Pilgrim Blessings for Us All

My good friend, Ron Angert, a Jew who converted to Christianity, has begun a walk on the Camino de Santiago. His trip has taken him from Blacksburg, Virginia to Paris via Atlanta, and on to Morocco. 

After visiting Rabat the capital of Morocco he is in Marrakesh, Morocco where he visited the Berber Museum, displaying a culture of which I knew nothing. 

http://jardinmajorelle.com/ang/introduction-to-berber-culture/

From Marrakesh he plans to fly to Barcelona and then bus to St Jean Pied de Port, France from where he will begin his 770 km (478 mile) hike to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, believed to be the resting place of St. James the Apostle.

Ron is going to post daily entries of his travels at https://theotherjew.blogspot.com/  

Already his blog has made me more refined and cultured, granted my refinement is just above an East Texas Big Thicket swamp. Most important the blog has provided and will continue to provide a spiritual lift.

Before he began his walk (known also as the Way) Ron's church pastor, Morris Fleischer, sanctified his trip with the Pilgrim Blessing found on the Camino:

As you follow the Way

May God bless you with discomfort at your own easy answers, half truths, superficial relationships, so that you will learn to live deep within your heart.

As you walk

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people so that you will fill your heart with the desire for justice, equality and peace.

As you carry your load

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that you will reach out your hand to comfort them and change their pain into joy.

As you enter the Cathedral at Santiago

May God bless you with the foolishness to think that you can make a difference in the world, so that when you return home you will do the things which others tell you cannot be done."

May all of us on our Way to sanctification receive these blessings.

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Just after finishing this entry I read an editorial in the August 27, Wall Street Journal quoting a television address of Mohammad VI of Morocco who said, in part: 

I call upon [Moroccans living abroad] to be always among the first to defend peace, harmony, and coexistence in their countries of residence....The terrorists who operate in the name of Islam are not Muslims. They have nothing to do with Islam, and jump on the bandwagon to justify their crimes....

You Never Know What a Call May Bring

Two decades ago I gave motivational talks. Following 911 several of my presentations were cancelled thus ending my word-of-mouth marketing. A busy psychiatric practice and hospital duties drained the enthusiasm for rebooting. I was soon forgotten by meeting planners.

Somewhere along the way I lost a fourteen page booklet, The 3% Solution: Proven Techniques for Rising to the Top During Times of Change, containing pearls of wisdom that I had labored over for many an hour. I couldn't find the computer disk either. I combed the filing cabinets and storage bins, the closets and book shelves. No joy.

Heartbroken is too strong a word. Devastated–too melodramatic. Frustrated, perhaps, is the best word to explain my disappointment in losing valued material much of which hadn't been duplicated in other booklets or handouts I had developed.

Then Vance Proctor called. He had heard me speak 25 years ago, we figured. In rummaging through some old files he can across The 3% Solution and decided to look me up and call.

Vance's booming voice, cheery and optimistic, announced the Texan I had met a quarter of a century ago. We agreed that the Texas we knew then was not the Texas we know now. Because we can't hit life's pause button our memories become more special day by passing day. 

Soon we got around to the presentation of long ago. After I told Vance of my loss he agreed to mail a copy. It arrived today. 

Here's an ounce or two of the 3% solution:

• Character Builders: Those Characteristics that Enable You to Love, Work and Enjoy life:
• Altruism––earning your neighbor's love by inspiring good will, gratitude, respect and happiness through service to others.
• Suppression––solving problems instead of ruminating about them.
• Sublimation––channeling frustration and anger into productive work.
• Anticipation––goal directed planning.
• Humor––a twinkle-in-the-eye kindness to yourself and others.
• Wisdom––by studying the scriptures and reading the classics we learn the consequences of bad behavior and the blessings of virtuous living. 
• Integrity––the answers to three questions asked of you (from Lou Holtz):
• Can I trust you?: Always do what is right.
• Do you care about me?: Follow the Golden Rule.
• Are you committed to excellence?: Always do the best you can in all that you do.

After receiving the package from Vance I wrote back, concluding with these words:

Thanks for responding to that  inner voice suggesting that you make an "out of the blue" phone call. Your call was not only a pleasure to receive but I got a bonus gift that I thought was gone forever. When we listen to that quiet whisper from the Holy Spirit miraculous events occur. 

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BTW: If you'd like to hear a funny talk loaded with stories and packed with useful information give me a call. 

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Research clearly demonstrates that an annual vacation significantly cuts risks of most diseases by 20-30%....but more than one out of three fail to use their full vacation times.

