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This month’s Digest is a special edition, dedicated for the first time solely to the work of one thought leader. I encountered Dr. John C. Robinson’s work on aging 5 years ago. Until then, I thought of spirituality as a solution to the challenges of aging. Over time, I grew to view aging as a spiritual path. But it was John Robinson’s books that opened the portal to my understanding of aging as a mystical experience, in and of itself.

The spiritual-religious notion of acting where one can and accepting where one cannot is transcultural.

In the 1st century, Epictetus wrote:

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

In every waking moment we make choices: mostly with sensible decisions based on coherent information with due consideration for consequences. But intellect alone does not control thinking. Neuroscientists point out that our actual ‘brainpower’ lies in signals between 86 billion unique neurons. Their intricate networks communicate, relay, and integrate signals within and between regions of the brain. These regions function with changing strengths and different information for various purposes. Their electrochemical impulses act and react with a barrage of rational, emotional, social, cultural, environmental, and physiological influences. Galaxies of neural forces evaluate risks and benefits in every choice.

I recently heard a Christmas Eve sermon titled “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” recited entirely in rhymed couplets and delivered without a manuscript. Running for nearly eleven minutes, it was quite a remarkable feat.

Good and gracious God,

We come before you today
lifting up those who,
because they are far too frequently
seen as different,
are far too frequently
treated differently.

To church leaders, I say this: Be brave enough to be yourself. Trust in the dignity in which God has created you. Be whatever you are–nerdy, goofy, quirky, young or old, plain or complex. Don’t be trendy. You don’t have to know the latest catch phrases or technology.

Just be you.

That’s all that you can ever give, and honestly, that’s all that anyone ever really wants.

In the same way he revitalized our faith in A New Kind of Christianity, church leader Brian McLaren reinvigorates our approach to spiritual fulfillment in Naked Spirituality—by tearing down the old dogmatic practices that hamper our spiritual growth, and leading us toward the meaningful spiritual practices that can help transform our lives.

Like many liberals and progressives, I was shocked and dismayed after the election of Donald Trump, and I went through a very real “grieving” process as I came to terms with what had happened. I thought I had accepted the reality of the election results and even felt reasonably self-assured about the future of the country and of the Democratic Party on Inauguration Day. And yet, on Day 3 of Trump’s presidency, I found myself entering a second “grieving” process having perceived the magnitude of the election in much sharper focus.

Many women of color did indeed attend the marches. Angela Peoples went to the march in D.C. wearing a Trump-like red hat that read “Stop Killing Black People” and carried a sign that read “White Women Voted for Trump.”

However, it must be noted that there is a difference between marching for everyone’s civil rights versus marching because white women now recognize a diminishment of their white privilege.

Like a cosmic singularity, the jam was so tight and strong, so energetic and energizing, that it ended with a Big Bang. The movement really began when the marchlesss marches ended, after the long waits at crowded subway stations. We got home, turned on our screens and gazed awestruck at the images of ourselves standing shoulder-to-shoulder, filling squares and boulevards and bridges, spilling into side-streets. Now we move from protest into organized, long-term activism to stop the inhumane, immoral, and unpopular agenda of Trump and the Republicans.

Winona LaDuke speaking on the Rights of Nature at the University of Oregon November 19th, 2016.

In May 2017, people from all over the world will gather in Portland, Oregon to share knowledge and wisdom, learn from each other, celebrate, be inspired, and find the tools needed to create and enliven local movements within our communities. Together we will explore sacred oneness, Christ consciousness, eco-spirituality, social justice and the way of universal and personal transformation that honors the Divine in all.

It’s not about a messiah, it is about each one of us working together to overcome the things that separate us! – a sermon on the birthday of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King

There were two particularly disturbing news reports recently. The first was about a group of white students who turned their backs to a visiting black high school basketball team while holding a Trump sign. The second was reported in the news organization Alternet, among other places, and concerned a college professor in Orange County, CA. She was giving a lecture in which she was critical of Trump, while unbeknownst to her a student was videotaping. The tape went to a Republican group and was posted on the internet. Since that posting, the professor has been harassed by over 1000 emails and phone calls, many of them death threats. A photo of her house with the address was posted. One message said “You want communism, go to Cuba. Try bringing it to the US and we’ll put a (expletive) bullet in your face.” She left California, fearful for her life.

And then there was the union leader in Indiana who called out Trump’s hypocrisy on the Carrier deal, and faced similar retribution. Every day, it seems, brings new horror stories.

The Shakers, in their pious oddity and their strange holiness remain, however small, a crack in the wall that divides us in this increasingly insular, hierarchical, and oppressive era. They rejected the apparatus of state, economy, industry and military. Theirs was a pacifist army against Moloch’s minions. In offering us difference they enacted the possibility and promise of that difference.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character give him power.” I think one look back at 2016 would confirm that. Power, it would seem, as much as we may want it, sometimes turns us into people we never thought we would be.
History tells us this is true.

In this day and age of vast amounts of news and media that bombard and compete for public attention fewer and fewer are able to discriminate fact from fiction. Shocking tabloid headlines, once reserved for amusement at grocery store line checkout, are now used by the mainstream press to bait the hook to get the consumer to bite and read/watch more. Journalists and reporters, if you can now call them such, are woefully compromised in the bias they take in propagandizing issues that ultimately serve the agenda of the media giants and hidden elite (owners of these media conglomerates) for whom they work and shape the perceptional lens of the masses.

Is there a intentional agenda behind all this and if so, whose masterminding it and for what purpose? The answer, I believe, is YES.

Noam Chomsky offers two dire warnings following the election of Donald Trump: The first is an accelerated use of carbon based fuels that will bring the human race to extinction and the other is a renewed nuclear arms race leading quickly to a nuclear war. As real as these threats are, this sermon speaks to the ways in which fear is a villain that pushes us to make the worst decisions in response to these global threats.