Common Wonders
Co-creating a culture of peace
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Do You Believe in Them Yet?
By Robert C. Koehler “Do you believe in them yet?” Well, do you? Do I? I tear these words loose from my not-so-recent past – indeed, 27 years ago – when my wife was dying of pancreatic cancer. I think they mean something, but God knows what. I plunked that question in my journal on […]
Sanctuary Cities and International Security
By Robert C. Koehler As Trump and friends claim control over the country, celebrating their war on migrants – “the enemy” of the moment, whom they’ve created and dehumanized – much of America writhes in shock and irony as it looks on. The president who hates criminals is also our criminal-in-chief. But fortunately (for him), […]
This Old House . . .
By Robert C. Koehler Forty years. That’s how long I’ve been here – quietly bonding with this old house, becoming it, you might say, as I clunk up the stairs every day with a cup of coffee and plop down in front of my computer. My wife and I had been married two years when […]
Earth Day Is the Planet’s Future
By Robert C. Koehler Let Earth Day be every day! Let it transcend the present state of politics and our economic hierarchy. Let it open us to the future we long for but do not yet envision. We live on one vulnerable, extraordinary planet. We are not its overlords; we are part of an evolving […]
There’s No Real Future Without Empathy
From Gulf of America to mass expulsion of “illegals” (people of color) to continuing genocidal complicity in Gaza to whatever the daily news brings us , , , welcome to Trump America! Welcome to the small-minded, white nation so many long for, free once again from those large, inconvenient values – e.g., the Declaration of […]
Everything That Doesn’t Matter
By Robert C. Koehler I need some help here. The Trump presidency and the “America only” future he’s hawking to the public like the world’s most arrogant snake-oil salesman feels beyond my ability to address right now, even though I consider doing so my life’s work. But sometimes the news of the day simply feels […]
A Little Mix of Money, Poetry and God
By Robert C. Koehler As I stumble into my later years, I seem to know less and less. And I find myself – often in desperation – pulling what I think of as my childhood rabbit out of its hat. That is to say, when the conversation seems to be drifting away from me and […]
Growing Up with Fear and Self-Awareness
By Robert C. Koehler When I write about personal matters, I quickly stumble into one of life’s puzzling ironies: Every one of us is unique, and we’re also part of a collective whole. Self-awareness essentially means straddling that divide. This thought came up for me in the past week, when I started doing my best […]
Freedom of Speech: Keeping Sanity Alive
By Robert C. Koehler Freedom of speech is kind of like eggs nowadays – too expensive! For Columbia University, the cost imposed on it by the Trump administration was suddenly $400 million in rescinded federal funding, at least if the speech was pro-Palestinian and critical of Israel. What choice did the school have, except, as […]
The Journey Beyond Nukes Begins with an Apology
By Robert C. Koehler When the powerful speak, mushroom clouds emerge – oh so easily. Power is about conquest; winning the war, getting what you want no matter the cost. For instance, Israel should nuke Gaza. “Do whatever you have to do.” Thus declared Sen. Lindsey Graham last year in a Meet the Press interview, […]
Look Your Best – We’re Coed
By Robert C. Koehler The “old days” are more alive than ever – by which I mean my old days, when I was a kid. My life pushed forward on its own, more or less. This is called growing up. I wasn’t paying much attention until, at a certain point, a.k.a., adolescence, I started noticing […]
Do We Need an Enemy To Know Ourselves?
By Robert C. Koehler “The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.” The words are from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (where else?), explaining the root causes of a dystopian world. The book may be a work of fiction, but his words […]
Peltier’s Release, a Nation’s Healing
By Robert C. Koehler “. . . I write today from a position rare for a former prosecutor: to beseech you to commute the sentence of a man I helped put behind bars.” Thus begins one of the most stunning letters I have ever read, written almost four years ago by former U.S. Attorney James […]
Closing Gitmo in the American Heart
By Robert C. Koehler Gitmo, of course!! It’s the freest place “we” have – by which I mean the American government, a.k.a. Donald Trump. No rules apply there, be they international humanitarian law or the U.S. Constitution. It’s a dumping ground, a black hole. It’s the most secure place for America to hold, as Trump […]
War Unites Us in Hell
By Robert C. Koehler “Some experts worry that, if the country went to war, many reserve units might be unable to deploy. A U.S. official who works on these issues put it simply: ‘We can’t get enough people.’” “Vietnam Syndrome” hasn’t gone away! It resulted in the elimination of the draft and ultimately morphed into […]
Election Theft in the Context of Racism
By Robert C. Koehler As the Trump presidency digs its claws into the country – winner take all! – I look on in terrified amazement as he begins arrogantly instituting what can only be called his plan to devolve America back to the good old days: back to the era of Jim Crow certainty and […]
‘All They Will Call You Will Be Deportees’
By Robert C. Koehler And now Trump consciousness purports to claim – or reclaim – control over America: the land of white Christian nationalists and no one else, damnit! But of course that level of selfishness – mine, mine, mine! – is only possible to maintain with a huge helping of fear alongside it: fear […]
Transcending Muturally Assured Insanity
By Robert C. Koehler Uh oh, nukes coming in. Should we retaliate? This strikes me as the stupidest question a human being could ask – and, just possibly, also the last. Our enemy of the moment is loosing hell on us (if warning signals are accurate), so let’s do the same back at them. If […]
A World’s Soul in Tatters
By Robert C. Koehler “I left you for God, Daddy.” Let those words resonate across the planet. The speaker is Yahya Al-Batran, a Palestinian man – a dad – imagining the words his newborn son would have said. The boy, Jumaa, froze to death in the family’s tent. The infant had a twin brother who […]
Finding a Cure for Humanity’s Cancer
By Robert C. Koehler I welcome in the new year with a sense of abstract helplessness, as the headlines continue to bring us dead children, bombed hospitals, torture, rape and, of course, ever more “self-defense” (sometimes known as genocide). From my safe, secure office space I absorb the daily news – from Gaza, from all […]
Growing Up Means Claiming Your Own Mind
By Robert C. Koehler Dig, ponder, dig some more. A year ago I wrote a column about some of the early moments of my growing up – not just memories but profound moments of awareness; flickers, you might say, of becoming who I am. I was 77 at the time. Now I’m . . . […]
Return of ‘Kids for Cash’ and a Look Within
By Robert C. Koehler More than fifteen years after the “kids for cash” scandal shocked the nation, it’s back, stirring not just public incredulity but, for some, soul-slicing memories of hell on Earth. This is thanks to Joe Biden’s decision to grant clemency to Michel Conahan, one of two juvenile-court judges in Luzerne County. Pennsylvania, […]
Our Right To Sing — and Create the Future
By Robert C. Koehler You may not have noticed this. The world “celebrated” International Human Rights Day the other day, even as wars across the planet continued, bombs fell, children died. What if “freedom from war” were a human right? I don’t ask this to be cynical, but rather to expand the reach of what […]
Tearing Down Our Emotional Walls
By Robert C. Koehler War, war and more war. It’s only possible for one reason: the belief that only some people are fully human. Those who aren’t . . . well, they can be killed when necessary. My inner scream at this false reality we feed ourselves — via the media, via mainstream politics — […]
Loving Life, Honoring Roe
By Robert C. Koehler As Christian nationalism, the political right and Trump-mania seem to tighten their grip on the country, maybe now is the time for me to take a deep dig into the complex preciousness of . . . life itself. Hey, guess what? I’m “pro-life” — by which I mean, you know, pro-life […]
