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[ by Charles Cameron — a note at the intersection of material with spiritual ]
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left to right: Emmanuel Levinas, Gershom Gorenberg, Elliott Horowitz

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Gershom Gorenberg in March 28th’s Washington Post tells three stories from his own life of what I believe Catholicism would call “acts of corporal mercy” — feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting prisoners, visiting the sick, harboring strangers, and burying the dead (Matthew 25. 34-40). He concludes, honoring his mentor, Israeli historian Elliott Horowitz:

He said, without pride or embarrassment, that he acted out of religious conviction. In Israel, the political stereotype of Orthodox Jews is of people concerned exclusively with settling the occupied territories. In the world, commitment to the most traditional forms of faith — Jewish, Christian, Muslim or other — is often confused with building walls between people.

Elliott believed that faith demanded breaking down barriers between human beings created in God’s image. I believed that, too, but he pushed me to act.

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It’s a story by and about a friend, and about human goodness. Apart from those two sterling but not uncommon facts, why should I care?

I care because the story illustrates the Jewish proverb of which Emmanuel Levinas reminds us:

the other’s material needs are my spiritual needs

It’s not easy to bridge the gap between subjective experience and objective, physical reality, which is why the hard problem in consciousness is called the hard problem in consciousness — but this quote bridges the gap effortlessly, and in a manner that instructs us.

[ by Charles Cameron ]
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Michael Yon on Facebook, and (illustrated) on his journal page under the heading Rivers of tears flow tonight:

On one level, there is not much to say other than that one of the greatest leaders in history graced us for so long. He is the Father of Thailand. He was a champion of peace, freedom, and prosperity, and a good friend to America and to American people. His Majesty is loved by many Americans.

Americans normally do not like Kings, but King Bhumibol is a great exception. Those who studied him grew to respect him, then to like him, and finally to share in the love for the King of Kings. The love for His Majesty is so immense that it could fill the Gulf of Thailand.

Thais are among freest people on earth, thanks to His Majesty. He brought his millions of sons and daughters very far, and he taught lessons and brought inspiration to foreigners such as me.

He was a musician, and good, and his photography was excellent. Highly educated, he visited every corner of this great country, into the deepest jungles to help villagers, into the mountains, out to the islands, down the rivers. He went everywhere. His Majesty was a man of the people. He wanted to see with his own eyes, and he did.

Finally his body has worn out. We wish his body had lived to 110 but his body wore out. He spent it working for Thailand. But this is not the end. Only his body is gone. His Majesty is more alive now than ever before.

Strangely perhaps, since I only knew of him from a smattering of press accounts, I too am moved to tears by the death of this man and monarch. May he rest in peace.

[ by Charles Cameron — the words “substitute teachers” come to mind ]
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There’s nothing like quoting the recent past to illustrate the near future, eh?

https://twitter.com/postpolitics/status/785172785417125889

I guess these guys seem more presidential?

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Edited to add: Okay, revised version, 20 minutes later:

Live debate streaming tonight at 9 p.m. ET.
Post: https://t.co/IHaONdWF4o
Facebook: https://t.co/hZHrubnJJ5
Youtube: https://t.co/H9uZokKnIg pic.twitter.com/ZCdz6EWOKi

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 9, 2016

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/785177688839520257

[ by Charles Cameron — what’s true of hex maps is true of all mental models ]
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There’s a certain let-your-hair-down quality to play.

It appears that one Tausendsassa Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser said or perhaps wrote, muttered, whispered, shouted, or simply thought out loud, “the straight line is a godless line” — at any rate, someone noticed and recorded the phrase, and now it’s scattered across the net and difficult to track to its source.

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But we do love order, don’t we?

And so the rivers on our hexagonal maps all too easily follow the hexagons..

when they’d more realistically cross over them, following their own courses:

and note how easily even our efforts to bring natural variety to our hexagonal mappings conform more to hexagons than to variety.

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Zennist Thich Nhat Hanh in Listening Deeply for Peace writes:

A traditional Vietnamese Zen garden is very different from a Japanese Zen garden. Our Zen gardens, called hon non bo, are wild and exuberant, more playful than the formal Japanese gardens with their restrained patterns. Vietnamese Zen gardens are seriously unserious. For us, the whole world is contained in this peaceful place. All activities of life unfold in true peace in the garden: in one part, children will be playing, and in another part, some elderly men will be having a chess game; couples are walking; families are having picnics; animals are free to wander around. Beautiful trees are growing next to abundant grasses and flowers. There is water, and there are rock formations. All ecologies are represented in this one microecology without discrimination. It is a miniature, peaceful world. It is a beautiful living metaphor for what a new global ethic could bring.

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Here is the wrestling of a tree with such angels as gravity, sun, wind and rain:

Here is the wild calligraphy of the Rio Mamoré across the forests of the Amazon basin:

[ by Charles Cameron — Syria echoes Guernica ]
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This, from JM Berger today, offers a glimpse of Syria that is neither war, nor peace, if I might put it this way, but war longing for peace:

‘All Syrians Are Tired of This Absurd War’: Voices From the Ground During the Cease-Fire https://t.co/H6rifenXHz

— J.M. Berger (@intelwire) September 15, 2016

Irresistibly, it reminds me of this:

5 May 1937
-commissioned the "Guernica" at the Paris World's Fair. pic.twitter.com/ZknE4okL

— Pablo Picasso JAG (@GuernicaArtWork) May 6, 2012

Isn’t that a bull’s head in cloth, hanging right above the shoulder of the leaping boy in the Syrian image — and isn’t that alnmost exactly Picasso’s swooping white head, again in cloth, just to the right of it? The illusion of their similarity is enhanced by the aspect ratio of the Twitter image from Syria, which cuts off a stretch of green in the original photo, just below the image as you see it here..

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But it may be I’m seeing this because the bullfight and tauromachia have been on my mind recently — mythic combats of man pitted agains one of his worthiest opponents. There’s an archaic resonance there that’s inmportant in some way, but the actual killing of the bull, blood in the sand, horrifies me, the animal descending from grandeur to humiliation, its bowed head propped on one horn as it awaits finality — terrible.

And I was accordingly happy to recall the less violent version of the sport, still pitting man’s skill against adversary — in the bull-leaping of Knossos:

Bull-Leaping Fresco from the Great Palace at Knossos,Crete pic.twitter.com/hZNTKqBIFp

— Libertas (@VeraCausa9) May 25, 2016

and its latter-day practice, shown here at the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona:

Recordator JUMPING over charging bull in Pamplona goes back to bull leaping in ancient Crete https://t.co/67U2mkRBOI pic.twitter.com/KKfQFX22iE

— Richard Kellie (@rjkellie) July 10, 2016

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Taurus:

This image comes from the fabulous Constellations of Words site.