This Video captured my heart, and not just because my paternal grandparents emigrated from western Ukraine in the 1920s.  It features a host of folk singer legends singing about the heroism of the Ukrainian people in the face of unimaginable devastation.  If you like this piece - please share it with others.

I read a news story of a Ukrainian woman confronting a Russian soldier, telling him to “put sunflower seeds in your pockets so when you die in Ukraine, at least sunflowers will grow here.”  At first I was impressed with the bravery and the imagery this woman conjured up. In my mind, the soldier was a young man, likely wondering what the hell he was doing invading Ukraine and killing its people. And that was the power of this woman’s image. She was the one planting seeds in the thought process of this fellow, with a clear intent to impress upon him that he may very well die here.
 
As a Quaker, I am conflicted by this war.  It is easy to be against Russian aggression: the bombing of civilian targets, the hegemony, and the greed so grossly on display.  But it is also easy to pray for the efforts of the Ukrainian people: their courage in standing up to an aggressor, their care for each other, their staunch defense of democracy.

I have often struggled with the Quaker Peace testimony, and this war is a good example of why.  I am certainly for Peace – but I am also for self-defense.  While the bible exhorts us to “turn the other cheek” when struck – such an act on the part of Ukraine would have allowed Russia to quickly take over the country and accomplish its imperialistic goals with little cost to the aggressor.

While I support the efforts of Ukraine to defend itself, I also realize that Russian soldiers aren’t really the enemy.  They are victims, as well.   The Russian army is comprised of both conscripted soldiers and professional military volunteers, all of whom were misled on the need and purpose of this invasion by the Russian central government.  In war, everyone is a victim – one way or another.

I keep coming back to the image of giving sunflower seeds to the Russian soldiers.  Perhaps our prayer should be for the soldiers to realize that they don’t need to be fighting in this senseless war and that they can plant sunflower seeds as a sign of peace as they put down their arms and return home.

I come from Russian/Ukrainian heritage.  I know this because I completed one of those ancestry tests and discovered that 42% of my DNA hails from Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Poland.  Me, and my children are proud of this heritage, to the point that all three kids – years ago – went out and together had the words “My Family” tattooed on their bodies in Ukrainian:  MoR-Cim’R

I wish there was a way to send sunflower seeds to the Russian soldiers – who are my family, and to the Ukrainian freedom fighters – who are my family and ask them all to put down their arms and plant seeds of peace. But I understand that peace must rise up from the soul just as a seed must rise up from the dark and nourishing earth in which it is planted.   

It’s pretty clear that the cry for peace won’t be coming from Russian leadership; that it will have to rise up from the Russian people; from the mothers who fear their soldier sons will die in a senseless war; from the young men and women who fear their loved ones will be lost; from the fathers who know the brutality of war and want no part of it for their sons and daughters.

Peace is a seed that is already planted in the soul of each of us.  It is our job to nourish it until its roots grow deep and its stalk grows strong as it thrives in the light of the sun.
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Peace is planted everywhere.  Pray for it to grow.

​She couldn’t wait to tell him
That now a child was growing
An unseen soul was forming
And soon he’d be a father.
 
The world’s on fire, he sighed
The sky is full of dragons.
With trees and cities burning
It’s no time to raise a daughter.
 
The world was always danger
With war and famine looming,
With thieves and wild men roaming,
Yet you and I were born.
 
Because all seems to falter, and
The thought of dragons haunting,
No better time there be than now
To raise a dragon fighter.

I read the above quote in one of the daily meditation emails I receive, and found that it spoke to me. 

Perhaps what appeals to me about the quote is that it mirrors a core Quaker belief: there is that of God within each person.  In my ongoing spiritual journey, I have found that the essence of the divine is found in our hearts; in the world where we walk, and in the people with whom we meet.   The image of an omniscient god who resides in the kingdom of heaven is as alien to my unfolding spirituality as is the worshipping of a sacred golden calf. 

I once had an insight while in contemplative prayer which was this:  Most of the time I walk around unaware of the spirit which surrounds me, yet there are few but precious moments when I become aware that I am swimming in the deep ocean of god; that the light of the divine radiates from every atom in the cosmos like heat radiating off of a black car sitting in the midday sun.

Sometimes during meditation, my mind wonders fiercely and I catch myself struggling to “get it under control.”  And then I laugh at myself and at my futile attempt to catch a light that is already there; one that I can absorb by simply sitting back and basking in its warmth.  The God I know doesn’t hide from me.  The spirit isn’t one that withholds love until I have earned it or that comes and goes for reasons too grand for me to comprehend.  No, the spirit of god is upon me – just as it is upon each of you – just as it is upon the dust that we see drifting through the sunlight.
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God comes to us disguised as our life.  Our job, is to simply say hello.

