Contextual Musings - Professional Edition

If You Want to be Free

2008-11-12T18:38:00.000-08:00

If you want to be free,
Get to know your real self.
It has no form, no appearance,
No root, no basis, no abode,
But is lively and buoyant.
It responds with versatile facility,
But its function cannot be located.
Therefore when you look for it,
You become further from it;
When you seek it,
You turn away from it all the more.
- Linji

Contextual Musing X

2008-11-01T20:32:00.001-07:00

Addiction to meaning and our flight from meaninglessness often require that we worship at the altar of singular truth; a deity which causes, at best, the destruction of community, and at worst, violence, hatred and death. How long will it take before we accept the notion that “truth” is subjective (an understanding directly related to our human condition), and refuse to impose empty structure on Children of God?

Musing and Photo by J. David Zacko-Smith

Inspired by a recent conversation with Ann Preston, and the writing of Ernest Becker.

Contextual Musing IX

2008-09-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

Someday we’ll discover that everything we sought to define really needed no help creating, organizing or expressing itself . . . and that the only thing we’ve managed to create is unnecessary complexity.

~ J. David Zacko-Smith, September 14, 2008

Hiatus

2008-06-22T23:15:00.000-07:00

I've been busy working on an article and book chapter for publishing, and thus I'm afraid my blogging here has suffered. I hope to get back in the swing of things sometime soon!

Fireworks

2008-02-01T22:48:00.000-08:00

Gosh, it's been a long time since I posted to CM - Professional Edition. I took a nice long blogging vacation, and I have been writing so much in my "real life" that I haven't had time to compose a single new musing! A recent experience (and meeting) has made me contemplate many of the people and things that have come into my life through the years, and I have fully begun to appreciate the fact that I am truly drawn to people, things and experiences that are "out of the ordinary" and perhaps even a little quirky. I met a guy not too long ago who is amazingly brilliant, very sexy, and highly accomplished, yet able to be totally silly and flirty and fun - and I love that combination! So, I think I'll muse using Jack Kerouac, and say...

The only people for me are the mad ones,
the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk,
mad to be saved, desirous of everything at
the same time, the ones who never yawn or
say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn,
burn like fabulolus yellow roman candles
exploding like spiders across the stars . . .

This one's for you Chris G. in Portland!

Contextual Musing VIII

2007-10-19T22:51:00.000-07:00

If you ask enough questions you will arrive at the truth of the matter. Questions murder assumption and illusion, so you can see what’s real. No one and nothing is spared. Questions are blind. Questions are relentless. When our questioning leads us to understand that nothing is what it seems, we arrive at the only place where faith matters; blind belief either enables us to find the point of our existence, or, through it’s absence, shows the pointlessness of everything we know to be real.

~ J. David Zacko-Smith, Contextual Musings, 2007

Luke 11:19

2007-10-07T17:41:00.001-07:00

My children -- what is it you fear that you run so far and so fast, that you bury yourself in the drama of others and the distractions of a post-modern age fraught with both trauma and beauty (which are, to those that know, one in the same thing)?

How can you know truth if you do not live it, see it, smell it, taste it, and touch it? How can you know what makes the world rich? How can you find truth if you spend all of your time and energy escaping from the very experiences that will lead you to it?

Truth can not be found in singularity, only in silent union.

The answers you seek (and this seeking is, my friends, the reason for your existence, and the reason for your tribulations) are not found in any place "out there", but they are found somewhere that I suspect is the most foreign and exotic location of all to you, deep down in the depths of your self.

If you do not know your essence, you know nothing. You most certainly do not know God.

And I say unto you, ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

Run and we shall perish.

~ J. David Zacko-Smith, Contextual Musings, 2006

The Danger of LABELS

2007-10-02T20:36:00.001-07:00

I have blogged about the dangers of labels before, but it bears repeating. Yes, labeling people and things IS a way to keep the human mind (and thus human beings and all their stuff) "organized" -- the problems arise when we start to see the label as a singular reality. One example comes from the world of psychiatry (as seen in the quote below), but the list is seemingly infinite. Remember my friends...sol lucet omnibus (the sun shines for everyone), so question, question, question what you see, hear and believe to be true. Don't let labels bind you!

