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Reading Material:	Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey by Jane Goodall


	+ asst. romance novels and children's books

I recently finished the above book. The first two-thirds were not particularly exciting, so I set it down for quite awhile, but if I thought her journey was not all that exciting, I liked where she ended up very much. I feel renewed and inspired by the way she has taken her life energy and her celebrity and put it to work for positive change. I am instructed by her wisdom and compassion, may I also be a bit improved by it.

I am struck, however, by the way that most all proponents of compassionate living are very spiritual and this is very often the root of their philosophy. Sometimes this makes me rather impatient. Why is it generally so necessary for people to believe that all life is interconnected spiritually or some such thing in order to care? Isn't it enough to know that others hurt and bleed and despair? *sigh* Sometimes I think it's silly that I'm struggling to give up ice cream out of compassion, but most folks that consider themselves Christian happily plan church barbecues.

The bits about why she believes in psychic stuff were kind of lame. It would be nice, just once, to hear something new and interesting coming from the creationists and believers in psychic abilities, instead we get the same old thing. "My son dreamed that his aunt came to tell him of the death of his stepfather the night before it actually happened." "The night my great-uncle(?) died we all heard the cry of a barn owl, said to be an escorter of souls, even though the bird hasn't been seen in this area in 15 years." "My bed-ridden Grandmother told us she thought her time had come, she reread love letters from her late husband and then died peacefully in her sleep that very night." (These are the actual examples from the book.) Well, if my elderly step-father was diagnosed with serious colon cancer I would be surprised if I didn't have dreams related to him dying. To have one the night he passed on is far and away from proof of psychic ability. I often hear reports that animals are sighted in areas in which they have been extinct. Usually no one suspects them of being attracted by newly departed souls. If old granny hadn't passed on, nobody would have thought twice about her melancholy mood the night before. I wish folks would come up with something better than this stuff or at least... why does no one say: "There are other much more likely explanations than psychic phenomena, but I want to believe." Courage people! Believe what you want to believe dammit! Don't pretend that the 'cold, hard facts' leave you no other choice. I know I have had dreams from which I was very pleased to awake and find my loved ones safe in their bed. When Alan has been a few hours late, sometimes I've been unable to avoid imaginings of crunched bicycles and broken bodies. I can only imagine that other people are no different. Very rarely worried imaginings will turn out to reflect reality, that doesn't make them psychic visions. Ditto for disturbing dreams whose timing coincides more or less with real life tragedy. I have seen no evidence that these coincidences occur more often than they would at random, quite the opposite. Yet people consistently trot them out as 'proof'. Anyway, I need to quit ranting and go eat dinner.