Welcome

WELCOME TO THE GREEN PEN!

It's my personal soapbox, a place for me to express thoughts and feelings, musings and rants, reflections and recollections; to have fun with words -- about things spiritual, environmental, social, political, economic, and, from time to time, personal. And of course about peace. Soapboxes are in public places (as London's legendary Hyde Park) on purpose, and so I invite conversations with you, for it is through civil discourse that we can gain some perspective on the seeming chaos of these changing times and learn together how to shape a positive future for ourselves, our communities, and the generations to come.

Friday, July 15, 2022

On Reality, Hope, and Optimism

Friend Maribeth shared this Robert Hubbell post. Most of it is about his thoughts surrounding the January 6 Committee hearings. Toward the end, though, Hubbell talks about reality, hope, and optimism with regards to the survivability of our democracy.

What I find most interesting is Hubbell’s distinction among hope, optimism, and reality. I’m beginning to see these three as a triumvirate, a troika, or, most graphically, the three legs of an easel upon which the future will be painted – or, rather, upon which we can do the painting.

Thursday, February 4, 2021

Pledge of Allegiance

It was in the middle of my 6th grade year that the U.S. Congress decided, and President Eisenhower concurred, that the United States of America was not merely one nation but, importantly, one nation under God. Thus, the Constitution’s guarantee of separation of church and state be damned, all citizens, including school children, were now required to acknowledge the irrefutable reality of that religion-based truth every time they pledged allegiance to the flag. And we, of course, obeyed.

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Breakdown and Breakthrough

This is certainly a time of all the elements - earth, wind, fire, water, and for sure consciousness - dissolving into one another, dissolving the reality as we've imagined it into kaleidoscopic fragments of tumbling possibilities and inviting us to reimagine it.

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Campaign 2020: Prescriptions for the Democratic Party


Premise
These prescriptions carry with them a dramatically different way of looking at the United States and its people.
·       The times, the succession of plagues we’ve been experiencing (the latest being Covid-19), means we won’t, we can’t, go back to the way things were.
·       The old “normal” is history, and a new normal is aborning. Fresh eyes are critical to helping clarify what that new normal is going to look like and then leading us into it.
·       Like it or not, the old days are gone for good, and it is impossible, even suicidal, to stay in the middle of a road that is veering sharply into the future.
The Democratic Party has within it and available to it the people, ideas, and resources needed to help the nation on its journey along that road never before traveled. Will it heed the call?
Above all, the intention here is to ensure a landslide, up-and-down-ballot victory in November 2020 for the Democrats, for democracy, and, more importantly, for the American people as a whole as we go forward into the 21st century.

Saturday, January 25, 2020

Impeachment Screechment

The crows on our street are conducting their own punditry and analysis of the trial of the president and clearly making about as much sense of it and with as much decorum as are the cable news networks.

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Science and Spirituality: What is Reality?

In a recent online conversation I participated in, a debate arose concerning what was science and what was metaphysical or spiritual and therefore outside the realm of science and rational discussion. Here are some points I made in the course of that conversation:

Saturday, September 7, 2019

From Separation to Interbeing: A Cultural Transmutation


The shift of humanity’s mindset or worldview from one of separation to one of interbeing will of necessity involve, accordingly, a transmutation of our whole cultural ethos, that is, our understanding of what’s the morally right way to behave and do things and what’s the morally wrong way to behave and do things.

The paradigm of separation is what has resulted in fear, scarcity, and zero-sum calculus being at the very foundation of the structures and rules of the game of our economic and financial institutions and transactions, of politics and government (as the way we make collective decisions), and of social organizations and relationships. A paradigm of interbeing, on the other hand, implies that love, abundance, and positive-sum calculus must perforce be foundational to a transmutational redesign of our political, economic, and social institutions as the old structures and rules of the game will no longer make any sense.