Five Reasons For Giving

The reason that I have chosen the number five is because trying to delineate the myriad reasons for giving would be like trying to fit the entire ocean into a single bag. Being selective about the reasons allows one to focus on basic principles behind the give away. With a bit of looking, we can find ways of dividing things up that are salient. These will allow us to get on to discussion about other important topics, rather than tying up many hours that it would take, trying to describe what lies beyond the scope of our ability to understand.  One list of five would be:
Instant Karma:
Short-term Karma:
Medium-term Karma:
Long-term Karma:
Infinite-term Karma:

These harmonize and combine in exquisite ways when they are in play within our awareness. When practiced, in, around and about us, resonating through us. The frequencies of the "Big Bang"(if you want to call it that) are as alive today as at the creation of the universe. We choose to fall in step with Universal creative forces, or remain out of step with them, it is our choice.The womb of creation that virtually every native culture reflects and understands is the same empty pot that the rune Perth describes. Holding on, to both ideas and possessions is something that we forget takes us away from cosmic energies and ultimately ignores physics. We bear as baggage, what we hold onto like so many talisman, however, the objects and ideas hold no power, they merely remind us that power exists. Whether we feel the need to carry more or less "gear" through life, directly determines our ability to accept our gifts with grace and to create change through profound giving.

 Living in the present (pre-sent) allows us to diminish the role of ego within and amongst us. I remember a series of events that happened a long time ago, a friend gave me my first Tarot deck. I remember, like it was yesterday, although it was forty years ago, the suspicion and dread that I felt as a young person trying to understand the nature of this tool. I thought that the "spirits" that the cards must contain could be a useful divinatory tool and yet, the suspicion that I had for any spiritual device sold as an amusement or "game". For decades, even as I learned to read the Tarot, I felt that it was silly or somehow offensive to my sensibilities, to use a mass-produced deck to do such intimate work. It was like trying to stuff a whole cow into a sausage skin. My mind could not wrap my head around the fact that the memes or messages that were available were as individual as the moments that I chose to do readings, the responses of the cards were as varied as the individuals who were "read". I had amazing insights and excellent results, but there was a nagging part of me that wanted to see what would happen if I made my own deck. Stepping out from under the burden of this self-imposed questioning has allowed me to transform my own abilities beyond limitations that I did not even realize I was creating.

Sometimes the giving can begin with giving up, other times it can be giving away, giving over, giving unconditionally, or giving out. (Ironic that there are five of these as well.)

Over the years, I have started designing several Tarot decks, perhaps, one day I will finish one, or more but the liberation (that I felt when I realized that the world around me holds all that I need) has allowed me to read much more effectively and without struggle. I gave up my attachment to what I thought would be "best" and things began to flow. The give away is not always about things, often our ideas are what need to be given away.

I have written before about the psychological difficulty associated with "doing good works". If we are seeking to look good, even to our selves, the effect of our good works are undermined by egoic energies. A perfect example of this is one holiday season, when my young family was living on far less than poverty income. A local advertizing agency "adopted us" for the holiday. Our social worker acted as an intermediary and had us draw up a list of things that we "needed" in the way of gifts. This was truly a struggle because our needs were so simple. As best we could figure, we needed a pizza cutter, a bigger cutting board and a cheese grater. The gifts came in a giant basket and included a doll baby or something similar for our young toddler daughter. I'm sure that the donors were feeling pretty good about the fact that they got all three of the things on our list, but the first pizza that we cut, we got about halfway through the first cut and the cutting wheel fell off, the cutting board warped horribly and broke in half within a moon or two and the handle of the cheese grater broke off, making it useless.

Stepping back just one order of magnitude, don't we all enjoy seeing ourselves as benevolent? What is that part of us is it that enjoys being seen as a good person? Does that part of us serve or enslave us? When we see it objectively, it is ego plain and sure. Getting beyond that layer in our being, transcending those limits, is where the art of giving lies. Obscured behind who we think we are lies total abundance. Think Giving Tree (Shel Silverstein) but on infinite levels. We are agents of the Universe. The creation that we represent is of infinite scale, science has proved it, beyond a shadow of a doubt. All that is known is that, at some far off date, the Sun will supernova and we will be subsumed in it's corona. We can go to the light now, or later, it is our choice. According to my current beliefs, we are entering the Lettucine Epoch, characterized by wilt. Compost what you can for maximum effectiveness. If this means plowing under an entire crop of mistrust, deceit or rancor in homage to the next crop, by all means do it!

