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L Links:
TH Thought Process:
The only purpose of anxiety is to separate us from the grace of God and His purpose in our lives.
Also, God does not take away our desire, but he offers us the transformation of our desires into a desire for things that are good for us. We can find fulfillment and joy in the purpose that God has given us. We never find fulfillment chasing after our own desires, but in desiring the things of God we can find true fulfillment and can experience the fullness of life-- life as God intends it. We can release our anxieties and obsessive thoughts and impulses to our Creator, and in that release we find ourselves able to access the true beauty of life, even in the midst of its messiness, because we have released our spirits from the clutter of our natural human stupidity and entered the current of God's purpose and therefore we ride through life on His strength and His joy.
This is basically a reiteration of Philippians, Chapter Four, so go and read the original . Don't take my word for it.
I want to comment on a statement from Interesting Monstah regarding the conservative religious position of Blacks on the homosexual agenda.
March 9, 2004
Last I Checked, "Agape" Means "Love"
...but you wouldn't know it from this hater tripe, courtesy Agape Press, "Black Conservative Condemns Linking Homosexual Agenda with Civil Rights":
Peterson asserts that homosexual activists "jumped on the Civil Rights bandwagon" in the early 1960s "under the pretense of trying to help black people so that they can further their cause, and that's what's happening today."
But Peterson finds it offensive that homosexuals attempt to equate homosexuality with race. "It's not the same," he says, "I cannot change my color from black to white, but I have seen homosexuals overcome and become heterosexuals. And so this [lifestyle] is not a civil right but a moral issue."
From the Agape Press.
Here we have yet another example of the black/gay wedge, being hyped by desperate white Fundocrats, where gay=white and black=straight. It's irrelevant whether homosexuality is a choice or a morality-driven lifestyle "issue". They tax all of us, natural or nurtured. That is what makes this a Civil Rights, capital C, capital R, issue.
Don't any of these "Black conservatives" like Peterson find it disturbing that they are being used in these pseudo-"Uncle Tom Callouts" by white social conservatives? Or that some of those "homosexual activists" were Black?
Don't these Black Fundocrat hypocrites understand that not all Blacks are straight Christians and not all gays are white?
Don't these people know anything about life? Reality?
Hello?
You Black conservative Fundocrats are being used as tools.
© 2004 Interesting Monstah
Interesting Monstah seems to be confusing Peterson's statement with an attempt to exclude Black homosexuals from partaking in or benefiting from the work of Civil Rights activists. In fact, all he has said is that there is no real comparison between the two issues.
There is a difference in magnitude. Racial issues are real, cut deeply through our society, and are with you for a lifetime (setting aside for the moment weird surgical procedures and the like). There is a definite connection between the treatment of people based on skin color and their experience of poverty, their relationship with law enforcement, their experience of religion and politics, their opportunities for education, employment and advancement and their general sense of being misunderstood by their society. There is also a deep history of mistreatment of massive groups of people based on race and ethnicity.
This is not true of the gay experience, and where there are similarities (i.e. the sense of misunderstanding) there is a difference of degree that makes equating true Civil Rights issues and the gay agenda offensive and trite.
Peterson is not saying that all gays are White or all Blacks are straight (or should be). He is just saying that Civil Rights issues will affect us regardless of other lifestyle choices, such as being gay.
Civil rights issues are about all of us-- they are about our families, and our children, and our economy, and our education, and our politics and our most deeply held beliefs. Gay issues are about gays-- and they are about extending the priveleges of our society to a population with a non-normative sexual orientation. Civil rights is concerned with securing the basic priveleges of our society for the everyday citizen, not in exclusion of such issues as sexual orientation, but including them among many other issues (origin, race, language, ethnicity, culture, age, gender) that, together, serve to move our society forward into an era of greater opportunity and inclusion.
Focusing on any one issue, such as the gay agenda, to the expense of the other issues can serve only to detract from the true struggles of all the other people who fight for Civil Rights. Exalting any one issue, such as the homosexual agenda, to the status of Civil Rights itself not only shows a very shallow understanding of how our society works, but it serves to marginalize the very population that it is supposed to promote. All the differences in what "being gay" means are accentuated, rather than accentuating how "being gay" can be part of the normal existence of a white person who grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, a Laotian immigrant who runs a Vietnamese restaurant, a poor child of Kanjobal Maya descent who saw his Grandpa get shot in the head by the Guatemalan military and now lives in Chicago, a young black girl who was adopted by a mixed race family at the age of four months because her crack-addict mother gave her up at birth rather than try to raise her in the slums, a black man from Cuba who grew up under Castro's regime and saw the wealth of his family wane, a Canadian kid who enlisted in the army at age 17, is of Lummi Indian descent, and served with the 101st Airborne, and so on.
