“Harry Reid has decided to trigger the nuclear option.”

And about time! I am so tired of all the back and forth arguing, the posturing and threatening. The thought that someone was doing something, anything, to try to fix our broken system was a huge relief. Fist pumping in the air, I listened as the political pundits debated this move by the Senate majority leader.

And then I became depressed. Perhaps it is my own failing… needing a right answer, an answer that will make everyone happy. At my age I should know this doesn’t exist. And yet I hope. I hope that rather than this partisan bickering we could find a way toward personal and interpersonal peace. When I hear the word War it makes me think of fighting on a battlefield or in a foreign country. But war is waged, every day within each of us.

We really don’t have to look any further than so many family Thanksgiving dinners. Even without the conflict that families bring, our own  internal debates about the best way to keep the mashed potatoes warm can be the like a little Normandy.

Peace is warm and fuzzy… it is our rose colored image of what Thanksgiving should be. But, somewhere between that image and the reality of pulling together 7 different dishes, kids and adults, silverware and stemware, I usually lose it. My Zen calm goes up in flames like the yams placed too close to the broiler.

As the holiday approach, as we consider the 150 years since Gettysburg, the 50 years since JFK was assassinated, the year since we lost
those precious lives at Sandyhook Elementary, may we find a new resolve to fill our lives with peace, within ourselves and with our  neighbor.

Do you have any good tricks for maintaining peace in the midst of strife? I’d love to hear your comments on this or any of my blog posts. And to prove it, I am going to pick one lucky commenter during the month of November and donate $10 to the charity of their choice. Just leave a comment for any of my blogs and then check back at the end of the month to see if you have won. 

“Why can’t Obama be more like Clinton?”

Seeing as how this was coming from my very conservative father, it piqued my interest. It turns out he was comparing their positions on helping small business. It took me a couple of days to go in and do my own research on this but here is what I found:

-Sept. 2010, CNN reported: President Barack Obama signed into law a $42 billion bill to aid small businesses Monday, saying it would create jobs by providing tax credits and helping banks increase loans.

-Feb. 2012, CNN Money reported: The government program, one of President Obama's many attempts to
pump capital into small firms, disbursed only $4 billion of the $30 billion it was allotted. The original bill, in Feb. 2012 was designed to help small businesses acquire much needed financing . Unfortunately, as one journalist points out there were two problems: small banks were using it to clear their balance sheets instead of lending it out; and small businesses weren’t convinced that demand would support expansion.

-Jan. 2012, The Business Review reported: President Barack Obama’s proposal to consolidate government programs for business into one agency could make it easier for small businesses to find the information and resources they
need. They also pointed out it could dilute small business’ voice… but in the near-term this is avoided, because Obama elevated the SBA administrator’s post to a Cabinet-level position... Something it hasn’t been since Clinton’s administration.

To be fair, there are many very real reasons why small businesses favor Romney in the election. But comparisons of Romney to Clinton seem simplified, like reading a picture book version of Anna Karenina rather than Tolstoy’s original. This seems to me to be exactly what media would like us to do; ignore the difficult details and accept instead a snap-shot as handed to us by whatever partisan group has the money to spend. 

I have mentioned before that I have a penchant for wearing rose colored, historical glasses.  Now I see that I may
have inherited this from my father, who with the distance of time (and a lack of negative ads) has finally begun to acknowledge some of the positive things Clinton accomplished.

“When he heard the news on the radio he began to cry.”

A friend was over and we were discussing the Supreme Court decision about the Affordable Healthcare Act.
She said a colleague who was in a taxi at the time of the decision watched as the taxi driver began to cry. The taxi driver eventually explained that it was because he was so relieved he would have insurance for his
family.

At church yesterday our priest gave a fantastic homily in preparation for the 4th of July and in response to the second reading from Corinthians (2 Cor 8:7,9,13-15) -
As it is written:
Whoever had much did not have more,
and whoever had little did not have less.

On the back of our money, he pointed out, it reads – In God We Trust. After a brief history lesson about how it came to be there, he asked us what we thought that meant…. What trust as a nation in God would look like? Would it be where we are today… the anger and fighting and extreme hatred of others who hold a different view?

Our country was formed by dissent and challenge…. And 200+ years later there are still many things we disagree about. But the premise of democracy was a huge experiment in whether listening to all voices could lead to a nation that stood together, rather than fell apart.  

In the grand scheme of things we are a rather young nation. My daughter, who loves Egypt, can only barely conceptualize what it means for a nation to last for more than 3000 years. We are only 200 years in and the experiment continues. Will we be able to listen, with trust that God will help us to be just and fair? Or, will our need to personally control things lead to such bitterness that we will implode?

We may not all agree on the right way to keep our people healthy… and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact it
may even be horribly arrogant to think there is a right way at all.

In the end, whether the Supreme Court decision made each of us want to cry in relief or in anger – if we can
dialogue in peace, we will continue to live the dream of our founding fathers and show as a nation that In God we do
Trust.

“It’s the evil crawfish explosion.” 

One of the joys of visiting Lake Tahoe in the summer is fishing for crawfish (aka crawdads) along the rocks of the shore. Yesterday we were hanging out at the beach admiring the bucket load a family had caught and they offered to give us one for our sand bucket. My daughter was thrilled…after finding a dead crawdad on the beach earlier, it was nice for her to see a live one.

Later that day, as we packed up to go home, I walked with her over to the rocks so we could set the little crawdad free again. Along the way we ran into the boys who had caught the original bucketful. They had set most of the little guys loose already. But, unfortunately for this one remaining crustacean, they had come up with a game where they dumped sand on top of it in the bucket then tipped the bucket over  and waited for the crawfish to climb his
way out.. I asked if they thought the crawfish liked this and they said he had already done it a lot of times and was
fine.

What had been such a lovely memory from my childhood became tainted by the sight of the poor crawfish struggling for freedom and, earlier, the dead crawfish sticking out of the sand. It reminded me of the recent YouTube video where the old woman was bullied on the bus. A fantastic writer, Charles M. Blow wrote a piece for the New York Times about how that event relates to the society we now live in.: (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/blow-bullies-on-the-bus.html). Somehow I don’t think Mr. Blow would be at all surprised by the behavior of these two boys.

He wrote… ”It is that part of society that sees the weak and vulnerable as worthy of derision and animus.” 

You would think that in a civilized country we would be teaching our children how to care for, not take advantage of, those who are weaker or less able. Instead, we live in a time when in order to maintain our own powerbase we model
disrespect and intimidation. It is pervasive…. In the video games we play, the political debates we have, and the resources we fight over. And sadly, I think many people have become immune and even callous towards these
actions.

There are ways to combat this though. Of course one option is to donate to the vacation fund set up for this bullied woman. But to affect it on a larger scale we can consider donating to an anti-bullying campaign (find some  resources for this here: http://ellen.warnerbros.com/2010/10/donate_to_the_anti-bullying_organizations_ellen_supports_1005.php).

We can also join many others in the bipartisan effort led by NoLables.com to restore civilized debate and discussion
(http://www.nolabels.org/about-us).

And certainly we can and should do some reading about the negative effects of violent video games (http://www.apa.org/research/action/games.aspx).

But most of all we can stand up for the little guy… every day, even when it is only in a small way, and even if it is
only just a crawfish.