Oct 17
“This life…is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it; the process is not finished but it is going on. This is not the end but it is the road… — Martin Luther
Hypocrisy is the highest form of flattery. If someone willing to abandon their own identity in order to impress you, then you must be pretty awesome.
Bono talks about Karma and Grace:
You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics; in physical laws every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.
We have a thing or two to learn from Bono about how to interact with a doubting world. He doesn’t call secular and pagan ideas “stupid” — he merely says they are in incomplete picture of the whole story. He doesn’t attack the notion of karma as foolish. Instead, Bono just describes it as another term for the laws of nature. Laws of nature suspended by the miracle of grace.
To me, that’s how we make friends with — and make sense to — our friends and neighbors. Don’t call names, offer a wider perspective. Give our world a way to make sense of the fractured pieces sin has left in its path of devastation across history.
More from his fascinating conversation about Christ and religion right here. It’s well worth reading.
Thanks to seancom for posting this article.
French President Sarkozy says the nations’ efforts to respect everyone’s culturally heritage equally has been a miserable failure:
Of course we must all respect differences, but we do not want… a society where communities coexist side by side. If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France.
The ideal society is not one where every nationality or race or language is cordoned off into their own city blocks. The resent rash of social unrest in France shows that if the contents of the cultural pot doesn’t melt, it will boil over.
Why? Because tolerance doesn’t foster harmony. Tolerance breeds contempt. And contempt smolders into hatred. When you tolerate someone, you merely put up with them.
It’s like sharing the back seat of the family car with your brother on a long road trip. You can divide the seat into half and agree not to cross that imaginary line, but he can still make faces at you and you can flick boogers at him. Despite efforts to ignore — tolerate — your annoying sibling, it’s not long before open conflict erupts.
Tolerance is humankind’s most fashionable way to seek unity. It’s only our most recent failure. Tolerance isn’t the answer.
What we need is the opposite of tolerance.
We need Love.
May 30
Mild or Wild? Click to help BP spin the Wild-O-Meter...
BP puts the “slick” in oil slick. They’ve positioned themselves to raise oil prices, tie the hands of the government, and still have a chance to save their oil well for future use.
Did BP purposefully blow up their own offshore oil platform? Of course not. Are they still trying to turn disaster into dollars? Absolutely.
Now that the “top kill” method has failed, BP has been presented with a best case senario from their point of view. Rather than being forever frozen in a layer of concrete, the well-that won’t-die is still open for future business. According to the Washington Post, John Tesvich, head of the Mississippi State Oyster Task Force, wasn’t surprised the top kill tactic didn’t work:
For them to say that its success ratio was 60 to 70 percent, for a company that’s trying to spin everything as positive as it can, that probably means they knew it wasn’t likely to have an effect. And that’s what’s being borne out now. It now looks likely that this will be an ordeal — that the oil will be spewing most of the summer.
The people on the ground in Mississippi aren’t surprised, neither should we be.
The only way to stop the spill? Drill a “relief well.” Poor BP. They’ll have to sink another well into the Gulf. Considering the drilling ban recently enacted by President Obama, BP must devastated with the prospect of another chance to tap into the Gulf’s oil reserves. The net result will be not one but two BP wells pumping side-by-side off the coast of Louisiana by the time this ordeal is over.
And a summer-long oil leak will be all that’s required to send oil and gasoline prices on an extended spike while BP and the rest of the oil industry cash in on the profits. This despite the fact that, as huge as this spill is, it represents a tiny fraction of the 81 million barrels of oil produced globally each year according to BP’s own 2009 statistical review.
(On a side note, here’s the pdf of BP’s global oil production chart for 2009 and here’s a pdf of BP’s powerpoint presentation on world energy statistics presented at the USAEE.)
Meanwhile, Obama’s over a barrel. The American people want accountability for the disaster, but the government has neither the technical expertise to address the spill on their own nor the ability to threaten the powerful oil industry with economic ultimatums.
President Obama is not known as a man of action by either party. Teddy Roosevelt spoken softly and carried a big stick; President Obama prefers to speak sternly and carry a selection of tasty candy. But as his recent press conference on the fiasco demonstrated, Obama isn’t even speaking sternly this time.
Where are the massive fines for every day BP does not stop that well? You can’t tell me that if BP had to scratch a $2 million check for every day this spill goes on their team of scientists wouldn’t be a little more motivated. Interactive oil spill timeline here.
Somehow, BP has reduced the President of the United States to a sequence of “concerned thoughts” and “I-don’t-know-what-any-of-my-departments-are-doings.” All President Obama can do is sit in the Oval Office and watch the live video feed of oil bubbling up from the floor of the Gulf like the rest of us.
Now that’s slick, BP.
So where does all this put BP on the Wild-O-Meter? Well, you have to look at this from two sides.
On the Evil side, there’s the fudging numbers, greasing palms, half-hearted containment efforts, the ruining of fishermen’s livelihood, and the endangerment of miles of beautiful American coastline. That’s pretty evil. Evil generally gets a very low Wild-O-Meter reading.
But there’s also the Genius side. BP is turning disaster into dollars, putting slick moves on Obama and the Feds, and setting themselves up for expanding their business in the Gulf. And no one can stop them. Strategically, that’s just brilliant.
Evil+Genius = Evil Genius. That’s why the Wild-O-Meter gives BP’s handling of the oil mess in the Gulf…. 2.5 roaring kittens out of five.
Theme: Linen by The Theme Foundry
Dec 6
And they presented unto him gifts…
… gold, frankincense, and a $3,000 nativity set..
.