The Unclad Soul

I fight like crazy these days to refrain from cynicism. I am by nature a pretty pleasant person. I want to see good in everyone. I love to laugh, to feel joy, to delight in life. I try to manage my anger, take a deep breath, and stay calm. It doesn’t always work. For instance, I’m thinking now how I would rather watch every tedious moment of the entire Royal Wedding than to have had to watch five seconds of the celebration of moving our American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and listening to Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress pray. I have thoughts on that. But I’m holding back. They are not kind thoughts. They stir in me that image that Nick Lowe sings about, “The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars.” I’m trying to hold the locks in place. I have Jewish friends that I cherish. I honor them and their faith. Judaism is a historic system of beautiful beliefs. But what has gone on in Israel under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu is something I find grossly offen...

The world is broken. Split down the middle of its whole structure of existence. Civilization wobbles on cracked limbs leaving it basically immobile and infirm. The Ebola virus threatens West Africa and potentially all of us. The mulish ignorance and superstition, the wretched poverty and corruption of human life there invites indifference to all the simple protections against deadly diseases. The virus there spreads and kills because of human neglect, illiteracy, and obstinate religious cultism and bizarre myths. It destroys life because of the political indifference of the countries themselves and of the rest of the world toward them. Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan all remain locked in some horrendous blood bath that leaves the rest of us weary with it all. The politics and religious fanaticism involved in that mess of cultures is beyond any rational unraveling. The political corruption, the insane inhuman greed fed by these wars, the waste of life, theirs and of our soldiers, ...