Author: Rick Bellingham

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”- James Baldwin   About 3 million years ago, early Hominins in Africa discovered that a stone could be used to crush objects they had previously been unable to penetrate.  This first known tool, the hammerstone, accelerated the evolution of our early ancestors.  They advanced because they were able to concede that tools, however rudimentary, could exceed brute force. Read More

  “Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.”  Rabindranath Tagore.   “Keep the faith, my friend,” is a commonly used, breezy goodbye that we hear often without giving much thought to it.  And yet, faith spans deeply held religious beliefs, doctrinal commitments, and emotional encouragement.  It generally sends the message of maintaining hope, trust, or loyalty in the face of adversity, doubt, or depression.  For many Christians, it Read More

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Frederick Douglass I may not be broken, but I’ve been exceptionally lucky.  In my morning meditation, I review the times in my life when I felt truly welcome.  The list is long: at birth, first breath, mother’s breast; friends next door, in high school, and in college; my future wife meeting me in LA when I returned from Vietnam; my in-laws, my own Read More

In 1969, I marched on the capital in Washington, D.C. with 500,000 other protesters carrying candles and pleading for peace in Vietnam.  I had just returned from my tour of duty there. The war finally ended in 1975 when the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong stormed Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and took over the government.  The protests made a difference. Now, more than 50 years later, I’m still marching.  This time in Read More

I’m hoping that young children watching the performance unfolding on the world stage each day are not learning these lessons: Bullying pays Arrogance works Principles are pliable Friends don’t matter The earth’s resources will last forever Loyalty only goes one way Contempt trumps collaboration Control, don’t free Take, don’t give Tell, don’t ask Sell, don’t consult Quit, don’t join Pretend, don’t prepare Deny, don’t own Close down, don’t open up Double down, don’t listen; demonize, Read More

“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.  Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living”.  Heschel   Abraham Heschel was a Polish-American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century.  He was born in 1907 in Poland and died in 1972 in New York.  In 1938, he was arrested by the Gestapo but managed to escape to London before the Holocaust.  His Read More

“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.”  Carl Jung “Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment.  Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.”  Albert Einstein   I’ve been working Read More

“A ripple widening from a single stone – winding around the waters of the world.”  Theodore Roethke “A person who leaves does not leave a void behind, but a glowing echo.”  Fatima Haggar   Sometimes, it feels like life is just a series of shocks that constantly shake up our view of the world.  As I reflect on big events in American history like the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Read More

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran Every great story has at least two narratives – the thing that is on the surface and then the things underneath which are invisible.  Ali Smith   One year ago, I wrote a post on Hanging on to Hope based on a song by Mumford and Sons.  It’s the song that helped my family get through 105 Read More

I’ve been sharing perspectives and suggesting possibilities for over 10 years.  Lots has changed in that short span of time, and volumes of words have been written to describe the experience.  Instead of piling more opinions onto the heap, I will simply try to summarize the North Stars for my writing in as few words as possible.  Here’s my shortest post ever.   Perspective begins with the realization that we are one among 8 billion humans Read More

“The real evils in war are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power.”  Augustine “Remoteness from reality and thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together.”  Hannah Arendt   It feels so futile to write this post.  People are trying so hard to survive this chaos, to find meaningful moments, and to stay afloat in the evil flooding the world.  In the Read More

  Last weekend, I was talking to a brilliant professor at a prestigious university.  I asked him about his students’ state of well-being during these chaotic, cruel, and confusing times.  He expressed his concern that his students didn’t seem too affected by all the news in the outside world.  They were living their lives in their protected bubbles and were more concerned about their social lives than the sociopathic times in which they were living.  Read More