Soul Hunger: The reason of faith, according to Karen Armstrong

www.odemagazine.com

MICHAEL BRUNTON
Ode
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009 ISSUE

The reason of faith

Religion isn’t easy, Karen Armstrong says: “You have to practice quite hard, like you do with any art form.”

Modern science knows how to fix a hole in the heart. It can diagnose a hole in the ozone layer and prove the existence of black holes at the edge of the universe.

But when it comes to explaining what's often described as the "God-shaped hole" in our lives, neither quantum physicists nor geneticists nor neuropsychologists appear to quite have the measure of it.

If anything, the rate of scientific advance in recent decades has only served to polarize religious debate. At one extreme is a resurgent atheism—epitomized by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who've both written best-selling books denouncing religious belief—which trusts that this hole, like every hole, will be filled in time by knowledge. At the other extreme is religious fundamentalism—epitomized by political spats over headscarves and creationism—which believes this hole is brimful of scriptural truth. For most of us in between, the hole in the soul gnaws away at our subconscious, like a hunger. And all of us, believers and non-believers alike, rush to fill the void with words.

One way or another, according to Karen Armstrong, "We talk far too much about God these days." Which might sound a bit rich coming from the English author of almost 20 books on religion as well as two memoirs about her becoming—and then unbecoming—a Catholic nun, who has been decked with religious prizes and who regularly lectures the high and mighty of church and state around the world. What's more, according to her new book The Case for God, the things we say when we do talk about religious faith are often "facile," "stupid" or "primitive." Ammunition, perhaps, for Armstrong's critics, of whom she has had her share, ever since her breakthrough book, A History of God, in 1993.

In that and the books that followed, Armstrong has traced the tangled roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, liberally reinterpreted the lives of Muhammad, Buddha and Jesus, and dived headlong into the maelstrom of theological debate around fundamentalism, both before and after 9/11. Some have criticized her idealistic interpretation of the Koran; religious academics berate her for shortcomings of scholarly rigor; atheists dismiss her for refusing to engage in debate on their terms.

Yet Armstrong's consistently eloquent arguments for compassion and commonality as an antidote to Islamophobia and the "clash of civilizations" have struck a chord, particularly in the U.S., where she has addressed both houses of Congress. She's also increasingly in demand on the lecture circuit in countries like Pakistan and Egypt, and is to be found on book stalls in 40 languages around the world. Drawing together the main threads of her previous research, The Case for God is Armstrong's most concise and practical-minded book yet: a historical survey of how rather than what we believe, where we lost the "knack" of religion and what we need to do to get it back.

"A lot of the arguments about religion going on at the moment spring from a rather inept understanding of religious truth," says Armstrong, settling into her theme and a winged easy chair in her early-Georgian home in north London. The furnishings and decoration suggest Jane Austen may have just stepped out of the room. Like Austen, and in a polished English accent, Armstrong is sharp-witted, quick to ridicule nonsense, and a good storyteller. "Our notion changed during the early modern period when we became convinced that the only path to any kind of truth was reason. That works beautifully for science but doesn't work so well for the humanities. Religion is really an art form and a struggle to find value and meaning amid the ghastly tragedy of human life."

Armstrong's The Case for God begins with the cave paintings of Lascaux in the French Dordogne, made some 17,000 years ago—seemingly religious art works in which the hunter assuages his unease at killing his prey through shamanic rituals in honor of the Animal Master. Such myths were born because, Armstrong writes, "As meaning-seeking creatures, men and women fall very easily into despair. They have created religions and works of art to help them find value in their lives, despite all the dispiriting evidence to the contrary."

From that point on, the religious impulse took the form of creation myths like Tao and Brahman from the East, on through the gods of ancient Greece and eventually the emergence of the world's three main monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—and their founding scriptures. But none of them, says Armstrong, were meant to be taken literally. "The cosmology of the ancient world was telling you about the nature of life here and now. Genesis is not about the origins of life. There were many other creation stories current in Israel at that time and no one was required to believe in that one."

Reason, science and logic—what the Greeks called "logos"—were also evolving as ways of understanding the world, but always in concert, not competition, with the stories—the mythos—they relied on to deal with the mysteries of the human psyche. Pythagoras, for example, a founding father of mathematics and astronomy, sought the geometric truth of the universe from within a religious community dedicated to Apollo and the Muses. He also called himself a philosopher and expected his students to lead an ascetic and monastic kind of life, undergoing rites of purification and silence "in a search," Armstrong writes, "for transcendence and a dedicated, practical lifestyle."