Try this basic practice as often as you dare. Give something away, perhaps as simply as giving a compliment, not to look good, but to truly put yourself out of the picture. It can be hard. The reasons become more defined, or refined in that we see a physical, mental, emotional, psychic and spiritual aspects to the gift. Each intentional act that we can completely step out of, gains strength by being self-less. The Universe didn't create itself to prove anything, it just was, inevitable, like our own consciousness. I strive to give as much of my own energy, for the enrichment of others. How I choose to live my life is determined by how I perceive service and what I am capable of seeing as beneficial to as many people as possible. Ideally, I would not know the depth or extent of my ability to serve. That is part of the draw for me of working backstage in the theater. If I do my job to perfection, no one will know that I have done it, yet they will be enriched by the experience just the same. If we can be but a gift, we fulfill the promise of a day. Understanding this multilevel give away requires deeper understanding of the storyteller. There are rules about these sorts of things. The entire story exists for the reader. I am (as storyteller) here to conduct your ride, with luck along a path along which you define all of the elements. The story exists only as a vehicle that attempts to get to certain shared places, or perhaps create new spaces, that you, the listener have to fill in. The entire experience is yours. Our interaction with others is telling a story about the now. The process of creating our stories determines reality, why not alter things for the better?

We inhabit our stories, we tell ourselves what we want to hear, but who we listen to is HUGE! I reject out of hand the admonition, "Give until it hurts." I believe that the most profound gifts do not cause pain to either the giver or the receiver. When we give of ourselves, let it be for the enrichment of all, for it is only then that everyone could have the possibility of having enough. I think that too often we run the numbers wrong. We have far more than enough, what we need is a better distribution network. If we make the slightest effort for our sole benefit, it can but by nature tear at the fabric of reality. While it is true that without our own health and welfare, we will have little to give, but opulence in any realm chokes the vitality of flowing energy that is the way of nature. Over the next moon or two, I will try to elaborate on each aspect of experience, Physical, Mental, Emotional, Psychic & Spiritual. I have an inkling that the five types of karma can be reflected in each realm of manifestation. Our physical bodies can experience an instant karma event like throwing up bad food or too much drink, we can eat gluten for years before all of the cilia in our gut have been either sheared or strangled off, or we could experience long-term karma after breathing teratogenic fumes or being exposed to toxins during pregnancy.

On a mental level we might have an instant karma event in which we catch ourselves being hypocritical or a sea change, infinite-term event like an alcoholic quitting alcohol. Of course, many experiences like this have multiple effects on varied levels. It is nearly formulaic that when we have a major life change or crisis in one aspect of our lives, it seems that all aspects are affected. Fortunately, I have had nearly infinite support from my wife, which allows me to stretch the boundaries of experience that many have. In addition to helping to feed me better, she puts mental and emotional poultices on my many wounds, helps me heal psychically and occasionally challenges my assumptions about my own spirituality, which keeps me humble. She even accepts the eternal student within me that hears the "news" about the two Tesla Motorcars that caught fire from hitting road debris and goes looking on the internet to find out how many other cars catch fire and why they are not in the news. Our entire culture sustains a psychic scar when we accept the "gift" that our newscasters have for us. This creates an infinite-term Karma event because the real truth, the reality that we should be confronting, is that 287,000 vehicle fires occur each year, two were in Tesla Motorcars whose manufacturer has offered to voluntarily add shielding over the vulnerable components, but Ford, GM and Chrysler ignore the inevitability of their devices to kill and maim.

