Hailey, Idaho’s New Town Square Development
April 30, 2019Courthouse Location
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#3
#4
Library Location
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Developers: BYLA Landscape Architects, Ketchum & Lyon Landscape Architects, Sun Valley
https://www.haileycityhall.org/planning/documents/2019TownSquarePublicOutreachTimeline.pdf
Developers and the city combined comments from previous workshops focused on vision, amenities and activities. Discussion continues at the next P&Z meeting, Mon., May 6th, at 5:30. For landscape designs, four at each location.
Supermajority.
April 29, 2019
As long as there is a dearth of women in positions of political power, this chronic tilting of American priorities toward short-term economic interests as opposed to humanitarian values is understandable. As long as women are basically invisible, children are invisible as well. -Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson
Supermajority launches today.
“A community for women who want to work together to build economic and political power, organize for gender equity, and transform this country. Sign up to be a founding member and be part of this from the beginning.”
WOMEN ARE ALREADY THE MAJORITY. NOW LET’S BUILD A SUPERMAJORITY.
In the past two years, we’ve seen what happens when women mobilize.
- 1 in 5 Americans has participated in a march or protest since 2016. The biggest issue driving these actions is support for women’s rights.
- Women donated $100 million more to campaigns and causes in 2018 than they did in 2016.
- We’ve been the majority of voters in every national election since 1964. In 2018, women helped elect a Congress with a record-breaking 127 women members.
Women are on the cusp of becoming the most powerful force in America. But to fundamentally transform this country, we need to work together. That’s where Supermajority comes in.
V I D E O:
https://twitter.com/supermajority/status/1122817808713297920/video/1
The founders:
AI-Jen Poo, Executive director, National Domestic Workers Alliance
Co-director, Caring Across Generations
Alicia Garza, Strategy and partnerships director, National Domestic Workers Alliaince
Co-founder Black Lives Matter Global Network
Principal, Black Futures Lab
Cecile Richards, Former president, Planned Parenthood Federation of American and Planned Parenthood Action Fund
OUR MISSION
Supermajority is a membership-based organization that affirms and builds women’s power and serves as a one-stop shop for advocacy, community building, and electoral participation aimed at transforming our country and building an intergenerational, multiracial movement for women’s equity.
Women are marching, running for office, donating to and advocating for causes and campaigns, and voting in record numbers. We can be the most powerful force in America—if we do the work together.
We’re building a Supermajority of women* who are organizing for gender equity. Sign up to be a founding member and be part of this from the beginning.
*And everyone who shares our values!
“The feminine energy is the energy of creation and of protection of the community. By adopting policies to protect women, society simply protects itself.” -Marianne Williamson
#SCOTUS
[Washington Post uses a pay-wall giving only the elite access to their news. Dayle’s Community Café does not subscribe to news organizations who restrict viewers through electronic news barbed wire.]
Send the reporters, not pundits.
Gary Jones on taking over Daily Express: ‘It was anti-immigrant. I couldn’t sleep’
Jim Waterson
The Daily Express
The Guardian
‘The answer is the Daily Express, the once-mighty tabloid newspaper that over the last two decades has become associated with barely veiled racism, a relentless campaign for Britain to leave the EU, and an obsession with Princess Diana.
[Gary Jones] has placed an emphasis on exclusive, original, campaigning and investigative stories while turning down coverage of Tommy Robinson and Steve Bannon – “the BBC gives far more airtime to rightwing propagandists”
“I’m a complete mix of contradictions,” he said, unexpectedly bringing up his children’s education. “I suppose the reason why I sent my son to Eton was, you know, I just wanted to confront the establishment and authority and to try to have a say, but to be authentic. He’s not thanked me for it at times.”
His son was appalled when he found out his father would be swapping chats with Jeremy Corbyn for editing the Daily Express and interviewing Theresa May.
“He just looked at me and said: ‘I feel sick’.”
“It was one of those defining moments. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I said: ‘Good on you for having views.’ He said: ‘I can’t say I don’t feel just a little disappointed.’ And then I said: ‘Anything else?’ He goes: ‘I do hope you’re not doing it just because you need to pay the school fees.’”
