Sometimes I rant…Sometimes I rave… and sometimes…I…take…a…breath….
Every day, we the American people, sit in our homes, our trailers, our motor homes, our cars, or our tents; perhaps we sit in cardboard boxes under the freeway. We eat, we drink, we go shopping in malls, post on our Facebook pages, go to the library, go dancing, watch videos while we eat popcorn, go to a bar, go to church, text on our i-phones, buy cars and houses we can’t afford, and play video games. We eat food that is killing us, loaded down with pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, preservatives, additives, antibiotics, food coloring, genetically modified, and irradiated non-food ingredients.
Food that does not nourish, but encourages obesity, the growth of cancer cells, mental illness, our kidneys to fail, our livers to atrophy, our hearts to stop, is not the only unpalatable crap we swallow every day. And just like the food that is killing us without our awareness, but with our consent, we allow ourselves to be duped into complacency, complicity and apathy. We allow the powerful to bully us, without calling it bullying, without calling it what it is, “being ruled”; but by calling it by the fantasy name that we have put upon our acquiescence of abdication of our own… personal… ethical… action; “governing”.
We are lulled and duped into believing that all is well, that all will be well, that killing and torturing in the name of weapons of mass destruction and fear, because it is done in the name of democracy, releases us from what we all are at this moment in time; war criminals. We allow it to happen, we turn our youngsters into killing machines, on the streets of Iraq and Arabia, Chicago and New Jersey. We sell weapons and trade favors to the highest bidder, and then we wonder why we are hated as a nation.
We turn our faces when we see children dying by violence that we have perpetuated as a nation, in Afghanistan, and then we allow the children we have sent to do the killing to come home, mentally tortured, homeless, and broken. We are appalled that a woman living in the Middle East can be stoned to death for having sex or for showing her face in public, that people living in China throw unvalued infant girls into rivers or dumpsters, and that African park rangers slaughter Elephants and Rhino’s simply for their tusks. Yet there are those in these United States that would make birth control for women illegal, that condone the massive slaughter of dogs and cats every day in animal “shelters” around our country, that allow chickens to be stored in cages so small their feet grow into the wire, and while they are still living, cruelly, cut their beaks off to stop the “pecking order”. We hate in the name of the Bible, and kill in the name morality.
We discriminate, and subjugate, and allow cruelty and deprivation, and then we go to church, to synagogues, to temples, to the woods and praise Jesus, Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh and the Goddess. We are a country of contradictions…of dichotomies…of horrific cruelty and sometimes, unbearable kindness.
I am guilty. I know that, because I do nothing. My life is not on the line to right the wrongs, the governmental and corporate abuses; the inhumanity. I know that the government of the United States that we see on the news is not the real government. It is not the behind the scenes political maneuvering, purchased by big business and industry, the wheeling and dealing of armchair warriors, moving the game pieces across the board, pumped up with the need for power, glory, and conquest. Born of greed and arrogance our elected officials are part of a club that most of us never are invited to, never want to be invited to, and if we are, if we choose to join the bureaucracy, with star spangled eyes, we start out full of ideals and end up horribly compromised.
Our elected government daily passes laws and bills with last minute amendments that kill us; kill our families, our planet, our spirits, steal the inheritance of our children and suck the innocence from them to be left dry as bones turning to dust. We practice “an eye for an eye”, we torture and maim in the name of freedom, justice and Jesus. We allow the IRS to steal our money illegally, tax the poor till they are homeless and watch as the wealthiest among us purchase jet planes and nights in the South of France wearing shoes that cost as much as a teachers yearly salary, and ball gowns that cost as much as a years-worth of college tuition, with money saved from tax-shelters and deductions the rest of us can only dream of.
In this land of $24,000 Gucci purses and $30,000 Brooks Brothers suits, I have held the hand of a senior adult sleeping in a card board box; dying from malnutrition. I do not deny that hard work should be rewarded, but also submit that equitable distribution should prevail.
We walk with our collars turned up, our faces turned down, never making eye contact in case we are forced to be aware of the need and pain and utter desolation that travels across the faces of some of those who are on the journey with us…Of course there are those of us who risk a glance up, once in a while, and see beyond the protective bubble we surround ourselves with. We know there is despair, but we also know there is hope. We know there is injustice, but we also know there is healing. We know, but we feel impotent; not up to the task. So we bend our faces back down to watch our feet trudging onwards without connection.
