Principles-Policies-Procedures

Learning about leadership forces you to understand how people make decisions and go on to live their lives. The trouble with that thinking is that no two people are the same or think in lock step with each other. To make matters worse, a person can see the sky as blue one day and a few days later they might think of it as purple. People are not static, they change, sometimes a lot. So you might be just like them on Tuesday and wildly different than them on Friday.

One of the under explored consequences of this love of differentiating ourselves from each other turns out to be how are we going to get along with each other once we can no longer avoid each other. You can go full hermit and you still will run into someone that will confront you about this or that. You may dislike taxes for instance, but the tax man will not allow that as an excuse to avoid paying them. Unless you live in the remotest place, you are going to have to rub shoulders with others. Try as hard as you might, you can’t avoid it.

This is a troublesome condition of life today. Getting along with others and even learning to enjoy their company is growing less and less real. We have sophisticated ways of avoidance instead of conviviality and fellowship.

Where this will end, no body knows. But it can’t be good.

One of my attempts to solve this distancing of ourselves is found in the idea of Principles-Policies-Procedures. Principles are well understood as the base of society. Don’t kill or lie or steal. I admit these seem to be losing their power today like never before. But still, I think you could get some basic agreement on these principles.

Policies are the next level down. Policies are an attempt to help people live by the guardrails of our base Principles. We want people to obey speed limits and avoid distracted driving and so on. These are policies based on principles.

Then there are procedures or perhaps preferences. I want to do something in a certain way because it works for me. I want to go to the other side of town along certain roads for several reasons. Basically, I prefer my route to your route.

So whenever conflict or disagreement came up, I would try to unpack the inherent questions, Are these Principles, Policies or Preferences. Some people never did slow down for a minute when they were unwilling to answer the question. They just wanted to bully forward with their way or the highway. But some people would back up for a moment and start to look at just how important their idea was. These are the ones you could hope for to have an aha moment.

Greece created Debate out of nothing. Before Greece during the Athens age, if you tried to debate you could easily end up dead. But everything changed with Athenian Democracy. Next time you find yourself at odds with someone or some idea, take moment and ask yourself the question, Is this a Principle, Policy or Preference? It might just help you to have more friends and acquaintances and fewer opponents.

One of the signs that we are in danger of moving backwards toward tyranny is the ability to discuss and debate and talk with each other. Lost that entirely and we will lose much more. That is one of my top principles.

Power Plant in the Tongue

Death and life are in the power of the tongue; And they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

Proverbs 18:21 American Standard Version

I don’t think much about my tongue, Do you? I mean, I brush it, enjoy salt and sweet by it, but that’s about it. It’s just there. And it doesn’t quite make any sounds like the voice box does or any form of communication. It aids in communication for sure but to match up the tongue with power on a one to one scale, not so much. Was the writer in proverbs off somehow, or just reporting what he had observed over the years?

Words come from someplace in our throat and mouth, we all know that. And we instinctively know that words have power. I track with the writer so far. I think that’s what he means really, about power. But then he just has to add life and death.

Now you’ve gone and added something we can argue about. Remember the Sticks and Stones thing, can never hurt me thing? Turns out, the Proverbs author would like to pick a Bone With You, as another Proverbial personage in my life liked to say. My mother seemed to have a lot of bone picking to do with me, in reality, we would take the wishbone of the chicken and see which way it split as we pulled on it. We did that once a week maybe. But she had a lot of symbolical bones to pick with me it seems, usually over words.

Language and words produce longer life or quicker death it seems. I suppose if you want to do more good than you are already doing, you might have to get better at using words. If you want to be more destructive in some way, the same is true, you might want to use words. I think the center of human power then is derived from our words. Sure, there are more obvious forms of energy in our minds and bodies, from our mitochondria to our muscles to our minds to our movement in any direction. But the words are the projectiles that heal or injure. They have power that pushes them out of our mouth and power when they hit their intended target.

I am fascinated by those that have taken words and changed the world. Paul Harvey for good with his moral stories. John F. Kennedy with his calm and reasoned approach to facing Russian and Cuban aggression. I could add 20 names to this list in a few minutes. All are imperfect but when it really counts, they somehow get out the important and life changing words.

I would not like to say that the opposite people, like Hitler or Stalin fascinate me, or anybody for that matter. But we all know that their words and their actions have been studied and talked about for nearly a century now. Sadly, that’s because they had power as well. And that power started in the same place. Words. Their words brought incredible death and destruction.

