Amo: Volu Ut Sis

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August 24, 2012

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Withdrawal and Emergence

Yesterday was Commencement at the university. It was a long, full day—twelve hours on my feet, helping shepherd graduates, parents, and friends through the joy and chaos of celebration. British graduation ceremonies I’ve attended tend to be formal and solemn. Not so in New York—more like a raucous party that gets more rambunctious as the day moves on. Jane and I served as marshals again, as we have for many years. For me, it’s time to don the academic regalia, now getting frayed around the edges. It’s fun seeing the students in their bright red robes, proud parents straining for a glimpse, lots of laughter and hugs. Beautiful—and exhausting. This morning felt like “the morning after.” I woke with a sore throat and a headache. My body’s quiet signal: time to stop and take a little self-care. My morning practice is a mix of silent reflection, daily prayer from A New Way of Living , drawing a rune, casting the Yijing, and jotting a few lines in my Field Notes journal. These elements shi...

Uniformity, Inequity, and Exclusion … Really?

A colleague and friend of mine—a fellow philosopher—was stopped recently at the U.S. border. Returning from giving a series of lectures abroad, he found himself pulled aside and questioned for some time. The reason? After much probing, it emerged that his talk was on biodiversity. That word—biodiversity—had triggered suspicion. The irony is thick. A scholar advocating for the value of biological difference was being treated as potentially subversive—perhaps even un-American. Is that who we’ve become? I’ve taught and researched at the State University of New York for 25 years. At a recent University Faculty Senate meeting, Chancellor John B. King reminded us that diversity, equity, and inclusion are in the DNA of SUNY. SUNY’s founding vision was not of uniformity, but inclusion. It welcomed the diverse peoples of New York and worked to iron out social inequities and prejudice. Chancellor King asserted that the mission has not changed. SUNY’s commitment resonates with my own long-stand...

Message in the sand

It is ordinary time in the Christian calendar. That is, the long space after Lent–Easter–Pentecost and before Advent–Christmas–Epiphany. There’s no major narrative in ordinary time—no special stories—only the slow green weeks between the major seasons. Yet, June to November suggests the sacred is not in spectacle, but in what we overlook. We are at the beach with Jane’s sisters—a long-awaited time together this side of the pond. It’s not a grand pilgrimage—though the horse shoe crabs and the sand-dunes might argue otherwise. It is a brief pause, a pocket of calm in a world that currently feels more rough than usual. And yes, I know: just being here is a kind of privilege. Not everyone has time to sit and stare at waves. I am thankful. And then it happened: the ankle twist. To be honest, I was showing off. A sign of good health as you age is being able to stand up from sitting on the floor cross-legged without using your hands. I have done it a thousand times. “This is how it’s done,...

“I Must Have Done Something to Deserve This”

Readers of my musing will know that in March a tree fell on our house. We have been dealing with the aftermath for more than two months, with many more months stretching ahead. When the tree fell on our house, the first thought was practical: Is anyone hurt? Then: How bad is the damage? But somewhere in the background, almost unbidden, was another thought: Did we do something to deserve this? Actually, I don’t believe trees fall in moral judgment. But the question lingered. It revealed something deeper—an ancient, almost instinctive impulse to connect what happens to us with what we have done. Cause and effect. Guilt and consequence. Karma. In its various guises, karma is said to be the law of cause and effect—or, more casually, what goes around comes around. In popular speech it often takes a superstitious form, as when a friend faces a hard time and says, “I must have done something wrong to deserve this!” Sometimes karma is understood impersonally, as a principle of the universe, ...

Longing for Normality

We have been six months without a functioning kitchen. That sentence lands heavier than it might appear. The makeshift cooking setup in the lounge, washing everything by hand—(I’ll forego nostalgia for the day before dishwashers), and Ned’s Pizza, which wore thin far more quickly than I expected—all of it accumulates like emotional sediment, much like the dust that is now everywhere in the house. I find myself longing for normality. But as I wait—impatiently—for countertops and roof and floor to be installed, I begin to wonder: what exactly is this normal I am longing for? Philosophers love a good ambiguity, and normal is nothing if not ambiguous. In one sense, it refers to the statistical norm—the center of the bell curve, the majority experience. In the USA, most people, most of the time, have functioning kitchens. And when they do not, it is usually a short disruption, not a half-year saga. In that sense, I am out of the norm, a deviant from the statistical average. Yet deviancy, ...

There and back …

In my last blog, I wrote of longing for normality. After months of dust and disruption in the kitchen, I craved a return to something steady and familiar. But only a few days later, I was thrust into a new kind of abnormal. I experienced an episode of transient global amnesia. For about five hours, I was “lost.” I became confused and asked questions, I repeated myself often—but afterward, and still now, I had no memory of it. Those hours are gone, not tucked away in some corner of recall, but apparently erased. I only know what happened because Jane and others told me. To them, I was there, but not myself; present but absent. To me, it is a blank. When I was lucid again, then at the hospital, I asked the neurologist about it. He told me: the brain is an organ, the self—the soul—is something different. His words struck me. I have been thinking about them ever since. The Soul and the Brain The brain is physical, biological, electrochemical. It ages, it heals, it sometimes misfires. B...

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