A Season Of Hopefulness

Comes a time when the need to change the circumstances of your life will impose itself on your consciousness in a markedly undeniable way. You will know that moment as a new and forceful breath that fills up the stale chambers of your being. That enabling wind will lift you above the depressing old expectations that once informed your sense of being in the world in which you exist. And when that Arising comes to you, you will make a compact bundle of the things that mean the most to you. And you will gather around you those who have shared the experiences that shaped the now in which you find yourself. You will tell them that the time has come for you to pursue a different kind of future. It may be that some of them will want to trade the stale air that depresses them for the inspiration of that dynamic new gale that ruffles feathers and enables the wings that will lift you above and beyond the vale of despair.

Your life is yours. It is yours to lose. It is yours to save. It is yours to do something or nothing with. Ultimately no one else can occupy that space in eternity that you now inhabit. Accept that… know that this is true. Wake up from the slumber of unconsciousness that befalls so many. Open your eyes and train your senses for the challenges you must face as you become more and more aware of the circumstances that you now call your life. Is it what you want it to be? If not, why not? Be honest.

What are the aspirations that once energized you that have over time gone dormant? Where is the fire in your gut that once danced as a sparkle in your eyes? Like so many before you and around you, that fire may have been doused by the too many swallowed tears of mounting disappointments. Your primordial blaze may have succumbed to the many buckets of cold water poured on by those who seek to thrive by suppressing the aspirations of others. You may have gotten stuck in the mud of a sense of worthlessness cultivated by an overindulgence of your failings. You do not have to continue to wallow in that precarious existential state.

Your Moment Of Awakening comes, and when it does do not slight it as one more occasion of pipe-dreaming. Do not ignore your Epiphany by deferring the need to get up out of the bed of despair. Instead, adjust your position… determine to take up your bed and walk. Wake up and set your face against the place that locks you up and shuts you down. Make up your mind to leave behind you every influence that binds you to a future of hopelessness.

Beyond the state of bondage and despair that too many of us endure, lies The Land Of Promise… the promise of a more fulfilling life. Getting there will force you to confront daunting odds. There are “many rivers to cross”. There are discouraging voices calling you back to the deleterious ways that you must now discard; voices you must necessarily disregard. Yes, there are obstacles that will seem insurmountable that you must face and overcome. But you can… you must… and you, with the inspiration of a new vision of yourself, you will overcome those obstacles.

Your life is a promise to be fulfilled. Your dreams are possibilities to be explored. You have within you the power to become everything you believe you can be. Yes, beyond the state of bondage and despair lies the Land Of Promise. Beyond the disparaging critique of those who live to break others, lies the power of your possibilities… the boundlessness of your dreams.

Beyond the days of pain and grief lies a Season Of Hopefulness that only you can deny yourself through your own lack of faith. Faith… that ability to reach into the the future and touch the things you have hoped for. Faith… that focus on your life which allows you to grasp the significance of things you have not yet accomplished, but which you now must.

Arise! Get up out of the rut of complacency. Stand up and determine to find your footing despite the instability that has come to define your circumstances. You can part the “Red Sea” in your mind a thousand times, but your journey to a prosperous future will only begin when you actually get up and start doing the work that your better life demands. This moment is as good as any to embark on that journey into A Season Of Hopefulness.

Our Fears, Our Dogmas, and Our Fragile Existentialism

Some random thoughts on a recent flight...

The idea that we are free and are therefore ultimately responsible for the choices we make is a philosophical burden that few of us are prepared to assume. In a world in which it is sometimes convenient to believe that “what is to be will be”, we tend to cultivate a certain pathos around the reality that whatever is to be is up to us. I have come to believe this. Many of us declare a pre-determinism that assumes that our course in this life has been set, and there is nothing we can do about it. What is to be, will be. Period.

We can agree that there are some things we have little or no control over in our lives; but our fate and destiny are determined by the course that we ourselves set by each decision we make. There are people who will never set foot on an airplane because of their fear of flying. Like bungee jumping, and riding on the latest version of a wild roller coaster, they just wont do it. Our most awe-full phobias are fed by one decision after another not to do something…not to take those steps which will ultimately give us power over our irrationality.

In other contexts in our lives we parrot the dogma “practice makes perfect”, but we fail to see its implication for the “finishing” of ourselves with regards to our fears. Yes, the word “perfect” means “finished”, and it is an often stated fact that none of us are. We are impacted daily by the formative influences of the hands of experience. The perfection that life nudges us toward is a function of the steps we take to overcome our worries and our fears. Sometimes the nudges of reality are painful and unsettling, but they force us to look more clearly at the ground around our feet. They make us look again with more critical eyes at the assumptions in which we have anchored our expectations.

Our fears sabotage every aspect of our existence. They prevent one from asking for a deserved salary increase at the job one has done well for five, six, seven years. It is fear that causes an unhappy spouse not to declare to the world that his or her marriage is a miserable sham that should end. The desire to maintain the status quo at the expense of one’s fulfillment demands unreasonable self-sacrifice. We worry about outcomes that may never be because fear breeds irrationality. My existentialism says, if a thing is unreasonable it is wrong. There comes a moment when we are shaken by the need to right the ship of fear-filled living.

My thoughts go by like wisps of cirrus clouds. A multitude of “what ifs” find their way in and out of my mind despite the protestations of my rationalism. I eventually surrender to the moment, recognizing the reality that there are some possibilities that lay on the heap of fate which are out of my control. My mind goes back to something that Cypher Raige says to his son Kitai in the movie After Earth : “Danger is very real. Fear is always a choice”.

I try for a moment to reconfigure the notion… Fear is a response to danger… . 

My reformulation sounds reasonable, it is congruent with what I have heard others conclude, but I chose to stick with Cypher Raige’s dogma…Fear is a choice. Something about this formulation engenders a sense of being in control. I identify with that. The thought appeals to something in the DNA of my personhood, so I let it soak in. It fleshes out my existentialism, fragile as it may be.

The Crass Symbiosis Between Parasites And Their Hosts

Parasites… they are an unmistakable reality of the ecology of our lives. A parasite is an organism that lives in or on another organism, its host, and benefits by deriving nutrients at that host's expense. They present as insects, and plants, … and as persons.

There comes a time in our lives - a season if you will - when we must, in order to survive and maximize our potentials, rid ourselves of those influences that are in fact impediments in our journey to our best selves. To that end it becomes necessary to realistically evaluate the factors in and around us that impact our lives - and that our lives impact - with a view to detaching from them where they have proven to be detrimental to our own growth and the growth of others.

