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DEEP THOUGHTS

How incredible an experience it must have been for James Cameron to descend [solo ]into the bottom of the Mariana Trench, a place where no human has ever been. [Correction: two men, Piccard and Walsh as part of the Challenger Deep Mission  made it in a bathysphere in 1960.] The Trench is the lowest spot on the surface of the earth, over seven miles below the surface of the Pacific, just East of Guam. At the bottom of the Trench, Cameron’s underwater vehicle experienced over 8 tons psi of pressure on its surface. All went well and Cameron saw and experienced a place–and probably feelings–that none of us will ever have in our lifetimes.

From another perspective, if Cameron had ventured up rather than down, his voyage would have been totally unremarkable–since airliners routinely ascend to this altitude on a daily basis. The difference, of course, is the “alien” environment of water and its weight which increases with depth, while air decreases in weight as one ascends.

In any case, thinking about being where no one has ever been before returned me very quickly to many childhood fantasies that I entertained as a youngster. I spent lots of time hiking through Kentucky woods, playing explorer,  and amused myself by wondering if any human had ever seen what I was seeing exactly as I was seeing it at that moment, or if anyone had put a foot down exactly where my foot was planted. Surely, somewhere in my ramblings I must have been the first to touch a piece of ground or see a particular vista or tree or stream.

As a young man, being first was actually more important to me that the actual quality of the experience I was having. I wonder what was most important for Cameron. This world places such a high premium on being “first” that he may have been seduced by that motivation. Or it may have been fame, money, or as several observers noted,  the self-aggrandizement of a “rich leftie” who didn’t mind spending $50 million to toot his own horn.

As for me, right now I am satisfied with exploring mostly safe environments (art museums, the Botanic Gardens, Rocky Mountain National Park, Mesa Verde, relationships, etc.) and letting others do the “deep diving” and “heavy lifting” off earth’s surface.  The only unsafe environment I enjoy exploring these days is the abyss of my “Unconscious” which I do each week with my Jungian therapist guide. My interior life, I find, is bottomless, and exploring it provides me with quite enough in the way of excitement and thrills to keep me more than satisfied… and in my place. And yes, for sure, I am the first to set foot in this particular wilderness.

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LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN

The other day on Colorado Public Radio, I had one of those “driveway moments” they talk about, except mine was an “underground parking garage moment.” The occasion was the celebration of Langston Hughes’ birthday on Talk of the Nation hosted by Neal Conan. Towards the end of the program, Neal asked one of his guests, Nikki Finney, a National Book Award winning poet from the University of Kentucky, to read one of Hughes’ poems.  She chose Let America Be America  Again.

I was unfamiliar with this particular poem although I knew Hughes’ work  pretty well from my days teaching American Civilization.  However, these verses spoke to me in a deep and powerful way, so much so that I remained in my car for a while after Finney had finished, the radio had grown silent,  and the moist, musty scent of damp  concrete had seeped into my car.


There in the mostly dark basement of my apartment building, I tried to imagine what Black people have felt ever since they were forcefully brought to America early in our nation’s life. I couldn’t help the tears welling up when I realized the painful truth of Hughes repeated refrain for himself as as an American Black person: “America never was America to me.” How incredibly awful, not to be in any sense “at home” in America or to participate in or share the original dream except as a dream…only a dream, never a reality.

More tragic, of course, as Hughes points out, is that it is not only the Black people for whom America has never been America. Later in the poem he broadens his observations to include the poor farmer, the worker, the people in debt without relief, those who never got ahead because, for whatever reasons, the decks were stacked against them. Lord what a tragedy, and how guilty I feel, that I have been fortunate enough to have dreamed the dream and enjoyed its benefits, but not responsible enough to help improve the condition of those who honestly and sadly have said–and say right now–America must become America to all of us, not just to me.


I join with the Occupiers, temporary and permanent,  who cry out that we must take back our land from those who “live like leeches” on our lives, from those who espouse power, profit, gain and greed–all at the expense of the rest of us–the poor white, the Negro, the Indian’, the immigrant, those who are down trodden for any reason.


For me, Hughes’ poem trumpets a call to awareness and demands that I take whatever action I can to advance the cause of human freedom and justice, as much as I can–given my own station in life. At the very least I can be kind to others, give support and lend a shoulder to the weary or tearful, stand up and complain when people make racist  remarks, or tell immigrant jokes, or put down the opposite sex, or ignore people who are hurting in their lives. 

We can all do something–at the very least, in an election year, we can avoid  supporting and electing ideologically motivated, greedy and self-serving people to the legislature and White House. 


Let’s swear the oath: America will be…and we can make America America again.

Here’s the poem. Try reading it aloud–making use of his punctuation. Listen to the sound and feel the feelings. It’s a beauty. I dare you not to get teary.

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes 

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? 
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!


O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
© 2012, Academy of American Poets. All Rights Reserved.
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I Discover What The Shadow Knows

As you may remember, I was born in Kentucky where I was  raised by a quintessential WASP family.  We were members of a “frontier” religious denomination called The Disciples of Christ (The Christian Church).  This splinter denomination was conceived and born in what was then the trans-Appalachian West in the mid-19th century.

