That which you do for me….

Well, that's another 90 TED talks wrapped up in Vancouver last week. Sitting back and trying to sift through there are a few sharp pointy rocks which stick out of the sand dunes.

The one I keep going back to is "That which you do for me…. which you do without me…. you do to me." Those were the words of Pastor Jeffrey Brown http://www.recapevents.org He was the last speaker in the "Just and Unjust" session which started with Monica Lewinsky. Sure it was a talk about rebuilding a community devastated by gang violence but leave off the last part of that and what you have is "rebuilding a community" that's the heart and something which touches all of us.

Which brings me back to how the week started- at the Aspen Institute with "Athens to Aspen" Our readings were Willa Cather's "Death Comes for the Archbishop" and Robert Frost's poems for the Kennedy inaugural "Dedication" and "A Gift Outright". The obvious question : what do any of these have to do with each other?

Simple answer, hubris.

Frost is full of it  from Dedication:

" They are our wards we think to some extent 

For the time being and with their consent, 

To teach them how Democracy is meant."

To "The Gift Outright."

"The land was ours before we were the land's"

Manifest Destiny from Vietnam to land management, hubris pure and simple.  (Yeah, want to talk about "entitlement"?)

Follow this with Willa Cather's languid poem to the Southwest with it's oh so easy benevolent Catholicism and you're digging at a  deeper root. There is our Archbishop being very Sun Tzu like,  water taking the easiest path.

His mission is to convert, ever so gently to convert … The wide New Mexico sky seduces you into forgetting and blood disappears beneath the sand.  (Man, do I want breakfast at Tia Sophia's after reading this)

These are both poems in praise of  the will of the Western mind. 

Do we choose stillness and patience sitting quietly in a Pascalian empty room where you wait for the answers to fall like gentle rain? Or do we choose the more active path and insert ourselves into the story? Obviously, the Darwinian answer is "both". 

But, and this is a big but, the endgames between active and passive are quite different.  The core of that difference I believe is  what his holiness the Dalai Lama expresses so well. It is "us and them". 

How do we get beyond something as basic as our tribal tendency to separate into groups?  That's pretty deep in our reptile brains- how many seasons of Suvivor now? Just sayin' 

So, let's forget about trying to become one big group which strives towards the blissfully undefined common good because that ain't gonna happen. Even when we come together because of an exterior threat it's not long before we drift apart again (witness the US Congressional Kumbaya moment after 9/11 and look at it now).  Let's start with the little things- like inclusion.  Let's start with the little things- like listening. Acknowledge the difference. Don't try and change it. Learn from it. 

 "That which you do for me…. which you do without me…. you do to me."