October 31, 2024

On this day of Halloween, I’m reminded of the various strategies that humans have used to ward off evil spirits. In this era of political stress and world wars, there’s no shortage of dark forces to contend with.

In ancient Ireland, the birthplace of Halloween (specifically, the Oweynagat Cave at Rathcroghan in County Roscommon), people wore costumes during the Celtic harvest festival of Samhain to conceal their identity from scary beings that might harm them or take them down into the underworld.

Recently I’ve been reading about – and remembering – a different method of facing one’s fear of death: singing.

My mother’s death in July has prompted my siblings and cousins and me to rediscover her father’s World War I letters from France. My grandfather William Kenney was an artillery mechanic in the American Expeditionary Forces, and in at least one of his letters he made a passing reference to the 1917 song “Over There” that lifted the spirits of American soldiers such as my grandfather as they headed to war in Europe:

Over there, over there, send the word, send the word over there,

That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, the drums rum-tumming everywhere,

So prepare, say a prayer, send the word, send the word to beware,

We’ll be over, we’re coming over, and we won’t come back till it’s over over there.

In May I was in Pennsylvania for three weeks, visiting sites from American history such as the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War. I was reminded of the Civil War songs “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” and “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” I also recalled the lyrics of a Revolutionary War song we learned in the fifth grade:

Why come ye hither Redcoats? What mind your madness fills?

For there’s danger in our valleys, and there’s danger on our hills.

Oh, hear ye forth the singing of the bugle wild and free?

For soon you’ll know the ringing of the rifle from the tree.

For the rifle [clap, clap, clap], for the rifle [clap, clap, clap},

In our hands it is no trifle.

And that song about American colonists fighting a British invasion led me to remember the many Irish songs of rebellion that my ancestors sang to give them the courage to face overwhelming odds as they risked death during seven centuries of British colonial oppression of their island:

We’re on the one road, sharing the one load, we’re on the road to God knows where.

We’re on the one road, it may be the wrong road, but we’re together now who cares?

North men, South men, comrades all, Dublin Belfast Cork and Donegal

We’re on the one road, singing a song, singing a soldier’s song.

I suppose that singing songs of war is a form of whistling past the graveyard – facing one’s fears of death by summoning a cheerful attitude of confidence and hope. It’s not unlike what my friend Julie once joked about regarding her spiritual path: “I practice maintenance Buddhism – it keeps you feeling good, while everything around you crumbles.”

I love to sing, in good times and in bad times. Unfortunately I’m concerned that we humans are headed into times of even greater turmoil and peril than we have been experiencing recently. And in this country we face the possibility of a period of dangerous political instability in the near future.

I don’t know what goblins or other negative energy may be unleashed to assail us in the aftermath of the November 5th election. But I intend to face it with several rollicking songs in my heart.

September 19, 2024

I was looking forward to a reunion with two longtime friends. But when we finally met for breakfast two days ago, the result was bittersweet.

I’ve known Bart and Monty (not their real names) since the 1960’s, when the three of us were young men devoted to a Buddhist mass movement. All three of us have continued our Buddhist practice, but we now live hours apart in different areas of northern California. And only one of us remains involved with the organization that was once so important to all of us.

Now in our seventies, we know that we don’t have many years left in our current bodies and personalities before we trade them in for new models. So it’s understandable that we would spend a couple of hours laughing and reminiscing about the past.

Except that there was little laughter in our “conversation.”

Monty and I were dismayed to discover that Bart had no curiosity about or interest in our lives. The two hour reunion was an extended monologue by Bart about his stories from the past and his current involvement with his Buddhist cult. Bart didn’t talk with Monty or me – he talked off of us, bouncing his memories and his opinions against his dumbfounded audience of two.

Last night Monty and I spoke by phone to process our disappointment in the outcome of our much anticipated reunion. Monty was understandably shocked and offended by Bart’s cavalier treatment of us and his dogmatic approach to life. We both realized belatedly that perhaps the three of us had never really been friends, only comrades in a common cause, and that our relationships had been superficial and maybe even delusional. Both of us acknowledged how depressed we were as we each drove home separately after the encounter.

