Does the Universe Blah Blah Have Meaning?

Does the Universe Blah Blah Have Meaning?

A colleague of mine died unexpectedly just a few days ago. I’ve been quite flummoxed by the sudden death, especially as she had just moved into the office next to mine. Her death conjures up old and still confusing memories of another colleague who took her life quite a few years ago, and her death was a shock as well. Life always has meaning, we’re conditioned to believe, because human beings say it is so, but in the Sunday Edition of the New York Times (Oct 7, 2007) I read a quite provocative and stimulating two page advertisement that featured 12 scholars and scientists who tried to answer the equally flummoxing question, “Does the Universe Have Purpose?” This is one of those Latin logical arguments, isn’t it? Somewhere in the perfectness of Greek logic, can’t we say, Life has meaning, therefore the Universe has meaning, therefore both were “meant” by something which brought meaning to somebody’s theological mind, right? Maybe not?

Of course life, and the universe has meaning if you have faith, if you want to believe that’s so, if you can’t face the vast meaningless, random events theory that a few scholars offer for faith believers to chew on, but by and large, everybody wants to believe that we have purpose, and so by extension, the Universe must have purpose too, for we are part of the Universe. You can see the logic, yes? You can even add a Creator in there, if you think it will help find meaning.

But so long as humans talk to other humans, humans will tend to say, of course the Universe has meaning. But then a few of the scholars in the advertisement
(www.templeton.org/purpose) offered some challenging perspectives that humans might not want to think about, at least in the context of meaning. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and the director of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium, wrote something that smelled a bit funky. After agreeing that religious minded people might want to believe that God has given them purpose, he goes on to write: “But if you’re one of the 100 billion bacteria living and working in a single centimeter of our lower intestine (rivaling by the way, the total number of humans who have ever been born) you would give an entirely different answer. You might instead say that the purpose of human life is to provide you with a dark, but idyllic, anaerobic habitat of fecal matter…” Go to the website for further olfactory details…

Now I’ll admit, as long as humans pontificate ad nauseum about meaning, well, the little bugs in the world (microscopic, and those we sometimes run in panic from) bring on a whole new “context.” What about their meaning? What about their existence? How do they fit into the purpose-thing? Who is their bug God? Don’t they have a say? Of course not, of course not, just the humans get to own “meaning” right?

I know, life is so beautiful, and often, so not, that surely it was “designed.” And, to muddy the waters even more , humans have written that it was so. There, that proves it. But aren’t those deliberations just a poor human’s desire to make meaning out of everything? I’m a bit leary and weary of the pastoral/religious responses I’ve heard over the years, but then I know that’s what they’re supposed to say. Nothing new there. But the human rationale, or argument, for purpose just doesn’t seem convincing, and by the way, I’m a pretty up-beat guy, so it’s not any nihilistic notion that I offer. But when ever I hear anyone espousing the truth about this, it nearly always turns anthropomorphic, and then, I wonder, who’s trying to persuade whom?

Socrates had it right, as he had no faith with the philosophers of the heavens. Instead, he questioned why humans believe what they believe. He often found adults who knew they were right, and then, he began to help those poor Greeks learn that what they knew was just the opinion of someone else. Perhaps that’s all we’ve got. And then there’s The Buddha’s remark, “ I don’t recall saying anything about the (Hindu) gods.” Well, we have much to wonder about, don’t we? Please read the 12 scientists/scholars reflections on line, unless you read the Sunday paper. It’s okay we ask the questions. It’s the insistent answers that bug me sometimes.

"Does the Universe Have a Purpose?"

Does the Universe Have a Purpose?

The New York Times ran a special 2 page advertisement featuring the comments of 12 scientists and scholars answering the question, “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?”
The short answers can be found in the Week in Review section (Oct 7, 2007) issue of the Sunday New York Times. The slightly longer responses can be found at
www.templeton.org/purpose (not hotlinked, sorry)

These are fascinating and quite thoughtful replies, and soon I’d like to chip in and add a 13th comment, but for now, please try to find the special feature as I am sure you and your favorite conversationalist could have a hey-day with the questions, and replies. I’m tempted to use the site when I start introducing Socrates in a few weeks to students in a “World of Ideas” class.

What are You Reading/Why are You Reading?

