My mother was very strong about my doing well in school and living up to my potential. Two things were important to her and she repeated them endlessly. One was to ‘be a lady,’ and that meant conduct yourself civilly, don’ t let emotions like anger or envy get in your way. And the other was to be independent, which was an unusual message for mothers of that time to be giving their daughters.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s talk at Stanford University on living a meaningful life, February 6, 2017.
I recall a friend encouraging her adult child to stand up for what she believes in. After the dialogue, she concluded with: “Don’t settle for crumbs in your life, or that would be your meal.” Her sharing made a profound impact on me. How much have we settled and forego reaching for our dreams?
What did she mean by ‘crumbs?’ Did she mean to aspire for top drawer assignments? Would that mean ignoring your values like ethics, integrity, honesty? Or standing up to what you care about, including your values, until your efforts pay off to reward you a whole pie?
Primacy of truth Take for example 36-year-old Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has been the White House press secretary since 2017. The press pool regards her as the personification of falsehoods and lies. She conceivably has a whole pie given her access to power, the 45th president.
But, what happens after her tenure is over at the White House? Politico even made a partial listing of her lies, on April 27, 2018, though they tried to deodorize her lies as “misadventures”:
August 2, 2017: Said Trump didn’t lie when he claimed the Mexican president called to praise his immigration policies, or when he said leaders from the Boy Scouts of America called to praise a speech he gave at the National Scout Jamboree. (Neither call had occurred.)
November 1, 2017: Said immigrants entering the United States on diversity visas aren’t vetted. (They are.)
November 2, 2017: Denied that Trump called the U.S. justice system “a joke.” (Hours earlier, Trump said of the justice system, “What we have right now, it’s a joke and it’s a laughingstock.”)
February 20, 2018: Said, “The president hasn’t said that Russia didn’t meddle.” (He has.)
March 27, 2018: Said there has been a citizenship question “included in every census since 1965, with the exception of 2010, when it was removed.” (No citizenship question has appeared on the full census form since 1950.)
Politico on June 26, 2018 described her as a valuable staffer for her ability to take the press pool into an alternative path with a perceived calm and unflappable demeanor and even more so, after the pool raises a controversial remark, she manages to take the oxygen out of the controversy by leading them someplace else.
In other words, she creates diversionary tactics and keeps repeating her scripted message, until the pool gives up. Because she repeats her diversionary script with a calm demeanor perceived as “unflappable,” she is regarded as invaluable and has been press secretary since 2017.
Some of you may recall the incident with CNN’s Jim Acosta, who was accused of placing his hands on a young intern and because of that accusation, the White House pulled his press pass?
Except, the claim to support pulling the press pass was a fabrication. The alleged altercation was captured by major television channels and replayed for the public who weighed in on social media that it was an overreach by the White House as well as a First Amendment breach. CNN filed a lawsuit and the court ruled in favor of CNN, which allowed Acosta’s press pass to be returned. He continues to be part of the press pool.
Intersection of civility with truth
On June 2018, Red Hen Restaurant’s owner and employees found Sarah Sanders’ presence at her restaurant untenable, as she defends “unethical and inhumane Trump policies,” especially towards immigrants.
The restaurant stood for honesty, compassion and cooperation while they perceived Sanders to be the embodiment of opposite values.
Can we say the Red Hen was justified when they asked her to leave? Was there enough ‘just cause’ to remove the press secretary and her group of eight? Sanders soon after asked for secret service temporary protection.
But what about Acosta? Was pulling his press pass an arbitrary and capricious move on the part of the White House? Do these two incidents illustrate the lack of civility?
In a restaurant, one is presumed welcome and if open for business, one can order and eat inside. In the same vein, the restaurant owner of Red Hen can also refuse service to anyone.
Then Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, now House Speaker, weighed in on this controversy and called for civility for all parties.
I too agree with Madame Pelosi. After all, not even Sanders expected to be denied restaurant service at the present time; maybe if we were in the 1930s, when racist and offensive signs like, “No Filipinos and dogs allowed,” were posted at hotel lobbies?
Or because one is Japanese American, when nearly 150,000 were arbitrarily removed from their houses, workplaces, businesses and placed in horse stalls and makeshift wood shacks to live in, from 1942 to 1946, based on a falsified military memo presuming these American citizens as threats to the national security?
Or banned from entering the U.S. just because one is a Muslim, with this ban imposed by the 45th president and later, upheld by the US Supreme Court, 5-4, as Adam Liptak and Michael D. Shear reported in the New York Times on June 26, 2018?
