I would love to hear how each of you answered the question “Can you?” And, now that you have had some time to contemplate that, I have to say… I think my therapist was asking the wrong question.
When our frame is whether or not we can do something, the implication is that we might not be able to do it for one reason or another. I am a staunch believer in the idea that there is no such thing as can’t. The better question would have been “Will she?”
Because honestly that is what it comes down to. Do I have the enough will to do whatever it is I might dream of doing? Do I have enough will to take care of my wellbeing? Do I have enough will to stand up for what I believe in? Do I have enough will to learn new tricks? Do I have enough will to shed old tricks? Those are the better questions.
This is always shady territory when I say such things. At one and the same time, I am not a fan of meritocracy. I would never tell somebody to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” Nuance and complexity are important here. To believe in these things is to believe in rugged individuality. The truth is, none of us ever accomplishes anything alone. If you’ve accomplished something, you were helped.
The even better question, then, is “Will we?” Will we? Will we what? What is it that we are dreaming of? What is it that we crave? What better world do we envision? What could we be better at? What do we need to stop doing? Will we muster enough will to do these things?! Will we?
Let’s all take the things that we wondered if we could or not and ask ourselves this new question. I like to be outrageous in my dreams. Most would call me pie in the sky. So be it. But here’s the thing. I never think I am going to do it alone. I believe I am always helped in one way or another.
But nobody or nothing can help if we don’t say these things out loud. So let’s hear it. Drop your most outrageous answers to this question in the comments.
That was what she wrote down at the end of our last session. Two weeks later she felt compelled to put the question to me. After all that was her job, to put questions to me. She was my therapist. Yet this time seemed different. Mysterious in some way. I got the sense that she was dying to know. Because the truth of the situation was, she was dying. Cancer had gotten a hold of her and was showing no sign of letting up. I knew this. I felt the urgency of her question. It was clear in the way that she blurted it out before I had gotten myself situated in my seat.
“I wrote this down at the end of our last session. I think you need to hear it.” I braced myself. What had this woman who had seen through my walls seen? Would I be able to withstand the reflection? She sat silently waiting for me to settle down, staring at me intently. Then, through the bated stillness between us, she delivered the message:
“Can she?”
That’s it??? Now I’ll be honest. I was perplexed. Whatever this question was, I didn’t have any immediate answer. I didn’t even know what was being asked, much less how to defend myself against it. She saw the confusion on my face. And let me sit with it.
She knew I wanted to ask what she meant. I knew that she wasn’t about to explain. I wasn’t sure that she even could if she wanted to. So we both just sat there with the question lingering between us. Taunting us both.
My therapist passed many years ago. I have sat with her question ever since. Occasionally it sneaks up on me. Taps on my shoulder. Whispers in my ear. Continues the taunting.
There is no definitive answer. Such is the case with open-ended questions. All one can do is live it. I dance around it to get whatever glimpses I can. So here goes my best interpretations thus far:
Can I let down my guard?
Can I tear down my fortress, stone by stone?
Can I replace it with boundaries instead?
Can I live into all that I came here to be and to do?
Because those things are in no way small.
It’s a bit intimidating.
These things are so incredibly expansive that I worry I might lose all sense of self.
I worry I might lose control.
I worry.
Can I stop worrying?
Can I be fearlessly authentic?
Can the world take it?
I mean can the world take me?
Wait, that’s not my problem.
Can I take it if the world can’t take it?
Can I laugh when they freak out?
Not in a defensive way.
Nor in an offensive way.
But with a quiet grace.
Seeing that they too are bigger than it all.
Knowing they just haven’t seen it yet.
Can I be still in that madness?
Can I be the medicine?
That opens the door and holds it open for all to pass through.
I don’t have any answers. For the moment, the best I can do is invite you into the question as well:
From what I am hearing from people from every which direction, it seems we are all bobbing up and down in a sort of aftershock. It’s like the worst of the storm has passed and as our overtaxed survival instincts go into hiatus, we find ourselves in the midst of the realization that our ship has sunk and we now find ourselves at the mercy of the cold, turbulent water with very little energy or wherewithal to fight the undertoe. Perhaps that sounds dramatic, but I think it is better to speak it out loud, give it the name and recognition that it deserves. The trauma is real. To not acknowledge it is to deny gratitude to our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits for all of the overtime they have been putting in.
I, like everyone else that I have heard from, am feeling it. Luckily, I have been super fortunate to have been receiving a ton of reinforcement that validates my experience. Our systems have been overtaxed and it is going to take time for us to recover. In the meantime, be gentle with yourself. Take it slow. Lower your expectations and demands. Be realistic. Nurture, nurture, nurture. Sleep more. Repeat.
If you haven’t been getting these sorts of reflections on where we are in this moment, please seek out such reflections. Step one is just being aware. This morning Shannon and I listened to Krista Tippet’s On Being podcast interviewing clinical psychologist Christine Runyan. It’s helpful. It puts things in perspective. It reminds us of our very real humanity which begs our attention. Here is the link:
That said, I have to admit to not being in great writing shape these days. But I’m not fighting it. I’ll simply be here when and as I can and trust that the tides will change.
In the meantime, I have to say that this bobbing up and down with the current has proven to be interesting these past few weeks. It’s like this. It’s like knowing that I used to be on this great ship that has been smashed to smithereens and the mission/grand adventure that I was on right along with it. It’s in the past and it isn’t coming back. But just as I come to terms with this idea, some remnant of the ship comes floating by. It’s not just wreckage either. It is, rather, somehow in and of itself whole. Something different than it used to be perhaps, but also still a projection of that old thing into the present and moving on into the future.
What I am saying is that things change, yes. Sometimes they change catastrophically. However, there is also a wholeness between past, present, and future that can never be undone. Everything that is has always been there and will be there all along. Even though we only perceive a minuscule portion of the All That Is, if you will, in any particular moment doesn’t mean that it isn’t there just the same. But let me give you some examples.
When Shannon and I left Houston and moved to Vermont, it was in no small part out of frustration. We felt we had been banging our heads against a wall that was never going to budge for way too long. It was time to let it be. In truth, we had been making significant progress on that wall, but it is difficult to see that when your nose is right up against it and your head and heart hurt.
One such endeavor was The Fly Flat, the multi-award winning project that my last Race to Zero competition team at Prairie View A&M University designed. We had pushed hard to move that project into PVAMU’s first full fledged design-build project. We had laid all of the groundwork, ensured that the facility in which we would be constructing it was fully equipped to do so, secured community partners, pedaled the project to countless national partners for technical and financial support, etc. But when push came to shove, the university wasn’t ready to take it on and wouldn’t be any time in the foreseeable future. It was heartbreaking. Sometimes the best thing to do in these cases is to just walk away. So we did. We let go.
