حرية/Horiya (Freedom)

Fear paralyzes us, and we need to get moving.
--Tawakkul Karman, Yemeni activist

Today, a short but timely entry on a brave activist being swept up in the tides of the Arab Spring. Her name, poetically enough, is Tawakkul (“Trust”) Karman. The virtue is حرية, transliterated as Horiya (Freedom). (Say it: “hoo-REE-yah.”)

Yemen is just one of the many nations currently seeing an uprising of “people’s power”  against entrenched autocracies since Tunisia erupted last month. A 20,000 person mostly-peaceful protest today, the “Day of Rage,” called for an end to President Ali Abdallah Saleh’s reign.

Blogger Kimberly Latta has been following the story in Yemen, including Tawakkul Karman’s role in the protests. She notes that the protests in Yemen have been slowly building ever since the formerly separate nations of North and South Yemen unified in 1990:

In 2007  disgruntled former civil servants who had been forcibly retired after unification, lawyers, academics, students, and journalists, began to organize broad demonstrations to demand greater economic opportunities, greater freedom of the press, an end to corruption, and a fairer share of the country’s oil resources between the North and the South.  By 2009 more traditional community leaders, including tribal sheiks, had joined the Southern movement.

Among the members of this Southern Movement is Karman: a journalist, an activist, a freedom fighter, a wife and a mother of three. In 2005, she founded a group called Women Journalists Without Chains to fight for freedom of the press in Yemen, later expanding its mission to fight for all human rights. Since 2007, Karman has led weekly demonstrations in front of Yemen’s Cabinet headquarters. In March 2010, she was one of 10 recipients of the International Women of Courage award, in recognition of “her exceptional leadership and courage in the area of women’s rights and equality.”  

On January 22, inspired by similar rallies across the Middle East, Tawakkul Karman led a protest crying out for basic freedoms in Yemen, and the authorities arrested her. After worldwide outcry, they released her 2 days later. She told crowds of supporters, “We will continue our struggle until regime change happens in our happy country. We will defend order in our country, we will defend the system, the constitution, the law. The Jasmine Revolution will continue until the entire regime goes.”

I cannot fathom the Temerity, the Equanimity, the Nerve it must take for a woman living in a conservative Muslim country simply to flout the veil--much less for a mother of three to risk arrest and torture for the sake of giving Voice. True Horiya, true Freedom, only starts when we free ourselves from fear. Perhaps Karman’s great Trust in the Divine--whence comes her very name--gives her this Courage; Isabella Jagiellon said as much when telling us the secret of Wolność.

The sirocco of Horiya is blowing, across the sands of not just Tunisia and Egypt, but also of Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Morroco, Libya, Syria. Let us hope it scatters the seeds of Wisdom and Prosperity for the many peoples of the Middle East.

May we see the gates of Horiya, and perhaps make a home there.

Leadership

That night, I thanked God for seeing me through that day of days and prayed I would make it through D plus 1. I also promised that if some way I could get home again, I would find a nice peaceful town and spend the rest of my life in peace.
--Major Dick Winters, as quoted in the film Band of Brothers


[Last month, we lost one more star from the heavens, with the passage of Major Richard “Dick” Winters, commander of “Easy Company,” whose fate during the invasion of Normandy served as a basis for the film Band of Brothers. In Dick Winters one found a moving combination of Humility, Strength, and Humor, but tonight we will honor him as an avatar of Leadership.
Winters was an exemplary man from an exemplary generation. From the first time I worked with the WWII vets on the medicine service at Fort Miley in San Francisco, I was struck by their Graciousness, Grit, and Affability. Tom Brokaw is right to call them The Greatest Generation. In this time of crisis in our nation’s history, we would do well to turn to these venerables, so few of whom are still with us.

Otis "Sam" Sampson

I had the good fortune recently to get to know a living survivor of the Parachute Infantry, Otis “Sam” Sampson, who celebrated his 100th birthday on January 19th at a local Italian restaurant. Even at 100 years of age, Sam is lucid and kind and funny. He wrote a book about his own experiences in the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, called Time Out for Combat. Visiting with him at my hospital’s tent at the Palm Springs weekly Village Fest, I was reminded of the nobility of his generation. They really do show the best of what this country has to offer, and they make me proud to be American.
My twin Kael has a fondness for WWII stories, and it was he who suggested we honor Dick Winters in Ten Thousand Virtues. I'd had another topic planned for today, but I’ll save it in favor of “the Winters’ Tale.” His story recalls that of Cincinnatus, the hero of Rome, who went from farmer, to soldier, to reluctant dictator, to humble farmer once again. Both men show us Auctoritas... Jen... Self-Possession. A consistent theme among those who served under Winters was his ability to inspire his men. He never asked anything of anyone that he didn't ask from himself. And like most true heroes, he didn't take himself too seriously, and was all too happy to pass along the mantle of Leadership. What follows is an obituary of Winters from his hometown paper:]


Dick Winters, who inspired 'Band of Brothers,' remembered as an American hero
By Lara Brenckle, The Patriot-News


His life story was writ large, a hero ready-made for Hollywood who helped save the nation during its darkest hour.


