Hopeful Thinking

People cling to the belief it’s all going to end badly. Things look pretty shaky right now. But that’s just because we’re looking in the wrong end of the binoculars. The view is somewhat accurate in content, but too narrow, hard to make out. Distorted. It’s difficult to see the larger reality: We are so used to progress we feel like passengers standing in the aisle of a speeding train. We can barely perceive the true speed at which we are moving forward. We feel as if waiting in line at the cafe counter is an eternity of standing still. But it is an illusion. If you take a step back to look at the wider timeline of known human history we have come a long way. And our progress is speeding up. Most notably, our social progress. Just a blip of time ago, whole populations of countries were enslaved by others as a common practice. It has taken (and is taking) a long time to eradicate slavery on this planet. Several thousand years and counting. But you can see the shift over time in what...

    I spent much of my adult life resenting stop lights. I want to move, not grind my brakes to powder in the second hilliest city in the country stopping at every single red light and sign. Attempting to intuit a solution to my tension about this issue (which I definitely inherited from my father), I actually looked to one of the prevailing life practice concepts from many world faiths. Nonresistance. “What we resist persists,” Carl Jung said. There is deep truth to that. When we resist someone or something it has a tendency to use its creativity to develop bigger armor and weapons against us. Nonresistance means working toward what you actually want rather than pushing against—and ultimately giving your energy to—the very thing you don’t want.     I was definitely resistant to traffic lights. But if I felt stress from their existence, what good would that do me? They are a reality of life in any town larger than 250 people. Resisting traffic lights i...

Things look kind of scary right now, it's true. No matter what side of the fence you're on, there are people you love who are on the other. Our recent political campaign season exposed a deep cultural wound. Ironic to the point of seeming cosmic, the two most recent people to occupy the Oval Office could not possibly have been starker versions of the American Dream if they were characters in a Hollywood film script. We have been presented with a most compelling contrast. A contrast much deeper than party lines, deeper than color, deeper than the opportunity gap. Regardless of your views on Obama’s politics, our first black President exhibited fundamental grace, inherent class, thoughtfulness and welcoming. The contrast? The plantation owners have now banded together to become president out of spite. But I also see something really beautiful happening. Probably the most disappointing thing to our current Oval Office Temp’s ego will be how ineffective and unloved he will reall...

    This may come as a shock to you but that list of ten rules given to Moses around 3,000 years ago were not technically commandments, per se. They were utterances. At least that’s what the original Hebrew words meant. Of course one could guess that it if came from God, even a mild suggestion is probably worth serious consideration. The “Ten Commandments” as a term, however, is not the fully appropriate translation of the actual Hebrew words used in the Old Testament, aseret hedevarim . It means the ‘ten words’ or ‘ten utterances.’ Even the Greek and Latin did not call them commandments, but ‘sayings.’ That’s important to remember. At some point in history someone decided to present these important suggestions as demands. It appears that it was in the moment of its translation into English, but I invite correction. Suffice it to say we have not been commanded by anyone to do anything. We have been given sacred words as encouragements, not threats. Advice. Hope.    ...

    The Islamic midday call to prayer rings on my phone every day when the sun reaches it’s highest point in the sky. Yes, there’s an app for that. Today on January 21 it will be at 11:59 am. It is the Islamic call to prayer for the entire Muslim world. It is a beautiful Arabic chant calling the faithful to their third of five prayers for the day. “Haiya ‘Alas-salah!  Haiya ‘Alal-falah! Allahuu Akbar! Laa ilaaha Illal-Laah! (Come to prayer! Come to success! God is Most Great! There is no God but God.)     I am not a Muslim, however. I am a Christian. Yet, at midday every day I turn and face toward the east at the same time as my Muslim brothers and sister do and pray with them. To pray when they pray, beside them, in solidarity with them. I pray my own prayers for peace in the Middle East while they offer their Dhuhr prayers. Muslims are not terrorists. Terrorists are not true Muslims. Just like the early Crusaders and the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition wer...

The "Placebo Effect" is a medical term for an effect produced by medication which the patient believes will occur. In other words, if someone gives you a sugar pill, and you truly believe it will cure your cold, the chances are likely it will actually help. In one study people were given placebos and told they were a stimulant. Their heart rate, blood pressure and reaction speeds increased as if they had actually been administered a genuine stimulant. The opposite occurred when they were told they were being given a sleep aid. We've heard things like this before. We call it "mind over matter" but is that just something we say to brush aside the deep implications of recognizing that belief actually does matter to our general well-being? At what point will we start to integrate into our daily behavior the bumper stickers of wisdom we feed regularly ourselves? There is plenty of science to back up our notions that thought alone makes an impact on our bodies....

Greetings and Happy New Year! This being my first column I thought I’d write about something nice and simple like the Apocalypse. I love to study word history and meanings, etymology especially. Apocalypse is an interesting one. Of course we connect it with the so-called end of the world. But in the words of the rock band REM, perhaps it’s more like the end of the world as we know it. Not incidentally, sales of that song went up 62% the week the world was predicted by the Mayans to end in December 2012. We have a morbid fascination with the end of the world. Religion has had much to say on the subject of global annihilation. Some use it with great skill. But it in many ways that thinking is a conspiracy. Our cultural understanding of the End Times has been encouraged to think of itself as a destruction into nothingness. But there is little to theologically support this. All prophetic readings describe a recalibration, an end to the old ways of doing things. Not an end of all things, ...