Wednesday night was so exhilirating, I had to take over 24 hours, to process all of it.
I attended the May meeting for Pax Christi, (St. Jude's chapter).
We had our opening peace prayer
The prayers chosen are always very inclusive, and
(We have featured Native-American prayers, Jewish prayers, Interdenominational, etc.)
I was delighted to see this prayer featured the work of writer Dorothy Day, famed for founding the (socialist) Catholic Worker Movement, which our own fearless leader, Joe Goode asked me to read aloud.
We had our discussions about Peace Moments(we routinely share moments where we felt a presence of Peace); we discussed living non-violently.
We spoke of the new immigration law in Arizona. We are all, absolutely, against such obvious profiling and bigotry. As people of God, we want reform that will allow all(if they wish) to become citizens here.
We all agreed that the USA is quite fortunate to be blessed with such a great mix of people. :)
I offered to cast, and direct "A Line In The Sand", a play written by young people involved with CRS(Catholic Relief Services) and a play that I feel is especially timely, given the increasingly heated debate in the USA, over immigration.
I had first mentioned this play, back in 2007, and am glad we waited.
The play chronicles several scenarios involving undocumented workers from Mexico, the so-called "coyotes" that get them here, and the fear their families endure, seeing their loved ones try to squeeze across the border, just for a job that does not even pay a living-wage.
I hope to get this cast, and begin rehearsing, by late summer, or early fall.
We'll see!
We discussed books written that explore faith and spirituality, whether by metaphor(think:any novel by Flannery O'Connor)or in a biography or memoir(think: "A Persistent Peace", by Fr. John Dear)
The evening was one of connection(all of us offering support for each other's prayer intentions; all of us discussing ways to better live in peace, with one another), and communion(not the wafer-type, but the communion between humans that occurs when the connection is made real, whole, and wholly meaningful).
Every meeting I attend, I am again reminded of why I joined this group--and continued in this journey(I am a charter-member of PCSJ)--it is because it is here that I feel lifted-up, certain that the idealism we all hold in our hearts, and the living example of the peaceful, non-violent Christ we believe in(the only Jesus Christ who existed)and which we try to follow, can be achieved.
We can make a difference.
We will.
Peace, kids.
Showing posts with label Idealism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Idealism. Show all posts
Friday, May 07, 2010
Thursday, July 30, 2009
MATTER OF FACT.
MATTER OF FACT.
Buried beneath the minutae of Michael Jackson's "mysterious" death, tucked behind the updates on who's calling who a racist in the Professor Gates/Cambridge police officer/President Obama incident/aftermath, and the moment-by-moment developments in the Octomom's new reality-tv series, I found a piece of something genuinely surprising, and uplifting:
REAL NEWS! Read what I found at the wonderful website, LiveScience, below:
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scientists Claim New State of Matter Created
LiveScience Staff
LiveScience.com livescience Staff
Scientists claim to have created a form of aluminum that's nearly transparent to extreme ultraviolet radiation and which is a new state of matter.
It's an idea straight out of science fiction, featured in the movie "Star Trek IV."
The work is detailed in the journal Nature Physics.
The normal states of matter are solid, liquid and gas, and a fourth state, called plasma, is a superheated gas considered more exotic. Other experiments have created strange states of matter for brief periods. This one, too, existed only briefly.
To create the new, even more exotic stuff, a short pulse from a laser "knocked out" a core electron from every aluminum atom in a sample without disrupting the metal's crystalline structure, the researchers explain.
''What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before," said professor Justin Wark of Oxford University's Department of Physics.
"Transparent aluminum is just the start," Wark said. "The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth."
Fusion is a dream of scientists who would create cheap and plentiful power by fusing atoms together, as opposed to nuclear fission that generates electricity today.
The discovery was made possible with a high-powered synchrotron radiation generator called the FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany. It produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city.
The Oxford team, along with their international colleagues, focused all this power down into a spot with a diameter less than a twentieth of the width of a human hair. At such high intensities the aluminum turned transparent.
While the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period - an estimated 40 femtoseconds - it demonstrates that such an exotic state of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.
"What is particularly remarkable about our experiment is that we have turned ordinary aluminum into this exotic new material in a single step by using this very powerful laser," Wark said. "For a brief period the sample looks and behaves in every way like a new form of matter. In certain respects, the way it reacts is as though we had changed every aluminum atom into silicon: it's almost as surprising as finding that you can turn lead into gold with light."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How remarkable that this is possible! If we can create a new state of matter, we can create a new state of being(which means World Peace is not only possible one day, but likely).
Peace, kids.
Buried beneath the minutae of Michael Jackson's "mysterious" death, tucked behind the updates on who's calling who a racist in the Professor Gates/Cambridge police officer/President Obama incident/aftermath, and the moment-by-moment developments in the Octomom's new reality-tv series, I found a piece of something genuinely surprising, and uplifting:
REAL NEWS! Read what I found at the wonderful website, LiveScience, below:
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scientists Claim New State of Matter Created
LiveScience Staff
LiveScience.com livescience Staff
Scientists claim to have created a form of aluminum that's nearly transparent to extreme ultraviolet radiation and which is a new state of matter.
It's an idea straight out of science fiction, featured in the movie "Star Trek IV."
The work is detailed in the journal Nature Physics.
The normal states of matter are solid, liquid and gas, and a fourth state, called plasma, is a superheated gas considered more exotic. Other experiments have created strange states of matter for brief periods. This one, too, existed only briefly.
To create the new, even more exotic stuff, a short pulse from a laser "knocked out" a core electron from every aluminum atom in a sample without disrupting the metal's crystalline structure, the researchers explain.
''What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before," said professor Justin Wark of Oxford University's Department of Physics.
"Transparent aluminum is just the start," Wark said. "The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth."
Fusion is a dream of scientists who would create cheap and plentiful power by fusing atoms together, as opposed to nuclear fission that generates electricity today.
The discovery was made possible with a high-powered synchrotron radiation generator called the FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany. It produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city.
The Oxford team, along with their international colleagues, focused all this power down into a spot with a diameter less than a twentieth of the width of a human hair. At such high intensities the aluminum turned transparent.
While the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period - an estimated 40 femtoseconds - it demonstrates that such an exotic state of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.
"What is particularly remarkable about our experiment is that we have turned ordinary aluminum into this exotic new material in a single step by using this very powerful laser," Wark said. "For a brief period the sample looks and behaves in every way like a new form of matter. In certain respects, the way it reacts is as though we had changed every aluminum atom into silicon: it's almost as surprising as finding that you can turn lead into gold with light."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How remarkable that this is possible! If we can create a new state of matter, we can create a new state of being(which means World Peace is not only possible one day, but likely).
Peace, kids.
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