Category: Beliefs

Truth Not Truth

Have you ever noticed how many so-called “truths” get passed around on a single topic? The so-called truths regarding the separation of children from parents at the border is dizzying. So many excuses used to justify inhumanity.

I suppose we could chock it all up to the blind men and the elephant story. Each touches a different part of the elephant and when recounting their experiences they argue about what an elephant is according to their own “truth”…For the one who touched the leg, it is like a trunk of a tree, to another, the tail felt like a rope, yet another thought the ear was like a banana leaf…and so on…

Or could it be that this spoon-feeding of lies as truth could signal something more sinister?

As I pondered all of the posturing, the anger, and hopefully the solutions, I remembered that today is the summer solstice. It is the longest day of the year. And with it comes truths far less confusing and much more consistent then what we are fed in daily media.

The earth orbits around the sun on a tilted axis. In June, our hemisphere is at its greatest tilt toward the sun, bringing light and warmth. It’s the opposite south of the equator, where June 21 marks the shortest day of the year.

Here in Wisconsin, today we should be getting between 15 to 16 hours of light – through the rain, of course.

Tomorrow, the days will begin to shorten once more, and the nights will grow longer until the winter solstice. Yet the promise of the return of the light will hold us, and we will celebrate, each in our own way or not at all, and that is a truth with which I can live.

And here is the truth I cannot live with. 2300 + children have been separated from their families with no clear path for reunification. Our walk towards inhumanity continues. Until we stop it.

 

Photo compliments of Joreen Knafelc.

This piece aired on WDRT’s “Consider This” June 21.

Give It a Chance

Maybe I am not as cynical about the Trump- Kim agreements on nuclear disarmament because I listened to the early morning press conference that immediately followed their meeting. Pundits and politicians on both the left and the right are suspiciously eyeing the agreement, looking for loopholes and creating doubt. If the agreements were not about the de-escalation of nuclear weapons and a step towards peace, their alarming comments would almost be funny.

Let’s consider the stakes: the reunion of nearly 65,000 individuals to family members living on either side of the border; the return of the remains of our soldiers who died during that horrific war; and the possibility of “de-nuking” the Korean peninsula…it seems to me we owe this moment, if not applause, at least a silent hope that peace will prevail.

In one of the longest press conferences ever, I listened, as an elated Trump sounded rather surprised at the outcome of the meeting. It was in stark contrast to Kim’s few words, but not in content as a buoyant Kim told reporters, “ The world will see major changes.”

After months of wrangling and insulting one another, whatever brought on the handshake, the terms of respect and the intention to work together is not mine to question.

Sure, there were moments when I thought, “Get a room”, but if this is how they will find a way to peace then bring it on.

There are very few at the top who make these decisions, and a very few below them whispering or shouting in their ears, but the vast majority of us breathed a sigh of relief at the thought of peaceful resolution and troops coming home.

As with the famous words of John Lennon, let us please find a way to, “Give peace a chance”.

 

 

photo: Graffiti on the Lennon Wall, Prague, Czech Republic.
Source: Wikipedia and Licensed through Creative Commons.

This piece aired on WDRT’s “Consider This”, June 14. You can hear it here.

You Need Us.

It seems the Supreme Court has decided to weigh in on bigotry. A baker has won the right to not bake for a gay wedding. And now intellectuals are busy trying to tell us why the decision is OK.

Well, I grew up during the time when people like me were forced to meet in the shadows. I witnessed the sadness, the retreat to bars and alcohol and drugs, and the shunning of family. I watched as police arrived at the nightclub and were handed a sack of money to keep them from shutting the place down or beating up the patrons. I lived through Ronald Reagan’s ignorance over AIDS that cost the lives of young gay men… and I am here to tell you none of it was OK.

This recent salt to the wound, in the name of religion, will not be ignored by those of us who know better. The insistence to divide humanity is only working for the self-righteous. Human beings are capable of much more than this.

