ORIGINAL WRITTEN WORK
I have been a published author for a long time and am so humbled that I get to do what I love for a living. I can remember using writing as an escape from life’s complications, and also how crazy difficult it was to get published. Hearing no because a norm, and it is easy to feel defeated and not pursue a dream. One of the reasons I insist on sharing written work by other authors is so that can and will be seen and not think their words do not matter. Please to share these works, and hope you enjoy them.
Love Is My Religion and My Politics
Composed By: Dan Hawk
The word politics has been used so often and so loosely that we have almost forgotten what it means. People hear it and think of sides, noise, and endless debate. The word itself comes from the Greek politiká, meaning the affairs of the city. At its root, politics is simply how we live together. For Aristotle, politics was moral work. It was how a community decided what was right, how it shared responsibility, and how it cared for its people. He called humans zoon politikon, political animals, because we only become whole in relationship with others. The personal and the political were never meant to be separate. Somewhere along the way, we lost that. Power replaced purpose. Influence took the place of integrity. We started treating politics like a contest instead of a shared life. The score began to matter more than the substance. But politics, in its truest sense, is about belonging. It is not about parties or platforms. It’s about what happens when people try to live together with fairness and respect. It is something we practice, not just something we talk about. We take part in politics every day, whether we mean to or not. When we choose patience over anger, when we forgive, when we speak up for someone who can’t, we are shaping the world we live in. Those choices are a form of citizenship.
Most people think politics lives only in the voting booth or on a debate stage. But it lives at the dinner table, in the workplace, and in how we treat strangers. Every word we speak, every judgment we make, every time we choose kindness instead of contempt, we are casting a vote with our behavior. That’s why I think about my politics the same way I think about faith. I do not follow a party or a denomination. I try to start from love. For me, love is both my religion and my politics. Not a sentimental kind of love, but a steady one. The kind that listens first. The kind that holds its ground when people disappoint you. The kind that still believes in second chances.
Love asks something of us. It is patient, but not passive. It forgives, but it does not turn away from truth. It is willing to do the slow work of seeing the humanity in people who can’t yet see yours. In that sense, love is the highest form of politics. It’s how we organize our shared life around compassion instead of fear.
When I say love is my politics, I am not talking about slogans. I’m talking about daily practice, about how I show up for my family, my neighbors, and the people who test me most. I fail plenty, but I keep trying. I have seen what happens when love leaves the room. I’ve also seen what happens when faith gets tangled in fear.
I am not a religious man, though I grew up in it. Sundays were not optional, and questions were not welcome. But even then, I listened. I remember how Jesus spoke to people who had been cast aside. How he touched those no one else would touch. How he never bowed to power. If Christian means Christ-like, I cannot help but ask how we ended up here; how faith that began with mercy has come to speak so often in anger.
When I look back at the life of Jesus, I do not see a man chasing control. I see someone who crossed every line to remind people that love has no borders. He healed on the Sabbath because compassion mattered more than rules. He defended a woman caught in sin because judgment without love is not justice. He overturned tables in the temple because greed had taken the place of grace. He walked into betrayal knowing what it would cost because truth mattered more than safety. Barbara Brown Taylor, in An Altar in the World, writes that Jesus spent much of his time with people the world considered wrong. Maybe those were the right people after all, the ones who didn’t fit, who didn’t know the rules, and who had been told they were too far gone. Those are still the ones love is trying to reach.
Somewhere along the way, we made love smaller. We turned belief into a brand. We started measuring holiness by who we exclude instead of who we embrace. That was never the message. Anne Lamott writes in Traveling Mercies that “you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.” That one hits hard because real love doesn’t need an enemy.
If I am honest, I think Jesus would be heartbroken over what is been done in his name. However, I also believe he would still be doing what he always did, feeding the hungry, comforting the broken, forgiving the ones who don’t deserve it, and asking us to do the same.
I did not write this to condemn anyone’s faith. I write it because I see the distance between the story we tell and the life he lived. That distance is where we have lost something sacred. If Christian means Christ-like, maybe it begins again with love that looks like service and forgiveness, not certainty. The kind that kneels, listens, and stays.
So how do we come back?
Maybe it starts with remembering what politics once meant. It was never about sides or slogans. It was about people, about how we live together. Maybe it is the same with faith. The real measure of belief isn’t what we post or declare, but how we love. We can start by telling the truth about the mess we’ve made. We can be slower to judge and quicker to listen. We can admit that most of us are still learning how to love people who don’t think like us.
That’s the politics of love. It doesn’t fit inside a platform or a campaign. It doesn’t need applause. It just asks that we keep showing up, keep our hearts open, and remember that every act of kindness is a vote for the world we want to build. I still believe we can get there. The story isn’t over. Love hasn’t lost, because love never campaigns. It just keeps showing up.
