We’re not all too bad at bobbing and weaving.  We’re pretty good at side-stepping and side-lining issues.  We’re quite adept at cutting and spinning, doing a bit of fanciful dodging, as well as deftly running the obstacle course without getting so much as a scratch on us.  We’ve learned to see things coming from a long ways away, and we’ve figured … [Read more...]

Slavery as an institution is pretty far removed from the minds of most of us residing here in 21st century America.  Slavery sits back plenty far enough in the faded, yellowed and brittle pages of history to create a more than comfortable chasm between us and itself.  We view that chasm of time and social development and modernism as broad enough … [Read more...]

Wikipedia states that a perfect storm “refers to the simultaneous occurrence of weather events which, taken individually, would be far less powerful than the storm resulting of their chance combination.  Such occurrences are rare by their very nature, so that even a slight change in any one event contributing to the perfect storm would lessen its … [Read more...]

Am I paying attention?  As this thing called life moves ‘round about me, and I move ‘round about within it, am I paying attention to it all?  Am I paying attention, or have I unwittingly confused a host of other behaviors and habits as paying attention?  Am I paying attention, or have I adopted certain views or biases as ready templates that I slap … [Read more...]

We reap what we sow.  In other words, what we do is never free of an outcome that will be shaped by what we do.  The ‘cause-and-effect’ of life is such that what we do will always cause an outcome that is fashioned directly by what we do.  Despite the fact that we often think (or would prefer to think) that what we do is somehow isolated to the … [Read more...]

We are humans.  All of us.  And while we come from different cultures, and hold different beliefs, and embrace a variety of traditions…we are human.  Our dress may vary, our economics might be quite different, the language that we speak may be entirely unknown to others, and we may well be spread far across the socio-economic spectrum…but we are … [Read more...]

Do we search for the truth, or do we search for ways around the truth?  Do we even take the time to consider a question like that out of the long-held assumption that we are, in fact, looking for the truth because (we assume) that that’s the obvious thing to do?  What insanity would behoove us to do anything less?  But do we search for the truth, … [Read more...]

We all have…problems.  And there’s a real good chance that we have a lot of…problems.  Life comes with problems.  It’s part of the deal.  It’s a natural part of this thing that we’re all doing called life.  Life comes with problems.  But the real problem is not that life comes with problems.  The real problem is what we do with them. The Problem … [Read more...]

History has pivoted on ordinary people who when faced with extraordinary circumstances drew on some deeply submerged essence of their humanity and were, in those most harrowing of moments, transformed into extraordinary people.  There are those who held themselves of no accord who stood in harm’s way or entered the dangers of the fray and turned … [Read more...]

What is a warrior?  Who are these combatants who take up arms in whatever way that they take them up?  The shared sense is that a warrior is someone who engages in battle.  That’s quite different from a terrorist who holds that the perceived virtue of the cause justifies the slaughter of the innocent, or someone who runs hard with psychopathic … [Read more...]