Idealist

Sometimes I forget how great idealist.org is. This is a reminder to all of you: if you're looking for a job, or something to do, or any other way to improve the world - it's really great.

The bird in the tree on the rock in the void

This morning at breakfast people were talking about moon phases and tides and things. Afterwards I sat in meeting for worship trying to visualize it all. If the sun is here and the Earth is here, the full moon is out there on the other side, so the tide is pulled away from the sun . . . I looked out the window at the wet grass on the hill in front of the meeting room. In the tree next to the building a bird was singing.

Suddenly it seemed miraculous. We are on a globe of rock, flying around in space, orbiting a flaming globe and orbited by another globe of rock. And conditions on our rock are such that there is wet green grass on the hill and a bird singing in the tree. Because I usually don't think of myself as living on a rock flying through space, it's easy to forget how elegant it all is.

Unplugged

I'm amused and disturbed by the way new technology makes people unhappy when they don't get it. A few decades ago people got upset about technological intrusion when Pendle Hill put phone lines in the dorm rooms, but now people get all malcontent if they can't have free wireless. The other night some of us were sharing about how our days had been, and one man said meditatively, "I'm feeling really disconnected from . . ." I expected this sentence to end with "my family" or "the people around me" or some such thing. But no, it was "wireless internet in my room. There are so many things I feel I'm missing out on."

This morning my kitchen helper didn't show up to his job at all, and when I saw him at lunch I asked him what happened. "I'm so sorry," he said, "I slept in until eleven. I was up all night trying to get the wireless in my room to work." Tip: don't tell this to the woman who no longer has a computer of any kind and who got up before dawn to cook the breakfast you didn't eat.