Thursday, January 31, 2013

Strangely Silent Seagulls

Strangely silent seagulls soar on the wild wind,
Stop-action as they surrender to the air's pull.
Waves crash beneath, have no current appeal;
Is this a meditative moment for a gull?

Usually so seeking, greedy, screeching;
It isn't often that, in the air, they are calm.
Does it take a wild wind to comfort some,
So they don't have to sing their own song?

Crazy clanking of the riggings, huge wind chimes,
As clouds scud densely across the sky.
The seagull song could probably compete,
But they are probably asking themselves why.

Today is a day for them to simply relax,
And the whipping wind will take them away.
For a short time, they seem content
To have no fights and nothing to say.

Those who aren't ever exposed to nature
Can't feel the earth's sacred rhythms.
They are always anxious and hurried
Over the making of their next decisions.

Humans supposedly have superior brains;
I like to believe this is actually true.
But it seems that even a bird brain
Can teach we humans a thing or two.


Wednesday, January 30, 2013

In Love and The Sacred Spirit

Yesterday, Gayle wrote in her blog OneBirdWatching.blogspot.com "God wants to reveal Himself to each one of us; He wants direct, Spirit-to-spirit communication with us.  He wants the kind of energy-exchange that most of us will truly experience only when we fall deeply and sincerely in love for the first time.  He wants openness, not fear.  He wants us to be able to open our hearts fully to Him, as lovers exchange freely and fully all that is in them without fear --- and He wants us to be able to hear fully and freely what He has to say to us."

I am so fortunate to have finally found that love experience about which she speaks. I believe that many people actually experience it for the first time in their relationships with their parents. I've often admitted openly that I'm absolutely "in love" with my children and grandchildren. Our relationships, as does my relationship with my mate, only work when we are vulnerable to each other, emotionally naked, if you will.

The great sin of religions, in my opinion, has been inflicting of shame and fear where nakedness had been. You can argue that Adam and Eve started it, but religions have continued this method of mind control. As a child, I was in awe of my parents and grandparents, and I didn't have to be made afraid to strive to please them. If they were open with me about their emotions, I  made every attempt to make them happy with me.

The Roman church taught fear of God instead of awe and bonding with The Sacred Spirit. They taught that an angry God sends us to damnation forever if we don't sacrifice enough to Him. They even taught that God created a sacrificial son in order to feed His own need to punish sin. They took it upon themselves to take away the bread and wine that they declared was Jesus' body and blood as a punishment for our transgressions.

I made up my mind a long time ago that I would not be manipulated by fear. The gut-wrenching grief that I feel when I'm rejected because of this may appear as anger to some, but when the soul breaks open again and again it causes unimaginable agony. The labor pains of rebirth of oneself and one's relationships can be as painful for both communicants as the physical birthing process of our children.

Thankfully, The Sacred Spirit has continued coming my way through so many people that I have never been able to completely despair.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Gratitude for Good Mornings

Wake up everyday, and focus our minds on the beautiful,
And throughout the day, take breaks to reclaim the joyful.
I am blessed that my lover wakes up smiling with gratitude;
His morning words and touch help to set my daily mood.

As you open your eyes, celebrate that you're still breathing;
If you're in a bed, that's a blessing you're receiving.
You may think you worked hard and deserve your bed;
What about those defending our country who may soon be dead?

Do you have a job? Be grateful for that gift to you;
There are many who have skills and no work to go to.
Be happy for today, that you don't have any cancer
Look for gratitude, and your Sacred Spirit will answer.

Can you afford food for your table and gas for your car?
Be grateful for the skills that make you who you are.
Do you have at least one person who cares if you live or die?
Every day be grateful for this; don't let an opportunity go by.

There is always something more for which we can grasp,
But gratitude for what we have is such an easy task.
Why do we waste so much energy in fear and anger?
It continues to put the Universal Sacred Spirit in danger.

Even righteous anger should be used to fuel good acts;
When we simply churn with it, it is our own souls it attacks.
Do not let the anger and fear of others enter your head;
It will only turn your days into missions that you dread.

I am more than happy to be asked to help with solutions,
But mindless complaining leads to my spirit's dissolution.
And if nobody needs my help today, I will continue to study,
So that if I'm needed again, I'll be even more ready.

It is true that my gratitude swells to where it brings tears;
This is something that others have often come to fear.
We are so used to adulthood being seen as sacrifice,
About joy and gratitude, we often don't think twice.

Good morning, roof over my head and air that I breathe;
Good morning, Sacred Spirit that shields me from greed.
Good morning, sacred earth that nourishes my food;
Good morning, ability to choose to focus on the good.

Good morning, my children who are such a joy to me;
Good morning, my grateful mate and the love that I see;
Good morning, my wonderful friends, near and far;
Good morning, all the differences that make us who we are.







Monday, January 28, 2013

What a Wonderful World

So, on my way to do my good deeds, I got all emotional thinking of my brave little friend Queenie with the huge personality taking care of her son and husband, each over two hundred pounds and over six feet tall, when she herself should have been in bed. I was rushing to the post office between grocery shopping for her and making the delivery to her house, to get king cakes in the Saturday mail to my granddaughter and daughter in Atlanta. I got there just as the post office locked it's doors, but that was the least of my worries.

I had packages in my hands, so I stuck my credit card in my pocket to avoid having to carry a purse. As is my habit, I turned off the engine and dropped the keys into said purse while extracting my credit card from my wallet. You know that sinking feeling you have just as you hear the car door shut and you realize you've locked yourself out. Per my reasonable husband's suggestion, I carry a spare key...in my wallet, which was in my purse... in my van.

Not to worry, we have Triple A insurance. Oh, but wait, my cell phone was also in my purse, locked in my van. Even if I could find a pay phone, I had no quarters because they would also be in my wallet, in my purse, which was locked in my van. Oh dear, what to do?

Across from the post office is a wonderful little breakfast and lunch place that we frequent on Sacred Sundays. I asked at the desk if I could use their phone. With no hesitation, the darling little gal at the desk handed me the house phone. Realizing that I had no phone number for Triple A, I asked for a phone book. It was rather amusing, the look she gave me, as if I was asking for a dinosaur burger. After a bit of fumbling, she produced a local directory.

I reached Triple A, but they could find no record of our membership on their computer. I, of course, didn't have our membership number because the card was in my wallet, in my purse, in my van, which was locked. The dear roadside service lady on the phone empathized and went so far as to call Tennessee Triple A to see if they had a record of our membership. Lord love a duck, they had never heard of us. Twenty minutes into this, on the restaurant's business line, I was still stuck.

After assurances from Triple A that we could be reimbursed if they had declined us by mistake, I called Pop-A-Lock. As I sat on the restaurant front porch waiting to be rescued, two waitresses came out to commiserate with me in my misery. One confessed that she had done the same thing just days before, but that, thanks to her daddy, she and her sister had Triple A insurance. She remembered that Triple A had given her a coupon for a discount on Pop-a-Lock, which she ran to her car and retrieved and gave to me.

The young man from Pop-a-Lock was covered in body art, probably to cover his freckles, with one of those half inch plastic rings in his ear. We discussed his piercing as he retrieved his equipment from his trunk. In the trunk, was also a baby stroller which led to discussion of his eighteen month old and thirty-five day old children. He was so pleasant that I felt compelled to give him a ten dollar tip, as a baby present. What a wonderful world we live in when we all realize that we're all in this together.

This morning Richard and I ate at Sunrise on Second simply to have the opportunity to thank the staff for their random acts of kindness.



Sunday, January 27, 2013

Children's Church

I took my son to church on Sunday;
Nobody asked what he had to say.
They all told him to be quite and sit down,
Not to behave like a class clown.

He is a child of exuberance;
Going to church became a penance.
The joy simply wiggled out of his pores,
The childlike joy The Sacred Spirit adores.

The rest of the week, we had responsibilities;
On Sundays we could let our love run free.
He had been forced to sit and listen all week;
On Sunday's, my soul, his joy did seek

Heaven was in my children's eyes,
And for this, they were often despised.
As parents we were to act as martyrs,
Or we'd spoil our sons and daughters.

I gave up on church for my family
In order to allow my son to continue to be
When there's a church where the children preach,
I may want to hear what they have to teach.

Until then, I prefer my children's families;
In their love, The Sacred Spirit is what I see.
The Sacred Spirit creates church in one's home;
Wherever compassion is, we are never alone.


Saturday, January 26, 2013

Caring and Sharing

I began the day feeling forlorn because all my reasons for living were gone.
The reasons to live were presented one after another, as they are to any mother.
My friend, when I asked her to accompany me to coffee, said she wasn't free
Her whole family had the flu; though she's a doctor, she was feeling unglued.

I offered my help to get her prescriptions, if she could simply make this decision.
She accepted; so I offered to provide some chicken soup upon which many rely.
This blossomed into neighbors on both sides accepting food that we can provide.
This vocation, to which I feel I've been born, is one that many continue to scorn.

