinted upon my mind. The religious tradition of my upbringing and in the Puritan heritage of our nation, was and is serious business. I grew up believing that opportunities for pleasure should be treated with suspicion because the devil used such opportunities to lead us astray and the next thing you know you are spending eternity in hell.

I have observed and experienced this repressive religious attitude about pleasure having a negative impact on marriage. Money and sex are usually cited as the two leading causes of marital strive, but both of those are rooted in pleasure, or more precisely, the inability to cherish pleasure, to be spontaneous, to throw caution to the wind, to take a chance, to let go, to lose control, and just live in the moment. Even more troublesome is when this inability turns into fear of spontaneity, fear of losing control, and feelings of guilt following pleasurable experiences.

I am not versant in the religious origins for the repression of pleasure but I am generally aware of the conflict as old as human history between the fertility oriented religions and the male-dominated dualistic religions. So this is nothing new and it is certainly not a unique problem, but I am turning a page in my life not only to embrace opportunities for pleasure, but to actively seek them out, to live, laugh, and love as never before. It is not a simple nor easy step and I will probably need a helpful push now and then to continue in this direction; also, I am not advocating the pursuit of pleasure for pleasure’s sake at the expense of responsibility, but it is a necessary step in the pursuit of a healthy balance.

First Stop: San Francisco and the Rediscovery of Fun

When I began to make plans to attend and present at two academic conferences in Australia and India later this month, I learned about a travel option that would allow me to make five stops on a trip around the world for one flat rate that was much cheaper than the estimate I had submitted to the university for approval. I have taken advantage of this opportunity to include a couple of other stops on my journey the first of which is San Franciso to visit my brother, Sean, and his wife Lynn. The thought of spending a couple of days with Sean helped me to realize the greater depth of what this journey is all about for me and to be intentional in my contemplation and reflections upon it.

For context, I am the oldest of four children and there are ten years between Sean and myself. We are very different people in many ways, but we have a bond that grows stronger every time we are together. Because we are so different, I learn a lot about myself from just being around Sean and interacting with him. In some ways, it is hard to believe that we both grew up in the same household in which religion affected everything and often in rather negative ways.

First of all, Sean has always known how to have fun. He has an easy smile and as a child would fall into bouts of hysterical laughter at the least little thing that would soon have the rest of the family laughing at his laughing until our sides hurt. Sean never seemed to be overly affected by the fear and anxiety that often marked our family environment. Whereas, I dutifully submitted to the religious influence and the fear based messages of the potential consequences that would come with anything less than complete obedience to a stern and judging god, Sean could not be bothered by such a narrow path.

Not that he was a rebellious child by any means. He would first have to be angry to be rebellious and I have seldom seen Sean angry. I have known my brother to be very competitive and determined, to have experienced significant disappointment, and to display and articulate irritation in certain situations, but I cannot recall times when he was angry. In situations that would have my blood boiling Sean has a way of shrugging it off and moving on to the next thing, refusing to be brought down by the situation.

I have spent most of my life on low boil and I have been aware of that for many years. I believe that I do a pretty good job of keeping my anger in check, but others may well disagree. There are a lot of reasons for the anger the details of which I do not need to go into here, except to say I believe that the driving force is the feeling of being unworthy that comes from a fearful religious upbringing. More importantly, I acknowledge that my anger has cost me friendships and important relationships for which I am very sorry. In the past few years, I have been able to acknowledge and deal with it in constructive ways. While it has been too little, too late for some relationships, I am working hard to lay down the anger and to embrace a happier outlook that believes it is okay to have fun, to experience pleasure, to love life, to laugh with others rather than to be bothered by them, and so on.

So yesterday I enjoyed exploring San Francisco with my brother and sharing some good laughs and creating some timeless memories. Sean started a brotherly air hockey competition many years ago when he was in college that we renew each time we are together if we can find an arcade. Yesterday that arcade was on Fisherman’s Wharf with a view of Alcatraz in the distance. We left it at a 1-1 tie, although I did have 12 total points to Sean’s 11, but who is counting? The point is that where I saw the arcade and thought nothing of it, but Sean saw the opportunity for some fun and friendly sibling competition and bonding.

I know that fear and anger shuts down my ability to see and appreciate the life that is going on all around me. I know that it is easy for me to say that I am going to pay more attention and enjoy life, but I also know that I have a hard time actually doing so. I have often heard that experiencing the life of India changes a person forever. I am hopeful the same will be true for me.

