"Any Religion That Needs Fear To Thrive Is Bad Religion"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/02/religion-that-needs-fear-to.html

"Bad Religion: A Compendium"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/04/bad-religion-compendium.html

Good Religion And Bad Religion
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/02/bad-religion-and-good-religion.html

"Terrorism And The Other Religions"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/04/terrorism-and-other-religions-juan-cole.html

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts On "Too Pure Principles" And The Collapse Of Conservatism

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/02/compendium-of-best-pax-posts-on-too.html

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts: 
What's Wrong With American Conservatism?
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/04/compendium-of-best-pax-posts-whats.html

Retired General Confronts Chaplains On LGBT Rights: 
“Make Room at the Table or Get Out" 

My friends, remember the name and words of rare courage of a retired Army 3 star General and be prepared to be astonished, if not thunderstruck, with pride and hope.

Allow me to please recount for you the stunning saga and unadulterated glory of what this General recently said to his audience of Army chaplains assembled at a military base (Redstone Arsenal) in the heart of Dixie (Alabama) no less.

First let’s set the proper scene for the drama of truth-to-power telling to follow. Martin Luther King Jr. would be so proud. Gandhi would be equally as thrilled.

As the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), the only group driven solely by the fight to secure church-state separation, for both the religious and nonreligious, in the United States Armed Forces, we’re usually inundated by disheartening news regarding the terrifying state of our Constitution and its sacrosanct promise of religious liberty as it relates to our service members. MRFF presently represents over 42,200 armed forces personnel and, amazingly, about 96% of them are practicing Christians. Further, for the record, MRFF also proudly represents 906 LGBT active duty military members.

Much of this adverse pressure and prejudice versus religious (and non-religious) liberty revolves around the increasingly troubling role of the military chaplaincy, which is absolutely riddled with fundamentalist Evangelical Christian extremists who have ceaselessly raised a phenomenally false hue and cry about some fictitious “war on Christianity” within the military.

Any examination of this malevolent myth will quickly reveal that militant Christian dominionist officers and chaplains are in fact waging a “War” against their helpless subordinates and those they were meant to counsel, respectively. Indeed, from Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan to the mandatory nuclear ethics briefings at Vandenberg Air Force Baseon California’s central coast, and nearly every other U.S. military installation imaginable around the globe, we’ve seen an unbroken chain of scandalous violations of the most basic Constitutional religious rights of our countless Sailors, Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, Cadets, Midshipmen, National Guard and Reserve personnel, Coast Guard men and women and Veterans. In many cases, even top brass officers are explicitly implicated in this egregious, systematic defiling of the No Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights as well as the No Religious Test mandates of Clause 3, Article VI of the U.S. Constitution.

Unfortunately, the military chaplaincy has played a special role in this civil rights tragedy, both actively and by deafening silence, especially when perniciously upholding anti-LGBTQ bigotry as some cherished faux “religious right.” In April of this year, a USAF Chaplain was crowned as his unit’s Company Grade Officer of the Year at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton, Ohio despite his open, abominable espousing of theological homophobiawhereby he actually describes HIV as a  “due penalty” for “detestable and abominable” acts of same-sex love. Indeed, MRFF has just been informed that Army National Guard Chaplain (Captain) Michael Maccabee Collins has taken to social media to urge his fellow servicemembers to burn a rainbow-striped U.S. flag symbolizing LGBTQ equality that was posted at Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, AZ. 

Of course those are just a mere two, among countless, similar violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in the fraudulent name of “religious freedom". This pair of abominable examples is just a mere tacit taste for the reader of a hateful movement of brazen bigotry within the Department of Defense. MRFF has repeatedly called on the Pentagon toexpeditiously purge such human reprobates from the military chaplaincy.

