The Unclad Soul

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...

I have been out of pocket a while because I was battling Influenza B, one of the strains of the flu virus that has been plaguing the nation for months now. The flu brings with it a variety of nasty irritations. Fever, chills, headache, sore throat, a hacking cough, weakness, and just a general feeling of, Lord, please help me! The strains this year have included additional problems such as strep throat, pneumonia, and in some cases, sepsis, a sometimes deadly collection of bacteria and toxins in the bloodstream. My worse symptoms were a searing sore throat from two small ulcers caused by the flu virus and an accompanying ear and neck ache. I felt very fortunate to have Ingrid and Claudia bringing me soups and good things to eat and making sure I was still alive. My sons, Caleb and Luke, kept up with me, offering to come to my rescue if I needed them. I had great friends from Hamilton checking on me daily. And I had coworkers who called to see if I was faking or really sick...

I am a liberal in politics and religion. All of my friends know this. I am a seeker. They know this, too. I have never been comfortable with easy answers, with the accepted truth of the majority, with well-meaning but trite words of comfort. I want to find some deeper meaning to it all. I want to know there is a meaning. Beyond the shallowness of our current day there has to be more. More than the acrimony and alienation between so many of us. More than the shameless meanness of our leaders. More than the materialistic gluttony, the voracious urge for empty consumption of so many of us. We’re all appetite and no provision. Something has turned us sour, spoiled our sense of humanity, and left us rotting inside our vacant rituals. The election of a president in this country is now a tawdry spectacle of infantile behavior. The candidates preen and harangue and offer us not examples of capable leadership or even decent human conduct. Instead, they divide us with caus...