The Unclad Soul

My Huckleberry Friends I have returned from a trip to the country where I spent glorious days with my son Luke, my daughter-in-law Tawna, my granddaughter T’Lee, and the dogs—Maggie, Trapper, Finder, and Poncho. We fished, we ate, we talked and laughed, we rode around the stunning ranch, we breathed clean fresh air. We even played golf one day at a little 9-hole course down the road. Well, Tawna and I did. Luke managed the snacks and drinks on the golf cart. As I drove out of the ranch to return to Dallas, I passed on the road an Amish couple in a horse drawn buggy. They gave me a friendly wave and I waved back. There is a solid Amish community in the area. They live mostly quiet lives. They follow strict standards of Christian morality and family life. They are a peaceful people. Hard working and immensely gifted craftsman and builders. The women are talented quilt makers and seamstresses as well as devoted mothers. Some have their own businesses. Some are teachers within the Am...

It is a sad conclusion on my part that religion today is failing us. It has, historically, had a shady past creating some of the most brutal and oppressive acts on human life in spite of whatever good it has produced. But today, worldwide, it is often the fuel of cruel prejudices, hatred, and violence. The wars of the Middle East all have their origins in religious disputes. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iran, religious clashes and the refusal to honor other beliefs, often just other interpretations of their own beliefs, have led to the slaughter of millions of helpless people. Today, Evangelical Christianity, in our own nation, has become one of the most confusing, deceptive, shallow and self-serving belief systems anywhere. The hypocrisy of modern Christianity has swallowed it whole and left it a mocked and rejected object of derision. Clearly, there are exceptions. But a wide-spread image of religion in our world today is one of withering decay. I grew up in the...

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....

Clergyman, author, and professor of Homiletics at Yale Divinity School, Halford Luccock, used to tell the story of a father who took his young son camping. At one point the father handed his son binoculars so he could better see the beauty of a mountain range. But the boy took the binoculars and looked through them from the wrong end. He complained that everything seemed so small, that he couldn’t make anything out. His father turned them around and said, “Now, you can see things as they are.” I read that story years ago and have never forgotten it. It seems an appropriate example of the error of our day. We seem, as a society, to be looking through the wrong end of the binoculars. Everything is small, insignificant, trite, unclear. We have no grand vision, no breathtaking sense of the beauty of our world and its people. We have lost our perspective. The gifted historian and novelist, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was a voice of courage and truth against the old Soviet Union. Hi...

There is this from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” Mad Hatter: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” (There is a long pause.) “Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. “No, I give up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?” “I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter . And so, there you have it. My dilemma. I’m trying to figure out what happened to us as a nation. It’s a riddle I can’t answer. I haven’t the slightest idea. There are possible answers, I suppose. We got too big. We overachieved. We mixed religion with politics and politics took over religion. We became insanely selfish. We forgot our neighbors. We learned to hate more than we learned to love. We confined ourselves to our own kind and decided “others” were our enemies. We stopped thinking. We stopped caring. We stopped growing. The list is pretty much endless. So here we are. A nation in crisis. We’re surrounded by the greatest gadgets and devices and pla...

I admit I’m in love with Lady Gaga. I know, it’s silly to say it, and of course when I say, “in love,” I mean something more than a foolish fantasy. I’m convinced she has one of the purest voices of today’s crowded talent of musicians and performers. When she sang the National Anthem (you can see it on youtube) in 2016 at Super Bowl 50, I was mesmerized. Patriotism and all the pseudo hype that goes with it these days falls flat for me most of the time. But her performance made me want to cheer or salute or something. It was a powerful moment. Her song, “Joanne,” which she performed at last Sunday’s Grammys, was dedicated, she said, to her father’s sister, Joanne. Again, it was sung with so much passion and precision, while she played the piano and was accompanied on guitar by her album producer Mark Ronson. In spite of her past outrageous outfits, masks, wigs, get-ups, and other brazen acts of defiance, protest, or whatever else she was feeling at the time, she remains a phen...

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...

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...

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. In Jesus’ day mourning was serious business. People suffering loss or some inner wound would go out into the streets and tear at their clothing. They would scream and weep in agony. They would gather a handful of dirt and pour it over their heads and let it mingle in their tears. It was a sign of their connection with their mortality, their belonging to the earth where sorrow breeds. They would wrap themselves in the arms of others. They didn’t lose themselves in mindless work or distract themselves in foolish activity. Grieving hurt. Mourning meant something. And I think what Jesus is saying here is: be open to the wounds of the world and to your own. Mourn the hurting of people and when you yourself hurt. Weep over the suffering of humanity and your suffering, too. Don’t hide from it. Don’t attempt to chase it away with meaningless clichés or empty escapes. Feel it and be moved. We are to mourn the deaths of those we l...

