Resurrection day. You can't keep a good guy or the message that "we're doing it wrong" down. The idea didn't die. It took a few days off. Let the bullies think they were still winning. Let everyone let out a sigh of relief only to have it all come spring apart when the grave was open and empty.
There's so much flying around here today. The sightings of people dressed to the nines. Girls in their fanciest new outfits with new shoes and hats that will be like wedding attire...worn once and then sentenced to the Goodwill or the dress-up box. Next week they'll be back in Sunday school in normal "school clothes". It's pretty much the same with the boys except that their trousers and shoes are from their regular wardrobe. The dress shirts, vest, jackets and ties will be hung in the back for the closet to wear to Cousin Sally's wedding, Spring concert at school or grandma's funeral. Yes, I participated in this clothing ritual even as an adult but why? What does it have to do with the "Jesus narrative". Whether a great storybook prophet/villain/hero or a real person...even the people who came after the Ascension were the working poor. They also didn't go to "church" and not just once a week. They lived in fellowship 24/7. They got together for impromptu meals, scripture readings and prayers. So the dress up thing came a long time later and bears the markings of a "Spring celebration". Nothing to do with Jesus but a pagan or even secular celebration of the change of seasons.
Of course most people, especially Christians, know that the other stars of the day have nothing to do with resurrection and are totally taken from pagan tradition. The whole bunny, chicks, ducklings and chocolate thing? Please fundies stop losing your shit over others calling this part of the holiday for what it is-a retail marketing blitz.
Other things have passed through my spirit this weekend but to put them here pulls me down. All I'll say after seeing a Facebook called "Jesus please save America"... is maybe "he" is trying but you're not liking the answer or are so controlled you won't tap into it. Read the Jesus narrative. Humility, justice, truth, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, community. He's not going to ride in on a big horse, with guns ablaze handing out weapons to you all and blowing up all the people you don't like. He's calling out the lies, the avarice and greed that is in control of humanity. He is revealing the poverty not only of your neighbors in regards to food, water, clothing and shelter. He's revealing the poverty of your soul-your laziness, selfishness, intolerance. You starve you mind of real knowledge. You starve your heart with lack of empathy. You look for a Jesus who comes riding on a giant steam roller that will destroy your "enemies". The problem is, your enemies are his friends-the peacemakers, the meek, the opposed, the poor, the compassionate, the truthful and those seeking justice. Do you just keep crucifying him hoping someone different is going to walk out of that tomb?
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Of time, flight, wisdom and divinity
For those of you who read this blog but are not aware of the other rooms where I write all over and hang pictures on the wall, you will probably do better understanding this post if you take a look in The Tribes of Art. There you will find some of my inspirers, spirit guides, conspirators and cohorts in crime. Yesterday's walk included elements shared with me by my friends William and Hans. For Sir William, my angel of music, it was about angels and the music of the Earth and of the Universe. Actually the language of the Infinite is creaks and groans, squeaks and moans, whines and cries and the grating of stone. If you mash that all together you will discover the most primal of music. William takes the heartbeats of the planets, the stars and space beaten on multiheaded drums and mixes them with the deep harmonicas pulled and plucked from the strings of harps, violins and guitars. Validation of this revelation came in the discovery of a small, pure white feather along the labyrinth path. I choose to believe that a molting angel walk by.
Then there were all the other pieces contributed by The Bee. Lately he's been focusing on feathers. For him, it is his family heritage. For me it was about rising above all the things and people seeking to pull me down and put me under their weights. He's also back on the key theme. He has unlocked a door in his life that has allowed for healing of old wounds. All through the Lenten season and even before I've learned that other people's keys are not mine. They have opened doors that I have been invited to walk through.
Keys also wind clocks and machines. They tune instruments. Hans has captured wisdom in due time with brush and pencil. Owls
and clocks blend together on canvas and paper. I drive off to walk, to meditate and as I drive I think about time and about the understanding that my spiritual goes from Vernal Equinox to Vernal Equinox. My year dies as the snow that has congealed into dirt and gravel coated masses of ice melts away to reveal gray-green grass, and dead leaves and mud. As the roadbeds fissure into ruts and potholes. As the drapes become weighted down with winter's dust and the smell of stuffiness, longing to be washed and hung outside on the line. Even though daylight began to stretch in December to become equal in March, until it gets there and then sunlight outlasts the night my new year has not begun. The old one is still fading away. My clock is winding down. And that was when it hit me. How to meditate this year's walk. Finish running the time out on the walk in. Let the gears slow to a complete STOP. Let the last grains of sand fall through the narrow opening and joint rest in the bottom of the glass.
Walking in I listened to William and the Harp on my iPod. I physically felt my body and mind unwind. I reviewed the past year and all that I had learned. I had seen the Darkness on more than one level, face to face. I had physically connected with some of my spirit family. I had danced with sylphs, My children had taught me how to laugh again and we were family under one roof again for a short period. I had experienced my mother moving into the last phases of life and teaching myself to be less selfish, spending time with her helping her hold onto as many memories as possible, even ones as simple as what day it is. Being stabbed in the back and having the knife twisted. Learning that what looked like the door that would get me away from that situation was not. Coming back around to my resolve to get the hell out of there. Being invited to a gathering of the tribe. Learning that I have a responsibility to them and to tell their stories even if only for those who come behind us. Unwinding, completely empty as I reached the center...and sat.
I put my root chakra into the ground to draw nourishment. I opened my heart chakra, letting it break. Letting love out, letting it in. I opened my mind to wisdom that would help to rewind me. I reclaimed by chi for the Light Spirits from the Darkness that twists my gut in knots. The white fire must also burn inside. I released my dragon so she could stretch and bask in the sun for a while. I felt the voices of the wind and the birds. Then I walked out, winding the clock as I went. The piece playing on my 'pod included many metal sounds, gears moving, weights colliding. Not only was a clock being wound, a large one, one that requires a person to grasp the chain and ride the weight to the bottom of the tower but a machine with all of the dragon army being cogs and gears, all manner of parts. The machine is not complete. Others will be added as we work toward the New Age. Progress. Moving forward. As my feet on the path, moving through to something different, something better. Pushing through that which has tried to hold us back for too long. I even danced a little. I felt like and productive.
When I reached the exit I was fully wound. The batteries completely charged. I turned to the labyrinth to say final thanks and to ask the Fates to wipe it clean for the next person to come and find their enlightenment. ..and that's when I saw it. I've been walking this particular path for 4 years now but as with all things...in their own time (oh there's that pesky clock reference again)...the center of this path is a keyhole. Every year, I take my key and unlock something new...or old but to find new inspiration, wisdom or understanding whose time had not come until then.
Clocks and feather, owls and harps, angels and ravens and keys, locks and pens. I take all of this into the tomb and sit quietly with it until tomorrow morning when the Spirit rolls the stone back and lets the sun shine on it again. Once again "they" try to kill it. Once again, we of the Light, die but with the knowledge that we will rise again much to "their" chagrin bringing back justice, truth, compassion, joy, peace and love. We shine our lights on them and they scurry from it. But today is the day of the tomb. We have passed through Sheol and now sleep peacefully, resting our very souls. Tomorrow with clocks fully wound we will walk out and continue this journey. Blessed are the peacemakers, the humble, the poor, the artists, the laborers, the parents, all who are of the Light and work to move humanity forward into the Great Light.
