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How to Thank Al Green

Thank you, Honorable Al Green,
Congressional Representative from Texas,
for daring to stand up and speak truth to power,
saying “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid,”
as you waved your cane at the president,
making what the Honorable John Lewis,
would call “Good trouble.”

Thank you to all who stood with Al Green
in that deep dark well of the House
where he was censured, all together
singing “We Shall Overcome”
not letting him stand alone,
not letting yourselves be silenced.

Thank you for an act of
nonviolent civil disobedience
for the sake of the millions who will suffer
because the Republican administration
and congressional budget
are cutting billions of dollars from
taking care of the poorest Americans
when they need help most,
when they are sick and cannot afford care.

The sickening question is,
why did every other congress person not
stand up and join the protest?
Why did they not feel sick themselves
over the suffering of the people they represent,
sick enough to demand
that the most vulnerable be protected
and the most greedy be denied?

And what about us?
When that suffering comes to us,
when it is someone we love who is sick
and cannot afford care,
or when we get cancer and the research
that could have saved our life
has been cut,
or when we are injured by a shoddy product
made by the richest in the world
because they intentionally destroyed
the government agencies
that protect the American people
from their own corporate irresponsibility,
or when we suffer because the health care
for the climate has been cut and storms
and fires and droughts and floods rage,
creating refugees with nowhere safe to go,
will we be thankful for the Honorable
People who have dared to stand up
and protest along the way?

If you want to thank the Honorable
Al Green, or those who are
taking to the streets and
speaking out wherever they can,
then join them.  Use your voice.
The more of us who do, the more
other people will wake up
to the suffering coming their way,
and do something about it.

The more you use your voice,
the more joy you will feel,
and the more you will overcome
those trying to keep you silent
out of fear, despair
or powerlessness.
We the people have the power,
and all we have to do
is use it and keep using it.

Thank you for choosing that joy!

“Ancient Taoist Poets Flight and Fight” Poem of the Week 3/5/25

The poem text is below.

This sonnet refers to ancient Taoist poets who fled their corrupt empire. I highly recommend David Hinton’s excellent book Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China. You can find a link for it below the poem text.

The ancient Taoist poets did take flight
from empire’s deadly storms to mountain’s peace.
That does not mean that they gave up the fight.
In truth, it made their influence increase
both there and then and through all realms and ages
until today when evil has returned
and persecutes descendants of those sages
who still pursue the world for which they yearned,
the all-inclusive love of Christ and Tao.
Resistance rises in its timeless forms,
and each of us who love are asking how
we best can fight such fierce, enormous storms—
some on the barricades, some underground,
and some where peace and power of Tao are found.

3/5/25

You can find David Hinton’s book Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China at your local bookstore or at Books a Million (still has a DEI policy!) at https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Mountain-Home/David-Hinton/9780811216241?id=9413125460217

Thank You, Ukraine

I wrote the following message at 3:00 in the morning after watching the shameful attack by our President and Vice President on really the entire people of Ukraine and all that they are fighting to defend. The immature school-yard bully attack used an accusation of ingratitude as its primary taunt, completely unfairly since the people and leadership of Ukraine have expressed enormous gratitude countless times. The attack was really about much more sinister and shameful things, including an attempt to justify our President’s aligning with Russia. Still, this needs to be said:

Thank you, Ukraine!

If anyone should be thanking anyone,
we should be thanking you, over and over.

We have fought together a tyrant and war criminal.
We have fought together to defend the principles:
that no nation be allowed to invade another nation;
that no nation be allowed to destroy the infrastructure
and systems and resources needed
for another people to survive;
that no nation be allowed to undermine
the freedom and democracy
and self-determination of another sovereign nation.

We should be thanking you
for being our partner in that fight.
We should be thanking you because while we gave
only a tiny percentage of what we easily could spare,
you are giving your all.
Your lives are being lost by the tens of thousands,
not ours.
Your homes are being bombed every day,
not ours.
Your power plants, hospitals, schools, churches,
sources of food and water and economic survival
are being destroyed,
not ours.
Your children are being kidnapped and taken
by the invaders to their country and brainwashed,
not ours.
Your women are being raped by invading soldiers,
not ours.
We have suffered no pain, you have suffered
and continue to suffer enormous pain.

We owe you our compassion, honor and gratitude.
We are humbled by your heroism.

The time for saying thank you, though,
is when we have won.
Partners in a common struggle show their thanks
by standing together and giving what is required.
But since you are being dishonored
and bullied and exploited,
please know that the decent people of our country
honor and thank you every day,
and are horrified by what is being done to you,
and are horrified that anyone would shamefully join
the war criminal tyrant’s side
and abandon you, or try to take advantage of you
while you are fighting for your life,
or betray the principles on which the peace
and survival of all nations depend.

You have our unwavering, heart-aching support,
and we will do all we can to restore our nation
to its rightful place at your side.

Poem of the Week September 20, 2024

You can read the poem below.