But that, Dick Winters’ friends said, was Hollywood.
   
In real life, Winters, whose leadership in Easy Company, 506th regiment of the 101st Airborne Division was commemorated in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, based on the Stephen Ambrose book, shied from the spotlight.
   
And when Winters died Jan. 2 at an assisted-living facility in Campbelltown, his final wish — a totally private funeral — befit a man who lived through extraordinary circumstances but never considered himself anything more than a man doing his duty, his longtime friend William S. Jackson said Sunday night...


Filmmaker Brian Kreider of Derry Township met Winters through his job in the Pennsylvania Film Office.
   
Winters was pushing for some of Band of Brothers to be filmed in Pennsylvania, and Kreider helped scout locations. The two later worked on a documentary and lecture series in which Winters discussed his experiences between clips from Band of Brothers.
   
A born leader
   
Winters was a natural leader, Kreider said.
   
“There’s no question you would follow him,” he said.
   
His Warmth and Strength were augmented by a wonderful sense of Humor, Kreider said...
   
State House of Representative’s Democratic leader Frank Dermody called Winters “a real-life American hero.”
   
“He led hundreds of young men through some of the toughest fighting the world has known, but at his core he was a peaceful man,” Dermody said. “In everything he did, he served honorably.”
   
Born in Ephrata on Jan. 21, 1918, to Richard and Edith Winters, Winters moved to nearby Lancaster when he was 8, according to his biography. He graduated from Lancaster Boys High School in 1937 and from Franklin & Marshall College in 1941.
   
Winters and his troops from Easy Company parachuted behind enemy lines to take on a German artillery nest on Utah Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944. His company fought through the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of a death camp at Dachau and to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden.
   
The war described in Band of Brothers is ugly, but the young men developed character under fire, Winters said in interviews. He was glad the miniseries showed war realistically, not glorified or demonized as in so many movies.
   
He wanted people to understand that success in war depends not on heroics but on Bonding, character, getting the job done and “Hanging Tough,” his lifelong motto. In combat, he wrote 50 years after the war, “Your reward for a good job done is that you get the next tough mission.”
   
Home from the war
   
After the war, he fulfilled the pledge he made to himself in the midst of the D-Day chaos: If he survived the war, he would find a nice, quiet place and live in peace.


He married Ethel, bought a bucolic farm in Fredericksburg, raised two children and worked in the agricultural feed business. He didn’t talk about the war until Ambrose wanted to put Easy Company’s exploits on paper.
   
“When the book [Band of Brothers] came out, he sent it to me at the paper with a note, saying, ‘I don’t know if this is worth writing about,’" Jackson recalled with a laugh.
   
Following the miniseries, Winters turned down most requests for interviews because he said he didn’t want to appear as if he was bragging. But he did feel the story of Easy Company was an important one, especially for young people.
   
He was more likely to accept invitations by local school groups and spent time with students at Cedar Crest High School, among others. A talk he gave at Palmyra Middle School drew hundreds of spectators...

Originally published: Monday, January 10, 2011, 12:10 AM. Staff writers Liam Migdail-Smith, Monica von Dobeneck, Jan Murphy and Mary Klaus contributed to this report.

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May we see the gates of Leadership, and perhaps make a home there.

