What's good for Johnny is good for America....

To be a Negro in this country

and to be relatively conscious

is to be in a rage almost all the time.

So that the first problem

is how to control that rage

so that it won't destroy you.

 - James Baldwin, "The Negro in American Culture" (1961)

John - not his real name - is my friend, of whom I and his other family and friends are greatly proud, as should we all be.  He's the very embodiment of how we'd like to see ourselves as a society and as a country: from modest middle class beginnings, he's fashioned a successful and accomplished life for himself and his family in his adulthood.  He's played by the rules, kept his nose to the grindstone and worked hard as we were all taught to do.  Accordingly, he is a man to be admired and cited as an inspiration to us all and especially to our children.  And yet this is how he feels about his American Experience of the moment:

I spent much of yesterday in reflection, trying to put into words what I was feeling. While I could attribute a good portion of what I felt to the elevation of a man whom I've detested for much of my adult life - with good reason - there was something else. My antipathy towards that man masked another, deeper, set of feelings. It wasn't anger. Sure, the anger was there but I wanted to know what those other feelings were - the ones that I couldn't put my finger on.

Then it hit me. I remembered back to 5-6 years after I graduated from college. I was at a business event, for young Black professionals, where I heard a senior Black executive speak. Afterwards, I got a chance to chat with this man and we exchanged cards. I was thrilled, a few weeks later, when his office called and said that he'd like for me to join him for lunch. Over the span of 4-5 months, our relationship built as we had a number of discussions over the phone and in person. I grew to greatly admire and respect this man. As I had not had a business mentor who looked like me, this meant a lot. One day, he suggested that my fiancée (soon to be my wife) and I join him for dinner. On the way, we excitedly talked about the possibility that this man was going to make me a job offer. After all, my recent conversations with him were peppered with him telling me that "greater things were in store" for me, and that I wasn't "maximizing my talents" with my current employer.

It turns out that "dinner" was, actually, an MLM recruitment event. His "taking me under his wing" was an elaborate ploy to recruit me to sell soap and water purifiers and cosmetics. Later on, I heard that this was his M.O. He sized up "recruits" at networking events and developed a mentor relationship before asking them to join his team. It was the classic "long con". I was crushed and hurt to learn that someone whom I greatly admired, and respected, was someone dramatically different from what I thought he was. I never spoke with him again.

That was it. This was how I was feeling now. I'm hurt and disappointed to know that "my country" would elect a man, to the highest office in the land, who is vulgar and mean and racist and misogynistic and mendacious and ignorant and homophobic and insecure. And there is no question that he is these things - even those who voted for him would, mostly, agree. While I knew that the country was hardly "post racial", I thought we were better. I never in a million years thought that my country would actually elect someone like this man. A man who had been a NYC punchline for decades. A clown. A poor person's warped imagining of a rich person. Richie Rich wrapped up in Arthur wrapped up in the Monopoly Man.

So while I have hope for resistance, and while I believe that this resistance will usher in a new era of unity among those who will be oppressed under this "regime" (because that is, exactly, what it is), I am sad to have found out that the country I was so proud of for electing President Barack H. Obama, was actually setting me up for one of the the biggest disappointments of my life.

"Johnny," as he's called lovingly by his friends, has, by all measures, made it in modern America.  So why is he so disaffected?  My own view is that, in small part, this is due to his distress over the seemingly deep division in our commonweal.  This being said, however, I would argue that a far larger spur for his disaffection is that he is - and always will be - Black in America.  And to make it plain, as the old folks used to say, there's nothin' quite like - or as painful - as bein' Black in America....

I can empathize with Johnny's plight and with his feelings about our native land ... but I'm from Detroit, so despite my late but very proper southern mother's best efforts otherwise - sorry, Mom! - I am want to digress from eloquence into fierce frankness from time to time, so here goes....

What Johnny and I and many others, especially People of Color, are feeling is, simply put, betrayed.  Betrayed because we were lied to as kids (though, I'm sure, with the best of intentions on the part of those adults who nurtured us).  Betrayed because though we joined the mainstream and, by all accounts, played the game well, the outcomes and experience thereof has been meaningfully different - which is a really nice way of saying "lesser" - for us (despite the reality that many of us have done some amazing things and occupied lofty perches).  One need only think of President Obama - that elegant, graceful and disciplined man/soul - and how he was treated to understand what I'm suggesting.  Funny how you can become President of the United States - the ultimate accomplishment to which we were pointed as children - and still be disrespected largely due to immutable factors over which you have no control.  But I digress too eloquently....

And in light of the most recent developments in which our fellow citizens have elected a man who is the very embodiment of the -isms that still hold our country back as well as the very antithesis of all we were raised to be, in addition to feeling betrayed, we also feel palpably, sometimes uncontrollably, angry.

To put a finer point on it (and personalize it), pillar of the community though I may appear to be, our national social and political retrenchment, the continuing problems of societal inhumanity that have occasioned the need for a movement to coalesce under the moniker Black Lives Matter and the realization that so much progress is likely to be undone by the stroke of a presidential pen and a flurry of legislative activity from a formerly moribund and morally blind Congress is converging to make me that which (white) America fears most: the proverbial Angry Black Man.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I still dress well and go to work and play nice in the mainstream sandbox, but when I return to my home, my sanctuary, my anger is safe to come out.  And it does, virtually every day.  Lately it seems as if not a day goes by in which we learn of some new and tragic injustice, typically related to the victim's skin color (or some other immutable factor) and not the content of his or her character.

But perhaps I should be more careful with my words so that my meaning and message can be clearer: I am first and foremost outraged, which is what leads to my anger.  (Of course, the latter must be largely privately expressed, as public expressions thereof have consistently been met with brutal - and sometimes lethal - repression over the course of the history of our country.)

Outraged because a racist, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic, et. al., sexual predator has been elected the Leader of the Free World (as if other countries don't have enough reasons to be mad at us already).  Outraged that the utterly fraudulent class warfare that's been going on for more than a generation has marked itself so powerfully as well as likely so impermeable to redress, which has been confounded by 'the people' who are most being disenfranchised voting for it out of ignorance, fear and, most sadly, supposed faith.  Outraged that more than a half-century after the landmark Civil and Voting Rights Acts were passed, the consistent assault on and effective repeal of those rights proceeds apace, all while those who're doing the assaulting and repealing feign a lack of awareness with paternalistic unconcern.  Outraged that, in their young adulthood, my children are inheriting a world that is in many ways, far more f@#ked up than the one that my/our generation inherited and that we were supposed to improve far more than we apparently have.