In conversation, Armstrong spins the threads of her research with agile, unhesitating precision, leaping across centuries of scripture, philosophy and theology. She dissects the writings of Denys the Areopagite, the pseudonymous 5th-to-6th-century Christian theologian; explains the roots of Greek words like pistis (faith); pauses to unpick the purpose of Socratic dialogue or the classical atheism of Ludwig Feuerbach, the 19th-century German philosopher and proto-Marxist.

But through all the twists and turns, the notion of transcendence is the one she returns to time and again as the beating heart of all pre-modern theology. "The idea was that when we spoke about God we were speaking of something that lies beyond words," says Armstrong. "People like Thomas Aquinas would say we can't talk about God as a creator because we can only have in our heads the idea of a human creator and that can't apply to God. We can't even say that God exists because our notion of existence is too limited to apply to God. People were instructed to think about this in those terms."

In Armstrong's scheme of things, it was with the dawning of the Age of Reason that the problems started. As philosophers and mathematicians both, Descartes and then Newton well understood that science and religion—logos and mythos—were discrete realms in the search for universal truth. But when the foundation for modern science was laid, the conceptual nature of truth itself began to blur.

"Newton and Descartes started to try and prove that God existed in the same way as they would try and prove something in the laboratory or with their mathematics," says Armstrong. "And when you try and mix science and religion you get bad science and bad religion. The two are doing two different things. ... Science can give you a diagnosis of cancer. It can even cure your disease, but it cannot touch your grief and disappointment, nor can it help you to die well."

Newton seeded not only the idea that God was reducible, says Armstrong, but also that understanding religion would be easy. So easy that by 1900, the German mathematician David Hilbert could confidently assert that precisely 23 problems remained to be solved in order to complete the Newtonian view of the universe. More than a century later, few of us can even comprehend those problems, let alone calculate the answers or grasp the significance of all the things we've learned since. Worse, as our theories about the universe grow ever more abstract, a sense of bewilderment is replacing the sense of transcendence. "It's not easy to talk about transcendence, just as it's not easy to play or listen to a late Beethoven quartet," says Armstrong. "You have to practice quite hard, like you do with any art form. Religion is hard work."

And as with great art, the realization that God defies understanding can be a source of the profoundest joy. For Einstein that sense of the existence of something impenetrable was, as he wrote in a 1930 essay, "the sower of all true art and science" and "the centre of all true religiousness." Armstrong herself calls this experience "the stunned appreciation of an otherness"—a state she says she can occasionally glimpse in the long, silent and solitary hours of study that fuel her writing.

In her studies, Armstrong, at 64, now finds what countless hours of obligatory prayer as an unhappy Catholic nun in her teenage years had flatly failed to bring into focus. Suffering a lost vocation and physically frail, she considered her eventual departure from the convent in 1969 as a relief of sorts. But coming to terms with the world outside and the God she'd left behind triggered a profound spiritual trauma. After a diagnosis of epilepsy and disastrous spells teaching at a university, Armstrong's convalescence proper began in 1981—it's still underway, she says—when she poured her pain into a memoir of her convent days, Through the Narrow Gate. A second volume Beginning the World related her adjustment to the outside world, but Armstrong later recanted it because of the false heartiness she'd adopted to satisfy both her publisher and her own delusion of contentment.

In fact, Armstrong's adjustment wasn't going well, and a brief spell as an erudite but pungently skeptical presenter of religious TV programs in the U.K.—egged on by the producers, she claims, to say ever more outrageous things—did little to help matters. But in the course of that work, Armstrong found herself drawn back to the theological texts underpinning the monotheistic religions and to what they really mean. To do that, says Armstrong, "I had to put my clever, post-Enlightenment, Oxford-educated, aggressively logos self on the back burner, and enter into the mind of someone like Muhammad, who believed he'd been touched by God. Because if I didn't sympathetically and compassionately feel with him, I would miss the essence of it and just write another clever riposte."

A report by the Pew Forum, a U.S. research body on religion and public life, recently painted a startling picture of religious faith in America. About half the population appears to have changed religious affiliation at least once, while the number of believers unaffiliated with any particular faith is rising faster than those of any of religion. Yet more than half of those who grow up unaffiliated later choose to join one. Of the reasons people give for this restlessness, far more cite disenchantment with their religious institutions than a loss of faith per se.

Across Europe, in contrast, while many still identify with a religious denomination, Pew's Global Attitudes Project report last year showed that only a fraction value religion as "very important" in their lives, compared to America, where 55 percent consider it so. In secular-minded France, only 10 percent take that view. Even in traditionally Catholic Spain, the figure is only 19 percent. Among young Europeans, religion's importance appears to be still on the wane. That's somewhat true in America, although 49 percent of adults under 40 value it like their parents and grandparents do, while in places like Egypt (69 percent), Turkey (88 percent) and Pakistan (95 percent), many more young people are keeping the faith.

