Month: April 2017

Spirituality and Politics

The Old Growth Brown Locust, Along The River Bank.

Those who have been or are engaged in spiritual community are not traditionally into politics. Those who are engaged in politics are not likely to call themselves spiritual. This is a broad generalization, but something I’ve observed over the years.

People are often given the advice to drop the news altogether, and I am likely to agree, if by news they mean mainstream media, Fox News, MSNBC, CNN.

As mentioned previously, I get my news from independent media, which by any account, lacks a spiritual perspective, perhaps because the news itself is devoid of empathy of compassion.

As I was growing up, our household was into spiritual studies, while also engaging in left wing political activism. These two activities rarely merged. They were mutually exclusive.

We have reached a spiritual crisis in America. The rate of heart disease has skyrocketed in part because people have shut down their ability to accept and love one another, or themselves.

The high fat American diet plays a major role in heart disease, as well as a sedentary lifestyle and lack of exercise.

I just resurrected my old blog Prayer Prescriptions. As much as I am able, I will post on both blogs and link them heart to heart. Politics and matters of the spirit benefit from prayer, meditation and a contemplative daily life.

Each day is an opportunity to begin anew: to laugh, love and grasp the beauty that everywhere surrounds us. 

Throughout the day, let us remember to say special prayers for the people affected by the chemical poisoning in Syria. Their pain is our pain. Their liberation is also ours.

May the benevolent spirits make the journey between worlds a fearless one.

On Peace Amen

Politics of Homelessness and Poverty part 2

Although the adventures in this book happened nearly forty-four years ago, they serve as record and reminder of the Baby Boomer legacy to American history.

When I and my gang of traveling vagabonds left the hometown with just the clothing we wore plus a few other apparel choices, our 5-10 dogs, and panel truck to live in, plus enough weed and LSD to sink a military ship, we didn’t consider the Politics of our actions. We knew the US government had gone mad and the social norms based on accepted ways to live no longer meant anything to us, as if they ever did.

This was the end of the 1960’s, after all, and the Vietnam war was raging and all our beloved leaders had been shot down.

We were forced to live in the present moment.

No one wanted to put us up, so that winter, we lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, moved on to Velaca Lake in upper state New York, (strangely, I can’t find this lake in my google searches) and further on to the woods near Williams College in Massachusetts.

I remember when my down sleeping bag got wet and in attempting to dry it by an open fire, went up in flames. My only security–gone.

We picked up most of the down feathers, stuffed them back in the sleeping bag, and I sewed it up. Not quite as fluffy as before, but it worked. 

A sewing kit is indispensable in the war chest of a homeless person.

My favorite memories were around a campfire at night telling stories, making each other laugh, staring into the hot coals,  imagining dream shapes. 

We didn’t drink alcohol in those days, but weed heightened our sensory perspectives.

I wrote a book on those days of homelessness. I am sure Nathan Monk whom I wrote about yesterday, would say we chose our homelessness experience. He was born into it. Because of his resilient spirit, he did not fall prey to the forces that could have destroyed him. 

When I entered nursing school in 1980, I viewed that experience as a rehabilitation for my mind, body and spirit.

Here is the link to my book on kindle. You can buy it for 99 cents.

The Politics of Homelessness

This picture accompanied an article on homelessness in the New York Times.

Father Nathan Monk, author of Chasing The Mouse, describes in his memoir what it was like growing up in poverty. Most of his childhood was spent living in cars, abandoned homes, or rundown motels.

He went on to become a Roman Catholic Priest whose ministry is homelessness, saving people from the streets and prison. I just finished his book and highly recommend it.

Here is his interview with Max Keiser of the Keiser Report. Is homelessness a racket in America? Is it big business? When the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, I surmise Nathan Monk is on to something, from someone who experienced poverty and homelessness first hand.

Are Democrats for Voters or Donors?

Here is Ammon Hennacy, close family friend.

     We can decry Trump forever but until and unless the Democrats get with the program in alignment with working people and struggling masses, Trump will win again.

     Only Bernie Sanders is addressing this issue, along with my favorite independent media sources, outlined on this recent post. I forgot to add Lee Camp of Redacted Tonight.

     The oligarchy and plutocracy is in control here in the USA. This means the 1% wants to take our freedoms and money away to make themselves richer. They’ve already essentially done this for decades in the making. Trump is a symptom of this phenomenon.

     Would the corporate democrats rather lose to Trump than win with a progressive democrat? Seems so, at great expense to a democracy existing in name only.

     Freedom lies at the heart of these questions. When our family friend Ammon Hennacy was imprisoned for not paying the WW1 war tax, he came to a vital realization: freedom lies in the heart, mind and soul of the individual. 

     The warden was a controlling individual and disturbed Ammon’s ability to be at peace within himself. When he had his awakening, he forgave the warden. Suddenly, the warden and Ammon could communicate on a human level. 

     What about the democrats? Here is Jimmy Dore going on a classic rant against the Corporate Democrats:

Loving vs the State of Virginia

The Lovings had an amazing and enduring Love Story.
     When I was growing up, my mother told me and my siblings that all the Lovings in America and throughout the world are related. William E. Loving was my grandfather. When he and my grandmother divorced, he moved back to Virginia.
     I thought my mother was an only child, but W.E. Loving went on to have seven more children, a total of eight.
     I met the youngest of W.E.’s children in the 1990’s. Her husband was doing the Loving genealogy, and they wanted to meet me. So we had a reunion in Lancaster, PA.
     Some years later, I became aware of Loving vs the State Of Virginia, of the profound love story between Mildred and Richard Loving.
     They were first arrested in 1958 for the then crime of interracial marriage, outlawed in Virginia. They exiled to Washington DC  and fought to bring their case to the Supreme Court. They succeeded. And they won.
     This case set a precedent for striking down the Defense Of Marriage Act, or DOMA, making marriage between LGBT couples legal. The ACLU was strategic in winning both cases, bringing both to the Supreme Court.
     I recently became a member of the ACLU. It’s the least I can do, under the present circumstances gripping America. We have many battles to fight, and the ACLU has always been on the right side of history. May they continue to wage peace and speak truth to power, as is their way. May we the people support their efforts.
     Another interesting Loving tidbit: Robert Duvall played my great great grandfather, Oliver Loving,  in the mini-series, Lonesome Dove. Names were changed to protect the not so innocent. Lonesome Dove spiced the characters up. I doubt Oliver Loving was as colorful a character as Augustus McCrae–or was he? Thanks to the creative imagination, I can pretend he was.