Thursday, June 26, 2014

Please Don't Pray for Me

Please don't pray for me to your god unless I know of what your god is capable.

I want nothing to do with any entity that demands suffering or death from his or her own children, as a way to assuage his or her rage. Never do I want to answer to an entity that accepts incest as a way to advance the lines of those subject to him or her. Nor will my knee bend in supplication to one who allows forgiveness of sins, without any attempts at recompense to those whom we have harmed. The god we are told chose Abraham is not a god for me.

 It matters not to me whether you believe me to be in heaven or hell. No prayer on earth can change or erase the impact my energy has had on others. I have caused pain to many, some because they needed to purge poison from their pasts, and the only way to do so was to hold them until they broke. Others I have given great joy, to tide them over when the lives that they were living seemed nothing but dark clouds. Only in eternity will the energies be balanced. Nobody has control over the energies' eventual equilibrium.

What I want around me when I am in anguish, physical or mental, is a reminder of all the happy times we shared while I was not in pain. I care not what my future holds; my only important work is long-since completed. How I live from here on out is simply attempting to avoid causing pain.

Moses, Jesus, MLK, Gandhi, and Mandela are all examples of people on earth who must have experienced a different god. Abraham was simply wrong when he thought he heard the true god. The god of peace is the only eternal entity that heals the earth with willing human hands.

Don't pray for me, unless your hands are busy comforting my flesh and that of my loved ones. In my opinion there is no value in loving "pure and chaste from afar."






Wednesday, June 25, 2014

My Mothering

After a lifetime of wondering what others wanted from me, so that I could seek to fulfill their fantasies, I am faced with wondering what I want for myself in my life. This seems to be the plight of many women my age who were taught that our mission was to mother all on earth. We were informed that we should not make any move without checking out our actions with others, and that we should keep a constant eye on others for their approval as we progressed in any direction.

This "emotional intelligence," or empathy, was the hallmark of being a good woman. Sadly, I find this to still be the case so in many circles of females. We are still taught to honor our empathy above all our other skills. So much of our rhetoric is about mothering our earth and all on it. What about those of us who want no part in eternal dependency of our progeny and those that come after them? If our children never grow away from their need for our assistance, I believe we have failed them. Did I work so hard at impressing independence on my own children only to be a pariah among other women in my old age?

I am sick to death of the conferences of women spending all their time and energy seeking to heal their own inner children, rather than in forming game plans for healing the earth in which we all live. The soft, sweet voices that tell us all to remain calm in the face of the continued destruction of our planet and all on it seem mostly misguided to me.

Moses, MLK, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela did not spend all their time contemplating their own navels and shopping for shoes. They made their marks on our earth by identifying their own strengths and drawing to themselves those with complementary characteristics. They planned actions and marched forward with steely determination, dressed in a manner that did not threaten their oppressors.

The women of old knew that women's sensuality was as important in winning wars as were weapons. I am excellent at feeding and creating fun for males, in order that they should relax. When they are relaxed, they will often let down their guard and listen even to women and children. When will we bring the men most threatened by our militancy to our tables and ask them to help us protect them and their progeny? Where have we lost the real glory of our own gender?

It matters not to me what makes my men most comfortable around me. I would wear a burka or chador, if it worked to make the language of my eyes more intense. In my country, we have finally found that even nudity doesn't necessarily bring men begging to be held to a woman's breasts. It is imperative that each of us, in our own arenas, use all the gifts granted to us by the universe to help sway the conversations between males and females toward action that promotes world peace.

My version of mothering is to continue to bring resources to all who will join the effort in helping others share in just success. I may not bail you out of jail, but I'll support you along your mission's trail.

Friday, June 20, 2014

All Are In the Self I See

When one lives life as a sacrament, it can become too intense for others to enjoy. Upon the death of my youngest brother, my mother curled up in my arms and wailed that the last words she had shared with Albert had been harsh. I got it in my mind that I should live every moment with every person as if it was to be my last. I wanted every encounter to end on a high note.

