The Unclad Soul

We are the land of liberty whose Statue’s flame never dims. We crossed the mapless ocean to escape the oppression of Church and government. We wrote a magnificent Constitution. We established laws, instituted a court system, and decreed all men free. We created communities, towns, and cities. We built schools and hospitals and churches. We fought foreign enemies. Helped defeat Nazis, dictators and tyrants. We made the world safer. We have not always been true to our ideals, but we learned and changed and became better. We are Lincoln, Babe Ruth, Martin Luther King, Jr. We are Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Maya Angelou. Compassion runs through our veins. We are helpers and healers, and goodness has always been our highest trait. We believe in free and excellent public education, in equal rights, in the value of every person. Though we have not always honored these values, they remain a central part of our identity and we have always strived to fulfill them. ...

In this Season of Advent, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, candles, food and festivities, giving and cheer, I keep thinking of Bob Marley’s beautiful music, especially his, “Redemption Song.” “Old pirates, yes, they rob me Sold me to the merchant ships Minutes after they took me From the bottomless pit But my hand was made strong By the hand of the Almighty We forward in this generation Triumphantly Won't you help to sing These songs of freedom? Redemption songs …” That is the message of this Season, whatever tradition you follow. Pirates still exist. People are still being sold in sex trafficking and sold out in politics. There are minorities and the elderly, the homeless and the disabled, who remain in the bottomless pit. Won’t you help to sing the songs of freedom? The Statue of Liberty is firmly anchored in New York Harbor, her light still beaming. But freedom escapes many beneath her lamp. People caught in poverty, in opioid addiction, in low w...

You were once a proud country of people united around simple but durable truths: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You honored yourselves by championing freedom for all people, by advocating for diversity, civil rights, and human rights. You grew into a nation the world envied, admired, and wanted to live in. People across all lands and regions, from remote communities and desert places, came here in search of a better life for them and their families. Over the years millions have come here to flee tyranny, to escape the violent evil oppression of soulless dictators. They came to America to be safe, to raise their children without the threat of seeing them slaughtered in the streets by brutal military forces or carried off into vicious exploitation by drug lords and pimps. They came to participate in an economy that welcomed demanding work, ingenuity, and a chance to build something of their own for them and their families. And in the process, this nation gr...

I had an enjoyable conversation with my nephew, David, the other night. In the midst of talking about other things he mentioned a recent essay I posted here. He reads all of them and though he doesn’t always agree with them he makes a point to keep up with what I’m thinking about. That makes his uncle enormously grateful. He has mentioned before that he would like to see more positive pieces and less negative ones. What I wrote about The Handmaid’s Tale was especially dark for him. “Why write about such horrible stuff, Uncle Tim,” he asked. “I never see that side of you when I’m with you. Write about the good stuff,” he said. I took it to heart. I have admitted here before that I know I have a streak of cynicism that runs through me at times. I don’t want to be cynical, or negative. And yet, I don’t know how to hold in my feelings of alarm, fear, and often anger at the seemingly endless injustices in our nation. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, though a merci...

The Hulu series, The Handmaid’s Tale, is a scalding, brutal, at times sickening portrayal of life in some future totalitarian and theocratic state in New England known as Gilead. The storylines are so reprehensible they leave one churning with rage and shattered with sorrow. They offer a glimpse into a horrifying future that may not be impossible to imagine. Gilead is growing childless. Those in charge have devised a way to repopulate the state. Women of childbearing age are simply taken off the streets or out of their homes and proclaimed handmaids for commanders, slick and morally compromised men who have wives unable to conceive. A handmaid is chosen for them, even if she is already married and has children of her own. They are permanently separated from her. She has no rights. Her only existence is to serve the elite couple she is assigned to. The lead character in this inhuman existence is June (Elizabeth Moss), whose name is changed to Offred. Once a month, in the mo...

Ingrid and her cousin Hannah and I walked the entire March For Your Lives in Dallas last Saturday. Ingrid was a bit hesitant when I invited her to join me. She was afraid there might be problems. Maybe a bomb. Or violent protestors. Or a shooter. I told her there would be plenty of police and security, though I knew in my own mind there are always risks at these kinds of events. She decided to go and Hannah came with us as well. I wanted the girls to have a sense of social conscience, to be a part of something historic and hopefully, a catalyst for change in our violent weary nation. The crowd was energetic, diverse, and respectful. There were chants and tons of creative signs and posters. There were ongoing conversations in the crowd. I sensed that people are genuinely worried about our nation. And they want change. Now. I never saw one protestor. There were no hecklers or angry people pushing back against the march. That says to me that most people realize something ...

What would a perfect world look like? I don’t know. Probably very sterile and boring. I don’t really want a perfect world. I’d be happy with just a humane one. Dictionary.com defines humane as, “characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals; especially for the suffering or distressed: acting in a manner that causes the least harm to people or animals.” When I was a boy I used to spend a few days with my paternal grandparents whom I called Nana and Granddad. They were both gentle souls, quiet, kind people. One afternoon after Nana had fixed me lunch in the kitchen and I had finished eating, I took my plate to the sink to wash it. I noticed a small spider on the window sill and asked Nana for the flyswatter so I could kill it. She said, “Oh honey, don’t hurt it. It’s not poisonous. It’s not bothering anyone. And it will eventually find its way outside.” I will never forget how at that moment I started feeling a deeper sense of compassion fo...

