Infusing Hope Into the Dark Night of Our Species

When he was 41, Andrew Harvey met Father Bede Griffith, a renowned mystic and teacher living in India, who was 85 years old at the time. Harvey, a serious seeker, mystic, and teacher himself [check out his particulars on Amazon or at www.andrewharvey,org] spent 10 days at Griffith's ashram, taping interviews with the Master for a friend's documentary film. One of the first things Father Bede said to him was "You know, Andrew, don't you, that we are now living in the 'Hour of God'?" Andrew asked him to explain what he meant by the 'Hour of God'."

"I mean that humanity has come to the moment when it will have to choose between trying to play God, with the catastrophic results we see all around us, and trying to become what all the true mystical traditions know we can become--one with God through grace in life. This is a dangerous yet wonderful and hopeful moment because if enough of us can choose the latter, the birth of a wholly new kind of human being, and so of a new world, is possible."

This is where I always have my fatal stumble with spirituality today: its presumption of a new kind of human being and a new world that will miraculously unfold after humanity has traversed a near-deathlike dark night of the soul. Standing lonesome watch as I do when I often feel like I am live-blogging the end of the world, what I see is one unforgiving catastrophe unfolding after another. It seems relentless. (Check out the new oil spill currently polluting the Yellowstone River.) From these circumstances, the leap into envisioning "a new kind of human being and a new world" frankly eludes me. I feel only dread at what awaits the human race.

Reading Andrew's book "The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism" this summer, however, is helping me to pass, like a fitful camel, through the eye of that needle. The words he writes and the stories he tells have made me feel less alone in my heartbreak. This is because Andrew minces no words when he describes the depths of his own dread and despair, and how difficult it has been to confront them. "How could any half-conscious human being NOT feel dread at the enormous suffering that is erupting all over the world?" The extremity of it is overwhelming.

"Dread," Andrew writes, "is the most paralyzing of all human of all human emotions and the one I, and everyone else I know, will do almost anything to avoid. Facing the depth of my dread has threatened me, at times, with hopelessness. What I have found, however, is that acknowledging my dread and treating it not as a weakness to be repressed at all costs, but as an inevitable response to real circumstances, has helped me start to heal it."

Personal disclosure: I haven't read too many people willing to be that unflinchingly frank, and so I clutch onto this book as I would to a life raft. I relish the company of someone who writes the way I would like to write, who thinks the way I would like to think, and when I read him, I know myself a little better. Harvey asks questions the way no one else would: "How exactly do we acquire a 'lover's heart" [he is paraphrasing Rumi here] that stays 'a rose garden' however 'choked with thorns' our circumstances become?" I feel a little less lost in emotional Siberia when I read him.

It was Harvey's own "radical descent" into a fierce and angry disillusionment with humanity, he claims, that ultimately saved him. To experience this disillusionment, he now believes, is to face without denial the reality of the evil that we as a race have done to ourselves, to the animals, and to Nature. He catalogues the list of evils we have perpetrated thusly: brutal wars, genocides, the systematic rape of Nature, the creation of a free-for-all financial system that makes an elite few obscenely rich while billions of people live in terrible degradation--with the result that humanity is now in danger of losing its conscience and soul just when it needs them most. In the end, Harvey is convinced that only by "weathering the storms of grief and heartbreak and the hopelessness of a long, hard look at our crisis, the state of humanity, and the state of my own character" was he able to alchemically transmute the hopelessness and the heartbreak into an infusion of more illuminating energy.

For me, the lesson learned here--and there will be more of them to recount as I make my way through this remarkable book--is that hope is not some giddy, feel-good, Oprah Winfrey thing meant to spackle over your despair and keep you comfy while you go on about your daily business. Given where the planet is at this point, hope must be earned, by walking on the hot coals of a crisis-ridden world and running the gauntlet of a sickening chagrin and dismay. Only then can an authentic and embodied hope bloom into place and become a realistic possibility. Any hope, according to Andrew, that "glosses over the reality of evil or does not respect its power will not be of any use." And so, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. [To be continued.]

The illustration above was sent to me by my friend Jane Vance, who says it is the torso of a poor village Indian who saves and befriends animals, a detail from a painting-in-progress called "What Light Does to Fish."

Butterflies on Steroids

I recently finished reading "A Question of Values" by Morris Berman and was stopped dead in my tracks by his statement:
"Wouldn't it make sense, at this point, for America to "resign' with dignity? To come to terms with its collapse, and just accept it?" I think about this all the time. It's been my personal Zen koan, even before reading Berman's book.