What are You Reading/Why are You Reading?

cnn.com just reported on America’s reading habits, an update from the 2002 National Endowment for the Arts report which offered a fairly bleak, perhaps just discouraging sign that more and more, fewer and fewer of us are reading, but then the question is,
What are we reading? Here’s the article in case you’d like to read it.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/08/21/reading.ap/index.html

But then I began wondering if I had made the quota for the year, as an older near retirement age, aging literature professor. So if you don’t mind, I’ll pass along a few titles that have been quite rewarding, some more so than others, some which disappointed, and some I couldn’t finish as I didn’t have to write a paper or review.
Hope you enjoy the list, and they are all recommendations. Lastly, I didn’t read these last week, but over the last year.

I’ll start with the last book read, a recommendation, and one I actually started to read a second time as I wanted to more clearly remember everything the author wrote.
Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept was quite an eye-opener, and made me realize how naïve I was about the effects of Muslim immigration, population surges and Scandinavia’s complacency with integration. I believe the paperback is coming out on Sept. 11.

While all sorts of books on Buddhism are available to the public, I started rereading one book that I found in our Honolulu hotel several years ago, The Teaching of Buddha, which would probably be found by writing to the publisher BDK Sudatta Hawaii, in Honolulu. This isn’t anything like Thich Nhat Hanh or The Dalai Lama’s books, for it has more of a scriptural feel to it. Highly Recommended for someone who has an interest in the less commercial texts on Buddhism.

By all means read John Updike’s Terrorist. I’m not sure if it will grip you like it did me, but I found that this is one of the recent books I just couldn’t put down. Don’t you hate that when a good book completely absorbs your life!

Just before the movie came out, I wanted to read Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. What a beautiful writer. I loved every page of it. As with all books made into films, this one is much more rewarding than the beautiful filmic “Namesake.” Her The Interpreter of Maladies was quite wonderful as well, but I found that I had earmarked my last page about half way through. I do enjoy short stories, and if you are looking for perhaps the best recommendation of a good story writer, please, go out and find Jhumpa Lahiri.

Did anyone read Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason? I hope so. The material he writes about is quite absorbing, and I assume that anyone, anyone interested in the health of our planet will find a few chapters worth staying up late for.

This summer I couldn’t get enough information on triathlons, but I did find the magazine
Triathlete to be a delightful fantasy of what I could become, if I trained every day, found a trainer, and of course, landed a corporate sponsor. I can pretend I am right behind everyone one of those speedy swimmers, cyclists or runners. HaHa. But the book that helped the most, perhaps in its small tips, was Michael Finch’s Triathlon Training. I’ll start rereading it again in the winter when I am about to start training for my second entry into the New York City Olympic Triathlon next July.

Just the other day, while browsing through one of Milwaukee’s bookstores, I opened the pages of The New York Review of Books. I had always assumed it was the stuffiest of stuffy book magazines, but I found several wonderful articles which I quickly read over
several cups of coffee. The issue had a fascinating article on Gunter Grass’s new memoir, which if you haven’t heard about it, is quite controversial, and I also appreciated the insights about the Islamic scholar, Tariq Ramadan. I’ll look for more issues.

In a different bookstore I found a small blue book which just seemed quite enticing. Has anyone every heard of the Polish poet, Tadeuz Rozewicz? His new poems were quite refreshing and yes, eclectic, and yes, about Polish life and culture, and yes, require a reader to be patient with references the American reader might need background on, but it is a delight to read European poets. This collection was translated from the Polish by Bill Johnson.

I did enjoy, and have enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy the Selected Poems of Fernando Pessoa & Co., translated by Richard Zenith. I found this 1998 text in a used bookstore, but really, everybody reading this, go out and find Fernando Pessoa. I would recommend reading and rereading every poem!

Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon came highly recommended, and I gave it a good read but about halfway through, I decided I wanted to let it go, and find something that might hold my attention a little stronger. I am sure I can come back to it. Perhaps I put my expectations of the South American novel ahead of the novel, if that makes any sense.

Over Christmas Break, I read, breathlessly, just before seeing the movie (a must!!) PD James’ The Children of Men. Oh, what a story. I admit having never read a PD James novel, but this story is so extraordinarily compelling, even though that sounds a bit too praiseworthy for any novel. A must read.

Speaking of must read, please put your hands on anything by the Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk. I didn’t get all the way through his Istanbul, but I’ll admit the competition for my time were hundreds of undergraduate English essays which had to take priority.
So I read the compositions, and as a change, or reward, I read his lovely memoirs of growing up in Istanbul. But his Snow is probably one of the most engaging, thoughtful, beautifully designed novels I’ve read, well, in a long time. He’s the recent Nobel Prize winner in literature, and while that doesn’t always raise an eyebrow, I would recommend you find something by this amazing writer.

