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Service Recording etc.

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Here is today’s recording, as requested by Creators…
The Creation for Sunday, January 22, 2012
and the notes Service Notes for Sunday, January 22, 2012

At 47 MB, the recording is a hefty file, so please be patient. While You’re waiting, consider the assignments, if You choose to take them on. During the State of the Union (SOTU) Address, listen for the three modes of meaning.

1) Presentational Meaning Listen for facts and figures, processes and procedures, explanations, definitions, descriptions, quantification and so on.

2) Orientational Meaning Characterized by the language of formality, as well as intimacy, status and power relationships, role relationships; speech acts such as promising or threatening, joking, insulting, pleading, requesting/demanding, offering, etc.

3) Organizational Meaning Generally not recognized or noticed in our culture, organizational meaning includes the ways in which language creates wholes and parts, how it tells us which words go with which other ones, which phrases and sentences with which others and how, and generally how a coherent text distinguishes itself from a random sequence of sentences, phrases, or words. This is the realm of the ‘texture’ of text. Look for figures of speech, changes in inflection and tone, word choices, rhythm, “call and response” techniques.

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Creation Recording Available, and This and That

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Here is today’s recording, if You’d like to “relive the moments…”


The Creation for Sunday, December 4, 2011


At 45 MB, it’s a large file, so please be patient.
In the meantime, here’s the 411 on the song we were singing this morning.


SMILE
artist: Nat King Cole
Peak billboard position: #10 in 1954.
Competing versions charted by Sunny Gale (#19) and David Whitfield (#25).
Also charted in 1959 by Tony Bennett (#73); in 1961 by Timi Yuro (#42); in 1962 by Ferrante and Teicher (#94); and in 1965 by Betty Everett and Jerry Butler (#42).
Words by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons and music by Charlie Chaplin (yes, that Charlie Chaplin

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though it’s breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That’s the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what’s the use of crying?
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

Lyrics | Nat King Cole lyricsSmile lyrics

That’s the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what’s the use of crying?
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

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END:CIV About Our Future…

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Creating We Can Create…

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I deeply appreciate the level at which Creators engage with the philosophical propositions of the Creation. I received a question from a frustrated Creator, who states, “I am having trouble with what inspires me and what my dreams are… Feel like I lost being able to create these long ago.” My response follows:

You are not alone in Your difficulty with creating inspiration: inspiring possibilities, dreams and visions. Possibilities, dreams and visions conceal themselves in the aspect of Existence, Being, as such. We tend to lose our facility with this powerful aspect of life around the age of five, give or take a couple of years. In the history of Human Being, Heidegger asserts, we began to neglect Being when we attached our approach to life to Plato’s philosophy of ideals (Heidegger. Being and Time. 1926). As I said on Sunday, ideals are possibilities that have died, changing their state from Being to Having. We have ideals, but consider them unattainable, or significantly, impossible.

Coming to Life from ideals (or preferences, desires, opinions, feelings, beliefs and so on) in the aspect of Having, drives us to react in the aspect of Doing, and then we get whatever results from that: disappointment, stress, frustration, elation, happiness, anger, a paycheck — and since none of those has any permanence or reality, these results dissipate and then we have to do more, or do better, or do something different, which then produces more, better or different results, and we are in a self-perpetuating downward spiral. This is the inevitable outcome of living in the neglect or resistance to Being. This was the fundamental mistake of Western Philosophy that produced our current condition of perpetual war, environmental disasters, greed, inequitable economies, oppression and slavery, and all of the outcomes we call “evil.” It has also produced progress in technology and techniques that we consider “good.” Continuing in our good or bad, better or worse, more or less, different and same strategies will keep us in dilemma, conflict, quandary and perplexity. What we need to get out of the vortex cannot be produced in the vortex. What we need makes no sense.

To live an empowered Life, we must create ways of Being, called possibilities, that serve as futures into which we can live. The future exists only in language, which fortunately for us, is the medium in which Human Beings can create. Language is not necessarily words and sentences, but it can be. There are no private languages, so one of the features of language is that it can be shared. Art, music, dance, non-verbal expressions of love can be language, as well as words, and they are most language-y when shared. (See, ‘language-y’ is not a word, but it communicates something.)

To inquire into what You could create, You may begin with considering the last time You were inspired by something. What was it? What inspired You about it? How did it feel, look, sound, smell or taste? Recreate the experience for Yourself. Then look to see what is in the way of creating the inspiration. We often think of the barriers in the way as something external to us, but the barriers are our own. “My upbringing” for instance, is not an external, as it is my interpretation of my childhood. Someone else with the same upbringing may have interpreted it differently, and constructed different barriers. When You’ve identified Your barriers, consider if You are wiling to give them up. If so, give them up. In the clearing that opens in the absence of the barriers You’ve given up, a new possibility (new future) will show up. I can coach You through this method, if You find it difficult the first time.

While it is not absolutely required that You share Your created future, it is valuable. Unpredictable promises and direct requests lead to the fulfillment of possibilities.

I hope this deepens the distinction of creating for You.

Love,
Samantha

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Sunday Service: July 4, 2010

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Today we had an enlivening conversation about the drift we are in, as well as the Possibility of Freedom, distinguished against the background of Liberty. We participated in a process and looked upward from our aphelion.

Creation Service: July 4, 2010

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Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell on the Outrageous

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Our dear friend, Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell, appeared on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Thursday, June 18, 2009 to comment on outrageousness in Public Discourse, particularly as it relates to the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for Associate Justice.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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