The searing scene from Afghanistan's Kabul airport tears our hearts. People jam the gates of the airport, individuals cling to the planes racing down the exit runways, and the urgency of airlifting US citizens and Afghan colleagues as well as family members creeps into our minds—perhaps forever—along with the scenes of our forces departing Saigon, the last moments of that tragic war. War is hell, indeed, but these scenes of a rush to safety, stranding individuals and the country with little hope left for a better future... . Well, there are no words that can frame the horror, the sadness, the desperation, and the despair.

However, to place that scene in our narrative, I can say simply and agonizingly, the world is not safe. It is not safe in many ways and on so many levels. For example, consider all we are living through at this time: the tragic rush to end the war in Afghanistan; COVID-19; hurricanes, run-away fires, and other natural calamities resulting from the human-induced climate change; the systemic racism that splinters our society; the political exploitation and opportunism that makes moral cowards of our political leaders; and the misinformation funneled from some major news sources that clouds the good will of whole groups of people and jeopardizes our children.

Each of these—COVID, climate change, systemic racism, political cowardice, and misinformation—hangs like a dark and foreboding cloud over our souls. We may try to escape into the 10,000 distractions that entice us, but a the end of the day we know when we wake in the morning we will face a world that is not safe.

We cannot escape these. Where are we to turn in times of a pandemic? As of this writing, worldwide records indicate 218,156,909 cases, including 264,330 new cases, 4,528,323 COVID-related deaths, and 195,117,535 reports of recovery among whom many of the symptoms will continue for some indefinite time.

Then there is the misinformation fiasco associated with this dread disease. The formula for dealing with this virus is relatively simple: Get vaccinated, maintain a safe distance protocol, and wear a mask. If our political leaders had stepped forward, sharing the accurate information, and modeling the actions recommended by medical professionals, we maybe could have avoided the rampaging onslaught of the virus, preventing it from becoming endemic. Perhaps we could have saved some of our small businesses and have prevented the death of so many, and have protected our children, demonstrating to them the support and care of our common good. But we did not.

And the same can be said about our climate. We have lost so much time. Based upon the most recent information accumulated and recorded by our National Aeronautics and Space Administration, we can point directly toward the human-influenced changes in our climate.
NASA's report online as of 8/28, indicated the human activities as the "primary driver" in the following:

• global rise in temperature by 2.12 degrees since measurements in the late 19th century;
• oceans warming resulting in tons of ice decreasing in the Greenland and Arctic ice sheets;
• glacial retreat occurring "almost everywhere in the world;"
• decreased snow cover in northern hemisphere and melting earlier;
• rise in sea level about 8 inches in the last century;
• Arctic sea ice declining in extent and thickness;
• ocean acidification increasing by about 30% since the industrial revolution as the result of human emitting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that culminates in a fallout from which oceans absorb 20%-30% of the total carbon dioxide emissions.

Along with those indicators we can add the incidents of forest fires clouding the skies on the west coast and drifting east, as well as hurricane activity. Hurricane Ida struck the Louisiana coast with the force of a category 4, just short of a category 5. Millions of people are without power, flooding has forced evacuation of some homes, but mercifully the number of deaths remains small, although the death of any one person under the power of natural catastrophes prompted by the human impact on climate change is one too many. We extend our condolences to all who lost property, life, and the stability of their livelihoods.

So, yes, the world is not safe against the threat of the smallest danger (the virus), the largest immediate threat of a hurricane, the more distant threat of an asteroid hurtling through space with the earth in its cross-hairs, and the political chicanery of some elected officials who fail to speak forthrightly and to act honorably. In the face of these threats, we understand what it is to think and feel our vulnerability in this vast universe.

However, you no doubt observed that the title of this piece includes a "but" in response to the statement that the world is not safe. The truth is, "The World is not safe, but we are not powerless either"! The knowledge, compassion, commitment, and heroism of our people are remarkable. Doctors and nurses work long hours in the wards attending COVID patients; drivers and maintenance people, IT technicians, custodians, and others do the hard work even when we do not see them, and scientists scan the skies to intercept dangerous intruders.

The world is not safe, but we are not unaware and unprepared. Life goes on and it seems that our mission in the universe probably has a purpose which we unknowingly are  fulfilling. I believe it is a purpose working out so that we can say, "Yes, the world is not safe in every way at all times, but we are committed to make it a habitat in which we recognize and contend with whatever appears to make our world less safe." 

One of you asked why I did not include "love" as a quality in what I referred to as the "New Humanity." I included "conscience," "compassion," "curiosity," and "coping" but not "love." So, why not "love?"

I wondered myself why I did not include love, and I think the reason was that I consider love to necessitate consideration not as a "quality" of our evolving species but rather as a fundamental construct of being itself.

In other words, our very being rises out of love if we understand love as the power of being. Thus, to love something or someone is "to let be." Perhaps, like conscience, compassion, curiosity, and coping, love may be considered as a quality of the New Humanity, but if so, it stands alone as the very foundation from which everyone and everything arises.

I am aware that this may appear as a philosophical and theological projection, but not so much if you consider the psychological dynamics love plays in our evolutionary consciousness. Consider, for example, the four dynamics of love as they evolved within the European and Christian frames of human bonding: agape, storge, philia, and eros.

