Toward a Pro-Democracy Movement

Think about it...here and here.

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

Sense of Bearings

I’ve noticed…I can quickly lose my sense of bearings when I'm not around other people.

40

40 years ago today, we started doing this marriage thing. To celebrate that, we recently took a little trip....

Some pics from it that tell part of the story of the life we enjoy together…here.

I love her more than ever.

3 Observations & A Question

Watching someone riding on a chairlift and being on one is not the same thing.

Even though a lot of what you can do is just a little, a lot of little is a lot.

Respect, in the end, really isn’t predicated only what you get out of it — it’s based on we all get out of it.

More people seem impatient with a long story (which might be among the best ones) — a function of declining attention span?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question…

On The Lighter Side: You Came From Dust

On the Lighter Side:

Voter ID Push

The goal of this administration’s voter ID push is to make sure the “right people” are voting to elect the “right leaders.”

-- Kristi Noem

Stay Close

Stay close to any sounds that make you glad you are alive.

-- Hafez

Goodness Leads Us To Repentence

It is God’s goodness that leads to repentance. I have plenty of repenting to do this year. More than usual, I’m sorry to say.  But this Lent is already reminding me that the goal is not ultimately about attacking my sins, but about reawakening my glad identity.  Repentance clears away the space for our true selves to breathe again.  This might be what it means to be born again….again and again.

-- Aaron Niequist

Focus On The Inputs

Focus on the inputs you control and the outputs will follow.

-- Shane Parrish

Someone Else

Ever noticed...that many of us want someone else to go first?

History: Presidents Day

 Some important history on Presidents Day.

Your Little Grain of Salt

Your one little grain of salt can help with something someone else’s grain can’t. And when all the grains get mixed and sprinkled together, preserving and flavoring and helping others flourish occurs everywhere. 

-- Margaret Feinberg

3 Observations & A Question

Embrace where you are, in sunshine or rain.

What you see is impacted by what you experience; what you do is impacted by what you see.

They say character doesn’t matter — that the ends justify the means….

Isn’t one of the secrets of life to enjoy whatever you have been given (as opposed to what you haven’t)?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question…

Visual: Nā Pali Coast

Visual - “Nā Pali Coast”

Nā Pali Coast,  Kauai

In The Other

The choice to love is the choice to connect — to find ourselves in the other.

 

-- Bell Hooks

The Phone Call

When you receive the phone call….

You know, the one that changes something significant about your life.

What do you notice happens inside yourself?  What kicks in?

I received one of those today (actually, it was a TXT). My first reaction was anger, followed by blame (I told you this would happen, if…).

Even though it may feel hard, the easy part is to react.  Reacting can be ugly, but it may also be necessary in order to get to what is driving the reaction.  Often that is deep senses of disappointment, hurt, or loss.

Sitting with your reaction is often quite challenging, but it can disarm the locus of your feeling and enable an awareness that your perspective may not the only legitimate one.  This can open us up to what otherwise feels like something that wants to shut down. And, an openness to ourselves allows for an openness to others.

We are, after all, not the only ones receiving ’bad’ news in life.  We can hold each other because of our unique, but also common, suffering.  And, when we do this, we discover we have more capacity to offer grace, than anything else, to both ourselves and others.

…but, this still takes commitment and more work than we often prefer.  I’m still trudging my way through it internally, because I know things will not be returning to the way they have been.

The phone call changed that.

If It Is Not Right

If is is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.

-- Marcus Aurelius

Success

What is success depends on how you define it.  Otherwise you are left with how others (society) define it for you, which is often quite inadequate (if not wrong).

Money

I'm wondering...about our relationship with money, as a society and as individuals.  

When does it liberate us? 

When does it keep us in bondage?

We can’t just be privately happy that the stock market is at record highs and ignore the predatorial oppression it has created through the unprecedented wealth of a select few.

Sundays

-- Joseph Vogel, Timpanogos Hiking Co.

4 Observations (from Others)

Whenever you have a choice between being right or being kind, be kind.  No exceptions.

-- Kevin Kelly

 

We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

-- Joseph Campbell 

 

 

Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up. 

-- Brené Brown

 

 

There is no greater exhaustion than a charade of spirituality.

-- Cole Arthur Riley

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

In These Dark Days

'Poem for the week' -- "In These Dark Days":

From what darkness in its center

does the amaryllis call forth

the tall green stalk, the muscular bud,

the voluptuous petals pealing back

from the center like radiant red bells?

What impossible sun shines

inside the rough-skinned bulb

to generate such lushness,

such extravagant beauty?

I want to know it, to trust it,

this bright immensity that pulses through

what is darkest in me, this life force

that cannot fit inside, that thrusts

through the desiccated skins

of my exhausted hopes to reveal itself

vulnerable and soft, vital, astonishing,

belonging to no one, alive within us all.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Crisis

What is on my mind today?

