Activating Language

a review of Fingerprints of Fire....Footprints of Peace: a Spiritual Manifesto from a Jesus Perspective by Noel Moules (Circle Books, 2012), by Mike Mallory

Noel Moules, a founding member of the Anabaptist Network UK, writes from a liberal Christian perspective.  He is inclusive in his theology, conveys a reassuring sense of knowledge about the subject and is a gentle yet persistent story-teller.  The text is well footnoted and the author concludes with a glossary that includes Hebrew, Greek and Sanskrit terms.  The glossary is helpful because Moules pressures his language to submit to his views that scripture is social gospel.

The book focuses on the teachings of Jesus rather than Christology or the worship of His divinity.  The readership likely to gain the most out of this work is activists looking for a deeper religious or spiritual grounding for their work.  This book conveys both a passion for taking up the call of social justice and a reading of the New Testament that becomes a manifesto for peace.

"Hope" and "Shalom" are two of the central notions of this book.  Like other terms examined by Moules, he rejects a sentimental reading in favour of a description of behaviors constituting an active quest for peace.  "Shalom," he claims is a verb masquerading as a noun.  While usually translated as "peace," this book asks us to understand the term as though it is a call from Jesus, the Justice-Maker, to join Him in the struggle for a world built on the harmonious wholeness implied by values such as compassion, respect and even love.  Similarly he gives depth to the word "hope."  "Hope" becomes more than wishful thinking, it is the unshakable vision in the ultimate triumph of the salvation of Shalom and our role in creating the City upon the Hill.  With his persistent language shifting, Moules' New Testament becomes not just a manifesto for peace, but for peace-making.

This book is more than one Christian writing for another.  The book is replete with quotations from most religious traditions.  I am not a Christian, not even a theist in any conventional sense.  But I am concerned about social and economic justice and I found the book both inspiring and informative about the message of Jesus as it relates to these important issues.  While I do not share a religious theology I am a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation and felt a included by his addition of the Unitarian Universalist symbol, the Flaming Chalice in his diagram on page 186.

And while the features of the book discussed above are worthy and justify publication, there is more.  What I liked most about this book was the patient retelling of the parables and sayings of Jesus.  To be honest, I have never felt the Bible was all that interesting, but the New Testament in Moules' telling is fresh, exciting and relevant.  I have never heard his interpretation of turning the other cheek before.  Moules turns the parable from stoic pacifism into a lesson on the psychological subversion of power. 

At the end of the book I was left wishing for more.  What I wanted was a complete Noel Moules compendium of the Bible.  A book that would rest the Bible from those who would use it as an excuse for an oppressive status quo and allow it be become a testament of speaking truth to power.

5/29/13

Mike Mallory

The Colonial Self

A.  The Subjective.

The official line holds that I am an individual, a one, a singularity, that which is incapable of division.  The official line is so ingrained and taken for granted that any other perspective is marginalized.  The promise of the official line is that no matter how fractured or self-contradictory I am, there is path or therapeutic response leading toward wholeness, integrity, a unity that synthesizes all inconsistencies into a coherent wholeness.

I have at long last come to doubt the official line.  I have abandoned hope that some "true self" will arise within me, as though I should suddenly be endowed with a skill like juggling, tight-rope walking or solving for f(x) I did not heretofore possess.  Without the promise of resolution, I am resigned to accept a condition of multiplicity, of tension unresolved, of simultaneously saving and losing my cake.  At one and the same time I feel obliged to work late and “catch-up" and also to leave early and relax at home, to find a buck or two to give the panhandler at the freeway exit and also to selfishly horde and preserve every dollar for my own use, to answer truthfully as questions arise and also to hide behind polite prevarication.

And it is not as though I was of two minds; it is as though I am cluster-minded, as though I am crowd-sourced, poll-driven, building an inner consensus, forming parliamentary coalitions, an insecurity council sometimes as random as a sample of YouTube comments.

B. The Objective.

The two prevailing theories that seek to explain the development of multi-celled organisms uses the symbiosis model or colony model ¹.  In symbiosis two or more different organisms each helping and feeding off the other in some way develop an ever closer relationship until at some point they are treated as one organism.   Under the colony theory, clusters of identical cells combine into a single mass for some benefit such as protection or grazing.  Given enough time the different cells within the cluster develop or evolve specialization, differentiation and division of labor so that some cells become feet and some become hands and one day the cluster of cells can climb a tree.