Friday, March 29, 2013
The end of my spirit year
Hi. I know. You thought I forgot you. No. Just got really busy with other things. Plus this blog seemed to have lost its way a bit. But now I have things to say. Important things. Enlightened things. Scary things. Subversive things. Big things. Little things. Just things.
Today was Maundy Thursday. Back when I followed Christian doctrine I would look forward to going to church on this night. Where some people think Christmas eve is the holiest of nights I always found Tenebrae very mystical. I took communion for the first time at a Tenebrae service. We were invite into the "upper room" to share Passover with The Prophet and his closest disciples. The ending of worship was a ritual that still speaks to something deep in my spirit...we left the table and went back to our seats in silence. People stripped the altar, a black cloth was put on it. All the lights were turned out and then the candles snuffed. We left the sanctuary in silence.
This is the point where my spiritual year still goes into the tomb. Into that place of mystery. According to the story our hero/villain Jesus goes to commune with the other world and the underworld before his spirit is allowed to reanimate the human body placed on the slab behind the great stone. If he spoke of this experience, either the apostles never recorded it or "the church" has tucked it away along with other gospels and scriptures because they "don't think 'the people' can handle it" which really means that it reveals more of the true story which would weaken their control of 'the people'. But we'll get there in a few paragraphs. For now let me state where I am in my yearly journey through Lent.
As previously mentioned, I walked a mainline Christian path for a long time. It was while still being active in the church that I felt the power of Lent in my life and made it a structured part of my journey. This year I saw that even as a pagan, my spiritual year is different. Most paths' years end in the Fall or Winter. Mine ends with Holy Week and the New Year begins on Easter. Palm Sunday's message of walking into a situation that is dangerous with humble confidence, that last parade before dealing with awful treatment at the hands of your enemies. I find that day usually a positive one. Monday to Thursday is getting my spiritual house in order. Thursday is that last drink and dinner with friends because Friday is the day when everything literally breaks off the walls. Saturday is time for pancakes and keeping old close friends close while I process Friday. Sunday? The Hallelujah chorus! A new year. New life. New Light.
Tonight was a phone conversation with my daughter. Take out food and a cheap rose while watching my favorite shows. I conversed with a videographer friend in L.A. and a music friend in Phoenix. All three people I would so sit down with over wine or beer, chips and dip, sushi. Now I'm sitting in the quiet. It's not dark but it's quiet. My altars are dark. No candles burning. I'll go to the garden to pray before bed.
Tomorrow is a ritual I started at least 6 years ago. I walk a labyrinth. I had walked before in a number of places and found it to be one of my best meditation tools. So when I learned that another Congregational Church up the road a ways was doing a Lenten labyrinth in their parish hall, I went with my son. It was so great. They used small bottles of water to make the path. There were small worship stations around the room that were all water themed. I had a good walk. I came away calmed, ready to enter the new year peacefully. The next year their labyrinth was outside with the path created with heavy rope. I felt like I came out with more questions than I went in with. The next year the church didn't do one so I had to search for some place to walk. I was going to drive up to a retreat center in Litchfield but it felt like such a waste of gas for a 30-45 minute walk. I found one much closer to home. It's outside and permanent and also at a Congregational church. I've been going there for 3 years now. This year I'm going back to the church I started at. It's inside and I just feel like I need to walk around in the tomb a bit even though things have been gearing up to get pretty intense. I feel like inside I can keep my own spiritual shit together to handle whatever The Fates throw at me. I also need those little worship stations because I know I'm going to have to walk at least twice.
12/21/12 marked the beginning of the New Era or New Age. No you didn't notice any big change. There wasn't one. Not on the surface at least. You saw visible changes leading up to it. Those of the Old Regime have been drawing the line between Darkness and Light deeper and deeper, especially over the past decade until it became a chasm. Some of you will still be able to make it across when you wake up and realize your not on your correct side. Some of you think you are Light Warriors but you're really not. Some are spies for the Darkness. Some don't have the real courage to put your money, bodies and minds where your mouths are. Then there are those who are over on the other side. You believed the lies. You tried to "be good" but your true self has been trying to beat itself out of your and that Light is just screaming to get out and come over to this side and fight, or heal, or feed, or educate or bury with the rest of us. You were kind of like Dorothy, just wandering through the poppies cuz they were pretty and never saw the trap coming. The Darkness knew you were a bright Light to contend with and tried to take you out of the game. If it was lucky you'd come to and be one of them.
What started on the Solstice was labor. Very early stages. We are building up the muscles so we are really strong when hard labor sets in and as one we start to push and birth this New Age of wisdom, compassion, justice, truth, and joy which will culminate in peace and love. We are working on being more confident in our true, unique, free thinking selves. We are worshipping by showing The Great Spirit that we have broken from the flock of hive-minded sheeple to be who each of us was individually created to be. Yes, we will still live or visit in community. We may stay with a tribe. But that tribe fully functions because each member has their own skill and talent. It works because we are each different not because we are all the same.
Some "christian" clergy jerk post a red and pink division symbol with a reference to the book of Luke and Jesus' statement about dividing people. I love how people who claim to follow this prophet's teachings interpret that to mean that they are "better than", to be sequestered from, to judge others. Even I was raised with that statement out of context. If fact I didn't really get it till yesterday. Here's the thing. Biblical Jesus (there are no historic records that he actually existed) was an early version of Robin Hood. No, he didn't steal but he did ask people for things and then gave them away. The point is is that he is this villain/hero. Jesus was not popular with the religious hierarchy. He was telling off the clergy at his bar mitzvah. Where the Pharisees and the Sadducees had done a great job of making up a gajillion rules that not even the best Jew could live up to, therefore having great control over the people, JC comes along and says "One rule-love your neighbor as yourself". A spin on the Golden Rule...treat folks the way you want to be treated. Allow me to interject here that you must go to YouTube and search "Kid President" and listen to his version..."treat everyone like it's their birthday". Kid President is right. If we did that the world would be awesome and in the New Era that's how it will be. But back to our story about villain/hero Jesus. The locals love this guy cuz he is taking ten tons of spiritual weight and legalistic monkeys off their backs. BE NICE TO EVERYONE EVEN IF IT'S SOMEONE THE RABBI SAYS YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LIKE...cuz their the wrong color, from a different town, worship a different god or have more or less money than you. Remember that who story about the Samaritan. The point of that story to the townsfolk he was telling it to was that Jews and Samaritans didn't get along, like at all. So both the beat up Jew, who by the way gets passed over by a rabbi and a Levite...clergy and lawyer of his own race and religion, and the Samaritan have to give a lot of ground for the whole story to go down the way it did. Jesus was such a hippie...people lived in kinds of communes around him. He crashed on whatever empty couch he could find. He probably had some pretty nasty dreds. He was unemployed and he was the pied piper dude who was setting people free. Of course they followed him. THAT pissed off both the Jewish politicians and religious leaders along with the Romans who "owned" Israel. The thing is with "controllers" they can't have real alphas around to screw up their game plan. They either have to depose them or dispose of them. Jesus got dealt the dispose of card.
A friend sent me an email earlier this week and short paragraph generated most of that last paragraph and will fit into other things I will write later today and tomorrow. He told me how his 5 year old asked him "Daddy, why did Jesus have to die?". He didn't give it as second thought and answered, "Politics". In that one word answer is some very heavy revelation and will put more scripture and society and culture of the Old Era in very clear perspective. I'll continue with that in my next post. Blessings. May these days be filled with blessings for all.