Eutrapelia

So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.
--Molly Ivins

[Four years ago today, syndicated columnist and Southern quipster Molly Ivins breathed her last after a nearly 10 year long battle with breast cancer. A woman of deep passion and Jollity, she graces us today as an emanation of the virtue Eutrapelia (Wit).
Raised in Houston, Texas, the daugher of an authoritarian oil executive, Molly seems to have had the seeds of rebellion planted in her early. She graduated from St. John’s, an Episcopal prep school in Houston, and ultimately from Smith. Her true love, Hank, died in a car accident; she never married. Her journalism career kicked into high gear when she joined the Texas Observer in 1970. For over 35 years she tilted at the windmills of pomposity, both in Austin and in Washington, D.C.
Eutrapelia first appears in the Nicomachean Ethics (c.8) as one of Aristotle’s virtuous states, a Temperance of good humor that lies somewhere between buffoonery (bõmolochia) and dull rudeness (bõmolochos). In the Christian tradition, Saint Paul admonishes in his letter to the Ephesians (5:4) that Eutrapelia is “improper for God’s holy people,” although Christian scholar Larry Perkins adds that in “wise and respected leaders Eutrapelia can... be considered virtuous because it demonstrates self-restraining tact...” He also points to Cicero, focus of our essay on Soithnges, as an exemplar of Eutrapelia. Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica, cites Eutrapelia as a Divine virtue, translated as “Playfulness” and explaining: “Now such like words or deeds wherein nothing further is sought than the soul's delight, are called playful or humorous. Hence it is necessary at times to make use of them, in order to give rest, as it were, to the soul.” Perhaps Saint Paul was too hasty after all; seems to me Jesus would appreciate a good joke from a Texas good ol’ gal... The Wiccans for sure would; the virtues appear amongst the Great Eight, as Mirth.
I leave you with a re-print of a tribute column from Molly’s syndicate, written by her editor, Anthony Zurcher: ]

Goodbye, Molly I.
Molly Ivins is gone, and her words will never grace these pages again -- for this, we will mourn. But Molly wasn't the type of woman who would want us to grieve. More likely, she'd say something like, "Hang in there, keep fightin' for freedom, raise more hell, and don't forget to laugh, too."
If there was one thing Molly wanted us to understand, it's that the world of politics is absurd. Since we can't cry, we might as well laugh. And in case we ever forgot, Molly would remind us, several times a week, in her own unique style.
Shortly after becoming editor of Molly Ivins' syndicated column, I learned one of my most important jobs was to tell her newspaper clients that, yes, Molly meant to write it that way. We called her linguistic peculiarities "Molly-isms." Administration officials were "Bushies," government was in fact spelled "guvment," business was "bidness." And if someone was "madder than a peach orchard boar," well, he was quite mad indeed.
Of course, having grown up in Texas, all of this made sense to me. But to newspaper editors in Seattle, Chicago, Detroit and beyond -- Yankee land, as Molly would say -- her folksy language could be a mystery. "That's just Molly being Molly," I would explain and leave it at that.
But there was more to Molly Ivins than insightful political commentary packaged in an aw-shucks Southern charm. In the coming days, much will be made of Molly's contributions to the liberal cause, how important she was as an authentic female voice on opinion pages across the country, her passionate and eloquent defense of the poorest and the weakest among us against the corruption of the most powerful, and the joy she took in celebrating the uniqueness of American culture -- and all of this is true. But more than that, Molly Ivins was a woman who loved and cared deeply for the world around her. And her warm and generous spirit was apparent in all her words and deeds.
Molly's work was truly her passion.
She would regularly turn down lucrative speaking engagements to give rally-the-troops speeches at liberalism's loneliest outposts. And when she did rub elbows with the highfalutin' well-to-do, the encounter would invariably end up as comedic grist in future columns.
For a woman who made a profession of offering her opinion to others, Molly was remarkably humble. She was known for hosting unforgettable parties at her Austin home, which would feature rollicking political discussions, and impromptu poetry recitals and satirical songs. At one such event, I noticed her dining table was littered with various awards and distinguished speaker plaques, put to use as trivets for steaming plates of tamales, chili and fajita meat. When I called this to her attention, Molly matter-of-factly replied, "Well, what else am I going to do with 'em?"
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Molly's life is the love she engendered from her legions of fans. If Molly missed a column for any reason, her newspapers would hear about it the next day. As word of Molly's illness spread, the letters, cards, e-mails and gifts poured in.
Even as Molly fought her last battle with cancer, she continued to make public appearances. When she was too weak to write, she dictated her final two columns. Although her body was failing, she still had so much to say. Last fall, before an audience at the University of Texas, her voice began as barely a whisper. But as she went on, she drew strength from the standing-room-only crowd until, at the end of the hour, she was forcefully imploring the students to get involved and make a difference. As Molly once wrote, "Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for."
For me, Molly's greatest words of wisdom came with three children's books she gave my son when he was born. In her inimitable way, she captured the spirit of each in one-sentence inscriptions. In Alice in Wonderland, she offered, "Here's to six impossible things before breakfast." For The Wind in the Willows, it was, "May you have Toad's zest for life." And in The Little Prince, she wrote, "May your heart always see clearly."
Like the Little Prince, Molly Ivins has left us for a journey of her own. But while she was here, her heart never failed to see clear and true -- and for that, we can all be grateful.
*    *    *

May we all have the Toad’s Zest for life. And: May we see the gates of Eutrapelia, and perhaps make a home there.

