Embracing The Whole

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Education, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Striving

March 8, 2022- Two widely-circulated photos of recent vintage have circulated around the Internet. One is the shot of two conservative Congresswomen loudly heckling the President of the United States, during a point in his State of the Union address, last week. The other is that of a small group of Russian teenagers, sporting a nationalist, presumably pro-war, symbol on their outfits.

It is often tempting to think of women and children as universally being the nurturing and the nurtured, thus lending one’s thinking towards their being universally progressive and all-accepting. Such a mindset, not giving allowance for them as complete, complex human beings, besides being somewhat condescending, misses the chance to connect with a sizeable group of people who simply view the world differently-and not always in a bad way.

Those who resist progressive thought may have a thousand different reasons for their views. Not all of it, in fact very little of it, has to do with being brainwashed by men who are seeking dominance and obedience. I have several women friends who have stood up and thrown domineering, abusive men out of their lives-and who hold true to very conservative, traditional values. Many young people have done considerable research, across a variety of viewpoints and media, and still adhere to a traditionalist take on public affairs and personal business.

Where I draw the line, for those at any point on the political spectrum, is seeking to deprive those of differing viewpoints of their right to free expression. Thus, the whole idea of rolling back voting rights is anathema to me, whereas a return to the practices of respect for others, following a modicum of social order, that is based on civility towards one’s fellow humans and taking responsibility for one’s actions, are central to the core of my being. The first concept is a progressive value: Everyone over the age of 18 who is a citizen in good standing should be able to cast a ballot in their community’s elections, clear to the national level. The rest are identified with conservatives, but really do justice to every human being, regardless of where they stand ideologically.

I think of these matters today, as the world celebrates International Women’s Day. Let everyone live their truth, and seek to gently educate those whose statements and actions show want of adjustment, in light of facts.

They Also Suffer

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Striving

March 7, 2022- The African students approached the border between Ukraine and Poland. Border guards intercepted them, and told them to head south, to Romania. Being on foot, tired, hungry and freezing-like their Caucasian counterparts, the men and women then spent two hours negotiating back and forth with the Ukrainian guards, until word came from Kyiv that all were to be allowed crossing, regardless of “colour” or ethnicity.

This represents the larger challenge facing ethnically and “racially” homogeneous eastern European countries. They have long admitted people of colour, from all parts of the world, to study at their universities, but at the cost of frequently facing the wrath of those who are not used to seeing people of other nations as anything more than a nuisance. It is not just Ukraine, or Europe, for that matter. East Asians have only recently begun being more open to people of African descent living among them, and people of colour across the Americas have a long way to go, in achieving true equality with people of European descent.

This brings me to Russia, and to the case of Brittney Griner, a star player in the WNBA and an Olympic medalist, accused of being in possession of a controlled substance, whilst preparing to board a plane out of Moscow. Ms. Griner is African-American and a member of the LGBTQ community. The first is said not to matter to the Russian government; the second, matters greatly: Russia officially bans LGBTQ activities. Complicating matters further, however, is Ms. Griner’s celebrity status as a basketball player in the Russian leagues, commensurate with her salary and perks, which are presently much higher than her earnings in the States. It is also complicated by the concurrent imprisonment of two former U.S. Marines, both Caucasian, in Russian jails. There is no easy resolution of any of the three cases, in isolation from the other two. All three pretty much need to be resolved close to the same time, if the flames of partisan rancor are not to be further exacerbated.

Those pushing for the release of the former Marines have so far met with scant empathy from the current Administration; then again, it’s been two years since their imprisonment, and not much was done in 2019-20, either. Ms. Griner and the men will likely sit in confinement for a good while yet.

War brings suffering to a good many more people, in often overlooked ways, than the immediate targets of the aggressor.

Restitutions and Return Visits

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Posted by on in animal and plant life, collaborating, Community, Hiking and Nature, impediments, Inner Struggles, Matters of Faith, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 6, 2022- I was quite gratified this morning, to be given a complementary breakfast, in view of the two such meals which I had to speak out in order to receive, after paying in advance. Good will means a lot at the Legion, so when the servers mess up, the host steps up. After I was finished eating, one of our regular table mates who usually helps serve the other diners had just been given his own breakfast. So, I took a turn at service for a bit-and saw where some of the confusion may have arisen over the past few weeks. There is a tendency to write first names and family initials. There are four “Garys”, myself included and two of us have the last initial “B”. There are six “Steves”, five “Bobs” and three “Terris”. I called out the people’s names and got it done. The problem, thus, seems to be shy servers.

