The Unclad Soul

Rick Perry’s latest commercial (see below) is another politician’s bogus attempt to use Christianity as a way to get people to vote for him. The whole performance drips with hypocrisy and slime. Perry cynically mocks gays in the military as a way to slam President Obama and in turn try to make himself look so upstanding and righteous. He deridingly and dishonestly says gays can be open in the military but children can’t celebrate Christmas or pray in school. Huh? Then he says he will end President Obama’s “war on religion.” Again, what in the world is he talking about? There is no war on religion by the president or anyone else. The whole damn country is being taken over by fundamentalist religious fanatics. What we do have in this country are politicians like Rick Perry who will do anything in order to get elected to some high office including trying to manipulate people with trite and outright dishonest religious talk. How disgraceful to insult our gay soldiers who are ris...

“To be in your children's memories tomorrow, You have to be in their lives today.” ~ Barbara Johnson, Writer/Literary Critic/Professor

An easy yoga exercise that doesn't take long and that aids in protection from winter aches, stiffness, and pain. Check it out here: Yoga for an Ache-Free Winter

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life: A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us—to know Whence our lives come and where they go. ~ Matthew Arnold I have always loved this section of Arnold's long, old poem. The phrase, “There rises an unspeakable desire / after the knowledge of our buried life” resonates so deeply in me. There are times I want to uncover the buried life of my boyhood when I dreamed of baseball and girls and someday hitting a home run with both; the buried life of the years with my grandparents who were ballasts that kept my young ballooning life from flying away into nothingness or into destruction; the buried life of my struggling search for God, to go beyond the burdensome rules of the church that wer...

“What you seek is seeking you.” ~ Rumi, Persian Poet

There is this very nasty business of questioning President Obama’s citizenship that continues to drive a lot of conservatives in this country. The force behind this disgraceful display of total nonsense is a woman named Orly Taitz, a self professed lawyer and dentist, who doesn’t seem to be actively practicing either of those professions. Her full time job appears to be to somehow convince the American people that Barack Obama does not deserve to be our president now or in the future. She apparently lives somewhere in California but she is now up in New Hampshire trying to get the President’s name taken off the ballot there for the upcoming primary elections. She still claims he is not an American citizen even though Mr. Obama’s birth certificate has been declared by all manner of officials as valid and trustworthy. I don’t like the way our country is behaving. We have lost so much of what has made us a place of welcome and inspiration to the world. I don’t think I’m being na...

I recently wrote about the Christian Church dying in America. Here is a brief, interesting article that shows just how difficult maintaining a relevant church has gotten in our country. But there are those who are using thoughtful, creative ways to express their faith in these unsettling times. See the article here: Ten church models for a new generation | The Christian Century

Are you as tired as I am of this political bullshit that is destroying our sense of what America is supposed to mean and how we as a society are supposed to live? I was trying to watch Meet the Press this morning on TV. The host, David Gregory, a bought and paid for political hack if there ever was one, was interviewing David Axelrod, one of President Obama's senior political advisors. In spite of the news that the economy is making some feeble but honest signs of recovery, Gregory had nothing but criticism and hand wringing and just blathering on and on about how bad things are and how Obama has failed. I finally just turned it off and wanted to drain a bottle of vodka at 9:30 in the morning. I mean, what in the world has happened to this country? How did we get to the place where our, OUR, elected officials RUN and CONTROL and DECIDE how much money we will make, where it will be spent, and who gets to get all the rewards and who doesn't? What happened to freedom? W...