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< Back Ethics and the Works of Mercy David Cowles Nov 7, 2023 “The Past is what it is, the Future will be what will be. We are just here, now!” Rule of thumb : Any 10 philosophers on the head of a pin = 18 different ethical systems! Most of us cling to a childhood confidence that ethics can be reduced to a series of commandments, a list of dos and don'ts, and the convergence of the 4 P’s: priest, parent, pedagogue , and police . Since 1500 CE, we have eagerly shifted our ethical focus away from the concrete act per se and onto the imputed ‘intentions’ behind the act (psychology) and/or its mythical ‘consequences’ (political science). “Act? What act?” The Future is nothing but a mirror image of the Past: New chairs, same deck! From Machiavelli (‘ends justify means’) to Mill (‘greatest good for the greatest number’) to Marx (‘dictatorship of the proletariat’) to Malcolm (‘by any means necessary’), we have made a pact to suppress the Present (action) and amplify the Past (intention) and the Future (consequence). We have deceived ourselves into believing that modern pragmatism is a smooth continuation of an ethical heritage that traces back to Moses and Socrates. It’s not! Moses did not lead the Exodus because he wanted to experiment with a new social contract or because he dreamed of enjoying a more lavish lifestyle in the ‘Land of Milk and Honey’, Canaan. Moses did it because Liberation per se is an ethical imperative. As we’ll see (below), it is one of the Works of Mercy , albeit writ large. The ethics of Moses, Socrates, Jesus, and Marcus Aurelius are consistent with their cosmologies. Our ethics…not so much! Example: Chaos Theory renders any ‘consequence-based’ morality untenable. No event ‘causes’ any other event; therefore, no event is to blame for any other event. On the other hand, every event is responsible for itself; it is its own intention and its own consequence. According to the ‘standard model’, an Event is simply the Past acting through the Present to secure the Future (Darwin, Freud, Trotsky, Skinner, Derrida, et al.). I am the accidental battlefield on which various cosmic forces contend: Michael vs. Lucifer, God vs. Satan, Arjuna vs. his kinsmen. According to this ontology, ‘to do’ is active voice in form only; in fact, it can have only one voice: the passive voice. I am the passive product of my Past projecting its ‘image’ onto my Future. Our morality, therefore, contradicts our ontology. It requires us to take full responsibility for events over which we have no control and to shun all responsibility for events over which we have total control. We’ve stood the Serenity Prayer on its head: “God grant me the serenity to accept things I could have changed but didn’t, and the courage to change things that can’t be altered.” According to contemporary ethics, “the devil made me so it…or it was an accident; I inherited bad genes…or bad Karma; I grew up poor…or posh; I was abused…or neglected, and of course, I was under the influence of alcohol and drugs.” This contradiction is crystallized in the structure of most modern Indo-European languages: noun (subject) → verb (active voice) → noun (object). Past (noun) → Present (verb) → Future (noun). The active/passive voice is well suited to describe the transition from Past (subject) to Future (object): I dig a hole in the ground so that I can pour concrete. Most of us assume without reflection that this formula describes something that is a substructural feature of being itself: intention → action → consequence; I mean, how else could it be? Well, instead of Past (subject) → Present (verb) → Future (object), try Past (co-subject) → Present (verb) ← Future (co-subject) or Past (co-object) ← Present (verb) → Future (co-object). The difference appears subtle, but in fact, it is tectonic…to the extent that anything in philosophy can be ‘tectonic’. According to consensus, the contrast of Past and Future constitutes the Present. But according to our ‘alternative models’ (above), every Present determines its own Past and its own Future. It is easy to express an ethics based on intentions (Past) or consequences (Future), using active/passive verb forms. But how about an ethics divorced from any consideration of Past or Future, an ethics focused entirely on the Act per se , the Present? That would require an alternate voice: a Middle Voice , interactive and/or reflexive. Originally, Middle Voice may have been the dominant voice; today, it has disappeared or atrophied in most Indo-European languages. Now consider the Works of Mercy ! The first known reference to these Works, Corporal and Spiritual, comes from the theologian Pseudo-Isidore, a Frankish monk, writing around 550 CE. T he Works of Mercy focus on the material and spiritual needs of other creatures. They are consistent with the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule. They trace back to Chapter 25 of the Gospel of Matthew, but they are also mentioned in the Old Testament (Isaiah and Tobit): Feed the hungry. Water the thirsty. Clothe the naked. Shelter the homeless. Visit the sick. Liberate captives. Bury the dead. Instruct the ignorant. Counsel the doubtful. Admonish sinners. Bear wrongs patiently. Forgive offenses. Comfort the sorrowful. Pray for the living and the dead. These ‘new commandments’ make no reference to Past or Future, only Present. In fact, what makes these Works ethically imperative is precisely that they are divorced from motives and consequences. They just are! A recent Thoughts While Shaving mentioned Michael Kelly’s Holy Moments . His ‘Holy Moments’ are moments of kindness, of being there for others. In other words, performing the Works of Mercy ! The Past consists of ‘settled matters of fact’ – we can’t do anything about it. The Future is indeterminate; we can’t control it. We can only control the Present, the moment, the act. The Past is what it is, the Future will be what will be. We are just here, now! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

“…Everything that happens happens only once…there is nothing under the Sun that is not new! Being and novelty are synonymous.” < Back Miracles David Cowles Apr 1, 2025 “…Everything that happens happens only once…there is nothing under the Sun that is not new! Being and novelty are synonymous.” We’ve got it all wrong. How unusual! Ok, not so unusual. Let’s start over: We’ve got it all wrong as usual ! When you’re 10 year old, beginning to question what you do and don’t believe, the miracle stories from the Bible and the lives of saints are a real stumbling block. At 10, God’s still in the mix but Santa no longer makes the cut. But what about miracles? The Red Sea parting. Jesus walking on water, curing the stick, ‘multiplying loaves and fishes’. Mary appearing at Fatima (and elsewhere). The sick inexplicable cured at Lourdes (and elsewhere). Of course, these are just the stories that made the nightly news. Every day, all around the world, people are attesting to ‘miracles’, most not camera ready. But what are we post-Enlightenment science aficionados to make of these alleged events? A bunch of people lying to make an ideological point? Fictional parables that have been mistaken for historical reporting? Symptoms of mass hallucination? Exaggerated or otherwise distorted accounts of everyday events? If you are a believer, the authenticity of such miracles may be a load bearing column of your faith; or miracles may support a faith based on a ‘personal encounter’ with the Transcendent; or miracles may be a slightly uncomfortable aspect of a faith deduced through reason. If not, you may believe that the Bible’s miracle stories are meant to be understood metaphorically: “It was as if the food supply had increased; it was as though Jesus had walked on water.” If you are a non-believer, the objective impossibility of most reported miracles may contribute to your skepticism. Finally, you may accept the validity of at least some so-called ‘miracles’, but you may chock them up to non-miraculous causes: The parting of the Red Sea was caused by a strong wind. The apparitions at Fatima were an optical illusion. The cures at Lourdes testify to the healing power of the human mind. But what if I were to tell you that all of these explanations are wrong …on both sides? Inspired by the positivist philosophers of the early 20 th century (e.g. Ayer, Wittgenstein, Austin), we normally sort events into three buckets: (1) the set of all events that can be reliably repeated at our discretion (scientific method), (2) the set of all events that may repeat but cannot be replicated on demand and (3) the set of all events that can never be repeated. The first set contains the propositions of empirical science. The second set concerns potentially recurring patterns. The third set consists of events that can (or will) never be repeated under any circumstances: Given certain standardized conditions, water will always boil at 100°C. The Boston Red Sox have won a few world series and may do so again, but neither wishing nor rooting can make it so. Humpty Dumpty can only fall off the wall once (since all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again). Would it surprise you to learn that our first two sets (above) are empty (ø)? The Universe consists entirely of events belonging to the third set. Sometimes two events are so similar that we’re tempted to use an ‘R word’ (repeat, reflect, recur, etc.). But similarity, no matter how close, is never identity. Regardless of resemblances, every event is unique; otherwise they would all be just one event. On one level, all events are congruent – they are all ‘event-shaped’, whatever that means; but on another level, no two events are ever the same. Consider the cells in your body. There are more than 30 trillion of them living at any one time. Enough? (BTW, the national debt of the United States is also 30 trillion…dollars.) They are all descended from a single cell, and they all have certain structures and processes in common, but no two cells are the same cell. Two cells may be of the same type, but no two cells are the same cell. Each cell is an independent organism, occupying a