A matter of time: autumn 2014

 Hi Katalusis friends,

This little tree is always the first in our back yard to flaunt red leaves (9/23/14).

The autumnal equinox a couple of days ago reminded me of this piece that I first posted in September 2007:


Up here in the northern hemisphere, we’ll mark the autumnal equinox this Sunday when the sun heads south across the celestial equator, and the hours of daylight and darkness become nearly equal.


My son Steve is coming for dinner this evening (his wife Nancy is out of town), and the already shorter days and cooler nights demand a pot of spicy chili, salad greens, and fresh-baked apple pie.


Good smells from the kitchen distract me from my work as I sit here at my computer. And I’m thinking if I get time, I’ll run out and get a chunk of cheese and some wine to add to our feast. Wait a minute, I remind myself, I’m in charge here, and my computer can nap until I get back.


I pull out of the parking garage into an early fall afternoon with temps in the low 70s, blue skies, and blinding sunlight. A few trees flaunt newly dyed yellow leaves from among the still mostly green groves along my route.


The supermarket is busy but in no time at all I’ve paid for my cheese and dashed to the neighborhood liquor store for a bottle of red wine. I then stop by the library to return a couple of books I borrowed before the season shifted on Labor Day from the more relaxed pace of summer to the early signs of autumn when kids return to school, Unitarian-Universalists return to church, and Congress returns to Washington.


“The ticking of the clock is the normal measure of experience,” James Carroll reminded us at the beginning of this too rapidly waning year. He said, “You usually move through this sequencing, the way a fish moves through water, unaware of the realm in which you have your being.”


But there’s a difference between the fish and us, Carroll continued: “You can notice the water. Your water is time, but noticing the water is how you swim. The future and the past exist only in your minds, but that does not mean they are not real…we are bodies moving through the world, but our real movement is through the temporal stream of consciousness.”


Mindfulness meditation has taught me how to slow time down as I move though my own temporal stream of consciousness. From the writings of Jon Kabbat-Zinn and Thich Nhat Hanh, I’ve learned to navigate through memories of the past and make imaginative forays into the future while relying on my breathing to anchor me in this present moment.


Slowing time down is no small achievement for one conditioned by the demands of journalism to continually hustle to meet the next deadline. But on this day, I’ve mindfully arranged the bouquet of flowers I picked up at the supermarket, set out the wine glasses, and stirred the chili simmering on the stove.



When all is ready, I turn on the news to catch glimpses of the war-ravaged citizens of Iraq, and I wonder how they experience their movement through time lacking even the most basic necessities of safe drinking water and electricity, while their daily life is disrupted by exploding I.E.D.s and random bursts of gunfire from American troops and/or Blackwater Security Guards.


Not surprisingly, the most recent polls show a majority of Iraqis want Americans out of there like yesterday.


I turn off the TV when the phone rings from the lobby announcing Steve’s arrival. We enjoy our dinner together in the warm atmosphere of home, reminiscing a bit here and there and in contrast to our civilian Iraqi counterparts, speaking confidently of tomorrow.


Loading the dishwasher after Steve leaves, I realize I’ve been unable to completely dispel the ugly shadow of war cast by the evening news.


You could say it’s just a matter of time, but precisely how and when this administration will find the wisdom and courage to admit its mistakes and end our occupation of Iraq is anyone’s guess. 

How should America react to the ISIS-produced video beheadings of journalists?

Photo credits: public domain.

In a recent email conversation, a friend and I exchanged concerns about the flare-up of violence throughout the Middle East and where it might lead. My friend despaired of ever understanding the roots of war in that area. In reply, I noted the readiness to kill one another off for religious differences among various sectarian factions in the area.

All too often leaders of the opposition party in the U.S., media reps, and ranting Facebook or other social media participants plunge in to take sides in one conflict or another, frequently offering unqualified recommendations for intervention by the United States. That’s why it’s always such a relief to read NY Times op-ed columnist Tom Friedman’s analysis of foreign affairs. Friedman has the intellect and knowledge to grasp the complexity of Middle East conflicts and offer a few wise insights, even in response to the evil forces motivating the ISIS beheadings of journalists.

Friedman writes:

President Obama has been excoriated for declaring that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for effectively confronting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. In criticizing Obama for taking too much time, Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that “this ‘don’t-do-stupid-stuff’ policy isn’t working.” That sounded odd to my ear — like we should just bomb somebody, even if it is stupid. If Obama did that, what would he be ignoring?