I ask, how should we proceed then to have civility in our public discourse when we cannot even look up to the White House occupants to speak the truth with integrity?
Of course, Politico also described Sanders as helpful in logistics and quite approachable, outside of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.
Independence to do right or wrong Recently, the FBI indicted 50 wealthy people, including Hollywood celebrities Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, after William Singer admitted to a massive college cheating scam, including bribes up to $6.5 million to get the wealthy people’s children into elite colleges, like Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, USC, as ABC News reported on March 13.
“According to U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling, William Singer, owner of Key Worldwide Foundation and Edge College and Career Network, allegedly accepted bribes totaling $25 million from these parents from 2011 to 2018. Singer pleaded guilty on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of justice,” ABC News continued.
Some students who alleged sports experiences had not even played a single game of soccer and simply created Facebook pages to show they were. I wonder if their parents had pangs of conscience?
Or were they merely subscribing to a culture of privileges with no regard to consequences? Or were they so privileged to stack the odds in favor of their children? Did these parents mistrust their children not to have the inner motivation and discipline to accomplish this on their own?
Like anything in life, we are faced with choices. If with wealth, rich students have more independence to pursue their interests while in college, unlike working students who hold down two to three jobs just to afford tuition and their daily living expenses.
And if the rich children have fewer survival challenges to deal with, can they perhaps be the model students that can inspire by helping other students?
As Ruth Bader Ginsburg said during a talk about a meaningful life at Stanford University on February 6, 2017, “If you want to be a true professional, you will do something outside yourself. Something to repair tears in your community. Something to make life a little better for people less fortunate than you.”
California looking like Norway or Switzerland. A road trip to pay homage to the mountains, as they are calling us. We are passing by Palmdale, California City, Red Rock Canyon, Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine, Bishop, Convict Lake and now, Mammoth.
Some slight showers, spectacular snow-covered mountains, and frozen Convict Lake. Convict Lake is named after prisoners escaped from Nevada Prison and were found there.
Passing by wind farm, parking lot for airplanes and solar farm. The parking lot consumes energy while the farms supply power, yin ang yang of life in the rural and urban cities.
“A different kind of spectacle,” as hubby said, to see snow covered highways on both sides of the road. Truly spectacular. Day 2 Posting #6 What a glorious yesterday to see many faces of snow-topped mountains, and explore places with snow. This morning, we woke up to a short spray of snow. Thank you for all this grace, God and to my indefatigable husband who makes it his job to know where these places are.
By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.
Chief Justice John Roberts
We are all in this together — in this country, USA, and even if we pretend we are far removed from what is happening in the White House, we are all affected by what our President does.
Imagine how he is now threatening a major pillar to our social safety net — throw out medical services for the aged, the seniors, the disabled, the children, and more and let them suffer. In the meantime, after enabling internal suffering in the millions, after furloughing 800,000 federal workers, he wants to do millions more by building the border walls. This time his obsession with his manly “wall” is really an aggressive statement that “I am king” regardless of what US Constitution says that all three branches of government (executive, judicial, legislative) are co-equal and are in parity, the way the founders intended it to be.
The U.S. republic is only 243 years old, if we count that the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776. We now have 21st century’s imperialistic president who wants to overreach his executive powers to cover even the legislative authority to appropriate funding, provide oversight and to make laws. He has been thwarted in his efforts by the US Senate of late, when they voted 59-41 to rebuke and reverse his declaration of “national emergency” on the border with 12 Republicans joining a solid Democratic bloc. This time, these Republicans are prioritizing the country over their party.
But a lot of this national emergency is a man-made crisis by this 45th U.S. President. The Daily Podcast of the New York Times on Nov. 21 reported 700,000 pending asylum cases in the U.S. So why would Pres. Trump send over 5,000 military troops when he could have sent analysts and lawyers that would have reduced the backlog?
Instead, Trump introduced metering where only 30 asylum applicants can apply daily. Crowds that are in the thousands have resorted to arbitrary encampments at the border, essentially waiting for their turn to apply for asylum and that waiting can be for months, if not years, as only 30 are allowed to apply each day.
These mothers were fleeing persecution at the hands of gang members, facing the certainty of death if they do not comply so they have opted to protect their children and are simply seeking safety and a new future.
So if these potential refugees are following the procedures of applying for asylum, why are these families being demonized as if they are criminals and part of gangs that they are fleeing from? Do you sense a blatant institutional racist policy from the President?
Is it any wonder why Michael Cohen characterized him as a racist, a con man and a cheat and elaborated on some of his “expansive pattern of lies and criminality,” according to the New York Times?