That longing for spiritual uplift and communion, along with the sense of being let down, have no doubt driven the popularity of New Age beliefs in the U.S. and elsewhere in recent decades. It may also have contributed to the rise in eco-consciousness and the emergence of a "Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability" (LOHAS) demographic, said to include some 40 million people in the U.S., socially responsible green consumers interested in spiritually tinged practices like alternative medicine and personal development.

Armstrong for one isn't surprised at these shifts. "We—the British and the northern Europeans—are beginning to look endearingly old-fashioned in our secularism. The rest of the world is becoming more religious." But while God-centered religion may not own the copyright on transcendence, she warns, "None of it is of any value unless you translate it into practical compassionate action for others. In Buddhism, yoga is properly about the dismantling of egotism; if you just do these things to lose weight or to get a warm glow, that's not religion."

For Armstrong, it's compassion that's the defining virtue of religion, the Golden Rule articulated by Confucius two and a half millennia ago as "Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you." Practicing compassion is, she says, a form of "ethical artistry" that requires the dethroning of ego—a virtue, Armstrong believes, that's alive and well for the majority of the faithful in all religions, but one often singularly lacking in the higher echelons of the various faiths she addresses.

Last year, that message earned Armstrong a prize from the TED Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering big ideas, allowing Armstrong to promote a Charter for Compassion that aims to get religious leaders to commit to a program of compassionate principles (see sidebar). For some religious commentators, like the U.S. rabbi Brad Hirschfield, the Charter amounts to little more than "a ‘Kumbaya' moment" for "a world filled with hate-driven faith." Armstrong disagrees, believing the abundant supply of compassion among religious communities the world over will win out. She does have a poor opinion of religious committees though, and admits she was nervous before the first meeting of the high-profile, multifaith, multinational body convened to draw up the Charter. Until, that is, the first speaker got up and said, "We must include a sentence saying that we, that religious people, have failed." Everyone agreed, nodding, says Armstrong with a grin. "As soon as I heard that, I thought, ‘We're going to be all right.'"

Michael Brunton is a writer living in London who agrees with Voltaire on the necessity of god and gardening.

It was a bit more than 38 years ago today...

Photo and caption by my brother Paul: August 1971. A car that today you'd most likely see as a rusting hulk in a junkyard or vacant lot, and clothes in a Goodwill. My brother and sister-in-law pose with their 1967 Datsun Bluebird parked on my father's garage ramp on Walnut Avenue in Larkspur, California. All kidding aside, I think they're both pretty snappily dressed, and her expression is pricelessly inscrutable. My Kodachrome slide.

Will and Jack

Will wonders how other California friends are making it through this storm. As for me I'm curled up with Jack the Ripper, or more precisely a marvelous audio book of Patricia Cornwell's meticulously researched and grippingly told "Jack the Ripper: Portrait of a Killer Case Closed."

My summer reading: Late summer 2009

I found these three recently-published books of special interest, one because I've found meditation desirable but a difficult path to follow until I discovered Thich Nhat Hanh/s Walking Meditation many years ago, and this latest version with its CD and DVD recharged me; the second because while i959 was special to me because I graduated from college and did a year of graduate study in San Francisco, no one had examined that year's pivotal influence until Fred Kaplan's 1959: The Year Everything Changed; and third, because even though I have lived in the Sonoma Valley for four years now, Jonah Raskin's Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating, and Drinking Wine in California re-catalyzed not only my joy of living here but also my joy of being a Californian!

Walking Meditation, by Nguyen Anh-Huong and Thich Nhat Hanh (Sounds True, 2006)
Walking meditation is meditation while walking. We walk slowly, in a relaxed way, keeping a light smile on our lips. When we practice this way, we feel deeply at ease, and our steps are those of the most secure person on Earth. All our sorrows and anxieties drop away, and peace and joy fill our hearts. Anyone can do it. It takes only a little time, a little mindfulness, and the wish to be happy. –Thich Nhat Hanh

Here are two ways to practice walking meditation, by Thich Nhat Hanh:

We can practice walking meditation by counting steps or by using words. If the rhythm of our breathing is three steps for each in-breath and out-breath (3-3), for example, we can say, silently, “Lotus flower blooms. Lotus flower blooms,” or “The green planet. The green planet,” as we walk. If our breathing is two steps for each in-breath, and three steps for each out breath(2-3), we might say, “Lotus flower. Lotus flower blooms.” Or “Walking on the green planet. Walking on the green planet,” for 5-6.

