=================================================THE CENTER FOR THIRD AGE LEADERSHIP NEWSLETTER – MARCH 20161. FATHER WILLIAM’S MUSINGS2. THE MEANING OF GOOD FRIDAY3. THE MAN THE FOUNDERS FEARED4. IT’S THE CHARACTER5. TRUMP: A FRIGHTENING WINDOW INTO THE AMERICAN PRESENT6. AMERICA CAN’T BE GREAT AGAIN NO MATTER WHO’S ELECTED…7. TRUMP OVERWHELMED WITH PRESTIGIOUS ENDORSEMENTS8. THIS MONTH’S LINKS=================================================QUOTES OF THE MONTH – PETER WEHNER & ARISTOTLE “There are no filters anymore, no restraints, no cultural guardrails. Now, under the sway of Trumpism, what was once considered shameful asserts itself openly. As we contemplate this, it is worth recalling that the membrane separating what the Scottish novelist John Buchan called ‘the graces of civilization’ from ‘the rawness of barbarism’ is thinner and more fragile than we sometimes imagine…” =================================================1. FATHER WILLIAM’S MUSINGSMarch Greetings, Dear Friends… I recently read Edward Rutherford’s historical novel, Sarum. In it, he brings to life over 10,000 years of human history by telling gripping stories of the descendants of five families from prehistoric times until 1985. While most of the action takes place around Stonehenge and Sarum, worldwide events are also covered as the British Empire expands. The chapter headings give a sense of the history:Old Sarum 1. Journey to Sarum (prehistoric Britain) 2. The Barrow (the arrival of agriculture in Britain) 3. The Henge (the building of Stonehenge) 4. Sorviodunum (the arrival of the Romans) 5. Twilight (the fall of the Roman Empire/arrival of the Saxons) 6. The Two Rivers (arrival of the Vikings/uniting of England) 7. The Castle (Norman England)New Sarum 8. The Founding (founding of New Sarum/Salisbury Cathedral) 9. The Death (the Black Death) 10. The Rose (the Rule of Lancaster) 11. A Journey From Sarum 12. New World (The Reformation) 13. The Unrest (The English Civil War/ the Exclusion Crisis) 14. The Calm (the eighteenth century) 15. Boney (the Battle of Trafalgar) 16. Empire (the British Empire) 17. The Henge II (World War I/the selling of Stonehenge) 18. The Encampment (World War II) 19. The Spire (Salisbury in 1985)If you like to get into a universe and stay there for a while, I highly recommend Sarum to you as a great read, but I bring it to these Musings to share how Rutherford has deepened my understanding of both individual and species evolution. As I near completion of my 78th year, much of my time is spent reflecting on earlier periods of my life. Some of these flashbacks are pleasantly warm, but many are more of the “How could I have thought or believed or done such things?” My guess is this holds true for many who’ve been privileged to live long enough to have such perspective. From this point of view, I could and would do a much more competent and loving job of being decently human than I often did at many earlier times. But all I had to work with in those earlier days was “me then” who was doing the best he could; the accumulated experience and wisdom of “me now” wasn’t yet available. What we hope for and like to believe about evolution is that it helps all species, especially ours, become “better” over time. “Better” can mean so many things (becoming more successful, loving, dominant, peaceful, safe, pure, etc.) that I’ll leave your definition to you. Mine is that somehow my children and their descendants would not make the same mistakes my generation has, and it seems to me they are much more aware and being much “better” than I was at their ages. On this individual level of evolution, I am hopeful. But, on the species level, between reading Sarum and observing the state of this world for almost eight decades, I am not nearly so optimistic. The rise of Donald Trump to likely US Presidential candidate is most disturbing, because it, like the repetitions of “human-caused” disasters in Sarum, is just one more “human-caused” disaster in my lifetime. I’m emphasizing the “human-caused” because, even though these catastrophes are named for leaders, places or organizations like Hitler, Ruwanda or ISIS, their systemic causes are functions of our evolved wisdom as homo sapiens. Reading Sarum shocked me into realizing how little wisdom our species seems to gain from 10,000 years of agonizing experience. In my earlier years I was able to find solace in focusing on changes in degree. I remember in one talk saying, “While our American football is clearly just another version of Rome’s “Bread and Circuses,” it’s certainly an improvement over gladiators killing each other!” Now I wonder if such changes in form help or hinder the process of healthy evolution – “enabling” is a current day term that comes to mind. I bet by now you can guess this newsletter is not going to be playfully uplifting so don’t say you haven’t been warned. Even so, I found the articles included hopeful in that they can be written, published and made immediately available around the world. There are many places where this is still at best very dangerous and at worst not possible. Here’s a quick sample of each:2. THE MEANING OF GOOD FRIDAY “Must Thousands be Tortured, Millions Die, in Every Generation — Because Some of Us Lack Imagination?”3. THE MAN THE FOUNDERS FEARED “…the Trump phenomenon isn’t just about coarsening and stupidity: His political practices are precisely what the founders feared and Lincoln warned