Prospero's Books

This Great Love

Today is the 800th birthday of the Sufi poet Rumi. In honor of the day, Beliefnet has posted a visual and musical meditation, "This Great Love," using Rumi's words. I think you will like it.

A shadow of the greater world

The Cosmic Evolution Survey has produced a map of the "dark matter" of the universe. And Maggie Whitlin, at Seed magazine, has produced a beautiful essay that illuminates the map for me. Here are a couple of samples:

In one sense, the image is categorically sublime. Scientists have taken something that cannot be seen, and they've let us see it. They've not only increased our knowledge of the large-scale structure of dark matter, they've also taken something inherently invisible and given it an accessible beauty. . . .

When science presents us with an image of dark matter, of electron orbitals, of general relativity, of anything fundamentally unseeable, it teases us. The visual draws us in with its incredible elegance; it lets us think for just a moment that the secrets of the universe are spread out before our eyes. And then, as we start to read the text that inevitably accompanies the picture, it hits us: Our eyes will never be as big as our science. Our visual system is the best source of intuitive information, the kind of stuff that we need to survive, but it gives us only a shadow of the greater world.

In the laboratory as well as in the cathedral

The September-October 2007 issue of Science & Spirit includes an interesting brief essay by Francis S. Collins, director of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God. In the essay, Collins calls for a "theology of celebration," in which people with a wide range of beliefs about God can join in celebrating the wonder of existence. He writes

Despite their claims to hard-nosed objectivity, atheists have gone wildly outside the evidence by declaring God imaginary. They are proposing an impoverished perspective that will not satisfy most of their intended converts. For their part, fundamentalists who demand acceptance of a unilateral interpretation of Genesis are making that a litmus test for true faith, which wise theologians over the centuries have not found necessary.

Could we not step back from the unloving rhetoric of these entrenched positions and seek a new path towards truth? If science is a way of uncovering the details of God's creation, then it may actually be a form of worship. Did not God, in giving us the intelligence to ask and answer questions about nature, expect us to use it? We should be able to learn about God in the laboratory as well as in the cathedral. (66)

Shakespeare mapped

Duane, at Shakespeare Geek, has posted a link to a fascinating map of Shakespearean characters based on the iconic London Underground map. The map carries the Royal Shakespeare Company logo, but I haven't been able to find it on the RSC site.

Loss, grief, cruelty, and love

At Theatre Notes, Alison Croggon has posted an extraordinary review of Peter Brook's 1971 film of King Lear. Here's an excerpt:

Watching King Lear now is a different experience from watching it when it was made: our world has changed since 1971. But this film illustrates Ezra Pound's truism that art is "news that stays news". Perhaps what is most shocking about Brook's film - and it remains shocking - is how profoundly it galvanises our present. Gloucester is a prisoner in Abu Ghraib; Lear is a bereaved father in Chechnya or Lebanon. The loss, the grief, the cruelty and the love are all of our own time.

(Thanks to Shakespeare Geek for the tip.)

"Equiknot"

My friend Karmen, at Chaotic Utopia, has posted, as last week's Friday Fractal, a beautiful piece inspired by both the autumnal equinox and ancient Celtic art, especially the "Celtic knot." Be sure to see it both still and animated.

In times of change . . . .

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” — Eric Hoffer

(Thanks to Donna Woodka at Changing Places for the quote.)

Melting the wax tablets

Tim Boucher at Pop Occulture writes

Been reading Epictetus lately, who is absolutely awesome and worth reading. Never heard this before, but apparently students of philosophy in Antiquity used to take notes during the day on wax tablets, which they would then melt down at night. Obviously, this is partly a practical issue if you don’t have paper. But it seems to go much deeper than that, making a statement about the nature of a student’s relationship to knowledge. That is, while you’re learning, your understanding of a subject is being developed. It is not, by any means, final or mature. The act of melting down the wax tablets containing one’s notes on philosophy trains you to detach yourself from your own interpretations and to continually seek the truth.

A time for the natural rhythms of the organism to assert themselves

In his always gorgeous style, Chet Raymo writes:

Walking is the one thing that connects us to the deep past. Food, drink, clothing, shelter, sex, childbirth have all been transformed by technology, mostly for the better. But when we walk, we might as well be on the savannas of East Africa two million years ago. . . .

And later:

I'd rather think of walking as a spiritual activity. It has nothing to do with keeping the body fit, although that may be a convenient side effect. Walking is a time for the natural rhythms of the organism to assert themselves -- limbs, breath, heartbeat, thought -- a smoothly functioning unity honed by natural selection at a time when we were still a part of the natural world, not masters of it.

A death every fortnight

Every two weeks, a language dies. So says the Enduring Voices project, a group whose mission is to

• Understand the geographic dimensions of language distribution
• Determine how linguistic diversity is linked to biodiversity
• Bring wide attention to the issue of language loss

When a language dies, so dies a way of seeing, and thinking about, the world. And right now the world needs all the viewpoints it can get.