One Woman’s View on Volunteering
Composed by: Deanna Culver
From my experience of over forty plus years of volunteering, I believe in giving my time and energy to help others. It has become an extremely important part of my life. Volunteering in some capacity helps improve our communities as a whole while building a sense of belonging and purpose. I have volunteered throughout the years with my first opportunity being in elementary school with the help of a student crossing guard. I was also of assistance to my Girl Scout troop, which led to my desire to continue helping others throughout my life. Some of the many opportunities I have helped with throughout the years include community/ church gathering, mental health awareness (including suicide awareness and prevention), music and emergency service events. I also assisted at my children’s and grandchildren’s schools, food pantries and soup kitchens, and at natural disaster shelters.
For myself, I enjoy giving back to the community while also leaving a positive and important legacy for my own children and grandchildren. I have found that the personal growth I experienced while volunteering improves my own life, helps with my own mental health challenges, and brings upon happiness within myself. After all, devoting time to others can benefit any individual - we can all work together to bring change within the world for the better.
The numerous benefits of volunteering include a significant impact on self-confidence, self-esteem, and life satisfaction while providing steppingstones for others who may not realize their own potential. They cannot see how to live a life outside of some of their own struggles or may not even know where or how to start volunteering. By being a kind, caring, and loving person, one hopes to inspire and impact another person. No matter how big or small the task is, it centers around what we do with our time, skills, and talents that can help make a difference in bettering our communities we live in. Volunteering in some capacity can also help shape individuals into responsible leaders.
The personal growth and development that occurs through volunteering is something that can improve the lives of everyone around us. It examines how volunteering can build new skills and improve our empathy and compassion for another human being and animal by making a difference in our communities we live in. My dedication to volunteering has grown stronger through the years. There is a deeper understanding from my own perspective of the issues that many face in our communities. I hope to continue inspiring others to join me in creating opportunities for positive change in our communities and the world around us. We can all leave a lasting impression of hope and dignity for future generations, filling our hearts with the legacy of knowing we helped make a difference in at least one other person's life.
Winston The Quest Of Questions
Written By: Leya Hunter
Winston began his long journey into the centre of town. These long train rides always fascinated him, it was something about the changing landscape that sparked intrigue into the deepest recesses of his psyche. He began jotting down his morning thoughts in real time, capturing the moments as they arose into his mind and manifested out through his fingertips into fine black ink.
“The mountain appears different at every angle, which one could I assume is the correct one? If any at all, or perhaps all of them are. If the latter is the case, then can this also apply to the mental construction of multiple and opposing theories? The angles must be important for the measurement, every angle has an opposite end, whether in mathematics or mentally. If I cannot understand the angle’s opposite, then I cannot know it in its entirety, and if I cannot know it in its entirety then how can I devote myself to its chains of truth? So, the mountain remains, but my understanding of it differs in proportion to the view of the mountain changing. This distance is proving to be a problem for the accuracy of any one answer, perhaps because the distance between opposing angles is so great, we tend to perpetuate our assumptions directly into validity? Especially seeing as we rarely understand the angle’s opposite in its entirety. Even though things can be fixed within themselves, they are surrounded by a type of fluidity, does it have to be either or? These complexities always shine into the simplicities…where to begin and where to end, where does the point and the pointless begin? I suppose things need a reference in which to reference themselves. I don’t know things in fine detail, but I know the perimeter in which they exist, the outside lining, the borders, the expansion, the deflation and contraction within it.. even though I think I understand, I am still heavily swayed by my own humanity, the mechanical tinkers inside the monotonous and mundanity. This wonder gets me high, but my humanity keeps me grounded.. this mountain has sparked many thoughts... oh the joys of thinking….”
Winston glanced out of the frosty window, pushing his little black notebook to one side near his heavily caffeinated Styrofoam cup, his long skinny legs slumped to one side underneath the stowaway table. He caught a glimpse of his reflection as the frost ran down the windows edges, his blue eyes piercing back towards him with a look of deep solitude, which was well suited to his pondering nature. He looked closer at his own characteristics and wondered if other people saw him the same way. His exaggerated perfectly straight nose although large was nicely in proportion to his elongated face, his face not perfect by any means, but handsome in its unique sense. His smile wide and bright, but a rarity for his introverted personality. He looked beyond himself and out into the void of the grey misty London skyline, and just as he was about to reach for his pen, the trains’ computerised voice pierced through the speaker system, “Next... stop... London.” He quickly put his notebook into the inside pocket of his emerald green velvet jacket and swung his brown satchel diagonally across his torso and over his shoulder.
