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"This matzah, which we set aside as a symbol of hope for the thousands of women who are anchored to marriages in name only, reminds us that slavery comes in many forms." < Back Matzah of Hope--Passover Part One B.J. Yudelson Apr 15, 2023 "This matzah, which we set aside as a symbol of hope for the thousands of women who are anchored to marriages in name only, reminds us that slavery comes in many forms." You may remember that back in the ’70s and ’80s, we added a fourth matzah to the three required for the Seder and called it the Matzah of Hope. It was a symbol of the three million Soviet Jews who had no freedom to be Jews. Some twenty or thirty years later, our united voices had changed the situation. I propose that this year we once again add a fourth matzah to our Seder table and read the following. What do you think? Maybe together we can change the situation for the Agunot, women anchored to men who neither want them as wives nor are willing to free them to lead their own lives. This matzah, which we set aside as a symbol of hope for the thousands of women who are anchored to marriages in name only, reminds us that slavery comes in many forms. Three thousand years ago, Jewish women were forced to see their baby sons die. They themselves were forced to follow the orders of the Egyptian masters to make bricks and perform other onerous tasks. Today, there are women enslaved to unsustainable marriages. The common term for them is “chained” women. But the Hebrew, agunah, comes from the root that means “to anchor.” These women, who have asked for a divorce but are dependent upon their husbands for the “get” that completes the divorce procedure, are anchored in place by men who refuse to comply. Tethered under water, it is as if they are mired in the muck on the bottom. Although the water that swirls about them represents opportunity, freedom, the ability to navigate to new and different Jewish places, they can barely breathe. How tantalizing to be surrounded by freedom yet to be prohibited from leading the free, fulfilling Jewish lives they crave. These women can dream of a new life, of new experiences that await them in a different part of this lake or sea they are trapped in. But they can’t, by themselves, hoist the anchor to change their situations. They need our support: our prayers, our petitions, our demonstrations. They need for us to convince our rabbis to take action, for where there is a rabbinic will, there will be found a rabbinic way to free agunot. As we set aside this matzah in their honor, let us pledge to do more in the coming year to free all agunot from the bondage that weighs particularly heavily as we celebrate freedom this Seder night. This was republished with permission from T he Jewish Pluralist . It is first in the series Four Women’s Collected Essays on the Meaning of Passover . Click here for introduction to the series. This essay was also published on B.J. Yudelson website. Image: Passover Seder, 19th Century B.J. is an explorer who loves both the comfort of the familiar and the challenge of the unknown. As a child growing up in Atlanta, she knew the size and position of every tree in the wooded ravine behind her house as well as the best rocks for crossing the creek at the bottom. When she passes a street repeatedly, she may suddenly turn onto it just to find out where it goes, making the unknown familiar. World religions, her own beloved Judaism, a foreign country, or a local park all bring out the explorer in her. She writes to make sense of the inner landscapes of family and friends, the ins and outs of her community (currently, Rochester, New York), and the beauty of loon-filled lakes. Her writings—published in a variety of literary journals, websites, and anthologies —explore family, Judaism, nature, and overcoming obstacles. She invites you to join her on her adventures. Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, 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. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! 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, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

Get paid to write. Calling all writers with critical thoughts and ideas about theology, science, philosophy, Christian educacation, culture, and prayer. Aletheia Today is online magazine where science, theology, and philosophy converge. Submission Guidelines Write for us! As we step into a new year, Aletheia Today is thrilled to announce our refreshed publication schedule for 2025! Our new approach allows us to better align our content with the ancient seasonal celebrations we honor. Here’s what’s coming up: February 1 – “Groundhog Day”: Revisit overlooked “Hidden Gems” from AT’s archives. April 1 – “Resurrection” - Life…it’s what’s happening! June 1 – “Summer” - The seeds are sown; we await the harvest. August 1 – “Lammas” - First harvest, first fruits, Transubstantiation, Eucharist. October 1 – “Harvest” - Second harvest, The Kingdom of God. Football. December 1 – “Yule” - Celebrate the triumph of light over darkness. We’re excited about the opportunities this schedule creates for deeper collaboration with independent contributors and more focused content for our readers. Thank you for being part of this journey as we continue to explore the intersection philosophy, theology and science. Specs for All Submissions: All completed work must be submitted through the online submissions form. (See link below.) All submissions must include a title and credited image. All submissions must include a headshot and a short (100 words or less) author bio with social handles. All work must be original. We will republish the author's previously published essays with credit to and permission from the original publication only. We will not use any images without a credit. Submission Due Dates: We accept unsolicited submissions throughout the year. Writers’ Comp (paid for original work only, not republications): For feature length articles and short stories, $250 per published article or short story plus a $100 bonus once the author’s work has reached 100 unique views. For original prayers and poems, $100 per published piece plus a $50 bonus once the author’s work has reached 100 unique views. For questions about submissions, email editor@aletheiatoday.com . Feel free, but not required, to email us a proposal, pitch, or query to the email address above prior to submitting your completed work. To becomes an AT Contributor, submit your work online; click here .

