A New Way to See Ourselves and Our Culture: Fall, and A New School Year, A New Possibility

How do we meet a new season? How do we get our children or ourselves ready for a new school year, or for any moment? Especially this moment. Our world today faces so many threats. It’s changing at a rate none of us can keep pace with. So, besides keeping informed of news and the health of our planet and democracy, what more can we do?

 

It’s almost the end of August. When I was working, and the end of August was upon me, and night was settling around me⎼ I’d sit on my porch and just listen to crickets and other end of summer sounds. I’d often feel that somehow the summer had passed too quickly and wonder if I was ready for the new semester. And I promised myself I would not waste these last moments. I would make sure I missed none of it. By sitting there with the crickets, letting their song settle inside me, somehow, I felt more prepared for what lay ahead. If I could sit with this moment, I could sit or race with another.

 

And I’m doing just that even now. It’s 11 years since I retired from teaching secondary school, and I still feel this tension in my belly every year at this time, this dread mixed with excitement. There’s an extra chill in the air today, an extra gentle movement in the leaves, trees, and bushes. Even the sound of cars passing on the road has an unusual quality to it. The colors are sharp. My face, shoulders, and belly quivers. My jaw, the back of my mouth, is tense until I notice a cardinal calling very faintly in an apple tree. Then I relax. And I so love the soft touch of the wind and how it wakes trees and leaves into speech.

 

We can do all we can to keep informed about the news, but even more we have to stay in touch with our own changes, our inner state, and to those closest to us. And with this powerful strength, we can do so much good.

 

A Basic Practice:

This is one thing we can do. We can stand or sit still, in a safe place; a place we can remain calm and attentive for a few minutes. And take a breath. We might notice if we will: Are we comfortable where we are, with the weight of our body evenly distributed? How does it feel to simply be right here? Do we want to let our eyes rest and take in what’s around us? Or close them partly or fully?

 

If we open our mouth or take a breath through our nose, we might notice the taste of the air, how it feels on our tongue? Maybe notice what it is we hear right now? What sounds? What stands out or calls to us? Or what is it we see? What colors? And maybe, where on our body do we respond to these sounds or sights or tastes? In our shoulders, belly, back, legs? How deep is the response? Or maybe, what is the quality of feeling, sharp, heavy, light, like a cloud or a wind? Strong or mild?

 

If there’s a wind, do we feel the pressure of it on our skin? On our hands? On our belly? Do we hear any bird calls or car sounds only with our ears, or also our face, our toes?

 

And maybe, if we want, we can notice any thoughts that arise in this moment? How do we feel right now, about a new day, or a new school year? And then we can let the thought go and return to the sound or feel of the wind. The sense of being right here, now, present. The sense that this, this moment⎼ this, I can do.

 

I was reading a short article in the Fall, 2023 Tricycle by Venerable Jissai Prince-Cherry, about a classic on meditation practice, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, by the Japanese Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki. I first read it probably 50 years ago. It is a beloved book of several friends and two of my most respected teachers. Suzuki speaks to us in a manner that makes ignored aspects and possibilities in our lives and values obvious to us. It reveals the intimate reality of our experience. And it gifts us, and our culture, with a new way to see ourselves….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

The Dread That Was Sitting Beside Me Was Now Me: We Appear Like Two So We Can Be One

It finally caught me and then my wife. A thing we have dreaded; a thing that has pursued all of us for over 3 years and has touched everyone in one way or another in multiple times and ways. That has caught most of us. That we hoped and might have imagined was over. COVID.

 

In 2022, the CDC did a study of Americans 16 and older and found 77.5% of us had antibodies from infection. Clearly more of us have been affected since 2022, at least two more, and all the people we all know who have been sick in 2023.

 

It was said, over and over, we’re all in this together. And that is the most fearful thing, and the most hopeful. That maybe we will wake from a collective sleep and realize our mutual relationship, or that it’s not even a relationship but a continuum, or web of interrelations.

 

In the most basic way, someone passes the illness to us. We may pass it to someone else. Which gets to another part of this I had nightmares about: getting others sick. My spouse as number one. I couldn’t stand the thought of her sick, especially from me. She tested negative Thursday. But this morning, Friday, a sniffle, a cough, and a positive test. And I was scared all over again, but for her. When we realized I was sick, we had started sleeping in separate rooms, wore masks, etc. But at home, with only one bathroom and kitchen, isolation proved impossible.

