Regarding the feature story “Changing Our Minds” in the September/October 2008 issue: Nick Street has written an incredible piece that beautifully depicts the role of mindfulness meditation in healing from trauma. I am the teacher of the MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) class that Donnie Apted attended in the article. The class changed our lives in many ways. We are both now part of a non-profit group formed to promote healing from the effects of war. Our website is www.veteransheartgeorgia.org. Donnie is our webmaster.
I plan to use “Changing Our Minds” as supporting material as I present the concepts of my program, Mindfulness-Based Trauma Healing, to the Atlanta Veterans’ Administration, as well as to the Georgia National Guard. Three units of the guard are set to deploy to Iraq by the spring of 2009.
Thanks to you and Nick Street for telling Donnie’s story. We hope this will help us reach out to other vets.
With gratitude,
Kaye Coker
Atlanta, Georgia
It is very important that Thomas Jefferson really did write “separation of church and state.” Jefferson did not write “separation of religion and state.” That is not even possible, since the purpose of government is to enforce principles of being, i.e. some sort of a “religion.”
By turning from page four to page eight in a recent issue of your fine magazine (November/December 2008), I see that one letter quotes Christian theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich in defense of what I am saying about Jefferson: “Culture is the form of religion, religion is the substance of culture.”
All cultures must have some sort of government to enforce their principles of being, because, as James Madison insisted, “men are not angels.” I enjoy the thoughts in your letters, even if I do not always completely agree with them. These things must be discussed, as Jefferson insisted.
You have the best summary of this separation problem at the top of the “From the Editor” column in the November/December 2008 issue so I feel a little foolish repeating it. But here goes. As Gandhi says: “Those who insist that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.” Exactly!
Piers Woodriff
Somerset, Virginia
I regret to inform you that I am not going to renew my subscription for this year. The main reason is that I am consolidating my periodical subscriptions, and Search unfortunately needs to be eliminated.
However, there is a secondary problem for me. This is your total non-support for any argument in favor of Intelligent Design (ID). It seems that the magazine has adopted the position that ID is merely another approach to “Creationism” or, worse, religious fundamentalism, and no writers favorable to it are ever represented in your pages.
But I would tell you this is either an entirely unsupportable bias or a non-understanding on your part. ID need not be any of these, and in its best and sophisticated presentation it is an intellectually legitimate challenging of how evolution occurs, and in that sense is not anti-evolution. It just makes the claim that evolution cannot be explained by a random and non-intelligent or non-designed process. A good presentation of this view is almost any article by Stephen Meyer from the discovery.org web site.
In any event, I wish you the best with what is otherwise an excellent and important publication. Maybe I’ll be back with you in the future.
Sincerely Yours,
Kenneth Lux
Rockland, Maine
Thank you for Barbara J. King’s recent “On God” column (“Full Disclosure,” November/December 2008). I don’t think scientists should stop sharing their beliefs or opinions about religion, but I do certainly agree becoming good listeners can better serve us all.
Moreover, I doubt the “overpowering presence” of high-profile scientists and “their impact on public life” is nearly as significant as King suggests, though some publishers, booksellers, and readerships might disagree.
Comment on scienceandreligiontoday.blogspot.com
Regarding Sam Kean’s analysis of the recently discovered letter Albert Eistein wrote to the philosopher Eric Gutkind in January 1954 (“God’s Dice on the Auction Block,” September/October 2008):
Previously, my general impression of where Einstein stood on religion was based on a famous statement of his that appeared in an article titled “Science and Religion,” which appeared in Nature in 1940: “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” I also knew he rejected the concept of a personal God and considered himself an agnostic. The Gutkind letter is straightforward and revealing. As Kean correctly points out, in the letter Einstein chides religion but never condemns belief itself.
He also does his readers a helpful service by quoting this passage from a speech Einstein gave just after the article in Nature was published: “I must nevertheless qualify this assertion . . . with reference to the actual content of historical religions.” Unfortunately, Kean doesn’t provide the source of the speech. Doing a little digging of my own, I discovered the speech was made on September 10, 1941, at the Symposium on Science, Philosophy and Religion, which was held at the Union Theological Seminary in New York.
The day after he gave his talk the Associated Press printed a story about it titled “Sees No Personal God.”
Einstein’s personal opinions on God, science, and religion, whether published in Nature, shared at a symposium, or included in a personal letter to a friend, will always remain opinions. But they are carefully considered ones, to be sure, and as such they deserve thoughtful consideration whether we accept them or not.
Personally, I’m encouraged by the fact that in his letter to Gutkind, Einstein did not reject the positive role religion can provide in the lives of human beings, alter his agnosticism, or contradict his earlier assertion about the synergy between science and religion that ensures progress for both.
Comment on cosmologybus.typepad.com
Regarding Nick Street’s article on the decision to allow the Tongva Indian tribe of southern California to name one of Neptune’s moons (“Heavenly Bodies and the People of the Earth,” July/August 2008): Amidst discussion of some of the tribe’s most important deities and internal schisms concerning the possibility of building a tribal casino, the article mentions Marc Acuna, a Tongva wehepet.
The article says that wehepet is “a term meaning ‘two-spirit’ or ‘two-road’ that was traditionally applied to people we would now identify as gay or lesbian.” This is technically incorrect and ethnocentric on a number of counts. For one, we would identify this person as either a wehepet, a Two-Spirit, or gay, depending on how the person identifies. Secondly, the reason why the term “Two-Spirit” was coined in 1990 was to provide a more gender/role-encompassing term (meant especially for American Indians) than “gay/lesbian”—terms which only speak to sexual preference and limit our understanding of the individual to that aspect of him/her/ze.
Nonetheless, mention of Marc in this article is really awesome in terms of general visibility and understanding of Two-Spirits, and the piece even goes on to discuss some of what his role entails with a few direct quotes from him. I love the photo featured because it shows him teaching local youth native herbalism. So Two-Spirit!
Comment on centaurcunningman.wordpress.com
Regarding P.J. O’Rourke’s recent announcement in Search’s pages (“Give Me Liberty and Give Me Death,” September/October 2008):
P.J. O’Rourke is a funny man. His ability to find humor in just about any situation served him well when he was diagnosed recently with cancer.
We all have friends and relatives who have received dire medical prognoses. It’s got to be among life’s more gut-wrenching moments. Breaking the news to patients has to be one of the more difficult tasks a doctor faces. You never know how a person will react to grim news.
Some people get angry. Others wallow in self-pity. Some people reassess their lives, mend fences and take those trips they’ve always wanted to take. Some people simply put their affairs in order and treasure each day, often wondering why they haven’t done this all along.
We find inspiration in those who rise above their own interests and well-being to reach out to others. This is why The Last Lecture by the late Randy Pausch has been such a phenomenal success. A former colleague of mine, columnist Rob Borsellino of the Des Moines Register, was just as inspirational in his battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
I’m not sure that knowing you are going to die soon is a good thing, but it does tend to bring a person’s life into a tighter focus. How do you think you would react to such news? Now consider this: Given the unpredictability of our time on earth, is there any reason why we shouldn’t live each moment as if it were our last?
Larry Lehmer
Comment on whenwordsmatter.typepad.com
Regarding “Reading the Wounds” by Jina Moore (November/December 2008): Jina Moore’s recent article exploring the role of physicians in Queens who work with torture survivors to determine their stories through the reading of scars is a beautiful, wise and compassionate piece of writing that deserves to be widely read.
Comment on partialtruths.wordpress.com