No amount of intellectualism can hide the stench of bigotry. No amount of legal wrangling can change the course that those brave Queens and Lesbians carved for us at Stonewall on June 28, 1969.

And who is this “us”? We are your sons, daughters, your clergy and politicians. We are two spirited at our best and made sickened by your disgust at our worst. How you treat us is indicative of how you look upon yourself: your secret passion to fit in, your secret loathing of anything that challenges your sameness. We will not return to your shadow. You need us.

So I am not celebrating this unwise decision to uphold ignorance by the Supreme Court. But I will continue to honor the gift of my Creator to be the unique person that I am, and I will surely not surrender my ability to be kind, even in the face of such vile hatred masked as religion.

To those who are different, I say, “Come out come out wherever you are”. Let Love win. Light will always trump darkness. Don’t despair. We got this.

 

This piece aired on WDRT‘s “Consider This” on June 7.

You can listen on Soundcloud.

Photo compliments of Wikipedia Commons.

Assumption and Abe

Decades ago while flipping through a magazine I came upon an anecdote about Abraham Lincoln. When Abe was a young defense lawyer it is said he countered a prosecuting attorney’s closing argument with this:

Abe addressed the jury, “I’d like to begin with a little story”, he said, “Little Jimmy came running to his Pa. “Pa come quick, he said, Johnny and Sally are fixin’ to pee in the barn.” His Father paused and then asked him why he thought such a thing, and Jimmy replied, “Because Sally’s dress is pulled up and Johnny’s pants are down.” His Father replied, “Son, I think you got your facts all right, but your conclusion’s all wrong.” Abe did not challenge the facts of the prosecutor only the conclusion.

As I listen to people beat one another up with facts in support of their conclusions, I often chuckle remembering this story. And I have to wonder what it would take for all of us to stop for a moment and reflect on what it is that we know, not simply believe or assume.

If we did, I am confident that we would all find that the sum of what we know far outweighs the emotional roller coaster of assumption.

At the end of the day, what is that we know?

In this moment I am alive. Life is a powerful resource. I cannot control the comings and goings around me, but I have the ability to find my way, if I so chose. Peace is a possibility that comes to the living. All kinds of people have discovered peace, regardless of circumstance.

This is what I know. And if this is my knowing, then let the game begin!

Belief and assumption are the parents of confusion. And confusion is the harbinger of pain. In thinking on this I remembered this quote by Isaac Asimov:

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”

Maybe its time we scrub those windows and let a little light in!

 

This piece aired on WDRT’s Consider This, Thursday, May 31.

Considering Trust

Whom do you trust? What do you trust? Do you trust?

Trust is a word seldom spoken these days unless it is used in legal terms. If it is used it is with great caution and it is often considered to be a weakness, such as having blind faith. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary refers to trust as “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something”. The word’s root is in Old Norse, an ancient North Germanic language of Scandinavia and it’s meaning was “strong”.

So somewhere in the history of the word trust, the meaning must have communicated strength; and the giver of trust was one who had “assured reliance” on the outcome of trusting.

Trust, in its original ideal, was more dependent on the person trusting than on the person or object to be trusted. In other words, to give trust implied that one had confidence in his or her choice. That the person giving trust had vetted well enough to be “assured reliance”. This is not “blind faith”. This requires a strength born of knowing, not simply hoping, that the gift of trust will be rewarded.

Trust is a tool we can use, not abuse and not one to hide behind. It is a gift we give to those who have proven beyond a doubt that they are worthy of our trust. That is the strength of trust. It is wholly dependent on the reasoning and the wisdom of each of us; and it is born of our discernment.

As we go through this very complicated moment in time, where truth is hidden and lies are boldly told, it is imperative that we revive within us the wisdom of trust. Trust is a powerful gift that should not be given lightly.

So when you consider giving the power of your trust to a salesperson, politician, doctor, clergy, facebook or anyone else, it may be wise to remember that your trust is your strength, not your weakness…and perhaps the most important trust is in your Self.

 

This piece aired on Thursday May 17 on WDRT‘s “Consider This”.

