Watching a Train Wreck and Trying Not to Despair....

Men that have a strong opinion of their own wisdom

in matter of government are disposed to ambition.

Because without public employment in council or magistracy

the honor of wisdom is lost.

And therefore eloquent speakers are inclined to ambition,

for eloquence seemeth wisdom, both to themselves and others.

- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

OK, it's been almost three weeks since our national mistake and the initial sense of the costs of our collective failure are starting to become clear.  A boorish billionaire whose only qualifications to lead the free world are that he's white, inhumane and rich and who was elected supposedly to dismantle the very system that has enabled this natural tragedy in the unfolding.  In a word, we're f@#ked.

How did it come to this?  In part because of ignorance and in part because of arrogance ... on both sides of our very apparent national divide.  There are those who are triumphant, hoping against hope that our new 'leader' will take us back to a mythical time when all was well.  (For some that is, apparently.)  And there are those of us experiencing great despair and trepidation because our best case scenario involves years (if not decades) of concerted effort to overturn the regression sure to come in a single term of the President-elect (and our worst case scenarios being too hard - indeed, crushing - to contemplate).

The ignorance of the 'winners,' those able to overlook the fundamental inhumanity of our next elected leader, is palpable: even the concept that we could somehow stop time and revert back to a simpler, better one is farcical and thoroughly discredited by history, including our own.

Remember the Camelot of the Kennedy Administration?  It lasted just 2-1/2 years and, though we've wrapped it in gauzy, rose-colored ahistoricity, the reality of it was far less fantastic.  There were real problems then, and that administration handled a few excellently and many poorly - you know, as in beginning the military 'observation' that blossomed terribly into the Vietnam War a few years later - so our choice to remember the good and forget the bad is misguided at best and quite dangerous at worst.

And the behavior of so many who supported our President-elect was both deplorable and revealing: so many of the -isms still plaguing our society were bewilderingly evident in both the Deplorables themselves and their leader.  Having drunk the Fox News and Alt-Right (read = reactionary radical racist fringe) kool-aid for years, their espoused beliefs are a mystifying mix of unreality - that a capitalist who does his own manufacturing overseas would defy globalization to save their manufacturing jobs and even bring untold millions of "good" ones back, etc. - bordering on insanity.

Objectively so many of the issues that were supposed to be important or the challenges that were besting us were, in fact, untrue.  For example, America is experiencing greater economic prosperity than ever (and thus not in need of some supposed return to greatness) ... it's just that the equity in its allocation is becoming ever more skewed.  By shrewd political design and (largely immoral) social infusion, the trickle down theories of a generation ago have now shifted the balance of the respective returns between labor and capital decidedly in the favor of the latter.

It's greater now than ever before to be a capitalist - an actual 'haver' and thus investor of capital - and is beginning to suck ever more meaningfully for those who possess little more than their own labor.  That this system disproportionately benefits those at the top is no accident, and neither is the completely mystifying reality that so many of those in the middle and toward the bottom keep voting for it.  To sell masses on an economic policy that largely disenfranchises them, the ruling elites have commingled these self-defeating prescriptions with 'social' and 'wedge' issues - like abortion, so-called 'religious freedom' laws, etc. - and created an expedient reality that means that in order to support the latter, many have also condoned the former to their own and increasing detriment.  I don't care how much you hate abortion, having your and your children's life chances increasingly narrowed economically is way too high a price to pay for it (especially since the two are in no way inextricably linked in the real world).

The 'winners' also exhibited an arrogance that was hard to fathom as well.  Sure the plutocrats among them have reason to be proud of their insulation from the harsh realities of daily life, but the lesser of them displayed a perplexing sense of superiority.  For example, their support of violence to silence dissent seems an odd one: do they not realize that though they may not like the dissenters in their midst at the President-elect's rallies, those folks' First Amendment rights are no less immutable and thus shouldn't be subject to challenge?  Does it not occur to them that, following their own logic, they, too, may be subject to being silenced soon should they step outside of the groupthink orthodoxy?  Martin Niemoller's observation about for whom "they" come seems especially apropos here.

Further, their conflation of their candidate's standing and ultimate victory with God's will seems especially misguided: given their history of harsh judgment for anyone who didn't fit their supposedly conservative, evangelical Christian mold, how can one own and celebrate the elevation of a man who's a walking repudiation of all that they claim to hold dear?  You know, how do you reconcile that God has chosen to gift you - and, by extension, the rest of us - with a thrice-married, philandering, sexual assault-prone, xenophobic, racist, etc., feigned adherent to "Two Corinthians" as a leader?  I just can't wrap my head around how anyone claiming to be of the Christian Right can support such a person, let alone lift him up ... but perhaps that's because I don't have the temerity to claim to know God's will as much (or, truthfully, at all), as some clearly do....

Yet, deplorable as the are, the 'winners' were not the only ones guilty of arrogance.  To many of the losers, especially those of a more progressive stripe, simply assumed that the rubes' insouciance about their candidate's flaws, though unfortunate, could not be determinative.  Really now?  There was an assumption that their own candidate, because she was arguably the best-prepared in history and clearly more capable when the two squared off over the course of three debates, was the only real choice and thus, despite the narrowing polls before the election, destined to win.  Oops!?!  And soon to be "Ouch!!!" for us all.

And the arrogance of their dismissal of the admittedly craven and fake email (or, before it, Benghazi) scandal has been proven exceptionally misguided.  Simply put, the Left confused reality and what's right with politics, a realm that lately seems to have become devoid of both.

And then there's the Left's ignorance of the very real pain which too many of our fellow citizens feel.  Some of it is certainly economic: these are the blue collar Reagan Democrats who were unpersuaded by Mrs. Clinton's cerebral (and far more intellectually defensible) approach.  And some of it was certainly social: many of our neighbors feel like the world is changing in ways that are hurting them - whether or not these hurts are real or largely conceptual at this point - and that this pain was only seemingly deeply appreciated and reflected by one candidate.  To put a finer point on it, when the majority of women vote for the admitted sexual predator, you have to admit that the problem runs deeper than you thought/realized.  Perhaps this painful lesson will bring more of our progressive neighbors down out of their ivory towers in the future....

Sadly, on both sides, ignorance and arrogance have done us in and now we are about to suffer mightily.  The pain will be both multi-faceted and real, symbolic and literal.  And even more than this, the sense of common decency that allows us to collaborate across our differences will be under severe attack, making our recovery even more tenuous, costly and uncertain after the storm has passed.

I hate to sound like the funnily facetious comedian and social critic Lewis Black, but, truly, America, you've f@#ked yourself, at least for the next four years.  (And for those of you who think that the President-elect could be impeached sooner, remember that the transition to a new order thereafter will take some time, likely at least the same four years.)  Let's hope that we choose education and humility as a result, as the costs of our ignorance and arrogance become all to clear and painful in the days and years to come....

Arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence.

Not a pretty cocktail of personality traits in the best of situations.

No sirree.

Not a pretty cocktail in an office-mate

and not a pretty cocktail in a head of state.

In fact, in a leader it's a lethal cocktail.

- Graydon Carter

The Tyranny of Real Life....

I don't want to Adult today.

- Popular FaceBook meme/theme

Today I attended my third funeral in the past month.  Gone too soon were my 20-year old cousin, my 61-year old electrician and my 84-year old 'Other Mother' (of whose loving presence one can never have too much in life).  Adulthood is hard.  Adulthood is difficult.  Much harder and much more difficult than it appeared to be when I was a child hell-bent on getting to it as soon as possible.

As the FaceBook meme suggests, I can't adult today....

I would like to think that this is really a reflection of the much harder circumstances that I face relative to my parents ... but I know that this isn't true: I've enjoyed opportunities about which they could only dream, one of them having grown up in the de jure segregated South and the other having come of age in the de facto segregated North.  And, in terms of opportunity, with respect to my children - their grandchildren - this truth is even more so.

Part of the challenge for me is that both of my parents are gone now, so they're not here to coach me through the vagaries of fate at mid-life.  I can't help but think that were they here, I'd have made fewer mistakes and would've also leveraged opportunities better.  Or so I'd prefer to think (even though I've lived in a world virtually exclusively beyond their experience).  Whatever the case, I miss them and wish that they had lived to see their sacrifices come to fruition in the life that my family - their grandchildren and I and their daughter-in-law and step-grands - enjoys.

Yet I'm ever aware that, as I used to tell my cousin (who's like a brother to me) more than a decade ago, we are now the age at which we met (read = can remember) our parents in their prime ... and we've seen the rest of the movie of their lives, which turned out to be a short feature for some (like my parents) and a full-length drama for others.  In a word, this time in my life and my contemporary loved ones' lives counts.  A reality driven home all the more by this maddening and saddening rash of funerals....

A few years ago, my (cousin-)brother and I were having a conversation that has never left me: we were both remarking on the arc of our careers, which, it turns out, was not as grand as we had expected.  And the more we talked, the more we were drawn to the conclusion that our personal lives were more challenging than we expected, too.  Multiple kids in expensive private schools during stock market crashes and career transitions and minor mid-life medical challenges and ... had all added up to a far more challenging existence than we anticipated as we crossed the Rubicon of the Big 5-0.  Salad days were not our reality; we were rising before dawn to work harder and longer than ever for less money while coming home in the dark to crazy, loving households full of kids who were just a little more spoiled and less appreciative than we expected.  Life was supposed to have been easier now - given our sacrifices over the preceding two-plus decades - but our reality was something quite different.  Still blessed, but not nearly as easily so (as we expected, of course).

Hmmm.  There's that word again: expectation.  While we were cognizant and appreciative of our myriad blessings, we felt a real lack of comfort and ease, one of the expected payoffs that hasn't materialized in as great abundance as we'd anticipated.  Though we're still better off than 99% of the rest of God's Children on this planet, life for us hasn't nearly been no crystal stair as had been suggested to us in our youth, or so we believed....

I suspect that this aspect of our experience is three-fold:

First, we were naive when we were young and emboldened by our full access to the mainstream of America.  We were the first generation of young People of Color for whom the limits of our success corresponded to our abilities, or so we were told.  Second, I suspect that our role models had it a good bit harder than we realized when we were young and, like loving parents do, they shielded us from this bracing reality, which has turned out to be a double-edged gift.  Third, I do believe that, to a lesser extent than we might suspect, 21st century life is a bit more complicated and challenging than that our parents faced.

They were children of the Depression, our parents, so as long as things weren't horrible, to them, they were good.  We are the children of those Children of the Depression who strove so valiantly so that we wouldn't experience lack.  We may not have had it easy, but, thankfully, virtually everyone in my extended family had everything that they needed growing up and even a few of the things that they wanted.  I know that this was certainly the case for me.

In reality, in my family, we've all lived a good life, especially relative to so many others in our society and our world, and yet we're not fully satisfied (even though we are, I believe, virtually fully appreciative).  This dis-ease is only minorly material; it's far more about a perceived lack of comfort and ease - and a greater volatility that accompanies it now - than about the bigger houses and nicer cars to which our children have become accustomed.

So what is the nature of this middle-aged miasma?  What's missing?  Why aren't we as happy and satisfied as we expected to be?

Here, too, I think that the answer has three primary parts:

First, we were naive in our youth and it turns out that adulthood has always been harder than it appears ... so the answer to this part of the challenge is simply to acknowledge this reality, suck it up and move on, as hard as this may be for some to do.  As M. Scott Peck so memorably noted in that famous opening sentence to his classic The Road Less Traveled, "Life is difficult."  Get a grip, accept this and keep putting one foot in front of the other (in large part because we still can...).

Next, let's acknowledge that progress, too, comes at a cost.  The world is certainly more complex than the one in which we came of age, so we need to adjust to this.  Yes, we have the Internet and smartphones that bring the world into the palm of our hand, but we also have greater inequality and an Education Gap and a Digital Divide and a phalanx of other new phenomena with which to deal.

Third and most importantly, the reality is that adult life isn't linear as we thought that it would be, so we need to be far more resilient, sometimes in dramatic measure and for extended periods, than we expected to have to be.  Resilience, though potentially transformative, is also supremely enervating, especially when summoned on command but of necessity for a long period of time.  The challenge is that the cyclicality of life - that roller coaster phenomenon where it feels like every peak is followed inevitably by a dark valley and a frightening descent into it - is tiring and wears us down after a while.  In sum, we are not resilient enough to anticipate this troubling pattern and approach it dispassionately while working through it.  Damn us that we expected to become masters of our fate and to be able to handle life with aplomb by now....

In his new book, Thank You For Being Late, the ever perceptive Tom Friedman writes about how our world is changing so much and so fast that we're feeling disoriented and that the pace of the change is now greater than our ability to process it (though we're getting somewhat better at doing so).  For me, this is an update and extension to the myriad learnings that I had from studying the work of Darryl Conner, whose Managing at the Speed of Change transformed both my personal and professional lives two decades ago.  In it were so many astute distillations of concepts about the nature of change and how it affects us as well as tools to address them that I felt empowered to confront the impending new millennium.  Or so I thought....

