WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS

 Or God/dess help us this poster is probably not only registered to vote but does. I don't know if this person just slept through science class or was homeschooled with workbooks that featured Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs. And yes these do exist. Or at least they did about twenty years ago because I saw them in a Portland "Christian" bookstore while my sister was picking up more Christmas decorations. 

Well I was planning to post about Quaker ideas on liberty and then The Politburo of Teabilly Mockery posted this little gem. This is why we can't have nice things. The Bible is not a science text book. Most of it was written almost two thousand years or more ago when a good many of our fellow humans believed the earth revolved around the sun. Those that bothered to think about it all. Matthew was, so it is said, a reformed tax collector. Peter was a fisherman. Paul was a tentmaker. 

We didn't "lose" the tech to go back to the moon, we just have to reinvent the wheel so to speak. And decide to spend the cash to do it. There is a great line in Apollo 13 when Jim Lovell is taking a tour group through. "A computer that fits in a room" imagine that. I probably have more computing ability in my phone than the Houston Space Center had to follow the Apollo missions. Catch the movie if you have the chance. Slide rules, computer monitors, smoking in the room, coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. 

Those shots of the earth from the moon were not composites they were taken by at least one astronaut with his very own camera. Oh and this should really blow his tiny little mind. Voyager I "woke up" and fired it's thrusters ot make a tine course change. Forty years old and more than a billion miles away from home. That blows my mind. 

I've known about this mindset for years but I simply cannot imagine living in a universe where you believe that just about everything is a trick of the devil or that the tiny little god you follow has filled your world with deceptions to test your so called faith. Is it fear that keeps your mnd and imagination in a straight jacket? 

Do I sound cranky this morning. Damn straight. 

BEING CALLED A LIBERAL IS NOT AN INSULT

AOL comments used to be quite the experience. If you enjuoyed swimming in the castle middens in July in a heat wave. Anyway a blastfrom the past. 

 I’ve been dipping my toes in some of the comments sections over on AOHell (yes, Lisa there does lie madness). Considering how some of the posters feel about the Huffington Post, I wonder how they’ll feel about the merger with AOL. After all there’s no site I know of that’s crazier than AOL, so where can they go? :-)It can be useful place to pick up journal ideas sometimes though. There are folks on those boards who treat the word Liberal as if was an insult. I guess in their eyes it is.

I’ve got to tell you though, as possible insults go, liberal is about as mild as it gets. And since a few of them claim to be Christians, I’d love to ask them if they’ve read that pesky little verse about hating your neighbor. I seem to remember that Jesus said something along the lines of “saying that you hate your neighbor in your heart is the same as murdering him.”

I’ve been researching my family tree over the last year. And the ancestors seem to run heavily to New England dissenters and seekers, Mid Atlantic Quakers and the odd Maryland or Virginia Roman Catholic. I’m sure there’s the odd Anglican in the mix, too.

A distant cousin four centuries or so removed, Thomas Gerard, went to the stake with Robert Barnes in July of 1540 for being too Protestant. They hanged three Catholics the same day because they wouldn’t sign the Act of Supremacy that made Henry VIII the head of the church in England. Henry, it seems, was something of an equal opportunity oppressor when it came to religion. (did I really say that?)

Ironically, Thomas Cromwell who pointed out to Henry that if he was head of the English church he could basically grant himself a divorce and get on with the business of getting a male heir without interference from Rome had gone to the block two days earlier. He’d let the genie out of the bottle, miscalculated how far Henry was willing to go on the road to reformation.

A great uncle a dozen or so times removed, John Gerard, spent a stretch in the tower in Elizabeth’s time for being too Catholic. He was a Jesuit who had been functioning as an underground priest. He managed to survive, finally went into exile for good and wrote his memoir

Members of the family have probably been called ranters, levelers, diggers, schismatics, heretics, papists, atheists and/or blasphemers. Remember, being called a Puritan or a Quaker was not meant as a term of affection. Heck, being called a liberal is relatively tame.

And that was while they were in England. Once they arrived in the New World each group became targets for the others. Roger Williams came into conflict with the Puritan leadership in what became Massachusetts and ended up founding Rhode Island.

Thomas Hooker was no believer in universal suffrage, but did believe that if you belonged to the church (and were a man) you should have the right to vote even if you weren’t a land owner. He and his followers helped found Connecticut.