Also let me be clear about this:  Yes, I am furiously angry because of my experience as a Black Man in America, my race and that of tens of millions of other People of Color continuing to have an outsized negative impact on our lives and especially those of our children ... but more than this, I am absolutely incensed because what's happening is an unconscionable affront to my and our humanity.  In this modern era, never before have we been so materially wealthy and yet so morally bankrupt.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I, too, have read MLK's later works in which his optimism had faded and his expressions of disappointment and outraged anger had multiplied, so I know that this country has been this way for some time.  But our assumption of progress - that uniquely naive American inheritance born of ignorance and arrogance - has proven misguided, at least in our lifetime.  If Dr. King is correct that the arc of the moral universe is long and bends toward justice, either its timeframe is far more elongated than we think or the unspoken caveat to this wisdom/insight is that progress is not linear but happens in fits and starts necessitating constant vigilance and continual action and advocacy.  But, again, I digress too eloquently....

What's most ironic to me in this new era of ours is that we're so deeply divided when, in actuality, I believe that we all agree on one thing: that our beloved America is on the wrong path.  The challenge that we face is a disagreement over the direction in which we should proceed going forward.  On the one side are those who hope to return to a bygone era (or, at least, a claimed one that has also been ascribed to history); on the other are those who believe, based on observation and experience, that history only moves forward and thus so should we.  Suffice it to say that I find myself (far) more persuaded by the latter than the former.

Simply put, there's no society on Earth that's been able to return to a golden era of a previous incarnation, though a few have tried to replicate them, most often with uneven results (to be kind).

What's far more prevalent in the historical record is that history marches on, often in unexpected directions, and thus people individually and societies collectively have to re-imagine their path creatively.  As numerous sages have pointed out over the years, the only certainty is that circumstances will change ... and our job is to be adaptable enough to roll with them and thrive in the successive new realities with which they present us.

So, too, I believe is the present case: not only because it's a fiction to which we can't return but also because of the forward historical imperative, Making American Great Again is not about going back to some mythical time but forward to a different and better reality than the one that we enjoy currently.

But change is hard, especially when power shifts accompany it.  In this case, America is becoming less white, less Christian and less supportive of the myriad -isms that have plagued our society since its inception.  But for many white, self-considered Christians prone to fear and thus to demonize The Other, a more diverse America in which they have to share power - or, God forbid, be in the minority - is not of interest.

In fact, it's to be resisted at virtually all costs.  How else can one explain the support of white Christians for a president who's behavior demonstrates virtually no familiarity with Christian principles whatsoever and whose economic policies disenfranchise them in ways that are likely to be long-lasting if not permanent?  How else can one explain the belief that "America first" trade policies will stem the decades-long tide of globalization and return high wage jobs to this country (even as that very same president's companies make all of their products sold in this country overseas because the wages in this country are [still/already] too high [or, more correctly, will reduce profit margins too much])?  How else can one explain a mystifying belief that the problem with our society is immigrants, the vast majority of whom are law abiding - more so than those white Christians, in fact - and who do jobs that white Christians long ago eschewed doing?  (If you doubt this last point, just google Alabama and North Carolina and their recent [disastrous] approaches to expulsion of immigrant agricultural workers to see just how far-fetched such a theory would have to be.)  How else ... well, you get the picture....

Let's face it, like the Afrikaners before them, white Christian Americans are worried about what happens when they no longer dominate this society ... and, truth be told, for good reason.  American history, whitewashed though it is, is replete with egregious examples of white Christian inhumanity, so the fear of payback is a most legitimate one ... except, again, for the reality of historical example, which shows, for instance, that there was no widespread retribution in the Republic of South Africa.

Again, I digress too eloquently....

So, to sum this up and keep it real/100, let's just put it this way:  America has been great throughout much of its history - let's acknowledge this - but only for some and decidedly not for all.  For far too many of us, we need to Make America Great for the First Time by holding it accountable to its professed creeds.  In so doing, we must fashion a world in which all of God's children of whatever hue, gender identity, religion, etc., can drink from the deep Well of Opportunity that this country can represent.  But until that day, we should all realize that the anger of the dispossessed exists on both sides of our ideological divide and that if this is not addressed deftly, the fabric of our society may tear irreparably.

So how do we keep this from happening, to prevent us from tearing ourselves apart forever?  There are many ways, but I'll focus on just a few:

First, let's commit to living by the Platinum Rule.  Beyond just treating each other as we ourselves would like to be treated - which is an egocentric, sub-optimal approach - let's commit to treating each other as these others want to be treated.  Among other things, this imposes a duty upon us to get to know each other well so that we can predict how our fellows want to be treated.  This may seem a huge leap - and it is - but it's solely in a forward direction.

Second, let's commit to respecting each other's religious beliefs and yet keeping them out of the public square.  I really don't care which of the paths to God you favor - or if you don't favor one at all - but I would like not to have you claim God's mantle to disadvantage me, which is how institutional religion - and especially institutional conservative Christianity - plays out in American society currently.  So, I'm glad your faith - or lack thereof - sustains you, but please stop trying to reflect your evangelism in the contours of the society in which I'm supposed to enjoy my freedom.

Third, let's commit to the commonweal, meaning that we'll be guided in our policy- and decision-making by the Greater Good.  Adverse impacts are real and too well targeted in our history, so we must acknowledge and address them if we are to go forward differently and better in the future.  And as we craft the ever evolving rules by which we interact and progress, let's be fair and equitable in our construction.  To an appreciable extent, this is a commitment to multi-faceted diversity and inclusion in that we want all of God's children to have a chance in life and to have access to opportunities that can enable individual and collective progress.  And this does mean all of God's children....

And fourth and finally, let's commit to reality and truth over mendacity and b.s.  Let's face it, the lies that we allow to be told in our society at present are fantastic and fantastically awful in that they limit our ability to make progress toward a more just and equitable society.  As hard as it may be, let's admit and address all of the -isms that still plague us by opening the doors of opportunity more broadly and by being vigilant in holding our elected representatives to this 'truth and reality, no b.s.' standard.  I realize that this is asking a lot of us - more, in fact, than we've ever asked of ourselves before - but our future depends on it.  Simply put, you can't build a strong foundation for the future on a fantastical cornerstone.  It, like our consciences, really must be able to bear the weight....

If we choose to disregard these suggestions - and many astutely developed ones that others have offered - then we do so at our increasing peril.  This tailspin of societal devolution that we're experiencing will only get worse unless we correct course soon and significantly.  The only remaining question is whether or not we have the will to do so, as the consequences of failure become clearer and more precipitous each day.

Bringing this meditation back to where it started, remember that Johnny is a winner in this game and yet largely disaffected.  Just imagine what happens when others like him join forces with those who are losing increasingly in our current societal structure.  History offers precedents for this, too: seems to me there was a revolution in this very country in the late eighteenth century when it was widely perceived that the structure of our society was oppressive.

To put it bluntly, unless we move in a different and better direction - one in which the Johnnys of our society are likely to go from angry to fiercely proud - then we will indeed experience the traumatic pain of failing to learn from history - our own, no less - and find to our horror that everything old indeed can be new again but not in a great way....