Do you like history? I just found the most intriguing publication, the BBC History Magazine. It is just a treat, a delight, not necessarily a hoot, for it is quite academic, but it is for the common arm chair historian, and if you want to read about anything British, well, try to find this colorful and charming magazine.

And lastly, but not in order, I’d recommend that you find Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Toleranceby Ian Buruma. This book, along with While Europe Slept will give you a good detailed picture of what’s happening politically and socially in Scandinavian Islamic countries.

Please don’t think I’ve read these day by day, month by month, for I haven’t. But when I saw the cnn.com article on what we Americans were reading, I couldn’t help but look back in awe and amazement for just a few of the wonderful titles out there that might capture your attention as they did mine.

3:16:45

3:16:45

Okay, it was the hardest, longest and most physically challenging “effort” I’ve ever put myself through, with the exception of Army basic training in the summer of 1968, but now that it’s over, and my back isn’t killing me as much, I have to say I would do it again, and again and again, until only three guys are left standing in my age group at the start of the swim down the mighty Hudson. I predict that might be the 75+ year age group, but I’d like to stick it out, and try for that in about 14 more Nautica Olympic Triathlons. In July 2006, after finishing terribly in a sprint triathlon, I never would have imagined that a year later I would have completed such a longer race, even sprinting to the end in Central Park. But the challenge from my niece was just enough to say, why not, I’m only 60, a Clydesdale, in triathlon weight terms, and riding on a speedy 1970 Miriushi 12 speed, no wet suit, no running belt. What a year of training can do!

Here are the grueling details. First of all, I completely, totally, idiotically did not comprehend how long it would take to walk from the transition area (where we changed from one event to another) to not only the end of the swim, but to the beginning, nearly a mile upstream. As a result, I found myself running in bare feet through a crowd of sauntering Sunday athletes who were all going to swim long after my beginning time of 6:00 a.m. As a result, not only did I forget to get my timing chip, as that was the last thing I thought I needed, but I made it into the water, and into my wetsuit in RECORD TIME, hanging on to the start rope for dear life, with about 18 seconds before the starter gun. I dipped into the water just to prepare for the longest swim of my life, only to bob up and see that everyone had started.

If you’re wondering did the current help me swim in record time, I would admit yes, and yes, I did swim it faster than in a current less lake in Wisconsin, but I wouldn’t exactly call it swimming, more like a desperate attempt to sidestroke my way down past the hundreds of bobbing heads that were ahead of me, and soon to be behind me. At one point, I heard my niece yell tons of encouragement, but after the first 25 yards, I was pretty much a drifter. The lesson of the swim is that I do need lessons for open water swimming, I do need to learn bilateral breathing technique, and I do need to stop thinking that pool swimming is anything, anything, anything related to open water swimming. But the good news is that I didn’t drift out into the Atlantic, I didn’t swim from buoy to buoy, and I wasn’t pulled out of the water by the NYPD. So was it my fastest swim ever. Absolutely!

I must say it was a miraculous feeling to reach the end of the swim, and get a hand out of the water from one of the race volunteers. Then a long wet walk/jog to the transition area, slip out of the wetsuit as fast as possible, and into bike shoes and a helmet in record time. The greatest challenge of the 40K bike ride was not the long. very long hill climbs up the West End Highway in Manhattan and the Bronx, no, the tough part came right in the transition area with a sharp right turn and an immediate steep climb. I had practiced this monster twice the day before, so I was ready to take the hill, and by some miracle, I made it up with falling, or causing a major Tour de France crash up. The ride was good, long, even longer, with more hills than I had trained for, and oddly, I passed a few riders, and I even offered encouragement of “How ya doin mate?” which made me wonder where did my Irish brogue come from in the middle of terribly hard bike climbs, but regardless of my brain turning Irish on the West End Highway, I returned to the transition area in one piece, with no flats, no crashes, no blood. Back to transition area, and into running (jogging) shoes and on to Central Park. (At this point, I assumed all my times were being accurately reported when I crossed several rubber timing mats, even though my chip was still hanging on the chip board way back at the start of the swim.)

My training for Central Park took place primarily up and down Lake Shore Drive and
Lake Park on the eastside of Milwaukee, so I had a few hills to train on, and in the last few weeks, I kept hitting these hills more regularly, and perhaps some of it paid off, for while I didn’t walk the 10K portion, I didn’t exactly jog the portion either, but to be honest, without a chip, it’s hard to say what I was doing with my tired legs, but toward the end, say the last mile, I could feel the excitement of possibly finishing and started to pick up whatever pace I had, and finished with a stride longer than I had in training, gasping for air, looking a little startled that I was actually going to finish. When I saw the clock above the finish line, I began to grasp the significance of the whole event, and was inspired to even sprint hard to the very end, in a sea of tears, and then to my surprise, a cold wet towel, a beautiful medal, and then someone asked “where’s your chip?”

