On May 19 Occupy activist Cecily McMillan was sentenced to serve ninety days in prison for being sexually assaulted by a cop at Zuccotti Park. That day, her team left a message at the justiceforcecilly.com website, and it reads in part:
‘The Occupy Wall Street Movement has been a catalyst for social and economic change. But, while we claim to be “the 99%,” building a movement that truly represents the diversity and strength of the people will require a principled approach in our activism centered around a love ethic. bell hooks describes the love ethic in All About Love as:
The will to one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. Love is as love does, Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.
Allow me to submit that it’s possible and even more important to our present struggle, to choose to love people we don’t even like, or are our enemies, and that’s where it gets seriously hard. Sages and prophets have explained many times over that the best love is essentially compassionate love, the sort in which we extend ourselves by choice in order to further not only the spiritual growth of others, but ourselves in the process. Active, not passive love. Martin Luther King spoke of it often:
‘Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.’
And it may just be one of the hardest choices to actuate ever, along with taming our own egos, but they may also be somewhat related. Some liken higher love to conferring a moment of grace on another, or the glorious way Kabir does.
‘The flute of interior time is played whether we hear it or not.
What we mean by “love” is its sound coming in.
When love hits the farthest edge of excess, it reaches wisdom.
And the fragrance of the knowledge!
It penetrates our thick bodies,
it goes through walls.
Its network of notes has a structure as if a million suns were arranged inside.
The tune has truth in it.
Where else have you heard a sound like this?’
~ Kabir, Indian mystic
We speak of the Second American Revolution now and again, some of us in hope and conviction, some disparagingly, giving voice to the belief that our populace is smug, lazy, too used to creature comforts to be bothered, and so on. Yes, of course it’s difficult to truly imagine a successful American (USian) Spring. While there are many potential tipping points to massive resistance, there is one key component that has been foretold, but not yet fully realized: a vast revolution of consciousness and values, underpinned by the awareness that we truly are all One, spiritually indivisible from each other and the planet itself. One can easily imagine that this essential wisdom must be the precursor to a healthy revolution and building a better world.
The Occupy movement, of course, was grounded upon the premise of egalitarianism, social, financial, and democratic justice, and many former OWS activists are busy working on projects that reflect exactly that. as in: ‘When you bleed, do I not suffer, and give you aid?’ Yes, many of us are still rooted in self-centered lives, but we also now that as more of us begin to suffer, we will come to the conclusion that only in solidarity and mutual cooperation can we survive, if not thrive for now. More of us are living lives in service to others, and to our communities, reaching out to listen, ask questions…and find cooperative solutions. And live our lives as ‘friction to stop the machine’ (22 minutes, well spent), of course. :)
There are many different accounts of the democracy movement’s inception, including the Culture Jammers at Adbusters, Wikileaks, and the Arab Spring movements, but certainly there was a dawning realization of the utterly global nature of the oppression of the rabble class by the tyrants and oligarchs, whether by the built-in austerity of neoliberalism, or capitalism itself. More and more of us are beginning to see the need for cross-culture communication, given that at least by my lights, the global Indigenous were the first to experience the suffering that capitalist colonizers cavalierly robbing them of the future they wanted for themselves were laid waste…again and again.
That more of the 99% in this land are waking to the fact that we are being treated as third-class citizens allows us to empathize with them more, and look to their old ways of sustainable agriculture, horizontal democracy, cooperatives, and mutual respect a models for the future. And that’s a good thing, as of course was, the Mayan end of the old calendar prophesy of demilitarization and turning swords into ploughshares.
Some time back, I wanted to have a tangential conversation, but the comment thread went quite awry, and rather derailed a vibrant sharing of thoughts. The theme was largely based on the long line of ancestral love and caring that brought most of us here, and how we might begin to realize anew what we were arguably born sensing about ourselves in relation to one another…and the planet. It was simply titled ‘We are.’, and was anchored by this stellar song by Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Borrowing a bit from that diary:
‘The Indigenous cry: One Tribe, One World!…and understand that it must be that way if we are to heal the world, and create a better one.
If the time is upon us for a nonviolent global revolution, a time that we peasants throw off the yokes of our servitude and sense of powerlessness before the oppressive Behemoth of Doom, there will be hard days ahead. Behind the scenes, many are experimenting with new models, rediscovering older and simpler ways, working outside the machine as much as possible.
But the clearest reason (at least to me) that it must be driven by a wildfire of opening the of doors of consciousness is that without that inspired newness and even ecstasy…nothing that comes next will flourish. No new economic models, democracy models, business models, agricultural or energy models will take hold if we are not changed into more enlightened human beings who understand that we all must be honored, we all must be considered in any just models. We can be, we must be; it’s all that’s left, and it has been foretold. A spiritual insurrection is on the way.
It’s time to remember back, back, back…to the time when we knew that we are luminous beings of truth and honesty and trust that we can tap into innate Wisdom of the Ages that’s available when we’re still, and…stop time; then peer inside, and reach upward and outward to collect the wisdom of our ancestors that circles the globe aloft. To be the tree between the heavens and the earth. In your still time, perhaps tie a key onto the long tail of a kite in your mind, run out into the storm until it’s aloft, and lightning comes down zzzzzzt to the key. Use that supercharged key to open any door you wish. Find yourself again, whether you be a child of the wind, water, fire or earth, or of God as you know her. Open your heart and your soul to others; it will feed you and free you…and me. The danger is real, the risks are great, but soon there may be nothing left to lose…but the Oppressive Foot on our collective backs.’
And we’ll need to find ways to be of service that take us out of our selves, then see it spread to others.
‘Life has its beginning and its maturity comes into being when an individual rises above self to something greater. Few individuals learn this, and so they go through life merely existing and never living. Now you see signs all along in your everyday life with individuals who are the victims of self-centeredness. They are the people who live an eternal “I.” They do not have the capacity to project the “I” into the “Thou.” They do not have the mental equipment for an eternal, dangerous and sometimes costly altruism. They live a life of perpetual egotism.
Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.’
~ Martin Luther King
Yes, as in Martin Buber’s ‘I and Thou’ shared relations of mutual reciprocity, eh, juliania?. :)
There’s an online visualization meditation I do sometimes that asks one to see the fountain of light that exists inside, and imagine spreading that light out…out…out…to those we love, and even to those we fear or regret we’ve harmed, maybe even our enemies. Oh, I try, and so often fail to not be the sort of person who gets vexed by comments even here on different threads, and before I sleep, imagine bathing them in Light. That we are so factionalized here by now is clear enough, and I would like to offer my sincere apologies to any of you I’ve inadvertently harmed in the past due to the monsters that still live…under my bed.