By way of example, one concept that Conner brought to the fore indelibly involves the following:

Consider that you are sitting peacefully by the side of a pond that contains a single lily pad.  The next day you come back to your perch and find that the number of lily pads has doubled to two.  Ths doubling continues every day thereafter, you observe.  If it takes 30 days for the pond to become completely covered in lily pads, on what day would it be half full?  Naturally your mind cuts the 30 days in half and shouts "Day 15!" before you can think critically about this conundrum and come to realize that it's on Day 29 that the pond was half full and that as much change as had taken 29 days to foment was duplicated in a single day on Day 30 such that the pond became completely covered.  That's what it often feels like now: that we're living in Day 29 times where change is happening so fast that we can't keep up and seems at risk of doubling again before we've even mastered its latest iteration.

Friedman touches on this reality in several ways and almost as indelibly, including in his consideration of Moore's Law, that bold prediction a half-century ago by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the computational capacity of microchips (and thus computing power) would double every year for a decade (which he revised to every two years a decade later) but that has proven true ever since.  Think about it: a chip the size of your fingernail could have over a billion - that's right "one billion with a 'B'" - transistors on it.  And a computer that can perform 1.8 teraflops - 1.8 Trillion with a T calculations per second (and, no, you can't even mentally conceptualize such a number/speed!?!) - went from being the size of a tennis court, using as much electricity as 800 houses and costing more than $55 million in the mid-1990s to being available for retail purchase - because it's smaller than a DVR, runs off of a single electrical socket and costs only a couple of hundred dollars - a decade later (i.e., you know it as the PS3 Sony Playstation that you bought your kids in 2006).  Let those numbers - and the scale of change acceleration that they represent - sink in for a moment....

Now, is it any wonder that we're having trouble dealing with all of this change?!?

Of course not.  And therein lies the problem, because even though we know that we shouldn't be bothered too much by the feeling that we're always drinking from a fire hose and that life seems to keep aiming more of such hoses at us than we want, we're still troubled.  And we're troubled because this isn't what we expected.

The reality of the modern world is that even in the lives of supposedly comfortable middle class families, the alpha of change is higher, both objectively and than expected.  Connor's prescience is relevant here, too: it feels like the volume, magnitude and complexity of the change we're experiencing are increasing simultaneously ... because they are.

This is the New Reality: that change means that we're all at risk more than we used to be ... and thus we must raise our children and their children to accept this phenomenon dispassionately while we lead them to build their resilience continuously.  Here, too, Conner can be our guide, as we need to teach ourselves and our children to do two things: first, to increase our overall capacity to adapt to change over time; and, second, to have each experience of change cost us less emotionally, spiritually, physically, etc.

The Tyranny of Daily Life is quite simple: the world is gonna do what the world is gonna do, so the only question is what are we gonna do in response.  I/we don't like this new, change-dominated world as much, but that doesn't really matter, does it?  It's in our acceptance of this New Reality that we find our deliverance: cultivating resilience - or what Darwin would describe as adaptability - is both our charge and our salvation.  By choosing to become fluent in proactive evolution - which means, in essence, to learn continuously whatever it takes to stay current and make progress - we can adapt successfully to this new world in which we find ourselves.

Or we can delay the inevitable, as so many who've chosen to succumb to the siren song of leaders who promise to return them to some long ago but (necessarily) undefined better days seem to be doing.  This mass engagement in fantasy is both mystifying and dismaying given that no one can document an epoch when time/life/reality didn't march inexorably forward - admittedly at different speeds and with different scope in different eras - as we see it doing ever more profoundly at the present time.  The urge to want to stop this inexorable march is understandable; the belief that it can be done is not....

I, for one, am choosing to move forward, to embrace the reality that change is dominating my individual life and our collective lives ever more profoundly and, even at this 'advanced' life stage, to commit myself to learning new skills and increasing my resilience so that I can not only survive in this Age of Acceleration (as Friedman describes it) but thrive.  In part this will be accomplished not by lowering my expectations, but by reality-testing them.  It's OK to wish that things were easier and better.  I suspect that this is an innate psychic and intellectual pattern.  But it's not OK to project it out into the world, as many of us have been doing for some time now.

Life being easier and better because we want or expect it too isn't a thing.  But choosing to keep growing, stretching and striving continuously is, thankfully, and this is how I'm going to fight the Tyranny of Real Life going forward.  Will you join me?

It is not the strongest of the species that survives,

nor the most intelligent that survives.

It is the one that is most adaptable to change.

- (Attributed to) Charles Darwin

Now the Work of Christmas Begins....

When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home,

when the shepherds are back with their flocks,

the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal the broken,

to feed the hungry,

to release the prisoner,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among the people,

to make music in the heart.

- Howard Thurman

May the tidings of the season warm your hearts and fill you and yours with love for each other and for our world!

Ah, Christmas: that time of year - thankfully fully coordinated with Hanukkah this year! - when most of us celebrate the birth of our Savior in a stable in a manger by spending way more than is prudent to treat ourselves and others to gifts in His name.  Hmmm.  There has to be a better way....

I really do enjoy the holidays and especially Christmas, but I also really do think that our celebration of Christmas must change.  If there's a war on Christmas - there's not, but a few traditionalists want to think that it's so and involve the rest of us in their dissatisfaction - it's because we've taken the spirit of the day and transformed it into something unrecognizable in a Frankenstein's monster sort of way.  This is what has to change.

Let's face it, in its modern American incarnation, Christmas has three parts: first, ostensibly it's the celebration of the birth of Jesus, the Redeemer of the Christian faith/faithful; second, it's a time to gather with loved ones and be renewed by the love (and occasional rancor) that comes with them, too; and, third, in this era, it's a time of commercial excess that is, frankly, sickening.  So much so that we've figured out how to ruin our Thanksgiving holiday so that we can shop/stock up for Christmas.  It's this last part that has to change the most, followed by the first.

I'm all for celebrating the birth of Jesus, though I do think that we go a bit to far when we literalize and mix it as we do.  Though many Christians don't realize it, the only thing that we can say for sure about this sacred day is that it didn't happen as we celebrate it now: there was likely no stable and manger scene with wise men, etc.  How do we know this?  Because the Bible, and specifically two of the Gospels, tells us so:

Luke's story of the birth of Jesus is most familiar: the trip to Bethlehem to be recorded in a census and the unexpected birth of the Christ in the most humble of circumstances.  While this last part is likely correct figuratively - Jesus' earthly family was at best working class and thus his circumstances humble from beginning to end - the former, generative part is likely not: there is no census of record during this time - and the Romans did many things well, including keeping great records to which we have access even today -  meaning that this part of the story is, well, a bit of literary license.

Further, where are the wise men and the star in Luke's story?  Have you read this Gospel lately?  They're not there because in Luke's story, it's about the shepherds and an angel.  You're thinking of Matthew's Gospel, which begins with a genealogy of Jesus linking him to David and then mentions the visit of the wise men (but, contrary to popular belief, no camels on which they were supposed to have ridden).

Finally, the two Gospels disagree about what happened soon after Jesus was born: Luke has the newly expanded family return to Nazareth (where Jesus grows up and is then presented at the Temple) and Matthew has the family flee to Egypt temporarily to escape King Herod's jealously murderous wrath.

