Think about the reflection in a person’s eyes

I found this image on Facebook but I couldn’t find its source.

The photo is interesting for several reasons.

Notice the reflections in Helen Mirren’s eyes

At first I thought that the photographer had somehow found a scene to reflect in her eyes. Then I noticed that the reflections are themselves reflected horizontally, with the pointed ends of the oblong reflections pointing towards each other. The reflections should have the same orientation, but they do not.

The photo is also interesting because of who it is and the unusually bleak way she is shown.

At first I thought, “No makeup”, but that’s not strictly true upon reflection.

If I have time, I should try to give someone eyes like these.

Abraham Piper, Exvangelical

Today’s NY Times had an article on Abraham Piper entitled Pastor’s Son Left Faith, Becoming an Evangelical Critic for a New Flock on TikTok. It was so intriguing that I signed up on TikTok in order to see him. It was worth it. Piper is amazingly good at explaining how to think clearly about life.

Taking Christianity seriously

What I was really glad to see in this article was this comment by Blake Chastain (my emphasis):

… Mr. Piper’s pedigree is proof that ex-Christians should not be dismissed as people who were never really committed in the first place. “One of the common refrains is that these people were never Christian,” said Blake Chastain, who popularized the term “exvangelical” when he named his podcast in 2016. “But the people who leave over these issues are the people who took it seriously. They were the youth group kids who were on fire for God.”

I took it seriously.

After my mother was killed in a car accident and my father had remarried our evil Danish stepmother, we 4 children were somewhat adrift in spite of the fact that our father truly loved us.

Because my father wanted a church wedding with the Danish woman, he started going back to church, a Congregational church on Walnut St in Berkeley, CA. (We lived about four long blocks up the hill from the Church. Fun fact: Peet’s coffee started on the same street.) This put me in contact with the church’s youth group as I entered 7th grade.

Wesley Burwell, a seminary student at PSR, ran the youth group and became like a father to me over the next few years. I would drop by once a week to talk about “religion”. I realized years later what when we discussed “God’s” love, we were taking about my own deep needs for parental love. Wes helped me immensely, and I was privileged to reconnect with him and his wonderful wife Dot in the last decade before he died.

Because of Wes, I tried my best to believe in God. Being a liberal Protestant, Wes told me that I didn’t have to actually perceive God in order to believe in Him (yes, God’s pronouns were He/His/Him).

I tried to believe Wes and even gave two “youth sermons” in my church. I was so inspired that I planned to become a minister and even volunteered once to give a sermon all by myself (the “youth” sermons had 3 kids giving the sermon). As Wes had taught me, I spoke of Jesus’s love and of our duty as Christians to give to the poor and sick.

After the service where I gave my sermon, I walked up the aisle to stand at the door to be greeted by people leaving the church. Everyone congratulated me except for one man who basically told me that I was full of shit. We didn’t have time to discuss it although his comment felt like the most sincere one I got.

Of course, as I came to realize over time, most Xtians (as I now spell the word) don’t believe in the kind, loving, generous part of the Xtian message. They are just as capable as any other group of ignoring the poor and sick and of hating different ethnic and racial groups. It was this growing realization, along with the fact that my girlfriend was also losing her faith, that made it increasingly difficult for me to believe in God. (When I was finally able to contact and visit Wes many years later in New Hampshire, he no longer believed in an anthropomorphic deity, calling himself a “spiritualist”. He retained his same, kind personality, however. He was a wonderful man.)

Abraham Piper on the notion of Ultimate Meaning

Here he discusses the notion of ultimate meaning in an amazingly clear and deceptively deep way.

@abrahampiper

##absurdism ##existentialism ##optimisticnihilism ##whatdoesitallmean ##meaning ##meaninglessness ##purpose

♬ original sound - Abraham Piper

Abraham Piper on the notion of Matching colors

As a confused would-be photographer, I loved his rant about “matching colors”:

@abrahampiper

Love a good color clash… ##learnfromnature ##color ##clash ##style ##beauty ##fashion ##colortheory ##nature ##colorful ##animals ##youregood ##beconfident

♬ original sound - Abraham Piper

The Georgia Voter Suppression Law

When I first read about Georgia’s new voting law, it sounded as if some parts of it were okay. For example, Republicans say that Sunday voting is permitted, which sounds good for Black churches that vote together on Sundays. But looking at the details shows that while Sunday voting is permitted, it is not mandatory throughout the state.