Agape is the fundamental, grounding form of love associated with the Christian understanding of Christ. The sacrificial giving of his life stands as a supreme example of love as unconditional acceptance, care, and validation of not only human life but the whole creation. As such, agape stands not so much as the apex of human love but the foundation out of which all love appears. This is to say that the revelation of love, agape, associated with Christ made possible the understanding of human existence in which love holds everything together -- the unifying power of creation which has brought us to the awareness of a relational connection that grants meaning to human existence.

From this basic "ground floor" of life, we experience other expressions of love. Consider storge, for example. Storge is the natural bonding that occurs in families and other groups in which people are thrown together to work, or live, and/or play. The key here is that this form of love is natural. It follows the neural pathways of our brain and central nervous system, weaving together the dynamics of our triune brain: the instincts of our brain stem, the feeling capacity of our mammalian brain, and the rational structure of our frontal cortex. 

Then there is philia, the love of friendship. We feel this dynamic in our native cities, our gatherings for holidays, sports events, our patriotic histories. People live and die for country, for the home team, for institutions that have played a role in our personal history. We may not know a stranger we meet for the first time, but we observe a class ring or some symbolic gesture, piece of clothing, or a song, and then the feeling of philia rushes up within us. We feel connected and share stories about our "history," our experience of some recent or distant commonality. In some instances, the feelings of philia even exceed those of storge for family members. 

But it is eros to which I turn now and which I believe stands at the apex of human love. Eros is: 

      —an energy
      —an archetypal power
      —a deity, in mythological stories
      —a power that enlivens a person, a couple, a group
      —a spirit of communion, togetherness
      —an experience of meaningfulness
      —a sense of desire
      —a sexual excitement
      —an autonomous complex
      —a perceptible closeness and enjoyment of participants in the experience of eros
      —a sense of something eternal and worth dying for
      —an air of contagious infection
      —a desire for union with the other

And yet, this dynamic experience of eros differs from hysteria, mob dynamics, or power- driven patriotic and political rallies. The difference may be subtle to some onlookers, but the key is that eros is life-giving, not life denying; eros brings light and not darkness; eros realizes the positive features of agape, storge, and philia in the uplifting spirit of supporting people to become all that they are, not less; and eros rides the fine line between danger and safety, not accentuating either extreme.

For example, consider eros as sexual desire. This is a fundamental drive for union with the other, and what is more fulfilling than erotic union with a  partner, with whom there is present also the other dimensions of love: affection, friendship, and unconditional regard? 

This is why the four loves belong together. Love is one; but it has many portals. And each portal leads us deeper into the mystery and meaning of our New Humanity. We are not robots; we are not machines. Neither as we puppets to be manipulated and controlled or used by others. 

Finally, as far as we know, we are the only creatures in the universe who know love in its four dimensions. This is the glory, the excitement, the danger, the fulfillment, and the potential of what it means to be a human in love... 
whose name is eros.




     

The universe is now estimated to be 13.8 billion years old, according to a very prestigious international team of astrophysicists. You can look that up for yourselves, and please don't ask me to explain the basis for that estimate except to say that it is based upon measurements of the oldest light detected in the universe, a kind of "afterglow" following the "Big Bang" when protons and electrons formed atoms. You got that?!

In any case, the universe appears to have been around longer than I can count. And, then, there is the question that follows: How old is humanity? However, the question itself is not that simple because there arises the very problematic question: What do I mean by the word "humanity?"  If I trace human beings back to the appearance of primates from which we appear to have evolved, this would take us back more than 60 million years, and it is estimated that the earliest civilizations arose between 4000 and 3000 BCE, according to the data Google traces to the National Geographic Society.

My point simply put is this: Our universe's age may be measured in billions of years, and civilization in terms of thousands of years. One might say, we are just getting started. Ours is a recent appearance in this parade of life's evolution.

But it does also appear that humanity's evolution hit the fast-forward button, and this is a problem, maybe the problem as to prospects of our survival as a species. For the sake of this paper, I am referring to our place on the evolutionary stage of life as the New Humanity. Why is that important? I believe it is important because we now may see ourselves as co-creators in the future prospects of life.

Further, as co-creators we have been equipped to move forward, providing care not only for humanity's survival, but also for tending the well-being of our planet earth even as we send out tentative probes exploring the far reaches of our solar system.

What do I mean when I say this New Humanity has been equipped as co-creators to provide care for evolutionary life today? There are four qualities in particular that serve our evolving life and perhaps bode well for the future of our planet, its inhabitants, and its natural features. Those qualities are: conscience, curiosity, compassion, and coping. As you will see below, each of these qualities reflects a stage in the evolutionary scale of life, each quality contributing significantly to our survival, and each quality adding a layer of meaning which enhances our experience of evolutionary and planetary life. However, as we shall also see, each quality contains not only positive potential but destructive potential as well. 

I begin my brief exploration of each quality not in terms of most important to least significant but because the first quality is likely to be the one we most readily recognize:

  Conscience.  Conscience is an inner sense of right and wrong. It arises out of the structures of the brain involving cognition and emotion, a developing sense of our common humanity, how one feels when abused and when treated fairly, how one's family and culture teach as well as practice moral principles. All of these add up to create a personal morality that expands to form institutions, laws, religions, and educational systems. The positive contribution of our conscience is a high morality. However, the negative outcome of our conscience may lead to a legalism and obsession with punishment for persons who do not conform to the legalistically imposed laws and puritanical expectations.