No sooner had we moved to Vermont, than the City of Houston got in touch with me wanting to build the dang thing! A year and a half of red tape and in the midst of a pandemic, the project was finally given the green light. I just issued the construction documents a week ago. It’s not out of the gates yet as what we are attempting to do is not so simple. We are attempting to change the course of affordable housing in Houston. There is a ton more work to be done to try to birth it into reality. That said, I do understand that no matter where it goes from here, it has and will have impact in ways that we may never fully understand.
Here’s another example. I have mentioned before the Living Building Challenge Studio at The Monarch School. This was the first project to be designed to achieve the Living Building Challenge in Texas. I (Architend) designed it, Shannon (Tend Building) built it, and our good friend Amanda (GreeNexus) handled the LBC certification process. We poured everything we had into making that project a reality- time, sweat, money, persistence, and on and on. Then the school went through a major life-altering administrative transition and what started as an impossible dream drifted back into impossibility. It was heartbreaking. Sometimes the best thing that you can do is to walk away. So we did. We let it go.
A few years ago The Monarch School contacted me to see if they could resurrect the LBC certification. I directed them to Amanda and left them in her good hands. I, myself, remained guarded about it. I wasn’t about to get my hopes up just to be crushed again. So I didn’t think about it. On the very same day that I was issuing the drawings for Fly Flat, Amanda texted. She had just been notified that the LBC Studio had achieved LBC Petal Certification. Even though not the full certification that the building is capable of, this is a massively, huge deal. Redemption. Finally. Elation. Finally. Ten years later, to be exact.
It is so hard sometimes to deal with grief head on. It’s just too much. Life goes on and we have to find ways to keep playing along. It’s not that I have given up on anything that lies within my vision. I haven’t. I have faithfully kept plugging away at it in any and every way that life makes available to me. I do trust that even when a particular dream doesn’t seem to materialize, it does ultimately come back around in some way that will perhaps be recognizable, perhaps not. I could site countless examples from hockey to architecture to urban planning to regenerative design to personal relations. Every bit of it is still swirling around in this vast ocean, rising and falling just like me. There is something to the letting go, to being unmoored. And when some piece of your life goes floating by, ah… the joy.
The words are hard to come by this week. I have to admit that it is difficult to watch my fellow Texans not just in pain, but in danger, from nearly 2,000 miles away. That said, I have to first express deep gratitude that my parents, who live in Houston, only lost power for a few hours. Thank God is all I can really say to that. My parents are getting up there (I can hear my Dad now saying that they are not getting up there, they are up there!), My mother in particular has been in a state of compromised health for years now. It’s bad enough that they have been in a state of high risk due to COVID-19, and now this. Also, thankfully, they both recently received their second vaccine shot. So while Texas isn’t quite out of the woods yet, at least they have turned the corner.
You might imagine that I know a whole lot of people in Texas. I do. I haven’t been able to check in with all of them. I know that many were without power and heat for multiple days. Almost all have been without running/potable water and still are. While I haven’t heard any reports from people who I directly know having water damage in their house, I certainly have heard such reports from people with only two degrees of separation, and no doubt I just haven’t heard yet that this has in fact happened to people close to me. This is just to say that my parents were the exception, not the rule. The fallout has been as widespread as anything I have ever seen in Texas… Harvey included.
One thing that I have found interesting since moving to Vermont is how the persistent trials and tribulations of another place tend to fade into the background. Having spent 50 years of my life in Texas, I know up close and personal what those trials and tribulations are for Texans, and Houstonians in particular. I know the fear and trauma of hurricanes and flooding, of draught, of heat waves, of freezing pipes and roads. I always thought that when such an onslaught was coming that all of my friends who lived elsewhere, indeed people all over the country if not the world, were paying attention and bracing for us out of empathy.
Now I can say that is only partially true, although it is at least partially true. Yet it is difficult for us to be empathetic to something that is not only so far away, but is also something that we are not and/or have not personally experienced. The human condition in all parts of the world has to respond to challenges, both natural and manmade. There is a certain amount of hardness that comes from just having lived life. It’s the impulse to say “shit happens,” followed by “get over it.” We all have our own lives to attend to, after all. So with our hyper-connectivity, we have what I would call a cursory finger on the pulse of events across the globe. Of course we tend to respond to those that hit closer to home than those that hit on the other side of the globe.
On the spectrum between fight or flight, I fall squarely on freeze. I mean freeze solid, people. There should be a picture of me next to the explanation of the term “deer in headlights.” I think this is in part because my highly analytical mind is constantly churning an infinite number of scenarios to determine the best course of action (of course combined with a high fear of failure operating in the background). When push comes to shove, I can’t complete the process fast enough to respond in a timely manner. The other part of it has to do with being a highly sensitive person. The inputs themselves can be overwhelming and so deeply emotional that it is hard to to hold. So I freeze instead.
I have to admit that I feel much safer in a multitude of ways since moving to Vermont, relatively speaking. That isn’t because Vermont doesn’t have its own challenges, it’s because it is consistent in facing them and working hard- and paying the price- to meet them. But I won’t turn this into a political criticism, in spite of the anger that I share with so many of my fellow Texans. I don’t want to invoke the side of me that wants to fry Ted Cruz in the Cancun sun in the face of real, widespread trauma. I have to say here that I am now grateful for our own trauma last Fall. As you may recall, Shannon and I found ourselves in our own situation without power, heat, and water in the face of freezing temperatures for weeks as we desperately scrambled to find a new place to rent for the winter when our first place fell through. I am here to say that the trauma is real. If you haven’t experienced something like this, you can’t even begin to imagine it. I am grateful that I now can. It enables me to be fully empathetic with what Texans are now experiencing. It enables me to stand into it without freezing.
The thing that we all need to start getting real about is that trauma is being heaped upon trauma. Take Houstonians. Some Houstonians’ houses were flooded in massive flood events in the couple of years leading up to Harvey in 2017, only to have their houses flood again after they had just completed renovations. I literally know people who this happened to. Just going through a hurricane is traumatic, to say nothing of the aftermath. It takes years to get back to normal, and some never recover. Just as Houston was returning to a sense of general normalcy, COVID hits, then social unrest (and remember that George Floyd was a Houstonian), then the Capitol Insurrection, and now this. Nevermind all of the ongoing personal demons that each and every one of us faces.
