If your heart be open and your mind be free

Could you then understand someone like me

If I really listen careful to whisper on the wind

Would I know what is in your heart just then

Fear, joy, love and proud can they be understood today

Across the room or many miles with no discerned delay

If it is faith, or if it is intuition, is it perception, or simply love

Life’s emotion lives barely perceived like rustle from wings of a dove

Nature is resplendent with diversity, beauty and mystery

Be one with this nature and take in time, this point of history

For time is this point and future unknown, and past sins please relieve

Be in the moment and know what we know and allow our hearts to believe

We are connected by time, by nature and by whispers on the wind

Believe and then you’ll understand and know the loving message I send

Mike

I find it fascinating that Pope Francis, to fabulous acclaim, is speaking to the US Congress and to the United Nations.   His style of bringing everyone onto the same page to address problems as we and us instead of they is hopefully infectious. His compassion for others and inclusiveness is a good thing in politics as well as for the human spirit. Maybe, just maybe, we will be witnessing the second and third greatest miracles of all time: actually getting Washington DC and the UN to work!

I have hope and I pray for the seeming miracle of constructive dialog and cooperation to address many challenging problems in the USA and the world.   I fear however that those that are not able to stomach the constant bickering and gridlock will use this opportunity to resign.   I’m not certain of John Boehner’s purpose in resigning at this time, but it seems to me that someone so obviously moved by the Pope’s message should endeavor to carry on and fight for the civility and compromise so sorely needed.

We do need those miracles and maybe it’s too much to ask of a Parish Priest from Argentina who is 78 years old, but I think it’s worth the dream and the prayers.

Mike

 Poetry is elusive today for some reason

Maybe its lazy, hazy summer season

Maybe all the connections aren’t firing

Maybe it’s my mind that is old and tiring

Well I don’t know what to write about

Nothing in my mind that needs to come out

From my musing I’ll give you a brief respite

Until I have something of interest to write

Mike

I’ve written about perspective and wisdom, as you may know, if you’ve been reading my musings. Passion however is maybe the human trait that makes us most interesting. Passion is desire given a name. Its fear managed. Its what makes us love, its what makes us excel in the arts, in business, or in sports.   Some say that there is a fine line between genius and madness. I think that fine line is passion controlled versus passion uncontrolled. Contained by perspective, wisdom and improved on by practice, passion is what can make us great.   Think about the athlete that excels at his or her sport… its by passion that they excel, it also is at that border between perfection and destruction that we see passion play out and we are fascinated to watch. A batter in baseball fails more than two thirds of the time, yet he is great to succeed just that one third of time, because we know and understand the passion for their sport that they have conquered.

When we listen to a great musician we know we are hearing passion, we want to not just listen, but we want to watch, we want to see how they are engulfed by their music, and they become that music, and always so close to the edge of madness. Think about why we pay hundreds to go to a concert when for a few bucks we can listen to a perfect rendition of their work in the convenience of home? Same with a dancer, how close are they to failing, yet they perform faultlessly because they’ve controlled that passion we are witnessing through practice and perspective… they know what they can do and what they cannot instinctively… and because they’ve been to the other side of that edge before. Passion uncontrolled can be destructive and consuming, passion controlled is productive, wonderful and the greatest of all human traits.

I saw a dancer once and it occurred to me how she was controlling passion, managing her dragon as it seemed to me. Making passion productive. In our minds, our hearts, our souls we struggle to find, control, manage our dragon. We must put ourselves in the proper and perfect state of mind to manage our passions. Proper level of restraint, control, with perspective and wisdom as we dance with our dragon. We keep it where it needs to be, we use it when it is productive, and we keep in line…