unique region of spacetime at a particular site in the body, performing a specific set of functions, enjoying (or not) a unique life trajectory. Outside the classroom ‘A = B’ if and only if A is B, in which case A and B are just two names for one event. “You call it corn; we call it maize.” There are no absolutely, positively repeatable events because… It is impossible ever to reproduce exactly the initial conditions of any experiment. No true event is ever entirely the product of its initial conditions; there must always be an element novelty - the sine qua non of Being. The initial conditions of any event are always the entire Universe of past events. Each event is a unique reaction of a unique antecedent Universe to itself. Every event automatically becomes part of the antecedent Universe of all future events. Therefore every event contributes novel conditions that ensure that no future event can ever duplicate any past (or present) event. (Is this an extension of Godel?) The Universe is a block chain . Every novel event adds to the chain, making it unique. Therefore, every event has a unique pre-history. No one ever steps in the same river twice (Heraclitus), not just because the river flows but because every ‘stepping in’ changes the river forever. Patterns that appear congruent are only congruent down to a certain level of detail. All events appear ‘congruent’ on one scale, but any two events can always be differentiated on another scale. The structure of the Universe is fractal . Everywhere and on every scale, it is self-similar. As your perspective broadens, the same patterns repeat. On the other hand, every iteration is slightly different from any other iteration on some scale. “There is nothing new under the Sun!” That’s the adult version of my children’s frequent complaint, “Mom, there’s nothing to do, I’m bored” to which my spouse would always reply, “Only boring people get bored.” She’s right, of course! How can anyone ever be bored when so much is happening all at once all the time and everything that happens happens only once? In fact, there is nothing under the Sun that is not new! Everything that is, is new, always. Being and novelty are synonymous. How could they be otherwise? What claim to being would Y have if Y were identical to X. Y would simply be X…X would be, period! ‘Being Y’ would not be being at all. So where do so-called miracles fit in this picture? Nowhere…and everywhere. ‘Miracle’ is simply another name for ‘Event’. Every event is miraculous , i.e. unique – a novelty, the product of creativity, ultimately uncaused. An event may (or may not ) be predictable, but it can never be certain. Analyzing the apparent consistencies in the physical world (induction), we agree with Annie: there is a high probability that the Sun will come up tomorrow…but it’s not a certainty. Therefore, every sunrise is a miracle, exactly as the Ancients taught. Have you ever truly watched the sun rise? Then you know. Every sunrise is unique, every sunrise is a miracle. Arguing whether miracles are real is a colossal exercise in self-deception. Miracles are events so of course they’re real (unless your cosmology does not include ‘real events’). You object : It was a miracle that the Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVI, beating ‘the greatest show on turf’ but it was not a miracle that there was an Equinox on March 21 st . But these events are only apparently different: one was a ‘long shot’, one a ‘sure thing’, but neither was ultimately guaranteed . I wasn’t brave enough to bet on the 2001 – 02 Patriots, but I’m all in on the time of tomorrow’s sunrise; even so, it’s still a gamble. Miracles do not violate the Laws of Nature! How could they? The ‘Laws of Nature’ are just one way of conceptualizing what is . (Joyce’s Ulysses is another.) Every event is, and is not, the same as any other event. To the extent that one event appears to duplicate another, we call it natural . To the extent that it doesn’t, we call it novel . When an event is massively discontinuous with its predecessors, e.g. the Red Sea parting, we call it miraculous . But we are just putting labels on a continuum. It’s like the EM spectrum. It’s smooth but we call one part red and another part blue . In reality, it’s all just light . Every event is natural ; every event is novel ; every event is miraculous . For all their connotative differences, the three words are denotatively synonymous. Nor can we explain away ‘miracles’ by reducing them to safe, every day, non-miraculous, seemingly repeatable processes. Rather, the events we call ‘miracles’ are simply demonstrations of Nature’s creativity. They reveal aspects of nature we don’t often notice. Nature is not an inert stage set, suitable only as background for a Broadway blockbuster; nature is a force, an eruption, a physis . Nature does not merely ‘contain’ events. Nature lends its shape to events and is in turn shaped by them. Nature does not follow some pre-determined set of rules; it makes the rules. Whatever events occur, whenever and wherever – that’s nature ; we abstract patterns from those events and call those patterns, laws . Miracles do not occur outside the sphere of the possible; but they do live on the frontier. They encourage us to expand our sense of what’s possible, of what’s natural. They expose us to the transcendent power that is immanent everywhere in our material world. It’s a great mistake to imagine that Nature constrains variety. Rather, it is the rich top soil from which novelty continually sprouts. Nature is more than just the tiny subset of phenomena that can be approximated in a laboratory setting. Nature is what’s happening! Call it ‘miraculous’…or not, “It’s still rock and roll to me.” (Billy Joel) Image: Caspar David Friedrich, c. 1818. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Oil on canvas, 94.8 cm × 74.8 cm (37.3 in × 29.4 in). Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. 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“Satan glorified political power for its own sake. He defended the socio-economic status quo…Jesus’ mother proclaimed a political and economic revolution...” < Back Satan, Mary, and ‘Da Judge’ David Cowles Oct 15, 2023 “Satan glorified political power for its own sake. He defended the socio-economic status quo…Jesus’ mother proclaimed a political and economic revolution...” There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned barroom – you know…that place ‘where everybody knows your name’. Sadly, this Anglo-American institution is in decline on both sides of the Atlantic. We love to complain about socio-economic inequality and yet we are quietly witnessing the demise of a great leveler. The bar is where landlords and tenants, shop owners and wage earners, lawyers and tradesmen, bankers and borrowers have traditionally sat side by side, enjoying ‘a pint of the best’, and sharing their perspectives on the sorry state of the world. I love a good bar; you never know who you’ll meet and, if you shut up for a second, you can eavesdrop on the most interesting conversations. In my younger days, I frequented a bar where the ‘regulars’ included the owner of a rival bar, a pre-school teacher (and Stalin scholar), a florist, a contractor, a biology professor, a municipal employee, and an attorney. My best story, however, concerns a lazy summer afternoon with me sitting alone on my usual perch in my then favorite watering hole. Unexpectedly, two men and one woman walked in, already deeply engaged in animated conversation; they sat down right next to me. I had been going to this same bar for years, and as far as I know, none of the three had ever been there before. But of course, I recognized them immediately! Have you even been in a public space when suddenly and unexpectedly you encounter somebody famous? How do you react? Do you tell them how much you appreciate their ‘work’? Do you ask for their autograph? Or do you totally ignore them? I have adopted an intermediate strategy. I nod knowingly in their direction (sometimes they nod back) and I leave it at that. But not this time! On this occasion, I sat frozen on my stool, eyes forward, watching my bar mates only out of the corner of one eye and then only as reflected in the huge mirror that hung over the bar’s display of bottled spirits. And speaking of spirits, my drinking companions that day were none other than Mary, the virgin Mother of God, Lucifer (aka Satan), and ‘Judge Gudy’ (Gideon). In my experience, the only subjects worth talking about in a bar are religion and politics and this afternoon’s guests had apparently settled on politics as their topic du jour . Satan boasted proudly of his accomplishments in the field of politics. He reminded Mary that he had offered her son, Jesus, “all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence.” (Matthew 4: 8 - 9) Of course, Mary reminded Satan that Jesus had turned him down flat, but she did not challenge his boastful claim that he could in fact deliver ‘all the kingdoms of the world’. Clearly, this is political power way beyond anything Boss Tweed or Mayor Daley could have imagined. Then Mary lectured Satan on the terms of God’s own political praxis: “He has thrown down rulers from their thrones but lifted-up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty.“ (Luke 1: 52 – 53) Clearly, we were in for a good old-fashioned 19 th century donnybrook. Satan glorified political power for its own sake. He defended the socio-economic status quo. His platform did not include even a single mention of ‘justice’; but he confidently asserted the corrupt malleability of ‘all the kingdoms’ (not some, not most… all ). Nor did Jesus contest Satan’s ability to deliver absolute political power. It was taken for granted. On the other hand, Jesus’ mother proclaimed a political and economic revolution the scope of which would have made Marx and Lenin cringe. The argument might have gone well into the evening, “Who’s driving?” I thought, had ‘Judge Gudy’ not intervened, “May I tell my story?” “3 millennia ago, give or take, I was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites who were occupying our land. Suddenly, almost as if I’d been confronted by an angel, I thought, ‘You’re a brave man, and the Lord is with you’. I thought, If not me, who? If not now, when? If it’s going to be it’s up to me! “But of course, bravado gave way to skepticism and caution. “If the Lord is really with us, why has all this happened to us? Did I really receive a message from God or was I just daydreaming…again?” I prayed, “Give me a sign!” And I got one. “So that night, I engaged in my first act of revolutionary violence. I overturned the altar of Baal, tore down its ridiculous ‘pole’... a symbol of status quo and social hierarchy. Instead, I built on that same site an altar dedicated to YHWH and, using the wood from the pole, I sacrificed a whole bull. I even gave the altar a name, ‘Jehovah Shalom’, which means, ‘God is wholeness’. “Of course, I got caught, but I was the beneficiary of a ‘woke’ wave of ‘selective prosecutions’ and let go. I realize now that the destruction of Baal was just an initiation ritual; God was testing me to see if I was ready for bigger things. For better or worse, I passed the test. “Great for God, not so great for me! The cops (and my dad) had put the fear of Baal in me; I didn’t relish another bout with the law. But also, I didn’t want to turn down God, so I asked for another sign. And then another. No way out now! “So, I raised an army of 32,000 to take on 135,000 occupying soldiers. Farmers and craftsmen against Midian’s professional military. God or not, I couldn’t face the prospect of inflicting such carnage on my own people. So I decided to send 31,700 soldiers back home to their families. I would fight Midian…but with just 300 of my best . “I blush when people call me ‘the Father of Guerilla Warfare’. I was no military genius; I was just scared. I was willing to serve God, even if it meant martyrdom, but I was unwilling to sacrifice any more lives than absolutely necessary in the process. Besides, what was I going to do with 30,000 untrained soldiers? Better to rely on my best and brightest . And so, ya da, ya da, ya da … we won. With the help of God, and a lot of good luck, we drove Midian across the Jordan and out of Israel. "My only thought then was to get home to my father and my pastoral life. Surely my dad will let me drink wine now that I’ve defeated Midian in battle, or maybe not! Anyway, no more fighting for me. But my neighbors had other ideas. They insisted on making me King. "No way! As the leader of a victorious army, I was in a position to lay down the law… and this time I didn’t need to wait for a sign: 'I will not rule over you nor shall my son; the Lord will rule over you.” And so it was that “for 40 years the land was at peace...'” Silence followed. Slowly, Mary and Satan paid their tabs and Mary picked up the bill for Gideon. Satan left quietly followed a few minutes later by Mary. It seemed as though Gideon might hang out a while but, tab paid, he too left the bar. At that moment it occurred to me that the intellectual history of the 19 th and 20 th centuries had just played out in front of me. Satan advocated for secular pragmatism, democratic capitalism, the new world order. Mary argued for the overthrow of the existing socio-economic order to be replaced by a benign version of Marx’s Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Gideon argued for nothing. He lived his ideology, a fine blend of devotion to God, compassion for his fellows, and dedication to purpose. He had no desire for political power; he was content to let God rule Israel directly, without interference from permanent political institutions. He demonstrated the spirit of what today we call Anarchism . David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. 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< Back Trees According to life-long forester Peter Wohllben (The Hidden Life of Trees), trees communicate via electrical signals transmitted through their roots. Fungi connect the roots and form a “wood wide web”. Communication is at 220 Hertz and signals travel at 1/3rd of an inch per second…not exactly the speed of light. David Cowles According to life-long forester Peter Wohllben (The Hidden Life of Trees), trees communicate via electrical signals transmitted through their roots. Fungi connect the roots and form a “wood wide web”. Communication is at 220 Hertz and signals travel at 1/3rd of an inch per second…not exactly the speed of light. In addition, trees form friendships and recognize both their parents and their offspring. Finally, trees practice charity. Stronger trees share water and nutrients with less well endowed neighbors. Through this process even stumps can live on for hundreds of years. As a result of these processes, each tree has the opportunity to “grow into the best tree it can be”. One is reminded of the U.S. Army’s recruiting slogan, “Be all that you can be” and the Hebrew concept of Shalom. The question, of course, is whether there is anything approaching consciousness involved in this symbiosis. The rate of signal dispersion is so slow by our standards that we probably wouldn’t recognize it if there was. Also, we could be looking at a different kind of consciousness, a collective consciousness for example. Share Previous Next

< Back The Myth of the Maze David Cowles Sep 3, 2024 “Have you ever found yourself in a small, brightly lit room?” It’s something out of science fiction…or a primetime network cop show. You’ve just awakened, but not in your comfortable bed in your familiar bedroom. Today, you find yourself naked in a small, brightly lit room…and then you notice: your memories have been wiped. Well, partially wiped: you have no ‘thetic’ memories, memories of who you are or what the world is like; but you’ve retained all your ‘non-thetic’ memories. If you could walk, talk, swim, or ride a bike, you still can. You may even be able to chew gum at the same time. But you can’t recite the alphabet, add a column of figures, or discuss the Fall of Rome. Bummer! Fortunately this room has a doorway that opens out onto a corridor. Instinctively, you begin to explore. One corridor leads to another and then to another. Corridors branch off from each other. You wander aimlessly, with no fixed direction. Soon you realize that there are other people in these corridors. They don’t threaten you; in fact, for the most part, they pretty much ignore you. Apparently, each person is pursuing a personal agenda – but what agenda? Exceptions prove the rule: every so often you meet someone who seems interested in you , who tries to engage with you. Should you trust these people? Or fear them? How should you respond? Then things start to get interesting. Up to now, it’s been just ‘another tequila Sunday’ (excuse me, a what?).The bare and empty corridors begin to fill-in. They are punctuated with ‘stations’: food stops, drink stops, stations with free VR headsets, music stations, movie stations, stations with video games, handball courts, etc. You’d be reminded of a casino complex in Vegas or luxury seating at an NFL event, if you knew what they were. You could get used to this! Time goes by. You’re comfortable…but perplexed. What is all this? What’s going on? Do these corridors lead anywhere? If so, where? And why? And who are these ‘other people’ anyway? Gradually, you build your ‘social map’. Each person you meet is unique. But they seem to cluster into 4 fairly distinct groups. You might think ‘middle school cliques’…if you had any idea what a ‘middle school’ was. One group is frantic; they’re fixated on one thing only: We’ve got to get out of this place…if it’s the last thing we ever do! (Where’d that come from?) “Where are they going?” you wonder. “What’s out there?” Another group seems in no hurry to leave; they just want to understand! What’s it all about, Alfie? (Who’s Alfie ?) Folks in the third group don’t seem to care where they’re going or why they’re here. They’re more than happy just to enjoy this world and all it has to offer. Why would anyone want to leave? Who cares what’s out there? Or why it’s there? Or why we’re here? Being here is a gift! Enjoy it, prolong it, be grateful for it. Our final group doesn’t seem to care about any of this. They are focused on each other. “How can I help? What can I do to make your time here better?” (Whatever ‘better’ is!) Like any prison, this one ‘encourages’ you to join one of the ‘gangs’; you probably don’t want to do your time here as a lone wolf. To survive, you’ll need to create an avatar…choose an identity…and then keep your head down! But which identity? What turns you on? What floats your boat? Are you motivated by accomplishment, by knowledge, by enjoyment, or by service? Who R U? Or better yet, who do you choose to be? Ok, it’s a nice fable. But what’s the point? I mean, have you ever found ‘yourself naked in a small, brightly lit room’? A room with ‘a doorway that opens out’ into a maze of unmarked corridors? Have you? If you did, who did you choose to be? Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Electricity “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” is a movie currently playing on Amazon Prime. Louis is an early 20th century English painter with zero artistic merit…but that’s not important. What is important is the way Louis experiences the world. From time to time, he encounters the ineffable in the course of his everyday living. He imagines that what he is experiencing is a form of ‘electricity’ that permeates the world but lies beneath the plane of ordinary sensory perception. Many of us have had a similar experience; but I doubt if any of us called it “electricity”. In my day, it was fashionable to call it “energy”; Star Wars called it “the force”. I wonder, what’s the current nom de jour? The ineffable is the ineffable because it is…well, ineffable. It is the ‘immanence of transcendence’ in our everyday world. If we must name it, we must name it metaphorically. It is, after all, ineffable. In classical times, it might have been called “beauty”; in the middle ages, “God”. But to Louis Wain, it is “electricity”. How come? Louis Wain lived in the final days of a dark age ironically known as The Enlightenment. Though long past, it still casts a shadow. The Enlightenment was rooted in materialism and mechanism and in the certain belief that technological progress would inevitably bring about Utopia. So “electricity” was the closest anyone of that era could come to naming the ineffable. We know better today; but we are still struggling to find our own metaphor for the immanence of transcendence in the world. David Cowles Share Previous Next