Today was Maundy Thursday. Back when I followed Christian doctrine I would look forward to going to church on this night. Where some people think Christmas eve is the holiest of nights I always found Tenebrae very mystical. I took communion for the first time at a Tenebrae service. We were invite into the "upper room" to share Passover with The Prophet and his closest disciples. The ending of worship was a ritual that still speaks to something deep in my spirit...we left the table and went back to our seats in silence. People stripped the altar, a black cloth was put on it. All the lights were turned out and then the candles snuffed. We left the sanctuary in silence.
This is the point where my spiritual year still goes into the tomb. Into that place of mystery. According to the story our hero/villain Jesus goes to commune with the other world and the underworld before his spirit is allowed to reanimate the human body placed on the slab behind the great stone. If he spoke of this experience, either the apostles never recorded it or "the church" has tucked it away along with other gospels and scriptures because they "don't think 'the people' can handle it" which really means that it reveals more of the true story which would weaken their control of 'the people'. But we'll get there in a few paragraphs. For now let me state where I am in my yearly journey through Lent.
As previously mentioned, I walked a mainline Christian path for a long time. It was while still being active in the church that I felt the power of Lent in my life and made it a structured part of my journey. This year I saw that even as a pagan, my spiritual year is different. Most paths' years end in the Fall or Winter. Mine ends with Holy Week and the New Year begins on Easter. Palm Sunday's message of walking into a situation that is dangerous with humble confidence, that last parade before dealing with awful treatment at the hands of your enemies. I find that day usually a positive one. Monday to Thursday is getting my spiritual house in order. Thursday is that last drink and dinner with friends because Friday is the day when everything literally breaks off the walls. Saturday is time for pancakes and keeping old close friends close while I process Friday. Sunday? The Hallelujah chorus! A new year. New life. New Light.
Tonight was a phone conversation with my daughter. Take out food and a cheap rose while watching my favorite shows. I conversed with a videographer friend in L.A. and a music friend in Phoenix. All three people I would so sit down with over wine or beer, chips and dip, sushi. Now I'm sitting in the quiet. It's not dark but it's quiet. My altars are dark. No candles burning. I'll go to the garden to pray before bed.
Tomorrow is a ritual I started at least 6 years ago. I walk a labyrinth. I had walked before in a number of places and found it to be one of my best meditation tools. So when I learned that another Congregational Church up the road a ways was doing a Lenten labyrinth in their parish hall, I went with my son. It was so great. They used small bottles of water to make the path. There were small worship stations around the room that were all water themed. I had a good walk. I came away calmed, ready to enter the new year peacefully. The next year their labyrinth was outside with the path created with heavy rope. I felt like I came out with more questions than I went in with. The next year the church didn't do one so I had to search for some place to walk. I was going to drive up to a retreat center in Litchfield but it felt like such a waste of gas for a 30-45 minute walk. I found one much closer to home. It's outside and permanent and also at a Congregational church. I've been going there for 3 years now. This year I'm going back to the church I started at. It's inside and I just feel like I need to walk around in the tomb a bit even though things have been gearing up to get pretty intense. I feel like inside I can keep my own spiritual shit together to handle whatever The Fates throw at me. I also need those little worship stations because I know I'm going to have to walk at least twice.
12/21/12 marked the beginning of the New Era or New Age. No you didn't notice any big change. There wasn't one. Not on the surface at least. You saw visible changes leading up to it. Those of the Old Regime have been drawing the line between Darkness and Light deeper and deeper, especially over the past decade until it became a chasm. Some of you will still be able to make it across when you wake up and realize your not on your correct side. Some of you think you are Light Warriors but you're really not. Some are spies for the Darkness. Some don't have the real courage to put your money, bodies and minds where your mouths are. Then there are those who are over on the other side. You believed the lies. You tried to "be good" but your true self has been trying to beat itself out of your and that Light is just screaming to get out and come over to this side and fight, or heal, or feed, or educate or bury with the rest of us. You were kind of like Dorothy, just wandering through the poppies cuz they were pretty and never saw the trap coming. The Darkness knew you were a bright Light to contend with and tried to take you out of the game. If it was lucky you'd come to and be one of them.
What started on the Solstice was labor. Very early stages. We are building up the muscles so we are really strong when hard labor sets in and as one we start to push and birth this New Age of wisdom, compassion, justice, truth, and joy which will culminate in peace and love. We are working on being more confident in our true, unique, free thinking selves. We are worshipping by showing The Great Spirit that we have broken from the flock of hive-minded sheeple to be who each of us was individually created to be. Yes, we will still live or visit in community. We may stay with a tribe. But that tribe fully functions because each member has their own skill and talent. It works because we are each different not because we are all the same.
Some "christian" clergy jerk post a red and pink division symbol with a reference to the book of Luke and Jesus' statement about dividing people. I love how people who claim to follow this prophet's teachings interpret that to mean that they are "better than", to be sequestered from, to judge others. Even I was raised with that statement out of context. If fact I didn't really get it till yesterday. Here's the thing. Biblical Jesus (there are no historic records that he actually existed) was an early version of Robin Hood. No, he didn't steal but he did ask people for things and then gave them away. The point is is that he is this villain/hero. Jesus was not popular with the religious hierarchy. He was telling off the clergy at his bar mitzvah. Where the Pharisees and the Sadducees had done a great job of making up a gajillion rules that not even the best Jew could live up to, therefore having great control over the people, JC comes along and says "One rule-love your neighbor as yourself". A spin on the Golden Rule...treat folks the way you want to be treated. Allow me to interject here that you must go to YouTube and search "Kid President" and listen to his version..."treat everyone like it's their birthday". Kid President is right. If we did that the world would be awesome and in the New Era that's how it will be. But back to our story about villain/hero Jesus. The locals love this guy cuz he is taking ten tons of spiritual weight and legalistic monkeys off their backs. BE NICE TO EVERYONE EVEN IF IT'S SOMEONE THE RABBI SAYS YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LIKE...cuz their the wrong color, from a different town, worship a different god or have more or less money than you. Remember that who story about the Samaritan. The point of that story to the townsfolk he was telling it to was that Jews and Samaritans didn't get along, like at all. So both the beat up Jew, who by the way gets passed over by a rabbi and a Levite...clergy and lawyer of his own race and religion, and the Samaritan have to give a lot of ground for the whole story to go down the way it did. Jesus was such a hippie...people lived in kinds of communes around him. He crashed on whatever empty couch he could find. He probably had some pretty nasty dreds. He was unemployed and he was the pied piper dude who was setting people free. Of course they followed him. THAT pissed off both the Jewish politicians and religious leaders along with the Romans who "owned" Israel. The thing is with "controllers" they can't have real alphas around to screw up their game plan. They either have to depose them or dispose of them. Jesus got dealt the dispose of card.
A friend sent me an email earlier this week and short paragraph generated most of that last paragraph and will fit into other things I will write later today and tomorrow. He told me how his 5 year old asked him "Daddy, why did Jesus have to die?". He didn't give it as second thought and answered, "Politics". In that one word answer is some very heavy revelation and will put more scripture and society and culture of the Old Era in very clear perspective. I'll continue with that in my next post. Blessings. May these days be filled with blessings for all.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
A beautiful light
I know it's hard to think about beauty right now. Especially for those of us who live so close to the latest ugliness. We, these same folks also have connections to 9-11 being less than an hour and a half from the city.
