My blog is a forum for discussion and an outlet where I can share my opinions, thoughts, feelings, analysis, observations, and creativity–usually in response to breaking news and current issues. My military-brat and academic backgrounds led me to compelling interests … Continue reading
Excerpt: “Schizophrenic behavior” is defined as behavior which is motivated by contradictory or conflicting principles, or which results from the co-existence of disparate or antagonistic activities. In other words, when your ideals frequently conflict with each other, and when your actions feel equally conflicted, it can drive you nuts. Fallible human attempts to live up to one’s ethics, values, standards and goals can make even the best soldiers feel schizophrenic.
Excerpt: When soldiers from any nation come home from their wars, of course they have trouble rectifying all they've participated in, with their peacetime ethical, spiritual and religious beliefs about what it means to be humane, caring, good—all the many understandings parents and teachers carefully taught them about what makes relationships work, and what make life worth living. Many returning war veterans basically go insane for years. Others are unstable or crazy for the rest of their lives. Continue reading
6/29/10 – Whenever I’m afraid, I can ask God to help me see each situation, person or challenge as he sees it, give him all my fear, calmly await his sure guidance, and trust and allow him to handle every situation, knowing he won’t let my fear get in the way of love.
6/28/10 – We can ignore all impulses to judge, condemn, correct, see evil, or contribute to conflict, guilt or weakness, and instead align ourselves with the holy light that knows all of humankind, and all past and present reality, only as loving and forever innocent.
6/27/10 – When we ask to see God’s perspective on any challenge, situation or any relationship, we’ll always be reminded of our eternal oneness with all, and that there is nothing that God’s boundless, unconditional, eternal, perfect love cannot heal.
6/26/10 – When we turn over our conflicts, priorities and decisions to our higher power, who alone understands the needs of all and what matters most, we will be reminded to hear in every communication only one of two things: an offer of love, or a request for it.
6/25/10 – We are now and forever exactly as we were created to be, but we will see, enjoy and celebrate God’s one beloved, innocent, perfect, eternal creation more clearly when we ask him to free our spirits from limiting cultural blinders of guilt, sin and fear.
6/24/10 – Rather than try to fix ourselves and others, we can surrender to God’s guidance, inspiration and justice (love); let go of judgment, comparisons and guilt; accept, appreciate and forgive all; and see all as eternally unique, innocent, perfect.
6/23/10 – We have created the scary stuff “out there in the world” through our own fearful, judgmental personal and cultural projections and reactions. When we change our goal to love, and see with accepting, forgiving, appreciative eyes, our world will change.
6/22/10 – Shared cultural illusions of brief, fearful, competitive lives between birth and death limit us, while faith in the eternal, universal justice of unconditional love, abundance and forgiveness offers infinite patience yielding immediate miraculous results.
6/21/10 – With no fear of conflict or competition, we can release all our illusions of past, future and separation, and commit wholeheartedly to seeing and sharing only a present miraculous healing motivation of love with God’s one holy, eternally-beloved creation. Continue reading
5/24/10 – When we’re feeling fearful or awkward about how to react to a situation or person, we can turn the moment over to the guidance, perspective and insights of our higher power—and then relax, knowing the best healing response for all will come to us.
5/23/10 – We can bow to the world’s cultural dream of fear, sin, judgment, suffering, guilt, depression and death, or we can awaken now to the beauty, peace, love and joy of beloved and loving spirits, eternally celebrating God’s one perfect, abundant creation.
5/22/10 – When I’m feeling negative about any situation, person or issue, and ask to see things differently, the helpful insight I receive encompasses all interests, and reveals my eternal oneness, and loving communication now, with all that is—man, nature, and God.
5/21/10 – God’s forgiveness, and our own, release us from our dreams of retribution and penance for our unjust pasts, and free us to focus now, with God, on acceptance, appreciation and love for all things, the only purposes which assure peace and happiness.
5/20, 2010 – When we remind ourselves that we don’t have to do anything, we will also remember that some of the things we think we have to do are often things we really want to do—which is a happier place to come from.
5/19, 2010 – When we feel weak, beleaguered, hopeless, despairing, angry, guilty, resentful and defiant, we can surrender all to faith, let go, and trust God’s order, purpose, strength, peace, love, innocence and oneness to miraculously transform chaos into peace.
5/18/10 – We can struggle to protect, affirm and aggrandize our illusions of separate, guilty, competing bodies alone in a threatening world; or we can know only one beloved eternal spiritual creation sharing one holy purpose and one peaceful loving home in God.
5/17/10 – When we judge the world and try to fix it, we will see only chaos and error. When we relax, judge not, and see, think and be only love, we will find in ourselves and in all the inner peace and love that gives the world the only meaning it will ever have.
5/16/10 – We can focus on fearful and unsolvable mortal problems, shortcomings and mistakes in a futile attempt to correct and change ourselves and others, or we can let our guiding spirit help us focus on only what is good, true and eternal in ourselves and others.
5/15/10 – “Being” is oneness, wholeness, and the shared loving purpose of a diverse and holy self. This simple truth of one love, one creation and one eternal time of now can be hidden by false, frightening, complex cultural concepts and assumptions, but never lost. Continue reading
Excerpt: Wallowing in winter’s woes is so addictive. Sometimes it seems life will never change, things will never get better, we won’t ever improve. March lions look back at us ominously as they depart, tails lashing, mouths dripping with blood. As we grope for ways to ease past losses, our bleary eyes may see only the faded evidence of passing winter, only bare black branches crossing dirty snow, too-recent reminders that there is a time for dying, and the Lord indeed taketh away.
