I saw Dave Wilcox in concert recently. Dave’s a singer/songwriter/storyteller that I really like. His “concerts” are like an evening-long journey into the highs and lows of the human heart. While he’s tuning his guitar he tells stories of his life and friends and lovers and the stories morph into songs and truth gets said and sung. I laugh. I cry. I’m moved. Nothing sounds preachy or fake, there’s no lecture. And from a technical point of view the songs and musicianship are astounding.

Things Dave said that got me thinking (I’ll need to paraphrase because I wasn’t taking notes, I was enjoying a show):

- A heart needs to break for us to know it really works.

- All our paths get shorter at the end, because we only have so many steps, only so much time…so we have to choose, we have to trust.

- What if we went into a relationship fearless? We could tell the truth because we weren’t afraid it would end. (Probably wouldn’t end if we told the truth…)

-It’s human nature to be dissatisfied. If, by some miracle, we all woke up tomorrow with the ability to jump into the air and just fly, unaided, to just soar, we’d be happy…for about a week. Then we’d start to think “I’m not so special, everyone can fly, I really can’t do anything, I’m just ordinary…”

- So let’s say you’re arguing with your lover and it’s taking her a really long time to realize you’re right…

- We have hearts that can hold a tremendous amount of fullness, which is great if there’s a tremendous amount of fullness in our lives, but it leaves us a lot of room for empty. This isn’t bad design, there’s a lot of fullness to find. Maybe it’s only the empty that would keep us looking to find the fullness?

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On April 29, 1945, at about 11 AM, members of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, of the U.S. 45th (Thunderbird) Division, as part of Task Force Love, entered Dachau concentration camp. (Pfc. John Degro of Burton, Ohio is believed to be the first American liberator to enter the concentration camp and come within view of the inmates.) An excellent timeline and description, with photos can be found at: Humanitas International.org.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War ended. This blog is a part of a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated.

Now, more than ever, with websites, hate groups, neo-Nazis and even the government of Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be ‘a myth,’ it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.

I believe, with all my heart, that we have the ability to create a world where everyone lives together live together in dignity, respect, understanding, trust, kindness, honesty, compassion and love. And, I believe that forgiveness is the key to happiness.

Life, my own readings of history, and common sense, has taught me that, to paraphrase philosopher and poet George Santayana, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, that denial of the truth is a path to suffering. We must remember, we must never allow it to happen again.

This message is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide! Join us and be a link in this memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world. Please copy this blog and email it to your friends and family, or simply send a link to this site to people you know and ask them to continue the memorial chain.

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This month’s Esquire magazine (May 2008) has a nice article by Tom Chiarella titled “No” (as of this writing it’s not on-line yet, but I’m sure it will be). Chiarella writes about the simple power of the plain, unadorned, one word sentence “No.” For one month, whenever he doesn’t want to do something he just says no, clearly, unambiguously, but not in a mean way.

It seems to me that most adults have trouble just saying no. We say “No, thank you” to be polite. We say “I’d rather not” or “I’m not sure.” We offer long explanations, hoping not to feel guilty and not to hurt feelings.

When we were kids our parents said “Don’t you say no to me!” Kids who said “No, no, no, no!” were throwing a “tantrum” and sent to their rooms, punished, hit. I don’t remember any teacher ever praising me for my “no” - “I’m so proud of you, Chip, for the strength of your convictions and the clarity of your no.” Yeah, right.

Then there are those yeses, maybes, and I’m not sures that are actually nos. Either we “know” that the person means no, or we take the absence of a no to mean yes. In the first case, it was a no, we heard the no, why not just say no? In the second case, the inability or unwillingness to say no created a genuine misunderstanding. My experience is that such misunderstandings fuel anger and mistrust. In either case, the simple and direct no was certainly a better choice.

While I know that what I’ve written so far is true, I also know there are times when saying no can actually be corrosive. I’ve heard countless stories of intimate moments that get undermined by a no. When making love, instead of saying no to something, I often prefer to tell my partner something I like or appreciate about what I’m experiencing and something different I’d like. “I really love the way you ______, and right now I’d love it if you _______.”

A big part of being the man I choose to be has something to do with the ways I say yes - yes to life, yes to love, yes to service, yes to my family, yes to my community, yes to my passion and yes to my responsibilities. And an equally big part of being the man I choose to be has something to do with the ways I say no - no to injustice, no to deceit, no to hatred, no to knowingly inflicting unnecessary pain, and sometimes, no because that’s my truth.

Check out this weirdly erotic, intensely sexual, and beautiful clip of a love-making in the wild.

An “N” in semiphore is a person with arms (or flags) down and a bit away from their body. A “D” is one arm straight down, one arm straight up. Fifty years ago, in April of 1958, Gerald Holtom, a textile designer, put the two signals together to form the symbol we call a peace sign. The ND stood for “nuclear disarmament”, and Gerald was involved in Britain’s Direct Action Campaign (DAC), a ban-the-bomb protest group. Time Magazine has a nice history of the peace sign at Time.Com/Peace.

Ten years after it first made its appearance, when I was a 15 year-old kid (in 1968) I wore some form of peace sign almost all the time - as a pendant, a belt buckle, and on several pins. To me it was the sign of all that I thought the world was moving towards. The peace sign indicated the dream of a world without war, and implied “make love, not war.” The peace sign, and the two-fingered peace sign (that was the same as Churchill’s V for Victory, but now meant peace) was a kind of shibboleth, a symbol used to distinguish members of “our” generation from outsiders.

A lot has been written about the sixties - some that matches my memories, a lot that seems revisionist or just plain wrong. Thankfully the dream of living together in peace keeps resurfacing, and so does that 50 year-old peace sign. I’ve been seeing it a lot lately. And one thing I know is - the things we focus our attention on are the things that grow.

So happy birthday Peace Sign!

Forty years ago, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assasinated. He was just 39 years old. I was 15. To me, a Jewish kid from the Bronx who was a hippie wannabe, MLK was perhaps the bravest, most compassionate and loving man I had ever heard of. He still is. Here are some of his words:

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.