Everyone Should Have Their Own Music

In this era we delegate music and dancing to professionals and it's a same. We should all be doing our own singing and our own dancing. You don't have to be famous. You don't have to perform on the stage. We have music to process our feelings and to help us work our lives out. Hep us with something that's a hard task to do. Everyone should have their own music.  

If nothing else get in the choir. I preach choirs. I think they're so important. 

--Linda Ronstadt on Good Morning America, September 16, 2013

My answer to Ian Argent's post.  

One the Eve of War: The Measure of a (Wo)man

The ultimate test of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and movements of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy 

--Martin Luther King, Jr., January 27, 1965

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. 

--Martin Luther King. Jr., "Loving Your Enemies," in Strength to Love

It is to be broken

It is to be broken. It is to be
torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. I turn against you,
I break from you, I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.

--Wendell Berry
The Collected Poems, 1957-1982

Happy New Year

Dream giant golden Buddha-sized dreams -- Ryunosuke Satoro

Happiness, Revealed

If you watch anything today, make it this.

"And so I wish  you will open your heart to all these blessings, and let them flow through you. Then everyone who you meet on this day will be blessed by you. Just by your eyes, by your smile, by your touch. Just by your presence. Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you. And then, it will really be, a good day."

I Have a Dream

There has been a lot of hoopla here in New England the last few days. A storm was coming that threatened to be a disaster. Indeed, there are areas that have seen disaster. People have lost homes, some have died, lots are under water, and tens of thousands are without power. Here in my little corner of New England it wasn't much of a disaster. My house still stands. A few branches are down. The last roses of the season have blown off. All in all, I'm thankful that me and my neighbors have escaped unharmed.

It nearly escaped me that today marks the 48th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. It is a speech that I've listened to a lot recently. I've re-read many of Dr. King's speeches with an eye toward the narrative structures he creates for a paper I'm working on. His rhetoric was brilliant then in his time and remains brilliant now, in our times.

He offered up such a language of inclusion -- we are brothers. We are in this together. Together we will have a dream.

There is so much work to be done before we can share that dream. So much need for connection and togetherness. Take a look at the news and our current fascination with budgets and finances. We no longer care to help out our communities. We no longer care to help lift up those who need our help. We are slowly and completely turning our backs on our communities in preference of our selfish needs. The brotherhood,  community, and dream Dr. King spoke of are all becoming rapidly replaced with a singular self-interest in getting what we think we "deserve."

Interested in doing a little background reading on the overwhelming amount of rhetoric that stokes racial fear by the perpetuation of myths and falsehoods. Jeffery Ogbar presents an excellent analysis of just this in a recent article posted on the Root.

Some dream that is. Don't you think?

So today as millions of Americans reflect on Dr. King and the anniversary of his beautiful speech that envisioned all Americans having the same rights and opportunities to succeed and prosper, maybe his words will provoke more Americans to work to make his dream a reality. Because although there is an African-American president and people of color serving in Congress, there are still millions of Americans who barely subsist from day-to-day and conditions are getting worse thanks to Republicans who are more concerned with enriching the wealthy off the backs of the poor. 

Read more of this article here.

Take a minute an listen to the speech. Dream a little. See what happens. I think you'll be glad you did.

Attachment

Our love lives, all of them, forge links in a healthy chain of normal development: maternal love, infant love, paternal love, friendship, partnership--one connecting to the next and then the next. The early attachment is the first link of that chain, the start of our ability to connect with others.

Deborah Blum in the book Love at Goon Park

Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Do?

I'm watching the CBS Sunday Morning Show. I'm finding that I can't look away from the segment called "Don't Try This at Home." The segment started with roller derby girls running across a track while they  are on fire. They are chronicling a dare devil spectacular in Omaha Nebraska.

The star of the show is  Spanky Spangler. One of the last scenes in the segment involved a car drop. Spanky was suspended by a crane 190 feet in the air. He is dangled for a moment in a car and then dropped, head first, into a pile of vans.

After his drop Spanky said, "When you are an American dare devil it is a sign of of freedom. We are lucky to live in a country like this where you have freedom. Being a daredevil doing what you want to do, no matter how dangerous it is is freedom, it's freedom."

I'm all for a little thrill seeking. I've been known to do a little of it myself (though never have I intentionally set myself on fire nor have I been dropped from a crane in a car). That's not what I take issue with this morning.

Being a dare devil is a sign of freedom? Yes. Sure. In a superficial way having the freedom to run around whilst on fire or being dropped into a pile of cars is a sign of freedom. But is that the kind of freedom we want to celebrate. Is that how we want to spend our freedom?

Over the last couple of days I've been reading some of the major speeches that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave during his lifetime. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, written on April 16, 1963, he wrote:

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flow stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God," And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free," And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." so the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? ...perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Here MLK was talking about extremism, not freedom. The underlying concept is the same. What kind of freedom do we want to have? It's nice (I suppose) to do any number of different dangerous acts. We have a choices that many in this world do not have. How do we want to use that choice? Do we want to use that choice for sensation seeking? Personal gain? How about the betterment of humanity? Making something better for those who come after us?

You have the freedom to choose.

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening

Stopping by the woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost (1923)

Quote of the Day

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. -- Victor Frankl

Quote of the Day

The young, free to act on their initiative, can lead their elders in the direction of the unknown... The children, the young, must ask the questions that we would never think to ask, but enough trust must be re-established so that the elders will be permitted to work with them on the answers. — Margaret Mead

Quote of the Day

One of the things I enjoy most about keeping this blog is having the opportunity to interact with people that I wouldn't ordinarily know. Here is a quote sent in from a visitor:

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. -- Albert Einstein, 1954