Wednesday, November 21, 2007
News From Baghdad
No doubt you've noticed.
All the headlines on the front pages saying life in Baghdad is returning to normal. On the front page of yesterday's NY Times was a photo of a wedding party in Baghdad, suggesting that such happy celebrations could once again be carried out without fear of violence.
That the violence that has torn apart that small country and - by proxy - ours, might be lessening, is only good news. Whether one is against our Iraq adventure or not, we wish for an end to the nasty bloodshed.
Some suggest that this is an accommodation without agreement. The Shiites are in control but they are allowing the others some access to the spoils. So, while there has been no formal agreement about sharing of oil revenues, the revenue is in fact being shared on an informal basis. And despite no formal agreement about sharing government power, power is - at least on a limited basis - being shared among the warring parties.
Thomas Friedman - whom I respect even though I think he has let his hopes trump his usual good judgment on Iraq - says the NY Times Baghdad correspondent tells him there is a calm on the streets he hasn't seen since the beginning of the insurgency. He goes on to say that everyone is holding their collective breath, wondering, because the issues that triggered the violence are all still unresolved. He says people look ominously down every quiet alley wondering if and when the terror will burst forth again.
This morning I saw a podcast of Sheila Jackson, Congresswoman from Texas, in which she said that, now that the warring side as cooperating and violence is slowing, we can declare our objectives accomplished and bring the troops home to a well deserved celebration of a job well done. (She also suggested giving each returning soldier a check for $5,000, reminiscent of the 3 acres and a mule for freed slaves following the Civil War).
And there is growing conviction that the Democrats better develop - soon - a strategy for meeting what we all anticipate will be the Republican attempt to reignite American fears that have succeeded in electing Republicans in three of the last four elections. This time it will be Iran and her so-called nuclear threat and sending terrorists to Iraq to kill Americans.
So here are a few dilemmas we need to think about:
Do we dare - we Democrats, because I don't believe the Republicans have any serious intention of disengaging from Iraq - to declare victory and leave Iraq, knowing the likelihood of tribal violence - possibly spreading throughout the region - returning as soon as we withdraw, and with even worse consequences for the region?
Do we dare stare down the inevitable Republican fear-baiting on Iran in the coming presidential election? I hope so, because I think Obama's much maligned conviction that a president ought to talk to our enemies is the only hope we have of stemming our precipitous slide in the eyes of the world. I hope the Democratic presidential candidate will first stare down the fear that the Republicans can make him/her look like a wimp for talking rather than threatening. And then stare down the advisors who will be warning about the same fear.
The big unanswered question - because it has yet to be openly asked - is, what happens if we lose our foothold in the region that now supplies more than a quarter of the oil required for our energy needs?
Though no serious candidate has yet opened this huge can of worms, it is still out there. And, honestly, whether you think, as I do, that our ability to have our way in the world by military might and intimidation has finally been shown to be very limited - in Vietnam and in Iraq, until we begin to speak openly about the reality of why we attacked Iraq in the first place, it is impossible for us to begin to form some alternate policy.
We fought in Vietnam for ideological reasons. We believed Ho Chi Minh, because he was a Communist, was part of a worldwide challenge to the capitalist west. We were wrong. Our defeat, while humiliating and eroding of our prestige, turned out to be of no great long term consequence. George Bush himself showed up in Vietnam recently on a trade mission to that rapidly growing economic partner.
But we invaded Iraq because it is in the center of the world's largest oil reserves, reserves we are counting on for a long time to come. We are building the largest embassy we have anywhere else in the world in that small country, and three military bases so large they have shopping malls, multiplex theaters and spas. They signal our intention to be there in a big way for a long time.
If we were to be driven from that region as we were from Vietnam, it would have consequences beyond anything even the hyperbolic Bush/Cheney people have claimed.
I believe the reality is that the game is up. Whether it will take a century or a decade, our ability to maintain our lavish lives on oil imported from the middle east, is ending.
Where is the politician or party with the cojones and the vision to say so and propose modesty in our aims for the future, sacrifice while we put massive resources - as we did in the moon race - toward new energy sources, and an end to the excesses we have held up as the new American dream in lotteries and billionaire payoffs to a few financial moguls?
All the headlines on the front pages saying life in Baghdad is returning to normal. On the front page of yesterday's NY Times was a photo of a wedding party in Baghdad, suggesting that such happy celebrations could once again be carried out without fear of violence.
That the violence that has torn apart that small country and - by proxy - ours, might be lessening, is only good news. Whether one is against our Iraq adventure or not, we wish for an end to the nasty bloodshed.
Some suggest that this is an accommodation without agreement. The Shiites are in control but they are allowing the others some access to the spoils. So, while there has been no formal agreement about sharing of oil revenues, the revenue is in fact being shared on an informal basis. And despite no formal agreement about sharing government power, power is - at least on a limited basis - being shared among the warring parties.
Thomas Friedman - whom I respect even though I think he has let his hopes trump his usual good judgment on Iraq - says the NY Times Baghdad correspondent tells him there is a calm on the streets he hasn't seen since the beginning of the insurgency. He goes on to say that everyone is holding their collective breath, wondering, because the issues that triggered the violence are all still unresolved. He says people look ominously down every quiet alley wondering if and when the terror will burst forth again.
This morning I saw a podcast of Sheila Jackson, Congresswoman from Texas, in which she said that, now that the warring side as cooperating and violence is slowing, we can declare our objectives accomplished and bring the troops home to a well deserved celebration of a job well done. (She also suggested giving each returning soldier a check for $5,000, reminiscent of the 3 acres and a mule for freed slaves following the Civil War).
And there is growing conviction that the Democrats better develop - soon - a strategy for meeting what we all anticipate will be the Republican attempt to reignite American fears that have succeeded in electing Republicans in three of the last four elections. This time it will be Iran and her so-called nuclear threat and sending terrorists to Iraq to kill Americans.
So here are a few dilemmas we need to think about:
Do we dare - we Democrats, because I don't believe the Republicans have any serious intention of disengaging from Iraq - to declare victory and leave Iraq, knowing the likelihood of tribal violence - possibly spreading throughout the region - returning as soon as we withdraw, and with even worse consequences for the region?
Do we dare stare down the inevitable Republican fear-baiting on Iran in the coming presidential election? I hope so, because I think Obama's much maligned conviction that a president ought to talk to our enemies is the only hope we have of stemming our precipitous slide in the eyes of the world. I hope the Democratic presidential candidate will first stare down the fear that the Republicans can make him/her look like a wimp for talking rather than threatening. And then stare down the advisors who will be warning about the same fear.
