Gene's Blog

Random thoughts

Last night was pot pouri and you can’t have the same thing for supper every night, well, unless you are me, I am on my third night in a row of peaches for supper. I think I could live on those alone. I might be trying to, giggle.

So what I am going to do is wander, random thoughts, that have been running through me. Tomorrow night will be different, a group of bloggers is sponsoring a rally against abuse, of all sorts, I got a mailing today about it and solicited ideas from friends, organizations, things like that, dealing with all manner of abuse, unfortunately there are many forms to consider. So tomorrow night, I’m going to write something about something and have no idea yet at all what that will be, jen does, she tells me not to worry about that tonight, tomorrow night will flow on its own. So I am sure it will. :^)

I was thinking, because of this book, I’ve mentioned about transcending our biology, which really means our primal instincts as I am understanding it and thought it is sort of hard going, I am finding a lot of truth in it. I’m going to do a piece, maybe more than one about that eventually, or elements of it. It is important, kids are, how they get their start in life is.

While I was reading that today at lunch though, I heard this child’s laugh echo through the atrium of the building I was in. And it made me think of something, I know lots of people are annoyed by children in restaurants and other public places, all that noise and exuberance, which is not always all that conducive to those other people having the experience they are there to have. And at one time in my life, a much younger me felt the same way – can’t those parents control those children. Then I had children of my own, giggle. I mean we were all told as kids ourselves that children should be seen and not heard. If you weren’t, well, good on you, as a friend of mine from down under might say, but a lot of us were. But you know, a very long time ago, I changed my mind about all that and for a reason that I’ll talk about in tomorrow’s post. I smile now when I hear a child’s raised voice in a restaurant, because I know that is a child who knows she is loved. Children who aren’t sure of that, who live in fear, they are the quiet ones, the ones who know that if they make noise, they will hear about it THEN, or even worse, later. To me now, a giggling child’s shrill little voice signifies one who is secure in her person, who knows that the people around her love her and who has not been taught to be silent, or made to be. She is full of cheer and questions and confident that she is allowed to ask them, to observe, to giggle and free to be. So while I still think, that all children should be taught the difference between inside and outside voices, they should not be until they have heard their laughter peal through the echoes of a large public building. At least once. Cuz, hey, I want to hear that too, giggle. It make me smile and some days I need that more than anything else that is going to happen.

I’ve been listening to Sarah McLachlan again, this time a song from Solace, which on the whole is not my favorite cd of hers, but I am expanding my understanding of her music and so will keep with it for a bit, I am REALLY loving Afterglow and will talk about those another time but this one is special, I just love the whole song, I will not forget you, but it’s chorus is what catches my attention most.

And I will oh I will not forget you

Nor will I ever let you go

I will oh I will not forget you

I think this is the song God sings us as we descend into our human bodies here in the relative universe. I think this is why, somewhere deep within us, every soul, remembers home.

I saw in the paper today that the White House is seeking $190 billion dollars for war in 2008. What do you suppose that much money would buy in terms of love? Health care for children, food and shelter for the homeless, sick and needy, early childhood education and child care, post-secondary education for more of our talented little ones, job training for those so inclined. Yet we want to spend it on death. What do priorities of THAT sort teach our children about our moral values?

I got a joke in the mail today. One of those Jeff Foxworthy “you might be a” something or other if you? Well, I am most definitely a Minnesotan cuz not only did I have the experience of most of them, but I did one last night, lol. Took Cisco out for his last potty break of the night wearing shorts and a parka, giggle.

I saw something in a movie the other day, heard, I suppose I mean, a line that gave me real pause for thought. Some guy said that the new law of the 21st century jungle is not kill or be killed, it is kill or be irrelevant. That really is the world we’ve become isn’t it? It isn’t enough to stand on a soap box and speak your piece to anyone who might stop to listen, or to write yourself a snotty little book about how others should do things, or send off pithy letters to the editor, or even hold court at your local watering hole. No, in this century, to be relevant, to make your point, you kill or you are invisible. You strap bombs to yourself and kill 30 innocent people having lunch. Or, you load up a car with explosives and drive it into a building. Or you arm your warplane with all manner of horrors and take off from a flight deck into the beauty of a God-given morning and drop those hellish contraptions on people you hope are the enemy. Or are told are the enemy. I am wondering why we aren’t wondering just how important relevance has to be. Has it ever really been different on this planet? Did the first two groups of humans to meet, do so to kill each other? We aren’t very good at this learning to play nice with others part yet. In those dark nights of the soul I talked about yesterday, I worry that we will never be, but always comes the dawn and with it a rebirth of hope. Hope can’t die. We can’t let it. Without that, we really do have nothing to light the darkness. 90 billion flipping dollars for war next year. And all that is being debated is the amount. THAT is scary. That is the darkness encroaching. And, hell, we don’t even know what bin Laden’s budget is. Or where he is for that matter. So we’ll just keep pacifying Iraq and blowing up various parts of Afghanistan, and God know what else.

