Meeting of Minds?

The Chinese government is currently debating reducing the number of crimes which deserve capital punishment. For some of those offences which will be downgraded, a week of meetings will be the alternate form of punishment.

Jacky Chan: give up the information, or we will torture you.

Prisoner: I will not yield!

Jacky Chan: Guard, put this man into a meeting.

Prisoner: No, thumb screws, electric shocks, anything…but not that.

Jacky Chan: Take him into the meeting room!

Prisoner: I give up, here is the information you wanted.

“Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.” (John Kenneth Galbraith)

A: He has gone into cardiac arrest; does somebody have a defibrillator?

B: No!

A: Then let us send him into a meeting, that should do it.

“I had a wonderful evening; but this wasn’t it” (Groucho Marx)

I met Darwin´s Brother

There is a funny rubber taste in my mouth and I struggle to be able to breathe. That, together with my slight tendency toward claustrophobia make me “chicken out”, so I stop and come up. It is my first time ever snorkeling and I have not yet gotten the hang of it. After three further attempts and lots of salt water, I

finally keep my head under water and breathe. My heart is still racing, so it takes a few more minutes before I quiet down, inside and out. For the first few minutes all I can see is muddy water, and my hands…but as I begin to focus, I detect movement. A bl

ue tiny fish is doing his little dance, about 3 inches in front of my nose: his back is deep blue, with bright yellow stripes. Soon he is joined by three others, and then smaller pink ones further down, and a much larger yellow one, and on and on. I just cannot believe my eyes: shapes and colours pass in front of me and all I have to do is float. The waves take me here and there, some places deeper, some shallower, and wherever I look, I see fish, all beautiful, all seemingly minding their own business while twenty or so tourists blow bubbles while they are looking at them.

You guessed it: I am in the Pacific ocean, the Tortuga Islands off the Costa Rican coast to be precise, together with a crowd of German, Italian and Spanish tourists. We just had a beautiful lunch of grilled fish on t

he beach, a nap, and now we are floating in the water, on a super sunny day. I still cannot believe the unreality of it all: not only that I am here in Costa Rica at all, but the beauty of this place. My day began with me waking up to the typical sound of rainforest buzz, with crickets and other animals making an almost electric sound. As I sat at breakfast three large blue birds decided that I did not need sugar in my coffee and carried off the little sachets, to feed their young, I presume. While I ate my muesli a monkey was swinging dangerously close in a tree just above me. The little hotel I am staying in has a garden which seems on fire with all the bright orange and red flowers in the midst of lush greens and browns. If you take the time to look you can see any number of butterflies, many the size of my palm, blue, orange and bright yellow, all dancing around, for just a few days before they die. At night frogs make their appearance: they do not only sound funny, they look hilarious with their almost transparent fingers and their bright green bodies.

As I am stumbling in amazement from one animal or flower to another one thought keeps coming back: all this just happened by accident? Somehow evolution just brought this about, without any intelligent design? I don’t think so. Not only is this too beautiful to have just sprung into being, it works together in harmony. Some of these animals will never be seen by anybody, and yet they are beautiful, as if somebody cared. And some of them look funny, as if somebody had a sense of humour in the midst of it all. So yes, Darwin was wrong…and I am having the time of my life. To be continued!

The Girl Who Kissed the Dragon Slayer

Lisbeth Salander is a tortured soul. Her childhood is the stuff of nightmares (literally), with abuse, rape and neglect figuring prominently. And she is clever: endowed with a photographic memory, a kickboxing champ and master computer hacker, she has a skill set which would make your girl friend envious, and which makes a man think twice before buying her a drink. But when life quiets down, night falls and the demons come out. Want it or not, Salanders past reels its ugly head…and pushes her to do things. We shall stop here, both so we do not spoil the plot and because this is not intended to be a film review. Lisbeth is a bit like a female Bourne (more so than “Salt”, in my opinion), and like him, she has “issues”. What makes the books and films about her (and Bourne) so popular? Is it simply the violence and suspense? I suggest not. What resonates so profoundly with many of us is the struggle of an individual to overcome the odds and wrestle with one’s demons, with the past that threatens to undo our lives. And we all have demons, small or large, things from our upbringing, things we have done or failed to do, which haunt us. Yet we refuse to believe that we are simply the fruit of our upbringing; there must be freedom, and so we cheer for the one who seems to beat the odds and affirms his or her free will. In the process many of them of course also seek out the help of a therapist, since being faster than one’s shadow is only given to Lucky Luke, not real human beings.

