The Artemis II astronauts; their lunar mission began yesterday. (Left to right: Jeremy Hansen, Canadian Space Agency; NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman. Photos: crew: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani; launch: NASA/Michael DeMocker.)
Did you know that a lunar spaceflight began yesterday, with a crew of four astronauts aboard?
If so, did you care?
I couldn't help caring. As I've written before, space exploration has fascinated me since childhood. But ever since the Apollo project (1961-1972) made lunar spaceflight practically routine, I've been impatient about our next grand goal. After Apollo, low earth orbits just weren't all that impressive. (If the earth's diameter were the height of an average adult male, spaceships in low earth orbit would pass only a couple of inches over his head.) But we've seemingly lacked the ambition and focus to send people beyond those two inches.
It's not that we haven't done some incredible things in space by means of robotic explorers who've already traveled distances that crewed spacecraft aren't likely to reach for perhaps centuries. Some of them, such as the Hubble and JWST projects, have extended our vision into time/space up to just about the theoretical limit of the early universe.
As for money spent on space exploration, our legislators have poured vast amounts into equipment. Since it began in 2011, the Artemis program of heavy-lift rockets and Orion spacecraft has thus far produced two launches, including yesterday's, but it has cost something like US$ 69 billion. The immediate costs associated with yesterday's launch ran to about $4 billion. Despite its bloated costs and gigantic delays, every argument to replace the Artemis launch vehicle with more economical and project-focused alternatives has run up against congressional defenders determined to preserve the associated jobs in their states and districts. These debates have mainly occurred among insiders, because even these astronomical (sorry) costs haven't earned the attention of the ultimate funders—the taxpayers.
(Speaking of human spaceflight expenditures and delays, I won't even mention the problems of the Boeing Starliner.)
The alternatives to those traditional government-owned and -funded programs are the public-private collaborations that produced the SpaceX and Blue Origin spacecraft, among others. But to quote Amy Shira Teitel, "...it's opening the door to an era where NASA could become a contracting agency, funneling its budget to billionaires" instead of providing the leadership and focus of NASA's first decade of human spaceflight and its amazing record of successes in uncrewed exploration.
Again, I share Teitel's concern about the Artemis program in its larger context, if there even is a larger context:
...We have two landing missions or we have four landing missions. Then what? You know, like there's still that big question of what comes after that. And I just feel like we're almost kind of kicking the can down the road a little bit. Like, great, we can have a couple more missions. We can get a bit more science. Um, but then what? We're just delaying having to make a big decision about whether or not to retain this over-budget rocket or try something different or pass it off to commercial partners. It feels like that's an inevitable point that we're going to get to. (From this video.)
Exactly. If we are looking forward to establishing a moon base, as has been proposed, there's not much practical planning evident for how that will happen, given the current maximum of four more Artemis launches (if sticker shock doesn't hit us first!), or even a coherent attempt to persuade us that such a base is a worthwhile project on the way to some specified greater goal.
And I'm sorry, vague references to China aren't enough. President Kennedy at one point suggested replacing a U.S.-only Apollo project with a collaboration with the USSR and other nations. Is anyone designing a 21st-century version of his vision?
In the meantime, I'm following the Artemis II mission more or less constantly, and hoping very much for its safety and success, but I admit that it's not the same unmixed devotion I had for Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
It's been nearly 13 years since Gmail offered automatic classification of e-mails (sorting them into "Primary," "Promotion," "Social," etc.). I appreciated the way this organized my in-box, and I soon began creating filters that would override Gmail's decisions when necessary. Even so, I wondered what Google was doing with the data it must have been collecting to do that sorting of my mail.
More recently, Gmail has been trying to finish my sentences, and has been offering summaries of my incoming mail and my e-mail conversations. It offers to help me write letters.
I posted the following query into Google's search engine:
"Examples of unwanted and uninvited use of AI in our everyday Internet-based tasks (e-mail, for example)." I'll let AI speak for itself (but I'll return at the end).
Note: Google provides the sources of the information and advice in this essay through links in the actual Google-constructed reply to my request.
Platforms are moving from simple "tools" to "collaborators" without always being asked.
It’s a fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) time to be online. We are currently in the "opt-out" era of the internet, where AI features are often pushed live first, leaving users to figure out how to disable them later.
While some find these tools helpful, many users experience them as "feature creep"—unnecessary clutter that interrupts flow or compromises privacy.
1. Communication & Email
This is where most people encounter unwanted AI daily.Smart Compose & Predictive Text: Gmail and Outlook now suggest the end of your sentences. While it saves seconds, many feel it flattens their personal voice or makes emails sound robotic.
AI-Generated Summaries: Some email clients now place an AI-generated summary at the top of long threads. If the AI misses a nuance or gets a deadline wrong, it can lead to costly misunderstandings.
Priority Inboxes: Algorithms decide which emails are "Important." If the AI "hallucinates" that a bill or a personal note is "Promotions," you might miss it entirely. [This happens to me frequently.]
2. Search Engines & Information
The way we look for facts has fundamentally shifted in the last year, often removing the "human" element of the web.
AI Overviews (SGE): Google and Bing now place an AI-generated answer at the very top of search results. This pushes actual websites (written by humans) further down the page and can sometimes present "hallucinations" as factual truth.
Chatbot Sidebars: Many browsers (like Edge with Copilot) now have persistent sidebars that analyze the page you are reading, even if you just wanted a clean reading experience.
3. Social Media & Content Creation
Social platforms are using AI to keep you scrolling longer and to fill gaps in original content.