Of those who do take full time away from their regular jobs much of their vacation time is spent on activities other than rest and relaxation:

• 19% spend their vacation time on family or personal responsibilities.
• Another 13% spend vacation time going to school, working at another job or participating in reserve military service.
• A fourth of employed adults report checking work email or voicemail while vacationing.
• 20% of vacationers are contacted about work matters during their time off. 

A self-induced increased workload causes deterioration in marriage and family life undermining the main source of non-work related support. Likewise, avoiding vacation time leads to a decline in efficiency and initiative resulting in an increasing spiral of mistakes and complaints from associates and customers. Accompanying poor work performance is the inability to have fun. 

Whether on vacation or at work or at home the ability to have fun improves performance, harmony and health. Here are some tips for enjoying life more:

• Everyday ask yourself, "Am I having fun yet?"
• Be an inverse paranoid: Think the world is out to do you good.
• Surround yourself with people who fill you with joy and laughter.
• Decide to be hopeful and fun-loving
• Don't take yourself so seriously. Those people who take a cosmic view of life cultivate a lifestyle that allows them to tolerate outrageous fortune. They laugh at themselves and their absurd situations.
• Develop a hang-loose philosophy of life.
• Read, listen or YouTube humor regularly.
• Marry someone (or hangout with someone) who thinks everything you say is funny. 
• When a situation becomes stressful pretend it's a joke for YouTube.
• Practice LOL---it's internal jogging.
• Play golf. Golf is just like life---difficult and unfair. Par is 18 laughs a round.  

When we learn to think funny our life becomes becomes enriched with friends and fellowship.

Let's get some communication going between you and me. Click on the comment section below and tell me how you have fun. What do you do on your vacation? (Avoid X or R Rated vacation answers, please). How do you have fun? 

Avoid Email Ambiguity

Email, indeed all forms of electronic messaging, present the most menacing form of communication. Why? Once you send an electronic message you can't take it back. Yes, you can delete it but someone, somewhere probably has it.

Electronic messages can hurt feelings. End friendships. Make a fool of us. The most innocent of messages can be misinterpreted.

Relationship experts tell us that 93% of communication is nonverbal. The tone of voice, the body posture, the eyes indicate more than the words. An email message or a Facebook post leaves us exposed, denuded and stripped of nonverbal cues.

These thoughts were driven home this weekend when a good friend sent a very nice comment about a blog I had written. I replied with thanks and a short "twinkle in the eye" annotation. Later that night I realized my friend might have misunderstood my innocent statement as a put-down, a snub, a barb, a jibe.

You might say, "That's neurotic thinking. It's unimportant. It's a little thing."

Not to me and, perhaps, not to my friend.

To avoid these unintended discombobulations, I considered these options for myself:

• Never send an electronic message that would cause problems if leaked to the general public.
• Avoid humor. What's funny to you may be insulting to the recipient. 
• Remember the sensitivity of others. Just about all of us have fragile egos.
• Keep emails short, concise, pithy. The more you write, the more your ideas can be misread.  
• Delete any sentence that has the slightest possibility of being misinterpreted.
• Never send a critical, harsh, or angry email. Use the Abraham Lincoln approach. When angry Lincoln wrote a scathing message, read it several times, and once his temper had subsided he destroyed it.
• Never write a electronic message out of vengeance or spite.
• Refuse to argue electronically. Indeed no one ever wins an argument.
• Avoid gossip or negative comments about others.  
• Spread good news and goodwill.

Please comment to enhance learning and inspire interaction. We don't know what you are thinking until we read what you write. Did the blog entry bring to mind a personal story you would like to share? Any ideas you would like to contribute? Any disagreements?

Why a Facebook Post Goes Viral

Six degrees of separation refers to the concept that if a person is one rung away from each person they know and two rungs away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, the mathematical progression indicates that everyone is approximately six rungs away from each person on Earth. 

In 1990, an American playwright John Guare wrote the play Six Degrees of Separation that, in 1993, was adapted for the screen. Soon other television and cinema scripts would incorporate the concept, launching the phrase into everyday lexicon. 

The game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon posits the challenge to link any actor in a movie with Kevin Bacon through no more than six progressions.  I tried this using Johnny Sneed an obscure bit actor. At the fourth association he was connected to Kevin Bacon. 

Play this game using any actor or actress. You will be amazed at the connections. 

A Columbia University professor, Duncan Watts, used 48,000 e-mail senders in 157 countries to demonstrate a package delivery to complete strangers around the world. The average number of messages to deliver packages around the world was just under six. 