Our Mistake with Iran

It appears the king of frenetic energy has done it again. Pulling out of the nuclear “deal” with Iran, President Trump has sent allies and others into frenzy. They are trying to salvage the one step that had promised some semblance of peace to the troubled region. Everyone had admitted there were flaws in the accord – I try to refrain from using the word deal which is better left for car sales and snake oil – but with the US walking out of the efforts to correct the accord, the promise of peace is greatly diminished. When asked if this pull out has brought us closer to war, even right wing pundits admit, “Yes, it has”.

From what I can tell there are two ideologies leading the pack. One is the very old “might is right”. Certain that increased sanctions will force regime change; this out dated wisdom ignores the reality that the people of Iran had already moved toward a more reasoned and modern government. And now with the threat of severe sanctions again impeding their lives, Iranians question the wisdom of creating a new “deal”, which a new president could once again discard. Keep in mind; the Iranians had not broken the accord that President Obama had signed onto.

The second ideology is equally outdated. Our interest in the Mid-east is due to oil. Oil has us selling weapons to the Saudi’s to bomb Yemen. Oil has the world spinning to control Syria. Oil created the “shock and awe” of Iraq and make no mistake, oil is the incentive in destroying Iran.

While Israel, Pakistan and India’s nuclear weaponry sits unquestioned. And only the Saudi’s and Israel are celebrating this hawkish move to disavow the accord, one has to question the sanity of ‘might is right’ and the need for oil.

I once heard that if pigs knew their dung would be used for explosives, they would still be constipated.*

We need to look at our choices. We are implicitly to blame if once again our military or our weaponry are used for regime change. And it will be innocent blood again on our hands. Divest from oil. Call for diplomacy. Humanity is watching and the yet-to-be-born children of the world are begging.

 

 

This “Consider This” aired on WDRT, Thursday, May 10. You can catch Consider This every Thursday at about 5:28 pm CST. You can also hear it on Soundcloud.

*Through the decades, Prem Rawat has kept me thinking and has urged me to my humanity. This quip I remember from the 70’s.

The Greatest Sacrifice

I was recently invited to speak to a sustainability class at the UW La-Crosse. It is the end of the semester and the professor wanted to motivate them to act and to not see sustainable choices as sacrifice. I agreed, but first I had to wrap my head around the idea that I was sacrificing something. I looked closely at my choices to live on a community-sustained farm and to move towards energy independence. While the choices are not the norm, I could see no sacrifice. As my Mother once observed and said to me, “You know where your food comes from, you know where your water comes from and you are surrounded by loving people, there is nothing bad in that.”

I began the class by asking each student to tell me their name and what was their take away. They are majors in environmental studies and I was impressed by their understanding and conviction towards fostering change. However, one theme that stood out was the sense of difficulty that lies ahead in moving our society to one that is sustainable.

Here is where my homework paid off. I reminded them that the word sacrifice comes from the word sacred and therein is the key. The greatest sacrifice is not following your heart. The heaviest burden is to live in compromise.

When we move towards a more sustainable life, we are moving towards something, not away from something. It is a massively creative act and definitely a challenging one. As we move towards that which we love, life simplifies and appreciation grows.

When you wash your hands, to wash off dirt, you don’t wash off skin. You need that skin. In the same way as you walk the path of sustainable living, you discard what you can as you can.

Seek knowledge. Observation of life is the greatest teacher. When we come to understand that our lifestyle choices are harming the water, the air, and the food we consume, we will choose a different way. When we realize the privileged life we lead has been on the backs of human beings and at the cost of our precious environment, we will find new ways to proceed.

Living sustainably is not a sacrifice; it is about falling in love again.

Hit the Reset on Poverty

It is time we hit the reset button on poverty.

It seems we have taken this notion that “there will be poor always” a bit too far. We have allowed a doubt to creep into our consciousness that declares poverty is normal – that people going to bed hungry, if they have a bed at all, is part of some master plan.