The more I loved a person, the more important it became to me that we would never let the sun set on our anger. Other people don't act like this; they trust that the relationship will continue no matter what words are left in conflict. I have consequently become a big burden for others to bear.

The near-deaths of several friends and family members and the losses of so many relationships during Hurricane Katrina only added to my sense that I had to end every day with peace among those with whom I usually share good will. To say that I became obsessed with peace is simply an understatement of immense magnitude.

All of this was also impacted by the whole heaven and hell system of my mother's religion. She said that she believed that only those following her faith would make it to heaven, but her child died without notice enough to "get right with God" before he passed away from us. The same scenario subsequently happened when a sister and older brother died. All of them had moved on from the faith of our father and mother.

It became totally unbearable when my daughter was diagnosed with cancer. She is a devout follower of the Christian religion in her religious, professional and personal lives. I, who follow no religion, still had enough of the fear that informed my mother's faith that I became adamant about finding a way to assure that my daughter and I would share peace in the hereafter. I could find no words to assist us in sharing our beliefs and I didn't know how I would celebrate her life with her and others if I didn't have the proper words to describe what she meant to me and those around her.

I also didn't know how to handle the fact that her religion teaches that people like me don't see our loved ones after they have passed from this earth. For years I have pondered this problem in solitude, giving up relationships rather than continue to run the daily risk of offending someone I love. And talking faith and religion is the fastest way to offend. If I don't interact with people, I certainly can't offend them.

What I came to realize is that energy shared with another lives on in each person, place, or thing that we encounter. No matter how much I may have fought with another, the good memories will always come back when I least expect them. Their energy has become a part of me that I also observe in others. Every time I cook, I feel my mothers in my kitchen with me. When I write, I feel my daddy informing how I think about things. Every beautiful day brings back my baby brother, and ironing includes the person who taught me, my older brother.

I never visit our bayou family without taking along my deceased sister who shared in their hospitality when we were sent to the country for summer vacations. My daddy, who my sister fought every minute of her life, is also laughing along with me in his sister's living room. I don't know what others may see from their places  in the hereafter, but I know that I will never stop seeing them in myself and in so many people that I know.

Watch out world, here I come again!



Thursday, June 19, 2014

Sanity Is Simply Too Terrible

It seems that the only sane thing is to accept the "inevitable." Those who dare to see outside the box of recurring human errors are destined to be marked either crazy, visionaries, or miracle workers. It is amazing how many crazy people in their own time on earth are admired as saints and geniuses after they are dead.

I have long grown weary of those who look to our abusive ancestors for ways to follow their purported faiths. Isn't it time that we understand that many leaders have come for the express purpose of leading us away from our recurring human errors?

I can imagine that Moses was sent to put an end to the foolishness of offering physical goods and flesh as homage to a god outside of all earthly experience. This seems to have been the first inkling that the way to honor our origins is to take care of ourselves and others in a manner that improves responsible compassion on earth.

I am fairly certain that the reason Jesus lived and died the way he did was to carry the concept and example of responsible compassion away from the belief that it was born into people. I believe his main message to Homo sapiens is that full humanity is a choice, freely made by each individual. I believe he also meant to lay to rest the belief that there is a spiritual salvation gained by accumulating and hoarding physical things to show great virtue by offering these things as sacrifices, as we lord it over others.

When will we move past the desire to offer to gods that which is already part of the very essence of what is sacred on our earth? All we really have to offer is what we are to each experience on our earth. What we leave behind is what we have offered, both negative and positive, to all. It will all become blessed in the end; it is up to each of us to either expand the positive or to eventually completely disappear.

I accept that these thoughts must mark me as insane, but the alternative that I was taught as sanity is simply too terrible for me to bear.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Fight, Flight and Our Future

Is anger the only effective fuel against fear? Aren't humans supposed to have the capacity to cope with more reasoned means? While it is true that other animals may only have capacity to flee or fight, Homo sapiens are supposed to have the ability to back away until we put our energies together in forming productive plans to make changes that will effect the future course of our earth.