The president of Iran will keep making speeches that in many countries could get him committed but in this one, and in his own, gets him applause. The holocaust is a fraud, did you know that? Do the six million Jews who died in the chambers know that? A journalist was impertinent enough to tell him that he was wrong in saying there were no gay people in Iran, that she knew personally some of them. He inquired as to their addresses, so that the government might know what was going on. The world gets more insane by the day, and honestly, on most days, it seems no one is noticing. I’m going to quote a bit of a book I love here, Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, actually I’d quote from two, but one of them has gone missing, giggle. No worries, I’ll get another, and anyway, I practically have it memorized. I have identified with this book since I first read it, I guess that would have been 1968, though it was published in 1961, until 1968, I was occupied reading all of his books leading up to this one. As an aside, I was pleased to see Neale Donald Walsch credit what he called the “visionary literature of Robert Heinlein, who raised questions and posed answers in ways no one else has even dared approach” in the Acknowledgments preface to book 1. Indeed there was a time when I thought most of book 1 was lifted FROM Robert’s works, so similar are many of the ideas God brings forth. Anyway, what I’m going to do here is just quote a little of what Robert interspersed throughout this most enlightening, mind-expanding and wonderfully entertaining book. I mean, most of it is pure story, well written and conceived as was everything he did, but he threw in at the beginning of many sections, what I suppose you could call non sequiturs, a couple of paragraphs that had NOTHING to do with the story, but which sort of summarized the “news” of that particular day. I found them all quite amusing, for example,

“The third planet from Sol, held 230,000 more humans this day than yesterday; among five billion terrestrials such increase was not noticeable. The Kingdom of South Africa, Federation associate, was again cited before the High Court for persecution of its white minority. The lords of fashion, gathered in Rio, decreed that hemlines would go down and navels would be covered. Federation defense stations swung in the sky, promising death to any who disturbed the planet’s peace; commercial space stations disturbed the peace with endless clamor of endless trademarked trade goods. Half a million more mobile homes has set down on the shores of Hudson Bay than migrated by the same date last year; the Chinese rice belt was declared an emergency malnutrition area by the Federation Assembly; Cynthia Davis, known as the Richest Girl in the World, paid off her sixth husband.

The Reverend Doctor Daniel Digby, Supreme Bishop of the Church of the New Revelation (Fosterite) announced that he had nominated the Angel Azreel to guide Federation Senator Thomas Boone and the he expected Heavenly confirmation later today; news services carried it as straight news, the Fosterites having wrecked newspaper offices in the past. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Campbell VI had a son and heir by host-mother at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital while the happy parents were vacationing in Peru. Dr. Horace Quackenbush, Professor of Leisure Arts at Yale Divinity School, called for a return to faith and cultivation of spiritual values; a betting scandal involved half the professionals of the West Point football squad; three bacterial warfare chemists were suspended at Toronto for emotional instability; they announced that they would carry their cases to the High Court.”

Now honestly, does all THAT sound much different from the headlines of any newspaper in the world today? That was published in 1961. And, to me, it reads much like the Minneapolis StarTribune on any given day this year. There are many more such little bits scattered throughout what really is a profound look at humanity, faith, values and just who gets to determine what those are at any given time for any given group of people. And it is the story of how one man comes of age, a human not born on earth, a Stranger in a Strange Land. But I swear, I WAS born on earth, and I feel much like Michael Valentine Smith every day. Sometimes you have to laugh until you cry.

I think though, what truth can be found in what is happening around our world, where to not kill is to be irrelevant is found in a simple statement. Do not become that which you fear. We can’t change what we see around us by becoming what we see around us. We can’t change what our world is until we can talk about what it is. That takes people of courage, people of love, people willing to stand up and say this is NOT what we are. Moderates of every faith and tradition have to do what that brave young woman named Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American psychologist from Los Angeles did on Al Jazeera Television. Watch this amazing woman’s two minutes. SHE, and many more like her, are what are needed now. Al Jazeera Television

Then remember this as we go forth into our next day and try to follow her example. We are ALL Bringers of the Light, this must be our truth:

And I will oh I will not forget you

Nor will I ever let you go

I will oh I will not forget you

much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way,
choose to be a bringer of the light. much love, :^) gene