Here’s what happened:

I belong to several forums and organizations that have articles and presentations on topics that interest me - spirituality, philosophy, psychology, cosmology, etc.

Some of these send out e-mails that summarize what the current topics and offerings are.

If these “teaser” articles are of interest, there is usually a link that one can “click on” and be taken to the website where the full article is published.

The other day one caught my interest and I clicked on the link to the full article. What came up was a page that said, “Click here if you are not a robot.” Although I can be mindless and live robot-like, I’m not a robot.

I’ve encountered this sort of thing before. It has always struck me as somewhat funny that a robot is asking me if I’m a robot. I clicked on it and up came a page that said, “Be patient while we determine if you are a human.”

I was patient.

I waited.

And, waited.

I busied myself with other matters on my desk while it was trying to determine if I met the criteria - whatever they might be - that would qualify me as a human.

After about ten minutes I thought, “This is ridiculous” and moved on to other matters.

As far as I know there is still a bot out there is cyberspace trying to determine if I am worthy of its time and attention; trying to determine if I am human.

My work, both personal and professional, has for decades been trying to learn, know and teach what it means to “be fully human.”

During this time, I’ve learned that becoming fully human is a life-long process. Every time I have thought that I had a firm grasp on the matter, I soon came to realize that I had simply reached another rung on the never-ending ladder of awareness. Or, to use another metaphor, I seem to come, over and over again, to a place in the journey that invites me to take another leap in the open future.

When I was first introduced to the notion of existentialism, one teacher explained it to me this way:

you can either stand on a balcony watching the parade below go by; or, you can be part of the parade.

Being human is being a participant in life rather than an observer.

My experience as a spiritual teacher is that everyone, if they are honest - and such honesty is no simple or easy task - knows whether she or he is on the shore watching the waves or whether that person is in the swim of things.

In a recent brilliant presentation I heard her make, Dr. Holly Hudley quoted Alan Lightman:

“Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck any of us will ever experience.”

Sadly, many people do not actually experience “being alive.”

Why is that?

Much of the world’s population, of course, is caught in the oppressive prison of a poverty that no one reading these words knows. For those of us fortunate enough to have escaped that, we still can fall into “ways of being” that are prevalent in Western culture.

One of these is withdrawal. It is so easy simply not to be present.

In my teaching I harp on the importance of having “a daily spiritual practice.” Some people are quick to tell me that they are “spiritual but not religious.” One response I have to that is, “Terrific. Tell me, how do you practice being spiritual? What does that consist of for you?”

What follows is frequently an awkward silence.

Being present is difficult.

When people ask for guidance in having a meditation practice, the very first thing I tell them is that they should be prepared to experience what a horrible failure they will be at it. Try it for yourself and see. Try silently counting ten breaths with not one single interrupting thought. It is very difficult. (Actually it is impossible for all but a dedicated few!) What some practitioners refer to as “monkey mind” causes us mentally to jump all over the place.

It is also easy in the Western culture to experience fragmentation.

Unlike just a few generations ago, it is now possible for many of us to work in one place, live in another, and vacate to someplace else. That’s just in the outer world.

Our inner worlds are usually even more fragmented - or chaotic.

When I first began to receive training in Jungian dream analysis, I became acutely aware of not only the reality of the inner world but also the importance of acknowledging the denied and repressed aspects of ourselves. Carl Jung referred to these as the “shadow” aspects of our personality. Their power to run, rule and ruin our lives is incredible. My definition of the unconscious is simple:

“We don’t know what we don’t know.” Yet, what we “don’t know” often makes tremendous decisions for us.

The street term for the opposite of fragmentation is “getting your sh#*”together. Ironically most of us think we have accomplished this when our verbal and nonverbal behavior shows just the opposite.

Then, there is numbing.

I am not on any social media. I do have the Facebook app on my phone and for some reason the other day I accidentally tapped it. I noticed an item at the bottom of the page that simply said “reels.”

“What is that?” I wondered.

For the next twenty minutes I was gone - sucked up into the world of standup comedians, magic performances, and punsters. How did it know!?

It is so easy in this culture to get hooked and taken away - taken away from the moment, from others, from ourselves.

I’ve long believed that ours is a very addicted culture. We are, for one thing, addicted to violence. That, however, is a topic for another occasion.

Addiction to our devices - phones, tablets, etc. - is so widespread that hardly anyone denies the reality of this any more. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt put it well:

One of the ways I have been extremely luckily in the living of my life is to have encountered early on some very important, powerful, and influential teachers. One tasked me with defining or describing what I thought being fully human was. This was decades ago and the phrase I came up with was this:

To be human is to be involved in the process of becoming centers of freedom and love.

Each word is fraught with meaning:

“Involved” rather than an observer.

“Process” rather than a steady state. Growth in an imperative calling for the authentic human.

“Becoming” rather than allowing our identity to be define by what we do, have, or who we know.

“Centers” rather than being fragmented, divided, split, unknown to ourselves.

“Freedom” rather than trapped by addictions or roles.

“Love” - the capacity to have empathy for others and to treat others as the way we want to be treated.

I suppose that bot is still trying to figure out if I am human. Let it do its thing.

For me being human is not being waylaid by being fragmented, withdrawn and numb. It is- experienced and expressed by being involved in the process of being a center of freedom and love.

Thank goodness, this is a never-ending opportunity!

There are few life tasks more important than be able to answer the question, “Who am?”

Since my orientation is that of Jungian psychology with the particular religious language I was given to speak, my current answer is:

I am Sacred Mystery experiencing my particular, unique life on a this planet at this time.

Who are you?

Don’t allow some bot to decide the matter for you.

That being said, I am aware, if you are anything like me, that there is virtually no way to avoid knowing about the chaos that is going on in our country.

Some of it is funny - well, at least comical in a slapstick sort of way. Like for example, some of the things the president says that reveal his absolute ignorance and buffoonery. Increasingly his speech turns to gibberish.

Much of it, however, is some combination of sad and scary.

For example, last week the president gave an “address to the nation” that most media outlets refused to air live because of his penchant for misleading and outright lying. Never thought I’d see that in America!

I’m not on social media - except for this. Try it. Go a week without checking it. If that is not possible, go a day. You’ll find it makes a HUGE difference in your life.

In response to what is going on in our country I want to offer an observation about three things that can serve as correctives and help us contribute to a better atmosphere in which to live while not only watching this train wreck but also being either on the tracks or in one of the train cars.

I am referring to happiness, optimism, and hope.

We could stand a healthy injection of all three.

The specific thing that motivated this musing is the fact that President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and deputy White House chief of staff, Stephen Miller, have all thrown the weight of the U.S. Government behind the far right conspiracy that says the U.S. is being taken over by communists. Heather Cox Richardson in her “Letters From an American” says this is the prelude to taking over the November elections in some way. This is appalling!

How in such a context can we be “happy,” “optimistic,” or “hopeful”?

As a trans-religious spiritual teacher, I offer these musings.

First, happiness.

One of the principles of “ordinary life” that I teach is that we have a “moral obligation to be happy.” This is the one thing I have gotten the most pushback about of all my teachings. Some people have complained that it is not realistic. They give me examples about people who have suffered great catastrophes and losses. I am not unmindful of these realities. There are plenty of reasons for grieving and lamenting.

Grieving is what those who suffer do.
Lamenting is what those who cause the suffering do. Or, should do.

However, - and I think “however” may be one of the most important words in the spiritual vocabulary - the people from whom I have learned the most, who have influenced me the most, the ones I have wanted to hang out with the most, are people who are usually happy. They laugh a lot. Think of the Dali Lama. Think of the Vietnamese monk who was so influential in speaking out for peace, Thich Nhat Hanh.

The Dali Lama is always laughing. Thich Nhat Hanh was always smiling. Neither of these guys had reason to be happy. One has been living in exile for decades and the other’s country was torn apart by war. Yet, with no reason for it - they manage to laugh and smile most all the time.

In his beautiful poem “Manifesto: The Mad Father Liberation Front,” Wendell Berry writes:

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful.

(I encourage you to look up the full text of this wonderful piece. You’ll be glad you did.)

I had a grandmother who looked like she was weaned on a pickle. You’ve likely known people like that. No one likes to hang out with them.

Perhaps the events of life are like that too. I’m less and less sure how the vast energy field we are a part of operates. If, however, attitudes affect outcomes in any way, a positive attitude has to be better than a negative one.

Once we commit to a path of happiness, then we can turn to optimism and hope.

There is a difference - a HUGE one - between optimism and hope.

Optimism is based on evidence and trends. If the evidence looks bad, an honest optimist becomes pessimistic. For example: if we are planning a family picnic and on the day of the event, it is raining, we are not optimistic about the picnic happening. However, (there’s that word again!) an optimist will reframe the situation to both come up with an alternate plan and also consider all the people for whom rain might be good news.

Optimists generally interpret setbacks as temporary and believe good outcomes are more likely than bad ones

Hope is different. Hope doesn’t collapse when the data turns grim. Hope is less about forecasting how things will be and more an orientation, a state toward the future.

Hope keeps us engaged rather than resigned.

Vaclav Havel put it this way,

“Hope isn’t the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.”

We can be hopeful in a situation that we are not at all optimistic about.

Angelus Silesius, the German mystic and poet (1624-1677) wrote:

The rose is without why;
It blossoms because it blossoms;
It cares not for itself,
Asks not if it is seen.

The rose is untroubled by philosophical “why’s” and “wherefore’s.” It just blooms.

The point is not that the rose is unlike us. The point is exactly the opposite: that we should take the rose as our role model.

Every advance made in human affairs has depended upon people who look upon how things are and ask why they cannot be otherwise.

People on both the right and left are decrying “the way things are” and striving in their own way to shape the future to their own liking. I’m talking about something else.

Not about another world but about another way to be in this world.

I am a very left of center person and am both shaken and sadden by what has been allowed to happen in this country. The one thing I can affirm about the movement that is calling itself “Christian Nationalism” is that it is not Christian.

This swing toward embracing authoritarianism is not one that sprang up out of nowhere. The U.S. has been moving in this direction for several decades. Consequently there will be no “overnight turn-around.”

We progressives, if that is a useful label, have few reasons to be optimistic. What we can do is learn to live hopefully in this present context. We can be hopeful without being optimistic. An optimist might say, “The road ahead will probably be smooth.”

The hopeful person says, “Whatever the road is like, I will keep walking with courage, creativity and love.” Whaich means, at least for me in this instance, that we will work to make sure everyone can vote in this democracy.

My hope is that by living this way, we make a difference.

I live in a city, Houston, in a state, Texas, that puts me in a bubble.

Houston, Texas is among the most diverse cities in the United States. Our restaurants are outstanding and variety is beyond belief. We have one of the best symphonies in the country. As well as outstanding opera, ballet and dramatic theater venues galore. Great educational institutions. Houston is a sanctuary city and affirming for those in the LBGTQIA+ demographic. This is all good

Texas, as a state, however, doesn’t rank so highly. Though the Medical Center in Houston is one of the nation’s best - I’m still alive because of it - The Commonwealth Fund’s Scorecard ranked Texas dead last among all 50 states for overall health system performance. We have the highest rate of uninsured in the entire U.S. We are 41st in child well-being. Overall quality-of-life studies consistently place Texas among the lowest-ranked states.

All of this is more than ironic when the big “brag” of Texas is how wealthy the “oil industry” has made the state.

When it comes to politics, don’t get me started. Well, I’m already started so let’s keep going.

Two candidates have been put forward for U.S. Senate.

One has been indicted for securities fraud, impeached, cost taxpayers $3.3 million for whistleblower complaints, is under federal investigation for making false statements to a financial institution, accused of adultery by his wife, etc.

The other candidate is a current seminarian (Presbyterian) studying for the ministry.

What has pulled me into this maelstrom is that, having no stronger points to argue, the opposition has decided to attack the seminarian for “not being a man.” These attacks have not been subtle. White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, has claimed that this candidate is the “first transgender Senate candidate.” This is not just a falsehood. It is a lie.

I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t want to run for public office because I’m sure folks could dig up plenty of negative stuff to spin into a story about what a horrible person I am.