As I started to put this post together in my head, I thought, "Where do I start?". I can tell you that very beautiful things started coming into my life about 9 years ago when the art came back into this house. But could I honestly tell you that in the twenty years of living in a wasteland that there was no beauty at all? No, I can't say that. Out of 9-11 came the trip to Nightwatch. I saw the inside and outside of one of the most stunning edifices dedicated to the worship of the Divine, St. John's Cathedral in NY. There I met young people and their chaperons from Newtown and Sandy Hook. One dad was an EMT who had been place on-call after 9-11 as all the lower Fairfield County emergency service people had been sent to Manhattan. Together we learned songs, shared the Holy Eucharist and wandered the gardens. In the daylight we watched the residents of Harlem sit on the stoop and talk over coffee, sweep their sidewalks and drink in the unusual quiet of the city. That was 2001.
In 1984 and again in 1985, I was a part of the most beautiful process the Goddess designed, childbirth. My beautiful babies are still beautiful. So many beautiful moments of their lives thus far; graduations, concerts, plays, snowboarding, dancing, writing, and laughter. Yes, laughter is such a gorgeous medium we can create with. And there was the natural art of sunrises, sunsets, waves at the beaches in NJ and FL, flowers naturally growing in some places and planted in others. To this day I still look forward to the blooming of my Bleeding Heart.
Beauty versus ugly. Another aspect of the line that has been drawn deeper and deep over the last thirty years. It is the same people on either side of the line no matter what parameters you give it. In this case most have chosen their side but there are also those who have been forced to the ugly side. The powerful wish to maintain the power and the status quo. It has gotten progressively harder, mainly due to this creation that I am writing on...computers. Not the first time man has created something that had ramifications that would backfire on the world. But this time the added feature would benefit man rather than destroy him like the unleashing of the atom. Those born with a natural affinity for numbers would decide once they figured out how to make the box "think", to teach it how to communicate with other boxes and the humans operating them. Through this communication explosion we would learn that there were others out there who also had a knack for numbers. Some would use the force for what has been labeled "evil" but hackers aren't bad. They are pointing out the weaknesses of the system. They also shut down the "powerful". Yes, some of us feel the backlash when our home computers get viruses but we're not the ones hackers are after. We're collateral damage and it is damage I will accept as I am 1) still alive after the fact and can buy a new hard-drive while bitching about losing photos, blog posts, etc. that I was too dumb or lazy to remember to back-up.
It is all this communication and hacking that has the Powerful scared and why they have been working overtime to keep "Us" in check. It's a hard job that they've been at since the beginning of time. They know that one day we would figure out how many more of the us there are than of the them. We can overpower them very easily if we all got together and made the plan. We're doing that now. And what does the them have to do to slow us down? Shut down the internet. In the Middle East, the rebels opted for communication they knew...social networks. Yes, governments shut them down but not until after the damage was done. The rebels have been winning in confrontation after confrontation and it is because the mainly young people in their ranks are so communication savvy.
Another form of communication that is gaining momentum is the arts. There is an emergence of street painters, underground musicians and performers and self-publishing writers. They are on the side of beauty for sure and have changed my life drastically for the better. But never forget, all the arts are forms of communication and they speak of the human condition, spirituality and politics. One of my favorite artists is Mear One. He is not a favorite of bankers, corporate fat cats or politicians. He is telling a story of stark truth and calling for rebellion in stunning paintings.
Back to those on the "Ugly" side not there of their own volition but due to the control process. In the 60's and 70's the psych industry was born. All of the sudden a damn broke allowing free speech about mental health. But that opened a floodgate that in the end seems to have done more harm than good. The "warm fuzzies" of "I'm OK-You're OK" were painted thickly over the "cold pricklies" of transactional analysis so we missed the fact that governments and corporations bought into "set them free. We can provide chronically anti-social, emotionally and/or mentally dysfunctional people a "normal" life through the wonderful world of medication. Except that in the bug bin, there were medical personnel who insured that this folks TOOK those meds regularly. They could control the environment so these unfortunate folks didn't end up in a room in a boarding house, unemployed, hungry, confused and depressed to the point that not only did they try to take their own life but they thought fire would be a great form of suicide and almost burned the boarding house to the ground. Mental institutions, no matter how grizzly have been a part of human history for a long time and it's because fellow humans recognized that some people just cannot function in the real world. Today we'd allow the Marquis d'Sade to wander the streets of Manhattan and assume he had taken his medication and did not have an iron maiden in the basement of his apartment building then be horrified when we learned about all the bodies he'd been dumping in the East River. At that point we would send the Marquis to a regular prison because no one can commit him to Bellevue for life. For those who don't know, most state facilities had a separate ward for the "criminally insane". These folks were not put in the regular prison population because doctors knew that that was not safe for other prisoners or prison personnel. Now we put people who would have resided quietly in facility where they had a pleasant room, activities and monitoring by trained professionals into a prison where anything could set them off, where they are being punished for being sick...they could be beautiful but the system has made them ugly.
Even the Goddess is feeling less than beautiful since Friday. The skies here have been gray. The temperature has hovered in the mid-40's. I can't light my Yule candles outside due to the rain. The ugly has sucked the joy out of Yule, Christmas and Hanukkah here. No, "god" did not call those children or the adults home. It wasn't "their time". One little girl was a cancer survivor. Mother had more plans for that child. No this was a cold act of the Darkness. It is the ugly trying to control the beautiful with fear...the ugly's greatest weapon. What's really scary to we Children of the Light is that there are a lot of uglies who believe they are the beautiful and that they speak the message of The Light. They have deceived many of the beautiful to their camp. I feel kind of bad when they find out they were working for the wrong side. It will be too late. They will be too far gone to join our side. They will die ugly on so many levels.
The good news is that the beautiful will win. When the dust settles and the smoke clears we will join together where ever we ended up, covered in dirts, bleeding and exhausted and we will watch the sunrise and be filled with the beauty of Mother's natural art. The purest art. The most original art. Some of us, who still have voices will sing or chant. Some will clap out a beat. We along with the fauna will make a joyful noise. We will welcome the Beautiful Age. But for now we must stay strong and look hard for the tiny bits of Light especially leading up to the Convergence. Turn off the TV and the radio. Stay away from "news" websites. Use you computer or your phone to talk to friends. Find the Light and the Beauty. Treasure a snowflake if it falls where you are. Wade knee-deep into the ocean, raise your arms and praise Mother and Father if you are in warmer climates. Reach out with your spirit and find the Light. Stand strong. BE BEAUTIFUL.
As I started to put this post together in my head, I thought, "Where do I start?". I can tell you that very beautiful things started coming into my life about 9 years ago when the art came back into this house. But could I honestly tell you that in the twenty years of living in a wasteland that there was no beauty at all? No, I can't say that. Out of 9-11 came the trip to Nightwatch. I saw the inside and outside of one of the most stunning edifices dedicated to the worship of the Divine, St. John's Cathedral in NY. There I met young people and their chaperons from Newtown and Sandy Hook. One dad was an EMT who had been place on-call after 9-11 as all the lower Fairfield County emergency service people had been sent to Manhattan. Together we learned songs, shared the Holy Eucharist and wandered the gardens. In the daylight we watched the residents of Harlem sit on the stoop and talk over coffee, sweep their sidewalks and drink in the unusual quiet of the city. That was 2001.
