Turning Toward the Light

Frenetic preparations to hit the road for holiday family visits usually makes the passing of the solstice a blur. It has been no different this year, except for the added spiritual darkness felt by so many who are struggling in the financial and political darkness that has befallen our country and the world.

I was glancing through a column posted on Huffington Post by a self-proclaimed conservative blogger and skipped ahead, as I am more and more inclined to do, to look at reader comments, wanting to know what ordinary people like me are thinking.

I came upon this prayer posted by a reader who goes by the moniker freedom4allau.

Divine Universal Creator, Mother / Father God - on the eve of this, the day the masses celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and some of us celebrate Winter Solstice, a deep abiding prayer / meditation that this country may begin a new path of understanding, enlightenment and healing.

I was moved to post this response:

Thanks to freedom4allau for the universal prayer.

The clash of the titans tone of our conflict is as out of proportion to real life as the mythic battles between the Greek or Roman gods. Our elected officials, like Mickey in the Sorcerer's Apprentice seem powerful and scary when we focus on the over-sized shadow cast by the bright lights we shine on them. They also make quite a mess when let loose with the magic wand of governmental power.

But we need to remember that a larger wisdom will eventually reveal the mouse-sized stature of today's supposed gods and monsters. They too are ordinary humans, with no special insight and only the power granted to them by the people's collective will.

We can not wait for the Sorcerer in the cartoon to come and clean up the mess.

That character represents the spirit of good that lives in all of us. The greater wisdom, knowledge and compassion we see in him is real, but it lies beyond any one person alone. We feel it any time we notice the spiritual sustenance we take from witnessing or performing loving acts of generosity and kindness.

Thanks for the prayer, to remind all of us that we have the choice to put down our swords, to not be tricked into doing battle with one another. We can choose to return again and again to our faith in our potential to find our way through to something better.

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In response to "Wish I Had a River"

I posted the comment below in response to a friend's post on her blog bullseye, baby! about the power of music to reconnect to universal spirit.

So wise, my friend.

At 51 I find the ache you describe has gone and a lovely peace has arrived. I remember sensing this peace in some older (50's) adults I knew and loved when I was a child -- Mrs. Robinson, my next door neighbor, and Mr. Copenhaver, one of my mother's co-workers. I distinctly remember thinking then how I looked forward to arriving at my 50's. I though maybe then I too could live every day "in my skin" with the peace I felt emanating from these two people who understood how to be a friend to an eight year-old, burdened by adult questions and concerns.

I think back now about how Mrs. Robinson was deeply grounded in her love of Christ and her evangelical religious community. I sat in her kitchen on Saturdays and visited with her while she fried up a mountain of chicken for Sunday's church supper. I once walked by the small building on a Sunday and felt the brick walls pulsing with the organ music and the booming voices singing joyful gospel songs. I couldn't make out the words, but I could feel the message.

Each day after school I walked to my mother's office with my younger brother and waited there to walk home with her at the end of her day. I remember Mr. Copenhaver occasionally taking a break from work to stand on his head. My mother explained it was part of his daily meditation practice. Mr. Copenhaver was the only man I knew whose energy never seemed to feel angry or overbearing.

How lucky I feel today that I knew these two people at such a tender and vulnerable time in my life. I think knowing them planted a seed that I believed in enough to spend the next 40 years trying to learn how to nurture.

Even though the ache is gone, I still get lost in the business of everyday life, and music still serves as a lovely gateway into a garden blooming with self- energy- and universe-awareness. Thank you for sharing with such beautiful openness and love, words and reflections that speak to the hearts of so many.

