A Summertime of Politics and Paradox

I woke this morning to sunlight and this glorious natural world of which I am part. From nature all around and within me I can learn. It is summer and the plants and animals are experiencing the paradox of maturity—that withering and death cannot be separated from the still emerging new life. The deer are eating some wildflowers down to their roots.  The oak tree by the deck will not make it into the next season. I ponder how it is essential to hold all of it together in both mind and heart, and this thought immediately spins me a degree further around to the present condition of the human world, the consciousness of which is also caught in paradox.

The world is caught up this summer in the sometimes creative, often insane dialectic of a USA National Election, with its always carnival-like conventions that showcase with thick irony issues of global mass creation or destruction. I’m not a political person, so I can barely suffer these days, and yet I watch them, ponder them, participate in them, because I want to understand as best as is possible for me, what we are in for. I know it is a world event because what we do as a nation affects the entire world. One World is now a fact. Isolation is no longer an option where information travels at the speed of thought.

I’m not a political person, so I’m no expert in political science, nor economic theory, environmental science, civil and legal rights, and the rest. It seems to me that each of us has the opportunity and responsibility to approach our electoral choice from the base of experience, education, and frame of reference we know best. That is our gift to the world. For me that means from the focus of the human soul and mystical spirit. What effect does a candidate’s world view and political platform have on what I know about the human soul, both individually and as a world?

When all of us are combined we should be able to present to the electoral process a wholeness of perspective. If you are a mom, be the nation and world’s mom; if you own a business, vote what’s best for the business of the world; If a farmer, see that the land is cared for so that the peoples might be fed; if a teacher, seek and spread and support the truth; and so forth…you get my meaning.

From my own perspective I would need to choose people and policies that

-Integrate rather that separate, divide, exclude

-See morality as complex rather than simplistic

-Are able to distinguish legality from morality

-Embrace opposites and opposition rather than attempting to eliminate them

-Promote rational thinking and heartfelt compassion rather than fear and rejection at all levels of individual, communal, national and international discourse and interaction

-Honor mistakes as essential to the creative process, and as openings to new ways of thinking.

-Encourage new forms of thought, imagination, and life style

-Revive the arts as essential to human growth and development

-Reflect citizenship not only of the USA, but of the world.