In 1984 and again in 1985, I was a part of the most beautiful process the Goddess designed, childbirth. My beautiful babies are still beautiful. So many beautiful moments of their lives thus far; graduations, concerts, plays, snowboarding, dancing, writing, and laughter. Yes, laughter is such a gorgeous medium we can create with. And there was the natural art of sunrises, sunsets, waves at the beaches in NJ and FL, flowers naturally growing in some places and planted in others. To this day I still look forward to the blooming of my Bleeding Heart.
Beauty versus ugly. Another aspect of the line that has been drawn deeper and deep over the last thirty years. It is the same people on either side of the line no matter what parameters you give it. In this case most have chosen their side but there are also those who have been forced to the ugly side. The powerful wish to maintain the power and the status quo. It has gotten progressively harder, mainly due to this creation that I am writing on...computers. Not the first time man has created something that had ramifications that would backfire on the world. But this time the added feature would benefit man rather than destroy him like the unleashing of the atom. Those born with a natural affinity for numbers would decide once they figured out how to make the box "think", to teach it how to communicate with other boxes and the humans operating them. Through this communication explosion we would learn that there were others out there who also had a knack for numbers. Some would use the force for what has been labeled "evil" but hackers aren't bad. They are pointing out the weaknesses of the system. They also shut down the "powerful". Yes, some of us feel the backlash when our home computers get viruses but we're not the ones hackers are after. We're collateral damage and it is damage I will accept as I am 1) still alive after the fact and can buy a new hard-drive while bitching about losing photos, blog posts, etc. that I was too dumb or lazy to remember to back-up.
It is all this communication and hacking that has the Powerful scared and why they have been working overtime to keep "Us" in check. It's a hard job that they've been at since the beginning of time. They know that one day we would figure out how many more of the us there are than of the them. We can overpower them very easily if we all got together and made the plan. We're doing that now. And what does the them have to do to slow us down? Shut down the internet. In the Middle East, the rebels opted for communication they knew...social networks. Yes, governments shut them down but not until after the damage was done. The rebels have been winning in confrontation after confrontation and it is because the mainly young people in their ranks are so communication savvy.
Another form of communication that is gaining momentum is the arts. There is an emergence of street painters, underground musicians and performers and self-publishing writers. They are on the side of beauty for sure and have changed my life drastically for the better. But never forget, all the arts are forms of communication and they speak of the human condition, spirituality and politics. One of my favorite artists is Mear One. He is not a favorite of bankers, corporate fat cats or politicians. He is telling a story of stark truth and calling for rebellion in stunning paintings.
Back to those on the "Ugly" side not there of their own volition but due to the control process. In the 60's and 70's the psych industry was born. All of the sudden a damn broke allowing free speech about mental health. But that opened a floodgate that in the end seems to have done more harm than good. The "warm fuzzies" of "I'm OK-You're OK" were painted thickly over the "cold pricklies" of transactional analysis so we missed the fact that governments and corporations bought into "set them free. We can provide chronically anti-social, emotionally and/or mentally dysfunctional people a "normal" life through the wonderful world of medication. Except that in the bug bin, there were medical personnel who insured that this folks TOOK those meds regularly. They could control the environment so these unfortunate folks didn't end up in a room in a boarding house, unemployed, hungry, confused and depressed to the point that not only did they try to take their own life but they thought fire would be a great form of suicide and almost burned the boarding house to the ground. Mental institutions, no matter how grizzly have been a part of human history for a long time and it's because fellow humans recognized that some people just cannot function in the real world. Today we'd allow the Marquis d'Sade to wander the streets of Manhattan and assume he had taken his medication and did not have an iron maiden in the basement of his apartment building then be horrified when we learned about all the bodies he'd been dumping in the East River. At that point we would send the Marquis to a regular prison because no one can commit him to Bellevue for life. For those who don't know, most state facilities had a separate ward for the "criminally insane". These folks were not put in the regular prison population because doctors knew that that was not safe for other prisoners or prison personnel. Now we put people who would have resided quietly in facility where they had a pleasant room, activities and monitoring by trained professionals into a prison where anything could set them off, where they are being punished for being sick...they could be beautiful but the system has made them ugly.
Even the Goddess is feeling less than beautiful since Friday. The skies here have been gray. The temperature has hovered in the mid-40's. I can't light my Yule candles outside due to the rain. The ugly has sucked the joy out of Yule, Christmas and Hanukkah here. No, "god" did not call those children or the adults home. It wasn't "their time". One little girl was a cancer survivor. Mother had more plans for that child. No this was a cold act of the Darkness. It is the ugly trying to control the beautiful with fear...the ugly's greatest weapon. What's really scary to we Children of the Light is that there are a lot of uglies who believe they are the beautiful and that they speak the message of The Light. They have deceived many of the beautiful to their camp. I feel kind of bad when they find out they were working for the wrong side. It will be too late. They will be too far gone to join our side. They will die ugly on so many levels.
The good news is that the beautiful will win. When the dust settles and the smoke clears we will join together where ever we ended up, covered in dirts, bleeding and exhausted and we will watch the sunrise and be filled with the beauty of Mother's natural art. The purest art. The most original art. Some of us, who still have voices will sing or chant. Some will clap out a beat. We along with the fauna will make a joyful noise. We will welcome the Beautiful Age. But for now we must stay strong and look hard for the tiny bits of Light especially leading up to the Convergence. Turn off the TV and the radio. Stay away from "news" websites. Use you computer or your phone to talk to friends. Find the Light and the Beauty. Treasure a snowflake if it falls where you are. Wade knee-deep into the ocean, raise your arms and praise Mother and Father if you are in warmer climates. Reach out with your spirit and find the Light. Stand strong. BE BEAUTIFUL.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
A revelation on organized religion
Let me start with "Yes, I do believe in higher powers". I am spiritual. No longer religious. Today I cast off any remaining "Christian" identification I may have espoused. Why you ask?
Two reasons. The first is merely the revelation that religious text are a fraud manufactured by imperfect humans like myself. Being fallible they wrote numerous errors into these text and never went back and corrected them. Let's start with Mosaic law. In every version of the Old Testament or Torah I have heard or read, the commandment reads "Thou shall not kill". However if one delves further into the Pentateuch there are laws that require people to stone adultresses, murder their insubordinate teens, and roast anyone who does not profess in the Hebrew god. Again, the commandment does not say "Thou shall not kill unless..." But we can go all the way back to Genesis where the writer begins speaks of the creators, plural. However, it is an individual, jealous, bratty, selfish god that takes one male human into a special part of the one of the newly created planets and creates his mate from his rib then teases them with knowledge only to punish them for not wanting to be ignorant their whole lives. Add to this the fact that the first thing they notice with the "knowledge of the Universe" is that they are naked. Really? I'd be more interested in now knowing all the species of trees, animals, origins of the stars AND THE FACT THAT THERE ARE ALREADY OTHER PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET. What!? How can I say that? Have you never finished reading the Cain and Abel story? Cain gets sent to Nod as his punishment and apparently there are other people there. So we must assume then that other divine beings created other human/human-like creatures. Some of these groups were matriarchal, polytheistic and thriving.