The big unanswered question - because it has yet to be openly asked - is, what happens if we lose our foothold in the region that now supplies more than a quarter of the oil required for our energy needs?
Though no serious candidate has yet opened this huge can of worms, it is still out there. And, honestly, whether you think, as I do, that our ability to have our way in the world by military might and intimidation has finally been shown to be very limited - in Vietnam and in Iraq, until we begin to speak openly about the reality of why we attacked Iraq in the first place, it is impossible for us to begin to form some alternate policy.
We fought in Vietnam for ideological reasons. We believed Ho Chi Minh, because he was a Communist, was part of a worldwide challenge to the capitalist west. We were wrong. Our defeat, while humiliating and eroding of our prestige, turned out to be of no great long term consequence. George Bush himself showed up in Vietnam recently on a trade mission to that rapidly growing economic partner.
But we invaded Iraq because it is in the center of the world's largest oil reserves, reserves we are counting on for a long time to come. We are building the largest embassy we have anywhere else in the world in that small country, and three military bases so large they have shopping malls, multiplex theaters and spas. They signal our intention to be there in a big way for a long time.
If we were to be driven from that region as we were from Vietnam, it would have consequences beyond anything even the hyperbolic Bush/Cheney people have claimed.
I believe the reality is that the game is up. Whether it will take a century or a decade, our ability to maintain our lavish lives on oil imported from the middle east, is ending.
Where is the politician or party with the cojones and the vision to say so and propose modesty in our aims for the future, sacrifice while we put massive resources - as we did in the moon race - toward new energy sources, and an end to the excesses we have held up as the new American dream in lotteries and billionaire payoffs to a few financial moguls?
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
An Early Christmas Wish
Form the time I was 14 and 13,000 miles from home on Christmas - my family lived in the Philippines and I was in boarding school in this country - I have hated Christmas.
I can't remember how I felt about it before that, but the loneliness and sense of desolation I always seem to have when the days are short, have combined to make me grit my teeth and just get through it.
The 30 years I was a parish priest I presided over one of the significant pieces of Christmas for church- going families, and for a lot of families who didn't ordinarily go to church but chose to on Christmas. It kept me busy, which was welcome diversion, but it didn't keep me from being Scrooge at home. My family begged me to at least work to remain neutral instead of hostile, so they might have a shot at a decent celebration.
Since I have been retired I have been able by and large to adopt that neutral stance, though, perhaps by habit, my family still watches me with suspicion as the time approaches.
Today I had lunch with a friend who is a screen and play writer. He told me he is working on a play about a man who is retired and lives in a modest house that has a fantastic view. (He didn't say, but since we were having lunch in a seaside town in S. California, I assume the view is of the ocean.) His neighbor sells his house which is between the man and his view, and the new owners immediately tear it down to build a new, tall house that will block the view the man in the play cherishes.
My friend told me that he thinks he has decided to make the man a retired cleric, and that I am the inspiration for the character. He went on to say that the character has lost whatever conventional faith he may have had, and is opening himself to new and unorthodox possibilities as he goes through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief over the loss of the view he has loved for many decades.
It can't be much of a secret to any any longer that Christmas was adapted during the reign of Constantine to replace the pagan festival of the solstice, the celebration marking the shortest day and the beginning of the return of sun and warmth.
Although my 30 years in the parish taught me that many - maybe most - people choose to cling to what began as metaphor and symbol as if they were literal representations of reality, the depression that becomes rampant at Christmas (a psychologist friend emailed me today that Christmas is the highest suicide day of the year), has to do with trying to make life conform to religious myth.
When we acknowledge that our symbols and ceremonies are intended as obeisance to archetypes, giving vent to forces in us we have yet to decipher, the pressure to protect them against debunkers disappears.
Even Santa Claus - adapted by Disney in the 1930s as a culture friendly version of the more austere St. Nicholas - can be let go by children as they grow up, when their parents are comfortable letting them discard myths that no longer bear weight.
My (likely futile) wish this approaching Christmas is that we might enjoy the party, mark the solstice, even welcome the new son (sun, get it?) without that fierce need to protect the truth or reality of it.
I can't remember how I felt about it before that, but the loneliness and sense of desolation I always seem to have when the days are short, have combined to make me grit my teeth and just get through it.
The 30 years I was a parish priest I presided over one of the significant pieces of Christmas for church- going families, and for a lot of families who didn't ordinarily go to church but chose to on Christmas. It kept me busy, which was welcome diversion, but it didn't keep me from being Scrooge at home. My family begged me to at least work to remain neutral instead of hostile, so they might have a shot at a decent celebration.
Since I have been retired I have been able by and large to adopt that neutral stance, though, perhaps by habit, my family still watches me with suspicion as the time approaches.
Today I had lunch with a friend who is a screen and play writer. He told me he is working on a play about a man who is retired and lives in a modest house that has a fantastic view. (He didn't say, but since we were having lunch in a seaside town in S. California, I assume the view is of the ocean.) His neighbor sells his house which is between the man and his view, and the new owners immediately tear it down to build a new, tall house that will block the view the man in the play cherishes.
My friend told me that he thinks he has decided to make the man a retired cleric, and that I am the inspiration for the character. He went on to say that the character has lost whatever conventional faith he may have had, and is opening himself to new and unorthodox possibilities as he goes through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief over the loss of the view he has loved for many decades.
It can't be much of a secret to any any longer that Christmas was adapted during the reign of Constantine to replace the pagan festival of the solstice, the celebration marking the shortest day and the beginning of the return of sun and warmth.
Although my 30 years in the parish taught me that many - maybe most - people choose to cling to what began as metaphor and symbol as if they were literal representations of reality, the depression that becomes rampant at Christmas (a psychologist friend emailed me today that Christmas is the highest suicide day of the year), has to do with trying to make life conform to religious myth.
When we acknowledge that our symbols and ceremonies are intended as obeisance to archetypes, giving vent to forces in us we have yet to decipher, the pressure to protect them against debunkers disappears.
Even Santa Claus - adapted by Disney in the 1930s as a culture friendly version of the more austere St. Nicholas - can be let go by children as they grow up, when their parents are comfortable letting them discard myths that no longer bear weight.
