The Unclad Soul

I was channel surfing yesterday evening looking for anything remotely positive and stumbled on world traveler Rick Steves’ program on PBS.  He was in Nazaré, Portugal and the scenes were magnificent. Calm, blue sea. Families with children playing on the beach. Quiet little villages of happy people walking the streets and working in open markets.  It all seemed so far from the real chaos in the world with the now labeled COVID-19 virus sweeping the globe, political upheaval across Europe, the impossible-to-describe calamity in Syria, the wretched corruption and cruelty of Netanyahu in the Middle East, and of course the alarming disintegration of our own election process and the shameful division and rancor of our people.  I long for summer and a beach getaway. There is something transfixing and transformative about the ocean.  And yet I cannot stop thinking about those who have no way to escape; the oppressed; those tortured by chronic illness and dis...

There is a classic scene in Season One of HBO’s epic series, Game of Thrones. Queen Cersei Baratheon of the House of Lannister connives to have her young, impertinent son become King of the Iron Throne, a position of high power over the Seven Kingdoms on the continent of Westeros. When her son lies about a confrontation with a daughter of the House of Stark, the Queen assures him there is nothing wrong with that. In the pursuit of power, she tells him lying is necessary. “Someday you will sit on the throne,” she says, “and the truth will be what you make it.” The series is based on the novel by George R.R. Martin, which was written long before Donald Trump became president. And yet, it mirrors a ruthlessness of those seeking power in our own day, including President Trump. In fact, the scene I have quoted above, describes perfectly the mindset and political game plan of Mr. Trump. From the beginning of his presidency, we have seen that for him and his operatives, truth is...

There is a wonderful native American tale told in the Ken Burns series, The West. Seven siblings are playing. Six girls and one boy. The boy pretends he’s a bear chasing the girls and they pretend to be afraid. Then the boy actually becomes a bear and the girls are then actually frightened. They run past a tree, and the tree tells them to climb up, that it will keep them safe. The girls climb into the tree. The bear claws all the bark off the base of the tree. But the tree only rises higher carrying the girls into the sky until they become stars in the Big Dipper. The greatest lessons in life always bring us back to nature, to the land and the sky, to the place of our origin. What happens when our peers, our protectors, turn against us? We run to the safety of what we instinctively know to be good and right. We go into the arms of nature, to what we can see and feel. And, we also go into the mystery of the spirit world, into what we know deep inside us is of authentic value....

Dear God, Jesus, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Help us in the hour of our need. The lessons you taught us about kindness, tolerance, and acceptance of others, have lost their value in our day. The love you demonstrated has been ignored and replaced with political power, religious hypocrisy, and a spirit of meanness and self-righteous arrogance. We are not, as your followers or as good Americans, guided by the Beatitudes, but by branding forces of money and greed. We ignore the lesson of the Good Samaritan and, like the priest and the Levite who simply walked on by not wanting to get involved with the wounded victim, we too, are self-absorbed and blasphemous in our indifference to the hurting of others. You taught us to love the little children, to care for the poor and forgotten, to stand up to evil, especially when it is disguised as Christianity, as God’s Will, as faith, and yes, as patriotism. I know you cannot make us do what is right and honorable. To believe in you i...

And what is it that stirs your soul in these maddening days? What melts your heart? What enlivens you? What makes you want to run flat out full speed until out of breath you stop and hold your arms out to the sky? What motivates you to smile, to laugh out loud, to relish the moment with delight? What creates deep inside you, feelings of warmth, of affection, of love? Is it music? Listening to a beautiful song, being moved by the music and the lyrics? Is it reading a captivating book, following some story whether in a novel or some historical setting, that keeps you turning the page? Is it a movie, whether sitting in a theater or watching at home on live streaming TV, a movie that holds you in its spell until the credits run at the end? Is it attending a play, perhaps a musical, like Hamilton, Les Miserables, the Lion King, or some other fantastic performance that soars and enlightens and sends you home emotionally spent, or tingling inside, or singing all t...

The recent killing spree at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, by Marine vet, Ian David Long, was a chilling reminder of the war mentality promoted by our government. Long walked into the bar and murdered 12 people, mostly young patrons, before taking his own life. He posted on his Facebook page before going to the bar, “Yeah…I’m insane, but the only thing you people do after these shootings is ‘hopes and prayers’ or ‘keep you in my thoughts’…every time…and wonder why these keep happening.” Wonder if anyone in the government will hear that? Wonder if all the NRA supports got the message? Ironically, the mother of one of the young people murdered at the bar told reporters she didn’t want anyone’s prayers, what she wanted was gun regulation. Wonder if anyone in the government will pay any attention to that? Ian David Long was not insane, but he certainly was profoundly disturbed. He returned from military conflict lost in a fog of unresolved rage and the damaging ps...

I have started watching Season 6 of the Netflix series, House of Cards. President Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is dead, and his wife Claire (Robin Wright) is the new president. She takes charge with ferocious scheming using all of her wily skills, which are sometimes frightening, to make sure people know she will not be denied. Anything. This series closely identifies our own emotionally and spiritually bankrupt political system, although in HOC things are, well, dramatically excessive. The characters in the Claire Underwood (which she changes to her maiden name, Clair Hale) administration are about as corrupt as a gang of Capone criminals in the 1920s. Like those guys, they’re all in nice suits with clean looks, but underneath the urbane clothes beat hearts of stone. The tortured and deranged Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) returns from prison and ruin and God knows what else, to pick up his old expertise in doing relentless damage to those Claire Hale finds in the way...