The giving company, the one with our collective best interest in mind is penalized by untruthful implications that it is an increased hazard over "tried and true" motorcars, but also burdened by associating the technology of the future seem less attainable because of "fatal flaws" even though the drivers of both burned Teslas were able to evacuate before being consumed in flames. In over 200 cases each year, other people, driving fossil fuel burning cars are no so lucky. When we give, unconditionally, we change the nature of the world around us. It may seem odd, like I changed stream in the middle of a boat, but let the ideas weave within you, like a night in the forest, let the words heal the parts of you that have remained unseen, neglected or abused for far too long. We, the many, are on the rise and it is with great effort that some of us will turn away from the old and corrupt ways of dominance and submission, power and control and other abuses of our planet, her people and the creatures that used to abound in the biosphere. Just as two eyes are needed to perceive depth, so too sharing our stories give a quality to perception that is akin to depth as well.

The Pareto Optimum

Simply stated, this is a condition on a decision-making tree in which at least one person is better off and no one is worse off. Sadly, the only time this comes up is in theoretical classes where we learn that making changes in the real world should be easier and more efficient than they usually are. Just as most folks don't understand that not doing anything is also a choice, a condition in another part of the decision-making tree in which no one is any better off, but certainly people will become worse off as conditions deteriorate. Rush said: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." An often overlooked parameter for judging whether an action or idea is any good, or of any real use, The Pareto Optimum is the condition under which I have tried to live my entire life. Often I go around the corner with my snow blower, passing several houses, blowing snow like a mad-man since my snow blower is already running, I like to go down to make sure that the nearest shut-in has a clear driveway in case she has guests or service providers that need to get to her house. Especially the big pile that the plow throws up needs to be cleared away and if I am out, and just half a block away, I go down to do her driveway anyway and the snow blower doesn't use that much more gas, whether I'm throwing the snow or not.

The joy that I get back for doing her the favor, and those folks along the way, is more than enough reward for me and in a grand scheme makes them all have a little better time of their social responsibility. Many times I have seen stern men, set against the harshness of winter, closed off to their surroundings because of their snow clearing duties, melt a bit inside and turn to me, flashing an appreciative smile. so much reward lies in my seeming silliness that I got about the same distance in the opposite direction as well. I stop at a little old lady's house that direction as well, but she is still capable of doing it herself. It may cost me a bit in fuel and an extra half hour or so whenever it snows deep enough to warrant running the blower, but it is something I can afford to do for others.

This is perhaps the difficult part of trying to mandate or encourage this sort of activity by government. My search for the Pareto Optimum comes from the heart, not the pocketbook. Many years ago, some idiot in the United States of America decided that the government should be run as efficiently as possible, much like it was a business. With one fell swoop, it changed our decision-making trees into bonsai, or wreaths, chanting the mantra cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. The illnesses that we face are as much of intellect as of lack of compassion. There is good reason that heart disease is the leading killer. Those who care are shredded by daily torture and pain. Without taking the reigns from corporate welfare whores, wresting the power of the fork and spoon from chain restaurants and beginning to teach our own children the truth rather than sorted lies of deceitful practitioners of capitalism, with ulterior motives, we might just as well roll over and give up the ship. I for one will not stand by and let the people of the planet continue to be bamboozled by mediocrity, injustice and doublespeak. I continue to write truth about powerful interests, teach peace and security through my advocacy for nature, for the trees, the creatures of the planet, including humans and for the water.

Just for fun, I continue to research dozens of diverse subjects, to get a better sense of where the truth exists and how best to express it. One of the amazing things that I learned in my quest for solutions to the mounting threat of global catastrophe that climate change represents, is that just adding 1% organic matter, (humus) to soil allows it to hold and additional 18,174.109 gallons per acre. (170,000Litres per hectare) To give an idea how much water that is, we can multiply those gallons by eight pounds and represent it as weight 145,392 lbs. or 72.7 tons! Humus holds it's weight in water and hosts billions of organisms per cubic centimeter. One of the greatest tragedies is that we continue to sterilize, de-mineralize and desertify vast areas that used to be arable land.  Simply choosing to compost every scrap of organic matter we come in contact with could vastly improve conditions for all, at virtually no cost. My grandmother used to use her half gallon paper milk cartons as her method of composting. Between her back door and the back of her lot, she had enough room to bury about 150 half gallon paperboard containers full of food scraps and vegetable peelings before she would have to start over at the start. This gave her several years of decomposition before she would bring in more nutrients and humus with the next container. Her flowers were the envy of the women of Springfield.

