#108. The Universe in Each Infant

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 
http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This post is the 8th in a series of blog entries beginning with #101-- a collection of notes and essays from my files all dealing in one way or another with the emerging new religious consciousness. They are mostly things I've written over the last decade to clarify my own thoughts but which I now want to make available for anyone who might be interested.




Post #108 is a kind of informal book review with personal notes that I wrote for a relative and some friends who had asked about Mary Coelho's book "Awakening Universe, Emerging Personhood."

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macpeno.com


===

Awakening Universe, Emerging Personhood: The Power of Contemplation in an Evolving Universe - Mary Coelho - ISBN: 1556053541 (Wyndham Hall Press, 2002)

This is the first book I know that attempts to integrate science, religion and psychology. It does so not from an ivy tower academic point of view but rather from that of individuals struggling to make sense of their lives in our confusing times.

The science is not that of 19th century materialism but 21st century evolutionary thought and quantum mechanics. The religion is not that of private morality and fear of punishment but the deep contemplaive perspectives of the Western religious tradition. And the psychology is the depth perspectives stemming from Jungian thought and an understanding of personal development based on the findings about early childhood development ignored by much of 20th century psychology.

The scientific worldview presented here is the new cosmology: the evolutionary perspectives of biology and the unconventional views of quantum physics that recognize the world not as static but dynamic. This in itself is a major change in consciousness; in fact, perhaps the biggest change in human awareness since human awareness first appeared on Earth. It sees the world going somewhere, with a direction and purpose, an unfolding in some way of the world's ultimate source. In this new cosmological view, life and personal awareness is not improbable; rather, human consciousness has a central place in the dynamic cosmos. Even these basic views of contemporary science haven't yet reached the ordinary person in the streets.

The dynamic worldview of modern science is integrated by Mary C. with the deepest aspects of the western religious tradition. "Religion" here means far more than a personal ethical perspective or a private morality. Not "save your soul, go to heaven" type of thing. Its focus is that personal communion with the ultimate mystery that is at the basis of global religions' unitive or contemplative perspectives.

The integration of these scientific and religious perspectives far transcends the on-going science-religion debates; it sees their resolution not in academic theories but in the hearts of individuals. It recognizes each person as being called forth by the universe.... with the "charge" of making themselves-- as their "work of works" and their participation and contribution to the goals of the cosmos.

The author's starting point is not theoretical but personal: the unexpected tragic death of her parents' four year-old son a few days after she was born. Her struggles to make sense of her life and to bring it to some degree of healing account for the profoundly cosmic and profoundly personal perspective offered here. She has a strong Quaker heritage, as well as a background in personal therapy and degrees in science and theology.

The chapter on the evolutionary worldview is the best summary I've seen anywhere of the modern scientific/evolutionary perspective. It is a masterpiece in itself. The chapter on the contemplative traditions of the west is equally well done: familiar names such as Plotinus, Gregory of Nyssa, Meister Eckhart and Teresa of Avila appear here. The psychology section includes familiar names such as C. G. Jung, but also some far less familiar names whose empirical findings have been ignored by 20th century thought. Each of these parts of the book are excellent in themselves, but it is the overall integrative worldview, with its important focus on child-rearing ideals, that makes the book unique and so valuable. 

All of our contemporary problems, from environmental disasters to religious fundamentalism and the oppression of women find their place here. But of most significance, as I see it, is the emphasis on the need for loving care of young children. Every mother is invited to become a theotokos, bearer of the primordial God-consiousness in her infant, and it is as to do as picking up the infant when the child needs it, and smiling at the baby.

The final chapters deal with the means by which the difficulties of life are so often dealt with: incomplete "formation" results in the hungry wolf or angry dragon..... then the cover up by pretense of perfection... and the resulting fear and hatred we experience in our society daily.

To me the most fascinating aspect of the book is her focus on the place of "the person" in the new science story. Of the three-fold transition we’re in-- a new consciousness of the divine, the cosmic and the human-- it’s that third one-- the role of personal consciousness in cosmic evolution, which we don’t even have a name for yet-- that she’s especially good at. Mary Coelho stresses that the universe is becoming conscious of itself in each infant. Her focus on the humanity aspect of the immense transition-- on what infants need in order to gradually grow into fully mature persons, as understood from both the evolutionary context and that of western religion’s mystical perspectives-- is quite powerful.

In a Michael Dowd & Connie Barlow review they say this is the first new cosmology-related book to do this kind of needed integration. It’s challenging material. Not really difficult, but most definitely not casual reading. Sister Miriam MacGillis-- friend of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme and founder of Genesis Farm-- said it moved her to tears. Couldn't get a better recommendation! +++

#106. Ritual & the Evolution of Culture

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 
http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is the 6th in a series of blog entries beginning with #101. It's a collection of notes and essays from my files all dealing in one way or another with the emerging new religious consciousness. They are mostly things I've written over the last decade or so to clarify my own thoughts but which I now want to make available for anyone who might be interested. This post (#106) originally was a followup to a phone conversation with a friend about the sophiological ideas of Sergius Bulgakov described in post #104.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com 

===

Dear R,

As I said on the phone, this topic is too big! But I can't pass up the opportunity to try to spell out some thoughts about it, and hope that something here may be along the lines of what you're interested in. I hardly know where to start, there are so many inter-related things to think about! 

Ritual may be the focal point, but in a sophiological context things like church, eschaton, the cosmic evolutionary process and our place in it-- all go together along with ritual. Since my last note to you was about Bulgakov's Bride of the Lamb, some of his ideas about church may be a good take-off place for talk about ritual.

In section 5-1 on "The Essence of the Church" (where he begins with what he calls "the primordial significance of the Church") he says that the church is nothing less than the foundation and basis of the created world. God’s eternal plan is "to gather together all things into one" and the church is the fulfillment of that plan.

It is, as I've said, a profound set of ideas. The created world has a purpose, that purpose the unity of all things, and the fulfillment of that purpose is the church. What a contrast, indeed, this is with the prevailing conventional views of scientific rationalism (that can't acknowledge that there is any meaning or purpose to our existence) and also with the views of religious dualism (that claim only that we are to escape from the world rather than be united with it utterly). And as I also mentioned, even many of the new cosmologists seem unable to acknowledge a goal to cosmic evolution. So right from the start, "the sophiological perspective stands in the greatest contrast to all the conventional views about the world as either evil or meaningless."

