What Can Mend The Broken Heart of the World?

This is certainly a time of tumult in the Muslim faith, as this article in the Daily Beast describes a recent Saturday afternoon prayer session "invaded" by women in one of the most popular mosques in Washington, D.C. to make the point that women should be allowed into mosques to pray along with men. The women "activists" or "invaders" were almost arrested.

The Muslim-Christian Summit organized with officials of the Muslim faith is meeting this week at the Washington National Cathedral. Wonder if these Muslim clerics could explain in plain English for us all, please, why they exclude women from equality in religion and social life.

Today's Sunday Forum at the Washington National Cathedral with Suheil Salman Dawani the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, of the Holy Land, of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon filled us in on the Christian side of the Holy Land and is available to hear and to purchase on DVD from the Cathedral website, www.nationalcathedral.org.

The Rt. Rev. Suheil Salman Dawani  
photo:Washington National Cathedral

The Bishop of Jerusalem has launched a number of non-profits, such as hospitals, clinics, rehabilitation centers, twelve schools with 7,000 students and summer camps abroad with different faiths.

The Christian community centered in Jerusalem goes back to the days of the Pentecost,  the church's birthday, although the number of Christians in the Holy Land has actually decreased significantly to a current number less than 1% of the population. Many Christians raised as such moved abroad for higher education and did not return. At the same time, Muslims in the Holy Land attend Anglican schools in significant numbers for a solid education and to learn good values.

The Very Rev. Sam Lloyd asked how America can be helpful and supportive and engage with Christians in the Holy Land? Here are three suggested ways to get involved:

1) advocate for the peace process

2) support American Friends of Jerusalem and 

3) Episcopal Relief & Development (www.er-d.org)

Cathedral Dean Sam Lloyd emphasized later in his sermon the future depends on peace between Christians and Muslims. We need to seek good in each other. He says reconciliation is a one-on-one personal business. He cited the mothers he met in the Holy Land who wanted to work for peace so the tragedies met by their sons in battle wouldn't happen again. 

____________________________________________________________

The Christian-Muslim Summit

March 1–3, 2010
Washington National Cathedral hosts a summit of Christian and Muslim faith leaders March 1–3, 2010, culminating in a public dialogue the evening of Wednesday, March 3, at 7 pm, in the Cathedral nave.
[Please see the National Cathedral website to] RSVP for the public dialogue now »
This is the first of four interfaith dialogues on reconciliation planned with the following four principals:

• Ayatollah Dr. Seyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, professor of law and chairman, Department of Islamic Studies, the Academy of Sciences of Iran; representing the Shi’a Muslim tradition
• Professor Ahmad El Tayeb, president of Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt; representing the Sunni Muslim tradition
• His Eminence Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, Vatican
• The Right Reverend John Bryson Chane, Episcopal bishop of Washington

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Is There A Secret To Women's Happiness?

Rodin, The Kiss

What can a man say to a woman, any woman, to make her feel happier?

The point is to maximize dreamy phrases. Go ahead and dare to be a dreamboat. Women will love you for it.

1) "You're beautiful" - They want to know they are at least beautiful to you, but then it's best to go further with what exactly makes them look so. Perhaps that's what he's whispering in her ear, above, but he's likely said it already lots of times.
2) "You're the best" - Of course, no one wants to be second best at anything, even if it is stretching the truth at times.
3) Notice a girl's moods. Comfort her if she's sad, and ask what's wrong if she's angry.
4) Please a girl at every opportunity. Tell girls you will do what they want to do and go along with them to please them, but don't cling. Offer action, but don't force a girl to do something she doesn't want to do.
5) "You know a lot" - For lots of women, it's their life's favorite hobby to learn a lot, so it's nice to be complimented for knowledge. After all, it doesn't subtract from a man's warehouse of knowledge.
6) "You're smart" - Be sincere, and think of an example. The easiest way is to acknowledge it when you hear and recognize it. Who wouldn't feel stronger with this sort of compliment?
7) Be ultra-communicative. Tease and flirt at every opportunity in a friendly way. Occasionally leave text or phone messages so your target doesn't forget about you. Return any message from a girl, no matter how vague (it's a gift of your attention she might not expect or feel appropriate to command). Err on the side of over-communicating if you're not sure. The other side can't always guess what you think.
8) Be confident. Remember to talk to her and answer her questions and make her feel equal to you and better about herself from all the attention she is getting from you. Never, ever, take giving her attention to an extreme and stalk a girl - it's a no-no, and alarming to any girl.
9) Be nice to her friends. She will judge you with them and them with you. She will consider your attitudes to her friends and family a sign of your social smoothness.
10) Be careful what you promise. Girls usually remember promises (it's a big deal, as in, wow, he promised) and will turn it against you if you forget. For example, don't say you'll call if you have no intention of doing so.
11) "You'll do well" - what a relief to hear, almost like hearing an astrology reading. Fun and loving to give a woman the benefit of the doubt. Don't be surprised if they giggle, but continue to reassure women with this dreamy phrase anyway.
12) "You cook well" - never, ever, I repeat, ever, tell a woman anything other than that she cooks well. Be very subtle with criticism as a general rule. All women want to think they cook well. It is as important as being clean and beautiful. It's not as if they think they are perfect, but they all want to believe they are better than average in the cooking department.
13) "Raising a woman's standard of living raises everyone's standard of living." Anyone believe for a second this is not true? This phrase reassures women and makes women feel more important.
14) Don't cheat. Don't be surprised she drops you if you cheat; expect it.