So you open your safe and find ashes. But exactly who--what publisher, what network--would even entertain such a story? Of America "resigning" and coming to terms with its collapse? Acceptance of this damning truth may be our only exit from the culture of lies and denial--from the "psychic free radicals" poisoning everyone's energy field and filling the collective atmosphere with a sense of dread--but ultimately (once you seriously think about it), would facing up to this truth help or harm? Were we fully to acknowledge our civilizational and environmental collapse, wouldn't that signal a hopeless defeatism from which there could be no possibility of recovery? But what if recovery really is not possible? Would that mean a loss of faith in life, of still having confidence in something which is broken? Can we even grasp what it would be like to live without confidence in the future?

Anyway, it won't happen. Nobody, not Obama and certainly not the Republicans, not Charlie Rose or Jon Stewart or anyone else, is going to stand up tall and officially inform the American people that it's "over" for our country. Nobody wants to tell their out-of-town friends that the houseplants have died and gone black, sitting in their pots in the bay window. Who among us is likely to admit that we really have no idea what we should do? Life seems as if it just goes on, irregardless; it goes on as before, at least for those whose houses are still standing and are not under water--whose chess pieces can still be found in their rightful positions on an end table in some well-furnished room. For those who are still that lucky, there is no shortage of good days.

In his book, Berman cites a Feb.2, 2009 essay by Benjamin Barber, published in The Nation: "It is hard to discern any movement toward a wholesale rethinking of the dominant role of the market in our society. No one is questioning the impulse to rehabilitate the consumer market as the driver of American commerce." Many weights have fallen on the heads of the American people since then, with notable frequency, but thus far, nothing has broken the powerful pattern. "Rather than being on the verge of some possible cultural renaissance," Berman comments, "or a reversal of our entire history, what we are now witnessing is the slow-motion suicide of the nation, with Mr. Obama guiding us, in a genteel and semi-conscious way, into the grave. Indeed, what more can he or anybody do at this point?" I still vividly recall Berman's comment, even before Obama became president, that whoever got elected would end up being a funeral director, rather than a president.

One of my favorite writers (whom I've also been reading of late), Caroline Myss, in her Forward to Andrew Harvey's "The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism," claims that aside from the obvious social, political, economic, and environmental challenges facing us, there are even more treacherous subtle forces at play, such as the ever-accelerating rapidity of these changes--to the point where we can't really keep up with them. Change now happens at light speed and is global in magnitude. There is hardly such a thing anymore as a "local" change, says Myss.

"The Internet and the television have brought changes of all nations into view within seconds and not only into view, but into your bank account, into your stock holdings, into your insurance policies, and into your job security. A shift in the market in Japan or China could result in the loss of your job in the morning." It sounds like the "butterfly effect," only on steroids. (The "butterfly effect" refers to the proposition that whatever happens in the world has a ripple effect that eventually affects every other thing in the world. Thus, a butterfly flapping its wings in Rio can cause an earthquake in Beijing.) The information overload of news and information, warns Myss, affects not only our exterior lives but also our emotional, psychological, and mental well-being:

"I frequently have people tell me," she writes, "that they avoid the news because it's all negative, but is avoidance really a mature response?" (To me, avoidance seems like a nickel magic trick.) If you decide to avoid the news because it's all negative, "then who should respond to those assaulting the environment?" asks Myss. "And to those committing war crimes? And to those violating our constitution? These crimes happened and will continue to happen precisely because people do not want to look at the shadow of the society we live in, much less the shadow of the global community." Don't imagine for a moment, she adds, that by not following the news you can avoid the psychic free radicals generated by the collective unconscious. They are penetrating willy-nilly into your individual psychic field whether you are paying attention or not.

Item. From my local newspaper today: "For the first time in a year, Americans have stopped spending more. Consumer spending failed to budge from April to May, evidence that high gasoline prices and unemployment are squeezing household budgets....Consumer spending is important because it accounts for 70 percent of economic activity."

Item. A friend from Roanoke, who has been driving across the country to California with her dog, sends this bulletin (along with many others): "Arkansas seems to have missed the fact that the World did not end on May 21st. I counted 12 billboards still proudly displaying the 'message.' "

Enough for now. I am ending this post with opening lines from a poem by Ray Bradbury:

"Not smash and grab, but rather find and keep;
Go panther-pawwed [sic] where all the mined truths sleep
To detonate the hidden seeds with stealth
So in your wake a weltering of wealth
Springs up unseen, ignored, and left behind
As you sneak on, pretending to be blind."