On an intellectual level the deliberative act suggested here seems to be a no brainer. It makes all the sense in the world to separate ourselves from things and from persons that would jeopardize our safety, and the integrity of our being. In fact though, this is more easily said than done. Removing and destroying a tick or a fungus is one thing; separating ourselves from habits and persons that have become a part of our natural habitat is quite another.

We look around us and it is easy to see the organisms that attach themselves to the vegetation in our immediate environment. If we till the ground, or if we raise livestock, or if we have pets; the task of ridding our gardens and our animals of these parasites becomes obvious and necessary. There are fungi that attach themselves to plants and infuse them with destructive toxins. Ticks maim and degrade the animals they sink their tentacles into. As human beings we should educate ourselves and our loved ones about the threat that pathologies such as Lyme Disease pose to our health and well-being. The presence of head lice, which feed on human blood, is a scare that threatens the social viability of homes and larger institutions.

When we come to know the dangers posed by the organisms noted above, we are able to dispassionately dispatch them with practices and treatments that remove the threats they pose. Good enough. But what about those threats that look like us? What about the real human threats to our physical and emotional integrity that live and move and have their being in our daily lives? Well… let's just say the task of ridding ourselves of them is a much less dispassionate one. Truthfully speaking, this task can be so downright difficult, and the consequences so traumatic, that we defer necessary action in this regard indefinitely.

Non-human parasites are dependent for their existence on the organisms to which they attach themselves. On the other hand, the human sources of dysfunction in our lives exist in a kind of crass symbiosis with us that makes it difficult for many to identify them for the essential threat they represent. Instead of the unilateral dependency expressed in the relationship between a tick and its host; the human parasite in many instances is facilitated by a more complex interrelationship. The nature and extent of this complexity varies from relationship to relationship… from individual to individual; and is informed by the degree of neediness in each instance.

The word used to describe what I have called this crass symbiosis is codependency. Codependency is defined by mental health professionals as - “an emotional and behavioral condition that affects an individual's ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship. It is also known as “relationship addiction” because people with codependency often form or maintain relationships that are one-sided, emotionally destructive, and/or abusive.” Based on the evidence, I believe that it is not an exaggeration to remove all qualifiers and state that such relationships are destructive… period.

One can rid one’s self of ticks or lice and recover one’s health. You can rid a plant of the fungus that stunts its growth, and it will return to great health and productivity. The end of a co-dependent relationship on the other hand, can result in disastrous consequences for everyone involved in such relationships. Furthermore, the damage that can result is in certain instances not limited to those directly involved in these relationships; but is expressed in the collateral hurt/damage visited on those in close proximity to the intended target of the aggrieved. Getting rid of head lice is a very exact science that has little or no collateral carnage. Not so with a person with whom one has established a pathologically dysfunctional relationship.

Let us agree that relationships characterized by bilateral and unilateral dependencies are dangerous to the health and wellbeing of all those involved in such relationships. These pathological attachments have  their reasons for being in dynamics that range from emotional to economic neediness. Codependent relationships in many cases have their reason for being in a corrupted power dynamic in which control of other persons for whatever reason, is an expressed objective of those involved. Whether we facilitate and cultivate the dependence of others on us, or whether others attach themselves to us for reasons of convenience; the resulting dysfunction is just as deleterious.

A tragic consequence of such relationships is that persons end up in situations where they might feel they can't do without the other, or where the other feels that if they can't “have”  the object of their attachment no one else should. Both of these circumstances engender tragedies that play out in the social environment everyday. The husband or boyfriend kills the partner and children. The mother or wife poisons the former mate and murders the girlfriend. The many variations of these tragic dysfunctions play out in front of us almost daily.

As inconvenient as it may be, there comes a time when in the interest of the common good, and for our own sakes, we should evaluate our various relationships in an effort to identify and take remedial action regarding the dysfunctions in and around us. Our very lives may depend on that inconvenient analysis. At the very least, the possibilities of our growth and development beckon us to discover the truth about the deficiencies that ultimately undermine our own well-being, the wellbeing of others - and our very lives.

Good vs Evil ... No Equivocation!

There are those among us who even now would salute Hitler; but they are in reality a fringe trying to survive against the moral tide of History. There are those who would resurrect the fascism of Mussolini; but they inevitably find themselves marginalized and eventually swept aside by the thrust toward a more equal society and a better world. The putrid stench of slavery lingers in the air we breathe. The Ku Klux Klan still lives among us despite the desperately vicious history they represent.

The forward march of History gains impetus when we identify and call Evil by its name… That which seeks to destroy the will to achieve the common good. The establishment of the common good is the goal of our civilization. It is a foundation of the kind of Peace which issues from the triumph of the forces of good over the presence of evil.

We understand civil society to be a function of the recognition of each other’s right to the pursuit of our highest human potential regardless of circumstances of race, gender, sexuality, religious persuasion, or the socio-economic circumstances of one’s birth. When we appropriate to each other as a human right the ability to thrive in ways that are non-obstructive to the strivings of our fellow persons, we regard that as a good thing.

To live at peace with each other by the establishment of equity among us is good. We know beyond equivocation that there have been, and that there remain among us persons and influences that do not share the values implicit in these notions. They foster in their own lives, and seek to foist upon others, the inequity that serves their twisted sense of being. They create misery. They are agents of chaos.

The heroes we celebrate in our individual and corporate lives are those who stood in firm opposition to the forces of evil. There must be no equivocation; those who represent the expression of evil must continue to bear the eternal rebuke reserved for them. They must either repent, or be relegated to the hell they would create for others.

Of Bogeymen and Saviors

Let us be clear about the profound immorality of those who love to use Karl Marx as the bogeyman of our time, while they pay lip service to the life and work of a Nazarene now called Jesus. 

Marx lived twice as long as Jesus and eventually died of pleurisy. He has been vilified by many for calling the workers of the world to unite against their exploiters. Jesus was murdered in his early thirties for calling out the inequities of his day and those who perpetuated it. 

All efforts to theologically sanitize his murder aside, the fact is Jesus was NAILED to a rough wooden cross which he was forced to carry on his back to the hill where he would be further brutalized. Like many who suffered a similar fate he was tortured while many looked on, and hung there till he was dead. His was the kind of fate that the theologian Bonhoeffer aptly described in his declaration that:  "When God calls a man, He bids him come and die." This for Bonhoeffer was "the cost of discipleship".

Those who have an interest in maintaining the status quo have always sought to demonize the voices that declare in favor of the poor and the disadvantaged. Popular Christianity is a reflection of the prevailing moral and political values in our society.  In this context those who act out in contravention of those values are invariably isolated and targeted for elimination. 

