I was remiss

Yesterday, I posted about abuse, in conjunction with thousands of other bloggers around the world. I asked people to tell me if they had any cause they wished to have some publicity. And I got a letter from a dear friend and did not publish it. I thought it was something she wished to tell me. But, I was remiss, she wanted her story public. Without names and in such a way as to not actually make it public. No one will find this who could harm her. So she asked me today to do this. To tell her story as it is. And I do so, in hope and in faith, that anyone who reads this and recognizes any part of it, will remain silent no longer. That anyone who recognizes any part of themselves in this story, in any role, will seek help for it. I want people to know, and so does she, that they are NOT alone. They did NOTHING to cause this to happen to them. And that people love them, no matter what happened to them, no matter its repercussions. And I want to emphasize here that events like this reverberate through our lives like echoes that never stop. There is NO end to this, unless WE end it. So here, is this story, in all its sad detail. And I ask anyone reading this, to offer up a healing thought for this young man, and his mother. much love, :^) gene  – I was going to do another post tonight too, but I think this one has to stand on its own.  My own ideas will wait.  This is what is important tonight.

Through the years I think I have told you about the emotional and mental abuse for myself as well as my son. He was abused as a child. It was child abuse. I have suffered extreme depression and anxiety through the years and so has my son. He was sexually abused. The perpetrator was a family member. Even to this day, at the age of 33, he has that constant reminder of his past. There are times when he comes over to visit and relates the whole past to me again and again, and he cries alot even if he is a man with a family, a daughter and a son, and because he has suffered for so many years, I have come to the realization that he will never forget. My son was molested. Even if he was just molested it has put a hole in my son’s life. Because of this, he has had troubles with the law but has been released. I pray so much for my son and this monster that lives in him. He gets jobs and can’t hold on to them for long. He feels as if he is the head of the company and always blows off steam. Therefore, they let him go. He thinks these thoughts I feel because that is the way he thinks of himself so that he feels he is in control. I thought that as the years passed and after countless therapists and counselors, this would have relieved him by now, but it hasn’t. I support any organization that deals with child molestation. I would like you to put this on your blog.

People have to know that even a child molestation, at a very young age, and at the age of 11, when the family member told him he would give him money if he would so a very dirty act on him. Luckily, he was 11 and he ran. For many years, I have blamed myself for this to happen. I had no one to stay with my son, at the age of 11. I had to work tomake a living. The only one I could count on was my mother. She offered to stay with my son while I worked across the street, two blocks away.

The family member I am talking about lives with my mom and dad. Not to get into any details, he managed to let my son watch cartoons in his room. My parents were very caucious, but were not very caucious. I trusted my mom and after that, I couldn’t leave him there while he was young. I had to find someone else who had no other person living with her and I felt so confident with this person to leave my son with her so I could work. She was great. He took a moment, when my mom was very busy in the kitchen to say these things to my child. Being that he was 11 and I cautioned him about not being around this family member alone, he was still a child. He ran to my office and as soon as I saw him at the door, which I had to buzz him in to get in, I immediately knew, in my heart, that something terrible had happened. He didn’t get to hurt my son luckily but, when he was a child at the age of 2, I was so naive to the world. I lost my husband and I almost lostmy sanity and to this day, I feel depression and anxiety and, worries about who he might hurt next. At this time, I called an organization that had to do with child abuse and my family member actually stated that what he said to my son was true. He didn’t deny it. He was let go on no bail but had to go to court and so did I with my son. NO ONE, in my family, went with me that day and as I sat, on that bus, suddenly my family member walked into the same bus and sat right behind me. He started saying, “I hope that I don’t have to go to jail and I didn’t hurt him”, and all I could do was be strong for my son.

After the judge saw my family member, he gave this person five years probation and jail if he ever touched another child. My son kept asking me, on the bus, “Mommy, why didn’t they put my family member in jail”. To this day, I still hate that judge. I felt he needed to be put away. My family member has two sons and they stay at the family member’s home on the weekends which is my parents home. My sister adopted them and feels that the children will not be hurt. I often think,”what if”. But, it has been 31 years and there has been no problems arising from his past. But, that doesn’t condone what he did to my child and to me and to my family. My siblings never took their children to my parent’s house when they were young and now that they have become adults and have children of their own, they do not bring the children to the house of my parents except on specific dates such as mother’s day and father’s day. When they do, they have their children veryclose to them. We found out, in the past, when all this happened, that this family member was on very heavy drugs and this person did not know what he was doing at the time it happened. He doesn’t remember the details but he did know because this family member acknowledge it to my mother.

This is why I am also an advocate for Alcohol and Drug Addiction and what it can do to a person and how it destroyed my family. My son’s lack of self esteem will always remain with him but I pray for him. He tells me that the only way that he would forget is if this family member were to die. We are all a loving family and a Godly family. I must see my mom and dad because they are older and need my help and, in doing this, I have to constantly run into this person. My familymember will often say, “Oh! you came to visit and he hugs me and kisses my cheek”. Being a Godly person, I have forgiven him, but I will never forget. I try to stay clear of him but I can’t because of my parents who I love dearly. This family member has been treated for schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder since this occurred 31 years ago.

I will never condone what he did to my son and the rage inside of my person grows more and more especially when my son repeats it to me over the years.

I consider this a tragedy. This person ruined my family. He destroyed the confidence I have in men. He destroyed my son and I lost my family. I lost my husband. I have been alone for many years. God blessed me with a wonderful man for seven years but at the end of this relationship we had to say goodbye because he was lying to me. I look for happiness and I feel like I am not blessed with the kind of man I want to have in my life. Yes, I feel that 31 years ago, confidence, hate, anger and all the other words I want to add, have and are still in my life. I know that God will help me and my son and he has been helping me. I was a single mother trying to do what I can for my son and to this day, I consider myself as a good mother even though he is now an adult. Being an adult does not take away your childhood fears.

I would you to share this with others and please do not mention my name (I know you won’t).

Stop Abuse

I got this invitation from the BlogCatalog to join them today in a project:

“Thousands of bloggers from around the world are joining together this Thursday, September 27th with a single message: Stop Abuse!

BlogCatalog would love for you to be one of them!

On Thursday, September 27th, post about any abuse topic you care about – child abuse, domestic abuse, animal abuse, drug abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, political abuse – and let the world know you stand united with thousands of bloggers as part of the Bloggers Unite “Blog Against Abuse” campaign. Depending on your topic, you can even link to local, regional, national, or international organizations that you care about or support. Every post will count!

And I’m going to. First, I am going to recommend a couple of places recommended to me by others, young people who care. I’d encourage anyone reading this to support these organizations, after that I’m going to talk about another form of abuse that is close to my heart.

I’d recommend you encourage people to read “Do They Hear You When You Cry” by Fauziya Kassindja and to support the Equality Now organization.

Equality Now

Equality Now is an international human rights organization that works for the protection and promotion of women’s rights. Issues of concern to Equality Now include domestic violence, rape, female genital mutilation, reproductive rights, trafficking in women, and other forms of violence and discrimination against women that have historically been neglected by the international human rights movement. The Women’s Action Network of Equality Now is a growing force of activists around the world campaigning for the human rights of women.

And another wonderful place. The Animal Humane Society Which, of course, protects those little ones who give us all of their love and ask nothing in return, this place tries to help those whose human animals are lesser creatures than those they “own”.

Now I want to beat the drum for my own particular cause, though all of those listed above need be addressed and stopped, the one I want most dearly to see ended forever is child abuse. National statistics indicate that 1100 children a year die in the United States from child abuse. Most sadly, 90% of those suffered at the hands of someone in whom they should have been able to unconditionally trust, a parent or other caretaker. These little ones have no voice of their own and they have no idea what they could possibly have done to deserve such treatment. The truth is they don’t deserve such treatment. Children are the forgotten victims in our world today. Starvation, malnutrition, war, terrorism and parents, of all people, parents, abandon these innocents to unspeakable acts of violence and abuse. There are more than 3 million reports of neglect and abuse received by child protection agencies in the United States, 2/3’s of which are actually investigated. Estimates are that less than 20% of child sexual abuse instances are ever reported. How can it be so in a free country that we stand idly by, protesting a tax increase that would help these most deserving of all people in need, our own children.

President Bush has promised to veto a bill that would extend health care coverage to children because he does not want to go down the road toward socialized medicine. What social need could be greater than providing health care coverage to children? How many more children must die of neglect, abuse, malnutrition and starvation before we say enough? He will ask for $190 billion dollars to blow limbs off Iraqi children next year, okay, Iraqi adults too, but is not willing to extend health care coverage to children in this country because it is too costly and could actually lead to health care coverage for everyone, gawd forbid. This is compassionate conservatism showing its core values. Death over life. That really isn’t much of a motto for a country that bills itself as freedom’s haven, is it? What does it say there on the Statue of Liberty?

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)

This is an eloquent and beautiful portrayal of what was once the promise of America: a new land of equal opportunity. Isn’t it still carved into the concrete pillar at the base of the Statue of Liberty? When did we stop meaning that? Why did we? Does anyone know? Are those not still the core values of America? Are we not the land of the free and the brave?

I believe we still are and I join with other voices today in asking all of us to stand up when we see those values being abused, to be counted on to help stop the abuse, in any form and in any place, of our children. When you see an atrocious act taking place, intervene. Don’t look the other way. Call someone. Get help. But DO something. And, I don’t ask this solely for American children, I ask that you heed the voice within you, that voice which says we must end the conditions that create the poverty that breeds the violence that consumes our littlest and least protected souls. It IS time to say ENOUGH. Do so with your pocketbooks, do so with your votes, do so with your love. Please. much love, gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene

Random thoughts

Last night was pot pouri and you can’t have the same thing for supper every night, well, unless you are me, I am on my third night in a row of peaches for supper. I think I could live on those alone. I might be trying to, giggle.

So what I am going to do is wander, random thoughts, that have been running through me. Tomorrow night will be different, a group of bloggers is sponsoring a rally against abuse, of all sorts, I got a mailing today about it and solicited ideas from friends, organizations, things like that, dealing with all manner of abuse, unfortunately there are many forms to consider. So tomorrow night, I’m going to write something about something and have no idea yet at all what that will be, jen does, she tells me not to worry about that tonight, tomorrow night will flow on its own. So I am sure it will. :^)

I was thinking, because of this book, I’ve mentioned about transcending our biology, which really means our primal instincts as I am understanding it and thought it is sort of hard going, I am finding a lot of truth in it. I’m going to do a piece, maybe more than one about that eventually, or elements of it. It is important, kids are, how they get their start in life is.

While I was reading that today at lunch though, I heard this child’s laugh echo through the atrium of the building I was in. And it made me think of something, I know lots of people are annoyed by children in restaurants and other public places, all that noise and exuberance, which is not always all that conducive to those other people having the experience they are there to have. And at one time in my life, a much younger me felt the same way – can’t those parents control those children. Then I had children of my own, giggle. I mean we were all told as kids ourselves that children should be seen and not heard. If you weren’t, well, good on you, as a friend of mine from down under might say, but a lot of us were. But you know, a very long time ago, I changed my mind about all that and for a reason that I’ll talk about in tomorrow’s post. I smile now when I hear a child’s raised voice in a restaurant, because I know that is a child who knows she is loved. Children who aren’t sure of that, who live in fear, they are the quiet ones, the ones who know that if they make noise, they will hear about it THEN, or even worse, later. To me now, a giggling child’s shrill little voice signifies one who is secure in her person, who knows that the people around her love her and who has not been taught to be silent, or made to be. She is full of cheer and questions and confident that she is allowed to ask them, to observe, to giggle and free to be. So while I still think, that all children should be taught the difference between inside and outside voices, they should not be until they have heard their laughter peal through the echoes of a large public building. At least once. Cuz, hey, I want to hear that too, giggle. It make me smile and some days I need that more than anything else that is going to happen.

I’ve been listening to Sarah McLachlan again, this time a song from Solace, which on the whole is not my favorite cd of hers, but I am expanding my understanding of her music and so will keep with it for a bit, I am REALLY loving Afterglow and will talk about those another time but this one is special, I just love the whole song, I will not forget you, but it’s chorus is what catches my attention most.

And I will oh I will not forget you

Nor will I ever let you go

I will oh I will not forget you

I think this is the song God sings us as we descend into our human bodies here in the relative universe. I think this is why, somewhere deep within us, every soul, remembers home.

I saw in the paper today that the White House is seeking $190 billion dollars for war in 2008. What do you suppose that much money would buy in terms of love? Health care for children, food and shelter for the homeless, sick and needy, early childhood education and child care, post-secondary education for more of our talented little ones, job training for those so inclined. Yet we want to spend it on death. What do priorities of THAT sort teach our children about our moral values?

I got a joke in the mail today. One of those Jeff Foxworthy “you might be a” something or other if you? Well, I am most definitely a Minnesotan cuz not only did I have the experience of most of them, but I did one last night, lol. Took Cisco out for his last potty break of the night wearing shorts and a parka, giggle.

I saw something in a movie the other day, heard, I suppose I mean, a line that gave me real pause for thought. Some guy said that the new law of the 21st century jungle is not kill or be killed, it is kill or be irrelevant. That really is the world we’ve become isn’t it? It isn’t enough to stand on a soap box and speak your piece to anyone who might stop to listen, or to write yourself a snotty little book about how others should do things, or send off pithy letters to the editor, or even hold court at your local watering hole. No, in this century, to be relevant, to make your point, you kill or you are invisible. You strap bombs to yourself and kill 30 innocent people having lunch. Or, you load up a car with explosives and drive it into a building. Or you arm your warplane with all manner of horrors and take off from a flight deck into the beauty of a God-given morning and drop those hellish contraptions on people you hope are the enemy. Or are told are the enemy. I am wondering why we aren’t wondering just how important relevance has to be. Has it ever really been different on this planet? Did the first two groups of humans to meet, do so to kill each other? We aren’t very good at this learning to play nice with others part yet. In those dark nights of the soul I talked about yesterday, I worry that we will never be, but always comes the dawn and with it a rebirth of hope. Hope can’t die. We can’t let it. Without that, we really do have nothing to light the darkness. 90 billion flipping dollars for war next year. And all that is being debated is the amount. THAT is scary. That is the darkness encroaching. And, hell, we don’t even know what bin Laden’s budget is. Or where he is for that matter. So we’ll just keep pacifying Iraq and blowing up various parts of Afghanistan, and God know what else.

