The mission of H.O.P.E. is to turn the prow of our entropyship, the Earth, back upstream so that Earth's evolving consciousness may explore the headwaters of the Universe for billions of years to come. The work of H.O.P.E. is to make visible the larger relationships we live within - relationships that inspire visions of wonder and works of hope.

  The Gift of Constraints

  We were camped at a campground during a family vacation this summer. Kids from a nearby campsite were playing "capture the flag". There were a fewer older kids who knew the game and lots of younger kids who wanted to play the game their older siblings clearly loved so much. However, the younger kids tended to get caught first and sent to jail. They didn't like to spend much of the game sitting in jail. They wanted to run around looking for the flag. So after a minute in jail, they would run away and keep looking. If a person won't stay in jail, there is no reason to chase them and if there is no chasing, the whole game loses its strategic heart. The older kids tried to explain the importance of staying in jail but the younger kids ran off  to "capture the flag".

Similarly, when a game of chess or checkers starts going against them, a child will often want to move their pieces in some rule-forbidden way. At an adult level, I can see that if pieces could be moved every which way, then the game would cease to be. It is the constraint on the game's objective and the pieces' movements that give the game its focus and challenge.

This is hard to explain to a child. However, I found it easier to explain with a different example. While playing Asteroids on the computer, my daughter expressed how neat it would be if you got an extra life for every 1000 points instead of for every 5000 points. "Think of what a high score you could get then." Yes, one could get a very high score--one probably limited only by one's tolerance for boredom. But to have value, the score must distinguish between average play and great play. If there is no
distinction, there is no value. It would be like someone boasting that they clapped their hands 10,000 times. So what? Or, more probably, "what a waste of time". A high score on Asteroids has value only if it represents something. One is always searching for a better way to play the game, a different move, a different strategy. One is looking for that level of play where one is thinking quickly and precisely and moving nimbly. One is looking for that area of performance that creates a high score. The high score is the measurement on one's performance. But it is the performance itself, not the measurement alone, that entices and inspires us upward. If we change the rules to make the game so easy that no thought or inspiration are required, the game loses its zip.

(There is a middle ground of setting the challenge level so the learner can experience success when they are focused and mindful. Examples are a better chess player playing with less pieces or golfers using handicaps. Computer game creators have developed this to a fine art; I often look towards computer games for inspiration on how to organize my own teaching.)

Accepting the constraints of the game allows one to begin mastering the game. An adult version of this is a lesson that our minister is always repeating in one form or another. "The good news and the bad news is that you reap what you sow." The Law of Karma is a rule of life. Like a kid wanting to move their king two squares instead of one, we can wish the game had different rules. We can wish that we can eat all the chocolate we want and not gain weight or develop cavities. We can wish that we could buy whatever catches our eye and never go into debt. We can wish that we can ignore the dishes and laundry and they won't pile up. We can wish that we can say whatever we want to get out of difficult situations and that they won't influence others' opinions of ourselves. But as we sow, so shall we reap.

As one accepts the rules of life and develops one's form within them, one comes to appreciate how the rules create the structure that draws one to deeper and deeper levels. If our behaviors set up loops of cause and effect that feed back into our lives in the future, then which behaviors will set up the loops that feed back in a beneficial way and which behaviors should we avoid? This question is worthy of both individual contemplation and social dialogue. How can we help one another? What is the proper mix of inspiration towards some actions and constraint against other actions. Dealing with this issue is some of the most exciting work we experience in life.
  = = =
I was out in the forest with some Chrysalis kids last week and one of the kids made some comment in that "I know more than you do" sing-song tone of voice. Because I believe that we become what we practice, I ask the kids to reiterate such comments in a way that doesn't pull down the spirit. Sometimes it is a different choice of words. Often times the words are fine but the tone turns them into a hacksaw of the spirit. Such was the case with this particular comment. So I modelled how the exact same words could be said in a way that contributed to the group rather than deflating it. When the child said the comment more gracefully, I was shocked at how invisible the comment became. It became so invisible that I could understand why she used the caustic tone of voice.

Considerate comments slide over us like a breeze, soothing without drawing attention to itself. The other kind of comment is like a siren/flashing light. It proclaims "I am here. Do you notice me?" And that is most of its appeal. Kindness is invisible. That sing-song voice is not. If you want to be noticed within a group, use a caustic tone, not a gentle voice. The gentle voice is metaphorically similar to what (in Shifting) I call the Invisible Power. A gully catches the eye faster than a grass-filled, gentle drainage. The power within the grass is less ego-appealing than the power that pours down the gullies.

This brings me back to the challenge the Second Law of Thermodynamics sets for us. The contrast between the two tones of voice brings out one of the seductive aspects of the Second Law: the range of movement in either direction is not equal. Imagine standing on a steep mountain slope. Living within this universe is like the choice between throwing a rock upslope or downslope. If you throw it upslope, it flies a few yards and thuds to a stop. If you throw it downslope, it flies so much farther and bounces spectacularly and can set other rocks to bouncing and there can be a spectacular pinball machine of action for a minute.