Here’s my point: we can’t do this alone. We weren’t designed to. Here’s a bit of straight-talking Texas realness for you: it’s time to drop the rugged individualism bullshit. It’s also time to drop the Us vs. Them bullshit. Any simple observation reveals that none of that is working for anyone. Nor will it. Ever. As I continue to be slow to be reactive, I instead reach for my higher Self. In the process I reach for higher Wisdom, from whatever directions that happens to come. Now that I have set the stage, here are the two things that are speaking to me this week.
The first is Beto, who tirelessly shows up. Nevermind politics. The guy is for real. He is on the ground. He is for everyone at the end, beginning, and middle of every day. Hell, he is for everyone in the middle of the night. Even without an elected position, he is the best leader that Texas has at the moment. If you find yourself empathetic to what Texans are going through right now, consider giving to his fundraising and organizing effort to provide relief:
The next thing is bigger picture than this week’s traumas. This is getting back to that divide between Us vs. Them. We have to heal this divide first and foremost if we have any hopes of surviving, much less thriving. Every single last one of us needs to focus on this. Urgently. I am currently nine chapters into an extraordinary book that I would make every single American read if I could:
Please, please read it. Let’s get on the path together. It’s time we unfreeze and learn to be like flowing water, while accepting that rocks have their rightful place in the world. Want to know what I am talking about? Then read. Wishing you warmth and water wherever you are in the world.
To be honest, I find myself in a quandary these days- half of me pulled toward wanting to fight with all my might for everything that I believe (and love), while the other half of me sits here watching all of the old tired antics unfolding and refusing to engage. In fact it is precisely because I am inhabiting this in between space that I have found it hard to come to this table to write. But instead of waiting until I have it all figured out (which I never will), I’ll do what I intended to do on these pages from the beginning: I’ll share with you openly and honestly my inner workings.
Where to begin? I last wrote in the wake of the Capitol Insurrection. Since that time, as I shared in my last post, I and many of my fellow Princetonians have been reflecting on, discussing, debating, and moving toward action in response to the role my classmate Ted Cruz has played not only in the Insurrection, but also in helping to create the great divide that exists in this country. It would be a mistake to treat the Insurrection in any way as an isolated incident. Rather, it is a clear reflection of exactly where we are. And in that sense, we are all of us- every single last one of us- responsible in some way. Be that as it may, let’s not jump to false equivalencies here when doling out our guilty verdicts. Power, in the currently rudimentary way that we perceive it, matters. The behavior of those who have it therefore bears much more weight than that of those who are struggling for just a little piece of that pie.
So if you want to know where I stand, I stand for bearing responsibility. We must be accountable for ourselves and to each other. In my ideal world, we each hold ourselves accountable. In fact, I value this principal so highly that it is probably the greatest source of my judginess when I believe that somebody has failed to do so in regards to how they have behaved toward another. By the same token, to hold oneself accountable is the surest way to earn my respect and trust. I can forgive anything and embrace the messiness of humanity so long as we reflect and acknowledge where our thoughts and actions are not reflective of our Higher Being. And to be clear, holding oneself accountable isn’t the same as taking the blame. Again, we are all to blame so far as the blame game goes. It is instead to simply admit that I took part in this in some way, and I am willing to look at that so that we can correct course moving forward.
Yet that is my ideal world. That is the world of a highly intelligent and evolved species, such as the ones that God describes in Conversations with God. We are nowhere even close to such a state of being (maybe). In the meantime, when others fail to hold themselves accountable, we must do it for them if we have any hopes of ever attaining our Higher Selves. We must do so, not so much as a judgement, but as a course correction that looks something like this: “You were thinking that you are something less than Who You Really Are, and therefore you said or did this thing that is out of sync with your higher truth. We are here to remind you that you are more than what you were believing in that moment, and if you could remember that, you will think and act differently moving forward.” In the case of those who utilized their power to incite the Insurrection, we do have to start this process of holding them to account by first removing their authority over others.
In the meantime, I am holding myself to my own standard. I am looking myself in the mirror. That is the very reason that I find myself now hesitating rather than throwing myself full throttle at the jugular (which I happen to be pretty good at). I am slowing down to take a look at what I haven’t been seeing. I am stopping to listen more deeply. I am resisting that urge to reduce “the opposition” to a subhuman creature without a heart or a soul, a highly questionable mind, and an upside down moral code. And as I slow myself down, what I find myself asking is, how do we get out of this mess? How do we dismantle two alternate realities and construct one that expresses the truth about Who We Really Are?
That’s a very hard question, indeed… because both sides believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that their version of reality is already expressing the (not their) absolute truth, while the other side is absolutely not. I won’t even pretend to know how to extract a person from a cult. I assume there are experts out there in that department, whose insights might prove helpful in this moment. I do believe that we need such help. Yet I will also say that every single last one of us would benefit from a healthy dose of cult brainwashing extraction. If you find that insulting or irritating in some way, then I refer you back to my observations on the fallacies in our collective worldview. The truth is that the source of our divide lies in the fallacies that are foundational to our collective worldview. No amount of business as usual is going to save us now, nor would it be helpful if it did.
Finding my mind stumped by the question, I am looking elsewhere for answers. This is not to say that I can’t come up with a highly articulate rebuttal aimed at said jugular of, say, Ted Cruz. Oh, I can. My mind has been churning away on that one for years now. I just happen to know that no matter how logical, foolproof, or powerful my argument may be, it won’t work. That is to say, it won’t change Ted’s mind, nor the mind of anyone else who lives in his parallel universe. While I can’t say that I have ever known Ted well, I can say that I have been familiar with his perspective since he was seventeen. Since that time it looks to me like it has not budged, not at all. As far as I can tell, the only thing that is going to change Ted Cruz’s mind is a divine intervention. Until then he will, in my opinion, remain lost and imprisoned within the constructs of his own mind. It is easy to think that he is being willfully evil. I don’t think that is the truth, though. I think he is simply lost and doesn’t know it. His childhood indoctrination was so strong that he was never able to question it, and has hence spent his entire life to date beefing it up. He is in no way exceptional in this regard.
