Sonya Massey's Murder and America's Readiness for a Woman of Color as President

America (and, unfortunately, especially white America) MUST demand this kind of thing stops — “this is kind of sad, but what am I supposed to do?” is NOT good enough:

Sonya Massey called 911 because she was concerned she was in danger in her home.

When police arrived, she was in danger.

Massey was executed in her kitchen by officer Sean Grayson, a man who had been previously discharged from the Army for serious misconduct, had pled guilty to two DUIs, and been referred to take “high-stress decision” classes by a past police department.

Not only did Grayson and other responding officers woefully fail the 36-year old mother of two teenagers when she was at her most vulnerable, they killed her without any efforts to deescalate the charged situation that they themselves created, and they showed a complete disregard for her after her death.

And in a week where my social media feeds exploded with boundless enthusiasm over Kamala Harris’ announced presidential campaign, Sonya Massey’s name and face were far less prominent, especially among white people.

Most sharing their grief and anger at such a clear display of the sickening consequences of systemic racism were other Black women, reminding us that this nation has never been a place where people of color have felt truly safe in the presence of law enforcement—and for good reason.

The lack of visible and vocal white outrage at Sonya Massey’s murder has me asking the question:

Is America truly ready for a woman of color as president?

Are we expecting too much from a nation that still seems more invested in white supremacy than in Democracy, as evidenced by Donald Trump’s steadfast support among White Christian conservatives?

In an America where people of color do not feel protected by white law enforcement, can Kamala Harris galvanize enough white voters who are truly burdened to dismantle the racism embedded in our foundation, one we have been complicit in and benefitted from?

Honestly, I confess that I have my doubts even as there are encouraging signs that renovation is happening.

It’s been a beautiful surprise seeing the way the Vice President’s candidacy has been embraced by White people, with the #AnswerTheCall and #WhiteDudesForHarris movements among a number of high-profile efforts to mobilize voters. It was something we might not have seen a few years ago, and that in itself makes this moment feel different, giving us all cause for cautious hope.

I want to believe this nation has finally reached a collective moral clearing: that after nearly two hundred-and-fifty years, we are ready to reject misogyny and racism once-and-for-all and to elect a qualified, poised, intelligent woman of color to our highest office.

But that aspiration is tempered by the reality that Sonya Massey should be alive right now and by the realization that power and prejudice combined to violently end her life in her home.

The relative silence in the face of her murder, makes me question if enough white Americans are truly ready to face the ugliness of who we have been, who in many ways we still are, and to build something better together.

The only way that a more humane version of our country will be possible is if enough white people condemn and oppose the dehumanization that visited Sonya Massey and that still shows up millions of times a day in less visible or glaring moments.

We need to inventory our own hearts, directly engage those in our circles of influence, and confront the darkest parts of our nation.

Every time we see and hear and speak and share about Kamala Harris, we should remember and talk about Sonya Massey. We should grieve her death and feel fury over the way she left this place.

On the campaign trail, Kamala Harris has confidently declared that we are not going back as a nation.

With every fiber of my being I hope she’s right.

And if she is, Sonya Massey should have lived to see it.

-- John Pavlovitz, The Beautiful Mess

What Looks Like Skill

What looks like skill is often consistent discipline.

-- Shane Parrish

What Needs To Be Said?

I've noticed...there is only so much time—in any given day, in our life-times, etc.  

So, what can be said and what needs to be said is worth thinking about.  

For me, the question may be closer to, what do I want to say?

The Universal Need to Grieve

This may be one of the better things I have read about our relationship with pain and suffering (two often related, but different things), especially in terms of remedy for what really ails us...avoidance:

The human instinct is to block suffering and pain. This is especially true in the West where we have been influenced by the “rationalism” of the Enlightenment. As anyone who has experienced grief can attest, it isn’t rational. We really don’t know how to hurt! We simply don’t know what to do with our pain. 

The great wisdom traditions are trying to teach us that grief isn’t something from which to run. It’s a liminal space, a time of transformation. In fact, we can’t risk getting rid of our pain until we’ve learned what it has to teach us, and it—grief, suffering, loss, pain—always has something to teach us! Unfortunately, many of us have been taught that grief and sadness are something to repress, deny, or avoid. We would much rather be angry than sad. 