God gave Noah the rainbow sign,

No more water the fire next time.

 - Negro Spiritual "Mary Don't You Weep"

The Gift of Donald Trump: A Study in Black and White....

In a real sense all life is inter-related.

All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,

tied in a single garment of destiny.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

I can never be what I ought to be

until you are what you ought to be,

and you can never be what you ought to be

until I am what I ought to be....

This is the inter-related structure of reality.

- The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Letter From Birmingham Jail" (1963)

Let's be clear from the start: Donald Trump is a blight on the American Presidency and on the country as a whole.  But he's also a gift ... perhaps one that we don't want or think that we don't need, but a gift nonetheless.  Here's why:

Donald Trump has committed to and is achieving an historic level of equality in our county: deeply and unashamedly faithful to the Plutocracy of which he is a part, he and his minions are f@#cking over everyone else, including the regular white folks who voted for him.  In sum, you either have - in which case his policies don't affect you much if at all except to help you - or you don't - in which case there'll be hell to pay, apparently on an equal opportunity basis....

The winning, it seems, is limited to those who've already won in life ... and they don't appear to be getting tired of winning any time soon....

Plutocrats don't live near streams that can again be polluted with toxic chemicals (including because they own the polluting entities and are again legally insulated from the impact of them now).  Plutocrats don't have kids in public schools, so they don't care about whether your children are shamed at lunch for being unable to afford it or whether they're in classrooms with too many students led by underpaid (but usually dedicated) teachers or whether they're not being sufficiently educated for the 21st century (in which a high school diploma offers few if any societal benefits) or whether you're trying hard to use your voucher to get your kid into one of the charter schools or private (often religious) academies that may soon be allowed to take public school funds.  Plutocrats' kids don't have student loans that can again be collected in predatory ways.  Plutocrats don't need public health insurance.  (Because they can afford private concierge medical care.  Try it sometime if you can afford it: empty lounge rooms with no extended waiting, doctors with premium pedigrees who have ample time so serve patients, etc., kinda like a medical DisneyWorld with nothin' but Fast Passes.)  Plutocrats ... well, you get the picture....

By contrast, lower and middle American racists - and, stop the sanctimonious b.s. 'cause too many of 'em supported Mr. Trump specifically because he was so unafraid to be racist, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic, ignorant, arrogant, etc. - need all of these protections and now will be without them.  Hmmm.  And yet few of them seem either smart enough to realize their mistake or humble enough to admit it ... yet.

Let's face it, middle America, you voted for a Plutocrat who gamed the System to get rich and stay that way who you somehow came to believe would tear down that very system to let in you and your kind.  Except that he'd never done anything of the sort ever in his entire adult life to indicate that your hope had a basis in reality.  What he promised you was that America would be great again, which you took to mean that other white folks like you would be in charge again.  Except that they're not like you and don't care about you as their actions from day one of this travesty/abomination of an Administration demonstrate.  Yes, you may be white ... but you're middle class or poor and the only white that counts in 45's America is Rich White (with a side of Powerful White).

If you don't believe me, think about this: how many of you were in two iconic recent photographs, the one of the lily-white Capitol Hill staff and interns or the one of the (morally reprehensible and premature) Rose Garden celebration for the passage of the AHCA?  None?  But maybe your kids could be in them someday?  Perhaps ... except that everything that this Administration has done and will do will pull that proverbial mobility ladder up as they rise.

Don't you get it yet?  What's it going to take to make you realize that you got completely conned by a man who pandered to your basest instincts in exchange for the opportunity to make sure that you and all the other little people who want things from the government won't get them because the government's gonna be broke from paying for the tax cuts that lighten his and his fellow Plutocrats' financial burden?!?

Don't you yet get the AHCA?  It's a tax cut for rich people cloaked in the language of healthcare reform for you ... meaning that the rich folks will get the money that otherwise would have paid for your healthcare.  Do you doubt this?  Check out the estimates of the size of the tax cut disproportionately for the wealthy (approx. $1 Trillion according to Fox News or 'only' $675 Billion according to NPR - pick your source) and the cuts to Medicaid (approx. $880 Billion according to the Atlantic Magazine or those commie bastards in the Congressional Budget Office - again, pick your source).  Notice the similarity?  The rich will get richer and stay healthy enough to create more jobs for the lumpenproletariat who already have the least access to life-sustaining healthcare and apparently better start praying that they don't get too sick soon because they'll be without it (again).  And all of you regular folks who're already sick, well, it's been nice knowing you because your (pre-)existing condition makes you ineligible for coverage in Trumpworld.

(Can't help but hear the words of the Marcan and Matthean Jesus when I think of this: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  [Mark 15:34, Matthew 27:46]  Because our society has elected leaders who've favored themselves and their kind and truly and totally forsaken We the People!?!

And I'm so disgusted and dismayed over it now as I write that I must move on....)  

As I suggested in a previous post - "Who Are We? And What Have We Become?" (January 28th, 2017) - I actually agree with Mr. Trump on one point: we do, in fact, need to make America great again ... but we diverge as to how.  Whereas 45 and his minions seek to divide, demean and disaffirm life, by contrast, I believe that we must unite, uphold, celebrate and affirm our common humanity.  Among other things, this means that we must...

• Make America kind again, a country that seeks to help all of its citizens to live a better life (if not really pursue the American Dream) rather than demonizing those who find themselves out of power at any given time or, for too many of our fellows, seemingly permanently
• Make America thoughtful again, so that our leaders - returning to being reality-based rather than partisan-deranged - are actually mindful of the long-term interests of the many constituencies they serve and are accordingly carefully responsive.
• Make America communal again, a place where we realize that our success is tied to our neighbors' and where we act on the truths that MLK taught us, including that we are all woven together in a single garment of destiny and that if we don't learn to live together as brothers and sisters we'll certainly perish as fools.
• Make America conversant again, a society in which we don't always agree but within which we can and do participate in a multi-faceted conversation as we listen to others and their perspectives, educate each other and seek to fashion solutions to our problems that benefit the many rather than the few.
• Make America open and embracing again, a country in which we realize that we're all immigrants, which means that we're all different yet have something to contribute, our diversity being our greatest strength, and in which every man, woman and child is our brother or sister rather than The Other.

And there are so many more ways that we can join together to make a better country and, indeed, world.  Or we can choose the path of division and death proffered by this Administration.  The contrast is clear: its policies disproportionately favor the rich over the middle class or poor (and, in many if not most cases, actually disenfranchise the latter) and its embrace of a "healthcare" actually means that there will be less of it and many more people will die (needlessly).

How stark does this difference have to become for us to make a different choice?