I had an encounter that made me angry.  And every time I thought about that incident for weeks after, I got angry all over again.  Clearly – a lot of unfinished business here.

The episode occurred as I was picking up my five year old granddaughter from school.  We were parked on the side street adjacent to the school.  We got in the car, and as my wife was in the back seat buckling in our little one, I was preparing to drive away.  A car rolled up next to me just as I turned on my blinker to pull out.  I waited for them to pass, but they pulled directly in front of me and then backed up.  I had my blinker on and I honked my horn as they were backing up – clearly trying to signal that I just needed to pull out.  But the car proceeded to back so closely that I was blocked in.  I honked again and threw up my hands asking – in effect – WTF?

No response.

My inclination was to walk over to the car and ask them to let me out, but knowing my own state of mind and how the other driver didn’t seem to care, I decided that causing a confrontation in front of my granddaughter wasn’t worth it.  So, I sat and fumed. 

What made matters worse was that the car blocking me in was an expensive, Lexus SUV.  So as I simmered in anger, I imagined the owner to be a white, wealthy, and entitled SOB.

Not my most Quakerly moment.

I have since spent time in prayer and reflection trying to understand the seeds of my anger.  Part of it is the anger I inherited from my father who was openly suspicious of anyone in a position of wealth and power.  His anger rested in the fact that his family was made homeless after his father was killed in a coal mine explosion and the coal company evicted his grieving family - a widow with five children - from the company house and cut off credit to the company store.

But there is more going on under the surface with me than the latent anger inherited from my father.  My anger also grew from a sense of powerlessness I felt.  If I wasn’t willing to cause a confrontation, then there was really nothing I could do but sit and seethe and wait for the offending car to leave. 

Another source of anger I identified  was a sense of sorrow for a  loss of community, and of a lack of support for the common good.  I found myself grieving over a way of life that seemed to be swiftly washing away.  Things like civility, honesty, community, common good, respect, caring, democracy, all words that once defined the best of America in the not so distant past, now seem quaint… and meaningless.

As I sat and pondered over this sense of loss, I realized that the words I used to define a longed for past, are the very same words used to describe the same sense of loss also felt by those who so ardently support the movement towards the far right and towards autocracy in America today.  They too feel that the country they knew and love and felt secure in, is being quickly eroded by the “radical left”, by immigrants taking their jobs, by a drug epidemic that ravaged their community, by urban machines that “steal” elections, and so much more.

Ironic isn’t it?  That if one digs deeply into the feelings of angst and anger, be it a farmer from Elroy Wisconsin or a store clerk on Burleigh Street in Milwaukee, we find a common sense of loss of community and a common sense of a loss of power to affect change.

Feelings of anger and powerlessness seem to predominate in our culture at this moment.  Black and Latinx anger certainly were on in the streets during the 500+ protests throughout the summer of 2020.  White anger seems to have driven the failed coup attempt on January 6th.  If you have friends on Facebook who are conservative, you can see the almost daily posts of anger over a loss of culture and country expressed on the memes they share.

Where will it all end?  How do we begin to heal?  Does it all have to come crashing down before we are shocked into a time of mass healing?

I know that the answer to my anger is love.  But I have to confess, that loving the SOB in the Lexus wasn’t my first reaction…or my second…or my tenth.  In fact, it wasn’t until deep reflection that I even considered love as an answer.
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The only thing that stopped me from an angry confrontation with the Lexus driver was the love I have for my granddaughter.  I didn’t want to be a poor example of how to handle my frustration in her eyes.

What would have happened if I would have sat in my car and thought about ways to show love to the Lexus owner instead of fuming and heaping assumptions of privilege upon him?  Would I have felt my anger bubble up again and again each time I remembered this encounter?

What would have happened if I would have simply prayed – asking for guidance on how to proceed or how to perceive the whole thing in a more divine light?

If showing love for our enemies is a step too far, perhaps then prayer is the best answer.  I don’t mean prayers for God to make everything OK or for the Divine to right all wrongs.  I’m talking about a more basic kind of prayer, one that asks for simple guidance.  Perhaps the best prayer is this:

“Lord, I know your light is in my heart.  Help me to let it shine on this moment.” 
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Such a prayer puts the onus on us to become the light of God in the world.  It takes us from a point of powerlessness and anger and moves us to divine action.  Now that’s an example I’d be proud share with my granddaughter.