The denomination’s doctrines and beliefs were few and simple: centrality of the Scripture which every person interprets his/her own way, baptism by immersion (no infants), priesthood of all believers, each congregation govern itself, no political hierarchy, and weekly communion (Eucharist) partaken of by all believers who had accepted Christ as their personal savior. I accepted Christ–that is, I made my “confession of faith,” when I was 12 after many hours of Sunday School and Vacation Bible School instruction.

That morning in 1948 as I sat on the mauve cushions in the front row of the starkly white sanctuary, waiting for the minister to call my name and ask me the requisite questions about my belief and intentions, I really didn’t have the foggiest notion of what I was doing  or what my membership in the church entailed. The plain truth is that I was doing what my parents and relatives had done before me and, therefore, expected me to do as well. And so I did it. Always the dutiful child.

I performed admirably, answering correctly while looking  Rev. Tom Giltner directly in the eye, shaking his hand firmly, and then the following week joining him in the baptistry where I was dutifully immersed.  I noticed no descending doves or claps of thunder. But it was apparent that my parents and close relatives were very pleased with me and I could feel their warm glow and hear their repeated words of pride as they talked to their friends while we stood together in the reception line in the Church’s social hall.

Inside my 12 year old self, at that point, I understood a couple of things. First, now that I was baptized, I could  take weekly communion. This was a major part of the weekly service of worship that I was required to attend.  Previously I could only watch others have communion. I felt left out. Deacons served the bread and wine to the congregation, pew by pew, in polished silver salvers designed for that one purpose.  The bread was actually Matzos, crackers made of unleavened flour and broken in small pieces.  The “wine” was actually Welsh’s Concord grape juice served  in tiny half ounce glasses, the claret liquid always warm, and cloyingly sweet. These two elements comprised the communion that was partaken of every Sunday by all declared believers in the congregation. “This is my body” and “drink this in remembrance of me” were the words intoned solemnly by the elders at the communion table in front of the church, and so, once baptized, I ate and drank along with the rest, not really knowing what I was doing.

Second, I realized that being allowed able to take communion was a powerful symbol and public acknowledgement that I was now  “grown up.” In my 12 year old head, the recognition of being “grown up” was both good and bad. The thought suddenly engendered  numbers of thoughts and numerous questions that rattled around in my brain.  For example, what would happen to me now that I was “grown up?” Would I have to be “good” all the time?  Would people forgive me my mistakes less than before?  For years I had been told  “wait until you are grown up,” or “you’ll understand that when you are grown up,” or “once you are grown up you will have to become responsible, or act like a man, or know the difference between right and wrong… etc.” This new status was scary stuff even though I desperately wanted in one way to be a grown man. Somehow I intuited that I had just entered the Big Leagues where things started to count, where good and bad deeds and thoughts would be registered in the heavenly log book on a clean new page that had been put there just for me.

Third,  in my 12 year old head was the conviction that with my baptism, something spiritually significant had happened to me,  or should have happened, something very like a lightening bolt striking a tree, and that adulthood as a  newly-minted believer would render my life different and make my choices much easier and allow me to move ahead with my religious life with clarity and confidence. Although I searched and searched for the “difference” that baptism made in my little mind and soul, I could honestly find nothing new or radically changed. I was still the same red headed, freckle faced, four-eyed, funny, testosterone-charged little guy that I had been before walking down the slippery steps into the baptistry pool. Maybe I had messed something up. Maybe it hadn’t worked. Guilt.

My search for the “difference” went on for many, many years, as did my deepening self-applied guilt for not finding or feeling that “something new,” astonishing, sparkling, clarifying had occurred. Moreover, as I looked around me I saw that it wasn’t just me. I saw that other people, particularly grown ups who were also members of the church, who had allegedly been hit with the same spiritual lightening bolt that I had been hit by, had apparently not changed their behaviors after the lightening strike–a deacon was caught with another man’s wife, an elder who was President of a Bank aided another church member in committing fraud, one of dad’s friends went bankrupt and killed himself, several couples got divorces for reasons that were only alluded to in low tones behind closed doors or in whispers covered by hands with out-turned palms.

All the while, plagued by spiritual and moral unease, I kept remembering two commandments (learned at Sunday School and at the dinner table) that I knew should be directing my internal and external lives.  The first was from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount when he said, “You, therefore, must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt, 5:48). The second was uttered by my own father, the most nearly perfect living man I ever met, who told me, “If you do not turn out to be a better man that I am, then I have failed you as a father.” Consider for a moment the impact of these two instructions on the life of a 12 year old boy who wanted desperately to “do”  adulthood–to accomplish being “grown up”– right.  And understand that I knew with absolute certainty at the same time that  perfection of the type being required of me was not even remotely possible in my life. I had already failed at age 12 when I shoplifted a paperback from the Walgreens and also when I indulged in thinking lascivious thoughts about one of my mother’s friends. And there was lots more stuff than that, primed and loaded, and stored in the locker of my imagination ready for action. The conflict between knowing who I really was and who I was supposed to be was intense and painful.

