Committee Members and Tomatoes

Recently I did some committee work with a woman who seemed to have a negative comment and prediction about everything.  It didn’t take long before her comments began to irritate me.  In a small way, they became painful.  Then I felt bad about my thoughts, and that “You’re too judgmental recording,” started playing.  I managed to stop myself from doing a little internal rant about her personality deficiencies. 

Later I thought about tomatoes.  I really don’t like the taste of raw tomatoes.  It’s not a judgment; to me, they’re just icky!  The tomatoes themselves are innocent, and I love the role they play in pasta, pizza, and chili, but the taste and texture of raw tomatoes make me gag.

Children Should Play

When I was a child in the 1950s, my friends and I had two educations. We had school (which was not the big deal it is today), and we also had what I call a hunter-gather education. We played in mixed-age neighbourhood groups almost every day after school, often until dark. We played all weekend and all summer long. We had time to explore in all sorts of ways, and also time to become bored and figure out how to overcome boredom, time to get into trouble and find our way out of it, time to daydream, time to immerse ourselves in hobbies, and time to read comics and whatever else we wanted to read rather than the books assigned to us. What I learnt in my hunter-gatherer education has been far more valuable to my adult life than what I learnt in school, and I think others in my age group would say the same if they took time to think about it. 

My Values Are Better than Your Values!, cont.

A man I was once close to said to me, “I know I’m right; I’ve thought about his.”  I didn’t have it in me to laugh, but this statement had a humorous side.  He implied that only he thought about things when of course, I had thought about it too and arrived at a different conclusion.

My Values Are Better than Your Values!

Yesterday I wrote about my frustration with the Republican Party and the government shutdown.  Today I return to a question I have asked before:  Can we be peaceful and loving people and still care about the politics of our country?  Ann Lamott writes this today: 

[My family] felt, and taught, that our family was better than other families, because we had gorgeous classical and jazz on the hi-fi, and worshipped at church of Julia Child, and the New Yorker Holiness Temple. I knew how to unpack a New Yorker cartoon by the age of six. We knew enough to hike, and support the Sierra Club. My Uncle Rex famously rolled down his car window and shouter "Litterer!" at people in the early sixties who tossed stuff out the windows as they drove. Being a Litterer was right up there with being KKK, or the pre-curser of the modern Tea Party, the John Birch Society…

We were better than all of them, because of our values, which were obviously the correct values to hold. Otherwise, we would have had other values. 

I can relate to this, and I know it is flawed.  I’m not sure how to handle politics, but the above is a good reminder that most everyone thinks they have the correct values.  Otherwise, we would have other values.

Music and Dance

Here’s another borrowed idea from Andrew Sullivan’s site.  The acrobatics in this video are amazing.  The rap, ok.

All Parties Are Not to Blame

Can I burn down your house?

No

Just the 2nd floor?

 No Garage?

No

Let's talk about what I can burn down.

No

YOU AREN'T COMPROMISING!

I think the source of this little dialogue is Judd Legume of Mother Jones Magazine.

Here Jim Fallows gives two reasons why this problem is so limited in it’s causes: 

The Price of a Shutdown

From Brad Plummer:

In a research note Tuesday, J.P. Morgan analysts estimated that federal furloughs will reduce national income by a total of $1.3 billion per week. As a result, the shutdown could shave 0.12 percent off fourth quarter GDP growth for each week it goes on. That forecast doesn’t account for any knock-on effects on the private sector or dent in economic confidence which are harder to quantify.

I wish I had something original to say about this shutdown, but I don’t.  I sent the passage above to my House representative this morning.

Stop Complaining

Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself.  Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in….Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labeling of people adds even more energy to the ego…. Complaining is not to be confused with informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so that it can be put right.  (Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth) 

This passage seems appropriate for a day when the government has been shut down, but separating the two—feeding the ego and putting things right—is no easy job.

Rocky Goes Out for a Morning Run

I don’t want to think about how long ago it was that I watched this scene from Rocky 2--almost another life.  Last week, Andrew Sullivan posted this clip on his blog.  My first response was amusement.  Would such a corny scene work in 2013?  My second response was a sort of automatic emotional feeling.  I found myself being moved by the combination of music and effort.  My emotions seem to have an inconsistent mind of their own.  

Can we have peace in our hearts and still care about politics and what it stands for?

Kindness Matters

Two weeks ago I was returning home after twelve days in Scotland.  My first stop in the U.S. was Philadelphia.  So tiring and tedious, one curling line after another.  The good part was, all of the people who directed me through these lines, examined my passport, and patted me down, all were friendly and polite.  My favorite was the guy who looked at my passport, looked up at me, smiled,  and said, “Somebody’s having a birthday soon; Happy Birthday!”  I’ve thought of these people more than once, especially the Happy-Birthday-guy.  Human kindness does make a difference.  Today’s my birthday.  Wish I could thank that nice guy in Philadelphia.

