Senator Jeff Merkley: We All Must Protest and Obstruct the Authoritarian Assault On Our Nation

Thank you, Senator Merkley!! Absolutely true - this insane, illegal, brutal, criminal, incredibly cruel, fascist and sadistic madness must be stopped! ― Molly

From Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley:

President Trump is out of control.

He is snatching people off the streets and deporting them without due process.

He is using research grants, security clearances, and broadcast licenses to harass and influence universities, law firms, and networks.

He is illegally canceling programs fully authorized and funded by law.

He is blowing up boats—murdering the crews—with no evidence they are carrying drugs.

He is seeking to federalize and deploy our national guard against peaceful citizens with faked claims of rebellion or invasion.

He is ordering the Department of Justice to target his perceived political enemies.

He is filling government websites and public announcements with partisan propaganda.

He is rigging the next election with gerrymandered congressional districts and a nationalized voter registration database.

And now he is issuing death threats and demanding investigations into members of Congress who remind the military of the responsibility to ignore illegal orders.

He is destroying our freedom and our Republic.

He must be stopped. Every citizen must protest and every Member of Congress must obstruct his authoritarian assault on our nation.

Presidents are not Kings.

The Constitution is not optional.

https://www.merkley.senate.gov/news/

Lewis Goldstein: Unnecessary Deaths

An illuminating piece by my close and gifted friend Lewis Goldstein. The extreme irony and hypocrisy is that in the name of "cracking down on violence," Mr. Trump is himself the greatest perpetrator of violence across our nation and beyond. It is my belief that it is our vital and ongoing individual and collective task to recognize the many faces of violence that are perpetrated by the President of the United States and his fascist administration and to do everything we possibly can to expose and end the madness. ― Molly

From August: The White House on Monday revealed photos of National Guard troops in Washington, DC, as President Donald Trump moved to take direct federal control of the city’s police and deploy 800 troops in a sweeping crime crackdown.

It's on Trump

By Lewis Goldstein

Nov 28, 2025

When a president, or ranking commander, or defense secretary, or any “leader” sends those under their command to a post or place where their services are not needed, though supposedly legally or not, and they are killed, that death was committed by the person who sent them there.

Donald Trump sent National Guard troops into Washington, DC, unnecessarily under the pretense that there was violence to contain. No one in DC wanted them there, and their presence served no function except for intimidation. Donald Trump sent Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old woman, to her death. He, along with the shooter, killed this young woman. He, along with the shooter, is also responsible for the shooting of Andrew Wolfe, who is in critical condition and may also die.

Donald Trump and the shooter are also responsible for all the suffering they have caused these young people’s families, friends, etc.

Yet Donald Trump will feel no guilt or accept any responsibility and will blame others for what he has done. He has now sent in even more young people where they are not needed, and he will likely be the cause of others’ deaths.

Getting away with this does not mitigate guilt or truth. George W. Bush, though unpunished, is still the cause of 50,000 unnecessary American deaths and a million or so deaths of Iraqi civilians, as are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Perhaps they will reap the results of their actions sometime? I think they know they are guilty of creating war under false pretenses. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Bush keeps such a low profile? I doubt Donald Trump has the mental, emotional, or moral capability to feel guilt or remorse. That’s called sociopathy/psychopathy. That’s also why soldiers are being reminded not to follow illegal and immoral orders.

There is a show called “How to Get Away With Murder.” Perhaps the stars of this show should be certain American presidents or Israeli Prime Ministers, et al?

Please go here for the original article: https://open.substack.com/pub/goldsteinl/p/unnecessary-deaths?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Francis Weller: Let Us Generate Living Culture Once Again

Photo by Molly

Dear friends,

Warm greetings to you. I hope this finds you all rooted in community and the rich loam of soul. We need the steadying qualities that come from these two vital aspects of our lives in this challenging time. So much is unsettled and in free fall. We are being taken through a rough initiation that will ask much of us. As is true of all initiations, both traditional and rough, we are required to cultivate a much more expansive sense of identity, one that senses our wild entanglement with all things, from star clusters to mycelia. We must remember our co-extensive identity and lean into this truth to help fortify us for the coming times when the winds of change will be fierce. We can find each other in the dark and craft spaces of healing and repair. We are not without medicine for the seasons ahead.

