Natalia Antanova writes “I Obectify Men” on Feministe:

I know this doesn’t sound terribly progressive of me, but I think some objectification is healthy, whether one is male or female. I believe that both male and female desire should have a place in our discourse - which is why so much of my professional work is dedicated to football and footballers and footballers’ legs. It is all quite serious. Stop smirking.

I do think that because of power differentials, objectification of women more readily becomes a springboard for abuse, and worse. But I do think that there is a genuinely OK way of expressing one’s appreciation for someone else’s physical body and/or persona (and hell, a beautiful mind can be just as sexy). And I want more women to be comfortable with expressing their views on men and women that they find attractive, and even be superficial about it. [...]

Let’s talk about sexuality, spirituality, and the AIDS epidemic. I’ll be a member of a discussion panel of religious leaders, community leaders, activists, and authors meeting July 10th from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Capitol Hill Library in Seattle.

The forum is sponsored by the Absurd Reality Theatre, the group putting on “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches”, the award-winning play by Tony Kushner. The panelists will use Kushner’s “gay fantasia on social themes” as a springboard to discuss the place of the gay community and persons living with AIDS in contemporary American spirituality.

Elite: representing the most choice or select; best: an elite group of authors. By the usual definition, America’s political candidates are unquestionably elites. They are the victors of the modern primary system, one of the most challenging contests ever invented.

A post today by Matthew Yglesias makes me want to shout: can everyone please stop pretending that our leaders are not elites? And by “everyone” I mean principally the GOP political operatives who try to convince Americans that their opponents are elites, unlike their own …

… John McCain is an all-American regular guy who, like most people, earns his keep by marrying an heiress. Like average, everyday folks the McCain’s rely on credit cards to make ends meet month-to-month “Cindy McCain charged as much as $500,000 in a single month on one American Express card and $250,000 on another, while one of their two dependent children had an AmEx card with a monthly balance as large as $50,000.” Yes it’s true, one of McCain’s dependent children spent approximately the median annual household income of the United States in a single month and that’s how McCain knows how to connect with regular people.

Similarly, Mrs. McCain “favors suits made by the German designer Escada, which typically retail for around $3,000 a pop” so she understands that most Americans welcome Wal-Mart’s discount prices. And like many Americans, the McCains are very effected by developments in the real estate market, since “trusts and corporations controlled by her and her children spent nearly $11 million between the summer of 2004 and February 2008 on three condominiums in Phoenix and a pair outside San Diego.” The McCains understand that these days many young people graduate from college saddled with debt and need a helping hand, that’s why they spent “$700,000 for a 1,900-square foot, three-bedroom loft condo for her then-22-year-old daughter Meghan McCain” after she graduated from Columbia. Similarly, they know all about problems with inflation since they “increased their budget for household employees from $184,000 in 2006 to $273,000 in 2007, according to John McCain’s tax returns.”

The blogger behind one of the brighest lights in the Episcopal/Anglican blogosphere has decided to move on to new projects. I miss Father Jake’s insight and humor and enthusiasm already, and wish him every success as he retires from blogging.
Sadly, he cites his frustration with the toxic rhetoric in the Church as one important reason [...]

“If all the roads end up in dead ends, you will be shown the secret paths no one will comprehend.”

Thanks for the link, Mark Shea.

“As soon as you do this breathwork, it instantly projects you back into that time-space that you once existed in, out of space-time which is so alluring, distracting, and disillusioning. This is the preparation for what is to come.”

The spiritual journey takes many forms, from paths marked by gradual evolution to crises requiring cataclysmic upheavals. Integral theory says that faith changes over time from prerational to rational and transrational perspectives. But much as I hate to question the spiritual path of others whose journeys have been more consistent or more gradual in their shifts of perspective, I find little to recommend in taking the path of least resistance.

I say: be bold in your belief, and even bolder in your unbelief. In my book, the transition from prerational to transrational faith is best accomplished with an extended period of denial, doubt, despair, and disillusionment. In any case, that’s the only way that worked for me. I had to doubt and deny for many years before I ultimately found a form of belief that was completely natural, totally sincere, and — I believe — ultimately true.