And that, folks, is my collage offering for the week. I hope to leave behind a weltering of wealth that will spring up unseen in my wake, as I myself sneak on, pretending to be blind, which of course, I'm not.

Into the Yucky Pack of Varmints, a Huntsman Comes!

Here's how the New York Times characterized the GOP's first presidential debate held earlier this week: "Monday’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire — full of historical error, economic obfuscation, avoidance of hard truths and even outright bigotry — was a feast for connoisseurs of political dysfunction. Desperate to avoid being outflanked on the right, the seven candidates tried so hard to outdo each other in finding fault with President Obama that they seemed to forget that they are competing for the same party nomination. By evening’s end, they had melted into an indistinguishable mass of privatizing, tax-cutting opponents of Shariah law."

The following exchange is a day-glo example of what the Times editorial was referring to. It took place that night between CNN's moderator, John King, and Governor Tim Pawlenty, who predictably recommends more tax-cutting to "get the economy moving again": “If you win the nomination, you’ll have to make the choice that a nominee makes, and that is picking a running mate. Governor Pawlenty to you, look back on 2008 and the process. President Obama made a pick. Senator McCain made a pick. Who made the best choice?” Pawlenty hesitates, and then recovers. He says Vice President Joe Biden makes horrible decisions and that Palin is wonderful.

The truth is, there is one plausible Republican candidate out there--one who still bears a resemblance to the species once formerly known as "homo sapiens." But he wasn't at the debate. He has since announced, however, that he will officially declare his candidacy next Tuesday. I've been eyeballing Utah's former governor, Jon Huntsman, ever since late May when I came across an online version of a commencement address he gave at the University of South Carolina on May 27th. I've mentioned him since to several friends, who all shook their heads in foggy nonrecognition. "Never heard of him,. Don't know who he is," they all said. Except for my friend Jane's son, Emerson, a politically savvy young man whom I love to talk politics with. When I said to Emer that I thought the Republicans had one decent candidate, he immediately shook his head in agreement. I wondered if, by some miracle, we were referring to the same person. "What are his initials?" I diffidently asked, almost afraid to ask. "J.H." he replied. "Yow! I said, that's him!"

The first time I noticed Jon Huntsman was when President Obama appointed him as U.S. Ambassador to China. A few pundits whispered at the time it was partly to get Huntsman out of the country as a political rival in the 2012 election. But Huntsman resigned the post several months ago and came back to America. He's been on the GOP's list of possible candidates all along, but Republican officials have ignored him. Huntsman polls at only 1% and in a straw poll in Iowa, he got a total of one vote. The GOP would like to keep it that way, not only because he is unacceptably moderate, but because he also did the unthinkable--accepting a job in the Obama administration. Which is, after all, the equivalent of digging your own grave. Not only that, but he expressed support for Obama's 2009 stimulus package, endorsed an individual mandate for health insurance, and has been a moderate on gay marriage, supporting civil unions for same-sex couples. "This would make him an accomplished pragmatic conservative in any other Western country," writes political blogger, Nate Silver. "In America, in the GOP today, he's a commie."

But what really got my attention, as I said, was his commencement speech. It sounded just like something Obama would give. These are some excerpts:

"Your generation will have your own unique set of circumstances that make you feel like your future has somehow been derailed. Wars, economic recessions, social upheaval, revolutions around the globe...and yet, in each case, we recover, learn lessons and become ever more resilient.
I know there are many in China who think their time has come, that America's best days are over. And, there are probably some in this country who have lost confidence and think that China is the next big thing. But these people aren't seeing things from my earlier vantage point of 10,000 miles away. The way I saw it from overseas, America's passion remains as strong today as ever. Hold on to that sense of optimism. Hold on to that belief in your future. Our free and open society that can respectfully embrace debate, coupled with a free market system that rewards risk and innovation, is still the envy of the world. We are still as full of potential as ever. Just remember... When the oppressed are fighting autocratic regimes, they look to America for inspiration. When overseas entrepreneurs build companies, they still look to U.S. practices as the gold standard. When young people around the world want to attend the best colleges and universities they travel here. When playwrights, filmmakers and the creative classes abroad dream, their imaginations are fueled by America’s example.Our system needs new thinking. We need a fresh generation of innovators, leaders, risk takers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and activists -- That's you! Give back. As much as you’re able. Work to keep America great. Serve her, if asked. I was, by a president of a different political party. But in the end, while we might not all be of one party, we are all part of one nation, a nation that needs your generational gift of energy and confidence."