But babbling and burbling, surging and burgeoning, importunate idiot spring insists we wake up now to springtime’s morning, that we set about now to recycle new selves from old. Kicking us out of hibernation, spring slaps us silly, shakes off our inertia and bad habits, wakes up our slushy sap, pulls us up out of past muck by our own muddy bootstraps, and stirs our clods to go outside and just do it. Continue reading
(Excerpt): We are all conditioned to believe that being “right” about ourselves, our politics, traditions and religions, is more important than living and letting others live in peace. We have to be “right” about so many things—about who the bad guys are, who started it, who was at fault, what happened, who meant well and who didn’t, who did what to whom, whose ideology or form of government or religion is superior….
(Excerpt): The truth is, in this confusing world, it’s difficult to find agreement even amongst our best friends and those most “like” us, about what life is all about—what we’re doing here, and how best to look upon the world, ourselves, and one another. Even the greatest scholars realize that the more they know, the more they know they don’t know. This is why, in every conflict, humility, acceptance, mutual respect, support, and yes, forgiveness, are the wisest guides to being “right.”
(Excerpt): Wars cannot prevent catastrophes; war itself is a catastrophe, as attested by all those whose lives are touched by war. Soldiers and soldiers’ families are always catastrophically exploited by war. Ninety percent of the victims of war are civilians. We who so proudly march into war have no idea what future injustices those wars will inevitably loose upon innocents on all sides. Continue reading
Barack is our most electable candidate in November. Here's why…. Continue reading
(Excerpt): I was raised to think that fidgeting, shouting and mopping one’s brow when speaking in public was unrefined. My mom only meant to teach me how to act, but her instructions left me judgmental of other cultures and styles. I squirmed with her when Elvis Presley gyrated and grunted and sweated. Together we hated Hitler’s rants, and shrank in dismay from Khrushchev’s noisy shoe. Loud, angry, confrontive voices still do nothing for me. They feel rude and threatening. And I’m not alone in this.
Maybe it’s my Calvinist streak, but I like my leaders calm, cool, and collected, like my man Barack Obama…. Continue reading
The long cruel media-bashing of Bill Richardson by Hillary Clinton’s attack-dogs, led by James Carville at his most offensive (which is saying a lot), was impeccably timed to stop cold the imminent bleeding of super delegates and other influential public figures to the Obama camp. Making an unfairly public example of Richardson, vengefully humiliating and marginalizing him, worked like a charm, though, and it’s still working. Leaders everywhere, the small and the mighty alike, are terrified now to defect to Obama, no matter how much they might want to. They’ve heard loud-and-clear the ringing message: “This is what will happen to you if you desert the Clintons!”********************
Bill Richardson has shown amazing integrity, grace and courage in standing up for what he believes to be best for all concerned. The Clintons deserve only condemnation for pigheadedly insisting on loyalty to persons over loyalty to country.****************
Like many others, I have admired the Clintons greatly, chalking up their political relentlessness mostly to their Christian compassion and desire to serve others. They’ve changed. They’re in it now more for the power than for the opportunity for service, and will apparently do whatever it takes to get back in the limelight. Power corrupts….****************
Regrettably, had the Clintons not fallen in love with themselves in power for eight more years, they would have been the first to jump at the chance to become Barack Obama’s most famous and influential supporters, because he’s exactly their kind of candidate. That opportunity for selflessness still lies ahead of them–an opportunity to reclaim the idealism which once so drew me and others to them when they truly were, as Obama is now, the future of the Democratic Party. *************
They'd better make up their minds soon, though, or instead of making twenty-first century history, the Clintons will be relegated to its periphery, becoming living anachronisms who leave only dinosaur footprints.***********
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I wonder if Barack Obama ever read Rudyard Kipling’s novel, Kim, about a half-British, half-Indian child growing up happily, as Barack did, in an amazingly diverse culture; Kim’s world was India, Barack’s Hawaii and Indonesia. Kim’s nickname was “little friend of all the world,” and he, like Barack, drew on his hard-won expertise in navigating a mysteriously multi-faceted childhood world to later become successful in “the great game” of politics. **********
Certainly, Kipling’s own memories of growing up in British Raj India influenced his own many adult contributions as a great communicator and cultural ambassador.**************
I thought about these many fascinating commonalities while reading Amanda Ripley’s story in today’s Time Magazine about Barack’s anthropologist mother. What adventures she and Barack shared living in the fascinating mélange that is Indonesia—17,500 islands, 230 million people, 300 languages, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Dutch/Christian traditions–and later in multicultural Hawaii, where Barack attended, on scholarship, a prestigious private high school. *******************
Among Barack’s many strengths as a Presidential candidate are his openness to different cultural and political perspectives, and his non-polarizing, accepting attitude toward people from all walks of life. No one is ever a stranger to this non-ideological, caring, international rock star. **********************
What a fascinating youth compelled Barack Obama, our own young “friend of all the world,” to overcome petty divisions and partisan distractions, offer leadership and service to his own nation, and bring the world together to resolve our most pressing common global problems—the ravages of disease, injustice, hopelessness, hunger, greed, environmental degradation, natural disasters, ignorance, addiction, prejudice, nuclear proliferation, crime, poverty, war, terrorism, and violence itself. Continue reading