   Curiosity.  Next, the second quality of the New Humanity is curiosity. Curiosity is humanity's innate desire to "know" and explore. Curiosity is the name NASA gave its car-sized rover that explores the landscape of Mars, which is successfully taking place as of this writing and has been for nearly a decade. The positive outcome of our curiosity is discovery; the negative outcome is danger. "Curiosity killed the cat," as our old saying goes. But without curiosity we would be locked into a sealed world, a diminishment of interest that would suppress the human spirit. Think of the many discoveries our ancestors brought into human consciousness, consider also the practical applications that have enhanced our lives, not without danger. But most often the benefits of our discoveries outweigh the dangers we face.

    Compassion.  Then, there is the third quality: compassion. Compassion is seated within the limbic system of our brain, where it modulates our rationalizations and our aggressions. Compassion arose in the second major stage of the human brain's development when warm-blooded mammals began to nurse, feed, train, and protect their young. The positive outcome of compassion is empathy by which we take the measure of another person's suffering and reach out to help, to alleviate the suffering. However, compassion's positive outcome of empathy is always at risk of assuming the pain of another. This potential negative outcome is what today we might call co-dependency, a state of enmeshment in which compassion sinks into the suffering  of another and drowns. 

    Coping.  Finally, I come to the fourth quality that I observe in the top echelon of the New Humanity's positive characteristics. This quality is coping. The origin of the word  meant "to meet in battle." Today, we generally employ coping skills several times a day to solve problems, personal and/or interpersonal. Coping is the conscious process of solving problems. The "ten thousand things" come at us from within and from without. We experience this as stress, difficulties that threaten us personally or the larger world in which we live. These difficulties may weigh us down and threaten to defeat us by wrecking our health, our finances, our relationship with others and even our relationship with ourselves. But when we engage a problem, our will, our cognition, and our emotions rally in search of a solution. Out of sight and out of mind, our evolutionary inheritance prepares us not only to solve a problem but to deepen our understanding of how our world and our mind may work together. We employ all we have learned and experienced, all that we are, and our consciousness expands. This is what is involved in the wonderful human quality of coping. Not to do so or not to be able to do so, is despair.

The prospect of our "New Humanity" is a readiness for life made possible by our conscience, curiosity, compassion, and coping. These qualities hold us together as we become co-creators of tomorrow. They do not guarantee anything like an inevitable utopia for our future, but they do provide us a light to make our way through the darkness ahead.

Continuing my observations of last month, I return again to consider the spell-binding enchantments of which C.S. Lewis spoke in The Weight of Glory. I repeat the warning Lewis gave us concerning the vulnerability of our human minds to be possessed by an enchantment that overcomes reason, leaving us in the power of the enchantment and the individual or group who casts the spell.

So, you ask, what does that have to do with the idea and image of a merry-go-round? Here is the connection. Go back in your mind to your childhood excitement of riding the merry-go-round. In my experience, the merry-go-round was located in the center of the theme park, and I could hardly wait to pull my folks to that magic place of music, vibrant colors moving and flashing, lively animals bobbing up and down in their circular, never-ending pursuit of one another, the chariots, the mythical creatures I could fantasize in my activated imagination, the excited kids rushing to claim their favorite creature -- mine, the noble white horse who had been waiting for me since our last adventure, weeks, months, or a year ago.

Suspended in space and time, I rode my gallant horse in adventures of my mind while scenes of the old, boring world of familiar people and irrelevant objects floated by my eyes that were trained on mythical far-away places shared by my white horse that could easily outrun Trigger (Roy Rogers), Champion (Gene Autry), and Topper (Hopalong Cassidy). What fun, what excitement, what grand stories raced through my mind as the world whirled by, oblivious to the drama of a heroic call to what was really important in my enchantment. 

And what is really important? Alas, here I return to the idea of enchantment and the warning Lewis extended. I just described how as a small kid I fell into the enchantment of a merry-go-round. But think about that. I believe each of us is vulnerable to enchantment because we long for something big, meaningful, worthwhile, hopeful, deep, ultimate, adventurous -- something around which we want to orient our lives.

What is really important? What demands your attention? Of course, to be clear, sometimes our hobby invites our interest, if not even a goodly amount of our time and our money. Sometimes, it is our religion. But hobbies and religious practices are not necessarily enchantments.

If enchantment means to be under the power of a spell that directs our minds with commanding force, which is the way Lewis and I are using the word, then most hobbies and even our religious practices do not usually hold that level of fascination. They might attain some measure of influence over our lives. The basic distinction is this: I hold an attitude and I direct my behavior toward my hobby and my religious practice, but an enchantment holds me. 

To use the language of depth psychology, an experience of enchantment is commanding in the sense that my ego is under the spell of the enchanting force. My lifestyle, the way I think, the way I use my time, the way I see the world -- all of these are shaped by the enchantment. On the extreme end of such enchantment, we find fanatics, ideologues, fundamentalists. These people are not insane with a mental illness. What is the difference? With enchantment, the spell may be broken; with mental illness, psychotherapeutic care is necessary to restore the sane balance of healthy cognition, emotion, sensations, and behavior.