Thus, it came as an incredibly uplifting blast of clean, fresh Constitutional oxygen when the August 12, 2015 issue of Army News published an article titled “Chaplains Valued For Their Service As Moral Compass” which featured a talk to chaplains given by Retired Army Lt. Gen. Jim Pillsbury. Let me make it clear from the outset that the good General is obviously very much a devout practicing Christian himself and his words spring from the foundations of his deep and abiding Christian faith. The reader will quickly see the ironclad consonance of beliefs between America’s treasured, secular values of tolerance and respect, which are those espoused by the former Lt. General, and MRFF’s bedrock Constitutional mission itself:

While most chaplains have a positive impact on Soldiers, Pillsbury said that, as a whole,the Army's chaplain corps has not been a leader of change. In the 1950s, when the Army began integrating segregated black Soldiers into its units, and throughout the '60s and '70s as integration was fully realized, chaplains did not take lead in making that happen, he said. In the 1970s and '80s, as the Army integrated women into its ranks, chaplains were again not at the forefront of change. And, now, as the Army works to include gays and other gender differences, the chaplain corps has been silent, he said.

"Two things you have to wrestle with, and that is your Army oath and your strong beliefs," Pillsbury said. 

The retired three-star general went on to describe the sanctuary at his church where his pastor has two chairs and one table near the pulpit. The two chairs represent opposites -- black and white, Republican and democrat, boy and girl, peacemaker and warrior, straight and gay -- and the table represents inclusiveness.

"Do you have room in your heart for those who are different from what your beliefs are? I firmly believe the intention of our Lord is for us to read the Bible and interpret the Bible based on our relationship with the Lord. The word is not black and white. That is why Jesus told parables," Pillsbury said.

"You can make room at the table or you can get out. I know all of you have wrestled with that." With a strong faith in the Lord and a strong faith in the nation, Pillsbury said the U.S. was built on controversy, inclusion and the principles of acceptance. 

"Jesus was one for inclusion. I hate to see our nation split, and if our military splits our nation splits because our military is the rock for our ethics," he said.

"I believe God made everybody for a reason, and there are two things we should do: Love the Lord and love our neighbors." 

Wow! Double Wow! There you have it folks. Lt. General Pillsbury’s moving and sagacious words are PRECISELY the type of religious counseling which is badly needed from the military chaplaincy. Specifically what is so desperately required is the type of good faith counseling from these very same chaplains which embraces and nurtures the armed forces' primary compelling governmental interest of maximizing/optimizing military readiness and mission accomplishment, unit cohesion, good order, morale, discipline, health, and safety.

Many chaplains already accomplish this goal with distinction and excellence. However, many fail to do so. Failure can never be an option here.

As MRFF has long screamed into this opposing hurricane of prejudice, anything less than what this courageous and valiant retired General has just so perfectly articulated simply serves as a grievous insult and universal assault to the myriad sacrifices made by our fallen and wounded service members. Indeed, it fatally fouls the solemn oaths they swore to the United States Constitution and deliberately desecrates American national security itself.

Bravo, Lt. General Pillsbury! Words matter but silence betrays. And the gravitas of your honorable words now matter most, sir!

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is up against well-funded extremist religious organizations. Your donations allow us to continue our fight in the courts and in the media to fight for separation of church and state in the U.S. military. Please make a fully tax-deductible donation today at helpbuildthewall.org.

Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, Esq. is founder and president of the 7-time Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), an honor graduate of the Air Force Academy, and a former J.A.G. in the U.S. Air Force. He served as a White House counsel in the Reagan Administration and as the Committee Management Officer of the "Iran-Contra" Investigation. He is also the former General Counsel to H. Ross Perot and Perot Systems Corporation. His two sons, daughter-in-law, son-in law, and brother-in-law are also graduates of USAFA. In December 2012, Defense News named Mikey one of the 100 Most Influential People in U.S. Defense. He is the author of "With God On Our Side" (2006, St. Martin's Press) and "No Snowflake in an Avalanche" (2012, Vireo).

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO MIKEY WEINSTEIN ON THU AUG 13, 2015 AT 10:27 AM PDT.

ALSO REPUBLISHED BY MILITARY COMMUNITY MEMBERS OF DAILY KOS, LGBT KOS COMMUNITY, LGBT RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS, PROGRESSIVE ATHEISTS, AND STREET PROPHETS .