If I could, I would Stop all the wars And heal all the sores And give the less more And free the bored And individualize the hoard If I could If I could, I would Have all women revered And all children loved And the old honored And the sick well And the disabled cheered And the foreigner welcomed If I could If I could, I would Enact gay rights around the world And celebrate them as whole And give them freedom To be who they are And embrace them into The family of you and me If I could If I could, I would Empty Congress of its politicians And fill it with teachers And Poets And writers; With artists And sculptors; With farmers And ranchers; With animal lovers And stargazers; With gardeners And fishermen If I could If I could, I would Remove all bigotry And prejudice of every kind And put the redneck and the whitey and the Confederate flagger and the bully cop and the crooked judge and the ...

Two things. Vice President Pence left an NFL game last Sunday because some players took a knee at the playing of the National Anthem. He said they were disrespecting the American flag. Second, Dallas Cowboy’s owner Jerry Jones has now said his players will all stand at the playing of the National anthem or else they can’t play. He said his players will respect the flag. Okay, I get this obsession with the flag, which is only a symbol. I’ve written about both the absurdity and the danger of worshipping a symbol of freedom while denying people human and equal rights. Pence and Jones are playing to the worst fears and prejudices in people. To deny professional football players, or anyone else, the right to express their disappointment and their disapproval of how certain police officers and police forces are mistreating, often outright killing, unarmed suspects, especially black men, ought to bother all Americans. Power and money do not give anyone the right to silence protest of...

The human catastrophe in Yemen is entirely man made. The politics of it are messy and complicated and the various factions behind this horror, the U.S. among them, are difficult to keep up with. But the bottom line is this: government leaders started the war there, they have continued it, and they are doing precious little to avoid civilian casualties and deaths, and, they are impeding the flow of medical care and food for the millions of suffering people there. Cholera is now an epidemic in the country and thousands of displaced families and individuals are dying from a disease that afflicts the most primitive environments of refuse, squalor, and starvation. According to a report on NPR this morning some families have lived in cardboard tents for three years, their children out of school for that time, and endless neighborhoods of people without food or water or hope. For what? For greed. Power. Control. Here we are in the 21 st century and the world wobbles in the i...

“For one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that binds us to earth, and joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine!” – Helen Keller

I recently spent a day in Oklahoma City with my brother, Jim, who has muscular dystrophy. He fell at home a few weeks ago and had to have surgery. He is now in a rehabilitation center. The doctors and physical therapists are trying to get him to a place where he will have some measure of independence. He will not, however, be able to return home. It’s possible that he could go into assisted living, but more probably, he will have to go to a nursing home and live there. He is facing all of this with a lot of heart and reality. He knows his health has seriously deteriorated and   living   alone is no longer an option for him. But he is also experiencing, understandably, a certain sadness about his situation. I feel sad for him as well. Jim was once a tall, healthy, athletic guy. He played baseball in high school. Was a terrific swimmer. He loved to play golf. In his late 20’s he began to experience a weakness in his arms and legs. As time went by and his symptoms worsen...

“We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may not ever need to go there.”  ~ Edward Abbey, Environmentalist/Author

The masterminds of 911, whether they intended to be or not, were geniuses. Not because they managed in the most terrifying way to collapse the Twin Towers but because their hideous act successfully severed our nation from its bearings. They didn’t just viciously murder nearly 3,000 Americans and temporarily shut down various financial institutions and disrupt the flow of commerce for a while. That wasn’t their goal. They created an ominous, debilitating, relentless fear among us. A terrorizing fear that still to this day remains in force in the lives of so many Americans. A fear writhing and twisting in hate. An irrational fear. A fear that gallops headstrong through our churches and schools, our Congress, our businesses and our homes. And that fear has made us so distrusting of people, so neurotically detached from reality, so emotionally hardened, bigoted and vengeful, that it is in many ways destroying us. That’s what terror is supposed to do. Weaken. Cripple. Confound. Torment. Di...

The Supreme Court decision last week to prevent any state in America from denying the issuing of a marriage license to a gay couple remains controversial. The ruling is being misunderstood by many and twisted into something it isn’t by others. In spite of the fact some politicians, religious people, and conservative media pundits keep alarming everyone that the world is ending there is nothing in this ruling that in any way threatens religious liberty.  Heterosexuals will not be forced to marry a gay person. Heterosexuals will not be forced to attend a gay wedding. Heterosexual ministers will not be forced to perform a gay wedding in their church or anywhere else. Heterosexual marriages will not be invalidated. Life will go on as usual only now no state in this country can deny a gay couple from obtaining a marriage license. And county clerks cannot deny them because they say it goes against their religious beliefs. That does not matter. It is the law and they will follow ...

The country woke up this morning to more madness. A white, apparently deranged young man in South Carolina, killed 9 people at a Bible study in a historic Black church. Police are calling it a hate crime. More details will obviously come in but here is what is undeniable. Our country is out of control. We have lost our way and it is not by accident. We as a people have chosen to allow our nation to be violent, hateful, prejudiced, bigoted, unjust, and inhuman. When this young man is caught, if he does not end up shooting himself in some cowardly panic, let the psychiatrists do their analyses. Let law enforcement prescribe the punishment. Let those who want to coddle him because they’ll say he’s insane do so. Let the gun lovers make excuses for him as they always do. Let the whites clamor on about mixed messages and make their phony allowances for him as they will. But here is the reality. This guy is the product of an unapologetic racist society. He is the result of our primit...