The Unclad Soul

I find it astonishing that in this country we have political and religious leaders who seem perfectly fine creating a society that dismisses the poor, the sick, children in crisis, and the frail elderly who don’t have enough resources for their many medical and prescription needs. These leaders have no interest in providing a safety net for the most vulnerable people in our country. They talk about cutting social spending but are fine with bloated defense budgets.  They want the government out of their lives but are happy to get Medicare. They want to pay little or no taxes but then scream the loudest when the system doesn’t work for them.  They are fine shutting down agencies of care for people desperate for help, all the while they tell us how righteous they are. They quote random Bible verses and use them as validation for their indifference to others. They lift themselves up in pompous claims of religious fervor even as they detest those who differ from them in co...

For a long time I have been taken with Whitney Houston’s 2009 video of her song, “I Look to You.” I often return to it for some kind of connection which I’m really not sure of.  I think it must be her vulnerability. Or mine. And there is something that feels so fragile about her in this one. I feel compassion when I watch it. The video has a simple setting. She begins in shadows sitting in a chair. As the song opens soft light reveals her in a flowing silk dress. Her head is bowed. Her features troubled. And though her face is luminous, there is weariness in her eyes. She sings, “As I lay me down/Heaven hear me now/I’m lost without a cause/After giving it my all/Winter storms have come/And darkened my sun/After all that I’ve been through/Who on earth can I turn to?/I look to you” The most awarded female performer of all time, according to Guinness World Records, she nevertheless often lived a life tormented by inner urges she could not control, by an injured soul that ...

The crisis in Syria is basically a civil war. It is a power struggle between conflicting ideologies. It started as an uprising against Assad’s dictatorship and a small faction attempting to have something like democracy without knowing what that really meant for them. Now, however, it has turned into something else. The rebel forces are apparently a jumble of insurgents including members of Al-Qaeda. So if we go in there and do whatever, blow up some of Assad’s military assets, or even topple the regime, do we want terrorists taking over things? How would a gang of Muslim extremists turning the place into an unbending theocracy be better for the Syrian people? Is President Obama simply trying to save face, hoping to keep from looking weak after making previous threats against Assad’s use of chemical weapons? Even with all of the horror that has gone on, there was no real threat to the U.S. Assad had never made any movement against our country (and neither as the world know...

President Obama’s decision to respond to the horror and conflict in Syria makes me think of that line in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” where one of the characters says, “This is as strange a maze as ever men trod.” How do you watch children and women and people of all ages being gassed to death, writhing in convulsions and gasping for air, and not want to immediately do something about it? And yet, how will throwing a few bombs at Assad’s air force do anything to change the dynamic or stop the carnage? I believe President Obama is a man who truly wrestles with all of this. He obviously is counting the political costs, but I do believe he is a man with a conscience. I think he wants to do the right thing, but I’m not sure he knows what is right in this instance. His “red line” comment was careless and not well thought through. It put him in a spot where he is forced now to back it up in some way. But let’s not pretend the Congress and especially all of the Republican/Tea ...

It is time to face the facts in this country. We are dangerously divided. You can’t sugarcoat it by saying it’s always been this way between people and groups. You can’t dismiss it as just life in contemporary society. You can’t pretend there is any middle ground any longer. The evolutionary biologist and author, Richard Dawkins, has said, “When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.” How true. It’s not that the Democrats are a little right and the Republicans are, too. It’s no longer true that both sides share basically the same political ideals. They don’t. Maybe once, but not anymore. Democrats are not without their own hypocrisies, blunders, irritating passiveness, and cheap compromises. But there are clear differences in the crafting of traditional, well meaning, good for all of society political legislation, which they are still commit...

The small and almost silent group of religious leaders, politicians, authors, editors, social critics, teachers, physicians and others who seek to define themselves and live by a compassionate faith, a social conscience, and who work for a progressive approach to solving our massive problems in this country, swim against a raging current of resistance.  It comes from those who disdain unity, who are terrified of diversity, who hate government unless it works only to their advantage, who care nothing about preserving a social fabric that holds all of us in community. The struggle against this forceful cultural current is exhausting, expensive, and often defeating. No one will be surprised if those fighting to move against it grow tired and sometimes collapse in shallow waters. Bullies flourish in this environment and are always the last to go down. They prey on the defenseless, those smaller, those less powerful, those with gentle souls who have no lust for battle or conflict. ...