Much of my adolescent and adult life, therefore, was spent focusing on my shortcomings, call them what you will, assigning appropriate guilt, and on carefully covering up imperfections and “sins,” so that they would be invisible to the outside world. Variations on the question “what would the neighbors think if they knew?” became the moral leitmotiv for decisions I made that occasionally reined  in my natural impulses–when they did. I think back with regret on the amount of mental and emotional energy that I wasted on these tasks, on worrying about the neighbors, in beating myself up for not being perfect–or sometimes not even wanting to be– over the years.

But relief was finally in sight. In the last third of my life, I have become acquainted with the thinking and writings of Carl Jung, and many of my earlier conflicts and self-imposed guilt are in the process of being resolved.  Healing is possible even for an old guy. It was in Jung’s concept of the Shadow that I gained a better understanding of what it might mean–for me at least–to be “grown up.” I learned that all people, not just me, “carry a shadow…a reservoir for human darkness.” I also learned that “the shadow in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to projection: turning a personal inferiority into a perceived moral deficiency in someone else.” I discovered that perfection is a mental construct only, and not a realistic goal to be desired, sought, or even achieved.

The “take-away” idea from my reading of Jung, and by my personal therapy is an “a’ ha” of sorts: perfection in the sense it was described to me by Jesus or Henry Johnson, Jr., on any level, is simply not possible, not even desirable. I accept that for me to be human is to have a Shadow that, outside of the control of my will,  fills my thoughts, influences my motivations, encourages me to judge others and to find fault with myself, prevents me from copying those perfectionist behavioral models expounded by parents and preachers.

Now comes the very different and difficult task of forgiving myself. Easier said than done, I am finding. But in the effort, I am increasingly realizing the incredibly broad dimensions of what it means to be human, specifically what it means for me (for all of us) to be fully human. This also means that  I have to accept the Shadow as an integral and loveable part of me along with everything else that contains  traces of good and noble. I find this acceptance is a very hard task, but it isa necessary one if I am to move  ahead with my process of individuation and maturation.

Who cares what the neighbors think?? The Shadow really knows!

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Mark Answers Chris Hedges’ Question: “Standing There Shaking In My Wet Depends!”

 It’s easy to stand among my fellow men and women, as I have often done, and mouth the words of faith, but I have never had the nerve, courage, or guts to stand face to face with the oppressors, some  of whom were my bosses, friends, relatives, teachers or former colleagues, and speak what I really knew to be Right. MLK (quoted below) observed with insight that in my heart I was more concerned with my safety, popularity, job security, and political expediency than with publicly standing up for what I knew was Right. In the following article from 12/6/2011 Nation of Change, Chris Hedges  pointed my finger at me once again.
Where Were You When They Crucified My Lord?

By Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges gave an abbreviated version of this talk Saturday morning in Liberty Square in New York City as part of an appeal to Trinity Church to turn over to the Occupy Wall Street movement an empty lot, known as Duarte Square, that the church owns at Canal Street and 6th Avenue. Occupy Wall Street protesters, following the call, began a hunger strike at the gates of the church-owned property. Three of the demonstrators were arrested Sunday on charges of trespassing, and three others took their places.
The Occupy movement is the force that will revitalize traditional Christianity in the United States or signal its moral, social and political irrelevance. The mainstream church, battered by declining numbers and a failure to defiantly condemn the crimes and cruelty of the corporate state, as well as a refusal to vigorously attack the charlatans of the Christian right, whose misuse of the Gospel to champion unfettered capitalism, bigotry and imperialism is heretical, has become a marginal force in the life of most Americans, especially the young. Outside the doors of churches, many of which have trouble filling a quarter of the pews on Sundays, struggles a movement, driven largely by young men and women, which has as its unofficial credo the Beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.
Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