We have entered a liminal terrain where everything is changing. We don’t know what will happen. We do know there’s medicine available to respond to the challenges we will be facing. We are being ripened to become a place of shining darkness, a point of combustion, of incandescence. The world will need our affection and warmth, our outrage and kindness. Let us generate living culture once again. Let us dream of a wild earth, teeming with life and richness. We are not bereft. We are not alone. We are part of this dreaming earth. There are many forms of sweet, soul medicine available to us like friendship, imagination, beauty, ritual, and many others. There will be much to metabolize over the coming years and decades. Knowing that we have access to multiple forms and styles of medicine is reassuring. I look forward to continuing our conversation. In the meantime, I wish you well.

Green blessings,

Francis

Russian River Watershed

https://www.francisweller.net/

Tara Brach: What Matters Most In Life

Photo by Molly

What Matters Most In Life

If we ask ourselves when meeting anyone—friend or stranger—"How can I be more kind?” inevitably we will recognize that every being needs to be listened to, loved and understood. While we might become aware of this first with those in our immediate circle, it is possible to pay attention and care for all living beings. The more fully we offer our attention, the more deeply we realize that what matters most in life is being kind. As we open to the vulnerability of others, the veil of separation falls away, and our natural response is to reach out a helping hand. 

― Tara Brach

From Radical Acceptance

Thích Nhất Hạnh: When Your Mind Is Liberated

Photo by Molly

When Your Mind Is Liberated

When your mind is liberated your heart floods with compassion: compassion for yourself, for having undergone countless sufferings because you were not yet able to relieve yourself of false views, hatred, ignorance, and anger; and compassion for others because they do not yet see and so are still imprisoned by false views, hatred, and ignorance and continue to create suffering for themselves and for others. Now look at yourself and at others with the eyes of compassion, like a saint who hears the cry of every creature in the universe and whose voice is the voice of every person who has seen reality in perfect wholeness. As a Buddhist Sutra hears the voice of the Bodhisattva of compassion:

 The wondrous voice, the voice of the one 

who attends to the cries of the world

The noble voice, the voice of the rising

tide surpassing all the sounds of the world

Let our mind be attuned to that voice.

 Put aside all doubt and meditate on the pure and

holy nature of the regarder of the cries of the world

Because that is our reliance in situations

of pain, distress, calamity, death.

 Perfect in all merits, beholding all sentient being with 

compassionate eyes, making the ocean of blessings limitless,

Before this one, we should incline.

Practice looking at all beings with the eyes of compassion: this is the meditation called "the meditation on compassion."

 ... A peace worker is like anyone else. She or he must live her own life. Work is only a part of life. But work is life only when done in mindfulness. Otherwise one becomes like the person "who lives as though dead."  We need to light our own torch in order to carry on. But the life of each one of us is connected with the life of those around us. If we know how to live in mindfulness, if we know how to preserve and care for our own mind and heart, then thanks to that, our brothers and sisters will also know how to live in mindfulness.

― Thích Nhất Hạnh,

excerpted from The Miracle of Mindfulness

Anaïs Nin: The Light Within

Photo by  Molly

When you possess light within, 

you see it externally. 
 

– Anaïs Nin

Henry David Thoreau: Nourishment For Our Soul

Photo by Molly

One is wise to cultivate the tree

that bears fruit in our soul.

― Henry David Thoreau

Howard Zinn: Veterans and Dissent at the War Memorial

Year after year, it is my belief that the wise voice of Howard Zinn needs to be shared again and again and again. May more and and more of us listen, learn, and work together to end the madness of war. Another world is possible. ― Molly

For Veterans Day, we highlight this article, “Dissent at the War Memorial,” written by Howard Zinn for The Progressive in 2004. Asked to speak on a panel called, “War Stories,” Zinn said, “I don’t want to honor military heroism — that conceals too much death and suffering. I want to honor those who all these years have opposed the horror of war.”

 By Howard Zinn

As I write this, the sounds of the World War II Memorial celebration in Washington, D.C., are still in my head. I was invited by the Smithsonian Institution to be on one of the panels, and the person who called to invite me said that the theme would be “War Stories.” I told him that I would come, but not to tell “war stories,” rather to talk about World War II and its meaning for us today. Fine, he said.

I made my way into a scene that looked like a movie set for a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza—huge tents pitched here and there, hawkers with souvenirs, thousands of visitors, many of them clearly World War II veterans, some in old uniforms, sporting military caps, wearing their medals. In the tent designated for my panel, I joined my fellow panelist, an African American woman who had served with the WACS (Women’s Army Corps) in World War II, and who would speak about her personal experiences in a racially segregated army.