All in all, the most exciting, challenging race I’ve ever trained for, and yes, I’ll try it again. Next year, I’ll try to remember to pick up the chip before hitting the water.

For pictures, go to
www.nyctri.com
then search for the pictures link,
then type in Clinton under name,
or race number 191,
and see a few seconds of the race.

Olympic Dreams

Olympic Dreams

Ha Ha! Not the Olympics, not the Olympics every 4 years, no. But yes, Olympic “distance.” That’s what I’ve been working on as I try to put a few finishing touches on training for an Olympic distance triathlon in mid July in New York City. Can you imagine swimming in the Hudson off Manhattan for 0.9 tenths of a mile? Or cycling 24 miles up Manhattan through the Bronx or jogging through Central Park for a 10K? Okay, now let’s put all that together, in sequence, back to back, right after the other. Oi Vay!
Nothing I’ve ever done tells me I could actually do this, until last summer when I nearly called it quits in a sprint distance triathlon and my first outdoor lake swim. I kept holding on the buoys, dogpaddling, drinking the Lake, but somehow, miraculously, I made it to the end, and felt the good earth beneath my feet again.

That day last summer was incredibly hot, in the 90’s, with a high heat index, and a monster hill to just start the 5K. After it was all over, and sitting on a bench recovering my lungs, and legs, I realized how crazy I had been in thinking that indoor and outdoor triathlons must be similar, somehow. But they are at best only distant cousins! That afternoon I called my niece in NYC to see how she did with her Olympic distance race. Somewhere in that conversation, knowing I had come in dead last in my age group, I asked Deborah, how much further an Olympic was compared to a Sprint distance. And within a few weeks, I started getting ready for the biggest physical feat of my life. Now, I am only a few days out from the official New York City Nautica Triathlon.

Okay so I upgraded into a wet suit, a newer bike, and a cool outfit, but I’ve also lost about 20 pounds, gained a lot of confidence by swimming way way way further away from a beach than I ever have, and have started to even “take” a few hills on my new red racer. I’ve also fallen from the bike (clip shoes are a real trick to get out of before you fall over on concrete!), witnessed some bad bad cycling accidents, found thighs and calves I never thought I had, and have actually cranked it up into the highest road gear…not exactly anthing Lance might even notice, but a lot faster than my old 1970’s Mariushi 12 speed. I’ve also learned there’s no “pushoff” at the end of the lane in a lake, but learning also how to spot a buoy so far away, that it’s only a blip on my visual screen…but slowly, ever so slowly, I make the turn, and look for another one.

So, it’s off to New York City in a few weeks. My mantra? Sure, you guessed it,
“I am an Olympian!” That should get me through the long jog at the end of this crazy race. In case you’d like to see what the race is, and the distances, etc., here’s the website
http://www.nyctri.com

"Vacationing at Auschwitz" II

“Vacationing at Auschwitz” II


Alex Perry writes a very informative and thoughtful essay, “Vacationing at Auschwitz” in a recent issue of Time Magazine on the subject of visiting Auschwitz. See his article on line in the current issue at
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1630425,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner

Auschwitz is one of those places off the usual tourist map as it is a place of magnified horror and shock, yet it is also the most memorable place on earth that I have been to, and only for a few hours. Often, especially when teaching about the Holocaust, I revisit the walk I made with students and friends from Milwaukee to this notorious “secret prison” of the Third Reich.

Walking under the “Arbeit Macht Frie” is a chilling experience, yet it is also odd to see tourists from around the globe wondering through the brick army barracks that comprised what was once Auschwitz I, a Polish army camp that became a center of torture and brutality shortly after Poland was overrun by its neighbor/enemy. A number of the buildings offer a glimpse into the death camp, with displays of collected articles from the prisoners who arrived by the hundreds of thousands, day and night, month by month, year by year between 1941 and 1944-45, though I am not sure when the last train arrived in the last year of the War. By the time you finish a guided tour any visitor has a good clear sense of what happened here, and one can even walk by and even enter the first or “experimental” gas chamber and crematorium, though it has been reconstructed for tourists to have a “walk through.”

