The Unclad Soul

I have gone back to my morning routine of starting the workday by listening to Ave Maria sung by Luciano Pavarotti. The strength of his voice and the beauty of the song calm me. There is a hint of mysticism in the experience for me. The thought of Mary, so vulnerable and yet so courageous, carrying the responsibility of her demanding task with so much poise and intelligence, moves me and inspires me. The song is based on the greeting the angel Gabriel gave to Mary announcing that she would give birth to Jesus, “the holy one.” His greeting is filled with honor calling Mary “highly favored.” The phrase is rarely seen in Scripture and is believed to have been used in greeting Royalty. Celine Dion’s version, sung in English, is that of a young girl praying to Mary: “Ave Maria, maiden mild Oh, listen to a maiden's prayer For thou canst hear amid the wild 'Tis thou, 'tis thou canst save amid, despair We slumber safely till the morrow Though we've by man bee...

What would a perfect world look like? I don’t know. Probably very sterile and boring. I don’t really want a perfect world. I’d be happy with just a humane one. Dictionary.com defines humane as, “characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals; especially for the suffering or distressed: acting in a manner that causes the least harm to people or animals.” When I was a boy I used to spend a few days with my paternal grandparents whom I called Nana and Granddad. They were both gentle souls, quiet, kind people. One afternoon after Nana had fixed me lunch in the kitchen and I had finished eating, I took my plate to the sink to wash it. I noticed a small spider on the window sill and asked Nana for the flyswatter so I could kill it. She said, “Oh honey, don’t hurt it. It’s not poisonous. It’s not bothering anyone. And it will eventually find its way outside.” I will never forget how at that moment I started feeling a deeper sense of compassion fo...

The Independent , a UK online news source, reported this week that Jack Wood, a 15-year-old boy from South London rescued a baby and a grandmother from a burning house. Jack was walking to school when he saw smoke coming from a neighbor’s house. He knows the family and knew a baby and grandmother lived there. He called his mother and told her to call the fire department. Then he ran into the house and grabbed the baby and put it on the lawn outside. He then went back into the house and got the grandmother and led her out to safety. Then he went back into the house, found a bucket, filled it with water and proceeded to put out the fire until the fire department got there. “I just wanted to get the baby and the gran out and make sure the fire was out,” Jack told reporters. All three were treated for smoke inhalation, but Jack was called a hero for saving the lives of the baby and the grandmother. Kids today, like kids in all days, are so easily dismissed. But young people today are ...

President Trump has not yet made the transition from Real Estate mogul to a political world leader. And it’s not certain he will ever be able to do that. A man his age is usually settled into the person he is from here on out and it’s all but impossible to make drastic changes. And drastic changes are needed. The world of high-end real estate, huge commercial building construction, casinos, hotels, and whatever other kinds of structures Mr. Trump can add his name to, is a far cry from the arena of world politics. There are at odd times glimpses that president Trump might actually have serious thoughts about how people should be treated and helped. But those get lost in his notoriously checkered history and in his perplexing persona. In the cut-throat universe of gigantic real estate projects, Mr. Trump established himself as a player. The massive buildings with his name emblazoned on them have successfully hidden the many failed and, as many have suggested, corrupt business de...

My therapist recently asked me where I get inspiration. I had to think for a minute about that. I don’t attend church anymore. I have this ongoing struggle with institutional religion. I know there are wonderful congregations out there, mostly small ones, that do good work, where worship is not an hour of entertainment and hype and shallow platitudes, but rather, quiet and reverent worship, where the people gather to learn and to grow and to find ways to be better human beings. But, for me, the institution of religion is mostly fraudulent and trivial and self-centered. I’m speaking primarily of institutional Christianity. Retired minister and prolific author, John Shelby Spong, has said that religion today “is a division between the shouters and the disinterested.” He has written, “ Jesus becomes the captive of the hysterically religious, the chronically fearful, the insecure and even the neurotic among us, or he becomes little more than a fading memory, the symbol of an age t...

Now that the murdering of 17 students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, has more fully registered on us, most Americans remain stunned. We are stunned that in this country of ours we still have a government that refuses to do anything about gun violence. The flimsy, tone deaf comments of politicians about this horror seem worthless. They are finally starting to talk about mostly cosmetic changes in the law but I’m skeptical of anything significant. We are stunned that our president has been mostly silent, unwilling or incapable of a simple sign of outrage over the senseless massacre of helpless teenagers at school. He is beginning to make gestures about passing new legislation, but I'm waiting to see if any changes are made. We are stunned that an organization like the NRA (National Rifle Association) has the unlimited power to dominate and control our elected legislators. We are stunned by our political leaders’ greed and their cowardice. We are ...

I have been out of pocket a while because I was battling Influenza B, one of the strains of the flu virus that has been plaguing the nation for months now. The flu brings with it a variety of nasty irritations. Fever, chills, headache, sore throat, a hacking cough, weakness, and just a general feeling of, Lord, please help me! The strains this year have included additional problems such as strep throat, pneumonia, and in some cases, sepsis, a sometimes deadly collection of bacteria and toxins in the bloodstream. My worse symptoms were a searing sore throat from two small ulcers caused by the flu virus and an accompanying ear and neck ache. I felt very fortunate to have Ingrid and Claudia bringing me soups and good things to eat and making sure I was still alive. My sons, Caleb and Luke, kept up with me, offering to come to my rescue if I needed them. I had great friends from Hamilton checking on me daily. And I had coworkers who called to see if I was faking or really sick...