We don’t just say the words. We really see flowers blooming under our feet. We really become one with our green planet. Feel free to use your own creativity and wisdom. Walking meditation is not hard labor. It is for your enjoyment.
–Thich Nhat Hanh

When you begin to practice walking meditation, you might feel unbalanced, like a baby learning to walk. Follow your breathing, dwell mindfully on your steps, and soon you will find your balance. Visualize a tiger walking slowly, and you will find that your steps become as majestic as the steps of a tiger.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

1959: The Year Everything Changed, by Fred Kaplan (Wiley, 2009)

There's something very off-putting about a hyperbolic title. The more the author trumpets the earth-shattering importance of his premise, the more the skeptical reader is likely to growl: sez who? But it would be wrong to let the title — or even the occasionally supercharged rhetoric — of Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Fred Kaplan's book put you off his fascinating, fact-filled look at this seething cauldron of a year:

"1959 was the year when the shockwaves of the new ripped the seams of daily life, when humanity stepped into the cosmos and also commandeered the conception of human life, when the world shrank exponentially, when outsiders became insiders, when categories were crossed and taboos were trampled, when everything was changing and everyone knew it — when the world as we now know it began to take form."

As we stand on the cusp of what will no doubt be 10 years of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Sixties, with countless commemorations of society-altering events and occasions, it is salutary to be reminded that even the most revolutionary decades don't begin crisply according to rigid calendar categories. We all know that the Beats of the 1950s paved the way for the Beatles and hippies of the 1960s, and Mr. Kaplan gives us a colorful and memorable account of their antics during 1959. But what makes his book especially interesting is the host of other truly pivotal events that he spotlights, running the gamut from art to politics, from literature to jazz.

The year certainly began with a bang: On just its second day, the Russian Lunik 1 rocket "sailed past the moon, and pushed free of Earth's orbit, becoming the first man-made object to revolve around the sun among the celestial bodies." In the next decade, the space race between the Americans and the Russians proved one of the most competitive aspects of the Cold War rivalry, but also undeniably the most fruitful, culminating only 10 years later with Neil Armstrong's moon landing in July 1969. Today, with the Cold War gone but not forgotten, Americans and Russians work together manning the International Space Station, something unimaginable 50 years ago.

All sorts of barriers were breached. Mr. Kaplan points to John Cassavetes' independent feature film "Shadows," first screened in New York on Nov. 11, 1959, as opening up American movie making beyond Hollywood's hegemony and unleashing countless quality independent homegrown films to compete with Europe's and Japan's. Landmark court cases involving D.H. Lawrence's novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and a film based on it effectively ended censorship of written and dramatic material, no matter how titillating. In movie house and publishing house, all bets were off henceforth. And not just there: Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl were cavorting in nightclubs saying words that would have been unthinkable in public not long before. And if things were not quite that dramatic or groundbreaking in the world of art and music, Mr. Kaplan points to the opening of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City on October 21 and to the efforts of Jasper Johns, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong and Berry Gordy in this year.

Undoubtedly, the most far-reaching innovations of 1959 were the development and clinical trials of the birth control pill and the introduction of "a new device that would change the world as profoundly as any invention of the 20th century — the solid integrated circuit, or as it also came to be called, the microchip." In the latter case, there is no question of hyperbole: How can one overstate the changes ushered in by this particular invention? But, as Mr. Kaplan writes, the ability of women to control their reproduction was scarcely less revolutionary: "The Pill freed women to control not only when to have children, and how many, but also what to do with their lives."

It is not necessary for us to accept Mr. Kaplan's thesis to appreciate, enjoy and be enlightened by all that he has packed into this volume. What seems beyond doubt is that much of what happened in 1959 had very far-reaching consequences, well beyond the decade of the 1960s which they ushered in:

"This dual tension between 'unknown opportunities and peril,' as [John F.] Kennedy put it, did much to spark the creative energy of the era. It marked the onset of a new era in modern history, when — for better and for worse — nothing seemed out of the question, no option definitely foreclosed. Life's hairpin curves could be avoided through various means — drugs, therapy, denial, or dropping out. But those who immersed themselves in the voyage experienced the thrill and vertigo that came from streaking across the edge of a tomorrow that might bring miracles or catastrophe in an instant — a tomorrow that still haunts us today."

In these words with which "1959: The Year Everything Changed" conclude, the exuberance of Mr. Kaplan's prose shows itself not to have been worn down in the process of writing his book. But undeniably the ripple effect of those innovations of 1959 is still disturbing our universe for better and for worse and show no signs of dying out anytime soon.

Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating, and Drinking Wine in California, by Jonah Raskin (University of California Press, 2009)

Author Jonah Raskin labored on an organic farm in Sonoma, California, to write his new book Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating, and Drinking Wine in California. He commingles his reporter's notes with personal memoir in this quest for "health, harmony, and a sense of place." The

journey transforms him into a slimmer, near-vegetarian locavore. He comes to understand that the key to sustainability is to eat food raised close to home and grown organically.

