It never occurred to me that I was prejudiced. In fact, I was inspired to leave the life I knew as a young white man to be a Christian missionary in Africa. Yet, until that time at age 22 in my little town in Colorado, I don’t remember ever meeting a black person or knowing anything about black history. I just knew I wanted to know and serve God. As I prepared to depart my country for that foreign land, I felt an inward restraint so strong that I canceled my plans with Africa Inland Mission. In the coming years, several events and relationships impacted my decision and changed my life. My desire had been admirable, but difficult circumstances revealed that I was not like I had hoped that I was. It would take 49 years before I went on my first visit to Kenya.

Watts

Amid a complicated set of circumstances, I found myself in Los Angeles—alone, far from home, and having made decisions that canceled everything that I had accomplished in college and learned from my numerous, hopeful mentors. Suddenly I needed a job. Not knowing why, I was impressed to apply for a teaching position in Watts. This was soon after the riots and fires of the mid-sixties.

When I applied to L.A. City Schools, Superintendent Baer said that in all of Los Angeles only one teaching position was open. It was in Watts! I went to Charles Drew Jr. High for an interview with the principal, Mr. Henrikson. He told me I could have the job if I wanted it, but he wanted to assure me I would be a failure. I was white, and I would be a teacher. I would face nothing but rebellion among the 1800 black students and represent authority. Having a strong conviction, I surprised him. I said “Fine, I will take the job.”

Suddenly, I was a white teacher in a black school. I was to teach plastics and other industrial subjects, of which I knew absolutely nothing. I would have as many as 44 students in my shop classes. On my second day, a riot broke out. It was chaos. My students threw my two desks into the walls and tore down some of the plaster. They were all screaming “Get outta here Whitey and don’t ever come back!” I ran out of my shop door, across the teachers’ parking lot and across the campus to hide in the Counselor’s Office under Mr. Kerr’s desk. He was a black man, the former teacher of my shop classes. He knew if I were a failure he would have to return to that impossible job.

I cried on the way to school and quit every day for three months. In the agony of my situation, I learned things about myself. I discovered that my love for God was mostly doctrinal, and my love for people mostly theoretical. In the next four years, 700 students passed through my classes. I had as many as four death threats on my life in a single week. My students sometimes started fights in class, chased others with a hack saw and chisel, threw a hammer at others, threw orange juice at me during recess, and more. In my constant distress, one day I went into my supply room during class, slammed the door and just stood there, cursing them all. I was frustrated and angry that many saw my white skin and cursed me for the same reason. I didn’t see people. I didn’t see faces. I just saw black bodies in motion. And I suddenly saw the prejudice and hatred in my own heart.

Where had that little missionary in me gone? A light dawned inside of me—something was wrong in my own heart. The situation had not made me prejudiced. It only exposed what was deep inside of me already. Perhaps my students had the same problem. I cried out to the living God and realizations began.  My hatred began to turn to a genuine love that I previously only thought I had.

Soon, I was elected Department Chairman, and my students had responded to my changing view and feelings. I brought many of them home with me on weekends. I had no “teacher’s pet.” Rather, it was a rivalry, a great honor to be invited to Mr. and Mrs. Nelson’s apartment for the weekend. In my third year, students prepared a project display for the Los Angeles Industrial Crafts Fair. Of 34 Junior High Schools, my students took First Place, a phenomenal accomplishment.

By that time, I had begun to see them as people, individuals, creations of a loving God whom everyone can relate to. I wasn’t “color blind.” I saw color as a beautiful gift, the more diverse the better. To this day, Ricky, Michael, Louis and the others remain in my heart. If there were ever a need, I knew they and the others would defend me to the death, as I also would have for them. I failed a lot, but a lot was gained—in them and in me. Watts had become my Africa.

Transition

Between my entrance into the black community and the present time, I have had countless experiences of peoples with complexions, languages, and cultures different from mine. When I discovered the depths of my own prejudice and depravity while teaching in Watts, I opened my heart deeper than I could have ever known possible. Since that time, I have grown, filled with love of God and love of all people.

Expansion

Half-way through my doctoral program 42 years after teaching at Watts, I was required to present a Forum Essay to students, faculty, and the public. My essay was on Poetry. The essay’s impact was significant. The critiquing professors were all known to be incredibly sophisticated, daunting, and tough. No critiques being offered, the chairman concluded by saying that during his 14 years at Oxford Graduate School (OGS) there had never been a student’s presentation that was so outstanding that no one thought it could be improved. The discussion was then opened up to the audience for responses. One impactful, positive comment came from a highly esteemed, black professor. Another wonderful comment in the audience came from a successful black woman, my esteemed colleague. The President of OGS later asked if I would extend my Forum Essay to a doctoral dissertation. Eventually, she also arranged for me to meet the esteemed Dr. Maya Angelou.

Dr. Maya Angelou

Through amazing circumstances, among a luncheon of 500 black women and I in Charlotte, NC, I heard Dr. Angelou speak. Weeks later, my wife and other guests were sitting at her lunch table, an exquisite affair! I had read much of her stunning life story but physically being with her vastly enlarged my views of the black community, of their suffering, struggles, and successes. On one occasion in her home, we sat with Dr. Angelou and Oprah Winfrey for a casual discussion of more than one hour. The night she invited us to stay overnight in her home, she asked me to autograph one of my books for her and then ordered eight more copies for her friends. She included us in her Annual Five-Day-Celebration of Thanksgiving in Winston-Salem among her closest biological and social friends.

From my friend Dr. Maya Angelou, I learned of her great involvement with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Because of her, I became acquainted with the daughter of Malcolm X as we were seated in the VIP section at the U.S. Post Office inauguration of the “Maya Angelou Stamp.” Because of her, I have great friends among the black community in America and with Africans of many countries. I even got to go on a fantastic visit to see Mama Sarah, President Obama’s grandmother in Kenya. Five weeks before she passed away in 2014, Dr. Angelou designated me to help design, build, and launch a traveling, educational museum of her life and work. Her personal assistant of more than 15 years continues to call me and stay overnight with us in Nashville occasionally as he is crisscrossing our great nation. And so much more…

Summary

The experiences and perspectives that I have shared in this discussion were pivotal adventures of my life, but there are countless other stories of impact to my own life—of concept, of sub-culture, and appreciation of the black community. The relevant enlightenment and spiritual renewal of my heart has included people of every culture, religion, and complexion whom I know from all around the world. It is through experiencing persons in their context with mine, serving and participating in mutual events in my home and theirs, that my appreciation has grown, expanded, and been shared. It may be that others have found the need to discover their own inward condition and realize a journey such as mine. The joyful overflow of my life’s adventure thus far has led me to publish more than 25 books on family, spiritual guidance, and work, relevant to all. My contribution to celebrating Black History Month here may be small, but it is personal, it is real, and it is mine.

Humans take up residence in all kinds of environments ranging from sprawling metropolises to some of the most remote corners of the globe that are largely devoid of our modern luxuries. Oftentimes though, we emigrate to other societies for a variety of reasons; curiosity, financial profit, for the sake of adventure, service, to spread one’s beliefs, or to learn about others. Richard Nelson, a white man that taught in one of Los Angeles’ toughest African American schools, is one of those people that left his home behind to learn more about himself and overcome his subconscious prejudices. His article “My White Experience in the Black Community” is an emotional and gripping memoir that can help all of us open our hearts to others.

In worst case scenarios, people flee from their homes to avoid persecution, enmity, exclusion, or even ethnic cleansing. Many Turks have had to flee their home country of Turkey, often via illegal and unsafe practices, with the hope of escaping a brutal dictatorship that no one wanted them to call Turkey their home. Zain Hussain recounts his emotional and life changing encounter with Turkish refugees on his volunteer trip to Greece.