The false equivalencies that we witness from the mouths of the servants of this status quo are nothing more than attempts to muddle the consciousness of the uncritical among us. These preachers and politicians mouthing off about the assault on their fictitious  “Savior” by those who seek to address the persistent inequities in our society are for the most part just charlatans “making a living”.

And so the poor continue to perish while political opportunists and their lackeys spook the people with their visions of the ghost of Marx. And for this "Jesus wept". 

The struggle continues...

Anodynes

“Creative rhymes…
Potent anodynes…
Analgesic tones…
Somnifaciently affected sounds…
Words that heal…
In combinations we feel…
Anesthetic formulae
And stupefacient lies
Won’t change our need for realistic treatise…

Preachers and teachers
Singers and speakers…
Sermons and lessons
Songs and mass visions…
Come now before us
Sounding so spurious
Because they are devoid of real truths…

Thoughts obfuscated
On minds opiated
Will…finally…do us no good—”

Excerpt From: Roy Alexander Graham. “Of Scattered Seed and Broken Souls.” Figtree Enterprises, Inc., 2012. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

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Immortal

Forever
Like a wind traveling through time
Across many stages…
From everlasting till now…we are…
And will be still
Through all the ages…of time…

And forever
Like a raindrop moving through space…
Returning again to its origin as air…
Through heat and cold
Becoming water
Again…and again

Forever and forever
We are like the wind
Becoming clouds
That fall as rain
To return again
To its form as spirit…

We are the immortals…of the Immortal
Which was…
Who is…
That will be
Forever

Excerpt From: Roy Alexander Graham's  “In My Element.” Figtree Enterprises, Inc., 2012. 

Where does your "god" stand on the matter of Justice?

There is in fact a well established and very meaningful orthodoxy which declares that it is utter nonsense to talk about our fascination with gods we cannot see, while we foster a culture of inequity. The propagation of injustice is a direct contradiction of our claim to obedience to any loving God. It places our faith on tenuous ground, and nullifies all attempts, rhetorical and liturgical, to validate our stated beliefs.

Theological exercises that do not affirm the experiences and the needs of our common humanity are a gross misuse of physical and mental energy. Worse than that, they are potentially dangerous. To profess our love for, and our commitment to celestial beings while we actively antagonize one another is to live a lie. Lies have a tendency to erode our potential to live in authentic relationships. This is as true for each of us as it is for all of us. Lies negate and erode the life-enhancing potentials of individuals and of nations. A meaningful faith is one which finds expression through the cultivation of real equity in our stewardship of Earth and its fullness. Another word for equity... Justice.

In the physical, cultural, and political spaces in which we live out our lives we often have to confront the incongruities between the ideas that we have come to define ourselves by and the challenges that are inherent in the realities of our being together. The tensions herein are real and ongoing. Our efforts to resolve these tensions underline the necessity to engage philosophically with our selves and each other. The honest philosopher comes to acknowledge a truth that is universally affirmed: "There are more questions than answers; ... and the more we find out, the less we know". The less we know for sure that is.

Ultimately the most consequential question that we must answer is not about the nature of God. The responses to that philosophical piece are too subjective to be universally useful. We can agree that that question is indicative of a certain functional genius, and it most definitely has its place in our philosophical resumes. But the more pressing query is: Who is my neighbor, and am I his/her keeper? An affirmation of the wisdom and the duty implied in this question clears the path to the salvation we and our societies seek… and need.

Trump... A Clear and Present Danger to Civil Society

It has been declared that politics is about life. I want to expand and expound on that: Politics is about our lives together. 

Beyond our individual interests and the group interests that are at times used to divide and rule us; there is that greater imperative that calls us to build the kind of national and international community that will secure our mutual interests and bolster our collective security. The leadership that this vision of our lives demands is what we are constantly  being called on to bring into being. 

Donald Trump is NOT the kind of leader our country and the world needs. His lack of moral acuity, his demonstrably horrible temperament, his ill-mannered attitude toward others - these traits are antithetical to everything we should be working toward as a society.

One does not have to look far in order to find the reasons that disqualify Mr Trump from holding the highest office in the land. Any casual observer of his conduct can, without much effort, identify a host of such reasons. His unapologetic divisiveness. His crass abrasiveness. His activist appeal to the racist underbelly of a nation still scarred by its history of bigotry. His disrespect for women, and for immigrants who are not white and rich... and corrupt. Add to all this his obvious inability to intelligently address any of the issues of critical importance in our national life and we have the ingredients for a national crisis.

Trump has demonstrated a lack of intellectual curiosity about our world that, in an otherwise uncorrupted process, would disqualify him from leadership of any corporate entity - much less the United States of America. His careless disregard for those with disabilities among us is a marker of the kind of warped amorality that those concerned about the health of our nation find detestable. His history of exploiting the economic system to benefit himself to the disadvantage of others is the primeval scream of a corrupt economic soul. 

When we add to all this Trump's careless disregard for truth, we have nothing less than the recipe for a national disaster. His propensity to promote violence against those who do not share his worldview calls the civilized among us to engage in the necessary constitutional measures to preserve our democracy. His ludicrously inconsequential bravado is matched only by his disrespect of those who have served in our military. 

This man is a clear and present danger to the further establishment of civil society here in America, and in the world. 

Building Blocks Of Hope

Though we may disagree, there is no need to try to invalidate the perspective of the many of us who look back and conclude that times have gotten worse. To be sure, there has certainly  been an erosion in our sense of security. Truth be told though, the “good old days” weren't all that good for most of us. There is real progress going on all around us, and we are being called to be part of that progress. Our challenge, and we must choose to accept it, is to find ways to partner with each other across the divides constantly being highlighted amongst us.

Beyond the superficial national, regional, ethnic, and religious boundaries that divide us, we are constantly being called to reach out and touch each other in recognition of that deeper connection which is our common humanity. That reaching out must be defined by a coupling of the needs we share, and the resources available to us. A little from the many will go a far way in meeting the needs of multitudes.

The development and propagation of dynamic technologies, bring us closer to each other in our world. These technologies avail us of opportunities to break out of the isolationism that partners with ignorance to breed a pessimistic outlook on life. We are now able to reach out and touch each other in ways never before possible. The revolution in information technologies facilitates the  sharing of our lives and concerns in ways that were once impossible. In large measure it is now up to each of us to develop the resourcefulness to take advantage of every opportunity to empower ourselves and each other.

A greater sense of hope can be realized in the normal day to day circumstances of our lives. It comes when we live into the greatest calling of Life - the call to enter each other's lives in transformative ways. The seeds of hope are sown whenever we open up our hearts and minds, and make whatever resources we have available to enrich the lives and circumstances around us.