When the shift from pre- to trans- is complete, it may be the case that a believer’s preference of terminology has changed. Or perhaps not. The believer may yet utter the same words to the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, Allah, or Shiva. But it’s not the terminology that matters, but the meaning bestowed on the acts of devotion. [...]

The professor decided to pursue the link between the temporal lobes of the brain and religious experience … so he set up an experiment to compare the brains of people with and without temporal lobe epilelpsy…

The experience of Ultimate Reality is ultimately indescribable, ineffable, and irreducibly mysterious. But the theory of spiritual experience is different entirely. Theory translates immediate experience into ideas that can help to orient our mind towards Ultimate Reality. And on the other hand, our theories can impoverish our ability to be receptive to spiritual truths.

Perhaps the most central concept underlying any spiritual worldview is that of the nature of Ultimate Reality itself, and how it is related to the manifest reality. As students of religious thought are well aware, there are three major theories: transcendent (theistic), holding that Ultimate Reality is wholly separate from the world; immanent (panthestic), holding that Ultimate Reality is completely identified with the world; and panentheistic, holding that the world is “in” the Ultimate Reality, and that Ultimate Reality is both immanent and transcendent.

Snakes represent the very essence of transformation, birth, death, and rebirth. It’s the serpent of Kundalini that rises up the spine…”

“Roger, I’m coming!!! …Roger, run!!! Roger, no. Roger, I brought you here. Roger, I betrayed you. Roger, come back!!!”

I know too much about unusual, prolonged itching sensations that don’t respond to seemingly exhaustive medical treatment. I’ve had itching take control of my life to the point of hopelessness, despair, and suicidal thoughts. That’s why upon discovering this article my eyes practically bulged out of my skull and my eyes traced the lines on the page as fast as lightning.

I’ve experienced a few pain sensations in my life that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy (acute pancreatitis probably the worst), but itching is not pain. Itching can be worse than pain, far worse, and far less susceptible to treatment. The experience of being “itch free” — which happened for me as recently as nine or ten months ago — is the greatest feeling in the world. Here’s another person’s experience with itching (and hers makes my problem seem like a walk in the park) …

It was still shocking to M. how much a few wrong turns could change your life. She had graduated from Boston College with a degree in psychology, married at twenty-five, and had two children, a son and a daughter. She and her family settled in a town on Massachusetts’ southern shore. She worked for thirteen years in health care, becoming the director of a residence program for men who’d suffered severe head injuries. But she and her husband began fighting. There were betrayals. By the time she was thirty-two, her marriage had disintegrated. In the divorce, she lost possession of their home, and, amid her financial and psychological struggles, she saw that she was losing her children, too. Within a few years, she was drinking. She began dating someone, and they drank together. After a while, he brought some drugs home, and she tried them. The drugs got harder. Eventually, they were doing heroin, which turned out to be readily available from a street dealer a block away from her apartment. [...]

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“Stop going and advising people without asking (that’s what the Bible says). Give only when asked. We cannot bend the world. When the world is not ready to receive your ideas, don’t force them.” — Swami Satchidananda

Hat tip to GetReligion.

The media frequently discusses all the controversy and potential schism in the Episcopal Church because of its gay-inclusive stance (the election of Gene Robinson as bishop and so forth), so you would think that this is a body in turmoil, at war with itself. But in fact, the Episcopal Church may be gaining a competitive advantage in the Protestant church “marketplace”. More people than ever are aware of the Church and know that it is an open and welcoming community, and one not afraid to take bold progressive stances even at great cost. Father Jake notices this too, and writes in “Positive Fallout From Anglican Crisis”:

In this neck of the woods, when in collar, most folks assume I’m Roman Catholic. When they find out I’m an Episcopal priest, not only do more seem to know what such a creature is than in the past, they are curious to know more about us. Within the congregation, I can never recalled talking so much about the Anglican Communion in response to questions in all of my 18 years as an ordained person. [...]