Some of Earth’s most beautiful islands and oceans are home for other creatures, such as Pacific Golden Plovers and Loggerhead Sea Turtles. Despite lacking free will or methodology, they utilize a variety of complex systems to consistently find their way home even if it means travelling hundreds of miles across giant swaths of lands or water. These natural phenomena are astounding and still perplex scientists to this day.

Even the most microscopic creatures find homes for themselves, whether in our bodies or in the bodies of other animals. One such creature, though we would definitely consider it not welcome in our systems, is the trypanosome, a lethal parasite that is a scourge across much of Africa. Such parasites travel through a variety of hosts including worms, eggs, snails, birds, and flies to eventually end up within our bloodstreams.

Hsueh MF et al. Analysis of “old” proteins unmasks dynamic gradient of cartilage turnover in human limbs. Science Advances, October 2019.

Humans may not be able to regrow amputated limbs, but a recent study showed that damaged cartilage may regrow through a process similar to that of animals such as salamanders and zebrafish. Scientists collected 18 specimens of joint tissue from the hips, knees, or ankles of patients who underwent surgery. They then placed the tissue in a mass spectrometer and measured the age of the cartilage proteins in the sample. These analyses showed that the age of cartilage largely depended on where it resided in the body. Cartilage in ankles is young, middle-aged in the knee, and old in the hips. This correlation between the age of human cartilage and its location in the body suggests that limb repair occurs in humans in a similar fashion to certain animals in which tissue regeneration takes place at the furthest tips such as the ends of legs or tails. This finding also helps to explain why injuries to people’s knees and, especially, hips take a long time to recover and often develop into arthritis, while ankle injuries heal quicker and less often become severely arthritic. The researchers further identified the molecules that are instrumental in the regulation of this region-specific regeneration process. They are called microRNAs and, not surprisingly, are present at very high levels in animals that are known for limb, fin, or tail repair including salamanders, zebrafish, and lizards. Scientists believe that these regulator microRNAs can be utilized in the regeneration of degenerated cartilage of an arthritic joint to reverse arthritis. Regeneration of part or all of an injured human limb may even be possible by finding components salamanders have and we don’t. Finally, it is also possible that this could be a fundamental mechanism of repair that could be applied to many tissues, not just cartilage, which might open up many new avenues in the regenerative medicine.

The universe might have many Earth-like exoplanets

Doyle AE et al. Oxygen fugacities of extrasolar rocks: Evidence for an Earth-like geochemistry of exoplanets. Science, October 2019.

New astrophysical and geochemical evidence suggests that Earth may not be that unique, and Earth-like planets may be common in the universe. All of the planets in our solar system orbit around the Sun. Planets that orbit around other stars are called exoplanets.  The first exoplanets were discovered in the early 1990s. Since then, thousands of exoplanets have been revealed with over 4,000 confirmed and a further 4,495 potential candidates. There have been major efforts to narrow down the exoplanets that may have properties similar to Earth with conditions suitable for life. This includes being a rocky planet that is not too hot or cold so that liquid water can exist. When searching for exoplanets that are similar to Earth, astronomers typically look for worlds in orbit around a type of star called a red dwarf or an M-dwarf. These types of stars are somewhat similar to our sun and make up about 70% of the stars in our galaxy. However, a new study shows that rocky exoplanets in orbit around a different type of star, a white dwarf, can have interiors that are surprisingly similar to our planet. White dwarf stars are dense remains of normal stars that have exhausted their nuclear fuel. These stars are typically composed of light elements such as hydrogen and helium, but in some cases they attract heavier elements such as magnesium, iron, and oxygen in their atmospheres due to their extreme gravity. These heavy elements are thought to be introduced when a rocky exoplanet crashes into a star, which gives astronomers evidence of what the exoplanets were like before they were destroyed. In this recent study, scientists looked at six white dwarfs located 200 to 665 light-years from Earth and rocks from the planets that once orbited it. Their analyses showed that five out of the six white dwarfs had sucked up fragments whose chemical composition is similar to rocks on Earth, Venus, and Mars. While the conditions suitable for life depend upon many additional factors, this study points towards the idea that many rocky planets are likely very familiar in terms of their general composition and, therefore, structure and behavior. This study also made a substantial leap forward in being able to make inferences for bodies outside of our own solar system and indicates that it is very likely that there are truly Earth analogs out there.

Artificial leaf points to a sustainable path to carbon-neutral fuels

Andrei V et al. Bias-free solar syngas production by integrating a molecular cobalt catalyst with perovskite–BiVO4 tandems. Nature Materials, October 2019.

An artificial leaf from which a “clean” fuel alternative to petrol could be produced has been developed. Synthetic gas can be obtained from the lead by using only sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water.

Synthetic gas, also called syngas, is typically a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. It is largely produced by exposing fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas to high temperature steam and pressure, and the process releases carbon dioxide. Syngas is broadly used in a wide range of commodities including fuels, plastics, and fertilizers. While the utilization of fossil fuels has enabled large-scale industrial development in human history, the burning of fossil fuels is the largest source of emissions of carbon dioxide, which is one of the greenhouse gases that contributes to global warming. For decades scientists have been trying to discover new ways to produce syngas in order to close the global carbon cycle and to establish a sustainable chemical and fuel industry. In a recent study, researchers got inspired by leaves. These perfect little machines use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into fuel for plants through photosynthesis. An artificial leaf has been designed to have two light absorbers, similar to the molecules in plants that harvest sunlight, and a catalyst made from the naturally abundant element cobalt. When the leaf is immersed in water, one light absorber uses the catalyst to produce oxygen and the other one carries out the chemical reaction that reduces carbon dioxide and water into carbon monoxide and hydrogen, thus forming the syngas mixture. The scientists are now searching for ways to use their technology to produce a sustainable liquid syngas that could serve as an alternative to petrol. Although major efforts to generate renewable energy sources are being made, the development of synthetic petrol is critical as electricity can currently fulfill about 25% of our total global energy demand. There is a huge demand for liquid fuels to power heavy transport, shipping, and aviation sustainably.

Have you ever seen a rainbow? Until recently, I had looked at many rainbows, but had never truly seen a rainbow.

In his writings on faith and logic, religious scholar Bediuzzaman Said Nursi maintained that looking and seeing are two different things. In his book, The Words, he says: “The eye is a window through which the spirit looks at this world. If you use it on behalf of your carnal soul, without selling it to God Almighty, by gazing at transient, impermanent beauties and spectacles, it panders to lust and other carnal desires.”

Using Nursi’s reasoning, you might look at a magician who is right in front of you, for example, but never see how a trick is accomplished. The same thing happens when you look at a mathematical equation but don’t see what the x value is – unless you are good at mathematics.

After watching MIT physics professor Walter Lewin’s lecture “The Hidden Beauty of Rainbows,”[1] I am finally able to see the rainbow, instead of just looking at it. To share my fascination about this topic, and reinforce my own knowledge, here are some notes I took during Lewin’s lecture. Walter Lewin is the author of For the Love of Physics. This book is really a perfect book if you love Physics.