My (likely futile) wish this approaching Christmas is that we might enjoy the party, mark the solstice, even welcome the new son (sun, get it?) without that fierce need to protect the truth or reality of it.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Vietnam
We are putting the finishing touches on plans to spend Christmas in Hanoi.
Friends my age have all sorts of responses when they learn where we are going. The most honest may have been one who said he spent so much of his creative energy trying to keep from going to Vietnam back when we were of an age, that the thought of going there still gives him the shakes.
Another - a super capitalist who runs a couple of mutual funds - emailed me that he has been to Hanoi and thinks it is a fantastic city. He said he bets I will want to stay longer than the 10 days we have planned. He also said I should be sure to go to the museum where they have John McCain's parachute and boots.
A friend who was in Navy intelligence during that war said he has never been to Hanoi but he knows every inch of it.
As one might expect, our children - son and daughter-in-law, who live in Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra (check out www.oaklybrooks.com/blog) - provide the impetus for a trip I would surely never otherwise take.
But now that we are going, i am psyched.
Reading the names of the places that I once knew so well from reports of our last futile war, brings a lot back.
How I would love to think we might be trading partners with Iraq in 40 years as we now are with Vietnam. And that Iraq might be prospering.
But, while there are many parallels between the two, most of them are about us, not the other country. We seem to have learned nothing about the impossibility of defeating an insurgency when we are the invaders.
Christmas in Hanoi. Do you suppose it could ramp up my hope for what lies ahead?
My financial advisor just reassured me that our money will not run out before we have passed 100.
Friends my age have all sorts of responses when they learn where we are going. The most honest may have been one who said he spent so much of his creative energy trying to keep from going to Vietnam back when we were of an age, that the thought of going there still gives him the shakes.
Another - a super capitalist who runs a couple of mutual funds - emailed me that he has been to Hanoi and thinks it is a fantastic city. He said he bets I will want to stay longer than the 10 days we have planned. He also said I should be sure to go to the museum where they have John McCain's parachute and boots.
A friend who was in Navy intelligence during that war said he has never been to Hanoi but he knows every inch of it.
As one might expect, our children - son and daughter-in-law, who live in Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra (check out www.oaklybrooks.com/blog) - provide the impetus for a trip I would surely never otherwise take.
But now that we are going, i am psyched.
Reading the names of the places that I once knew so well from reports of our last futile war, brings a lot back.
How I would love to think we might be trading partners with Iraq in 40 years as we now are with Vietnam. And that Iraq might be prospering.
But, while there are many parallels between the two, most of them are about us, not the other country. We seem to have learned nothing about the impossibility of defeating an insurgency when we are the invaders.
Christmas in Hanoi. Do you suppose it could ramp up my hope for what lies ahead?
My financial advisor just reassured me that our money will not run out before we have passed 100.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Another try
I guess I'll keep pounding away at this until someone presuades me I've got it wrong.
We humans - who, when measured in geological time, arrived very recently - are a phenomenon, alongside all other phenomena, produced by the forces of the universe that have birthed everything else.
Although there is much about us that is particular to us - perhaps mind/consciousness, though we are not sure whether cimpanzees may also have it - we are not different in origin or eventual outcome.
We are a species for a season.
We are embedded in the system - the cosmos - and expecting to be able to stand aside and see the whole system is like trying to take out your eyeballs and stare at yourself.
How or when we may finish our time on the planet no one can know.
We may be able to extend our stay - and enhance it - if we could ever begin to understand ourselves as a part of it rather than as either its finest product or its master.
We humans - who, when measured in geological time, arrived very recently - are a phenomenon, alongside all other phenomena, produced by the forces of the universe that have birthed everything else.
Although there is much about us that is particular to us - perhaps mind/consciousness, though we are not sure whether cimpanzees may also have it - we are not different in origin or eventual outcome.
We are a species for a season.
We are embedded in the system - the cosmos - and expecting to be able to stand aside and see the whole system is like trying to take out your eyeballs and stare at yourself.
How or when we may finish our time on the planet no one can know.
We may be able to extend our stay - and enhance it - if we could ever begin to understand ourselves as a part of it rather than as either its finest product or its master.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Families
A friend called recently to talk about the looming crunch her family was heading for over Thanksgiving.
Seems the extended family - children, their spouse and grandchildren - were all going to gather in one place for a big family Thanksgiving. Since they are scattered across the country - and the world - it required logistical planning equal to our invasion of Iraq.
And it is looking as if it might resemble the way that invasion has since played out.
My friend was feeling particularly beleaguered, wondering why his family couldn't let go of their chronic issues, built up over generations and decades - and just enjoy the rare moment of being together like other happy families.
Having spent thirty years of my life as a parish pastor - walking through countless family feuds with parishioners - I reassured my friend that his family was nothing if not typical.
Big events, birth, death, Christmas, weddings, Thanksgiving, act as catalyst for all that remains unresolved. And - no matter how happy - every family has a mountain of unresolved stuff.
So why do we all got to such ends to get together? The day before Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day of the year. I bet you have your own stories about the agonies of travel, and of anger and sadness at wondering whether it was worth the effort.
Well, I am happy to settle the matter.
It's worth it.
Because it's the only game in town.
Although who doesn't prefer happy time to difficult ones, the reality is that there is simply no one on earth with whom true intimacy is more possible than one's family. Because your family is made up of people who know you from the inside, naked and vulnerable.
Which is the reason there is so much conflict. As we try so hard to protect ourselves from those against whom there is no protection.
And need not be.
But that comes a little harder. Believing that we can be loved by someone who knows more about us than we wish.
But, search to the ends of the earth and we will never find anyone with whom such powerful - and scary - intimacy is possible.
So the choice becomes, run the risk, or keep your distance.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Seems the extended family - children, their spouse and grandchildren - were all going to gather in one place for a big family Thanksgiving. Since they are scattered across the country - and the world - it required logistical planning equal to our invasion of Iraq.
And it is looking as if it might resemble the way that invasion has since played out.
My friend was feeling particularly beleaguered, wondering why his family couldn't let go of their chronic issues, built up over generations and decades - and just enjoy the rare moment of being together like other happy families.
Having spent thirty years of my life as a parish pastor - walking through countless family feuds with parishioners - I reassured my friend that his family was nothing if not typical.
Big events, birth, death, Christmas, weddings, Thanksgiving, act as catalyst for all that remains unresolved. And - no matter how happy - every family has a mountain of unresolved stuff.
