an opportunity to participate

Life is not about that which is commonly sought after but is an opportunity to participate in a unique yet universally available experience. Here we are with the innate yet generally ignored ability to sense the presence of the divine within ourselves and the whole creation and instead we chase after fame, fortune and power. We busily pursue the offerings of a man made world thereby losing the sense of mystery and awe which makes it possible for us to commune with the creator and the creation. Instead, we wind up worshipping the “reality” we make and thinking it is life.

We fall into a man made trap, the vanity of God made in our image. We fall into a pit dug by our arrogance, our conceit that the creation, the universe exists for our domination. The simple truth of our being born into a world over which we have little control and in which we could not survive except for the graciousness and self giving love of countless generations of ancestors is quickly forgotten if acknowledged at all.

Perhaps if we could envision the process wherein the one without ancestors poured self into the creation dividing and differentiating into everything that is, while remaining whole and present in every part of it, we could appreciate the magnitude of the gift we have by virtue of being alive, awake and aware.

And being aware of the gift of life and the presence of the one who is self giving love in ourselves and in each and every other being, we could relate to the divine mystery in each with clarity and wisdom born of the knowledge of our interdependent existence. Perhaps this is an awakening from the illusion of power over that upon which we are utterly dependent. Perhaps this is the humility which would allow us to relate to each other in terms of mutuality, common good and the welfare of all life. Perhaps this would quicken the light of love and compassion in everything known and unknown which is capable of such feeling and emotion. Perhaps we could learn to dwell here and from here.

Along the Seam

Along the seam which runs the length of the two halves of each of us, there is an itch as though from a scar. Small differences between the halves bespeak the asymmetrical development of the portions that comprise the whole. We do not gradually flow from state to state, mood to mood, feeling to feeling. Instead we sometimes stall or balk, leap ahead, fall back, progress and retreat, and once in awhile we are utterly transformed into a beauty and peace we are not always prepared to comprehend. These moments of disproportionate grace, uncalled for and arising out of a type of mystery we only glimpse at the periphery of the senses, give us the hope (or is it courage) to follow the spirit’s leading.

Some follow an intuition which is far more profound that a hunch. We are listening and looking for signs and miracles from the deepest places within our personal universes for what attracts our whole being in subtle and consistent ways. Even long after we have walled ourselves off from one another and our true selves, what calls to us explores the crack and crannies of our walls and shells and masks with the implacability of root and tendril until we have exhausted our ability and desire to shore up the illusions of separateness we have created to protect ourselves from the truth.

When this happens and we choose to finally let go of all the blocks and self created illusions and explanations to which we cling, we discover a love, a compassion suffusing the whole creation. This love guides us to participate and cooperate in its unfolding in us and all the fields of being and consciousness. Space-time is love’s form entering into conscious communion with the mystery from which all life springs. We open ourselves and invite the spirit of wholeness, the holy spirit, the Beloved to resolve every paradox.

The proposed reopening of the Idaho Maryland Mine

I am opposed to proposed reopening of the Idaho Maryland Mine not only for many good reasons enumerated in the draft environmental impact report, some of which are significant and cannot be mitigated, but because consideration of its reopening is not based on the deep listening necessary to know the truth in the moment. I oppose the reopening of the mine because it does not consider the long past nor the far future but is instead content to look at things in terms of an economically expedient and sociopathic world view. Our dominanation world view does not extend our spiritual and emotional feelings to the earth or teach us to consider earth herself or the flora and fauna who inhabit her as living beings as precious to the spirit of life as we humans are. We have been taught to regard earth as raw material, resource to be fashioned into whatever we desire. She is not seen as sacred and many have lost their sense of connection to her.

But in all times and places there remain some among humans who see all life as sacred. These are always being born to her. These are people, children and grown-ups who are conscious of an intimate interconnection with the whole web of life. Violence and genocide have been unable to rid the earth of these people though the powerful have tried. These continue to be born into every time and place for they are called into being by the presence of Great Spirit’s infinite compassion and untiring patience.

Indigenous people of many places have been harmed by the forces of greed and the cultures of dominance. But it is not only indigenous humans who are harmed but earth, air and water and all the relations. We have all been subjected to fear before we awakened to unconditional love and compassion. But once we are awakened there is no way to return to ignorance and the dispensation of the old gods and idols with their numberless names, excuses and rationalizations.