Figure 1.0

There are four fundamental facets we need to cover to understand a rainbow (Figure 1.0). The first is the “radius” of a rainbow. Since every rainbow has a radius, this means a rainbow is a circle. And every circle has a center point. A rainbow’s center point is below the horizon. Here, we can ask these follow-up questions:

1.1 How we can find the radius of a rainbow in degrees?

1.2 Do all rainbows have the same radius?

The second question is about the colors of a rainbow, specifically red. If you see a rainbow, there is always a red color. But:

2.1 Is the color red always on the inside or outside of the rainbow?

2.2 Does the position of the red color depend on the time of the day and year?

It’s obvious that light determines a rainbow. If there is a rainbow somewhere, there is an enormous difference in the brightness of the sky above and below a rainbow. We can now ask:

3.1 Where is it bright?

3.2 Where is it dark?

There are some additional questions we need to discuss regarding the second bow in Figure 2, specifically:

4 Have you ever noticed the second bow? If yes, then;

5 Where do you look for the second bow?

6.1 What is the color sequence of the second bow?

6.2 Is it the same as the primary bow, is it brighter, or is it reversed?

Figure 2.0

In order to understand rainbows better, we need to review some basic physics. Let’s start with reflection and refraction.

Mediums, reflection, and refraction

Definition: A medium[2] is the substance that carries a wave from one location to another.

When light goes from one medium to another, like from air to water, one of two things happens:

● Some of that light bounces back, which we call reflection. The light will reflect at the same angle at which it hit the surface.

● Part of the light doesn’t reflect, instead continuing into water at an angle. We call this refraction.

Each medium has an index of refraction, which tells us what the speed of light in that medium is. The index of refraction of air is 1.0003, and the index of refraction of a vacuum is 1.

That means the speed of light in air and in a vacuum is almost the same. That speed is 300,000 kilometers per second, and that’s why the index of refraction for air and a vacuum is 1. But in water, the index of refraction is approximately 1.33. The difference between 1 and 1.33 means that in water the speed of light is 33 percent slower than it is in air.

Snell’s law and an angle of incidence

There is also a connection between angle of reflection, angle of refraction, and the index of refraction. We call it Snell’s law.

Snell’s law illustrated:

Figure 3.0

To understand this formula, you need to know the definition of the sine of an angle.

Definition:The sine[3] is a trigonometric function of an angle. It is found by taking the length of the side opposite the angle and dividing by the length of the longest side of the triangle.

If α is 0°, then sin (α) = 0.

If α is 30°, then sin (α) = 0.5.

If α is 90°, then the sin (α) = 1.

Let’s do an example where we can apply Snell’s law (Figure 4.0).

Light comes from air to water at an angle of 60°. (This is possible, because the angle at which water comes in, the angle β, will be 40.6°.)

Definition: The angle of incidence[4] is the angle between the incoming light and the vertical on the surface.

Figure 4.0

Like professor Lewin said, “very simple, very straightforward.”

Figure 5.0 | Figure 5.0. Example of refraction and reflection. See also [5].[5]

Figure 6.0

Figure 6.0 displays a true wonder of water. Sunlight is coming from the left side, landing everywhere on half the surface of that raindrop. We can choose one very narrow beam of all that sunlight with a 60° angle of incidence. We call the angle of incidence “i” and the angle for the refraction “r.”

Of course, that narrow beam is the only a small fraction of the total.

At point A, two things happen (in accordance with Snell’s law);

● A little bit of light reflects.

● The remaining light refracts.

The light reaches point B inside the water drop. At point B, two things happen:

● Some of the light goes back into the air (signaling refraction).

● Some of the light gets reflected. (Therefore, at point B, the angles are the same, “r.”)

Then the reflected light goes on its way to point C. Here, a little bit of the light is reflected and goes back into the water. Most of it comes out of the water, which results in refraction.

At this point, if we use Snell’s law at point A, the reflection law at point B, and then Snell’s law at point C again, we will see that our angle for the refraction at point C will be, surprisingly, “i.”

Now, if we check the line that comes out from the water at point C, we will have a changing angle. We can call it φ (Phi). And for the angle φ, we have an algebraic formula, as follows:

φ= 4r — 2i

If you check the figure, you will see that we have 4 r and 2 i.

By the way, if we take the narrow beam which passes through the center of the raindrop, we can easily see that the angle of incidence is zero. In accordance to Snell’s law, this narrow beam goes straight through. Then it reflects back and finally it comes out of the water. This is true because:

if i = 0, then r = 0 and therefore φ = 0.

Let’s do something interesting and change the value of “i.” If the light hits the water drop higher up, the angle “i” increases. At some point, the angle φ also increases and reaches a maximum value.

Figure 7.0

If you recall, the index of refraction for water is 1.336. If we take any value of “i” on the table and apply Snell’s law, we can easily calculate values of r. And then, if we use the formula φ=4r — 2i, we can come up with the values of φ. This is illustrated in Figure 7.0.

If this doesn’t seem all that special, there is something else that you wouldn’t expect: φ reaches a maximum value, and when you go to higher values of i, then φ goes down again. This plays a key role in the formation of a rainbow.

The index of refraction depends on the color of the light.

Figure 8.0

As seen in the table, when the angle of incidence for red light is very close to 60°, the value of φ is at its maximum, which is 42.3°. In other words, the value of φ can be smaller than 42.3°, but it cannot be larger. For blue light, the angle of incidence is slightly lower, and the φ maximum is at 40.7°.

Water drop and a cone

A key question arises: Let us say we have one water drop, and the sunlight falling onto that water drop is coming from the left. What is that one water drop going to do with the white light from the sun that covers half of the rainbow?

Let us check first for red light and then for blue light.

Light beams will come out of this drop, and that cone will be filled with red light. But the angle for the light beams cannot be larger than 42°, meaning they can be smaller. Then we will see a cone of lights.

But why is it a cone? Because, if we go back to what was previously discussed, we will remember that one light beam comes in with an angle i, and then comes out with an angle i.

Figure 9.0

Figure 9.0 shows a representation of a water drop. The light that comes in at the angle of incidence is 60°. It refracts and reflects inside the droplet, then goes to point C and comes out of droplet at an angle of 42°. And, surprisingly, if the angle of incidence is 60°, when the light beam comes out, it has to be red light. On the other hand, there is not only one light beam coming in with an angle 60°. The entire surface of this water drop is illuminated by the sun, so there are an enormous number of beams for which the angle of incidence is 60°.

If we go back to Figure 9.0, we see the black line on this water drop. Any light beam that comes in anywhere on that black line will have an angle of incidence of 60°.

Figure 6.1

Now we will do the same for blue light. This time, we will have another cone which is completely filled with blue light, but when the blue light beams come out, the angle will be at a maximum of 40.7°.

Interesting fact: All the colors except for red and blue that are in the sunlight will be in between the red and blue.

Figure 6.2

A journey: refraction, reflection, and refraction

We know that when the light comes in, it goes through a journey. A light beam refracts, then reflects, and then refracts. That’s all. But, how about the light on the right side of the cone? Is there any light? When the sun shines in, does this water drop bring light there?

If the angle φ is larger than 42°, then, yes, it is possible. But we have already proven that the angle φ cannot be larger than 42°. So, it is impossible: There is no light outside the cone.

Another question… What will be the color of the light inside the blue cone? We should remember that the red light is everywhere in this cone, because as long as the angle φ is smaller than 42°, red light can be anywhere. The blue light is also almost everywhere because the blue light is allowed to be smaller than 40°. This means all the colors that we didn’t mention are coming out inside the blue cone and there will be just white light.

Figure 6.3

To summarize, if we have a water drop, and a bright light shining onto this water drop, we will see red, blue, green, white, and other colors inside the cone or circle. In other words, all the colors of a rainbow. And of course, there will be no light outside the cone. There are some experiments on YouTube that you can watch if you want.

Figure 6.4

You may think that at the location where blue comes out, if all the other colors can come out — which they can because the angle is smaller than 40° — the light should be also white, not blue. It is a nice approach, but wrong.

