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Agnostic
A Spirited Manifesto
Available April 4, 2016

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  • After The Prophet

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The Poem That Stopped Me Crying

Posted December 30th, 2016 by Lesley Hazleton

I hated the tears.  Hated the helplessness of them. Two weeks after the U.S. election, and they were still coming. And then a friend emailed me saying “I’d love to treat you to a poem just written by a brilliant young woman I know.”

It was signed only with initials: e.c.c.  I had no idea who e.c.c. was. But I knew the moment I saw the first lines that this what I needed. Enough with the tears. This spirited slam poem had me cheering. It’s what got me moving again.

REVENGE

Since you mention it, I think I will start that race war.

I could’ve swung either way, but now I’m definitely spending
the next 4 years converting your daughters to lesbianism;
I’m gonna eat all your guns. Swallow them lock stock and barrel
and spit bullet casings onto the dinner table;

I’ll give birth to an army of mixed-race babies
with fathers from every continent and genders to outnumber the stars
My legion of multiracial babies will be intersectional as fuck
and your swastikas will not be enough to save you,

because real talk, you didn’t stop the future from coming.
You just delayed our coronation.
We have the same deviant haircuts we had yesterday;
we are still getting gay-married like nobody’s business
because it’s still nobody’s business;
there’s a Muslim kid in Kansas who has already written the schematic
for the robot that will steal your job in manufacturing.
And that robot? Will also be gay, so get used to it:

we didn’t manifest the mountain by speaking its name,
the buildings here are not on your side just because
you make them spray-painted accomplices.
These walls do not have genders and they all think you suck.
Even the earth found common ground with us in the way
you bootstrap across us both.

Oh yeah: there will be signs, and rainbow-colored drum circles,
and folks arguing ideology until even I want to punch them
but I won’t, because they’re my family,
in that blood-of-the-covenant sense.
If you’ve never loved someone like that
you cannot outwaltz us, we have all the good dancers anyway.

I’ll confess I don’t know if I’m alive right now;
I haven’t heard my heart beat in days,
I keep holding my breath for the moment the plane goes down
and I have to save enough oxygen to get my friends through.
But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us.
We’re the effigies that haunt America’s nights harder
the longer they spend burning us,
we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading,
by refusing to die: what are we but a fire?
We know everything we do is so the kids after us
will be able to follow something towards safety;
what can I call us but lighthouse,

Of course I’m terrified. Of course I’m a shroud.
And of course it’s not fair but rest assured,
anxious America, you brought your fists to a glitter fight.
This is a taco truck rally and all you have is cole slaw.
You cannot deport our minds; we won’t
hold funerals for our potential. We have always been
what makes America great.

And who is e.c.c?  She’s Elisa Chavez, co-organizer of the Rain City Slam. Three weeks later, she’d bring down the house at Town Hall Seattle with her performance of this poem, doing for 900 others what she did for me. And yes, I post the poem here with her permission, in the hope that it does for you what it did for me as we move into the New Year: with spirit, with resolve, and dammit, with joy. — Lesley


 

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File under: light, US politics | Tagged: Tags: 'Revenge', e.c.c., Elisa Chavez, poem, Rain City Slam, resistance, resolve, Town Hall Seattle, US election | Be the First to leave a comment

Coming In The New Year!

Posted December 31st, 2015 by Lesley Hazleton

April 5, 2016 publication.  Riverhead Books.
And already available for pre-order here, here, and here!

ag final cover

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File under: agnosticism, existence, light, sanity | Tagged: Tags: Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto, agnosticism, belief, doubt, faith, infinity, life, meaning, mystery, soul | 2 Comments
  1. Nuzhat says:
    December 31, 2015 at 7:16 pm

    Countdown has begun for the opening of this Pandora’s box of ‘revelation’….pun intended! It’s high, as well as the right time to understand this ‘hazy to the world’ scripture….excited!!
    All the best Lesley. Reviews are making it more enthusing….
    Nuzhat.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      January 1, 2016 at 7:27 pm

      Good puns always make me smile! Thanks, Nuzhat.

Muhammad’s Tears

Posted January 12th, 2015 by Lesley Hazleton

The cover of this week’s Charlie Hebdo leaves me speechless, in a good way.  And in tears too.  (And yes, it is indeed deeply Islamic in spirit.)

o-CHARLIE-COVER-570

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File under: Islam, light, sanity | Tagged: Tags: Charlie Hebdo, cover, Je Suis Charlie, Muhammad, Paris | 15 Comments
  1. Nuzhat says:
    January 12, 2015 at 7:11 pm

    That’s the fittest reply expected….
    Despite the calumny of depiction, the spirit of its presentation should be into account. Muslims should salute this one….
    Awesome!!

  2. Sohail Kizilbash says:
    January 13, 2015 at 1:49 am

    How many people cried when these sick Taliban shot and burned 124 young students and teachers in Peshawar last month. I think our tears are also selective.

    • severthetwilight says:
      January 17, 2015 at 4:11 am

      Some of us did cry for those students and teachers in Peshawar…and for the café manager and customer who were shot in Sydney…and again for the staff assassinated at Hebdo.

      Some even cried harder when people stood up and said (in essence), ‘This stops now. We will not be cowed by the Taliban, or ISIS or anyone who would use their faith to destroy innocent lives.’

  3. Levent says:
    January 13, 2015 at 2:27 pm

    A strong Light.

    Yesterday I found a video from you on the web about Islam.
    I searched for other video’s.

    I am impressed about your way of thinking.

    it’s not your topic that attracted me but the way you see it, the way you aproche it, and how you phrase it.

    I believe that all beings are part of the Light.
    Th same Light who created the Big Bang, the same Light that created the first atoms in the belly of the stars, the same Light that made life as we know possible on earth.
    As Light is our source, we are attracted by it.
    As there are stars who radiate more light then other stars,
    Some humans radiate more Light then others (as is above so is below)
    And vary rarely there were and are and will be people who shine like a star (Mozes, Jesus, Mohamed, Boedha, Gandi, Marten l King,…)

    Light can bring love, understanding, awareness,…
    Light can ‘open’ eyes.
    As written in the Bible, Jesus’ (Light) made a blindman ‘see’.

    Ms. Hazleton, you are a strong Light. Keep on radiating.
    Thanks to you people can perhabs see better, further, wider, deeper,…

    Regards
    Levent Guney

    Ps. Love your idea of ‘doubt’

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      January 13, 2015 at 4:56 pm

      I can only say Thank you…

  4. Dr B Ravinder Reddy says:
    January 14, 2015 at 2:11 am

    No religion preaches violence. It is the misguided elements who bring a bad name and reputation to their respective religions, due to their misunderstood beliefs!

  5. Lesley Hazleton says:
    January 16, 2015 at 11:49 am

    This comment appears to have been dropped by WordPress — I have no idea why, but it happens, as it does on Facebook — but the writer emailed me about it, so am taking the liberty of printing it here together with my reply:

    Dear Lesley,
    Did you read the comment in Time magazine saying that the
    “Editor-in-chief Gérard Biard, who made their intent clear on a French radio program saying: “It is we who forgive, not Muhammad,” referring to the speculation by some that the cover was a message about the paper being forgiven for publishing an image of the Prophet, an act that many Islamic leaders deem sacrilegious.”
    It was quite a misleading cover, and could harbour unwarranted repercussions. Hope sanity prevails on both sides.