‘Give us grace and strength to forebear and persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends and soften to us our enemies. Give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another.’
~Robert Louis Stevenson~
Many of you are involved in projects of service to others, or witnessing empathy as it spreads into communities by way of realizations of shared pain or outrage by various miscreants and the system at large. Please share with us what you’ve seen as folks twig to the fact that we really are all in this together, and that compassionate love is finding a way….
Oh, andone of our favorite climate change activists, Tim DeChristopher speaks on Anger, Love, and Sacrifice (and Occupy) here.
(photo from Oakland Occupy Love, Hella Love Valentine’s Day March, 2012)
(cross-posted at My.Firedoglake.com)
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
With all deference due DeChristopher, apparently US Eternal Flamers’ (aka ‘baby’ “boomers”) sheer protest numbers and friction was insufficient (despite, as you know, in my case at least, Every DAY’s career efforts; and now beyond, having encountered an equally quotidian and enduring silence …
Though, I’ll still listen for any call to lead, follow or simply, step aside.
Seems like on this planet, a lot of the organisms survive by eating others.
Except most plants they make their own food, from air and light. Wish I could do that.
I wonder if there’s a planet somewhere where that is not the basic model.
Probably.
anyway, since we can think, we can do it differently. Which is your point…
I agree, more than anything else, the change has to be in how we think about our fellow beings.
It’s not impossible. There are lots of people right now, probably many millions of them whose daily work consists of doing something for someone else.
I disagree with the romanticizing of the North American Indians.
Pre contact with Europeans, they were no better, no worse than any other people at killing each other. There’s no shortage of archaeological finds on that subject.
“The site of a gruesome massacre some 1,200 years ago in southwestern Colorado is yielding new evidence of the severity, and the grisly intensity, of the violence that took place there.More than a massacre, the scene at Sacred Ridge betrayed evidence of at least 33 people, men and women alike, having been not only butchered and burned, but, according to new research — also tortured.”
http://westerndigs.org/evidence-of-hobbling-torture-discovered-at-ancient-massacre-site-in-colorado/
a tune from the Congo lots of guitars.
“Prahlad Jani (“Mataji”)
Prahlad Jani is an Indian sadhu who has claimed to have lived without food and water for more than 70 years. His claims were investigated by doctors at Sterling Hospital, Ahmedabad, Gujarat in 2003 and 2010. The research team reported that he did not consume any food or water during the testing periods, although they could not comment on his claim of having been able to survive in this way for decades. The study concluded that Prahlad Jani was able to survive under observation for two weeks without either food or water, and had passed no urine or stool, with no need for dialysis.
“Hindu religious texts contain account of saints and hermits practicing what would be called inedia, breatharianism or Sustenance through Light in modern terms. In Valmiki’s Ramayana, Book III, Canto VI, an account of anchorites and holy men is given, who flocked around Rama when he came to Śarabhanga’s hermitage. These included, among others, the “…saints who live on rays which moon and daystar give” and “those … whose food the wave of air supplies”.
Wikipedia
My hippy friends mentioned this to me many years ago. They called it “Prawna”.
i’m not quite sure why you’re focused on tim dechristopher, bruce. unless i missed it, he wasn’t meaning that he would lead a movement so much. and of course so many of the gains we’d won earlier have even been rolled *backward8, which is grievous to watch. and for now disaster capitalism and the Imperium are winning, but there is a possibility that it might hange soon. and tragically, privation and suffering will launch some of it, but seein one another suffer, and caring a whole lot about that, could up the numbers in the resistance magnificently. ergo: that’s what love’s got to do with it.
but do click the cross-post link to read che’s gary snyder ‘smokey the bear sutra’. it’s just sublime.
i’ll split the difference on north american first americans: some were violent, warlike, wasted resources (alaskan fisherpeople, for instance). many pueblo peoples were extremely nonviolent, which did lead to much depradation by spaniards, for instance, and some archeos believe that the cannibalism discovered and finally proven at chaco (iirc) was down to marauders from the global south. the witch theme does pop up now and again.
but a far as agriculture and other sustainables, you may be right that even they earned to go back to the old ways, although many tribes never were agriculturalist, but hunter/gatherers.
grisly articel, though, and wars over interpretation will have already started, as they did concerning the first two fellows having shown what they believed indicated cannibalism. the local archeo school has had long meetings with the local puebloan representatives to find ways to present the conclusions…in an acceptable way.
thanks for the music, i will listen in a bit. and nice to see you. oh, and could you say the name of the bluesman named red you showed us some time ago? i’ still trying to recreate my realplayer (i lost everything when my laptop burned and crashed a few months ago). and right now i have to run malware bytes about every four hours just to get videos to play. ack.
one of my favorite barbara kingsolver quotes:
‘The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That’s about it. Right now I’m living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
the first time i read it i wept with emotion.
yes, species eat other ones. and some are parasites. ) breatharianism: i remember a man back in the day telling me of some ascetics who either claimed to, or posited: living off the smell of flowers. iirc, it was mo seigel of celestial seasonings fame. and remember the hndu swami (one of the bigs) who was said to exist on perhaps five grains of rice per day, and shat one tiny marble a day? i’ve looked up how many *tons* on food the average north american eats, and the amount makes ‘growing our own food’ (even with greenhouse high-rise cooperative) seem a little on the silly side.
fun african music; thanks. i can see the dancing! the music may not be one’s cup of tea, but i love the borrowed african dance moves in this one:
It WAS the bottom line (and the most loving response I could muster):
‘The Boomers “Failed” Us: Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher on Anger, …’
“van Gelder: What is it that enrages you?
DeChristopher: I’ve met very few baby boomer liberals who understand what it means to be a young person facing the reality of climate change. It means that we’re never going to have the opportunities that our parents’ and our grandparents’ generations had, and that we’ve got this massive burden weighing on our future.
We constantly hear baby boomers saying to young people: “Stopping climate change is going to be the challenge of your generation.”
Well, that’s not really true. We’ve known about climate change for 20 years, during the time when baby boomers were holding power in this country. Stopping climate change was the challenge of the baby boomer generation, and they failed because it would’ve meant making sacrifices and putting their children’s and grandchildren’s generations ahead of their own. They chose not to do that.”
Last I recall, I fought for the whole of North America’s climate-attenuating wetlands, demanded electric cars since 1980 and the solar film to run them on our homes from their respective rooftops! Butt BETRAYED by Poppy (Raygun) Bush’s perpetuating our parents’ 40 year reign of terror; extended via his adopted/genetic/adopted spawn, Clinton/W/0bomba (next, Clinton/JEB)*. (*Sorta like Queenie w/Prince Charlie) The living (US) and dead (Kent, et al) attest to infinitely more Eternal Flaming than organic eating, light bulb-changing, and halfascist hybrid car-driving!
