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Dear Ed, While I do not
have a savory “marinating” shirt to wear, I do have several sent to me by a
dear friend of a cocoon in the shape of a question mark on the front and a
butterfly on the back, which I wear with great affection. I’m in a state of change, too. Even at middle age and beyond, we can
become something new and something beautiful. You are indeed
in the golden years where one can reflect back upon your life and those whom
you begat and raised with more mellowness and wisdom, better able to discern
truth from fiction, the trivial from the significant. Stay in good
health, marinate in (red) wine as needed; we need all the sage wisdom and
strong, ripe voices we can get these days. Be well, Karen Karen, this is the kind of message one wants to get on a Sunday
morning - very thought provoking. I must confess that I am wearing a T
shirt inscribed with "I'm not aging; I'm marinating". Someone
gave it to me, so I feel obliged to wear it. Actually, I'm doing both - aging and marinating. We all,
with some regret, know what "aging" means. All too often it
means a stiffening of the joints and a despair that one may no longer have the
time to fix the world and make it right, that our kids are what they have
become and that there are some things that we can never make restitution
for. While "marinating" can mean consuming too much wine, which
I occasionally do, it can also mean a process of softening and
tenderizing. So what if I can't fix the world, I can at least look at it
with sympathetic eyes and try to forgive those that trespass against the few
things I continue to hold as absolutes. And so what if one of my kids, in
his mid forties, has decided to make a major career change, he is at least doing
something, and I still love him. We muddle on, just as past generations did and as future
generations will. We may at times be building a better world, but there
are other times when we seem to be doing the opposite. Or, while some are
building, others are wrecking. One of my favorite pieces of music, which I listen to when I've
had a little too much wine, is Mahler's "Songs of a Wayfarer".
It ends with a contralto hauntingly singing "ewig, ewig ..... ewig,
ewig..."; "eternally, eternally.....eternally, eternally".
And so it goes. Best regards, Ed -----
Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday,
August 30, 2003 10:58 PM Subject: RE:
[Futurework] Will Bush become a Shia Moslem? Threats and defenses.... Lawry, Ed, Brad: I can only hope to be coherent here, not
inspiring: we must make new alliances, as you say, that are not limited by
borders or nationality, as everyone on FW surely agrees. At the same time, we must develop the
voice and language that reaches into comatose and closed minds. This must be a peaceful process,
seeking the best in ourselves. And
it will take great fortitude. I’m feeling a little synchronicity
here. Currently I’m reading two
books that hint at what we may need to be doing. The first is Inheriting
the Revolution by Joyce Appleby, about the sons and daughters of the
American Revolution, the first generation after, who became our first
entrepreneurs, breaking out of the colonial mold of their parents’ generation,
grasping the possibilities set in motion by 1776 and the idealism and
inspiration of the Constitution and later, Bill of Rights. I can’t help but thinking that we must
once again seize upon this energy and enthusiasm. It is time for a new revolution. The other is The Restorative Economy by Storm Cunningham, who insists
that more money is being made today restoring, renovating and cleaning up
messes from the past than is being made in new construction, old business
models and revenue streams. Given
our environmental and population limitations, this seems like something we
should be looking into as we try to create a sustainable future. A new revolution would touch upon many
cultural aspects, including religion, for in our history there was a quick
religious fervor kindled after the Revolution, perhaps because faith and
sacrifice had been so rewarded in secular (political) life, but certainly
because the Constitution made freedom of religion much more possible. But I’m not a religious scholar, just a
seeker, so I’ll leave that for now.
Rather, it seems to me that we are on the verge of something like what
were in the past called religious awakenings, but this time I think it will be
much more ecumenical and inclusive, it will be a spiritual recognition that
life here is too precious to be squandered needlessly, that it is time to take
a deep breath and “go where we have never gone before” to introduce a new
age. We will not avoid wars in the
future, but for our own sakes we need to stand for more peace and less war as
we progress, not the other way around. I am hopeful, as I’ve posted for discussion
in the past, that this will be an age where Science and Religion are partners,
not competitors, as EO Wilson and others have written, where the commonweal of
all peoples are pursued and guarded collectively. Others on this list can contribute from the literature that
supports this, as does classical wisdom.
This makes me a hopeless idealist, I realize, in this “bottom line”
materialistic world, and for all my moments of political cynicism, I remain a
dedicated Pollyanna because of one simple thing: human nature. We will not stay in the dark forever,
we will not grow there, we dislike the confinement and the stench. Human nature will seek the light, and
that will manifest itself in the myriad systems and institutions we have
created and have yet to conceive. To go forward, we will have to bravely shed
the destructive past and carry with us the best of those traditions that
inspired us forward. We must be
creative, use language that heals and works towards consensus, not division.
Evolutionary Economics, Evolutionary Politics, Evolutionary Culture. We can be individual nations and
cultures and still be a planet in concert. We must become shun those who preach
otherwise. Reflections nearing sunset after a warm
afternoon of hard work in the garden. Thanks, all, for the engaging
conversation. Shalom, Karen LdB wrote: Thanks, Karen. I
haven't given up hope, either, though I am feeling less optimistic about the US
than ever before in my lifetime. This country is |
- RE: [Futurework] Will Bush become a Shia Moslem? Threat... Karen Watters Cole
- Re: [Futurework] Will Bush become a Shia Moslem? T... Ed Weick
- [Futurework] The crafting of our collective fu... Karen Watters Cole
- [Futurework] The crafting of our collective future Lawrence DeBivort