    My reply:
    That’s the thing with art, high or (as in this case) low — the viewer reads into it, and it is (as are words) always open to multiple readings. Perhaps we each choose the reading we want.
    And there are so many ways of reading.
    I never thought the cover meant that the editors were saying that Muhammad was forgiving them — rather that first, forgiveness was central to Islam, and second, that they forgave. How sincere this was on their part is of course another question. But since I believe it to be true that Muhammad would indeed be in tears at all this, I went with that first meaning.
    There are other levels of meaning I can think of. One that occurred to me was that the surviving cartoonists, being a left-wing intellectual crowd despite their affinity for the childishly grotesque, were thinking of the last line of The Myth of Sisyphus (by that French Algerian, Camus) — “Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux” — and from there arrived at “Mahomet malheureux.”

  6. Wahab says:
    January 17, 2015 at 2:45 am

    Professor Hazleton, I have been visiting your blog on and off, but I just want to thank you. I was a little ashamed when I saw your video ‘on reading the quran’ because you appeared to experience the book in a manner that I (as a muslim) had not done. I also read your biography of the prophet (pbuh) in a single day, because it give me a more meaningful connection with his personality.

    I also share your idea of doubt, because I read somewhere (i think in the works of Rumi) that doubt and faith are like two wings that keep the bird in the air and if either one is missing, the bird cannot fly.

    Keeping that in mind, Im not sure if youve heard of the man, but you would find great pleasure in reading books my Imam Al-Ghazzali. He was one of the giants of Islam and his influence on christianity is also tremendous. He also chose the ways of skepticism and doubt. Im sure you would find great pleasure in reading the following books:

    1) Deliverance from error
    2) Niche for lights

    Lastly. Keep up the good work 🙂

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      January 17, 2015 at 8:43 am

      Thank you. I met a dear friend at a coffee shop the other day. I was carrying a novel by Ali Smith; she was carrying al-Ghazzali. We had a wonderful conversation about the difference between artificial light and natural light.

  7. şule says:
    February 13, 2015 at 11:37 am

    mrs hazleten ı am a medical student and ı read your books and watch your videos . ı dont know how should ı say but did you heard anythıng about asa-ı musa book from risaleinur collection.ALso in there there is something about agnostizm .ı thınk thıs is valuable to think in a different side.ı know ıt ıs not my business but just a suggestion and ıam thinking for a months about it

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      March 2, 2015 at 1:10 pm

      Thank you. I’m currently working on the last chapter of an agnostic manifesto, to be published in early 2016.

  8. hirafaraz says:
    February 26, 2015 at 11:47 pm

    Hello Prof Hazleton,
    I don’t know from where to start. I can’t speak on behalf of the Muslim population here in Pakistan but I’m sure there are quite a number who will agree with me.
    As Wahab said, faith and doubt goes hand in hand with each other. And yes, I do have doubts. And by searching for answers, it leads me to faith, closer with every search.

    Your book, The First Muslim, opened a sacred door inside me. Before reading this, to be honest, I really didn’t knew Muhammad. Here, in our textbooks and our grandmothers` stories, Muhammad is being pictured as an Angel rather than a human. So we cannot relate to him like we do with another fellow human. We couldn’t feel his pain, neither we could see the essence of his life as a man, prophet and a leader. But thanks to your words, I finally met him, as a human above all. 🙂

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      March 2, 2015 at 1:08 pm

      I am humbled, privileged, and grateful. Thank you.

  9. Aterah Nusrat says:
    May 2, 2015 at 2:30 pm

    Dear Professor Hazleton,

    I have only recently come across your work, and have just ordered your two books (The First Muslim and After the Prophet). As a British born Muslim, I initially retreated from Islam in my youth, and engaged with eastern enlightenment teachings and meditation. I’m now circling back to Islam to review my inherited religion and integrate the different paths of understanding and experience that I’ve now accumulated.

    I am curious to know whether you have explored/engaged with any thinkers that take an ‘integral’ perspective on religion/spirituality. I’m thinking of the likes of integral philosopher, Ken Wilber and Steve McIntosh? McIntosh recently published a paper, entitled “Fostering Evolution in Islamic Culture.”

    I am looking forward to diving into your books.
    Best Regards
    Aterah

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 6, 2015 at 5:47 pm

      Thanks, Aterah — will check them out. — L.

Sun Dog

Posted October 23rd, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

People experience awe in very different ways. One person’s exhilarating glimpse of something infinitely grand can be another’s nightmare, to be denied, even exiled from consciousness.

This happened some years ago, before the ubiquity of smartphones.  It was dawn, the midsummer sun not yet risen, as I sailed with a friend out of Neah Bay, the small native American township at the northwest tip of the United States. I stood at the helm as my companion huddled over charts down in the cabin, plotting our course across the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca where it opens up into the Pacific. The sea was cutting short and choppy as the incoming ocean swell came up against the outflow of the strait, but I was suffused with a feeling of calm. We were the only boat in sight, the only sounds the water against the hull and an occasional flap of the sail. The world, at that moment, was perfect. And then it became more so.

The sun began to rise over the mountains to the east – a large, fuzzy sun, the color of a white daffodil. Mesmerized by its slow ascent, I waited for the moment when it would detach itself from the mountain ridges and assume a perfect, independent roundness. Except it didn’t. Just when I expected to see clear sky between sun and mountains, there seemed instead to be something beneath the sun, pushing it upward, and I realized that there were now two suns rising — two suns of equal size, conjoined, one on top of the other. “A sun dog!” I shouted.

My friend came running up from below, took one look, and froze. “That shouldn’t be happening. That can’t be happening,” he shouted, adamantly refusing to believe the testimony of his own eyes. “That’s impossible!”

I tried to tell him that somewhere, some time, I had read an account of just such a twinned sunrise (in a novel? a short story? I’ve searched since, but never been able to find it again). But he’d have none of it. Instead, he scrambled down to the cabin to bring up an armful of meteorology books, and with his back resolutely set to the splendor of the sky behind him, started leafing frantically through them. “See!” he said, jabbing at a page. “It can’t be a sun dog. A sun dog is a parhelion, a much smaller mock sun, and they come in pairs, at an angle to the real sun. Not this… this abomination!”

Abomination?  I’d never expected to hear that biblical word from this eminently rational intellectual – a pastor’s son turned insistent atheist. “Can’t you see?” he wailed. “Something awful is happening, against all the laws of nature.” I’m not a hundred percent sure if he used the phrase “end of the world” — surely not, though it seems to me he did, and he trembled as though some form of apocalypse was in progress.

I admit I was no help. “Just look!” I kept saying. But he only dashed back down into the cabin for shelter from the sky, leaving me alone to watch as it became still more extraordinary. The lower sun assumed a deeper color and more definite form as it rose, and as the upper one faded, a thick pillar of white light took shape between the remaining sun – the real sun — and the mountaintops. It occurred to me that it may have been as well that my friend was below deck: a pillar of light was so damn biblical. And then that in turn gave way to a huge double rainbow in an ellipse around the risen sun, and I could only stand there shaking my head and laughing, tears in my eyes, knowing that I would never again witness a sunrise as stunningly eerie and beautiful and grand as this. Not even my companion’s panic could change that.