The Seeking Balance Tour

I am on the second day of a journey by which I will close out this year by traveling around the world while making presentations at academic conferences in Australia and India. It is an exciting yet bittersweet journey. Exciting because it is the fulfillment of a dream and a desire to see the world; bittersweet because I am traveling alone. I have decided to give my journey a name and to write about it here because in many ways the journey is an explicit exercise for me in sense-making and my life. I am calling this journey “The Seeking Balance Tour of 2010”.

This past year has been tumultuous for me. My marriage of nearly 29 years came to an end, which felt a lot like the childhood experience of being on the high end of a teeter-totter when the person on the other end suddenly gets off and you have that terrifying feeling of helplessly falling without any control of the speed of the fall। And while at the time it seemed like a sudden experience, I know now that it was not. I know that things had been out of balance for quite some time and that we simply reached the tipping point, the breaking point, beyond which all hope of recovering balance, was lost.

Last July, in the middle of this very negative legal proceeding, it occurred to me that I would be spending the holiday season on my own and I began to wonder what I could do to avoid feeling lonely and depressed. It then occurred to me that I could do anything that I wanted. I have always enjoyed traveling and long dreamed of traveling the world so I began to look for international academic conferences on topics that fit within my area of research at which I might present. I found two conferences the timing of which bookend Christmas, submitted proposals that were accepted, submitted the travel request to my university, which was also accepted, made the travel plans and here I am.

That was the first step in a spiritual journey, a journey of the Big Picture, and the destination is self-discovery. As a child, I usually thought of the teeter-totter as a rather boring activity. I preferred the greater challenge of standing on top of the middle of the teeter-totter by myself and shifting my weight from one foot to the other until the board reached a balance parallel to the ground. That is what I am trying to do in my life. To acknowledge, accept, deal with, and leave behind those attributes of my life that led to the crash; and to discover, recognize, embrace, and appreciate those attributes, activities, attitudes, and persons that I need in order for my life to regain balance. That is my quest and I invite you to follow along as I chronicle the daily journey, discoveries, and insights that I have along the way.

Online Repository of Religious Messages

The Center for the Study of Information and Religion (CSIR) at the School of Library and Information Science, Kent State University is in the process of creating a digital repository of religious messages to serve as a data resource for scholars. The repository is web based and keyword searchable. Currently, data records consist of less than one hundred sermons prepared by Christian clergy members, but the goal is to collect religious messages from all faiths. The small sample of records are available for demonstration purposes as CSIR is in the process of applying for grant funding to finance the development and expansion of the Religious Messages Repository.

CSIR invites scholars who might find such a data resource helpful to their research to visit the repository at http://csir.slis.kent.edu/sermons/search. Repository users may currently drill down into the data records by the date on which the religious message was delivered to a congregation, by the scripture text upon which the religious message was based, and the gender, ethnicity, denominational affiliation, geographical location, education level, and ordination status of the clergy person delivering the sermon. Eventually, scholars will be able to search the repository by faith tradition.

CSIR also seeks the support of scholars interested in using the repository in the grant application process. After visiting the repository, scholars are asked to take a short online survey at http://kentstate.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_a3u9j5jTTIGgrmA

The purpose of this survey is to demonstrate to grant funding agencies the extent of interest in and the need for the Religious Messages Repository. CSIR will compile the survey data regarding the number of scholars expressing an interest, the various academic fields represented, and the different types of research that the repository would benefit to potential funding agencies.

Please direct any questions regarding CSIR, the Religious Message Repository, or the survey to Dr. Daniel Roland, droland1@kent.edu.

An invitation for clergy member participation in a research project regarding the Gulf Oil Spill

The Center for the Study of Information and Religion (CSIR), Kent State University, is conducting research regarding how clergy members around the country addressed the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident in the Gulf of Mexico in their sermons. Findings will be presented at the 4^th Annual Conference of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture in December 2010. The conference theme is “Living on the Edge”.

CSIR invites and encourages clergy members who mentioned the Gulf oil spill in one or more sermons to take an online and anonymous survey that consists of 16 questions and should take less than 30 minutes to complete. To participate, please send an email message to Dr. Daniel Roland at droland1@kent.edu indicating your willingness to participate in the research project. You will receive a reply that includes a link to the survey website and the necessary password.