The president of Iran will keep making speeches that in many countries could get him committed but in this one, and in his own, gets him applause. The holocaust is a fraud, did you know that? Do the six million Jews who died in the chambers know that? A journalist was impertinent enough to tell him that he was wrong in saying there were no gay people in Iran, that she knew personally some of them. He inquired as to their addresses, so that the government might know what was going on. The world gets more insane by the day, and honestly, on most days, it seems no one is noticing. I’m going to quote a bit of a book I love here, Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, actually I’d quote from two, but one of them has gone missing, giggle. No worries, I’ll get another, and anyway, I practically have it memorized. I have identified with this book since I first read it, I guess that would have been 1968, though it was published in 1961, until 1968, I was occupied reading all of his books leading up to this one. As an aside, I was pleased to see Neale Donald Walsch credit what he called the “visionary literature of Robert Heinlein, who raised questions and posed answers in ways no one else has even dared approach” in the Acknowledgments preface to book 1. Indeed there was a time when I thought most of book 1 was lifted FROM Robert’s works, so similar are many of the ideas God brings forth. Anyway, what I’m going to do here is just quote a little of what Robert interspersed throughout this most enlightening, mind-expanding and wonderfully entertaining book. I mean, most of it is pure story, well written and conceived as was everything he did, but he threw in at the beginning of many sections, what I suppose you could call non sequiturs, a couple of paragraphs that had NOTHING to do with the story, but which sort of summarized the “news” of that particular day. I found them all quite amusing, for example,

“The third planet from Sol, held 230,000 more humans this day than yesterday; among five billion terrestrials such increase was not noticeable. The Kingdom of South Africa, Federation associate, was again cited before the High Court for persecution of its white minority. The lords of fashion, gathered in Rio, decreed that hemlines would go down and navels would be covered. Federation defense stations swung in the sky, promising death to any who disturbed the planet’s peace; commercial space stations disturbed the peace with endless clamor of endless trademarked trade goods. Half a million more mobile homes has set down on the shores of Hudson Bay than migrated by the same date last year; the Chinese rice belt was declared an emergency malnutrition area by the Federation Assembly; Cynthia Davis, known as the Richest Girl in the World, paid off her sixth husband.

The Reverend Doctor Daniel Digby, Supreme Bishop of the Church of the New Revelation (Fosterite) announced that he had nominated the Angel Azreel to guide Federation Senator Thomas Boone and the he expected Heavenly confirmation later today; news services carried it as straight news, the Fosterites having wrecked newspaper offices in the past. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Campbell VI had a son and heir by host-mother at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital while the happy parents were vacationing in Peru. Dr. Horace Quackenbush, Professor of Leisure Arts at Yale Divinity School, called for a return to faith and cultivation of spiritual values; a betting scandal involved half the professionals of the West Point football squad; three bacterial warfare chemists were suspended at Toronto for emotional instability; they announced that they would carry their cases to the High Court.”

Now honestly, does all THAT sound much different from the headlines of any newspaper in the world today? That was published in 1961. And, to me, it reads much like the Minneapolis StarTribune on any given day this year. There are many more such little bits scattered throughout what really is a profound look at humanity, faith, values and just who gets to determine what those are at any given time for any given group of people. And it is the story of how one man comes of age, a human not born on earth, a Stranger in a Strange Land. But I swear, I WAS born on earth, and I feel much like Michael Valentine Smith every day. Sometimes you have to laugh until you cry.

I think though, what truth can be found in what is happening around our world, where to not kill is to be irrelevant is found in a simple statement. Do not become that which you fear. We can’t change what we see around us by becoming what we see around us. We can’t change what our world is until we can talk about what it is. That takes people of courage, people of love, people willing to stand up and say this is NOT what we are. Moderates of every faith and tradition have to do what that brave young woman named Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American psychologist from Los Angeles did on Al Jazeera Television. Watch this amazing woman’s two minutes. SHE, and many more like her, are what are needed now. Al Jazeera Television

Then remember this as we go forth into our next day and try to follow her example. We are ALL Bringers of the Light, this must be our truth:

And I will oh I will not forget you

Nor will I ever let you go

I will oh I will not forget you

much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way,
choose to be a bringer of the light. much love, :^) gene

Pot Pouri

Tonight is going to be sort of free form. I sometimes do this on email, usually with a subject of pot pouri since I tend to cover a lot of unrelated ground, varied turf you might say as I wander the twists and turns within. I’ve got a lot of little two line notes to myself lying around and I’m going to talk a little about some of those tonight.

Those of you who’ve seen my main site will know that I am no atheist. I’m not really what you could call a deist either in that I am no friend of religion, at least in its institutional form. Individual practitioners of every persuasion I can love with passion, but their institutions all give me the chills. I wasn’t going to talk about CWG here at all tonight but it turns out I need a quote to set the tone:

This actually starts on the bottom of page 89, book 1, when Neale asks God a rather impertinent question.

Neale: Which brings me to another question. Why don’t You fix the world, instead of allowing it to go to hell?

To which God replies: Why don’t you?

Neale: I don’t have the power.

God responds: Nonsense. You’ve the power and the ability right now to end world hunger this minute, to cure diseases this instant. What if I told you your own medical profession holds back cures, refuses to approve alternative medicines and procedures because they threaten the very structure of the “healing” profession? What if I told you that the governments of the world do not want to end world hunger? Would you believe me?

Neale: I’d have a hard time with that one. I know that’s the populist view, but I can’t believe its actually true. No doctor wants to deny a cure. No countryman wants to see his people die.

God: No individual doctor, that’s true. No particular countryman, that’s right. But doctoring and politicking have become institutionalized, and its the institutions that fight these things, sometimes very subtly, sometimes even unwittingly, but inevitably…because to these institutions it’s a matter of survival.

And so, to give you just one very simple and obvious example, doctors in the West deny the healing efficacies of doctors in the East because to accept them, to admit that certain alternative modalities might just provide some healing, would be to tear at the very fabric of the institution as it has structured itself.

This is not malevolent, yet it is insidious. The profession doesn’t do this because it is evil. It it does it because it is scared.

What started me on this particular train of thought is that I’ve always been sort of on the opposite side of the world from those who consider Mother Theresa now, and while she was living, a saint. I guess my main opposition came from my antipathy toward her religion. Catholicism, as an institution, has been responsible for a great deal of despair and bloodshed during its long history, witch burning, pedophile protecting, not to mention the most recent pope (people who have the temerity to claim they speak as Jesus in the flesh sort of set my nerves on edge) claiming that all adherents of every other faith were condemned, things like that have sort of always left me a bit cold toward the “one true church”. Well, that and being born and raised Lutheran, giggle. But don’t make the mistake of thinking I exempt Lutherans from my irreligious ire. Because I do not. I believe that there has been more evil done by men in the name of God than for any other reason. And, to me, that is the greatest blasphemy of them all. To do evil unto others and to lay the blame at God’s feet and claim you act in His name is the most evil act of all.

So why does Mother Teresa come into this little diatribe? Well, I read an article this past week about a new book, which I have since ordered and will read, which is apparently a collection of letters she wrote various people. Nice people, of course, who saved them and are now using them for their own purposes long after her having returned home, though she never intended they become public and had actually asked they be destroyed. If there were such things as circles of hell, I’d have one reserved for such as they. Anyway, despite her public pronunciations of faith, and some of the harsh things she said (which were what caused my rather low opinion of her personally, not her work; her work was wonderful, bringing comfort to those in need is indeed God’s work. But then since there is nothing which God is not, then, one must also conclude it is EVERYONE’s work – so do I conclude) about people who made choices other than those she might have made herself. Like, for instance, those who faced abortion or divorce. I wasn’t impressed with other reports of about her work either, feeling a lack of compassion in her work which is talked about somewhat in the wiki article I cite below. Now that may sound odd, given what she did, but it was the “feeling” I had. Keeping people alive dogmatically, but not necessarily humanely, didn’t feel saintly to me. It still doesn’t. There is a whole Wiki section devoted to her that talks about some of this: Mother_Teresa

But that is not what I want to talk about now. I want to talk about this book I have on its way to me, Mother Teresa: Come be my Light. I am really looking forward to it. It seems she and I have something in common. Something maybe a lot of us have in common. The article I read was about this book and her letters in which she apparently agonized over her own ability to believe. She heard the voice of Jesus, she said, calling her to the work she did throughout her life, tending to the poorest of the poor. Mystical encounters with Jesus, the article says, now THAT I understand, having detailed my own mystical encounters on my main site, the lights, the awakening, and, of course, my jenna. The difference between us is that she lost her ability to hear Jesus virtually as soon as she began doing the work she thought he asked her to do. Thus beginning what the article calls an extended “long dark night of the soul”, something it says she had in common with many catholic saints, though not many had such an extended night as did she. She doubted her faith, God’s existence and felt abandoned spiritually. I think that showed tremendous courage, for that to me is what courage means, being scared as all hell, feeling completely alone, yet going ahead and doing what you feel is right anyway, no matter the personal cost. I think she did that. I am eager to read how she felt as she did.

I empathize. I cycle myself between complete faith in jenna and everything she tells me to doubt that there is any truth within me at all. My own long dark night of the soul has lasted, well, having just turned 58, I guess one would say quite a long time, because I have vacillated between faith and despair all of my life. Not faith in the sense of disbelieving a creator exists, I have never been able to come to a place wherein I was able to believe that the universe just “happened”, there is too much order and precision in it for me to ever be able to believe that, but my faith that a creator who actually gave a rat’s butt what happened to any particular individual IN this creation, well, that is where the rub has been for me. jenna not withstanding. CWG cleared a lot of that up for me. I’m not saying this is how I would have done it, but that it has been done this way, I understand. Even if there are large pieces I do not like at all. Still, the part about not knowing who we are until we know who we are not makes sense to me. If we come from a place where love is all there is, and I believe we do, then how do we know that? If there is nothing else, how would one “know” anything? Let alone anything else. That we might then come here to experience what we are not in order to experience what we really are makes a terrible sort of sense to me.

Book 1 talks about this on page 61, where God asserts that Hitler went to heaven, which idea, will, when more people hear of it than have now, horrify most “believers”. But God says that there is nowhere else to go and that, in fact, Hitler did us all a service, by showing us what humanity at its darkest, is capable of. If we see the dark and we know we are not that, does that make us the light? Make us appreciate the light more? I would think it must. At home. But here, the dark encroaches everywhere. Fear is the darkness here. And though it has been more than 60 years since Hitler returned to the light, have we really learned all that much about how to live a better way? We have Hitler wannabes living in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan wanting nothing more than additional bloodshed. And we have Hitler wannabes living in penthouses and global corporate boardrooms wanting the very same thing. Each for their own reasons, but they are the same people.

We have power brokers in political positions around the world who want the same sort of carnage Hitler wrought, because it would bring them, and their idea of power, to the top of their particular ideological mountain. They, too, are the same. And it matters not what nationality these are. Had they been born in different countries they would be the same, just dressed differently and speaking different languages, but they would still ALL be here to show the rest of us what we are not. So should we thank the bin Laden’s and Bush’s and Putin’s and Mao’s of the world today? For modeling for the rest of us behavior that teaches us what we are not? I wonder.

Or do we, as God also says in book 1 on page 133 face this question? This is the answer to your question, “If love is all there is, how can man ever justify war?”

Sometimes man must go to war to make the grandest statement about who man truly is: he who abhors war.

There are times when you may have to give up Who You Are in order to be Who You Are…Thus, in order to “have” yourself as a man of peace, you may have to give up the idea of yourself as a man who never goes to war. History has called upon men for such decisions.

On page 132, He prefaced this piece above by saying:“…As a practical matter – again leaving esoterics aside – if you look in these situations where you are being abused, (gene inserts ANYONE is being abused),at the very least what will do is stop the abuse. And that will be good for both you and your abuser. For even an abuser is abused when his abuse is allowed to continue.

This is not healing to the abuser, but damaging. For if an abuser finds that his abuse is acceptable, what has he learned? yef it if the abuser finds that his abuse will be accepted no more, what has he he been allowed to discover?

Therefore, treating others with love does not necessarily mean allowing others to do as they wish.

Parents learn this early with their children. Adults are not so quick to learn it with other adults, nor nation with nation.

Yet, despots cannot be allowed to flourish, but must be stopped in their despotism. Love of Self, and love of the despot, demands it.

Is it time for good people to wake and take back the truth of humanity from those who would usurp our trust and use it to satisfy their own blood lust? I’ve been hearing Dido in my head lately. Haven’t heard a song of hers in a very long time, but this verse has been playing over and over at odd times for days.

I will go down with this ship, And I won’t put my hands up and surrender, There will be no white flag above my door, I’m in love and always will be.

I think maybe that is what we need assert now. That love is going to win this time, and that we will go down with this ship even if it sinks, believing that the truth of us is that we ARE love and trusting that our ship will not stay down, but will rise again and that our will, I believe the majorities will, to live in peace and family hood, can prevail. I think we approach a cusp. When the scales will finally accumulate enough weight on the side of love to tip the balance and let the dark slide off into the vastness of the universal black hole from which it came, when we can create here a replica of our home and let this be a place where love prevails. Honest to “god” I think that is the only answer that saves us. Because we are in love and always will be. And, as always, Sarah has the perfect line, we should wear our love like heaven. Wouldn’t that be a sight to see? In our rainbow hues, arms linked, facing down those angry men who would make us fear them, fear life, fear each other. Wear our love like heaven, that would certainly let our little lights shine, wouldn’t it?

Okay, I’m going to leave the rest of my thoughts for later, tomorrow maybe. I need to think, these drain me in a way. And maybe walk in a bit in the cool night air of late September. We’ll talk again tomorrow, much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene

I was wrong about something. Yup, me.

About the two greatest threats to planet earth. There is one greater. Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously named it: Fear. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. I’m reading a book, of late, about transcendence, I’m going to talk it about later this week, but it is about transcending biology, ostensibly, but it isn’t biology we need transcend. It is fear. It is fear that grips this world by the throat. It is fear that our media, all versions, spew out in hurried, harried phrases. Often, not what has happened, on a slow day, but what MAY happen if nothing horrible can be found to frighten us with. That is where the transcendence part comes in. Our world, we, its people, must learn to transcend fear. How may we do that? It is a reasonable question and one I’m going to explore later this week. But for the moment, I just wanted to make it clear that fearing religion and global warming aren’t going to cure either. What will then? Transcending them with love.

So, tonight, as I am a bit harried and hurried myself, I’m going to borrow a bit from Steve Goodier again, as always from his newsletter, Life Support, and it does, he does.

FINER THAN WEALTH

I love the story about an angel who suddenly appears at a faculty
meeting and tells the dean of the college that, in return for his
unselfish and exemplary behavior, he will be given his choice of
infinite wealth, wisdom or beauty. Without hesitating, the dean
selects infinite wisdom.

“Done!” says the angel, and disappears in a cloud of smoke and a bolt
of lightning.

Now, all heads turn toward the dean, who sits surrounded by a faint
halo of light. At length, one of his colleagues whispers, “Say
something wise.”

The dean looks at them and says, “I should have taken the money.”

Though wealth is highly regarded in our world, I rather suspect this
fictitious academic made the better choice. Wisdom, like many other
virtues, is usually more difficult to obtain and can be far more
satisfying.

I’ve heard it said that when our hearts are empty, we collect
“things.” On the other hand, when our hearts are full, we tend to lose
interest in most of the “stuff” of life. The “things of the heart”
become all important. Things like love and joy and peace. Or wisdom.
Or hope. Or faith.

And the wonderful truth is that these gifts are given freely to any
who will take them! None of us has to live without love. There really
is joy to be found in this life. And we can know peace – now.

Fra Giovanni gave us these immortal words in 1513:

“No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today.
Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future that is not hidden in his present
moment. Take peace!
The gloom of this world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within reach, is joy.
There is a radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see,
and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look.
Life is so generous a giver….”

You have already been offered things even finer than infinite wealth.
Will you grasp them and make them yours – today?

