The Look We Give and the One We Get in Return Are Two Sides of One Reality: The Mirror that Makes Civilization Possible

I remember being told by my father not to catch anyone’s eyes when walking down a big city street. If we catch another person’s eyes, we might truly see who they are, but we’d also be seen by them; we’d become vulnerable. Seeing and being seen are linked. The look we give and the one we get are two sides of one reality.

 

Likewise, most of us have experienced yawning when we see another person yawning. Or felt tears coming to our eyes when we saw someone weeping– or felt bad when we noticed someone else feeling bad. Maybe for a similar reason, simply smiling can make us feel more like– smiling. Why is that?

 

In the book Ethical Wisdom: What Makes Us Good, the author, Mark Matousek details how “a newborn baby, barely able to see, can imitate the facial expression of adults within one hour of delivery.” When the child imitates a caregiver, this creates a coupling between the baby’s expressions, its emotions, and the other person. When a baby sees its mother or guardian, it waits for the other to see it. And when she does see him, her, or them, the baby lights up.

 

Science fascinates me. Or maybe it’s the ability to closely study reality and recognize patterns and connections underlying what drives us to do what we do or feel what we feel. It can help us perceive the universe more “objectively,” meaning relatively free from the enclosure of ego, or without too many of our biases and personal stories getting in the way.

 

When I was teaching Psychological Literature for high school students, we read chapters in books by neuroscientist V. S Ramachandran, especially The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human. This book exemplified what I loved about science. It talked about so many topics that expanded our imagination and understanding of our humanity. It introduced us to imposter’s or Capgras syndrome, where we look at a person we know well, like our spouse or parent, and experience them as a stranger. Or synesthesia, which is when we blend our senses, so we might taste colors, see sounds, or hear shapes.

 

Students both loved the reading and yet had trouble believing the power of our brain to both expand our sense of ourselves or distort how we experienced the world.

 

It introduced us to one of the most fascinating discoveries in recent memory, the discovery of cells in the brain called mirror neurons. This discovery so captured the imagination of many people that it led to intense speculation; both scientists and non-scientists drawing conclusions before the science could catch up with our yearning for answers. I felt if the discovery hadn’t been made, someone would have had to make it up. As a result, attacks on the science began, and the whole subject went from the bright lights of headlines to the darkness of doubt and anger.

 

In the 1990s, a group of Italian scientists led by Giacomo Rizzolatti, at the University of Parma, discovered something weird. They were studying monkey behavior. When a monkey noticed an object, or interacted with it, for example reaching out their hand to grasp a peanut, certain sets of neurons fired. These same neurons also fired when the monkey watched other monkeys doing the same thing. In other words, they were understanding what the other was doing through having their own neurons fire as if they were doing it. They were “reading the other’s mind” by modeling themselves doing the action. Ramachandran described these neurons as virtual reality simulators provided by nature to help us understand the intention of others. They were natural empathy generators.

 

One of my students asked, if we can so model the actions of others, how come we don’t repeat them? Why don’t we constantly walk around imitating others?…

 

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

If We Can’t Be Silent, How Then Can We Hear Deeply? Expecting God to Send a Text

How often do we look up to the sky, or sit at our desk or in our bed, and we ask a question, or want to, of a God or the universe?

 

We want the universe to be like AI, or social media. Or we want God to speak at the other end of a text but never get Her, Him, It, or Them. Or we want a voice in a cloud to speak to us, in English or whatever language we prefer. Or maybe we engage in one of those conversations with ourselves that so occupy our time, and we divide ourselves in two, into a questioner and a responder, but all we get in response is a repeat of something old and familiar. The universe then feels silent to us, even empty. Oh, or something happens to us, and we think the universe is sending us the event as a message.

 

As I was thinking about this, one of my cats, then another, went to the glass outer door in my den and intently stared out the window. One, our girl, looked slowly from side to side, as if following something, while the other stared straight ahead. I don’t know if it was her eyes that were tracking something, or her hearing, but whatever it was, it was invisible to me. They were both seeing with more than their eyes. There was no distraction for them from looking, just attention.

