Simply saying..

In an interview on Revelation TV, Professor Dawkins is invited to comment on the presenting pastor's own moment of revelation.

He describes a variety of somatic phenomena including, hypersensitivity to colours and sounds, an impression of invulnerability in combination with insignificance and euphoria. These are apparently his principle reasons for belief in God.
Whilst always having been a Christian, he chose his professional pathway at this point.
In countering Dawkins' gentle suggestion that there may be more than one explanation for these issues, none of which need be paranormal, the pastor responds;

'I am just a simple man Richard.. Not an Intellectual like yourself'.

More in the spirit of a rant than a blog entry I must address this pastor and all others I have heard make such ill considered statements. Claiming 'Simplicity' has no virtue. We are all 'Simple men', the more for taking a reasoned approach when discussing such matters.

A step by step, evidenced based enquiry is a much simpler process than fitting a God into the gaps in your knowledge. I have no need of a god since the gaps I have in my understanding are simply filled by learning.

 How refreshing it is to sometimes stumble upon believers who are willing to consider alternatives to magical thinking and assumption. They exist in numbers. Their variety as great as any philosophically minded people.

We share the potential for intellectual inquiry, please try not to substitute assumption for understanding.  Education is not scary when you open your mind and religion is no substitute for intellect and cultural experience. No need to fear. Celebrate your cerebral self!

Palletable

Those who follow my Twitter feed will by now be fed up to the molars with posts about my conversions. Apologies to you all..
In a similar vein to the Woodstore from a Packing Crate post, I include Pallet to Table. Our house is now surrounded and perfused by the reclaimed. I make no apology for this.

 

I was enthused about this conversion, to the extent that I didn't stop to think about a 'step by step' Photo Story. Rest assured, the beat up character of the table ably reflects the beat up nature of the source materials. I hardly had to make any mistakes at all!

Poenoia

Turn out the light and close the curtains Mabel.
Take off the candle from the kitchen table.
Inform the dog and cat we want no fuss
best lock them in the scullery 'till it's just us.
We want no visitors, we need no help
and still that dog lest he lets out a yelp.
The cat may scratch, so best we pull her claws
and tie the socks on him, on all his paws.
Best tack some carpet to the doors
no, wait, that's leaving none for on the floors.
We're best sat here and not go out again
and don't you breathe until I count to ten.
No wait, you breathed, I need to count to ten again.

An older document reprinted without apology.. Musings on a dream with some footnotes..

A very proper dream.

Here is a new place.  I am sitting in a large auditorium.  I am in the gods, looking down a steeply raked group of seats towards a small bright screen below.  It is showing a film but I am unable to make out which one.  The seats are covered in red velour or velvet and there are shining brass safety rails separating the seating blocks.  Just in front of the screen two larger seat groups are turned to face the audience.  There are couples in these seats , smiling at our view of the screen and obviously enjoying their experience of our enjoyment.

I am aware of a number of important facts about my presence.  I am to be given a present or award.  I am careful not to betray my knowledge of this, as one may be, given info about a surprise birthday party.

I have a briefcase on my lap.  It has a loose cover of leather and no amount of effort can replace it properly once opened.

The film has become live action.  The cast are now live and approaching audience members.  Everyone is having a good time.  I am happier than I have been for a long, long time.

A very tall, well built, good looking woman, appearing to be of Mediterranean origin with dark thick hair and tanned complexion, climbs up the rake towards me.  She is wearing an upper face mask and headdress.  It appears to be of Mayan or Egyptian design, bird like, dark, painted.

She speaks,  “Come on, Me-mon. Follow me now.”  I pause, simply to ask myself where she had got my name but understanding completely who she means and who I am.  We walk down the steps to a blood red curtain covering an exit.

Outside, in the pre dawn light.  I see a smooth grass area.  Just too small to be a field and too large for a lawn.  There is the hint of sunlight coming purely from the low horizon and, for the present, it is blocked by the bulk of a titanic mountain.  This is remarkable in its placement and material.  This is no more or less than a vast boulder, pale stone but rising sharply to a peak straight out of the grass and without plant life upon its sides.   I am forced to turn a full ninety degrees in either direction before I lose sight of this monument.

I turn to face the inhabitant of this place.  I know who I am to see.  Walking towards me, another woman.  Older than my guide and yet equally beautiful.  She has long, thick grey or light blonde hair ornately plaited and twisted about her head and an oval symmetry to her face.  Her frame is draped in (and wears) a ground kissing dress made from raw silk or cotton.  Unbleached and thick, it is decorated with barely discernible designs quilted and smocked into the breast and hip panels.  A wide loose rope of the same material somehow informs the dress which way to fall whilst also supporting the woman’s right hand.  Her left hand keeps time with her walk and loosely grips the knotted end of her belt.