These are open secrets not just to the arts of seduction and how to seduce a woman, but how to get along better with women in general - all the women in your life. They are useful professionally as well as personally; common sense knows it, experience proves it.

Sorry, it's a bit late to wish you Happy Valentine's Day.  I was busy then.  I hope Happy Valentine's Month suffices.

How and Why To Pray: The Fire Within Us Is The Spirit

The Very Reverend Sam Lloyd gave the most recent Sunday Forum at the Washington National Cathedral as a talk about prayer and our spiritual lives. A dvd is available here to purchase at the National Cathedral website. His talk is all about being a Christian with the power of prayer, living a spiritual life and maintaining a life of prayer.

A central part of being a Christian, he says, is to say prayers and to have a pattern of prayer. This lecture tells how to pray and why prayer is awesome and desirable.

Dean Sam Lloyd tells of his own personal journey to a life of faith and prayer, and tells us how we, too, can improve our own spiritual lives. In his very gifted, warm and intelligent way, as a supremely educated and experienced preacher, everything he says inspires in this special talk.

He talks about how he experienced the Copernican revolution of what prayer is and what God is. He tells how he learned that we are not the center; the earth is not the center, according to Copernicus, but that light is the center of the universe and is where energy comes from. God is trying to connect with us. The Bible, he says, is God's quest for us. The heart of the Christian life, he says, is learning how to pay attention to a God who is coming to us, if we open ourselves up.

Psalm 139

1	O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.
2	Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising;          thou understandest my thought afar off.

...

23  Search me, O God, and know my heart:          try me, and know my thoughts: 24  and see if there be any wicked way in me,          and lead me in the way everlasting.     King James Version.

All along, God has known us and is always there. He quotes from Isaiah 43:1 Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. God is always with us. He also recited by heart a beautiful old hymn, "I sought the Lord...always thou lovest me." In C.S. Lewis' autobiography Surprised by Joy, he says, the God we have been trying to reach has been trying even harder to reach us. St. Augustine also says prayer begins in our finding a space and openness to hear and notice and receive the God who has always been seeking us out. Prayer at its heart is profoundly receptive and passive. And it leads to great energy, passion and commitment, but it begins by our receiving God. Dean Sam Lloyd's second point is about the spiritual life and what we do with our lives. At the heart of our life is this desire for more. This restlessness is "at the heart of the human phenomenon." It drives people to do good and evil, and is the fire within. He refers to Ronald Rolheiser in The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality about the fire within. It is a fire for goodness, love, longing and connection that drives us beyond ourselves. We should aim for a spiritual life that honors that fire within us. This idea goes back to the Greeks, Hebrews and St. Paul; the fire within us is the spirit of God trying to be in us. The spirit and energy and fire propels us. To long for God is to experience God. The fire within us is the life of the spirit within us. We are all in God as fish are in water. The third major point in this talk is about how it isn't easy to maintain the life of prayer in today's busy world. He believes life is meant to be lived from a divine center. As Thomas Kelly says,  there is a "divine abyss within us all." Thomas Merton said there is a true self and a partial self. People in the West think they are who they think they are, instead of knowing they are deeper. The true self is deeper than who we think we are. The idea is to create a pattern of spaciousness to allow enough quiet for God to be heard. He is immersed in the world and in our lives and speaks to us. The spiritual life is about learning to listen, says Dean Sam Lloyd.  He advised us to take ten minutes a day to be still and learn to create an open space to listen to this Deeper Spirit. We can read scriptures if it helps to open our hearts. As St. John said in John 15:3, "I am the vine and you are the branches" for we are all one with Jesus. Prayer can help us think and feel new things, and help us learn how to listen. We can ask for God's help for anything we want, confess our sins, and be honest. By taking the time to be still, prayer is about being present in the moment, and the goal is to create a life that is attentive to God.  Dean Sam Lloyd suggests a goal for Lent is to have a deeper prayer life. Most of the Sunday Forum talks are available linked here to buy on dvd and are well-worth watching. This writing is not in any way sanctioned or approved of by the National Cathedral. The writer is grateful to the National Cathedral for the opportunity to write and learn about these modern issues at the intersection of faith and public life. Please give generously to the Washington National Cathedral.

