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< 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 Shame David Coles Dec 13, 2022 “Shame comes in two flavors: episodic shame and existential shame. Episodic shame can be habit-forming; it can turn into existential shame.” Shame is one of the most powerful of all human emotions…and perhaps the most pernicious. Other emotions are directed, at least in part, at things outside us. We fear ‘something’; we are angry at ‘someone’. Not so, shame. My shame is directed solely at myself, by myself. I only feel shame in the context of an outside observer, actual or potential; but the observer does not ‘shame me’. I shame myself. Furthermore, I cannot feel shame unless I allow myself to be shamed, so, end of day, I cannot be shamed by anyone else but me. When we were kids, our father used to threaten us, “I’ll shame you!” And he did, or at least he tried to; and he succeeded, but only because I let myself be shamed. I looked at myself through his eyes. I internalized his disgust. Likewise, I didn’t know then that shame was optional. I didn’t know that no one could be shamed by anyone but themselves. Example: I’m 10 years old and on my way to school I see a friend being balled-out by his mom in front of several of our classmates. Figuratively, I ‘feel his shame’; literally, I feel sorry for my friend, but I don’t feel ashamed, not really. Now reverse roles. It’s my mom, and I’m the boy on the receiving end of the stick. Of course, I’m ashamed, but why? What’s changed? A boy is being shamed in either case. In either case, I’m sorry that it’s happening. It’s wrong in both cases. (Shaming is always wrong, regardless of the provocation.) But in neither case am I the boy ‘being shamed’. I’m watching myself be shamed, just as I watched my friend being shamed; but there’s no reason for either of us to feel shame either time. We didn’t do anything wrong, or at least we didn’t do anything shameful. The only people in this story who might legitimately feel shame are the two moms, but even then, only if they allow themselves to feel shame, which I’m guessing, they won’t. Self-righteousness is a powerful protection against self-criticism. So, let’s review. IRT, I watched my friend… from the outside; IRT, I watched myself from the inside; now I’m watching the moms, but from my memory, i.e., outside of real time. Different scenarios, no doubt. But it’s still me watching. It’s the same me. I haven’t changed. Hint: I never change; I am ageless and timeless. I’m watching, always watching, watching me, watching you, watching me watching you. Watching is what I do, ‘watching’ is what I am. Observo ergo sum. Shame is an instance of Alfred North Whitehead’s ‘Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness’, which itself is just another way of saying ‘Idolatry’, the first sin condemned in the Torah and throughout Judeo-Christian-Islamic history. When I feel shame, I mistake myself for myself. I confuse something ageless and timeless, me watching, with something time bound and aging, me being watched. I mistake the perpetually perishing me for the eternal me. Fear and anger erupt, often in response to outside stimuli, but always from the inside out. On a camping trip, I hear a bear outside my tent. I am terrified. My fear is my response to the bear-threat. The bear ‘occasioned’ my fear, but she did not cause it. Fear was my response to a well-intentioned bear innocently looking for a midnight snack. Plus, if I am afraid, I’m afraid whether anyone knows it or not. Shame is totally different. It is imposed from the outside. Shame presupposes the existence of a judgy observer. That could be a loved one, a neighbor or a casual passer-by; it could be your pet or even ‘God, his angels, and his saints’. Nor does this potential external observer need to be present IRT. The anticipation that a present act may be uncovered in the future is enough to trigger shame if we let it. Shame comes in two flavors: episodic shame and existential shame. Episodic shame can be habit-forming; it can turn into existential shame. You begin to identify with your shame; you allow yourself to become ‘shameful’. You feel you deserve to feel shame, not just once in a while, but all the time. You’re no longer ashamed of what you’ve done; now you’re ashamed of who you are. You’re a fish out of ontological water, and somehow, you always manage to turn up naked. So, congratulations, you’ve graduated from episodic to existential shame. Now your Christmas goose is truly cooked. All we’re waiting for is Tiny Tim…but if he’s otherwise occupied, you could try spending a year with a Harley Street therapist instead. Or, if all else fails, just remember who you are…and who you are not. 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 The Leading Player of Memories Annie D. Stutley Maybe that’s what Judy Garland meant in “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” when she sang “we’ll have to muddle through somehow?” Growing up, I always looked forward to coming home from church with Grandpa. As we walked up the back steps of our house in Bay St. Louis, Miss., Grandpa would say in his booming voice, “Annie, you were so good in church today that I deserve a milk punch.” Soon the smell of bourbon and nutmeg would fill the porte cochère, the little room off the kitchen where Grandpa would blend his post-religious cordial, pouring out a kid-sized portion for me. I’d pucker my lips to suck up the frothy cap of milk floating on top and relish the simple Sunday ritual. All was well in my world where Grandpas were reassuringly predictable. I have taken to the occasional post Mass sarcasm with my own children. There’s something warm about traditions. We don’t always know quite how they began, but as the world spins around us, they are our constants, beacons of comfort, ready to wrap us in their arms and remind us that all is still well. Most of us have holiday traditions we anticipate as the calendar rolls into December. My cousins in Lake Charles look for a gold pickle hidden in the evergreen of the Christmas tree. My neighbor spends a full Friday from lunch to supper gallivanting through soufflé potatoes and French 75’s with friends in the front room at New Orleans’ famed Galatoire’s Restaurant. When my husband was a child, every holiday season they baked homemade ornaments from clay and painted them. Most of the cutouts were badly altered in the hot oven, creating timeless characters like Sweaty Angel, whose wings were too small and too fat, morphed from the steam. Only copious sweat and divine intervention could allow the aerodynamic Christmas miracle that would get her off the ground. Then there was Black-Eyed Bart, the fear-inducing Santa ornament whose eyes were black as pitch and whose red painted lips dribbled down his chin. My husband recalls the jubilation that would fill his living room when these ornaments were unpacked from ten months of attic hibernation each year – as anticipated as opening presents on Christmas Day. Growing up, my family celebrated two Christmases, one with our nuclear family of seven and another over New Year’s weekend back in Bay St. Louis with Grandma, Grandpa, and all our cousins. The first Christmas was for Santa and his magic. The latter was for the predictable magic: Grandpa’s scavenger hunt clues through the big drafty house leading to our Christmas checks and Pop’s notorious poems on the rest of the presents. My father knew the secret to a healthy sense of self: laugh at yourself first, and the rest will laugh with you, not at you. During second Christmas he exercised this through verse written on the outside of our presents. His poems were supposed to be clues, but more times than not, they only made sense to him. That was the best part – seeing Pop chuckle at his own expense, standing before the twinkling lights of the tree in his red shirt, ready to hand out the next gift, while the receiver of the previous gift scratched their head, trying to connect the words of Pop’s poem to what they’d just unwrapped. There came a time when I began to save all these poems. Something told me that someday, maybe sooner than I feared, the predictability of Christmas poems would be gone and the poem itself would be more valuable than anything Pop bought me. As much as I find comfort in what is expected of rituals and traditions, I’m also energized by the unexpected. There’s promise in the unknown because the future has not been determined. I’ve always had this feeling that something great “is just around the corner.” But my first holiday season after Pop died – the first gift exchange without Pop’s poems, without that glint in his eye, without seeing him laugh at his own buffoonery – I entered Advent with a lump in my throat, paralyzed by the unexpected. Where would the silliness stem from now that our Leading Player had finished his run? Sweaty Angel and Black-Eyed Bart came from my mother-in-law’s annual effort to mix clay and gather everyone around the table for messy memories. My cousins’ pickle hunt is the result of keeping the same date on the calendar every year (Pickle Night), and Pop’s poems only happened because he took the time to make them happen, and because he was exceedingly generous with his sense of self. Eventually, however, it’s not just the tradition itself that’s passed down. It’s the responsibility to creating memories. When a new actor steps into an established role, preceded by a long-running fan favorite, the new actor has to make that role their own. Otherwise, the performance is trite. Nothing breaks the fourth wall like seeing a performer reach. In the same way, when we become the keepers of the keys formerly held by our ancestors, we have to do the best we can with the script we’ve been given. We can’t keep what was entirely, but that doesn’t mean that run has to stop. They set the scene, our parents and. before them, our grandparents, but eventually, it’s our turn. We may not follow through with the same flair, but we keep the story going. We may even spin off toward new traditions, new predictability of the season, building upon the family catalog of memories. Maybe that’s what Judy Garland meant in “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” when she sang “we’ll have to muddle through somehow?” We take what we’ve been given, and we serve the role of the Leading Player (not the traditions), keeping our motivation on what matters most: transporting those in our audience (our siblings, kids, and grandkids) to that timeless, childlike place where the joy of the season is felt most. Somewhere in that first Christmas after Pop died, I realized that the silliness of the season was mine to lose. I was destined for the role of Memory Maker, Leading Player of Christmas, the instant I first laughed at those who came before me. Because long ago in those moments of unhinged joy, kept safe in the catalog of my most treasured memories, my heart bursting with love for Pop, Grandpa, Mama – all my life’s Leading Players, I knew the feeling would last and that when it was my turn, I’d want to keep the laughter going. Because just as Pop knew, laughter is best shared. Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines. 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. Previous Next