Belief Is the Enemy of Faith

From the magazine UUWorld: 

The good news is that people, at least in the developed world, are rejecting cultural and religious exceptionalism. By religious exceptionalism I mean the conviction that my religion possesses the truth and, by extension, yours is false. When I grew up I was taught that religion was about what we believed. What made my denomination different (and correct, of course) was our sound doctrine. We were right. This made religion too much about being right, about us and them. Too much attention then goes into defending our beliefs.

I am now convinced that “belief,” in the way we usually use the word, is actually the enemy of faith, religion, and spirituality…. When we dwell on beliefs we ask all the wrong questions. My faith is much more about what I love than about what I think.

Vote for "Obamacare"

“… the right has dominated the Obamacare public debate through blunt rhetorical force,” says Jonathan Chait.  While mainstream health analysis publications are cautiously optimistic about the benefits of the bill, realizing they cannot predict the future, a large group of conservatives express no doubt as to their predictions.  Chait worries that these doomsday predictions of the right may contribute to its failure. He says, "The predictions of a train wreck are intended to precipitate one."

 To me, this extreme effort to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act seems like a repudiation of democracy.  I have written my house representative and requested she drop this obsession and move on to more creative governing endeavors.  I don’t have high expectations for this, but I believe in voting, even when I think my candidate or issue will lose. 

 It’s easy to contact your representative. Google their names and go to their gov website. Usually they have a “contact me” option. Write a few sentences and click send.  That’s it—interesting how long I can procrastinate dong such an easy little thing.

Not Prepared

Ian Leslie writes about our understanding of privacy for the online magazine aeon.  He describes one study conducted by George Loewenstein where college students were asked to make choices about their privacy online.  Leslie says, 

The students were using their instincts about privacy, and their instincts proved to be deeply wayward. ‘Thinking about online privacy doesn’t come naturally to us,’ Loewenstein told me when I spoke to him on the phone. "Nothing in our evolution or culture has equipped us to deal with it."

Adam Gopnik continues to speak eloquently about the problems of guns in the U.S. He points out that in this latest mass shooting the people in the building were not schoolteachers but trained members of the military, many of them armed. The main point of his piece however, is despair.  He believes we will eventually come around to policies that will reduce this violence.  Read his entire piece.  

Hello

It was my first morning in Edinburgh.  I was standing on the balcony outside our rooms when I saw an official looking building flying three flags: the UK flag, the Scotland flag, and…and…a white flag with black letters spelling “Hello.”

It got my attention, but I had no idea how such a strange grouping of flags came about.  During our stay in Edinburgh, I continued to see the Hello-flag flying atop buildings.  It was an enjoyable curiosity.

Today, back in the U.S., I Googled it and discovered it was to welcome visitors to the annual arts festival.  The flag was the idea of Peter Liversidge who specializes in performance art. There was something cute as well as goofy about that flag. It was an incongruous and sweet welcome to my first full day in Scotland and a light-hearted memory to store with the incredible dramatic scenery of the Scottish countryside.

Not Again!

It has happened again—another mass shooting in the United States. There are many other shootings as well, single deaths that don’t make national headlines.  Just a few days ago, the South Bend Tribune, reported the death of three-year-old as the result of a game being played between the mother’s boyfriend and the child.  The boyfriend forgot the gun was loaded.

From time to time, I look at the Slate site’s, “How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?”  The answer as of September 16 was 8,259. I don’t know whether or not that includes the latest spree.

Yesterday David Frum posted the following: 

Resonance

Some friends of mine from here in South Bend attended the 2014 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Louisville, Kentucky, and found themselves listening to Eboo Patel, a Muslim from India, tell this story about an experience he had at a Catholic University in South Bend, Indiana. 

That's an important phrase in my life. Look for the resonances. It was actually formative in my own development as an interfaith leader. It's something that my father told me when I was really just a boy. My family is in this country because a Catholic University in Indiana, Notre Dame, allowed a somewhat wayward Indian Muslim student into their MBA program in the mid-1970s. That man would be my father.

Coming Home

I arrived home last night after two weeks in Scotland.  Nine of those days were spent hiking.  Getting to Scotland, coming home—tiresome and tedious.  Being there—beautiful and wonderful.

A few posts down I quoted Pico Iyer saying, 

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate….And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. 

He also says, 

[F]or me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle. 

If I could write like Pico Iyer, I might be truly able to describe what this trip meant.  Scotland is not a country with a different language—not too different anyway.  The culture is much the same as here.  But the landscape is so much more dramatic than Indiana.  I would round a corner or step up higher on the trail and enter a scene that would stop me in my tracks.  Now, back home again, this world seems new and fresh.  Wonderful trip; good to be home.

Music for Sunday, "Loch Loman" on Bagpipe

Many of these scenes in this video look very familiar to me now--one I think even shows the foot path of the West Highland Way.  I discovered that there a lot of theories as to the meaning of this song.  One common interpretation is that the singer is going to die because of Jacobite uprising in 1745 (a bit of history I haven't quite figured out), and so, the low road was death.

