Author Archives: Eileen
TEAM HUMANITY
Not liking to clean house, I spend time sitting around puzzling about things in general.
Like what are the differences between righteous and self-righteous? I think being righteous is to the best of our ability trying to make loving choices. Being self-righteous is thinking our way of loving is the only way. But with people with different gifts and training, could the difference be like when a plane is having a problem and our practical response is to put the oxygen on our self first so we can help those closest to us or if our knowledge of aeronautics makes our first instinct be to start trying to save the plane? I see this as similar to our political differences. Neither is wrong…..we use what God gave each of us. But, we need to start working together. There are people who are practical and see the immediate problems right around them and have the natural gifts and training to fix them. But there are people who study history to learn from it or who study science to understand possibilities both helpful and destructive to prepare for them. The latter can’t fix our plumbing, but they can recognize potential universal problems and work to find solutions. We need both and we need them working together. It’s not either/or.
And we are all ignorant….whether about how to harvest or repair things or how to stop poisoning our oceans or our atmosphere. We need each others’ gifts. We need to value both our own and each others’. And to understand that ignorance is part of everyone’s life. Only God knows it all. Ignorance is not stupidity, unless we don’t admit it and don’t value those with knowledge we don’t have.
God designed us with different gifts so we would learn to work together for the good of all. Wake up! We need each other!
Reflection by Katie Rose
I used to believe in my mind;
respected it
credited it with accuracy and trustworthiness.
but only for a while —
until i saw its limitations:
criticism and discouragement,
fears and pessimism rooted in primal survival.
it’s scope such a tiny distorted projection,
oblivious of the infinite and eternal ocean
we all swim in.
I saw with utmost clarity
my mind was not my friend!
Not talking here about intellectual data, even
daily navigation through life;
I am speaking of what makes us who and what we are:
our heart. Self worth, our spirit and soul, our dreams, aspirations and all we love.
Did ego mind ever recognize, honor, work constructively with any of those aspects of being?
just what was this noisy, negative thing in my head
anyway?
I had read from an enlightened One
that the mind was a good servant, but a terrible (even dangerous) master. the heart was meant to lead, make the important life decisions.
I had placed mind on the throne.
I began to meditate,
seeking to quiet the unruly monkey mind.
on the way, I discovered higher pathways therein:
a secret chamber,
hidden tunnels to a mystical interior land
of Merlin and stars
saints and sacret teachings
wild Wise Women set free to be.
much to explore in this place of beauty, love, and mystery.
Over time,
the rigid structures and sturdy file cabinets of mind
were demolished,
swept clean.
windows were flung open
birdsong and sunlight welcomed in
a refreshing breeze of renewal wafting
through the dark
that had been.
celestial music in one corner
flowers and unicorns in another
arm in arm sweethearts
in drunken bliss,
spiritual education at its finest
unconditional love Grace-filled kiss
mind and I have traveled together thru many challenging days
happily we have reached a place
where we are friends.
most days…
Anne Lamott A Favorite of Mine
Anne Lamott
I Don’t Want to See a High School Football Coach Praying at the Fifty Yard Line
Many of us who believe in a reality beyond the visible realms, who believe in a soul that survives death, and who are hoping for seats in heaven near the dessert table, also recoil from the image of a high school football coach praying at the 50-yard line.
It offends me to see sanctimonious public prayer in any circumstance — but a coach holding his players hostage while an audience watches his piety makes my skin crawl.
We are fighting furiously for women’s rights and the planet, and we mean business. We believers march, rally and agitate, putting feet to our prayers. And in our private lives, we pray.
Isn’t praying a bit Teletubbies as we face off with the urgent darkness?
Nah.
Prayer means talking to God, or to the great universal spirit, a.k.a. Gus, or to Not Me. Prayer connects us umbilically to a spirit both outside and within us, who hears and answers. Is it like the comedian Flip Wilson saying, “I’m gonna pray now; anyone want anything?”
Kind of.
I do not understand much about string theory, but I do know we are vibrations, all the time. Between the tiny strings is space in which change can happen. The strings are infinitesimal; the space between nearly limitless. Prayer says to that space, I am tiny, helpless, needy, worried, but there’s nothing I can do except send my love into that which is so much bigger than me.
How do people like me who believe entirely in science and reason also believe that prayer can heal and restore? Well, I’ve seen it happen a thousand times in my own inconsequential life. God seems like a total showoff to me, if perhaps unnecessarily cryptic.