The point is that this story shouldn't be literalized and mixed as it is in modern America, because it didn't happen as we celebrate it and fetishize it to our detriment.  What do I mean that we 'fetishize' Christmas?  Just that: we create a comfortable (and historically fictional) story and then insist that everyone agree to and abide by it.  Nonesense!

In my humble opinion, it really doesn't matter what the circumstances of Jesus' birth were because they are dwarfed by the true significance of His life and message.  So, I'm all for celebrating Jesus' birthday, but let's do it in a way that honors who He was and still is for/to so many of us.

We should celebrate that someone so consumed by Love walked among us and that His impact and influence were such that now delineate time based on His birth.  (Though, technically, it appears that we do so incorrectly, as Jesus would have had to have been born between 4BCE and 10BCE - i.e., 4BC and 10BC - for the details in the Gospels to bear any resemblance to the recorded history of the time.)  We should celebrate His Love and Example ... by being loving and emulating his example, which brings me to the part of Christmas that needs to be changed the most....

Do we ever pause to reflect on the irony that we celebrate the birth of a man who was poor and anti-material his entire life by engaging in conspicuous consumption and physical gift-giving?  Do we ever register that Jesus gave of Himself and His heart, lovingly, and eschewed the material (and required His followers to do so)?

I submit that we should celebrate Christmas by being like Christ: loving and proactively so.  Instead of buying ourselves the latest, largest big screen TV and our spouse, kids and loved ones gifts that we likely can't afford and that they likely won't use for very long, perhaps we should get out in our communities and minister to the less fortunate as He did.  Perhaps Christmas should be about our being as Christ-like as possible and about giving from the heart.  Perhaps we should stretch our budgets at Christmas to give to those for whom our funds are beyond their current conception and recent experience.

It seems to me that if we really want to honor Christ on His birthday, then we should give of ourselves freely, totally and "wastefully" as Bishop John Spong describes it.

Think about it: would your life really be meaningfully less blessed if you didn't get a bunch of stuff today?  And what would the impact be on the receivers if we took all the money that we spend on ourselves and instead share it with fellow Children of God who are less fortunate?

I offer this suggestion: that we follow the guidance of the late great Howard Thurman - shared at the beginning of this piece - in his litany "The Work of Christmas Begins," that we invest ourselves today (and every day, really) in honoring Jesus' legacy by continuing it in doing His work - finding the lost, healing the broken, feeding the hungry, etc.

In this way, we'll actually be living as He commanded us, which is both the best way that we can honor Him as well as to give to and live with each other:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.

- The Gospel of John, 13:34-35

In this spirit, I wish you a Merry Christmas and hope that His spirit will illumine and guide your life and all of ours toward living the Love that is His legacy.  Amen.

Saying goodbye to my Other Mother....

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches,

but the spirit of reverence.

- Plato

When I was growing up, I had the great fortune to have two loving parents.  They are both gone now and I miss them.  I really wish that they would have lived long enough to see their sacrifices to fruition: to celebrate and participate in the life that I now live thanks to them.

And yet, another aspect of the truth of my journey is that my parents both fought their demons throughout my young life and I was often the collateral damage.  Into those breaches of safety and security would often step another adult who would care for me and offer me succor and sanctuary, my mother's lifelong best friend, Vera Champion Woodruff.  Mrs. W, as I have always called her, was a haven in a storm, someone who could make a bad situation feel much better as well as make a good situation feel great.

And now she's gone: she passed away quietly a few days ago, just before Thanksgiving.  So, in the spirit of thanksgiving, I offer this tribute.

Mrs. W and my mother met in high school when my mother moved with her family to Columbia, South Carolina.  In my mother's retelling many years ago, they became fast and lifelong friends.  They graduated high school together and went to Bennett College together, transferring after a year to Fisk University from which they graduated.  One notable difference between the two is that, one year, Mrs. W, then known as Vera Champion, was the Sweetheart for the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, of which my (future) father was a member at the time.

They then went off to graduate school to get their Masters degrees in Library Science - my mother at the University of Michigan and Mrs. W at Case Western Reserve - and thereafter settled in Detroit, where I grew up.  They both became distinguished educators and married - in my mother's case, to her college sweetheart from Fisk, in Mrs. W's case to a dashing young up-and-coming businessman and executive named James Woodruff - and had a single child.

Mrs. W's daughter, now Maria Woodruff Wright, and I were only children of best friends, so we've been the only siblings that each other have known, in addition to my cousin Paul "Bobby" Thompson, III, who was also an only child of close cousins and rounds out our triumvirate.  In fact, so close were Maria, Bobby and I that it wasn't until we were about 25 years old that Bobby finally figured out that, technically speaking, he and I weren't related to Maria by birth but by love.  That's how close we've always been and, hopefully, will forever be.

So close that for many holiday celebrations, the entire Shivers clan - my mother's family, most of whom had also settled in Detroit - would gather at Mrs. W's home on Santa Rosa.  In fact, it turns out, Mrs. W was related by love to my entire family on my mother's side, such was her impact on and influence in our lives.  I would estimate that about a quarter of our family celebrations were held in her home, a rotation that most often included my home, my cousins the Thompsons' home and one of our aunt's homes (i.e., Bertha's in my youth and Doris Ann's in my adolescence).  The echoes of the love in these gatherings ring in my heart even now.

To this day, it's not really Christmas to me unless I listen to Handel's Messiah, to which I was introduced during one of those long-ago Christmas dinners at Mrs. W's.  I remember being about 14 or 15 at the time and being struck by the beauty, power and majesty of this work, so much so that I stopped, sat down in a chair in the living room and listened rapturously to the entire thing.  It remains one of my most cherished holiday memories four decades hence.

(And as I listen to it now while composing this tribute, I must type through the tears, smiling for having been touched by her life but also aching from being touched by her death and facing the first Christmas season I've ever experienced without her....)

"Hello, Walter!" would be how she always greeted me in adult life, with that sweet, twangy and a bit snappy lilt.  I suspect the sound reflected a native southern accent that was mostly gone by her mid- and later adult life.  It was an endearing and ironic notation of our relative transition: me into an adult who no longer wanted to be called by my childhood nickname and her into a loving elder who did her best to respect my choice.  When she slipped occasionally and called me "Wally," we would both laugh because, in truth, I would always be Wally to her, no matter how seriously I tried to be an adult and thereby use my given name, and that was just fine by me.

And I could never bring myself to call her by hers.  In part, this was due to my very proper southern mother's influence, but as an adult it was a reflection of deference and respect: I couldn't address someone whom I loved and esteemed so greatly as if she were a peer.  She was and forever will be above my level in life, which means that I am and have been blessed to have known her.  So forever she has been and will be Mrs. W to me.

