Dictators

 Time and time again, brutal and power-hungry dictators use the tyrant playbook to take control of their countries, repress their people, build a following of loyal and armed sycophants. Wealth pours into their bank accounts as their citizens suffer. Putin, Kim, Maduro, Bashar al Assad, the list goes on.

This is not a new process of political control, but it seems to work for the skilled dictator. And sadly, democratic countries have not found a strategy to prevent the success of these tyrants. Sadly, today, autocracies flourish.

Guns and children

 Guns are the number one killer of children in the USA.

America leads all wealthy nations in mass shootings and incarcerations.
A 6-year-old can get a gun and shoot a teacher.
Students begin their armed shooter drills in elementary school.
Is this what we want for our children?

I’m sick of the callous responses of Republican lawmakers to shooting after shooting. I’m sick of the way Republicans shift the blame onto others. I’m sick of lame Second Amendment arguments that completely ignore the militia clause.

The Second Amendment was written when America had no standing army or national guard. It was only white men that would be called to serve in a militia, and they had to be prepared to fight. Now militia has a very different and dark meaning. How can it be that the deaths, the heartbreak, the shame, the lives destroyed can’t move the Republicans’ stubborn stance?

Love

 Love wants only to love, to spread itself like a virus. So what keeps that from happening? If we answer that for ourselves, we answer that for the world.

Since no one is perfect, forgiveness is essential.

What makes you fall in love is not what makes you stay in love.

Assessment

 Forget all the math and language arts testing. Hire qualified teachers. Pay them fairly. Trust them to do the work you hired them to do.

Instead, at ages 6, 10 and 14 give each school student an assessment of their physical, emotional and mental health with any necessary follow up support.

Trans

 Ron DeSantis’ greatest fears:

1. Trans men will marry trans women and have trans babies.

2. His former high school will field an all-trans football team and win the state championship.

3. Trans kindergarteners will use conversion therapy on their classmates.

4. A covert trans teacher will covertly teach CRT.

Stupid fears

 Blame evolution

Not the sexual choices
The young are called to

Your stupid fears have
Turned their natural sex lives
Into dysfunction

How youth search for love
Becomes an aberration
Personhood, stolen

Your culture wants to
Shame nature’s diversity
Why are you so afraid

Let the others live
The life that is within them
To seek their own truth

Today

 Today, all day, I’m thinking about how so many persons who thought of themselves as human beings and good Christians could bring such intolerable cruelty and death to so many. How they could live in the luxury of marble, gold, silver, fine art, gardens and fine food and drink, knowing those they had power over lived in abject conditions with no hope of any kind of freedom? What is it in human culture that allows people like this to emerge and even thrive?

But I am also thinking about where and how I fit in this picture.

Life is

 Life is the dandelion in the crack in the sidewalk.

Life is the flying cockroach.
Life is the spider in your attic.
Life is the mutating virus.
Life is all the undiscovered creatures beneath the sea.
Life is all the life in your gut.
Life is the industrious termite.
Life is the organism in the termite’s gut.
Life is the patient cicada.
Life is all the undiscovered life in the universe.
Life is all that’s crawling in the dirt.
Life is the DNA code book.
Life is all the species waiting to be found.
Life is the vines strangling other life.
Life is the NYC rat.
Life is the whale that eats the krill.
Life is all the uncelebrated life that builds the web of life.

Young people

Experts are trying to figure out why there is such an increase in depression and suicidal thought among young people. The answer, to me, is clear.
Families are in great economic and emotional distress.
Drugs are too easily available.
Alcoholism is very present.
Violence is everywhere.
They don’t feel safe at school.
Messages about sexuality are confused.
Counselors and mentors are not accessible enough.
They don’t play, they compete.
Marketers and influencers are poisonous.
They don’t understand their own psychological development.
Their heroes are shallow.

Anything else? 

Human beings

 Evolution made us homo sapiens. Our brains made us homo sapiens with benefits. How we use the capacity of our brains allows us to call ourselves human beings. Wealth doesn’t guarantee our humanity. Power doesn’t guarantee our humanity. Ur humanity is not determined by class or religion. Becoming a human being happens through the way a life is lived. That’s all.

Games

 Games. Tournaments. Playoffs. Finals. March Madness. Games. Pres-season. Playoffs. Super Bowl.