Raskin says, "I did not intend this book to be about politics or economics." That is a concept so quaint as to be humorous. The only thing more political than the issues of farming, organic food production and environmental sustainability is Karl Rove's Blackberry. No matter how delicately Raskin wants to tiptoe around politics or economics, he is discussing Mexican farm labor within 22 pages, California land value within 31 pages and soon thereafter, farm collectives, food co-ops, agribusiness, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), the Department of Homeland Security, labor raids, pesticides and other such socio-economic considerations. Raskin is no stranger to political topics. He reported extensively on California's marijuana cultivation business throughout the 1970s and he has written books on such incendiary figures as Abbie Hoffman and Alan Ginsberg. In spite of Raskin's non-political intent, he states (at least twice) throughout his book, "I believe that the hands on the hoes in the fields are connected to the hand on the knives and the forks at the dinner table." Not exactly destined for a bumper sticker, however it does capsulate a world view.

In Field Days, Raskin presents himself as a skilled note taker rather than a brilliant wordsmith. He knows his strengths and weaknesses. He displays no false modesty when he says, "I never do know how to use the terms that wine writers use, though I have written about wine and wineries for magazines since the 1980s." He demonstrates the point by rather feebly describing a boutique Zinfandel as "amazing" and moving on. Raskin's book reads like assiduous notes more or less randomly fleshed out. There is no unifying narrative thread to follow, no dramatic arc to travel. The many Somona residents who populate Field Days have personalities, but we learn too little about them to have an emotional stake in their outcome. We are still being introduced to new people on the fourth to last page. This is a bit of a ramble, but rambles can be enjoyable.

Raskin frequently is possessed to describe the clothing of his interview subjects and the impulse is entirely baffling, as the attire is never more remarkable than jeans, t-shirt and a baseball cap. Unless your subject is wearing leotards, a cape and a mask, it probably isn't worth mentioning. While this type of empty calorie detail is served, we are often left begging for more nourishing information at other passages in the book. For example, Raskin interviewed a farmer who "kept a record of the compost he added to the soil, and about compost he spoke rapturously. From the way he described its texture, color, smell, and weight, you might think compost was the food of the gods." And that's it. Nothing more about that rapturous description. Just nouns, the bare bones. No adjectives, no similes, no spice. How would we think compost was the food of the gods with nothing more to incite our imagination? Come on, give us something to develop that manna-like texture, color, smell and weight. We can take it.

On a substantive level, Raskin may be a bit light-headed and heavy-handed on the topic of locally grown and consumed produce. The most glaring example is his approach to the Whole Foods market chain. We are told that Whole Foods is an evil corporate giant to be shunned. However, we are never actually told why. From his interviews, the employees seem happy, the executives seem committed. Raskin is given access to all aspects of the Sonoma Whole Foods store with the exception of the kitchen for safety considerations, but for that hindrance Raskin insists Whole Foods is not to be trusted. He appears to have forgotten mentioning 200 pages earlier that Whole Foods loaned a Sonoma organic farmer $50,000, with which she installed an elaborate underground irrigation system, as part of the company's "program to rely less on distant suppliers and generate more produce from local farmers." This doesn't sound the least bit evil or corporate. In fact, it sounds quite compatable with Raskin's "hands on the hoes" sensibility. Yet, we are told absolutely nothing more about this sponsorship program. Remember, this is a personal quest and not investigative journalism. Field Days is best appreciated when held to this less demanding standard.

Raskin's personal quest is what is important here. "Going back to the soil--planting, harvesting, weeding, and cultivating--changed what I prepared in my kitchen and how I prepared it," he observes. "Farming changed my feelings about food any my rituals of eating, whether by myself or with friends." If it takes a ramble to reach this most admirable end, so be it. Enjoy the ramble.

My Summer Reading, early summer 2009

I find these three recently-published books of special interest, one because I'm a brother, the next because it reprints fabulous food writings from a great "lost" WPA file, and the last because as I get older I want my American history to be people-centered, truer, and if it's written for young people, that's even better.

"Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry" by Andrew Blauner (Editor), Frank McCourt (Foreword)

Novelist Frank McCourt’s rollicking essay detailing each of his brothers’ strengths and weaknesses is a fitting introduction to literary agent Blauner’s assortment of sibling ruminations. First up is the friendly fire exchanged between Benjamin and Fred Cheever, who take turns volleying their opinions on each other and how they separately perceived their upbringing in the shadow of a Pulitzer Prize–winning father. In "Secrets and Bones," Rolling Stone writer Mikal Gilmore reflects on the nature of family ties—a "fidelity born of blood"—during a bittersweet reunion with his "relinquished" brother Frank. Ethan Canin’s "American Beauty" touches on the frivolity and melodramatic intercourse of family. Tobias Wolff’s recollection, one of the best in the compilation, examines the "shambles of a summer" spent with his brother Geoffrey in the wake of their father’s nervous breakdown. David Sedaris offers an amusingly over-the-top, potty-mouthed family fable. Coming to terms with his brother Robert’s harrowingly sad mental illness becomes Jay Neugeboren’s key to happiness. David Kaczynski dissects life with "Unabomber" brother Ted as he describes the drastic repercussions of Ted’s cumulative psychological deterioration. Insisting it was "veneration" and not rivalry, Chris Bohjalian describes his motivation in mimicking his brother’s younger years, while rivalry certainly propels Daniel Menaker’s footnote-laden tale of family dynamics. Blauner (co-editor: Anatomy of Baseball, 2008, etc.) closes the anthology with a hilarious interview of Nathaniel and Simon Rich, who animate the push-pull fraternization of close-knit brothers. An accomplished paean to brotherly love. (Kirkus Reviews, April 2009)

"The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal" by Mark Kurlansky

A remarkable portrait of American food before World War II, presented by the New York Times–bestselling author of Cod and Salt.
Award-winning New York Times–bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America: Before the national highway system brought the country closer together; before chain restaurants imposed uniformity and low quality; and before the Frigidaire meant frozen food in mass quantities, the nation’s food was seasonal, regional, and traditional. It helped form the distinct character, attitudes, and customs of those who ate it.

In the 1930s, with the country gripped by the Great Depression and millions of Americans struggling to get by, FDR created the Federal Writers’ Project under the New Deal as a make-work program for artists and authors. A number of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Nelson Algren, were dispatched all across America to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people. The project, called “America Eats,” was abandoned in the early 1940s because of the World War and never completed.
The Food of a Younger Land unearths this forgotten literary and historical treasure and brings it to exuberant life. Mark Kurlansky’s brilliant book captures these remarkable stories, and combined with authentic recipes, anecdotes, photos, and his own musings and analysis, evokes a bygone era when Americans had never heard of fast food and the grocery superstore was a thing of the future. Kurlansky serves as a guide to this hearty and poignant look at the country’s roots.

From New York automats to Georgia Coca-Cola parties, from Arkansas possum-eating clubs to Puget Sound salmon feasts, from Choctaw funerals to South Carolina barbecues, the WPA writers found Americans in their regional niches and eating an enormous diversity of meals. From Mississippi chittlins to Indiana persimmon puddings, Maine lobsters, and Montana beavertails, they recorded the curiosities, commonalities, and communities of American food.

Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times–bestselling and James A. Beard Award–winning author of many books, including Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World; Salt: A World History; 1968: The Year That Rocked the World; The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell; The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America’s Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town. He is the winner of a Bon Appétit American Food and Entertaining Award for Food Writer of the Year, and the Glenfiddich Food and Drink Award for Food Book of the Year, as well as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

"A Young People's History of the United States" Howard Zinn With Rebecca Stefoff

Now in paperback with illustrations, this is the new, revised, and updated single volume young adult edition of Howard Zinn’s classic telling of American history. A Young People’s History of the United States brings to US history the viewpoints of workers, slaves, immigrants, women, Native Americans, and others whose stories, and their impact, are rarely included in books for young people. A Young People’s History of the United States is also a companion volume to The People Speak, Zinn’s forthcoming televised series, adapted from A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States.

Beginning with a look at Christopher Columbus’ arrival through the eyes of the Arawak Indians; then leading the reader through the struggles for workers’ rights, women’s rights, and civil rights during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and ending with the current protests against continued American imperialism, Zinn presents a radical new way of understanding America’s history. In so doing, he reminds readers that America’s true greatness is shaped by our dissident voices, not our military generals.

"Food, Inc.." Vs. "Food Fight": Two complementary views of the American food scene

Both of these new films deal with contrasting aspects of food in America:

"Food, Inc." presents a disturbing and unflattering look inside America's corporate controlled food industry. A fim by Robert kenner, it exposes America's industrialized food system and its effect on our environment, health, economy and workers' rights. Learn about these issues and take action through the Hungry For Change cafeteria and check out the 10 Simple Tips for making positive changes in your eating habits. Learn more about these issues and how you can take action on Takepart.com.
www.youtube.com/watch

