Getting A Grip

Given all the news of End-Times fast approaching with degradation politically and in planetary terms, we need to get a grip; to summon our core values and find ways to live our lives in creativity and full consciousness. That includes opening our hearts to each other. To think globally and act locally. To lower the temperature figuratively and literally.

Add an e to grip and we have gripe. The far right has harvested a bumper crop of gripes and made a meal of them. I have to believe the platter of crumbs and hollow promises served as remedies will be seen as a dainty dish of junk food to serve only the king.

I’m remembering how that word grip had yet another meaning, spelled grippe. As a kid, around 1940, it was one thing to have a cold but to be diagnosed with the grippe conferred added gravity and a touch of drama to the malady. I pictured myself caught in a vise gripping my gripe.

102 degrees, rectally speaking, was enough to get the doctor for a house call. He came with a satchel-full of modern remedies such as tongue depressor, alcohol rubdowns, eucalyptus for the vaporizer and Argyrol to paint my throat. As I imagined it the germs were short for Germans and I would scatter the Nazi invasion by sheer will, driving them out of Normandy. When my fever dropped, I was too modest to tell anyone how I had just won the war.

The war we must win today requires a joining of hands with massive doses of common sense. We have tens of millions of voters casting their lot and their ballot against their own interests. Yet the forces of Democracy have outnumbered them in seven of the last eight presidential elections.

There is a substance within us for healing that prevails. Just as my body drove Nazis to retreat and surrender without the benefit of antibiotics so too will decency, compassion and truth defeat the infestation of hatred from the American soul.  

I don’t mean this to be a prescription for complacency but rather as a plea to speak out with the belief that our advocacy carries the ring of truth. It is the difference between the sounds of Brubeck or Beethoven versus the screech and jangle of a revved-up motorcycle. One is music. the other, noise.