Pentagon under fire for guidelines that liken war reporters to 'belligerents'

Critics warn that new legal manual makes reporting on conflict more difficult and more dangerous - and could be used by repressive regimes to justify their own attacks on press freedom

"Bidding adieu to anti-death penalty activist Steve Dear" 

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/bidding-adieu-to-anti-death-penalty-activist-steve-dear/Content?oid=4610239

Steve Dear added 12 new photos to the album: Oops and the Jazz Pilgrims by Alan Archibald and Steve Dear.
54 mins ·

If I had known it was called the Friday Night Jazz Orchestra I would never have gone.
We renamed our little quartet Oops and the Jazz Pilgrims. I’m Oops. It’s the word I said most last night.
Decades ago my guitar playing kind of hit a plateau at “Louie Louie” and “I Saw Her Standing There.” I have hardly played guitar or drums since 2014. I walked in last night and heard Chuck Holton and Dan Newnam on piano and bass, respectively, and almost left out of respect. I was expecting Beatles and Who, not melodious Herbie Hancock. In my experience, the better the musicians the more gracious, open, and generous they are. I soon discovered that Chuck and Dan are two of the best musicians I’ve ever played with.
The drummer didn’t show up. There was no other guitar player there.
Mwaaahahaha!
We did “One After 909” five times longer than the Beatles and I sort of kept up. I’d planned to stay until 10 p.m., 45 minutes. At 2:30 a.m. I left. We did a 20-minute version of “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” and “Drive My Car,” “Nowhere Man,” “Dock of the Bay,” “I Can See Clearly Now,” and a jazzy “For What It’s Worth.”
It was all jazzy. Elvis Costello’s “Alyson” on drums and an extended drums-piano jazz duet at 2:15 a.m. for which I was too tired to know I should not attempt to accompany this great jazz musician on a jazz improv.
“I call Chuck’s playing out-of-the-box jazz… called jazz only because there’s nothing else to call it,” says my friend and singer Alan Archibald, who encouraged me to join in last night.
Alan sang with such power he didn’t need a mic even over Chuck’s piano, the bass, and my loud drumming and Rickenbacker 350.
“We humans are ordained at our best -- whether literally or figuratively -- to find ways to be soaringly harmonic,” said Alan.
You can soar on one chord, on one note. There were moments when we soared.
May you find ways, and people, to soar with.
— in Durham, North Carolina.

+8

IN DEFENSE OF THE COCKROACH

BY NICOLA TWILLEY

Leisure, the Basis of Culture: An Obscure German Philosopher's Timely 1948 Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Human Dignity in a Culture of Workaholism

"We get such a kick out of looking forward to pleasures and rushing ahead to meet them that we can’t slow down enough to enjoy them when they come," Alan Watts observed in 1970, aptly declaring us "a civilization which suffers from chronic disappointment." Two millennia earlier, Aristotle asserted: "This is the main question, with what activity one's leisure is filled."

The original meaning of the concept of "leisure" has practically been forgotten in today's leisure-less culture of "total work": in order to win our way to a real understanding of leisure, we must confront the contradiction that rises from our overemphasis on that world of work.

[...]

The very fact of this difference, of our inability to recover the original meaning of "leisure," will strike us all the more when we realize how extensively the opposing idea of "work" has invaded and taken over the whole realm of human action and of human existence as a whole.

As an ethicist of independence, this Antisthenes had no feeling for cultic celebration, which he preferred attacking with "enlightened" wit; he was "a-musical" (a foe of the Muses: poetry only interested him for its moral content); he felt no responsiveness to Eros (he said he "would like to kill Aphrodite"); as a flat Realist, he had no belief in immortality (what really matters, he said, was to live rightly "on this earth"). This collection of character traits appears almost purposely designed to illustrate the very "type" of the modern "workaholic."

What is normal is work, and the normal day is the working day. But the question is this: can the world of man be exhausted in being "the working world"? Can the human being be satisfied with being a functionary, a "worker"? Can human existence be fulfilled in being exclusively a work-a-day existence?

