You are One, under the stars.

That’s it… and look upon this moment. Savor it! Rejoice with great gladness! Great gladness! Remember it always, for you are joined by it. You are One, under the stars. Remember it well, then… this night, this great victory. So that in the years ahead, you can say, ‘I was there that night, with Arthur, the King!’ For it is the doom of men that they forget.

- Merlin, Excalibur

Many thanks to an old friend for passing this along:

Who is this American warrior?

Letter to a friend:

As you have rightly intuited, the inflammatory politics is merely symptomatic of a larger crisis — the end of the time we know and the beginning of another — as presaged by war, famine, fire, flood and reality TV.

This just in:

NATIONAL (NBC ) – Does the financial crisis have you feeling stressed out? Well, you’re not alone.

A newly released survey by the American Psychological Association shows the declining economy is causing stress levels to skyrocket.

The annual report takes a look at the stress level of Americans, and this year, stress is on the rise.

As things get worse on Wall Street, it seems Americans are hitting the wall. They’re stressed out and letting it show.

Dr. Katherine Nordal, the Executive Director for Professional Practice, says they have “irritability, depression, sleeplessness, problems concentrating…”

A new survey by the American Psychological Association finds eight out of ten Americans say the economy is now a significant source of stress.

Almost half say their stress has increased in the past year and they are now increasingly worried about their ability to provide even their families basic needs.

Dr. Nordal says, “What we’re seeing is more and more people coming in because they are more stressed about financial situations, having homes foreclosed on.”

According to the survey, women are being hit the hardest, feeling more stress than men about money, the economy, job stability, housing costs and health problems.

Since I’m the canary in the coal mine when it comes to stress, I can tell you with an uncertain amount of authority that exercise, rest, vitamins, meditation, prayer, soothing music and talking things over with trusted friends are all terrific for smoothing you out. Humor, where appropriate, can also work wonders.

That said, the sheer numbers of wobbling blobs of bobbling blubber among us — I speak, of course, of our fellow Americans — tell us that not everyone “gets” this. We therefore have a lot on our plate. Not as much as them, but you see my point.

The foregoing does not cover all those who resort to drugs and alcohol, of course, who can be counted upon to spiral out into all sorts of lunacy, not all of them comical.

You can, again, mightily empower yourself, being such a good ear and wise counsel, by helping others at this time of crisis, always bearing in mind the final temptation.

Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:
Temptation shall not come in this kind again.
The last temptation is the greatest treason
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

My love to you and the gang!

Our transcendent splendor,

Brian J. Flanagan

To all our men and women in uniform …

The Gratitude Campaign

I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. We have too much water in some regions of the world, too little in others.

We need to build an aquatic equivalent of the information, transportation and electrification grids to manage the flow of water.

Otherwise, climate change will continue to accelerate, along with all its attendant death, destruction and evangelical dementia:

• California burning.
• Climate change and Darfur
• This guy thinks it’s false, ergo it must be true…

The situation these people face is utterly deplorable. No wonder the militants are up in arms.

Who among us has known such misery? (Aside from Katrina victims, I mean.)

Palestinians Begin Returning To Devastated Lebanon Camp – washingtonpost.com

I admire George Soros. He passes as a philosopher among businessmen and his Open Society Institute has done great good in the world.

In college, I avidly read Karl Popper’s masterful work on The Open Society and Its Enemies. In brief, an open society sustains a free market for ideas and their unfettered expression. A closed society tries to stifle same for reasons religious, political and/or ideological.

We are an open society on good days. China is not. The USSR was not. And neither, apparently, is the Huffington Post, where the following item appeared the other day:

Dept. of Misdirection: With Iraq a Disaster, GOP Goes Crazy Over a Newspaper Ad

I attempted to reply in their house blog that Soros had seen fascism up close in his youth — and that perhaps this early scarring had something to do with the ad targeting Petraeus, which was remarkably tone deaf and tellingly juvenile.

I argued, quietly and calmly, that to call the Iraq war a disaster does not make it so. That, to fill a bubble with the refrain does not make it so, though it may deafen us to what we might otherwise hear.

I stated that the left had acted to balance the right, that our soldiers were coming home, that we can all take a measure of comfort in the implications.

That the war is over, that it ended the moment Al Qaeda began to attack the Iraqis. (Would that all our enemies were so stupid.)

I reminded that the Iraqis, their neighbors and the rest of the world are now free of Saddam & Sons. That Iraq has held elections, forged a constitution, and created a fledgling democracy.

It was too much. They didn’t want to hear it. They refused to air it. They declined to give a reason why. (I asked.)

None of which is important. Except insofar as it highlights a larger picture, wherein the left & right continue to shout past one another, neither hearing what the other has to say — and so unwittingly limiting their audiences, preaching to the choir, filling their echo chambers with sound and fury that comes to stand in for original thought and authentic emotion.

