Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller

In 1927, at the age of 32, Buckminster Fuller stood on the shores of Lake Michigan, prepared to throw himself into the freezing waters. His first child had died. He was bankrupt, discredited and jobless, and he had a wife and new-born daughter. On the verge of suicide, it suddenly struck him that his life belonged, not to himself, but to the universe. He chose at that moment to embark on what he called “an experiment to discover what the little, penniless, unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity.” Over the next fifty-four years, he proved, time and again, that his most controversial ideas were practical and workable.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:WtUmeEBihRsJ:www.bfi.org/introduction_to_bmf.htm+%22buckminster+fuller%22+biography&hl=en&client=firefox-a

In 1927, 'Bucky' Fuller had little reason to be optimistic about the future. The year found Bucky jobless and broke with a wife and newborn daughter Alegra, to support. His first daughter Alexandra had died four years previous and Buckminster Fuller was still living in mourning. He had attempted suicide and was drinking heavily. In the darkness of that year, Buckminster Fuller went through a spiritual rebirth that changed the course of his life. He decided to dedicate his life to finding out how much difference one man could make in the world.

Renouncing personal and financial gain, Buckminster Fuller entered two years of seclusion to begin in his own words:

"the search for the principles governing the universe and help advance the evolution of humanity in accordance with them... finding ways of doing more with less to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more"

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa111897.htm

Johnny Cash

* The third essay is featured at Beliefnet.com, with the headline “A Faith-Life Johnny Cash.” This essay is by Mark Joseph, who has written a number of books on religion and rock ‘n’ roll and works on a wide variety of projects in Hollywood. Here is the heart of his piece, which ends up quoting Cash on the redemption of Johnny Cash. Quoting Cash is never a bad idea:

The key moment in Cash’s turnaround happened when he tried a unique method of suicide—crawling through a cave hoping to never make it out alive. Cash wrote:

The absolute lack of light was appropriate, for at that moment I was as far from God as I have ever been. My separation from Him, the deepest and most ravaging of the various kinds of loneliness I’d felt over the years seemed finally complete. It wasn’t. I thought I’d left him but He hadn’t left me. I felt something very powerful start to happen to me, a sensation of utter peace, clarity and sobriety. I didn’t believe it at first. I couldn’t understand it . . .. the feeling persisted though and then my mind started focusing on God . . .. there in Nickajack cave I became conscious of my destiny. I was not in charge of my own death. I was going to die at God’s time, not mine. I hadn’t prayed over my decision to seek death in the cave, but that hadn’t stopped God from intervening … I told my mother that God had saved me from killing myself. I told her I was ready to commit myself to Him and do whatever it took to get off drugs. I wasn’t lying.

The big question: Where is Nickajack cave in the timeline of the Walk the Line movie? That sounds like that would have been a rather dramatic scene, to me. Maybe it would have been too dark, or too light, or too something else.

Posted at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

http://www.getreligion.org/

18 November 2005