Perhaps the simplest and most inclusive definition of grief is “unfinished hurt.” It feels like a demon spinning around inside of us and it hurts too much, so we immediately look for someone else to blame. We have to learn to remain open to our grief, to wait in patient expectation for what it has to teach us. When we close in too tightly around our sadness or grief, when we try to fix it, control it, or understand it, we only deny ourselves its lessons. 

Saint Ephrem the Syrian (303–373) considered tears to be sacramental signs of divine mercy. He instructs: “Give God weeping, and increase the tears in your eyes: through your tears and [God’s] goodness the soul which has been dead will be restored.” What a different kind of human being than most of us! In the charismatic circles in which I participated during my early years of ministry, holy tears were a common experience. Saints Francis and Clare of Assisi reportedly wept all the time—for days on end! 

The “weeping mode” is a different way of being in the world. It’s different than the fixing, explaining, or controlling mode. We’re finally free to feel the tragedy of things, the sadness of things. Tears cleanse our eyes both physically and spiritually so we can begin to see more clearly. Sometimes we have to cry for a very long time because we’re not seeing truthfully or well at all. Tears only come when we realize we can’t fix and we can’t change reality. The situation is absurd, it’s unjust, it’s wrong, it’s impossible. She should not have died; he should not have died. How could this happen? Only when we are led to the edges of our own resources are we finally free to move to the weeping mode. 

The way we can tell our tears have cleansed us is that afterwards we don’t need to blame anybody, even ourselves. It’s an utter transformation and cleansing of the soul, and we know it came from God. It is what it is, and somehow God is in it.

-- Richard Rohr

3 Observations & A Question

Much of what you do, when you’re not needed, impacts what you can do when you are. 

Too often when we seek information, we are really just seeking affirmation — our genuine curiosity is lacking.

Respect is treating someone with respect, even when the way they are acting is not respect-worthy (especially towards you). 

What If…the other person won’t start listening until you do?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Visual: Sunrise Layers

Visual - “Sunrise Layers”

Granby,  CO

Wonders never cease (even when our awareness of them does).  

Healing Begins

Healing begins where the wound was made.

-- Alice Walker

Though likely still inclusive of it, the frame of healing referenced here is larger than physical healing.

Rest

Rest, at the end of the day, is an act of submission.

We often seem to resent that we can’t afford to take the time to rest.  And yet, when life provides us times for rest, we often chafe at not being able to be more...productive.

I recently had to submit to rest.  It come in the form of a hernia surgery.  Obviously, I wouldn't have chosen that as an opportunity for rest.  But, it is hard to deny that what comes our way is not often exactly in the form we would prefer.   And, for that reason alone, we can easily miss something significant as we scramble to get back on track as soon as possible.

Why is it that rest is, more often than not, something we must choose?  In other words, unless it chooses us, we feel like it is closer to a wasting of time to do it. 

Perhaps it is influenced by our preoccupation with self-determinism.  We don't want to be dictated to.  We want to be in control.  To choose when we do something and when we don't.  Not all of this is inherently bad.  But, some of it is; maybe even more of it than we think.  

Healing, like growth, is not a linear function.  Even though I wanted (want) to know how long it would be before I could fully return to the routines of my life, I really just had to be patient with a process that is mostly unfamiliar to me.  In one week you can do this  In two weeks, you can do that.  But, before four weeks, don't do....

So, I watched that calendar, trying to cooperate with it (mostly to avoid a set-back), but also mindful of whether I beating the averages of...getting back on track.  Not really as mindful of the opportunity this situation was affording me.  I live a lot of my life this way.  Missing important stuff.  Eager to be productive.  But, for what essential purpose?  ...to be in control of the things I think I want in life?  

Rest is, after all, not something you can really rush.  You have to cooperate with it; to submit to its own time-table.

Besides, one of the forfeits of not submitting to rest is not really the constancy of my productivity, as much as it is the recognition that such a view of life is actually denying something.  It is denying that rest is really a kind of recognition that dependency is a vital part of my existence.  That rest is an opportunity to remind myself of that.  That I am not in control of as much as I would like to be and that that is not only okay, but important to know.

Because knowing that significantly alters what I am relying on in my life — myself, or something bigger.

Submitting is not as bad a thing as we have come to believe.  After all, independence is often not nearly as much about freedom as it is control.  When I demand to be in control, I both can't afford or benefit from the gift that rest gives to us.