AI-Generated Commenting: LinkedIn and other platforms now suggest "AI replies" to posts. This can lead to comment sections filled with shallow, automated praise rather than genuine networking.
Feed Manipulation: Algorithms have moved beyond "who you follow" to "what the AI thinks will keep you hooked," often surfacing AI-generated "slop" (synthetic images or low-quality AI articles) in your main feed.
Invisible Editing: Instagram and Facebook have integrated AI tools that can "expand" your photos or remove people from backgrounds automatically, sometimes blurring the line between reality and digital fabrication.
4. Workplace & Productivity Tools
The "Software as a Service" (SaaS) world has integrated AI into almost every text box.
The "Ask AI" Pop-up: In tools like Notion, Slack, or Google Docs, highlighting text often triggers a "Write with AI" button that can get in the way of manual editing.
Meeting Transcription Bots: You may join a Zoom call only to find an "AI Note-taker" bot joined too. This can feel like uninvited surveillance, especially if the host didn't ask for everyone's consent first.
Why this feels "unwanted"
The tension usually comes down to three things:
Cognitive Load: Having to constantly dismiss pop-ups or "X out" of AI suggestions is exhausting.
Privacy Concerns: Users often worry that their private drafts or emails are being used to "train" the next version of the AI.
Loss of Agency: When a tool suggests how you should finish a sentence, it subtly influences your thoughts and communication style.
Even more unwanted! Google's sources did not mention perhaps the most disastrous aspect of AI's invasion into our online lives: the electricity it takes to make those often-unwanted features possible.
I asked Google, "How much additional electricity (beyond what would be used simply by the Internet) is required to power AI?" Here is its full answer. In brief,
AI-optimized data centers require 3–5 times more power per square foot than traditional facilities, with a single AI server rack consuming 50–150 kilowatts compared to 10–15 kW for conventional computing. AI searches use roughly 10 times more electricity than standard, non-AI internet searches, driving a potential 10%–20% increase in total U.S. power demand by 2030.
I admit that I appreciate that AI is probably helping Google process the questions I ask it. Instead of guessing at the best key words and their best order, as I used to do, I can frame my queries in natural language. However, my occasional and voluntary use of AI in this direction is not the same as having it intrude when not invited.
At the end of the original response to my query, Google asks, "Would you like me to show you how to disable some of these specific AI features in Gmail, Google Search, or LinkedIn?" I answered "yes," and it linked to these suggestions.
In the context of ICE and other U.S. Homeland Security officers' abusive behavior, it's not surprising that audiences yearn for evidence that justice is on the way. A whole new AI-powered trope has arisen to meet this hunger: videos of officers making ludicrous and cruel arrests (it happens!) and then getting scolded by angry citizens, business owners, local police, and judges. Here's a YouTube channel specializing in such videos. The channel's front page makes it clear that every video is fictional, a similar note is on each video's individual page, and the videos themselves bear all the typical features of fakes, but the vast majority of the comments on many of these videos are cheering on those righteous resisters. Occasionally there's a plaintive "It's probably AI but I wish this were true."
Other AI-generated videos tell stories of miraculous landings of stricken airplanes, or detailed accounts of Ukrainian drone strikes, and no doubt far worse material ... and we're all paying for the power that's needed to compose these AI fakes, and the mental and spiritual pollution they spread, just when civil society needs true discernment more than ever. Among the names of the early Quaker movement were "Publishers of Truth" and "Children of the Light"; I guess we're still needed, if we're up to it!
Artemis II's lunar mission is delayed. Amy Shira Teitel's sad and blunt commentary on this rocket and its ultra-expensive path to irrelevance: her video and article.
A Guardian report on Dezer Development and Palestinian deportations: an infuriating glimpse into the world of wealthy presidential friends who earn big fees by transporting deportees and treating them as utter nobodies.
One of my favorite versions of "Baby Scratch My Back" ... Jason Ricci with John Lisi, Sam Hotchkiss, Andy Kurz, and Adam Baumol.
A couple of weeks ago I sketched our travels from London, England, to Hampstead, New Hampshire, via Barcelona. As I prepared to publish that post, we were hearing reports of winter conditions predicted for the path of our upcoming train trip home via Boston and Chicago.
As it turned out, we traveled in great comfort (despite being in coach seats the whole three days), but winter weather did cause several delays, particularly west of Chicago. By Malta, Montana, outside temperatures were down to -6 F.
At one time, technical problems and "congestion" got us five hours behind schedule, but we pulled into Portland, Oregon, only four hours late.
I brought an 800-page book with me, and nearly finished it on the train. It was Anne Rivers Siddons's Peachtree Road, a fictionalized social history of 20th-century Atlanta, Georgia, mostly from the point of view of its midcentury elite families. It's a sweeping cultural epic combined with close-up accounts of family dysfunctions and episodes of social failure worthy of Tolstoy. In any case,the book had plenty to keep me occupied.
One moment in Peachtree Road was particularly poignant for me. The author described the impact of President Kennedy's assassination on the idealists in Atlanta's emerging leadership of the early 1960's. I remember the assassination vividly, but at age ten, I had not had any sense of the "Camelot" aura around the Kennedys' White House.
Now, reading the novel, I remembered an incident in my Russian history class at Carleton University. The professor was Carter Elwood, a central figure in Slavic studies in Canada and the world, and an inspiring instructor in the classroom. (And Carleton had no lack of inspiring instructors in Soviet studies—Vladimir Grebenshchikov, Paul Varnai, Halina Stepanovna van de Lagemaat—see last item here, Edward Lee, and others.)