We Can Build Walls... Or We Can Broaden Our Perspectives

If you are a consumer of “news” in our society you have probably developed a certain emotional obliqueness to the repetition of adverse events coming at you constantly. Indeed you may have come to cultivate a lack of attachment to any and all the issues being exploited in order to grab your attention, just so you can maintain some modicum of balance in your perspective on life. This expressed indifference has become a defining feature of the attitude of many people in our world.

A significant number of people have come to the conclusion that their indifference is necessary in order to maintain their sanity in what many have come to regard as a crazy world. The conscious construction of this wall - this defense mechanism to keep the madness out - might seem necessary, but it is not our only option… nor is it the most viable one. Reality bites, but we can find creative ways to avoid being uncritical consumers of the menu of an unconscionable media culture.

To be sure, there are things happening in our world that hold grave concerns for the future. There are enduring wars and strife. There are political dramas that raise questions about the assumptions we have cultivated about what constitutes good governance. Challenges to the foundational values that have come to underpin our political systems and the way we expect our societies to operate abound. Beyond the hypocrisies that are a part of the day to day relationships between nations, we continue to be concerned about the gross demonstrations of immorality and amorality in international affairs.

Bad news is a fact of life, but, thankfully, it is not the only news. While the reasons for pessimism persist, the necessity for optimism beckons. We may not be living in the best of times, but it is not true that we are in the worst of times. The violence that causes many to retreat is a fact of life; but cultivating hope for a more peaceful and prosperous world is an ontological imperative we must not ignore.

Contrary To Our Pervasive Pessimism

Harvard University professor of Psychology Steven Pinker, author of the book – The Better Angels Of Our Nature – disagrees with the popularly held notion that the world is falling apart or getting more violent. In an interview with National Public Radio’s Michel Martin in 2016 he states the following in regard to this hypothesis:

“The only way you can really answer the question – has violence gone up or down? – is to count how many violent incidents have there been as a proportion of the number of opportunities, and has that gone up or down over the course of history? And that’s what I tried to do in the book. I looked at homicide, looked at war, looked at genocide, looked at terrorism. And in all cases, the long-term historical trend, though there are ups and downs and wiggles and spikes, is absolutely downward. The rate of violent crime in United States has fallen by more than half in just a decade. The rate of death in war fell by a factor of 100 over a span of 25 years.”

Asked whether or not this was a worldwide phenomenon he says:

“Well, it’s highly uneven. If you certainly choose the most violent parts of the world at any given time, they’re going to be pretty violent. But if you count the number of parts of the world that are violent versus those that aren’t, then you see that the world is becoming more peaceful. The impression that some kinds of violence have gone up over the last five years has some truth to it. Because of the Syrian civil war, the rate of death in warfare has drifted upward a little bit in the last five years. There has been a small increase in homicide in the United States in the last three years. But both of those figures are at a fraction of what they were in the ’60s, ’70S and ’80s.”

Admittedly the foregoing is small comfort to many who, try as they may, cannot escape the overwhelming sense of gloom and insecurity in the face of tragedies that are ever present around us. But contrary to the pessimism bolstered by a mass media focused on the reporting of bad news, there are reasons for optimism in our world. In addition to the perspectives researched and presented by Steven Pinker and others, we can state the following with certainty…

Despite recent downturns, economies around the world are growing at significant rates, with seven out of ten of the fastest growing in Africa. Global poverty, according to United Nations estimates, has been reduced more in the last 50 years than in the previous 500 years. Educational access has vastly improved, with a fourfold increase in the number male college graduates and a sevenfold increase in the number of female graduates.

In a world culture now fueled by the work of researchers developing and advancing new technologies that are revolutionizing the way we live, these are significant facts that we must not allow ourselves to overlook despite the retrogressive rubber-necking to which we are frequently drawn.

On Raising Our Sons

'On Raising Our Sons' by guest blogger Monica Rhea Graham (as posted on her Facebook page).

As we were headed to brunch to celebrate My Birthday and our Wedding Anniversary, unbeknownst to us, our son Trei took this picture from the back seat... it's Me and My Honey holding hands (the norm for us). He captioned the picture 'Happy Anniversary' and sent it to us.

I read a few posts today that pointed to the fact that as we raise our sons, remember that we are raising them to be someone's Husband and Father. The fact that Trei felt compelled to capture this Loving image and honor his parents on their Anniversary makes my heart smile and let's me know that he is definitely on the right track.

Just in case you think that your children are not paying attention to what you say and how you move in this world, think again.

One Love!

Walking Bare-footed Over Perilous Paths... A word to those like myself

There is a vacuous liberalism that would have us believe that we can claim our human right to Freedom while slighting our communal call to Responsibility.  This is especially true in the cliched analyses of what is wrong in many communities, and specifically in African American life.

On any given day we can tune in to various media, and read and listen to the arguments that basically posit the view that the reason peoples' lives are the way they are has to do with the overarching influence of some other entity flexing its cultural and economic might to the disadvantage of those perceived as victims in this dynamic. Any contradicting critique of this way of seeing this issue is usually greeted with the reflexive liberalism that we are "blaming the victim for his/her victimization"? Any serious analysis of the socio-economic disparities in our society must account for and acknowledge that such disparities have some roots in the victimization implicit in the liberal critique. It is true that greed and a corrupted sense of being are afflictions in the pathology of our societal dysfunction; but we would be incredibly amiss to end our analysis there.

We cannot ignore the fact that corporate compensation has outpaced the value placed on labor to an extent that a moral society will find abhorrent. This, in some cases, acts as a disincentive to pursue work, especially where the reality is that becoming a welfare recipient is a better option due to the accrual of certain necessary benefits. The current ongoing political haggle over raising the minimum wage highlights much of the impoverished logic that go into objections to  doing what is right for workers and their families. Moral voices must continue to insist on doing the just thing over the loud objections of those who have a stake in maintaining the status quo. Let us note for the sake of History that those objecting to the demands for a livable wage were the same voices against the 40 hour work week, Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, the ACA, and other programs designed to make this a more just and economically secure society.

Having acknowledged the persistent inequities in our society, we must nevertheless not ignore the most fundamental consequence of our claim on Freedom. That consequence is the need to assume responsibility for our present circumstances, and for our futures as individuals and as groups.

I speak as a descendant of a once enslaved people. I was raised by a grandmother who was born in the year 1900. That happens to be one generation removed from the Emancipation Proclamation. I grew up in a house in which the absence of "modern conveniences" was immediately obvious. My children look at me with a pronounced incredulity when I tell them that for most of my primary school years I walked the five or so miles to and from school... barefooted over mostly unpaved roads.