So why do we all got to such ends to get together? The day before Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day of the year. I bet you have your own stories about the agonies of travel, and of anger and sadness at wondering whether it was worth the effort.
Well, I am happy to settle the matter.
It's worth it.
Because it's the only game in town.
Although who doesn't prefer happy time to difficult ones, the reality is that there is simply no one on earth with whom true intimacy is more possible than one's family. Because your family is made up of people who know you from the inside, naked and vulnerable.
Which is the reason there is so much conflict. As we try so hard to protect ourselves from those against whom there is no protection.
And need not be.
But that comes a little harder. Believing that we can be loved by someone who knows more about us than we wish.
But, search to the ends of the earth and we will never find anyone with whom such powerful - and scary - intimacy is possible.
So the choice becomes, run the risk, or keep your distance.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Choices
I guess i just basically abhor war. Probably am afraid of it.
I recognize that human life seems clearly to sponsor it, even though most political rhetoric is about making peace.
And I even believe there are moments in which - were I in charge - I might wage war. Although one must go back to root underlying causes, the Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were such moments.
I am not sure about Korea, but I feel certain that Vietnam and Iraq are both instances of stupid and self-defeating wars, engaged in by leaders who either didn't understand the history of those places or - for reasons we may never fully know - felt the need, politically, to make a war.
I have been deeply opposed to our present Iraq war, both in its conception and in its unfolding. It was a bad idea to begin, and our management since we invaded has been among the worst international train wrecks in human history.
Now, let me take an entirely different tack.
We Americans have enjoyed - except for our persistent pockets of poverty - unparalleled prosperity since 1950. Both in how well we live and in how our living standards compare with the rest of the world (though this is changing, and fast) we have been the world's fat cats.
And, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have been unchallenged in world dominance.
It is true that - in the increasingly global marketplace - military, and even financial power do not seem necessarily to cow the rest of the world. Because nuclear weapons are too scary to use, local guerilla insurgencies can tie up a great power as they did in Vietnam and are in Iraq.
A group of people (I have to restrain myself to keep from calling them a cabal) decided when the Soviet Union died, that the United States had a brief moment in which she could, if she were willing, establish her world dominance in a way that would preclude any nation seriously challenging that dominance for the forseeable future.
One of the pieces required to complete the puzzle of world dominance was oil. Because we had tapped out our reserves, and because our economy would require more oil in the future in order to grow, and because China and India and Brazil, with huge populations, were beginning to take a larger role in the world economy, we needed to ensure our oil supply before they were in a position to challenge us as they, too, looked to feed their voracious and growing energy needs.
Thus, look for an opportunity to make a big military move somewhere in the middle east, to secure our dominance in the region that sits atop the world's largest oil reserves.
Iraq was never about Saddam nor WMD. Had the issue been purely about the struggle against terrorism we would have kept the focus on Afghanistan. The reason we didn't is both because their oil reserves were not significant enough, and because the experience of the British showed us the impossibility of dominanting them.
So we attacked Iraq, thinking we could easily subdue their weak army (which we did), and set up bases that would serve us for generations as we protected our access to their oil. Turns out we made a bad move in thinking we could sustain our presence without much trouble.
But it seems we have built in Baghdad the largest embassy anywhere in the world, and three military bases that are medium sized American cities. So, even though the war has gone badly, the objective continues to move ahead. Some even suggest that Bush/Cheney wanted this debacle that would make it necessary for us to remain there for a long time to come, way beyond this presidency.
The question becomes: do we want to begin to ratchet back our economic hegemony, or are we willing to make war the means by which we maintain it?
It may be that war will not accomplish that. But, given that means other than the burnng of fossil fuel for providing the energy to run a great country, are not even seriously on the radar screen yet, there is no means other than war to ensure we have the oil we need.
No politician, not even Dennis Kucinich, dares to ask the question outright.
But we had better.
I recognize that human life seems clearly to sponsor it, even though most political rhetoric is about making peace.
And I even believe there are moments in which - were I in charge - I might wage war. Although one must go back to root underlying causes, the Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were such moments.
I am not sure about Korea, but I feel certain that Vietnam and Iraq are both instances of stupid and self-defeating wars, engaged in by leaders who either didn't understand the history of those places or - for reasons we may never fully know - felt the need, politically, to make a war.
I have been deeply opposed to our present Iraq war, both in its conception and in its unfolding. It was a bad idea to begin, and our management since we invaded has been among the worst international train wrecks in human history.
Now, let me take an entirely different tack.
We Americans have enjoyed - except for our persistent pockets of poverty - unparalleled prosperity since 1950. Both in how well we live and in how our living standards compare with the rest of the world (though this is changing, and fast) we have been the world's fat cats.
And, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have been unchallenged in world dominance.
It is true that - in the increasingly global marketplace - military, and even financial power do not seem necessarily to cow the rest of the world. Because nuclear weapons are too scary to use, local guerilla insurgencies can tie up a great power as they did in Vietnam and are in Iraq.
A group of people (I have to restrain myself to keep from calling them a cabal) decided when the Soviet Union died, that the United States had a brief moment in which she could, if she were willing, establish her world dominance in a way that would preclude any nation seriously challenging that dominance for the forseeable future.
One of the pieces required to complete the puzzle of world dominance was oil. Because we had tapped out our reserves, and because our economy would require more oil in the future in order to grow, and because China and India and Brazil, with huge populations, were beginning to take a larger role in the world economy, we needed to ensure our oil supply before they were in a position to challenge us as they, too, looked to feed their voracious and growing energy needs.
Thus, look for an opportunity to make a big military move somewhere in the middle east, to secure our dominance in the region that sits atop the world's largest oil reserves.
Iraq was never about Saddam nor WMD. Had the issue been purely about the struggle against terrorism we would have kept the focus on Afghanistan. The reason we didn't is both because their oil reserves were not significant enough, and because the experience of the British showed us the impossibility of dominanting them.
So we attacked Iraq, thinking we could easily subdue their weak army (which we did), and set up bases that would serve us for generations as we protected our access to their oil. Turns out we made a bad move in thinking we could sustain our presence without much trouble.
But it seems we have built in Baghdad the largest embassy anywhere in the world, and three military bases that are medium sized American cities. So, even though the war has gone badly, the objective continues to move ahead. Some even suggest that Bush/Cheney wanted this debacle that would make it necessary for us to remain there for a long time to come, way beyond this presidency.
The question becomes: do we want to begin to ratchet back our economic hegemony, or are we willing to make war the means by which we maintain it?