Quakers who showed up preaching in Massachusetts were lucky if they were just kicked out of the colony. Come back and you risked being flogged at the back end of a cart while being paraded through the town. A few insisted on coming back a third or fourth time and finally faced a date with the village hangman. Not that many, but it's scary how fast the persecuted turn around and become persecuters.

I guess that set the pattern for what has happened over the years. As long as there was someplace else to go, we could get out of Dodge if we couldn't get along with each other. But, now there’s no frontier to run to; we have to stay where we are. Hopefully, somewhere along the line we’ll finally grow up (sort of) and learn to get along (maybe).

THE LIBERTY TO ORDER OTHERS-COLONIAL VIRGINIA

 Most of this material comes from David Fischer’s Albion’s Seed.

Well, I’m beginning to understand why a lot history got left out when I took US history. Twice. High school and university. :-P.

“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” Dr. Samuel Johnson. Died 1784.

“I am an aristocrat, I love liberty; I hate equality.” John Randolph of Roanoke Virginia

These quotes help to capture the paradox of the love of liberty expressed by the gentry of Virginia. The gentry, who controlled between to seventy five percent of the land and other productive assets including a growing population of African American slaves, had an exceptionally strong sense of their English liberties. While many Englishman turned out reams of prose and poetry celebrating their heritage of English liberty going back to Magna Charta those visions often contradicted each other. New England’s ordered liberty that emphasized a liberty that often subordinated individual liberty to the community and the church was much different from the hierarchical vision of liberty that grew up in colonial Virginia and the broad lands of the Chesapeake.

Hegemony and hierarchy, the uprights that held the rungs of Virginia’s social ladder. Hegemony was a condition of dominion over others and a dominion over themselves. When a traveler named Andrew Barnaby spoke of the colonial Virginian’s he observed “the public and political character of the Virginians corresponds with their private one: they are haughty and jealous of their liberties, impatient of restraint, and scarcely bear the thought of being controlled by any superior power.”

In Fischer’s opinion that was the key of Virginia colony’s definition of liberty; the power to rule. To rule over others, not to be ruled by them. The opposite of the power to rule was slavery. You didn’t have to actually be a slave, just have lost your power to rule over others.

When Britain first, at Heaven’s command,
Arose from out of the Azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:
Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. James Thomson

There’s almost innocent arrogance in this verse. Britain, protected by its namesake stormy Channel, has the right to rule; Heaven has spoken. Simply by being the sons of southern England’s landed gentry, Virginia’s gentry assumed the right to rule over others.

In Virginia’s hierarchical paradise, your status was determined by the liberties you possessed. The big land owners on the top rung of the ladder had the most liberty. They controlled most of the land and had enough power to negotiate favorable tax rates and limitations on the power of the colonial government from sympathetic governors. Granted the colonial government, at least in the first generations, didn’t have a lot of responsibilities. The patriarchal head of the new world manor regarded his dependents, those with less liberty as his responsibility. This protection could extend to immediate family, wards, house servants, visitors, farm workers and slaves.

Next came the thirty percent or so of the population that were small farmers and tradesmen. They were expected to bend the knee to the gentry and the established church, but they could give orders to the landless laborers they employed.

The laborers seem to have had at least one liberty. They could quit and look for a job somewhere else. But in a colony with large separated land holdings and few towns that may not have counted for a lot.

At the bottom of the ladder were the slaves. They had no liberties that the law was obliged to recognize. Anything they were granted was dependent on their masters. The masters had the liberty. They had none. Fischer uses a term, laisser asservir. It literally means the “right to enslave.” He doesn’t explore where the basis of the belief of the planters that they had the right to enslave others. It may go back to the whole concept of “Britannia Rules the Waves.” We have the right to do this simply because we’re British and it’s mandated by Heaven. I feel another headache coming on.

The ideal of hegemony was not only public, but personal. The ideal colonial member of Virginia’s elite was a master not only of others but of himself. To be truly free, you must rule your thoughts and actions; not be ruled by them. And while they believed in minimal intervention by the colonial government they also believed that part of their personal liberty was the duty to fulfill the duties and responsibilities of their station. Well, that’s one saving grace I suppose.

I’d love to go back to the 1780’s and invite the likes of Jefferson, Adams and Washington to a little get together.

ORDERED LIBERTY IN NEW ENGLAND

 When British emigrants came to the New World they brought more than thier religious beliefs and folkways. Each group; Puritans and dissenters, Quakers and Pietists, exiled Cavaliers, British borderers and Irish economic refugees brought their own conception of liberty.