It was the church in Latin America, especially in Central America and Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, which provided the physical space, moral support and direction for the opposition to dictatorship. It was the church in East Germany that organized the peaceful opposition marches in Leipzig that would bring down the communist regime in that country. It was the church in Czechoslovakia, and its 90-year-old cardinal, that blessed and defended the Velvet Revolution. It was the church, and especially the African-American church, that made possible the civil rights movements. And it is the church, especially Trinity Church in New York City with its open park space at Canal and 6th, which can make manifest its commitment to the Gospel and nonviolent social change by permitting the Occupy movement to use this empty space, just as churches in other cities that hold unused physical space have a moral imperative to turn them over to Occupy movements. If this nonviolent movement fails, it will eventually be replaced by one that will employ violence. And if it fails it will fail in part because good men and women, especially those in the church, did nothing.
Where is the church now? Where are the clergy? Why do so many church doors remain shut? Why do so many churches refuse to carry out the central mandate of the Christian Gospel and lift up the cross?
Some day they are going to have to answer the question: “Where were you when they crucified my Lord?”
Let me tell you on this first Sunday in Advent, when we celebrate hope, when we remember in the church how Mary and Joseph left Nazareth for Bethlehem, why I am in Liberty Square. I am here because I have tried, however imperfectly, to live by the radical message of the Gospel. I am here because I know that it is not what we say or profess but what we do. I am here because I have seen in my many years overseas as a foreign correspondent that great men and women of moral probity arise in all cultures and all religions to fight the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed. I am here because I have seen that it is possible to be a Jew, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu or an atheist and carry the cross. The words are different but the self-sacrifice and thirst for justice are the same. And these men and women, who may not profess what I profess or believe what I believe, are my brothers and sisters. And I stand with them honoring and respecting our differences and finding hope and strength and love in our common commitment.
At times like these I hear the voices of the saints who went before us. The suffragist Susan B. Anthony, who announced that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God, and the suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who said, “The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.” Or Henry David Thoreau, who told us we should be men and women first and subjects afterward, that we should cultivate a respect not for the law but for what is right. And Frederick Douglass, who warned us: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” And the great 19th century populist Mary Elizabeth Lease, who thundered: “Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master.” And Gen. Smedley Butler, who said that after 33 years and four months in the Marine Corps he had come to understand that he had been nothing more than a gangster for capitalism, making Mexico safe for American oil interests, making Haiti and Cuba safe for banks and pacifying the Dominican Republic for sugar companies. War, he said, is a racket in which newly dominated countries are exploited by the financial elites and Wall Street while the citizens foot the bill and sacrifice their young men and women on the battlefield for corporate greed. Or Eugene V. Debs, the socialist presidential candidate, who in 1912 pulled almost a million votes, or 6 percent, and who was sent to prison by Woodrow Wilson for opposing the First World War, and who told the world: “While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” And Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who when he was criticized for walking with Martin Luther King on the Sabbath in Selma answered: “I pray with my feet” and who quoted Samuel Johnson, who said: “The opposite of good is not evil. The opposite of good is indifference.” And Rosa Parks, who defied the segregated bus system and said “the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.” And Philip Berrigan, who said: “If enough Christians follow the Gospel, they can bring any state to its knees.”
And the poet Langston Hughes, who wrote:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

And Martin Luther King, who said: “On some positions, cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ And there comes a time when a true follower of Jesus Christ must take a stand that’s neither safe nor politic nor popular but he must take a stand because it is right.”
Where were you when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there to halt the genocide of Native Americans? Were you there when Sitting Bull died on the cross? Were you there to halt the enslavement of African-Americans? Were you there to halt the mobs that terrorized black men, women and even children with lynching during Jim Crow? Were you there when they persecuted union organizers and Joe Hill died on the cross? Were you there to halt the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in World War II? Were you there to halt Bull Connor’s dogs as they were unleashed on civil rights marchers in Birmingham? Were you there when Martin Luther King died upon the cross? Were you there when Malcolm X died on the cross? Were you there to halt the hate crimes, discrimination and violence against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and those who are transgender? Were you there when Matthew Shepard died on the cross? Were you there to halt the abuse and at times enslavement of workers in the farmlands of this country? Were you there to halt the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Vietnamese during the war in Vietnam or hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan? Were you there to halt Israel’s saturation bombing of Lebanon and Gaza? Were you there when Rachel Corrie died on the cross? Were you there to halt the corporate forces that have left working men and women and the poor in this country bereft of a sustainable income, hope and dignity? Were you there to share your food with your neighbor in Liberty Square? Were you there to become homeless with them?
Where were you when they crucified my Lord?
I know where I was.
Here.
With you.
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/where-were-you-when-they-crucified-my-lord-1323183242. All rights are reserved.

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War, The Wreck of An Illusion, and My Continuing Self-Examination.

My daughter Sarah is home schooling both of her sons. The older boy, Zack, is 14 and quite mature intellectually because he is bright, a reader, and is immersed in input from the Internet.  Having played serveral war Games, he asked his mom if he could study something called “American Military History Since 1945.” She contacted me as an old and former  history teacher to see if I could help, and I readily agreed to try to put together a “learning packet” on this topic for him. Doing this task has been the focus of my attention since August and has created an intense surge of excitement in my life that is hard to describe.

Why? Because I have always been an avid reader about war, about combat. When I read, I am there. Yet I am an equally avid pacifist who abhors violence in any form in the real world. I’m sure a psychologist could explain this contradiction.  I was fortunate that the timing of my birth allowed me to arrive at draft age in between wars.  I was on a career path leading through graduate school and fatherhood that furnished me deferments and cancelled any necessity of me actually having to be in the service and fight in actual combat.

My enchantment and involvement with war, therefore, were totally vicarious and removed from its reality–a viewpoint that I see now contained more than a hint of romance gleaned from the movies I watched and the paperbacks I devoured as I grew up. I responded viscerally to the excitement of second-hand combat and danger–on film or print–in spite of the fact that if I had been forced to live out those events, I would have perished with fright long before I was ever hit with by shell or shrapnel.