 

Maybe the problem is in where we look, or how we ask. In Exodus 3:1-6 God says to Moses, from a burning bush, “Moses, Moses! Here I am.” Or in the 1950s classic religious movie, The Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston stands over the Red Sea, parts his arms, and speaks “Behold His mighty hands.” And God answers by parting the sea. Maybe we’d like such a clear and dramatic response, but it’s a bit much to ask. I’ve never personally seen seas parted by command or heard God’s voice in a bush.

 

Maybe we expect the answer to come in a certain way, and the expectation blinds us to the answer. We might look, for example, outside ourselves, or to some authority or a defined being not ourselves. Or to the thoughts and images in our minds, not the feelings and sensations in our bodies.

 

Maybe we’re hearing the speech of the Burning Bush wrong. Maybe, as some scholars say, we could hear God’s “Here I am,” as “Look Here;” see all this, see this right here.

 

Describing Buddhist practice in his book, You Have to Say Something: Manifesting Zen Insight, Dainin Katagiri, a central figure in the early transmission of Buddhism to the US, says that to truly see a teacher, or see anybody, you cannot maintain an expectation of a certain response. If you have a preconceived idea of a meeting, there’s no meeting.

 

We often create such noise in ourselves. We know this. We know people who can’t stand silence and constantly play the tv or listen to their earbuds or search social media and suffer from FOMO. The world right now is bad enough, so terribly frightening. So, silence, if we can hear it, can be so healing. We need to give ourselves a break, a pause, a bit of kindness. If we can’t be silent, how can we listen deeply?

 

Maybe we’d hear more if we asked ourselves a question and then just listened, listened not just to words, but to the entirety of the moment when we heard the question in ourselves? We ask and then feel the asking. Maybe then we’d hear our own mind more clearly….

 

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

 

To Better Understand the Echoes of What We Do and Say: What Would Happen If We Felt the Rivers of the Earth as the Veins of Our Body?

In a book titled In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty, the author, Francis Weller, says “we can no longer divide the inside from the outside.” Maybe the pandemic, the climate emergency, regional wars, economic instability, and I’d add, this new administration, have made that illusory division uncomfortable and too painful to live with.

 

Weller thinks we’ve begun to feel there’s no “ordinary” anymore. He describes a felt sense that the continuity of history and our participation in it have altered. Increasingly, we “register in our souls” the sorrows of the world. The sorrow of others, of our planet, is our sorrow. As climate change stresses forests, oceans, the fabric of natural life, social bonds also fray, and clarity of thought diminishes. The world, or at least human civilization, seems to be teetering on an edge. Yet the fate of the world’s climate and history runs right through us. What an unbearable but necessary burden.

 

I hope he’s correct, but I don’t know. How many of “us” now fit Weller’s analysis? Polls show increasing concern about the environment and climate. They show disapproval of the DT administration’s wars, economic policies, and cuts to healthcare. Most of my community of friends, family, and neighbors fit his analysis, but certainly not others. Certainly not the sycophants or supporters of the administration. But will enough of us wake up in time?

 

Dividing up the world, analyzing and breaking down situations and problems, is often necessary and useful, but it yields only partial truths. It can create problems even as it solves others. But dividing ourselves emotionally from the world— never. We need to develop a better awareness of our entanglement with everything around us so we can better understand the echoes of what we do and say.

 

To counter the illusion of a divisive self, Weller recommends we increase our tolerance and ability to descend into the dark mythic underworld, the world of dreams, the unknown. We so often fear or resist the uncertain. We need to allow ourselves to do what we can in this unbearable situation; to let go of much of the life we’ve known so we can step into the unknown. So, we reach into the darkness to find the inspiration and resources to build something new, in harmony with the natural world, and I think just.

 

Weller recommends 5 disciplines to explore and strengthen in ourselves so we can better face the depths of what’s happening.