Let me offer a suggestion that may help increase your acuity:  Try being Black or of Color for a while.  Yep, try being Black Like Me as John Howard Griffin did more than a half-century ago.  Then you'll see the difference in stark relief ... and then, too, you'll realize that your brand of white - the middle class and/or poor one - doesn't offer you much in Trumpworld: yes, you're still white, so you'll still be at the top ... but it's the top of the bottom and the real top is getting higher and higher which means further and further away for you and your progeny, so much so as not really to be attainable anymore.

Face it, you're now stuck down here with the rest of us, fighting for the crumbs from our Plutocrat masters' table.  Yes, equality has come anew to America: the masses are virtually equally disadvantaged and the rich are insulated and unperturbed.  America as a Banana Republic: not the America I consider great.  What about you?

So if you want a different and better America, band with those who are like you except for the color of their skin or their gender or their sexual orientation or their religion or their country of origin or their whatever and fight to make America a country committed to its ideals again.  Demand that those who represent you reflect our founding ethos in their behavior (and not just empty rhetoric).  Indeed, Make America Great Again ... by making it truly America for all for the first time....

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

- The Preamble to the Constitution of these United States

The Radicalization of Walter K. Booker (and why I'm OK with it...)

Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root.'

- Dr. Angela Davis

Lately I've heard numerous 'news' stories describe the "radicalization" of various religious zealots as a rationale for why they commit atrocities.  Like most, I suppose, I tend to judge them with a knowing (and, truthfully, condescending) "tsk, tsk" and then say a short prayer for their victims before moving on with my comfortable life.  And then one day I realized that I've been radicalized, too....

Increasingly at mid-life, I find that my thinking - and, I hope, very being - is far more radical than in my youth in many ways.  For example, I now consider myself a...

• Radical Feminist
• Radical Humanist
• Radical Life-ist

What's a Radical Feminist, you ask?  Well, in my (developing) formulation, it's a person who no longer believes in any limitations placed on those of the female gender voluntarily (which differentiates these from the natural [and legitimate-to-consider] physical ones).  I am against patriarchy in all of its forms, which is a really hard position to hold as the ostensible patriarch of my little clan ... but then my wife is my partner and equal in every way (and, truth be told, my better in most ways), so I'm not really the patriarch, am I, really?

(Reminds me of a time in my youth when my late, sainted mother suggested that I go ask my father to bless a purchase that she had already made on my behalf.  When I asked her why I should seek agreement on something that had already been done, she noted that it was important to let my father feel that he was involved and in charge.  Sure enough, my dad gave his blessing and then all was well ... except that I felt sad for the King as he sat on his throne in our den thinking that he actually knew what was going on and was presiding over it....)

That it will be novel to have our first-ever female president eventually strikes me as both sad and absurd in the 21st century.  Simply out, we must get beyond gender (in the sense of it being a restricting factor) as it warps  our shared reality and encourages self-limiting choices that are, on the whole, negative for us as a human race....

(And don't get me started about the absurdity and profanity of how too many of us treat our fellows in the LGBTQ community: suffice it to say that whoever you are and however you identify is your choice, reflective of the unique humanity with which you've been gifted ... and anyone who seeks to deny this for any reason - religious or otherwise - is an inhuman ass.  Your being LGBTQ or whatever doesn't affect who I choose to be in any way, so for me or anyone else to pretend that it does is just fundamentally dishonest and inhumane.  Be who you are on this one short trip of life that we get - and share - and know that whoever that turns out to be, I'm happy for and supportive and celebratory of you!)

And what's a Radical Humanist?  Well, in this still-developing formulation, I'm moving beyond the religious differences that we've chosen to divide us and focusing on what I consider to be the ultimate reality of our lives: that we are all equally human - which, to me, as a believer, means that we are all Children of God - and thus we are all deserving of having that humanity affirmed, supported and celebrated always.  I don't care if you're a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or a Sikh or an atheist, you're a human being and I believe that you deserve to be both allowed and encouraged to be who you are and that your uniqueness should be celebrated by us all.  None of us is better than any other of us, but we are legitimately different and these differences should be recognized, appreciated, explored and celebrated.

Hence, as a Radical Humanist, I'm also a fervent believer in and practitioner of Diversity & Inclusion.  It's pretty clear to me that the profound diversity in the natural world suggests that God (= He/She/It) is a believer in the power of uniqueness, otherwise why would we have so many different plants, animals, people, etc.?  Following on this, then, it's incumbent upon us to appreciate this idiosyncracy and try to leverage it for our mutual/collective benefit.

(Which is where I bring back in the concept of gender and, by example, suggest that it should be gotten beyond as a limiter in our thinking and experience but be absolutely and appropriately celebrated to the extent that being female is a very different and wonderful experience of our humanity.)

Or, put more positively, it's incumbent upon us to celebrate and learn more about our differences, not be scared by and 'Otherize' because of them.  Of course, let's acknowledge that this respectful exploration takes work, which is why so many decry so-called political correctness now: it's really an admission that they'd prefer that you respect what's different and good about them without them having to make the effort to do the same with respect to you.  Last I checked, successful, long-term relationships all seem to require abiding by the Law of Mutual Benefit, so any effort to shirk one's responsibility to understand as much as to be understood isn't likely to work well....

Another aspect of my Radical Humanism is my evolving and increasingly fierce embrace of ecology and acceptance of my individual and our collective responsibility to appreciate, respect, honor and cultivate this one sacred place that we've been given to live.  Anything that degrades or demeans Mother Earth is just as inappropriate and harmful as anything that does so with respect to any of its inhabitants (including the animals whom we tend to consider as lessers because we've been taught to presume that they don't have souls and thus are supposed to be ruled, for some reason, by those of us who claim to have them ...).

In sum, my Radical Humanism leads me to feel compelled to celebrate this One Life that we share - and/with all of God's Creatures and Children who share it - which is why I consider myself to be a(n evolving) Radical Life-ist, too.  (Yeah, I know, I need a better term for this; feel free to offer suggestions!)

What this means is simple: that in every moment of my existence and with every gift that I have been given and/or developed and in any and every way, I am compelled to affirm my own and others' uniqueness and right to exist and contribute and therefore that I am compelled to get beyond my comfort zone, reach out to those who may be different (but certainly in no way lesser) than me and to do the admittedly often challenging work of getting to know, affirming, supporting and celebrating their uniqueness and right to exist, too.

In the words of the insightful and inspiring Bishop John Shelby Spong, as a Radical Life-ist, I'm called to live fully, love wastefully and be all that I can be ... and, in so doing, to affirm, support and celebrate each and every one of God's other creatures in doing the same.

Not surprisingly, then, I find so much of our world repugnant and disheartening.  Our politics in America are toxic and mystifying: so many of us claim to be Christians and yet support policies that are the very antithesis of our Patron's example.  Our new Administration is an abomination in so many ways, including its appalling tendency to divide and diminish the humanity that it's supposed to serve while enabling the poisoning of our communities, the choice of commerce over citizens, the continuing disenfranchisement from voting rights and healthcare options, etc.  And then there's the ugliness in the rest of the world....