The point being: it should be okay to be gay and fly under the radar; it should be okay to be gay and be focused first and foremost on the welfare of your people, your family, and normal people like us, and not just some fringe agenda; it should be okay to be gay and not buy into all the fashion and the mannerisms and the urban lifestyle; it should be okay to be gay and to accentuate one's normalcy; it should be okay to be gay and not to be attention hungry or a caricature of oneself. And of course, these things are okay, but the parades and the voice of special interests and the minstrel show that gays characters provide us on TV drown out all these normal voices.
And also, if you are a minority and gay, how can you leave behind the greater struggles of your people and focus on obtaining priveleged status based on a marginal lifestyle? How can gays pursue political influence to such a degree while leaving the rest of the population behind? Why are you wasting your time being offended that normal, family-oriented people of your own race and ethnicity look at you funny? Don't you share many of their concerns about society? Don't you understand many of the diffuculties they encounter in day-to-day life? Why don't you refocus on the hard work of finding common ground with your fellow soldiers in the greater Civil Rights struggle and participate in those efforts primarily, and the sexual orientation issues only secondarily? Because the truth is, no one is limited to living in a ghetto and dealing with poor educational options and criminal profiling because they are gay.
And yes-- it is the gay person's job to be clear about themselves and seek out understanding because they are the one who has stepped the furthest out of normative societal bounds. There are legitimate constraints on how we express ourselves in a free society, because without those self-limiting mechanisms we would dissapate into a random and licentious mob of willful individualists with no sense of accountability for our own words and actions.
I am not, at this juncture, and in this context, saying that it is absolutely wrong to be gay (although due to my religious beliefs I lean in that direction), but I will say without a doubt that there are wrong ways to express one's homosexuality (or heterosexuality, or ethnicity, or any other categories, ad nauseum).
We must simply use our discernment in how we exercise ourselves upon those around us and upon our greater society so that the greater good is promoted, rather than self-centered, near-term, or fringe interests. And this is equally true of many other activist voices and fringe interests, not just the homosexual agenda, lest anyone think that I am singling them out for blame.
Focusing on real Civil Rights issues and true social justice, instead of being caught up in the superficial distractions that our society and its media attempt to delude us with, is the true task set before all of us.
We must engage ourselves in the effort to make this world a better place for everyone, and that is a complicated and multi-faceted task. Letting any one voice drown out the others is a mistake that is encouraged by the powers that be; the worldly powers that seek to maintain their hold on our lives and all that makes our lives meaningful; because when we are thus divided, we fall.
We must find some way to see beyond all of our isolated issues (and there are many) and stand up united. We must find a way to do this without an utter dependence on charismatic leaders (who will be shot or succumb to their human failings) and without splintering off into many bickering groups. We must work together as everyday people to transform everyday life, and this is more important, and of a greater magnitude than any one group's agenda.
Okay, "hibernation of the hazel mouse" has to be the strangest search string that has ever led to my site. While following this up on Google I also discovered that a mouse can hibernate in the rectum of a polar bear. I mean, they both were hibernating "together," so to speak. Random upon random upon random.
MRS. WUI RETRIEVES HATS
CONTAINER
ASKING PRICE
ROOT-BOUND
GAY MARRIAGE
GAY RIGHTS
RUNAWAY MIND WITH EMOTIONS RIDING CABOOSE
ALL I WANT IS WHAT I HAVE RIGHT NOW
SURRENDER
FALLING
This bears repeating (I also posted it on my MySpace profile):
I grew up on a wooded patch of delta at the mouth of the Eel River in Northern California. We were a mile from the ocean and surrounded by water. My family was packed into an old ranch house on Cock Robin Island (yes feel free to giggle at the name... okay stop giggling now) which is accessible only by a one-lane bridge. The school bus couldn't cross this bridge, and we were about four miles from town, so I had to walk or ride my bike for a mile or so each morning to catch the bus-- starting on the second day of Kindergarten and continuing till my last day of High School (of course, by then I was often riding my bike the straight 12 miles to school, cutting out the madness of the bus ride, cutting out the middle-man).
We were a family of seven, with three daughters and two sons (myself included). I am the oldest. I have a different mom from the rest of them. My dad married two women who went to High School together in Lawrence, Kansas. They knew each other, went to the same youth group, had art class together, were both into my dad who was, at the time, the youth group leader. My dad was in his long-haired hippie phase and was in from California after a bad Christian Commune experience (they burnt all of his books while he was down in the Bay Area, because, y'know, book burnings were the groovy thing to do, and he wasn't down with that, so he split with a friend of his to bunk up with his pal's previous girlfriend in Kansas).