“You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.”    < Back Philip Goff David Cowles Mar 1, 2024 “You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.” Philip Goff is a breath of fresh air: he’s a philosopher on the faculty of a major university (Durham), whose work is published by Oxford University Press. He maintains that existence may have an objective purpose, and he is willing to at least consider a role for ‘God’ in the overall scheme of things. In the end, Goff rejects what he describes as the Abrahamic (Judeo-Christian-Islamic) ‘Omni-God’ (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) but nonetheless posits the possibility of a transcendent, purposeful entity. Goff is willing to entertain the ‘God Hypothesis’ provided God’s knowledge and power are somehow limited, or God’s benevolence is impure or conditional. So, Goff’s latest book, Why - The Purpose of the Universe , was eagerly anticipated. Unfortunately, it disappoints. Goff fails to make a clear distinction between the sort of God he excludes a priori and the sort he might entertain. His characterization of ‘Abrahamic divinity’ oversimplifies. Any concept of omnipotence is limited by what’s possible, omniscience by what’s knowable, and benevolence by what’s doable. God cannot square a circle any more than you can! He cannot fashion a rock that is too heavy for him to lift. These logical and material fallacies have nothing to do with divinity. God is Good…in fact, God is Value per se . That’s really all you need to know. God does not ‘have values’ or ‘determine’ values; God is Value! Value is the efficient cause and the final cause of everything that is. I mean, what else could be? Why else would anything ever happen? It is said, “Love makes the world go round.” The same could be said of ‘the Good’. In fact, Love and Good are denotatively synonymous. Every novel event begins and ends with Value. Value is the sole motivator: it alone allows us to execute judgment on ‘the gods of Egypt’ (i.e., on what is ). Motivated by Value, we push off from shore; guided by Value we seek the horizon. Value alone guides us to create what might be . Between these two poles, Alpha-impulse and Omega-goal, each event shapes itself. It is causa sui and sui generis . It is informed by only two things: (1) the Actual World ( what is ) and (2) God’s values ( what might be ). “Some folks see things as they are and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not.” (Bobby Kennedy) Between motive and immortality, each event is 100% free – free to react to what is, free to pursue what might yet be. This is what Goff calls ‘libertarian free will’; it closely resembles Sartre’s notion of absolute existential freedom. Robert Frost illustrates this concept in his most famous poem, The Road Not Taken . Out for a stroll in the NH woods, Frost comes to a fork in the road. He knows that both paths will take him to his destination. Yet he agonizes over the choice: “Both that morning equally lay.” Frost’s location and destination were hard-wired; his route was entirely undetermined. Every event (→) begins and ends with what is (Actual World → Objective Immortality → Actual World). In the context of this ontology, Abraham’s God is the same as Goth’s. The notion of an Omni-cubed (∞³) God is a straw man, set up only to be torn down. It’s easy to disprove the existence of something that is impossible, something that makes no sense on its face. Goff’s work is about God and Consciousness…and he gets them both wrong. Early on, he dismisses strong AI, claiming that there is something ‘special’ about the neuronal stuff he’s made of (i.e., his organic chemistry). Later, however, he proposes the possibility that the cosmos itself may be conscious ( Cosmo-panpsychism )…and the cosmos is not (primarily) made of neurons…or any other ‘special stuff’. Here, Goff carries a good idea too far. He not only posits universal consciousness, but he also maintains that all actual entities are rational agents . No doubt, events change the world (though we can’t reliably predict how), and events exhibit internal patterns. But those patterns cannot be reduced to rationality, nor can all changes be chalked up to agency. We are, I think, on the cusp of discovering that intelligence, and even consciousness, is platform-agnostic. In fact, the essence of panpsychism is the conjecture that ‘consciousness is everywhere’, that it pervades cosmos. It appears likely that many, if not all, organisms are conscious (or at least self-aware) in some way and to some degree, and there are strong reasons for wanting to extend the net to include certain inorganic phenomena…like computers. Goff posits three activities that make life worth living: “creativity, learning, and showing kindness to others," but he makes no effect to substantiate his claim that these values are somehow sewn into the fabric of the cosmos. The discovery of Value raises key questions: How is it that there is such a thing as Value? How does Value come to influence the course of events? By what faculty are we able to access Value? I agree with Goff that the answers to these questions are tied to the matter of consciousness. I would go even further and argue that Value is impossible without consciousness. Consciousness is reflection; it’s the universe ‘taking a selfie’, i.e., reflecting itself reflecting. Consciousness is what Universe sees when it sees itself. But reflection is comparative. I conceptualize A in the context of ~A. Judging A on the basis of the values it manifests requires an external perspective that also encompasses ~A and the set of universal values by which we may judge A. Goff rejects, I think too easily (below), Pascal’s argument for the existence of God (his famous “Wager”), but Goff replaces it with a ‘modern’ version called ‘Bayesian Logic’. According to this ‘science of inference’ we can validly reason upstream (induction) as well as down (deduction). In a nutshell, assume there is an event, A. If we don’t directly know anything about any events other than A, can we deduce something about everything else based on our experience of A? Were Leibniz and Blake right after all? Is every event a reflection (monad) of every other event? Can we discover “a universe is a grain of sand”? Crazy, right? Well, not entirely. If we know that A is very likely to occur, provided B has occurred before it, and if we know that A is very unlikely to occur unless B has occurred before it, then our experience of A lets us presume, provisionally at least, that B has occurred. Apply this to the matter of God: If there is a God according to the Judeo-Christian prototype, then it is likely that the created world would be well-ordered. If there is no God, then spontaneous ordering would be very, very unlikely . The world is extremely well-ordered (i.e., the degree of fine-tuning is astronomically improbable). ‘God’ accounts for that fine-tuning better than ‘no-God’ accounts for it. Therefore, it is likely that God exists…very, very likely! As with Pascal, Goff’s conclusion comes down to a so-called ‘Wager’, but the nature of that wager is very different. Goff uses Bayesian Logic to establish the existence of ‘God’ as highly probable . With Bayes, you end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, very profitably! But it’s still gambling. Pascal is a whole different kettle of fish! His argument has nothing to do with probabilities, so his ‘wager’ is a wager in name only. Pascal’s argument is based on something much stronger…and much more ephemeral. Pascal is prepared to divide the World in two: on one side, A - the set of all things/events that make a difference, that have consequences, that change things, that mean something; on the other side, B - the set of all things/events that do not belong to A, i.e., that make no difference, have no consequences, change nothing, mean nothing. Every event X in Set A is associated with a proposition P of the form, ‘X exists’ and with proposition P’ of the form, ‘P is true’. Therefore, the proposition ‘X exists’ is always true, provided that X is a member of A. For Pascal, at least, A is the set of all things that exist, and B is the set of…nothing. Anything that might have belonged to B doesn’t exist. So, B is the null set, ø. In fact, it’s a ‘double null set’ ø² – a null set of null elements. (Ok, I made that up!) But in any event, the only set that has real members is A. Therefore, whatever belongs to A exists. What does this have to do with God? Pascal notes that God’s existence makes no difference if we don’t believe it, and that our beliefs about God make no difference if God doesn’t exist. Therefore, the existence of God is only meaningful if we believe it, and our beliefs about God are only meaningful if God exists. Therefore, there is only one meaningful solution to the problem: God exists, and now that I know that for certain, I cannot not believe. While I disagree with Philip Goff on many things, we are all indebted to him for helping to move conversations like this one back into the public domain. 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. 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

