Sane and Insanity

I watched a story about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on CBS’s Sunday Morning yesterday.

It was an excellent profile of the man, his philosophy and his directness and difference as a politician.

I like him. I don't like some of his decisions, but I like the way he thinks and speaks. He is a refreshing politician. I would hope others in his republican party would embrace his style of politics instead of the uncompromising, contentious, if not cantankerous, body they have become.

Speaking of uncompromising republicans. The current crop of Obama-care haters in congress would rather shut down the government than sit down and reason together. As Governor Christie might say, “that’s stupid.”

If there is something in the Obama-care law that doesn’t work or could work better, then it is congress’s responsibility to fix it, not shut down the government. Congress voted it into law in the first place and the United States Supreme Court and the electorate in the last election have affirmed it.

I wish there was an immediate way we could throw these idiots out of congress and bring in reasonable legislators to sit down and work out the problems.

GOP - Grand Old Party. What a misnomer.

Scattered Hayseeds

I think we need to change the name “senior cititzen” to “elder.” I like the singular sound of “elder” better than the duality of “senior citizen.” Elder sounds wise to me. Senior citizen sounds Orwellian at best and old at worst. Elders, to me, can be sophisticated, plain or profound.

The native peoples of the world use the term "elder" as a plateau of respect, honor and acquired wisdom and as a sacred reminder of the ancestral past. Modern society, flooded with its passions for youth and anything new sees seniors as a nuisance, something to tolerate and move aside. It is a shame of modern American society.

We often hide our elder’s brilliance and accumulated knowledge in homes and designated residences with the belief they are finished with thought and have nothing more to contribute. We smother their life stories and valued memories into boxed rooms and medicated minds.

We need to free them with venues of public expression and participation.

Elders are the strata of humanity. They are the human schist of wisdom precipitated into the sediments of experience. Elders have the acquired pallor of experience and the wrinkled rows of worry and the knowing that youth must learn it their own way.

I reprise these thoughts for I just received a wonderful book by Mary Rose Zalvis. It is entitled, “Scattered Hayseeds.” It is a collection of her observations of life experiences from her birth in 1916 to her wonderful age of 97. It’s published by IMAGO Press and I recommend it. “Scattered Hayseeds” by Mary Rose Zalvis is a treasure to be enjoyed and embraced by readers of all ages.

The Train Car

I traveled into New york City yesterday, but it was not a pleasant experience. I put my observations into poetic blank verse form.

From where I sit the train is filled

with bobbing heads of gray.

A younger man man across the way

Is loudly on the phone.

I learned about his business plan,

I did not want to know.

He'll catch a cab in NYC

And then head off to lunch.

The graying pates just shake their heads

and some would turn to peek

To see the man who's rudely loud

And cares not that he’s heard.

But when some time has finally passed

The man has close his eyes.

His hand is tight upon his phone

To keep us grays from jail.

A Hard Thought

We knew America was not immune after 9/11

It was then that we joined the rest of the world’s nations in dealing with the fringe political elements of arrogance, anarchy, ambivalence and dispassion. We missed one, however, mental illness.

The Naval Yard killings are just another reminder that there are people in the world who are mentally ill. And we need to recognize it and deal with it.

The killings at the Kenya mall are different, but the result is the same. These people care nothing for life. These militant terrorists care only for the agenda of violence thinking it leads to their supremacy. They cannot see the difference between life and living.

Life is a gift from the All That Is. Living is what we choose to do with that life.

In living, some choose the venues of literature, music, art, business, medicine and the labor of working for family achievement.

Killing, terrorism, fanaticism and dispassionate awareness for the welfare of the “other,” are the antithesis of what we spiritually are.

If we accept that a loving deity created all of us, then it follows that each and every soul on earth, despite their individual choices, beliefs or non-beliefs is part and parcel of that Deity.

In trying to understand why some souls, all of whom are part of the holy whole, would choose mayhem and murder rather than the emulation of Supreme Love is a hard cognitive stretch.

There is only one word that works for me in trying to understand this struggle.

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE!

What if this whole theatre of life is a script from before birth that we co-designed to teach ourselves that divine love is just that! UNCONDITIONAL.

Damn, that’s hard to accept.