Steve is right. None of us has to live without love. None of us should. If there is anything those who oppose the light would take from us, it is our ability to forgive without restraint and love that which ennobles and frees us. That would be the indomitable spirit born in each of us. There is a new “resident evil” movie out this past weekend. It amuses me how even our “entertainment” wants to make us afraid, wants to appeal to the dark side of life, feels it must lest no one care. But my favorite movies are all those in which love transcends fear. What IS resident in us is love and light.  When the light wins. I lost my taste for the dark many years ago though I have lived in its shadow all of my life, as have we all. The cold war, terrorism, global warming, gangs, radicals of every stripe and persuasion. All want us to live in fear because it is in that fear that we give them our power, that we allow them to run the world as THEY see fit. Well, I think it is time we take back our power, that we who know the light exists, who have felt it, who have transcended it, even if for brief moments, begin sharing those moments, begin talking about those moments, we can all emerge from our long dark night of the soul into the light that is our birthright. As a child, a song we sang in Sunday School every week as little ones, has new meaning, new purpose in my life, in all of life, I think. “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine” we sang each Sunday morning. I think we need to start singing that song every morning, every evening, until the light of those small candles overwhelms the dark, and lets us see that there is nothing there in the shadows but sad, little people, who have lost the ability to see their own light. We can teach them to love too. We will. How’s THAT for a goal for the 21st century? It is coming, it is ALL coming. Sooner than any of us think. The gloom of this world is but a shadow, and we know shadows are not to be feared, because they are caused by the light. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way,
Choose to be a Bringer of the Light. :^) gene

Investing in our future. OUR future.

Tonight I’m going to start with a story. A real story. A real sad story. Then, I’m going to talk about that a bit. What it really means. And more.

Federal Investment in Children Expected to Weaken by 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. September 10, 2007—Federal investment in children is likely to decline markedly within the next decade, according to a new Urban Institute study for the Partnership for America’s Economic Success. The share of the federal budget for programs that enhance kids’ future productivity or income—by improving education, promoting good health, supporting parents’ ability to work, and more—is forecast to drop from 1.6 percent of the gross domestic product in 2006 to 1.3 percent by 2017, under current policies.

The decline would be even steeper but for increased federal spending on children’s health care, an aspect of the budget that report authors Eugene Steuerle, Gillian Reynolds, and Adam Carasso attribute largely to spiraling medical costs rather than to deliberate investment in children and their futures.

In “Investing in Children,” the authors note that spending for future proceeds and well-being, as opposed to spending on current consumption, has long been recognized as a primary driver of economic growth. “In an increasingly knowledge-based economy, investment in human capabilities rises in ever-greater importance,” write Steuerle, Reynolds, and Carasso. Nonetheless, the researchers find, domestic spending is likely to rise by about $647 billion by 2017, with less than half of 1 percent of the increase going to investment in education and research.

The report’s authors point to large federal programs with built-in growth mechanisms to explain why the slice of the federal budget pie assigned to investment in children is so slim. “Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid do not require annual appropriations and the benefits they pay grow automatically each year with changes in wages, life expectancy, and medical costs. Programs that invest in children seldom grow or expand by design. Increasing investment in kids’ programs is a much more difficult process,” observe Steuerle, Reynolds, and Carasso.

The researchers conclude, “Reorienting the budget toward investment in children is one way of trying to both increase their future well-being and to give them greater economic capacity to finance the programs that support their parents’ and grandparents’ needs.”

“Investing in Children” charts U.S. federal spending on investment in total and for children from 1965 to 2017. It was written by C. Eugene Steuerle and Gillian Reynolds of the Urban Institute and Adam Carasso, formerly with the Institute and now with the New America Foundation, and is available at http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411539. Funding was provided by the Partnership for America’s Economic Success, a project of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation.

The point of this is insanity defined. Only worse. Doing LESS of the same thing and expecting better results is far worse than simply repeating the follies of the past and expecting the same results. And BETTER is what they, meaning our political leadership, is going to TELL us they are doing. That, my friends, is called spin. And it how the political game of “find the pea” is played. You SAY one thing while doing another and hope your lips are moving fast enough so that the people don’t catch on that there was NEVER a pea in play in the first place. The pea, they have safely tucked away someplace for their own supper, it isn’t on the table, it isn’t under the shell and it certainly isn’t going to better our children’s lives. 2017? Really, does anyone REALLY think it is going to take that long? Does no notice things like:

U.S. has second worst newborn death rate in modern world, report says

CNN) — An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a new report.

American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.

Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births.

“The United States has more neonatologists and neonatal intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, but its newborn rate is higher than any of those countries,” said the annual State of the World’s Mothers report.

The report, which analyzed data from governments, research institutions and international agencies, found higher newborn death rates among U.S. minorities and disadvantaged groups. For African-Americans, the mortality rate is nearly double that of the United States as a whole, with 9.3 deaths per 1,000 births.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the worst place in the world to be a mother or child, with Scandinavian nations again taking the top spots in the rankings by the Connecticut-based humanitarian group.

Sweden heads the list, with Niger last. (10 worst and best)

The “Mothers’ Index” in the report ranks 125 nations according to 10 gauges of well-being — six for mothers and four for children — including objective measures such as lifetime mortality risk for mothers and infant mortality rate and subjective measures such as the political status of women.

Charles MacCormack, president and CEO of Save the Children, said the report card “illustrates the direct line between the status of mothers and the status of their children.”

“In countries where mothers do well, children do well,” he said in a written statement accompanying the report.

But each year, according to the report, more than a half-million women die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth difficulties, 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours, 2 million more die within their first month and 3 million are stillborn.

Why are we worried about 2017? Isn’t THIS amount of carnage enough to pay attention to now? Not to mention, the 50,000 children around the world who die of starvation each and every day. That is 35 dead children a minute. Now. While worldwide policies allow an additional 353,000 births per day. One in 7 them condemned before they’ve taken their first breath. I want to quote a bit from CWG, book 1, here:

On page 49, God, in response to Neale’s question about God wanting the world to exist as it does, replies, “I am saying that the world exists the way it exists – just as a snowflake exists the way it exists – quite by design. You have created it that way – just as you have created your life exactly as it is.

I want what you want. The day you really want to end hunger, there will be no more hunger. I have given you the resources with which to do that. You have all the tools with which to make that choice. You have not made it. Not because you cannot make it. The world could end hunger tomorrow. You choose not to make it.

You claim that there are good reasons that 40,000 people a day must die of hunger. (gene inserts, this was written in 1995, the numbers are even more horrifying today) There are no good reasons. Yet at a time when you say you can do nothing to stop 40,000 people a day from dying of hunger, you bring 50,000 people a day into your world to begin a new life. And this you call love. This you call God’s plan. It is a plan which totally lacks logic or reason, to say nothing of compassion.

I am showing you in stark terms that the world exists the way it exists because you have chosen for it to. You are systematically destroying your own environment, the pointing to so-called natural disasters as evidence of God’s cruel hoax, or Nature’s harsh ways. You have played the hoax on yourselves and it is your ways which are cruel.

Nothing, nothing is more gentle than Nature. And nothing, nothing has been more cruel to Nature than man. Yet you step aside from all involvement in this; deny all responsibility. It is not your fault, you say, and in this you are right. It not a question of fault, it is a matter of choice.

…The world is in the condition it is in because of you, and the choices you have made, or failed to make. (Not to decide is to decide) The earth is in the shape it’s in because of you, and the choices you have made, or failed to make.

Choices. That is what this all comes down to you know. We choose to come up with ever more inventive, and expensive ways, to kill each other. We subvert each others way of life, we pay lip service to the appreciation of the variety of cultures and traditions we enjoy on this planet. But we do nothing to stop the carnage of hate. We do nothing to make use of the tools we have to understand each other, to reach out our hand to each other in love and with goodwill. The Urban Institute is worried about 2017. I am worried about 2007. We must learn to appreciate our differences, to understand each other, to find a common language of love with which we can begin to heal our planet, our selves and each other. It is past time we grew up. We have been locked in a perpetual stage of adolescent angst and rebellion for the entire recorded history of this planet. Not even the teachings of the most gentle persons to walk the earth have been able to help us make better choices about how we treat each other. It is time we began listening to a higher calling than that clarion call to hatred. It is time we began listening to the quiet voice within, that which says it is WRONG that these children be born only to die within days, which says it is morally reprehensible to spend money that could be used to better lives, to provide education, health care and housing for all this worlds children on weapons that will bring naught but heartbreak to families all around the planet we share. We must learn again the meaning of the word SHARE. There is enough, we have enough resources to do this tomorrow, God was clear about that in book 1 and in book 2 he offers a plan to do that very thing. But we’d have to give up one thing. Just one. Fear. Of each other. We’d need to reduce military spending by a fraction, restrict ourselves to self-defense only, work globally together to enforce peace, and spend the savings on our future, our children’s future, our planet’s future. We can do this we only need choose.  So, can we start that conversation now, please? much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene

The two greatest threats to Earth.

Would you take bets on what I might think those are? :^). I won’t make you wait. Religion and Global Warming. Come to think of it, they aren’t all that much different. Both create huge division between people and both really heat up any discussion.

Let’s start though with our environment. Since those with an interest in keeping things the way they are, people who already have considerable advantages, I mean, in that they own the means of production globally and all those who are peripherally involved in those enterprises, the advertising, banking, brokering industries, to name three, could find no real fault with Al Gore’s brilliantly put together documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, they did find a small error in one statement regarding the loss of coastline as the ice at both poles becomes water, they have used that to attack the entire premise. This is the typical stance of right wing, American right wing, politics – if you can’t refute the argument, find some tiny piece of it that you can, then hammer that, relentlessly, ignoring every other part of it. Your core constituency will not bother to do the investigating themselves, they will, as I have mentioned many times already, allow their “leadership” to do their thinking for them, and follow that leadership blindly, waving their arms in righteous indignation, right over the cliff and into that newly teeming ocean. The science is, in the immortal words of Robert Palmer, irrefutable, giggle. So you allege there is no consensus, that not all scientists support the theory behind global warming. Conveniently, or inconveniently, depending on your viewpoint, declining to mention that the ratio of scientists who support the theory behind global warming to those who don’t has been increasing steadily, until now it is overwhelmingly in support of decisive and immediate action. These articles from Wikipedia demonstrate both the danger and the growing consensus.

This page describes the current conditions objectively and scientifically as to the effect this phenomena is having now.

Global Warming

This page lists a large number of official scientific associations who have taken substantive positions on this issue that support the idea that the current situation is exacerbated greatly, and likely caused by, human actions. The most recent surveys of various types are listed on this page as well. The most recent indicate roughly 80% are on the side of human cause and 20% still claiming natural causes. I want to note that the surveys go back roughly 15 years and the percentages have climbed dramatically and consistently to their current levels. There was considerable skepticism to begin with, why would there not be? To think that we puny humans could affect so large a system as that which sustains life on our planet was silly 15 years ago, but as the evidence has mounted, so too has scientific opinion swung toward certainty that it is we puny humans who are at the root of this and that if we do not act, strongly and soon, we may pass a point of no return. We may see global events that have not been ever occurred on this planet by natural causes. We could, we certainly could, make earth uninhabitable without ever experiencing the global holocaust a full-scale nuclear war would precipitate. That is where I am going next. Look at these articles, follow the links, decide for yourselves. Then push your political representatives INTO action. They will not act without, we, the people demanding that action. It is past time that we took our heads out of the sand and demanded significant, immediate, change. Lest we suffer the consequences that so far only religion has threatened us with.

Scientific Organizations Who Have Issued Supporting Statements

Now then, to the other danger I mentioned in the title. Religion. Yesterday I posted a table of the world’s religions. Most of the population of our planet are affiliated in one way or another with one of those, or smaller sects that I didn’t ferret out. Virtually all of those are more about fear than love, division than togetherness. In talking with someone earlier today, I mentioned that it was time to “put the fear of God” in people for real, then amended that to “put the love of God” in them. Because, God is not about fear, God is the antithesis of fear, God, our Creator, is about love and nothing but love. Many religions claim this, teach this, out of one side of their mouths, while out of the other they say but if you don’t do what He wants, as He told me to tell you, He will punish you for eternity. So they combine fear and love in the same sentence, in the same theology. But they are opposites, they are polar opposites. The reason I consider religion so great a threat is that, while so many of its adherents are quite peaceful people, among them have always been those who are not. Those are the ones with the loudest voices. Those are the ones who kill those who do not believe what they believe. Who believe the end justifies the means and the only end that is acceptable to them is that everyone believe what THEY believe. Or pretend to. I got this today in my mail from a friend. I’ve been unable to discern its true source, what I’ve found simply says it is an anonymous email. But it makes an enormous point.

FANATICISM

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

“Very few people were true Nazis,” he said, “but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp, and the Allies destroyed my factories.”

We are told again and again by “experts” and “talking heads” that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder or “honor kill.” It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the “peaceful majority,” the “silent majority,” is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia comprised Russians who just wanted to live in peace, Yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across southeast Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians, most killed by sword, shovel and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving?”

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up because, like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

The following poem/statement exists in various forms but they all have the same message to me. The version inscribed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. reads:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

And this brings me to my point about the other grave danger to our planet, religion. It divides us. It separates us into camps. And in our separate, peaceful camps will steal the wolves of fanaticism, regardless that the vast majority of the adherents to any particular religious tradition are peaceful, there will be among them those who would kill everyone who dares have another idea. The only way to free ourselves from this never-ending cycle of hatred, fear, war, bloodshed and horror is to turn from those who would teach us that different is bad, that our way is the only way, and that all who do not follow our way are our enemies. We must turn to those who teach that Love is the answer to every question AND who put that most basic principle of our true homeland, that place where love is all there is and to which we all return in the end, to work here on earth. If we are here to have an experience that teaches us what we are not, can we not NOW say we have learned that lesson? Can we not count the carnage we have created in our desperate attempts to force our way on others as enough? Can we not quiet the wolves with our love? We cannot win this battle with evil incarnate, and that is what those “wolves” are dear ones, they who are here to show the rest of us who WE ARE NOT, evil incarnate. Isn’t it time we took back our rightful heritage as children of our loving God? Isn’t it time we quiet ones stood up and said, enough. It is time you who would create “faith” and “obeisance” at the point of a sword, or the barrel of a gun, sit down, shut up and learn the truth of us. We are living souls, born in love, who wish to live this experience here in the relative universe as expression OF that love, not as its antithesis? We are here to re-member Who We Really Are, to re-join each other in celebration of our very existence and get on with the business of loving each other? I am not saying we will have no commerce, no government, no faith or tradition, I am saying we can have all those things in whatever way we wish as long as we do so with love and respect for each other. When we have done this, turned planet earth into a place resembling the Eden from which we came, that we will then be ready to turn our attention to the heavens and begin to consider where we might like to live next, giggle. Where we might meet another group of God’s children with whom to enjoy love and fellowship.

It is time we quiet ones took back our truth from the thieves and wolves who have turned it into their platform for spreading hatred, intolerance and bloodshed around this world in the most unholy of ways, in the name of our loving Creator. It is not His will that we live this way, it is OURS. We have created this unholy mess, we can recreate it in its true glory. I’ve described on my main page the feeling of our home. I believe with all my heart that we can all experience that feeling here, when we join together and decide THAT is how we wish to express the truth of our heritage, of our souls and our love for each other and our Creator. Eden on Earth. Has a nice ring to it in my ears, giggle. And it is that to which I wish to dedicate my own life. To which I DO dedicate my own life. Nothing stands between us now, and we will not be denied. Sorry, Sarah, giggle. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene

Truth and betrayal

How are these two words linked? And why would I use them in the title of this post? Good questions. Really good, considering they are my own, giggle. Let me explain.