The colonists of New Englanders had some conceptions of liberty that were unique to their settlements. David Fischer argues in Albion’s Seed that the word liberty was used in four different ways that would probably strike modern Americans as unusual.

One use of liberty described liberty or liberties that belonged to the community or communities rather than the individual. Writers, from the founding of the colony for the next two centuries spoke of the liberty of New England, the liberty of Boston, or the liberty of the town. There is evidence that Sam Adams wrote more often about the ”liberty of America” than the liberty of individual Americans.


This concept of collective liberty was consistent, to New Englanders at least, with restrictions on individual liberty that modern Americans would find very restrictive to say the least. In early years of the Massachusetts colony, potential colonists couldn’t settle there without permission from the general court. Persons who were judged to have dangerous opinions, in the eyes of the authorities, could be and occasionally were shipped back to England. Not every Tom, Dick, or Harry was allowed to move into the colony without permission.

Those colonial New Englanders accepted restraints, but did insist that the restrictions be consistent with the written laws of the Commonwealth. And they insisted that they had the right to order their communities in their own way. Not the way it was done in Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or in some cases even England.

Liberty or liberties had a second meaning in New England. One that had roots in the counties of East Anglia where many of colonists and most of their pastors left when they emigrated. Individuals could be granted the liberty to do something that they normally couldn’t do. For example, certain individuals could be granted the liberty to fish or hunt in certain areas while that liberty was denied to others. In some cases the liberty granted depended on someone’s social rank. For example a gentleman could not be punished with a whipping unless the crime was extremely serious and “his course of life was vicious and profligate.” (the author didn’t provide any examples) Those of lesser rank, had a lesser liberty: they were limited to forty stripes or less if they were sentenced to a flogging.

And codified in the fundamental liberties of the colony was the right of any man, inhabitant or foreigner to come before the courts or town meetings and have his voice heard. And if he couldn’t plead his own cause he had the right to ask someone else to speak for him.

And there was a third kind of liberty in New England. It was referred to as Soul Liberty, Christian Liberty or Freedom of Conscience. This did not mean freedom of conscience in the way we understand it. This was freedom to practice the true faith as defined by the fundamental law of the colony. This liberty did not apply to Quakers, Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, or even Presbyterians who did not agree to a very restrictive definition of reformed theology. And the definitions could, and often did, depend on the whim of the local minister. Basically, it meant they were free to persecute everyone else in their own way. I know, I’m getting a headache just trying to wrap my brain around the idea that the freedom to serve God in your own way in your own community could be defined as the right to hang Quakers for preaching in the town.

And, at times, liberty was used in a fourth way. It described an obligation of the “body politicke” to protect individual members from what the author calls the “tyranny of circumstance.” The Massachusetts poor laws may have been limited but the General Court recognized a right for individuals to be free from want in a basic sense. It wasn’t a question of collective welfare or even social equality.

In Fischer’s opinion these four ways of looking at liberty; collective liberty, individual liberties, soul freedom and freedom from tyranny of circumstance were all part of what the New Englanders sometimes called ordered liberty. The New Englanders had their ways of defining liberty; other colonies and their settlers didn’t always agree.

A WARNING

 My get up and go got up and went and didn't let me know where it was headed. So while I am searching for it here's a little something.

The words of Eriu, one of the queens of the Tuatha Da Dannan to the Sons of Mil in the novel Bard by Morgan Llewwylan. We can't keep taking without giving back and giving thanks. Perfect description of our if we can't make a profit off of it it's worthless. 

HERESY?

  "You will realize that doctrines are the inventions of the the human mind, as it tries to penetrate the mystery of God. You will realize that scripture itself is the work of human minds, recording the example and teaching of Jesus. Thus it is not what you believe that matters; it is how you respond with your heart and actions. It is not believing in Christ that matters, it is becoming like him." from the letters of Pelagius a British theologian. He disagreed, intensely, with Augustine's theology of Original Sin. He's come down through the history of Western Church as a heretic. I first ran across the pesky Britain, oh it must have been twenty years ago. My mention of him during a home visit with our pastor brought an immediate "he was a heretic." OK, we won't go there right now. And folks a little further from my tapdancing line would probably agree with him. If they'd ever heard of Pelagiius in the first place. 

The Eastern Church wasn't quite so sure about the heresy charges and withheld judgement. He saw the world with different eyes, and what he saw he loved.