I can't say for sure that everyone was better off for hearing of her petunias, roses or dahlias, but it certainly didn't hurt her any and the billions of organisms living in her soil were happy to be provided optimum conditions in which to thrive. Ultimately, I see the looming ecological crisis this way. We have it in our power to change the planet, both for good and ill. What we do here and now will determine whether life, as we know it, on Earth, continues to proliferate, or becomes truncated or extinct. when I began to actively experiment with soil health and abundance theory, I was but a child myself and many would make fun of me for enriching soils that I did not own. Now that I am a grandfather, I continue to enrich soils that I do not own, if only in the hope that one day I will not be just one crazy old man spitting in the wind, but a part of a vast tribe of humanity, aligned with specific and attainable goals. Re-establishing humus across the land sounds like an almost impossible task until you realize that billions of agents of change can take up the standard of leaving the world better than when we found it. Believe me, the condition it is in now, makes it easier than ever to improve. In building a sense of community, of meeting your farmers at local markets, learning from them about how they treat the earth, enriching the soils around us can yield only benefits. Putting compost in the waste bin assures that it will at least smell rotten by trash day, making the lives of countless garbage men and women decidedly worse off. your carrot tops, potato peelings and onion skins have the power to save the planet, shouldn't you be saving them for compost?

I speak routinely about how we need to learn to emulate nature, creating no waste, shedding all but the essential, designing around beauty and efficient use of materials and energy. Perhaps we do have a long way to go, but the road to get there requires us lining up our values and our beliefs and taking the first step. the way forward never starts with a click of our tongue and a shaking of our head at the senselessness of it all. Resignation in the face of planetary destruction is not what human beings should leave as their legacy. I for one will continue in my attempts to share what I have learned, please do the same. Share a bit of what you have with the world around you and you will be surprised with what that investment yields! I promise, it won't cost you anything and everyone will be better off. More on Biochar from David Yarrow & Kris Can

Soil Science For Beginners

Ted Talks are frequently packed with information about important cutting edge research. In this case, much of the information has been known for centuries, but our preoccupation with instant everything has led to a sickening ignorance about soil and the base of the food chain. Instead of writing for an hour about this subject, I hope you take the time to watch this twenty minute synopsis about soil health and the saving of the planet. Bio-char is perhaps the best amendment we can add to soils to begin the process of healing. The second most important thing to add is compost.

Starting This Blog

Back in the day, I only knew it as a fanzine. Friends, who were mostly interested in Punk Rock, would print pages of information about bands that they loved and shows that they had seen for other fans, friends and other punkers who might appreciate the mix of art and ideas brought on by their favorite bands. Punk music was great. The angst and direction pointed at by the movement was great, but the music that stirred me then and continues to stir me is that music of the spheres, the hum of the big bang and the cyclic murmurings of nature, once extant across the entire surface of the planet, yet drowned out by our human creations. The fanzine that I produced spoke in the tones and tunes of the Great Lakes. Trying to write about what a tree might care about, or what the fishes of the Freshwater Seas that surround and define my home region allowed me to write reams of stories and insightful prose that helped other fans of natural areas and phenomena associated with the state of nature.

Oddly enough, I have always had fans, so the writing that I did about the Great Lakes was designed to share with them the concepts and ideas that I was developing as the result of my own independent research. I have been more or less engaged with studying the atmosphere for most of the last fifty years. What I have seen repeatedly is the creation of upwelling over vast areas in which fuels are burned. The mass balance study that I put together back in the nineteen-eighties showed the ability of all fuels burned within, Brown County Wisconsin, to expand and super-heat hundreds of billions of cubic feet of air to roughly sixteen times their original size. These massive boluses of hot air are discharged through both horizontal spreading into adjacent areas, heating them, and venting through vertical columns, vortecies, capable of jettisoning massive amounts of hot, dense air into the stratosphere. Destabilization of the atmosphere has been real in my mind for decades and the relatively recent push for a non-scientific approach that infatuates climate change deniers has baffled me. I completely understand that big money wants us to continue to burn through the fossil record at a record pace, but we are at the end of the age during which doing so can continue.

