March 2010
ElPasoFishNet
By Randy Limbird
I recently heard the term “cognitive fluency” for the first time. It refers to how easy or hard something is to think about. In general, people don’t like things that are hard to wrap their minds around, so they opt for simpler ways of looking at the world.
We live in a world that is increasingly complex but we grab for the easiest answers.
The most pressing issues of our time become matters of personal opinion governed by political stereotypes. What you believe about global warming, for example, is more likely to be based on whether you think money-grubbing corporate slimeballs are raping our planet a la Pandora in “Avatar,” or godless liberals are fudging the data so they can topple free enterprise.
Even in matters of faith, we opt for easy answers. We condense our creeds into bumper stickers. The appeal of fundamentalism is that it has all the answers and leaves little room for mystery. Certainty based on ignorance is more comforting than doubt based on earnest soul-searching.
One of my favorite bloggers is Canadian artist/pastor David Hayward who writes under the nickname “naked pastor.” A recent post at nakedpastor.com related how the more he learned about God, the more mysterious God became. God was like an iceberg: the more you saw of it, the more there was that you didn’t see.
I love that analogy, because it defies the typical way we approach mysteries. We think we can learn more and more, and whittle that riddle down to something we can grasp. But the mysteries of faith call us to a greater and greater understanding of how much we don’t understand. That also means that faith and reason are neither opposed nor totally compatible. Reason defines this box we live in, yet also points us to something beyond that it can never measure or master.
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One of the mysteries I wonder about each spring is whether the poppies will blanket the east side of the Franklins once again. For the last few years I’ve used poppy images for the cover of every March Scene, but all that comes up is a smattering of the golden flowers in the foothills.
From what I’ve been told, there’s a certain timing of winter rain and/or snow required to wake the dormant seeds buried on the mountainside so that they will burst forth in March. When it happens, it’s as if the desert has been sprinkled with fairy dust.
I’ve lived here 24 years and I can only recall two or three real explosions of poppies. One came months after an extensive brushfire on Castner Range that may have actually nourished the wildflowers in the spring. Then they waited a few years and suddenly reemerged like a botanical Brigadoon.
I thought of the poppies recently when I was listening to a talk given by religion writer Cathleen Falsani. She used the Celtic term “thin moments” to describe those experiences when God seems to touch our world and transform it for an instant. These are moments we cherish, yet cannot control or re-create. Just like poppies on a desert mountainside.
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My wife and I love to watch “Sunday Morning” on CBS, which is by far the most thoughtful and creative news show offered on any television network. On the Feb. 21 show, reporter Steve Hartman interviewed three people by randomly choosing a spot on the globe, traveling to the city nearest that spot and then picking a number at random from the phonebook.
One of the interviews was a blind man in his 70s living in Rewari, India. He earned a small wage milling grain and lived happily in a home of 13 family members. Even the great-grandchildren gladly helped him when needed. A remarkable detail was that the household, which included two sons and a grandson working at different businesses, kept a single bank account.
Here was a simple Hindu family living in spiritual richness that humbled us watching half a world away, surrounded by affluence that paled in comparison.
Randy Limbird is editor and
publisher of El Paso Scene. Comments??Send them to randy@epscene.comEl Paso Scene MONTHLY
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