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It's Our Country: What Will We Make it Become?

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 ...

Religious Freedom Does Not Make Religious Bigotry Okay

The Supreme Court decision last week to prevent any state in America from denying the issuing of a marriage license to a gay couple remains controversial. The ruling is being misunderstood by many and twisted into something it isn’t by others. In spite of the fact some politicians, religious people, and conservative media pundits keep alarming everyone that the world is ending there is nothing in this ruling that in any way threatens religious liberty.  Heterosexuals will not be forced to marry a gay person. Heterosexuals will not be forced to attend a gay wedding. Heterosexual ministers will not be forced to perform a gay wedding in their church or anywhere else. Heterosexual marriages will not be invalidated. Life will go on as usual only now no state in this country can deny a gay couple from obtaining a marriage license. And county clerks cannot deny them because they say it goes against their religious beliefs. That does not matter. It is the law and they will follow ...

Teaching Our Children to Honor Their Mind

“Unfortunately, as a society, we do not teach our children that they need to   tend carefully the garden of their minds . Without structure, censorship, or discipline, our thoughts run rampant on automatic. Because we have not learned how to more carefully manage what goes on inside our brains, we remain vulnerable to not only what other people think about us, but also to advertising and/or political manipulation.”   ―  Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor,  Neuroscientist/Author  

I am More

“Strip me down to nothing—nude beneath the moon, stars afire under feet. And on bare unbranded body I will write: ‘This isn’t all of me.’”  – Amanda Torroni, Writer/Author

We Are Broken

The country woke up this morning to more madness. A white, apparently deranged young man in South Carolina, killed 9 people at a Bible study in a historic Black church. Police are calling it a hate crime. More details will obviously come in but here is what is undeniable. Our country is out of control. We have lost our way and it is not by accident. We as a people have chosen to allow our nation to be violent, hateful, prejudiced, bigoted, unjust, and inhuman. When this young man is caught, if he does not end up shooting himself in some cowardly panic, let the psychiatrists do their analyses. Let law enforcement prescribe the punishment. Let those who want to coddle him because they’ll say he’s insane do so. Let the gun lovers make excuses for him as they always do. Let the whites clamor on about mixed messages and make their phony allowances for him as they will. But here is the reality. This guy is the product of an unapologetic racist society. He is the result of our primit...

The Kindness of Strangers

“I’m a miner for a heart of gold.” ~ Neil Young, Musician/Song writer

The Work of the Soul

“The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it.”   ―  Henri J.M. Nouwen, Prolific Writer/Priest/Taught at the Menninger Clinic, Yale & Harvard