So I find myself putting the arguments down to give myself some space. In this space I am remembering Who I Really Am. I can’t do that without also remembering Who We All Are. In that space I have been grateful for the voice and guidance of one being in particular these days: Shaman Durek. I have mentioned him in this blog before. I am doing so again because I find what he is focusing on in this very moment to be spot on. Specifically, I consider him to be the Chief Cult Brainwashing Extractionist that we are so desperately in need of. Just this past Wednesday, he addressed perfectly how to overcome our mental traps in his Be Your Own Damn Guru Series which, among other deprogramming, you can find here:
Specifically look for the BYODG Heart Mapping recording, which isn’t posted yet. Warning: nobody likes to be deprogrammed. Please remember that if you dare to take a look. You may also find it helpful to remember that Shaman Durek’s end game is for each of us to step into Who We Really Are, not for anyone to become a follower of him or of anybody else. The problem being that we have all been programmed to believe that we are something less than what we actually are. Imagine how hard it is to extract somebody from a cult. What is the difference between a cult and any other given worldview? The hard truth is that there is none. Yet we have to have one of these worldview thingies. So my best advice it to choose wisely, keep a close eye on it, and constantly reevaluate whether or not your chosen worldview is serving Who You Really Are. If not, time to let it go.
I apologize for my silence since last Wednesday. Several of you reached out to me prior to Wednesday expressing your frustration with Ted Cruz over his objection to the electoral college vote. For those of you who don’t know why anyone would reach out to me about that, it is because I was classmates with Ted at Princeton. I first met Ted in the summer before we headed off to college 1,600 miles away from our hometown of Houston, TX. That means that I have had the opportunity to know not just the politician, but the man. I can honestly say that I have found Ted to be frustrating from the moment that I met him, and I certainly felt that frustration going into last Wednesday.
Then January 6th came. The only thing that I really found shocking about the “insurrection” was that anyone was shocked. Indeed as I have pointed out recently on this page, it is difficult to imagine anything other than Civil War based on how divided this country is. Anyone with a pulse on the ground should know this. Anyone who didn’t know that Trump was planning a coup simply wasn’t listening to him. Many still aren’t. And rest assured, I am sorry to have to point out that this is far from over. Not that I want this to devolve into Civil War. I don’t. I would prefer that we figure it out. I would prefer we evolve, together. But it isn’t going to be easy. Given where we are, this is going to be quite hard.
It is hard to know even where to begin. Those of us who spent the first four years of our adult lives with Ted have been internally debating what our role should be. Those discussions have been civil, intelligent, deep. We don’t all agree, just like the rest of America. But somehow our ability to even have the discussion without devolving into hate has been one of the most encouraging things that I have experienced in this last week. In the meantime, well over 400 members (and counting) of our class have signed a petition condemning Ted’s decision to, in our minds, spread a lie for his own political gain and incite the events of Wednesday in the process. I am among them. You can read the full statement here:
I feel it is extremely important that we each speak our truth. I further feel that it is important that we each always and forever seek deeper truths, admitting that our individual and even collective perspectives are always limited. With this in mind, my analysis is that these three steps will lead toward healing:
Be honest with ourselves and others, by telling our own deepest truths as well as the deepest truth about our history.
Listen to each other utilizing tools such as Nonviolent Communication.
Reset our democracy with substantial reforms.
In the name of these first two points, I would like to share with you my response as to why I signed the petition denouncing Ted’s actions. I ask you to respectfully listen as I state my truth. It doesn’t have to be yours, but this is most certainly mine:
As a Texan, a Houstonian, and a Princetonian, I have had to give Ted Cruz a great deal of thought. He was “my” senator for seven years, before my wife and I ultimately decided to leave Texas for her home state of Vermont in 2019 (which I realize Ted may well consider a victory). If you asked me how Ted represented me during that time, I’d have to say that he didn’t. Why would he? I am gay. I am also a progressive. I never voted for him. Nor did I ever agree with him in our preceptorship (small discussion group) on American Political Thought, a course that we both took at Princeton. I believe in transparency. So there you have mine. Why on earth would Ted ever represent me? In his Texas-sized world, I am a minority. I am a minority in Texas politically speaking (although just barely these days). I am further a minority in terms of sexual identity. If you believe the latest statistics, roughly 4% of adults in Texas identify as LGTBQ+. What this amounts to is that at a statewide level, Ted has been politically safe ignoring (voting against) me, my values, and my concerns. Fine. That’s our political system for you. He won the election, after all. (Note: representation by the people who are supposed to represent us is highly lacking on both sides of the aisle.)
Perhaps, then, you can forgive me for letting out a little chuckle when Ted uttered these words on the Senate floor, “Recent polling shows that 39% of Americans believe that the election that just occurred was ‘rigged.’ You may not agree with that, but it is nonetheless the reality for half the country (strange math, but whatever)…. Even if you do not share that conviction…. simply telling the voters to “go jump in a lake, the fact that you have deep concerns is of no moment to us.” The entire time that Ted was my senator, he was in essence telling me to “go jump in a lake.” So, you know what, I did. I moved to a beautiful lake in Vermont!
To unpack what Ted seemed to be saying on this day was that it was important to hear the voice of the minority and stand up for them. But he then justifies his actions by asserting that the minority is by some strange math half the country. Or perhaps more to the point, he is gambling that half of the country believes there was widespread election fraud and will therefore vote for him in 2024. But let me be transparent. I think Ted is being disingenuous. I don’t think he cares what either the majority or the minority of Americans think. I think Ted cares about what he thinks, particularly what he thinks will get him elected President. I am far from alone amongst our Princeton classmates in thinking that Ted is, and has always been, self-serving. It may well be that Ted believes that he is following our school motto of “in the nation’s service.” But I would argue that if so, he is not being honest even with himself.
I would like to take to heart Ted’s comments, both before and after the insurrection, that we need to tone down the rhetoric and instead work on healing the deep divide in this country. I can’t, though, because I have spent way too much of my adult life listening to Ted’s divisive rhetoric that I believe has in no small part led us to said deep divide. Furthermore, I know too well that if we are to understand how January 6th could have happened in the United States, we need to retrace our history. Specifically, we need to get uncomfortably honest about our history. Ready for some Texas history? It was impossible to miss the “Come and Take It” and Confederate flags waving in the mob last Wednesday. It is no accident that a) the “Come and Take It” flag is a favorite of Ted’s, the Texas Tea Party, and the Texas Republican Party or that b) it was being waved side-by-side with the Confederate flag. Now if you are a Texan worth your salt, you know the history of the “Come and Take It” flag, or should I say, you know the official (Anglo-white approved) version that you were fed in your seventh grade history book.