The thing that disturbs me is that this negative “anti-masculine” campaign just might work. If it does, we will elect “a serial adulterer whose’s been indicated for fraud and impeached by fellow Republicans; he also recently made a much-criticized plea deal with a political connected pedophile to serve one day in jail.” (Source: The Week. June 19, 2026, page 17.)

Between now and November there will be much talk about what it means to “be a man.” Since this is something I do feel quite qualified to speak on, here goes:

Most of my work as a psychotherapist has been with men. I can safely say that most of the men who have consulted with me were experiencing some form of what I call “covert depression.” There are, no doubt, many reasons for this. Here are the four main ones I have encountered over several decades of doing this work.

First, many men do not know how to love. Our culture leads men to objectify and idealize women. Our culture is very misogynistic. We talk a good game when it comes to gender equality but almost nowhere is it truly practiced. And when it comes to men loving men, the homophobia that stirs up is just astounding. I cannot tell you how many men I have worked with over the years who have never heard their father say, “I love you” or who have been genuinely embraced by their fathers.

Being a real man involves knowing how to love.

Second, many men do not know what it means to be powerful. We value strength but there is a world of difference between power and strength. A gorilla is strong but you don’t send a gorilla to deal with an upset infant at two o’clock in the morning. That endeavor requires power.

Third, many men do not know why they are here. Men have been trained, especially in this culture to identify who they are with what they do and how much money their make.

One of my beautiful bride’s favorite cities is Barcelona, Spain. We have been fortunate enough to have been there several times. Once, on an extended stay I struck up a conversation with a man I had seen several days in our hotel lobby. I asked him what he did. He said, “I go to the beach. I go to the cinema with my wife. My family enjoys picnics. I love naps.” It quickly became apparent that he was “playing” with me. He said, “Oh, you mean what do I do to live?” When I said, “Yes,” he replied, “I eat, I breathe, I sleep, I love.” Then he added, “That’s the difference between us. You Americans live to work. We work to live.” Point taken.

Fourth, many men lack clarity about what it means to live with integrity. I don’t mean just speaking honestly, though that is hugely important. I mean it in the classic psychological sense of “getting you sh*t”  *together. What does it mean to live with an integrated personality. This is, of course, a lifelong task. Many men don’t have a clue about how to undertake it.

All of this being said, I’m all for electing a “real man” to public office. A real man know how to love, how to be powerful, why he is here, and does all this with integrity.

I want to avoid putting a label on myself or anyone else that slams the door to being open to more information and growing in the multitude of ways growth is possible for we humans.

In order for growth to happen, we have to outgrow some things. None of us can wear the clothes we wore in grade school. Though I did hear a woman brag the other day that she could still wear the earrings she wore as a teen-ager. That doesn’t count.

For decades now I have found my own personal meaning living in and teaching from the intersection of spirituality and psychology. When it is appropriate, I answer the “what do you do?” question by saying, “I am a trans-religious spiritual teacher.”

I got to that label by reading the works of Ken Wilber who says that the path of growth is one that “transcends and includes.” We don’t toss the past or disregard its importance. We build on it and outgrow it. This is necessary in order to embrace something new.

All of us grow up in some tribe - we call it our family. As we grow older this tribal identity grows to include our neighborhood, our town or city, our state, our nation.

Many people stop at one of these way-stations and do not move on to embracing a global consciousness and an identity that makes them a “citizen of the world.” What this inevitably leads to is tribal competition which is often violent in one way or another.

I have recently be rereading a book by one of my favorite theologians, Diarmuid O’Murchu. The book is “Evolutionary Faith.” He ends each chapter with two short paragraphs. They begin, in turn, with the phrases - “It is time to outgrow” and “It is time to embrace.”

Although I am a huge proponent of education - I think our public school teachers should be paid as much as doctors, what I have in mind is growing an educated heart, growing in wisdom.

I certainly want my teachings to inform. Illiteracy of all sorts is maiming us.

The kind of education I am talking about here is not just more information but rather, a drawing out or bringing to birth what is already in each of us.

Leo Tolstoy whose book “War and Peace” is generally considered the greatest novel ever written, said,

“I cannot imagine what else a teacher would do except to remind people of their capacity for the infinite.”

This kind of education is a challenge. If, however, we do not undertake it, we will fall for the lies of our culture and will treat others and the word as objects to be used, judged, rejected, or whatever it is we do with what we regard as not part of us.

One of the things we must outgrow in an understanding of the cosmos that is no longer true. I think one of the things that captivated all of us so much about the recent trip the astronauts made around the moon is that they looked back in awe at an earth that was one. Not something divided by the artificial divisions we use to separate us from each other.

It is time to outgrow cosmological dualism and it is time to embrace the oneness that we are. We all came from the same origins so the racial and ethnic differences humans make is an expression of ignorance - not superiority.

It is time to outgrow the notion that “my religion” (whatever that is) is the best or only one. Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher who is best known for his teachings about the “I-Thou” relationship, rather than the “I -It” way we can be so easily be seduced into once wrote,

“Nothing hides the face of God better than religion.”

It is time for us to outgrow the notion I call “cosmological dualism.” Cosmological dualism holds that there is another, better place to be than where we are. Some believe this is in an afterlife. Some believe it is when their particular religious or political point of view vanquishes all others. This notion is destroying us.

The other thing it is time to outgrow is the emphasis on “individualism” that is rampant in our culture. The psychological word for this disorder is “narcissism.”

The psychological reason people are attracted to such people and elect them to public office, give them huge donations, and/or pay to see them perform is the sometimes not so subtle hope that we can be powerful, wealthy, or super-stars just like them. This is not an aspiration that leads to human flourishing.

When I first got interested in being trained in Jungian analytic work, I asked a highly trained Jungian psychologist to give me an example of someone in public life who had a “fully integrated” personality. What I was told was, “I can’t do that. Such a person doesn’t stand out as a star. They play life’s game as a team member.”

It is time for us to give up the beliefs and behaviors that divide and destroy.

It is time to embrace that we are all intended to be part of an integrated wholeness.

The motivation for doing this is that if we don’t, we are on the insane path of self-destruction. If we do embrace moving into this wisdom, in the words of Julian of Norwich, “all shall be well.”

What is true today may not be true tomorrow.

In using the words “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow” I am not necessarily meaning a twenty-four hour period of time. Decades, even centuries, can be involved.

Things that were thought to be one way turn out to be another. Matters that had been in the dark come to light.

There was a time when all humans believed, simply accepted as factually true, that the earth was the center all of that was. Everything else existed for and revolved around the earth. Then, Copernicus.

There was a time when it was believed humans had two states of being - conscious and asleep. What you saw was what you got. Then, Freud and Jung.

There was a time when the myth of human creation was more or less taken as fact. If you lived in Western culture the belief was that somewhere, sometime something like Adam and Eve must have been. Then, Darwin.

There was a time when human illness, its causes and cures, were virtually mysterious. Then, Pasteur and Lister. Louis Pasteur renown for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination and pasteurization. Joseph Lister is the one who introduced antiseptic protocol into surgical procedures.

More often than not the new truths that were introduced, by these and others, were resisted and denied. Sometimes with violence.

Shift happens.

Years ago I went to a conference where one of the speakers was Ilia Delio. She looked out over the crowd and said something like this:

“As I look at you, most of you appear to be over the age of fifty. You grew up being taught and believing that our earth is a minor planet in a solar system that is part of a galaxy know as ’The Milky Way’ and that, perhaps there were two or three other galaxies ‘out there.’

“Let me tell you what we now know. There are in the ‘observable universe’ between 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies.

“You cannot get your mind around that. Further more, this energy field in which we live is evolving, expanding, creative, and entangled. I don’t know what words you use to describe God, but I would start with those.”

That was over a dozen years ago when I first heard her speak.

Shift happens.

I am aware that it is always true that we live between the last moment and the next, between the last breath we took and the next we hope to take, between this day which we hope to live well and survive and tomorrow which we hope to wake up to. For the most part we greet this inevitability with equanimity.

Most of us are broadminded enough to admit that there are two side to every question - our own side, and the side that no intelligent, informed, sane and self-respecting person could possibly hold. (An attempt at humor.)

I am part of that demographic that remembers when there was nothing digital. Now I write with a pen that transcribes my cursive writing into text on the device of my choosing.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of this country where some will sing of a country that calls itself indivisible, our culture has cracked open along fault lines of culture, class, religion and tribal identity unlike any time in my lifetime. The world seems to be twisted into some new form of insanity on almost a daily basis. Whether we as a globe choose to turn into the light before plunging ourselves, along with our neighbors, into darkness remains to be seen.

One of the things different about our time is the speed with which things happen. The insights of Copernicus and Galileo weren’t widely known about for hundreds of years. When Gutenberg invented the printing press that involved a massive revolution, it took centuries before that was fully unpacked. Our technological revolution has evolved with astonish speed.

Think of this: during the time I have been working on this post, I had a Zoom session with a person in another country. He told me about a book he was reading that he thought I would like. While we were talking, I searched the book out, bought an e-version of it on line, downloaded it to my tablet, and looked up the very passage he was talking about. Just ten years ago that would have been incomprehensible. To my grandchildren it is so ho-hum.

For some this shift is exciting. For others, terrifying. For some increased knowledge and information is liberating. For others it has created deep wells of idiocy and denial. For these people, they yearn for a return to the past. However, how many milkmen, lamplighters or buggy whip makes have you met lately?

One of the things I fight, or try to correct, in my teaching is the horrible notion that there is “one true religion.” Or, for that matter, one “true way” to do most anything.

I joke a fair amount in my teaching about people who don’t use their turn signals when they drive. How/why should I trust that they know how to operate the rest of the vehicle? However, this is not a small point. Since Covid I have noticed an increase in the number of jerks who are driving on our streets and roads.

I am coming more and more to believe and have faith in not the “sleaziods” at the top who are screwing everything up. What counts are the average folks who through normal, simple gestures like being kind in public places, being attentive to the elderly and being considerate while behind the wheel of a vehicle are what Pope Francis called “artisans of the common good.”

Being both in the generation that is the first and the last gives us an interesting vantage point in which and from which to look at what we have lost and what we have gained. We used to look to elders for wisdom and guidance. Now we look to children - not for wisdom and guidance - for help in learning to deal with new technologies.

Social anthropologists are saying that we are retaining less wisdom and knowledge because we don’t need to. We remember less, know everything and yet we know nothing. Someone referred to this condition as feeling “smupid.” Smart and stupid at once.

Many people are plagued with doubt, fear, and anger. Those conditions are not bad in and of themselves but left to fester this can be very problematic - for everyone! Doubtful people do questionable things, fearful people do frightening things, angry people act out in angry ways.

Shift happens.

How shall we deal with it? I once was privileged to meet the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He advised that when fearful emotions or troubling states of mind arise, we should open the door and invite them in. Offer to prepare tea for them and assure them you will take care of them during this period of time and that you will also make sure that they don’t make matters worse because you’ll be busy making them better.

Shift happens.

How we respond to it is entirely up to us.

I am suggesting we be guided by the qualities of humility, justice, and peace.

Manipulation is to a magician what etudes are to a pianist. Just as a pianist practices “running the scales” over and over until the process becomes “muscle memory” stored deep within the brain, a magician will practice the same “moves” with cards or coins over and over until they can be done without “thinking” and, this is especially important, without looking at the hands.

Misdirection is when the magician wants to direct a spectator’s attention elsewhere while the “dirty work” of the magic effect is being done.

I have a coin trick that I perform that, if done correctly, is not only stunning to watch but a real “fooler.” One surprising revelation occurs after another with coins disappearing, reappearing, changing places until, just when the one watching this effect being done is absolutely sure they have it “figured out,” there are no coins whatsoever. It is one of my favorite routines to perform.

Now, here is something interesting: I will begin performing this effect by saying, “Here are two coins. I use them for manipulation and misdirection.” This very statement causes people to stare intently at the very place where the “real work” of the effect is NOT being done. Our human brains are funny that way. By the magician’s saying, “Look here,” he directs attention away from where the real manipulation is taking place. That is the misdirection.

So, here is a question for you: what or who is Humpty Dumpty? You know the children’s rhyme:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again?

What or who was Humpty Dumpty?

Everybody knows the answer to this. Right?

