The Unclad Soul

The distinguished French philosopher and priest, Teilhard de Chardin, wrote, “Humankind is being brought to a moment where it will have to decide between suicide and adoration.” The distance between those two is enormous. It’s a long drop from adoration to suicide but according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 45,000 Americans killed themselves in 2016, the most recent statistics available. Another 1 million people attempt suicide each year. The latest casualty was celebrated chef, author, and world traveler Anthony Bourdain. He left us at age 61, devoted to a beautiful girlfriend and the father of an adorable 11-year old daughter. Famous, wealthy, revered by millions of fans, Bourdain nevertheless found life unbearable. He follows the famous fashion designer and entrepreneur, 55-year old Kate Spade, who took her life only a few days earlier. And in April of this year, the iconic Swedish musician and record producer, Avicii, committed suicide. He was 28. ...

The world is yearning. America is yearning. We are yearning. I am yearning. What is this longing in us? What necessary thing is it that we yearn to know or have or experience? Writer, essayist, and editor, Rebecca Solnit, has written: “For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go.” These are beautifully haunting words. Haven’t we seen the distant horizon and felt its pull, its mystery? That distance, as Solnit describes it, “the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go.” Such powerful thoughts. That “blue at the far edge of what can be seen,” lures us and, perhaps, ta...

The unhinged politics of the day, the messy presidential campaign, the total ruin of Congress, has created a lot anger, recrimination, insults and division in the country. We see it every day on Facebook and Twitter. The comments to one another have gotten more intense, more contentious. As novelist Michael Cunningham once said, “You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody’s little display of genius.” I’m guilty of that myself. And I don’t like it when I find myself feeling defensive, trying to convince others of viewpoints I hold, or attempting to counter theirs. The political atmosphere in the nation has made us smaller, less. It has reduced us to quarrelsomeness and discord. My friends are courteous in their disagreements with me. And I honestly try to be the same with them. But I do see now and then on other posts some really nasty stuff, horrible ugly comments that are sneering and demeaning. This past Father’s Day weekend was a nice and needed respite from a...

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting— over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” ~ Mary Oliver, Pulitzer Prize winning Poet

In Cormac McCarthy’s pulverizing novel, “The Road,” we enter the final years perhaps months or days of civilization. The world is a burned out place of depressing despair, the result of climate change ignored, the waste of precious resources, the rape of the land and its beauty, the viciousness of marauding wars, and the cruel cold inhumanity of people, the end result of human beings diminished to their most primitive drives—violent, savage, diabolical. A father and his young son are on “the road” to basically nowhere. They are just trying to survive and to hold on to the slightest thread of humanity left in them. Everything is dead. The waters of the ocean are black. Plants and flowers are all gone. Animals lay decomposed in their bleached skeletons everywhere. Ashes cover the earth. The sky is a dismal grey haze, a withering glare of menace. It is cold. Dirty snow falls. And the man, unnamed, perhaps in his 40s, stops at one point to reflect on what once was. He looks around at ...

“There are far too many silent sufferers.  Not because they don't yearn to reach out, but because they've tried and found no one who cares.” ~ Richelle E. Goodrich, Writer/Author

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”   ―   Saul Bellow, Novelist

"You try as a parent. You love beyond reason. You fight beyond endurance. You hope beyond despair. You never think, until the very last moment, that it still might not be enough." ~ Lisa Gardner, Novelist

For a long time I have been taken with Whitney Houston’s 2009 video of her song, “I Look to You.” I often return to it for some kind of connection which I’m really not sure of.  I think it must be her vulnerability. Or mine. And there is something that feels so fragile about her in this one. I feel compassion when I watch it. The video has a simple setting. She begins in shadows sitting in a chair. As the song opens soft light reveals her in a flowing silk dress. Her head is bowed. Her features troubled. And though her face is luminous, there is weariness in her eyes. She sings, “As I lay me down/Heaven hear me now/I’m lost without a cause/After giving it my all/Winter storms have come/And darkened my sun/After all that I’ve been through/Who on earth can I turn to?/I look to you” The most awarded female performer of all time, according to Guinness World Records, she nevertheless often lived a life tormented by inner urges she could not control, by an injured soul that ...

There is an etching by the 18 th century artist Francisco de Goya that I find haunting and relevant. The picture shows an artist, perhaps a painter or writer, slumped over his desk. His pen and sketching paper are there. His face is buried in his arms that are resting over his head. We cannot see his face in sleep. We can only see his thick black hair tousled around his head. Behind him in the darkness are flying creatures that look like fierce bats and sneering owls. Next to him reclining on the floor is a large cat with big eyes with its head erect. It looks startled. The title of the drawing is, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.” Goya’s amazing pieces, there were 80 in all, were attempts to confront the political and religious institutions of his day, institutions that had turned cruel and oppressive and brutalized the common defenseless people of that era. His etchings were also wake up calls to fellow artists to use their talents to expose the intolerance, criminal...