LOOSELY SPEAKING...

Bad Dad

Imagine a family where the father corrals all the money that comes into the household and uses it for his own vacations, his own toys and projects. He also puts some aside for emergencies, like seeing a car he really wants, or he suddenly needs to take a trip somewhere. He enjoys taking his friends out to dinner. He gives expensive presents because he wants people bigger than himself to like him, to include him, to invite him to their parties.

Only when (if) his personal needs and wants are met, whatever money is left goes to support of the household: making sure everyone gets enough food; making sure medical care can be paid for; making sure school supplies can be purchased, and that there are funds for field trips and special opportunities, and tuition. But it is a small pie. He tells his wife that frugality is a virtue, and he can’t afford to waste money on frivolous things.

He gives carefully portioned allowances, but later, if he needs more money for his own opportunities, cuts back that allowance. He will sometimes withhold allowances as a punishment or to teach a lesson: The world is a hard place, and the children should be prepared for it. He charges rent for their bedrooms, for rides in the car–Nothing is granted for free, and they must learn fiscal responsibility. If they can’t manage with what they have, that’s their own fault.

If someone in the household has a special need and can justify to him that it is really necessary, he will shell out as little as possible for it. And it may have to be paid back with interest.

If the roof blows off the house, he will hire someone to repair it, but will delay paying them as long as he can.

This is not a happy household. This family will either fade away from neglect, or will get fed up with the father’s financial abuse and rebel against him. There are more of them than of him: They are likely to prevail. They will sell off all his stuff, they will drain all his accounts. Perhaps they will put him down in the basement and feed him scraps for the rest of his life.

This is of course, a metaphor for how authoritarian governments treat their citizens, and how it always turns out in the end.

Going Beyond Meat

Had a char-broiled Beyond-Meat burger yesterday. Not bad… Then read a review online that say what with all the not-meat but still saturated fat (like coconut oil), the lack of nutritious veg ingredient (in favor of more meat-like textures), and a lot of salt, it really isn’t all that much healthier than a regular ground beef burger.
Yeah, okay then… Except for the cow. It’s a LOT healthier for the cow.

And how about the recent legislation in America’s deep South where it is now illegal to call anything not actually real meat, a burger? Seriously, do they think that a) changing the word changes the reality, or that b) consumers are too stupid to understand that a label that says ‘vegetarian burger’ isn’t actually a meat burger?

In fact, we are living in an America right now that is run by people who do think that way: that changing a word changes reality; that saying a thing makes it true; that no one should question what Authority declares true.

They really think we are that stupid.

Mystic Whispers: Troy

ASHES IN THE ORACLE’S MOUTH

Helen, oh Helen!
You silly git!
You pretty face,
You great lack-wit!

Paris, perspective
was never your strength
Just please yourself
at any length!

Menelaus,
big as a bull
your heart pumps blood
and that is all.

Agamemnon,
greed for power
cuts at your life line
hour by hour.

Achilles,
as honest as killers come–
kill and be killed
is your personal sum.

Hector, oh Hector,
where else could you end
but dragged beyond death
your mouth full of sand.

Homer, great Homer,
Troy’s yours for the giving–
I know, I know, Poet–
writing– well, it’s a living…

CL Redding 2005

Toddler-think

Toddlerhood does not necessarily end at a particular age, but we can recognize them by certain signs and behaviors.

TODDLER’S RULES OF POSSESSION

If I like it, it’s mine.
If it’s in my hand, it’s mine.
If I can take it from you, it’s mine.
If I had it a while ago, it’s mine.
If it’s mine, it must NEVER appear to be yours in any way.
If I’m doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
If it looks just like mine, it’s mine.
If I saw it first, it’s mine.
If you are playing with something and you put it down, it automatically becomes mine.
If it’s broken, it’s yours.

(author unknown)

Out-of-Hand, Out-of-Mind, Out-of-Existence

When it leaves my hand, it leaves the world.
When it leaves your hand, if I don’t want it, it becomes a mess and you should get it out of my way.

Good and Evil/Rules

If it runs contrary to my expectations and desires, it is evil.
If it upsets me, it is evil.
My rules are good, your rules are evil.
If it breaks my rules, it is evil.
If I break your rules, it is good.
If I am held accountable for breaking your rules, it is evil.
If I am mean to you, it is good.
If you are mean to me, it is evil.