  1. Deep listening: to sit quietly and listen for the truth spoken and lived by others and the trees, hills, water, around us. Hear what needs to be heard.
  2. Restraint: take a moment before acting to pause, breathe, and reflect.
  3. Humility: look around and become sensitive to how we depend on one another, how enmeshed we all are in each other. And I’d add, realize that we’re all prone to think our view is right and true; so, in order not to be wrong, we must recognize the “right/s” of others.
  4. Embrace not-knowing. Acknowledge we never know what’s going to happen. We don’t even know all that’s really happening right here in front of us. But by acknowledging this, and living it, we can be more open, vulnerable, and humble. We can take in more than possible otherwise.
  5. Let go: Everything is impermanent, always changing. But we can better change in harmony with the world when we no longer try to control all that happens in it.

 

But descending into what Weller calls the dark is, I think, also entering what is always right here, now. It’s just that we don’t look at it or see it. In every perception, there’s not just us and what we look at; there’s the looking, or the awareness itself. When we are aware of awareness, we can be so present. It almost seems unnecessary or repetitive to say it, but when we see another human being, what we experience is not just the person but our awareness of them. That tree, that artwork, has ourselves in it. We are never not of this world. It’s our home. And when we feel this, it can be startling and beautiful. It can awaken the energy needed to dare, to care, to create, and to act.

 

Years ago, I hitch-hiked to the west coast and took a side trip to the Grand Canyon. I stood at the edge of the Canyon, staring into its depths; the strata of soil, stone, and colors seemed to extend forever. Deep at the bottom, a barely perceived blue river. Then a family of 5 parked and exited their car. The woman in the group was maybe 40 years old and totally wrapped up corralling her 3 kids. When she reached the edge near me, her attempt at controlling her children, her focus on anything other than the canyon, was totally forgotten. All she had, or all she was, was an awareness of what was seen and felt. She just looked out at the canyon and it seemed she felt the utter incomprehensibility of everything in front of her. And all she could say was, “Oh, my God. Oh my God.”

 

We need these “Oh, my God” moments, moments of awareness of a reality so startlingly real. And it might not be obvious, but demonstrating with thousands of others for a political cause while thinking with a perspective larger than ourselves alone— acting to save our democracy, healthcare, and planet— ”Oh, my God.”

 

When I was parking my car near a friend’s home several blocks from the location of the last No Kings demonstration, the size and atmosphere of the event became clear. There were so many cars, so many people. It was like a river of people flowing together, a powerful, even joyous river…

 

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

Being Seen and Being Ready for A Revelation: Healthcare USA, 2026

It took 16 months before I could get an appointment with a specialist that I needed for a complex and unusual medical condition. 16 months of increasing symptoms and of not-knowing– or of knowing there’s something living inside me whose face I could not see. 8 months to get the test I needed. Then 8 more months before I could see the doctor to explain the results and formulate treatment plans. Is this an example of a humane and well-functioning health care system in the supposedly richest nation in the world?

 

And there are so many inequities. I have good insurance. I am white and middle class. What might others who are not so privileged face? And so much paperwork, steps to slough through, high insurance payments.

 

The clinic I went to, the Cleveland Clinic, was wonderful. Like the care people report at the Mayo Clinic, the Langone Center at New York University, UCLA Medical Center, or Massachusetts General Hospital, these places are associated with teaching institutions; the doctors see a wide variety of patients and get to learn from a wide variety of fellow practitioners. Each doctor I saw showed not only care but competence. They were also wonderful human beings. Many local doctors are also tremendously compassionate, but they didn’t know what to do with me. As some said, I was a mystery. I did not fit in any of the usual categories. It’s good to stand out, they said, but not this way.

 

And what we can’t understand, we often reject or hide from. When I never got better from any treatments the local doctors offered; and after test after test revealed only peripheral problems, but never the core, some acted as if I, my personality maybe, was the problem. These doctors could think, and think well, but they were limited by their training and experience to only a narrow area of concern. Instead of doing everything they could to truly explore the symptoms wherever they led, many focused on simply checking off a checklist. And they often recognized this. They asked that when I did get a diagnosis, I should share it with them.

 

I know many people complain about doctors and dread going to see them, which I deeply understand. They feel vulnerable, in pain, and don’t like it. But for me, even after all the disappointments, I was still ready for a revelation. Going to the doctor meant there was a possibility of insight and a reduction of pain. So, for each appointment, I was excited. I prepared; I tried to make the visit count. I researched symptoms and possible treatments, wrote out questions and a list of medications. Before entering the office, I focused on my breath, the feel of my feet on the ground, or on the quality of my awareness right then. And finally, at the Clinic, one doctor said he had seen other people with what I had. I had a diagnosis. I felt redeemed.