I pray every day for a word of life. We have such great freedoms in our world today, many of us anyhow. That freedom brings with it a similar power, to bring life or death. People are free to do almost anything, not that they should, but they have that freedom. And they are free to say just about anything, not that they should.

It’s the training and the taming of the tongue and its sources of input that the Wisdom writers are trying to get us to think about.

Here is a passage from another man of wisdom, likely the brother of Jesus. It should be read as a whole and learned from. It can be depressing because it doesn’t seem to have much hope that we will ever get or tongue under control, but it does offer an alternative to destruction. Read it for yourself and try to follow the last words of the chapter.

James 3

New International Version

Taming the Tongue

3 Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. 2 We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.

3 When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. 4 Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. 5 Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

7 All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

9 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. 11 Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? 12 My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

Two Kinds of Wisdom

13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. 14 But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15 Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

17 But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.18 Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

Constitution of Constituent States

Growing up in New York and New Jersey and a family background from New England, mostly Massachusetts, meant that some of the history of our early attempts to become a nation were going to rub off on me, like ticks climbing on to my clothing as I walked through tall grass. It was easier for much of my earlier years to try to pick the tidbits of history off my skin than it was to gather them into a container to study them and learn something of our great nation.

It seemed like every trip we took out of town led to some place where George Washington slept, or some battle was fought or some hero returned home. From Boston to Virginia, history was always nearby and on display. I don’t expect to ever go back east for any vacations, but if I did, they would be to revisit the early revolutionary war places.

It took the vicarious suffering I felt when I went to Valley Forge and later Gettysburg. Gettysburg may not seem like a likely battlefield to teach us about our early attempts to form a governement, but it had a lot to do with reexamining and restoring that form of government, kind of a Second Coming of the Constitution.

So the history of both periods began to fascinate me in my early teens, but it was the revolution and the decade or more after the conflict that is the better place to start to understand how we formed or more honestly, failed to form a working national government. In fact, we almost lost the whole revolutionary endeavor and subsequent unity of states as a result of weak documents and weak thinking among the leaders of our colonies.

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was the first constitution of the United States, followed in 1787, 1788 with the current constitution. This one has lasted almost 24 decades, longer than any other similar document.

It was very difficult to write it and promulgate it and it never seems to be as uniting as we had hoped. But it has served us well in many ways. And then the Amendments to it have brought needed improvements. All of this work was difficult and like pulling teeth on a Grizzly Bear with bubblegum for pliers. Dangerous and mind numbing and hyper partisan work took place in order to achieve some form of collaboration and long lasting processes for us to become the United States.

The principles in these documents are still with us, some have shifted, most have withstood the test of time. Slavery was allowed into these early documents and it has been revealed over time for the evil it was and is. In fact, it took a Civil War to rid ourselves of the subjugation of our fellow man. We are still arguing it, but we have made steps to grant us even better arguments going forward. Before the Civil War, the level of turmoil in the country could only be tamped down after a national fight, and not before. Did we have to have the Civil War, I don’t know. I’ve heard arguments on both sides. But we did have it, and we still have fires flare up from it. Yet, we are better positioned to learn from it and not repeat anything so horrific and inhumane again.

It is the Constitution, written in 1787, then ratified and instituted over the next two years that gave us the base level to become united and one nation. This is the document that is always being challenged, reworked, added to or taken away from while we are a nation. The saddest part is when we go through those national times of ignorance about it’s principles and use as a guide to our lives and governance.

It’s to be expected that many take no concern over the paper we call the US Constitution. In fact, many can and do live their lives without so much as a mention of it in their many years of living in the US. One can live their lives without a single thought about the pain and suffering that went into that document. But there are times when that document comes out of the case, from under the glass and calls forth the best in our citizens. It has happened quite a few times before and it will continue to happen. The times demand it. I think we are at one of the most powerful times of the Constitutions’s life because so many of the concerns of its writers are coming to bear upon us today like never before. Our economy and taxation, war and peace, settling the territorial disputes between states, national sovereignty and security, privacy and expression, religion and freedom are all deeply contested today like never before at this crossroads of information, technology, and conflict laden age we are living through.

Now is the time to take a second look at this Constitution, what it meant to the Founders, what they were afraid of, what they hoped for, what they saw in the future, what they failed to see or presage. Otherwise we will slide into another, more chaotic time, much like the time before the document. The document brought us together so much more than having no document at all. It is an excellent time to come together again, before we allow the document to die of neglect.