Those who believe that Homo sapiens are destined to continue committing the same sins, because of Karma or the words of our ancient ancestors, look forward to peace only after we have destroyed our earth. I refuse to subscribe to a heaven other than what we are creating in our physical universe. I don't believe that I will see those who have lived and died after I'm dead, except as my own energy contains the energy that they already shared with me.

In this life, I see and hear my sisters and brothers, fathers, mothers, and all the friends who have touched my life. In my dreams, I actually feel their touches, as I did while their bodies were still on our earth. Who is to tell me that my dreams aren't simply parts of my life here on earth? I don't enjoy interpreting them, but I do often embrace them.

I simply don't see the difference in definition between then and now, the physical manifestations and the energy existent in the universe. I do expect that those who want to be treated as humans, not simply Homo sapiens animals, prove that they have the ability to channel their energies into progressively positive endeavors, for their own generation and all that come after theirs.

It is time that we define humanity as separate from the animals called Homo sapiens.

Monday, June 16, 2014

Golden Rule Gone Awry

I submit that it is dangerous to equate the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." with what Jesus meant when he is reported to have said, "Love God with your heart soul and mind, and you neighbor as you do yourself." I have had too many friends and family live and die by this misinterpretation to stay silent on the subject.

I believe that Jesus came to earth expressly to give us a new view of "God," based not on Abraham's interpretation, but on the need to "get right with our earth" as the only way to "get right with God." Jesus's greatest ridicule, we are told, was toward those who believed otherwise. This says to me that Jesus expected humans to see The Sacred Spirit inside themselves and in others around them, like him. He also expected us to honor The Sacred in ourselves enough not to do ourselves or our children harm. He, and his earthly family and friends, exemplified how to do this.

In interpreting his great commandment as The Golden Rule, we allow ourselves to deny The Sacred Spirit alive in all who embrace it in ourselves and in others. Addicts share their substance and sex induced bliss with each other. Those who deny control over their own actions take their children, and the children of others, under their wings of lust and greed. Doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, without a higher purpose than lust fulfillment for our lives on earth, is fraught with the danger of destroying all that is sacred about our physical time on earth.

What we sow, not only do we reap, but all on earth reap what we have sown, both good and bad for many generations that follow our physical manifestations on earth. This is what we each should remember as we pretend to have the keys to heaven in hands that harm and/or hoard all that is holy right here on our shared earth. We must first acknowledge The Sacred in many manifestations on earth, then share only, and all, which is sacred with others. For this ideal many martyrs, including Jesus, have given their lives and have died. Most of us are only asked to give our lives over to the effort.






Saturday, June 14, 2014

I Wish I'd Been an Oldest

I wish I had been born an oldest because I'd be certain of all that I do;
Oldest child, oldest daughter, oldest son; any would help me through.
Unfortunately, for my authority, I had an older of both sister and brother;
This secured my position of inferiority, with them and with our mother.

When siblings reached to me for guidance, food, or a loving home,
I welcomed them with open arms, no matter where I roamed.
It only caused much jealousy when my younger siblings came to me;
Their complicity in my persecution was something I couldn't see.

I'll never know how I, with no authority, have come to be blamed,
For so many of the family problems, and many yet to be named.
The oldest of our brothers is dead; our oldest sister is a living saint.
Somehow, their authority continues to, my reputation, taint.

I am not the one who tortured our siblings, at our mother's insistence.
I am not the one who brought down our father's wrath, with my resistance.
I am not the one who beat our ineffective mother in front of her children.
I am the one who offered to share all my resources, and those of my men.

Still, I am a pariah, when I share family secrets that have been told to me,
Hoping, through them, to define family values on which we all could agree.
The problem which I see is that many are convinced of absolute truth,
No matter what, in human history, has been shown to be power's abuse.

