"I Am Fortunate..."

Here’s another short passage from The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert spoken by the main character, Alma Whittaker:

I do truly believe I am fortunate.  I am fortunate because I have been able to spend my life in study of the world.  As such, I have never felt insignificant.  This life is a mystery, yes, and it is often a trial, but if one can find some facts within it, one should always do so—for knowledge is the most precious of all commodities.

From Pope Francis

“A religion without mystics is a philosophy.”

What We Need to Know about Poverty

Do you live in poverty?  Do you know anyone who does?  Does poverty exist in another world from the one you live in?

Last week I attended a workshop called “Building a Sustainable Community:  Why Poverty Matters.”  I attended because it was sponsored by the Bridges Out of Poverty organization (Bridges), and I have been intrigued by their work. I learned that “4 out of 5 adult Americans will experience economic uncertainty during their lifetimes.”  And I learned how different that experience can be, depending on a variety of factors.  Bridges has a “dynamic” definition of poverty: “The extent to which an individual does without resources.”

There was a period in my life where my financial resources were low, but my educational and family resources have always been high.  People in generation poverty are usually “under resourced” in many areas.

Some facts from the day...

I have just finished reading The Signature of All Things, a novel by Elizabeth Gilbert.  Here is one of my favorite sentences:

 A person cannot marvel in dumbstruck amazement forever…

The Long View, from the President

What Barack Obama said in an interview with David Remick:

I think we are born into this world and inherit all the grudges and rivalries and hatreds and sins of the past. But we also inherit the beauty and the joy and goodness of our forebears. And we’re on this planet a pretty short time, so that we cannot remake the world entirely during this little stretch that we have....But I think our decisions matter.  And I think America was very lucky that Abraham Lincoln was President when he was President. If he hadn’t been, the course of history would be very different. But I also think that, despite being the greatest President, in my mind, in our history, it took another hundred and fifty years before African-Americans had anything approaching formal equality, much less real equality. I think that doesn’t diminish Lincoln’s achievements, but it acknowledges that at the end of the day we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.

The Perfect Song

Usually, I post songs on Sunday, but I can’t wait.  This one is too perfect!

You Can't Be Cool"

"Never  try to look cool and learn something at the same time. You must have an awkward phase. All of us would like to skip that awkward phase. That is not how it works. Here is how it works: Get your ass in the water. Swim like me."  Na-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates (my favorite blogger) has been reading Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, Timothy Snyder's book about millions of murders in Europe between 1933 and 1945.  The details shared by Coates are horrific.  The book lists so many atrocities, Coates worries it might numb the reader.  Still he says,

...I think Snyder frames the questions correctly--How can men commit such acts? The question is not answered by empty invocations of "evil" or vague invocations of "sociopathy." The question is not answered by memorializing victims (though this has its place) or the construction of national oaths (though that too might have its place.) On the contrary the question might best be answered, not by identifying with history greatest victims, but by identifying with its killers. This is in fact, as Snyder argues, the moral position.

He then quotes Snyder:

It is easy to sanctify policies or identities by the deaths of the victims. It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander.

Coates concludes,

I think that allows for a skeptical morality. I think that allows those of us on the socio-economic bottom to give up our righteousness, to understand that there is nothing super-moral, or blessed, or prophesied in being down here. The bottom is just the bottom. Can we truly say we'd be much different were we on top?

Yes You Can

For Christmas my daughter gave me a mix CD with a variety of songs.  The first time I listened to it, I was driving to meet with my meditation group.  In that frame of mind, I concluded that most of the songs she had selected were Zen songs, and I found the Zen label made "You Can't always Get..." more moving than usual.  The video, from 2013, is of mediocre quality, but I like that it is done with the University Of Southern California Thornton Chamber Choir as the first recording, released in 1969, was done with the London Bach Choir providing some of the background.  

Change the law. Change the numbers.

The chart above was posted today on The Dish and it shows one of the worst flaws of current drug policy.  Most sources say that blacks and whites use marijuana at about the same rates.  Yet, look at the above incarceration rates.  Let’s not raise the arrest numbers for whites; let’s reduce arrests. Period.

Me, Me, Me

From Pema Chödrön:

There is a saying that is the underlying principle of tonglen and slogan practice:  Gain and victory to others, loss and defeat to myself.”  The Tibetan word for pride or arrogance, which is nya-gyal, is literally in English “me-victorious.”  Me first.  Ego.  That kind of “me-victorious” attitude is the cause of all suffering.

She goes on to explain that “loss and defeat" does not mean allowing ourselves to be beat up.  It means “you can open your heart” to feeling bad and “know what defeat feels like."  It’s the me-victorious attitude that intrigues me.  It reminds me of times when even in a conversation about nothing very important, I was striving for victory.

The View from My Front Porch

Around 8:15 AM, January 5, 2014

In this example "Cool Ad" is not an oxymoron

Readers of The Dish chose the ad above as the second coolest ad of 2013.  The coolest ad is also good, but the ad above relates to one of the themes of this blog, the need for better gun laws. It has been called the "best gun control commercial ever produced" and makes an interesting point about the Second Amendment.

Different Democratic Manifestations

As a United States citizen, I tend to think of our two-party system as typical of democracy, even though I hear, from time-to-time, of many political parties existing in other democracies.  Frances Moore Lappé explains:

[I]t’s worth noting that our two-party stranglehold is an anomaly.  In Germany, five major parties participate in parliament; in Sweden, it’s seven parties; and in the Netherlands, eleven.  In fact, in most of Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, and in a majority of the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe, a party can win a certain minimum of the national vote—in some countries as low as 4 or 5 percent—and still participate in the government.

I'm jealous.

(From Democracy's Edge)