I need to start by quoting a few lines from Sarah McLachlan’s wonderful song, Possession, at the end of the first verse, the last line:
“Would I spend forever here and not be satisfied?” Then, the first lines of the third verse: “Through this world I’ve stumbled, so many times betrayed, trying to find an honest word (only) to find the truth enslaved.” Then, the last line of the fifth verse: “Nothing stands between us here and I won’t be denied.”

What those lines say to me as I listen and think about them is probably not what Sarah was thinking as she composed them, but they together form a picture for me. A picture, I’m a very visual guy, when I say I see something within, I really mean I SEE it, first I “see” things, then I can form words about them. So, the picture I see created by those words is one that describes the human condition. We come here veiled, our memory of home left behind, so that we might create an experience here, not unintentionally, we have a “plan” of sorts when we come here, for what we want to do, what lesson we wish to remember, what circumstances we wish to begin with, and an idea that we will create from our beginning in whatever part of this world we have chosen to be born in, often, almost always, in a sort of pre-collaborative way with those with whom we will be here, will meet here – our goals, our objectives may be, often are very different, but we agree, in principle to come into certain configurations, and then let our lives unfold as they will, as we create them here. This is talked about in great detail in book 1, and it is, and isn’t quite “right” as my Jenna has explained it to me, but for my purpose here tonight, this overview suffices.

I don’t think we come here to spend forever and not be satisfied, we do indeed “stumble” through our lives, sometimes betrayed by circumstance, or people to whom we have given our trust, sometimes by ourselves with the challenges we decided we would have here to aid us in our creation of this particular incarnation’s experience. It is in how we meet and react to those challenges that we create our lives and our experiences. But how have we been betrayed? Because we, DO, find upon arrival here, the “truth” enslaved. Co opted by those who came before us, ordered into books and rituals that have nothing do with ultimate truth but only with human guesstimates about eternal truth. Books and rituals devised by people for specific purposes, to gain and maintain power over the masses. Religious and political leaders from antiquity to the present, often including leaders of commerce, but not always, not in the beginnings of our history anyway, but in recent centuries most assuredly. If anyone doubts this, watch, or buy, the public television series, Slavery and the Making of America, narrated by the marvelously talented Morgan Freeman – it demonstrates starkly how commerce wormed its way into the unholy traditional alliance between politics and religion. It is often said that politics and religion make strange bedfellows, but I don’t find that so at all, I find them natural suited to beneath the covers and behind closed door work. Enslaving the truth can hardly be done in the open, now can it?

It is the first two groups who decided what went into what we know as the Bible, in its various translations and compilations. Men who decided what was “safe” and “good” for the people to know. Men, who as I described in yesterday’s post, to whom we have given over our power to hear the truth from within. We need not look for the truth, it has been spoon fed to us since we were children, by people with reason to wish to control that “truth” and to present it in ways that contribute to our continued reliance on them for understanding of that truth. Questions are NOT appreciated. Those of us with them, may indeed spend forever here and not be satisfied, unless we learn to look outside the mainstream for answers to our questions. Because the truth of our Creator, our purpose, Who We Really Are, has been withheld from us. Now, I am not saying deliberately, I am saying with malice aforethought. Those who constructed what is presented to children around the world as “truth” did so deliberately, to gain and maintain their authority to be our intercessors with our Creator. As He explains in book 1, if we accept their word as “truth” then we have no thinking on our own to do, we are not responsible for understanding anything but what we are told. And in so doing, we allow the truth to be enslaved.

My purpose here, in telling you of my own experiences with the Light, is to tell you that the truth is not only enslaved but that which has been presented as truth, is not. Is naught but the imaginings of people who have an agenda other than the well-being of the masses. That agenda is to gain wealth and power at the expense of others and to maintain both at all costs. Those costs often coming in the blood of innocents who pay with their lives for the greed and avarice of those who control most of the worlds resources. And who did not learn, or have forgotten, the most basic lesson of our childhoods, share. What you have with whomever needs it. Don’t crab about it. Don’t complain about your taxes being too high. Don’t tell others “I did it myself, you do the same”, recognize that not all are born with equal abilities and be willing to share what you have been given, yes given (you certainly do not think sentient life is “earned” do you?) is what I said and what I meant. Remember, or learn, that love is the answer to every question. And if someone tries to tell you what Jesus would have done and it is NOT love us unconditionally, answer that they have misinterpreted His teachings, because that IS all He taught. If they dispute that refer them to Luke 6: 20-23, which begins, “blessed are the poor…” Because one who alleges Jesus would be in support of what this world, its “leaders” are doing to this world and its people in His name and in the name of our Creator is teaching the enslaved truth created by humans, not God.

What has been shown me, and is described on my main site, IS the truth. What God speaks of in CWG books 1 and 2 IS the truth. Of God and of us. And so this post closes with the last line of Possession I quoted above. Nothing stands between us now and I will not be denied. That is true whether it is God speaking, or gene speaking. I have seen the truth, and the truth shall set us free, with gratitude to Martin Luther King for his eloquent organization of that phrase. Seeking the truth within, sharing what you find there, IS the job of each of us. We cannot be satisfied until it can be said of every man, woman and child on this planet, that each has equal opportunity, equal access to health care, education, food and shelter. We cannot be satisfied until we are ALL free from the truth enslaved. Be a Bringer of the Light. It is the highest calling any of us can have. Be satisfied with nothing less. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene

How does a religion know it is THE one?

While reading last night, I came across a question, which I’ve seen stated many times, in many ways. Usually by people who are not necessarily believer’s in a Universal Creator of any kind, this book, is Robert Heinlein’s, Stranger in a Strange Land, one my all-time favorites. What this character said was, “…Though, I’ve never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith – it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.”

I’ve always sort of had that same idea myself, giggle. I’ve talked about this on my main site as well as in previous posts, but for me, the idea of an “accidental universe” is just plain silly. There is too much order in the universe, in my judgment, for it all to have just “happened’. Somehow.

From Wikipedia: Pascal’s_Wager

Pascal’s Wager basically states that if the atheist is right, when we die nothing will happen, and nothing is lost. But if the Christian is right, when the nonbelievers die they are going to an eternity of damnation. Based on that notion it’s safer to believe than risk Hell.

To this I say: would someone kindly tell me which religious system I should believe in?

A religion is the organized practice of worshiping a God or Gods. Some have sacred texts and writings; some have traditions passed down through generations. Some have both. Trying to pin down the current number of world religions is very difficult. Most research categorizes religions by numbers of followers. The more members, the more likely the religion is to be counted as a “major world religion.” According to the 2001 edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia there are currently 150 world religions with 1 million or more followers and 10,000 distinct world religions. Worse yet, what about all those religions which are no longer practiced?

One version which leaves out many I would consider “major”:

10,000 world religions? Each of whom has the path to salvation? And, from among these, many adherents would have us believe that if we choose wrong we are headed to a less than pleasant experience once we leave this existence? Can I ask the obvious question here? It sort of loops back to Robert Heinlein – what sort of Creator would place so many choices before His children, give them NO no clue as to which to choose or how to do so and then condemn all who choose an incorrect one to eternal banishment at best, punishment at worst? What sort of creature could come up with such an idea? Well, here’s a clue as to my thinking, not a Divine one. THIS notion strikes me as coming from the mouth of a man. A godly creature who does not know Who He Really is. Yes, man, women have never had enough power in our recorded history to have had much voice in creating such silly ideas. I don’t say they aren’t capable of it, giggle, only that they’ve not had much opportunity. :^) Let’s do one more list, I just love ‘em, giggle.

They aren’t really links, they just look like it. The actual site is: Religions_By_Adherent
They’ve got a really cool little chart there too.

1. Christianity: 2.1 billion
2. Islam: 1.5 billion
3. Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
4. Hinduism: 900 million
5. Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
6. Buddhism: 376 million
7. primal-indigenous: 300 million
8. African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
9. Sikhism: 23 million
10. Juche: 19 million
11. Spiritism: 15 million
12. Judaism: 14 million
13. Baha’i: 7 million
14. Jainism: 4.2 million
15. Shinto: 4 million
16. Cao Dai: 4 million
17. Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
18. Tenrikyo: 2 million
19. Neo-Paganism: 1 million
20. Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
21. Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
22. Scientology: 500 thousand

So, now, I’m no math major but this is starting to look to me like a whole LOT of people think they and they alone are going to get a chance to see “home” whilst the rest of us visit some lesser place. Except, of course, for those who think, when we blink out here, we blink out forever. That, I assure you is NOT the case. Why? Check my main site and read, if nothing else, the light stories, and maybe, So What’s Your Point, gene? Those experiences, which arose from within me, which I cannot duplicate, but which produced in me a certainty beyond mere faith that THIS is not all there IS, for me, prove for me that when sentience winks out here, we simply go somewhere else. Just about anyone in any of those lists, categories or religions above will tell you what they think that means. But I know. Not one of them has seen, experienced, what I have. Had they, there would be books, references, Dead flipping Sea scrolls galore extolling what they “knew”. And there is no such reference, not anywhere. I’ve looked, and I mean looked, for the last 12 years, in every nook and cranny of the Internet, for even one such reference as those things which I describe on my main site. I haven’t restricted my search to out of the way places, I have searched the online libraries of universities and colleges, psychological and psychiatric books and journals – I did not refuse to consider that these were simply illusions. Had they been, I thought, then someone else, somewhere else would have had them too, or something similar. But not I’ve not found even one other. Anywhere. LOTS of opinions, yes, not one true. Not one other.

So, my question, within, has always been then, WTF? I mean, literally, giggle. WHY ME? What does a farm boy from the middle of nowhere have to do with any of this? Why show me these things? Why not show them to someone who had an audience, who could tell people the truth of us? Who could help relieve the terrible fear which grips the people on this planet so fiercely that it causes us to blow each other up with car bombs, with explosives strapped to our bodies, with missiles hidden in below ground bunkers, with “smart” (if there is ONE word that should NEVER be used to describe a bomb, it is smart) bombs launched from ships, airplanes and the shoulders of, again, mostly men, who believe their way is so right that they are willing to kill anyone who questions it. Why show the truth of the love that we are to me? Then, allow my son, my 21 year old baby boy, to die so horribly that the act alone drove me completely out of and away from the faith, Lutheran, I was raised in and into an odd little book store, to a section I did not know existed, but to which I was “led” in answer to a prayer, a simple request that if anything existed in that store which could give me peace, that it please, please, be shown me. And there, in this section I had never seen, was Conversations With God, Book 1, turned sideways, the only book which was at my eye level. As I say on the main section, I thought, that was JUST what I needed, a conversation with whatever being created this horrid hellhole of despair.

So, I bought it. Couldn’t make myself read much of it to start with, you can read that story on the main site, but the answer to the question I asked earlier, about why me? Well, once I got past my blindness, that blindness created by the veil of my upbringing, and actually read the book, I could not stop reading it, the words could have been my own. I had always “known” those things, I just did not know I knew that. I’ve said that to several people in recent weeks, in different ways, that they have answers they do not know they have to questions they have not yet been asked, including the wonderful woman who created ANSIR – on my blogroll. As well as to others to whom Jenna has asked to make that statement to. I’m not prescient. I don’t know what that statement means for those to whom I’ve made it, I only know its true. I quoted a piece from page 58 in book 1 the other day, now I’m going to quote another. Because it is the answer to my original question, why me? And I am NOT the only answer. You are too. I’ll tell you what I mean in a moment.

“From the highest mountain it has been shouted, in the lowest place its whisper has been heard. Through the corridors of all human experience has this Truth been echoed: Love is the answer. Yet you have not listened.

Now come you to this book, asking God again what God has told you countless times in countless ways. Yet I will tell you again – here in the context of this book. Will you listen now? Will you truly hear?

What do you think has brought you to this material? How does it come to pass that you are holding it in your hands? Do you not think I know what I am doing?”

Yes. I do think He knows what He is doing. I think my light experiences are all the evidence I need of that. I think my inner guide, Jenna, is all the proof I need of the existence of something, some place, completely outside the realm of what I, you, can normally see and hear here. Of course, YOU, are not holding this book in your hands, are you? But here I am telling you about it. Is there really a difference? I am not going to replicate the entire thing here, giggle. Neale deserves his reward for having undertaken to answer God’s call and put this wonderful material into the books he has written. I am still going to recommend personally only books 1 and 2, I am not saying his other works are not worth reading, indeed, I will really say no more about them at all, those are his. These first two are God’s, for me and in my opinion. I am sure Neale’s inspiration did not change, nor did his source. I am saying that all the world needs to know to pull itself back from the brink of religious annihilation, religious war, political war and the destruction of our global habitat is contained in books 1 and 2. They’re available everywhere, all the time, even in public libraries, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders and small independent bookstores everywhere. I urge you to find them, read them, think about them, join groups to talk about them. Write me and I will talk to you about them. Go to Neale’s site, talk to him about them. Talk to your friends and neighbors about them. Do not be afraid, the truth IS within you. And when you come to page 58 and God asks YOU what brought you to this material, don’t answer “gene”, think about your answer, because it isn’t me, but the voice within you that will tell you whether my words here, and what you have read in the first 58 pages, meet the test we’ve talked about earlier here and God mentions early on in Book 1 – are these words, these recommendations, words of love, truth and joy? If, within you, you hear a small voice say yes, keep reading. And if it takes years for you to feel that urge to find them; then heed it then.

So again, why me? Well, Jenna has told me a fantastic story about that, if it ever comes to pass, I’ll start telling it to you too. She says, I’ll know when. Until then, I’m just going to keep doing this. Telling my little story, wondering why me, and sharing the truth I feel within. God says often throughout the books, if you do not go within, you go with out. And, that too, is truth. If you continue to let others, even well-meaning others, tell you what the truth is for you, you will never find it, I promise you. You will find what THEY want you to believe is truth. Our truth, the truth of us, is encoded in our dna. The Kundalini, what Jenna told me is the Awakening, is not some mysterious Eastern voodoo, it is the hard coded presence of God within us. There is not an atom in the relative universe that is not part of the body of God. We are made up of those atoms. Each of those atoms has the potential to come to sentient life in a being like us and there lying within us, waiting for our call, is our Creator and our individual guides, ready and willing to awaken us to the truth of Who We Really Are. We are children of a loving entity come to a place where we might learn how magnificent He is, We are, how magnificent our “home” is by having here the experience of not knowing who we are, forgetting temporarily the love from which we were born and from which we enter relativity. We come with veils intact, all of us, and we contrive all manner of superstitions and rituals to explain the reality of our existence, in response to our dim memory of home.

The path to spiritual evolution lies not in the words of men written in antiquity, nor in the words of enlightened, and not so enlightened people today – spiritual guru’s, psychobabble experts, or how-to-manuals of any kind, no, the truth of us lies in the place most of us never think to look, never DREAM it could be, within. If we do not go within, we go with out. That’s why me. It took me years to realize those lights, that wonderful peace, that overwhelming love, what some would call nirvana, some would call heaven, that I call home, did not originate somewhere outside me. They came from where they always were, within me. And the truth of us all is, dear ones, that same experience is, those same lights, that same love, is in you too. That is why me. It may be, and Jenna says will be, that a day may come when I find, remember, a way to call that experience out of me again, and then perhaps to show it to you, that you too might remember, might experience the truth, the overwhelming truth of who we really are. I can’t think of a better day personally. It isn’t a matter of being worthy, worth has nothing to do with it, what is, IS, whether what she tells me comes, does, is something I need wait to see. But your own experience needn’t wait for me. It waits for you now and will come to you if you call it. Ask within, “are you there?”. And go with that answer. Find the books, read them. Think about them. Try if you can, to live the truth within them, the rest will follow. And when someone asks you what the answer is? Tell them love. Because that is the only answer that has ever really mattered. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way,
Choose to be a Bringer of the Light. :^) gene

Messages – from where, from whom?