My bottom line: the law is as bad as critics say it is.

Here are the most significant changes to voting in the state, as written into the new law:

• The complete analysis
  
• Voters will now have less time to request absentee ballots.
• There are strict new ID requirements for absentee ballots.
• It’s now illegal for election officials to mail out absentee ballot applications to all voters.
• Drop boxes still exist … but barely.
• Mobile voting centers (think an R.V. where you can vote) are essentially banned.
• Early voting is expanded in a lot of small counties, but probably not in more populous ones.
• Offering food or water to voters waiting in line now risks misdemeanor charges.
• If you go to the wrong polling place, it will be (even) harder to vote.
• If election problems arise, a common occurrence, it is now more difficult to extend voting hours.
• With a mix of changes to vote-counting, high-turnout elections will probably mean a long wait for results.
• Election officials can no longer accept third-party funding (a measure that nods to right-wing conspiracy theories).
• With an eye toward voter fraud, the state attorney general will manage an election hotline.
• The Republican-controlled legislature has more control over the State Election Board.
• The secretary of state is removed as a voting member of the State Election Board.
• The G.O.P.-led legislature is empowered to suspend county election officials.
• Runoff elections will happen faster — and could become harder to manage.

COVID-19 vaccines and older so-called conservatives

I can’t understand how older people can refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Younger people have not lived through the amazing vaccines developed during the lifetimes of us older folks. That may be some kind of excuse for not understanding how vital they are and how much suffering and death they have prevented. It’s not a very good excuse, mind you, but it’s somewhat understandable.

But older so-called “conservatives”? They’ve seen polio eliminated. They’ve seen measles, mumps, shingles, pneumonia, diphtheria, flu, &c. eliminated or reduced. Their resistance to COVID vaccines is willful and dangerous.

Don’t believe me? Maybe this quick history of vaccine development will jog your memory.

We’re talking Darwin Award material.

Post Vaccination Haircut

Me with 14-month-long hair

Plus Big Mike

Equals this

Passover and the Power of Jewish Continuity

• Telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt allows Jews to share a spiritual experience across time and space

by Gerson, Mark. Wall Street Journal (Online); New York, N.Y. 20 Mar 2021.

After hundreds of years of slavery, it is the Israelites’ final night in Egypt. They are ready to escape to freedom. Their leader, Moses, imparts a final piece of guidance, one that is also to serve as a lasting edict: He instructs them to tell their children about this Exodus from Egypt. But there are many different ways to tell a story, let alone one as rich, complex and dynamic as the Exodus. Moses didn’t offer precise instructions. So thousands of years ago, Jews created a book known as the Haggadah, which means “telling.”

The Haggadah serves as the script for the Passover Seder, the ritual meal that Jews around the world will celebrate on the night of March 27. As much as any other book, it has been responsible for assuring the continuity of Judaism. The Haggadah does this “horizontally,” by creating an experience that every Jew in the world shares at the same time, as well as “vertically” through history. If a 3rd-century Yemenite or an 18th-century Russian were to walk into a Seder in Miami or Tel Aviv today, they would know exactly what was going on and be able to participate.

If the Haggadah were just a holiday manual or a dinner program, it would have disappeared a long time ago. Instead, it offers a condensed compilation of centuries of wisdom—the Greatest Hits of Jewish Thought. It is one of the greatest guides ever written for living a meaningful, fulfilling and happy life.

Near the beginning of the Seder, for instance, the Haggadah declares: “All who are hungry, let them come and eat; all who are needy, let them come and celebrate Passover.” But why would we issue an invitation when the event has begun and everyone is seated?

The answer is that the invitation is addressed to those already present to bring a certain part of themselves. The Hebrew word for “face” is a plural, suggesting that each of us has many faces, many selves. The self being invited to the Seder isn’t the confident one, which even occasionally feels invulnerable. Rather, it is the self who, as Deuteronomy says, “does not live by bread alone” but needs to alleviate its spiritual and ethical hunger.

The Hebrew word for “face” is a plural, suggesting that each of us has many faces, many selves.

(Is this really true?)

