Butterfly effect

If you can fully and honestly accept others for who they are,

then, as a consequence, you accept yourself for you are.

If you do this, you accept the world for what it is.

Then the trite, “It is what it is,” becomes just bullshit.

The world is what we make it.

Your active engagement with the other has consequences.

One of those consequences is that this engagement and its choices

make you who you are.

As a result, you are always becoming who you are

while the world, in tandem, is becoming what it is.

This becomes an awareness that your choices, no matter how small,

can cause a butterfly effect that may change the world.

I have a question

What is the emptiness in us that we were looking to the Pope to fill?

Thought for the day

Speak the truth and you will be admired. Live the truth and you will be crucified.

Decisions...decisions

My 7-year-old granddaughter was discussing a bet where if she won, I would pay her $100. She said,
"I could use the hundred dollars for college...or maybe shoes."

I have a question

Suppose you stand up, take your "Love one another" net, twirl it around your head and cast it out as far as you can, how far does it reach?

Thought for the day

Don't ask who you are. Ask why you are.

I have a question

After the (Walmart) Walton family subtracts from their annual earnings all that they need to live opulently and the remainder is distributed among their workers in salary, how much would that raise the hourly wage of each worker?

I have a question

If 1 in 4 college women have experienced sexual harassment (NY Times), what ratio of college men have been perpetrators of sexual harassment?

I have a question

What do you think Jesus would say in an address to a joint session of Congress?

I have a question

How much do you think it cost to outfit all of the audience members at the 67th Annual Emmy Awards?

GOP candidate debate checklist

debate checklist

--trump Trump

--acknowledge devoted wife

--try to look presidential

--try to look human

--get in at least one memorable one-liner

--stand on tip toes to look taller

--avoid controversial topics

--ignore actual questions

--avoid the honest truth

--remember what debate coach said

--rehearsed sound bites only,  Americans don't want complicated answers

Thought for the day

It's strange to me that any rebel or splinter group or small revolutionary army can manage to get ahold of some of the most sophisticated weapons in the world. Whatever the ideology or validity of the cause they can terrorize and kill often with impunity. These wars are always on the radar of American foreign policy. We decry the deaths and take a side.

At home there are increasing numbers of guns and gun owners, armed in parks, bars and churches. Are we at war? Do we need de facto citizen militias? Why aren't we as vocally concerned about our daily suicide numbers or black on black deaths as we are about civilians killed by random bombings?

Politics

Politics should be about opposing positions seeking harmonious and productive balance. Instead, with politicians desperate for money and in the pockets of special interests, politics is an immature "my way or no way." And so we have the public showing great interest in non-politicians, a CEO and neurosurgeon, a billionaire developer and TV star. Whether this is a positive development or not remains to be seen.

If you or I were interviewed for an important job, we would be tested to see if we understood the requirements of the job and if we could do it effectively and with commitment. Yet the voting public must largely come to its conclusion through information filtered by the media: soundbites, interviews where the focus is on the interviewer trying to get a story, slick, over-produced campaign ads, negative attacks, debates that would rather see the candidates as attack dogs than anything else.

Ask each one a simple question, let them answer in full and let us decide: What do you believe are the personal, intellectual and ethical requirements necessary to be an effective President of the United States and how have you demonstrated you have them?

Some news headlines during the administration of President Trump

President Trump asses the faces of all of the world's first ladies

Bankruptcy laws loosened, but only for billionaires

All White House bathrooms have newly installed gold wash basins

Trump and Putin compare penis sizes, argue over the meaning of "fully erect"

White House bowling alley converted into gambling casino

President Trump divorces wife, marries new "Trump tramp"

Trump dismisses Swedish ambassador, angry for being passed over for Nobel Peace Prize

Trump declares that each government is "just another business venture"

Thought for the day

Every human life is an unsolved mystery.

Thought for the day

How  many authentic voices do you hear in a day? How many are masked, spinned, reputation managed, mediated, coached or framed?

Thought for the day.

Even at the moment of birth, it's first pain, then joy.

What I'm tired of

I don't know about you but I'm tired of:

celebrities trying to sell me stuff
entrees that need 8 words to name them
rap music
big tits and abs of steel
blonde female detectives who wear heels and unbuttoned blouses
plastic surgery faces
interviews with athletes who only spout cliches
theatrical hand  movements of TV anchors
national news that ends with dog stories
designer underwear
super egos
whiney people
the glorification of trashy behavior
Donald Trump
billion dollar stadiums
people who are certain they know what God thinks
medications with death as a side effect
racism
self-referential convoluted writing
Miley Cyrus
perfect white teeth
Creationists

Thought for the day

Increasingly we discover that animals are much smarter than we ever thought and humans are much stupider than we ever imagined.

Becoming yourself

So out you come. The umbilical cord is snipped. You become the nexus of potential, possibility and joy. But you soon realize that the potential is someone else's potential for your excellence, and your possibilities are corralled by someone else's expectation of your potential and that joy (yours and theirs) is always connected to pain. You can't understand why it's so hard for them to let you become who you need to be.  Then you realize it's also hard for you to let you become who you need to be. But then you discover that you are just a human being like every other human being. And it's clear sailing from then on.

Thought for the day

Why do we pay so much attention to celebrities whose celebrity comes from just being a celebrity? Why does the media give us a minute on a Nobel Prize winner and a lifetime on Kim Kardashian? Is this what we really care about? And if it is, what does it say about us?

9/11

Another anniversary of  9/11. The first one, I wrote a Litany in which I imagined the what victims might have been doing or thinking in the moment before they died. These many years later, death is present to us in shootings, terrorist bombings, airline crashes, natural disasters, refugee tragedies, war and hate crimes related to race, gender, religious persecution and sexual orientation.

I still think of the shock of life, not lost, but taken violently away for all of these victims. And so much  of it unnecessary.

Thought for the day

Wake up. You live in the midst of great mysteries.

Thought for the day

"I became an artist because, under such pressure, my father still had somewhere nobody could touch. Even when the world was dark, there was something warm in his heart."       --Ai Weiwei

Thought for the day

If I have meaning as part of the universe, how do I show it?

Do you have time to watch a hummingbird or listen to your heart beat or hear a thought form quietly in your head?

Thought for the day

When it comes to justice, God left it to us. So far, we've pretty much botched it.

Thought for the day

All the turmoil in the world today is just a cry for justice and human dignity.

Thought for the day

The second most important member of the Emperor's court is not the Empress. She nags. It's not the courtiers. They are sycophants. It's not the Prime Minister. He maneuvers. It's the jester. He will tell the truth, even the brutal truth, even about the Emperor's new clothes.

Thought for the day

The naked self is the authentic self.

Thought for the day

Is being ordinary a failure?

Is being ordinary possible?

Thought for the day

A life lived without gaining wisdom seems like a life wasted.  And wisdom gained but not shared to help (though not bully) others is wisdom wasted.

But wisdom is not easily acquired. It takes self-awareness, empathy, patience, attentiveness, and the ability to listen and to learn from failure.