Accepting help makes us feel vulnerable; when you're too weak to push, I pull.
Why do so many resent the helpers, and banish them from their family shelters?
The purpose of help isn't to keep one weak; it's building the community that we seek.
When we share with others on whom we can depend, we become trusted friends.

How did we get to the point that what's most sacred makes us ashamed of being naked?
We all need the help of other human hands; this is what fullness of humanity demands.
I am so tired of hiding our vulnerabilities, as if  our human frailties, nobody else sees.
We don't share the same gifts it is true, but if you'll share yours with me, I'll share mine with you.

I don't believe in a heaven or hell separate from that in which we now dwell.
I believe that the life we embody on earth is simply one of many a verse.
Some create dissonance, some harmony; all of it is of interest to me.
Can we really feel good without the bad? Can we really feel happy without the sad?


We will never get past our competition while we don't believe in full community fruition.
Eternal peace will never be a possibility as long as any of our loved ones are community free.
I remember, with love, every moment of joy with every loved person, be they girl or boy
I hope that each bit of love and grateful memory will serve to heal The Sacred Spirit of Eternity.


Friday, January 25, 2013

When Given a Choice, Choose Joy

How did we get back to this kind of terrified hatred after Kumbaya and Blowin' In the Wind?

It is so strange to listen to how different people feel about the catastrophic imminent endings that are being so widely predicted today. A male friend who served in Vietnam, and spends his life helping the vulnerable in the New Orleans area, gave up on religion many years ago. The defining moment was when a priest banished a black family from his all white congregation's Mass. He recently pointed out that he found it strange that the people who seem most afraid of death are so often those who proclaim themselves to be most religious.

I was with a group of women at my pottery class yesterday, and we got on the subject of how our husbands are reacting to all the fear-mongering rhetoric that is saturating the media today. Several of the women spoke of how their husbands are arming themselves and obsessing over how to defend themselves and their families. Most of we women agreed that we'd rather be dead than live in a bunker without our families and friends.

Perhaps we need an end times scare every so often to get our relationships in order. Isn't that the energy that was the catalyst for the early Christians? Didn't they firmly believe that the end was coming in their own lifetimes? The difference today seems to be that we are buying guns and filling our airways and minds with fear and hatred. The early Christians were getting together to pray and do good works, hoping to bring more people to heaven with them through sharing of their faith.

What if all people of passionate faith were to sing songs of praise as we reach out to all who seem scared or angry and really listen to what their fears are? What if we would turn off the angry rhetoric and music and fill our ears with the joyful songs, voices, and laughter of children, birds, breezes, waves, and each other? What if we made up our minds to go out singing and dancing, no matter when the end hits us?

Sure, people may say we're crazy, but isn't all the fear driving us crazy anyway? Life is choices. I choose joy.


Thursday, January 24, 2013

Infinite Energy

All positive energy is infinite, and from the same original source. Individuals are but manifestations of The Sacred Spirit (Divine Energy)  of the universe, like fleeting stars in each family galaxy. We only see them for a little while, but their auras live on forever.



http://images.sciencedaily.com/2013/01/130103113846-large.jpg

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Unwanted Infants

I am the unwanted infant whose mothers had no joy in their eyes.
I am the child who was rejected when every child should be prized.
I am the child who is so needy that I will do almost anything to be held.
I am the child in whom fear of abandonment always dwells.

I am a mother who struggled to give my children a safe place,
Not having an internal well of community and spiritual grace.
I am a person who still struggles for a reason to continue to live,
Now that nobody seems to want or need what I have to give.

I speak out for all the vulnerable, as if it were my pain;
It feels so very painful, as if the rejection is mine again.
The grief for others I mirror becomes too much for them,
And, once again, I've used up the compassion of a friend.

I hurt for every child not loved while being conceived;
Those born to the selfish are those for whom I grieve.
Some have babies for their religions, some for status;
These are child abuses that we don't often discuss.

Children do not, to their own conception, consent;
"God" does not dictate to whom children are sent.
We use our animal bodies, without Sacred Spirits;
As the child's unloved soul dies, nobody will hear it.

When a mother's soul is dead through addiction or depression,
The child feels the deadening as his or her own rejection.
Fear, too, is experienced by a child as rejection or rage;
For another generation of fear and anger, this sets the stage.

Jesus had no soldiers; we need no soldiers for the true Christ;
To continue converting followers through fear is a great vice.
We must stop forcing children on those who cannot love them;
To lead a child to despair and rage is the greatest human sin.






Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Ministry and Humanity

We say that the preachers and priests are our ministry;
The truth of this concept, I've never been able to see.
Priests perform rituals that bind us in hypnotic states;
Preachers read to us what they feel their attention rates.

Ministers hold us as we cry and rock our babies to sleep;
This is not the religion in which my soul was steeped.
Pretending to be above physical needs was to be exalted;
When they preyed upon the vulnerable, victims were faulted.

Parents are actually the ministers set upon this earth
To protect the innocent to whom they and theirs gave birth.
The communities have seduced parents into believing
That religions will take care of the children they're conceiving.

It is all a hoax to build armies for religious domination,
Pretending victory on earth is the way to eternal salvation.
When we realize that all Divine Energy is never ending,
To the throne of righteousness, nations may stop pretending.

We must all wake up to our individual responsibility
For ourselves and what we do, me to you and you to me.
The energy we share with others whether positive or negative
Is the energy that the universe beyond ourselves has to give.

We are meant to minister to each other and to the earth;
Each of us are, from the same seeds of life, given birth.
All humanity are neighbors, whether from near are far;
We cannot choose who our eternal brothers and sisters are.








Monday, January 21, 2013

Begetting Brokenness

It seems that all relationship transformation begins with a broken heart.
How is it that crisis bonds many and tears so many relationships apart?
We must both be willing to stand emotionally naked in front of each other,
And to share our pain like a sick child and a concerned mother.

How many of us run from any pain and turn it into fear and anger;
That we will then attack others with this, is the greatest danger.
If their are no human arms to hold us while we writhe in agony,
Many broken hearts will scar over, forever Sacred Spirit free.

Children born to broken mothers absorb their mothers pain;
They have no way to salve it, so they recycle it again.
They pass on to our society that which they cannot hold;
They eventually have no choice but to become callous and cold.


Many had nobody strong to hold them while they cried;
Their anguished innocent spirits eventually died.
Boys were told to, "Be a man;" girls to, "Grow up."
If not with parents, with whom to share their bitter cups?

We marry to complete our spirits with the mates of our souls,
But the mirror image of ourselves will not make us whole.

Those never sheltered are too empty to be mates, parents, friends
When they can't be filled, their relationships are doomed to end.



These children go on to breed another generation,
Spreading the angry fear since the dawn of human creation.
Responsible humans have the choice not to conceive,
While free to seek arms to hold them while they grieve.

Marriage is not be two dead people making life through babies;
It seems that there is no way that other spirits can save these.
Even community with much compassion has no authority,
And forcing false bonding doesn't create responsibility.

Without The Sacred Spirit, we are nothing but animals.
This seems to be the life with which our earth is full;
Festering with fear and anger because we won't stand naked
With each other and The Sacred Spirit with which we were created.







Sunday, January 20, 2013

Redemption Through Reproduction

Why do we wonder why our arrogance continues to lead to failure at achieving harmony on earth? "God" never changed a diaper, except with the hands of humans. Sacred Spirit hands to do the deeds necessary to every soul's salvation. We simply need to have more who understand this and are willing to commit to the family of The Universal Sacred Spirit. Responsible, committed compassion replicates itself and creates prize winning breeds out of spiritual weeds.

It is actually a wonder that more in our society don't get themselves pregnant for the aura of adulation that mothers receive for the simple action of opening their legs and wombs to another generation of their own selves. The responsible compassion of The Sacred Spirit is either part of a parent or isn't. When children are conceived for selfish reasons, including status, there is usually an eternal lack of The Sacred Spirit in the child's soul.

Even both parents with Sacred Spirit seeds may produce offspring in which recessive attributes fight for ascendancy. Parents who are prepared to give their lives to channeling the strengths and protecting against the invaders that threaten their offspring's spirits often help produce stronger Sacred Spirit stock.Why do we continue to use our efforts to save even those that are meant to go back into the Infinite Energy pool where The Sacred Spirit will live on forever without corruption.

Those who have not committed to living in The Light of The Sacred Spirit that children need to be compassionate, productive citizens should feel free to give up their progeny in whatever way suits them. As long as their progeny are still in the seed stage, parents may choose to abort them. The Energy of The Sacred Spirit that would have been a human, goes back in innocence to fuel the Sacred Spirit of the universe.

Once the seed is able to survive without being physically attached to the host parent, the community family of The Sacred Spirit must be committed to embracing and rearing each formerly unwanted child in the Light of Love (Responsible Compassion).

The rejecting parent must give up all rights to creating a triangle of failure. Any house divided against itself will fail, and children torn between the values of their self-centered parents and those of the community of The Sacred Spirit are doomed to failure as full human adults.Only when we understand this will we stop the arrogance of believing that we can, through passive measures like prayer, save the world, one soul at a time.