Pflichtbewusstsein

[B]reaking the social stalemate... means acting on what we feel and think, here, now, for human flesh and sense, against the abstractions of duty and obedience.
--Howard Zinn, from “The Bombing of Royan,” in The Politics of History (1990)

A year ago today, Howard Zinn--famed author of A People’s History of the United States--died of a heart attack while swimming laps in a Santa Monica hotel pool. He was 88. A former solider and bombardier, turned anti-war philosopher, social critic, and historian, Zinn challenged the notion that history can only be written by the victors. He put history back in the hands of the common folk. Zinn’s life serves as a promontory from which to regard Pflichtbewusstsein (say it: FLISHT-buh-voose-ZEIN)--the Prussian virtue of Dutifulness.

First, the Prussian virtues. Prussia of course was once its own nation before becoming the northern part of Germany, containing within it the cities of Potsdam and Berlin. The uncharitable, when they hear “Prussian,” think “Nazi.” There’s a certain truth to it; much of the power of the German military machine capitalized on the strengths of the Prussian people: Discipline, Self-control, Punctuality, Thriftiness, Service, and Hard Work. Hitler himself proclaimed the Third Reich from the grave of Frederick the Great, who presided over Prussia’s acme during the mid-18th century. (More than one patriotic Prussian has pointed out that Hitler himself was not Prussian, but Bavarian.)

In 2001, the German government proclaimed a “Prussian year,” with celebrations of Prussian heritage. German President Johannes Rau defended all that was good with Prussia and pointed to “attitudes that are worth highlighting and rediscovering: Tolerance, Reform, Selflessness and Modesty, the nation-state and Law and Order.” This is not just revisionism: At their height, the Prussian people emancipated Jewish citizens (in 1812); eliminated feudalism and serfdom; encouraged immigration; celebrated the arts and sciences; and made routine education of the young available and mandatory.

My own family, mostly on the side of my mother, Big Tree, hails from Prussia; somewhere there’s still a picture of our great-great-grandpa sitting in his Prussian military garb, on a white horse, his spiked helmet bestrewn with ostrich feathers. Mom’s compulsive Cleanliness and Orderliness I embrace as additional examples of positive Prussian virtues that I, too, esteem (even if I still can’t manage hospital corners when I make up my bed).

Pflichtbewusstsein, yet another of these core values, one can translate as “Conscientiousness” or “Sense of Duty.” Yet it has a Shadow, this virtue...

Howard Zinn understood duty. Growing up in Brooklyn of immigrant Jewish parents, he eagerly joined the Army Air Force during World War II. As part of the 490th Bombardment Group, he participated in bombing runs on Berlin, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. In April 1945, at the very end of the war in Europe, he participated in an early military use of napalm, which took place in Royan, western France.

In the mid-1950s and 60s, Zinn returned to the small but ancient city, thoroughly researching the circumstances of the bombing raid. Things on the ground looked different than they had at 15,000 feet. Zinn discovered that the officers who ordered the bombing of Royan did so more for career advancement than for legitimate military goals. By doing his duty, Zinn had burned to death more than 1000 French citizens--all supposedly allies of America.

As he wrote later in The Politics of History:

One can see in the destruction of Royan that infinite chain of causes, that infinite dispersion of responsibility, which can give infinite work to historical scholarship and sociological speculation, and bring an infinitely pleasurable paralysis of the will. What a complex of motives!... And among all participants, high and low, French and American, the most powerful motive of all: The habit of obedience, the universal teaching of all cultures, not to get out of line, not to even think about that which one has not been assigned to think about, the negative motive of not having either a reason or a will to intercede.

Zinn’s reconsideration of the events of his military service transformed him into a critic of the military-industrial complex and a tireless advocate for voices buried by abuses of power. He marched for civil rights, fought against the wars in Vietnam and later Iraq, and sought to expose hegemony and encourage average citizens to claim their destinies. And yet, while on his many campaigns, our Howard Zinn was no stern-faced, unsmiling Prussian general. A colleague at Boston University noted: "He had a deep sense of fairness and justice for the underdog. But he always kept his sense of humor. He was a happy warrior."  

I was recently introduced to the Parable of Aggasiz and the fish (which for some inexplicable reason seems to be very popular among students of the Christian Bible). The message of the story is that we sometimes tell ourselves that we know what we’re looking at, who we are, what we’re doing, when in fact, we don’t, and we need to keep looking until we really see. Zinn’s journey to Royan was like staring at the fish, and, in time, he did start to learn something about himself.