Yet, I’ll take Smokey’s dharma directive and retire to my peepal tree for further karmic instruction (still, wishing deChristopher effective success).
Can’t remember “Red” the blues player. catchy music video.
okay, i understand your high level of anger, then. i feel much the same (only it’s not near as personal for me, as i haven’t had such direct and frustrating contact with the issue myself) about the Big Green democrat capitalist gatekeepers, especially 350org. once one discovers from whence their funding comes, it all becomes very clear. and meh.
but again, it was covering the global climate change side meetings in rio of 2012 that i finally really got what green capitalism was about…and it was from the global indigenous. some of their accords were lengthy, but stellar documents. but i do appreciate your having shared the reason for your anger.
oh mark (mafr): could you just bonk me on the head a good un and put me out of my (and everyone else’s) misery. beyond this new laptop needing its keys smashed to get them to type, i never noticed i’d typed ‘red’. his name was…er ‘fred’. the first one you gave us was at night, perhaps in a parking lot (maybe even wet with rain), lit up predominantly blue. maybe lots of neon in the frame? good blues guitarist and vocalist.
yah, k. offishull, dunno… but the dancin’? whooosh. always wished i’d taken some african dance lessons.
Here’s another bit of Buber, wendye:
“The world, lit by eternity, becomes fully present to him who approaches the Face, and to the Being of beings he can in a single response say ‘Thou’. Then there is no more tension between the world and God, but only the one reality. The man is not freed from responsibility; he has exchanged the torment of the finite, pursuit of effects, for the motive power of the infinite; he has got the mighty responsibility of love for the whole untraceable world-event, for the profound belonging to the world before the Face of God. He has, to be sure, abolished moral judgments for ever; the ‘evil’ man is simply one who is commended to him for greater responsibility, one more needy of love; but he will have to practise, till death itself, decision in the depths of spontaneity, unruffled decision, made ever anew, to right action. Then, action is not empty, but purposive, enjoined, needed, part of creation; but this action is no longer imposed upon the world, it grows on it, as if it were non-action.”
I don’t know what it is about Buber that moves me, but it does move me. And you put it well, the same way Martin Luther King moves one. The speaking voice ( though I’ve never heard Buber’s) of the cadenced phrases even in translation as this is. I really love to read him even while not entirely understanding. Soul to soul. “…he will have to practise, till death itself…” Not bad that, practising love! “The mighty responsibility of love…”
Moar like sheer sadness at US cant having solar-electric cars and homes coated in Flisom-film; as well as the cricketzzzz … that also greeted my career Public SERVICE efforts. Despite its ear-candy quality to some, this Associative song sustained my daily youthful struggles toward thoroughly unappreciated public-serving ends:
But for real karmative dissonance, consider a ’60s ZPG-guided guy now facing the prospect of though having had only 2 daughters; now ‘entertaining’ an additional grandson AND daughter from one and an expecting momentarily an additional granddaughter from the second; IN ADDITION to 2 previous grandsons, EACH! Teach our children well, InDeed (I DID?).
juliania, that passage is far more enigmatic to me, but it is the end of a very long and tiring day, so i may not be reading well in any event. oddly, thomas merton can do the same for me, though i knew only quotes that led me to essays at different times, and i’ve forgotten so much. at their cores, some of the greatest sages, prophets, and philosophers, seem to believe many of the same things about love, conscience, consciousness, morality and ethical responsibilities, awareness as key, whether thru prayer, meditation, or just silence… with or without a god or a godhead, i guess. or even many gods. our jobs are clear, and again, i’ll go fetch another quote by uncle albert i like a lot.
“Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men – above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.”
~ Albert Einstein
Sleep well and dream well. May your garden grow during the night.
i don’t quite get the lyrics, but that it has so much meaning for you is good. it’s hard to imagine that you didn’t understand what odds you were fighting about energy sources since the whole goddam u.s. and much of the world was based on keeping gas and oil cheap enough (while subsidizing big oil bigtime) that there would ever be any serious moves toward good public transportation. americans helped to teach the world the joys and freedoms of scooting around in our little boxes on wheels, while the saudis sat bemused.
yes, our daughter and her hubbie had three, and flipped me out, not only because they can’t begin to afford them on one target salary. both kids became fundie christianists, one joined the national guard, so…i feel your pain. and yet, you will love those grandchirren as we do, even the extra ones, no? cuz philosophical approval doesn’t matter much in the end when you hold a new one, at least that’s been my experience. :)
peace to you when you can manage it; some days it’s so very hard to come by.
It was a ’60s version of Si, se Puede AND what we were promised, earth days, Carter solar panels, Clinton/Gore 1995 electric cars; all equally reneged Upon RHETORIC!
But, that’s SOME Rainbow IZ crossed over; yet, he’s the kind of Hawaiian one can admire, like the inventor of Lumeloid solar electric-generating coating for homes AND cars (instead of serial reneging, prolific presidential vacationer, 0). We have all the tools we need to avoid universal catastrophe; but NOOOOO …
Now that Pele’s on my mind, maybe it’s her wrath upon the young’ns for each souvenir of lava flows from the years of their births, when we visited her Kilauea home in the ’80s. Or Well, Peace And lava,
i knew i’d seen this somewhere in the past few days.
‘A team of Russian physicists want to revisit Nikola Tesla’s greatest unrealized plan, update it with modern technology, and try to make his theoretical world-wide wireless power transmission system a reality. And they’re using Indiegogo to make it happen.
Tesla, born 158 years ago today, built Wardenclyffe Tower in 1902 in New York State. He planned for the massive coil at the top of the nearly 200′ tall construction to have a resonant match on the other side of the Atlantic, precisely tuned so to allow for efficient transfer of large amounts of electrical energy over great distances using principles of the ionosphere. Initially backed by J.P. Morgan, the project only lasted a few years before funds evaporated, and while the tower stood for over a decade longer, it eventually fell into disrepair and was demolished during World War I for national safety reasons.’
more later; chores galore. had extreme wind last night, and clean up’s eating some time. poor garden.
Sorry, wendye, I had disremembered that the word ‘God’ comes up several times in that quotation – coming here this morning I was simply mulling over how nice it was to substitute simply ‘the Face’ – since there are so many negative connotations now to what ‘God’ might mean. Jesus himself doesn’t talk very much about ‘God’ but about his ‘Father’, emphasizing, as Buber does, relationship, and as I think you do, to an Other of which one is part.
Mankind faces that Other mostly as an Unknowable but in those moments of ecstasy you describe, as being a part of it, connected to it in love and awe as everything transitory shines with imperishable radiance and takes on for a moment eternity. ( A wee lizard is on my wall after rain, sunsoaking.)