He married one of these young hotties from his youth group, conceived me (my Grandma Dorothy at times wolud take me aside to impress upon me in private that I was conceived in Kansas City during my Great Grandfather's funeral and that I was in some sense his reincarnation and so I better get on it and be a credit to his legacy). Within the year his young wife had completely lost it, seemed to be cheating on him, and they divorced. It was my Grandma Aileen who noticed that her daughter's behavior was beyond passing strange and who tried to get some medical help. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, upon which she grabbed my 1 and a half year old butt and took off with me so they couldn't steal her baby and lock her up.
My dad caught wind of these events and drove his VW Beetle out to Kansas in a panic, trying to save me. He just thought she was selfish and adulterous. He had never suspected insanity. His car barely survived the trip so he began scouting around the Lawrence, Kansas area for someone to help him. He found my step-mom, fresh out of nursing school, and she offered to help him with transportation. They chased my mom out to California and back. She kept moving due to paranoia (albeit justified paranoia) that people were after her.
My dad and step-mom were still travelling back from California when the police located me and my mom back in Lawrence. The police spent an hour searching the premises for me, trying to extract info from my hysterically sobbing and delusional mom, and were about to give up on the search (they figured I was off the premises and they were going to have to search the neighborhood). Near the time they were about to leave a young cop searched the basement again and noticed that if you squeezed behind the central heating unit, pressed against the wall, you could get to a defunct closet that was under the stairwell. The central heating had been installed in such a way that it blocked this closet. When he wedged himself in there and opened the door a crack he found me playing with dust-bunnies and the remains of an old mop. My face was not wet. I had not made a peep.
See, the cops had almost given up because they were certain that a two year old, left alone, would be crying after an hour of isolation. I guess I was used to it.
However, I was in good health. The cops turned me over to my Grandma Aileen. She handed me off to my dad when he arrived. On his trip he and my step-mom had had time to reacquaint and bond and they were already engaged to be married.
So most of the excitement of my life happened before the age of two.
I live at "The Edge," which is a Christian campus ministry at San Francisco State University. I have done a lot of work on the garden this summer, so when the students arrive for the school year there will be produce to use for the purposes outlined on the edgesfsu.org website (i.e. "We are creating an organic garden to regrow the soil, grow food for homeless and women and children's shelters, and learn about life-sustaining methods of gardening."). I just happened to grow up in a large family, being the oldest of five kids, and gardening was one of my responsibilities. So putting in a garden is like falling off a log to me. It has felt good to get my fingers back in some soil and start some green stuff growing. Besides, when the capitalists get done gunning down democracy abroad, they'll probably finish the job right here at home, and at that juncture a green thumb (as well as a quick trigger finger) may just come in handy. For clarificition on this paranoiac line of thought (no, I do not think the sky is falling, no I do not think the world is coming to an end) please take a look at Octavia Butler's "Parable" series, beginning with "The Parable of the Sower." You may come to realize that the immanent collapse of all that we take for granted is a more plausible option than we would care to think. On that lighthearted note, sayonara!
Thursday, 13 May 2004 
Después de los exámenes
El viento corre por el cielo
Y todo el mundo se cae en dormir.
No sé si sirve como poema, pero creo que tiene posibilidades.
Wednesday, 5 May 2004 
Here are the responses that Sister Outsider (AKA Anitra) gave to my questions:
1. What would you like to prove to yourself? If you had infinite resources and time what would you do to prove this to yourself?
That's a toughie. I'm hard on myself, so I'm trying to prove things to myself all the time. I wanted to prove to myself that I could get in and succeed in graduate school, and here I am, doing just that. I'd like to prove to myself that I could successfully run my own business, and if I had an infinite supply of money, I'd do just that. The other things that I'd like to prove to myself are more personal in nature: being more assertive, etc.
2. What types of fantasies scroll through your mind most often (violent, sexual, worried, etc.)?
Do I really have to answer that? *lol* Hardly ever violent, unless I've seen or read something particularly violent. I'd say worried, and sometimes sexual.
3. What part of yourself do you most fear to lose? If you lost it what do you think you would feel?
You mean, physically? Physically, I would say my eyesight or something. I'm already half-blind as it is. I think becoming blind would just make me feel helpless and not in control. If you're referring to non-physically, I'd say my sense of independence. I've lost it before, and it sucked, because I [was] constantly walking around being defined by everything and everyone else.
The above entry (05/05/2004) © 2000-2004 ADC
Monday, 26 April 2004 
Another angle I could tackle (in reference to my domain name, "emotionally stunted") is the dynamic explored in Nick Hornby's writing, as expressed here at Contemporary Writers, a site about British authors.
