I read the political news and contrast it with the beauty around me.
A Photo Respite
Testing
I was speaking with my son who is dealing with some challenging health issues. How do we meet what comes? How do we see this world that Trump and cronies are turning upside down? Life is a series of tests, and we test our response.
And now the days are shorter. This morning, I see stars shining in the sky, beacons prompting us to look within, and bring forth our own light in the dark.
Tomorrow is a huge day, No King’s Day. Today, a friend and I are making signs for the protest though I’ll be at my grandson’s birthday party, where snakes are coming to be viewed and held. Snakes aren’t slimy; they are our friends.
I’m with the Oscar Wilde quote: I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
Let’s prove Oscar Wilde wrong as the country unites in connecting us all as constellations in the sky.
Democracy, Now
Yesterday, with a sold-out crowd, we attended a documentary on Amy Goodman at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. It was inspiring and told with the blazing torch of truth. While the credits rolled, Patty Smith’s powerful song People Have the Power rang out. Tears come even now as I reflect on Amy’s life and the battles she’s fought to defend our democracy. The film isn’t yet out in full release. This was the third showing and it will show tonight at 5:30 at the San Rafael theatre for the MV Film Festival.
Keep your eye out for “Steal This Story, Please.” It’s a non-biased account of what’s gone on in the last 30 years in our country, in our name.
Contrast
On one hand we have Trump and his cronies carrying out the destructive policies of Project 2025 and on the other we have the role model of Dr. Jane Goodall, who passed at 91 years old while on a speaking tour promoting and demonstrating curiosity, generosity, compassion, and courage.
In Marshall, we stayed in a home where a dock partially destroyed in a storm was repaired with new wood. The two woods, old and new, were combined just as our constitution is meant to withstand storms and adapt. Jane Goodall is the example we’re meant to follow, an honoring and recognition of all the creatures and the environment we share.
Geologic Plates
We’re in West Marin, in Marshall, on a house literally on Tomales Bay. I am bathed in the sound of lapping and waved in beauty as I sit on one continental plate and view another across the water.
What a contrast to reading Robert Hubbell today. Here’s an excerpt:
It is about whether Congress will retain its authority under Article I of the Constitution to lay taxes and appropriate funds through legislation. As of October 1, 2025, that remains an open question.
On Wednesday, Trump and his sidekicks announced billions of dollars in “cancellations” of funds lawfully appropriated by Congress. Trump has no authority to cancel those appropriations, but the GOP-controlled Congress is apparently willing to cede its control over the power of the purse—one of its chief constitutional duties.
But it gets worse. Not only does Trump claim the authority to cancel congressional appropriations, he also claims the authority to raise revenue through illegal tariffs.
He goes on and comes to this: If Democrats needed any further evidence that compromise with Trump is foolish, the president began canceling grants and projects in states that did not vote for him in 2024.
Withholding funds appropriated by Congress is unlawful in the first instance. But doing so to exact political revenge is among the most corrupt presidential actions in the history of our republic. The withheld funds do not belong to Donald Trump and should not be used for political purposes. Those funds belong to the United States of America, to be spent as directed by Congress.
Beginnings
Yesterday Trump again showed his true colors to the world at the United Nations.
Given 15 minutes to address the UN General Assembly, he spoke for 57 minutes in a rant that will go down in history as cruel, embarrassing, false, and insane.
Heather Cox Richardson ends her column today with this: The United Nations correspondent for the Associated Press, Farnoush Amiri, reported that “[a] UN official said the UN understands that someone from the president’s party who ran ahead of him inadvertently triggered the stop mechanism on the escalator. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House was operating the teleprompter for Trump.”
We know that those Trump chooses to support and lie to him are incompetent, but who knew they can’t even ride an escalator without stopping it or manage to work a teleprompter. On the other hand, maybe it was purposeful, an underhanded way to stop him now so we can return to the well-thought out and considered values on which the country was founded.
Jimmy Kimmel was returned to us, and ended his beautiful monologue with the hope that the silver lining of this is bringing people from the left, right and center together to speak up for the First Amendment. He said he was touched by the speech that Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, delivered at his memorial on Sunday, in which she said she forgave the man who shot her husband.
“That is an example we should follow. If you believe in the teachings of Jesus, as I do, there it was. … A selfless act of grace, forgiveness from a grieving widow.” Kimmel said. “And if there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that and not this.”
Imagine
I just finished reading Jacinda Ardern’s book A Different Kind of Power.
Even as a child, she asked “Why?”
On March 15, 2019, in Christchurch, New Zealand a terrorist attacked a mosque killing forty-nine people and leaving others in critical condition. He had acquired his weapons legally. Following the response of Australia in 1996 to a mass shooting, where the conservative prime minister of the time, John Howard, moved quickly to ban “pump-action, semiautomatic, and automatic weapons”, New Zealand responded by reforming their gun laws in ten days.