After my weekly Zoom devotional, the day looked open-ended, and the Agua Fria River was calling, so I made a return hike along the Badger Springs Trail, this time focusing on the section that passes by two frames of petroglyphs. The glyphs are visible to the naked eye, but don’t photograph well in a casual manner. Could it be that the spirits are protecting them from casual photographers? We’ll have to see, on future visits.

The river itself is not so coy. It does seem to be down a bit, but since it is largely dependent on snow melt, the level may yet rise, over the next month or so.

Agua Fria River, at Badger Springs
Agua Fria River, at Badger Springs

Return visits to local natural scenes are increasingly important, if for no other reason than rootedness. They also figure in acts of completion. A few days ago, I finished hiking the Lime Kiln Trail, which runs between Cottonwood and Sedona. The final segment is but 1 1/2 miles, from one segment of the Red Rock State Park access road, over Scheuerman (SHOY-er man) Mountain Ridge, across a forested valley and on to the entrance to the state park. It was a fitting end to a segmented hike that had been in abeyance for over a year.

Beginning of Scheuerman Ridge segment, Lime Kiln Trail
Junction with Scheuerman Mountain Trail
View towards Cathedral Rock, from Scheuerman Ridge

So the cementing of returns dovetails with the strengthening that comes from new discoveries.

Finally, because we need it in the face of both real and imagined tyranny: A return to the most stirring song from Les Miserables (2012). Let us neither be deluded or complacent, in the weeks, months and possibly years ahead. Every nation, every people, deserve to be free of rule from without.

A Tale from 2007

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Family, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 5, 2022- It has now been eleven years, since Penny winged her flight to be with our Lord. As her passage took place on a Saturday, this day was especially poignant. Having been in Phoenix, and the cemetery, on Thursday took some of the edge off of this day’s ambiance. I also followed my Saturday morning routine, and having a Baha’i Zoom devotional, that was itself based in Phoenix, as part of that routine was also a plus.

Ten of our twenty-nine years together were spent in Phoenix. Although the community is large and the people are quite busy with their daily lives, Penny made a positive impression on a lot of people. Her joie de vivre was irrepressible, almost to the end. She did not use her disability as an excuse to refrain from living her faith. Fifteen years ago, in the midst of her decline in mobility, and just after she had to be wheelchair bound, we were invited to attend a prayer meeting that was on the second floor of an apartment complex, and there was no elevator.

She asked me to help her to the stairs, and proceeded to carefully climb the stairs, on her hands and knees, reversing the process by coming down each step on her buttocks when the meeting was over. I brought the empty wheelchair up and down, standing behind, then in front of her, as was prudent. The device was her chair while we were in the apartment.

There went a genuine hero.

Angels and Extraterrestrials

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

March 4, 2022- A review of my Birth Chart, this afternoon, showed what I have long suspected: I am a mess of contradictions, with the stabilizing aspects of my personality holding forth. Those who have stayed with me, these past eleven years of Word Press and at Xanga, beforehand, know it has not been easy. It has gotten easier, since mid-2015, largely because I owned all the stuff and nonsense that went down in the 2000s and in the months and years immediately after Penny’s passing, and learned valuable lessons from a lot of it.

There has been a lot of influence, and what I’d call support, from unseen forces. A small amount of dark energy, both visible and invisible, has made itself known as well. People of faith know these forces as angels (light) and demons (dark), and we can debate those concepts all day long. Suffice it to say, I have felt the protection and assistance of light energy. I have also met beings who seemed to appear out of nowhere and who have disappeared in the blink of an eye. These have been helpful beings in all but one instance. Who knows whether they are angels or are extraterrestrials? In any case, my life goes on and I feel safeguarded, even in situations that could have been far more precarious.

This is about the time when I look at Spring, Summer and Fall. Part of my Birth Chart review looked at transitions that will affect my life. Of course, there is also the 1-ton pachyderm of eastern Europe that affects everyone’s life. I am squarely on the side of what elevates human dignity and the well-being of citizens. My original plan for this year was for extensive travel. Thus far, the early Spring visits with family and friends in the Southeast U.S. are on track. June-July, in the Northwest U.S., Canada and back through the Northeast and Midwest, may be altered a bit by some Faith-based gatherings here, but is generally on track. It is October, involving Europe, that may end up Putinized and pulverized into either being severely altered to an Iceland and British Isles itinerary, or canceled altogether. No matter, the plans pale in comparison to the horrors now going on across the Atlantic and elsewhere. Each of us must do what is right, by the suffering.

