The Perfect Gift

I wrapped presents last night and was reminded of why I don’t like Christmas—how I automatically evaluate my expressions of love as performances and almost always come up short. While wrapping presents for people I really love, I’m wondering: ‘Will this gift be enough or will they be disappointed?’ ‘Is this wrapping job creative and fun, or just plain sloppy?’ In some part of my mind, the balance is delicate and the consequences overly consequential. While wrapping, I notice this internal conversation and work to ignore the critical one who chatters away so relentlessly on my shoulder.

But maybe I should give him a gift? He’s a hard worker, this little fellow—constantly vigilant lest a mistake be made. It’s a dangerous, nerve-racking job. Always on the alert. Always imagining the dire repercussions that would cascade down from some possible unskillful action. Most of his attention is devoted to worrying about how others are feeling and will be feeling—how they will react to something I do or don’t do. He’s not really concerned about me and how I’m doing. Or rather, he is concerned about me, but from the perspective that my happiness will only be possible when everyone else is happy with me—especially those people closest to me.

On the plus side, he does want me to be happy and safe. Now that I think about it, he is more into safety than happiness. From his perspective, this is life and death stuff. Negative reactions to my actions feel life-threatening to my critical little buddy. He lives in constant fear of doing the wrong thing and being cut off. ‘What if we do something wrong and everyone leaves us?’ ‘What if they decide we’re not worth their time anymore?’ Poor fellow.

He tries so hard. He’s quite admirable and inspiring in that way. Relentlessly working though his fear, he thinks and plans far into the disthymic future. If everything is so delicately balanced and the stakes are so high, there is no time to rest or slack off.

He lives in the world of a scared little boy. This little boy can’t quite figure the world out and is sure it’s all up to him to make everything come out right. He constantly works hard and things do come out right so he has learned he must keep working hard in order to keep things coming out right. Trapped in a never-ending feedback loop.

So, for Christmas this year, I’m getting him an all-expenses paid vacation to Costa Rica. Since he’s not real, Covid-19 is no problem. He can just slip into an empty seat on the next flight down. But as I think more deeply, I realize that that’s not what he wants. He’d just lie there on the white sand beaches under the warm sun and be worried about me.

No, what I need to give him is a stay-cation. That’s clearly the perfect gift! I’ll get him a mini barcalounger for use on my shoulder. I’ll also give him a four-pack of Greater Good ‘Pulp Daddy’ Imperial IPA and some 1,000 day aged gouda cheese. He can sit back in the lounger, sip beer, nibble cheese and survey the world from his advantaged perch on my shoulder. And the final gift, the one that will really let him know how much I love him and change his life forever, will be a copy of the Tao Te Ching so he read about the glories of ‘doing not-doing’ while he’s lounging around at home.

I can just see the surprised and delighted look on his face as he opens the wonderful presents I have gotten for him. He’ll look at me with wondrous disbelief that, having a choice, I would still be willing to have him stay. With slightly watery eyes we’ll remember our deep love for each other. And as we hug, we’ll both appreciate the intimacy and immediacy of our sometimes challenging relationship. We’ll remember again that though we can never get it right, that’s part of the fun of it all.

Celestial Stories

As I write this, it is exactly 5:02 on December 21^st, 2020. Winter solstice. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, the shortest day of the year is finally here. It’s caused by the angle of the earth’s axis and the consequent angle of the sun’s rays as we stand here on the surface of this spinning chunk of rock and water. Today the sun’s elevation above the horizon will be the lowest of the year.

Though the coldest months are still to come, the days will now begin to grow longer. Slowly at first, then comes the lengthening of the lengthening—accelerating till we reach a maximum of around two minutes of extra daylight every day. I’m already wondering how I should spend my coming treasure trove of minutes. One might think that two minutes isn’t a long time, but don’t be fooled.

