Face the Future, Con't

Another lingering reflection, on a recent I'm Wondering...:

I'm wondering...about how we orient ourselves to face the future.

For one thing, how am I thinking about the future relative to how I thought about it in my 20s seems quite different.  Obviously, the time-table has changed and that seems to affect things. When I was younger, my sense of 'my whole life in front of me' would often take the pressure off something.  As I age, I would describe that pressure as shifting.  I'm increasingly focused on a shorter term (like a window is closing — which relieves things in some ways, but adds things in other ways).

Another feature of how we orient to the future seems to be related to fear.  I've noticed that fear in older people seems to increasingly dominate their perspective about the future.  I've said I won't let that happen to me.  But, I suspect I am a bit naive (if not arrogant) about that assertion (even if I don't watch FOX News).

And, then, there's the nexus of my own personal, little world and that of the larger collective that continues to evolve over time.  How does what my grandparents remember about 'when they grew up' assimilate with what we're experiencing now in terms of things like social and environmental issues, politics, technology, and our sense of meaning in life?  How does what my grandparents faced as children and what my grandchildren will face affect how I view things today?

Like it or not, a lot of the time, how I view things today is psychologically impacted by my sense of the future.  Are we progressing or are we retreating?  Gaining ground or losing it?  Is the future bright with possibility and betterment or beset by the inevitability of dystopia?  

So, in all of this, what do I turn to for a sense of my bearings? What gives me healthy perspective about the future?  How does my perspective of the future inform what I focus on today (or, is it the other way around)?

Is the future just an abyss waiting for all of us to just fall into?  Or, does it largely resemble the present evolution of the past (even as it is changing)?  Is what I am really grasping at whether or not anything (or anyone) has control of the future…of where things are headed?

As much as things change, they also stay (largely) the same.  Or, at least, the basics do.  The sun rises every day.  Gravity is always there.  Air to breath is a given.  Most days, we get up and do our thing — eat (by the way, a helpful way to do that...here), work, clean, etc. Sure we have nicer clothes, indoor plumbing and climate controlled temperature, the ability to communicate and entertain ourselves at unprecedented levels, to fly nearly anywhere in the world now (whereas before, many people never traveled out of their own community), not to mention outer-space.  But how much has that capability altered the essential nature of my existence — of what matters most in any given moment?

In other words, what will be is more like what it has always been.  If that is true, then most of my future is related to today — to what I do today.  If nothing else, the past demonstrates that.  And, that is a significant part of how I can face the future...today.  

...not to mention the wisdom and faith I benefit from every day from those who have gone before me (both recently and long ago). 

Greatest Danger

The greatest danger to our future is apathy.

-- Jane Goodall

Behavior

Let your behavior lead the way.

-- James Clear, from The Silent Cost of Bad Habits

So, Who Is Deranged?

CBS NEWS

Besides the profound implications, in addition to the overall backlash (not to mention his pathetic back-pedaling or, perhaps even worse, the audacity of his VP's subsequent attempt to school the Pope), how do you reconcile this with:

Hegseth’s Unholy War 

You really can't and it may be catching up with him: 

Trump's incredible shrinking tent

Face The Future

I'm wondering...about how we orient ourselves to face the future.

Artemis II

Regarding perspective, there is still something to be said for your point-of-view:

 USA TODAY

More...here.

This reminds me of something I've mentioned before:

A Reason to Look Up

3 Observations & A Question

Expose the good, in addition to the bad — using one to cancel the other isn’t in our best interest. 

 

Human interaction is important to our well-being — notice what happens without it.

 

Not unlike your overall well-being, you have to work at your health — it helps to habitualize it.

 

What is it that I most want to solve for in my life? — If I don’t know, am I just on auto-pilot (or in a trance)?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question…

Persuasion

'Poem for the week' -- "Persuasion":

Man’s life is like a Sparrow, mighty King!
That—while at banquet with your Chiefs you sit
Housed near a blazing fire—is seen to flit
Safe from the wintry tempest. Fluttering,
Here did it enter; there, on hasty wing,
Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold;
But whence it came we know not, nor behold
Whither it goes. Even such, that transient Thing,
The human Soul; not utterly unknown
While in the Body lodged, her warm abode;
But from what world She came, what woe or weal
On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown;
This mystery if the Stranger can reveal,
His be a welcome cordially bestowed!

