by Chris Bodenner
A reader writes:
One of the very best depressing (or at least melancholy) Christmas songs ever written has to be “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” first recorded by Bing Crosby during World War II. Many people forget that it is a song about soldiers separated from their families. This year some 300,000 American servicemembers and support personnel will be home for Christmas only in their dreams.
by Patrick Appel
A reader writes:
Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac? He lies awake all night wondering if there is a Dog.
by Chris Bodenner
by Patrick Appel
The Iranian government attacked Twitter late last night:
Other sources told us that the timing of the attack on Twitter is part of a concerted effort across the Iranian government and military to take a stronger diplomatic stance against the United States and European Union in the lead up to negotiations on Irans nuclear plans.
by Andrew Sprung
As an agnostic, chary of the assumed authority of scriptures and clerics, I confess to having a soft spot for mystics. Just as the human race spawns Michael Jordans, born to play ball, and Michael Jacksons, born to sing, it persists in spawning Michaels- –those near to God, seized heart and soul and mind by what they at least perceive to be direct communication and union with the divine.
I admit to some inconsistency in my attitudes, since scripture is in large part the direct or indirect product of mystic perception, and clerics study that product in search of a secondary buzz — and many of them are in fact mystics of some sort. But let's just say that most of what comes from the horse's mouth (as the mystically inclined/psychotic artist in Joyce Cary's great novel of that name calls the source of inspiration) — gets lost in an endless game of telephone.
But I do sense the mainline connection at work in some writings. Call the perceived contact with the divine psychosis or an evolutionary quirk, if you will. But it strikes me as at least marginally more plausible that the human mind connects with some other form of mind than that mind itself is simply an accident of physics. That suspicion gets a further boost from accounts of near-death experiences.
All this is by way of too-long introduction to my own beginner's pleasure in the poetry of Rumi, aka Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi, the great Persian Sufi mystic poet, whose works have been called a Persian Koran. It's heady stuff — seemingly straight from the horse's mouth, per Joyce Cary above. For those of us in the West who encounter Islam chiefly through fearsome Koranic quotes about "infidels" or pious assurances that it is "a religion of peace," these verses open a window. (And many have opened it; Rumi is perhaps the best-selling poet in America.)
I am reading Rumi cold, and my knowledge of Sufiism is Wikipedia-thin, so I will avoid the hubris of commentary and just share my own unmediated 'first contact.' Here's an early favorite — one of a series that figure the world as a tavern and life as drunkenness.
A Children's Game
Listen to the poet Sanai,
who lived secluded: "Don't wander out on the road
in your ecstasy. Sleep in the tavern."
When a drunk strays out to the street,
children make fun of him.
He falls down in the mud.
He takes any and every road.
The children follow,
not knowing the taste of wine,
or how his drunkenness feels. All people on the planet
are children, except for a very few.
No one is grown up except those free of desire.
God said,
"The world is a play, a children's game,
and you are the children."
God speaks the truth.
If you haven't left the child's play,
how can you be an adult?
Without purity of spirit,
if you're still in the middle of lust and greed
and other wantings, you're like children
playing at sexual intercourse.
They wrestle
and rub together, but it's not sex!
The same with the fightings of mankind.
It's a squabble with play-swords.
No purpose, totally futile.
Like kids on hobby horses, soldiers claim to be riding
Boraq, Muhammad's night-horse, or Duldul, his mule.
Your actions mean nothing, the sex and war that you do.
You're holding part of your pants and prancing around,
Dun-da-dun, dun-da-dun.
Don't wait till you die to see this.
Recognize that your imagination and your thinking
and your sense perception are reed canes
that children cut and pretend are horsies.
The knowing of mystic lovers is different.
The empirical, sensory, sciences
are like a donkey loaded with books,
or like the makeup woman's makeup.
It washes off.
But if you lift the baggage rightly, it will give joy.
Don't carry your knowledge-load for some selfish reason.
Deny your desires and willfulness,
and a real mount may appear under you.
Don't be satisfied with the name of HU*,
with just words about it.
Experience that breathing.
From books and words come fantasy,
and sometimes, from fantasy comes union.
——-
* The pronoun for the divine presence
by Conor Friedersdorf
A reader writes:
Two old men, next door neighbors, meet every evening to walk their dogs.
