Editor's Desktop at The Zoo Fence

I am done. I have come to the end of The Zoo Fence. Since January 1996, when The Zoo Fence was first published in its original hard-copy form, I — and Anna too — have put into this website in one form or another everything I know about the spiritual process. Whatever I know, whatever I have to share, I have freely shared here.

I know that The Zoo Fence has been useful to some, for they have told me so. I am grateful for that. In the hope that it will continue to be of use to some others, The Zoo Fence will remain in place more or less indefinitely.

For the moment, I will continue to post new items to Here's A Thought, and there are a few Theophyle cartoons in my head which I want to draw and eventually post. In addition, there are a couple of items in train which I will post in the next days or weeks. But that is likely to be the extent of it.

TZF's Open Forum will remain in place, and I will participate there irregularly from time to time as I am doing now. However, The Sand Box feature will no longer enjoy the protected status it has had. That is, The Sand Box will be as open to view as is everything else on Open Forum, indeed as is everything else on The Zoo Fence. Therefore, any Open Forum members who have contributed material to The Sand Box which they would prefer not be publicly viewable, should log in and delete those entries.
December 29, 2009

As frequent visitors to The Zoo Fence are aware, the page Selections, Sources & References provides source information for the many selections and quotations and other stuff that appear scattered here and there throughout the website. Originally, I had included on that page, also known as que.html, source information for prayers that appear in The Quiet Room, but because the source page has now grown so large (as the website itself has grown), I have moved the source information for The Quiet Room material to a separate source page, called quepray.html. This event will be of interest only to those who, like me, have an interest in html-stuff.
December 6, 2009

This week's selection at TZF's Here's A Thought is from Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities, which I have been reading along with his Misquoting Jesus; both books are about the New Testament and particularly the Gospels. Their focus is not theology as such, but the evolution of early Christian and pre-Christian sects, the conflicts and controversies among and between them, and how that influenced the development of New Testament canon: who wrote the books, how many books were there to start with, why were some books included and others rejected, and so on, as well as detailed consideration of the additions, deletions, alterations, and errors in the texts, some significant, some minor, some intentional, some accidental.

These are scholarly books in the sense that Ehrman is a scholar, and his work is well researched with lots of end notes. But they are an easy read, and offer a fascinating look into the evolution of Christian scripture. I enthusiastically recommend them to all seekers.

As expected, other books have been written attacking Ehrman's work and in "defense" of the New Testament. I have not read them, but I have read reviews of them, from which I gather that they are essentially apologetic (in the theological sense of the word, meaning that instead of addressing Ehrman's points, they pretty much simply reassure the faithful that there is nothing to worry about).

For my part, I do not doubt for a moment that the canon we have today has gone through numerous manipulations along its way to us. Even among current spiritual groups whose teachers or gurus are still alive, Anna and I have seen manipulation of the leader's and the group's history, in one case even rewriting a living teacher's autobiography to remove mention of events in his life which now seem inappropriate to a man of his presumed stature.

For me, none of Ehrman's conclusions detract from the power of the Gospels. On the contrary, Ehrman's books have made the Gospels more, not less, meaningful. In my mind now, they fit far more comfortably and sensibly with the scriptures of the world's other great spiritual traditions.

I had hoped to post at TZF's Ampers&and a lengthy excerpt from Ehrman's "Lost Christianities". Unfortunately, the publisher denied me copyright permission to do so.
July 5, 2009

Today is Memorial Day in the United States. It is a day intended to celebrate those who are serving and who have served in the nation's armed forces, particularly those who have lost their lives in that service. This year I am moved to include TZF in that celebration by changing the website's home page to the Brother Theophyle cartoon on war. It will be so for only today. Those of you who use the regular index.html page as your portal to TZF need make no changes. Tomorrow we will be back to normal.
May 25, 2009

This morning, I added to TZF's My Space feature a link to LibForAll Foundation. I like the sounds of it a lot, and I recommend a visit. I learned of the website by reading Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times about a recent conference at Notre Dame University described as "an international conference … on the latest scholarship about the Qur’an". It is a good column, and an interesting conference.
April 23, 2009