I’ve been thinking about this part for a couple days. On September 3, I talked a lot about truth. I specifically talked about how we know what messages we get from, well, anywhere, can be determined to be “truth, or messages from “God”, because, of course, any message which lacks truth is not from God but from another source. What other sources are there? Quite a few as it turns out, lol. But they are all human. And, we humans, surprisingly, aren’t always as truthful as we could be.

On my main site, I introduced you to my inner voice, my other “half” so to speak, my guide, and my love, jenna. When I first talked about her to the CWG discussion group at Spiritweb, I was still in my “grasshopper”(for you fans of David Carradine’s wonderful show Kung Fu from decades past and which was full of eternal wisdom) days of learning, remembering, the whole, what I call esoteric, experience was very new to me then. I’d only known Jenna AS Jenna for less than two years, I’d only had books 1 and 2 for about 16 months, when I told the list about my inner voice. I was honest, I told them I had no way to know if she was me, not me, or something else entirely. Someone there said that guides could not lie to us, if you asked one directly they had to tell you the truth, that person said the question to ask was, “are you from the light”. So, I did ask, exactly that, and Jen’s response was, and has always been, “I AM the Light”. I’ve not figured out a way to close my posts here, yet, with a signature file, the way I do with emails, I have closed every mail I’ve written in the last 9 1/2 years with this quote:

If today brings even one choice your way,
Choose to be a Bringer of the Light. :^) gene

For me, that means making a daily choice to live in the Light of truth. That was what I wrote about on 9/3, how to discern which messages WERE truth, and which were from a lesser source. So I quoted from book 1, this bit from page 5:

“The challenge is one of discernment. The difficulty is knowing the difference between messages from God and data from other sources. Discrimination is a simple matter with the application of a basic rule:

Mine is always your Highest Thought, your Clearest Word, your Grandest Feeling. Anything less is from another source. Now the task of differentiation becomes easy, for it should not be difficult even for the beginning student to identify the Highest, the Clearest, and the Grandest.

Yet will I give you these guidelines:

The Highest thought is always a thought that contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest feeling is that feeling which you call love.

Joy, truth, love.

These three are interchangeable, and one always follows the other. It matters not in which order they are placed.

Having with these guidelines determined which messages are Mine and which have come from another source, the only question remaining is whether My messages will be heeded.”

Yes, it IS worth reading again, giggle. I don’t think it can be read too often. Far too many come to us with messages they allege to be from God, including our very own President Bush. But those messages do not meet the standard God sets on page 5. One does not discern that they contain joy, truth or love. And so may be, must be, disregarded as from a lesser source. For example, Osama bin Laden’s last message – did that contain the necessary elements to be heeded as a message he received from God? By whatever name we call Him/Her, God, Allah, Jehovah, even Jesus, the message MUST be one of love or it is NOT from our Creator. I’ve talked about the feeling I had in those moments in the presence of the light at 7, and the globes at 15 and 46. And I can tell you that if a message does not evoke in me some sense of THAT love, I don’t consider it divine, but something far less than that.

So, then that leads me back to what I want to talk about tonight about messages. They do not come in but one form, not necessarily a voice within. God is clear about this in book 1, too. In fact, on page 6, He says:

“My messages will come in a hundred forms, at a thousand moments, across a million years. You cannot miss them if you truly listen. You cannot ignore them once truly heard. Thus will our communication begin in earnest. For in the past you have only talked to Me, beseeching Me. Yet now can I talk back to you, even as I am doing here.”

Neale then asks, How can I know this communication is from God? How do I know this is not my own imagination?

Believe me, I have had this thought too. This is my own deepest struggle. But for me here, 9 1/2 years after God put book 1 in my hands, 11 years after Jenna introduced herself to me, in response to MY call, I STILL am, in faith. God was right, you cannot ignore the messages once you have truly heard them. They will NOT leave you alone. She, Jenna, will NOT leave me alone. I have tried, at times, to ignore, to move away, and at most, she will go quiet for a bit, but she NEVER leaves me. She cannot, she will not. It is the same with God. We are NOT alone. We have NEVER been alone. It is the illusion of our relative universe that we are alone, but even in our darkest moments, our guide, our God, is with us. That they do not alter the course of our lives, is because it is OUR life, and ours alone to alter, or not, as we choose. This is the gift God has given us in creating this universe, this experience for our evolution as His/Her (okay that gets annoying, I will use mostly the male descriptor hence, but I want to be clear that God is not “simply” male, He/She is complete in one entity, as are WE, when we are home) children. We KNOW what we are when we are home by having this experience of knowing what we are NOT while we are here. We can appreciate perfect love there because we have our experience of something less than that here. Sometimes, something horribly less than that. Now I need another quote, yes, there will be many of those, especially in this first year of this blog, this too will evolve over time, but the stage for that has to be set, and it is in me that THIS is how I must do that. So many people have not been exposed to books 1 and 2 and it is important that what is in them become common knowledge. Why? Because they are the blueprint for our next evolutionary advance as a species. Are they perfect? No. Neale received them through his own filter but I tell you that 90% of what is in them IS gospel and God’s own truth. Do I “know” what parts are not? Yes, but I get THAT from within, from Jenna. When we come to something like that, I’ll state my disagreement, and that will be in matter of degree for the most part. For ALL of us, those books have personal messages, that WE will see as we read them, I’ve been through both books many times, in excess of 20 and I tell you that EACH time I see something I did not see in any previous reading. We “get” the message when we are ready to hear it. That is the beauty of the books AND of God’s communications with us. There is no such thing as stale. :^)

So, from page 6, in response to Neale’s question above, God responds: ” What would be the difference” Do you not see that I could just as easily work through your imagination as anything else? I will bring you the EXACT right thoughts, words, or feelings, at any given moment, suited precisely to the purpose at hand, using one device, or several. You will know these words are from Me because you, of your own accord, have never spoken so clearly. Had you already spoken so clearly on these questions, you would not be asking them.”

Neale then asks: To whom does God communicate? Are there special people? Are their special times?

God responds: “All people are special, and all moments are golden. There is no person and there is no time one more special than another. Many people choose to believe that God communicates in special ways and only with special people. This removes the mass of the people from hearing My message, much less receiving, (which is another matter), and allows them to take someone else’s word for everything. You don’t have to listen to Me, for you’ve already decided that others have heard from Me on every subject, and you have them to listen to. By listening to what other people think they have heard Me say, you don’t have to think at all. This is the biggest reason for most people turning from My messages on a personal level. If you acknowledge that you are receiving My messages directly, then you are responsible for interpreting them. It is far safer and much easier to accept the interpretation of others (even others who have lived 2,000 years ago) than to seek to interpret the message you may very well be receiving in this moment now. Yet I invite you to a new form of communication with God. A two-way communication. In truth, it is you who have invited Me. For I have come to you, in this form, right now, in answer to your call.“

That is how Jenna came to me. In answer to MY call. She was there all along, waiting for me to call her out, to ask her WHO she was. And, thank God, she has not shut up since, giggle. I can be a very difficult guy, lol. But she never has any trouble with me at all, though I have given, or tried to, her trouble, she has NEVER been anything but softness, love, truth and joy within me. No matter MY own state, hers never changes. Not in the slightest. It is quite disconcerting, to be honest, to be really upset about something, and to have her be always her, calm and loving. Sometimes we humans do NOT want calm and loving, but nothing has ever caused her to be less than what she is. That alone is enough to justify my faith in her. She is what I cannot myself be. At least not perfectly, not nearly often enough. I would be as her, were I able, and I look forward to the day when I can be, even if it is not until I am home with her again. This is why I do not fear death. I KNOW where I am going, I KNOW I am going home, I know we are ALL going home. There is such comfort in that knowing. Certainly the process of that transition can be disconcerting, to say the least, but ultimate outcome is not in doubt, for any of us, not even Osama bin Laden. Or, George W. Bush, who, in some parts of the world, is considered a bigger, meaner, devil than Osama is in this part of the world. We ALL go home. No exceptions. Why? How? Because there is NO other place to go. We’ll talk more about that another time. For now though, I want to come back to messages.

Book 1, page 58: The last paragraph, and the last quote for today too, I didn’t say the last word, that is mine, giggle, and it follows immediately. God says: “So go ahead now. Ask Me anything. Anything. I will contrive to bring you the answer. The whole universe will I use to do this. So be on the lookout. This book is far from My only tool. You may ask a question, then put this book down. But watch. Listen. The words to the next song you hear. The information in the next article you read. The story line of the next movie you watch. The chance utterance of the next person you meet. Or the whisper of the next river, the next ocean, the next breeze that caresses you ear – all these devices are mine; all these avenues are open to Me, I will speak to you if you will listen. I will come to you if you invite Me. I will show you then that I have always been there, All ways.

So – my point tonight in writing this to you, is that, God’s truth is everywhere you look. You need only see it there, hear it there. Jenna does not talk to me only from within. There are things she knows I see every day. I am not a believer in astrology, I find the whole idea more than a little silly, but there is one place I read a horoscope every day, since I was 17 or so, just for the heck of it. I don’t expect any of that to come true. And mostly? It doesn’t. But for the past 11 years, since she made herself known to me “officially”, I have found a line of inspiration, almost daily, in that particular horoscope. Not having anything to do with predicting my future, but reminding me of something I need to re-member, something she wants me to SEE, from a different perspective. God uses every vehicle available to talk to and with us. So does my Jenna. The responsibility for seeing, hearing, and interpreting those messages are mine alone. I decide what meaning they have for me. And what, if anything, I do with each bit of wisdom I come across. And I use the test He gave us in the beginning of book 1 for discerning which messages are His or Hers, and which are from a lesser source. If the message does not evoke in me a feeling of love, of joy, or of truth, I know the message is not from my Higher Power, but from someone else, who often has an agenda that does not match my own. My agenda? I want this world to be filled with love, truth and joy. I want us to stop killing each other. I want us to set aside our differences. I want us to set aside our human-created religions, those institutions created that one small group of people might exercise power over another large group of people by telling them God told them to have them kill or hate another group because of their color, or their clothing, or where they live or what they eat. I want this planet to become the paradise it could be were we to give up warlike ways and turn to love as the answer to every question. Were we able to set aside our greed and avarice and tell ourselves that we only need pile our money and possessions up so high, until we can say, I have enough to care for myself and my family for as long as I live, and now I can turn my attention, my talents and my fortune to helping those who can not help themselves. Those in that group that Hubert Humphrey talked about which I wrote about it my post on Health Care – those in the dawn of life, in the twilight of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. At some time, we have to God-like enough to say, I have enough, and I want to give back now.

We have to overcome our greed and our fear of being taken advantage of and stop worrying about government programs designed to help others. We have to realize that we did not get where we are by ourselves, and we have to learn to love reaching out to give others a hand up. If that sometimes begins with a handout? So what? There is enough here for all of us. There IS. In a post down the road a bit, I’ll talk about that too. God addresses the idea raised by Neale, that if we made things so easy, if we guarantee a basic living stipend, housing, food and clothing to all, all of the time, that there would be some who would never do more than that, just take and contribute nothing. Well, yes, there will be some like that. So what? The vast majority of us would NEVER be satisfied with that sort of meager existence. We would continue on building, growing, learning, evolving, stretching ourselves and reaching for the stars because it is in the VAST majority of us to do exactly that. If some come here to do less, to show the rest of us what we are NOT, that we wish to be more than that, then they do us a favor by being willing to be that example of what we do not wish, ourselves, to be. They should be thanked for being that example for us. And in another life, perhaps we will return the favor and be that example for them. There is enough time for all of us to be everything. And we can be, we will be, as I talked about time the other day, we ARE already, ALL of that. Everyone gets a turn at everything. We are ALL children of our Creator, and we all have every chance to be all that we wish to be. I’ve not said this yet, but, am going to say it here for the first time, I think, giggle. This IS my first trip to relativity, and it will be my last in this form as well, always before it has been Jen who came, and me who did for her, what she does for me now, and we’ll go back to that pattern after this ride is over. Probably. That is what SHE tells me, giggle. I think we’ll have that discussion when I get back home. But I have no reason to disbelieve her, I have no memory of past lives, because I have had none, not here. And I have to say I am truly impressed by this experience. There are large parts of it I haven’t liked much, don’t like much, but I do have the opportunity to choose my responses to those parts. I’m grateful for that. Grateful I was given this opportunity. I hope you, all of you, can feel that gratitude too. In your darkest hours, I hope you seek the truth within. Because within that truth, you will find hope. We ARE love, we come FROM love, and we go back to that love. We are in a game we cannot lose. So let us not act like losers, especially not sore ones. Lets join hands and turn this world into the dream so many have expressed so eloquently about it. Lets make Earth, Eden. We can you know. So, lets do that. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way,
Choose to be a Bringer of the Light. :^) gene

Fear or love. Which shall we choose?

Seems like an easy enough question, doesn’t it? Then why, I wonder, do so we often choose fear? What? You don’t? I’m going to have suggest that you think again. And, I’m going to tell you why. First, we’ll need an excerpt from CWG, Book1, to set the frame for the debate. Now, I am going to skip around a bit, well, not skip around so much as skip past, parts of what I’m going to quote here, but not so much that you’ll miss anything. And the payoff is in the end anyway, isn’t it always? :^)

I’m going to start on page 15, with God’s response to Neale’s question, in response to God’s statement, giggle. Shush, you’ll see what I mean in a minute. :^)

God: “For it is in the nature of people to love, then destroy, then love again that which the value most.”

Neale: “But why? Why do we do that?”

God: “All human actions are motivated at their deepest level level by one of two emotions – fear or love. In truth there are only two emotions – only two words in the language of the soul. These are the opposites of the great polarity which I created when I produced the universe, and your world, as you know it today.

These are the the two points – the Alpha and the Omega – which allow the system you call “relativity” to be. Without these two points, without these two ideas about things, no other idea could exist.

Every human thought, and every human action, is based in either fear or love. There is no other human motivation and all other ideas are but derivatives of these two. They are simply different versions – different twists on the same theme. Think on this deeply and you will see that it is true. This is what I have called the Sponsoring thought. It is either a thought of love or fear. This is the thought behind the thought. It is the first thought. It is prime force. It is the raw energy that drives the human experience.”

continuing on page 16, “…And the reason is found in the first lie – the lie which you hold as the truth about God – that God cannot be trusted; the God’s love cannot be depended upon; that God’s acceptance of you is conditional; that the ultimate outcome is thus in doubt. For if you cannot depend on God’s love to always be there, on whose love can you depend? If God retreats and withdraws when you do not perform properly, will not mere mortals also?

…And so it is that in the moment you pledge your highest love, you greet your greatest fear. For the first thing you worry about after saying “I love you” is whether you’ll hear it back. And if you hear it back, then you begin immediately to worry that the love you have just found, you will lose. And so all action becomes reaction – defense against loss – even as you seek to defend yourself against the loss of God.

But you do not know Who You Are – that you are the most magnificent, the most remarkable, the most splendid being God has ever created -you would never fear. For who could reject such wondrous magnificence? Not even God could find fault in such a being. But you do not know Who You Are, and you think you are a great deal less. And where did you get the idea of how much less than magnificent you are? From the only people whose word you would take on everything. From your mother and your father.