To all that I added the note that it is precisely sophiology's unitive perspective which makes it so relevant to our understanding of the church tradition and the new cosmology. What the church is all about is unity; its very essence is the unity of all things. "To gather together all things into one."

This means that "church" can be understood only within a cosmic context. In the old (static) cosmos, church became the means of escape from the cosmos. But the very essence of the new cosmology is its understanding of the cosmos as dynamic, and this is totally in accord with the original ekklesia's self-understanding. In Bruno Barnhart’s words, the essence of the New Testament vision is "the transformation of cosmic matter (in the human person) into its ultimate unitive state in God." And it's that unity of cosmos, anthropos and theos which in Bulgakov’s view is church.

One thing we can see immediately is how the central place of individuals-- as the agents of this cosmic unity-- stands out in this dynamic and transformational view. It's clear that sophiology and the new cosmology agree on this critically important point: that we exist and live in a dynamic person-centered cosmos. Far from being incompatible, the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the emerging scientific worldview see the one same thing. (And indeed, they have the same source: the Exodus experience and Hebrew ontology.)

It's easy to say that "church" is what sophiology and the new cosmology have in common, but conventional Christianity has little real sense of ekklesia, and of course ekklesia is not part of the contemporary scientific perspective (even though the new cosmology supports the ekklesia's self-understanding and they have a common source). In both conventional Christianity and new cosmology, what's missing, as you've heard me say before, is eschatology: that the world has a purpose and we are its agents. So the new cosmology is much closer to a sophiological anthropology than is conventional Christianity, in that it sees human persons as participating in the cosmic process; it also clearly supports sophiology's view of personal creativity and inspiration in that context. Both Bulgakov and Brian Swimme even use the same word, "mission," to describe our personal participation in the process, and Bulgakov calls it the church's "very life."

So all that is the very messy situation in which we have to pursue the question of ritual!

===

When I mentioned Bulgakov's note about language not being precise enough for what needs to be said about "church" I added in parenthesis, "[That's] one of the reasons why realistic ritual remains a major need in the immense transition!"

I emphasize "realistic ritual" because an authentic understanding of ritual is as much in contrast with the conventional dualistic perspectives as are sophiology's ideas about the world's purpose and about the church as the fulfillment of that purpose. It is also, of course, equally in contrast with rationalist secular views, which see ritual at best as only meaningless and at worst as repetitive or compulsive-- pathological-- behavior.

The situation is even more complicated, however, in that, for religious dualism, "ritual" is considered to be only empty gestures except when those gestures are done by authorized persons (and for the purpose of providing temporary freedom from the possibility of eternal punishment once the individual is freed from the cosmos). 

I'm aware how odd that sounds, but you know it's not a caricature of how sacraments were (and, alas, still are) understood.

For many good-willed church people today, those who have titles such as "religious educator" or "liturgist" or "liturgical musician," and who thus find themselves responsible for educating people (primarily kids) about ritual ("sacramental preparation"), "ritual" takes on the meaning of educational activities or artistic performances. They are essentially thought of, at their best, very much like plays or lectures and concerts, or even spectator sports, where the few do something for the edification and/or entertainment of the many. I don't, of course, mean to say there's anything wrong with concerts or lectures or games; but I do mean that such spectator events are not ritual.

===

In her talk, "Teilhard and the Fabric of the Universe," (which I sent you a while back), Sister Kathleen Duffy, from the physics department at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, describes Teilhard as a pioneer who had to "break through to the core" of both science and religion. Today, many have broken through to a post-rationalist view of science; and also many are at work on a post-rationalist view of religion. But the break-through to a specifically post-rationalist view of ritual hasn't happened yet.

The best we've come up with so far is the New Age movement from back in the 60's. It was a mind-blowing mixture of authentic ritual and utter nonsense, and although it had a broad impact on people interested in spirituality, almost none of it (good or bad) rubbed off on church leaders (clergy, DREs, liturgists, musicians). Thus church-goers (the people in the pews) are for the most part in an incredibly impoverished situation.

And of course ritual was held in utter disdain by academic people. That includes even cultural anthropologists, who do pay attention to ritual, in that they collect and record data about it. But nobody, as far as I'm aware, is into studying what it is and how it works in itself. Ritual in the academic world seems to be much like "religion" was until the early 20th century or shamanism was until the late 20th century: irrational activity, unworthy of serious attention.

===

So. All of that (all those many words!) is background explanation for why I said, when we were talking on the phone, that any talk of evolutionary ritual may be premature. It's just "too big" an issue to deal with. I said the old things (of tribal, native, "first" peoples) are best: sweat lodge, vision quest, talking-staff council, sacred pipe; things that allow us to be in right relationship with the earth. That's essentially what rituals are, a saying "yes" to our human situation, an affirmation of our belonging to the universe; and the more authentic they are, they more they result in empowerment for growth and development. (They "give grace," exactly what's said of the sacraments, but it's much more clear when we see "grace" as Bulgakov does: a "new how, not new what"). So authentic ritual is about our personal and communal growth, our development as participants in the developmental cosmos. (Which is why it is especially powerful in liminal moments, such as dawn, sunset, winter solstice, spring, puberty, birth, sickness....)

The issue, as I see it, is that for ritual to be authentic the persons involved need to have an active, participatory role in the rites themselves; they can't be passive spectators or recipients. Remember "active participation" as the rallying cry of the liturgical movement back in the 50's? The liturgists of that time were on the right track. One of the (many) reasons the liturgical movement fizzled was the "active participation" that was permitted was almost totally verbal, whereas participants in authentic ritual have to do something, not just say words. It has to be something primarily physical. (This also explains why dualistic religious disdain for matter and body is also a disdain for ritual; it explains why even the seven "legitimate" church rituals are almost totally reduced to nothing but words.)

As far as I can see, we won't be able to evolve appropriate contemporary ritual until we have moved beyond projecting "sacred" in to another worldly category. (Again, it's consciousness of making the "immense transition"-- to a dynamic cosmos, a unitive theos and a participatory anthropos-- that makes all the difference.)