"You know what?" Harry says one evening. "Twenty years walking through this park, and we've never once stopped in at that bar to have a drink."
"Sure, I'm thirsty," Dick says. "But we've got the dogs."
"Oh, I've already thought of that," Harry says. "Just follow my lead."
So they walk over to the bar, where sitting on a stool outside the door is a bouncer.
"Sorry gents, no pets in here," the bouncer says.
"Oh, you don't understand," Harry replies, "this is my seeing eye dog."
"Oh, I beg your pardon," the bouncer says. "Go right ahead."
So Harry leads his German Shepard into the bar, while Dick steps before the bouncer.
"Sorry sir, no pets," the bouncer says.
"Oh, you don't understand," says Dick. "This is my seeing eye dog too. We're all friends over at the old folks home for blind people."
The bouncer looks suspiciously at Dick.
"I don't know, buddy," he says, "they gave you a chihuahua for a seeing eye dog?"
Says Dick, "They gave me a chihuahua?!"
by Patrick Appel
Will at Ordinary Gentleman makes a solid point on behalf of cap and trade opponents:
Straightforward denialism allows those who favor aggressive emissions controls to shape the public’s perception of climate science. Instead of sober cost-benefit analysis, people who basically accept the existence of global warming (read: most of the voting public) are now more likely to think that climate change is catastrophic rather than incremental. The longer the right’s response to anthropogenic warming is dominated by the likes of Inhofe and Santorum, the longer this perception will linger, which doesn’t bode well for efforts to stop monstrously expensive cap-and-trade legislation.
by Patrick Appel
Kristol wants to kill health care reform because of weather.
by Conor Friedersdorf
The big story today: a mother whose two year old son drowned in their backyard pool. It is making national headlines because the woman Tweeted about the incident.
"Fog is rolling in thick scared the birds back in the coop," Ross tweeted at 5:22 p.m. on Monday.
At 5:23 p.m., her son called 911 to report that his brother, 2-year-old Bryson, was floating unconscious in the pool. Records show that the Brevard County Fire-Rescue paramedics arrived at Ross' Mirrett Island, Fla., home at 5:38 p.m.
And 34 minutes later, at 6:12 p.m., Ross tweeted again. "Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool."
Nearly five hours later, after her son had been pronounced dead, Ross tweeted again.
"Remembering my million dollar baby," she wrote. Ross included a photo of Bryson in the post, time-stamped at 11:08 p.m. A few minutes later, she posted another photo of her son.
May that little boy rest in peace, and I hope the family muddles through as best they can. Like many of you, I am surprised at how the mother behaved during this ordeal. I've never faced a tragedy as grave, so I suppose I can't know for sure, but I can't even imagine I'd Tweet it — and I don't mean that to imply that I am judging the woman for having done so, because I'm mostly posting this to wonder at the vitriol being directed against her in the comments section of the story.
Isn't this just the latest example of people becoming insanely judgmental about a fellow citizen merely because she conceives of technology differently? It is unimaginable to me that people would react this way if Ms. Ross shouted over the back fence in the middle of the crisis to ask all in earshot to pray, and five hours later, still in shock, mechanically composed a letter to friends lamenting her loss.
But doing what amounts to the same thing on Twitter? It provokes vitriol that I find every bit as inexplicable as I do the Tweeting of a child's death. In this moment of utmost gravity, you're criticizing her approach to social media? "This woman is a perfect example of where humanity is heading as it becomes more enslaved by technology," one commenter said. In fact, the callousness strangers direct via Internet at a grieving mother is a far more dire harbinger of where we're headed.
by Chris Bodenner
Mudflats imagines a scene between two photographers trying to find Palin while she vacationed with her family in Hawaii:
Who IS that?
You mean over there with Todd Palin and Piper and Trig?
Yeah, that mystery woman in the sunglasses…
Do you think that’s Sarah?
(squinting) Not sure… Let me get my other lens.
Yeah…I think it might be. She’s supposed to be in Hawaii with her family.
But we have to be sure!
Does it say anything on her visor?
I can’t make it out… Looks like she’s scribbled something out.
Dang. If we could only verify. I HATE when celebrities go incognito.
The Dish 