The Unclad Soul

What is Real? The HBO series, “Westworld,” is a tough to watch show about a futuristic park; sort of a perverted Disneyland for rich adults. It offers people a chance to live out their worst fantasies with “hosts,” who are human-like and life-like robots. As you can imagine things go horribly wrong. You can’t create an environment of no consequences no matter what awful things you do, without disastrous results. Even if you do them with and to robots. We were created with a conscience, the ability to self-limit our actions, if we know they will harm or destroy others. This is an essential part of our humanity. In Westworld, those innate boundaries are eliminated. In one insightful scene, Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) the programming director of Westworld, is talking privately with one of the beautiful hosts, Delores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood).  Delores is becoming confused. She questions her purpose. She’s having disturbing dreams she doesn’t understand. In the scen...

In my innocence I grew up believing in the goodness of people and all things. My parents and grandparents modeled this in front of me. I saw in them patience. Joy. Human warmth. Integrity. I felt their love and affection. I observed and absorbed their goodness.  I grew up extremely sheltered because of this. My world was small, provincial, full of church life.  I had great school friends. As a teen my buddies were not necessarily honor roll, but they were smart, athletic, and fun to be around. My girlfriends were cute, clever, flirtatious and, yes, honor roll.    Aren’t most girls? In college I wanted to be a broadcast journalist. I loved my speech and radio and TV production classes. But then, after an emotional church service I attended, I believed, as it was described then, that I was being “called into the ministry.” It wasn’t until I had my first rural church as a single, young, naive minister, barely out of college, that I began to understand t...

While on the walking/bike trail this morning, Billy Joel’s “The Piano Man,” began playing through my earbuds. This was one of my late brother Jim’s favorite songs. We often talked about it. So, when it started playing, I raised my index finger to the sky and said, “This one is for you, Jim, wherever you are or aren’t.” Death has always been a mystery to me. Eternal life, the idea of immortality after this life, is something I can’t explain or even comprehend. As a minister, I was, over the years, with many people who were dying and, in some instances, who died in my presence. There is a profound change in the body at death, an emptying of life. The human spirit leaves, you can almost see it happening, and disappears into the inscrutable and is gone forever. Where does that spirit go? I’m not certain. As a Christian, I want to believe our essence, our spirit finds rest somewhere beautiful. But, in spite of those classic Bible verses and the long history of Christiani...

There is an insightful comment from the novelist Virginia Woolf in her search for purpose in life. She had often come to detours and dead ends. There were high moments of discovery and low times of nagging self-doubt. In a personal essay she concluded, “What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with the years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.” It is such a magnificent comment. Most of us at some point in our lives, often in mid-life or our later years, look back over it all and wonder what any of it meant. We see people we loved for the wrong reasons. Relationships that ended badly. Pathways we should have never taken. Choices we knew were questionable but made them anyway often with regret. We see good times, laughter and celebrations, deep love; that fun concert, the hila...

“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue,” sings Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. “And the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true.” If only it were that simple, to fly above the chaos, past the rainbow, where the sky is clear blue, so rich in color it almost burns your eyes. A place where “troubles melt like lemon drops, way above the chimney tops.” We can go there, perhaps in meditation, in prayer, in deeper thought in some place of quiet and calm. A seashore. A park bench. A library. A garden of flowers. A walk through lush trees. A church sanctuary. Those can be times of healing, restoration, invigoration, insight, and learning. It was the brilliant naturalist, Thoreau, who wrote, “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk in love and reverence.” That’s an idea worthy of practice. Whatever religion you follow has a similar viewpoint. Judaism calls for an intelligent mind. Buddhism asks us to honor Karma and seek rebi...

Poet Andres Fernandez has written, “Do not just slay your demons, dissect them, and find what they have been feeding on.” This is the work of therapy. Although you could attempt it on your own as well. The best therapists are insightful listeners. They help us talk about what is bothering us, what may be haunting or disturbing or frightening us that we have been unable to either admit or face. Within the protection of the therapist’s office, we are able to confidently say what we might not otherwise be able to say to anyone else. There is enormous freedom in that if we are indeed able to experience it, to open up and say what we feel. “I hate my parents but I pretend I love them.” “I’m having an affair.” “I drink too much.” “I am terrified that someone at work will see how incompetent I really am.” “I can’t stand my husband/wife.” “My kids have completely disappointed me.” “I was sexually abused as a child.” “I am afraid I will be abandoned by those who love me.” T...