"People say, 'I have heart disease,' not 'I am heart disease'. Somehow the presumption of a person's individuality is not compromised by those diagnostic labels. All the labels tell us is that the person has a specific challenge with which he or she struggles in a highly diverse life. But call someone 'a schizophrenic' or 'a borderline' and the shorthand has a way of closing the chapter on the person. It reduces a multifaceted human being to a diagnosis and lulls us into a false sense that those words tell us who the person is, rather than only telling us how the person suffers".

~ Martha Manning

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Photo: "Bound" by J. David Zacko-Smith, Lausanne, Switzerland, July 2007.

Learn To Love It All

2007-09-19T23:17:00.001-07:00

The more I go through life, the more I understand the value of "loving it all" - ya know, loving the good AND the bad, the joy and the pain (need I go on? Likely not). I am continually amazed by what I refer to as "the power of opposites"; life is incomplete if we only love, desire and experience the light, since without the darkness we can never truly know it, never truly experience it's complete depth and breadth. We are limited. We are half alive, half awake. We spend so much time running away, avoiding, repressing, denying and fighting all of the things we've been conditioned to believe are "bad", and then wondering why we feel incomplete, why we still feel empty or can't get ourselves together, and why we have no time to truly live.

Meanwhile the answer was there all along. Love it all. Be free.

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We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

LITTLE GIDDING (No. 4 of 'Four Quartets')
BY T.S. Eliot

The Leader Label

2007-09-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

I've recently had an article published; it looks specifically at leadership through a social constructionist lens (exciting, I know). The abstract (and a link to the article itself) are below for anyone interested!

Abstract

Utilizing a social constructionist framework under which "leader" is a highly pliable construct, and is something created, enhanced, mitigated or destroyed via language, this research explores how the use of metaphor and story can alter leadership perceptions, framing a more flexible notion of leadership as being the most compatible with increasingly flat and interconnected contexts. Conventional understandings of leaders are themselves metaphorical in nature; the leader is actually in the lead, the first to move forward. This image is appropriate for certain circumstances, but may be less relevant today because it implies hierarchy, connotes exclusivity, and ignores the necessity of flexibility. This research challenges conventional leadership metaphors, reframes the construct of "leader" as available to everyone, and allows us to re-shape our individual and collective leadership stories.

Read my entire recent article here.

The Truth of Constructionism

2007-09-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

The whole dear notion of one's own self -- marvelous old free-willed, free enterprising, autonomous, independent, isolated island of the self -- is a myth. ~ Lewis Thomas, from "The Lives of a Cell"

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. . . We multiply distinctions, then
Deem that our puny boundaries are things
That we perceive, and not that which we have made.

~ William Wordsworth, "The Prelude", Book III

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If I ask about the world, you can offer to tell me how it is under one or more frames of reference; but if I insist that you tell me how it is apart from all frames, what can you say? ~ Nelson Goodman, from "Ways of Worldmaking"

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Every version of an "other" . . . is also the construction of a "self". ~ James Clifford, from "Writing Culture"

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PHOTO; Sculpture, Musee Olympique, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2007

The Violence of Mass Distraction

2007-08-21T08:04:00.001-07:00

Ask yourself some questions - what are you doing to distract yourself from YOURSELF (and, yes, there is a difference between "yourself" and "YOURSELF")? Will you get to know YOURSELF in this lifetime? What are YOU waiting for? Are you wed to fear, like so many are?

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A Healthy Sense of Self

By Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Shambhala Sun Magazine

“As we learn to abide peacefully,” says Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, “we become familiar with a healthy sense of self. Like the Buddha, we become strong, caring, clear-minded individuals in harmony with ourselves and our environment."

In his journey toward enlightenment, the Buddha saw that human existence is characterized by three qualities: impermanence, suffering and selflessness. He discovered that we suffer because we try to make ourselves solid and permanent, while our fundamental state of being is unconditionally open and changing. The Buddha encouraged others to discover this open state of being for themselves in the process of sitting meditation.

A Tibetan word for meditation is gom - "familiarity." When we meditate, we're becoming familiar with something. In shamatha meditation we first become familiar with a technique: to recognize and release thoughts and emotions and return our attention to the breath. Over time we become familiar with the open state of being that the Buddha called selflessness. As we learn to abide peacefully, we also become familiar with what I call a healthy sense of self. Like the Buddha, we become strong, caring, clear-minded individuals in harmony with ourselves and our environment. The meditation posture itself embodies this healthiness: grounded, balanced and relaxed.