Long after that friendship’s inevitable dissolution, I occasionally searched meteorology sites online. My companion had been right in that most sun dogs are indeed much smaller images at an angle to the sun, but I did eventually find a couple of photographs of two suns, even if not quite conjoined, and horizontal rather than vertical.  I also found explanations of how the acutely angled light of the sun is refracted when layers of ice crystals form barely visible low-lying fog in the chill early-morning air, acting as a kind of mirror.  I could now explain how come I’d seen what I saw. And yet the explanation did nothing to diminish the splendor of the memory. Or the experience of pure wonder. Or the knowledge that what had delighted me, had terrified another.

double_sun

 

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File under: ecology, existence, light | Tagged: Tags: awe, Neah Bay, parhelion, Strait of Juan de Fuca, sunrise, two suns | 4 Comments
  1. Mary Scriver says:
    October 23, 2014 at 12:44 pm

    I’m laughing at your silly friend that his education didn’t include the science of optics! The sky is full of magic tricks from the aurora to the light ellipses that some people think are alien spaceships. If one lives on prairie or sea, there is plenty to marvel at — the great light shows of the planet. But then I must add that once, heading into the Rockies from the prairie on a damp and very cold day, I drove through THREE rainbow arches, one after the other, and fully expected to arrive in some mystical place.

    Thanks for the image of the double dog — as in “double dog dare.”

    Prairie Mary

  2. Cory says:
    October 23, 2014 at 12:58 pm

    First, thank you for this moving description of a sight I will very likely never witness. I do find your atheist friend’s reaction odd, however. I tend to think atheists must see themselves as highly rational, free of all that religious emoting, and keen, dispassionate observers. So it was amusing to read of your friend’s railing against a phenomenon because it was against the laws of nature! I guess some atheists have an orthodoxy all their own.

  3. Nuzhat says:
    October 23, 2014 at 8:05 pm

    Hi Lesley,
    This piece is really visual poetry! I could see the sun dog live with you!
    The marvels of Nature are beyond human perception. I wish you could join me in my walks by the sea in monsoon, in mumbai. The sunsets are a treat, as each day the sky paints a different picture, with the sun charting out its colorful track into the horizon.
    A writer, composer, artist, believer….all of them can actually grasp its impact in any medium. And yes, you can reach out to equal number of rainbows too..
    Nuzhat.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 24, 2014 at 8:40 am

      That sounds like a rain date! I look forward to it. — L.

A Rainbow Gathering

Posted October 18th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

If you haven’t yet heard of it, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to the Ravel/Unravel project.  “Unravel your assumptions” is their motto.  And they’re asking you to help them ravel your unraveling into something wonderfully new — “a multimedia exploration of the tapestry of religious and spiritual identities that make up our communities and our world.”  (See the video below.)

Begun a year ago by Project Interfaith in Omaha, Ravel/Unravel is an invitation:  “We’re exploring the tapestry of religious and spiritual identities that make up our communities and the complexities of how we construct and deconstruct identity.  We invite you to view the stories that make up RavelUnravel and add to the movement by sharing your own.”

Close to a thousand people have taken up that invitation so far.  And it’s fun to do.  Just turn on the camera in your phone or your computer, follow the prompts on the website, and upload your answers.  Yes, I’m already there, part of a rainbow gathering of age and gender, ethnicity and nationality, faith and spirituality, including (but not limited to) Christians, Muslims and Jews of all denominations, Hindus and Buddhists and Sikhs, agnostics and atheists and secular humanists, Native Americans and pantheists.

The questions you’re prompted to speak to (reasonably briefly!):

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your religious or spiritual identity and why do you identify as such?

3. What is a stereotype that impacts you based on your religious or spiritual identity?

4. Have you found your community welcoming of your chosen religious or spiritual path? Why or why not?

5. Is there anything else you would like us to know about you and your religion or belief system?

My advice:  don’t overthink it, just do it.  And enjoy it.  As the director of Project Interfaith says here:  “This isn’t about theology;  this is about community.”

–

[youtube=http://youtu.be/PEZ2-otmWdU]

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File under: agnosticism, atheism, Buddhism, Christianity, existence, Islam, Judaism, light, technology | Tagged: Tags: multimedia, Omaha, Project Interfaith, RavelUnravel, religious and spiritual identity | 1 Comment
  1. Reaching Out says:
    October 18, 2013 at 5:01 pm

    Reblogged this on Reaching Out and commented:
    Good interfaith scene – check it out!

Adoring ‘Darling’

Posted October 13th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

Here’s my review of Richard Rodriguez’ “Persian carpet of a book” in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

Yes, it’s a rave.

No, I’ve never met him.

Yes, I’d love to:

'darling'On rare occasion, a writer makes a reviewer’s life hard. Richard Rodriguez’s Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography has to be celebrated as one of those occasions.

The deep pleasures of such a book defy the usual capsule account. Instead you want to read sentences and whole passages aloud as I’ve been doing over cafe and dinner tables the past few weeks – “Listen to this!” You want to press “Darling” on others as a gift of friendship, judiciously picking whom to share it with lest you expose Rodriguez to pedants who can’t fathom the way his mind works.

“I did not intend to write a spiritual autobiography,” he writes in the foreword, and I’m glad to say that despite the subtitle (an editorial addition, I suspect), he hasn’t. This is something infinitely more supple – a rich tapestry, a Persian carpet of a book. True, it’s framed as an exploration of his own Catholicism post-9/11, when he realized that “Christianity, like Judaism, like Islam, is a desert religion, an oriental religion, a Semitic religion, born of sinus-clearing glottal consonants, spit, dust, blinding light,” and began to wonder how he and the “cockpit terrorists” could worship the same Abrahamic God.

But Rodriguez’s faith is light-years away from the deadening dogma of “mitered, bearded, fringed holy men.” As he investigates “the ecologies of the holy desert” – specifically the Judean desert – what he creates instead is more like an ecology of the soul. And unlike the desert, it teems with life.

St. Francis, Elvis, Muhammad Ali, Pope John Paul II, Cesar Chavez, Keats, William Randolph Hearst, Moses, Warhol, Herbert Hoover, Dorothy Day, Shelley – a short list of the roster of personalities jostling shoulders as they wander in and out of the virtual salon of Rodriguez’s mind, where San Francisco is “the mystical, witty, sourdough city,” Las Vegas is “disarmingly innocent,” and Jerusalem’s multiple archaeological layers are “vertiginously sunken – resentments and miracles parfaited.”

His writing is suffused with such little epiphanies, words and images springing to fresh life: His Mexican mother’s ojalá, “God willing,” as a Spanish borrowing from the Muslim inshallah; yellow tulips “closed and as thumpable as drumsticks” outside a Vegas hotel as a friend dies of AIDS in a nearby hospice; Picasso’s division of the female face “into competing arrondissements – one tearful, one tyrannical – like the faces of playing-card Queens.”

