LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

To anyone out in Blog land. I have an Amazon Fire tablet that is having a problem charging. It ran down a bit once. Recharged to 100 percent held that for a couple of weeks then started going down again. If the battery goes down to zero can you still run a tablet off the power cord? Seems like an easy enough question to ask but got no help from the so called help line from a phone answerer with a very heavy, almost unintelligible Indian accent.

SHIFTING SANDS

Posts may seem a little, shall we say different for awhile. I'm rereading Starhawk's Spiral Dance again. For the first time. And rereading some Quaker texts. Again for the first time.

I was working with her "Grounding the Tree of Life." Sitting, breathing, eyes closed. Sudden image of the Great Tree as a great, old oak. Roots going down, down, down deep into the earth. And suddenly I'm hit with feelings of grief and sorrow. (how do you put a psychic experience into words, it's impossible)

Grief for what? Not sure. Loss of habitat? Loss of the birds that make the trees their homes? Loss of the trees so the birds have no where to go? Breaking the circle? Don't know right now.

Was it me crying or was I tapping into, recognizing some deep ecological sorrow? That the trees had a way of communicating through their root systems, through the deep earth and that is being destroyed?

SYMBOLS

This is a simple version of the peace symbol.

And this a version of the wheel of the year.

Look at the first image carefully. Turn it upside down. Then turn it on it's side. First to the left and then to the right. One becomes the other and the peace sign becomes the wheel of the year, the endless cycle of sewing, growing, harvesting. And finally the waiting for the cycle to begin again.

Life leads to death and death to a new beginning.

And then there is death that leads to destruction. From Proverbs 6:16-19

"There are six things that God/dess hates, seven that s(he) abhors: a haughty look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that weaves wicked plots, feet that hurry to do evil, a false witness who lies with every breath, and one who sows dissension among brothers (and sisters)." With some slight variations of my own. LOL

And I leave these verses might apply to your imagination. There are two paths. Life and death. Time to choose. And it won't be easy.

I WROTE THIS POST

back in July of 2014. Some things have changed. A lot hasn't. And I'm afraid we may be that much closer to the whirlwind. 

BACKGROUND

There is an excellent documentary, Monsenor:The final journey of Oscar Romero. Unfortunately outside of a couple of YouTube excerpts it appears to only be available for purchase. You can instant rent damn near anything on Amazon, but not this one. I'm not recommending buying on my say so, but a church library might have a copy.

If the film were just about Romero I probably wouldn't have bothered. However, it makes extensive use of archival news film from those last three years. Army patrols, bodies, army patrols, frightened men standing to one side with their arms tied behind their backs. A mark of the death squads. More army patrols. Mothers gathering together to demand to know what happened to their disappeared children. One women had four sons. They were all missing. I doubt if she ever found out happened to them. Mostly peaceful street demonstrations that were cut short in a hail of bullets. Crowded, narrow city streets. Almost claustrophobic even on film.

The interview that stands out for me is with a woman who was a lay churchworker at the time. She held Bible studies in her home. During one meeting a newcomer asked her if she knew that three men were sitting in a car outside her house watching who was coming and going? Gulp time. I don't think it ever got so bad that being discovered with a Bible could get you killed. But, next time somebody complains about how bad Christians have it here ask them if anybody has tagged a building in their neighborhood with "be a patriot, kill a priest lately."

In fact. The next time some paranoid idjit natters on about how oppressive this government is gently remind them so far our children aren't being disappeared, our neighbors aren't being beaten or worse; their bodies found in the local dump or by the side of the road. In most of the country we don't hear gunfire or screams in the night.

Even after he was murdered the killers couldn't take a day off. The crowds for his funeral overflowed to the plaza outside the cathdral. Somebody threw a smoke bomb and the killing began. It continued and went on for ten long, tortured years. Those kids on the border are just the tip of the iceberg. We've sown the wind. I hope we can survive the whirlwind.

IT'S BEEN PAID FOR

I guess you could call our way of doing war these days the highest form of capitalism. In a society that claims it values saving but just wants to play with the lives of others what do you do with the weapons of war?

They've been paid for. With that borrowed work of others. The weapons neither plant or do they reap. Might as well use them to blow something, or someone up. Any excuse will do as long as the explosions and misery aren't in our back yards.

MASTER OF NOTHING

So the Trumpster wants to boast about so sort of mission accomplished. Well, my favorite ex navy warrant officer does his usual excellent job of breaking that claim down.

Remember the current occupant is a salesman. Has been, still is and always will be. And if you can sell something while lying through your teeth? Hell yes, a salesman will do that and laugh all the way to the bank about how stupid you were to part with your money for his snake oil. And as we seem to be drifting to ramping up our presence in the Middle East so the man child in DC can claim to be more of a, damned if I know what here are the lyrics to a Bob Dylan piece that I've posted  before.

"Masters Of War" by Bob Dylan

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain.

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion'
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins.

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do.

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead.

And remember how Faux Noise announced the whole scenario while standing in front of a picture of a mushroom cloud.

TIME TO MOVE ON

Like it or not this,sadly has become the face of American Christianity. The more moderate believers keep hoping there is something to salvage. There isn't.

I've said it before. The face that the cult of American Christianity seen by the rest of the world is beyond salvage. Beyond redemption. Find another way. Find another road. Leave this cult to rot on the vine. Let it be dead and buried. And let the sign on the headstone read "this far and no further."

GUNS INTO TOOLS

You can pronounce lead as either "led" as in the metal or "leed" as in what Moses and MLK did for their people. This group takes guns, has them melted down and turned into tools. Some of those tools are shovels that are then used to plant trees.

From Isaiah 2:4 "And He shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords in plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and neither shall they learn war anymore."

We can't trust the elected hired help to do a damn thing. We can't trust the far right evangelicals to to a damn thing. Funny how when the nutjobs call on a boycott of the NFL for taking a knee for peace that's freedom of speech. When kids cry out that they are tired of being targets in a shooting range, are insulted and railed against the talking heads tell them to rely on elected leaders to do the right thing.

Hell will freeze over and pigs will fly before that happens.

DRUM MAJOR FOR A DREAM

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Just that the well has run pretty dry.

Martin Luther King was martyred fifty years ago today. This poem was written in remembrance. And to point out that some dreams are too "expensive to be realized."

DRUM MAJOR FOR A DREAM

Ira G Zepp, Jr.

Your dream was clear,

We understood it perfectly.

Liberty and justice for all –

But that was too costly

For us, too expensive

Too dear, as they used to say;

Have-nots having

Disinherited, inheriting.

Is that what you meant by

Lowering mountains and

Exalting valleys?

But you beat your drum

Slowly, persistently, non-violently.

Your dream was clear,

We understood it perfectly.

Heaven on earth.

But heaven can wait.

It is often unwise and untimely for color of skin

To give way to content of character: for black, white

Brown, red yellow

To live together in Shalom.
Is that what you mean by

Making rough places plain

And crooked paths straight?

But you beat your drum

Lovingly, redemptively, faithfully.

Your dream was clear.

We understood it perfectly.

Love your enemies,

But that is impractical, not

Calculating enough.

Loving those who despise you

Who speak calumny against you

Enables us to be brothers and sister

In the Beloved Community.

Is that what you meant by

Seeing the Promised Land?

We understood all of this

So perfectly, saw it so clearly

That we beat the drummer

Senselessly, violently, fatally.

Poem was found in a little volume with the same title. Printed in India. NOT the good old US of A.