Longing for leadership.......................

.................................capable of uniting.

As these events unfold, America’s global leadership role is being challenged outside by other nations and inside by our polarized electorate. We need to find ways to put aside our differences and work in partnership with other Western nations in the name of democracy. During this time of great crises, uniting to protect our essential freedoms, including free enterprise, is paramount. We should remember that America, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” still remains a shining beacon of hope to citizens around the world. JPMorgan Chase, a company that historically has worked across borders and boundaries, will do its part to ensure that the global economy is safe and secure.

-Jamie Dimon, from here

well served........................

 Postmodern times are well served by premodern thinkers, especially when it comes to caring about cosmos and psyche.

-Matthew Fox, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic Warrior for Our Times

Union............................

 "Compassion arises when the jewel of the mind rests in the lotus of the heart."*

     In the West, we tend to separate the mind and the heart.  The mind thinks rationally.  It knows hard and objective truths.  It judges good from bad, right from wrong.  The heart is emotional and soft.  If we pay too close attention to it, it will make us weak and or lead us astray.  But the truth lies outside of this dichotomy altogether.  The mind is powerful when it is situated in the heart, when striving and trying to get something right is held with love and compassion. 

-Brad Stulberg, The Practice of Groundedness

*quote attributed to Jack Kornfield

melting......................

      America, which survived a gory civil war among political and geographical factions, has become so far one of history's few exceptions.  The ultimate rationale of America's unique Constitution led Americans eventually to define themselves by their shared values, not by their inconsequential appearances.  Eventually, most who were willing to give up their prior identities and assume a new American persona were accepted as Americans.  The United States has always cherished its universally applicable melting-pot ethos of e pluribus unum—of blending diverse peoples into one through assimilation, integration, and inter-marriage in the manner that diverse colonies united to become one nation.

-Victor Davis Hanson:  The Dying Citizen

On the wisdom..................................

.................................................of one war at a time.

Would that I could..................

      Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.
     Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody,
     But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?

-Kahlil Gibran, from his passage on Reason and Passion in The Prophet

What if............................

A small, inconsequential experiment. But I wonder: If instead of giving speeches, making promises, or berating opponents during their town hall meetings and political rallies, what if our politicians asked the question: “What are your hopes for America for 2020?”

And then listened to the answers.

-as cut-and-pasted from here

Not one. Not two....................

"How does one seek union with God?"

"The harder you seek, the more distance you create between Him and you."

"So what does one do about the distance."

"Understand that it isn't there."

"Does that mean that God and I are one?"

"Not one.  Not two."

"How is that possible?"

"The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song—not one.  Not two."

-Anthony de Mello,  One Minute Wisdom

A kind of sorcery.......................

"Lines prompting reading, dreaming minds not to see every thing by itself and separate, but to see the seams often unseen in the dark expanses across space and time. . . . A power not to wield, but to hold. To practice holding.”

-Ellie Rogers, via David Kanigan's wondrous blog

Politics is a funny business.................

Andrew Sullivan points out that, contrary to popular belief, Donald Trump can be a unifier.

If you’ve been waiting for the U.S. Senate to exercise its constitutional prerogatives in the era of Trump, you need wait no longer. A big bipartisan majority has finally stood up to Trump … by voting to advance an amendment in favor of continuing the 18-year occupation of Afghanistan and the ongoing intervention in Syria!

Mitch McConnell actually went on the Senate floor to argue that Trump’s proposed exit from Afghanistan, where no serious progress has been made for almost two decades, would be far too sudden. “The precipitous withdrawal of United States forces from either [Syria or Afghanistan] could put at risk hard-won gains and United States national security,” he argued. “I believe the threats remain.” Precipitous!

In fact, the vote was — at 68-to-23 — veto-proof.

43 Republican senators (out of a total of 53) were joined by 25 Democratic senators (out of a total of 47).   Bipartisanship!

Simpler times they were not.....................

Clearly the president wanted to bury the "bloody shirt" that had enflamed sectional passions for decades.   But he knew that unity and social harmony also required good times and a sense that American prosperity was widely shared.  He devoted elements of his Annual Message to these themes.