-- William Wordsworth

So, What Does Make You Mad?

If this doesn't make you mad, then what would?

Chevron's CEO made $104 million while America bombed Iran 

This?

Hegseth Has Gutted the Entire Joint Chiefs and Replaced Them With People Whose Primary Skill Is Clapping 

Or, this?

“Time is running out - 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD! President DONALD J. TRUMP” 

This administration has been fleecing the system (you and me) in so many ways from the get-go, largely under the banner of conservatism (if not Christianity). It's hardly conservative (or Christian), especially on the financial front — look up the numbers.  Any 'greatness' coming from it is certainly not for you and me.

Are we really going to let these guys take us all down?

The Speech That History Will Remember as the Breakpoint in the Trump-Epstein-Russia Scandal

Put Blinders On

Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head.

-- Meryl Streep 

Architects

We are the architects of our situation. 

-- Simon Sinek

Adjustments

I’ve noticed…adjustments I need to be willing to make in my life.  

I know I'm getting older.  My compensation for that has been my failing assumption that I can still keep everything going IF I adapt — just find ways to do things differently.

But, there is more evidence that this isn't working.  My body is telling me this, in a variety of ways.  I suspect I'm not listening enough because, perhaps, I'm not accepting the reality of my increasing limitations. 

Maybe what I need to adjust is more than I've thought.... 

Another Seriously? This Is Our President.

Another, Seriously? This is our President:

Easter: New Life

As we move from the fear of Holy Friday through the despair of Holy Saturday, there is nothing quite like the joy of new life on Holy Sunday to move things back into perspective.

A personalized example for our family this Easter:

1st Team In History

4 Observations (from Others)

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

 

-- Albert Einstein

 

 

Discipline is the greatest thing in the world. Where there is no discipline, there is no character.

-- J.W. Marriott

 

 

I follow three rules: Do the right thing, do the best you can, and always show people you care.

 

-- Lou Holtz

 

Patience is everything.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

Holy (Good) Friday: He Became What We Fear

Father Richard Rohr offers a guided meditation, inviting listeners to be present with Jesus at the crucifixion:  

Picture yourself before the crucified Jesus; recognize that he became what you fear: nakedness, exposure, vulnerability, and failure. He became sin to free you from sin (see 2 Corinthians 5:21). He became what we do to one another in order to free us from the lie of punishing and scapegoating each other. He became the crucified so we would stop crucifying. He refused to transmit his pain onto others.

Richard imagines Jesus speaking these words to us, offering God’s love and forgiveness:

My beloved, I am your self. I am your beauty. I am your goodness, which you are destroying. I am what you do to what you should love. I am what you are afraid of: your deepest and best and most naked self—your soul. Your sin largely consists in what you do to harm goodness—your own and others’. You are afraid of the good; you are afraid of me. You kill what you should love; you hate what could transform you. I am Jesus crucified. I am yourself, and I am all of humanity.

We are invited to respond to Jesus on the cross:

Jesus, Crucified, you are my life and you are also my death. You are my beauty, you are my possibility, and you are my full self. You are everything I want, and you are everything I am afraid of. You are everything I desire, and you are everything I deny. You are my outrageously ignored and neglected soul.

Jesus, your love is what I most fear. I can’t let anybody love me for nothing. Intimacy with you or anyone terrifies me.

I am beginning to see that I, in my own body, am an image of what is happening everywhere, and I want it to stop today. I want to stop the violence toward myself, toward the world, toward you. I don’t need to ever again create any victim, even in my mind.

You alone, Jesus, refused to be crucifier, even at the cost of being crucified. You never asked for sympathy. You never played the victim or asked for vengeance. You breathed forgiveness.

We humans mistrust, murder, and attack. Now I see that it is not you that humanity hates. We hate ourselves, but we mistakenly kill you. I must stop crucifying your blessed flesh on this earth and in my brothers and sisters.

Now I see that you live in me and I live in you. You are inviting me out of this endless cycle of illusion and violence. You are Jesus crucified. You are saving me. In your perfect love, you have chosen to enter into union with me, and I am slowly learning to trust that this could be true.

Feels Free

You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

No foolin'.

No foolin'.

But, in some ways today, I wish I was.