These days, my sense of time seems rather erratic. On the one hand it feels like I’ve been in some kind of lockdown for years. On the other, I can’t believe Christmas comes on Friday. Where did the month go? Where did the year go?

Last night, a friend gave a lovely Zen talk that featured the image of erratic boulders. These large standing rocks are the ones dropped onto the New England landscape 22,000 years ago by the glacier that then covered this whole region. They had been picked up further north as the glacier carved the valleys and shaved the mountains on its southward journey. Then, as the ice melted, these stones of sometimes great proportion were left like travelers stranded in a foreign country with no means of return.

But how could travelers be stranded for such a long time? Maybe they lost their wallet and your passport. Maybe they couldn’t speak the language. Or maybe the foreign country was an island and all the boats were sunk and the airport was destroyed. The local inhabitants had had enough of all of this coming and going—were tired of exchange rates and the globalization of their traditional jobs—decided they didn’t want to be part of the world-wide-web or any other webs of commerce, intrigue and deceit.

Maybe everyone was going native, just as you happened to arrive. And since you had always hoped to lose everything anyway, you decided to join in. You finally gave up on the person you were and decided to join in the insurrection of disconnection. Slowly you learned the beautiful language of where you were. You found friends and learned to fish and grew a few vegetables in a small plot by your kitchen door. (I’m now thinking that your island was off the coast of Greece and the weather was nearly always perfect.) Or maybe you just became a storyteller and entertained the next generation with tall tales of the mythical world across the waters. You walked a lot, were happy to work hard and enjoyed the rest of your days on the island.

Now that would be erratic.

But last night, my friend, who had never, to my knowledge, been stranded on such as island as described above, told all of us who were webbing together on Zoom Zen that the word erratic comes from the Latin root erraticus which means wandering and also mistake or error. Certainly we are all wanderers living lives that, as one Zen teacher put it, are one mistake after another. We find ourselves deposited in this moment of time at this particular place. We don’t really know where we came from and the sheet of ice, or whatever it was that brought us here, has long since disappeared. So we make up stories. My father was of royal parentage but I was born in humble circumstances. There was a big star that was really two planets, but that’s just incidental. It’s a long story and with an R-rated ending. (graphic violence)

Believing the story or not, this will still be the shortest day of the year. We are all stranded here on the shores of present—carried here by vast depths of time beyond comprehension. We do our best to learn the beautiful language of this true place, but the syntax is hard and the subtle sounds nearly indiscernible.

And all the while this blue-green pearl of a planet twirls on its imagined axis as it hurtles through space—held in the magnificent thrall of a burning orb. I’m reminded of the ancient Native American song: ‘Why do I go about pitying myself, when all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky?’

Balancing Both

I have recovered from my alarm of yesterday morning when after writing a reasonably reassuring blog about the psychological processes that lead toward extremism I read some very disturbing news about the Russian cyber attacks, the refusal of some parts of the military to continue to work with the Biden team in transition and ongoing reports and investigations about the Trump camps fund-raising practices, and I got so upset I posted the whole article/newsletter that had upset me.

Was that an incidence of exactly what I was warning about? I was certainly emotionally reactive, but was I moving from denial into a more realistic assessment of the dangers of this moment of transition and alternative realities? Or was I getting carried away by bits of information that I put together in ways that confirm my worst fears about ‘those people’?

As a good Zen practitioner, I have to assume that it’s both. In our linguistic world, things are either this or that—either light or dark—either good or bad. But when we look more closely into our experience of life, we can notice that these clear boundaries and demarcations are nowhere to be found. I might say that I’m upset, but I’m also eating my breakfast and planning for the day’s events. In the dark there is light, and in the light there is dark. Events in the past that seemed good at the time led to some very difficult times. Conversely failures and disappointment may have turned out to had some unexpected gifts. It’s never just one thing.

