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… those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Mt 23:20
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Make no mistake there are distinct, substantive differences between our two major parties.
Do not be deceived the last electoral result highlighted the very real difference between the common citizen and the elites: those with power, money, status – the intellectual and celebrity class, globalists, the media, the perpetual Washington insiders whose class status is far different from Mom and Dad in small town U.S.A. , and between the ideologues, “special pleaders,” and mere citizen taxpayers.
Frankly, the privileged class lost and the most politically-focused of them (the Left and the Washington wags who are used to being “important”) are offended and not taking their bite of humble pie very well. Yes, their obstruction and rhetoric is destructive – having gone beyond civil debate. Actually, their behavior mimics the Democrats in the Wisconsin legislature who fled their state and hid from their official duties so as to thwart the election of Republican Governor Scott Walker.
Like all actions people take, the angry objection to the voters choice of President tells us about those who are upset. One thing it says is this: politics and power is a high priority for them – probably too important for their and our wellbeing as a nation. Make no mistake a subset is NOT greater than the whole. No one is more important than the nation.
It is always hard to speak to your Brother and Sister when they must be reproached – but speak we must – speak calmly, in a soft voice, as a friend, with authority and care. Reconciliation is the goal and it must always be.
Losses are difficult for many. Those of us who have lived modestly and, in my case, on the “wrong side of the tracks” amid the very serious conflicts one can encounter – we are used to life’s ups and downs. We learned long ago that no one wins all the time and that it is the losses which actually teach us the best lessons, impart the greatest truth and wisdom.
The one thing that we need now is a calm conversation with those who are most displaced by their perceived loss. For civility to return, maturity must be cultivated and in this instance it means those hurt must listen to the voices of those who care for their welfare and that of this nation. Yelling, fighting, anger will only inflame and put much at risk … including each of us.
Remember the opposite of love is not hate – but rather: indifference. We cannot afford to draw battle lines, engage in nasty and dishonest behavior, retribution, character assassination, or violence. Honest, calm conversation is the need. An end to extreme language that excites ideologues and flames the fire … it must cease today, now.
I hope we are all to the task. It is the humble who are exalted. They are strongest who life has humbled. Make no mistake – in the end the humble remain standing while the prideful fall.
Shalom.
Postscript – I am always amazed that the “talking heads” on T.V. and many elected officials talk and talk without ever citing an authority – the words of someone whose insight and wisdom they share. You have to conclude that they are talking through their hats, haven’t cracked a book since the 3rd grade.
You wonder: why would I listen to these people? They really do not warrant my time. They do not. Happy landings.
In living we are directly doing the will of God … our very existence is contact with His will … life is holy and a responsibility of God and man.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, in Man is Not Alone
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If you can imagine that your existence is willed by God, that each moment of your existence fulfills God’s will – would you think differently … act differently … feel differently than you do?
If one’s very existence touches the will of God, would you make different choices in life than you now do?
Each day I awake and in due time look at the news of the world. Typically, I see some article that tells of something like this: a man tried to drown his two twin children, or a school teacher threatened to flunk a student with whom she was sexually involved if that student “broke” off their “contact.”
Seeing these things, I am repelled – not just by the event but by the fact that these things are thought newsworthy.
These reported stories make me ask: Why would I want to know this? What effect does reading this have on me? On others? Do these stories not bring us down? Sow seeds of despair? Turn our appetite for life sour?
I am sure that every day there are any number of horrible acts committed and that newspapers and the news media in-general have their pick of horrible stories to convey – but is there any glancing thought that feeding others these stories has a debilitating effect?
The mere reporting of such stores tells us that the lost souls offering these stories neither conceive of living as collaborating with God’s will, nor that life itself is holy, sacred, divine in its creation and ought to be respected as such.
The truth is if you look around you will see all sorts of actions which deny that life is holy, sacred and divine. Having seen this so clearly, I have decided to ignore this crap.
My view is quite simple: why do I want to have my spirit be poisoned by the godless conduct of those gripped by evil and its manifestations? I know such people and acts occur, but why must I be made a party to them each day? Consequently, I’ve come to “keep by distance” from these reports just as I reject a diet of rotten food.
Why bathe in other people’s dirty water, or each rancid food?
Shalom.
If this post strikes a positive cord for you, please send it to others. The process of reclaiming the public square and public space calls for our participation … and that means you and me together.
Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transform techniques so that the art becomes artless art, growing out of the unconscious.
D. T. Suzuki, in Zen and Japanese Culture
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How do you fully live? Yes, how do you access and activate the unconscious – awaken the essence of the human legacy? Same question really.
He met the conformity of culture as structured by man but never conceded its control over his breathing, his heartbeat, his life here – as it preceded him and stretched into eternity.