Most Find Airline Seats Narrow Enough

TIME Magazine

Many of us are wider than the seventeen inches allowed by airlines per customer. It shouldn't surprise anyone to hear complaints. While I don't include myself amongst those with a need for two seats, I can see how boxed-in airlines make passengers feel.

When I heard about a passenger recently denied a seat on a Southwest flight because he supposedly needed two, I felt for him. Airlines, along with other forms of public transportation, have not successfully solved the challenge. Seventeen inches per seat is a little narrow now when most people have hip sizes over forty inches.  The reality is we're not all as fit and trim as airlines expect.

If airlines act unexpectedly, the public learns fast. No one wants to waste good money. For instance, I will likely not buy an extra seat for a baby in the future because after an airline overbooked I had to give up the paid-for space. Now this is more like it! Plenty of room to change a baby from the look of it.

edesedoret.com

Thanks for visiting. Please leave comments if airlines have acted unexpectedly to you, not that I can do A to Z about it, but who will know unless you say something?

Political and Social Attitudes in the United States and Canada

Political writer James Fallows, on Marty Moss-Coane's show, Radio Times, said today Republicans and Democrats have become almost completely separated by ideology and aren't communicating with each other. The Republican obstructionist policy could be turned around, he says, by televising the upcoming "Bipartisan Summit on Health Care" this month with President Obama.

Petesearch

America and Canada are already regional generally according to an American and a Canadian in two recent articles.  Petesearch, the blog of Pete Warden, describes seven distinct American regions with data from 210 million Facebook profiles:

• Stayathomia: People in this Northeast region, stretching from New York to Minnesota, form very tight geographic connections, with most friends living in neighboring cities.
• Dixie: A fairly intuitive “Old South” grouping, with Atlanta as the network’s hub. 
• Greater Texas: Places like Missouri, Louisiana, and Arkansas are connected more to this Dallas-centric group than the South.
• Nomadic West: In this huge region, even small towns are strongly connected to distant big cities.
• Mormonia: A slice of tightly-knit Utah and Eastern Idaho towns inside, but isolated from, the Nomadic West.
• Socalistan: LA is king here, linked to almost everywhere in California and Nevada—and many exterior cities, too. Outside the big cities though, Californians form very tight clusters.
• Pacifica: This Seattle-centric area has surprisingly few connections outside of Washington.

Canada, too, has different regions and serial entrepreneur Jennifer McNeill describes them in an excerpt of this article in Toronto's Globe and Mail:

"Is it different selling to Canadians than Americans?

 

It is. It is even different selling to geographies inside Canada. In the Maritimes, you sell based on relationship. In Toronto, it is strictly business - delivery, price - and Calgary is very much about who you know, and those relationships. As you get to the West Coast, it is a matter of how much patience you have. They're like snails, very slow, a very different mind.

In the U.S., there are different geographies but they all buy the same...based on price and value and they have to believe there is some credibility to the company. They have to perceive value." 

Clearly, in America and Canada, political differences and friendly relationships are dividing the land invisibly. They always have, but let's hope modern communications improve the situation.

Interview With Orhan Pamuk: Excerpts On Writing

Since I have just written a little novel, I found myself interested in a fascinating wide-ranging interview in The Hindu newspaper, unabridged online entitled "Writing and writing is my happiness". Nirmala Lakshman interviewed Orhan Pamuk, Winner of the 2006 Nobel Price for Literature, and author of such books as My Name is Red, Snow, The Black Book, and The Museum of Innocence.