In sitting meditation we develop the patience and honesty to be self-aware. As our minds become more flexible and curious, a whole new range of reality becomes available to us. We begin to see certain truths about the way things are. For example, we begin to notice that even though we want to live a dignified, enlightened life, there's a constant pull on our attention. Moment to moment, we're trying to be entertained. I'm not just talking about watching movies and television or roaming around on the internet. This notion of entertainment is older than modern technology. The ancient meditation texts are full of observations about how the mind is always seeking entertainment.

We're always thinking that the next little thing-the next thought, bite of food, conversation or relationship-is going to give us the permanence and solidity that we lack. We keep looking and looking for what will bring us final satisfaction. Meditation shows us this tendency most directly. As we sit there, we notice that even though we could abide peacefully, the mind is still churning. Rather than relax right now, we continue to look for entertainment. We distract ourselves with replays of the past and fantasies about the future. We rehash conversations and plan our day.

Read the rest here.

Love It All

2007-07-31T20:47:00.001-07:00

This is so brilliant I had to share it! Thich Nhat Hanh is simply amazing to me. I've been pondering (for quite a long time) the role of duality in our lives. Now, of course, this is generally thought to be a primarily Eastern concept; the Yin and the Yang and other such natural dualistic constructions. Completely valid thinking. But, I assert that it is more than simply an Eastern concept, that it is actually the very nature of creation itself (though I suppose you have to believe in the notion to find truth in it, as with all such things). Ask yourself...what can exist without it's opposite? Nothing. Therefore, we should truly embrace everything and it's opposite with completely equal gusto - we should love the darkness and the light, we should love times of abundance and times of starvation; for without one, we can never, ever truly know the other. You see, we have been conditioned (in many cases) by our larger society to believe that one part of this "team" is "good", while it's opposite is "bad". But the reality is that tendency is just what I called it...a construction. It is illusion. It is falsehood. Ultimately what I'm getting at here, to use just one example, is that the darkness deserves the same respect and love as the light does. Love it all, and teach others to do the same.

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An Excerpt From: This Silence is Called Great Joy

By Thich Nhat Hanh

You are not static. You are the life that you are becoming. Because “to be” means to be something: happy, unhappy, light or heavy, sky or earth. We have to learn to see being as becoming. The quality of your being depends on the object of your being. That is why when you hear Rene Descartes’ famous statement “I think, therefore I am,” you have to ask, “You are what?” Of course you are your own thinking—and your happiness or your sorrow depends very much on the quality of your thinking. So you are your view, you are your thinking, you are your speech, you are your action, and these things are your continuation. You are becoming now, you are being reborn now in every second. You don’t need to come to death in order to be reborn. You are reborn in every moment; you have to see your continuation in the here and the now.

I don’t care at all what happens to me when I die. That’s why I have a lot of time to care about what is happening to me in the here and the now. When I walk, I want to enjoy every step I take. I want freedom and peace and joy in every step. So joy and peace and lightness are what I produce in that moment. I have inherited it and I pass it on to other people. If someone sees me walking this way and decides to walk mindfully for him or herself, then I am reborn in him or in her right away—that’s my continuation. That’s what is happening to me in the here and the now. And if I know what is happening to me in the here and the now, I don’t need to ask the question, “What will happen to me after this body disintegrates?” There is no “before” and “after,” just as there is no birth and death. We can be free of these notions in this very moment, filled with the great joyful silence of all that is.

Excerpted from: This Silence is Called Great Joy, Thich Nhat Hanh, Shambhala Sun, September 2007.

PHOTO: Stained Glass Window, Lausanne Cathedral, Switzerland.

Contextual Musing VIII

2007-06-10T10:29:00.002-07:00

You have wandered through the deserts, mountains, cities and valleys seeking that which you desire, whatever that may be in one particular and ever-changing moment, never realizing that it is not your desire that traps you, but your seeking. Desire is wish and intention and focus. Seeking is action and manipulation and scattered attempt.

One frees.

One imprisons.

Both are choices.

Choose wisely.

The Problem of Religion

2007-06-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

This is so brilliant that I can't really comment on it...it's an excerpt from a longer article in the Shambhala Sun Magazine by Sam Harris.

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The Problem of Religion

Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities, and these divisions have become a continuous source of bloodshed. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it has been at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews vs. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians vs. Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians vs. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants vs. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims vs. Hindus), Sudan (Muslims vs. Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims vs. Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims vs. Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists vs. Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims vs. Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite vs. Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians vs. Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis vs. Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in recent decades.

