Dealing with things that cannot be cured

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I have done what was mine to do.  May Christ teach you what is yours.

St Francis of Assisi

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

Friedrich Nietzsche

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday

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Old bones creak

The pain is moderate, but unremitting

The lilac on the porch

Nursed through many a summer’s drought

Looks dead

My country is gone, washed away by a flash flood 

of abused power, corruption, hate, racism, and greed

destroyed

the pain in the world is no moderate, but is unremitting

the grief in Nepal and Tibet, where over 6000 souls

are dead or missing

and communities lie buried in mud

destroyed

while the world moves on, already forgetting

forgetting as they also forget Gaza

and the tens of thousands killed

as they forget the 20,000 children gone

As they forget the children killed by the US

In Iran

And the children in Ukraine

My pathetic sufferings are nothing.

Nothing

Nothing

Compared to the pain caused by those

Addicted to wealth and power

As the devastation created by those empty shells

Who cannot figure out

That more money and more power will not ease their soul pain

Which is unremitting

Trump, Hegseth, Putin, Netanyahu, Kim

And there are others.

Smaller tyrants

Abusive spouses, rapers, 

The corrupt rich like Russel Vought, Peter Thiel, Howard Lutnick

I suspect their pain too, if they allow themselves to feel it

Is greater than mine

And pain, untransformed

Is transmitted

Passed on

So what do I now do

With this life

What is mine to do?

Do I shrivel up, like my lilac

Do I let the hate defeat me, and make me small?

Trump small?

Hegseth small?

Or do I believe in spring?

In resurrection?

In love?

What is my job?

Perhaps, perhaps,

It is to create a free and friendly space

To be a person who passes on

Not the hate and the need for domination of MAGA

But the love of Jesus (the Christ)

A love that extends to all

A love that transforms

That seems foolish and puny.

Even as I write it

But then Jesus on the cross

Seemed foolish and weak too

God’s ways are truly not our ways.

So let me live this day,

Not angry, not cruel

Not filled with hate

Not retributive

Not hopeless

Let me live hope

For hope is only truly hope

When it is lived (thank you, Mitri Rahib)

For that is what

That is perhaps all

I can do