My angels are ever-present, and respond best when I exercise common sense. We’ll see how the rest of the year goes, both at Home Base and on the road. Pray-and work- for peace, in any case, just because the poor souls in Ukraine, Yemen, Myanmar, DR Congo and in every drug-lord ruled community on the planet, deserve it.










A Simple Message

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, Family, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 3, 2022- The little toddler looked over at me, from her booster seat, and began to twirl her still-wrapped straw, as other family members were eating. I was waiting for my own meal to be served, so I picked up my still-wrapped straw and began to play with it, thus engaging the child for a bit. Across the room, the bartender/server was watching me, with some consternation, until her busser remarked that there was a baby involved. Thus, I avoided being carted off by the White Coat Squad.

The day had started with a check of my Saturn’s computer system, and a reset of one of the warning lights. That done, I headed to Phoenix, and commemorated Penny’s passing, which was eleven years ago, this Saturday. Flowers, prayers and reflection at the gravesite do not minimize her remaining spiritual presence, all these years later. At the end of my day in the city, an hour or so was spent with a resilient soul, who has cultivated paternal and avuncular relationships with a good many young people, the world over. I cannot hold a candle to “Uncle Lal”, in that regard.

Getting back to the initial story: I had stopped at a steak house, just southeast of Prescott Valley, which I hadn’t visited in over a year. I like taking one of the high top tables, which are just suited for either single diners or couples. Across from my table was the family of five, including the engaging little girl. In between her acceptance of bites of food offered by her mother, she would hold up two fingers and point to herself, which I took to mean that she was two. Then she would point at me, and again at herself, and hold up two fingers.

It was a simple message, recognizing that none of us are ever really alone.

Sweet

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal Values, Social, Striving

March 2, 2022- A state legislator, censured for advocating executions of her political opponents, on a public gallows, fired back at those who voted for censure-saying they were picking on a “sweet grandma”.

To be sure, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, even for those who say people of different ethnicities have horns and a tail, or words to that effect. Yet, there are laws that forbid making specific threats against the safety and well-being of other human beings-or hurting most animals, for that matter.

I am sure the legislator is sweet to her grandchildren, if not her children. Loving people who are one’s bloodline is well nigh universal, save for those who are deranged. That tells me the woman has some semblance of heart. Her comments, at a recent gathering of white supremacists, tell me that she has spent precious little time listening to those who offer views different from her own. They also give readers and listeners who disagree with those comments a sense that she herself may be a bit unhinged.

We have had a long, hard road together, vis-à-vis race relations, especially between Blacks and Whites, but also between Whites and First Nations people as well as between First Nations people and Blacks. Much of the discord involves failure to listen, to observe, to accept others for who they are. It’s true that there are people in each group who have taken advantage of their own, and who have ingratiated themselves with the dominant group. It is also true that there are people within the dominant group who have suffered at the hands of “their own kind”. This, however, does not take away from the aggregate of the dominant group, in a good many countries, having the responsibility for erecting a system that perpetuates their dominance, at the expense of those outside their circle.

Real sweetness does not hate.

Lions, Tigers, Bears-and Zebras

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 1, 2022- I woke this morning, after some vivid dreams, in a sort of mental fog. I managed to get the rent paid, then went and sat in one of my safe havens, and wrote at length in the 2022 journal. Things were better afterward, so a synopsis about March came into my awareness.

March appears to have come in like a lion-in Australia. A wide swath of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria is under water. On the opposite side of the country, Western Australia is parched. Here in North America, the month has started off in benign fashion, after a tempestuous February.

This one, born in a Year of the Tiger, will view a “Birth Chart” in a few days. It will likely answer some questions I still have about the circumstances of my birth and how they have affected my life since then. Part of me has been bold and another part, furtive. Both are traits of a tiger in the wild. That aspect lends credence to the East Asian zodiac.

The Russian Bear has stalled. Mother Russia seems to have had less say about where her cubs have been sent, and why. The wayward Lone Male has sent them on a mission, known only to him-with only snippets divulged to a select few. While he stays in his cave, the cubs cast about for food-and fuel.