Once we are moving toward making that transition, we see that there is, in fact, a treasury of appropriate ritual available to us. Much of it from tribal (native) peoples, but also much of it that is long-neglected, indeed buried, within the Christian tradition, covered over with the dust of the centuries. Someday, those buried treasures will make sense as "just what we need" by future new cosmologists and post-patriarchal Christians.

One more point to all this. I don't mean to say that we have no appropriate rituals available to us right now. But we have to "do" them in a non-dualistic and non-rationalistic context: with non-dualistic and non-rationalistic attitudes. Whatever we do, it always has to be in affirmation of our real lives in the real world, a 'yes' to our material and biological existence. It either allows us to stand at the center of the world or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it's either escape from the world, which is why secularism condemns it, or it's only artistic performance or audio-visual education. Neither of which is bad in itself, but they have to be distinguished from ritual.

Making that distinction is nearly impossible in our culture, due to the pervasiveness of rationalism and dualism. The contrast with authentic ritual-- affirming our belonging to the universe and thereby being empowered to active collaboration with the cosmic process-- is great.

In a sophiological context, authentic ritual makes good sense. It is precisely our affirmation, to use Vagaginni's neat terms, of the caro that is the cardo of salvation. (And of which the essence, as Irenaeus says, is healing and wholeness; or in Bulgakov's blunt statement, "that the body will be restored to the person and be changed.")

Also helpful are the terms of sarx and pneuma: ritual is affirmation of the developmental cosmic-body process (sarx) in light of its realization or fulfillment (pneuma). It's easy to see why rationalism would dismiss all this, and why church sacraments so easily slip in to a dualistic framework. But it's a delight to see that the new cosmology gives us a much better context for keeping ritual grounded and thus authentic.

===

So one of the main things I want to say about "evolution and ritual" is that, in the immense transition, an understanding evolution, not an understanding ritual, takes priority. Conceptually, an evolutionary cosmology supports and helps us to understand ritual, but ritual can't help us to understand evolution. We have to have some real sense of the evolutionary worldview before we can ritually "own" our place in it. (This would be true even if we created an initiation rite for moving into the evolutionary worldview.) But we don't need to "ritually" embrace the new cosmology; what we need to embrace is the cosmos. We don't really need any new rites or ceremonies; we only need to do the old ones, even the Christian eucharist, in the ways they were done before religious dualism set in.

And Homo sapiens has been doing earth-rites-- cosmos-embracing rites of belonging and participation-- for many thousands of years. If we want to recover good ways of doing ritual we have to go to those indigenous peoples whose early cultures pre-date Western civilization and who have managed to hold on, to some extent, to something of those old ways. They are, as Matthew Fox said many years ago, a great gift to the world. So at least with regard to ritual, the immense transition includes a going back as well as a moving ahead. (All this is "very messy," indeed!)

In a nut shell, what's needed, re "evolutionary Christianity," is not ritual but kerygma. Only after there's been a proclamation-- a declaration, a consciousness-expansion-- is there something to which we can give our fiat. As I mentioned in one of the earlier notes I sent, the old Angelus provides a clear pattern for authentic ritual: first the announcement by the angel, then the fiat by Mary. And only after that comes grace, cosmic empowerment, "not a new what but a new how," an incarnation of the holy breath/wind/spiritus.

So people like Michael Dowd and his wife Connie are on the right track. If you looked at the list of churches participating in "Evolution Sunday" (on one of their links I sent recently), I'm sure you noticed how few RC groups were listed: out of more than 460 congregations, only two were RC for sure. (Maybe three. There were two "Antioch Catholic" parishes listed, one of which also calls itself Malabar rite, and which may or may not be in communion with Rome; the other, also called "Antiochan Catholic," is definitely not: it lists a female bishop!) Quakers and Unitarians, the least sacramentally oriented groups, are leaders in the proclamation of the evolutionary kerygma. (I find it interesting that it may be because they are the least sacramentally oriented groups. An interesting question to pursue sometime!)

In any case, the main point I'm trying to make with all this is that-- far from being a pathological escape mechanism (from the universe and from punishment in the hereafter, as sacraments are, in a dualistic context)-- ritual is essentially the acceptance and affirmation of our cosmic-material-physical-bodily reality and, thereby, of our active role in the world's on-going development. As I've said before (probably too many times!), "it all fits together."

In a sophiological context, all these things-- evolution, cosmos, matter, caro, non-duality, salvation, ekklesia, eschaton, ritual-- all are part of a post-patriarchal "package." If we move into any one of these areas, we eventually find ourselves dealing with all of them. One very nice example is Bulgakov's comment that the physical universe is "the cosmic face of the ekklesia." Here are a few more examples of that interconnectedness.

1) As I've mentioned before, the Sanskrit term rita, from which our words "rites" and "ritual" come, means the order of the universe, the way the world works: the wisdom of the cosmos which (or who, as the old Advent hymn has it), "orders all things mightily." As the very means by which we enter into and are empowered by the universe to participate in that wisdom-ordered cosmic process, ritual is what makes evolution happen at the human culture level. So just from the Sanskrit word alone we can see how Sophia-wisdom, cosmic evolution and our unitive participation in it are all connected.

2) Thomas Berry's Principle Twelve of New Cosmology is that “the main task of the immediate future is to assist in activating the inter-communion of all the living and non-living components of the earth." Ritual activates that inter-communion; it empowers us to enter into communion with "All our relations." (Native Americans use that phrase in connection with almost all their sacred ceremonies and even in public talks.) So ritual is at the heart of the New Cosmology.

3) The "inter-communion of all the living and non-living components of the earth" is the human task. In Panikkar's words, the focused energy or concentrated consciousness of ritual is “the act by which the ‘thing’ is converted into a bit of the human world.” That's the "public work" which is accomplished by every person and community participating in the cosmos process to bring about the new creation of diversity and communion, peace and justice. (In Bruno’s words, that work is "the transformation of cosmic matter [in the human person] into its ultimate unitive state in God.") This is the work of the ekklesia, done "on behalf of all and for all," and for which the Greek word is, of course, "liturgy." So once again we see evolution at the cultural level, cosmic unity, ritual and ekklesia to be utterly interconnected.

4) The almost forgotten Christian image of "the lamb slain at the foundation of the world"-- an image which goes back to the Paleolithic (hunting culture) understanding of the game animal willingly giving itself "so that the people can live"-- is an image of the most primeval of all rita: God's, not ours, the divine kenosis by which the world comes to be.

