Joel Primack & Saints among Us vs. Epstein, et al & a Compromised EPA

2/22/2026

Week of 2/16-21/2026:

This is a summary of the previous week’s daily meditations. Father Adam Bucko (AB) is guest writer this week for Friday and Saturday. You can click on any title to view the DM in its entirety.

February 16, 2026: Saints Among Us: Encouraging and Good News (MF)

Matthew proposes that Time Magazine name its “person of the year” early, and give it to the people of Minneapolis. But lo and behold, there is now a movement underfoot by the editors of The Nation to give a Nobel Peace Prize to the city of Minneapolis and its people!*

Another bit of good news is the completion of the Buddhist monks’ 108-day, 2300-mile walking pilgrimage for Peace that recently ended in Washington D.C.

In the words of the Venerable Ratanaguna about the large crowd who gathered to meet the monks: This is an assembly made up of people of all races and cultures without distinctions of faith or religion. People from all walks of life coming together here in the spirit of unity, love, empathy, and understanding.**

The monks were invited to make one more stop after the Lincoln Memorial: Lt. Governor Miller Welcomes Theravada Buddhist Monks to the Maryland State House. Photo by Maryland GovPics. Wikimedia Commons.

February 17, 2025: Joel Primack: The Passing of a Special Man and Scientist (MF)

Recently, Matthew attended a Celebration of Life for physicist and cosmologist Joel Primack. He and his wife, Nancy Abrams, co-authored two very important books: The View From the Center of the Universe, and The New Universe and the Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World.

During the celebration, he was honored for his support of women scientists and students, as well as his major role in co-founding the Union of Concerned Scientists, which resisted the Vietnam War.***

One of the things Matthew shared in his remarks was the following quotation from Aquinas: The most excellent thing in the universe is not the human. The most excellent thing in the universe is the universe itself, and all beings are here to serve the universe.

February 18, 2025: Joel Primack Eulogy, continued (MF)

We continue with more excerpts from Matthew’s eulogy of Joel Primack: Geologian Thomas Berry used to say, “We will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves as a revelatory experience of that numinous presence whence all things come into being. Indeed, the universe is the primary sacred reality.…”

In their book on cosmology and society, Joel and Nancy instruct us to “think cosmically, but act globally.” They call for a “purified religion” that does not live in the past, but honors the meaning of the universe and our special place in it.

Joel was humble, close to the earth… as well as close to the stars…. Joel taught us about our kinship to the stars and our origins and sacred relationship to Father Sky, Mother Earth and one another. What an extraordinary man!

What is the new cosmological picture of the universe? – Joel R. Primack

“What is the new cosmological picture of the universe? – Joel R. Primack” Video by Science and Nonduality

February 19, 2026: Not Only Epstein, But MAGA’s EPA Is Now Victimizing Children (MF)

The Epstein files reveal that billionaires and other powerful men the world over have been involved in abusing over 1200 women and children. UN experts say we are talking about crimes against humanity.****

Meanwhile, there are also efforts to destroy and dismantle laws and regulations passed to defend Mother Earth from poisons in our air, soil, and waters. This is another form of attack which effects our children, as well as future generations.

Part of the strategy of Project 2025 has been to so flood the news with bad news every day that chaos becomes the name of the game. This has resulted in few front page headlines about the desecration of Mother Earth.

One cannot imagine a more thorough rejection of Pope Francis’s call for “care for our common home” in his groundbreaking encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Sí.”

February 20, 2026: Wisdom from Adam Bucko: The Image of God as Defiant Language (AB)

(Matthew welcomes guest writer Fr. Adam Bucko for today’s and tomorrow’s DM. He is the author of Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide: Lessons in Engaged Contemplation.)

Adam tells us that he was co-facilitating a retreat for homeless youth in upstate New York. He says: A young girl…approached me….Painful things from her past were beginning to surface….

Seeing her pain…I encouraged her to go for a walk around the chapel and find three objects in nature that represented some of what she was feeling.…One of (her) objects was a flower that had not yet bloomed. I suggested that (she) take her…objects into the chapel and spend some time in prayer and meditation.…Some time later, I noticed her…running toward me with a big smile…. (She said) “I was holding (the blossom) in my hands while praying with my eyes closed, and I felt something. I felt like all those struggles I was feeling but could not express in words just dissolved, and there was this sense of relief and peace.

When I opened my eyes, I was shocked. The flower I had been holding opened and bloomed while I was praying.”

A young girl with blossom. Photo by Trésor Kande on Unsplash

February 21, 2026: Adam Bucko on Holiness & The Image & Likeness of God, continued (AB)

(By Father Adam Bucko.) Howard Thurman understood both how fragile and how powerful is the truth that the human being is made in God’s image and likeness.

Thurman wrote and taught during a time of segregation and racial terror. He knew that when the world tries to define you as less than human, you must return again and again to that inward altar, where your dignity is anchored in God and not in the approval of the powerful.

Adam quotes Matthew: We see such courage and holiness playing out in the streets of Minneapolis these days by ordinary citizens, at least two of whom have been murdered and martyred by ICE, which is our government at work.

Saints act on their moral outrage. Says Adam: Holiness is not some kind of abstract perfection. It is conscience made public. It is defiant language.*****

* The Editors, “Help Minneapolis Get a Nobel Peace Prize,”The Nation, February 12, 2026.

** Meghan Cook, “Buddhist monks walked 108 days straight from Texas to DC in a walk for Peace,” MSN, February 13, 2026.

***Kenneth Chang, “Joel Primack, Physicist Who Helped Explain the Cosmos, Dies at 80” New York Times, January 17, 2026

****”Epstein files suggest acts that may amount to crimes against humanity, say UN experts” Reuters, on The Guardian, February 17, 2026

*****Adam Bucko, “To Be Human is to Revolt Against Injustice,” in Contemplative Witness with Adam Bucko, February 13, 2026.

Banner image: “Protect what You Love.” Sign at a protest in suburban Pennsylvania. Photo by Cynthia Greb is used with pemission.