That version tells of how the Texas founders rose against the evil empire of dictator Santa Anna’s Mexico, beginning by refusing to give back the cannon that Mexico had given, loaned, whatever to the colonists to “protect themselves” from Native Americans. The official version says nothing about the completely fabricated disinformation campaign that the Father of Texas, Stephen F. Austin, waged about the Karankawas specifically to justify their extermination (in part by said cannon). Nevermind those pesky Native Americans and the fact that their land was stolen by the Spanish, then the Mexicans, and then the Anglo colonists. Just get rid of them. Problem solved. They were cannibals anyway (note: you really ought to fact check that for yourself). Now as for those dang Mexicans, well they had the nerve to a) require the Anglo colonists to start paying taxes just like everybody else after giving them their first four years for free so that they could get established, b) not allow the Anglos to become the State of Texas because they didn’t yet meet the population requirements like everybody else (is that white privilege I smell?), and c) do the most egregious thing ever- outlaw slavery in 1829 and by 1836 feel it was time for the Anglos to start complying. In case you were wondering where all those Anglo colonists were coming from, they were coming largely from the South… with their slaves in tow. Now I am not saying that Santa Anna wasn’t a bad dude. He was. Even his own people thought so and fought against him. What I am saying is that the history of the Republic of Texas is much more nuanced and complex than the white-washed version that we have sold ourselves and everyone else on. I am also saying that it is way past time to come clean. That starts with honesty. That starts by acknowledging that anytime we wave the “Come and Take It” flag, we cannot divorce it from the fact that it is connected to both genocide and slavery. To paraphrase Lyndsey Graham (Lyndsey Graham of all people!!!), “If you are looking for historical guidance, this (flag) is not the one to pick.” I’m sorry, Texas. I know this is painful, but what we are looking for is on the other side of this great divide.
Ted is a smart person. You are all smart people. I don’t need to connect the dots for any of you. I simply want to use this moment to suggest that if we are serious about healing the divide, then honesty is the way forward. It is o.k. to have been wrong. It is o.k. to admit our mistakes. It is o.k. to let the other sides of the story come out. It is even o.k. to scoot over and allow others to have power. Doing so is not a threat to either our individuality or our democracy. Doing so is the very foundation of democracy, and the more perfect union that we seek. It is time to let go of our old notions of power-over that are based in un-evolved survival instinct. It is time to learn how to do power-with. Because the truth is that evolution was never rooted in competition or survival of the fittest. Evolution has always been based in cooperation. Even the dumb old trees know that (on second thought, I suppose that is why they are so old). If you don’t know what I am talking about, ask an ecologist.
So that is my truth. If you found that hard to read, I would like to share a resource with you that I hope gives all of us hope. Please watch this short film:
If you are interested in bringing this sort of conversation to your community, check out the group behind this movie:
We have to start with honesty. We have to be able to have the hard conversations. I encourage each of you to seek these conversations in your own lives and communities. If you are having trouble imagining how we overcome political gridlock in this country, I refer you to this report by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences:
Read through the recommendations, think about how they would transform our government. If that change resonates with you, then tell others, tell your representatives, and get involved.
Finally, what I want to say to Ted after all of these years is this:
“Let go. You don’t have to be right, nor do you have to save this country. You don’t have to win the debate. I get that it feels scary to you, but let the future unfold. Let our country evolve. If you want to call yourself an originalist, then dig deeper. Our Constitution didn’t just drop out of the sky. It emerged in the natural progression of the Western worldview. That being the case, it has a great deal of context. It has precedents. It has history. So if you want to be an originalist, then you have to go back to the founding thoughts upon which the Western worldview was built. If you dig deep enough, you will discover that much of what we once thought to be true about the world is flat out wrong. Our systems are built on fallacies layered upon fallacies. Saying so doesn’t make us unAmerican. It makes us very much American. Because the good news is that we know much better now. We simply have to admit as much. You can do it, Ted. Be a real originalist. Have an original thought. Heed Thomas Jefferson in his assertion that every generation must write the Constitution anew, based on the best knowledge available to them at the time, so as to not bind one generation to another. In the words of Jefferson, “the earth belongs to the living and not to the dead.” It’s going to be o.k., Ted. Change is scary, but what awaits us on the other side of this is better than anything we have experienced before. All you have to do is let go and come along for the ride.”
I was originally going to call this post “Area 51,” and then quickly clarify that I am referring to my 51st trip around the sun, not the cryptic place where aliens are kept. Given the year that this 51st trip has been, I thought it an appropriate metaphor. But I have been slow to sit down to write since my birthday (the 4th in case you were wondering), and now the solstice is upon us. I am up, not able to sleep and wishing that I could actually see the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, but no such luck. Nevertheless, I feel the thinness of the moment and figured it is as good a time as any to share. The sun is standing still, after all, in that moment of pause as it switches from descent to rise… or so it seems to us on what seems to be on the up side of our planet (side note: we might want to check as to why we think north is up and south is down, just sayin).
Anyway, to back up to my birthday, Shannon asked me on the day of what I had to share upon completion of trip #51. I hadn’t thought too much about that, but did have an immediate response as well as some follow up thoughts that have been emerging in the weeks since. So in this moment of pause, that is what I would like to share with you. Here goes:
Thank God for young people. This was the thing that immediately came to mind when Shannon popped the question. The thing is, I am incredibly grateful that in my adult life I have always had the opportunity to work closely and profoundly with young people. By young I am talking kids through young adults. In addition to the honor of raising two beautiful girls, I spent fifteen years coaching a very large extended hockey family of youth and since then have taught architecture at the college level. I won’t say that this intense relating has kept me young, per se, but rather has kept me open minded. Because the thing about young people is that the world hasn’t usually crashed down on them yet. There is still nothing but wide open potential in front of them. They have yet to become stuck in their neural pathways. They don’t really think they know it all (although they may pretend to, as opposed to adults who tend to be sure that they do even though they may claim otherwise so as to not sound pompous). Young people have yet to become, well, jaded. Their stories are still largely in front of them, and therefore they aren’t limited by what has yet to be written. In short, life is still a big mystery. This is an extremely important perspective to stick close to, because in truth it always remains so in spite of our tendency to forget as our stories and patterns pin us down as time progresses.
There is no such thing as closure. There are no endings. There is no end of the proverbial rope. Life isn’t linear like that. There is no point in trying to make it so. In reality, life is a complex tangle of strings, all interweaving into one another with no end of any string to be found. Ever. Oh you may think that you have found it, but just give it a moment. The second you think you have escaped the entanglement that string will yank your feet right out from under you. My best advice: laugh when it does. Be deeply appreciative in the knowing that the net has got you and it will never let you fall. In this very moment, I am thinking about so many strings, the so, so many people who are woven through my life. Every single one of them is with me in every single moment, and always will be… especially in my moments of quiet solitude and reflection. Especially in my thin moments, like tonight, which brings me to my last observation for you.