Why is religion such a potent source of violence? There is no other sphere of discourse in which human beings so fully articulate their differences from one another, or cast these differences in terms of everlasting rewards and punishments. Religion is the one endeavor in which us–them thinking achieves a transcendent significance. If you really believe that calling God by the right name can spell the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, then it becomes quite reasonable to treat heretics and unbelievers rather badly. The stakes of our religious differences are immeasurably higher than those born of mere tribalism, racism, or politics.

Religion is also the only area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give evidence in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet, these beliefs often determine what they live for, what they will die for, and—all too often—what they will kill for. This is a problem, because when the stakes are high, human beings have a simple choice between conversation and violence. At the level of societies, the choice is between conversation and war. There is nothing apart from a fundamental willingness to be reasonable—to have one’s beliefs about the world revised by new evidence and new arguments—that can guarantee we will keep talking to one another. Certainty without evidence is necessarily divisive and dehumanizing.

Therefore, one of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns—about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering—in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith. While there is no guarantee that rational people will always agree, the irrational are certain to be divided by their dogmas.

It seems profoundly unlikely that we will heal the divisions in our world simply by multiplying the occasions for interfaith dialogue. The end game for civilization cannot be mutual tolerance of patent irrationality. All parties to ecumenical religious discourse have agreed to tread lightly over those points where their worldviews would otherwise collide, and yet these very points remain perpetual sources of bewilderment and intolerance for their coreligionists. Political correctness simply does not offer an enduring basis for human cooperation. If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith.

Read the rest here.

Contextual Musing VII

2007-05-16T21:24:00.000-07:00

Language is all-powerful. Thus, believing that “actions speak louder than words” is similar to believing that the river can flow without the rain. Such sheer foolishness is not the providence of the Awakened mind.

~ J. David Zacko-Smith, Contextual Musings, 2007

Can YOU glimpse your depth?

2007-05-12T09:29:00.000-07:00

Most of us can’t glimpse into the depths, our true nature, because our conceptual mind is constantly churning out turbulence. Grasping at self tricks us, like a nightmare, into believing that we are separate from the world and each other. This triggers negative emotions, from craving and anxiety to jealousy and aggression, which spill out into unhealthy words and actions.

Every dualistic perception, every negative thought, feeling, word, and deed, leaves a negative karmic imprint in our conceptual mind that walls us off from our true nature. On the other hand, positive mentalities leave positive karmic imprints that open our mind, loosen grasping at self, and thin out the barriers to our true nature.

As long as we have dualistic concepts and emotions, the world is solid to us. Our suffering is all too real. Circumstances matter. If our surroundings are chaotic, it will be hard to find tranquillity. If we experience peace and joy, however, we will be inspired to generate even more peace and joy. Then whatever we say and do will be the words and deeds of joy and peace. We progressively loosen our grasping at self, and eventually we glimpse the luminous nature of our mind. If we perfect this realization, we uproot grasping at self and become fully awakened.

Read more here.

You ALREADY understand!

2007-05-06T10:44:00.001-07:00

You Already Understand!

By Seung Sahn - Shambhala Sun Magazine

Bodhidharma, founder of the Zen lineage, is said to have described Zen this way: “A special transmission outside the scriptures / Not depending on words and letters / Pointing directly to the human mind / Seeing into one’s nature and attaining buddhahood.” There’s no better example of Zen’s direct, penetrating spirit than these exchanges between the late Seung Sahn—one of the great Zen masters to have lived and taught in the United States—and his students.

Someone asked Zen Master Seung Sahn,

“What do you think about the beginning of this world?”

“The beginning of this world came from your mouth. Ha ha ha ha! Do you understand?”

The student was silent.

“Then I will explain: what is this world? You must under–stand that point first. You make time, space, cause and effect. In three seconds, when you asked that question, you made this whole world. Physics used to teach that time and space, and cause and effect, are absolutes. But modern physics teaches that time, space, and cause and effect are subjective. So you make this whole world, and you make your time and space.”

The student said, “I still don’t understand.”