The code of life in the High Middle Ages [held] that it was precisely lack of leisure, an inability to be at leisure, that went together with idleness; that the restlessness of work-for-work's-sake arose from nothing other than idleness. There is a curious connection in the fact that the restlessness of a self-destructive work-fanaticism should take its rise form the absence of a will to accomplish something.

[...]

Idleness, for the older code of behavior, meant especially this: that the human being had given up on the very responsibility that comes with his dignity... The metaphysical-theological concept of idleness means, then, that man finally does not agree with his own existence; that behind all his energetic activity, he is not at one with himself; that, as the Middle Ages expressed it, sadness has seized him in the face of the divine Goodness that lives within him.

The opposite of acedia is not the industrious spirit of the daily effort to make a living, but rather the cheerful affirmation by man of his own existence, of the world as a whole, and of God -– of Love, that is, from which arises that special freshness of action, which would never be confused by anyone [who has] any experience with the narrow activity of the "workaholic."

[...]

Leisure, then, is a condition of the soul – (and we must firmly keep this assumption, since leisure is not necessarily present in all the external things like "breaks,""time off,""weekend,""vacation," and so on – it is a condition of the soul) – leisure is precisely the counterpoise to the image for the "worker."

Against the exclusiveness of the paradigm of work as activity ... there is leisure as "non-activity"– an inner absence of preoccupation, a calm, an ability to let things go, to be quiet.

Leisure is a form of that stillness that is necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear. Such stillness is not mere soundlessness or a dead muteness; it means, rather, that the soul's power, as real, of responding to the real – a co-respondence, eternally established in nature – has not yet descended into words. Leisure is the disposition of perceptive understanding, of contemplative beholding, and immersion – in the real.

In leisure, there is ... something of the serenity of "not-being-able-to-grasp," of the recognition of the mysterious character of the world, and the confidence of blind faith, which can let things go as they will.

[...]

Leisure is not the attitude of the one who intervenes but of the one who opens himself; not of someone who seizes but of one who lets go, who lets himself go, and "go under," almost as someone who falls asleep must let himself go... The surge of new life that flows out to us when we give ourselves to the contemplation of a blossoming rose, a sleeping child, or of a divine mystery – is this not like the surge of life that comes from deep, dreamless sleep?

Against the exclusiveness of the paradigm of work as effort, leisure is the condition of considering things in a celebrating spirit. The inner joyfulness of the person who is celebrating belongs to the very core of what we mean by leisure... Leisure is only possible in the assumption that man is not only in harmony with himself ... but also he is in agreement with the world and its meaning. Leisure lives on affirmation. It is not the same as the absence of activity; it is not the same thing as quiet, or even as an inner quiet. It is rather like the stillness in the conversation of lovers, which is fed by their oneness.

Leisure stands opposed to the exclusiveness of the paradigm of work as social function. 

The simple "break" from work – the kind that lasts an hour, or the kind that lasts a week or longer – is part and parcel of daily working life. It is something that has been built into the whole working process, a part of the schedule. The "break" is there for the sake of work. It is supposed to provide "new strength" for "new work," as the word "refreshment" indicates: one is refreshed for work through being refreshed from work. 

Leisure stands in a perpendicular position with respect to the working process... Leisure is not there for the sake of work, no matter how much new strength the one who resumes working may gain from it; leisure in our sense is not justified by providing bodily renewal or even mental refreshment to lend new vigor to further work... Nobody who wants leisure merely for the sake of "refreshment" will experience its authentic fruit, the deep refreshment that comes from a deep sleep.

Leisure is not justified in making the functionary as "trouble-free" in operation as possible, with minimum "downtime," but rather in keeping the functionary human ... and this means that the human being does not disappear into the parceled-out world of his limited work-a-day function, but instead remains capable of taking in the world as a whole, and thereby to realize himself as a being who is oriented toward the whole of existence. 

This is why the ability to be "at leisure" is one of the basic powers of the human soul. Like the gift of contemplative self-immersion in Being, and the ability to uplift one's spirits in festivity, the power to be at leisure is the power to step beyond the working world and win contact with those superhuman, life-giving forces that can send us, renewed and alive again, into the busy world of work... 