 

Yet even at the Cleveland and the other Clinics, problems are increasing. They used to employ a multidisciplinary team approach to treating complex illnesses. No longer; they just don’t have the staff. And here, after being hospitalized last year, a local doctor promised they’d form a team to work to diagnose and treat my condition. Never happened.

 

What we in the U. S. are now facing under DT is the seemingly intentional undermining of healthcare. This administration is not only attacking MEDICAID and the Affordable Care Act or any federal health insurance assistance. They’re also attacking our healthcare from multiple directions. For example, there just aren’t enough doctors. This shortage has been getting worse for years, with the pandemic accentuating the problem. Yet DT has cut funding for universities, including medical training. Over a quarter of our doctors are now from other countries, many “third world” countries. Two of the five doctors I saw at the clinic were not born in the U. S.

 

Much of our health care, not only doctors but nurses, technicians, etc. is by immigrants….

 

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

Are We Seeing What Happens When the 7 Deadly Sins Rule a Government? Are they Fighting a War Mostly to Distract from Epstein Revelations?

Would anyone be so self-centered they’d start a war, de-stabilize international relations and the world economy, and kill thousands mainly to distract from potentially devastating revelations and raise his poll numbers? Is that what DT is doing in Iran? And before in Venezuela? And maybe soon with Cuba? Greenland? Is this Greed? Envy? Wrath? Is it self-Indulgence, trying to appear strong, superior to cover a fear of being inferior? Certainly, it’s creating Discord. Are the Seven Deadly Sins aiming to rule America?

 

Others have written about this before me: DT acts as if he was taught the deadly sins as his catechism. I was a little unclear on the history and religious doctrine, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, the early version listed the sins as: Lust, Idolatry, Avarice, Discord, Indulgence, Wrath, and Pride. In 590 AD, Pope Gregory I changed this to: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, Wrath, and Pride.

 

The changes are interesting. Greed for Avarice, Sloth for Indulgence—easy to understand.

But Gluttony for Idolatry, and Envy for Indulgence are more complex. Of course, a growing church would be interested in stopping idolatry, or the worshipping of false gods, idols of power instead of the one true God, or truth, maybe? Or today, worshipping the idols of cherished beliefs, easy answers, social media rumors instead of science, or reliable facts?

 

So, I’d add ignorance to the list, willfully ig-noring or not seeing what’s there in front of us? And Envy? The Lust for what others possess; the anger over what others have and we do not? The rage for vengeance.

 

And Lust: Have too many of bus forgotten that just months ago, it was reported that DT’s DOJ was scrubbing all the Epstein files to destroy links to the President? Then, after the scrub was mostly lost in the shock and chaos of headlines, news outlets reported there was no evidence in the files of malfeasance on DT’s part, except for bad judgment befriending a pedophile and child trafficker.

 

For months in 2025, DT claimed the Epstein Files were a hoax perpetuated by Democrats and there was nothing worth our attention in the material. He ordered his followers to stop being weaklings and wasting time on the files. But thanks in large part to the courage and persistence of a group of survivors of the crimes, the testimony and other evidence of possible participation by DT and other powerful men in Epstein’s crimes are now being revealed. According to reporting by the New York Times,  DT’s name was mentioned more than 38,000 times in 5,300 of the files. A woman gave testimony saying when she was 13, DT tried to force her to have sex. She wasn’t the only woman to make such claims.

 

In November, Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act which aimed to force the release of all the files. But recently NPR came out with a report showing the DOJ is still withholding evidence. The DOJ claimed to only redact and withhold files to protect the survivors, as directed in the legislation. But victims’ names and personal information were left available to the public while the names of the rich and powerful who made use of Epstein and Maxwell’s services were hidden.