We all suffered a major trauma six years ago. The word, ‘trauma,’ is related to the German traum, meaning ‘dream.’ Those who have been traumatized behave as though they continue to relive a nightmare wherefrom they cannot awaken, often thrashing about in an effort to call attention to their plight.

I want to wake both houses and alert them to the dangers within and without. While we squabble among ourselves, the world moves on.

Israel has just now bombed Syria, on suspicion of nuclear activity abetted by N Korea.

France is talking about war with Iran.

The political structure of Pakistan is wobbling.

The polar ice caps are crumbling.

Our economy gives evidence of another meltdown.

Our people are putting on lard like they expect an extended privation.

Our homeless children are showing up on porn sites everywhere.

Millions more have no health insurance and meanwhile a billion dollars no longer qualifies you at Forbes.

Wake up.

Occupation 101

 ”Let the winds of doctrine blow me.” (Milton)

Conservatism is not, strictly speaking, synonymous with stupidity. Nor is liberalism, properly understood, a metaphor for perversion.

Edmund Burke was a conservative and he was no dummy. Gandhi liberated an entire people and he is no doubt on a fast track at the Vatican.

Conservatives wish to preserve that which is best in our traditions, including freedom of speech — which was once a radically liberal cause.

Liberals want to enlarge the sphere of our best traditions, to afford the protection of law to those whom conservatives would prefer to exploit, if not own outright. In order to do so, they are perfectly willing to shout you down.

I was watching a liberal program last night. It was all about the burgeoning Arab media, a field wherein Al Jazeera is clearly out in front. I learned that a conservative “think tank” had succeeded in banning Al Jazeera from US airwaves.

“Brilliant!” I thought. “Surely peace and understanding between our peoples can only be served by fostering ignorance of them on our side. Those consultants are worth their weight in gold. Surely the framers of our Constitution did not intend for freedom of speech to be extended to the heathen, who have no understanding of the liberties enshrined in that document.”

Satisfied with my analysis, I turned to Fox News, where I learned the most recent wrinkle surrounding the death of a prominent bimbo with remarkable knockers.

“How could the story become more sordid?” I wondered, though not for long.

I was watching a local cable program the other day. An author was in town, reading from his new book. He was bright, funny, amiable — the sort of guy many might enjoy having over for a beer.

His works were all political in one way or another, he said, adding that what Americans fear is the cost of health care, not terrorists. “I mean, come on,” he said.

His entire argument consisted of that one ad hominem.

The next day the news broke about the FBI arresting a nest of bad guys in Florida, who appear to have been planning on blowing up the Sears Tower.

Coincidentally, the men in custody are poor, dark and disenfranchised — akin to their foreign counterparts, they appear to be buffoons in search of explosives.

That got me thinking. About how much I love Bruce Springsteen, George Clooney, PBS, the BBC and all my friends who oppose the war. And how much I don’t want them running the Pentagon. But how their hearts are ultimately in the right place.

Then I got to thinking about the differences in temper between those on the right and those on the left. And how those differences often seem to come down to the division between the hard-headed and the soft-hearted, as explicated by William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience, specifically Lectures XIV and XV, where he writes about the value of saintliness:

We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess.

The powers of darkness have systematically taken advantage of them. The whole modern scientific organization of charity is a consequence of the failure of simply giving alms. The whole history of constitutional government is a commentary on the excellence of resisting evil, and when one cheek is smitten, of smiting back and not turning the other cheek also.

You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.

And yet you are sure, as I am sure, that were the world confined to these hard-headed, hard-hearted, and hard-fisted methods exclusively, were there no one prompt to help a brother first, and find out afterwards whether he were worthy; no one willing to drown his private wrongs in pity for the wronger’s person; no one ready to be duped many a time rather than live always on suspicion; no one glad to treat individuals passionately and impulsively rather than by general rules of prudence; the world would be an infinitely worse place than it is now to live in. The tender grace, not of a day that is dead, but of a day yet to be born somehow, with the golden rule grown natural, would be cut out from the perspective of our imaginations.

The saints, existing in this way, may, with their extravagances of human tenderness, be prophetic. Nay, innumerable times they have proved themselves prophetic. Treating those whom they met, in spite of the past, in spite of all appearances, as worthy, they have stimulated them to BE worthy, miraculously transformed them by their radiant example and by the challenge of their expectation.

[...]

World of light from which all brightness shines
You have that world’s illuminating eyes.
These sad eyes in which you always dance
These eyes are agitated eyes.

sufi-mystic.net/index4.htm

O Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace!
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is discord, harmony.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sorrow, joy.

Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.