A Small Birds Feet

on the ugly yellow gold formica
lay the tiny clawed feet of a
bird. I looked for a moment ...
maybe two. mesmerized. then i
remembered that yesterday i had
spit the stem of the seedless grape.
my heart jumped as I gazed at it.

Fight for Peace

While my son was battling through a year of intense chemotherapy  I began to explore avenues of self-realization that I had been interested in all my life. I believe the world would be well served to adapt some of the tenets I have discovered. 

 My search led me to Tai Chi Chuan, which is one of the three so-called “internal” martial arts of China. They are considered internal because the core of the disciplines is to guide the body’s energy with the mind. Meditation is an integral part of these disciplines.

  I was already meditating. My wife has obtained certification to teach meditation so it is part of our lives. I felt as if I needed the fighting aspect though. I was psychologically abused by a violent alcoholic as a child. Escaping into the Navy led me into a another violent world of harsh realities.

  So I fought. I have fought all my life in one way or another. It’s as if it was an engine by which I was driven. Argument, anger, fists and fright evolved into a personality of aggression that was only tempered by a fierce love of God.

  I took Krav Maga,  Punching and kicking and wrestling were  fun I was like a kid at Christmas. I thought I had found myself. The thing is I began to have injury after injury until finally I blew out and old shoulder that had been surgically repaired a few years back. I had to question my process. Though the fighting seemed to release the germs that confounded me the repercussions were unacceptable and obviously not intelligent for a man in his late fifties.

  The slow forms of Tai Chi Chuan and the qi gong that go hand in hand were healing. I dodged the orthopedic surgeon and began to look at options. Tai Chi is sometimes called “moving meditation”. I was steadily drawn deeper into the reflection of yin and yang. In my mind’s eye peace lay resting at the end of a forest trail.

  This deep conflict of fighting versus peace had torn me asunder until I surrendered to God yet I continued in many ways to fight. Moving into the martial arts I became aware once again that they are not about fighting. They are about not fighting. To protect and defend means to do what is necessary to neutralize violence. Often the best thing to do is dissolve that violence with reason and love.

  As I continue to ponder this issue I can’t help but wonder what the world would be like if its leaders could make this core shift of perspective. That is to say, if the primary motivation of all the peoples of the earth were to “do no harm” … where would we be?

You see I have come to realize that it takes no courage to fight back. It is instinctual and motivated by fear. What if one’s goal were simply to protect life and promote justice doing as little harm as possible to the antagonist?

  What if we sought to wage peace rather than war?

  What if we saw ourselves in the eyes of every person? We are all part and parcel of the same bouncing molecular universe. Our worst enemies are no less than an extension of ourselves. Call it brothers and sisters in Christ, Sangha, community or any of the infinite number of names; we are all from the same seed at some point. We are as leaves on a tree … grains of sand … stars of the eternal prescience that is boundless reality. If we were of sound mind, why would we visit violence upon ourselves?

  But that is another matter entirely. 

How To Honor Them: Memorial Day 2014

I was leaving a church when I turned on my car radio. Garrison Keillor and a female angel voice were singing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in two part harmony.

My mind exploded to a vision of a soldier dragging his wounded brother out of harm’s way while under fire.

Then came John John saluting the caisson, rolling green hills dotted endlessly with the stark white faces of courage waiting through eternity for a truth that will lay their souls to rest.

My heart trudged a muddy trench in cold rain. A wayward boot stood full of water. I passed a dazed corporal, blood dripping from his ear.

A mass of maimed, dismembered corpses of blue, gray and darkening red rotted in the noonday sun of a southern field

The drummer boy ducked as shots whistled in his curly red hair. Crimson tunics marched doggedly into a maw of blistering shot that knows no prejudice, brooks no dissent.

“My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord …”

And I wept. I wept for the fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters who lie beneath the earth of our discontent.

I cannot help but wonder if we have betrayed them. We stand at their graves and hold them in our hearts yet we live as if our hate were all that mattered.

Would they have us fight at every turn? Would the dead send their children to the war that stole their lives?

So I said the prayer that has rang in my heart since I was a small boy.

   Help us Lord to honor them … all those lives sacrificed on the altar of freedom. Help us Lord to feed the wolf of tolerance and grace rather than hate so that their lives will not be wasted. Help us Lord to wage peace not war that our flesh might know a future that only our hearts can imagine.

On this Memorial Day 2014 let us remember … true courage is to encourage the love of all mankind. Yes we must always be prepared for the wolf that will not listen but we do not honor the dead by becoming that wolf.

Goodbye Jimbo

  I’d push you in jest when you had begun to use a cane. You’d act like you were going to whack me with it and we’d laugh.

  You recognized my rough edges and that made us brothers somehow. You’d come by the car lot during the workweek. Each visit you’d complain about my entry steps. I worried a little that you’d fall.

  I’d slap you on the back and tell you to stop your damn complaining and we’d chuckle.

