More and more I find myself understanding the appeal of Donald Trump primarily to those who feel most powerless in this country. If I might generalize, I believe The Powerless have lost all faith in the politicians we keep electing and re-electing. It isn't just a matter of Throw the Bums Out. If the proposed solutions involve politicians, they just won't believe it’s possible. "They're all crooks." Blanket dismissal without any need to consider their victim. And no one is really going to help them feel any sense of power in their lives unless it is someone they see as willing and able to redefine what it is to be a politician, and first and foremost that means a candidate that talks like them. Not like what you hear 24/7 from politicians invited to blather with the cable provocateurs of your...and their choice. The policies aren’t even important. It’s the messenger. Not the message but the way the message is conveyed.

I’ve said for 20 years that the most successful politician will be the one who talks like a human – my examples were always John McCain, Ed Rendell and Joe Biden. Sadly, John McCain stopped doing that when he ran for President the first time and, as he admitted later, didn’t have the courage to call for the removal of the confederate flag over South Carolina’s Capitol Building. He had thus jumped off his Straight Talk Express and try as he might to jump back on, the best he could do was to bring on Sarah Palin to play the role for him. And to occasionally tweak President Trump up to his final days.

Even more sadly, like his pal Ed Rendell who now has Parkinson’s, Joe Biden has lost the ability to talk like a human for a different reason. To be blunt, he’s practically lost the ability to speak at all, God love him (as he likes to say.)

So who are we left with to talk like us…and by us, I sure don’t mean like anyone I would want to hang out with…but Donald J. Trump. For all he does so so wrong, he gets it. He knows he can say anything he wants, the more outrageous the better. Hell, he can call dead war veterans suckers and losers. It’s oh-so appealing to his Powerless People. It doesn’t matter what his policies are – people don’t even know what he stands for besides being against abortion, for guns and apparently for Bibles best displayed, so appropriately and symbolically, upside down.

And other than what a truly awful human being he is, the worst American I’ve ever known of, what bothers me most? That we Dems didn’t bring forth the same kind of person. Not the person who personally bankrupts blue collar workers with his shady business practices. Not the person who makes fun of the disabled or who separates kids from their parents and puts them in cages.

No, my fantasy Dem candidate is kind to small animals and works and plays well with others. S/He’s not snooty and highbrow like Barack and Hillary. S/He’s an intellectual but you would never know it by the way s/he converses with us.

And he or she is the kind of person who gets blue collar voters to think that he is one of them. And actually is.  

Of my good friends Freud, Sir Paul, Monica and Cheryl

I have often thought of Freud when sitting in Meeting for Worship on Sunday mornings. He, or maybe it was one of his cohorts, I should know given that this was the subject of my 60+/- page senior thesis at Earlham, had a theory that subconsciously, our life goal is to return to the happiest place we ever knew - our mother's womb. 

I know. Kinda creepy. But so was Freud sometimes.

And Meeting feels like that to me sometimes. It feels like a warm, welcoming, loving, enclosed place, walled off from, but not oblivious to, the noise all around us. 

And it can especially feel that way when it gets particularly loud outside. This past Sunday for instance, there was a lot of noise coming off route 30 - sirens, motorcycles, etc. At times it almost seemed like a parade out there, but a very fast moving one.

At one point I realized that the more the noise outside is amplified, the more it amplifies the silence in our little Meetinghouse.

And that leads to one of the greatest challenges for me as a Quaker. As the outside noises get louder in my life - the national anger, hate, divisions, vitriol - so I am challenged to amplify the love, acceptance and tolerance inside me to tune all that out, or counter it in the best way possible.

The other night, driving home, Paul McCartney's Let It Be came on the radio, and I listened to it more carefully than the first couple hundred times I've heard it:

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Yeah, there will be an answer, let it be

And I wondered if those words would take on a new meaning for me in the upcoming days, while hoping I would be wrong. But I wasn't.

I came to know in the past few days that someone has been attacking me behind my back to some friends. It upset me at first, even though virtually all his accusations were based on untruths. But thanks to the wise counsel of Cheryl, my long time friend Monica and my even longer-time friend (even though he doesn't know it) Paul McC, I decided to just Let It Be, and use it as a chance to amplify my love and acceptance of a differing point of view. And it was another example of something I've tried to teach the kids when someone is speaking poorly of someone else: it reflects more poorly on the one saying it than it does the target of the comments.