Maybe the key is in relationships, the more great and small one is able to grasp, the more the wonder, the more the ‘being’ in being.
i admit i’ll sometimes bypass a quote i like since god is mentioned; as you say, it ruffles some feathers here and there. it’s a relatively easy thing for me to transpose a bit, but into what i don’t always know. but that passage is still hard for me to comprehend, sorry. :) your translation is far easier, and poetic as well.
mlk spoke about love as ‘agape’, but the one quote i remember conveyed the ‘hate the sin’, not the sinner’, but christianists have used that far to often to denounce homosexuality for me to have been comfortable using it.
when i rewrote this piece, once again i left out things that i’d believed were still there, and i get so tangled up with the cut/copy/paste functions and whatnot, but as i tried to explain to welshT, i’d meant it more by what degree of higher consciousness and connectivity epiphanies will be not only necessary soon to help one another survive, but those new understandings will lead us to making a more egalitarian, loving, and just society one day…hopefully soon.
this center imply cannot hold, as the quote goes. and that tyranny and evil are globally so evident right now, the only answer is higher love and higher ground. i’m so grateful for all the folks who contributed to ‘playing for change’; music is indeed one of the universal communications we can build upon.
ack. the other part i left out was how hard all this seems, given how at just one bloody website, we often treat each other with such ugliness, contempt, and disrespect. i stupidly did not do any protection visualizations before i read the ‘we are’ post comments, and i srsly almost threw up at some of them, and had to struggle hard to bathe those two in light. but of course, it’s for my own well-being as well, so i’ll keep tryin’ to light those monsters under my bed. jung called it ‘our shadows’, didn’t he? yes, they do loom overmuch sometimes…. dammit. :)
hello beautiful people. Love the article Wendye. Oh and FYI This song was sung as a hymn at the wedding of Mrs Michael Cavlan and my own self. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fahr069-fzE
I have it on a DVD- I should make it a you tube. It really was quite lovely.
i will share something with you Wendye that I have shared only with my wife. There are three reasons I chose this song as a hymn at our wedding
1. It is a lovely love song
2. The singer is a Hawaiian gay man and the song is about rainbows. So it was my personal nod to the rights of gays folks to get married.
3. We got married in a Native American Church in Minneapolis and the Native community recognize that the Hawaiian people are Natives that are oppressed by the United States. It is mentioned all the time at our Church. They also as an aside recognize me as a Native. Or as my wife puts it “oh Mike, you are just with the Irish Tribe.” LOL //:-D>———
the images on your version are a bit more attractive, i confess. but i hadn’t wanted to diss Iz, i guess. i forget when his heart gave out (not long ago iirc), but it’s a wonder he’d lasted as long as he did with all that weight. but i hadn’t known he was gay, so that was a very nice tribute you all made, michael cavlan of the irish tribe. yes, this nation doesn’t care much for indigenous rabble much for the most part.
our best to both you and miz michael cavlan. ha. i’d just run across a photo of our wedding that i’d scanned into digital at some point. hippies in the snow, married er…41 years ago. ;) a geezer and a crone, lol.
might use the photo in my flower slidehow one day….
LOL Old hippies never die. They just take another trip. Or how about this one? A fav of mine about the ‘dirty f’ing hippies.”
a classic. :) oh, but according to old sourpuss hedges, the dfh’s were *worse than useless*, according to his lofty take. i still carry my hippie card, a bit frayed around the edges though it is. maybe i should have it laminated?
Happy Sunday to all, and clarity of mind and expression! I think that’s why we love music, because we travel from a starting point to the end, a finite historical expression of the timeliness the world brings to the table set for the vast expanses of beginning and endings the mind barely comprehends. Every song is a gift.
Plato and the ancients thought of ‘the music of the spheres’, which were not the spherical planets but spheres of the universe radiating out from the center, earth. We should probably go back to that and not lose ourselves in the scientific explorations which while more factually based, leave us puny thinkers teetering on the brink of a galaxy bound eventually to collide with another larger one (and who knows what happens then?)
After all, do we not seek to do well for our place of residence, the only one we shall meaningfully know while time holds us captive? For as you point out in your piece, wendye, life is for the living most satisfying when we accomplish this.
I suppose that something of what makes Buber difficult to understand is that he is describing his NOW, which we might suppose is different from ours – that is, the early 1930’s when Jewish philosophers could still speak out in a Germany with such dark days ahead of it. I find his bold exegesis difficult also, but as one of our near prophetic voices I try to understand.
Somehow, with great suffering, the world came out of that mad spin, though still the spiral of history kept on. That was a cataclysmal event, that world war, and the need now is greater because the planet will be involved if it happens again – and even if it doesn’t happen, by bits and pieces we seem to be turning towards that dark place as nature succumbs.
Still, because this is our NOW, and we shall not be here when whatever happens happens, for me the priorities you lay out take on a turning of their own. You touch on ego, with the phrase ‘we truly are all One.’ So, there’s the difference, because I think we truly are all one, one creation, and that Spirit is One, of which we have been breathed, we all living things and planets and more that we do not know.
So I think the revolution of consciousness comes first as a gift (like music) individually, in a lifetime – and perhaps it comes at the moment of death for some – too late to be of much assistance in the greater scheme of things – but we all can avail ourselves of this gift if we strive for the life of mind in heart, whatever is going on around us, and in doing so we enlarge all possibilities, even if we can’t see it except with our spiritual eye. I am strengthened by I/Thou translating into i/thee, but whatever works :))
Well hello Jullianna2 dear. How are ya? Lovely thoughts and in the deep hippy aura.
Wendye- Thee is a book out there called “Ringolivio- A Life Played For Keeps.” Authur is Emmet Grogan, one of the co-founders of the Diggers in Haight Ashbury. As in the Free Store movement. They sought to deligitimize money itself. They stole stuff, including money, scrounged at such. Then they gave it all away for free at their Free Store. The book talked of the Hippies that would eventually sell out and “leave the love ghettoes that they played an adventure in poverty and scale back over the walls into the suburbs.” He wrote this in 1969. He was right. there are many great and noble hippies that still “get it” but many of these former hippies are now “liberal Democrats” or “Republicans.”
I have considered this book to be my personal political bible for over 4o years now.
And the dirty fucking hippies WERE RIGHT. I am still a hippy in my heart.