In leisure ... the truly human is rescued and preserved precisely because the area of the "just human" is left behind... [But] the condition of utmost exertion is more easily to be realized than the condition of relaxation and detachment, even though the latter is effortless: this is the paradox that reigns over the attainment of leisure, which is at once a human and super-human condition.

How to Begin Each Day: A Recipe for Unshakable Sanity and Inner Peace from Marcus Aurelius

"Take everything that’s bright and beautiful in you and introduce it to the shadow side of yourself," the wise and wonderful Parker Palmer counseled the young in his superbNaropa Unviersity commencement address. Only by accepting our own interior contradictions and dualities, he argued, are we liberated to put the shadow’s power in service of the good in the exterior world.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood or birth, but of the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.

Anam Cara and the Essence of True Friendship: Poet and Philosopher John O'Donohue on the Beautiful Ancient Celtic Notion of Soul-Friend

Aristotle laid out the philosophical foundation of friendship as the art of holding up a mirror to each other's souls. Two millennia later, Emerson contemplated its two pillars of truth and tenderness. Another century later, C.S. Lewis wrote:"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."

In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the fascinating ideas here is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is anam cara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and cara is the word for friend. So anam cara in the Celtic world was the “soul friend.” In the early Celtic church, a person who acted as a teacher, companion, or spiritual guide was called an anam cara. It originally referred to someone to whom you confessed, revealing the hidden intimacies of your life. With the anam carayou could share your inner-most self, your mind and your heart. This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging. When you had an anam cara, your friendship cut across all convention, morality, and category. You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the “friend of your soul.” The Celtic understanding did not set limitations of space or time on the soul. There is no cage for the soul. The soul is a divine light that flows into you and into your Other. This art of belonging awakened and fostered a deep and special companionship.

In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person’s soul... This art of love discloses the special and sacred identity of the other person. Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person’s individuality and soul. Love alone is literate in the world of origin; it can decipher identity and destiny.

The heart learns a new art of feeling. Such friendship is neither cerebral nor abstract. In Celtic tradition, the anam cara was not merely a metaphor or ideal. It was a soul-bond that existed as a recognized and admired social construct. It altered the meaning of identity and perception. When your affection is kindled, the world of your intellect takes on a new tenderness and compassion... You look and see and understand differently. Initially, this can be disruptive and awkward, but it gradually refines your sensibility and transforms your way of being in the world. Most fundamentalism, greed, violence, and oppression can be traced back to the separation of idea and affection.

The anam cara perspective is sublime because it permits us to enter this unity of ancient belonging.

A friend is a loved one who awakens your life in order to free the wild possibilities within you.

[...]

The one you love, your anam cara, your soul friend, is the truest mirror to reflect your soul. The honesty and clarity of true friendship also brings out the real contour of your spirit.

If you realize how vital to your whole spirit – and being and character and mind and health – friendship actually is, you will take time for it… [But] for so many of us … we have to be in trouble before we remember what’s essential… It’s one of the lonelinesses of humans that you hold on desperately to things that make you miserable and … you only realize what you have when you’re almost about to lose it.

Parker Palmer's Spectacular Commencement Address on the Six Pillars of the Examined Life

In 1974, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford alumnus Chögyam Trungpa founded Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado – a most unusual and emboldening not-for-profit educational institution named after the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa and intended as a 100-year experiment of combining the best methodologies of Western scholarship with the most timeless tenets of Eastern wisdom, fusing academic and experiential learning with contemplative practice. Under the auspices of its Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, founded by Allen Ginsberg, the university hosted a number of lectures and readings by such luminaries as John Cage, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac himself, for all of whom Buddhism was a major influence.

Be reckless when it comes to affairs of the heart.

[...]

What I really mean ... is be passionate, fall madly in love with life. Be passionate about some part of the natural and/or human worlds and take risks on its behalf, no matter how vulnerable they make you. No one ever died saying, “I’m sure glad for the self-centered, self-serving and self-protective life I lived.”

Offer yourself to the world – your energies, your gifts, your visions, your heart – with open-hearted generosity. But understand that when you live that way you will soon learn how little you know and how easy it is to fail.

