When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

                                                                   –Howard Thurman

It’s so easy to dream of the days gone by, so hard to think of the times to come.

The Grace to accept every moment as a gift is a gift that is given to some.

What can we do with our days but work and hope?  Let your dreams bind your work with your play.

What can you do with each moment of your life, but love ’till you’ve loved it away?

Love ’till you’ve loved it away.

 

There are sorrows enough for the whole world’s end, there are no guarantees but the grave.

This life that we live and the times that we spend are treasures too precious to save.

What can we do with our days but work and hope?  Let your dreams bind your work with your play.

What can you do with each moment of your life, but love ’till you’ve loved it away?

Love ’till you’ve loved it away.

 

-Bob Franke

It is in vogue for Presidential contenders to out-do each other with more extreme ways of saying “no” to Syrian refugees.  When making sure the vetting process was not enough, Trump simply said we should stop accepting them altogether.  When Christie needed to cut through the noise, he made it explicit that even toddlers were a risk.  Meanwhile the French, even in the aftermath of the attacks on their soil, are continuing to accept refugees.  This brings to mind for me Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s meditation on the parable of the Good Samaritan.

In the parable, Jesus tells us of a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho who gets beaten, robbed and left for dead.  The dying man is passed by a priest, and than a Levite, both of whom continue on their way, refusing to render assistance.  Then a Samaritan, always a strange choice for a hero in Biblical stories, came to the man, helped him to safety and paid for his care.  Jesus calls upon us to be like that Samaritan.

Dr. King’s speech, I’ve Been to the Mountaintop references the parable;

I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, “I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.” It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive for ambushing.

You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles — or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you’re about 2200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road.

In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked — the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”

But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

Several candidates who would be our President, several governors are calling on us to ask what will become of us.  Meanwhile the French, who have recent experience with what could happen, are reminding us that we need to reverse the question.

All the world’s a stage.  We are  all merely players.  In our time, we play many parts.  Right now, the city of Raqqa is playing the part of whipping boy for the world’s most powerful men.  When Vladimir Putin needs to show strength after ISIS bombs a plane, Russia bombs Raqqa.  When Francois Hollande needs to show strength after the attacks in Paris, France bombs Raqqa.  Meanwhile, ISIS knows full well the role of Raqqa, and cleared out of the targeted areas before the airstrikes came.  The French are hitting abandoned ISIS bases while the Russians hit bridges, stadiums, clinics and hospitals.

Meanwhile our media has it’s part to play.  NPR had a piece this morning that discussed the disparity of news reporting between the Paris attacks and the attacks in Beirut.  Eleven stories talked about Paris this morning, there were no further stories about Beirut.  None was needed, as NPR pointed out the newsworthiness of the Beirut story is tempered by the fact that we expect it there, we don’t expect it in Paris.

If death becomes less newsworthy when it becomes expected, it is probably telling that neither this morning’s show nor yesterday’s talked about last weekends mass shooting in Texas.  6 campers were shot and killed.  The campers have moved into their final part; mere oblivion.  Their death is yet another shooting and is not even newsworthy.

We come now to the politicians.  The merchants of fear are playing their part.  They would have us fear refugees, the Trojan Horse that would bring violence to our country.  The violence is already here.  We have 5% of the world’s population, and 31% of the world’s mass shootings.  With 190,000 murders since 9/11 we have a history of violence that we are unwilling to discuss least we be forced to make uncomfortable decisions as a society.  Instead, they expect us to play the part of the coward who is afraid to face our own demons.  They would rather us be interested in facing the threat posed by fleeing refugees.

We’ve yet to decide what part we will play.

I’ve had a lot to think about since listening to our President sing “Amazing Grace.” I normally would not reflect on the leader of a secular nation in a religious context, but after President Obama delivered a magnificent eulogy that referenced racism as our countries original sin, it’s hard to not to.

President Obama did not talk about the Sumerian Woman at the Well in his speech but that is where my mind goes when I reflect on the nature of grace. It’s a simple story, but one of ones I find the most challenging. In the story, the woman’s relationship with Jesus grows not because she is perfect, but because she is imperfect. In the story, Jesus meets with the woman and tells her her sins. She does not deny them. She does not protest. She accepts him for who he is, and then goes on to be his first cleric, the first person sent before him to give the good news. She tells her town that the messiah is coming, and that he knew her and all her sins. To do so, she had to confess to her fellow townsfolk that she was a sinner, and allow all to be amazed that he knew what she had kept so secret.

To sin is an old archery term. It simply means to miss the mark. When you do so, you pick up another arrow, and you try again until you get it right. You can’t do that if you don’t look at the target after you shoot. If you don’t acknowledge to yourself that you missed, you never get better. In this way, President Obama was quite correct to call us out as a nation on the areas where we still sin. He was right to bring up economic injustice, he was right to bring up voter suppression. Much like the Sumerian Woman, we are elevated not when we hide our sins, but when we confront them.

So, we must confront our sins as a nation, but we can’t stop with what happens within our borders. Our original sin is not just racism, but it is that we as a nation maintain our position and authority through violence.