< Back Meggie Gates Contributor Meggie Gates is a freelance writer living in Chicago, Illinois. In the past, their work has appeared in the Chicago Reader , Southside Weekly , and Vulture Magazine . You can find more of their work or what karaoke bar they're singing at this weekend here. How the Saints Taught Me Feminism

< Back Alice David Cowles In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now. You remember Alice – the girl who chased a white rabbit down a hole and almost got her head chopped off by the Queen of Hearts! But did you know that later, when she was a bit older, Alice had another, entirely different adventure? Whenever Alice was bored, and she was often very bored – remember, in her day there was no TV, no smartphones and no video games – she would spend hours staring into the big mirror that hung on her living room wall. (I wonder if her parents limited her ‘screen’ time.) As she gazed into that looking glass, she could see a room on the other side. It looked just like her own living room…well, almost just like it. It looked just like it except that on the other side of the looking glass, everything was reversed! That’s right, reversed! If Alice stuck out her right hand to shake hands with the girl in the mirror, the girl in the mirror would stick out her left hand. If Alice wrote a note (from left to right, of course), the girl on the other side of the glass would write the very same note…but from right to left. Otherwise, everything looked exactly the same. But Alice wondered, “was it really the same?” After all, if right and left were reversed, maybe other things were reversed too. But how could she find out? “How nice it would be if we could only get into Looking-glass house,” she thought. And then, a moment later, there she was…on the other side of the glass! As expected, whatever Alice had been able to see in the mirror was just the same in Looking-glass house as it was in her own home. But what about everything she couldn’t see from her side? That turned out to be as different as different could be! Alice had been right to be suspicious of the mirror, after all. The mirror did not ‘reveal’ a world; it hid one. Alice immediately headed out of Looking-glass house and into its garden. She was not at all surprised to find flowers…but she was VERY surprised to learn that these flowers could talk! “…Can all the flowers talk?” Alice asked. “As well as you can,” said the Tiger-lily. “And a great deal louder.” Alice noticed a high hill in the distance. “I should see the garden far better,” said Alice to herself. “If I could get to the top of that hill: and here’s a path that leads straight to it…” Only it didn’t! No matter how hard Alice tried, no matter what turns she made, she always ended up right back where she started. But Alice was a very clever girl, so she decided to try a new plan. Instead of walking toward the hill and always missing it, she decided to walk in the opposite direction, away from the hill, to see where that would take her. Her plan succeeded beautifully. She hadn’t been walking more than a minute when she found herself at the base of the hill. So, it’s not just right and left that are reversed in Looking-glass world; it’s also to and from, forwards and backwards. At the base of the hill, Alice met the Red Queen. After some polite conversation, Alice and the queen suddenly started running. They ran hand-in-hand, as fast as they possibly could, for as long as they possibly could. But while she was running, Alice noticed something strange: the trees and the other things around them never changed; they seemed to move right along with them. Finally, the queen stopped, and Alice flopped to the ground breathless beside her. Then she noticed, “…We’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!” Alice complained to the queen, “…In our country, you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran very fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.” But the queen replied, “Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” Next, Alice encountered the White Queen and her majesty looked quite the mess. Alice did her best to help the queen tidy up, and then she suggested that the queen might like to hire a maid to help her stay neat and clean in the future. The queen offered the job to Alice, “Two pence a week and jam every other day.” Imagine getting by on an allowance of two pennies a week! I guess pennies could buy a lot more in Alice’s time. But Alice didn’t object to the low wage; instead, she protested that she didn’t like jam, “Well, I don’t want any to-day at any rate.” “You couldn’t have it if you did want it,” the queen said. “The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today …” Alice objected, “It must come sometimes to jam today.” “No, it can’t,” said the queen. “It’s jam every other day; today isn’t any other day, you know.” “I don’t understand you,” said Alice, obviously puzzled. “That’s the effect of living backwards,” the queen explained. “It always makes one a little giddy at first.” Then the queen decided to tell Alice more about what it’s like to live on her side of the glass. “Memory works both ways,” she said. “I’m sure mine only works one way,” interrupted Alice. “I can’t remember things before they happen…What sorts of things do you remember best?” “Oh, things that happened the week after next,” the queen replied. The queen pointed to the King’s Messenger, “He’s in prison now, being punished, and the trial doesn’t even begin till next Wednesday, and of course, the crime comes last of all.” Before Alice could object to this unfair treatment, the queen began screaming. Alice rushed to comfort her, “What is the matter? Have you pricked your finger?” “I haven’t pricked it yet,” the queen said. “But I soon shall.” And sure enough, a moment later, she did just that! But