Just hearing the rhyme or riddle causes an image to come to mind. You have one now as you read this. That image is of an egg.

Why?

Go back and read the rhyme. Nowhere in it does it mention an egg.

Why is it that we think of an egg?

Because in 1871 an artist, John Tenniel, illustrated a book by Lewis Carroll. The book is “Through the Looking Glass” which was published in 1871. Tenniel drew Humpty Dumpty as a large egg sitting on a wall. By giving the egg a speaking voice in the book, the image of Humpty Dumpty as an egg has been permanently planted in people’s imagination.

Neither Carroll nor Tenniel were trying to “trick” the reading audience and, most likely, the answer to the riddle was intended to be an egg to begin with. My point, however, is that an egg is not mentioned in the rhyme.

By the way, there is a popular theory, among people who like to figure out the origin and meaning of things, that Humpty Dumpty was a large cannon used by Royalist forces during the English Civil War of 1624. When the wall on which the cannon sat was damaged, the cannon fell and couldn’t be repaired. It is a colorful story but there is no evidence to link the rhyme to it

Our culture is rife with misdirection and manipulation. Many people are being bamboozled and dumb-fuddled by it.

My beautiful bride and I live within walking distance of a magnificent park. When the weather is amenable, it is a great place to go. In the park there is a Japanese Garden with all sorts of plant and animal life - ponds with ducks and turtles, squirrels and other critters abound. There are attractive and enticing play areas for children, a reflecting pool, paddle boats to rent and ride. Various musical groups, sometimes even the city’s symphony orchestra, are performing. These are all good reasons to go there and walk. In addition, we get to enjoy and interact with our city’s diverse population.

Last January while we were resting on a bench watching the boaters and ducks, there was a boy nearby feeding the ducks.

(We’re not supposed to do that but . . . AND, he was having such a great time.)

The couple nearby watching over him were, I concluded by their looks, his grandparents.

I engaged the boy in conversation and asked him his name. “My name is Mohammed,” he said.

“That’s a wonderful name. It has so much wonderful history and meaning to it. How old are you Mohammed?”

“I’m five” he said, as he held up all the fingers on one tiny hand.

“Wow!” I responded. “That’s a handful.” His grandparents nodded vigorously.

“Mohammed, tomorrow is going to be the Houston Marathon. Are you going to run in it?”

Without hesitation he replied, “Yes!”

“How do you think you will do?”

He put his hands on his hips, looked confidently at me and said loudly, “I’m going to win.” That kid has a future.

It was an interaction that gladdened my soul.

We got up and headed back home and alongside the reflecting pool I asked my wife to stop so I could take her picture. That was a bit of misdirection and manipulation on my part because what I really wanted to do was surreptitiously take the photo of these young women sitting on a bench by the reflecting pool. (I’ve made the photo a drawing to protect identity.)

Perhaps they had all just received some horrible or wonderful news. I doubt that. They were likely being misdirected and manipulated by some algorithm that led them to sit there on a beautiful January day so focused on their damn devices that they were missing the joy of being - being in nature, being with their friends, just being.

I confess that I can get suckered into this world too. Though I am not on Facebook, or any other social media, except this and the postings of my teachings that go out via Constant Contact and are available on the Ordinary Life website. I do occasionally watch Reels. I love standup comics and the magicians who appear on Penn and Teller’s “Fool Us.”

Recently I saw a bit by one of my favorite comedians, Desi Lydic, on how “desperately” the American people absolutely wanted, needed and must have a ballroom. (You can search it out on YouTube) She had put together a multitude of clips of talking heads and politicians looking sincerely at the camera and lying about how the “American people are expressing their desperate need” for this structure.

I say these people were lying for two reasons:

First, I hang out with a fair representation of “the American people” and so far none of them has expressed such a “desperate need” for a ball room. It has never been mentioned. What has been talked about is the price of gasoline, the unwarranted war in Iran, and what will happen to the million people displaced now as refugees from Lebanon.

Second, these people sound a lot like me when I am lying.

The ballroom in question is a bit of misdirection and manipulation - and the desire of one terribly broken man’s insatiable hunger for fame and love.

Humpty Dumpty may or may not have been an egg. If, however, we do not wake up and pay attention, like him, we are headed for a great fall.

There are likely more than two!

These are the ones I am aware of.

One: In nearly every teaching I offer I suggest that people have a “daily spiritual practice.” By “spiritual” I don’t mean religious. Some folks say I harp on this.

Two: Books. I recommend books. I read widely and benefit from such reading and assume, rightly or wrongly, that others will as well.

If you come to hear one of my teachings, which I hope you will - either in person, virtually or, later by means of the wonderful technology that is available to us; you’ll experience this for yourself.

I have a book to recommend. Actually, there will be two in this posting. Perhaps those who make fun of me are on the right track.

Please buy and read “Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi.

This is a book about generosity, wonder and the invisible threads that bind people together. It is the kind of book that I wish I could persuade everyone to read - especially at this point in our country’s life where greed, lying, divisiveness, a lack of or unwillingness to take personality responsibility and other ills rule, run and are ruinning us.

Reading has always “given me heart” for the journey ahead. That is, it is something that encourages. This is a time when we all need to have our hearts - and our values! - strengthened.

I don’t “doom scroll” and I am judicious about how I expose my soul to “the news.” What I do see and hear reminds me of the first car I ever owned. I bought it when I was nineteen for seven hundred dollars - which tells you something about how old I am and how times have changed. The car was a Ford with manual transmission. I drove that car from Tennessee to Texas to attend the university and, then, graduate school. It served me well.

One day when I was cruising along, all of a sudden the car started vibrating so violently I thought it would fall apart.

I slowed down and it stopped. I took the car to a mechanic and told him what had happened. The cause of the problem? The wheels had gotten out of alignment. He fixed it and the problem was solved.

I’ve lived through a time when the wheels of the institutional church that birthed me were so out of alignment that, though I contributed to trying to repair this, I eventually left that expression of religion. That expression of religion has gotten so out of alignment it is causing major cultural problems. So much so that now our culture is experiencing a major misalignment. I can’t replace my culture as I eventually did with that Ford. I can’t leave it as I eventually did with the church. So, what now for me and for folks like me?

Though I could not articulate it at the time, ever since I was a young child I have been interested in psychology and spirituality. At this point in the journey I realize that they are not separate matters.

It started with my being frightened of the dark as a small child of five or six. As I grew, I assumed or thought that other children were not. I’ve since learned otherwise - all of us have some anxiety about the unknown.

At any rate, I was curious: what did they who seemed fearless know that I didn’t? What did they have that I didn’t?

Thus began my lifelong quest in learning about human growth and development, psychology, and the faith what undergirds one’s confidence in taking another step into the unknown future, spirituality.

I have been extremely blessed that this passion has led to my being a spiritual teacher, something I’ve been doing for over five decades now.

Although I believe that all religions everywhere and throughout all history are humanly constructed, I have also come to see that they are a combination of the inevitable and essential. Yes, religions have done untold damage on and to the planet. And, they also provide opportunities for community, for the necessary rituals that mark and give meaning to our lives, and they enable us to do things together for good that none of us could do alone. I’m thinking, for example, of how people in my current community of faith are helping people of brown skin, be they immigrants or not, deal with the real fear of masked immigration officials and how others are banning together to see how we can aid in creating opportunities for understanding and reconciliation in the conflict(s) in the Middle East. (I live in one of the most diverse cities in the United States - Houston, Texas.)

After 9/11 my teaching took a dramatic shift. Up until then I had devoted my time and energy to teaching about “the journey into wholeness.” This is a phrase I got from the beloved teacher, Robert Johnson.

Robert was a Jungian analyst, teacher, and writer. His autobiography, “Balancing Heaven and Earth,” is something I HIGHLY RECOMMEND to you. This is book recommendation two.

My belief, and I’ve stated this before in these postings, is that our primary purpose on this planet, after we have met the survival needs, is growth. We are designed to participate in the ongoing evolutionary process by growing in every way and in all areas possible.

So, I taught about this. I taught about various developmental models, there are many!, and how we might utilize their insights to contribute to our own growth.

Then, 9/11 happened. I remember that Tuesday morning vividly. I opened to door to my consulting office and the person waiting to see me said, “A commercial airliner has just crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York.” That story and those images consumed the airways for days. Now nearly 1 in 3 Americans has no lived experience of that event.

I knew then, and still firmly believe, that act of revenge against the United States was the result of religious fundamentalism. Fundamentalism in any arena - religious, political, economic, education, etc. - is ALWAYS violent! Either physically, psychologically, or verbally.

We are living through a consequential moment in our nation’s history. There is a “right” side and a “wrong” side to that history. Every religious system I know teaches that someday, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, there will be a reckoning. People reap what they sow. There is the rule and law of karma. The arc of history bends toward justice. At some point both individuals and institutions will have to justify their responses to that time when democracy was and is under attack.

People and organizations, some of them with proud histories of inclusion and equity, will have to explain why they abandoned these principles to fairness and justice. Were they afraid? Greedy? Or, did they just not care?

We must choose to be on the right side of history. Not in order to win. Because it is the right thing to do.

We are badly out of alignment. Each of us can do our part of realign with the values that are just, inclusive, and compassionate.

Read “Theo of Golden.” You’ll be awakened, encouraged, and empowered.

Creating Wholeness in a Fragmented World

In it I made nine specific suggestions each of us can take so that we don’t become “well adjusted to a sick society.”

Here is the text of the talk - I hope you find it helpful.

I’m not entirely sure why I have been invited to speak here today.

I thought: what should I talk about? We live in a world where there seems to be crises and problems at every turn. I don’t have a solution to any of them.

I don’t have a clue how to respond to the war that is not a war and then is a war again before it is not a war in Iran.

I don’t have a solution to the immigration issue.

The war in Ukraine wages on and I don’t know what could or should happen to end that. Now there seems to be one with Lebanon.

We have a major health care crisis in this country and I certainly don’t know what to do about that.

I don’t know how to resolve the conflicts over free speech and the expression of patriotism.

In fact, I don’t know so much about so much, it’s a wonder I haven’t been elected to Congress.

I know that today is St. Patrick’s Day, so let’s start with that.

Pat and Mike were walking toward their favorite pub in Dublin when they passed the Church of the Holy Word. Pat says to Mike, “It’s been a while since I made confession. Stay here. I’m going in. I won’t be long.”

So in Pat goes and he goes into the confessional booth. The priest says, “Yes, my son.” Pat replies, “Father, forgive me for I have sinned.”

“Yes, what is the nature of your offense?”

“I’ve had my way with a woman.”

There is a pause and the priest looks down and through the privacy screen and says, “Pat. Pat O’Malley, is that you?”

“Yes, ’tis I.”

“Well, Pat, this is the same confession you had your past six visits here so I’ll not be granting you pardon until you tell me who this woman is.”

“Ah, father, I can’t be telling you that.”

“Is the Murphy girl?”

“Father, I’ll not be saying.”

“Is it the Flanagan widow?”

“Father, I won’t say.”

“Is it that Fitzpatrick woman?”

“Again, Father, I can’t be saying.”

“Well, then, Pat, you’ll get no forgiveness from me. There be no cheap grace in this parish.”

So Pat leaves the confessional and joins Mike on the steps and they resume their way to the pub.

Mike asks Pat, “So, did you make a good confession then?”

Pat says, “No. But, I got three good leads.”

So, maybe today you could get some two or three ideas that might be useful as we make our way through these murky times.

To begin I want to tell you a smidgen about who I am, what I do, and how I got here. I don’t want to be or sound self centered but I do want to be centered in the Self. There’s a difference.

When someone asks me what I do, my usual smart-ass answer is, “About what?”

Only in Western culture do we pigeon-hole people by asking what they do to make money. We live to work.

My friends in other cultures work to live.

In European countries, like England, the question is “Where are you from?” Which may be just as pigeon-holing.

In Middle-Eastern countries it is, “What’s your family.”

The serious answer to what I do is that I am a trans-religious spiritual teacher and I do this work both with individuals and to a group once a week that meets at St. Paul’s UMC. I’ve been at St. Paul’s almost 40 years.

I will be 89 in a few months. I have been both blessed and cursed with a memory that can recall the Sunday afternoon when we got the news about Pearl Harbor being bombed. I lived through the days of WWII and, since then, many both dark and bright days in this country.