No brakes left on this runaway train

Reader comments under Huffington Post's recent post about the 15 biggest Wall Street payoffs to members of congress are full of the usual vitriol and snark. No doubt the streets of Rome rang similar insults and recriminations in the weeks and months leading up to the end of that civilization.
The vomitous mess we're in won't be solved by us shrieking insults at each other.
The crisis is real.
We are on a socio-econ­omic-indus­trial runaway train together.
The few people with access to the control room of this train are caught up in a video-game like delusion, as if all that really counts is their individual score at the end of the game.
Meanwhile we're thundering down the track headed for a crash that really will end life as we know it, and not in the too distant future.
It used to seem that nuclear war would end everything.
Instead it is this unstoppable global orgy of consumerism, greed, corruption, and passing the buck.
This time around the empire itself is too big to fail, and when it falls it will take everything with it.
No one with the courage or integrity to confront the lies that hold it all together will be permitted anywhere near the controls to this juggernaut.
No matter what party, what station, what anything.
There are no working checks or balances or brakes left anywhere on this train.
Will we tear at each others' throats over the ignominy of it all?
We, neighbors one to another, will have work to do to after the looting and gluttony leave behind ashes and wreckage.
We will each fare better, with hope of avoiding another narcissistic mess like that which plagues us now, only if we can commit ourselves to doing the work together.

Another one bites the dust...

As posted in "Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice"

Guen Gifford, 1972-2009

Posted by Cathy Resmer on November 12, 2009 at 11:24 AM in In Memoriam, Vermont | Permalink

Burlington resident Guenever Gifford, 37, died in a paragliding accident in California last Sunday, November 1. Like everyone who knew her, I was shocked and saddened to hear it. ...

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Too many good people are gone from our small community in too short a time.

This past Saturday, November 14, 2009 I attended Guen's memorial service. It was the fifth one since the last week of May marking a death in our tiny, local community of someone who dedicated their daily work and life to protecting rights and well being of the most vulnerable among us.

Over 200 people gathered in the sanctuary of the U.U. Society in downtown Burlington to share their memories and grief at the death of Guen Gifford.

Everyone is special. Guen was extra special. She cared about poor people. She was smart and talented and generous. She was especially generous with her heart.

You can listen to one of the cases Guen argued and won before the Vermont Supreme Court during her too short life here. You can learn about the legal advocacy agency where she learned the law here.

Goodbye to three good men...

I'm sitting in my office with my jacket on to keep off the chill. The old storm windows bang and rattle loose in their frames every now and then. I always feel a little sad this time of year on the gray afternoons, especially when the wind is whining around the corners of the building and I can't help but think of the deep freeze coming so soon.

Today I've just returned from my second memorial service in a week, my third this season. I sat alone in my pew, one of hundreds, saying goodbye to yet another of the good men in this small community I have come to call home. I sat in the back, looking around at the men I didn't know, curious about the ones showing signs of emotion. I saw a few of I did know and couldn't help wondering how much longer they will be here. In the world, that is.

Maybe it's just the gray day. Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I just miss these men who have been my guides, my role models. Men who have given me courage and faith. Men who had the character to remain good to their core in this world that rewards and nurtures men who take the low road. These men were my guideposts. They didn't let themselves or anyone else off the hook. They made us all better people.









Larry was 82. Gary was 57. Glen was 42.

We have to figure out how to carry on without you. As I sit here with an ache in my throat and in my heart, the wind rises up to rattle my windows again as if to say, "Bang--no, it's not easy. Bang--who ever said it was? Rattle, rattle--so what are you going to do?"

Today, I'm going to feel sad. Tomorrow I'll get to work finding the courage in myself that until now I've only known while standing in your shadow.

I have been trying to get back here for weeks, but rolling waves of shock from daily revelations about unimaginable greed in my immediate and the global world have taken my breath away. I have cried and gnashed my teeth, both literally. I have missed appointments and holed up in my office, hoping the phone wouldn't ring. Each morning I check the news. When Bush was in office I said a silent prayer that we hadn't blown anything up or killed too many more people while I slept. Now I say a silent prayer that maybe Obama will have figured out that Timothy Geithner is fundamentally dishonest and Larry Summers is fundamentally wrong and both have confused what is best for the country with what is best for banks instead of people.

I watched Geithner speak before congress and watched the way he ducks his head and glances sidewise at the people he is addressing, and thought, you don't have to watch "Lie to Me," or be a psychologist (although I am), to get the creepy feeling that this guy is lying. To see what I'm talking about you can watch this interview on CNN, or any other video you can find of Geithner where he is responding to tough questions.



Day after day I read statements by really smart economists, one after the other: Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, and most compelling of all, Joseph Stiglitz. I almost felt reassured listening the sense Stiglitz made during a talk at Columbia University Business School on February 19th. There has been one serious problem that has grown clearer every day since then... No one in control seems to be listening.