At our biologic foundation we are not a single cell that grew up to be a complex humanoid.  We are formed from a mob, a collection, a committee, a conglomeration of identical and symbiotic cells.

There are nine times as many microbial organisms in and on the human body as there are human cells.²   Bacteria and fungus are much smaller than human cells and our human microbiome amounts to only 1-3% of a human body by weight.  The vast majority of the alien organisms inhabiting the human body are beneficial. Some are needed for digestion; they perform functions such as breaking down carbohydrates that would be otherwise indigestible.  Farts are not of our making.  They are the gaseous by-product of bacterial metabolism.

The human body has evolved to be inhabited, always was inhabited, infested, populated and colonized by the non-human.  Encapsulated within almost every human cell are one or more mitochondria: bladder shaped entities suspended in perfect symbiosis.³  From the human perspective mitochondria serve us by creating adenosine triphosphate (ATP), molecular chemical energy,  usable by the cell.  Humans depend upon mitochondria.  From the mitochondrion point-of-view, they are served by humans who provide the oxygen and glucose upon which the mitochondria feed.  Humans have developed lungs, guts, hunger and a bacterial environment just so that the mitochondria can be supplied with nutrients.

That mitochondria, though co-dependent, are in the end different from humans seems clear when we consider:

1)         Mitochondria act as cells within cells dividing in self-replication;
2)         Mitochondria have their own genome;
3)         Mitochondria DNA resembles bacterial DNA, not human DNA; and
4)         Mitochondria are evolving independently from humans;

We are not infected with mitochondria as infants playing on a dirty floor.  Mitochondria are there at the beginning, providing the female egg with the energy necessary for reproduction.

C.  The Emergent.

Molecules are formed by combining atoms in a new relationship.  Molecular relationships are a level of complexity that emerge out of the lower level atomic complexity.  Just so, life emerges, arises, animates from the lower level molecular complexity.

Where does consciousness come from?  It emerges out of biologic complexity, but what biology.  Descartes put the seat of consciousness in the pineal gland, a small trans-hemispheric, endocrine gland in the vertebrate brain.  Some traditions seat consciousness in the gut or bowels.

Today most assume that consciousness is a transcendent pattern emerging out the neural activity in the brain.  Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging maps or correlates certain kinds of cognition with specific areas of the brain.   But beware the Post Hoc Egro Propter Hoc; correlation does not imply causation.

Does consciousness cause the brain to fire as it does, or does the brain cause experience as it is?  Some experiments suggest that brain is as much as seven seconds ahead of consciousness, ⁴ that consciousness is just awareness of activity, that consciousness records but is not the creative force we imagine.  According to these experiments we are simply along for the ride.

D.        The Communal.

I approach the synthesis of this reverie with reluctance, both because I find it to be a shock to my own self-importance and because I know the weight of my conclusion will alight as a feather on balance with the ponderous assumptions about our own existence.  The explanation for a reality that includes:

1.    A biological foundation rooted in a colony of members working with dissimilar life forms in a symbiotic relationship,

2.    A mental experience which presents more as a plurality than a unity, and

3.    A correlation between nerve cell activity and consciousness,

is, I am forced to conclude, that I do not experience human consciousness, I experience mitochondrial consciousness.  I am agnostic about whether humans are conscious or not. 

I suggest that -

1.    The multi-perspectival nature of consciousness is explained by the fact that there are trillions of mitochondria participating in the collective consciousness.⁵

2.    The source of the energy mapped by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging is the activity of the neuronal mitochondria.

3.    Mitochondria are captive passengers in the human organism and it would make sense than their consciousness would lag seven seconds behind host-made decision making.

4.    While we cannot help but to identify with the human host, we are essentially witnesses to the primary action and lack the agency to express much more than the Existential Response made central in the work of Viktor Frankl.⁶

The world we inhabit is a secondary world of the passive witnesses to the unfolding history of humanity.  The identification with the bi-pedal humanoid is an illusion.  We may scream and shout about absurdities and misdirection of human existence, but there is little evidence that our human hosts are listening.

5/23/13

Mike Mallory

1.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome

3.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion

4.http://exploringthemind.com/the-mind/brain-scans-can-reveal-your-decisions-7-seconds-before-you-decide

5.  http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/AniciaNdabahaliye2.shtml (There are about 100,000,000 neurons in the brain.) http://www.jci.org/articles/view/17741 (Neurons may contain thousands of mitochondria.)