In his testimony before U.S. Congress’ oversight committee headed by U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, he provided copies of checks made out from Donald Trump’s charitable foundation signed by Donald Trump, Jr. and the Trump organization’s lawyer, Allan Weisselberg and another check signed by Donald Trump himself to silence two women with sordid past affairs with him, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal just before the 2016 Presidential elections. Stormy Daniels was reported to have had an affair with the U.S. President and was paid $130,000 to be quiet about the affair and Karen McDougal’s story was paid by National Enquirer who squashed the story.
We ask — why would reasonably minded folks submit to a pattern of deception for access to power? Why would anyone lose their soul and ignore the pangs of their conscience?
116th U.S. Congress oversight
We rejoice that U.S. Congress is presiding over hearings questioning Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen on the family separation policy that separated children from their parents and were held in cages. She kept parsing the definition of cages and instead referred to them as “detention spaces.” She finally agreed to the “larger than dog spaces,” and defined it as chain linked spaces placed on concrete floors, where folks can stand, move around and sit, essentially cages where non-criminals and potential refugees are housed in. As if that sanitized definition will diminish the cruelty and barbaric border policies of this administration.
What makes folks in power submit to insanity and irrational lies? What causes them to forego their own conscience and even their own humanity? When we are this inhumane to others, we too are defined by that inhumanity and we become morally misaligned.
To date, there are thousands separated from their families and when questioned, the Secretary of Homeland Security remarked “there is a list but the list is in Mexico.”
What do all these flagrant abuses of power mean to us?
It is happening not just in the US, but in other countries as well. We have in the Philippines a head of state who calls on bishops and priests as dispensable leaders with death threats shadowing those who oppose arbitrary killings and murders.
We also have flagrant abuses of power even amongst the rich, the famous and the privileged. They are now being exposed by the FBI in a $ 25 million scam of paying proctors and test takers of SAT tests to improve these rich kids’ chances at admission into college.
Two Hollywood celebrity figures, Felicity Huffmann who is involved in a non-profit promoting the inspiring lives of pioneering women in America and Lori Loughlin, posted bail after the ring leader of the scam, William Ring Singer, pled guilty last Tuesday, March 12.
Why do we find even Hollywood celebrities, sports coaches, and even academic proctors losing their consciences in promoting these scams? Have we lost our sense of propriety and decency as a nation? Are we all mired in a swamp of lies, falsehoods, and schemes to evade the truth?
We are now publicly witnessing even Pope Francis apologizing for decades and decades of abusive sexual crimes committed against the Catholic laity. We recently read about Cardinal George Pell being sentenced to six years in jail. Read that sentence again – can we reconcile Cardinal with the word jail? What happened to even our moral leaders?
Public trust and consequences of human failures
One can theorize the absence of humility, a clear case of spiritual arrogance and abuse of power. When one is a Cardinal, Bishop and even a priest, a president, a celebrity, rap singer, a musician, a television executive, a film producer, a theater director, actors, we seem to endow these public figures with public trust. That relegated higher status presumes they have “higher than normal” morals, decency and an impeccable code of conduct that respects all people. Instead, when we find them abusing our children and our women and boys, we resort to lawsuits to get justice.
But truly, the failures emanate from the home and the parents. What were the parents thinking while these children were growing up to become teenagers? Did they morally exercise their guidance and leadership? Did they tell these children – it is not okay to help yourselves to someone’s body or to someone’s wealth and feel privileged about not considering any consequences?
For example, do you feel entitled as an employee to use the company credit card for your personal expenses? Do you feel entitled to have someone pay for your travel expenses just because?
What are we supposed to gather as lessons on these flagrant abuses of power that we seem to read daily coming from the White House, the churches, the entertainment industry and now academic institutions? Are we weeding out weeds of abuses to clean up and refresh our institutions? Or are we elevating folks with hollowed out cores with no consciences and regard for consequences for their wrongdoings? Are we electing morally bankrupt folks into office because we align with them? Or not?
Spring and Lent come together to give us all opportunities for changes. I myself would need to reexamine where I have hidden cobwebs that enabled dust and dirt to accumulate inside my heart. It is time to renew and for justice to bloom once more in America and in many parts of the world.
As I write this, my heart aches for the 49 dead and 41 injured inside two mosques in New Zealand, who were killed by an Australian terrorist, as reported by NBC News March 14. It is time we root out hatred and not propagate violent words in our 21st century spaces in homes, state houses, public squares and more importantly churches and mosques. May this spring time present an opportunity for all to move away from all these barbaric animalistic actions of abuse and violence and for the rest of us to stand for truth and justice!
