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Night time sharpens, Heightens each sensation Darkness stirs and wakes imagination Silently the senses Abandon their defenses… … listen to the music of the night (Music of the Night, Lyrics by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe) Yesterday, the harsh winter gave an inch, and spring took a mile. Overnight, we went from the depths of winter to late spring. The temperature rose by 42 degrees! Folks were out and about in their shorts and tank tops. Where the bike path had been desolate, it was now teeming with joggers, walkers, bikers, and dogs on long leashes. Everyone was smiling. Even the dogs.
It was so good to be back outdoors, and to be free of coats and hats, boots and gloves. After a day outdoors, I found myself tiring early, and I headed to bed about 9:00 PM with the windows wide open. Despite my fatigue, I lay awake in bed for hours, the air alive with sounds, sounds that a winter night keeps to itself behind the cloak of darkness, closed windows, and insulating snow. I lay in my bed, listening to the quiet, whispered song of the ceiling fan circling overhead. Occasionally, the long silver chain jingled on the twirling air like a choir of tiny bells. A long train rumbled in the distance like a thundering bass drum. The building shook like a giant morocco. The train’s air horn accentuated the beat with a mighty vibrato. Cars whooshed down the four-lane highway at the end of my drive, nylon brushes against brass cymbals. Sirens screamed in the near-distance like blares from a horn while a helicopter hovered overhead with the steady chop-chop of its propeller. A soft breeze kept the mini blinds tapping a steady beat against the window frame. The night was a dark theater. The phantom of summer had returned. I listened in awe-filled silence as I welcomed back the music of the night!
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Mark Zuckerberg took the stand last week to testify in a lawsuit brought by grieving parents who believe their children were harmed by engagement with Meta’s social media platforms. Zuckerberg arrived at the courthouse still looking much like a teenage boy with his mop of curly brown hair. He seemed out of place in his grown-up clothes, a suit and tie. I watched this sober-faced man-boy, and I was reminded of images of young college-aged men on trial for the deaths of their fraternity brothers after a night of drunken hazing. Zuckerberg did have a good idea while he was still in college. Back in 2003, he seemed to understand the social needs of college students to connect, to be seen, heard, and liked. It wasn’t long before he realized that all people have these same social needs, and Facebook for the masses was launched. For most of us, connection remains the main reason we continue to use social media all of these years later. Zuckerberg launched his career at Facebook with the motto: Move fast and break things, a motto that has dominated the tech world. In 2014 he updated the motto to “Move fast with a stable infrastructure,” whatever that means. In any event, maybe it was too little too late. Move fast and break things was too deep in the DNA of the entire industry. And not just the tech industry, the contagion spread and created a pandemic that is apparent everywhere including our politics. These folks seem to have grown up with the belief that “We’re cool because we’re careless.” Think Facebook and the genocide in Myanmar, or Musk and DOGE. Move fast and break things is what a child freeing himself from the restraint and security of his mother’s arms might be thinking. Move fast and break things might be the motto of a wrecking crew not a builder, a jewel thief not the jeweler. Move fast and break things sounds like fun until it is time to clean up the debris field or until you cut off your own hands. When every norm is broken, lives can be destroyed, and they are not so easily put back together as the grieving parents who filed these lawsuits complain. It is not the first time Zuckerberg has been called to account. Many books have been written. Members of the press have confronted him. He has been called before Congress. Perhaps Zuckerberg feels too big to fail and so he has not heeded the warnings. Perhaps, like many powerful men, he believes the rules do not apply to him, or he deludes himself by believing that things are as he says they are because he says so. Or maybe he is incapable of empathy and through his social media empire, he destroys empathy in others. A business that is built on a model of scandalizing its patrons and promoting outrage will eventually become self-destructive. When you see the scale of the damage influenced or caused by social media, you realize the depravity. This model is not just breaking the rules of business; it is breaking people, breaking peace and order, breaking elections and democracy, breaking civilizations. A strong footing in reality is the foundation of mental health. Social media has stolen reality in order to sell advertising. Half of the country gets its news from social media where reporting is not balanced, fair or complete, where it is deliberately manipulated and sensationalized through disinformation in order to foster outrage, clicks, and sharing. It normalizes political fear and hatred and increases suspiciousness. It amplifies the demand for immediate answers which doesn’t allow experts time to do their work. This furthers misinformation and loss of confidence in science, truth, and expertise. Social media company owners cry “freedom,” to keep their malignant operations running, but what does that word “freedom" even mean when words are manipulated in such a predatory fashion? Research shows how easily our minds can be influenced and our choices and behavior swayed. All of this is well studied and applied by social media companies and marketers of every stripe. Social media is programmed to appeal to our reptilian brains—brains that react without concern for their young or for others. It makes people self-absorbed. Technology is causing children to be confused about what it means to be alive, to be a human being. It has changed the way we engage with others and work in groups. It amplifies our primal instincts of fear and aggression. As our machines get smarter and faster, we lose the higher functions of the mind like insight and empathy, functions that make us fully human and give us the capacity to anticipate and care about the consequences of our actions. There are many industries in which moving fast is critical: think EMTs, firefighters, ER doctors and surgeons, people who repair our power lines and sewer pipes in the midst of storms…It is possible to think fast, act quickly and still maintain the structure and safety of individuals and society. What most of us want is to live in a world filled with compassion not hate and conflict. We all want to feel inspired and optimistic not beaten and suspicious. We need hope not despair. We all want to be seen and heard, but the only way for society to survive is with shared truth based on facts and history. It is all coming to a head, Mark Zuckerberg, the speed, the greed, and the misdeeds. No kid goes off to college thinking he will kill a fellow student at a frat party. And that brilliant kid sitting in his dorm room at Harvard who came up with the idea to connect us surely didn’t start out with the intention to push teenagers to suicide or countries to genocide. You can do better than this. Our parents never encouraged us to move fast and break things, but they did often remind us to be careful of the company we keep. Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. -- Rumi Lately, I have been praying continuously and fervently. The state of the world frightens me. The growing scale of problems overwhelms me. And so, like Abraham Lincoln, each day I fall to my knees because I believe that I have nowhere else to go. On a recent morning, I began the day with my usual catalog of prayers when a thought took hold of me: what if God doesn’t answer prayers? Initially, the idea stunned me but quickly grew into a confident belief. As I remained still and quiet, a story from the Book of Genesis came to me: God saw that man was lonely, and God made a companion for the forlorn man. I meditated on that and began to entertain a question. What if that was the original response to prayer? And the once-and-for-all, forever answer? Man had a need he could not name, and he received a solution he could not have conceived. It was a solution birthed from the man’s own ribs, from a part of his being. The answer was a companion, the gift of someone like himself. Has God anticipated our needs? And having anticipated our needs has God created someone to help us meet each one of them? Could I be the answer to someone’s prayers? What if each of us lived with the belief that we contain the spark of the divine, the ability to answer prayers? What if each of us was raised not with the question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” But with the query: “Whose prayers will you answer today?” Might that be the response to the great existential question, “Why am I here?” And might it be the road back to paradise? I continue to convene with God each day. Like C.S. Lewis, I just can’t seem to help myself. It doesn’t change God, but I hope that it changes me. God saw that man was lonely. He made you someone’s valentine. Perhaps you have yet to meet, but someone is looking for you today. Someone needs you. Open your eyes and your heart. Answer someone’s prayers and believe that there is someone ready to answer yours.  After a splendid run at the top of the ratings, the American viewing audience has tired of What About the Other Guy. Responding to the changing tastes of its audience, WHY (We Hear You) Broadcasting Corporation has launched a hot new game show that blends America’s true crime fascination with the tremendous success of the lottery, honoring American’s love of danger and taking chances. The show is called Who Said? Name that Psychopath. Contestants will be offered quotes from famous psychopaths and asked to identify the correct notorious villain from a list of choices. Think you know a psychopath when you hear one? Let us be the judge of that! Join us for a round of Who Said? Name that Psychopath. Winners will receive our thoughts and prayers and an updated high-tech version of our very popular moral vacuum. Losers get to drink the Kool-Aid. The response choices are:
Here we go! Name that Psychopath! Who Said?
An Inside Job Walking in a large commercial parking lot, I see a food truck pull up to the curb with the words “Gangster Cheese” painted on the side. As the staff set up shop, preparing for the soon-to-arrive lunch crowd, I find myself wondering what “gangster cheese” might be. Some type of cheese with a lot of street cred? But the truck is painted black. The logo is shadowy figures dressed in trench coats with fedoras tipped below their brows—intimidating, old-time gangster images, not hip-hop stars and rappers. An employee sets up a sign that contains the menu: grilled cheese sandwiches. This doesn’t add up. To bring order to my mind, I want to stop and tell these cheese gangsters to change the name because I am pretty sure that a buttery grilled cheese sandwich is not the food of evil forces; it’s what’s for lunch in heaven. Before penicillin, it cured a lot of sick kids and made life worth living. But even in my state of mental confusion, I still have enough judgment to realize that asking a gangster of any kind to change their name would be a gamble, and it might end with me buried in concrete. I sleep on it. My rested mind remembers that before cheese kills you, it makes you an addict, clogging your arteries and sealing off your colon. Aha! These cheese gangsters don’t cut your heart out, they wait for it to explode. What a scheme! They take your money and let you die a slow death even as they keep you coming back for more. It’s the perfect crime--all the evidence is digested and flushed down the toilet. I guess of all the ways to die, death by buttery grilled cheese sandwiches is not so bad. It’s better than having your bones broken one-by-one. I decide to go undercover before drawing any final conclusions. I infiltrate some local cartels of cafeteria ladies and stay-at-home moms. In the process, I learn that this is a big operation that goes all the way to the top. It’s a syndicate too big for this little gumshoe, and so I wind up my investigation. The findings? A buttery grilled cheese sandwich is the original ecstasy, a recipe the gods intended for heaven. With the size of their operation and their many channels of distribution, I conclude that these cunning, cheese-trafficking gangsters must have someone on the inside! It seems that in 2025 the fizz went out the cola, the sparkle out of the water, the bubbly out of the champagne, the taste of the brew fell flat and repugnant. In a world already suffering from loneliness, the politics widened the divide and silenced good people. At least that’s how it felt to me much of the year. My joy and energy dissipated with every news headline. People became quiet and more distant even more so than during the height of the COVID pandemic. Many days were complete radio silence. Early in the political year I wrote to my