I will never forget her smile, which could light up a room.  I will never forget her home, which could light up the lives of all who entered.  And I will never forget her spirit, which inspired us all, and all of which, along with her quiet determination, was required as she battled cancer successfully for years, usually without her losing that endearing and reassuring smile.

She played cards with friends, sang in the choir at church, traveled throughout the world and was a blessing to all who knew her.

But to me, she was the great lady who never forgot my birthday though I, too often, was late in memorializing hers.  After my mother died more than 20 years ago, Mrs. W's card was the one that I could count on receiving before my special day, and some years it was the only card that I would receive (our world having lost to an appreciable extent the habit and courtesy of written birthday greetings).

When I saw her last, at Maria's wedding earlier this year, I was honored to have been given the privilege of driving her to and from the reception.  We chatted freely as in the olden days, as if mid-life weren't kickin' my butt and late life challenging her mightily as well.  And in those golden moments, I could appreciate all that she'd meant to me over the years, a person who was unfailingly in my corner and always had a good word to share with and for me (even as she upbraided me occasionally as Other Mothers are wont and called to do).

As I watched her head to the elevator in her building, as life had taught me over the years, I realized that this might be the last time I would have the privilege of seeing her (though, of course, we always hope otherwise).  And so it was.  This being said, however, I will forever remember that proud lady, who despite the challenges of age and disease, refused to allow me to accompany her all the way to her apartment: she had the grit and determination to meet the challenges of life on her own feisty terms, an aspect of her character that I've always appreciated and admired.

Vera Champion Woodruff wasn't a saint, but she sure felt like one to me on many an occasion and was also proof of God's beneficence to me, to Maria, to her grandchildren Jay and Kristen and to all who had the privilege of knowing her.  Truth be told, the only differences now are that she's no longer in pain and we have been gifted with moments of love and guidance that will last us a lifetime.  And so she lives on in our hearts and spirits, forever joyful, loving and inviting, an eternal spiritual presence to be felt longer than her earthly life.

And though I won't be getting a birthday card this year, I appreciate my Other Mother all the more: she was a gift in my life that I hope to pay forward.  As with my mother, she has taught me that love can last longer than an earthly lifetime and that some of the greatest gifts are the smallest ones, the courtesies and kindnesses usually unexpected but always appreciated.

And now I must end this tribute: as I read it, I see myriad mistakes and realize that it's just too hard to continue, her loss just a little too fresh to enable me to move beyond it.  Disappointing though this may be to me, I can imagine her pardoning me and, instead, thanking me for the effort.  What I know now is that the privilege has always and ever been mine....

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,

while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

- Lau Tzu

One of my favorite Bible verses is from St. John’s Gospel, the 34^th verse in its 13^th chapter, in which Jesus says:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Vera Champion Woodruff was the very embodiment of this gospel for those of us who will honor her today in Detroit and the many whose lives she touched over the years have been immeasurably blessed by this singular life.  So as we thank God for the blessing of Vera Champion Woodruff, let us promise to love as we were commanded and as she loved us for so many joyful, grace-filled and graceful years….

The American Dream Reconsidered (or Reconfigured)

Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose."

- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,

Where Do We Go From Here:

Chaos or Community?

Wow!  Just wow!  That our country could be so deeply divided as to allow for the election of a President-elect so clearly lacking in character and competence should be a wakeup call for us all.  The question is whether we will learn from this lesson that is already deeply painful now and will doubtless become immeasurably more so in the next four years.

I'm moved to compose this piece by two friends with whom life circumstances afford me the opportunity to keep in contact via Facebook, but I'm thankful for this virtual bond because, in their messages to me, I was inspired to reconsider my reaction to this week's events.  I still see them as tragic and dismaying, but I also now see an opportunity within them.  As Einstein noted some years ago, it's actually in the midst of difficulty that we find opportunity and, as Churchill astutely observed, the optimists among us will focus on the latter.  So I'll choose to be optimistic and invite you to join me....

The first friend from whom I heard was a former work colleague with whom I hadn't communicated in years.  She was so saddened by the election results and the implicit - and possibly explicit - sanction that they give to our fellow citizens to express more freely their commitment to the -isms that continue to afflict our society.  This being said, she noted that she detected a sense of hope in the spontaneous protests and the pledges of many of the more (self-professed) progressive among us to respond proactively, positively and constructively.  All this she was motivated to share with me - openly, honestly and reflective of a still raw woundedness - after we'd been out of touch for at least five years or more.  And she was motivated to share this with me because my FaceBook posts over the year indicate to her that I'm one of her camp, the progressives who believe in an ever more inclusive, equitable and truly free society.  In my own pain over this horrific outcome, I was actually more disposed to respond cynically, but her faith in me inspired to reclaim my own hope.

The second message was from a former college friend with whom I'm actually closer virtually than when we were in school lo those many years ago.  She decided that in order to close the last chapter and start a new one that she would delete all of her previous posts of a political nature, go radio silent for an indeterminate time and then reemerge with a reformulated strategy and commitment to a new worldview and the action plan to help realize it.  I respect her thoughtful approach ... and yet her way, I realized, didn't work for me and therefore I was called to a different and equally authentic approach: I'm leaving my posts up so that I can review them periodically to insure that my commitment to evolve is happening.  They are a reminder to me of my participation in a system that didn't work well enough to be sustained and thus while that system is being torn down in the next four years, I have to have a different approach to what comes after.

Accordingly, I'd like to start with two simple premises that underlie my still evolving but materially different worldview and approach:  First, we have to go back to the past to find a greater future and, second, that our goal is not to restore what will almost surely be lost but to create something even and ever better.

Why do we have to go back to the past to light the way to our greater/better future?  Because the strategist/conceptualizer of this new and better world is, sadly but also thankfully, in our past.  Reflecting the paradox of life, it's sad that he left us too soon and it's great that he accomplished so much while he lived.  I'm referring, of course, to the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  And he is our beacon for a new world not just because he's the greatest moral exemplar for our public life in our country's history but also because he was an underappreciated social strategist whose conception of a new and better world could and, I contend, should guide us now.  Simply put, in his last book, Dr. King asked a question of us the answer of which should be our greater better future:

Where do we go from here: chaos or community?

While this week's election result may suggest to many (or even most) that we're headed toward chaos, I would suggest that perhaps its truer import could be toward community, at least in the long run.  Let's face it, in his campaigning, Mr. Trump showed himself to be a most inhumane individual whose societal prescriptions would be intentionally hurtful to many of our fellow citizens.  And that his supporters would overlook these twin failures of character and competence makes the wound that much more painful.  And the violence and hatred-driven racism, xenophobia, sexism/misogyny, heterosexism, etc., that we've witnessed in the first few days since his election suggest that the chaos has already begun.  When we add to it the public promises to dismantle much of the progress that we've made on so many fronts under the current Administration, you have to conclude that the chaos will continue - and possibly even get worse/more painful - for some time (if not for the next four years in their entirety).

