The Magic dress

I slowly woke up this morning pondering religion and Kung Fu. I've been tying these things, specifically the Catholic ideas and Lion Dance into my new novel and was day dreaming about starting a lion dance group at St. James, which may or may not happen. Anyway, in my imagination I thought about what would happen if people of different religions decided to join the team, specifically this other Sifu, Uncle Gai. I don't know why he popped into my mind, but he was ostracized unfairly from an organization (and then let back in later) in sort of a microcosmic way that some early members of the Church were excommunicated you know back when the Roman Empire still existed. Why did this pop into my head? I don't know. But I imagined explaining my Faith (which is probably different from the Catholic Church's platform but  there is more variation I think than people let on.) Anyway I running through a martial arts, religious argument in my head.

"Do any of you have any proof that any God or gods or Buddhas or angels exist in the way we pray to them? Real proof. Scientific proof. The answer is no. In fact that  is why faith is important. If it was just proof then it would be science and not religion. So to bring in people to your religion you don't have to prove that you know the TRUTH or that yours is the best religion. You just have to show that your religion is as good as the other, and that since you know us and hang out with us, you might as well be part of our community."

And then I ran through some criticisms I had in my mind of Christianity, even though I now consider myself to be Christian.

"Let's look at it from a martial arts perspective. Here is a White Crane punch. The basic one where we train to turn our waist and not our stance. Here's a Choi lei fut punch where you turn the stance. Here is a Hung Gar stance where the waist and the stance do not move and the arm is not fully extended. Here is a Wing Chun stance where the hips turns but the punch is short. If you are a student of any of these systems you might think that your way is the best way. But you don't have to. You could agree that there are other ways that may or may not be better but you are simply practicing your system because that is what you were raised in and that is what you are familiar with. You can have friends of other systems and visit other schools, but ultimately if you are a Wing Chun Sifu, even if you take up another system it doesn't necessarily mean you convert if you are part of a long lineage and tradition. But to say that only your punch works and no other punch is even valid or possible is ridiculous."

Well I woke up out of this horrible day dream because who day dreams about nonsense like this? And I saw Grace holding her phone. She held up a picture of a dress and asked me what color it was.

"Blue and green."

"What!?"

"Well okay I guess the green is a darkish brownish color what would you call it?"

The story of the dress is already widespread. At first I thought it was some sort of trick where a program created a different image to be seen by different people, but Grace and I were looking at the same screen and she said it was blue and black. Not just a little black, but straight black.

There are a ton of explanations, some scientific, some probably not so much. But here is the thing. I was upset at the way Grace said, "No it's..." I wouldn't say it like that. I see it this way, if you see it a different way okay. Maybe it's because of that Buddhist story of the elephant that I always think about. Maybe it's because I'm mixed race. But I have no problem with seeing it one way and immediately acknowledging that there is another way to see it, even if that's not how I see it. The fact that people got angry and in a huff about it is so telling of human nature.