 

The symptoms started for me on Tuesday. My wife and I were in New York City, on one of our few vacations since COVID. I was climbing the steps to go into The Museum of Natural History, a museum I knew well in my youth but not in recent years. And I tripped. One foot seemed to fall asleep on me. Then it happened again when we took stairs down from the fourth-floor dinosaur wing. And again, descending from the third floor. I realized something was off. I feared a stroke, but everything else in me was working perfectly⎼ or so it seemed.

 

Then at night, after a wonderful dinner, we returned to our hotel. And my head started feeling too heavy to sit on my shoulders and was spinning from the weight. My throat was absurdly dry and scratchy. My stomach a bit queasy. Most of you know the signs. And now I knew.

 

When I turned out the light, I realized that lying with me in bed was something so big it had become myth sized. Larger than any one human. Darker than night. A myth that felt very modern but in one form or another has been with humans forever, or maybe more so once we moved from grassy plains to enclosed spaces. To big groups instead of small ones. A possibly deadly illness that we could catch and pass on from one person to the next.

 

And I was frightened. Here it was. And I knew not what would happen to me or to us. Suddenly, I was not in my own hands. I realized we were never totally in our own hands.

 

And just as I fell asleep, someone knocked on the door of our room, The noise woke us up, and was repeated again and again. I yelled out in response, “Who is it?” “Me,” they answered. Was this a puzzle posed by the universe? “Who?”

 

I got up and went to the door. I looked through the peephole. A young woman was standing there, apparently alone, but my view was obstructed. I opened the door. Once she saw my face, she knew she was at the wrong door, apologized, and turned away.

 

It took a while, but finally peace and quiet replaced the knocking.

 

The next day, I tested positive….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to this link to The Good Men Project.

What Might Being at Peace Mean? The Deep Joy Embedded in Presence that Inclines Us to Laughter

Each morning, before meditating, I follow a version of the Buddhist practice of dedicating the meditation to relieving the suffering of others. I wish that I, my wife, and anyone close to me who is suffering, or every being anywhere, be at peace. The practice calms me. But I must admit that it’s not always clear what being at peace would realistically be like in our world today or if my notion of peace is like anyone else’s.

 

It’s clear to me that saying it and meaning it, doing it with sincerity, is possibly a beginning of an answer in itself. Telling ourselves being at peace is possible is a door to being there. Or maybe it’s a door to persuading ourselves we deserve it.

 

So, what do I mean by being at peace? It can sound to many of us like contentment or being satisfied; and it does share something with those two states of heart and mind. Yet, it’s closer to calmness or happiness, both of which might be components of peace.

 

But contentment, satisfaction, and even happiness have a bad rep in many quarters today. There’s so much that is terrifying right now, so many threats, so much injustice, how can we want peace? How can we be content, happy, or satisfied? Don’t we want discontent, fury, and outrage? Don’t we want determination and commitment to change?

 

And so many of us, even critics in my own mind, seem to doubt we deserve it. It seems we’ve been educated in discontent with ourselves.

 

I think fostering discontent with political policies that harm people is simply responsible behavior. But discontent that arises from conducting a war with ourselves is an entirely different story. It assists those who would do us harm. It undermines our work to create a more compassionate and equitable country by undermining our ability to be compassionate with ourselves. Being at war with ourselves exhausts inner resources that could help us imagine positive actions to take, and then take them.

 

And maybe recognizing this is a key to feeling at peace ⎼ accepting and being able to live in our own minds and bodies. ‘Accepting’ not in the sense of being unaware of the reality of what we are and what we face, but instead very cognizant of it. It’s not easy to accept that we can’t always be strong or feel good or know the answer, or to not automatically attack whatever feels threatening. Being at peace begins with not being at war with ourselves.

 

Our thoughts often take the form of stories, or internally created and enacted stage-plays or scripts. “All the world is a stage,” said Shakespeare. These plays can be noticed through mindful observation and are described not only in meditation teachings but the psychological approaches of Transactional Analysis and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

 

Self-criticism can be helpful, if it motivates us to be aware of painful patterns of thought and behavior. But it can also separate our inner world into warring parties. The self-critic is one character or side in the drama. The criticized is another. Too often, we react to the critic as if it was a celestial judge. When we abstract ourselves from the moments of our lives and try to reduce our world to only an idea of it, we suffer. Our ideals can be impossible to live up to, yet we all have them. We are all imperfect, full of contradictions. To the degree we hold an ideal too tightly, to that same degree we can hurt ourselves for not meeting that ideal…

 

*To read the whole blog, please go to The Good Men Project.