On November 22, 1973, the tenth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Elwood set aside his normal themes. He talked to us about that brief period of new ideals, energy, and elegance, that Kennedy's presidency seemed to bring, and that were ended so cruelly by Oswald's bullets. With tears in his eyes, he contrasted the Kennedys' Camelot with the state of affairs in 1973, Nixon having just gone on television the previous week to tell us he was not a crook.
We have made this particular three-day railroad trip several times before, but it's not the longest train trip we've taken. That happened in 2011, when we spent four days on the train from Moscow, Russia, to Sukhbaatar, Mongolia. Some pictures from that trip are here, and I described the book I read on that trip, Crazy for God, in the following week's post.
One final note on travel. This year I marked the fiftieth anniversaries of two trips that helped shape my life. The first one was to Mississippi, and the second, to Moscow and Leningrad. More on those trips at From Mississippi to Moscow.
The Friends Incubator for Public Ministry presents an online conversation with Windy Cooler and historian Tom Hamm on bold Quaker ministers. It's this Saturday at 11 a.m. Pacific time. Register through the link on this page.
Two Washington Post items on religion in the USA: "A hidden trend" (new fascination with faith among young people); and Senator Warnock's warning to all of us, particularly Democrats, of the cost of ignoring faith. (Video of Warnock's presentation is available here.)
Is there a moment of truth coming for the USA's NASA and its moon-landing project? Ars Technica's Eric Berger describes a recent congressional hearing in which one credible scientist made his doubts very clear.
I cannot, cannot press "publish" on this post without noting the vulgar inhumanity of Trump on Somalia and Somalis. It is a festering scandal that such a man occupies the White House. Words fail me, so I'll link to The Guardian's Moira Donegan.
In keeping with the travel theme, I'm closing this week's post with a classical pianist from London, Nataly Ganina. She began her musical education at age 5 in Riga, Latvia. We first heard her at a lunchtime concert at St. Olave's Hart Street, London, three years ago, and then again at the same place last month. I couldn't find a video clip from that location, but here she is at Holy Trinity South Woodford last October, playing one of my favorite impromptus from Schubert, as she did again a couple of weeks later at St. Olave.
(I've selected the segment that starts with Schubert's fourth impromptu from Op. 90, but if you have the time, listen to the whole concert.)
At Monday's unveiling of the first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón in Chile, director Željko Ivezić promised,
... At the end of presentation you will get the link [to this site/application] and then you can spend the rest of your day enjoying these ten million galaxies.
Ivezić made this promise as he presented stunning initial images from the Rubin Observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope and its world-record-sized digital camera. In the hour and a half news conference I linked above ("Monday's unveiling"), his wonderful presentation, given with both awe and humor, starts here. If you are a space or cosmology nerd or a fan of science journalism, you'll want to see all of the rest of this video, but if not, Scientific American has done you a great service by summarizing the presentation, and selecting several shorter videos, in their article, "Majestic First Images from Rubin Observatory Show Universe in More Detail Than Ever Before."
Most news headlines these days don't give us much joy, but I found this Rubin Observatory presentation and press conference, clunky as it was in places, very inspiring. Željko Ivezić's enthusiasm, and the heartfelt comments from the news conference panel (question-and-answer portion starts here), gave a wonderful human dimension to an otherwise tech-heavy theme and the staggering cosmic scale of the images themselves.
You might ask what distinguishes this earth-bound observatory from the Hubble and James Webb telescopes in space. Those amazing space tools can focus on very specific places, at distances that take us close to the apparent origins of our universe. The Rubin Observatory, on the other hand, will photograph the entire sky that's visible on its mountain, through full revolutions of the earth, over and over. These high-resolution images will be compiled over a ten-year period. Scientists and other viewers worldwide will be able to gain access to the images, including celestial movements and changes, and evidences of dark matter and dark energy. The compilation is called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Here's how it compares to other astronomical survey projects and catalogs, but one of its main advantages is simply the combination of the unprecedented speed of its repeating image-capturing cycles, without losing high resolution.
Rubin in 1963 using Kitt Peak National Observatory's 36-inch telescope with Kent Ford's image tube spectrograph attached. (Source and description.)
Instead of spending the last two days just looking at ten million galaxies, I've enjoyed reading about Vera Rubin and some of her contemporary colleagues, such as Kent Ford, Geoffrey Burbridge, Margaret Burbridge ... and following up some of the numerous links on their Wikipedia pages.
In case you see politics in everything, as I tend to do, notice that several of the initial speakers in the long video puffed the USA's role as the world leader in science. That made it all the more interesting to notice the incredible variety of immigrants, international participants, cultures, and languages involved in the Rubin Observatory program.
It's also interesting to note that the press conference press handler turned away a question about future funding in light of federal budget cuts. (One earlier projection estimated running costs of $40 million per year.)
Now, back to the images .... Or as Željko Ivezić says, "Warp One, engage!"
A few more words about the Rubin Observatory: here are the project's four main science goals.
"Racist is a tough little word," wrote linguist John McWhorter in The Atlantic. "Many of us think its meaning is obvious, but it has evolved quite a bit from its original signification over the past several decades."
What would you say? What are useful current definitions of "racism," "systemic racism," and "racist," based on your own experience or on sources you trust and recommend? In a brief survey, I'd like to ask you five questions that may help me write a related blog post, but, if that happens, nobody's comments will be attributed without permission.
