April 2025 (Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4)
Dear Friends ~ The kids and I stare out the window, watching birds. The juncos are my favorite, presenting in sooty suits, bowing often in a jaunty jig of seed seeking. My son enjoys the sparrows, who descend in numbers that send our feeders reeling. My daughter likes the showy birds—right red cardinals and silence shattering jays.
I am mesmerized in a manner that conjures memories of my own childhood, when wonder came in waves of such intensity it could knock the feet out from under my day, leaving me belly down, drawn to the details of a blade of grass or a grasshopper's legs. As I grew in body, mind, and vision, my sights widened to bigger pictures; a perspective that helped me find myself in academics, civics, and spirituality.
That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.
You have seen so much of the outer world and had so many experiences of people, places, and things—and of course those experiences will keep coming. But now, in the second half of your life, as the outer world seems more unstable and dangerous than ever, we want you to take the same rapacious curiosity that once thrust you all over the planet with a hungry, fascinated appetite, and we want you to turn it inward.
Jubilee‚ wasn't it a jubilee!
We were singing out together —
shouting revelries.
Jubilee‚ Lord wasn't it a jubilee!
Jubilee‚ wasn't it a jubilee!
Jubilee‚ wasn't it a jubilee!
We were dancing by the river,
dancing by the sea,
Bouncing all the babies,
up and down upon our knees,
Laughing out happy,
crying out free;
Jubilee‚ wasn't it a jubilee!
We were banging on the banjos,
picking on guitars,
Blowing out the bass notes,
on the crockery jars,
Sliding on the washboards,
banging spoons upon our knees;
Jubilee, wasn't it a Jubilee!
We came from the valleys,
we came from the towns,
We came to see the paddlewheel
and the show boat clowns,
We came from the farmlands,
we came from the sea;
Jubilee, wasn't it a Jubilee!
All words have a history. But some are particularly interesting to explore when it comes to psychology—because they're directly born from it. How many times have you been mesmerized by something, so captured by it that it was like you were in a trance? The word "mesmerize" dates back to an 18th century Austrian physician named Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815). He established a theory of illness that involved internal magnetic forces, which he called animal magnetism. (It would later be known as mesmerism.)
A blue-bell springs upon the ledge,
A lark sits singing in the hedge;
Sweet perfumes scent the balmy air,
And life is brimming everywhere.
What lark and breeze and bluebird sing,
Is Spring, Spring, Spring!
Whether a plot in a yard or pots in a window, every politically engaged person should have a garden. By politically engaged, I mean everyone with a vested interest in the direction the people on this planet take in relationship to others. We should all take some time to plant life in the soil. Even when such planting isn't easy.
The cricket doesn't wonder
if there's a heaven
or, if there is, if there's room for him.
It's fall. Romance is over. Still, he sings.
If he can, he enters a house
through the tiniest crack under the door.
Then the house grows colder.
He sings slower and slower.
Then, nothing.
This must mean something, I don't know what.
But certainly it doesn't mean
he hasn't been an excellent cricket
all his life.