The second revelation was brought home to me today. Organized religion is about ORGANIZATION. A defined set of rules to govern its followers. However, mainly in the case of monotheistic, Judaism based doctrine, are based in the theology that man must never look for the spiritual power within himself. He must use "god" as a crutch. That god will never approve of his life choices, his accomplishments or his sacrifices. He will always fall short. Thus a great part of the human population, for hundreds of thousands of years, has indeed fallen short by blindly forfeiting their spiritual wealth and power to shills who sought only to control their fellow man.
A truly spiritual person, who recognizes the divine and sacred spirits of the air, fire, earth and water, treats these elements with respect. They worship the beauty and gifts that have been presented them each day. They give credence to the existence of supernatural beings that keep themselves hidden from mankind for self-preservation. They reach into their core and bonding with the elements, use the strength they have been blessed with to protect, defend, and nurture creation. They do not accept it as "sin" to believe that they can work together with the gods and spirits. However, they usually subscribe to "First do no harm" in all rituals and actions.
So open your mind, heart and soul to the "voices" around you. The Fates reside here with you and wish you to be free. They pray their own prayers that man will stop allowing himself to be bamboozled by those who follow spirits of greed, arrogance, selfishness and manipulation. The spirits of Light long for us to break free and work together in charity, justice, humility and peace. This will result in real love. Agape. Love without lines, walls, moats or rules. A love where we are all the same. A love that requires a hell of a lot of work but one that is possible.
To my friends who subscribe to doctrines that continue to drain you of your personal spiritual life and power, I hope you will awaken some day. I pray you will release the energy within yourself and let it spread over the walls, through the moats and across the lines that were drawn by our predecessors. May you join the dragon army in the coming conflict and fight for peace, justice, and kindness with a humble heart. We all fear that which is new but we must draw on our spiritual courage to overcome the fear and not only ride the wave of change but be the change.
Two reasons. The first is merely the revelation that religious text are a fraud manufactured by imperfect humans like myself. Being fallible they wrote numerous errors into these text and never went back and corrected them. Let's start with Mosaic law. In every version of the Old Testament or Torah I have heard or read, the commandment reads "Thou shall not kill". However if one delves further into the Pentateuch there are laws that require people to stone adultresses, murder their insubordinate teens, and roast anyone who does not profess in the Hebrew god. Again, the commandment does not say "Thou shall not kill unless..." But we can go all the way back to Genesis where the writer begins speaks of the creators, plural. However, it is an individual, jealous, bratty, selfish god that takes one male human into a special part of the one of the newly created planets and creates his mate from his rib then teases them with knowledge only to punish them for not wanting to be ignorant their whole lives. Add to this the fact that the first thing they notice with the "knowledge of the Universe" is that they are naked. Really? I'd be more interested in now knowing all the species of trees, animals, origins of the stars AND THE FACT THAT THERE ARE ALREADY OTHER PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET. What!? How can I say that? Have you never finished reading the Cain and Abel story? Cain gets sent to Nod as his punishment and apparently there are other people there. So we must assume then that other divine beings created other human/human-like creatures. Some of these groups were matriarchal, polytheistic and thriving.
The second revelation was brought home to me today. Organized religion is about ORGANIZATION. A defined set of rules to govern its followers. However, mainly in the case of monotheistic, Judaism based doctrine, are based in the theology that man must never look for the spiritual power within himself. He must use "god" as a crutch. That god will never approve of his life choices, his accomplishments or his sacrifices. He will always fall short. Thus a great part of the human population, for hundreds of thousands of years, has indeed fallen short by blindly forfeiting their spiritual wealth and power to shills who sought only to control their fellow man.
A truly spiritual person, who recognizes the divine and sacred spirits of the air, fire, earth and water, treats these elements with respect. They worship the beauty and gifts that have been presented them each day. They give credence to the existence of supernatural beings that keep themselves hidden from mankind for self-preservation. They reach into their core and bonding with the elements, use the strength they have been blessed with to protect, defend, and nurture creation. They do not accept it as "sin" to believe that they can work together with the gods and spirits. However, they usually subscribe to "First do no harm" in all rituals and actions.
So open your mind, heart and soul to the "voices" around you. The Fates reside here with you and wish you to be free. They pray their own prayers that man will stop allowing himself to be bamboozled by those who follow spirits of greed, arrogance, selfishness and manipulation. The spirits of Light long for us to break free and work together in charity, justice, humility and peace. This will result in real love. Agape. Love without lines, walls, moats or rules. A love where we are all the same. A love that requires a hell of a lot of work but one that is possible.
To my friends who subscribe to doctrines that continue to drain you of your personal spiritual life and power, I hope you will awaken some day. I pray you will release the energy within yourself and let it spread over the walls, through the moats and across the lines that were drawn by our predecessors. May you join the dragon army in the coming conflict and fight for peace, justice, and kindness with a humble heart. We all fear that which is new but we must draw on our spiritual courage to overcome the fear and not only ride the wave of change but be the change.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
It gets better
If you'd told me ten years ago I'd be where I am now, I'd have told you you were full of shit. Actually ten years ago my life was in the midst of it's biggest upheaval in twenty years.
April 21st, 2002: I had bought a house two years earlier. What had started as a "we" project had ended up a "me" project like it always had. I did all the leg work, used my GI loan guarantee. There'd been promises of second jobs and rooms being finished off, blah, blah, blah followed by all the excuses I'd been listening to for 17 years. One year in an old face had popped back into my life and I thought I'd finally found my "happily ever after". 2002 wound up being a year of change and unpleasant surprises. I ended it totally alone and doubly heart broken. I'd survived a meltdown and now had that one quietly settled in college. The other one also fell apart after having two people move out of their life in the same year. I tried to be the stalwart one while crying myself to sleep every night. But like the song says, my soul was ok. I knew I wasn't a failure for not having an s.o. to validate me. I had my kids, my parents and my extended family. I lost friends but it was my own fault. I just couldn't deal. Others were moved out of my life by non-friends who successfully turned my one safe haven into a battlefield and made me and the other kids the enemy. We all left.
Let me go back further though to frame how it got to that point. You don't have to be gay to be bullied, picked-on, put down, etc. In grammar school I was the weird kid. My parents, gods bless them, had no idea how to socialize a child. Fortunately they on had one to ruin...me. I was awkward. My mom dressed me weird. I was smart but I was also very social. The note on my report card was the same every...single...marking period "Kathleen is a good student who could do much better". The rest was, basically, she talks too much. What that boiled down to was trying to get people to like me. Instead it just made them laugh at me more.
Jr High, today known as Middle School, was worse. I'd learned from the few kids that did talk to me that certain things were just not done. I pleaded with my mother not to make me wear white bobby socks. She told me "Don't be ridiculous". I ended up being laughed at more along with being physically accosted over it. Of course, by then, I knew my mother didn't listen which meant she really didn't care. Totally humiliated things went from bad to worse when my dad got transferred and I had to move in the middle of 8th grade. The new town was very different and I was immediately labeled an outcast because I was from a more upscale area (no, my family is middle, middle class). I also was curve-busting on quizzes and tests because I'd had all this material in 6th grade. Add the ever increasing hormone level and the intense pressure to be coupled? Oh, this was getting more fun by the minute.