 

And back on May 7, 2024 Stormy Daniels’ gave testimony about having sex with the married DT and his payment to her to be quiet about it. We remember an earlier conviction of DT on charges of defamation and sexual assault of the writer E. Jean Carroll. We might remember Judge Lewis A. Kaplan later clarifying that although the jury did not convict DT of rape according to NY State Penal Law, the trial did show that as people commonly understand the word, he did indeed rape her.

 

And there’s Greed, lots of it. And maybe Envy of what others have? Selfishness. Narcissism? The New York Times reports he has monetized the presidency to a degree never seen before. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, he has taken in at least 3 billion dollars over the last year from linking government policy to his business profits, real estate and microchip deals, selling pardons to drug criminals, etc. Gluttony is not just about food.

 

For Wrath there’s his vindictive attacks, his DOJ going after anyone who opposes, or speaks out against him.

 

And then, the wars. Venezuela and Iran, especially. Certainly, we have here the sowing of Discord. He started a war with no plan or consistent justification….

 

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

Reflections on The Drive to Know: Reality is More than Words and People are Not Just Concepts

The urge to know, to have an answer, to understand, to explain— this is such a powerful drive in our lives. So many writers, philosophers, fellow human beings have thought and written about this. And we feel it all the time. We don’t hear from a friend or loved one and we send a text, and worry-wait for a reply. We get in the car in a snowstorm yet want to know if we’re being stupid driving anywhere. And when we listen to the news lately, we might wonder what will succeed in making things better? What else might be taken from us, or what will be revealed that will assure democracy and our humanity will prevail over autocracy and cruelty? There can be such pain and discomfort in not-knowing.

 

Many of us can recall a time we felt some new pain and wondered what the cause was. A pain without an explanation is a pain doubled. Sometimes, not-knowing can be fun and add openness, excitement, and anticipation to our lives. But often, it’s just another source of worry.

 

We have this sense of ourselves, of what it’s like to reflect on our feelings or experiences. I think I know what it feels like to be me.

 

But there are times that I’m not so sure. For example, when I realize my attitude, energy level, or what I enjoy doing has changed. Or when so much is going on inside my mind it seems like foreign territory, and I have no idea where it all came from or where it’s leading me. Our inner world can feel so vast and elusive. Or sometimes someone says something about me that shocks me. And as I get older, this rate of change intensifies. I never know from day to day how I’ll be or, of course, what will happen. This is another dimension of not-knowing. We might feel we don’t even know ourselves. How can we control what we don’t know?

 

And then there’s the negativity bias, where we imagine the worst so we’re ready to take action to prevent it. And we develop a theory about ourselves that’s just too awful to face and we cease to care about the reality; we catastrophise and paralyze ourselves. In this case, friends can help us perceive and face what we need to face but haven’t.

 

The same is true if a neighbor, friend, or loved one is in pain. If we don’t know the cause, we worry twice as much about them. We want to help. This is part of our natural compassion. If we have an explanation, a reason, even a mere theory of a cause, we worry less. We have a way to help. Even if the reality is bad, there’s often a sense of comfort in knowing.

 

But sometimes the suggestions we offer others can be hurtful. We can unknowingly imply we’re superior in some way, or that the person is ignorant, or doesn’t know what we think they should know. We can’t totally get into their mind with ours and maybe we don’t want to use our empathy and imagination to even try do so.

 

One issue here is feeling hurt and helpless in the face of another’s pain. We can feel a loss of control in being powerless to help. So, we reach for something to give us that control. But I wonder about control. What does it really mean?

 

We might also expect there to be reasons for things. Not just causes, but something like God delivering prizes and penalties. When something awful happens to a good person, and to ourselves, we might try to figure out “what did we do to deserve this?” But I think God is too big or the intelligence of the universe too inclusive to think in terms prizes and penalties. Maybe, the teaching about Karma is correct, and one thing, one action, one intention simply sets up the conditions for other actions and intentions.

 

And when I try so hard to find an explanation, I could simply be enjoying expanding my knowledge. I love reading and learning. But it can also be an attempt to turn reality into words and people into concepts. A word is so much smaller than the reality it purports to explain. And a concept of a person can describe at most a tiny particle of them. A little bit of humility about what we think we know can go a long way….