We stand as we are in the great mystery surrounded by choice, seemingly adrift in a universe greater than our comprehension. Slowly we discern the way weaving like a bright thread in the tapestry of reality. We begin to see what we are unable to imagine or create and yet is right before our senses. From here we can see what makes for healing and wholeness. From here we begin to understand the nature of our relationship to everything we consider to be other than ourselves.

Exploiting earth and her creatures, so that some people become rich while others suffer, is not part of the healing way, the beauty way. What is good for the whole is what we are guided to do by future generations and the spirit of our ancestors. We cannot compromise the well being of the whole community of life. We are called to be faithful to the way regardless of personal consequence. Neither birth nor death separates us from the one whose love and compassion set the whole creation free and whose way we travel. It is the right time for us to take a stand and be willing to be faithful to that which creates us, gave us consciousness and set us free. We feel the call at the core of ourselves and respond to the love and compassion which is with us from the beginning of all that is. There are many forms of right livelihood we can pursue as individuals and as a community which are considerate of the common good. Reopening the mine is not one of them.

On This Earth Day

Every day we learn again to live in peace.
We recall how to live in love
through the ceremony each does for Earth
not once in a lifetime but continuously.

We know deep inside we cannot heal the Earth
if we hate ourselves or others.
Earth heals when we heal.
Healing is slow, one moment at a time
each new wound a setback.
Earth is not surprised, she has grown
accustomed to our injurious ways.
She endures as mother of life.

Stunted within the prisons of our minds
we destroy our place within her.
Not seeing her as mother of life
she becomes barren, shrinking
from our touch as though abused.
But here we are, perhaps only a few,
or perhaps a multitude, intending healing,
intending love and compassion.

Intent upon healing and love
we let down the walls, let go the fear,
embracing life and its awareness
choosing to listen to the spirit of life
so the mother of flesh may be healed
and future generations may grow in diversity
consciousness and compassion

So it is in this moment, on this day, this Earth day.
She rises within our spirits to greet and embrace
the beloved flesh of her flesh, children of life.

Not Our Mind’s Creation

For our own sake, we follow the way.
We see it, wake in it and sleep in it.
It is the way she is healed,
sister Earth, grandmother Gaia,
revolving, evolving, Atabey,
mother spirit of life.

The way she becomes her own again
and not any man’s property
or subject to rule,
is for us to find the way and live it
through the seasons and days of our lives
regardless of culture or tradition.

Thinking why yields no answer.
This is the way we come to you, Beloved,
following your spirit scent, feeling you nearby,
watering your seeds of compassion and love.

We know why in the living of it
now and then feeling its fullness and emptiness
reassuring us it is you love
who makes it so.

We have been ourselves long enough to know
it is not us drawing forth life’s consciousness
blessing the way with intent and purpose.
It is beyond our wisdom.

We look in mirrors to see the way
that is before we know the way.
The way runs through us and begins here.
It is like that for each of us.

The Spirit of life lives in all that lives
and guides us when we let go the illusions
and shed the protective shells
slowly removing the armor.

The way stands open.
It travels through every being
and naked each chooses
to know it or not.

You are not alone, beloved.

I write because I want you to know you are not alone, beloved. We were and are here with you. What you feel we feel and felt. That with which you struggle is our struggle as well. The way you seek and the way you go, we go and went that we might find our spiritual and mindful ancestors. We each have names and we are the voices of the cosmos speaking the truth in human sounds.

I write that you may know you are loved and longed for, beloved. Despite appearance to the contrary we are and were here fostering and nurturing the transformation from the world of dominance and violence, suffering and ignorance to the sacred creation unfolding in the presence of the love which is the Great Spirit and mystery of life. I write to let you know we are here together. You are not alone. We shall find each other as we have from the beginning.

We meet each other in the moment of truth. We dwell together in the light. We have no master or mistress but God and no weapons but the love of the one who causes us to be. You are the longed for one who is always coming into being from nothingness. You are the awakened on awakening from the dream of the world. You are the creation’s desire for self reflective consciousness. You are the healing in your time and place and from your body and mind shines the light which illuminates our shadows. Come beloved, into your own which is prepared from before time and space by the Creator who frees us to be.

