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Today I announce a long-term ambition that has held me over the years – I have always wanted to be president of the United States. Did you chuckle, did you laugh? I think that's very understandable given a royally statuesque view of the presidency. (Someone once called by the kid nickname “Wiener” should better know their place.)  It is has taken me many years to develop an answer to these chuckles.  And that answer is: “Your view of the presidency is way too small.”

Many people yearn for a transformational president. I yearn for a president that has been transformed. Transformed that is by experience, education, work, and (the most important of all other than faith)—by the deep implantation within their innermost core of gratitude for the vast array of human resources and talent widely on display, but sometimes hidden but assuredly always there. Such assurances come by personal, intimate loving relations with at least some individuals outside one’s own circumscribed conventionality.  It is only then that one understands that the labels one pastes on others is directly reflective of one's own impoverished humanity.

I ask that you again listen to this recording. (It appeared also on my previous blog.)  It is of an American president and an adviser transcendentally assured they are fully capable of facilely judging the limitations of others.  To me this only says one thing—they still clutch even yet to their soiled romper room security blankets smeared deep with egocentric turpitude.  https://www.dropbox.com/s/mv019hiy6s3zbgs/Nixon.mp4?dl=0



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I’ll Hold My Tongue If You’ll Hold Yours

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I have found that most people I’ve met to be kind and considerate. I am sure that much like me, they have bit their tongue more than once so as not to hurt or arouse stress in others. In short, in my life the problem has rarely been an overpowering bully, but the very opposite–an undue exercise of forced tolerance for my quirks and shortcomings.

This is much like the quasi rule of silence we have experienced in America since 1968 – a year of unbelievable and explosive social stress.

I came across a video yesterday that uncovers a subterranean chamber of latent snakes. (Please click this link immediately below)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mv019hiy6s3zbgs/Nixon.mp4?dl=0


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The following link is Nixon phone call unedited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwXOEFK6Swo

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Leadership Litmus Test---To Incite or Inspire?

Poet and sculptor do the work   
Nor let the modish painter shirk   
What his great forefathers did,   
Bring the soul of man to God,   
Make him fill the cradles right.

Under Ben Bulben
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS


Please view video at this point (link below)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fhnkihp6v8ez31q/Poetry%20in%20gov.mp4?dl=0

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My father exercised three aspects of leadership: goodwill (love), empathy, and power under control (humility). Naturally as a Methodist minister he sought to encourage and inspire from the pulpit and occasionally during everyday discourse. This is something I think that most expect from their religious leaders. But of course, this need not be the case. We are all-too-familiar with the fact that religion can breed fanaticism that incites the most dangerous and inflammatory human emotions. 

As for religion, also for politics.  While of necessity a great deal of a government official's time is consumed by narrative of facts and what can be called rational prosaic commentary, it is also undeniably true that a government leader need also address the hearts, mentality, and emotions of citizens for these elements of human nature form an intractable part of life (embodied rhetoric).

Today may we seek to embrace enlightened prose and authentic poetry and eschew rank diatribe and destructive doggerel.

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Are We Still of Any Use?

 Are we still of any use?

--Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

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Verb: nurture
1. Help develop, help grow
2. Provide for and care for during childhood
3. Provide with nourishment

Noun: nurture
1. The properties acquired as a consequence of the way you were treated as a child
2. Helping someone grow up to be an accepted member of the community

[WordWeb.info]

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Adjective: surrogate
1. Providing or receiving nurture or parental care though not related by blood or legal ties

Noun: surrogate
1. Someone who takes the place of another person
2. A person appointed to represent or act on behalf of others

[WordWeb.info]
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As a Floridian I love to vacation in the mountains for there one is almost impelled to recognize the sweep of the forest. Today I want to contemplate society in the broadest terms. Let us ask what is the basic demand that most institutions exist to meet?  (I say “most” for in America we always maintain an underbelly of harmful “sin” enterprise often justified and even legitimized on the dubious claim of equal and ever-present free choice.) 

Institutions are created to meet unique demands arising from the multi-faceted need for nurture. I would like to discuss today two institutions – the family and the church. (Other institutions include government and the diverse roles reserved for the creative enterprise sector.)  In broadest terms, I hold all institutions are, in fact. service institutions in that they arise from the persistent need to nurture.