Here is an example. A young man in his late twenties was referred to me by a political professor in a neighboring university. The young man talked out of turn in class in an obsession with UFOs, unidentified flying objects or unidentified aerial projections. I asked that the young man call my office for an appointment which he did. The reason he gave for wanting to see me was that his professor told him I might be someone he could talk to about UFOs.

As an aside that is important, the professor in his own research had come across a paper by Carl Jung in which Jung reflected on the phenomenon of UFOs. In a little booklet published in English in 1959, under the title, "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies," Jung explored the psychological enchantment of UFOs. He was 84 years old at the time, only two years before his death in 1961. And yet, Jung's research was true to form and incredibly timely. Presented in his Collected Works, Vol. 10, paragraphs 589-824, the reader will be impressed with the Swiss psychologist's summation of the data, limited as it was at that time.

Here is an excerpt taken from paragraphs 785-787:

      The only thing we know with reliable certainty about UFOs is that they
​      possess a surface which can be seen by the eye and at the same time 
      throw back a radar echo. Everything else is so uncertain that it must
​     remain for the time being an unproven connector, or rumor, until we
     know more about it. ... Their movements indicate volition and psychic
​     relatedness, e.g., evasion and flight, perhaps even aggression and 
     defense. ... We are left with only two hypotheses: that of their weightlessness
     on the one hand and of their psychic nature on the other. This is a 
     question I for one cannot decide.

Then, moving toward his conclusion in paragraph 789, Jung suggests a third possibility:

     ... that UFOs are real material phenomena of an unknown nature,
​     presumably coming from outer space, which perhaps have long been
​     visible to mankind, but otherwise have no recognizable connection with
     the earth or its inhabitants. In recent times, however, and just at the 
     moment when the eyes of mankind are turned towards the heavens, 
     partly on account of their fantasies about possible space-ships, and partly 
     in a figurative sense because their earthly existence is threatened, 
​     unconscious contents have projected themselves on these inexplicable 
     heavenly phenomena and given them a significance they in no way deserve. ...

Then, at this point, Jung makes a profound psychological observation: 

     ... The meaningful connection is the product on the one hand of projection
     and on the other of round and cylindrical forms which embody the 
     projected meaning and have always symbolized the union of opposites.

​In other words, the UFOs appear in colloquial language as "flying saucers," mandala-like objects. And throughout recorded history, in myth, religion, and fairy tales, the saucer-shaped mandala has appeared as a symbol of wholeness. This is a modern-day enchantment. Remember, an enchantment is the experience of being caught up in a fantasy, a marvelous adventure that transcends the grind of daily life. We look up toward the skies and marvel at what we are calling UFOs as possible extensions of our life on planet earth, extensions that animate our fantasies with adventurous meaning. 
     
So, after that extended quote by Jung, I return to the merry-go-round. By this point you yourself may well have put together this enchanting connection of the theme park's "merry-go-round" and the enchantment of saucers flying through our skies in some strange process  where we psychically extend our search for wholeness. This comes at a time of dark despair when the unity of humankind is threatened by political ideologies, and our planet itself is threatened by human destructive acts.

In his book, The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis offered this evocative defense of his writings on the themes of mythology, theology, and adventures into the realms of the creative imagination:

       "Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your
       fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing
       them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake
       us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for
       nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to 
       silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies
       have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on earth."

Lewis wrote to confront his generation lost under the spell of MATERIALISM that Lewis calls "evil." Now, today, our generation is also materialistic, only worse. Materialism continues to enchant us with the 10,000 distractions that money can buy and the human soul can absorb until we become bloated with the ugliness of physical corpulence.

Materialism fuels the engine of our cherished free market system. We enjoy our toys, our comforts, our novelties, our costumes, our conveniences. We have come a long way in the relatively short time between the laborious squeaking of our wagons plodding westward and our rocket ships propelling to the moon, to Mars, and beyond. Nor has it been only a venture of self-serving greed. Much good has been accomplished in the development of the materials of our life. But materialism becomes bad when it possesses our souls and we fall under the spell of its enchantments.

Materialism, however, would likely be named by Lewis as only one of our enchantments that beguile us today. I suspect he would also include EMPIRICISM, RATIONALISM, and LIBERTARIANISM. 

Consider the enchantment of EMPERICISM. Not only do we love our toys. We love to measure things; we love order, predictability, a sense of control, a capacity to master things, to explain them, make them "work." We love to be able to demonstrate results so that we can justify our requests for large grants that will enable us to measure more things large and small, things cosmic in scope and infinite in depth. It is the way of science that formulates hypotheses, sets up experiments to test the hypotheses, monitors and measures the parts and pieces of the experiment and draws conclusions that make possible newer inventions, developments, and even medicines that come to our aid in times of pandemics that threaten our existence. Empiricism serves many worthy ends by which we understand nature and our place in nature; but empiricism slides off the rails when it reduces humanity to objects in an experimental lab.

And the same is true of another enchantment, RATIONALISM. Unlike empiricism that measures experiences, rationalism begins with the structures of reason and thought. Looking at the nature of mind and the way our thoughts proceed within the contours of reason, rationality may be considered a safeguard against "emotional reasoning." In this sense, rationalism has challenged the swamps of superstition, age-old prejudices of race and gender, witchcraft, and fundamentalist views of creation. Not only can we think, we can think about the ways in which we think and come to conclusions. Arising in the 17th century as part of the advent of mathematical reckoning, rationalism helped not only to explore the outer world but also the contours of human consciousness. However, when rational decision making and problem solving fail to take feelings into account, rationality ceases to be humane.