First, experience. After 9/11 that sort of “fire, ready, aim” approach led George W. Bush to order a ground war in Iraq without sufficient troops to control the country, without a true grasp of Iraq’s Shiite-Sunni sectarian dynamics, and without any realization that, in destroying the Sunni Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the Sunni Baathist regime in Iraq, we were destroying both of Iran’s mortal enemies and thereby opening the way for a vast expansion of Iran’s regional influence. We were in a hurry, myself included, to change things after 9/11, and when you’re in a hurry you ignore complexities that come back to haunt you later.

There are no words to describe the vileness of the video beheadings of two American journalists by ISIS, but I have no doubt that they’re meant to get us to overreact, à la 9/11, and rush off again without a strategy. ISIS is awful, but it is not a threat to America’s homeland.

Read more:

RX for the Middle East: pluralism in politics, education and religion

Courtesy of thomaslfriedman.com.

Tom Friedman, op-ed columnist at the NY Times, is promoting a radical solution to the latest outburst of sectarian violence in Iraq and other hotspots in the Middle East. In his column titled ISIS and SISI, Friedman, a native of the Twin Cities, is talking about pluralism (inclusion rather than exclusion) in education, politics, and religion.

Friedman is being true to his roots in the Twin Cities. For example, the St. Paul Interfaith Network actively promotes religious pluralism, and my alma mater, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, describes itself on its website as: "Home to interfaith and intercultural Initiatives, where every graduate has academic grounding and personal experience to lead in a pluralistic society."

It's going to take a while longer for the rest of the world to catch up with enlightened folks in Minneapolis-St. Paul, but Friedman is doing his part by encouraging a movement toward pluralism in the Middle East where sectarian violence has long been a way of life:

The past month has presented the world with what the Israeli analyst Orit Perlov describes as the two dominant Arab governing models: ISIS and SISI. 

ISIS, of course, is the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the bloodthirsty Sunni militia that has gouged out a new state from Sunni areas in Syria and Iraq. SISI, of course, is Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the new strongman/president of Egypt, whose regime debuted this week by shamefully sentencing three Al Jazeera journalists to prison terms on patently trumped-up charges — a great nation acting so small.

ISIS and Sisi, argues Perlov, a researcher on Middle East social networks at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, are just flip sides of the same coin: one elevates “god” as the arbiter of all political life and the other “the national state.”

Both have failed and will continue to fail — and require coercion to stay in power — because they cannot deliver for young Arabs and Muslims what they need most: the education, freedom and jobs to realize their full potential and the ability to participate as equal citizens in their political life.

We are going to have to wait for a new generation that “puts society in the center,” argues Perlov, a new Arab/Muslim generation that asks not “how can we serve god or how can we serve the state but how can they serve us.”

Perlov argues that these governing models — hyper-Islamism (ISIS) driven by a war against “takfiris,” or apostates, which is how Sunni Muslim extremists refer to Shiite Muslims; and hyper-nationalism (SISI) driven by a war against Islamist “terrorists,” which is what the Egyptian state calls the Muslim Brotherhood — need to be exhausted to make room for a third option built on pluralism in society, religion and thought.

Read more:

Bill Moyers: What it’s like to go to war (video) and an alternative from Thich Nhat Hanh

Karl Marlantes, courtesy of tatteredcoverbookstoreblogspot.com.

Watching the video of Bill Moyers’ interview with Karl Marlantes, titled What it’s like to go to war, was not a pleasant interlude this Saturday afternoon.  But since he and other young men and women are sent into combat in my name, I felt obligated to tune in.

Marlantes' description of his experiences in a kill or be killed environment reminded me of an incident at my apartment building a few years ago. Walking across the parking lot one afternoon, I stopped to chat with a young man wearing an Army camouflage uniform. He was sent home from Iraq to recuperate from an illness and, he expected to be deployed again soon. When I asked him about his combat experiences, he turned pale, and the expression in his eyes was one of pure terror.

The incident confirmed my long ago conclusion that war is insane, and the expectation that you could send young men and women into combat and expect them to return home mentally and emotionally unscarred is part of the overall insanity. All the more reason, we should be required to watch the video posted below or read the full transcript. It’s the least we can do to honor the youth we send to war.

Coincidentally, I’m re-reading along with my meditation group, Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Calming the Fearful Mind: a Zen approach to terrorism, which should be required reading for all Americans as well.

Here’s the video: What It’s Like to Go to War

Time to sober up and reassess the price we’ve paid since 9/11

In the midst of celebrating bin Laden’s death, someone is actually pausing to assess the cost of America’s war on terror since 9/11. Dan  Froomkin at the Huffington Post has the story and folks, it’s time to sober up:

 (Psst - it wasn't Social Security and Medicare that caused the great recession.)

WASHINGTON -- Osama bin Laden's death doesn’t end the post-9/11 era, but it does provide an occasion to look back at everything that’s happened since the attacks nearly 10 years ago and reassess the costs.