The New Cosmology doesn't have the lamb imagery, of course, and neither does most of the Christian world. But Sophiology has it, and sees our on-going participation in the world's evolution (what Bulgakov calls Bogochelovechestvo) as nothing less than our participation in that original creative kenotic rita. So yet again we see how ritual, evolution and participatory unitive reality all go together.

Here's a few comments about our basic 'mind and body' needs with regard to ritual. I see dealing with those needs as essentials in the recovery of an authentic religious anthropology:

1) Patriarchal culture's lack of understanding of imagery makes understanding life-giving ritual all but impossible. So whatever can be done to raise consciousness of the four-fold nature of the psyche-- and thus help validate images, intuition, feelings and emotions as legitimate modes of human awareness-- is important.

2) Our collaboration with the workings of the wisdom of the universe obviously depends on our contact with nature. Legitimating for people things like walks in the park, "wasting time with the ocean," enjoying good cooking, are important. Ultimately, the need here is to see our very caro as nature. The chart on page 40 of Mary Conrow Coelho's book is invaluable kerygma.

Well, as I've said, the topic is too big. I hope something here is along the lines of what you were interested in. If it's helpful, great. If not, let me know. I can give it another shot. - Sam

+++

#103. "Nature's Magic"

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is the third in my series of blog entries beginning with #101. It's a collection of notes and essays from my files all dealing in one way or another with the emerging new religious consciousness. They are mostly things I've written over the last decade or so to clarify my own thoughts but which I now want to make available for anyone who might be interested.

This post #103 is about an especially significant book.


If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

===

Some thoughts I wrote out in July '04 for a friend; a review of Nature's Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind, by Peter Corning ISBN: 0521825474 (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

As I’ve already said, this is the most interesting book about the evolutionary worldview I’ve seen since I first read Teilhard’s Phenomenon Of Man forty years ago. Corning calls synergy “magic,” and if “the working together of things to produce results otherwise not possible” isn’t magic, I don’t know what is. The cooperative relationship between things, or more correctly, the creative results produced by such cooperation, is what makes evolution happen: “The synergies produced at one level become the building blocks for the next level.”

It seems to me that the very appearance in our time of the idea of synergy is itself an example of synergy. Such a concept isn’t even possible in a static worldview. We are, indeed, in the midst of an “immense transition.”

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the awareness of synergy is that it is also, among many other things, the discovery of creativity. In the evolutionary process, the new forms that emerge were previously unpredictable, so that, as Corning says, “the whole process of cosmic evolution is profoundly creative.” In a static perspective, we were able to use the passive tense to say that the world “was created.” But then we came to see that creation “is still going on.” And with an understanding of synergy as a central aspect of the evolutionary process, we can now say something even more significant: the world itself is creative.

We’ve come a long way from saying creation “happened six thousand years ago.” But there’s still more to this synergy perspective. Not only is creation creative, we now see ourselves as the central agents of that creative process. Human persons have a major role in the cosmic process of things “working together to produce results otherwise not possible.”

If the transition from static to dynamic cosmos is a great challenge to many, the transition from what Bruno calls the “suppression of the image of person” to seeing that image located at the very heart of the evolving universe is far more challenging.

The British scholar (and now-retired Orthodox bishop Kallistos of Patmos), Timothy Ware, said in a talk at Princeton a few years that the great task of the 21st century is that we should finally come to an adequate understanding of ‘person.’ The synergy-perspective helps tremendously. It sees persons called both to their individual uniqueness and to communion with others. And called to bring about-- precisely via those cooperative relationships-- new things at new levels of complexity.

What a contrast from “the suppression of the image of the person” that prevailed through most of the history of Western culture.

===

Corning asks at some point, “If synergy is everywhere, why are we not more aware of it?” His response is that “it seems to have to do with the way our minds work.” We can perceive parts or wholes fairly easily, he says, but not the relationships between the parts.

To put it in Jungian terms: the Sensation function allows us to perceive parts and the Intuitive function lets us perceive wholes, but our consciousness apparently does not operate in such a way that we can directly perceive relationships. Certainly the Feeling function focuses on relationships, but it’s an evaluative activity: we don’t so much “perceive” as judge relationships (in terms of whether or not they are agreeable to us). In dealing with the relationship of parts to wholes, it looks like conscious awareness “skips a step.”

That thought got me wondering whether something similar might also be true about the Thinking function. Do we skip a step there, too? I think we do. What the Thinking function evaluates seems to be the agreeability of words (spoken or visual) with data (facts). If that’s so, it explains why there can be many different versions of what’s considered to be the truth about something. It looks like we don’t directly “perceive” thoughts (and their verbal expression) any more than we directly perceive relationships.

Most of us readily accept that “we can not dispute taste.” But we are very far from accepting that, similarly, we can’t dispute what people hold to be true, either. If nothing else, this perspective lets us see why pluralism is an acceptable, and indeed necessary, contemporary attitude. De veritas, non disputandum.

In any case, so what if we can see parts and wholes but not relationships? From an evolutionary perspective, the Thinking and Feeling functions of consciousness are thought to be later developments than Sensation and Intuition (which functions it’s understood we share with pre-human animals). With the emergence of the synergy perspectives, we would seem to be not only witnessing first hand, but indeed experiencing within ourselves, a newly emerging aspect of consciousness. I.e., We have first hand experiential evidence of the evolution of consciousness.

My point is that whether my thoughts about the Thinking function are right or not, the emphasis of synergy on cooperative relationships seems to be, in itself, a further evolution of human awareness. And, in this sense, consciousness of synergy really is a very big step away from the rationalism of the patriarchal worldview, which so neglects (and indeed suppresses) of the Feeling function.

We not only can know by inner experience that the universe is evolving but also that, as personal centers of consciousness, we humans are at the creative heart of it. The book by Mary Coelho, Awakening Universe, Emerging Personhood, is precisely about this dawning emergence of our understanding of the central place of ‘person’ in cosmic evolution. We are well on our way to fulfilling the task Bishop Kallistos spelled out so clearly.

===

The immense transition also has a third important aspect. It’s not only movement from a static to a dynamic cosmos and from the suppression of the image of person to recognition of our central participatory role in the cosmic process. The immense transition also includes movement from a dualistic understanding of God to a non-dual or unitive sense of the divine mystery.

