The Unclad Soul

Out there in the beautiful unknown, out where life’s mysteries are created and apportioned, out in the wonder of our deeper existence surely lies a welcome for each of us. I want to be connected to that. I want to be open to all of the gifts that wait for me, and you, and all of us in those sacred places of the extraordinary presence of something inexplicable and good. For instance, comfort, in the midst of life’s muddle. Across every path we travel today, the blinding traffic of cars, the early morning neighbor rolling out the trash bins, the coworkers at our workplace, the weary homeless man pushing across the intersection a grocery cart of used debris--there and elsewhere--passes someone just entering or leaving a devastating experience. Heartbreak knows no boundaries. The wounding of the soul comes not with some predetermined assignment or punishment for the few; it comes to all of us, deserving or not. But into the tumult there often appear the mystical open arms of c...

I’m not sure I could be more disheartened about our political system. I feel sorrow and dismay, anger and disillusionment, and I do not know what the answers are to our corrupt and rotting national political apparatus. A character in N.K. Jemisin’s novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms , speaks for me, “…and when I lift my head to scream out my fury, a million stars turn black and die. No one can see them, but they are my tears.” The Republicans are doing everything in their power to completely dismantle the orderly flow of Congressional procedures. Going on 6 years now they stubbornly and arrogantly refuse to cooperate with the President. They serve in their elected places of responsibility only to block his judicial appointments, to discredit and sabotage the Affordable Care Act with nothing to replace it, to defund public education, to bow down and kiss the feet of the wealthy, to interfere with any economic progress whatsoever because they are terrified a Democrat might get...