Games. All-Star Game. Playoffs. World Series. Games. League Championships. World Cup. Men and women.
All the other sports. All the high school fields and gyms.
Coaches of major sports make bigger salaries than university presidents. High profile college players can now make more money in a year than high profile professors do. Money makes common sense and fairness make no sense at all. And sports are extra-curricular.
So why don’t we just give in and make sports the core of high school and college education. Make academics extra-curricular, maybe just club activities. Then there’ll be lots of time for glorification of athletes, games during school hours, no worrisome testing, on-site campus casinos. This will give students needed relief from the disciplined effort and stress of learning.
With a little imagination, all academics can be integrated into sports programming—math, language arts, drama, biology and more.

Challenge

 A challenge. Describe your life so far in 10 phrases.

Here’s mine.

First born prince
Little shit
Conscientious student
Aced college
Mathematician to artist
Husband, father, friend
Lapsed Catholic, spirituality in tact
Skilled teacher
Loving caregiver
Human being

Soul

 Something in each of us—name it spirit, soul or yearning—calls us to be deeper human beings. It emerges in the form of love, compassion, art, service, nature. We have to listen for it attentively and be prepared with the courage to act on its call. If we respond, the world opens up in possibility, beauty and richness. If we fail to respond, life remains constrained and anxious. Like every call, it takes faith and fearlessness. But what adventure doesn’t?

Adolescents

 Our consumerist society tempts young people with alcohol, drugs, cigarettes and spectacle. Social media is a space for influencers and a platform for all kinds of inappropriate behaviors. The vulnerability of adolescents who think they are invincible makes them easy targets.

We don’t always recognize that adolescents are not mentally or emotionally prepared to make important decisions about their lives. They need parents, teachers and mentors who can guide and support them through this social maze. It takes time to build a young person who is disciplined and educated, who has self-worth and who values adult guidance. That is, a young person who can successfully and productively make it to adulthood.

Families are in crisis. Parents are distracted. Society is full of predators with wrong-headed messages. We adults need to make the commitments that will protect young people.

Adolescents must learn that:
--Behavior has consequences, and the consequences they must live with
--Sex is normal, but it has meaning in terms of intimacy, partners and body.
--Their brain development is not sufficient for the life choices they will have to make.
--They must have adults they can trust and friends they can depend on.

Minds

 Small minds need a small, walled-in world to soften their fears and hold onto their delusions. Big minds are alive in a big world, meeting the world’s challenges and making the world bigger. Most of us are somewhere in between, sizing up which way to go.

Hell

 Hell, let’s just wipe ourselves off the face of the earth, and let the termites take over. They might do a better job.

Hell, let’s just get everyone whatever gun they want, and shoot it out. We need another Wild West.

Hell, let’s just all hate one another. Love is just too damn hard.

Hell, let’s quit spending all this money on the poor and homeless. We know it’s their own fault.

Hell, what’s all this about the mentally ill. They’re just too weak to get better.

Hell, let’s all send Ron DeSantis our crossdressing photos. He can arrest us when we cross the state line into Florida.

Shaming

 Shaming was one strategy of the Catholic Church. Shaming is at the root of bullying. Shaming is a tactic of weak people. Shaming is sometimes a ploy of parents. Shaming often falls on those of different gender, ethnicity, race, disability and more.

But the most subtle and pervasive use of shaming is in the strategies of advertising and marketing. We must outdo the Jones with the fastest and most beautifully appointed car. We must have the new kitchen or bath. Wives in expansive, sparkling kitchens offer us nee cleaning products. In-style is the key to being accepted, even if we must throw out yesterday’s fashions.

We are shamed into buying more, having more, wanting more, living beyond our means, accumulating much useless stuff. We are shamed into defining ourselves by our stuff and being ourselves by being like the influencers.

Women

 Today, all day, I am thinking about all the girls and women who have been abused, discriminated against, pushed aside, forced to serve, treated as inferior, denied their sexuality and simply ignored. I’m thinking of all the symbolic ways that women have to live under: virgin, goddess, dutiful wife, vixen, seductress and more.

Colonialism

Today, all day, I will be thinking about all those whose lives, countries, livelihoods, dignity, homes and land were taken away by Colonialism of powerful nations. Their scars are deep and still remain. Even in our times, waves of refugees from brutal power search for a decent life. 