  Sometimes I’d come down from the balcony to see you in your seat with Ruth where you always were.  We’d joke and tease until it was time for worship. I always felt the better for it.

  One day I realized that you were struggling. Life had gotten hard on a proud and tough old guy. You looked at me through those oh so sad eyes and my heart broke a little.

  I hugged you for first time ever. We both got a little misty so I slapped you on the back and made some crack and we chuckled. 

  Goodbye old friend. I suppose God’s got some entry steps too. I’m just glad you don’t have to struggle anymore.

 I suspect you’ll complain anyway … and then you guys can chuckle. 

A Letter to My Tea Party Friends

  Reading and watching the media the past few months when the federal government began to shutdown, I was more mindful than ever that many of you who I care for are “Tea Partiers”, or close kin of the same.

 I must say that I became concerned over your letters to the editors and posts. I may care for you but can no longer be silent. Let me here and now expose the elephant in the room.

 I have begun to suspect that you would cast aside your morality for fear that you will become a minority and people of color and or American citizens of foreign origin will erode your way of life.

  This country is based in a messy dynamic of checks and balances. Regardless it has, with the exception of the Civil War, functioned. The government, whether correct in their actions or not, has moved forward and sought on a functional level to represent their constituents in a reasonable fashion.

  I won’t quote numbers and statistics but rather ask if you believe it is the job of any segment of our legislature to put forth their ideology by any means at risk of the well being of the governed?

  Do you support the hijacking of the legislative process by a select few who have gained office through gerrymander and recent stilted campaign laws favoring corporate interests?

  Are you even aware that this is what is happening? I know you support family values, free enterprise, religious freedom, the right to bear arms and the rights of a human fetus among other things. I know you believe in the U.S. constitution yet suspect by your rhetoric and voting history that you have not studied or even read it.

  Do you believe it is right to refuse to compromise with others for the sake of our country and the world? Can you possibly believe that it is acceptable to put thousands out of work and knowingly damage the economy in order to force your minority opinion on the populace?

  I know you and when I am alone with my thoughts I fear that you will answer yes to these questions. I fear that you would isolate yourself in a cocoon of mistrust and prejudice until your ship has foundered and the only salvation are those that you would deny.

  In the end I will say that I agree with you on some issues and do not on others. All I know for sure is that we are fortunate enough to live in a country where we can disagree yet continue to seek harmony through a tried and true process of government. I can only hope and pray that you will ultimately believe in that process and that when you stand in that voting booth you will vote from the heart of your freedom rather than the fog of your fear. 

More Inconvenient Truths

                                                   

  Recently I once again heard the term, “inconvenient truths.” It has troubled me since. I am awed by our propensity to avoid moral responsibility in the face of these truths.

  Anyone or anything different from us is foreign and therefore bad. Is not the truth that we are afraid to allow change because it will somehow dilute who we are? How weak must be our core if change would destroy us?

  Our youth are maimed and die on foreign soil because we disagree with the ruling elite when all that truly exists is something different than what we choose. We are somehow threatened by the presence of conflicting ideas and government process.

   We bathe daily in the fear of immigration because zealots would attack our home ground. As that fear dries, our minds harden to common sense and decency for those who seek the same goals as us, freedom to work and worship and pursue happiness without oppression.

  Innocent people lie sick on the doorstep of medicine. Yet many of us would deny them basic care.

  Our youth fall in the educational ranking of a changing world yet we ignore the reality that we have handcuffed our teachers. Rather than educate, we would test, ever checking on our failure.

  We deny loving, law abiding, productive couples the same rights as ourselves avoiding reality for the sake of our own self-centered fear.

  When we stand in that voting booth we prove time and again that our driving force is what government can do for us or ours. We speak clearly of our disdain for those who have not risen to our “level” yet would do nothing to lift them up.

  Some have said that this is a Christian nation. Having grown up in the Christian faith, the message that I received as a child has held steady.  That message is that we should love our brothers and sisters as ourselves.

   The only fuel that “hate” needs is fear and ignorance. Love requires courage. Love demands sacrifice. Love lifts us above our petty groveling into the air of saints and Saviors.

  Each day, as we rise, I believe that if our most ardent prayer is to find love for all mankind in our hearts then we might find the cure for a poison that would destroy us all.

  We must always be guided by prudence and common sense. It is our duty to protect and defend against all evil. Even still, when we direct our energy at seeing evil through the lens of reality rather than fear our path will be true.

  In our deepest heart we know our fear rules most of what we do and say. I can only hope and pray that in the end we will accept the most inconvenient truth of all; we as humans have let fear win out over love and for that we must often live in turmoil of our own making.

Mosese of Shangri-la

                                        

  My wife, one son (my other son Tucker was indisposed) and I went on a nature hike today guided by a young Fijian they call Moses. His real name is Mosese. All the resort workers shorten their names to more European monikers for the sake of the tourists.  We are in Fiji of the South Pacific on a vacation of sorts.

