Personal

As you might have noticed, I haven't blogged much. Partially, it's because I've gotten out of the habit, and I'm going to work on changing that. Partially, though, it's because I have been trying to figure out what to say about Occupy. I've been only peripherally involved in OccupyOakland, and other Occupy efforts. I helped start OccupyTechnology, and I've been to OccupyOakland a couple of times.

I have been at times elated at what is happening all over the country (and world) with the Occupy movement. And, at times, I have been sorely dissapointed when people in the movement have done things that are violent or counter-productive, and when the discussion has gotten mired in what feels at somepoints to be arguments about non-violent tactics, who has claim to be most radical,  or speak most for "the people."

The Occupy movement has brought out the absolute best in all of us, and has also brought out the worst - and I'm not just talking about police brutality, but that is certainly a big piece of it. Eve Ensler reminds us that even in the midst of a movement like Occupy, women still get raped. And people still get shot.

Above all, I am very clear that we're not going to get where we need to go without some kind of spiritual transformation. A video I saw recently (a great one, worth watching), is called "The Revolution is Love" and there is a comment in it about how we don't just want to knock down the 1% and put a different 1% in it's place. It's about changing the whole paradigm.

The good thing is that the language about transformation is in the air in the Occupy movement. My housemate and friend Nichola Torbett's organization, Seminary of the Street, is deep in the Occupy trenches, talking a lot about spiritual transformation, particularly with Jesus as the model. 

And this spiritual transformation, from my perspective, isn't necessarily religious. It's not about religious conversion, or adoption of particular spiritual traditions or ideas. It is fully embracing our dependence on a healthy Mother Earth, the primacy of love and compassion, and realizing that each human being has great value, and that all of our lives can, and should have meaning beyond what money we can make, or what kind of house we can live in.

So as we Occupy cities and towns, abandoned buildings and vacant lots for the good of all, let's also Occupy Transformation.

I came across this quote today, and it seems worth posting here. It's a quote by John Lennon:

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” 

I've spent a lot of time in my life trying to fit myself into varied spiritual boxes. I was a Presbyterian, then I was a Nazarne, then I was a humanist, then I was a Pagan, then a Buddhist, then a UU, and lastly a progressive Christian. Lately, I have come to realize that there are aspects of all of these identities in my spiritual and religious life at the moment,  but none of them can singularly hold me. I've known for a long time that being a Progressive Christian wasn't really enough to describe me, and at many times I've called myself a "Buddheo-Christian" (this term did not originate with me.) But even that isn't really enough - it doesn't reflect the influence of other traditions in my spiritual life.

I was talking with Ruth yesterday, and she has a way of seeing things about me that I sometimes have a hard time seeing. She said that I was simply a contemplative.Somehow, that seemed so straightforward and true. That seems like a container that can fit me.

I was looking at the etymology of "contemplative". It's lingusitically connected to contemplation. Contemplation is from Latin, and includes such meaning as "act of looking at" and "to gaze attentively, observe" and to "to mark out a space for observation". I like that latter meaning - "to mark out a space" - I think of that in terms of both time and intention: to set aside time and effort to observe. 

What is the observation? Rather often, it's my mind. But sometimes it's about observing creation - the natural world, and all beings in it. 

This also feels like it allows for a more intimate connection between my scientist self, my writer self, and my spiritual self. And it feels like it can explain a lot of what I feel called to do in ways that being a Christian or a Buddhist didn't quite explain to me. 

In my adult life, I've lived with others in community longer than I've lived alone. It suits me, and I hope to be able to live in intentional community for the rest of my life.

I've lived in WORSHP house for almost a year now. WORSHP house (WORSHP stands for West Oakland Reconciliation and Social Healing Project) is an intentional commnity of six people, of varied ages, ethnicities, sexualities and backgrounds, living in a big old Victorian house (the one on the corner) in West Oakland. We are interfaith, although we all have some connection to Christianity, and several of our members consider that to be their faith tradition. Some of us also have deep connections to Buddhism.

Living life in this time in history, in this particular country, is a complicated journey. Having companions along this journey is a true blessing. We are all trying hard to live this life where we spread love - we try our hardest to love everyone, even when our society, and our inner voices say that we can't, or shouldn't. A post that went up once on our status whiteboard (our physical version of Facebook) said "This thing of loving everyone ... is a pain in the a**". We also have a gratitude board, which fills up with all of the things in life we are grateful for.