I write to you beloved child of yesterday, today and tomorrow because we want you to take heart and be present in all your potential. We want you to accept the gift of freedom, transformation and enlightenment which is planted like a seed at the core of your being. We are with and for you, beloved.

Entering Another’s Bubble

Entering another’s bubble is a sometimes frightening thing. I try to select people who don’t have armored bubbles. There is less chance of conflict and confrontation. After all, each of us is the Creator’s representative within our personal bubble. I am also one of the Creator’s creatures and would share a bit of the vision the Great Spirit gave me for it is the way and the truth. You might wonder why anyone would want to share anything with a stranger when the safest course in this civilization is steering clear of everyone you don’t need to have contact with as a means of avoiding violence and abuse, especially if you happen to be profiled on the basis of race and status. But speaking the word of peace requires a certain amount of risk-taking in the world of violence into which we human beings have awakened.

It is not simply a matter of preaching to the choir for the choir already knows the song of the community of life and sings it to the best of its ability. The speaking of the word of peace is the speaking of truth to power for if its power cannot be turned from violence to creativity humanity will cease to be human and lapse into a spiritual and psychic darkness.

Reaching out and being rejected remains a painful personal experience but not reaching out is an abdication of our responsibility to future generations and the growing diversity and complexity of the creation. We humans are not the only conscious species on the Earth or the creation and the Great Spirit, the mystery of life has the ability and the process in place to evolve spirit filled awakened beings to God’s intent. If we should fail to learn the way that makes for life it will not be for lack of signs and miracles and guides along the journey through time. It will be because we came to a moment of profound choice and chose to ignore the truth and followed the lie that coils its way around our desire to be as gods.

Like a Stranger and an Immigrant

Having grown up in this nation where I feel like a stranger and an immigrant, I don’t feel I am of it or it is of me. When I was a child and a young man I believed what I was told and acted as though I were a part of it. But I stopped wanting to be at home in this civilization, in this culture and society as I learned the truth. I wanted to be another way, a way that spoke to the deep places within me. I am a human being, an Earth man.

I have entered into relationship with Earth and Heaven against the civilizations and cultures of her oppressors and destroyers, the cities of the dominators and colonizers, the dominions of the man gods. I cast my lot and hope with Mother Nature, with her waters and soil, her dark humus, rocks and stones, and that which worms and wings it blessing through her. I choose in favor of what breaks the willfulness of the destroyer to destroy.

The Creator plants the seed of light in the darkness that violence and fear might know their ways lead only to their end. All things pass away but the one that lives in life as life itself. This one who pours love through individual human beings to transform the moment and redeem the time shall not be undone by empires or legions of believers. This one who nurtures and coaxes, who enflames the human spirit to rise and take its place in the community of life will not be denied the sweetness and joy of our very human awakening.

Though we rise and fall and rise again, though we forget who and what we are and then again remember, though we have no clue who calls and what for, we shall be as intended when we so intend. It is an act of faith this death to fear and death itself. It is a letting go, a surrender of all the weapons and armor we use to fend off our fears and to control the other. It is the Buddha consciousness, the mind of Christ, the beauty way.

Wishing each other a Thanksgiving

People are wishing each other a happy Thanksgiving and expressing their gratitude for life. The images of thanksgiving make some of us sad even though we are grateful for life. We think of the indigenous people of all lands and what the dominator cultures and societies did and do to them and we are sorrowed. At Thanksgiving some of us are sorrowful for those who are oppressed and exploited by the dominator predator model of thinking that operates in the world. We feel great connection to the people, the imprisoned, the wounded and abused, the left out, the meek of the Earth, the chosen, the faithful ones of the Great Spirit for the powerful of the world grind us to dust.

We remain grateful for life for it is a gift from the Creator no matter how damaged or distorted by our unconscious acts. We are grateful for the opportunity to enter into relationship with God through the creation. We are grateful and give thanks for the consciousness we have and the light we are given to nurture. We are grateful the Earth feeds our bodies and spirit with hers and that we journey as part of her in the universe.