I may call the writing that I do by a different name, a generation ago it was produced in a print shop, laboriously shrinking hand-written text to fit a few thousand words onto a flyer, but the issues that I write about are the same. Instead of working for week to have a few dozen of these "zines" in the hands of those who cared enough to read them has been supplanted by having a thousand readers per moon "tuning-in" from around the planet. I cannot say how proud I am of those who read me, those who care enough to listen, but without my readers, I would be nothing. I would be a ne'er-do-well, raving to a wall somewhere. Instead, I feel that there are those who understand at least part of what I am saying, folks who can express some of my meaning in their own way to others whom they care about.

We really are all in this together. Whether our tribes of peaceful loving people will prevail depend on our ability to educate, elucidate potential beneficial choices for behavior and wrest from the collapsing petro-chemical age to one that can sustain life rather than destroy it. We have been blessed with the ability to study and understand what is going on around us and the longer we forget to pay attention, the more likely it will be too late before we all get on the same page about climate science and the need to change our trajectory.

Burning our way through millions of years of the fossil record, which stored solar radiation safely under foot over geologic time, in just a few hundred years will undoubtedly make life on this planet untenable. Learning to mimic natural systems with our own may provide just the needed ability to stop the climate crisis. Many of the technologies and practices are awaiting our re-discovery. Organics, bio-char and permaculture are but a few. Bio-dynamic agriculture, hugleculture and aquaponics are others. There is plenty of territory that can be brought into production if we develop the will and skills needed to change our culture from the grassroots up. This is why I often urge people to contact ECO-Tours of Wisconsin to arrange an ECO-Tour immediately. This is my pet organization that plants trees, provides eco-education to all ages and which brings the ideas presented in this blog into a practical life process. We share techniques to lessen ecological damage and solutions to pressing ecological issues. These have been the primary goals of ECO-Tours since their founding. As far back as the eighties, we have been taking folks into wild areas, as well as those that had been denuded to get in touch with what can be done both save them and re-create more natural areas that support diverse sets of organisms.

Like Laugh Lines On Your Brain

Our thoughts, memories and ideas are nothing more than patterns of synapses, firing along established routes that are called neural pathways. The electrons that flow through our brains are a bit like water and flow along paths of least resistance, so thinking the way we always have is reinforced not only by our outward experiences and the environment that we perceive around us, but by the internal wiring and patterns within our brains. The more profoundly we establish our relationship to either the outer world, or our inner one, the more connected to and reliant on these patterns we become. Changing our brains, or reprogramming them to integrate new ideas or actions can often take more than a single attempt. If we use the water analogy, the higher the banks become, the more resistant the streams are to change.

Just as the elderly grump may find it difficult to lighten up, or the terminally happy person may have a difficult time being sad, all manner of patterns, once established in our brains can be difficult to eradicate or replace with different ones. So too our thoughts and actions on a societal level are guided by our thoughts on a range of matters. Often without question we allow the way things have been done in the past to rule both our present choices, actions and beliefs. What follows by implication, are our future ones as well. Science has shown us that we can sculpt our brains, however without active re-programming, we can fall into the same patterns of thought and thus, behavior.

I got in an argument with someone this week that I never expected. Her reaction to my statements, which were about education, seemed completely out of character for her. I guess that I just strayed beyond what she was either willing or able to take in. Perhaps I triggered an invisible switch which turned on a whole cascade of thoughts and emotion. What struck me hardest was the nature of her protestations. They seemed to be along lines that had nothing to do with my statements. Like a marble in a raceway, she seemed to be discharging potential energy along well established routes to an ultimate destination. Taking on how we think about necessary changes that need to be made may be as important, perhaps even more important than  the changes themselves.