Taken at dawn at the rooftop of Pontificat Institute of Notre Dame in Jerusalem, where a fellow pilgrim from South Korea was meditating.
At the entrance of this chapel in the hotel, I smelled rose essence, but the altar flowers were star gazers. In the middle of my meditation, I felt chills, as if inside the freezer, then at the end, the rose essence smell dissipated.
Two classmates, Anita Rubio, and Ludy Manansala Obando Manansala Obando meet after 39 years at 6 am. They went to Dr. Nicanor Reyes Memorial College in Tarlac, Philippines, for high school. Ludy lives in Netanya, Israel, and Anita lives in Anaheim. They eagerly had breakfast together.
Mom, Anna, 77 years old, and daughter, Carmen, 52 years old, are on a spiritual journey together. Anna did not want a party. Instead, she wanted a trip to Holy Land. I sat and waited with Anna in a very cold spot, seated on a concrete bench, inside the Holy Sepulcher for hours, and held her hand to go inside the tomb of Jesus.
Think of a person who faces the world without knowing his capabilities and limitations – someone with misguided notions about himself, who dreams of being powerful, rich, and admired for a host of talents he does not have. Such a person is incapable of self-judgment.
Equipped with mistaken ideas, he enters the great arena of the world ready to compete and excel. You can only shudder at the thought of his fate. He is like a child who thinks he can walk miles, but who tires after only two hundred feet. To know your own weaknesses and to accept them, even if it is painful. To be honest. To chase illusions away and realize how much you do not know. To treasure life’s lessons. That is humility. And humility is a great strength.
Piero Ferrucci, “The Power of Kindness,” 2006.
I have sat down to interview thousands of folks: first, as an eligibility worker interviewing welfare recipients, mostly single mothers with children for two years; second, as a public health professional at a state agency for 27 years; and third, as an appointed LA City Commissioner for Civil Service for two years.
This role entailed listening to grievances and employer anomalies with employees testifying to abuse of power through its public agenda process of five minutes per commission’s meeting. Few employees succeeded to present their issue and only if they persisted for months.
My fourth, as a contributing writer for the Asian Journal for 11 years. I have interviewed individuals at work, in factories, restaurants, churches and sometimes, their homes.
It has been 42 years of listening to people sharing their stories and listening for life’s lessons.
I have interviewed welfare moms, multimillionaires, CEOs, professionals, artists, photographers, jewelers, musicians, writers, professors, students, activists, entrepreneurs, workers, chefs, realtors, authors, writers, playwrights, actors, actresses, directors, mayor, composers, assemblymembers, members of Congress, composers, attorneys, lyricists, conductors, beauty queens, 50 priests, two monsignors and a bishop.
There are more who I need to connect to – computer technicians, gardeners, parking attendants, cleaning ladies, busboys, waiters, electricians, plumbers, bus drivers, garbage men, repairmen, and homeless families from whom I can learn from.
Four types of people
I recently shared with a good friend, that reflecting on the thousands whom I have interviewed, I believe there are three kinds of people.
First, the radical givers who share themselves; second, the content receptors of grace or open vessels; and third, a hybrid of both open receivers and sensitive givers of grace.
I added a fourth category: those who are mean, unkind, cruel, and feeling victimized and harassed, much like the 45th U.S. president in the Oval Office, who extracts patience and tolerance from others, with the unusual grace of understanding and justice for their wrongdoings.
I added this fourth category as it is quite obvious, in public view for all to see how the current president creates division, while he considers diverse folks as his enemies: Muslims, women, Mexicans, immigrants, gays disabled, journalists, the intelligence community, refugees, even his personal attorney and Special Counsel, while he has admiration for authoritarian leaders from Russia and North Korea. He could not even let go of the rebuke he got from the late Sen. John McCain, who voted no to the repeal of Obamacare.
I was in Europe in 2003. It had been two years after the suicide bombers from the Middle East attacked the Twin Towers and thereafter the U.S. and its coalition partners went to war against Iraq. Travel felt ominous then and even more so as American citizens as we were met with hostility and suspicion. To folks whom I met and struck conversations, they openly complained of the actions of U.S. President George W. Bush.
They recalled what they had to endure during World War II and were afraid of another World War III. They pointed to a nearby building, whose inaccessible basement and tunnels remain and reminiscent of how folks hid there during the war. They prayed for peace and they had all their prayers written down and kept in a wooden box. Quietly, a prayer movement reached 20,000+ for peace and no world war. They kept the box as a symbol of their unity, hoping someday, they would be alive to read them aloud and thank God for protecting Europe during the invasion of Iraq.
