It must be obvious to any of us that the MAGA appeal is to glorify a world that never was. Nor should it have been.

This imagined world is free from legal constraints. Free from accountability. Free from the traditions of precedent. Free from the principles of decency. Free from credibility. Free from integrity. Freedom from the collegiality among nations – from keeping your word and commitments. Freedom to scoff at universal commandments such as “Thou shalt not kill,” Freedom to violate the status and rights of people as citizens, as refugees, even as accused defendants.

This is a product of the mind of a disturbed child. It is not the mind of a grownup. It is the mind of a “daddy killer.” I have no idea what it was to be the child of Fred Trump. I have no sense at all of his mother or what Donald’s relationship to her was. Whatever the details of his childhood, it is clear Donald did not survive his childhood intact. He is not a competent adult. He has no capacity for compassion, accountability, responsibility. Those are basic prerequisites of citizenship. They are minimum expectations of elected officials.

People who support the agenda, values and actions of Donald Trump are no more adult than he is. They are not fit to serve in our government. They are not fit to vote.

It is time to vote for grownups.

Still standing. The phrase evokes a sense of tenacity, of relentless effort against formidable odds, resisting the power of gravity itself. It may also suggest persistence, pursuing an objective, adhering steadfastly to principle. And it may also apply to simply surviving, sometimes simply through dumb luck.

It isn’t always perceived as a virtue. It might apply to an opponent whose obstinacy is exasperating, or it could represent a pitiful soul who just doesn’t know when to quit.

But to the person described, is there always, or at least often, a felt expression of Will, of the great “I am?” For some it may be the most intense awareness of being alive.

Martinez, California

May 4, 2024

Today’s news about Roe v. Wade is a challenge. It demands a response. Let me repeat: it calls for a response, not merely a reaction. One appeal in my inbox today referred to the writer’s struggle with anger and anguish. That is a reaction, and an understandable one, a heartrending one. To be fair and accurate, the writer went on to advocate action to redress this abominable SCOTUS action, thereby reframing her reaction into a response. If we surrender to anger and anguish, we surrender our power as well. We need more than that. Anger and anguish are not wrong. They are natural, understandable feelings. But they are not effective agents of change. We need go beyond influencing change to become agents of change.

Just « any old change » will not suffice. The goal is more than a different world. It is a better world. For that kind of objective – and the means for achieving it – we need clear minds. We need to acknowledge our fears, anxieties and experiences – without allowing them to cripple us into inaction. We need to identify and pursue pathways to justice, compassion, fairness, and respect.

At the same time, we need to adhere to the values of our objectives in how we assert, advocate and achieve our goals. Our irrational outbursts and action are not better than theirs just because they are ours.

This brings us to the matter of opening our hearts as well as our eyes. There are people who will agree with us in their hearts but oppose us or remain on the sidelines out of genuine fear or mere laziness. We need a place for them as fence-sitting allies in our hearts, just as we will wince at some actions of our strongest comrades. And there must be room in our hearts to acknowledge that some people see the world differently and they will continue to disagree « world without end…. »

What will NOT succeed is inaction. Action without clear objectives will not succeed either. Actions merely expressive of discontent can produce no worthy outcomes either. We need bold action based on worthy values with respect for each other.

Clear minds and open hearts….

In a newsletter I received this week from Giorgia Milne, a friend and teacher, I was struck by a quote at the beginning:

When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order:

Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1977

Possible implications of this assertion keep competing for attention in my mind.

For example, considering the behavior of SARS II 19, a.k.a. Covid, a range of behaviors among humans regarding testing, isolating, masking, vaccinating, distancing (a sea of chaos) has allowed pockets of the virus concentrations (islands of coherence) to evolve into strains that spread very efficiently (a higher order) that are likely at this point to remain among us perhaps forever.

An example of a different kind from my line of work involves considering that an informed, caring, touch (an island of coherence) to any location of a client’s body in pain of any kind (sea of chaos) can function as a fulcrum for the client’s own healing powers to organize around what wants attention and change (a higher order). And sometimes the fulcrum effect evolves from a way I touch the client by listening (!). Sometimes the « touch » is simply and powerfully what Giorgia calls a « Touch of Presence. » And sometimes it may seem structural and clinical, such as pressing directly into an agonizing trigger point for several seconds. In each case, the outcome is often exponentially more significant than the impetus it begins with.

In the arena of politics, I believe the principle may hold true as well. While there are strategies and efforts to mold people’s minds through media, strategies to control power with wealth, I believe the most powerful influences on my mind are personal. People talking in small groups, and especially one to one, touch me deepest. And these exchanges have been inhibited during our isolating, a condition I consider ominous. I believe the health of our present and future will be informed by our capacity to connect and reconnect from the heart as well as the head.