One can’t understand gratitude without embracing grace.  It is by reflecting on the grace that befalls us every day that we begin to develop a deepening sense of gratitude.  On good days, it is easy to see the grace all around us; in the warm breeze, in the touch of a lover’s hand, in the laughter and innocence of a child. 

Poet Mary Oliver noted that “Attention without feeling… is only a report. An openness …is necessary if the attention is to matter.“ Oliver was a master at holding up the wonder of the world for all of us to reflect upon.  A honking goose, a grasshopper, the rain or sun, the trees or clouds – all were means she used in her poetry to help us uncover something deeper and richer emanating from our soul.  The grace of the world provides an ongoing invitation to experience the whisper of God from within.

It is a small step to go from recognizing the grace that abounds to being grateful for our many blessings.  G.K. Chesterton wrote that “…gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”  First, we marvel at the grace that showers us and then we cannot help but to become grateful for the bounty the Divine has granted.

Of course – identifying grace and showing our gratitude for it is easy when life is going our way.  But, what about when life is hard? How do we find grace and gratitude when we are in debilitating pain, or when we have lost a loved one, or when we have been fired from our job or when a family member has succumbed to drugs or alcohol, or when we have been abused?  What then?
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Many a good believer has turned sour on the Spirit when life becomes crushing and prayers go unanswered.  The silence of God during desperate times can be the harshest cruelty to befall a struggling soul.

An excerpt from Psalm 102 aptly sums up this sense of existential void:

For I have eaten ashes like bread
and mixed my drink with tears…
for You have picked me up and cast me aside…
and I wither away like grass.
 
It is when such spiritual darkness consumes us, when the thought of God’s grace is mocking us, when gratitude is beyond us, it is then we find whether we are led by faith. Only faith can sustain us when our troubled hearts and minds have crowded out grace and gratitude.  

Grace is bestowed upon us freely whether or not we desire it or feel we deserve it.  Gratitude is a byproduct of our embrace of grace.  But faith comes from the foundation of our relationship with the Divine who is always calling to us. 
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We build up our faith when we work to quiet our ego and strive to hear the voice of our inward teacher.  The more we open ourselves up to God, the brighter does the light from within illuminate our path.

It is no accident that the Christmas celebration of the light of God incarnate comes during the darkest days of the year.  Even before the birth of Jesus, people celebrated the winter solstice (December 21st) as the point when the dark days begin to wane, and light conquers darkness.

Some have said that we either walk by faith or we walk in fear.  I don’t think the world is ever that clear.  Our lives are a paradox filled with the ebb and flow of grace and gratitude, woundedness and despair. We cannot evade the darkness in the world or the darkness in our souls.  But we can take solace in knowing that light abounds; that grace abounds; that love abounds…

and that the darkness will end.

The light of God abounds, and such is the grace we have been given. For this unearned grace, I am profoundly grateful.

I wanted to have a basic understanding of President Biden's Build Back Better Plan, so I created an informational video about it.  Creating informational videos is something I do from time to time as a hobby.  I decided to share it here.   Love to hear your feedback.

We Baby Boomers – have we left the world a better place than when we came into it? It seems like our watch on this planet has been punctuated with constant turmoil. 

Growing up we had the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the nuclear war “duck and cover” drills and air raid shelters.  There were the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X.  We fought about Viet Nam and then there was the Tet Offensive, which spurred our defeat and withdrawal from Viet Nam.  We saw massive protests for Civil Rights and people pummeled in the streets and at lunch counters. 

We witnessed the demise of the American middle class as labor unions atrophied, wages stagnated, towns deteriorated, and countless lives were lost to alcoholism and drug addiction. 

We’ve experienced a resurgence of racism and white supremacy along with more mass shootings than any place else on earth. Ever.

Most recently we’ve seen the debasement of politics with significant attacks on our democratic systems.  We are at a time when facts don’t matter, when tribe supersedes the common good and wearing a mask and getting vaccinated to save our families and our neighbors fosters political attacks.  We are just beginning to understand the extent of the January 6th insurrection and the attempt to circumvent a valid presidential election through brute force, which sadly has been accompanied by nation-wide efforts to roll back voting rights.

And now – we can say that we saw both the birth of “Earth Day” and onslaught of the fierce effects of climate change such as massive wildfires, biblical flooding, and heat waves that cooked billions of shellfish in the sea. 

