The Answer Is Love Love is the answer. No matter the problem, the answer is love. I believe that. I really do. But today we’re talking about Earth Day and its theme for this year, climate change. What does love have to do with that? How can love help? Not everyone thinks it will. In July, I wrote about the Dirtbag Left, angry lefties who enjoy calling names and throwing hateful gibes into the virtual world as much as do reactionary Republicans. In his article about the digital nature of the presidential election, Kevin Roose quotes Mark Provost, a manager with the Other98%, as saying that Joe Biden could capitalize…
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Spring, Coronavirus, and Pulling Together
Spring and COVID-19 Looking out my office window, I see sunshine brightening the green of the sprouting grass. Dandelions bloom, the dogwood tree leafs out, birds dart around the yard seeking sticks and down and bark to build nests that will shelter the eggs that hold new life. It is Spring, and the world is being made anew. But what kind of world will it be? With COVID-19 sweeping throughout the globe, we are facing new threats and new opportunities. Some people are frightened; some blasé, perhaps thinking nothing bad will ever happen to them. Yet it is not only the elderly and those with chronic illness who are at…
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The Power of Love Versus Hate
The Air You Breathe When you grow up feeling loved, you don’t notice it. At least not at first. After a while, you begin to understand your home is different from the homes of your friends. You realize that other mothers, for instance, don’t call their girls “dear darling daughter,” that sometimes they call them cruel names you never heard before, and they chastise them in front of you and invade their privacy, breeding shame and insecurity. As you come to understand this, you feel shocked. You start to be grateful that, though the polite stillness in your own home sometimes drives you crazy, and though you sometimes feel lonely…
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Honor, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11
Remembering Pearl Harbor Seventy-eight years ago, on December 7, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The strike destroyed ships, damaged airfields, and killed over 2,400 people. One thousand more were wounded. Called by President Roosevelt “a date which will live in infamy,” December 7, 1941 changed the course of history, bringing the United States into World War II. [1] Those who lived through it thought it would live in our memories forever. But time moves on. For most people alive today, Pearl Harbor is a blip in a history book or online article. Being closer to us in time, 9/11 feeds more anguish and anger in our country today than does the…
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Opinion, Fact, and Truth
Truth from Out of the Void At a Recovery Church circle a few months ago, someone asked, “What is truth?” “Truth is core; it’s how everything starts,” came the first answer. According to the Hebrew Scriptures, everything started with chaos. Over the deep spread “a formless void and darkness” (Gen 1:2). That chaotic vastness still thrums in the background of space. [1] Like the swirl of emotions that allows us to nurture bonds and love our children, this primal music is part of our being. We are stardust; we are the incipient chaos. Does truth reside in that wildness, in those feelings? Vital and compelling, they can lead us to…
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Shame, Shamelessness, and the Power of Love
The Evil of Shame The inquisitive engineer in our group asked, “Are love and shame opposites?” After a few moments of discussion, we tabled the topic until now. So here we are again, wondering how love and shame might be connected, or not. As I researched and reflected on this topic, I came to the conclusion that shame isn’t the opposite of love; shamelessness is. To understand shamelessness, however, we must first understand shame. Shame is that gut-wrenching experience of being found out, of having our nakedness – whether figurative or literal – revealed. Yes, we can feel shame in private, and we certainly can experience a fear of being…
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Easter and Earth Day
Easter and Dominion I write this on the day before Easter. Tomorrow, Christians around the world will celebrate the resurrection of a man who, by his act of being reborn, rendered death meaningless. Instead of life being an illusion, death became one. Most religions describe an afterlife, some continued existence for our souls once our bodies are gone. Many people find comfort in the belief that death is not the end. The story of an Easter that takes away death’s sting brings a similar sense of peace. Without a fall, however, there would be no resurrection. Once upon a time, Adam and Eve lived as if one with nature. Knowing…
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Privilege and Entitlement in Kat Howard’s “Unseen World”
The Privilege of Magic Only some people can perform magic. Like any privilege to which we are born, whether it be masculinity, whiteness, wealth, heterosexuality, or attractiveness, the ability to weave a spell and make it stick is not good or bad in and of itself, except that society does make it so. Therefore, most of us end up confusing an accident of birth with entitlement. Kat Howard explores this tension between privilege and entitlement in her novel, An Unkindness of Magicians. The magic community, called the Unseen World, is divided into houses. Every twenty years or so the houses hold the Turning to determine which of them will rule…
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The Chaos of Our Time, Listening, and Forgiveness
Chaos and the Naivete of Forgiveness Given the chaos breaking out across our nation and in the world, the rise of a hateful nationalism, and the brutal attacks on human decency and human lives that have been encouraged by our own president, it seems naive to write about listening and forgiveness. In less than a month there have been two major mass shootings; Christine Blasey Ford continues to receive death threats; our president has named Matthew Whitaker, a critic of the Mueller investigation, as “acting” Attorney General; and as he has always done, he undermines our democracy and foments crises that almost seem designed to divert our attention from important matters such as…
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The Journey of Empowerment
Freedom and Power Last week, I wrote about the freedom of acceptance, that which comes with surrender, forgiveness, death. No matter our circumstances, we can become a bit more free by letting go. Other kinds of freedom are connected with power. For instance, some of us have the freedom to make decisions about our own lives. Others of us have lived with freedom long enough that we recognize our emotions and feel comfortable expressing them. If we feel sad or angry, we can say so. Along with these freedoms are some that only people with external power have the luxury of exercising, such as the ability to disrupt and destroy…