Paper Cuts
Think of a small paper cut. Recall the impressive sting. Think about your soul. Imagine your soul covered in tiny paper cuts. Imagine the level of spiritual pain. Imagine the soul reddened, pulsing hot, badly infected.
Our souls are sick. Not cancerous or riddled with tumors, rather, sliced daily by being aware but choosing to ignore what we know. Our souls have been incessantly and steadfastly wounded by a high level of denial.
We know in our souls, our very core, our essence, our humanity, that WE ALL MUST CHANGE. These are not small decorative insignificant changes. These are whoppers. These are seismic shifts. These are a change in perspective and attitude. These are transformative, creating a whole new way of being. This is not simply a lifestyle change, but a change in how and why we live.
Thinks of it this way. This is not the redecorating of a room. This is not a new color or wall paper. This is not the adding of new artwork or pillows or throws. This is not a new arrangement of the furniture, or even a new built in bookcase. This is spiritually the equivalent of moving from a four-bedroom ranch in the suburbs, to a one-bedroom rural cottage rental.
This is a massive change of choice. This is choosing less, and I mean much less. This is deciding to downsize in a big way. This is learning to live with the old, including us, and to create things which last – again, including us. This is putting the brakes on the addiction game, and recognizing sooner when we have clearly hit bottom. This is about necessity, and not about luxury. This is about sharing, and not hording. This is all about enough is enough.
This is a change which demands our heart and soul. We must be all in. We must be ready to serve and sacrifice, and yes, suffer, all of us. We are hopefully at the end of some bad habits, like being obsessed with accumulation, worshipping stuff, and trying to look and act as if we never need grow up or old. This is about playing by the rules, rules which are in a playbook called Life itself. This a choice to live as though there does deserve to be a tomorrow for those we love and will someday leave behind.
This is a MUST CHANGE. This is mandatory. It is vital. Our planet and souls are depending on us to make the necessary shifts. We must turn it around. Turn it upside down. We must become new. Truly new, not like so many born-again Christians who simply cloak their conversation with a thick coat of Jesus, but remain even more judgmental and self-righteous than they were pre-conversion. We must be fully alive and aware and awake. We must be human. We must witness the divine within everyone.
We must pay attention and take notice. We cannot be so oblivious, and live in such a thick fog. We have to open our eyes to what the planet is teaching us every single day. Stop. Slow it down. Quit buying and then wasting Time. Quit living like a spoiled brat teenager who wants it all, and wants it now. The earth is begging for some relief from all the pillaging and plundering.
We must grow up. The soul can only thrive as it matures. We must grow up by climbing up to higher ground. Higher ground is where we will see no racism, sexism, or homophobia. Higher ground is where equality and diversity are celebrated. Higher Ground is heaven come to earth, where our High Powers unleash the best in who we are.
We must claim the radical notion and Truth of Grace. It is indeed UN-CONDITIONAL. It is available to all people, everywhere, and for all time. No rankings or hierarchies. No dogmas and doctrines and creeds to define and divide. No first and third world. No folks kept out of Heaven for some human flaw or failing. A universal welcome to all God’s children, both on earth and in Heaven. If Grace is true, it is a radical, offensive, transforming idea, but if it is false, it is nothing more than a nice prayer before eating.
We must stop competing and comparing. We must learn to live together as one people. We must function as genuine neighbors. We must encourage community, compromise, consensus, and the building of an endless maze of sturdy bridges. We must communicate intimately, and adhere to a BOTH/AND ethic, and surrender any EITHER/OR values to the trash heap of the notoriously failed and flopped.
We must put the brakes on obscene greed. Nobody is worth a billion dollars. We must not pay our biggest salaries to CEO’S, celebrities, and athletic superstars. We must start to value those who serve and sacrifice daily to make everyone’s life better. We must stop thinking our security is to be found in stocks, a savings account, or on Wall Street. We must admit that our American culture is functioning like the Rome of the Book of Revelation – built on the backs of the poor.