Saturday, January 19, 2013

Dowager Duchesses and Heaven

Queenie told me that she doesn't want to live if she can't dance. Now, I was trying to be nice, so I said, "Well, I never could dance, so that can't be my reason to live." I didn't want to tell her that we both look like spastics on the dance floor, but she didn't miss a beat before she said, "I didn't say I dance well; I just said I need to dance."

How I've always admired her courage to simply be the biggest and brightest she could be. Sometimes, when I feel embarrassed about what she's doing in public, I join her and we have soooo much fun. But we do, at times, hurt people's feelings and I feel bad for weeks afterward. I wish feeling so free didn't come with such a bad backlash.

Queenie has always been so responsible and has always worked so sincerely and so hard, I figure she deserves to take time off to twirl and titter like a little girl. I'm always grateful when she takes time to twirl and titter with me. I have many women of wit and wisdom in my life about whom I feel the same immense gratitude. Unfortunately, many of them get on each others nerves when I'm included, so I seldom have a hen house of happy hens, all laying their unique eggs together. I'm sure that, if I did, I could whip up some amazing omelets.

What is it with we women of a certain generation? We seem to have these Dowager Duchess complexes where we simply can't agree on anything. Each of us feels that our way is the proper way, and that we are each "She who will be obeyed." Queenie has never been like this with me (except when she's in professional mode), but she certainly draws her share of these women into her aura.

If I gave myself a funeral that I wanted to be fun, I would have to have different funerals for different friends. Forget about adding family. Everyone would want to reinvent me in their own image of what is considered "socially acceptable," what a sister/mother/aunt/cousin/sibling is "supposed" to be. Except for my wonderful mate who knows and loves me as I really am, in all my many hypo-manic manifestations.

What I'd really like is if we all wrote to our friends with what we would say about them if they died tonight. It could all be kept private and burned, along with our earthly bodies, when we are cremated and our sacred ashes drifted toward the sky. Or they could be buried with our bodies, and used to aerate the soil by feeding the worms. Instead of a funeral, everybody could simply party us into paradise, or wherever it is that wise-cracking women and other people who say "shit" and "damn" go.


Friday, January 18, 2013

Babies Born of The Sacred Spirit

I am so weary of those who cannot acknowledge the sacrifice
Of the many abused women that so often are called mother and wife.
Each time a woman bears and loves a child forced upon her,
Without abusing the child, she is, of eternal salvation, sure.

Damn what's called "Christianity" with praying and laying on of hands;
Getting our human hands dirty is what healing of our earth demands.
Your "God" doesn't change diapers or take away the physical pain
That, when mother-in-law, husband or child dies, will forever remain.

Only the arms of others who understand and are willing to absorb grief
Have any hope of, the void left by physical death, to decrease.
Those who claim The Sacred Spirit don't often get their own hands dirty;
They are much too busy assuring you that "Christians" are above pity.

We are born with tactile bodies as humans in The Sacred Spirit's chosen race.
"God" will provide, they say; not salving the voids of smell, sight, and taste;
How starved are we for human touch that we have no physical compassion?
Somewhere in religions' history, the sacred physical fell out of fashion.

The sight, smell, taste, sound, and touch of my children and my mate
Have been the experiences that keep me able to, The Sacred, relate.
I hear the Sacred Spirit commanding me to fearlessly reach out my arms
And assure others, in The Sacred Spirit's care, they won't come to harm.

I turn to others who say they are disciples of the Spirit of The Sacred;
My emptiness and grief has them run and hide, as if we all were naked.
If sterile prayer is all "Christianity" has to offer to those who are dying,
I see no new life that it is offering me, so I have stopped trying.

My children, who offered me hands and hearts of service with joy
Became unable to support me, as my mom's "Christianity" I employed.
Their are too many who feel that physical decay is untouchable;
Not realizing that what we call human waste is, with new life, over-full.

I am tired of practicing and preaching the joy in every new ideation
Of The Sacred Spirit in each of life's heaven-on-earth manifestations.
My children have long-since tired of their mother being different;
I must wish them peace as they leave. For this, I feel that I was sent.

My body will still long for them and their children in their physicality;
I've always wished I was manifested in a different body than me.
Thus far, my beloved mate, the other half of my earth-bound soul
Hasn't run from the impossible demands pushing me to an unseen goal.

My prayer is that my beloved mate has loving arms that will hold him,
When The Sacred Spirit calls me to be other than my mate's best friend.
I didn't sign up to be a martyr; that was my "perfect" older sister.
If you've chosen me, my mother and sister will be forever bitter.

It's fine with me if you changed your mind; I don't mind dying,
But the lack of companions in this quest is getting a bit trying.
Every time I think I'm sent a companion, he/she becomes unavailable;
This seems to be the "Christian" society in which your earth is full.

Your priests, and the parents you gave me, sent me to the wild.
Why don't you simply leave me alone, as your feral child?
My religious friends say that I'm a child of yours, their god;
Clearly, they haven't walked the path that you gave me to trod.

Your priests, prophets, and vast array of famous penitents
Did not reveal the challenges of the world to which I was sent.
Those who we accept as leaders seem to be the Anti-Christ;
I am asking, in all childlike humility, for your Divine advice.

The Church of Rome is accepted as the seat of "Christianity;"
Reading their bloody history, I believe that this can't be.
But there are so many true Christians sold their bill of goods;
Is there a reason you handed over to them, your whole brood?

I know I am not a prophet, deserving of Divine answers.
Many seem to believe they have run out of earthly chances.
I believe you are, as usual, leaving much to our free will.
Some have an active Sacred Spirit; in others you are still.

I will not force the answer of eternal life for the dead.
I will remember them fondly, if necessary, in your stead.
I hope that, in this way, any shred of your Divine Light
Will be preserved as part of The Eternal Sacred Might.

Perhaps this philosophy will break the cycle of procreation,
Where tribes compete for supremacy in your Sacred nation.
Adam and Eve, and their children set such bad example;
I think their many misguided paths to peace have been ample.

Clearly their ancestral way is not working to lead to peace.
We ignore the Jewish leader Jesus; why hasn't war ceased?
For the sins of their fathers, are they still to be rejected?
Or are we to understand that the innocent are to be protected?

I have finished rearing my children; I'm ready for martyrdom,
If my death will help secure safety for their children to come.
I care not at all for the mission of the rights of women
If these women care not about the children of their wombs.

Too many parents seek their own comfort behind their offspring;
No wonder we're passing down fears that past parents bring.
Allow all to face their own consciences, from which we're free,
If they engage in carnal pleasures without any responsibility.

We should hold each responsible, egg donor and that of sperm,
To provide a trust fund to insure that each child will learn.
Rules of responsibility securing the future of children in creation
May achieve the goal of a compassionate community's salvation.

Barring this ability, conception control implants
Are the only way responsible society has a chance
Of allowing those with no Sacred Spirit to choose
Extinction of their kind. What do we have to lose?

The arrogance of preaching a gospel of transferred guilt
Is the Sacred Spirit's trash dump of humanity's filth.
I struggle every day to nudge my soul to follow holiness;
An innocent child's destruction, my Spirit won't erase.

My hope is if I have, in my life, the excess resources
To provide for my "Christian" society's other re-courses,
I want to save an unwanted child, to this I will commit
Resources (but, what of time?) as if my own blood, I'd see fit.

Jesus spoke clearly about those don't do, only publicly pray.
Many have their own children they don't protect from being prey.
We continue to march for that in which you say you "believe"
Not adopting innocent the children that the Spiritless conceive.

Babies need loving arms, safe shelter, clothing and food
Not prayers that their soulless parents will somehow turn to good.
Though I mourn for every unwanted child as yet unborn,
I believe giving them back to The Sacred Spirit is the lesser harm.


























Thursday, January 17, 2013

Waiting on The Word

The most maddening thing about having children is never knowing when it's time to let them finally fly on their own or fail. When do we stop feeling responsible for not warning them of every danger that we wish we could protect them and their children from experiencing? When do we accept that our children have the right to ignore us and make their own decisions, no matter what harm we foretell, based on our experiences and those of the wise people to whom we have exposed our children? When do we stop feeling their pain all the way into our wombs?

I grew up in an age where children were to be good mirrors of their parents skills and virtues, even if the parents had no idea what they were actually projecting onto their children. Parents turned all their fears into anger, and attempted to control their children with fear of parental reprisal, even into eternity. It was perfectly acceptable in many families to, literally, torture the disobedient child. We had no trouble believing that "God" was a vengeful father who felt no pain if we were burning in hell forever. After all, we deserved it.

Throughout the Judeo-Christian bible, it seems that we never learn that fear doesn't create faith. We continue to go a few steps toward responsible compassion, only to go thousands of years back. We continue to get people of peace to show us the way, and continue to shove them aside when they don't get there fast enough or the road gets too rocky. Why is this?