It’s been a long, grueling and enormously expensive time for this country, a time of endless war and massive fortification, of borrowed money and of missed opportunities.

There’s the human toll. More than twice as many Americans -- over 6,000 -- have now died in the two wars that followed 9/11 than did in the original attacks, along with more than 100,000 Iraqis and Afghans. Over three million Iraqis and 400,000 Afghans remain displaced. Several hundred thousand U.S. soldiers suffer from long-term war-related injuries and health problems, with more than 200,000 diagnosed with traumatic brain injury alone.

And there’s the extraordinary financial toll. Indeed, even as Washington officials panic about the growing deficit, much of the problem can be traced back to 9/11 -- not to the attack itself, but to the response, and particularly to the decision to go to war in Iraq.

Read more:

Celebrating life, not bin Laden’s death, on Mayday 2011

Early May in Minnesota (photo by VB)

 

 

 

The weather has been colder than usual this week in the Twin Cities, and no one left a festive basket at my door on Sunday, May 1. That was the date many people around the world will long remember, not as a celebration of life, but as the day Osama bin Laden died.

Some of us will also remember the tremendous cost incurred in blood and treasure to bring about his death. Most poignantly, Kristen Breitweiser, 9/11 widow and activist wrote on this occasion:

I think about the thousands of lives lost -- American, Afghani, Iraqi. I know firsthand the sorrow those families have felt. I ponder how the billions -- maybe trillions -- of dollars could have been better spent. I remain alarmed about the continued expansion of absolute Executive power in the name of fighting this seemingly ongoing and never-ending "war on terror." I worry about the further erosion of our constitutional rights. I wonder when our troops will ever be called home. I know all too well, that thousands of young American men and women soldiers will never have the opportunity to return home. And of course, I fear reprisal.

In the meantime, as May Day came and went, the grass turned green and new leaves appeared on the trees, even way up here in the frozen tundra of Minnesota. And so life defeats death once more; may it continue to do so, now and forever.

Considering U.S. boots on the ground in yet another foreign country against the backdrop of recent history

U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2007 (public domain)

Boston Globe columnist James Carroll  examines U.S. history in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and even the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac in his moving comments on a recent speech by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:

Carroll writes:

IN ADDRESSING the cadet corps at West Point last month, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates unknowingly plucked the mystic chords of the Abraham-Isaac story in Genesis. A father is prepared to sacrifice his beloved son, but at the last moment his knife-wielding hand is stayed by a God who desires no such offering. Gates is Abraham, the cadets are Isaac, but the staying voice now is not God’s, but history’s.

One pictures the dressed lines of gray tunics, bright young faces lifted to the white-haired Gates with utter trust. The secretary did not invoke the story of the nearly slain son, of course, but neither did he flinch from the gravity of his role. “I feel personally responsible for each and every one of you,’’ he solemnly told the cadets, “as if you were my own sons and daughters.’’

The speech was extraordinary, also, for its frank acknowledgment that America’s elders have consistently failed the nation’s sons and daughters in sending them off to war. “Since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right — from the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more.’’ Gates was faulting failures to anticipate the true nature of those engagements, but their outcomes arguably establish that all of them were unjustified. Young lives wasted.

Read more:

Superman Obama’s Wait and Then Pounce Leadership Style

Frank Rich’s op-ed in the Sunday NY Times offers a revelatory look at Barack Obama’s leadership style. Here’s a sample (emphases mine):

After a good couple of years of living with the guy, we know the drill that defines his leadership, for better and worse. When trouble lurks, No Drama Obama stays calm as everyone around him goes ballistic. Then he waits — and waits — for that superdramatic moment when he can ride to his own rescue with what the press reliably hypes as The Do-or-Die Speech of His Career. Cable networks slap a countdown clock on the corner of the screen and pump up the suspense. Finally, Mighty Obama steps up to the plate and, lo and behold, confounds all the doubting bloviators yet again by (as they are wont to say) hitting it out of the park.

So it’s a little disingenuous for Obama to claim that he is not distracted by the 24-hour news cycle. What he’s actually doing is gaming it for all it’s worth.

Rich goes on to say:

Wednesday night’s address on health care reform was inspired, lucid and, in the literally and figuratively Kennedyesque finale, moving. It was also (mildly) partisan, a trait much deplored by high-minded editorial writers but in real life quite useful when your party is in the majority and you want to rally the troops to get something done. But there was little in the speech that Obama couldn’t have said at the summer’s outset. Its practical effect may prove nil. Short of signing a mass suicide pact, the Democrats were always destined to pass a bill. Will the one to come be substantially better than the one that would have emerged if the same speech had been delivered weeks earlier? Not necessarily — and marginally at most.