It is wrong, because of the light intensity. If you check the graph for the intensity of the light, you will see that different colors have peak points where φ reaches the maximum value. If all the colors are present and equal intensity, we see white light. That’s why the inside of the cone is white. However, when the color red spikes up, it dominates its location. We don’t even notice the other colors.

Figure 6.5

Looking at the sky

Let’s say you are standing at point A and the sunlight is coming from the left. Since the light comes from infinitely far away, all these lines are parallel to each other. Let’s say you look at the sky in direction B and pick a raindrop at any point. Any point you pick will cast the cone in the direction of the sun with the angle 60°.

When you look at the sky in the direction B, will you see light? You will not, because you are outside the 42°.

Figure 10.0

What if you look in a different direction? We will look at point C (it doesn’t matter where), and take a rain drop on line C. Light beams will do the same thing. Again, they will produce a 42° red cone. However, you will see white light. Yes, you read that right, white light, because you are looking straight in the middle of the cone of white light.

Let’s say we choose another angle and look at point D. If we choose a raindrop anywhere on line D, it will make no difference. It will cast into the sky the famous 42° angle because that’s the angle that was chosen there. If we look in that direction of the sky, what will we see? Yes, only red. No other color!

Figure 10.1

And now, we know where we will see red light, blue light, or white light. And we also know which direction has no light.

A rainbow is a bow in the sky

Let’s suppose the sun is on your left and you are standing at point A (Figure 11.0). Since there is light, you will have a shadow on the ground. As long as you look 42° away from any direction, you will only see red. That is because a cone is a spherical object. And that explains why the rainbow is a bowl in the sky. As long as it is 42° away from a line in any direction, you will always see red light. And if you decrease the angle, you will see the other colors in the sky.

And so now, we can make a picture of a rainbow.

When we look at the horizon, sometimes we see a rainbow. And we will have a center point somewhere below the horizon. The radius with 42° has red light. The blue light is closer to the 40° radius. This tells us that the red bowl is always on the outside and the blue light is always on the inside. That’s what we always see.

Figure 11.0

Double Reflection in the Rainbow

We can also include two reflections in the rainbow. If we do, we get refraction, reflection, another reflection, and then another refraction. So, the light beams reflect twice. And if we do this hocus-pocus again and again, we can come to a conclusion: There is no maximum value for the various colors, but there is a minimum value. In other words, various colors cannot be lower than a certain value, but they can be higher.

And if we do some calculation for the angles, we will see something very similar. We will find out that the second bow is pointing at the sky, and the angle is 10° above the first one (which is 52°). And, surprisingly, the colors of the second bowl reverse. In other words, red is the one on the inside, and blue is on the outside this time.

Figure 11.1

Interesting fact: There is no light between the two bowls. This is because of the φ maximum and minimum. We call that dark part Alexander’s dark band.[6]Additionally, since the second bowl is formed by φ minimum, sunlight can come out at angle φ or larger and there will be sunlight above a rainbow.

Figure 11.2

Some examples…

Image 1: René Descartes’ sketch of how primary and secondary rainbows are formed (probable engraver: Frans van Schooten the younger).

Image 2: This diagram was drawn by the famous physicist Newton who was one of the first to understand the rainbow, from his book Optics.

Image 3: Double rainbow. The primary red bow is on the outside, and blue is on the inside. Alexander’s dark band can be seen in between the two bows. It shows up really dark. For the secondary bow, red is on the inside, and blue is on the outside.

Image 4: Walter Lewis’ backyard and his rainbow. When you water your garden when the sun is high in the sky, you can get a rainbow all the way around you. 42° away from the line is always red. If you turn around and look back, it is red.

Image 5 | A white rainbow. It is very unique and rare. It is also called a fog bow, because fog has small water droplets that create this effect.

Image 8 | Red rainbow. Let us imagine that there is a rainbow at sunset. What would you expect to see? We would only see red light because there is only red light. What would happen to the white light inside the bow? It would be red too.

Is this life?
This drastic contrast?
This black and white?
This sunshine and rain?
Is it?

Is it normal
for worlds to collide?
Combine?
Crash?

And these emotions?
To effervesce differently, yet be present,
in the same world,
the same existence.

It is.
And, apparently this is life,
When your mind and heart will be playing a tug of war,
and you sit,
you sit and realize it’s your choice.

See…
It’s your choice to visualize what you want to see. It’s your choice to just stay in the sunshine, ignoring the rain.
It’s your choice to just stare at that white and don’t look back at that black.

So this is what they meant,
when they told us to look at the cup, half full.

Even when you’re grieving the half that is gone, half is still there.

It’s the choice.
It’s the choice to chose how we look at our lives, the good and the bad.
How we smile in our happiness,
and find strength in our sadness.

How we laugh when we hear something funny,
something fun,
and hold those tears
when the sadness stings our hearts.

It’s our choice.
Our choice to be those optimisms
who just look at the glass as half full.

And who know,

deep down,
Even if the glass isn’t half full,
even if it’s only a quarter, or even a tenth, full
it will still, to some degree, be full.

And that it’ll get better.
It will get fuller.
Just know
that it will get better.
It will fill up.

No one’s glass
is constantly full…

Ibn ‘Arabi was such a determined one. He is a strong milestone in the history of mysticism. His heritage goes beyond Muslim identity and encompasses a following from diverse traditions. In this issue, Brenda Pletcher explores Ibn ‘Arabi’s mystical legacy as a firm foundation for interreligious dialogue. For Pletcher, Ibn ‘Arabi’s philosophy of “diversity within unity,” as symbolized by his vision of a Universal Tree surrounded by four mystical birds, reveals dialogues “of life, of study, of prayer, and of spirituality, all of which, if followed in an atmosphere of mutuality, will have the potential to facilitate people toward the dialogue of action—an action bringing forth a vision of justice for all.”

Just as these great messengers enrich our spirits, so do fruits enrich our bodies.. We love their taste and smell, and are aware of their health benefits. However, a great majority of us do not consume fruits when we should – we are not even aware of when we should. “When To Eat Fruits” explains reasons why fruits should not be consumed right after a meal, and why we should eat them at least an hour before the main course, or two hours after. It is a very useful read on the right consumption of one of the most important components of our daily diet, which we wrongfully substitute with industrially processed juices.

Like eating well, recycling has become integral to our daily lives. We collect the food remains in our kitchen and the leaves in our backyard. We separate paper from plastic, all in the hopes of making our planet’s body healthier.. But were you aware that recycling has always been a part of our body’s survival mechanisms? Abdullah Acar says there are recycling centers in our cells which “have the duty to help with the digestion of cellular trash (i.e. damaged cellular organelles, misfolded proteins, toxic loads) so that energy can be generated and raw material obtained for the construction of new cellular units.” Named autophagy (i.e. self-eating), this recycling phenomenon “is primarily activated or enhanced via fasting or food deprivation.”

The Fountain is bringing scholars from different disciplines and traditions together in Istanbul on November 5-7 for a three-day workshop to have “Conversations on Life, Knowledge, and Belief.” The purpose is to pave the way for The Fountain to be a platform of thoughtful discussions on cross-cultural dialogue, scientific thought, faith, and philosophy. We will keep you posted about the event.

Of all the faculties and senses that man is endowed with, moderation is one of the most essential virtues. Moderation concerns all people within society, and can become an unattainable virtue unless all members of society have gained a sufficient level of straightforwardness in their thoughts and actions. That straightness of conduct can only be sustained if a sufficient number of people in that society understand, desire and practice the virtue of moderation.