I was introduced as a veteran of the Army Air Corps, a bombardier who had flown combat missions over Europe in the last months of the war. I wasn’t sure how this audience would react to what I had to say about the war, in that atmosphere of celebration, in the honoring of the dead, in the glow of a great victory accompanied by countless acts of military heroism.

This, roughly, is what I said: “I’m here to honor the two guys who were my closest buddies in the Air Corps—Joe Perry and Ed Plotkin—both of whom were killed in the last weeks of the war. And to honor all the others who died in that war. But I’m not here to honor war itself. I’m not here to honor the men in Washington who send the young to war. I’m certainly not here to honor those in authority who are now waging an immoral war in Iraq.”

I went on: “World War II is not simply and purely a ‘good war.’ It was accompanied by too many atrocities on our side—too many bombings of civilian populations. There were too many betrayals of the principles for which the war was supposed to have been fought.

“Yes, World War II had a strong moral aspect to it—the defeat of fascism. But I deeply resent the way the so-called good war has been used to cast its glow over all the immoral wars we have fought in the past fifty years: in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan. I certainly don’t want our government to use the triumphal excitement surrounding World War II to cover up the horrors now taking place in Iraq.

“I don’t want to honor military heroism—that conceals too much death and suffering. I want to honor those who all these years have opposed the horror of war.”

Please go here for the original: https://www.howardzinn.org/veteran-dissent-war-memorial/

Celebrating 15 Years With My Beloved

 

Celebrating 15 Years With My Beloved

These images from 15 years ago are reminders of when it all began. I will be forever grateful for the profound blessings and synchronicity and grace which brought Ron and myself to the little coffee shop in Portland where we first met on November 11th, 2010. And what kids we were then at 59 and 62 and soon to be finding ourselves falling head over heals in love. 

Of course, there were also bumps and setbacks and scary and painful places — and especially in our early days — which sent each of us off to therapy and other resources of support. Gratefully, there was also already much healing work that we had done before we ever met. And there was more to do. Of course. 

This is what our intimate relationships call us into — the courageous territory of further working with our old triggers and trauma, of assuming greater accountability and embodying deeper compassion, and of deepening and expanding the ongoing sacred journey of unburdening ourselves of our old wounds and learning how to undefend our hearts.

And Love is always the greatest medicine. 

I write this today with the deepest love and gratitude to my beloved husband. Ron and I have certainly brought the nourishment, the safe ground, the commitment and courage, and the compassion and kindness and abiding love needed to increasingly support ourselves and each other in growing into more and more of the wholeness and beauty of who we most truly are.

There is no greater gift that we humans can give to each other and ourselves. It takes courage to risk vulnerability and authenticity, honesty and open-heartedness, trust and love with another human being. And when we have found those who grace us in such profound ways on our human journeys, we have been blessed with life's greatest treasure.

And I will forevermore treasure my beloved Ron. 💗🙏 Molly

Joanne Cacciatore: Fierce Compassion

This deeply compassionate and wise book by Joanne Cacciatore was recommended to me by a family therapist several years ago. Before I engaged in brief therapy with one of my sons, and in our initial conversation, this therapist spoke to me of Bearing the Unbearable upon learning of the suicide of my twin brother in 1978. It didn't matter that decades had passed and that I had done many years of deep grieving and healing, I still found this gem by Joanne Cacciatore to be a wise and beautiful gift. 

It is not easy to be human. Bless us all on our 

human journeys and beyond. 

🙏💜 Molly

Photo by Molly

Fierce Compassion

It is in knowing suffering, in all its darkest places and with all its most harrowing faces, that we are brought to a place of fierce compassion for others, and perhaps one day, for ourselves.

The road of sorrow is not easy. It is ominous, jarring, and narrow.

We may meet others along the road who offer sustenance: some water, a morsel of food, loving support or guidance, a small candle to light the way, a hand that helps us climb out of a ditch we've fallen into, a patch of shade in which we can shelter from the heat. Such meetings plant seeds.

These seeds of kindness grow one day into our own compassionate care for others.

And, at some point, we ourselves will shade another.

At times, the turn toward compassionate action unfurls so slowly.

At other times, the calling is more precipitous, a tsunami in response to quakes of fully inhabited grief.

 And this is how our world will change.

Those who have deeply suffered understand life in ways others cannot: they know the only way to attain authentic and lasting contentment is to turn our hearts outward in service to those who are suffering as we have suffered.

I am now present with life because I am present with death.

I know joy and peace because I am present with grief and suffering.

— Joanne Cacciatore

From Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and

the Heartbreaking Path of Grief