But the editor said a recent meeting with Daily Express readers had given him hope his audience did not want to read hateful content: “They reminded me of my parents. They weren’t entirely aware of what the newspaper had become. But they were sucked into it because they’re loyal to the Express.
“They are compassionate, traditional people. I think they were just led down a path.”
“Covering the news requires sending reporters… It’s expensive and inconvenient. Talk, on the other hand, is literally cheap. Round up a few semi-knowledgeable and telegenic types, array them around the desk, and off you go.”
-Jay Rosen teaches journalism at NYU and directs the Studio 20 program there. He is also a media analyst.
Clockwise from top left: Andrea Mitchell of NBC, Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.), Jim Acosta of CNN, political commentator Donna Brazile, Shepard Smith of Fox News, counterterrorism analyst Philip Mudd. (William Plowman/NBC Newswire; J. Scott Applewhite/AP; Edward M. Pio Roda/CNN; Kate Patterson for The Washington Post; Richard Drew/AP; Susan Walsh/AP/AP, CNN, NBC, Washington Post, etc.)
How breaking news got panelized: On cable, journalists and pundits increasingly share space.
Within minutes of the announcement that President Trump had agreed to meet North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the cable news networks had their panels of talking heads assembled and ready, like SWAT teams preparing to storm a barricaded house.
[…]
Once again, it was time for the panelization of breaking news.
From early in its history, cable news found the panel format — featuring people from different perspectives and disciplines — to be a lively (and cost-efficient) way to deliver opinions on current events. The discussions can be enervating, enlightening or infuriating, depending on who is on which side of the food fight.
But, as the Korean news demonstrated, it’s often hard to tell the reporters from the opinion slingers, especially when the panels bleed into the delivery of the news itself.
News reporters bristle when critics tar them as liberal or conservative. They’re quick to insist that they have nothing to do with the opinion side of their organizations. (“We serve different masters,” Fox News anchorman Shepard Smith told Time magazine this month. “We work for different reporting chains, we have different rules.”)
And yet panels with multiple talking heads arguably make the situation more fraught for them by lumping them with former politicians, think-tank scholars and opinionated party hacks — a blending of news reporting and commentary that’s bound to leave some viewers confused.
Philip Mudd and Will Hurd aren’t reporters. Yet from their perches on CNN or Fox or MSNBC, in the mix of a developing news story, they both certainly look like part of “the news media.”
Back in the rapidly receding past, the lines were much clearer: Just as newspapers physically separate the opinion columns from the news sections, any TV newscast that offered commentary (and many didn’t) would typically schedule it for the end of the broadcast. The goal was to give the public one clean shot at the facts, as a wise editor once put it, by keeping the opinions separate from the news columns.
But the business model of 24-hour cable news may have made the coexistence and commingling of reporting and opinion a near certainty. Covering the news requires sending reporters, producers, editors and video journalists to wherever the news is happening. It’s expensive and inconvenient. Talk, on the other hand, is literally cheap. Round up a few semi-knowledgeable and telegenic types, array them around the desk, and off you go.
Such blabfests have the additional benefit of drawing predictable audiences, which in turn establishes predictable advertising rates, which in turn produces reliable cash flows. All-out coverage of a big news story — with reporters in key locales — can still spike the ratings. But big news stories don’t keep regular hours. Panels do.
The hybrid news-commentary format is on regular display in cable’s evening hours. In a “breaking news”discussion about the latest twist in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation last week, for example, CNN’s Anderson Cooper opened the floor to multiple talking heads: New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, investigative reporter and political analyst Carl Bernstein, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin and a former federal prosecutor, Anne Milgram. Opinions flew. So did the occasional news nugget.
On Fox News the same night, host Sean Hannity — whom no one would mistake for a down-the-middle guy — stirred opinion, political spin and journalism about Mueller with a panel that included former Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz, reporter Sara Carter, Fox legal analyst Gregg Jarrett and journalist John Solomon. MSNBC’s Brian Williams tackled the same topic that night with BBC anchor Katty Kay, former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi and Rick Stengel, a journalist and former State Department official with the administration of President Barack Obama.
The panel model has trained viewers to expect news to be served with a side of opinion, and often the other way around. In a briefly viral interview with Hannity last year, broadcast-news legend Ted Koppel despaired of cable’s increasing partisanship and opinion peddling. Hannity retorted that “we have to give some credit to the American people that they are somewhat intelligent and that they know the difference between an opinion show and a news show.”