Some of my classmates got and died from polio.

I remember the Korean conflict.

I grew up in Tennessee during the Civil Rights mayhem.

I was in graduate school during the Vietnam War.

I vividly remember the assignations of JFK, MLK, and Robert Kennedy.

I have lived in Houston since 1964. And have seen this city change and grow in astounding ways.

All of this is to say that I’ve lived through some tumultuous times and through some great times.

Right now, as I see it, our country and our democracy is at as fragile a place as it has been since the Civil War.

During my life I have been guided by some teachers and teachings that have been extremely helpful to me. So my plan is, for the next few minutes, to share a few of these with you.

I will say to you what I say to people who come to consult with me. I am like a piano teacher. People come to see me because they want to learn to play the piano or to play it better. Just coming to the lesson is not enough. Even if you had the best piano teacher in the world, that would not be enough. You have to practice.

So the first and most important thing I stress in my teaching is that of having a daily spiritual practice.

Related to this is my firm conviction that our primary purpose on this planet, after we have met the survival needs, is that of personal and relational growth. This growth, just like becoming an accomplished pianist, doesn’t just happen. It takes practice.

So having a daily spiritual practice accompanied by a conscious commitment to growth is, to me, the first and most important the navigating these stormy times.

Carl Jung, about whom I’ll say more in a moment, was once asked, during the darkest days of WWII, “Will we make it?” He said, “Yes. If enough of us do our personal work.”

So, here is what I want to say about Carl Jung. He was a Swiss psychiatrist, a student and colleague of Freud, before they had a falling out. We have a Jung Center here in Houston dedicated to continuing his legacy. There is one in every city in the U.S. where he visited.

I remember vividly the Spring day when I was sitting in my graduate carrel working on my doctorate when I read a passage from Jung’s writings that would become the guiding light of and for my life and my life’s work.

Jung wrote:

“Among all my patients in the second half of life, that is to say over the age of thirty-five, there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he or she had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really be healed who did not regain their religious outlook.”

He was not referring to some particular form of organized religion. He was referring to the personal work involved in living with what he called “integrity.” This is a life-long task.

What is that religious/spiritual solution? This is what I have sought to learn and to teach.

Let me insert here something else I say to people. If something I say today is useful to you, embrace it. Try it.

If something I say doesn’t make sense or isn’t useful, toss it.

If something I say really pisses you off, the likelihood is that I’ve hit a place that needs attention.

I have come to believe that when I do my spiritual teaching, there are two types of people when it comes to learning about religious and spiritual literacy.

One group is energized and excited about it. They like learning new things.

The other group is itself divided into two groups.

One group sits through such information but they are not really interested in it.

The other group is saying things like, “Wait a minute, that’s not what I learned growing up in church. Besides, if I changed that now, it’s going to upset some people.”

Organized religion teaches people what to see and not how to see. Seeing “what is” is at the heart of our recovery from the hurting place we are in.

The next thing that has been enormously useful to me is an awareness of the unconscious. We humans are like icebergs. About ninety percent of who we are is underneath the surface and unknown to us. The simple definition of the unconscious is: we don’t know what we don’t know and yet what we don’t know makes huge decisions for us.

There is not a one of you reading this who doesn’t know what it is like to make such decisions. Something unconscious reaches up and derails us.

One of my training analysts once said,

“We don’t so much have an unconscious as, unless we wake up, the unconscious has us.”

Jung called these aspects of ourselves “the shadow.” One quick way to know what lurks in your shadow is to pay attention to what irritates you about other people. That irritation probably says more about you than it does about them.

Cultures also have shadows.

The culture of the Western World has profound and potentially destructive shadows.

One of our cultural shadows is that of entitlement. It is built into our national DNA. Our ancestors came to this country that belonged to other people and just took it. Even called it a divine right. Now many people in places of privilege get upset because others in the culture feel “entitled.” Ironic isn’t it? Entitled people accusing and/or blaming others for “being entitled.”

Racism and greed are two huge shadows in American culture.

And, of course, so is the belief in redemptive violence.

In becoming aware of these things, our shadows, both personally and collectively, we can be more in charge of them than they are in charge of us.

I want to make some more specific suggestions about how we can practice wholeness in this increasingly fragmented world.

We suffer from some deficits in this country and I think each of us can and should do our part to correct this.

We suffer from a truth deficit. We have, sadly reached the point in American culture where we no longer know who to believe or what to believe.

People at the highest levels of our government look us straight in the face and lie to us - and we know it - and for this there is no consequence. There is no good mother to wash our mouths out with soap.

Even on so-called non-biased news sources you don’t know who to believe because we don’t know whether their sources are telling them the truth. Further, in our culture we have developed a rather blasé attitude about it. “All politicians lie - what are you going to do?”

So, commit to telling the truth and being curious about whether you are being told the truth.

My observation is that we don’t so much love the truth as we make true what we love. That is a failure to see “what is.”

Because of our biases and prejudices we can look right at “what is” and call it something else.

Things are not true just because we want them to be.

All of us have beliefs that we don’t honor.

If I were to ask you if you believe that a healthy diet, regular exercise, true moderation in drinking is good for a person. We’d all agree. If I were to ask, how many of us live by that . . . Different story.

Another specific thing each of us can do is work to rebuild the trust deficit. Because we don’t know who is telling the truth or can’t be sure that they are, we don’t trust each other. Civic cohesion collapses when individuals can’t rely on basic trust in one another.

The foundation for every other stage of development is trust. No trust, no real growth.

It is hard to believe now but there was a time when the person who was considered the most trusted man in America was Walter Conkite on CBS Nightly News. We’ve come a long way from that.

Several social psychologists who are far smarter than I, have said that likely eighty-percent of the adult population of the United States is stuck at late adolescent development.

One of the ways to see this for yourself is to see what is on prime-time commercial television. Not only is the content geared to that level of development but out of each hour almost twenty minutes is devoted to commercials - which is America’s true religion.

The other way is to see what goes on in national politics. What we are witnessing is an out-of-control cafeteria food fight where each side is saying some version of, “He hit me first.” We are witnessing an abysmal lack of honesty and the refusal to take personal responsibility for virtually anything.

I am all in for religious and spiritual literacy. And would love to talk with you about that. But, let’s talk about just basic literacy for a moment. Because, to me, this is critically important.

What is happening, rather not happening, in the information and knowledge area of our cultural life is contributing to our being so divided.

We are increasingly becoming “two Americas.” This is true in economics. We are not, as a country, divided so much left and right as up and down.

We are divided in two worlds: a literate world and one that exists in a non-reality-based system.

Literate people can cope with complexity and have the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth.

The other America, which is a growing majority, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture and cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and cliches.

This divide is more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state. This divide is not only antagonistic to each other but also becoming daily more unbridgeable. That may sound discouraging but it is coming reality.

I’ll give you some more-than-alarming statistics:

There are over 42 million American adults, a sizable portion of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read.

An additional 50 million of our population read at a fourth or fifth grade level.

This means that a third of our nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate.

This demographic is growing by 2 million people a year in this country.

More and more of our population live in an image and sound-bite based world.

Almost half of our population never read a book after they finish school.

Eighty percent of the families in the United States did not buy a book last year.

The ramifications of this are enormous.

We live in a culture where both the media and the politicians cater to an audience that is entrapped in shallowness or amnesia.

I am one of these people who believe school teachers ought to be paid as much as doctors and believe that we are shooting ourselves in the foot when we cut back and hamper public education.

This is one of the reasons so many of our population are arrested at late adolescent development.

I asked the search program I use, “Who is the most famous person in the United States today?” The answer I got listed several: Elon Musk (Note: He is about to become the world’s first “trillionaire.” I looked up how long it would take me to spend a trillion dollars if I spent a million dollars a day. Answer: 2,740 years!), Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Superman, Spiderman, Mickey Mouse, Kim Kardashian.

The same answers for the 19th century were: Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Uncle Sam, and Huckleberry Finn.

News, political debate, theater, art and books are judged not on the power of their ideas but on their ability to entertain.

Those who embrace Christian Nationalism are completely unmoored from reality.

So, if we want to heal a fragmented world, those of us in positions to do something about it, should commit ourselves to the education of our entire population and not just to those who can afford it.

Another thing we can commit ourselves to move toward wholeness in this fragmented time is to commit ourselves to decency, to treating people with respect and civility.

(I had given this talk before Trump responded to the death of truly decent man, Robert Muller, by saying: “Robert Mueller just died. Good. I’m glad he is dead.”)

Again, at the highest levels of our government we see interactions that have become increasingly hostile and uncivil. How can we have a national conversation if that is what we have been reduced to? Our leaders’ lack of civility gives permission for this to become a cultural norm.

The last specific thing I will mention has to do with compassion.

I was born into a family that was Baptist. I didn’t have any choice about that. I was taught by that tribe that being Baptist, that particular version of Baptist, was the only real religion.

When I first began seeing patients in the hospital and then, later, when I traveled to other countries, when my circle of friends grew to include people of the Jewish faith, of the Muslim faith, of the Hindu faith, people who were Buddhist; I began to see that they felt the same way about what they had inherited.

Did you know that there are more Hindu Temples in the United States than any other country outside of India? There are eighteen in Harris county! Yet, I doubt that many people in Harris county could tell you the first thing about Hinduism, about their sacred texts or traditions. Most people can’t name the four noble truths of Buddhism or the five pillars of Islam.

Even worse, most people who profess to be devout Christian couldn’t name the four gospels or how tell you how the Bible came to be written. They just believe in it.

Being curious about each other rather than being competitive about who has it right is one of the most healing and growth producing things I know.

A few months ago we had a tragedy in the Hill Country here in Texas; a flooding that took many young lives. Just horrible.

A few weeks ago a missile, likely fired by the US, killed over a hundred and fifty school age girls.

No matter where they lived they were children, forever lost to parents who loved them.

What has happened to us that it is okay to be so upset about one and to be blasé about the other?

I’m not saying any of this to make anyone feel bad.

I’m saying that we have to wake up, be more conscious, take more personal responsibility, speak up.

The Indian philosopher, Jidda Krishnamurti, wrote,

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

I have, by my count at least, given you at least nine specific “good leads.”

Have a daily spiritual practice.

Commit to growth.

Be open.

Assume there is more to you and others than we normally think.

Be aware of your shadow - we all have a shadow side.

Tell the truth.

Work to rebuild trust.

Commit to communal literacy.

Commit to decency.

Be curious about yourself and others.

Be compassionate.

I hope you find them useful.

This is my nineteenth posting. I haven’t posted here in a while. In starting this Substack my intention was three-fold:

First, to post something on a somewhat regular basis - which I haven’t done.

Second, I didn’t want to pile on to what so many other, and much more knowledgeable, voices are saying about our current cultural and political scene. Hence, infrequent postings. We all suffer from information overload - especially people who doom-scroll.

Third, even though I describe myself as a “trans-religious spiritual teacher,” I don’t want to have the “religious” label put on me without opportunity for adequate explanation. One of the things I mean by being “trans-religious” is my commitment to teaching religious and spiritual illiteracy. (They are not the same.) So-called “Christian Nationalism” is an abomination and a result of religious and spiritual illiteracy. I am committed to combatting that.

I was up very early on this past Sunday morning and after doing my morning practice, I read that in an interview with NBC News on Saturday, the president said that U.S. forces had already “totally demolished” much of Iran’s oil export hub, but he suggested additional strikes could follow, saying “we may hit it a few more times just for fun.”

For fun? Really?!?!?! Are we so blind and stupid? Are we so callous and lacking in compassion? Is our alleged leadership not aware that this war that is not a war is setting the U.S. up for some event(s) down the road that will make 9/11 look like child’s play?

After reading that I went on to fulfill a commitment to give the sermon at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas. Afterwards, I was urged to make the text of that sermon available. So, the text of the sermon is below. It is about the importance of learning how to see and not what to see. It is about being healed of the blindness to our common humanity and the need we have - in my opinion - for each of us to practice humility, justice and peace. I called the sermon -

Blind Faith

The text from which I spoke is as follows:

I love so much about this church.

I love this space. I love how it looks. I love how it feels.