You are welcome to add more Toddler-Think lists in the comments–I am sure there are many I have missed.

Cleaning Up Our Mess

The world is in such a mess!

It has always been messy, that’s nature, but mostly, prehistorically, when everyone lived in Jurassic Park, messes were local business: some moments of violence followed by inelegant feeding, and plenty of scavengers to clean up after. Humankind, we don’t confine our messiness to moments or a limited area, we spread it far and wide, and it never seems to end. But in those times, we didn’t have the reach we have now.

I’m writing now about a particular element of the human mess: our propensity for deadly conflict. Is it biological, rooted deep in our DNA? Is violent territoriality hard-wired into Homo sapiens, as it appears to be in other primates? If that were so, then we could not choose otherwise. But we can. Many don’t, but every human being has the potential to make choices, to choose not to go with what comes automatically. We abandoned Eden so that we could make our own choices.

It has been said that we are here in this world to learn how to make successful choices. We are designed to observe and interpret, to explain, to understand, to decide, to believe. We feel, too, and that certainly colors what we decide about what we’ve observed, and what we do with the information we believe we’ve pinned down about Reality.

If we all saw clearly, and really did grasp Reality, there would be a lot less to fight over. But we don’t. We could, but we don’t. It isn’t what we choose. Yet.

Perceptual Filters and Paradigms

Reality happens. Right there in front of us, it happens, and we see it happening. If anyone asks, we can tell them what we saw happen. But can we tell them what happened?

Probably not—because we are not allowed to see what really happens: Our own minds don’t let us.

Everything we observe of reality comes to our consciousness through the filters we have set in our subconscious to interpret for us, to make sense of the world according to our experience and expectations.

Paradigms are a kind of perceptual filter: a template, a set of rules, a collection of beliefs about the world and all, that helps us define our own reality. It is a shortcut.

It is a great time-saver to sieve stimuli through a set of beliefs about How Things Are—established beliefs about Reality—to organize and interpret, to understand where things fit in Reality. Of course, it isn’t absolute Reality, but personal reality we are thusly defining.

The trouble comes not just from not knowing the difference, but from not even realizing that there is one.

We don’t see what we don’t want to be true.
We see what we’re looking for.
We reject what doesn’t fit through our filters.
We seek to explain rather than to understand.

Mystic Whispers: On the Half Shell

Out of the sea on rising foam
Venus emerges,
makes herself at home,

and the Gods all pause a moment to look
and admire and plan…
and their canny brains cook…

The Goddesses, too– they look and they see
a sister to them
and a rival-to-be…

For the proper attentions, there must always be,
to Wisdom, and
to Fidelity.

And Discord smiles to see this birth:
Her job’s secure
forever on Earth!

CL Redding 2005

ReUse, ReImagine, RePurpose

SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF PLASTIC

I save things that are not useless–though today I did unfriend and block a person on Facebook. I have bags and boxes loaded with medication bottles, protein supplement drink bottles, the big plastic flasks from cold brew coffee concentrate… Egg cartons, lots of egg cartons of the old paper kind and those clear, tri-fold ones that are so useful if you do egg art for the holidays! Large clear plastic bakery boxes that make excellent green-houses for starting seeds… plastic plates from microwave meals that are very useful water catchers under potted plants… tubes from paper towels and toilet tissue, and those narrow, sturdy ones from aluminum foil boxes… And have you ever noticed that the cutting edge from a foil box can be very handy in a tool kit?

I will never use all this stuff for crafts or anything, but someone might. I hear that on ebay one can sell such stuff for surprising amounts of actual money. And there is a local crafting/recycling store where one can trade in just about anything for credit towards stuff one actually does have a use for.

So, from today, each type of such stuff has an accessible receptical to itself, and a day will come when I actually get around to which ever next stage seems best.

The key to reducing plastic waste in the environment is to find new uses for it, to never let it get back into the waste disposal system. Plastic is not as big a problem as our own carelessness and indifference to what happens to things we toss out of our immediate space and consciousness.

