Shalom...Salaam...Peace

         It is sought by almost every culture, but is historically elusive.

       We have to ask what is wrong with humankind? Are we cursed by choice?

       It is the season of light. We seek peace. Here at Light/Breezes our choice is to encourage your strength of well being. May your belief bring the true sense of Shalom, a full wellness, universal flourishing, wholeness and a peaceful being.

        It would be nice to share that peace, Salaam and Shalom with all creation.

        We live in a big reality.

                    

        War is evil, human failure. We find ourselves unable and ill equipped to discern. Innocents suffer. The most courageous path is peace. But sides are chosen, minds are closed, barbarism begets revenge. Our hearts are missing their heart. 

      Cry out, pray, light candles, feel helpless or

      find smiles and share them.

                    

Live and dream as if all life matters.

Coming soon to this space.....

....the annual visit to toyland!

See you down the trail

As Summer Visits.....

         The scene above, summer evening in the park on the square in Paso Robles captures my sense of summer spirit.

        The busking singer songwriter, a young man full of dreams, children at play, families strolling, green foliage, blue sky and a gentle, peaceful scene.

        Summer is still a time of hope, for ripening gardens, an improved game, no matter the sport, leisure with friends, evenings of simple relaxation and reflection. The scene speaks to me of that essence and it is evocative of a simple time, still possible.

        Lana's orchid cactus's have celebrated summer's arrival with an array of giant blooms. They are dazzling.

        So we celebrate the solstice, and the days of summer with a few scenes of the way it is around here, on the California central coast, a place of "endless summer" in so many ways.

        As members of the US Senate ponder their post summer plans it might be good for the Judiciary Committee to rally an investigation of sitting Supreme Court Justices, all of them if they prefer, but certainly Thomas and Alito who may well have proven themselves unfit to serve. As the House January 6 Committee presented a document to the nation and future generations, perhaps it is time to look into the snake pit on the high court. 

The photo above and below were taken by Lana while tending to her garden.

While here she tends, harvesting fava beans.

An evening in another garden, as Jill Knight and Eric continue to create the score of our lives in Cambria.

Sweet Summer....

    I hope that your summer is peaceful, gentle and includes lazy naps.

   See you down the trail.

"...we thought we'd bring peace to the world..."

off-shore Cambria, CA

        It was buried in an Associated Press report from Colleville-Sur-Mer, France, an account of several dozen veterans in their 90's observing D-Day. About 4 paragraphs down it jumped off the page, one of those universal truths we recognize with a flash.

    The speaker is a 98 year old Penobscot Native American from Indian Island Maine who was participating in a sage-burning ceremony near the beach. Charles Shay was a 19 year old US Army Medic at Omaha Beach.

    "In 1944 I landed on these beaches and we thought we'd bring peace to the world. But it's not possible."

    It is not possible! Peace?

    Sage burning is a native ritual of cleansing and release and on this day in honor of fallen comrades. 

    "I have never forgotten them and know their spirits are here."

    The AP reports "He said he is especially sad to see war in Europe again. 

    'Ukraine is sad. I feel sorry for the people there and I don't know why this war had to come, but I think human beings like to, I think they like to fight, I don't know...'"

    98, a survivor of an historically bloody invasion tending to the fallen as a healer, a spiritual man who has seen the ways of the world for almost a century, and he cannot understand human beings. 

    It is no wonder then that I cannot. 

    Peace, the diadem of human faith, the elusive goal of religions and diplomacy, the thing that humankind values above all, even trying to find it in places, things, and states of mind. Peace, a state of no conflict, of no hostility, of no more war. It is not possible.

    Not possible. You can't get peace out violence. 

    Quickly I attempted to deconstruct the truth that Charles Shay spoke 78 years after he was part of massive effort to "bring peace." My mind ran to my father and his generation who fought in that war, to "win the peace." And then to my friends who "did their patriotic duty" in Viet Nam and then to all of the other conflicts, all over the globe. Why is it that we ask so much for a peace that is impossible. 

    It was ever such.

    The only good thing to be said of a war is when it ends. Though, does it ever? It only changes shape and decades. Peace, an idealistic aspiration is shredded by a read of history. 

    We stumble through life grazing for something that will resonate deeply as significant, a clarifying knowledge, an insight. We search, even as we're never sure what it is we're after. Until it smacks us. 

    Peace is impossible, because?

    As Mr. Shay said, "human beings like to, I think they like to fight."

    Despite the wisdom of this special man, and even in these later years of my life, I'm not giving up on peace, either as a diplomatic and geo political quest, and certainly not as a spiritual reality. 