< Back Mary Poppins, Sufi Master David Cowles The story of Mary Poppins is the story of one small boy’s initiation into the teachings of Sufi spirituality and the secrets of Sufi mysticism. When the initiation of Michael Banks is complete, Michael has come, at least in some measure, to know the mind of God. Not bad for seven-years-old! How does one come to know the mind of God? From reading children’s stories? Maybe! In 1934, P.L. Travers, an Australian, wrote one of the most famous children’s books of all time, Mary Poppins . But this is no ordinary nursery fable. Mary Poppins is a tale steeped in tradition and rich in the lore of Sufi mysticism. Sufism is a spiritual tradition with deep roots in Islam, but it is not bound to any one religion’s traditions, any one geographic region, any one ethnic group or any one historical period. Sufism is synonymous with certain mystical and spiritual traditions and practices that span cultures. The story of Mary Poppins is the story of one small boy’s initiation into the teachings of Sufi spirituality and the secrets of Sufi mysticism. When the initiation of Michael Banks is complete, Michael has come, at least in some measure, to know the mind of God. Not bad for seven-years-old! Upon Mary’s arrival at 17 Cherry Tree Lane, Michael peers into her luggage, a carpet bag, and is “more than surprised to find it was completely empty.” When Michael’s older sister Jane articulates this discovery (“Why…there’s nothing in it!”), Mary responds by systematically extracting a host of personal items, including “a small folding armchair.” Michael in turn whispers to Jane, “But I saw…it was empty.” (Later, at the climax of the story, Michael will ‘see again’…but this time he sees ‘something’ rather than ‘nothing.’) And so, Michael and Mary quickly establish the philosophical framework for the dialog…and adventures…to come: When is seeing believing…and when isn’t it? (epistemology); What is real…and what isn’t? (ontology). Take the matter of the carpet bag, for instance. Is it empty, or isn’t it? From one perspective, it is: peering in, Michael sees nothing. That’s epistemology! But from another perspective, it is not: it contains all the items needed to furnish a small apartment. That’s ontology! In a sense, every systematic philosophy turns on the relationship between epistemology and ontology: ‘thinking’ and ‘being’ according to the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Parmenides. But back to Mary Poppins ! Is there really a conflict between what Michael sees (epistemology) and what Mary does (ontology)? Only if you subscribe to the underlying premise that one cannot extract large objects from an empty bag! Consider the long-running TV series, “Doctor Who.” The central ‘character’ in this story is something called ‘The Tardis.’ From the outside, The Tardis is a typical English phone booth. But on the inside, The Tardis is a vast hexagonal space that accommodates multiple characters and events. And that is precisely that sort of commonsense tenet that Mary Poppins challenges! There is no effort here to challenge the reality of Michael’s perceptions or of Mary’s actions; the challenge here is strictly to the appearance of contradiction between the two. This is not a book about magic (at least not in the usual sense of that word) nor illusion, delusion, or fantasy. This is a book about epistemology and ontology. Mary Poppins consists of a series of tales, adventures told or orchestrated by Mary, designed to wean Michael from the mother’s milk of commonsense and replace it with something much stronger: a willing recognition and acceptance of mystical reality! By the final chapter (West Wind), Mary has achieved her goal and is free to move on. It is the first day of spring, and the east wind that blew Mary to Cherry Tree Lane in the first place has finally given way. Westerly weather is the signal for Mary Poppins to depart. As she prepares to leave, Mary presents Michael with her compass. In an earlier chapter (“Bad Tuesday”), Mary used this compass to travel instantaneously to the four corners of earth with Jane and Michael at her side. Later in that same chapter, Michael’s misuse of the same compass summons menacing creatures from those same four corners. But now, as the story ends, Mary feels able to trust Michael with that compass. Her mission on Cherry Tree Lane has been accomplished. The passing of the compass from Mary Poppins to Michael Banks signals that the central conflict of the story has been resolved. Sufism lives on, its torch passed to a new generation. Michael has been initiated. He has transcended his (our) childish commitment to naïve realism and can now be trusted to understand the power of the compass and to use it judiciously. A good story? Yes! Just a story? No way! Michael Banks’ initiation into Sufism is more than just a story; it is a sacrament. According to the Roman Catholic Church, a sacrament must be both symbolic and efficacious. Mary Poppins is about the conversion of Michael Banks (symbolic), but it is potentially about the conversion of everyone who reads it (efficacious). I am reminded of a 1984 movie, The Never-Ending Story . The hero, a young boy named Bastian, hides in an attic, reading a book. (The book he’s reading, by the way, is entitled, The Never-Ending Story.) First clue! Bastian is also a character in that book. Second clue! And, final clue, that book is about the real-life adventures of a real-life hero who, of course, also turns out to be none other than Bastian, the very same. We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore! If we read Mary Poppins in the proper spirit, we will gradually realize that each one of us is also Michael Banks! And like Michael, we may come to see reality, at least to some extent, as God sees it. Some background is in order. Sufism is a family of spiritual doctrines and practices that vary widely across geographical, cultural, and historical landscapes. Mary Poppins reflects a particular school of Sufism associated with a Euro-centric group known as the Carbonari. If you’re thinking ‘pasta carbonara’ right now, and getting a wee bit hungry, you’re on the right track. Pasta Carbonara is the pasta of the ‘charcoal workers,’ i.e., the pasta of the Carbonari, the Sufis. While many Sufi schools focus on meditative practices and ‘inner awakening,’ the Carbonari believe that Sufism can and should be a transformative factor in everyday life. They embrace an ethic that has been compared to primitive Christianity, and they can even become politically active when devotion to that ethic so dictates. The Carbonari influence in Mary Poppins is immediately evident. As early as Chapter 2 (The Day Out), we are introduced to Bert (played by Dick Van Dyke in the movie), a “Match-Man” in the book, a “chimney sweep” in the movie, both charcoal workers, both Carbonari. Carbon workers of all kinds represent Sufism throughout the literature and practices of the eponymous Carbonari. The prominent role of Bert in Mary’s Sufi community explicitly identifies the Carbonari ideology that underlies this work. On her first day at 17 Cherry Tree Lane (East Wind), Mary changes “a dark crimson fluid” (wine like?) variously into strawberry ice, lime juice cordial, milk, and rum punch. From our knowledge of Christianity (Roman Catholic doctrine in particular), we recognize this as Transubstantiation: during the celebration of the Roman Catholic Mass, bread and wine are transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. Mary does the same thing on Cherry Tree Lane. Of course, a skeptic might object that the dark crimson fluid merely appears to be various things to various people, according to their personal tastes and desires (idealism?). P.L. Travers is too smart to fall for that trap. She anticipated this objection. Long before J.K. Rowlings, Travers knew well the hardness of a muggle’s heart, and so, she met the skeptics’ objection head-on. Jane Banks (who tasted the lime juice cordial) entreats Mary Poppins not to give it to the twin babies in the nursery: “Oh, no, please. They’re too young. It wouldn’t be good for them. Please!” Mary ignores Jane’s well-intended plea, of course, and “…tipped the spoon toward John’s (baby’s) mouth…and by the few drops that were spilled on his bib, Jane and Michael could tell that the substance in the spoon this time was milk.” I wonder how many Roman Catholics receiving Holy Communion on a Sunday have as much faith in the reality of Transubstantiation as Jane and Michael did that day on Cherry Tree Lane! But back to Chapter 2 (The Day Out). Bert, the match-man we met earlier, is drawing two-dimensional chalk pictures on a sidewalk. One of his panels depicts a particularly idyllic country scene. “Why don’t we go there – right now – this very day? Both, together, into the picture. Eh, Mary?” And so, they do! What follows is a fabulous ‘country day’ experience, complete with afternoon tea and a ride on a merry-go-round. This section deserves a special note. Throughout her book, Travers leaves clues to let us know that what Jane and Michael are experiencing is real, not an illusion, fantasy, or dream. The first example of this is the drops of milk on John’s bib; later, encounters with gingerbread, paper stars, and snakeskin will serve the same function. “The Day Out” contains a similar, but totally unintended, clue – this time not for Jane and Michael but for us, the readers! Long after Travers wrote Mary Poppins , mathematicians confirmed that Travers’ account of dimensionality is accurate. Information, it seems, is a two-dimensional quantity; all the information contained in a three-dimensional space can actually be mapped onto two dimensions. Think hologram; think black hole. A two-dimensional chalk drawing can, in fact, encode all the information needed to generate a three-dimensional space and a four-dimensional experience (time added). In Chapter 3 (Laughing Gas), Mary and the children pay a visit to her uncle, Albert Wigg. Imagine their consternation when they find Uncle Wigg, not with his feet on the floor, but rather floating in air! Mary is not surprised. She’s seen this before. Whenever Uncle Albert laughs on his birthday, he fills up with what he calls “laughing gas” and overcomes the force of gravity. Of course, Jane and Michael are astonished…but not for long. Soon something strikes them as funny, and they too leave their feet and join Uncle Albert “on the ceiling”. “‘Well!’ said Mr. Wigg, looking very surprised indeed. ‘Don’t tell me it’s your birthday, too?’ Jane shook her head.” Mr. Wigg can only transcend gravity once a year. Jane and Michael are not so restricted. It seems that even by Chapter 3 Jane and Michael are farther up the Sufi hierarchy than Mary’s uncle. But what of Mary herself? “‘Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins, do come up,’ interrupted Michael. ‘Think of something funny…’“ “‘Ah, she doesn’t need to,’ said Mr. Wigg, sighing. ‘She can come up if she wants to, even without laughing – and she knows it.’“ In Chapter 8 (“Mrs. Corry”), Mary takes the children to a gingerbread shop. There, they purchase “a baker’s dozen” of gingerbread slabs, each of which comes with a “gilt paper star.” As they leave the shop, Jane and Michael “turned and looked behind them”. The shop had disappeared…but not the gingerbread. This is another example of that important teaching technique employed by Mary (and Travers). Just as in Chapter One, the drops of milk on John’s bid prove that the apparent metamorphosis is actual trans-substantial, so now in Chapter 8 it is the gingerbread (and gilt paper stars) that prove that the gingerbread shop was real and not an illusion or a dream. But back to the story. Jane and Michael carefully put their gilt paper stars in safe places in their room. Later that night, as they pretend to sleep, they see Mary, rummaging through their belongings. She leaves the house “…carrying a market basket, and in the basket was something that seemed to give out a faint, mysterious light”. Shortly, we learn that the basket contains the children’s paper stars. Mary meets Mrs. Corry and her helpers from the shop, and together they climb a pair of ladders and begin gluing these paper stars to the sky, where they “began to twinkle furiously”. Astrogenesis? Jane and Michael get out of bed, look through their belongings, and find that their stars are indeed gone. (In this case, it is the absence of the stars that proves the reality of the experience: the empty tomb.) Mary and Mrs. Corry have affixed them to the sky, where they twinkle like every other star in the night. Jane asks, “What I want to know…is this: Are the stars gold paper, or are the gold paper stars?” Jane’s question is the lesson of this chapter. She assumes that either stars are gold paper or that the gold paper is stars. Her thinking is linear. If stars and gold paper are the same, then either one is the origin of the other. Jane doesn’t consider the possibility that both propositions could be true simultaneously. The same logic is at work in the Christian doctrine of Eucharist. The communicant incorporates the body and blood of Christ in the form of a wafer of bread and a sip of wine, and by that, every act the communicant is incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ. Likewise, Tanya, a foundational work of Hasidic Judaism, states: When you think a thought, you are greater than that thought. But when that thought is of Torah, which is rooted in God (and is God), that thought is greater than you, and you become absorbed into the thought, and in this way you and God are one. There is another lesson encoded in this episode. An implicit commonsense assumption underlies Jane’s inquiry: a “thing” must consist of an immutable substance and a function (attribute?) consistent with that substance. By extension, everything in the world can be analyzed into “x” and “not x”: stars and not stars, paper and not paper. Though Jane does not realize it, her question is really a reductio ad absurdum for any such logical dualism. Her question proves that the notion of an underlying substance with a self-consistent function is nonsensical. The world is indefinitely mutable. Anything, made of any substance, can fulfill any function. As we learn from modern-day Structuralism, the totality determines the function of each of its parts, and any “thing” can perform any function within that totality. We are discovering that the same might be true of the animal (human) body, but that is a topic for another essay at another time. Finally, several chapters involve dialog between animals and humans. In Chapter 4, (“Miss Lark’s Andrew”) Mary speaks at length with Andrew, Miss Lark’s dog, but Jane and Michael cannot understand their conversation. Later, however, in Chapter 10 (Full Moon), Jane and Michael converse freely with the animals. These strange phenomena are explained in Chapter 9 (John and Barbara’s Story). John and Barbara are infant twins…and they are entirely conversant in the language of animals and even of nature (e.g., sunbeams and wind). P.L. Travers explains that all babies are omniglots, speaking and understanding the language of all creatures, animate and inanimate (if indeed that is even a valid distinction). All babies are natural (uninitiated) Sufis, sharing from birth in God’s knowledge. Unfortunately, by about the age of one, almost all children forget their universal knowledge of language and struggle now to learn just a single language, their parents.’ Mary is helping Jane and Michael relearn the language of creation. Here we have a case of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. According to Genesis, early humans enjoyed a universal language and the very first humans apparently communicated with animals as well. There may also be a suggestion here that from God’s perspective, we still live in Eden. Perhaps it is not that Eden vanished or that we were driven out; perhaps we have always been in Eden all the time but, like Jane and Michael, we have just forgotten how to see it. C.S. Lewis suggests something similar in The Great Divorce. Chapter 10 (Full Moon) is the critical turning point in the story. Jane and Michael are now able to dialog with animals (at the zoo). And at the end of this chapter, they finally come to accept without reservation that the experiences they’ve had with Mary are real, not products of a dream or a fantasy or an illusion. While at the zoo, they are introduced to a great King Cobra, Hamadryad, “the Lord of the Jungle.” For the first time in Mary Poppins , we meet a creature who is apparently further advanced in the Sufi hierarchy than Mary. For the first time in the entire story, Jane and Michael are formally instructed in Sufi doctrine…but not by Mary Poppins, rather by the great teacher himself, Hamadryad: “Tonight, the small are free from the great and the great protect the small (the lion and the lamb in Isaiah)... It may be that to eat and be eaten are the same thing in the end (Eucharist)… We are all made of the same stuff…the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star – we are all one, all moving to the same end.” “Remember that when you no longer remember me… Bird and beast and stone and star – we are all one, all one… Child and serpent, star and stone – all one.” Hamadryad presents Mary with one of his shed skins as a birthday present, and he writes on it an inscription: “A Present from the Zoo.” The next morning over breakfast, Jane and Michael tell each other about the marvelous “dream” each one had the night before. Soon they realize that they both had the same dream. Jane immediately grasps the enormous import of this discovery: “We can’t both have dreamed the same thing… Then it couldn’t have been a dream at all… It must have been true.” But the power of commonsense (naïve realism) is overwhelming, especially when you’re older than 7. Jane, frightened by her own thought, walks back her profound insight; she concludes, “Then it must have been a dream…after all.” But not so fast! Only now is it time for the climax! Michael Banks, “staring, open-mouthed at Mary Poppins…pointed, and Jane also saw what he was looking at. Round her waist, Mary Poppins was wearing a belt made of golden scaly snakeskin, and on it was written…’A Present from the Zoo.’” There is no longer a shred of doubt in Michael’s mind that the experiences he has had with Mary have been real…no matter how much those experiences violate the canon of “commonsense”. The conversion of Michael Banks is complete. But what about us? Are we converted too? Was this beautifully symbolic sacrament efficacious as promised? 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

