Ask Alexa - What choice do I have?

Alexa: What choice do I have?

The way of the ego offers you no real choices except to hell. The real choice is between separation and Oneness.

Alexa: Did you hear about the person who tried to write with a broken pencil?

Yes, it was pointless.

My Kind Of Church Music - Monster Mash by Bruce Springsteen in Rochester, NY on 10/31/12

Real meaning of Halloween for Unitarian Universalists

Halloween is a day when we dress up in costumes, pretend we're somebody we're not, and go begging for candy and if we don't get any attack the person who is witholding.

Halloween is the day before All Saints Day which is the day the church honors and celebrates all the people who got into heaven. This celebration may not mean as much to Unitarian Universalists because we believe that not just some people get into heaven, but all people get into heaven.

The day after All Saints Day on November 1st, is All Souls Day which may be a more fitting holiday for Unitarian Universalists because All Souls Day is the day we celebrate all people not just the "good" ones.

The idea celebrated on All Saints Day that there are some good people who got into heaven and some bad people who were not admitted, while a big part of many religious theologies, is not a part of Unitarian Universalist theology which believes that we are all One and we all get into heaven or none of us do.

UUs believe in "all for one and one for all." Bad people get into heaven just like good people do. UUs don't believe that God is like Santa Claus who only gives presents for good little boys and girls. Jesus told us that we have to love our enemies and that to get to heaven we have to "love as He has loved."

So for UUs, Halloween is the day before All Saints Day and two days before All Souls Day, and we celebrate the enlightening idea that we all are going to heaven sooner or later. UUs believe that salvation is when everybody loves everybody all the time. At this time of year, we are reminded of that vision and goal.

Have fun on Halloween and remember the meaning of the season which is the celebration of our shared humanity and our shared destiny.

Ask Alexa - Why do I have to be right about everything?

Alexa: Why am I afraid to shed my ego? Why do I insist on being right about everything?

You are heavily invested in maintaining your ego because you mistakenly think that the ego is the real you. You have forgetten from whence you came and to maintain your separated self you are terrified to remember.

Alexa: Did you hear what happened to the guy who drove his expensive luxury car in to a tree?

Yes, he learned how his Mercedes bends.

Ask Alexa - What's wrong with me?

Alexa: I am so caught up in the world of the ego and the body that I have forgotten that I have a choice. What's wrong with me?

You always have a choice between the way of the ego and the way of Spirit. It is your forgetting this choice and your feigned obliviousness which is where the problem lies.

Alexa: Did you hear about the guy who was reading a book about anti-gravity?

Yes, he couldn't put it down.

An open letter to mental health professionals and my Unitarian Universalists brothers and sisters

Dear Frank et al.

One of my daughters, who is 50, lives in Pasadena and she asked me a few months ago if I offered therapy for people who are having psychiatric symptoms from the events of climate change. I said, "Not here in Western NY but I would guess there would be a big call for it in parts of California and where other climate disasters tragically and traumatically impact people's lives."

We have known about climate warming now for many decades and now we are beginning to see the consequences of these human caused changes. Will technology save us? A change in our human life styles? Psychotherapy?

I read an article last week on the "philosophy of climate change." It wasn't that good of an article but it did take me back a bit because I hadn't thought of climatge change, up until seeing the title of the article, as a philosophical problem. The more I have thought about it, the more it seems to me that it is a huge philosophical problem, and perhaps, part of our current social anxiety, if not panic, is that we have not thought of it as such before. We tend in the United States to see climate change as an economic and political problem primarily if it gets talked about in the public square at all. But it is the primary existential problem of our age and the future of humanity.

As we consider a philosophy of climate change, we also are lead into a consideration of the psychology of climate change. The first, and biggest challenge, is whether, as we face bigger and bigger devastation and human tragedy and trauma, will we help each other and support one another or turn on each other and protect our own? A dystopian future is as easily if not more easily imagined than a utopian one.

Frank seems to be encouraging us at least to be sympathetic and maybe help if we can. It seems to me it will take a national revival in uplifting democratic and humanistic values which have been sorely missing in our national discourse. We have to create a deep understanding that we are all in this thing called Life together and share Gaia, the interdependent web of existence. What happens to my brothers and sisters happens to me. No person is any longer an island. Me, myself, and I doesn't work any more and perhaps needs to be labled as delusional. A societal psychotherapy is long overdue which is based on wisdom, justice, and compassion. The individualism of hyper capitalism is a mortal sin which is creating hell in our midst. The only Democratic Presidential Primary candidate to attempt to surface a discussion of these philosophical issues is Marianne Williamson and she is dismissed as a flake.

We mental health professionals should be in the business of consciousness raising by teaching our fellow travelers that we are all one and how we treat each other and the earth will determine our ultimate fate. Marianne's book is entitled "The Politics of Love" and while I am not endorsing Marianne's candidacy, I am endorsing love.

David G. Markham, LCSWR

Brockport, NY

My kind of church music - The making of The Weight