The Obama Effect

“For the first time in CBS News polling history, a majority of blacks are casting race relations in the United States in a positive light.

Fifty-nine percent of African-Americans – along with 65 percent of whites – now characterize the relationship between blacks and whites in America as “good,” according to a new CBS News/New York Times survey.” read more

So what does this mean?

“I have mixed feelings about the poll. That’s because it focuses on perception rather than reality. While blacks and whites may perceive an improvement in race relations, the facts suggest gaps that have traditionally existed between racial groups persist in the present….” Why? read more

emphasis mine

So, what do you think? Is it just perception, or are the races actually getting closer in terms of wealth and power? Wealth and power do matter, right?

What’s up, Doc?

Poetry Workings 101

First I wrote a blurb for Terry Kirby Erickson’s new book Telling Tales of Dusk (coming out soon from Press 53).

Next I accepted a few poems for the October and November issues of The Dead Mule.

Then I began a bit of blatant self-promotion. Better With Friends is now available form me.

Last night I submitted poems.

Thoughts from Thomas Merton

Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny. We are free beings and sons and daughters of God. This means to say that we should not passively exist, but actively participate in His creative freedom, in our own lives, and in the lives of others, by choosing the truth. To put it better, we are even called to share with God the work of creating the truth of our identity. …To work out our own identity in God, which the Bible calls “working out our salvation,” is a labor that requires sacrifice and anguish, risk and many tears. It demands close attention to reality at every moment, and great fidelity to God as He reveals Himself, obscurely, in the mystery of each new situation.

We do not know clearly beforehand what the result of this work will be. The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him. He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be.

Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Press, 1961): 32, 33.

emphasis mine