I cannot deal with those who refuse to acknowledge progress in humanity,
Believing that all who protest for human progress are victims of insanity.
I have turned myself inside out in attempting to understand their positions;
To defect from their versions of humanity has become most sane of my decisions.

Only those who walk in paths that lead to peace while still on earth
Will be, by me, seen as the messiahs for which they were given birth.
Any father, god, or prophet that hopes to control me by inflicting fear
Will never be a god or leader that I will hold, in my values or life, dear.

Goodbye my sisters and brothers who believe in parroted dogma and rules.
Goodbye to those who believe that all worth knowing is learned in schools.
Goodbye to religions that believe in anointed gurus, prophets, and priests.
I believe it's time for all hierarchical religions and caste systems to cease.











Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Preparing Progeny

There are people in the pool and sailors on the seas. How can the view be better than this? Watching others enjoy the blessings of their being is probably the greatest pleasure I have in my leisurely life.Can it be possible that appreciation is a vocation?If so, I have certainly found my reason to continue breathing the air gifted to me.

The boats are back for summer sailing classes, a yearly event that draws me to live on the water.
So many seasoned sailors freely donate their time to teach young people safe sailing techniques. It takes days of preparation and intermittent harbor patrols, I assume to check for sunken obstacles and placing buoys to mark what is unseen in the brackish water's depths. It is a delight watching the smooth sailing, and an equally enjoyable activity watching the young capsized sailors regain mastery of their crafts.

I have always wanted to be a teacher, but my lack of confidence in myself always leads me to over-identify with the struggles of others. This is not a good trait in a teacher, as a teacher must exude confidence and a certain detached superiority to which a student must aspire. A teacher must also have infinite ability for repetition of tasks, as the students repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

I was, unfortunately taught that all mistakes, once being told the "right way," are punishable offenses. Instead of punishing my students, I learned to punish myself for not explaining the process properly. A bit of this tendency may be compassion, but too much of it renders me helpless to keep my own boundaries intact.

Meanwhile, I love watching those who can guide and protect the progeny of others, never doubting their own abilities to give them the skills and strengths they need.

Monday, June 9, 2014

What Energy Will Exist in Eternity

How can we say that we value life when we focus most of our funds on killing? We tear out full forests; thereby, killing entire ecosystems and assuring the deaths of complete civilizations. We poison water supplies in the quest for energy sources that could be obtained with more patient processes. We wage war to claim and cage lands that are able to thrive only in diversity. We produce pools of poison for bathing, next to seas of soothing salts. We've harnessed the nuances of nature in order to create illusions of permanence in our physical destinies, destroying our earthly experiences of peace in the process.

We don't allow pre-term babies to be loved while they live, insisting that they will be better off under lids of incubators instead of in their parents' caring arms. Our dying are shocked, prodded, paddled and protected from peaceful passing, as our living are driven to greater and greater acts of desperation by those who hoard what our earth so freely gives. We don't even allow our dead bodies to be used as new sources of earth's energy. Will we ever leave well enough alone in order to embrace what works best in natural rhythms?

What is wrong with feeding our bodies to the carrion who take our spirits soaring skyward? How horrible would it really be to have the energy of your flesh and bones feed a new tree? Would you rather have the arms of the ones who most love you wrapped around you, in an effort to soak up the last bits of your earthly energy, or would you prefer to have your body continue to use the medical resources that could save a young mother or child?

How have we come to a point where humanity means honoring outside appearance, while the core energy of the universe is being denied eternal life? When will we realize that our skins are simply wrappers for our spirits and the spirits of those who have impacted our own? What we create from our insides is all that will live on after our physical selves are expired, and the best of life is dependent on sharing and diversity.

Those who spend their lives destroying and hoarding don't know what they do. They are not only destroying the earth that they see around them, but are ensuring that their energies will die as our honored universe is repaired. I don't believe in Armageddon, where the hoards will be either saved or left behind by a great god. I believe Homo sapiens are self-selecting, with how they spend their lives, what energy will exist in eternity.








