Tolstoy's "Theory Of Life"

A Dervish rebuke to both church and state.

Tolstoyans.

Wake Up America!

There is an inverted type of faith that venerates the past and resists change:



Emerson referred to the adherents of this faith as the "Party of Memory."

There is also a type of faith that is remarkably influential in the United States, one which regards the future in escapist terms:



It is difficult to know what to say about that "faith" beyond observing that it is politically irresponsible and anti-democratic.

But there is also a future-oriented faith (sometimes referred to as "Progressivism") that embraces change:



Emerson referred to the adherents of this future-oriented faith as the "Party of Hope."



In a sense, then, American politics is inevitably "faith-based."



The question is always: to which "political faith" do you belong?

What If?

What if we could collectively agree that the primary function of government is the alleviation of human suffering?

An Unmitigated Disaster

I have only lately begun to recognize the Religious Right for the threat that it is--not only to the future of our moribund democracy but to world peace. Sure, I knew that Billy Graham had been Richard Nixon's "spiritual advisor" during the Vietnam war, that Pat Robertson had been a (risible) Presidential candidate, that Jerry Falwell was a sanctimonious jerk, that Ralph Reed was taking money under the table, etc., but I thought that their power and influence in Washington was fairly marginal. I also thought that they and their followers would have scruples about playing hard-ball politics and, in time, would regret that they had ever dirtied their hands in that business. I did not realize that they were laying the foundation for a new generation of Machiavellian Evangelicals whose interpretation of Christianity is compatible with the advocacy of violence, sexism, unbridled capitalism, and every form of bigotry imaginable. I let the historical associations of evangelicalism with pietism color my perceptions and blind me to the virulent toxicity of this theo-political movement. What an unmitigated disaster.

Dervish Politics

The members of the human race are limbs to one another, for at creation they were of one essence. When one limb is pained by fate, the others cannot rest.

You who are unsympathetic to the troubles of others, it is not fitting to call you human.

~Sa'di, Gulistan, 1.10 (tr. Thackston).

Re-Crucifying Christ

Machiavellian Christianity.

Find A Mirror!

The summary of all the advice of the prophets is this: Find a mirror!

~Shams-e Tabrizi, quoted in Algan & Helminski, Rumi's Sun, p. 32.

Slow Train (San Francisco, Nov. 16, 1979)

People Reluctant To Kill For An Abstraction

A Manifesto by George Saunders.

Loyal Rue pt 1: "Amythia" (interviewed by Barlow and Dowd)

Loyal Rue pt 2: "By the Grace of Guile" (interviewed by Barlow and Dowd)

Religion Is Not About God

And The Moon Rose Over An Open Field...

Grace Under Pressure

As always, it is comportment (adab) that matters:



Or, to borrow Hemingway's famous line: Adab is "grace under pressure."

The Sherry Triangle

Southern Spain.

Terence McKenna: A Brief History Of Early Christianity

Terence McKenna: Nature Is Conscious

Who By Fire?

Fragment

I read the Bible and the blessed Book of Signs;
Forced to choose between the two we wander deaf and dumb and blind.
Truth is subtle and it's buried somewhere deep between the lines;
I read the Bible and the blessed Book of Signs.