I have written repeatedly about the problems associated with assumptions that have left their traces on our society. The Divine Right of Kings for instance, or the Calvinistic beliefs that the poor deserve their lot in life because they have made "immoral" choices serve only to placate the conscience of uber-wealthy oligarchs. The belief that capitalism must always be given free reign over health and welfare of the general population is what has spawned problems from blue baby syndrome in the corn producing areas of North America to flammable water in regions that allow fracking. The book Unsafe At Any Speed by Ralph Nader detailed the fight that the auto industry had with the government over any sort of regulations that would reduce the hazardous nature of motor vehicle transport. Upton Sinclair in The Jungle detailed the abuses that took place in the industrialized meat packing facilities that were playing fast and loose with health and welfare of workers as well as the general public. Rachel Carson in her book, Silent Spring pointed out the fallacy of her time that we could all expect "better living through chemistry". Breaking the patterns of behavior that harm one another and the environment must occur rapidly in many areas simultaneously. We cannot wait to attack the dozens of areas that need to see massive and nearly instant change piecemeal over the course of decades. These patterns need to be changed immediately. We do not have time to waste.

Bill Nye, in his recent debate with Ken Ham sidled up to the point I am trying to make by clarifying Darwin's theory...survival of the fittest...in his attempt to reprogram our thinking about the now famous concept , he explained that the language of Darwin's time was just different enough that it was worth realizing, that the meaning of the word fittest did not mean healthy, wealthy and wise, or even strongest or most physically fit. The  meaning that he was trying to convey is more like "best able to fit into the ecological niche".  In this age of changing climate, changing energy sources, changing social mores, changing values and changing landscapes, perhaps those with the most ability to accept change will be the ones who survive. We need to realize that falling into patterns allows us more free space in our brains for momentary distractions, but they may also inhibit our ability to look at things differently and if they limit our ability to change, they may handicap our species in ways that will eventually prove fatal. Clinging to what has "worked" in the past may doom our species to extinction.

I Want To Share

A Blog You Might Like.
I have written at length about the ability of many of us to hold two or more competing ideas in our heads simultaneously. This blog, Cognitive Dissidence, is a collection of thoughts from others who are committed to injecting truth into the political landscape and holding our leaders to the facts rather than letting them continue to subscribe to their fairy tale ideas of what our citizens want, need and require. The social contract has been broken and our culture and society in general is suffering from a cancer of fear and hate. The writers that post to this blog are peaceful loving people who feel the weight of injustice heavily in their own lives and who seek a better path forward. They are also part of the revolution that is not being televised.

It has been said that if you like laws or sausage, do not pay attention to, or learn how they are made. While I have seen the inner workings of both sausage making and legislation, I can tell you that if you want high quality in either, you have to investigate, look critically and take it upon yourself to put in a bit of extra time finding out the truth about where these things come from. The best sausage that I ever ate was from a farmer who nurtured his animals, fed them well and then, turned his pig, which had a name, into delectable sausages that included ramps that the butcher found on his daily walk in the woods on the morning the sausage was to be made.

Similarly, laws crafted by folks whose feet are firmly planted on the ground, who understand the world around them in a more intimate and caring way and who respect the need for care being taken at all levels of government will always produce a superior product. Allowing industrialization and commercialization as well as the commodification of the legislative process to rule the day has resulted in flagrant legislative violations of basic human values, ecological catastrophes, a litany of social ills, dislocation, disenfranchisement and dissolution that we see around us every day.

It is time to take back our rights as citizens, demand our birthright and to secure leadership that understand that they are working for us, not the corporate welfare whores who have been ruling the day ever since Ronald Reagan got into the oval office. Anyone who can understand that the stock market is booming at the expense of the vast majority of people who are continuing to be worse and worse off needs to get involved in making the world a better place that will not allow the needs of the few overwhelm the needs of the many.

Recent Debate Stirred Awareness

I am not sure how many people saw the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham but it is worth watching. This was an encapsulation of the long touted "debate" between fundamentalist religion and the scientific method. Essentially, there is none but for the moment, and to help make my point, let us assume that there is an actual debate. Those who have watched the entire discussion were asked who was the "winner" and 90% came down on the side of Bill Nye. This is not to say that he absolutely "won" hands down, but rather that we are all losers if we continue to believe in the fantasy world of Ken Ham. I believe that the ten percent who thought that Ken Ham was on the side of truth were somehow feeling put up to it. Like a spouse forced to leave the theater because their significant other is offended, they felt some sort of loyalty to the fiction of their religion. Less than 2 & 1/2 million people have watched the debate on You Tube to date, but about three million watched it live. In spite of the desire that most of us have to put the fictions of fundamentalist religion behind us, there has been a concerted effort to hide the discussion behind the veil of secrecy and this post is my attempt to re-open the eyes of the billions of humans around the planet who have not seen it.

