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Hospitality

I came across this quote from Henri Nouwen. I like it. I hope it resonates for you also.

“Hospitality … means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. It is not to lead our neighbor into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment. It is not an educated intimidation with good books, good stories and good works, but the liberation of fearful hearts so that words can find roots and bear ample fruit. It is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria of happiness, but the opening of an opportunity to others to find their God and their way. The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the life style of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his (or her) own.”

Peace.

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EyeOS: Web based operating system

Here’s a relatively new open source product that lets you access your desktop from anywhere in the world. EyeOS is an Open Source Web Desktop Environment, commonly known as Web Operating System or Web Office. With eyeOS you can be organized, work and have fun anywhere, using your own personalzied Web Desktop. For using eyeOS, you only have to go to your eyeOS server (or use the official eyeOS public server) and log in with your username and password. If you don’t have a username and password, you can create an account from there too.
Peace.

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eyeOS, web based, operating system, open source

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Photo Story 3

Are you looking for a quick and easy way to assemble some of your digital pictures into a slide show complete with narration and/or sound? Microsoft has a tool for you. It’s called PhotoStory 3 and best of all it is free. Click here to download it and try it out. Peace.

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microsoft, slide show, photo story

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Media fasting

We must also be careful to avoid ingesting toxins in the form of violent TV programs, video games, movies, magazines, and books. When we watch that kind of violence, we water our own negative seeds, or tendencies, and eventually we will think and act out of those seeds.
— Thich Nhat Hanh in Living Buddha, Living Christ

Steve Bogner has a post “Just War-Lasting Peace” that I was reading this morning. One of the comments got me to thinking of Thich Nhat Hanh and what he had to say about watering the seeds of violence in our own lives. Thich Nhat Hanh is a man well acquainted with violence and paradoxically peace and non-violence as well. Consider going on a violence fast if you’d like to practice what he is speaking of. Give up entertainments which contain any kind of violence. Over the past several years I’ve gone on news fasts and violence fasts where I’ve limited my intake of television, internet news, and movies that have violent scenes. What has happened in the process has been a renewed sensitivity to the barrage of media from all sources that either intentionally or unintentionally de-sensitizes us to violence.

I’ve found that I can’t watch movies like Patton, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, et al without either fast forwarding through the violent scenes or being very uncomfortable. I am much more sensitive to the presence of violence around me and I’ve noticed a real softening of my heart towards the victims of violence of any type. Peace.

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What’s Going On?

One of my favorite recording artists of all time is/was Marvin Gaye. His tragic death in 1984 at the hands of his own father was very troubling. Marvin was frequently billed as a ladies man by Motown Records and I’m sure he was. Marvin also had a deeply spiritual and religious side which began to come out in his recordings in the 1970’s. Here is a link at Crooks & Liars blog which has the music video of one of my favorite Gaye lyrics “What’s Going On?”. What’s Going On came at a time in America when the Vietnam war began to become extremely unpopular. A time that is similar to now.


Peace.

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marvin gaye, peace, vietnam, antiwar, music

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Be yourself

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separate us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.–Thomas Merton

I can really identify with what Merton writes of here. How often do I present to the world the person I’d like others to see and run from who I really am. Even in this blog I find myself holding back and not completely expressing myself. I love George Carlin’s humor and sometimes I’m afraid that I’ll offend some of the readership because a lot of what Carlin writes about is ribald and raw. I’ve posted clips from Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young because there is within me yet the rebel, the bankrupt idealist who rails at injustice. The following poem written in 1934 by Dale Winbrow expresses the same thing in a slightly different way. It’s called “The Man in the Glass.”

When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He’s the person to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the man in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.


Peace.

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self, merton, peace, gratefulness

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Thoughts

Yesterday the United States Air Force, a force without peer in the world killed a terrorist leader named Zarqawi in Iraq. Originally we invaded Iraq because there were weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein might be able to hit New York City in 45 minutes with one of those weapons. That’s what we were told. We had Saddam and the Iraqi Air Force contained with a “no-fly zone”, but the government likes people who don’t remember details. After we got to Iraq and couldn’t find any weapons we had to invent a reason to stay there. Part of that reason got vaporized yesterday by two, five hundred pound laser guided munitions.

President Bush was apparently quite happy the Zarqawi got killed, but stated that his associates would probably carry on the war. If you’re a thinking person, which not many are apparently, you’d begin to wonder if all this killling is really accomplishing much. We don’t seem to be ending terrorism. We don’t seem to be winning any hearts and minds. We do have twenty-five hundred dead American soldiers and perhaps seventeen thousand badly wounded Americans. Of course there are tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who’ve been caught in the crossfire. They’re listed as collateral damage following surgical strikes like the one that got Zarqawi. Did you ever see the destructive power of one of these IEDs or one of our five hundred pound bombs. It’s unbelievable. In the world of military speak collateral damage is the result of a surgical strike. I love the euphemisms these Pentagon types and pundits toss around. You’d almost think you were watching an episode of ER. War and killing have been sanitized by a special language that hides the ugly truth, a truth we don’t want to really see. As long as we can hide behind these metaphors we’ll be able to kill our fellow men without much thought to the soul sickness it is creating in our own homes, businesses and society.

We have a Character Counts program where I work that attempts to imbue ideals and values into young children. It’s a great program. We hope that the children leave school with a better understanding of those values. Those values are important to an orderly society. We teach children that telling the truth and fairplay are important and they are. Respect for life is one of those values. When those children get old enough and join our military we have to retrain them in basic training. We give them new values which will help them to stay alive in a war zone. Many of these values run counter to the ones they learned earlier in life. Is it any wonder that they are confused?

A couple of weeks ago I had cordial visit with a recruiter who was visiting our school. He was a nice young man, a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne. He told me he didn’t jump out of planes, he rappelled out of helicopters. He’d served in Iraq and had risked his life many times during the course of the war. Though I’m opposed to this war and to war in general, I’m a veteran of the United States Navy and there exists among servicemen and women a bond that lasts a lifetime. Though I had never met this sergeant before I immediately liked him and there is now a bond between us though we may never meet again. He’s an honorable man of high moral character. He had integrity. I don’t know if the sergeant had ever killed anyone and I don’t really want to know. I do know that he is a soldier and like all soldiers he will do his duty. That’s part of being in the Army.

I recently posted a cartoon by Mark Fiore about “Core Values Education” that is being given to our troops in theater in Iraq. This training comes on the heels of an alleged slaughter of Iraqi civilians. This massacre came on the heels of the explosion of an improvised explosive device. It appears that Marines reacted as you’d expect them to. They defended themselves and perhaps over reacted. How can anyone reasonably expect the Marines to act in any other fashion. Someone had just tried to kill them and they were reacting to that threat. They are trained to kill the enemy. In a war where the enemy is an irregular un-uniformed person, how can you tell friend from foe. There is bound to be confusion in the fog of war. Language like proportional response and rules of engagement are made up words by policy makers out of touch with the realities faced by men and women who have been placed in a gravely dangerous situation. The United States Marines in Haditha and the all our fighting men and women don’t need core values training. They’ve got it. They are the salt of the earth. The clowns who need the core values training are the leaders who lied us all into this war in the first place. We need core values training at the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and at the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

The following quote is attributed to Herman Goering. Goering and his crew could have used some core values training themselves.

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

….All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

Peace.

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