Citing COVID-19 restrictions dating to 2020, city authorities in Moscow are not allowing protests (not even single-person picketing) at the site of the restored Joseph Stalin sculpture at Metro station Taganskaya. It reminds me of the scandal that surrounded restoration of a quotation lauding Stalin in the rotunda of Kurskaya station back in 2009, a time when we often passed through that station. (You can see part of that quotation in my photo: "Stalin raised us to be faithful to the people, and he inspired us to work and to perform great deeds.") Back in 2009, protesting didn't seem to be all that risky.
An urgent question (and an offer of practical resources for local Friends meetings) from Wess Daniels: Who gave us Guilford College?
Joseph and his brothers: Tom Gates continues his series on Quakers and the end of scapegoating.
Micah Bales on the Gerasenes and their unhappy reaction to a healing. (Context: Luke 8:26-39.) And how would we react?
Our reading this morning leaves us with no doubt: Healing is hard. True healing disrupts as much as it restores. The transformation that Jesus brings ripples out from those who are being healed to touch the whole fabric of society. When we get healed, we’ll find ourselves in a new kind of trouble. Holy trouble.
“One thing that I just don’t vibe with in modern American society – there’s an entire thing about safety. And I’ve lived my life in a way that safety was the last thing that I would care about,” she said. “This is a thing I think about a lot lately. We need to be less safe, be ready to offend ourselves and other people. Otherwise, Maga people are just going to keep winning, because they’re not afraid.”
At least the second time I've ended with this clip: Gino Matteo and Jason Ricci ... "I need Jesus to walk with me."
It began as a normal afternoon in my schoolyard—no reason for it to stand out in my mind. I was racing around playing with water balloons. We filled them part way and then squirted the water out. No use wasting an entire balloon full of water on the Arizona desert by filling water balloons and breaking them.
It was late spring, when a squirt of water would dry easily in the sun. Squirted children then grabbed a balloon for themselves and joined the race around the schoolyard. I spied one girl walking alone. Her dress was temptingly still dry. I squirted her. She turned around, face full of rage, and tried to pull my hair and scratch me with her fingernails. I dodged her. I was shocked. She turned away.
Later I walked home through the desert, between the trees whose branches my brothers had long ago flagged with plastic ties, so I could follow the ties to find my way home. My brothers were off to boarding school and college by then, and I expected an empty house at the end of the path. I was surprised to find my father writing at the dining room table.
I told him what happened. I asked him why she had lashed out. He grew very serious, and said, “I remember walking up to her house, knowing I had to tell her mother that her husband had died.” My father had been the pastor in that little town with maybe 80 kids in the district’s one grade school. I knew the story—her father had died suddenly, leaving four children and a widow. Nancy was the youngest, two years old at the time.
My father leaned down, looked me in the eye and said, “I want you to take care of her, Judy.”
It’s been sixty years now. She puts messages on Facebook like an image of flag-draped Trump saving our planet, with the tagline “On a mission from God.” Another asks for God’s protection because “with every fiber of his being, Trump is trying to protect our Land.”
I carefully weed out these messages, congratulate her on another grandchild, heart the flowery memes. Occasionally I try to offer facts in her pro-Trump posts. However calmly or kindly I word the facts, it doesn’t seem to make an impact.
It all drives me wild, but I do not unfriend her. Every time I think about it, I remember my father’s words. It’s not that she needs me to take care of her anymore. It’s that I simply cannot cut the connection.
I don’t know if she or anyone else in her family now needs Medicaid or the Obamacare subsidies. I don’t know if they are on food stamps. Did anyone get student loans? Has anyone she loves lost their federal government job? And did Republicans tell her all this would happen if she supported Trump?
Will it all come crashing down at their feet, without warning?
I’ve read posts on X ridiculing Democrats’ “hysteria” that Medicaid will be cut. How silly they are, the posts say. They ignore that the GOP has already passed a plan that will necessitate that. What will happen when their food stamps are cut, when student loan applications can’t be processed, when they have no medical insurance? It pulls at my heart.
The nonpartisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities says the GOP plan just passed requires a minimum of $1.5 trillion in cuts through 2034. Also according to the Center, 45% of the federal budget funds Social Security and health insurance programs, including Medicaid. How could these programs not be cut after a massive tax cut?
Last week I realized with shock that a progressive friend of mine sincerely believed disinformation from the left. The news for the left is bad enough; why make it all worse by spreading lies? Probably for the same reason the top layer of the right-wing purveyors of disinformation do—to gain power and money for themselves.
I’ve been reading Steven Hassan’s book on cults: Combating Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults. I’ve also gotten involved in Indivisible’s Truth Brigade. Their webinar on their grass-roots efforts to counter disinformation was inspiring and well designed. They said their strategies were research-based, but they did not give us sources.
Indivisible pressured us to use a formula for responding to disinformation. It’s hard for me to follow other people's formulas without understanding more of the context. So I searched for the research and best practices on my own. I found a summary of research findings (here) about disinformation that was very helpful. It was well written for an academic piece, but it was the usual thicket of complex sentences, passive verbs, and precise but uncommon English words. I took up my courage and a compass. I navigated my way through the underbrush of words.
I read and re-read a section titled “counter-messaging strategies.” It explained that my factual posts would have little impact on my friend. “There is strong evidence that truthful communications campaigns designed to engage people on a narrative and psychological level are more effective than facts alone.”
Of course. Another word for “narrative” is story. How could I, coming from a long line of story-tellers, have missed that people respond better to story than to a recitation of facts?
Another sentence leapt out at me, too. “Promising techniques include communicating respect and empathy, appealing to prosocial values, and giving the audience a sense of agency.”