The sun breaks cover, a shaft of light hits the ground just in front of me.  A sound like no sound ever heard happens from all around and from within me.  My local companion looks straight at me and tears begin to fall.  Rain from her lower eyelids.  Her tear ducts are almost visible.  There is no reddening of her skin or eyes.  The sound becomes  (not louder) clearer.  More important, my companion is recognisable now as my mother.  She has no name, but I have.  It is not Richard.  I put my arm around her.  I am aware of the height  difference as my shoulder measures the extra space that the angle of my arm demands.  I begin to cry too.  This is a mutual outpouring of grief but no grief is felt.  We are vessels for emotions, courier passengers on an aqueduct of sorrow.  The music rises and moves with us as we walk away from the mountain.  As we depart, it seems more understandable and recognisable as a kind of ensemble, mostly brass, Gamelan perhaps.  I feel very much at peace.

An older man appears.  He has the calm and reason of a Buddha whilst also seeming mischievous.  He wears robes of a similar cloth to my female companion but in a darker colour.  I am impressed by how similar to the colour of heather or lichen they are.  It is on the tip of my tongue to suggest that he has used roots or moss to dye his cloth but feel unwilling to talk, for fear of breaking the very tangible peace of this place.  The man indicates that I lie on a curved wooden couch.  It is upholstered in the same red cloth as the seats in the auditorium.  There is a soft filling to it, more accommodating than feathers but definitely organic.  Moss perhaps.

The older man speaks, I hear his voice internally.  He has a statement about my reason for being in this place.  I was right.  By this time I had forgotten the surprise that I had anticipated earlier and I was gifted with a powerful regeneration of this impression as he talks.

“Here’,  he holds out a sheaf of papers, ‘I believe you will grow to love this place..” I examine the gift.  It is a brochure or prospectus of sorts.  “Go here.  It is easily found”.  He turns away from his new task of covering me up with the same rough cloth and addresses my newly arrived son Nathan. He is delighted by a book of tear-off vouchers for amusement rides.

Nathan shows me how to use the vouchers he has been given.  Each one corresponds to an area on the prospectus.  An area delineated by faint, sepia ink.  The legend on the front cover describes the opportunities available within the place.  We are offered access to other times and other places, a kind of temporal and cultural theme park, like a museum but infinite in its scope and possibilities.  And driven by dreams.  As the place begins to fade and become unstable, we are deciding where we should go….

Here are a few thoughts about this one.  I am often struck by the clarity and apparent meaning in my dreams but this seemed somehow different.  It lacked that definable, manipulable quality that other lucid dreams I have experienced have had.  I was in the presence of other people to a far greater extent.  I was a welcome guest in the place.  In my exploration of the symbolics or meaning of this experience, I started with Brewers Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable, looking for my Dream Name.

Me-Mon or Meh-Moon. The Mediterranean woman who became my guide was unequivocal.  This was my name.  I felt no surprise at her usage and would have looked around to see who she meant if she had used Richard.

From Brewer:

Memnon Prince of the Ethiopians, who went to the assistance of his uncle Priam, and was slain by Achilles. His mother Eos was inconsolable for his death, and wept for him every morning.  The Greeks used to call the statue of Amenophis III., in Thebes, that of Memnon. This image, when first struck by the rays of the rising sun, is said to have produced a sound like the snapping asunder of a chord. Poetically, when Eos (morning) kisses her son at daybreak, the hero acknowledges the salutation with a musical murmur. The word is the Egyptian mei-amun, beloved of Ammon.  I think that the key words and phrases here are:

·         Inconsolable

·         Wept for him every morning

·         struck by the rays of the rising sun

·         sound like the snapping asunder of a chord

·         Egyptian

·         mei-amun

·         musical murmur

Over the last few days, I have been considering a couple of items in the news.  In particular, the discovery of a ring of stones in Egypt, two thousand years older than the Great Pyramid of Cheops and of significant astrological importance.  Also, the sunken lake in Antarctica, a possible time capsule.  Remarkable in this era of intrusion and desecration because the scientists who have found it are unwilling to explore it.  They are worried that their examination will become contamination.  I am very much encouraged by this and it has forced many thoughts about our rights as temporal explorers. As a child, in my first school, I was often left alone by my teacher.  She was confident that, so long as I was reading, I was learning.  The material she had to offer me was mostly Victorian and Edwardian text of an “improving” nature.  I feasted on the Greek and Roman Myths.  My favourites included Achilles and Oedipus.  Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.  The Laocoon, Prometheus, Pandora. I believe that I have been privileged to meet Eos and inhabit the same space as Memnon.  I have no idea why this should happen.  I am very glad that it has.  I would prefer not to look too closely.  I think that this is somehow important.  That is enough . More understanding will come in time, I am sure.