Green Reads

Wendy Becktold writes in Sierra about owning sorting books:

Clearly, there are just too many books.  E-readers were supposed to solve this problem, but they are hard to bond with and aren't necessarily better for the environment.  I'd have to read a minimum of 40 volumes on one for it to be the greener choice, according to a life cycle assessment by Daniel Goleman and Gregory Norris in the New York Times.

What serious reader can't read 40 volumes?  Becktold does this idea for book shelves.

More than "I Have a Dream"

This is one of my favorite passages from this speech: 

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."
 But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children. 

I turned on the radio for the last piece of the Diane Rehm Show today.  There was a good conversation going on with Isabel Wilkerson (!), David Garrow, and Anthony Cook about how well the “bank of justice” is doing today.  I plan to go back and listen to the first part.  (The listening link isn't up yet, but I assume it will be there soon.)

West Highland Way

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.  (Pico Iyer, “Why We Travel") 

I have posted the above passage before.  It has touched me deeply.  But now, as I prepare for hiking the 95-mile West Highland Way slightly northwest of Glasgow, I can only have faith that this is true.  I have been upping my walking miles for months and getting things sorted out for weeks, and I have felt a lot of stress.  In a few days, I expect my heart to open, etc., etc.

Daisy, Daisy...

Two years ago--before I knew there would be a new movie version of the story--I reread The Great Gatsby.  I hadn’t remembered what a grim story it is.  I continue to read reviews of the film but can’t bring myself to see it.  Today I came across this interesting critique of Daisy Buchanan: 

Daisy isn't awful, [as many reviews proclaim] she is trapped and scared -- and that is how Mulligan plays her, timidly. Raised a debutante in Louisville, she is expected to marry as a teenager, and she does, to the alcoholic, racist, chronically unfaithful Tom Buchanan. Daisy hasn't had the chance to go to college, or travel the world in the army, as the male characters have. She has a baby before she becomes an adult, and thus is hardly prepared to be an attentive mother. If there are opportunities out there for Daisy to live a more exciting, fulfilling life, she is only dimly aware of them. Is it any wonder she idealizes her first, adolescent romance, with a sweet young officer? Her brief affair with Gatsy is probably one of the only things Daisy has ever done fully by choice. Look at her wrists, bound by diamond cuffs. She is shackled by her own privilege. 

(From the blog of Dana Goldstein)

Haiku by Wendell Berry

And I Beg Your Pardon

The first mosquito:

Come here and I will kill thee

Holy though thou art.

Song for Sunday

It's interesting to see what some of the "professional"
bloggers  post on their sites.  This song was posted on http://www.3quarksdaily.com/  The clothes are fascinating.

Facing the Past, continued

When will we achieve the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr.?  Joshua DuBois offers a different perspective from the last post.  

My first instinct has always been to answer that open-ended inquiry with an equally squishy response, one that we will hear again and again from politicians, preachers, and activists during the next week: “We’ve come so far, but we have so much further to go.” I’ve said this line myself, as recently as this past Wednesday, in the pulpit of a Black Baptist church. 

It’s a phrase that sounds practical, realistic, and even useful. But the problem is: I think it’s wrong. And more than just wrong, it is perhaps the primary barrier to real racial progress in this nation…. 

A Night in the Sky

A week from today, I'll be flying to Scotland.  As I get ready for the trip, I'be been thinking of Sylvia Boorstein's description of spending the night on a plane.  It's comforting.

Facing the Past

“Can America face up to the terrible reality of slavery in the way that Germany has faced up to the Holocaust?” ask Susan Neiman in “History and Guilt,” an article in the online magazine Aeon.  Neiman, born in Atlanta and living in Berlin, questions whether the United States has faced its history of slavery.  I think not.

Neiman, living in Germany, is impressed with how Germany has dealt with the guilt of Hitler’s reign.  According to Neiman, the Germans even have a word “for coming to terms with past atrocities”:  Vergangenheitsbewältigung.  There is also a slogan: “Collective guilt, no! Collective responsibility, yes!” 

The Way of the Cross

Alice Walker is shown here wearing a silver necklace.  When an old friend saw this photograph, she was upset that Walker was wearing a cross.  Walker responded, "This necklace...was made by a Native American artist; it represents the four directions.  There have always been four directions, you know, long before there was a cross."

She goes on to tell about an African American artist who gave her a "cross," and explained, "I think for most folks the cross is something people die on, but to me, when I was making the necklace and pondering its four directions, it seemed to represent choices."

Here is Walker's favorite definition
of the cross:  "the cross represents the place where spirit crosses matter."  Maybe her favorite definition is more lovely than mine though their meanings are similar.   To me  the cross represents the intersection of the vertical and horizontal or depth and breadth.  These definitions can mesh with the traditional Christian meaning of the cross, but they add a more universal meaning.  Here are two of my favorite crosses

.
The quotations from Alice Walker come from her book The Cushion in the Road.

What is race?

I believe I first saw this video on Facebook.  In a speech to the Florida Press Association and the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, Leonard Pitts talks about the experiment in the video and more.