:)
and a good monday to us all. some music is timeless, i think, as some songs seem to be. some exist as stories from *a moment*, though, and the best have universality and imagery that stays with one, some express feelings and conditions, some teach, some allow us to imagine, some do all those and more.
certainly i understand why buber sings to you, but the reason i’d mentioned ‘other than god’ was probably due to the fact that i’ve been having side conversations about different meditations, their origins, god or godheads involved or not, ‘the gift’ coming from within our original luminous selves or other than that…and O, the monsters that so often cause two-left-footed folks like me to stumble and fall. oh, and another conversation about prayer itself, one friend maintaining that we ‘silly monkeys’ seem to require an entity to send them to (not sure i agree it needs to be a creator/god/gods ‘with agency’ as obey says it, myself, but that gets to be a longer conversation).
my sense, and i wasn’t very clear about it, is that as more of us twig to one spirit, if you like that concept, is that more realize they do indeed have inner lives, which most people deny (including my own estranged sister), thus will look within at their own shadow sides, and do battle with them, and learn to be more on the lookout for their popping up again and again. collective consciousness on the rise will bring more folks to the realizations we require now in these ever- more perilous times.
yes, it’s hard to imagine the ukranian or israeli governments being more empathetic to their avowed enemies, but even now as the guardian is beginning to report a *little bit* more even handedly on both sets of events, that can potentially cause more folks to question the western media blame-game, i think.
and yes, scientists are predicting that andromeda and the milky way will crash together any time between 2 and 4 billion years from now. fireworks! creative destruction? who can guess?
digger predictions as right. ;) well, i do remember them, and yes, many sold out, some went into duopoly politics (i did, and with a vengeance), many hippies who went to law school to become public defenders or do pro bono work…went into corporate or other profitable law practices. but still, so many wonderful movements begun in the sixties are still extant today, much as the spirit of occupy is very much alive all over the US and planet. that in itself is very heartening.
and juliania, i couldn’t get this one to play yesterday, so ill try again. i heard back from hotflashcarol recently, and she said these folks have a new compilation coming on, including one song with los lobos, some faves.
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? …
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?”
Always the Shakespearian dilemma for practitioners of love and peace; which, if ultimately having failed, what else is to be done?
has it failed? has it been tried in significant numbers? but again, this post is about love’s importance to *preRevolution, okay? but yes, i’d mentioned that even with the zapatista movement, there were a few mexican soldiers and militiamen killed at the beginning. margo had mentioned gandhi, so:
from ‘A Virtual Debate With Gandhi About Non-Violence’ quotes from book written by thomas merton:
“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.”
—Gandhi
[At the end of his life Gandhi admitted loss of hope of attaining real non-violence in India. —Thomas Merton] “The loss of hope arises from my knowledge that I have not attained sufficient detachment and control over my temper and emotions which entitle one to entertain the hope…. I must confess my bankruptcy, not that of non-violence…. India has no experience of the non-violence of the strong.”
—Gandhi
“I have admitted my mistake. I thought our struggle was based on non-violence, whereas in reality it was no more than passive resistance, which essentially is a weapon of the weak. It leads naturally to armed resistance whenever possible.”
—Gandhi
over yonder, a fellah calling himself gentleUncicorn is disgusted by ‘the left’ for not factoring in violence in self defense; he wants an armed revolution now, as far as i can tell, but using asymmetrical tactics. with no preparation for alternatives in governance in justice for all, nor massive numbers of us in solidarity *with each other*, any revolution would be crushed hard, and demagogues would leap into the fray, perhaps making life far worse and more divided than ever, i reckon.
Just(ly) saying; it’s always the proscribed wall I’ve encountered; IF ultimately having failed. YET. HOPE. REMAINS.
I just hope the DFH are Those LEFT.
Thank you for the Bob Marley piece, wendye. I have been thinking about your phrase ‘opening the doors of consciousness’, and I went looking for videos of the Beatitudes, or Sermon on the Mount, commonly called. My search didn’t find the melody we sang in church, but this one I think does what I wanted to see as I listened, so I hope you like it:
the people look like characters from ‘the wizard of id’, don’t they? and yes, what a treasure!
“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.”
~ Vaclav Havel
it’s lovely, juliania, and the beatitudes have always had an appealing ring to them. but in the end, the ‘justice deferred until after death, or heaven’, is just too long to wait, and is one of the reasons that some folks see religion as overly-placating in answer to those who would push back against earthly injustices and tyranny.
in some ways, it’s akin to some priests and ministers who, when asked, “why is god so cruel?”, the “where were you when god created the heavens and the earth” (etc.) biblical quote.
and only tangential to this topic, i’d almost posted a contest to solicit answers to this cosmic riddle after seeing it a RT (as an antidote for our current angst and pain for others):
“Universal crisis: 80 percent of light in space is missing, scientists say”
mr. wd reads the urantia book, and said that iihc, the book spoke of a place in the cosmos in which human souls migrate after death for their next lessons, and that these portions were not meant to be seen by the human eye. :)
http://rt.com/usa/171896-universe-light-photon-underproduction/
Well, if dark matter, like black holes can capture even light, but still preserve its sources’ images upon their event horizons in perpetuity; then the light we see represents the 20 percent remnants, whose sources always appear to be “receding” as the cosmologists contend. This could be illustrated by the old B.C. comic’s two GRRROwling, charging snakes who bite each other’s tails and begin chomping, rapidly ending up with nothing – * (of course, like the black holes’ surface images, you’d actually see at least the two skulls remaining after the cosmic close encounter)!
Ah, wendye – your response is indeed why I bypassed many beautiful renditions, simply because most of them had a theological cast with far too many icons or church settings to them. I was intrigued that the Valaam monastics partnered their ancient rendition not with such images (although they do begin and end with the traditional church symbols) but with ordinary people, which is how the original text ought to be considered. That was why it felt to me right for your ‘we are all one’ theme. These people are like those who gathered on the mountainside and listened to the words of Jesus.
For, in this age when those who are feted by the ptb are the rich, the well off, the militant – this list of blessings is a radical departure. And I would translate the final ‘for great is your reward’ to mean now, at this very moment, each of you is being praised for your very being. You, Jesus is saying, are worth more than the rich man.It is a radical statement of present human beauty as is for example the statement ‘black is beautiful.
The following is I think one of Norman Pollack’s best, and goes with the idea of looking deeply into the meaning of faith beyond simply ‘pie in the sky when you die’ assumptions. If it doesn’t have meaning right here and now as lives are being lived, it doesn’t have meaning. And I would say also of Pollack’s piece that a true Christian would write exactly as he does about the distortions of faith in this present time.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/14/cynicism-israeli-national-policy/
lol. a smarty pants scientist we have here, eh? a bit better than the first comment at RT: “the light went up hillary’s ass!” me, i had to giggle to find out what a quasar is. oh, my, that’s a thing connected to: black holes.
