The day after Donald Trump’s aborted Senate impeachment trials ended, I awakened into morning reverie with a desire to share reflections deriving from my conversations with G-d that generally usher in my day.
It seemed to have been a good long time since I felt prompted to do so, having spent so many months, actually the years following the 2016 presidential election, at sixes and sevens, both for myself, personally, and in leading my non-profit organization, the New Horizons/Small “Zones Of Peace.
Since the start of the formal impeachment efforts by the Congressional House Democrats there had been a sense of relief in me, perhaps in others too.
The voices of reason and justice had spoken out truths, if not purely and perfectly, but at least in ways that made sense to me overall, resonating with values I respected. Once given voice, as they were in, more or less orderly fashion, they could no longer be ignored and submerged beneath the chaos and corruption of Donald Trump’s White House and his GOP allies.
History would, now, live to tell the tale, even if the Senate would not.
Not too many days later, given that our organization had, at last, gotten its eBay store for fundraising set up and ready to go, I found myself listing for sale the one remaining copy of Ahmsta Kebzeh: The Science Of Universal Awe, Volume I we were holding, written by our esteemed, now deceased, Community Development Mentor, Murat Yagan.
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| Abkhazian Elder, Murat Yagan |
The book sold off of eBay almost instantly.
However, I didn’t, at first, make the connection between my impetus to want to share some of the content of my conversations with G-d and my listing that long-held book, given to us by Murat, personally, close to fifteen years ago. Not too much later, however, I realized that each was my way of making a statement, if only to myself, of the kind of leadership I respect and honor -- and to which I would, from here forth, return my most pointed attentions.
Nothing at all like we are seeing in the purported leaders of our country!
Along with this certainty in myself arose a staunch unwillingness to allow any more of my precious life time and energy to be drawn into b…s..t, the kind that proliferates these days through the halls of the White House and Congress, large corporations, even with my neighborhood plumber who, by the way, stood me up last evening, with a no-show for fixing the leaky pipe that was drowning my lower level kitchen in water.
This morning I remedied that latter breech of ethics by hiring a more professional handyman service that came through for me within hours, bringing into my home the kind of ethics and responsibility that I find most comforting! How I wish I could be free of our “fake” governmental leaders as quickly and easily!
The whole of my internal responses, body, mind and spirit, that day after the aborted impeachment trials ended, showed me I have more than enough clarity in my head – and my heart to know where I stand personally, to know what I need to do next in order that I do my best to maintain, or seek to sustain, order in my life where chaos bred of human corruption appears to take a lead.
No more sixes and sevens! No more energy drains for me, from those who pretend to lead while, at the same time, seeking to destroy! And, with this resolve, no more morning waking rushing to check the news online, out of fear and a deep yearning for an order in my life I had formerly trusted our government, established as a democracy, to ensure.
I was DONE with it all!
From here forth, the values I most respect would set the tone of my days.
The House Congressional representatives with their impeachment actions had given me/us that, even with their efforts being aborted in the Senate. Lies and corruption had been formally recorded. Truth would not die, nor the fact of the actions that stood up for it.
Not long after that morning after, I asked myself “Where might concerned, voting Americans find a place to settle and rest securely and peacefully, after the aborted senate impeachment trials of D0nald Trump?
Likely I pose a challenging question to many, as perhaps our whole country is at sixes and sevens? And, how would citizens who are more aligned with my thinking move forward?
Half the voting population is celebrating the acquittal of Trump.
Another good half of which I am a part, those who uphold values, differing markedly from the dominant GOP we watched, handling themselves with a deliberate investment to remain ignorant throughout this impeachment ordeal, are angry, possibly frightened, sad or in despair, experiencing trauma, on a national level as essential principles or standards of behavior were desecrated,.
No that does not strike me as correct! I am not with this segment, either, in these responses.
For me, the warped ways of the Senate GOP have now strengthened my convictions, in this time of greatest divisiveness, to uphold the values with which I was raised, including teaching me to look to leadership I can honor. Men like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. come immediately to mind. Yet closer still to where my heart sits in comfort are the images of my father, along with a more current teacher, also deceased as is my father, Murat Yagan, from whom I had many long years to learn, personally.
So, now in the aftermath of b.s such I had never imagined in what I thought to be the hallowed halls of American government, most especially in the White House and Congress, I am reaching out in my mind and spirit to these wise elders I have known most closely, rededicating myself to holding them in prime space, allowing these who have gone before me that I hold most in esteem and love for the dignity, integrity, courage. love and wisdom they have shown me by their principles lived out, congruently, through their actions, albeit not totally with perfection.
I regret that there are no women among these role models of mine, only men. But perhaps it is, now up to women, like Nancy Pelosi and others who have, particularly recently, taken stands for justice and right, women like myself included.
From here forth I want things to be different in my life, not at all like the past four years have been. I don’t yet know what that will look like for me and for those around me upon whose lives I have influence though "Seeking Sanctuary In These Turbulent Times" will certainly have a priority. But I do know from here forth, the coming years will not look, feel or be like the past four years, whether Donald Trump is reelected or not!
Thomas Paine spoke these words on December 23, 1776, in the midst of the Revolutionary War. They are no less meaningful today.
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated”
