Sunday, September 13, 2020

books recommended

from Steven:
I would recommend a fairly old book by Fritjof Kapra, The Tao of Physics (originally from the 70s.)

The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism

by Fritjof Capra  | Sep 14, 2010
My father had recommended to him Gary Zukav "The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics" which mostly is a good general account of subatomic phsycis which only in the last chapter explains how particles are really dancing relationships of fields and relates that to the Buddhist concept of Emptiness.
My father bought it me when it was first published in about 1979

The only book I managed to read during the  six years I was given clozapine, 2000-2006 which spiritually crippled me so much I could not inspire my wife not to neglect herself to death was 
The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann

The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex

by Murray Gell-Mann  | Apr 1, 1994
It is a very thorough book written by the man who first postulated the Quark.
He is a memebr of a group in New Mexico who explore the boundaries between a mystical awareness and a Western approach to science, politics and economics.

For a more modern approach written by a quantum astro-physicist who decries the atheism of much of Western scientists Bernard Haisch  The God Theory
His theory is that God cerated many universes, each with only a fraction of the possibilities from which to produce good.  As each univrse develops it creates a richness which goes beyiond anything that God could have conceived.  It is like seeing a movie made only of three colours filtered.  In mystical states one sees the white light that contains all possibilities, but to produce a film that tells a story you need the indvidual colours.  He pointed me to The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley 1945

The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West by Huxley, Aldous(July 28, 2009) 

It is an excellent work which quotes from many authors and scriptures and quotes extensively from 18th century English Quaker, William Law, who’s view on eternity and the fact that Quakers think the resurrection of Christ is more an eternal truth than an event in history that saved man from sin he says is more like Buddhism than he rest of Christianity.
This has some really good funny parables about some of the logic denying principles of quantum theory such as the Schroedingr’s cat paradox and the entanglement of pairs of electrons that seem to know which spin is measured in the oopposite half of a pair, even though they are moving away from each other at near the speed of light.  He really lays into the vengeful God of the Old Testament.

The best book on the theology of quantum theory and how primitive people don’t separate the spiritual from the physical as I didn’t since infancy is

Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics

by Diarmuid O'Murchu | AJan 1, 2000
It also tells how liberation theology and post colonial and new feminist theology is returning to a quantum based approach where relationships are more important than the objects which the relationships are between.
Part of a quantum awareness is the holographic nature of reality that the whole is contained in every part, but the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.
There is an extensive bibliography in it.

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resources from Steven

This is from Steven:

Reorder: The Promised Land
Sunday,  August 23, 2020

Our recent Daily Meditations have been focusing on what seems to me a universal pattern of spiritual transformation that takes us from Order, through Disorder, to Reorder. Order, by itself, normally wants to eliminate any disorder or diversity, creating a narrow and cognitive rigidity in both people and systems. Disorder, by itself, closes us off from any primal union, meaning, and eventually even sanity in both people and systems. Our focus of this week is Reorder, or transformation of people and systems, which happens when both are seen to work together.

Like most other kinds of growth, this spiral probably happens over and over throughout our lives, and reveals itself in the Bible:

Garden of Eden —> Fall —> Paradise.

Walter Brueggemann teaches three kinds of Psalms: Psalms of Orientation —> Psalms of Disorientation —> Psalms of New Orientation. [1]

Christians call the pattern Life —> Crucifixion —> Resurrection.

Many now speak generally of Construction —> Deconstruction —> Reconstruction.

We are indeed “saved” by knowing and surrendering to this universal pattern of reality. Knowing the full pattern allows us to let go of the first order, accept the disorder, and, sometimes hardest of all—to trust the new reorder.

Every religion in its own way is talking about getting us to the reorder stage. Various systems would call it “enlightenment,” “paradise,” “nirvana,” “heaven,” “salvation,” “springtime,” or even “resurrection.” It is the life on the other side of death, the victory on the other side of failure, the joy on the other side of birthing pains. It is an insistence on going through—not under, over, or around. There is no nonstop flight to reorder. To arrive there, we must endure, learn from, and include the Disorder stage, transcending the first naïve Order—but also still including it! It amounts to the best of the conservative and the best of the liberal positions. People who have reached this stage, like the Jewish prophets, might be called “radical traditionalists.” They love their truth and their group enough to critique it; and they critique it enough to maintain their own integrity and intelligence. These wise ones have stopped overreacting but also over defending. They are usually a minority of humans.

Based on years of spiritual direction, I have observed that conservatives must let go of their illusion that they can order and control the world through religion, money, war, or politics. True release of control to God will show itself as compassion and generosity, and less boundary keeping. Liberals, however, must surrender their skepticism of leadership, eldering, or authority, and find what is good, healthy, and deeply true about a foundational order. This will normally be experienced as a move toward humility and real community.

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Monday, August 31, 2020

Western Friends

 This is from Daniel. Hopefully it will be updated as I'm afraid we've already missed the one listed here - sorry!

Quakers for the Future - Western Friend

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Articles about Mary Ratcliff

The following is from Steven:

This book was mentioned in ministry at Thursday morning Meeting for Worship at Woodbrooke Quaker Guesthouse, Cumbria, England.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy read aloud by Tim Ufindell 12:02

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81b4i9jQhck

He shows each page with the illustrations as he reads, so there is no need to buy the book.

Is there more to life than this? by Charlie Mackesy HTB church Alpha Course 19 May, 2019 36:48

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba1XF-iFhoE

Christianity is like a tin of tuna he was given in Singapore as a treat.

It was labeled “Crap.”