Compel You To Become

The real value in setting goals is not in their achievement. The acquisition of the things you want is strictly secondary. The major reason for setting goals is to compel you to become the person it takes to achieve them.

-- Jim Rohn

To Give Of Myself

I’m wondering…about calling.  

Throughout history, there's been more than a little opining (especially religious) on the topic of finding one’s calling.  But, at the end of the day, isn't it really about whatever I have grown to want to give of myself for the good of the world?

That's what I am called to do, isn't it?

Wisdom Begins in Wonder

Christians and Partisan Talking Points

When Christians are more conversant around partisan talking points than the Sermon on the Mount, we demonstrate that our Christianity is secondary and a servant to our politics.

-- Rich Villodas

Imagining and contending for what you hope for in this world is one of the hardest and kindest paths I’ve discovered out here. In the midst of all this, don’t forget to imagine something better. Don’t forget to dream of what could be possible. And don’t forget to live into those hopes with faithfulness. Move in that direction, especially when all you know is “not this.” 

If it helps, sometimes I’ve thought of this as the rhythm of turning away and then turning toward, almost like a beautiful dance…. We turn away from those things we’re against and toward the hopeful future we imagine. In a purposeful movement, we turn away from the practices or beliefs or habits that consume us, threaten us, reduce us, and distract us. And then we turn toward what brings flourishing, goodness, and truth to us. Turn away, yes, and turn toward…. What we turn toward should reorient us to the world in a posture of love, joy, and service. 

It can be a simple rhythm to begin with. Turning away from spaces in social media that have become toxic for you and turning toward inviting a lonely neighbor over for tea. Turning away from voices that bring shame and guilt to you or others and turning toward voices that preach freedom and wholeness and love. Or turning away from shrinking back and shutting up to keep the peace; turning toward owning your voice, your body, your experiences with boldness. Turning away from gossip and petty nitpicking; turning toward language of blessing….  

Begin with Against, and keep going until you find your For. It’s an act of defiant faith. It will give you something to lean into. It will give you a path to follow. 

-- Sarah Bessey

Nest

 

3 Observations & A Question

People rarely change their minds by thinking — but, their personal experiences often do.

A lack of humility is a lack of acknowledgment of the true vulnerabilities of our lives — which invariably seems to lead towards some form of oppression of others. 

Our individual and collective well-being is diminished when we spend more time speculating on, rather than serving, our community.

What do we need to just clear out of our lives, so that we can start growing again?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

This is the key to ending the negative-thinking pandemic

What you don’t know can hinder your potential and growth. Unfortunately, it creates a paradox, because you don’t know what you don’t know. The quickest way to learn new information is to tap into the ideas and insights of the people around you, but people often don’t ask enough questions, says Jeff Wetzler, author of Ask: Tap into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life. 

“The biggest reason is because we don’t realize the question that needs to be asked in the first place,” he says. “We size up situations so quickly and jump to conclusions. We feel that those conclusions are reality, and it doesn’t occur to us there is something we don’t know. If you feel certain about something, it’s logical that you wouldn’t ask questions.”

Another reason people hold back from asking a question is that they overestimate how the other person is going to feel about being asked, says Wetzler. “We think the other person is not going to want to be put on the spot, but research shows that people actually appreciate being asked questions to express who they are and what they’re going through.”  Continue here....

-- Stephanie Vozza

You Are What You Love

You are what you love, not what loves you.

-- Charlie Kaufman

3 (4 actually) Perspectives on Democracy

3 perspectives still startlingly impacting our collective work on democracy:

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill.

I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are born equal’. 

-- James Henry Hammond, South Carolina senator  1858

Arguments that some races are “inferior, rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and…transform this Government into a government of some other form. The idea that it is beneficial for some people to be dominated by others is the argument “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent."

-- Abraham Lincoln, Months after Hammond’s speech addressing German immigrants in Chicago

...[t]he relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy, “I dissent.”

-- Justice Sonia Sotomayor

OK, a fourth for good measure:

You’re Screwing Yourself Over Big Time

Something about the social pressures of adolescence and professional pressures of young adulthood squeezes the passion out of us. We’re taught that the only reason to do something is if we’re somehow rewarded for it. And the transactional nature of the world inevitably stifles us and makes us feel lost or stuck. 

Embrace embarrassment. Feeling foolish is part of the path to achieving something important, something meaningful. The more a major life decision scares you, chances are the more you need to be doing it. 

