Can't want

My 3-year-old grandson is currently saying: “I can’t want this.”

It occurred to me that many adults say: “I can’t not want this.”

We are programmed from early childhood to be consumers. We carry the fate of the American economy on our shoulders every Christmas season. If it’s the newest model, we must have it. If it has lots of bells and whistles, we have to get it. If the style moguls say we must wear it this season, we rush out and get it.

I’ve tried to practice saying, “I can't not want this.” It’s not always easy, but there’s a kind of satisfaction in it.

Fluid world

We like to feel comfortable in our own comfort zones, protected by walls put up by our religion, ideology, wealth, friendships. But in this contemporary world, some things are so fluid the test our seemingly safe spaces. For example:

Gender

Race

Sexuality

Technology

Social systems

Religious thought

Relationships

National and international boundaries

Medicine/medical care

This means we have to be fluid in the same way our world is fluid. We need to be on our toes in the world we are dancing through. There are no caves or bunkers. Besides, though it’s more work, it’s also more exciting to live in this fluid world

New medical research

New medical research

Scientists in New Zealand, in a breakthrough study of 100 pregnant women with tattoos, discovered faint traces of the women’s tattoos on the bodies of the newborns. The authors of the study predicted that if the babies were in the womb one month longer, the mother’s tattoos would be fully formed and noticeable on the newborn child.

A new option has been opened up for organ donors. A team of French male research physicians has found that nerve tissue harvested from the penis within 48 hours of death can be transplanted anywhere in the body. After a short time of regeneration, stimulation of the tissue can lead to orgasm. Among study participants, specifically placed transplants led to orgasms by rubbing the back, chest or legs.

For centuries the blood sucking capacity of leeches has been used as a curative in medical procedures. Now two Canadian scientists have performed genetic reconfiguration on leeches to make them fat sucking. A fat sucking leech can suck out 100 times its body weight before expiring. Once this procedure is approved by the FDA, individuals can purchase these leeches in any appropriate quantity, apply them in the privacy of their own homes in any part of their bodies. Researchers see great uses for body sculpting.

Love one another

Love one another. Simple enough. Not really. Buried in those three words are openness, empathy, compassion and even suffering. It’s not easy.

In our contemporary world, we realize that we are inextricably connected in all kinds of ways to one another and to all of nature. So beyond humanity, we must love the coral reef, love the endangered species, love the air and the water.

We must cultivate a love that makes us willing to sacrifice as we need to, to have empathy with the plight of all living things and to be open to new ways in which science reveals this connected world to us.

This is not easy. I’m not yet good at it. But at least I’ve taken the first step of awareness.

A Trump rally

I’ve never been to a Trump rally. But I’ve seen enough to be disgusted by them. Donald Trump is a master at taking decent people and pulling them down to his level of crudeness. Through name calling, half truths, verbal bullying and vulgarity—not necessarily sexual—but vulgarity nonetheless, he convinces his audiences to join him in a tactic that seems to bring him real pleasure. We all have dark and negative impulses. Donald Trump is skillful in bringing these out in his audiences, pushing aside decency.

I wonder what occurs when his rally attendees leave and go home. Do they not know what just happened to them? Do they rethink that experience in terms of their moral or religious beliefs? Could they imagine Jesus even tolerating a minute at such a rally?

What does it mean to have a lying, tax-evading, incompetent, womanizing man as your flag bearer?

The small thing

The small thing is the big thing.

The big thing is intimate with the small thing.

The small thing is at the nexus of many webs.

The small thing can suck you in with as much intensity as the big thing.

Nature relishes the small thing.

Holding a small thing in your hand is the first step in understanding the universe.

Manhood

For President Trump, “Boys will be boys,” is a rallying cry to protect those fragile male beings. For me, the real concern is “Boys will stay boys.” Growing into good ole boys or stunted men. 

We have few viable rituals that help boys transition into healthy young men. Media images, inadvertently or not, help them stumble through destructive cultural stereotypes like the jock, the rebel, the tough guy, the he-man and the clueless buffoon. Without good guidance, they have only fuzzy ideas of what manhood is and fewer ideas of how to achieve it.

The #METOO movement is no threat to a man being a man. In fact, it is a chance to engage in a dialogue about gender that can only be productive for all. Manhood is not something you just have. It’s something you keep growing into with courage and attentiveness.