 

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

Time Tunnels and Meditating Lions: Searching Beyond Memories for Who I Was Then, And Who I’m Being Now

There is a lion, a leonine version of a Teddy Bear, sitting on the back of the couch in my den. When I look at him, I don’t know what to make of him.

 

When I was young, maybe 5 or 6, my parents gave my brother and me stuffed animals. I thought my lion had a very dignified expression and so I was a bit reluctant to cuddle with him, even though I was of an age when cuddling with stuffed animals was the way of things; and where the imagination was so powerful that simply holding something in mind made it real. The lion resided at the end of my bed, absorbing not only my presence but my dreams, pains, and wishes.

 

And although I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, it spoke to me of my parent’s love. I was so engulfed in it then, I didn’t distinguish it from the home I lived in, my brother, our cousins and neighbors, our dog, the flowers, the rose bushes my mom had planted, the maple tree in the front of the house. It took a while for the maybe inevitable separation to occur.

 

I certainly didn’t realize when I was so young how many people didn’t have the love and resources in their lives that I did, or how much my parents had given me. I was deeply disturbed by but didn’t understand the lack of loving care in many lives, and certainly didn’t understand the poverty, hate and violence that too often plagued the lives of so many. But when I was in college and 3 friends came home with me and stayed overnight, they woke me up to how privileged I was. They joked they wished they had had my parents, and my dog, and maybe the lion, for themselves.

 

I don’t know exactly when, and I don’t know to where he disappeared, but for many years the lion was gone from my life. Probably most of us let go of childhood creatures of comfort, as we no longer feel a need for them– or don’t want anyone else to know that we once felt a need for them. But sometime about 10 years ago, after both my parents had died, my brother found him amongst their possessions and returned him to me.

 

And as I look at him now, I don’t know what to make of him. He’s certainly an artifact of my deep past and is somehow larger in meaning than anything I could say about him. Sometimes, he seems to be me, or to be my 5-year-old self, sitting there on the couch. And he’s trying to talk with me from down a long tunnel made of silence, trying to share some secret, or some game we had played. Or maybe to share what life felt like back then. When I see him, my mind and emotions often jump back and forth, searching beyond memories for the sense of who I then was.

 

We’re all surrounded by such time tunnels, of people, images, buildings, trees, and maybe little lions and bears or the equivalents. Their silence takes us back to memories, feelings, or just to presence. There can be love and joy there. There can be fear, pain, and terrible loss there, not only in the memory but in the journey.  And by taking time to stop and just focus on what’s around us, or on a breath, the feel of air on our face; acknowledging what’s there, noticing as best we can in that moment what lives in the tunnel without feeding it, our lives benefit greatly….

 

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

The Example of Minneapolis; Our Needs are Only One Line in a Song of Everyone’s Needs

The world, and not just the human world, looks so threatened right now. One thing that gives me hope when hope seems impossible or seems like more of a blindfold than a clear viewing, is the response of the people of Minneapolis to the violent attack on them by our own federal government.

 

Every day in this country, we experience the supposed leader of the “free world” causing new threats, new horrors and shocks. So many lives are being upended and destroyed. This is what DT brings to us. Yet, to change this and survive the assault, I think we must look to what’s happening in Minneapolis. There, in eye-scorching detail, is the affliction– and the cure.

 

The affliction: we see it daily. So many injured and arrested. Two innocent, caring people dead. The US government invading an American city, attacking its own citizens, and lying about what they’re doing and why. 3000 members of DT’s personal army roaming the city streets, obstructing the lives of people, not arresting supposed criminals but anyone brown, black, or anyone who gets in their way. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the US. ICE is ripping people from cars, schools, hospitals, places of work and worship. Acting as if the rule of law never existed or didn’t apply to them. These actions cannot be forgotten or excused just because the DT administration has finally announced they will soon end the ICE invasion in Minnesota.

 

The murders of ICU nurse for the US Department of Veterans Affairs, Alex Pretti, and poet and loving mother of 3, Renee Nicole Good, wake us up to the danger every one of us now faces. Every one of us. But reading about the response by the people of Minneapolis to such violence gives me hope and direction; it rescues me and could possibly rescue all of us from the fear and depression DT seems to purposefully instigate. This is the cure. The people of Minnesota are our neighbors. By nonviolently standing up, in a disciplined and caring manner, to oppose this government ordered violence and destruction, they are standing with all of us. But they aren’t just protesting in the streets.