When Corning says synergy is “a fundamental property of the universe and of human societies” [italics added], it’s clear that he intends no dualism between nature and culture: the synergy perspective moves us well beyond the patriarchal alienation of anthropos from cosmos. And it is equally clear, when Corning makes the point that synergy is the creative source of the world’s evolution, that it sees no dualism between the creative mystery we call theos and the manifest world of anthropos at the heart of cosmos.

Synergy offers us a worldview that is just the opposite of patriarchal dualism. Corning describes synergy as “the wellspring of creativity which makes evolution happen.” In older (if, alas, still unfamiliar) language, that same thought would sound something like, “Synergy is the manifestation of eternal wisdom.” Synergy is nothing less than the inner wisdom of God, the divine Sophia, manifesting in the workings of the universe. The early 20th century Russian Sophiologist, Sergius Bulgakov, even uses the same word, synergy, when he talks about the results of what he calls Bogochelovechestvo, the cooperative inter-action of the world and God.

A fascinating aspect of Corning’s book is its emphasis on economics (“in a broad sense,” as he says) with regard to how the world works, and Bulgakov began his career as an economist.

Corning’s economic perspective is that the “payoff” of synergy at the biological and anthropological level is “simply” those results which contribute to life’s on-going survival and reproduction. This is a radical change from the patriarchal perspective. It puts fairness and cooperation, rather than competition and violence, at the center of human life and cultural evolution. It’s no small thing to recognize that what causes evolution to happen on the biological level is “simply” life itself working at keeping itself going. It’s even more significant to see that this understanding of synergy-- as yielding an economic payoff-- is valid at the cultural level as well.

Life makes use of the helpful new things that result when at one level things join together to become parts of a more complex new thing at the next level. And what promotes the on-going survival of human life is nothing other than cooperation. What a positive outlook! And, in our troubled times, what an extremely hopeful one! As I mentioned in the review, the synergy perspective provides us with a straightforward ethics and morality, a way to be human based on the clearly observable fact that what succeeds is cooperation: on how the universe works.

So, here we have a “rationally-based norm for human life in an evolutionary world: cooperation rather than competition, creativity rather than conventionality, awe and wonder rather than dullness and boredom.” But also-- and especially-- a non-dualistic and participatory (person-centered) understanding of the workings of the world. This is realistic and down-to-earth view couldn’t be more different from those of competition and alienation on which patriarchy is based.

===

I have a half-dozen or so other thoughts about Nature’s Magic which I need to mention. I don’t know how to put them into any meaningful sequence.

1. While it results from the serious study of the scientific worldview of the last few centuries, the synergy perspective would seem to be a validation of the intuitive wisdom of Israel and early Christianity (and also of India). The emergence of the synergy perspective is the beginnings of a rational understanding, from the “science of history,” of the intuitions of those ancient cultures about “how the world works.” That’s real progress.

-

2. The whole idea of creativity is much clearer from the synergy perspective. We humans create, in a literal sense. By our cooperative interaction with others, increased complexity allows newness to emerge.

At its deepest level, this creative newness seems to me to be what Meister Eckhart meant when he talked about “releasement” (sometimes translated as “waiting”). Eckhart’s understanding seems to be an intuitive sense of the synergy process precisely in its aspect of allowing newness to emerge via the cooperative synergy of anthropos and theos.

To put it in obviously inadequate language, our cooperative inter-action with God (via Eckhart’s “waiting”) allows what’s in the divine unconscious to seep out (leak out, be released) into the world.

-

3. With regard specifically to Christianity, the evolutionary-synergy perspective allows us a deeper understanding of traditional ecclesiology and eschatology. If synergy is the creative source of the dynamic evolutionary universe, and if the relationships between things is that out of which newness emerges, then relationship is the very essence of cosmic creativity: the world creates itself, precisely by forming relationships. If human persons are that world become conscious of itself and, now, with the synergy perspective, we see ourselves as the world become conscious of itself as self-creative, then ecclesia would seem to be a name for that segment of humanity that is aware of humanity’s central self-creative role in the cosmos.

-

4. The evolutionary-synergy perspective also opens up once again the long-neglected area of eschatology. Thomas Berry names the ultimate goals of the universe to be “differentiation, subjectivity and communion.”

In response to a question about these abstract terms, Brian Swimme said once in a note that the ideas are Teilhard’s, although the terms themselves are Berry’s. The synergy perspective offers us a much less abstract but still conceptual expression of the ultimate eschaton: something like “the on-going cooperative relationships between (uniquely differentiated) persons.” Swimme expands on Berry’s terms nicely: “the fullness of differentiation, the deepest subjectivity and the most intimate communion.” Personally, I like Bruno’s Teilhardian phrase even better, “eucharistic omega.” But, in any case, being able to talk about the eschaton in terms of creative personal relationships in an evolutionary cosmos is a delight. And it makes clear, as nothing else I know does, the traditional understanding of the ecclesia as already the beginnings of the eschaton.

-

5. Thomas Berry repeatedly describes patriarchal culture as being under a spell with regard to its alienation from the natural world. One of the best things about Corning’s work is that it makes clear how we can break the spell. The means by which we can step out of the patriarchal prison is nothing other than our awe and wonder at synergy’s magic. We need only look and see the real world as it is, see that we are active participants in the creative evolutionary process, to replace patriarchal dualism’s feelings of anger and rage at not being wanted by Mother Earth.

-

6. Personally, it’s a delight for me to realize that helping others experience that awe and wonder at the natural world is the essential task of the shamanic personality. I find the understanding of complexity and synergy to be a profoundly liberating and validating affirmation of my life-long focus on both science (nature, evolution) and religion (spirituality, shamanism).

-

7. Finally, a thought that keeps impinging on me is that while the focus on cosmic evolution is a tremendous breakthrough for human culture, these synergy perspectives of the New Cosmology need artistic expression. Science education is obviously essential; so is a serious understanding of the nature of religious ritual (although that would seem to be still a long time coming). But the invitation to awe and wonder seems to require something else, something “earlier” or prior to such things. I’m thinking especially in terms of fiction. Since I retired, I’ve been reading several contemporary works of fiction weekly; that’s hundreds of books in the last four years. Not once did I ever see a reference to humanity’s creative role in cosmic evolution. I wish I could write a novel.