The other notable thing about Huntsman is he doesn't spend his time bashing Obama, or even take pokes at his Republican counterparts. He is, like Obama, unfailingly polite. "I think the answers are in the middle," he told a small crowd in Hancock, N.H. "There are enough wars in the world that Republicans don't have to be at war with Democrats." It's enough to stop the heart. Right now Huntsman's trailing like a vine, so we'll just have to see how it all plays out--starting next week when Huntsman's candidacy becomes official.

Walking in Water

Far be it from me to deny the Prez his moment of glory over the 2009 auto bailouts, but he needs to let up on the optimism narrative re the economy and face reality. I know Time magazine's recent cover story, "The Optimism Bias," claims our brains are hardwired to see the bright side, and that this is good for human health and evolution, but there's a hideous truth stalking the rear window and tapping on the panes. The U.S. economy is no longer treading water; it is going under. And this time. bailouts won't save us.

As of a year or two ago, bailouts were an important part of humanity's rescue plan--but that was before before floods and earthquakes and tornadoes became the new normal. Now, every week, another piece of the planet sinks under water, or is completely wiped off the face of the earth by an earthquake or a tornado. It's pretty grim stuff that, so far, President Obama has been reluctant to parse into his strained equations for the "recovering" economy.

Only a couple of weeks ago, flood disasters along the Mississippi delta grabbed the headlines, and now, another wave of flooding threatens multiple cities along the Missouri River--meaning that, once again, businesses, jobs, and homes will be pummeled and thrashed out of existence. Lives and economies upended. Levees and dams are unable to hold back the deluge. In the case of the Missouri, the floods are a consequence of excessive winter snow deluging down from the Rockies as it melts. The flows at some of the dam gates are expected to be more than double any previous records. Emergency rescue operations have demanded round-the-clock help from all government agencies--the National Guard, FEMA, and the Army Corps of Engineers--even while the national debt is rising at the rate of $46,0000 PER SECOND. But these nightmare scenarios are not just happening here. They are happening everywhere.

In 2010 alone, about 92 million people were forced to flee their homes because of natural "mega-disasters" around the world, more than double the number than during the previous year, according to reports by experts at an international conference about climate change and population displacement held in Oslo, Norway, recently. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan left more than 10,000 people dead, some 17,500 missing, and about a half-million homeless. In China, more than 15 million people were forced to flee their homes following floods, while 11 million were displaced in Paklstan. Similar mega-flooding has also occurred in Australia, India, and most recently, the U.S. "The intensity and frequency of extreme weather events is increasing, and this trend is only set to continue...as human-induced climate change comes into full force," said Elisabeth Rasmusson, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Polls show that Americans are increasingly unhappy with Obama's handling of the economy, and growing ever more pessimistic about the slow pace of recovery. Disapproval of his economic record is at a new high--boosting Mitt Romney's chances in the 2012 election. The American electorate is just so god-damned predictable, like the stars keeping their courses. The last thing Republicans want to see is a robust economic recovery taking place just before the election. It looks now as if they may get their wish.

Discussing climate change is bad news for any politician in office, so I expect we'll just go on with the president's optimistic bluster about auto bailouts, more rejiggering of the relationship between economic growth and jobs, and more Congressional rants about the debt ceiling. As the fire balloon bringing collapse burns in the night sky, no one will ever connect the dots. The sleeping elephant in the room will shamble forth, scattering bricks and bones, and our lost and ruined world will overflow its banks until it drowns. Whoever made that haunting film "Waterworld" was clearly a visionary and ahead of his time.

Vessels of Optimism

Everything about our lives is now changing so fast, many people wake up only to find that the world they went to sleep in the night before is significantly different the next day. It happened in Japan after the earthquake/tsunami and it happened again last week in Joplin, Missouri when the 200-mph tornado struck. You go to bed with your life seemingly normal and intact, and minutes later, you find yourself homeless, stripped of everything you once owned.

But this kind of extreme change can also happen in reverse. Last week, a 17-year-old high school student--who was only recently bagging groceries in Garner, N.C.--woke up on May 25th, just four days after Pastor Harold Walker had declared that the world was going to end, to find his fortunes, too, were radically changed; and that, after that night, his world would never be the same again either.

