Gaia Anyone?

I tend to believe that we live in a clockwork universe, where God created everything, "wound it up," and then pretty much vanished from the scene to wait for time to run out. Otherwise, I think, if God somehow actively participated in the world where natural disasters routinely take thousands of lives, she'd be complicit in murder. But she did leave us the free will to channel her love into the world.

Another idea occurred to me a few days ago. What if she does actively participate in this world? What if the Earth is alive, and has its own free will that is respected by God?

This isn't a new thought. Some believe in Gaia, the "child" of the Gaia hypothesis first posited by ecologist and environmentalist James Lovelock in the late 60's. He believed that the Earth is a superorganism, a single organism composed of other organisms such as its atmosphere, oceans, crust, polar icecaps, fauna, flora, etc. He named this superorganism Gaia, after the Greek goddess of the Earth.

Some folks ran with the spiritual/mystical aspect of the hypothesis. Many believe that not only is Gaia alive, but that it's a sentient being. Thus would Gaia have the choice to be good or bad, as do we. God's love could flow through Gaia as through us, giving God not only the power to act through our hearts, but through the heart of Gaia as well.

I know...far out stuff, but it begs the question: If there is a tragic disaster, is Gaia making a choice to be evil or just letting its systems play out according to its nature? Do we ever "let our systems play out," or do we have a choice in each action that we take? Can there be sentience without that choice?

I'll just have to wonder. Whenever a tornado diverts radically from its track towards a town - is it the Earth being kind?

Guilty Pleasures

This is where I confess to reading comedy websites, either gross, politically incorrect, sarcastic, ironic, parodic or just generally -ic.

The Borowitz Report
Cracked.com
Fark.com
Mark Fiore
The Onion
Weird Universe

If you need a quick comedy fix, after carefully glancing around to make sure no one can see what you're snickering at, these should do it for you. Some are brilliant satire, while some are just demented. Enjoy!

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Spencer Johnson asked that in his thoughtful and clever (and unread by me) 1998 book Who Moved My Cheese?. But even the implications of that question frighten me. I've always been afraid, clutching my fear to me, afraid to lose what I'm so familiar with, even though it's mostly shaped my life for ill.

I've always been discouraged easily. I'll start or plan to do something and either get paralysis by analysis, or I tell folks I got depressed and just couldn't go on (back of hand to forehead as I gaze stoically into the distance). The depression part is true some of the time, but mostly I'm just afraid to change anything: being fat, being physically & emotionally disabled, being diabetic, being a host to several other diseases and disorders. It's what I'm used to.

I could change most of these things for the better by pursuing weight loss by way of the gastric bypass surgery I wrote about in the last post. But instead I dick around telling people I'm in an depressive episode and/or I'm trying to deal with more pain issues that usual. They're both true at the moment, but how am I to pursue the surgery to the end if I even balk at the beginning?

What would I do if I wasn't afraid? I might be thinner...many of my physical and emotional problems might be partly or fully resolved. I might be an author, a poet, a musician, a teacher. There's no telling what beauty might find expression through me, or what unfamiliar fears will come to challenge me. Perhaps I'll be strong enough then to face them fearlessly, learning what lessons they bring, and then moving past them.

What would I do if I wasn't afraid? I might probably, finally, be alive.