We have faced tough issues as a community. What does it mean to be who we are (mostly priviledged by background - we've all been to graduate school) living in West Oakland? What does real racial reconciliation mean? We've grappled with tough issues like money, ego, how we want and need to be taken care of, and fairness. We're complete, and fine, and incomplete at the same time. We are a work in progress, moving along a path we seem to be called to, and stumbling, but we pick each other up when we fall. 

This year has been one of the most difficult years of my life. It has also been a year full of change. At the same time, it has been one of the best years of my life, living here. I have felt called to live a life of simplicity, awareness, generosity and love, and I don't know if I could have found a better place for it. 

And then there's the fun stuff. The fun conversations around the dining room table on theology, economics, food security, political action, what it really means to follow that Jesus guy, and sex (yes, we talk about sex.) We love to play games, and it's no surprise to find people engaging in a game of bananagrams or Spades. We all are good cooks, so we eat well, not just on Fridays where we have our group dinners, but many days someone has cooked up a pot of soup, or a dish of curried this or that for people to share. We have lots of visitors, both for dinners and events, and also for lengthier stays. It's fun to meet such a wider range of people than I'd generally meet on my own.

As a community, we certainly could fit within the movement called "New Monasticism," and we all find resonance with those ideals, we also have deep critiques of that largely white, straight movement. We think they gone far in critiquing our economic system, and the ways in which Chrisitianity has become complicit in the dominany culture, but they haven't gone nearly far enough in looking at gender and sexuality. 

I know we also have a lot more distance to travel, and I look forward to the road ahead.

Self-publishing books used to have a bad reputation. That has changed a little bit over the past couple of years, but there definitely is the sense that people who get published "for real" must be better writers, and certainly have more cred. I decided to self-publish my novels for a number of reasons, after long consideration and contemplation. These reasons are both philosophical as well as deeply personal.

First for the philosophical. There are two different threads that I'll follow in this post about the philosophical underpinnings of my decision not only to self-publish, but also to publish using a Creative Commons License. I have been an open source advocate for many years. Although not as much of a purist as some, I still believe that the way to create and share these digital things we're awash in now, whether it be software, content, data, music, writing, art, what have you, is to make them open and freely available to everyone, and allow anyone to "riff off" of that creativity. And, I want to help encourage economic models which help creators make a living from creating.

Open source software is a great example of a gift economy at work, and although it is never, and can never be purely so until and unless our society operates as a gift economy (my personal economic philosophy) it does present a success of sorts for that ideal. 

When I wrote my first novel 5 years ago, I knew I wanted to release that work using an open content model. I worried as an emerging writer about how I could possibly do that and get published at the same time. I even wrote Cory Doctorow an email about it once. He is without a doubt the most well known published author who's work has an open content license. There are very, very few other success stories like his. He was quite nice in reply, and basically said "don't worry about it until later." Well, three books and five years later came, and getting published "for real" didn't look especially likely, especially not with an open content license. I'll talk more about those issues a little later in the personal section.

The second thread has to do the concentration of ownership of media companies in a very, very few hands. Six companies in the United States own the vast majority of media, including TV, radio, music, movies, and print. Most publishers of science fiction and fantasy novels are now owned by one of these big six. And in the pursuit of being published "for real", one might be hard pressed to pick and choose. I found the idea of being a part of that machine kind of distasteful. I don't blame other authors who are - not at all. But I realized it wasn't for me.

These two threads come together in talking about copyright, and the ways in which these large media companies work very hard to not only extend copyright protection for works far beyond what makes sense in order to protect the creators of that work, but also to do their best to limit the availability of work, and prevent unauthorized copying of works with technology such as DRM. Things which, in my humble opinion stifles creativity and innovation instead of fostering it. There is a great (albeit long and complex) discussion of this in Yochai Benkler's amazing book The Wealth of Networks.

So now to the personal. Frankly, I didn't spend many years trying to get an agent, or trying to get published. I did spend some months, however. And I got feedback from editors and such on my work. The most common kind of feedback I got was "it needs more conflict." I even had someone suggest that the Casitians should be involved in a space battle with the US military at the beginning of my first book! 

I was fighting with this - I wanted people to read the books. I wanted to get published. But I realized that that wasn't why I was writing. It's a subtle thing. I write to tell stories that flow through me. That's the only way I can describe it. I realized that I wanted to write without compromise. I think I'm a good writer. I hope some day I can become a very good writer. I want people to read what I write - but that's not why I write. I write because I can't not write. I can't not tell these stories that come to me.

I didn't want to have to change how I write, or what I wite just so I can get published. I write on subjects that some science fiction fans (and therefore publishers) won't like. I write about gender, race, sexuality and spirituality. I write about peacemaking, and alternative economic systems. I write about the effects of oppression. I want these stories to be read - I don't want them to simply pile up on my hard drive, with no one to see them but myself. 