UPDATE: During Meeting yesterday, I thought (prayed?) about the person who had been sharing his thoughts about me and reviewed the three choices I had considered in response to his hurtful email: 

- Email him, telling him what I'd heard and countering his arguments. 

- Confront him similarly. 

- Ignore it, as I'd decided above. 

But in the end, I chose a fourth option. After Meeting, I sought him out and went over and gave him a big hug and said simply, "Hang in there, dude." 

Oh, what a lucky man

I wrote this a few weeks ago but didn't want to post it until I let some time go by so I could think about it some more and to see if my feelings would change. Spoiler alert - they didn't:

21 years ago almost to the day, in August of 1998, Cheryl moved in to my house in Thorndale with her two awesome daughters, Elissa, age 12 and Evelyn, age 5.  And on that day, my life would change forever. My bachelorhood ended and my life as I always imagined and fervently hoped it would become, began.

Two years later, Trevor was born, and at some point, I remember telling Cheryl that coming home from work each day, and opening the door to that house, felt like Dorothy opening her door to Munchkinland, not because of the size of the inhabitants, and not because of the gingham dress and sparkly ruby slippers I was usually wearing, but because I was moving from my very satisfying, if often uneventful, dare I say dull, life of black and white, into a world of color, imagination, surprises, entertainment...and unconditional love, given and received.

Eventually that crazy world grew to include Alex and Ammar and even for 5 years, my mom, accompanied by her sticky dementia and her even stronger unconditional love for all of us.

This morning and continuing to next Monday, when we drop Alex off to board at Westtown, ended the best 21 years of my life, certainly so far. Not because it won't still be amazing in an entirely new way, as I get to know Cheryl better than I ever have, as we have both been so looking forward to this time for, well, 21 years, but because my favorite word in the entire English language is...Dad.

It was so rough when Liss was the first to go, shortly after Ammar came into our lives. Then a year later Mom passed away. Then Evie left a few years after that and that was hard too, missing her energy, humor and joy. So it's been an ongoing adjustment, missing those lives I so loved being a part of each day. But now, with the house soon to be totally empty of kids, it feels like the drop-off to Penn State and Westtown is more like our drop-off into a crevice.

The house will feel emptier. The memories and the love will bounce and echo off the walls, and I will make a point of remembering to absorb all of it for all my days to come.

...and loving it.

Now...on to enjoy Cheryl like I never have before. It's not a comparison of a house full versus just the two of us. It's two truly amazing life experiences. We have so many things we feel like we can do together now that we haven't been able to fully before. We even have a list.

Who is the luckiest guy ever? That's right. This guy.

Indeed - and much thanks to my readers to such an extent and for their convene as well!

I find myself often torn (Have you ever found yourself? Other maybe than when you was lost? Have you ever been torn? Gosh I hope not.) between wanting more people to see my posts (validation, after all!) and wishing I didn't know if anyone read them, or who read them, so I could write ever more freely about my often wacky and revealing (oh - the intrigue!) thoughts.

Other than from devoted reader Becca, I rarely get any comments on here, and since there is no "like" function, it's entirely possible that the handful of people who have signed up to see my posts the day they are written via auto-email actually are horrified by what they read and go by the dictum (Dictum?! Hell, I damn near killed him!) that if you can't say anything nice, you should keep your damn mouth shut/keep your fingers off the keyboard.

But there are some incredibly supportive comments that I have heretofore (And just how far is it from heretofore?!) not posted, surely completely out of sheer modesty.

Some examples:

"Great and very informative information it is. Thanks for sharing"

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"Interesting blog. It would be great if you can provide more details about it. Thanks you. This post is very useful and helpful. I like your posts. I always follow your Posts. I hope, in the future, you will present us with such important posts." (Such a fan!)

"great article. I always visit your site. thanks "

"I really like your post. Thanks so lot for your convene. I’m very fired up to show it to anyone. Thanks so much with this fantastic this post."

