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...

Dear Conservative Friends, I’m torn. Some of you I have known for years. Some of you are close friends, people I love and admire and care about. So it makes it difficult for me to understand your politics sometimes and your devotion to president Trump, your tolerance of his divisive partisanship, your silence regarding his often hurtful comments, and your acceptance of his merry clan of White House associates and Congressional chums many of whom are clearly corrupt and many others who seem hell bent on making America one race (white of course), one religion (Fundamentalist Christian), one economy (for the wealthy), one issue (the 2 nd Amendment), and one truth (theirs). Now, I’m sure you can turn that all around and say something similar to me about Democrats or liberals or others you strenuously disagree with or dislike. Understood. But I’m honestly concerned about the way things seem to be going in the country. Yes, liberals and moderates have often been lousy at govern...

Showtime’s series, “Billions,” is a smart, wild journey in the world of finance, legal tightwires, investor manipulation, shady deals dressed in big money, deceit, and a style of living only a few ever really experience. Half the time I have no idea what they are talking about. The financial sophistication and the language of the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), the justice department, the FBI, and the office of the US attorney in New York City is baffling. But, the storylines, the characters, and so much of the dialogue is so captivating and even instructive that I enjoy it. Anyone in business or law would find this series illuminating. Mostly, though, the series is a shocking look at how a lot of life goes on in our country. Particularly how we operate in our careers, our jobs, and our relationships both in and out of work. Even though this is a fictional series, I think it hits close to home for many viewers. Not that we know the life of high finance and a ...

I fight like crazy these days to refrain from cynicism. I am by nature a pretty pleasant person. I want to see good in everyone. I love to laugh, to feel joy, to delight in life. I try to manage my anger, take a deep breath, and stay calm. It doesn’t always work. For instance, I’m thinking now how I would rather watch every tedious moment of the entire Royal Wedding than to have had to watch five seconds of the celebration of moving our American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and listening to Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress pray. I have thoughts on that. But I’m holding back. They are not kind thoughts. They stir in me that image that Nick Lowe sings about, “The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars.” I’m trying to hold the locks in place. I have Jewish friends that I cherish. I honor them and their faith. Judaism is a historic system of beautiful beliefs. But what has gone on in Israel under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu is something I find grossly offen...

The remarkable Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, once wrote, “This hasn’t been the age for the righteous and the decent.  I know what it means to beget monsters  And to recognize in them myself.”  It is an appropriate indictment of our own day and of our own selves. I keep telling myself that what we are experiencing in our country is just a phase, something we have gone through before, where people who turn loathsome and violent, enormously greedy and arrogant, will change. That these dark clouds of hostility hovering over us will pass and the sunlight of decent behavior will shine again. But there is something alarmingly stubborn about the indignity, prejudice, violence, division and hatred among us. We seem stuck in a continuous atmosphere of rancor and bitter estrangement. And it is disturbing and frightening that our leaders seem incapable or not interested in changing the nation’s oppressive mood. Our media, in all of its forms, is clearly geared t...

Historian Will Durant wrote in one of his books about “the few” who he said delight in thinking and understanding, “who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth.” “These are the   people” he wrote, “who stand aside unused by the world.” How perplexing that so often it is thinking people, gentle souls,   soft spoken   individuals, people of spiritual depth, unprofaned, compassionate to a fault, who “stand aside unused by the world.” I know these people. I have met them over the years. I have worked with them. They have been neighbors. They have been amazing friends. They live in quiet, modest homes, warm with welcome, blanketed with love. They are not famous. They have no massive assets. They do not run big companies. Their impact is not in power, or financial resources...

"I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life. I've learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as making a ‘life.’ I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a ...

At the age of 66, novelist and poet May Sarton, was diagnosed with breast cancer, went through a mastectomy, ended a long time relationship, and suffered from depression. Out of that she wrote one of her best books, Recovering: A Journal . She was obviously hurt and angry about all that had happened to her. But she was determined to understand what it meant and how she should respond. She struggled through every raw emotion in an attempt to remain human. “We cannot withdraw love without damaging ourselves,” she wrote. “Rage,” she continued, “is the deprived infant in me but there is also a compassionate mother in me and she will come back with her healing powers in time.”  It is a message of hope for the country. There is so much cold anger today; so much unacknowledged hurt and pain. You see it everywhere. You feel it from people in traffic, at store counters, and certainly on social media platforms, especially Twitter and Facebook. Some things there are vicious a...

