The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

STILL RE-MEMBERING

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“Last time I was down South, I walked into this restaurant. This white waitress came up to me and said, ‘We don’t serve colored people here.’ I said, ‘That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people.Bring me a whole fried chicken.’ About that time, these three cousins came in. You know the ones I mean, Ku, Klux and Klan. They said, ‘Boy, we’re givin’ you fair warnin. Anything you do to that chicken, we’re gonna do to you.’
“So I put down my knife and fork, picked up that chicken, and kissed it.” – Dick Gregory, comedian and activist (Oct. 12, 1932 – Aug. 19, 2017)

Sometimes I think from all the Distances we’ve come.       .      .
we haven’t come very far at all.            .          .
Seriously, have we even budged, even a little.            .           .
And while you’re questioning
WONDER:

SOMETIMES
You have to do more than just BRING THE COLOR

You have to 
 BE THE COLOR.        .         .
AND WONDER SOME MORE:
AND THEN DECIDE:

HIGHER THAN A MOUNTAIN TOP

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HAPPY MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR DAY
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. . .
We don’t quite say that the way that we do
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
HAPPY NEW YEAR
HAPPY HANUKKAH
HAPPY HALLOWEEN
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY
HAPPY EASTER
Wait.     .     .What.      .     .Huh?

Like most Monday morning blogs this is not a video that I researched or that I sought out, it is one that found me and now haunts me. As I listen to this video from Martin Luther King Jr. about the Good Samaritan, which was a part of his I HAVE BEEN TO THE MOUNTAIN TOP speech, I quickly realized that not only am I not the Good Samaritan, I am not even close to being the not-so-Good-Samaritan.

Quick: if you could describe your life to this point in just one single word what would it be?  Seriously, mine might be ENCHANTED. I live a ENCHANTED LIFE; I really do. I am a severely white privileged male that has never really felt what racism is all about; or poverty; or disadvantage; or choice of sexual orientation, or. . . . Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked hard for everything that I’ve gotten and I’ve tried to do right by another person, not just by treating them the way that I want to be treated but really trying to go the extra step past the Mountain Top and finding out how they would like to be treated and then actually treating them that way. I have never joined a demonstration. I have never participated in a March. I have never protested. I would like to believe that part of me being a Caring Catalyst and trying to be a better One each day, is trying to convince myself that person by person the world itself changes and that I have an active part in participating in that every single encounter that I have with every single person.

No, I’m not a Good Samaritan. I’m the guy that is too busy to stop because I have business to do; important business, maybe even business that affects peoples lives. No, I’m not a Good Samaritan not because I don’t stop and help, or because I’m sometimes afraid I may to become that victim I too, may be misunderstood or harshly judged.  No, but possibly because I have a great way of RATIONALIZING everything away so that I can feel just a little bit better about myself (one-not-that-all-important-act-but-makes-me-look-good-without-trying-all-that-hard. . . .

I don’t do good with vacations or paid time off, so every year I rarely take a week or two weeks off at a time. I’m better at taking days off especially Friday and Mondays. I, on purpose, take my birthday off. I take my wife, Erin’s, Birthday off. I take off good Friday every year usually the Monday after Easter and yes now Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I usually take these days off to spend them with people that I love and people who love me. In particular, I take off Martin Luther King Jr. Day, just like Good Friday, to reflect, to ask myself, ‘why am I not the not-so-Good Samaritan; why am I the one that would go to the other side of the road; why am I the one, that being as privileged as I am, would make myself feel better by literally, just writing a check and mailing it in? Tough questions, but not always elicit the most honest answers. Somehow, just asking the questions helps, eases me as it inspires, challenges me not by attempting to answering the questions with my words or my mouth, but with my actions. Hoping, just hoping, that what I might do for ANOTHER, personally, intentionally, and yes maybe even, intimately, will not only be world changing for them but also mean the universe to me, too.