But at the heart of this book are women. Rodriguez – gay, Catholic Rodriguez – loves women. Not the way many men say they do, with a sexual twinkle in their eye, but deeply and gratefully. The stand-alone masterpiece of the title chapter starts with that “voluble endearment exchanged between lovers on stage and screen” (Noël Coward‘s “sequined grace notes flying up” like “starlings in a summer sky”), touches among other things on the use of habeebee among Arab men (“In a region of mind without coed irony, where women are draped like Ash Wednesday statues … men, among themselves, have achieved an elegant ease of confraternity and sentimentality”), and builds to the central take on how much the three “desert religions” need women to survive (“Somewhere in its canny old mind, the Church knows this. Every bishop has a mother.”).

Rodriguez depends on women “to protect the Church from its impulse to cleanse itself of me.” It was women who stood against the arid maleness he sensed as a child: “Outside the Rodriguez home, God made covenants with men. Covenants were cut out of the male organ. A miasma of psychological fear – fear of smite, fear of flinty tools, fear of lightning – crackled in God’s wake. Scripture began to smell of anger – a civet smell. Scripture began to smell of blood – of iron, of salt.”

He writes movingly of his schoolteachers, the Sisters of Mercy – movingly, yet with a wry, clear eye. A single sentence evokes a whole Irish immigrant world: “Most of the women who swelled the ranks of missionary orders had left peat-fumed, sour-stomached, skinny-cat childhoods behind.” That wry eye notes their “burqa-like habits” – perfect! – which “lent them protection in the roustabout world, also a bit of romance.” These women in teaching and hospital orders, he writes, were the forerunners of feminism, “the least sequestered women imaginable.”

The specific “darling” here is a newly divorced friend, and the whole chapter is in a way a conversation with her – an extended love letter, really – leading up to this stunning conclusion: “I cannot imagine my freedom as a homosexual man without women in veils. Women in red Chanel. Women in flannel nightgowns. Women in their mirrors. Women saying, Honey-bunny. Women saying, We’ll see. Women saying, If you lay one hand on that child, I swear to God I will kill you. Women in curlers. Women in high heels. Younger sisters, older sisters; women and girls. Without women. Without you.”

Even the most flinty-hearted reviewer could only melt at that.

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File under: agnosticism, Christianity, ecology, existence, Islam, Judaism, light, Middle East, women | Tagged: Tags: 'Darling', Catholic, gay, literature, Mexican-American, review, Richard Rodriguez, San Francisco Chronicle, Sisters of Mercy, spiritual autobiography | Be the First to leave a comment

What Courage Looks Like

Posted October 10th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

As Nick Kristof put it, “Malala is defined not by what the Taliban did to her, but by the power of her response.”

This week, she left even Jon Stewart speechless:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/f506lCk6Tos]

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File under: light, women | Tagged: Tags: Jon Stewart, Malala, Taliban | 8 Comments
  1. iobserveall says:
    October 10, 2013 at 2:06 pm

    Malala is an exceptional person who will make a huge difference to the world.

  2. AJ says:
    October 10, 2013 at 11:58 pm

    Lets look at other side of story.
    I don’t mean I necessarily agree with the story but Dawn.com is reliable source, worth reading.
    http://learningpk.com/malala-the-real-story-with-evidence/

    • iobserveall says:
      October 11, 2013 at 12:13 am

      The article you mention was written by Nadeem Paracha. This is not an article with evidence. His blogs often ridicule the news and people in it. I have read many of his blogs and the majority of them are like this.

      It is obvious from the photo of earwax (particularly the mention of one with bits of pizza in it) and the ISI man wearing little more than a Spiderman mask. I am sorry to say that you have been duped. This is Nadeem’s speciality and he appears to be very good at it judging by your response.

      The women and girls in Pakistan are not the downtrodden people many believe. I have Pakistani friends and I have visited Pakistan and I have found that the opposite is true. So Malala can be believed to be a real Pakistani. She is an extraordinary girl but she is definitely Pakistani.

      I read the Dawn online regularly too, it was recommended to me as the best by my friend in Pakistan.

      • AJ says:
        October 11, 2013 at 3:26 am

        Lesley thanks for ur input.
        Actually I was not duped that why I did not own the story.
        few terms used in article were reason for my skepticism…like..
        1)archaeology division of the Taliban
        2)Taliban’s division of quantum physics.”
        3)Collecting earwax samples of Saudi Royal family.
        1 n 2 are typical Taliban mainstream supporters in Pakistan who want to give them credence by use of such state deptt. run by legit state.
        3 is very confusing…why a doc from remote under develop area servicing corrupt and insidious Saudi Royal family….I suspect Prince Bandar involvement

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          October 11, 2013 at 7:26 am

          Ear wax? Oh please. Is there no end to conspiracy theories?

          • AJ says:
            October 11, 2013 at 3:08 pm

            And what Taliban had to do with archeology.

  3. Lynn Rosen says:
    October 11, 2013 at 12:25 am

    An old soul in a young body. Malala will definitely make a dent on this world.

    • iobserveall says:
      October 11, 2013 at 12:27 am

      I definitely agree. She is one of the best prospects for the future. That is why she is a danger to the militants.

The God Particle. Sort Of.

Posted October 9th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

I love the fact that yesterday, the day he won the Nobel Prize in physics, Peter Higgs couldn’t be found.  He was off “somewhere in Scotland” with no cell phone, no email, no address.  That, I think, is winning in style.

Higgs is the father, as it were, of the Higgs boson, aka “the God particle.”  As you might suspect, it wasn’t him who gave it so grandiose and eye-catching a nickname.  That was a colleague in search of a selling book title, who later said that what he really wanted to call it was “the goddamn particle.”

Not being a physicist, I’ve had trouble figuring out exactly what this boson is — in fact, what any boson is.  (Not that physicists have had it any easier:  it took ten thousand of them 53 years to follow up on Higgs’ first theoretical paper until they proved the boson’s existence just last year — after sifting 2,000 trillion subatomic fireballs through CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.  Yes, two thousand trillion — that’s why it’s large.)

But then lo and behold, this morning:  epiphany!  Denis Overbye at the NYT described the Higgs boson in terms I can almost grasp, along with a short video he begins this way: “The Higgs boson is not for the faint of heart.  It’s tough stuff, even for physicists.”

Gulp.  But gird up your loins, because this is worth it.  It brims with enticing ideas to play with — a grand portal to the intersection of physics and metaphysics.

The Higgs was the last missing ingredient of the Standard Model, a suite of equations that has ruled particle physics for the last half-century, explaining everything from the smell of a rose to the ping when your computer boots up.

According to this model, the universe brims with energy that acts like a cosmic molasses, imbuing the particles that move through it with mass, the way a bill moving through Congress attracts riders and amendments, becoming more and more ponderous and controversial.

Cosmic molasses.  Am into that.

Without the Higgs field, many elementary particles, like electrons, would be massless and would zip around at the speed of light. There would be no atoms and no us.

For scientists, the discovery of the Higgs (as physicists call it) affirmed the view of a cosmos ruled by laws of almost diamond-like elegance and simplicity, but in which everything interesting — like us — is a result of lapses or flaws in that elegance.

You can see why I love this.  It’s an intensely esthetic idea — an intensely existential, philosophical and psychological one too — in which flaws and imperfections are exactly what makes life interesting. There’s a touch of kabbala in it (real kabbala, not Madonna red-string theory).  A good dose of Spinoza, perhaps.  And a marvelous challenge to the naive and pernicious idea of human perfectibility.