We are grateful for the Spirit of life which teaches us to laugh as well as weep. We are grateful and give thanks for the Beloved and all the forms the Beloved takes. We give thanks for our bodies, minds and spirits and for those of the others to whom we relate. We give thanks for feelings and that within each of us which feels its way to the wisdom that surpasses understanding.

We give thanks for the truth though we may not yet know it fully. We are thankful that it exists and is the source of all life and makes itself known, here and there, now and then. We are grateful and give thanks that none can possess the truth but that we may be lifted by it.

Finally, we are grateful for the light that breaks into our darkness leads us on the way that is life eternal. We give thanks for friends and family, the stranger and the other. We ask you, Beloved Spirit of life, to create in us a holy place where we may drink from the spring of love and wisdom that flows from your presence in the creation.

The Thunder Dreamer

Dreams tell me the way of violence is coming to an end.
We are left with a crippled home to care for as though it is ours
though we may not be of the world that made it thus.

We are the aliens, the outsiders, the strangers, the dirt people.
We are the poor and the oppressed. We are the raped and wounded.
We the maimed and broken have nothing but God’s promise.

We are the beloved of Mother Earth yearning for justice.
We are the creation becoming conscious on the way.
We are the awakening and the turning.

Dreams tell us it is happening even as we sleep.
The empires of man are falling beneath the weight
of their shadowy arrogance and they are afraid.

The dreams tell us to come out of their clutches, beloved.
Let them die in peace. Ease their going for they fall prey
to a disease of mind and soul. A heart rot leaves them empty.

The dreams say it is time to set right what we can,
time to tend our relations. The Creator is in the creation.
The fall wind strips dead leaves and limbs from trees.

Winter draws us tight to each other and spring waits on us.
This man’s world comes to an end and heaven and earth
are one. That is what the dreams say.

Father Creator if we ask you to reveal

Father Creator if we ask you to reveal our cracks and shadows, do you do it in a way we can understand and accept? Will you help us to see the log in our own eye, the place of our denial? Help us to see what it is in us, in me, which prevents healing. Heal our separation from each other. Help us to understand what it is we need to do this time around to be consciously aware in your presence each moment. Help us see where we put the blocks to your presence in the moment.

Beloved, we want to relate to each other as though you are present in each of us knowing full well we may have forgotten who we truly are. We forget we are your light taking form. And in the forgetting we become frightened children fearful of the spirits we create in our forgetting. Yet most of the creation knows it is you taking form, Beloved. Most of the creation lives in union with you. Not separate from but integrated into the expression of your love.

But many of us do not yet know this in our souls and still delight in the distinctions that make us better than the other, whether the other is a coyote, a pine cone, a granite outcrop. We define ourselves by comparison to whatever is seemingly other and reinforce our sense of separate self as present and accounted for and more valued than these small wonders. Perhaps the judge must suspend all judgments so the Great Mystery has room to operate and the time of control returns to the forces of nature and departs from the hand of man. After all a judge can only judge by human law and the law of humans is flawed for we have made ourselves into gods. While the truth is if we think we are god or act as if we are god or could be god we are far from the way.

Our minds are unique gifts from the creation to itself and to each other for it is the creation which produced this mind, body and spirit from the creative energy of the Creator burning within it. It is the energy which is never consumed but always transformed into greater and greater complexity and differentiation. It is written in the bible that the Great Spirit can create children to Abraham from the stones of the Earth. Children to Abram, inheritors, heirs to the Great Spirit’s blessing of the way, the truth and the light.

Oh Christ, can you imagine Buddha meditating, sitting still while the cosmos revolves and evolves. Empires rising and falling while the light of Malcolm and Martin, Gandhi and Black Elk shines through their fog and darkness like beacons of hope in a sea of unconsciousness.

A well meaning and sincere man asked me what this communion would look like, this consciousness of communality. I answered he should talk to God about it and look for the answer there. He told me he did not like my answer but later apologized because his wife suggested he may have offended me. I was not offended by him saying he did not like my answer. I thought of another way to answer the question. Many want to know what heaven will look like before they will choose it and in the meantime we exist in man made suffering and denial, full of pride and arrogance building empires and cultures of dominance and greed. I have heard that it was Jesus who said seek first the presence of God. Sounds like the place to start and end every endeavor for the sake of all future generations.