But yesterday, I was surprised by the duration of my disturbance. My emotional state is usually fairly stable, but yesterday morning I was deeply agitated for several hours. I was worried about the Presidential transition and the ongoing damage of Trump’s baseless but powerful challenge to the legitimacy of the election. Trump is attempting a self-coup. He is doing whatever can to undermine the lawful transition of power and to stay in office. He is not defending the country (has said nothing about the Russian cyber-attack or about the rising Corona virus deaths) he is defending himself and his grip on power. He is openly spreading unfounded rumors and fanning the flames of conspiracy theories. He urges all toward extremism then presents himself as the only one who can bring stability.

Though Republicans in Congress are increasingly coming out and publicly accepting Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, they are still unwilling to directly take on the President’s preposterous lies and his passionate supporters. This is not a good thing. We are still in danger. Biden’s election was a huge victory but Trump’s influence and attempts to subvert our democracy are ongoing and need to be taken seriously.

This morning, as I open this can of worms again (and remembering that cans of worms, though perhaps slimy and icky are also wondrous and life-giving) I am not nearly as disturbed. Yes, there is ongoing danger and we should all do what we can. But many people are awake to this and we are, generally, moving in the right direction. Here are some suggestions I have for moving forward, honoring both our social responsibility and individual sanity:

1) Stay informed, but not too informed. Don’t imagine ‘it’s over and we won’ but also don’t stay glued to the constant agitation of information. Also remember to listen to a variety of voices, not just the ones that shout the loudest.

2) Find some small actions you can take for the good of all. I recently called my state representatives to urge them to fight Governor Baker’s amendments that weaken the recent Police Reform bill. I sent some postcards to George to urge people to vote. Not much, but it’s something.

3) Remember what you love. Don’t let the behavior of others be the focus of your inner life. Be intentional with your attention. Don’t wait until thing ‘settle down’ to appreciate the simple things that are already here.

Letter from an American (repost)

I have never posted twice in one day, nor have I reposted someone else’s writing.  But I read this after my reassuring post urging caution, and I feel compelled to repost Heather Cox Richardson’s December 18^th ‘Letter from an American.’ I have been reading her posts for the past six months and find her to be reasonable and direct in her reporting and analysis. I pass this on because I find it so disturbing and important. In our intention to move toward a civil society we must also be realistic about our assessment of the dangers of the moment.

A year ago today, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

In his plea to Senators to convict the president, Adam Schiff (D-CA), the lead impeachment manager for the House, warned “you know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country.” Schiff asked: “How much damage can Donald Trump do between now and the next election?” and then answered his own question: “A lot. A lot of damage.” “Can you have the least bit of confidence that Donald Trump will… protect our national interest over his own personal interest?” Schiff asked the senators who were about to vote on Trump’s guilt. “You know you can’t, which makes him dangerous to this country.’’

Republicans took offense at Schiff’s passionate words, seeing them as criticism of themselves. They voted to acquit Trump of the charges the House had levied against him.

And a year later, here we are. A pandemic has killed more than 312,000 of us, and numbers of infections and deaths are spiking. Today we hit a new single-day record of reported coronavirus cases with 246,914, our third daily record in a row. The economy is in shambles, with more than 6 million Americans applying for unemployment benefits. And the government has been hobbled by a massive hack from foreign operatives, likely Russians, who have hit many of our key departments.

Today it began to feel as if the Trump administration was falling apart as journalists began digging into a number of troubling stories.

Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, appointed by Trump after he fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper by tweet on November 9, this morning abruptly halted the transition briefings the Pentagon had been providing, as required by law, to the incoming Biden team. Observers were taken aback by this unprecedented halt to the transition process, as well as by the stated excuse: that Defense Department officials were overwhelmed by the number of meetings the transition required. Retired four-star general Barry R. McCaffrey, a military analyst for NBC and MSNBC, tweeted: “Pentagon abruptly halts Biden transition—MAKES NO SENSE. CLAIM THEY ARE OVERWHELMED. DOD GOES OPAQUE. TRUMP-MILLER UP TO NO GOOD. DANGER.”