    As a global status it may not be possible, no indeed, but the absence of trying for it is even more disturbing. 

    Some humans choose to live in peace, engaging our better likes. 

    Lana creates beauty. Here is evidence, a corner of our deck, benefiting from her affirmation of life by means of a green thumb.

    Even through the millennia of human history, from clubs and stones to assault weapons, killer drones and nuclear missiles, the force of life resurrects itself, nature shows us the path. For as long as we have told our histories particular humans have lifted our vision to what can be. Like Mr. Shay humans have knelt over the injured and dying and have comforted parents, friends and the grieving. Humans have told us there is a better way. It need not be our destiny "... to like to fight. 

    I think it is that which enables our survival.

    Peace.

    See you down the trail.

    

    

 

LIVING WITH PUTIN, OR NOT!

             Hoping to provide a least a momentary break by sharing images of where I've sought solace while ruminating about Putin and his evil and destructive arc. 

        Longtime readers may recall the December 2013 post "A Bullet for Putin?" It was another of the "tells" that I saw in his emerging philosophy and world view. He has been signaling his messianic intentions to change the world map and elevate himself to that of a czar and hero of the fatherland. 

        So how do we live in a world with Putin? How do we behave, upholding human civility and the sanctity of law, while a thug with no regard for life or territorial integrity invades and attacks, committing war crimes?

            To a straightforward mind it seems wrong not to be more aggressive and to intervene to stop the invasion and brutality. That has been the plea of the Ukrainian people and President Zelensky. However from the safety of not being bombed and invaded, the world's response has been to leverage war without escalating the violence, which could quickly lead to a World War. That is made more frightening by Putin's irrationality and his stance on nuclear weapons.

        The sanctions and diplomacy are important and have already begun to have a cratering impact on Russia. But if you are a Ukrainian it seems to be not enough.

        There are larger issues here. Putin must be stopped and must be made to pay a high price. If not, he will continue with his messianic vision and mad agenda. 

        If the west were to respond militarily, they could stop the invasion where it is and if inclined could seriously damage Russian military infrastructure. Punishing strikes on Russian bases might seem an effective response to such lawless and blatant aggression. But that takes the war to Russia and there would be dire consequences.

            The draconian sanctions are a way to degrade Russian power and perhaps force and incentivize the Russian military to stop Putin. 

        The Russian economy is in free fall. Increasingly Russia is being cut off from the world. The millions of Russian citizens are unwitting victims of Putin's war. He has moved the nation backwards. The war crimes being committed are being catalogued and investigated already. This will reach into the military and the bureaucracy. Sources in the West are communicating with sources in Russia with the objective of giving doubting Russians a path to depose Putin, or to circumvent his war plans.     

            That is the best hope, and it is only that. It may be that Russian citizens will be so hurt by a devastated and isolated "life as normal"  they will find a way, even in the face of arrest and jail for speaking against Putin and his war. There may be a common sense in the military command to reason that Putin is indeed mad, out of touch with the legacy impact of his actions and that he is just wrong. The only way forward for Putin is to pursue his own grandiose vision and the Generals know there are costs, and strategic disadvantages. Finally, most of them do not want to be tried for the war crimes. 

            When the Soviet Union collapsed it was Red Army Generals who made a secret trip to Washington to talk about the disposition of Soviet nuclear warheads on land, on submarines and on airplanes. Two heroic US Senators did what James Baker and George HW Bush did not, that was to meet with the Generals and to begin the process to secure the old Soviet war heads. 

            Republican Dick Lugar and Democrat Sam Nunn put themselves at risk by traveling, negotiating and working with former Soviet commanders to keep the war heads safe, off the black market and secure. It began as an emergency appropriation, became the Nunn-Lugar Act and eventually the Cooperative Threat Reduction program.

            Russian military leadership called a halt to the Russo Japanese conflict in 1905. Again in 1917 the Russian military just quit fighting, tried of World War I. US and Russian counterparts have communicated periodically in the last half of the 20th Century and in the 21st. Military leaders understand the risk of modern warfare to the future of life on the planet.

            The first KGB officer to rule was Yuri Andropov in the 1980's. It was during this reign that planning to stage and survive a nuclear exchange was undertaken. Even though Andropov increased military spending, creating hardship in his economy to lavish the Generals, it was the military who began to reach out the west to alert the world to how "hair trigger" the nuclear game had become. The Russian military and the KGB have different world views. 