===

#96. Science's Best: Cosmic Energy

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 
http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

In the previous post I shared my thoughts about Science's Best in terms of how our consciousness of matter, time and space allows us to see that our Earth and the whole universe grows and develops just as we ourselves and all living things do.

I used a mandala-- the four functions of consciousness-- to describe how Thinking and Feeling gives us our awareness of the temporal and spatial arrangements of cosmic matter perceived by our Sensing ability.

Though it may seem unfamiliar, I hope the wording helps make clear that an understanding of the developmental cosmic process via the Thinking function is fairly easy, and that-- with a bit of effort-- so, too, is our understanding of its spatial aspects using our Feeling function.

The mechanics by which the sequential nesting process happens, however, aren't so easy to understand. To make sense of these energy dynamics-- the fourth part of my matter, time, space and energy mandala-- we need to use the fourth of our consciousness functions, Intuition.

It's Intuition that puts it all together. And there is a lot to put together! That's what this post is about, and why it's as long as the previous post which dealt with all three of the other parts of the cosmic mandala. I'll start with a quick review of post #95. (If you haven't read it, you might want to read it before going on.)

===

My Quick Review: Our Sensing-function awareness of matter lets us see the many diverse aspects of the physical universe-- from people, animals and plants to rocks, stars and galaxies; our Thinking function gives us our awareness that these many diverse aspects of the world have emerged in a orderly sequence; and our Feeling function gives us our awareness that that orderly sequence also has a relational aspect: it's a "nesting" sequence.

But it's when we ask how it all works-- "What are the mechanisms, the dynamics, by which the material things of the universe emerge in an orderly nesting sequence?"--that we need to use the Intuition function of our conscious minds.

And as I've noted many times in these posts, in Western culture Intuition is the least understood or valued of the four ways our minds operate. That's why this second post on Science's Best-- focused only on energy and Intuition-- is as long as the previous post; I need to describe both energy and Intuition in much more detail than was needed for all three other parts of the mandala.

Most of us are fairly comfortable with the idea of energy, even if we don't give it much conscious thought, so I'll share my thoughts about energy first. Then I'll describe how our Intuition ability helps us to understand this fourth aspect of the cosmic mandala.

---

We know by personal experience what "energy" means. It's our name for what makes things happen. The most elementary scientific definition of energy is "the ability to do work."

Common synonyms for energy are "power" and "force." In Latin, it's spiritus; in Greek, dynamis. And while energy may be invisible, like air, no one doubts its existence; energy is the dynamic force which makes things move. And just like the air we breathe, energy keeps things moving. Without breath, we die; without energy, absolutely nothing happens.

So when we say "How does it all work?" we're asking about the dynamic forces and powers which bring about galaxies and stars, atoms and molecules, living things and ourselves. To see Science's Best in our day, we need an understanding of those dynamic energy processes.

===

For me, this is where the mandala image is especially helpful. What allows us to understand the creative energy processes by which the components of the universe emerge is not our Sensing awareness of matter, nor our Thinking awareness of the temporal flow of time, nor even our Feeling awareness of spatial relationships. As I've said, it's our fourth consciousness function, Intuition, which "puts it all together."

But our culture's patriarchal disdain for relationships and its consequent refusal to look at the over-all picture of the world make it difficult to see this aspect of Science's Best. So even though I've mentioned the four functions of consciousness in many previous posts, I need to say a few words here specifically about how C. G. Jung's descriptions of the operations of our conscious minds can help us to better understand energy and Intuition.

---

Jung pairs the mind's four conscious functions into two groups: perceptions and judgments. He says Thinking and Feeling are judgment operations-- evaluations of what we perceive-- while Sensing and Intuition are the mental operations by which we perceive what we do.

And while no one doubts that we perceive the world through our Sensing ability, many of us have a problem in our still-patriarchal culture with the idea that we also can see the world via our Intuition function.

In recognizing that Intuition is no less a perception function than is Sensing, it helps to recall that, when we talk about the cosmos, we tend to automatically combine the words "matter and energy." It's not accidental that we do it in exactly the same way that Jung, in talking about consciousness, paired Sensing and Intuition, the perception functions.

We also usually join "time and space" in the same way that Jung paired Thinking and Feeling, the evaluative functions.

Long-time readers will remember that, as I've mentioned many times, the difference between these two perception functions is that through Sensing we see details ("the trees"), while by Intuition we see the over-all picture ("the forest"). Just as we can focus our attention on the smallest detail by Sensing, we can "take it all in at once" via Intuition.

Another way to say it is that Intuition lets us see from higher up on the Great Ladder than Sensing does in its position down on the bottom rung of the ladder. We can also say that while Sensing focuses on surface details, Intuition lets us look deeper-- below the surface, at the underlying processes.

---

Besides our cultural prejudice against Intuition, there's a second reason why many of us are uncomfortable with the big picture which Science's Best offers us today.

This second reason is that science and technology have come a very long way in a very short time. Only within the last few decades have scientists been able to look more deeply into the over-all picture of the cosmos specifically with regard to the complex dynamic energy processes by which the nesting components of the universe have emerged.

What has made the difference is the development of high-speed computers. Some of them can do millions of calculations in one second, allowing scientists a far deeper look at the dynamic processes of the cosmos than earlier generations could ever have imagined.

For example, a recent computer simulation of the formation of a spiral galaxy was completed in "only" eight months by a super-computer system in Switzerland; that sounds like a lot but on a personal computer the same simulation would take 570 years. 

A video of the simulation can be viewed in less than three minutes.

So it's not only our patriarchal culture's disdain for Intuition that makes it difficult for us to take into account all the details and put them into an over-all picture. It's that modern technology is "putting it all together" so fast that the resulting big picture doesn't filter down to the rest of us quickly enough. Most of us just can't keep up!

===

There are three big ideas to which we need to give our attention in order to understand Science's Best in terms of Intuition and energy. One is familiar and easy to understand: the interaction of opposites.

The second is also familiar but not so easy to understand: creativity. The third is much less familiar because science has only recently given its attention to it and real effort on our part is required to make sense of it: self-organization.

I'm going to do my best to spell out these three ideas for readers willing to stay with me for the rest of this post. It's a lot of work, so this is a good place to take a break.

