Be cautious of your sources, lest you be swayed by propaganda. Find your own way home.

We get caught up in monikers and labels...I'm much more conservative than most conservatives, much more libertarian than most libertarians, much more progressive than most progressives and much more liberal than most liberals...how can that be? Well...it's like someone identifying as Christian. Do they mean evangelical christian, christian identity movement, liberation christians, christianity which has gay ministers, christianity which condemns same sex relationships as of satan, christianity which believes the earth is 6000 years old, or christians who believe in evolution. Through distortion...Mother Earth becomes Mary, the mother of Jesus who was born near the winter solstice...pro-paganism...pro-pagan-da...Ambiguous, distorted, easily twisted into any propagandist stand one wishes to take.
Be cautious of your sources, lest you be swayed by propaganda. Find your own way home.

Conservative me is smart not to want to destroy the earth, but conserve the natural and honor the Earth...Liberal me knows that we need social programs, especially in a nation as diverse as this...to pull people out of poverty, create livable, affordable, sustainable urban conditions...greening them as we go, public transportation, bike trails, decentralized schools walking distance, better neighborhood medical triage...taking the opposite track, destroying the Earth for short term gain, turning our backs on the plight of poverty and inner cities, further centralization of grids and medicine, more specialization is a recipe for disaster, civil unrest, neighbor against neighbor, factionalism, blurring of lines...

Thanksgiving, it's best to remember this

Ghost Road Song by Deborah Miranda

I need a song.
I need a song like a river, cool and dark and wet,
like a battered old oak; gnarled bark,
bitter acorns,
a song like a dragonfly:
shimmer – hover – swerve -
like embers, too hot to touch.

I need a song like my father’s hands:
scarred, callused, blunt,
a song like a wheel,
like June rain, seep of solstice,
tang of waking earth.

I need a song like a seed:
a hard and shiny promise,
a song like ashes:
gritty, fine, scattered;
a song like abalone, tough as stone,
smooth as a ripple at the edge of the bay.

I need a song so soft, it won’t sting my wounds,
so true, no anger can blunt it,
so deep, no one can mine it.

I need a song with a heart wrapped in barbed wire.

I need a song that sheds no tears,
I need a song that sobs.
I need a song that skates along the edge of black ice,
howls with coyotes,
a song with a good set of lungs,
a song that won’t give out, give up,
give in, give way:
I need a song with guts.

I need a song like lightning, just one blaze of insight.

I need a song like a hurricane,
spiraled winds of chaos,
a snake-charming song,
a bullshit-busting song,
a shut-up-and-listen-to-the-Creator song.
I need a song that rears its head up like a granite peak
and greets the eastern sky.

I need a song small enough to fit in my pocket,
big enough to wrap around
the wide shoulders of my grief,
a song with a melody like thunder,
chords that won’t get lost,
rhythm that can’t steal away.
I need a song that forgives me my lack of voice.

I need a song that forgives my lack of forgiveness.

I need a song so right
that the first note splinters me like crystal,
spits the shards out into the universe
like sleek seedlings of stars; yes,
that’s the song
I need,

the song to accompany you
on your first steps
along the Milky Way,
that song with ragged edges,
a worn-out sun;
the song that lets a burnt red rim
slip away into the Pacific,
leaves my throat
healed at last.

Autumnal Equinox musings

We have all the Elements within us…Air, Water, Fire, Earth and Spirit.

At this turning from summer to autumn, let our spirits shine...let us come together with strength and forgiveness, remembering that we are a community of people and that the golden rule applies in all cultures...more powerful than any commandment.

"And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbour that which thou choosest for thyself." Epistle to the Son of the Wolf. (Baha'i)

"This is the sum of Dharma [duty]: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you". Mahabharata (Brahmanism)

"One should seek for others the happiness one desires for oneself." (Buddhism)

"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." Luke 6:31 (Christianity)

“What I do not wish men to do to me, I also wish not to do to men." Analects 15:23 (Confucianism)

"Do not to another what you would not yourself experience." Manco Capoc (Inca)

"None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." (Islam)

"What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary." Talmud, (Judaism)

"All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One." Black Elk

Project for a New American Century and 9/11

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi citizens, two from the UAE, one each from Egypt and Lebanon. None from Iraq. There was no known operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

A bit of history about the Project for a New American Century (PNAC)

PNAC members held key positions in the White House, Defense and State Departments, among them Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, Lewis Libby, and John Bolton, along with others in lesser positions. William Kristol, writer for the conservative magazine, the Weekly Standard, was chairman of the group. They called for the waging of "multiple simultaneous large-scale wars" and one of their first orders of business was always the removal of Saddam Hussein, thereby giving the US a toehold in the oil-rich Middle East. What was needed for America to dominate through a "Pax Americana" securing the world’s resources, it said, was “some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor”. The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the “new Pearl Harbor”, described as “the opportunity of the ages”.