        I expect as the war crimes and the brutality of the unprovoked war continue there will increasing debate in the west, among NATO and in the US about upping our response, getting more militarily involved. 

        There is truth in the historic comparisons and questions about "what if" Hitler's early invasions and lunatic aspirations were stopped. If Putin is able to succeed in changing the map, or even survive, he will be empowered and emboldened. In my view, there is no place in the modern world for people like Putin, other than in prison or dead and used as an example. 

        

        Putin is a demonstration of why there are alliances, why NATO is important. He is an example of why democracy is essential and why authoritarians are dangerous and should be permitted only in ancient history. 

        A final thought for now. As we watch history made be careful of what you see in public opinion polls. The media ballyhoos them. 

        They are positioned as an entre' into the public mind or a validation or repudiation of a policy or statement. After several decades in journalism I've come to think there is too much emphasis on the "take" or meaning of the polls. 

        Some questions surpass public knowledge or understanding. The polls only compound false assumptions or  misrepresentation. Too many people react based on emotion and feeling instead of facts or critical reasoning. Too many people are in their own confirming information silos and do not have a complete or broad understanding.  

        A terrible use is to pose a simplistic question like "Should the US use military force to support Ukraine?" or "Should the US do more...." Yes public policy needs public acceptance, but asking an increasingly ill informed, even misinformed social media fed public is as useful as me asking the shelled denizens of the tidal pool, can I walk on water. 

        BTW there is a self portrait of sorts in the first frame.

        Nothing is a simple as some will try to make you think it is. Nothing is more difficult than watching innocents suffer, unless it is finding a way to end the violence.

        I hope a truce can be struck, and that combatants will be separated by a UN resolution. The negotiations that I hope will come will be a challenge. It will be difficult for Putin to accept anything less than some gain, and in my view that is too much.

        Modern history tells us tyrants and power mad men like Putin need to be cut down, earlier rather than later. But it has to be done properly. 

        We are in a brutal time. We can counter a bit by our humane support for Ukrainians, those who are left behind, and those who seek refuge. Everyone can do something. 

        Remember to unplug occasionally, breath deeply and de-stress.

        Peace!  

        See you down the trail. 

        

    

THE MESSAGE

PEACE ON EARTH

GOODWILL TO ALL

I'm with the kids....

Peace-William Strutt 1896  

In the public domain

Family Print brought from England

     I've been thinking about this William Strutt work, Peace.

    The framed print above is one of my earliest memories. It hung in the entrance hall of the three story house shared by my widowed grandmother and her sisters; a widowed aunt, and two additional aunts and their husbands. The women were English, and the two uncles were Scots. As the lone child in the lively hub, I found fascination and retreat in the print. Peace was a psychological icon and it is a lodestone.
      Seeing the Parkland kids with their direct and honest confrontation of "business as normal" has been a catharsis. A dread that our current low information, bully populism was a trap door to bad getting worse is now tempered by our children calling our BS. 
     Children mobilized, because of the slaughter of their friends, is not the back story we'd expect but it leads now to a hope. The Strutt is therapeutic. 

     Peace hypnotized me. I remember standing on a stool, staring at it, endlessly. 

     It is frequently called "And A Child Shall Lead Them" and that leads back to the kids. 

    I presume I am one of millions who hope children are  leading us now, the children of Parkland Florida and the school children of America who are walking out, marching, protesting and challenging the hypocrisy and prostitution of elected officials. They lead in naming names of house and senate members who are on the payroll of the NRA, calling out trump for rescinding an Obama administration regulation that made it more difficult for people with mental illness to get guns.

     A theological note; Strutt's painting is based on words from Isaiah, "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them."

     People have diverse interpretations of its meaning. Strutt had his own of course, depicting the verse and calling it Peace. I like that.

     But I've always favored the idea of the innocence of a child as being a model for how to live and believe. An important pronouncement for followers of Christ is to protect and revere children and to adopt a child like purity of mind and belief, "for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." 

     After each mass slaughter there is a public outcry. There was a moment when it appeared members of the House and Senate were listening. Congress was poised to tighten laws and do something constructive, but then, as always, Wayne La Pierre and his cultural terrorists go to work. Big money gets pumped into PACs and politicians, who are threatened with "primarying" if they don't do the NRA's bidding. There is an abundance of spineless, cowardly weasels to tumble to the NRA once again.

