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The two bookends of life: Birth and Death - the certainty of uncertainty...

The two bookends of life: Birth and Death – the tension created by the frame they create fuels the creative impulse that drives life.”

  
Within each of us a need for certainty exists – a certainty that cannot exist in the world, as we know it. 

From this premise, we begin a journey to seek an uncertain truth that can only exist in faith.  Within the intuitive understanding of this concept, we begin our journey. 

The frame of Life created at Birth and ending with Death is a vertical boundary, open ended at each end. 

To travel beyond the vertical boundary is a matter of transcendence and, if we go beyond the frame, we go from the uncertainty of reality to the certainty of uncertainty.

We call that journey Faith and it cannot be resolved as long as we remain in the frame. 

Brother Giovanni 

From Brother Giovanni’s notes on the Seminary Lectures

“Good and evil begin with rationalization. It simply is easier to rationalize an excuse for evil rather than for good.” Pizzaonia proverb

Conjectures of a recovering dilettante as we continue to move west

 

 
Notes from Brother Giovanni Seminary lecture series

Much of the world’s horror exists in the name of good. It is amazing how much evil we do in the name of rationalized good.  

Moreover, once we rationalize the evil for good, the acceptance of so-called collateral damage becomes acceptable - anything goes as long as the rationalized good is accepted.

Eventually we see through the self-deception.  Even so, some of us will continue to look the other way.  Later, rather than sooner, we gather the individual and collective will to stop the evil.  We just cannot go on any longer and still have some pretense of conscience left. 

Then, and only then do we do something about it, but by then we have done the damage that only rationalized good can do. 

This seems to be the history of the human condition.

 

What changed was baseball discovered it could make spring training an event and charge substantially for it.* from April 2011

 
If there is one thing you cannot help but notice in our so-called throw away culture is that we don’t throw as much away anymore, particularly when you can sell to someone what we used to throw away. You notice this with food, sports and entertainment. 

I was in the store the other day and I bought what I thought was a bag of pretzels.  But when I got home and opened the package, I noticed I had bought a bag of pretzel pieces.  

It wasn’t too long ago that when pretzels were being made the broken pieces were thrown away.  Now they are packaged in bright special packages and sold as a specialty product.  Nice work if you can get it. 

The more I got thinking about this, the coming baseball season came to mind. When I was kid spring training was where out of shape baseball players came to get ready for the season.  It was pretty casual, at least in the beginning, and for most people that showed up to watch, it was free, or almost so. 

This year the opening of spring training was treated like a minor version of the World Series. Players who did not perform well immediately were berated by the press and fans for being less than perfect. 

 
I can remember when some of the great pitchers in the game had trouble finding the plate, much less throwing strikes, when they first showed up for spring training, and no one was surprised.  It begs the question: What changed? 

What changed was baseball discovered it could make spring training an event and charge substantially for it.* Also, it became a bonanza for the tourist business in the areas that the teams trained.  

For baseball to pull this off, you need to charge big bucks and you need to have a better than average product to sell.  And that’s what spring training has become. In sports and entertainment today, casual practice properly packaged, is a saleable product. 

It would not surprise me if there are many plaguing injuries to ball players this year.  If there is, part of the reason is because they did not have the luxury of getting ready for the season.  Instead, like the bag of broken pretzels in shiny packages, they had to perform to unrealistic early expectations.  Play Ball! 

Brother Giovanni, PNS Bureau Chief, Pizzaonian News Service

* Professional football was way ahead, as usual, on this one.

DiVerti Mento keeps Brother Giovanni at Pizzaonian News Service!

 
As you know by now there has been a major shakeup at Pizzaonian News Service. Diverti Mento has been appointed News Director and I can assure you there will be major changes. (I am one of them.) 

DiMento, as he likes to be called, is an interesting figure in Pizzaonian folklore. Considered a passionate, unyielding mystic, he has always been on the fringe of Pizzaonian politics. 

One difference between Pizzaonia and Worldonia (United States) is while Pizzaonians are just as serious about their politics as you are, they know it to be a meaningless endeavor and consider it more as entertainment than anything else. 