You were once a proud country of people united around simple but durable truths: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You honored yourselves by championing freedom for all people, by advocating for diversity, civil rights, and human rights. You grew into a nation the world envied, admired, and wanted to live in. People across all lands and regions, from remote communities and desert places, came here in search of a better life for them and their families. Over the years millions have come here to flee tyranny, to escape the violent evil oppression of soulless dictators. They came to America to be safe, to raise their children without the threat of seeing them slaughtered in the streets by brutal military forces or carried off into vicious exploitation by drug lords and pimps. They came to participate in an economy that welcomed demanding work, ingenuity, and a chance to build something of their own for them and their families. And in the process, this nation gr...

(Note: This may be hard to take, but I think it's necessary. - TM) President Trump took his road show to Houston, Texas this week. He was there to support the Senate candidacy of Ted Cruz. However, he barely mentioned Cruz. Most of the speech was about, as usual, himself. One of the most disturbing things he said was a threat to send the military to the border to stop what he calls “the caravan” of refugees from Honduras and Guatemala from entering the U.S. First of all, he cannot legally do that. There is an Act that prohibits the military from engaging in civilian law enforcement outside of military bases (The Posse Comitatus Act). And secondly, really? Just ignore these desperate people? Without the slightest proof and with a desire to continue to scare his base, he claimed gangs, murderers, rapists, and terrorists are basically the people in the caravan. “We don’t want them,” he yelled to the crowd, who of course cheered and applauded. I don’t care to go on ab...

The courageous protest by the former professional football player, Colin Kaepernick, has been so misunderstood and misrepresented that the point of it has mostly been lost. After what seemed like an endless stream of shootings and killings of unarmed black men by white police officers, Kaepernick decided to do something. He didn’t riot or retaliate, scream profanities, or assault white people. Instead, he simply chose not to stand at the playing of the National Anthem before his games . It was not an attack on the American Flag, on the military, or the anthem. His action was simply saying that, for him, the battles of war that our soldiers have fought to make us “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” as spoken in The Star-Spangled Banner song, are not being honored. The violence of white cops against Blacks and the indifference of politicians and the courts to tolerate and excuse it was what Kaepernick was protesting. The National Anthem praises honor, courage, ...

José Rizal, a physician, writer, and a peace advocate during the Spanish-American War wrote: “There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves.” Merriam-Webster defines a tyrant as “an absolute ruler unrestrained by law or constitution…an oppressive ruler in the harsh use of authority or power.” We normally think of tyrants as madmen, vicious and violent dictators who brutalize their people, often with beatings, imprisonment, and death. And there have been and still are leaders of countries with those characteristics. But tyrants can also be less than that. They can simply be those who lead by manipulation, deceit, and mocking rhetoric, who, as Merriam-Webster put it, rule “unrestrained by law or constitution.” But whatever stripe of tyrant one may be, they cannot stay in power, as Rizal said, “without slaves.” What does that mean? It means those who do as they are told. Those who follow without consideration of their own best interests or the interests of others....

The news photo of a defenseless 92-year old Mexican man who was recently beaten with a brick by a woman and kicked by men, haunts and torments me. The woman, whose toddler daughter watched the whole thing, told the bleeding and battered old man to “Go back to Mexico.” He was visiting his family and was simply taking a walk near the house when the woman assaulted him. 92 years old. I watched a lengthy video on Facebook last week by a young Latina woman at a Chicago park who was verbally taunted by a drunk white man who kept getting in her face while a white police officer stood by and watched, doing nothing, even though she kept asking the officer to intervene. She and her family had rented a space at the park for a birthday party. But the drunk man and another white man were sitting in their space and wouldn’t leave. He then began harassing her because she was wearing a shirt that read, Puerto Rico on it. Eventually, several other police officers arrived but they let the drunk man ...

I am fighting pessimism. I do not want to be sour and gloomy and see only all that is wrong in our country and the world. I am trying to not believe we are at the edge of the abyss staring into the darkness. The poet Mary Oliver has written, “My concern for the world is a sorrowful business.” I have that concern as well. I struggle to breathe easier, to lessen the stresses, to find a place beyond the hard realities of this current debacle that is our nation and its defective government. My Facebook friend, Shelley Henderson, shared an astonishing poem from the brilliant Kate Tempest, titled, “Brand New Ancients.” In it, she writes, “In the old days, the myths were the stories we used to explain ourselves But how can we explain the way we hate ourselves? The things we’ve made ourselves into, the way we break ourselves in two, the way we overcomplicate ourselves? We are still permanently trapped somewhere between the heroic and the pitiful.” ...

On NPR (National Public Radio) this morning they played a recording of a typical scene now where the Border Patrol is separating children from their parents.  I was in my car on my way to work. I heard babies crying, children screaming in tears. A Border officer is heard saying in Spanish, "We have an orchestra." It was a pathetic attempt to settle the distraught children terrified of being taken from their parents. The Trump administration is trying, unconvincingly, to dress the scene in quiet calm with children getting food and medicine, shelter and games. But let’s be honest. These are no substitutes for a child being taken from their parents. You can sit them in front of a circus of dancing elephants and they will still cry for their mother and father. The president is cynically blaming Democrats, or saying he’s protecting the country from the drug cartel, or whatever sort of baloney he wants to embellish, but the truth is, and please, everyone can see this, the pre...