But what about when the news show is also an opinion show?
At their best, a well-constructed panel can add depth and dimension to the basic reporting of a story, said Bob Franken, a former CNN White House reporter who is now a syndicated columnist.
“If they can provide context, they can help a viewer understand the story,” he said. It’s the moderator’s job, he said, to identify who’s trafficking in facts, and who’s there to opine. At their worst, he acknowledges, they can become “cheap-shot yelling matches that are just showbiz.”
Jeffrey Lord, a veteran of many news-commentary hybrid panels, defended the format. Opinions have always infected news stories, he argues, so the notion that they should remain separate on cable news is dubious at best.
“Yes, news and opinion should stay in their respective places,” said Lord, who spoke in behalf of candidate DT as a CNN contributor during the 2016 campaign. “I used to believe this. Now? I am not convinced that they ever did and that news consumers like my younger self were not hornswoggled in some fashion to think that was true.” He calls the panel format “the 21st century way of hashing out issues.”
Representatives of CNN, Fox and MSNBC declined to comment.
Cable is hardly the only medium to blur the lines between news and commentary these days. Newspapers lace their front pages and home pages with the occasional editorial or critic’s review; a burgeoning subgenre of reporting that promises “analysis” of the news, rather than the news itself, can often seem like a blend of the two forms.
Even when news organizations take pains to draw distinctions, in the digital age, it can often be hard to discern whether the headline that drifted through your Twitter or Facebook feed was an actual news report or just someone’s “take” on the matter.
As is, old-school news reporting is in steep decline. Roughly half as many journalists work in newspapers compared with a decade ago. As the volume of available facts declines, the void has been filled with an explosion of commentary.
Meanwhile, news organizations fret over the surveys showing that people in ever increasing numbers distrust “the news media.” But cable’s free-for-all panels, and the many other ways opinions cohabit with reporting, suggest another question: Does anyone even know what “the news media” is any more?
Rilke.
April 27, 2019
“Dear darkening ground,
you’ve endured so patiently the walls we built,
please give the cities one more hour
and the churches and cloisters two.
And those that labor — let their toils
still hold them for another five hours, or seven,
before that hour of inconceivable terror
when you take back your name/ from all things.
Just give me a little more time!
I just need a little more time.
Because I am going to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they’re real and worthy of you.”
❧
A Politics of Love.
The humanitarian crisis is in the White House.
DT’s Second Term
Paul Starr
So far, much of the concern about the long-term effects of DT’s presidency has centered on his antidemocratic tendencies. But even if we take those off the table—even if we assume that Trump continues to be hemmed in by other parts of the government and by outside institutions, and that he governs no more effectively than he has until now—the impact of a second term would be more lasting than that of the first.
[…]
Three areas—climate change, the risk of a renewed global arms race, and control of the Supreme Court—illustrate the historic significance of the 2020 election. The first two problems will become much harder to address as time goes on. The third one stands to remake our constitutional democracy and undermine the capacity for future change.
[…]
In short, the biggest difference between electing Trump in 2016 and reelecting DT in 2020 would be irreversibility.
[…]
Democracy is always a gamble, but ordinarily the stakes involve short-term wins and losses. Much more hangs in the balance next year.
[…]
The choice Americans face in 2020 is one we will not get to make again. What remains to be seen is whether voters will grasp the stakes before them. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s emails absorbed more media and public attention than any other issue. In 2018, DT tried to focus attention on a ragtag caravan of a few thousand Central Americans approaching the southern border. That effort failed, but the master of distraction will be back at it next year. If we cannot focus on what matters, we may sleepwalk into a truly perilous future.
[Full article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/trump-2020-second-term/585994/]
“Humanity has come to a fork in the road. There is a way marked Love and there is a way marked Fear, each path leading tumor of the same…in our finest hours, America has stood for what humanity at our best aspires to be. We have sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed, but today, in our time, it is ours to decide our path as we move forward. lady Liberty’s torch is in our hands, but only we can determine whether it burns within our hearts.”