Communicate respect and empathy
Of course. Genuine respect and empathy. It’s backed by twenty-first century research, and it’s ancient wisdom as well. Jesus said, ”You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” One can not have empathy without love and respect first. Love and respect opens the way to empathy.
Appeal to prosocial values
I had to look up what “prosocial values” meant. It’s values that “promote the concern and care for the welfare of others.” It’s kindness, helping, sharing, cooperation—that sort of thing. It’s ancient wisdom as well.
Mark Condo, pastor at Reedwood Friends, opened this up for me on a Facebook post, of all places. In the comment section, a friend asked Mark, “How do we follow this scripture in this day and age when thousands are losing the support and sustenance they need because of POTUS?”
The scripture was “Christ is all and in all. As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience."
Mark replied to my friend’s question, “I've often wondered what my role is at this time. For me, what resonates most deeply and clearly within me is universal compassion. I was struck by this scripture today during my quiet time—just how essential compassion and prayer are right now, as both inward and outward practice, to allow them to flow in my own life, toward my family, Meeting, stranger, neighborhood, city.…”
Allowing compassion to flow sounds remarkably prosocial to me. Clothing yourself in humility would help the left, as well.
Give the audience a sense of agency
I love the word “agency.” It means “the power to think, choose, and act for oneself.” A grace-filled faith will in itself encourage choices. Philip Yancey in What's So Amazing About Grace? wrote, “Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more. ... And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. ... Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.”
We cannot earn God’s love by following a strict list of things to do. The Gospels do not give much in the way of formulas to blindly follow. For example, the Beatitudes are more about opening one’s heart and mind. In Matthew, we are told to “welcome the stranger,” but not a strict formula for standing on street corners finding strangers to welcome.
I admit that we humans have difficulty giving each other—and ourselves—grace, so over the centuries Christians have created complex formulas to follow, instead of choices about how to love one’s particular neighbor.
Quakers are not immune from this. It’s only that the rules for how to be a “good Quaker” are more unspoken—keep quiet about it if you just bought a new Cadillac, don’t bring a side of beef to meeting potlucks, etc.
Still, we can call ourselves back to grace. We can ground ourselves in grace, and incidentally encourage agency.
I point this out because I believe that the progressive church in the US can have a profound effect on the political climate today. With so many changes, people need community more. We can be that trustworthy, grace-filled community.
We know in our bones how to communicate respect and empathy, appeal to prosocial values, and give the audience a sense of agency.
We just have to be louder about it, and follow our own ancient wisdom. It works.
Reposted with permission from the March 30 issue of the Newsletter of Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends. Judy van Wyck Maurer (she, her) lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband Johan and two cats. She is the editor of the Newsletter and clerk of Sierra-Cascades Communications Committee.
From the same issue, here are more ideas on communicating with respect:
Too much disinformation on the menu?
Make a truth sandwich!
Indivisible and other organizations recommend responding to disinformation with a “truth sandwich.” It’s based on the same research referenced above. The graphic is from Indivisible’s Truth Brigade.
First, find and express common ground. “I’m also concerned about…” Or “I agree that ____ is important.”
Second, help engage the person’s critical thinking, perhaps by posing questions with good information.
Third, go positive with a shared sense of a good future.
Here’s a good how-to from the Truth Brigade on making your own truth sandwich.
Here’s a different take on the truth sandwich from National Education Association.
The first Sunday of April is coming up, which means that Bremerton Friends Worship Group, Bremerton, Washington, USA, will be gathering again.
The reality of Starliner's flight to the International Space Station was "far wilder than most of us thought." Eric Berger (ars technica) has the "harrowing" details.
More from space:
Fram2 mission patch (source); Amundsen and team's tent at South Pole (replica); the original Fram.
Stephen Clark reports on the Fram2 mission—the first human spaceflight to orbit over the North Pole and South Pole. The mission is named in honor of the historic ship Fram, used by Norwegian polar explorers. Mission updates.
Rick Estrin is tired of "Living Hand to Mouth." (Rick, don't look to "Liberation Day" for help!)
Last week, I proposed "under occupation" as a way of absorbing what the new Trump regime was imposing on us, and considering how to respond. I'm not going to try to list all the developments since then, that, taken together, feel like a occupation—you know as much as I do about all that. Here are just a few reflections, with references, on the past week.
Lawsuits: In my list of links last week, I included a lawsuit challenging a U.S. Department of Homeland Security policy change. That change allows DHS to invade "sensitive locations" such as places of worship, schools, and hospitals in order to arrest immigrants suspected of violating the law. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends, New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, and Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends, along with two congregations within Baltimore Yearly Meeting.
Since then, several other faith communities have joined the lawsuit, including New York Yearly Meeting. In that same list of links, I provided a link to this legal challenges tracker. At that point it listed 24 lawsuits challenging various executive actions of the Trump administration. As of today, the number of complaints has grown to 37.
The favored religion: Today, in a document entitled "Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias," Donald Trump announced that his administration "will not tolerate anti-Christian weaponization of government or unlawful conduct targeting Christians. The law protects the freedom of Americans and groups of Americans to practice their faith in peace, and my Administration will enforce the law and protect these freedoms. My Administration will ensure that any unlawful and improper conduct, policies, or practices that target Christians are identified, terminated, and rectified." (More in Reuters' coverage.) I wonder, will this protection extend to Catholics and Lutherans defending migrants, or "nasty" Episcopal bishops who preach the Gospel in the president's presence? And what about our neighbors who peacefully practice other religions, or none?