We did not have much in terms of the stuff that many now take for granted, but what we did have were parents (in my case Grandma, and Mother) who inculcated in us, sometimes through harsh means, a sense that we were expected to "do right" regardless of the challenges around us. Remember that dictum about "sparing the rod and spoiling the child"? Disrespect was never tolerated. Laziness was always discouraged. We were taught that "cleanliness was next to godliness", and that went as much for our garbs as it did for the floors of our oh so humble abode.  Despite the scarcity of opportunities, we were nonetheless raised to have great expectations.

Through a connected effort between home and school and church, we got not just an education in the "three Rs", but in the Ten Commandments which we were expected to live out in our relationships. Don't kill. Don't steal. Don't covet. Don't bear false witness. Honor your mother and father so your days may be long...and so on. My Grandma, and in my teenage years my Mom, would ask us "What did you learn in school today?"  When they did not go to church with us we had to tell "What the preacher preached about today".

My Mom knew nothing about Pythagoras' theorem, but it was enough for her to hear me trying to explain something about the square on the hypotenuse being equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. The idea that “the shortest distance between any two points was a straight line joining those two points together” made perfect sense to them as folk who walked almost everywhere. They couldn't help with homework, but they did what they could to make sure that we were doing as we should. We kept the house and our yards clean. It was our duty. No allowances either! We participated in growing and harvesting the food for our sustenance. We were taught to respect our elders. By these means my granny helped my mom raise seven children, all of whom are upstanding productive citizens to this day. What I got from those experiences was a solid foundation for my own life, and a template for raising my own children.

Without belaboring the point, I will put before us the reality that we need to return to some basics. Whether we live in cities  or wherever, there are basic acts of living and growing up that we are ignoring. They are acts of industry. The inculcation of moral and ethical values. Acts of basic decency. Cleanliness. These are the foundations which we are ignoring to our peril. With regards to the business of  being free, we have come to the bank of our lives without the collateral of assumed responsibility. By so doing we are complicit in the impoverishment of our own circumstances.

And oh yes... I remember spending part of a summer with my father in my preteen years - but I never met saw him again until my brother and I and our mother went in search of him just before my twenty first birthday. My brother was a year and a few months younger than I. We still remember the tears he shed when he finally realized who these two young men standing beside the woman he once knew were.

We loved our father, but his tears were his. He chose to act out his freedom by ignoring his responsibilities to two sons that he helped bring into this world. His pain is demonstrative of the peril of claiming his freedom while ignoring his sacred duty to be responsible... Kinda like walking barefooted over a perilous path.

You Are Only Human...

Superman is a figment of our imagination, as dynamic a figment as we can imagine, but even he has his kryptonite.

We are all prone to influences that have deleterious effects on us and on our ability to be the dynamic operators we wish we could be in our various worlds. As such there are times when we succumb to being tired.  We become torn by the various challenges that are ever present in the course of our lives. Those challenges come from within and without. They originate in our own deficiencies as individuals. They come from the inevitable bruising of lives lived in the real world where things don't always pan out according to our idealism.

Beyond our desire to rise to every circumstance lies that bothersome reality that we are in fact breakable. We discover, much to our chagrin, that we are vulnerable to the battering that comes our way in the course of the many transactions that we are agents of. And so it behoves us to periodically pause, and take stock of our need of repair.

That nagging headache. That developing tendency to snap at everyone about  everything. The repeated collisions of our feet and our other body parts with objects that more and more seem to be “in the way”. An inability to focus. That creeping hypertension. The inability to summon the energy we need to get going at the start of our day. The fact that rest does not come when we lay down to sleep. The unwelcome observation that we are becoming more and more absent in our most intimate relationships. The deficit of joy that everyone around us now notice, and that we can feel in ourselves. These are but a few of the indicators that become present in our lives when we are operating on the ragged edges of the wear and tear that is a natural part of being. And while it is natural that living will take its toll on us, continuing to operate in a state of disrepair should never become the norm… as so often it does. Ignoring the need for personal repair eventually has disastrous consequences.

In the face of the many demands of life, there comes a time when we are required to pay attention to the signs and symptoms of the developing dysfunctions in ourselves. These dysfunctions have physical, intellectual, and spiritual manifestations. They adversely affect our ability to get up and go. They present as distortions in judgement, rendering us unable to think straight about the most basic problems we face. Eventually they cause us to fail in all the relationships essential to maintaining balance, and achieving the success we desire in our world.

To head off the very real breakdown that can result from being worn out, we must heed the squeaky noises coming from our own internal commotion. There comes a season to retreat from the ever-present demands of our lives that eventually wear us down. There comes a time to reflect  on our approach to things, and the results we have been harvesting for ourselves and in our relationships. These are prerequisite steps which must be taken if we are to renew ourselves in ways that will lead to the kind of revitalization that impacts positively on every aspect of our being in the world. Take time off for self-repair... or suffer the unfortunate consequences.

Needed Now... A Remedy For Hate

Then Senator Barack Hussein Obama in his now celebrated address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004 declared:

“… even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats…”

Senator Obama went on to become President Obama. His time in office was marked by his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the passage of seminal legislation such as the Affordable Care Act - now known as Obamacare. His Presidency was also, without doubt, marked by a significant challenge to the notion of a united country -  which was the main thesis of his 2004 speech. Those who hoped that we could put issues of race behind us were in for a rude awakening.

With the coming of a Black family to the White House we learned to our chagrin that there is in fact a Black America, and a White America. In the face of the hope-full-ness of the first African American President -  white supremacists came with a vengeance … to take their country back. This sentiment now finds fulfillment in the presence of Donald Trump in the White House - his stated commitment… to make America great again - is one which reenergized the likes of white supremacist David Duke, and the KKK. Every right wing racist extremist now salivates at the prospect of making America white again. They have all collectively embraced Trump as their new savior.