After Axios published the story and outrage was building, Miller issued a statement saying the two sides had decided on a “mutually-agreed upon holiday, which begins tomorrow.” Biden transition director Yohannes Abraham promptly told reporters: “Let me be clear: there was no mutually agreed upon holiday break. In fact, we think it’s important that briefings and other engagements continue during this period as there’s no time to spare, and that’s particularly true in the aftermath of ascertainment delay,” a reference to the delay in the administration’s recognition of Biden’s election.

Later, the administration suggested the sudden end to the transition briefings was because Trump was angry that the Washington Post on Wednesday had published a story showing how much money Biden could save by stopping the construction of Trump’s border wall. Anger over a story from two days ago seems like a stretch, a justification after the briefings had been cancelled for other reasons. The big story of the day, and the week, and the month, and the year, and probably of this administration, is the sweeping hack of our government by a hostile foreign power. The abrupt end to the briefings might reflect that the administration isn’t keen on giving Biden access to the crime scene.

Republicans appear to be trying to cripple the Biden administration more broadly. The country has been thrilled by the arrival of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine that promises an end to the scourge under which we’re suffering. Just tonight, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized a second vaccine, produced by Moderna, for emergency authorization use. This vaccine does not require ultracold temperatures for shipping the way the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine does. Two vaccines for the coronavirus are extraordinarily good news.

But this week, as the first Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were being given, states learned that the doses the federal government had promised were not going to arrive, and no one is quite sure why. The government blamed Pfizer, which promptly blasted the government, saying it had plenty of vaccines in warehouses but had received no information about where to send them. Then the White House said there was confusion over scheduling.

Josh Kovensky at Talking Points Memo has been following this story, and concluded a day or so ago that the administration had made no plans for vaccine distribution beyond February 1, when the problem would be Biden’s. Kovensky also noted that it appears the administration promised vaccine distribution on an impossible timeline, deliberately raising hopes for vaccine availability that Biden couldn’t possibly fulfill. Today Kovensky noted that there are apparently doses missing and unaccounted for, but no one seems to know where they might be.

Today suggested yet another instance of Republican bad faith. With Americans hungry and increasingly homeless, the nation is desperate for another coronavirus relief bill. The House passed one last May, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to take it up. Throughout the summer and fall, negotiations on a different bill failed as Republicans demanded liability protection for businesses whose employees got coronavirus after they reopened, and Democrats demanded federal aid to states and local governments, pinched as tax revenue has fallen off during the pandemic. Now, though, with many Americans at the end of their rope, McConnell indicated he would be willing to cut a deal because the lack of a relief package is hurting the Republican Senate candidates before the runoff election in Georgia on January 5. Both sides seemed on the verge of a deal.

That deal fell apart this afternoon after Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) with the blessing of McConnell, suddenly insisted on limiting the ability of the Federal Reserve to lend money to help businesses and towns stay afloat. These were tools the Trump administration had and used, but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tried to kill them after Trump lost the election. The Federal Reserve’s ability to manage fiscal markets is key to addressing recessions. Removing that power would gravely hamper Biden’s ability to help the nation climb out of the recession during his administration.

It’s hard not to see this as a move by McConnell and Senate Republicans to take away Biden’s power—power enjoyed by presidents in general, and by Trump in particular—to combat the recession in order to hobble the economy and hurt the Democrats before the 2022 election.

Money was in the news in another way today, too. Business Insider broke the story that the Trump campaign used a shell company approved by Jared Kushner to pay campaign expenses without having to disclose them to federal election regulators. The company was called American Made Media Consultants LLC. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was president, and Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew, John Pence, was vice president until the two apparently stepped down in late 2019 to work on the campaign. The treasurer was the chief financial officer of the Trump campaign, Sean Dollman.