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"Hello,Great post! Very nicely witten article, I love your blog.I just have a blog so need more information about Tutorial Blog.You always right very useful and informative articles, keep writing.Thanks for sharing." (No no - thank YOU, dear reader!)

"Thanks You Very Much Dear For Post Great Article, I forwarded to My all friends to read It."

"Interesting and important information. It is really beneficial for us."

"Very nice post"

"Very attractive theme of your blog and i have have learn your blog"  (I'm not entirely sure Becca didn't write that comment too.)

And my favorite: When Incitatus faced south, his north end had no choice. Cankles has a choice"!  (oh, please - Don't leave us hanging here - what end did Cankles choose?!)

But seriously folks - thanks for reading. I have fun here, even though my posts have slacked off over the past year or so. I have a number of them lined up for the next week or two, so I hope you find them beneficial, informative, interesting, important and very attractive.

Be the difference

I love love.

I like likes.

I hate hate.

But I am not indifferent about indifference. 

Get involved. Make a difference.

Of bright and scary brains

Cheryl tells me that I need to unpack the post below a little (which is a nice way of saying she couldn't figure out what the heck I was trying to say). It is a little dense, I admit, moving too quickly from one thought to another without appropriate thought-linkage.

The awkward (poorly explained) transition is here:

"And thus, back to the quote, which I had always aligned with those who are in a position of great financial wealth....For of those to whom much is given, much is expected.

And so, conveniently, self-servingly, I wondered: for those among us who are just occasionally jerks and not consistently one, when we say something hurtful, does it sting more than someone from whom much less is expected? 

The twist is moving from viewing that statement in terms of wealth to viewing it in terms of respect and positive personal attributes. If someone says something about me, but I don't respect them to begin with (think certain Presidents or bosses), it doesn't hurt as much as it would coming from someone I love and/or have great personal respect for, from someone to whom much (of my respect) is given.

Okay, it was kind of a stretch, but that was where my mind wandered and contorted to, and such is the peril of the reader, getting a glimpse inside the scary maze in my brain, with its many dark, occasionally gloomy, occasionally blindingly bright, paths and corners.

"For those to whom much is given, much is expected."

- President John Kennedy

(or Luke 12:48: "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.") 

This past Sunday, that thought kept trying to sneak, eventually successfully, into my large head. It kept trying to squeeze in there among the noise generated by an interaction I'd had two nights earlier with someone who means very much to me (No, not Cheryl), when she misunderstood a few texts I'd sent her, thinking I was being uncaring, when in fact, the intent was the direct opposite. (One of many reasons I hate texting, so maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophesy.)

As I tortured myself that morning, reliving what I'd done, trying to figure the best way to make things right, I must have paused long enough to give some legroom to John and Luke's words.

I am a sensitive guy. For better and worse, and to the possible surprise of some folks who have heard me be too blunt...okay, completely tactless...I really try to be very aware of people's feelings, careful to replace my verbal divots when I go too far. And on the other side, it doesn't take much more than the slightest of slights directed at me to set me in a tailspin, sometimes for hours, sometimes days, wondering if their critique of me has merit, forgetting that no one is liked by everyone, no one's opinions are universally shared and that it's okay to ruffle the odd feather, especially mine.

So, to trot out another of my favorite aphorisms, in the category of Sometimes our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses, such is the case with my sensitivity.

And thus, back to the quote above, which I had always aligned with those who are in a position of great financial wealth. Or to take it in another direction, on a sports team, when the superstar has just an average or even subpar game, everyone howls, but when the guy at the end of the bench has the same numbers, we are thrilled by his big game. For of those to whom much is given, much is expected.

And so, conveniently, self-servingly, I wondered: for those among us who are just occasionally jerks and not consistently one, when we say something hurtful, does it sting more than someone from whom much less is expected? Seems kind of obvious when I put it in writing. 

On the other hand, in a meeting that same Sunday morning, my friend Cate said, "Just because you mean well, doesn't mean you do well."

I have a feeling that is the better quote to explain my texting inadequacy. 

And back to trying to make things right to the person I upset, other than telling her how much I love her, I brought her home a big yummy cinnamon donut. Woulda worked for me!