Pizzaonians figured out a long time ago that everything runs its course with or without us, and if the system is sound it will usually survive the inevitable stupidity that is part of all political systems.

This type of existential angst or cynicism will seem very negative from an American perspective, but in the evolution of the Pizzaonian personality their cynicism produced an authenticity that gave way to a national integrity that now defines Pizzaonians. 

They see life as it is and remain unwilling to accept it passively. Instead, they choose to live life to the fullest with no grand  illusions as to outcomes.

  

This is the reason people like DiMento will occasionally rise to prominence in Pizzaonia. Since Pizzaonians see the process as pointless, why not let an unyielding mystic have a chance once in a while.  I can assure you it can be very entertaining if nothing else.  You would never let anything like this happen in the United States, or would you?

I am the first casualty of the new DiMento era.  Since many felt I needed to take a rest from the Pizzaonian main stream they needed a place for me.  Now you just don't push an ex Supreme Pizzaonian**aside, so with some reluctance, DiMento assigned me as a roving reporter for PNS.  

I am told I can write about any subject I choose.  I am looking forward to it and hoping to hear from some of you.  I know there is some interest in this strange place called Pizzaonia.   If you have any questions let me know, I will look forward to hearing from you.

 

Brother Giovanni, Reporter at Large, Pizzaonian News Service.

** http://giovanniandfranco.typepad.com/giovanniandfrancocom/2010/01/headmaster-brother-giovanni-proclaimed-as-supreme-pizzaonian.html

Diverti Mento, Pizzaonian Mystic, appointed director of Pizzaonian News Service. Major changes coming

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FROM:  PIZZAONIAN NEWS SERVICE (PNS)

 Contact:  Publicio Relationio at the PNS office of Public Relations at   PIZZAONIAN@YAHOO.COM 

 
SUBJECT:  Shake up at Pizzaonian News Service.  Major changes coming

In a major shakeup at Pizzaonian News Service, Brother Giovanni will no longer be Worldonian Bureau Chief for PNS.  No successor has been named at this time, but Diverti Mento, Pizzaonian Mystic, and newly appointed director of Pizzaonian News Service will name a new Chief soon. 

Mento, new to the news business is creating serious upheaval at PNS with his unorthodox methods of news reporting. 

Mento, who prefers to be called DiMento, is a disciple of the new school of reporting known as “Newsertainment” and is determined to make news the entertainment vehicle of the coming decade. 

“The notion that news is about news is long gone. Today’s reporting is about filling the void that the entertainment industry once filled. Our new policy is to leave them laughing or crying, that’s what Newsertainment is about,” said DiMento 

Brother Giovanni, relieved of all administrative duties, will be reassigned as a feature writer covering both Pizzaonian and Worldonian affairs.

 

Pizzaonian News Service where all the news is reported, whether it is news or not, without bias or inclination to check the facts.

 

 

So much for the anticipation of intelligent political commentary!

 

Now that we are in the aftermath of the destructive debate on raising the debt ceiling of the U.S. government that took place in Congress, it is interesting to watch the reaction of the political pundits. 

It is the more moderate pundits of the right and left that are the most interesting to read. 

Since the extremes of both political parties seem to have won the day, once reasonable commentary is suddenly slanted to the extreme for fear of being left behind. 

No one is unscathed in the need to be on right side.  Even reasonable men and women who should know better are now pandering to be on the right side, be it the extreme left or the extreme right. 

So much for the anticipation of intelligent commentary that might be useful in helping a very confused electorate make an informed decision.

 
Brother Giovanni, Bureau Chief, Pizzaonian News Service, PNS

Skipping rocks with Jesus and other stuff

Hanging out with Jesus by his favorite pond.

 

I never thought that hanging out with Jesus could be so casual. Last week we spent a couple of hours skipping rocks across a pond. 

Jesus was much better at it than I was. With one rock he got thirty six skips – seemed like a miracle to me since the best I could do was seven. 

I should mention that when I first started skipping rocks with Jesus, the best I could do was three.  I am much better now. 

Maybe that’s the point - just hanging out with Jesus seems to make a difference.

 

Brother Giovanni