let’s get back to the matter of the jam. Alice explained to the queen that she did not like jam, “Well, I don’t want any to-day at any rate.” Remember what the queen said? “’You couldn’t have it if you did want it…the rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today .” So, in Looking-glass world there is a past (yesterday) and a future (tomorrow), but never a present (jam today). Later, Alice found herself in a shop where every shelf seemed to be overflowing with interesting things to buy. But whenever she walked up to any particular shelf, that shelf was always completely empty. The shelves that are there are always full, but the shelf that is here is always empty! In Looking-glass world, it seems you can have all the jam you want…just not now ; and you can buy anything you want…just not here . The stores are always brimming with merchandise, but always out of whatever it is you want. In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now . Later, while visiting Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Alice sees the Red King. He is asleep. “He’s dreaming now,” said Tweedledee. “And what do you think he’s dreaming about?” “Nobody can guess that!” Alice replied. Alice is depending on the difference between inside and outside to keep her thoughts, and the king’s, private. But Tweedledee knows better. The way Looking-glass world works, inner and outer could be reversed; or the distinction could be wiped away entirely. Either way, Tweedledee knows that in Looking-glass world, anyone can see what you’re thinking just by looking at you. “Why about you !” Tweedledee continued, returning to the content of the Red King’s dream. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be?” “Where I am now, of course,” said Alice. “’You’d be nowhere,” replied Tweedledee. “Why you’re only a sort of thing in his dream!’” (It seems that Shakespeare listened to Tweedledee’s podcasts because in one of his most famous plays, The Tempest , he wrote, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”) “If the King were to wake,” added Tweedledum. “You’d go out – bang! – just like a candle!’” Toward the end of her stay in Looking-glass world, Alice met the famous Humpty-Dumpty. Like any good girl of her day, Alice knew her nursery rhymes backwards and forwards, so when she met Humpty, she was immediately worried about his safety. “Don’t you think you’d be safer down on the ground? That wall is so very narrow!” In response, Humpty Dumpty growled. “Of course, I don’t think so. Why, if I ever did fall off – which there’s no chance of – but if I did…the King has promised me – with his very own mouth…” Here Alice interrupted, “To send all his horses and all his men…” Moments later, a crash shook the forest from end to end and soldiers came running, first two or three, then ten or twenty, finally thousands. So many that they seemed to fill the whole forest! The king had kept his promise. But would his horses and his men be able to put Humpty together again? Maybe not on our side of the looking glass, but on the other side…who knows? At the end of her adventure, when Alice was once again safely back on her own side of the mirror, she thought about her experience and said to her pussycat, “’Now, Kitty, let’s consider, who it was that dreamed it all…it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course – but then I was part of his dream too!’” 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. Previous Next

Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL continues his regular blog, “Monastic Scribe”, where he reflects on "what I may have learned from all these years and what I am still trying to learn." Fr. Timothy notes, “I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else.” < Back Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL Contributor Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL continues his regular blog, “ Monastic Scribe ”, where he reflects on "what I may have learned from all these years and what I am still trying to learn." Fr. Timothy notes, “I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else.” Jesus Meets Mr. Spock

< Back Fernanda Nascimento Contributor Fernanda Nascimento is a Brazilian writer whose work has appeared in Koinesune Magazine. Finding Gold in the Scars

< Back Causality & the B-Gita “Because every event is sui generis, no event causes any other event! That said, every event contributes to the Actual World of every subsequent event.” David Cowles In an earlier article Cause and Effect , we spelled out a ‘new’ theory of causality , based in part on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. According to this model, every ‘act’ ( aka Actual Entity) begins with the conversion of the disordered multiplicity that is Universe (“Universe is plural” – Buckminster Fuller) into a uniquely ordered nexus, an Actual World. Each Actual Entity (event) has its own Actual World: one world, one event; one event, one world! However, it is important to note at the outset that the Actual World does not in any way cause or determine its Actual Entity; rather every Actual Entity determines its own Actual World. The first stage in the concrescence of any Actual Entity is a single process with three aspects: (1) conversion of the Multiplicity (Universe) into a nexus (Actual World), (2) evaluation of that nexus in terms of objective eternal values, and (3) formation of intent (‘subjective aim’), not necessarily conscious, based on that evaluation. Expressed this way, these three ‘aspects’ seem to suggest a sequence; however, that is a trick of language. In fact, they constitute a single act with three simultaneous aspects. In the real world, process is multi-valent, not simply vectored through time. This initial stage is motivated and guided by transcendental values (‘eternal objects’), like