We must celebrate equality. We must stop the senseless mission to declare whiteness superior. I am white. I am lily white. I am Easter bunny white. I also recognize the degree to which white supremacy has been used to trample and destroy so many indigenous peoples --our Native Americans. We must remember Nazi Germany. We must claim to know it is not an isolated historical incident. We must never come to welcome neo-Nazis as the good folk neighbors our President claims they can be. Evil is evil. Quit lying.
Well, it is good to stop here. I just wanted us to see how hurting we are, and how badly damaged our souls. They may not be in critical condition, but they are in a lot of pain. The pain of living too many damn lies, and pretending not to see the oppression and exploitation of the wretched of the earth. The accelerated growing gap between rich and poor should make us weep, and the salt of those tears can only add pain to our rash of paper cuts. How can we stand by and watch the gap become a canyon, the canyon an abyss, the abyss a hell on earth? We must not!
Our souls are sick. Not cancerous or riddled with tumors, rather, sliced daily by being aware but choosing to ignore what we know. Our souls have been incessantly and steadfastly wounded by a high level of denial.
We know in our souls, our very core, our essence, our humanity, that WE ALL MUST CHANGE. These are not small decorative insignificant changes. These are whoppers. These are seismic shifts. These are a change in perspective and attitude. These are transformative, creating a whole new way of being. This is not simply a lifestyle change, but a change in how and why we live.
Thinks of it this way. This is not the redecorating of a room. This is not a new color or wall paper. This is not the adding of new artwork or pillows or throws. This is not a new arrangement of the furniture, or even a new built in bookcase. This is spiritually the equivalent of moving from a four-bedroom ranch in the suburbs, to a one-bedroom rural cottage rental.
This is a massive change of choice. This is choosing less, and I mean much less. This is deciding to downsize in a big way. This is learning to live with the old, including us, and to create things which last – again, including us. This is putting the brakes on the addiction game, and recognizing sooner when we have clearly hit bottom. This is about necessity, and not about luxury. This is about sharing, and not hording. This is all about enough is enough.
This is a change which demands our heart and soul. We must be all in. We must be ready to serve and sacrifice, and yes, suffer, all of us. We are hopefully at the end of some bad habits, like being obsessed with accumulation, worshipping stuff, and trying to look and act as if we never need grow up or old. This is about playing by the rules, rules which are in a playbook called Life itself. This a choice to live as though there does deserve to be a tomorrow for those we love and will someday leave behind.
This is a MUST CHANGE. This is mandatory. It is vital. Our planet and souls are depending on us to make the necessary shifts. We must turn it around. Turn it upside down. We must become new. Truly new, not like so many born-again Christians who simply cloak their conversation with a thick coat of Jesus, but remain even more judgmental and self-righteous than they were pre-conversion. We must be fully alive and aware and awake. We must be human. We must witness the divine within everyone.
We must pay attention and take notice. We cannot be so oblivious, and live in such a thick fog. We have to open our eyes to what the planet is teaching us every single day. Stop. Slow it down. Quit buying and then wasting Time. Quit living like a spoiled brat teenager who wants it all, and wants it now. The earth is begging for some relief from all the pillaging and plundering.
We must grow up. The soul can only thrive as it matures. We must grow up by climbing up to higher ground. Higher ground is where we will see no racism, sexism, or homophobia. Higher ground is where equality and diversity are celebrated. Higher Ground is heaven come to earth, where our High Powers unleash the best in who we are.
We must claim the radical notion and Truth of Grace. It is indeed UN-CONDITIONAL. It is available to all people, everywhere, and for all time. No rankings or hierarchies. No dogmas and doctrines and creeds to define and divide. No first and third world. No folks kept out of Heaven for some human flaw or failing. A universal welcome to all God’s children, both on earth and in Heaven. If Grace is true, it is a radical, offensive, transforming idea, but if it is false, it is nothing more than a nice prayer before eating.