To grow in love and service, you – I, all of us – must value ignorance as much as knowledge and failure as much as success... Clinging to what you already know and do well is the path to an unlived life. So, cultivate beginner’s mind, walk straight into your not-knowing, and take the risk of failing and falling again and again, then getting up again and again to learn – that’s the path to a life lived large, in service of love, truth, and justice.

As you integrate ignorance and failure into your knowledge and success, do the same with all the alien parts of yourself. Take everything that’s bright and beautiful in you and introduce it to the shadow side of yourself. Let your altruism meet your egotism, let your generosity meet your greed, let your joy meet your grief. Everyone has a shadow... But when you are able to say, “I am all of the above, my shadow as well as my light,” the shadow’s power is put in service of the good. Wholeness is the goal, but wholeness does not mean perfection, it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of your life.

As a person who ... has made three deep dives into depression along the way, I do not speak lightly of this. I simply know that it is true.

As you acknowledge and embrace all that you are, you give yourself a gift that will benefit the rest of us as well. Our world is in desperate need of leaders who live what Socrates called “an examined life.” In critical areas like politics, religion, business, and the mass media, too many leaders refuse to name and claim their shadows because they don’t want to look weak. With shadows that go unexamined and unchecked, they use power heedlessly in ways that harm countless people and undermine public trust in our major institutions.

As you welcome whatever you find alien within yourself, extend that same welcome to whatever you find alien in the outer world. I don’t know any virtue more important these days than hospitality to the stranger, to those we perceive as “other” than us.

The old majority in this society, people who look like me, is on its way out. By 2045 the majority of Americans will be people of color... Many in the old majority fear that fact, and their fear, shamelessly manipulated by too many politicians, is bringing us down. The renewal this nation needs will not come from people who are afraid of otherness in race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

Take on big jobs worth doing – jobs like the spread of love, peace, and justice. That means refusing to be seduced by our cultural obsession with being effective as measured by short-term results. We all want our work to make a difference – but if we take on the big jobs and our only measure of success is next quarter’s bottom line, we’ll end up disappointed, dropping out, and in despair.

[...]

Our heroes take on impossible jobs and stay with them for the long haul because they live by a standard that trumps effectiveness. The name of that standard, I think, is faithfulness – faithfulness to your gifts, faithfulness to your perception of the needs of the world, and faithfulness to offering your gifts to whatever needs are within your reach.

The tighter we cling to the norm of effectiveness the smaller the tasks we’ll take on, because they are the only ones that get short-term results... Care about being effective, of course, but care even more about being faithful ... to your calling, and to the true needs of those entrusted to your care.

You won’t get the big jobs done in your lifetime, but if at the end of the day you can say, “I was faithful,” I think you’ll be okay.

Since suffering as well as joy comes with being human, I urge you to remember this: Violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering.

Violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering.

Sometimes we aim that violence at ourselves, as in overwork that leads to burnout or worse, or in the many forms of substance abuse; sometimes we aim that violence at other people – racism, sexism, and homophobia often come from people trying to relieve their suffering by claiming superiority over others.

The good news is that suffering can be transformed into something that brings life, not death. It happens every day. I’m 76 years old, I now know many people who’ve suffered the loss of the dearest person in their lives. At first they go into deep grief, certain that their lives will never again be worth living. But then they slowly awaken to the fact that not in spite of their loss, but because of it, they’ve become bigger, more compassionate people, with more capacity of heart to take in other people’s sorrows and joys. These are broken-hearted people, but their hearts have been broken open, rather than broken apart.

So, every day, exercise your heart by taking in life’s little pains and joys – that kind of exercise will make your heart supple, the way a runner makes a muscle supple, so that when it breaks, (and it surely will,) it will break not into a fragment grenade, but into a greater capacity for love.

If you hold a healthy awareness of your own mortality, your eyes will be opened to the grandeur and glory of life, and that will evoke all of the virtues I’ve named, as well as those I haven’t, such as hope, generosity, and gratitude. If the unexamined life is not worth living, it’s equally true that the unlived life is not worth examining.