He always had one foot outside the box. His wry comments and independent judgment kept him free and gave him a sharper vision than most. He saw behind the silk scene – people, after all, were not clever in concealing their shallow and predictable motives.
He was not often fooled.
Having access to the unconscious, getting to know it in detail made his life art – artless art, a movie from birth to mortal death … and then the everlasting sequel, a seat above in the presence of a warm May sun.
He was never much for formulas. A blank canvas was more his comfort. Something to write on, to scribble freehand what came to heart, mind, wrist and hand. Free flowing.
Operating on the margin of the box – turning the rules into sources of amusement and dismemberment so to say: “You do not have me yet.” Life in the present structures as a game of escape and evasion, lest he suffocate, dry up and become weak and brittle.
Victory. Life as artless art in all its ease, in each breath, in listening, hearing and seeing.
The experience of experience in its full range – from joy to sorrow and back again, never a dark day in triumph over the warmth of the sun reflected in the others, the friends, the children, love, laughter, kindness, the beauty, the quiet, the memories, the experience in yesterday and today.
… artless art …
Shalom.
We see the world … as we are …
Stephen R. Covey
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These seven words are worth remembering. There is truth in them. Our actions, inactions, thoughts and concerns tell others who we are.
Thinking about this I am struck by two things: (1) how often we meet or are exposed to difficult or disordered people in this culture, (2) how often we can conclude that those we encounter have defaulted to a status far below their full growth and development.
This brings me to Carl Jung, M.D., and this opinion: we do little or nothing to present people with an understanding of what a human being is, and how we are formed and develop.
Jung’s life work provides a useful template which we neglect at great expense.
His view was that each person had to develop as the individual person they were created to be (i.e., individuation). To explain this process, Dr. Jung focused first on the psyche.
Jung divided the mind into a conscious and unconscious sphere. The latter is divided into two components: what is personal and what is collective. The personal is composed of lifetime experiences – including things forgotten or repressed. The unconscious is comprised of universal and timeless images and understandings that are “inherited” and formed in archetypal patterns the denial of which creates disorder, keeps one from full development and individuation.
Jung’s view is that when one attends to the conscious (the center of which is the ego) and neglects the unconscious imbalance follows, and reaction appears in dreams, dream images and fantasies intended to encourage the full experience of human life. Those who repress or neglect the unconscious sphere rely on ego alone and their assertiveness and disposition can be punishing to themselves and others upon whom they impose their will. Yes, rely on ego and consciousness alone and disorder arises.
The latter, those egotists who impose their will, are abundant in politics and mass media today – giving rise to the hostility, bias and rather zany and self-destructive ideas advocated by the Left and ideologues today.
The practical point to be made is this: when you encounter those who advance strange ideas and insist on your allegiance to them, and turn hostile when you pause or refute their views you are likely facing one who is imbalanced. One who does not manifest a healthy humility, is frantic when there is no reason for such a state – is probably short of the development they can, if the wish, achieve.
When you look about, when you encounter people and groups who are insistent and aggressive, who demonize those who do not agree with them – you are wise to discount their views. Their behavior itself discredits what they advocate or propose.
Shalom.
Amazing – It is amazing to listen to the “Priests of Climate Change” who see those who disagree with them as heretics … and use scathing words to show their discontent. So much for tolerance, civility and a democracy that allows for difference of opinion.
God works in history, therefore a contemplative who has no sense of history, no sense of historic responsibility … is not fully a Christian contemplative: he is gazing at God as a static essence … But we are face to face with the Lord of history and with Christ the King … light of the world … We must confront Him the awful paradoxes of our day …
Thomas Merton
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If there is one (and there is) central failure that puts us in the conflict, and confusion, and chaos … and danger and division, that we face today it is our failure to know and serve God as the Lord of History.
All of the immorality, hostility, bitterness, rancor, hatred and rank stupidity can be assigned to that one failure.
Likewise, the destructive behaviors we witness in special pleaders of unwise causes are the product of God’s exile, and in that absence – the geometric ignorance and needless destruction it produces.
Yesterday, I watched an episode of The Ozzie and Harriet Show and one of The Rockford Files. The former from the 1950’s and the latter from the 1960’s. Each was a delight. Each well-written, and nicely acted. Each told an engaging story – the former in a family context, the latter in a detective format.
In the former we saw truths about husbands and wives, men and women, family, brothers, neighbors, boys and girls and human nature. It was fun to watch. Truth told in a gentle and amusing manner. It was nice TV … it sat a tone, was believable – represented a reality that was and could be: a relaxed and kindly family environment.
In the latter, we had a “who done it” yarn with the focus being the work of a not-so-successful, and unflappable private detective whose status-life was that of living in a trailer parked on asphalt adjoining a stretch of California beach.