About a 3 minute or so bus ride away is the larger camp, Auschwitz II, which was expanded and magnified into one of the largest and efficient death camps of World War II. Without any trouble, you can take a picture of the classic structure of the main gate of Auschwitz II. Inside, it is quite remarkable, as today it looks like an open field with tens of tiny chimneys which to a new tourist, might be mistaken for the notorious five chimneys that sent 1.5 million men, women and children floating into the sky, or drifting down the river, or simply as field fertilizer. But they are only heating units of the countless number of barracks used in the 40’s for “housing.” I still can recall walking into a women’s barracks thinking that I might experience something, but it was quite clean, all the feces and urine had been washed away, and no one was screaming or moaning. No one was dragged away after a selection. I was safe.

At the very end of Auschwitz II, which might be a 30-40 minute walk, depending on your willingness to wonder through such a tranquil and peaceful field, you will come to the destroyed five chimneys and gas chambers though you can’t walk through any of it, unless you are looking for something like a bone or a scraping of Zyklon B. What is most memorable is the memorial plaque which explains, briefly, that 1.5 million Europeans were murdered here as a “final cleansing” of Nordic stock. By the time you kneel or rest at this memorial site, you probably are either tired, thirsty, or deeply saddened. I know I was. The sadness has lifted, but I am always remembering this place as one of the most unimaginable places on earth.

Huey Talk

Huey Talk

A few days ago while running errands around town, a Huey, or perhaps several, buzzed the east side of Milwaukee. We have a reserve Army base located here, so I imagine they were just running operations in the sky, or perhaps some other innocent training mission.

But I was below, looking up, having pulled my Focus over, stuck my head out into the cold spring air, and looked straight up, and not quite surprised, but a little disturbed, I began to feel tears streaming down my face. This isn’t the first time the whack-whack-whack of the rotor blades of a Huey has done this to me. In fact it comes close to classical conditioning…put me in the air space of a moving Huey, and I usually start to leak all over the place. I keep trying to get over it, and I say I am over it, and I can go long periods of staying over it, but somehow, like those one or two-step snakes in Vietnam, I get bitten with immediate reactions.

Hueys resupplied our firebase in Vietnam every day, and always, a few guys were stepping onto the Huey to ship out, and a few were stepping off, as new timers for a 365 day tour of duty in Vietnam. Of course the Huey also supplied us with hot food (roast beef, peas, roast beef, peas, roast beef, peas, roast beef, peas, roast beef, peas, and roast beef and peas.) When the Hueys landed on our little patch of US Territory in the foothills of Vietnam, it was always a good feeling. The wind would kick up fearsome, but for all of us (I’ve lost track of everybody) I wondered if it was some kind of hope that flew in every day with supplies, food, new troops and old-timers. I’ve even flown in on a Huey to this firebase and flew out, so I have a sense, even though it is a distant one, of what it’s like to sit in on, with an M-14 sitting between our legs. I’ve flown in larger helicopters (Chinooks) for special operations, and smaller ones, little mosquitoes, for super fast travel, but it’s Hueys I came to expect every day, and even if the sun didn’t shine (6 months due to the monsoons) I still knew a Huey knew where we were, and wouldn’t forget us.

I came home in bad shape, not physically, but my head was a bit screwed up, and couldn’t quite get over the accusation that I was a monster of the Nixon Administration. I wore a combat jacket for a few months, but with time, I began to find civilian clothes must more comfortable, and created much less buzz with the civilians who I spoke to whether it was ordering fried eggs, or asking a professor about John Milton’s “Areopagitica.” I put away the few medals and “salad bar” items worn on my Army dress coat, and today, I couldn’t even begin to think of where they might be. The few pictures I took are fading away downstairs somewhere in a slide box, and the few paper photos, well, I have no idea where there are now. One photo captured an image of me shirtless with a flak jacket and helmet, M14, outside a bunker. I believe that was taken on Hill 477, probably before the Hill was overrun by North Vietnamese Regulars in June of 1970. I still wonder sometimes why a NVA bullet didn’t spray my brains out that long night so many years ago. I don’t obsess about it, didn’t dream about it, but when those darn Hueys pass over, it all comes back.