The Celtic church is widely believed to have taken its inspiration from the Gospel of John. The emphasis was on listening for God in the world around us. Listen carefully and you can hear the heartbeat of God in all that is around us. It sounds easy, yeah really easy. Until you damn near knock yourself out when you run into the brick wall. If the Spirit is in every man, woman, child, fish and flower then it not only dwells where it's least expected but where it's least wanted. Who do you think of when you find yourself thinking "you really don't mean that the Spirit can be found in ______________?"

And I suspect we all can think a few folks with the spirit buried so deeply you couldn't find it with a map, a compass, a backhoe and a case of dynamite

I SUPPORT YOUR INDIVIDUAL RIGHT TO _________ EXCEPT FOR (TAKE YOUR PICK)

 A detour on the journey through Genesis. Maybe not a such a big detour after all back when I was stuck in Springfield with no fundies to torment. 

There’s a dirty little secret at the foundation of the fixation many of our economic and political leaders have on hyper individualism. It’s only really tolerated in the economic sphere of our lives. It’s ok to make as much money as you can, any way you can. No matter who or what gets hurt along the way.

Good jobs get outsourced to India or China? Ok, as long as my dividends and stock options survive. Another oil pipeline breaks and oil leaks out destroying habitat or farm land. Just the costs of doing business. And if we work it right we’ll stick the taxpayers with the clean up costs. Which means it won’t get done any time soon. Another gas pipeline breaks and explodes. Another train carrying cars full of oil and blows up. Well at least we didn’t kill anybody this time. Again somebody else probably get stuck with the clean up costs.

But, just try to carry that individualism over into our private or social lives and you might just come a cropper. Abortion on demand is the logical outcome of that individualistic philosophy. Just try to tell that to the true believers. They’ll give you chapter and verse about the “Right to Life.” At least until baby is born and then you are on your own. Have a couple of kids when times were good, fall on hard times and need a hand up? Tough, you should have consulted your trusty crystal ball, saw this coming and not had the kids in the first place.

And we’ll just belly up to the tax money fountain and ask for financing for pregnancy crisis centers staffed with counselors  that will outright lie to their clients. For their own good of course. No outdated, largely unverified information is too off the map to used to convince scared young women to keep their babies. Again for their own good. Too bad about the cuts in food stamps and other help; it’s never to soon to teach little Joey or Joanie that they’ll have to pull themselves up by their own bootie ties.

The right to decide how many children you have and when to have them? Same thing.  Just don’t step into one of our counseling centers believing you’ll get the same information as the Planned Parenthood clinic that closed down a couple of months ago. Not going to happen.

The right to marry person you love whether it’s Adam and Eve, Adam and Steve or Eve and Louise. Under that hyper individualistic philosophy it’s nobody’s business but yours. Not your neighbor, not the pastor down the street or groups like the American Family Association and their clones.

Yep. How you make your money is your business. How you live the rest of your life is the business of every Nosy Parker with a megaphone, a website, a Face Book page and a 501 whatever the designation is group with a good donor list.

You can’t have it both ways. Either it’s unfettered individualism in all parts of our lives or it isn’t. If you have the right to question how your neighbors live their private lives, they have the right to question the full costs of how you run your business and make your money. 

HEAVEN: WHERE BEST FRIENDS ARE WELCOME

 A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying

the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead.

He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been

dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.

  

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side

of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.

   

When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch

that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold.

He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.

  

When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?"

"This is Heaven, sir," the man answered.

 

"Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked.

"Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up."

 

 The man gestured, and the gate began to open.

"Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in, too?" the traveler asked.

 

     "I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets."

 

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.

 

After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed.

There was no fence.

 

As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.

 

"Excuse me!" he called to the man. "Do you have any water?"

"Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in."

"How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog.

"There should be a bowl by the pump."

 

   

They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.

The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog.

 

When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.

 

"What do you call this place?" the traveler asked.

 

"This is Heaven," he answered.

 

 "Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was Heaven, too."

 

"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell."

 

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"

 

"No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind."

 

AMAZING GRACE

Been scrolling though old journal entries trying to get my head back where it was before everything went to heck and gone. And stumbled across and it seems it's still too true. 

Amazing Grace was a song first and then a movie about the struggle in England to abolish the slave trade. The most vocal group was the Society to Aboish the Slave trade. The potter Josiah Wedgewood (potter. He was famous for his relatively inexpensive table ware) was behind the creation of of a medallion that became the "face" of the abolition movement. Pins, plates, nedallions to be worn as necklaces. He even sent some to Benjamin Franklin in the colonies. 