I am delighted to report that we have received and granted a request from a Vietnamese student at a university in Korea for copyright permission to translate The Cranberry Tales into Vietnamese for posting on his blog. From his messages to us, he seems an enthusiastic fellow who is up to the considerable challenge he has undertaken for himself. I will report his progress here as we learn of it, and again when the task is completed. In the meantime, we wish him well in his effort to teach the Vietnamese language to Pilikia, Cantachiaro, Tancredi, and their friends!
December 6, 2009

I had hoped to post at TZF's Ampers&and a lengthy excerpt from Ehrman's "Lost Christianities". Unfortunately, the publisher denied me copyright permission to do so.
July 5, 2009

This morning, I restored TZF's regular home page. Barack Obama is now in office, doing his thing, hopefully restoring some balance to this country (and the world), and TZF can return to normal, whatever precisely that is. We continue to wish him well. The special home page I posted last month (about which, see the item immediately below this) is still at the site, but the only link to it is this one.
February 1 , 2009

From the beginning, I have purposely kept politics out of The Zoo Fence. The Google blog is the closest I have come to commenting publicly about politics, and even there I have written little and rarely. I ran a special home page after the events of September 11, 2001, because they seemed to me to call for notice. That page remained in place for about a month. Likewise, the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States is so immense an event from almost every imaginable angle and perspective that it demands attention. Accordingly, today I posted a special home page. It will remain in place for a while, by which I mean I don't know just now how long I will leave it up. Once opened, the page displays for a few seconds, and then jumps to TZF's familiar home page (which is temporarily renamed indexa.html).This automatic jump works in most browsers, but not all; so I've included a clickable link, too.

I just wanted to explain what and why I'm up to — particularly for our long-time, frequent visitors.
January 18, 2009

As some of you will have noticed, The Zoo Fence website (zoofence.com and zoofence.org), including TZF's Open Forum (and our email), was down and inaccessible much of yesterday and today. Our domain host, OLM, experienced technical problems which took longer than expected to resolve. I regret the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience. Unfortunately, computers, like lots of other stuff, do these kinds of things from time to time.

In the process of their work, the OLM technicians needed to restore TZF to their server using their backup files, which were made a couple of days ago. As it happens, during that interim, I had uploaded some new or revised files which were not reflected in OLM's backup package. Fortunately, I keep copies of all TZF files, and so today I have been able to replace those few files (notably the new Theophyle cartoon) which OLM inadvertently lost.

Now, the affirmation "I keep copies of all TZF files" in the preceding paragraph does not include Open Forum material. What that means is that if any new Open Forum members signed on, or if any existing members worked on their profile (like, changed their password), or if anyone made any new posts in the last day or so, that information may have been lost, and, if so, will need to be redone.

I guess this event is just one more example of why God created the eraser!

Other than this cyber wrinkle, we are looking forward to, and we expect, an exciting and uplifting new year ahead, and we wish the very same for all our friends and visitors.
January 4, 2009

There are some extraordinary photographs of the recent volcanic eruption in Chile at http://megagalerias.terra.cl/galerias/index.cfm?id_galeria=30734! The first ten or so, of the accompanying electrical storm, are breathtaking.
May 8, 2008

As frequent TZFers know, for some years TZF's bookstore pages have been "in association with Amazon.com", meaning that we are able to sell books, videos, and other stuff through Amazon.com directly on The Zoo Fence, and Amazon pays us a small percentage for each sale so transacted … for which we are grateful, particularly to those TZFers who regularly make the extra effort to purchase from Amazon through TZF! Now, Amazon has initiated a new feature, called "aStore" (presumably for "Amazon Store", a play on eStore?), which seems to me to be essentially the same service writ large. All the same, I have installed the page, and we'll see how it plays. To jump directly to this new feautre, please click here.
April 30, 2008