Fast forward to Donald Trump who recently pulled out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement, signed by Pres. Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on Dec. 8, 1987.
“The treaty was approved by the U.S. Senate and ratified by both Gorbachev and Reagan on June 1, 1988. With this treaty, 2,692 missiles were eliminated, in May 1991, followed by 10 years of on-site verification inspections.” (Source:Wikipedia and Euro News).
The “U.S. formally suspended the treaty on Feb. 1, 2019, and Russia followed the following day. Putin wants to have ‘supersonic’ missile after the treaty suspension and declared that “Russia must develop new nuclear warhead-carrying missiles by 2021,” according to CNBC and CNN.
Is the 45th U.S. president taking us back to the Dark Ages?
“The term Dark Ages was coined by an Italian scholar, Francesco Petrarch, who lived from 1304 to 1374,” according to Nate Sullivan, a history professor and writer.
Petrarch lamented the scarcity of quality in Latin literature and dark ages became a term for lack of culture and advancement in Europe. Black Death bubonic plague killed an estimated 100 to 200 million, devastating Europe from the late 1340s to early 1350s, Sullivan continued. Are we now having our Dark Ages in America?
Do we have a choice between this culture of death and a culture of life? Do we sense the opioid epidemic of deaths in the thousands, the suicides of teenagers, shootings of black teenagers by police officers, and 30,000 deaths of Americans from random gun violence?
Yet, the president insists on cultivating fear coming from caravans of migrants, refugees, immigrant crimes and women choosing to abort their fetuses. His fearmongering has backfired and resulted in bringing in more diverse congressmembers to the 116th Congress: hundreds of women representatives, the first two Muslim-Americans, the first two Native Americans, the first Filipino American from the Central Valley TJ Cox, and the youngest 29-year-old Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Smatterings of light
I wondered if we became radical givers and contribute to a movement of being Saints, could that change America from being in the Dark Ages of massive deaths, lies, lack of culture and advancement? Would that be enough to stop the violence from hatred? I pray and I hope so.
Allow me to switch back to describing the first three categories. It is really my intent to choose smatterings of light towards a lighted path and to leave behind the dark shadows of hatred and bigotry.
The first type is radical givers, who give without expectations of anything in return.
I know of Korkie, a high school classmate, who is a radical giver. She organizes her friends, to the point of arranging carpools for those who don’t drive so all can meet for bible studies or reunions. Our classmates are from diverse income categories, and some are without cars. But, that does not deter them from sharing rides and to be together. She also arranges visits to the nuns who are now in their retirement home, about three hours away from her residence, while staying up at times till dawn to connect to U.S. and Canadian classmates and share what these nuns need for daily living.
She even supervised the carpenters and laborers, whom our 1967 batch contracted, to renew the kneelers in the school’s chapel and buy snacks for these laborers using her own resources. I consider her as part of the first category. At one time, she coordinated the receipt of books donated to the school’s library from U.S.-based classmates, through the efforts of Ambassador Mary Jo Aragon, then, Philippine Consul General in Los Angeles.
Another classmate, Beatriz, uses her financial resources to build chapels and to provide scholarships to boys for their complete education. She and her husband pay to the colleges directly and their treasures come in the form of scholars who finish their degrees. They monitor them to make sure these college graduates finance their siblings so they catalyze lifting one family at a time, out of poverty.
Can you imagine her ‘without fanfare’ giving and philanthropy without calling to what she does publicly? She also does not subscribe to the glitter and bling culture of the rich, even though she is well-endowed. What is her pay-off? A much closer relationship to God.
When she visits me in LA, I invariably witness spiritual gifts of grace. To those who may not believe in invisible miracles, it might be difficult to comprehend, but to those with faith, they appreciate the shared stories.
I also became a volunteer in 2018 to the Philippine Medical Society of Northern California, an organization which has been fielding volunteer medical professionals for 30+ years now. Doctors, dentists, nurses give up a week’s worth of income to go to a province in the Philippines, spending their own dime, to provide comprehensive medical, surgical, optical and dental services to thousands. It was so moving to witness 150 folks help thousands they do not even know nor have met in a matter of five days. Volunteers include retired professionals who simply want to help folks to have a better quality of living and not to keep suffering from their aches and pains due to the lack of money to pay for health care.
Doctors end up operating to remove goiter, hernia, reverse club foot, cleft palate, tumors, and dentists removing decaying teeth by the hundreds. The look of sweat and fatigue are matched by big smiles and content residents who get much-needed care.