[Y]ou may remember that I made reference to a social experiment I once saw on television. What Would You Do? is one of those hidden camera shows in which they set up a situation and watch to see how average people respond. In the segment I wrote about, a young white actor sets to work trying to steal a chained up bicycle in a park. He uses a hacksaw, a bolt cutter and even an electric saw. The cameras watch for an hour. A hundred people pass by. A few mildly question what he’s doing, but most don’t even bother. Out of that 100 people, only one couple calls authorities. ABC also tried the setup with an attractive blonde woman. Five white guys stopped – and helped her steal the bike.
It was when they did the experiment with a black kid that things got interesting. And you know where this is going. Within the first minutes, there’s a crowd of people around him. They challenge him.

They lecture him. They whip out cell phone cameras and take video of him for use in court. They call the police. And afterward, when they are asked if the color of the young man stealing the bike had any bearing on their actions, they all swear it did not.

As one man put it, “Not at all. He could’ve been any color, it wouldn’t have mattered to me.”

So when you ask yourself what I mean by “race,” I mean that. That is race.

I recommend the whole speech.

See You?

“It’s good to see you,” I said to my ninety-one-year old Uncle Bob.
  
“You won’t be seeing me many more times,” he answered.

I have visited many relatives and old friends in the past three weeks.  This is the most memorable exchange, but visiting people I haven’t seen for 20 or 30 years and not visiting so many who are gone, Uncle Bob accurately sums up the long view.

Running Out of Songs

Songs about summer

The Daily Beast says, 

‘Blurred Lines’ may be the song of summer 2013, but plenty of older songs are more seasonally appropriate. From ‘The Heat Is On’ to ‘Under the Boardwalk’ and (of course) ‘Hot in Here.’ Listen to ‘hot’ songs of decades past. 

These “hot” songs were songs from the past that I was somewhat familiar with.  I was not familiar with “Blurred Lines,” so I looked up the video.  The main refrain was,

“I know you want it…” and video was a collection of cute, attractive women almost naked and cute, attractive men fully clothed.  I found it both catchy and offensive.  Maybe I'm running out of songs for Sundays.

Fear It

Today, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about becoming bilingual and the vision necessary for such a journey.  He includes in his post a French video where Jacques Brei stresses the importance of fear.  Brei seems extreme in his belief the fear is crucial to success, but Brei's perspective is a useful balance to our usual avoidance of fear.  He says this: 

…a man who has no fear is not a man.  It is important to accept your fear…if someone says he has no fear, he is insane...Living without fear is not living.  You’d better be dead.

Sunday Song: "Class Reunion"

I just finished the 5-6 hour drive from Washington, Indiana to South Bend.  My class reunion was yesterday.  It’s not your typical reunion, not like the one in the song though the song still hits the spot.  My school was so small that every year there is just an all-school reunion for Epsom High School.  The reunion was a surreal over-view of life after high school.  Glad I went; glad to be home.

"Words" for the Day

Ta-Nehisi Coates is living in France right now, and today he writes this:

There's something illuminating about living in a place with other foundational myths and other foundational evils.

Back Home Again...

Yesterday my friend Jean and I walked about five miles on some of the country roads in Daviess County, Indiana.  We both grew up here, both have moved away.  It was like traveling back in time.  Back, because it was back to where we were kids, and back because many of the houses on the main road of our walk were Amish houses without some of the conveniences of 21^st century living.  No electricity or cars.  Big gardens where much of the family’s food was raised.  Laundry hanging on the line.  We love this walk, love ending up at the Gasthof Restaurant in Montgomery for lunch, love talking and walking as we have done since we were teens. Love driving home in our modern cars,

Talking in France about Race in the United States

I'm in the process of writing a post about why Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of my favorite writers and definitely my favorite blogger.  In the meantime, here is an interesting video from his blog: he talks about the role of white supremacy in our country’s history and the Trayvon Martin case as one piece of that history.  To me, it seems like a nice balanced view but some of it is harsh.  It’s not a short video—23 minutes of focused talk and another 10-15 minutes of Q and A on a number of topics.

"What does aversion feel like?"

Last week I posted four behaviors that may kill a relationship:  criticism, contempt, denial, and stonewalling.  Since then, I’ve been reading Practicing Peace by Pema Chödrön.  She discusses dealing with aversion which seems to me the emotion behind the four behaviors listed above.  She asks, “What does aversion feel like?”  Then she offers this practice to help explore the feeling.

For the purpose of doing this practice, try to connect with a feeling of aversion to something. Whether this is a smell, a sound, or a memory of a person, an event, dark places, snakes-whatever it is, use your discursive mind to help you contact the feeling of aversion. And then, as much as possible, apply the technique of letting the thoughts go so that you can abide in the experience of aversion as a felt quality....

“Who am I to judge them?” Pope Francis said.in a conversation about homosexuality.  Beautiful.  Yesterday, I was walking and thinking, and I had a very uncharitable thought about a long forgotten acquaintance.  Then I thought, who am I to judge?  Beautiful.  Since then, I’ve had this thought a couple more times in response to some small critical thoughts.  It feels like a good practice.  I hope I don’t forget about it as I have, in the past, forgotten about other good practices.  