The folks at phpBB.com who provide the software that drives TZF's Open Forum have issued an update to it which I installed yesterday and this morning. Happily, it went without incident. The instructions that accompany their update and upgrade packages are normally clear and easy to follow. However, for me at least, the process is a little scary because the scripting language of the software is PHP, about which I am not as fluent as I am in straight HTML, for example. It can get particulalry iffy where I need to insert or reinsert my own tweaks to their scripts, which their updates sometimes undo, like the TZF logo (the kestrel & "Open Forum") on each page. Like the rest of life, it is a learning process! As the kids say, we should be good to go now, but please let me know if you encounter any unexpected difficulties or obstacles at Open Forum.Thanks.
April 11, 2008

At the author's request, I have re-posted Fully Involved at TZF's Integral Health after having removed it about a year ago, also at her request. The author is a long-time friend of The Zoo Fence. The piece is the story of her son's leukemia, and how she and her husband dealt with the emotional, physical, and insitutional rigors associated with the disease. Thus, it is a mother's story, and compelling as such, but it is all the more so because she happens to be a Registered Nurse (RN), and therefore brings to the telling all the knowledge and experience which that profession offers.
March 1, 2008

This morning, I posted a new submission to TZF's Open Space. It is an article entitled The Awakening, and is apparently also the first chapter of a book by the author. I do not know any more about the author or the experience reported in the article than appears on that page. However, I can say that it is a beautiful story nicely told. I am glad to have it on TZF.
February 22, 2008

The folks at phpBB.com have issued a new version of the software that drives TZF's Open Forum. I am in the process of installing it now. I expect that it will be up and ready to go tomorrow or the next day. I will post updates here. Thanks for your patience.
December 18, 2007

Update December 19 morning: The new software is installed and, on first glance, it seems to be working fine. Accordingly, I expect to re-open the forum Thursday (tomorrow) or Friday.

Update December 19 evening: The new version of phpBB software appears to be performing correctly. It looks different, and it has some new features, but it seems okay, so I am opening it. All the usernames and threads appear to have transferred successfully. However, if you have any trouble logging in, or anything that does not seem to work properly, please let me know.

Also, please note that the internet address (URL) has changed. It is now http://www.zoofence.com/openforum

Today I have added a link at TZF's home page to a blog I started some time ago. Originally, I chose not to link it to The Zoo Fence because the focus of TZF from the beginning has intentionally been "spiritual" -- that is, matters related to the spiritual quest, path, and growth process -- and the blog, except for a couple of items -- is not about that; it is more about "the world". But all the while, I have been fully aware that one cannot successfully separate the two, as indeed is the underlying premise of what we call The Simple Way. So, today I have overruled my earlier decision, and linked the two together in fact as they always have been in substance.
November 24, 2006

As regular visitors to TZF have observed, Open Forum has been inaccessible for several months. The reason, as a few have guessed, has been the nearly epidemic increase in spammers who "visit" the forum with no intention other than to leave behind links to advertising sites and various other unpleasant websites, or simply to use up server space for no reason other than to complicate the lives of others. It seems pretty clear that TZF generally nor Open Forum itself is being specifically targeted. Rather, these rascals write computer programs which then search the internet for any forums using phpBB software (as we do), and then there leave behind their footprints ... or worse. Mostly, it is just a nuisance, but it got to be a sufficiently serious nuisance (a couple of days, there were hundreds of such "visits"), that I decided to turn off the forum for a while. Eventually, I will turn it back on, but I have not yet decided just when.
September 21, 2006

The Zoo Fence, including Open Forum, will probably be inaccessible this coming Friday, September 5, from about midnight to about four in the morning on Saturday, September 6, while OLM, our domain service provider, performs maintenance on their equipment. We apologize to TZF visitors who may be inconvenienced by this interruption.
August 29, 2005

