A More Virtuous Life... A Worthwhile Resolution

“The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough…” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Virtue is defined as: moral goodness; upright living; righteousness. It is the conduct of one’s life in accordance with principles of Righteousness. It is doing to others as you would have them do to you. Virtue challenges us to lift each other up in the face of circumstances that are down-pressing. Virtue is that light in the darkness that warms the cold, comforts the afflicted, reassures the frightened, and points the way to those who may be lost.

Virtue moves us toward each other. It makes us care in a culture where one person’s mis-step or misfortune is treated as nobody else’s concern. Virtue opens our eyes where it is more convenient to be blind. When we care, we align our lives with the cause of Justice. When we align our lives with the cause of Justice, we find ourselves in solidarity with the purpose of working to liberate our fellowmen from all circumstances that are dehumanizing. These circumstances range from personal habits of drug and sexual addiction to  the corporate cultivation of inhumane working conditions.

Virtue calls us to call each other to personal and corporate accountability. It makes us constructively critical of our national perspectives and priorities. Virtue rejects our individual and corporate tendencies toward inhumane practices. It condemns torture and police criminality. It challenges us to let our light shine as a guide to others. Virtue reminds us that the Justice we demand of others, institutional and national, must also be evident in our own behavior as citizens, as parents, as co-workers, and as neighbors.

Virtue reminds us that an authentic love is not a function of our simple-minded heroism. It is not enough to give the unfortunate a turkey so that we can then feel good about ourselves. A “hand-out” is okay. We are reminded of our human duty to feed the hungry. However, a hand up is always better. The empowerment of persons is the real mission to which we are called. We must remain mindful of the reality that we cannot do for others what they should, and must do for themselves in the course of their humanity.

An authentic love, a virtuous love, is the real work that we must each do to save ourselves from the despair bred by dysfunctional living. What we can all do for each other is to lovingly, but firmly, point the way to self-redemption. No person can save another person’s soul. The cultivation of self-control is absolutely necessary in each life. Virtuous self-control is liberating. It leads to a state of good health. Moral health. Physical health. Cultural health. Spiritual health. That is what salvation is! Anything less is religious vanity. Nothing more.

The New Year comes... Again. We appropriately want to refocus our lives through resolutions designed to make us better.  We want to become more healthy. We want to become more prosperous. We desire to shed the vanity that eventually leads to our destruction. Ultimately it is our commitment to more virtuous living that will allow us to realize the most noble of our aspirations. We are reminded by Ralph Waldo Emerson that the essence of the greatness to which we aspire is the knowledge... the perception that virtue is enough. 

Happy New Year!!

Ask Yourself...

Ask yourself “What do you want?”; and “What are you willing to give in return for the prize of your obsession…?”
Do not answer in haste…

What are your limits… the measure of your strivings…
How powerful is the force of your drive…
Can you separate your passions from your goals…
Can you prevent their submersion in the shallow pond of someone else’s desire?

Can you direct your days so that your dreams will be realized…
Can you defer your want of immediate gratification to the end of your ultimate fulfillment…?

And about the ghost of doubt…
Can you repair the breach of fear…
Are you able to revive yourself when discouragement attempts to suffocate you… to quench your desire…?
Can you muster the resolve to come again when you feel that you have spent your last shell…?

Can you maintain the definition of yourself when the praise or ruinous witicism of other voices attempt to redefine you in terms of their convenience…
Can you maintain your focus in the light of the redirecting glare of public advisement…?

And finally…
Can you be honest… brutally so if necessary… first with yourself… and then with all else about everything…?
Can you forgive yourself your immediate failings… and act with the force of your forwardness…
Can you join in the laughter when dissenting voices pour scorn and ridicule on the blaze of your primordial fire…?

Can you learn to love yourself like this…
And if you can… Will you…
And if you will… Then won’t you…

The Season Of Giving

"He has freely scattered His gifts to the poor, His righteousness endures forever;…” 
Psalm 112:9 (NIV)

Take a deep breath and relax now …

As we emerge from what is usually a very hectic time of the year, let us take a moment to reflect and look forward to how we can continue our lives and relationships in meaningful ways in the days ahead. The stresses of finding the right gift for someone, the joy of receiving a longed-for wish, the head-shaking blandness of getting something as redundant as a tie, or another pair of socks, or sweater that we do not need or want, the empty feeling of just picking something for the sake of picking something to give, can leave us exhausted to say the least.