Years ago, I thought I wanted to go back to Vietnam, find the hillsides where I lived for 13 months, but I sense it would have been a lonely trip, and no one to really visit with. I read about Tim O’Brien of The Things They Carried doing that in a New York Times Magazine article, but I wasn’t sure about the whole trip. My wonderful wife urged me not to go. Good advice at the time, and I haven’t felt the urge to go, but oddly, and maybe this is the reason for the tears, I did share a wonderful meal with friends last night in Milwaukee’s only Vietnamese restaurant. Maybe the atmosphere, the Hueys, our war in Iraq and Afghanistan, all of it came buzzing by this morning. And the evening, a delightful little theater production of “Ears on a Beatle,” a light look at two FBI agents following the likes of John Lennon. I was doing just fine on the front row until the sound director included a Huey helicopter hovering over the The Dakota. I couldn’t help but close my eyes, tune out the sounds, and take a few yoga breaths. Why have so many Hueys buzzed my brain in such a short time? I’m checking the local air traffic the next time I go outside.

God Talk

God Talk

Okay, so sooner or later, somebody’s going to ask, I believe in God, right? Well, that sort of depends, as my students like to say, for just about every question that I ask them. As a kid, I couldn’t help but at least say, “of course!!” as I was growing up in a Methodist parsonage, and praying over meals at home, and at church, and I suppose everyplace else where I thought it might help the situation. Nobody actually every asked the question, as everybody assumed everybody in Kansas was a believer. So swept up in the excitement of my father’s sermons, and baptisms and what I heard about funerals, that I decided while still in high school, that I would follow in the great footsteps, for my grandfather, too, was a Methodist minister.

So at the early and tender age of 18, even before I arrived at a church college to begin a pre-ministerial life, I started hitting the books required for securing a “license to preach.” This is it, I thought. Learn how to stand up before the believers and prove to them the joy of this life and the next, that is, if they believed. At the time, I didn’t believe I was in any trouble, with the Lord, or with any board that questioned my sermon topics that I used throughout my freshman year at a Methodist church college, as I was just a sub for the regular ministers who were not available to their flock.

I still have frightening memories of one college professor jumping up onto his lectern table scarring the b’Jesus out of us with rants and rages of a living, breathing Isaiah, or perhaps it was Jeremiah. I still attended the pre-ministerial student meetings, but remember that it was the late 1960’s, and despite the fact that I was living in Kansas, the rest of the world was revolting from so many different social/cultural/political problems that somehow, some of it must have trickled its way into that tiny town of Winfield, Kansas. English and journalism were beginning to replace the Bible classes, and even though I recall that I did poorly in nearly all of my classes, I found the work of the modern poets even more fascinating than the mysterious texts of the Old and New Testaments. By the end of my college years I was thinking more about the Peace Corps than seminary, and when that fizzled, I took a defeatist attitude and decided to volunteer for the U.S. Army knowing that there could be no way that I could be stationed in Vietnam for a tour of duty.

Little did I know that a Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, was also protesting the war in his country, and it wouldn’t be until decades later that I even knew he was there. Slowly I was losing interest in seminary, in even becoming a lay minister. Without knowing it, I had just drifted away from something that was fundamental and essential to who I was going to be, but now I was in a different kind of seminary, learning how to interpret “literary” texts, and I was even trusted with my first congregation of freshman though no faith in the word was required, but their words had many fragments, comma splices and run-on sentences along with even more frightening “agreement” errors. But I was beginning to get the hang of it, and besides, the flock left at the end of a season, and then a whole new congregation would sit in the pews next semester.

I admit writing the text, and talking about the text, and reading student texts were more appealing and invigorating than what I had planned on as a life of a minister, but the lure of graduate school and more classes and more new friendships with text writers was quite appealing. I had forgotten about God.

That is until a Jewish classmate invited me and my wife to his house in Detroit to enjoy a lunch in his “sukkah.” I vaguely recalled my father talking about this Jewish tradition, but now I am not sure I heard anything Jewish in my father’s church. It really didn’t matter for the hummus was delicious, and have been eating it for sustenance ever since, though at the time, I didn’t realize what was being kindled in my heart and mind.

Years and years later, decades perhaps, my wife asked if I would join her in attending a Jewish worship service on a Friday night on the east side of Milwaukee. We were just beginning to get started with our different academic assignments, yet my wife found herself yearning for something more than just having friends over, or trips to the zoo on Sundays. So without knowing what might happen, and with actually some excitement and curiosity, I decided to take up her offer. That evening, without knowing it, I had taken the first step in becoming a Jew. Between the rabbi and the cantor, the new “congregants” and the great cake and tea as part of the “oneg,” I had stepped into a world of the “Old Testament,” and realized how much I had missed, or probably misinterpreted, back then, in the olden days of college envisioning a life of a New Testament Methodist minister. Well that certainly changed.