As Winston walked on the narrow London pavement amongst the herds of people, he became even more entrenched in his own voice. He quickly reached for his notebook, which was the size of his large palm, and started to write his spontaneous thoughts, in fact he barely knew how to write any other way. He looked up every few seconds as to not bump into anyone, which was virtually impossible at the best of times in London square. He was pushed and shoved several times in the crowd, but he was so encapsulated in his own thoughts he acted as if it were totally unbeknownst to him. He swiftly started writing his thoughts and pushed his satchel to his side once more after it had been knocked several times to his front.
“As the crowd makes my body feel small it enlarges my mind until I forget my body even exits. Here I walk along the curb, the path made of old-world pavers, they are rugged and dull, the depths of the dullness becoming furnished with different colour markings which are becoming living stains upon which my mind imagines. The perfectly architected cathedrals oozing out beauty through the leadlight stained glass, the old shop fronts depicting scenes from a medieval society, an era where merchants bartered their bread and hand sewn clothing in exchange for precious metals. I’m noticing the finest details in the arched doorways, the curvature, the embellished patterns, the raw imperfect beauty. I see the changing of light creating different angles of the same thing, I am sifting through mountains of distractions trying to get to the core of any one thought, but my senses are too wide open, perhaps my streams of thoughts don’t allow for it, or perhaps the beauty of possibilities and expansion lives inside the unknowable and uncertainty of it all, or perhaps the unknowable is likened to a holographic image, the closer we think we get the further the thing becomes. I do wonder if others think in similar terms, or if others are intrigued by questions as much as I. Perhaps I just have a rusted cog in the wheels of modern society, I feel this, as when presenting such thoughts to people the wheels sure don’t spin freely without hinderance. Dare I add that perhaps one day our minds will experience a freedom like no other, which brings me to another thought, do we truly want to be free and if so then it must be noted that we have to understand and experience, or at least truly understand its opposite to fully grasp and appreciate it, as sad as that is to say.”
Winston stopped still in the middle of the crowd and took a deep breath, flicking his pen around his fingers he began to notice that most of the faces surrounding him were dull, they looked somber and lifeless, they all shared the same face, a face that had an urgency to be somewhere, a face marked with a distaste for life itself, a face that had lost touch with the soul that existed behind its very eyes. He found the closest park bench, and started writing again.
“As I bask in the light of the cold London sun, I open my notebook and continue reading myself in-between the lines of sentences, opening inscriptions of dual possibilities, moulding the differences into open ended interpretations of thought. The faces that surround me are bleak, but there surely must be a whole world inside them dying to breathe.? What kind of world do they foster? What have they endured? What are their hopes and dreams? My quest for questions is becoming limitless, but the outcome always remains unsolidified. The thirst of unknowing draws out an unquenchable curiosity. I hold contradictions as if they were a prerequisite to being human. It seems like a true condition of the nature within, it all starts and ends in questions, and it is a cycle of continual becoming and unbecoming.”
Winston tucked the notebook back into his velvet jacket and hurriedly walked to the bookstore that he had owned for the past four years. He came to a halt before walking in, and caught his reflection in the window, he realized how easy it was to look like all the other faces, he had the same hurried lifeless look, but he had a whole world inside his head, that no one had ever seen or known, he wondered how on earth he could look so different to how he felt, but shook the feeling and unlocked the door. As he took his first step inside the bookstore, the little bells chimed that hung above the red French doors. He took a few steps inside and gazed around escaping into the store’s fragrance, taking several deep breaths as though he were going back in time. The smell of musty old books was like a remnant of history filling his lungs with old-world vapour. The red suede lined walls gave the essence of living amongst fine poetry, and a little black chandelier which bought the 18th century to life decorated the run-down ceiling. The stores ’counter which he loved to read at was tucked away in the right-hand corner of the small shop. The sight of those large, commercialised bookstores gave him the shivers every time he saw them. Although he was poor in his pockets he knew the depth of his richness and smiled as he walked towards two boxes of new arrivals.
‘Ahhh Winston, just the man I wanted to see. Ave you seen me better arf?” An old friend of Winston’s barged through the French doors, the bells continuing to ring as he stood in the doorway.”
“Erm, no indeed I have not Bob, have you lost her again?” Winston said amused, as this continued to be a weekly occurrence. “And Bob” Winston gestured for Bob to move from the doorway as the bells continued ringing.
Bob quickly shuffled away from the door. “Well, you see Winston, I ave taught about this long and ard, and me thinks she might just be running from me, I mean all the signs are they, inn it they?” Said Bob, giving off a wheezy laugh sounding like he had been train smoking for forty years.
