I am continually challenged to stop arguing with reality and instead soften into what is. Over time, I learned to find beauty, meaning, and wholeness in the heart of reality. Unpredictable, ever-changing, humiliating, and humbling reality.
-- Mirabai Starr
I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States.
-- Donald Trump, this week
In honor of the many freedoms I enjoy, I would like to fly the American flag, like I used to.
However (assuming anyone even noticed), I’m afraid that would be completely misunderstood.. As much as I would like it to be about patriotism, the community I live in would tend to read it, especially right now, as nationalism.
There is a distinction between patriotism and nationalism.
Question yourself, yes, but don't doubt yourself. There's a difference.
Sometimes the stories are as important as the truth they represent.
You have to take ownership of your own health — it’s not somebody else’s job.
Whatever happened to the question, "Can you tell me more about that?"?
'Poem for the week' -- "Sufficient":
Citron, pomegranate,
Apricot, and peach,
Flutter of apple-blows
Whiter than the snow,
Filling the silence
With their leafy speech,
Budding and blooming
Down row after row.
Breaths of blown spices,
Which the meadows yield,
Blossoms broad-petaled,
Starry buds and small;
Gold of the hill-sides,
Purple of the field,
Waft to my nostrils
Their fragrance, one and all.
Birds in the tree-tops,
Birds that fill the air,
Trilling, piping, singing,
In their merry moods, —
Gold wing and brown wing,
Flitting here and here,
To the coo and chirrup
Of their downy broods.
What grace has summer
Better that can suit?
What gift can autumn
Bring us more to please?
Red of blown roses,
Mellow tints of fruit,
Never can be fairer,
Sweeter than are these
-- Ina Donna Coolbrith
How chaotic does the world seem to you right now?
How about in your own life — how chaotic does it feel?
Where does this lead you? Do you feel like you just want to isolate yourself from it all?
I know people who try to literally move away from what they feel is chaotic — to insulate themselves from the outside world. . It feels like an almost natural response (after all, why would you want to stay in chaos?). But, moving away from it doesn’t really deal with it, it is mostly just an attempt to avoid it, often with only short-term effect.
When I am disrupted by something, I feel like moving away from it. Others respond in the opposite way, they confront it. Disruption is not always a bad thing. But, chaos usually is, especially when it is persistent.
Chaos makes you feel like something is out of control. It makes you feel like you have to do something about it — that you can't handle it, if you don't.
Chaos disables connection.
Chaos enables isolation.
Isolation enables the impacts of chaos. It is an attempt to control it, when in fact it actually contributes to perpetuating it.
Even in its most legitimate form, isolation is simply a method to reposition how one enters the chaos. And, sometimes that is needed. But, isolation is mostly ineffective and, in the long run, an illusion.
Working on something collectively (together) is often the greatest antidote to chaos.
Going it alone, whether at a personal or national level, betrays a fundamental flaw in one’s understanding of what it means to be in a healthy relationship with the dialectic of order and chaos. Isolation only tips the scale further away from a more constructive and healthy engagement with chaos in life.
We should be both aware of and vigilant against, then, those who use chaos to divide and isolate us. Ironically, chaos when use this way is even more about power at times than order is (which can also at times feel just as heavy handed).
Disruption is one thing. Monetized chaos is another.
Given what and how these things work, we need to come together.
Few things are quite like ‘live’ experience.
Stories crack us open — your story gives me access to mine.
There are 100s of things (1000s?) that pull us in different directions — the key is to find what best centers us.
Is it just me or are we all just refining our working conclusions and summary judgments?
Prior 3 Observations & A Question….
On Tuesday, August 5, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its comprehensive report on crime in the United States for 2024. As crime data expert Jeff Asher noted, not only did the report reveal that overall crime was down substantially in 2024, but crime "fell in 2024 across every category and population group." Specifically, it "was down in all seven categories of crime across all 10 population groups that the FBI measures."
Moreover, the new FBI data shows that both violent crime and property crime are at their lowest level since the 1960s. Continue here....
-- Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby
There is always opportunity to do new things.
I heard someone reflect once that they’re always learning new things. Other people have described some of these people as always needing to learn new things.
For me, the opportunity to do new things and the need to do so are not exactly the same thing. The latter often seems to come from a kind of drivenness. The former, comes from something more like curiosity.
Few things move me towards a sullen resignation or depression more than drivenness. Drivenness (again for me) leads to resentment. I don’t feel free under the clasp of drivenness. Opportunity, on the other hand, feels more free because it is like a beckoning. It’s like something is calling and offering an invitation. I have the freedom to decline or accept the invitation. Something about the posture of invitation allows for self-regulation and choice.