These are the people who love you most. Why would they lie to you? Yet have they not told you that you are too much of this, and not enough of that? Have they not reminded you that you are to be seen and not heard? Have they not scolded you in some of the moments of your greatest exuberance? And, did they not encourage you to set aside some of your wildest imaginings.

These are the messages you’ve received, and though they do not meet the criteria (gene inserts – the Highest, Grandest, Clearest – from a previous post and page 5 of book 1), and are thus not messages from God, they might as well have been, for the have come from the gods of your universe well enough. It was your parents who taught you that love ws conditional – you have felt their conditions many times – and that is the experience you take into your own relationships. (gene inserts, into adulthood). It also the experience you bring to Me?

From this experience you draw your conclusions about Me. Within this framework you speak your truth. “God is a loving God”, you say, “but if you break His commandments, He will punish you with eternal banishment and everlasting damnation.

For have you not experienced the banishment of your own parents? Do you not know the pain of their damnation? How, then, could you imagine it to be any different with Me? You have forgotten what it was like to be loved without condition. You do not remember the experience of the love of God. (gene interjects, go read my two light globe stories if you have not, THAT is the feeling I had in their presence, unconditional, complete, utter love – I KNOW it exists, I have felt it, for but brief moments but I am witness to this truth, it is why I am here now writing this to you, to bear that witness) And so you try to imagine what God’s love must be like, based on what you see of love in the world.”

And now, I’m going to skip, but recommend you buy or borrow book 1 and read the rest of this for yourself. Or maybe I’ll come back to it another time, giggle, but I do recommend every soul on the planet read this book, own it and make it your own, it will free your soul and your love, I promise. So, skipping to the top of page 19, God is going to tell us how to tell the difference between a thought based in love and one based in fear. It is marvelous language, a marvelous idea, and I believe it is gospel truth.

“Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards, harms. Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares, heals.

Fear wraps our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.

Every human thought, word, or deed is based in one emotion or the other. You have no choice about this, because there is nothing else from which to choose. But you have free choice about which of these to select.”

So there, does the subject line answer itself for you? Yet, we have so far to travel on this path we are on. We are choosing fear, ever more often, around the world. We fear other countries, we fear other ideas, we fear our neighbors and we fear ourselves. Our love IS conditional, upon behavior, upon the other – person, country, organization – behaving as we wish them to, if they do not, we withdraw our love and no longer call them friend. Isn’t it time that we begin to recognize the ultimate futility of such behavior? Isn’t it time that we examine what our fear has brought us to? The “cold war” may have ended, but the killing has not. It isn’t democracy-communism any longer that struggle against each other in fear, it is religion against religion. The great conflict of this century is Islam-Christianity. But I want to ask why does it have to be either? Why does one side have to “win”? And what does winning actually mean if it does not result in a wave of love washing the bloodstains from this world of ours? I submit that religion has served us badly. That it has promulgated a vision of our Creator that serves the purposes of men, not God. I submit that God spoke the truth to Neale Donald Walsch in books 1 and 2. I submit that if we re-member, as He will teach us through reading those books and absorbing the love with which He wrote them, that we can change our idea of our Creator. That we can leave the notion of an angry judgmental entity just waiting for us to make a mistake so that He can hurt us forever, far, far behind us. I think that when we accept the truth of who we really are, children of the most magnificent entity that has ever existed, and that the love He has for us IS unconditional, that we are engaged in an experience from which the ONLY escape, is a sentence to return to the love from which we came, that we can begin to understand just what a special place we have here, what a special opportunity in this time, to begin a movement that can sweep the world, that can sweep fear from this world. A movement that can let us see each other as we truly are – not Christian, not Muslim, not Buddhist, not black, not white, not brown, not yellow, but as souls, having an experience of life in the flesh, and then, maybe then, we can lift our veils just enough to see the light of love that shines within us all. Those globes of pure love I saw, didn’t emerge from thin air. They emerged from within me. And, I tell you that same energy, that same love IS alive in each and every soul on this planet. We are ALL children of a loving God. I’d like nothing more than to see us start acting like it. It isn’t a matter of “faking it till you make it” either. Because, when you look deep within you, you will FEEL the presence of that love, you see it in the eyes of your children, your mate, your friends, now see it in the eyes of EVERYONE you meet. See first a child of love, then a human being. If you will do this it will change your life forever. And then, we can change life on this planet forever. There is no apocalyptic end coming, though there is a time coming when love will rule this planet, that will never come about by violence, violence is fear expressed. Peace is love expressed. When we regard everyone and everything with love, we will have peace on our world. I have a LOT more to say about this, giggle, and a blueprint to follow as I say it. But it starts with each of us. I’ve added an url to my blogroll, Blessed Unrest. I encourage you all to watch it. It is only a few quiet minutes long. But it is the first step on the road to heaven on earth. We CAN create that here. We will. If we have the will. And I believe we do. I believe in YOU. much love, :^) gene

I want to talk about time

And maybe just a little bit more, at the end I will have a titillating little treat for you, :^). On my main site, I said that for most of my life, I’ve been more a Carl Sagan sort of guy than any sort of religionist. This is true. I was raised in the Lutheran religion, you can read about that on my site, but was never really able to buy what they were selling. My first “contact” with Carl Sagan was with his book “Contact”, then the movie starring Jodie Foster, which I recommend to anyone and everyone. The only argument I have with it, well, there are two, first, I preferred the book, but Carl wrote the screenplay so I just assume he approved the changes and am okay with them, second, is how fearful everyone was, well almost everyone, of that first contact from another sentient species. This has been one of my gripes about the whole sci-fi genre forever, though, in truth, my only sci-fi reading has been all of Robert Heinlein and all of Isaac Asimov, so often, that I have their books practically committed to memory. And their ideas ingrained into my everyday life, indeed into my soul. What I liked about their work, well, besides the prescience with which they wrote, was that they didn’t assume visitors to this planet would automatically have hostile intentions. And the rest of this world seems to. Which is, to me, just silly. With hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy alone and an infinite number of galaxies, beings capable of traveling such distances would go find a world that was already occupied and putz with the residents? I mean, gawd, what on “earth” for? There are an infinite number of habitable planets out there, why not pick one of them if colonies are what you are looking for? Why pick one where you would have to fight to take it, or at least exterminate the sentient species inhabiting it? That is just stoopid. And I assume any species capable of developing a way to move light years across space just traveling, would not be stoopid. So, this whole ufo’s are out to get us thing is just plain silly, in my opinion. And in Carl’s too.

Because of that novel, I read his other books, none of which are fiction and found fascinating the way his mind worked, his logic, his approach to life, and to love. I found that same approach in the works of Robert and Isaac. And I found, as I said, prescience. Much of what they wrote about is going to come to pass. Yes, I am a prophet, giggle, named gene. But as I gaze into my inner world, I see a time coming where we will one day spread to the stars. This one is NOT going to last forever you know, and sometime before it becomes a red giant and consumes this little ball of air and water, we will have to have been long gone, or we will be long gone. Simple as that. What Robert and Isaac wrote about with such flair and love is possible. And, inevitable, I think. Robert I sometimes take issue with, he was a bit violent in his approach to others, more than I liked, but that indomitable independent spirit, I completely understand. Isaac’s work is just plain wonderful, there is nothing about it to dislike. Wonderful, liberating literature. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert’s best know book, marked a turning point for him. And though I loved those that followed, I grew increasingly disenchanted with the way he had his characters treat each other. They did so with a sort of cavalier friendly insulting manner that I find incredibly insensitive. I don’t like it when people insult each other and pretend it is okay because they are friends, to me that is veiled cruelty and enormously disrespectful. And I don’t like it. Which is MY truth, you are entitled to your own. Just not expressed to me. That is about the only rule I have here, and I WILL enforce it, civility rules this blog. Humor is fine, just gentle humor is preferred. Still, Roberts later works got so close to the real truth of who we are and what we can become, what I think we will ultimately become. His Time Enough For Love is a blueprint for an advanced society in many ways. He foreshadowed that in Stranger. His books were ultimately about relationships, so were Isaac’s, in slightly different ways, but what Isaac foresaw as the future of this galaxy is, I think, what will ultimately come to pass. We will populate it, the way we have the earth, hopefully with a little more elan and a lot less bloodshed, but we will spread our wings and fly into the future. Ultimately I don’t think we’ll have a choice but to reach for the stars. Even with all that, I think my favorite book of Robert’s is the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I cry at the ending of that one every time. Isaac’s books don’t bring me to tears, well, there IS one, but we’ll leave that for another time, his are always about hope. And we humans need hope to live, to live comfortably. The alternative is fear and we don’t do well in that state, none of us do. I’m reading in our past now about how the Christian religion developed, well one of the things I’m reading is about that, and that too came about because of the intense need we humans have for hope in our lives.

Okay, so I’ve wandered a bit, I do that. But it should be okay with you, or you wouldn’t be here, if you are here at all, and that isn’t the point of this either. Who needs or wants to find this will. That part doesn’t concern me, I have another agenda here in talking to anyone who drops by this way. Which one day, two years maybe, I’ll talk about. Until then, though, I want to come back to time. Carl made physics understandable in a way no other had for me, not a math major here, that isn’t an accident either, had I been meant to be I would be, but where I was born and schooled, precluded that, and since there are no such things as coincidence, I believe the reason was that I needed to develop other skills, other interests, and so I have. Carl referenced a book by Stephen Hawking, A Brief Moment in Time, an incredible book, an incredible man. Stephen took me deeper into physics than Carl but did so in a way that made perfect sense to me. I actually “got” it. He explained Einstein’s theory of time, which I am not going to do here, giggle, and you are welcome. Then, I came to Conversations With God, book 2. God has a theory of time too, not surprisingly, and it too made perfect sense to me. This is what I am going to talk about here tonight.

First though, from book 1, if you’ve done your reading, giggle, and even if you haven’t, God explains that reincarnation is a “given”. No soul is EVER forced to do such a thing, descend from where we come from, to the relative universe, but that those who choose to, have every opportunity to be it all, poet, pauper, pirate and king. It is as He calls it a grand collaboration. And it makes perfect sense. One can’t help but wonder, given an infinite number of souls, and a finite, perhaps, universe, even with time as a relative construction, how it could be possible that all could have every opportunity to experience all that life has to offer. Even here on this one small planet, with 6 billion people, it is possible to have 6 billion separate and unique experiences each of which we call a life time. Now multiply that over the course of recorded history and you quickly see that one world isn’t quite enough for everyone to have every chance to do everything. And we have only had 6 billion of us here for a relatively short period, so just where have the rest of His children been and what have they been doing? Well, to really get that, you need to accept that this is not the only populated planet in the universe. I don’t really have a problem with that. With the nearest star being 4.2 light years away, that would be 5.8 trillion miles away. And it isn’t habitable. Those sorts of distances, makes the likelihood of watching their tv stations just a bit on the high side. So, point being, there are a LOT of places in the universe, that we, God’s children, could be having experiences similar to what we are having here on earth. Plenty of room in which to play every sort of game in other words. But still how does that fit into time.

God explains in book 2, beginning on page 28, “…”Time is not a continuum. It is an element of relativity that exists vertically, not horizontally. Don’t think of it as a “left to right” thing – a so-called time line that runs from birth to death for each individual, and FROM some finite point TO some finite point for the universe. “Time” is an up and down thing! Think of it as a spindle, representing the Eternal Moment of Now. Now picture leafs of paper on the spindle, on atop the other. These are the elements of time. Each element separate and distinct, yet each existing simultaneously with the other. All of the paper on the spindle at once! As much as there will ever be – as much as there ever was… There is only One Moment – THIS moment – the Eternal Moment of Now. It is RIGHT now that everything is happening – and I am glorified. There is no waiting for the glory of God. I made it this way because I JUST COULDN’T WAIT! I was so HAPPY to Be Who I Am that I just couldn’t wait to make that manifest in My reality. So BOOM, here it is – right here, right now – ALL OF IT! There is no Beginning to this, and there is no End. It – the All of Everything – just IS. WITHIN THE ISNESS is where your experience – and your greatest secret – lies. You can move within the Isness to any “time” or “place” you choose.

And that is the source of our freedom, the source of our ability to have it all, see it all, be it all and do it all. Each of us with the same opportunity to experience every sort of life we wish as we experience here in relativity that which we cannot experience at home, being less than we really are. Home is the place where love is all there is. Again, someone will ask, why would anyone leave such a place for this? And the answer to that question remains the same. If all you know is perfect love, how do you know that you know that? Until and unless you experience something which is not that. Which is why we come here at all. To experience that which we are not in order to love even more that which we really are. Having this experience, these experiences, and the memory of them, makes home even sweeter than it was before we left. We are in a way playing a game here, a game of discovery, a game that teaches us who we are by allowing us to experience who we are not. And that it all happens at once, on that spindle, makes perfect, logical sense to me. Besides, my creator and I share a foible, giggle, I can’t wait either. Never could. Boom, all at once, has always been my preference too, then spend an eternity exploring the all at my leisure. Which, I guess, is what I am doing here tonight, in this place, on this planet and in this lifetime. It is my first and last trip in this way. Yes, that is odd sounding, I know, given what I’ve just said, but it is true too. And I said that earlier as well, no soul is ever forced to do anything against its will. I am sure, there are those, who have yet to take this escalator down into the relative universe, who know of what this is, what it can be, only from what we who have, tell them when we return home. Interesting to think about, huh? It took me some time to really feel the truth of this spindle idea though I KNEW it the moment I first read it. And it fits like a glove to Einstein’s theory of relativity and Stephen Hawkings explanation of time in A Brief Moment. Ahh. I love it when a plan comes together, giggle. There’s a lot more to say about this and say it I will as I come back to book 2, I intend to spend most of my time, to begin with book 1, because it lays the foundation for book 2 so perfectly, indeed for life itself, that it bears focusing on first. So this will be my last foray into book 2 for a bit, but I did promise a bit of titillation for you here at the end, didn’t I?  I had forgotten this part completely about book 2 and I as I skimmed through it again and found this, I remembered the section.  My first reading of it was that it was out of place, sort of, but then I thought, what part of life here could be out of place for God?  I had been sort of locked into the time theory and the plan God lays out at the end of the book for a way to build this earth into a real civilization that I forgot the part in the middle where he talks about the law of attraction, giggle.  And a good “law” it is.  It is one of those things that draw us to one another, and a part of the life experience that is as wonderful, glorious, really as any other, more so in some ways as it re-connects us to each other in a union of souls that is perfectly wonderful for souls here to remember our union.