I questioned the propriety of Obama calling his adversaries liars – think “death panels” - during his speech while self-righteous outrage erupted when a Republican representative spontaneously shouted “You lie,” in the midst of the president’s peroration.

Keep that in mind as you read Rich’s conclusion:

When we look back on these months, we may come to realize that there were in fact “death panels” threatening Americans all along — but they were on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and on Wall Street, not in the fine print of a health care bill on Capitol Hill. Obama’s deliberative brand of wait-and-then-pounce leadership let him squeak — barely — through the summer. The real crises already gathering won’t wait for him to stand back and calculate the precise moment to spring the next Do-or-Die Speech.

Reminder: Frank Rich was among the liberal pundits during the Democratic primary caught up in the Obama swoon who joined his sexist brethren in slandering Hillary Clinton at every turn.

Shades of George W. Bush in Jim Lehrer’s NewsMaker Interview of Barack Obama

President Obama told Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina today that U.S. combat operations will end in Iraq by August 31, 2010.

But as the new commander in chief promised to wind down the War in Iraq, he had already ordered 8,000 of the 40,000 Marines stationed at Camp Lejeune to Afghanistan, and a brigade from the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg in central North Carolina could soon follow.

Jim Lehrer, an ex-Marine, joined President Obama at Camp Lejeune and interviewed him for the PBS NewsHour this evening.

As usual, Obama self-righteously reiterated his position that he had opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning without mentioning that he had not been a U.S. senator at the time the Iraq War Resolution was passed and was therefore ineligible to vote on it.

Aside from that, our new commander in chief’s answers to several of Lehrer’s questions prompted a strong sense of déjà vu reminiscent of George W. Bush:

JIM LEHRER: And you also said in your speech that it's - one of the lessons of Iraq is that there are clearly defined goals. What are the goals for Afghanistan right now?

BARACK OBAMA: Well, I don't think that they're clear enough, that's part of the problem. We've seen a sense of drift in the mission in Afghanistan, and that's why I've ordered a head-to-toe, soup-to-nuts review of our approach in Afghanistan.

In other words, Obama has ordered 17,000 troops to Afghanistan prior to reviewing U.S. strategy there and setting any goals.

JIM LEHRER: You're not the least bit uneasy over the fact as John McCain and John Boehner, the Republican leader of the House, have praised your plan {for exiting Iraq} while the Democrats are criticizing it?

BARACK OBAMA: You know, I don't - I don't make these decisions based on polls or popularity. I make the decisions based on what I think is best. This is consistent with what I said during the campaign. The fact - if anything I think people should be interested in the fact that there's been a movement in the direction of what I thought was going to be the right plan in the first place.

Think about it: how often have we heard Dubya say he didn’t make his decisions based on polls or popularity.

When Lehrer asked Obama about how it felt to send young men and women in the military into harm’s way, we got another statement nearly identical to Bush’s response to the same question.

BARACK OBAMA: You know, it will keep you up at night. I feel an enormous obligation to get it right, which is why I say the last thing I'm thinking about is either applause or cat calls from the public or, you know, the cable stations as I'm making these decisions. I feel a profound obligation to these troops and their families to make sure that the decisions I'm making are the best possible decisions given the best possible information that I have, having canvassed the widest range of viewpoints in order to keep the American people safe.

But perhaps the most chilling trigger of deja vu occurred during the Analysis of Shields and Brooks following Lehrer’s interview with Obama. It came when Brooks expressed concern at Obama’s apparently unflappable self confidence in facing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a global financial crisis, and several other major problems, any one of which would be a heavy burden for a newly elected president with little or no relevant experience.

How many times did we shake our heads in dismay at George Bush’s swagger in facing the challenges of the presidency? Our former president's ego was no doubt as bolstered by his advisors and handlers as our current president's ego is by his.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Marking the Passage from the Age of Experience to the Age of Wisdom

Note: This post is an edited version of a presentation I gave at my Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship on Jan. 4, 2009. My topic was wisdom in the context of social justice. Regular readers will recognize several issues I’ve addressed previously in Katalusis posts.

The topic of wisdom is a good choice this first Sunday of the new year, considering the turmoil in a world that includes wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and yet another raging conflict between Israel and Palestine. Not to mention the global financial meltdown.

We are in an acute state of denial if we fail to realize that all of the above affects each of us personally.

On PBS’ News Hour this Friday night, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne remarked, “Israel certainly has the right to retaliate against Hamas for firing rockets into Israeli territory, but is it prudent? Is it wise?”