Our hero detective was an anti-hero – an earnest man (yet not beyond employing a street-smart trick now and again) who was resigned to the riff-raff of life without losing his kind and understanding nature. He was, indeed, an everyman with the wonderful grace to live life as it presented – without scorning what he saw.
Yes, in the 50’s and the early 60’s we effortlessly lived with God the Lord of History and in so doing, we were not out-of-control, frantic, required to “get-our-own-way.” We were then, sublime, without anxiety or fits anger, public or otherwise … better yet there was no need for intolerant crusaders. Social justice had yet to emerge to anoint any and all mediocre C-minus-minus people into obnoxious “know-it-all” crusaders. In short, looking back you see that when God is recognized as the Lord of History … our life is easier and our relationships much more pleasant.
I’ll pass on the very unfunny bores of late night TV, and the likes of Chuckie Schumer and the talking heads of CNN, MSNBC, et al, the vacuous celebrities who have opinions about all manner of things never thoroughly considered, and on the minor leaguers of The Times, The Post etc.
Today we are so dumb and uninformed we don’t realize life (properly considered and experienced) is so much easier … death-defying anxiety and hostility is not mandatory.
Try thinking of God as essential – as the Lord of History … ignore those who speak as if God is either dead or indifferent to us … Such people are as common as a penny and just as valuable.
Shalom.
… (Thomas) Merton described himself as journeying towards his destiny “in the belly of a paradox” … He sought the monastic life because he desired hiddenness and solitude, but his writings brought fame and demands.
Lawrence S. Cunningham, in Thomas Merton & the Monastic Vision
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When we flee the world in favor of aloneness or have aloneness thrust upon us, we most often find God and in finding God we find ourselves, others and the world. God, of course, is our solitude and in Him and with Him we then proceed … never to be without Him.
There is no hiding, though many do so in plain sight using status, title, appearance, celebrity, power, wealth or what-have-you to separate out from the mob. As for the individual, there is no unitary escape, no disappearing act.
In seeking one’s particular solitude you will most surely find self and God – for solitude is the door to contemplation, to self-examination, reflection, infused wisdom, understanding, compassion, mercy, patience, love, forgiveness, intimacy, contentment … and in each of these the gateway to Truth, to what alone is True, to you and He who makes you as you have been made.
Once God is known aloneness is proved a lie, for then one is never alone and realizes that one was never alone. Paradox ends, then – and all fits a divine rubic.
Our path – seek to withdraw as if to the desert, or sit under the lotus tree in quiet and soon enough God is present and hiddenness is impossible, unnecessary for then we are called to life as it is intended.
The Sacred Paradox is this: aloneness presents God and aloneness is no more.
Shalom.
Blog for May 23, 2017, will be posted in the midday.
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President Trump at the Western Wall. This is a remarkable vision. Why have we not seen this before now? We can be grateful for the emergence of faith in public affairs – how else can you see an American President stopping in Saudi Arabia and then in Israel.
Faith has a place in all life, and activity without it is doomed to fail. Has not our recent past and the woeful tone of opposition politics today shown us this.
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When man subverted order he did … more than … diminish his own humanity … compromise his destiny … he … presents the unhappy spectacle of a being in revolt against Being …
Etienne Gilson, in The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy
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Gilson thought of God as Being itself. As such, everything in the cosmos combines into one meaningful whole and all is contingent on God who is the reason for the existence of all things, all persons, all life.
Ask yourself if you act as if this is so? It puts you to a significant test, a serious self-examination. Are you bogged down in meaningless matters, governed so easily by emotions and worry? Swept up in useless, insignificant daily sensations and alarms?
Likewise, look at the news, at politics, at those with easy access to mass communication – what do they have to say about that matters? Are they conscious of their own contingency?
Contingency breeds humility – our scale reduced to proper size: a tiny part of a timeless whole – of Being itself, of God the Creator who is always and forever.
If you do not live in proper context and dimension you come to prefer self to God and condemn yourself to error and discord, restlessness and worry, loneliness and separation.
A life well lived fulfills your design as God has presented it … authors contentment and prepares you for harmony with all things.
Do you see in this what you need to do to know contentment? Can you see how lost we are today? Especially those you show their godless confusion and seek that we might follow them, tolerate their self-destruction so that it can then destroy us?
Embrace the best way of living and that is under God’s authority where peace prevails when the rain and wind comes to gale force and all seems darker yet.
Shalom.
… the time was approaching … when the Ego … would be mere putty in the hands of something much larger than any human being … a strangely impersonal (and inhuman) construction of social and political reality, that would have enormous, compelling, even definitive sway over all within its grasp … the state’s (moral and political) power (would) become for the individual a commanding and pervasive presence … enforcing its institutional will on … all … (Emphasis added.)
