A Monday Prayer for All

Praying that this week will be blessed by our sharing the love we All possess!

Embracing anyone whom we meet as kindred may our words and deeds engender familial Peace!

Remembering the nurtures of Kindness we have enjoyed may we the like generously share!

Observing the Tolerance we have been shown may we through the week proceed from similar grace!

Embodying the Forgiveness we have received may we not forget to give forward the same!

Appreciating each other with notes of gratitude may our Harmony grow!

Embarking upon a new week's journey may our ways be mindfully chosen!

Affording to all Equal passage from purses rich in wisdom received!

Intending for all those entrained with us arrivals Fruitious!

Hoping that all vesseled aboard our starship Earth reach their Heavens!

Wishing for everyone's Illumination in a universally ensconced Light!

So prays one pilgrim among many!

Meeting a Stranger online

So...here's a new wrinkle for my blog (which hasn't gotten any attention for over a year) 😕

Hello Irene! We've been chatting on Messenger today and I invited you to have a look-see here. Ta-dah!

I can sincerely thank Irene, the stranger I've met online. I mean, it's not exactly my forte, opening up to folks I don't know. And yet, where one detects weakness, exercise is called for!

Oh, but this is an Internet meeting! Caution, Will Robinson! The webs are not replete with strangers who will prove to be kind, let alone without ulterior motives, right? Irene expressed similar concerns.

But, you know what? Maybe it's the Springtide sun soaring through a cloudless sky, or the phase of the moon - I dunno. Something I wrote about in my journal this morning...

 

 

Mea Culpa

Mea Culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! I am mourning the deaths of innocents, again, as are so many of us. And I am culpable.

       (I open with the full Facebook post made earlier today)

I grieve with the devestated families, left behind, again. And I beg their forgiveness of my part in bringing about their loss.

I haven't done enough, in addressing my nation's plague of armed violence. I've voted for politicians who I hoped would solve this crisis but seem not to have chosen well.

I have wept, fasted and prayed. It has not been sufficient, when war and murder still abound. I am sorry, and repent of my errors.

Yet, as did Gandhi, I believe in the absolute oneness of God and therefore of humanity...it is for this then that I can neither detach myself from the wickedest soul, nor be denied identity with the most virtuous.

I really do wish I could join, without qualification, the answering calls for action I hear, again. I just don't see how more gun control laws will help - primarily because they don't seem to have, thus far.

Yes, I really wish we could hear a lot more from the NRA, et. al., about the responsibilities inherent to 2nd Amendment rights. But aren't we also to a degree scapegoating our one minority subculture devoted to firearms? Don't we do that, all too often? Point to an out-group and lay the blame for our woes at their feet?

So today I also wish this generational American plague of violent death were as simple to resolve as is often claimed, particularly following each grisly mass murder.

Aren't we all in the end responsible in this? While a comforting emotional release in our grief over regularly repeated mass killings, in hand-wringing and passionate politics we are only addressing one of the roots of our problem. And it doesn't seem to be helping.

Above you've found the best crack I've found for letting some light into what's really going on, two days after the Uvalde Texas school massacre, and 11 days since the Tops massacre in Buffalo, NY.

And it comes from your Brother Charlie's brief 44 years of study, contemplation, prayer, meditation and activism. That doesn't make me right, it just means I've learned the humility to admit that I don't have any simple political or social engineering solution to offer. The ultimate solution is breathtakingly simple, though.

We Are All One

One Heart, one pain

One Mind, one fear

One Life, one death

One Soul, one salvation

I hope you'll look further into GUS. I've collected here many references to world faith and practice traditions, published more of my own writing and...withal borne upon these imperfect wings of prayer that the reader will come to know their path and be liberated from all the vales of illusion and live forever in Bliss!

Namesté

A Meditation on Peace and War

      April 17, 2022

     War churns afresh on our earth. And I wonder, why? Not only why now, in Ukraine. Why, in Eritrea? Why Myanmar? Palestine? Afghanistan? Why?

     Poets and priests, statesmen and soldiers have each in their way grappled and opined upon war and peace, over time immemorial. I'm no bard, nor any kind of wise old head, no. Still, I wonder.

     

     10,000 years, or more, we've been riding this terrible merry-go-round, spinning on one violent struggle after another. And we just keep buying more tickets, trading more treasure for bombs and guns to aim at some, instead of securing shelter and sustenance for all. Don't you ever wonder about that?

     While so many thousands, all around the world, are suffering, I trust that we each ask, in our own time: "What can I do?".

     Well, we must choose, yes? Pick one side to support, the other to despise?

     Yet thus, the vicious cycle's roots are not cut, but fed.

    My mind and heart, too, vie in their own eternal contest. Do yours'?

    Halfway 'round the world from me, Mr. Putin's "dirty little war" is entering it's third week. There's also generations of tension accreted, at the Khyber Pass. And the West Bank. Generations, too, of murder, open hostility and cultural warfare or simple neglect towards Americans of color, the physically and mentally challenged, those trapped in houselessness, 

      one following another, 

     And I've asked myself, why? Just, why? In mind, I feel outrage at the injustice of any armed strife. At heart, compassion yearns for the relief of all who are being wounded, body and soul. Must I choose mind's view, or heart's feeling? Maybe both are inescapably entwined, stepping to some kind of fatal fandango?

     I've inquired upon how much of my anger or scorn would touch a single neuron of that one particularly troubled mind, so isolated in his Kremlin perch? Could my condemnation reach to Teheran? My righteous wrath, as far as Caracas? Could I summon enough hatred or imagined wrath to sway even one stitch of any of those immortal souls?

     And an answer came: "Nay, but sure, any of those certainly *will* touch you.".

     

     Can't I somehow stop the madness? Offer more prayer, perhaps? Make a donation to Médecins Sans Frontières? Have I love in my heart sufficient to overcome this evil?

     The reply that came, "Aye, and touch *you* any of these, also, certainly will.".

     There is, I've decided, only this "non-choice" to make. Let me not answer violence with violence - not even in my mind. Pray from my heart, for no people less so than for any others. To meditate, not in opposition to war, but on  contributing to peace, for all of life on earth.

 https://fb.watch/b4tSUaYK0d/

Life is a Spectrum

The way we think about biological sex is wrong

- a TED Talk by Emily Quinn

   Representative Democracy is most certainly a messy affair at times. Yet the seats of power continue to be exchanged in an orderly fashion. And our streets aren't running with the blood of civil warfare.

   Neither is anyone in the political arena operating in a complete vacuum. It is arguably a partial one.

   The starkest failures of the American experiment in self-government are traceable to a lack of participation by much of the electorate. From a Stanford University study I've read, active voter engagement in elections has been wavering, for generations, in the neighborhood of 50%. Hence, no candidate of either major party may be seen to have received a "mandate" from any genuine majority of citizens.

   Into that vacancy a decidedly angry segment of the electorate has stepped. Feeling disenfranchised in a far from perfect Union, seething at being largely ignored by the political mainstream, they put Donald J. Trump into office.

   And on they rage! The public media platforms are teeming with their vitriol. But I ask: where will any of that actually get us?

   While the cacophony of rancorous partisan bickering continues - who stands to gain? Who, to lose?