It really begins on page 82 of book 2, with Neale’s assertion that: “There are those who say that the only legitimate purpose of human sexuality is procreation.” To which God, replies, “Rubbish.” Now you are just going to have to go get book 2 and read this yourself, giggle, but I warn you the first time I read this section which goes on through the end of page 86, I was on a public bus, and I managed to get just a little, umm, flushed, as I read it. Neale describes it on the top of page 87 as, “That is the most beautiful description of human sexuality I have ever heard.” I agree with him. God knew what he was doing when he came up with this whole idea of sexuality, let me tell, and He knows how to explain what it is at its utter best. Beautiful, compelling, heart wrenching, and HOT. He tells the story of Tom and Mary and how they become Tomary in the flesh. That flesh does not have to be of opposite genders, this is not about that, this is about how we humans find each other, are attracted to each other, and what we in our very best moments can do with that. Some of you will have experienced this already. I hope you have an infinite number of additional experiences as rich and rewarding. Some of you will have not, it is my fondest wish that you do, and that you too, have an infinite number of experiences as rich and rewarding. This IS what physical, emotional and spiritual connection in the flesh means. IS, at its best. Might it always be so for you. much love, :^) gene

Keep on trying

The year my son died, 1997 brought with it a lot of changes. One of them was that I lost my ability, if such a thing can be called an ability, to enjoy movies I had once done. After the light globe at 15, my life went on pretty much as it did with any guy growing up, coming of age in the late 60’s and 70’s. I knew I was different in a lot of ways, but I was careful to not let that show, not manly, you know? :^) So I did the usual stuff, and given my nature, did plenty OF that stuff to extremes, always pushing against the edges of my world, sort of defining and creating my world, I guess. As we all do. Anyway, I enjoyed Clint Eastwood movies, I’ve always gravitated toward movies where the “good guys” win and Clint through “bad tactics”, was always on the side of “good” ultimately. I grew up on Roy Rogers, after all, where guns didn’t shoot real bullets, there was no smoke and gunpowder, and though people fell down, there was no blood, and the “bad” guys never won. It was a sort of antiseptic old west, cleaned up for television, giggle.

The real world isn’t like that of course and in the 70’s our movies began to reflect “reality” in what was shown on screen, still mild compared to what is available today. I don’t know what the effect of having seen thousands of bloody murders, let alone years worth of the nightly news, and the even starker reality that is posted all over the internet has had on the global psyche, but I have to suspect, that like with many things, once you’ve seen enough of it, you aren’t really shocked by it anymore, it loses its reality in some way. Maybe that is how what is happening around the world has come to be so commonplace, so accepted, so normal. Why there is no outrage over what we do to each other in the name of God.

Well, that aside, as I started to say, when Brandon died, I lost my ability to deal with violent movies. I had an experience that summer while trying to watch an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that completely freaked me out. I wrote about that elsewhere, but that sort of feeling has extended to the small screen too. I can’t abide inane comedies where the humor is derived from insulting each other (I have to tell you NOT everyone loved Raymond!) and I don’t like violent dramas either and games shows bore me to tears. Which doesn’t really leave me much. I loved the first couple years of the original CSI, the science of it fascinated me, but in recent years it too has moved into “gore for gore’s sake” mode, I guess to keep its audience. I never liked the other versions of it. I really liked Criminal Minds, for a few episodes, so well written, so splendidly acted, but after a few weeks it made me uncomfortable, they had to come up with a new serial killer, ever more depraved, each week. As if that were what life is like in America. We don’t have weekly serial killers here. We have plenty of individual horrors and events, but not like the things Criminal Minds laid out there. So they lost me.

But there is a show I fell in love with in its first season, Bones, which is also about the science, but has mostly stayed away from the sensationalist gore that so many shows use to hype themselves. Again, this show is wonderfully written and acted, the characters are real people. And, for me, it is more about the relationships between them, and that growth, than anything else. The back stories are interesting, woven neatly into the show, and the science still fascinates me. The protagonist is a forensic anthropologist. I love what we learn about our world, our evolution on this world, through anthropolgy, I find Discovery HD ever fascinating, lol. This show has a lot of that, real science. But for me, the main attraction has been watching two people pretend not to know they are in love with each other for two years, giggle, sometimes really not knowing it, but watching that grow, and the relationships among the rest of the cast, is what has kept me faithful fan. I watch very little television these days. It is amusing, I bought the best tv by far I’ve ever owned two years ago, a 50″ HD, and I watch less now than I ever have. There is another force driving me. Jenna, of course, and she leads me to the strangest things, half the time I have NO idea why I’m there, but the point always comes clear, and when it doesn’t she whacks me with it, giggle. Okay, she’s not a hitter, but she definitely catches my attention.

So, tonight I wrote here a bit earlier but I knew Bones was on, having seen the back page of the tv section in the paper on the bus and decided that I’d go watch that at 7, then read for the rest of the evening – the sleep thing I went on and on about is still in full swing, so the reading will go on a while, lol. But the show, though, a repeat, was wonderful. And it closed with a song, that I’m reproducing here, and listening to on youtube as I type. I actually found and bought this cd, the day after I first saw this show. I’m not going to go into the details of it but the second season had a wonderful storyline wherein Ryan O’Neal, yes, from Love Story, showed he still has some talent, quite a lot of it actually, he used to sing this song by Poco, to his daughter who is the shows protagonist. As the show closed, the song was playing, it is Keep On Trying. Now, not every word of it has relevance to what I’ve been talking about these past couple weeks, but if you think about it, and I have, a lot of them do. This really is what we need to do. Keep on trying to get home.

As the CWG books talk about that, and as I have, home is where we all came from and where we are all going to return. I KNOW what that place feels like, I was given a glimpse, twice, just seconds worth into what where we come from feels like. We can create here, wonders of love, but we can’t touch that, giggle. But that does NOT mean we can’t try. And we don’t come any closer than when we are at our best with each other. CWG explains that what we do here, why we come here “veiled” is to have an experience, as we grow through that experience, we re-member, we remember the truth of us. Who we really are. That we are ALL children of the same creator, that we were created in love and are at our best when we are IN love. I am not talking eros here, though sweet eros is one of our greatest pleasures, I am talking about agape, that love we feel for each other that isn’t dependent on a “climactic” end to an evening, giggle. I’m talking about that overpowering feeling of goodwill toward others, where all you want to do is hug them close and never let go. Because you love them so much, your child, your friend, your mate. I think THAT is when we are at our best when we can expand that love beyond our “immediate” family and feel it, REALLY feel, it for others.

We SEE it when we see others responding to an accident, when we saw those police and firemen rushing into the twin towers, when we see the real heroes of Iraq, rushing into the latest horror, cradling each other in their arms, loving each other with all their hearts. We humans can be SO good, it shouldn’t require tragedy to bring that out of us. THAT is how we will live when we fully remember who we really are. I’ve got a lot to say about that too, not all from CWG, mind you, I’ve been mightily influenced by other writers and ideas as well and I’ve got jenna, but for this night, this song, reminds me of our real purpose here. Helping each other fight through the doubt, the fear, and find our way home to each other, to the truth of us. Just read the lyrics. I tried to create a link down there at the end, if you wish you can hear it too. If the link doesn’t work, cut and paste it, its on YouTube. You’ll like it. The harmonies are amazing, one of these guys is now part of the Eagles another group with a wonderful, unique sound. And who hasn’t spent some time at the Hotel California? giggle.

I’ve been thinkin bout all the times you told me
You’re so full of doubt you just can’t let it be but I know
If you keep on comin back for more and I keep on tryin
I Keep on tryin and
I’ve been drinkin now just a little too much
And I don’t know how I can get in touch with you
Now there’s only one thing for me to do is to keep on tryin
To get home to you
And I feel so satisfied when I can see you smile
I want to confide in all that is true so I
Keep on trying I’m thru with lying
Just like the sun above I’ll come shining thru oh yes I’ll
Keep on trying I’m tired of crying
I’ve got to find a way to get on home to you
I’ve been thinkin bout the times you held me
I never heard you shout the flow of energy was so fine
Now I think I’ll lay it on the line and keep on tryin
To get home to you
And I feel so satisfied when I can see you smile
I want to confide in all that is true so I
Keep on trying I’m thru with lying
Just like the sun above I’ll come shining thru yes I will
Keep on trying I’m tired of crying
I’ve got to find a way to get on home to you

Okay, that is just NOT turning into a link, darn it, so just cut and paste if you’d like to hear it.

What I want to SAY about it is just this. I hope we are ALL soon tired of crying and that we find our way home to each other here. “Home” is assured, but why should we wait THAT long, to find a little of that experience here? We’ll just keep on trying, be through with lying, tired of crying and find a way to get on home to you, me, us. That’d be a road trip worth taking, even if we traveled the full 25,000 miles around this planet, don’t you think? And some pretty music to keep us company, giggle. much love, :^) gene

Health Care

Tonight I want to talk about what I think is a national disgrace. 47 million Americans have no health insurance. A letter in todays paper quoted Minnesota’s last true progressive politician, Hubert Humphrey as saying:

“…the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life – the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

The letter writer then suggested that it is time our government take this moral test. You will have noted in previous posts, that I have strong feelings about the moral responsibilities of government. I am a flaming liberal and proud of it. The reason I am is that I was so blessed as to have been born in Minnesota and to grow up during Hubert Humphrey’s greatest days. I still think it a national tragedy that this large-hearted man never became President of the United States, we would be a better country for having had his legacy to live up to nationally. We, here in Minnesota, aren’t even trying anymore ourselves.

On the page opposite page the Letters section, the paper devoted a full third page to an article written by two men representing the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Health Policy Studies, Andrew Grossman and Robert Moffit. Why is it that these conservative think-tanks feel this need to name themselves for actions and ideas that make them sound as if they are FOR something? When the truth is they are for nothing but getting government out of their lives and cutting taxes to the bone? They think they should be able to live in this wonderful land for free, that somehow schools, hospitals, police and fire, and highways, always highways, will just magically appear from nothing. They got theirs, dammit, and the rest of us had just better sit down and shut up about it or get our own ourselves. Including the children, the elderly, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. Those two “gentlemen” and their organizations FAIL that moral test. Morality to them is everyone else doing what we are told and letting the top 10% of this country consume 60% of the worlds resources while they bomb into insurgency everyone around the world who has the temerity to question why so few should have so much at the expense of so many. They are not good global citizens. They are not good people. They are here to show the rest of us who we are not.

I am proud to stand in Hubert Humphrey’s shadow and support those dreams he so eloquently proposed and spent his entire life fighting for. We do NOT treat ANY of the people mentioned in that quotation well. I wrote a day or two ago about what has happened to education here in Minnesota, that what was once the province of government, has now become “charter” schools for the wealthiest children, while those in most need, now get 5 days of kindergarten every two weeks, every day kindergarten is costing my son and his family, plus a little after school care, $822 a month. We spend our time trying to figure ways to keep people from being eligible for those few programs we still provide. We do not care that many of our own sleep outside because they can’t afford shelter. We don’t care that our elderly take half or less of their needed medications because they simply can’t afford to pay the cost of taking them all. And we don’t give a rats butt about the sick, the needy or the handicapped, dammit. We got ours, let them get their own. And we wonder why we have gang problems in the inner city. When children are raised to believe there is no hope, they find it for themselves. When there are no after school programs to teach them, help them, tutor them, they turn to each other for support. And you know what? They are not really the best role models for each other. But we don’t care about that. We care about a cabin on the lake and an SUV to haul the boat up there a few months of the year. And that is about all we care about, ourselves. We are a society that shames the species. That shames our heritage, that allows an organization to call itself the Heritage Foundation when it fights desperately against everything our heritage was. There was a time in this country when we tried to do what Hubert suggested, that time began dying with the Reagan administration and we have been sliding into the pit of greed and avarice ever since.

These two guys who wrote the article I referenced, Backers of Health Plan For Kids Have Other Motives, were incensed because it turns out that some people who are so wealthy that they have had to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax (a tax designed to ensure that those sneaky really rich people could not shelter ALL of their income from taxation) have been eligible for this program, or their children have. What they missed, apparently, is that for YEARS, every tax season has seen a flurry of articles about how Congress did not index that tax for inflation and so it has slowly gobbled up huge chunks of money from people who are hardly wealthy, while of course the really wealthy, that upper 10%, have found ever more creative ways to avoid paying their fair share at all, the AMT now grabs couples who are living paycheck to paycheck just like most of us, and practically bankrupts them. And, each year columnists wring their hands and Congress insists it will fix it, and each year, they do NOTHING about it. So, yes, some people who have had the bulk of their income confiscated by a law never intended to touch them, may have been eligible to have their children covered under this program. And, the writers were absolutely shocked that some states have expanded their programs to include uninsured adults. By gawd that ought to be a crime. If you can’t find a job that pays health insurance for you, then you simply do not deserve health care coverage. In all this, they see not a program that could use some fine-tuning, or an AMT that MUST be fixed, no, they see a vast left wing conspiracy to create a government monopoly on health care. Uh huh. That’s the danger they rail against. That government might somehow make sure ALL Americans have health care coverage. And it might take tax dollars to do that.

Well, those two organizations, unsurprisingly, are great fans of military spending and our pacification of the terrorist problem in Iraq. Which, of course, HAD no terrorist problem until we got there and also supplied precisely NONE of the people who flew those plans into American towers. We could insure our entire country for a pittance of the $480,000,000 we have spent trying to drive terrorists out of Iraq. So successfully, I might add, that five minutes after the last American soldier leaves that country, a civil war will break out, only, of course, if we don’t call what is happening there now, a civil war. Isn’t that just the silliest transposition of terms? As if a war could EVER be “civil”. Excuse me, sir, while I behead your friends, so sorry for the mess.

So here, I want to come back to CWG, book 1, page 50, “…You can similarly end all war tomorrow. Simply. Easily. All it takes – all it has EVER taken – is for all of you to agree. Yet if you cannot agree on something as simple as ending the killing of each other, how can you call upon the heavens with shaking fist to put your life in order? I will do nothing for you that you will not do for your self. That is the law and the prophets. The world is in the condition it is because of YOU, and the choices you have made, or failed to make.”

That is God’s truth. What we see around us in this country, in this world, God did not do to us, we did it to ourselves. We aren’t content even with killing ourselves, we are hellbent on killing the planet too, though that is but a human conceit. We can certainly make the planet uninhabitable for some time, but eventually the earth will just spit us out, and over some eons, replenish itself. Maybe with a sentient species then that can understand, grasp and believe in the principle of unconditional love. Maybe with a teacher who can say when you have done this unto the least of my children, you have done it unto me. Maybe with people who can embrace and understand that teaching and make IT the center of life. Love IS the answer to every question. I don’t know why I read newspapers, all that is in them is evidence that we not only don’t understand the question, we don’t want to. We want to love only those just like us and we want to kill all the rest. What a world we’ve created. What a species we have become, spread over this globe like a deadly plague, spewing bombs and bullets heedlessly. We no longer even restrict those activities to people who signed up to do such things, ostensibly in defense of their lands, but we now kill civilians indiscriminately and promise each other paradise for such sacrificial horrors. Sometimes we just are disgusting.

Doesn’t anyone else think it is time this species grew the hell up? Isn’t it time for people, good, caring people to stand up and tell those purveyor’s of hatred, separation, greed and death, that we have had ENOUGH and we are saying when? There are movements around the world of quiet-voiced peaceful people, who need to raise their voices, help raise the level of public discourse, turn our attention away from those things that divide us, develop common goals that will help governments around the globe pass the moral test Hubert Humphrey posed? Those of us who believe what he said, well, I think we have our own moral obligation, to find our voice, and the courage to speak our truth, and to insist that the carnage stop, on all sides of all issues. It is time we stopped hating each other and started loving each other. We’re going to talk a lot more about that here in days to come. Because it is a topic I never tire of. Will never tire of. When I leave this plane and return home, I am STILL going to be standing on a podium somewhere talking about love. Because home is where love is all there is, where all are safe and cared for. Why can’t we make this place a little bit like that? Why can’t we make this place home too? I absolutely believe we can. But we can never tire in that pursuit. Those who write such horrid things as in that article I referenced, who do such horrid things as the acts I have described, as we see on the nightly news NIGHTLY, must be stopped.

