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Biodesign Out For Walk

“Let Freedom Ring!” Dr. Martin Luther King

Posted on July 3, 2022 Leave a Comment

A Libra’s Bipolar Views Of The 4th of July Celebration.

On the one hand, we should all be walking around each day with our arms raised heavenward in a state of ecstasy and adulation for the privilege of being alive in these United States of America. Of the estimated 108 billion modern humans who have lived on Earth, probably a tiny percentage have enjoyed the freedom and privileges of the average US citizen.

Whether the “Story of Eden” was real, mythical, or allegorical may remain enigmatic, what is not questionable, is that what separates man from other animals is his extraordinary capacity of free will. Furthermore, if the Eden Story represents the battle of good vs evil, there is ample evidence that the battle is not over.

From man’s earliest beginnings, ruthless tribal chiefs, kings, tzars, emperors, and dictators have ascended to assume positions of absolute power over weaker members of their societies and ruled with iron fists. Using increasingly powerful means of destruction they have slaughtered billions of people. It has been said that man is never more creative than when designing weapons of destruction.

On the other hand:

Although we may be living in unprecedented peace and freedom, our history is not without its ugly blemishes. Having escaped the tyranny of the British Crown, the fledgling US committed the massive atrocities of enslaving other “children of God,” from Africa and waging overt genocide by attempting to annihilate the 500 Native American Tribes. Although nearly every US high school US history book includes the horrific stories of Adolph Hitler destroying 7 million Jewish people in WWII, the equally horrendous history of “The Trail of Tears,” Smallpox infested blankets for land” and the systemic destruction of buffalo herds is ignored or reduced to a half-page titled: “Cowboys and Indians.” 

Although there are countless wonderful stories of peace and love overcoming the evils of hatred, the battle of good vs evil was illuminated in Loren Eiseley’s “The Immense Journey“.

“We are now in a position to see the wonder and terror of the human predicament: man is totally dependent on society. Creature of dream, he has created an invisible world of ideas, beliefs, habits and customs which buttress him about and replace for him the precise instincts of the lower creatures. In this invisible universe he takes refuge, but just as instinct may fail an animal under some shift of environmental conditions, so man’s cultural beliefs may prove inadequate to meet a new situation, or, on an individual level, the confused mind may substitute, by some terrible alchemy, cruelty for love.”  

The twisted mind of the killer of Dr. MLK is evidence of this tragic reality. However, to a lesser degree, many non-whites, women, various ethnic groups, and members of the LGBQT community are still not treated as equal partners in the “American Dream.”  

If that dream is to be fulfilled it will have to be inclusive of all.

It is not likely that many Native Americans, homeless people, and displaced or forgotten minority members will have cause to celebrate the “4th Of July.

A beautiful epitaph of Dr. King’s, “I Have a Dream” speech might describe all children; “red and yellow; black and white,” laughing, talking and walking hand-in-hand, loving and celebrating their diversity and each other.    

“Let Freedom Ring”.

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

Photo credits

www.abodeparkcity.com

www.belvederefamily.com

Posted in: Reflections | Tagged: 4th of July, Biodesign Out For Walk, Martin Luther King

Yin-Yang—Divine Green Slime—Biodesign

Posted on June 27, 2018 1 Comment

The two quintessential decisions that led to the birth of the Biodesign Class at St. Helena High School were adopting John Muir as our primary mentor and planning a six-day trip to Yosemite N.P. to explore what he was writing about. In preparation for each trip we pondered The Wilderness World Of John Muir (edited by Edwin Teale). In his introduction, Teal noted that although Muir belonged to no organized religion, he was deeply religious and boldly credited God for creating Earth and the universe. Furthermore, he wrote: “He was by turn a scientist, a poet, a mystic, a philosopher, a humorist. Because he saw everything, mountains and streams and landscapes, as evolving, unfinished, in the process of creation, there is a pervading sense of vitality in all he wrote.”

The two operative words were “evolving” and “creation.” Although beautifully written, Teale presented me with the dilemma of how to introduce public high school students to Muir’s philosophy without violating the spirit of the law separating church and state. The emerging class embraced the freedom to discuss all things biological, which included a thoughtful, unbiased, approach to the great evolution debate.