Maybe the stories of the bible are like that. Maybe we keep getting new words to warn us back onto the path to peaceful co-existence, but we keep getting scared and going back to the mistakes of the beginning. One definition of insanity is when we keep repeating behaviors that don't work, expecting different results. We continued to kill the prophets until there were no more to kill. Is all of humanity insane?

We are now going to have to take responsibility for our own collective future. An earth, like a house, divided against itself will always fail. This earth is all of humanity's home. We will all sink or swim into eternal harmony together. We have the Sacred Spirit in each of us that, collectively, will light the way, if we stop attempting to avoid proximity to each other and competing for most-favored status. Do we really believe that a Sacred Spirit would play favorites like human parents often do?

Maybe we no more need prophets. Maybe we're ready to all be priests, spreading the sacred with our own inner light radiating and igniting others. Maybe we all need to put on our big boy and big girl faith and go forward with confidence in our mission. People of responsible compassion will find you. You don't need to follow any earthly leader other than The Sacred Spirit in your own head. This Spirit never asks anyone to be put to death, except those who have put out The Sacred Spirit's light in a vulnerable soul. This is one way that you know if the voice in your head is The Sacred Spirit.

Abraham was a man of the old way, believing that God, like the gods, wanted blood sacrifice. But he was told by The Sacred Spirit that it was time for a new covenant with The Sacred Spirit. What would have happened to all the world if Abraham hadn't waited for clarification of the voice in his head?

When Jesus was born, there were still many who insisted that God wanted blood sacrifice, even after all of Jewish Jesus' witness to a new way of worship through responsible compassion for our fellow humans. With great sorrow, Jesus went alone to the garden to listen to The Scared Spirit and decided to allow himself to forward with becoming the sacrificial lamb that some of his people demanded.

He was very clear in sharing his vision of The Sacred Spirit, along with instructions for how to spread The Spirit, one relationship at a time, as he shared The Spirit with his friends and followers. He had even given instructions for how to love each other, including how to work out our differences. None of this included killing people, although it did include walking away at times. But Moses had already given us ample example of that.

"When will we ever learn? Oh, when will we ever learn? (With apologies to Pete Seeger and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger's Blowin' in the Wind)

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Gayle and the Great "Magic"

"The real presence of Jesus in our lives -- and His power to re-shape us -- is the point of the Gospel. It is not an historical document; it is the Word of God to us: Take and eat, and be transformed." - Gayle Nolan OneBirdWatching.blogspot.com

Gayle is quite an accomplished bible scholar and amazing teacher. In fact, my daughter has given Gayle credit for teaching her a new way to pray. I was brought up in a very letter-of-the-law religion. My mother and I taught rote prayers, as was the way of our religion. Believing that we could hear God was simply arrogant. We were certainly never to approach God in any manner other than abject fear, preferably through an intermediary.

Gayle was the "religion" teacher at a small private school at which her husband was head master. I credit my long-term friendship with Gayle for planting the seeds of the enormous faith my daughter has and seems to be passing on to her two daughters. My daughter says that Ms. Gayle taught them that the way to pray was to go and sit silently under a tree and "listen." What a concept, but Gayle was always a renegade, like that.

What a blessing it is in my life that I have been able to expose my children to so many who radiate their Sacred Spirits from the very marrow of their bones outward into the universe. Gayle absorbs the gospels and many other sacred scriptures into her body like most of us absorb nutrients from our physical food. She then spreads the product of her "digestion" process in her words and her deeds. I have always been convinced that Gayle thought her children and husband should be able to live on their faith alone. The words, I could live on, but families insist on being fed physical food.

Many is the day that Gayle's hungry husband would come home after working and attending evening classes to find the two of us sitting at her kitchen table. In the words of the song "The house was dark and the pots were cold." Bless him, he never banned me from their home. I could have at least cooked while we talked, but I was much too mesmerized by Gayle's views of faith and her God. Thankfully, manna would regularly fall from heaven, in the form of a pot of vegetable soup from Gayle's mama's kitchen.

Her mother, unlike Gayle was a no-nonsense kind of teacher and woman of great faith. Imagine what her reaction must have been when she would walk into Gayle's house to find her three grandchildren dressed in super hero and fairy princess garb, dancing on the coffee table and the window sills. Gayle called these her children's "magic years."

I have never heard Gayle or her very faith-filled husband proselytize; they simply allow others into their aura, and it spreads their faith. In the words of another song, their version of God "walks with me, and talks with me, and tells me I am his own." I like this kind of Christianity, no matter what a person's "religion." With people who can hear The Sacred Spirit calling, all the years seem to be "magic."

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

The Sacred Spirit

I am convinced that many are Christians without having heard the name "Jesus." The Christ is The Anointed One, and each of us can share in being limbs on the "Body of The Christ."

It seems that, throughout the history of humanity, humans have sought an anointed one to lead them to harmony on earth. Jesus himself said that The Holy Spirit is the spirit anointed to stay with all of humanity for all eternity, lighting the way to heavenly harmony on this earth.

To say that Jesus is the only manifestation of The Holy Spirit that was ever in human form simply doesn't make sense to me. It seems to me that since humans began scratching manifestations of The Holy Spirit into cave walls, the lesson has been clear. All nature is imbued with a certain special life-giving "Something" that has the potential to burn brightest in humans.

Jesus seems to have been anointed with an incredible amount of the Holiness which he couldn't help share with others through the celebration of his life with everyone whom he encountered. He came from a remarkable line of people who had been focused on finding and following the path to harmony on earth for centuries preceding his birth. As the seeking of The Anointed One (The Christ) was passed down from generation to generation, it became stronger and stronger in the children of the faithful. The seed and the womb that produced Jesus were especially anointed, indeed.

Jesus' Anointed Spirit drew others to him, like flies to honey. People simply want(ed) to walk in his footsteps because he brought joyful peace with his mere presence and preaching. Jesus said that, in The Fullness of The Sacred Spirit, there is no Jew or Gentile, no male nor female. He also said that he was the vine that was connected to and fed by The Sacred Spirit  that fed The Sacred Spirit to all on earth when they ate of the fruit that is nourished by the branches of The Anointed on earth. He said that those branches are the people who follow in the earthly footsteps of way to The Sacred Spirit. As was taught by Jesus' Jewish ancestors, humanity is made to be anointed with The Sacred Spirit in a special way.

We seem to instinctively honor those who walk among the vulnerable, spreading The Sacred Spirit through their presence, laying hands on lepers and  little ones alike in The Sacred Spirit's healing ministries. The problem seems to be in a form of infantile sibling rivalry, that the path simply isn't big enough for all of us. We continue to attempt to kill the roots of vines that have sprouted up in gardens other than our own, rather than attempting to graft new hybrid life onto vines that will eventually stop bearing fruit without new branches to absorb and process The Light.

When will we give up the notion that the way to new life is through destruction of old life. We seem to simply be spreading the seeds of The Unholy onto our selves and our children. All Sacred scriptures, since the beginning of humanity, seem to proclaim the old Sacred seeds will fall to the Sacred ground and transform into new Sacred energy. That which is not Sacred will self-select and destroy itself, but we must be unafraid as we hold the hands of our own children and walk in the strength of our own faith.

Religions that conquer by war will die away, if we recognize that conversion by fear is not true conversion. True faith without fear seems to come from the understanding that all Sacred Energy is eternal. When we embrace peace patiently, the Sacred Spirit that is our own anointing will, in one manifestation of life or another, experience complete harmony. All life that we touch on earth carries our Sacred seeds into another manifestation and generation.

The way of The Sacred Spirit seems to have always been that we may have to move to different, more fertile ground, to keep our family faith alive and to keep from being overrun by the weeds of The Unholy. Perhaps the problem is that we are planting too many times in soil that can no longer nourish life. All ground becomes Sacred ground if it is filled with The True Spirit of harmony on earth, as it is in heaven.

They will know we are The Anointed (Christians) by our responsible compassion for all life on this earth, and by our patience in the face of others' fears.




Monday, January 14, 2013

Queenie in the Kitchen

Gayle talked in her blog, OneBirdWatching.blogspot.com today about the biblical account of Mary and Martha. She wrote how both behaviors exist in the same body, both being important to a life of prayer and service. I really resonated to that entry after the day I had on Saturday.

I was granted the gift by my friend, Queenie, of accompanying her to the kitchen of an off-the-boat Italian woman's son's home. Saturday, we were going to learn to bake Italian cookies. Richard has already perfected the baking of Eda's best biscotti ever, so I was thrilled with the opportunity to add to our repertoire of original Italian delicacies.

Real Italians are powerfully passionate people, even about the almonds and figs for their family's favorite foods. Many people don't know this, but the Italian influence in the New Orleans area is so strong that after being here for a year you become part Italian Catholic. It's in the food, the wine, and the air. Francesca should be famous as the queen if the New Orleans Italian kitchen.

I don't know what I expected, but we arrived at Francesca's son's home and were greeted by her gentle and gentile daughter-in-law. Upon walking through the great room, we came upon a beautifully appointed open kitchen looking over a huge majestic dining room. This was the kind of table where homemade Italian food would be properly honored. We were ready to roll up our sleeves, scrub up, and begin. But wait!