And all of that is just off the top of my head.  I’m sure I’ve missed some big (and small but significant) events. 
My point is not to chronicle everything that has gone wrong during our collective time on earth, but to raise our consciousness to the possibility that we may not be done yet.  The poet Dylan Thomas urges us to “ not go gentle into that good night” but rather to “rage against the dying of the light.”

I’ve been tempted to say that it is time to let someone else rage about the state of the world. I’m rather enjoying my time working on our boat, and sailing, and I’ve been especially content to hang out with our two granddaughters.
Buy I’m feeling as if there is something I need to do.  There is a gentle nudge that’s just a whisper now, like the hint of wind on a glassy still lake. 

I care about the big issues of the day such as voter suppression, gun control, climate change, inequality, education and stay abreast of them.  But it seems to me there is something deeper we need to address.  There is a wound at the heart of our people that must be healed and from there, the issues will take care of themselves.

I find it tragically ironic that the Trumpian Republicans and the Progressive Democrats both rally around the same point of view: each believes they are fighting for the very soul of America.  Each fears that the future will bring catastrophic economic and cultural changes that must be stopped before they take hold.

Where does the healing begin?  How do we minister to a people so encamped in their positions and so energized to protect their way of life that they see no wrong in demonizing the “other side?”

I am reminded of a quote from Julian of Norwich – a mystic from the middle ages - who wrote: “failure of love on our part is the only cause of all sorrow.” 

I’ve thought about this quite a bit.  There is not a single evil or issue that can’t be traced back to a failure of love. 
I am struggling to find a constructive way to show how a demonstration of love can bring lasting change.  Perhaps, it is as easy as Dorothy Day professes when she wrote “I don’t have the answers to solve everything. Be faithful today.”
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Is this the guidance we need?  Be faithful today.  Show peace today.  Demonstrate love today.  Embrace understanding today.  Now that’s something we Baby Boomers understand; Peace, Love and Understanding. 
 
“What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?” (1974 song written by Nick Lowe.  Performed at the 2004 Vote for Change concert in Washington, D.C.)

Covid cases among Wisconsin children ages 4 – 8  increased a whopping 944% between early June to early August.  Case increases among other Wisconsin childhood groups was in the 400% - 500% range.  Talk about canaries in the coalmine.  If we had seen a nearly 1000% increase in childhood shootings or abuse or car accidents – would we have such a tepid response?

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services reports that between the week of June 6th and the week of August 4th, the number of children who have been infected with the Covid virus has grown astronomically as show in the accompanying chart.

When I look at what is occurring with kids in Wisconsin, I struggle with my anger against those who refuse to get vaccinated, and I think I’m not alone.  My Quaker sensibilities tell me to just get over it and seek to find the grace within each person.  But that’s harder than I thought it would be.

I have two granddaughters, ages five years old and seven-months old.  Their parents – and my wife and I –  do everything we can to protect them from getting infected and thus far we’ve been successful.  But we know that with the Delta Variant now representing 80% of those infected in our region, and less than 50% of the population fully vaccinated – there is only so much we can do; especially with one granddaughter in daycare and the other in summer day camp and just weeks away from starting school.  I am angry and I am fearful.

I understand that we can’t paint all of these vaccine nay-sayers with the same brush.  After all, some are motivated because they don’t want to put foreign substance in their bodies.  Others do so out of fear or mistrust of the government because of past abuses.  Many are simply being misled and their true fault is placing their trust in people who use them for personal and political gain.

But that doesn’t excuse those who know better but who are promulgating false and misleading information about the vaccine for purely political reasons.  As my mother would say “there should be a special place in hell for those people.”  But since I don’t believe in hell I find no solace in the prospect of biblical retribution.
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And so, as a concerned grandparent, and as a Quaker what can I do?  What can we – as a community – do?
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Here is my thought.  I’m going to ask everyone I meet if they are vaccinated, and if not, I’m going to provide them with some version of the following information.  Maybe I should print up business cards with this information and hand it to them. 

• 97% of those who have recently been hospitalized or who have died from covid have been unvaccinated
• Getting vaccinated doesn’t just protect YOU…it protects everyone around you.  This is not an individual decision being made – it is a communal decision.
• In the 8 weeks from early June to early August we have seen Covid spread dramatically among children – primarily from people who aren’t vaccinated.
  • 500% increase in Covid in kids aged 0 to 3 years old
  • Nearly a 1000% increase in Covid in kids aged 4 – 8

The solution is simple:  Get Vaccinated.  Protect Wisconsin Children.  And spread the word.