S I G N P O S T S V O L V

Dr. Davison spends his time seeking a greater understanding of the world and its people. Their common bonds and commitments are for him a continual source of inspiration. He and his wife, Patricia, currently live in Arizona.

SIGN POSTS
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS VOL. V

D A V I S O N

Don Davison

SIGN POSTS A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS Volume V

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Other Books by Don Davison

An Outline of a Philosophy of the Consciousness of Truth The Concept of Personhood in the Evolutionary Process of Being The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others Sign Posts: A Collection of Essays, Volumes I, II, III, and IV

Poetry
Thoughts and Feelings Book I Thoughts and Feelings Book II Needles from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Seeds from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Pitch from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Humus from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Sawdust from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Suns Rays Bouncing off the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Shadows Beneath the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Cones from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Pollen Sifting from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Reflections from Lucerne Searching Swamps Questions Times Echoes Memories Insistences Splashes Ripples Pebbles

Collections
Always Extolling Murmurings Iris and Other Things Pieces of the Journey Through the Swamps of Time Reflections from Lucerne The Twelfth Hour Pebbles on the Shore

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SIGN POSTS A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS Volume V Don Davison

Zirahuen Tempe, AZ pathtotheself.com DrDavison@pathtotheself.com 2013 by Zirahuen All rights reserved. Published 2013 Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-9858130-3-1 No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and review. Cover photo and author photo by Patricia Davison Special thanks to Louella Holter, and to Tina Rosio, from W.

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Again To Patricia, for everything.

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All of Don Davisons books have water on their covers. Water is one of the most essential attributes of the planet Earth; without it, life as we know it would not exist. It deserves our most considered attention. Davisons collections of poetry all end with Finding Pieces. Many of you have asked, where did the rules for the Game of Life come from? They come from many places and different times. Good hunting!

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CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUME SIGN POSTS I Preface A Human Face A Human Touch A New Point of Departure A Word About Politics Grow Up, America! Immigration A Brief History Iraq The Last War Self-Love Thank You, Artists! The Mediation of Reality The Past Present and Future The Person Wars of the Moment What Is Right? An Agenda for Us All The United Nations xiii 1 7 11 13 23 37 43 49 53 61 67 79 85 91 95

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CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUME SIGN POSTS II Preface Vignette Sufficient Security Its Free! The Ethics of Politics: An Oxymoron or Truth? Democratic Oversight Health Care Our Current Moment A Question for Our Times We Need Enough Truth to Know the Truth Procedural Questions Understanding Our Current Moment Standpoints and a Methodology for Dealing with Postmodern Perspectives Damn It! Ive Had Enough! Take Courage, America! How Much Is Too Much? The Truth Elections and the Health of a Nation A Humanistic Manifesto xiii 1 3 7 11 17 19 33 39 41 45 47 53 57 61 69 75 81

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Splash A Beacon on a Hill All Hands on Deck! Learning to Die Well My Current Status Is A Direction

85 87 89 93 97 99

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CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUME SIGN POSTS III Preface While We Are At It: Health Care 2.0 Kudos and Thank Yous Economics 101 Time, Place, and People The Gift Obama Got Most of It Wrong The Paparazzi A Streaming The Greatest Challenge of Our Time, Part 1 Fear, Facts, and Ideologies The Coming Revolt Thinking Matters Globalization We The People Trust Let Me Speak! The Greatest Challenge of Our Time, Part 2 History Does Not Run Backwards! xiii 1 7 9 15 19 23 27 31 35 45 49 55 57 65 67 75 77 81

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Cultural Blinders Human Life Is a Moving Force Come to the Party! A Visit with the Dancing Muse Bite the Bullet!