In the 1500s another tortured soul contemplated night, darkness and demons and made an astounding discovery. While he sat in prison where supposed friends had thrown him into, he experienced a presence which seemed to transcend and transform the night of his experience; he no longer felt alone, but understood and loved. And so his weakness was not something to run from, since it had turned out to be the gateway through which divine grace could enter his life. John of the Cross (that is his name) spends chapters and books speaking of the “blessed night” which heals neuroses, bestows peace and makes men whole. At the heart of it is the realization that there is God out there who loves humanity in all its brokenness and who indeed has shared that brokenness by becoming one of them. Therefore every experience of suffering, loneliness and dejection does no longer have to feed mental disorder and angst, but can serve as the gateway to mystical experience. I wonder what will happen if Lisbeth ever reads John’s “Dark Night of the Soul”? Might there be a sequel…?

Depression or Management Advice?

Elijah has just reaped enormous success: he has proven to the whole people of Israel that whoever the God is that he serves, he is more powerful than the gods of Baal: when it comes to a showdown on Mount Carmel, those prophets are not able to light their sacrifice without firelighters, whereas all Elijah needs to do is to call on his God, and fire comes from heaven. Unfortunately the powers at be, most notably queen Jezebel are convinced; in fact, this whole affair has only infuriated her and so she promises to kill Elijah, whatever the cost. So he flees to the desert, and there, under a broom tree, let’s off his complaint, made famous by Mendelssohn’s oratory (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Tei4iQh9Y&feature=related):
It is enough! O Lord, now take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers! I desire to live no longer: now let me die, for my days are but vanity. I have been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts, for the children of Israel have broken Thy covenant, and thrown down Thine altars, and slain all Thy prophets, slain them with the sword. And I, even I only am left: and they seek my life to take it away! It is enough!
A combination of genuine concern and fear, mixed with simple anger, frustration and despair. He has enough and is not interested in continuing. “I am the only one left, nobody seems to care except me, there is nobody to help, let alone to take my place.” But God is only marginally sympathetic to the prophets complaint, and does not immediately send the relief troops. Instead he lets Elijah stew for a while, before an impressive display of the powers of nature: storm, earthquake and fire. But none of those, as awesome as they are, convince Elijah of the presence of God as much as a still and quiet voice. Suddenly he understands how little he is; he snaps out of his depression and is ready to listen. And what God has to say is eminently surprising: “What are you doing here?” God asks. He then commands him to return to civilization and to appoint two kings, one for Israel and one for Aram, and a successor for himself. God does not share Elijah’s view that he is utterly alone and that nobody else can do his job or succeed him. There are others who are waiting to be enlisted, and this is what Elijah is commanded to do.
Do we not find ourselves ever so often “in the desert”, pitying ourselves for the lack of sympathy we are getting? We have slaved while others did not seem to care; nobody else evidently shares the same commitment to the cause, in fact, if you let them, they might sell off the family silver. A good thing we are there to make sure that does not happen. We are dead tired, but nothing will keep us from delegating responsibility to people less qualified than we are. And slowly but surely vision, energy and perspective seep out of us. It takes getting away from it all to realize what is really going on; in the desert, the very place we do not want to be in, allows us to hear God and like Elijah, Moses or Job remember rule number 6: “Don’t take yourself too seriously”. Ironically, once we do we become more useful again, because we do not hold things so tightly and because we look for allies and people to bring into whatever we are doing. Elijah could have been a one-man show, impressive but transient. As it was he managed to pass on to others what he had received. Who are the Elishas you and I are supposed to seek out and train?