=== +++ ===

Opposites. I'm starting with opposites since everyone knows what "opposite" means. There are two basic ideas involved here. The first is that, in nature, many things come in pairs-- our body parts are a good example. And even the four ways our conscious minds work come in pairs-- a pair of pairs, actually. So it's not surprising that energy also operates in pairs of forces.

The second idea is that the energy comes in pairs of opposite forces. Our whole world is, in fact, made up of such pairs of opposites. The ancient Chinese symbol for the dynamic interaction of opposites has been around for centuries: yin and yang, night and day, summer and winter, hot and cold, light and dark, big and small, male and female-- it's an unending list.

This same idea of interacting opposites is true of the various forms of cosmic energy. They, too, come in pairs. And these powerful energy forces don't just "make things happen" or "cause things to move." They cause things to move in opposite directions.

---

The most cosmic of all powers is the expansion of the universe itself. From the first moment of the existence of cosmic matter at the Big Bang, every bit of it has been moving away from every other bit in an expansion process which is still going on today.

But at the same time, the opposite power-- one we're quite familiar with: the force of gravity-- is also pulling those bits of the universe's matter back into a single mass again.

It was the interaction of these opposites-- the "push" of the expansion of the universe outward and the "pull" of the gravitational attraction inward-- which caused the primordial bits of matter (leptons, quarks and hydrogen nuclei) to spread unevenly throughout the early universe. And it's that unevenness which resulted in those "clumps" of matter which eventually became what we call today "galaxies."

It was within the galaxies that stars began to form, and it was within the stars that atoms and molecules were first made-- and they're still being made in stars today.

And just as with the galaxies themselves, those chemical elements and compounds are also formed by opposite forces, but in this case the energy is electrical, rather than gravitational.

Even if we have little sense of just what "electricity" means, all of us are familiar with the basic idea that "opposite charges attract and like charges repel."

Those opposite electrical forces also allow large molecules to combine to form the even-larger macro-molecules, which-- on at least one planet we know of-- have formed into living cells. On Earth, some of those early cells eventually joined together, also because of electrical forces. The result, over millions of years, was the plants, animals and humans we know on our Earth today.

---

Every new thing in the universe-- the first stars, the first atoms, the first cells, the first mammals, the first primates, the first human beings-- is the result of the interaction of opposites. The point of this very brief description of the cosmic flow of energy is that it always happens by way of the interaction of opposite forces. And it's this interaction-- this push and pull-- which causes the cosmic process to be creative. Creativity, too, is a primary characteristic of our world.

===

Creativity. Although everyone understands what "creativity" means, many still have a problem with it today because of Western culture's earlier static religious picture of the world-- that it was created all at once. The thought of an on-going creative process-- that new forms of cosmic matter are continually emerging via the temporal and nesting developmental process-- is an idea with which many in our culture are not yet comfortable.

I said earlier that while we're more or less familiar with the word "creative," it's not so easy to understand creativity as a concept. It's worth our best effort, however, because creativity is an especially important aspect of contemporary Science's Best. We need to understand and trust our creative ability in order to deal, for example, with our present social, cultural political, economic and environmental crises.

We need to move past Western culture's older but-still-lingering understanding of creation as a static event in the distant past. To do this, we can start where Asian cultures often begin: with the recognition that nothing in our world is permanent. There are two important thoughts here: first, that on-going change is a fundamental aspect of the way our world works; and second, that not all change is negative.

But just as the idea of evolutionary development wasn't part of Western culture's understanding until the 19th century, and just as the nesting characteristic of the evolutionary process wasn't understood until the 20th century, creativity has yet to become part of the 21st century understanding of the cosmos process.

It's been slow to catch on because the older patriarchal perspectives shy away from change. Religious fundamentalists even deny the very possibility of change when it comes to plant and animal species. If we don't understand on-going change as creative, we miss a fundamental understanding of the very nature of the world and our place in it.

---

To me, this is a basic issue of our time. Without our awareness of creativity as a major characteristic of the dynamic cosmos, we're simply unable to understand how we fit in with the rest of the created world. (That's why fundamentalists want to escape from it.)

So it's especially important for us to recognize that the creative process is, in fact, a normal part of everyday life and personal experience. A few examples can help:

Who doesn't delight in a baby's first words and first steps? And what pre-teen doesn't delight in the prospect of his/her newly emerging sexual characteristics? And what's more delightful to each of us as adults than those new insights into ourselves and our world which come to us-- and often transform us-- all throughout our lives?

My point is that we do know what "creativity" means. It's just that we're only gradually coming to realize the fact-- thanks to Intuition-- that it's an aspect of our personal experience because it's an aspect of the way the whole universe works.

This conceptual understanding of creativity-- that the universe is creative and that new realities emerge in the cosmic process precisely due to the interaction of opposite energy forces-- greatly enriches Western culture's understanding of the nature of the world. It's a prime aspect of Science's Best precisely because it lets us see that, rather than escaping from a world to which we don't belong, we have in fact a major role in creating a better world.

Our contemporary social, cultural, political, economic and environmental crises are due to our slow pace in becoming aware of global humanity's creative place in the cosmic process. But we need to use our Intuition ability to see this big picture. And we miss it if we get lost in the details. For the perception of reality, Intuition is no less important than is Sensing.

===

Self-organization. The concept of self-organization is a fairly new understanding of how matter works; it isn't so easy to understand because it simply wasn't available until recently.

But it too is a characteristic of cosmic matter which we do, in fact, know by personal experience. Because self-organization is so intimately personal to each of us, however, we have even more trouble thinking of it as a characteristic of the matter and energy of the cosmos than we do in attributing creativity to the universe as a whole.

To put it as simply as possible, when matter forms into clumps due to gravity acting in the opposite direction from the cosmic expansion force, those clumps are not static.

They have a dynamic internal energy by which they are able to organize themselves into something more. The clumps of matter take a shape, they form internal "structures," all by themselves. The word "communities" is even used to describe the new realities which emerge. 

The fact that clumps of matter can give themselves both external shapes and internal organization is what's meant by the term "self-organizing."

The self-organizational aspect of cosmic matter was first recognized by biologists as a characteristic of living things, but with the availability of computers and high technology we now know that that it extends to every aspect of the physical universe. (If you didn't, earlier, you might want to watch that less-than-three-minute video of the formation of a galaxy I mentioned above. It's a wonderful example of elemental matter's ability to organize itself.)