We must stop competing and comparing. We must learn to live together as one people. We must function as genuine neighbors. We must encourage community, compromise, consensus, and the building of an endless maze of sturdy bridges. We must communicate intimately, and adhere to a BOTH/AND ethic, and surrender any EITHER/OR values to the trash heap of the notoriously failed and flopped.
We must put the brakes on obscene greed. Nobody is worth a billion dollars. We must not pay our biggest salaries to CEO’S, celebrities, and athletic superstars. We must start to value those who serve and sacrifice daily to make everyone’s life better. We must stop thinking our security is to be found in stocks, a savings account, or on Wall Street. We must admit that our American culture is functioning like the Rome of the Book of Revelation – built on the backs of the poor.
We must celebrate equality. We must stop the senseless mission to declare whiteness superior. I am white. I am lily white. I am Easter bunny white. I also recognize the degree to which white supremacy has been used to trample and destroy so many indigenous peoples --our Native Americans. We must remember Nazi Germany. We must claim to know it is not an isolated historical incident. We must never come to welcome neo-Nazis as the good folk neighbors our President claims they can be. Evil is evil. Quit lying.
Well, it is good to stop here. I just wanted us to see how hurting we are, and how badly damaged our souls. They may not be in critical condition, but they are in a lot of pain. The pain of living too many damn lies, and pretending not to see the oppression and exploitation of the wretched of the earth. The accelerated growing gap between rich and poor should make us weep, and the salt of those tears can only add pain to our rash of paper cuts. How can we stand by and watch the gap become a canyon, the canyon an abyss, the abyss a hell on earth? We must not!
Go Back to the Fields
I recently read yet another article about the cruelty and hatred rooted in racism. These sad stories are becoming alarmingly more frequent, and they are KKK vicious in spirit. Would anyone in America be shocked by a lynching?
This news item was about a young black high school baseball player in Iowa, who was taunted by fans during a game. The crowd chanted that “he should have been George Floyd”, and then encouraged him “to go back to the fields”. Iowa -- not known as a hotbed of racism! The black player was 18, an excellent student and athlete, and considered popular by his classmates. The verbal terrorists who taunted him were numerous.
This kind of harassment must stop. If it is to cease, the white community must claim and name the evil at the core of such behavior. The white community must not only offer no excuses, but begin to address the depth and breadth of these loathsome attitudes and behavior.
The umpire at this game asked the young man if he wanted to pause the game, which was a gracious thing to do. The young man was reluctant to disappoint his team, and so chose to decline. I wish the game had been stopped. I wish there had been enforced time for everyone to stop and feel and think about the abomination of these racial taunts. Somehow, in some dramatic way, we must call attention to a real rise in white racist hatred in America.
White supremacy has become a fixture in America and around the world. There are now several neo-nazis running for office in our nation, and many are doing so by camouflaging their beliefs behind pro-American and pro-Christian rhetoric. Our culture and the Church often remain coldly silent; not wishing to rock the boat, or ruffle feathers, or simply pretending this too shall pass. Well, it is not passing any time soon, and it is costing lives in its wake.
Think about this handsome young black man. Think about the night after the game, when he crawled under the covers of his own bed. Imagine the anger. Imagine the fear. Imagine the frustration. It must be an isolation jammed with raw hopelessness.
Why would folks wish him dead, or to be a slave once again? How have we gone so low as a nation? How have we reached a point where our youth feel comfortable leading such a racist taunt in public? This chant was aimed to deliver a brutal message. You have no value at all to this nation. You are disposable. You are nothing more than an owned piece of meat. Down deep -- we still own you.
We must admit to the disgrace of such white racism on display across our land. We need not only apologize for it, we must get angry, and demand real change. What if the team of the chanting crowd were forced to forfeit the game? I know, this punishes everyone for the behavior of a few. Well, maybe it is time for such accountability. Maybe we all have to be willing to admit we are part of the problem, until we all demand it to stop.