But it is the "enchantment" of LIBERTARIANISM that threatens us more directly today and may be seen as the underlying dynamic of the attack on our nation's Capitol on January 6. Of course, who does not love liberty? "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty," we sing. Liberty is indeed sweet, and precious lives have been lost defending the liberty we enjoy. However, in thinking about what liberty means, I find two very interesting definitions (from The Oxford English Dictionary): 

       1. "the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed
           by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views." 
       2. "the power or scope to act as one pleases." 

And libertarianism is defined as: 

          "a political philosophy that advocates only minimal state intervention in
           the free market and the private lives of citizens."

If we tease out the key element between the idea of liberty and libertarianism, it would be the question of "oppressive restrictions at the hands of the state or authoritarian individuals." The matter thus becomes: When does my expression of liberty conflict with your expression of liberty? When two automobiles rush from opposite directions toward a busy intersection where there are also pedestrians trying to move through the intersection, not everyone may act as he/she pleases if a major disaster is to be avoided. 

Obviously, in this simplistic example, someone has to yield. And for that to occur, some "authority" will have to determine the process and ensure it is followed. One does not have the liberty "to act as one pleases" within human community. Always, the concern for the common good shapes the laws and ethical behavior of a nation, just as human personality is shaped by the nurturing care of parents who teach their children to share and to live by the norms of justice and mercy for all.

In the extremes of libertarianism, however, a very regressive attitude misleads individuals and groups, losing sight of liberty in the service of a common good with justice and mercy for all. Individuals who live under such a spell, the enchantment of an authoritarian libertarianism serve their own needs without respect for others.

This is the evil of which Lewis warns us, the danger of falling under the spell of enchantment that blinds us to the evils of materialism, empiricism, rationalism, and libertarianism. Like all "isms," materialism, empiricism, rationalism, and libertarianism are indeed "spells," "enchantments," that dominate the human mind. And, as Lewis said, the power of such spells to control human thought, emotions, sensations, and behavior can be overcome only by an enchantment that is more powerful, an enchantment in the service of a higher power. What that might be is my topic for the next blog.

We live in a strange bubble of "babel." I take the word, "babel," from a reference in the Bible's book of Genesis to the infamous "tower of babel." You may remember the ancient story adopted by the writer of Genesis (Gen. 11:1-9) about humanity's attempt to erect a tower that would reach up to heaven but the builders could not finish the job because they did not speak the same language. The words spoken sounded like what we have come to call babble -- nonsensical uttering that carry no recognizable meaning.

This mythical story lives on in our psyches as part of our religious heritage. The lessons learned in the biblical account emphasize the folly of what happens when people do not understand each other. However, there are also other underlying themes which the Genesis story presents. 

For example, the writer offers the idea that the diverse languages spoken around the world came to be because the people speaking different languages at the tower were dispersed around the world as a punishment for trying to build a tower to reach heaven and be seen as heavenly beings. In other words, the human attempt to build such a tower was an act of hubris, to become like God. And in an almost comical reference, the writer adds:

            The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had 
            built. And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have one
            language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing
            that they propose now will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down
            and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one
            another's speech."    (Genesis 11:5-7)

But you notice in this story of the Tower of Babel that another very important theme slips in. It is this: the Lord does not trust the human beings working on the tower. They must be up to no-good, and if not with the tower, then eventually they will do something even worse than building a tower up and into heaven. In other words, human beings are not trustworthy, at least, not so in the Lord's eyes.

However, this was not the conclusion as stated earlier in the first chapter of Genesis: "God saw everything he had made, and indeed, it was very good." (Genesis 1:31). And so, we may ask: Is humanity trustworthy or not? On the one hand, they are part of creation that is "very good;" but on the other hand, they can be trouble-makers and "nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them."

These opposing points of view arise from two different creation accounts, appearing at different times in the emerging consciousness of the biblical writers. And dragging this dichotomy of belief through the centuries, we arrive at the present moment when we are split. We ride the see-saw of expectations as to the essential nature of human personality. Are we essentially trustworthy or untrustworthy? Do we intend to do the "good," or do we do the "bad" when it serves our interests, while hoping no one will really see?

Meanwhile, our towers of babel go up and down. We cast a leery eye over at our neighbors' homes, yards, places of work and play. We believe in providing assistance, just not too much so that they remain somehow in check, because -- heaven knows -- they might get out of control. After all, in our rise to power we have developed the know-how and gathered enough resources that we can indeed destroy and be destroyed.

But let us also remember this. We create, build, and finance hospitals, universities, museums, playgrounds, works of splendid beauty, symphonies of space-transcending heights and depths, police and military forces to keep peace and protect boundaries, democratic institutions and codes of law that uphold and protect the noblest ideals of a civilized people.

Humanity cannot be considered to be essentially bad. And so, we press the pause button during the Passover and Easter season to reflect upon the story of the Tower of Babel as a lens through which we see the horrific experiences of our past several months: the pandemic's toll of human life and resources, the flood of refugees seeking safety and high ground when their habitats disappear, the pervasive failure to control gun violence, the daily litany of people shot to death, and the divided will of a people to affirm the essential goodness of human nature.

