Category: Humanity

Let Hearts Lead

Let your heart lead. This is not a time to choose sides. This is the time to choose being human. Hamas, or whoever ignited this fuse, acted outside of their humanity when they brutally attacked Israeli civilians. What the Israeli government and military are doing is also acting outside of their humanity. 

Today we listen to the blame and denials of who caused hundreds of children to be killed by a rocket blast to a hospital. More time is spent on the blame game than on the rescue. That is outside of our humanity. 

President Biden’s calculated error was to whole-heartedly support Israel without noting the consequences from such an unequivocal stand. Seeing the inhuman disregard for life by the Israeli government, the administration has attempted to interrupt the mistake, with little success. Mainstream media is happy to fuel the fire with slanted journalism and our citizenry is complicit in ignorance. But we can change this.

The families of those held hostage are wondering why ceasefire and negotiations are not front and center to recover their loved ones. 

We have too quickly pledged our allegiance. The allegiance should be to our humanity, not to a side.  The consequences will continue to spiral, until we once and for all end the disregard of human life. And we can do this.

Our government is playing a very dangerous game. Whether politics, or greed, religious dogma or sheer ignorance are driving the bus, we are heading for another horrible nightmare. 

Have we not learned from the lies that led us into the Iraq war? Have we not witnessed the folly of avenging violence with more violence? 

There is only one side to take. It’s the human side. Help end the madness. Not prolong it.

I am not sure the source of this photo. but if you cannot appreciate the innocence in it, please reconsider what matters most in Life. We are here but for such a short time and we leave this bit of heaven to those who come after us. Think. And act with Love. The choice is always ours.

One Day. Take a listen.

Stories We Refuse To Hear

It’s August and commemorations of the bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and of Nagasaki three days later honor the lives lost. We’re reminded of the gruesome destruction and the inhumanity released on the world through the atomic bomb.

Podcasts and radio raise the voices of survivors and the unanswered debate lingers: Wasn’t the carnage of Hiroshima enough? Why did the US bomb Nagasaki?

As a youth I was taught the United States won the war and saved lives through the use of nuclear weapons. I don’t recall learning much about horrific annihilation. And I can assure you I never learned about Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Bayard Russell and W. E. B. Du Bois speaking up for nuclear disarmament or ending nuclear testing. Nor was I aware of the racial connections they drew as they warned against the use of the bomb in Vietnam and Korea.*

While we all knew the first atomic bomb test happened in New Mexico, we’re only now learning that generations of families living near the test site are still haunted by cancers linked to that initial explosion. We were not taught that the government did not take the time to warn residents about what was coming, nor did they ever document the after effects. We can thank concerned citizens and family members for that research. 

The lasting legacy of the first atomic bomb

I ask myself, what will it take for people to end this nightmare of nuclear war? We fear it. Yet we continue to glorify war and refuse to find peaceful solutions. We teach our histories of omission and refuse to take responsibility for guiding our government to a new direction. Abolition of violence, in our selves and in our world, still waits for us.

This is the map of the first atomic test site in New Mexico known as Trinity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)

*https://www.zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our-history/web-dubois-coretta-scott-king-ban-the-bomb/

W. E. B. Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb

W. E. B. Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb
W. E. B. Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb

Love as a Wake Up Call

The further we’ve removed ourselves from living naturally on the earth, the more the earth is challenging us to rethink our choices. And the choices keep coming. We’re over mid-way through this year and the natural disasters have increased worldwide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2023_natural_disasters

So far we are in mitigation mode. We seek to reduce the severity and the painfulness of what is occurring. But mostly we rely on blind hope. We hope it is all an anomaly. We hope the facts are all wrong. We hope it doesn’t happen to us or at least not to anyone we love.

We hope our money holds out. We hope our air-conditioning does, too. We’re so busy keeping the ship afloat we seldom look to see how those around us are faring. 

Mitigation and hope will fail us. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you want to find solutions you have to step off the merry-go-round of distraction and roll up your sleeves.

If you are not growing some of your own food or helping others grow food, you are, minimally, out of step. If you are not seeking to reduce your consumption of energy – particularly of fossil fuels, you are a significant part of the problem. 

And if you’re not connecting with local partners to create local solutions, stop further pollution, and move towards renewables, you’re not even in the boat.

Get on board! Everyone can do SOMETHING.  Wake-up calls have come and gone. For me that call comes in the form of Love. Appreciation for the Earth and for one another gives me the courage to try. And clarity tells me all things are possible. 

A mega-transformation is needed. Let’s get on with it.

Teach Forbearance

“To live and let live” is a proverb worthy of remembrance. As our homogenized society moves further from acceptance and more towards fear, it’s not lost on me that it took four white guys to write a song about violence now dominating the charts. “Try That in a Small Town” is the latest assault on human dignity. With worn and tired lyrics it boasts about guns and small town boys sticking together.

