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Early on a Sunday morning and the coffee shop is devoid of life. A man walked in slowly, old brown leather suitcase in his left hand. Fulfilling the usual rite of passage at the counter, he turned and walked steadily toward my table. I realised he had spoken only as I realised he had stopped by the vacant chair opposite me. I looked up apologising for making him repeat himself, as I took my headphones out of my ears. He asked if he might sit down at my table. I found it a strange request bearing in mind every other table in the room was unoccupied; but he seemed polite, unremarkable, bland even, so I gestured toward the chair, inclined my head in permission and replaced my headphones.
A minute later, I realised his lips were moving, he was talking to me. I was not going to get peace, so the headphones were once more detached. I smiled uncertainly, he was asking me a question. “Are you a civilian in this army town?” My reply was guarded, but given. “I spent a bit of time in the legion he said” I nodded and smiled; this person in front of me, the legion, my thoughts and my reaction to his statement were at odds. He went quiet again, took a sip of his coffee and then reached down to his suitcase then standing firmly by his feet. A little unsure I sat back a touch, he caught my movement and offered a nervous smile. The suitcase, now open on the chair, was full of the detritus of a traveller. This is someone who barely touches ground at home I thought.
He reached in to a pile of photographs, took just the very top one and placed it on the table in front of me. ‘That’s me’ he said as I looked down and saw a well worn snap of four men in full FFL uniform, standing with their weapons against a backdrop of pure sand. I looked up at him, trying to find similarities between the lined face before me and the image on the table. It was impossible, it could have been anyone. I smiled, and I think he knew my doubt. He reached back into the suitcase and placed a second photo on the table; ‘I don’t know how to live my life now’ he said as I found myself staring at a photo that was clearly this man sat at my table, standing shoulder to shoulder with a fellow legionnaire and smiling the smile of someone with a deep happiness.
I didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter. The photos kept coming. He talked to me for more than three hours, of his life and the loss of his sense of belonging.
He was only passing through; he doesn’t settle, he doesn’t know how to.
He is possibly the most interesting person I have met in a very long time.
The point? Never judge a book by its cover.

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contagious curiosity

feynmanR

Part eccentric, wholly genius and as a friend of mine excitedly stated the other day “He’s cooler than Snoopy!”; we should all pause to listen to this man’s infectious, radiating enthusiasm for the scientific side of life.

Ground-breaking and inspiring, with a speaker’s ease; Ladies and Gentlemen I give you, the late, Richard Feynman. A man who found wonder and beauty in every single thing.

Richard Feynman – Ode To A Flower from Fraser Davidson on Vimeo.

Or, if you prefer something with a little more drama, there are a mere 4 days left to catch The Challenger on BBC iPlayer. (William Hurt doesn’t do too shabby a portrayal either!)

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science . discord . religion . saving ourselves

View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. | NASA Johnson Space Center

View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. | NASA Johnson Space Center

One of the most important things, before any discussion is undertaken, is to define your subject. (Socrates)
So…
Religion
The (Oxford) dictionary states:
The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods:ideas about the relationship between science and religion.
A particular system of faith and worship.
Wikipedia states:
Religion is an organized collection of belief systems, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values.

Science
The (Oxford) dictionary states:
The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment:the world of science and technology.
Wikipedia states:
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

They really are quite bland definitions for two that are so often declared as being diametrically opposed! Yet deeper definitions could be considered subjective, as there can be little that is more personal than someone’s faith.

Impasse.

Sorry Socrates.

Perhaps, if we simply state that science and religion both start with a doubt that the obvious is all there is, then we could agree that imagination must invent what might lie behind the obvious.
If we accept that, then we accept that science and religion do start with the same thought.
It is only when imagination develops into reason, that the two begin to branch out; and it is that fork in the road that causes so much argument.

Yet this discord is not just between science and religion; instead it is amplified by numerous disciplines of science (arguing with each other) and numerous faiths (also arguing with each other).

It’s time we all stopped and really took a look around us.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Because we all share this small planet earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. That is not just a dream, but a necessity.
The time has come to educate people, to cease all quarrels in the name of religion, culture, countries, different political or economic systems. Fighting is useless. Suicide.
His Holiness, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

One is science and looks from the outside in, one is religion and looks from the inside out; but essentially they both say the same thing…
We are what we have to save ourselves.

We’re not doing a great job right now!

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world war tea

World War II | Unknown

World War II | Unknown

A picture speaks a thousand words; this one speaks an entire story in one frame.

And to sit beside it, a tale of true selfless spirit…

“Suddenly along the street, in the middle of the maelstrom, a middle-aged woman – a real East-Ender, the people London was to learn to be proud of – carrying a large wash-stand jug. Beside her was a little kiddie, she can’t have been more than four or five, clutching a handful of tin mugs.
“She came up to us firemen and said ‘Would you chaps like some tea?’ Yes please, we all replied, suddenly we realised how dry were our throats in the gasping heat and smoke.
“Putting the jug down amid the debris, she took the cups from the child and wiped them in her apron, oblivious to the hell around, and then poured the tea. Never did tea taste better…
“But why are you out with your child in the middle of a blitz? She shrugged her shoulders – ‘I thought the men would like a drink. They must be thirsty with all that heat.’
“She took the cups and, with the child at her side, set off towards the dock gates to offer her tea to any man she saw.”
When Jeff got back home he told me he said to his wife, “Where the hell did she get the water and heat the kettle?”

Excerpt taken from:
Are you 17? Vivid real-life story of every-day men and women, who became the fire-fighting saviours of Britain from the World War Two Blitz by Alan G. Sandall (out of print)

I dislike conflict but it is something we all have to deal with, to some degree, at some point in our lives. I do believe that there is usually room to take a better path though; and we should all try to look for it.

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one photo. one poem.

Mirror | Geir Magne Sætre

Mirror | Geir Magne Sætre

I stumbled across these captivating words today.

The Invitation by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

By Oriah ,
from the book The Invitation
published by HarperONE, San Francisco,
1999 All rights reserved