I see and hear a lot of zebras these days. People talking out of both sides of their mouths are more common than they’ve been in a long time. Skittish, prancing about haphazardly, wanting to be everything and nothing, simultaneously, they alternate between snorting half-truths and noises of obeisance to the Lone Male and braying that they only want to see justice done. They readily point to the other animals, in the corral, and claim that those are the real beasts who need to be brought to heel.

March will bring out a lot of truth and will bring a few down. We may or may not be seeing the onset of another worldwide conflagration. We may or may not be seeing the long-overdue implosion of the real “empire of lies”. We will definitely continue to see the true faces of heroism and love of humanity.

In the late winter of the Russian soldier, his humanity buried by the artillery of his wayward master; in the long nightmare of the Ukrainian mother, her dreams for her children drowned out by the pummeling of all around her; in the long and frightful night before the eerie dawn-listen to the hopeful voice of Mat Shaw:

Hypocrisy? or Just Being Inconsistent?

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Posted by on in collaborating, impediments, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Striving

February 28, 2022- The just-concluded Conservative Political Action Conference featured several speakers with a similar message: The Far Left is a dictatorial entity. Many on the Left, citing the fear that so many of their opposite numbers seem to have of former President Trump, claim that the Right is the autocratic force.

Both are correct, insofar as each side practices intolerance and outright anathema towards those with whom they disagree. The calls for the imprisonment of people who express an opposing point of view have increased dramatically, since 2016, and all the more since the onset of the COVID pandemic. I have heard calls for the executions of various figures on the Left, and there are the rabbit-hole dwellers who say that this has already happened! Conversely, there are thousands of comments on posts, each day, wondering when the participants in all aspects of the January 6th events will be punished.

So, we have each group calling out the other for hypocrisy. I have a slightly different take on the matter. For decades, society has subconsciously pushed the idea that the way to get out of a bind is to distract, to engage in false equivalency, to muddy the waters. People my age have made a fine art out of looking under rocks to find fault with those whom they themselves wrong-as if the actual victims brought it on themselves. Those in subsequent generations have astutely taken note.

Since the last Perfect Being ascended in 1892, and the last Perfect Exemplar, in 1921, it stands to reason that anyone can be taken to task, for one thing or another. I have experienced plenty of table turning, over the years, and probably have done the same to others, at one time or another. Yet, I think there is a subtle difference between hypocrisy and inconsistency of conduct. A true hypocrite builds a brand, career or reputation around consistently throwing stones at others, while knowingly doing the exact same thing to which (s)he objects in others. Occasional inconsistency, or even past behaviours which one has overcome, do not constitute hypocrisy, IF one owns the faux pas and is actively making amends.

We are all works in progress.

Sane and Intelligent Patriotism

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Personal Values, Social, Striving

February 27, 2022- Recently, we have been treated to the spectacle of a field grade officer, in the United States Army Reserves, making public statements supporting the unprovoked attack of one country upon another-as a way of expressing opposition to our own sitting president.

Baha’u’llah taught that love of one’s country, as expressed in patriotism, should be sane and intelligent. Shoghi Effendi, His great-grandson and the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, from 1922 until his passing in 1957, explained the Baha’i teachings on this matter further: “Let there be no misgivings as to the animating purpose of the world-wide Law of Baha’u’llah. Far from aiming at the subversion of the existing foundations of society, it seeks to broaden its basis, to remold its institutions in a manner consonant with the needs of an ever-changing world. It can conflict with no legitimate allegiances, nor can it undermine essential loyalties. Its purpose is neither to stifle the flame of a sane and intelligent patriotism in men’s hearts, nor to abolish the system of national autonomy so essential if the evils of excessive centralization are to be avoided.”-Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u’llah.

This World Order, as opposed to the partisan or financial globalist orders, recognizes the essential need for society to be constructed from the ground up, first with a securely functioning family, then community, state/province/prefecture, nation and commonwealth. None may be allowed to cancel the other, particularly from the top down.

This principle honours the human need for loyalty and belonging. By its lights, a citizen exhibits loyalty to family, state and nation, then gradually may reach the understanding that the human race is one entity. This understanding can never be forced upon anyone. Conversely, peace officers, military and government officials-at any level, must honour the citizens and their elected representatives, regardless of the officer’s or official’s personal views about those representatives.

In my humble opinion, that is the meaning of sane and intelligent patriotism.