All free societies have their beginning, middle and ending. Where is ours today? The answer is found in the minds of its citizens. And the citizens that will move this country forward have a deep remembrance of where we came from and why we became a nation in the first place.

Speech, Free and Otherwise

I can’t imagine speech so unrestrained that every word that comes to mind is spoken without restriction. Haven’t there been some movies like that? Every word thought was involuntarily spoken like some sort of Tourette’s Syndrome Speech.

That would be a form of hell I suppose, speaking all the obscene thoughts no matter how degrading they might be. And that type of involuntary and repugnant speech would invariably be mean and ugly, bereft of any kind or beautiful thoughts.

If free speech does not have self limits in other words, will it end up as little more than ugly utterances and hurtful words, all aimed at devastating someone.

I think, as I often do, that something else is going on. We operate it seems with well placed bandaids when what is called for are strategically placed tourniquets. The real problem seems to be a polution of our words because they come from a polluted heart.

A snippit from Matthew confirms this, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” 15:19

I find something supernatural about this text, but even if you don’t, you have to admit it to be reasonable and common sense. I think God is making this clear, not just a human writer. But if you don’t, history itself would tell you this to be true.

So it’s a heart thing, a mind thing, an inner thing, this need to speak out loud that which is normally silent. Silent but very much alive it seems.

Like most laws in society, we try to control an outer expression of an inner problem. I’m personally glad that we don’t try to control everyones mind with laws yet, although some free speech laws so called seem to be moving into that territory.

There are two points that come to mind, maybe three. We might succeed in controlling what comes out of peoples mouths, but at what cost. I suspect it will make them more vicious inside, not less. So we need to figure out what we are trying to control. And the other thought, maybe we are going about this wrong. Even harder to control is the human heart, far more difficult than the human tongue. And yet, this is where we need the most help. George Bush said this in a speech, ““America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.” — Inauguration speech, Jan. 20, 1989.

I don’t know if he wrote that, but he said it. At the time, I’ll bet most of us thought he was foolish and out of touch with the realities of life. As I look back, I’m not so sure. Maybe he was on to something fundamental. Out of our hearts is where good and evil come from, and there is good and evil speech that comes from that same heart. I doubt we can legislate the speech or the heart into being good all the time. But I think we can spend more time appealing to the good in all of us. That is a simple take on free speech, but a much better use of my speech.

For Greece, Free speech was based on reason, proofs in most cases, something we could argue about and come to some agreement. Today, most free speech seems to be simmered in emotion and instant decisions without prolonged thought and wisdom. We are more often in a hurry to be mean than we are to be nice. This is a heart problem and needs a heart solution.

Democracy and Duration

I do like democracy. In fact I crave it. I’m afraid for it at times. Democracy seems to be a movement against tyranny. It’s a desire to get life back into the hands of those that are living it.

But it doesn’t seem to last long, compared to tyranny. I suspect that there have been far more man hours lived in tyranny than democracy. As real as that has to be, it is distressing because what follows Democracy does not seem to be an improvment. On the contrary, it seems like a great downfall of the human condition when Democracy suffers and dies.

Our second president, John Adams supported the notion that Democracy does not last long. In a letter to John Taylor, a close friend of Thomas Jefferson, Adams wrote that very thing, “Remember Democracy never lasts long…”

I wonder what our early political leaders thought and hoped for when they were crafting our political system and its documents? I wonder how durable and long lasting they thought their work would prove to be? Or did they turn it all over to the citizens of the future? What a sad thing to give birth to a great nation and not see it rise in its capacities. It could also be said how fortunate they were not to see how flawed their work might become. At any rate, they are dead and we who read this are alive.

They never handed us perfection. They handed us possibility. We have no history to insure Democracy will evolve righteously. We have yet to make all of its further history. It’s not getting any easier, is it? But it is still vital.

Pain

Accumulated stories of pain have informed my belief that the world and my neighbors are feeling lot of pain. Actually, always have and always will. Pain isn’t going anywhere.

As a minister, and twice as much as a chaplain, I was constantly involved in hearing and identifying pain in someone’s life.

I’m talking about a variety of identifiable pains. Societal Pain, Relational Pain, Financial Pain, Mental Pain, Abuse Pain, War Trauma Pain, Spiritual Pain,Existential Pain as well as the standard Physical Pain.