“Very wise of you to think so Bob, I mean, I by no means are coming to any conclusions, but the fact that you have identified some signs means you are stretching your thoughts outside the perimeters. Anyhow I must carry on opening the shop for the day, can you make it to book club tonight?”
“The fact that I “can” does not mean that I “will,” Winston, you must phrase your words in the right context” Bob said as he smirked and turned, hurriedly pacing up and down the alley way looking for his wife Linda.
Winston gave a little wave and smirked. Bob and Winston were like brothers, and bounced off each other when it came to discussing philosophical theories. Bob was short in stature but his persistence and skis of persuasion were by no means short.
Winston put the last remaining books onto the shelf before sitting behind his messy counter. He had several pieces of various writings scattered about the surface, a handwritten list of overdue books from his customers and a small laptop he rarely used. He thought of technology what he thought of the large bookstore chains, unnecessary and the slow death of true spirit. He glanced over near the laptop and saw the latest pile of envelopes from the post. He smirked at them, knowing they probably contained bills upon bills, as everything seemed to be regulated in one way or another these days. He opened a familiar looking envelope which contained Arthur’s letter of reply in regards to the new mind conference. After reading it closely he had a sudden and deep curiosity for the inquiry of several more thoughts, so for the third time today Winston pulled out his notebook and began writing.
“Have I adopted all my thoughts? Where do they really come from? From prior thoughts, a rotation of patterns and the habitual nature of being human? External stimuli? From other people’s minds? Are they free thoughts or are they largely constructed through belief systems and ideological constructs? Do they fluctuate in accordance with external forces? Are they perhaps a combination of all such intangible things? Which brings me to another point, seeing as I’m on the topic of intangible, is reality shaped by the mind or the mind shaped by reality? Both? Is there a definitive definition of what reality is, and if not, how can we say with certainty we know what it is? Sure, it can be built upon truth and actuality, but it is useless unless there is a continuous stream of such things, who decided on this definition of reality? How do others base their reality, or do they even think about it? If reality is founded on the assertion of a continuous stream of objective truths how does that coincide with subjective truths? Even though an objective fact is objective it has the eyes of subjectivity organising it into the shapes of its choosing, therefore everyone sees the one same truth differently. Well, I guess we could say that interpretation of truth is generally justified by one’s perception of it, and if truth is justified by one’s perception and one’s perception is based on the level or scope of awareness, then the truth just dances in different shades between perception and awareness. But of course, it is not the truth that changes, it must be the individuals’ altering of it that covers the naked truth, weaving fabric, and colours usually to suit confirmation bias and parade around in the falsity of its own fancy attire. Maybe truth really is stranger than fiction, maybe reality will always remain an enigma, and the paradoxical nature of our very atoms can never be understood in logical ways. We always need to consider the opposing nature of things, we can’t actually get anywhere without opposing views and concepts otherwise it always stays the same, stagnation is a breeding ground for neurosis, so the exploration of fresh ideas and thoughts are never wasted, and the comparison of opposites are necessary for any conclusion. What if reality is not so much about objectivity? Could it be that reality is just a sequentially fluid movement of images in time, much like a never-ending movie, and maybe the characters we encounter change the course of things, the narrative changing as we evolve, or descend, and where the lifeless faces come to life through the right interactions? But the mind can’t be so definitive about itself, as it is intangible, and a dichotomy, it uses itself to understand itself, so we then really know nothing, maybe Plato was right in his assumptions. Perhaps all I think I know are the questions and the forms inside them. Maybe we are the paradox and the irony, the mystery and the known, the ever-forming mind altering perceptions of ourselves that spin on the axis of ever-changing states of mind.”
Winston scratched the back of his head, perplexed at his usual morning thoughts, and put his notebook back in his pocket, proceeding to read the pile of unopened envelopes. He reached for the pink envelope smiling as he knew it must belong to his partner in crime and fellow group member for the new mind conference. Sophy had been a dear friend since university and shared common interests, but what he liked most about her was the way she could always cut through the crap with her quick wit and sarcasm.
“Winston, Sophy here, I know the submission for our new mind conference is fast approaching. I do not have the final draft yet, my nine-to-five has been too demanding to allow my creativity to flow freely, you know how it is, well actually you probably don’t seeing as you live and breathe in the field of books, anyway I have attached a draft for you to comb through. I must admit Winston, I’m quite nervous about our presentation, I mean we are the only philosophers in the conference, and I’m not sure if that is an advantage or not. I guess it could be the unknown that I’m hesitant about. Well, we must carry on with what we set out to do, and I guess at the end of the day it is about courage and staying virtuous, well as much as one can in this world of dying philosophy eh.” .
