Finishing this trinity is Courage. A part of me, and probably of most folks at one time or another, just recoils from the world, imagining a billion dangerous challenges, and making me want to pull the covers over my head and hide in bed. It is so easy to imagine that every other person is a threat, … More Courage
It is almost sacrilegious to co-opt Love as a trope for our little effort at a revisionist ritual. Love is a theme of nearly every pop song and novel, the glue that holds our fractured community of humanity together, and even claimed to be synonymous with god in some quarters. But I generally reject the concept of sacredness in … More Love
Today, over the hump, we shift gears from the sparkle of the Christmas side, and into New Years side. New Year celebrations tend to include reflective restarts. http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-psychological-research-that-helps-explain-the-election Truth is perhaps the most important, and sadly most under siege, value in these times. Our whole nervous system has evolved to serve one function, discover truth. All our … More TRUTH
Finishing the sharing trinity is gratitude. The old saw: count your blessings, is nice, but it’s hard to get it to really take emotionally. We here in the USA, reading webpages, grousing on facebook or reddit, are so extraordinarily lucky to be in this place and time, that it’s hard for us to even grasp the … More Gratitude
Here on the hinge of the holidays, Christmas Day: the big dog, plus scrappy little hanukah this year, both gift-reinforced holidays, we consider Generosity. For me here with my tiny G-Dot and her two smart and sassy cousins, I got to relive the old days of toy extravaganza Gretchen and I so loved when our kids … More Generosity
The first day of the second trinity of Holly Days is Hope. Hard to feel that right now; ironic that it was Obama’s catchword, and that so many of us feel it leaving along with him. But there is always hope, no matter how dark things seem, and they may, in expectation, feel a lot … More Hope
Today is the third, and final day of the first Trinity of Holly Days: Community. Kindness just feels so correct as the optimal interaction between all living things, but I suspect it is much deeper. You may have seen this sweet video: My experience has been that this sort of paying forward is nearly universal. … More Kindness
Today is the second Holly Day, on which we consider Compassion. I’ve been listening to Paul Bloom talking about empathy, and the seductive danger of emotional reactivity, which makes us care more about a baby in well than climate change. Compassion is not that sort of follow-your-heart trap. It is the idea of caring for … More Compassion
The first Holly Day is Unity. How ironic is that in America at the end of 2016? Our bubbles seem to be drifting further and further apart. As Hannah Arendt and others observed, some of what allowed the Nazis to take over Germany was liberals trying too hard to be accommodating to an ideology they … More Unity
Today is the Holly Day of Love, another of the values I take on faith, although I think I can support this one with reason, math and testing. There is this fascinating little plot line running lately in The Good Wife. A character claims there are two kinds of people, one who will say “excuse … More Love
HOLLY DAYS 