The essence of white supremacist sentiment in the United States of America is captured in a now infamous statement that Abraham Lincoln made in the context of a political debate in Charleston, Illinois on September 18, 1858. While there has been considerable discussion as to whether or not Lincoln harbored racism as a fact of his own cultural and ideological disposition, this statement in and of itself captures the gist of white supremacist thinking on issues critical to the lives of black folk. Lincoln's words, in this circumstance, demonstrate the awkward position that politicians put themselves in when they speak out of both sides of their mouths on a critical issue such as this. On this occasion he bites his own tongue when he responds to the prodding of a political opponent about his involvement in the abolitionist movement by stating:

"I will say that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, ...that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of  qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

Lets talk about "inferior" and "superior" positions for a moment. There is a remarkably pathetic quality that marks the logic of the white supremacist. In his effort to justify his culture of exploitation he must employ the tactic of subjugation, and he must codify this in his laws and his philosophy of life. Thus he assigns an arbitrary "inferiority" to those he exploits based on their most obvious difference - color. One can see why they hate Marx... he has a better explanation - power. Marx points out that in a culture of exploitation all relationships are necessarily power relationships. Thus when reactionary half literates talk about black racists, ask them what black institution in our society has the power to exploit and victimize white people. In a culture based on exploitation - as in Slavery - the underlying power dynamic breeds fear for the simple reason that you must always watch your back when your prosperity is based on the brutal exploitation of others. Fear is an inescapable consequence of the dysfunctions inherent in a culture of oppression; and hate is a fruit of this fear. The one proceeds from the other.

Hate is the torment that fear breeds; and White Supremacy is nothing more than the agency of this dynamic. The oppressor lives in fear, and therefore his hatefulness. 

The cancer of hate that thrives in the gut of this nation needs to be diagnosed as such. It needs to be subjected to the necessary radical treatment that we reserve for any malady that threaten our lives. Make no mistake about it - people are dying from this sickness in our midst. It is not good enough that we engage in occasional outpouring of emotions when those infected with the disease of white racism spew their nasty venom at will. We have witnessed the snuffing out of vulnerable lives like those in that church in South Carolina, and most recently the killing of an African American man in New York City by a white supremacist who traveled hundreds of miles with the expressed purpose of murdering black men.

It is past time that this nation becomes proactive about its collective well-being. As a nation we are a house divided. That division is realized in the negation of every ideal that a hope-filled Senator Obama espoused in 2004. Wisdom and History have taught us that a nation that nourishes discord is destined for destruction. The cantankerous political argument regarding Healthcare that has dominated the news in recent years is itself a product of the issue of racial dysfunction in this society. Naming the Affordable Care Act "Obamacare" was a way of denigrating it by appealing to the racist underbelly of a nation steeped in a history of bigotry. It is almost humorous to note that many who opposed "Obamacare" did not realize that it was in fact the ACA ... yes... the same insurance they were about to lose under "Trumpcare". 

The significance of Obama's legacy powerfully impacting one fifth of this nation's economy is not lost on those who would make his complexion - rather than his convictions - the issue. It is time to focus on preventive actions that will address the cancer of hate, a function of the racism in our country's body politic. Beyond Obamacare and Trumpcare, diagnosing and rooting out this malady must become our top national priority.

A Concupiscent Embrace Of Spring

 It is the end of that recurring season of frigidness, and she has come again... 
The scars of what seems like too many days in the cold are still present, and all around me. We all have those scars no matter where we find ourselves, they are the unmistakable impressions of lives lived out in the uncomfortable open. We are not all threatened by frostbite. But like deciduous trees our leaves fall off, and our limbs are left bare to embrace the elements during the days of cold. Those days of discomfort come and go in our lives wherever we are… the extent of our exposure, a matter of degrees. For some of us, on those seemingly endless days, the presence of sunlight does very little to quell the wrath of Jack Frost. Threat of frostbite or not, we all experience that season in our lives when not much flourishes...or grows for that matter. Even the “evergreen” will testify to this.

We have been told by the more “seasoned” among us that there is no such thing as bad weather… just bad clothes. There is undeniable wisdom in that old adage, but I beg to differ. Heavy coats and appropriately insulated boots or not, bad weather is a fact of our experience. It is a reality that tends to wear us out despite our best efforts at clothing ourselves against it. We may dress ourselves up in its presence, but its impact remains nonetheless unmistakably wearisome.

Squirrels hide their nuts. Birds fly South to more agreeable climes. And we… well we either imitate the birds, or we bundle up till the days become more accessible to the company of the sun. For some, the option to shut things down and retreat to places where we can hibernate is rather appealing... it seems to come naturally. For others the challenges of daily survival dictate that we adjust our pace and keep moving forward. Like the mail, there are items that we need in our lives which must be delivered despite seasonal and temperamental challenges.

She has been gone for awhile, and I have missed her...
I have grown accustomed to her coming and going… she does so with an abiding constancy. When she is with me I experience that wonderful reawakening that affirms again the presence of the roots of my potential effervescence. The stimulating vitality of her aura makes me sprout again in all the right places. Yes, she makes me breathe and live again in ways that celebrate my fecundity. Savoring this aspect of her impact on me, I sometimes enquire of her as to why she has to go as she does… And she, in her everlasting patience, reminds me that it is essential that we have time apart.

Discerning my angst she places her kind, stilling, fingers on my quivering lips; and like the poet Gibran, she breathes into my ears the substantial sentiments… There must be spaces in our togetherness... Sentiments that, like myself, some may find difficult to embrace and cultivate, but that are nevertheless so essential to our individual and communal well-being. Spaces for rest and restoration. Spaces to discover and be discovered. Spaces to be and to become. Spaces for everything and for no-thing. Spaces to create and to re-create… Spaces… Yes… Let there be spaces...

As has been the case, it was around the beginning of Summer that we were last together. After that season of resurrection and reinvigoration she inspired me to nurture the products of our mutual insemination. With the help of her warming influence and the blessed showers of our fertile dalliance, we together sowed and nurtured the seeds that are witnesses to our divine multiplicity. In time it would be up to me to reap and to store as needs be, the abundant harvest of our innate creativity.

“Your life and mine are the place where Heaven and Earth intersect”, she always says. 
I believe I now understand what she means. It is true that we are both creatures and creators. Our lives are the gardens where the gods come to play… where they resort to connect with their primeval clay. I know without doubt that the place where we connect is idyllic. It is indeed a place of unmistakable bliss. But beyond my agreeable reflections during the seasons of her absence, there remains my persistent longing for her. I can state with a certain guilty pleasure that our intersection is the place where I most want to have my life. Those who know her will agree.

My longing however, is fortunately not a function of any essential intransigence. I am certain of this because I have come to trust her wisdom. I have come to recognize and affirm the need for, and the nature of the spaces in our togetherness. Those spaces help us to keep and maintain the boundaries between our needs and our wants. It is essential to the cause of balance in our lives that they be kept clearly defined. They serve to prevent the kind of intransigence that clouds our judgement, and render redundant our claims to any right of self-determination. Our recognition of the value of the essential spaces in our experience is what helps us to connect with the time honored declaration... “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens… ”. This is a self-evident truth about which the "The Preacher" speaks to us with a certainty that is inescapable:

“A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”


 Discarding the heavy garb of a season of frigidity… Come Spring!
There is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing. As much as we may revel in our wants, it is the path of necessity that keeps us appropriately focused. We can, and should enjoy our wants without compromising our needs. The cultivation of appropriate focus helps us to transition effectively into the various seasons of our lives and their natural demands. I have been feeling her unmistakable approach for some days now. There is a warmth that is in no way transitory, and it is all around me. Yes she is here, this is no tease. There is a stirring in my sacred places that tells me that I am ready, that she is near… That the time has come for us to cohabitate again.