The Trump campaign spent more than $700 million of the $1.26 billion of campaign cash it raised in the 2020 cycle through AMMC, but to whom it paid that money is hidden. Former Republican Federal Election Commission Chairman Trevor Potter is trying to take up the slack left by the currently crippled Federal Elections Commission. His organization, the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan clean election group, last July accused the Trump campaign of “disguising” campaign funding of about $170 million “by laundering the funds” through AMMC.

This news adds to our understanding that Trump is leaving the White House with a large amount of cash. He has raised more than $250 million since November 3, urging his supporters to donate to his election challenges, but much of the money has gone to his own new political action committee or to the Republican National Committee. Recently, he has begged supporters to give to a “Georgia Election Fund,” suggesting that the money will go to the runoff elections for Georgia’s two senators, but 75% of the money actually goes to Trump’s new political action committee and 25% to the Republican National Committee.

Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman at the New York Times note that are very few limits to how Trump can spend the money from his new PAC.

The Seduction of Being Right

Many years ago a friend of mine who studied the Middle East gave a talk in which he spoke about how the radical fringes of each side, both the Israeli and the Palestinian, functioned to potentiate each other. The extreme actions of one side served as evidence to validate the extreme views and actions of the other side. This dynamic is present in every polarized situation, whether it is between countries, within countries, within organizations, or even between two people.

Once we become polarized, our beliefs and opinions of the situation tend to increase the gap between us. Part of this is due to the confirmation bias—the tendency of our minds to seek out information that confirms our opinion and to ignore information that would bring our beliefs into question. All of us want to be confirmed in our position. Much as we might not want to admit it, we like to be right. If I think you are out to get me, then I will notice and interpret everything you do and don’t do as evidence to support my theory. It feels good to be right.

One of the most challenging parts of confirmation bias is that it mostly operates below the level of our awareness. Most of the time, most of us think we are seeing the world as it is. From the perceptual point of view, I am rarely aware that I am creatively participating in constructing the world I see. The fact that I am paying attention to some features of reality while ignoring everything else is usually hidden from me. One researcher estimated that there at 8 billion bits of information available to us at any moment and we can only process approximately 8!

It turns out, that our input awareness apparatus, our senses and our brains, are woefully outmatched by the richness of the cosmos. One confirmation of this (and notice I’m presenting bits of evidence that confirm the rightness of my position) is that when we slow down, it is often possible to see and sense more about where we are than we had previously been conscious of. When you are looking into the world, any place you start turns out to be more interesting and complex and interconnected than you had previously imagined.

In my work as a life and leadership coach, I find that wherever we start our coaching conversation leads to everything else, including the center. The particular issue you are dealing with at this moment, contains everything else that has ever happened to you. When we look closely at the world we are encountering, we can begin to see both our part in creating whatever is here as well as the choices available to us that had previously been hidden.

I’m thinking of all this because of the ongoing polarization of our country with Trump’s relentless assertions of election fraud. Some people say Trump is really a sadist—that he enjoys the pained reactions of liberals like myself when he does or says something outrageous. Certainly some of his followers delight in his outrageous behavior that is so upsetting to us New York Times and Washington Post type people. There is some release from feeling ignored and powerless in this quickly changing society.

And the primacy of conspiracy theories—about the election, about Q-Anon’s wild assertions of a deep state that is running child slavery rings that only Donald Trump knows about and can truly fight—these are believable to many because they fit our human psychological need to be right. When we are upset by the actions of those we disagree with, there is something thrilling about imagining our worst fantasies.

Ross Douthat of the NY Times put it this way last week when he wrote of:

a fantasy in which your political enemies are poised to do something unbelievably terrible — like all the right-wing militia violence that liberals expected on Election Day — that would vindicate all your fears and makes you happy in your hatred. (bolding added)

Being confirmed is a wonderful and dangerous thing. The workers at security check-in at the airport, there must be some excitement and sense of confirmation when they actually do uncover something of danger. Given how rarely their search uncovers anything more than too much shampoo or a Swiss pocket knife I wonder how they stay awake and alert through the endless lines that used to be a normal feature of airports.