It hurts.  A lot.  (And, sometimes, too much.)

And yet I remain hopeful because there is a "still more excellent way," that of Radicalism.  Not only is being a Radical a more edifying way to live - to cite just a single example, the letting go of the impulse to hate and to fear and to inhumanity is so incredibly freeing - but it offers the opportunity to 'flip the script': instead of focusing on what's bad or wrong, we can revel in the myriad instances of what's beautiful, of what's right, of what's affirming, of what's supportive, of what's celebratory, etc., that occur in virtually every moment of every day and then build on them.

No, I'm not a pie-in-the-sky optimist or utopian, just a reality-based Radical.  Our choices are as clear as they are stark: we can contribute to the ugliness in our world and kill ourselves from the inside out or focus narrowly on ourselves and our own interests and accept our own gradual withering away morally and otherwise or we can engage lovingly with life and our fellow Children and Creatures of God and keep doing the bravest thing possible: joining hands with those who share this journey in time and keep putting one foot in front of the other toward a better and more humane existence.

As I've aged - and possibly matured - more and more I've moved from that middle, selfish choice to the radical third one and, in so doing, have experienced more of the beauty - and heartache - of life.  But, I've also experienced something unexpected: a profound, fundamental and animating joy that comes from living fully, loving wastefully and trying hard and failing every day at being all that I can be.

And, so, dear friends, I share my journey with you and invite you, too, to become a Radical....

So when I try to make sense of what I believe is my experience of the transcendent,

I use three concepts.

I experience God as “the Source of life” empowering me to“live fully.”

I experience God as “the Source of love” freeing me to “love wastefully,”

by which I mean to love without stopping to count the cost;

without pausing to determine whether the recipient of that love is an appropriate recipient.

I experience God as “the Ground of all Being,” who gives me the courage to be all that I can be.

If that is what God means to me then I worship this God by

“living fully, loving wastefully and being all that I am capable of being.”

My mission as a Christian is not “to convert the heathen” as we once asserted,

it is rather to assist in the task of helping all people

“to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that they are capable of being.”

This is a Christianity grounded in a radical understanding of humanity.

- Bishop John Shelby Spong

Not in spite of, but because of....

In our interconnected world, we must learn to feel

enlarged, not threatened, by difference....

 - Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

One of the sweeter ironies of my adult life is that I now voluntarily attend church more often than my sainted mother and far more than I grudgingly did as a teenager being lugged there by her oh so many years ago.  I go to feed my soul, to share in a community of spiritually-minded fellow human beings and to nurture - and, most often, restore - the innate sense of hope that I treasure but so often feels besieged by life of late.

And today's service was one of those spiritual gifts that brings me back to the sanctuary at least three weeks out of every four now.  We had a guest preacher, the Rev. Dr. Sonia E. Waters, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary who just happens to be the Much Better Half of my dear friend and priest, the Rev. John A. Mennell.  (Like me, he's married way up, a gift for which we are both thankful and that we revel in often.)  She taught - and I do mean taught, even as she preached - a sermon on the Samaritan Woman by the Well in the Gospel of John.  And it'll go down in my all-time top 10 sermons.  Here's why: simply put, Rev. Waters (or Sonia, as she seems to prefer being called), flipped the script in such a paradigm-shifting way that it left an indelible mark and was one of those 'a-ha!' moments that rocks you in the present and lingers long and lastingly thereafter....

For those of you unfamiliar with the story of the Samaritan Woman by the Well as portrayed in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel, let's just say that it features a highly unusual interaction, in this case between Jesus and an unnamed stranger of a different gender ... and, thanks to Rev. Waters' illumination, I will never quite conceive of it - and, more importantly, its much deeper meaning - in the same way ever again.

[Rev. Waters' treatment was such a paradigm shift that it reminded me of others in my spiritual history spurred by the likes of Bishop John A.T. Robinson, theologians Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, Bishop John Spong, Rev. Mennell - yeah, her husband's contributed a few over the years, too (which must be yet another thing that they have in common) - and the Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks.  For example, the latter's exposition of the Lord's Prayer in his extraordinary The Politics of Jesus has so indelibly marked me spiritually that I have always conceived of this seminal prayer differently and more powerfully and resonantly ever since.  So, too, I suspect will I now see the Woman by the Well.]

In reviewing the context of the meeting and subsequent discussion between the protagonists of this story, Rev. Waters noted that it was unusual in antiquity for a Jew and a Samaritan to discourse (which we've mostly forgotten is the context of the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan) as well as for a man to speak to an unaccompanied woman.  So unusual, in fact, that the Disciples tried to dissuade Jesus from having it.  But He persisted.  And what follows was such a powerful moment, born of the interaction of strangers, that the woman was converted as were many of her neighbors when she shared her testimony thereafter.  

Further, the well is a familiar setting in biblical history, where many a woman met a man who changed her life.  More broadly, Rev. Waters noted, the well was a crossroads where different people met in the ancient world because they all had a common need, for water.

And this is the kernel from which she extracted a powerful testimony and lesson: that we are all different but share a common humanity and therein lies an opportunity to live into God.

But difference scares us, so we have a tendency to 'Otherize.'  As Rev. Waters described it, "It's our human nature to erase difference," which leads us to want to seek likeness and reject variety.  When faced with the opportunity to open ourselves to some who's different - be it a difference rooted in race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. - we have choice, to be loving or to give into our fear, distance ourselves and virtually always demonize or in some way demean/deem the Other as lesser.

And yet those of us who claim to follow a person who always chose love too often choose fear....

But, as Rev. Sonia noted, Jesus chose the Woman by the Well because she was different: it was her difference that offered the possibility to bridge a gap in ancient culture and belief.  She pointed out that "Jesus doesn't (try to) fix her," but knows her and accepts her as she is, despite her difficult history.  She continued that "What Jesus is saying here is that shame is a useless emotion at the crossroads of God's Knowledge (of) and Love (for us)."  In fact, she pointed out, "differences are the exact things that can change us."  It's in our Otherness relative to each other that we can learn to live into God's love ... and thus we are called by God "not in spite of (our differences) but because of" them.  We all have difficult life histories - yet another thing that we share as human beings - and thus in these gifts of varied experience we find that "God has equipped (us) in the crucible of (our) own lives to be a vessel of Living Water," a living embodiment of His/Her/Its Love.

Hmmm....

As I sat and listened to Rev. Sonia speaking softly but passionately, I was jolted in one of those spiritual paradigm shifts that I've experienced over the course of my life: in fact, it's our difference that's the gift, even though we prefer similarity.  It's our difference that offers us the choice to fear and revile or to love and embrace.  It's our difference that makes us fallibly human and fearful or divinely human(/humane) and loving.  It's our difference that's why we're called to love as God loves, without respect to difference.  It's our difference that makes us the same, all and to a person, Children of God and vessels of Living Water ... if we choose to be.