 ...if you avoid anything that could potentially embarrass you, then you will never end up doing something that feels important. 

Right now, there’s something you want to do, something you think about doing, something you fantasize about doing, yet you don’t do it. You have your reasons, no doubt. And you repeat these reasons to yourself ad infinitum. 

But what are those reasons? Because I can tell you right now that if those reasons are based on what others would think, then you’re screwing yourself over big time. 

-- Mark Manson

When You Stop Moving

Ever noticed...how many things quickly slow down, when you stop moving?

The Healing Path

In terms of healing, this perspective seems far more helpful (if not wise) than Jake Paul's:

It is in experiencing and accepting how difficult it can be to free ourselves from our hurtful attitudes and ways of treating ourselves and others that we begin to understand that the healing path is not a linear process in which we can force our way beyond our wounded and wounding ways. Rather, it is a path along which we learn to circle back again and again to cultivate within ourselves a more merciful understanding of ourselves as we learn to see, love, and respect the still-confused and wounded aspects of ourselves. Insofar as these wounded and wounding aspects of ourselves recognize that they are seen, loved, and respected in such a merciful way, they can feel safe enough to release the pain they carry into the more healed and whole aspects of ourselves.  

We are now attempting to bear witness to the sweet secret of experiential salvation in which the torn and ragged edges of our wounded and wayward hearts are experienced as... the opening through which the gentle light of God’s merciful love shines into our lives.

-- James Finley

Global Approval of U.S. Leadership

GALLUP - Front Page

Trump Shooting

He actually said this regarding the shooting at Donald Trump:

If it isn't apparent enough who God wants to win. When you try and kill God's angels and saviors of the world it just makes them bigger.

-- Jake Paul

Our ability to conflate things is nothing short of astounding sometimes. I guess this is what you do when over 25 million people follow you on social media....

Even worse is when that conflation is simultaneously institutionalized and commercialized by a political party:

The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.

-- J.D. Vance 

If this isn't a prime example of the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is.  And, if the last 50 years has led to this, I am actually embarrassed that I was ever a Republican.  They can invoke Lincoln all they want, but their practices, especially related to cultural warfare, pretty much shows they really don't believe very much at all of what he was about.

The rhetoric represented in these two examples is revolting.

3 Observations & A Question

You never know what just happened to the person you just walked by….

You have to be quiet long enough to hear all the noise going on inside you — especially in your head.

We often lead with incompleteness (from happenstance or intention) and perfect with revision.

So many things seem to require vigilance — why?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

The Pencil's Tale

Lifeline

‘Poem for the week’ — “Lifeline”:

I knew it right when it happened,

the moment that everything shifted,

that I was in the in-between,

liminal space between life and death,

where there are people to notice,

choices to make, a life to examine.

I walked the path of every childhood home,

remembered each person who held me,

grieved many lost relationships and identities,

and celebrated once again the small moments

when I found my way back to myself.

But it was there that the lifeline appeared,

small as a child, myself as a child,

standing there with a vase full of tulips,

all kinds of colors I’d never seen before,

asking me what I believe is next.

How could I know? I whispered,

but she just smiled, holding out the vase,

holding out the possibility of what could be,

asking me to believe something, anything,

about the entire journey away from myself and back.

I took the vase of tulips in every color,

and she quietly smiled, tugging a string beside her,

a line, to follow toward the New Way,

toward Home, onto Another Path,

any path that might be the one to guide me

back, once again, to the life I’ve been waiting for.

-- Kaitlin Curtice

Form of Action

Acceptance vs Expectations

My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.

~ Michael J. Fox

Here is another example of an observation that stands on its own merits. But, if you also know Fox's story, it takes on a whole different level of meaning.  The context of our observations as humans is often even more compelling than the content itself.

Transformation

One of the more startling things, as I age, is understanding more and more about the dimensions of transformation. 

If it were to be a holistic thing, transformation really could not be uni-dimensional anyway.  It is not hard to observe that decline, of one kind or another, is simply evidence of a much longer process — one that is actually creating or re-creating, or perhaps even better said, rebirthing…something new.  Even death, then, is just one of the steps in such on-going transformation. Or, perhaps to put it this way, death is simply transformation.

But, you can almost viscerally feel a culture reactionary thud to this notion, can't you?  So, why is it that we resist understanding death in this way?