But one of the giant omissions of this mess of a song – and there are many – is that it champions a dying breed.

When we are told “the west was won”, it’s with this kind of swagger. The bravado is used to hide the truth that the west was stolen at the cost of indigenous lives and ways of being. These whitewashed storylines creep into our discourses today with the latest out of Florida introducing a curriculum espousing that human beings benefitted from being enslaved.* 

Really? What sickness is this that continues to dominate the airwaves and receives so much support? 

I haven’t watched the video of the song. I read the lyrics and that was enough.

Sing and make some money fellows. The tide is turning and your chest thumping proves it. You’re not striking fear; you’re inviting resistance. And how will that resistance look? Like the colors of the rainbow we will rise and envelope you. We will plant gardens where you poisoned the soil; we will restore the waters until they are pristine again.

Most importantly we will teach love and forbearance and if you are fortunate, we will forgive you.

**********

And if you want a deeper dive into Florida’s latest controversy: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jul/24/kamala-harris/do-Florida-school-standards-say-enslaved-people/

How Far Are We Willing To Go?

How far are we willing to go to kill? The United States has made the decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine as part of another 800 million dollar military package.

Cluster Bombs were developed in WWII. They carry canisters of explosives that are designed to detonate on tanks and hard surfaces, but they do not always detonate on contact. There are fragments of cluster bombs used in Vietnam that are still killing and harming people decades after they were used. 

More than 120 countries have banned them. The US, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey did not sign on to ban them and they have been widely used during the war in Ukraine by both sides. 

Most allies are balking at the decision. Canada, New Zealand and Spain have doubled down on their support of the ban. Others support the US decision yet choose for their own countries to honor the ban. We are becoming the world’s henchmen.  (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66144153)

As this proxy war continues and Ukraine is dismantled, the question becomes how many of the millions of displaced people and refugees will be willing to return at the war’s end? An estimated 17.6 million people living in Ukraine will need humanitarian assistance this year as the war carries on. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61778433)

Our citizenry needs to decide where we stand.

How far are we willing to go to support death and destruction?

Are we too weak to demand a peaceful resolution? 

Or are we too cynical to believe it is possible?

Our collective inability to redirect our government from war to diplomacy, and our refusal to halt shipments of weapons weighs heavily upon us.

How far are we willing to go?

Let your elected officials know where you stand, sign here: https://afsc.org/action/tell-congress-dont-send-cluster-munitions-ukraine

For more:

A B-1B Lancer drops cluster munitions. The B-1B uses radar and inertial navigation equipment enabling aircrews to globally navigate, update mission profiles and target coordinates in-flight, and precision bomb without the need for ground-based navigation aids. (U.S. Air Force photo – Public Domain)

Top photo: March 1991 unexploded cluster bomblet in a tarmac in Kuwait, photo: Johnny Saunderson compliments of creative commons licensing

Citizens of the Earth

Another Fourth of July has come and gone. Animals and Veterans can rest a bit easier now that the firework hullabaloo is over. I was grateful not to hear fire trucks as sparks flew on parched land. And I wonder how many of those flags were actually made in the good ole USA? There comes a point when learned behavior becomes monotonous. I’ve reached that point with celebrating the Fourth.

I’m much happier acknowledging Juneteenth. And I am all for giving thanks, but please keep the Pilgrim myths out of it. The truth is I’m bored with anything that doesn’t touch my humanity.

I heard the phrase Citizen of the Earth a long time ago and made it my business to understand what that meant. It doesn’t mean you cannot love your country, but it does mean you cannot love it to the exclusion and degradation of others. It doesn’t mean that you cannot take pride in achievements, but when those achievements come on the backs of Black, Brown and Indigenous people historical and contemporary acknowledgments should be given.

Being a Citizen of the Earth means that you take into account your relationship with all of Life. It means you have a right and a duty to question activities that do harm to your life and the lives of all around you. It does not imply that you can impose your will on anyone or anything.

In his Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence speech, Martin Luther King referred to our government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” That “today” continues unchecked. And the sixteen mass shootings over the holiday should tell us the chickens have come home to roost.

We need to become purveyors of peace.

Lead the Way

Researchers of carbon emissions are calculating the environmental costs of our propensity for war. The Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, the burning of forests, croplands and oil reserves are only a fraction of the consideration. There’s also rebuilding once wars conclude, and that is loaded with carbon emissions.

And then there is the destruction of farmland, with landmines and contaminants, forcing human migration. Or, as in the case of the ended war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, farmers are cutting trees, including fruit trees, for fuel in an area once known for its reforestation efforts.

It is speculated that ending war games, ballistic testing and other non -defensive military operations would significantly reduce our carbon emissions. Surely we can agree to this and while we’re at it, why not agree to end all war?

I heard it said once that pigs would be constipated if it knew their dung would be used to make firepower. One has to believe that those who still mass-produce war have no sense of the preciousness of life, nor of the interconnectedness we share with the earth and all living.