“Outside the freezing desert night, This other night grows warm, kindling.” ~ Rumi

In the holiday classic, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” George Bailey loses it all. His small building and loan company appears bankrupt due to Uncle Billy’s foolish misplacement of their funds. Believing he had nothing to live for except ruin and disgrace, George jumps off a bridge in desperation. He is rescued by Clarence, an odd, elderly angel still trying to get his wings. As they are both drying out from the cold water below the bridge, George tries to understand what is happening: George : Look, who are you? Clarence : I told you, George. I'm your guardian angel. George : Yeah, yeah, I know. You told me that. What else are you? What...are you a hypnotist? Clarence : No, of course not. George : Well, then, why am I seeing all these strange things? Clarence : Don't you understand, George? It's because you were not born. George : Then if I wasn't born, who am I? Clarence : You're nobody. You have no identity. George : What do you mean, no identity? ...

There is a scene in the famous series, “Mad Men,” where Don Draper and Roger Sterling are sitting in Don’s office having a drink. Don is an advertising genius and ad man. Roger inherited the agency from his father, and though plenty smart, he sort of just provides advice and insights to the rest of the staff. He and Don are talking about the firm and the problems they are facing with both old and new clients. As Don pours them a drink, they have this exchange: Roger : I bet daily friendship with that bottle attracts more people to advertising than any salary you can dream of. Don : It's the way I got in. Roger : So enjoy it. Don : I'm doin' my best here. Roger : No, you're not. You don't know how to drink. Your whole generation, you drink for the wrong reasons. My generation, we drink because it's good, because it feels better than unbuttoning your collar, because we deserve it. We drink because it's what men do. Don : What about shaky hands, ...

I am making my way through the AMC Mad Men series. I saw the original series when it first came out almost ten years ago. Now I’m watching it again on Netflix. I knew what I was in for. Since the presidential election I have been trying to better understand myself, others, and my country. The ugly bitterness of the election left me emotionally exhausted, and frankly, disappointed in people in general. I didn’t follow the chaos on Twitter, but Facebook was a primeval jungle of crude squabbling, angry rants, malicious name calling, and endless acts of blocking and unfriending people. Some of them relatives and close friends. So after all of that, I decided to wander into Mad Men, the perfect setting for seeing the absolute worst in human hurt, pettiness, jealously, manipulation and betrayal. I thought that there, I might get some understanding of why, in certain circumstances, we sink, almost unconsciously and hopelessly, into such abysmal and damaging behavior. Don Draper, ...

“When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear; angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your private score is.” ~ Excerpt from Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye

The masterminds of 911, whether they intended to be or not, were geniuses. Not because they managed in the most terrifying way to collapse the Twin Towers but because their hideous act successfully severed our nation from its bearings. They didn’t just viciously murder nearly 3,000 Americans and temporarily shut down various financial institutions and disrupt the flow of commerce for a while. That wasn’t their goal. They created an ominous, debilitating, relentless fear among us. A terrorizing fear that still to this day remains in force in the lives of so many Americans. A fear writhing and twisting in hate. An irrational fear. A fear that gallops headstrong through our churches and schools, our Congress, our businesses and our homes. And that fear has made us so distrusting of people, so neurotically detached from reality, so emotionally hardened, bigoted and vengeful, that it is in many ways destroying us. That’s what terror is supposed to do. Weaken. Cripple. Confound. Torment. Di...

If your religion, your faith, helps you handle your addictions, brings you emotional balance and enables you to deal intelligently with life in healthy ways, then wonderful. I applaud you. If your religion/faith helps you live with a terminal illness or a lifelong disability with grace and courage and dignity, then you are an inspiration and someone I truly admire. If your religion/faith enables you to be understanding and compassionate of all people everywhere, if it creates a welcome in your heart for the oppressed and the forgotten and the different, if it makes you genuinely tolerant of other religions, if it moves you to social action, to deeds of kindness and generosity, then I respect you and will appreciate your commitment to your beliefs. But if what you believe in a religious context makes you feel you are more than others, if it leaves you arrogant and removed from the rest of struggling humanity, if it gives you a sense of superiority, the idea that you have some speci...

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”   ―   Saul Bellow, Novelist

It was one of those really cold dreary days recently and Ingrid and I were on our way to the Half Price Book store to browse, mingle among the shelves, look for a good book, and get something hot to drink in the Black Forest Coffee Shop. On our way we stopped at a traffic light and there on the corner, his face against the wind, a not nearly warm enough jacket on, was a small Latino man selling candy apples on a long wooden pole he held in front of him. I looked at him and thought of all the mean things that are said about immigrants these days, documented or not; how so many in this country have no interest in giving them a fair chance at making a good life here; how they supposedly steal our jobs. I wondered if he had a wife and children at home he was trying to care for. How many men would brave the cold on a Saturday afternoon to sell apples? The pole was full. I couldn’t tell he’d sold a single thing and I suspected he might have been there for some time. I commented ...