A study examining data from 30 billion conversations among 240 million people found that the degree of separation before a world-wide connection was 6.6. 

In the book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell compared change in social phenomena with the spread of infectious diseases. Gladwell contends that social actions sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. 

A Facebook entry, a YouTube post, the development of a “must have” product, the popularity of a movie—all these sudden changes---the tipping point can result from social epidemics. 

According to Gladwell, the tipping point in social change results from the confluence of three types of people that he calls agents of change: 

1. Salesmen are charismatic people who have a trait that makes others want to be in agreement with them. I suspect you can recall a relative or friend who could sell cookies to a Girl Scout.
2. Mavens accumulate a wide-range of knowledge and share it with others. 
3. Connectors have a special gift of making friends with just about everyone. 

Randomly take a list of 250 surnames from a phone book. Go down the list and give yourself a point every time you see a surname that is shared by someone you know. The higher the score the more connected you are. Twenty out of 250 surnames is an average score.

Gladwell has given this test to almost 400 people. Of those 400 people tested, eight people found 90 surnames out of 250 randomly selected surnames that were shared by someone they knew. Four out of 400 tested found over 100 random surnames that were possessed by someone they knew. 

Connectors bring to mind a friend of mine, Jeff Savell. Jeff seems to know just about everyone. Go to a large party and over 80% of the guests know Jeff. At international conferences just about everyone from all over the world know Jeff. At a Texas A&M football game the fans in his section, the yell leaders, and the coaches wave at Jeff. The school mascot, Reveille, wags her tail when Jeff approaches.  

Perhaps I exaggerate a little but Jeff’s connector type engenders this apocryphal story: 

Jeff is given a private audience with the Pope. During their meeting the Pope invites Jeff to accompany him on the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square and wave to the huge crowd below. A couple of friends in the crowd look up at the two men waving from the balcony. One asks the other to identify the two people on the balcony. His friend replies, “I don’t know the guy wearing the white cassock and zucchetto, but the man standing next to him is Jeff Savell.” 

We are all connected, perhaps not as dramatically as Jeff, but we are all linked nonetheless. Lets use our connections to spread good will, positive messages, joy, encouragement and love to those we know. Perhaps those Facebook messages will connect to strangers all around the world.

   

      

A Brief History of Islam

With the diatribes, fulminations, and promulgations surrounding terrorist concerns I decided to make up my own mind. If I had known how long it would take to learn so little I would have headed for the golf course and let the debaters’ twaddle rage on without me. But (sigh) I pressed on consuming so much time writing the following notes that I refused to jettison them. So here they are. Bless your critical thinking brain if you read them.

Muhammad born AD 570 into one of the poorest clans in Mecca claimed a revelation from Allah, “the one true God.” Muhammad’s religion became known as Islam, a word meaning, “to submit to God.”  The official designation of a believer became a Muslim.

Muhammad claimed that over a twenty-year period the angel Gabriel dictated the Quran (“the recitation”) to him. The illiterate Muhammad repeated the words from memory; they were later chronicled, reaching the final written form under the third Caliph, Uthman. 

The Quran, divided into 114 suras (chapters), contains four sections:

1. Doctrinal passages concerned with death, resurrection, and judgment.  Martyrs gain entry into paradise.  Rewards go to those who fight against infidels.  Hell consists of fire and acrid smoke.
2. Prophetic stories many of which are adaptations of pagan customs.  Others show evidence of Christian and Jewish influence with alterations to fit the Arabian point of view.  For example, according to the Quran Allah commanded Abraham to sacrifice Ishmael instead of Isaac.
3. Proclamations and regulations: The Quran prohibits alcohol and pork consumption, gambling, idolatry, image making, usury, and asserts that women are inferior to men. The Quran contains 109 verses calling Muslims to war with nonbelievers. Ethical admonitions include compassion and mercy.  The contradiction between mercy and killing infidels remains unresolved.
4. Religious duties, known as the Five Pillars of the Faith, consist of the following:

1.     Prayer must be said five times every 24-hours facing Mecca on clean ground.

2.     Alms giving are expected to represent one-fortieth of a man’s earnings.

3.     Fasting is ordained.  Eating and drinking and all worldly pleasure are forbidden between sunrise and sunset during Ramadan, the ninth month of Islamic year.  Because the Islamic calendar is lunar, Ramadan falls at different times of the year. 