I have yet to find anyone that identifies these and other types of pain as I am suggesting. Occasionally the word distress is substituted for pain in some cases, such as Mental Distress, or Financial Stress.

For me, the words have become nearly interchangeable. Distress and Pain both change us and require therapy or healing or improvement in our condition. Whether I am correct in my use and definition of these terms I cannot say for sure, but I do know I have seen many a lifetime of pain in my ministerial work.

One Hospice care leader in the UK came close to my thinking, in fact I probably owe much of my thinking to her. Her name was Dame Cicely Saunders. More about her to come. Her concept was Total Pain. More about that as well.

History and Wars

If history is a guide and it so often can be, then war is with us always. I suspect very few people today can tell you much about any of the wars that the US has been involved in. They just know that we have had our share of war and then some. There seems to be almost zero interest in understanding what causes war and all the above mentioned wars and what can be done to maintain or recover peace, before, after and during a war.

As we watch a ferocious volley of missles and other high tech projectiles aimed at Israel this past weekend we know that we are filled with anxiety at what might happen and how it will affect us. It will pass in time seems to be our only solace. There is not much interest in understanding why the east or mid east as it is often called and the west are so ready to come to all out belligerency at what seems like a moments notice.

My family has some history with combat, warfare and militarism. My wife and I both served in what is now sometimes described as the Cold War era. There are no metals or ribbons given for this service that I know of, unlike Vietnam, Korea, or WWII. But the currents of history are offering the degree of tension in the world was nearly as warlike as in the actual times of war.

This makes me think of the years then since I was born and truly, they all have been saturated in war or warlike circumstances.

Do we always need an enemy? Is it as simple and sad as that? Or are there more complicated conditions that set themselves up in order to pump us up for war? It is not easy to go to war, but it is so much easier than going to peace it seems.

I try to listen to diplomats in times of war and try to find out about their personal lives in order to understand what makes them attempt to avoid war. In many cases, they have seen war and know that war is hell and even a poor piece is far preferable to a hot or even cold war.

Can a nation be driven by its emotional braintrust in the same way a young driver can instantly be thrown into road rage? Not only young people are involved in road rage incidents I should add, but seem less in control of their emotions perhaps. I myself have to prepare myself before I leave the house by considering the route to take, the time of day and the likely traffic, the construction zones, my mental state of mind, am I easily frustrated on certain days and several other factors. I don’t have a very good reason, except the stroke I had a while back has affected my brain somewhat. But I’m doing my best to compensate for that with a thought out process to facing conflict or other incitements.

We need to give much more thought to what takes place prior to all out war. We need to recognize all the traumas in our national past and use their cautious lessons to help us execute better policeies toward those we share the planet with.

With all the war we have been involved in, you would think we would have an advantage with all the lessons we have or should have learned. This may be the real point though, why don’t we learn and take these lessons to heart?

The Greeks were a reasoning people, more than any society before and perhaps after. There was a lot of thinking through the different possibilities and permutations. Again, the average citizen was involved in this to a moderate extent, far more at any case than today’s citizen.

Like General Patton, I would agree that war is hell. As a warrior he executed war vigoursly when called upon to do so. Norman Schwarzkopf did not earn his nickname Storming Norman without good reason as well. We need this warriors when we need them. But they all would prefer the prevention of war. We need more reasoned peacemakers though, for many reasons. And in this time of striking technological development, we may one day find ourselves in a war that cannot be recovered from so easily.

If I could influence one person to master the skills of Peacemaking than I will feel very good about that. I hope so.

Monday Morning

Feeling better each day. Nice to feel almost normal. Sailing Osprey over dam this sunrise.

Representation

Many citizens of their respective countries accept the government ordered taxes as part of their personal economy and for the good of the nation. There is a contribution to make to all societies and a substantial part of that living is financial support. It is the loss of representation and some say in the use of those finances that brought the British colonies to the point where they declared themselves underrepresented and over taxed. Eventually this would cause them to break free from the king and start their own form of government. It took some time, decades I would say, much longer others would say to iron out what that form of government would look like.

Each state would write their own constitutions and in most cases, the citizens at large would ratify them. There were several layers of self representation in this process.

This was simpler in Athens. Most citizens were expected to be self representing. they had a say in all matters of their city state including how much of the currency was spent and when to go to war. I would argue that they had more of a say than any nation does today. I would also argue that would be impossible to replicate today.