In a wonderfully ironic twist, a partial solution to our dilemma came from ancient China. The Chinese yin-yang philosophy describes how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. Yin-yang philosophy can be applied to the great debate of creationism vs. Darwin’s theory of evolution. The Universe, including all forms of life, is in a constant process of evolving, yet everything that evolves had to be created.

Although most students grasped the yin-yang concept, understandably, many had difficulty visualizing any possible physical—spiritual interaction. Most were not satisfied with the current scientific explanation of evolution being the result of random chance and competition. In a perfectly timed synchronicity, while one class was pondering the Muir—Darwin dichotomy, S.F. Chronicle legendary columnist, Art Hoppe, wrote the following column.

Excerpt: Biodesign Out For A Walk, Chap. 11, Matthew. The Landlord’s Slime.

Scene: The Heavenly Real Estate Office.

The Landlord, humming to himself, is craning forward to hang a mediocre-sized galaxy of a hundred billion suns on the far edge of the cosmos. His business agent, Mr. Gabriel, enters, golden trumpet in hand.

Gabriel: Excuse me, sir. A noisy debate’s broken out on that planet Earth. The tenants are fighting over how the place was made.

Landlord: (frowning) Earth? Let’s see … Is that the one I patched together out of drifting stardust, rainbow wisps, and a few million snatches of birdsong?

Gabriel: No, that was Arcturus 4673-a.

Landlord: Good me! After a couple of zillion, it’s hard to recall exactly how …

What do the tenants say?

Gabriel: Well, the fundamentalists say that you created the whole shebang in six days with sort of a wave of your hand.

Landlord: (nodding) Yes, yes, I could have done it that way.

Gabriel: But the scientists claim that it evolved over 4 billion years.

Landlord: Six days? Four billion years? What’s the difference, Gabriel?

Gabriel: That’s easy for you to say, sir; you’re not in a hurry. But to their finite little minds, it’s an eternity.

Landlord: How do the scientists think life began?

Gabriel: The scientists say it could have started when some free- floating chemicals, perhaps in a tide pool, were zapped by a bolt of lightning.

Landlord: Ah! That sounds like me.

Gabriel: This created microscopic one-celled life-forms, which soon evolved into a thimbleful of green slime. Really, sir, why would you create green slime? It sounds sacrilegious.

Landlord: If it’s my green slime, it’s divine green slime.

Gabriel: Yes, sir. Anyway, you apparently told the green slime to go forth and multiply.

Landlord: “Go forth and multiply, green slime!” I like the ring to that.

Gabriel: Well, it certainly did multiply. According to the scientists, it multiplied into paramecia and sea worms and oysters and fish and great whales.

Landlord: How wonderful!

Gabriel: And at long last, the scientists say, the fish crawled up on the land to become the fowl of the air and the beasts of the field.

Landlord: How dramatic!

Gabriel: Finally the beasts stood erect as hairy, apelike creatures who …

Landlord: (thoughtfully) Perhaps I should have stopped there.

Gabriel: … in the end became man.

Landlord: What a lovely, lovely story, Gabriel. When I think of all the fish of the sea, the beasts of the land, the fowl of the air in all their shapes so singular and strange, in all their myriad colors, dappled and striped and iridescent, swimming and slithering and soaring … All this emerging from a thimbleful of green slime! I … What was that argument about again, Gabriel?

Gabriel: Basically, sir, it’s over whether children in school should be taught to believe in cold, scientific facts or you—ordained miracles.

Landlord: I know that, Gabriel (frowning), but what’s the difference?

Hoppe’s column was a brilliant allegory, which arrived at a perfect time. He not only used satire to illuminate the absurdity of the debate, but his “Landlord” aligned with Muir’s philosophy. I firmly believe that the column should be shared with every high school and university biology student.