Sunday, 25 April 2004 
My sinuses were keeping me up (felt like a ping pong ball got shoved up in my skull) so I was browsing some of my links. Sister Outsider had a thought-provoking little exercise posted on her site, so I thought I'd participate.
Here were my three questions:
1. What would you like to prove to yourself? If you had infinite resources and time what would you do to prove this to yourself?
2. What types of fantasies scroll through your mind most often (violent, sexual, worried, etc.)?
3. What part of yourself do you most fear to lose? If you lost it what do you think you would feel?
I will post any response I receive.
Saturday, 24 April 2004 
I posted this on Open Brackets:
How eminently skilled I am at
Self-distraction. Like a hummingbird inches
Away from the flower's open mouth,
Offering me nectar that I might sustain myself,
While instead I become enthralled by my own
Reflection in a dewdrop, hanging from
The fuschia. In that moment I enter a reverie
Of self-adoration, wherein I love myself as a
Vision of the expansiveness of all possibility;
Wherein the perceptual reality of my own
Preference seems imminent, so close that I can taste it.
Such that in this dewdrop illusion I believe that
The contemplations most dear to my heart may be actualized;
Wherein the requirements of flight and exertion
Fall away and I perceive an eternal beauty in that moment
Of distraction in myself.
Oh that the world may revolve around me and be
Saved from their confusions by my realizations!
Except that, pausing so long between the reflection and the flower,
I wait too long for nectar and I fall,
Beautiful thing that I am,
And offer my plumage to the reality that places
Its requirements upon me, whether
I prefer it or not.
Meanwhile, the flower waits, offering its nectar--
Blandly existing without metaphysics or agenda.
There is no other purpose that beckons it away
From the union of its form with function.
But as for myself--
How eminently skilled I am at self-distraction.
---//---
It's just a toss-off poem, but I think it expresses something useful about our tendency to exalt our concepts of reality over reality itself. We must spend more time, I believe, submitting to what life requires of us. All the high-minded concepts in the world will not loosen those requirements, and we may as well aquiesce to them gracefully.
Friday, 23 April 2004 
The concept that I want to explore on this site (in part) is as follows: "Our society is emotionally stunted, but it is our children who pay the price."

The picture above is the work of an eight year-old artist from Oakland, California. She was removed from her family because of an abusive situation and lived in a group home for several years. While she was with us we did our best to give her the tools to succeed and thrive despite her circumstances.
Her art is also featured in an article in the SF Weekly from January of 2004 go>>>
Monday, 12 April 2004 
I just wanted to acknowledge this piece of perrenial wisdom from my nuova amica (? is my Italian cutting it?) Andrea on MySpace (they usually require an account & password to get in):
Miles Davis once said, and I don't really remember it verbatim, but when asked why he doesn't play ballads anymore he replied, "Because I love to play them."
In essence, this musical genius and simultaneous enthusiast of change, was suggesting that in order to truly succeed in life, sometimes you have to leave the things you love so that one can grow and mature as a person.
This is not to say one should leave something as soon as they begin to love it, but it is merely to say that attaining satisfaction from one thing and using that one thing to provide satisfaction from then on out is just like keeping the same posture for hours on end. It may feel fine at the time, but the longer the muscles are kept static like that, the more it is going to hurt to try and move them. And really, they eventually are going to have to move in order to get along.
I feel a slight twinge every now and then, which beckons me to try something different, go somewhere new, do something in an unconventional way, eat something strange, or wear something crazy. So many people allow themselves to grow complacent in their lives. They know in their heart that they have desires. Desires to change, to do things they have never done, to see things. Many people cite excuses for not doing these things. Like money or time or responsibilities. All valid, of course, but if there is something you truly want to do, there are ways to make it happen.
It takes initiative. And it takes the strength and courage to move from that seemingly comfortable position, endure the slight pain of having to change from a situation that has been held for slightly too long, and to take on a new stance. In the end the soul will be greatful, just as my muscles are when I remember to move around and stretch them out every once and while. Extend the possibilities of oneself to prevent the soul from "cramping up" and growing hostile in its confinement to one way of life.
Ain't that the shit? Hit me where it counts, I know that much. So onward with life, but with perception muscles all limbered up and ready to do-it-to-it like they ain't nothin' to it.
(Yeah, I know. I'll stop it now.) Peace out!
Sunday, 11 April 2004 
I have been commenting on various pages in lieu of accomplishing anything else:
(1) Comments on a choice quote from Martin Luther on Open Brackets.
(2) Somewhat misguided comments on Banagor's commentary on the Rwandan genocide (I did not read carefully and quickly got off-topic) but anyhow, you can read what I said.