John B. Watson and his colleague conducted an experiment if an emotion could be generalized from one subject to another subject similar to the first. He targeted a baby, called Little Albert, who had no fear of small furry animals like white rats at that time. To carry out their hypothesis, Watson and colleague presented a white rat for Little Albert to play with. But after a while, the researchers made a very loud disturbing noise whenever Little Albert attempted at reaching for the white rat. After several times the researchers paired the loud noise with Little Albert’s attempts at reaching that white rat, a time came to the point where Little Albert was scared of the animal on its own—without the loud sound. From that on, Little Albert generalized his fear to anything furry, including non-white rabbits and dogs. (Watson & Rayner, 1920)

From early years of childhood, we have directly and indirectly learnt how an excess and shortage of anything could be undesirable. No matter who an individual is or where he or she comes from, that individual knows that eating too much can cause a bloated feeling, eating too less can harm health, talking too much could hurt others, and so does not talking at all. Moderation is such a universal virtue that every individual from every religion, ethnicity, and background knows that a life lived in moderation always reaps the most benefits.

Not just on trivial daily matters, moderation can address any issue that has significant relations to human life. Moderation is related to healthy lifestyles, satisfactory life outcomes, healthy relationships, and many more. But one aspect of humankind that is faced everyday—yet it seems to be ignored most of the time—is the mindset, way of thinking, or the cognition. We can have times when there is a “shortage” of the mindset, but more problematic is the instances when some individuals choose to adopt an extreme way of thinking.

Consider the case of Little Albert above, because of one tragedy Little Albert generalized his feelings and fear that anything furry was scary. Probably because that white furry rat seemed to produce such a loud scary noise, Little Albert thought, “so, anything furry MUST be scary too…” This is one example where way of thinking can be extreme. Moderation does not seek to moderate this extreme way of thinking, rather it seeks to moderate way of thinking generally so it is not as extreme.

How moderation is related to prejudice

As mentioned above, moderation can address many issues, and this includes prejudice. Prejudice is defined as the way we see others—the social orientation that is based on a membership of a particular group (Brown, 2010). To understand prejudice, one has to note that prejudice comes from a generalized attribution or characterization (or what is commonly known as a stereotype). Prejudice is the emotional aspect of stereotypical thinking. Like Little Albert, the infant generalized his prejudice to anything furry, and although Albert’s reaction to those furry objects was dramatic, our modern prejudicial reaction is usually more subtle and hidden.

In relation to the issue of prejudice, moderation is synonymized to being fair-minded—a way of thinking that employs the middle point between two extremes. Prejudice is, in its basic form, a way of thinking that is located in one extreme. The extremity comes from the aspect of generalization of prejudicial mindset in its beholder’s way of thinking. But where do these thoughts come from? People’s tendency to generalize their observation of a trait of a person to his or her group members always comes from the external sources.

One study supported the notion that people obtain prejudicial thinking from external sources (Aboud, 1976). The research method involved asking participants to seek information on three fictitious groups. Prior to seeking information, the participants were shown statistics of certain traits related to these groups. This was done to “set” the minds of the participants on the traits that were more likely to be shown by the members of these groups. Consequently, when seeking information on the groups after shown the statistics of the groups, the participants were more likely to “confirm” what they had been told from the statistics, allowing a generalization to occur in their mindset.

Availability heuristics and their role in prejudicial thinking

Why do humans generalize more than they should, or at all? Perhaps it is because of the information they can readily and superficially obtain from the target of their prejudicial thinking. Stereotypes are always something people can see directly, such as weight, skin color, and intelligence shown through behavior and many other characteristics. These sets of readily available information seem to be more important because there is one type of heuristics, availability heuristics that is present in the human mind to help them judge on frequency or probability (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973).

To understand heuristics, consider the two images below that we come across very often. How do you know which gender is which symbol? The existence of heuristics allows us to manage this world in a more simplified and helpful way. Society uses symbols that represent certain group of people to give certain information. No matter where we are, our brain is integrated with the understanding that “skirts” are something only women would wear—it is how, by using that heuristic, we know that the first symbol tells us that it is a women’s place, or belongs to women, or can only be used by women—depending on where we see the symbol.

Heuristics are tools to help people make a cognitive decision on something such as deciding who someone is, if he or she is a righteous person, or what leads to a particular event, or how a certain event happens. Availability heuristics is the tool used to make a judgment when it comes to the frequency of probability that something occurs to that particular target. For example, one may judge the traits of people in community A, after seeing the behavior of a few members of community A. Availability heuristics help people simplify judgment to the most simplified information they can get in mind, and that information can come from various sources, such as a personal experience like the one in the Little Albert case, and others like the statistics given in the study described above.

Availability heuristics can be useful in some situations, such as estimating voting behavior in an election period, or predicting divorce cases for a particular year, but sometimes it has a negative consequence. Prejudice partly comes from the use of availability heuristics and blind “compliance” to such judgment. In this case, availability heuristics are a form of excess of the use of limited information offered to the human mind prior to judgment because blind belief to such heuristics can lead them to generalize. This is an extreme way of thinking that would go against the very nature of moderation itself.

Labeling and availability heuristics

Availability heuristics can be so powerful that sometimes people do not even realize that it is affecting their way of thinking. This is due to the excess use of labeling to simplify and categorize objects. Labeling affects human judgment and interpretation toward something or someone (Jussim, Nelson, Manis, & Soffin, 1995). Labeling is one of the sources of availability heuristics because labeling comes from the traits of physical attributes that people see from the individuals that they label. For example, individuals are labeled as doctors after they are seen wearing a white coat with a stethoscope around their neck, or a man is labeled as dangerous when walking in the dark with a hooded jumper on. Once labeling happens, individuals who conform to the traits and physical attributes that resemble the labels are stereotyped and these stereotypes become the readily available information to serve as a tool to form availability heuristics.

Labeling is not all inaccurate, but the negative consequence of labeling happens because people are too focused on the external traits of a target of the label. People seem to readily judge that a person in a white coat is a doctor, or that a man who has a hood on while walking in the dark is dangerous. These are all the external qualities of the person in a white coat and the man with a hood that people focus on to make a judgment, and eventually they have prejudicial thinking against these targets.

When discussing the topic of faith, Benjamin Franklin said, “Faith is confirmed by the heart, confessed by the tongue, and acted upon by the body.” This definition of faith is in parallel with the definition given by various religions. It emphasizes the importance of both external (confessing and acting upon) and internal aspects (believing) of spirituality. One cannot have one aspect without the other. Moderation involves professing your faith internally, such as believing and keeping your motivation, and externally, such as taking care of your appearance in line with your faith, and being concerned about what you say and do. This means that you do not just focus on either one aspect alone, but prove your stand by maintaining your faith, internally and externally.

In relation to prejudice, labeling happens due to focusing more on the external aspects of traits, like the group members’ appearance, behavior, and even intelligence (as it can be seen from their way of thinking and speaking). But we often neglect to remember that there are interior aspects of those individuals—the aspects that are dismissed from the factors of being labeled. These interior aspects can be different across individuals, thus labels alone could not make an entirely accurate judgment on an individual.

Conceptual frameworks of the relationship between moderation and prejudice

As discussed, prejudice comes from many factors that are not in line with the concept of moderation and this can be prevented by allowing the right way of thinking to be our habit. Moderation is a middle pathway to prevent prejudice. One way to do so is by understanding that while the outside of a person can tell something about him or her, the inside parts can be important too. Figure 1 illustrates the conceptual framework on how moderation can address prejudicial thinking.