We accept it. It’s convenient. The quote “There will be poor always” is understood as “There is nothing I can do about it…”

The stigma of being poor has targeted all immigrants to this country. And it has been the legacy of far too many Blacks and Native Peoples. A belief that the accumulation of wealth was an outgrowth of divine right, justified the use and abuse of human beings deemed as “poor” or needy. Our entire economic system is based on the assumption that “there will be poor always”, and pits human against human in a race to the top.

It is time we hit the reset button on poverty.

We have allowed the loathing and self-loathing that springs from the label of “poverty” to take hold of us. And with this sickness we now publicly declare the poor to be lazy and undeserving. Churches give with one hand and ask for allegiance with the other. And the government seems to have forgotten its responsibility to its citizens.

So what if we recognize that our assumptions are based on fallacies? What if we understand poverty to be a concept designed to help a few and to divide the many? What if we unshackle ourselves from the systems that are little more than slavery and adopt new visions and new pathways of cooperation that can remove poverty from our lives?

Some of the greatest wisdom and the sweetest kindnesses have come to me from those labeled “poor”. Perhaps it is time to allow humanistic truth to re-emerge. If one of us is poor, we are all poor. And accumulation of wealth is not an indicator of success. We have been chasing the wrong story.

Our community is listed as one of the poorest in the state. We have a chance to prove statistics wrong. Let us find ways to share. Let us find ways to help one another.

 

This piece aired on WDRT Community Radio on the two minute commentary, “Consider This”, scheduled every Thursday at 5:28 pm CST.

OPT IN

opt  äpt/  verb   make a choice from a range of possibilities

And so it goes, we have choice from a range of possibilities. Perhaps not on the outside, perhaps our choices are limited there. But we have a choice where it counts to us the most – on the inside.

There is only one who knows the range of emotion like waves of sound that courses through us. There is only one who can choose which note to listen to, which note to add to, which note to delete.

To welcome that understanding is the first option.

The second option is to enable the ability to choose. Choose.

Choose well.Choose as if your life depends on it…because it does.

Opt in to life. Opt in to hope. Opt in to clarity. Opt into beauty. Practice.

Because we can.

Brown Earth Dog

It never hurts to find a good reason to celebrate and one of the best reasons I’ve found of late is the welcoming of the Chinese New Year – this year is that of the Brown Earth Dog. The celebration began on February 16th and it will last for around 15 days. It has been sixty years since the last Earth Dog Year.

The Year of the Brown Earth Dog is thought to be a good year; a year where good actions, persistence and honest hard work will be rewarded. It will be a year to make commitments to all that is important to us.

And because the Earth Dog is a pack animal, it will be a year of building community. It is projected to be full of hope, and filled with dialogue that can bring people together and help us shed our indifference. If resources are scarce, people will become innovative and more willing to work with others, allowing for successful endeavors throughout this year.

Dogs are the eleventh sign in the Chinese zodiac and are viewed as independent, sincere, loyal and decisive. They are not afraid of the difficulties in life. In a year that can be bustling with activity, lifestyle changes towards good healthy habits will be an important consideration for everyone.

Earth dog is symbolic of land so everything related to agriculture and the earth’s resources will be more significant than ever. And while mountains may block our view, the instinct of the earth dog will be to overcome, go around or find some new way to reach our destination.

The element of earth in Chinese astrology is also connected to stability and meditation, and this may awaken people to a new or renewed interest in spiritual understanding.

Dog represents intelligence and protection and we may be able to learn lessons from our past and incorporate what has worked and what has not.

And here is some of the best news about this Chinese New Year. It signifies the end of the strong willed and multi-tasking fire cock. And the greed and self-centeredness that have characterized the past year may have a difficult road ahead.

So here we go, year of the Earth Dog! Set clear intentions, bring on the effort required, and bring on the love of the land and community building! We are long, long overdue!

 

 

This piece aired on WDRT‘s “Consider This” on March 1. You can listen to it here.

The adorable dog is Chester.