A few days ago, we received a message from an artist named Mindy Sommers introducing us to her work. This morning, I posted one of her pieces, titled "Forgiveness" -- which is part of a deck of tarot-like cards she created -- to TZF's page "Forgive You, Forgive Me" at http://www.zoofence.com/cons16.html. To see the work, scroll past the article, toward the bottom of the page. Once you have enjoyed that piece, I urge you to visit the artist's website at http://www.dreamincolortarot.com, where you will find one of the most beautiful assortment of colors I have ever seen on the internet. My compliments to the artist who mixed them, but equally to whoever created the graphics from her artwork and designed the website itself.
July 27, 2005

For years, I posted on TZF's Technical Stuff page reports of virus and other alerts that we received from Symantec or McAfee, or that I came across elsewhere. I stopped doing that because there are just too many of them, and most people seem now to have anti-virus software installed, and, perhaps most importantly, Symantec offers a free alert service that updates itself automatically, which I have installed on the Technical Stuff page. To see it, please click here. I will continue to use that page to alert or inform TZFers of other tech stuff that may be of special interest.
June 13, 2005

On Monday, May 30, from about 12:00 AM to about 5:00 AM Central Daylight Time which is 5:00 AM to 10:00 AM Coordinated Universal Time (also called Universal Coordinated Time, Universal Time, and Greenwhich Mean Time), all of the features on The Zoo Fence website, including Open Forum, will be inaccessible while our hosting service performs maintenance on their servers and related equipment. We regret this inconvenience, and thank you for your understanding and patience.
May 28, 2005

Today, I instituted a new feature on The Zoo Fence called "Miscellanea" to which I moved three items of mine that had been at TZF's Open Space. They never really belonged there, because Open Space is specifically intended for the work or contributions of TZF's visitors. The problem was, I didn't know where else to put them, so that's where they ended up. Now they have a place. Miscellanea, as the name is intended to suggest, is where I'll put anything that doesn't seem to fit exactly anywhere else on TZF.
December 5, 2004

Today, we altered TZF's sub-title from "A Commentary on The Spiritual Life" to "A Commentary on Life & Living". The former still appears on some of the site's graphics, and will do so until I get around to effecting all the changes; but at TZF's two home pages (index and index3), where visitors are first introduced to us, the new sub-title is in place. We took this action because the distinction "spiritual" in the expression "a spiritual life" no longer seems to us to be appropriate. That is, the phrase "a spiritual life" suggests that there is such a thing as a life that is not spiritual, a non-spiritual life, and increasingly that does not make sense. As we explain at The Simple Way, if God is Infinite, then the entirety is Godly ... or spiritual. And if that's the case, then "a spiritual life" is a redundancy. At the same time, I moved the lines "Silence your thoughts ..." from index.html to consdr13.html, where is The Simple Way (scroll down the page, just below the painting of the lion). For now, it seems more appropriate there.
November 27, 2004
Update, six months or so later: I have undone that change. I am unable to explain precisely why, except that the earlier way seems to me to ring better. Maybe it has something to do with feng shui!

I have revised TZF's Definitions pages. The new set of pages is arranged alphabetically, so that the first page contains words that begin with the letters A, B, or C, the second page has words that begin with the letters D, E, or F, and so on. The definitions index page remains the same, except instead of a single (very long) column of words, there are now two (fairly long) columns. Those of you who are familiar with HTML will understand that this process required editing a LOT of hyperlinks across the entire website. I am (reasonably) confident I got them all, and that wherever a word on the site is hyperlinked to its definition on the definitions pages, the link works. Again, reasonably confident. If you should discover such a link that does not work properly, please tell me (write to editor@zoofenceDOTcom -- but don't forget to change the letters "DOT" to a dot or period). Thanks.
July 18, 2004

