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	<title>Toward the Mystery</title>
	<link>http://williamedelen.org</link>
	<description>The virtual home of the William Edelen Symposium</description>
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		<title>Walter Annenberg</title>
		<description><![CDATA["Sunnylands," the estate of Walter Annenberg is being opened in February as a think tank for world leaders, a Camp David of the West coast. In March the general public will be able to see the estate. Reading about this brought back many joyful memories of Sunnylands and Walter Annenberg.

Our friendship began when he started reading my weekly column in The Desert Sun. At the time my wife and I lived in Idaho where I was writing for the The Idaho Statesman.

One morning at the Post Office, I had a letter from “Walter Annenberg, Sunnylands.” I had never met him but knew who he was of course. I have never forgotten his opening paragraph. He wrote this to me:

"I consider your columns monumental in raising the level of religious literacy." I was floating about a foot off the ground for the rest of that day. Our friendship had started on a very high plane and continued until the time of his death, years later.

He became my patron in 1990, saying he wanted to free me to speak and write full time, with no strings attached. He kept encouraging me to move to Palm Springs and start my own Sunday Symposium where I was free to lecture to any open minded person and free thinker who wanted to attend, with no dogmas, doctrines or creeds that forced people into mental concentration camps.
]]></description>
		<link>http://williamedelen.org/archives/2989</link>
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		<title>Prayer as magic</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In the study of religion among primal peoples you find that many believed in "magic." Magic is defined as the belief that supernatural forces can be controlled, influenced and manipulated by executing a ritualistic formula, either physical or verbal. We still, today, in a more fashionable way, utilize superstition, prayer wheels, magic, sacrifices and elaborate doxologies to induce God to favor our requests, grant our wishes and perform miracles upon demand. 

Minister, rabbi and priest are expected to offer prayers on behalf of the desires of their congregation. Does this not make God a divine magician? And does this not make the minister or priest a magician's apprentice? 

I am asking, "Can something called "God's Will" really be changed by requests from the earth?" And if so, what kind of a capricious, chaotic universe would this be? What kind of chaos would it be if the eternal will of an eternal God with an eternal design could be changed from time to time as this design was subjected to millions and millions of people in a barrage of requests to make things different? ]]></description>
		<link>http://williamedelen.org/archives/2984</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Ideas that use us</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When we look at creative lives, past and present, that have been made great by great ideas, it brings to us a very stimulating message, a challenging message. It is THAT YOU AND I NEED NOT BE VERY GREAT TO CHOOSE AND BE USED BY SOME VERY GREAT IDEAS. An inspiring message to us is that the wake we leave behind us as we live our days will be more significant and more monumental as our wake has been filled with some of the great ideas of civilization.

We are constantly being used by ideas and if we are not being used by great and noble ideas, we are being used by small, petty and trivial ideas.

In every generation the great ideas and the sick ideas must find human beings that they can use or they would die out. Generation after generation, human beings come and go, but ideas remain and words live on. Human beings die but ideas survive and knock on a living mind and say, “Let me use you now in your time."

So, the "bottom line," as they say, is this: 

THE ULTIMATE MEANING OF OUR LIVES AS HUMAN BEINGS IS TO BE FOUND IN THE IDEAS THAT WE ALLOW TO USE US. ]]></description>
		<link>http://williamedelen.org/archives/2978</link>
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