< Back The Crucible Challenge Winner: Integrity vs. Life Grace Krzenski We are thrilled to share with you the winning essay from our first Young Writers Challenge, this one conducted exclusively at Cabrini High School in New Orleans. Our winner, Grace Krzenski, answered the prompt, "Why do you think Arthur Miller decided to call his play 'The Crucible' and which definition of crucible do you think Miller had in mind when he wrote his play?" Grace's essay has also awarded her $100. Congratulations, Grace! In the spring of 1692, Abigail Williams and Betty Parris, two children, started what would become a full-blown witch hunt that would result in the death of twenty people and the imprisonment of at least one hundred. Today we refer to this as The Salem Witch Trials. Arthur Miller, author of the 1953 play entitled The Crucible uses this unfortunate period of history to reveal what happens when fear and hysteria take control. According to dictionary.com , the word crucible is “used to refer to [a situation] that represents an extreme trial for someone, especially a situation that tests courage or preparedness.” Arthur Miller titled his play as he did in order to show that the residents of Salem were put to a moral test: they could tell the truth and die, or lie and live. Characters John Proctor and Tituba personify this moral dilemma and the two courses of action it presents. More specifically, John Proctor chooses integrity over life, while Tituba forfeits her integrity to live. John Proctor, a farmer in his mid-thirties, is cast as a morally challenged man who is not afraid to stand alone. Early in the play, we learn that he has chosen to stop going to church because he despises the sermons, and we also learn that he has had an affair with his servant, Abigail Williams. Clearly, John Proctor is an imperfect man; however, he has one incredibly redeeming quality: he cannot cling to a lie in order to save himself. Despite his absence from church and his infidelity, he passes the ultimate moral test when he refuses to perpetuate the lies that resulted in the death and imprisonment of so many in Salem. He stands alone when it would have been easier to do what so many others did; they lied to save their lives. Shortly before he is hung, he says, “I cannot throw away my life in a lie, even though it would save my life.” To John Proctor, life without the goodness of your word is not worth living. On the other hand, Tituba, Reverend Parris’s slave from Barbados, chooses life over integrity. Tituba is the first to be accused when Abigail Williams, Reverend Parris’s niece, claims that Tituba made her drink blood. Abigail does this to shift blame from herself to Tituba because at the time, witchery was a “hangin’ error.” When Tituba realizes that she will be faced with a fatal beating or hanging on the gallows, she confesses to witchcraft and quickly incriminates two others, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, both easy targets in the community. While one can empathize with Tituba’s choice, certainly John Proctor is the more admirable character; he chooses integrity above all else. However, it’s likely that Miller wants us to understand that this “crucible,” this test, is complicated, and that the way one responds cannot be so easily judged because fear and hysteria obscure both reason and the truth. So, while Tituba lies to save her life, it’s hard to condemn her. In short, Arthur Miller prompts readers and viewers to carefully consider the moral dilemmas in their own lives and to think about what lessons they might learn from what happened in Salem. At what point is it okay to lie? Is life more important than one’s integrity? Moreover, is it vain to choose integrity over life? These are the questions that Miller’s masterpiece raises. So, did John Proctor pass the test? Did Tituba pass it? It’s difficult to say definitively because it all depends upon what is most important to each individual. Grace Krzenski is a junior at Cabrini High School , New Orleans, where she enjoys studying science and English. Grace is on the varsity Cabrini basketball team, and in her spare time enjoys reading, playing basketball, and spending time with family and friends. She is looking forward to attending college somewhere in the southern states to study marine biology. Do you run an English or philosophy program at a school in search of a publisher for your students' content? Look no further! Email editor@aletheitoday.com for more information about how ATM can bring your young writers to the next level and get your department the publicity it deserves. Previous Next

< Back Good God Paul Tillich David Cowles Oct 4, 2025 “…It makes no difference what direction we look, it’s utter devastation everywhere. Oh, the price we pay to have no God!” In 1959, existentialist theologian, Paul Tillich, kicked off a logical cascade when he innocently defined Faith as ‘ultimate concern’. What’s your ‘ultimate concern’? Is it sex, drugs or rock-and-roll? Is it power, status, or fame? Money or security? Family or friends? Health or happiness? Whatever your ‘ultimate concern’, that is your Good and therefore that is your God . Tillich’s surprise definition puts idolatry on the same footing as monotheism. It’s simply a matter of ‘ultimate concerns’. If my ‘ultimate concern’ is a lump of clay, so be it. As in AA and other 12 step programs, each person is free to designate anything as their personal Higher Power . If I make a Faith commitment to inorganic matter, then I am at most guilty of misplaced concreteness (Whitehead) – i.e. considering something to be something it isn’t, for example a ‘god’ that is not and could not possibly be God. (I’m not just in the wrong pew, I’m in the wrong church…but I’m still living a life of Faith per Tillich.) It is comforting to think that everything we do is motivated by our conception of what is Good (i.e. our Faith) because whatever is Good is ‘God’. There is just one fly in this ointment: we decide what is Good for us and therefore we each define, i.e. create, our own God. By definition, Good and God must transcend our immanent world (otherwise, per Nietzsche, they would have no normative function or value and without that, they would be meaningless terms). But we have turned that relationship on its head; we have made the Immanent normative. Sometimes, you can invert a relationship and everything runs smoothly; the relationship is symmetrical and reciprocal. This is not one of those times. If the Immanent is normative then what-is is normative for what will be. Therefore any change is ‘bad’, i.e. a reduction of Good. Talk about radical conservatism! Assuming that ‘things’ are motivated to act (or change) by their sense of what’s Good (for them), no such motivation could exist, ever. Given an Entity A in State X, there is no State Y that would be better than X for A. “Every way you look at this, you lose.” (Simon & Garfunkel) We would be living in Leibniz’ Best of all Possible Worlds . Therefore, the status quo would be locked-in and the Universe would be a frozen solid. Is that bad enough for you? It gets worse ! Assuming a state of non-being is logically, not temporally, prior to a state of being, then non-being would be the eternally preferred state. There would be no universe, and in fact no universe of any sort would ever be possible because anything that might be would be less good than status quo, i.e. nothing at all. And so, Good, God, and even Being itself would be precluded. So we’d be living in Leibniz’ Best of all Possible Worlds but only from the perspective of the present moment. Our Present would by definition be somewhat less good than what immediately preceded it, and what preceded that, and so on. With ‘every move we make, every breath we take’ we regress in value, back toward our origin or forward toward our destiny, which are exactly the same, i.e. nothing. Like Noah, it makes no difference what direction (in space or time) we look, it’s utter devastation everywhere. Oh, the price we pay to have no God! But this is not the way things seem to be. Something is. Value seems graded across a variety of events and options. Devastation is not total, universal, or eternal. So let’s assume this is not the way it is IRL. That there is something immanent means that there must be something transcendent and what is transcendent is also normative for what is immanent. Being is not symmetrical…or democratic. Get over it! The father of Western philosophy, Parmenides (5th century BCE), captured it perfectly in his epic poem, On Nature: “To come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, to shift place and to exchange bright color…all things have been named light and night...” This is Doxa, the realm of appearances. To this Parmenides counterposed the realm of truth, Aletheia : “…What-is is ungenerated and imperishable…whole…steadfast and complete; nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one… It is not lacking, but if it were, it would lack everything…Therefore, it must either be completely, or not at all.” Certainly, Parmenides’ Aletheia is Augustine’s Bonum . Jean-Paul Sartre, a fitting bridge connecting Parmenides and Tillich, devoted an entire novel, Nausea , to this point. We view things as tools or obstacles strewn in the path of life’s projects. We treat life as a video game, avoiding pitfalls and acquiring weapons at every turn. Sartre invites us to encounter things as they are in themselves ( en soi ), as raw existents apart from every context, but he warns us: the experience is likely to make us sick (hence, nausea ). We have no experience viewing the world other than through various mediating membranes; coming in contact with ‘the real thing’ can be shocking – imagine a lifelong Pepsi drinker having her first can of Real Coke! Sidebar : Sartre is an interesting character. An avowed materialist, communist and atheist, he finds himself sharing overnight accommodations with some very unexpected bed fellows: for example, Pope Leo XIII on the matter of absolute freedom and the Baal Shem Tov ( Hasidism ) on meeting things in the world on their own terms, undisguised by noisy utility . So we don’t have to accept the reality of God if we don’t want to but we pay a heavy price. We have to give up Good (as defined philosophically) and ultimately we have to give up Being itself. But hey, that’s a small price to pay to keep our pride: “Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.” (John Milton) *** Giorgio de Chirico’s The Disquieting Muses (c. 1916–18) depicts two mannequin-like figures set in an eerie, empty piazza framed by classical architecture and long, unsettling shadows. The stillness and distorted perspective create a dreamlike tension between the familiar and the uncanny, suggesting a world stripped of human warmth yet charged with metaphysical meaning. Through its haunting calm and timeless setting, the painting evokes questions about existence, solitude, and the mysterious workings of consciousness. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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Ecbatan may share the seven-ringed pattern of the solar system, but Paradise shares the seven-ringed pattern of Ecbatan! < Back Ectaban David Cowles Oct 15, 2022 Ecbatan may share the seven-ringed pattern of the solar system, but Paradise shares the seven-ringed pattern of Ecbatan! “Great bulk, huge mass, thesaurus; Ecbatan, the clock ticks and fades out. The bride awaiting the god’s touch; Ecbatan, city of patterned streets; again the vision:” – Ezra Pound, Canto V Is it possible to present a fully formed Eschatology in just four lines of verse? After all, great works like Revelation require half a thousand verses to tell their tale. But surprisingly, the answer is, “Yes!” And we’ll see that Ezra Pound has done it (above)…once we unpack all the allusions and references contained in those four lines. Ecbatan (‘Ecbatana’) is an ancient city on the Silk Road, located in modern-day Iran. It was the capital city of the Empire of the Medes. In Canto LXXIV, Pound refers to Ecbatan as “the city of Dioce,” the first ruler of the Medes. It is at least remotely possible that this is also the city that the authors of Genesis attributed to Cain and his sons when Cain became a ‘wanderer’ and ‘settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden’ and ‘became the founder of a city’. But what makes Ecbatan so important is not primarily its great age, nor its role in history and mythology; what makes Ecbatan important is its layout. It is the apex of City Planning. Ecbatan consists of seven concentric rings, demarcated by walls. Moving inward, each wall is higher than the next and each a different color. The penultimate wall is silver, the final wall gold, and within that wall, the palace. Inside these walls run those “patterned streets.” The seven rings of Ecbatan call to mind the seven rings of the then known solar system. In Canto LXXIV, the first of the so-called Pisan Cantos, Pound confirms that association when he sets forth in a single line his entire cosmo-political platform: “To build the city of Dioce whose terraces are the colour of stars.” Ezra Pound’s Cantos are at least ab initio modeled after the 100 cantos that form Dante’s Divine Comedy. To understand Pound’s project, it is essential to understand Dante’s. Unlike Pound, Dante is the hero of his own epic. His ‘odyssey’ begins “in the middle of the journey of our life…within a dark wood where the straightway was lost.” He is then conducted by a series of ‘guides’ through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and finally Heaven (Paradiso). Along the way, Dante encounters persons from early Renaissance Italy, the classical world, salvation history, and the Church. Their life stories supply the stuff of his epic. Pound, likewise, weaves cultural and historical events on an eschatological loom. But compared to Dante, Pound casts a much, much wider net. There is hardly a region of the globe or a period of history that does not contribute content to Pound’s epic. While Dante tells the story of ‘Earth as it is in Heaven,’ Pound tells the story of ‘Heaven as it is on Earth.’ For Dante, the seven rings of the solar system were patterned after the seven rings of Paradise; but Pound turns that relationship upside down…and inside out: Ecbatan may share the seven-ringed pattern of the solar system, but Paradise shares the seven-ringed pattern of Ecbatan! If Ecbatan is ‘Enoch,’ the city of Cain, that would make Cain the world’s first urban planner. But even if there is no such association, being the first ‘founder of a city’ makes Cain responsible for developing and introducing the technology that would ultimately have made Ecbatan possible. Either way, Ecbatan (like all cities) traces back to Cain. The theological implications of this are enormous. In Genesis, Cain is presented as committing the first great sin in historical time (i.e., post-Eden). How fitting then, from the perspective of Judeo-Christian eschatology, that Cain be responsible, directly or indirectly, for building a post-historical Eden, Ecbatan! Ecbatan is the Judeo-Christian message of salvation in a nutshell. God does not just passively forgive the sinner; God empowers the sinner to become a co-creator of Paradise. We partner with God in the redemption of the world, and we are led in this venture by Jesus, aka the Christ, our Redeemer. This is the essence of the theological virtue of hope: not only that our sins will be wiped away, but also that our lives will be redeemed. With Job, we affirm, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust…(and) I will see God.” (Job 19: 25 – 26) In this context, it is useful to compare Cantos to another great work of literature, the New Testament Book of Revelation. Paul tells us that only three things will last: faith, hope, and love. Literature is full of books about faith and love, but hope sometimes gets short-shrift. What it lacks in quantity, it makes up in quality; hope is the central theme of three of Western civilization’s greatest works: the Book of Revelation, The Divine Comedy, and the Cantos of Ezra Pound. The Judeo-Christian tradition (including Dante) understands God as “the creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible” (Nicene Creed). Pound joins Alfred North Whitehead, perhaps Carl Jung, and a very few others in reversing that process. For these visionaries, the world in some sense ‘creates God;’ or, at least, there is a mutually creative relationship between the two! Ecbatan of the Cantos is Pound’s version of Dante’s Paradise. It is not a model for Paradise, it IS Paradise. There are no ‘models’ in Pound! The concept of a model necessarily introduces the notion of an ontological hierarchy (“the map is not the territory”). Pound rejects that idea categorically. In Cantos the mythological, the historical, the fictional, the experiential, the theological and the eschatological share a common ontological status. Anthropologists report that many aboriginal societies do not distinguish what happens in history from what happens in dreams or in spiritual experiences. (Read “Speaking Piraha” for reference.) Like Pound, they are ontological democrats! Of course, Ecbatan is Paradise seen from an eschatological perspective. Pity the lowly camel driver resting on the star-colored terraces of the Median capital, not understanding that he is living in Paradise; pity the frenzied investment banker racing across Manhattan in a cab, still not understanding. Christians are fond of saying, “Repent and hear the Good News!” Perhaps we might rephrase, “Read Pound and live the Good News!” Of course, Ecbatan is a once and future city, a once and future Paradise. Throughout Cantos, Pound rhymes the historical Ecbatan with other cities; for example, Wagadu, capital of the Ghanian Empire, four times rebuilt. The message is clear and consistent: Ecbatan is not just a place, it is a mission. Ultimately, we all share a common eschatological imperative, “To build the city of Dioce…” (Not ‘rebuild’ but ‘build!’) The city of Dioce (the Kingdom of Heaven) is only built once, for all time and eternity. Pound’s ‘Paradiso’ begins in earnest with the first Pisan Canto (Canto LXXIV). We now see Canto V (above) as the Cliff’s Notes version of Pound’s later cantos. Note that the map (Canto V) precedes the territory (Canto LXXIV & ff). But is it the case, stated above, that four lines from Canto V constitute a complete and fully developed eschatology? To make that case, we’ll need to unpack each line, beginning with: “Great bulk, huge mass, thesaurus.” Parmenides, the first Western philosopher to leave extant a significant body of work, presented reality under two aspects: the aspect of Truth (Aletheia) and the aspect of Appearance (Doxa). These two complementary, but mutually exclusive aspects are both required in order to build a viable model of reality. Aletheia is Parmenides’ Eschaton; Doxa, his history. Parmenides describes Aletheia as follows: “It is not divisible…but it is full of what is…it is not lacking but if it were, it would lack everything…It is completed from every direction like the bulk of a well-rounded sphere, everywhere from the center equally matched…equal to itself from every direction.” The mini-Paradiso found in Canto V immediately links Pound to the philosophical tradition of Parmenides. Like Aletheia, Ecbatan is massive and symmetrical. Parmenides says that Aletheia lacks nothing because, if it lacked anything, it would lack everything. The same may be said of Ecbatan; above all else, it is complete! But while Aletheia is changeless, things according to the “way of appearance” (Doxa) “come to be and perish, be and not be, shift place and exchange bright color” (aka attributes). This behavior is at the root of all the dissonance and conflict in our everyday experience, but that conflict is the raw material of contrast, which is the source of all intensity. In the ‘Doxa fragments’ of On Nature, Parmenides dwells on the role that “naming” plays in shattering the homogeneity of ‘Truth’ into the seemingly endless variety of ‘Appearances.’ For example: “Thus, according to belief, these things were born and now are, and hereafter, having grown from this, they will come to an end. And for each of these did men establish a distinctive name.” Certain African and Australasian cultures believe that the process of naming (Namo) can actually make things come to be. Pound cites the story of “Wanjina” (Wondjina) whose father sewed up his mouth because he was ‘making too many things’. Parmenides would agree wholeheartedly. The “thrusting forth” of things that “come to be” (Fragment 11) is either caused by or chronicled by the development of the dictionary. The size of a dictionary is a good measure of the immersion of its readers in Doxa. Hence, thesaurus! Thesaurus is the antonym of dictionary. A dictionary records distinctions; a thesaurus, on the other hand, resolves those distinctions by finding common ground. On the one hand, dictionary smashes the crystal vase of Aletheia against the rocks of English Empiricism and American Pragmatism, reducing it to so many shards of glass (Doxa). Thesaurus, on the other hand, painstakingly matches those shards with one another until the vase is whole again (Aletheia). But the reconstructed vase is not quite the same as the original vase. While the shape and volume are still the same, and while the vase can still hold water, now you can see the outline of each and every shard that makes it up. The new vase is vastly more beautiful and interesting…and much, much more valuable; it is the product of negentropy. Reality requires both Aletheia and Doxa to optimize coherence and maximize intensity. Compare this with the creation narrative in Genesis. Words play an important role in God’s creative process: “Let there be light…God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness he called ‘night’…God called the dome ‘sky’…God called the dry land ‘earth,’ and the basin of water he called ‘sea’.” Creation is the process of distinction; it is the living dictionary. Salvation reverses that process; it is a way of harmonizing apparent conflicts into mere contrasts. Salvation is the living thesaurus. “Ecbatan, the clock ticks and fades out” In Paradise there is no time; everything is atemporal (eternal). When the clock ticks for the final time, it fades out and eternity begins. Ecbatan, city of patterned streets, is that ‘final tick;’ it is the membrane between history and eternity. The pattern of its streets and terraces replaces the historical flow of events. A vertical architecture replaces a horizontal flow. Ecbatan is proof that process is not dependent on time. When we speak of Ecbatan, we are not just talking about an historical city or some ‘kingdom (to) come;’ Ecbatan is what it is, what there is, all there is, now and forever. Process is bi-directional. On one axis, process is change (Heraclitus), growth, evolution; on the other, process is harmonization (Whitehead), pattern building. Today, we rely heavily on clocks to help us get where we’re supposed to be, when we were supposed to be there. But when I was growing up, kids didn’t always have ready access to clocks (or watches). No matter, you were still expected to be home on time. So, without thinking about it, we built our own clocks: the progress of the sun in the sky, the changing colors on the horizon, the ‘gas man’ (sic) lighting the streetlamps every afternoon, the corporeal sense of time passing. For all the hours we spent each week in church, we were nothing but a bunch of pagans. These organic clocks worked just as well as any Timex, often better. Through all this, it never occurred to us that time might be nothing other than the clocks (natural or man-made) that we use to measure it. We took it for granted that time was something objective, that it formed the background of all things, that events occur in time. In recent years, however, cosmologists have suggested that this might not be the case. Roger Penrose, for example, suggests that when we are no longer able to construct a ‘clock’ to measure time, time will cease to exist. Others have suggested that objective time is nothing other than an abstraction from the variable organic ‘durations’ of events superimposed on one another. Pound predates Penrose by decades. Yet, he uses Penrose’s imagery. When the last clock ticks its last tick, time folds into eternity. “The bride awaiting the god’s touch; Ecbatan…” This evokes the image of Mary being touched by the Holy Spirit at the moment of Incarnation and of the Church as the “Bride of Christ”. Ecbatan is Mater Dei (mother of God); Ecbatan is Church. Ecbatan is the physical substructure of Paradise. Over and over again, Pound writes, “Le Paradis n’est pas artificiel.” It must be physical and historical…it’s Mary’s womb, Christ’s Church, Ecbatan. While no Marxist, Pound wholeheartedly embraced materialism. “City of patterned streets; again, the vision:” The ‘vision’ Pound refers to is Dante’s vision in Canto XXXIII, the final canto, of his Paradiso: “O abounding grace by which I dared to fix my look on the eternal light so long that I spent all my sight upon it. In its depth I saw that it contained, bound by love in one volume that which is scattered in leaves through the universe, substances and accidents and their relations as it were fused together in such a way that what I tell of is a simple light.” Dante rejects the Heraclitan model of continuous process. In Dante’s vision, all of the events, entities and aspects of the world are organized as “leaves.” Pound’s Cantos recapitulate Dante’s vision using Pound’s own seemingly inexhaustible treasure trove. Cantos consists entirely of such ‘leaves,’ ‘fused together’ into ‘a simple light.’ Rare among authors, Pound avoids the temptation to add personal commentary, emotional shading, ‘mere ideas,’ spin; instead, he literally lets the thing speak for itself (ipse loquitur). In the visual arts, the 19th century saw objects dissolve into impressions. Starting with Cezanne, progressing through the Cubists and culminating in Surrealism and Dada, the 20th century reversed that process. It focused on the thing itself, releasing the object from its utilitarian context and allowing it to tell its own story. Pound performed a parallel function in the literary arena. Ideally, to read the Cantos would be to have the ‘vision,’ Dante’s vision. Both Dante and Pound fixed their looks on the eternal light and saw that it contained that which is scattered in leaves; both Dante and Pound attempt to bind these leaves “by love in one volume…in such a way that what I tell of is a simple light”. Pound confirms: “I have tried to write Paradise.” (Canto CXX) To write Paradise, to ‘create’ light, to build the City of Dioce, that’s everyone’s highest calling. But it is the nature of the human condition that no one will ever succeed, at least not completely. It is for God alone to create light (fiat lux), to build Paradise, but that does not mean that we are not all called to do everything we can do in pursuit of that elusive goal. Like Cain, we contribute what we can to the Eschaton, and we humbly beg forgiveness for what we fail to do. In this context, Canto CXX is worth reproducing in its entirety: I have tried to write Paradise Do not move Let the wind speak That is Paradise Let the Gods forgive what I have made Let those I love try to forgive what I have made. Illustration taken from Buckingham, J.S. (1829). Travels in Assyria, Media and Persia . Page 159. London. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back The Resurrection Promises More Than Heaven Annie D. Stutley So much of Easter focuses on conquering death itself, but overlooking the freedom that the resurrection offers 'this' life, skips a sizable chunk of the miracle. In my family we knock our Easter eggs. Knocking eggs, egg pocking, or egg paquing is an Easter tradition that came to my part of Louisiana via the Cajuns. The game is pretty simple. It’s man-to-man, egg-to-egg. Players face off, each one with a hard-boiled egg in their fist, and they knock the ends of their eggs together. Whoever’s cracks is the loser. The game keeps going until it’s down to one Champion Egg. We’re unsure of the origins of the first egg knock in my family, but we’ve done it on Easter Sunday as long as anyone can remember. And my father, Pop, held the record not for the highest number of Champion Eggs, but for the most notorious egg pranks. Among the most infamous was the year he and my uncle dyed one raw egg. Just before dinner, they snuck the trick egg onto one of the egg and candy nests of the dining table's place settings. Unfortunately, they chose the nest of one of Grandma’s special guests, a lady who was wearing an expensive long chiffon dress. When she knocked her egg with her neighbor, the yoke dribbled onto her gown and slithered between the pleats of pastel chiffon. Grandma was furious and promptly marched into the kitchen, grabbed an egg from the fridge, and cracked it over Pop’s head. He didn’t pull that prank again, but while the rest of the family played by the rules, he would use anything–a robin's egg candy, the back of a stainless steel spoon–attempting to fool the rest of us into thinking it was a real hard-boiled egg tucked in his grasp. Of course, we were never fooled, but we laughed with him anyway. He engaged in this buffoonery year after year, the incessant clown he was, and we came to look forward to his mischievousness: “what would Pop use as an ‘egg’ this year?” So the first Easter without Pop’s shenanigans was one I dreaded. Egg knocking has been around for centuries and is common in Europe, especially France. Its origins trace all the way back to Ancient Greece, and in the Greek Orthodox church, the eggs are dyed red to symbolize the crucifixion of Christ. The cracking of the shell when the eggs collide symbolizes Christ’s resurrection from death. The egg, then, is a reminder of rebirth–the new life in Heaven that awaits those who believe in Christ. That first Easter without my father was a rather agonizing time in which to grieve. All the talk about life after