CSIR is a research center hosted by the School of Library and Information Science (www.slis.kent.edu). For more information CSIR, please visit our website at http://csir.slis.kent.edu/

Guns, Honest Belief, Bullies, and Murder

My former state of residence, Kansas, made page 2 of the Akron Beacon Journal this morning with a story and photo of Scott Roeder. Roeder is on trial in Wichita for walking into a church on a Sunday May 31, 2009, pulling out a gun, and murdering Dr. George Tiller all in the name of preserving life. Tiller was one of the few doctors in the country who practiced late-term abortions and apparently Roeder believes that was justification enough for him to walk into Tiller's house of worship and to kill the man in front of his family and friends.

Roeder's defense team is predictably expected to argue for the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter rather than pre-meditated murder. Even though prior to May 31 Roeder made a trip from Kansas City to Wichita, a journey of 200 miles, in order to locate Tiller's church and determine when Tiller would serve as a church usher and thus insure his attendance, the defense will ask us to believe Roeder's actions were not pre-meditated. Rather, they will ask us to believe that Roeder is guilty of nothing more than voluntary manslaughter, which, in Kansas, is defined as "an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force." I have spent the day trying to make sense of this definition.

I wrote in an earlier posting that Roeder is an ideologue and how that ideologues are defined by their emotional rather than rational decision making processes. I have no doubt that Roeder honestly believes that his use of deadly force is justified, but however unreasonable I and others may find Roeder's belief to be, the state of Kansas may hold him accountable to a lesser charge because of the honesty of Roeder's belief. It seems to me that such a decision would declare open hunting season for every unreasonable person out there with a sincere conviction that someone they have a beef with deserves to die. Combine such a legal precedent with the easy availability of guns in this country and you can see why I am feeling sick.

I believe that Scott Roeder and his ilk are nothing more than bullies: unreasonable people who resort to intimidation when they do not get their way. Bullies are also cowards who are afraid of their impotence and pointing a gun at someone supposedly makes a person feel pretty damn powerful. Our laws make it way too easy for unreasonable people to feel so empowered.

I applaud the District Attorney, Nola Foulston, for charging Roeder with pre-meditated murder and I wish her every success in gaining a conviction on that charge. I hope that the state of Kansas and other states with similar definitions of voluntary manslaughter will take steps to change this wording so as to protect their citizens in the courts, but also to protect them in their daily lives through tougher restrictions on handgun possession.

Reflections on Fathers Day

In one way it was a fairly low-key Fathers Day for me, which suits me fine. A couple of funny cards, no obligatory store-bought gifts. I grilled some burgers and we enjoyed a family meal, something that I count as making me a most fortunate man. My wife and I have three sons ages 22, 18, and 13. I believe that I have a close relationship with each of them and that makes me feel like a success as a father, which is all that I really want and something that no one can give me.

In another way, it was a very emotional day for me. I was hardly able to talk without getting a catch in my throat. A lot has been going on that reminds me that life is a fragile and precious gift. Not the least of which is the knowledge that my sons are no longer boys. My oldest son is older now than I was when I got married. That certainly gives me pause for reflection and I think that may be the best thing for fathers to do on Fathers Day: take at least a few moments to reflect on how we are doing.

My father sent me a message recently with a passage written by Ruth Beebe Hill who asked: "will not each father look for the day when he sees his son walking beyond him?" As I think about each of my sons and where they are in the world at this point in their lives, I am amazed and proud at how much more mature, knowledgeable, confident, etc., each of them are than I was at the same age. I have a hard time trying to imagine what their world will be like when they reach my age, but I am confident they will each have made an impact to make it a better place. So, "thanks guys" for a good Fathers Day.

Resist the fear mongers, embrace freedom, celebrate life.

On the misuse and disowning of ideologues

An article in the NY Times this morning caught my eye, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/us/08wichita.html?_r=1&th&emc=th, as the anti-abortion groups based in Wichita suddenly are without a target now that Dr. George Tiller has been murdered. Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, is quoted as "tearfully" saying, "This idiot [Scott Roeder] did more to damage the pro-life movement than you can imagine." That much, I hope, is true, but Newman's words seem little more to me than a lament for loss of donation income for his political agenda - was he also moved to tears for the Tiller family and the members of Tiller's church? His words also reminded me of a passage from Don DeLio's book "Libra" - a quasi-fictional speculation about Lee Harvey Oswald and systematic plots surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy.

In the book, when Oswald is in the Soviet Union looking to become a Soviet citizen, a KGB agent assigned to debrief and evaluate Oswald is reflecting on how to possibly use Oswald. He recognizes that the problem with Oswald is that Oswald is an ideologue and he knows that ideologues are unpredictable because they are not rational, guided rather by their very strong emotions. So while an ideologue may serve as a very valuable puppet, there is always the chance they will become disillusioned with the puppet master, cut the strings, and take matters into their own hands.