What do we mean when we speak of wisdom? Is it different from knowledge or experience? The word wisdom likely means many different things to different people. As I understand it, wisdom arises from the sum total of our knowledge and experience, influenced at times by the still, small voice of our intuition whenever we’re called upon to make decisions, whether large or small.

From my one undergraduate class in ancient history, I recall the meaning of wisdom was a hot topic centuries ago in the noble city of Athens, the birthplace of democracy.

According to Plato’s Apology, a friend of Socrates asked the oracle of Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates. The Oracle replied, “No way. No one is any wiser than Socrates.”

Socrates was not impressed. He of the examined life was well aware of how little he knew. To prove the oracle wrong, he went around questioning those considered wise by the people of Athens. Socrates concluded that while each man thought he knew a lot and was very wise, he actually knew very little and was not wise at all. Paradoxically, then, the oracle was right: Socrates was the wisest of all because he was the only one aware of his ignorance.

On that note, let me be very clear - I do not consider myself exceptionally wise.

I first came across the notion in the early 1980s that human beings typically pass through three stages in our lifetimes: the age of innocence, the age of experience, and the age of wisdom.

The age of innocence is supposedly the blissful Eden-like state of childhood when all of our needs are met, and we’ve yet to be burdened by knowing the difference between right and wrong. You recall that’s what got Adam and Eve kicked out of the garden after they’d munched on the forbidden fruit.

If you think about it for a minute, you might remember when you first lost your innocence and were suddenly thrown into the world of experience, otherwise known as adulthood. I was in my 20s, married and the mother of two young children, when a friend I’d met at a community education class jarred me out of my innocent fundamentalist Christian ideas about religion. To start with, she was not one of those given to claiming the glass is half full. Life had taught her to be cynical about most everything. I once mentioned the fall colors were subtle that year. She replied, “They’re drab.”

My friend was a second generation Arab from Detroit whose husband had been transferred to my hometown in northwestern Ohio A displaced Unitarian she had little patience with the Christian majority in our community of about 25,000 where she may well have been our only UU resident. She was expressing her displeasure with the local ultra-conservative ethos on one occasion when I reminded her in jest that she was savaging my hometown. She replied, “The nicest thing I can say about you, Virginia, is that I forget this is your hometown.”

You see, considering my roots, my age, and my limited education, I was actually pretty liberal and open-minded.

I don’t recall whining about it much, but my loss of faith back then was painful and disorienting, and it took me awhile to get my bearings in the age of experience. In the meantime my former husband and I moved to his hometown of Minneapolis. It was a couple of years later when our kids were in elementary school that I enrolled in college where it was a privilege to breathe the fresh air of academic inquiry.

In my freshman composition class, due to my Arab friend’s influence, I attempted to write an objective account of the never ceasing conflict between Palestine and Israel.

While researching that paper, I came across persons of unusual grace and wisdom. I read an exchange of letters between Albert Einstein and an Arab professor at Princeton that were written prior to 1948. I was impressed by the graciousness these two men showed one another while openly discussing their considerable differences over the proposed creation of Israel on Palestinian soil.

I also discovered the writings of I.F. Stone, a man of Jewish heritage, widely recognized as a citizen of the world. It was Stone who reminded us that Israel was created out of the ovens of the holocaust and the subsequent refusal of Great Britain and the United States to raise their quotas for Jewish immigrants.

Sixty years later, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rages on.

That paper may have been the origin of my generally live and let live ecumenical attitude toward all religions, each of which I’m convinced contains its own kernel of wisdom. I should explain that I’m tolerant of the belief systems of others as long as their practices don’t involve oppressing women, gays, or any other group of people.

Recently seared in my memory is the story of the 13-year-old Somali girl who on her way to visit her grandmother was brutally raped by three men. When she sought help from the authorities, the child was charged with adultery and publicly stoned to death.

Lest we become self righteous, gang rape occurs in our country as well. The Associated Press reported yesterday that four males, two of whom are teenagers, have been arrested on suspicion of raping a woman last month in the San Francisco Bay area while allegedly taunting her for being a lesbian.

The AP said:

‘“According to detectives, “The 45-minute attack started when one of the men approached the woman in the street, struck her with a blunt object, ordered her to disrobe and sexually assaulted her with the help of the others.

‘“The police said that “when the group saw another person approaching, they forced the victim back into her car and took her to a burned-out apartment building. She was raped again inside and outside the vehicle and left naked outside the building while the alleged assailants took her wallet and drove off in her car.”

It’s no wonder that many in the GLBT community remain unconvinced the anti-gay comments by religious leaders like evangelical pastor Rick Warren are harmless in light of the good deeds he and his church have performed.

