Cool Mind Warm Heart

This Bug May Be Healthier Than Apple

 

On many levels, Apple is one of my favorite companies.  I’m a sucker for excellence that aspires to serve both mind and heart.  I love people who strive to be outrageously good at something or die trying.  I applaud those who presume to guide the world’s understanding.  I celebrate anyone whose heros include elegance, simplicity, intelligence, intuition, playfulness, love and depth.  At this very moment, however, a client of mine (no bigger than a bug compared to Apple) just might have a better chance of fulfilling its aspirations over the next decade than Apple does.

the essay

Ruthless Saints: A Sign of Life

[from the archives]

Here’s one measure of how the world is heading in a positive direction. 

Fifty years ago the epitome of the circus was Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey.  With its lion tamers, dancing bears, trick horses, performing elephants, monkeys on bikes, and seals bouncing beach balls on their noses, the implicit message was Man Over Beast.  Even the aerialists, tightrope walkers, jugglers, fire-eaters, knife-throwers and human pretzels were an example of Man Over the Beast Within.  Today, the epitome of the circus is Cirque du Soleil, whose implicit message is The Celebration of Humanity.  Indeed, Cirque leaves most churches in the dust when it comes to inspiring the integration of body, mind and spirit: the criteria for living as a whole person. 

My Phone Call With Osama

[This essay, offered in May 2011 upon the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death, was first published in February 2007]

❦

I’d food fight the Dalai Lama on the back of a crocodile (prime time on ESPN, of course) if I felt the world’s love quotient would rise a tick.  So if Osama bin Laden were to ring me here at the farm and ask would I consider taking him on as a client, I’d say sure, I’d consider it.  In my imagination, the rest of our conversation might go something like this:

MORE

The World Cup and the World's Future

And when we meet...we’ll laugh tears of compassion as we compare scars from all those lifetimes, like this one, when we were so oblivious of our beauty. 

[a new essay]

They Kill Us. We Kill Them. We Humans Have Just Got To Get More Creative

 

On HBO the other day I saw the last half of the Harrison Ford movie “Patriot Games”.  Ford plays one of his customary heroes: a modest, self-effacing family man of enormous intestinal fortitude who stands up to the forces of evil whether they be drug lords, mercenaries or morally bankrupt colleagues within the U.S. government––and of course usually it’s all of the above and a few more for good measure.   Plus, just in case there is a belly button of doubt that Mr. Ford’s character walks on ethical water, his mentor is played by (who else?) James Earl Jones. 

In general, I’m not a fan of films where you know the outcome before the opening titles and the only suspense is “how” the bad guy and gal will experience their just desserts.  And while “Patriot Games,” in my abbreviated viewing, seems to be such a film, predictability isn’t why I find it an unfortunate role model of what it means to be a healthy person.

Isn't It Great We're So Immature?

So a Catholic grammar school is choosing to reject the application of a prospective student because the student’s parents are lesbians.  Boy, it’s a good thing that rule wasn’t around when I attended St. Mike’s.  I’m sure I’ve had queer parents in any number of previous lives.  Heck, I’m sure I’ve been a queer parent myself, probably many times.  Which means, I bet,  so have the school officials who are today telling that kid that Jesus, Mr. Love Your Neighbor, doesn’t embrace the children of homosexuals.

Some say that God's middle name is Irony.

Isn’t it great we’re so immature as a species, with plenty of room for expansion, plenty of lifetimes to learn how alike we all are...how all that matters is love? 

We’d be in deep tapioca if this were as awake as we’re going to get.

Welcome Twenty Ten

 

There is no such thing as talent, only awareness.

~ Chogyam Trungpa