-Marianne Williamson, A Politics of Love
Marianne spoke in Las Vegas last night. I recommend beginning at 50:15 for her introduction video. Forward to 1:20:00 for her Q&A to hear the depth of her issues, wisdom, compassion, and her connection with “We the People.” (1:24:00 is beautiful.)
https://livestream.com/accounts/11464019/events/8656602/videos/190529602
“A truth teller, a seeker, a mother, and a learned woman in this scary and strange new world, her voice is at once strong medicine for our roundedness, warmth, insistence, good humor, and a little light to see by.”
-Author Anne Lamott
Author. Lecturer. Activist. Democratic Presidential Candidate.
♡
‘My campaign for the presidency is dedicated to this search, for wisdom of the heart is too often absent from the political sphere.
Together we can reclaim both our democratic principles and the angels of our better selves, expressed not just in our personal lives but on acts of citizenship as well.
Politics should not be a pursuit disconnected from the heart; it should be, as everything should be, an expression of the heart. Where fear has been harnessed for political purposes, let’s now harness the power of love.
It is time to let go of an old and tired political conversation, and forge a new, whole-person, heart-centered political dynamic.’
～
From Marianne on Saturday, April 27th: “We’re under 8,000 left to go! So we’re totally getting there. Please do everything you can to get even the smallest donations to get us onto the DNC debate stage.”
[Only$1-$5 donations needed for a singular/unique donation.]
Kindness
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
If only.
April 26, 2019Idaho’s first female Lt. Governor could have been Kristin Collum, a former Army officer who served under Colin Powell at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. After 12 years in the military, she left to work at Micron, Hewlett-Packard, and as a software engineering manager at Xylem Inc.
Instead.
Idaho’s current Lt. Governor is Janice McGeachin, a hard-right Republican who previously spent four terms in the House of Representatives before retiring in 2012. In late February she flashed a hand signal, “sending love”, to Todd Engel, who is in prison in connection to the Bundy Ranch standoff in Nevada. In the photo McGeachin was posing with two members of the III Percenters group wearing prison garb, also flashing hand signs.
An editorial in the Lewiston Tribune yesterday [4.25] headlined “Never allow McGeachin to be acting governor again,” noting that while acting governor while Gov. Brad Little was out of town, McGeachin “observed the 24th anniversary of the bombing at Oklahoma City last Friday by encouraging the ideology that sparked it. McGeachin left out the portion of the oath that obligates a person to “obey orders of the president of the United States and the governor of the state of Idaho,” and that the event occurred on the 24th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.
“On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people and injuring more than 680. It remains the nation’s deadliest act of domestic terrorism. McVeigh justified his actions by saying he hoped to “wake Americans up to the tyranny of government.
His ideological heirs are a group of self-styled extremists calling themselves the Three Percenters — militia-minded types who have declared the same credo: “When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.”
From the editorial:
Asked about the Friday rally during the press conference in the governor’s ceremonial office on Thursday, Little said, “That’s not germane to what we’re talking about here. Let me absolutely refuse to answer your question.”
McGeachin, too, declined to comment on the rally during the press conference but spoke about it afterward in her office.
“We were just trying to carry on that tradition and not forget the history of our country, which some people are trying to cover over,” McGeachin told the Idaho Press. She cited “when people are trying to tear down statues” as an example of that.
“I love history. I think we can learn so much from history,” she said.
The Friday rally was hosted by the “Real III Percent of Idaho,” a right-wing group that emphasizes gun rights and what it views as threats to the Constitution, the Post Register reported. Other speakers included Scott Drexler, a Challis man who was arrested for taking part in the 2014 standoff with federal authorities at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada; Rep. Christy Zito, R-Hammett; Sarah Clendenon of Health Freedom Idaho; and Rep. Chad Christensen, R-Ammon, who later acknowledged that his fiery speech calling for resisting tyranny was lifted without attribution from an essay by Libertarian activist Adam Kokesh.
McGeachin told the crowd, “Hold up your right hand and all of you please repeat after me.” After all had repeated the oath to support and defend the Constitution, “against all enemies foreign and domestic,” she raised her fist and called out, “Hallelujah!”
Yesterday, Gov. Little named McGeachin to head a new state commission at possibly consolidating state agency offices in “far-flung parts of the state” in the name of efficiency.