Through the door at the edge of the dining room was a second kitchen. Be still my heart, a prep kitchen as well as a show kitchen in a private home. Only in the mansion where my Italian friend, Noel, works had I been exposed to such a foodie's fantasy.

The first excited utterings, in a very heavy Italian accent, had to do with not having the right size bowl and the absence of the necessary twenty eggs. Julia Child was never any more entertaining than was Francesca. There were ways to do things that were sacred, and we were in danger of committing cooking heresy. Her daughter-in-law pulled out several bowls as substitutions, "No! No! No!" in the way an only Italian grandmother can express her dismay.

This prep kitchen is bedecked with gorgeous granite counter-tops. When a suitable bowl couldn't be produced, Francesca sent her daughter-in-law out for eggs, and plop! Ten pounds of flour hit the shiny surface in one big white mound. Queenie suggested that we should be writing down the recipe. What recipe? As with all really good cooks, measurements are a matter of feel, not a matter of science. Could Michelangelo have written a recipe for painting the Sistine Chapel? The only difference is that we worship the paintings forever; we eat in mere minutes the lovingly made artworks of the great chefs.

I was amazed at the similarities in teaching cooking methods between this tiny immigrant Italian and myself. When I was a professional cooking teacher, I didn't arrive in the classroom with written directions. I appointed a student in the front row to follow along, writing down all my "guestimates" of how much of each ingredient. I volunteered to be that front-row student for Francesca. I have problems standing for long periods, so this suited me just fine.

Queenie is just learning the intricacies of the kitchen, now that she's in semi-retirement. She was greatly enthused by adding the great globs of other ingredients onto the massive mound of flour. My three-year-old sister making mud pies with me had no more glee than did Queenie. It mattered not to Francesca when the half gallon river of eggs started cascading dangerously off the mound toward Queenie's feet. Not to worry, what Queenie lacks in height, she makes up for with fast reflexes.

I was enjoying being Mary, sitting at the feet of the master (mistress?), for a change, converting her Italian- tinged directives to my own shorthand for later transcription. But with Francesca, every warm body had to get into the act. You want to eat, you cook...unless you're her sacred son, who she says with pride "doesn't know how. He asks too many questions. How much you put? I no know how much."

After incorporating all other ingredients into the dough, it was time to have lunch while the dough rested. But there was to be little rest for Francesca and Queenie. Francesca had planned a feast for us. Out of her daughter-in-law's refrigerator, she produced veal cutlets that, she explained, had been breaded by her with her own bread crumb recipe. Out of the pantry, came a quart of her should-be-famous marinara sauce, that Queenie had helped her can many months before. Out of one of her five-gallon buckets, that she had brought in when she arrived, came a plastic bag of her hand grated "stinky cheese."

While Francesca set to work frying the veal and fussing about the inadequacy of the pan, I stood by asking about ingredients and procedures.  She sincerely bemoaned her inability to teach because she couldn't say "how much." By this time, I think she was toying with being comfortable that I could translate her directions to something resembling a recipe. Maybe it was the way I handled her measuring of milk by the handful into the dough that calmed her. i sincerely answered that she was the best kind of teacher, the kind that helps you learn by assisting the artist.

She and I had seemed to bond over the understanding that flour doesn't always contain the same amount of moisture, and almonds have varying amounts of oil. I think she was willing to trust me for the moment, but the proof of my trustworthiness will probably come when her daughter attempts to use my written recipes. Queenie was set to work making salad while Francesca boiled the pasta.

Meanwhile, Francesca's son had breezed through the kitchen, kissing us all on the tops of our heads and doing a bit of fatherly flirting with his two daughters. He didn't stay for lunch, but his sister entered with her two children, a nine-year-old girl and an eighteen-month-old boy who clearly adores his Nona. But he broke Nona's heart when he took one look at lunch and started saying No! with his hands and his beautiful little-boy soprano voice. I had a son with that gleam in his eye. I don't think it was meant to be an affront to Nona's culinary talents, but that he didn't want to take time out of chasing the dog to be strapped in a chair to eat.

Francesca seemed to feel that a meal without a man at the table just wasn't worth spending time on. She insisted that her daughter get the son-in-law on the phone and "make" him come to lunch. The party was on! "Ma, don't start with me! He's got other things to do!" "What he got to do? He gotta eat."

Queenie held the salad bowl up to Francesca in the position in which the alter boys hold the vessel of hosts at communion. Francesca anointed the romaine with a few ingredients and finished off with vinegar, "Just a splash." After tossing the salad, Queenie got us to the table, with the only "man" being in a high chair, by announcing, "Manga!"

We were thoroughly enjoying the lively lunch conversation about fifty years of marriage, Italian-style, when Francesca proclaimed, "Talk is good, but we got work to do. Back to the kitchen!"

Everybody really got into the act at this point. There was to be no more division of Marys and Marthas. The fourteen-year-old genius granddaughter ran for cover. Two other nine-year-old granddaughters came in and fought to be Nona's favorite cookie makers. The daughter-in-law prepared baking pans, rotated them in the oven, removed cookies, and dusted them with powdered sugar. Queenie and Francesca worked as a small (in stature and numbers) assembly line, rolling dough and placing almond and fig fillings in the centers before covering with more dough and placing on the baking sheets. The daughter-in-law placed the pans in the oven.

Every time her daughter-in-law opened her commercial convection oven, Francesca would announce, " I love this oven, but she won't let me steal it!" Her daughter-in-law replied, without missing a beat, " I told her she could have it if she can lift it out and carry it out by herself." Francesca finally admitted that she could buy one, but she didn't want to spend a thousand dollars on one when she's ready to "retire" from cooking. I got the feeling that this same conversation transpires every time Francesca cooks in her son's home.

Francesca's daughter entered with her toddler and announced to her mother that she was leaving the active little boy with her mother, so she could go shopping. Her mother replied, quick as lightening, "I have work to do! You don't do nothing!" Queenie jumped in with, "We'll watch him. You go." Francesca's look at Queenie was pure incredulity. At this point, the daughter burst into laughter, while her mother continued fussing. "Ma! I was just kidding! I don't leave him with you went you're not making cookies; I'm not going to leave him with you now!"

Francesca was already off to the races with fussing about how her daughter wasn't getting any cookies because she didn't help make them. This led to a rollicking discussion of the favoritism shown to the son, which took us full circle back to "He don't know how!" Another conversation that has probably been circling for almost fifty years.

Francesca must have then noticed that I no doing nothing, so she set me to work rolling dough. I've never had manual dexterity, so several times she fussed about my uneven dough. I offered to let her beat me with her wooden rolling stick. She said, "I would, but I know how that hurt." Did I wonder how she'd know what a whack with a wooden stick feels like? Not in the least.

My mother and grandmothers wouldn't let me help them either because I was too messy. More than once my mother's mother threatened to hit me and my younger sister with a broom handle. And when I attempted to learn drums from a nun in high school, she ended trying to teach me after two lessons with the words, "You're a spastic." i was grateful when Francesca simply patched the bald spots in the dough.

I'm not sure if I'd gotten any cookies to take home if I hadn't gotten into the act of rolling and stuffing for a few minutes. More than likely, I would have because my man arrived to take me home and I don't think Francesca knows how to let a man leave with a token of her talents to remember her by.

It took me two days to recuperate. Welcome to the Old New Orleans Italian way. Manga!












Sunday, January 13, 2013

Pre-Productive Protection

In a recent Time Magazine, an article referred to the replacement of the term, "Reproductive Rights" with the term "Reproductive Justice." We continue to relabel a movement without a clearly defined mission, hoping that all who hear will be attuned to the message. Reproductive Justice is not a women's issue; it is a children's issue, and by extension, a humanity issue.

When a very close friend whose children my husband and I assisted with parenting showed me a photo of her ten-week-old unborn grandchild, I could hardly breathe with the awe of the moment. We are already deciding who he/she looks like. My friend said the baby looked like Mr. Peanut; I insisted that the skinny legs could only come from his/her grandmother, my friend. We both loved that baby already so much that we could smell him/her. Every baby deserves this kind of community commitment.

That is the damn point, you patriarchal misogynistic jerks who think that women are walking wombs with eggs for you to fertilize with your superior seed. You have no empathy, much less real committed love, for your children or their mothers. For centuries you have acted no better than roosters in a hen house. What you don't seem to comprehend is that all but a very few male roosters are killed at birth, and only the best stock is kept to reproduce. It matters not what the birth order of the baby roosters; only one is needed to service the whole flock of females. And what a mother or grandma of baby roosters thinks is no measure of superior stock. Neither is first-born status.

DNA is now able to prove paternity ( and genetic superiority), so some of you now grudgingly support your offspring and their caretaker, but you continue to act no better than barnyard thugs. I believe it is time to let you self destruct; you are anachronisms in modern society. Dinosaur dads may have been better fathers to their offspring than are many of you. We know that one close relative of the dinosaur, the penguin, is better at parenting than many of you.