In a week or so, I will be holding another grand-baby.  So, I was sprucing up a bit at the barber today (for the inevitable pics).  We got talking about how little humor there is these days, not to mention the fun we used to have playing April Fools jokes on people.  "Everyone is so uptight right now...", he said.

Unfortunately, that seems a bit too true.

But, I'm not, right?  Well, I did recently acquire (is that the way to say it?) shingles....

There is SO much not to laugh about right now.  So much hanging in the balance.  So much to not ignore.  So many people suffering at the hands of systemic power (not to mention our own).

It feels like there's just not much mental or emotional space left for a little light-heartedness.  We're worn out.

But, when we get to the point we are no longer able to laugh at anything, perhaps we should pause and reconsider a few things.

In these kinds of moments, we tend to become even more binary.  It gets harder to hold more than one thing at a time — it's either all bad or all good.  The reality is, though, that it's not.  It's really both.  It always has been both.  We have to continue to learn how to be honest and hold...both.  

Life can be terrible.  And, it can be wonderful.  And, if truth be told, often at nearly the same time.  This is hard for us to reconcile, especially in our minds.  And, that may provide the clue we need.  

What we know and what we experience are not always in the same medium.  But, both sources are kinds of intelligence and legitimate.  Perhaps, our highly rational habits (even though they're really not as rational as we think) are often misleading, especially in terms of all that truly informs the quality of our existence.  Too often, we are guilty of using one to cancel the other.  But, that is mostly due to our general discomfort with duality.  Something about one-or-the-other thinking is highly appealing, but it also truncates something in us.  We have to hold bad and good simultaneously.  

A joke, somehow, might be a part of doing that. 

So, maybe we should April Fool someone today...and let them April Fool us.   

We may need that more than we...think. 

How To Think

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

-- David Foster Wallace

Imperfections

Ever noticed…when we tend to use people’s imperfections against them?

A Psalm of Peace and Justice

The LORD is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
In grass meadows
He makes me lie down,
by quiet waters guides me.
My life He brings back.
He leads me on pathways of justice
for His name’s sake.

-- Psalm 23:1-3

Maybe this beloved psalm of consolation isn't only that — a meditation...here. 

We do tend to have a fairly singular (and small) perspective of justice; one primarily focused on punishment for wrongdoing...especially for others. 

God’s perspective on justice is much bigger.  

“No Kings Day”: Toward a Pro-Democracy Movement

Think about it...here and here.

I saw a sign that read, “Democracy Doesn’t Fear Protests, Dictators Do.”

As our fore-fathers knew, the right to peacefully assemble seems critical to self-governance (perhaps this is why it was the very first amendment to our Constitution).  We all know there are abuses going on and that those benefiting from them don’t want to be called out — are we saying calling them out shouldn’t be allowed?  What if you are the object of that abuse of power personally?

 

 

 constitutionus.com

3 Observations & A Question

We have never been (or ever will be) good enough — but, that has never been the point after all.

 

Things will happen to you — most of which, you can actually do quite little about, especially in the moment.

 

Anything that happens from here is all gift — acknowledging that makes one realize that’s always been true.

 

If you want to know what you’re really trusting in, ask yourself about your fears about the future?

 

Prior 3 Observations & A Question…

Macronutrients

Enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning are like the macro-nutrients of happiness.

-- Arthur C. Brooks

Head In The Sand

Don’t look only for confirmation of what you already think. On the other hand, recognize that you are not capable of being infinitely open.

So, what to do then?

Commit yourself to being alive. Be aware. 

Being alive is something that you will have to actively work at.  It, actually, isn’t easy.

It means that you know that you don’t live in isolation. That you have to do your part to cultivate good friendships. Neighbors are as good for you as you are for them — look out for and help each other. Love your family; not just in theory, but in specific ways.  

You don't always have to be nice, but be kind (including to yourself).  This enables the above more than we know (at the very least, the opposite is true).

Get outdoors.  Look around you, especially up.  What you see there is God.

Attend to your surroundings with care. 

Do physical work. Don’t eat too much crap. Get sleep.

And, stop doing things that you know deaden your aliveness.

Don’t forget that you also need to play, to laugh, and to feel the deep Yes of live music and art (these often say things for you that you don't know how to say otherwise).