I knew the 1% fundaments had Hoovered up the majority of the resources; but the light, as ill? May you and Sarah Miller at RT find that quasar to light the monsters beneath your beds and drive them back into the Clinton vacuum:
“Sarah Millar 11.07.2014 03:15
I think what they are saying is that intergalactic night light burned. It’s dark… Someone hold me and protect me from.the monster under the bed!”
It already worked on Slick Hillie, as RT took her critical mass comment down!
of course the faces were sublime, juliania, but…i did do some googling, and found that for the most part, the beatitudes indeed were meant to speak to the rewards in heaven, with a nod to comforting the afflicted on earth now. i do take your belief in the present to heart, but…i disagree to a point, knowing church doctrine for so long was “keep your ordained place and status”. but yes to the rest.
as an aside, who was it that said that the role of journalists should be “to afflict the comfortable”? :) long hard day in the garden, and visiting a couple other websites i may report on tomorrow. for tonight, love (and to you, too):
lol, silly man. kinda like the gigantic flashlights they began to use on the X-files? and they never had to carry spare batteries cuz theirs never ran outta juice?
i’ll hafta go back to RT and look.
and oh, juliania; thanks for the pollack. i will try to read it soon; he’s a good un.
As a way to get to know me just a wee bit better. These video clips are from Portadown,Garvaghy Rd. I lived four miles from this place. the town Portadown was notorious for being the center of many right wing, pro-Britsh death squads. I have too many tales from this part of the world. My Uncle John and Aunt Sheila live on the Garvaghy Rd.
Then to completely flip the script. The hippy song that ALWAYS spoke the deepest to my own heart and soul. Such mixed up creatures, we humans eh?
Love-Respect-Solidarity
Oh and I do feel that humanity is perched on the edge and we probably will not make it. So it makes this song all the more poignant eh?
Sad. At least some of us tried. Feeling a bit melancholy today I suppose.
I do hope, feel, pray they there is “someone” who will lead us away from this foreign land. In my heart of hearts and soul of souls I do believe there is someone who will. Not sure who.
Someone. Another species from another galaxy or the one called “God.” Who knows eh?
//:-)>———–
Oui, The PEOPLE. That’s US; NOT U.S. ennui?
were you still in northern ireland in 1997, michael cavlan? thanks for the videos ‘getting to know you’, and it does look hideous as hell. what are they chanting?
methinks we need to stop looking for leaders, and somehow lead ourselves, although maybe some key people may pop out of the throng to represent different affinity groups. all i ask is that one isn’t chris hedges, lol.
the purple berries not having sickened the one who’d been eating them…always pierces my heart, and now even more with fukushima, the many, many leaking storages vessels at the hanford reservation, all of the nuclear waste going into ground water, rivers, and to the ocean itself.
“guess i’ll set a course and go….” yes, as with predictions that the sixth extinction is fully baked in, “when all that’s left is the fall, how you fall matters a great deal”. but then, i wrote a post containing evidence in different directions that directed thought, prayer, even buddhist gongs and singing bowls…can change poison into medicine (on this one i’m thinking of toxic water), but more. so who knows what we might be able to heal on the planet as we heal ourselves?
yes, galactic travelers or the one called god. :)
bruce, translate?
It Is US; or No ONE.
(“methinks we need to stop looking for leaders, and somehow lead ourselves,”), InDeed!
gracias, bruce; i wasn’t clear who you were answering. yes, think how many hoped Obomba was a savior, lol. and can’t say goodbye even now, arrrgh
today’s the last day to comment on the net neutrality bill, and i admit i haven’t done it yet…unless i’ve already signed six different petitions. :)
http://act.freepress.net/sign/internet_fcc_nprm_oliver/?source=FPblog
They were chanting SS RUC- The RUC are the pro-British police force there. From which came many of the death squads.
If we are pendant only on ourselves then I am afraid that we are fucked. far too many cowards, far too little support for each other. Unless of course that old human will for survival kicks in.
My great fear is that humanity will really start to wake up to the need for mutual support when it is too late.
Which may have already happened and very few are even aware- Yet.
As always i hope that I will be proven wrong. Just lime i was hoping to be prove wrong about Obama. We all know where that went……
ah, ‘SchutzStaffel Royal Ulster Constabulary’.
would we be less cowardly under a leader? which sort of leader do you imagine, i guess i should ask? any names? and do you imagine a military leader like strelkov in novorossia? an academic? religious leader? would we know one when we saw one? i just dunno any of these answers, michael cavlan. over yonder, gentleUnicorn and i see our future possibilities very differently, but then, as he says, he believes we need a revolution NOW, can’t imagine how i believe we can wait. well, waiting is.
heroes, leaders, clay feet, hmmmm… i’m about to write a post along that line to get it off my chest.
To have been expected from a Moneygall Offaly descendent, destined to be $pawned in the BERNANK$TER BAILOUT$ ; driving their Bushmobile getaway car straight into the Offal Orifice.
We had a “leader” and it was the leaderless Occupy Wall Street movement. Sadly it was marshaled and corralled into non existence. Leaders seem to always sell us out. Well now a days they do anyway.
I suppose the “leaders” of today may need to be brave, unsought, spiritual and political. The military bit I have seen and I know where that goes but then it returns to the everlasting conversation of Ma (RIP) and myself.
How can you overgrow a violent military oppressor without the use of violence? Which then infects you and your soul. We never did get an answer but i suppose to ask the question itself is the hope. To never give up on the question of how to do so is itself is the answer? I dunno?
Sorry unsought, not unsought. Spell check. Although in hindsight unsought works as well.
Those who want to be leaders should never be allowed to be leaders. Take a look at our corporate selected officials for an example of that.
Another song that speaks to me. I am tired Wendye Davis and I am tired of trying, working for something better and finding myself banned, silenced, marginalized and such.
It gets to ya ya know?
Telling the truth in a time of universal deceit is a revolutionary act. George Orwell.