6.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl

Grandpa Moments

Visiting my son and his family I have had a few "Grandpa Moments."  At one point I was watching Louisville beat Duke.  My daughter-in-law's mother is a professor at Duke so we had some loyalty there.  During the game my eight year old granddaughter came into the living room with a stuffed animal and a baby bottle.  She said the little dog needed to be fed.  I dutifully cradled the toy dog and put the bottle to his mouth as I watched the game.  A few trips back and forth across the court passed and I realized I was only one in the living room and I still had this stuffed animal in my arms and was holding a baby bottle to it's mouth.......

Despite my best efforts I ended up with my two and a half year old grandson when he had a messy diaper.  I took responsibility for changing him.  Sometimes fortune smiles on the oblivious and, much to the amusement of everyone else,  when I put another diaper on him, I apparently put it on inside out.  This simple, but unintentional act, should excuse me from diaper duty the rest of the trip.

A Trapper's Journal (Fiction - Historical)

May 15, 1834.   My name is Richard Gaulin,   I come from Burlington, Vermont.   I am  28 years old and on my way to the Great Rocky Mountains where I hope to make a respectable living selling pelts to furriers.   I make this first entry on a train bound for Chicago.  I boarded the train in Syracuse, New York where I bought this journal on a lark.  I grew up on a farm, but my father insisted I attend school and I finished the sixth grade so I figure I can write fair enough to keep a journal.  From Chicago I shall travel by river to the Mississippi and then up the Missouri past Omaha, Nebraska.  Eventually I will be forced to give up the boat for a coach on the last leg of the trip to Butte, Montana.  I hear there are entire mountains teaming with beaver, mink and ermine waiting for someone like me    My baggage includes a Springfield rifle, traps, snares, knives, an axe and other assorted tools. I have enough money saved to buy a horse when I get to Butte.

Oct 18, 1834 - My cabin is near enough finished to protect me from the elements.  It may only have one room and a dirt floor, but I have built a fireplace out of rock from a near-by creek to provide warmth this coming winter. 

June 14, 1835 - Since my arrival on this mountain I have done well in my estimation, bringing many pelts into Butte.  I was able to purchase a Hall Breech loading carbine and a mule.   The winter was more severe than I had contemplated.  I might have starved to death if I had not shot a bear, early out of hibernation, the first week of March.

Sept. 9, 1836 - A band of Blackfoot Indians camped nearby.  We got to trading and I have come away with a wife.  I traded her father my Remington, two knives and several pelts.  Her name to my ears sounds like Con'ney-aghtal; I call her Connie.  She does not understand English and I do not know her language.   She is good with a knife and can skin any animal, but she hasn't really taken to becoming my wife.  I hope she doesn't kill me in my sleep.

April 7, 1837 - Connie is Pregnant.

Sept. 4, 1837 - Connie gave birth in the cabin to a son.  I named him Noble.

Feb. 20, 1839 - Connie is pregnant again.

Aug. 4, 1839 - Connie died in childbirth.  The unborn child died with her.  They are buried behind the cabin.    I have sent Noble to stay with my sister in Vermont.

June 8, 1840 - I am told that the market for beaver pelts has collapsed.  People prefer hats made of silk.  It will be hard to buy enough provisions with the money I earned for the pelts.

Feb. 1841 - Leg broke.  Firewood gone.

Ado's Grief (Flash Fiction - Biblical Series)

Ado‘s husband was a good and righteous man.  She was obedient, not only out of duty, but respect, as well.  She kept his house and bore him children.  They were daughters, not sons, but had brought worthy husbands into the family.  They enjoyed a rewarding life and a comfortable status in the community.

Now, as she walked through the desert by the Dead Sea with all the valuables she could carry, she feared the loss of that happiness.  Yesterday, Lot, sometimes given to religious excess had invited two strangers into their home.  Ado had made them comfortable and provided both food and drink. Curiously, Lot had been deferential to the pair and went so far as to prostrate himself before their feet.

Trouble started in the night when a pack of drunken young men staggered up to the front of the house and begin to taunt the strangers.  Their bawdy shouts demanded that the strangers come out and provide the kind of pleasure that men give to each other.

The strangers were very offended and agitated by the ruckus and went to the front of the house.  A flash of light filled the street.  The brightness was so intense that the crowd stumbled around unable to see.