 The universe is not symmetrical. Part of the draw of what I call the downward direction is that the consequences of our efforts are more spectacular when they "go with the flow" of the universe. There is a "current" that pushes them along faster. This assymetry underlies the benediction I shared in the last issue:

Go forth and make a difference
in the best way you can.

Not the biggest way--
that is the wrong direction--
but the best.

This assymetry can inspire both despair and hope. Despair because of its seductiveness. Kids, for example, are naturally drawn to things poised on a thermodynamic brink. They are drawn to making caustic comments in the same way they are drawn to rolling rocks down a slope. Kids want to be grown-ups. They see grown-ups making big changes. The easiest way a kid ca  make a big change is if they have the universe helping give a push. Thus the attraction towards the downward direction. But if one sees this attraction as the first step in the learning curve, then this attraction can also inspire hope.

 The attraction catches our attention. We begin learning that we have the power to influence the universe. The law of "we reap what we sow" starts to raise its head and that can lead us to begin wondering what it would be like to move in the other direction. And then the real learning and the real fun can begin.

This is where we are as a culture in our relationship with our environment. We have learned that we have the power to change our environment. We have learned that by degrading large realms of the Earth. And now we are asking "how do we change our actions so that we could move in the other direction?"

The assymetry of the universe is a constraint, a rule set by the Second Law. Like children learning checkers, we can rail against it and prefer playing in a game where all my pieces float across the board to change into kings. But as we come to accept these constraints and focus on working within them, we begin to discover the engrossing magnitude of a great game set before us, challenging us to master it with our lives.

  = = = = = = =
Salmon Experiment

I grow bardic about Salmon's contribution to Gaia, the impossibility of the sea's fertility flowing upstream becoming possible. I want to teach that at Chrysalis but how do I teach it to kids? I don't want to just say it as a lecture. We are very near the Sacramento River so we can walk down every week and watch the fall run spawning and dying. But how do I teach about the gift of fertility?

After mulling it over, I started some experiments with the kids. In the forest, we created four one-meter-square plots by cutting away the vegetation (and later weighing its dry weight). Last week we buried two dead salmon from the river in two of the plots. Next spring we will clear the vegetation from the four plots, weigh the dried vegetation, and see if the two plots with salmon grew more abundantly. That is our hypothesis.

However, we did another experiment where we took two jars of pond water and put some salmon meat in one and not the other. I hypothesized that the meat jar would experience a greater quantity of life. It seethed with bacterial life for a couple of days and then crashed. I assume the bacteria consumed all of the dissolved oxygen and everything died. When one starts an
experiment, one must be prepared to deal with the actual results. A constraint I put upon my teaching is that I don't allow myself to say about some experimental result "Well, what we should have gotten..." That's not an experiment then. That is a demonstration posing as an experiment. Experiments inspire more of students' mindfulness than a demonstration but then a teacher must be prepared to be equally mindful in honestly making sense of the actual results.

This also makes me aware that experiments that go against our hypothesis can teach us in two ways. We can abandon our hypothesis. Or we can continue our faith in the hypothesis and change our experimental procedures to find out under what conditions our hypothesis is true. Each is a valid response. With our pond jars, for example, I am sure that the salmon meat will lead to an increase of aquatic life. However, a river is different than a jar of water. A river moves, dilutes, stirs in oxygen. I can not explain away the dead jar by saying that "normally life would increase in response to the meat". My only legitimate response is to learn from the dead jar and repeat the experiment under different conditions (less meat, occasional stirring, etc) and see if we can create an increase in aquatic life.

One of the things I love about experiments (which contains one of my hopes for Chrysalis) is that they always turn out messier than one predicts because an experiment brings into awareness others of the interconnections that bind this universe together. The magic lies in the interconnections. In trying to study one interconnection, the results are influenced by others. In the tangle is the fascination, the magic web of the creation.

  = = = = = = =
Shakespeare

As video technology allows me to watch and hear outstanding actors proclaim Shakespeare, I find myself falling deeper in awe of his language. When I  was in school, we read Shakespeare but Shakespeare wrote for the stage, wrote to be spoken, not read silently. As I watched the videos of Henry V and Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet, I found myself asking "how is he doing whatever he is doing to make these lines so magic?"

A bit of research answered "blank verse". Ten syllables in practically every line with the accent falling on syllables 2,4,6,8, and 10. Rhymes aren't required--though often a couplet gives emphasis to the end of some speech. But that rise and fall of the accent is like... not a metronome for the flow of speech is less rhythmic, more plastic than that--but like an everchanging heartbeat flowing through all the lines, pulsing vitality. I was watching "Hamlet" and came upon this quote that feels appropriate to these too-sedentary times. Please read it aloud. Feel the pulse. Proclaim it to the heart.

  ... What is a man,
  If his chief good and market of his time
  Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
  Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
  Looking before and after, gave us not
  That capability and god-like reason
  To fust in us unused...
 

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© 1998, Paul Krafel, 18080 Brincat Manor, Cottonwood, CA 96022-0609
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