death, resurrection, and the gates of Heaven opening for a new life, the awaiting of new bodies–that was heavy stuff when my loss was so raw. My entire life, Heaven had been a no-brainer, a second-nature belief. I went to Catholic school; my parents were part of the charismatic renewal. There was no question Jesus was the Messiah and that he died on the cross for me to have eternal life. But that talk was before I had a horse in the race, a stake in the game, before Heaven absolutely had to exist. That Easter, as I dropped dye tablets into vinegar and water to dye four dozen eggs, everything was at risk because the person who meant everything to me was somewhere out there. For the first time, I had to face where that somewhere is...or isn’t. For Christians, Easter is the holiest day of the year. Doctrine is written around the idea of Jesus taking the sins of mankind and dying with them so that death would no longer be a loss, but a victory. Try taking that in when all you want is to see someone again. It’s either a comfort or an inner trial. What did I believe after all? This question consumed me as I approached that Sunday; as I watched my kids tear through their baskets of toys and chocolates; while I listened to my pastor preach about the ultimate miracle and God’s promises; and as I picked up a hard-boiled egg and wished with all my might that Pop was there, tricking me with a walnut or something posing as an egg. Easter is the ultimate miracle–the Great Ta-Da–the promise that something better is waiting. But what about my miracle that I prayed and prayed and prayed for back when I pumped my father with every homeopathic treatment I could find after the doctors gave up? I didn’t get my miracle. How could I not then question everything that once came easy when everything was suddenly so damn hard? Grief is unquestionably a way to feel proximity to the person we miss. The more I hurt, the more it was as if Pop were near. And as much as grief exhausted me, I couldn’t let go because, and I admit this freely, I didn’t know for sure where Pop was. His death weakened my faith. Boy, would he hate that. But I also think he’d understand, because the mystery of faith is revealed through an entirely personal journey to get to its truth. Faith isn’t a doctrine, a philosophy, simply tossed out and accepted unquestionably...without a little pain even. Countless heroes and “sheroes” in the Bible underwent moments of disbelief, pain, and suffering before reaching their ultimate partnership with God, from Abraham to Esther to Mary to Paul. Abraham doubted God enough to bring about Ishmael when God didn’t produce His promises fast enough; Esther doesn’t even speak of God because she was so distant from Him in her miserable circumstances; Paul fought against God with brutality before his profession of faith; and Mary, sweet, immaculate Mary, was rattled by the news of the baby in her womb enough for Gabriel to say, “Do not be afraid.” Yet, on the other side of “afraid” was joy. On the other side of waiting was promises. On the other side of feeling abandoned was renewal, and on the other side of sin was forgiveness and life–yes, both eternal and here on Earth. In the years following that difficult Easter as I was forced to explore my beliefs to find peace, I underwent even bigger trials. Were I to have a book in the Bible, my synopsis would go something like this: “In the midst of a global pandemic, she was diagnosed with stage three cancer. In the midst of debilitating chemotherapy and during the recovery of major surgery, she found her mother’s body in her guest bedroom. She buried her mother while fighting off painful cancer side effects, and had to console her three young children, not just about the fate of their grandmother but her own mortality as well.” Yet on the other side of that story was faith, hope, and a future I don’t doubt anymore. With my life on the line, my resilience shattered, my children looking to me for guidance, it seemed an appropriate time to soften my heart and seek the truth. So much of Easter focuses on conquering death itself, but overlooking the freedom that the resurrection offers this life, skips a sizable chunk of the miracle. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is basically documentation that Jesus’ sacrifice was meant to empower us here before we go there . “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being.” (3:16) We’re invited to accept the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, not “when we get to Heaven” but in the here and now. The resurrection gives us long-term hope, but for the short term, Jesus left his spirit to go before us always, an invitation to enter the greatest relationship of all time. The gift of the resurrection is such that we can live without guilt, without fear, without anxiety, without doubt because “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17) Heaven is just beyond our fingertips. Once we realize how close we are to the immeasurable joy of it, that leap of faith isn’t so scary after all. Something as big as life after death deserves introspection, time, and patience. After all, if faith is so easy, why does someone have to die to provoke a conversation about it for so many? If I knew that Easter what I know now, would I have buried my head in my mother’s shoulder and wept as I did after all the eggs were knocked and all the lamb consumed? I’d like to think I wouldn’t have. But I do know I questioned everything because I have experienced unconditional love. Pop hung the moon in my world, and I was the apple of his eye. I know what it means to be positively spoiled with love. I’d rather have loved and hurt from the loss of it than to never have loved at all. And I suppose just saying that was one small step in the bigger journey toward my examination of faith. The Champion Egg that year went to my oldest son, Billy. Five years later, this year, he had the Champion Egg again. Like Pop, he’s charmingly disorganized, generous beyond measure, artistic, a serial goofball, and he has an inner light that radiates a room. Pop was still with us this Easter, especially when my son’s winning strategy was suspect. Pop was there as we pranked the grandkids with fake eggs. He and Mom were there in each one of us as we sat in comfortable chairs and simply absorbed the scene, a pleasant refresment in hand. Our loved ones do live on, both here and there, kingdoms at hand. I believe that. Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines, most noticeably Mississippi Magazine and Worklight . Her blog, " That Time You, " was ranked in the Top 100 Blogs by FeedSpot. To read more of her work, go to her website , or follow her at @anniedstutley or Annie D. Stutley-writer on Facebook. Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Previous Next

< Back Drumming to Inner Peace Magesh The biggest connection I made between music and spirituality was that they both focus on the present moment. When I managed to stay in the present moment in both the song and in life, I realized there was no time for anxiety. I've had a great career as a session musician. I played the drums for Lionel Richie, Rhianna, Ricky Martin, Nelly Fertado, Kimbra, and many other pop stars. I have also taught the drums and piano for over 20 years. (Although now all my teaching is online...thanks, Covid!) Playing music has taught me many things: the discipline of practice, how working hard yields results, and that, if you get lucky enough, your dreams may come true. Although I have done many cool things like playing on television, performing in multiple countries, and appearing in magazines, there was one thing that trumped all of these: playing music gave me inner peace. Here is how that happened… As an adolescent, my mind always moved quickly with racing thoughts. Looking back, it was probably teen angst and a good dose of old-fashioned anxiety. My older brother played music, too, and one day, he took me to the concert of a famous drummer. I can still vividly remember the performance. The drummer played to a sold-out auditorium of 1,000 people. His performance was so outstanding by the end, he received a standing ovation. I was mesmerized by it and also by the crowd’s reaction. At 14-years-old, I didn't know many things; what I did know was that I, too, was going to be a famous drummer. After convincing my parents that my school grades would improve if they bought me a drum kit, (they didn’t!), I sat down in my bedroom to start my first practice session. As soon as I hit the snare drum, all my racing thoughts stopped. Just like that! There was no worrying about what was going to happen at school tomorrow, nor any worry about if the girl on the bus liked me; in fact, there was no worrying about anything. What there was, was the present moment each time I hit that drum. I remember feeling incredible peace as I launched into a basic rock beat. (The irony was this beat probably filled my neighbor with anxiety because it was as loud as a jackhammer!) I've read stories of Buddhist monks who achieved a blissful state of mind through constant meditation. I don't know if I reached that state of bliss, but my teenage angst definitely disappeared. By playing music and literally concentrating on one note at a time, I didn't have the time to be concerned about problems outside my bedroom door, and, after playing for just a few months, my self-esteem and confidence improved tenfold. This was simply because I was starting to sound great…or so I thought. My older brother was a professional musician. After I had been playing the drums for ten months, he opened my bedroom door and quite calmly said, “Your timing sucks. You should get some drum lessons.” After picking up the shards of my shattered self-esteem off the floor, I realized that maybe he was right. I booked a 30-minute lesson with a famous Australian drummer. I really thought this teacher would be impressed with my ability to play several types of drum beats. However, as I sat down to play, he said, “Your posture is all wrong.” How could I screw up sitting down? He then asked me to play something I was comfortable playing and to pretend that he wasn't