Scotty McCreery was voted (by 120 million viewers) the up-front, winner on American Idol, and so for him, life couldn't be better. See how radiant he looks, together with his equally lustrous runner-up, Lauren Alaina, age 16. They both appeared on stage at the beginning of the two-hour grand finale dressed in white, appearing for all the world like two angels writing in a book of gold. Vessels of optimism so pure as to liberate anyone's embittered self. Just the mere sight of them makes you glad to be alive, and that's before they even sing. At this point, no one knew yet who the winner was, and if, like me, you have no penchant for country music, listen to these kids perform on You-tube and become an instant convert.

The extravaganza on Fox that night, live from the Nokia Theater in L.A., was so unbelievably exhilarating, it made all the global crimes against humanity scrambling for our attention and the collective catastrophes of environmental destruction everywhere disappear, at least briefly, the way the moon will disappear for a while on a cloudy night. For a couple of hours, the world seemed whole again, and millions of viewers were lost in intense jubilation, saturated in so much talent and sweetness. It was human creativity at its zenith, enough to last for a lifetime, enclosing everyone in its wild power.

They took it all in stride, these kids, whirling happily on the globe of life without being hamstrung by their own success or ruined by self-conscious posturings. There were notable high points in the evening, such as when Lauren sang a duet with her idol, Carrie Underwood, and Jacob Lusk, a lumbering black crooner with rhythm that leaked from his very DNA, sang gospel with his idol, Gladys Knight. Most beguiling of all, however, was the 19-year-old runner-up, Haley Reinhart, paired with 84-year-old Tony Bennett, the two of them singing "Steppin' Out with My Baby" from the 1948 musical "Easter Parade" like there was no tomorrow. Check it out on Google if you want to give yourself a special treat.

The other stunner was my new passion, Jennifer Lopez, who was one of the judges, performing "Aquanile" with her sexy musician husband, Mark Anthony. The sizzle between the two of them was enough to take out the most hardened criminal on Death Row. Lopez's smoldering sexuality just knocks Lady Gaga's contrived seductions right off the board. it's no wonder she has become America's sweetheart. Lopez is heart-stopping beautiful and drop-dead talented. You might just think it is hopelessly tacky, even shameful, of me to be so in thrall to a popular reality-TV show. If you do happen to think that, it is only because you are asleep in the waves.

Discovering Evil for the First Time

Time magazine recently devoted an entire issue to "The End of Osama bin Laden," his face on the cover receiving the same treatment--a red X painted across it--as Hitler's and Saddam's once did. In her weekly essay, columnist Nancy Gibbs remembers, ten years later, a conversation she overheard between her two daughters a few days after 9/11. She was driving them home from school; and they were aged 4 and 7 at the time. A program on the car radio was suddenly interrupted by a voice announcing the latest body count.

"They should have been more careful," the 4-year-old declared to her sister. "They should have watched where they were going, the men flying the planes--they shouldn't have knocked those buildings down." "My almost-7-year-old came back," Gibbs writes, "all wise and knowing. 'Galen,' she said anciently, 'that wasn't an accident. They meant to knock the buildings down.' "
"Silence. Stubborn. 'No, they didn't.'"
"'Yes. They did. They WANTED to kill those people. They were bad men.' "

Remembering that conversation prompts Gibbs to wonder when it was, somewhere along the way, that her older daughter had discovered the presence of evil in the world. It set me wondering as well: is there a moment in childhood when the hymen of innocence gets unexpectedly pierced in some raw encounter with evil? I think of this now, because I can so clearly recall the precise moment when it happened to me--although, admittedly, I couldn't have framed it in those terms at the time. Years later, I could.

It was Easter Sunday and I was maybe 10 years old. My mother had given me an (el cheapo) Easter basket with fake green grass, some fuzzy, yellow, baby chicks, and a multi-colored assortment of jelly bean eggs. I was thrilled with it. In those days, we lived in a high-rise apartment building in Manhattan, and I would play on the sidewalk in front of the building--things like handball, roller skating, jump rope. That morning I took the elevator downstairs and went outside, proudly carrying my Easter basket.

A few minutes later, the teen bully I'd seen around a few times before suddenly appeared and, with a malicious sneer, he grabbed the basket out of my hand. Before I could fathom what was happening, he smashed it into the gutter and ran off. I stared at the strewn contents and was devastated. Shrieking with terror, I ran upstairs to find my mother, By then, I was crying hysterically and could not be consoled. Once my mother finally ascertained the cause of my traumatized emotion, she dismissed the whole affair. After all, I had not been personally assaulted or suffered any physical injury. The basket wasn't really worth anything, and my mother was not exactly an intuitive scholar in matters of human evil and psychic trauma.