When I have someone come to see me for spiritual direction and they have never been in this building before, I usually end our time together by bringing them up the stairs from my office, on the grounded floor, through the door on the lectern side of this space and bring them in here. The response is always the same - “Wow! This is beautiful.”

If you’ve never been in here in the late afternoon with the lights out and nothing but sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows, you’ve missed something. It’s like being inside a sacred kaleidoscope.

I love our form of worship and commitment to the lectionary. Usually.

I could wish that we might experiment with a creed that was written after the Copernican revolution but it usually takes organized religion a while to catch up with the rest of the world.

I heard our pastor Emeritus, Dr. Jim Bankston, say in a talk he gave once at a Breaking the Silence meeting, “The church has lost its opportunity to be prophetic. Now the challenge is to see if we can be relevant.” (By quoting someone else, and someone very respected!, I can say things without getting into trouble for saying them.)

Of course, I love the music that comes out of the choir loft. We have, in my humble opinion, the best choir in all the world and are SO fortunate to have two organists who are not only technically outstanding but who play with their hearts, with their souls. They tap into Source and music flows into them, through them, out their fingers, onto the keyboard, and fills this sacred space for all of us to benefit from. We are so fortunate!

If you weren’t here for the closing hymn and postlude on Transfiguration Sunday, go back to the online archives and watch/listen to that entire service. Great hymns, great sermon, and that closing hymn - stunning.

I love all that about our church. And more.

I love it that we have a clergy team that reflects diversity and inclusivity - something that seems to upset some folks in our culture and at the top of our government. They can’t stop the gospel we manifest here.

I especially love it that we don’t have as part of our worship a children’s sermon.

For those of you who don’t know what that is, a children’s sermon is when the pastor invites all the children present to come and sit on the chancel steps and he or she joins these precious little angels and tells them some story that fits the theme of that Sunday’s service.

Usually the minister tells sweet little stories and then the children either go elsewhere for the remainder of the service or return to their seats to distract their parents.

If the minister has completely taken leave of their senses, he or she offers the children an opportunity to respond. When that happens, a minefield has just been entered.

A friend of mine, right after he graduated from seminary, moved to Georgia to be pastor of a flourishing church in an Atlanta suburb. He inherited a worship service that contained a children’s sermon. One of the most important things learned in seminary is “when you go to a new church do NOT try to change the order of service!” That is just asking to be moved elsewhere.

On this particular Sunday his sermon was on the wisdom of saving - saving money was just one aspect of what he had in mind. Saving resources, saving the planet, saving values, and so forth.

So he brought the children down for the children’s sermon and started talking to them about saving. “How many of you get an allowance?” Some hands went up. He was off to a good start.

“And, what do you do with the money?” There were a variety of answers: spend it for lunch money, buy toys and candy, go to the movies, give some to the church - all the parents gave a sigh of relief. And, so it went.

To nudge them into the arena of talking about saving money he said, “I’m thinking an animal. This animal can climb trees. It has a bushy tail. It stores nuts in its nest high up in the tree. Do any of you know what animal I’m thinking of?”

No hands went up. Until one little boy stuck his hand up. The mike goes in front of he and he says, “I know the answer is Jesus. But it sounds like a squirrel.”

And there we have it. Beginning so young.

An example of how the tribes in which we grow up, and the church for many is just such a tribe, teach us not how to see but what to see.

“I know the expected answer is Jesus but my intellect tells me it’s a squirrel.”

I think it is only fair to let you know that coming into this place, as beautiful as it is and as comforting as it can be, can also be hazardous. We might be healed of our blindness. We might learn to see what is.

I know, I know - each of us is sure that we see. We have things nailed down. Like the people around the blind man whose sight was restored in the Gospel reading we just heard were so sure they had it right. They thought they were being faithful to what they had been taught. They weren’t being faithful. They were being stubborn. They had eyes but didn’t see. They were sticking with what they had been taught to see and not to what was right in front of their eyes. So, seeing, they were blind.

Part of what it means to encounter Jesus is being willing to step out from under the shade of whatever worldview we have inherited and learning to see and say the world as it is. If we were taught that the religious answer was “Jesus” when what we saw was a “squirrel,” we have to develop the courage to say so. And, vice versa.

I grew up in a culture that professed goodwill toward all. I went to a church that taught me to sing

“Brown and yellow, black and white,

they are precious in his sight,

God loves all the little children of the world”

But we didn’t really believe that.

We had separate water fountains, entrances, restrooms, restaurants, and accommodations for “whites” and “colored.”

Those are what some now refer to as “the good old days.”

Memory is deceptive and the comfort that many in our culture now long for was an ignorance that kept them feeling safe with fixed categories of beliefs and behaviors where Jesus was the answer but a squirrel was the reality. It is only when we transcend the values of tribalism that we ever experience renewal.

By the way, in that culture, when I said what I saw, I was called a troublemaker. So was the formerly blind man in our gospel story.

Actually, the answer is Jesus. The trick is - we have to be open to having him heal our blindness.

One of the most revolutionary teachings in theology I know, and people who have heard me teach more than half a dozen times are familiar with it, is something the Scottish theologian Sara Grant wrote: “It isn’t the way because Jesus walked it. Jesus walked it because it was the way.”

We don’t need to be angry at or ashamed about what we did believe. It was necessary to get us here. I am eternally grateful for the church in which I got my start. Among other things it taught me the Bible. And God knows, right now our world is suffering from a lack of biblical and religious literacy. There is nothing about Christian Nationalism that is Christian. Biblical illiteracy led to this abomination.

In his opening sermon in Mark Jesus says, quoting Isaiah, “I came, among other things, to restore sight to the blind.”

This restoration of sight is challenging because when we are healed of our blindness, we see things unfamiliar to us, uncomfortable to us, and out of our control. And, God knows, how we love to be in control - or think we are. We love to be in safe, familiar, comfortable surroundings. The problem is that I can’t find Jesus anywhere saying, “I came to make you comfortable.” He did say, “I came to give you the good news that you are a child of God - and so is everyone else.” Are we willing in our practices willing to see that?

Some folks heard that message and were overcome with joy and happiness. Some were so threatened they ended up executing him. Which one of those groups could really see?

Right after 9/11 - and the statistics show that less than half of us gathered here today remember that event - right after 9/11 - and our government’s current behavior is guaranteeing that we will have similar events in our country’s future - I committed myself to teaching about religious and spiritual literacy - they are not the same.

My reason is that all fundamentalism in any arena, religious or political, is the result of ignorance. Not stupidity. There are some really smart and articulate fundamentalists. Just ignorant. Blind, if you will.

All fundamentalism eventually ends in violence of some kind - verbally or physically. It divides and harms with words, guns or bombs. Both our country and our globe are suffering so from this blind faith right now.

One Sunday after I had concluded teaching, a man came up to me and said, “I think you ought to stay away from this stuff and just preach Jesus. People need to believe in Jesus.”

I told him, “I couldn’t agree with you more. People need people to be like Jesus to them. Because people need the healing that Jesus brings, especially the healing of blindness. People need to see themselves for who they are.” He never came back.

This is how Jesus healed people. I think that the secret and power behind Jesus’ ability to heal people is that he saw people for who they were. In essence he said to them, “I see past what you and society says defines you to the person God created you to be and when you see what I see in you, then you will be healed into the wholeness God desires for all people.”

In the beginning following Jesus was not about believing stuff. He never said, “You have to believe this” and then gave a list of credal statements. He said, “You have love each other.” Of course, you don’t have to do that. The disturbing truth, however, is that you can’t encounter Jesus if you don’t do that. Or, if you truly encounter Jesus, you will do that.

Before I stop I want to say a few words about the other lectionary readings for today.

In the first lesson we heard God saying to Samuel: “God judges persons differently than humans do. Men and women look at their faces. God looks at the heart.” How do we see others?

The 23rd Psalm was the first complete passage from the Bible I learned by heart. Not memorized. That is different from learning something “by heart.”

It is such a rich passage. My Old Testament professor in seminary said, “The 23rd psalm is shallow enough for a child to safely wade and play in it and so deep that our best scholars have not plumbed its depth.” Your eyes have to be open to see that.

Right now, culturally and globally, we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. As one of your pastors, I want you to know that in every such valley God has the capacity to guard, protect and eventually make new. God has the transformative power to make safe, to fill cups, and to set tables. There will always be people who bicker about the napkin choice because they are blind. There are others who see and who will savor the feast.

Of course, making it through the dark valley requires from us our eyes-wide open cooperation with the wholeness God desires for all people, for all creation.

The blind man in the gospel narrative bears witness to God’s power to overcome blindness and create new possibilities.

The only thing worse than being blind is having eyes and not seeing.

Jesus did not ask from the man born blind his moral credentials or his creedal statements. All Jesus asked for was trust. When we trust enough to see the way the blind man saw before he could see, then we too will get it.

Paul in the epistle urges us to “walk as children of light for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.”

Let me read to you that passage as Eugene Peterson renders it:

“You groped your way through murk once, but no longer. You’re out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it! The good, the right, the true - these are the actions appropriate for daylight hours. Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.”

The formerly blind man makes it very simple: I was born blind, and now I see! Amazing grace, amazing grace; I once was blind but now I see.

Having had this experience the formerly blind man cannot fathom why those around him distance themselves from him - even his parents.

The answer to that is simple as well. They were committed to holding on to what they had been taught to see not to the miracle that was right in front of them.

So let me give you this sermon in one sentence: excessive commitment to tradition, either religious or political - and for some people their politics is their religion - excessive commitment to tradition that contradicts the will of God - which is humility, justice, and peace - is not only deliberate blindness. In the Bible called idolatry.

As I said, the sight we gain through encountering Jesus is dangerous. If we claim Jesus, we open ourselves to having our sight continually restored.

Sometimes I think that if we were serious about encountering and being encountered by Jesus we would be issued crash helmets when we come into this space for worship. The ushers should give us seatbelts.

Jesus never left anyone unchanged after an encounter with him no matter how far along the path they were or thought they were. Even after resurrection his closest disciples were still having their eyes opened to new dimensions of what it meant to be a followers of Jesus.

As we continue our walk through Lent we ask ourselves two questions:

How often do I allow what I have been taught to see blind me from seeing what is? That’s one question.

The other is: How does my vision of Jesus become clouded over by my need to be right and in control, by my culture, by fear - that that though I claim sight, I am still blind?

The Gospel lesson today is not about one man’s blindness. Rather it is about the blindness of the religious leaders, even the man’s parents, and the rest of us who do not see.

In this story the blind man is the only one who can truly see. And, the reason I preached this sermon is so that we may we join his ranks.

If you would like to see the video of this sermon and service, click here. If you would like to listen to the audio of this sermon, click here.

My avocation is magic.

I have been a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians for so long that I have achieved the designation of “Merlin.” (This has nothing to do with anything other than tenure - not skill.)

I have loved magic and all things pertaining to magic since I was in grammar school and hardly a day passes that I am not somehow involved with magic - practicing a slight, reading about magic, watching a video of a performance, etc.

Not everyone enjoys magic. That’s okay. Not everyone enjoys opera either.

What I have learned is that no one likes to be “tricked.”

When I was first starting out as a child and would ask someone, “Wanna see a trick?” I would get a polite acquiescence. Now as an adult I realize that I was merely being tolerated as a kid with a new hobby.

I’ve learned never to ask, “Want to see a trick?” If I do have something I want to show, I might begin by saying, “Do you believe in magic?” That provides an opening for me to show the latest bit of entertainment that I have learned. And, it is precisely that - entertainment.

While the magic is being performed both I and those watching suspend belief for a moment in order to experience what the moment has to offer.

If, after causing a dollar bill to change into a hundred dollar bill, or when coins are produced out of “thin air,” I claimed that actually happened, I would not be a magician doing magic but a charlatan who deceives.

When I first started this Substack, this is my eighteenth posting, I vowed I was not going to “pile on” to the other able writers who post using this medium about our current political and cultural situation. There are other social commentators far more competent to do this than I.

My hope and goal was, and is, to entice anyone who reads these to take the step of joining me in my weekly teachings in Ordinary Life - whether in person or via live-stream.

My convictions are few, simple and yet - I believe - life-giving.