Tuesday, 7 April 2004 
Setting: Ehido, City of Bahia Blanca, Pichihubi Train Station
Visual Focus: Homeless Man
"Suddenly great, enormous wings erupted from his back. His coat was cast aside, his arms stretched as if strained from the armpits to the fingers into where they joined with their new enclosing feathered sheaths, the wormlike threads from the sheaths creeping integument-by-integument into his skin-- his back arced upward as if pulled to the sky with cords-- as small rows of non-flight plumage sprouted out in curves from his upturned elbows back to where his axilla and deltoids had been and large primaries flashed out from where new tissues gloved his wrists and fingers, turning in a slight inward curve, and in the sunset light gleaming a blackened shade of bronze.
"Still surprised, I stared. 'Sometimes it makes a frightening sort of sense,' I said to her, 'The wings, the homelessness, the flight.'
"Leaving his crumbling hunk of cheese half-eaten, he ran down the platform, sunset light gleaming in his panicked eyes as he lifted off, arising from the ground, arcing left above the approaching train-- suddenly free.
"'They usually just die after that.' she said, sipping from her tea and wishing (I could tell) for sugar."
Wednesday, 6 April 2004 
Setting: California, City of Oakland, The Hills
Visual Focus: Toyota Corrolla, Gray
"While I was driving the other day, not too far from my home, one car just swerved off to the side of the road, curled up into fetal position and lay there sobbing-- her hazard lights blinking dolefully.
"The rest of us just kept on driving."
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Q Quotes
At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserved
seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what
you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't
get anything, and if you can't hold anything, you
won't keep anything. And you can't take anything
without organization.
--A. Philip Randolph
expand the section »
We owe to no leader our blind obedience, but only our highest judgement.
-- (somebody with an "L" name; Lytle? Lydell? from C-SPAN2 interview w/ D. Height 6/24/03)
You can't get bitter about the things that happen to you, you just have to keep working.
--Dorothy Height, during a C-SPAN2 interview on 6/24/03
Purple people
--Arianna Huffington, author of Fanatics and Fools, a former Republican, on C-SPAN2 interview on 5/3/04, regarding 50% of potential voting public who are neither Democrat (blue) or Republican (red), but neither or both (purple) and who are largely progressive (seek out full quote)
What we have is the spectacle of a very lively, vibrant, ill-mannered Democracy.
--Bernard Lewis describing Israel and Israeli TV during a Q & A on C-SPAN2
The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumberable guises, and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.
--Paul Johnson (source?)
Wesley, the evangelist, was a man possessed of amazing grace. Never did he lose his temper; and always was he prepared to endure a blow, if the dealing of it would relieve the hysteria of his assailant. Repeatedly, when struck by a stone or cudgel, he quietly wiped away the blood and went on preaching without so much as a frown on his face. He loved his enemies; and do what they would, they could not make him discourteous or angry.... This miraculous grace was the power which finally conquered the 18th-century mob.... It was not courage alone that saved Wesley. He was preserved by a tranquil dignity, by cool, steady and courteous behavior, by the entire abscence of malice and anger; but above all, by those peculiar graces and powers which accompany a man of God.
--J.W. Brady, "England: Before and After Wesley"
"He who would be a Christ must expect crucifixion.
--Spanish proverb
Love is a fruit that is in season at all times & it is available for the picking.
--Mother Teresa
We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.
--Mother Teresa
Bad habits are easy to form and hard to live with. Good habits are hard to form but easy to live with.
