The Buddha in Glory

A blogger friend – one I’ve never met in person but with whom I share a blogging enjoyment – is fond of the Buddha and his wisdom.
by Charlie Leck

I’ve told you before that I’m reading, on a daily basis, A Year with Rilke (a collection of Rainer Maria Rilke’s writings put together by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows). Today’s reading, “The Buddha in Glory,” is from New Poems…

“Center of all centers, innermost core,
almond sweetening in its self-embrace –
all of this, out to the stars,
is the fruit of your body. We greet you.

You feel how little clings to you now.
Endlessness is your shell,
and there, too, the strength.
It is summoned by the radiance

of the full and glowing suns
that wheel around you.
Yet those stars will be outlasted
by what you have begun.”

I’ve been enriched by these Rilke readings. Santa left this small book beneath the tree this past Christmas. A wise man, this Santa! As for Rilke, he’s no Milton, Yates or even Dylan Thomas, but he is complex and mysterious and I find myself enchanted by his thinking. I keep reminding myself that I am reading him in translation and he was likely even better in his original language. Translations usually slaughter poetry. I’ve tried to read a few of the poems in the original German (it’s too tough for me after all these years).

Tony Rugare, in Cleveland, blogs almost daily. He writes what he feels like writing and it seems so often that he feels what he writes quite strongly. He’s a quiet, wise sort of fellow and I think the Buddha has had some significant impact on him. Whenever I think of Tony, I see the traditional image of the Buddha in my mind – so much so that I had to sit down here and do the above computerized etching of Tony to remind me what he really looks like. I’ve added meeting Tony and having a beer with him to my bucket list. Getting to Cleveland oughtn’t be that difficult. Maybe when the Twins are there to play a ball game or two at Jacob Field.

Keep your eye on him (Tony, Rilke, the Buddha -- or all three of them). You might also have some fun along the way.

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A Simple Truth, Plainly Spoken

Why do we always want to complicate things that, in fact, are very, very simple?
by Charlie Leck

Maureen Dowd wrote plainly in the NY Times this week, in a column she called Father Doesn’t Know Best…

“The bishops and the Vatican care passionately about putting women in chastity belts. Yet they let unchaste priests run wild for decades, unconcerned about the generations of children who were violated and raped and passed around like communion wine.”

In her blog, Dowd pointed back to some very reliable statistics…

82% of Catholics say birth control is morally acceptable

89% of all Americans agree

Tony Rugare tweets and blogs and I follow both. He has a very simple wisdom, spoken plainly and definitively. On a recent tweet he said:

“If most Catholics support contraception why do they allow their money to condemn it?”

Some things seem so simple, but there are people who want to complicate them. The clergy tends to do that. And that’s God’s truth. I swear it!

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Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it,send me an email if you’d like.

Keep the Vikings

If you are a Vikings fan and want to keep them in Minnesota, watch this video!
Christian Ponder photograph above, thanks to Zimbio.com/Christian Ponder photos!

I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about the Minnesota Vikings before, but today is the day!
by Charlie Leck

I’ve got a good blogging friend, Tony Rugare, in Cleveland. Tony has a sharp wit and a good mind. His bogs never go on and on. He gets right to the point and those points are nearly always sharp. Among other things, Tony is also a terrific sports fan and devoted to his Cleveland Indians. The fact that he can think well about national and world current events and local muddles there in Cleveland AND sports makes him, I think, a well rounded guy. He doesn’t over-do it with his sports detours, but one feels his passion when he does. [Check out From Tony’s Keyboard]

I should like to know from Tony what the atmosphere must have been like the day it became clear in Cleveland that their professional football team, the Browns, were headed for Baltimore, leaving heartbreak behind them.

Now here’s the reason I ask…
I’m a hopeless Minnesota Vikings fan and have been since the team came into existence in 1961. Now, there is a danger that we will become another Cleveland – broken hearted lovers who have been left in a lurch by the one over whom we have poured out so much affection and emotion.

The Vikings have made it clear that they can’t compete with the other guys with the stadium they have. To pay the price of the best players these days, a team needs first class practice facilities and a first class stadium to play in. The old Metrodome isn’t that place. The Vikes have made it clear that they will contribute nearly 500 million dollars to this stadium that will we owned by the state and will be used for many other community events – concerts, entertainment galore, high school football and soccer championship games, national collegiate championships in football and basketball and on and on….