One is that our major cultural problem is religious and spiritual illiteracy - Christian Nationalism is based on poor information and faulty logic. Many people have not grown enough emotionally to be able to embrace contradiction and paradox. Giving loyalty to a person rather than values is idolatry pure and simple.

Another matter destroying us is this: I believe the solution of our current culture problem is spiritual - not religious! We suffer not only from closed minds but also closed and cold hearts.

If you want to know how virtually any magic effect is done, all you have to do is go to YouTube and find it exposed and explained. This doesn’t rob the power and entertainment value of the magic effect any more than looking at a sheet of music detracts from listening to it performed.

If you want to know what is going on in our culture, all you have to do is look at the videos of events being described in the news media.

After Trump’s first inauguration the claim was made that the crowd that attended that event was “the largest in history.” All anyone had to do was look at the photographs taken of that and of prior inaugurations to see that was not the truth. When confronted with this, a spokesperson for the administration said, “We have alternative facts.” There are no such things! Two plus two does NOT equal five just because I want that to be the answer.

When it comes to crowd size not a lot is at stake. When it comes to extrajudicial killings, that’s another matter.

So what are we to do?

Well, in short, and this is what I will be elaborating on in Ordinary Life this coming week, we have to develop the courage to change the things we can, the strength to accept the things we can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.

These words are at the heart of what is known as The Serenity Prayer and, in its original form, was meant to be used not by an individual but by a community of like-minded individuals. It was written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as a response to the horrors of Nazism that led to WWII. It’s original form was -

Give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know one from the other.

Just to be clear: I don’t believe that there is a being off out in space somewhere who is going to take a stick and, at our request, stir things up to make them better. I love the way Barry Taylor describes it: “‘God’ is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape.”

I do believe in the “mystery” and in the oldest and best description of this Source of all that is and all who are - God is love.

I believe in the miracle of love empowered and enacted when we do our part to make real hearts and minds open to really seeing each other - and all others. It is the “othering” of people that is destroying us.

In addition to my hoping that you will join me in Ordinary Life this week, I have a request. Watch the movie “Eleanor The Great.” (It’s on Netflix and will take you less than an hour and half.)

The movie is about a woman who loved her roommate so much that she ended up “telling her story” as if it were her own. What would it be like if we had the knowing ability to tell the story of Renee Good or Alex Pretti? Or, if we could tell the story of the individuals who murdered them?

None of them grew up thinking or hoping they would be involved in such horror. Yet, here we are. All of us together. Not “them” and us. But, just “us.” We are all in the same boat and the seas have gotten very rough.

What if we were open to the courage, strength and wisdom as a collective to say “No!” to trickery and falsehood and opted, instead, for the miraculous, even magical, outcome of love embodied?

Wanna see a trick? Nope.

Do you believe in magic, in the miracle of love?

Pray that it may be so. Prayer is much, much more than words we say. Prayer is what we do with our hands, feet and the words that we say in public places that say, “This current insanity must stop!” When that happens, it will be a not a magic trick but the miracle we need.

“No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference.”

Those words, written by essayist Charles Lamb in 1819, I first heard quoted by a professor when I was in graduate school. I had only a smattering of awareness about Lamb but I have remembered the line ever since.

The truth of the sentence comes around every year.

At the end of December a huge variety of publications, both print and online, come out with their list of “the best of the year.” These include - best photos, best news stories, best movies, best recipes, best - well, you get the point.

Then, on the first of the year, or near to it, we get the advice columns informing us how we can make this the best year ever - how to lose weight, sleep better, be more productive - once again, you get the point.

And, inevitably, there are those who remind us in print and cartoons that New Year’s resolutions don’t work. The example usually given is how gyms are full the first few weeks of the new year but, as time passes, attendance falls off.

I went back and read the entire essay in which Charles Lamb used the memorable line. It is a reflection about time, memory, and mortality. Exploring further, one can read about Lamb’s own tragic family circumstances - his sister murdered their mother in a fit of rage and, because she was declared insane at the time, lived with Charles for the rest of her life.

This year, for the third time, I composed a “Christmas letter” to send out to friends and family. In the process I surveyed the past year. I was stunned at the number of very dear friends, as well as former friends who had transitioned into being acquaintances, who are no longer physically with us. It reminded me of the line in a well known and loved hymn by Isaac Watts:

“time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away.”

Christian Wiman, whose writings - both poetry and prose - always stuns me, has a phrase in a recent article that was in Harper’s Magazine. The phrase is “between gravity and grace.”

That, I think, is what I want to maintain an awareness of as I go into this new year. It is where I want to live. And, I’m posting this encouraging you to consider the same.

We are bound to things, habits, and people that we cannot hold on to. Sometimes this binding is conscious. Most often it is not.

Of course, some of these realities are things we don’t so much have as they have us. Usually, we are quite unaware of this “being had” and that is not only to our detriment to also to those around us.

I don’t know about you, but I know a lot more about how to embody what I’m writing about than actually living it. I am reminded of another professor who told us that in our clinical work we would frequently encounter people who would say that they wanted to change but who actually wanted to remain the same - just to feel better about it. That’s gravity. But, it is true:

we frequently want to be more successful neurotics who prefer the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity. That is living life to the minimum.

That’s giving in to gravity.

Living between gravity and grace is to occupy a liminal space, a place between the no-longer and the not-yet. It is the fear generated by the unknown that keeps us stuck in our efforts to hold on to or to reproduce what no longer works. Nostalgia is a powerful force!

There is a line by a theologian, Karl Rahner, that I have used multiple times in my teaching. It is: “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.”

Please forgive both the sexist language and the provincialism in the quote. He didn’t know better and I mean to be incredibly inclusive.

However, those were written SIXTY years ago! We now live in that future and are still slogging through the gravity caused by either-or, you-me, in-out mentality. Where are the ordinary mystics of our time? Maybe working to become such a person, regardless of your religious or spiritual stance would be a good “New Year’s” aspiration. Just saying.

My goal and hope for this year, and I am urging you to make it yours, is to live in the grace of a non-dual world where everything and everyone belong.

In these disorderly and frightening times, people want answers that are clear, clean, and easy. There is this strong urge to find things to hold on to. To experience things that provide solidity. That’s what we get from gravity.

From grace we get not what we want but what we need.

I have come to believe that the only security in life comes from embracing its insecurity. Gravity minimizes risks. Grace gives us, hopefully, the courage to take them.

It is emotionally satisfying to be certain but what is emotionally satisfying can be devastating to ourselves, others, and the planet.

So, no New Year’s resolutions except, perhaps, to embrace the advice of Rilke the poet:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and learn to love the questions themselves.”

I wish you and your’s a Happy New Year and hope we all have the courage to love all who are and all that is.

That phrase was frequently used in that period of my life. Everyone knew what it meant because, it seemed that Christmas, a much anticipated holiday of my youth, would NEVER come.

It has been decades since I have heard this phrase - which, in itself, is a sign of the times.

Our time seems to be not as “slow as Christmas” but flying by.

Albert Einstein has been quoted as explaining the theory of relativity this way:

“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute - you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.”

That was in a newspaper sometime around 1929 and in addition to it being sexist, it was likely never uttered by the famous man. Besides, it is not about relativity, either general or specific. Rather, the phrase is about subjective psychological time - which is the subject of this post.

Since you are a Substack reader, I’m assuming you keep up with what is going on around you and around the globe. I’m not in my Substack postings going to pile on to that theme. I will say that we are running out of time to deal with the issues that are both killing us and the planet. We don’t have “all the time in the world” and the “passing of time” will not automatically solve these issues. One social commentator I read and trust has wondered if America can ever recover from the moral standards that have been debased and barbarized during this current regime.

What this time calls for is not a looking back with nostalgia or a looking forward with optimism. What is called for is living in this present moment with a “muscular hope.”

Muscular hope is not simply an optimistic view that somehow everything will turn out all right - which means “if things go like I want them to go.” Muscular hope is more rugged than that. Muscular hope embraces a view that even if things don’t turn out all right and aren’t the way we want them to be, we are enabled to endure through and beyond the times that disappoint and even threaten to destroy us.

Further, muscular hope awakens us to the reality of the situation and empowers us to act.

When I was a child, hoping for a Christmas that seemed like it would never come, that wasn’t really hope; that was optimism. Hope is so much more than optimism. Hope is what gets us through and beyond when the worst than can happen happens - which seems to be what these days are full of.

We cannot achieve hope alone. It is an act of community. These days of Christmas and Hanukkah are about the world as it is yet-to-be. There is no grand and glorious past we are to get back to. We do not honor the message these holy days seek to celebrate by keeping things as they are or with a return to how they have been.

There is a line in the Christian Scripture that says, “Always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is within you.” A better translation, in my opinion is, “Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy.”

Courtesy is lacking at the highest levels of our government. No one has to respond in kind. A great gift we can give to each other and the world is not to be cruel. And, we can live a muscular hope.

I keep returning to the first book that was required reading when I entered clinical training in the mid ’60s. It was “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl.

If you have not read it, take this time during this season to do so. (Forgive his sexist language, he didn’t know better at the time.)

The book describes Frankl’s experiences surviving Nazi concentration camps and the insights he drew from them. His affirmation is that humans can endure immense suffering if they find meaning. Meaning, rather than pleasure, possessions, prestige or power is the primary motivation for life.

Sometimes others will interfere with the ability we have to take care of ourselves and then say, “I was only trying to help you.” In my work, as well as in these postings, my goal is not to help you but to “hope you.”

Hope is so much more than optimism. Hope is the stuff that gets us through and beyond when the worst than can happen happens.

You likely have heard the saying: Where there is life, there is hope. As with many of such adages, this one is backwards. The fact is that where there is hope there is life.

Without hope no one can live. Not really live. Without hope perspective is distorted. Without hope we don’t try or give our best. Without hope people get sick and die - whether physically or otherwise.

Hope goes beyond optimism or pessimism. Hope doesn’t go up and down with the temperature of our times. Hope is the state of having nothing and yet possessing all things.

Muscular hope doesn’t remove us from the world but, rather, allows us to participate fully in the various worlds in which we live fully, freely, bravely, and lovingly.

Hope is a decision that is made in the dark, not where everything is bright and sunny and coming up roses. Hope is made where there is pain and despair. Hope is decided for in the shadow of death. Hope is chosen when there seems to be little or no evidence to support it. Hope is letting go of bitterness, hate, fear and guilt. Hope, muscular hope, is a choice. Always.

Hope is not about what we expect from life but, rather, what life expects from us.

We don’t find happiness, wellness, peace, loving kindness, compassion and the like - we express these things.

What we have to offer to one another and to all others is a muscular hope.

Yes, it has been, is being, likely will be bleak these days. Nonethess, I wish for you and me the will and courage to live a muscular hope.

Much love,

Bill Kerley

When you finish reading this post, and I hope you do, what would be a good outcome of the expenditure of this time?

It is not my intention to pile on to the “ain’t it awful” things that are being said about this time. There is enough of that. Besides, if you are reading this, you are in the demographic that knows the leadership of our country is deplorable.

My interest is in exploring and teaching a path that leads to the experience of freedom and love and the practice of justice and peace.

I asked the “what would be a good outcome question” recently to someone who had come to see me and the person to whom I asked it thought for a moment and then said, “I just need sorting out.”

Yup! Don’t we all?!

One of my teachers once said that as Adam and Eve were walking out of the Garden of Eden, Adam turned to Eve and said, “My dear, we live in an age of transition.”

I’ve lived long enough, I am eighty-eight, to have lived through some rocky times in American culture. Further, I am blessed - or cursed! - with a memory that can recall things from when I was two or three. There have been some scary times. None, however, as threatening to our fragile democracy as the time we are in at the moment.

We are in, as a culture and country, stormy times.

Sometimes the literal storms of life - things like floods, fires, hurricanes and the like - can break through our usual hypnotic state and we see each other as the persons we are. During these times, people who are able to what they can to assist those in need do so without regard of skin color, political or religious beliefs.

When, however, the literal storms subside, we are back to “business as usual.”

Some people will say things like, “We are all in this together.” Or, “One person’s opinion is just as valid as another person’s.”

That is tepid egalitarianism. It is what the Buddhists call “idiot compassion.” That stance is flawed because though it says “no view is any better than another,” it is claiming that view is superior to any other.