How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

This is from the Slate website by Chris Kirk and Dan Kois: 

Using the most recent CDC estimates for yearly deaths by guns in the United States, it is likely that as of today, 7/30/2013, roughly 19,684 people have died from guns in the United States since the Newtown shootings. Compare that number to the number of deaths reported in the news [6,666, see site] and you can see how undertold the story of gun violence in America actually is.

The Color of His Skin

Here’s an interesting opinion about the character assignation of Trayvon Martin.

Four Bads

Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—these are the four things that “kill a relationship stone dead” says the author of PsyBlog.  We all know how much we dislike these qualities in others, but if you’re like me, it’s good to have a reminder that they are hurtful, not helpful strategies. I can be sneaky too, with “innocent” questions that contain a grain of criticism.  Ouch.

A Song for Sunday

This song is in celebration of the family reunion I’m enjoying right now.  We tried singing this song on our road trip yesterday, but we couldn't do it.  The tune was in our heads, but it wouldn’t come out our mouths.  Sisters in this song of course includes brothers.

"Words" for Today

Astronaut Suni Williams talks about spending months in space:  "When you're flying in space some of the things down on Earth seem trivial....I didn't feel like I was a person from the United States, I felt like I was lucky enough to be a person from Earth….If you are having a bad day, you can go to the cupola window and see a part of the Earth. It makes you smile."

 " 

Lucky Me

On Thursday night I went out to eat with my three sisters and one brother.  I really can’t remember if the five of us, without other relatives, have ever done such a thing.  It was low-key, comfortable, and fun.  Today, eleven family members are riding a rented van to Chicago to pick up my brother’s daughter and tour the places where she has worked this summer.  This week is hectic but nice.  And I believe that all the genealogy research I’ve done this past year makes my family even more special to me.

"Words" for Today

The Republican attempt to nullify the last election and engage in unprecedented sabotage of a law for universal healthcare intensified today. It seems we effectively have no politics in this country right now – just political warfare, in which one party refuses to accept the legitimacy of election results. (Andrew Sullivan)

Head, I Win; Tails You Lose

I’ve written before about a certain proclivity to under assign the role of luck in human successes.  Here’s an interesting article with more on that topic: 

Jordi Brandts and colleagues got a group of students to predict a sequence of five coin tosses, and then selected the best and the worst predictor. They then asked other subjects to bet on whether the best and worst predictor could predict another five coin tosses. The subjects were told that they would bet on the worst predictor from the first round, unless they paid to switch to the best predictor.  82% of subjects paid to make the switch.  But of course, there is no such thing as an ability to predict the toss of a coin. Most subjects, then, saw skill where there was only luck. And, what's more, they were willing to spend good money to back this daft opinion.

 (Thanks to The Dish)

"Words"

"...much in modern America depends on where you draw boundaries, and who's inside and who's outside. Who is included in the social contract? If "Detroit" is defined as the larger metropolitan area that includes its suburbs, "Detroit" has enough money to provide all its residents with adequate if not good public services, without falling into bankruptcy. Politically, it would come down to a question of whether the more affluent areas of this "Detroit" were willing to subsidize the poor inner-city through their tax dollars, and help it rebound. That's an awkward question that the more affluent areas would probably rather not have to face." (Robert Reich)

A Few Weeks of Beauty

About ten days ago I visited the butterfly house at the Sarett Nature Center, a bit outside Benton Harbor Michigan.  When I first looked at my pictures, I was disappointed as they of course aren't as good as the real thing.  But now, with the visit in the past, I'm rather moved by the pictures.  They capture only a moment, but each moment seems so beautiful.


Their lifespan is odd:  The butterfly lives first in an egg, then as a caterpillar, then a pupa, and finally, as a butterfly.  The butterfly's main job is to mate and reproduce.  It's lifespan is only a few

weeks.  Somehow these facts don't mesh with the butterfly's beauty.  It looks so perfect.  The caterpillar and pupa, not so much.

Song for Sunday, Bonus

I’ve posted this song before, but I need to listen to it from time to time:  “This is my Song.”

"Small Town," Sunday Song: Seymour

I grew up about 75 miles southwest of Seymour, Indiana, and this video makes me miss my small town and love where I live now.

"Words"

That’s one of the reasons I decided to be happy—out of compassion for all the people who have to put up with me.  (Ajahn Brahm)

How do you evaluate a charity?

According to Dan Pallotta, we're doing it all wrong.  He says, “Business will move the great masses of humanity forward with advancements in pharmaceuticals, materials, process, and technology — but it will almost always leave 10% behind. It will almost always leave unaddressed humanity's most disadvantaged and unlucky.”  I talked before about the role of luck in achievement, so I’m happy to hear Pallotta acknowledge this too.  Yes, the market works well for the lucky. However, “Philanthropy is the market for love,” he says. 