Most of human existence, including its main historical religions, have ended up accepting some version of this reality.  But, a lot of Americana is organized away from this reality.  YOLO is just one version of that resistance.  Obey Your Thirst is another.  There are many more, actually.  And, the stacking effect of them all truncates something important about what it really means to live or, at the very least, to understand what it is that is really alive.

We do not, in fact, live this independently.  We are not only totally immersed in moment-by-moment inter-dependence, but also in a time-transcending inter-dependence.  But, unfortunately, it is quite true that we are not trained to see this, nor to accept it.   It is as if such an idea would be too limiting against the fantasy we maintain about our self-importance.

Our western-leaning inability to acknowledge this directly translates to our disposition of consumption as a measure of success, which thereby shapes our working definitions of what a good life even is.  A good life, to so many, is simply what we can get out of it — what we can consume in it.  Not to what we can give to it or to what we need to do to nurture it, for the sake of something much larger and longer in frame of reference.  We primarily live for the now.  The past is primitive or stupid.  The future is likely unknowable and foreboding.  So, all we have is now and let's, therefore, seize-the-day and consume it...or, so it is said.

Transformation, though, is a kind of longer-term participation in something that, accordingly, is often hard to track, particularly within the confines of things like time.  But, the limitations are really more on the instrumentation we tend to use than on the reality itself.  We all are in process of becoming something.  Some see it in the reverse; that we are all in the process of un-becoming something (which also seems descriptively accurate).  If the thing that we think we have become is actually in need of some degree of disposal, we find that we more largely are only discovering what we always have been (once that process really gets going).  All we've ended up doing, along the way, is disguising it for one reason or another.

The process involved, though, seems to require (if not assume)...continue here.

NATO - 75 Years

A helpful read on the history (and importance) of NATO:

Letters From An American, July 10

LT: Asks, Why?

One important step in leadership is to genuinely ask an important question:  why?  Why did that happen?  Why is this happening?

It inherently acknowledges that the leader does not know everything.  And, it communicates that the leader is not content with only what he or she does know — in other words, he or she wants to know (what they may not know).

Leaders know they can't effectively solve for what they don't fundamentally understand.

Most Obvious Question

I've noticed...that sometimes I tend to not ask the most obvious question.

Why would that be? Perhaps I'm doing something internally (often, in my case, anticipating) more than I am actually listening....

Wounding Another

No one heals himself by wounding another.

~ St. Ambrose of Milan

Simply because of the merits of how true the observation above is on its own, I really wish I could just leave it there and not have to give any more oxygen to this next part, but:

BEWARE:  Trump is Project 2025

Trump’s team has begun to try to make him look more moderate than he is. Trump claimed not to know anything about the extremist Project 2025, which calls for an authoritarian leader to impose Christian nationalism on the United States, despite the fact that his own appointees wrote it, his own political action committee advertised it as his plan, and his name appears in it 312 times. 

-- Heather Cox Richardson

Trump’s henchmen are riding on their premise of general public ignorance, lazy disregard, and a base weaponization-appeal of…wounding others who have a different perspective than we do (talk about lazy...).

Even though it still won’t work (despite the further wounding it will cause) because, sadly, Ambrose’s observation…will still be true.

4 Observations (from Others)

So much of our development seems rooted in acceptance (especially self-acceptance), which comes from a deep understanding about why we can do so — that we have already been accepted at a profound level:

In growing psychologically, one moves toward increasing autonomy and independence. In growing spiritually, one increasingly realizes how utterly dependent one is, on God and on the grace of God that comes through other people. 

-- Gerald May

Resilience isn’t really about returning back to the way you were before, but is much more about reclaiming whatever new shape your form has taken. A resilience that doesn’t really ask us to forget, but that carries the memory of whatever harm or whatever fire we’ve been through.  

-- Cole Arthur Riley

By walking into that pain, experiencing it fully, and moving through it, you metabolize it and put an end to it. In the process, you also grow, create more room in your nervous system for flow and coherence, and build your capacity for further growth. 

-- Resmaa Menakem

In the most mature stage of spiritual development, I’m “just me,” warts and all. We are now fully detached from our own self-image and living in God’s image of us — which includes and loves both the good and the bad. We experience true serenity and freedom. This is the peace the world cannot give (see John 14:27) and full resting in God.  