     Once more the NRA and La Pierres's finger prints are on the mass shooting. They've distorted and propagandized the Second Amendment. The NRA is really only a marketing force and lobby for the gun makers and sellers. They are a big reason why 17 more victims have been claimed and while we will likely see another Parkland, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Marysville, Rancho Tehama, Santa Monica, Virginia Tech, Red Lake, West Nickel, Northern Illinois, Umpqua Community College, Oikos University in Oakland, and this is only a partial list of just school shootings. If you wish you can compute your own list of mass shootings in total. 
      Mr. LaPierre, how many of these victims do you take responsibility for? How many more bodies do you and the NRA desire to see?
     The child in the Strutt, and the children who lost friends tell us there is a better way. We should listen and get out of their way and let them lead.

      

a pause for beauty

   See you down the trail.

PEACE

  

     In that moment when Patti Smith missed a lyric, apologized, nervously began again and was met with a warm applause that grew even warmer upon completion of A Hard Rains A Gonna Fall at the Nobel literature presentation the love of this season was personified. Sincerity, compassion, tenderness, love and joy were all in that moment.

      The grand spiritual and philosophical architecture of this epoch of human habitation on this planet is constructed by singular acts, one at a time. They exist and in fact they abound if only we will see them, or create them.

      Regardless of your most intimate and deepest belief please allow me to wish you and yours Merriment at this Christmas season. May you all experience joy, peace and the light of love.

     See you down the trail. 

AT THE EDGE AND WHY NOT?

CREATING STABILITY

    Old ideas have failed for centuries so we propose a novel approach to fixing the middle east.  That follows below.

LANDS END

    Surf Lullaby

    Into 22 mph North Westerly wind-motor, not a day for the sail.

   Shore texture

 Dedicated to the US Congress. Your ideas on why?

  Soar patrol 1

  Soar patrol 2

A NOVEL PLAY 

in a tired old drama

     Dexter Filkins has proven himself to be one of the sharpest observers and thus experts on the middle east. The former New York Times writer, Pulitzer winner and current New Yorker writer stands tall in my eyes because aside from his skill, he and I share a theory.  We believe what is unfolding in the middle east is the latest incarnation of a war for power and control in Islam-Shia vs Sunni.  Nation state is of less importance than who's version of Islam, fundamentalist at that, dominates.  Our blundering into and out of Iraq only enabled the larger battlefield.  So, with that as pretext here is my magic bullet solution for the region.

    We create a coalition to internationalize the region, starting with the Saudi oil fields, and then internationalize Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and maybe Oman. The border states would be Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and Iran.

    The enforcing coalition would be the US, Russia, China as the big 3 with more power but would also include the Euro block, ASEAN, the Southern Hemisphere (African and South America) and finally the unit of Canada and Northern Europe.

    In essence the big 3 runs the new cartel, assigning oil distribution allotments, pricing, flow and etc to the world. The full coalition provides security and infrastructure control for the new middle east. Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Jordan and Israel become operating partners for commerce, social services, education, and economic development in the internationalized region. 

    The Saudi Royal family would be given the option to move to Mecca, that remain would under their control, but the bulk of their military, wealth and the remainder of the kingdom become internationalized. Some of the opulence and wealth we are familiar with would be utilized to build up the quality of life of citizens of the internationalized region. The Royals would be given a discreet amount of time in which to affect their move, after that they are out of luck. 

    In the process much of the British and French partitioning of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WW I, the bastardly and stupid progenitor to much of the regions troubles since, could be partially erased.  The continuing Arab-Israeli friction gets absorbed into the larger construct of maintaining a regional peace and economic vitality.

    The current bad ass, the Islamic State, is snuffed quickly with Russia, China and the US standing on the same sight of the barrel, pointed at them!

    Yea, I know it's a pipe dream but nothing else is working and I think our hope for the future is innovation, new ideas, creative options and bold imagining.  

See you down the trail. 

    

THE WEEKENDER-AWESOME-PEACEFUL-AND THE DOG GOLDBERG

THE ELDERS OF THE PLANET

      As the news of floods, drought, wildfire and tropical storms fill the airwaves and internet I've been thinking about some of my favorite living things-the giant Sequoia trees only some 4 hours from here.
    From 1,200 to 1,800 years old I try to imagine the kind of changes that have swept over this planet since they first emerged as saplings.  I am filled with awe and reverence whenever I am in their presence, or in the presence of their cousins, the coast Redwoods.  That is why Big Sur and the
Sequoia national parks are so special to me.

TIME TO CHILL

   No matter where your journey has taken you this week, here are a couple of frames to help you find a road to peaceful relaxation.

THE WEEKENDER VIDEO

it may have you howling

   Find something to enjoy this weekend.  See you down the trail.