Passion is a Dragon

Settle thoughts, settle heart, keep in line

Look to the future, remembering the past

Be in the present a perfect state of mind 

Passion is a Red Dragon that must be named

Contained, controlled and yet wild just the same

Work on it, train it, the dragon must be tamed

Fire in my soul lets the dragon fly as needed at time

Dance with it, control and make it work, others see

But keep in the present a perfect state of mind

See the sunset beautiful and perfectly framed

Then settle, enjoy and let the dragon dream

Sky dark, moon and stars more than can be named

Deep at night, the dragon stirs in its sleep

Keeping it alive, listen to it influencing me

Productive, think, protecting me in my castle keep

See joy and laughter and love of friends

Be in the present a perfect state of mind

Comfort in soul that such beauty never ends

Dragon sleeps but still there to awaken in time

Events and time, emotions and rhymes

Be in the present always a perfect state of mind

Mike

On Sunday mornings I like to read the Tampa Bay Times, Perspective section… I really think it’s a great name for this section of the paper.  It usually includes political editorial columns as well as historical perspective columns. This Sunday’s edition included two articles that I think were a very interesting pairing.  One of the articles was written by Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University and was called “The Next Genocide Approaches”.   Despite its appalling name there is much to learn about the conditions that lead up to genocide, and the nature, and willingness of the masses to follow leadership into the depths of evil.  Nations in need of land, and energy resources to feed a growing population, especially to maintain a certain lifestyle can incite their masses to participate in horrific acts if they can demonize the people that are in the way of their goals.   Without repeating all the examples and premises of the article here, it was interesting to understand the historical perspective that lead to genocide, including the Holocaust  as well as the more recent killing of half a million Tutsis in Rwanda just twenty one years ago.  In both cases ethnic hatred was used to drive an evil solution borne out of a need to recover land and to reduce the number of mouths to feed to maintain an idealized lifestyle.  It was fashioned in the minds of so many as a fight for survival.  In the example of the Nazis, there was a belief that without war to take land for agriculture and oil resources, the German destiny could not be fulfilled and further the ethnic hatred they developed allowed an evil final solution of extermination to take hold.  Science of land use and development, of improved fertilization, pesticides, and geopolitical compromise to ensure open trading all lost out to a militaristic narcissistic view of superiority.  This led to a feeling of right to others property and a sense of revenge for slights of the First World War and the sanctions and financial crisis that followed.    When a way of life is threatened, when the political order is disturbed as is occurring in the Ukraine with Russian influence, as it is in the Middle-East with the rise of a religious-whipped frenzy of power grab, as China makes plays for resources in Africa, and as there is growing ecological over-reactions evolving elsewhere, we must be careful to keep our perspective.  We must have an understanding and we much learn from history, and we must understand science, and we must understand the weakness of humans to follow a seemingly logical and good intentioned path that leads to demonizing others because they impede our path.  Think about how easy it is for us to believe and even say that the person that cut us off in traffic is an idiot and an asshole, and of course other not so nice things…

The second article was about how good intentioned, charismatic leaders can make us believe in a path and a direction that is not supported by facts and ignores lessons of history.  So the object of this next article is Pope Francis.  Certainly this topic could be viewed as the antithesis of a discussion on the conditions that allow genocide…. And just for clarity… I’m not suggesting in any way that Pope Francis is leading us on a path that could be so evil.  However George Will’s article titled: Francis Delivers a Flamboyant, Fact-Free Message, was striking in the way he pointed out that the pope is describing the Earth as becoming “an immense pile of filth” and advocates subsistence farming, and other idealistic social behaviors.  Ignoring the improvements in cleaner energy that science is making, the improvements that abundant energy and improved efficiency in food production, in pharmaceutical production and of course the dramatic improvements that have been realized in the last two centuries of the industrial age.  Life expectancy improved by 2x or more.   Global poverty in just the last 3 decades has declined from 53 percent to 17 percent.  Furthermore agriculture is many times more efficient than a century ago thanks to fossil fuels, machinery and fertilizers and pesticides.   Will makes the point that “Francis grew up around the rancid political culture of Peronist populism, the sterile redistributionism that has reduced his Argentina from the world’s 14th highest per-capita GDP in 1900 to 63rd today.  (Pope) Francis agenda for the planet would globalize Argentina’s downward mobility.”

I think that Pope Francis is terrific for the Catholic Church as a revivalist for faith and most importantly for pressing the issues around tolerance and service that makes up the Christian faith.  However as George Will points out, we must have historical understanding and perspective and fact-based policies that determine our futures.  Charisma and populist well intended sound bites are not enough.  In fact, it is my opinion that in the wrong minds, sound bites and limited perspective are extremely dangerous.   Mr. Will is almost visceral in his attack on Pope Francis, so that it is uncomfortable to read, but I can understand why he is so adamant… the potential for damage caused by misunderstandings is huge.

We as a society must learn from our pasts, understand science and have a global perspective that helps us see past the seemingly well-intended populist sound bite messages.   In any case these are my musings from Sunday’s readings…

Mike

Its Fun Friday post time…

Much the way I like it

The morning is quiet and still much the way I like it

Light shimmers on the pond reflections clearly rippled

Alone in thoughts, emotions and hope

Quietly I write to no one and to know just one

Birds play, a black bird crows and yet it seems quiet

Plane disrupts nature with high flight overhead

I feel everything and yet nothing at all

Why do I write these thoughts that are nothing at all

I read a poem about Azaleas this morning in the paper

It was nice, but I imagine it was some musings like mine

No words of importance, no rhythm and rhyme

But random thoughts, much the way I like it

Last night I watched and was exhausted by 11 Republican Candidates for President sharing a stage and jostling for their moments of notice. It seemed less of a debate and more of a sound bite scrum!

I think that the debate planners would be better off taking a “March-Madness” approach to debates… start with a Sweet Sixteen if you need to, although a Great Eight would be a better starting point.

Imagine four 15-minute debates of two candidates each, the winner, by audience electronic vote moves on to the Final Four. Two more 30 min debates result in a down select to 2 candidates that complete in the final 30 min debate.   Sound bites would not be sufficient to make it through. At the end of 2 hrs. of debating there would be a debate winner, with breaks and voting it may take two and a half hours. There can be another 5 minutes of summary from each of the 8 candidates at the end. Then we’d have a meaningful debate with some sense of who these candidates are and what are their policy positions.

Next time around mix up the starting pairing.