Needing opportunity stymies something in me. An invitation feels more like “Come if you want to, but you don’t have to.” I find this context for opportunity to make a lot of difference for me. I don’t have to do something. I get to do something…again, if I want to.
This can put me in a slightly different kind of bind, because it forces me to acknowledge (and address) what I want. Obligation is dismissive of what I want. It doesn’t care. Perhaps, this is why I am drawn to opportunity in one context and not in the other.
All of this can happen on the smallest and simplest of levels.
If I have to mow the grass, I invariably head towards the notion of “damn it, here’s just one more thing I have to do”. It leads me to feeling like a victim. But, if I say, I get to mow the grass, I get dropped off at the door of something closer to “so, how do I want to do it? Do I want make straight lines today? Do I want to use angles? Or, do I want to put a funky curve in the pattern? If I get to mow the grass, I get to ask how do I want to mow it? If I have to mow the grass, I fall towards a sullenness because of all the things that something is making me do.
At a more sublime level, when facing something that feels new or hard (or both), framing the question as something that I get to do provides me with more agency to ask how do I want to do that thing. Again, freedom.
In a relational context, obligation leads me towards thinking that this is just one more thing that I have to get right or figure out so that you won’t be upset with me. In the other frame, I am free to explore why you, as another person, feel the way you do. You may say that your problem is with me. And, that may be true. Or, it may not be (me) and that would be something you need to discover. I get to listen to you enables the opportunity to find out which it is. Doing it from the point of view of obligation makes me not want to find out (even if it turns out that I’m not the problem).
Many times this distinction seems to pivot on my interest in and perception of the potential outcome. More often than we would like to admit, we seem to let the potential outcome dictate to our interest in proceeding. This is pretty normal, actually. But, it can also be insidious. It can change our view of the smallest of things, not to mention the largest of things. It’s not bad to consider potential outcomes. But, managing for them often is, especially in the context of opportunities. On the one hand, this is one more thing I have to do. On the other hand, this is one more thing I get to do. One has freedom and agency aimed in an open-ended direction. The other does not; it shuts down those things.
Often, in writing, it is easier (than in other modes of communication) to go back to the beginning and confirm whether or not where you started is supported by where you headed. So, in this case, I return to my opening line.
There is always opportunity to do new things.
It seems strikingly non-committal, especially in light of where it ended up. That may not be a bad thing. I wasn’t sure, initially, how much I liked the thought. Having parsed it a bit, I feel some affection for where such an unfreighted statement could lead.
I think now I have a little more to work with as I face the opportunities in my life.
I've noticed...that experiencing nature is not simply a luxury or leisure — it is a necessity.
We tend to think about what we see around us — the converse is also true.
We already know the first couple of things we need to do — to move towards where we want (or need) to be.
The more we do something, the better we tend to get at it.
Everything is subordinate to the sovereignty of something else — we do know that, right?
Prior 3 Observations & A Question….
Change can be viewed less on a spectrum of acceptance (or rejection) than on a spectrum of growth (non-growth).
So many of us right now are concerned about change — both the content of it and rate of it. To many, it feels unfamiliar, out of control, and difficult to determine what to use to keep their bearings. There is something instinctual that makes us want to reign it in, slow it down, find a basis to evaluate what parts of it are ok and what parts aren't. The waterfall of the information involved is overwhelming — it feels like we're drowning...in something.
When this kind of thing happens, people will often try to get back to something — to the basics they might say. One way we often do this is to try to break things down into simple parts. Often, into binaries. This or that. One or the other. Keep it or toss it. People try to figure out what things to work with and what things not to.
Often this takes on personal dimensions pretty quickly. And, for some reason, it seems easy to make things about acceptance (or rejection). In other words, if I make choices, I am making them on the basis of whether they are good or bad. I need a frame to sort with and often I end up using labels (like good or bad) to reinforce why I am making choices the way I do.
This, of course, is mostly a method to simplify the process. But, it also is about defending it (either to ourselves or to someone else).
Invariably, though, it also becomes about whether or not I perceive that you accept me for my choices. Somewhat amazingly, we get all the way from uncertainty about the nature of change to whether or not you accept (or reject) me. At the very least, this dynamic is not very helpful in general, but in particular with our relationship with change. Change happens regardless. Our sense of acceptance from other people is almost entirely another matter.
What if, then, we could move this frame of thinking to a different one. What if, rather than a matter of acceptance, change is really more about growth?
It kind of is anyway, isn't it? Will I adapt and grow with an evolving reality? If there is one thing that humans do, it is that — they adapt. Any even cursory review of history will reveal that not only does this happen, it has to happen. The conditions of our surroundings (manmade or otherwise) have always influenced what humans do, where they live, how they think about their relationship with it. This, by the way, is not isolated to human beings. All living things, in fact, do this over time.
