Disaster Opens the World’s Heart As I write, the world is pouring out its heart to the survivors of the Haiti earthquake.  I watch, stunned at the magnitude of the devastation and awed by the magnitude of the generosity this tragedy has elicited. Something about natural disasters brings out the best in people. Perhaps this is because we would want others to treat us with compassion were we the ones in desperate need. Having worked with people closely as a psychiatric nurse for the past forty years, I have come to know one thing:  human beings want to be known.  We want to be seen and treated with compassion.  This is why giving to Haiti is so important and why it was so important during Katrina, and during the Tsunami of 2004 and other disasters.  But what is not often appreciated is that humans want to be known and seen during conflict, and when they are in deep turmoil. We Cannot See the Other as Human During Conflict We seem to forget this during conflict. Perhaps it has to do with the stormy emotions roiling around inside of us: rage, hatred, revenge.  In the midst of conflict our opponent, who may have been a friend before now becomes an enemy.  He or she becomes other.  Their humanity is gone.  This is true as well of people we have decided we don’t like, those who hold different political, religious or social viewpoints from our own.

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Americans Played for Suckers Frank Rich’s column, Tiger Woods, Person of the Year in the New York Times is a brilliant dissection of how  Americans  have been scammed by con artists of every stripe from Bernie Madoff to Ken Lay to real estate agents who brokered bad mortgages.  He draws dots between apparently unconnected social events and ends with President Obama’s current political plight.  Many Americans are disenchanted with him because they have been hyped and spun one too many times. A Con Artist is Nothing Without an Easy Mark How is it that we have been taken in so easily and so often? We need to look more deeply at ourselves, and ask why we have been conned so many times.  There is some connection here, I think, between our ability to be truthful with ourselves and our ability to create a more peaceful nation and world. When someone lies to you, whether it’s your cheating spouse or some flimflam huckster selling gew-gaws, we know deep down in our guts that we are being lied to.   It may be a voice in your head that says, “He/she is lying to me,” or it may be more subtle, a feeling of unease somewhere in your body, but something inside is telling you, “Something is wrong here.” Silencing the Voice of Truth Within This is our inner truth-meter in action.  It’s trying to tell us to listen, to take action. The problem comes when we ignore the promptings of this inner truth teller.  We suppress the message of our inner self because we have some fantasy, need, or old belief that we have been taught about how we ought to behave, which conflicts with the promptings of the truth teller.  And so we betray ourselves, give in and buy the house with the big mortgage we can’t afford or that get-rich quick scheme the investment salesman is touting.

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The Partisan Divide in Our Country Worsens The first signs of the current partisan divide occurred during the 2008 election.  I hoped that division would go away once candidate Obama became President.  That didn’t happen, and within months the divisive ranting grew from a rumble to a roar.  How did the joy of the victory on election night turn so quickly into dark and vicious rhetoric? From the birther movement to the Tea Parties to the popularity of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, I tried helplessly to understand what was going.  Mostly I was just scared.  The notes of hysteria in the rhetoric, the barely suppressed racism, and the ever-present possibility of violence terrified me.  Having lived through three assassinations in the 1960’s and seen a nation divided by the Vietnam War, those bitter days were and are still vivid for me.  I did not want to see blood in the streets again. A Win-Win Solution Appears in the Transpartisan Alliance I was familiar with the Transpartisan Alliance, a group that has been working for several years to unite Americans across political divides. TA seeks to include all positions and points of view with the underlying premise that all perspectives are needed in order to find win-win solutions. Our current politics is completely saturated with a win-lose, attack/fight approach that is exhausting to participants and to the public. Having focused their work on the national level for some time, TA is now shifting its attention to grassroots political organizing.   When the first Seattle TA meeting was held in October 2009, I was present.

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Returning after Nine Months Absence Peace By Design is back.  I am back. It is good to write those words.  I stopped writing this blog in March 2009.  I did not know If I would ever write again.  I only knew I was bone-tired and could not go on.    I no longer knew what peace was or how to achieve it.  How dare I write about it from that weary place? Where have I been last nine months? Good question!  I worked at my job as a psychiatric nurse but the rest of my life was up for re-invention.  Not working actively at peace, and specifically, not writing, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  The critical voices in my head shrieked  that I should be writing now! As if I, single-handedly, could save the planet with my writing.  Could it be that resting was more important than writing?

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Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy. Working with Time. Directed and Edited by Thomas Riedelsheimer. Director of Photography: Mr. Riedelsheimer. (2001).

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Name Calling Frenzy After President’s Speech to Congress In the middle of the worst financial crisis in memory, President Obama gave a powerful and masterful speech to Congress and the American people last week. The speech received rave reviews from American citizens. Yet since the speech Republican leaders and media figures have been ranting and issuing calls for revolution and calling the President every name in the book. The rhetoric verges on hysteria. Name Calling From Both Republicans and Democrats–Why? What is going on here?

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Stop Trying to Fix the Economic System:  Re-invent It The world’s economic system is in free fall.  President Obama and his team are hastily applying fixes, hoping they will work, as are world leaders, but no one really knows how to put humpty-dumpty together again.  This started in the U.S. with a mortgage crisis. The first reaction of the Bush administration was to bail-out Wall Street.  It has only occurred to a few that a complete re-invention of our whole economic system is needed. Now is the moment to create a system that works for everyone. David Korten’s New Book is a Must-Read David Korten  has written a new book called Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth (Berrett-Koehler Publishers: San Francisco, CA, 2009), a must read for those of us studying current fiscal events.  This book is particularly important for those starting to see the relationship of money to violence and wondering how to create a sustainable planet, one where people are free to love each other, where everyone can grow into a ripe old age. Wall Street Creates Phantom Wealth–Let it Go With advanced degrees in business from Stanford, and years of experience in business strategy and economics, Korten knows what he is talking about.  The central piece of his thinking is that Wall Street creates phantom wealth.  The wealth the financial industry creates is hollow; it is not based on anything real in the world.  A giant house of cards, built up over the past thirty to forty years has suddenly collapsed.  While large numbers of people in that industry enriched themselves and lived like kings, middle and lower class Americans, and others like us around the world paid dearly for those luxurious lifestyles.

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A Terrible Love of War by James Hillman. The Penguin Press: New York. 2004. The Profound and Terrible Love of War This is one of the most unsettling and important books I have read in a long time.  The book begins with a scene from the movie Patton where Patton walks among a field of burnt tanks and dead men, kisses a dying officer and says, “I love it. God help me I do love it so. I love it more than my life.”  Hillman declares if we would grasp how men could actually love war, it must first be understood.

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Need for Enemies Keeps War in Place Why do we love war so much? I have struggled to understand war most of my life.  If something  was so horrific you would think human beings would stop doing it, but we keep going back for more. I keep returning to the issue of enemy for without an enemy wars would not take place at all. What is it about us that we have to have an enemy? Does this start with monsters under the bed in childhood? As we grow up  we divide the world into good guys and bad guys, the ones who are with us and against us.

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From Celebration to Discord Watching the nation’s legislators slug it out over the stimulus package in Washington D.C. the past week has been painful.  In the end they will cobble something together but it will not be a bill that will do what needs to be done to get Americans working again. Obama’s election and inauguration were one of the highest points of celebration this nation has ever seen. Now we have descended into fighting.  What is going on? Lessons from My Own Life So I step back and ask myself, “What’s this about?”  I only begin to get it when I  look at my own life.  I have been working incredibly hard at two jobs while I also write a blog about peace, the passion of my life, and try to nurture a business in the free hours I have left.  I notice that things in my life are breaking down: my car, my computer, my health.

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