Readings from Mary Magdalene Community Sunday, June 10, 2007

OPENING MEDITATION:

LOST

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here, and you must treat it as a powerful stranger, must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying here no trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you.
David Wagoner

ON TAOISM

In ancient times there were great Taoist Sages.
Their way of living was so deep, so subtle,
it cannot be directly explained.
Instead, here is how they looked . . .

. . . Polite, as if they were always a guest
Yielding, like ice that is on the verge of melting
Sincere, like an uncut block of wood
Receptive, like a valley
Opaque, like muddy water

ON EINSTEIN

When asked by a reporter something like: "What, in your opinion is the most important question facing humanity today?" Einstein thought for a bit then replied,
"I think the most important question facing humanity is, "Is the universe a friendly place?'. This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves "For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process.
"If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially 'playing dice with the universe', then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives."

CHAOS THEORY

Chaos theory is really about finding the underlying order in apparently random data.
When was chaos first discovered? The first true experimenter in chaos was a meteorologist, named Edward Lorenz. This effect came to be known as the butterfly effect. The amount of difference in the starting points of the two curves is so small that it is comparable to a butterfly flapping its wings.
The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in
the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere
actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time,
a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen.
Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does. (Ian Stewart, Does God Play
Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141)

A READING FROM THE GOSPEL OF MARY MAGDALENE

When the soul had overcome the third power, it went upwards and saw the fourth power, (which) took seven forms... . They ask the soul, 'Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?' The soul answered and said, 'What binds me has been slain, and what surrounds me has been overcome, and my desire has been ended, and ignorance has died. In a (world) I was released from a world, (and) in a type from a heavenly type, and (from) the fetter of oblivion which is transient. From this time on will I attain to the rest of the time, of the season, of the aeon, in silence.' When Mary had said this, she fell silent...

CLOSING

" If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try
to hold onto."
Tao Te Ching

"Dancing is not rising to your feet painlessly like a whirl of dust
blown about by the wind. Dancing is when you rise above both worlds,
tearing your heart to pieces and giving up your soul..."

Rumi

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