November 10, 2024 by willedare

The Power Of Love?

I hope you are well as you read this blog post.

Outside where I live in Massachusetts, leaves are changing color and falling to the ground.

Inside I am sitting on our couch under a layer of blankets and writing in the middle of the night.

I woke up to go to the bathroom and now am unable to fall asleep,

All my brain wants to do is think about potentially catastrophic things which may start unfolding in 2025 as a result of our recent national election.

Before I continue this blog post, I am going to pause and acknowledge any readers who may be excited and happy about recent election results.

I do not want to rain on your parade, and I hope that you are savoring your victories.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

However, if you are a reader who is feeling less excited and hopeful about the future as a result of last week’s election, my heart goes out to you.

Although I have decided not to read about politics and interact with the media for the time being, my brain — especially when I am lying awake in the middle of the night — keeps remembering things that are likely to be impacted in the next four years:

NATO — and the safety of all the countries bordering Russia…

The health of women I love — and the health of women I will never meet — due to new restrictions about what decisions they and their healthcare providers are allowed to make about their own bodies…

Social security — which I have paid into since I was three years old and which I was planning to start collecting in three years time…

Medicare/Medicaid and other health insurance options — for millions of Americans and for me.

The cost of anything we don’t make or grow in the USA — due to potential new tariffs.

The cost of anything we DO make or grow in the USA — due to the potential prosecution/expulsion of many people who currently harvest our produce, work in our slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants, labor in our restaurants, work on our construction sites, landscape our properties, mow our lawns, blow our leaves, etc. etc. etc.

My two nephews — one approaching draft-age and the other one still eligible to be drafted if we find ourselves in a situation where we need to expand our (already vast) military capabilities.

Image by Wolfgang_Hasselmann from Pixabay

Long term — and potentially irreversible — environmental consequences due to potential deregulation of rules which currently protect the entire web of life here on planet earth.

Our access and ability to vote, our access to education, our access to public healthcare in the event of another epidemic…

The list goes on and on.

I don’t understand how love and respect factor into any of the above.

I don’t understand how love and respect can withstand — much less overcome — the forces which spread disinformation, which lie, which aim to divide us, which value power and money over honesty and decency.

I hesitate to call those forces evil, but I have been reminded more and more in recent months about a book I read a long time ago by M. Scott Peck called THE PEOPLE OF THE LIE.

As the group mind at Wikipedia summarizes:

“According to Peck, an evil person:

is consistently self-deceiving, with the intent of avoiding guilt and maintaining a self-image of perfection
deceives others as a consequence of their own self-deception
projects his or her evils and sins onto very specific targets (scapegoats) while being apparently normal with everyone else
commonly hates with the pretense of love, for the purposes of self-deception as much as deception of others
abuses political (emotional) power (“the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion” (Peck, 1978/1992, p298^[7]))
maintains a high level of respectability, and lies incessantly to do so
is consistent in his or her sins.
is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim
has a covert intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury

Most evil people realize the evil deep within themselves, but are unable to tolerate the pain of introspection, or admit to themselves that they are evil. Thus, they constantly run away from their evil by putting themselves in a position of moral superiority and putting the focus of evil on others. Evil is an extreme form of what Peck, in THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED, calls a character and personality disorder.”

The group mind of Wikipedia also describes Peck’s understanding of love in his previous book, THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED:

“Love is not a feeling, it is an activity and an investment — ‘The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth’ (Peck, 1978/1992, p85). Peck expands on the work of Thomas Aquinas over 700 years ago, that love is primarily actions towards nurturing the spiritual growth of another.”

I welcome any insights into the power of love and how it does — or doesn’t — impact our current political situation here in the USA (as well as how love and respect may impact other patterns unfolding here on planet earth).

Please leave a comment if you are so inspired.

I end with a link to this heartful song at the beginning of this blog post in case you might like to listen to it on a streaming platform, add it to a playlist, or share it with a friend.