< Back How ChatGPT Robs Students Naomi S. Baron "When AI does our writing for us, we diminish opportunities to think out problems for ourselves." When the company OpenAI launched its new artificial intelligence program, ChatGPT, in late 2022, educators began to worry. ChatGPT could generate text that seemed like a human wrote it. How could teachers detect whether students were using language generated by an AI chatbot to cheat on a writing assignment? As a linguist who studies the effects of technology on how people read , write and think , I believe there are other, equally pressing concerns besides cheating. These include whether AI, more generally, threatens student writing skills, the value of writing as a process, and the importance of seeing writing as a vehicle for thinking. As part of the research for my new book on the effects of artificial intelligence on human writing , I surveyed young adults in the U.S. and Europe about a host of issues related to those effects. They reported a litany of concerns about how AI tools can undermine what they do as writers. However, as I note in my book, these concerns have been a long time in the making. Users See Negative Effects Tools like ChatGPT are only the latest in a progression of AI programs for editing or generating text. In fact, the potential for AI undermining both writing skills and motivation to do your own composing has been decades in the making. Spellcheck and now sophisticated grammar and style programs like Grammarly and Microsoft Editor are among the most widely known AI-driven editing tools. Besides correcting spelling and punctuation, they identify grammar issues as well as offer alternative wording. AI text-generation developments have included autocomplete for online searches and predictive texting. Enter “Was Rome” into a Google search and you’re given a list of choices like “Was Rome built in a day.” Type “ple” into a text message and you’re offered “please” and “plenty.” These tools inject themselves into our writing endeavors without being invited, incessantly asking us to follow their suggestions. Young adults in my surveys appreciated AI assistance with spelling and word completion, but they also spoke of negative effects. One survey participant said that “At some point, if you depend on a predictive text [program], you’re going to lose your spelling abilities.” Another observed that “Spellcheck and AI software … can … be used by people who want to take an easier way out.” One respondent mentioned laziness when relying on predictive texting: “It’s OK when I am feeling particularly lazy.” Personal Expression Diminished AI tools can also affect a person’s writing voice. One person in my survey said that with predictive texting, “[I] don’t feel I wrote it.” A high school student in Britain echoed the same concern about individual writing style when describing Grammarly: “Grammarly can remove students’ artistic voice. … Rather than using their own unique style when writing, Grammarly can strip that away from students by suggesting severe changes to their work.” In a similar vein, Evan Selinger, a philosopher, worried that predictive texting reduces the power of writing as a form of mental activity and personal expression. “[B]y encouraging us not to think too deeply about our words, predictive technology may subtly change how we interact with each other,” Selinger wrote . “[W]e give others more algorithm and less of ourselves. … [A]utomation … can stop us thinking.” In literate societies, writing has long been recognized as a way to help people think . Many people have quoted author Flannery O’Connor ’s comment that “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” A host of other accomplished writers, from William Faulkner to Joan Didion , have also voiced this sentiment. If AI text generation does our writing for us, we diminish opportunities to think out problems for ourselves. One eerie consequence of using programs like ChatGPT to generate language is that the text is grammatically perfect. A finished product. It turns out that lack of errors is a sign that AI, not a human, probably wrote the words, since even accomplished writers and editors make mistakes. Human writing is a process. We question what we originally wrote, we rewrite, or sometimes start over entirely. Challenges in Schools When undertaking school writing assignments, ideally there is ongoing dialogue between teacher and student: Discuss what the student wants to write about. Share and comment on initial drafts. Then it’s time for the student to rethink and revise. But this practice often doesn’t happen. Most teachers don’t have time to fill a collaborative editorial – and educational – role. Moreover, they might lack interest or the necessary skills, or both. Conscientious students sometimes undertake aspects of the process themselves – as professional authors typically do. But the temptation to lean on editing and text generation tools like Grammarly and ChatGPT makes it all too easy for people to substitute ready-made technology results for opportunities to think and learn. Educators are brainstorming how to make good use of AI writing technology. Some point up AI’s potential to kick-start thinking or to collaborate. Before the appearance of ChatGPT, an earlier version of the same underlying program, GPT-3, was licensed by commercial ventures such as Sudowrite . Users can enter a phrase or sentence and then ask the software to fill in more words, potentially stimulating the human writer’s creative juices. A fading sense of Ownership Yet there’s a slippery slope between collaboration and encroachment. Writer Jennifer Lepp admits that as she increasingly relied on Sudowrite, the resulting text “didn’t feel like mine anymore. It was very uncomfortable to look back over what I wrote and not really feel connected to the words or ideas.” Students are even less likely than seasoned writers to recognize where to draw the line between a writing assist and letting an AI text generator take over their content and style. As the technology becomes more powerful and pervasive, I expect schools will strive to teach students about generative AI’s pros and cons . However, the lure of efficiency can make it hard to resist relying on AI to polish a writing assignment or do much of the writing for you. Spellcheck, grammar check and autocomplete programs have already paved the way. Writing as a Human Process I asked ChatGPT whether it was a threat to humans’ motivation to write. The bot’s response: “There will always be a demand for creative, original content that requires the unique perspective and insight of a human writer.” It continued: “[W]riting serves many purposes beyond just the creation of content, such as self-expression, communication, and personal growth, which can continue to motivate people to write even if certain types of writing can be automated.” I was heartened to find the program seemingly acknowledged its own limitations. My hope is that educators and students will as well. The purpose of making writing assignments must be more than submitting work for a grade. Crafting written work should be a journey, not just a destination. This essay was republished with minimal edits in cooperation with The Conversation . Professor Baron is interested in language and technology, written language, reading, the history and structure of English, and higher education. She is a former Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, and Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Her books include Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World (which won the English-Speaking Union’s Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Award for 2008), Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World (2015), and How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, and Audio (2021). Her newest book (forthcoming) is Who Wrote This? How AI and the Lure of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing. Professor Baron taught at Brown University, Emory University, and Southwestern University before coming to American University in Washington, DC, where she has served as associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, chair of the Department of Language and Foreign Studies, Director of the TESOL Program, and executive director of the Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning. Professor Baron has appeared extensively in the media, including interviews on Good Morning America, ABC News 20/20, CNN, The Diane Rehm Show, All Things Considered, the BBC, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, New Yorker, Fortune, and Time. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Pre-existing David Cowles Jan 6, 2022 In my last post, I reflected on the idea that all the world’s ontologies (philosophical, theological or scientific) fall into one of two camps: (A) Some sort of Determinism, where the ‘actual’ is ultimately embedded in what is falsely called the ‘potential’ or (B) some sort of Indeterminism where potentiality is selectively converted to actuality through an agency that somehow, in some way transcends pure potentiality itself. In my last post, I reflected on the idea that all the world’s ontologies (philosophical, theological or scientific) fall into one of two camps: (A) Some sort of Determinism, where the ‘actual’ is ultimately embedded in what is falsely called the ‘potential’ or (B) some sort of Indeterminism where potentiality is selectively converted to actuality through an agency that somehow, in some way transcends pure potentiality itself. Group A would argue that there must be nothing before there can be something; Group B would reverse it: there must be something before there can nothing. At first glance, Group A might seem to have the better of the argument. After all, doesn’t it make sense to move from ‘nothing’ to ‘something’? But there are two problems: (1) No one has been able to explain successfully how nothing can give birth to something without reference to some pre-existing actuality (e.g., chaos, virtual particles, negative vacuum pressure) or some transcendent agency (e.g., a probability function, the fundamental laws of physics) (2) The notion of Nothing, by itself, has no denotative meaning. No-thing implies ‘thing’ and there are no pre-existing things in this ontology. On the other hand, if one posits Something then the notion of Nothing emerge 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.