We have given our President the authority to target people on foreign soil with drone strikes. This authority gives him the position of being both judge, jury and executioner. The process used to determine a valid target is shrouded secrecy. There is no daylight, there is little discussion. What we know is that there is a “Disposition Matrix” which determines if someone is a “legitimate” target. There is a lack of transparency in how we come to that determination which makes it impossible for us to learn from our sins, to re-focus, and to improve. It also makes it impossible to understand how we could mistake a wedding convoy for an arms shipment, and impossible for us to explain to the victims what steps we are taking to make sure it never happens again.

President Obama has taken flack for talking about racism, but he was right to do so. There is nothing wrong with this country that can’t be fixed by what is right with it. When we work on problems, we make things better. President Obama has taken the first step, but the conversation must be bigger than the racism within our own borders. Like the Sumerian Woman, we could move forward with the Amazing Grace that comes from self-reflection. Like the slaver captain who wrote that song after freeing his human cargo, we can improve ourselves and the world, but first we need to be willing to look at ourselves. We are still blind. We need to be willing to see.

The Sun is the source of essentially all color on our planet. Sunlight is full-spectrum, and when you see something that has color, what you see is the reflected color that is not absorbed.  When the sun is at its brightest, the world is over-saturated with color, and we see less definition.  Paradoxically, there is so much color that we actually see less of it as direct sunlight trends to wash out everything. It is only when the sun is filtered that we see nuance and hue. Under a grey overcast day with light rain the solid monolithic green of a forest a becomes a multitude of greens, as well as reds, browns and yellows.  Resurrection Bay, on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula, is a deep fiord that accentuates that effect with steep craggy mountains providing depth and texture, shadow and light.  It really is the coastal rainforest at its finest.

Today, I saw the sun through a different filter.  The Alaska Sealife Center includes a delightful aquarium that is a must see if you ever get to Seward.  Every time I visit I discover something new. The first time it was the obvious things, watching birds “flying” through the water, seeing birds in a whole new light, and environment, as they show more grace underwater than one can imagine as they kind of lumber through the air.  I went back, and learned about fish policy, and the attempts at restoring Prince William Sound, and what has our had not recovered from the Exxon Valdez spill. This time my discovery was a new way to look at rain.

The signature piece for the Sea Life Center is the outdoor pen for the rehabilitation of marine mammals, filled with water constantly taken from and returned to Resurrection Bay.  Greater than 2 stories tall, you can stand at the bottom, and look up at the surface of the water.  What I discovered with this trip is that in a rainfall, each drop becomes a pin-prick of light; sunlight refracted to a diamond’s radiance.  As the water hits, it creates circles emanating outwards, each of which creates a mini rainbow, as transient as the raindrop itself.  Filtered light falling on water from the bay, showing a new layer of nature’s beauty.

I have come to a  fantastic realization; I have finally stopped following my dreams.  I am now following my happiness instead.

I have not given up on my dreams.  If a leprechaun were to grant me a wish (aside from the obvious of simply making for me a good fitting pair of shoes), I would have a band full of strings and harmony, and we would be performing hopeful, lightly political music at Winnipeg this summer.  We would jam on workshop stages with other musicians and share The Craic long into the night.  There are no handy leprechauns,  so getting to Winnipeg (or Carnegie) is not a matter of dreaming but a matter of following a series of choices, and not ones I can make.

A couple of years ago, I went to a workshop at Winnipeg about the economics of the entertainment industry.  In  it, we were given the best possible advice that anyone could give.  We were asked why we wanted to be professional musicians, and then told that there is only one “good” answer.  “That you must.  You can love music, you can love to entertain, you can want to serve, but at the end of the day the only thing that will be worth all of the sacrifices you will need to make is if being a musician is simply what you must do.”

I have spent some time “on the road.”  While I will always love traveling I have come to the conclusion that the “romance of the road” is a myth we tell ourselves so we can enjoy the resulting show.  For the brief time I was on the road following my dreams.  I remember long drives going over in my head what I needed to remember for my part and long drives home categorizing what I needed to fix in my costume or re-living the audience interactions where I should have been brilliant but was not.  I remember waking up in a hotel room, and looking for a phone book to figure out where I was.

I also remember specific nights more than a decade ago on where the craic was good.  Those were amazing nights and I could certainly see how some people must have that lifestyle.  For days after such a night creativity flowed out of me faster than my brain could register.   Poetry, writing, or solutions to stubborn problems would seem to come from nowhere.  There is not a feeling like it, and the best way to get to that feeling is to be with imaginative people who you don’t otherwise spend much time with.  People who have enough in common to share stories, but who have not yet shared their stories with each other.  Travelers who come together for brief periods of time.

I have felt this at festivals, at youth hostels, at conferences, at pub song-circles and in the back of a greyhound bus.  This, as much as the audience interaction, is what I dream about.  This is what the leprechaun would give me, but amazing craic on its own cannot equate to happiness for me.

I wrote some pretty good songs while under the influence of other people’s creativity, but the themes are all of saying goodbye to those people and of meeting again sometime in the future.  They are songs of not being together now.  I was in my early 20’s, and writing music that was essentially re-living the glory days.

