The Unclad Soul

Playwright and screenwriter, Robert Ardrey, once wrote, “We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.” Which is to say, our acts of benevolence, kindness, love and generosity transcend our acts of terror, barbarity, murder, and mayhem. The unimaginable carnage, cowardly and beyond any possible reason, carried out Sunday by Devin Kelley, takes us to our knees. We collapse under the weight of such a beastly crime. How does anyone human carry out such an inhuman atrocity? Details are murky. The answers we need and want, and what will finally be revealed, if any at all, will not be sufficient. Whatever the motive or mental defect may have been, all we will be left with is that the depths of our individual capacity for evil and harm know no limits. Monstrous crimes are not new. But what seems to be dramatically different these days is the frequency of them, so that they are becoming not an aberration but a common reality. There is without question a poiso...

The murders in Paris last week were an example of the moral deafness in the world today. No one is listening to anyone but themselves. The Islamic fanatics who carried out the killings supposedly did so to punish those who insulted their religion. The innocent people in the Jewish market that were shot to death just happened to be in the way of the broader act of vengeance going on at the Paris magazine house. But the magazine, “Charlie Hebdo," was itself deaf to the sensitivities of Muslims. Why mock Muhammad again and again? Why taunt Islamic extremists with cartoons and articles the magazine knew were provocative and insulting? Of course they had the freedom to do it. But why use their freedom for those purposes? Someone once said that knowledge comes from study and wisdom comes from observation. Those two important characteristics are missing all over the world today. I think I’m pretty safe in saying that most of the people in America who hate Muslims hav...

“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

I am reading Judith Guest’s monumental classic, “Ordinary People.”  It was written 30 years ago and was made into an Academy Award winning movie directed by Robert Redford.  It remains an extraordinary novel with life lessons still fresh and relevant today. Here is a journey into deeply wounding grief, into the dark shadows of shattering loss. The Jarrets are a suburban family of affluence and refinement.  Calvin, or Cal, the father, is a successful tax attorney.  He appears confident and polished but underneath the suits he wears is a broken man coming apart from sadness and crippling self doubts.  He longs for his family and himself to heal from a terrible event but he does not know how to guide the process.  He is stuck in bewildering passivity.  His wife Beth is a sophisticated, attractive woman, neatly put together in color coordinated outfits.  But she is coldly indifferent to her family, more than high maintenance, she is touchy an...

Every morning when I leave my apartment complex I have to cross into a busy flow of four lanes of traffic to go pick up my little princess Ingrid and take her to school. Some mornings it is a daunting task crossing the incoming traffic and getting over to the other side going the opposite direction where I need to be. Most Dallas drivers are completely insane behind the wheel and morning rush hour only intensifies their frenzied irrational behavior. My particular morning start often feels like a scene out of Mad Max where Mel Gibson is being furiously chased by absolute maniacs. To get it right without missing cars by inches and elevating my blood pressure into near unconsciousness it requires two things: timing and courage. I have to make sure there is plenty of space on both sides to safely move out into an open lane. That’s the timing part. The courage comes in getting the right feeling, seeing a clear way, and then moving the heck out into the quickly closing window of opp...