Beauty, Truth, and Justice, that logically (not temporally) precede Universe and subsist in God’s Primordial Nature. The final stage in the concrescence of any Actual Entity is also a single process with three simultaneous aspects: (1) satisfaction, (2) objective immortality, and (3) superject. These aspects are denotatively identical but connotatively distinct. Here the three-in-one phenomenon is a bit more apparent. ‘Satisfaction’ is the realization of the ‘subjective aim’ as felt by the Actual Entity itself; ‘objective immortality’ is that satisfaction seen from the perspective of the Multiplicity; and ‘superject’ is that objective immortality felt by other Actual Entities, including God’s Consequent Nature. The function of every act is to convert intention into satisfaction. This is the act itself and the process is called ‘concrescence’ (Whitehead). In the process of concrescence, the subjective aim usually undergoes substantial modification. The event ends as a ‘settled matter of fact’ (objective immortality) projected (superject) into the Actual Worlds of all future Actual Entities. The ‘subject’ of the action, the Actual Entity itself, is responsible (1) for its intention (subjective aim), (2) for its objective immortality (superject), and (3) for the way (‘subjective form’) that the intention is reflected in the satisfaction. Style counts! Every event is sui generis , it ‘causes itself’. Is this Nihilism? Or Solipsism? The very opposite! Every event begins with an evaluation of ‘everything that is’, and the formation of a complex intention that reflects that valuation and the relevant values it seeks to realize. On the other hand, no event is responsible for the way it is received by and integrated into subsequent Actual Entities. That is entirely the responsibility of those subsequent entities. Because every event is sui generis , no event causes any other event! That said, every event contributes to the Actual World of every subsequent event. This model of reality is not new, not to me, not even to Whitehead. In fact, I discovered a similar concept of causality in a 2000 year old Hindu scripture, the justly famous Bhagavad Gita . Let’s set the scene: We are on a field of battle but Arjuna, commander of one of the armies, is having second thoughts. He recognizes his kinship with the warriors on the other side and he is loath to kill them: “I foresee no good resulting from slaughtering my kin in war…for if we killed these murderers, evil like theirs would cling to us…The wrong done by this destruction is evident… Nor do we know whether it would be better for us to vanquish them or to be overcome.” In just a few words, Arjuna raises three cogent arguments against ‘activism’: (1) ‘karma’ from committed acts blows back on whoever commits those acts; (2) the acts that duty calls us to perform may be immoral per se (for example, killing other human beings); (3) there is no way to know anything about the long term consequences of our actions. Fortunately, however, Arjuna is best buds with the divine Lord Krishna and this ‘Handsome Haired One’ sets the ‘Strong-Armed Warrior’ straight: “Your concern should be with action, never with action’s fruits.” Lord Krishna swats away Arjuna’s weighty reservations with the flick of his supple wrist. In the process, he exposes the unstated premise undergirding both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment: i.e., that future events ( ends ) are ‘caused’ by prior events ( means ). Krishna exhorts Arjuna to detach himself from the fruits of his actions and to focus exclusively on the actions themselves. This is not an appeal for Quietism. Rejection of the fruits of action is not the same thing as rejection of action itself: “Not by not acting in this world does one become free from action… Not even for a moment does someone exist without acting… In order to maintain the world, your obligation is to act… Should I not engage in action these worlds would perish, utterly…” Today, we know that the cessation of all activity is synonymous with Absolute Zero on the Kelvin Scale; 0°K defines Big Freeze , the end of Universe. Krishna was ahead of his time. Non-action is an illusion. To be is to act. The question is how : “Scripture is your authority for what to do and not to do. Understanding its injunctions, you are obliged to action…These actions, though, should be performed without attachment to their fruits…” By Scripture, the Gita is referring to the Hindu Vedas and the Upanishads. Scripture plays a comparable role in Judeo-Christian theology. Here though, we are referring to the Torah, the Midrashim, the Talmud, the Semon on the Mount, etc. “All actions are undertaken by the qualities of nature though one deceived by his ego imagines, ‘I am doing this’… Qualities act on one another.” In other words, God, the conduit of all values into the world, acts through us, his mortal agents. Per Whitehead, all action is motivated by qualities (values). Actual Entities are the loci of acts but the acts themselves are pure expressions of values. The ‘subject’ is merely the mechanism by which those values are realized in the present and projected into the future. “Better to do one’s own duty ineptly than another’s well.” Here, The Gita calls to mind Paul’s contemporaneous Letter to Ephesians: “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God had prepared in advance that we should live in them.” (2: 10) We do not determine our duty. We divine it and we perform it…or we don’t! Duty is dictated by the ‘eternal objects’ ( aka ‘transcendental values’) that constitute God’s Primordial Nature. Nor is Krishna (God) exempt from these laws ( dharma ): “In order to protect the good…and to establish righteousness, age after age, I come to be.” God too is a manifestation of ‘qualities acting on one another’. Good is what constitutes