Tag Archives: Star Wars

The Force and The Source

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

May 4, 2023- The silly, but catchy, memes that are based on a lisped pronunciation of the word force, and its association with the Star Wars series, have their 24 hours of overuse again this year. I caught some footage of “A New Hope” (Episode 4 of the nine-part main series of films), whilst exercising this afternoon. It all makes me think of the whole concept of power, and from where it comes.

There are, essentially, two views of how power is derived: Through individual initiative and effort; through collective action. In reality, both are necessary, for a full life and for a highly functioning society. Purists on either side tend to negate the effects of their stated views, as they end up getting trapped in the webs of their egos. Thus, the firebrand who wants to cut government to the quick ends up depriving the very free enterprise he wants to promote of the incentives to invest-as the investors are too worried about losing money to focus on much else. The ideologue who wishes death or dismemberment upon the family members of a conservative official ends up contradicting the notion of a peaceful, harmonious society that her cohorts are trying to promote.

All power, every force, comes from the Divine, the Source, the Creator, God, Bhagwan, Allah-whatever one wishes to call the One Who is both the Nameless and the Possessor of all names. From this Source, which has no beginning or end, comes everything we need to build up, or tear down. We do the former either out of love or out of ambition. We do the latter either out of anger/hate or out of recognition that a course correction is needed. The whole process, whatever form it takes, comes from free will-itself a product of the variety that presents itself to us, in a physical world.

I can stay in Home Base and enjoy the comfort of my residence or I can go on the road and visit family/friends, old and new. I can eat delicious ice cream, stuffed omelettes, pizza and such, putting on weight or I can content myself with a strict diet and watch my waistline get more in line, with a healthy regimen-so I have told myself. The truth is somewhere in between.

The same is true, in just about every area of this life. Baha’u’llah tells us: “It is incumbent upon them who are in authority to exercise moderation in all things. Whatsoever passeth beyond the limits of moderation will cease to exert a beneficial influence.” We who are not in positions of authority do well to follow this, also.

With that, I will exercise moderation, and stop here. May the Force, and the Source, be with you!

The Force

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Posted by on in impediments, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual

May 4, 2022- I spent a good part of last night, and today, going back over posts from 2011-13. The first purpose was to restore photographs on several posts, which had been removed, prior to my upgrading to a business account on Word Press. A bonus was that small errors in spelling and punctuation also were corrected. Anyone going to those sites now would see the photographs which had “disappeared”, although many of them leave something to be desired.

The whole purpose of going to this plan was so that I could have unlimited storage, which has been achieved. A fair question is: “What happens to my blogs when this life is done?” They will be, along with the Flickr albums and collections, handwritten journals and anything else of possible intellectual and social worth, given over to my family, with the possibility that the items of redeeming value might go on to serve as educational tools.

That said, there is a fairly long road ahead on this planet. It just makes sense to plan well ahead, in this area, as with any other matter of tangible assets.

Many have adopted a punning reference to May 4- borrowing a line from the Star Wars series of films and books: “May the Force be with you!” This fictional force has a real life counterpart, an actual spiritual/physical energy that, according to ‘Abdu’l-Baha, itself has

 "a mysterious power, far, far, far away
from the ken of men and angels. That invisible power is the cause of all
these outward activities. It moves the hearts. It rends the mountains. It
administers the complicated affairs of the Cause. It inspires the friends.
It dashes into a thousand pieces all the forces of opposition. It creates
new spiritual worlds. 
 This is a mystery of the Kingdom of Abha." 
                                'Abdu'l Baha.
                        - SW, Vol. 7, p. 34  

(SW refers to "Star of the West", a Baha'i Magazine of the Twentieth Century, in which the Writings and Speeches of 'Abdu'l-Baha, as well as the Writings of Baha'u'llah, were printed.)


People of Faith have recognized this power from the dawn of the human race.  Many have called it "magic".  Some physicists refer to it as the "God Particle".  None of us can completely understand the actual Force that, essentially, brought Creation into being.  We give the names God (and all linguistic variations of His Name), Supreme Being, Creator, Unknowable Essence and add our own spiritual energy towards bringing about desired outcomes in the affairs of this world-and for our loved ones who have passed on. 

So, when our attempts to explain the Force come up short, we turn to George Lucas, George RR Martin, JR Tolkien, Isaac Asimov, even (gasp) HP Lovecraft to explain it all.  As entertaining as the above writers and filmmakers may be, in the final analysis, only the Force Itself can make things clear. 

Thus, the Divine Messengers appear and do Their best to explain such matters.  Happy Fourth!

A Progressive Rogue

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, Spiritual, Striving

December 17, 2016, Prescott- 

I regard myself as a progressive.  There is only one way to real progress, though, in my view.  That is, for everyone to roll up their sleeves, get a given job done, and not be concerned with WHO ELSE is on the team, or in the relay line, so long as each person is carrying his or her weight.

I was on a team, this morning, whose collective task was to empty a storage yard of holiday wreaths.  We had about a thousand wreaths, most of which were in boxes of six.  Our team, of ten men and one woman, loaded the boxes and loose wreaths onto any of three trucks.  The trucks then brought their loads up to a staging area, in Prescott Memorial Cemetery, where others took the wreaths and placed them at each of a thousand or so gravesites, as part of Wreaths Across America, which honours our departed veterans, each Christmas season.  The team members did not stop for a minute, until the job was done.  Yes, it was cold(18-25 F), but so was shoveling snow, back in Saugus, Deerfield and Bangor, in my earlier days.  As the project director said, when we first gathered for assignments, the men and women whose graves we honoured did not flinch, for convenience’s sake.

I left the site, after our job was finished, and went over to another place, where 45 women, men and children were putting Christmas baskets and backpacks together, for homeless veterans and disadvantaged families.  My jobs were to sort donated groceries into food types, sort empty backpacks into piles, by colour and size, and then help fill twenty backpacks, with donated clothing, safety implements, toiletries and stationery. Once again, each of us worked with the others, across lines of ideology, gender and age, with no regard for differences.

These two events, no doubt, had their counterparts, by the thousands, across the country, and around the world.  We do them, as part of our community loves, on a daily basis, some of us more than others, but each according to his/her own talents and time allowances.

I  went to see “Rogue One:  A Star Wars Story”, last night, in our very comfortable, and inexpensive, Picture Show Theater.  The plot told of a young woman who grows up, a de facto orphan, learning the self-reliance and self-discipline that such a state of affairs imparts.  She trusts few, having been abandoned by her father, and betrayed by two competing groups of tyrants.  The rest is up to anyone, wishing to see the film, to find out for themselves.

I have had to go it alone, several times, in life and I’m sure this will happen again.  Being “rogue”, however, doesn’t mean that one should lose sight of the greater challenge facing humanity.  We are here, I believe, to care for one another with enormous passion.  My opus, gladly engaged, is caring for others with an ever-decreasing regard for my own comfort.  Yes, my “job”, in the eyes of family members, is to take care of myself, and I have that one down, pretty well.  That said, people and their chronic issues will not go away by themselves.  Progress means that the problems of society are to be remediated systematically, or not at all.  It means we do this together, and get over our differences.