Sunday, June 8, 2014

The Peace Preceding Homo Sapiens

Until "Christians" confess to one another, I have no use for the farce. Jesus criticized the hypocrites that confessed to god, but did not approach each other with humility and repentance. He made it very clear that there was no relationship with god without peace among the bodies that god inhabits on earth. There is only one Sacred Spirit in all the universe, and Homo sapiens have been given the unique gift of exemplifying this Spirit in our flesh. Why would we continue to waste such a precious blessing if we were actually reasonable animals?

The only conclusion I can come to is that Homo sapiens aren't ready to bear such a beautiful "burden." I'm not sure we ever will be, and that is why we are intent on our own species' and habitat's destruction. I only hope I am not around to see the end of our earth. What fools we have been to believe that we were better than what we refer to as the "lower" animal species. Religion and philosophy have only made us more arrogant.

When we replaced childlike wonder with the need to know more than the neighbor next to us, we set the stage for the destruction of us all. No person is an expert on the final answer to anything on earth. Earth is ever evolving, or it, and we, would die. How did we get to a point where we believe we are about obtaining answers, rather than believing it is the depth of our questions that count?

The basic question in any relationship should be, "How deeply do you want to relate?" The rest can only follow once we have the answer to this. Until we stand emotionally naked before each other, there is no hope of reclaiming the peace preceding Homo sapiens.

Friday, June 6, 2014

The Great Gift of Conception Control

It is my opinion that conception control is a gift given to abolish the need for killing. Scientists blessed with the ability to inhibit procreation, while enabling the physical enjoyment of a couple that promotes family stability, are to be lauded for using their gifts for good. It is a mystery to me why so many of the religious "right" have identified conception control with abortion in order to stigmatize and attempt to abolish both.

While I am not a proponent of abortion as a method of birth control, I do believe that it is a greater wrong to give birth to an unwanted child, and to abuse the child (through neglect, words, or otherwise), than it is to give the seed of a potential child, a conceptus, a painless exit back into eternity.

As a mother of both a daughter and a son, I was certainly not willing to have anyone declare whether either of them was genetically superior enough to be allowed to live. I realized that, once I chose to keep the conceptus, I would have to put the life of the new being above my own survival, and I freely chose to do this. Parents who can't, won't, or don't do this should be able to end the potential person before they bring into the world another Homo sapiens animal that will have little chance to become a full human.

I submit that we, as humans, with the ability to make informed choices, have a responsibility to prevent the birth of any more of our own children than we and our communities are ready to shelter, above our own instincts for self and our own genetic preservation, from harm. What is the greater wrong? To euthanize a potential life, or to bring a child into a world where he or she is guaranteed a life of nothing but abuse?

Effective conception control gives Homo sapiens the ability to control where and when we have children, based on the resources available to us to protect and provide for their needs physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I cannot understand why any thinking person, with any compassion for parents and/or children, would object to accepting this scientific advancement as a blessing to be embraced.

When the preachers of religion refuse medical intervention for all their own physical discomforts and diseases, I think it will be time to entertain their assertions that we should all, without scientific/medical intervention, acquiesce to "the will of God" in conception. When every conceptus, including those created in fertility factories, is assured of the resources to live in full human safety, acceptance, and dignity after birth, we can begin to talk about the morality and justice of forcing unwanted pregnancies to be brought to the births of more Homo sapiens on our earth.

There has been no greater gift in my life than the privilege of mothering two Homo sapiens that seem to have, as adults, chosen full humanity for themselves. The sacrifices were more than I could ever have imagined, even though I was blessed with healthy children and a co-parent who did support his offspring. The rewards are much greater than the sacrifices because my children choose to act as adults not dependent on my continued sacrifice for their survival and that of their children. Not all who conceive are so blessed as I have been.