Do we continue to go blindly, not the few who are called extremist, left wing do-gooders, but the “us” the seething mass of humanity just trying to muddle through buying groceries, paying rent, catching up on our credit cards, paying our power bills, our tax liability, do we ignore the destruction of our planet? Do we allow the frackers and polluters, big industry and oil, inventors of death weapons and death drugs, both legal and illegal; including genetically modified food, the power junkies, the privileged few, who move us around like a game of pick-up-sticks, out of short sighted greed, take from us our basic human rights? The right to breath clean air, to drink clean water, to eat safe nutritionally dense food, to live in shelter, to find safety in sleep, to raise our children to adult hood, to cradle our grandchildren in our arms, to live without fear of violence and rape; the rape of our planet, the rape of our souls, the taking by force, that which is not theirs to take, those thieves of humanity.
Do we continue to allow those who cannot afford health care or health insurance to die because they lack financial resources? Are we out of touch, out of caring, out to lunch? While our moms and dads, our children, our siblings, our neighbors, gasp their last breath, lives that could be saved, if only they could afford the cost of the treatment, the cost of the bill, the cost of the forced insurance to providers who are not healers, but money changers. When does the cost become too great? When do we err on the side of humanity? When do we stand up with our knees knocking, breathing in as much courage as it takes to rise up and say in united voices; ENOUGH!
When will we hold our elected criminals accountable for dragging us through power struggles we have not agreed to support? Why is it we simply comply with the dictates of our governmental ruler’s whims? When will the lives of all of those sharing this planet earth; the humans, the animals, the plants, the water, the rocks, become more important than our own human need for validation of our superiority? When do arrogance, cruelty, and ego take a back seat to compassion and love? When will humility, kindness, and gentleness be the measure of life’s successes, instead of wealth, material gain, and power?
I do not have these answers. I only have the questions. But I do know that every day that we allow anger and hatred, bitterness and resentment, envy and greed, to rule our hearts, to define our actions, to create excuses for our global behaviors, than the world becomes a harsher place, we will continue to be broken, and hope is as futile as pissing in the ocean.
One voice…that is all each of us have, one lonely voice singing an isolated melody. But when we unite our voices together we create a choir that has interwoven strands of harmony and color, strength, intensity, and grace. We create a song of life.
There are glimpses of hope. Black Women, wearing white, sitting in protest, blocking violent and cruel African War Lords with the only weapon of Peace they have; their words and their fragile human bodies…Children on a playground encouraging a youngster with cerebral palsy to finish a long run; running along with him chanting, “Go Mattie Go” cheering him on and hugging him as he crosses the finish line… A young homeless man wrapping his only blanket around an elderly homeless man, “he needs it more than me”… A brave young girl standing up to dangerous terrorists in Iraq, speaking out to champion the cause of education for girls in the Middle East, a bullet shot into her brain, and yet today, still inspires us with her bravery… The woman risking her life to rescue a dog in the middle of a hurricane, sheer will power pushing her against the wind… and the thousands of people who join together one day each year all over the world; Japan, Serbia, Holland, Germany, India, Pakistan, Israel, the United States…to give total strangers a free hug for peace…70 of our neighbors and volunteer fire fighters who risked their own health to stop a racing forest fire, 250 feet before it could reach our home…Glimpses of hope that remind us why we chose this assignment, why we put on suits of bone and skin, breath and vision; hearts that pound with radical compassion, with unerring grace. Hero’s simply because we are, just by being. Blessing the universe…
Today, I join my voice with those who seek to light the world with goodness, to not be bogged down with uncertainty. Today, I exercise my ability and gift to choose. I choose to be involved. Today, I will give away a part of me, the heart of me, that which is connected to the best of humanity. Today, I remind myself to breathe…in…breathe…out…Today; because I make this choice the vibration of this planet has been raised. Today, if we join our voices, our choices, if we honor one another, all life that lives on this living breathing organism we call our Mother Earth, if we find common ground, if we respectfully engage, not only do we create a world where evolution brings fierce joy, but through this creation we nullify those energies that destroy, that break down, that corrupt.
When Love walks into the room, fear must leave. When Light walks into the room, darkness is banished. When Spirit arrives, ego must flee. When we are brave enough or fed up enough to finally peer out from underneath our collars we will finally understand that by looking through eyes of love that which we see in the child, the woman, the man who is walking beside us…. is simply the face of God… looking back…