It is better to live soberly than an addicted life. That’s not a judgment. It is a fact. It is an act of compassion to face into this. Further, we live in a very addicted and addictive culture. To deny this is not to notice the storm. And, it is build an unseaworthy craft for these stormy times.

Real compassion includes judgments made out of care and concern.

We have personal responsibility to build the craft to carry us through this stormy time.

The boat in which I want to ride out the storm we are in is constructed out of the following materials:

the ability to think for oneself,

to draw independent conclusions,

to express dissent when judgement and common sense indicate something is wrong,

to be self critical,

to challenge authority,

to understand historical facts,

to separate truth from lies,

to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable.

And, it means not being cruel in word or deed to another living being.

I recommend and encourage this as a path to walk.

Those who choose this way of life and living I refer to as “Custodians of Consciousness.”

Such people live in a way so that when others come up for air they see the way of humility, justice and peace as the most attractive option available.

No matter who you are or where you are in your journey, I hope you have a gratitude filled Thanksgiving. Practicing gratitude is one of the best ways to get sorted our and build a worthy craft that I know of.

The daughter of the king became ill. She was old enough for all who knew her to know that she would become a wise and compassionate queen when her father left the throne. She had fallen into unconsciousness. No one could rouse her and as each day passed she became weaker and closer to death.

All the healers of the kingdom had tried to revive her. Nothing worked.

One of the king’s servants told the king about a healer in her country who had great power. The king was not friendly with this country but he was desperate.

Though times were tight, money was raised to secure the services of this healer.

The healer finally arrives. All the villagers gather around. This was, after all, their future leader who was ill.

The healer kneels over the child and says a few simple prayers. Then, he rises and says to the king, “Now your daughter will be well.”

The king’s physician, who had tried to heal the child and had failed, came forward and said, “What do you mean, the child will be well? You say a few words and expect us to believe that the child is supposed to be healed? We paid all this money for such nonsense? Ha! You are a fraud and a charlatan!”

The healer who had come from afar strides over to him and says, “What do you mean to say such a thing. You know nothing about this. You are an absolute, total, ignorant fool - the son of a dog!”

The king’s physician was enraged at this. His face turns red. His body begins to shake. He reaches into the robe he is wearing and draws his dagger. He is about to strike when the healer from afar says, “See. If a word or two can turn you red and fill you with enough energy and anger to kill, why should not a few other words have the power to heal?”

I got this story from a teacher of mine, Robert Johnson. He said he got it during one of his many stays in India. I highly recommend his autobiography, “Balancing Heaven and Earth.”

Robert used myths and stories like this to teach principles of Jungian psychology. He taught that this story has many meanings that are relevant for us.

Here are some examples:

When the king or someone in the king’s family is ill, the entire kingdom suffers. If the leadership is not well, the whole country suffers. Rains do not come, crops fail, the animals in the fields grow sick, the people suffer.

In these type of stories the source of healing comes from “a far country.” That is, from some place that is “foreign” to us, some place unexpected, often even unwanted or deemed “beneath us.”

The word about such healing sources can come from the most unlikely of places. In this story it is the king’s servant.

And, there is usually cost for such services. This, too, is a metaphor. Healing is costly in the changes in beliefs and behaviors that are required for healing to take place.

The healer doesn’t arrive instantly. Patience is required.

Then, there is the obvious opposition to the healing that takes place or for the healer who accomplishes it. Old ways die with difficulty.

Most of all there is the lesson having to do with the power of words. The words we say, the words we allow ourselves to hear have the power to heal or to hurt.

I thought of this story in light of recent stories of people who are voicing their opinions and judgments of others using the vilest of words and phrases. News reports that so-called “leaders” at the highest levels of our government are doing this and, then, some of those under them seem to be following the same pattern.

Rumi, the Sufi poet, said in the 13th century that “the fish begins to sink at the head, not the tail.” In current lingo we say,

“The fish rots from the head.”

When leadership is sick or dysfunctional, the entire kingdom suffers. Some follow the leader and contribute to the general malaise.

There are those, however like the servant girl in this story, who know that there are other ways to be and other paths to follow. It can take courage to bring this to the king’s attention. It can be costly. And, patience and persistence are required.

Remember the old saying, “Don’t wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty. And, the pig likes it.”

There are some words attributed to the Buddha that are worthy of embracing:

No matter where you go this week, no matter what happens, remember this: You carry precious cargo. So, watch your step.

Join me either personally or online for my teachings in Ordinary Life. For more information click here.

Do you remember what, when you were a child, you wanted to be when you “grew up”?

I don’t hear that question asked of children much anymore but it was the one that seemed to be asked frequently when I was a child: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Remember how you answered that question?

Did it happen?

I did not become an airplane pilot - that was my dream. Or, one of my dreams.

That didn’t happen.

Years ago I did some consulting work for what was then Continental Airlines. I met, spent time with, and became friends with the man who at that time was in charge of all pilot training for that airline. I got to spend many hours with him including an afternoon in one of the simulators that are used to train pilots on how to deal with “emergency situations” should they occur in actual flight. I quickly learned that being an aviator was neither in my skill nor aptitude set.

What would your life have been like had your childhood dreams come true?

If we are privileged to have had a successful launch into life, each one of us has to “have a job.” That is, every adult who is capable of self-care has the responsibility to figure out how to “make a living.”

However, “making a living” is nowhere near what it means to “have a life.”

Years ago I went to a conference where each of us was asked to introduce ourselves without referring to what we did “for a job.” As I remember it, the leader said,

“Tell us, apart from what you do to make a living, who are you?”

Sit with that for a while.

One of the best teachers I ever had warned,

“Be careful how you describe yourself. Any label you put on yourself is a trap.”

Indeed. Just this week someone sent me a meme that said,

“Y’all enjoy those 20s, 30s, and 40s. Because in your 50s that ‘check engine’ light gone come on.”

Nothing lasts.

I’m working on writing something about being “peacemakers” for another project and asked ChatGPT, “how many armed conflicts are there in the world today?” The answer I got back was 122! When I survey the public discourses taking place in this country, the amount of harmful rhetoric being hurled back and forth between people of alleged “good will” is appalling.

Peaceful protests that use hateful rhetoric aren’t peaceful. The old saying we heard in childhood -

Sticks and stones may break my bones

But words will never harm me

is as wrong as can be.

Words matter.

It is hard for me to imagine that anyone carrying a sign full of hateful language or anyone who is hurling such words at another had a point in their past where that is who they hoped to become.

I am a huge admirer of the poetry of Jalal Al Din Rumi. Reading him on a regular basis is a good “daily spiritual practice.”

Some words from one of his works are these:

The poem is about transcending judgment and the limitations of right and wrong to finding a place of connection, peace, and love. It suggests that there is a place of deeper understanding where we can meet each other without the burden of blame or labels.

I want to hold on to and spread the hope that we are not locked within a system that resists meaningful transformation.

Yes, we are becoming more and more immersed in ignorance (not stupidity for many ignorant people are very cunning!) and corruption.

What we each hope for and want is to be treated with compassion, dignity, and justice. If this is true, then these are the things we must offer to each other. Looking at our current culture it seems to be the case that these are the things we must grow into.

One writer refers to such people as “custodians of consciousness.” This is what I want to be “when I grow up.” And, it is an ongoing process. That is, one we never finish. Isn’t that hopeful!

I am embracing the hope that if more people will aspire to this goal, our culture might be turned in a different direction.

As the writer from whom I got the phrase “custodians of consciousness” said,

Baraka Blue, the rapper and poet, wrote, “We have to see everyone as ‘us.’ . . . I believe in us, and I love us, but I weep for us for what we do to us in the name of us.”

We, as a species, don’t seemed to be equipped to live at the level where our technology has put us. In order to get there, many of us have much growing to do.

So, what do you want be when you grow up?

A teacher of mine many years ago encouraged me to travel the world as much as possible saying,

“The one who does not travel thinks mother is the only cook.”

His teaching has proven to be true.

Spending time in and with other cultures gives me a wider appreciation for how other people experience life and develop their own beliefs and customs.

Once, in Greece, and this was shortly after 9/11, a native of that country said to me, “We all want the same things. We want to be safe. We want to make a decent living. We want to believe that our children have a safe and promising future. We all want to go home from work at the end of the day to enjoy a meal with our loved ones and to spend time with them.”

How true!

Because I live in a city where we are almost to the point that there is no single ethnic majority, we enjoy all the delights that come from multi-cultural living. This includes some of the best international eating experiences you can imagine, the celebration of different cultural holidays, and more. I cannot comprehend how and why there are those who don’t delight in diversity.

One of the downsides of living in such a populous area is that there is a lot of automobile traffic and, along with that, a lot of vehicle accidents. Across the metroplex area where I live there are around three hundred car crashes a day. That is, correct, a day!

Now, here is the thing:

Likely every single one of the drivers involved in those car crashes believes her or himself to be an “above average driver.”

Don’t you?

Yet, the statistics prove that is not the case. If I were to stop the next one hundred cars that come down the street where my office is - and it is so centrally located the street is actually named “Main Street” - and asked each driver, “Do you believe you are an ‘above average’ driver?” I am confident almost all of them would say, “Yes.”

If I were to ask each of these people, “Do you believe you are above average in the skill of talking?” I am equally confident each would say, “Yes.” However, when you look at the mayhem caused by miscommunication in our world, that is clearly not the case.

Over the years I have counseled countless couples whose complaint has been, “We just don’t seem to be able to communicate.” Eventually I get to say to them, “No, that is not the problem. The problem is that you don’t know how to talk.”

There is a world of difference between “talking” and “communicating.”

Here is an axiom you can engrave in stone:

“There is no behavior in the presence of another person that doesn’t communicate something.”

If I come home from work at the end of the day and ask my beautiful bride, “How was your day?” And, she doesn’t take her eyes off the book she is reading, doesn’t look at me, and grunts, “Fine”, she just communicated something. It was not that she was overjoyed to see me!

One of the most important skills in any relationship is the skill of talking. Knowing how to talk effectively doesn’t come automatically - especially in this era where we pride efficiency over effectiveness.

Here is an example:

When a child is doing something the child thinks is worthy of attention and shouts out to a parent, “Hey, look at me!” and the parent, occupied with other things, says, “That’s good honey.” the parent has just commented on performance and not personhood. All the child was asking for was “to be seen.” What the child got was “a performance review.”

Susan Scott in her book, the best book on learning and knowing how to talk that I know of, says,

“Being understood rather than being interpreted is so rare, you could charge admission.”

I recommend this book to all of my clients. It is NOT a self-help book. You’ll find it in the “management section” of the bookstore or library. The book is “Fierce Conversation.”

One of the miracles our culture needs is to be gifted with the ability for us to be able to talk with one another -

from the heart,

about things that matter.

The idea of calling this a “miracle” is one I got from another book over forty years ago now, “The Miracle of Dialogue” by Reuel Howe.

I can confidently promise that if you will read and apply the information and knowledge in these two works, you will not only increase in wisdom and understanding but also, you will have the skill to make the places in this world where you live out your life places that are more compassionate and just.

Isn’t that the miracle we need?

No matter where you go this week, no matter what happens, remember this: you carry precious cargo. So, watch your step.

This story comes from the Sufi tradition, which is the mystical side of Islam. Sufism is a treasure trove of wonderful “teaching stories.” One of the best sources for such stories are the works of Idries Shah and, though this is my version of the story, I’m fairly certain I got the original from his writings years ago.

Here is the story:

Once there was a metal worker who was unjustly accused of a crime he did not commit. He had no money to hire a lawyer and no friends in powerful places. So, he was put in prison.

His wife went repeatedly to the judge pleading for mercy but got none. One day she pleaded that she might at least give him a prayer rug so he could keep his vow to pray five times a day. The judge ruled that this was a lawful request so he let her bring a prayer rug for her husband to use.

Every day, five times a day, he prostrated himself on the rug.

One day he said to his guards, “I am poor and without hope. You are not well paid. Bring me some metal and tools to work with and I will make things you can sell in the market so that you can have more resources for your families.”

The guards agreed to this and as time passed the guards not only began to benefit from the gifts made by their prisoner but also they became his friends. Soon they began to realize that they were as much prisoners as was he.