The above reasoning reminds me of the battered woman who continues to risk her life staying with her abusive spouse because he occasionally does something nice for her.

You don’t have to look far in daily news accounts to be reminded of the suffering endured by various groups of vulnerable people.

And it doesn’t take a financial wizard to know the most vulnerable will suffer the greatest hardship from the fallout of the global financial crisis. A couple of facts:

#1) To this day women in the United States continue to earn 70 cents to the dollar compared to their male counterparts in the workforce; as I know from personal experience, this makes a huge difference when women reach retirement age and their social security benefits are calculated on the basis of their earnings.

Fact #2) The unemployment rate in the black community is already double that of the national average.

I once heard a United Church of Christ Official remark: "I never know whether I'm being discriminated against because I'm a woman, an African-American, or a native of Texas."

Coincidentally, Rev. Forrest Church reminded his listeners in a recent sermon at All Souls UU in New York City that historically during periods of economic decline, outreach programs are usually the first to go when congregations begin cutting costs. He was urging All Souls not to move in that direction as the recession continues its downturn. Who knows when it will bottom out?

You can be sure the CEOs of Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors will be well taken care of, regardless of the ultimate fate of their hundreds of thousands of employees.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers and the U.S. government’s subsequent bailout of the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) last fall reminded me of the absurdity of an essentially unregulated economic system driven by excessive borrowing and consumer spending.

It’s a system that on a local level produces incidents like the one that happened on Black Friday. The day after Americans gave thanks for our many blessings, Long Island residents went on a rampage in pursuit of material goods.

The New York Times reported: “A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York died after being trampled by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a frenzy.”

Again, I don’t consider myself exceptionally wise. But as I’ve written elsewhere I do hope that our government will somehow restructure our econonomy in a way that preserves safety nets for the have nots, promotes charitable giving by those who can, and encourages for the common good the radical notion of frugality over spending by all parties. That might mean Living Simply by Design (the name of a green group affiliated with our church fellowship).

As you’ve likely guessed, my journey through the age of experience has been a long one of many ups and downs, and although I may have visited the age of wisdom from time to time, I’ve not as yet taken up permanent residence there.

The enlightened Catholic priest, Richard Chilson, who suggested the original theory of the three ages human beings pass through, also defined the quest for wisdom as synonymous with the quest for meaning in our lives. It is in effect a spiritual journey.

One of the delights I’ve experienced in growing older is that I continue to recognize signs of growth in myself – in knowledge, insight, and even in wisdom. I’ve learned over time the necessity for nurturing the spiritual life; it doesn’t just take care of itself. Around the middle of last summer, I decided to become more disciplined about this. And since then I’ve included in my morning ritual of journaling, a time for reading spiritual literature, and a few minutes of formal meditation.

In the meantime, I’ve heard from loved ones who have been hard hit by the econcomic downturn. It’s also been necessary for me to cut my own expenses, and truly, I’ve not exactly been a big spender.

Throughout all of this, my expanded morning ritual has been a source of strength and for the most part, I’ve been able to be there for friends and family.

Before I become too self-congratulatory, though, I should confess my struggle to overcome impatience throughout my years in the troublesome age of experience. That flaw in my character emerged only recently. I like for things to be done promptly, and I’ve never been very good at waiting. Especially when it involves the technician from the cable company that provides my bundled telephone and Internet connection.

It happened this Christmas morning that two incoming phone calls from family members were aborted because the other party couldn’t hear me, and my supposedly high-speed Internet service was so slow I was barely able to check my email. Further complicating matters, I live on the fourth floor of my apartment building, and my landline phone is programmed so that I can easily admit visitors to the lobby. Fortunately, when my son and his wife arrived for dinner at about noon, I was able to buzz them in.

A short time later both the phone service and my Internet connection died.

I used my cell phone to call my service provider and after wasting at least 15 precious minutes on hold, I finally talked to a live person who told me they wouldn’t be able to come out until the following Sunday between 1 and 5 p.m.

My unwired status didn’t prevent my son and his wife, and I from celebrating Christmas and the final day of Hanukah.

On Friday morning, I contacted the service provider again hoping to get an earlier appointment. I was told they’d move me up if someone else in my area cancelled.

That afternoon I went into town to do a few errands and when I returned, I discovered the electricity in part of our building was out. Both elevators were down, and I was forced to walk up the stairs with my arthritic knees to my apartment on the fourth floor. Thankfully, the power came back on in a few hours, but I’d still not heard from my ISP.

Saturday, too, passed with no word. By Sunday afternoon my impatience was about to get the better of me. Thich Nhat Hanh’s book on anger that I’ve been re-reading lately still lay on my kitchen table from my morning ritual. To pass the time I began to read the wise and venerable one’s instructions on how to mindfully treat powerful emotions threatening to get out of control.