Pallotta is frustrated because society forces charities to operate using different and less effective rules than capitalism.  I’ve done it myself, looked at the evaluations for charities, looked to see which charities use the largest percentage of their money for “good work,” and the smallest amount for overhead.  However, here is Pallotta’s take on the subject: 

More on Trayvon

This is from Devlin Barrett this morning on The Diane RehmShow:  

This situation [shooting of Trayvon Martin], to me, looks like a life or death jump ball where whoever wins that struggle and kills the other person is the winner legally as well…as long as there are no witnesses to counter what the survivor says. 

However, I wonder, if Trayvon has been the winner of the struggle, would he have been found innocent?  As usual, for me, Ta-Nehisi Coates says it all.  Here is the introduction to his column today. 

Not Guilty

I was disappointed this morning when I read the results of George Zimmerman’s trail.  I’ve collected below a few interesting opinions—I’m sure there will be a mass of them today.  I’m impressed that these people can write so much and so coherently in such a short time.  And maybe my opinion is merely this:  Zimmerman’s decision to get out of his car that night was too heartbreaking.  Nothing will change that.  We have only our grief for comfort.

The most damning element here is not that George Zimmerman was found innocent: it’s the bitter knowledge that Trayvon Martin was found guilty.  

We can take from this verdict the understanding that it means validation for the idea that the actions George Zimmerman took that night are those of a reasonable man, that the conclusions he drew are sound, and that a black teenager can be considered armed any time he is walking down a paved street.  

There’s fear that the verdict will embolden vigilantes but that need not be the concern: History has already done that. (Jelani Cobb)

Sunday Song: Scalia v. Ginsburg

Derrick Wang, so inspired by the words of two justices, sets them to music and an opera is born.  Many NPR fans heard this on Wednesday.  

Call the Vet

This is one of the pictures that Andrew Sullivan uses (The Dish) when he writes about a self-destructive behavior of the Republican Party.  Here's his latest complaint:

This is what so many on the right just don’t understand. Their very arguments against universal healthcare and gay marriage and immigration reform are all made as if the working poor, gays, and illegal Latino immigrants were not in the room. You think we don’t hear that in the tone and content of what they are saying? It’s the way in which people who desperately need healthcare are dismissed as abstractions, or in which gays are never offered any actual policy but avoidance and disdain, or in which hard-working immigrants – living in a kind of radical insecurity no white native-born Republican has ever fully experienced or imagined – are simply told to hang around for a few more years, or “self-deport”. That bespeaks a disconnect that obscures any capacity to govern this country as it actually is – rather than as they would like it to be.

Using empathy as one of the tools for making policy is a complicated balance.  It’s interesting that two prominent Republicans who support gay marriage have gay children.  Using empathy is complicated; not using empathy at all is often inhumane.

"Words"

“The big issue here…are we going to have to redefine the very concept of privacy?  Is privacy any longer technically possible in the kind of world we’re in?”  (Martin Walker)

"Words" for Today

“Should “not guilty” as charged (if that were to be the verdict) be read the same as “without guilt” in general? Is there some moral space in which [Trayvon] Martin can, as the defense contends, be solely responsible for his own death?”  (Charles M. Blow)

Yeah, Stand Your Ground

Here, Jelani Cobb raises the issue that isn't talked about enough.  Wasn’t Trayvon Martin "standing his ground”? 

What remains frustratingly marginal in this discussion is the point Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel raised in her testimony—that Martin himself was afraid, that a black person might assess a man following him in a car and on foot as a threat, never mind that he might have seen Zimmerman’s weapon and suspected his life was in danger. The defense paid a great deal of attention to the implications of Martin referring to Zimmerman as a “creepy-ass cracker,” but, to the extent that we think about the epithet, we’re concerned with the wrong C-word. Imagine George Zimmerman being followed at night, in the rain, by an armed, unknown black man and you have an encounter that far exceeds the minimal definition of “creepy.” Indeed, you have a circumstance in which anyone would reasonably fear for his life. Add a twist in which that black man fires a shot that ends a person’s life, and it’s hard to imagine him going home after a brief police interview, as Zimmerman did.

"Words" for Today

"...democratization is more of a process than an end game."  (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

A 1000 Mile Walk on the Beach by Loreen Niewenhuis

I’ve often wondered about the entire lakeshore of Lake Michigan.  How much of it is walkable?  If I started walking from my favorite beach, how far could I go before I was stopped by a barrier of human or natural construction?

Loreen Niewenhuis wondered this too.  Also, she had just turned 45.  She says, "I felt something pull at me, goading me to take on something bigger than myself.”  She decided she would “take on the lake.”  She began with the question, “Why not walk its shoreline day after day until I had walked all of it, captured it in my muscles, recorded it in my body?”

She begins her walk at Navy Pier in Chicago and heads toward Indiana.  She describes the beauty of the lake and its beaches and the ways that factories and power plants have marred that beauty and dumped toxic waste into its water.

Sum, sum, summertime..

The video is a bit fuzzy, but it includes some nice, nostalgic memories of American Bandstand.