But I couldn’t help but wonder what had caused Bart to go from a passionate youthful idealist living for the future to a jaded fanatic with no social skills who is living mostly in the past. Is it his dead-end low-wage job that has robbed him of hope? His failed marriages? Is he lonely, alienated, despairing? Or is it some form of age-related cognitive decline? He reminds me of a classmate of mine who went from being a high school football star to a depressed alcoholic for whom high school was the high point of his life. Both of them are lost boys who never really grew up.

It’s easy to judge someone else’s life choices or karma. But there is much that we don’t really understand about ourselves, let alone our fellow humans.

There is a Japanese nature image known as komorebi, which refers to the shimmering light and shadows caused by sunlight peeking through the shade of trees. This contrast of beauty and darkness is a good metaphor for the human condition.

Two days ago I saw the melancholy shadows of Bart’s personality. But I will never forget the light of his soul that I caught glimpses of so long ago, and that I believe still shines above the forest canopy of his current incarnation.

August 1, 2024

I’m feeling happy, relieved, and depressed these days, and I guess it should come as no surprise. My mom died in her sleep five days ago at the age of 93.

So now I’m in the process of trying to figure out: Who was she? What was my relationship with her? How could I love someone so much who was so different than me?

Part of my appreciation of her stems from childhood memories of her taking good care of me when I crushed my finger in a collapsing folding chair, and when I had the measles, and when I had my tonsils out, and when I suffered miserably so many times from poison oak. But maybe I’m grateful to her because she never stopped loving me.

Margaret Mary Kenney was a very pretty girl and a beautiful Irish colleen who grew up in a Catholic family of 11 in Berkeley during the Great Depression and World War II. Proud of her good looks, she was popular with the boys at Berkeley High School. Her devout mother made sure that she went to confession every Saturday and Mass every Sunday, yet she got in trouble for talking back to one of the nuns who tried to rein in her free spirit. Later, when she divorced my dad and realized that Church rules now prohibited her from receiving communion, she left the Church but never lost her respect for the Virgin Mary.

My mother eventually became a good cook, but not when I was growing up. Our dinners consisted of gourmet meals such as hot dog casserole (hot dogs in tomato sauce from a can), tuna casserole, and Spam and lima beans. When my young parents invited another couple to dinner at their apartment, my mom treated everyone to spaghetti and mashed potatoes.

She was also prone to exaggeration. As a boy I came across a rattlesnake on our road, and then watched as a neighbor decapitated it with a shovel. When I told my mom what I had seen, she called up a friend and regaled the woman with a story about how the vicious snake had lashed out at me and nearly bitten and killed me.

When I was 14, my parents divorced, and at age 35 my mom began her five year frolic in the dating game. She reveled in her miniskirts, hot pants, and white go go boots, while driving her sporty Mustang, much to the embarrassment of her four kids. Fortunately for her and for us, she eventually married Norm, a fine man to whom she remained devoted for the rest of her life.

Perhaps because money had been tight in her Depression-era family, later on, in due course, when she and Norm prospered, Mom delighted in playing tennis at their country club, and was stylish and elegant in her clothing, car, and home, as opposed to my…uh…simple lifestyle. She could be a bit snobbish at times about her upper middle class status, though never with me. Norm jokingly referred to her as his Irish-American Princess. Yet she enjoyed talking with people of all economic and ethnic backgrounds, and was popular with restaurant food servers, grocery store checkout clerks, and pretty much anyone she came in contact with. She could be generous with strangers and with charities.

At my sister Laura’s wedding, I was assigned the task of escorting my mom in the procession down the center aisle to her front row seat. When it came time for us to begin our walk, I started to go, but Mom said, “Wait a moment, David.” She had us take a dramatic pause until the aisle before us was clear of other procession participants. Everyone in the church turned their heads toward the top of the aisle to see who would be coming next. At that instant she whispered, “Now!” And then we (she) made our (her) grand entrance, her beaming and resplendent in her finery. That’s when she taught me that timing is everything.

As my cousin Mary said, “Maggie was fun, with a zest for life, and she had a gift for style and flair.” My cousin Mike said it more humorously, “She was a kick in the pants.”