Here is the Poem of the Week for September 20, 2024, a first draft classic Shakespearean sonnet in a first take video recording. The text is printed below. Springfield, Ohio was on my mind when I wrote it, and then last night I heard Tennessee state legislator Justin Pearson describe a meeting he had with Kamala Harris and other national youth leaders. She said that the best response to the racist, fear-mongering, hate-inciting lies (my words) being spread by Trump, Vance and MAGA was not to attack them or even stage protests, but to build community–diverse community that welcomes and serves all.

This Sunday I’ll be preaching about Beloved Community, quoting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s essay about the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement entitled “An Experiment in Love.” He said, “The Holy Spirit is the continuing community creating reality that moves through history. He who works against community is working against the whole of creation. Therefore, if I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate I do nothing but intensify the cleavage in broken community. I can only close the gap in broken community by meeting hate with love.” Here’s my poem, written a few days before all these thoughts came together:

We need each other. I mean left and right,
poet and grouse, the hunter needs her prey
and even somehow with enlightened sight
we see earth needs us, too. It’s nature’s way.
To love your enemies is common sense.
We’re “entertaining angels unawares”
constantly—photons, microbes—through our fence
come deer and woodchucks, skunks beneath porch stairs.
We need the immigrant, the refugee,
we need their stories, wisdom, all they know,
we need all loves, all yearnings to be free,
the fast need voices warning, “Wait, go slow!”
So do not trust the voice of fearful hate.
Be still and know each heart truth. Then relate.
9/14/24

Poem of the Week 7/5/24

You can hear the poems in this video and read the text with an introduction below.

Here are two poems from this week, which has been one of the hardest in our nation in my lifetime and maybe ever, between the debate a little over a week ago and two Supreme Court decisions that have been devastating to democracy and the rule of law and protection from the abuses of Presidents and big corporations. These two poems are both loosely-connected sequences of seven traditionally structured haiku. The structure of the seven is a little like a sonnet, with internal echoes and a turn in the middle, so I call them Hai-nets. The first is on grief, and the second on happiness, written out of my struggles through this week. The text is below, and I read them on the video.

some days too much grief
too little comfort until
the woods trail says come

back home in these trees
death turns to new life each step
old leaves new leaves nuts

sometimes even here
it’s too hot or loud jets jays
deep hemlock peace come

bear’s been here again
old monk leaves no stone unturned
to find what gives life

not welcome at home
with nothing anyone wants
dog finds a dense bush

high up the woods trail
deer cock ears blink but don’t run
if you’re here you’re home

if you go back down
share what you found the long view
what earth makes of grief

7/2/24

I love goldfinches
how they swoop yellow and black
they flash out happy

happy is hard now
news flashes and angry tones
but bird song dawn light

birds eat harmful bugs
then sing of hungry beaks fed
earth’s song of balance

old haiku poet
steps like deer out of dark woods
to flash like goldfinch

to have quiet joy
sometime each day sing out loud
hard rain frees stream flow

denial is good
in moderation sabbath
see eden here now

don’t tell goldfinches
gold empires plot their earth’s death
give love’s joy a chance

7/4/24

beech leaf midwinter

 

Photograph by Lesley Wellman; see the video of this poem and photo below.

battered
but the truth is
beautiful
old
but holding on
cold and brittle
but giving warmth
the warm gold
glowing out from within
and the rasping but
reassuring whisper in the wind
soothing the weary
worried or wounded
visitor to the wood
saying
you are not alone
saying
not all is lost

all this
plus the promise of the bud
just behind
and then comes the
ice storm
the suffocating weight
and
will it break you
will your twig fall
will your mold shatter
on the glazed snow
amid all the other litter of the storm

or
will you find it in you
to endure
until the inevitable thaw
and having given the hard casing
your shape and contours
the very tracing of your veins
will you slip it
off shed it
and let it
drop like a molting feather
like an artist’s dream
of freedom cast in crystal
that says
I was here
that says
this is what I made
of what I had to bear

An Appreciation of George Kinder, April 2, 2018

My brother, George Kinder, is a map-maker—he has been working on maps to the transformations that we need as individuals and as a world for decades.  I am celebrating his birthday by republishing this analysis of how his life work is contributing to changing the world for the better.

George has been recognized in national publications as one of the 35 most influential people in financial services, one of the top Icons & Innovators in financial planning, and the first of 15 transformational advisors whose vision most changed the industry.  He has revolutionized financial advising over the last thirty years, training over 3000 professionals in 30 countries in the field of Life Planning.

George is a spiritual teacher as well, and although his maps have been designed with financial Life Planners in mind, they have broad applicability. Hundreds of financial planners are now helping clients from all walks of life explore their deep heart’s core, their Golden Room.  The clients are living in, from and for the dreams or callings that they find there.  (A 2016 New York Times article described how people are following the Life Planning map to a meaningful retirement.)  Often these Life Plans contribute directly or indirectly to a healthier family, community or world.

George’s maps can be applied equally well to all facets of our lives and across the spectrum of our developmental lines or multiple intelligences, not just the financial realm.  All his maps lead us through the Golden Room of inner transformation to the transformed culture he calls the Golden Civilization.  Below I will look at the contribution that four of his books make to that movement.

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