It may be that war will not accomplish that. But, given that means other than the burnng of fossil fuel for providing the energy to run a great country, are not even seriously on the radar screen yet, there is no means other than war to ensure we have the oil we need.
No politician, not even Dennis Kucinich, dares to ask the question outright.
But we had better.
Embrace
Embrace
as I approach the end
never sure the end of what, certainly of my span
birth - death
the issue begins to come into ever sharper focus
and that surely is because I can see that this I that
approaches
begins, like a long-ago star whose fading once-upon-a-time
light
faintly but surely makes its mark on the Hubble miracle
that’s giving us a glimpse of what those psalmists were singing
about,
this I gracefully begins redistributing, diffusing the light that
organized so wonderfully a few decades ago into and
I
that danced and swam, rested, wept, worked, wondered,
wished
cheated, fucked, forgot, ate, shat, laughed, tripped, hoped,
stank, abandoned and embraced, chewed, choked,
vomited
has been winding down, its light dimming
no longer blinding
so it can now be seen with the
naked
eye
funny to say the focus becomes sharper because the edges become more
fuzzy
blurred which is why it can be looked at straight on with the most
fragile eyes
and as it fades it feels less like
my
or I
and more like, well like
can you come up with an image that causes your boundaries to
blur
and where there has been anxiety and disappointment,
admit ecstasy?
Maybe orgasm?
That’s it. Ecstasy
exploding, exceeding, excreting
exiting into
embrace
©2007Blayney Colmore
as I approach the end
never sure the end of what, certainly of my span
birth - death
the issue begins to come into ever sharper focus
and that surely is because I can see that this I that
approaches
begins, like a long-ago star whose fading once-upon-a-time
light
faintly but surely makes its mark on the Hubble miracle
that’s giving us a glimpse of what those psalmists were singing
about,
this I gracefully begins redistributing, diffusing the light that
organized so wonderfully a few decades ago into and
I
that danced and swam, rested, wept, worked, wondered,
wished
cheated, fucked, forgot, ate, shat, laughed, tripped, hoped,
stank, abandoned and embraced, chewed, choked,
vomited
has been winding down, its light dimming
no longer blinding
so it can now be seen with the
naked
eye
funny to say the focus becomes sharper because the edges become more
fuzzy
blurred which is why it can be looked at straight on with the most
fragile eyes
and as it fades it feels less like
my
or I
and more like, well like
can you come up with an image that causes your boundaries to
blur
and where there has been anxiety and disappointment,
admit ecstasy?
Maybe orgasm?
That’s it. Ecstasy
exploding, exceeding, excreting
exiting into
embrace
©2007Blayney Colmore
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Social Climbing
Naomi Klein, writing in The Nation, reports: "In less than two years, the
lease on the largest and most important US military base in Latin America
will run out. The base is in Manta, Ecuador, and Rafael Correa, the
country's leftist president, has pronounced that he will renew the lease 'on
one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami - an Ecuadorean base. If
there is no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely
they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States.'"
*****
Monday, as I walked along the shore, three Mexican men shimmied up adjoining 50 foot palm trees to trim the fronds. As they climbed they chattered in that voice that somehow sounds cheerful to my Gringo ears.
(My father, raised in Puerto Rico, visited us in San Diego. I found him one morning in rapid-fire conversation with the gardener next door. “Finally,” he said later, “people who speak proper Spanish.”)
If one of those fronds was to break loose in a wind storm and hit you, it could be the end of you. Made me dizzy watching the brave men cut them.
Despite being everyone’s symbol for southern California, the palm is not native here. There is one rare species found in a few desert oases that grew here. The rest are all introduced.
The same is true of the eucalyptus. Brought here from Australia to make railroad ties, it proved too soft. But it loves it here. A menace in the fires, pockets of sap collect under its bark and when the fire hits the tree, the sap, like a hand gernade, explodes, sending an inferno into neighboring vegetation.
Considering those men at their acrobatic job, I wondered if, as we reconsider the need to build safeguards into the economy, we might also become a little more modest about how we try to manage nature.
A friend visited us in Vermont just after I put up a bluebird box. I had watched excitedly a pair of bluebirds visit and then seem to move in. But the day my friend arrived war had broken out in the back field. Small birds dive-bombing each other as they flew erratic circles around the house.
My friend, a gentle nature lover, takes care of the bluebird boxes in his town in suburban Chicago. “Those are English sparrows attacking the bluebirds. They were brought here a hundred years ago as pets, got loose, and have become a predatory menace. They will kill a bluebird family in their nest. When I find one in a bluebird box, I strangle it.”
If you drive 20 miles south of here into Mexico, it’s as if you have driven into another climate zone. And, because of irrigation and elaborate planting, you have. (Curiously, irrigation has raised the humidity in San Diego. Our natural annual rainfall is in the single digits. )
It would be wrong to say that we have disrupted nature. We are a part of nature. What we do becomes part of what the planet must learn to cope with.
Which raises the question of mind/consciousness, our proudest feat, that has made us able to rearrange the world in astonishing ways.
And has perhaps tricked us into thinking we can step out of nature, fulfilled Archimedes’ dream, finding the lever we can use to lift the earth.
Mind/consciousness could yet turn out to be a fascinating experiment that, because it supports a chimera – the illusion that we had taken a step out of the process that produced us - proves to be a wrong turn. Our fatal flaw.
Yesterday, after several days of dire predictions ( a couple of years ago it was announced that San Diego now has the world’s most sophisticated weather predicting technology) of a two day storm that was going to wreak havoc here, a night of gentle rain – 1/10” – gave way to a cloudless sky.
lease on the largest and most important US military base in Latin America
will run out. The base is in Manta, Ecuador, and Rafael Correa, the
country's leftist president, has pronounced that he will renew the lease 'on
one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami - an Ecuadorean base. If
there is no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely
they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States.'"
*****
Monday, as I walked along the shore, three Mexican men shimmied up adjoining 50 foot palm trees to trim the fronds. As they climbed they chattered in that voice that somehow sounds cheerful to my Gringo ears.
(My father, raised in Puerto Rico, visited us in San Diego. I found him one morning in rapid-fire conversation with the gardener next door. “Finally,” he said later, “people who speak proper Spanish.”)
If one of those fronds was to break loose in a wind storm and hit you, it could be the end of you. Made me dizzy watching the brave men cut them.