When I pray for all the places where we see Christ crucified — Ukraine, India, the refugee camps — I see in my heart and in the newspaper that goodness draws near, through UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, volunteers, through motley old us.
I wake up praying. I say a prayer some sober people told me to pray 36 years ago, because when all else fails, follow instructions. It helps me to not fixate on who I am, but on whose. I am God’s adorable, aging, self-centered, spaced-out beloved. One man in early sobriety told me that he had come into recovery as a hotshot but that other sober men helped him work his way up to servant. I pray to be a good servant because I’ve learned that this is the path of happiness. I pray for my family and all my sick friends that they have days of grace and healing, and I end my prayers, “Make me ever mindful of the needs of the poor.”
Then I put on my glasses, let the dog out to pee and start my day. I will have horrible thoughts about others, typically the Christian right or the Supreme Court, or someone who has seriously crossed me, whose hair I pray falls out or whose book fails. I say to God, as I do every Sunday in confession: “Look — I think we can both see what we have on our hands here. Help me not be such a pill.”
It is miserable to be a hater. I pray to be more like Jesus with his crazy compassion and reckless love. Some days go better than others. I pray to remember that God loves Marjorie Taylor Greene exactly the same as God loves my grandson, because God loves, period. God does not have an app for Not Love. God sees beyond each person’s awfulness to each person’s needs. God loves them, as is. God is better at this than I am.
I lift up one of my grown Sunday school kids who is in the I.C.U. with anorexia. I beseech God to intervene, and she does, through finding my girl a great nurse later that day. (Nurses are God’s answer 35 percent of the time). My prayer says to whoever might be listening, “I care about her and have no idea what to do, but to hold her in my heart and turn her over to something that might do better than me.” And I hear what to do next — make her one of my world-famous care packages — overpriced socks, a journal, and needless to say, communion elements tailored to her: almonds and sugar-free gum. It’s love inside wrapping paper.
Especially when I travel, I talk to so many people who are absolutely undone by all the miseries of the world, and I can’t do anything for them but listen, commiserate and offer to pray. I can’t turn politics around, or war, or the climate, but in listening, by opening my heart to someone in trouble, I create with them more love, less of a grippy clench in our little corner of the universe.
When I get onstage for a talk or an interview, I pray to say words that will help the people in the audience who feel most defeated. When I got to interview Hillary Clinton in Seattle a few years ago, we prayed this prayer huddled in a corner backstage — to bring hope to the hopeless.
Do I honestly think these kinds of prayers were heard, and helpful?
Definitely.
On good days, I feel (slightly) more neutral toward Ginni Thomas and the high school coach praying after games. I pray the great prayer of “Thanks” all day, for my glorious messy family, husband and life; for my faith, my sobriety; for nature; for all that is still here and still works after so much has been taken from us.
When I am at my most rattled or in victimized self-righteousness, I go for walks, another way to put my feet to prayer. I pray for help, and in some dimension outside of my mind or language, I relax. I can breathe again. I say, “Thank you.” I say, “Thank you for the same flowers and trees and ferns and cactuses I pass every day.” I say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.
A walk is a great prayer. To make eye contact and smile is a kind of prayer, and it changes you. Fields and woods are the kingdom. You don’t say, “Oh, there’s a dark-eyed junco flitting around that same old pine tree; whatever,” or: “Look at those purple wildflowers. I’ve seen those a dozen times.” You are silent. There may be no one around you and the forest will speak to you in the way it will speak to an animal. And that changes you.
At bedtime I pray again for my sick friends, and the refugees. I beg for sleep. I give thanks for the blessings of the day. I rest into the vision of the pearly moon outside my window that looks like a porthole to a bigger reality, sigh and close my tired eyes.
I have the theological understanding of a bright 8-year-old, but Jesus says we need to approach life like children, not like cranky know-it-alls, crazily busy, clutching our to-do lists. One of my daily prayers is, “Slow me down, Girlfriend.” The prayer changes me. It breaks the toxic trance. God says to Moses the first time they meet, “Take off your shoes.” Be on the earth. Breathe with me a moment.
It’s Not Either/Or. It’s Not Them or Us. It’s We.
The Zealots and the Pharisees
Richard Rohr expands upon the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Third Core Principle: “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Oppositional energy only creates more of the same.”
