Adam and Eve (sort of)

http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0603/feature2/index.html

Following DNA markers and Y chromosomes scientists have been able to show that modern humans originated in Africa; specifically Ethiopia (Jah Rastafarii!). First central Asia, i.e. Afghanistan, then from that area Europe and Asia, and from Siberia finally, the Americas, were populated by the gradual movements of people pushed further up rivers and along coasts by the growth of their own populations and cultures.

In other words, traditionally scientist have always postulated that that most human of activities, war, was why humans migrated and populated new areas. Whereas this is new evidence that it had more to do with peaceful movements motivated by the search for new hunting grounds and new living space.

Here's the kicker: While none of us carry the exact same genetics, there are patterns: i.e. all white people have certain genes in common, all people of Celtic descent have certain genes in common, all people descended from Brittany in France have certain genes in common. This means that there was a certain person who originated that genetic mutation, who is the grandfather of all Brittany Celts, for example. Well, it seems there was a primordial Eve in East Africa, a woman who had a genetic marker we all share. And roughly a thousand years later, there was a primordial Adam, again with a certain mutation that ended up in all of us.

What I find fascinating about this is that, beyond the obvious and very final refuting of certain racist rhetoric, it would seem to also be sobering news indeed for Nationalists. How can someone cling proudly, for example, to being Irish, with the knowledge that first of all, Celts were almost identical to the Italic and Greco peoples who eventually became Greeks and Romans, and furthermore these Indo Europeans were at one point barely much different from the other Indo Europeans, the Slavs and Indians and Armenians and Persians and Germans, and furthermore all these Indo Europeans were at one point split off genetically from the non-nondescript people who originally left Africa. And other splits went the other way and became Mongols and walked across the land-bridge to the Americas.

In other words, the only true differences between us are purely cultural, and cultural differences are arbitrary: you wear pants, I wear a kilt, you play drums and dance naked, I worship my ancestors, he eats cow eyeballs, she loves democracy, they love hockey, we drink milk.

AAAAAAARGH

If I add up the time (I realize afterwards ) I've spent trying to gather world news, editorials from people who can tell me what to think about the world news, habs news, habs analysis from people who can tell me what to think about the habs, emerging-conversation news, articles by people who can tell me what to think about the emerging-conversation, music-biz news, criticism from writers who can tell me what music to like and dislike, and googling whatever odd periphery is burning my mind with cosmic intensity with the urge to investigate immediately, IT'S A LOT OF TIME.

By contrast if I add up all the moments (I realize afterwards) I feel aggravated, victimized, sorry-for-myself, and generally persecuted because I have neglected to spend time on the individual pursuits I really want to get on with in my life, my paintings, my songs, my writings, getting back into shape, THEY'RE A LOT OF MOMENTS.

And despite the fact that I've acknowledged the fact it recurs.

I am an INFORMATION JUNKY. The internet and news media is my SMACK. It is burying the substantive output of my life, and rendering me the static, non-contributing, unimaginative drone society likes me to be. And it is NOT HEALTHY.

AAAAAARRRRGHHHHHH

Not Familiar

When he is spoken to, he has next to no idea what is being said. He hears the voice, he knows something mysterious is being passed along, but he lacks the experience and knowledge to understand it. However, more importantly than understanding on rational basis, it's plainly obvious that he fully understands, and is calmed and reassured by, what is being communicated on an intuitive basis: that the attention and time spent passes along love and a sense of belonging.

I wish that sounded familiar in the way mentioned in my post, "Malachi". I believe it is possible.

?

Nice article in CT

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/11.35.html

As roundly concise and clear an overview of what emerging is all about as I've come across, nice smooth read, too.

Check out the first comment under it though, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck...

Malachi

He seems to have only fleeting moments of recognition, a shadow from above, voices, somewhat identifiable, inexplicable highs and lows. Sometimes his cries result in his wish being answered, other times not. Driven by the overwhelming instincts to eat and sleep and be warm and clean, he will soon embark on the challenge of discovering you can't always get what you want. But one way or the other, if you cry, what you need seems to get supplied. Most of the time. And when not there is nothing worse, and no explanation. But he has to choose to trust anyways.

He sounds familiar, right?

metro convo with enoch

Yesterday on the metro Enoch was musing about the polytheistic nature of our society. For many, YHWH is just one in a pantheon which includes Mithras, Venus, Mars, and many others, consumerism, nationalism, celebrity.... sure, for many Christians he is like a Zeus figure, "in charge"of the other gods and godesses. But for many he is not. How many Christians have Jesus as a kind of lucky charm with which to better procure the real blessings of fortune, success, wealth, pride?

And for the non-spiritual, is the consumerist/ nationalist/ militarist package of the conservatives really worse than the consumerist/ idealist/ reactionary package of the liberals? Aren't Liberal and Conservative just pagan religions worshipping the pantheons listed above?

But our quarrel is more with the Christians, because we name ourselves after the one who's career and effforts were to save from these idle/idol distractions and instead to feed and clothe the needy, while at the same time we fall into the same traps of religion that 10 000 years of (recorded) generations have fallen pray to.