The Downs Child

Some years ago I saw a drawing of a Downs child and began to consider my own thoughts and feelings about how I regarded such children, what it would be like to be the parent of one of these special people. These two poems came out of those ponderings.

SLOW

So steady and intent your gaze
staring at me as my patience frays…
So long it takes to tell you anything,
to watch you process what the world brings.

You don’t know, not yet at any rate,
my anger and dismay at this, our fate:
Yours, to struggle just to comprehend;
mine, the same, it comes to in the end.

But then–for nothing that I see, you laugh!
The throaty coo and giggle whole, not half–
not half-a-child, in your pure delight;
Your chuckle bursts into my guilty night.

It’s I, not you, that must adjust my pace–
relax, remembering it’s not a race!
I teach your mind what you will need to know;
You teach my heart, where I’m a little slow.

OH, CHILD!

I am tempted
to be so sad
for you…
Grieving for
your limitations,
for how the world
will pity
and neglect
and scorn…

And yet–
I see the fierceness
in your gaze:
Intent
to understand
whatever mystery
lies there before you
veiled…

How you
would scorn my pity
this
and every day!

Pinning Down ‘God’

PART ONE: DISTINGUISHING RELIGION FROM SPIRITUALITY

It has been said that there are as many recipes for borscht as there are Russians. Of course, borscht is a matter of personal taste, and only really important to beet fanciers. If there are any wars fought over which borscht is best, they are probably very small, and go unnoticed in the world at large.

Religion is not quite such a local phenomenon.

Differing definitions of gods or ‘God’ have moved vast armies across the face of the world, generated suffering and grief, have driven uncountable numbers of people away from the very idea of certain definitions of ‘God.’ People have justified terrible things in support of their meaning of ‘God.’

Any useful discussion on the topic requires defining of terms, just so that those involved can be sure of discussing the same thing: Assumptions are the seeds of war!

My simple definition of ‘religion’ is that which is the packaging of spiritual information. It is the body of the spirit of connection with the Divine. As a body, a religion fears its own extinction, it strives for its own advantage, it reads its power from the numbers of its followers from whom it gathers in what it needs to survive in the temporal/physical world. These needs range from money to buildings to bodies. The power of a religion to control resources–like followers–is generally based in the fear/love spectrum.

Spiritual revelation is the content of that packaging. Revelation… understanding… epiphany… all are part of what the package dresses itself up for. But all the glitz and awe and pageantry that go into attracting followers, especially followers not informed enough in their lives to see deeper than surfaces, creates a body of followers who are so distracted and cheered by the packaging and never take note of the content.

Religion is also a tool of spiritual revelation, once it gets past its own survival issues. The rituals and words serve to help all those body-bound followers–people used to seeing themselves only as physical beings–to experience the realness of spirit. It is by way of entrancement that we shift from a body-consciousness to something higher.

Entrancement is that state in which we engage with a good book or a movie, losing our sense of self, of time passing in order to ‘be’ in the story. It is a kind of hypnosis that we experience when our thoughts extend beyond whatever is happening in the immediate world around us–as when we are driving, or sitting in a boring meeting. It is a dream state-of-consciousness, whether simple distraction or deep sleep dreaming.

Trance is induced by simple things. For instance, information suggested to the senses, or to the part of the mind that processes senses: when more than three senses are given information to work with, the mind believes.

Trance comes out of numbing of the feelings, too: giving the sense-mind more than it can process. Babies, when overstimulated, fall asleep. Boring the mind also works: Chanting uses both tone and repetition–repetition of tones moves the mind right on out of its body-consciousness.

The incense, the chant, the liturgy, the motions, the surroundings are all controlled to make that happen, to allow people who only know themselves as physical can feel that disembodied reality. For some, this is a doorway to a truly spiritual experience. For many, it is what they learn to identify as spiritual experience. These are the ones who celebrate the packaging as the Truth. They absorb the teachings of their particular religion as Truth, with no application of critical thought, while those who went through that doorway, who transcended the packaging, tend to see beyond the packaging, become aware of the false advertising, the vanities of the lures and promises.

When a religion is deliberately built to create followers, to build wealth and power, the tactics are the same, but there is no content. There will be the suggestion, some sort of construct meant to look like spiritual content, but it is all part of the control strategy. This is my definition of a cult.