Over the months and years of my wife’s own journey into Judaism, I, too, started to enroll and listen to my new Jewish teachers tell me about such things as Isaac’s sacrifice each fall season (where was I when I heard that as a kid?), or matzo ball soup (I can even make my own now), or who were the 6 million of a dictator’s wrath? Or maybe why Ruth in the Book of Ruth was not just a Moabite, but a distant cousin? Walking around in Jerusalem years later, I thought I had come home. Then came the new Jewish name. My father would have probably flinched, or twitched, on hearing that, but I never want to assume what he might have done. But his widow, my mother, was there for the conversion ceremony, and somehow she got through it. Soon I began further studies, and even tried learning enough Hebrew to take the next step, as an adult bar mitzvah boy. That didn’t seem to satiate my need for learning, so it was off to a summer camp rabbinic aide school, and by that time, I seriously wondered if a full time English professor could squeeze in a part time study toward a Jewish Studies program. When that seemed too much to do in one lifetime, I did take a step toward wanting to help others on the path toward Judaism, and in time, began teaching an Introduction to Judaism course to potential converts.

But at my university, where I was still able to manage holding down a full time job, I began to take on a new assignment of a course that reflected even a broader sweep of religion and literature, a general education course called simply, World of Ideas.
I began to read the Upanishads, and wondered about cool places like nirvana and what would it really be like to experience samsara. Then the Buddha came into my life.
Then the Dalai Lama. And finally, all the way from Vietnam, Thich Nhat Hanh, who taught me not how to hold my breath, but to simply acknowledge it. And much more.
But Lao-Tze also dropped into my life through this course, and so did Confucius.
And in time, so did Muhammad. And on the day I read Surah 37 in the Koran (in English, not Arabic) I couldn’t help but sense how this journey was a complete circle of coming and going, for there was not Isaac, but Ishmael, and off we went from ancient Israel to southern Saudi Arabia to rebuild the Kaa’ba.

So where is God in all of this? Actually I thought I found a hint when teaching Socrates, or introducing Socrates to my students. At one point, the “text” points to Anaxagoras, a “pre-Socratic” philosopher who got into much much trouble for interpreting gods as simply a metaphor for human desires, wishes and fears. Labeled an “atheist,” he too was run out of Athens because of his unpopular “views.” Yet it’s Anaxagoras who has my current interest. Why didn’t his views gel with the Athenians? Why was the personification of gods and goddesses more acceptable to even the smartest guys? Even Socrates paid homage to the Greek gods, for he was probably as pious as anyone.

And another mystery keeps me looking. Wasn’t it the Zoroastrians of Persia who introduced the Cosmic Battle of Good and Evil to the exiled Jews in Babylonia?
Where is God? Well, God just might be a text. I’ll keep thinking about it.

Training for the Big One?!

TRAINING FOR THE BIG ONE?!

I can’t say exactly what the appeal of triathlons is, yet I am already beginning to feel that I want to step up to the next level, from “sprint” distance to “Olympic” distance. Last summer I tried an open lake swim in a sprint triathlon in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, and thought I was going to drown with the choppy waves, but I made it, a little shaken and stirred, and came out of the water like someone does for the first time in shock water therapy. I then got on an old 1980’s Maruishi 12 speed and pedaled my way through 15 miles around the lake, and then, on practically the hottest day of the year, started jogging up a steep hill. Well, I did terribly at this event, so I can’t quite figure out why I would want to swim, bike and jog even further, but on that memorable day in Pewaukee, I knew that I wanted to continue to train and improve for these triple heart beat events.

Actually, I’ve been entering indoor triathlons (an oxymoron) since the late 1980’s at a local gym in Milwaukee. Of course the size of the age group I’ve been in is quite small, and if I am lucky, I can pull a first or second or sometimes a third place finish without totally dying. A few years ago I entered an AARP triathlon in Madison, and thought the combination of indoor pool, and outside cycling and jogging worked just fine. A few years later I started to add on biathlons (jog and cycle) but unfortunately the one I entered has now shut down. After the debacle in Lake Pewaukee, I joined a triathlon training group in the Milwaukee area, and started swimming in a nearby lake with other individuals training for lake swimming. After the first dip, I thought I had been infused with a miracle growth hormone, for I hadn’t felt better in my entire life. Perhaps I ingested a few lake microbes that actually gave me a short boost. But it’s a bit chilly out there today for a swim (temp=23F today) so I am back to my gym, working up to 36 full laps or about a mile. For a while, I could only manage 9 laps or ¼ mile, the distance for a sprint triathlon, but with practice and perseverance, I am now training at the mile distance.