It was written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, a delicious songwriting team who helped to create the musicals RAGTIME, SEUSSICAL, ONCE ON THIS ISLAND and A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE (which is where “Love Who You Love” comes from) among many other projects.

I initially featured this song in a blog post I wrote in August 2015 which you can read by clicking here if you are curious.

Thank you to Ahrens and Flaherty for writing “Love Who You Love.”

Thank you to Doug Hammer and Mike Callahan for playing so beautifully on this recording of it.

Thank you to Gretje Ferguson for taking this photo many years ago.

Photo by Gretje Ferguson + Graphic Design by Stephen C. Fischer @ DigitalFisch

Thank you to Stephen Fischer for creating this graphic design using Gretje’s photo.

Thank you to the wonderful and generous photographers at Pixabay.

Thank you to all of the folks who helped to create the internet and WordPress so that I can share my thoughts and music with you.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to another one of my blog posts.

I welcome any comments below.

July 8, 2017 by willedare

May Your Life Be Blessed

I just opened up WordPress and was happy to find a post about gratitude from The Snail of Happiness in my daily feed.

There are a seemingly-ever-increasing number of energies and actions on planet earth that we can be aware of — due in large part to the magic of electricity and our wide-ranging embrace of modern media — yet which we can do very little to influence directly.

And I am easily overwhelmed by this onslaught of information.

However, we CAN re-align our own energy/perspective by doing something as simple as writing down three things for which we are grateful.

And then — from a more grateful, grounded emotional space — we can send a card to an elected official, give a little money to a compelling cause, or volunteer our time at a local non-profit.

Or make some art.

Or write a song.

Or simply sit and breath.

Today I am grateful that a friend’s husband is alive in New Orleans.

I don’t see this friend very often (our paths used to cross because of work) and have never met his husband.

I learned about his husband’s recent assault and robbery — while he was attending the Unitarian-Universalist annual general assembly being held at the end of June in New Orleans! — when I checked my Facebook page.

Apparently it is all over the Boston and New Orleans news — since our media have (sadly) functioned for decades with a mindset of “if it bleeds, it leads…”

But I have been out of town and away from the local news.

So today I am grateful that my friend’s husband is finally out of the hospital in New Orleans and back at home in Boston.

And I am grateful that the other person who was (less severely) attacked is also recovering well.

And that two of the four young men who perpetrated this crime (some of whom had been staying at a Covenant House shelter for homeless/troubled youth) have turned themselves in.

I hope they — as well as the two people whom they attacked and robbed — are being treated with compassion and respect by the judicial system so that some unexpected healing might take place as a result of this sad and brutal event.

And I am grateful for the basics: health and patience and delicious food — more and more of it organic — and a roof over my head.

I am grateful for people who visit my blog even though I haven’t posted anything new for four months.

I am grateful for progress (sometimes very sloooow) and persistence (sometimes almost imperceptible) on larger tasks such as letting go of un-needed possessions, processing complicated emotional situations, and crafting a CD of original songs.

Which leads me to the song at the beginning of this post.

I wrote it last summer while I was camping with family in heaven a.k.a. North Truro, MA.

Some of the words came from a little piece of paper I picked up after one of my cousins was married a few summers ago on a hill overlooking Cayuga Lake in upstate New York.

The little piece of paper turned out to be a crib sheet that the mother of the bride had used when she spoke during the ceremony.

I expanded her words a bit, consulted my trusty ukulele to find chords and a melody, and eventually brought it to pianist Doug Hammer’s studio on the North Shore of Boston to record.

Thank you to anyone and everyone who reads this blog post.

I am grateful for your interest.

I am also grateful for the beautiful images from Pixabay that I have used in this post.

My cousin who got married loves horses and is an excellent — and very hard-working —equestrian.

She and her husband also just had their first child.

And I am very grateful for that, too.