Finally, It’s Here. Finally, He’s Charged: An Almost Anti-Climactic Saving of the Nation

It seems like almost an anti-climax to the biggest event since⎼ I don’t know when. The pandemic, which was or is a three-year catastrophe? The Russian invasion of Ukraine? Any of the recent mass killings? The Jan 6, anti-democratic, mostly white nationalist attack on our nation, that is still creeping along, threatening so much we hold dear? None of these will be forgotten by so many of us. Joe Biden’s defeat of DJT? Now, that was something. DJT being elected in 2016? The world is still reeling from that.

 

So many of us have waited and hoped and now it’s here. It’s taken three plus years. Such events, in a democracy and nation of laws and millions of people, can take time. This is the first time in U. S. history a former President faces criminal prosecution, and for charges that include conspiring to undermine the constitution.

 

This event began Tuesday, in the late afternoon, with the announcement that the court in Washington, DC indicted someone. We could guess, but we didn’t know for sure. On Wednesday, the indictment was released, and we knew for sure. The document was devastating in its completeness and quality of evidence, dramatically written, even elegant. And Thursday, the arraignment.

 

No charge of treason, despite fairly clear evidence that he probably did just that. He tried to end democracy. No charge that his speech led to the death of police officers as well as attackers, or to police suffering from lingering PTSD from the attack.

 

David Leonhardt of The New York Times reported the evidence of treason would not be easy to prove⎼ especially if the goal is to complete a trial before the next election. DJT “never directly told those at the Jan 6 rally to attack Congress.” He was crafty in his language.

 

He did lie, repeatedly about the election being stolen, and so much else. Sixty plus court cases show that he had no evidence for his claims. His own Attorney General and many others told him that. His Vice President has said that DJT lied about Jan. 6 and will be held accountable by history for the lies.

 

What DJT did say, on Jan. 6, was, “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up; we will never concede…

I’ve been in two elections. I won them both and the second one, I won much bigger than the first.… I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard…. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore….” Etc.

 

He was charged on four counts. Obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U. S. government, and conspiracy to prevent others from exercising their constitutional or civil rights, to vote and have their votes counted.

 

The indictment starts out with simple and direct charges. “The Defendant lost the 2020 election. Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power.” It shows that he knew that his claims about the election of 2020 were false, were a lie, yet he did it anyway. He showed no concern for who was hurt, and the awful effects on our nation. As the Special counsel, Jack Smith, said, we should read the indictment. It’s also available as a podcast, read to us by MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi.

 

Yet, I expected more. Maybe the heavens to part. Maybe love to spread through the nation, or civil war. But luckily, none of the reactionary violence we might’ve feared has occurred. All big events, if they don’t cause unforgettable harm can take time to reach us and can create this sense of “wow, has it really happened?”

 

Maybe we will finally get to see him led off to serve time for crimes no one, certainly no President should ever commit. Maybe the trial will lead those in the GOP to become a party that cares at least somewhat about the nation and laws. Maybe. But as New York Times columnist David French said, it is surely “a trial America needs.” A trial that will hopefully get out the vote in November 2024, to save our world and democracy. Let’s make it so.

 

Today, he was formally arrested but not handcuffed as accused criminals are on crime shows. He was arraigned in a federal court. He was read his rights. And he was released on several conditions, including not communicating with witnesses without counsel being present, or trying to influence jurors, or commit a crime. Judge Moxila A. Upadhaya was the magistrate judge for the arraignment and Judge Tanya S. Chutkan will oversee the actual trial. The hearing to set the trial date will be August 28th. And then DJT was allowed to walk out of the courtroom.

 

He is now facing 3, and soon possibly 4, trials. Over 1,000 Jan. 6 attackers or seditionists have been prosecuted so far. This was made possible by so many of us standing up for democracy and the rule of law or just doing our jobs responsibly. This includes not only the Capitol police and FBI, Democrats, and old-line, not MAGA Republicans, in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere, election workers and others throughout the nation. These people sometimes risked their lives, homes, jobs to do so. This shows, I hope, that we can save and improve this fragile thing called democracy, and stop those in our midst who would destroy it.

 

Another long and dramatic event will now play out in this nation. An event that might determine if we have Presidents in the future or Presidential dictators or just dictators. We will be immersed in a legal battle that might determine how well we sleep at night and if we get to vote or have our votes counted in the morning. So, we take a deep breath. And we watch and listen.

 

 

*This blog was syndicated by The Good Men Project on Sunday, 8/06/23.