As I look at the picture accompanying the NY Times story, I can easily place Roeder in the photo holding one of those terrible placards and screaming at Dr. Tiller's clients. I wonder how many of these people know Roeder and/or share his ideology that killing an abortion provider is not wrong - an ideology that he openly proclaimed. Did anyone in the anti-abortion movement ever try to talk sense into Roeder, ever report him to authorities as someone who is over the edge and a danger to society? 

I have very strong doubts this was ever the case because Roeder and others like him are people that Troy Newman and his ilk welcome with open arms when they come to line up at the gates every day with their obscene posters and tirades of abuse for anyone who disagrees with their ideology. Newman uses the news coverage generated by these folks to raise financial donations for his political agenda. Consequently, Newman must also keep his puppets stirred up and coming back day after day to generate more press coverage so he can claim to have prevented x number of abortions by disrupting operations at any given clinic. But once one of the puppets cuts the strings, takes matters into their own hands, and kills a doctor or bombs a clinic, suddenly the puppet is an "idiot", no one knows him, and he is portrayed as a solitary crazy man.  In the words of the SNL Church Lady: "How conveeenient." 

Last week I wrote about a sermon from years ago when I hoped that Dr. Tiller would go out of business due to a lack of demand for his services. Today I am hoping that Troy Newman will go out of business for a lack of financial support. 

Resist the fear mongers, embrace freedom, and love life.

On the murder of Dr. George Tiller

I was traveling home this afternoon from a weekend celebrating my wife's parents 60th wedding anniversary when I learned that Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed during the morning worship service at his church while he was serving as an usher. Just a couple hours earlier I was congratulating my father-in-law on surviving the Battle of the Bulge and nearly two hundred days on the front lines of the Second World War to come home, raise four children, put them through college, and now enjoy being surrounded by a dozen grandchildren and one great-grandson. To go from a joyous celebration of life and affirmation of children to hearing about an assassination in a place of worship, a murder probably carried out in the name of God and rationalized as a way to save lives, leaves me once again trying to make sense of my world.

I was still in local church ministry back in 1993 when Rachelle Shannon shot Dr. Tiller in both his arms at his clinic in Wichita, Kansas. I was serving two congregations less than a hundred miles away. Operation Rescue was staging highly charged protests at Dr. Tiller's abortion clinic, which were on the television news most every evening. The Old Testament lesson for the Sunday following the 1993 shooting was from the story from book of Exodus of Pharaoh ordering the death of all the Hebrew infant males and how Moses was spared that fate. It seemed to me that the Scripture called for a sermon addressing abortion, valuing life, and social responsibility. 

The point of my sermon was that I wished that Dr. Tiller was unemployed for a lack of demand for his services, but that as long as our society was willing to devalue children through the acceptance of poverty, lack of universal health care, and keeping education as a low priority, then the services of Dr. Tiller would always be in demand. The problem was not Dr. Tiller, the problem was and continues to be us. 

More than one child in ten in this country does not have health insurance. Nearly 30% of young adults aged 18-24, a likely time for pregnancy, are without health insurance (http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml/). Over 3 billion people in our world live on less than $2.50 per day and less than 1% of what our world spends on weapons could put every child in school (http://www.globalissues.org/issue/2/causes-of-poverty). These are the problems we can and must address.

I did not know Dr. Tiller and I admit that I was a little surprised to read that he was an active church member. I admired the man and now I admire his congregation for refusing to give in to the protesters who have tried to shut him down for years. He and his congregation respected the free speech rights of the protesters even as those opposed to his work vandalized his property and sought to intimidate his clients and fellow church members. Dr. Tiller refused to be the scapegoat for our society. Now we must avoid the temptation to make his assassin a scapegoat and dismiss this violent act as the unfortunate act of a crazy man. The anti-abortion rhetoric and vitriol must be turned off, tuned out, and held accountable for the fear and reactionary violence that it creates.

Resist the fear mongers, embrace freedom, and celebrate life.

Absurdity

I am sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting for a flight to take me back to Ohio and my other life. Earlier today I was driving to an airport in Kansas with my spouse and youngest son and I made the remark that I felt schizophrenic. It was probably an improper use of the word, but it effectively communicated my feelings of having two different lives. I had just finished two weeks of being reunited with my family and I was trying to prepare myself for six weeks or so of being separated from them once again. 