The important point is, that people can accept taxation in proportion to representation. Their taxes are hard earned expressions of what they hope their country can be in the international arena, magnanimous and generous. At some point though, and no one knows when or where, but at some point, the citizen feels like they have lost all say in the common sense spending of that capitol. The good will of the people fades and their desire to be better represented rises to the surface.

It is amazing the burdens that people can bear when they know their voice is heard and respected, even if they did not prevail in their hopes or directions they hope for their country.

It seems like crisis and conflict are hot on the heels of a period where the voice of the people has been squelched and eventually shut out. Some go on trying to be heard and others give in to despair. They use their voice for as long as they can. But every democracy grew as the common voices were heard and they declined as they stopped listening to the same voices.

Athens did use voting as a way to choose leaders as much as we do. They took many votes, but they were more often votes on ideas. We use votes to put in place leaders that we think will make our ideas come to be. That is a step removed from Athens, maybe more in practice. If they were to go to war, a terribly costly endeavor, they as a body of citizens voted it. If the war turned out well, they could celebrate their own decisions. If it turned out badly, well, that is another matter. At any rate, they had a few leaders to blame but they could recognize that they too shouldered some of the blame. After all, they helped craft the debate and decision to go to war.

This is not how it works today, is it? I don’t know how to improve it honestly, short of taking a national poll every time a major decision was to be made. That would be crazy, right? But I still think there is something to listening to the citizens or what we commonly call our constituents. The better we listen to them, and act like them and vote like them, the closer we are to their lives and economies. As we grow more distant from them and act upon the interests of others outside our constituency, the quicker we bring disrepute and anxiety to our conduct of civil affairs.

We could stand a revival of civic discourse and debate. People passionately trying to make their case but respecting the opinion of the other debaters as well. If only there were such a forum.

Shows, like Firing Line with Buckley, or the Prime Ministers Questions, come to mind. Granted these are politicians or elites or academics, but they could come down to our level and we could identify with them. And it could spread. In some ways, the vlog and blogs and videos on the internet are creating a lot of good debate. It’s unfortunate that many wish to cancel those blogs with which they disagree, we seem to be in a great age of disagreeableness if you ask me.

I simply hope we will regain the privilege of listening to one another again. Much depends on it.

A Second Age of Athens?

Greece disliked institutions for the most part. They allowed some minor institutionalizing, but their biggest institution was the gathering of free thinking citizens that owed their allegiance to no one or no god but only to themselves.

Stating it like that, it's a wonder that they got anything done or left any record of accomplishment. When times of crisis occurred, they managed to institutionalize the military, naval and land forces. They also institutionalized the games or sports, and they had some legal, civic and religious institutionalizing occurring as well. You could say they created individual democracy based on individual freedom. You could even call that itself an institution if you wish.

Left to their own devices, institutions were secondary at best to the ordinary citizen of Greece. This is not well understood in the west today with its millions of institutions. We have a group or sub society for everything it seems, and I mean everything. Take a look at FB Groups and you'll see what I mean.

American institutions have existed since our national beginning in the 17 and 18 hundreds. But I really believe they went ballistic after WWII. The GI generation rebuilt America after the depression and put its institutions on steroids.

Ancient Greeks, especially the Athenians, would have fought against this form of society. It might have been the greatest outpost for individual instead of collective thought and philosophy. For many reasons, we will never have another Athenian like democracy, at least not so you would notice. It just can't be replicated.

And yet, it seems like many people today are tired of the Institution, whatever one they choose that is or all of them for that matter. And like the ancient Greeks, they wish to remain free of institutional control. Control is a word we can get our mind around. But there are words even deeper in hierarchy of institutions. Power, dominance, grandiosity and the like come to mind. Control is the concentration of force or coercion to obtain those base conditions.

It seems like we might be having our own Athenia revolution today. Americans are no stranger to the feeling of wanting control over their own lives and resist strongly outside influences of control. With all the institutions vying for our attention either because of their failures or their power, we are finding ourselves less trusting of them.

Greece had no model for moving past its institutional past. Tyrants ruled them, Priests coerced them, and the god's frightened them. That's why they did away with, neutered or minimized these institutions.

We might be seeing a repeat of the unwinding of the Institutional Movement as well today. My interest is what side of and what role do I wish to play in this movement. Take religion for instance. Greece would no longer be afraid of their gods and their priestly class as Egyptians were. So they changed religion to something much less formidable and even tepid, more safe perhaps, more controllable. This took time to achieve but it was the direction of their thought.

