Replying to LO25325 --
[Dedicated to Lauren and her Mother] <and> [ Ellie* and Sarah Setland]
" His senses are sentinels of immediate thought and outposts of action,
and not, as they so often are with us, mere pathways along which material
is gathered to be stored away for a delayed and remote possibility." John
Dewy
Replying to Learning, Training and Chaos LO25325
In LO25315 Stan Schellenburg writes:
>I think I've heard this mindset referred to as "business as usual" --
>growth, growth, growth. Even people I associate with who identify as
>"environmentalists" working for "sustainability" suffers this kind of
>mindset, I think. Hip to hip and lock-step with politicians and
>self-identified conservatives and libertarians here in the U.S..
and in LO25325 At de Lange writes,
>Duncan tells in his article how he listened "fascinated and stunned" to a
>lecture given in 1964 by the cosmologist sir Fred Hoyle. He quotes Hoyle
>saying,
>". With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone,
>. no species however competent can make the long climb
>. from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is
>. a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so
>. far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of
>. other planetary systems. On each of them there will be
>. one chance, and one chance only."
>Duncan assumes that the intelligent animal (Homo sapiens) emerged in the
>Olduvai Gorge of Tanzania. But discoveries of much older archeological
>artifacts had been made in South Africa, some close to Pretoria. Any way,
>what Hoyle have said about humankind in modern times, has a striking
>resemblance to the story which Plato recorded 2400 years earlier about
>Atlantis. I wish I were in that audience listening to Sir Fred Hoyle
>rather than battling it out with my local prof.
Stan writes,
>I think At's right. If W < /_\F and S=(E-F)/T is a topic for anyone,
>it's a topic for learning-org.
At writes,
>I have been working the past week on a contribution which will cover the
>W < /_\F relationship. I intend to call it
>Free Energy and Work -- The dance of LEP on LEC Please keep a lookout for
>it so that we can have an authentic LO-dialogue on Free Energy and Work.
>I do not want to bring "angst" into your hearts. I rather want to
>encourage you to learn (train ?) what to do with clear understanding in
>the little time left before the "Titanic Titanic" will begin to sink. It
>is indeed possible to transform a collapse into a "creative collapse",
>but it requires understanding of the highest level.
>Think of someone who is stranded in the desert. The person has to leave
>as much baggage as possible behind so as to cross the desert. What does the
>person need to take with on the journey through the desert?
>The San people taught us the answer. The person can leave every material
>thing behind, except perhaps a tiny leather skirt to protect the "tender
>family jewels". But the person has to take mental preparedness
>(knowledge) with him so as to live from the desert itself. This mental
>preparedness must be acquired in advance.
>With care and best wishes,
>At de Lange
Dear Stan, Dear At, Dear Learners,
"Hold fast the love of God. The inner man who is invisible to all mortal
eyes is the proper working place for the invisible God. The invisible
inner man, who is a stranger on earth, belongs to the invisible God." St.
Augustine (Man < Personality)
Perhaps somewhere, down the long and irreversible diverging, splaying and
complexifying lines of a collective and fabricated history we lost or maybe
just got blinded to the real meaning of Life, and with that the miracle that
IT is?
Man is redeemed isn't he, in each and every case by the expansion and
emergence of some new 'capacity'? What might that 'capacity' become? We,
unable to undo the done, even and although one did not and could not
(fore)know what one was in reality (really) un-doing. All modern production,
human 'doing' as per 'fabrication' (Homo faber) is done by some measure of
violence to and within the fabric of the 'whole' and so can we only 'undo'
through similar violence. What a strange sentence? The insertion of the
en-'acting' of our science into nature has set into IT (nature) our own human
'unpredictability' via its emergent creative (sic) plurality.
"While you have with you something which you must lose, and either in death
or life let it go, it cannot be with you always." <> the moment comes <>
"-you discover that you are changeable by nature, you must transcend
yourself."
St. Augustine. (TR XXXIX, 72)
I now paste into this public message part of a 'private' one,
Paste.
"Dear -------
I wonder if earlier this week -- you might have heard the story of a young
mother whose daughter was born with a profound disability such that this
previously hectic, organised and successful young working woman who had to
constantly stay at home, almost 'set into' their domestic lounge with her
daughter for four years? A kind of compassioned imprisonment. The 'teaching'
given (and taken) was contained in the commanding statement of the little
child from the time she began to speak. "Mummy, be with me now." Whenever she
left her daughter while she was conscious, the child would call to out to
her, "Mummy, be with me now." And the mother recounted how during those years
she learned the art of being with almost perfect stillness, gazing out of the
room from the settee that almost became a 'perch' for them both to
simply/complexly 'be' with (among) each other in a radically shrunken world.