Interestingly, in putting together the learning packet for Zack, I have discovered that my ardor for the subject matter of war diminished as my reading and viewing moved from the 1940’s toward the present. It was fairly easy, I found,  to be a “hero-in-my-own-mind” while doing battle with the Krauts and Japs (as we depersonalized them), shooting down Kamakazis from a fast moving destroyer, sinking supply ships through the periscope of a sub and watching the torpedoes run true to their targets, or commanding a platoon of resourceful commandos wreaking havoc behind enemy lines in occupied France.

However, I discovered that the minute the action moved to the frigid hills of Korea, the hot and humid jungles of Vietnam, and the arid deserts and barren mountains of Iraq and Afghanistan, my interest and emotional involvement subsided, virtually disappeared. No longer was I able to be personally involved–that is, as myself, Mark from Kentucky, red headed and wearing glasses, often afraid of my own shadow in the real world.

The issue forced by the historical work I was doing on Zack’s learning packet turned out to be centered right here–in me–at the place where my emotional involvement and support of the “hot” action of war faded away and became something more like disgust or nausea or revulsion.  Perhaps the change began when I reviewed 1945 and Hiroshima, and first saw photographs and newsreels depicting horribly burned and mutilated Japanese citizens, not soldiers, lying blackened and maimed where they just happened to be, following their daily routines, that morning in August 1945 when an atomic bomb exploded over their hometown.

Perhaps my outlook also changed when I talked with college friends who had been in Korea and heard their horror stories about the inescapable freezing cold, their perpetual hunger, their fear, the mass nightly charges and bugle-blowing hordes of Chinese who just kept coming even when they were being slaughtered by our machine guns as fast as they appeared. Or maybe it was when I watched the brutality of the Vietnam War that I saw on each evening’s TV news, military and civilians, adults and children burned by napalm or mowed down by shrapnel, automatic weapons, or exploding Claymore mines. Or it could have been when I was witnessing any one of the many military encounters in which my country has been involved, whether in Latin America, Africa, or the Asian sub-continent in the past 30 years.

It seems to me, in retrospect, that the rationale for war has become less and less obvious and apparent as the years of my life have passed. Acknowledging this,  I searched deep into myself, exploring my soul as it were, for other sources of my decreasing enchantment with war, and I discovered several.  First, as I had grown older, I  began more fully to understand the meaning of pain, both physical and emotional, because I had experienced both in my life. I had to acknowledge that war is full of both. Moreover, as my age advanced, I had become increasingly sensitive to the finality of death, mine as well as others. People in the movies or news clips who got hit and went down and expired were “down for good”–no second chances or repeat performances. No longer could I take any comfort by making a charade of death.

I also began to question more deeply than ever before whether there were ever any good rationales for fighting a war, for deliberately devising strategies to kill as many or the “enemy” (other human beings) as possible. And this was particularly troublesome where it concerned fighting other people for reasons that were not directly involved with the defense of my nation, my people, my family,  or myself.

All of these changes in me were only intensified as I searched through films and books to include in Zack’s packet. Last night, for example, I accidentally happened on an older movie, not on my topic,  starring Anthony Quinn, one of my favorites. He played Omar Mukhtar, a Bedouin tribal leader in Libya fighting on horseback against the colonizing Italians’ artillery, tanks and aircraft. The Italians, like many of their European and American counterparts, were seeking to suppress/eliminate the natives who objected to the subjection of their country by the foreigners.

Here the full absurdity of war was presented boldly and graphically. I saw that the slaughter and death and tribal destruction had many causes, from the individual hubris of the commanders,  to the generalized lust for control, the national and personal need to exert power over others, the urge to exact revenge, disputes about who owns the land, international competition and pride, the excitement of rape and pillage, etc., etc.  In short, I saw war for what it was with no hint of romance or positive coloration by rose colored glasses. And it made me sick.

Following that, t didn’t take much reflection to refocus my attention ahead a couple of years, on what’s happening in Libya today. It’s easy to see the results of those  earlier colonial-tribal conflicts, of the later  battles in North Africa during War II, of the appearance of a self-serving, autocratic government seeking some sort of order after World War II.  Then there are the latest events of the Arab Spring, the overthrow of corrupt absolute power in favor of ….who knows what? And the “elephant in the room,” of course, or under the sands,  Libya’s oil reserves, 8th largest in the world, a national asset that takes on new meaning in our petroleum-based world where crude oil resources are literally fought for because they inevitably dwindle and disappear.

While I am still excited about creating this learning package for Zack, my enthusiasm for the subject matter of war per se has diminished notably. I continue to try to hold my cynicism in check because I still love the country into which I was born and whose ideals, opportunities, standards. and virtues I have treasured ever since I was old enough to cry at a Fourth of July parade during World War II. I find small solace in knowing that aggression and war are part of human nature.