Despite being everyone’s symbol for southern California, the palm is not native here. There is one rare species found in a few desert oases that grew here. The rest are all introduced.
The same is true of the eucalyptus. Brought here from Australia to make railroad ties, it proved too soft. But it loves it here. A menace in the fires, pockets of sap collect under its bark and when the fire hits the tree, the sap, like a hand gernade, explodes, sending an inferno into neighboring vegetation.
Considering those men at their acrobatic job, I wondered if, as we reconsider the need to build safeguards into the economy, we might also become a little more modest about how we try to manage nature.
A friend visited us in Vermont just after I put up a bluebird box. I had watched excitedly a pair of bluebirds visit and then seem to move in. But the day my friend arrived war had broken out in the back field. Small birds dive-bombing each other as they flew erratic circles around the house.
My friend, a gentle nature lover, takes care of the bluebird boxes in his town in suburban Chicago. “Those are English sparrows attacking the bluebirds. They were brought here a hundred years ago as pets, got loose, and have become a predatory menace. They will kill a bluebird family in their nest. When I find one in a bluebird box, I strangle it.”
If you drive 20 miles south of here into Mexico, it’s as if you have driven into another climate zone. And, because of irrigation and elaborate planting, you have. (Curiously, irrigation has raised the humidity in San Diego. Our natural annual rainfall is in the single digits. )
It would be wrong to say that we have disrupted nature. We are a part of nature. What we do becomes part of what the planet must learn to cope with.
Which raises the question of mind/consciousness, our proudest feat, that has made us able to rearrange the world in astonishing ways.
And has perhaps tricked us into thinking we can step out of nature, fulfilled Archimedes’ dream, finding the lever we can use to lift the earth.
Mind/consciousness could yet turn out to be a fascinating experiment that, because it supports a chimera – the illusion that we had taken a step out of the process that produced us - proves to be a wrong turn. Our fatal flaw.
Yesterday, after several days of dire predictions ( a couple of years ago it was announced that San Diego now has the world’s most sophisticated weather predicting technology) of a two day storm that was going to wreak havoc here, a night of gentle rain – 1/10” – gave way to a cloudless sky.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Urban Garden
Lacey and I take a walk most weeks that winds through several seemingly different environments that exist side by side.
The walk is about 6 miles and can take us anywhere from 2 hours to close to 3.
We start along the beach. If the tide isn't too high we can go for a mile before we begin a climb up some cliffs of scruffy vegetation, at the top of which sits the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. I have been told that Ellen Browning Scripps - the benefactress without whom La Jolla would be a totally different community - suggested putting the Institute up on that bluff because it was a desolate piece of land that no one else would ever care about. My guess is that the Institute could sell their campus to a developer for several billion dollars.
As we crest the steep hill we come to a stand of Torrey Pines - a species of tree I believe exists nowhere else on earth - before coming to two small, simple but elegant cottages that are used for conferences. Someone with foresight got them onto the National Registry so they cannot be either sold or altered. Each time we pass by them I dream of living in one of them, looking from the bluff, over the drought tolerant plants to the west and the mighty Pacific.
If you turn around and go down a couple of steps, you will find a plain wood sign on which is carved in letters that are eroding but still faintly legible, the astonishing news that the first inhabitants of this land were La Jolla Indians and that carbon dating of remnants have placed them there several thousand years before the Common Era.
After passing the cottages we walk up a steep concrete drive that services a big 70s style building that houses the National Fisheries Institute. Up another steep bank barely held in place by scruffy plants intended to prevent occasional rain from washing it away, we walk alongside a bend in a road that connects the village of La Jolla with the University of California, Sand Diego.
The University came here in the mid 60s and - overnight - transformed the sleepy village of retired military into a major academic watering hole. Before the University came the realtors had a covenant - I have never been able to find out whether it was written or verbal - that they would not sell houses to Jews or blacks. The day the Uinversity opened, Angela Davis and Herbert Marcuse were their new neighbors.
At the top of that hill we walk out onto a bluff that overlooks legendary Black's Beach. Legendary among surfers and nudists. The bluff has been transformed into a cul de sac with a handful of houses that bring prices in the tens of millions. Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcom, has recently moved into the house we have watched being built over the past five years.
Yesterday, as we turned the corner at the top of the hill encrusted with Eucalyptus trees, we stopped at a usual resting spot and found that someone had planted - on a rare piece of undeveloped land that we have often wondered about - a beautiful, organic, drought tolerant garden.
As we leaned on the fence admiring it, a man came from a neighboring house and called out, "What do you think?"
We were so pleased, so overcome by this unexpected and unlikely garden, we had a hard time responding to him.
"My son is doing this as a hobby," he said. He's got a big bee hive over there behind that shed. We bought this land a few years ago to keep it from having some big McMansion built on it. I couldn't think what to do with it until my son suggested this."
One imagines being both unimaginably rich and using one's wealth to improve the planet rather than to further gouge it. But such a person rarely exists.
It's way too late to hope that La Jolla and southern California might turn aside from the madness and greed that has caused traffic and humans to clog this beautiful coast, squander the sparse water and pollute the ocean. Our species, when we are drawn to a place like this, are like cancer cells stealthily invading the healthy cells and then growing insanely, without a manageable plan, until the out of control growth overwhelms the original inhabitants.
But so many people I have known with intractable cancer have occasional moments of grace that remind one how beautiful their landscape once was. And this garden provided such a moment for us.
The walk is about 6 miles and can take us anywhere from 2 hours to close to 3.
We start along the beach. If the tide isn't too high we can go for a mile before we begin a climb up some cliffs of scruffy vegetation, at the top of which sits the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. I have been told that Ellen Browning Scripps - the benefactress without whom La Jolla would be a totally different community - suggested putting the Institute up on that bluff because it was a desolate piece of land that no one else would ever care about. My guess is that the Institute could sell their campus to a developer for several billion dollars.
As we crest the steep hill we come to a stand of Torrey Pines - a species of tree I believe exists nowhere else on earth - before coming to two small, simple but elegant cottages that are used for conferences. Someone with foresight got them onto the National Registry so they cannot be either sold or altered. Each time we pass by them I dream of living in one of them, looking from the bluff, over the drought tolerant plants to the west and the mighty Pacific.
If you turn around and go down a couple of steps, you will find a plain wood sign on which is carved in letters that are eroding but still faintly legible, the astonishing news that the first inhabitants of this land were La Jolla Indians and that carbon dating of remnants have placed them there several thousand years before the Common Era.