Figure 1 shows a continuum of the way of thinking with moderation in the middle and “indifference” and “prejudicial thinking” on each extreme end. Prejudicial thinking, in one extreme, focuses only on the external aspects of a group of people, by which the aspects are used to make a judgment if the group is “good” or “bad.” These judgments are then used to make a generalization. On the other hand, indifference is shown when people have a neutral attitude; too much of it that they do not care about what is happening around them.

Moderation is located in the middle. It is neither prejudicial nor indifferent. People with a moderate way of thinking consider both the external and internal qualities of individuals to make a fair judgment. Each judgment is different across individuals because he or she knows that even if an individual belongs to a certain group, that individual does not have to be the same as the other members of that group. People with a moderate way of thinking know that tolerance needs to be exercised whenever needed, without any unfairness to any individuals who belong to a certain group of people.

Conclusion and a suggestion

When making a judgment or decision on a target’s attribution, it is important to examine the extent to which heuristics or the person’s dependence on readily available information—also known as availability heuristics—affects their judgment. Heuristics can be useful to help people organize, manage, and simplify their thoughts, but it should be supervised so that it is only used in moderate levels. Whenever one feels the need to make a quick judgment, he or she should break it by “educating” the self. Educating the self in its simplest form can be to ask, “What if I am judged that way? Would I like it?” By educating yourself, you make a psychological and mental reminder that to quickly judge means to unfairly treat that individual, which is something you would not want happen to you.

Another way to hinder the potential formation of prejudice is to empathize. By putting yourself in the target’s own shoes, you will be able to see how unfair stereotypes can be to a particular individual. Self-serving bias is a social cognitive error in which you are more likely to view positive events as a result of your own doing and negative events as the consequence of an external factor (Miller & Ross, 1975). This is viewed by psychologists as an error in thinking about other people, but interestingly, this can actually help in reducing prejudice. Prejudice can occur because you fail to attribute a person’s behavior or trait fairly, because he or she is simply another person you cannot relate to. Therefore, by empathizing with a person, you would more likely start to view that behavior through your own lens. By doing that, “self-serving bias” can begin and that is equipped with the ability to also consider your own internal attributes. Therefore, there will be a balance between focusing on internal aspects because it is you, and focusing on external aspects, because it is others.

Moderation is indeed a virtue that can help us develop and grow as a well-adjusting human being. By employing moderation in every aspect of our lives, we can see that moderation can address almost any issue, including prejudice. Moderation is the middle and the most proper pathway of thinking.

Taufik Mohammad, PhD, is a senior lecturer in Universiti Sains Malaysia.

References

• Aboud, F. E. 1976. The effect of stereotype generalization on information seeking. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science , 8, 178-188.
• Brown, R. 2010. Prejudice: Its social psychology. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
• Jussim, L., Nelson, T. E., Manis, M., & Soffin, S. 1995. Prejudice, stereotypes, and labeling effects: Sources of bias in person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 228-246.
• Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. 1975. Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82, 213-225.
• Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. 1973. Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 4, 207-232.
• Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. 1920. Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal

When a professor of Turkish language and literature is met by Turkish hospitality during a short stopover, she realizes how much the world is in need of small

I was sitting at my desk, listening to professor Adalet’s lecture on Turkish morphology. It’s was my third year in the undergraduate program and I loved my major; Turkish language and literature. The university I attended, though a modest one, was the best of the state universities in my country, Albania.

Adalet Hodja—that’s how we, her students, addressed her in Turkish—was a lovely lady, passionate in teaching, and proud of her Turkish heritage. From the first day she came to our country, she traveled to all major cities photographing everything unusual that caught her eye. She was most fond of the Ottoman prints in architecture, cuisine, cultural customs and the Albanian language.

To make her lectures enjoyable, she used to season them with interesting anecdotes from daily life or with jokes from Nasreddin Hodja— a funny Turkish folkloric figure, also well known by Albanians. Even at times, she used to relate delicious recipes from south eastern Turkey where she came from.

That day, the long discourse on how the words in Turkish have changed forms from past to present was about to lull us into sleep when Professor Adalet, very wisely, dropped the topic and started relating to us something special that had happened to her.

“Years ago, we were traveling from Erzurum, an eastern city where my in-laws live, to Bolu, a cute city in the Black Sea region where my husband and I worked as instructors at Abant University. My husband was driving, and I was trying, as hard as I possibly could, to keep our three children entertained. It was a hot summer day, and traveling crammed inside a small car wasn’t the best way to spend it. The children were getting hungry, so I proposed a break. Judging by the road signs, the closest city where we could find a decent restaurant was two hours away, and since my children were growing impatient, we decided to stop at the first çeşme (a water fountain by the road).”

“In Turkey, such water fountains are built by philanthropists,” Adalet hodja explained.. This made sense, considering even a cup of coffee is cherished for 40 years in Turkey, so building a water fountain to satisfy the thirst of people was a greater, more cherishable deed.

“Not long after that, we saw a çeşme by the side of the road. A big oak tree nearby was shading the flow of water, a vast field was covered in clovers, three cows were grazing, and a white stucco house was gleaming under the sun at a distance… What could be more inviting?

We got out of our car and after washing our hands with cold water, we sat down on clovers under the tree, feeling refreshed.”

Adalet hodja took a deep breath with unmatched pleasure, as if she was extracting the air of that summer day from wherever it was stored in space and time.

“I was about to lay out the picnic table cloth and the food we had taken for the trip, when I noticed a woman hurrying toward us from the white house. Her dress, her headscarf tied from behind, her sunburned face, all spelled local.

“We felt a little uneasy sitting on a property without asking first, so I readied myself to apologize. When the woman got closer, we noticed that she was carrying a tray covered with a clean white cloth.

“‘Welcome!’ she said with sheer delight before I could mutter my apologies, and then handed the tray to me in slightly embarrassed manner.

‘We would like to invite you in,’ she said pointing to the white house, ‘but my husband and his brothers are painting the house today.’

“‘Please, forgive us;’ she said timidly. You are Tanri misafiri (a guest sent by God), and I wish we could have properly accommodated you. Please pardon us,’ she said apologetically and left the tray in my hands kindly wishing us to enjoy our meal.

“I thanked her in return in the way most pleasing way, saying ‘Allah razi olsun,’ may God be pleased with you.

“I opened the tray to discover fresh baked pita bread, still warm and plump, and juicy white grapes.”

Our teacher swallowed hard to keep the tears but I was pretty sure she must have wept then, holding that tray.

“I swear to God,” she concluded, “only food from paradise would have tasted that good.”

She looked at her watch and declared the class dismissed. I looked around and saw that my classmates were deeply impressed with her story as well.

Generosity and hospitality were prevalent, highly esteemed values among Albanians, too. We were happy to see that small acts of kindness were appreciated elsewhere. It is after listening to such stories that you say to yourself: “With good people around, the world is a nice place to be.”

How generous of us. How condescending, actually! It implies that I can bear up under the difference which is exemplified in the other: I won’t criticize you openly or make comments, but deep down, I know you to be “different” and myself to be virtuous and probably superior. I may catch myself, when speaking of someone I actually do not like, saying politely: “Well, she’s different.” With that comment, I am off the hook. I refrain from telling you I reject this person. But “different” here may support a polite tolerance, yet it harbors an inner rejection.

So can we count tolerance a virtue? Perhaps developing tolerance is a stepping stone to something deeper? It might be the beginning of wisdom and exemplify a necessary patience with what feels painful, uncomfortable, unfamiliar, possibly frightening, in fact “foreign” to us. “Unfamiliar,” literally means: Not of my family. I am ill at ease with this because I do not know it. It is not part of my family, my tribe, my beliefs, my language, my religion, my race. In the spirit of tolerance, I might begin to open myself to tasting, hearing, learning something about that which is not “ours.” It is a beginning, but it still holds fast to the comfort of what it knows and only tolerates what it cannot fully accept.