Thunderhead.

Sat watching a Thunder Beetle.. How so tiny a head contains sufficient neurones to effect decision making consistently amazes me. Then I remember the proportionate size of our brains and shake my enormous head.

Split

I knew a woman once whose talent lay

in splitting apples in a special way.

Inserting thumbs between the stalk and flesh,

she’d twist her hands and, making fun of physics and the mesh of atoms that composed the whole, 

the apple would perform a joke and with a crack, would lose control.

And split. 

From front to back.

Latterly, physics.

A Boy. Mull.

When an object moves sideways, horizontal or parallel to the source of gravity, at a constant velocity, the effect of gravity on the object is independent of the object's lateral movement.

So, whilst engaged in a pre decided battle of maths with my nemesis in the main body of the school, cold winter afternoons were spent in far more enjoyable and understandable ways.

Physics was taught in post war Prefab buildings known as the 'Huts'. Concrete and steel bunkers set in wasted playground space, just low enough to be scaled in rubber soled shoes. Just narrow enough to prevent the concealment of a prone schoolboy hiding on the asbestos roof, from the police.

In retrospect, it is tempting to think that the Art, Physics and Music that were taught in the huts were more liberal and humorous sessions due to their physical distance from the great toad squat bulk of the main school. Less likely than internal classrooms to receive visits from the rector or prefects bearing bad news and/or summonses. More close knit and comfortable due to our sense of isolated camaraderie.

On initial inspection these were cold and forbidding places, The Huts. For years, I assumed that the enthusiasm of the teachers who inhabited them was due to their adventurous spirit. I now realise, it was due to the meanness of spirit demonstrated by senior staff that demanded young, newly qualified and enthusiastic teachers start their careers in isolation. Away from central heating and out of earshot as their classes fell into chaos. They seldom did. 

I like to think that the imposition of discomfort backfired on the seniors. As many of them languished in tedium in over heated, musty oak panelled classrooms, we and our near contemporaries in teaching robes were kept sharp and playing together outside. Altogether healthier learning environments.

My weekly boarding home. Kilbowie Hostel.

Keen eyed readers may have already discerned the foundation of my physics lessons was couched in the fascination afforded by Lily Cowan's bust, its movement and the lack of it. It was the sideways movement that fascinated me.

In primary school, my voracious reading had revealed basic facts about the physical universe. Lily's provision of Victorian and Edwardian reading books gave a fabulously diverse view of the world and our influence on our small lunar system. Distances were expressed in Rods Chains and Perches. Weights in Pecks, Bushels and Grains. Friction was demonstrated by the burning wooden axles of Greek slave driven carts tumbling downhill from battles purposely lost and Gravity by Newton sitting waiting under an apple tree. The significance of mass and attraction interested me. I had read of the Galileo falling weight experiment and was not impressed by Newton really. Galileo had gone to the trouble of climbing the Tower of Pisa and dropping weighted spheres. Newton merely sat and waited for the truth to appear from nature. Or so I was told by the editors of these Readers.

Dropping the balls. Pisa.

A Buoy. Mull

For me, Gravity was already something wonderful and mysterious. (enhanced by the bending of a rubber sheet by cricket balls as shown on Open University programmes by doctor this or that, looking for all the world like a member of ZZ Top). I had a sense of it's purveying all our space and spaces. Bending time and light. I understood the nature of Red Shift and the Doppler effect, absorbing these from stories by Clarke and and Asimov, watching the sky and sea become one peach glow as the sun set over our loch, emptying the world of its horizon and unifying all my simple theories.

The day our teacher showed that gravity exerted more effect on dropped mass than lateral travel I realised the germ of my lifelong affection for the little things that make a difference. In Lily's sweep across the classroom floor, no movement north to south could be discerned but expansive sways to left and right bore simple witness to these forces and their effect on momentum. The appearance and disappearance of her pearl and heather brooch beneath her cardigan, a measure of the speed and moment of her carriage.Lily was a walking accellerometer. A Pilotless coastal freighter. Plying the same course, day in day out and teaching all the time. Whether she knew it or not.