Peaceful protests continued unabated across the country and around the world. As Andy Ramos, 72, mayor of Alpine, Texas had it, “My generation, we did a lot of good, but we stagnated. We need a push in the butt and you guys are the ones who have to do it. You have to bring social change to this world.” One of the largest protests was in the nation’s capital, where new fences, concrete barriers and a force of unidentifiable guards have shrouded the White House, projecting a new symbolism of militarized defensiveness rather than openness and democracy. Roger Cohen did not pull his punches this week. “No, the point would be this: to assert with a great show of force, after the slow-motion murder of George Floyd by a white police officer, that the oppressive system that produced this act is not about to change and armed white male power in America is inviolable. That is Trump’s fundamental credo. His Bible-brandishing, American Gothic portrait this week outside St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington is one of the most disturbing portraits of psychopathic self-importance seen since 1933.”
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I have asserted before, and no doubt, will again that Mary Engelbreit never lets me down. Today’s page-a-day adage is from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; / What is essential is invisible to the eye./ Now, contrast that with these scenarios please. A woman, living in Staten Island, knows that her father in Virginia has life-threatening cancer. Her heart is calling her to Virginia. Two friends call her and read her the riot act about leaving her home and putting others at risk.
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A headline in The Huffington Post news aggregator this morning called the Narcissist-in-Chief’s son-in-law Jared Kushner the “clown prince.” He has swooped into the federal government’s sullied pseudo-response to the coronavirus. An article in The Times this morning noted that “New York is running out of body bags,” and that the U.S. Navy ship in the Hudson is “a joke.” They have 20 patients.
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It’s time for True Confessions. I wrote recently that a friend had sent my husband and me two masks as we couldn’t get any here in the Hudson River Valley. When the envelope arrived, it looked a little the worse for wear. Despite the best efforts of the USPS, that happens sometimes. We opened it to eight blue latex gloves, and a number ten envelope that had one mask. Without so much as a breath, a thought, a reservation, I said, “Someone’s stolen one.”
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The idea came to me from within, but then I saw this headline in The New York Times, and that gelled it. “Storm Expected to Bring Snow to the Northeast on Monday” Of course it is. It’s March, ducklings. We who live in the Northeast know that on any given day it can snow, rain, sleet, hail, or beam sunshine with added lilac crocuses for good measure. My hanging Mary Engelbreit calendar for this particular March, that is, March 2020, bears two words: “Brace Yourself!” The lovely Mary has drawn two people flying a kite. We are bracing ourselves for something different from kite-flying these days.
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So, just when we were pondering the best mechanism to make some of my books available for free during this time of fear, Smashwords came up with Authors Give Back and we jumped on it! Here are the URLs for three of my books absolutely free for the next month!
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The fear that is leading our experience of reality at the moment is, you might be surprised to learn, a form of spiritual bypass. Startling, isn’t that? The Narcissist-in-Chief, the Denier-in-Chief, the Toddler-in-Chief, or whatever other nickname you choose, has taken the practice of rewriting history to its dark underbelly. The thing of it is, as any good metaphysician knows, if we don’t rewrite history, to borrow from philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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My spiritual teachers are legion, and they often arise in the oddest places. Take this morning, for example: I have been a fan of Mary Engelbreit for decades. It is my custom to have a page-a-day calendar of hers that displays her prodigious illustration artistry. Mary Engelbreit understood sound bytes even before they had a name. She’s used quotes that inspire her for decades. This morning’s read: If you are more fortunate than others, it’s better to build a longer table than a taller fence.
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