Back in the day I did a journal entry about Moses coming down off Mount Sinai, stone tablets securely tucked under his arm. More to the point I imagined what happened in the first thirty seconds or so after he finished letting the Hebrews in on the Word from on high. First there would be silence, I imagined. Then everybody would be talking at once. Every sentence beginning with “what exactly to you mean by,” followed by the commandment(s) of your choice. The gist of the matter being “what I’m planning on doing, or would really like to do, or wish I could do isn’t really covered by…..again the commandment of your choice…..is it?

Ok, intro over. Back in the 1700’s West Indian sugar and all that went with it was oil, high tech and sub-prime mortgages all rolled into one for the English economy. Slave grown and processed sugar fueled the triangle trade. By the late 1700’s the infant abolition movement in England found a voice. It belonged to William Wilberforce. Member of parliament from Yorkshire, he spent twenty years trying to get a bill through parliament abolishing the slave trade. It’s the story behind the film, Amazing Grace. He was the voice for the hundreds, if not thousands of men and women who worked to end the trade in human souls. (frankly if I used all the adjectives I'd like to use I'd run out of space, abomination is the kindest)

Is the film totally accurate? Probably not. Did the film take liberties with history? Probably. Was I totally blown away at the end? Yeah. Would I have wanted to ask the man to dinner? I’m not sure. Abolition, free education, decent treatment for animals, efforts to end prostitution; the man was never still. Dinner would not have been boring. A profoundly devout Evangelical Christian, he was influenced by John Newton. The same John Newton who finally traded the slave trade for a pulpit and along the line helped write the hymn that gives the film its name.

But, it’s not the movie so much that I’m writing about at that damnable “surely you don’t mean” gene that human beings seem to have. The western European run slave trade was financed, manned and benefitted people who described themselves as Christians. Most of them saw themselves as good, honorable men and women.  

There are two Creation stories in Genesis. In the first, God Created human beings in His image. In the second, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

And “but surely” rears its ugly, hydra headed, monstrous body. We hear it in the modern Neo Nazi movement. We're confronted with it every single, bloody, shit not again, day.

The…….fill in the group of your choice that doesn’t look like me, talk like me, eat what I like, dress like me, love like me, or most important of all believe like me can’t have that divine spark can it? Surely this isn’t the image of God. Surely you can’t mean that I should treat somebody like THAT as if God had come down to walk among us, can you?

WELL, WHY THE BLOODY HELL NOT? Sorry. Sometimes I can't help shouting out of sheer frustraion.

Anyway, if you can get your hands on the film, it's well worth your time. We can change the world. Before there was Free Trade coffee there were signs in London shops that advertised sugar grown in the East Indies.

The East Indians may not have been living in paradise. They probably weren't paid that well, Although they at least were being paid. At least they hadn't been torn from their homes, chained, crammed into a space approximately 40 inches wide by 18 inches high for a three week voyage into hell. Men, women and children crammed together in the same stinking holds. Some ships lost over half of their cargo to disease and despair before they even made the slave pens in the West Indies.

The trade in slaves was abolished in 1807. Slavery itself was abolished within the empire in 1833. William Wilberforce died three days later. The fight, all of it continues. The "but, you don't mean" monster and its children are alive and doing very, very well.

EVERYTHING THAT IS

 ( From the Hubble telescope. Two galaxies dancing over a billion years or so. Either heading for a collision or preparing to "collide" again. Colors have been enhanced. The bright blue areas are where new stars are born.)

"is alive.

Life forms did not come into this world. The life forms of the earth are a natural product of the earth, as the living planet is a natural product of the living universe.

Life in any form is part of life in every form. One, indivisible. The terrestrial spark is connected to the most distant star, just as the collective consciousness of the earth is one cell in the infinitely greater intelligence of the universe.

It is said that no one can know the mind of God.
Yet we are the mind of God.
And so we dance for joy.

We dance to the music of life, which ripples and shimmers across the universe. Even in the coldest depths of space, something is dancing the dance. Something is part of the music.

Every molecule of air on the earth has its part to play in the whole. Millions of life forms dance in what appears, to human eyes, to be empty air.

Air is not empty. Air is alive.

The angels of the air sing the songs of the spheres."

Morgan Llywelyn in The Elementals

THE SOUL OF A RIVER

 The end of this piece started to match the Where I'm From piece. You start with the cheerful material and then the writing takes the bit in its teeth and you are off. Incidentally a great deal of Cousteau's material is online via YouTube. 

