Tiling Metaphysical Space with a Trinity of Principles

Celtic Knot Anisohedral Tiling (Tessellation)

It is my precept and understanding that the teachings of Jesus can be refined down to three basic principles: 

1) Everyone is included
2) Don't judge others
3) Treat people right

These form a kind of twitter like shorthand (mix those metaphors, Tess) that are easily remembered, easily understood and well, not so easily lived out.  My evidence for #1 comes primarily from the parables.  I do not think it is by accident that Jesus told stories, that he created narrative to communicate ideas.  Stories weather the ravages of texts and culture and abuse, retaining their coherence and power across the ages better than many others forms of teaching.  The scholar John Dominic Crossan wrote "Cliffs of Fall: Paradox and Polyvalence in the Parables of Jesus."  Those who know me will realize quickly that I came to love this book first because of it's title.  The reference to Gerard Manley Hopkins "Dark Night of the Soul" sonnet  "No worst, there is none" is a soul catcher for me.  And then the alliteration in the title, including the word polyvalence which rolls so trippingly off the tongue, grabbed at my aesthetic sensibilities.  But I stayed for the content.  I do think that the parables are the closest that we can come to the "ipsissima verba", the very words that Jesus spoke.  And so I weight them more heavily than other texts.

And the evidence for #1 comes from the The Parable of the Wedding Feast.  There is an ever widening circle of invitations, ending with "Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast".  Ultimately, everyone is invited.  And in stories from the activities of Jesus, he included the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the lepers.  Why, he even included the children!  The invitation is for everyone, without exception.  Those who participate in exclusionary dealings with others are not following the actions and words and example of Jesus.


The evidence for #2 comes from the story of the Woman taken in Adultery and from the Sermon on the Mount.  In his Sermon Jesus is very clear about judgment.  “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."   And in the story of the Woman taken in Adultery, Jesus refuses to cast judgment, even as the Pharisees are trying to put him in a difficult position.  He uses the same line of thinking as he gave us in the Sermon.  He tells the accusers that whoever among them is without sin, he may cast the first stone.  There is the apocryphal story that as Jesus was saying this he was writing the sins of the accusers in the dust.  Jesus refuses to participate in the dialogue that the Pharisees are trying to control.  He sidesteps their intentions by answering their question with a question of his own.  And thereby goes straight to the heart of the problem of judgment.

The evidence for #3 is known generally to us moderns as "The Golden Rule".  "Do to others what you would have them do to you."  It is also called the "Ethic of Reciprocity" and exists in some form in almost all belief and philosophical systems:

Brahmanism"This is the sum of Dharma [duty]: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you". Mahabharata, 5:1517 "

Buddhism:"...a state that is not pleasing or delightful to me, how could I inflict that upon another?" Samyutta NIkaya v. 353 

Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." Udana-Varga 5:18

Confucianism:  "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you" Analects 15:23

Ancient Egypt:   "Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do." The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, 109 - 110 Translated by R.B. Parkinson. The original dates to circa 1800 BCE and may be the earliest version of the Epic of Reciprocity ever written.

Hinduism:  This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you. Mahabharata 5:1517 

Islam:  "None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." Number 13 of Imam "Al-Nawawi's Forty Hadiths."

Judaism:  "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary." Talmud, Shabbat 31a.

I like to simplify it to "treat people right", because I have a core belief that each one of us really DOES know how to do that, if we only spend a little bit of time thinking about it.

Now, it cannot be ignored that I have not included any of Jesus' directives about love among this trinity of principles.  The reason for this is because I think that there is an inversion that has taken place and reigns supreme in our culture.  And this inversion makes it difficult to use the word love in a way that communicates what I believe Jesus meant when he used the word love. The inversion is that love is a feeling.  Love is not a feeling.  Love is an action.  Love is played out in the act of refraining from judgment.  Love is played out in all acts of inclusion.  Love is played out each time we treat another person well.  It may be that a wonderful feeling follows upon these acts and even helps to perpetuate them.  Or it may not.  But it is in carrying out these acts that we are doing the work of love.

Imagine our lives if we can live each day with these three principles in mind, just 3x3 words:

Everyone is included.

Do not judge.

Treat people right.

Each principle is a tile that we can use to pattern the metaphorical plane and create a tessellation; a pattern or behavior that makes a work of art from out of the actions in our lives.  This is loving the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strengh and with all our mind.  And this is loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Tessellations in the Garden

I think that this would be called an irregular, three dimensional, Euclidean space, tessellated natural structure, otherwise known as Sedum!  And it is from my garden!