The trip to the airport was generating feelings of being disconcerted as my emotions were in once place and my physical being was on the way to another place with a separate place of residence, a different time zone, with different sets of routines and responsibilities. My mind needed to be refocused on my life as a professor and researcher who is on a tenure clock, who is facing a lot of grading as the end of the semester approaches as well as articles that need to be written. But doing so was painful and something I wanted to avoid as long as possible.

As I sit here in the midst of this parade of humanity that is a busy airport on a Sunday afternoon, inundated with a head-splitting cacophony of sound, I am struck with the realization of this absurd aspect of my life. It is in the time I spend with my family that I am able to create a life with clarity and meaning that is emotionally fulfilling and comforting. However, to provide for the economic security and well being of my family, I live another life that separates me from them by 900 miles. My other life is a time of working for clarity and meaning in the midst of uncertainty as a new professor and researcher. It is an adventure which a part of me wants to liken to the explorers of long ago who set forth into the unknown, wondering if they would ever see home and loved ones again, but I know that my adventure is much safer and certain than was theirs.

I look forward to the time when this geographical and chronological split in my life is bridged, but there is also a part of me that realizes that this emotional turmoil is somewhat healthy in the search for intellectual clarity and meaning. Holding too tightly to the emotional clarity and meaning would require foregoing the opportunity for intellectual adventure.

Like Kierkegaard’s Absurd Man, I choose to embrace the absurd and create my own meaning and clarity. I am thankful that my family seems to be coping with this absurdity as well. It was great to spend a couple of weeks with them and summer vacation will be here soon.  

What Comes After?

It has been a good weekend for me, for which I am thankful. I spent some quality time with good friends and got to know and appreciate them even more. I made a new friend, got to hold a newborn baby on his second day home from the hospital, and made my first visit to the Akron Art Museum. It is so exciting to be living just a few miles from such an excellent museum.

A good deal of the weekend was spent in pretty heavy conversations about life and death, love and betrayal, selfishness and selflessness, the present moment and eternity. I found myself reading "The Hound of Heaven" by Francis Thompson aloud to my friends. It is a favorite poem for within its words I somehow find reason to believe in an eternal dimension of life that defies my preference for objective rationality. It is a poem that moves me to believe in the eternity of Love as the power of Life. The poem is made all the more powerful when one also reads about Thompson's tragic life. 

There are no words, however, for the powerful experience of holding a small bundle of new life in ones arms, especially one's own son or daughter; knowing you would sacrifice your own life to protect this little one from any harm and recognizing the presence of an emotional bond that I want to believe transcends life and death. It is a bond with the timeless dimension of life that I also find evidence of in humanity's awesome capacity for art. 

I went to the Akron Art Museum today to see an exhibit of the photography of Edward Weston. Weston is known for his very sensual photographs of vegetables, especially peppers. I have included a picture of one that I found amusing in that it reminded me of the wrinkled face of a baby or elderly man with a pacifier. Weston saw patterns in nature that affirmed his belief that all of life is one.

While I went to the museum to see the works of Weston, I fell in love with the works of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson. Her extremely moving and innovative works document the life of a community from earlier days in Columbus, Ohio.  Ms. Robinson will be speaking at the Akron Art Muesum on Sunday, March 22, 2009. I regret that I will be out of town, but I hope it is a standing room only opportunity. 

I was especially struck by the large hands of the people in Ms. Robinson's works. Large, strong hands, seemingly for the necessary work to hold one another up in love and community in the present moment and also patiently waiting for what tomorrow brings. The use of buttons, shells, and thread are also very powerful in her work and speak to me of holding things together, one for the other, today, tomorrow, and for what comes after.

Thanks for reading.

A Blog about Living each Moment in the Moment

One of the nicest persons I have met in my move to Kent State University from Kansas is Ruth Smith. Ruth is in charge of public relations for the School of Library and Information Science. That is a responsibility I used to have for the library school at Emporia State so I can appreciate her work to listen to others, to gather and spread news that helps make people feel good about themselves, and to remember a lot of details in her efforts to help the school put its best foot forward. 

Knowing that I was here by myself, Ruth invited me to her church, got me complimentary tickets to university drama and musical performances, introduced me to people at the homecoming alumni event, and more. I have never seen this person in anything less than a positive mood and it is infectious, which is also something that I needed.

It was very upsetting to learn a couple of weeks ago that Ruth had just been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Unbelievable. The details did not make sense. The situation confirmed that life is not fair. 

Then Ruth stopped by my office this past Thursday. It was the first time I had seen her in a couple of months. She looked great as always because she was full of life, as always. There was no denial, there was no anger, though I am sure those emotions have not been absent. Instead there was a determination to live every moment in the moment. I have not doubt she will.