We cluck our tongues and say how awful it is what Muslims do to their women. We still have households in America who treat women no better, and it is still not against International law to use rape of women AND CHILDREN as weapons of war. THINK ABOUT THIS. We have had people calling themselves Christians for over 2000 years, and we still have no international treaty against this abomination.

I was not wanted except for the services I could render as a caretaker to children of my parents beginning when I was four and we lost our Black nanny. My eventual status in society was as a servant to the children that I bore and to their father. This began in 1955 and continued until the present, in many circles. I began publicly speaking out against this when my daughter was in danger of dying four years ago and had her own husband and daughters to minister to her in her illness. I woke up about my real role in today's world. There are some things (like cancer) from which I could not protect my own young, so I began to channel the grief that I felt into protection of the children of others.

Reproductive Justice is an attempt to make sure that every child enters into a responsible, compassionate community, committed to creating world peace for all generations of children and those yet to be conceived. We can begin by making sure those who create children without responsibility for caring for the child and others who neglect and actively abuse children (including by creating them through incest or rape) have millstones tied around their necks until they throw themselves into the sea. Meanwhile, we can allow mothers who can't commit to protecting their children, both born and unborn, to make their own decisions about whether it is better: to kill a child's body before birth or the child's soul as he/she lives without love.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Fear, Myths, and Faith

Humanity is prone to fear of the unknown. This is usually a result of poor understanding of something and inability to create an action plan for dealing with the root of our fears. Sailors were justifiably afraid of fog in the days before satellite navigation systems. They could not anticipate what lay ahead, which may lead to their demise. They created myths to give them a sense of power over the unknown. The myths were probably based on the storyteller's comfort level in having the skills to deal with whatever lay beyond the mists.

Scientists, too, make up myths, which they call theories. As theories are tested, scientists come to conclusions that help them plan progress in the physical world. When a theory is tested enough to satisfy the statistics by which scientists predict events, we think of the prevailing findings as facts. These are actually the prevailing theories that seem to be factual. Great scientists never lose their sense of wonder about the unknown. They never lose their awe in attempting answers to mysteries.

There is a huge difference between fear and awe, but our religious traditions often interchange the two concepts. The Psalms speak eloquently of awe, but much of scripture speaks in fear of that which cannot be seen or understood on a physical level. Myths are created by the storytellers to assuage their own fears and those of their communities. The only tools the tellers had were words describing what surrounded them. They used the known as metaphors for the unknown. Their fear and awe were real, but not the words that could not begin to describe, in earthly terms, Infinite Power.

When scientists began understanding the nature of the unseen power that we call energy, and ascertained that all matter is manifestations of energy, this opened a whole new way to experience Divinity. The masses of energy that we call stars can be seen with telescopes long after these stars have burned out. How is this possible? The same way that we still see the faces and hear the voices of those we love long after their bodies have died. Energy never really dies; it simply goes into other manifestations.

The concept of a Holy Spirit being part of every human may be as old as humankind. The belief that this Divine Energy is the same in The Holy Spirit and in humans was codified in the book of Genesis. Isn't it possible that, by all the names that we call god, The Big Bang is, in fact, an explosion of The Holy Spirit? Isn't it possible that this holy energy has been free for the taking ever since the beginning? Isn't it possible that free will gives us the ability to manifest as much, or as little, of this Holy Energy as we choose? Isn't it possible that peace on earth is actually achievable if each of us commits to focusing our "Force" on responsible compassion?

This concept certainly gives me a greater sense of awe that the thought of god as a jealous, vengeful, war lord creating a soldiers and a son for enforcing his bloody will. I don't need to understand it to have faith in it, but this is what I believe.

Friday, January 11, 2013

The House United Will Stand

Lunch with my friend Queenie who is in many ways part of me;
She's the kind of woman who I often wish I could be.
She funny and accomplished, loved and respected;
She's the one who notices when I need to be protected.

She used to see her self as my spiritual adviser,
But this is not the reason that I so very highly prize her.
Her spiritual advice is, to my tastes, too celebration free,
But she constantly celebrates what makes me uniquely me.

We laugh, cry, sing together, and sort of dance;
We even helped each other to find lasting romance.
We've shared our children and shared our homes,
Not caring by which of us each was "owned."

She's semi-retired and finally has the spare time
To share in the memories that invoke The Divine.
We are hoping someday to share another generation
Of her beautiful family, in mutual celebration.

There are three of us amigas on different life paths;
I, even in our youth as usual, lived mine very fast.
The experience we two who are grandmothers await
Is sharing with Queenie new innocence to celebrate.

I plan to sit in a rocker and beam as she basks
In the joy of being a trusted part of parenting tasks.
If she asks for advice, we abuellas have so much to share,
Knowing that she'll understand and honor how we care.

To help committed parents is the greatest of gifts;
We've lost the honor in availability as society shifts.
Even parenting partners sometimes need helping hands;
Consistent values is what strong family demands.

In my experience, it is true that the house divided falls.
Division of men and women, onto parenting, threw a pall.
In rural society, many share all work toward the same goal;
Pulling together on the same clear path keeps The Spirit whole.

Should all families have mission statements and job descriptions?
A goal never defined and set cannot ever come to fruition.
Marriage based on animal attraction can only become sacred
By defining our and common goals, becoming spiritually naked.

Innocent souls deserve the protection of responsible community
Patrolling the perimeter to keep our children predator free.
In this day of global values entering into our sacred homes,
We can't protect our children's souls by simply casting stones.

We must remain diligent for any signs of spiritual danger,
As were the earthly guardians of the child born in the manger.
A parent without committed partners can rarely succeed;
One parent can't have all the resources to fill all a child's need.

Blood cannot be thicker than values that are passed on;
Parents are the conduits of the gifts that The Holy Spirit spawns.
Our free wills give us the right to shun even our own parents
If they subvert the sacred mission that, in our children, we are sent.

I'll not honor an earthly father or mother teaching my children wrong;
For this I have been shunned by the religion to which I did belong.
My parents were not given birth by me, they were not my sacred duty.
That others wanted them to come first was not my responsibility.

I always knew my children were lent to me, for me to keep safe;
I always knew that my boundaries would cause them to chaff.
I knew there may come a time when they would turn away from me
As they tired of hearing about the dangers that only I could see.

I hope that I can remain, in some circles, a respected elder.
I worked for this since my daughter first cried and I held her.
Before my son was born, I knew that this was a life-long mission;
I pray I'll have new opportunity to support parental decisions.




Thursday, January 10, 2013

Parenting and Peace

Some religious folk create, of their neighbors' lives, a  hell
By refusing to honor the good, in them, that dwells.
They shut out the voices of the humans closest to them,
As if only one is anointed as "God's" best friend.

Can we believe that some are meant to be better than others?
All of us share the gifts of earth as our sacred mother.
A loving parent doesn't favor the gifts of only one
While allowing all other children's' gifts to be shunned.

Somewhere along the way, humans have accepted lies
That allow us, our parent's other children, to despise.
This cannot be the purpose of the many manifestations
Of the faces of Infinite Divinity in Creation's many nations.

How can parents be happy as some of their children burn in hell?
I could not, even as a small child, on this possibility dwell.
When I was taught that my father and his sons couldn't be saved,
I willingly accepted eternal damnation beyond my grave.

They shared with me more than mothers and sisters ever would,
Without competing for which of us contained the most good.
I learned that to be a man was to accept hell as their lot,
And marry women who had mastered the virtues that they did not.

I have since come to consider hell what we do upon this earth;
I believe Divinity awaits for all of our Holy Spiritual rebirth.
I believe that there are many paths to come to final peace;
When we look to all our children, the light on the path is increased.

Every child should be born as innocent as birth trauma allows;
This should be the most sacred of our society's vows.
How do we know how we interrupt eternal peace
When we insist that our own genetics should always increase?

Perhaps we are meant to adopt all unwanted children;
They are, in Universal Energy, the children of all humans.
When we begin to lovingly parent all children of all nations,
I believe we will achieve, through peace on earth, salvation.







Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Lessons in Life

Sometimes we're so busy saving our own souls, we're stomping on the souls of others.
I never wanted to go to heaven without my father, sisters, and brothers.
I had been taught about what was sin and that children and men are usually grace free.
Those who scorned confession and contrition were destined for hell, you see.

We could tell who was in the state of mortal sin by who sat at Holy Communion.
This could only mean that, if they died in their sleep, God wouldn't let them come in.
We had to choose whether to expose ourselves as the sinners we were to all in church,
As between being true to ourselves or true to our faith, our consciences would lurch.

It all came to a head for me when birth control became my greatest issue.
I said good-bye forever to my beloved church, but I do still actively miss you.
I know many who believe their decisions are between them and their savior,
But I can't peacefully belong to a religion when I don't follow their rules of behavior.

When I was confirmed, I took the oath, and tried my best to follow the rules;
I didn't begin to openly rebel until I went to a Catholic High School.
The dirty old chaplain was creepy; he reminded me of one of my molesters.
All these years later, the betrayals by my church continue to deeply fester.