 

A mother of a newborn baby and a 16 year old girl was picked up by ICE on her way to work, leaving 2 children at home, uncared for by any government agency. The 16 year old did her best, but her sibling was used to being breast fed. She called a neighbor, who was breast-feeding her own child, for assistance. The neighbor stepped in, helping the children with food and sharing her own breast milk with the baby.

 

Despite the raids by ICE interfering with business, ripping shop owners and workers from their stores and homes, several individuals and businesses have been doing what they can to help their neighbors. A family was seized by ICE and held in a facility in Texas. Upon their release, a Minnesota bookstore raised $6,000 to help the family return to their lives. A café in Minneapolis has been offering their neighbors free food until ICE is gone from the state. Doctors are making home visits to those needing medical assistance and who fear exposing themselves to ICE on the streets.

 

As the BBC points out, “Operation Metro Surge,” DT’s invasion of Minnesota began after his racist rant against Somali immigrants. He called them “garbage,” said their country is “no good for a reason.”  The political purpose of his comments and the invasion that followed are revealed by his vicious attacks on Somali Democrat and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, an outspoken critic of DT. DT divides and divides, setting one against another. No community can exist peacefully inside a wall of hate….

 

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

Hitch-Hiking the Unknown: The Intimacy of Night

It’s 3 am, no moon, just darkness. I’m sitting in the living room in a la-Z-boy and turn on a lamp to provide just enough light to write by. And it feels like a whole universe fits under this canopy of light. It’s so quiet. So alone. Nothing yanks at me for attention, except maybe the hands of sleep. They almost close my eyes, almost.

 

There’s this woodblock print by a prolific and fantastic Japanese artist named Kawase Hasui. It’s of The Sanggye Pavilion or temple, located by a body of water in Korea. The structure is so strong, but bare. In the background, trees, of beautiful oranges, reds, and yellows. A man stands alone by the bright trees and water, just like I sit alone by the dark.

 

We might often think of ourselves as alone, especially when it’s night, and we’re in pain of some sort, or afraid, have suffered a loss; or we feel the breath of death on our face. Maybe that’s why the man in the woodblock gets to me. He’s clearly not young, but still very upright. He’s looking off to the autumn trees. Is it autumn in the woodblock because it’s late in the man’s life?

 

It’s so hard to look directly at our own aging and to understand it. It sneaks around all the seconds of life until suddenly, it’s just there. A pain, a sickness, a lost friend. How do we come to realize we only live because we age, and that our constant changing is what carries us through life? And when we’re awake to these changes, like we can be in the quiet dark of 3 am, so much becomes clearer to us. Our mind and the world feel so intimately here for us.

 

And when we’re awake like this at 3 am and we’re lucky enough to be relatively pain-free and open to consciously focusing on our existence in this very moment, we can better discern and decide the great matters of our lives. Consciousness was created just for this purpose, to see who we are, see ourselves both here, alone, and in a greater context, carried by the entirety of life, so we can better make decisions about what we do next with our life.

 

When I was 24 or so I hitch-hiked from NYC to San Francisco and Berkeley. It was the 1970s, a very different time than this one, and soon after I had returned from the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone. Hitch-hiking was never the safest way to travel. But I was trying to figure out what to do with my life.  And when we’re out there like that, on the road, thumb out, so blatantly in the realm of the unknown, with little to serve as protective walls between us and the vagaries of what we might be exposed to, anything can happen at any time. We can get arrested, attacked, run into people from our past. Run into insights and beauties of all kinds.

 

I ran into someone from college, who had been in the theatre group I was once part of, and we spent a wonderful afternoon together. I met and stayed with one cousin and by chance ran into another. What I needed, I found.

 

One day, I decided to hitch-hike north, to Mendocino, California, to find a friend I had grown up with. All I knew about where she lived was that she was part of a commune in northern California⎼ and there were communes in Mendocino. I got a ride to a small town most of the way to my destination. But then nothing. No cars, no rides.

