The Unclad Soul

It’s the beginning of a new week, and soon, a new month. Where did the time go? Weren’t we all swimming and grilling and taking vacations just a couple of weeks ago? Now the kids are all well into the school year. In a few days, it will be Halloween. And incredibly, it’s only 58 days until Christmas. Someone has said, “Life is not just the passing of time. Life is the collection of experiences and their intensity.” Well put. Not just a collection of experiences but also their intensity. Those are the moments that give life substance, affirmation, depth. Those are the times we remember. I attended a couple of birthday parties over the weekend. They were great times with family and friends I love. We shared food and drinks, laughter and fun, warm hugs and memories. There were children rolling in the grass, their tender faces bright with smiles, their small arms extended to receive squeezes and kisses. There were adult reminiscences, catching up on what’s new with on...

Historian Will Durant wrote in one of his books about “the few” who he said delight in thinking and understanding, “who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth.” “These are the   people” he wrote, “who stand aside unused by the world.” How perplexing that so often it is thinking people, gentle souls,   soft spoken   individuals, people of spiritual depth, unprofaned, compassionate to a fault, who “stand aside unused by the world.” I know these people. I have met them over the years. I have worked with them. They have been neighbors. They have been amazing friends. They live in quiet, modest homes, warm with welcome, blanketed with love. They are not famous. They have no massive assets. They do not run big companies. Their impact is not in power, or financial resources...

I have just finished watching Ken Burns’ magnificent series, “The Civil War.” I saw it when it first aired on PBS some years ago but I wanted to return to it. The racial unrest in our country today is hauntingly and shockingly similar to the racial divide in the country a hundred and fifty years ago. Think of that. We are still fighting that long, bloody, wasteful and savage war.  President Lincoln wanted to keep the Union together, strengthen it against any foreign power, and make America a country free for all of its citizens. But slavery in the South prompted leaders there to secede from the Union and form their own government under a new president, Jefferson Davis. They saw where Lincoln was taking them and they refused to go there. There have been calls for secession again in the past few years. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry was one who flaunted that threat. As usual, it was a political ploy for him and nothing more. But he stirred up people ready to separate t...