The Unclad Soul

I have just finished watching Ken Burns’ magnificent series, “The Civil War.” I saw it when it first aired on PBS some years ago but I wanted to return to it. The racial unrest in our country today is hauntingly and shockingly similar to the racial divide in the country a hundred and fifty years ago. Think of that. We are still fighting that long, bloody, wasteful and savage war.  President Lincoln wanted to keep the Union together, strengthen it against any foreign power, and make America a country free for all of its citizens. But slavery in the South prompted leaders there to secede from the Union and form their own government under a new president, Jefferson Davis. They saw where Lincoln was taking them and they refused to go there. There have been calls for secession again in the past few years. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry was one who flaunted that threat. As usual, it was a political ploy for him and nothing more. But he stirred up people ready to separate t...

“The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.” – Thoreau

In Mario Puzo’s brilliant novel, “The Godfather,” the mafia leaders meet for a critical negotiation to stop the fighting between families and to end the senseless bloodshed. In a room full of the men who wielded the most power a truce was established. Puzo writes, “The other Dons in the room applauded and rose to shake hands with everybody in sight and to congratulate Don Corleone and Don Tattaglia on their new friendship. It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other. That was friendship enough in this world, all that was needed.” This is in a strange way what international political diplomacy is about. It is sitting down with your enemies and trying to find a way to keep from killing each other. It is setting up rules and codes of conduct and lines that can’t be crossed, as well as giving one another something in return, in order to establish an atmosphere of peaceful toleranc...

“Everybody’s gotta learn; nobody’s born knowing.”   ―   Harper Lee, Novelist

“Is your first responsibility to yourself? The question is misleading; that is, it misleads the person who takes it to heart. It’s like asking, must you shift your weight in order to walk? Of course you must, but anyone who concentrates first on shifting their weight will not walk well.” – Hugh Prather, Writer/Mystic

There are basically two kinds of fear. One is a healthy, informed fear. The other is a neurotic, uninformed fear. If I see an oncologist about various symptoms of dizziness, blackouts, severe nausea and other physiological issues and the doctor after a series of tests tells me I have a massive malignant and inoperable tumor on my spine, I have a legitimate right to be fearful. The facts are in and I must face them. If on the other hand I wake up with a painful stomach ache and spend the day believing I have stomach cancer, then my fear is irrational and probably meaningless. I have nothing to base my fear on except my own neurotic worries that I am dying. This is where we are in America politically and religiously. Huge numbers of our citizens are living in the worst kind of hysterical, obsessive fear based on nothing more than their own gut feelings, and of course, the maddening, overwrought deceitfulness and hype of various forms of media that keep telling us we’re all a...

“Perhaps we just need little reminders from time to time that we are already dignified, deserving, worthy. Sometimes we don't feel that way because of the wounds and the scars we carry from the past or because of the uncertainty of the future. It is doubtful that we came to feel undeserving on our own. We were helped to feel unworthy. We were taught it in a thousand ways when we were little, and we learned our lessons well.”   ―   Jon Kabat-Zinn, Physician/Author