Well, what isn't? 

In many directions right now, I feel a foreboding sense of existential crisis. 

And, when I stare at it (rather than just feel it), I remember things that I know.

In our humanity, feelings and knowing go together, in spite of when they feel like they don't. They inform each other.

And, so, I know that such feelings are what they want you to feel.  Wait, who is they?

The system; the world.  The powers of it.  They don't want you to feel peace.  That keeps you dependent on them.  I know this.

But, I still feel it....

Breathing helps.  But, it doesn't suppress it fully.

Crisis has a way of putting you face to face with other questions — like what you ultimately are depending on.  Crisis reminds you that you are not enough on your own.  Crisis puts you in touch with a larger reality, that is needed for survival (if not well-being).

How does having to trust in something bigger than myself put me in touch with something I tend to otherwise dismiss? 

Does that change the crisis (probably not much)?  Does that change something else and how I relate to it?

Yes. 

For one thing, it opens me up to thing like...this.

Participation In A Society

Participation in a society is not an artistic choice, it's a human need.

-- Ai Weiwei

Need To Be Flexible

To get on a path to success, we need a plan. To achieve success, we need to be flexible when the path is blocked.

-- Simon Sinek

Suspicious

Every third Monday, I ask myself, what have I noticed lately...about myself. 

This week, for example, I’ve noticed…that I've become more suspicious lately.

Over time, I've recognized that when this happens, something has shifted within me. 

Something feels (more) at risk. I've been having dreams about it.

This should be OK; after all, there's always risk. So, its really about the relationship I have with that risk that seems to shifts sometimes. I've observed, more than once, this is related to how secure I feel internally as a person, at any given moment. And, my sense of security is often based on what I feel threatened by...and why. 

In the end, it is often my awareness of the basis, of my true sense of security, that moves. 

This is the kind of thing that a lot of mental health strategies are actually working with. Our sense of security is also a fundamental base-line of basic spirituality. 

Do I really need to be suspicious, when I notice that I am? Probably not. Perhaps, noticing my suspicions can be an indicator that something has shifted within me...and that I need to pay attention to it and do something about it. 

Almost Everyone Prays

Almost everyone prays...when they feel desperate enough. 

Perhaps the question then is, when (and why) do we stop praying?

"Why do it, if it doesn’t do any good?" — one of our not uncommon thoughts.

An assumption is embedded in this not uncommon working conclusion. Do we think this because when we pray we are, in essence, trying to change God's mind? Truth be told, we often pray because of the leverage we feel in need of. If we feel a lack of power to secure what we need (or want), especially when we feel desperate. So, we appeal to a higher one (until we don’t need it anymore). It would follow then that if it feels like we can’t get God to do it, then why bother?

What if, however, prayer is not really as much about getting something from God as it is a way to get ourselves in the right state of being (in relation to everything…God). And, what if we need to pray because we acknowledge we need God’s help to do that? 

What if, then, prayer is really as much about changing something in ourselves, as it is about changing God's disposition?

3 Observations & A Question

Outrage is not a public policy, by the way.

In a democracy, paying attention is a duty.

...so is not being silent for your fellow-man.

When's the last time you actually had to fight for something good?

 

Prior 3 Observations & A Question…

Share of U.S. consumer spending, by income

AXIOS

AXIOS

New York Times

Something To Hold On To

Aren’t we all pretty desperate to find something to hold on to?

So much so, in fact, we often hold on to the wrong things.  At least in the sense that we think they will give us something they cannot give us.

The most obvious example may be the past.  It is easy to think that something in the past will give us something we need, if we just hold on to it long enough.

Or, sometimes we think a certain behavior will do the trick (it worked before, so...).  Often, it is certain belief or system of belief that will do it.

But, whatever it is, in most cases, it doesn’t…primarily because it can’t.

This is true because most of what we actually need is something dynamic in the present. If we follow the metaphor of ‘holding on’, perhaps one that would serve us more would be ‘reaching for’.  What will we extend our ourselves to reach for in our time of need? Whatever it is, it is more something that we need to continue to discover than something that we need to try again. In other words, our need is time sensitive, and it is something that we need now, not necessarily something that we needed in the past.

This is often somewhere between unsettling and frightening to us, largely because we don’t know exactly where that leaves us.  And because of that uncertainty, we are tentative. Discovering (or rediscovering) what we need is an on-going process much more than it is the thing we had at one particular point. 

The past is often an infatuation with outcomes, even if those have been largely imagined. Outcomes don’t play as well with the future because the future is unknown. So, it’s really what we do in the present moment that makes the difference.

What is it that I need to reach for, out my actual need, right now? That is an open posture, one capable of receiving something slightly (or completely) unknown. Holding on to the past is a closed posture towards our receptivity to the future.

But, we want something...so bad.

And, we actually have it, if we are willing to stop holding on to something else.