Let us leave behind the craziness of crowded malls filled with last minute shoppers. Every year we swear that we are not going to go crazy ‘doing this thing’ again. And every year, to some degree, we all do. I have told my friends, my children, my co-workers, that instead of buying me stuff that I am sure I don’t need; they should instead  find someone who is in need, and give them something for me. For the most part they do not listen, and I understand. I do.

This has been, and maybe still is, a season of complex emotions. There is a genuine need to reach out and touch someone. There is a need to be touched ourselves.  We want to share the love that in many cases has gone untold, or is dormant in our chests and in our stomachs, or that has sort of become sub-conscious. Our love goes underground in our lives, waiting for a time and place to be expressed. Unfortunately that time is usually when one of us is about to have our physical remains placed beneath the ground. At funerals that is! This then, is a season when we become aware of the many significant others around us, and of the impact that our presence makes in each other’s lives.

It is also a time when some become acutely aware of their loneliness. In the midst of all our merry making, the increase in the number of suicides this time of year is a critical reminder to us of how absent we are in the world of someone who really needs us.  In the very midst of great abundance, there is a desperate poverty that afflicts many. The Good News is that in fact we, none of us, need to feel abandoned to the destiny of hopelessness that is implied in our desperate poverty. Hope for our world comes in the form of the God in us who is Love. It is this God that became incarnate in the life of Christ that we should be celebrating all year long.

“He has scattered His gifts to the poor …”

The God of infinite resources comes to us in all our circumstances of need. Our needs vary. Some of us need some things. Some of us need something more. The God who is Love calls us to shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the widow and the fatherless, speak the Word of salvation to those in prison, liberate the oppressed and the oppressor… The gifts of God are tailored to our individual needs.  He gives his gifts indiscriminately to us in accordance with the circumstances of our poverty. Yes, God scatters his gifts to the poor! That means all of us!

"His righteousness endures forever"

So we make a big deal of our efforts in what has essentially become an orgy of commercialism. Then the season passes. The caroling goes away. And we return to the ‘being absent’ in each other’s lives that really is our standard. Ok, so I am being a bit hard. I am a hard guy, but you get my drift. In the end it is not the things that we purchase with money that matter most, but our continued loving/caring presence in each other’s lives. It is how we continue to… be with/walk with…, one another down the roads of life. It is the crucial matter of how we continue to do right by each other when no bells are ringing.

Let us remember that the greatest gift we can give in the Season of Giving is the gift of a Love that endures.

Overheated Rhetoric and Existential Disasters

“IF I were a careless candle

Waxing eloquent from the flame of my own burning

I would set free by my heated tongue

The liquefied rantings of my softened core

And for a fleeting moment touch with my vanishing heat

The exposed senses of those who seek my glow…

And just as my warmth were known I would go cold

Returning to my hardened state…

If I was a careless candle

I would promise you light and warmth and then go out and leave you

Cold…and dark…and hard”

( "Lukewarm Thoughts" ...From my book... “Of Scattered Seed and Broken Souls.” )

The right to freely express ourselves has been enshrined in the highest Code of our society. It is one of the things that we claim with an almost religious zeal. Unfortunately we are not always very conscientious about the impact of our expressions on each other, and if we are, then we do not seem to care.

The claiming of this right has an implicit assumption that as a society we are civilized enough to bear the burdens: intellectual, political, cultural, spiritual, social, and  legal; that the wanton expressions of our “freedom of speech” sometimes create. This is a careless assumption. Time and again, events have shown this assumption to be problematic to say the least. Ideologues, whether they be politicians, ex-politicians, media commentators, or religious figures; continue to be overwhelmed by the intrinsic ramifications of the frivolous exercise of this “right”. Even as we speak we are witnesses to the negative banter of opposing voices as they seek to address the many issues that haunt our society; from torture, to crime and violence, to community policing. We are duly concerned about  quality of the analysis proceeding from the minds and mouths of many of the persons who present themselves as leaders on the various stages in our culture.  