Mom was mostly bedridden during the last few years of her life, so she really enjoyed my occasional visits and my daily Facetime (video) phone calls. She would ask about the details of my hikes, and loved hearing about the poppies, oaks, redwoods, pelicans, and whales that I and my companions experienced. She was so fortunate to have her loyal husband Norm by her side at the end, and to be able to die in bed at home rather than in a hospital or nursing home.

Although her body died a few days ago, her spirit or soul, in my view, did not, and I have sensed her presence at least three times since her passing. One of them, a dream, featured a huge blossoming tree, with a rushing stream nearby after a recent rain, and a serene range of hills or mountains in the distance. The Irish have a name for such a place: Tir na Nog, the Land of Eternal Youth and Beauty, a mystical realm of immortality. Some might say that it is known as the astral plane, where souls go between lives. Others might call it heaven.

Wherever you are, Mom, congratulations on your new beginning. And may your tree of life continue to blossom.

July 2, 2024

The Fourth of July has long been one of my favorite holidays, in part because of memories of family gatherings at my grandmother’s home in Berkeley, and in part because it’s a secular anniversary that celebrates the independence and freedoms earned through sacrifices made by patriots during the American Revolution.

But in this election year, there are dark clouds on the horizon, in this country and abroad, and the survival of those hard-won freedoms may be at stake.

A couple of months ago I spent a week in Philadelphia exploring the city and being inspired by various sites related to the Revolution and the Founding Fathers. One spot I found especially moving was the Old Pine Street Churchyard, a beautiful green graveyard shaded by mature sycamore trees. Wandering among the 18th century tombstones, I noticed that some of the graves were decorated with little 13 star American flags, and some were not. Upon further inspection I realized that the graves marked by the circle star flags were the final resting places of soldiers who served under General Washington in the Continental Army.

There are many prominent citizens from that time who are buried in that cemetery, but only the graves of the 200 plus ordinary veterans of the Continental Army are honored with American flags, even after 240 some years. Their heroism and sacrifices have not been forgotten, and in death they outrank their social superiors.

And what is it that the farmers and tradesmen and shopkeepers of Washington’s ragtag “army” fought for? Independence from Britain, to be sure, along with the opportunity to experience “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” as the Declaration of Independence proclaimed.

But freedom means different things to different people.

For many conservatives, freedom means the right to carry guns in public, and intimidate their fellow citizens with assault rifles. For some in the Black Lives Matter movement, freedom means to defund the police. In Louisiana the public schools are now required to post the Ten Commandments, and in progressive Berkeley the Free Speech Movement of the 1960’s has been replaced by left wing intolerance of any views but their own.

Democracies are messy and contentious, and even Founding Fathers such as George Washington and John Adams were disgusted by the nasty politics of their day. Sometimes I wonder if there is a cause, a person, or a philosophy today that could unite Americans, and human beings everywhere, in service to the common good. Perhaps climate change will force humanity to come together at some point.

Or maybe true liberty is not political, but spiritual. Beethoven was appalled by the bloody French Revolution, and unimpressed by the authoritarians and monarchies of his day; rather, he said, “I much prefer the empire of the mind, and I regard it as the highest of all spiritual and worldly monarchies.” He didn’t specify what he meant by “empire of the mind,” but I’m guessing that he was referring to creativity and imagination.

So for this upcoming Fourth of July, I’m declaring my independence from left wing and right wing divisiveness, and aligning myself with the ideals of spiritual liberation.

I’m a Yankee Doodle Buddha.

May 14, 2024

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

For me, the best antidote to cynicism and despair is appreciation. For that reason, on May 1st I traveled from California to Pennsylvania to marvel at the courage and hope of our Founding Fathers and our soldiers at places like Valley Forge and here at Gettysburg.

I enjoy basking in the reflected glory of people who sacrificed their peace and tranquility and sometimes even their lives for the common good. It’s a humbling but healthy reminder to my ego that there are millions of Americans who have done far more for their country than I ever will.