Eugene Robinson precisely summarizes my ambivalence towards the Supreme Court’s ruling on handgun rights. Here’s how his Washington Post op-ed concludes:

I believe the Constitution is a living document that has to be seen in light of the times. I believe the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, was right to infer an implicit right to privacy, even though no such thing is spelled out. I think the idea that the Founders’ “original intent” should govern every interpretation of the Constitution is loony — as if men who wrote with quill pens could somehow devise a blueprint for regulating the Internet.

But I also believe that if the Constitution says yes, you can’t just blithely pretend it says no. Yesterday’s decision appears to leave room for laws that place some restrictions on gun ownership but still observe the Second Amendment’s guarantee. If not, then the way to fix the Constitution is to amend it — not ignore it.

[...]

“Wherever you live there’s beauty, beauty that resonates with that particular part of the world … and it can be the smallest, simplest things … tasting a blackberry or seeing a hummingbird. The smallest things can bring you to the sense of awakening to the moment into your own essence and brings a stillness into the moment where you realize that this moment in itself is full and complete…” — Brian Piergrossi

As my readers are aware, I’ve completely redone my Web presence this month, merging my previously separate home page, the Until blog, and the Whole Writing blog. Some of this work is still in progress, including an update to my blogrolls (links to other blogs and frequently updated news and opinion sites). My lists contain links that I like to monitor. I read my favorites every day. I try to check in on the others once or twice a week.

I would love to have your help in suggesting new additions to the blogrolls for my next update in July. The blogs don’t all have to be “integrally informed”, and opinions range from fundamentalist to new age, conservative to progressive, friend and foe. Why don’t you suggest a link or two in the comments of this thread or by dropping me a line? By all means, feel free to nominate your own site if I’ve missed it. (And if you have a site and would rather that I linked to a different URL, please give me the update.)

Here are the lists as they currently stand: [...]

Originally posted on August 19, 2007. Note: Most of this post was originally composed via a method of stream-of-consciousness writing called a Whole Write. Be on the alert that there are a few moments of letting my shadow out to dance. Read at your own risk.

John wants me to define involution. So I wrote this.

What do I mean by involution? What can’t you guys get out a fuckin’ wikipedia or get out a fuckin’ dictionary? Oh, I suppose you want my definition. Well, since you asked … Any moron can see that involution is the metaphysical process by which the Absolute or God or Brahman involves itself in creation through a series of manifestations, generally regarded as a sequence of stages of enfolding. Evolution is the opposite of involution, so generally what we know about involution is by inference: it is what evolution is NOT. In terms of concepts within time, evolution may be fruitfully viewed as a process of emergence out of the Spirit, so you can say involution took place before evolution. On the other hand, you can also say that involution does not take place within time and therefore it makes no difference whether involution precedes or follows evolution or occurs simultaneously.

Got that? If you don’t, I’m not surprised. It’s rather abstract to me, too. And apart from placing involution within the context of a fully fleshed out metaphysical edifice such as Sri Aurobindo’s, it’s tough to really speak about involution and come away feeling satisfied. It’s easier for me to feel like a moron. And yet I feel called to speak about involution because it’s part of my own process of self-discovery and self-realization. Metaphysics is a layer of abstraction, an overlay, that attempts to interpret personal religious or spiritual experience. (As I use metaphysics, it’s always provisional–my best effort at explanation within a plethora of socially and culturally created contexts.) For example, I may have a sense of connection to nature, for instance, and this may show up as the belief that Nature with a capital N or Gaia with a capital G is a mystical Oneness which is not separate from the self with the little s. You probably do something like that, even if you don’t call what you do metaphysics.

If you’re trying to wrap a layer of theory around evolution — and that’s what the 20 tenets of all holons is — that’s what Integral theory is all about — that’s the perennial philosophy and most of theology in general whether it knows it or not — then in large part you’re trying to make sense of your own holistic development: the various processes that led you from where you were as an infant to where you were as a toddler, then a child, then a school age kid, then a teenager, then a young adult, and then an adult, and then a middle-aged adult and then… Evolutionary theory is, in large measure, an attempt to grasp the process of development. So involutionary theory is, at least for me, an attempt to grasp the process of regression. [...]