For better or worse, our words create realities that we must then deal with in the various circumstances of our lives. As the agents of our thoughts words express the deepest longings of our souls. Our words, at their best, create peace. At their worst, they result in tragic conflicts. Our words can create feelings of compassion, or they can engender emotions that negate our efforts at well needed reconciliation. Our expressions can build the bridges that bring us together, or they can cause the kind of alienation that makes neighborliness almost impossible. Our words can heal, or they can cause wounds from which we never recover.

While we cherish the right to freely express ourselves, let us never forget the sacred responsibility that we have to make this world better. Let us help with the healing; not exacerbate the hurt. Our words create our world… for better or for worse

Vietnam... China... Why Not Cuba?

As the crow flies, it is 90 miles from the southernmost tip of the United States to Cuba. With a little help people swim that far. From the lips of self-serving politicians that distance becomes the equivalent of Earth's distance from its furthest star. The distance between us and our Spanish speaking neighbor to the near South has grown as a result of a myriad of political and economic dysfunctions that have lasted for more than two generations starting in 1961. These dysfunctions have become almost unfathomable especially in light of our current relationship with countries like  Communist China and Vietnam. We restored trade with the latter over twenty years ago when Bill Clinton was President. Communist China is not just a trading partner, but the largest holder of US debt.

How do we rationalize the maintainance of the current state of affairs with Cuba in the light of our dalliances with the largest Communist nation on Earth, and Vietnam with whom we fought a war that cost around two million Vietnamese lives and close to sixty thousand American lives? Don't ask the political whores who "serve" in our Congress. Like typical prostitutes, their semantic flourishes are tailored to bring them the benefits of the illicit "congress" that defines their existence. Despite the hardships that the Cuban people have to withstand as a result of a senseless embargo, they continue to shamelessly display their tired political wares in the face of History's rebuke. Subsequent to President Obama's announcement of steps to end the embargo today, Senator Marco Rubio mustered up the following propagandist jewel:

This entire policy shift announced today is based on an illusion, based on a lie,” Rubio, who is the son of Cuban immigrants, told reporters on Capitol Hill. "The White House has conceded everything and gained little."

Is this guy serious? For whom does he speak, except for his political benefactors who have a vested interest in perpetuating the current dysfunction? He certainly does not speak for the Cuban people, most of whom do not look like the typical Miami Cuban or for that matter his alter ego and Senate colleague Ted Cruz. This embargo must end. People of conscience, from the Pope to the leadership of the Caribbean community of nations, have said so in no uncertain terms. The CARICOM Secretariat issued the following statement recently:
"Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Honourable Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda called on the United States President and Congress to end its “senseless embargo of Cuba now.” 

Prime Minister Browne was speaking at the opening ceremony of the Fifth CARICOM Cuba Summit in Havana, Cuba on Monday.  He said that CARICOM’s solidarity with Cuba was manifested by the Region’s repeated calls “in every council in every part of the world” for an end to the embargo."

In announcing the coming change in US policy President Obama said this:

“Neither the American nor Cuban people are well served by a rigid policy that’s rooted in events that took place before most of us were born. These 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked. It’s time for a new approach.”

A majority of Americans agree. I have been to Cuba. It is a beautiful country with people whose human aspirations are no different from ours. We must join with the Pope and Cuba's neighbors in the Caribbean and Latin America in calling for the end of a policy that traps our brothers and sisters of this nation in an unnecessary poverty. End the unjust embargo now. As for Senator Rubio... Well suffice it to say : "In the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty." Let Cuba get her share of the abundance all around. "Oh island in the sun..."

Against Torture... Reckoning With The Burning Bush In Our Midst

In the brave new world where hashtags reign a little less than supreme, the #TortureReport has become a source of contention about what kind of society we are. People of conscience cannot ignore the kind of uncivilized brutality that has been a prominent feature of our national machismo for generations. Truth be told... this machismo, which has been celebrated from the entertainment perches of Hollywood to the political podiums of the Capitol, has become the Achilles Heel of our democracy.  We cannot pretend that we are unaware of the activities of our CIA with regard to the legacy of morally repugnant actions that agency has pursued in the name of the American people over many decades. It is mind-boggling to listen to the rationalizations of the criminality of torture in terms of its "effectiveness". The moral illiteracy of those who indulge in these rhetorical orgies is appalling. The complicity of the Press, while not surprising, is nonetheless disturbing. Many still hold on to the idea that they are a vital organ of our democracy.  They still claim that mantle, but we have good reason to doubt.