I weep that there were many people killed and continue to suffer, perhaps because of some global domination scheme...

To all the first responders, and to all that lost their lives on that fateful day...we will remember.

How to recreate the world

"...Our teachers, parents, friends, (entertainment/news) and peers contribute to the on-going story. They give us only the description of the world they know - their perception of the world. It may not be how the world really is. We ourselves contribute to the story of the world every moment of our existence by thinking and believing in what we have been told.

The stories we tell ourselves form our social and cultural values. This means that our stories, tales, fables, anecdotes, parables, proverbs, and colloquial expressions are the backbone, the building blocks, of our society as a whole, and our modern culture on the planet Earth.

For the last few thousand years, the stories that have dominated our consciousness, in most modern cultures, are the stories of mankind’s rule over the natural world, of the sense of separateness from nature and from each other, and of our self-gratifying pre-occupation with our ego-mind.

No matter how simple and seemingly insignificant, our stories are the real cause of many global social and cultural problems such as war and violence; fear of the natural world and separation from nature; pollution, environmental destruction, and the loss of wildlife habitats; over-consumption and materialism.

Imagine if most of our stories were teaching us some virtuous value, or encouraging us toward a positive action.

“Kill two birds with one stone” would be “Feed two birds with one seed.”
“It’s a dog-eat-dog world” would be “It’s a happy-dog-splashing-in-the-pool world.”
“Take as much as you can, before someone else will” would become “Take only what you need, leave the rest for others”.

Been awhile since I posted, but I can't remain silent on this issue confronting us and the world.

I grieve for the deaths of innocents. The latest in Nice...families with small children celebrating their equivalent of our fourth of July, watching fireworks just as we would here...gathered as a community not suspecting that a lorry would jump the curb and mow through fragile bodies for nearly a mile...killing 84 and leaving another 50 in critical condition, clinging to life.
"Terrorism is a threat that weighs heavily upon France and will continue to weigh for a long time," Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after the emergency meeting. "We are facing a war that terrorism has brought to us."
***
We must assess our role in the recruitment of young, disenfranchised men and women who feel threatened by our rhetoric...and are bolstered by Daesh's propaganda which plays into their fears...the anti muslim rhetoric in this country could well cause more Orlandos...a young man, unaffiliated, swore his allegiance to both ISIS and Hezbollah before dying...not even knowing their history well enough to understand these are warring factions...one Sunni, one Shi'ite...It doesn't matter...the tipping point was reached in many ways with this man...and with people in France and Belgium, and all across Europe. We are protected by a large expanse of ocean, but ginning up hatred and exploiting fears by using our own "leaders" words against them helps to recruit lone wolves who can very easily find a crowd and use a truck to plow into them...perhaps a truck filled with explosives. Daesh's goal is to divide America and set us at each others throats. They're already doing a bang up job.

Donald Trump, being chosen as the head of the Republican Party, could cause a split in the nation wide enough for civil war to break out. “They love him from the sense that he is supporting their rhetoric,” Rita Katz, an expert from the SITE Intelligence Group states. “When Trump says, ‘No Muslims should be allowed in America,’ they tell people, ‘We told you America hates Muslims and here is proof.'”

Today the parties have swapped sides from the days of Lincoln, but the pattern is the same. Political leaders have for years used inflammatory rhetoric to bolster a system that favors the very wealthy. Once again, their rhetoric has created an insurgency that they cannot control. Once again, that insurgency appeals to Americans who have never actually had to grapple with what it might mean to fight for an ideology.

It is this kind of self-implosion that ISIS in America may hope to inspire and exploit. We must find it within ourselves to come together and end the divisiveness.