Robert Coles, M.D., in A Secular Mind
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In the above Dr. Coles, an esteemed research psychiatrist who held three endowed chairs at Harvard University, is commenting on George Orwell’s classic 1984 (written in 1948) in which Orwell foretold of man’s loss of self to the state and its impersonal and often brutal, a-spiritual, conforming power.
We are, of course, precisely where Coles said we would be in his 1999 book –A Secular Mind.
We are – notwithstanding, the useless, uneducated, destructive chatter of “talking heads,” newspaper editorial boards, Leftists intellectuals, “progressive” politicos, feminist and sexual “special pleaders,” the mindless celebrity class, and misplaced vaudevilleans of late night television – just a Coles predicted … at risk of losing our Self.
The problem we face is not merely political. No, it is far more. It is cultural. As cultural, it is fundamental. It poses this question: what is and shall be a fully developed human being?
In particular, the force of the state on the human being always invokes this question: what is it to be human?
Of course, the history of the Communists’ gulags and the adjacent death camps of totalitarian states tells us that centralized, ideological governments and politics never advance the fullness of the human person. Their concern is control of the mass, not the sacred reality of being a human being. Hence, all central states (our behemoth included) incline to homogenize and reduce the human to dependent or servant and in doing so they seek to reduce the role of faith, exile God and curtail religious freedom.
The impulse which elected Trump is the impulse to salvage human existence in the face of the growth of the central state. The hatred this has stirred up on the Left and among the statists Republicans (i.e., globalists, and vested elites) and those who make their very nice living as media handmaids of the governing class is precisely a defense of the large state and its imposition on the human person and critical subversion of faith and spiritual existence. Think, for example, of the Obama IRS which took active, lawless aim at religious tax exempt citizen organizations.
That is where we are …and I add I see no one in mass communication culture who has called this to the fore. Rather, I see debates over this or that policy, the appointment of this or that person to do X or Y.
We have a more comprehensive problem … one requiring a broader scope of intellect and a greater knowledge of psychiatric welfare and spiritual development.
Alas, the politicos and media-types are least likely to possess anything like the knowledge, experience, insights or analytical tools to navigate us through very troubled and dangerous waters.
We have an interesting challenge in the present moment. The discussion must be broader than politics. It must be cultural and fundamental.
Shalom.
… when we are most human … we have greatest access to the soul …
Thomas Moore, in Care of the Soul
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We’ve come to a point where we miss the significance of being a human being. We have substituted racial identity, sexual identity, political identity as our primary identity. We are homosexual before we are a human being. We are Black before we are a human being. We are “Democrat” or “progressive,” or “socialist” before we are a human being.
Of course this is not all people, but this is surely enough people that we have accommodated these identities into the culture in a manner that has been disturbing and destructive.
We have given special position and concern to race, sexual conduct, political preference and in doing this we have lost the single thing we have in common on this planet – that we are human beings first and foremost.
We need not be individualized to the point that we are less human beings and more a far lesser and insignificant designation of our own choosing. In this specification we have created division and discord and balkanized a culture – separated ourselves from one another and made us perpetually at odds with each other … and much weaker as a nation.
To show you how bizarre this has become: Bradley Manning – the undersized, immature, young Army clerk who gave away national security secrets that exposed each of us and this nation to our adversaries and was sentenced to a long prison sentence only to be pardoned by Mr. Obama – is soon to be released from military prison. The young Mr. Manning (having secured a sex change operation at taxpayer expense) will not be returning to private life however but rather has decided to remain in the military for the benefits it provides. Real public servant is he.
So a sexually confused and disordered young man who committed espionage gets a sex change operation, a pardon from Mr. Obama (God knows why), and stays in the military – all at your expense even though his conduct made you and your family more vulnerable to nuclear attack and death.
Do you see how a disturbed man’s sexual “identity” (disordered as it is) trumped his obligations and identity as a human being? Selfish and sick to the core. Do you see how Mr. Manning’s sexual disorder impressed Mr. Obama as something of importance? Very disturbing. Feminized Democrat governance as cheap daytime soap opera!
Anyone who does not think this nonsense puts us as grave danger is fooling himself or herself. We are human beings with obligations to one another. That missing – watch out below … all tumbles. Do you think of a moment that his “soldier” will defend you or die for you??? Heck, his Commander-in-Chief didn’t see anything off-kilter in this sordid matter. How’s that for insanity?
Apparently the circus is in town … I hope it’s a not permanent addition.
Shalom.
Man of the People – It is reported that Mr. Obama received $3 million dollars for a foreign speech last week. I guess “the Man of the People” conceives he and the wife will have a hard time existing on a lifelong pension with paid protectors and others handsome allowances. Just plain folks they are. St. Barack of the Freebie and False Persona. What a country! And people attack Trump!!! Hey, Barack is now “Mr. Gravy Train.”
