Years ago, after my first divorce, my friend Peter took me aside and showed me a list he'd written up for me of affirmations he suggested I repeat before the mirror on a daily basis. The idea seemed kind of foolish and desperate to me at the time. I couldn't relate to the words, which didn't make sense to me. I felt overwhelmed with feelings, and language felt like little more than an intrusion on the process of letting those feelings go. Grateful to Peter for his thoughtfulness, I folded up the piece of paper he'd given me on which his positive sayings were written and put it aside. A few years after that, while getting ready for a move, I found the piece of paper with Peter's affirmations and re-read them. They were simple--phrases like, "I am worthy." "Today will be a good day." "I believe good things will come to me." By then these daily affirmations were a part of me as they are common to the 12-step AA program to which I and many ...
"Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that star‐spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" These words, by Francis Scott Key, speak of the glory of war and the loud bombastic cry of victory. There is no glory in war. No joy in celebrating a country contributing to genocides around the world and there is nothing to celebrate about a regime that would take even from the poor in order to satisfy its grotesque greed. Lady Liberty is ashamed and sad and so many of us stand with her on this holiday, proclaiming that our liberty is in peril, justice has not been served, the American flag ...
We are all filled with opinions, as plentiful as soot, which are often the byproduct, or garbage, of our obsessions, the result of long-held habits like watching cop shows, and what we have gleaned from that, consciously and unconsciously. What do opinions matter? Not at all, except when we recognize how people kill for them. Wage war for them. Sacrifice their own lives for a belief. A belief. An opinion. Mind bubbles. What if, in chatting with a fellow activist, for example, I discover that she supports Israel, is sympathetic to its cause. While I am deeply opposed to the genocide in Palestine, my companion sees it as a necessary exclamation of history and nature, mere necessity. Do we argue until our faces redden and one or both of us walks away, or do we set aside the dagger of our differences, doubling down instead on the more important imperative--treating the other as a human being regardless, inquiring about them as if their lives matter, listening sincerely, offering no judgmen...
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