elected representatives and reminded them of the words of Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Absurdity certainly describes 2025 every bit as much as the word of the year: SLOP. We cringe and squint at the atrocities that have already occurred, atrocities sanctioned by our elected representatives with their eyes wide open. It is easy to feel hopeless. Perhaps there are people in power who put their hope in our hopelessness. Today, 80 mile per hour winds are howling through the trees and rattling my windows. I try to picture the absurdities and atrocities of 2025 being blown away, the strong wind a cleansing breath from God. And today I pray that the year 2026 will spark some collective effervescence. We will sparkle again with life, laughter, togetherness, and actions that better serve ourselves, our neighbors, and the greater good. As J. K. Rowling once wrote of her 200 rejections of the Harry Potter series, “rock bottom can be a solid foundation.” With that thought in my mind, I’d like to offer a suggestion for next year’s word of the year. How about YET? Another writer, Paulette Perhach wrote: “I’d like to submit YET as your new favorite word. YET tells you that just because you don’t have something now doesn’t mean you won’t have it in the future if you work for it.” We can “pull ourselves from the ruin of our choices.” Let’s make YET our working vocabulary for the year 2026. Let’s put down our phones and limit our social media. Let’s be mindful of our use of resources and who and what we are supporting every time we pick up our phones, shop, read, listen, or participate in some way. Let’s stay aware that social media works by driving up outrage through clickbait and “likes” that sell advertising. Let’s tell the social media giants whose guiding philosophy is “move fast and break things,” that we are not careless people. We build things; we don’t break things. Let us pride ourselves not on our excess but on ensuring that each person has enough. Let’s demand a government that aligns with the well-being of its citizens and not just the wealthiest few. Let’s demand that government do more to prepare for the changes AI is bringing as well as the impending loss of government revenue previously collected from human workers through income tax. Let’s tax the robots. You can’t give tax breaks to the wealthiest citizens and then allow them to discard the human work force and the tax revenue that hardworking Americans create to pay the federal and state bills and support the programs that serve us all. We’ve already experienced how the poor planning for and regulation of social media has turned it into a hate machine, destroyed science and expertise with disinformation, and dismantled democracy here and around the world. We haven’t stopped it…YET. Let’s bring an end to profits over people, a policy that has led to our rising discontent. Executive reimbursement has been tied to short-term profits and has risen over 900%. CEOs and corporate America grow wealthy while making products that destroy us, our jobs, and the environment. Find out where your retirement funds are invested, where you are a shareholder. Vote, ask questions. Think before shopping. Democracy must be something we deliberately practice and that includes civility, kindness, tolerance, and expressions of gratitude for what and who are working. Call people by name. Support local businesses. Local shops serve the public good by keeping our neighborhoods lively and safe, by giving us places to gather and people to meet. They need our support. And support our community spaces like parks and rec centers and libraries while standing up to the new “aggressive architecture” that makes it unpleasant to gather in these common areas. We will share the fate of what happens next. So let it be a shared love and concern for ourselves, our neighbors, their families and ours, and the safety and health of our communities. Let’s walk together, pray together, cook together. Let’s make things beautiful together. Times are hard for so many, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enrich the times and places in which we live. We will write the story of our times. We will write the story of democracy’s future. Let’s toast to the New Year. Let’s toast to collective effervescence, to the new you, the new me, the new we, and to the power of YET. …and the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves… - William Shakespeare Chapter One “So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem…He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born…She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” Luke 2:4-7 Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head. The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay, The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. - William J. Kirkpatrick “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.” Matthew 2:1-2 Then the traveler in the dark Thanks you for your tiny spark; He could not see which way to go, If you did not twinkle so. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are! - Jane Taylor "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Matthew 25:35 This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine… Everywhere I go, I’m going to let it shine… Jesus gave it to me, I’m going to let it shine. - Attributed to Henry Dixon Loes Chapter Two “When I am back in the White House, we will use every tool, lever, and authority to get the homeless off our streets.” – Donald J. Trump, Former President “They’re eating the dogs!” - Donald J. Trump, Candidate for President, During Televised Debate “We’re going the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. Her friends are garbage.” - Donald J. Trump, President O stars, and dreams, and gentle night; O night and stars, return! And hide me from the hostile light That does not warm, but burns; That drains the blood of suffering men; Drinks tears, instead of dew; Let me sleep through this blinding reign, And only wake with you! - Emily Bronte An Epilogue “I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car… “This is what I say to the young Jewish boy wondering what I have done with his years…We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them... “Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.” - Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor, 1986 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech Star light, star bright, First star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, Have this wish I wish tonight. - Anonymous |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
March 2026
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