How can I turn my back on religion? I'm pretty involved in the cults of reactionary ideology, of intelectualism/rationalism, I'm a high preist of defensive pride. Where do we find out how to dump these things? I know it's there in Jesus but I'm reading with religion-goggles I don't know how to take off.

Thomas Cahill compares modern religions like Republicanism and Individualistic Hedonism to pagan ancient Greece very succesfully, in Sailing the Wine Dark Seas: Why the Greeks Matter.

Campolo interview:

http://www.crosscurrents.org/CompoloSpring2005.htm

Some really interesting thoughts on the whole interfaith question, emphasis on the Muslims.

Shane Claiborne 2

So I've finished the book and while it's highly recommended by ME it comes with a cautionary note: this guy's actions and ideas made me feel like a defensive-minded, money-grubbing, self-obsessed glutton. Which was exilerating in a sense, since that's exactly what I am. And he'd probably say he was too.

The strength of the book is that amid inspirational and traumatizing anecdotes, stirring and bitch-slapping-across-the-kisser quotes, and great nuggets of wisdom, he includes so much positivity, i.e.: not just pointing to the problems and injustices but pointing to real ways people can and do help in heroic and gargantuan ways, ways that seem attainable (if I could just put down my burger).

Shane Claiborne

Reading Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne, a founder in a neo-monastic, urban commune of people mainly helping the homeless, prostitutes, and addicts around their area in Philadelphia, as well as peace efforts in Iraq and Calcutta. Very interesting, and a-propos to an emergent longing for the actual concrete dimension of all the nice thoughts and ideas. People actually doing what we daydream would be nice to do.

article in an interesting Catholic / emergent-attitude website, Busted Halo:

http://www.bustedhalo.com/TheSimpleWay.htm

End Times Trivia

Ok, here's a little end-times trivia : tongue planted firmly in cheek of course

Question 1: Given that our current climate of militaristic Pagan administration and hollow, pharisaical religious establishment closely resembles Judea at the time of Jesus, and using his first coming as a model, who would he be (humanly speaking), where would he appear and what would he do if he came now?

Here's a couple to get you going:

1: He would be a black bus driver from New Orleans who recently lost his house in Katrina .. He would make a name for himself roundly criticizing the Bush administration for not helping and not caring. He would head up protests and hungerstrikes until finally getting put in jail: after extensive lobbying by the Christian Right!

2: He would be a monk of indiscriminate religious affiliation, complaining that it was not in fact himself who founded Christianity, but Constantine among others, and that tons of them have got it all wrong and they shouldn't be naming this thing after him! And finally he would be put in jail: after extensive lobbying by the Christian Right!

Pray contribute....

Whaaaaaaaa.....??????

Alright, we get the picture, we're riding the world too hard and she's gonna buck us off. Yep.

Yesterday was 36 without the humidex reading, 46 with. I can barely move. Also last weekend I spent a couple hours with only a bit of sunscreen on my shoulders.... I then spent the next three days shivering with a fever and covered in a burning red sunburn while trying to lower my temperature which eventually got me a cold.

Perfect...

This doesn't seem plausible, except that I was there: get this: when I was ten.... 19 years ago, I could spend the whole summer with no shirt on and never bother my darker-than-usual caucasian complexion with the slightest pink.

We've also had three bang-crashing, hurly burly thunderstorms in the last week, incredibly unusual for this area. I guess we should start re-thinking using the terms "usual" and "unusual" to describe the weather.

Where's this all going...

Sometimes I wonder if the planet may clean and restore itself regardless of our best efforts to aid or prevent it. Maybe in the face of such a crisis our role will become less to prevent "disaster" through environmental action, a disaster which may be necessary, but instead to educate and encourage people on how to survive the "disaster".

Maybe we will await the earth's wrath and convulsive self-healing with joy, and hold on as best we can?

Imagine, networks of inustrial mass-production and polution splinter apart.... cities' populations are scattered, re-populating the vast tracts of industrial farming with a return to sustainable, clean, village economy. Individuals are forced to rediscover, by necessity, their vocational calling, and eke out positive existances doing simple things they love, and their former prisons, the gleaming towers of Babylon, collect seeweed and lichen under a newly formed sea.

Dangerous and Fun.

bonjour,

today as I sat basking in the humidity, on the large marblesque terrace in front of the shiny babel of my employer, standard life, I was mocked by two unruly characters. I was sitting in my "casual friday" jeans, sipping water, and a couple of squeegee types with dreads and a lingering smell identified me as perfect slaving-for-the-man-part-of-the-problem-soulless mocking fodder.

ouch

Strange Animals

We have the capacity for typically animal behaviour. We are territorial, jealous, and violent. We are preoccupied with sexual conquest and material hoarding.

At our corporate worst, we are sub-animal, a raging virus sweeping across the earth, an infection, multiplying, destroying, eating, burning, a terminal illness the planet has somehow contracted.

But we are strange animals. Because at our best we will lay down our lives for another, will courageously risk everything in the rescue of a complete stranger, will forsake conquest for a life long promise.

It is this strange duality that I feel marks us as different, often for worse, sometimes for better.

This is Strange Animal.