Zen Master Seung Sahn replied, “OK, so first you must understand, what is time? One unit of time is an hour. But my thinking sometimes makes this hour very long, or very short. You go to the airport to pick up your girlfriend. You haven’t seen her in a long time. You wait at the airport, and the airplane is very late. Five, ten, twenty, thirty minutes—waiting, waiting, waiting. Even another half hour passes. Ten minutes seems like a whole day. So this one hour feels like a very, very long time because you want to see her very much, and you sit there saying, ‘Where is the plane? Why hasn’t it arrived yet?’ But yet some other time, you go dancing with friends, and dance all night, and even one hour seems to pass by very quickly. Now that same amount of time measured as ‘one hour’ seems very short. ‘A whole hour has already passed? It seems like only a minute!’ So mind makes one hour very long or very short. Time depends on thinking, because time is created by thinking. The Buddha taught this, and we can test it in our everyday life. ‘Everything is created by mind alone.’

“It is the same with space: Spain is here, and New York is there, Korea is over there, and Japan is over here. People in Spain say, ‘This way is north, that’s south, east, and west.’ But on the opposite side of the earth, Korean people say that north is here, south is over there, and east and west are here and here. If I stay here, my north, south, east, and west are like this. If I am not here, my north, south, east, and west disappear. Cause and effect are also the same: if I do some good action, I go to heaven; bad action, go to hell. That’s cause and effect. But if I don’t make anything, where do I go?

“So I make time, and space, and cause and effect. I make my world; you make your world. A cat makes a cat’s world. The dog makes the dog’s world. God makes God’s world. Buddha makes Buddha’s world. If you believe in God 100 percent, then when you die, and your world disappears, you go to God’s world. If you believe in Buddha 100 percent, then when your world disappears, you will go to Buddha’s world. But if you believe in your true self 100 percent, then you make your world, and that’s complete freedom: heaven or hell, coming and going anywhere with no hindrance.”

Zen Master Seung Sahn looked at the questioner. “So I ask you, which one do you like?”

The student was silent.

“Anytime you open your mouth, your world appears.”

The student asked, “So, who was the first person to open his mouth?”

“You already understand!”

Amid general laughter, the student was silent for a few moments. Then he bowed deeply.

Contextual Musing VI

2007-05-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

"My friends - the search for 'truth' is an illusion, it is a trap. The only truth is right here and right now. It is all that can ever be known".

Contextual Musing V

2007-04-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

Language either frees or enslaves us; if we believe in “the pursuit of happiness” we are enslaved, if we see it for the lie that it is, we are free. Choose wisely.

God Without Religion - BRILLIANT

2007-04-03T22:28:00.001-07:00

Why do religions propagated in the name of God lead to so many wars and divisiveness.

Why do the many faces of God divide us and not unite us?

It is an age old question.

But Sankara Saranam -- ironically an American educated (he graduated from Columbia University) mystic born of Jewish parents who fled Iraq -- provides a thought provoking book that offers fresh answers to the dark legacy of religion that leads to deadly Crusades, Inquisitions, torture and a gruesome legacy of death. (Yes, you can toss Bush's "Divine Christian Mandate" right into the mix.)

As Arun Gandhi, a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, writes in the preface to "God Without Religion": "The admission that no one really knows the true God behind all these images leads us to an understanding that human beings can only pursue the truth and not 'possess' it, as many religious zealots claim to do. Pursuit implies humility, acceptance, openness, and appreciation, while posession suggests arrogance, closed mindedness, and lack of appreciation. Herein lies the rub; if we persist in competing to possesthe truth instead of working in unity to pursue it, we are going to face untold grief -- and worse, violence."

What a succinct analysis of the dilemma we find ourselves in today, with fundamentalist Christians facing down fundamentalist Muslims, while the rest of us watch the death and bloodshed that ensues.

Of fundamentalism, Saranam,the book's author, notes in an interview: "During difficult and complex times, people tend to seek external security in hopes of relieving inner feelings of unhappiness, emptiness, or inferiority. Fundamentalist doctrines promise many forms of security in exchange for winning God's graces. But moving toward an infinite God and subscribing to fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms. Fundamentalism's literal interpretations of so-called divine law entice followers to identify with increasingly smaller and more cultlike segments of humanity rather than with an all-encompassing God. Nor can these interpretations be proven: there is no evidence of a God giving preference to certain people over others, creating miracles to prove his existence, or demanding that his favor be won. Certainly, it's possible to worship God through an established belief system, yet in doing so we run the risk of stunting our spiritual growth. The guidance we need in hard times is already within us, and all we must do is grow to encompass it."