My cell phone rang at about 4:30 and in a surprisingly calm and relaxed state of mind, I took the elevator down to the lobby to admit the technician, a personable and competent young man. He took care of the problem within minutes, and my life was soon back to normal.

In the run up to New Year’s I hadn’t thought very much about making resolutions. In fact, it was New Year’s morning when I came across the fourth of the five mindfulness trainings in Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings. Titled Deep Listening and Loving Speech the piece struck me as a resolution that might help me make it one day across the threshold from the age of experience to the age of wisdom:

It goes like this:

“Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I vow to cultivate loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I vow to learn to speak truthfully with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, and hope. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord, or that can cause the family or the community to break. I will make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.”

Even though I continue to be annoyed by people like Rick Warren, and my telephone service, my internet connection, and both elevators in the building fail within 24 hours.

Amen.

Here’s a News Flash for the Obama Team: There’s a Difference between Campaigning and Governing

In the run-up to the election, the nation’s pundits and other Obama supporters, especially the netroots, kept repeating the false notion that running a good campaign was proof their idol was qualified to be president even though he had no other notable achievements or relevant experience on his resume. My frequent rejoinder on online forums has been the claim: “There’s a difference between campaigning and governing, one that our current president has yet to figure out.” In the wake of Obama’s first press conference, the New Yorker’s George Packer does a great job of explaining that difference for his readers in his post titled - you guessed it - “More Press Conferences.”

After first acknowledging there was some truth in the cliché that the press had been in the tank for Obama, Packer writes:

‘“But the reverse wasn’t true: the Obama campaign was not ‘in the tank’ for the press. In my limited experience, and in what I’ve heard from the more extensive experience of other reporters, editors, fact-checkers, etc., the Obama press operation made the current White House look like the early days of the Straight Talk Express. Friendlier than Bush’s, maybe, but tighter—as tight as a poker player who’s just been raised. No fact was too incontrovertible, no judgment too safe, no quotation too anodyne, to be questioned, challenged, changed, taken off the record, manipulated, denied, and finally denounced by the super-disciplined members of the Obama message team on the imperative mission of shaping the campaign narrative in their favor. Working for an Obama-friendly publication like this one didn’t help in the least. If anything, it meant we could be taken for granted, like the other woman who will always be waiting for the phone to ring.”’

Packer continues:

“As of November 4th, it worked brilliantly. But what about after January 20th? Since the Clinton years, this has been the era of the permanent campaign, with the line between running for election and running the country practically erased. Bush took Karl Rove into the White House, turned policy into an arm of politics, and governed the same way he campaigned: treat the press as an out-of-favor interest group, control the message at all cost, repeat it incessantly regardless of changing facts, admit no mistakes, show no uncertainty, reward loyalists, and ignore critics or else, if necessary, destroy them. This approach to what’s known as strategic communications won Bush two elections; it also helped destroy his Presidency. Campaigning and governing are not the same. They are closer to being opposites.”

“In Iraq, Paul Bremer had a strategic-communications adviser named Dan Senor, who had come out of the world of Republican political operatives (a world he returned to after his year in Baghdad). Senor controlled the message coming out of the Republican Palace with all the determination of an Ari Fleischer. The message was: Iraq is on the road to democracy. Meanwhile, outside the Green Zone, the country was going up in flames. As a result, by May of 2004 no one believed what was coming out of Senor’s daily briefings. They had turned into the Iraq equivalent of the Five O’Clock Follies in Saigon.

“It was worse than a simple breakdown of trust. The problem with strategic communications is that the White House that lives by it slowly becomes incapable of dealing with reality. When bad news comes, the impulse is to deny it, and that impulse turns into a mental habit. Eventually, those in power are the last to figure out the truth (in this sense, Katrina was a direct result of the kind of mentality that had already led to disaster in Iraq). The Administration can’t answer the arguments of its critics because it has long since stopped listening to them. It finds itself increasingly isolated, not just from potential supporters, but from the truth.

‘“While researching my piece on the new liberalism in next week’s issue, I read H. W. Brands’s new biography of Roosevelt, ‘Traitor to His Class.’ There’s a section that describes F.D.R.’s press conferences: twice weekly, beginning in the first week of his Presidency, with dozens of reporters crowded into the Oval Office and ground rules that allowed for a surprising degree of candor (though Roosevelt was a masterful manipulator of the press, in part because they were grateful for the access).

“President Obama won’t go that far—no modern President would. But I hope he’ll live up to his Election Night promise to listen especially well to his critics, including in the press. He should make himself and his aides more, not less, available to reporters than they’ve been. Not just because I belong to that particular interest group and it would be the democratic thing to do. It’s because I want him to succeed.”