against.”4. IT’S THE CHARACTER “A normal, well-adjusted man does not go to great lengths to prove to a random journalist that he has normal-sized fingers.”5. TRUMP: A FRIGHTENING WINDOW INTO THE AMERICAN PRESENT “…in America, populism is driven not solely by distress at economic malaise but also by fears inspired by racial progress—and the belief that these two things are synonymous.”6. AMERICA CAN’T BE GREAT AGAIN NO MATTER WHO’S ELECTED… “For an American, it takes coming to a place like New Zealand to understand what freedom actually is…”7. TRUMP OVERWHELMED WITH PRESTIGIOUS ENDORSEMENTS “The scheduling of Christie’s endorsement just one day after the K.K.K. luminary’s boost was ‘obviously far from ideal,’ Trump aide Harland Dorrinson said.”I offer these writers’ observations in the spirit of Aristotle’s quote:May we all be paying attention to what is developing – again – in America and the world, and may we all use our highest wisdom to help guide and shape its energies…Love, FWwww.FatherWilliam.org=================================================2. THE MEANING OF GOOD FRIDAY BY RABBI ARTHUR WASKOW, THE SHALOM CENTER, MARCH 25, 2016Must Thousands be Tortured, Millions Die, in Every Generation — Because Some of Us Lack Imagination?Last night — the eve of Good Friday — Phyllis and I went to see the Quintessence Theater in Philadelphia do George Bernard Shaw’s play Saint Joan. Until we were deep into the play, we did not realize how appropriate it was to be seeing it that evening.Toward the end of the play, one of the judges who has found Joan, the Maid of Orleans, guilty of heresy and sent her to be burnt actually sees the burning carried out. He is struck with horror at the torture of her death. Standing on the brink of madness, he mourns his own inability to imagine her death ahead of time, and tries to repent of his own complicity.At that moment, Shaw, a socialist and by then an unchurched transreligious mystic, puts in the mouth of his character this question:“Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?”Indeed.For me, Shaw’s question leaves intact the various and mostly sacred Christian understandings of the meanings of Good Friday, while beckoning other communities to learn and share their own:Must Rabbi Akiba’s body be torn by iron rakes in every generation because some of us lack imagination?Must the Six Million be gassed to death in every generation because some of us lack not imagination of the horror, but compassion for the “Other” who is seen as not really human?Must 29 Muslims be machine-gunned at prayer in the Tomb of Abraham because some of us are filled with fear, contempt, and hatred? -– and must their deaths be renewed in every generation, as when the Dawabsheh family in Palestine were burned alive in their own home?Must 30 Jews in the midst of celebrating Passover be blown to shreds in every generation because some of us are filled with fear, contempt, and hatred? Must Martin Luther King and Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman and James Cheney be murdered in every generation because some of us become addicted to their own power and protect it with their cruelty?Must Cardinal Romero be murdered as he chanted the Mass and Jean Donovan, Maura Clarke, and four other Catholic lay religious sisters be raped and murdered in every generation because their work for the poor threatened the Salvadoran government? Must Emmett Till be lynched and Eric Garner be choked to death in every generation because Black lives don’t matter?Must thousands die in the most powerful tornado ever recorded because some of us would burn the Earth to make a super-profit – and because some of us lack the imagination to see our planet choking, hear it wailing, “I can’t breathe!”For those of us who are observing Good Friday today, and for all of us who can remember any of these tortures and these deaths;For all of us who seek to renew our own imagination –– and awaken it in others — May we all remember to resist those Caesars and would-be Caesars of today who get pleasure from calling for the torture of anyone and who gain power from their arson, their burning, of the Earth as their political forebears burned Saint Joan.For those of us who await with special hope this approaching Easter Sunday, may your day be filled with Joy—And for you and for us all, may we act to make sure that all that is dead and all that is shattered in our world be redeemed to new life!https://theshalomcenter.org/meaning-good-friday=================================================3. THE MAN THE FOUNDERS FEARED BY PETER WEHNER, WWW.NYTIMES.COM, MARCH 19, 2016
BY MONA CHAREN, FROM THE RIGHT/POLITICS, MARCH 22, 2016
I first became aware of Donald Trump when he chose to make cheating on his first wife front-page news. It was the early ’90s. Donald and Ivana Trump broke up over the course of months. Not that divorce is shocking, mind you; among the glitterati marriage seems more unusual. Nor is infidelity exactly novel. But it requires a particular breed of lowlife to advertise the sexual superiority of one’s mistress over the mother of one’s children. That was Trump’s style. He leaked stories to the New York tabloids about Ivana’s breast implants — they didn’t feel right. Marla Maples, by contrast, suited him better. She, proving her suitability for the man she was eager to steal from his family, told the papers that her encounters with the mogul were “the best sex I’ve ever had.”