God and it is God who projects Good into Universe. No Good, no God! No God, no Good! This is a radical form of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Medieval theologians noted that some entities are ‘more good’ than others. They reasoned that there must therefore be something that is ‘ most good ’, and that whatever is ‘most good’ must exist, because it is better to exist than not. That ‘most good being’ is what we call ‘God’. The Gita arrives at the same destination via a somewhat different route; Krishna says, “Know me as one who never acts.” - i.e., as one who selflessly lets qualities act through him. Speaking of qualities, “Of lights, I am the radiant sun…of stars, I am the Moon…of beings, I am consciousness…of waters, I am Ocean…of mountains, I am the Himalayas…of mortal men, I am the king…of rivers, I am Ganges…of creations, I am beginning, middle, and end…of speakers, I am the discourse…of secrets, I am the silence, and the knowledge of those who know…” Anslem of Bec never wrote like this! But a Medieval Irish poet ( St. Dallan ) came close: “Be Thou my vision…my best thought…my light…my wisdom…my true word…my treasure...” Like Dallan, Krishna defines himself in terms of essential qualities: “I am water’s taste, Arjuna, I am the light of the sun and moon…sound in the air, manhood in men. I am the pure fragrance of earth and the radiance of fire; I am the life in all beings…the mind of the intelligent, the splendor of the radiant. I am the might of the mighty…” “And know that states of being…proceed from me – however, I am not in them, they are in me…Here behold all the universe…standing as one in my body.” “I am that which is the seed within all beings, Arjuna – without me nothing can exist.” The Gospel of John applies this same insight to Christ: “All things came to be through him and without him nothing came to be.” (1: 3) Finally, Krishna makes clear to Arjuna that he neither controls nor is responsible for the course of events in the world: “Those warriors arrayed in lines opposing your men, even without you, will have perished…I have destroyed your enemy already: serve as my tool, O Ambidextrous Archer! (Arjuna)” “Who sees himself as the sole doer, does not see…even after slaying these people, he neither slays, nor is he bound…” Arjuna is responsible for discerning his duty, perhaps with a gentle nudge from Lord Krishna, and then performing that duty to the best of his ability. That will be his legacy, not the outcome of some battle now barely visible through the fog of history. So how is any of this different from the traditional Western view of causality? I’ll grant you the distinction is subtle…but important! We tend to focus on intent, motive, ‘what was he trying to do’. The model we are proposing here includes the formation of intent but also the execution of that intent. Our judges put great emphasis on the dismount. We focus on ‘settled matters of fact’: what did he do! We are not concerned, however, with what happens next. What use future Actual Entities make of Arjuna’s Objective Immortality is between them and their God. Leave Arjuna out of it. He is not to blame for the Great London Fire (1666) or for Johnny’s poor performance on this morning’s algebra exam. So, in the spirit of Voltaire ( Candide ), “Tend to your own patch!” 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

< Back Elizabeth Bradfield Contributor Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of five collections, most recently Toward Antarctica and Theorem , a collaboration with artist Antonia Contro. She has co-edited the anthologies Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic/Artistic Collaboration and Cascadia: A Field Guide Through Art, Ecology and Poetry (forthcoming 2023). Her work has been appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship . Founder of Broadsided Press ( www.broadsidedpress.org ), Liz works as a naturalist/guide and teaches creative writing at Brandeis University. www.ebradfield.com Again

< Back Alphabet David Cowles “Reciting the alphabet is like peeling layers off of a prize-winning red onion.” We all know the letters A, B, and C - they sponsor episodes of Sesame Street . We learned ‘ABC’ as the beginning of an alphabet; but later we generalized the moniker to apply to any 3 distinct ‘states of affairs’ that follow one another in an inexorable sequence, A → B → C. We reduced that pattern to a song, making it possible for very young children to learn the entire alphabet. Using the same technique, I was able to teach the ancient Greek alphabet to one of my grandchildren when she was no older than 7. On the other hand, imagine that a police officer pulls you over on suspicion of DUI. He asks you to recite the alphabet and you’re happy to oblige; but a few letters in, he stops you, “No, I want you to recite the letters randomly, making sure that you include each letter once and only once and that no two adjacent letters are in alphabetical order.” Sounds impossible but actually it’s at least theoretically doable, but you’d need to fit the elements into a non-alphabetic pattern. For example, “A C B E D”. No? Ok, prepare to kiss your DL goodbye, even if you haven’t had a drop of alcohol in 20 years. Imagine our alphabet as 26 autonomous, unconnected symbols distributed randomly across a semantic plane. For the most part, that’s what an alphabet is; but we have transformed it into something quite different by giving it an invariant linear order: A → B → C → … Z. As though somehow H belongs after G. The purpose of an alphabet is to enable the formation of words that can then be ordered to communicate meaning. Encumbering those letters with any extraneous semantic baggage reduces their symbolic power by many orders of magnitude. Yet we do it! We have imposed an utterly capricious order on an inherently