At the heart of the physicists’ quest, Overby continues, was

an ancient idea, the concept of symmetry, and how it was present in the foundations of physics but hidden in the world as we experience it. In art and nature, something is symmetrical if it looks the same when you move it one way or another, like a snowflake rotated 60 degrees; in science and math, a symmetry is something that does not change when you transform the system, like the length of an arrow when you turn it around or shoot it.

All fundamental forces were the result of nature’s trying to maintain symmetries, physicists realized — for example, the conservation of electric charge in the case of electromagnetism, or the conservation of momentum and energy in the case of Einstein’s gravity. But…

By a process called symmetry breaking, a situation that started out balanced can wind up unbalanced.  Imagine, for example, a pencil standing on its tip; it will eventually fall over and point only one way out of many possibilities. The mass of the boson can be thought of as the energy released when the pencil falls.

“The energy released when a pencil falls.”  There’s poetry here, and I’ve only sampled it, so read the whole article (it’s misleadingly headlined — hello, NYT editors? — so scroll down to paragraph 10 and read on from there), and let the imagination soar…

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File under: agnosticism, light, science | Tagged: Tags: energy, Higgs boson, metaphysics, Nobel prize, Peter Higgs, physics | 9 Comments
  1. Everett Moran says:
    October 9, 2013 at 10:32 am

    Lesley, if you have not read “The God Particle” by Leon Lederman, I highly recommend it. Not only is it quite understandable (Lederman is an experimental physicist, rather than theoretical), it is very funny in places, so quite an entertaining read as well.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 9, 2013 at 11:18 am

      I haven’t, but now see that he’s just published a new book called — appropriately? — “Beyond the God Particle.” The meta-God particle?

  2. Ross says:
    October 9, 2013 at 7:02 pm

    Now, how can this be turned into a weapon? Just kidding I’m sure no-one would do that…

  3. Bushra Zafar says:
    October 9, 2013 at 9:19 pm

    There is an even simpler way of understanding the God particle. It is what gives everything the mass that they need to exist, meaning that it surrounds everything and touches everything yet is itself elusive. That is the definition of God as we understand from the Quran,
    He is everywhere and touches everything, yet Himself is Elusive.

    • Nasir says:
      October 10, 2013 at 1:10 am

      Yes Bushra, you are on the track. Although difficult to propound on the issue being a non physicist but still will throw in my bits. The mention of ‘God’ here may not go well with agnostics but it is necessary here. The Qur’an 1400 years ago says that God created the Heavens and the Earth (plain to see) and ‘everythings between them’ (Invisible), when there was nothing before except a little smoke like substance. (Qur’an was also the first to point out that Earth is not flat as earlier supposed, but round like the ‘egg of an Ostrich’ and spinning on its axis and going around the Sun, many centuries before the Europeans. It contains many scientific facts proven right by science only today.) The greatest scientist the world has ever known -Albert Einstien said, ‘Religion is blind without science and science is lame without religion’.

      However, these ‘God particle’ or ‘Higgs boson’ originates from an invisible field that fills up all space even when the Universe seems empty and dark, this field is there as these particles are everywhere yet bafflingly elusive or so it remained until the discovery. (First propounded by a sage-scientist -Dr Abdus Salam of Pakistan that won him the Noble Prize and the Einstein Medal in 1979). Fundamental particles travel through this field and some interact yet some don’t. Without it, we and all other joined up atoms in the Universe would not exist, says theorists. This makes a lot of sense as it also serve as a medium of contact because it is from this contact that particle acquire mass by the Will of God He says Be! And it becomes!

      • moranpro says:
        October 10, 2013 at 2:52 pm

        At the risk of seeing this devolve into a religious discussion, I recognize that many world views incorporate the concept of an Ultimate Architect, if you will. The Einstein quote is right on. In my estimation, the most successful religions – and by “successful” I mean philosophically, not in terms of numbers of followers – evolve as the knowledge of the universe around us evolves. Although I am not a religious man, I do not hold to the notion that science and the concept of God are necessarily incompatible. Many scientists see their research as not only a means to understanding the Universe, but also as a means to understanding the mind of God. The transcendent nature of God as described by Spinoza, Lin Yutang and, apparently, in the Q’uran as well suggests that, as we refine our understanding of the Universe, we come closer to that goal.

        [Hmmmm….. if we find that ours is just one universe in an infinite soup of multiverses, will western religions still subscribe to the one god concept? No way to prove or disprove, of course, but perhaps we live in a one god per universe multiverse!]

        When Europe was muddling through the Dark Ages, the Islamic world was laying the foundation for the language of physics: modern mathematics. It is sad to contemplate such a rich tradition rejecting its own heritage, which appears to be inevitable if fundamentalists take control. I fear the same outcome in the U.S. if the Conservative Christian Right is allowed to co-opt governmental policy. Religious texts which were drafted thousands of years ago require reinterpretation by enlightened minds, as we [hopefully] continue to evolve. What good is new knowledge of the world around us and changing conditions if we neglect to incorporate them into our policies? What good is civil discourse if, in the end, the presumption is that nothing can change because of a bunch of laws written by individuals of another place and time who, necessarily, possessed a far less comprehensive view of the world than an educated 21st century individual does?

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          October 10, 2013 at 5:43 pm

          Well, let’s call it a philosophical discussion rather than a religious one. Isn’t the crux of religion — beyond the primitive and false dichotomy of believe-or-don’t-believe — philosophical? In fact it seems to me that much of philosophy, up to today, has revolved around sheer amazement A. that we exist, and B. that we can think. Or at least, as you point out, that some of us can think. The Dark Ages is indeed where the Banana Republicans would dearly love to take us all.

          • moranpro says:
            October 11, 2013 at 7:40 am

            Agreed on all points.

  4. pah says:
    October 13, 2013 at 6:53 am

    wow, i am impressed, as someone with a non-scientific brain!

MLK’s Dream

Posted August 28th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

i-have-a-dream

It’s the 50th anniversary of that powerful, enduring speech, and somehow I want to cry.

There is so much dreaming still to be done.

And so much pressure to abandon those dreams.  To sleep so deep that we forget how to dream.  To wake with no awareness of ever having had one.

Easy to be cynical and say the obvious:  dreams aren’t reality.  But isn’t that just an excuse for inaction?  A different reality is not possible if you cannot imagine it.  If you cannot imagine peace, or friendship, or even simply absence of conflict, you will not act towards it.  You will be a passive bystander in your own life and that of the world around you.  You will accept the status quo, however bad it is.  Your lack of dreams will become your waking nightmare.

In June, I said that if we call something impossible, we act in such a way that we make it so.  I stand by that.  I stand by the vital human ability to defy nightmare and to insist on dreams, on different possibilities.

Even as we know we will never fully achieve them, the very least we can do is try.

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File under: existence, light | Tagged: Tags: "I have a dream", 50th anniversary, Martin Luther King | 6 Comments
  1. John Sterns says:
    August 28, 2013 at 4:16 pm

    Two quotes come to mind, first on the need to dream:

    “You got to have a dream,
    If you don’t have a dream,
    How you gonna have a dream come true?”