So what will it be for you today?  Will you fear and avoid (and possibly demean) the Other?  Or will you embrace his/her/their Otherness as an opportunity to practice what Jesus preached by example in His life: love for all?

It's up to you.  And me.  But rest assured that God is calling us.  The question is how will we answer?  Will we choose fear or love?  Will we shrink from opportunity and separate ourselves to our mutual detriment or will we realize our full potential, be all that we can be, engage fully and love wastefully (as Bishop Spong suggests, based on Jesus' example)?

Today, thanks to Rev. Sonia, I now realize that our differences are our gifts and that we are called because of them.  Therein lies opportunity, specifically the opportunity to choose between fear and love.  And, following Rev. Dr. Hendricks' suggested moniker, as a self-considered Follower of Jesus, I'm committed to choosing love, as challenging and scary and messy as that may be at times.  Difference, the natural variety that Darwin noted so long ago, isn't a barrier but an invitation if we choose it.  And if I'm really going to follow Jesus, it means, just as He did with the Woman by the Well, I'll choose to love....

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

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

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.

- Jesus Christ, as quoted in

The Gospel of St. John, 13:34-35

Beyond Our Comfortable Christianity....

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

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

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.

- Jesus Christ, as quoted in

The Gospel of St. John, 13:34-35

Today in church, my esteemed Rector preached one of his best sermons, one that elevated and moved me and the others who were privileged to share in it.  Ruminating on the Beatitudes, he began by noting that, given the layout of the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes which form its core are really the first of Jesus' lessons in Scripture.  He then noted that Jesus' first Beatitude is focused on "the poor in spirit," those for whom life's burdens cause pain and/or doubt, whose suffering we have all felt/shared at some point in our journey.  He further noted that our "brokenness can lead us to see the Kingdom of Heaven" as well as to recognize the myriad blessings that we still invariably enjoy amidst our pain and that we have all been poor in spirit at one point or another in our life journeys.  And then he asked a simple question that 'set it off' for me:  

"What role do we play in creating the Kingdom of Heaven"(here on Earth)?

He went on to exhort us that "We are called to walk with each other in the Darkness" (to which I've added the capitalized 'D' to reflect the widespread and deep sense of foreboding created in so many by this amazing - and, to many, horrifying - first week of the new Administration).  He then shifted to the current furor around the new president's immigration ban and how, regardless of your view on it politically, it concerns us all and especially those of us, our neighbors whom we're called to love just as much as ourselves, who are directly affected by it.  After which he relayed a story from his participation in a Sanctuary Churches organizational meeting earlier in the week.  Suffice it to say that as he recounted Alejandra's experience as an illegal immigrant in our society, at that moment there were eyes brimming with empathetic and guilty tears as well as an awareness that our inhumanity today hearkens all the way back and relates too well to that in biblical times.  Our religious forebears, the Jews of antiquity, have also been refugees at many points in their journey and suffered greatly under various regimes, not dissimilarly to how Alejandra and her family suffer now.

And then it hit me:  If we are truly called to love our neighbors as ourselves and called to help create the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth, what do we feel compelled to do every day to live into this spiritual calling?  The question that coalesced was a simple but powerful one:

Who have I or you blessed today?

Oh sure, some of us come to church reasonably regularly and by supporting the institution can claim some credit for making a meaningful contribution to our neighbors' well-being.  We may even participate on a committee or two over the course of the years.  And we volunteer occasionally.  In sum, we're self-considered "good people."  And, indeed, what we do and what we contribute are truly good things.

But did this goodness cost us anything, really?  Did we have to sacrifice meaningfully to achieve it?

Whenever I ask myself this seriously - and others rhetorically - the answer always seems more tepid than it should be.  If I/we follow a Patron whose altruism was complete and whose example of selflessness truly legendary, shouldn't our experience of followership be a more meaningfully proactive one?  If Jesus gave his life, shouldn't we at least have to give enough to force us out of our comfort zones?  If we're really going to call and consider ourselves Christians, shouldn't we be forced to get beyond our 'Comfortable Christianity'?

When I look at my own congregation, whom I'm fortunate to serve as a Warden, I'm proud of our collective good works.  And yet, in my heart of hearts, I know that we could do so much more ... if we were able to push beyond our comfort zone, our Comfortable Christianity.

Yes, the community kitchen that we support served almost 69,000 meals to neighbors in need last year - something of which we should all be proud because our support of the church leads directly to the support of this worthy effort - but, truth be told, only a small percentage of those who volunteered during this service last year were fellow congregants.  In fact, in this blessed communal meal provision and hunger relief effort, the majority of volunteers are community members who are not members of our church.  I ask myself how many meals we might be able to serve were, say, 25% of our congregation volunteering regularly in this worthy cause ... or 50%....

The same holds true with respect to a recently founded effort, called the "Caring Community," in which we do good works for neighbors in need who are mostly also fellow parish members.  And, despite a growing and impressive list of kindnesses extended - be they meals cooked and brought to shut-ins or rides given to and from doctors' appointments or any other number of legitimately good deeds, what our Jewish friends call mitzvahs - we are always struggling to find more people to participate and thereby to alleviate the increasing burden on the small, core group of leaders who've built this burgeoning and beautiful legacy.  I can't help but ask myself the same question: what if we were able to get 25% of our parish to volunteer regularly, how many more people could we serve?  Or 50%....

In sum, we're a good church, a positive, caring community, but we're also largely focused on what goes on inside the church and far less aware of and committed to taking the love we share in the church out into the broader community and society in a more meaningfully impactful way.  We are afflicted by Comfortable Christianity.

And this affliction is quite costly, though in a less obvious way: its primary toll is in a sort of dual opportunity cost.  The first opportunity cost is that we have engaged fewer people than we could, so we do less good than we can.  This in no way diminishes the appreciable good that we do, but it does represent a huge opportunity missed to do even more of God's work right here and now.

And the second opportunity cost is even less obvious but equally meaningful: because we miss opportunities to serve, we miss opportunities to be enriched by our own experience of helping to create the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.  We miss literally tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of chances every year to love our neighbors as ourselves.  And if you've ever done a good deed - especially for someone who can never 'repay' you - you know that the reward of giving - that feeling of having loved generously - is likely even more beneficial to you, the giver, than your kindness is to the receiver.  The cost of Comfortable Christianity, it seems to me, is hundreds of thousands of opportunities to bless and be blessed every year.

(If you're wondering about my math, here it is:  Our parish has over 600 members.  If each of them were to do a mitzvah each day, this would mean that we'd perform 219,000 good deeds in a year.  While I'm sure a meaningful portion of our fellows are doing just this, many are not, thus my belief that we're missing a huge opportunity.  And lest you be drawn to suggest that we may not know all the good that our members do - a suggestion that's both positive in intent and accurate/agreed - we can intuit from how very hard it is to find Caring Community volunteers that whatever their current level of contribution, there's a good bit more that could be given, in alignment with the Gospel imperative.  And now that we've had this little sidebar, imagine if each of us did two mitzvahs a day, one in the morning and one in the evening: how much more meaningfully could we invoke the Kingdom of God here on Earth?)