In the ’60s, a revolution began—a political and culinary revolution. For years, America’s industrial food suppliers relied more on convenience than taste and nutrition. Taxpayers funded this unhealthy food policy, which made Americans overweight and led to an increase in diseases, such as diabetes. Chris Taylor’s brilliant and insightful documentary is fascinating look at the beginnings of California cuisine and the food activists who returned taste, nutrition and pleasure to our plates. “Eighty-five percent of cooking is finding the ingredients.” Those words spoken by Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters over 30 years ago sparked an organic food movement that we still enjoy today. Alice set out to find food with taste, and in that process she found that growing organic was the only way to go. She has not only inspired some of the greatest chefs in the world but also created a community of organic farmers and suppliers.
vimeo.com/2156254

The Meaning of Death in Buddhism, by Shirley Galloway

The Meaning of Death in Buddhism
Shirley Galloway
1992

Experiencing the death of a loved one, or witnessing the death of others, can be one of the most profound events in one's life. Especially in Western culture, death is something we pretend does not exist. We are constantly encouraged to hold onto life, and even if we're with someone we know is dying, the subject is rarely, if ever, mentioned. Never acknowledging this universal experience of the unknown is like an individual who admits he has a mind but not a body, or vice versa; in short, by hiding from such an inherent part of life as death, we deny ourselves a truly integrated understanding of life's possibilities and its meaning. Buddhism has a lot to say about the role of death in human life, as well as its true nature. Death can be a teacher. Only in facing death, those of loved ones and our own, can we be free from the fear of it and learn the lessons it has to teach about life.

I lost my mother four months ago. She was 52 years old and no one realized how ill she was. I don't think she even knew. In fact, she had been to the doctor just days before and the doctor had diagnosed her as having a bladder infection, and sent her home with some antibiotics. She died two days later in her bathroom from sepsis, a toxification of the system, resulting from a blocked and inoperative kidney. The bedside scene we always envision when contemplating the death of a loved one never came into play. She died alone and I, along with the rest of her family, never got to say goodby, or communicate one last time how much we loved her. Trusting in some sort of design in the universe, I hope her spirit is safe in the care of higher beings and involved in a process constructed to guide the millions of people who die and leave the planet every day. I am left here on earth to cope with loss, regrets and grief, and with the gut realization that death is present, a pervasive reality, and it has now changed my life forever.

Buddhism addresses the subject of death, and I will only deal with a small portion of the Bhuddist texts called the Dhammapada. The texts of the Theravadin school of Buddhism are collectively known as the Pali Canon. The Pali Canon is divided into three sections: the Vinaya (the disciplinary rules governing the daily behavior of monks), the Abhidhamma (the psychological writings which postdate the historical Buddha's lifetime), and the Sutta (the discourses of the Buddha). The Suttas are, in turn, sub-divided into five sections. One of these, the Khuddaka Nikaya, is comprised of fifteen books, and the best known is the Dhammapada. Loosely translated, Dhammapada means the "path of perfection," or the right path of life which leads one to the supreme Truth. In section 20 of the Dhammapada, I found some verses that seemed to speak to my situation:

286 "Here shall I dwell in the season of rains, and here in winter and summer"; thus thinks the fool, but he does not think of death.

287 For death carries away the man whose mind is self-satisfied with his children and his flocks, even as a torrent carries away a sleeping village.

288 Neither father, sons nor one's relations can stop the King of Death. When he comes with all his power, a man's relations cannot save him.

289 A man who is virtuous and wise understands the meaning of this, and swiftly strives with all his might to clear a path to Nirvana.

These verses clearly call attention to our powerlessness when it comes to death. It sweeps through our lives, often without warning, and nothing can prevent it. They also point out how most people hide their heads in the sand, pretending death will never affect them, that this life will go on forever. After reading this, I realized it was true; I never thought my mother would be taken so suddenly and so soon. I wanted to turn back the clock and tell her so many things that, now, I will never be able to say. Grief over the loss of someone I love so much has, over the past months, opened me up, deepened my understanding of how temporal life is and how much more important people are than anything else. My heart was torn open, and I experienced my own humanity perhaps more than I ever have. Life has an urgency now, I feel impelled to enjoy others more fully, to assess my time carefully, to be in the present as much as I can. I must be in this moment because I will never have this moment, with this person, again. But my new awareness is not the Nirvana that is mentioned. What does Nirvana have to do with death, and can Buddhism give a more precise idea of what death is?

In section 2, I found a somewhat startling verse:

21 Watchfulness is the path of immortality: unwatchfulness is the path of death. Those who are watchful never die: those who do not watch are already as dead.

