By The Way: Post-Xmas musings on peace, hope

In our “eclectically” put together living room I always feel a sense of overall well-being, which is heightened during this season.  

I find that incomprehensible, surrounded as I am with keepsakes from our meandering journey — a journey visited by sudden hairpin turns and steep dips and climbs along the way. Many of our Christmas/seasonal mementos are still shadowed by their aura of anxiety, fear or sorrow.  

For example, a picture of our family sits atop a table. It is sunrise on Mt. Kenya, Africa, and we have made the three-day hike in time to greet the Christmas morn’ of 2001. Having been yanked out of Pakistan immediately after 9/11 and leaving everything behind, we were temporarily posted to Nairobi and this was our desperately needed “alternative Christmas”. 

So I sit here surrounded by external reminders of a chaotic life, but I find that in this space I experience take-your-breath-away peace.  

I decide to record this slice of seasonal contentment. Personality and years of professional habit snap to attention, ready to dissect it into categories delineated by space and time. But I tell my attendants to take the night off. Somehow I know this sense of peace has arisen from the whole and not from the sum of its individual parts.

Physics tells us we live in an “observer-influenced” world. But what does “observer-influenced” mean? Is it not possible that acts done with love, kindness and compassion are creating much more than just good feelings. Could they be changing molecular structures?  

Isn’t this the subject of poets, mystics and lovers? Throughout religious history, theologians have written about how God has chosen to work with humanity — how God, Divinity, Ultimate Reality adds to, enhances and supplements our flawed attempts at doing good. Hence we are “co-creators” with God, in an “observer-influenced” world.  

So let’s assume I have co-created this space with Divinity. Using basic principles of order and beauty that reflect attributes of God, I have tried to create a place of rest for my family.  

Perhaps the love and, yes, the sorrows inherent in these mementos contribute physically to this peace. Much has been written about the benefits of sorrow and suffering, somehow they add to the whole in ways we will never fully understand.  

Maybe each one comes with its own fairy dust and mixed together it creates a matrix flecked with gold, binding life together, and my soul perceives this shimmering apart from my physical senses.  

Regardless, it’s an experience characterized by a sense of completeness. This experience fills me with hope for two reasons. First, if we can find one place outside of ourselves where we feel tangible peace, we can know that peace exists. That in spite of our failures, the injustices of life and its disappointments, peace can exist. And second, my efforts matter. This is significant, especially in our postmodern society. To believe there is no purpose in life, that we are just molecules in the cosmic soup, strands of DNA fighting to survive for the sake of surviving, is a metaphysical decision. There is no proof that that statement is true and to believe so is a leap of faith. 

Yes, it is also a leap of faith to believe that choices we make to increase the good in the universe matter, and that we can co-create with Ultimate Reality, Divinity, God. 

However, most of humanity throughout history would agree that their experiences fit with the latter statement of faith. Are we to deny the reality of our experiences? To deny the historicity of our lives? 

Rationally, I have yet to plumb the depths of this experience but I have recorded what I could. Peace settles upon me, permeating me. It is enough.

Source: The Jakarta Post | Sun, 12/28/2008 8:29 AM | Headlines 

Students build trust with inmates

Ten female inmates at Tangerang penitentiary listened to instructions given by Ian Pierson, while he led a group of students from the British International School in a workshop Wednesday. 
The mixed group of students and inmates followed the step-by-step instructions, ordering them to walk into each other with their eyes closed. 
Some of them stopped after hitting others standing as a human wall, but some others failed to do so because they stopped before they could reach the instructed destination. 
"You stopped before you could reach the human wall and that's because you are afraid of falling down. You already know that you will not fall, but you are still scared," Pierson told the group. 
He said this happened because the group members couldn't trust that those standing as the human wall would stop them from falling. 
"The main purpose of the activity is to train the inmates to control their emotions, and to gain the patience and concentration needed to build trust," Pierson said. 
One of the inmates, Herlina, 18, who is serving the last month of her one-year prison sentence at the penitentiary for drug possession said she was very pleased to participate in the activity. 
"This is a rare opportunity for me to be able to communicate with people outside the prison and I can also improve my knowledge through interaction with the (visiting) students," she said. 
Another inmate Monika, who is sentenced to four years in jail for a drug offense, said she was also happy to be involved in the activity because she could learn how to control her emotions. 
"I did enjoy every part of the activity because I will never find the training anywhere else," she said. 
The visit was part of the Creativity Action Service (CAS), the final requirement for grade-13 students before their graduation. 
"We are all required to perform creativity action service for 150 hours as the last grade to get our diploma," a student, Albert, said.

source: Multa Fidrus , The Jakarta Post , Tangerang | Sat, 11/22/2008 12:53 PM | City 

solar energy could take care of some of our needs

A lot of time has been spent on solar energy in recent days, down here in the Netherlands. Quite some profound newspapers and magazines (among which Elsevier, which is the Dutch conservative version of Time) are busily informing readers about the profound impact solar energy could have.

If Western governments are willing to invest in energy, Elsevier explained, we could provide 80 times the energy we need on a yearly basis. 80 times.

Of course, transforming the current system into entirely solar based will take years, decades even, and it will cost a tremendous amount of money. Other research has indicated that Western economies could indeed even suffer tremendously, possibly collapse if we would take this gigantic step. 

But something has to change nonetheless. It is silly for us to depend on foreign oil and other energy sources that are wasteful, limited, costly and that make us dependent on other, often hostile governments.

So, if solar energy could take care of some of our needs but if we would ruin our economy if we would truly launch a massive project aimed at making solar energy our sole source of energy what can we do? The answer is simple: aside from solar power we should use wind and nuclear power.

Nuclear power is ‘dirty’ and it is difficult to get rid of the ‘garbage,’ but it is also highly effective and relatively affortable. Every single country in the West, in the world actually, could build nuclear facilities, which can be built much safer today than a few decades ago.

Wind power is quite similar to solar power of course; it is clean, but costly for us to invest in on a massive scale.

A balance has to be found between those three energy sources if we want to be able to function without ruining our economy and we have to take our time. There is no need to act as if we, the West, have to become energy independent in five years time.

The above has, of course, been noted by many others. The following has not, or, at least, it has not gotten the attention it deserves: what will happen to countries we depend so heavily on for oil now? What would happen to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran and others if we would use solar, wind and nuclear power?

The answer is that these countries’ economies will collapse. They will be ruined. The collapse will be so devastating that massive riots, possibly civil wars will break out. Fathers will not be able to buy food for their children. Mothers will not be able to buy or even knit clothes for them let alone themselves. These economies depend so heavily on oil that our energy revolution would ruin them completely, leaving nothing behind except for massive instability.

As we have learned in the last couple of decades, instability in other parts of the world, and especially in Africa and the Middle East, causes instability at home. The more poverty exists in the Middle East, the more youngers will radicalize and the more likely it is that extremists will take over. They will use these countries as platforms for terrorist attacks against the West and it interests. In short, a massive Western energy revolution would make the world much less safe.

This means that when we commit ourselves to aforementioned revolution, we will need to come up with a plan for oil producing and exporting countries. It means we will have to invest in them, we will have to help them become less dependent on oil.

In turn, this means that we will have to spend many billions, trillions even perhaps, more. An energy revolution is not limited to ourselves. Its impact spreads throughout the world, it will influence many lives. Millions will lose their job and their home. Unless we help them.

It would be great to see politicians taking this subject seriously and articulate plans that would make us less dependent on foreign governments, and on oil, while explaining how they would help those governments deal with the loss in oil sales.

Until they do, all the talk about an energy revolution, let alone energy independence, should be considered void and useless.