THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE OBJECTS OF THE CORPORATION ARE:
. . . The fostering and encouragement of a higher degree of spiritual enlightenment and understanding, the basis of true Spiritual Democracy as interpreted in terms of the self-evident Truth that Being is the equality of man; the cultivation of friendship and fellowship among its members; to safeguard the future welfare of the youth of America and the world; to build them up to a high plane, mentally, morally and spiritually; to foster, guard and protect them that they may grow and develop into upright cosmopolite citizens; to provide healthful recreation that they may develop perfect healthy bodies; to educate them in the better class of art and literature that their minds may only absorb that which is of the best, and to encourage them to study the latest scientific matter; to give them a moral and spiritual background in keeping with the Atomic Age so that they will be able to meet the world’s problems with poise and Intelligence and create a solution of affairs with peace, equity and justice; to so encourage and train them that they will exercise a spirit of liberty and tolerance toward all whom they may contact; to instill in them a reverence and knowledge of the Spiritual reality and resource of Democracy as envisioned by our forefathers and thus be prepared to oppose and be immune to any propaganda or agitation, either from within or without, which has as it object the destruction of Democracy as a way of life.
–Articles of Reincorporation dated February 14, 1975 of original Charter dated May 22, 1956
In his short and lovely poem penned at the end of his life, Kurt Vonnegut located the wellspring of happiness in a source so simple yet so countercultural in capitalist society: “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
A generation later, artist and author Oliver Jeffers — one of the most beloved and thoughtful storytellers of our time — picks up the message with uncommon simplicity of expression and profundity of sentiment in The Fate of Fausto (public library) — a “painted fable,” in that classic sense of moral admonition conveyed on the wings of enchantment, about how very little we and all of our striving matter in the grand scheme of time and being, and therefore how very much it matters to live with kindness, with generosity, in openhearted consanguinity with everything else that shares our cosmic blink of existence.
Inspired by Vonnegut’s poem, which appears on the final page of the book, the story follows a greedy suited man named Fausto, who decides he wants to own the whole world — from the littlest flower to the vastest ocean.
Building on Jeffers’s earlier illustrated meditation on the absurdity of ownership, the story is evocative of The Little Prince (which I continue to consider one of the greatest works of philosophy) and its archetypal characters, through whom Saint-Exupéry conveys his soulful existential admonition — the king who tries to make the Sun his subject; the businessman who, blind to the beauty of the stars, is busy tallying them in order to own them.
Perhaps Jeffers is paying deliberate homage to the beloved classic — the first two objects of Fausto’s hunger for ownership are a flower and a sheep.
One by one, he demands the surrender of sovereignty from all that he comes upon. The flower, being delicate and choiceless, assents to being owned by Fausto. The sheep, being sheepish, puts up no objection. Threatened, the tree bows down before him. (Oh how William Blake would have winced.)
When the lake questions Fausto’s self-appointed authority, he throws a tantrum to show the lake “who’s boss,” and the lake surrenders.
But when the mountain, grounded in her autonomy, refuses to move, Fausto flies into a fit of fury so menacing that even the mountain breaks down and submits to being owned.
Restless with not-enoughness, not content to own the flower and the sheep and the tree and the lake and the mountain, Fausto usurps a boat and heads for the open sea.
Alone amid the blue expanse, he bellows his claim of ownership. But the sea is silent. Fausto yells louder still, unsure quite where to aim his fury, for the sea stretches in all directions.
Finally, the sea responds, calmly questioning how Fausto can wish to own her if he doesn’t even love her. Oh but he does, he does, the riled Fausto insists. The sea, in consonance with the great humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm’s observation that “understanding and loving are inseparable,” tells Fausto that he couldn’t possibly love her if he doesn’t understand her.
Anxious to stake his claim, Fausto scolds the sea for being wrong, barks that he understands her deeply, then swiftly demands that she submit to his ownership or he will show her who’s boss.
“And how will you do that?” asks the sea. By making a fist and stamping his foot, Fausto replies. With her primordial wisdom, having witnessed human folly since the dawn of humanity, the sea invites Fausto to show her just how he plans to stamp his foot, so she can understand. And Fausto, “in order to show his anger and omnipotence,” perches overboard and aims his foot at the sea.
Swiftly, inevitably, the laws of physics and human hubris take hold of Fausto, who disappears into the fathomless sea — a sinking testament to Ursula K. Le Guin’s cautionary charge that unbridled anger “feeds off itself, destroying its host in the process.” (How fitting, too, that Jeffers should choose the world of water — one of his supreme fixations as an artist, subject of some of his most haunting conceptual paintings — as the arena on which this final existential battle between the human animal and its ego plays out.)
Jeffers’s subtle, powerful message emerges with the tidal force of elemental truth: When all is said and done and sunk and swallowed, there is only the realization at which Dostoyevsky arrived in his stark brush with death: that “life is a gift, life is happiness, each moment could have been an eternity of happiness,” had it been lived with a sympathetic love of the world.
The sea, Jeffers tells us, feels sorry for Fausto, but goes on being a sea, as the mountain does being a mountain.
And the lake and the forest, the field and the tree, the sheep and the flower, carried on as before.
For the fate of Fausto did not matter to them.
