The Unclad Soul

There is an error in how our country is seen today. We appear to be a nation of angry, bigoted, mean-spirited, violent people. The picture is one of weakness and ingratitude, of people holding endless grudges, of crooked cops killing minorities, of shallow selfish Christians demanding everyone obey their beliefs, of incompetent predatory politicians desecrating democracy. It’s true; the country has its fair share of these people. And the dishonorable behavior and the loud voices of all of them overwhelm the good Americans everywhere. We are not well represented to the world. However, every day decent Americans do their jobs honestly, competently, and well. They care for their families. They follow the law. They respect the diversity of our country. They get along with their neighbors. They worship regularly and attempt to live by their beliefs; they don’t cram them down the throats of others or assume they alone own God. They are concerned about the environment and appreci...

“The good life doesn't knock on the door. Joy is a job.”  ~ Lionel Shriver,  Novelist

“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever”, he told the boy. “You might want to think about that.” “You forget some things, don’t you?” the boy said. “Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”  ― From The Road , by Cormac McCarthy 

There is a scene in the first episode of the Showtime series "Nurse Jackie" where she consoles a young unmarried girl whose boyfriend, a bike courier, had just died of injuries in a bike accident on his way to work in the crushing traffic of New York City. The girl—poor, pregnant, wearing a stained t-shirt and asking what she is going to do, that she doesn’t even have money to get a cab home—sits on a bench in the hallway outside the chapel in All Saints Catholic Hospital. Jackie, a morally complicated, fiercely dedicated nurse but who is herself addicted to pain killers and whose personal life is a disaster, stands next to the girl and gently puts her hand on the girl’s head and draws her to her. Nothing is said. Just that moment of tenderness. As the scene ends and the camera pulls away from them, we see behind them at the end of the hallway set into the wall, a beautifully sculptured figure of Jesus with his arms extended.   I don’t know what Christianity is anymore....

“By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.”  ~ Guy Gavriel Kay, Canadian Novelist

Sociologist Theodor Adorno once wrote that “Triviality is evil.” That might very well be an appropriate epitaph for our nation. We may actually see the end to a great experiment in freedom, creativity, ingenuity, genius, and a once civil society known as America. And it won’t be from a terrorist bomb. Triviality certainly fits our current political climate. It describes much of religion in America today. It explains our economy and the shredding of fairness in the workplace, in the giant corporate arena, and in the wild untamed monkeyshine behavior of Wall Street and its gang of banks. The problems we face, the challenges ever in front of us, are enormous and daunting. But we don’t confront them intelligently. Instead we are seized, haunted, gripped by fear. Our media apparatus is a daily around the clock unfolding of fear inducing hype, gossip, distortion, lies, and propaganda. A tragedy occurs like the San Bernardino shootings and CNN airs the chase, capture and killing of t...

“Let’s state it clearly: One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway.”   ―   Richard Rohr, Priest/Mystic/Author