High school was merely the icing on the cake. No one asked me out. I missed both my proms in an era where there was still a huge stigma attached to it. I was a music geek and a theater nerd. I was still smart and not overly pretty. Looking back though the two sanctuaries I had were the music room and the auditorium. That where we nerds gathered to lick each others wounds. But I still felt the extreme pressure to be coupled.
All this imprinting carried on into my post-high school, early adult life. I became a bit of a slut just to say I had male attention. I did a lot of things I won't talk about here. It all ended very badly when I met my ex. Initially he was a tool to exit another bad situation I'd been in for a few years. However, I mistook the whole mess for love and married him. Then I did what I was made to feel over all those years and procreated. To say I'm the worst candidate for motherhood is an understatement. But I do excel at survival and so the child had a warm, safe place to live, clean clothes that fit, food in their belly and someone to tuck them in with a story every night.
I spent 30 years surviving. Always doing what others made me feel I was supposed to do to be validated as a human female. Thank the Fates my kids set me free from that in 2004. By then I had completed the divorce, owned MY house (which was MY house from the beginning), started paying off credit cards, had the nasty wound created by that old friend start to heal (there's still an ugly scar over my heart today) and was able to sit down and take a breath. When I exhaled I saw and heard really good music coming out of my TV and my kids' iPods. The younger one's guitar and trombone playing were getting better. The older one was halfway to an arts degree. The color had come back into my life.
Since then I've fallen down this amazing rabbit hole full of even more amazing people and experiences. It really does get better no matter how old you are. But you do have to do your part to get there. I could have been okay with just being a music fan and gone to a lot of live shows but it was getting expensive. Also I wanted to help my favorite artists get more recognition but after two years of promoting for free, I kinda wanted some compensation for all that work. I just started following the path of breadcrumbs. Today I have met and had great conversations with big names and the up and coming. I have all kinds of new friends and I'm not done yet. My bucket list is full of wonderful experiences, places and people. I never allow myself to accept "no" from my inner voice. I'm not saying that sometimes I am met with scary challenges but I push through them and then end up very grateful on the other side. Those pushes have, so far, have resulted in some of my most positive moments.
Hang in there. It does get better but you have to take some responsibility. Don't wait for anyone to hand it to you. Beat yourself up a little. Tell yourself you're strong, that you're tough, that you're talented. Truly do not care what people say about you. Don't care if they like you. You will waste a great life trying to live up to other's expectations of you, even your own parents. Be the you that produces the brightest colors, the most perfect harmonies between your brain, your heart and your spirit. Screw everyone else. At that point your life will not only be better, it will be the closest thing to perfect and you will attract people and they will like you.
April 21st, 2002: I had bought a house two years earlier. What had started as a "we" project had ended up a "me" project like it always had. I did all the leg work, used my GI loan guarantee. There'd been promises of second jobs and rooms being finished off, blah, blah, blah followed by all the excuses I'd been listening to for 17 years. One year in an old face had popped back into my life and I thought I'd finally found my "happily ever after". 2002 wound up being a year of change and unpleasant surprises. I ended it totally alone and doubly heart broken. I'd survived a meltdown and now had that one quietly settled in college. The other one also fell apart after having two people move out of their life in the same year. I tried to be the stalwart one while crying myself to sleep every night. But like the song says, my soul was ok. I knew I wasn't a failure for not having an s.o. to validate me. I had my kids, my parents and my extended family. I lost friends but it was my own fault. I just couldn't deal. Others were moved out of my life by non-friends who successfully turned my one safe haven into a battlefield and made me and the other kids the enemy. We all left.
Let me go back further though to frame how it got to that point. You don't have to be gay to be bullied, picked-on, put down, etc. In grammar school I was the weird kid. My parents, gods bless them, had no idea how to socialize a child. Fortunately they on had one to ruin...me. I was awkward. My mom dressed me weird. I was smart but I was also very social. The note on my report card was the same every...single...marking period "Kathleen is a good student who could do much better". The rest was, basically, she talks too much. What that boiled down to was trying to get people to like me. Instead it just made them laugh at me more.
Jr High, today known as Middle School, was worse. I'd learned from the few kids that did talk to me that certain things were just not done. I pleaded with my mother not to make me wear white bobby socks. She told me "Don't be ridiculous". I ended up being laughed at more along with being physically accosted over it. Of course, by then, I knew my mother didn't listen which meant she really didn't care. Totally humiliated things went from bad to worse when my dad got transferred and I had to move in the middle of 8th grade. The new town was very different and I was immediately labeled an outcast because I was from a more upscale area (no, my family is middle, middle class). I also was curve-busting on quizzes and tests because I'd had all this material in 6th grade. Add the ever increasing hormone level and the intense pressure to be coupled? Oh, this was getting more fun by the minute.
High school was merely the icing on the cake. No one asked me out. I missed both my proms in an era where there was still a huge stigma attached to it. I was a music geek and a theater nerd. I was still smart and not overly pretty. Looking back though the two sanctuaries I had were the music room and the auditorium. That where we nerds gathered to lick each others wounds. But I still felt the extreme pressure to be coupled.
All this imprinting carried on into my post-high school, early adult life. I became a bit of a slut just to say I had male attention. I did a lot of things I won't talk about here. It all ended very badly when I met my ex. Initially he was a tool to exit another bad situation I'd been in for a few years. However, I mistook the whole mess for love and married him. Then I did what I was made to feel over all those years and procreated. To say I'm the worst candidate for motherhood is an understatement. But I do excel at survival and so the child had a warm, safe place to live, clean clothes that fit, food in their belly and someone to tuck them in with a story every night.
I spent 30 years surviving. Always doing what others made me feel I was supposed to do to be validated as a human female. Thank the Fates my kids set me free from that in 2004. By then I had completed the divorce, owned MY house (which was MY house from the beginning), started paying off credit cards, had the nasty wound created by that old friend start to heal (there's still an ugly scar over my heart today) and was able to sit down and take a breath. When I exhaled I saw and heard really good music coming out of my TV and my kids' iPods. The younger one's guitar and trombone playing were getting better. The older one was halfway to an arts degree. The color had come back into my life.
Since then I've fallen down this amazing rabbit hole full of even more amazing people and experiences. It really does get better no matter how old you are. But you do have to do your part to get there. I could have been okay with just being a music fan and gone to a lot of live shows but it was getting expensive. Also I wanted to help my favorite artists get more recognition but after two years of promoting for free, I kinda wanted some compensation for all that work. I just started following the path of breadcrumbs. Today I have met and had great conversations with big names and the up and coming. I have all kinds of new friends and I'm not done yet. My bucket list is full of wonderful experiences, places and people. I never allow myself to accept "no" from my inner voice. I'm not saying that sometimes I am met with scary challenges but I push through them and then end up very grateful on the other side. Those pushes have, so far, have resulted in some of my most positive moments.
Hang in there. It does get better but you have to take some responsibility. Don't wait for anyone to hand it to you. Beat yourself up a little. Tell yourself you're strong, that you're tough, that you're talented. Truly do not care what people say about you. Don't care if they like you. You will waste a great life trying to live up to other's expectations of you, even your own parents. Be the you that produces the brightest colors, the most perfect harmonies between your brain, your heart and your spirit. Screw everyone else. At that point your life will not only be better, it will be the closest thing to perfect and you will attract people and they will like you.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Fables - an important part of growing up
Fables may not be the word I should be using here. Those who follow Christian tradition would probably be more apt to use the word parable. But whatever word you want to use, there are stories, very important short stories that parents need to go back to reading to their children.