So how do we stay alert to the damage and potential hazards Trump continues to pose to democracy and to our country without falling into the world of emotional whirlpool of happy hatred? How do we stay focused on what incremental steps are possible right now rather than the many fantasies that swirl around us?

Peter Block, author and organizational consultant, once said ‘If you want to change the world, change the room you’re in.’

Manifesto of Liberation

I didn’t want
to get out of bed
this morning
so I didn’t—
until just now.

So there!

The Sound of Snow

If you listen carefully, you can hear the weather outside. Last night was peculiarly quiet with snow. I didn’t really listen all night, but the absence of sounds was vivid with me as I slept. In the quiet darkness I dreamt I was given a complex problem to solve. There were four elements involved in the issue. They were presented on a clipboard and I had to come up with a solution. The problem wasn’t clear. There wasn’t enough information. But I dutifully worked hard on the problem, thereby creating a problem for myself.

The dream went on and on, as I am both a dedicated dreamer and a hard worker. I suppose I am most familiar with myself when I am working hard. As a younger man leading a small internship-based school, I was often exhausted and overwhelmed by the pace of my work. When I began to investigate why the boss (me) was making me work so hard, I realized that I was only comfortable when I was working hard. There was always so much to do—so many problems arising and so much that couldn’t be fixed—that only when I was at a near frantic pitch did I feel like I had a plausible excuse for not setting everything right.

My unconscious operational theory was: ‘You can’t be blamed for what doesn’t get done if you’re visibly and earnestly working hard all the time.’ It turns out not to really be true. But I also noticed that when I slowed down, I felt more guilty about all that was undone. How could I not give my all when there was so much more to do? Hard work was a shelter, a pre-emptive escape from the awareness of all that is undone. Exhaustion was preferable, for a time, to the discomforting realization of my inability to control and fix the universe. (These days, and at this point in my life, I spend much more of my time leaning and easing into the manifest realization of my lack of control.)

The other factor was, and is, I love to be engaged. Working hard, getting things done is fun. To give myself to something (like writing every morning) that requires attention and effort is clearly what I am designed to do. Like the sled dogs that love to pull. When you harness them to the sled, the main thing to remember is to secure the sled to a tree, or the excited dogs already tied in will run off with the sled before the final dogs are engaged.

My dream problem last night was a difficult one. After much tossing and turning and partial waking, a solution emerged. I realized (for the umpteenth time) that the problem was not the problem. The four elements on the clipboard could be combined in any number of ways. The only stable solution was to be present with the people around the clipboard.

This was not a satisfying solution at first. I abandoned it several times to back to the familiar sense of working hard. Then, in a combination of exhaustion and insight I realized that abandoning focus on the purported problem was the only true solution. The four elements on the clipboard could be continually reshuffled, some combinations would work better than others, but there could be no resolution in that realm. And it wasn’t even about getting the people around the clipboard to do anything or be in any certain relationship, it was just being present with them. That’s my real job. That’s the durable resolution: resting in the web of dynamic relationships.

That was the revelation in the long silence of last night’s snow. Now, in the early morning, the beams of streetlights sparkle with the fine and cold falling snow. The wind sounds a low and ominous hum. Pleasant Street is wonderfully vacant. Like the ancient days of the early pandemic, this main thoroughfare lies empty. Just an occasionally truck going slowly. The hard-driving lawyers are not driving into the office to produce early morning billable hours and the early morning cleaners too are sleeping late.

The grand gears of corporeal life have mercifully slowed with the snow. Though the high pitched inaudible whine of the internet will screech forcefully on and a day of work will appear for most of us, the wind and the continuing snow will keep us safely contained within our warm homes. (Here I insert a quick prayer for those with minimal or no shelter. May they be find warmth and safety in the midst of these life-threatening conditions.)