I don't know what will happen now that I've embarked on this road. It's been fun talking with people who are reading, or have read my first book. I'm looking forward to the process of putting the rest of them out, as I'm also already working on more (yes, there will be more - I said I can't not write.)

This is a great song (and catchy, too.)

My spiritual journey through this life has been interesting, at least. I started out life as a mainline Christian (Presbyterian), was a Nazarene for a while, then wandered a bit, explored Paganism, picked up a Buddhist meditation practice, then returned to Christianity more recently, but a type that is neither the faith of my childhood, nor the faith of my fundamentalist early adulthood. These days, I find myself holding less tightly to the label Christian that I relatively recently re-adopted. I'm finding myself willing to live with the complexity of what it means to follow two different faith traditions (Christianity and Buddhism) at the same time.

I've always thought that every faith is simply an approximation of what's really true. We humans are limited beings, and we're not capable of fully understanding the truths of the universe - the best we can do is approximate.

It's been almost 5 years since I wrote my first novel in the summer of 2006, a science fiction story about aliens who are human. It has finally made it to the light of day! After a lot of consideration about the current massive changes in the publishing world, and my own penchant for all things technical, I decided to self-publish the novel, in eBook form first. If enough people request it, there will be a print run. There may even be an audio book! 

I'm excited that this has happened - I've written a lot in the last 5 years, and I'm happy that I've finally allowed myself to get this out the door! :-) 

The novel is called: "The Casitians Return." The sequels in the trilogy, called "The Story of New Earth" and "Humans Untied" will be published in June and August, respectively.

You can watch the video trailer for the book on You Tube.

More information (like where you can get a copy) is on the website. It's not yet available on Amazon for Kindle, but should be in the next couple of weeks or so.

If you want to keep informed, feel free to check out the website, sign up for my email list, and/or check out the Facebook page.

In 2003 at the start of the war in Iraq, I did a news blackout for about a year. I'd gotten so addicted to reading and watching news, and addicted to the need to see what was happening, and I got so disheartened and frustrated that I needed detox.

Well, it happened again. Over the course of the last few years since Obama was elected, I've felt compelled to keep track of what's happening in the country and the world. I see that same addiction and need coming back, so it's time again for a national and international news blackout. Goodbye NPR, Al Jazeera English, NYT, Rachel Maddow, and even John Stewart. I don't know how long this will last (forever, maybe?) but I figure if anything really momentous happens, I'll hear about it anyway.

Constantly hearing about horrible things happening far away that I have no way to affect is disheartening, difficult and frustrating, and takes away energy for positive action. Time to focus on the local, and what I can affect.

I have hemmed and hawed about this for years, now. I started writing my novels in the "Casitian Universe" series back in 2006, and I have now completed the trilogy. I spent a few months looking for agents and publishers, and decided, given my penchant for all things open, as well as the massive, amazing changes happening in the publishing business, that I would strike out on my own. I decided, at first at least, to self-publish all three novels in electronic form only.

The first novel, called "The Casitians Return" will be published on April 8, 2011. You can find an excerpt online. It will be distributed on Amazon, Google, Apple iBook, for the Barnes and Noble Nook, and on casitian.com.

The novels will be Creative Commons licensed.

I imagine many of you have seen the movie "The Matrix." If you have, you know about the Red Pill.

The red pill is a tough one to swallow, and once you swallow it, there is no going back. In some ways, I think I was born with the red pill in my body, with slow-release timing, and it's just about completely dispersed in my system right about now. I think also at varied times in my life I have chosen red pill booster shots. I don't want to stretch this analogy too far beyond recognition, though. I do feel like I'm beginning to see things more clearly than I have in a while - things that are uncomfortable. Lately, this has been primarily generated by the fact that I have been struggling with a chronic health condition that has made my life somewhat difficult to manage. And that has a way of putting so much about my life, and our collective lives into a sharp kind of contrast that makes some things hard to ignore. Things that were much more easy to ignore when I was healthy, and living my normal life.

We have chosen, for a variety of reasons, to live with a set of illusions about who we are as human beings, and what we are capable of. And, as is clear in so many ways, we are learning the hard way about how false these illusions really are - we are all, in a sense, taking a big dose of the Red Pill without our permission.

If you have some time, definitely listen to this podcast - an interview with Barbara Kingsolver about her book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." I had the pleasure of listening to it yesterday. The interview, and her book, is a few years old, but it's a great interview, and I can tell from her writing that she is someone who has taken the Red Pill.