reverse threading

the path back is the path forward


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who you are. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

“you are who you elect.” (michael ramirez – the washington post )

dismay doesn’t begin to describe it. devastated doesn’t begin to describe it.

the betrayal of any goodness is rampant. over half of this country voted for it. whatever your flagship policy issue was – when you stepped up to that voting booth – it should have absolutely paled in comparison to the potential of the cruelty that is now coming, the cruelty you chose.

in your vote you have eliminated all options for meeting in the aisle, for affording change that would have addressed your concerns as well as mine. in your vote you have forever undermined the constitution of this country, undermined democracy, paving the way for authoritarianism, people gleeful to have absolute power and control. in your vote you have done away with – trampled – the rights of women, of minorities, of the LGBTQ community. in your vote you have decimated healthcare, social security, medicare, education. in your vote you, who have descended from immigrants, gallingly voted to remigrate the country into whiteness, into extreme nationalism. in your vote you have opted to give your complicit nod to the alignment of this country with dictators and tyrants around the world. in your vote you have doomed any hope for our physical planet. in your vote you have thrust this country backwards.

but silly me. why would i spell out what your vote meant? you already knew. and you didn’t care.

i did not know your heart was quite this cold. i am horrified. i fear i no longer know you.

i am grieving. and crying doesn’t touch it.

a dear friend texted me late last night.

“i still can’t believe hate won!” she wrote.

exactly.

but it did.

“you are who you elect.”

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY


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in your right mind. [merely-a-thought monday]

in your right mind copy

i remember thinking that this would be easy to write about when i jotted it down.  in your right mind.  ptom and i had discussion about being in your right mind; michael gerson had written part of a column about being in right mind….surely i would have something of depth to say.

now that this is sitting right in front of me, i find that it’s not so easy to articulate.  or maybe it’s territory that feels too revealing, too human.

the moments when calm finally comes after the storm of anger and you are -again- in your right mind. the moments of blind dire panic of imagined-worst-case-scenario when your right mind eludes you and something else takes over until the adrenalin rush eases up and you can see again.  the moments when absolute white-knuckled-fear precedes the back-to-your-right-mindedness. the moments of really bad choices and the post-choice-angst you feel, the remorse for a period of time you weren’t in your right mind.

and then there are the times when you know…you can feel everything align and you, in your right mind, are able to make a decision, to be rational, to be measured in good intention.  your right mind is calm, cool, collected, more at peace with the reality around you.  your right mind is accepting, forgiving, altruistic in empathy and goodness, benevolent and generous.  your right mind is reasonable.

i have known, at least after-the-fact, the times i wasn’t in my right mind.  they are times for which i, impossibly, wish a do-over, a chance to make all well.  times that range the spectrum from angry words spoken to life decisions made without, well, my right mind.

i suppose ptom is right.  you recognize the moments you leave your right mind.  you ask for forgiveness.  from others, from yourself.  and you move on, a little wiser and maybe more capable of steeling yourself against being somehow out of your right mind.  and michael gerson is also right.  he said, “…in our right minds, we know that life is not a farce but a pilgimage…” “..in our right minds, we know that hope can grow within us…”  “…in our right minds, we know that love is at the heart of all things….”

we are in our right mind; we are not in our right mind.  we live life on the roller coaster of right-mindedness, for we are human and we sometimes are, in the complexities of the moments we live, incapable of mindedness.  so we make mistakes.  we learn.  we grow.  and we try again.

for “…we learn that we are neither devils nor divines.” (maya angelou)

read DAVID’S thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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