Or as my new bumper sticker says- 1984 Was A Warning- Not An Instruction Manuel
bruce, i despair of ever understanding you first time through. obomba? authorizing the second bailout tranche of $350 million, then morphing into $17 r whatever trillion wth fed guarantees, ‘loans’ and buy-backs at mark-to-market values? QE’s for wall street?
well, read: rubin, and chicago boys economics.
ows was not sold out, but crushed by way of a concerted nationwide demand to get rid of the encampments…violently, if possible. fusion centers, spying by PDs, fibbies, homeland security, the acronym foia docs keep on comin’. some say righty that the nsa is a spit in the bucket, and i am here to agree, except fo internationally. but for us? who cares about that? let individual nations take that info and decide for themselves how, and to what degree, to foil this Imperium. are all the plans so far bluster? we’ll see, but domestically? the new laws up for votes are arguably worse…for the 99%.
i did want to say that a visitation would be just what the doctor ordered, as the knowledge that ‘we are not alone’ would put us right in our place/s. ennit odd, though, how most teevee and film projects about that possibility always posit that the visitors would be conquistadors, and malevolent as hell? purdy funny projection, that, eh?
mama: yes, i do get that. but still, there must be other answers we can’t quite see quite yet, but maybe as more of us begin to be able to peer into those parallel universes, different time zones available…we will. for now, we must all search our consciences, dark side demons, and come with our own interpretations of forward-looking zeitgeists, and choose.
god as leader? well, not so much. and my guess is that juliania would speak to this better than i, but quite some time ago i read a book that was essentially along the lines of god and free will. most of the book was an argument among old torah jews, trying to divine the meaning of the first five books of the christian bible, of course.
where they ended after long conversations and deliberations, was that some of the translations were wrong! where god had said ‘must’, needed to be correctly re-translated to ‘mayest’, implying of course…choice.
an illuminating distinction, even for one who, like myself, does not believe that the bible was divinely written, nor the final word on anything much. jesus, however, was an incredible soul and prophet, by my lights, even if oft-misquoted. :)
gotta get some rest, try to finish that post.
and i hear you on being tired, and i have loved that song since what…1966?
yes, juliania, that piece pollack wrote is one of his finest, and made my eyes tear a bit. this was the crux of his plea and lament, i’d say:
“Israel has become the worst-case scenario of the degradation of Torah, and worst-case scenario of what was once the deep unadulterated humaneness of worldwide Jews, a people under whose capacious tent one could simultaneously honor Marx and Freud, and equally honor non-Jews, from Paul Robeson to Arturo Toscanini, two of my favorites from late childhood. The people who experienced the most loathsome tragedy in modern times, which should have led to compassion by survivors and descendants alike, more than compassion, the placement of human freedom above all else, have proven ourselves unworthy of our heritage of oppression and thirst for a life based on justice and equality. Perhaps the human being internalizes persecution or its threat as a warning to flee from independence and grasp for safety and security. Perhaps the human constitution accepts limits as a condition of survival, and when possible, strikes out at perceived threats—or merely delights in conquest and cruelty. I’d like to think otherwise, that humanity is forever projecting from within itself widening the scope of freedom for all.”
much in the way of peter yarrow’s ‘light one candle’:
I wouldn’t want to be found disagreeing with googlepersons, wendye, but simply to point out the original message (I’m big on original messages) was as the monks depicted it, to ordinary people gathered on a hillside outside of the city, spoken by one of their own ordinary people and not by any official, organized body of theologians. That message points out the innate worth of the downtrodden, and the emphasis is, to me, on worthiness immediately being recognized, not on ‘pie in the sky when you die.’ The beatitudes are followed by two sayings to this effect:
“You are the salt of the earth.”
and:
“You are the light of the world.”
(I find that wondrous when the more common, googleable saying is that Christ is the light of the world.)
You see, in the text, there is no word given in the Greek to stand for either ‘is’ or ‘will be’ in the saying:
“Rejoice [hairetay] and [kai] ‘be exceedingly glad’ [agayasthay],
for [hoti] the reward [ho misthos] of you [houmown] great [polus] in the heavens [en tois ouranois.]
To me that indicates immediacy, not long term, end of the line, future reward, but right Now. The Kingdom of heaven isn’t an end point. It is an ongoing presence that touches time from time to time. It is within you. It is a Now.
But I don’t mind if other wise folk disagree. I simply point to the text. That’s what it says. :))
then i will yield to your greater knowledge and conception of ‘the kingdom of heaven’, juliania, especially as it offers the immediacy of the Now to you. as i’ve said before, my understanding of some christian sects who believed that god resides within, not without, was very attractive to me. but those understandings (as in gnosticism) also came by way of a friend…who believed thus.
and perhaps different churches used the texts to defer blessings, or so it seems reading history to the extend i have. and that was limited, of course.
No greater knowledge for sure, wendye; just an interpretation. I am beginning to read slowly again ‘Dr. Zhivago’ as I had come across a saying of his that the poems at the end of the book are the outline of the plan of the actual novel – so I am reading them as much in sync as possible. And here in the seventh part of Chapter One, this seems to express something similar to my theme above:
“Every motion in the world taken separately [this is 1910, before the Revolution, Zhivago still a child] was calculated and purposeful, but, taken together, they were spontaneously intoxicated with the general stream of life which united them all. People worked and struggled, each set in motion by the mechanism of his own cares. But the mechanisms would not have worked properly had they not been regulated and governed by a higher sense of an ultimate freedom from care. This freedom came from the feeling that all human lives were interrelated, a certainty that they flowed into each other – a happy feeling that all events took place not only on the earth, in which the dead are buried, but also in some other region which some called the Kingdom of God, others history, and still others by some other name.”
i’m not sure which theme above this illustrates, ww, but indeed it does speak to his after-the-fact sense that without that ineffable spirit of camaraderie, both in spirit and shared plights, there would have been no revolution (if i understand it). his last sentence reminds me of plato’s concept of thought forms a bit, or at least the mind-picture they produced for me when i read about them at…age 18. :)
but then it also reminds me of the new branches of quantum physics concerning parallel universes, temporal differences, *and* the noosphere, where certainly the general ambiance of planetary consciousness is recorded and felt. that pasternak related it to a future without care is so very interesting, though.
what i believe we’ve been collectively feeling for so long is free-floating anxiety that things on the planet are just plain wrong, and that it didn’t, and doesn’t, have to be this way. even the toxins in the air, water, and our food likely contributes to that sense, apart from general oppression, burgeoning poverty, injustices on so many fronts. and that, of course, is where brotherly love comes in, and might save the day…and the planet. i’m rambling, but i do want to go grab a philosophical directive quote i keep handy. :)
“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
~ Arundhati Roy
If the antithesis of those dark events and deeds is ‘the kingdom of god’, or
reaching toward a more enlightened awareness, no, we don’t need to fuss much about what to call it, i think. and yes, i just envisioned third eyes as i typed, but there are so many other metaphors. the center of the lotus, fractals, any or all of that. or god, as you know/interpret the *good-est* stuff. :)
I would agree, wendye; we are in a different place. Maybe because we now have had these wars, betrayals, atrocities to endure, commit to memory. History has moved on, and what Pasternak describes is now history to us, not memory. For him it is memory.
Maybe Occupy before the crackdowns was our pre-revolutionary period like this early description. Memory, not history yet; we remember how it was. Or, more generally, the Clinton era when so many of us still believed in exceptionalism, America was more loved on the world stage, people knew what they thought they knew. Memory, moving into history for many.