Contextual Musing IIII

2007-03-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

All of creation is the result of the tension that exists between opposites. Darkness cannot exist without light, just as light cannot exist without darkness; it is in the void between a thing and it's reverse that we find our God seated and waiting for us.

Contextual Musing III

2007-03-11T18:41:00.000-07:00

It is clear that exclusion and domination are not the way to achieve goals of peace and progress, but that these goals can only be achieved through collaboration and the abdication of our addiction to individualism. All islands are connected at the bottom of the ocean; what you see on the surface is but a speck cradled in the arms of the universe.

J. David Zacko-Smith, 2007

Our Deepest Fear

2007-03-07T19:28:00.000-08:00

By Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous”? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

This is taken from her "A Return to Love: Reflection on the Principles of A Course in Miracles", and it's one of my favorite things ever written! I have adapted it to become a leadership prayer, and in various other ways, too, and it makes me cry every time I read or recite it - it's just that powerful! Read more about Marianne here.

NOTE: this quote is often found on the Internet incorrectly credited to Nelson Mandela from his Inauguration Speech, 1994, especially the last sentence of that quote, “As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

She has also started the Peace Alliance - which is very exciting and is something you should check out!

Still I Rise

2007-03-02T11:02:00.000-08:00

I loved this poem from the very first time I heard it; it's so gutsy and brash, yet gentle and intelligently expressed. It is, as all great poems are, many things at once.

Still I Rise
by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin' in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

From And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou.

Duality

2007-03-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

This is so brilliant! The Dalai Lama is discussing "emptiness and existence" in an article in the Shambhala Sun, and in this one paragraph he very much hits upon a profound truth; we are constantly operating under the illusion that things exist, when, in fact, they do not exist at all. Only emptiness exists. This is why asking questions is the only way to truth. Using them as a tool is the best way that we can deconstruct reality (which is illusion); when our deconstruction is complete, we end up finding that the only thing that exists is emptiness (which is truth) itself. An easier way to say this, I think, is "everything is nothing and nothing is everything".

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Because all phenomena appear to exist in their own right, all of our ordinary perceptions are mistaken. Only when emptiness is directly realized during completely focused meditation is there no false appearance. At that time, the dualism of subject and object has vanished, as has the appearance of multiplicity; only emptiness appears. After you rise from that meditation, once again living beings and objects falsely appear to exist in and of themselves, but through the power of having realized emptiness, you will recognize the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Through meditation you have identified both the false mode of appearance and the false mode of apprehension.

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Tenzin Gyatso is the Fourteen Dalai Lama of Tibet. This selection is from How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D. Excerpted with permission of Pockets Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. © 2003 by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D.

The Invention of Heterosexuality

2007-03-01T16:18:00.000-08:00

Fascinating stuff, eh? I'm moving from the social construction of leadership to the social construction of gender and sexuality...

Jonathan Ned Katz is a writer and historian. He is the editor of Gay American History (1976), the Gay/Lesbian Almanac (1994), and The Invention of Heterosexuality (1995).

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In the twentieth century, creatures called heterosexuals emerged from the dark shadows of the nineteenth-century medical world to become common types acknowledged in the bright light of the modern day.

Heterosexuality began this century defensively, as the publicly unsanctioned private practice of the respectable middle class, and as the publicly put-clown pleasure-affirming practice of urban working-class youths, southern blacks, and Greenwich Village bohemians. But by the end of the 1920s, heterosexuality had triumphed as dominant, sanctified culture.' In the first quarter of the twentieth century the heterosexual came out, a public, self-affirming debut the homosexual would duplicate near the century's end.

The discourse on heterosexuality had a protracted coming out, not completed in American popular culture until the 1920s. Only slowly was heterosexuality established as a stable sign of normal sex. The association of heterosexuality with perversion continued as well into the twentieth century. . . .

In the first years of the twentieth century heterosexual and homosexual were still obscure medical terms, not yet standard English. In the first 1901 edition of the "H" volume of the comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary, heterosexual and homosexual had not yet made it.

Read much more here.

Order it here.

The Social Construction of Sexuality

2007-03-01T16:12:00.000-08:00

I am fascinated by this course - I wish I could take it! Christianity has had such an effect on the creation of our individual and collective reality that it's simply hard to contemplate it's impact.