The team’s lease runs out this season – in February. There are other towns (the City of Angels, for one), courting our team. Can you imagine the Vikings of Los Angeles? It doesn’t make sense.

I’ve contacted my State Senator (Gen Olson) about this and also my District Representative (Steve Smith). I’ve had a good response from Smith, a Republican, who says he’s on board for getting something done that will help the Vikings get a new stadium. Senator Olson hasn’t gotten back to me yet. I’ll keep bugging her.

Here’s a very cool and heart-tugging video the Vikings have put out and asked their fans to spread around. I’m easy! I know that! I have strong emotional ties to the Vikings. Sure they’ve broken my heart a number of times. It’s so hard getting over those four (4) – yes FOUR – Super Bowl losses; yet, they are still my team – my one and only team and I’ll pull for them forever – at least for as long as they’re in Minnesota and I’m still kicking.

If you’re a Vikings fan, be sure to watch the video. If you remember Bill Brown, Chuck Foreman, Karl Kasulke and Jim Marshall, you’ve just got to. Our state will lose so much if we lose the Vikings. It would be one of the most foolish things we’ve ever done. Don’t let them do it!

If you're hooked on the Vikings also, you might want to take a look at the web site Save the Vikings.

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Legislative Failure Cripples the Nation

Tony Rugare has got it right, I'm so very afraid!
by Charlie Leck

One of my regular blog reads come out of Cleveland, Ohio. Tony Rugare writes a blog that is, at the moment, called FROM TONY’S KEYBOARD. Tony likes fiddling with the format of his blog page and that includes rather frequent changes in the title. Whatever it’s called, it’s worth the very little amount of time it takes to read his nearly daily and brief “musings about a potpourri of subjects.”

A couple of days ago he made an interesting observation about which I have been thinking for some time. It’s frightening that the politics of removing Obama from office has gotten so dominant in the minds of his opponents that they are willing to sacrifice the good of the country to their objectives. Here’s how Tony put it in a mere paragraph.

“In his speech to a joint session of Congress on September 8, President Obama reminded both parties, ‘The election is 14 months away.’ His message was that it is totally selfish for both parties to battle each other instead of joining together to fix the economy. Predictably the message fell on deaf Republican ears. There is no doubt that Republicans will stop at nothing in their quest to remove Obama from the presidency. Is this the Republican version of ‘Arab Spring?’ If so, it looks like we have 14 months of chaos ahead of us. Hopefully there will not be an ‘Arab Spring’ American style in our future.”

Were we (Democrats) as irrational when we set our goal on removing the Republicans from Executive Branch control? Remember McCain and Obama postponing their scheduled campaign trips to fly to Washington to consult with George W. Bush about the imminent collapse of the economy? Remember how Obama and the Democrats cooperated with the President in creating aide packages for some of those banks and companies, to shore them up? Bail-outs, the Republicans call them now; and they create the fiction that they were Obama’s idea. Republicans don’t want us remembering that this economy went to hell under the gaze of George W. Bush and the deregulation that began with Ronald Reagan.

Unfortunately, Tony has got it right: we have a long 14 months of feuding in front of us and very little helpful legislation.

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Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

High Primal Thoughts

Tony’s keyboard produces some mighty fine thinking and I try not to miss it!
by Charlie Leck

Tony Rugare’s blog, From Tony’s Keyboard, is one I regularly visit. I like the way Tony gets to the point, makes it and gets out of the way. Below, for instance, is one of his blogs from last week. Bang! Bang! Bang! No messing around.

“My high primal thinker spouse stated in the According To Marge blog that "We are no longer a Democratic Republic. We are a Corporate Capitalistic Republic!" The Supreme Court has insured that this will persist when it ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. The fox is in the henhouse and corporations will feast on chickens otherwise known as voters. The days of ten and twenty dollar contributions making a difference in political campaigns are over. Corporations will overwhelm the system and make sure "user friendly" individuals sit in governmental positions.”

Tony’s point is painfully felt here in Minnesota. I wrote about it in the past week in my blog, Targeting Target! Target is using my money – part of the profits they made – to help finance the campaign of one of the most low-down jerks ever to run for political office. It’s part of the “can of worms” (or Pandora’s Box) that the Supreme Court opened with its recent decision about corporate political contributions. Now I’m forced to give up shopping in stores with which I’d grown comfortable.

Tony (or, perhaps, Tony’s wife) nailed it!

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