Wars rage. Ice caps melt. Reefs crumble. A child dies every 5 seconds of sheer hunger or preventable disease. Your 401K looks like a tip jar. An Escalade snaked your parking spot. Aimless teenagers repeatedly flip you off.

Day in the life?

Indeed some days. Yes, there is much to frustrate, infuriate and incapacitate. Apathy lurks. Entropy looms. But is this second law of thermodynamics inevitable? Is chaos preventable, degeneration reversible? That, I suppose is the nature of faith. I don’t exactly know what I believe but I know that I have to believe in the essential goodness of people – and I do.

Turning the tide — people coming on like the tide – that is the energy driving TAKEPART.COM . This site houses the stories, the tools, the contacts and connection to spur action. Information and access are power. To be sure, this is true. Anger motivates. Also true. But where does change begin, how does it grow, what keeps it alive? What do you individually control; what can you independently change? You are truly master of only one thing — and that thing is your own imagination.

You are the only person who gets to decide what and how you think about violent conflict, resource depletion, poverty and incivility. You are the person that makes your own energy renewable. You build order from the chaos of circumstance by first changing yourself. Yes, it is things like reducing your carbon footprint and casting an informed vote. But it’s also starts with seeing the world as something that is a part of you (yes, even the messy, unkind, wacked out parts of what’s out there). Embrace the other, even when it flips you off. Find beauty in all that surrounds you. If you can’t do that, then the tough days will eat you whole, grind you down, strip off bits of your humanity. And that’s the one gift we can not afford to give up. If we lose the grace of discovery — the desire to be pleasantly surprised by what we capable of– then entropy does win.

I think and write plenty about current conversations and the latest news. But I also ponder and wander and wonder. If you see me blogging here, you’ll witness me finding my religion…exploring my telos, asking to hear about yours…

If I have a ruler, she’s a muse. I lay myself down to sleep at night not with prayer but with poetry. For me, poetry isn’t something you understand, it’s something that makes you feel. What a gift it is to feel. It’s the root of imagination. It’s the source of compassion. You can’t make change if you can’t first be moved. So, as you gear up to inspire, connect, act, blog, create, teach, don’t forget to smile.

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile
e.e .cummings