Life is a thin space. Always. It doesn’t seem so, no. Much of the time it feels like we are walking through mud, or quicksand as the case may be. But that is just the illusion talking. If you are ever desperate to remember how thin life is, just pick up a glass or plate or anything breakable and hurl it at the nearest wall or floor (borrowing this from a movie, for the record). As you watch and listen to it shatter, think to yourself “this is life”. It seems solid, but reality is fragile, held together as it is by tenuous beliefs and easily overcome by an instant of committed rejection after which there is no going back to playing pretend. Usually it is an outside force that reveals the thinness of it all to us. Embrace those. Revel in those. Invite more of that in. We need life to get as thin as it can be right about now so that all of that untapped potential that our young people remain close to can come pouring in through each and every one of us.
Those are my top three observations upon completion of my 51st spin as I sit still with the world, for just a moment. And for all of you humans who can see the conjunction tonight, I trust that you are taking some damn good pics for those of us trapped under the clouds! Peace.
Spoiler alert: we aren’t. But for a hot second there it got more than a bit dicey. So much so that I now have an entirely new appreciation for what it means to be homed. To back up, we are in the midst of a gut renovation of our primary home. We have therefore been living off grid in our tiny home (Tiny Drop) for the past eight months.
We have lived in Tiny Drop before, but never for more than three months… three summer months, that is. For this stint, we moved in while there was still three feet of snow on the ground in April, in the midst of a pandemic. Because we are off grid on the mountain and still don’t have everything operational in Tiny Drop, we have been living without running (much less hot) water in the house, without a fully functional toilet in the house, with limited power from our half-functioning solar system, and without heat.
When we started out on this adventure, I figured we would acclimate to our new conditions. I figured our new normal would become, well, normal. I figured life would then also feel normal. But it soon became clear that it’s one thing living off grid with little in the way of creature comforts when you don’t have to be or go anywhere. It’s another thing when you have to show up to work looking, well, normal.
Just to give you a little glimpse into a day in the life, to shower required first filling up four one gallon jugs with spring water from an outdoor faucet, heating half of that up on an outdoor propane stove, mixing the hot and cold water to temperature in a big steel pail, pouring the mixed water back into the four gallon jugs through a funnel, carrying the four gallons in a milk crate into the house, undressing (important step, and highly unpleasant in a cold house), getting in the shower, filling up a bucket with two of the gallons, lifting the bucket up onto brackets that Shannon rigged up so that the plastic camping spout would be high enough so that you could sit on said milk crate to wash your hair, taking the first half of your shower being sure to get enough shampoo out of your hair so that you could see, because you need to see to lift the bucket down and fill it up with the remaining two gallons to finish your four gallon shower. Incidentally, that four gallon shower is the equivalent of taking a two minute shower with a water efficient shower head. Two minutes. Granted, doing it this way takes much longer than two minutes. Oh and don’t forget the dismount… freezing ass cold!
Needless to say, we didn’t shower much. But I couldn’t show up to teach at an elite college looking and smelling homeless, so I had to shower twice a week. Add to this the five steps that have to be added to every other creature comfort to which we have become accustomed. Just push that button. Just turn this dial. Just flip a switch. Not so much. My morning routine, which is painfully slow even with all of those modern conveniences, suddenly drained half of my energy before my day even started.
The end result is that by the beginning of October we were both running on zero. It had also become clear that we were not going to get construction on the house far enough along to move back in before winter set in. We had known that this was likely to be the case given pandemic related delays and so on, so we were prepared to seek out a rental to get us through the winter months. That process went, thankfully, fairly quickly and we found a place we could afford not far from our construction project. That was a huge sigh of relief. We just had to get through another month and we would be moving out of the cold and into a place with heat, a working kitchen, running (hot) water, a shower, a flushing toilet. Light was at the end of the tunnel.
Then it got cold. Then it snowed. Then our spring water froze. Then our solar system stopped producing any electricity. We started heating stones on the grill to keep us warm enough in bed. On a scale of 1-10, our energy levels dropped from an average of say 5 down to an average of maybe a whopping 2. We were tanking by the second. But the light was at the end of the tunnel. We just had to get through a couple more weeks. That is, until the call came. The pandemic flexed its muscle. Our would-be landlord panicked. She and her family decided that it would be safer for her to winter in Vermont. One week before we were supposed to move, we suddenly had nowhere to go. We found ourselves face to face with the prospect of homelessness.
There is this Zen Buddhist Center near Middlebury that goes on what they call “street retreats.” They basically go live on the streets with the homeless for a week in cities around the country as a way to develop an intimate understanding of the challenges. As somebody who works on affordable housing, I had only a year ago considered some day participating in such a retreat. On the one hand I thought maybe it wouldn’t be too different from hiking the Long Trail. But then I realized that shitting in the woods is one thing, while trying to find a place to go to the restroom in New York City when one is homeless, is something else. I wasn’t sure I could handle it. After coming face to face with homelessness, I now know for sure that I can’t.
After an intense week of panicked searching and coming up with nothing (largely due to the pandemic), we finally found a new place through one of Shannon’s high school classmates. It’s not glamorous, but it’s a roof, a shower, hot water, a stove, a fridge, HEAT and luxury of all luxuries… a washer and dryer! And within the week we will also enter back into the 21st century…. we will have internet (which also means we will be able to access Netflix for the first time in eight months)!!! We have now been here for a week, unthawing and decompressing as we enter into what I presume will be a long, slow stabilization process. We have to reset, completely. We have to detox an immense amount of stress.
Now I’m not telling you all of this in order to get any form of sympathy. The truth is that Shannon and I are privileged. We are Ivy League educated. We are white. We are employed. We have support networks. We would have found our way out of this situation one way or the other. I think. Because the thing is that as I work through how we ended up in this predicament, we would have to back all the way up to our decision to buy her family home in the first place to correct course. There isn’t, on close introspection, a different decision that we should have made along the way. Not really. I mean we could have decided to do this rather than that at any given moment, but we honestly made the best decisions that we could have given the information available to us at each moment. In spite of that, we ended up on the precipice of homelessness through no fault of our own. Do you have any idea how many people living on the streets ended up there by no fault of their own? How about this… just assume every single one of them regardless of whatever judgements we might throw at them.
