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The holy site of our collective moral awakening
Robin Tanner names our southern border as “the holy site of our collective moral awakening as a country.”
From the bones yet to be discovered beside the cactus flower under moonlight bloom to the server watching the door for a raid, these words echo from the lives of the brave ones who taught us, as Archbishop Oscar Romero once said…“I implore you, each one of you is us. We are the same people. I implore you! I beg you! Stop the repressions!” (Facebook, August 1)
Alex Kapitan suggests ways to use language to re-humanize immigrant communities.
When writing and talking about immigrant communities, take the time to use more words and be more descriptive. Because the very word immigrant has become a tool of dehumanization, using more descriptive language (for example, “Gabriela is a grandmother of four from Honduras,” “Sergio, who is 8, is trying to reunite with his father, who lives in northern California,” “people seeking refuge in the United States,” “people who came here to get an education and have overstayed their visas”) can bring folks’ humanity back to the center. (Radical Copyeditor, July 22)
All things are mind-wrought
Barbara Stevens explores our human need to create illusions of control.
Land iguanas on the Galapagos Islands eat centipedes and carrion, but they prefer prickly-pear fruit. Unlike their marine cousins, they can’t climb the cactus, so they stand beneath the sprawling limbs and gaze up at the pears, waiting for one to ripen and fall to the ground. This can take hours or days, yet through it all, the creature waits. . . .
What patience and zen-like forbearance these animals must have to remain so still. Are they bored? Blissed out? . . . Perhaps the iguanas long to control the moment of release, that instant when the fruit lets go and plummets. (Universalist Recovery Church, July 27)
Gretchen Haley writes about an interpersonal zugzwang—a moment in a game where a player must move and none of the options are good.
By the time we sat in the room
where life turnedfrom what was, to what would be
I had barely begun to believethere was a game, and
we were playersthere was a strategy, and
you intended to winyou’d been making already so many moves
it was all I could do, to decide the sorrowI could swallow, and survive
the waves I could takewithout staying under
too long – we like to believethere is perpetually some perfect
calculus, a thing called right, and wrongwe will know when the time comes
but the right choice does not always arrive without regret (Another Possibility, July 31)
Kat Liu explains what the Dhammapada means when it says: "Mind precedes all things. All things are mind wrought."
[The] Buddha . . . wasn’t saying that we can control reality with our minds. He was telling us that our conception of reality is created in our minds, and is influenced by our perceptions. Knowing this, we can control *our conception* of reality.
Why is this important? Believing in your mind that you can defy gravity and fly is not going to cause you to be able to fly. But understanding that the unforgivable offense that someone else committed against you is only an unforgivable offense because you perceive it that way can help you let go of the anger. (Facebook, July 31)
A time of uncertainty and division
Joanna Fontaine Crawford notes that “Our society is in a time of great divisiveness.”
The shibboleths that define whether we are conservative or liberal are everything from the chicken we eat to the hardware chain where we shop.
If we allow it, our world can become so small that growth is nearly impossible. Individual growth requires room to stretch, new ideas to mull over, and the understanding that others can have different experiences that have led them to come to different conclusions than we have. (Statesman, July 23)
Doug Muder reviews Robert Mueller’s public testimony and wonders what will happen next.
Will the Supremes rule that they are empowered to second-guess a Democratic Congress in ways that they can’t second-guess [a] Republican president? That would be a striking message that the rule of law is essentially dead.
The other way this progresses is if the people rise up and demand impeachment, the way that people have risen up in Puerto Rico or Hong Kong. But will we? (The Weekly Sift, July 29)
Adam Lawrence Dyer predicts who will win the 2020 presidential election.
The 2020 election will be won by the person who meets ALL people where they are (or where they would like to see themselves).
The 2020 election will be won by the person who speaks to people in the clearest voice, (or the tone of voice they wish they could use).
The 2020 election will be won by the person who motivates people in ways they can’t or are too tired, angry, hopeless, etc. to motivate themselves.
Trump succeeds because he always speaks to the child in people that cries, “I want it now!” It is the only language in which he is truly fluent: International Brat. He speaks to the most volatile emotion…pride. He uses the most vulnerable part of the human personality…ego; and he activates the lizard brain through simplicity. (spirituwellness, July 31)