Lately, we have been receiving so much spam, sometimes as many as fifty spam messages a day, that I have reluctantly decided to take some action that may stem the tide. It is my understanding that spammers send robots across the internet harvesting anything they find that has the symbol @ in it, which they take to be an email address and then send spam messages to it. The obvious solution is to remove our email address from the site. However, I do not want to do that because many visitors seem to enjoy writing us, and we certainly enjoy hearing from you. Therefore, today I am trying an alternative, which I hope will help. Wherever it appears on this site, I have altered our email address to a format which I hope the robots will not be able to use. What I have done is changed the . (dot or period) in the domain name zoofence.com to the letters DOT, so that, for example, the email address that is shown on the Open Space Guidelines page for submissions to Open Space now reads "openspace@zoofenceDOTcom", with instructions immediately following to change the letters "DOT" to a period or dot before sending a message. I know that this change will inconvenience (and undoubtedly confuse) some TZF visitors, and I apologize for that; but I hope you will understand the need for it.
May 18, 2004

A visitor to TZF has just published a new book about spirituality and celibacy (about which please see here) in which she has reproduced our own article, Do We Have To Give Up Sex?. Curiously (or perhaps not), that article has drawn as much attention as anything else on TZF (among the other most remarked upon items are The Quiet Room, Anna's Page, the article about forgiveness, Bo Lozoff's piece at Ampers&nd, and our definitions pages, where particularly namaste, ahimsa, religion, and seeker). Frequent visitors may remember that a little over a year ago, the TAT Forum, which is dedicated to the teaching of Richard Rose, reproduced the same article on their site, at http://www.tatfoundation.org/forum2003-01.htm (towards the bottom of that page).
April 20, 2004

This morning, I inadvertently deleted an incoming email message sent to our link exchange address suggesting a link exchange. The message started out by referring to TZF as a "content rich site" (for which observation we are very grateful!). I apologize to whoever sent that message, and if you are reading this item, please resend the message. This is the second or third time that we know of when we have inadvertently deleted "real" messages. Clearly, the spam/scam/virus/worm epidemic has made us counterproductively cautious. We are going to have to do some re-thinking.
September 9, 2003
Today, we were able to recover the deleted message. So, problem solved.
September 20, 2003

Today, at index.html I replaced "The very One" with "Your very Self". For those interested, the history here is: When those seven lines first came to me, many years ago, the sixth line was "Your very Self". Then, when we added the septet to the front door of The Zoo Fence, the general consensus here was that we should replace that line with "The very One" which seemed to us more likely to be compatible with the many paths and various traditions TZF visitors travel. Now, we are moved to restore the original, and so I have done so. I hope that's okay with everyone here!
May 10, 2003

David Wertman has written us about a new CD of spiritually uplifting music that he has published. It is called "May The Spirit Be With You". On his site at http://www.songsofpeace.homestead.com, there is a link to several song clips which we enjoyed, and I am sure others will too.
March 15, 2003

Anna's Page has been restored. I apologize for any inconvenience its absence may have caused, and I thank you for your patience.
March 10, 2003

I am working on Anna's Page, and so for the next few days her stuff will not be accessible. I apologize for the inconvenience.
February 12, 2003

Recently, we received a message from a TZF visitor who has set up a site to collect stories and reports of miracles and other nice news. It's a happy venture, and we wish it well. The URL is http://www.tobeablessing.com.
January 9, 2003

I have decided to close down TZF's Open Forum. There are numerous serious, mature "spiritual" forums on the internet, more nearly every day, including many that are dedicated to some of the specific topics that have been addressed on Open Forum. Thus, it seems to me that our forum does not fill a real need. To help bridge whatever gap this decision may create for other TZFers, I have added a "Groups & Forums" category to TZF's Links page where I will list some that come to our attention. The Zoo Fence itself will remain unchanged. I thank all of you who have participated at Open Forum, and, as always, wish you bountiful success and joy along your own continuing inner journey.
October 3, 2002

This item just goes on and on ... I originally posted the second paragraph below (which begins "The story continues" -- if you have not yet read it, you may wish to do so before continuing) on August 20. Now, October 4, I have received a message from TZF's cherished friend, Wayne Manning of Unity Auburn, who stumbled across the same attribution error way back in 1995. He writes me that someone had given a colleague of his "a framed copy of the quote, attributed to Mandela. It was taken from the very reputable and usually reliable UTNE magazine. Still, it just didn't ring quite true, so I did an exhaustive search on his inaugural speeches (there were four, as I recall, in different cities, with no two exactly alike) and the quote appeared in none of them. We then contacted UTNE who, as I remember, printed a small retraction on page umpty-ump in a subsequent edition. Marianne has since made numerous public statements owning the quote, in print and verbally, but the 'folk myth' continues".