---

From the spiral structure of galaxies to the arrangement of petals on a flower and our own personal body-build, self-organization characterizes every bit of cosmic matter.

What I called its "intimate" nature is clear in some examples from our own personal experience. Whenever we say to ourselves, "I need to get in shape" or, with regard to some issue we may be dealing with in our life, "I need to pull myself together," it is precisely this self-organizational aspect of cosmic matter that we are acknowledging as operative within our own personal self-awareness.

But it's operating not only in human consciousness and in other living things; it's also operating in atoms, stars and galaxies.

---

We can find the simplest example of self-organization in our own kitchen sink: in the whirlpool that forms when water swirls around as it drains out. That whirlpool is a real, if elementary, example of cosmic matter's self-organizing ability.

The shape of the whirlpool is the point here. The individual water molecules are constantly changing, but the spiral shape holds even as gravity pulls the molecules down the drain.

It's not a coincidence that galaxies have a similar shape. Spirals are, in fact, everywhere. And they come in many sizes.

I learned recently that it's a tiny whirlpool of air that lets hummingbirds fly and hover the way they do. (There's a brief description of it in the September, 2011 issue of Discover magazine. Look for "Hummingbird Flight Secrets Revealed.") And the spiral shape of Hurricane Irene, roughly 300 miles across, became familiar to millions as they watched its progress up the East Coast of the United States in late August of this year.

---

This ability to organize itself pervades all cosmic matter-- galaxies, stars and planets, air and water, and especially the life-forms on the Earth. From single-celled bacteria and multi-cellular plants and animals to the nervous systems of mammals and primates-- including our own brain-- all forms of matter have this internal self-organizing ability.

Even the Earth itself, our planet as a whole, has it. There's an especially clear example of Earth as a living self-organized system in Brian Swimme's and Mary Evelyn Tucker's recent book Journey of the Universe (Yale University Press, 2011).

The book is part of a major New Cosmology project which includes an extensive study guide and an hour-long video documentary. (The documentary has already been shown on several PBS stations.) The book is beautifully written and easy to read; its authors were long-time friends and collaborators with Thomas Berry.

Here's their example of the self-organization of the Earth:

We know that the temperature of the Earth can't vary too far in either direction, or life will disappear. It was once thought that our planet's average temperature was simply a fortunate consequence of its being just the right distance from the sun. "But," say Swimme and Tucker, "thanks to the 20th century discovery of nuclear fusion and the structure of stars, we now know that over the past four billion years our Sun has increased its temperature by nearly 25 percent."

Their point is that the Earth has adapted itself so as to remain in the narrow band that enables life to flourish: "By drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis, Earth altered the composition of its atmosphere to keep itself cool as the Sun grew hotter."

So, as Swimme and Tucker say, "our planet isn't just a big ball of rock and metal on which living things exist. The Earth is a creative community of beings that reorganizes itself age after age so that it can perpetuate and even deepen its vibrant existence."

---

This example is obviously of great relevance to our global environmental crisis, but here I want to emphasize that this same energy "dynamic"-- this creative "orchestration," as Swimme and Tucker call it, of our planet's self-organizational ability-- appears over and over again in the universe's billions of years of development.

Along with creativity and the interaction of opposites, the cosmos' self-organization power is a primary characteristic of the whole universe. And (as I think I may have mentioned once or twice earlier!), it is Intuition that lets "put it all together."

=== +++ ===

A final thought about Intuition. Its role isn't limited to putting together our understanding of the universe's underlying energy processes. It also integrates our Sensing function's awareness of matter, our Thinking function's awareness of time, and our Feeling function's awareness of space. Intuition integrates all three into one big picture of the world we live in.

And it's that big picture which is Science's Best in our day. When we look at the big picture, what we see at the center of the cosmic mandala of time, space, matter and energy is ourselves.

---

You may feel that that's too much of an exaggeration. So to round out these two "home stretch" posts on Science's Best, I want to offer one example of how using Intuition along with Sensing, Thinking and Feeling helps us to see the unique, central place in the universe of personal consciousness.

Scientists are able to measure the speed of the expansion of the universe that began at the Big Bang. And they have learned that if that rate of expansion was slightly higher, the gravitational force would not be strong enough to cause those clumps of the initial particles which eventually resulted in galaxies, stars, atoms, planets, life-forms and ourselves.

The same thing, in reverse, would have happened if the speed of expansion was slightly slower: there would be no elementary particles to clump in the first place.

So while it's via our Sensing function we know that if the expansion speed wasn't "just right"-- that if it was even a fraction of one percent higher or lower, there would not have been a temporal emergence process for us to understand via our Thinking function, and there would not have been a nesting characteristic for us to understand via our Feeling function--it's via our Intuition function that we see that, in fact, we wouldn't even be here.

The main point of this example may not be as obvious as I like to think it is, so I'll say it a different way. It's only when we use our Intuition ability to put together the details into a big picture that we become aware of the fact that our very awareness of the cosmic process is itself an aspect of the cosmic process.

The personal awareness-- which you, I, and every person on Earth embody-- is at the center of the dynamic energy process we call "the universe."

---

With this big picture of the world, science in our day has moved well beyond Western culture's patriarchal disdain for relationships and its refusal to look at the big picture.

With its willingness to perceive the world via Intuition-- and especially with its willingness to include in that big picture our Feeling-function awareness of the inter-relatedness of all things in the cosmos-- science has indeed come a long way since its 19th-century emphasis on "facts and logic." It's that willingness which is, for me, 

Science's Best.

sam@macspeno.com

=== +++ ===

Your feedback is welcome!

Special note: In dealing with numerous spam comments, I inadvertently deleted all comments at the end of the posts up until #90, but they are still preserved in the collections of comments found in posts #32, #67 and #83.

Special request: I've completely lost the comments for posts #84 to #89. If you happen to have copied any of them, please send them to me. Thanks.

To send a comment: use either "Click here to send a comment" (below) or click on "Post a Comment" (at the bottom).

If you prefer, send your thoughts, suggestions and questions to my email address (above).

To email a link to this post to a friend, with your own message, click on the little envelope with an arrow (below).

If you would like to be notified when I publish a new post, let me know; I'll put you on the list.

+++