The funny thing is that while all of this was going on, I have myself been working on three separate affordable housing projects: one in Middlebury, one in Houston, and one in Boston. I was, in large part, doing this work from my car in order to access free internet outside the public library. Incidentally, I now fully understand why so many homeless tend to hang out at the public libraries in Houston. That was enough immersive research for me. I think I get it now in a way that I am not soon to forget. What I can tell you is that, yes, we have to approach homelessness with a housing first strategy. If I, with all of my privilege, education, resources, etc, cannot maintain mental, physical, emotional and spiritual stability living in a precarious situation, then there is no way in hell that we should expect anybody to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” Don’t believe me? Try not knowing where you are going to sleep the next night when it’s going to be 20 degrees outside.
Let’s all keep this in mind this holiday season. Help somebody. Even the smallest things make the biggest differences. God bless. I am going to enjoy my newfound heat now!
…or not. As in, no thank you. I have not and will not subject myself to what has devolved into bad reality TV. So if you were hoping for my take on it, my take is… don’t watch. But even if it hadn’t turned into something totally ridiculous, I still don’t think that debating has served us well as a… I’m not sure I can call it a democratic society, but perhaps a society that aspires to be egalitarian at least in some way, or so we thought. Oh, snap. Now I’ve said something utterly sacrilegious. Here we go!
I’m not talking about the democratic part either. If you have yet to figure out that we do not live in a democracy, then you haven’t been listening to the Republicans. They are by no means hiding the fact. It’s right there in their name for crying out loud! Republicans are correct when they say that this country was founded as a republic, not a democracy. Incidentally, if you ever wondered why Republicans are called Republicans and Democrats are called Democrats, it’s because the former believe we should remain a republic and the latter believe we should become a democracy. It’s as simple as that. Ha! I was just being facetious in case you didn’t notice.
But I am not here to talk about whether or not we should be one or the other, not that I don’t have an opinion on that subject matter that you no doubt can guess. If you have never read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers or at least gone to see Hamilton, then I will direct you there to get clear on what each side was fighting for in the founding of this country. In the end they came up with something of a compromise, which is why it isn’t as simple as I joked above. But the sacrilegious thing that I want to talk about is the process of how the founding fathers came to their decision, the process upon which this country was founded – debate.
Now maybe some of you have been trained in the art of debate. Maybe you participated on the debate team of some institution of lower or higher learning. Maybe you even went through the holy grail of all debate education, law school. I did none of these things. Yet regardless, debate is baked into a liberal arts education. Trust me, it is, for all of you doubters who think that a liberal arts education is about becoming brain washed by liberals. It isn’t. Even as we debate what should and should not be respectfully allowed into our debates in such institutions, the process of learning is still very much based on debating the various ways of seeing an issue.
The goal, of course, is to win the debate. That is to say, to prove that you are right and the other side is wrong. We practice this quite a lot at such places like my alma matter, Princeton, where large lecture courses are broken into small preceptorships of 10 or so people who meet once a week to, you guessed it- debate! Well, technically the term was “discuss.” But we all knew what that meant. Incidentally, I had the good fortune (sorry, I am particularly feisty these days) of ending up in a preceptorship for a course called American Political Thought with none other than my classmate Ted Cruz. Yes, yes I did. Ted, as you may or may not know, is a masterdebater. He’s a champ, actually, dating way back into his high school years, continuing through college, and right up into the holy grail of all holy grails, Harvard Law. Go, Ted.
Or not. I never really understood what all of the hype was surrounding Ted’s debating skills, or anybody’s really for that matter. I am sorry all of you debaters out there. I just have to honestly say that I do not feel that this mode of communication is serving us well. In fact, I think it has a whole lot to do with what has led us to this complete, utter breakdown of communication that has us at an impasse that no amount of debating will ever get us out of. The only thing that it is going to get us into is an all-out war followed by extinction. Go, debaters.
Not that I am immune from this disease. Yes, I just called debate a disease. I’m sorry. Those are fighting words, and I am finally, finally getting to this huge, critical, what I know will be a life-altering thing on my self-improvement, educational To Do List. I have started down the path of Nonviolent Communication (NVC for short). A couple of Marshall B. Rosenberg’s books just arrived a few days ago. Shannon and I each picked up one of the books and are in the process of swallowing them whole. If you have not studied or have never heard of NVC, please, please buy this book and/or sign up for an NVC course in your area:
So while I am clearly no expert on this subject, I know enough to know that NVC can and should supplant debate as our process of decision making. Want to revolutionize education? Replace debate teams with NVC teams for starters. Why? Because debate emphasizes division and leads to either outright domination or life-numbing compromise, otherwise known as lose-lose decisions and outcomes. This country, for example, was founded on a compromise. We have always celebrated that fact and that process, until we finally got sick of it and decided that compromise is for the birds. And that much is true, metaphorically speaking- birds surely know better. Compromise sucks. Compromise, by definition, leads to devolution of the system. As in, it makes everything worse.
The opposite of compromise is reconciliation. I’m sure I have talked about this before, but as a reminder, all decisions and hence actions are subject to the Law of Three. The Law of Three says that there is always an activating force and a restraining force at play in each and every decision. When those two forces move forward through a compromise, both sides lose, which is to say that neither one gets what they truly want. In NVC terms, each side has real needs and in the compromise nobody’s needs are met. Sound about right? When nobody’s needs are met, everything just gets worse.
Reconciliation is the answer. Reconciliation of the activating and restraining forces causes the system and everyone in it to evolve. It does so because in reconciliation, everyone’s needs are met. They must be by definition. The solution, or strategy in NVC terms, must be a win-win. Let that sink in. Everybody must win. Does that sound like rocket science given the moment we are inhabiting? Don’t answer that. Just, please, please, PLEASE, go buy the book. No, scratch that. Let me practice a little NVC:
When we debate it makes me feel irritable, self-protective, self-righteous, and outright angry. What I need is connection, understanding, support, trust, empathy, emotional safety, and consideration. I further need the space to live into my own authenticity and autonomy. In short, I need to be surrounded by conditions that support my self-actualization so that I may give my gifts to the world, so that I might contribute to the actualization (evolution) of my ecosystem in a way that helps me to experience the connection that I needed in the first place (full circle). I need connection, people! Sorry, that last line wasn’t very NVC of me.