Orhan Pamuk The Hindu

Here are excerpts about writing:

In Museum of Innocence, he looks at the spirit of the nation through love "where all these issues of love in a society where sex outside of marriage is problematical, and there is the taboo of virginity...Even in the Turkey of the 1970s, among the so-called upper class bourgeoisie the space for the lovers to meet, to talk, to develop, to explore their love is limited." It's a place where lovers "test and try to understand each other through a language that they develop sometimes, which is very sophisticated, through looks, silences and little punishments, double meaning, and gestures."

"The particularities, the uniqueness of any culture is interesting in a novel but novels are more interesting if they go deep into the culture and deeply into the universal, the eternal and what is common to all human hearts."..."all human beings are the same everywhere in some sense, but the cultures are different, so they behave differently."

Concerning Turkey: "Dissent and the strength of individual, dignified voices are also growing, you cannot stop it." ..."Don't forget that Turkey was never a colony."

"My first motivation is really to write a good Proustian, Nabokovian, Borgesian, whatever you like to call it, beautiful novel rather than think about the politics."

"I'm not saying there is truth in everything but it is the novel’s job to understand points of view. A novelist's job is not to find political or diplomatic solutions to conflicting desires and pressures....I just want to see the arena of politics through the participant's point of view, not necessarily agreeing with any of them.... But my job as a novelist is to make him convincing and try to see the world through his point of view.

"I write slowly, I plan my books. It took me 11 years to develop – I explore – plan the details and write The Museum of Innocence. I’m a slow worker, a hard worker. As such a novel can never come to you like ‘this.’ It's a step-by-step, painstaking organisation, taking notes, preparing scenes, it never comes to you in one light. So a novel develops -- of course I plan ahead – but it also develops as you write it. New ideas come, you read books, you talk to people, you revise, you talk to your friends. It's an immense labour which I love."

"Writing and writing and writing, that's my only happiness."

"But I know, I travel, and I see that now there is a strong, local demanding bourgeoisie, the elite. Their private lives can only be expressed in literature and that will be done and that will be interesting for the world."

"Also in these countries, especially in China, I have seen so much demand for international recognition. They feel very frustrated because people say that because of China, prices are going up, or because of India we have pollution, that kind of thing. They want their voices to be heard. It's inevitable, and they are taking over the art of the novel. Everyone is writing novels, so the world will not be saying, as the litterateurs of the French would say, ‘they are imitating.’ That’s over. Some English fancy person writing an experimental novel and we non-westerners trying to understand and writing that in our culture, that will be over! An interesting subject is the new cultural patterns that are emerging in non-western societies. I understand the recognition of my work all over the world in that context. I am aware of the fact that we are all getting to be more interesting."

..."living in a country with political and economic problems doesn't mean that you have to write cheap and journalistic fiction."

"The greatest living writer in the world is Garcia Marquez. If you're asking me for my favourite novelists ever, there are four: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, and Marcel Proust."

"I think the world is moving towards the humanity of the non-western world and that will obviously be more visible...Middle-class lives in China, in India, in places like Korea, in nations that were neglected, not represented, and then their literature, their voices, their murmurs and all of middle-class life, the private life of the nations that were suppressed will definitely be visible." -and women, let's hope...the private lives of non-western nations will be more visible in future."

He is well able to promote his own book with the words: "there is a beauty, a lyricism, and poetry in this book [The Museum of Innocence] which I think has not been lost in the translation."

A delightful, optimistic interview of an important world class novelist to read linked here.
Orhan Pamuk's page here at amazon.com.

With grateful appreciation to thehindu.com.

Here's A Nutty Women's Issue

thelinguist.com

In Taiwan skimpily clad ladies, in small numbers, sell betel nuts.  Feminists affirm the habit degrades women. Health officials say the nut causes oral cancer. Local officials call the 'betel nut culture'  "low-class and vulgar" and environmentalists complain the cash-crop is over-planted and causes soil erosion.

Despite these assertions, it looks like the secret is out.  "T-Life" - a magazine distributed free to train riders - listed betel nut beauties as one of the top five attractions of the Hsinchu, Taiwan area. A spokesperson at Hsinchu station asserts: "Personally, I think it's inappropriate," to tout betel nut beauties. "We should respect different cultures and different points of view, but I wouldn't encourage visitors to see betel nut girls."

Now we all can see them in some extraordinary photos. More information is here in a radio interview script at thelinguist.com.

Google Introduces New Sites at Street View Gallery

San Diego Wild Animal Park

New Parks, Beaches and Ski Areas at Updated 

Google Street Views

Google has created more awe-inspiring photographic views. This time, in the United States, Google Street Views have expanded with many new zoos, stadiums and theme parks. In the United Kingdom, a special guide is available to view National Trust sites.