The insistent reiteration from behind her daughter's crystal eyes
'understanding' became like a mandala to her, teaching her the profound gift
within the present and the present within the gift. Though the daughter has
all<>but<>gone the 'gift' remains, and remains as the 'present' remains
through remembrance of the past that created a new future. Snip. End Paste
Now, the little vision becomes for me like this. Every occasion that the
mother sought to remove herself from that beheld demanding presence into a
'future state' then the daughter saw her 'make a leap' over the (her in her)
'present' (that 'WHO' she IS) and immediately called out so the mother was ret
rained that 'way'. Through love began to envision of a new reality through
the w"o"ndow (visionary's window;-) and it took the general form of nature,
let's just say a sparrow flying about though the opened window. Though the
mother also recalled gazing into the crystality of her daughter's eyes, a
window in and a window out? The mother reflected on wasting time. " devorans
tempora, devoratus temporibus."<> "wasting time and being wasted by time"
"Hence so that you too maybe, transcend time." Maybe this is a legitimate way
to travel that desert future wasteland, by way of time?
The "TRANSIT" is for(e)getting? Time forgotten 'over' the Love of another.
The tension of proximity, enforced into real frustrations realized into
something very different.
If we cannot undo past actions and actions have unforeseen, undesired effects
upon neighbours and increasingly so the more interconnected we become then
what hope is there for a smooth, faultless transition?
"The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future,
is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises." And what might be
that release from irreversibility? "Forgiveness" (Arandt)
At writes,
"It is indeed possible to transform a collapse into a "creative collapse",
but it requires understanding of the highest level."
What happens then? They be<>long together. Forgiving is serving to 'release'
us into renewing actions and promising serving as healing 'bindings'- of us
together in 'islands' of (temporary) security on an 'ocean of uncertainty'
without which, " not even continuity let along durability of any kind would
be possible in relationships between men."
This new 'desert' is going to be mightily cramped one. Forever bumping and
jostling. I see lots of 'trespassing' At!
On another but not unrelated listserve;-) someone noted with compassion the
sufferings of a fellow, asking his 'forgiveness' for any felt unwarranted
intrusion, and expressing his being unsure if to reply in private or public
maybe if to respond at all to what he heard as a genuine 'cry in some other's
wilderness. How many 'lurkers', past, present and future feel that there will
be a good deal;-) more forgiveness in the unsent mail? How many expect more
forgiveness in a 'one to one mapping', how many fear speaking from a 'heart
center' that is implied by the irreversibility many times over of the 'one to
many mapping'?
At, you will know well the content of Luke 5: 21-24, Matt. 9: 4-6 and Mark
12: 7-10 It speaks of a "power upon earth' as mighty as that to perform
miracles upon earth. Emphasis is made "upon earth". And the greatest
"miracle" any man may perform upon earth? To forgive.
"Who is it that forgives sins also?" (As well as performs <other> miracles).
Luke 7: 49.
Willed evil and crime are rare outside the uncontrollable chaos of the web
our lives get woven out of. Knowing the stories in cases shows this often
enough to be at least a rule of thumb. "Parce subiectis" The act of 'sparing
the vanquished', a wisdom of the Romans and not the Greeks;-)
This needs 'mobilization' for the 'transit', the choice needs be made in each
and every case, to blame or to forgive? 'Pure evil' will in New Testament
terms will be taken care of in another dimension. (Apodounai) (Matt 16: 27)
In this line of thought it is apparent that 'not to forgive' leads to a
'chain reaction', a downward spiral, uncreative collapse. And the chains bind
all around. Only through constant release (letting go) of men among men from
the unintended consequences of their actions, mutual release, do men remain
free agents, free to change their minds (metanoia) and start again (single
and shared creative emergent rebirths through experie<n>mentations;-).
I did not, before studying the connected work of Arandt and St Augustine,
have any inkling of the beautiful connections to be made with a topics like
the one that Stan, At and no doubt many here are concerned to wrestle with.
The following text is cited in full for the clarity of connection it may
afford to the cited text that began my meandering, for which by the way I ask
your collective forgiveness in advance as I retreat somewhat slowly to a
differing horizon.
Luke 17:3-4. It is important to keep in mind that the three key words of the
text- aphienai, metanoein, and hamartanein--carry certain connotations even
in New Testament Greek which the translations fail to render fully. The
original meaning of aphienai is "dismiss" and "release" rather than
"forgive"; metanoein means "change of mind" and since it serves also to
render the Hebrew shuv giretum ..." trace back one's steps," rather than
"repentance" with its psychological emotional overtones; what is required is:
change your mind and "sin no more," which is almost the opposite of doing
penance. Hamartanein, finally, is in- deed very well rendered by
"trespassing" in so far as it means rather "to miss," "fail and go astray,"
than "to sin" (see Heinrich Ebeling, Griechisch-deutsches Wirterbuch zum
Neuen Testomente [1923]). The verse which I quote in the standard translation
could also be rendered as follows: "And if he trespass against thee ... and
... turn again to thee, saying, I changed my mind; thou shall release him."
"This mental preparedness must be acquired in advance. " At de Lange
And At, I feel I now know the meaning of the 'dream' in a greater part; the
reason WHY the footprints of my guides seemed to be pointing backwards as the
future is streaming over me both from and into the past.
- And knowledge such as men possess it in this life, shall vanish. Only "love
never fails."
(1 Cor.13)
At, do you think this little child calling "Mummy, be with me now." might
sound something like another desert wanderer calling, "Follow me." As he
wanders to the greatest 'creative collapse' of all?
Love,
Andrew Campbell
(* Ellie is name of the little girl in the story)
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