So I have to get an upgrade from my 1980’s Maruishi 12 speed and I will need a wetsuit, but for now, I am happy to get up to the gym and envision that I am about to either dip into the Hudson River, or tackle 26 miles in Manhattan and environs, and finish off with a 10K in the Park. Count me in, everybody.

Not All Poetry is Mad Poetry

NOT ALL POETRY IS MAD POETRY

With all the excitement in the poetry business about bipolar, chronically depressed and schizophrenic poets, I’d like to advocate here, briefly, for the non-psychotic, non b-p, non-chronically depressed poet. I admit I sometimes wish I had that rush of energy and imagination that is often documented in poets going all the way back before psychotropic drugs were even thought of as a temporary solace from that “mad” energy. Every year I read about more and more of the world’s gifted poets as having some sort of psychiatric diagnosis. I’ve lived close to these illnesses, I’ve assisted in a funeral of a dear poet who lost herself to the impulse of the noose. I’ve read some of the best poetry criticism that focuses on the mental health of wonderful, wonderful poets. I’ve read just about everything I can by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison who has helped me more than any other clinical psychiatrist to understand what moves and terrorizes the fragile psyche of so many poets.

But every once in a while, admitting that I am a poet, and not diagnosed as a “mad poet,” I yearn for the calm, reasoned, compassionate, clever, charming, witty, imaginative voice of a sane poet. There are a few out there, aren’t there? I’ve learned that this propensity for writing poets gets more artists to the grave sooner than all other writers, and to be quite honest, I am quite saddened by this. At the same time, I know we must have a few elder, middle aged, somewhat aged, youthful and young poets who go through their daily lives without a manic or depressive impulse, just the quiet voice that calls the poet to the writing table, or keyboard, or whatever paper might be available for a dream in language, as some do call it.

Okay, I’ll admit I’ve been mad, sad, elated, ecstatic, joyous, amused, puzzled, perplexed, and all together overwhelmed with the beauty of experience tapped out into the beauty of lines and stanzas. I’ve written poems where I have been crying my heart out as I try to hear the voice of an ancient Incan warlord face the onslaught of Spanish conquistadors. I’ve laughed my way through a few lines, I’ve squinted, I’ve been baffled by the way lines simply appear on the page, and everytime it happens, I know I’m in a special time space warp that is for me the most precious of moments while here on Earth. Yet in all of those experiences, I can’t say they have come from a particular mental diagnosis. It just comes from the beauty of reading and writing, or writing and rewriting poems in the hopes that someone else might appreciate or just enjoy the meager work that I find to be the most fulfilling work of a lifetime.

I do enjoy the confessionalist poets and all who follow in their tradition. I am deeply appreciative for all the poets who have written through their depression and manic episodes, but occasionally, I just want to acknowledge that a poet doesn’t have to be a deeply troubled soul to be able to write deeply troubling poems. I do acknowledge that poetry is written in a particularly unique state of mind. Some might call it a dream state, a heightened state, an extra-sensory state, but just as a small footnote to the volumes and volumes of poets who have written with deeply troubled psychoses, I just wanted to add that a few of us out there, and throughout history, have just simply been awed by either the world, the language in the world, or maybe both. As a brief example, here’s something written just a few weeks ago that might illustrate where I’m going, or coming with this brief blog:


AT THE END OF THE WAR
(after “The End and the Beginning,” Wislawa Syzmborska, 1993)

DeWitt Clinton

We need to do something about all the lost limbs.
Would anybody please volunteer to search
For who has lost legs, arms, faces?

We’re all thirsty, yes, but does anybody know
Where we can find a brook, a creek that
Doesn’t have our floating cousins?

Yes, yes, we need a morgue, but first
We must find a few dogs to tell us
Who is beneath the stones.

We know Gertrude and Maurice and maybe
Alfonse, maybe more, all have to be found.
Bandages, surely someone has some bandages.

We want to rebuild. Does anyone have a ladder?
Let’s leave God out of this for awhile.
Let’s start in the square, and slowly remove

What was thrown down from the sky.
Who knows how to get a weather report?
Will there be good weather for tomorrow?

Yes, that’s a good idea, but we can always
Talk, there’s always a lot of time for talk.
We’ve got such a mess.

Brooms. Everybody, find all the brooms.
Can anyone send a letter, we need to let
Someone know this has happened.

Tomorrow we can start burning our families.
Surely someone will see the smoke.
Surely someone will come.