The story continues ... On October 28, 2000, I posted to TZF's "Here's A Thought" a few lines that I came across on a website dedicated to Nelson Mandela. There, they had been cited as being from his 1994 inaugural speech, and so I attributed them accordingly. Then, in June, 2001, a TZF visitor wrote to inform us that although the lines in question were spoken by Mandela, they originally appeared in Marianne Williamson's book, A Return to Love, which was first published in 1992, two years before Mandela was said to have spoken the words. Thus, I concluded that Mandela was quoting Williamson, and I changed the attribution accordingly. Now, today, I have received a message from another TZF visitor correcting me once again by informing me that those lines never were spoken by Nelson Mandela! And, in fact, a search of the speech itself at the African National Congress's own site, confirms that. This visitor writes, "A search of all of Mandela's archived speeches at the ANC site does not find the quotation, either. I've been searching elsewhere, too, but have found no solid evidence that these words ever crossed his lips. I have come across a couple of people who inquired directly to the ANC, and were told that he never spoke them". I am very grateful to this second visitor for re-setting us straight! For me personally, the lesson of this episode is to check carefully before attributing words to anyone! I apologize for this confusion. On the other hand, had I caught the error back in October 2000 before posting the lines, I would not have enjoyed the exchange of email messages with the two TZF visitors which the error generated, and that would have been a loss.
August 20, 2002

I am very pleased to report that The Zoo Fence has been presented The Point of Life Gold Award of Excellence. Please check it out ... and check out their site, too!
August 3, 2002

Once again, we extend our heartfelt thanks to those of you who use TZF's Bookstore page as your access to Amazon.com. As you may know, we receive a small commission from Amazon on all purchases (books or anything else Amazon sells) made by TZF visitors who go to Amazon's site from our bookstore. What you may not know is how much we appreciate it. Of course, we have no way of knowing who you are (Amazon reports only the sales & commissions to us, not who made them), but whoever you are, we know you are generous and thoughtful, and we thank you for that, very much!
August 2, 2002

Last June, I added the feature "Eco-Consciousness" to The Zoo Fence. The page is coming along nicely, if it is still working on its personality. Today, I added an "eco-links" page to it, providing links to other sites whose focus also is on the planet, its inhabitants, environment, prognosis, and so on, broadly defined.
November 25, 2001

TZF's long-time friend Art Hale has written a new book, "Christ, Yes: Religion, No". In it, Art makes a nice distinction between Jesus as a "preeminent teacher, way-shower and spiritual guide" and "the sectarian chauvinism of the 30,000-plus Christian denominations". This issue is not unique to Christianity, of course, and the book will be of interest to a seeker on any path. For more, please visit http://www.iuniverse.com where the book is available online or in hard copy.
November 2, 2001

A TZFer wrote us about this NASA site - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html. Check it out for some eye-popping graphics ... like "Saturn at night". Wow! Thanks for sharing the URL.
April 23, 2001

Please check out this site suggested to us by TZF's ISP Administrator. It's a view of the planet at night from space ... pitch black except for electric lights! What a view. To get the full affect, some evening after dark, browse to it with MS Internet Explorer, then press F11 (Full Screen). Then, turn off your room lights. I've put a link to it on TZF's Thisenthat page, under "Science".
April 13, 2001

I recently came across a wonderfully powerful poem by Maya Angelou written in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations. It is "A Brave and Startling Truth". I had hoped to post it at TZF's Ampers&nd, but unfortunately we have been denied copyright permission to do so. Still, I heartily recommend your reading it at any of the numerous sites across the web where it does appear (here is one such).
April 5, 2001