Please be clear that I'm not criticizing: I truly do appreciate what we individually and collectively do ... but I'm also clear that it pales by comparison to what we could do were we more aware and committed to overcoming our Comfortable Christianity.

For example, what if we were able to summon 50 volunteers to our annual Habitat volunteering effort rather than the typical 5 to 10?  (Or what if we sponsored two such annual service opportunities?)  Or if we were able to get twenty regular volunteers for our Caring Community rather than the core handful or so (and the especially committed founder and leader who still does even more than the rest of the small team combined!?!)?  What if....

As I ponder this sense of sub-optimal spirituality, I invite your suggestions.  As a committed leader in my church, I will endeavor to address these underaddressed opportunities in the years ahead, so any creative input as to how I can help motivate my fellow parishioners to give even more generously of themselves would be greatly appreciated.  After all, as a Warden, I'm bound to help lead us to achieve one of our stated strategic goals: to be(come) a 'Cathedral in the Community.'  Ultimately, we wish to be known by how many and how meaningfully we bless our neighbors.  Now all we have to do is to mobilize more impactfully to get there, including by being able to answer that simple question more powerfully affirmatively every day:

Who have I/we blessed today?

Are we a positive contributor to our broader community?  Absolutely.  But, were we to be more proactive in loving our neighbors as ourselves could we do even/so much more?  Absolutely, too.  And therein lies the challenge: whether we can overcome our Comfortable Christianity to become "Crazy Christians" as our Presiding Bishop calls those who bless proactively and indiscriminately.  Or, to borrow the Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks' term, whether we can rise above being Comfortable Christians and truly become Followers of Jesus....

"Living fully, loving wastefully and being all that we can be" is my definition of seeing the presence of God in human life. To live for another is to escape the natural human drive to survive and to enable us to live for others, to give ourselves away in love for another. It means placing someone beside ourselves at the center of our affections. It is to recognize that God is part of who we are and that we are part of who or what God is. God is the quality of life that I see in the picture and memory of Jesus that transcends the ages. ... That is finally why I am a committed Christian.

- Bishop John Shelby Spong 

Who are we? And what have we become?

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.

Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

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

Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

1967

OK, it's been a week, a long exhausting week, and there's a fire burning in our wall.  A fervent, morally righteous movement is building.  In just a week, our new President has kept many of his promises to us ... and we are horrified.  He's begun to do all of the nasty, inhumane things that he promised us that he'd do on our behalf - and for which many of us cheered him at the time - and now we are terrified.  He's proven to us to be just the same pathological liar in office as he was on the campaign trail and we are mystified.

How did it come to this?

That answer starts with questions:  Who are we?  And what have we become?

America is the land of the free, right?  And almost all of our ancestors came here voluntarily to live a better life, right?  We are that shining beacon in the world, cast into the structure of one of our most treasured national symbols, about which our own poet Emma Lazarus wrote when she penned the transcendent sonnet that follows in part, whose words are forever etched in our hearts, right?

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door! 

In just a week, we are no longer that country, that beacon.  Who are we?  And what have we become?

As his very first act, our new president issued an order for which his Republican cohorts in Congress have been waiting for years, a charge to dismantle the well-subscribed and now-appreciated Affordable Care Act (ACA).  It was largely a symbolic act - such an undoing actually has to be by Act of Congress - but it sent a huge message and, in my view, a dual one:

First, in this decliningly so but still largely Christian nation whose supposed Christ-followers were so instrumental to our recent electoral outcome, the message is that officially and as a matter of policy, we repudiate our Savior's example.  We as a nation will not be making healthcare more accessible and affordable to ever more of our fellow citizens.  That's right, those who pretend to be Christians have declared that throwing 20 million fellow human beings out of a healthcare system that's actually stemmed the seemingly incessant rise in our national medical costs to be a good thing.

That so many who cheered this inhumanity so vociferously proved to be unfathomably ignorant - morally righteous in their condemnation of Obamacare and too stupid to realize that it was the very same thing as the ACA to which they themselves were subscribers and that provided, in many (if not most) cases, the only healthcare coverage to which they had access - simply prompts our two questions even more urgently: Again, who are we?  And what have we become?

The second message that this Executive Order sent, followed as it was by a flurry of others that appeared to be related in an increasingly discernible way, is that it was also the beginning of a planful eradication by our current president of his predecessor's legacy.  Oh, sure, that could just be about spiteful politics, right?  Perhaps ... but, intriguingly, there's no precedent for it in all of American presidential history, so what's really driving it?

One cannot escape the specter of race, no matter how much we pretend: it's not a coincidence that the only time in our history a succeeding president has consistently endeavored to undo his predecessor's legacy is when that predecessor 'just happened to be' African-American.  That such an evisceration hurts so many millions of people reveals the depth of our continuing racial antipathy - which we pretended not to appreciate fully during election season - and reinforces the urgency of asking and addressing our two questions:  Who are we?  And what have we become?

As a final example of an unprecedented phenomenon worthy of our examination, our new president has repeatedly and wantonly lied to us about the largest and smallest of things ... and yet so many of us want to pretend that we haven't enshrined a pathological liar as our putative leader.  Crowd size at the Inauguration.  Denial of a long, public feud with our nation's intelligence agencies during the campaign (that also featured a hagiographic lionizing of one of our most dangerous adversaries, but I digress...).  That there were literally millions of illegal immigrants who voted for his opponent which is why he lost the popular vote but remains our 'minority' president.

Let these sink in for a moment.  Even though they're just a few of the many, think on 'em for a minute.  We saw the pictures that compared crowd sizes - be they to previous Inaugurations or, say, a much larger protest that occurred the very next day - so we know the truth (as other areas of our government as well as independent sources have confirmed), and yet he lies to us.  We witnessed his repeated dissing of our National Intelligence effort, and especially the CIA while he was bromancing 'Putie' during the last part of the campaign and throughout most of his status as president-elect, and yet he appears at the aforementioned agency and denies that anything of the sort ever occurred and that, in fact, he loves them.  (Yeah ... wow!?!)  Apparently it doesn't matter that we saw it with our own eyes many times: defining reality is now the political prerogative of our president (or, at least, this one).

And, lastly, even though there has never been evidence of any meaningful amount of voter fraud in modern American History, and certainly none in this most recent of national elections, we are told that there were literally millions of illegal immigrants who voted illegally and for his opponent, no less.  Hard to know where to start on this one, but let me jump on the bandwagon of demonizing our national press - and, conceptually, the international press as well - for missing what is surely one of the largest and most meaningful stories in our country's history: that millions and millions of illegal voters descended on our polling places last November ... and they missed the story completely.  Shameful, just shameful!