There seem to be two typical ways to avoid conversion or transformation, two diversionary tactics that we use to avoid holding pain: fight and flight.
“Fight” is what I’ll call the way of Simon the Zealot. It describes people who want to change, fix, control, and reform other people and events. The zealot always looks for the political sinner, the unjust one, the oppressor, the bad person over there. Zealots consider themselves righteous when attacking them (whoever they are at a given time), hating them, even killing them. When they do, they believe they are “doing a holy duty for God” (John 16:2).
Zealots often have good conclusions, but their tactics and motives can be filled with ego, power, control, and the same righteousness they hate in others. They want to do something to avoid holding pain until it transforms them. Such people present Christianity as “a cult of innocence” as opposed to a movement for solidarity.
As long as they are the problem (whoever they are), and we keep our focus on changing them and correcting them, then we can sit in a reasonably comfortable position. But it’s a position that the saints call pax perniciosa, a dangerous and false peace. It feels like peace, but instead is the false peace of avoidance, denial, and projection. The Peace of the Crucified comes from holding the tension.
This brings us to flight, the second diversionary tactic. This is the common path of the “Pharisee,” the uninformed, and the falsely innocent. Such people deny pain altogether and refuse to carry the shadow side of anything in themselves or in their chosen groups. They allow no uncertainty nor ambiguity as they scapegoat and project their own wounded side somewhere else! There will be no problems. It is a form of narcotic, and at times probably necessary to get some people through the day.
Both fight and flight people are subject to hypocrisy, projection, or just plain illusion: “We are right; you are wrong. The world is divided into black and white, and we alone know who is good and who is bad.”
“Resurrected” people are the ones who have found a better way by prayerfully bearing witness against injustice and evil—while also agreeing compassionately to hold their own complicity in that same evil. It is not over there—it is here. It is our problem, not theirs. The Risen Christ, not accidentally, still carries the wounds in his hands and side. The question becomes: How can I know the greater truth, work through the anger, and still be a life-giving presence?
That is the Third Way beyond fight or flight, which in a certain sense includes both. It’s fighting in a new way from a God-centered place within, and fleeing from the quick, egocentric response. Only God can hold such an act together within us.
Holy Dissent and Self-Critical Thinking
Father Richard Rohr values how Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures introduced the gift of self-critical thinking into their relationship with God:
The Hebrew Scriptures, against all religious expectations, include what most of us would call the problem—the negative, the accidental, the sinful—as the precise arena for divine revelation. There are no perfectly moral people in ancient Scriptures; even Abraham rather cruelly drove his second wife into the desert with their child. The Jewish people, contrary to what might be expected, chose to present their arrogant and evil kings and their very critical prophets as part of their Holy Scriptures. They include stories and prophecies that do not tell the Jewish people how wonderful they are but, rather, how terrible they are! It is the birth of self-critical thinking and thus moves consciousness forward. No other religion has been known for such capacity for self-criticism, down to our own time. [1]
The Jewish rabbi and noted theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel understood such self-critical thinking and dissent as central to Judaism and to all vibrant and healthy religion:
Inherent to all traditional religion is the peril of stagnation. What becomes settled and established may easily turn foul. Insight is replaced by clichés, elasticity by obstinacy, spontaneity by habit. Acts of dissent prove to be acts of renewal.
It is therefore of vital importance for religious people to voice and to appreciate dissent. And dissent implies self-examination, critique, discontent.
Dissent is indigenous to Judaism. The prophets of ancient Israel who rebelled against a religion that would merely serve the self-interest or survival of the people continue to stand out as inspiration and example of dissent to this very day.
An outstanding feature dominating all Jewish books composed during the first five hundred years of our era is the fact that together with the normative view a dissenting view is nearly always offered, whether in theology or in law. Dissent continued during the finest periods of Jewish history: great scholars sharply disagreed with Maimonides; Hasidism, which brought so much illumination and inspiration into Jewish life, was a movement of dissent. . . . Creative dissent comes out of love and faith, offering positive alternatives, a vision. [2]
Father Richard seeks a both-and approach that embraces self-criticism without falling into excessive intellectualism or despair:
Self-criticism is quite rare in the history of religion, yet it is necessary to keep religion from its natural tendency toward arrogant self-assurance—and eventually idolatry, which is always the major sin for biblical Israel. We must also point out, however, that mere critique usually deteriorates into cynicism, skepticism, academic arrogance, and even post-modernistic nihilism. So be very careful and very prayerful before you own any self-image of professional critic or anointed prophet! Negativity will do you in. [3]
To the Woman Who……You Are Loved Beyond Measure. That’s Jesus’ Kind of Love.