The executive order mentions religious freedom in general several times, but the heavy emphasis (judge for yourself) is on eradicating anti-Christian bias. The Biden administration is charged with "an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses." The charges include the completely coincidental timing of Easter Sunday 2024 and "Transgender Day of Visibility." I can't help suspecting that to score points with a crucial part of his base, Trump might actually contribute to a whole new wave of genuine anti-evangelical bias as religious and secular people alike absorb this embarrassing enmeshment of government with the Christian knockoffs that suit this cruel and irreligious regime.
Ethnic cleansing, American style: Joe Biden's active participation in the rubbishing of the Gaza Strip was bad enough, but here comes Donald Trump with an amazing new embellishment: remove the whole population and create a "Riviera of the Middle East"! Meanwhile, as Michael Arria (Mondoweiss) points out, (1) the West Bank may face equal threats, and (2) "A Trump-appointed member of the United States Holocaust Memorial" (Martin Oliner) "has published an Op-Ed calling Palestinians 'fundamentally evil' and not worthy of 'any mercy.'"
Meanwhile, up in space: First, another false witness against Joe Biden. Last month, Elon Musk posted on X "that the president [Trump] had asked SpaceX to bring the two 'stranded' astronauts back to Earth. Musk added that SpaceX would do so, and, 'Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.' Trump chimed in, "I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to 'go get' the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration. They have been waiting for many months on Space Station. Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe. Good luck."
The actual situation, and the complicated planning and spaceship-swapping involved (no fault of Biden's!) is described by Ars Technica's Eric Berger.
A history lesson: "What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes." Timothy W. Ryback (gift link) in The Atlantic.
Rebecca Gordon (Tomdispatch) sums up:King Donald, old and new litanies, and the Faithful Fools.
Heather Cox Richardson's own summary of the occupation's progress, and a few instances of resistance. (Don't blame her for the "occupation" metaphor; it's mine.)
A pro-Russian disinformation source produced a video discrediting USAID, and apparently Elon Musk and Donald Trump, Jr., have taken the bait.
Becky Ankeny has been speaking to Silverton Friends Church about the crucifixion of Jesus. Last month she spoke about the resurrection.
Micah Bales at Berkeley Friends Church on Jesus and his inaugural sermon.... "'All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.' Wow, what a guy! He’s going to make Israel great again." Shouldn't he have stopped while he was ahead? More to the point: What has God anointed him to do?And are we ready, not just to admire, but to follow?
Greg Morgan, Elderchaplain: "Religious faith is an important source of peace for many facing death, but it’s no guarantee...."
Once again, an invitation to join our weekly online prayer meeting for peace, under the care of Friends World Committee for Consultation, Europe and Middle East Section. Every Tuesday, 1:30 p.m. London time. See this page for more information.
Christone "Kingfish" Ingram and his band perform "662."
Last week I wrote, "Our human capacity for chaos and cruelty still require worthy advocates of hope to remain very sober."
But not too sober!
I'm not the only one who realizes our hope must be deeper than the outcome of any particular contest, such as the 2024 U.S. presidential election (to choose a random example!).... Similarly, hope can't depend on one team in that contest being perfectly wonderful and the other team being uniformly villainous. Since my own family has people in both teams, that division breaks down right away.
Finally, hope for the future shouldn't keep us from seeing our neighbors who are suffering now, and whose suffering might well continue into the future even if our political dreams for 2024 come true.
Back in 2008, I was definitely caught up in the euphoria generated by Barack Obama's fired-up presidential campaign. Part of that wild hope was the promise of relief from the cynicism generated by the USA's post-9/11 wars, and the Bush-era neocons' calculated program of lies that powered those wars and cost us $8 trillion and the lives of over 900,000 people.
In a moment of hopeful sobriety that year, I wrote that "I don't expect the dawning of the Age of Aquarius on Inauguration Day, January 20. I expect that if the people make the best choice for U.S. president, the result on a policy level might be 5% better, or 10% better, than if they make the 'wrong' choice." However, I remember feeling that even "5% better, or 10% better," would (judging by the previous administration) mean thousands of lives saved.
Later that same year, 2008, Judy and I found out that we needed to move out of our original apartment in Elektrostal, Russia, and find a new apartment in a little over a week.
I retold some of that story here. Here are some more details. When we found out that we needed to move, we went to a real estate office in Elektrostal and explained our situation. The agent said, "Well, it's a tight market right now, but we happen to have a place for rent in the new building across from where you're living now." He took us to see the place—it had two bedrooms, a big living room, a comparatively large kitchen, an enormous hallway; what more could we want?
Our living room was big enough for a Friends House Moscow board meeting. (Photo Mary Morris.)
In fact, the layout was so nice and spacious that we worried that all our friends and colleagues would think we were living a posh "Euro" lifestyle, way beyond typical local standards. The agent looked at us as if we were nuts. He said, "The only other place I can show you now is in one of the old buildings downtown. If you'd like a bad-tempered landlady and a bunch of alcoholic neighbors, then ...."
He went on to say that if our friends and colleagues ever found out we'd turn down a nice apartment on account of their feelings, they would consider us crazy. In other words (in my interpretation), there's such a thing as excess sobriety. And if we had not chosen that new apartment, we would not have gotten to know the apartment's owners, who are among the loveliest human beings we met in Russia.
So, in responding with hope to the new energy in 2024's U.S. presidential race, we do well to stay sober, but not too sober. We should avoid going into denial about the world's persistent realities and their human toll, but we do not stand aside and withhold our own hopeful energy from that same world's new possibilities.
