Soul's Code

I jogged three miles yesterday and walked eight. I am in training for our trip to Spain where we will walk from Leon to Sanatiago de Compostela. This was the farthest I’ve trekked in one day.

Training at this time of year is special. The trees are in bud, daffodils are blooming, and every day spring seems to leap a little forward.

I have ordered a backpack and hiking boots called Waffle Stompers. What a wonderful name! Our plane tickets are on their way to our house. So our plans are moving forward with each step we take.

There’s a song by that un-sexy trendsetter Johnny Rotten — maybe you heard it — where he rants a refrain, Anger is an energy.

The track is called Rise, and it was done by Rotten’s post-Sex Pistols band, Public Image Ltd.

Anger’s an energy? Ya, we get it. From the World Trade Center to Oklahoma City, it can obliterate buildings. Far more of a reach is to grok how depression is equally an energy, maybe even moreso. As strange as it sounds, depression from a loss, a death, a break-up, bankruptcy or divorce has been tapped by people to propel themselves forward with the same force that others use anger.

WDAD? (What Did AMERICA Do?) | Originally uploaded by silki.

In a piece in this week’s New York Times Magazine headed, “With God On Our Side,” the fearless historian Gary Wills illustrates just how deeply religion has permeated the White House, for better of for worse.

Founding father James Madison and Enlightenment-devotee would be taken aback by the degree to which religion gets ”cognized” and empiricized in, say, Karl Rove’s Rolodex.

The nation’s executive mansion is currently honeycombed with prayer groups and Bible study cells, like a whited monastery. A sly dig there goes, ”Missed you at Bible study,” as David Frum, a Jewish Canadian who worked for Bush as speechwriter, reported in ”The Right Man.” A line from the book: “Bible study was, if not compulsory, not quite uncompulsory, either.”

White House etiquette tip: Friends going to intimate dinners with the Bushes should be prepared to lead grace before dining.

The question, then, is that if our government truly is filled with Christians, why, then, does it so often act with so little mercy and compassion? The White House may be religious. But is it genuinely spiritual?

The historical roots of the comedian is the court jester, the fool who is able to stealthily sway the ears of the wealthy and the powerful. Richard Jeni never had access to the powerful but he delighted his Baby Boomer fans by modeling his humor on gestalt psychology and parodying mystical practices. He paced his skits with eastern meditation poses and mantras.

Yesterday, Jeni committed suicide. And today, his surviving family revealed a diagnosis from a doctor that said, “psychotic paranoid and clinical depression.” Jeni joins a litany of counter-culture celebs like Hunter S. Thompson, Abbie Hoffman, Spalding Gray, Kurt Cobain, Ernest Hemingway who took the same way of escape. May their souls be sanctified.

For those of us who remain in corporeal being, do you realize how many in your midst have contemplated the same exit strategy? The National Mental Health Association estimates that more than half a million Americans attempt suicide each year — and 30,000 are successful. “Completed suicides are more likely to be men over 45 who are depressed or alcoholic.”

Jeni was 49, and had a self-publicized history of heavy drinking and random violence. Ironically, he doubled as a motivational speaker about his liberation from those afflictions.

TED Conference: Tony Robbins calls Al Gore a “son-of-a-bitch” . . . to his face!

BY PAUL KAIHLA — The 2007 “TED” conference — an eponymous acronym for ‘Technology Entertainment and Design’ — drew celebs-with-substance like Philippe Starck and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the conference center in Monterey, CA this weekend. It’s slugged as a summit of “icons, geniuses and mavericks,” but it’s really a Silicon Valley boondoggle that parades as Davos Lite.

Few geek/policy-wonk conferences deliver YouTube-able entertainment. But this high-powered, high-tech, Meet-Up totally delivered thanks to the presence of Al Gore, the sole member of Google’s advisory board, and Tony Robbins. The one-time TV infommercial schtick-man used the forum to re-brand himself, up-market.

Here’s the news-making line Robbins shot back after Gore humorously heckled him:

He’s broken my pattern, that son of a bitch.

Yes, this is me with a yellow arrow stuck to my back. Pilgrims on route to Santiago de Compostela, the most famous of the medieval pilgrimages follow yellow arrows along the pilgram route, called the Camino.

The reason I am wearing one is that my husband and I are planning on a pilgrimage to Spain and the shrine of the apostle St. James. We plan to walk 221 miles from Leon to Santiago with all our gear in backpacks.

This last weekend an organization called American Pilgrims on the Camino met in Williamsburg. I learned a lot about what to expect on this great adventure.

As part of the program, the group went to Jamestown for a five mile walk. Since I knew the area, I ended up showing them the way, wearing a yellow arrow.

If you would like to learn more about this pilgrimage, take a look at either or both of these sites: http://www.ricksteves.com/news/tribune/camino_santiago.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela

Every great cultural hub has some place that expresses its strengths, its spirit perfectly. New York City has the Statue of Liberty. Paris has the Eiffel Tower. And Rome has, well, Rome.

Austin, however, has the Hamilton Pool, a humble swimming hole that has more than a touch of the magnificent, thanks to the collapse of an underground river millenia ago. The result is a  deep grotto with 45-foot high waterfalls around the rim — and one of the most spectacular places in the world to have a beer, grab a tube, and just float. Try that in Paris.

fantastic | Originally uploaded by nedward.org.

We love surprises. And nothing reveals them better than the spiritual journey we all go through when we struggle with something painful. Rehab, therefore, is definitely up there among the great journeys one can take in life.

So it’s wonderful to hear, if true, that Britney’s lawyer, her stage-parent mother, and gold-digger-soon-to-be-ex-husband Kevin Federline may have stepped up to help struggling pop star Britney Spears along.

Of course a Big Gulp dose of skepticism is needed here. Lawyers and mothers are master manipulators. Federline, of course, belongs in the hall of fame. He’s already positioned himself masterfully for his upcoming custody fight with Spears (with a big assist from Spears of course). No doubt one or more of them have publicists in the game. Their motives are not entirely pure.

But as with much gossip, there’s could be a kernel of truth in there somewhere…