We can unlearn the teachings of our history. I recommend a wonderful movie “What the Bleep Do We Know?” as a beginning to understanding just how we can overcome our emotional addiction to responding to disappointment with violence. I recommend absorbing Conversations With God, Books 1 and 2, as a way to start the spiritual healing this planet, its people so desperately need. And then I recommend talking about these “new” ideas with everyone you meet. Engage with each other, understand each other, love each other. Don’t worry about the particulars of that love, as Sarah McLachlan sings, “Your love is better than chocolate, better than anything else that I’ve tried.” And she’s right. In the end, Love is all that is worth living for. Whatever form that love takes is irrelevant, this time, in THIS time, let love win. Let love finally win. Hatred has had its day and it is time for children of a new dawn to take their place at the front of the line and let love become our watchword, our path and our way. much love, :^) gene

I want to talk tonight about truth

How we know what is and isn’t truth, I mean. People claim God speaks to no one, well, except for a handful of ministers, priests, heads of state and, apparently, the odd terrorist or two. Those people, who say they hear God, tell us what he says. And expect us to accept their word as gospel given. Well, they’re wrong about all that. God talks to everyone, all the time, we have just been conditioned to believe that we, the rest of us, are somehow not worthy of direct communication with the same entity who created us all. So we listen to them tell us what he wants us to do and we, many of us, never stop to question why our creator would only speak to a relative handful of his/her children. What parent is like that? Well, what normal parent is like that? Not many, you know? And neither is ours.

So, tonight, I want to quote a good bit from CWG, book 1. Just to shake up the mix a little, giggle. Neale asked, on page 2 of book 1: How does God talk, and to whom? And God, responded through him, “I talk to everyone. All the time. The question is not to whom do I talk, but who listens?”. Now, we need pause and think about that for a moment. Who listens? Well, where we would listen? I mean, what channel? The answer to that is we need only listen in the very last place we’d think to, within, that small still voice within. That voice is IN all of us, all the time, we are just so conditioned to get our guidance from religious, political or business leaders, that we never think to listen in the only place we can ever truly hear his voice, within ourselves. We are not alone in there, we have never been. You know of my own voice, Jenna, well, she represents him in a way, and there is not a sentient soul here who does not have such a voice. It is HEARING that voice, and trusting it, that we have a problem with.

Neale and God continue their communication on page 3: Neale asked God to expand on that statement, and God replied, ” First, lets exchange the word talk with the word communicate. It’s a much better word, a much fuller, more accurate one. When we try to speak to each other, Me to you, you to Me, we are immediately constricted by the unbelievable limitation of words. For this reason, I do not communicate by words alone. In fact, rarely do I do so. My most common form of communication is through feeling. Feeling is the language of the soul. If you want to know what’s true for you about something, look to how you are feeling about it… I also communicate with thought. Thought and feelings are not the same, although they can occur at the same time. In communicating with thought, I often use images and pictures. For this reason, thoughts are more effective than mere words as tools of communication. In addition to feelings and thoughts, I also use the vehicle of experience as a grand communicator. And finally, when feelings and thoughts and experience all fail, I use words. Words are really the least effective communicator. They are most open to misinterpretation, most often misunderstood. And why is that? It is because of what words are. Words are mere utterances: noises that stand for feelings, thoughts, and experience. They are symbols. Signs. Insignias. They are not truth. They are not the real thing. Words may help you understand something. Experience allows you to know. Yet there are some things you cannot experience. So I have given you other tools of knowing. And these are called feelings. And so too, thoughts.

Now the supreme irony here is that you have all placed so much importance on the Word of God, and so little on the experience.

In fact, you place so little value on experience, that when what you experience of God differs from what you’ve heard of God, you automatically discard the experience and own the words, when it should be just the other way around… Many words have been uttered others, in My name. Many thoughts and many feelings have been sponsored by cause not of My direct creation. Many experiences result from these.”

Yes, says gene, that would be war, famine, intolerance, hatred, separation, division, us versus them. All taught us by men, and now women, of God, all utterances not given in His name but in their own and for their own purposes.

“The challenge is one of discernment. The difficulty is knowing the difference between messages from God and data from other sources. Discrimination is a simple matter with the application of a basic rule:

Mine is always your Highest Thought, your Clearest Word, your Grandest Feeling. Anything less is from another source. Now the task of differentiation becomes easy, for it should not be difficult even for the beginning student to identify the Highest, the Clearest, and the Grandest.

Yet will I give you these guidelines:

The Highest thought is always a thought that contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest feeling is that feeling which you call love.

Joy, truth, love.

These three are interchangeable, and one always follows the other. It matters not in which order they are placed.

Having with these guidelines determined which messages are Mine and which have come from another source, the only question remaining is whether My messages will be heeded.”

Okay, enough with the quotations for tonight. Interesting though, huh? And not that difficult. When someone tells what God wants you to do, do not own those words. Apply against them, those three tests. Are they words of love? Are they words of truth? Are they words of joy? If they are not, then they are someone’s message alright, but they are not God’s message. When your leaders tell you things that do not pass those tests, do not accept what you are being told as God’s will for you, or for anyone else. When your leaders tell you God wants you to hate someone else in some other country. They are not telling you the truth. When your leaders tell that God wants you to hate someone who loves differently than you do, they are not telling you the truth. When your leaders tell you it is right, and God’s will, that taxes be cut and education be curtailed, that children must go without health care and basic needs because of mistakes their parents have made, they are not telling you the truth. When someone tells you that it is right to not help those less fortunate, that they must pull themselves up by their bootstraps, as the teller insists he/she has done, they are not telling you the truth. Those who say such things, who believe that they got what they have on their own are not telling you the truth. The truth is none of us get to where we are in life on our own. Not one. We are a species that lives in communities, and we take care of each other in that way. We have always provided for each other, we have always been unwilling to see a neighbor suffer without lending a hand. We did not rise to the top of corporations by ourselves and on our own merits, we got there with help, lots of it, from parents, teachers, mentors, friends and opportunities that presented themselves by virtue of our station in life, our good fortune in having been born into a privileged society or family, or country, but we most certainly did not do so without help.

Some of us, get to the top by standing on the shoulders of those with lesser abilities, or lesser opportunities. Some of us think it perfectly natural, and their God-given right that they should earn more in a day than do their employees in a year. Some of us have the temerity to call that God’s will. When, in truth, it is nothing more than their own greed, their own avarice, their own selfishness, they are trying to pass off on the rest of us as God’s will. Book 1 will go on to talk about this in much more detail, and Book 2 offers a blueprint to a place we could actually call a civilization. We aren’t there yet. We are barely out of our caves. And we have not yet stopped throwing rocks at each other. We have not yet learned that having a thing, whatever that might be, that comes at the cost of another is not worth having. We are taught as children what sharing means, but that lesson doesn’t get past 6th grade for most of us. And we forget it so rapidly as adults that it is as if we never learned it at all. How can one person just a multi million dollar salary knowing that the employees whose labor provide it can’t afford health care? How can a corporation, a non-person, made of real persons who comprise its governing board, decide to stop hiring full time workers so that it can save money, and then give it to themselves, by not providing basic benefits to those part time workers like sick days, vacation days and basic health care? How do people who think like that live with themselves? The same way the pharisees and scribes of Christ’s day did. They persuade themselves that it is God’s will. I tell you here, now, tonight, this is NOT the will of God, this is the will of small, selfish people. We have a long way to go before we can call ourselves children of God. We can start by applying those three simple tests to every action we take and every action that is taken by our leaders, religious, political and business, and when those actions taken do not meet the test? We call them wrong. We say so. We challenge the status quo. We insist on fair treatment for ALL people, not just some. God did not create just some of us. He created ALL of us, and all of us must share in the bounty and beauty of this world fairly. When we accomplish that, when we learn to love all people as ourselves, we will be on our way to becoming a true civilization. And THAT is truth. much love, :^) gene

What does beauty really mean?

I’m going to start this with an essay from a wonderful man named Steve Goodier. I have gotten his several times a week newsletter for many years. He allows anyone who blogs to use our favorite articles of his freely. So I am, giggle. I actually send my favorites to others from time to time but this one I want to share here. Then I’ve got a couple things to say. :^)

“BEAUTY SECRET

Comic Phyllis Diller quipped that she once entered a beauty contest.”I not only came in last,” she said, “I was hit in the mouth by Miss Congenial­ity. “

Ed Feinhandler believes he is the world’s ug­liest man! But others disagree because, the fact is, Ed has dis­covered a universal “beauty secret.”

He has won 15 “Ugly Man” competitions. According to the Daily SparksTribune (Sparks, Nevada USA), Ed drives a minivan with “Mr. Ugly”personalized license plates. Good looks were never important to him. But helping people always has been, and the thousands of dollars he has raised over the years from “Ugly Man” competitions has beendonated to charity. In his spare time, Ed coaches youth sports, teaches tennis to un­derprivileged children and delivers Christmas bas­kets to the elderly. That’s the beauty of it!

To know Ed is to know a beautiful man whose real attractiveness comes from within. His secret is that beauty has little to do with physical looks, and much to do with the heart.

You, too, probably know some exquisitely beautiful people. They are kind and generous. They are happy and contented. And if you look closely inside your own heart, you may discover more beauty there than you imagined possible. As Ed Feinhandler teaches us, beauty has more to do with love than looks.”

Ok, we hear this a lot, don’t we? But here in America, we only talk this talk, we don’t live it. We don’t even come close. Oh, we like to pat ourselves on the back for being not only the world’s largest consumer but also its greatest giver. But we aren’t. Or we aren’t anymore. What we give now are weapons, division, we support people around the world who do horrible things to their own people because it is in “our” interest to do so. I suppose we have always done so, but it seems, for me the real horror of this began with Richard Nixon’s administration and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Cover support for dictators was our policy then. Because we liked right-wing horror’s like the Shah of Iran, more than we liked left-wing horror’s like Mao. It was, it seemed, a matter of choosing which side of atrocity we wanted to be on. The public business was truly conducted anywhere but in public. It seems to me that if you can’t do it in the light of day and in full view, then you really ought, if you have any sort of moral sense (and by moral sense, as I have said, I mean a simple idea of right and wrong, it is right to love people, it is wrong to kill them – it isn’t THAT complicated!) be giving serious though as to whether you should be doing it at all. We have become the country of the superficial. Or maybe just a superficial country. It reminds that Jesus had a way of describing such people that made such an impression me that it has long been among my most treasured of his teachings. He said beware of those who pray loudly in public and like to be seen in the front row in church, but in private take the houses of widows. This is an apt metaphor for what I see in the world around me, especially in this country.

We are a country of “Eds” in truth, there are many here, I believe the majority have Ed’s spirit. But what we see in public are people who talk loudly of the good they wish to do who in private, act very differently. I’ve always thought it no coincidence, giggle, and if you’ve read much on my main site, or CWG, you will no I believe there is no such thing as coincidence, that I was born in Minnesota. I was born here to remember the lessons this state would teach me. This has long been the most progressive of states in our union. That is now called liberal, as if love were a dirty word. Our political parties all cared about people. They disagreed, sometimes, over the best way to get things done, but the things they did, were always, at heart, good things, designed to help those who could not help themselves and to create a standard of living that allowed a chance at bettering individual circumstances for each person fortunate enough to have come to, or been born in, this place. But that has changed over the last two decades primarily. The mantra here has become, as it is everywhere, no taxes, I got mine, you get yours, your own damn self. Education has always been the key to success in America. We have always support free public education for all of our children, without regard to race, gender or parental net worth. The idea, to me, is that we all benefit from a well-educated populace. We, even those who have no children, pay taxes to support education because we are all better off by having a well educated work force. It is those children for whom we pay taxes that they might be educated now, who will take care of us in our senior years, as we take care of those who worked and paid before us. Somehow this idea has changed, and education is only symbolic, this basic idea of taking care of each other, that doing so was a moral obligation has been inbred into the Minnesota culture, through our traditions and our religions. But that has changed. Compassionate conservatism now rules the country, though in this state, it is 50-50. In the same passage I referred to earlier, which is from Luke 20, Jesus says a house divided against itself cannot stand. And I fear that is where we find ourselves now. Divided. We’ve cut taxes, given rebates, ignored long term public needs, in favor of short term gratifications. We do not think beyond the next election. We are unwilling to pay taxes for anything that does not show an immediate result, we are unwilling to invest in infrastructure that won’t pay results for 30 years, like the education of our children.

What brings this to mind for me, is personal, my granddaughter begins kindergarten this year. It once was, not so very long ago, that every day kindergarten was just a given, deemed an important part of a child’s education and worthy of public support. That has changed. A child may now go to all day kindergarten, free public education, two days one week, and three the next. Anything above that must be paid for by parents directly. It will cost my granddaughter’s parents, $822 per month to send her to kindergarten every day, which includes the cost of after school care for a bit. I think that borders on insanity. Where does that leave children whose parents can’t afford that sort of cost? I am not saying this is pocket money for my son’s family either, it is an enormous strain on a young family. But there are SO many single parent households living paycheck to paycheck who simply can’t afford that cost. So what happens if the one who can devise a cure for cancer is in that group? And never gets a chance to catch up, gets discouraged, and gives up. We will spend $500 million dollars to build a billionaire a new baseball field in Minneapolis, which will be used 82 times a year. But we won’t pay for all day kindergarten for five year olds. We, this country, will have spent in a week or two, $450 billion dollars on the “war” in Iraq, this does not count what we have spent in Afghanistan. But all we care about in education are simplistic tests that prove nothing, that do not demonstrate mastery of material nor understanding of the philosophical and historical realities of our world, but do let us cut taxes, again, and again, for people who already have piled up more money than they could use in 10 lifetimes.

The question we should be asking is not that on the bumper stickers, “what would Jesus do”, because those vehicles contain people who insist Jesus would be carrying an M16 and leading the charge in Iraq, and they are wrong, He taught love, we export death. How the teachings of the most loving person to ever walk the face of this earth have been so corrupted that we have preachers on television on Sunday morning teaching us “the winning way” and assuring us that what Jesus would have us do is become wealthy and give a tithe to that brilliant preacher. And consider that a job well done.

No. The question we should be asking is what would love do now? I mean LOVE, if we stopped thinking in terms of us and them and thought only in terms in what is good for ALL of us, not just some of us, not just those who look like us and act like us, but what is good for ALL of us regardless creed, color or country of origin, well then, I think our priorities we would change. We could stop building better bombs and begin building better health care systems, better educational systems, better affordable housing systems, and feeding those children of Darfur, finding a workable system to give Somalia back to Somalians, in peace. We’d stop arming insurgent groups around the world with guns and ammunition and begin arming them with baskets of fish and bread, and teaching them that the way to peace, is to share what they have, to love each other without condition, to see all people as their immediate family and to love and care for each from birth to death. We’d stop the processes killing our environment and work hard at healing the damage we have done to this beautiful blue oasis in space. We’d begin see the beauty inside us, begin recognizing that each of us is a sentient child of our creator and worthy of love whether we look good enough to walk down a runway with a perpetual pout on our faces or instead look the guy next door. Love is the answer to every question. This is not going to be a safe place, a nice place, a civilization, until we understand and accept this most simple of concepts. See beauty in every soul you meet, look for the loving intention, don’t view each other with suspicion, see in each person you meet another potential friend. Do THIS, teach THIS to our children, and in two generations our world will be changed forever. Can we start now? Please? much love, :^) gene