One of the greatest titles ever,

 I just read Nathan Miller's book - Out of Deception -
and of course I am lying because I really just skimmed it.

Nevertheless, I have found a great deal of cultural angst contained in his material, and regarding of the story - the quality of sincerity in the writing is of value in itself.  But, I have been thinking of discussing the issue of leadership, in other ways, but this book leads me into that idea in an interesting way.

The book is --- directly about an Amish cult ---. Something like, well the two words Amish and cult work together in a very odd way on the brain. But beyond that, it is about an individual that gained unusual control over the life's of quite a few people.

In the end there is this issue of leadership. Now simply, sometimes we choose a leader, or think we choose them for ourselves. Other times, the leader may in some way be chosen for us in a way that we find acceptable. In either case we like to think of the leader as a " good " person. The reason is simple, we like to think of ourselves as " good people " and therefore we make that kind of connection.

Now, the simple truth is that our goodness or badness is hardly ever connected to our "leader". Generally, that is something we do on our own. Sometimes if the leader is really a good one, we might come out learning something in the long run - or something that was spoken and rings true for us will remain with us and make life a little better or a little easier.

But, if in fact, there is a " reality " to all this good and bad way of looking at things - then ------- it can only be ourselves - moment to moment - that makes it happen. Did I say that?

Anyway,  that is what this story is about,  a lot, and therefore, there is a lot for all of us in the
story because we are all " involved ".  As Albert Einstein once indicated in an open letter to 
the U.N. general assembly:   It not so much the destructiveness of the atomic weapons, it is that they need to be guarded and therefore secrets need to be kept.  To keep those secrets, lies will be told.

That is why, we all need to find our way --- Out of Deception.

read the 63rd hexagram of the Iching

Fox are quite an intelligent species, but that has nothing to do with what I'm trying to say. It's more like what's a little bit of the measles, or how do I reconcile, Buddhism, native American spirituality and Christianity? Well, generally I don't. And mostly that is how this blog will be. You can not reconcile the un-reconcilable unless you " choose " to do so. At this moment my greatest regret is not having sufficiently read Dylan Thomas. Oh, well --- life goes on.