Still, we have all had the expansive experience of traveling outside our zones of comfort and making a new relationship. We have launched a friendship with someone who seems unlike us.

An obviously poor man has taken charge of the garden plot next to mine in our neighborhood community garden. Perhaps he is homeless? He rattles up to the garden on a dilapidated bicycle. His clothes are worn and he has a scruffy look. His nails are dirty and that might be because he has been working his plot. I sense a certain unease in myself as we scratch the soil in our plots. Part of me fears him. That might be because I feel guilty about the growing number of homeless who make camps under the overpasses in my neighborhood. I can let my mind race with objections: They might bring disease. They certainly clutter the surroundings with litter. What if, in their need, they take what they want from yards and sheds? And the police told us recently they found a cache of machetes, sticks and knives in the park behind us. Oh, I can build dungeons in the sky as fast as anyone.

But to be honest, deep down, I would dread being homeless myself and in this economy… my mind races. How much of this is all our responsibility? Other members of the community garden, I notice, walk well out of his way. Sometimes they whisper to one another making comments about their discomfort.

But this is, after all, a Community garden! What does that really mean. If you sign up and pay the nominal fee to tend a plot and use the garden tools, this man has a right to be here. So the gardeners put up a front of tolerance. “We shall see. We’ll give him a chance.”

Tolerance invites us to stand before the unfamiliar and allow-but it still has no relationship to the ability to be empathic. Empathy is a vulnerable frame of being. It is to feel with what is “other” or different. Tolerance does not yet stand in the shoes of the other, knowing exactly what it feels like to be that person, living into a sense of that person’s culture, situation, history, biology, with those talents, bearing those wounds or offering those gifts.

Empathy would be the greater quality to embrace and cultivate in ourselves if we want to conduct real dialogue. Empathy is a quality that comes with maturity, practice, humility, a vulnerable openness and, of course, prayer. There is nothing guarded, “tolerant” or superior about it.

“Hey!” Two of us greet the man one morning as we hoe our plants. What’s your name? What have you just planted there? I make a point of walking over there and taking responsibility for my own feelings, I try to make contact with the fellow devoid of my prejudices. I am not an extroverted, chatty person to begin with, so it takes a concerted effort on my part to walk over there, discuss our gardens, and share our experiences.

Dempsey is his name. He does indeed live at the homeless shelter downtown and bikes up hill here to work his plot. He has lost the place he once lived. There is a story hiding in him. Turns out he knows quite a bit about the soil and gardening. He introduces me to his beloved collards. I show him my chard and spinach. Eventually we share some of our produce and though I do not take a shine to his collards, no matter how I try, I feel somehow honored by his generosity.

He has a plan. Even a vision. If he can grow enough produce, he will bring it to the kitchens at his shelter. As a kid, he had gardens which he and his mom tended. When everything in a row turns ripe and ready at once, it is quite an armful and he would like to make a contribution to his shelter. He has more plans. There is some land at the back of the shelter that, if he can convince them, he would like to turn into gardens that the homeless can help cultivate. Right now it is just a dumping ground for old bottles and litter.

“Of course, we’d need to contain the kitchen waste for compost first to get some soil. Gardening is more about making good soil than about growing plants!”

Before long, I am hearing amazing things from Dempsey. What if I had avoided him in my fear, guilt, and prejudice?

I think about my feelings against his reality. When we were young and growing up, we all made choices: We chose this over that, we chose right over wrong. We chose right over left and light over dark. We learned not to talk to strangers or to walk in certain neighborhoods. All the world is split in halves and with our choices we made judgments to match. We learned to define ourselves in a certain way, convinced that we have chosen the better part and have left “the other,” the misguided, the sinful, the messy, and unenlightened behind. This is how we formed our identity. With this we were approved of by our families and accepted by our tribe. It was, perhaps, a necessary developmental process.

In time, we may become so comfortable in this identity that it takes wisdom and maturity to discover that the world isn’t so black and white as we would like to define it. Our “black and white mentality” is often acted out literally. Here in America, we have suffered and visited great suffering on people of color deeming white to be more worthy than black. Getting stuck at this stage of development has literally given advantage, education and wealth to whites and this on the backs of those we first imported as slaves to our country and then continued to enslave in our intolerance, injustice and rejection.

Everywhere in the world, we have seen these simplistic conflicts bloom and fester causing injustice, war, and dreadful human misery. Tolerance, then, might be the first step to healing an unjust society but then, it has to develop further, into a true virtue.

Empathy-that true virtue-allows us to viscerally feel with the other and learn a third way which stands over and above the simplicity of a merely “black and white” mentality. Perhaps fundamental rights and wrongs may well be necessary to growing up and learning to become someone.

But fundamentalism is essentially an unripe process in becoming whole, holy, and healthy. It is a spiritual and psychological immaturity. Becoming whole, empathic with “the other” and more than merely “tolerant” of the other requires that we make friends with the deepest part of our own inner selves first. The dark aspects of our own unconscious, which lie under our conscious choices and awareness, are alive and well and sometimes pop out in actions, prejudices, paranoia, and selfish behaviors that actually shock us, surprising ourselves! Where did THAT come from? The impromptu snub? That slip-of-the-tongue? Getting to know what you’d rather repress in yourself takes that washing, even symbolic washing, which takes off the accretions of only “looking good.” To reach into our depth we ask for the graces of God and the courage to know ourselves.

Dempsey proves to be a gifted gardener. Unlike many of us city-slickers who find the idea of gardening a nice, romantic concept, Dempsey knows how to lean into his work and stick with it. He puts a hand to our compost pile and gives me information on the chemistry of compost. He LOVES the compost. And I begin to be enamored with the beauty of this transforming pile of brush and leaves as they become mulch and then good, black earth. It takes time. It takes patience. The vegetable scraps and brush, the kitchen scraps that we reject and find, in fact, revolting as they mold and decompose, become, in time, something so rich and beautiful that I hold a palm full in my hand and run it through my fingers. Dempsey laughs at me. He knows that I have come around. I encourage him to share his knowledge at our garden meetings. Dempsey becomes a valuable member of the garden. And he becomes a friend.

Like the compost, I dig deep into my own unconscious and all that I have deemed objectionable, I take into my awareness. I get to know myself a little more. I get to appreciate what I otherwise throw out and bury out of sight-out of my consciousness-and I find it necessary as the very “ground of my being.” It is a spiritual, a holy exercise. Also the parts of society that I might only tolerate, I take into my awareness and with prayer and God’s grace, I watch the rejected become a valuable source and a piece of God’s holy plan and puzzle.

Richard Rohr, OFM put it this way:

With prayer we change sides from the inside-from a power position to the position of vulnerability and solidarity, which gradually changes everything. Because now we are allowing ourselves to change and grow!
Once we are freed from our paranoia, from the narcissism that thinks we are the center of the world, or from our belief that thinks our rights and dignity have to be defended before other people’s rights and dignity, only then can we finally live and act with any justice or truth. Once these blockages are taken away from us-and that is what prayer does-then we just have to be offered a few guiding statements on social justice or other thorny issues-and we tend to get it for ourselves. We start being drawn by love…

For it is common practice in the human condition to take everything we fear, hate, deny about ourselves and “throw it in the waste bin.” We have, unwittingly, put “the other” in that same place of rejection and waste.

