Author: Tim Buckley
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Cynicism in My Back Pocket
She’s been a spiritual touchstone for me and we met recently for coffee. I described my daily practice to “stay emotionally balanced” but admitted to being cynical about “the big picture”. Humans have been failing at peace since we could stand upright, I said, and all our technology has only made peace harder to find.…
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“I’ll Meet You There.”
Drenched each day by a firehose of social chaos and violence, our senses are flooded. We’re at peak saturation. Angry, scared and bewildered, our survival instincts often trigger responses to fight, freeze, or run away. An equal and opposite reaction is emerging from all that racket. People are seeking peace, inner peace and outer peace,…
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Moral or Legal: I Chose the Former
Danny called me a couple of weeks ago. “Our mutual friend (I’ll call her Linda) just called to say she has intentionally taken an overdose of opiates. She is tired of the chronic pain. And, she wants one of us to be there with her when she goes,” he said. Attending the death of a…
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Defanging Enemy Images
“It’s part of the water we all swim in!” That rationale is how we – individually and as a group – learn to love, or hate, people who don’t look, act, vote or worship like we do. Changing that “default setting” takes four things: awareness, intention, skills, and practice. Those are things that Nonviolent Communication…
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Those Fingers Pointing Back
“When you’re pointing your finger at someone else, remember that there are three other fingers on the same hand pointing back towards you!” That bit of sage advice came up for me again recently when reviewing a nasty arguement I had with a loved one. I was talking to a councilor about the conflict, and…
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NVC Answers the Call
America is amped up on fear and loathing. For some, a natural response to their elevated levels of cultural cortisol might be to seek shelter in a remote cabin. For others, ease from stress might simply involve dialing back the news feeds and seeking the shelter of a loving conversation. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is like…
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With Our Light Under a Bushel
I asked a local friend to join me as a member of the Salem Braver Angels steering committee. “No” is a common answer and I was prepared for that. She said “no.” I appreciated that she took the time to explain why, and her story stimulated a sadness in me. She said the reason she…
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Awareness: Upstream from Empathy
I agreed to help my wife make a complicated dessert – a French apple cake they call Gateau Aux Pommes! Oo la la! Part of the “invisible” part of the cake depends on very thinly sliced fruit. The ideal kitchen tool, a fancy mandoline, is not resident in our less than oo la la kitchen.…
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Full Circles Begin with One Turn at a Time
Awake in the night last week, I felt numbness in my heart. For some days, the numbness prevailed. The enormity of issues facing humanity became more than I could emotionally handle. At those times, I “turn away” rather than face it, shoulder it. Helplessness creeps in and I become paralyzed. Today’s newsletter from the Salem…