Lao Tzu is attributed to saying “If you are depressed you are living in the past, if you are anxious you are living in the future and if you are at peace you are living in the present.”  Following my dreams lead to a few glorious moments of being in the present, surrounded by a a lot of time being either anxious about how I was going to get to a present moment, or depressed about no longer being there.  I was not very often happy, and that is what I have given up by not following my dreams.

Shannon and I are building a family.  Some parts are harder and more complex than we had bargained on, but with her I am not focusing my energy on a few nights of matchless camaraderie, but focusing on building what we have, every single day.  Our short term energy is focused on a fair next week, and the creative outpouring that will entail, but it is a fair we share, and when it is over, we will share in that process as well.  After that, we will share trips to see more of our family, and then the next project we choose to be a part of, together.  Eventually (no, this is not an announcement) we will be sharing projects with our kids in an expanded family.

Not following my dreams is allowing me to be very, very happy.  I won’t need a phone book to tell me where I am; I will be home.

I probably owe some of you an apology.   I went back through my blog, and I made public much of my old poetry.  Some of it is good, some is not, but although all of it is old, apparently my blog emailed each piece as a new post.  I suppose that everything old is new.

I graduated.  My hope is that I will now have time to devote to writing again, which prompted this excessive in the first place.

The webpage history is split into 4 basic parts.

• My original website, which had some writing on it, but no room for response,
• The LiveJournal days, which had some good writing and some real and meaningful responses from a few good friends,
• The Facebook days, which has a lot of posts shared with a lot of people, taking a lot of time, but ultimately having the depth and breadth of a mud puddle,
• This page, which we have yet to develop.

Essentially all of my poetry comes from the first two parts.  While a quick reading of the poems would suggest that I wrote only when I was feeling depressed, it was actually rather the opposite.  When I was feeling pretty good, I was feeling creative.  Many of the songs I wrote were actually written or fleshed out at Hostfest, written during breaks from performing as a troll, or on the trip back when my head was still buzzing with excitement and a desire to create.  I just found it easy to write about feeling depressed because it is an easier subject to find a models in art to draw inspiration from.

That desire to create has never gone away.  The difference is that I actually used to give myself the time to do so.  LiveJournal as a format encouraged spending time on posts, and the posts were worth reading.  As I migrated to Facebook, I found myself spending less time on posts, and then wondering why I only got so many likes.  Instead of responding to friends posts, I simply liked them and moved on.  I got in that same habit in real life.  I would walk the dogs, take time and think, and come up with something worth developing.  I would then get home, fire up the computer, and … fill my head with other headlines, other ideas, and all manner of things that would choke the life out of any ideas I could have been developing.

About a year ago, I walked away from Facebook, but I still did not give myself time to create.  The idea of growing ideas itself withered on the vine as I looked to other priorities.  So, I have made public some of my old writings as a reminder to myself of what I want to improve and develop.  The “Songs” tag has a list of much of that work.  Some of it good, some of it not, all of which comes to a conspicuous end as I became more addicted to Facebook.  So, hopefully this will complete my return to the creativity of that time, when I knew the difference, as Kelz so beautifully put it, between being mindFULL and being mindful

Sometimes I wonder if the astrologers have a point.  It’s hard to conceive of a planet 50 million miles away having an effect on the goings on in life, but something seems to bundle events.  Something seems to be the catalyst for change, and once it starts, it spreads to parts of your life that are totally unrelated.  Frankly, a planet in retrograde makes just about as much sense as anything else.

The task this year has been to hold on.  The idea of a journal, well intended as it may be, fell to the wayside as I finished my Master of Public Administration, lost an aunt, visited the family, lost a cat, gained a dog, and tried varied in interesting new ways of using health insurance.  Somewhere along the way, the seasons turned.

I can actually tell you exactly when it happened.  Graduation.  The whites and greys of winter had melted, leaving the golden remains of autumn for all to see.  Then, the day I received my Master’s hood, the budding leaves hit critical mass on the mountains behind my house.  Green.  Such lively, vibrant colors.  Shades of green beyond description set off the remaining gold on the ground.  Green and gold.  The school colors for UAA.  It was a fantastic day.

I will get back to writing down my original thoughts soon.  For now, I will redirect you to another blog, and ask that you go read in tribute to a friend who died last week.

Ron played a large role in my childhood, and certainly in my education as to what adulthood was really all about.  Whether his stories were true or not, whether he believed his conspiracy theories or not, he was a brilliant man who taught me to look at things a different way.

My years at Saint Olaf College taught me to frame my thoughts in thesis, antithesis and synthesis, always looking to logically check myself and my assumptions.  Ron was there to remind me that the very mental discipline it takes to check your own work is itself a trap.  You can go over the same problem in your head over and over, but sometimes you just need to take some black-powder up to Castle Hill, fire off the old cannons at 3:00 AM, and see what happens.

As for adequately describing the man himself, words honestly fail me.  For that, I ask you to hop on over to John Straley’s blog, where you can read his much more eloquent hand and meet my departed friend.