Second, folks who are content receptors of grace or open channels of grace.
They discern well and speak with so much wisdom, like Pope Francis and certain holy priests. Sure, there are issues within the Catholic Church that have yet to be fully addressed like sexual abuse of parishioners and now, nuns.
I once told a Catholic priest/mentor that the brotherhood of priests includes holy priests only, and when the priest preys on his flock, he now belongs to the category of criminals, and no longer deserve to be treated as priest nor bishop nor cardinal.
Pope Francis recently made a historic trip to the Middle East, where he held a historic mass joined by thousands in an Islamic state and signed an agreement for peace.
“The document, signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb, was prepared “with much reflection and prayer”, the Pope said. The one great danger at this moment, he continued, is “destruction, war, hatred between us.”
“If we believers are not able to shake hands, embrace one another, kiss one another, and even pray, our faith will be defeated,” he said.
The Pope explained that the document “is born of faith in God who is the Father of all and the Father of peace; it condemns all destruction, all terrorism, from the first terrorism in history, that of Cain.” The Holy Father said that from the Catholic point of view, the Document on Human Fraternity “does not go one millimetre beyond the Second Vatican Council… the document was made in the spirit of Vatican II.”
Among Muslims, he said, there are various opinions, but them, too, it is a process.” Vatican News reported.
I consider Pope Francis a holy vessel where each move that he makes seems inspired by the joy of the Holy Spirit and as he intended.
As Rev. Jude Winkler reminds us, “The Spirit of God is not like a dull knife that refuses to cut. The Spirit is like a sharp blade that can cut right to the heart of the matter. The Spirit can help us to explore what is hidden and confused and to sort out our motivations so that we may be and do what is Spirit-filled.” Third, a hybrid of sensitive givers of grace and receivers of that divine blessing.
I have a friend who is a wonderful giver of services in wellness. Antonio hands use acupuncture needles, cupping and massage, which result in pain intervention. You sense his healing energies pass through as his clients receive them. He meditates to a Higher Source just before seeing each one.
As one of those receiving his healing energies, we also have in-depth dialogues about life, faiths, travels and family love.
From him, we get on track to a better quality of living, not a cure, but issues of sprained muscles, and aching back or painful joints are interrupted and resolved.
The fourth, a dangerous one, as the Lies of Two Minds come from them.
They believe they are the greatest gifts to mankind and they claim to have faith in God and even religious. But they inflict the highest levels of cruelty to thousands of human beings.
Recall the current president’s ban on Muslims? Recall how he separated toddlers and children from their families to the thousands?
Recall how he engineered the shutdown, insisting on the building of the southern border wall, causing 800,000 federal workers to have no salaries to pay their bills for 35 days? Recall how faith-believing slave owners prevented slaves from having their freedoms until the U.S. Civil War?
Recall the evils of Adolf Hitler gassing up six million Jews, and how he believed he was the savior of the German race tasked to purify the nation? He was a solid believer in the Catholic faith but he got disillusioned.
Might the pedophiles now in the Catholic Church, who act like priests, be criminals who live with the ‘lies of two minds?’
Might these be the corrupt politicians who pretend to be public servants, but receive emoluments or money benefits to their private checkbooks and waste time in public office without doing any work for the public good?
Are their hearts stone-cold, much like ice crystals on the ground?
What good is this knowledge of knowing these four types?
To me, the first three are sources of inspiration and the fourth, a source of lessons and what not to follow.
We are reflections of the Divine Creator. When we remember that, we self-identify with these first three categories and we practice the power of kindness and adhere to the light.
When we are unaware of ‘the light,’ we are misaligned with our shadows and darkness conquering our divine spirits, creating the ‘lies of two minds,’ with no awareness of sense of weaknesses or impact of our wrongdoings.
When we become conscious of this light at all times, the power of kindness become us.
It is what Enzo Capua described as: “These cultural shifts become unstoppable thanks to their communicative force, and are therefore physical transformations in the broadest sense, moving from one place to another…but today it is generally accepted, even held up as an example of the brotherhood between different countries, where borders are nothing more than lines drawn on a map. They don’t exist in nature. Often they’re the outcome of wars and deals struck under (clearly non-peaceful) pressure.”
We all have choices of being in the dark or the smatterings of lights and risk being kind and generous, to change the proliferation of negative energies.
We just might reverse the proliferation of threats of nuclear wars, but also fill up this world with new energies from those of us who are and who become radical givers, receptors of grace and even hybrids of both.