there. I played a basic rock pattern, which, I thought, was decent. The instructor had a look on his face as if someone had just insulted his mother. Slightly in shock, slightly angry, he said something I didn't understand at the time: “How do you go about breathing?” “I usually just breathe in and out,” I replied. This actually made him laugh out loud because what he meant was how I breathed when I played the drums. After carefully explaining to me that drumming was an extremely intense physical activity, he suggested I breathe two counts in, two counts out. This changed everything for me. I don't know the science behind it, but the exercise slowed down both my heart rate and my mind, which, in turn, made me feel incredibly calm. I would go on to have lessons with this teacher for 13 additional years. I would be performing with some of the biggest artists in the world, and still, I’d go to my weekly drum lesson. When people asked me why I was still taking lessons as a top professional, my answer was always the same: “It makes me feel good.” The biggest connection I made between music and spirituality was that they both focus on the present moment. When I managed to stay in the present moment in both the song and in life, I realized there was no time for anxiety. I remember being 16-years-old and saying to my teacher, “What happens if I'm on stage playing a concert and I make a mistake?” Without hesitating, he said, “Once you make a mistake, that moment is over. You have to leave it in the past. If you focus on that mistake, it will only lead to more mistakes.” If that isn't a metaphor for life, I don't know what is. * Editor's Note: Music can play an important role in how we experience the world and communicate that experience to others. Be sure to check out The Meaning of Music in this issue of AT Magazine. Magesh has written for “Lessonface,” “Aeyons,” “The Modern Rogue,” “Euronews,” “The Roland corporation,” “Penlight,” and “Elite Music.” He writes several monthly publications on music education. In the past, Magesh has written for parenting, humor, mental health, and travel websites as well. Previous Next

< Back Everyday Resurrections: The Divine Pattern of Healing and Transformation Hadassah Treu "Do you know that as a human being created in the image of God, you can experience everyday resurrections as part of God's pattern of healing and transformation?" Do you know that as a human being created in the image of God, you can experience everyday resurrections as part of God's pattern of healing and transformation? God has given us the abilities, the opportunities, and the means to experience new growth, renewal, and transformation in the places marked by death and loss. Jesus Christ is the Risen Lord, the Lord of Resurrection and Redemption, and the Giver of life. If this life flows through us, so does His resurrection power. Daily resurrections are the divine answer to loss and trauma. Life on this earth is a chain of small and big deaths: the death of things, relationships, dreams, and people we deeply treasure. How do we deal with death? How can we overcome it? What is the way God has provided for us? The Divine Pattern of Darkness and Light, Ends and Beginnings Since the beginning of creation, God has implemented a divine pattern of night and day, death and resurrection, destruction and renewal. This is the divine cycle of ends and beginnings, transition, and change. We find this pattern in the first chapter of Genesis. "God called the light 'day,' and the darkness He called 'night.' And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day." (Genesis 1:5, NIV) The first day and all the days after that start with the evening, followed by the night before the morning sun rises. First is the night, and then comes the day. This applies to creation, but it is also true for our lives. A day, a season, or a period starts with darkness: the darkness of physical or emotional pain and suffering in various forms. We go through a dark night of the soul, losing something we value or struggling with rejection, disappointment, doubt, anger, loneliness, and failure. Our hope dwindles, and our joy diminishes. But a new day is coming, for "weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning" (Psalm 30:5, NIV). The Creator of the night and day, the darkness and light, will not withhold His life and mercy from us. Dawn comes right after the darkest hour of the night. The best moments happen when we’ve already given up hope and don't expect anything. Sudden joy rushes through our veins, triggered by a child's smile, a meeting with a stranger, a gentle hug from a friend, the stunning beauty around us, or unexpected good news. Surprised, we can feel joy again. We fill our lungs with the breath of fresh life. We dare to hope again. Perhaps you've lost the hope of building a family of your own. Don’t give up: today may be the day to get acquainted with your future partner. Perhaps your dream of having a successful career as an artist has died. Don’t pull it away from your heart: today can be the day of a new start. Or you've lost hope of seeing a loved one healed and free from addiction or of mending a broken relationship. Don’t stop putting your hope in the God of the Impossible. If He could roll the heavy tombstone and let His life and light shine again in the dark grave, He can do this for you, too. His mercies are new every day, and so are our possibilities to experience the renewal of our souls, bodies, lives, and relationships. Every morning, we open our eyes, resurrected from the "small death" of sleep, to experience God's fresh mercies. Again. The Promise of AGAIN This is the code word of everyday resurrections. God has encoded this word in nature and the recurring seasons, in our making, and in His mighty word. Do you know God gives 15 "again" promises in the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 31? Jeremiah gives these beautiful restoration prophecies immediately before severe disasters befall Israel. Even before death and loss strike, God wants Israel to know that He has a good plan and is working on how to restore the people. He gives them the powerful promise of "again" as a stable foundation of hope for redemption and a good future. The foundation and the guarantee of our daily and eternal resurrections is God's everlasting love: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness." (Jeremiah 31:3, NIV) When we are in the deepest of sorrows, God doesn't abandon us but thinks about how to deliver and restore us. He always has a plan. Here are several promises of restoration and renewal containing the power of "again": • Again, we will be rebuilt. (verses 4, 28, 38)• Again, we will be given comfort and joy instead of sorrow and will be like a well-watered garden. (verses 4, 12, 13)• Again, we will be delivered and redeemed. (verse 11)• Again, we will be satisfied with abundance and God's bounty. (verse 14)• Again, we will be blessed and turned into a blessing. (verse 23)• Again, we will know the Lord on a deeper, intimate level. (verse 34) How Does God Resurrect Us? The first way God brings us to life after experiencing a valley of the shadow of death in our lives is by giving us a roadmap for our future based on His promises. When we take this roadmap to heart and start trusting it, we begin to heal and develop positive expectations for the future. When we let these specific promises speak into our present circumstances, we can start living with the expectancy for God to move and fulfill His promises. The second way God breathes life into our shattered souls is by resurrecting our joy and hope. Joy is the pulse of life. The Holy Spirit hovers over and fills the voids in our souls with fresh joy. This is not a superficial, fleeting joy, but the powerful current of God's love and sovereignty. He draws our attention and opens our eyes to see and behold our eternal, living hope. This enables us to live in the present and what is happening now. We can find the strength to let go of the past and embrace the new life and all the new things God does in the present moment. And by doing so, we heal. And we change. When we focus on the present day, and on God's constant and loving presence, we are ready to receive our daily resurrections because "this is the day which the Lord has brought about; we will rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24, AMPC). Resurrection Is a Transformation Our healing from trauma and loss and the daily renewal of hope and joy are no small miracles. However, the biggest miracle of the resurrection is that God doesn't just bring dead things to life. No, He transforms them in the process, giving them new nature and characteristics. The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is a powerful example of this. His resurrected body has a completely different nature than His fleshly body. It went through a powerful metamorphosis. Jesus' body was transformed into a heavenly, immortal body with which He could stand on the right side of God. This is what we are looking for at our final resurrection, too. We are longing for our eternal and final transformation. Mortal into immortal. Death into life. Sorrow into joy. Weakness into glory. In God's perfect timing, He will redeem all our deaths and the ultimate death, and shape something new and beautiful from the dust. Till then, we will again experience joy, comfort, satisfaction, blessings, and the most precious thing—a deeper and intimate knowledge of the Lord. Till then, let's count our daily resurrections. Image: Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on oak panels. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Hadassah Treu is an award-winning author of "DRAW NEAR: How Painful Experiences Become the Birthplace of Blessings," poet, speaker, and motivator, author of 2 poetry books, and co-author of 13 devotional and poetry anthologies. She loves encouraging people to draw near to God in the dark valleys of life. She has been featured in The Upper Room, (In)Courage, Proverbs 31 Ministries, Today's Christian Living, and others. Connect with her at onthewaybg.com, and on social media @onthewaybg and @hadassahtreu. Previous Next