Now the question of humanity's trustworthiness comes down to what each of us can do: We can trust.

We must trust that our essential nature is good, that we are trustworthy. We must learn to act trustworthy toward our children because they can learn that they are trustworthy only if they experience what it is to be trusted. We must act trustworthy toward our governments and institutions of civilizations who can govern and manage in a trustworthy manner only if they are trusted. Trust is not a license to do whatever you and/or I want. Rather, it is a psychological, spiritual, and moral impulse to act according to our essential nature, and to live with the consciousness that when we do not live in this manner, we suffer the consequences of having to restore a broken trust. This is our privilege, our challenge, and our opportunity to undertake the process of transformation consciously. 

As the old alchemists understood, this is indeed a great work, a Magnum Opus, laid upon us. It begins with confession or the honest recognition of who we are and what needs to be done. Next comes illumination which is the gathering of "in-sight." Then we undertake education. Education means more than acquiring a skill for a trade. Education means to develop our mental, moral, social, spiritual, and psychological capabilities toward the end of fulfilling our potential as trustworthy human beings. Only then is the fourth stage of the Great Work made possible: transformation.

Why transformation if the person has been educated already? This is because education alerts us to the dilemma of the Genesis stories: the Tower of Babel teaching of not being trustworthy, and the Genesis story of creation as good and trustworthy. This is a choice you and I must make each day. As we make the choice and commit ourselves toward the realization of life as trustworthy, we assist in moving creation a little further toward the fulfillment of human potential and consciousness. 

The coronavirus, COVID-19, continues its deadly sweep through the world, leaving behind, as of this writing, over 500,000 deaths in the US, and 2.5 million worldwide. Some authorities tell us the tapering numbers at present suggest we may begin to see signs of normalcy by summer's end, marking a period spanning some fifteen months that seem like a lifetime to many of us suffering from the "cabin fever" of ongoing quarantines worldwide.

And then there are the many who have suffered not just cabin fever but the greatest pain of all -- the death of family members and friends. To them, our hearts go out with inexpressible words for their tragedies.

So what have we learned from this grievous trauma we still are enduring? It is true that we observe the raw politicization of a medical emergency. The simple acts of washing hands, maintaining a safe distance and wearing masks have been exploited by some who disrespect the heroism of scientific medical groups working day and night to develop vaccines and distribute them as equitably as our geographical, governmental, and economic boundaries permit. It is true that some people seized upon the crisis of a viral contagion to sew rumors and mistrust. The hyper-paranoia of anger with and mistrust of well-meaning governmental officials and groups are fanned by social media, enabling displays of pseudo-defiance and fearful reluctance of others to act in the best interest of all. For God's sake, wear your mask; take the vaccine; endure the close of our bars, restaurants, theaters, and sports arenas!

But, of course, it is not that simple. We have been betrayed before. And now that everyone has an opinion about everything and a loud bullhorn that competes with others for the most attention, we can easily get lost in the soup of common ignorance.

So,what have we learned? At the end of the day, when we step out of the din of clamorous, blatant, boisterous, obstreperous, strident noise, we then listen to the muckraking investigations of our souls. We do know right from wrong, we do recognize falsehoods and phonies, and we do value the authentic voice of reason when it comes from the heart and speaks the truth of our soul. And are we not tired of the news sources that peddle sensationalism, fear, and paranoia?

So what have we learned form the pandemic? What has the pandemic exposed? What we have learned is what we already knew. What we have learned is what most of us have based our lives on. It is what is encoded within our religion and our democracy. It is anchored within our holy scriptures and embossed on the seal of our nation's motto.

What we have learned again is that we are one, really one. The virus COVID-19 does not attack just one race, one continent, one nation, one government, one religion, one sex, one gender, one age, one people. Each of us is vulnerable. There is no one, there is nowhere this aggressive coronavirus cannot reach. We are a common humanity, a common target of COVID. 

As I said, the fact that we human beings are one people is not new to us. However, the pandemic has exposed our common life and our common vulnerability in a way that has gotten our attention. Our hubris took a blow; our optimism suffered an eclipse, and our hope for a prosperous future with unimpeded growth and success pressed the pause button in our race to the future. We have been led to rethink some choices of what the good life is: what it means to be alone, how much we value relationships, and the fact that we do not have forever to say to one another that we do care.

We are finite and small, living on a small planet traveling at a speed roughly of 67,000 miles per hour around the sun while spinning at approximately 1,670 mph (measured from the equator in both cases), while the sun and our solar system is moving at a speed of 448,000 mph; while our galaxy as a whole, the Milky Way, is hurtling through space at 70 miles per second. Our solar system will take some 230 million years to travel all around the Milky Way as it presses onward toward another galaxy, the Andromeda, which is rushing to meet us in millions of years.

These facts simply throw light on the immensity of this cold, dark universe "in which live, move, and have our being."  It is a lonely journey, but we are one people. And we need each other, not just to combat the enemy of a very tenacious virus determined to kill us. We also need each other to bear with consciousness the burden of our solitude, not to depend upon distractions that divert our attention from our fateful rendezvous with the far reaches of our universe and the dangers that await us along the way.