December 11, 2016 by willedare

Life Goes On…

Like many people in the United States — and in many other countries around the planet — I have been experiencing a wide variety of feelings since our recent election.

And a lot of denial — for which I am both grateful and apprehensive…

One of the things that I have found the oddest is how most of us have continued to do the same things that we did before the election.

I have continued to buy groceries.

I have continued to take books out from the library.

I have continued to do laundry.

I have continued to get up and lead Music Together classes on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings.

I have continued to do gigs at retirement communities with jazz pianist Joe Reid.

I have continued to learn song lyrics.

I have continued to clean the toilet and wash the kitchen floor.

I have continued to draft blog posts.

I have continued to watch TV.

And I have continued to love the song “Life Goes On” written by Stephen Schwartz (a version of which is in the player at the beginning of this post with Doug Hammer on piano and Mike Callahan on clarinet which we recorded during a rehearsal for my show called Will Loves Steve several years ago).

Photo by Ralf Rühmeier

As you probably know, Stephen Schwartz is the composer and lyricist for Godspell, Pippin, The Magic Show, The Baker’s Wife, Wicked (and more) on Broadway as well as the lyricist for animated movies including Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Enchanted.

“Life Goes On” is not from one of his shows or movies, however.

I found it on Mr. Schwartz’s first solo CD release, Reluctant Pilgrim, and have been gently haunted by it ever since.

According to Mr. Schwartz’s web site, “I originally began to write the songs that make up Reluctant Pilgrim in response to a ‘challenge’ from a songwriter friend, John Bucchino. I had been encouraging John (who had always written individual and highly personal songs) to write for the theatre, and John in turned asked why I never wrote individual songs based on my own life. He said it was time to stop ‘hiding behind Hunchbacks and Indian princesses.’ So I decided to try… The first song I wrote was ‘Life Goes On.’ This was an attempt to deal with my feelings after a close friend of mine died of AIDS. Writing the song turned out to be very therapeutic for me.”

I recently heard a great interview by Terry Gross with Cleve Jones on Fresh Air.

Mr. Jones was involved with the AIDS crisis from the very beginning, and he (although he is beautifully soft-spoken and articulate during the interview) reminded me of how loudly and angrily and stubbornly AIDS activists had to demonstrate and organize in order to make progress on understanding and treating this virus when our president and many of our elected officials just wanted to ignore what was happening.

Have we re-entered a time in US history when we will need to act up — regularly, passionately, strategically — in response to our government’s actions and/or inactions regarding climate change, immigration, civil liberties, the rights of the media to investigate those who hold power in our society, etc. etc. etc.?

I do believe that grass roots action is a crucial part of how things — laws, attitudes, opinions, political leadership, prejudices — change.

What might be the most important issue(s) to which I might devote myself in upcoming days/weeks/months?

I have a sense that protecting and maintaining the amazing web of interconnections which make up our various ecosystems is a fundamental priority which underlies (and, dare I say, trumps) many of our specifically human challenges.

But maybe election and campaign finance reform are more crucial in the short run, as an antidote to the oligarchic voices which increasingly dominate (and frame) our political and cultural debate?

How do we address and respond to and heal the enormous reservoirs of fear and anger and disrespect which seem to be percolating in the hearts of so many fellow human beings on planet earth these days?

How do we plant seeds of hope and trust and respect and love while simultaneously standing up with great power so that we are not run over by ignorance and ego and power and greed and fear?

How do we nurture kindness and gentleness while also standing up for justice?

I am clueless.

I hope that music can somehow play a part in whatever activism and consciousness-raising and healing are on the horizon.

Until then, life goes on…

Thank you for reading and listening!

And thank you to Pixabay for the images in this blog post.

I welcome any thoughts, feelings, ideas, and recommended actions in the comments section.

amusicalifeonplanetearth

Music and the Thoughts It Can Inspire

Respect

The Power Of Love?

May Your Life Be Blessed

Life Goes On…