Start with Aesop. He? She? was an incredibly wise person. They told stories of basic morality. Those stories made such an impact that they are still passed down from generation to generation. These fables included children, everyday workers, rich people, animals and a variety of mythological creatures. The short tales taught lessons about trust, foolishness, financial responsibility and respect.
In raising my children, the most prominent of Aesop's fables in my house was "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". One of my children had a habit of telling tall tales of their own imaginings. However, these stories were things that could have happened in real life to them and/or the people around them. More than once I was ready to jump to the defense, to call out someone for having done something bad or to reward the child for an accomplishment only to have them speak up in the last mintue to tell me that it was not true. Any time the child did this I told the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf and explained that someday they could end up in a genuinely dangerous situation and no one would believe them. The child could end up injured, unjustly punished, or accepting praise meant for someone else. Sometimes I would pair the fable with the morality poem my parents had taught me; "Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first practice to decieve." This was to teach the child that once the first lie is told then another and another and another need to be created to keep the ruse going. Sooner or later we trip-up in the stories we have fabricated and call ourselves out.
Today it is so apparent that many adults raising children have not only forgotten these morality tales but they are definitely not teaching them to those children. In an era of anonymous electronic communication, children have far too many opportunities to deceive themselves, their families, their friends and total strangers. This deception is proving detrimental in so many ways.
Recently I, an a number of other people, experienced an exceptionally heinous game of "wolf crying". In this round a "teenager" successfully convinced strangers on the web that they are someone they are not and were trying to help a "friend" who was experiencing trauma due to sexual abuse. By the time it was over, I believe this was someone who was incredibly starved for attention. One has to have enough empty free time to become bored enough to begin even considering such a scheme. If there were real life people interacting with them, they surely would not give something like this a second thought.
Fortunately in the situation, the person fabricating this hoax began to trip over their lies. They also had not not counted on the people they were playing getting suspicious enough to contact newspapers, hospitals, childre protection agencies and law enforcement. The perpetrator became careless about details. Again, people who had been duped discovered photos of both the perpetrator and their "abused friend" were stock photos of random teens taken anywhere between 2003 and 2007. As the ruse began to unravel they ran for cover, shutting down Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. They have not resurfaced using the identities of this scheme.
Now here are the morals of these stories. First, this kind of behavior starts as soon as a child is old enough to understand "No". Parents must teach children that lying is a very bad thing. They also need to be taught respect and compassion from the very beginning. Next, young people have unsupervised access to the internet. It's a crazy place out there full of all kinds of crazy people who can tell bigger and better lies than a child. Kids are in danger on the net.
Here's a spot for another old story moral..."idle hands are the devil's playthings". Where this train really gets derailed is the damage these schemes do to children who are truly in danger and in need of help. With this kind of on-line behavior, people who can help become more and more skeptical about the validity of the cry for help. The child who is truly in an abusive household or being physically assaulted at school, etc. is sustaining more and more injury while the people who can take them away from it do days and days of research to find out the truth lest they respond to a hoax. We all know that if this goes too long or too far it could result in the death of a child. At that point, it is beyond too late. In the end, at best one child lies in a hospital bed fighting to live beyond grateful that someone heard the cry for help in time and believed it. Meanwhile the child who was one of many that slowed the response time walks away whistling, feeling no remorse. Will the wolf catch up to them some day? We can only hope and spread the word that parents need to pay attention. Watch and listen. Stop their kids when they find them crying "Wolf". Explain the danger they are putting themselves and others in. They may not be the only meal for the pack. They can leave weak prey unguarded to become dinner too.
Start with Aesop. He? She? was an incredibly wise person. They told stories of basic morality. Those stories made such an impact that they are still passed down from generation to generation. These fables included children, everyday workers, rich people, animals and a variety of mythological creatures. The short tales taught lessons about trust, foolishness, financial responsibility and respect.
In raising my children, the most prominent of Aesop's fables in my house was "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". One of my children had a habit of telling tall tales of their own imaginings. However, these stories were things that could have happened in real life to them and/or the people around them. More than once I was ready to jump to the defense, to call out someone for having done something bad or to reward the child for an accomplishment only to have them speak up in the last mintue to tell me that it was not true. Any time the child did this I told the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf and explained that someday they could end up in a genuinely dangerous situation and no one would believe them. The child could end up injured, unjustly punished, or accepting praise meant for someone else. Sometimes I would pair the fable with the morality poem my parents had taught me; "Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first practice to decieve." This was to teach the child that once the first lie is told then another and another and another need to be created to keep the ruse going. Sooner or later we trip-up in the stories we have fabricated and call ourselves out.
Today it is so apparent that many adults raising children have not only forgotten these morality tales but they are definitely not teaching them to those children. In an era of anonymous electronic communication, children have far too many opportunities to deceive themselves, their families, their friends and total strangers. This deception is proving detrimental in so many ways.
Recently I, an a number of other people, experienced an exceptionally heinous game of "wolf crying". In this round a "teenager" successfully convinced strangers on the web that they are someone they are not and were trying to help a "friend" who was experiencing trauma due to sexual abuse. By the time it was over, I believe this was someone who was incredibly starved for attention. One has to have enough empty free time to become bored enough to begin even considering such a scheme. If there were real life people interacting with them, they surely would not give something like this a second thought.
Fortunately in the situation, the person fabricating this hoax began to trip over their lies. They also had not not counted on the people they were playing getting suspicious enough to contact newspapers, hospitals, childre protection agencies and law enforcement. The perpetrator became careless about details. Again, people who had been duped discovered photos of both the perpetrator and their "abused friend" were stock photos of random teens taken anywhere between 2003 and 2007. As the ruse began to unravel they ran for cover, shutting down Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. They have not resurfaced using the identities of this scheme.
Now here are the morals of these stories. First, this kind of behavior starts as soon as a child is old enough to understand "No". Parents must teach children that lying is a very bad thing. They also need to be taught respect and compassion from the very beginning. Next, young people have unsupervised access to the internet. It's a crazy place out there full of all kinds of crazy people who can tell bigger and better lies than a child. Kids are in danger on the net.
Here's a spot for another old story moral..."idle hands are the devil's playthings". Where this train really gets derailed is the damage these schemes do to children who are truly in danger and in need of help. With this kind of on-line behavior, people who can help become more and more skeptical about the validity of the cry for help. The child who is truly in an abusive household or being physically assaulted at school, etc. is sustaining more and more injury while the people who can take them away from it do days and days of research to find out the truth lest they respond to a hoax. We all know that if this goes too long or too far it could result in the death of a child. At that point, it is beyond too late. In the end, at best one child lies in a hospital bed fighting to live beyond grateful that someone heard the cry for help in time and believed it. Meanwhile the child who was one of many that slowed the response time walks away whistling, feeling no remorse. Will the wolf catch up to them some day? We can only hope and spread the word that parents need to pay attention. Watch and listen. Stop their kids when they find them crying "Wolf". Explain the danger they are putting themselves and others in. They may not be the only meal for the pack. They can leave weak prey unguarded to become dinner too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