Read more here:
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/election/article211119539.html#storylink=cpy
Releases today. #2020
April 23, 2019
In this stirring call to arms, the activist, spiritual leader, and New York Times bestselling author of the classic Return to Love confronts the cancerous politics of fear and divisiveness threatening the United States today, urging all spiritually aware Americans to return to—and act out of—our deepest value: love.
America’s story is one of great social achievement. From the Abolitionists who fought to outlaw slavery, to the Suffragettes who championed women’s right to vote, to the Civil Rights proponents who battled segregation and institutionalized white supremacy, to the proponents of the women’s movement and gay rights seeking equality for all, citizens for generations have risen up to fulfill the promise of our nation. Over the course of America’s history, these activists have both embodied and enacted the nation’s deepest values.
Today, America once again is in turmoil. A spiritual cancer of fear threatens to undo the progress we have achieved. Discord and hatred are dissolving our communal bonds and undermining the spirit of social responsibility—the duty we feel toward one another. In this powerful spiritual manifesto, Marianne Williamson offers a tonic for this cultural malignancy. She urges us to imitate the heroes of our past and live out our deepest spiritual commitment: where some have sown hatred, let us now sow love.
Williamson argues that we must do more than respond to external political issues. We must address the deeper, internal causes that have led to this current dysfunction. We need a new, whole-person politics of love that stems not just from the head but from the heart, not just from intellectual understanding but from a genuine affection for one another. By committing to love, we will make a meaningful contribution to the joyful, fierce and disruptive energies that are rising at this critical point in time. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “we must think anew, and act anew . . . and then we shall save our country.”
#WethePeople, the sole conscious of our country now. “If you really want to send Trumpism into the history books, the best thing we can do is defeat it, decisively, at the ballot box in 2020.” #PeteButtigieg Let’s contribute to keep #MarrianneWilliamson and her powerful compassionate platform in the debate. She needs about 10,000 more singular donations…$5…to be on the stage in June. [Link pinned below.] “The nexus of faith and politics is undergoing a transformation. That’s why Democratic debates have the potential to become a turning point for our country.” -Dayle
Vice
Marianne Williamson Wants to Make Democrats the Party of Faith
For progressive, religious people like me, the 2020 candidate has a powerful message
Issac J. Bailey
“The move by top Democrats to speak more openly about their faith better aligns them with their base, black voters, who are maybe the most religious group in the country. That truth often gets lost in discussions about faith and politics, which most often center on the white Evangelical Christians who power the Republican Party. That’s why this shift on the Democratic side is so important, because it could further solidify the already-strong bond between the party and black people, making it less likely the constant, public declarations of faith by conservative candidates will win those voters over, a long-theorized possibility.
[…]
The candidate best equipped to deal with the changing politics of faith is one of the least talked-about figures in the primary and my inspiration all those years ago: Marianne Williamson. When I spoke with the 66-year-old self-help author and speaker about two weeks ago, she shared that she was only “about halfway” to securing the requisite number of campaign donors to make it onto the Democratic debate stage. She’s polling behind even fellow fringe candidate Andrew Yang—but more people should be paying attention to her.
“I think the Democratic Party must retrieve its soul,” she told me in a Pancake House in Georgetown, South Carolina, a stone’s throw from Horry County, home to tourist mecca Myrtle Beach, which gave Trump 67 percent of its vote in 2016. Serious debates about whether residents can be Democrats and Christian are not infrequently held in the area. “This is a moral emergency,” Williamson said.
In the past, her faith has been described as “new-agey.” But that’s not accurate. It’s not traditional, but is just as deeply held as that of Evangelical Vice President Mike Pence and at least as thoughtful as Buttigieg’s. Williamson is the candidate that most resembles the “nones,” who are a growing part of the Democratic Party. This demographic may believe in God, but doesn’t want to be associated with rigid religious dogmas. They are less likely to believe homosexuality is sinful than their more traditionally religious counterparts, for instance, and more likely to believe abortion should be legal in most cases, even as conservatives call the practice murder and genocide.
But the “nones” may be just as hungry for a message of faith as voters who belong to a formal religion. Williamson could certainly speak to that message: She is a Jew who converted to Christ—but not Christianity—as she once told Beliefnet. Evidence of her faith jumps off her lips no matter the political issue she is discussing.”