An open motorboat ferried us across the deep blue lagoon. After careful maneuvering through sandbars in the shallows the boat scrunched to a halt on the coral sand shore. The coxswain waved a grinning goodbye as we pushed him off. Someone would come back “in a while.” I couldn’t help but wonder if that was “Fiji time” which is a tongue in cheek way of implying a certain relaxed flexibility.

  After being informed that the island had been inhabited until the early 1800’s by way of a wonderful bit of history and story telling by Moses we embarked into the jungle. My son Corson, with his surgically reconstructed left leg, strode carefully down the shaded and uneven path with his ornate wooden cane  (a gift and story of its own)

  Each ten to twenty feet or so Moses would stop and pull a leaf or point out a fruit or flower. He’d softly explain the medicinal uses and totem qualities of each. His grandmother had been a healer. She knew all the plants and their uses. She could direct young Moses (now a father) through the forest to the exact location of whatever plant or tree she desired. He shared his amazement at her ability to place him on the spot.  He’d retrieve the leaf, berry or bark for her to grind or manipulate in order to form the medicine. He laughed a comical, shrill gurgle like a bird.

 The day before he had shown us how to build a “fish house.” This is part of a conservation project to rebuild the reef. My sons, Moses and I had sat in the sand mixing concrete in five gallon buckets to use as mortar of sorts in order to build an igloo of broken coral and shells while their Mother and Lata (another story) searched for shells. He had guided each of us patiently while regaling with stories and describing his life and work.

 When we finished the “house” he showed us a shed where he kept a sea kayak. It was like being shown a secret hiding place. Moses explained that he’d place the heavy igloos of concrete and shells onto the kayak and walk them out into the water 150 to 200 yards and place them there. When you finished your house they gave you the GPS coordinates and the sequential number of that house so you could always track it on a computer.

  Eventually we reached the far side of the island. As the trail opened out onto a secluded beach I gazed into the vast ocean that evolved from shallow turquoise to deep blue.  A sudden breeze dried the sweat on my brow, neck and chest. Moses had cut a papaya from a tree with the rusty machete he carried slung over his shoulder on a rope. Sitting cross-legged in the sand he fashioned a sliver of knife from a piece of the same papaya tree that had yielded the fruit. He explained that he did not want to contaminate the fruit with the rusty blade.

 As we chatted I watched him precisely, slowly, slice the papaya into pieces. He’d peer out across the water and sky with his eyes shaded by the bill of a worn and faded blue ball cap as if he could see somewhere beyond this world. Then he’d grin as he handed each of us a piece of the juicy, sweet, orange-yellow manna of a hiker’s heaven. We were comfortable and sustained. Eventually, we departed for the meeting place around the point and over the crest to our left.

  My son had struggled with fatigue on the walk. He had endured a year of intense chemotherapy a while back. Concern rose as we crossed huge driftwood jams the sea had deposited on the inlet side of the island. He looked across at me and gave thumbs up in response to my questioning gaze. Of course he’d respond the same even if he were about to fall out on the ground.

  Motoring back to the mainland. I reveled in gratitude for nature and the peace of having my son and wife in the boat safe and resting. Moses sat reflective and grinning in the bow.  I knew he had a baby coming. He’d told us on the beach. They wanted to name him Ebenezer, “from the book of Samuel.”

  I also knew that he had been two units from a marine biology degree and ran out of money and had to go to work. It had been difficult to find. The resort had not had a position so he’d volunteered for two and a half years at the marine center there until they had been able to give him a job. That had been two years before. We’d discovered all this while inquiring as he had guided us through the construction of the fish house.

  As far as I could see, in comparison to America, these folk live a meager existence. They come to this resort called “Shangri-La” each day. They work serving and cleaning, teaching and guiding, entertaining and giving of themselves in such a natural way that you feel as if you have known them forever.

 Then they return to their villages of cinderblock, tin and thatch; windows always open, few screens, eating their simple diet, living their simple lives, knowing there is opulence yet clearly loving their lives and family and ancient way of life.

 The resort jobs must be a godsend and I would imagine highly prized. Shangri-La has several resorts in the Pacific. Each of them works to sustain and serve the people and environment where they are located. Here they have built schools, initiated myriad environmental programs, aided families and more. They treated us with such grace and generosity that we are forever humbled and grateful.

  We leave here tomorrow. This trip was granted my son by the “Make a Wish” foundation. They grant wishes to children that suffer from life threatening diseases. We’ll leave these childlike, welcoming people behind for our competitive, material contest of a world and have only been a ripple on the sea of their lives.

  Lord willing, Moses’ child will be born and Moses will teach Ebenezer the plants that are medicine and life’s blood to these people of earth and sea. Lord willing, another son will walk with his mother and father across this island of time into the love of the world that awaits him.

“Bula,” all ye angels of life. Peace, love and blessings to each and every one of you in far away “Shangri-la.”

  You are in our hearts … forever.