Just because I feel like no one has said it….
To the woman who is pro-life, you are loved beyond measure
To the woman who is pro-choice, you are loved beyond measure.
To the woman who is on the fence, you are loved beyond measure.
To the woman who is heart broken from being told she is unable to have children, you are loved and created for a purpose.
To the woman who is excitingly pregnant with her fifth child even though her family says it’s “irresponsible” you are loved and created for a purpose.
To the woman who found out the child inside of her would cost her her life and chose to abort, you are loved and created for a purpose.
To the woman whose world has been turned upside down when her child’s heart stopped beating inside her womb, there is endless unconditioned love for you.
To the woman who is on the bathroom floor looking at two pink lines after running from their abusive partner. There is endless unconditional love for you.
To the woman who has to make an impossible decision when she was told her child was not forming properly and was in extreme pain. There is endless unconditional love for you.
To the woman whose abortion haunts her every day, there is grace and incredible love for you.
To the woman who was raped and found out she was pregnant and decided to not carry the child, there is grace and incredible love for you.
To all of the women who had to make a choice to bring life into the world or to end it and to the ones who were not given a choice. I hope you know that His grace and love is endless for you.
Whether people say your choice was “right” or “wrong” and with all the hatefulness on both sides. I hope you know that you are loved by the savior of the world. He understands your pain/grief/worry/doubt/ and every other thing you had to go through. And you are priceless and endlessly loved in his eyes. And mine. (I apologize for those who told you different)
You are loved beyond measure.
I join my Amen! to this. Eileen Norman
Loving the Other
Kinder Days?
Upper and middle-class whites remember kinder days. But they were not kinder to many who were disenfranchised. Many judges in the South simply refused to accept black vs black cases and left them to fight it out. There were many ways the white power structure forced others to resort to violence. Our white upper and middle-class view of how kind it was “back then” didn’t apply to either minorities or the very poor whites. Some of our problems are the results of the blindness of those days. It’s going to take more than going back to undo the damage. Particularly with so much of Christianity being hijacked by those whose God is about control, more than love. Much of our violence comes from fear of anything or anyone different from us. Fear blinds us and turns us to seeking power whether by laws or guns. Most of us haven’t recognized that many poor whites’ only power for a long time has been their guns. It’s more complicated than we can see with privileged eyes.
“Judge Not, Lest You Be Judged.”
Probably no more than 25% of people of each generation can see beyond the culture they were born into. The majority simply aren’t born with minds that question. That’s why it takes so many generations to change cultural blindness. And many of the blind are extremely kind to individual people different than themselves that through circumstances they get to know first-hand in youth. But they don’t generalize beyond those people, because of what they were taught by family, friends, and the culture. If they do manage to grow beyond their limited world view, usually by the love of someone who sees differently, they can be the ones that take the greatest risks to change the status quo. Those people deserve our admiration. We, who either were not taught prejudice or whose minds naturally question everything, were blessed and can’t really take credit or judge those born with different minds any more than judging those with different color skin. We work for change, but we have no right to judge. That becomes a prejudice itself and draws lines in the sand. It turns everything into “them” vs “us.” Jesus “got” this!!!
Love of God is Love of People
As long as religions teach that God doesn’t let unbaptized babies into heaven (a technicality it seems to me), then many moms, not taking-into-account the number of miscarriages that God allows early on, will oppose abortion. I understand that on a feeling level. But my logic questions what kind of God would do that. Not the God of the Jesus I know. Some religions have taught that birth control will send you to hell. And a woman can’t refuse her husband sex even if another pregnancy endangers her life and their other children will be motherless. You can bet your sweet bippy that religion’s rules were written by men who had never truly loved a woman.
Hope Is the Seed of Change
A Forty-three year old woman:
What a dark, dark season for our country.
I don’t feel like using my voice. Everything I would say is already being SCREAMED — online, in articles, in the halls of government — and with better phrasing than I could ever put together.
Nobody is listening.
They:
* Expanded gun rights.
* Removed Miranda rights enforcement.
