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...

We are a battle-weary people. At least I am a battle-weary person. We battle traffic, rude store clerks and customers, arrogant cops, cable companies, cell phone agents. We battle the incompetence of politicians, the hypocrisy of the religious, the indifference of employers, the jealousy of co-workers, the betrayal of lovers, the insolence of students. These battles wear us down, exhaust us, make us cynical and bad-tempered. We lose something of ourselves in every battle we wage or endure. Sometimes it’s something irretrievable. Humility. Understanding. A part of our soul. A slice of our heart. A function of our thinking that keeps us human. The battles, the wars, our American military are involved in across the world are often forgotten and ignored by most of us. We don’t really follow them. But we are part of those battles, too. As Americans, we are represented in those wars. And there is something terribly diminishing about them for all of us, whether we acknowledge...

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...

If I could, I would Stop all the wars And heal all the sores And give the less more And free the bored And individualize the hoard If I could If I could, I would Have all women revered And all children loved And the old honored And the sick well And the disabled cheered And the foreigner welcomed If I could If I could, I would Enact gay rights around the world And celebrate them as whole And give them freedom To be who they are And embrace them into The family of you and me If I could If I could, I would Empty Congress of its politicians And fill it with teachers And Poets And writers; With artists And sculptors; With farmers And ranchers; With animal lovers And stargazers; With gardeners And fishermen If I could If I could, I would Remove all bigotry And prejudice of every kind And put the redneck and the whitey and the Confederate flagger and the bully cop and the crooked judge and the ...

Best-selling author, Jungian analyst, and post-trauma recovery professional, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, has written, “Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation—in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.” This is the essence and the work of psychotherapy. A properly framed question can probe one’s deepest inner spaces and dislodge a revealing answer. But let’s broaden the scope a bit. More than the work of therapists, physicians, and psychiatrists, thoughtful questions offer all of us insights and discoveries we may or may not be aware of. We live in a time of flimsy answers. Our politicians are not interested in questions. They only want to provide their own solutions, even though they may be unworkable and unwante...

The human catastrophe in Yemen is entirely man made. The politics of it are messy and complicated and the various factions behind this horror, the U.S. among them, are difficult to keep up with. But the bottom line is this: government leaders started the war there, they have continued it, and they are doing precious little to avoid civilian casualties and deaths, and, they are impeding the flow of medical care and food for the millions of suffering people there. Cholera is now an epidemic in the country and thousands of displaced families and individuals are dying from a disease that afflicts the most primitive environments of refuse, squalor, and starvation. According to a report on NPR this morning some families have lived in cardboard tents for three years, their children out of school for that time, and endless neighborhoods of people without food or water or hope. For what? For greed. Power. Control. Here we are in the 21 st century and the world wobbles in the i...

National Public Radio (NPR) had a segment this week on the chaos in Libya. With more than forty years of rule under Muammar Gaddafi, Libya had become a thriving country. There were limited freedoms and an unbending system of laws, many of them harsh and restrictive. But the country held together while Gaddafi entered strategic partnerships with the U.S. and European powers, striking deals with defense manufacturers and oil companies. We were apparently fine with his dictatorial rule as long as there was something in it for us. Then, in the fall of 2010, revolt was moving through the Arab world. The U.S. government saw, once again, an opportunity for regime change. The rich oil reserves in Libya and other resources would be the spoils of a limited battle fully supported by the U.S. but mostly fought by NATO troops. Removing Gaddafi was never admitted to as a U.S. mission, but it was carried out nonetheless. It all went bad quickly, however. Gaddafi was beaten, sodomiz...

Cultural critic and novelist, Daniel Quinn, has written, “There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world…they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.“ Some of us grew up in a time when the church, the school, the government, and society at large, gave us a story to believe that asked us to live in accord with the world. There were always pockets of cynics, bullies, bigots and screwballs who rebelled and remained trouble makers attempting to divide people and communities. But for the most part, people tried to get al...

