YouandTheTarot

About 75 percent of calls to me for a tarot reading are about money. There is not enough of it and in the near future there could be even less with a layoff. To supplement, setting up online businesses is becoming more difficult with the changes in search. Meanwhile, the kids, now adults, are still living at home.  So, it should have been predictable to those in power and those who support power that something like the Zohran Mamdani moment was inevitable. In his campaign for the primary for New York mayor Mamdani promised affordability. His ideology is about a redistribution of wealth. And here we are: a potential return to the radicalism of the late 1960s counterculture. The language used in media headlines is the language of the counterculture - count the times the term "establishment" is put out there. Andrew Cuomo whom Mandani defeated is boxed as the "establishment" player. Axios notes: "The shock upset against a onetime establishment powerhouse [Cuomo] c...

  All kinds of voters in New York City got behind socialist candidate in the primary for mayor - Zohran Mamdani. And, yes, he won in a stunner of an upset. So, we might start to seriously wonder what socialism may be in America. After all, New York City is a trend-setter.  Boomers who were open to the fast-evolving trends during the late 1960s and early 1970s tried out versions of socialism. Those played out during what was called the "counterculture." Much of that took root among the 20-somethings, at least until the raw recession of the mid 1970s,  My experience was in university town Ann Arbor, Michigan. The counterculture had started on campuses in California, stopped off at those in Wisconsin and arrived at the University of Michigan when I began my doctoral studies. The ideology of equal access to life's necessities gave rise to free clinics for medical and mental conditions, low-priced food coops, centers where you could drop off what you no longer needed and take...

  Religion is back. But not all religious organizations are sharing in this boom.  As a tarot reader I have "sampled" a number of these.  Those which are growing speak the language of the heart. That ranges from their custom-made hymns (instead of the traditional ones in the hard-cover hymn books) to the tone and content of  sermons to the after-service one-on-one prayer healing sessions.  Those which continue to lose members are stuck in a different era of hardened ritual. Being at a service can feel like simply going through the motions. There is no uplifting of the soul, strengthening us to go out there and cope with another day. That is, there's no connection. Instead of retrofitting themselves to align with what reaches people the old-line religions seem to be digging in their heels more to preserve the past. There's no piloting what is effective at other churches such as guitar-playing versus pounding the piano. Or, one-on-one praying. Or for members to b...

  Just like Roman Catholics had established their own institutions of higher education, so did the "Quakers," that is the Society of Friends. In Wichita, Kansas there is Friends University , which brands itself as "higher education with a purpose." Here's a list of other Friends universities. Overall the higher-education sector is in turmoil. There's broad-based questioning of everything from the return-on-investment to the politics. The exception is the faith-based university, mostly Christian-oriented. The model is trusted. Its growth outstrips that of secular higher education:  " ... data from the National Center for Education Statistics showed that religious schools grew by 82 percent from 1980 to 2020, while the national average was 57 percent." In addition, the brand is known for innovation, especially in acclimating first-generation college students to the system and establishing affordability.  This trend aligns with the surge in membershi...

  Someone to listen, then maybe provide some insights. That's why most human beings come for a tarot reading.  And, deep listening is highly inefficient. For example, there's no rush to connect the dots, then spit out a "finding." The same, of course, applies to effective psychotherapy, pastoral counseling and meditation. In friendships, no, we don't welcome an efficient response to sharing difficulties.  Yet, achieving efficiency and continually increasing it have become the holy grail of a growing number of pursuits globally. Amazon just announced it's cutting jobs in the book division to, you got it, be more efficient. US government is now about being more efficient. AI screeners in both resume review and interviewing supposedly make the hiring process more efficient. So, here we are: Efficiency is killing off what it used to mean "to be human." During the Industrial Revolution novelist Charles Dickens chronicled that loss in everything from worki...

Whether it's a work issue or access to some other goody there are those who come to a tarot reading in despair about the "unfairness" of things.  The attractive man/woman got the promotion to the C-Suite. Not them, the hardest and most innovative middle manager.  The neighbor who inherited money and could afford a top lawyer got a slap on the wrist for a DUI.  Their partner went to jail. Is it naive to even try to get ahead, get things and all that?  That matter of seeming inequality has surfaced like a sea monster from the deep in China. The New York Times reports that there are: " ... fierce online debates in China about privilege and inequality" Meanwhile, here in America the source of the growing political polarization is rage about who gets to have the edge in this current economy of scarcity.  Some are so unraveled by that noise that they're returning to traditional religion to find trust in their ability to navigate what seems increasingly unfair. Ess...