 I originally posted this back in 2014. The almost ignored leak from the Keystone Pipeline, officially just over 200,000 gallons and probably much more, prompted this repost. That crude doesn't just sit on the surface. Especially on ground with a high water table. The soul of Mother Gaia is at stake not just the river. 

A few years ago I invested in the 1990’s Cousteau River Journeys DVD’s. Four of the episodes followed the Danube from headwaters to the Black Sea, with emphasis on the environmental degradation along the river in the former Soviet states. Chemical plants that dumped untreated waste into the river. The dangers of aging nuclear plants that weren’t that well built in the first place. Run off from contaminated ground water along with gas leakage into the atmosphere. Local economies based on fishing and farming were stressed out by the pollution.

The diversion of the river into man made channels to improve navigation, while destroying local economies based on the wetlands and marshes.

So, where is the soul of a river? Is it just the river? Or does the river and its soul stretch beyond the channel and the meandering blue line on a map.

The river is the ocean that gives up its moisture to the rains and snows.

The river is winter ice and summer sun.

The river is snow, rain and hail.

The river is the tiny veins and capillaries of water that stretch beyond the banks and below the river bed.  Searching, seeking, seeping into the deep rocks and the deep roots of the mountains. Finally finding the way to new streams and new tree roots. Coming into the sun again, pulled into the sky a thousand miles from where the rain last fell.

The river is the mountains, home to the springs a rivulets that join to form a torrent.

The river is the animals that depend on it for water and forage, the trees that shade the banks and shelter the birds.

The river is the disappearing marshes and the migratory birds that nested in the reeds.

The canals are the river and so are the drying wetlands that used to hold back the floods.

The dams we build are the river and so are the fish blocked from their native spawning grounds.

The river is the disappearing, sick and mutated fish and the villagers and fishermen who depend on them not only for their livelihood, but for tonight’s dinner.

The river is the untreated chemical waste that leaches into ground water. It’s the sewage from overburdened, aging city systems.

The river is the rain falling through air contaminated with radiation from nuclear plants that couldn’t be built to withstand every possible risk.

The river is us.

The last episode ends with a group of children including one of Cousteau’s grandchildren flying kites along the river bank to remind us that they will have to live in the world we are creating.

(Words fail me sometimes. I have the vision in my mind but can’t find the words to express what I see)

WHERE I'M STILL FROM

 I hope. Yeah I'm doing some reposting. To be honest I'm trying to get my head back where it was just before eveything downright crazy. If I'd known about the Internet Archive and a good PDF site I would have given different instructions when what was left of my library was packed. Leave the bios, except for John Adams and son. Pack all the books on religion comparative or otherwise. The Quaker part of me is still there but it's taking some work to get the other side in gear. So please be patient with me. Writing helps get me where I need to go. 

 Back in the day the company I worked for got involved with one of these motivational gurus. Who shall remain nameless  because to be honest I can't remember his name. He did have a really cool website. If you couldn't send your employees to hia mini boot camp you could buy a set of DVD's. I believe they ran about ten grand.

I was low enough on the totem pole that I managed to avoid being shipped clear across the country. I guess this stuff works for some folks but the more I heard the less I liked where this guy was coming from. Near as I could figure out it's a cross between a mini boot camp, revival meeting and a rock concert. Someone mentioned a scavenger hunt at four in the morning. 

The rest of us were blessed with a mini taste at an office meeting and when I asked one "graduate" what the loud music was supposed to do I was told it was "part of the program." I still haven't figured out how keeping me up most of the night three days running or trying to fracture my eardrums is supposed to improve my team building skills. I guess this is why they paid him the big bucks.

Having figured out where I didn't want to go, I found myself trying to put where I was comong from into words. I think what still troubles me the most it the effort to keep us all running so fast we don't have time to think. To keep the man made noise so loud that we can't hear what the world around us is trying to say.

Anyway this is what I came up with. If you were to bet that I never shared this with anybody at work, you'd win. Junction City was definiely not Springfield or Eugene. I think what bugs me the most was  the idea that you can do it by yourself. The old visualize success and it's your fault if your vision doesn't come true. That may be true to a point. But nobody and I mean nobody makes it alone. And that is what brought this little entry to life.

Earth, Air, Fire and Water, each element has a voice-but it can't sing without the others. Without the Earth in the form of the moon there would beno tides-no waves. Without the waves there would be no hiss of the little waves meeting the sandy beach. The great booming roar when tons of sea water meets two hundred feet of black basalt cliffs would be lost forever. Without the mountains to form cliffs and steep falls the roar of the waterfall would not exist. Without the rocks and stones in their beds, rivers and streams would lose their voices

Fire has a quicker, harsher song. Without water to make steam and sizzle,without trees or wood to burn, Fire would have almost no voice. As a lava flow cools the rocks grind together and the escaping gasses hiss and twist. Take away the fire from the earth's mantle and these fall silent.