Just south of the small town of Gettysburg is the national park dedicated to preserving the stories of this largest battle in North American history. 160,000 warriors representing the North and the South clashed here, of whom at least 7,000 were killed and 33,000 wounded, plus thousands more missing and captured.

This beautiful green parkland of rolling hills and grasslands is filled with about 1,800 combat monuments, 400 cannon, and thousands of graves. And more drama of life and death than one can comprehend.

One of the many heroes who fought here in July of 1863 was Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain from Maine. While defending the Little Round Top hill, he and his men were almost out of ammunition, so in desperation he led his regiment in a bayonet charge down the hill, routing the shocked Confederates and saving the Union flank from collapse.

Almost two years later, Chamberlain, now a general, witnessed the 1865 surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. As the rebels marched down the road, Chamberlain ordered his men to snap to attention out of respect for their defeated opponents.

As he later recalled, “All the while on our part not a sound of trumpet or drum, not a cheer, nor a word nor motion of man, but awful stillness as if it were the passing of the dead.”

A Confederate general passing in front of Chamberlain later praised him as “one of the knightliest soldiers of the Federal Army.”

In 1889 Chamberlain returned to Gettysburg, where he sensed the presence of his fallen comrades: “In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger…And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that…we know not of…(are)…drawn to see where…great things were suffered and done for them…”

As Chamberlain predicted, generations have followed in his footsteps, and over the last two days I’ve had the privilege of being one of those pilgrims. The climactic fight of Gettysburg is known as Pickett’s Charge, where Robert E. Lee ordered 12,000 of his Confederate infantry to cross a mile-long farmland to attack the Union defenders. About 5,000 of Lee’s men were killed or wounded before they had to retreat.

As I prepared to walk across the killing field of Pickett’s Charge, a woman called out to me and pointed to a rainbow appearing over the field of battle.

I then marched joyfully into the grassland toward the Union line, alone in the vast theater of war, with thousands of men on either side of me, and thousands facing us in the distance. All of us, Americans. All of us, human beings. All of us, dead and alive. All of us, one people, one spirit, one rainbow.

April 28, 2024

This coming week, in the midst of all the news about noisy chaos on many American college campuses, I’m traveling to Philadelphia to listen to the silent call of the Liberty Bell.

Sometimes protests have beneficial results, such as those that led to the American Revolution and the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement. And at other times, civil disobedience can lead to unintended consequences, as when the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964 – 65 created a backlash that helped elect Ronald Reagan as governor of California, and when the race riots and later the anti-war demonstrations and police violence at the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 assisted the presidential campaign of Richard Nixon that year.

With the Democratic convention once again in Chicago later this summer, will the pro-Palestine demonstrators attempt to disrupt that event as they have been doing on college campuses recently, thereby creating a law and order backlash that helps elect Donald Trump? Seems likely.

Although the left wing pro-Palestine groups have so far not been nearly as violent as the mob of right wing Trump supporters who tried to overthrow our democracy on January 6, 2021, there have been many incidents of intimidation of and threats against Jews by some of the more fanatical elements of that anti-Israel movement. One thing that seems to unite the far left and the far right is their demonization of Jews.

At least two of my Jewish friends have experienced antisemitic incidents in recent weeks, and others have been newly frightened by the rise of anti-Jewish hate that is becoming more prevalent in this country and around the world.

A couple of nights ago I attended a comedy show featuring a hilarious Jerry Seinfeld. While his impeccable timing, expressive body language, and humorous stories about the everyday foibles of human beings made his audience roar with laughter, I noticed that, in addition to the normal event security, he was protected by two armed sheriff’s deputies hidden in the wings. While many comedians have hired extra security staff after actor Will Smith assaulted comedian Chris Rock onstage at the Oscars a couple years ago, I can’t help but wonder if Seinfeld or other Jewish comedians feel the need for extra protection due to the “Death to the Jews!” slogans sometimes heard at pro-Palestine rallies.

When our Founding Fathers enshrined free speech in our Constitution, they clearly did not intend for the total absence of restraint that often characterizes the behavior of far right and far left champions of hatred and intolerance. Freedom is not the same as anarchy, although some deluded individuals believe that their sense of freedom entitles them to engage in various forms of disrespect, threats, and even violence aimed at those with whom they disagree.

