The Unclad Soul

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 thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.”  ―  Mary Oliver , American Poet

“Everyone says love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love, but in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt.” ―  Meša Selimović , Yugoslav Novelist/Writer

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”  ~ Rumi, Persian Poet/Mystic

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb." ~ Mary Oliver, Poet/Writer

“What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.”   ―   Alain de Botton ,  British Philosopher/Author

Let’s face it; racism in this country is a reality and a hideous evil. There is a great line from John Merrick, the Elephant Man, in the movie by the same title. Physically distorted, emotionally tormented because of his glaring differences, he tries to justify the cruelty of others by saying to a physician, “People are frightened by what they don’t understand.” Fear drives racism. It is a vicious fuel for all kinds of heartlessness. The simple truth is, far too many white people are terrified of black people. Terrified. And at the heart of that irrational fear is a gaping lack of understanding. There are too many of us who don’t want to understand others different from us. We’ve been white in this country so long we think the whole world is white, or should be. And we tremble with alarm that we just might someday no longer live in our dominating white world. We might then have to actually live along side of people who are a different color than us, have different cultural tr...