Air has a voice when it meets Earth and what grows from the Earth. The sighing of the trees, the lonely whistle around the cliffs, the cry of the gulls carried from a windy beach, the rustle of the grasses, these come together to make a chorus when the Air sings its songs.

Earth sings some of her songs alone; the sounds of rocks falling and sand or gravel rustling when someone walks across it are earthly solos.  But many of Earth's songs are sung by what grows from the earth or swims in the water. But, without air to carry birdsong or the sea  to carry whale songs the world would be a quieter, lonlier place. Let us join our songs to the songs of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Together these are the songs of Creation

THE EARTH IS NOT A SHOPPING LIST

 

Earth Mother by Angela Babby

“To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments. The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean. Giovanni di Verazanno in 1524 smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the fragrance of the Jersey Shore, whiles ships running further up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a rich riot of color and sound, of game and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were they might have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took inventory.” Frederick Turner. Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness.

I’ve never been to sea, so I’m not sure what we can smell now when we’re a hundred miles or so off shore. Diesel fumes. Gas fumes, hot asphalt, and industrial pollution? I’m betting the Jersey Shore has a much difference fragrance nearly five centuries after di Verazanno made his run up the coast. And the beds of floating flowers are a forgotten memory. Unless you want to count plastic bags, discarded bottles and cargo lost from containers as “flowers.” Well, there’s a riot of color and sound all right. We spend a great deal of time and energy trying to escape it. And, it looks like we finally did write that new mythology. Of the virtue and necessity of conquest and exploitation. Now, we find ourselves in a trap of our own making.

One industry develops low wattage LED’s and touts them a replacement for home light use while another industry finds a totally new use for light bulbs. Soon every corner bank and drugstore hosts a mini bill board advertising services. In firesale red. Electrical useage stays the same or goes up and visual pollution increases. Plant based bio fuels replace petroleum, at least in theory but it still takes more energy to produce the fuel than we’ll ever see in our fuel tanks.

Each appliance may take less energy but the number and SIZE of the appliances increases. Remember the TV’s with nineteen inch screens? Can you even get one of those these days? I may really like Tom Selleck, but I have no desire to count the number of hairs in his moustache.

And any suggestion that we might simplify our lives a little, just a little is met with that you’re a Marxist, Socialist, Fascist, nihilist trying to destroy the American nightmare. Whoops, pardon me, dream.

Which led me back to this little prayer in one of mom’s workbooks from her Methodist women’s group. And it is also a hymn. Courtwsy of YouTube. 

I am your mother: do not neglect me!

Children protect me-I need your trust;

my breath is your breath, my death is your death,

ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

I am your nurture; do not destroy me!

Love and enjoy me, savor my fruit;

my good is your good, my food is your food,

water and flower, branches and root.

I am your lodging: do not abuse me!

Tenderly use me, soothing my scars;

my health is your health, my wealth is your wealth,

shining with promise, set among stars.

The Creator is our maker, do not deny,

challenge, defy or, threaten this place;

life is to cherish, care, or we perish!

I am your mother, tears on my face.

Adapted from a prayer by Shirley Erena Murray 1996

She actually has a couple of hymn collections published. Barely known outside her native New Zealand the books only went though one publishing cycle. Expensive as all get out. 

I originally posted an answer on the original posting to a comment from a friend. I wished (wish) I could draw worth a damn. I'd replace Michelangelo's Pieta in Saint Peter's with the Earth as the grieving mother with all the wonders we've wasted in her lap and surrounding her 

STAR JEWELS

 This is one of the first images released by NASA taken by the James Webb telescope. The area of the sky is said to be the size of a grain of sand held at arms length. The tiny little dots are stars in our galaxy. All the other imges are galaxies big ones, little ones. A few million light years away to some images that may only be 600 million years old. 

Of course the oldest galaxies don't look like their snapshots anymore. Those stars have died and in the dying birthed new stars, new planets. Star jewels on black velvet. The closest to infinity we're likely to get. 