Organize the questions around a set so there could be some consistency in what each candidate has to address. Start with foreign policy questions, then economic, then domestic/social questions, then leadership/character challenges.

Just my musings for this morning!

Mike

This weekend I finished a book my Mom recommended.  Thank you Mom!   (Dad, after you read this, take the laptop over to Mom so she can read this… thanks :-)) The book is “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah.  I really enjoyed the book and found it striking because it presented WWII in France from two women’s perspective.  So much of history is shaped and written about and by the exploits of men that we fail to sometimes fully recognize the role of women in inspiring history, and more importantly leaving a legacy of courage, fortitude, and love for us to aspire to.  For the last year or more I’ve been writing some material that addresses our responsibility to our future generations, and what it means to leave a legacy, then at the end of this book, I found a two word sentence that spoke so loudly to me, it was “Love lasts.”   I had tears in my eyes when I read this not for what these women persevered through, and how they suffered, but how in the end they left a legacy of love, and in two words this message was succinctly delivered as an absolute truth.

In the Book of Wisdom, wisdom is represented as female to the reader, and I ran across that in church at liturgy one day quite awhile ago, and I came to appreciate over some contemplation how wise the author was to remind us that wisdom is precious and always comes first from our mothers in some ways, and very small ways at first.  From this start if we keep our hearts open and we listen, maybe we can hear the whisper of wisdom all through our lives.   Seeking and developing wisdom allows us to learn and enjoy then the legacy of love that those before us bring to us… and then we can be the bearers of that wisdom and loving benefit to future generations.

A poem I wrote awhile back I like very much as it presents the simple challenge to me to seek out and then listen carefully to her when she speaks, in this case maybe it was through the simple sentence written by Kristin Hannah… “Love lasts”

Wisdom

Wisdom whispers to us

Why it so hard to hear her?

My world is so noisy

Yet I know she is there

She is breathtaking panoramic, and

I’m looking at the smallest details

She is intricate in her fine work

I can’t see the message in the picture

She speaks through the meek

I listen to the proud

The wise add ideas, but

Are drowned by the chant of many

She stands at my bed in the mid of the night

I’m too tired to capture the thoughts

Please speak to me through my day

I promise I’ll listen in my own way

When I was in high school I experienced an event that changed who I am, or more possibly made me realize who I am.  At 16 I wanted to view myself as a gladiator, ready and capable of glory on the gridiron.   Mr. Smith was my catalyst.   He was the physics teacher, but also would teach other classes such as history and geography.  Once in a class, not sure what it was or what topic, he pointed to me and said lets hear what Socrates has to say on the topic. At the time, I took it in stride but was stung some because it seemed I was called out for being different.  At 16, who wants to be different?  Later that year in the summer I worked out and trained to play football.  I was in great shape and extremely confident, probably foolishly so.  In August I had an appendectomy and thus ended my gladiatorial ambitions.  However I came away with a knowledge of myself, that I could get in shape, I could be strong if I wanted to put the work into making myself that gladiator.

In a parallel event, Sister Boneventure gave me a book at 15 or 16, which seemed odd at the time.  It was Lord of the Rings, book 1 or 2.  It happened right after she saw me nearly beat up a bully in her class room (for some reason I didn’t get in trouble), maybe she thought I would relate to Frodo, in any case it set me on a lifelong interest in reading. Thank you Sister, and J.R.R Tolkien!  So when much later I ran across Plato’s treatise on Socrates in a second hand book store, I was willing to give it a go.  I was curious and more open to think about that nickname from high school, so I took the time to read it.  I wanted to know what was meant by this nickname that few probably knew stung me some when I was young.   I learned about the Socratic method, I learned how to abstract my self interest long enough to develop perspective and understanding of myself and situations and issues of life.   I found that to discover essential truths, one needed perspective, the ability to see from a distance and the strength of character to accept truth, no matter how much it may hurt.  Furthermore I realized that to lead others to logic, reasoning and success I needed a poets ability to communicate simply and succinctly… sure at this moment you are probably wondering where some of that brevity is…  in any event, with much practice I found myself able to live and operate this way.  As a result I believe that I’ve enjoyed accomplishments, success, and even happiness in this world because of this drive toward a philosopher/poet view of the world.  So did Mr. Smith see in me a young man that could be a philosopher/poet, and should be instead of a gladiator, or was it just a fun thing to say at that moment in time.  I’m sure I’ll never know, but I’m also sure that he said it and it did result in a tremendous positive affect on me.  Many others provided positive role models, especially my parents and influenced me in so many ways, but this one statement of observation on his part or likely more accurately a challenge on his part shaped my approach to life, love, family and business.   Sister Boneventure, will never know that she enable in me a passion for reading, that allowed me to follow my curiosity and pursue knowledge that I would never have acquired otherwise.

I hope that in someday, in someway I have a similar affect on others and challenge them to enjoy the benefits of perspective, logic, thinking and a poets capacity to communicate.  Maybe others will think about it in the future and realize that the Socratic Method of ancient times has value in all we are and will be.  Amazing how thought and challenges at impressionable ages carry through from generation to generation.