Later this morning, the same snow will drive some of us to the streets and sidewalks to clear paths and have neighborly conversations about the weather. I promise to pay as much attention to our idle chatter as I do to the snow we are clearing.

Learning To Remember

He held my hand on the
way home and I was
in heaven. We were
together in the backseat,
happy to see each
other after school after
a week apart. He was
talking excitedly and I
couldn’t help reaching out.

At first I pretended
I was just warming
his cold fingers, but then
we kept holding on—
contented to hold
hands and chatter away
about the color of passing
cars and his new sneaker-shoes.
His vocabulary is limited
but his brilliant being
shines without constraint.

In the back seat, as his
mother drives us all home,
miraculous life passes
between and through us
as if it were the most
ordinary thing in the world.

He already knows there is
nothing else to wait for,
while the rest of us are
still learning to remember.

Supporting Democracy

President-elect Joe Biden’s victory was officially confirmed by the Electoral College yesterday! Sadly, this is heartening news. Each state, whether Republican or Democrat, whether supporting Trump or Biden, carried out their duty to provide, guard and report a free and fair election. In any other year, the confirmation of the Electoral College would barely be a blip on the radar screen. But given Trump’s unabating and malicious actions to undercut the results of the election, the confirmation of the election results by the Electoral College was significant.

In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, Ross Douthat, a conservative commentator, drew a distinction between Republicans at different levels of government.   Republican officials at the state level have acted ‘normally’. They have resisted intense pressure from Trump and his allies to break the law and throw out votes. While Republicans at the national level have silently refused to acknowledge the legitimate results of the election or have joined in Trump’s baseless challenge of the election he lost.

‘The Republicans behaving normally are the ones who have actual political and legal roles in the electoral process and its judicial aftermath, from secretaries of state and governors in states like Georgia and Arizona to Trump’s judicial appointees. The Republicans behaving radically are doing so in the knowledge — or at least the strong assumption — that their behavior is performative, an act of storytelling rather than lawmaking, a posture rather than a political act.’

By one count, over sixty legal challenges to the election have been filed and there no major illegalities or irregularities have been found. Most of the suits have been dismissed with scathing rebukes from justices (both Democrat and Republican) about the lack of evidence and lack of even semblance of legal coherence. In all his hollering and complaining, Trump has neither presented, nor presumably found, any evidence of significant voter fraud.

Yet his destructive charade continues, supported by the fires of grievance he has so carefully tended throughout his time in office. The Congressional Republicans who have been following his lead must feel they have no choice. Most are silent, perhaps fearing to cross this malicious man and the passions he has fomented within the Republican Party and within this country. Crossing a vindictive and powerful man has consequences beyond what most of them are willing to bear.

Douthat goes on to compare Trump to a cult leader whose prophecy has failed:

Crucially, as in certain famous cults, the failure of these prophecies doesn’t undo the story. It just requires more elaboration and adaptation, more creative fantasizing — and meanwhile the gears of normal politics grind on, choked with sand but still turning steadily enough.

Trump will not stop. He laid the groundwork for this far-fetched challenge four years ago.   He cheerfully proclaimed ridiculous lies about the size of his inauguration crowds and claims that the only reason he lost the popular vote was due to massive voter fraud. The performative actions of Congressional leaders and the alternate reality he has so carefully crafted are what allow him to keep going. The majority of individuals who identify as Republican now believe, without legitimate evidence, that this past election was marred by a significant breakdown in our system of voting.

These baseless accusations will not, ultimately prevail. President-elect Joe Biden will, I believe, be sworn in on January 20^th. But his job of leading the country in dealing with the raging pandemic, the struggling economy, the ongoing systemic racism and the continuing environmental crises will be made even more difficult.

As Robert Hubbell often says, this is a generational struggle we are witnessing. The demographic, economic and social changes in our country and in the world have created fertile ground for the resentments and fears to blossom into an antagonism and distrust so deep that even verifiable events (the Presidential election) cannot be agreed upon.

