MVD UD - The Knotty Truth

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Gordius was never a just a simple farmer, rather he was one of the point men for a Qabbalistic experiment in raising spiritual consciousness. The Gordian Knot was the physical manifestation of a mathematical expression of social harmony, and the challenge to unravel it was meant to expose those who would dare be leaders to the refined, conscious altering arguments for peaceful coexistence. The closer one came to understanding the mystery of the knot and untying it, the more changed they would be by its formula.

Plato knew about the Qabbalists. He'd uncovered information about their existence and intents during some of his earliest research into Atlantis. He did not trust this ancient order of secret keepers, however, and thought them a danger to the way of life he was trying to help create, so he gave his most promising pupil the task of keeping them at bay.

Aristotle worked on the problem for more than fifteen years, even after philosophical disagreements with his mentor kept him from heading up the Academy upon Plato's death. His most promising solution came after leaving Athens when he was asked to tutor the son of Philip II, King of Macedon.

This is how Alexander the Great was set on the path to Gordius' fabled knot, not to unravel it, claiming the secrets of peace and bearing them into the world, but to destroy it, and spread through force of arms the visions of peripatetics, academics, and hemlock drinkers.

Two years later, in 331 BC, Alexander made a dangerous pilgrimage to the Oasis of Siwa to visit the Oracle of Ammon. Alexander had two questions for the Oracle.

"Have any of my father's assassins escaped unpunished?" he asked first.

"Yes," the Oracle responded. "The chief architect of that treachery lives on undetected and undeterred in a land where your name is yet unknown."

Unsettled, Alexander presented his second question. "Shall I conquer the whole of the world?"

"To conquer the whole of the world one need only untangle Gordius' knot," the Oracle replied.

"Ah!" Alexander shouted victorious. "This thing my hand has already done."

"No," the Oracle answered, explaining the nature of the Qabbalist creation and the consequences of his circumventing their intent.

In the few years that followed, Alexander declared himself a god, fell into debauchery, murdered his best friend, lost the respect of his men, and after more than a decade of leading his armies to victory in battle, died from a mosquito bite.

WIP MVD UD - Safer in Wool

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Bringing fruit from the bloomingOf dark, hopeful lips; From a pause, To a purse, To a soft airy phrase; Pushed past rose In the simplest prose, Granting a glimpse Of enameled desire.

Couched in a quirk; A brief dimpled twitch: A question, An answer, A sweet imposition, A challenge to leave Or stay and believe Lupine intentions Are safer in wool.

This Weeks Hateful Truth

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"The lesson of the Holocaust is that when you have the capacity to halt genocide, and you do not—no matter who carries out that genocide or who it is directed against—you are culpable. And we are very culpable. The F-16 jet fighters, the Apache attack helicopters, the 250-pound “smart” GBU-39 bombs are all part of the annual $2.4 billion in military aid the U.S. gives to Israel. Palestinians are being slaughtered with American-made weapons. They are being slaughtered by an Israeli military we lavishly bankroll. But perhaps our callous indifference to human suffering is to be expected. We, after all, kill women and children on an even vaster scale in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bloody hands of Israel mirror our own."-Chris Hedges, The Language of Death

A Future Not Our Own

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Romero's Prayer It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen

- Archbishop Oscar Romero

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Enough Shame To Go Around

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"While a ground war in densely populated Gaza is likely to increase the civilian toll there, the Israeli Army also faces new threats. Since seizing control of the territory a year and a half ago, Hamas has been able to smuggle in more and better weapons. Its more sophisticated arsenal has been on display in recent weeks, and even under heavy fire the group has shown its ability to keep hitting Israeli cities with long-range rockets. - from NYTimes.com, Israeli Troops Advance, Bisecting Gaza

From the same article, let's look at the comparative "threats" the Israeli army faces versus the population of Gaza:

"Israeli troops advanced into Gaza on Sunday under cover of heavy air, tank and artillery fire . . .", and "the military said the operation involved “large numbers” of forces including infantry, tanks, engineering and artillery corps."

Israel seems to be fairly well prepared: planes, tanks, artillery, and infantry. Not surprising as they have, thanks to good old Uncle Sam, one of the most modern and heavily armed militaries in the world. Remember, Israel is a member of the nuclear club, though a covertly, and one who has never signed the non-proliferation treaty.

But what "sophisticated arsenal" do these poor invading forces face from Hamas, who used the unholy methods of a democratic election to "seize control of the territory a year and a half ago"?

". . . Hamas was fighting back mostly with mortars and improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.s."

This is and has been a deeply uneven conflict and the rest of the world seems to realize that. Every one except the the U.S. government ("the White House has . . . blocked approval of a United Nations Security Council statement on a cease-fire." [update]), and as we've seen here, the New York Times, whose facts contain enough truth to let through a glimpse of reality, but whose spin would make Fox News proud.

"How Long, O' Lord?"

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"And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise “restraint” – as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas’s home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course. " - Robert Fisk, Leaders Lie, Civilians Die, and Lessons of History are Ignored

Hedges This Week - Chaneling Conrad

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"Those who attempt to mend the flaws in the human species through force embrace a perverted idealism. Those who believe that history is a progressive march toward human perfectibility, and that they have the moral right to force this progress on others, no longer know what it is to be human. In the name of the noblest virtues they sink to the depths of criminality and moral depravity." - Chris Hedges, Man Is a Cruel Animal

More Hedges, Big Quote

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Tolerance, as well as religious and political plurality, is not exclusive to Western culture. The Judeo-Christian tradition was born and came to life in the Middle East. Its intellectual and religious beliefs were cultivated and formed in cities such as Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople. Many of the greatest tenets of Western civilization, as is true with Islam and Buddhism, are Eastern in origin. Our concept of the rule of law and freedom of expression, the invention of printing, paper, the book, as well as the translation and dissemination of the classical Greek philosophers, algebra, geometry and universities were given to us by the Islamic world. The first law code was invented by the ancient Iraqi ruler Hammurabi. One of the first known legal protections of basic freedoms and equality was promulgated in the third century B.C. by the Buddhist Indian Emperor Ashoka. And, unlike Aristotle, he insisted on equal rights for women and slaves. The East and the West do not have separate, competing value systems. We do not treat life with greater sanctity than those we belittle. There are aged survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who can tell us something about our high moral values and passionate concern for innocent human life, about our own acts of terrorism. Eastern and Western traditions have within them varied ethical systems, some of which are repugnant and some of which are worth emulating. To hold up the highest ideals of our own culture and to deny that these great ideals exist in other cultures, especially Eastern cultures, is made possible only by historical and cultural illiteracy.

The civilization we champion and promote as superior is, in fact, a product of the fusion of traditions and beliefs of the Orient and the Occident. We advance morally and intellectually when we cross these cultural lines, when we use the lens of other cultures to examine our own.

- Chris Hedges, Confronting the Terrorist Within