We, as a society, are already allowing those with choices bought with power and privilege to choose when their own children will be created. It is injustice to deny the same human dignity of decision to the poor who serve us in our greatest times of vulnerability. That is, unless I am correct in believing that the privileged have a vested interest in continuing to encourage creation of more desperate poor people to serve them.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Actions of Acceptance

Stop saying my face of The Sacred is false simply because you don't have the same eyes as I.
Stop saying I'm deaf because my ears are not attuned to the same tones that, as to yours, apply.
Stop attempting to teach me. Stop wondering about what will greet me after my physical life.
We must stop looking for approval in words and allow our actions of acceptance to suffice.

Is it possible that we can experience the same Sacred Spirit though our beliefs are not the same?
Can we ever communicate when The Sacred in our lives has different manifestations and names?
I have struggled to know from whence you speak, as I once spoke like you and your religion do.
You seem to see me as misguided or confused; those who believe like I aren't among the few.

Sacred language of faith is not about words, no matter what mouth speaks or pen writes them.
It is about taking the time to connect The Most Sacred Spirit that, in sharing, makes us human.
How can a one-in-spirit husband not hurt as he wipes away his wife's anguished tears?
How can a one-in-spirit mother desire anything more than salving her children's fears?

When we have clearly hardened our hearts to the innocence of the other's little child spirit.
It matters not how loud the overwhelming passion is expressed, I don't think we can hear it.
There is no threat, only sadness, as our beloveds, in anger or regret, turn, from us, away.
The look in the eyes of the abandoned leaves no need for the words that we may want to say.

What if we carefully chose a few of our words on which we thought all full humans agreed;
And looked into others for truths we don't already possess, for which we may have need?
The stories on which we base our lives and friendships, we refuse to admit are humanly flawed.
Though, by the same seemingly Sacred realities on our shared earth, we admit to being awed.

Some walk away from others' Sacred beliefs, allowing persecution of those they call friend;
They may not want to punish their actions, but to the forces of hatred, they abandon them.
When will all stop the talking, and start listening, while looking into the eyes of different others?
Only, in this way, to know who around us are, in The Universal Sacred Spirit, sisters and brothers.





Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Simply Sacred

It seems to me that all religions, from the beginning of time, have been seeking the same thing, which is a sense of the sacred in our experiences on earth. It also seems to me that we have put too much emphasis on limiting our quest to defining the who, when, and where, and not enough on defining exactly what makes a moment in time or action, by ourselves or others, sacred.

I wonder whether people deliberately deny that we are all capable of both embracing and creating sacred moments in our own physical spaces on earth. What but this capacity delineates the difference between the animal that is simply homo sapiens and a fully human member of this same physical genus and species?

We know from our own experiences over the ages that where two or more people feel, see, or hear the same manifestations of energy in their midst, this energy bonds them in a sense of sibling-hood. When we are very small, we know that we feel the energies in a room, and we gravitate toward energy that seems safe to us. Even at the time of birth, the beginning of teaching us not to trust our own instincts begins. We are often taught that the desire for others to feel affirmed by and filled with our innocence is more important than is our own need to be protected from those who will breathe evil expectations into us and innocence out of us.

I applaud parents who carefully control who has access to the bodies, minds, and spirits of their pure children. The job of a child is to wonder and to absorb awe, creating sacred spaces simply by their presence. Too many of us want to tamper with this work, force feeding them answers for which they have not developed questions. It seems that we spend too little time with eyes and ears attuned to see and hear what their wonder and awe is revealing to us.

It seems to me that we would see what is actually sacred on our earth if we simply sat back and observed the safely guarded little children. Allow them to gravitate toward ceremonies that appeal to their sense of awe, making sure they are given time to rest and process what their wonder leads them to explore. Honor the wisdom that they are sharing about what we can no longer see or hear by writing down what they tell us, in their own words. Let them lead us to rituals of sharing the secrets of the sacred that only the truly innocent can hear and see. Perhaps, then we will be able to seek sacred peace on earth.