This is a moment of one such danger that threatens the survival of human existence. And all along the way we have been being prepared with the realization that we are one. In religion, our evolutionary consciousness moved from the stage of polytheism to a monotheism with many faces. In geography, we have moved from a world of continents separated by deep, mysterious oceans to the prospect of a planetary consciousness. In the areas of race, we are developing a consciousness that the color of our skin cannot separate us. In our politics, we are learning that the demonization of any one group threatens the possibility of the other party to govern. And in our astro-physics, we see that the very planet on which we live, as viewed from outer space, is imperiled by the abuse of our waterway, our varied land masses, our vegetation, and the poisonous gases that hover over our heads and destroy the very air we breathe.

Here within our United States, we have pondered the meaning of our common existence by forming and restating the mottoes that adorn our governmental buildings and seals. In 1956, Congress adopted the motto, "In God We Trust." And we also have on our coins E Pluribus Unum, "Out of Many One."  Another motto considered was Annuit Coeptis, "He Approves the Undertaking." 

But one motto has received little attention: Novus Ordo Seclorum, "New Order for the Ages." Still we are struggling to claim the promise of this New Order, while the world waits and the pandemic does battle with our destiny.

I am dependent upon Charles Dickens for my title of this blog:

      It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of
      wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the each of belief, it was
      the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of
      darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. 

Hard to believe Charles Dickens (1812-1870) wrote those lines in his novel, A Tale of Two Cities, published in 1859. It reads like something that could be written in any one of our daily newspapers. There is something strikingly similar about our present situation and the time in which Dickens tells his story. Dickens chose the conditions in France which led to the French Revolution (1789-1799) and what has been named the Reign of Terror, a period of calamitous upheaval among the people of France who struggled to find a balance of power in the dynamics of freedom and responsibility, of suppression and recognition of peoples in all the varied strata of human society.

Those epiphanies of what it means to be human being and to live out the grandeur of life in all its multi-fold moments -- these occurrences of such kairotic moments do not come  frequently with full force. But they do come and probably more frequently than we take note of "seeing" them. "Seeing" depends upon perception but also upon being conscious of what we are "seeing" and the possible meaning of what we are "seeing."

Three instances come to mind. The first goes back 388 centuries to Galileo's confrontation with the Church authorities who would not look through his telescope. The leaders feared what they might see if they actually studied the relation of the earth and sun. The Church's geocentric view was based not upon the scientific study of the sky and the dynamism of the earth's movement. Religious orthodoxy determined what belief was acceptable, and scriptures were thought to teach that the sun revolved the earth which was planted by God in the center of the universe and was unmovable (1 Chronicles 16:30; Psalm 96:16; Psalm 104:5; Eccleseiastes 1:5). 

Given such a world-view as ordained by the Creator, heliocentrism was condemned as heresy, and anyone who taught otherwise could be put to death or tortured as a heretic. So, when Galileo (1564-1642) said basically, "see for yourself," the ecclesiastical authorities refused. They refused to look through Galileo's telescope. Keep in mind also that this ideological "blindness" came 90 years after the Polish astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus, had already described the movement of the earth around the sun in his book "On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres," published in 1543, and also banned by the Church. 

The Church's theologians not only wouldn't "see" what the science of their day was pointing to, they could not see that their scripture was/is not a book of science but a sacred story of the human soul's longing for depth, meaning, moral guidance, and hope in the face of life's tragedies. The frightening situation Galileo faced was the age-old dilemma that haunts us today: the failure of persons to "see" when their perceptions are stuck within a world-view shaped by an ideology arising from centuries of distrust and fear of persons who differ in race, gender, belief system, skin color, and place of origin.

Which brings me to my second instance when not "seeing" creates a crisis -- this one not between an individual as with Galileo and Church authorities. My second example is what happens when a society itself becomes fractured into opposing groups. This is what we saw on January 6, 2021, when the US Capitol was attacked by hundreds of individuals, resulting in the destruction of property, the death of five persons, and the invasion of private, revered spaces by rioters who threatened to kill elected governmental officials.

The attack in daylight was observed by people around the world. In fact, the number of people who saw the attacks is staggering. There seemed to be no effort to conceal the hideous action. Rather, rioters posed for pictures and appeared to relish being seen within the inner chambers of our nation's Capitol where government business is conducted without the glaring spotlight of public viewing. So, yes, what many of us saw was disturbing to the core of our being.

But now we are contending with people who did not "see." They looked but did not "see;" they even experienced looking directly into the face of violence themselves, but they did not "see;" they witnessed the criminal acts of breaking doors and windows, of individuals beaten with flag poles, but they did not "see." Not only did the domestic terrorists seem not to "see." Now we hear people in leadership positions, persons who were present, claim not to "see" what happened.

Galileo's Church authorities who threatened him with torture and death did not "see." They wouldn't look into Galileo's telescope. The domestic terrorists and their protectors did not "see." It is not a telescope into which they could have looked. They did look. They looked into the screen of those media outlets that perpetuate misinformation and inflammatory conspiracy theories. They looked and looked but do not "see."

Finally, let me describe another observation which was seen but maybe not "seen." Indulge me here with a lightness of perspective that might help us to "see" something important in this troubled time, perhaps something for you to ponder when you cannot sleep late at night.