    Rodgers And Hammerstein, “Happy Talk”, South Pacific

    The other on making dreams a reality:

    “If you will it, it is not a dream.”

    Theodor Herzl

    We remember the dream articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., not only because of its vision, but because of the will of Civil Rights activists to not accepts things as they were and make life better for all of us.

  2. Jerry M says:
    September 2, 2013 at 10:59 am

    It is too bad that he died when he did. He did achieve some success. I lived in Tennessee for 3 years and worked with a number of African Americans who came from the social class that created the civil rights movement (one of my best friends was a child of 2 educators from Mississippi). That generation got the vote and a good measure of civil equality, but those people were already middle class and college educated. In the 1960’s when unions were relatively strong it probably seemed that the ending of legal segregation was all that was needed.

    I don’t know if King saw the attacks on unions and workers rights as the coming phase of modern capitalism, but I am sure if he lived until the 1990’s he would have attacked it. Perhaps with his personality he might have succeeded.

    So, civil rights movement v1, successful, v2, not so much.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 6, 2013 at 5:39 pm

      I agree, I’m sure he would have. But with how much success remains, as you note, a question mark.

  3. Jerry M says:
    September 6, 2013 at 10:20 am

    I will post 2 quotes from John Singer Sargent about portraits;
    “A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth.”

    “Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.”

  4. Jerry M says:
    September 6, 2013 at 11:16 am

    sorry posted in wrong place, meant to post on the article about the woman’s portrait

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 6, 2013 at 5:37 pm

      Here: http://accidentaltheologist.com/2013/08/19/seeing-women/

Elephant + Waves = Joy

Posted February 16th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

Forget cat and dog videos!  Elephant joy is where it’s at.

This has been making me smile all day:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/m90jeBPaBio]

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File under: ecology, light | Tagged: | 1 Comment
  1. Anna Johnson says:
    March 9, 2013 at 6:18 pm

    Thank you thank you for posting the elephant joy video! I have an affinity toward elephants and the video enriched my soul. Molto grazie.

In Love With The Bishop

Posted October 31st, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

There I was, agnostic Jewish me, eager as a teen music fan to meet an Episcopal bishop at Town Hall Seattle on Monday night, to shake his hand and thank him for his courage.

Then Hurricane Sandy intervened.  The bishop’s flight was canceled, so I went home and read his new book, God Believes in Love:  Straight Talk About Gay Marriage.

Which is how come I can now tell you that if you can read this book and not fall in love with Bishop Gene Robinson, head of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, then there is something seriously amiss with the state of your soul, let alone your heart and your mind.

Robinson was married – to a woman – for 15 years.  Now he’s married again – to a man.  This second marriage has lasted 25 years, and has led to multiple death threats against him, forcing him at times to wear a bullet-proof vest in public.  It’s also created an absurd rift within the Episcopal church.   And it’s brought out the big guns in his support.  There are only two blurbs on the back of this beautifully lucid book, but both are from Nobel Peace Laureates:  one from a guy called Obama, and the other from a guy called Tutu.

Robinson directly addresses ten FAQs on marriage equality, among them:  “Why should you care about gay marriage if you’re straight?”

His answer, and mine:  “It’s the civil rights issue of our time.”  Why did white activists put themselves in the line of fire in the 1960s?  They weren’t black;  they could always have claimed that it wasn’t “their” battle.  Except of course it was.  As Emma Lazarus put it – she of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free” – “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”

Besides, if you think gay rights don’t affect your straight life, you’re living in as alternative a universe as Mitt Romney.  As Robinson points out, “Orthodox Jews, conservative Muslims, and  fundamentalist Christians are just as likely  to raise a gay son or daughter as any other mother or father.”

Think about that:  Wherever you are as you read this, and no matter what you think about same-sex marriage, chances are that at least one person close to you – someone you know and love and wish everything good for — is gay.  So what do you wish for that person if you call the love they feel for someone else an abomination?  The only abomination involved here is in calling love an abomination.

Still think “This isn’t my fight” because you’re not gay?  Robinson has this to say:

No it isn’t.  Unless you care about the kind of society we have.  Unless you want the society of which you are a part to be a just one.  Unless you believe that a free society, not to mention a godly religion, should fight injustice wherever it is found…  Unless you care about our children.  Unless fairness matters to you.  Unless violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people concerns you.  Unless ‘liberty and justice for all’ is something you believe applies to all citizens.

Are you in love with him yet?

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File under: Christianity, light, sanity | Tagged: Tags: Barack Obama, Bishop Gene Robinson, civil rights, Desmond Tutu, Episcopal church, God Believes In Love, love, marriage equality, same sex marriage | 18 Comments
  1. Mary Johnson (@_MaryJohnson) says:
    October 31, 2012 at 11:23 am

    Ah, yes, I’ve been in love with Gene Robinson for quite a while. Thanks for drawing attention to this important book, Lesley. I haven’t read this latest, but his “In the Eye of the Storm” was terrific.

  2. Mark Knox says:
    October 31, 2012 at 11:28 am

    Great post- well articulated and now looking forward to reading the book.

  3. Lisa Kane says:
    October 31, 2012 at 1:42 pm

    Amen, Sister!

  4. Michael Camp says:
    October 31, 2012 at 2:35 pm

    Leslie, great post! Gene Robinson is in the watershed documentary “For the Bible Tells Me So,” that exposes the fallacy of conservative Christian views on gay and lesbians and discloses the biblical, historical, and psycological evidence in favor of gay equality. I’ve loved him ever since I saw it! Another voice in this fight is Mel White, who just did a re-write of a past book now called Holy Terror. I have a chapter in my book called Gay Rights, Not Wrongs, that addresses all this. Thanks for sharing this. I’ll have to read Gene’s book.

  5. Hashmi says:
    November 1, 2012 at 3:57 am

    Dear Lesley, You have a command over theology and you have read all religions. You know what evil homosexuality is.. and how displeasing it is to our Creator. Then why are you propogating and supporting this evil act.. May Allah guide all of us

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      November 1, 2012 at 9:43 am

      Abdullah, with so much evil in the world, how sad that you can call love evil. May I suggest that you read Gene Robinson’s book — ASAP.

  6. AA says:
    November 2, 2012 at 1:23 pm

    Bishop John Shelby Spong (another awesome personality) has this to say about Gene Robinson:

    “The Bishop of New Hampshire Gene Robinson is not our only gay bishop; he is our only honest gay bishop.”

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      November 2, 2012 at 2:10 pm

      Totally with you re Spong. And with Spong re Robinson.

  7. SãImã Abbasi says:
    November 2, 2012 at 11:05 pm

    and the God, Lord and Allah tala himself said that relationship between a man and a woman has a purpose to create human life, in gay thing this is neglected. God himself destroyed the People of Lot because they practiced gay. God love human beings and He alone know what is best for His creation so He said dont practice this…

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      November 3, 2012 at 8:55 am

      s:0:””;

      • Imraan says:
        November 5, 2012 at 1:05 pm

        Thanks for this great post – I always learn something 🙂 I’m quite the fan of what the Bishop has to say on responsible relationships in general – his branch of Christianity tends to preach a sort of commitment and honest relationship model that I think we should have more of. I’m intrigued often by this question. As someone who believes in civil liberties on principle – who despises bigotry of any sort to the core of my being – I don’t think this is an issue that will ever be fully ‘resolved’ in the Church – for the simple reason that I think both ‘sides’ of the debate can issue edicts based on Scripture – or at the very least, cite theological movements based on scriptural hermeneutics.