The ever resilient Nelson Mandela, patriarch of a new and revolutionary consciousness, articulates a vision of our humanity that we must all necessarily embrace in our efforts at building sustainable democracies in a more viable world. Our communities, he insists, must be built by people who realize that to guarantee our own freedom we must respect and do everything we can to enhance the freedom of others. He speaks to us as a man who endured nearly three decades of State persecution in his own country, South Africa, under an Apartheid regime. A society that predicates it's security on the continued oppression of people will never be truly viable. Indeed it is actively sowing the seeds of its own demise. There is a great body of evidence pointing to the fact that our rogue-ish behavior as a nation functions to create the very insecurity we claim to want to deter. We reap what we sow.

At the very core of our idealism as a nation is a philosophical insistence that "all persons are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". This is the central idea informing the exceptionalism we claim as a nation. Those who insist on the validity of the fundamental ideals informing our nation's origins, it's growth and  it's development, must never forget that our Faith has its genesis in a moral and ethical relationship with the God of Moses. That would be HIS/HER voice calling out to us from the “burning bush” of Justice. It is a voice that demands that we reign in our scandalous propensity to the kind of obscene bloodlust that issues in torture and murder. The Righteous Source from which that voice emanates speaks to the reality that we are inextricably connected in our "being", and are therefore essentially affected by all the circumstances that touch each of our lives.

The voice of our supreme moral and ethical Source declares in no uncertain terms that, as a nation,  we must take off the boots of moral ignorance which weigh us down in the muck of injustice. Those boots keep us from advancing overdue liberty-promoting actions toward the persons we have withering away as captives of an unjust process. They are being held in Guantanamo and our other prisons, known and unknown. These captives yearn for deliverance from the liberty-suppressing, life-thwarting circumstances prevalent around them. Their angst becomes the stuff our insecurity... Their pent up rage the impetus of coming explosions.  Our unjust war in Iraq gave birth to what we are now regarding as a terror born out of the Arabian sand. According to a National Geographic article, half a million Iraqis were killed in the war between 2003-2011. Can we discount the tragic consequences of this unjust war? Can we avoid it's tragic consequences? Arab lives matter. They matter just as much as American lives.

The undeniable dynamism of that voice coming from the "bush" of our fate, holds our feet to the fires of Justice. Cover our ears as we might, that same voice echoes disturbingly from the distant “wilderness” of our beginnings as a nation. A nation founded on the ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Justice for all. We have a history still stained by the disgrace of Slavery. A reminder that by "all men" we did not mean all men. Today in America we still have to be reminded that Black lives matter. They matter just as much as White lives... Or Brown lives... Or Red lives... Or Yellow lives. Those who would articulate the dynamic instructions of our moral core are required to have an exegetical moment that is ontologically meaningful. This is not a time to resort to the kind of meaningless obfuscation that calls a crime "a mistake". Repeating platitudes that comfort those who choose various convenient states of inaction while ignoring the need for corrective action, will only cement us in a place of cultural and spiritual decadence. Our claim to moral and political exceptionalism is about to go up in smoke. It is time to return to the faith expressed in our foundational rationale for being America... Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

Beyond the parochialism of our claim to some special existential privilege, ours is a Faith resonating in the powerful vibrations of the internationally acclaimed Robert Nesta Marley:
"Jah come to break downpression,
Rule equality,
Wipe away transgression,
Set the captives free... Set the captive free!... Set the captive free!"  (From the song “Exodus”...)

International Justice- Impartial, Impotent or Indifferent?

"The issue of whether the actions of Israel or Hamas and other associated groups constitute war crimes under international law has dominated the media since the summer. For Israel to suggest that their actions are permitted under international law yet the actions of Palestinian groups constitute war crimes defies logic."

Read more at the link below:

International Justice- Impartial, Impotent or Indifferent?