disordered string of symbols. After all, the letters of the modern English alphabet have no semantic connection to one another; do they? Sidebar : The much respected (here) science and practice of Kabbalah is based on precisely opposite assumptions. In Kabbalah, letters are laden with meaning per se and ‘order is everything’. An adept can literally read the story of the universe by reciting the Hebrew alphabet. I have argued (above) that letters and their arrangement in an alphabet should have no intrinsic meaning whatsoever; Kabbalah argues that all meaning resides in that alphabet. Can it be that we are both right? Idea : If we allowed every letter in an alphabet to associate freely with every other letter in that alphabet, how many letters would we need to express all the information contained in all earth’s written words? The difference is a measure of ‘semantic waste’ on a base 26 log scale. We create on our own the sense that A somehow ‘leads’ to B, that B is somehow ‘implicit’ in A. Reciting the alphabet is like peeling layers off of a prize winning red onion. Each layer corresponds to a letter, embodied in a prior letter and embodying a subsequent letter. We are born with the task of constructing a Mappa Mundi (world map), a logos incorporating the “signs of all things we are here to read” (James Joyce). Today, just two such maps are culturally pervasive. Logic links its elements via a daisy-chain of deductions. Science does the same based on the repeatability of experimental results. Note the 90° shift in orientation. Logic links elements horizontally, sequentially; science links elements vertically, hierarchically. Two different maps generated by two unrelated algorithms; they are like the various projections we use to create our maps of the world. Perhaps then we may be forgiven for imagining a deeper resemblance, not to say an identity, between our two logoi . Strange bedfellows, these! Logic is data-agnostic while Science is data-driven. Logic (deducibility) confers validity on reason; Science (repeatability) confers validity on observation. Logic is atemporal; Science presupposes, at least ab initio , a spatiotemporal continuum. (Therefore, ‘true science’ was not possible before calculus.) But something’s missing! It’s called Real Life . IRL, nothing can be deduced, nothing can be repeated! Our two ‘maps’ have no organic relationship with the ‘territories’ they represent. The stuff of Logic and Science is identity ; the stuff of Real Life is distinction . IRL, the closest we can get to identity is congruence: “My son looks just like George Clooney.” A = B is an oxymoron IRL. Scale is the new ‘spacetime’. RL is the search for scale invariant patterns (fractals) to replace spacetime extension and logic gates. Like → Like. RL is much closer to magic than it is to science. RL relies on scale to order experience. For example, most high school students notice congruent elements in Copernicus’ model of the solar system and Bohr’s model of the atom. William Blake saw deeper patterns; ultimately, he saw ‘a world in a grain of sand’ and ‘eternity in an hour’. For Blake, everything is congruent with everything else. Every part of every whole is congruent with the whole itself. The Christian doctrine of Incarnation lends additional structure to Blake’s insight. One ‘part’ ( Cristos ) is perfectly congruent with the ‘whole’ ( Theos ); all other parts ( onta ) are imperfectly congruent with both. Congruence is commutative. Cosmos is what lies between Theos and Cristos . Christmas celebrates ‘Emmanuel, God with us’, the mind bending fact that the entirety (YHWH) is incarnate in one of its quantum elements (Christ). Christ and YHWH are perfectly congruent: “The father and I are one.” (John 10:30) As above, so below: the Star of David. The Lord’s Prayer: “On earth as it is in heaven.” Ask a naïve realist to make a model of A, B, C, and you might be handed a beaded necklace with three larger beads separated from one another by two smaller beads. Each large bead represents a distinct event and occupies a region on the timeline, i.e. a duration. A, B, C means A ≠ B ≠ C. Therefore, in the cosmology of naïve realism there must be a region on the timeline where A is no longer A and B is not yet B; there must be a ‘region of transition’: ~A ᴜ ~B. But following that logic, it makes no sense to posit ~A ᴜ ~B as a ‘region’ from which B rises, unheralded. That is the currency of the miraculous, not the real. On the other hand, from the perspective of Process Philosophy (Alfred North Whitehead), ~A ᴜ ~B rises from oxymoron to tautology. According to Whitehead, et al., every B originates as a rejection of an A - a rejection that nonetheless conserves and propagates certain aspects A in the concrescence of B. B has the power to line item veto any aspect of A. ~A ᴜ ~B corresponds to Whitehead’s ‘creativity’, the crucible of unrest at the core of Being that perpetuates the primal act of creation. According to this school, God did not so much ‘create the Universe’ as he implanted ‘creativity’ in the Universe. A → B → C suggests sequence, temporal as well as logical. Where the sequence is temporal (science), we assume that A, B, and C each have duration, i.e., they each occupy a certain region on the timeline. Likewise, the transition states, call them x and y, that separate A from B and B from C will also have duration, however minimal; they too occupy a certain ‘region’. So we can rewrite our fundamental formula as ‘A x B y C’, where A, B, C, x, and y all occupy regions on the timeline. But as you can see, we’ve been forced to infect our ontology with a bunch of dubious and in any event superfluous assumptions (e.g., that x and y are real entities). So, let’s start over. A → B. There is no reason to suppose that there is a gap in time between the two states. Asking how long it takes