Politics

Inside Scott McClellan

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In his yet to be released book (What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception), McClellan, once a staunch defender of the war, comes to a stark conclusion, writing, “What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.”

Beam yourself up Scotty! The former Press Secretary, a close confidant and fellow Texan, will need to keep his head down. You don’t criticize the Administrator and Administration and walk free. The salvos are heading in.

The only question I have is: if you knew this five years ago, why did you wait so long to make the revelation? Is it about your conscience or is it about the book?

2007-11-22McClellan

Poverty/Spirituality

Unfinished painting

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Empathy and consideration for the life of another person is hard to keep in possession. The daily pull into myself and the world-of-my-life can only be balanced by a daily encounter with another human face.

And so this morning when I stopped to talk I made myself conscious of the accumulation of your joys and sorrows that were soft-sculpted into your face. I saw both the nuances and the patencies of your history. All those experiences etched in.

paul You were half a block away. When I crossed the street and stepped up on the curb I saw the inevitability of your approach. You walked toward me, your self-consciousness a forgotten thing, and one of the reasons you looked out of joint with time and place.

Your face, that unfinished painting through which you look at me and the world, revealed some dark passages. I often mask my own face–and we all have our veneers–but yours was far more vulnerable. Yours, a far thinner veneer.

Your story, the details of which are all unique and varied, beg some tragic questions. Asked, you told me how they look to you now. You drifted here from a northern reserve, a reserve you say is dying, hopeless. You said there was nothing for you there…but I understood that this was not nothing in the way I told my friends a half-generation ago when I left my own town, saying, “there is nothing for me here.” Your nothing is on a scale I can’t grasp.

Your drama, your paths, have to do with deep and complex breakage’s. I offer you so little, except a bit of time and spare change; you awaken a piece of humanity within me.

You know, of course, why you’re resented by many. And sometimes by me. You arouse emotions within me that I would sooner put aside. You are a constant reminder of a reality I want to forget. I don’t like being forced to notice the base poverty of my response to you. And so I ultimately blame you for my lack of compassion for you.

Politics/Spirituality

Tight Ships, Loose Ends and Leadership

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We meet gems in life, people who by their own dint take paths other than the deep-rutted ones. Grow Mercy cheers, salutes and encourages you.

This is meant to encourage you: for you have chosen to lead your lives in the messy intersections of human community. This is to salute you: for you have taken the more difficult path of willingly entering that jumble-of-souls with your presuppositions and preconceptions in check–a reflex of humility.

This is to honour you for preferring to learn through listening, to discover through personal engagement, and for being receptive to the present. To you who’s experience has taught you the peerless value of honouring people in their rich and odd paths, to you who refuse to pave over human distinctiveness and peculiarities, we raise our cups.

snow geese You, who risk being okay with chaos, letting it have its say; you, who are patient with with loose ends, who understand that chaos and loose ends finally reveal their own solutions and work their own balm…you are our social beacons. You, who seek consensus through a simple coming together are our cultures unheralded leaders. You, who do not miss the faces for the crowd are our agents of grace.

This post is meant to encourage you, and salute you, because in our mercantile world you are misunderstood. This is meant to give you space, because in places where zero-sum is the convening article, where vertical organizational charts are capitulated to, you will be marginalized, even ostracized.

Your allegiance to interconnections, your respect for the organism is a threat to the “bottom line,” the so called “tight ship.” But this allegiance is your candle and our illumination, and it must be protected. And so sometimes you must leave our “tight ships” to their tightness. Perhaps then, when constant constriction cuts off all lubrication and the “lean machine” cracks apart, there may yet be hope. At this point the lesson of liberality and karmic abundance may yet be learned. It is at this point that those who control through diversion and concealment and scapegoating may transcend their fears.

We can hope all this because of pearls like you.

Uncategorized

Quality Comfort

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Quilted robes

When the rain falls and the temp dips and you inexplicably slip into 1973, the first thing you’ll want to do is robe yourself with a button-up horse blanket. After all, you deserve comfort, and comfort comes in bolts of pucker-free, wrinkle-free, and fray-free fifty-weight nylon-satin-poly blend, yardered together using packing needles and worsted yarn.

Mind you, there’s a reason why none of our models are sitting down (well, almost, the one wearing the brush-fire has been rammed into position). A small oversight in the comfort department–Sears promises that the 74 model will include flex-tube at the places where people bend.

In the mean time, should you desire to lounge, just get someone to push you over; then, while your lying down, you’ll be able to surreptitiously observe everyone in the room without them knowing…because they’ll think you’re the couch.