Realism is hope's ally, but cynicism is cheap wisdom—and spiritual poison.
My soul hungers for civility. For human kindness. Are you there too?
Just this morning I saw a post from a guy who talks about Jesus, but his words were not only harsh, but gross. He used those words to “defend” our faith even as he tore down those who disagreed with him.
I wish I could make it go away, but I can’t. So I’m asking the Holy Spirit to examine my heart. I want to reflect Jesus who is strong, relentlessly tender, and who doesn’t care about one nation, but the world.
I first linked to a David Gushee article during the major USA controversy over torture in 2005-2006, when Christianity Today published his article "Five Reasons Torture Is Always Wrong." He has another list for us this election season: "Regarding election 2024: Eight things I see."
Ars Technica continues its coverage of the hapless Starliner: The NASA decision to return Starliner's test pilots to earth on a Crew Dragon; and the possible implications for Boeing.
Word of Life Church (phase two), Flowood, Mississippi, USA. Source.
In her important commentary on the passing of old-school church culture and what might be replacing it, Christianity after Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, Diana Butler Bass writes,
...[A]nger is not the only emotion people express when talking about religion. Many people are just bored. They are bored with church-as-usual, church-as-club, church-as-entertainment, or church-as-work. Many of my friends, faithful churchoers for decades, are dropping out because religion is dull, the purview of folks who never want to change or always want to fight about somebody else's sex life....
In all of the fifty years since I started attending weekly services, this has not been my experience at all; quite the opposite. However, I cheerfully acknowledge that I am a peculiar case—peculiarly unqualified to comment on Diana Butler Bass's assessment.
Before I deal with my disqualifications, I should acknowledge that she backs up her comments with statistical evidence of alienation from established religion, and that the trends she pointed to twelve years ago, when her book was published, have more or less continued along the same lines. (However, "boredom" isn't an explicit category in any of those statistics!)
In my case, I didn't have any significant contact with organized religion until adulthood, and then it was in part a rebellion against my family, coupled with a personal mystical experience that no church could take credit for. I specifically looked for a church that reflected the raw experience of the first Christians—experiencing Jesus personally and forming a community around that experience—and that's how I fell into the lap of the Quakers of Ottawa, Canada.
In my flush of new-convert enthusiasm, I was not there to be entertained, and I had no prior experience of "church-as-usual" or "church-as-club," but simply wanted to hold onto that very basic expectation that we were there to meet with God, and I wanted to be with others who would understand that eagerness. I gradually understood that not everyone at Ottawa Meeting would describe their own participation in quite the same way, but their kindness and hospitality, and the weekly adventure of unprogrammed worship, gave me a precious start, and that powerful confirmation of my hopes has sustained me to this day.
My experiences of Friends in Ottawa Meeting, and Boston (Beacon Hill Meeting), and Charlottesville, and later in Moscow Friends Meeting, all involved these meetings' unprogrammed worship format, waiting in silence for God to make the first move. Meeting for worship always had that sense of adventure. (The time when an angry visitor burst into our meeting in Moscow and accused us of being a "sect" was probably more adventure than I had bargained for, but ultimately that was a wonderful and instructive incident.) However, I've spent most of my five decades among Friends in meetings and churches that don't use a strictly unprogrammed format. Most of them have simple forms of programming—sermons, music, and so on—along with a time set aside for direct listening for God. Those planned elements may sometimes seem full of inspiration, and at other times seem fairly rote and predictable, but among people who love being together and praying for each other, that programming doesn't seem to get in the way at all. I'm still there to meet with God in the company with others who have a similar hope and a similar need. Boredom is not an issue.
Practically all my Christian experience is among Friends, but I have no doubt that other traditions have equivalent elements that express God's invitation and grace. However, all of our religious institutions—Friends and others—have a whole other reality that may relate more directly to the alienation that Bass describes. What should I call it?—our organizational overhead? Drag? In my first years among Friends, I didn't have to worry about any of that; the arrangements had already been made, and I was carried along by the community's established patterns. Eventually it dawned on me that the sweet adventure of worship, the intimacy of asking for prayer, the insights of a timely sermon, and all the other things that are best experienced together, in community, inevitably require a tedious logistical checklist, and consequently a need for people to decide how to do those tasks in ways that are consistent with our values and priorities. Even a modest house church has to choose times to meet, some minimal plan for leadership and pastoral care, and ways to get the word out.
And as soon as decisions need to be made, we need trustworthy processes to discern the community's will rather than majority rule or the sway of individual personalities. And here's where we can see the increasing awkwardnesses of those imperatives amidst the competing claims on our time from the world around us. For many of us, maybe it's not the experience of community that is boring, but all the tasks that hosting the community requires, from facilities and staff and committees all the way to the most basic task: naming the times and places (and online channels?) we might meet.
Slowly but surely, voluntarily or involuntarily, willingness to undertake those tasks is being whittled away. For many years, I was a creature of that "overhead"—mostly as a denominational worker or committee member (Friends World Committee, Right Sharing of World Resources, Friends United Meeting, five yearly meetings, several ecumenical organizations, pastor, missionary), but those overhead structures seem to be increasingly regarded as nice (maybe) but optional. Shrinking congregations find that old patterns of staffing, volunteering, and keeping up their facilities, aren't sustainable.
Is there a positive way to describe these realities? I'd love to hear from you. How do we learn to be light enough on our feet to continue providing that precious access to the adventures and consolations of meeting with God ... together?