The priests who were in charge of saving our souls were allowed to perform
The miraculous sacraments on our behalf, without their own reform.
How can the priests who sinned against me be in control of my salvation?
The abuse of absolute authority has always been a plague upon our nation.

The mighty are exempted from laws "for the good of the institution."
The churches and our leaders have ignored the evolving constitution.
How can we achieve true democracy while we protect "those too big to fail?"
Until I die, I will continue against leadership hypocrisy to rail.

We must stop acting as sheep, fearing the wolves with the biggest teeth.
We must assert our individual powers as far as they will reach.
If each of us stands up for truth, no matter the consequences,
Perhaps all humankind will eventually come to its collective senses.

The truth is none have the right to keep The Divine or justice from me.
Because we're born with a Divine spark, these gifts are ours for free.
"Do as I say, not as I do," is the way despots enforce their rules.
Did so many leave religion because we're tired of being played for fools?

The time has come to accept that not all leadership is Divinely given,
Although this is the ideal by which a true democracy is driven.
The model of teaching and testing by rote memorization
Is outmoded and a threat to the strength of our democratic nation.


Many are secretly subverting our laws without concern for consequences.
When our leaders start leading by example, perhaps it will mend the fences.
The republic assumes that the connected few are wiser than the crowd;
Teaching discernment and cooperation will keep our democracy proud.

But how can we teach these things when so few are taught to care
About the fates of others and that all resources are to be shared?
Corporate leaders shelter themselves from personal liability.
Capitalism must be governed by those who understand history.


We must stop being fruitful by multiplying ourselves in giving birth;
Responsible justice and compassion will increase Divinity on earth.
We have other crises in our nation caused by corporate greed;
The work projects in democracies fill a real human need.

The skills acquired by young men working to rebuild our nation
Carry on until this day, as does their sense of obligation.
Community service is alive in many areas of our country
Apprenticeships are the way to teach our youth how to be.


Not all human services should be set up to create company profits;
Mutual insurances within committed communities are a better fit.
If each citizen signed a pledge to use their talents to help other citizens
Even the poorest and most vulnerable could be working, sharing friends.


Acquisition of the most of everything is not the same as honest labor;


A few families hoard the resources with which America is favored.

Over and over again we dismiss the need for governmental referees,
Pretending that our leaders are concerned about our needs.

Let us each sign up to teach our skills to the vulnerable youth;
The difficulty in reaching them is not a good excuse.
We can create protected zones in all our nations schools,
And share the skills that we have to give them life-long tools.














Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Eternal, Infinite Patience

As long as I'm alive, I will love you, body, mind and sacred soul.
Can I not love you forever, when your being has helped make me whole?
The Energy you have shared with me has not been shared in vain;
Your Eternal Energy that is within me will forever bear your name.

It is true that our energies have a life beyond our physical dimensions;
There are those loved by you, bearing witness to your good intentions.
Although many would like to believe we achieve individual salvation,
I believe that Eternal Peace is when enlightenment includes every nation.

I know that, as a mother, I insisted that my very different children
Worked it out between them, until their points of view could blend.
I can't believe The Infinite Source of All Creation's Eternal Energy
Could expect that the universal family would strive less for unity?

I didn't know when or where my children and theirs would make peace;
I could only pray that their many turf battles would eventually cease.
If I can have such patience, with only one speck of Divine Energy,
Why do so many believe that The Eternal is Infinite Patience free?


Every day I die to ego a bit, and every day I mourn;
There are still so many treating each other with scorn.
Sometimes it is too much to bear; I want to stay in bed
Rather than face the negative energy that I've come to dread.


According to scientists, the universe is still expanding,
According to what Infinite Energy is demanding,
And at some point, all matter will come to an end.
I hope that by that time all our energies will blend.

Perhaps, then, we will all live as Divine Energy so pure,
Our combined family, for the rest of eternity, will endure.
Perhaps we are manifestations of the mind of God,
Each a steward of The Energy on our own bit of sod.

Negative energy seems to draw more energy in;
Positive energy, when used, seems to create energy again.
I would prefer to spend my life radiating Divine Light,
Though I was taught to hide it, quaking in fright.

Balancing of our energies causes universal strife.
The way that I was taught to achieve Eternal Life
Was to protect my energy against all feared wrong;
It kept me from blending with others in Sacred song.

As I have grown stronger in knowing who I am,
I believe that universal friendship is the Divine plan.
I sing my songs of gratitude for anyone to hear;
I pray for those who were taught to run from me in fear.

It is not for me to know the balance of my energies;
It is true there are many my presence doesn't please.
As a part of The Divine Energy of this, our earth
I pray that in the end, I've been more blessing than curse.








Monday, January 7, 2013

Women and Warriors

I was with my longest-lasting girlfriend, talking about changes in our society in our lifetimes. All America's sacred rules were revamped in the sixties. Our brothers, sons, and husbands could no longer be forced to go to war. Black American citizens could no longer be abused without their abusers facing serious legal challenges. Women were able to plan their professional and family lives through ready access to conception control. Christianity was set on a new course of compassion and respect for other religious views. With such great freedoms, much chaos has ensued.

It is true that many of we women weren't sure what to make of it all. We began experimenting with the way males had behaved, becoming just as irresponsible and irrepressible as many of our men had allowed themselves to be. Our children have suffered. They have very few inherited boundaries with which to guide their own behaviors. All the traditional models of adult behavior were all but abandoned by our flower child, feminist freedoms.

It is time for our America to decide where we want the world to end up, and begin helping to define what boundaries and goals are best for future societies. I believe that the greatest goal would be peace on earth. I also believe that sacred scriptures have a great deal to teach us about ways we have waylaid that process in generation after generation. I believe "heaven" can begin on earth if we stop the competition for the most of everything.

We have reared children who believe in justice. Justice requires fairness and equal partnerships in our complex society. It requires the honoring of the skills of every human and the insistence that we all pull our loads, even from early ages. Unfortunately, we were so busy finding ourselves and community networks, many of us lost our sense of responsibility for the families we created. We also found out that we all need some sort of boundaries to our paths in life or we lose our way. We need, not only boundaries, but an end-point in mind.

Many have been frightened by the drastic changes and want to turn the clock back to the past when neither women nor black people had full citizenship privileges. Many want to continue seeking eternal life without addressing the improvements that we can make in our Sacred Spirits in this life. Many believe that we can create peace by killing and conquering, even though this has only ever created temporary truce with retaliation awaiting the next generation.

Ladies, it is time to grow up and pay our dues. We now have sons who parent our grandchildren in a loving manner, so we could continue to be active in the greater society. We need to be ready to think about and discuss how the old and the new values interrelate. We need to help the new generation direct their energies toward justice and lasting peace. We need to help our own men step aside from procreation, property, and protection and step into partnership. This is new to them, so we must be patient.

I can't remember where I read it, but somewhere I heard that for a business to succeed, one should not invent something new, only improve something that exists by 10%. Perhaps when we look at society, we would all be better off to realize that "getting there" may take more than our own lifetimes. America is still assimilating the upheaval of the sixties. The Girl Scouts taught me that I should leave every place I went better than I found it. If each of us can stop concentrating on the end of our singular lives and attempt to leave 10% more positive energy in the world than what we found, maybe the new goal of peace on earth will eventually come to pass.

We're not done yet, but we have to stop attempting revenge for all our years of oppression. All that woman energy can be rerouted to creating a path to peace on earth. We can start with our own men (fathers, husbands, sons, and lovers) who have been rather lost ever since we stopped demanding that they train as warriors and war lords. If they are willing to learn to love with us, we may have to learn to laugh with them.

The real world is not our "G" rated Pollyanna fantasies of fairies, knights in shining armor, and Prince Charmings. Most men seem to need laughter as a way to scare away their own demons. Lock the kids out of the room and hold each other while you both laugh at the absurdities of real life.


Sunday, January 6, 2013

Stop the Stupid Pendulum Swings


Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.” ― George CarlinWhen Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops? This really gets to the heart of what is wrong with society. We keep swinging the pendulum from god as male to god as female and back again and from "Men are stupid" to "Women are stupid."

I am so tired of the pendulum swing, I could simply vomit! Only when we understand partnership will we be able to save the males and our humanity. We are getting dangerously close to cloning of humans. This won't take any males, only skin cells from females and wombs. Do we really want an all-female world? 

Sure, there will be some little bit of cloning of males, but only the strongest, best looking, smartest, whatever. Even if you are one of the chosen males, be aware that the genetics will get weaker and weaker with each generation. WAKE UP, MEN! Turn off your televisions; put down the beer. We need you for much more than the sperm you provide, but you are not living up to the rules for life that you have written in sacred scriptures. We women have, for too long, born the burden of exemplifying what you have espoused in your grand speeches and scriptures. It is time for you to do as Eliza Doolittle sang in My Fair Lady. SHOW ME!