Something must happen. Something has to give. There must be consequences to such cruel and crude and despicable behavior. This young man will never be the same, and neither should America.
This news item was about a young black high school baseball player in Iowa, who was taunted by fans during a game. The crowd chanted that “he should have been George Floyd”, and then encouraged him “to go back to the fields”. Iowa -- not known as a hotbed of racism! The black player was 18, an excellent student and athlete, and considered popular by his classmates. The verbal terrorists who taunted him were numerous.
This kind of harassment must stop. If it is to cease, the white community must claim and name the evil at the core of such behavior. The white community must not only offer no excuses, but begin to address the depth and breadth of these loathsome attitudes and behavior.
The umpire at this game asked the young man if he wanted to pause the game, which was a gracious thing to do. The young man was reluctant to disappoint his team, and so chose to decline. I wish the game had been stopped. I wish there had been enforced time for everyone to stop and feel and think about the abomination of these racial taunts. Somehow, in some dramatic way, we must call attention to a real rise in white racist hatred in America.
White supremacy has become a fixture in America and around the world. There are now several neo-nazis running for office in our nation, and many are doing so by camouflaging their beliefs behind pro-American and pro-Christian rhetoric. Our culture and the Church often remain coldly silent; not wishing to rock the boat, or ruffle feathers, or simply pretending this too shall pass. Well, it is not passing any time soon, and it is costing lives in its wake.
Think about this handsome young black man. Think about the night after the game, when he crawled under the covers of his own bed. Imagine the anger. Imagine the fear. Imagine the frustration. It must be an isolation jammed with raw hopelessness.
Why would folks wish him dead, or to be a slave once again? How have we gone so low as a nation? How have we reached a point where our youth feel comfortable leading such a racist taunt in public? This chant was aimed to deliver a brutal message. You have no value at all to this nation. You are disposable. You are nothing more than an owned piece of meat. Down deep -- we still own you.
We must admit to the disgrace of such white racism on display across our land. We need not only apologize for it, we must get angry, and demand real change. What if the team of the chanting crowd were forced to forfeit the game? I know, this punishes everyone for the behavior of a few. Well, maybe it is time for such accountability. Maybe we all have to be willing to admit we are part of the problem, until we all demand it to stop.
Something must happen. Something has to give. There must be consequences to such cruel and crude and despicable behavior. This young man will never be the same, and neither should America.
Swarming Lies
President Trump lies. He is a compulsive liar. He lies literally all of the time. He changes the facts to suit his fancy. He reports falsehoods he is well aware are bursting with pure fabrication. He will even go so far as to tell the American people, 99% of all coronavirus is “completely harmless” when nothing could be further from the Truth.
If our own personal physician repeatedly fed us such lies, we would begin to take note, even record the lies being told, and consider malpractice charges. This President believes he is above and beyond the fray, and has some royal right to invent the Truth.
When lies start to swarm, they can become deadly. With Covid-19, this is happening every single day. We have almost half of our nation living in addiction level denial, and asserting their liberty to take actions which clearly endanger the rest of us.
To me this is like being a nation which has decided to let drug dealers occupy all the corners outside our elementary schools, and then say we doubt anything bad will come of it. Absurd?! Crazy?! We must have consequences for such lies and lying. We must develop an effective way to hold our office holders to a standard of truth telling.
Truth is not Republican or Democrat, not conservative or liberal, it is simply not yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, when there is no such blaze. The absence of a fire can be proven. So can the falsehood of most lies.
I cannot even begin to imagine the impact all of this lying is having on our children. Maybe this is why our youth are so often pleading with adults to be adult. Can you imagine what we would do with a teacher who consistently offered lessons riddled with lies? If a teacher got up in an American classroom and declared the Holocaust never happened, and blacks were never held as slaves, they would be removed – we hope.
How do we keep letting this go on? What will it take to see the damage being done?