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

young.lowell@gmail.com

Posted in: Reflections | Tagged: bio-spirituality. freedom of religion, Biodesign Out For Walk, existence of God, John Muir vision, the origin of life

Epiphany—epiphanies—John Muir

Posted on January 5, 2016 2 Comments

Screen shot 2016-01-05 at 4.37.15 PMThere are many historical references (other than The Holy Bible) that an extraordinary cosmic event happened in the year 02 in Bethlehem. Whether it was an unusual convergence of planets, or some other mysterious cosmic event, it became the greatest epiphany the Earth has ever known.

Based on archaeological relics, anthropologists suggest that man’s spiritual quest began about 100,000 years ago. These relics indicate that as man’s heavy dependence on instinct declined, it was replaced with a converse increase of consciousness, free will and the importance of human values. This 100,000-year journey has been enhanced by the millions of heroes and saints who have made huge sacrifices attempting to elevate humanity to a state of; “thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.”

Although January 6 is the day that many Christians celebrate the arrival of the “Three Kings” at Bethlehem, it also encourages us to contemplate the wonder of how our lives have been guided by our unique epiphanies. They are related to serendipities and synchronicities, but seem to be perfectly matched to unveil our emerging personalities. The overarching question is; “where do they come from?” Are they merely self-induced revelations that bubble up into consciousness from deep within or are they messages or guidance from some mysterious outer force?

I recently received a note from an ex-student:

“I think epiphanies are too often associated with the “struck-by-lightning” moment. I have found that some of the most important ones are fueled by a slower-burning fuel. That long spiritual journey of learning and observation and experience that keeps revealing new epiphanies over time.”

John Muir’s life was shaped by so many amazing epiphanies that it seems like he must have experienced one every day. Perhaps he did. Several of them nearly cost him his life and led to his quip; “Sometimes God has to nearly kill us to get us going in the right direction.”

Perhaps his greatest one, which literally turned his life “tapsal-terrie” (Scottish for topsy-turvy) eventually had a revolutionary impact on the emerging concept of “spiritual ecology.” He was re-lacing a leather drive-belt in a lumber mill when the file he was using flipped up and punctured his right eye. As the vitreous humor dripped into his cupped hand, a fellow worker heard him wail, “My right eye is gone, closed forever on all God’s beauty!” Then, as his doctor predicted, his unharmed eye went blind “in sympathy” and he was ordered to spend a month in a darkened room. Understandably, he later described his internment as: “The darkest time in my life.”

Intriguingly, two natural events added to the drama of Muir’s encounter with fate:

  1. In an eerie synchronicity, there was a total solar eclipse on the day his eye was punctured.
  2.  It rained on the day before he was freed from his dark prison and he decided to go for a short walk in the woods. The sights, sounds and smells of the fresh forest, compared to his previous nightmarish month, engendered an epiphany that was so glorious that Muir described it as painful. He later described the event:

“I bade adieu to all my mechanical inventions, determined to devote the rest of my life to the study of the inventions of God.”

Saying good-bye to making lots of money by additional mechanical inventions, he began a “1,000-mile walk,” hoping to study the botany of South America. However, due to several additional epiphanies, he ended up in Yosemite Valley, where his discoveries and writing have literally changed modern humanity.

Remarkably, Muir’s message of encouraging people to “go to the mountains and seek being reborn,” bears witness to his faith that epiphanies aplenty are waiting for the spiritually curious.

Happy Epiphany.

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

www.facebook.com/biodesignoutforawalk
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Posted in: Reflections | Tagged: Bio-spirituality, Biodesign Out For Walk, Epiphany, John Muir, John Muir vision, Yosemite

Doctor—Lawyer—Indian—Chief

Posted on January 12, 2015 Leave a Comment

Screen shot 2015-01-12 at 10.33.58 AMPerhaps the most common mantra I chanted was, “I don’t care what you think, I care deeply that you think.” Contrary to what many people think, an overwhelming amount of education involves massive memorization and minimal original thought. I preferred the Socratic method of teaching, which involved asking students what they thought about reading assignments, and literature cited. If what they thought was their prerogative, what their eventual life-style, career choice or spiritual path (if any) was even more so.

Most students went on to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, engineers, architects, social workers, psychologists, biologists, house-wives (or house-husbands) and several became ministers, pastors and priests.

