Category: Humanity

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. 

Valuable, Capable and Loved

“People need to feel valuable, capable and loved”*. Those were words I heard in a conference decades ago and they’ve never left me.

Sounds right, doesn’t it? This very simple recognition of something so very basic to human life – but how is it achieved? It can’t be a mantra that we run around and say to one another, because it has to be felt. There are lots of words we know are true, yet we’ve not taken the time to unearth their deeper meaning by feeling them.

And what if each individual could feel their value and could comprehend their preciousness? How would it look in the world that we live in today? For one, when we understand our uniqueness and can celebrate the gift life affords us, it must be nearly impossible to harm or judge another human being for the color of their skin or because who they choose to love.

This simple act of respecting another would have massive implications. It may even create a tidal wave of love and kindness that would upend the cruelty we are faced with daily. Regardless of life choices or life’s circumstances each of us can come to this recognition. But we must take time to feel it. 

And what of those who transgress upon us? Should they feel valuable, capable and loved? Or is there some dividing line of right and wrong that makes that impossible?

This is where it gets a bit tough. This is when one begins to realize that our punitive systems and our judgmental natures are out of control. This is when you know its time for change.     

One sunrise, one heartbeat, one breathe at a time… discover you are loved.

*My recollection from a conference with Prem Rawat in the late 80’s.

Beat Swords Into Plowshares

Shot for going to the wrong home.

Killed for turning around in the driveway.

Shot for opening the wrong car door in a parking lot.

I keep hearing, “It’s not the guns. It’s unconsciousness. It’s the lack of respect for human dignity and life. It’s mental illness. Therefore laws on gun ownership won’t matter. Let us keep our guns; find another solution.” 

And while I understand the logic, I cannot divorce the gun from the power it bestows. I cannot separate the gun from the one who pulls the trigger or the ones who manufacture and sell these tools of destruction. I won’t separate the gun from the ignorance of humankind and those who insist on hating. And I will never hold the protection of property as sacred, as I do of human life. 

And while I am certain gun laws can be repealed, fought against and ignored, as they have been in the past, it is incumbent upon those of us who are weary of violence to climb out of this trap of self-annihilation that we have allowed. 

Therefore let us return to the wisdom of Isaiah 2:4 and ask that “the swords be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.” And as was observed in that book, that we should be taught the ways of peace and walk its path and study war no more. This is the only solution that I can dare dream. 

It will never happen you say. And I say it is only your doubt that stops it. If we could find the courage to speak up against violence instead of cushioning ourselves in doubt, we could soon see the possibility of peace.

If we could find the conviction to end the cycles of dominance that utilize every means to maintain power, we could make weaponry obsolete. 

We have yet to make the prophecy of Isaiah a reality. We have yet to study the ways of peace. 

Study War No More – Pete Seeger

  

The Option of the Heart

Hot dry winds are pummeling us and one has to hope that no single flame will ignite the tinderbox we currently reside in. And as I listen to the news it appears that people all over the world are holding their breaths, bowing in prayer or screaming in agony as tinderboxes keep being lit.

The Burmese government is dropping bombs and sniping villages from helicopters, killing mostly women and children in their quest for control. The Philippine government has not had enough of United States imperialism and is happily joining forces again, risking increased saber rattling with China.

And the silent on-lookers could only say, “Wow”, when Tennessee again reminded us that racism is alive and well.

We’ve been persuaded that there only two sides and we need to pick one. And every time we pick one, we wind up with the short stick. But that doesn’t keep us from believing. 

Pundits and experts fill the airwaves with theories and definitions, strategies and complexities designed to dazzle the mind and keep us entertained as we continue on the merry-go round. 

But those wise ones have yet to realize there’s another option. It’s the option of the heart. It’s the power that lies in our mutual humanity and in the recognition that we are one people, one planet. 

I’m long over believing there will be a movement or a leader that will come and save the day. It is up to every one of us to change course.

We’ve engaged in the worn tactics of conquering and war in every aspect of our lives, no wonder violence stalks us.

There’s so much more to life and living, friends. 

There is a third option. Choose.