The road back to a functioning two-party system at the national level will be a long one. We will all need to stay involved in both the performative and the normal political acts that foster the kind of democracy to which we aspire to. What we think, say and do matters. Let us continue to act with strength and compassion to use these times to move toward a country more fully realizes its highest ideals.

Choosing Our Lives

Many of us imagine that we’d be happy if only things would go smoothly. If only things were more predictable and less challenging, then we’d be able to get to all those things we’ve been meaning to do. I remember learning many years ago when I was leading an organization and making a practice of schmoozing with ‘important’ people that when someone said ‘Let’s get together when things settle down,’ that meant they didn’t really want to take the time to meet with you.

What do you want to take the time to do? What will you say yes to? What will you say no to? In the midst of an ever-expanding number of choices, what’s worth doing? What’s most important. These are the urgent questions that arise for us humans again and again.

I first heard Mary Oliver’s poem The Summer Day read at a Pottery and Zen workshop I attended in the mid-80’s and her formulation of these questions has stayed with me ever since. In the poem, she wonders about the meaning of life then quickly falls into one of her now-familiar reveries about the specifics of the outdoor moment in which she finds herself.

I’m reminded here of the Zen practice of calling out and receiving. It’s a kind of Zen prayer in which you internally call out to the universe from the place of your true need. You can call the universe whatever you want: God, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, my True Heart, Life or even Hey You. You call out asking for help from the deepest and most desperate place you know. THEN, you stop calling out and receive whatever arises in that particular moment as the response to your calling out. It may be just the sensation of your breath, it may be a sound or an image. It may be nothing at all. It may be, as it apparently was in Oliver’s case, a grasshopper.

Oliver observes the grasshopper ‘who has flung herself out of the grass…who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.’ She then extols the general virtue of paying attention to the particular and claims she is ‘idle and blessed.’ (Through this we have to assume that her carefully crafted and apparently natural poems are part of her idleness and her blessing – for she is not just ‘strolling through the fields’ as she claims. She is also coming home and writing about it as well, otherwise we would never know of her wondrous wonder.)

Then, in the poem, everything changes. She brings in death as an unexpected ally in her defense against the tyranny of busyness and productivity: Tell me, what else should I have done? / Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?. Funny—to invite death in to bolster your case for ease and reverie.

So often we think of death as our adversary—our mortal enemy. We use all the tricks available to us to avoid meeting directly with this most universal and unavoidable reality. We deny, we bargain, we rage, we withdraw. Yet as long as we push away the reality of death, we have no place to rest because we are constantly running from one of the most dependable aspects of our life.

I’ll never forget a conversation many years ago with my Zen teacher under a huge live oak near the retreat center where we were teaching just outside of Tallahassee. The old live oaks in that area are stunning. Enormous, spreading, and draped with Spanish moss, their leaves are green all year and they can live for over 500 years. The one we stopped under was an ancient and stunning specimen that some of the neighbors had honored by putting a park bench under its capacious spreading limbs.

It was there he spoke of his gratitude for death. Not that he wanted to die, but he imagined how unbearable an unending life would be. All your friends would die and you would be left alone in the vast infinity of space. Perhaps we can speak of the vast infinity of space being right here in each moment, but the certainty of change and the certainty of death are also part of this moment without borders.

Oliver closes her public reverie with the two lines that I have carried with me these last forty years: ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?’ In these concluding lines, Oliver shifts her keen focus from her dreamlike meeting with her summer day and the grasshopper to you and me, the readers. Suddenly, we are in her crosshairs. ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do’… In her challenge she affirms the possibility and the urgency of having a plan for the direction in which we intend to move.

So—in the face of the wonder and the inescapable brevity of life, how will you move forward into this day in which you find yourself? How will you meet the clamor and disturbance that will certainly come your way? What intention may guide you? What will you give your life to today?