My recent posts on the HBO series, Deadwood, generated some interesting comments. There was a discussion about the coarse language and the repeated use of the f-word. Most, however, commented how much they had enjoyed the series and hated to see it end after only three seasons. I watched it when it first came out in the spring of 2004 and just stumbled onto it again several weeks ago and re-watched the whole series. There is something authentic, truly American about those early pioneer days, and the importance of the frontier and the westward expansion in our incredible history. I am drawn to the cowboy, the rancher, the farmer. I grew up in the city and had little contact with places outside of that environment. But there was a veterinarian in my parents’ circle of friends, Fred Ryon, who practiced in the Stock Yards in Fort Worth. He was a tall, thin man with striking features. Thick hair combed neatly back, a smooth face and a square jaw. He always wore a pressed wester...

The earthquake near Mexico City this week has been devastating especially since they just had one a couple of weeks ago, in the southern part of the country. The death count continues to rise as more of the rubble is being cleared away. When I was a young minister in my first congregation years ago, people in my conservative rural church would have seen this, and frankly, all of the hurricanes and other natural disasters happening so frequently, as a sign of what was called “the end times.” Back then, I would speak about the “Rapture,” when Jesus will supposedly appear in the sky and magically, mysteriously, all true Christians will disappear from earth, ascend, invisibly, to meet him in the sky and then be transported to heaven while everyone else left here will suffer unbearable torment and eventually die and go to hell. My congregation loved this stuff and I have to say there was a sort of excitement in telling them all of the incredible details of this dramatic event, ...

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...

There is a scene in the famous series, “Mad Men,” where Don Draper and Roger Sterling are sitting in Don’s office having a drink. Don is an advertising genius and ad man. Roger inherited the agency from his father, and though plenty smart, he sort of just provides advice and insights to the rest of the staff. He and Don are talking about the firm and the problems they are facing with both old and new clients. As Don pours them a drink, they have this exchange: Roger : I bet daily friendship with that bottle attracts more people to advertising than any salary you can dream of. Don : It's the way I got in. Roger : So enjoy it. Don : I'm doin' my best here. Roger : No, you're not. You don't know how to drink. Your whole generation, you drink for the wrong reasons. My generation, we drink because it's good, because it feels better than unbuttoning your collar, because we deserve it. We drink because it's what men do. Don : What about shaky hands, ...

In the Netflix series, “Jack Taylor,” ex-cop Jack Taylor is a rebellious, hard drinking, scruffy guy who plays by his own rules, which are often questionable. Although he’s no longer a police officer, fired for unruly conduct, he still stumbles into situations where people need and want his help with some crime that’s been committed. He doesn’t always solve them, and he leaves plenty of debris along the way. He has a tough, rugged presence. And he’s a mess of a person. But inside the man, there beats a true heart for humanity. He lives in Mrs. Bailey’s Bed and Breakfast. It’s a lovely place that you would not expect to see the likes of Jack Taylor. But Mrs. Bailey took Jack in when he was disgracefully dismissed from the police force. He loved being a cop/detective. He fought for the underdog and the forgotten and the cheated. And the loss of his job sent him spiraling into a drunken bewilderment. He had no income but at Mrs. Bailey’s he found safety, welcome, clean sheets, an...

I asked Ingrid on the way to school the other morning if she could remember when she stopped believing in Santa Clause. She’s 13 now and I miss those days when she would stand by the tree in her Dora pajamas and chatter about Santa coming. She didn’t hesitate to answer my question. She said, “The year Santa never ate the cookies and milk.” Pilar and I were together then and we all lived in the house—Ingrid, her mom Claudia, and Pilar’s mom, Olivia, and Pilar and me. I remember I had set out the cookies and milk after Ingrid was in bed asleep and I always ate them before I went to bed and then would leave a note saying how good they were, signed by Santa. But that night for some reason, maybe I was just too sleepy, I went off to bed and left them there on a little stool by the tree. I don’t remember Ingrid saying much about it at the time. But apparently when she saw the cookies and milk untouched on Christmas morning, all the doubts she’d had about the whole Santa enterprise, fina...

 "It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it." ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Writer/Mystic

“Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so—just walk out from under the webs we've spun, the tasks we've assumed, the problems we have to solve. They'll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.” – Mark Nepo, Poet/Philosopher/Author

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

“Until you are willing to be confused about what you already know,  what you know will never grow bigger, better, or more useful.”  – Milton Erickson, Psychologist/Author