 

I was beginning to think my whole plan was crazy. How could I imagine I could just set off without knowing my destination and actually arrive there? Then a car stopped on the opposite side of the road and a woman emerged from the car. She had a small backpack and soon put out her thumb. After maybe a half hour of doing little but standing on opposite sides of the road wondering about each other, we smiled back and forth. I crossed the road, and we started to chat.

 

She asked where I was going, and I told her I was looking for a friend (I’ll call) Jo, who was living in a commune somewhere in northern California. My new acquaintance said she lived in a commune in the area. And a housemate of hers, named Jo, had just left for New York to meet up with a friend who had just returned from the Peace Corps. Me.

 

Just then a car stopped for her. She told me the name and location of the commune and then left with her ride. I eventually got to the commune, stayed for a few days, and then returned to Berkeley. It took a few months before Jo and I could get together….

 

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

A Dream of a Revitalized Democracy: An Image of a Conformist State and a Vast Cemetery of Buried Selves

Can you imagine living in a nation where oppression and conformity rules? Where no diversity of thought is accepted? Where people are persecuted and prosecuted for thinking differently than the ruler?

 

This is the DT nation. We are at a critical point right now, or maybe each moment of this administration has been critical, or maniacal, malignant. For years, he’s been threatening anyone who opposes or disagrees with him. Now, it’s clear to most that he’s more focused on revenge and persecution than protecting our nation, more focused on his own greed than the well-being of Americans.

 

Just recently, DT’s DOJ started a criminal investigation of the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, who was appointed by DT himself in 2017. Powell’s “crime”⎼ defending the Federal Reserve’s legal independence from the President. Powell dared to refuse to bow down to DT’s command to lower interest rates quickly and cease caring about the long-term effects on the economy and the American people. The DOJ recently initiated an investigation into a modest overrun in a Federal Reserve construction project as a pretext to frighten Powell into compliance. The threats did not work; Powell has clearly and forcefully spoken out about the true nature of DT’s investigation.

 

At the same time, the cost of DT’s own ego-project of illegally tearing down the East Wing of the White House to construct a palatial ballroom has doubled. The project is largely funded with bribes from corporations.

 

As he promised during his campaign for president, DT has also gone after other political and legal figures like Letitia James, Lisa Cook, James Comey, John Bolton, John Brennan, Jack Smith, Adam Schiff, Elissa Slotkin; and recently, his cronies took aim at Hillary and Bill Clinton. He’s attacked, and often worked to fire entertainers like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Bruce Sprinstein. He defunded independent media like the Public Broadcasting Company, inserted himself into mergers, and/or eliminated government permits to force media sources to pull stories that oppose or expose DT’s wrongdoing. He’s attacked universities and  the independence of educational institutions, defunded research and other programs, persecuted student activists. The list goes on and on.

 

And now he’s sent 1,000 additional ice agents to join the already deployed 2,000 agents in Minneapolis and other cities in Minnesota. The mission: to attack those protesting the murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE and the arrest and deportation of brown immigrants, many of whom are citizens. The supposed purpose was to arrest illegal immigrants. They are also citing, without clear evidence, fraud by some Somali immigrants in their running of daycare centers.

The presence of all these masked agents, using tear gas, pepper spray, beatings, shootings, and forceful arrest tactics against protestors has inflamed the situation. Is he purposefully trying to incite the citizens of this democratic-voting state into a violent response so he could invoke the insurrection act, deploy the military on US soil, and further disrupt, hurt, and deprive citizens even further of their rights? According to several sources including The Washington Post, this is exactly his plan. He appears to be laying the groundwork for this in his verbal attacks on the political leaders and protestors in Minnesota.

 

In the same week, DT threatened Iran with some form of intervention for its violent response to demonstrators. According to CBS, possibly 12,000 people were killed in Iran over two weeks of protest. Considering what DT’s doing in Minneapolis and other cities, his claim to care about the fate of protestors is ridiculous.

 

In 2016, campaigning in Iowa, he joked or bragged he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” The shooting of Renee Good might be such a crime committed to serve his interests….

 

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