But here's why, while I agree that we will experience a great deal of soul-wrenching chaos, the ultimate result could be a renewed and greater sense of community if we so choose.

(And, no, I don't live in one of those states that just legalized marijuana, so I'm not smokin' somethin'.  Hear me out, please.)

Why were so many of our fellow citizens willing to overlook the President-elect's inhumanity?  The early data is conclusive: not because they agree with or support it - and, in fact, many don't - just that this was a secondary concern for them, far behind that of their perceived economic, social and political marginality.  And Mr. Trump was the only candidate to do two critical things: first, to acknowledge their fear and anger and then wrap himself in it and promise to be their champion and, second, to exploit it for his own benefit.  They didn't elect Mr. Trump to be the inhuman leader of our country - which is an added benefit for some and an abhorrence for many (if not most) - they elected him to blow up the unresponsive and uncaring system/Washington as we know it.  They elected a political terrorist not a reformer (which were their only two real choices).

Now, two questions immediately assert themselves:  First, can Mr. Trump blow up Washington?  Second, what will replace our current system?  I think the obvious answers are first, "no," and second "we don't know," neither of which are good for us.

First, there's a difference between not liking something and blowing it up, between feeling alienated from and thus angry at something and wishing it not to exist.  I agree that our political elites have structured our society in a way that has marginalized many if not most ... but the sad reality is that many of those who voted for Mr. Trump have also been voting for the (mostly Republican) elites whose policies have disenfranchised them over time.  I understand your anger at a system that has hurt you ... but you can't escape the blame for your own role in helping it to do so.  And the rest of us shouldn't have to suffer because of your emotionally unintelligent (over)reaction.

Second, another culpability: with as complex a life as we live in our society, it's absolutely irresponsible and insanely dangerous to blow up our current system in favor of one that hasn't been carefully and proactively crafted to replace it and thereby function better.  Now some of you will want to claim that the President-elect supplied a vision for a greater America ... but tell me, explicitly, what that means?

One element is the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, right?  With what type of healthcare system?  Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)?  This has been candidate Trump's primary suggestion.  Think about this for a second: is the HSA a health plan (or an accessible system thereof like with the Affordable Care Act)?  Nope, not by a long shot.

While an HSA will help you save for your healthcare premium and out-of-pocket expenses in a tax-advantaged way, it won't actually provide you coverage.  So, following a favorite Republican orthodoxy, you'll just buy your coverage in the open market, right?  Except that absent the healthcare exchanges at the national and local levels, actually finding out what's available to you, what these plans offer and at what cost is a real challenging thing to do.  And, assuming even that tens of millions of our fellow citizens can navigate through this complicated maze, many will be refused coverage because of pre-existing conditions ... so the repeal of Obamacare also signals the end of their access to healthcare except on a pure, full cost out-of-pocket basis.  Given that the top reason that people declare bankruptcy in this country is because of crushing medical debts, the reality of a post-ACA healthcare system is that it will lead to an increase in these ranks, especially from those who are economically marginal to begin with.

Unbridled anger is dangerous, especially when it leads to self-harm....

Or, consider this example:  One of things that's supposed to make America Great Again is to repeal much of the regulation to which businesses are subject currently, ostensibly because these constraints make America less competitive in the cutthroat world economy.  Let's look beyond the reality that the American economy is faring quite well relative to those of the rest of the developed world and zero in on one of the proposals made by the Republican candidate: to repeal the Dodd-Frank and other post-2008 Crash regulations that were designed to prevent our relatively unrestrained and lightly regulated financial industry from engaging in the unbridled pursuit of profit that led to the world-wide economic collapse of eight years ago and the resulting Great Recession.  But wait, you say, perhaps the President-elect and his minions intend to replace this commonsense (though admittedly a bit unwieldy) regulation with a less onerous version.  Nope.

The expressed intent has been to allow our financial industry to be virtually completely unfettered in its pursuit of ever greater hundreds of billions despite the clear and present danger that this represents to us.  So, did our fellow citizens who wanted to blow up our system realize that in voting for Mr. Trump it actually meant endorsing the idea that we'd put ourselves at greater risk of national economic armaggedon?  Probably not.  But, then...

Unbridled anger is dangerous, especially when it leads to self-harm....

And a final, painfully obvious example: the promise to bring all of those "good jobs" back to the heartland, which is the number one present that our economically marginalized could ask for.  That this is pure fantasy and completely implausible on its face makes its near universal embrace among Trump voters that much more painful and amazing in a very bad way.  Think about it, the President-elect is proof that this won't happen: in his own clothing manufacturing enterprises, just to use a single example, he has his personally branded items made overseas in factories with much lower labor costs than would be the case here in the U.S.  To put a point on it, the first run of those ubiquitous red "Make America Great Again" hats was made in China!?!  Now, how, exactly, is a businessman who's lowered his own costs and fattened his own profits by shipping his own manufacturing opportunities overseas going to get others to do so en masse?

Their anger has blinded them both to economic reality and their candidate's own disproof of their fantasy, which has not only damaged their lives - just how delusional and alienated and angry are they going to be when it turns out that their fantasy-promising leader isn't, in fact, more powerful than the twin realities of globalization and macroeconomics?!? - and is certainly tragic for them, but it also has subjected the rest of us who knew better and decried this from the very beginning to the economic, politcial, et. al., uncertainty and instability that will result when this undeliverable promise goes unfulfilled.  Again...

Unbridled anger is dangerous, especially when it leads to self- and other-harm....

So now what?  Now that we realize that we're in for a real clusterf@#k when reality asserts itself in a painfully obvious way, what can or should we do?  Thankfully, there's not just an answer, but it's a great one and it comes from a person who left us almost a half-century ago.

When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., first began to speak about his concept of "The Beloved Community" back in the mid- to late 1960s, our reception wasn't exactly enthusiastic.  After all, in 1967 when he began to work on his aforementioned final book that explained this concept, our society was in the midst of chaos: not only was the economy shaky, but there was massive social unrest as a spate of riots had erupted in many of our major cities, a passionate anti-(Vietnam)war movement was making its presence felt and being met with harsh resistance from the authorities in power at the time and, in the Black community, 'Negro' leaders like King were beginning to be considered passe' and losing influence to the newly empowered, younger Black Power advocates.  And along comes Dr. King talkin' about a Beloved Community....

Truth be told, at the time, we were too enervated and scared and confused and overwhelmed to listen, understand and embrace his wisdom then ... but we sure better do so now.  While there are many aspects to this concept, for our purposes today, I'd like to concentrate on two: its commitment to inclusion and its commitment to class- vs. race-based political and economic solutions.