HAPPY MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY
.    .    .today.    .    .tomorrow.    .    .for-an-ever
let’s not pass each other by
but attend to each’s wounds
and heal as we are healed
no matter what
no matter who
no matter when
no matter how
NOW
to get one step higher than
THE MOUNTAIN TOP

THE POWER OF ONE

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MORE THAN A MOMENT

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When I heard of his death
I took a Moment
and then to really honor him
I TOOK ANOTHER MOMENT
and PAUSED
without hitting any magical button.          .          .
Thich Nhat Hanh in his room at his temple in Vietnam in 2019. He was exiled from his country after opposing the war there in the 1960s.  
Credit…Linh Pham for The New York Times

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was one of the world’s most influential Zen masters, spreading messages of mindfulness, compassion and nonviolence, died this past Saturday, January 22, 2022 at his home in the Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam. He was 95.

The death was announced by Plum Village, his organization of monasteries. He suffered a severe brain hemorrhage in 2014 that left him unable to speak, though he could communicate through gestures.

A prolific author, poet, teacher and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh  was exiled from Vietnam after opposing the war in the 1960s and became a leading voice in a movement he called “engaged Buddhism,” the application of Buddhist principles to political and social reform.

Traveling widely on speaking tours in the United States and Europe (he was fluent in English and French), Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced tik nyaht hahn) was a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism, urging the embrace of mindfulness, which his website describes as “the energy of being aware and awake to the present moment.”

In his book “Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life,” he wrote, “If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.”
His following grew as he established dozens of monasteries and practice centers around the world. The original Plum Village, near Bordeaux in southwest France, is the largest of his monasteries and receives visits from thousands of people a year.

In 2018, he returned home to Hue, in central Vietnam, to live out his last days at the Tu Hieu Temple, where he had become a novice as a teenager.

Thich Nhat Hanh dismissed the idea of death. “Birth and death are only notions,” he wrote in his book “No Death, No Fear.” “They are not real.”

He added: “The Buddha taught that there is no birth; there is no death; there is no coming; there is no going; there is no same; there is no different; there is no permanent self; there is no annihilation. We only think there is.”

That understanding, he wrote, can liberate people from fear and allow them to “enjoy life and appreciate it in a new way.”

His connection with the United States began in the early 1960s, when he studied at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey and later lectured at Cornell and Columbia. He influenced the American peace movement, urging the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to oppose the Vietnam War.

Dr. King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, but the prize was not awarded to anyone that year.

“I do not personally know of anyone more worthy than this gentle monk from Vietnam,” Dr. King wrote to the Nobel Institute in Norway. “His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”

Thich Nhat Hanh was born Nguyen Xuan Bao in Hue on Oct. 11, 1926. He joined a Zen monastery at 16 and studied Buddhism there as a novice. Upon his ordination in 1949, he assumed the Dharma name Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich is an honorary family name used by Vietnamese monks and nuns. To his followers he was known as Thay, or teacher.

In the early 1960s, he founded Youth for Social Services, a grass-roots relief organization in what was then South Vietnam. It rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools, established medical centers and reunited families left homeless by the war.

Thich Nhat Hanh began writing and speaking out against the war and in 1964 published a poem called “Condemnation” in a Buddhist weekly. It reads in part:

Whoever is listening, be my witness:
I cannot accept this war.
I never could I never will.
I must say this a thousand times before I am killed.
I am like the bird who dies for the sake of its mate,
dripping blood from its broken beak and crying out:
“Beware! Turn around and face your real enemies
— ambition, violence hatred and greed.”

The poem earned him the label “antiwar poet,” and he was denounced as a pro-Communist propagandist.

Thich Nhat Hanh took up residence in France when the South Vietnamese government denied him permission to return from abroad after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973.

He was unable to return to Vietnam until 2005, when the Communist government allowed him to teach, practice and travel throughout the country. His antiwar activism continued, and in a talk in Hanoi in 2008 he said the Iraq war had resulted from fear and misunderstanding in which violence fed on itself.

“We know very well that airplanes, guns and bombs cannot remove wrong perceptions,” he said. “Only loving speech and compassionate listening can help people correct wrong perceptions. But our leaders are not trained in that discipline, and they rely only on the armed forces to remove terrorism.”

Yeah, I took a moment last Saturday when I heard of Thich Nhat Hanh’s death

AND THEN I TOOK ANOTHER ONE.          .          .