Naively, I guess, I aspire for more and better than that for our kind, and for our progeny. To do what I can, a step better than mere “hoping,” I’ll support those causes and people who seem to agree with this dream and objective, simplistic and child-like though it may be. And keep my gnarled old fingers crossed.

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Name Should Change From Goldman Sachs to Sacks of Gold

This is a video featuring the ever-articulate Chris Hedges and Cornel West who are holding a mock trial of Goldman Sachs at the Occupy Wall Street site in New York City. I think that much of what they have to say makes sense and, therefore, heightens my rage at the unwillingness of the legal system to penalize those people and institutions who created the financial mess we are currently enduring. Lots of people are suffering while the perpetrators of this financial crime are free to continue to enrich themselves at our expense. Check it out.  The movement is alive and well. Keep tuned in.

Cornel West and Chris Hedges at Goldman Sachs Mock Trial

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The People vs. Goldman Sachs mock trial people’s hearing held at Liberty aka Zuccotti Park with fiery commentary by Dr. Cornel West, eloquence by Chris Hedges, and testimonies from people directly affected by Goldman Sach policies. Chris Headges states: “Goldman Sachs, which received more subsidies and bailout related funds than any other investment bank because the Federal Reserve permitted it to become a bank hodling company under it’s emergency situation has used billions in tax payer money to enrich itself and reward its top executives. ”
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/cornel-west-and-chris-hedges-goldman-sachs-mock-trial-1320759270. All rights are reserved.
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A Valuable Pearl Of Wisdom From Ms. Perlman–Makes A Lot Of Sense to Me

