The Unclad Soul

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...

The human body – what a miracle. Despite all we do to it—abuse it, take it for granted, it still operates with amazing precision. Walt Whitman wrote, “If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.” It is more than a work of art; it is the work of genius. The mind – a complex computer with nearly unlimited capacities. Think of all we do without even thinking about it. Breathing, swallowing, sleeping, waking, walking, running. My typing, at this moment, without actually thinking about it, my fingers run across the keys effortlessly as though they somehow instinctively find the right letters on their own. It’s all the involuntary work of the mind. Creation gave us a brain but life gives us a mind. If we are aware, life will feed and nurture our mind. The ancients called the mind “a palace.” Such a gift. Intimacy – touching, kissing, making love, holding one another; it’s all so vital to our humanity. We shrivel and withdraw, we isolate and grow remote when there is no real i...

“If you can risk getting lost somewhere along the day you might stumble upon openings that link you to your depths.” ~ The Ancient Mystics

“It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement: that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.”  ~ Sigmund Freud

“The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves. Thought is a dialogue with one’s inner self. Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness. The capacity to think is the only bulwark against any centralized authority that seeks to impose mindless obedience. There is a huge difference, as  Socrates  understood, between teaching people what to think and teaching them how to think.”  ~ Chris Hedges, Author/Journalist

“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

Sociologist Theodor Adorno once wrote that “Triviality is evil.” That might very well be an appropriate epitaph for our nation. We may actually see the end to a great experiment in freedom, creativity, ingenuity, genius, and a once civil society known as America. And it won’t be from a terrorist bomb. Triviality certainly fits our current political climate. It describes much of religion in America today. It explains our economy and the shredding of fairness in the workplace, in the giant corporate arena, and in the wild untamed monkeyshine behavior of Wall Street and its gang of banks. The problems we face, the challenges ever in front of us, are enormous and daunting. But we don’t confront them intelligently. Instead we are seized, haunted, gripped by fear. Our media apparatus is a daily around the clock unfolding of fear inducing hype, gossip, distortion, lies, and propaganda. A tragedy occurs like the San Bernardino shootings and CNN airs the chase, capture and killing of t...

“Unfortunately, as a society, we do not teach our children that they need to   tend carefully the garden of their minds . Without structure, censorship, or discipline, our thoughts run rampant on automatic. Because we have not learned how to more carefully manage what goes on inside our brains, we remain vulnerable to not only what other people think about us, but also to advertising and/or political manipulation.”   ―  Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor,  Neuroscientist/Author  

“Strip me down to nothing—nude beneath the moon, stars afire under feet. And on bare unbranded body I will write: ‘This isn’t all of me.’”  – Amanda Torroni, Writer/Author

“Just Say Know.”   ―   Timothy Leary, Psychologist/Author

“Everybody’s gotta learn; nobody’s born knowing.”   ―   Harper Lee, Novelist

  “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” ~ Emerson