Chaos

As I struggle to emerge from the post-election depression that has been my companion since November 3, one project seems to have promise. So, I have embarked on this, a journey of exploration. I have set upon this path pursuing a question that was always on our minds through the spring, summer and fall, but never quite was posed in a way that compelled an answer: given that our politics has given way to a choice between vanilla with chocolate swirl and vanilla with fudge swirl; what are the real, the important issues that deserve a real choice, a contrast, not just a naunced shading?

Many cultures have creation myths that are likely connected to that ur-story in our distant prehistory of how we came to be. In the common threads of these stories we can hazily make out the pattern of that first story that came from our first story-teller or if you have faith perhaps from someone who knew what actually happened. Many of these stories start with the world/universe/reality in chaos, without discernable pattern or purpose. The story usually tells us that something acted on this chaos to bring order or pattern into the world and it connects us to that emerging pattern. My own faith teaches that our physical being began as matter unorganized, chaotic was organized into preconceived patterns.

If indeed creation is marked by emerging patterns, then our world, our nations, our cultures, our families are best served by a conscious attempt to find and act in harmony with those patterns. That is the task I set for myself: finding the patterns that should form the indices for our conduct, our society and our policy. It is to build a rational, spiritual, reality-based daily politics. If you happen to read this, look at the patterns in the dust, hunker down, make a suggestion.