Ado sensed something frightening about the strangers.  They had eyes as deep as the infinite sky.  The strangers bade Lot join them in a sitting room.  Ado could not make out the words but occasionally heard Lot’s raised and pleading voice. 

Lot finally emerged with the strangers and told Ado to gather up their coin, best fabric and other valuables as they were fleeing Sodom for the nearby town of Bela.  “Fleeing?”  “Why would we leave, husband?” Ado cried.  She wailed and she screamed, but Lot was steadfast in his demand saying only that there was a prophecy of doom.  She went upstairs to pack, while Lot went to find their daughters.

When Lot returned, he was followed his tearful daughters, but not their husbands.  Ado protested that it was wrong for Lot to tear apart the households of their daughters.  Lot listened only to the strangers.  Ado was confused and frustrated, but bent to gather up the family wealth.

The burden was heavy and the ground was already hot when she looked up ahead to see Lot entering the gates to Bela.  The strangers remained outside the town and both turned back toward Sodom raising their arms heavenward and started to pray.  They were speaking in a tongue unfamiliar to Ado and looked to her as foreign as any person could possibly be.  One of them barked at her, “Don’t look back!”

Then she saw the reflected lights of explosions illuminate the city-walls of Bela.  The lights were followed immediately by rolling concussions that caused dust to fly from the earth.  She was afraid.  She was worried about her family and friends left behind.  She turned to face Sodom.  She was bombarded with a vision of fire raining from the sky, explosions in the city, death and destruction.  The valuables fell from her arms which  she raised in a protective stance.  She was horrified, but could not turn away.  Her heart was filled with the pain and misery of the Sodomites she loved.  She thought of the shopkeepers, the children and the women with whom she would gossip beside the well and she started to cry.  Tears streamed down her face and she could taste their salty outrage.  The salty grief sank deeper and deeper into her soul until, in the end, it totally consumed her.

 

Mike Mallory

Recess (Flash Fiction - Legal)

The Recess

The sound waves from the bailiff’s, “All rise!” were still reverberating against the wood-paneled courtroom when Judge Gilly’s black robe disappeared behind the door to his chambers.  The jury was safely tucked into the jury room where it could deliberately not talk about the case.  Both the clerk and court reporter filed back into their offices.  Judge Gilly was meticulous and deliberate.  You could set your clock by the length of his afternoon recess.  We had fifteen minutes: not fourteen and not sixteen.

The plaintiff sits back down with his attorney at their table and they start talking.  Clients often give their attorney suggestions during trial.  They would be better off just sitting silently while the attorney reviews trial notes. 

I am defending this case for the Retail Insurance Co. of America, which sent a risk management supervisor to sit in on the trial.  The RICA rep and I strategized over lunch and she wants me to settle this case for $15,000.00.  The case is worth more than that and she knows it. 

RIA insures Global Grocer, an upscale grocery outlet in a suburb off the interstate.  The plaintiff, a forty-two year old surveyor, on an errand for his wife stopped at the store to pick up some salad dressing.  Walking by the olive bar he slipped on some oily brine that had been spilled on the floor.  Hitting his head on the floor, the plaintiff fractured one of his cervical vertebras and damaged an adjoining disc.  He claims to have debilitating pain and restricted mobility.  He hasn’t worked since the fall.

I walk over to the plaintiff’s table and wait to be acknowledged by his attorney.  Finally recognized I say, “Can we talk?”  The attorney gives me a long look as if asking whether there is an anything I have to say that is worth getting up out of the chair to hear.  We walk out together.

Once out in the hall I start pressing, “Judge Gilly has already ruled that you can’t introduce evidence that the store upgraded to a safer bar.  I don’t see how you can fault the grocery store.”

“That oily mess was on their floor.  My client was entitled to a reasonable expectation of safety.”

Not letting up I continue, “The store has a regular inspection and maintenance schedule.  What more can they do?  You may have persuaded Judge Gilly not to dismiss this case before trial, but he came close to throwing this suit out.  I think Gilly is going to dump this thing.”

The attorney, working on a contingency fee and getting nervous about leaving without a paycheck, has invested heavily in this case.  “I’m more interested in what the jury is going to say than the judge.”

I was ready to get to the money.  “The insurance carrier for Global Grocer would like to finish this case here and now and they are increasing their settlement offer to $12,500.00.”

