Monasticism and doing the dishes

I would like to approach doing the dishes every day with the same kind of attention I imagine a monk using. This is sort of just a useful fantasy - like the SciFi blogger (I can't remember who it was) who approached mundane activities with the fantasy that he was, say, shopping at Target... on Mars! or in a huge undersea mall thousands of feet below the surface!

Though the monk thing is a fantasy on the outside, the inner reality is that the monk is washing the dishes for God, and for others, and *I should be too*. (And that means right now, instead of blogging, naturally! Why do you think I'm thinking about dishes?)

Not eating beef

I can talk a good line about ecology, global warming, and so on, but when it comes down to something I like to eat... it's hard. I am giving up beef, forever (within the bounds of hospitality; if someone serves me beef, I am not going to refuse it, but I am not going to eat it at restaurants, or buy it for myself to cook).

I have privately made this resolution before, without any results. I hope that making this resolution publicly will help me stick to it.

Shinto: Existential vs. Essentialist

I've been reading the book "Shinto: the Way Home" by Thomas Kasulis. The writer makes a distinction between existential Shinto (and religion in general), which is, roughly, Shinto practice, vs. essentialist Shinto, which is the dogma. This is part of a distinction he makes between existentialist and essentialist religion in general.

Shinto, according to Kasulis, started out as a pluralist, local religion without set dogma. After the essentialist Native Studies philosophers created dogmas and fixed beliefs for it, Shinto went on to be used (as State Shinto) as a weapon for the militarized Japanese state.

I'd like to work out what this means for Quakerism but I'm too tired right now. But I think it is relevant to the controversy about "convergent Quakerism". I think a lot of the more conservative Quaker writers on the web want a more essentialist Quakerism; a lot of Quakers are content with the existential version. I'm happy to be a Quaker who just does Quaker stuff, and takes a Quaker approach to life. Kasulis sees Christianity as an "essentialist" religion, at least after Constantine. Some of the Quaker community seems to want to remake Quakerism in that form, more in line with mainstream Christianity.

Applied math, the bomb, the road

I've just started a very good book on applied math, Logan's "Applied Mathematics". It starts out with one of my favorite subjects, dimensional analysis. But...

Logan's very first worked-out example follows:

"...we consider a calculation made by the British applied mathematician G. I. Taylor in the late 1940s to compute the yield of the first atomic explosion after viewing photographs of the spread of the fireball."

I read this within a few hours of finishing Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", his moving post-nuclear holocaust novel. The world after a nuclear war would be bleak indeed, with nearly every living thing dead. Yet in Logan's book (and some other books I've read) atomic weapons are just another interesting technical example. Why is it so hard to look at evil for what it is, when it's technically interesting?

Is this why we (and that means me) can read crime fiction, and be fascinated by the cleverness of the criminal's plans, even as we find solace in the eventual triumph of the detective (spy, policeman, etc.) who sorts things out and delivers justice?

We need to be as clever as serpents, I suppose, but there is a difference between understanding the darkness of human nature, and finding the darkness interesting. Thinking about the mechanics of how fast an atomic blast travels distances us, just a little, from thinking about what it does to women, men, and children. And we shouldn't ever give in to that.

A Postcard from My Father-in-Law

My life trying to push me into action: yesterday I received a postcard from my father-in-law. It's much more personal than an email, and has cool stamps. Even better, it will still be readable when gmail is a dim memory.

Escape Velocity, and Slowing Down.

Continuing my concern with escapist SF reading, it seems to me that reading and "commenting" on blogs on the 'net is the same thing. Yesterday on NPR there was an interview with a Granta editor who has written a book on the evils of email, and the virtues of the old-fashioned handwritten letter.

There are so many people in my life who would like to get a letter.

(ps re-reading this post, I realize that I meant reading and commenting on controversy blogs... like the various political blogs I'm addicted to. I think commenting on personal blogs is ok for me, because they don't seem to feed my internet monster, if that makes sense. But I still need to write letters.)

Why (this) Quaker Should Not Read (some) Novels

I've been reading an 1806 book on Quakers, at A Portraiture of Quakerism. While at first it sounds as though Quakers at the time were against having any fun at all (music, dancing, reading novels, drama, gambling) the arguments there are more nuanced than I expected.

While I'm right there with the author on gambling, I didn't expect to find myself convicted on the reading of novels. Namely, that reading novels makes it harder to read nonfiction:

Their [novels'] structure is similar to that of dramatic compositions. They exhibit characters to view. They have their heroes and heroines in the same manner. They lay open the checkered incidents in the lives of these. They interweave into their histories the powerful passion of love. By animated language, and descriptions which glow with sympathy, they rouse the sensibility of the reader, and fill his soul with interest in the tale. They fascinate therefore in the same manner as plays. They produce also the same kind of mental stimulus, or the same powerful excitement of the mind. Hence it is that this indisposition is generated. For if other books contain neither characters, nor incidents, nor any of the high seasoning, or gross stimulants, which belong to novels they become insipid.

Thomas Clarkson, "A Portraiture of Quakerism".

I've been noticing recently that my reading has been dominated by science fiction with a "thriller" element, that absorbs me and seems to make my nonfiction reading "duller". Much of the nonfiction I read would already seem dull to most people, so this is serious! Also, it pushes me away from spending that time with my family, a much more serious problem.