If we cannot behave with greater civility toward one another, we will get more chaos, followed by fascism.

But it is my hope that, even if we do lose our democracy for a while, the embers of freedom will stay alive in that winter of our discontent.

A good way to keep our democracy intact is to appreciate the tremendous sacrifices made by our Founding Fathers , the soldiers at Valley Forge and Gettysburg and elsewhere, and those Americans of goodwill who listen to what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

So I’m off to Philly on Wednesday to commune with Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the Liberty Bell. Gotta keep my standards high.

March 30, 2024

How many of our personal problems are caused by external social and economic conditions, and how many of them are caused by ourselves through our internal choices?

This was the main question that occurred to me last night as I watched the American Masters program “Moynihan” on PBS.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a poor Irish kid who grew up in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City during the Great Depression. His unemployed father abandoned the family, so after school Moynihan had various jobs such as being a shoe shine boy on the streets of his neighborhood.

A bright kid, Moynihan did well in public schools, then worked as a longshoreman, joined the Navy in 1944, then went to college. He eventually worked as Assistant Secretary for Labor under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, became an advisor to President Nixon, and later in his career was a Harvard professor, the American ambassador to the United Nations, and a U.S. Senator from New York.

Having come from a broken family living in impoverished conditions, Moynihan understood from personal experience the challenges facing low income people. He was especially alarmed by the breakdown of black families, and in 1965 while working for Lyndon Johnson he wrote a report entitled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” Commonly known as the Moynihan Report, it called for creating jobs and vocational training for black men, whose high unemployment rates caused them, like Moynihan’s father, to abandon their families to lives of poverty.

But the Moynihan Report became controversial because many black leaders resented his calling attention to the prevalence of single mothers having children without the financial and emotional support of the children’s fathers. Those civil rights leaders, then and now, prefer to blame the persistent dysfunction of black families and the resultant crime, addictions, and poverty on society at large, rather than on a lack of emphasis on strong nuclear families and the importance of education.

In 1965 I was 13 years old, and though I did not know about the Moynihan Report at that time, I was well aware of, and believed in, Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and his efforts on behalf of black civil rights. I believed that the federal government could play a constructive role in overcoming the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. And now, almost 60 years later, I still believe that – up to a point.

Yes, black people in this country are still at a disadvantage, although much progress has been made since 1965. But black people are at a disadvantage in every country in which they find themselves, whether in Haiti, Brazil, the African countries, or elsewhere. The question I asked myself last night as I watched the PBS program “Moynihan” was, how can we humans – all of us – overcome our challenges? Whether our obstacles are racial barriers, health problems, family pathologies, addictions, homelessness, or financial difficulties, are these troubles the result of social inequalities, or are they a deeper reflection of a poverty of spirit, a human ignorance of our minds or souls and our oftentimes unconscious roles as creators of our experience?

Last night, after watching the Moynihan program but before going to sleep, I read an excerpt from a Buddhist book that reminded me of a fundamental Buddhist teaching from the Dhammapada:

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind and trouble will follow you…Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow you.

In other words, the mind is powerful. Intentions and focus are powerful. Our inner life determines our outer life.

Socially we can practice kindness and generosity to the less fortunate, but spiritually each person has to find his or her own way.

I don’t know how Daniel Patrick Moynihan managed to turn on his inner light. I respect his efforts to address the social problems of his day. And I also believe that, regardless of our external circumstances, each of us has the resilience and creativity to tap into our inner resources to choose a life of dignity and well being.

A true war on poverty succeeds through an awakening of the spirit.

February 22, 2024

George Washington was born too early to be a Star Wars fan. But the Force was with him.

I wasn’t quite sure how I’d feel about him as I recently read my first biography of the man on our one dollar bill. He seemed too dignified, too remote, a slave owner from another time and place. But in his book Washington: A Life, author Ron Chernow, whose biography of another Founding Father inspired the Broadway musical Hamilton, introduced me to one of the most complicated, contradictory, and extraordinary human beings to ever live on this continent.