“My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird— equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the calm deep in the speckled sand. Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.” ~ Mary Oliver

I am a liberal Democrat. I am a Christian. I am a humanist. I believe in Choice. I support Gay Marriage. I believe in gay rights. I believe in reasonable gun laws including background checks at Gun Shows before a purchase is made. I believe in children. I believe in grand parenting. I believe in laughter and kissing and hugging and love. I believe in thinking, in using your mind and not just your emotions, which are often accurate, but can be easily manipulated. I believe in books. Books are guides into mystery and morality, into wisdom and insight, into gratitude and generosity, into acceptance and endurance, into risk and living, and we need all of that. I believe in pets because whether it’s a dog or a cat or a bird or a turtle it invites compassion from us and can make us a more decent person if we treat it with care and affection. I believe in the sacred which has the power to move and even transform us. Nature is sacred. Seasons are sacred. So is the ocean. Quiet worship before ...

The world today aches. It trembles with pain. It longs for something kind and good and human. People are tired. Worn down by the hatred of cold and calculating tactics of the powerful. Weary to the point of despair because of an unfair and unjust system that works only for the few, for people with influence and wealth and who alone pull all of the essential levers of life, always in their favor. Most of our modern world, including America, is lost in a sea of corrupt financial vandalism. The greed of the powerful knows no limit. Although that greed is primarily carried out by polished men in expensive suits whose lives glitter in luxury and extravagance, their greed nonetheless oozes out of them like a foul discharge. Their Joker smiles betray any attempt at normalcy. Their giddy gluttony is not the attractive superiority they boast or they presume. Instead it pollutes and harms and ruins. And for many if not most of them their wealth is by no means a sign of high intelligence or ...

“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it. ~ Wendell Berry, American Poet ...

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...

"O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;   Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;   Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)   Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;   Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;   Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest, me intertwined;   The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?   Answer.   That you are here—that life exists, and identity;   That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse."   ~ Walt Whitman

I don’t want to discuss President Obama’s speech to the nation about dealing with ISIS. I’m so weary with war. I don’t want to hear Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell launch another arrogant attack against the president. I don’t want to see any more beheading videos. I don’t want to watch people being swallowed up in floods and typhoons and mountain slides. I don’t want to hear anymore petty whining about defenseless children coming here from vicious countries hell bent on abusing and killing them. I don’t want any more lectures from Republican Congress members about how horrible everything is in the nation when they won’t lift a finger to do a damn thing about any of it. I don’t want to watch another unarmed young black man being shot to death by a gang of cowardly white cops. I don’t want to see anymore senseless beatings by bullying rogue cops. I don’t want to see anymore backward hillbilly racist Ferguson, Missouri’s. I don’t want to view another video of a pampered rich footb...

I spent last evening watching on C-Span the House Oversight Committee eviscerate the former commissioner of the IRS, Douglas Shulman. Both Republicans and Democrats took turns sanctimoniously judging Shulman and trying with all the drama of a courtroom trial of some grotesque murderer to humiliate and destroy the man. The Republicans of course love this kind of stuff.  Their questioning bordered on hysteria and orgasmic delight.  Most of it was complete buffoonery; as usual.  And the Democrats, who never miss a chance to hold hands with Republican fanatics and support them in their derangement, joined right in.  They always do this if they think doing so will impress someone out there in the voting public who thinks Democrats are passive sissies.  But of course no one is ever impressed by this display of phony outrage. Having a brain and being an intelligent, rational presence seems lost on all of those on this committee.  With the exception o...

Let us give action to our finest impulses, people of this great free land… Let us be superior to our fears, to the easy prejudices, to the ugly urge to hate, to the poison of arrogance, to the quick judgment, to the coward’s tactic of bullying, to the stubbornness of always being right, and to all things that demean, and discredit, that hurt and ruin, that drag all of us away from our giant selves so capable of love… Let us lift our voices in praise of life, in celebration of the human spirit that wants, that craves, that needs goodness… Let us fall on our knees in awe of children, of the wise, of the brave, of the undaunted… Let us clap our hands and stand in honor of soldiers and teachers, of librarians and therapists, of gardeners and wait staff, of flight attendants and firemen, of street vendors and retail clerks, of nursing aids and grill cooks, of bartenders and stay at home moms… Let us speak up for the u...

In a Peanuts cartoon Lucy, Linus, and Charlie Brown are resting on the lawn one afternoon looking at the clouds.  Lucy speaks: “Aren't the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton. I could just lie here all day, and watch them drift by.  If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud formations. What do you think you see, Linus?" "Well, those clouds up there look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean... that cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor...and that group of clouds over there gives me the impression of the stoning of Stephen...I can see the apostle Paul standing there to one side." "Uh huh. That's very good. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?" "Well, I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsy, but I changed my mind!”   I’m with Charlie Brown today.  I’m looking for the simple things in life.  Most of everythi...