It’s Not Too Late for Democrats to Nominate the Better-Qualified Candidate

Photo credits: AP/Susan Walsh

Two of the three articles I’m linking to this morning are related to the current positions staked out on the war in Iraq by Barack Obama and John McCain. The third article highlights the closeness of the general election race that many would argue ought to be Obama’s to lose.

WaPo Criticizes Obama on Iraq War

An editorial in today’s Washington Post turns Barack Obama’s criticism of President Bush and John McCain for their rigidity on the Iraq War back onto Obama:

“BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: "They said we couldn't leave when violence was up, they say we can't leave when violence is down." Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency. Early last year, when the war was at its peak, the Democratic candidate proposed a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces in slightly more than a year. Yesterday, with bloodshed at its lowest level since the war began, Mr. Obama endorsed the same plan. After hinting earlier this month that he might "refine" his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq.

Read more:

Obama's Web Site Deletes Surge References

Touching on the related matter of Obama’s initial opposition to the surge, Andrew Malcolm's post at Top of the Ticket (the LA Times) reports how the Obama campaign has lately deleted relevant references on its Web site:

“A funny thing happened over on the Barack Obama campaign website in the last few days.

“The parts that stressed his opposition to the 2007 troop surge and his statement that more troops would make no difference in a civil war have somehow disappeared. John McCain and Obama have been going at it heavily in recent days over the benefits of the surge.

“The Arizona senator, who advocated the surge for years before the Bush administration employed it, says the resulting reduction in violence is proof it worked with progress on “15 of 18 political benchmarks and Obama's plan to withdraw troops by now would have resulted in surrender.

“When President Bush ordered the surge in January, 2007, Obama said, "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse," a position he maintained throughout 2007. This year he acknowledged progress, but maintained his position that political progress was lacking.

“Tuesday, while Obama gave a speech on foreign policy, the New York Daily News was first to notice the removal of parts of Obama's campaign site listing the Iraq troop surge as part of "The Problem." An Obama spokeswoman said it was just part of an "update" to "reflect changes in current events," as our colleague Frank James notes in the Swamp. The update includes a new section on the rise of al-Qaeda violence in Afghanistan.

“But some might see the updating as part of Obama's skip to the political center now that he's secured the Democratic nomination. "Today," McCain said Tuesday, "we know Sen. Obama was wrong" to oppose the troop surge.

“An old quote of Obama's criticizing the "rash war," which helped him with the left wing of his party and helped differentiate his stand from that of Sen. Hillary Clinton, a primary opponent who voted for the use of force in Iraq, has been replaced on his site by one saying that ending the Iraq war will make America safer. That's more of a general election message.

“And hat tip to the folks over at the Wake Up America blog for their continuing trenchant analyses of the summer campaigns in general and, specifically, for highlighting the video below that contrasts Obama's pre-surge position with a more recent interview of David Axelrod, his chief campaign strategist, denying Obama's statements. A reminder of how carefully voters must listen during these last four campaign months.”

Watch the video here.

Are Obama and McCain Ebbing or Flowing?

Finally, Tom Edsall at the Huffington Post, wants to know if Obama and McCain are ebbing or flowing:

“About a week ago, Republican media specialist Alex Castellanos asked pollster Scott Rasmussen to add a question to one of his surveys: If the November election were between Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who would you vote for? Obama crushed Bush 54-34.

‘“Noting that tracking polls generally show just a 2 to 4 point edge for Obama over John McCain, Castellanos said the most obvious conclusion is that "McCain is not Bush." But more importantly, Castellanos argued, ‘It means McCain is not running against the Obama who won Iowa, but [against] the more polarizing Democrat [who] Hillary Clinton was beating like a drum in Texas, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, etc.’

‘“In the current political environment, according to Castellanos, ‘where the GOP is in disgrace, the President is unpopular, gasoline is 5 bucks a gallon, housing prices are sinking, and the economy is in the toilet,’ Obama's slim lead ‘means he is not an acceptable Democrat. . . . Obama is in big trouble.”’

Following the Rules in Denver

I would argue it’s the Democratic Party that’s in big trouble. But it still has a chance to set matters right in Denver with Hillary Clinton’s name on the ballot and a roll call vote. Obama has not yet been duly elected as the party’s nominee even though the DNC has rented a football stadium for his “acceptance speech.” We can still hope for a last-minute upset by Sen. Clinton, who is easily the better-qualified candidate.

For more on keeping the Democratic Party's convention democratic, check out the Denver Group and Heidi Li's Potpourri.