Pre-revolutionary, relatively innocent times – the mechanization described throughout is trains, which connect peoples and so far comparatively benign militaries (as far as the populace is concerned) – no reason yet to distrust except that the trains intrude on the landscape…and one has just come to a screeching halt as the novel begins.
Putting memory into history is a writer’s goal – he is doing this lyrically because then folk who haven’t yet had the experience might be persuaded to aim for the good he is trying to immortalize. It must have thrilled him how popular his work became, though he could never anticipate how the dark forces of his time would end, just that they seemed to be experiencing defeat on the world stage. So, he’s like Hamlet in his first poem:
“The stir is over. I step forth on the boards.
Leaning against an upright at the entrance,
I strain to make the far-off echo yield
A cue to the events that may come in my day…”
I would have thought I’d learned what needed to be learned from my last read through some years back, but if I understand a bit more now it must be because we have moved on and are nearing a breakthrough now – at least I tell myself so. We mightn’t be where the episode of pre-revolution is; but maybe we are where Pasternak is.
Yes indeed to the beautiful Arandati Roy, and to your piece here. These are the extracted lyrical essence of what has come before in memory echoing history, which the darkness tries to bury, but seeds must experience darkness in order to grow and flower, and we are nearing the surface of the earth, or standing at the entrance awaiting our cue…it is closer, coming closer.
[I think it’s why I love worms. They toil in darkness, but what they do for the soil!]
oh, my. i’ve been having problems with my email server and laptop in general this mornin’, so i finally fixed what i could temporarily, and went out to work in the garden for three sessions with birrrrd breaks. i wore myself out, will have a rest, and come back later, lord willin’ and the laptop creeks don’t rise. :)
memory for pasternak: yes, and what i’d meant was that looking backward in time, he saw things as ‘every motion being taken as calculated’, etc. after the fact, as yes, we my look back even now as occupy having sown not only the seeds of discontent as a class war, but also with the encampments and beyond, experiments in communitarian love, intentional community, and horizontal democracy, for a few examples.
many folks know have taught me that the seeds of corporatocracy and imperical design existed far before i’d realized it, although clinton’s triangulation and wars were quite explicative of the ongoing trends. and look at his still-raging popularity! my stars. ‘the people’ love him, and he commands huge figure for appearances, and he and his neo-con wife just may live in the white house again. arrggh. ‘couldn’t the american revolution come before that?’ she begged?
i can believe you glean knew understanding of ‘zhivago’ with every reading really, as it pings more that you’ve seen, learned about the past, and even witnessed recently. and when i mentioned the available angst, fear, resentment, and anxiety earlier, i’d meant to say that those so inclined tend to name all of the wrong culprits only too often, turning on fellow citizens as ‘the other’ to blame, but we all know the divide and conquer propaganda and how catching and toxic it is.
but yes, that’s just the time we need to reach out to aggrieved and ‘poor in spirit’, to share the light of love when we can. i’ll borrow some shelley (mr. wd’s favorite, iirc):
“You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.”
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
oh, and what’s harder than letting go of our egos a bit, and doing just that?
added on edit: i’d kept meaning to read this news once i’d seen the title, but had neglected to; it’s long enough that i won’t now, but it looks mighty interesting. :)
‘During Cold War, CIA used ‘Doctor Zhivago’ as a tool to undermine Soviet Union’
Thanks, wendye. I did love your theme in this posting, as an ‘always darkest ‘fore the dawn’ kind of suggestion where we might individually put our energies. To me, both Pasternak and Bulgakov were similar spirits, in that they wrote under oppression and in some danger to themselves, beautiful writings that championed the human spirit. And as we sink into dark times, just as you find inspiration in music, I find it here.
Events in Gaza and Ukraine are so fraught with horror and out of control it is very hard to see how either place can be reconciled, can take care of the people, all the people with homes in those regions. Rumors fly, and now there are crazed individuals in active control of those governments as well as their opposition – can this ever be calmed? I suppose I retreat to the novels because I don’t find peaceful solutions in what is happening out there. How must it feel to be caught up in either cauldron!
Maybe climate catastrophes will even be a relief as they intensify – a way of demonstrating something more important to even the more intransigent and violence-prone. St. Exupery tells in ‘Wind, Sand and Stars’ of being stranded in the desert, helped by a Bedouin – a Frenchman and an Arab, but a life saved and gratitude overwhelming, more vivid because they were so different, the two men.
We don’t have to be all alike – it’s better if we are not!
I have been up on my roof today. I’m rather glad I can do that again – what a view; the hillsides are greening!
Much love.
goodness, i’m entirely ignorant of belgakov. yes, i do understand retreating to beloved books that provide inspiration, and surely i would if i could read dead tree still. but i do keep one bookshelf full of favorites in the bedroom so that i can look at the covers and titles…and think of what’s inside.
the first climate change deaths have occurred already, of course, as have relocations of island dwellers. but they are almost always the poor, thus reap little attention by the media. yes, as the east coast lowlands of the usa begin to disappear, more mention will be made. for now, the wealthy get their places rebuilt with our tax dollars via obscure federal insurance, although i forget exactly how that machine works.
meanwhile, i’m so glad to be able to garden still (on a small scale), and live in a secluded spot critters like to visit. when i went down to the greenhouse yesterday, the runt of a set of fawn twins was eye to eye with me through a window. (the greenhouse is dug into the hill a bit.) watching that tiny tyke learning to eat its first tender grasses was so wonderful, trying awkwardly to mimic its mama, i reckon. the fawns chase birds, one another, and just generally find that life’s a lark…for the most part. they can teach me to live in the moment, one of the concepts i have so much trouble living.
what solutions for the haters and enemies? whoosh; it is hard to imagine. margo schulter sees some of the possible solutions, though, doesn’t she?
Gardening is love of planet, wendye. There is nothing satisfying me more than simply the power to increase plant life – don’t always succeed, but even the nonsuccesses contribute to the earth and animal/insect population, so there’s no such thing as failure.
[Oh phooey, I’ll be anonymous on this one – takes a bit of backtracking to get my avatar – small kiwi foraging, me]
gardening and small farming are also testaments to Life itself, both planting seeds and learning to live with loss, as both are important (your ‘no failures’ may not agree). planting trees is a whole ‘nother important endeavor, as in: giving shade, oxygen, and bailiwicks for critter habitats and homes. (we’ve planted over 300 here)
but i need sleep, and want to talk more about the railroad later, cuz they were so very important. gordon lightfoot was a naif, (even for a canadian) i reckon, but i’ve always loved this trilogy, and play if often…. no down sides here! more later, miz kiwi.