The Fruits of Zen

Last week I announced that I was getting ready to attend a four-day silent meditation retreat.  I’ve tried to write a few thoughts about those days, and they just came out boring and inadequate.  So, as follow-up, I post this video, which does describe the fruits tasted in that experience.

The speaker, Ruben Habito is one of the teachers in the linage I am following now.  His wife, Maria Habito was the teacher at last week’s retreat.

IF YOU KNEW

What if you knew you’d be the last 

to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

(For the rest of this poem by Ellen Bass, read here.)

Hi!

This morning Andrew Sullivan quoted Henry Fairlie's reflections on coming to the United States from Britain. It is a perfect reading for the Fourth of July.

Other memories come to mind. One spring day, shortly after my arrival, I was walking down the long, broad street of a suburb, with its sweeping front lawns (all that space), its tall trees (all that sky), and its clumps of azaleas (all that color). The only other person on the street was a small boy on a tricycle. As I passed him, he said "Hi!"—just like that. No four-year-old boy had ever addressed me without an introduction before. Yet here was this one, with his cheerful "Hi!" Recovering from the culture shock, I tried to look down stonily at his flaxen head, but instead, involuntarily, I found myself saying in return: "Well—hi!" He pedaled off, apparently satisfied. He had begun my Americanization.

Oh Yes!

[S]cience shares much with religion. Gods and monsters are wondrous things, recruited to explain life’s unknowns. Also, like science, religion has a striking capacity to make us feel simultaneously insignificant and elevated. (Jesse Prinz at aeon)

Anniversary of 8,000 Deaths

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought from July 1-3, 1863—150 years ago.  On the 100^th anniversary of the Gettysburg battle Vice-President Lyndon Johnson spoke these words:

One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin. The Negro today asks justice. 

We do not answer him—we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil—when we reply to the Negro by asking, ‘Patience.’ 

It is empty to plead that the solution to the dilemmas of the present rests on the hands of the clock. The solution is in our hands. Unless we are willing to yield up our destiny of greatness among the civilizations of history, Americans—white and Negro together—must be about the business of resolving the challenge which confronts us now. 

Our nation found its soul in honor on these fields of Gettysburg 100 years ago. We must not lose that soul in dishonor now on the fields of hate.  

Will there be speeches this week?  What will it take to complete the journey?

(The painting above is Father William Corby C.S.C. offering general absolution to an Irish brigade before the battle at Gettysburg.)

An Eviction

Can writing be beautiful when it describes a scene that breaks your heart?

Today, TA-NEHISICOATES describes accompanying a Chicago sheriff as the sheriff evicts a family from their home.  Here’s one paragraph: 

The adult male in the family, who was at home…agued with the officers and bucked in a way that was very familiar to me. He was in the living room with his spouse and their two kids. He was being emasculated in front of all of them. He had no power. His family was about to be sat out and there was nothing he could do. The officers escorted him outside. They told him to leave the immediate premises or be arrested. Outside there were men hired to haul the family's stuff into the streets. 

Read the rest, maybe--nothing else to say.

Sunday Song from Santiago, Spain by the Notre Dame Glee Club

The Notre Dame Glee Club did  some travelling in Spain.  Here they are singing an "impromptu concert in front of the Cathedral in Santiago, Spain (June 2013)." I'm not familiar with the song, supposedly a "traditional Galician folk song," but I am happy to see them standing in one of my favorite spots in Spain.  The glee club walked part of the camino de Santiago, from O Cerbreiro to Santiago.  Read more about it here.

Working with the Mind

I'll be leaving soon for a four-day-long meditation retreat.  No reading, talking, blogging, or emailing.  I'm both excited and nervous.  It's hard to explain why I'm doing such a thing.   Here Pema Chodron offers one explanation.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Plainsong—the unisonous vocal music used in the Christian church from the earliest time, a simple or unadorned melody or air.

The definition above is an introductory page to the novel Plainsong.   The words “simple or unadorned” describe the style of this novel as it jumps back and forth between a fairly large number of characters.  Events and complications are described, sometimes returned to, sometimes not.  The story starts off slowly and after finishing, it’s hard to summarize.  But I recommend it, mainly because I appreciated the hard work, likability, and goodwill of so many of the characters.  Tom Guthrie copes with his wife’s withdrawal.  Bobby and Ike, ages nine and ten, observe their mother’s withdrawal and their stern father’s preoccupation with work and relationships.  Victoria Roubideaux faces an unplanned pregnancy.  Maggie Jones cares for an ailing and confused father, and the two McPheron brothers open their doors and welcome an unexpected expansion of their small family.  Finishing the novel, I was inspired by the low-key goodness of so many of the characters.  And though I recommend the book, I felt for awhile that something was missing.  Writing about the story helped me appreciate it more and feel the conclusion was complete or complete enough.  The rest of these reflections contain spoilers and are for those who have read the book.

"All You Fascists Bound to Lose" or History Through Music

This Woody Guthrie song cracks me up and makes me sad at the same time.  This song by Leadbelly is of a similar nature:  "We're Gonna Tear Hitler Down."  And just because I'm reminded of Leadbelly, here's one of his most famous, "Goodnight Irene."