Full article:
Marianne’s Easter message:
MSNBC:
Gaia.
April 22, 2019
Nature will always wear the colors of the s p i r i t.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
-Rachel Carson
One touch of nature makes thew hole world kin.
-William Shakespeare
Life leafless trees waiting for morning, something as great and as constant as the Earth holds us up.
-Mark Nepo
Have you ever walked in nature and felt the presence of something greater than yourself? Did you find yourself being healed by the energy of beauty around you? Me, Too. Life finds lots of ways to remind us that our presence heals the world, just as being in nature heals us. You know who my heroes are? The plants that push through tiny cracks in concrete, pressing upward to be seen, and those trees that seem to be growing out of rock, standing tall, never giving up. Mother Earth teaches me to keep going, that there’s a way out of the darkness into the light. Just like the plants and the trees, I have what it takes to heal, thrive and be seen.Together, we are one heartbeat, breathing in unison. Thank you, Mother Earth, for the gift of life.
-Rev. Jane Beach
Sri Lanka.
Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit, “Invoked or not invoked, God is still present.”
-CG Jung
♡
Rachel, Daniel, Dave, Kyle, Steven, Cassie, Isaiah, Matthew, Lauren, John, Kelly, Daniel, and Corey
April 20, 2019—
Twenty years ago, two Columbine High School students murdered twelve peers and one teacher.
Two decades later, the rate of school shootings has increased. In 2018, there were more incidents of gun violence and more gun deaths at schools than any other year on record. In no other developed nation do students face these unprecedented levels of gun violence in their schools.
We owe it to every victim, every survivor, every student, every teacher, every parent, and all school staff across America to pass universal background checks, to place restrictions on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and to prohibit bump stocks
I was a high school student a thousand miles away when the Columbine massacre took place. It changed the psyche of young people in America. The era that followed saw more active shooter drills. Hiding in classrooms and bathrooms. Advice on how to stand on the toilet to hide your feet. Second-guessing your peers. Plans for airport-style security to get to class.
Our teachers are left to decide if they are strong enough to try to take down an active shooter. If they should close the door and shield their students, or try to lead their students out to safety. They are asked to think about how to barricade their doors, as much a part of their job as how to structure their class time.
Student, parent, and teacher activists — from Columbine, to Virginia Tech, to Sandy Hook, to Marjory Stoneman Douglas — have shown what elected officials in Washington have lacked when it comes to common-sense, comprehensive gun reforms: courage.
These simple, bipartisan steps will not stop every single gun death. But today, on the 20th anniversary of the Columbine massacre, we owe it to Rachel, Daniel, Dave, Kyle, Steven, Cassie, Isaiah, Matthew, Lauren, John, Kelly, Daniel, and Corey to commit to these basic measures to make our country and our communities safer.
And we owe it to every young person and every educator to make sure that they have a safe place to learn and teach.
When I was deployed in Afghanistan, it was my responsibility to carry two weapons — a pistol and a rifle (an M4, which is not that different than an AR15 if we’re being honest) — on foreign soil on the orders of a U.S. president. I’m aware of the capabilities of some weaponry that simply does not belong on the streets of American neighborhoods in peacetime.
I think most people understand that as a member of the generation defined by mass shootings, and as a veteran of the military, I’m coming to these views honestly. And even in my very red state of Indiana, many common-sense reforms are widely accepted and understood to be constitutional. Yet Washington can’t deliver. This must change.
We must do better for each other.
We can do this if we decide to.
Thank you,
Pete
Pete for America
PO Box 1226
South Bend, IN 46626
United States
Between silence.
‘Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of god.’
-Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
Some days are indeed times of great pain and some are of great joy, but most are…in between. Most are, in fact, times of waiting, as the disciples waited during Holy Saturday. We’re waiting. Waiting to get into a good school. Waiting to meet the right person. Waiting to get pregnant. Waiting to get a job. Waiting for things at work to improve Waiting for diagnosis from the doctor. Waiting for life just to get better.
And there is,
is an active waiting; it knows that, even in the worst of situations, even in the darkest times, God is at work.