In connecting with a human being, we validate who we are, another humane person! Much like what my 4-year-old granddaughter Princess says to me, she looks at the rock where it is written, “BELIEVE,” then reads each letter and altogether she says: “Believe LOVE!”
Truth entices us there on the frontier between fact and interpretation, and we strive for honesty in representing what is entrusted to us. We combine that honesty with a humility that comes from knowing beyond all doubt that whatever we believe, whatever we claim, whatever we know, the next generation will surely say, ‘That’s not good enough! We need to know more and we need to know better!
Sander M. Goldberg, distinguished research professor of Classics at UCLA, 2018.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—which love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.
“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl, as displayed at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany.
Allow me to start with an anecdote about my 4-year-old granddaughter. I made a mistake of saying grandbaby, and she corrected me in a soft-spoken manner, “Grandma, I am not a baby anymore.”
She is not, as we delve into a dialogue on the eve of her 4th birthday. I greeted her at the door, singing a happy birthday song. She quickly dashed to the bathroom to wash her hands and then, sat in her favorite chair. She put one raspberry, one after another, then held her fork and elegantly dug into the ¼ cup of macaroni and cheese.
“Grandma, you are good,” she said, after finishing it all, in a very loving, soft voice. She continued, “Grandma, when someone says you are not good, that is sad, right?”
“Yes, Princess (her pseudonym), it is why you need to always tell yourself you are a good person so you will always do good actions to others.”
I really wanted her to know these instinctively: “I am a good person and you will only expect good actions from me.”
I was quite impressed that her four-year-old mind’s revelation comes from knowing what is good and how it makes her and how when one is told “not good,” it is sad. She did not say, I am sad, but “it is sad.” What if we carried that same consciousness that our actions can make folks happy or sad? Will we do good by others?
Our national truth
What if each business leader who goes to work each week read the passage, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” (John 8:32) and go back to the Sermon on the Mount, as Eric Butterworth writes in “Discover the Power Within You,” “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where thy treasure its, there will thy heart be also.” What would be the collective legacies of these corporate business leaders?
Will they keep improving the cost of providing service and in their efficiencies, reduce the rates of cell phone services, as an example?
Or in their transport efficiencies, reduce the cost of shipping consumer goods? Or in their manufacturing efficiencies, the prescription and generic drugs costs are decreased to the final consumer?
What if in the course of innovation and more efficient service delivery, the consumers’ interests are at the forefront and not profit?
Recall the recent news item about how Disney CEO Bob Iger’s pay soars 80 percent to $65.6 million, from a prior $13.12 million? In another news front, Disney announces an increase in entrance fees, prompting others on Facebook to post, why not decrease Iger’s compensation and keep admission prices low?
Okay, let us suppose this business leader went to work and had an epiphany? That instead of taking the 80 percent increase in his pay, he opted to find 50 dedicated staff, engineers, and creative designers and gave them his salary increase at $1,000,000 each? Would he not propel these middle-class workers to millionaires and secure their futures? But, better yet, he might motivate them and the entire organization to exponential heights?
This is a pipe dream, some would say, but really, what if all the super-elites as we call them, actually looked beyond themselves and considered that our intuition says to us, as Paulo Coelho wrote in “The Alchemist”: “that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there?” That our accumulated riches are not accessories to wear in our coffins, but an inheritance to our descendants for positive good.
Consider what Renee Stout observes, sensing all inequalities and injustices, as George Lipsitz in “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics,” quoted: “When I look at society, I see the emphasis on money and material things. Everyone is bogged down in competition. The reason I found objects in my art is to say to everyone, ‘Use what you have and be positive, whatever it is that you have, try to make something good from it.’ My relatives were always able to make any situation elegant and wonderful. They made ‘home’ a very secure and nourishing place physically and spiritually. I realize that I was taking objects from a painfully cruel environment and trying to turn them into something positive by creating with them.”
Instead of melting our differences down to nothingness, what about understanding diverse cultures so we can all derive a better understanding of one another?
Franklin Roosevelt’s example
I keep drawing inspiration from the examples of good American presidents. Consider Franklin Roosevelt who presided over a “house divided” yet, managed to reunify the house. He did so by telling the truth of what happened to the banking crisis and why American had to have rules to stop banks from speculations and unwise loans.
He called on the press to be his allies and conferred with them honestly with free-flowing questions and answers. He learned with the press, as they did, from him, in these press conferences, with honest exchanges of ideas, with respect and of course, jokes. He certainly did not call them “fake news,” nor did he resorted to throwing them out from press conferences when he heard questions that he did not like, unlike this current U.S. president throwing out CNN’s Jim Acosta, to which CNN took the president to court and won. Press freedom is as sacrosanct as other freedoms, like freedom of speech.