In addition to giving religious groups their due, Bill Nye pointed out the fallacy of the "creation model". While Ken Ham floundered, taking his chances on name dropping, taking his examples out of context and falling back on tired and obsolete perspectives. From the very first, Mr. Ham attempted to prop up his own lies based on associations with other intelligent people, for instance the designer of a gear set that made a high tech robotic rover functional. The things that Ken Ham relied on for his arguments were based on the same "logic" that allows babies to enjoy the game Peek-a-boo. The "evidence" that he repeatedly fell back on was the book of Genesis which we all know was a folk tale at best, which came down to us through a process that resembled the Telephone game for centuries even before they were written down, translated and edited based on human ideas of what we needed to know about our origins that benefited the church, church leaders and society as it was seen and understood more than fifteen centuries ago.

I understand that it is a tenacious hold that we have on reality when we subscribe to supernatural beliefs. It can be disorienting to have to reconcile what we have been indoctrinated into believing with what is true. There have been events in my own life that defied logic and my ability to understand what my senses were perceiving. We have all experienced, as has frequently happened during the course of human events, more information becoming available that allows earlier experiences to make sense. The people of Pompeii for example could not have understood pyroclastic flow. In their final day, they could not have known or understood the poisonous gasses that would comprise their fate nor the insight those gasses would give scientists of the future about their fateful demise. Chalking our destiny up to the Gods may be as ingrained as the rhetoric that comes to us through ancient texts, but it is only able to convey meanings associated with that moment in time. As we look to the future, we may want to ascribe meaning based on fact and reason.

Truth is not, in fact, as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz claims in the theatrical performance of Wicked, what everyone agrees on, but something quite different. Truth stands alone without the support of what we believe about it, what we want to ascribe value and meaning to. Truth is never a justification for belief nor can it be a refuge from reality. It is the essential quality upon which we need to see the world around us and that was clearly expressed in the opening remarks of Mr. Bill Nye. He had an allegorical story about how his father wanted to wear bow ties, but did not know how to tie them. He went to another man, who he knew would be able to tie his bow tie and asked if he could tie his tie for him. The man agreed but told him that to do so, he would have to lie down on a table. After the tie was tied, Bill's father asked why he had to lie down first. The man responded that because he was an undertaker, the only way that he knew to tie it was on someone lying down. This in fact illustrates clearly the fact that we are often more comfortable with the things we have always known in a specific and discreet way. We may rationalize and create elaborate stories to support our limitations, but in the end, when our limits are based on experience, we will always bump up against things that are necessarily unexplainable. How we maneuver amongst these new realizations, these new realities and the new understandings that they bring may be what either lead to our ultimate triumph or our eventual demise.

The truth, as we understand it, lies somewhere between science and fiction, but erring on the side of thinking that we see the world clearly surely spells the end to our ability to adapt. The lies that we are told are often told with such vehemence that it clouds our perception and then, the only reality we can fathom, is make believe. Just as adrenaline narrows our visual field and eliminates audio "distraction", thinking we know it all can have the same effect on our perceptual ability. Watching fundamentalists become unhinged when confronted with reality has taught me one thing, the truth lies outside their purview. Knowing where we stand in the long history of humanity, being in touch with our own creativity, our own world view and the awareness that we share with others who are also trying to make sense of the world that surrounds us all is a large part of what we all need to do to make necessary changes happen in the future. How we resolve to think about the world around us will go a long way to determining whether we leave the world a better place for our fellow inhabitants of Mother Earth, be they plants, animals or fellow human beings.

We have come into an age where there are more LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual & Transgendered) people on the planet than there are who believe that God created the Universe in seven calendar days just a few thousand years ago. We need to focus on the vast majority of people who know about the truth and stop holding up the radical fringe as something worthy of emulation. Debating these issues with those who do not want to know the truth, or who claim to be (or know) the sole arbiter of what is true and real (as revealed in the Bible or any other religious text) will not sway the unenlightened. Throwing pearls to pigs can help nothing. Where we go with what we have learned is the only proof of real value in any of this discussion.