By the way, just so you know, it isn’t nearly as important how well you do these things as it is that you do them.

The impact of all, especially in aggregate, will keep your head out of the sand.

Silence and Smile

Always remember:  Silence and smile are two very powerful tools.

-- Paulo Coelho

Instruments of Violence

We become instruments of violence precisely by trying to protect ourselves from it.

-- Jason Miller, When The World Breaks

Not What Presidents Do

I'm wondering...what we are doing as a society, when we elect (and continue to support) a President like this:

Heather Delaney Reese, The President Can’t Walk This One Back

Seriously? (This is our President.)

Speaking of character (because, in the end, I think that is, largely, what we are talking about here), if you haven't read about the kind of man Robert Mueller was, you need to (one option...here).  

It's a free country, so we all get to decide who we want to lead us to the future. 

He tends to be naive about how things can happen. If he says it and keeps saying it, there’s always a hope that what he says will come true. But that’s what kids do. It’s not what presidents do.

-- Leon Panetta

"Love Jesus"

We need to look at Jesus until we can look out at the world with his kind of eyes. The world no longer trusts Christians who “love Jesus”, but do not seem to love anything else.

-- Richard Rohr

 
Choosing Relationship, by Rachel Held Evans.

3 Observations & A Question

Sometimes we just don't want to see things.

Believe it or not, America, our highest good is not our productivity.

Our surroundings give us everything — we should treat them with respect and care.

What are we really trusting in?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question…

On The Lighter Side: Tighten The Screws

On the Lighter Side:

Wasn’t A Great Deal Of Serious Thought

 Heather Delaney Reese

Seriousness here is a pretense (at best):

...from the very beginning of this war, we got a sense that there wasn’t a great deal of serious thought put into it by the president of the United States about how it might end, what our objectives were, what needed to be done to protect Americans who are in the Middle East, what might happen to oil in the Strait of Hormuz.

-- E.J. Dionne, New York Times

"...has more plans for the ballroom he’s trying to build at the East Wing than anything he’s gonna do next in the Middle East"

A Top U.S. Counterterrorism Official Resigns, Citing the Iran War

Trump's 45 minute phone call exposed EVERYTHING

Trump Alone

 

GALLUP - Front Page

 
How much of all of this is simply about the pure, unadulterated aggregation of personal power...primarily for the purpose of accumulating unprecedented wealth (not to mention avoiding jail)?

Decisions

Decisions are best made by the people affected by them.

-- Gloria Steinem

Arguing With A Fool

Arguing with a fool doesn't change them; it changes you.

-- Shane Parrish

Choose To Let Go

I’ve noticed…that I have to choose to let go.

In other words, it doesn't happen automatically. 

Where Jesus Would Be

Love [people] even in [their] sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. 

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

History: The day in 1820 that Maine, the Pine Tree State, joined the Union.

Another history...this time of the state of Maine.

Who cares?  Well, maybe we should.  You know what they say about history.... 

3 Observations & A Question

Bravado doesn’t make something true — you can’t fake competence for long.

We tend to fear the unknown; what we don’t understand.

  

If we're not careful, we can end up caring more about the administration of the thing, than the thing itself.

Why is it that there is always enough money for what we want to do (unlimited funding of bombs, while begrudging the poor)?

  

Prior 3 Observations & A Question…

Values Problem

...a values problems.

The Means to Attain Happy Life

'Poem for the week' -- "The Means to Attain Happy Life":


Martial, the things that do attain
  The happy life be these, I find:—
The richesse left, not got with pain,
   The fruitful ground; the quiet mind;

The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;
   No charge of rule nor governance;
Without disease the healthful life;
   The household of continuance;

The mean diet, no delicate fare;
   True wisdom join’d with simpleness;
The night dischargèd of all care,
   Where wine the wit may not oppress;

The faithful wife, without debate;
   Such sleeps as may beguile the night:
Contented with thine own estate,
   Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.

-- Martial, translated from the Latin by Henry Howard

Morning Person

I am a morning person. What I mean by that is that much of my inspiration for being alive comes from what happens in the early morning.

As the sun slinks its way through the wooded trees, the call of the cardinal warming itself in the emerging light prompts me to notice both the cool on one of my cheeks and the warmth from the sun on the other. Its sprinkling light across the still shadowy ground speaks a language of peace to me.