I could see it wouldn’t be enough.  The attorney was almost contemptuous.  “This case is worth at least $75,000.00.”

“I can never get you $75,000.00.  Gilly is going to tell the jury that Global had to have notice of the spill before there is a duty to clean it up.  You have no evidence that Global knew there was a problem before your client fell.  After the judge is through instructing the jury, they are going to end up dismissing the case and your client gets nothing.”  I didn’t have to add that the client’s attorney would also get nothing.  “Give your client something.  Take the offer.”

The attorney gives a disappointed head shake and says, “I’ll convey your offer to my client, but I will be advising him not to accept.”  We walk back into the courtroom.  I sit down next to the RICA rep.  She gives me a deadpan look I knew to be a request for a report.  I shrug.

I glance at the clock. It’s 3:08 p.m.  It dawns on me that I don’t know when the recess started.  Plaintiff’s counsel hands me a piece of folded paper.  Unfolding the paper I see a single figure: $35,000.00.  I slide it over to the rep.  She shakes her head, “No.”  I take a sheet of scratch paper and write “$25.000.00?”

She crosses out my number and writes “22,500.00.”  I take the plaintiff’s note, cross out his number and write in ours.  I hand it back and say, “This offer expires as soon as Judge Gilly takes the bench.”  The plaintiff and his attorney begin to boil in animated conversation.

The bailiff opens the door to chambers and calls out, “All Rise!”  I take to my feet and glance over at plaintiff’s table trying to determine upon which side they will alight.

Mike Mallory

Graveyard Watch (Historical Flash Fiction)

Twas less than a fortnight ago when Pell, one of the Duke’s lads, interrupted the mid-day meal with a fierce banging against the front door.  His hands were covered in heavy leather gloves against the cold and he came close to punching through the brittle wooden gate that serves as the entryway into the hut.  With an air of deferential politeness he was ushered inside the dirt-floor hovel.  Looking around the premises, as if overcome by gratitude that his station is superior, he comes to attention and remembers his errand.

In a booming voice, fit for a report to King Phillip, himself, Pell announces that I have been summoned, without so much as a prithee, by the Duke of Northumberland to stand the graveyard watch for three days in the churchyard behind the abbey.  They are burying Lady Francis Bandon, one o’ the Duke’s cousins and someone has to watch over her. This is an opportunity to serve the Duke and maybe to gain some bit ‘o favor. 

This is a new practice: the graveyard watch.  Digging up some old coffins so as to make room for the more recently departed, there was a lot of coffins from the time of yore what have scratch marks.  And the scratch marks was on the inside ‘o the coffins.  Only one thought comes to mind: people have been buried alive.

Now, the important people who die get a string tied ‘round their wrist and the string comes up outta the ground and is tied to a bell. If they wake up from the dead, why they can just wiggle around to ring the bell and them that buried ‘em just digs ‘em up again.  The graveyard watchman is charged with keepin’ his eyes and ears on that bell and go a running to the vicar’s house if it starts ringing.

With the wind a howlin’ and the rain beatin’ down it would have nice to have an oilskin or a greatcoat.  The woolen shawl is soggy wet and heavy cold.  Curled all up in a ball, half inside the old tree trunk like a fox, offers a little protection from the elements, but makes it hard to keep an eye on the bell.  Then again if it rings, keeping “an ear out” ought to be enough.

It is bootblack dark with a disturbing wind.  Leaves and sometimes even whole braches scuttle by.  That little bell, hanging from a little piece o’ wood is getting buffeted by gusts just like everything else.  Sure, it rings from time to time but that’s probably just the wind.  Still, it is a bad night to lay here wondering if her Ladyship has been buried alive.  God bless her Ladyship.

It’s best to let the wind die down and then see if the bell is still ringin’.  If the vicar is woken in the dead ‘o night to an alarm by the graveyard watchman and the Duke’s people get all busy in the middle of a storm and dig up her Ladyship only to find she is still dead as a piece ‘o firewood, why, then some mighty disaster would surely befall that graveyard watchman.  I durst not wake the vicar. 

If by chance that bell be ringin’ on account of her Ladyship pullin’ on the string, she will no doubt stop before long.  Bless her Ladyship’s soul.

 /Mike Mallory

(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_origin_of_the_phrase_saved_by_the_bell - it may just be an urban myth.  Then again, it’s on the World Wide Web! )