They're Screwing With Us Folks.

Let's take back our power by listening to that still small voice that says, "What!!!?" "What were you thinking?" 

Remember when we got excited when a President told us that we would send a man to the moon and bring him back safely before the end of the decade? We didn't know how in the world we were going to do that, but smartness rose to the occasion.

We had a vision.

We developed space travel when a leader told us we could. I remember when Sam Shepherd, the first man in space, did a quick up and down, only going into orbit. And I remember Shepherd while suited up and sitting in the space capsule regretted his morning coffee and needed to go to the bathroom. The crew discussed the problem and finally told him to wet his pants.

Remember when John F. Kennedy conceived the idea of the Peace Corps? 

Kennedy, arrived in Michigan at 2 am in the morning, not to speak, but to sleep. When he found himself surrounded by 10,000 students he spoke extemporaneously. Kennedy challenged American youth to devote a part of their lives to living and working in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a way to foster goodwill and peace. 

Their response was immediate: within weeks students organized a petition drive and gathered 1,000 signatures in support of the idea. Several hundred others pledged to serve. Enthusiastic letters poured into Democratic headquarters. This response was crucial to Kennedy's decision to make the founding of a Peace Corps a priority.  He executed it by executive order, and three days later appointed R. Sargent Shriver as the Director?

Maybe you don't remember, for this was March 1, 1961.

From the podium at the University of Michigan, Kennedy asked:

 

"How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world?"

 

"On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend on the answer whether a free society can compete. I think it can! And I think Americans are willing to contribute. But the effort must be far greater than we have ever made in the past."

 

By 2018, 141 countries had hosted more than 235,000 Peace Corp volunteers.

 I once witnessed the far-reaching arm of a Peace Corps volunteer:

I was part of a training session. One of the group, a Caucasian young man raised in Africa, was deep into his feelings of being alone. not wanted, grieving for what he had lost. He lamented that once in Africa, he knew friendship where boys would happily walk down the street with their arms around each other, and think nothing about it. He had no such friends in America.

 From the back of the room came a voice in Swahili.

 We didn't know what it said, but the boy did.

 Neither did we know we had a former Peace Corps volunteer in the group. The voice said, "Welcome, brother."

 The kid fell apart, and so did we as soon as we knew what had happened. We were leaping from our seats, hugging the kid and each other, crying and laughing all at the same time.

 

 

 

 

 

 Once, a psychologist named Abraham Maslow said: "Stop studying the ills and look to the positive way things work."

 What a concept.

Spiritual life, as Maslow puts it, is an instinct. One hears it from the voices that arise from within. However, two forces are pulling at the individual. One pulls us toward health and self-actualization, the other towards weaknesses and sickness.

 

 Self-actualization (Maslow's term) is not an endpoint or a destination.
 

It is an ongoing process in which people stretch themselves to achieve new heights of well-being, creativity, and fulfillment.

Maslow believed that self-actualizing people contained several characteristics—self-acceptance, spontaneity, independence, and the ability to have peak experiences.

Peak experiences are high points where the individual is in harmony with himself and his surroundings. Some would call that one's spirituality.

Peak experiences are moments of love, understanding, happiness, or rapture, during which a person feels whole, alive, self-sufficient, and yet a part of the world. They are more aware of truth, justice, harmony, and goodness.

 Religious or spiritual values are not the exclusive property of any religion or group. Self-actualizers are religious in character, attitudes, and behavior.

 "Spiritual disorders" tend toward anger or a loss of meaning. Sometimes, it is grief or despair regarding the future. There is often a belief that one's life has been a waste and that finding joy or love is impossible.

I'm attempting ever so carefully to pull myself out of media whitewashing of the Presidency, although tears are appearing in its fabric, and people see through its holes. It's like, 

"Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice; shame on me."

I'm sorry civilization creeps along slowly. We make giant strides ahead, only to lose some. It wobbles. We oscillate between elation and depression.

Some people thought that everything was rotten and that we ought to tear it all down and let Daddy build it back up.

 When donkeys fly.

 

 

 

Saturday Morning's Stream of Consciousness

I’m just going to begin writing. I’m frustrated. I’m not going to think about posting this, for I’m in a quandary about what to think. We’re in a pandemic. The government is undergoing a second impeachment trial on the ex-president. We’ve had people storming the Capital, and claiming to lynch the Vice President. We watch this in wonder. How in the world did we get to this place? 

We can hardly talk to each other anymore, for we might offend someone’s sensibilities because we’re on opposite sides. And why in the hell are we so polarized anyway? Extremism has happened. 

I had decided not to talk about the virus anymore, for I believed it gave energy to it, but I see people want to talk about it. It’s on our minds, it’s in our hearts, it’s in our faces if we venture out of our houses. It’s our concern right now, and we need relief from it. 

People are home with their kids, trying to home-school, getting their jobs done, and feeling overwhelmed. In times before the last Presidential campaign, I heard that Russia—hey, I want to be friends with Russia–and you don’t blame an entire country for the ills of a few. Still, I heard that they were dinking with our media to keep us off-kilter. Keep people off-kilter, and it’s easy to plant a belief. We are open and susceptible. Like how in the world did insurrectionists believe they could hang a Vice President for doing his job? Or resort to such violence anyway?