One day when the guards came to visit their prisoner, now their friend, they saw that the door to his cell was open, unlocked.

“How did this happen?” They asked.

He said, “After doing my prostrations day after day I realized that my wife had woven into the prayer rug the pattern of the mechanism of the lock of the cell that imprisoned me. I took some of the metal you brought to me and fashioned a key. We will all have a better life if we escape this prison together.”

After selling enough pieces of his metalwork to gather the resources they needed for life outside the prison, they all escaped. The metal worker left the prayer rug behind so that any other prisoner who was clever enough to read the pattern of the rug could also make an escape.

Some time passed and a convicted thief confessed to the crime that the metal worker had been imprisoned for. As a result, the metal worker was pardoned.

The ruler of that province heard of this amazing feat and summoned the metal worker to his palace to learn what magic he had used to make such an impossible escape.

The metal worker said, “It was by design. My wife is a weaver. She weaves patterns into the fabric when she makes something. She found the locksmith who had made the cell door locks of the prison and got the design from him. She wove that design into the rug. So, by design, I escaped and also freed those who were my captors.”

This story is rich with so many lessons. Almost every sentence is full of meaning and can be usefully applied to our current situation.

One of the first rules for growth in any area is that of patience and persistence in the practice. Patience is not a character trait. Patience is a skill. In the original story it was some time before the prisoner “woke up” to the design that was in the prayer rug. Paying attention and being present are not easy things. Simone Weil wrote,

“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.”

When we don’t pay attention, we drift off course and end up in places we don’t want and don’t like.

Further, our culture seduces us into thinking that the results we hope for should be easy and quick. Almost nothing that is worthwhile falls into the “quick and easy” category.

The man also “befriended” his situation. Life and living are always “in process.” Embracing this rather than resisting it, is not just “going with the flow.” It is, rather, learning how to see and use our current situation, however unpleasant, as a way to a more desirable place.

It is important to remember that surrender to “what is” is not submission.

In my pursuit of magic as a hobby, one of my first acquisitions - when I was very young - was what is sometimes called “a Chinese finger trap.”

It is a tube woven out of bamboo. If you put the index finger of each hand into it and try to pull your hands apart, the more you pull the more you are trapped. The way out is to push the fingers together and then release comes naturally. There is a lesson there as well: coming together is what sets us free.

Notice also that the man used the knowledge and skills he had to be useful to those around him and to create allies in the task of mutual freedom.

I’m confident that if you live with this story a while, you’ll find even more meanings and truths that are relevant and applicable for this time.

I have know this story for a very long time. It influenced me to purchase my own prayer rug.

A few years ago I got to spend extended time in Turkey. It was an exquisitely wonderful time enhanced by the fact that one of our traveling companions spoke fluent Turkish. (She speaks seven languages - that’s another story.)

I had asked her before we got to Istanbul if she would help me purchase a Turkish prayer rug. I didn’t want something that was sold to the “tourist trade.” Rather, I was looking for something that someone who lived in that country and who regularly attended services at a mosque would use.

She found the perfect spot and the process of making the acquisition is worthy of a post of its own. The transaction was not the “I want that, how much is it, here is the money.” It took us probably two hours to complete the deal. It was a delightful ritual.

I collect items that people use in various religious traditions to enhance their practice and experience - prayer beads, icons, statues, etc. I didn’t have a prayer rug.

The reason I wanted one has its roots in this Sufi teaching story.

The rug is in a place where I can see and use it every day. My goal is to sit and see, to pay attention and listen. Where can I use what I know and have to befriend the current situation in such a way that leads to more freedom for myself and others?

That is a question worthy of being raised in our awareness every day.

This post seeks to speak to that issue.

Admittedly there is an enormous temptation to believe that nothing we do has any influence on the disintegrating direction that seems our destiny.

However, everything is always in process and each of us is involved in that process - whether we are aware of it or not.

Awareness is a key ingredient in meaningful living.

So, no matter what we choose to believe, everything we do, including how we think, affects the process our culture is undergoing.

There was a poem in a book about Mother Teresa that contains these lines:

The good you do today, people will forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

The book says that the source of the poem was found written on the wall of her home for children in Calcutta. That may be but the words come from a book by Kent Keith, “The Paradoxical Commandments.” (I commend it to you. It is a brief read.)

Over the years I have worked with countless people who are “in recovery” from various kinds of addictions. Where their recovery process starts is by finding a spiritual base, whatever that is for each of them, and then living a life directed by the values of that path.

As they do this, they change AND they affect and influence others.

You have likely seen the image of three monkeys: one has his hands over his eyes, one has his hands over his ears, and one has his hands over this mouth. The meaning is: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

There is, I believe, a more useful and wiser way to think about what can energize us, even cause us to flourish in these difficult days.

In the 1950s, Japanese primatologists studied macaque monkeys on the island of Koshima. They observed a young female begin washing sweet potatoes before eating them. Others gradually copied her and over the years the practice spread through the monkey community.

This was the birth of the “100th Monkey” theory - that is, that the behavior of one money spread and it soon reached the power of communal transformation.

“Yes,” someone might counter. “But, there is so much anger and fear to contend with.”

No question about that.

This is why is it helpful to know how to do what I call “linguistic judo.” We use it when those who are hostile to words and deeds of justice, compassion, and inclusion might confront our efforts and seek to stop us or lead us in a different direction.

What I mean by doing judo is learning how to use an opponent’s energy to allow them to throw themselves off balance.

I have a friend who, when she overhears someone make a racist comment, says, “Wow! That sounded racist. I didn’t know you were are racist. Are you a racist?”

Few racists want actually to admit that they are.

Linguistic judo means learning how to be non-defensive, non-argumentative AND playful when confronted with harmful speech and behavior. Being playful is not weak. In fact it is very powerful.

One of the best examples I know of this is when, in 1964, Muhammad Ali, (still using the name Cassius Clay) said, “I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

Linguistic judo is using poetry and strategy - especially humor.

Even though the world, including our country, seems crazy as can be, that is no reason to abandon the way of meaningful life and living by doing good even though it seems useless.

Don’t limit your life by limiting your love or your potential for doing the right and moral thing.

Let’s uncover our eyes, ears and mouths - see what is going on, open our ears to hear the pain and anguish of the powerless, and use our voices to make a difference.

You just might be the 100th monkey.

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In my work as a spiritual director and counselor, almost everyone I sit with is expressing fear and frustration about our current cultural and political context.

What can we do? How might we make a difference?

For today, lets begin here:

One of the most powerful - and true! - set of words I know of is something written by R.D. Laing, a psychiatrist from Scotland. I was privileged to get to spend a weekend with him in the 1970’s. He wrote:

’The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And, because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change, until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

I keep these words where I can see them from time to time. When I do read them, I wonder what it is I am failing to notice.

One of the greatest commencement speeches of all time was delivered by David Foster Wallace. He gave it at Kenyon College twenty years ago. If you have not read it, here is a link to the entire speech. It isn’t long and well worth your reading.

In it he tells the story of an older fish who swims by two younger fish one day. As he does so he says, “Hey boys! How’s the water?” He swims on. After he is gone, one of the young fish turns to the other and says, “What the hell is water?”

When I hear, see, feel, experience the “force field” that our country’s culture has become, I wonder: are we at risk of becoming like the young fish and not noticing where we are and what is going on?

Just asking.

Around the same time I had my encounter with Laing, I went to hear Loren Eiseley give a lecture. I had read his wonderful book, “The Immense Journey,” and was so fortunate to get to hear him in person. He died shortly after that at the very early age of 69.

At the end of the lecture he told the story that has become so well know because of him and something that is, unfortunately, credited to others. It is his.

Here it is as he told and wrote it:

A young man is walking along the ocean and sees a beach on which thousands and thousands of starfish have washed ashore. Further along he sees an old man, walking slowly and stooping often, picking up one starfish after another and tossing each one gently into the ocean.

“Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?,” he asks.

“Because the sun is up and the tide is going out and if I don’t throw them further in they will die.”

“But, old man, don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it! You can’t possibly save them all, you can’t even save one-tenth of them. In fact, even if you work all day, your efforts won’t make any difference at all.”

The old man listened calmly and then bent down to pick up another starfish and threw it into the sea. “It made a difference to that one."

So, the purpose of this post is to encourage each of us to notice, to pay attention.

(I also want to urge us to become jesters poking fun at the “king” who hates humor. But, that’s for another time.)

Yes, these are discouraging, hard, frightening times; times when one’s efforts seem like throwing a single starfish into the ocean. If, however, we have a practice that enables us to notice what we are not noticing about how we can make a difference, then we can do what we can do in our corner, no matter how small it is, to make a difference.

May we have the eyes to see and courage to walk the way of patience, tolerance, kindness, and love.

That is to say, may we notice what we don’t notice and go throw some starfish into hope and possibility.

Until next time, much love.

Bill Kerley

At the risk of that, I do make some assumptions about you. Among them are:

• You are literate and informed. That is to say, you have some idea of what is going on in the world in which you live.

• You are eager or open to learning and knowing more.

• You are “affluent” enough to have access to Substack.

Hence, there is no need for me to reiterate what you already know. I don’t want to “pile on” to either the malaise or chaos in which we live.

Nor do I want to adopt some kind of Pollyanna stance about our context.

The fact is that our culture is on a path which, if not changed, leads to disaster.

And yet,

there is need and room for living life with a “heart as light as a feather.”

I find great delight in the gift that outstanding cartoonists offer us in their work. One such person I’ve followed for years is Dan Piraro who created the comic “Bizarro.” One cartoon of his and his partner, Wayno, captures what I'm attempting to communicate in this post.

When I was first working out the principles of what I call “Ordinary Life,” one of them was that we have a “moral obligation to be happy.”

That belief grew out of my experience with the really powerful spiritual teachers I have had through my life. They were a joy to be around. They laughed a lot. Their default position seemed to be that of smiling.

They did take life seriously but they also played with it.

The first person I learned this from is a man I frequently refer to in my teachings as “George.” He is deceased now. I was privileged to speak at his funeral and I titled my brief homily, “I remember his laugh.” Isn’t that a wonderful legacy?!

Thich Nhat Hanh, Desmond Tutu and the Dali Lama are also on this list. Because of them, and others, I have come to believe that humorless people are really dangerous. At least, I certainly don’t understand them.

Humor is about perspective. It is a willingness to access joy even in the midst of adversity. As a spiritual teacher and therapist, I have come to believe that humor and healing go hand-in-hand.

Sometimes you might hear someone say about some situation they found funny: “I laughed until I thought I would die.” My stance is that if we don’t laugh we will die - or are already dead.

Maybe you don’t feel the need for this - and if you don’t have a need, where did you come from? - but we as a culture are flirting with disaster and destruction. This is why I thought of the Bizarro cartoon.

Yes, there is tragedy in our world - the recent school shooting in Minneapolis and famine in Gaza being just two examples. We will not, however, be led into the new places we have not yet been or seen by dour and sour people.

One of the people who also influenced my thinking about this was the English writer G.K. Chesterton. If you’ve ever seen the PBS show Father Brown, you can credit him for the inspiration behind that.

Take the time to look up the Wikipedia article about him. He was a delightful gadfly who poked fun at most everything. I went through a time when I read him widely and quoted him frequently.

He once wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

That isn’t entirely true for there have been many individuals and groups who have wonderfully exemplified what it means to embody the teachings of Jesus.

What Chesterton meant was that the civilization that calls itself “a Christian nation” and has never seriously attempted to live the vision of the teachings Jesus gave is a stance of hypocrisy. Some of the meanest people I’ve ever encountered take pride in calling themselves “Christian.”

Chesterton once had a job writing for the London Daily News. He was a man of great intellect and ability. George Bernard Shaw once said of him, “He is a man of colossal genius.” He was asked to compose an essay on the topic, “What Is Wrong With the World?” His essay consisted of two words: “I am.”

The good news in that is that we can also each be what is right with the world. It will take growth in religious and spiritual literacy. And it will take work. It is not easy.

Here is a Chesterton quote to keep handy:

“Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”

Living by the light of truth, equality, and justice we will not only find solid ground on which to stand but also we will be taught to fly.

Happiness causes us to soar.