A to transition into B is like asking how long it takes for an electron at one energy level to ‘transition’ to another energy level: it’s not called a quantum leap for nothing. It does not have a temporal dimension. Instead of hypothesizing regions of transition, x and y, we may just as well assume that A and B and B and C are tangent (‘ABC’). The state of A is felt by every point in A, but one point of A also belongs to B. Therefore, any change in the state of A would be instantaneously reflected in the state of B and so on. Therefore, of course, any change in the state of A would also be instantaneously reflected in the state of C…and in the state of Z. The naïve realist in all of us understands the ‘tangency’ of A and B (and Z) in terms of a chain mediated by some sort of physical proximity, but it need not be so. As John Bell proved (1964), and Alan Aspect demonstrated, A and B may be on opposite sides of the universe and still function as ‘tangent’, though we say they are ‘entangled’ to distinguish this from ‘geographic’ tangency. Whatever you chose to call it, a change in the state of A is instantaneously reflected in the state of B…and of Z. In this model, events are like gears. In some configurations, A and B both move clockwise; in other configurations, one moves clockwise, the other counterclockwise. According to this model, the universe is a fabric of entangled particles. Spacetime represents a tear in that fabric, the introduction of an arbitrary interval between events; ‘c’ is the measure of the extent of that tear. Hassidic Jews understand their function as restorative, Christians as redemptive, Secularists as entropic. Call it what you will, the rip in the fabric that was Big Bang is ‘under repair’. The Kingdom of God will be restored pristine, but we’ll experience that restoration as Heat Death . 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 . Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Previous Next

< Back Who Is Mary? David Cowles Aug 9, 2022 The relationship between Jesus and Mary is the relationship between God and the World, and the relationship between God and the World is the paradigm of all external relatedness. Most Christians have high regard for Mary, the mother of Jesus, but she plays a particularly important role in Orthodox, Anglican, and Roman Catholic cosmology: Gate of Heaven, Queen of the Angles, Mirror of Justice, Seat of Wisdom, Theotokos (God Bearer) Mater Dei (Mother of God) 4th century poet and theologian Ephrem the Syrian uses verse to explore further Mary’s role in the ‘economy of salvation’. Take a listen: (Jesus’) Mother, Sister, Bride, Daughter of Man, Thirsty Earth Fountain of Milk, Royal Palace, Holy of Holies. Mary’s epithets are not just terms of endearment. They are also a kind of code, and what they encode is what I call ‘The Marian Topology of the Cosmos’ or just ‘Marian Topology.’ Notice how Ephrem uses familiar kinship terms to describe Mary’s relationship with Jesus. No surprise there; she is his mother after all. But I think Ephrem is going for something more here. Mary is the Daughter of Man , not just the daughter of a man, but the daughter of all men (sic), i.e., the daughter of humanity and, by extension, the daughter of the entire Cosmos. Everything that is now, ever was, or is still to come, climaxes with Mary and her son, Jesus. I am reminded of the last scene in Act One of hit musical Les Misérables . Everything comes together at a point in a moment of time (Paris, June 5th 1832 in the musical), and that point is in Mary’s womb, late in the first century B.C. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world… I mean, who’da thunk it? 15 billion years old, 93 billion light years wide (and who knows what to come), all of it converged at a single point (or in a single infinitesimal region) in spacetime! Sounds more “out there” than it is! According to ‘Marian Topology,’ all events involve the Cosmos converging at or near a point. That’s what an event is! The universal realized in the incidental. Would you be surprised if I told you that that view is shared by many modern scientists and philosophers: Alfred North Whitehead, John Bell (I think) and David Bohm, to name just a few? What makes the Marian event so special is not the way it is structured (a structure it shares with all events), but the fact that this point of convergence is also the point of tangency between spacetime and eternity, between the immanent and the transcendent, between the profane and the sacred, between the mundane and the divine. Mary is the fulcrum of the Cosmos (Jesus is its lever); hers is the hidden chamber (womb) where God and Man become one. She is the mother of Jesus the Christ, but she is also his Sister and his Bride. Read one way, this is the paradigm of incent; read it another way, it is Cosmology 101. “To see the World in a Grain of Sand” (Blake) - easy-peasy! Even I can do it (and we do it together twice each week in Thoughts While Shaving and 8 times each year in Aletheia Today Magazine ). On the other hand, to see the Creator and his Creation in a single cell, well, that’s why God gets the big bucks. The relationship between Jesus and Mary is the relationship between God and the World, and the relationship between God and the World is the paradigm of all external relatedness. (Trinity is the paradigm of all internal relatedness.) Mary is Jesus’ progenitrix (mother), fellow-traveler (sister) and lover (bride); in fulfilling that role, she becomes the parent, the sibling and the soulmate of every event in the Cosmos. She is the Earth’s thirst (need, lack) but she is also instrumental in the quenching of that thirst (like Elijah and the other Prophets ). She is the Royal Palace where the King of the Universe dwells, and she is the Holy Holies into which only the eternal high Priest , Jesus the Christ, can enter. Marian Topology is non-linear, non-orientable, teleological, and recursive; we need to push awareness out of the theological faculties, into physical science, social science, biology and philosophy, and ultimately into the streets. Only there, in my view, can it Save our Planet . Image: Pieta, 1876 is a painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau which was uploaded on May 10th, 2019. Public domain. Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! 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 What Is Time? An astronomer explains the search to find its origins... Sten Odenwald St. Augustine said of time, “If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain to him who asks, I don’t know.” Time is an elusive concept: We all experience it, and yet, the challenge of defining it has tested philosophers and scientists for millennia. This article was originally published in the May 2022 issue of Astronomy . Read the rest of the article here . Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Share Previous Next

< Back What Makes U, U? David Cowles May 16, 2024 “…The ‘you-experience’ is the same for every human being…for every living thing…for every ‘actual entity’. Yet every entity is unique.” Have you ever wondered what makes ‘you’ you ? You are certainly unique, a one off. As your friends say, “They threw away the mold.” But where do ‘you’ leave off and a ‘different you’ begin? And what makes that ‘other you’ not you ? In other words, why are you not me? Why am I not you? Too early in the AM for this? You are the product of a single male sex cell and a single female sex cell. Most likely, your conception was the product of a single act (intercourse) in which as many as 1 billion sperm cells set out in search of an ovum. You are testimony to the fact that at least one male cell reached its destination. Congratulations, BTW! Suppose your conception had occurred on the same ‘occasion’ but resulted from the union of a different sperm cell with that same egg? Same time, same place; same partners, same act. Would ‘you’ still be you ? Presumably you’d be someone - and if not you, then who? And the who you are now? Every successful conception generates a unique ‘you’; it doesn’t matter how close or how distant two potential conception events might be – every conception is unique, as is every ‘you’. Identity is not a continuum. As usual, we have things backwards. We assume you and then we try to associate you with a particular set of physical parameters. In fact, the potentiality for a ‘you-event’ is everywhere, but every actual ‘you’ is a singularity. Imagine you are a ball bearing rolling off an assembly line, smooth and shiny as you like. You are certainly unique in the sense that you are one among many. Presumably, but unintentionally, at some probably irrelevant level of detail you can be distinguished from the other ball bearings in ‘your run’ but for all intents and purposes you are interchangeable. You are both ‘what you are’ ( Wassein ) and ‘that you are’ ( Dasein ). What you are consists of attributes that you potentially share, to one degree or another, with every other entity. That you are is unique to you; however, your experience of being you is exactly the same as every other entity’s experience of being itself. Yes, every entity experiences itself being itself…because that is what an ‘entity’ is! But no two entities are the same. All entities, myself included, draw from a single, common set of attributes (‘accidents’), but every entity, myself included, exhibits these attributes differently – different attributes in different proportions, combinations and arrangements. To borrow terminology from Kant, you and I are noumenally identical but phenomenally unique. Whatever distinguishes you from everyone else is ‘accidental’ but what unites you is ‘substantial’. Everyone experiences themselves as a ‘you’ and that experience is presumably the same for everyone; how could it not be? Being you is… being you ! You are you as I am I. So the ‘you-experience’ is the same for every human being…for every living thing…for every ‘actual entity’. Yet every entity is unique. Riddle : What is the one sentence that is always true in every situation? Answer : “They threw away the mold.” Psychology (mind) is different from Physiology (body). Mind is body and body mind (Ryle), yet ‘the study of mind’ is very different from ‘the study of body’. Apparently, mind and body describe the same phenomena, but from different perspectives, attested to by the radically different vocabularies required. Likewise, Ontology is different from both Physiology and Psychology. Most of us go through life thinking that we are what we are; but according to JP Sartre, the reverse is true: We are not what we are; we are what we are not. Think of all the things that have happened to you, all the experiences that formed you, all the chance occurrences that impacted the course of your life; none of them has anything to do with you . You are now who you were at the moment of your birth (or before) and who you will be at the hour of your death. “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Regardless of what marvelous or horrible things you’ve done or have been done to you, you are, always have been and always will be, just you …now and at the hour of your death. This is the hour of your death! Every sufficiently large and structured set of elements constitutes a ‘you’. Every ‘you’ is the same you , even though every you is unique. Every ‘you’ is what it is in the same way; there is only one way of being ‘you’. However, what ‘you’ are is entirely unlike what anyone else is. Or, if you prefer: I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together… ( Beatles, I am the Walrus ) 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.