Among her many talents, Ruth is a writer and she has a wonderful blog at http://www.laurasmomlearns.com.  She has added a new section to the blog entitled "Dealing with It" - http://www.laurasmomlearns.com/blog/category/dealing/. 

I encourage you to subscribe to and read Ruth's blog and follow her story as she tries to make sense of what is happening in her life. Our lives will be enriched as we affirm her life just by reading her courageous words and taking her story to our hearts. 

Thanks for reading.  

On Approaching 50

I will celebrate my 50th birthday in less than two weeks. I am happy to say that I can honestly use the word "celebrate" to mark the occasion. I saw a t-shirt in a novelty shop the other day that was black and had the words "Oh crap, I turned 50." I considered buying it, but decided against it as that does not correctly communicate how I am feeling.

My feelings are more properly expressed in a passage from "All the Pretty Horses" a novel by Cormac MacCarthy. The main character, John Grady, is listening to the matron of a wealthy Mexican family tell the story of her youth. It is a story of captivity, rebellion, and hope bounded by the institutional walls of society that kept a young woman from realizing her dreams. The story revolved around one night many years  earlier when a young man had cried for her soul.

She tells Grady, "That night I thought long and not without despair about what must become of me. I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily. I knew that courage came with less struggle for some than for others but I believed that anyone who desired it could have it. That the desire was the thing itself. The thing itself. I could think of nothing else of which that was true."

As I crest this hill I find myself facing a new dawn rather than a sunset. I feel invigorated with courage from having turned away fear, embracing opportunity, and taking up the challenge to be a person of value. I am finding the courage to love, to share, and to savor more than ever before. I feel more alive, more aware, and more spiritual than ever before. I no longer need to fear what I do not know because I am in awe of what I have yet to learn. 

I have for a long time resisted the forces of fear and its minions, but the piece that I have been missing or at least have previously failed to fully embrace is courage. Not a macho bravado, which is merely a mask of fear, but courage as a spiritual experience that is greater than faith or belief. It is a constancy independent of fortune that I am consciously allowing to bloom in what has been a void.

As I approach fifty years of age, I consider myself the most fortunate man in the world, richly blessed with family, friends, health, and opportunity. I am humbled, excited, and eager to see what lies around the next bend in the road.

Thanks for reading.

Inauguration Day 2009

This is a day for memories, hopes, and dreams. A couple of my strongest memories regarding Presidential events include the televised funeral procession for John F. Kennedy. I was three years old and unable to understand the gravity of the situation. The funeral was on a Saturday and I remember my disappointment that cartoons were not broadcast back in that era when cartoons were on television only one day a week. I know now that a lot of hopes and dreams were buried on that day with the young man who personified the potential to let go of the fears that gripped our nation during the 1950's. Fears generated by the Cold War and manipulated by the likes of Senators Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. 

Another vivid memory is from 16 years ago and the first Inauguration of Bill Clinton. He was the first President to take the oath of office for whom I had voted. I don't remember the words as much as I remember the emotions I felt while listening to Maya Angelo recite the poem she wrote for the occasion. I remember using it in my sermon the following Sunday. 

The 16 years since that day have been difficult. First, from witnessing the disappointment of the Clinton years in terms of political partisanship and his personal failings. Second, from suffering through the eight years of Clinton's successor to the Oval Office, who must go down in history as the worst President in the history of our nation. Eight years ago there was the zealous talk of a permanent Republican majority that sounded a lot like the rhetoric coming out of Germany more than 70 years ago in reference to the future of the Third Reich. Thankfully, both of those regimes had much shorter lives than their deluded visions.

My joy on this day is tempered as our nation struggles to remove itself from the muck of a political, foreign relations, and economic meltdown even worse than that of the Great Depression.  However, the flame of enthusiasm is growing with the televised images of the throngs of people, especially young people, in attendance for the Inauguration ceremony of Barack Obama. 

I find myself hoping this is a day that is meaningful and memorable for my three sons, especially for the oldest two, both of whom voted for Obama. I believe that Obama will be the President that Clinton should have been and Kennedy could have been. A President who energizes and inspires people of every generation with his vision, wisdom, competence, and impeccability. A President who restores a proper sense of community spirit, social and corporate responsibility, political and personal ethics.

My hope is that eight years from now we are all looking back on the greatest eight years in the history and I wish our new President all the best.

I will be attending ALISE in Denver later this month.