And yes, it seems that Washington was chosen by a higher power, fated for a great role in establishing a government by the people and not by a monarch or strongman. Or at least that’s how he saw his destiny, and that’s how many of his contemporaries saw him as well.

As a colonial officer in the British army during the French and Indian war, “because of his height, he presented a gigantic target on horseback, but again he displayed unblinking courage and a miraculous immunity in battle…Washington’s derring-do even fostered a lasting mystique among the Indians…Fifteen years later he encountered an Indian chief who distinctly recalled seeing him at the battle by the Monongahela and told how he had ordered his warriors, without success, to fire directly at him. The chief had concluded that some great spirit would guide him to momentous things in the future.”

Later, in the Revolutionary War, General Washington “seemed blessed with a supernatural immunity to bullets…(He) construed favorable events in the war as reflections of Providence, transforming him from an actor in a human drama into a tool of heavenly purpose.”

“Providence” certainly chose a flawed human being as an instrument for the advancement of the human race. He was selfish, greedy, materialistic, a tight-fisted sharp-elbowed businessman, and at times a harsh slave owner. He was an aristocratic control freak with a terrible temper.

But his ambivalent views on slavery evolved over time, and he eventually freed his slaves upon his death. His tenacity and courage kept the Revolution alive during the misery of Valley Forge and eight years of defeats, deprivation, and lack of support from the Continental Congress. He was not corrupted by fame or power, and he shocked the Europeans by refusing to be made a king and by voluntarily giving up power after being a victorious general and then again after the “towering legacy” of his two highly successful and productive terms as president. He was honest, he ensured the survival of the Constitution, and “most of all he had shown a disbelieving world that a republican government could prosper without being spineless or disorderly or reverting to authoritarian rule.”

Was Washington really some sort of Jedi knight, guided and protected by a greater Force or higher consciousness in order to advance the cause of human democracy and liberty? After reading Chernow’s book, it sure seems like it. But whether it was Providence or just dumb luck, we could certainly use someone like Washington now.

Happy birthday, George. And thank you for your service.

January 19, 2024

Sometimes we just have to face our cynicism and despair.

A few days ago my friend Birgit and I drove down to San Francisco to explore the notorious neighborhood that author Gary Kamiya calls the Museum of Depravity:

In the universe of San Francisco, the Tenderloin is the black hole, the six-block-by-six-block area where the city’s urban matter is most intensely concentrated. It is the only part of San Francisco that remains untamed, its last human wilderness. Without the Tenderloin and its radioactive core of junkies, drunks, transvestites, dealers, thugs, madmen, hustlers, derelicts, prostitutes, and lowlifes, this overpriced, increasingly homogenous (city) would feel like one of those motel bathrooms that are “sani-sealed for your protection.” The Tenderloin is the creepy Mr. Hyde…to the rest of San Francisco’s respectable Dr. Jekyll…All of which is to say that the Tenderloin is a large turd – often a literal one – floating in the crystal punchbowl that is San Francisco. (Gary Kamiya, Cool Gray City of Love)

Compared to the “sin city” that is the Tenderloin, Las Vegas is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

But as we discovered, the Tenderloin is a horrible, wonderful, fascinating place.

We prepared for our journey through hell by first attending a Sunday service at Glide Memorial, a non-denominational church in that neighborhood famed for feeding the hungry and providing social services to the down and out. While the two ministers were black, as I expected, I was surprised that most of the gospel choir, musicians, and congregants were white and other ethnicities. I always thought of it as a predominantly black church, but it turns out that the church is multi racial, as is the neighborhood.

One of the ministers addressed the negative stereotype of the district by saying that the Tenderloin is more than a crime-infested, drug-using, homeless encampment – it’s a place where people love and help each other; it’s a community of hope. As Birgit and I were to learn, it’s an inspiring place in the midst of misery and sorrow.

After the relentlessly upbeat service, we joined a small, church-sponsored tour of the neighborhood. Our white, middle-aged tour guide, Dennis, was himself a homeless addict six months ago, but with the help of the church and other non-profit social service groups he’s now living in an SRO (single room occupancy) apartment in the Tenderloin.