The receding sorting and rinsing of sleep drops me off at the door of the waiting morning a little more poised. It asks me what I want to do in the new day with what it gave me. The welcoming sun sits patiently, wondering what I have come up with. As I lean back against the question, it gives me the chance to dispose of the chaff in my attention and consider, across the landscape of what is in front of me, what I want to respond to.

Not every day, of course, is like this. But I have noticed, over time, that the opportunity to embrace this beckoning is often there when I make the choice to awaken to it.

A honking goose overhead backgrounds notion to the things that are already being done, regardless of my participation. The ecology on display in early sunlight reminds me that all is well in the systems that ultimately matter. The trees are awake and doing their thing — existing, sharing, working, providing for all that lives among and below its branches.

I can’t help but feel a more proper kind of aliveness when I step out from the confines of my slumber and into the gentle easing-into of the coming day.

Surely it will bring its normal demands (on top of the ones that I tend to already have). But the morning pause to consider what I’m actually seeing, hearing, and feeling at the cellular level sets something right within me. It makes me want to linger, for just a moment longer, to absorb what is really happening, before I race off to my ever-present list of gotta–get–dones.

I need to know that I need this time. Because when I forget it, I quickly become lost in things of little substance, and lose my sense of aliveness from which I experience life. The slow dawning of my daily merging with it sets a pace consistent with most of the natural order of things and gives me a chance to align myself with it. 

The unheralded questions about the nature of my participation in the broader realities of existence can go a little less answered against the mysteries of the enjoyment of this simple start.

Whatever is sublime about the cohabitation of visceral morning realities and these mysteries strike me as the stuff of the divine. Many things have been organized around what that exactly is. And, it occurs to me that those exact requirements are among the things that deviate from it.

So, the genius of such simple things as a cool sunlit morning, with all of its accessories — like a red-flash of flying feather across my path — is that it is there every day. And, much of all I have to do, is to get up and open my door to it.

The sooner I get started each day, the better. 

Unite To Do Right

I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.

-- Frederick Douglass

When Leaders Lack Character

Picking up from last week....

Character informs values and values inform character.  In combination, they manifest behaviors resulting from decisions.  Not unlike other critical moments in history — and again now more than ever — we need leaders of strong character and the values that drive it to make critical decisions (especially those that transcend the simple interests of money).

When leaders lack it (as is too often the case — do we need yet another example?), we have to turn back to the people for the character (and values) that is needed.

Take Time

Ever noticed…that most good things take time?

Mystery of God

Sometimes, it is only in the midst of the “tempest,” in the heart of a storm of circumstances which we can’t control, that we come finally to realize something of the wonderful mystery of God.

-- Paul Murray

History: International Women's Day

 

The current moment and the history barreling behind it.

4 Observations (from Others)

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

-- Carl Jung

The more I think about it, the more I feel that there’s nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people.

-- Vincent van Gogh

The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Shalom is communal, holistic, and tangible. There is no private or partial shalom. The whole community must have shalom or no one has shalom…. Shalom is not for the many, while a few suffer; nor is it for the few while many suffer. It must be available for everyone. In this way, shalom is everyone’s concern…. Shalom produces change for the good of all…. 

-- Randy Woodley

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

How Things Work

History: Keeps Needing To Be Told

On a day of memorial for Rev. Jesse Jackson, a brief history that Keeps Needing To Be Told

Balance

Balance.  

That's what we need right now, right?

Unless our head is in the sand of all our TV shows, we are collectively struggling with how to balance our sense of being right now against the backdrop of what is happening around us.

The headlines are overwhelming us, because of their implications:

Exclusive: The Trump-Netanyahu call that changed the Middle East

A Dire Warning From the Tech World

Trump’s war exposed the truth

Alex Karp: The Insane Billionaire, Mass-Surveilling, Bullied Young Nerd Now Proudly Killing Humans to Get Revenge on the World

Not to mention Epstein, immigration, the coming elections...it just never stops.  And, it won't because too much money is being made off this machinery of chaos and fear (but we still love our capitalism, don't we?).

The question then is, is balance going to cut it for us?  