After passing the cottages we walk up a steep concrete drive that services a big 70s style building that houses the National Fisheries Institute. Up another steep bank barely held in place by scruffy plants intended to prevent occasional rain from washing it away, we walk alongside a bend in a road that connects the village of La Jolla with the University of California, Sand Diego.
The University came here in the mid 60s and - overnight - transformed the sleepy village of retired military into a major academic watering hole. Before the University came the realtors had a covenant - I have never been able to find out whether it was written or verbal - that they would not sell houses to Jews or blacks. The day the Uinversity opened, Angela Davis and Herbert Marcuse were their new neighbors.
At the top of that hill we walk out onto a bluff that overlooks legendary Black's Beach. Legendary among surfers and nudists. The bluff has been transformed into a cul de sac with a handful of houses that bring prices in the tens of millions. Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcom, has recently moved into the house we have watched being built over the past five years.
Yesterday, as we turned the corner at the top of the hill encrusted with Eucalyptus trees, we stopped at a usual resting spot and found that someone had planted - on a rare piece of undeveloped land that we have often wondered about - a beautiful, organic, drought tolerant garden.
As we leaned on the fence admiring it, a man came from a neighboring house and called out, "What do you think?"
We were so pleased, so overcome by this unexpected and unlikely garden, we had a hard time responding to him.
"My son is doing this as a hobby," he said. He's got a big bee hive over there behind that shed. We bought this land a few years ago to keep it from having some big McMansion built on it. I couldn't think what to do with it until my son suggested this."
One imagines being both unimaginably rich and using one's wealth to improve the planet rather than to further gouge it. But such a person rarely exists.
It's way too late to hope that La Jolla and southern California might turn aside from the madness and greed that has caused traffic and humans to clog this beautiful coast, squander the sparse water and pollute the ocean. Our species, when we are drawn to a place like this, are like cancer cells stealthily invading the healthy cells and then growing insanely, without a manageable plan, until the out of control growth overwhelms the original inhabitants.
But so many people I have known with intractable cancer have occasional moments of grace that remind one how beautiful their landscape once was. And this garden provided such a moment for us.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Impeach Cheney?
I got an email today from a young guy I really like and admire suggesting that the effort to impeach Cheney - which up until now I have regarded as the current equivalent of tilting at windmills - may actually have traction.
Ever since the impeachment of Clinton for his oval office blow job I have been worried that we were going to turn impeachment - surely one of the most drastic pieces the founding forebears built into our political system - as just one more empty means of harrassing the political opposition.
But Dennis Kucinich - who can't make any headway as a presidential candidate - has introduced an impeachment resolution that has somehow actually made its way to the floor and attracted a lot of votes.
I signed on.
It still worries me. If the move actually succeeded - or even got a serious hearing - you can be sure it would so enrage Republicans that if we were to be so lucky as to elect a Democratic president next year, they would quickly move to figure out some way to pay back for it.
But it may well be worth the risk.
I used to think Dick Cheney was power mad, a megalomaniac who intimidates his opponents and his supposed boss.
I still think that, but I have also come to think he represents a serious political point of view that has never been openly portrayed nor debated in this country and that had better be if we're not going to be led blindly into a conflagration.
That is, simply, that, due to historical luck and some smart moves, the United States found herself in a unique power position after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we have a brief moment in which to consolidate that position.
With China's economy growing at twice the rate of ours, with our having tapped out our domestic oil reserves, with the Islamic countries wich sit atop a vast reservoir of the oil we will continue for the forseeable future to require to remain dominant, we must do whatever we must - including all out war - to ensure that no one can seriously challenge us.
Now, I don't disagree with the Cheney picture of what is happening in the world. The questions are: do we want to make it a matter of national policy to continue our dominance; can we, without jeapordizing the very future of our species; and, if we can, are we willing to become the hegemonic bully- nation that requires?
Cheney says yes to each of those questions. And, give him credit - while he may be too astute to say all this in any public forum - he is willing to pursue the policies required to see them through.
I say no to all three, even though I can't describe in any convincing detail what the consequences will be of not pursuing them.
In the meantime, I would love to think that impeaching Cheney, even if it fails, may at least distract him and his minions long enough to keep us from the obvious next step in his agenda, attacking Iran.
The increasingly public concern that none of the Democratic candidates seem to be coming up with believable alternatives to the Republican agenda (with the exception to Kucinich) may be because none of them is willing to say she believes the day of American global dominance is inevitably yielding to world partnership. And that will inevitably mean a lowering - at least in relative terms - of our august living standards.
That it will be their intention to lead the nation into a Hurculean effort, not only to curb and find alternative means to our energy consumption, but to learn a kind of national modesty of ambition more in keeping with a world that simply will not support the lavish and out-of-balance bacchnal we have carried on for the past generation.
Can a serious presidential candidate say these things? I think so, but I see no evidence any of the current ones agree.
In the meantime, let's impeach Dick Cheney.
Ever since the impeachment of Clinton for his oval office blow job I have been worried that we were going to turn impeachment - surely one of the most drastic pieces the founding forebears built into our political system - as just one more empty means of harrassing the political opposition.
But Dennis Kucinich - who can't make any headway as a presidential candidate - has introduced an impeachment resolution that has somehow actually made its way to the floor and attracted a lot of votes.
I signed on.
It still worries me. If the move actually succeeded - or even got a serious hearing - you can be sure it would so enrage Republicans that if we were to be so lucky as to elect a Democratic president next year, they would quickly move to figure out some way to pay back for it.
But it may well be worth the risk.
I used to think Dick Cheney was power mad, a megalomaniac who intimidates his opponents and his supposed boss.
I still think that, but I have also come to think he represents a serious political point of view that has never been openly portrayed nor debated in this country and that had better be if we're not going to be led blindly into a conflagration.
That is, simply, that, due to historical luck and some smart moves, the United States found herself in a unique power position after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we have a brief moment in which to consolidate that position.
With China's economy growing at twice the rate of ours, with our having tapped out our domestic oil reserves, with the Islamic countries wich sit atop a vast reservoir of the oil we will continue for the forseeable future to require to remain dominant, we must do whatever we must - including all out war - to ensure that no one can seriously challenge us.
Now, I don't disagree with the Cheney picture of what is happening in the world. The questions are: do we want to make it a matter of national policy to continue our dominance; can we, without jeapordizing the very future of our species; and, if we can, are we willing to become the hegemonic bully- nation that requires?
