Month: December 2015

• December 27, 2015

  LEADERSHIP, A GOOD IDEA, A VERY GOOD IDEA, HAPPY NEW YEAR

  Who says commerce can never lead the way? This company had the courage to revive one of the most important moments in history. That day between British and German troops should be immortalized in the annals of peace as one of the central turning points. It should be studied by every person in other parts of the world who suffers under “eternal” enemies at each other’s throats. It is the art of the possible. The art of lone men, lone leaders who pave the way with a different idea in their head of the men they are pointing their guns at. This is leaders, a new idea, and the resulting festival of goodness.…

• December 27, 2015

  LEADERSHIP, IDEA, AND EVIL

   

  There is no mystery to evil.
  In fact making evil into a mystery,
  Is a bad idea.
  There are only good ideas and bad ideas.
  Anything that brings purposeful, unprovoked harm,
  To other sentient beings,
  Is a bad idea.
  Evil is a bad idea,
  In the hands of a leader.
  Be a leader only,
  With a good idea.
  If you must,
  Be a follower,
  For a good idea.
  Be smart enough,
  To be aware,
  Of your own bad ideas,
  And confine them to your head.
  If you cannot,
  Then you must leave immediately.

  The temptation to mystify evil is equal to our bewilderment at humanity, how many good people are led to do the worst things imaginable. The answer is not evil in them, but the evil of bad ideas inside leaders, and the tragedy of human obedience. The one alternative that has always worked is very good …

• December 11, 2015

  A Great Sifting of Religions

  Has anyone else sensed that global crisis is becoming like a massive sifter of the major religions? It is separating out hate ideology from piety, so that as the sifting increases we are starting to see who in each religion is a charlatan hater cloaked in religious garb, and who is penetrating deeper every day into spiritual authenticity and sacred courage.

  See this article. Here is an excerpt:

  As Rabbi Rick Jacobs defined it in his December 2013 address at the URJ Biennial in San Diego, “audacious hospitality isn’t just a temporary act of kindness so that people don’t feel left out; it’s an ongoing invitation to be part of a community where we can become all that God wants us to be—and a way to transform ourselves in the process.”  At this moment more than ever, the world needs people like Rivka—those who are willing to uphold the

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• December 8, 2015

  FLAGS AND THE LIGHT

  

   

  Light lasts forever, and we are light. If the energy and mass it took to create all of the atoms and molecules that evolved into our consciousness and spirit come from the light and return to it, then the light that the Menorah generates is eternal. To me this is the ancient holiday of Hanukkah.

   

  When this picture was taken that flag reigned terror on the entire world, it was invincible, and the little Menorah was weak as could be. Brutality rises so high but disappears so quickly, while the light lasts forever. My heart goes out deeply to those who took the picture so long ago, I doubt I could have survived. But to me the picture is a triumph of light over darkness, eternity over that passing vapor of empty bullying.

  …