As he had throughout his adult life, Dr. King never wavered in his belief that we are all God's children, even if we choose not to be loving to our neighbors.  Accordingly, in Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, he argued passionately for us to seek to be what we now call "inclusive."  He reminded us that "In a multiracial society no group can make it alone," and that "To succeed in a pluralistic society," across racial/ethnic/et. al. boundaries, "strength will only be effective when it is consolidated through constructive alliances with the majority group."

Let's think about this for a moment:  If we accept the premise that in a polyglot society like ours we need interracial, interethnic, interreligious, intersex, inter-everything collaboration, then we'll need to have alliances with the majority group.  From the perspective of race, for example, for the next quarter-century or so, that means that minority groups will have to have alliances with whites.  And after the mid-2040s when American becomes a 'minority majority,' whites will have to have alliances with People of Color, et. al.  In other words, in order to have harmonious relations, we must all work together toward progress (especially across racial, ethnic, et. al., lines), cognizant that we are, in Dr. King's words, "bound together in a single garment of destiny."

Dr. King also called for a "revolution of values" that would "honestly admit that capitalism has often left a gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few, and has encourage (sic) smallhearted men to become cold and conscienceless so that ... they are unmoved by suffering, poverty-stricken humanity," or, as one writer put it recently, the people in the back of the room who've been left behind amidst our 'progress.'  Certainly America is wealthier and more powerful than ever before, but studies show quite consistently and conclusively that this wealth is ever more concentrated at the top and that the inequality in the allocation of our material gain is widening.  One source of Mr. Trump's election was this urgent, angry cry to feel recognized as someone at risk in our economy or even as someone who's already sliding backward.  He acknowledged their alienation and their pain ... and they overlooked his myriad flaws and lack of experience or competence, so now we're all at risk....

But if we think back to the final programmatic thrust of Dr. King's life, his Poor People's Campaign, we'll notice a marked difference in strategy and approach that was both controversial and divisive at the time: the PPC was class- rather than race-based.  Dr. King understood that in order to increase the influence that he sought for African-Americans, he had to reach out to other similarly positioned groups, especially the poor whites who actually outnumbered them.  So he began to focus on their common condition - economic disenfranchisement - and not their racial and/or social realities (and differences).  He understood what his detractors did not at the time: that in collaboration, the numbers of the collective poor were too large to ignore, but the alienation of each group separately was an insufficient foundation for organization.

And this class rather than race focus should be ours now: we should seek to unify all of those being left behind in our top-skewed modern capitalism.  One thing that's clear - and made clearer still by the actual popular vote totals in our recent election - is that numbers matter and that the more voters there are, the more influence they will have in key strategic locales.  In this week's epically critical election, almost half - 45% - of us who are registered to vote didn't (and, of course, there are millions more of us who are not even registered).

Imagine if everyone who could vote did.  Imagine if our leaders had to respond to the call of the more than 80% of our fellow citizens who are middle or working class.  It would be much harder to continue to ignore the concerns of those who derive the least benefit from their leaders' upper income and class bias, wouldn't it?

Which is why we need to reach out to Mr. Trump's supporters - including those of callow character who've begun taking his election as an excuse to engage in horrific -ism-based behavior - and to listen to their concerns and to craft a plan - together with them - to address our super majority's needs.  The better able we are to develop a solution that improves the current fortunes and future opportunities of the majority of our citizens, the better off we will all be.  The challenge will be whether or not we can rise above our historic and current differences - especially race and ethnicity - and work together to achieve a more just and equitable society, especially from an economic perspective.

Such a class-based approach will be both a recognition and effective address of "disappointment that produces despair and despair that produces bitterness, and that the one thing certain about bitterness is its blindness."  It will be an acceptance of and effective response to the reality that "America must be a nation in which its multiracial people are partners in power" which "is the essence of democracy."  And it will be effective proof that we both acknowledge and act in accordance with the wisdom that "This refusal to be stopped, this 'courage to be,' this determination to go on 'in spite of' is the hallmark of any great movement."

Will it be easy?  No.  Absolutely not, even.  Groups that have rarely collaborated don't typically have the relational skill and necessary good will to partner effectively, at least initially.  And let's face it: there's a long history in our society of racial and ethnic groups being pitted against one another to their mutual detriment (while the ruling elites that encourage the fight continue to profit thereby).  But because of rising inequality, rural and rust belt whites now find themselves as vulnerable and suffering economically as their Black - and also Brown - counterparts.

The solution is not the competition among them to be at the top of the bottom, but the collaboration between them to insure that in a rising tide they all rise comparably and equitably.  The solution is not the sort of political tribalism that results in a shared disenfranchisement, but a conscious collaboration that results in common wealth and the improvement of the commonweal.  The solution is not handing power to a malevolent, craven beneficiary of a rigged (economic) system, but seizing political power nonviolently and collectively to wield it in a way that reflects that we are "seeking to make the world and our nation better places to live" for ever more of our fellow Children of God.  And, the solution, as we seek to refashion our society and our world in more economically, socially, politically, etc., inclusive ways, is that we recognize that "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that" and that "Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

These are the contours of the Beloved Society, that we value everyone and seek our collective - and each person's individual - progress.  I may be naive, but I have a belief that this may be a watershed moment in our shared history.  That we've finally done something so reckless that it may lead many of us to reconsider long-held beliefs and, in so doing, to find that we share common ground with others whom we may have perceived very differently in the past.

Call me crazy, but I think that tired, hurt and angry as we all are, we may finally be open to trying something radical like the Beloved Community.  And is this any crazier than the reality that we just chose the least qualified candidate in our history over the best qualified candidate in our history because, despite his utter and literal embodiment of every -ism that continues to plague our society, he made a significant number of us feel heard for the first time ever or at least for the first time in a long while?  Call me crazy, but I think that after the implosion of the Trumpian fantasy, we may be able to harness the even more intense disaffection toward the positive, mutually beneficial ends of the Beloved Community (including because at that point, we'll have even less to lose...).

The only healthy answer lies in one's honest recognition

 of disappointment even as he still clings to hope, 

one's acceptance of finite disappointment

even while clinging to infinite hope.

- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,

Where Do We Go From Here:

Chaos or Community

Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

"Writing is the way I think things through."

- Sister Joan D. Chittister, OSB

Amidst what is a disorientingly powerful sense of dismay, today I need to clear my head and begin to think things through carefully, as, I suspect, do many of us.  What happened yesterday/earlier today was indeed historic ... and saddening ... and concerning ... and worthy of note and consideration.  But in order to consider what's occurred and learn from it, we must, as Sister Chittister notes, "go beyond the freedom of being wrong to be honest enough to see life as it is, rather than the way we are told it is supposed to be" (or that we want/wish it to be).  And so I write....

And invite you to join me on the journey....