-Robert W. Merry,  President McKinley:  Architect of the American Century.  The year was 1897.

Undivided................................

“There are three motives for which we live; we live for the body, we live for the mind, we live for the soul. No one of these is better or holier than the other; all are alike desirable, and no one of the three—body, mind, or soul—can live fully if either of the others is cut short of full life and expression.” 

-Wallace Wattles

On conceptual divisions.........

"... perhaps the great disaster of human history is one that happened to or within religion:  that is, the conceptual division between the holy and the world, the excerpting of the Creator from the creation."

-Wendell Berry

Not a bad idea at any time.............

"Perhaps whenever survival is at stake, we need to unite as human beings rather than quarreling genders."

-Camille Paglia

unity from multiplicity........................

9.  All things are interwoven with one another; a sacred bond unites them; there is scarcely one thing that is isolated from another.  Everything is coordinated, everything works together in giving form to the one universe.  The world-order is a unity made up of multiplicity;  God is one, pervading all things;  all being is one, all law is one (namely the common reason which all thinking creatures possess) and all truth is one - if as we believe, there can be but one path to perfection for beings that are alike in kind and reason.


-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations,  Book VII

Improbable.......................

    The United States in 1804 still felt improbable.  The states had been separate colonies for generations before they had bound themselves together in a federation a quarter of a century earlier.  The Constitution has been in force for fifteen years.  Travel between north and south was almost unheard of.  Thomas Jefferson never stirred more than a few miles north of Washington, nor did John Adams ever venture below it.  A citizen of Massachusetts might feel more at home in England than in Virginia or certainly than in Kentucky.  The forces that drove these men apart were strong, and the habit of accepting adverse political outcomes - even of believing in legitimate difference of opinion - was very new.  The power of Virginia would only grow over the ensuing years, and New England's leaders would seriously contemplate separation again in 1810, and yet again in 1814.  The doctrine of secession was born not in South Carolina, but in Massachusetts and Connecticut.  Adams would resist Northern threats to the union as fiercely as he later would the threat from the South.

-James Traub,  John Quincy Adams:  Militant Spirit

Simple.........................................

From the soul's point of view, you come to appreciate that each one of us is living out his or her own karma.  We interact together, and those interactions are the grist for each other's mill of awakening.  From a personality point of view, you develop judgment, but from the soul's point of view,  you develop appreciation.  This shift from judging to appreciating -- to appreciating yourself and what your karmic predicament is, and who other beings are with their own karma -- brings everything into a simple loving awareness.  To be free means to open your heart and your being to the fullness of who you are, because only when you are resting in the place of unity can you truly honor and appreciate others and the incredible diversity of the universe.
-Ram Dass,  Polishing The Mirror:  How To Live From Your Spiritual Heart

Garibaldi..............................

A brief telling of the man's life can be found here or here.  He surely qualifies for inclusion on any list of the most important/interesting people of the nineteenth century.

Garibaldi statue in Washington Square, New York City

Garibaldi statue in La Spezia

U. S postage stamp

Hungarian postage stamp

Italian postage stamp

USSR postage stamp

Bulgarian postage stamp

Uruguayan postage stamp

Uhmmm........................

Barriers................

3.  Good or bad deeds are not the direct cause of the transformation.  They only act as breakers of the obstacles to natural evolution; just as a farmer breaks down the obstacles in a water course, so that water flows thought by its own nature.


     Here, Patanjali explains the Hindu theory of evolution of species by means of an illustration from agriculture. The farmer who irrigates one of his fields from a reservoir does not have to fetch the water.  The water is there already.  All the farmer has to do is to open a sluice gate or break down a dam, and the water flows into the field by the natural force of gravity.........."All progress and power are already in every man," says Vivekananda.  "Perfection is in every man's nature, only it is barred in and prevented from taking its proper course.  If anyone can take the bar off, in rushes nature."...............In the animal the man was suppressed, but, as soon as the door was opened, out rushed man.  So, in man there is the potential god, kept in by the locks and bars of ignorance.  When knowledge breaks these bars, the god becomes manifest.


-How to Know God:  The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali
Chapter IV. Liberation: Verse 3