Now
I’m inviting you to take a little more than
A MOMENT
not to pause
not to remember
not to honor
not to celebrate
a Life
BUT THE LIFE IN YOU
WORTH LIVING
WORTH SHARING
W   O   R   T   H
taking more than whatever we think is
A  MOMENT

A Call To ARMS

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Another     Horrific    Tragedy:

We are all still stunned

As WE seek for

UNDERSTANDING

REASONS

THEORIES

SAFETY

HOPE

HEALING

L            O            V            E

Non-Violence  is  the  greatest  force  at  the  disposal  of  mankind.  It  is mightier  than  the  lightest  weapon  of  destruction  devised  by  the  ingenuity of  man–Mahatma Ghandi

T          R          U          E          L          Y

are we past  T H I S ?

Aside from totally being stunned by the sheer madness;

the utter devastation of at least  5 9  innocent people being massacred.       .       .

theres’s a Call to Arms.          .          .

And if there’s ONE TIME

that’s absolutely true.          .          .

IT  IS  NOW

after recent hurricanes and earthquakes

and now, THIS:

I T     I S    N O W

.          .          .But,

A            C A L L            T O            A R M S ?

A B S O L U T E L Y

but not by buying more guns

or even absurdly thinking to rid the world of them.     .      .

but by using what is so readily available to each of us:

O U R       A  R  M  S

.            .            .But, H O W

Literally HUGGING everyone you know

and those you don’t.            .            .

RESPECT   EVERYONE–INCLUDING   YOURSELF

No one can degrade you without your permission and it is WITHIN YOU to uplift ANYONE, the richest, the poorest, the most kind or the most evil around us.     .     .

ALWAYS  INCLUDE  CONSTRUCTIVE  ALTERNATIVES

Fancy way to say:

B E     T H E     D I F F E R E N C E

Thousands of studies have shown that working together is the most effective way to unite people–this is being an ultimate CARING CATALYST; It builds community and reassures the general public that YOUR MOVEMENT  is not a danger to any social order but a pure restoration of IT

BE  AWARE  OF  THE  LONG  TERM

Yes.     .     .VIOLENCE is effective, maybe way too much effective but in the long run it leads to more misery and DISorder; In non-violence, we can lose battles but still go on to win the war

LOOK   FOR   WIN-WIN   SOLUTIONS 

Whenever I can be a part of another’s success; I AM SUCCESSFUL; When I row you across the roughest and most troubled of waters, I get to the other side, too!

U S E     P O W E R     C A R E F U L L Y

PROVE that the greatest power is never at the end of a gun  barrel  but at the end of your hand.     .     .it’s true, that when you reach out you may get hurt, shunned, mocked, but you also run the high risk of not just healing, affirming, comforting but actually REACHING what needs reached most: A N O T H E R

TRUE     OR     FALSE:

Is all LIFE is interconnected; Your PAIN is my PAIN; YOUR HAPPINESS is MY HAPPINESS.       .       .

I  can  never  be  what  I  ought  to  be  until  you  are  what  you  ought  to  be.   And  you  can  never  be  what  you  ought  to  be  until  I  am  what  I  ought  to  be.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

When it comes to  not  just  bearing  arms,

but actually using the two most powerful ways possible:

O U R   A R M S

to effect the most drastic means of healing change

there’s but one answer:

Without a doubt

Violence is a bon-fire of hurt that burns many,

Love is that small flicker that makes it impossible

for us to forget the

F         L         A         M         E 

We hear.     .     .

We witness what happens

most recently in Las Vegas

and while we’re so tempted to

r     e     m     e     m     b     e     r

the senselessness of it

we need more to be

m     i     n     d     f     u     l

of  how  our  own  personal

C A L L        T O       A R M S

is a Caring Catalyst way

that will bring the most

long lasting solution.          .          .

Our Constitution

is not going to be amended to repeal our right to bear arms

H     I     S     T     O     R     Y

i n s t r u c t s

evil will remain.       .       .

u  l  t  u  m  a  t  e  l  y

G U N S  and  L O V E

can never be legislated.          .          .

but of the two—

only one has a everlasting effect.          .          .

B  E

T  H  E        G  L  O  W          O  F          T  H  A  T          W A R M          E M B E R

which   is   always  inextinguishable

L  I  G  H  T       T  H  E      W  A  Y

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man