So this is when I tell you hold onto your compassionate heart. Find people that support your dreams of coexistence and peace. Never doubt that the power of light can triumph over darkness. And if all you can do is wish for war to end, then wish away. Your wishing and hoping, prayers and actions can lead the way.

So at this time of Summer Solstice, when the light is the greatest and the days the longest, celebrate. Welcome in the light, bask in it and know the possibility for peace is still available to us. 

Giving credit where it is due, the constipated pig comment was another of the gems of Prem Rawat.

The photo is of our newly gifted black lamb making friends with a great great grandma of our farm. We are thrilled to have this curious, brave lamb. Her mother had 4 lambs but has only one utter, so we are bottle feeding this little one and grateful to our friend for sharing her with us.

Use the Gift

Here we are in Pride month and as one would expect the rhetoric-vilifying non-heterosexuals is ratcheting up. Even Wisconsin Congressmen Van Orden and Tiffany got their anti-LGBTQ cracks in while addressing Canadian fires. One has to wonder who listens to this insanity and why it is lapped up rather than silenced.

Before I rail on the haters, I wish to thank the friends and allies who are unafraid of those who are different. I want to salute the people who have stopped laughing at course jokes and better yet have asked for voices of hate to stop. I want you to know that your words of support and caring have meant a great deal and I recognize there is a risk that you, too, will be erased by hate.

And what is this hatred? It’s nothing more than acquired bigotry that has been taught to us. We have the choice to reject it or to embrace it. But to encourage us to hold the course of hatred we are instilled with fear. Fear of other is solidified by the fear of hell. The grid of right and wrong is flexible when it comes to “Love thy neighbor”. Flexible because it’s OK to hate thy neighbor, if they’re different. 

We’re spiraling downward, cloaked in religion and supported by the ignorance of laws and lawmakers. The ACLU is tracking 491 anti-LGBTQ bills in the United States. And while not all will pass, the rhetoric incites violence and disrespect. 

Choose, People. What kind of world do you want to live in? More importantly, how do you want to live in your own being? I’ve tried hate. It only made me sick.

While we have the gift of choice, let’s put it to good use. 

Photo of 2019 Rzeszów Pride compliments of Silar – Creative Commons – Attribution Share 4.0 License

This One Chance

This week the NAACP found it necessary to issue a travel advisory to black and minority travelers to Florida. It was a simple one. “Don’t go.” 

We’ve come to this. The division we have allowed has grown to be so violent and unpredictable that safety is no longer a given.

School children know this. Ask them about how they are trained to take cover. Ask them what it feels like to live in a state of underlying fears.

Blacks know this, as do Native Americans, Latinos, Asians and LGBTQ+.  Sure there are the occasional movie stars, politicians, athletes and others who’ve climbed the ladder, but ask them about the fear and rage they’ve stifled. Ask them what systemic hatred feels like.

More than 80% of American Jews feel anti-Jewish sentiment is a growing concern. 

We’ve come to this. We don’t want to teach the Holocaust, the violence of slavery or the repression of the Reconstruction Era. The claim is that it is just too much for young white minds to handle. We’d rather teach them about the kingdom of heaven and how to get a ticket to the pearly gates.  

The classic gay flag now has a triangle that represents transgender. We fly it at the farm to let people know they are safe and respected here. In a world so ready to cast away, it’s important to draw people near.

I long for a time when kindness and respect are celebrated and love will rule. This will not happen without our effort and our choices. We can do this.We have this one chance, while we are alive, to get it right. Let it be so.

Recognize the Sacred

Land acknowledgments have become more common over the years. Acknowledging the story of the land that we now occupy and the people who inhabited it long before the time of conquest is critical to understanding that we all are one people today.

The tendency for dominant cultures to eradicate the “other” and to steal their resources and plunder their culture is not new. What is new is the push back that we are witnessing, as People emerge resilient and determined to be counted in.

And that push back is not really new, but technology and travel have allowed for greater perspectives to take hold.

The dominant culture is being called out on everything. From lies told in history books, to broken treaties, to the ignorant lumping of all tribes as one, we’re being confronted to learn the truth. 

And while we may be learning facts, we’re still far from discovering our humanity. 

I often think about how different our lives would be if the early colonizers had recognized the humanity of the Native People they encountered. If instead of imposing the patriarchal and capitalistic paradigms, we could have explored the world anew – and glimpsed it through the eyes of our Native brethren. Instead of being bent on usurping the resources we could have learned from the ones who had lived here the longest. We could have maintained the garden. We could have lived in peace.

To free our selves from dominant thinking and to honor the earth with respect and deference would be the greatest land acknowledgment. To recognize the sacred and temporal existence of the land would give us all a second chance.

It’s never too late to undo what has been done. 

The Earth can heal and so can we.