And here we are in the U.S, not responding but instead reversing on the orders of a man who has not fought in any wars, and now decides to change the name of the Defense Department to the Department of War.
Tom Hanks was to be honored by West Point for his work supporting veterans. Thanks to Trump, that’s cancelled because Hanks supported Biden, not him.
Responding to Trump, West Point recently rehung a 20-foot portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee, a West Point graduate who fought to preserve slavery for the Confederacy.
Asking ourselves why, perhaps we can reverse this daily travesty changing history, ethics, compassion, understanding, kindness and morality.
A friend shared that she’s been feeling “like a feeling painting”, with tears flowing easily, and then said as she reaches to receive and honor her inner knowing, “It’s something about being pulled up out of the mud and placed vertically on the earth.
May her words guide us as we align, and listen to Peace Train by Cat Stevens and Imagine by John Lennon.
Freedom
As we await a vote that benefits the super-wealthy, destroys our country with debt, and leads to children starving, each of us must look at what matters.
John Lewis in Across That Bridge wrote:
Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.
Last night I watched a recording of an event put on by the Tergar Institute. Uvinie Lubecki, Ocean Vuong, and Ronan Harrington spoke. I’m inspired by their intelligence and commitment to the world and themselves.
Some notes:
Uvinie: I saw no other way. Purpose is a way of being. It’s how we drink a cup of tea. Awareness, Love and Compassion, lead to connection and wisdom.
Ocean: Develop the voice you already have. Re-read a book like Moby Dick. Understand why it’s a classic. Live the Buddha’s final words: Go forth with earnestness. Try with all your heart. Our youth are afraid of being “cringy”, of shame. Give ourselves permission to fail so there is no shame.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche: Failure is the mother of success.
Ronan: Speak truth to power. Resilience requires balance. Know when to open and close so you don’t ruin your health as he did trying to save the world, and now he recovers from pain and addiction. Resilience requires boundaries.
How We Meet What Comes
The following poem comes from Stefan Laeng who read it at his meditation class on Tuesday. It is by the late great German comedian Hanns Dieter Hüsch (who was born not far from the birthplace of Charlotte Selver, our teacher of Sensory Awareness,). It’s his translation with the German original below.
When the soldiers come
Lure them onto the roof of the dove
Lure them into the nest of the swallow
Lure them into the cave of the lioness
Lure them into the forest of the deer.
Approach them with open hands
Full of bread, and salt, and fruit, and wine
So that they loose their way in the brushwood of your virtues;
So that they get lost in the maze of your friendliness.
Let them be amazed.
Let their generals and presidents be ashamed.
Let their henchmen run aground.
Be a lowland of courtesy
Intelligence be your weapon
Patience be your strength
Love be your narrative
Your silence be your victory
So that the governors marvel greatly.*
* Some of you may recognize this as a biblical reference. Matthew 27:14
In German:
Wenn die Krieger kommen
Look sie auf’s Dach der Taube
Lock sie in’s Nest der Schwalbe
Lock sie in die Höhle der Löwin
Lock sie in den Wald der Rehe.
Geh ihnen entgegen mit offenen Händen
Voll Brot und Salz und Obst und Wein.
Dass sie sich verlaufen im Knüppelholz deiner Tugenden
Dass sie sich verirren im Labyrinth deiner Freundlichkeit.
Mach sie staunen.
Beschäme ihre Generäle und Präsidenten
Lass ihre Handlanger in’s Leere laufen
Sei eine Tiefebene voll Höflichkeit.
Dein Gewehr sei die Klugheit
Deine Kraft sei die Geduld
Deine Geschichte sei die Liebe
Dein Sieg sei dein Schweigen
So dass sich die Landpfleger sehr verwundern.
The Protests Today
I went with a friend to Tam Junction near my home. There were 450-500 of us standing at the freeway exit, so we were seeing people close-up in their cars, coming from north and south. It was an amazing experience, a cacophony of horns honking and people waving and smiling. Traffic was slow so there were literal thank you’s as windows rolled down and children and adults smiled and cheered. Dogs were very interested and supportive. Tears come now as I contemplate the feeling of a unity that unintentionally, and in greed, Trump and his cronies have created.
My friend and I both took naps when we returned to our homes. It was a great deal to absorb, so beautiful and freeing to stand with a group of people and sing, “This land is your land, this land is my land.” Yes, this land is our land. No Kings since 1776.
Now, rested, I open a book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin.
“The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate our awareness, we are expanding the universe.
This expands the scope, not just of the material at our disposal to create form, but of the life we get to live.”
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