For years I never understood myself what upset me so much--until I finally did. That was my first encounter with gratuitous evil--with someone else's power to destroy and take pleasure in violence and aggression. It might have made more sense to me had the young man stolen my basket. But he didn't want the basket. What he took instead was my innocence, my ability to feel safe--the same thing Osama bin Laden took from the American people when he orchestrated the destruction of the Twin Towers.

I don't remember where or when I first heard the following story about a father, his small son, and the staircase, but I did know immediately that something about it was dangerous to the heart. I don't suppose it is actually a true story, but it was, and still remains, an object lesson in the breaking of trust, potent enough to leave its imprint on the recipient for life. A father decides to engage his little boy in a game, instructing him to go to the top of the stairs and jump, reassuring the child that it is safe because he will catch him at the bottom before he falls. The child jumps and the father catches him. Excitedly, they repeat the same ritual several times--the child enjoying this risky but thrilling interaction with his father. Suddenly, however, instead of catching his son, the father deliberately lets him fall. It is an initiation of sorts into the ways of the world, an inoculation against betrayal. So what do those marks on the floor tell you? "Never trust anybody," the father tells the son, and in that moment, the nectar of trust is surrendered to the bee's tongue.

When trust is shattered, it scars one's confidence in life and the possibility of trusting it. What matters is the sharpness and severity of the particular incident. Lions leaping out of walls will fill you with terror at any age--whether it is your Easter basket that is destroyed, or your tallest, most prized building. Either way, you will suffer because, at the time, you have no way of defending yourself.

Osama bin There, Done That

Hey ho, the witch is dead. The wicked witch is dead. At the risk of sounding like Donald Trump and taking credit where it is not due, I have to tell you something you don't know. It wasn't the Navy Seals who just pulled off one of the most spectacular special ops in modern military history--the killing of Osama bin Laden--it was me. I did it. I shot the sheriff, in a secret compound in Pakistan.

It took many years of searching and then months of planning, but the raid itself was over in forty minutes; afterwards, we dumped the body into the sea, a watery but thoroughly Muslim grave. You know, without a trace? It's a program on TV. However, don't expect to read much about my part in this, since the operation is highly classified. Just know that I'm really proud of what I've accomplished, something no one else before me has managed to do. Unlike the Donald, I do plan on keeping quiet about what I've achieved. I won't brag about it--I know it's important to keep the exact details to myself. But I do want reveal one photo of me from the archive, practicing my aim in a friend's back yard, years before events this weekend pushed me into my big moment.

I am proud to have done what I did for the president, who has discussed a crucial thematic connection with his aides in the West Wing, explaining that the death of bin Laden signals something far greater than a national-security accomplishment. “He views this as a demonstration of this country’s capacity to overcome skeptics and do things that people had decided were no longer doable,” White House press secretary, Jay Carney, elaborated in an interview on Monday afternoon. “There is sort of a grit and resolve. And not in a John Wayne way, but in a commitment and focus.”

I confess I did mention something to my hairdresser about it all this morning--I asked her what she thought about the Osama events--but honestly, she didn't have a clue what I was talking about. She doesn't follow the news. I had to apologize profusely after my jaw spontaneously dropped several inches, while she kept on nonchalantly blow-drying my hair. So, no responses to share from there. Instead, I am appending a few assessments culled from Andrew Sullivan's blog the next morning. He was live-blogging the event for half the night, while I was sleeping in ignorance:

"And, yes, I am happy to use the word 'victory'. Not a final victory against Jihadist terrorists. But a victory against this one, the man who set off a decade of war and chaos, the symbol of them all. We need apologize not a wit for the joy we feel. Not joy at vengeance; nor joy at death. Just joy at justice. Immense and profound joy....And [Obama's] steadiness under pressure, well, let's just say: The cat is cool. The poker face of the man has for the last few weeks been pretty damn impressive. Just because he's calm doesn't mean he isn't lethal. And imagine what must have been going through his mind as he was getting closer and closer to this just as Donald Trump was doing performance art with a birth certificate...This has the feel of the kind of operation John Kennedy would have loved to have pulled off - and had a martini after. Here's hoping the president enjoys at least one Martini and one cigarette. 12.08 am. Can I say how deeply moving it is that a man named Barack Hussein Obama gave the order for the operation that killed Osama bin Laden?"

Virgil suggests that we not take these inner ruins to Rome. It is wise to stay at home, he says, and ask yourself, "What do you really think of the world, what do you love, fear, hate?" Eventually your thoughts and your writing will clarify.