        However I’m not so willing to let a State decide on the matter either – the reason is because it is a power structure driven by economic forces – I don’t think the State very much cares whether or not this is a personal choice (gay marriage – not actually ‘being’ gay), in the same way as I imagine that many pro-choice decisions were carried forward not because of any notion of reproductive rights, rather it made economic sense.

        The idea of destruction in the name of “love” is an interesting one – of course, if we subscribe to the notion of a Higher Being (and a Loving Being at that), then I don’t see it a problem if this Being would choose to destroy a civilisation of it was in the ‘greater’ interest or served a higher purpose for Creation. But these are philosophical questions, I imagine. The question at first glance appears not to be of ‘human’ love (i.e. the love two people can feel for one another) but a notion of ‘Divine’ Love – who decides on what that means is not up to me, certainly, but I imagine that the highest idea of love that we can conceive of as human beings is limited by our own fallibility – this is why philosophy and religion matters so much to me – these take into consideration that very question and propose alternative models (which for the most part are similar say across the Abrahamic traditions) for attaining human flourishing.

        But we are in a sense dealing fundamentally with issues of human nature – and what society’s role should be in harmonising it to become conducive to living together.

        Whereas in the case of people who find themselves liking members of the same sex – that’s fine by one standard but many world philosophical, religious and syncretic systems seem to disagree on principle (not whether it’s wrong in principle but people tend to be rebuked if they act on these feelings). The argument of ‘consent’ doesn’t always hold up because various philosophical systems will argue that you can actively choose to engage in self-destructive behaviour which isn’t ‘harming’ anyone else, yet are frowned upon. In today’s world, similar examples might be…. Serving alcohol at a dinner party, serving your guests fattening food, smoking in the presence of non-smokers, smoking at all etc – these are essentially varying degrees of the same thing.

        (To be fair to you) Of course on the other hand, we are still ‘free’ to do those things – we haven’t actively legislated on the issue of fatty foods or serving alcohol at a dinner party…(again, this isn’t a corollary example and is sort of mixing moral content so doesn’t translate accurately – nonetheless I have heard it given before and is still worthwhile thinking about – the same way one might encourage a woman who is in love with her abusive lover to leave him, to seek something far more dignified, even if it means the chance of being ‘alone’ for the rest of her life, I would say on principle, is a higher good than her having to be engaged in something self-destructive, even if that means it not good for her on the whole)….

        ….Though when it comes to schoolchildren being served fatty foods (though, and I’m praying it’s not true, apparently Congress has legislated that pizza is technically a ‘vegetable’) for example, we legislate; or when it comes to smoking in public places, we now have very strict laws in the UK against that – in time, people seem to be trying to constrain things that fifty years ago were seen as a matter of freedom and free choice – which is interesting – in terms of civil liberties one might consider this to be regressive, but most people I imagine would find this to be ‘progress’ of some sort or other).

        A corollary argument perhaps that is put forward (though by no means are these things equal)…, and I’m only saying this from a perspective of a religious system (I don’t necessarily agree – just putting the arguments out) that if your child was say a thief or robber, say, or socially dysfunctional – the powers that be will take the liberty of trying and possibly incarcerating this child (if not the parents) – who has somehow thought it acceptable to engage in this sort of behaviour, to try and a) make them repay the damage they have done and b) to try to rehabilitate that child (not just for their own good, but for societal goods too).

        But before it got to that stage, wouldn’t a responsible parent do all that they could to dissuade their child from behaving this way? Threats on the child’s liberty, moral instruction, boot camp in extreme cases – despite the fact that the child is a minor?

        … Or if your child happens to be obese, society today can even apprehend the parents who might not see anything wrong in overfeeding the child (whether or not you agree is a different matter or the child might be cut off from his favourite foods, or sent away to ‘fat camp’- isn’t that limiting the child’s self-expression? – my point is that our societies have taken stands on various issues).

        Now if you are a responsible parent who happens to believe that it is your duty to dissuade your child from engaging in homosexual conduct – you would try every and any recourse you had available. Now why is this sort of treatment ‘cruel’, but not say, sending your child into boot camp, or a psychiatric ward for their kleptomania or their facility to be violent? In all cases, your child has somehow learned that what they are doing is fine. On that level, they are equal. I’m trying to figure out why one is considered repressive by an ‘objective’ standard and the other isn’t?

        If you look at the Qur’an, say (and of course you will know this as I gather from that brilliant TEDx talk – one of my favourites in fact) – I can’t speak of the Bible with any authority – though I can’t really for the Qur’an either) – the point is that before the ‘destruction’ was allowed to occur – these people were sent a “warner” or an “apostle” or “their brother” (Hud, Salih, Nuh, Lut from various chapters) to rebuke their people, warn them of their transgressions, offer them God’s Mercy if they turned back to Him… before the command was given for them to be ‘destroyed’- in that prism (and I don’t like the idea of anthropomorphising God, though speaking of a God of Love might suggest indeed that we are made in His Image, rather than us having made God in ours – nonetheless) – I can understand why something so final might be taken in the best interests of humanity.

        If we are religious we believe that we have a responsibility toward God; but just as much, God has taken a responsibility over us – that his Command exists because it helps us fulfill the purpose for which we’re created – God’s command in this sense is still active, even if the conduits for it are human agents (in the form of prophets, holy men, scholars)… That’s not saying that I condone stoning homosexuals, or whether I as a mere mortal have any right over someone else’s life and can make that decision for anyone (or would even dare to).

        Self-expression being a part of self-actualisation isn’t necessarily the view that most world philosophies assume is a valid premiss – that is a fairly recent development as I understand it. In fact religions will uphold the notion that in order to realise yourself truly, and be truly happy, you need to live by a particular moral code (and that it is a duty of a parent to teach that standard to his or her child); much the same way that in Western society today – you cannot raise your child to be a thief – that is considered a form of abuse. So if you have allowed your child to believe that homosexual conduct is fine – some philosophical/religious systems would equally consider that a form of abuse. Why one over the other? I could understand then why a religious person might believe a God (in our example a parent-figure) would choose to ‘destroy’ or condemn “love” in the name of Love.

        The point of a secular world is to apply the same objective standard over all walks of life, all belief systems etc., is applying a sort of rationality about what it sees as subjective morality, whereas those belonging to various religions might argue that these are fundamentally objective principles. Maybe that’s just something we have to put up with in a ‘secular’ world.

        Goodness, I didn’t realise I have gone on, and on! (again – I apologise sincerely that I force you to read these, and I promise they’re honest, attempts at exposition and being fair to both sides of the argument).

        But on the whole – those people who have hated or oppressed the Jews, the blacks, the women, Muslims, will no-doubt be from the same ilk who are against marriage equality, and certainly we ought to take a stand against them. But my idea would be to educate, not legislate, in general.