Eh-hem. As I was saying, would you be willing to join me in studying and transitioning to Nonviolent Communication so that we might figure out a way of moving forward that will meet each of our needs in such a way that all of our lives are enriched and our most wonderful dreams come true? (Not being facetious, sincerely asking.)
The last few weeks have been an absolute roller coaster ride. In the midst of my impasse despair, the clouds parted as I delivered my webinar to the Vermont Green Building Network on Regenerative Design & Development. If you have been reading these pages for any amount of time, you will know that I believe that the root of our challenges lie in our worldview. If you would like to learn more about how I see that as well as what I think we need to do about it, I encourage you to watch the webinar. Here is the link:
This is a presentation that has been emerging out of me for some time now. I have given parts of it in previous speaking engagements, and have explored other parts through writing, teaching, and general engagement with the world. This is my gift to the world coming through. I was supposed to deliver this speech in person as the keynote for the VGBN Annual Gathering earlier this year. Then the pandemic hit. In the meantime I sat on it. I gave it space. I’ve had other things on my mind. I focused on writing my book(s), building our home, and staying as sane as possible. By the time I came back to it I had more clarity to offer. While this work will forever remain a work in progress (as am I), I know how critical it is to get the word out at this time. I hope you find time to watch it and I hope you find it helpful.
After I Zoomed the presentation from my studio classroom at Middlebury, I headed out to our house to help Shannon who had been building all day. As soon as I arrived she stopped what she was doing and asked how it went. She didn’t want a one word answer either. She wanted to know everything. She wanted the full play by play. So we sat down and I recounted what I had presented and every question that had been asked. When I was done she said, “You are glowing. I haven’t seen you this alive in awhile.” She was right. I felt the energy pulsing through me. I was vibrating at a very high frequency.
Two days later RBG died. I immediately fell into a nose dive on hearing the news. The tears rolled. The panic set in. The hopelessness returned. Really? Really, God? You couldn’t help us out just a little here??? I know, I know, the pro-birthers are rejoicing. I just wish we actually were all truly pro-Life… as in we treated the entirety of Life- all humans inclusive of all genders, all races, all sexual orientations, all classes, etc. as well as every other species on the planet- as if all beings were truly Divine and were therefore to be cared for and revered as such. Instead we throw unsuspecting souls into our bullshit appropriated story of Darwin’s theory of evolution: “Survival of the Fittest.” (See my webinar for further explanation.) I’m sorry, but there is nothing whatsoever loving about this. And let me be clear: it’s bullshit. So until we are collectively prepared to properly care for the entirety of all of Life, then we have no business forcing a soul into existence through a particularly unprepared channel. To think that a soul has only one shot at life is, as I understand it, a complete misunderstanding of the infinite, eternal, mind-blowing nature of the Divine. That one was for you RBG. Rock on.
Then we had a visit from a neighbor who wanted to help us with our building project. I have to insert here that we have had an overwhelming show of support from our neighbors during this entire construction process. Whether it has been daily cheering by road or by boat or lending tools or lending time and effort or at least offering such things or just putting up with the daily noise and disruptions or even our port-a-potty, we have been so incredibly blessed by our neighbors. This easily could have been a different story. But this is how it has been and we are so grateful for it. It would not be an exaggeration to say that there have been some days when the support of our neighbors has been the only thing that has kept us going. So as I was saying, we had yet another neighbor, Dave, with nothing but time, relevant experience, a great attitude, and respect for our knowledge and abilities (no mansplaining) offer to help. Construction has been speeding up in part due to the additional help and in part due to our race against time!
Then one day about a week ago we got an unsuspecting visit from another neighbor- the guy across the street. His name just happens to be Guy, we soon learned. We had never met him before as he and his wife seem to keep to themselves and, well, he flies a different flag than the ones we had been looking for just weeks before. We had therefore kept our distance. I was working feverishly to stain and seal our loft floors before installation when I barely caught a glimpse of him our of my peripheral vision. It was the end of the day. He had walked down our driveway and was saying something. “Oh, I didn’t realize there were three of you over here. I’ll go get another beer.” Dave was there helping us that day. Guy placed a beer on the wall in front of me, handed one to Shannon, and headed back home to get one for Dave.
Um, first of all, I think it took both Shannon and I a second to get over our shock. We caught our snap quickly, though, and told him he didn’t have to do that, but he insisted that he just lived right across the street. He came back shortly and handed Dave a beer. Then he said, “I am sorry that it has taken me so long to come over. I have been watching and I am just amazed by what you are doing. It’s going to be beautiful.” Wait. What? We asked him to stay and have a beer with us, but he said he doesn’t drink. We invited him to come up to see the second floor that we were working on, but he wasn’t into heights. So we just chatted from where we each stood.
Guy explained that he was a Vietnam Vet and a retired police officer. He had been on the force in Rutland where he had become a Sergeant and then went on to train officers in the Academy. I can’t remember exactly how this conversation went down, but it became readily apparent that Guy was open and loving and more than willing to share his insights and experiences. More than anything he expressed his concerns with the way that policing had changed over the course of his life. We had a million and one questions, which Guy answered with grace. In short, he feels that policing is in need of a course correction. In fact, he became so at odds with the people he was tasked with training that he ultimately decided to get out of it. I asked him what he thought had changed.
Guy said the key is that policing used to be relational, as in officers developed relationships with the community and in particular with the people who found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Together they sought reasonable solutions that would lead to better life and community outcomes. Now, he says, people have become nothing more than objects or statistics. Officers, as a result, too often have no empathy with the people who they are dealing with. While he didn’t say this directly, he implied that they may as well be the “people” who they grew up shooting in video games. Guy thinks we are headed for civil war. You get the sense that he too is in a deep sense of despair about the loss of a country that he has fought for, even as he with clear vision understands that our reasons for fighting have been less than virtuous.
We chatted with Guy for a good while. By the time he left Shannon and I both stood there staring at each other in complete disbelief. Guy flies the Thin Blue Line flag because he is a retired cop. At the same time, he knows as well or better than anyone that there is a serious problem with policing in this country. My sense is that he genuinely respects and loves all humans. My sense is that if we made him king for the day (or however long it took) he would fix policing. He would know exactly what to do. Guy is exactly the kind of guy who I want wearing a police uniform. Guy did way more than just give us three beers that day. He gave us the gift of hope, even as he has none left. He gave us the gift of replacing a neighbor who we were deeply fearful of with one we are so grateful to have and would love to get to know better. You see, that’s the ticket. It all comes down to relationship. Relationships are the key. Don’t take it from me. Take it from Guy.