His life reminds us we must not lose our Conscience in Conscientiousness. At the end of the day, our duty belongs first and foremost to our own Discernment. We are the masters of our fate, the captains of our souls. Through a process of Masá'il, of Questioning, Howard Zinn transformed his world and reclaimed his Self-Possession. Then, and only then, did he discover his true Pflichtbewusstsein.

To what habits, patterns, or beliefs have you surrendered your allegiance? Do they deserve it? Is it time to do some revision of your personal historiography? What does your “human sense and flesh,” here, now, tell you? What terrain are you claiming? And are you a "happy warrior"?

May we see the gates of Pflichtbewusstsein, and perhaps make a home there.

Dog-good-ness

I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love.  For me they are the role model for being alive.  
--Gilda Radner

After the somber note of our last post, I take pleasure in turning attention to a happier subject. Today our ambassador to the virtues is Ricochet the Surf Dog, who turns 3 years old today. (Happy birthday, honey!) I felt she could give us all a reminder of the many virtues of “Man’s Best Friend,” which I package up (in a doggie bag?) in the name of Dog-good-ness.

Dog-good-ness is the second animal virtue we’ve visited here, the first being Cow-abundance, which we visited on the Hindu holiday of Vasu Baras. As with Cow-abundance, Dog-good-ness is an aggregate virtue, composed of elements like Innocence, Loyalty, Unconditional Love, Guilelessness, Courage, Forbearance, and Mirth.

The virtues of dogs have been well-known since ancient times. A founding father of the Cynic school of Greek philosophy, Diogenes of Sinope, had qualities so reminiscent of hounds that his peers named his lineage for them: the Greek word κυνικός, kynikos, means "dog-like."

Diogenes, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1860)

Diogenes felt humans lived lives of pretense and artifice. Dogs, on the other hand, show a complete lack of self-consciousness. Living completely in the moment, they rarely seem to worry, eating and sleeping what and where they can. Diogenes respected dogs for their Directness: Dogs wag their tails for their friends, and bark at their enemies. No hidden agendas.

The foremost modern scholar of the Cynics, Donald Dudley, claimed they earned their nickname for at least four reasons:

First because of the Indifference of their way of life, for they make a cult of indifference and, like dogs, eat and make love in public, go barefoot, and sleep in tubs and at crossroads. The second reason is that the dog is a shameless animal, and they make a cult of Shamelessness, not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to it. The third reason is that the dog is a good guard, and they guard the tenets of their philosophy. The fourth reason is that the dog is a Discriminating animal which can distinguish between its friends and enemies. So do they recognize as friends those who are suited to philosophy, and receive them kindly, while those unfitted they drive away, like dogs, by barking at them. [caps mine]

I admit to my own Shamelessness when it comes to canines. I come from a proud, long line of dog people besotted with our furry friends. (My dad, Big Rock, shows some ambivalence about our family’s shaggier, four-legged members, but we love him anyway.) My little buddies are Georgie, a 6-year-old Staffordshire Terrier, and Astro, a big galoot of a German Shepherd we rescued from a shelter this past summer. Some of my human friends live in an exclusively feline Cat-mosphere, and I feel sorry for what they’re missing.  

Whether or not they possess Buddha-nature, dogs are magic. We know this from no less an authority than the very Goddess of Magic, Hecate, another shameless dog enthusiast. History offers dozens of stories of dog Heroism (such as here and here.)

One of these inspiring stories is Ricochet’s. The video below tells her tale, one not just of Dog-good-ness, but also Doggedness:

Obviously, Ricochet’s wonderful gifts to the disabled kids she helps through the Adaptive Surfing Foundation owe a lot to her owner and doggy-mommy, Judy Fridono. But it’s hard to say whether Judy makes Ricochet possible, or vice-versa. In one interview, Judy pointed out, “Ricochet has taught me to focus on what I can do, rather than what I can't.”

So today, get in touch with your Inner Puppy (what Feri calls the Fetch, Kabbalah Nephesh, and Huna Unihipili). Less talk, more walk--radiant Joy, without jabbering or artifice. Bark in warning, bark in love. Empower yourself, and by that, empower those around you.

Meanwhile, consider a donation to one of Ricochet’s many good causes, or maybe even giving a dog a loving home. You might save their life, and--who knows?--they might return the favor.

May we see the gates of Dog-good-ness, and perhaps make a home there.