Just introduced in time for the Olympics, for example, are splendidly detailed views of Alpine skiing slopes at Whistler, among many other views of new world sites for you to enjoy, uncensored and free of charge. 

Open Secrets of Mathematics

Stephen Strogatz of Cornell University wrote another mathematics article in today's New York Times, which I want to support with this post. Maybe reading it will shine off and improve my grasp of mathematics. Since the article's written by an expert, it can't hurt. Professor Strogatz got twenty-one pages of comments on last week's article. Here's a link to today's article called Rock Groups.

Urgent: Solutions Needed for America and Canada

Looking at a wonderland of snow outside near Princeton, New Jersey, today, all is calm and quiet. The Washington National Cathedral had a fine service which I saw online this morning. In words to the audience, Cathedral Leaders were constantly mindful of the snow and grateful to those who did show up. Amidst all of this peaceful loveliness are those who look around at Canada and the United States and find fault. 

Two websites  have  recently listed in great detail the shortcomings of America and Canada. Citizens will criticize their own countries; just get them started, and the results are astounding to behold. Perhaps listing them is helpful to contain the issues, rather as meterologists summarize weather and archivists survey inventory. The point surely is, we need solutions and fast.

Orville Schell, a China scholar and former UC Berkeley Dean, now at the Asia Society in New York City, has assembled a list of strong and weak features of America.

Orville Schell - orvilleschell.com

America's strengths:

1) biotech

2) technology

3) civil society

4) American philanthropy

5) the American military

6) small-town life

7) the arts, both high-culture and pop

America's weaknesses:

1) public education "driven into the ground" from budget cuts

2) national energy system grid update needed

3) court system "struggling"

4) national park system "teetering above the abyss"

5) federal and state governments - "busted", essentially

6) interstate highway and water system updates needed

7) transportation updates of planes and trains essential

8) finance "system overhaul needed"

9) media over-commercialized, except the internet

10) overweight population

11) basic manufacturing "headed to China" or oblivion

12) American cities - "hollow and broken"

13) prison system - "pits of hopelessness"
14) global warming

Alas, my precious international readers, many of these, including climate change (#14) are common not only to America but to countries around the world.

Meanwhile, Canadians in Facebook blame politicians, especially Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, on breaking promises of all kinds, especially to cut taxes. He has also been taken to task on foreign policy, business policies, healthcare issues and job creation. All of these are issues with which the average citizen has little if any expertise or inside knowledge to referee. Canadians are free to criticize anyway, unfairly or not, but when will their issues be addressed?

Stephen Harper, Canadian Prime Minister - wikimedia

Many deep, long-standing problems in Canada are being blamed on the current Prime Minister, but Harper is also taking heat for proroguing Parliament and his criticism of a judiciary of "left-wing ideologues." For more, read this Facebook page: Canadians United Against Stephen Harper.

At the very least, as Americans and Canadians, we can console ourselves that all countries can find fault with themselves if given the opportunity. Listing disparate, incomparable issues can help put them in perspective; concrete form can organize them into a discrete space. What ultimately matters is whether we can find and implement solutions before we get more problems to solve.

Heavy Internet Use: Brain Sharpener or Mental Illness?

Does heavy internet use lead to depression or do the depressed, whom this study calls "mentally ill" tend to overuse the internet?

Perhaps depression happens if one focuses too long on almost anything, but to call it "mental illness" isn't fair, and goes too far, to my mind. Following that line of thought, doing the same of anything repeatedly for hours and hours could lead to depression and "mental illness." Blaming the internet is misplaced and notably unhelpful.

Surfing the internet with a high-speed connection is a thought-intensive activity. Competing studies confirm that brain function in the elderly improves through surfing the internet according to this UCLA study...

I would bet in favor of the internet, that surfing sharpens the brain functions, not just of the elderly, but of all.

Are you skeptical the internet affects brain function at all? Does it depress or help? Please leave your comments.

Stephen Strogatz: Mathematics From An Adult Perspective--NYTimes

An excellent opportunity to brush up on mathematics begins today in the Opinionator blog in The New York Times.


Stephen Strogatz, a Mathematics Professor at Cornell University, promises to write about "the elements of mathematics, from pre-school in today's article to grad school...from an adult perspective" in upcoming articles.

They're "not intended to be remedial." He wants to show "what math is all about and why it's so enthralling to those who get it." Read it here.