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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Carlin, When 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.

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.

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.