If I am willing to grow (change), I can often not only survive, but also thrive. I can be enriched by the growth that comes from change and become more capable of working with it and contributing to my life and the life of others. If I am not willing to grow, though, I become stuck and, to some degree, incapable of making much contribution to reality.
It is easy (for most) to see the importance of growth in young people — they need to grow and develop in order to become fully functioning and healthy adults. We accept that. What we don't often see as easily is the need to continue to do so; just because we have reached a certain size or age doesn't mean that our growth should stop. When this happens, we call it wisdom. The dimensionality of our growth continues to expand in all directions and we become increasingly capable of guiding others into the same process.
So, what if change could be more intentionally viewed through a lens of growth?
The body has such intense, innate wisdom and intuition, but we need to slow down to be able to hear it.
-- Casey Means, MD
Ever noticed…we all have (and maintain) a degree of distortion in our perception of things?
Talk to yourself as you would someone you love.
-- Brené Brown
I hope you heal from the things that no one ever apologized for.
-- Jet Carado
Let courage be your teacher.
-- Morgan Harper Nichols
Real wisdom does not merely cause us to know: it makes us “be” in a different way.
-- Pierre Hadot
For all my particular complexities, I’m a rather simple guy — I try to keep bad things from happening (especially things that are close to home, around me, or involving those I love). This is probably not too far off of what a normal human being would do.
But, more often than I like, I can’t do it — I can’t prevent bad things from happening. I’m just not that powerful (in fact, against the broader backdrop of our collective existence, what I often feel is more like powerlessness). Sometimes I forget that. And, when I do, I get pretty tangled up…quickly.
That’s what I am today — tangled up.
This meditation touches on some of the cords involved and the dynamic related to the mess of it:
Father Richard Rohr explores how getting in touch with our grief allows us to transform our anger:
I’m wondering…about the notion, some of us have inherited, that our soul is dark; that light is something external.
Christ has prophesied what will happen at the last judgment: we shall be judged according to the way we have treated him in the persons of the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden.
-- Dom Hélder Câmara
Prior 3 Observations & A Question….
Many times disorientation is the result of a perceived separation.
We become disoriented when we feel disconnected from something that otherwise centers us. This happens in, at least, a couple of ways.
One is when we do things that cause us to lose track of what our center is or what centers us. This could be a result of drift (we just stop paying attention to the things that orient us well to reality). Or, this can happen when we take up things that become habits which move us away from connection to what serves us well. In other words, this can be either conscious or unconscious things.
Another way this happens is when what we thought was the basis of our centeredness changes. This happens when something about that thing is revealed in a way that makes us question the validity of that basis. Perhaps, rather than it being rooted in our sense of something being right, it turns out to actually be wrong. Or, something about it no longer squares in a consistent enough way with what we had thought it did.
At these moments we're forced to recalibrate. And sometimes that calibration involves complete separation from it in the first place, often leaving us feeling disoriented in the mean time.
I have a friend who is going through the deep-throes of disorientation right now. It is not only difficult to go through, it is difficult to watch.
A meditation on the concept...here.
But, there is also an observable pattern in such things; it often takes disorientation to enable reorientation to what is actually true or, at the very least, to a deeper understanding of it.
Some call this process transformation.
I've noticed...that our bodies are designed to communicate with us. I'm learning how to better listen to what it is telling me.
We must pay attention to what needs our attention, especially within ourselves.
Prior 3 Observations & A Question….
Ever noticed…how much we want closeness AND pleasure?
We want both. Sometimes we feel like we have neither. And, when that happens, we may think we will be happy with just one. But, we really still want both.
There is a degree to which pleasure is not ultimately satisfying without closeness.
And, similarly, relationship without enjoyment feels lacking.
Over the course of our existence, we do likely experience all three (each and combined) at one point or another — though, perhaps, much less than we would prefer — but, more often only one of them, as life seems to anticipate the likelihood of longer stretches of one without the other.
The trick is to learn how to honor the gift of either (or both) from life, rather than demand them from it. As with many things, our lack of demand is what opens us more to experiencing the possibility.
Picking up a bit on yesterday's observation: You have to be human first...repeat, human first.
Not male, not white, not American...not even Christian.
Human.
From there, you can be the other things, too. But, if you don't start there, the other things seem to get skewed pretty quickly.
And, if you're worried about that identity prioritization, humans are made in the image of God. Humans can (and should) reflect that image in how they relate to each other (to everything really).
This understanding informs our sensibility of what it actually means to be human…and what it looks like when we don’t.
You have to be human first...repeat, human first.
If happiness is something you feel for yourself, joy is something you know with others.
Most people leave where they don’t feel safe, either simply because they can or because they’re desperate enough — wouldn’t you?