« collapse the section
Quasi-Folk/Alt/Pop Tracklist 1:
1. Ani DiFranco - Slide 
2. Clue to Kalo - Still We Felt Bulletproof 
3. Dido - White Flag 
4. Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood 
5. Jeffrey Gaines - In Your Eyes 
6. Mason Jennings - Darkness Between the Fireflies 
7. Modest Mouse - All Nite Diner 
8. Paul Duncan - Letdownville 
9. Ryan Adams - Come Pick Me Up 
10. Save Ferris - Let Me In 
11. Sister Hazel - Your Winter 
12. The Cardigans - War 
13. The Januaries - The Girl's Insane 
14. Sugarcubes - Delicious Demon 
15. Cat Power - He War 
16. The Telepathic Butterflies - A Final Word
Quasi-Folk/Alt/Pop Tracklist 2 (As You Wish Mix):
1. Ani DiFranco - Revelling 
2. Morcheeba - Never An Easy Way 
3. Incubus - Southern Girl 
4. Nada Surf - The Way You Wear Your Head 
5. Save Ferris - Let Me In 
6. Portishead - Insensible 
7. Fiona Apple - Paperbag 
8. Morcheeba - Be Yourself 
9. Portishead - It Could Be Sweet
10. Incubus - Smile Lines 
11. The Januaries - The Girl's Insane 
12. Dido - White Flag 
13. Morcheeba - Rome Wasn't Built In A Day 
14. Paul Simon - Look At That 
15. Mason Jennings - Darkness Between the Fireflies 
16. North House - Bought & Sold 
17. Morcheeba - Slowdown
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H Writing Hell:
poetry
mackerel sky
spectaclepod
articles
PAPER JUNGLE:
Visual Focus:
8-year old boy napping in the back seat of an old VW bug, with
it's engine on fire. Bring in the scenes of old ranchers coming over the
hills with farm tools to beat out the flames, the blackened frame of the VW
in a patch of smoldering grass, golden fields spreading out in rolling
undulations across the Ferndale bottoms up to the forested Wildcat, the
firetruck ride, the stoners in the back shed who called the fire-department,
the walk of horror with 20-some guard dogs hurling themselves against the
cyclone fence trying to eat us, the ride back in the police car (Later in life: "Have you
ever seen the back of a squad car, son?" "Yes I have, sir!" -- not usually a
good thing) my hysteria, thinking Sebastian's mom had died, her return in a
van with a stranger who picked her up and took her into town and back, etc.
Play with names like Thad and Octavian for the kids, make one kid Thaddeus
Octavian and the other Octavian Jonas (diff. last names).
"I know everyone says this, but part of me is still sleeping in that car,
engulfed in flames. I think I'm dreaming of tadpoles."
Baobabylon Song/Rap/Chant (from the Amerindianist movement, a neo-indigenous military occupation of ancient tribal lands-- think Zion, Aztlan, etc.):
"I feel like an Indian stuck on the reservation;
I feel like the rebirth of an ancient nation;
I feel like a bear come back to life from hibernation;
I feel like the drive to self-preservation.
I'm teaching clones how to speak Huron,
I got strange creatures speaking Cree.
I got Coyote playing funk on the saxophone,
I got ancient lines reborn to realign the symmetry.
Some of you think three-hundred years is a long time,
But to me it's just a day.
It seemed like forever before the Romans were gone,
But they're all dead and been replaced anyway.
"So I say, children--
Rise up, and realign yourselves.
We've got ancient lessons to relearn.
"So I say, children--
Rise up, and refine yourselves.
We've got cities to burn..."
(And all the people say) » seque into another song, of a celebratory tone.
Scene:
After Patrick comes to Cal's house, holds Marco hostage and starts ranting about "character assassination" and his reputation, Miriam flips out and refuses to hear Cal's apologies for Patrick's behavior. Cal gets tossed out for a bit to get his priorities straight while Miriam guards the door with a shotgun.
Cal is in a bar in Espalda Seca, his wedding ring is in his pocket, when a woman comes up and sits next to him, saying, "Hey, how you doing?"
Cal: Okay, I have an asking price. I require an up-front payment of beauty, charm and conversation. No cheap rides here. Now on beauty, I got to give you that, unless its the whiskey talking... but you need to make up the difference. So get with the charm and conversation, baby.
So she turns on the charm and conversation. Turns out she just wanted a cheap ride, liked his face and his money, but at least he still has his standards.
(Next scene » Innocence Serengeti-- Cal is stubborn, disillusioned, cynical and apathetic and won't apologize. So he gets all random, devil-may-care, and daring and starts up Innocence Serengeti up in the savannah lands high in the hills of Ehido. Turns out to be a career-making move, but only after he salvages himself, kicks his drinking habit, stops whoring with the interns and finds it in himself to apologize and make amends to Miriam.)
expand the section »
Quote:
"I've got my boxing gloves on, so I'm ready to fight the traffic."
--KitKat Booga (AKA Simper Booga, Giggle Booga, TimoSemper Booga, Future Spazz, Kika Booga, TeeTee Booga, Cuddle Monkey, Ack!Ack! Lapdog, Boogazilla, Extendozilla, Laugh Attack & so on)
Research Floyd Flake, pastor of the Greater Allen Cathedral, NY. "We don't believe b/c what God is telling us is so contrary to what we want to believe."
He who wishes to be ignorant and free wants what never was and never will be. --T. Jefferson
The Valiant 60 will be standard bearers for access to education (inclusive of vouchers, apprenticeships, work-study, homeschooling & etc.) b/c without education there is no effective self-rule. Without education we cannot be free.
Intelligent discernment and intuition are nurtured by a friendship with ambiguity and they are honed by an acceptance of the paradoxical and a grasp of the counterintuitive.