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"That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered." < Back Mary Magdalene, The Witness Rachel Held Evans Apr 15, 2023 "That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered." Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news:“I have seen the Lord!”—John 20:18 The story of how Mary Magdalene became known as a prostitute is a complicated one. One of six Marys that followed Jesus as a disciple, she was distinguished from the others through identification with her hometown of Magdala, a fishing village off the coast of the sea of Galilee. According to the gospels of Mark and Luke, Jesus cleansed Mary of seven demons, (a backstory infinitely more complicated and mysterious than prostitution, if you ask me), after which Mary became a devoted disciple, mentioned by Luke in the same context as the twelve, who traveled with Jesus and helped finance his ministry. In 597 pope Gregory the Great delivered a homily on Luke’s gospel in which he combined Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany (Martha’s sister), suggesting that this Mary was the same woman who wept at Jesus’ feet in Luke 7, and that one of the seven demons Jesus excised from her was sexual immorality. The idea caught on and was perpetuated in medieval art and literature, which often portrayed Mary as a weeping, penitent prostitute. In fact, the English word maudlin, meaning “weak and sentimental,” finds its derivation in this distorted image of Mary Magdalene. In 1969, the Vatican formally restated the Gospels’ distinction between Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the sinful woman of Luke 7, although it seems Martin Scorsese, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Mel Gibson have yet to get the message. A cynic might suggest that this mistake and its subsequent popularity represent a deliberate attempt to typecast and discredit a woman whose role in the gospel story is so critical and so revolutionary that the eastern orthodox Church refers to Mary Magdalene as equal to the apostles. Although she appears to have been a critical part of Jesus’ early ministry, Mary Magdalene’s extraordinary faithfulness shines most brightly in the story of the passion. After Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, his male disciples abandoned him. Judas delivered him over to the authorities for a bribe. Peter denied him three times. And only John, described as “the apostle whom Jesus loved,” was present at the crucifixion. But Mary Magdalene and the band of women who followed Jesus and supported his ministry are described by all four gospel writers as being present during the savior’s darkest hours. Even after Jesus took his last breath, and all hope of redemption seemed lost, the women stayed by their teacher and their friend and prepared his body for burial. It is precisely because they were present, loyal even through failure, that the women who followed Jesus were the first to witness the event that would define Christianity: the resurrection. Gospel accounts vary, but all four identify Mary Magdalene as among the first witnesses of the empty tomb. According to the synoptic Gospels, she and a group of women rose early that fateful morning, three days after Jesus had died, to anoint the body with spices and per- fumes. When they arrived at the tomb, they were met by divine messengers guarding the entrance, who declared that Jesus had risen from the dead, just as he said he would. The women immediately left the tomb behind and, “with fear and great joy” (Matthew 28:8), ran to tell the other disciples. Luke notes that on their way, they remembered what Jesus had taught them about resurrection, confirmation of the fact that these women had been present for some of Christ’s most important and intimate revelations and that they took these teachings to heart. But when the breathless women arrived at the home where the disciples had gathered, the men did not believe them. Women were considered unreliable witnesses at the time (a fact that perhaps explains why the apostle Paul omitted the women from the resurrection account entirely in his letter to the Corinthian church), so their proclamation of the good news was dismissed by the men as an “idle tale,” the type of silly gossip typical of uneducated women. Perhaps the men invoked the widely held belief that, just like their sister Eve, women were easily duped. A few, however, were curious enough to take a look at the tomb, and so, according to John’s account, Mary returned with peter and another disciple to the place she had encountered the messengers. The men saw for them-selves an empty grave and a pile of linen wrappings folded neatly within it, and conceded to the women that the tomb was indeed empty. However, John 20:9 notes, “they still did not understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” The men returned to report what they had seen to the rest of the disciples, leaving Mary behind. Perhaps disciples posited the theory that Jesus’ body had been stolen, for John wrote that Mary, once so full of breathless excitement and impassioned belief, now stood outside the tomb, crying. Angels appeared and asked her what was wrong. “They have taken my Lord away,” she told them, fully accepting the disciple’s dismissal of her “idle tale." The angels were then joined by a mysterious man, whom Mary assumed to be the gardener. He, too, asked why she was crying. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him,” she pleaded. Only when he called her by her name, did she recognize the man as Jesus. “Mary,” he said. “Rabboni!” she cried. “Do not hold on to me,” Jesus urged as she fell before his feet, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” And so again, Mary Magdalene ran to the house where the disciples were staying and told them she had seen the risen savior face-to-face. “I have seen the Lord!” she declared. But it was not until Jesus appeared to the men in person, allowing them to touch the wounds in his hands and side, that they finally believed. Far from being easily deceived, women were the first to make the connection between Christ’s teachings from scripture and his resurrection, and the first to believe these teachings when they mattered the most. For her valor in twice sharing the good news to the skeptical male disciples, the early church honored Mary Magdalene with the title of Apostle to the Apostles. That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered. And yet too many Easter services begin with a man standing before a congregation of Christians and shouting, “he is risen!” to a chorused response of “he is risen indeed!” Were we to honor the symbolic details of the text, that distinction would always belong to a woman. *** This was an excerpt from A Year of Biblical Womanhood. This piece was republished with permission from rachelheldevans.com . *** Image: "Christ and St. Mary Magdalen at the Tomb." Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669). Royal Collection Trust. Rachel Held Evans was a New York Times best-selling author whose books include Faith Unraveled (2010), A Year of Biblical Womanhood (2012), Searching for Sunday (2015), Inspired (2018). Hailing from Dayton, Tennessee—home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925— she wrote about faith, doubt and life in the Bible Belt. She was featured in The Washington Post , The Guardian , Christianity Today, Slate, The Huffington Post, The CNN Belief Blog, and on NPR, The BBC, The Today Show, and The View. She served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and kept a busy schedule speaking at churches, conferences, and colleges and universities around the country. Rachel and Dan welcomed their second child in 2018. Rachel passed away in 2019. Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? 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< Back Why The World Needs More Polymaths Bechem Ayuk "Just as the ocean's waves weave tales in their dance, polymaths craft stories of innovation by seamlessly blending knowledge from diverse domains." A few days ago I set foot on a beach for the first time. It was as if I had stumbled into another world. The vast expanse of shimmering sand met the endless body of water, stretching beyond the horizon. The beauty and terror of it all left me in awe. Each wave was a story in itself. The way they curled and unfurled, like a graceful dancer in a cosmic ballet, was a spectacle to behold. It was as if the ocean itself were breathing, inhaling and exhaling with the tides. And so, as I stood on that shore, mesmerized by the ceaseless dance of the waves, I couldn't help but draw a parallel between the nature of the ocean and the essence of polymaths. Just as the waves continually adapt and transform, drawing from the depths of the sea, polymaths are individuals who embrace a multifaceted existence, their knowledge and skills ever-evolving and interconnecting. In the world of polymaths, as with the waves, there is a harmonious blend of depth and breadth. They delve deeply into their chosen domains, just as the waves reach profound depths before returning to the shore. And, much like the waves' ability to bridge the gap between the land and the sea, polymaths possess the remarkable capacity to bridge the gaps between disparate fields of knowledge. The beach, with its ever-shifting waves, served as a powerful reminder that the world needs more polymaths who can navigate the complexities of our time, just as the waves navigate the intricacies of the ocean. In this edition of The Value Junction, we will explore the multifaceted nature of polymaths and how they are uniquely equipped to address the multifaceted challenges of our modern world. Like the waves, polymaths are a force to be reckoned with, shaping the future with their endless adaptability and relentless pursuit of knowledge. The Shift From Broad to Specialized Education For centuries, education took a markedly broad approach. Classical education traced back to ancient Greece and Rome emphasized developing well-rounded citizens versed in topics like philosophy, rhetoric, mathematics, and physical education. The likes of Leonardo da Vinci, a true polymath, emerged during this era. Da Vinci wasn't confined to a single discipline; he was a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. His ability to seamlessly merge the arts and sciences is a testament to the power of polymathic thinking. This model continued through the 18th century, when universities mandated studies across disciplines including sciences, humanities, and arts. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the rapid growth of knowledge led to increasing specialization. The Morrill Land Grant Acts funded specialized agricultural and technical colleges in America focused on practical subjects like engineering rather than classical liberal arts. Over time, secondary schools also transitioned to subject-specific curricula. Today, the educational pendulum has swung far towards hyper-specialization, particularly in higher education. Undergraduate students now typically declare majors immediately and take narrowly focused coursework tailored to their field. However, this laser focus on one discipline restricts exposure to different ways of thinking that spark creativity. Education scholar Sir Ken Robinson noted that the lack of interdisciplinary learning in our system leads many students to "become specialists in one area before they've even become a generalist" . This prevalent early specialization can deprive students of the intellectual versatility valued throughout history. To tackle complex issues in an interconnected world, students need both deep expertise and the ability to bridge disciplinary perspectives. Returning to a more polymathic model can better equip graduates with this agile, comprehensive mindset. The rigid division of education into categories stifles creativity and innovation. We need minds that can connect the dots between silos. The Benefits of a Polymathic Approach Adopting a polymathic approach that blends interdisciplinary learning with specialized domains has many advantages. As polymathic thinkers like Aristotle and Goethe demonstrated, synthesizing diverse ideas and experiences can yield revolutionary insights and innovations. Key benefits of a polymathic model include: 1. Fostering Connections Between Disciplines Polymaths are adept at identifying parallels across different fields that spur creative ideas. Polymathic architect Christopher Alexander found inspiration in poetry and mathematics to pioneer new architectural patterns. Interdisciplinary thinking enables the cross-pollination of concepts that drive discovery. In a world where many of our challenges require multidisciplinary approaches, polymaths excel. They can speak the language of different fields, facilitating collaboration and understanding. For instance, Temple Grandin, a polymath in animal science, psychology, and engineering, played a vital role in revolutionizing the treatment of livestock and advocating for more humane and efficient methods. Her work demonstrates how a polymathic approach can drive substantial change. “Innovation emerges when we connect experiences.” - Steve Jobs 2. Enhancing Creativity The breadth of knowledge across multiple domains cultivates creativity. A study of patent holders found those with interdisciplinary expertise produced over 30% more creative innovations than specialised inventors(Lévesque, 2022). Exposure to arts and humanities also boosts scientific creativity. Proponents of early specialization argue it allows students to fully immerse themselves and excel in a field. However, this study shows interdisciplinary learning enhances critical thinking, problem-solving, and cognitive flexibility. Exposure to diverse disciplines promotes connective insights and transferrable skills vital for innovation. 3. Solving Multifaceted Problems Real-world problems like inequality and global health require integrative solutions across disciplines. Polymaths with mastery in diverse domains are better equipped to develop holistic solutions by connecting the dots between specialities. Several longitudinal studies on interdisciplinary college programs confirmed these benefits. Students who blended natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities showed greater gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and intellectual flexibility compared to disciplined-focused peers. How to Encourage Students to be Polymathic One of the primary avenues for nurturing polymathic thinking is our education systems. To encourage students to be polymathic, we must reevaluate and reform how we teach and learn. 1. Embrace Interdisciplinary Learning : Encourage schools and universities to develop cross-disciplinary courses that allow students to explore connections between various subjects. For instance, a course that combines history and science can provide students with a more holistic understanding of the world. Educators should explicitly highlight connections between different subjects and areas of knowledge. Using an interdisciplinary lens in lessons demonstrates how diverse domains intersect to solve real problems. 2. Promote Project-Based Learning : Project-based learning that challenges students to tackle open-ended, real-world problems is a powerful way to build critical polymathic skills. Rather than memorizing facts and formulas, project-based learning encourages students to synthesize knowledge across disciplines to imagine and implement solutions. For example, students might be tasked with designing sustainable housing solutions that integrate engineering constraints, aesthetic design, and socioeconomic considerations of a hypothetical community. They would need to conduct research, collaborate across teams, and iterate on ideas - learning key lessons in adaptability, communication and making interdisciplinary connections along the way. Other projects could challenge students to develop business plans for eco-friendly products, combining science, business, and ethics lenses. Or students may be asked to analyze works of art through both aesthetic and mathematical principles, blending right- and left-brain strengths. STEAM education exemplifies project-based polymathic learning by organically integrating concepts from science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. For instance, students can use programming skills to create video games that educate players on climate change. Such projects enable students to flexibly apply knowledge across traditionally segregated subjects to solve multifaceted problems. The open-ended nature of projects teaches students creative agility since there is no single right answer. Having to work through ambiguity fosters the same critical thinking skills used by transdisciplinary polymaths in the real world. Passion-driven projects give students autonomy over their learning process, which further motivates polymathic exploration. With the right scaffolding and guidance, project-based learning develops core competencies for cross-domain thinking and innovation. 3. Encourage Extracurricular Exploration: Beyond core academics, schools should actively nurture student participation in diverse extracurricular activities. Exploring varied pursuits sparks passion and builds real-world skills. Rather than a bullet point list, schools can encourage this in several ways: Offer a wide array of affordable on-campus clubs and programs. From arts to athletics, academies to gaming clubs, provide on-ramps to different interests. Schedule flexibly to allow students time for activities. Avoid overloading with homework that restricts exploration. Spotlight extracurriculars at assemblies and events. Recognize student participation and achievements to motivate engagement. Collaborate with community centres and experts to run stimulating programs on campus. Bring in artists, scientists, and builders to instruct. Host "passion fairs" for students to discover local opportunities from nonprofits, companies, and colleges. Connect interested students. Train teachers as activity advisors. Compensate them for this added guidance of students' development. Exploration leads to engagement, keeping students invested in their own lifelong learning. 4. Socratic Questioning: The Socratic method of teaching through questioning helps students develop critical thinking skills and intellectual versatility. By asking a series of thought-provoking, open-ended questions, teachers can: Guide students to think more deeply about assumptions and consider alternative perspectives. For example, asking "What might we be overlooking?" or "How could this issue be viewed differently?" pushes them to examine ideas from multiple angles. Encourage students to identify and challenge biases. Asking "What evidence supports that conclusion?" or "Is there a conflict of interest?" prompts objective analysis. Stimulate imaginative solutions by asking "How else could we approach this problem?" and "What if we changed the constraints?" Divergent thinking stretches cognitive flexibility. Foster connections between disciplines by asking questions like "In what other domains might this concept apply?" and "Where else have we encountered similar patterns or issues?" Transferring insights across subjects exercises integrative thinking. Teachers can further develop critical thinking by having students generate their own Socratic questions on course material. The act of formulating probing questions builds creative problem-solving skills. Students can collaboratively discuss answers, practising respectful dialogue while exercising intellect. In a Nutshell At first glance, one might assume that specialization is the most efficient way to progress. The prevailing assumption is that in a world of increasing complexity, we need specialists who can delve deeply into specific areas. This idea is grounded in reason – specialists have indeed driven many of the incredible advancements we've witnessed. However, the world's challenges, from inequality to healthcare, rarely come neatly packaged in a single discipline. They are intricate, interconnected problems that demand multidisciplinary solutions. Consider the case of Steve Jobs. Widely regarded as one of the most innovative minds of our time, Jobs wasn't just a tech genius; he was a polymath. He seamlessly blended technology and design, understanding that creating transformative products required more than just technical know-how. It demanded a multidisciplinary perspective that drew from the arts, the sciences, and the humanities. The result? The iPhone; a device that revolutionized not just the tech industry but also how we live and communicate. This brings me to my central argument: the world needs more polymaths because they are uniquely equipped to navigate the intricate web of modern challenges. They are the individuals who can bridge the gaps between seemingly unrelated fields, drawing inspiration and knowledge from diverse sources to innovate and create. The future belongs to versatile innovators like Elon Musk and Naval Ravikant who can complement specialized expertise with the ability to integrate insights across domains. Graduating polymathic students equipped with this agile mindset is critical for raising a new generation of creative problem-solvers ready to tackle the complex issues ahead. The time has come to reimagine education and unleash a wave of boundary-pushing polymaths once more. **This article is a direct republish without changes from The Value Junction . Bechem Ayuk is an award-winning EdTech consultant, a web developer, and the author of The Value Junction. Newslette r . Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Satan, Mary, and ‘Da Judge’ “Satan glorified political power for its own sake. He defended the socio-economic status quo…Jesus’ mother proclaimed a political and economic revolution...” David Cowles 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 Previous Next

< Back Two-Faced Theology David Cowles May 22, 2025 Two-faced, God incorporates both the Past and the Future in the Present…temporality is possible only in the context of eternity.” In another article on this site, we introduced the idea of a ‘ Two-Faced God ’ as seen in disparate mythologies and theologies across multiple cultures. We made reference to YHWH (Hebrew), Janus (Roman), Duir (‘Thor’, Nordic), Hercules (Greek), and Llyr/Lear (Welsh/Anglo-Saxon). These two faced gods all function as time-binders . They look back on the Past and forward to the Future. Take Llyr (above) for example. Yes, this is the ‘Lear’ of Shakespearean fame, the father of Cordelia, a goddess in her own right (Cardea). According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Cordelia buried Llyr at Leicester, a site sacred to the Roman god Janus (above), after she had obtained “the government of the Kingdom”. (Geoffrey writes happier endings than William.) Janus and the other two-faced gods of mythology are often associated with celebrations of the New Year. At the turn of each year, God looks back on the Past and forward to the Future, all at the same time, i.e. in the Present. At the stroke of midnight, for one brief moment, as the ball nears the end of its descent in Time Square, the Past and the Future are co-incident. But this is merely a convention to make reality compatible with orientable spacetime. In reality, every point in time is simultaneously its own beginning and its own end, the culmination of a unique past and the launch of a unique future. The present is a point, but any point, on a non-orientable Mobius Strip. If we wish, we can define the unique point we call ‘present’ as any intersection of any past with any future. We know that this is true because wherever and whenever we are, it is always the Present, right there and right then. “In my end is my beginning.” (Queen Mary) ‘God’ bridges the gap between Past and Future and enables a single timeless, motionless moment ‘where & when’ the entire Universe, past and future, can just be present. God is Presence; presence per se is God’s gift to the World. Christ, God’s Incarnation, is ‘God being present’, Emmanuel , ‘God with us!’ Again according to Geoffrey of Monmouth (above), the wizard Merlin prophesied to King Vortigern, “After this, (two-faced) Janus shall never again have priests. His door will be shut and remain concealed in Ariadne’s crannies.” According to Robert Graves ( The White Goddess ), ‘after this’ refers to the coming of Christianity and ‘Ariadne’s crannies’ refers to the Corona Borealis , aka the ‘Castle of Arianrhod’, a small constellation in the northern sky. Presciently, Merlin saw Christianity as a threat to pagan traditions; but had he read more closely the Nicene Creed and the Gospel of John , Merlin might have understood that Christianity was really a restatement of his own core beliefs, albeit at a deeper level. Imagine how different the course of history might have been, had Merlin been at the docks to welcome St. Augustine upon his arrival in England! We might be talking today about ‘Bishop Merlin of Cornwall’, or who knows, maybe even ‘St. Merlin’; but that is not how this cookie crumbled. In our map of the Universe, Earth and the firmament that surrounds it remain separated by a vast topological gulf. Our moon shots and deep space probes are attempts, yet feeble, to bridge the gap between terra firma and the stars. In this respect at least, earlier civilizations were way ahead of us. In Nordic mythology, for example, there is no essential discontinuity between ‘heaven and earth’. W. B. Yeats references a similar tradition in his Celtic Twilight . Sky begins where Earth leaves off. The cosmos is radically continuous, so no special feat is required for Janus to play hide and seek among the celestial bodies. All the kids do it! Ancients intuitively understood the Universe as ‘non-orientable’. Earth and sky are simply complementary orientations on a single continuous surface; they are mirror images of one another. This explains why celestial forms (e.g. constellations) are thought to mirror terrestrial forms and why celestial events are believed to influence terrestrial counterparts. Ezra Pound explored this theme repeatedly in his Cantos . According to orientable post-Copernican cosmology, I can walk along the surface of the Earth and, completing a 360° loop, I will find myself back where I began. According to many non-orientable ancient cosmologies, that same journey will take me across the sky as well as around the earth. I must complete a 720° loop if I want to get back to Boston, now appropriately, if somewhat pompously, nicknamed ‘The Hub’, as in ‘Hub of the Universe’. Where earth ends, sky begins. Therefore, when the cult of Janus is banished from Earth, it naturally reappears as a celestial phenomenon. Hiding in the stars is better than wandering through Hades…though perhaps a bit chillier. Speaking of Aranrot , in the ‘Castle of Arianrhod’ there is a silver wheel, the mill around whose pivot the entire universe was thought to turn. Through that pivot runs Yggdrasil , the cosmic Tree of Life, the ‘pole’ whose wobble determines the precession of the equinoxes, an astronomical cycle, approximately 26,000 years long, which forms the basis for the so-called ‘ages’ of the Zodiac. Today we are in the Age of Pisces, the fish, Jesus; ‘tomorrow’ we will find ourselves in the Age of Aquarius, water, the Holy Spirit. Liturgically, we are living in the Church’s ‘Easter Season’, but we are approaching the cosmic Pentecost. According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, time is a vector that is infinitely, or ‘almost infinitely’ (down to units of 10^-44 seconds), divisible. Therefore, any past is separated from any future by a point which we mistakenly call ‘the present’. This model is sufficient to account for almost all physical phenomena, but it cannot account at all for the phenomenon of experience . Fortunately, each of us is also two-faced . (If that comes as news to you, get out more!) Like Janus, we bind past and future in a real present, but unlike Janus, we also look outward at the World and inward at our experience of that World. We are Janus on steroids. We are not well represented by mechanical models (e.g. door and hinge). Our experience requires something more organic. We are better modeled as membrane , permeable to the flow of time but also resistant to it; that resistance is presence, the narrow neck in the temporal hourglass. Are we not forever trying to hold on to the present? Memory, language, and the arts (including architecture, sculpture, and photography) are all efforts to project our Past-Present into the Future. We have evolved, physiologically and culturally, to conserve and savor what is passing away. Along the universal timeline, the present looks back on the past and forward to the future. Within the present, time does not exist. The present is an immobile pivot around which time itself revolves. Itself immobile, it enables all motion; timeless, it is the origin of time (time = motion, the mill, above). All cosmic history hinges on this hinge (see what I did there?) and this two faced but ever constant Presence is what human beings have called God . Without God, nothing exists; nothing can exist. The past does not exist; it is past . The future does not exist; it is future . All that exists is the present and according to physics, the present is an infinitesimal point with zero informational content. Therefore, nothing can exist; but something does … Ergo , God. Two-faced, God incorporates both the Past and the Future in the Present. God provides the continuity that connects what once was with what is not yet. God makes the Present possible, lifting what is out of the rushing river of perpetual perishing, aka time (lie quiet Heraclitus), thereby making it eternal. Temporality is possible only in the context of eternity. Either the Holy Grail of the ancients, to enjoy eternal life with the gods, is realized every single day in every single event or God is just auditioning for the role of “Two Face” in the next Dick Tracy movie. Image: The Emperor Augustus Closes the Doors of the Temple of Janus (c. 1655-1657) by Carlo Maratta Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? 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