I think the conclusion I have come to, is that I must stop blaming the lying on the President. We have allowed lies and liars to dominate our American culture for too long. We claim as necessity, that which is luxury. We create myriad products with built in obsolescence. We put profits before people on a repeated basis. We eliminate anything which attempts to regulate the ethical behavior of big business. We call it a patriotic belief and defense of the free enterprise system. I would call it placing blind trust in a pack of liars, and a network of lies.
I know. This is going too far. This is generalizing. This is lumping everyone together. What this truly is, is the same old story. We are being told yet again that rich white men know what is best for the rest of us. The virtual collapse of Wall Street in 2008, we now know with remarkable certainty, was caused by the weight of all the lies being told to all the investors. Bernie Madoff was a wicked crook, but he was sure damn good at being a well trusted liar.
I sincerely do not wish to argue the politics or the economics of Wall Street here, or to question the wisdom of our compulsive adherence to an unregulated capitalism. We already know the futility of the growing gap between rich and poor; we comprehend the utter stupidity in having a few be in control of most of the wealth; we hear our own rationalizations when we say. “It is just business.”
What I want to point out is that we are building a culture of lies and liars. We are teaching our children to just make it up. We are giving our youth the green light to pretend and fake it. We were indeed the culture of JUST SAY NO, when at the very same time Wall Street was a hotbed of rampant drug use. Our young people do not trust adults, and at this point, most adults trust very few other adults.
If our own personal physician repeatedly fed us such lies, we would begin to take note, even record the lies being told, and consider malpractice charges. This President believes he is above and beyond the fray, and has some royal right to invent the Truth.
When lies start to swarm, they can become deadly. With Covid-19, this is happening every single day. We have almost half of our nation living in addiction level denial, and asserting their liberty to take actions which clearly endanger the rest of us.
To me this is like being a nation which has decided to let drug dealers occupy all the corners outside our elementary schools, and then say we doubt anything bad will come of it. Absurd?! Crazy?! We must have consequences for such lies and lying. We must develop an effective way to hold our office holders to a standard of truth telling.
Truth is not Republican or Democrat, not conservative or liberal, it is simply not yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, when there is no such blaze. The absence of a fire can be proven. So can the falsehood of most lies.
I cannot even begin to imagine the impact all of this lying is having on our children. Maybe this is why our youth are so often pleading with adults to be adult. Can you imagine what we would do with a teacher who consistently offered lessons riddled with lies? If a teacher got up in an American classroom and declared the Holocaust never happened, and blacks were never held as slaves, they would be removed – we hope.
How do we keep letting this go on? What will it take to see the damage being done?
I think the conclusion I have come to, is that I must stop blaming the lying on the President. We have allowed lies and liars to dominate our American culture for too long. We claim as necessity, that which is luxury. We create myriad products with built in obsolescence. We put profits before people on a repeated basis. We eliminate anything which attempts to regulate the ethical behavior of big business. We call it a patriotic belief and defense of the free enterprise system. I would call it placing blind trust in a pack of liars, and a network of lies.
I know. This is going too far. This is generalizing. This is lumping everyone together. What this truly is, is the same old story. We are being told yet again that rich white men know what is best for the rest of us. The virtual collapse of Wall Street in 2008, we now know with remarkable certainty, was caused by the weight of all the lies being told to all the investors. Bernie Madoff was a wicked crook, but he was sure damn good at being a well trusted liar.
I sincerely do not wish to argue the politics or the economics of Wall Street here, or to question the wisdom of our compulsive adherence to an unregulated capitalism. We already know the futility of the growing gap between rich and poor; we comprehend the utter stupidity in having a few be in control of most of the wealth; we hear our own rationalizations when we say. “It is just business.”
What I want to point out is that we are building a culture of lies and liars. We are teaching our children to just make it up. We are giving our youth the green light to pretend and fake it. We were indeed the culture of JUST SAY NO, when at the very same time Wall Street was a hotbed of rampant drug use. Our young people do not trust adults, and at this point, most adults trust very few other adults.