Dennis took us to the clean, well maintained little Boeddeker Park that displays a huge mural of a giant tree with houses and apartments in its branches and the slogan “Everyone Deserves a Home.” The neighborhood is noted for its many outdoor murals and a growing community of artists and musicians. He showed us an impressive little art museum, Yemeni and Vietnamese restaurants, new affordable housing, St. Anthony’s Dining Room (free meals), the Golden Gate Theater (live performances), and the now historic site of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot where transgender women and gay men fought back against police harassment three years before the similar but better known Stonewall uprising in New York.

Everywhere we went we saw examples of people with big hearts devoting their lives to helping others. There are so many marvelous non-profits, such as Faithful Fools, practicing the kindness of Jesus and the Dalai Lama. Even so, I had to deal with my skepticism and pessimism about the efficacy of volunteerism and do-gooders.

In the summer of 1970, after high school but before college, I volunteered for Summer Happening Thing, a group I was misled to believe was a part of the reputable Youth For Service. Our purpose at Summer Happening Thing was to provide recreational opportunities and field trips for children in San Francisco housing projects. And we did that. But as the summer wore on, we were dismayed to learn that the lofty promises of direction and support that were made to us naive white teenagers were illusory; our inspirational black leader spent his time in bars rather than helping us help the kids. And while the girls in the projects were sweet and appreciative, the boys were little monsters who probably are now either in prison or dead.

So knowing that I can sometimes be mistrustful of idealism and judgmental about criminal behavior, I took a chance and went to the Tenderloin to see whether the volunteers there are the real deal or just another version of the leadership of Summer Happening Thing.

Everyone I met was sincere, compassionate, and open-hearted. In the words of the Faithful Fools mission statement: “We are called to a life of presence that acknowledges each human’s incredible worth. Aware of our judgments, we seek to meet people where they are, through the arts, education, advocacy, and accompaniment. We participate in shattering myths about those living in poverty, seeing the light, courage, intelligence, strength, and creativity of the people we encounter. We discover on the streets our common humanity through which celebration, community, and healing occur.”

San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And not just because of its bridges, islands, ocean, bay, Golden Gate, and architecture. But also because of the lovely, generous spirit of the angels of the Tenderloin.

January 6, 2024

Dear Mr. Trump,

It has come to my attention (as everything in the universe comes to my attention) that a video on your website entitled “God Made Trump” has claimed that I have anointed you as my “shepherd to mankind.” While I am not offended by your false claim of an endorsement by me (actually, I’m not offended by anything), I would like to set the record straight.

I do not take sides in political campaigns or wars. I wish everyone well, even you. I created souls so that they may be co-creators with me, exploring the meaning and joy of life through their various incarnations. Part of that co-creation process is learning through trial and error. You, as a human being, are entitled to your share of mistakes.

I will forgive you for all of your errors in judgement. But in the meantime, it is my merciful intention that your soul will learn lessons via the strict law of cause and effect. What you sow, dear Donald, you will reap. And in this way, you will evolve. I do not punish my children; I encourage their growth through the exercise of their free will. There is no hell, except that of your own making.

So as the creator of your soul, which in turn created you, I will offer you some friendly advice.

Whether or not you succeed in your efforts to become an authoritarian leader such as those in Russia and China that you admire so much, do not forget the aforementioned law of karma (cause and effect). Your attempt three years ago, on January 6, 2021, to encourage the violent overthrow of your country’s democracy, and your subsequent attempts to overturn the election results, have sown great fear and turmoil in your nation. Your description of the violent riot at your Capitol building as “beautiful,” and your promise to pardon those who engaged in such hateful brutality, and your continual incitement of violence by your followers, reveals a delusional state of mind that will lead to great suffering for you and your cult underlings.

I will not gloat in your suffering. My consciousness is always here for you when you are ready to align with what your President Lincoln described as the “better angels of our nature.”

In the grand evolution of your planet and its human inhabitants, this time of chaos will eventually pass. For now, beloved little Donny, do your soul a favor and heed this non-partisan, spiritual advice: drop out of the race and vote for Joe Biden.

With love,

Your heavenly father and mother,

God/Goddess