4.     Pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime at which time one must fulfill a series of rituals.

5.     Profession of faith in Allah and Muhammad.

Muhammad inspired his followers to battle by promising them slaves and booty for victory and threatening them with death, destruction, and damnation if they failed to follow his commands. Wanting to convert all Arabs to his teaching Muhammad attacked caravans and laid siege to towns. Convinced that war was a sacred duty his united tribes growing larger with each victory destroyed all who opposed Allah. Men were massacred, women raped, children enslaved.

On June 8, 632 Muhammad died at Medina where his mosque became the second holiest worship site in the Muslim world. At Mecca rests the holiest shrine, a black stone monument known as the Kaaba. 

The third most important Islamic monument, the Dome of the Rock, stands on the site of the original Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. This site commemorates the alleged occasion of Muhammad's ascent through the seven heavens to the very presence of Allah.

Soon after the death of Muhammad Islam split into three major sects:

1. The Sunnites maintain that representatives of the believers should elect the Islamic leader.  They believe that the Sunna –the traditions—supplemented the Koran as a valid source of belief.  Sunnites make up more than eighty percent of the Muslims.
2. The Shiites advocate that Muhammad’s successor, or Caliph, should be related to the Prophet by blood or by marriage.  They hold the Quran to be the only source of truth.  When Muhammad died, the Shiites rejected Abu Bakr, the Sunnite Caliph.  They argue that Muhammad had designated Ali husband of his daughter Fatima as leader.
3. The Sufis adhere to a mystical and ascetic ideal.  They deny the validity of rational judgment, maintaining that truth comes from divine revelation released by torturing the body.

Following the death of Mohammad a great wave of Islamic expansion swept over Asia, Africa and Europe.  When Muhammad died in 632 Islam authority extended over little more than one-third the Arabian Peninsula.  Within a hundred years of Muhammad’s death Islam dominated half of the civilized world.   

Islamic culture left a splendid legacy of original discoveries and achievements:

• Astronomy, mathematics, physics, chemistry and medicine advanced under Islam.  
• Europe adapted the Arabic system of numerals. 
• Muslims expanded algebra and trigonometry beyond Hellenistic times.
• They developed optics and the compass.
• Muslims found uses for alum, borax, sulfuric acid and sodium carbonate.  
• Muslims made paper.
• They developed the art of weaving pile carpeting and rugs and making brocaded silks and tapestries.  
• Muslims inlaid metal work, enameled glassware and painted pottery.  
• They improved farming techniques, terraced slopes and irrigated barren land.  
• They produced cotton, flax, silk, rice, wheat, spinach, asparagus, apricots, peaches, olives, banana, coffee and oranges.
• The songs of the troubadours and love poetry of medieval France were directly inspired by Muslim writings.  
• The Book of the Arabian Nights influenced Boccaccio and Chaucer.   
• The medical writings of Avicenna became the authoritative work in Europe until the late seventeenth century.  
• Medical progress included the description of smallpox, tuberculosis, stomach cancer, eye infections, pleurisy and a variety of nervous conditions.  
• The spread of disease through contamination of water and soil were described.  
• Under the Muslims commerce and manufacturing grew to an extraordinary degree.  
• Muslims developed checks, receipts, bills of lading, letters of credit, trade associations and stock companies.  
• They developed domes, minarets, horseshoe arches and built magnificent cities.

At the close of the first millennium the Muslem Turks (Seljuks) won control of Asia Minor.  The Turks defended Islamic civilization during the Crusades that began in 1096 as a series of military expeditions led by European Christians to drive the Muslims from Jerusalem.  In 1099 the Christian crusaders gained control over Jerusalem.  The Islamic warrior Saladin retook Jerusalem in 1187.  Five years later Richard the Lion-Hearted and Saladin made a truce that allowed Christian pilgrims to enter Jerusalem. 

The Muslin culture declined with the invasion of the Mongols in the middle of the thirteenth century.  By the fifteenth century the Muslim Ottoman Turks prevailed in the Middle East. 

            

During World War I the Ottoman Empire joined Germany to fight against the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Russia and the United States.  Following the war the League of Nations divided the Islamic lands into territories governed by the Allied victors.  Many of the current Middle East countries gained independence in the years between the two great wars.  

Currently several hotbeds of Islamic conflict exist giving the news channel commentators something with which to agitate, fret, and unhinge their viewers.            

Conclusion: It’s a mess. Recommendation: Pray, celebrate life, turn off the news and change the channel to I Love Lucy reruns.

Please comment to enhance learning and inspire interaction. We don't know what you are thinking until we read what you write. Did the blog entry bring to mind a personal story you would like to share? Any ideas you would like to contribute? Any disagreements?