WHERE I'M FROM

  Did this a few years ago. Along the line I discovered that Kaiser was actually spelled Kisor. All I can find out is that he was from Vermont. And got a message over ancestry from a lady who was familiar with his wife. Dester Kisor was her relative's second husband and the Meyers line is solidly German. Arrived in the early seventeen hundreds from the Hanovarian lands brought into the Stuarts when Princess Elizabeth married the Elector of Palatine and that is a whole 'nother story as the saying goes. 

Managed to trace a couple of lines to the late fourteen hundreds.Which means that they managed to survie the Protestant Reformation, the Peasant's Revolt, the Thirty Years War and various plagues and famines before emmigrating to the colonies and settled in Pennsylvania. 

There is information that William Penn sent Quaker followers into Germany to recruit Pietist Pretestants to settle in the new colony of Pennsylvania. Not Quakers but with similar beliefs. 

I’m a native Oregonian; a state that has the lowest per capita church attendance in the country. It doesn’t mean we aren’t religious or followers of the spirit. It does mean that we’re hard to pin down when it comes wearing a label. And to be honest all of us, including the remaining Native Americans came here from somewhere else. Some of us just happen to have more family members resting in pioneer cemeteries around the state than others. Me? I’ve got three generations and various cousins planted in a lovely cemetery on the north side of Chehalem mountain above the other side of Newburg.

My genes are solidly northern European. Supposedly there’s a Cherokee in my dad’s family tree but I don’t have any proof so that’s a thread in my family tapestry that would be fun to claim but I can’t prove it. (shrug) There’s one German great grandfather; with a name like Kaiser I think I’m safe to assume he was German, not Dutch. The rest is Scots, Irish, English and Welsh. And heck, for all I know there could be a Roman or two in the family tapestry if I went back far enough. Hell, for all I know there was a British trader or two over the years who made it to Goddess knows where and left a calling card or two behind.

My dad’s family name comes out of Yorkshire in England and Vikings settled there in what became the Kingdom of York as well as Ireland so there some Scandinavian sea farers adding a thread to the tapestry. Have you ever wished you could invite your DNA over for tea, muffins and a good long sit down?

Anyway I originally did this back in my early J Land career. I got it from another writer who has since dropped off the radar. The original template was designed as a stream of consciousness exercise. And Russ was right. You do end up where you didn’t expect to. For the non-Nothwesterners out there; the Hanford reach includes a free flowing section of the Columbia river and the Hanford reactor complex. One of these days the leftover radioactive contamination will probably reach the river and we’ll all start glowing in the dark. Since I originally wrote this I learned that Hanford's reactors provided the Plutonium for those lovely so far never used nuclear weapons. 

As for the arms depot? They used to store nerve gas there. That wasn’t so bad. The stuff doesn’t go anywhere unless you blow it up. So, some geniuses in the Reagan administration decided to make the stuff “war ready’ and installed the rockets. The government built a very nice, state of the art incinerator to deal with the little darlings. And they finally did. So, guess whose little sister lives smack, dab in the middle that little piece of God’s little acre? So far they aren’t glowing in the dark.

WHERE I'M FROM

I am from Douglas fir, hemlock, spruce and cedar.

I am from the Cascades, the Blues, the Siskiyous, and the Wallowas.

(Also turns out I'm sitting on about a mile of lava spewed out from cracks in the land over about two million years. Some of the flows made it all the way to Pacific Coast.)

I am from clear cuts, choker cables, riggers and log trucks with one log loads.

I am from sandy beaches, basalt cliffs and mudflats.

I am from wild geese calling at sunrise, wrens in the thickets, and great blue herons on the other side of the river.

I am from the little creeks, the mighty Columbia and the Pacific breakers.

I am from tricycles, tetherballs, little sisters with skinned knees and a love for bugs.

I am from the ivy by the patio, the hydrangeas with dinner plate size clumps of blossoms and the garden in the back yard.

I am from a wringer washer, a concrete laundry sink and clothes full of the smell of sunshine.

I am from missionaries, Methodist hymnals, Quakers and fairy rings.

I am from winter gales, spring showers, sunny summer days and autumn fogs and frosts.

I am from the Hanford Reach, the Umatilla Arms depot, and the Columbia Gorge where condors may soar again.

I am from logging towns with no mills, harbors with no fish, and farms being swallowed by urban sprawl.

I am from shelves full of books, an old flute and feeling out of step on the march to wherever.

I am from feeling like I’m on the outside looking in.

I am from seeing what no one else sees to see.

I am from hearing what no one else seems to hear.

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And if you’ve reached the final lines of the exercise this may be why you’ll find me out hugging the local oak trees these days.