 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
Favored Links To Favorite Websites... |
||||||||
| Expand Your Inquiries with a visit to the Church of Creation |  |
Noam Chomsky noted professor of linguistics, has much to say... |
 |
|||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Who (And When) We Are |
||||||||||||||||||
| We tend to think or believe that we know something about the future. We often speak of the future as something "out there," distant from us and approaching. In our inquiry, we intend to distinguish where the future is located, and if, perhaps, we can create a place to stand in it that may make a difference. | ||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||
The Context of Education |
||||||||||||||
| Education is a real challenge. Under the onslaught of hitherto unseen extrinsic forces, and with its previously undistinguished intrinsic weaknesses becoming blatantly evident, education is now fully open to question. The content of education has been continually changing -- with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the newly reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) -- and it will continue to change at an ever-increasing rate. Any attempt to either resist or keep up with these changes in content will certainly leave even the most resourceful educators hopelessly muddled. Going forward, it will be valuable to examine our currently unexamined and unintentional context for education and possibly create a new, powerful and intentional context for teaching and learning (and perhaps unlearning). | ||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||
The Future of Marriage |
||||||||||||||
| Our deepest, closest, most intimate relationships -- strange as it may seem -- often become an area of dissatisfaction, sadness and disempowerment in our lives. The divorce rate in the United States is now above 50%. Cold as that fact may be, it is just the tip of a ponderous iceberg, when one considers how many people are complaining and suffering in their relationships. Perhaps it is time to take a fresh look at the Being of being married (or in any committed relationship). This inquiry began as an approach to divorce and extended back to marriage and eventually has something useful and valuable to say for any relationship. If you are interested in starting, preserving or ending a marriage or relationship, this is your inquiry. |
||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||
The End Of Slavery |
||||||||||||
| Over 160 years ago, the Emancipation Proclamation became law and ended more than two centuries of slavery in the United States of America. Or did it? No more than Brown v. Board of Education ended segregation fifty years ago. No more than the Civil Rights Act or Affirmative Action have ended racial discrimination. We now inquire into the persistence of slavery, which continues in our unwillingness to free ourselves from our self-invented conversations about race, ourselves and each other. This is a conversation whose time has come. | ||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||
Samantha Thomas Is... |
|||||||||||||||||
| ...a self-declared Futurist. Samantha Thomas has had the privilege of working in many diverse fields in the circuitous course of her career. Her endeavors up to now have included engineering and industrial design, medicine, higher education, illustration, cartooning, music and philosophy, but none of that is really who she is. Ultimately, she is yours to create. |
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
Samantha Thomas Futurist |
|||||||||||||||||
The World of War |
||||||||||||||
| By now, we have a acquired a lot of familiarity with the World of War. It is so relentless and ubiquitous that it is now simply the World in which we live. Strange that it no longer seems strange to us. For most of us, however, the war is just something on the news -- a body count or a video clip -- and it doesn't seem to have much to do with life as we live it. Whether we realize it or not, we are neglecting Peace. By failing to inquire into who we are, we are unconsciously and unintentionally Being War. It shows up all over the place. In our relationships -- even (especially) with the people closest to us -- we relate dramatically with each other and demand validation.
Will we begin to be responsible for the World we share? If we will not, and we continue to ignore the question of who we are Being and who we could Be, the ongoing existence of Human Being in the Universe is at risk. |
||||||||||||||
It is all up to us... |
||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||
What About Peace? It is now clear that the War in Iraq has nothing to do with "fighting terrorism," securing our Freedom, assuring Freedom for anyone else, spreading the supposed glories of democracy and free-market capitalism, or anything else you could think of that might possibly justify a war. There is simply no such thing as a just war. Consider, furthermore, that everything you believed or hoped or had been told about America is a lie. We've been bamboozled, and the lies keep coming. No matter what we've been taught, we are not the "good guys." We are not "peace keepers" or "liberators." Our soldiers are not heroes; they are criminals, and that may be the most disgusting aspect of this offensive. To take young people, who want nothing more in life than to do what is right and honorable, and turn them into war criminals, through conditioning or subtle extortion, is perhaps the gravest harm that can be inflicted on Human Beings. The federally-regulated system of education in the United States is proficient in producing mostly patriotic drones, zombies and corpses. We kill our children here. If this is upsetting -- if this offends the value placed on the inauthentic plea to "Support Our Troops" -- well, too bad. This is an opportunity to reflect on how many of "OurTroops" have died while we've been "supporting" them. What if we chose to support them in coming home? Peace is already always Just, and requires no justification. Peace is fundamentally important to the continued presence of Human Being in this Universe, along with the rest of life. Pray for Peace if you like; it doesn't really make any difference, even if you feel better doing it. Fighting or struggling for Peace is absurd and obviously the antithesis of Peace, especially if you feel better doing it. To have Peace, one must begin by Being Peace. What does it take to Be Peace? Create a way for yourself. Perhaps we could start by giving up our internal turmoil over the customary dramas in our own lives that keep us distracted, while horrendous crimes are being done in our names. Perhaps we could overcome our own coldness, deadness and stinginess to really forgive the people we love for not meeting our expectations. Maybe we can be generous and compassionate toward loved ones with whom we are angry. Although it may not make you feel better, it will certainly make a profound difference in the World. Be Peace! |
||
 |
||
| Scroll down to read the entire article, or click the button at right to close this window. What are you thinking right now? Who are you Being? Please write a message about it... | |
|||
What About Making A Difference? Mostly, life doesn't give us the experience that we make a difference. Occasionally, something dramatic occurs to capture our attention -- a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, a major accident, a sensational crime. Then after a few days or weeks or months, life returns to more of the same, only a bit different. We look to political figures, business leaders or celebrities. Certainly they make a difference, don't they? They don't. They may make some noise and call attention to themselves or to something interesting. It just doesn't make a difference, no matter how fervently they (or we) wish it did. One could easily get cynical and resigned about it. It might even look cool or hip to be cynical and resigned about it. Some people make a career of it. Recently Prime Minister Tony Blair, of the United Kingdom, wistfully reflected, "When you get things done and you see results, and you think, 'Well, that in part happened as a result of something I did, or we did, or decisions that were taken here,' that's what makes everything worthwhile..." To the degree that we believe these fuzzy feelings "make it all worthwhile," we want to do more of whatever produces the feeling. When doing more fails to produce the expected feeling, we try to do better. Then we try something else. We repeat this process until we are exhausted on the treadmill of our ordinary experience. Still, we seldom (not "never," but rarely) get a sense that any of it really matters. So, we settle for what we consider important -- getting married, having children, getting approval in one's community, making money. Perhaps our incapacity to make a difference begins with the unwillingness to confront a barrier that we don't know. This barrier eludes us. It cannot be found in the content of our earnest trying and doing; it is in the context. We know a lot about the content, and we like knowing. Context is always questionable and ultimately unknowable, and so we tend to ignore it. While the context cannot be known, an authentic inquiry into it produces power and difference-making. This is an invitation to authentically inquire into the context of Everything. |
||
|
||