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Discovering My Own Values
–by Leah Perlman
 “At the end of your life” a friend once asked,  “What do you hope to have happened?” I thought it a great question and decided to give him a thoughtful answer, so pocketed it for later, bought myself a month for the assignment. For a while my mind flooded with questions of plot. Will I fall in love? Will I have kids? Will I know passion in my work? Will I touch lives? Will I change the world? For the better? What will my regrets be? Where Will I have traveled? Where will I have lived? Will I have really traveled? Will I have really lived?   
When I was a kid watching movies, I used to shout turning tense scenes “Ah! What’s gonna happen!?”  “How should I know?” My dad would laugh,  “I’m watching the same movie you are!” I wasn’t really asking him. But the uncertainty, it’s unnerving.  
It’s so tempting to ask questions about how things will turn out, grasping at some kind of assurance in a constantly changing world. But the answers are not here, not now.  They’re waiting patiently at the end of the story, relaxing in the shade, probably sipping lemonade. They’re not going anywhere, so perhaps it’s better to let the questions go and just live in to the possibilities.  
“Will I this? Might I that?”  I let all those questions go, and soon a new question began peaking around the corner of my consciousness. Rather than ask what life I hoped to live, I began wondering how to live life. The assignment had changed for me, from one story telling, to an inquiry in to my own values.   
 For most of my life, I believe inherited my values from my context. Looking back, I can see that in the years before getting into a good college the most important thing to me was just that, getting into a good college. Once at Brown, it was the grades. After graduating, I spent two years working and living, proving my independence to…myself? I think? And then I came to work at Facebook, a company with deeply embedded and well-articulated values. I believed in the vision and my coworkers, which was enough for me to adopt the values of the company as my own. Efficiency and leverage became important to me, along with openness, connectedness. impact. These were the things that kept me up at night.  
What should’ve kept me up was my dad’s cancer. He’d been diagnosed sometime while I was in college, but I’d mostly pretended he hadn’t because that was easier. I assumed he’d just get better. But then one day, during my Facebook years, he got worse. X-years-to-live type of thing. I was tempted to push the news aside again and go back to helping democratize the world’s information (also known as processing my email) when something inside me flipped, snapped, woke up, sang out. I saw in an instant that I was living a life on autopilot. I was asleep at the wheel, and I had been for…could it be? forever? So, what do I now? That day I put in a request for a six month leave-of-absence, needing space from my own life in order to see it. And also, to spend time with my parents.  
In the two years that followed I began, super slowly, to start following my own heart. As unpracticed as I was, it often spoke in low tones, gave me mixed messages, or long bouts of silence. This is still true, but the more I listen, the more I hear. And now that I’ve spent some time living in accordance with my own intuition, I can look back and see a new cohesion taking shape, my very own personal values are becoming clear.  
And just before I share them, I’d like to add that one result of following my heart is ending up in the presence of amazing teachers and role models. Much of what follows comes directly from what I have learned from them. Big hug, deep bow.   
~ Values ~
Truth. I can’t presume to know all the manifestations of living a truthful life, but I hope to always live into that question.  
One aspect of truth I’ve come to value is the ability to see clearly. A practical way I’ve learned to see True versus False is through “Is” versus “Isn’t.” I value learning to see what IS. As I move down my path I know longer care what I am not, what this world isn’t, what my partners or family or friends aren’t, you know? Rather, who am I? who are they? What is happening? Recently a friend stopped emailing me when he got a new girlfriend. My first thoughts were “He isn’t responding”, I’m not as important to him”, “I not being supported” and “I don’t have my close friend anymore.” It took me a few weeks to let go of what wasn’t happening and see what was. He was falling in love. My hurt and anger had kept me from being happy for him. And as I began writing for myself each day instead, I was developing my internal support. My sense of loss and indignation had kept me from seeing the growth in myself. Along with the isnt’s also go the the shoulds and shouldn’ts, the can’ts, didn’ts, weren’ts, and the needs and has tos.    
I’ve also taken on the practice of speaking as truthfully as I can, which has come to include saying not simply whatever is true, but what is kind, helpful and timely.
Communicating truth is not just to lie or not to lie. Rather, it’s an art. I can send you a text to tell you I love you. Or I can open my door to you whenever knock, answer whenever you call, listen whenever you need. Which is most true? Recently I heard someone say that speaking truthfully is only half the game, “How truthfully can we listen?” Listen without judgment, without expectation, without interruption, and without planning a response. 
Breaking through cognitive dissonance, is another way of living in Truth. Cognitive dissonance is the holding and living out of contradictory values. Recently I’ve been learning a lot about meat production, a topic about which I consciously ignored of until recently. Probably because I knew that if I knew too much, I’d have to start sacrificing. And I LOVE hamburgers. So often we hold cognitive dissonance for the sake of convenience – not knowing where and how my clothes are made allows me to buy cheaper things, as if someone else isn’t paying the cost. Not understanding the real threat to the planet allows me to keep driving, flying, producing…consuming. Consuming the very system, the earth, that brought me into being. I’ve never liked politics, or paid nearly enough attention to world affairs, human trafficking, religious oppression, women’s rights, endangered species, or any of the worlds suffering. I live such a life of privilege it’s so incredibly comfortable not to let any of that in. If I really knew what’s going on in the world, could I still live my life the way I am living it? No. But I can’t awaken unless I awaken to everything and so, I am committed. However, I’ve alo come to peace with the fact that learning to live in alignment takes education, and time. The “right” way to live is not always obvious. I heard Al Gore once say that despite the environmental cost of flying, he believes it’s worth it for him to educate the world on climate change. My path to cognitive resonance is to pay greater attention to my motivations, and to evolve at a pace that leaves me feeling strong and safe enough to continue down the path.  
 Self-Love. Until two years ago, I liked myself. If you’d asked me to swap with anyone I wouldn’t have done it, and I often felt proud of who I was and what I’d done. But I didn’t LOVE myself. I didn’t LOVE myself as if I was absolutely perfectly wonderfully unconditionally irresistibly lovable. Like truth-seeking, it may be a journey that lasts my whole lifetime, but these days I’m aggressively committed to honoring myself, my needs, my desires, my tastes, my emotions, my choices, my past, my intentions, my body, my art, my mistakes, my everything. I hope to honor it all as if there is nothing more important in this world to honor. I (am working to) love myself as if I’m my own only child; as if me and myself were the last two people on earth. I believe in myself as my very own religion. Not in a way that ranks me above anyone else; but allows for everyone to be their own personal God. I don’t know who this, but I like it, “If everyone healed themselves, the world would be healed.”  