Because most Jews attend a Seder every year, it offers an occasion to contemplate our younger selves. We realize how different we are now from who we were in the past and acknowledge that our future self will say the same about our current self. We can create that future self with the guidance of the Haggadah.

One of the mechanisms for doing so is the most familiar food of the holiday—the matzah. When a significant amount of salt is added to yeast, the yeast doesn’t rise, and the result is the flat, crackerlike bread known as matzah. On the night before Passover, Jews purge their homes of bread and introduce the matzah in its place. It is an opportunity to ask: What in my life do I want to discard? What do I want to preserve, and what do I want to last forever—even after I am gone?

Thoughts about preservation and permanence naturally lead to the subject of education. One of the best teaching tools in the Haggadah is the Four Questions, which point out some of the differences between an ordinary meal and the Seder: for example, “On all other nights we eat any vegetables. Why on this night do we eat only bitter herbs?” The Four Questions are traditionally recited by a child and are intended to arouse the curiosity of children. Yet no child has ever leapt from their chair, exclaiming, “Wow! I can’t believe we are eating bitter herbs tonight! Tell me more about the Exodus!” No, because generic instruction does not inspire. As King Solomon advised, each child must be educated “according to his way.”

The Four Questions are in fact meant to invite children to ask more questions of their own. The 13th-century rabbi Zedekiah ben Abraham noted that the Seder plate should contain “toasted grains, types of sweets and fruits to entice the children and drive away their sleepiness so that they will see the change and ask questions.” In my own home, we throw marshmallows to children who ask good questions. Does a child like baseball? Put a pack of trading cards under their plate. Is a child mischievous? Whoopee cushions are kosher for Passover!

Before long, the Seder arrives at the ten plagues, which God used to punish Pharaoh for continuing to enslave the Israelites. The book of Exodus says that the first two plagues, blood and frogs, were “everywhere in Egypt.” But rather than attempt to get rid of the plagues, Pharaoh’s magicians exacerbated them by creating more blood and frogs. Why? Because Jew-haters are often willing to accept increased suffering if it means inflicting greater pain upon Jews. This explains why Hitler used his dwindling military resources in late 1944 to round up and kill the Jews of Hungary.

The book of Exodus says that the first two plagues, blood and frogs, were “everywhere in Egypt.” But rather than attempt to get rid of the plagues, Pharaoh’s magicians exacerbated them by creating more blood and frogs. Why? Because Jew-haters are often willing to accept increased suffering if it means inflicting greater pain upon Jews. This explains why Hitler used his dwindling military resources in late 1944 to round up and kill the Jews of Hungary.

(An interesting explanation of the late Holocaust.)

The Haggadah has enabled the Jews to tell the story of the Exodus to their children for more than 100 generations because it isn’t simply meant to be read. Rather, the Haggadah involves a combination of activities: listening, speaking, being heard and responding anew. It is truly a conversation, in which the participants converse with those at the same table, those at Seders all over the world and those who sat at Seders in the distant past.

It is counterintuitive that a conversation should guarantee continuity. After all, participants in a conversation can’t know where it will end up, let alone how it will change them. Yet it is the unpredictable vehicle of a conversation that has enabled the endurance of the Passover celebration. This is another vital lesson from Passover: The secret to stability is structured dynamism. No wonder Jews celebrate Passover, the Festival of Freedom, at an event called the Seder, which means “order.” That miraculous balance, curated by the Haggadah, has kept the Jewish people on the same page generation after generation.

This essay is adapted from Mr. Gerson’s new book “The Telling: How Judaism’s Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life,” published this month by St. Martin’s Press.

Passover and the Power of Jewish Continuity

Credit: By Mark Gerson

Julia Knobloch

The Hebrew word for face is indeed plural, and it is “panim” - פנים.

The Yiddish expression “a sheyne punim” comes from that. It is often interpreted as being in the plural to express that we have many different selves, as the articles states — but this may also just be a very nice homiletic approach that is interesting and fascinating, and certainly rings true in many ways. The whole aspect of finding, revealing, disguising one’s true self (or in the Torah, God’s self) is very dominant and you find it in many stories, prayers, theological thought.

You may also like that the Hebrew word for to disguise (in a costume or as someone else) is להתחפש, — to literally, to self-search. Again, it’s intriguing :)

Hope that helps,