The Unclad Soul

“Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.” ~ Naomi Shihab Nye, Poet/Author

There are forces in society today that keep luring us into some kind of primitive, relic thinking; thinking that is stripped of compassion and decency and thrives only on some prehistoric brutal mode of survival. It is thinking that is soaking in psychologically damaging fear. It fills us with paranoid dread and suspicion. In this thinking we forget how to care about others. We are too busy building some safe zone for ourselves, some small bubble of existence that keeps out all the bad things and all the bad people. It is thinking that shrivels and diminishes us into people almost unrecognizably human. Hate radio is a part of these forces; voices dripping with the most crude, vicious hateful stuff, meant to divide us from our better thoughts and acts and from one another. So are horribly biased TV pundits who cash in on scaring people, who make up outrageous lies for the sheer pleasure of ratings and big salaries. Bogus politicians who are basically just puppets with financial str...

Religion is struggling these days to be relevant. About the only place it seems to me, strangely enough, to be entering some slight renewal is within Catholicism, which needs it, considering all of the horrors of past priest abuse. And that flicker of renewal is due solely to the fresh presence of Pope Francis. Pope Francis is in many ways a maverick. He is one of the few in religion today who gets religion. He is telling us and showing us what religion is supposed to do. Choosing not to live in the luxurious pontiff’s apartment and the surroundings of the papal palace he moved into a small modest cottage nearby. He has scorned capitalism and materialism and asks us to live for what matters. His sermons are filled with words of mercy and peace and the love of Jesus. Pope Francis goes to the people after each mass and tenderly, lovingly shakes their hands, waves, kisses babies and touches the sick and prays for them. There was a photo online the other day of him approac...

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward people, go freely with uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." ~ Walt Whitman

I watched the final Republican debate last night. The candidates were in Sioux City, Iowa and were trying their best to convince voters of their individual bona fides. It was mostly a very disturbing two hours of saber rattling, Obama bashing, and self congratulating nonsense. We have no statesmanship left in this country; certainly not among any of the current Republican presidential candidates, except perhaps for Ron Paul. I have been disappointed in many of President Obama’s decisions but I do see a certain amount of decency in him. The man had a huge task handed to him the minute he walked into the White House. Blaming him for the poor economy is simply refusing to see the reality of how damaging the Bush years were. What troubles me the most, however, about the Republicans running for president is how all of them, except for Dr. Ron Paul, simply pander to voters, promise the moon, trash Obama and all Democrats, thirst for war, and create more division in the country. ...