On the other hand, we also project everything we admire onto “the hero” as well. The adolescent makes heroes of the athlete, the rock star, the film star, the super model and decorates her bedroom with their posters. Meanwhile, the adults lean on their gurus, their preachers, their wise men, their favorite politicians and hope to vote in their hero as president and savior-of-the-nation. Our heroes, just like our shadow figures about whom we are passionate, are really aspects of ourselves which we are invited to come to know. These are abilities, virtues, talents, beauties, braveries, and wisdoms that we have not yet met in our own deepest selves but have “found” by projecting them on our heroes. What national leader can be the savior that delivers us from debt, from our enemies, from hunger? Over and over and at every election, we project on “the man who would be king,” and within months, because he is merely human, the populace has become disenchanted if not duped!

Samuel, in Hebrew Scripture, warns of turning away from God in favor of a king (1 Samuel 8). Israel wanted a leader like the other nations. But Samuel issues a final warning (1 Samuel 12:14) “If God’s people will remain faithful to God’s Commandments” and keep God as their ruler.

When our loves and our hates are visceral and passionate, we must take these deep emotions as invitations to examine our SELVES first. By truly “knowing ourselves” deeply, we are able to develop empathy-knowing “the other.” Then we learn to accept the dark and light aspect of our deepest self. We learn to embrace everyone. Our tolerance becomes empathy, even love! Rumi’s teaching often showed that love and empathy is the very path to spiritual growth and insight. Broadly tolerant of every person and all faiths he says:

Whoever you may be, come
Even though you may be
An infidel, a pagan, or a fire-worshipper, come
Our brotherhood is not one of despair
Even though you have broken
Your vows of repentance a hundred times, come.

Life is certain to dish up for us, family members, neighbors, people, situations, religions, countries-myriad experiences that are really invitations to rattle us out of our cozy dualistic and judgmental lives. May we grow surely and bravely from being merely tolerant into fully human beings who are steeped in empathy. Every dualist split that rends us apart personally and tears us one from the other would be healed. The same God reigns over and above us all. The same God guides us. The same God loves us all. The same God is the very ground of our being. Tolerance is only a start on the path to love and empathy.

Gertrud Mueller Nelson is an author, artist and retired teacher. She has illustrated and written nine books. She lives in California.

Original Article: Gibson, D.G. et al., Science Express (2010).

A team of genome researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute in the U.S recently announced that after almost 15 years of work and with a budget of $40 million, they had finally built the first bacterial strain with a completely synthetic genome. In the study, researchers chopped the genome of Mycoplasma mycodies into 1,000 pieces in the computer, chemically synthesized these fragments and assembled them into an artificial chromosome in yeast cells. The reconstructed artificial genome was subsequently transferred to a closely related bacterium Mycoplasma capricolum, whose genome was removed. Remarkably, the strain with the artificial genome was able to guide the protein machinery of the host cells, produce the necessary enzymes and macromolecules for a bacterium to survive and most importantly to grow and divide. Team leader Prof. J. Craig Venter, best known for his pioneering efforts in human genome mapping project, commented on their findings as “we created a ‘synthetic cell’ and it is the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is computer.” Many media sources also publicized the study as the first successful creation of the artificial life. As much as the scientific community agreed that the synthesis, transfer and retention of a functional synthetic genome is a breakthrough, most of the scientists have found Prof. Venter’s comments and the media’s reflection on the study to be somewhat of an overstatement. It would be quite unfair to call the new bacteria an example of “artificial life.” The synthesized genome was a copy of another living bacterium with slight modifications. The genome is a blueprint, whereas the proteins perform the actual cellular functions. This new approach shows that we can copy the book of cellular blueprints reliably but it brings no new parts to our inventory. Moreover, the synthetic genome had to be assembled in live yeast cells, processed with biochemical extracts from mycoplasma cells and finally transplanted into another (closely related) live cell. In other words, “natural life” was absolute prerequisite for the so-called “artificial life.” The generation of a fully functioning organism directed by machine-synthesized genome certainly represents a major step in our ability to manipulate large chunks of genetic material. It is clear that this study will positively influence many scientists, especially synthetic biologists, to try writing novel “synthetic” software to recruit the variety of organisms’ cellular hardware for solving various global problems like energy shortage or environmental pollution. However, the philosophical questions that probe the essence of life, like: “Can we reduce life to material? Is the human being ever going to be able to build a live cell from only a few chemicals?” will likely remain as major controversial issues for many years in the age of molecular biology.

2- Sharing the powers of Spiderman

Original Article: Vogel, M.J. & Steen, P.H., PNAS (published online before print on February 4, 2010).

The adhesive powers of Spiderman, jumping from one building to another and walking on the walls, attracted most of our interests. The recent invention of scientists from Cornell University brings this power from science fiction cartoons/movies to the real life. Inspired from a little creature, leaf beetle, which can stick to leaves by generating a force exceeding 100 times its body weight, these researchers designed a device which can stick to surfaces by using the adhesive powers of water. The device consists of a plate not thicker than a credit card with hundreds of tiny holes on it. The water is pumped through these holes, which builds liquid bridges between surfaces and thus generates a strong adhesive force. Simply pushing back the water un-sticks the device in a controllable and switchable manner. There are no solid moving parts nor any kinds of glue used in the system, and this makes device even more promising. The capabilities of the device are not at the level of the leaf beetle yet, but the inventors believe that it can be improved by building on the same principles. The system can potentially be used in many practical applications, such as robotics, and it can also be implemented into shoes and gloves allowing them to stick to surfaces. Accordingly, it is no longer improbable to imagine sharing the sticky-powers of Spiderman and walking on the walls very soon.

3- Igniting a Supernova

Original Article: Gilfanov, M. & Bogdan, A., Nature 463, 924 (2010).

upernova: the Rosetta stone that may help us put together the missing pieces of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle; one of the most energetic and most luminous explosions in the universe, putting out energies equivalent to what our sun could produce in 10 billion years. Yet the mechanism that produces these explosions still eludes us. Once our sun consumes its remaining fuel in another 5 billion years, it will shrink into a “white dwarf.” These compact stars are believed to produce subsequent explosions leading to supernovas if they reach beyond a critical limit of mass. One way to gain mass is to steal material from a companion star through an “accretion” process. Accretion was thought to be the most common means that might help push the mass of a white dwarf beyond the critical mass limit, until a recent study revealed that two clashing (in-spiraling) white dwarfs might be the missing fuse that ignites supernovas. German astronomers measured the X-ray flux of four nearby elliptical galaxies and the core of the Andromeda Galaxy to see whether the amount of X-rays from these galaxies are consistent with predictions based upon the accretion mechanism. Contrary to expectations, the observed X-rays were 2–3% of the amount that would have been produced if accreting white dwarfs were the primary trigger of supernova explosions. Hence, perhaps merging white dwarfs are more commonplace in the cosmos after all.

4- Strategy of bats finding their way

Original Article: Yovel Y et al., Science 327, 701 (2010).

Bats, dolphins, shrews and swiftlets use sound waves for navigation and hunting. They emit short sonar pulses and listen to the echoes reflecting back from solid objects. Microsecond differences in the arrival times of echoes are coded by detector neurons and used as a main cue for positioning objects in an environment. This phenomenon is known as biosonar. A recent study published in Science reveals one unknown part of this perfect sound processing strategy. The study shows that bats do not center the sonar beam on the target. Instead, they aim to match the maximum slope of the beam to the target in order to increase the signal-to- noise ratio. Around the sharp edge, small variations of the target position can be detected as a clear signal change in reflected sound intensity. Furthermore, the researchers showed that if the environment is very noisy, bats could bias this critical point to increase amplitude of the echoes. This powerful technique has already been employed by humans in engineering and used in various technological tools such as atomic force microcopy. Whether this strategy is used in general by other echolocating animals remains to be answered.