We are dropped safely ashore to contemplate the fundamental fact that our lives — along with all of our yearnings and fears, our most small-spirited grudges and most largehearted loves, our greatest achievements and deepest losses — will pass like the lives and loves and losses of everyone who has come before us and everyone who will come after. Temporary constellations of matter in an impartial universe of constant flux, we will come and go as living-dying testaments to Rachel Carson’s lyrical observation that “against this cosmic background the lifespan of a particular plant or animal appears, not as drama complete in itself, but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change.” The measure of our lives — the worthiness or worthlessness of them — resides in the quality of being with which we inhabit the interlude.
Claremont United Methodist Church transformed its Christmas nativity scene into a powerful statement about family separation by caging their figures of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and releasing a theological statement on the United States’ treatment of refugees.
A Facebook post by Senior Minister Karen Clark Ristine includes a picture of the nativity and the aforementioned statement, which encourages onlookers to “consider the most well-known refugee family in the world.” The statement continues:
“Shortly after the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary were forced to flee with their young son from Nazareth to Egypt to escape King Herod, a tyrant. They feared persecution and death. What if this family sought refuge in our country today?”
Clark Ristine also wrote that the church building contains a second set of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph figures depicting the family’s reunion.
Claremont UMC’s website includes information on the church’s previous work with asylum seekers at the U.S. border, and a recent post states the church raised $10,000 for Justice For Our Neighbors, an organization that provides legal counsel for detained and separated children. A blog post from 2018 also details the church’s participation in joint ministries with Mexican churches at Border Field State Park.
The minister’s Facebook post has gone moderately viral, with thousands of comments praising or excoriating the church’s choice to use their nativity to reflect on the current situation at the U.S. border.
Translators: Mike Zonta, Melissa Goodnight, Richard Branam, Hanz Bolen
SENSE TESTIMONY: More complex data management systems may entangle individuality and violate privacy.
5th Step Conclusions:
1) Truth is the only complex data management system in the Universe; It apprehends all because it is the one inviolate private Individual.
2) There is only one infinite, all-knowing intelligence, regulating and ruling, every individuation by perfect principle — thus ensuring, the limitless freedom, of sharing ONESELF with the whole world.
3) The All Powerful All Knowing All Present Truth I am is expressing fearlessly un reducibly, always complete, with integrity, in guidance, path and goal, with strength and health, in harmony with all. Integrity is the essence and only expression of all Being .
4) Truth the Magnus – Opus Intensity of pure delight, intricately embraces itself with Love, this Absolute Abstract of understanding relationships is the Indivisible energy, Primacy, this beautiful network of ever expanding Consciousness Identity concludes it’s Androgynous constitution is the favorably well established system of self commanding governance.
All Translators are welcome to join this group. See Weekly Groups page/tab.
Here is the link to the video recording of Heather Williams’ Sunday Meeting talk today about How to Approach the Challenge of Tribalism that we face today in our swiftly changing world. Heather guides her viewers to connect with the Universal Essence that is always calmly centered within you. Essence is personally available to you, and yet, it is not “tribal.”
Since its first publication in English in 1964, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space remains one of the most appealing and lyrical explorations of home. Bachelard takes us on a journey, from cellar to attic, to show how our perceptions of houses and other shelters shape our thoughts, memories, and dreams.
“A magical book. . . . The Poetics of Space is a prism through which all worlds from literary creation to housework to aesthetics to carpentry take on enhanced-and enchanted-significances. Every reader of it will never see ordinary spaces in ordinary ways. Instead the reader will see with the soul of the eye, the glint of Gaston Bachelard.” -from the new foreword by John R. Stilgoe
Explain means to flatten out. (Based on planus ‘plain’)
Rodger Kamenetz (born 1950) is an American poet and author. He is best known as the author of The Jew in the Lotus, an account of the historic dialogue between rabbis and the XIV Dalai Lama. Wikipedia
On December 15, The Prosperos Sunday Meeting presents Richard Hartnett, H.W., M., speaking on “How Did We Get Here?”
Richard met The Prosperos in 1975. He currently lives in Denver and is the co-director of the Metaphysical Research Society there. He teaches classes on the relationship between science and spirituality. He is a certified tarot card teacher. His book,The New Old Gods, published in 2010, explores the archetypal stories of the ancient Greek gods and guides us in understanding the archetypal patterns within ourselves. In 2014, he wrote The Call of the Soul: Finding Your Higher Purpose.
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The Prosperos is a school of self-observation and self-transcendence. We draw a straight line between the latest scientific breakthroughs about the nature of reality and the most ancient mystical insights about the nature of God and man. Our goal is “to make spiritual truth an effective force for ordered freedom and common good” by transcending the ancient definition of man as fearful, grasping, limited and self-seeking and realizing the God-ness within each and every person. We hope you will join us at 11 a.m. Pacific time on December 15 to hear Richard speak. Richard will be Introduced by Al Haferkamp, H.W., M.
“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”
–Thomas Szasz
Thomas Stephen Szasz (April 15, 1920 – September 8, 2012) was a Hungarian-American academic, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. Wikipedia
Szasz argued throughout his career that mental illness is a metaphor for human problems in living, and that mental illnesses are not ‘illnesses’ in the sense that physical illnesses are; and that except for a few identifiable brain diseases, there are ‘neither biological or chemical tests nor biopsy or necropsy findings for verifying DSM diagnoses.’
