Moral qualities of man

"Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men."

-- Confucius

"Less is More"

-- Mies van der Rohe

Attack on cancer cell

Working on the TMune business plan I happened on an amazing micrograph (below) showing with great clearity a specialized immune cell, called a macrophage (smaller), devouring a cancer cell (larger).  The many disc shaped cells in the background are red blood cells. 

Malignant cells arise contunually in our bodies.  Some result from mutated genes, others result from viruses or environmental exposure.  It is now clear that our immune system routinely clears these cells.  When our immune system fails we get cancer.  Restoring the immune system when it fails is the goal of TMune and other companies who aim to treat cancer with immunotherapy. 

Photo credit to Dr. Raowf Guirguis' lab at the National Cancer Institute.

Darkness Before Dawn

Its Always Darkest Before Dawn

But how dark
is darkest?
Does it get
jet --or tar--
black; does it
glint and increase
in hardness
or turn viscous?
Are there stages
of darkness
and chips
to match against
its increments,
holding them
up to our blindness,
estimating when
we'll have the
night behind us?

-- Kay Ryan, Poet Laureat
    From PBS

Ploughman

"The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act."

-- Tara Ploughman

Patient Trust

With thanks to Ian Cron, I lean on these words often:

"Do not try to force them on, as if you could be today what time will make of you tomorrow."

Here is the powerful context.  Jesuit Paleontologist Teillard de Chardin writes to his young niece:

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.

Your ideas mature gradually–let them grow,
Let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Tolstoy

"The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity"

-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Compassionate approach to terror

Back to basics:  The world's major religions share an emphasis of compassion and respect for the Golden Rule.  Prize winning TED speaker Karen Armstrong's Charter for Compassion taps into this commonality as a powerful force against religious extremism.

People want to be religious, says scholar Karen Armstrong; we should help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help build a Charter for Compassion -- to restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine. 

Three minute video:   Charter for Compassion

Website:                    charterforcompassion.org

Altruistic fluff?  Perhaps.  But if somehow this basic message of compassion became an orchestrated focus of the world's well-meaning peoples it could be the obvious answer.  I see it as the only answer.  Karen, we're cheering you on.

Aristotle

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
                                         --Aristotle, Greek philosopher

Sammy Squirrel

Sammy is Lily's class mascot.  Each weekend he scrambles into the backpack of an unsuspecting student looking for adventure.  Hosting such a guest provides a focus and purpose for the weekend.  Sammy also provided the opportunity for one of my favorite photos of Lily. 

The witty but correct (politicaly and grammatically) parental photo-writeup of the weekend activities is due Monday AM.

Religious Pluralism

Religious Pluralism goes beyond mere tolerance for diversity and requires that we build positive relationships and work with one another.  It is a state in which we respect one another's religious identity, develop mutually enriching relationships with each other and work together to make this world a better place.

--Interfaith Youth Core, Chicago