I understood some sense of this verse because of class lectures. The watcher is that kernal of pure awareness possessed by every human being that transcends every other aspect of the human experience. The watcher, or witness, watches us think, watches us feel, it watches everything we do and everything we experience. By watching ourselves experience we gain a certain detachment from the experience itself, and with this detachment comes freedom. But here, it is claimed those who connect with the watcher in themselves never die and those who do not are already dead. This is different from physical death, or is it? When so much of what human beings are has to do with consciousness, can it be that a life lived without this awareness is like death because we are only half alive, and life lived with this awareness makes it possible for us to carry this awareness with us into death? Perhaps the freedom the watcher imparts has something to do with it. If one is free from willing certain things to happen or not happen, one is open to a wider range of possibilities. Keeping oneself open to the experience of death also allows one to let go into life. By cultivating the watching of everything that happens, one can make sure they are as fully present as possible in each experience. One becomes very awake, and this is an awareness that death cannot affect. Even death can be an O.K. experience.

This idea is confirmed and expanded in section 18:

237 You are at the end of your life. You are going to meet Death. There is no resting place on your way, and you have no provision for the journey.

238 Make therefore an island for yourself. Hasten and strive. Be wise. With the dust of impurities blown off, and free from sinful passions, you will be free from birth that must die, you will be free from old age that ends in death.

It seems that when we think of dying, we think of losing the little "I," the ego, along with all the things we've built up in connection with the ego. The stronger the ego is, the greater the fear of death. But if the ego has already been abandoned during life, when we face death, "Death, where is thy sting?" This is where Nirvana seems to fit in, for the ultimate abandonment of the ego is Nirvana. Both death and Nirvana seem to entail the letting go of the ego. Buddhism is often perceived as a religion whose aim is nothingness. But can't nothingness simply be the absence of everything we do know of to make room for the unknown? The more I have thought about it, the more I see the similarities between death and Nirvana. Perhaps Buddha did not define Nirvana as "something" because no concept or experience we could ever have could approximate or represent it. Nirvana can only be described by what it isn't. It is an experience beyond the limitations of the human mind, and beyond the phenomenal world. So it is with death. Deathis the closest concept we have of the unknown, of nothingness, the opposite or negation of life as we know it. It is so frightening because it is so mysterious and inexorable. Therefore, death can be a teacher, because it brings home to us life's temporality, its ultimate illusory quality. Viewed from the center of consciousness called the watcher, or from its ultimate fulfillment, Nirvana, Buddhism offers us a place from which to perceive life and death as two parts of the same temporal experience.

Section 18:

255 There is no path in the sky and a monk must find the inner path. All things indeed pass away, but the Buddhas are forever in eternity.

Buddha says life is suffering, caused by desire. To end the suffering, we must end desire. From a greater perspective, death causes pain because of our desire for life. We fear death because we hold onto life. Here, the folly of attachment is brought into the sharpest relief, because we know the body is as sure to die as it was born. Death is all around us. We will die and all the people we love will die. Understood this way, the only sensible course of action seems to be to seek that state where death cannot follow: Nirvana, the state of being awake. This is how Buddhism addresses the issue of death, and it has an intuitive, practical logic to it.

I cannot help wishing I had been able to discuss these ideas with my mother.

Bibliography
Levine, Stephen. Who Dies? New York: Doubleday, 1982
Mascaro, Juan. (Translator). The Dhammapada. New York: Penguin Books, 1973.
Saddhatissa, H. (Translator). The Sutta-Nipata. London: Curzon Press,1985.

www.cyberpat.com/shirlsite...-budd.html

Thoughts from Buddhism on a wintry day

As we age, having seen many cycles of birth and death, there is a detachment and a wisdom that grows within us. - Jack Kornfield

Tribe.net's continuing glitches: February 14, 2009 edition

Messages between me and tribe.net :

Re: Most of our photos blew out in this latest tribe offline incident today!
Hi folks~
I hope you get things rectified soon!
Will

On Feb 14, 2009, at 11:12 AM, Tribe.net Premium Support wrote:
We're not sure to what you're referring. We don't seem to be having an offline incident. We are in the process of migrating our servers and we've created a second set of image cache servers and it is possible there was a cache sync issue, but everything seemed to go smoothly. Yours is the only complaint we've got. Any more details?
-Tribe

To: Tribe.net Premium Support <premium@tribe.net>
Subject: Re: Most of our photo blew out in this latest tribe offline incident today!

It must have been during that window that the images were down. Things look fine now. Perhaps you don't hear from more people because either (1) they're so used to tribe problems they no longer bother and/or (2) they haven't bothered to avail themselves of finding an email address they can reach you at.

Will

Now, it's happening again! Don't hesitate to contact them at premium@tribe.net where they usually answer promptley. They need to know!

Some Buddhist wisdom from my !* Over 70 *! tribe

As we age, having seen many cycles of birth and death, there is a detachment and a wisdom that grows within us. Jack Kornfield


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