And to look carefully for signs of the new life that are always right around the corner–just like they were on Holy Saturday.
-James Martin, Jesuit priest
https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/we-live-holy-saturday
I am not attempting, O Lord, to penetrate your loftiness,
for I cannot begin to match my understanding with it,
but I desire in some measure to understand your truth,
which my heart believes and loves.
For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe,
but I believe in order to understand.
For this too I believe,
that “unless I believe, I shall not understand.” ([Isaiah 7:9)
-Anselm of Canterbury
Stations of the Cross, a metaphor.
April 17, 2019
Notre Dame Cathedral, April 16th, 2019
Many films depict the crucifixion of Jesus and the torture he endured by the Romans before his execution at a well-traveled crossroads in Jerusalem. I have read various accounts about the Stations of his walk to the place of his crucifixion, yet I had not participated in the Stations personally either prayerfully or mindfully until this Holly Week, 2019. During the recent meditation at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Hailey, Idaho, with Mother Lea Colvill, the Stations were revealed personally to me, mindfully, as metaphors for life. The traditional Stations are:
- Jesus is condemned to death
- Jesus carries his cross
- Jesus falls the first time
- Jesus meets his mother
- Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry his cross
- Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
- Jesus falls the second time
- Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
- Jesus falls a third time
- Jesus is stripped
- Jesus is nailed to the cross
- Jesus dies on the cross
- The body of Jesus is taken down from the cross
- Jesus is laid in the tomb
Consider…
- Resolved
- Road of life’s suffering
- In life we stumble
- Embracing our Earthly beginning
- Assistance from friendships and relationships
- Empathy ♡
- Will we stand again?
- ‘7 times down, 8 times up’ (Buddha) ?
- Matriarchy and suffering yet to come
- Can I endure this?
- Non-attachment…release from Earthly materialism
- Intense suffering and pain
- R E L E A S E
- Transition begins…”Resurrection is the moment of enlightenment.” [Elaine Pagels, 1979]
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin [a missing of the mark] that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. -Hebrews 12:1
“I am grateful to be surrounded with a great cloud of witnesses, past and present. I love that I am welcomed and encouraged to sit with those who will both comfort and challenge me. I want to hear sermons that cause discomfort and move me out of my comfort zone in faith. I want to see God’s power at work, where the gifts of the Spirit are ignited and shine brightly. I want to finish the race well, inspired by trailblazers with whom I have shared space during this life. I want to continuously pray for those behind me and for those in front of me, so that my life and witness might cheer others on to the finish line.” [Forward Day by Day]
Once you choose hope, anything’s possible. -Christopher Reeve
The Divine could only intend good and abundance for Its creation, and we need to know that Its nature is forever flowing into everything we do. -Ernest Holmes
“I choose peace. Then I make a conscious decision to lean into hope. In the dark times, hope gives me a reason to believe in the light. There’s a blessing somewhere in this problem. Hanging on to hope fosters optimism for a positive outcome, which feels lots better than fear and despair. So I look for what’s right instead of what’s wrong, gratitude instead of angst. As I think about the situation, the vibration of my new perspective is noticed and acted upon by a universe that is alive and attuned to my every choice. Hope is creative. My hope becomes a bridge to peace. I can walk in nature…watch the sunset…talk with a friend. Hope creates a space where solutions can appear and peace can return.” -Rev. Jane Beach
“…if ye shall say unto this mountain, be though removed, and be cast into the sea; it shall be done. -Matthew 21:21
Power, greed, patriarchy, decisiveness, ugliness, violence…these are are the mountain that will be cast to the sea.
“Our lives and experiences may well be likened to a river. If we stay on the bank of a river and watch it flow by, we become aware that the river never changes but that its content is always new. By analogy, we might say the purposeful dynamic quality of life within us never changes, but the content of our experience of living never remains the same.” -Ernest Holmes
“The need to step into what we fear and, in so doing, disperse its hold on us is powerfully brought to life by a moment in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. After searching everywhere within reason and memory for the Holy Grail, Jones stands on an enormous precipice, a deep chasm before him, the Grail waiting on the other side. His father, wounded and depending on the Grail to heal, cries out possible interpretations of the clues Jones has been given to reach the Grail.