On 27 Aug 2020, at 04:14, Kaila wrote
As I mentioned, the book group I'm part of through the Phoenix Quaker Meeting will be discussing The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse along with The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. We meet on the first Sunday of every month at 12:30 p.m. MST, 2:30pm EDT which makes our next discussion on Sunday, September 7. 
We'll meet using this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82493851559?pwd=ZVhlei9senl1UGZGanNDSXhuMGpwQT09

Meeting ID: 824 9385 1559
Password: 659315

Mary Ratcliff and the San Francisco Bay View

These are articles about Mary Ratcliff, who have me good support between October 2017 and over the next year and a half. I was transferred back to Salford after fracturing the base of my skull while trying to do a zero point field transfer of my Insight to her on 4 January 2018.

KPIX evening news 20 August, 2020 3:03

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/08/20/81-year-old-editor-stepping-down-at-prominent-sf-black-newspaper-after-more-than-4-decades/

SF Heritage webinar: 1:06:18 On YouTube, at 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZM-HAmsUB0&feature=youtu.be

and also on Facebook, at 

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1356452167890375&ref=watch_permalink.

The third of this trio of news stories about the Bay View is the piece that writer Judy Goddess spent months working on, and it’s a masterpiece:

https://sfseniorbeat.com/2020/07/30/intrigued-by-her-parents-communism-activists-path-led-to-san-francisco-where-she-and-her-husband-have-brought-news-to-the-black-community-for-nearly-40-years/

You can learn a lot of issues of concern to black people especially mass incarceration, which makes up about a third of the paper. She says one of her proudest moments was when someone who worked in Sacramento told her the prison authorities blamed the SF Bay View for the hunger strikes of 2012 and 2013 which at their peak, according to the correction department had 60,000 prisoners who had refused nine consecutive meals.

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Sunday, August 30, 2020

ways of doing

As a community we are doing several things. First to me is providing a space for people out there to join us, ask what Quakerism is, and get straight answers. We are doing our best to provide for their needs. I am not always sure I can discern their needs, in an online environment.

Second, when they ask for resources, we are piling them on. The people in the meeting know a lot - they know the books, the things to watch, and places to look. Most of these have ended up in my e-mail. My solemn promise is to get to them and put them here; I've been busy and haven't done it. Look for it in the next few posts.

This is partly because the chat became a sensitive place. We copied the chat, a couple of times, because of the resources, and we'd forgotten that the chat was part of the meeting, and we were making an effort not to record the meetings. We are still making that effort. We are not recording the meetings, and we are not copying the chat.

Tonight it seemed we were zoom-bombed; we heard some things that don't really belong in Quaker meeting. I'm not sure if it was maybe just someone's roommate, or someone was bombing us or what. I muted them. There is no place for zoom-bombing in a Quaker meeting.

This may contradict my first-stated objective which is to be there for people out there. Maybe sometimes what they need is a place to come and be themselves and have us not ban them for life. I didn't ban them for life. I simply muted them temporarily, until we could figure out who was making all that noise.

Maybe ten people were there tonight. Many were the usual suspects: from Texas, from Kentucky, from England, from New York City, from North Carolina, from Kentucky, from Mississippi, from Arizona, and from New Mexico of course. I missed a few also, I believe. I didn't mean to ignore you. It gets big and it's possible for people to remain quiet, and get through as only an observer. It is another solemn promise that I will not ignore you, and, insomuch as possible, we will hear from everyone, if they are willing to speak.

The silence, or at least what there was of it, was very nice. Stay in touch!
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Sunday, August 2, 2020

On Community

I have said from the beginning that Cloud Quakers welcomes all people but in particular all different kinds of Quakers. Of course I have no idea how diverse the world of Quakers is, but still I make a point of saying that and then trying to live up to it. I think Quakers are among a number of different kinds of religion that people try in order to fulfill their need to connect to a divine being, and have a community of people who seek in the same way they do.

Tonight's meeting had ten or so people, most regular. We are all just looking for community, and I think, amongst most of us, we have one. It's a lively mix of different kinds of Quakers and people who enjoy a little silence in their busy weeks. Maybe "enjoy" is the wrong word. There is some discussion about whether "worship" is really possible on zoom - whether, in turning your mute on and off, your camera on and off, you can experience the divine.

I say you can. I say that there is no environment made, where we cannot practice spirituality, or experience the divine. We cannot say that this "online environment" doesn't count, or is somehow outside of life experiences as we know them. You may have trouble with the zoom environment - with centering, with experiencing something together - and I'm sure they said that about the phone at first too. But eventually it becomes integrated into life as we know it.

I have a family zoom on Sundays. I also have one of my original home meetings which now meets on zoom on Sunday mornings. And there is yet another - the old community of esl/techies, worldwide tech players known as the webheads - but they meet early, and I'm retired. Four zooms is way too much for one day. I've come to focus on the two that are most important - family and Cloud Quakers. I love my community.

In a sense, I think we are all still seekers. We are up there on zoom because we are looking for that connection, and if you affirm it once in a while: Yes, I am looking for that connection - then, just by doing that, you are closer to it.
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Friday, June 12, 2020

New log-in number!

New log-in number! Cloud Quakers invite everyone to Quaker worship group online on Zoom, SUN 6 pm US Mountain Time (7 in CHI, 8 in NY, 5 in CA) - Silence, fellowship, community, all welcome. On zoom dial 839 9637 5387. Please come!

To get on while using phone, find the directions on the Cloud Quaker Facebook site - you may have to scroll down a post or two. Really, everyone is welcome, phone or not, sound or not.  Hope to see you! 
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