* Removed women’s reproductive rights.
* Funded religious schools, while also saying they’re untaxable.
* Reworded our history textbooks to hide bad deeds.
* Removed parents’ choice about their own children’s biological therapies.
* Are actively drafting now to revoke equal voting rights.
Minority rights and remedies are the next target, and then gay marriage, and then probably gay existence.
Like pre-war Germany. There were document-able steps to that, and we are currently more than halfway through that list. In the same order. We learned nothing. We didn’t remember the past, and we are doomed to repeat it.
We sit here and pretend our country cares about freedom. It doesn’t.
Meanwhile, other nations have actual travel warning alerts declared on the US because of abnormal violence levels. I’ve downloaded and read them; they sound like you’re going as a tourist to 1970s Vietnam. Those outside our borders can’t believe we don’t all have healthcare covered, or that we’re still even debating equality. They don’t look upon us as a goal; we are internationally mocked as being backwards, uneducated, and very limited in individual freedoms.
I don’t recognize this country. This isn’t where I thought I lived, and what the military men in my ancestral line fought for. Today, I don’t see any hope whatsoever.
An eighty-five year old: Eileen Norman
History repeats itself. Both the bad and the good. We are a relatively young country. We still have a lot to learn the hard way. Sad for our progeny. But if we have instilled values and concern for others in them, we’ve done the best we can for the future. They will have to be the revolutionaries for their era. My struggle is trying to open the young’s eyes to the difference between Jesus and his “so called” followers. Christianity has over and over been bought by the powerful and then corrupted. But people with values, who experience the love and wisdom and ability to change His world view of Jesus, rise up over and over and renew it. Nothing is perfect and never has been and never will be. It’s a fallible world of fallible people. As a country we have not suffered like the countries we fled. We don’t recognize the seeds of self-destruction. Your voice is important. Every voice is heard by some. Though mostly we are “preaching to the choir,” every now and then if we are not attacking people rather than movements and laws, a few more will question enough to at least not add to the hate. It’s humbling to feel so ineffective and makes it hard to persevere. You are not alone. Speak your truth just as you have in this post. Thank you for keeping on keeping on when there are no ego rewards in it. Love you.
BEWARE!
Airlines Overbooked/ Airports Understaffed:
Flying this summer is ROUGH!!! I feel like as a Flight Attendant I should attempt to share some tips to get you through airline travel for the foreseeable future. 
1. Things are not good….. if its less than 7 hours – DRIVE! I’m not kidding. There is nothing enjoyable about flying right now. On any airline. If you must fly, keep reading. 
2. Download and use the app of the airline you are flying. You can do everything on it – get your boarding pass, track your bags, see your incoming plane, and change a flight. It sure beats waiting in the long line to talk to an agent! Trust me – Usually these apps will tell you a flight is cancelled before the crew even knows! 
3. Fly MUCH earlier than you need to – a whole day early if its important!! This week I saw many people miss important things like weddings, funerals, cruises, international connections, and graduations. The tears were very real, for very real reasons, and there was nothing I could do! If you have to be somewhere, spend the extra money, go a day early. Have a glass of wine and stay in a hotel, enjoy your night not being stressed while everyone else misses their events. 
4. ALWAYS fly the first flight in the morning so you have all day to be rebooked if the shit hits the fan. Yes, that means it might be a 3:00 alarm, but morning flights don’t cancel nearly as often.
5. This is not unique to this year, but keep in mind summer is thunderstorm season. A single storm can shut down a whole airport. We can’t fly through them. Storms usually build as the day gets later. Book early flights! 
6. Schedule long layovers – Your 1 hour layover is NOT enough anymore. 30 minutes, not a chance. 3 hours minimum. 
7. What you see on the news is an understatement. We are short staffed and overworked. Not just pilots and flight attendants, but also ground crews. Without ground crews there is no one to park the planes, drive jetways, get your bags on/off planes, or scan boarding passes. This causes many delays that snowball throughout the day. Sometimes HOURS.(Another reason morning flights are best!) 
8. When flight crews get delayed we time out. We can NOT fly longer than 16 hours. Its illegal. So it doesn’t matter if you have a wedding to get to, when we are done we are done. The way things are now, there are no back up crews, so when this happens your flight cancels. (Now you are starting to see why those morning flights are best!) 