This is a salt water tessellation.

And this is a complex tessellation from nature., a tessellation on the water caused by the refraction of the light from the sun.

Letter to the Editors at Scientific American Magazine

I entreat the editors at Scientific American to please stick to science.  When you do, I feel that I am getting my money's worth and am not wasting my time and energies wading through articles (and especially blogs and columns) that are not worth the effort.  I do not need or desire anyone on your staff to suggest to me what I ought to think about non-scientific endeavors, i.e.; religion art, politics, etc.

I know this can be difficult when dealing with the soft sciences, but I think you can do better.  And when dealing with more concrete disciplines, such as physics, astronomy, geology, etc., please do not get all gobbledygookish on your readers.  I do not need to read all the things that science thinks dark matter is when in fact no one (yet) knows.  I don't mind reading through theories or even flights of fancy, but so often it is presented as "wow, scientists now believe x,y,z" when in fact no science has actually been done, or no consensus exists because it is early days yet.

When science is done badly, or even presented badly, it makes it very difficult to discuss (for instance) global warming, where science HAS been done and there IS a consensus, with ones relatives who insist they have done the research and they are certain that global warming is a hoax.  When you present science badly, and when you insist on publishing op eds and blogs on subjects that do not fall within the parameters of scientific inquiry, then you muddy the waters that you insist you are trying to clear.  Then we are fishing blindly and no nourishment can be found

Meanwhile... I am getting so tired of all the religiosity of the anti-religious bloggers and columnists that you give ample space to in your otherwise wonderful magazine. The pursuit of science seems every bit as vulnerable as the pursuit of other disciplines to the fallibility of all human endeavor. I think that it would be a much more worthwhile endeavor, in the cause of advancing science, to first clean your own house, take the beam out of your own eye, etc. Science claims for itself things that the scientific method has not yet supported. It may yet, or it may not. But until it actually does, better to be careful how you report information.  I LOVE science, good science. Good science does not include spending your time and space arguing about things that are outside the domain of science. So, give me well designed, constructed and implemented experiments, and keep me updated on the work of scientists. Please do not make science into another religion.

Response to Jamaica Plain Census

(For anyone interested in the actual data I am writing in response to you, can find it at  

http://jamaicaplain.patch.com/articles/census-jamaica-plain-gets-whiter-and-less-brown)

This is a very murky set of statistics.

Exhibit A:  I make it a point to never answer the question of “race” except with the obvious scientific answer of “homo sapiens sapiens”.  A more accurate term when referring to various groups of peoples is “population”.  Even “ethnicity” has become too murky a term to use in conversation if the goal is to actually communicate ideas.

Exhibit B:  The statistics in the above article refer to those in the community who self-identify as only ONE of the choices.  This is murky within murky.  Self-identification is of no use for accurate data in this context.  And these statistics do not take into account all those people who refuse to honor only one of the choices offered because they know that it would not accurately reflect who they are.  Most people have very little idea about their origin past a few generations.  The constructs they are holding onto are cultural constructs.

Exhibit C:  is a challenge.  Send a cheek swab to the National Geographic Human DNA Project and learn about your more ancient past.  It can be illuminating.  This is how a Mexican priest learns that he carries the “Aaron” gene on his Y chromosome, or how a dark skinned man from the American south learns that his mtDNA (from mother to mother) is predominantly European.

Exhibit D:  Jamaica Plain abounds with people who have married outside of their population (“race”) and produced children that continue to produce children with others outside of each population circle.  How is this multitude reflected in the quoted set of statistics?  And how do these people react to a set of statistics that utterly excludes them, and yet is used to make points about the community they belong to?

There is (currently) only one human race.  It is homo sapiens sapiens.  Within this race, there are multitudes of ever shifting populations.  I believe that the statistics quoted above refer to the respondents understanding of what culture they identify with.  And that is useful.  But you must not say that it is something else.  It is not even a bad approximation of the diversity that is Jamaica Plain.  As a census of “race” it is poorly devised and utterly useless.

A new paradigm needs to be created to be able to actually study the population of Jamaica Plain and the rest of America as well.  It cannot include terms like “race” and “ethnicity”.  It cannot use peoples own self-identification regarding which population they see themselves belonging to.

While hair texture, eye shape and color and the amount of melanin we have are obvious identifiers, they are, after all, only skin deep.