Your boys need to be taught to fight instead of fleeing behind their mothers skirts and their sports bars. Fight for the balance of power in your families. Your protection of women way past their child bearing and nurturing years has turned your women into pampered eternal princesses and you into puppets clowning for your friends. You have abandoned your sons to being pampered princes without a kingdom into which to ascend.

Stand up and be counted among those who fight for what's right, not only for your positions in a pathetic society of apes following those with the biggest "roar" and most women at their disposal. Each man and each woman has skills to offer the human race. We have babies and the eternally innocent to provide sweet amusement as we watch over them and protect them from predators. We don't need any more clowns acting as if they are court jesters. 

We live in a free society in which we can all state our true opinions without fear of punishment. Stop standing behind false "humor." When you are displeased, don't roar or ridicule; communicate with the human words you were given. If you don't have the words, ask for help. Remember the story of  Cyrano de Bergerac? There are many in therapeutic fields who can help you put words to your feelings and opinions without offending your females.

Partnerships are about commitment to contracts. Let's stop pretending that marriage shouldn't be a carefully crafted contract. Stupid sex blinds you to the realities of a woman's values. Sex is sacred only when there is mutual responsibility, trust, and commitment.

Before it's too late, PLEASE...WAKE UP, MEN! SHOW ME!

Tomorrow...Patience, Women. They are trying.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Freedom and Free Will

Our country is about freedom to choose good over evil, not only about choosing legal or illegal. There are many things that I believe are wrong that are perfectly legal in our country, such as invitro-fertilization as long as there is even one unloved child needing a home.

I know that it's in our animal natures to want to replicate ourselves, but our gift and privilege as humans is that we are free to choose to act by something other than instinct and copying our ancestors. It is incumbent on each of us, as parents, to instill our values by our examples and allow only the freedoms to our children that we feel they are prepared to handle, as they are able to handle them.

As a parent, it made it very difficult to impose any values in my home without the back pressure on my children of the law. Complicating the issue was the fact that the father of my children, from whom I had been divorced before my son's second year, and I had many opposing values. The best I could do was to impress upon my children my expectation that they follow my values in my home.

The law said that, at thirteen, my son was old enough to decide with which parent he wanted to live. My son asked to live with his dad when he reached the age of fourteen. I felt that it was time that I allow him to test his own values and decide which of his dad's values he would incorporate into his journey into manhood. I released him to his father, five hundred miles from my home.

The transition for both my son and his father was extremely rocky, as they had never really lived together as father and son. I ended up relocating in order to referee their power struggles as my son "made his bones," as a man. Many was the time he came to me bragging about what his father allowed him to do, knowing full well how it would upset me. My reply to him was, "You know my rules. Don't blame your behaviors on your dad. You can choose which rules to follow." All I could do was pray that he would be faithful to his higher, more intelligent self.

Here is my point: Simply because something is within, or even required by the law, doesn't mean we have to embrace it. We should, however, be willing to accept the outcome of our actions. People who protested the killing of innocent souls in Vietnam by refusing to join the draft were willing to pay with their own lives to change the law. People who were no longer willing to have their American citizen children spit on because of their skin color were willing to pay with their own lives to change the law. Women who want to love their children are willing to pay with their own lives to give birth to and nurture them, perhaps until the mother's own death. The moral fathers are willing to put their own lives on the line in defense of their families.

Because abortion is available, in any form, doesn't mean anyone has to take advantage of the offer. This is their right, even if we don't agree. Cocaine is available, but I choose not to use it. As a child of abuse, I believe it is worse to give birth to a child whose soul will be crushed by being unwanted than to be given back to God before birth.

As a friend of several women who have sought abortion instead of giving birth to babies' who had already been damaged by their own addictions, I understand that sometimes abortion is an act of responsibility for one's own weaknesses, which were probably passed on from their own parents. Until every child (even the un-pretty, terribly damaged child) is guaranteed a safe place to be nurtured until his or her death, I will continue to object to the parents of children (and children) in war and to the creation of animal life by artificial means leaving much unwanted potential human life, as well as to other forms of abortion.

My taxes pay for all of these efforts. It is the law of the land. I can choose to move to a cave in a country that still lives in the stone age, if I could find one, or I can continue to support the laws of our country and each person's right to follow their own faith and live with their own consequences, earthly and eternal.

Neither Hobby Lobby nor their insurance carrier is going to force anyone to take a pill or procedure that their free will doesn't choose. Would Hobby Lobby have the same objections to artificial means of conception that also produces more unwanted human potential?

We cannot expect the law to enforce our fear of the perceived weaknesses of others. We do not know what is in the hearts and souls of others. Sometimes all we can do is pray that we all become responsible for our own souls and let those of others take care of themselves. We can also walk the walk that we talk, by not judging anyone but ourselves.

Friday, January 4, 2013

Family as Life-Long Friendship

What a blessing it is in my life to "belong" to so many families. We are widely treated as honored members of "the elders" in these families. We've wiped the tears and butts of many of their babies who are now coming into adulthood. These can be tough years for marriages when the focus becomes the marriage again after so much time prioritizing children.

Most of us enter marriage and parenthood with no idea how to form honest relationships. We tend to operate on automatic impulses from our own upbringing. This is how animals have been parenting since the beginning. As we attempt to establish the values of two completely different sets of parents into our own families, we find that there are some diametrically opposed values that cannot be lived simultaneously. We tend to muddle along and one person sets the rules while the other builds resentments.

In functional families, the children have been given the strength and the tools to fight their own battles and make their own contracts with both parents. In non-functional families, all action must be cleared by only one elder. This causes division in the household, which soon breaks down into chaos. It is true that a house divided against itself will fall. Somehow, families survive, but marriages often don't thrive. Changes must be brought to bear or the marriage will simply fall apart around the children's and our own heads.

M. Scott Peck, in his book, A World Waiting to Be Born, writes about changing old systems. He says that all systems hide behind masks of pretense in order to keep harmony. In order for the societal system to change, people have to be willing to take off their masks. When the old patterns are discarded, chaos ensues. Because we are so uncomfortable with the unfamiliar, we tend to get frightened and run back behind our masks.

I believe that this is what is happening in many marriages and families, in fact in our world's society, today. We have discarded many of the old patriarchal masks and mindsets and are looking for honest ways to relate. There are growing pains which cause many to want to despair. They lobby for a return to the old familiar.

If we have a firm and achievable goal in mind, we can make our case for an end to the discomfort being a better place than the automatic actions of our pasts. Only then will the journey through chaos be worth attempting. It helps to have a committed support network in these endeavors.

Every relationship requires investment of time and energy. Marriage also requires emotion, empathy, and physical bonding. These last three are gifts of The Spirit. We must allow ourselves to be vulnerable to receiving these gifts from our partner; only then will we stop being afraid that what we give of ourselves won't be restored to us. We must be open to each other and looking toward The Holy in each other in order to become honestly bonded and unafraid to embrace mutual values with respect.

It is never too late to begin again, as long as both parties are willing to commit to a sacred contract of seeking The Holy in Holy Matrimony. What we give of ourselves in a sacred bond will return to us many fold in the form of life-long friendship.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Religions and Roots


"And if the roots are sufficiently damaged or smothered by layers and layers of dirt, as in construction, the tree will eventually die, no matter how well-established or strong it has been." - Gayle Nolan, OneBirdWatching.blogspot.com

It seems to me that this is what happens to "the faith like that of a child" in generation after generation of humanity. We hand the big job of defining god over to "grown-ups" who pile rules and regulations that are actually human societal inventions onto the innocent trust that nurtured children have. We pretend to have answers for those things that we can't understand in order to impress our children with our wisdom and power. Enough generations of piling one fear-based story on top of another eventually crushes the pure faith of children under it's weigh, smothering The Holy Spirit in their souls.

Perhaps we'd do better as a people if we asked children to define god for us, instead of the other way around. Maybe we'd get closer to the truth, and maybe the uncountable numbers of underground capillary roots put out by the world's children would bring new nourishment into the Eternal Vine of Divinity.

Perhaps it is time that we allow the old leaves and fruit to fall to the ground and nourish the new life with its wisdom and history. Perhaps we should encourage inter-religious marriages to ensure "hybrid vigor" in our quest for the experience of The Holy Spirit for all nations and all generations.

I was taught, as a child, that even my closest relations could not go to heaven if they weren't practicing Roman Catholics. Others believe that the name of Jesus has to be on the lips of anyone wishing to see God. Religions throughout history seem to all have had some version of damnation if you were different. The rules were tightened ever more securely to scare children out of drifting away from their own tribes and the ways that were comfortable for their elders. Some now say that our religions were wrong in this, but how many small souls were destroyed in the interim?

If we really want to see The Sacred Spirit, perhaps we should look into the faces of the small, innocent children. And perhaps we should stop behaving as if our own deaths will be the end of the nourishment we can offer to the roots of our faith. I would like my life to count for something, even if my death is the best way to give life back to the children of the next generation. We must trust that the new roots growing in the soil of our old faiths will grow toward Eternal Light without our continued pruning and prodding.

The new fruit may be a hybrid that is unimaginably sweet and satisfying. This is my hope and prayer for the future.