Each of us, potentially, is a « coherent island, » and our world is « a sea of chaos. » We have the capacity to shift the system to a higher order, despite the odds.

I awoke today with this line from e.e. cummings running through my mind. That poem has long been a resonant favorite of mine, rich in spiritual import, powerfully simple, a model of reflective introspection.

But this morning was the day after cataract surgery for my left eye, and with a paper-taped shield partially obstructing my vision, I was not anticipating I would experience the results of the surgery until later today. As I began to move around after arising, however, I began to notice I was seeing things differently: vivid colors, laser-edge clarity, complex textures, depth (seeing through the branches and leaves of our trees to blades of grass on the hill beyond, for example).

This was not the stuff of getting a new pair of lenses for my glasses. This is discovery of a new visual world. It leads me to think I have been looking through a lens effect cinematographers once used (and perhaps still do) to create a fuzzy border around a scene be applying Vaseline to the circumference of a lens.

According to my ophthalmologist, the acuity properties of the new lens should continue to improve for about a month (!). After that, entropy takes over and, as with life itself, it’s all downhill after the peak. Alas! But I do get to go through the process with the right eye in a little over a month. Perhaps that will extend my world of discovery even further ( x-ray vision?).

For me this experience, however fleeting or temporary, goes well beyond the physical, affecting my attitudes and outlook in general. I have a sense of buoyancy as I move around, a degree of expectation wherever I look, an up-ratcheted optimism about whatever is next.

“now the eyes of my eyes are open…”

White wild pear blossoms 

Herald Spring’s sweet surging sap

And all that follows

Some say BE THE CHANGE You seek. Others bear witness, Hold space for what’s next.

28 February 2021

Before early astronomers calculated the periodicity of the seasons, with solstices and equinoxes, Celtic culture celebrated the recurring agronomic cycles of setting the herds and flocks to pasture in late Spring (in our terms) and returning them to stables and côtes in the Fall (again in our terms). The Spring event to commemorate sending out the animals to graze became ritualized in festivals around May 1, (Beltane, or May Day.) The return of the animals to shelter for the winter is honored in the festivals of Samhain by the Celts, and variously as Halloween, All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day in more recent English language usage. November 1 became the « New Years » of the Celtic calendar. All of this (and much more) is conveniently chronicled in James George Frazer’s classic The Golden Bough.

For us, this year, this dark year of pandemic suppression and political oppression, this year of conflagrations, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, this year of both passionate hope and ominous foreboding for the imminent election, this year that we imagined 50 years ago as « Earth 2020, » this year at a threshold of momentous possibilities — November 1 feels very much like a transition of great moment. What waits beyond the door?

This year marks the 15th time I have voted in a Presidential Election (yup, that’s 60 years of voting). The most exciting election for me was my first one (naturally!), but that one was exciting for an entire generation. JFK! He was inspirational to the nth degree. When he came to speak in San Francisco at the Cow Palace, he laid out the vision of The Peace Corps. A co-worker at the shoe store where I worked to put myself through SF State went to the rally, and I was so envious! The next visionary of that stature was Obama. No question. Win or lose, however, I felt each time that my vote mattered, that it was counted, that the process had credible integrity (but then I wasn’t black, trying to vote in Selma – white privilege existed then and now). Throughout this timeline I truly believed that as much as issues might divide our perspectives, certain common values united us as Americans.

This election is the first one where, from the very beginning, one candidate declared he would not be constrained by laws, rules, or common decency and respect. His demeanor, his behavior, his pronouncements at every turn cast the shadow of a tyrant. He in no way fits the profile of a President – he is a dictator, plain and simple. He behaves like a tyrant from a banana republic.

I agree with Joe Biden that we are fighting for the soul of the nation.

My contingent contributes modest amounts of money to Biden/Harris and several Senate campaigns. I mean it about the modest amounts. That’s what I have. For this year’s election I have contributed more than in all 14 previous presidential elections combined. That might not be enough. But it’s what I can do this time. Others are doing phone banks or distributing materials or who knows what. I hope ALL of us are voting. And voting early!

And what if it goes bad, or wrong, or crazy?

The worst possible reaction would be violent. It would give the other side a justification for suppression. And it just doesn’t work. Nonviolent uprisings are historically twice as likely to succeed as violent ones. But we may need to be creative: marches and protests, of course; but also strikes, slowdowns, and other traditional labor tactics. But we can’t let the current regime succeed (yes, l believe it is accurately a regime, not an administration).

And when we succeed – perhaps sooner, without all the drama, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work rebuilding and reinforcing the best of who we are and who we can be!

Happy Samhain!