My body, my self, this physical being is the way in which I interact in the world. What my body does, how it acts, what it says, what my fingers type, that is the only contact I have with this universe. This is my vehicle, this is my tool, this is it. So I need to keep it healthy and happy, and energized. I need to know everything about it. I need to learn to use it as wisely as possible. This self, it’s the only thing I have, really, so I will love it, worship it, and learn to make it shine as brightly as I know how.  
Set an Example. And while I’m learning to honor and love myself, I try to remain aware of the affect my actions have on others. I’m healing myself with the desire of healing the world. So after asking “Is this right for me?” The next question is “What example does this set?” They are deeply related, the answers can’t be separate because nothing is right for me unless it is also right for others to witness. But often the answer to the first isn’t clear and second question helps find clarity. We speak a thousand times a day, and each time is an opportunity to say something helpful or harmful.  Sometimes it might feel good to complain or gossip, but what example does that set? Sometimes I rush to be first in line, get the best seat, get the best piece, etc., without regard for how that might be affecting others around me. Quite often I find excuses for living out of line with my values. Asking what kind of example I’m setting, so often sheds light on the gray areas, helps me pay attention to the broader impact of my actions.   
Empowerment. The world is. It is what it is. What good is “I wish my parents would…” or  “the world was…”, or “my boss would…”, or “my friends this”, or “traffic that”, or “the weather this”, or “anything that.” The world is what it is. People are how they are. I don’t sit around getting annoyed that gravity doesn’t work differently (well, sometimes) because it just IS. So, the world is what it is and I want to live a happy peaceful life. So the only question is, how do I do? What do I change? Who do I become. I love this quote: “Feeling resentment is like drinking poison and hoping someone else will die.” Even if I don’t change the world at all, I am empowered to change the feelings and responses I have to it.  
Recently, an almost-landlord of mine pulled some weird stuff. I spent a few days feeling angry, and then annoyed, and now I’m almost up to compassion. I may never meet the guy, so it’s not for his sake, it’s for mine. Angry feels crappy, like I’m caging an animal inside me, and annoyance is the same, but maybe a fly instead. Compassion, however, is like drinking a warm cup of chai: cozy, sweet, and energizing. It feels great to my insides. My experience of this life will be the sum of my actions and my reactions, so if I want to live a good life (which I do! I do!) I will cultivate healthy responses. I want to take full accountability for everything that happens to me. I’m not a victim of anything. I’m free.  
Creating what I Crave. The idea is this. If I find myself craving something, I’m learning to give it away. If I’m lonely, I look for ways to make someone else feel less lonely. If I wish someone loved me, I find someone to love. If I think I’m being wronged, I find a way to apologize. If I want more community in my life, which I do, I will create it. I believe the clearest sign of what I am meant to cultivate in the world is identifying that which I crave the most. It’s harder than it sounds. When I walk into the kitchen and see dirty dishes everywhere, you can bet my gut instinct is not to joyfully clean up after everyone. But, that’s how it works. I have two paths to peace in that moment, let go of the irritation, or do the dishes myself. Understanding that which I crave is actually that which I am best suited to foster, that’s pretty damn empowering.  
Humor. While sometimes humor can seem like a frivolity, that which comes at the end of a knock knock joke, or after the chicken crosses the road, it must be more. Humor melts ice. It cuts tension, and lightens the heaviest loads. Humor has the capacity to transform suffering to joy. Sometimes humor is all that can break down the walls of one perspective, opening up new ways of seeing, which offers us new choices. It can communicate truths that can be easily tuned out in every other way. I had a teacher who once said that humor puts the “light” in “enlightenment.” I think the reason Humor has made it into my set of core values is because I need it to keep the rest in perspective. We are each, after all, infinitesimal in the span of time. So humor reminds us that while everything is important, nothing is so serious.  
 Love everyone. I will spend the rest of my life learning to see every person on this planet as lovable as a small child, a cute puppy. And also, as wise as the wisest teacher — as worthy of worship as my highest value. Like the rest, this is going to take a while, probably my whole life. But for now, my days are laced with small openings. I’m proactively choosing to spend time with people who confuse me. I’m spending more time chatting with strangers. I’m spending time with the same homeless people I used to pretend I didn’t see. I’m watching children more. And animals. I’m asking more questions. I’m cultivating patience. I want to love everyone not for his or her sake, but my own. Loving feels SO good. The beauty here is that the path to loving more, is loving more; the journey and the goal are the same. And so, I practice.  
Aesthetics.  I’ll never forget a conversation I once heard between two friends.
“Why do you do what you do?” 
“To maximize the good. And you?”
“Aesthetics.” 
I spent years trying to understand this answer. At first, it made no sense whatsoever. I’d spent my life trying to perform, improve, excel, achieve, each moment fueling the next like my body was on fire and a lake just ahead. Like the first friend who answered, I lived in a world of right and wrong, where right led to happiness and wrong to suffering.  But Aesthetics? To me that word had only to do with art, and only to do with a single moment in time. How does that look? How does it make me feel now?  Through this friend’s answer I began to see the whole world as a single work of art to be viewed and re-viewed in one discrete moment after the next. In this framework, our actions are decided not by what we expect to produce the best future outcome, but by what yields more beauty now. And that’s “beauty” in every dimension, not just beauty according to the senses, but as the heart can appreciate it. In this framework, nothing is about right and wrong, happiness vs. suffering. Actions just result in more or less beauty along an infinite scale.   
 Last night I was offered a ride and chose to walk home in the rain. Why? Aesthetics. Yesterday, aesthetics guided me to read a book cover-to-cover. Sometimes we feel called to act in a way that doesn’t make the most logical sense. Later we might see a broader purpose it served, but it’s in following these instincts that we break free from the limits of what we know, and open ourselves up to new possibilities.  I’ve come to see aesthetics as the value I’m honoring when there’s no good reason for doing what I do, but it just feels right. It’s the same force that guides a painter to choose how and where to stroke his brush, and what turns a life from a series of patterns and habits, into a work of art.  
~ Epilogue ~ 
I sent all of the above to the friend who asked the initial question, “how do you hope your life to turn out?” And in a letter to him, I ended with this:  
“I guess this isn’t quite the story of a life you’d want to read, with a climax and denouement. It’s not told from the end as we discussed. There aren’t a lot of specifics or characters. But even without any specifics in place, perhaps this all tells a story anyway. At the end, this life will have been a journey of perseverance; a century, I hope, of opening to truth and love. I will have cultivated a generous heart, I will have never lost the spirit of fun, I will have loved well, and set an example of love, truth, generosity, beauty, laughter and kindness. I will live and die at peace, confident that I did my very best.  
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This post is reprinted here with permission from the author, Leah Perlman. Leah is the co-founder of the Happiness Institute, a space in San Francisco dedicated to bringing people together to explore what brings them individual and collective happiness. More from Leah.