Or, more likely, still unfathomably shameful but for a very different reason: that the man that less than half of us who voted actually selected made the whole (f@#king[!?!?!]) thing up out of whole cloth ... and has now signed yet another Executive Order to investigate the fantasy.  Apparently, not only are we going to have to pay for the Wall in two ways - via regular spending funded by income tax revenues as well as a proposed tax on imported Mexican goods that - you guessed it! - means that Mexico pays not at all but we pay a second time - anybody unclear on the multiple bankruptcies now?!? - but we are also going to have to pay for an elaborate investigation into something that we all know never occurred just because the new president decrees it.  It's been just a week and we've become Fantasy Island.

Seriously, who are we?  And what have we become?

I can't presume to speak for us all, but I do believe an increasing number of my fellow Americans realize just how far off track we've gotten in an incredibly brief time and by our very own hand.  Accordingly, I feel compelled to appropriate our new president's campaign slogan to "Make America Great Again" and to repurpose it in the following ways:

• Make America kind again, a country that seeks to help all of its citizens to live a better life (if not really pursue the American Dream) rather than demonizing those who find themselves out of power at any given time or, for too many of our fellows, seemingly permanently
• Make American thoughtful again, so that our leaders - returning to being reality-based rather than partisan-deranged - are actually mindful of the long-term interests of the many constituencies they serve and are accordingly carefully responsive.
• Make America communal again, a place where we realize that our success is tied to our neighbors' and where we act on the truths that MLK taught us, including that we are all woven together in a single garment of destiny and that if we don't learn to live together as brothers and sisters we'll certainly perish as fools.
• Make America conversant again, a society in which we don't always agree but within which we can and do participate in a multi-faceted conversation as we listen to others and their perspectives, educate each other and seek to fashion solutions to our problems that benefit the many rather than the few.
• Make America open and embracing again, a country in which we realize that we're all immigrants, which means that we're all different yet have something to contribute, our diversity being our greatest strength, and in which every man, woman and child is our brother or sister rather than The Other.

These are just a few of the ways that we can Make America Great Again, but I'm sure that you could offer many, many more.  And now is surely the time to do so, as what we stand for is certainly becoming an ever more open question as the inhumanity and insanity of our choices begin to hit home in earnest.

Everyone individually and societies collectively make mistakes: this is a given.  The question is what are we going to do about this now, at this very - and critical, defining - moment?  In other words...

Who are we?  And what will we become?

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind.  I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.  I refuse to accept the idea of the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him.  I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.  I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

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

Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

1964 

As We Begin the New Year....

The chief beauty about time

is that you cannot waste it in advance.

The next year, the next day, the next hour

are lying ready for you,

as perfect, as unspoiled,

as if you had never wasted or misapplied

a single moment in all your life.

You can turn over a new leaf every hour

if you choose.

- Arnold Bennett, British author

January 1st: New Year's Day.  A chance to start anew ... with an entire year in the offing.  What a wonderful gift.  Now what can we make of it?

It's funny, but with the turning of the calendar we have developed the tradition to turn the page in our lives, to initiate a new chapter in our individual and collective stories.  And yet we give ourselves permission to deviate greatly from the previous narrative of our lives ... if only for however long we are able to escape our comfort zones.  I truly do hope that 2017 will be a year of personal transformation for you, not because it should or has to be, but because you want it to be so (if you do).

And I hope that 2017 is a transformational year for us all.  Certainly here in America there will be major political changes ... but the real opportunity, in my view, is in how we choose to address the social opportunities that these political changes will offer.  Will we revert or choose to go forward into an unknown but virtually limitless future?  The choice truly is ours to make....

How do you want the 2017 chapter of your life to be different?

I can say that the differences that I seek are mostly predictable and driven in part by what I've learned in 2016.  Among them:

• To be more present with and for my loved ones - In this ever more connected world, what truly matters doesn't change: the love of family and friends and the opportunity to luxuriate in it.  Accordingly, I'm making a pledge to turn off and tune out the world - how '60s of me, right? - in order to be fully present with my loved ones.  No texting or FaceBooking or being distracted in any other way while engaged with them.  The one exception: with permission/agreement, to google something that will aid a conversation.  Otherwise, old school all the way: let's talk - or sit quietly - and enjoy each other's company - and time - together.  For we know not when we'll have this gift again....
• To get in better physical shape - One of my biggest learnings in the past year is the feeling of my own mortality.  In part this is due to losing too many loved ones in 2016 and in part it's due to being too out of shape for too long.  Yes, as you age, your body may not work as well as it once did, but it shouldn't hurt nearly as much as mine does now, a legacy of too little investment in my physical health in the past decade.  In 2017, I must change this, not by overcompensating and becoming a workout fiend, but by finding a sustainable routine that contains far more exercise, a healthier diet, sufficient and restful sleep and an appreciable investment in activities that feed my soul.  (A large part of why I'm writing this blog today is in recognition and fulfillment of this last need and goal, to feed my soul.  I have always been inspired by sharing and hope that my doing so is beneficial to others as well....)
• To invest in learning and new life experiences - No, I probably won't chuck it all and become a world traveler - still have two kids at home/in various stages of schooling - so this will have to wait ... but this doesn't mean that I can't go somewhere I've never been or see loved ones whom I miss more often.  In fact, in order to increase my odds of success, I intend to start small: I'd like to take one trip to somewhere new with our family (or, truth be told, as much of it as we can reasonably assemble at a given time) and one with my wife this year.  And I'd like to make two trips to visit with loved ones whom I don't see often enough, especially those whose age suggests that I have less time than I would like.

There are a few more (perhaps more minor but nonetheless important) goals - like reading and reflecting more, like writing more, like cooking with and for my family and friends more, etc. - that I'll pursue as well, in addition to those few in the professional realm of my life.

And yet, as much as I would like my life to be appreciably different in 2017, there are some things that I hope will not change at all, like my commitment to being a loving family member and friend, like my commitment to being a highly contributory leader in the communities of which I'm a part, like my commitment to ever more exploration and evolution along my spiritual path, etc.  These essential parts of myself I expect to be the foundation to which the new and/or evolved is added.  And I'm thankful for this stable (but ever-evolving) core.  Just like I'm thankful for all of the wonderful souls who've touched and guided me in forming this core as well....

Finally, a concluding thought on the 'new beginnings' aspect of this day, starting with a question: how is this day different than all others/any other?  Truth be told, it's not ... which means that we can make the same choice - to start fresh and see what our God-given creativity can fashion - every day.  So, here's my thought and wish for you in 2017 and beyond: that you treat today as a chance to start over, and that you do so tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, and ... so that your life is a series of new beginnings, each different and yet as meaningful it can be....

And now we welcome the new year,

full of things that have never been.

- Rainier Maria Rilke