The bulbs that laid dormant underground have started to shoot their way through fertile topsoil. The limbs that seemed asleep yesterday are now displaying their multiple eruptions of vitality… their succulent sprouts soon to be leaves providing shade, and shelter, and sustenance. The geese are gathered again around the ponds. They are as loud as ever as they announce their presence and mark their territory. It is breeding season. And youth... Youth have discarded the heavy garb of caution in favor of the more flattering wear that invites passionate encounter. Spring is. Here again.

I awoke this morning and there she was in all her magnificent splendor. I opened my eyes, and all my senses rejoiced at her extraordinarily enlivening and fragrant presence. Her beautiful visage as manifestly magnetic as always. Seeing her, I stood up. And I advanced with unhurried steps toward the twin windows of my dwelling. I unlatched them and swung them wide open. Her air came in at a pace that matched my strides. It was neither hot nor cold, just air as it is meant to be on such a day as this. There was no bluster. She was calm, comfortable, and joy-evokingly splendid. She was non-abrasively enjoyable. Nakedness-inspiring. She was there with me, occupying the very space in which I stood...

…  And we embraced… With an unhurried kiss we simultaneously inhaled the breath of our mutuality. And time stood still as if to salute the passing of another season… as if to honor the letting down of our guard on this new day. And I absorbed her in all her essentialness. And she enveloped me as only she could. And we knew each other… Again.

An Uncircumcised Honesty

The process of reflecting provides opportunities to take an all-around look at ourselves. It allows us to see ourselves in greater detail than we are usually comfortable with. As an objective looker I challenge myself to see me as others might.  I give myself a chance to come to understand why someone else might not be comfortable with certain aspects of the me that I present daily.

As an honest viewer of myself I might find some aspects of me that I need to fix for my own wellbeing, and for the sake of the health of some of my relationships. Useful reflection is grounded in a raw, uncircumcised honesty. It lays us out in front of ourselves in all our awkward bareness, and presses us to come to terms with the ragged parts of our personhood.

At times we tend to talk about reflection as if it were some kind of esoteric abstraction. In response to that particular approach I would say like Ludwig Wittgenstein, a disciple of Sigmund Freud...  "Don't think, look!". The truth is usually right there, unblinkingly staring back at us. 

Meaningful reflection is an engagement in a decidedly unflattering evaluation of self, that forces to the fore the most authentic and at times unflattering pieces of who we are. It initiates a process of personal distillation that relieves us of the froth that is our superficiality.

In meaningful reflection we allow truth to become an ally in opening us up to the possibilities of becoming in accordance with our greatest potential. By truth I mean those transcendent statements that call us to be more than any of the existing estimates of who we are, or for that matter, who we can become.

In the course of our experience we are defined by the things we do, and by the things that are done to us. To be defined thus is to be limited accordingly. As a transcendent dynamic, Truth nullifies the limitations that Experience fetters us with. 

Through meaningful reflection then, we are empowered to make declarations about ourselves that transcend the facts that previously operated against us to stunt our growth.

Media Hacks And Political Mayhem

Corporate media is now fully engaged in exploiting the news-worthiness of the Russian hack of the US presidential elections. To hear them tell it, we should all be concerned about the atrocity of a foreign power's manipulation of our sacred electoral process. They want to now manufacture outrage toward Putin and his interests, and in the process expunge themselves - the Media that is - of any complicity in what is essentially a circus of economic corruption.

If Putin and his forces were able to drown the the prospects of a Clinton presidency through the power of speech, vulgar as it was... and always is... they were in fact only executing that same strategy that powerful imperialist forces have used to determine the political fate of many individuals and nations. I remember as a boy growing up in Jamaica, how the US Government of the time painted Fidel Castro of Cuba as the devil incarnate in order to foil any alliance between progressive movements in Jamaica and our neighbors ninety miles away. In an ideologically bipolar world this kind of operation remains a fact of life. Remember that old cliche... What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

We live in a world where power is measured in dollars and cents. An abundance of the one sets up the proliferation of the other. The US Supreme Court has ruled that "money is speech", so those with the most dollars are able then to rule through the drowning out of the voices of those without great wealth. Ultimately corporate media is driven... in all things, by its profit motif. Those who own and operate the media complexes that muscle their way into our attention, have no more noble an aspiration than to maximize their profit potential. They know that it takes money to make money... to wield power... and they are committed to the making of money by any means necessary.

To accomplish their goal, programmers must attract and hold our attention. The formula for doing so is a rather uncomplicated one... present more and more of the stuff that their core audience loves to see and hear. Those who want truth and esthetically uplifting content will generally not be satisfied with the content on our most dominant networks. These networks feed at the very bottom of Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs'. They tap into the insecurities that drive those still focused on their own survival in a dog eat dog world, and cultivate their fears with an unrelenting persistence. This is the allure of a Donald Trump... this is what explains his perch at the pinnacle of American power. Trumpism is an appeal to the fears that drive the insecurities which provide fuel for the engines of a morally bankrupt society. The roots of that moral bankruptcy run deep in American history and culture.

A culture of insecurity has become the desired environment for those who seek to profit from an audience still preoccupied with issues of its own basic survival. Through well honed "dog whistles", groups are turned against groups. The crass political banter that passes as "discussion" on daily news programs are real representations of this dynamic. The most basic of our human concerns are exploited through the grossest of our individual instincts. Our need to procreate physically and economically, and our anxieties about our ultimate decline become the triggers that get us to act out against each other in the cultural and political arena. Sex and violence... Self-propagation and death... These are the triggers constantly being fingered to keep us on the edge of our existential seats. They grab and fondle the  genitalia of the socially and economically vulnerable in order to keep them distracted from the real issues that affect their lives. This grossly aggressive indulgence greases the ball and socket that enables the long arm of our crass economic and political culture.

From cartoons to fake reality shows, every dramatic medium is utilized to cultivate mindsets that then become the agencies of the mayhem that we witness all too often in our society. Our preoccupation with the underlying insecurities in our psyches is what explains the phenomenal rise of politicians who continue to ride the angst of a declining middle class to the very heights of social, economic, and political power.