Wayne Neller is a Choctaw Nation/St. Helena Native. He attended local schools and after graduating from St. Helena High School, became an Episcopal priest, ecumenical pastor, substance-abuse counselor and author of several Christian evangelical programs. However, chapter 29 “Wayne” was not featured as a veiled form of evangelism, but as an extraordinary example of what one student experienced. For all I know, he might have become a lawyer, Buddhist monk, Sufi guru, or Native American Shaman. This, however, was his path and may or may not resonate with others.

When I began scribbling down the first stories, the thought that they might end up in book form never entered my mind. The plan was to collect some of the best stories and take them to Kinko’s and print 9 copies, one for each grandchild to read later. By a very strange synchronicity, ex-colleague Linda Wiliamson reentered my life and asked to see my scribblings. Amazingly, she tamed the beast, corrected many errors, reorganized the chapter sequence and produced something that Outskirts Press wanted to publish.

However, when the time came to submit Linda’s carefully edited manuscript, chapter 29, simply titled, Wayne, became problematic. I had major concerns about whether to include it or not. I sent final drafts of the chapter to friends who I knew were believers, non-believers and religious fence sitters. This list included the owner of a bookstore, high school English and humanities teachers and my support team. Shockingly, they were unanimous in their feeling that the chapter should be included. I think I was subconsciously hoping that they would discourage me. My battles to add a spiritual dimension to the Biodesign curriculum predicted that including the chapter would automatically cause the book to be banned from  reading lists at all public high schools, colleges and universities. However, equally concerning, I worried that potential readers would falsely assume that the book was defined by chapter 29, rather than chapter 29 merely being one of 31 chapters.

I thought I made it clear that I was presenting many ways that people connect Nature with spirituality in a non-preferential manner. When readers of Biodesign Out For A Walk have mentioned that they thought the book was written from a Christian perspective, I didn’t k now if they were being critical or complimentary. I pointed out that quotes and references were used from Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Atheism, Secular Humanism, Agnosticism, Pantheism, Shamanism, Sufism and Native American Spirituality. All of these ideas were presented as a spiritual smorgasbord with no intention to influence or recruit students for any particular doctrine or “ism.”

In a discussion with Rabbi David Wolpe, Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard professor and world-renowned anthropologist, ironically borrowed the acronym NOMA from the Catholic Church. NOMA stands for “non-overlapping magesteria.” Gould stated:

“Science and religion are different enterprises and serve different purposes in our lives. Science is a limited domain about discovering facts and religion with other, and perhaps more important, questions such as why we are here and the purpose of the universe, about which science has nothing to say.”

The one area of science that might allow peeks through the wall separating it from religion could be wilderness studies. Great naturalists like Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace, Gregor Mendel, Louis Agassiz, Henry Thoreau and John Muir saw “God” in many aspects of their work.

In the end, the decision to include the chapter was facilitated by six members of my support team. My wife, my gifted editor and Abraham Maslow, who properly stated that identifying and discussing origins of human spirituality is not tantamount to teaching religion. After walking with John Muir and Loren Eiseley for over 50 years, I can safely say that they would embrace and applaud Wayne’s story.

And finally, Wayne was the most important factor as to whether to include his story or not. He understood well that it might encourage and inspire some readers; he also knew that it could generate anger, ridicule and rejection.

It is remarkable that Wayne heeded Loren Eiseley’s message about the importance of serving others and that he followed John Muir’s model of not worshiping the “Almighty Dollar” and worshiping the “God of all creation.” Wayne’s path was his path and I had nothing more to do with it any more than if he had chosen to be a doctor, lawyer or Indian chief. 😉

In the end, I thought that sharing his story was more important than any possible book sales that I might lose. It was simply the right thing to do. Surprisingly, of all the hundreds of e-mails, Fb comments, messages, letters and notes I have received, not one has been critical or mean-spirited about Wayne’s story.

Lowell H. Young, Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

https://www.facebook.com/biodesignoutforawalk

Posted in: Reflections | Tagged: bio-spirituality. freedom of religion, Biodesign Out For Walk, existence of God, faith, Lowell Harrison Young, science and religion, spirituality, Wayne Neller

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