His name was Tahar, and he drove me from home to the station with such generosity and joyfulness of spirit. And all the while he taught me how to live. I asked him if the dark brooding storm-clouds of the economy and of politics worried him at all. And he looked at me with wondrous, wide, shining eyes.'Life is so precious,' he told me, 'but we forget. We forget that any of us could die any day, at any moment. And that it's always been that way.''We have to get real about the human condition,' he said. 'We're fooling ourselves if we think it could be otherwise.''And so there isn't much for us to do', he continued, 'apart from taking care of one another, fixing what's in our power to fix in our own lives and around us, and doing as much good for one another as we can, while we can. And, while doing all of that, to be joyful. Because, before long, and when we least expect it, it will be over.'Tahar told me about his history of chasing status and possessions, of worrying about what's beyond his power to influence, and the illness of body and spirit that all of this had brought him. And he told me how he'd realised that this was no way to live. That the choice, in a way, was simple - to live the life we have available and to bring as much goodness as we can to it, or to die in life. And I sat, touched profoundly by his delight and wonder at the world, and illuminated by his capacity to see so deeply into what ails us and what we might do about it.And for the first time in days I felt truly joyful - at the wonder of my own life, of the stunning coincidence that brings me to the people I love, and at my capacity to contribute no matter what awfulness is in the world.What a delight to meet someone so deeply committed to blessing others.Thank you, Tahar.
Photo Credit: jeremyg3030 Flickr via Compfight cc
So many of our troubles come from our insistence that there is an us and a them. 'Us' - the people who share something important with us. 'Them' - the ones who don't.Us - the managers of this organisation. Them - everyone else.Us - my company. Them - the competition.Us - the people already living in my country. Them - everyone else.Us - those who agree with me. Them - those that don't.Once we have an us and a them, we have reasons to be fearful, distrustful, suspicious, defensive. After all they might try to take what we have.Where we draw the boundary between us and them is, in many ways, arbitrary. It depends entirely upon what we take ourselves to hold in common with others, and what not. At its smallest, us is a category of one, the person who inhabits my own body. Now everyone else is them, potentially out to get me. Many people live this way. We could draw the boundary at family, at community, at nationhood. But us could also be as big as all of humanity (all that shares a human body) - or indeed all life (all that shares the mysterious quality we call life) - and then there is nobody and nothing to be them.The smaller us is, the bigger our fear, mistrust, and apprehension of others. The bigger us is, the more of the world we feel bound to take care of.It's ironic that at a time in history when there is more material abundance available than ever before, we seem so committed to shrinking us in a way that shrinks our care for the world.The last 200 years have given us unprecedented technology, science, and understanding of what it is to be a human being. We are more and more appreciating the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things. I wonder what would happen if instead of shrinking the world we used that understanding to grow our sense of us, and in doing so grew our capacity and responsibility to take care of things.
Today, I can think of nothing better than to simply share 
One day, perhaps, we'll understand that we're not separate from one another.That you only get to be you because of me. And I only get to be me, because of you.And when we understand this, we'll also understand our profound capacity to bring out darkness, and dignity, in one another.We'll see that management practices that treat people as machines beget machines. That regarding employees, or citizens, as if they are untrustworthy breeds suspicion and alienation. That dealing with our loved ones with contempt breeds contempt. That when we don't listen to the stories and requests of others, they find other ways to get their needs met.And that the we who we become when we do all this is but a dark shadow of the we that we could be.
Yes, I admit it. In my pain and confusion and fear and hope and general agitation over what's happening in the political and social sphere this week, I've read far too many of the knee-jerk reactions that fill the press and the web. Some have been helpful, some have fuelled my anxiety but many - most I think - have been the work of but a few minutes or a few hours of thought, and have done little to deepen my understanding. Most of my reading has been an attempt to reassure myself, I realise, an unachievable project given the complexity of this moment.Which is why I am so grateful for the depth, nuance and care of Marilynne Robinson's writing, which I mentioned a few days ago. Today I have once again picked up her latest book '
I've been reading, a lot, over the past few days, and noticing how my mood swings as I read. Here, I read an article about the inevitability of the coming destruction, and I am afraid. There, I read that it's not going to be so bad, and that what is happening in our politics is just a downward blip on an upward trend, and I feel settled. Seeing this has helped remind me how changeable my feelings are, and how important it is that - whatever I'm feeling - to get to work on what needs to be done.What seems truest right now is that nobody knows what's going to happen, and of course we cannot know. Being afraid for too long doesn't help - it causes us to flee, or numb out, or freeze, or perhaps fight one another. We can instead admit that we don't know, that there's much at stake, and start to do whatever we can do to improve things. Sitting around, hoping our lives won't be affected and waiting to see how it turns out is surely an irresponsible strategy.Getting to work, even when we don't know how it's going to go.That's what hope is.Today I'd like to recommend that you read 
The impact of the US election result (and the EU referendum in the UK) is, of course, not limited just to changing who gets to pull the levers of power. In both cases the political result is accompanied by a shift in the language in which we all live. Quite suddenly, new forms of speaking and listening are coming to the fore, while others move to the background.In both countries it has quickly become much more acceptable to use harsh and violently discriminatory language - against minorities and against all those who disagree - in the public sphere, on the street, in our institutions. Simultaneously, certain kinds of speech have become less possible. This shift, of course, has been both modelled and encouraged by prominent political figures such as Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, and it has been amplified by press coverage and the now widely-reported 'echo chamber' of social media.But whatever politicians do, it's when our own ways of speaking with one another cheapen and coarsen in this way, and when it spreads into our communities and homes, our work and our casual social interactions, that the world changes. Actions that would not have been possible before become possible again, ordinary even. And as all this happens, we change too.As Marcus Zusack points out in his beautiful novel '
Some resources for these days in which the world looks so uncertain.(1) How we can respond to the US election resultA fabulous, wise 30 minute talk by Norman Fischer at Everyday Zen, which is actually part 7 of a series called 'Training in Compassion' but stands alone beautifully. What Norman has to say is both a reminder of our capacity to respond and a call to hope in that capacity right when we're least sure what to do.
Once again the feeling in my body is as it was