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          November 5, 2012 at 4:14 pm

          Imraan — Suffice to say that same-sex love is not a “lifestyle choice,” but a natural part of human sexuality. Trying to enforce heterosexuality is what is unnatural. Laws permitting same-sex marriage are in fact not deciding the issue at all. It’s laws that prevent it that have decided the issue in the past, and are now, rightly, being overturned (including here in Washington state, I hope, where marriage equality is on tomorrow’s ballot). And yes, this really is a matter of equality, affecting matters not only of sexuality but also of citizenship, taxation, inheritance, Social Security, and legal and health-care decisions. The bigotry of the opposition is too often rationalized as religious — with, as Bishop Robinson shows, no justification. So as regards religion, here is a thought worth remembering from Christopher Hitchens, a man with whom I had multiple disagreements but who got it absolutely right on this: the best guarantee of religious freedom is secular government.

          • Imraan says:
            November 5, 2012 at 5:43 pm

            Of course, neither did I mean to imply, if I did, that it is a matter of choice; nor did I mean to say that I would enforce heterosexuality as a ‘norm’ – what I was perhaps inarticulately suggesting was that the ‘destruction’ the reader above referred to, given a certain hermeneutic, is understandable if certain premises are accepted. As a heterosexual male, I have a ‘choice’ in whether I act on my heterosexuality involving another person – the choice is still there, regardless of orientation. But I could make a ‘lifestyle choice’ to remain celibate, or maintain fidelity in my marriage. Now whether it’s socially or legally acceptable for me to act on those desires, as opposed to if I was homosexual, I understand is an important question.

            Certainly, under any conception of a ‘state’-based government (though I’m actually an anarchist of sorts as I find the idea of states abhorrent in principle for other reasons) there should be equality for all – I just fear that states might consider enforcing this for cynical reasons. My invoking certain religious examples, or by suggesting that the argument from religion was that indeed, that sexual morality is something that has been defined and interpreted differently across a wide range of contexts. Today we could abhor the idea of marrying a 13-year old to a 20 year old man, we didn’t in the past. What were the precipitating factors in the change – I don’t think it was just society.

            The young lady in question is still as physically mature as her counterpart might have been 100 years ago, and I don’t think her mental maturity would be much different (she might ‘know’ more today). (I don’t condone this position but these are the sorts of questions I’m interested in).

            For example, if we abhorred historically that a young lady shouldn’t be married off, or be permitted to marry of her own volition until a certain age, we don’t do away with the institution of marriage in and of itself. I can see why those in favour of a strict definition of heterosexual marriage today would feel that the institutions which they hold sacred are now being undermined. Of course, heterosexual people today do far more to undermine marriage anyway – but say, adultery is still frowned upon, or having an open marriage is still a subject of taboo or social disdain; in a secular society, we still seem to hold the notion of ‘Love’ between two people as sacred, even though I think secularism is supposed to drive out any notion of sacredness.

            You see, my point is that our society is supposed to be one where we are liberated under the law – we are enforcing equality or freedom in some ways by legislating against their opposites, or legislating ‘for’ them, a sort of ‘muscular liberalism’ if you like. Today, most advocates of equal marriage would, I imagine, legislate that marriage is between two people – no third person ought to be involved – why? I can’t point to exactly an underlying factor for all of these things – but I don’t think the conception of positive rights under the law (i.e. that you’re free to do something) isn’t a standard we apply across the board – there are many things we cannot simply do to ourselves or others. I find that a paradox of the secular world, which I was trying to point out.

            Many (not all certainly) of the same people today who are ‘pro-gay-rights’ (I don’t really like labels but we’ll work with that) would abhor polygamy even if it was consented to by all parties – there are ‘reasons’ (however weak or strong) we prohibit such institutions today in our ‘secular governments’ – where I think that if we are to be fair and equal, we should permit. I can understand people (though I don’t think I agree as we don’t have the sociological evidence for it) that by allowing for marriage-equality – we are changing something fundamental in the fabric of the society (whether that’s the reproductive imperative, the regard for Scripture). For example, if polygamy was legalised tomorrow (I don’t think much would be said against a polyamorous society – such households exist but I don’t think they’re ‘that’ commonplace because they aren’t recognised by law – would there not be a tremendous rise in polygamous households – how would that affect the children’s understanding of marriage, their relationship to ‘all’ of their parents, their siblings etc., etc. – but in general, we don’t seem to make these arguments for sociological reasons – we would tend to invoke this notion of ‘love’ – but, if more people were inclined to believe in Freud – our notions of free-associations would be desperately challenged.

            Final example of a question I like to ask (I don’t have answers) – Why for the last say, 1900 years was Scripture interpreted widely in one sense, and now is forming the basis for arguments ‘for’ marriage equality. The Scripture certainly hasn’t changed (that much) – Scripture has been interpreted or used in so many ways historically and has led to much abuse and tragedy in the world. Some (not me) might argue that we are using Scripture as a means of infidelity toward its essence (I can understand that certainly).

            I indeed also agree with Hitchens – I don’t particularly care for most of his views, but he was definitely spot on in that regard.

            Good luck for tomorrow! – I’ve been having this eerie feeling that I should savour the sky dearly – I fear that if a certain Republican candidate wins we may be on the precipice of having mushroom clouds lining our horizons…)

  8. AA says:
    November 3, 2012 at 9:10 am

    Scott Siraj al Haq Kugle is a credible authority on this topic from the Islamic perspective. He has already written a book on it and here is an essay from him which appeared in Omid Safi edited book.

    http://othersheepexecsite.com/Other_Sheep_Resource_Sexuality_Diversity_and_Ethics_in_the_Agenda_of_Progressive_Muslims_by_Scott_Siraj_al_Haqq_Kugle.pdf

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      November 3, 2012 at 10:48 am

      Thank you — will check it out.

      • Imraan says:
        November 5, 2012 at 5:43 pm

        This was a fascinating read, AA! Found it thoroughly insightful.

        • AA says:
          November 5, 2012 at 6:11 pm

          I’m a big Scott Kugle fan (though I’m not a homosexual). Do check out his book ‘Homosexuality in Islam’, it is a more detailed scholarly work.

          The most fascinating thing about his thesis is his deconstruction of the Lut story. I believe he has done it well for the whole of Judeo-Christian-Islam perspective, if only they’re willing to listen.

  9. HandeBir says:
    November 4, 2012 at 2:01 pm

    I can’t wait for it to arrive from Amazon. Thank you for this post.

Just For The Joy Of It

Posted July 3rd, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Orchestral flash mob:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/GBaHPND2QJg]

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File under: art, existence, light | Tagged: Tags: Beethoven's Ninth, flash mob, orchestra | 2 Comments
  1. Alim says:
    July 9, 2012 at 7:47 pm

    Dear Lesley, thank you very much for this post. I see not only joy, but also harmony and appreciation among people. This harmony and appreciation should be extened to wider contexts and that’s what we desperately need. I happened to watch your talk about Prophet Muhammad a year ago. Since then, that talk has become something I go to whenever life seems not as promising. Every line of that talk is transforming me as a Muslim, a son, a brother and most importantly a human. Many thanks again for you effort and wisdom. Looking forward to reading your ‘The First Muslim’.

  2. Sandra says:
    September 5, 2012 at 1:04 pm

    OMG, People actually not afraid to have fun! Both the players and the audience as humans were meant to be.

    thank you for posting this, I feel better already, there is hope for humanity!

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