And: are there ways that the "overhead" structures and associations, and their international and cross-cultural partnerships, can serve that learning process?
One final word: We Christians are not called to meet together simply to enjoy those adventures and consolations of the devotional life for ourselves. Our faith's credibility, and the vulnerable people we care about, are under direct attack from white Christian nationalists and others claiming the Name of the Prince of Peace for their aggression. This is not the time to get too casual about our priorities, or to complain about boredom. We need to consult, discern, and act.
Dmitry Biriukov: Why sobornost' (an aspect of Eastern Orthodox spirituality that reminds some of us of Quakers' "Gospel Order") is a double-edged sword.
Micah Bales: God asks Elijah at Mount Horeb, "Why are you here?" Good question.
Here's an interesting idea for a study Bible ... The NIV Upside-Down Kingdom Study Bible. Have you seen a copy? (Maybe not; Amazon says it is being published September 10. Take a look at the list of contributors.)
Today I visited Nancy Thomas's Life in an Old Growth Forest blog, one of my favorites. I had planned to choose a post to link here, but I found too many good ones to make a choice. My recommendation: go to the blog and just keep scrolling!
In Oslo, our family enjoyed our visit onboard the polar research ship, Fram, which went farther north (with Nansen) and farther south (with Amundsen) than any conventional ship. A few days ago, I learned about the Fram II mission, an upcoming space flight involving the SpaceX Crew Dragon craft known as Endurance. If all goes well, the journey will be the very first crewed spaceflight to fly over the North and South Poles.
On Wednesday, August 7, 1974, impressionist Rich Little opened a four-day engagement in his home town, Ottawa, Ontario. I was there, among the audience members in the opera hall of the National Arts Centre.
In those moments of political high drama just across the border in the USA, I'm sure most of the audience was looking forward to Little's signature impression: U.S. President Richard Nixon. We were not disappointed.
The very next evening, August 8, fifty years ago today, Nixon announced his resignation. It took effect the following day at noon. I understand that Rich Little dropped that segment of his program for the rest of his engagement.
I was in Ottawa in those years as a student of the Russian language and Soviet area studies at Carleton University. But I was also very interested in the politics of my own country, the USA. Along with other USA citizens among my Carleton University friends, I followed the Watergate scandal closely.
In fact, the news of the Saturday Night Massacre (October 20, 1973) hit me so strongly that on the following day I got on the overnight train from Montreal to Washington, DC, where I found little knots of people in Union Station discussing the latest developments. Not having any definite idea of what to do, I felt led to walk to the White House, and there, along the White House fence, I met others who had felt a similar elemental pull to come to Washington and witness events for themselves.
I'm writing these notes in Raymond, Maine. I have my diaries from 1973 and 1974 back at home, and when I get back there, I may fill in some more details. But I don't need my diary to recall some of these Watergate anniversaries, including Rich Little's performance of August 7, and the resignation announcement the following day.
Rich Little with impressions of Nixon and several Watergate personalities, on the Tonight Show, 1973.
It is, of course, very sobering to realize that five whole decades have passed since Nixon's resignation, and even more sobering to think of how quickly those decades seem to have gone by. As we pass through another time of testing for our democracy, another campaign seeking to convince us that the USA would do better under authoritarian rule, I'm hoping that our younger friends and relatives, those who will still be around in 2074, will be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of this year's upcoming victory of freedom and compassion.
August 1974 has a more private significance to me as well: On August 11, I made my very first visit to a Quaker meeting—Ottawa Friends Meeting of Canadian Yearly Meeting. Since that day, Friends have shaped my understanding and practice of Christian discipleship and provided me with many precious mentors and companions in our worldwide faith family.
A year later, in August 1975, I made my first visit to Russia. I had no idea that eventually I'd spend nearly ten years of my life there.
Two years later, in August 1977, I first met Judy Van Wyck. In August 1980, we became husband and wife. Tomorrow we celebrate our 44th anniversary. August has become a very important month!
We cannot let these days in August go by without another acknowledgment: August 6 and 9, 1945, the only times atomic bombs have been used as weapons. Here is a BBC History survey and debate on the justification for those bombings. My own skeptical (grumpy?) attitude toward Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemorations.
Eric Berger (ars technica) on the lively discussions concerning when and how to bring the Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to earth. (Reminder: I first wrote about this spaceflight back on June 6!)
Viking Venus (a relatively small cruise ship,
930 passengers) at Flåm, pop. 500.
Since I'm the grandson of a cruise ship captain, I have mixed feelings. However, it helps to remember scale. Knut Maurer's last ship was about one-fifth of the length and about 1% of the displacement of today's typical cruise ships.
Here is a glimpse of the future of fjord-eligible cruise vessels. These solutions may work for destinations with appropriate tourism infrastructure on land, but don't meet some of the other concerns of cities and regions trying to cope with unsustainable numbers of visitors. (Is the Camino de Santiago a worthy case study?)
Related: Tourism. ("To feel superior to the ordinary tourist might just be another form of that primordial social poison, elitism.")
When Jesus chose to allow himself to be arrested and crucified, he sacrificed himself despite all his human fear of pain, his ordinary desire for life and happiness. In the garden he sweated drops of blood as he contemplated his near future of torture and death, and on the cross he cried out his sense of abandonment by God. He protested against pain and death and aloneness, but he held fast to his intention because it brought and brings good for us. His ultimate act of agency was choosing to forgive his torturers.
Lightnin' Hopkins in full storytelling mode. "Mr. Charlie's Rolling Mill." (Hopkins mentions John Lee Hooker's stuttering; more about that here.)