Should this be similar today? I don't think so. But I see changes coming, and have already started to institutional religion that are well under way and unstoppable, not all for the better.

We are in the midst of an Athenian style revolution. Most have no idea this is so. Where will it go from here, again, most have no idea. But at some point, we will stop and take inventory of what we have left and what we want to rebuild. All revolutions do this.

The Democracy Files

I saw an article or something recently, what was it, that suggested that Rome would be a good model, or more precise, the fall of Rome would be a good model for what is going on in the world today. Some of these apocalypticists find Rome to be a good comparison to the USA.

And I can see some similarities, although it takes me a minute to conjure them up. But I quickly switched my focus to Greece, again to be more precise, Athens. This intellectual city of freedom and democracy was the earliest attempt to provide a space for men to live free in large numbers. As messed up as it was, it was an amazing experiment if you will to offer a new way of living upon the earth. It did not last as long as the USA has, perhaps we have learned a thing or two from the Greeks. That’s debatable of course.

The simple point for me is that Rome was an extension of the more tyrannical rule that came before Greece with its new political attempts to self govern in its culture. Rome does not offer the same starting ground for a comparison to the USA. It has simply been more dramatized. And it seems more of a forgone conclusion that when America does die, it will die like Rome did at the hands of invading barbarians. This simplistic and often misunderstood theory is not serving us well. It should not be a foregone conclusion that we will do ourselves in as Rome did nor should it be concluded that Rome would so weaken herself as to invite the invasion that took place.

At this point, I feel like speaking out of both sides of my mouth because we do seem to be allowing an invasion at our southern border, don’t we? Will this be the end of the US as we have known it? Quite possibly. Can America recover from this massive inflow and even prosper from it? I don’t know. I have yet to hear a cogent argument that it can. It seems like there are people that want this inflow to take place but keep quiet about it as long as it is happening. In order to maintain or even accelerate it, they seem to do little more than deny that it is even taking place.

What troubles me is another theory I have and that is that we often gaze in the wrong direction. Greece did not destroy itself because it allowed mass invasion. It would be invaded no doubt, Persians and eventually by Romans or Italians.

It is the period that led up to that which concerns me the most and that is the self warring among Greeks themselves. While we look to our borders in other words we take our eyes of our own issues and difficulties. What Greece failed to teach its citizens was how to get along with those that don’t think like you or agree with you. The same is true for us today.

If you watch what is happening to our city states as it were, we too are tribalizing and moving to the ones we agree with. A large movement back and forth across the country is taking place and it is an attempt to find social and cultural peace, even financial peace in the new space. The numbers say that people are moving to Texas and Florida and leaving California and New York. Instead of engendering policies that help us to live in peace in those places, we are creating policies that continue to divide us along our polemical lines of thought.

This was the same failure of Greece, the purest form of democracy at the time. As good as things were there for the citizens, they took up sides and eventually went to war with each other, giving up on internal discourse and conviviality.

No the tyrannical government of Rome may teach us some things about our future, but it is a poor model for what we face today. I’m not saying don’t look for lessons there, I’m suggesting that there are more important lessons elsewhere and I don’t see many looking there.

I’ve resisted the urge to use the Bible as a source of peaceful living for several reasons. You would think as a pastor and chaplain for almost 40 years I would be all over that source of wisdom. More on that later I suspect. How we use the Word of God today is quite another topic and so very rich with possibilities that I will not ignore it forever. For now though. I look to our own tribalism and look to push back on it as a means of making our lives better. It will not. Separating ourselves into warring factions has never proven to be a way to build a better society.

Feeling Better

I’ve had a couple weeks of the Head Nasties. On the mend I think. Writing articles for Outlook and Ministry. New birds on the lake. Kristy made me some vinegar mushrooms, man, they were good. New battery on moms car, more to that story than I’m letting on.

Sun Feb 18 6pm

Been a month of moderate pain and hard to exercise days since I pulled some rib muscles. Not feeling my best for all that time. Getting back now it seems. Off to the gym tomorrow, maybe some light weights. Still walking the lake each morning, not with gusto, but getting around. Hopefully the warmer temps put some spring in my step.

Thursday Morning Report, Jan 25, 2004

Didn’t get to walk this morning, hung out with Bo after he didn’t seem to want to wake for his walk. He got up after mom got going and we hung out together downstairs. Not sure what’s ailing him, bones or ribs, but he sure is slow to rise up.

Watching Tony Robbins seminar on YouTube. Interesting.