Balance is often a means to mitigate certain realities by trying to keep other realities in play (work, life balance, etc.).  When we have anxiety, we try to do things to off-set it (prayer, meditation, mindfulness, etc. — not saying things like this aren't good).  But, the concern here feels more significant than tweaking our dials by adding 10 minutes of...something that might help, doesn't it?

What if balance isn't what we most need right now?

If not, then, what?  What do we really need?

Most kind of know we need something closer to a complete reset.  And, that is half the problem anyway; we're trying to keep things going (as much as we can), without tipping over into something far worse.  

So, maybe it's the question that should be real our catalyst.  

Seriously.  If we don't know very much about what we really need, we're not going to be able to do much about it.

In theory, at least, a balanced approach should open us up to consider more than we usually do.  So, what should WE really be considering then?

How did we GET here? 
Who did we let INFLUENCE us?
How are we COMPLICIT (it's lazy to just blame whoever we think the bad guys are)? 
What do we want to DO about it?  

Just asking ‘balancing’ questions isn’t enough, though — doing the hard work of answering them is.

All to say, we need way more than just balance.

It Just Seems So

The blizzard doesn't last forever; it just seems so.

-- Ray Bradbury

All Lies

All lies come to an end. The truth lasts forever.

-- Simon Sinek

Character and Values

I'm wondering...about the role of character in our lives.  

Because how, as a society, will we survive without it?

For good or bad, people create and sustain values.  What character-traits, then, most influence the more significant decisions in front of us?  

Given the small-minded agenda (get DEI out of the military — is that really the biggest problem our military needs to address?) we have seen from him so far, I'm not thinking this guy knows (or represents) what we want, not to mention need, especially on this front:

...of course, he wants us to.  But, as with many of these folks, you really have to know why (in other words, what he really wants...surveillance).  Keep in mind that in our revenge and retribution economy, ANYONE who protests is now no longer referred to as an American with a different point of view, but a...domestic terrorist.  Terminology has shifted and is way more significant than we think it is because the fundamental landscape was changed when we elected it...again.

Oh, that's a bit dramatic isn't it?

Well, you tell me (these guys certainly look like they are working from a fairly common script):

Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.

-- Larry Ellison, from Citizens will be on their best behavior amid constant recording

False Narrative

One of the greatest deceptions of our time is the false narrative that tells us we should be more concerned about a poor person misusing the welfare system or an immigrant being here illegally than we are about the ultra wealthy abusing the system and cruel people have unchecked power over us all.

-- Benjamin Cremer

And, this, coming from a pastor (even though that shouldn't matter).

Here's another one, revived again today with Operation Epic Fury (also called by some, Operation Epstein Fury), from the George Orwell seminal novel, Nineteen Eight-Four:

War is Peace

Trump himself conflated the two....

Trump’s Real Reason for War

...worth considering, if nothing else, especially thru the lens of the observation above.

3 Observations & A Question

What really you care about is more evident than you think.

One of your greatest opportunities for joy, is to join someone in what they love.

At some point, we can only pay attention to so much — which is why making conscious choices (like this) about that is important.

Are there very many things you don’t have to work at, at least a little, to enjoy?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question…

Humanitarian Response -- "No Strong Nexus"

You have to know more than just what the FOX News echo-chamber is saying (I force myself to watch it, just so I know).  At the very least, just consider another perspective:

State of the Union was a national embarrassment

And, to add insult to injury (which is even the larger point):

The State Department will let lifesaving projects expire because there is no strong nexus between the humanitarian response and U.S. national interests.

-- Trump Administration

C'mon man — does this really sound (or look) right to you?

Our Humanity

We better get our collective humanity back before it’s too late.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to re-find it.  I'd say we're in one, despite the many claims to the contrary.

Here's one example of how it happens...What Neighbors Do, by Barbara Brown Taylor.  There, of course, are many others, like this one on Resistence, Wendell Berry Style.

But, the overall lack of it has been siphoned off for years under the banner of technology and 401Ks.  We've already lost more than we know.  But, we can start getting it back any time we want to — some are already trying...hard.

Now is the time to ask more conscious and serious questions about what it means to look out for each other, our relationship with power, and how to govern accordingly (as U2 reminds us, what we've been seeing isn't the humanity we need).

Before it's too late....

If You're Alive...

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished:  If you're alive, it isn't.

-- Richard Bach

Persistence

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.

-- Calvin Coolidge