exercise for writinglives


i see my life as a road, oftentimes as a straight road without
crossroads or branches. but now i know better, many times there have
been roads-not-taken, paths for some reason i didnt pursue. not a
cause for regrets as much as a cause to stop and contemplate what
could have been.

the army marks the first BIG crossroad. leaving the parental home
forever behind, even to the point of mailing home the clothes you
started the path in, so everything you owned at that point came from
the army. but i met alma and we had 2 kids while i was in. so how bad
could it have been? almost 5 years and a good story of how you can
manipulate the organization to get what you want without paying
anything in return. and of course the major leason: without
possibility of failure you eliminate the chance to succeed as well.
they are a matching pair, life requires and even demands both.

the second x-road was getting out and finishing school, back on the
regular straight and narrow, but i soon fell off, into seminary. both
going into and leaving theology school was the 3rd x-road. certainly i
had the best possible education at ucsd and later at westminster, i
just wish money hadnt raised it's ugly head and i could have finished
seminary. but kids ended up beating the books, despite their names.
(my kids are named for the author of whatever book i was reading when
my wife went into labor, we have a calvin, augustine irenaus, justin)

part of the falling off the customary middle class bandwagon of the
good life in the suburbs with a nice intellectual middle class job was
travelling in a school bus with 6 kids for almost 10 years, selling
stuff at swapmeets, reading at the local libraries during the week. i
enjoyed it but eventually mandatory school laws caught up to us and we
settled down in tucson. so the 4th was a period of trial and testing,
the family endured, the kids grew up sanely, kindof anyhow. the final
product remains to be seen as the youngest is 18.

so that makes 5 cross roads, now in tucson, with a job repairing
electronic items like tv, computers, vcr's i went back to school.
worked on ba in computer sci, electrical engineering. compilers,
developmental bio, or AI, i wouldnt exchange those classes for any job
memories.

and the 6th, quitting it all to travel in china for 3 summers. what a
place, an amazing culture the chinese. worth every moment to travel
and to see it. sure wish my wife wanted to chuck it all and go there
to teach english for a few years. there still is time, maybe that will
be the 7th turning point to mark my time here on earth.


so 6 times i've turned, at least 6 times opened up new possibilities
while closing off the old. a branching path that is me and to an
extent those i helped to come into this world of branches and
decisions and cross roads of the living.

exercise for writinglives
writinglives


pg 9 "if you have never kept a journal, this may be the time to begin"



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There are several bound plain page journal books staring down at me
from the top book shelf. Each has a few pages written on, with widely
scattered dates. Mute evidence of a desire to keep a journal and the
lack of discipline to care out this desire.

My folks died a couple of years ago. Their deaths became a peak event
in my life like parent's deaths are/ought to be in most people's
lifes. You know someone well who is no longer here, and the fact that
you are next becomes more inescapable then it was when your
grandparent's died. An event you observed more than participated as
you watched your parent's grief for their's. Watched your parent's
come to grips with their mortality. I bring this up because at that
time i looked at my regrets, the things i ought to have done but
didn't. Gladly my regrets were negative, often i have seen friends
more concentrated on the positive type of regrets, those things they
did they wish they hadn't. This positive type are much harder to
change then the negative.

Well, top of my list two years ago was journal keeping, and guess
what? I still don't keep a journal. Some life changing event-huh. I
had even better motivation as a few years back i decided to read
biographies of a few of my favorite people. Looking to answer the
question of why a few people seem to get so much done in their lives
while the masses of us get so very little really accomplished.

Two attributes stood out--- letter writing and journal keeping. Both
seem to do the same thing. They allow an ongoing dialogue with
yourself and maybe others. Time to reflex, time to re-examine.

I hope this book will re-inspire me to write, to keep a journal.


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there is my first 5 minute exercise.

post to:the highway

I am bothered by an issue and would appreciate some help sorting out the strings of thought involved.

In it's bluntest form the question is why does science progress and theology just sit there?

Part of the answer seems to involve the certainty of the knowledge in each discipline which would be part of the epistemology of each. But the more i think about certainty i am led to the idea that the reason revolves around how to change someone's mind.

In science, since K. Popper, most scientists would believe that scientific propositions must be falsifiable in order to be scientific.
This is to force new information to be constantly corrected, verified, etc. All with one objective in mind, widest possible acceptance sphere. That is if anyone can disprove the idea they are welcome to do it. Therefore the knowledge that the community holds in common has a very high level of acceptance and consistency between it's members. Since anyone is free to dispute and to prove something is wrong and not eligible for inclusion in the canon.

In theology the constituent communities are so much smaller, all striving for universality(maybe even claiming it), but nothing approaches the size and shape of the scientific communities. The knowledge is held in almost the opposite format as well. Creeds, confessions etc are worded positively, that is what you must believe to be true, to be inside. But the big difference is what happens if you disagree. In science there is a freedom(if you can be heard!), to show that the general consensus is wrong, and in the process change everyone's mind. In theology the community splits if the issue is big enough, sides line up and the vote is taken. Why?

Science appears monolithic, theology divisive and fragmented. Is this an issue of epistemology? or of sociology?
The crucial issue appears to be how to change people's minds about the central, important issues. How to modifiy the canon? Is there a substitute for continuing revelation?

books working on for the barnes-noble online class on evolution
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monad to man

shattering the myths of darwinism

evolution a theory in crisis

the monkey in the mirror

evolution the triumph of an idea

the structure of evolutionary theory
becoming human
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