After what seems all lifetime of inner debate and escalating fear, she dares, against everything she knows, to step into the void above the chasm, and as she does, an enormous stone foundation appears beneath her feet, a bridge that was there all along. This is a moment of risk and trust, a wisdom moment that repeats itself in our lives in both small and large ways.
Over and over, the cup we need to drink from, the ancient every healing cup of wholeness waits beyond some deep chasm we are afraid to cross. Often we are driven to the edge by the cries and clues of elders and loved ones, only to find that nothing makes sense, that there seems nowhere to go. And the the atom of the risk begins to replay itself in those brought to the edge. Beginning with risk and landing in trust reveals a foundation that was there all along, but which is only made visible by our risk to think and see in ways and our trust to step into what we fear.” -Mark Nepo
Then the Migdalah stood up, greeted them all and, raising her right hand, said to her brethren, ‘Only from the truth I tell you, do not weep and do not grieve or be irresolute, for his grace and that of the one who sent him will be entirely with you and will protect you. But rather, let us praise his greatness, for he has prepared us and made us truly human.’
-The Gospel of the Beloved Companion, p. 113
Cathedral thinking.
April 16, 2019
Greta Thunberg, speaking to Europe’s political leaders ahead of European parliament elections in May on Tuesday, April 16th.
Referring to Monday’s fire at Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral in her speech, Greta called for “cathedral thinking” to tackle climate change.
“It is still not too late to act. It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling,” she said. “In other words it will take cathedral thinking. I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible.”
[The Guardian]
❧
Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
– Cree Indian Prophecy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/15/notre-dame-fire-paris-france-cathedral
Collective Moment
It is the flash of a flame that is touched off by an immediate contact of the substance of the soul with God Himself. In one terrific second that belongs not to time but to eternity, the whole soul is transfixed and illumined by the tremendous darkness which is the light of God. -Thomas Merton
‘Why has the burning of Notre Dame moved so many? Because we believe in beauty, majesty, faith, art, history, and the human expressions thereof. We recognize in this cathedral our common humanity. A scar now emerges in our connections to our past, our future, and each other.
Will we rebuild? Yes. Notre Dame? Our country? Our world? Yes. It won’t be easy. It won’t mitigate the damage or the pain. But we have no other choice. To think otherwise is to succumb to the darkness.’
-Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather
A revolution of the heart.
April 14, 2019
“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?”
♡
Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert. Day initially lived a bohemian lifestyle before gaining public attention as a social activist after her conversion. She was a political radical, perhaps the best known radical in American Catholic Church history.
Deal.
April 13, 2019
I’m getting married [April 13] in a redwood grove, at the age of 65, to a tall handsome writer Neal Fallen—good sense of humor, is smarter than I am, can fix anything, and cook. So never ever give up, no matter how things look or how long they take. Don’t quit before the miracle. Deal?
-Anne Lamott
The Marsh Girl
“Yet in reality, she was only an abandoned child, a little girl surviving on her own in a swamp, hungry and cold, but we didn’t help her. Except for one of her only friends, Jumpin’, not one of our churches or community groups offered her food or clothes. Instead, we labeled and rejected her because we thought was was different. But, ladies and gentlemen, did we exclude Miss Clark because she was different, or was she different because we excluded her? If we had taken her in as one of our own, I think that is what she would be today, If we had fed, clothed, and loved her, invited her into our churches and homes, we wouldn’t be prejudiced against her.”
-Delia Owens
Gaia
Will mankind murder Mother Earth or will he redeem her?
-Arnold Toynbee, ‘Mankind and Mother Earth’
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed…be it ecological, social, demographic, or a general breakdown of civilization…will be unavoidable.
-Václav Havel address to U.S. Congress
Our planet.
The New Yorker
by, Rachel Riederer
With the Netflix Series “Our Planet,” David Attenborough Delivers an Urgent Message
Our Planet is a departure from David Attenborough’s previous documentaries. It places global climate catastrophe front and center, and treats the problems of climate change and habitat loss with a new urgency. “The longer we leave it, the more difficult it will be to solve the problem,” Attenborough, who is ninety-two, told me over the phone from Washington, where he was going to deliver a speech to the International Monetary Fund. “Eventually, of course, you can’t solve the problems, and the result is chaos.”