Change Happens

Exodus International, a Christian group that offered therapy to "cure" homosexuality reported this week they were ending this work.   Exodus President Alan Chambers offered this explanation and apology. 

Exodus is an institution in the conservative Christian world, but we’ve ceased to be a living, breathing organism.  For quite some time we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical. From a Judeo-Christian perspective, gay, straight or otherwise, we’re all prodigal sons and daughters. Exodus International is the prodigal’s older brother, trying to impose its will on God’s promises, and make judgments on who’s worthy of His Kingdom. God is calling us to be the Father – to welcome everyone, to love unhindered. 

There were a lot of stories about this yesterday, but I read it first at The Dish by Andrew Sullivan who himself is openly gay.  I was moved by the words of both Chambers and Sullivan.  Later in the day, I was moved again when Facebook Joel Barrett friend posted this:

Equanimity

Sylvia Boorstein’s book Happiness Is an Inside Job uses Buddhist principles as a way to avoid suffering and achieve happiness.  She recommends equanimity as an emotional state that allows us to respond appropriately to life's ups, downs, and neutrals.  Equanimity she says, “is the capacity of the mind to hold a clear view of whatever is happening, both externally and internally, as well as the ability of the mind to accommodate passion without losing its balance.  It’s the mind that sees clearly, that meets experience with cordial interest.”  Below is her example of meeting an everyday experience with goodwill. 

The overnight flight from San Francisco to Paris takes more than ten hours, and in the time between midnight and morning, the hours seem longer and the space between the seats in the coach section seems shorter.  When I get up to stretch, and perhaps walk down an aisle, I see men and women, old and young, large and small, all unknown to me, some traveling with young children, all trying to figure out how to be comfortable.  I see them wrapped up in airplane blankets, scrunched up into whatever position of repose they can organize for themselves, leaning on each other if they are traveling together or tying not to lean on each other if they aren’t.  Often a man or a woman is patrolling the aisle across from me, holding an infant against his or her chest and moving in the rocking gait that often soothes a baby’s distress.  I feel a pleasant intimacy with them.  I am also trying to stay comfortable.   I’m not frightened for them, or for me, because I’m relaxed about flying ad I assume we will land successfully, but I wish them well.  I enjoy the feeling of my own good-heartedness.  In fact, in that moment of mental hand-holding, all those people look a bit more familiar than ordinary strangers.  That moment of easy, impartial, benevolent connection—meta—buoys up my mind.  I feel better as I sit back down in my seat.

This is a typical Boorstein story showing how the ordinary is beautiful.

Parenting Problems--Another Video

It's the fairy wings that made me laugh so much at this scene.

One can only be as intimate with another as one is with oneself.
- Robert Chodo Campbell + Koshin Paley Ellison 

 Tricycle: the Buddhist Review posted the quotation above on their Facebook page.  I can’t decide what I think of it.  I don’t even know for sure how intimate I am with myself.  Or others.

Honoring Our Country with Song

The "Stars Spangled Banner has been in the news lately after eleven-year-old Sebastien De La Cruz sang the   song at one of the NBA final games in San Antonio last week.

I'm not a big fan of the National Anthem, but De La Cruz's age and charm make up for the fact that it's hard to sing and has a limited perspective.

Would "This Land Is Your Land" make a better anthem?  Hard to imagine it at ball games.

My fantasy is for "This Is My Song"  to be the anthem for every country--a world anthem I guess.  (Here's another version with stained class windows in the background.)

Separated from Nothing?

A little over a year ago, I traveled to Ireland with my brother, two of my sisters, and one of my nieces.  My ancestors appear to be 100% Irish (as far as the Irish are 100% Irish), and I liked knowing that, but it wasn’t a big deal, and I wasn’t dying to go back to the old country.  But something surprising happened during that trip.  On a visceral level, I began to feel my connection to Ireland and its history.  

I practice meditation at home and with a group.  A few mornings ago, before the group began to meditate, our teacher said, “Our great delusion is that we see ourselves as separate from other people, from plants, from the universe where we live.”  On one level, I don’t know what that means, and I can’t imagine what it’s like to feel connected to the entire universe.  But things happen and all of a sudden, I know I’m part of something more than myself.  I wrote in an earlier post about watching cardinals at my bird feeder and feeling connected to their mysterious lives.  In Ireland, I was surprised by a feeling of unity with my ancestors and to all the Irish who suffered economically and politically.

Some Are Born Lucky

Sam Harris explains why no one is completely self-made. 

And lurking at the bottom of this morass [that taxes are a form of theft and the right kind of market will solve all our problems] one finds flagrantly irrational ideas about the human condition. Many of my critics pretend that they have been entirely self-made. They seem to feel responsible for their intellectual gifts, for their freedom from injury and disease, and for the fact that they were born at a specific moment in history. Many appear to have absolutely no awareness of how lucky one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, to not have cerebral palsy, or to not have been bankrupted in middle age by the mortal illness of a spouse.