Key West, FL 2003: It’s nice to take a break in the action and get a little rest now and then. But beware. Nodding off spiritually and educationally may prompt lurkers to sneak up and overtake your life, thereby giving you some real problems.

From Trent Ling:

What in the world happened?  What went so wrong?  How in the world can we ever get out of this?  Must every little thing become a screeching matter of national importance, federal vote, and capital-city resolution?  Rather than excavate the accumulating pile of people problems meeting up with inept policy fixes, seeming helicopter convoys continue dropping new rubble and rabble upon the crash site with no end of the madness anywhere in sight.  Again, how did we get here?

The dangerous and excessively unhealthy site of toxic issues in Washington, D.C. birthed and morphed from two underlying failures of the people.  First, spiritual issues do not resolve spiritually.  Second, educational issues do not resolve educationally.  When these primary and secondary pathways clogged and closed, diversion to D.C. for political resolution spawned an endless mish-mash of a mess to which we all now bear witness.

When the spiritual house takes shape, little remains to float down the Potomac.  The cleansing of the inside of the cup concomitantly cleans the outside.  Where denial of self prevails, not much squawking remains.  Where standards and ideals emanate not from human origin, rationalizations and excuses disappear.  And, where love and charity flow gladly and freely, stolen dollars from tax grubbers seem not so necessary or preferable anymore.

Where educated and/or common-sense people dwell, no need arises for gazing and appealing elsewhere for answers and solutions.  Those practiced in thinking and solving relish invention and resolution.  In the midst of sensibility, bad and bloated ideas appropriately garner nobody’s attention or interest.  And, when people think for themselves, they gain real respect as actual fellow human beings worthy of sizable deference.

When problems are caught and fixed at the spiritual level, any God-ordained remainder would likely be arrested and wrestled at the educational level, leaving a few minor details to be ironed out for the common good at the political level.  However, when the spiritual and educational levels collapse, everything flows and/or falls to the woefully ill-equipped political mosh pit.  Thus, welcome to 2012.

And the people complain?  Either handle your deal at spiritual and educational levels or be subjected to hired hands scratching their heads one moment and scrubbing for surgery upon your head the next.