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Christianity and the Social Construction of Sexuality

Directed by Pamela Dickey Young

This project examines the social construction of sex and sexuality in relation to the Christian religious tradition, primarily in the North American context.

Where Christianity has been the dominant religious tradition it has been a force in the construction of our views of sex and sexuality. This research program;

*Explores the explicit influences of Christianity on views of sex and sexuality through traditions, doctrines, historical theologies and so on

*Gauges the implicit influence of contemporary Christianity on these views through influence on law making and social opinion with particular emphasis on Canada

*Attends to the possibility of presenting revised views of sex and sexuality within Christianity

Although there are many diverse and progressive Christian points of view on sexuality, the public image of Christianity is as a negative force in retheorizing sexuality. Throughout, this research attends to the question of why this public image persists even in the face of much divergence within Christianity itself.

Discussion of the marriage of same-sex partners in Canada today is one example of an issue that has raised to the forefront the discussion of sexuality and religion, since opinions are being offered in the names of religious groups. Other views, often disguised as “secular,” are still implicitly grounded in particular interpretations of the Christian tradition. This research project contributes to ongoing discussions of sexuality and religion by seeking to clarify, both for academic and popular audiences, the diverse and varied ways in which Christianity is connected to this and other discussions that arise on sexuality and public policy.

For all inquiries, contact Linda Thomas, Administrative Assistant
Department of Religious Studies, Theological Hall 414
Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada K7L 3N6

Tel.(613) 533 2106 Fax (613) 533 6558 Email thomaslm@post.queensu.ca

URL of this webpage: http://rels.queensu.ca/research.pdy.php

Contextual Musing II

2007-03-01T14:11:00.000-08:00

When we label someone we commit a violent act; structures which are arbitrarily set do not embody anything innate or real, but are illusions -- forced falsehoods that impact the very foundations of our humanness. The fist against the flesh only commits violence against the vessel, while structure imposed upon the soul does violence to God.

~ J. David Zacko-Smith, Contextual Musings, 2006

What exactly is a "Contextual Musing"?

2007-03-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

Well, it is several things all at once...

It is a statement. It is a thought. It is a beginning. It is an expression. It is a question. It is a prayer. It is a conclusion. It is an opinion. It is a feeling.

It embraces all things and in that embrace it is nothing.

Yet, it is something.

It is an attempt to make you think.

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We are increasingly imprisoned by our organizations, processes, systems, and "shoulds". Passion, which is inherently equitable, has been eviscerated, and finds itself subservient to the status quo. In this we are all complicit. Yet, we wonder why there is so much rage, why so many feel unsettled. You are not saving yourself or your loved ones through your complicity; the rage will find your doorstep given a new dawn.

~ J. David Zacko-Smith, Contextual Musings, 2006.

Why Social Constructionism is Important...

2007-02-28T20:16:00.000-08:00

"Constructionism is concerned with the minority view because it is a minority view - the deviant, the unusual - one which offers something new as a cultural resource". ~ Kenneth J. Gergen

Welcome!

2007-02-28T19:50:00.000-08:00

This new blog will serve to represent my more "serious" thought and writing, paying particular attention to that which revolves around Social Constructionism, Post-Modernism, Critical and Feminst Theory, and Gender Studies. I also reserve the right to post poety! Everything that appears here is meant to challenge stereotypes, preconceived notions, labels and the narrow scope of thought presented by empiricism, objectivism and modernism. Stay tuned for some (of what I hope to be) interesting posts!

Contextual Musings - Professional Edition

If You Want to be Free

Contextual Musing X

Contextual Musing IX

Hiatus

Fireworks

Contextual Musing VIII

Luke 11:19

The Danger of LABELS

Learn To Love It All

The Leader Label

The Truth of Constructionism

The Violence of Mass Distraction

Love It All

Contextual Musing VIII

The Problem of Religion

Contextual Musing VII

Can YOU glimpse your depth?

You ALREADY understand!

Contextual Musing VI

Contextual Musing V

God Without Religion - *BRILLIANT*

Contextual Musing IIII

Contextual Musing III

Our Deepest Fear

Still I Rise

Duality

The Invention of Heterosexuality

The Social Construction of Sexuality

Contextual Musing II

What exactly is a "Contextual Musing"?

Why Social Constructionism is Important...

Welcome!

God Without Religion - BRILLIANT