I had to write. I know you know all this, but we have few people to talk to about our concerns. We want to reach out and place a suave on wounded hearts, but we’re home, behind masks. 

We’re all in this together. Not one in the world is exempt from this virus scare except maybe some lucky aborigines who never heard of Covid19. However, they probably have their own concerns.

A little old lady at the eye doctor’s office, she had her temperature taken, she was feet away from anyone else, she had on two masks. See how frightened people are.

On January 7, a 34-year-old man admitted to a hospital in Bhutan’s Capital, Thimphu, with preexisting liver and kidney problems died of COVID-19. His was the country’s first death from the coronavirus. (And he was a tourist.) Not the first death that day, that week, or that month: the very first coronavirus death since the pandemic began. How did this poor underdeveloped country do it—A Coronavirus success story.

What to do? What to say? I’m just a person sitting in front of my computer typing my heart-felt best. And there you are, doing your heart-felt best. And I wonder what you and I can do to make a difference.

I have written before about beliefs, and probably will again. A belief is so firmly held that it’s like chipping cement to change it. We argue, not over who gets the biggest piece of cake, but over ideologies, which are thoughts. Of course, behind that belief is that something will be taken from us, or we will be forced to do something we do not want to do. That’s imprisonment, so I understand why we tenaciously hold our position. We want to be free.

Sometimes a belief does not serve the person, or they hold onto a theory such as when people thought the earth was the center of the solar system that to change their minds means to lose face. But to change in the face of new evidence is smart. And to allow change means that we have grown. That change ought to be celebrated, not, “Haha, I told you so.”

Most of us want to live and let live, but there comes a time when you realize you are being manipulated or lied to, and it boils the blood to watch injustice.

We have a strong sense of individualism in this country. We’re pioneers, adventurers, explorers, investigators, and inventors. We love doing what we do. Why then is there so much turmoil?

I’ve been taking care of business, being frustrated with my slow computer and a website that was giving me trouble. So today, I’m turning to the page and to you. 

I wanted to write, so I’m doing it. 

Perhaps I am writing “Morning Pages,” words for myself alone. 

I know the world is filled with words, and I wonder if it needs mine. Yet, my job is to write. It’s the job I have chosen for myself. I believe (ah-ha, see a belief) that writing is a transformational experience. I try to explain that to people in a little eBook, Grab a Pen and Kick-Ass, for that reason. I enjoyed doing it. It was directing people toward the pen and the page, not to teach them how to write; I list ten books that will do that, but because I believe writing is healing. 

In the March issue of Life Extension, I just saw that Matthew McConaughey has journaled since he was fifteen. How cool is that?!

Before I leave the subject of Beliefs, and I have written about them before, and probably will again, I have noticed how literal people are. You mention a myth, and many people do not see the symbolism, but instead run off to the gruesome, the diabolical, and the horrendous things people have done in the past.

My second daughter and I are writing a book in the form of letters. This is an excellent activity during these times. We are Elizabeth and Josephine, young archeologists in the 1920’s. Elizabeth discovered a gold coin, and we learned that there are three coins that together form a map to a treasure. The problem is finding the coins. One place Josephine will soon go is to the Yucatan. I have personally stood atop the pyramid, in the Holy of holies, that little room at the top of the Temple of Kukulkan in Chichen Itza. In our story, I go to find a clue or a coin I don’t know which. My point is my daughter asked me my interpretation of a frieze present at Chichen Itza of a Jaguar holding what has been interpreted as a heart. Curls come from his mouth appear to be flowing over the object in his hand (paw). To me, those curls look like his breath is flowing over the object in his paw, rather like God breathing life into Adam. The “Scholars” say that Jaguar is eating the heart. 

What do you think?

Well crap. When I visited Chichen Itza, I saw a frieze of the victor of the ball game. The Mayans built a ball court larger than a football field. (A whisper at one end of the court can be heard at the other end.) The victor of the game is represented as headless, with vegetation coming out of his neck. The guide said they decapitated the victor to ensure the crops. Well, that would really make a warrior want to win. My interpretation is that it is symbolic. The vegetation coming from his head indicated that they would have abundant crops. Did that mean they cut off his head? I prefer not. So argue with me. It’s a matter of interpretation. 

You see, I see, we all see, but we see different. Why is that? Our upbringing? Our genetics? Our past injuries served to form who we are. Some believed they could storm the Capital and threaten the Vice President. Some believe in throwing a tantrum if they don’t get their own way. Some believe that democracy should prevail and are endeavoring to make that happen. Some are afraid of losing their jobs or are in danger of their lives or those of their family, or the repercussions of going against the party line.

We need a Mr. Smith as in the movie Mr. Smith goes to Washington, starring Jimmy Stewart.

My telephone just rang. A certified caller from Georgia., I know someone in Georgia, so I answered it. It was Judy, the niece of my old friend June whom I have mentioned before. She is 97, and Judy took her from Eugene, Oregon, to Georgia, where she could place her in a memory care facility and look after her. 

June is on her way out. 

What an illustrious life she has had. An artist by choice, trade, and talent. I can foresee the celebration now. She will sashay into the group waiting for her on the other side– chocolate in one hand and wine in the other, saying, “Whoopie, what a ride.”

And now:

So, how was your morning?

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