Here it is. On October 19, 2017, the telescope on the Hawaiian island of Maui picked up an object in the sky estimated to be around a quarter mile wide with a length of five times its width, shaped somewhat like a cigar. It sped across the sky leaving astronomers stumbling through their minds in a less-than-graceful pathway of unchartered explanations. Some considered the object to be a different kind of comet, which might possibly explain the brightness of the object tumbling through space, arriving from the direction of the star Vega, and passing out of our solar system. This very strange object was named "Oumuamua," which means "scout" in Hawaiian.

Oumuamua remains a mystery to this day. But now comes Avi Loeb, Professor of Science at Harvard. Loeb and his assistant Shmuel Bialy published a paper in which they made a case for considering Oumuamua as an object of alien technology.

Now Loeb has stated his case in more detail with the publication of Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth. Loeb is nothing if not bold in his conclusions of what he takes to be the sighting of Oumuamua and what it might represent: the presence of intelligent life beyond our galaxy. "It would be arrogant to assume we are alone," he says. 

In any case, I make no claim for or against Loeb's conclusions. But for the sake of this blog and my topic, I side with Loeb in affirming the value of paying attention to what we "see." The world has grown stale and turned in on itself. The life of the adventurous imagination, of mythic wonder, and the possibilities that continue to call to us from the frontiers of our mind -- all of this assists us in "seeing" how grand it is to be alive.

When the ecclesiastical authorities insisted that Galileo refute his statement that the earth moves around the sun, Galileo relented and settled for his sentence of house arrest the remainder of his life. However, It is reported that as he relented he muttered, "But, still, it moves." 

(See also Dennis Overbye, "Did An Alien Life-Form Do a Drive-By of Our Solar System in 2017?" in The New York Times, January 28, 2021.)

Here we are together again as this year draws to its sad end. I would rather not languish in the tragic, putrid, miserable experiences all over again. Once is enough for the pandemic, the serious illnesses, the deaths, the isolation, the separation from loved ones, the loss of the familiar -- all of this and more stirred into a frenzy by political machinations we would never have associated with our democratic republic. Yuk!

The experience has been not just a bad dream, but a sordid nightmare. Now it comes to an end. We count the days, we look forward to picking up the pieces of our shredded traditions and institutions; we wonder what will remain of the world we knew, and we tentatively begin to dare to dream once more of what life may be like on January 21st.

Our soul drifts between the two poles of our human extremes: our faithful heart and our devious mind. We know very well the soul's noble character in which we love and receive love, we practice hospitality and graciously receive it, we feel deeply moved not only from the suffering of people we know but also those we do not know except through stories passed on to us by the media or our friends and neighbors. We open our hearts to the stranger in need, to the suffering of our pets and animals in the wild. We mourn the loss of life and the threat to our environment.  We hold these losses within the compassion of our faithful heart that moves us to create a better world. 


But then there is the other side of our personal and national character, the extreme that lies in the shadow-land of our consciousness. This is what I am referring to as "the devious mind." Here in the little neighborhood where I live, each holiday season we decorate a Christmas tree at the open-street entrance to our comfortable but modest homes. The Christmas tree is one you might expect in thousands of neighborhoods across the land, although our tree would probably win the prize for the most unoriginal, plain, uncreative Christmas tree. However, we enjoyed the tree even though there was not much to it, just a natural, green tree with no ornaments except the strands of colored lights. But someone continued to steal the bulbs. Finally, now only a few days after Christmas, our desolate, lonely and rather drab Christmas tree has only a few bulbs left! Our chairperson of the Christmas tree committee sent to all of our neighborhood the rather discomforting news that he saw no other choice but to cut off the electrical power to the tree. Actually, not a lot of us had noticed that the lights had continued to get dimmer as the days of Christmas came and went. 

But it is the principle of the thing! It is not just that someone(s) were stealing our bulbs. For heaven's sake, we would gladly have donated lights to anyone who did not have enough bulbs for their tree. Really, it is not simply just "the principle of the thing." No. It is the devious act of stealing the bulbs that intrudes upon the Christmas spirit and anything else that might be regarded as holy in our secular, pluralistic world. 

Because of its secretiveness, its sneaky act of petty theft that seems to be not a vagrant act of desperation but more likely an act of spite, of deceitfulness, dishonesty -- this is what makes the act appear to be devious. It is too close to the surface of our human character not to remind us of something deeper in the archetypal layers of personality where dwells the shadow that is nourished by lies, dishonesty, deceit, and underhanded acts.

This is the extreme of human personality that dwells in opposition to the faithful heart. We have to admit there is something in us that is fascinated by the macabre, the bizarre, the conspiracy, the catastrophe, and the pompous liar who commands attention to fuel his dark insecurity. 

The threat of the devious mind is real and a threat to us personally and socially. But our faithful heart leads us to compensate in order to ward off the danger because the faithful heart seeks the good, the true, and the beautiful. Think of our schools, universities, military forces, police, governments that create and support democracies, hospitals, churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, museums, symphonies, and on and on! Against the forces that would lie and destroy the good in the world, the Good prevails. 

Are we assured the faithful heart will prevail?  Not at all. And that is what brings us to this moment just before the New Year dawns. This is the moment when -- are you prepared for this -- the moment when we sit down quietly to formulate our NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS. 

In this simple unassuming act, each of us knows on some level that this is a moment of truth when we choose between the faithful heart and the devious mind.