"It is in loving others that we find ourselves." (as opposed to the conceit that "I must love myself before I love others," which is, in fact, a foot set firmly on the road to narcissism).
Demons, Concept A: We become possessed of things (anger, greed, arrogance, consumerism, dispirited thinking, overwork) that control our actions.
Demons, Concept B: Demons are real entities that use these possessions to deceive and control us. Through these emotional addictions they poison and control our thinking.
Demons, Concept C: In biblical times, sans modern scientific blinders, people could recognize a demon. Now we can't see it, but that by no means indicates that they are not real. Modern skepticism provides a convenient cloak for demonic activity.
Demons, Concept D: With scary or unpleasant things we employ euphemisms and avoid direct thought because that temporarily alleviates the discomfort. Another method of avoidance is self-deception, in this case we "confuse the weapon with the wielder" in order to equate the assailant with the assault, and thus diminish him, when in point of fact the assailant is capable of many more such assaults, both similar and dissimilar, and we are blinding ourselves to his existence. There are further levels of this denial, but I will set those aside for now. The refusal to personify evil is a self-protective mechanism. We want a tidy, "modern" world.
Demons, Concept D: With pleasant things, like the Holy Spirit, we do not hesitate to identify the agent of God's grace or love or salvation or blessing. There is a blessing, and the Holy Spirit is the agent of that blessing. Should we say that there is a spiritual agent behind all good things (blessedness, joy, grace) but there is no spiritual agent behind the bad things (anger, divisiveness, jealousy, covetousness)? We diminish the Holy Spirit if we refuse to personify it. Joy and blessedness do not just arise of themselves (except in a mechanistic, non-theistic universe)-- they are brought to us by the spiritual forces of good at work in our reality. Anger and divisiveness do not just arise of themselves-- they are brought to us by the spiritual forces of evil. To dessicate the idea of "demons" to the point that they are just metaphors for our own self-destructive tendencies is to deny spiritual reality. Do so if you like, but in so doing you also deny the experience of true grace and blessedness which come from God who is author and progenitor of that spiritual reality that you trivialize and deny.
Pema (Buddhist) speaks of "befriending" our demons. This is a useful concept. Step one in this friendship is the recognition of those demons. Recognition, not denial.
Spiritual forces are the mechanisms that connect diverse issues. When we acknowledge spiritual realities we can approach the problems of life in a concerted, focused, and unified fashion. Scientific or mechanistic thought tends to fragment our approach to the extent that we become isolated and ineffective. We must reunify, call out the demons from among us, embrace the Kingdom (and "Kin-dom") of God as a present reality, and act out of a sense of connectedness, not isolation.
Jesus calls us to surrender. In surrendering, the things that we expect are changed. Too often we expect God to fulfill our expectations. Jesus came, in part, to remove from us our expectations and to replace those misguided ideas with a complete reliance on God.
World Gathering of Young Friends (WGYF)
Epistle from 1985 World Gathering of Young Friends
MIASMA: insert bizarre lists. Format = "neither ___ nor ___, ____ nor ___, ..., but _____." See Galations 3:29 for eg. Convey info. and detail free of context (mostly), re. Ehido, Cal, etc. List "disembodied details" (oblique ref. to ROY, transcorporeal entity and the mechanism of disembodiment in the novel).
"... surefooted as a goat."
Anime: Macross Zero (jungle). Interesting dialogue.
"All we got from your town is dirt on our feet, so we're giving it back!" (ref. Luke 10:1-11)
SPECTACLEPOD: Federation of Competetive Eating (ref. SF Chron., "Food Fight to the Finish.")
John McWhorter, Authentically Black, the silent black majority.
From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East. Essays on Middle Eastern history and influence by Bernard Lewis (read also Adolphus Slade).
Random: Cokie, Buddy & Cranky, the druggie triplets
Mission Neighborhood Centers, Inc. (415) 206-7747. They help low income families. Child care, carnaval, afterschool programs, dance, etc. Bryant and 17th (& Mission).
"Transfer power from bureaucrats to parents" --Clint Bolick of the School of Choice Alliance
Arab paradox; modernizers vs. fundamentalist Islamicism. To remedy the awareness of "falling behind" the rest of the world. However, both approaches are a threat to the "old ways" of the Islamic world b/c they both represent a divorce from the past Arab political outlook. Lunatic fringe's rewriting of Islam (Wajabis, for e.g., from the house of Sa'ud) corrupts the traditional intent of Islam. Passion plus money (oil) and a total lack of scruples (evangelistic) combine to create modern fanatical Islam. The Wajabi sect educates diaspora communities of Arabs in Europe, U.S. and elsewhere, spreading their misperceptions until they become more of the "norm" in the eyes of the world.
