Popularity is not excellence.
Power is not leadership.
Falling in love is not love.
Wealth is not integrity.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Spontaneity is not creativity.
Rigidity is not discipline.
Routine is not ritual.
Asking is not prayer.
Information is not knowledge.
Honesty is not truth.
Idolatry is not worship.
It seems that any time of the day or night we can turn on the news and hear stories of discrimination against Asian Americans, African Americans, Muslims, Jews, Hispanics, LBGTQs. It’s all hate, and hate is the headline. Commentators highlight the hate.
But where are the stories of love and its redeeming powers. These are usually at the end of a newscast as human interest stories. As humans, we need one another, but loving one another is not a human instinct. If it were, the world would be a very different place and we wouldn’t have needed the great spiritual leaders.
Love is hard work, demanding work. Where are we taught how to love? Where are we taught its courage and its rewards? It’s not in songs or Hallmark stores or TV dramas or even always in families.
Love is the solution, but it’s not our persistent and authentic cultural message. That has to change.
When I was took art history in college, we used a tome called History of Art. It was the history of Western art made by white men. No history of art written today could be so closed and narrow. And art is so much the better for it. We need to see religion in the same way.
Every god we’ve worshipped has exceptional powers beyond those of humans themselves—powers of creation, omnipotence, ability to reconfigure nature, for example. Human individuals and communities cling to their gods as one-and-only and see themselves the chosen ones.
This is the biggest heresy, to limit god to one form and one presence. To limit the message of god humans. To limit god to one historical time. To limit the way in which individuals search for and find god in their lives.
What is life without a passion that is focused, consuming, transforming and aims at the good of others?
Our lives are the only ones we live inside of. That’s why we tell stories—literature, art, dance, music, journalism, chitchat, gossip. That’s the way we determine how our inside life aligns with the outside lives around us.
Stories are the way we decide if we need to rethink ourselves, to see if we are living what we say we believe, to see if we are changing with the world, to see if we mean something.
Exciting new book titles on shelves soon
The Land of White Jesuses
A Moth in Melania’sCloset
The Sexual Behavior among the QAnons
The Proud Boys Cook Book
The Mitch McConnell Joke Book
100 Women: Seductresses Who Changed History
The Harry and Meghan Coloring Book
DIY Bunkers for the Climate Apocalypse
10 Ways to Sabotage Political Correctness
Why Teenagers Should Be Caged
From the time a child exits the womb, their task is to leave home on the way to becoming an independent, productive and responsible human being. Their first attempt to escape could come at age 5 or 10 or 15 or later, but escape they must.
The task of the parents is a contradiction. They have to hold on to the child long enough to get them ready for a successful adulthood, but gradually let them go, moving toward the final umbilical snip.
The teenage years are often the most problematic, yet crucial. The child wants to believe they are independent, but they still are being fed, clothed, housed and educated by their parents. They are itching to make all kinds of big decisions with a brain that is not mature enough to support them.
Parents are in the middle of their careers and don’t always have the ability to provide the attention, discipline and patience these years require. The dynamics of these years, though, can determine the quality of relationships for years to come.