The election of Mr. Trump and apparent broad rejection of Ms. Clinton is truly a one-two punch in the gut for many of us.  With respect to the latter, it's hard to fathom how a supremely qualified candidate who also happens to be a woman could be successfully branded as untrustworthy - despite repeated, verified fact-checking that showed her to be the most truthful candidate in both the primaries and general election - while generating a depth of quite personal antipathy that seems somehow far out of proportion.  (I was and am no ardent HRC fan either, but I respect her and couldn't see anything that she's done in this election cycle that's worthy of such disrespect and vitriolic ad hominem attacks ... but, then again, I've been saying the same thing about President Obama for eight years now, so....)

With respect to Mr. Trump's election, one one level, I understand it perfectly well: his anti-establishment theme tapped into a deep wellspring of resentment - expressed in myriad ways including political 'enragement-engagement' and racism/bigotry, xenophobia, sexism/misogyny, religiocentrism, etc. - of those whose standing in our society has been eroded by the realities of late 20th and 21st century globalization, American trade policy and brilliant but craven (and largely domestic) politics.  To paraphrase the great Chris Rock, I'm not sayin' he should've done it, but I understand.

But what I can't wrap my head around - not since the announcement of his candidacy 18 months ago nor since the reality of his election in the wee hours of this morning - is his utter unfitness, with respect to both character and competence, to be the occupant of the highest office in our representative democracy and, indeed, to become, de facto, the Leader of the Free World.  There is no gainsaying that America has just elected its most openly bigoted/racist, sexist/misogynistic, xenophobic, narcissistic, etc., president in decades (if not a century or more) who's a repeatedly proven pathological liar with a thin-skinned sensibility, hair-trigger temper, proclivity to vindictiveness, and seemingly complete aversion to learning, growth and magnanimity to help us navigate through the ever more complex, diverse and dangerous times in which we live.

Or, put differently, perhaps I was/we were naive to believe that White Privilege wasn't so ultimately powerful still.  And before you're tempted to say that this wasn't Privilege writ large(r than ever in history), just consider any of the following:

Mr. Trump will follow an urbane, thoughtful and unfailingly prepared African-American who, for the past eight years, along with his family, has been a model of grace and decorum amidst historic obstruction and disrespect.  Still not convinced?  Then answer this question: could Mr. Obama have been elected as a thrice-married, serial philanderer without fixed principles or policies nor any relevant experience in governance, all the while stoking racial, ethnic, religious and gender-based bigotry and hatred?  Of course not ... which is the proof of the profundity of the still-extant and ultimately powerful Privilege: we've just elected a man with absolutely no relevant or transferable experience and expertise to, arguably, the highest (and most demanding) office in the world.  Let that sink in....

Alternatively, considered from the perspective of gender, how can we explain his selection over likely the most qualified candidate ever who just happens to be female?  Again, the same question: could Mrs. Clinton have been selected as her party's candidate were she a willfully unprepared sexual abuser with a history - and future - replete with major litigation that alleges massive fraud and sexual assault of a minor, among other ignominious (proven and prospective) claims?  No (f'in') way!  Which is how you know that Male Privilege is still alive and well in our country.

And when you combine White Privilege with Male Privilege, you get a Leader of the Free World without the temperament, qualifications/experience or emotional competence/fitness to serve in what is the ultimate position of power in our world.  Let that sink in....

Now breathe in slowly and deeply ... and, while exhaling, begin to pray....

(Lord, help us!  Please!)

So, now what?  I can think of at least three things that those of us who are self-considered to be more progressive and inclusive than Mr. Trump and his supporters appear to have been/are:  First, we must listen, carefully, deeply/empathetically and fully, to those whose anger and disaffection have driven this regrettable outcome.  Second, we must collaborate with them to develop a set of philosophies and policies that are both more equitable and inclusive than those of our recent history.  (In essence, we must apply the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s wisdom in the year or two before his assassination: we must be class-based in our approach to fashioning the boundaries and rules of our society - especially those of an economic nature and those that define access to opportunity - rather than race- or religion-based, etc.)  Third, we must coalesce quickly and devise a resilient defensive strategy for what is likely to be one of the most deleterious and hurtful first 100 days of any presidency.

And that's just where our work starts (or, for many, where the battle continues...).  We still need to address the level of ignorance and lack of education and life skills, especially from a social/societal perspective, in our populace, too many of whom are not appreciating the reality of the knowledge- and service-based world in which we live (which requires a very different academic and skill preparation than did our more manual/blue collar/manufacturing-based past).  Even though the dominant political party continues not to acknowledge the reality of Climate Change, we must become far more proactive in advocating for a more thoughtful and prudent approach to our environment and the one planet on which we can and do live now.  And we must learn to live together better as brothers and sisters or risk perishing together as fools, as MLK noted a half-century ago.

Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but in my heart of hearts, I actually believe now is the time to begin to fight without ceasing to realize Dr. King's vision of the Beloved Community.  Certainly the interests of the majority of our fellow citizens are served better therein, even if the majority clearly don't yet perceive this.  In part, this passionate belief is also driven by the realization that much of what has undergirded this popular - and populist - uprising represents a regression to the past, effectively (if cynically) represented in Mr. Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.  There is no example in human history of a culture or country able to go back - in effect, to devolve/revert - in order to progress, as emotionally (and politically) attractive a prospect as this may be.

The world is more evolved but complex than it ever has been and will only keep becoming more so.  It's up to us to understand this, develop a comprehensive and inclusive plan to address it and then to invite those motivated at the moment by fear and angst to choose to take the steps forward with us into this better future for us all.  But if we fail to organize and advocate virtually immediately, based on the President-elect's promises as a candidate and the behavior of his most virulent supporters thus far, this next four years could be a very damaging time indeed and an ill-advised and misguided repudiation of the progress that we've been making - admittedly unevenly and in a poorly distributed way - in recent years.

Our time is now and the challenge is great, but we must either choose to champion a more inclusive and equitable future or prepare to suffer an unimaginably painfully regressive one.

This continues to be our charge, our vision and our rallying cry, even if we don't have the leader that we would have preferred for the next four years.  But we're in the long game of our lives, so, as challenging as it may prove to be in the short run, we have to stay focused on that day in the future - hopefully sooner rather than later - when, to paraphrase the great Dr. King, all men and women can live in a country in which they're judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin or their gender or their economic status, etc., and they have equitable access to opportunities to live the Reverend's and our American Dream.

And, as he shared with us so memorably on that long ago, sweltering day in our nation's capital, consider his prophetic vision and broaden his constituency to all Americans (as in when you read "Negro," consider that he was actually speaking to and for all of us, so we should read it this way...) ... and you'll realize that we, too and still, have a Dream today:

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.  We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only."  We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.

It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

 And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

                Free at last! Free at last!

                Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!