-- Richard Rohr

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

Federal Debt

AXIOS

This is the key to ending the negative-thinking pandemic

Frank Bruni shares five key insights from his new book, The Age of Grievance:

1. WE’RE FIXATED ON HOW WE’VE BEEN WRONGED.

2. WE DON’T VOTE FOR; WE VOTE AGAINST.

3. GRIEVANCE THRIVES BECAUSE OF A CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE IN THE FUTURE.

4. CHANGES IN TRADITIONAL MEDIA DON’T HELP.

5. WE HAVE REMEDIES FOR GRIEVANCE.

Continue here....

Freedom to ...

This 4th of July, consider some of the benefits our freedom allows us to enjoy.  May we not take for granted what our democracy has provided for us — and, even with its glaring imperfections, may its umbrella continue to include more and more.

Like the joy of peacefully sharing time with multi-generational family:

The beauty and pleasures of our national parks (Zion National Park, 2018):

The comradery of a community-based fireworks show (with no direct cost for admission):

We are able to enjoy such things, simply because we are fortunate enough to live here.  And because, in a larger frame, we collectively aspire to believe that goodness is something to share…with our fellow man (John Pavlovitz). 

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Let's not return to the inevitable barbarism of autocracy and kings and keep working at this experiment, expanding its benefits for all, and for true freedom — the kind that is willing to sacrifice for “liberty and justice for all”. 

Content or ...

Is content the most significant thing? Or, are the dynamics that surround content the more significant thing? 

Without content, some would say, you don’t really have anything of substance. Others might argue that it is what surrounds content that actually makes it significant. 

I still remember, as a kid, our family camping with a bunch of other families.  I remember what seemed like (but actually wasn’t) the massive tent we stayed in, the sounds of people talking and laughing, the smell of the campground, the sense of what I would identify as a kind of belonging to something even bigger than my own family.  While a few details still float around in my memory, it was the feeling that has stuck with me the most.  This has often been true of other experiences over the course of my life.

In reality, content and dynamic are commingled.  But, sometimes content really isn’t as significant as the dynamic…especially in terms of effect.  

Take generational dynamics. At some point, you start to see that the dynamics between generations are often quite similar, even though the content involved between (even just two or three) generations back is substantially different.

Another example might be that of differing cultures. Many of the reasons that I have affection for certain things may likely be because of what we did as a family when I was young, particularly in the context of the community we were involved in.  Which, actually, are many of the same reasons that other people who grew up in very different family structures, and dynamics and communities, have affection for their way of doing things. The dynamic involved in such things is a kind of socialization that touches on the number of needs we have as human beings, whatever the context is for that to occur. Certain times of the year, for example, when certain things are celebrated that are familiar to me, I can have feelings of deep enjoyment, appreciation, and gratitude for our way of doing things. And, once you are exposed to people in other cultures and their practices, you start to notice some of the same dynamics, even though what and how they do them can be quite different.

What does this mean? Or, what is the import of this observation? 

For one thing, if I want to be respected in my experience, then I should do the same with the experience of other people. After all, neither way of doing things is necessarily more right than the other (even though we often tend to think that it is); it’s just different.  And, the beauty of recognizing this is that it disarms our need to assume that our approach is automatically and necessarily better than someone else’s. This gives us more capacity to allow other peoples to go about their lives, in the ways that mean something to them, just as mine do for me.

After all, it is the content AND the dynamics that surround it that make anything meaningful. 

And, we can respect that, not to mention others.

Benefit The Most

Those who fiercely defend the status quo are those who benefit most from it.

-- Simon Sinek

I don't do a lot of repeats here, but this one seems as true as ever right now....

Capacity

I’m wondering...about capacity.

A number of things are happening in my life right now that have me thinking about this.  Yesterday's prayer reference to capacity caught my ear.  

Perhaps, things shouldn’t exclusively be defined in terms of strength — am I strong enough?  Am I as strong as someone else?  How do I get stronger?  Etc.  What if we thought of things instead in terms of capacity, without the burden of comparison that often seems to come along with things like strength?  

So, what would I want to do, in the way I live my life, that would simply make me more capable?  Not infinitely so or completely so, just a little more capable than I am right now.  We are all going through things.  What could I do today, or how could I think about what happens to me today, in the frame of how it could make me more capable?  

Eventually, this would lead to this question — capable of what?  How about simply caring for things that need care in the world around me?

Wisdom Begins in Wonder

JULYED