Dead soldiers

 Today, all day, I will be thinking of all the dead soldiers on all sides of all the wars in human history. If we could take all their dead bodies, would we fill the Great Pyramid or St. Peter’s in Rome or Hagia Sophia or all three? Could their coffins build a skyscraper taller than most in the world? How long would the list be of their last words? How many would have simply said, “Why?” And if each of their dreams would become a beautiful singing bird, would we suddenly be overwhelmed with song and the fluttering of wings?

That’s what I will be thinking about all day today.

Ron de Santis

 Every human intellectual endeavor has moved forward because of the creativity and sustained effort of those who courageously believed that the world could be a better and truer place. Pushback always came from those who fear change and the loss of privilege. They built walls of resistance that always crumbled.

Here we are in 21st century America—one of the world’s great powers—and we have Ron DeSantis leading Florida—and perhaps America--into a society of book banning, control of language in the classroom and limits on healthy sexual dialogue. Attacks on the LGBTQ community, drag shows and writers of children’s books become acceptable, as if this were some public scourge. When we most need students to be critical thinkers, we are training them to fear new ideas.

Where are the worries about gun violence, social inequity, drug use, homelessness and hunger in the lives of children? These are things that harm, not ideas.

Responsibility

 Congress is in the process of taking to agency heads and CEOs to task for failings in the jobs they are doing. Who’s taking Congress to task for its failures to do its job of legislating. Issues of immigration, deficit and debt, solvency of Medicare and Social Security, medical care, drug prices and more are poorly dealt with or not dealt with at all.

Elections are not viable means to keep Congress working effectively. They come up for election only ever so many years. They are at the mercy of big donors. They are masters of negative and misleading advertising. They don’t allow adequate access for voters to ask pertinent questions.

What if each state had a panel of citizens with the authority to summons members of Congress before them for questioning relative to their performances. For example, Congress is now grilling the CEO of Norfolk Southern (legitimately), but who is grilling the Republicans who legislated the lifting of regulations on railroads?

Drugs

 The drug problem in America seems intractable. We put incredible time, effort and money into dealing with cartels, violence, drug dealing, overdoses, drug rehab, drug addiction and every other aspect of the drug problem.

Still, we must recognize that all these problems begin when the individual makes the choice to use drugs. In a world where there is so much information about the destructiveness of drug use, why does anyone make the choice to start? Is there as much effort put into answering this question as there is in dealing with all the consequences that stem from this choice.

If so much drug use grows out of our society, how is society culpable? We are a society in which the family is failing, government is failing, religion is failing and mental health care is failing.

In the end, the individual who chooses to use drugs must take responsibility. But society must recognize its own responsibility and put its problem solving efforts in the right places. 

Band names

 

Decent

 Two questions:

What does it take to become a decent human being?

What prevents us from becoming decent human beings?

Sacred

 If we see the world as it is, it’s hard to believe that we believe in a sacred creation of God. In truth, it’s our task to determine what’s sacred in the world, in the world we find and in the world we make.

What is a world in which nothing is sacred?

Prick

 It’s easy to be a dickhead, an asshole, a prick or a jackass. Dickheads, assholes, pricks or jackasses don’t think about how their actions impact others.

No one said being a human being was easy. It’s hard. It takes effort to see yourself in others and others in yourself. But it’s the only thing that keeps us being human.

We are born as homo sapiens with benefits. We get a body and a brain ripe with possibility. What we do with that is what allows us to earn the coveted name: human being.

Spaces

 The city skyline is filled with glorified boxes all trying to be the tallest or the most striking. But essentially, they are boxes divided into boxes divided into boxes. Inside and outside, they are symbols of the wealth of the material world. They impress us with wood, brass and slick design. They promise us service and a piece of the pie. They are busy places.

In contrast, neighborhoods are dotted with the spires of churches. They are aspirational, pointing to heaven. Their decorations remind of the sacred. Interior spaces call us to our interior spaces. They ask us to temporarily leave the material world and ask us find ways to quietly enter our interior world. They are mostly empty.

Beauty

 American education, even through college, needs to do a much better job of helping students understand, appreciate and find meaning in beauty. Every civilization--no matter the politics, wars, government or struggles—holds onto its expressions of beauty as symbols of who they are at their best. Without the guidance of teachers, the significance of beauty is lost in our lives, and we fall back on what’s glamourous, what’s pretty or what’s spectacle. These are superficial and entertaining, while beauty touches the soul.

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