By generalizing about immigrants as rapists and murderers,  and those with different religious convictions as terrorists, these charlatans tap into and exploit the most basic fears of the group they see as their ticket to the the top of the political hill. The whores in corporate media then partner with their political counterparts in the enterprise of  hate-mongering to maximize their audience share... and therefore their profit margins. It is time for us to tune them out. 

Trumpism... The New Great Hope Of The Prison-Industrial Complex

Since the 1970s the prison population in the USA has grown by leaps and bounds. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies:

“No country incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than the United States at 716 per 100,000 people”. 

This fact stands out in light of our claim to being the “beacon of Freedom”. It is necessary that we ask why… Why do we lock away our people at such an outrageous rate? Unsurprisingly the answer to this question may lie at the very heart of our socio-economic ideal. At the very core of this issue is a version of capitalism …expressed as unbridled, rapacious greed.

Vicky Pelaez writes the following in an article titled “The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?” :

“There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.” 

Addressing the same issue, Andy Kroll writes the following in an article titled “This Is How Private Prison Companies Make Millions Even When Crime Rates Fall” published in Mother Jones magazine, Sept 2013:

“We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Last year, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate their state-funded prisons. But what made CCA’s pitch to those governors so audacious and shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clause demanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percent full at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.

Occupancy requirements, as it turns out, are common practice within the private prison industry. A new report by In the Public Interest, an anti-privatization group, reviewed 62 contracts for private prisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In the Public Interest found that 41 of those contracts included occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full.”

Paying The Piper... Calling The Tune

It has been reported that the Trump Campaign received significant contributions from those who hope to boost their profits from the mass incarceration that is a stain on America's conscience. Well they have made their investment in Trump, and now they are looking forward to reaping the benefits. They have paid the piper, and now they are calling the tune to which they hope he will march. How, you ask, will they halt the trend of locking up people for profit that Hillary Clinton promised would be reversed under her Presidency? For the answer to that question look no further than  the new vigor that now characterizes immigration enforcement laws. 

There are by conservative estimates now over 11 million undocumented persons living in the US. For decades the focus has been on acting mainly against those with criminal histories. By all indications that will now change. Enforcement will now target everyone of those living in the shadows. Those who have invested in locking up people for profit must be smiling... all the way to the bank.

The Fix... A Love That Grows In Us & Between Us

How do we repair the breach that frustrates us, and that divides us against ourselves and from one another? How do we renew ourselves and find the oneness of being that characterizes sound, healthful living? We may begin, as has long been established, by recognizing the need to fix ourselves, and then proceed to seek the restoration of our relationships wherever possible.

Of some afflictions we are the authors; of others we may be the victims. With honest reflection we find ourselves needing to forgive ourselves our own indiscretions, and seek forgiveness where we have been the source of pain. In the course of this healing initiative we will find it necessary to forgive those who have trespassed against us.  We will also discover that we cannot fix every relationship around us that have in some way impacted us. It becomes necessary here to just walk away… let time and distance deal with those. Forgive where you can, forego where you must.

There are many stumbling blocks in our personal journeys that can make our way forward rather treacherous. Some of these are there as facts of our lives, others we may have had a hand in creating. Instead of continuously tripping ourselves up, we must eventually find ways to make these potential obstacles into stepping stones… (cliche intended). This becomes possible when we harbor the wisdom… and the courage… to avoid or navigate our way over and around the scandals that give life to our personal and interpersonal dysfunctions. Wisdom enters into the places where we live our lives when we allow humility to open our doors to her. She enters in when we are ready to accept her help. She takes our hands when we are ready to let her lead. She speaks when we are ready to listen.

In a culture that celebrates the rambunctious, unproductive argument – we must learn to face the circumstances before us with resolve, and speak the truth to and about them without malice. Deep breath… deeeep breath. This is never easy, but there is a reward for trying. There is certain liberation that comes from diffusing our anger. That freedom to act creativelycomes from our restraining the impulse to “let the other person have it” – verbally and otherwise. We can learn how to free ourselves from our own harshness. Truth spoken without venom has a certain healing quality. Instead of creating discord, it acts as a tonic. Instead of depressing us, it acts as an elixir. Instead of poisoning the discourse, it acts as an antidote. This way of engaging makes us stronger. It helps to restore our joy. Ultimately it might be the remedy we need for what ails us.

The freedom to act creatively is enabled by two dynamics… Forgiveness and Love. While this season is still new, we are forcefully reminded to focus on seminal events that figure significantly in effecting our redemption. This is that moment in time when we seek to facilitate the birthing of the Christ among us. This Christ is the universal Influence that seeks to redeem us… to restore us to our best selves, and to reconcile us to our Creator and to each other.

Our redemption necessarily begins with the recognition and admission of our need to be forgiven for our own tendencies to miss the mark… to mess up… to sin. Our lives are works in progress. None of us have any claim to perfection. This being the case, we can relieve ourselves of the burden of guilt that accumulates over time because of that naivety which evidences our lack of wisdom. If we can face the fact of our own unfinished-ness, then we might not be so terribly judgmental in our assessment of the shortcomings of others.

We begin our own healing with understanding the need for forgiveness in ourselves, and in others. First we admit our flaws and our faults… and those of others around us, and then we make a commitment to walk away from them. Forgiveness is the unburdening that comes when we act to leave our faults and those of our neighbor in the past where they belong.

The other aspect of the freedom to act creatively has to do with the cultivation of that resource which is in fact the ultimate expression of our wholeness. That resource is Love. A meaningful and durable expression of Love must go beyond any romantic notion of being together. Romance most certainly has its place, but we should all be aware that Eros has always been, and will always be a transient. Feelings come and go based on the culture of convenience and the fatuousness that typifies many of our interactions. The cultivation of a true Love must be grounded in a sense of selflessness – not in the shallowness of our egos. A ‘love’ which does not serve us beyond the moment, and beyond the trappings of an infatuation that is mostly concerned with our own self-satisfaction, is never durable.

Love in its purest and most lasting form is an unconditional commitment to what is just. A true love is rooted in a genuine concern for the growth and well-being of the lover and the loved. That kind of love rescues us from the miry clay of our own self-indulgence, and from the tricky self-indulgence of others. We will not always like each other, but we have a moral/ethical duty to treat others as we want to be treated ourselves. The carried consciousness of this duty becomes the agency for enhancing what is best about us, and what can be really good between us. Love grows in us and between us the grace that enables us to be vessels of the Christ who comforts the lonely, feeds the hungry, is the healer of the broken-hearted, and the liberator of the oppressed.