Roosevelt used the radio and an estimated 60 million people listened to his radio chat. He restored order to the banking crisis and when trading resumed, the stock market rose 15 percent, its largest rise in years. It was an interchange, as Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in “Leadership in Turbulent Times,” analyzing what went right for these four presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
That is our America, able to come together, after being divided, moved by persuasion and reason. Will we see that manifest today, after an unnecessary shutdown since Dec. 22, 2018?
Furlough of 800,000 federal workers
Since Dec. 22, 2018, the federal government has been shut down, forcing 800,000 federal workers to be furloughed. It means air traffic controllers are at work but have no pay. It also means TSA agents, the security workers that we go through in the airports, are at work without pay.
Their insecurities were somewhat assuaged when a bill went through Congress and Pres. Trump supposedly signed it promising back wages to these furloughed workers.
Prompting us to ask: If that bill guaranteeing back pay was passed by Congress, assented to by the Senate and the White House – why not proceed to simply reopen the federal government? Where is the free will to do good from the U.S. Senate and the White House as House has already passed the bills to reopen the federal government?
Even former Trump’s economic adviser, Gary Cohn, who stepped down as director of the National Economic Council on March 6, was quoted by the Washington Post’s John Wagner: “I don’t understand what the outcome is here and I don’t understand where we’re going with it, I’m confused as to what the White House’s strategy is on this a little bit.”
The Post continued, “In the interview, Cohn criticized the shutdown as “completely wrong” and said the furloughing of thousands of workers “makes absolutely no sense whatsoever,” according to the Globe that they quoted from.
The shutdown has exposed America’s White House under 45th President Donald Trump to its egregious irrationality, taking hostage the paychecks of 800,000 federal workers. Assuming each is paid at an average of $5,000 a month, that is an estimated $4 billion that could go into paying their mortgages, rent, car payments, babysitters, groceries, gas.
That unnecessary shutdown is also depriving the economy, at an estimated loss by Goldman Sachs at $1.5 billion a week. Can you imagine a shutdown that is imposing suffering on 800,000 federal workers over no labor issue with the federal government? I cannot forget the sight of teary-eyed federal workers who are reduced to going to soup kitchens and food pantries to avail of free food and groceries for their families.
Free will and moral responsibility
The House has rationally acted, exercising their free will to be a force for good, and voted on bills to open the federal government, and sent these appropriation bills to the Senate. These bills are the same bills already approved and voted on by 100 Senators in December 2018, before the shutdown. If submitted to a vote in the U.S. Senate and passed, then, it goes to the desk of Pres. Trump. There would not have been a shutdown, had this process been followed.
But, Trump was influenced by two talk show hosts: Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, prompting MSNBC guests to say that these two unelected talk show hosts are now running the U.S. government, and not Trump.
Have you seen such irrationality in any of the 44 U.S. presidents, ceding their executive powers to two talk show hosts?
I still remember a speech, with a banner, “Mission Accomplished!” when Pres. George W. Bush announced victory in Iraq, on USS Carrier Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003; yet, the U.S. occupying presence is now into its 16th year come May.
How much more irrationality can we tolerate?
A newly installed U.S. congressperson, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, spoke during her House inaugural speech, injecting some rationality into the national conversation: “It is actually not about a wall, it is not about the border, and it is certainly not about the well-being of everyday Americans. The truth is, this shutdown, is about the erosion of American democracy and the subversion of our most basic governmental norms. It is not normal to hold 800,000 workers’ paychecks hostage. It is not normal to shut down the government when we don’t get what we want. It is not normal for public servants to run away and hide from the public that they serve. And it is certainly not normal to starve the people we serve for a proposal that is wildly unpopular (the $5.7 border wall now referred to as slats or barriers) among the American people.”
The House has acted, now it is Senate’s turn to pass the same identical bills they already passed in December with 100 majority votes. Then, it is time to pass those bills approved by House, and hopefully consented to, by the Senate, whose powers are simply to advise and consent, and not to preempt the House from legislating, nor anticipate what the White House’s president will sign or not.
For all we know, the 45th U.S. president still has the capacity to exercise his free will to do good by the many and to be morally responsible. He took a presidential oath to protect the U.S. Constitution and to serve the American people. He certainly has the human capacities to do that, irrespective of his past conduct, move away from his past bad acts, as “it makes folks sad,” as my four-year-old granddaughter wisely observes.