Cheney says yes to each of those questions. And, give him credit - while he may be too astute to say all this in any public forum - he is willing to pursue the policies required to see them through.
I say no to all three, even though I can't describe in any convincing detail what the consequences will be of not pursuing them.
In the meantime, I would love to think that impeaching Cheney, even if it fails, may at least distract him and his minions long enough to keep us from the obvious next step in his agenda, attacking Iran.
The increasingly public concern that none of the Democratic candidates seem to be coming up with believable alternatives to the Republican agenda (with the exception to Kucinich) may be because none of them is willing to say she believes the day of American global dominance is inevitably yielding to world partnership. And that will inevitably mean a lowering - at least in relative terms - of our august living standards.
That it will be their intention to lead the nation into a Hurculean effort, not only to curb and find alternative means to our energy consumption, but to learn a kind of national modesty of ambition more in keeping with a world that simply will not support the lavish and out-of-balance bacchnal we have carried on for the past generation.
Can a serious presidential candidate say these things? I think so, but I see no evidence any of the current ones agree.
In the meantime, let's impeach Dick Cheney.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
A New Earth
During my tenure as pastor of a church in Dedham, Massachusetts (1973-1987), I wrote a weekly column for the local newspaper, entitled, A New Earth.
It was a reference to the biblical promise: Behold, I will show you a new heaven and a new earth.
I could never have imagined how new this earth would seem, these 27 years later.
Today, as I watched American financial markets continue their wild fluctuations - which seem to indicate a lack of ability to figure out whether we're headed for a big melt down, or are in just another period of fluctuation that will finally settle down as the United States resumes her place at the pinnacle of world economies - I emailed my very smart (and amazingly often right) financial advisor to ask if he thinks this is the Big One. (As in Archie Bunker saying to his wife, "The is the Big One, Elizabeth!")
His response was so different from the sorts of responses he has offered for market conditions over the more than 20 years i have been working with him.
He said we are just beginning to get used to our country not leading the way in the world's economy.
How can I help you understand what a statement like that means to a man like him, who is a super patriot, a Navy veteran, an unflinching believer in the wisdom of the markets to make appropriate adjustments?
This isn't the first time he has suggested that our economy is now at least as sensitive to what happens in China or India or France, as it is to what happens in Detroit or New York or Silicon Valley.
But now this view has replaced pretty completely the sense that we will recover our primacy.
And that seems to me like skippering a boat through familiar waters only to realize that all the markers by which one has always gotten one's bearings, have come loose and are drfiting with the currents.
A new earth.
It was a reference to the biblical promise: Behold, I will show you a new heaven and a new earth.
I could never have imagined how new this earth would seem, these 27 years later.
Today, as I watched American financial markets continue their wild fluctuations - which seem to indicate a lack of ability to figure out whether we're headed for a big melt down, or are in just another period of fluctuation that will finally settle down as the United States resumes her place at the pinnacle of world economies - I emailed my very smart (and amazingly often right) financial advisor to ask if he thinks this is the Big One. (As in Archie Bunker saying to his wife, "The is the Big One, Elizabeth!")
His response was so different from the sorts of responses he has offered for market conditions over the more than 20 years i have been working with him.
He said we are just beginning to get used to our country not leading the way in the world's economy.
How can I help you understand what a statement like that means to a man like him, who is a super patriot, a Navy veteran, an unflinching believer in the wisdom of the markets to make appropriate adjustments?
This isn't the first time he has suggested that our economy is now at least as sensitive to what happens in China or India or France, as it is to what happens in Detroit or New York or Silicon Valley.
But now this view has replaced pretty completely the sense that we will recover our primacy.
And that seems to me like skippering a boat through familiar waters only to realize that all the markers by which one has always gotten one's bearings, have come loose and are drfiting with the currents.
A new earth.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Felon
A good friend has just entered a guilty plea to a federal felony charge.
Sounds pretty bad, huh?
If you're my friend, it feels horrible.
I don't really understand what he did or why. But I have always known that, under some circumstance, I wouldn't discount my doing just about anything. Including murder.
He'll take his lumps. He's not trying to weasel his way out. He must have been desperate. And he acted in a way that was counter to the picture he has developed of himself over more than 60 years.
That's the toughest part; facing that one's image of one's self, while perhaps mostly accurate, is subject to change if change seems necessary.
I have been in situations I never would have imagined myself in. Though I hope not, I know I could be again. Not only because life could present me with challenges - money, fear, loss - that would overwhelm my sense of myself. That's a fancy way of describing the things I did in the past that felt like they would sink me for the rest of my life.
I learned a bunch of things. I am double-minded. I am weak. I can't predict how I will respond to fear. I care what people think of me. There are people who will hang in there with me even when I feel they should abandon me. And they are often those I would never have predicted. Reputation is fragile and mostly ephemeral. What counts when the chips are down is integrity. Integrity is having a sense of who I am even when the world's judgment differs.
Being good is worth a bucket of warm spit.
Being real, not hiding, either from others or from myself, maybe the hardest imaginable discipline, is worth more than piles of money.
I'd do a lot to relieve my friend's fear and shame. But I can't. They are his tutors now.
Sounds pretty bad, huh?
If you're my friend, it feels horrible.
I don't really understand what he did or why. But I have always known that, under some circumstance, I wouldn't discount my doing just about anything. Including murder.
He'll take his lumps. He's not trying to weasel his way out. He must have been desperate. And he acted in a way that was counter to the picture he has developed of himself over more than 60 years.
That's the toughest part; facing that one's image of one's self, while perhaps mostly accurate, is subject to change if change seems necessary.
I have been in situations I never would have imagined myself in. Though I hope not, I know I could be again. Not only because life could present me with challenges - money, fear, loss - that would overwhelm my sense of myself. That's a fancy way of describing the things I did in the past that felt like they would sink me for the rest of my life.
I learned a bunch of things. I am double-minded. I am weak. I can't predict how I will respond to fear. I care what people think of me. There are people who will hang in there with me even when I feel they should abandon me. And they are often those I would never have predicted. Reputation is fragile and mostly ephemeral. What counts when the chips are down is integrity. Integrity is having a sense of who I am even when the world's judgment differs.
Being good is worth a bucket of warm spit.
Being real, not hiding, either from others or from myself, maybe the hardest imaginable discipline, is worth more than piles of money.
I'd do a lot to relieve my friend's fear and shame. But I can't. They are his tutors now.