The unique gift that the family contributes to nurturing is the indispensable requirement for intimacy in human development and maintenance. Often, we are tempted to hold that “small things” don’t really matter that much. Absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. The unaffected knowledge that we are truly loved and that someone gives a damn whether we live or die can arise from a gentle touch on the shoulder—however irrational that may seem. Animal studies show that deprivation of intimacy can have long-term and profound debilitating effects.  The important question that confronts us is, can intimacy lack immediacy? Likewise, can surrogacy provide sufficient intimacy?

I would like to speak briefly of the church. Jesus asked us to pray by saying “Our Father.” (Some would even say “Our Daddy.”)  Nurture and extended family intimacy are very near the core of church life. When one says that we are to love one another – how different is that from saying that we are to nurture one another?  Can a  formal assembly lacking in intimacy or a family feeling still be the church?









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The Wake of a Storm

Man is subject to death so seeks to limit his vulnerabilities.  In somewhat stable times, he can go so far as to hone a sense of security by fabricating dubious guarantors of strength either materialistically (showrooms filled with unsinkable Titanic’s) or ideologically (comforting Towers of Intellectual Babel).

During dire threats, however, man’s prior reflexive succor from handy pacifiers is at last shorn away leaving the ultimate defense against death where it has always resided—exercise of equality’s Golden Rule and mutual accommodation. Then everyday kindness is not readily dismissed as mere cotton candy, but cherished as the most vital strand of DNA.

Nature's Own Program Language  (click link below)

https://www.ted.com/talks/moshe_szyf_how_early_life_experience_is_written_into_dna

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Easy to Say

"You've made your bed, now lie in it".


There is a dilemma in human affairs that persists in all seasons. That pertains to the concurrent need for accountability and for forgiveness. Often it is the human heart itself that must resolve this ever-wreathing Gordian knot. Jesus represents the preferred recourse in elegant simplicity. In the incident of the woman who was the target of stoning, Jesus noted the obvious truth that none of her accusers were without somber error. By masterful indirection, he slowed the pace of events and effectively disarmed the situation. Then, as day follows night, he said to the grateful woman “Go and sin no more.” Even so, as for the stiff-necked chromium personifications of self-righteous cruelty preying upon society at large, he unrelentingly denuded them for public display.

I must share that I saw on the news last week President Trump directly relating one-on-one with little children during his visit to a flood disaster relief center in Texas.  This instantly caused me to weep.  May light suffuse our nation.

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“Being President above All Is a Humbling Job” ....(B Obama)

For the last month, I have been exposed to an unusual measure of personal anxiety.  A routine blood test revealed the presence of a protein that is a possible indicator of bone marrow cancer.  An oncologist directed that I take a battery of test including a complete bone survey using imaging technology.  On completion of this survey, a presiding technician who had been viewing the images as the examination progressed showed so much compassion—putting on my shoes, attaching my necklace, even correctly positioning my eyeglasses—that I was certain that the x-rays must have revealed an obviously abnormal bone condition.

Last Thursday I returned to the office of Dr. Ahmad Shaker, the oncologist, to hear the results of all the tests.  As is often the case, the congenial work environment of the staff was plainly evident.  The graciousness, authenticity, helpfulness, and cheerfulness of the staff was a sure signal that their boss was not a Hitler.

Connie was with me for the appointment in case I should need the buttressing of compassionate empathy should the news be bad.  Soon we were summoned from the waiting room.  Connie was in her transport wheelchair.  I was wearing sandals.  On maneuvering through a tight area in the waiting room, my left big toenail caught on wheelchair apparatus. It hurt, but the pain was not significant.   Waiting for the doctor in the exam room, however, we looked down and a large pool of blood surrounded my sandal.  The doctor came in as I was using paper towels to wipe of the blood.  He at once said, “That’s OK I will take care of it.”

He put on gloves, and with paper towels finished wiping up the blood.  Then he asked me to raise my foot.  He carefully cleaned the injured toe and bandaged it.  He then wrapped my entire foot.  His readiness to help and his congeniality and humility greatly impressed me. As a fully accredited oncologist and hematologist, surely staff could mop up blood and bandage a toe.  While he had my foot in his hand and was carefully wrapping my toe, a strong and warm feeling of being cared for, even loved, came over me.  (When I was a kid and Daddy would buy me shoes, he would always bend down and press the tip of my shoe to make sure that my toes had room.  He would look up directly at me and ask “Is this OK?)”.  (By the way, as for the tests, no cancer was found.)

Sometimes it is necessary for a leader (for example, an American President) to lay out facts in a forceful and even somber manner.  But it is also surely the role of a leader to faithfully communicate to others the compassion and willingness to serve (the care, the love) of the those he represents.

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