Today!

Did you notice how the heat and humidity climbed today in the Northeast?

Do you remember the frigid cold of January and February?

Did you complain on both extremes?

Me too!

Perhaps we are never supposed to be satisfied in this time and density.

South Carolina

Monday agreements.

I agree with the statement that those who say the shooting in South Carolina was not racist are racists themselves.

I agree with those who say the shooting in South Carolina should be a call to action on guns and gun violence and mental health services.

I agree with those who say the Confederate flag flying in South Carolina is not a memorial to the Confederate soldiers who died in the civil war, but an offensive symbol supporting racial injustice and defiance sanctioned by the state government.

I have many friends who live in SC. The collective confederate mentality is not pervasive, it is however historically perverse, but it is still a stimulant to those whose deficient mentality is beyond reason.

America will never be able to stop a prejudicial mind. It can only deny the weapons of violence to those who cannot discern that the reality of life is oneness, not difference.

When local news was local.

When I was in local news, it was just that,  “local news.”

Today it seems the more affluent stations in big markets see local news as national news.

One of the major stations in New York City sent a reporter to Charleston, South Carolina to cover the Church shootings story.

To my mind, that’s not local news. Sure, it’s tragic, it’s sad, it’s emotional, it has national import, but it’s not local news.

Again, to me, sending a local reporter out of town to report on a story of this type is bordering on sensationalism. Bringing in a local reporter from the story’s area is fine, but sending a reporter who does not know the city’s gestalt or have the trusted contacts is once aging using a murder-tragedy as tabloid journalism.

Despite the enormity of the story, there must be just as many poignant stories in the New York City environs that serve the local audience to a far greater degree.

Living Life

I’m going to share something that is very personal.

My bride of 51-years has been struggling with various cancers for a number of years. She’s fought, struggled, won, and peacefully acknowledged all the challenges each cancer brought to her bulwarks of defense.

It's not defense anymore. It’s brilliant acceptance. It’s an understanding that life is terminal. It’s a willingness to participate in the celebration of a life well lived.

Hospice is now on the doorstep after many years of more horizons than we ever thought.

Many years ago when the diagnosis was terminal  and the dibilitation of medicine was worse, I wrote this poem.

 “I watched her change, a little each long day.

I did not stare but used a gentle look,

A tender, fervent glance when walking by.

She’s beautiful, I thought, like a bouquet

Of forget-me-nots, her favored flower.

How could disease rage just below her smile?

I did not want my gaze to be of fear,

For it could bring her pain above the drugs

And their debilitating therapy.

Most of the time, we act as nothing’s changed,

But illness gives new meaning to each life.

In our deepest, centered conversations,

Our hopes and wishes and some worries too

Would find their way to slip from off the tongue

Not as a comment said without a thought

But words of trust that only years can bring.

We’d speak of truth and its pathway to peace.

“Honesty,” we said, “is a sacrament

Healing a potential separation

Long before its reality is felt.”

We did ask, “Can this darkness pass, for now?”

But we know night descends to all someday

And we acknowledge an eternal truth:

If we’ve finished what “earthly” we can do,

Then let’s not linger in this density

But seek the freedom of angelic flight,

Returning to the Source from which we came.

In our connection to the All That Is,

We hear this truth beyond the clustered words:

Love is the chalice light of new pain’s grace.

It leads the spirit toward eternal light

And to a place of vast Elysian fields.

Thus, this we say, to all who choose to hear:

Celebrate the healing in the now,

But when the body ends its role and succumbs,

Be thankful for its form, then let it be.

Its dust will scatter to another time,

Another moment and another place.

“Rejoice!” our spirits shout from somewhere in.

This is the natural order of all life.

“Cry,” our hearts plead and savor what is left.

Do not be sad my friends, rejoice in the knowledge that life never ends, love is the eternal path to the other side and endings always have a beginning.

A New Friend

When you get to be my age, what a revelation it is to make new friends.

I once, in an interview, asked a very prominent elderly couple what was the hardest thing about getting old. They said in unison, “loosing your friends,” and added, “make friends with all ages so you always have them.”

I understand that “friend” has a different meaning to everyone. To me, to be a friend obviously takes time, trust, and shared experience.

But when the experience of a new friendship starts is when it the most exciting. You learn the passions, commitments, and dedications of the other, and most of all you experience appreciation of the other’s being and observations of life.

I knew my new friend a little from a professional relationship and from viewing his passion as expressed in photographic art. But it was not until we had the opportunity to share the extended conversational process of personal passions as well as life’s experiences did the germination of friendship begin in earnest.

A friend is one you knew before

Before each life began.

You both have come from spirit’s core

To seek a new life span.

And if by chance each happens by

To find their friend again.

We than can let the spirit sigh

And ask how have you been?