9. Avoid connecting in Newark (Or any New York airport for that matter). It is literal hell. You have a 50/50 chance your flight will cancel or missing your connection. They have been cancelling flights at their starting points just to keep the planes out, because there just aren’t enough people to manage the planes, so the gates stay full. Also the restaurants are expensive, it is not a great place to be stuck. 
10. Be nice. As stated above, we are overworked and tired. We will not help you if you are mean. No one cares that you are going to miss your cruise if you are an asshole. So even if we can help, we will save our help for someone nice. Tensions are high. Our patience is gone. If you make us mad – you will not be flying on our planes. We will leave you behind without a second thought, and laugh about you later. 
11. Being drunk on an airplane is a federal offense, so don’t overdo it. If you drink too much at the bar waiting for your delayed flight you risk not being allowed to fly at all. We are too tired to deal with your drunk ass when we have legitimate issues to deal with. 
12. Get trip insurance if you have a lot of money invested. I hate the whole idea of this, but I also hate the idea of losing money. Example: I was working a flight yesterday that waited over an hour for a gate. A family of 8 missed their flight to Rome. The only flight of the day. They were going to a cruise which they would now miss. They were all crying, there was nothing I could do. (Also a reason to fly a day early!) 
13. Flights are FULL. If you buy the cheap seats you will not be able to sit with your family. It says so when you purchase your ticket!! Flight Attendants aren’t there to rearrange the whole plane just so you can sit with your family because you tried to save $100 on a third party website. 
14. Speaking of third party websites and saving money….. Like I said flights are FULL. If a flight is oversold, and no one volunteers to give up their seats, who do you think is the first to be bumped? You guessed it, the family that saved a few $$ by using sites like Expedia, Kayak, Hotwire etc. 
15. Pack smart. Don’t be “That guy” Don’t hold up boarding because you have your extenders open till they are busting and you can’t figure out how to make it fit in the overhead. (Passengers are stressed too, they can be aggressive when boarding a delayed flight) 
16. Take showers, brush your teeth, leave the perfume off, don’t eat stinky food (caesar salad and tuna fish I’m talking to you!), and bring headphones. Trust me. These things sound basic, but add to stress on crowded planes. If you are stuck on the tarmac for 3 hours after a 4 hour flight, you will thank me for this. 
17. Bring a sweater if you tend to be cold. So tired of half naked girls asking me to turn the heat up. NO. Wear clothes!! Side note: If you dress like this and ask for heat, there’s a chance I will turn the AC up. 
18. Thats not water on the bathroom floor. For the love of God wear shoes to the bathroom!!! 
19. Don’t tell a Flight Attendant they look tired. We are and we know. You may cause us to ugly cry right there in galley. 
20. Happy Travels!
Our Tower of Babel
I hear Einstein’s quote “…my faith is not compatible with science” as saying that his faith is not limited by current scientific knowledge. It seems to me, ignorant as I am, that there is more that humanity (including scientists) doesn’t know than what we do know.
Isaac Asimov’s non-fiction books are some of my favorites. “Wellsprings of Life” was describing the evolution of the tiniest to the largest things in the universe and showing the correlation between them. It was so awesome, I literally danced with joy at the amazing intelligence behind and in all of it. His book The Human Body and The Human Brain showed how incredibly physically different we are from one another even within our level of evolution. It explains so much that could free us from our cookie cutter vision of humanity.
I do admit that I sometimes see the amazing survival adaptions of animals now looking more like evolution than what I see in humanity.
For me Jesus was a significant leap in evolution from “tribal” to “universal,” from “me first” to “everything is one,” and, from “scorn of those who do not understand” to “forgive them for they know not what they do.” I see intellectual scorn dividing us and setting those we judge’s ignorance in concrete. Those who see possibilities and those who live in the reality of the present moment are two sides of the human coin. And sadly, those who are limited to custom and what they can see physically outnumber those who explore the possible dream. If we cannot find a way to care enough to understand each other and free us all to grow wiser and more understanding, we are building a tower of Babel that will lead to the destruction of all. I love science, but it does not yet have all the answers and many of them are paradoxical. If the person with the high IQ (IQ tests do not measure all skills and knowledge necessary for survival) cannot communicate with the majority across the gap so that they can accept that ignorance is curable, even though it makes us feel and sometimes appear stupid, we are doomed. The whole may be greater than the sum of its parts, but the parts need to work together.