Research: thought, life, work of some guy named Fuller. He has a PhD (Harvard?).
Israel is a successful democracy but is not perceived as an example for Arabs to follow. However, Arabs, being close neighbors to the Israelis, long for the freedom of expression that they see via the airwaves when they watch broadcasts of Israeli TV. This can serve to deepen their hatred, perhaps out of covetousness or jealousy.
Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir by Dorothy Height, Civil Rights activist.
publicaffairsbooks.com
Note: George Washington drew on Phyllis Wheatley's work (speeches? writing?). P. Wheatley is a symbol of educational and literary accomplishment going back to the first days of our nation.
Study the Roosevelts, F.D.R. and Eleanor. Eleanor went out to people to meet them and understand them. She did more than a cosmetic overview-- she went to see people where they really lived, guaged their real level of poverty and unemployment and designed policy based on that.
Social goals: Opportunity, influence, and power --Bethune
Note: Lyndon Johnson's role in passing Civil Rights Act was also v. important
Bethune's Priorities: How she could make things better and how she could bring people together (coalition building & etc.).
« collapse the section
H Readings in Holiness:
We always have the privilege to be in prayer.
Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O divine master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying [to self] that we are born to eternal life.
Thought for Meditation and Preparation:
O gracious God, I pray today for your Holy Church universal,
That you would be pleased to fill it with all truth, in all peace.
Where it is corrupt, purify it;
Where it is in error, direct it;
Where in anything it is amiss, reform it;
Where it is right, establish it;
Where it is in want, provide for it;
Where it is divided, reunite it;
For the sake of the One who died and rose again,
And ever lives to walk with me,
I offer this prayer,
AMEN
A Prayer of Confession:
Holy and Powerful God,
We confess that we often are swept up in the tide of our generation.
We have failed in our calling to be your Holy people,
a people set apart for your divine purpose.
We live more in apathy born of fatalism than in passion born of hope.
We are moved more by private ambition than by our
commitment to social justice.
We dream more of privilege and benefits than of service and sacrifice.
We try to speak in your name,
But we try to speak it without relinquishing our glories,
Without nourishing our souls, without relying completely and
totally upon your grace.
Help us, we pray, to give our lives and our hearts to you.
Help us to claim you as the sovereign Lord of our life
over all other powers and principalities.
Forgive us, we pray.
Revive us so that we might revive your Church for the work of your ministry.
We pray this in Christ's name, AMEN.
(adapted from a prayer by Lydia S. Martinez)
Holy God of hope and faith,
We hear your call to faithfulness and new beginnings.
We hear your call to clarity and boldness in the living out of our faith,
And we sense the power of your Spirit pulling us forward.
Help us, as we respond to your call to know the difference
Between faithfulness and legalism, between clarity and arrogance;
Between your power and the power of our social order.
We pray for this ability to discern, and for the joy that comes with us
On this journey, AMEN.
Holy God, we live in a world that is full of lies.
We hear them from the highest places to the lowest.
We dodge them and try to discern wherein the truth rests.
And then, Holy Spirit, the voice of Pilate rings in our ears, saying,
"What is truth?"
We confess, gracious God, that sometimes we wither under the words.
We wilt in the rain of cynicism and we do not-- honestly-- always know where to find the truth.
Forgive us.
Forgive us when we grow weary of the world around us and give in to its sway.
Forgive us for loosening our grip on the truth we have from you.
Have mercy on us for the damage we do when we live in the shadow of this world, and give us courage to return to you.
Teach us the joy of living in your way.
Give to us the life building gifts of community and laughter, of hope and justice.
Hear us God, and hold us as we strive to be faithful in your sight.
We pray this and hope to live more fully in Jesus' name. AMEN.
Holy Spirit, flower of grace,
Enter into my heart in this moment and make a home therein.
Free me from anxiety and the need to achieve.
Liberate me from my anger and my fear.
Strip from me all that keeps me from the experience
Of your wonder.
AMEN.
Temple UMC
1111 Junipero Serra Blvd.
San Francisco, CA 94132
Phone: 415-586-1444
Fax: 415-586-1446
email the pastor:
Rev. Schuyler Rhodes
email the church office:
Ms. Donna Decker
ABOUT ME
If you wish to get some biographical info about me you can open a Friendster account and look for me there. I also have a page on MySpace with a lot of rambling self-disclosure, if you're in that kinda' mood. Or you could strike up an email conversation and who knows what I might tell you? I have, at times, very poor impulse control. The email link is below, just under my cheesin mug.
Contact
email: QHLTH60
DO NOT TOUCH
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