The Syrian conflict defies reason. What is it about? No one knows. The Syrian government, the Russian government, the US government, and ISIS terrorists—we are all a part of a bloody, inhumane slaughter of innocents. Our news sources are unreliable. We really have no idea what is going on. We see the devastation and the carnage, the heartbreaking chaos, and suffering. But it all goes around in vicious cycles of obscene violence and endless death and no one has any explanation or solution. Other than who can be the most ferocious in war. Our entire political leadership, from President Trump and the full Congress, all the way down to state governments, Texas most notably, are so arrogantly polarized, so consumed with indifference to real life and death issues, to actual living people, that they have nothing helpful or in any way substantial to offer a warring world. Yes, someone is responsible for the chemical explosion in Syria that brought horrifying misery and excruciatin...

I visited with my brother Jim yesterday and, as always when I see him, I left deeply reflecting on life. “The world,” Helen Keller once said, “is full of suffering; but also, the overcoming of it.” It is difficult to watch the news and see the horror in the Middle East. There is so much suffering and death there. And yet, people somehow survive it. Refugees walk hundreds of miles, pile their families and a few belongings into small boats to cross treacherous waters in hope of finding safety. They enter strange countries where now they are often unwelcome, mistreated, harmed or sent back to the nightmare they fled. How do they do it? How do they go on? The human spirit, though fragile, often shocks us with its undeterred courage. And here, in our country, minorities still struggle to be free. Free of discrimination, injustice, abuse, and hate. That our black friends still, after all these years, have to fight for basic rights is a stain on our democracy. Yet, they carry on,...

“We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about them.” ~ Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Physician/Author Pictured here is Kikuko Shinjo, 89 years old, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast. As a 17-year old nursing student she helped nurse victims of the carnage back to health. Many of them died in her care. She says she holds no grudge against America and encourages interaction between the Japanese and Americans. She has devoted her life to peace, saying, “I want all the people around the world to be friends, and I want to make my country peaceful without fighting.” Today she makes colorful paper cranes and donates them to the Children’s Peace Monument at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Someone on Facebook recently suggested, in a post comment, that I was not voting for Hillary Clinton because I may be afraid of strong women. The person does not know me and I have never met her. She made her comment to a friend of mine on his post in response to something I had said about Clinton. Anyone who actually knows me knows how wrong that comment is. And it’s irritating that many people seem to think if you don’t vote for Hillary you either hate her or you are afraid of women. Even if you denounce Trump, as I have done again and again, and say you aren’t voting for him, as I have said, you’re still suspect. The notion that if you’re not voting for Hillary something must be wrong with you and you have some kind of issue with women, is simply shortsighted and wrong. I have long supported the rights of women, blacks, gays, immigrants, veterans, and others who are often left out of any real discussion about equal rights, justice, and respect for them from the government a...

I went down to the memory lane And walked alone along the hazy trail I saw my boyhood and the dogs I owned And the field down the street where I played ball On hot summer days with my friends I walked into my grandparent’s house The little place a few blocks away Where love reigned and the hugs would never end And I felt a worth I’ve not since known I saw the art class in junior high Where I built a sculpture out of tiles A cathedral with a golden steeple That my mom kept for years in our home I waved at the girl I kissed under the bleachers At the football game in the high school stadium And she smiled at me like she did long ago And I remembered how sweet life was How easy the days all seemed to flow I drove my first car to the Dairy Queen And sat and watched the kids all come and go Their laughter was real and their faces beamed With innocence that now has disappeared From the faces of so many kids I know I sat in church and h...

I have friends who are supporting Donald Trump who have posted a few times on my Facebook page. They believe that I sympathize with them in certain ways. And I do. I understand where they are coming from. I share their frustration. And I’m glad they have posted comments. I want to hear their thoughts. I welcome them. I have friends who are supporting Hillary Clinton who seem bewildered that I am not on board with them and with her. I get that, too. I’m a liberal Democrat and they think I should be supporting Clinton. But, I’m not. Friends are irritated about that. That’s okay; I still want them to comment. I want to hear them as well. We don’t have to fully accept each other’s viewpoints or beliefs or politics in order to be friends. But we should be willing to at least listen to one another and allow each one of us our thoughts without judgment, anger, resentment, or condemnation. And certainly without hate. Thankfully, my friends do this. Hillary supporters believe Dona...