Monday, October 28, 2013

Who's Driving?


God is...

Most American women are driving.  But news broadcasts this past week reminded us that not all women in the world have permission to drive an automobile.  There are some who are now defying that prohibition (see CNN Saudi women driving).  It made me recall that my late mother-in-law and sister-in-law never drove a car, and that I was in my mid twenties and about to have my second child before I first got my driver’s license.  Oh my how I have evolved!

I am remembering too, a couple of weeks ago, a church official was on the news denouncing the recent ordination of a woman as a Catholic priest. He conceded that it would be hard for American women, living in a democracy, to understand why women cannot be priests.  We sure must know different Gods, because mine is totally democratic.  But wait, that’s right, they still wanted to keep nuns in the habit.

Public radio recently featured David Sloan Wilson and his book, “The Neighborhood Project – Using Evolution to Improve My City One Block at a Time.”  He was on Krista Tippett’s program “On Being.”  I just picked up his book and am anxious to get into it.  Wilson is a distinguished evolutionary biologist and anthropologist.  He focused his biology and anthropology skills on improving the quality of human life in his hometown of Binghamton, New York using Darwin’s theories.  I suspect his practical implications for improving interactions between humans and their environment could be applied beyond the scope of a city, like maybe to how killing female babies in some cultures will later result in a lack of women to become wives and procreate, or how prohibiting progeny in a hierarchy could weaken it or cause its extinction, or how inhibiting the growth of others ultimately affects the health of us all.  Will see.  Stay tuned.  I just started reading his book. 

What if we all became excellent drivers?  What if we all focused on ways to apply the laws of nature to improving our lives?  I know Teilhard de Chardin would approve.                

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