83 89 93 99 101

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CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUME SIGN POSTS IV Preface Sandbox Syndrome A New Transparency A Note to the Maryland State Employees, to Wisconsin State Employees, and to All Local, State, and Federal Employees Changing Our Minds It Is Deeply Troubling A Question for Our Times End Game Entertainment Is a Strange Bed Partner How Often Do We Need to Be Reminded? In All of This Justice Nothing Is Free! One Wonders The Arrogance of Tyrants The Drivel Called News Where Are We? Who Said That? Medias Gift Food for Thought Derivatives xvii 1 3

5 9 13 15 17 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 39 43 47 49 53 55

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Frustration Reiterated Looking for That Thing Our Time So Politically Correct Now Wait a Minute! We Are a World of Laws Freedom of the Spirit An Observation A Perfect Storm I Am an I Am!

59 61 63 67 69 71 75 79 81 85

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CONTENTS OF SIGN POSTS V (this volume) Preface The Greatest Challenge The Facts at Hand Immigration Not a Mandate It Was Predictable O Ignorance Dedicated Ignorance Ignorance Again Image and Likeness Todays Moment Almost The Multifaceted Diamond Some Womens Vote United We Stand Divided We Fall Facts Now Is The Time! The Great Wound The New Age of Transparency (and our Current State of Cultural Affairs) A Person Truths at a Blink Always Hope The Idiocy of it All The Three Musketeers The Facts of the Matter Polling the Youth (On Matters of Importance)
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xxi 1 1 7 9 17 18 19 20 22 23 25 27 31 37 42 43 48 49 54 57 59 61 65 66 67

Just How Smart Are We? Marriage What Legacy? A Glance at the Past A Peek at the Future Messages It Has Been Said Perpetrators Always Walking Always Running Advice Epitaph Decisions Choose! Life What We Must Know, We Must Be (Part One) To Dream

71 73 79 81 86 87 89 91 93 95 97 99 100 101 105

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AUTHORS NOTE I am primarily a poet; these essays are intended to help flesh out various themes and topics found in my poetry. Where I feel it is appropriate, I might refer you, dear reader, to a particular poem that further elucidates certain thoughts or sentiments. These and other materials are marked with an asterisk. If not otherwise noted, such inclusions are my own work.

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PREFACE Sign Posts are collections of essays written to shed some light on my personal thinking. Over the years, students and others have asked that I write some small pieces on what I felt about this or that. In the following working pieces called postings, I will attempt to share some of the fundamental points of departure that have guided my thinking and stimulated my searching in my various fields of interest. These pieces will be augmented with the new and intriguing that I find as I continue to discover the richness of the human garden and the unfathomable depths of the human experience. I believe that as a species, we must act in love (in that Frommian manner: with an active concern for all life and growth) by operating and proceeding with knowledge, care, responsibility, and respect while we dedicate ourselves to growth as self and circumstances change. We must live with the awareness that a sanctifying process is always underway (from A Word About Politics, in Sign Posts I).

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THE GREATEST CHALLENGE The greatest challenge for our constitutional republic is an educational one. A participative democracy needs an informed populaceand a motivated one. To put it straightforwardly: we need a citizenry that is smart enough to vote. Lets all do what we can to help each other become informed enough to maintain our freedoms by shouldering our personal, social, and governmental responsibilities. The themes of the day are complex and extremely important. Deficit Spending, Legislative Agendas, Immigration, Appropriate Military Response, and Freedoms are among some of the most important. THE FACTS AT HAND The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Hunter, 1790

We have recently crossed an unfortunate milestoneslightly more people now receive government assistance than work full time. About half of wage earners in the U.S. pay no income tax, and about half of the population receives some form of government assistance. This is obviously anathema to the facts at hand concerning the nature and survival of the species, as has been amply demonstrated by history. And as a compromised country and culture, we have elected a compromised president. And that is not a rhetorical we, it is a fraternal we in that biblical sense: I am my brothers keeper. If I believe that you cant seethat you are lostI am obligated to care for you, as the Samaritan did for his brother.
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And I must not only care for you, I must help you to understand so that you can survive in the organics of our everyday lives, knowing that all things change. In the human realm this has meant that we plan for the future and we share information with others precisely because there is the omnipresent unknown over which we have only a modicum of control. In other words, our evolutionary success is due to the fact that we do what we know we need to do in order to ensure that sufficient numbers know, and can do, so that they (or we as a whole) can provide for ourselves and our loved ones. This means that we, as a wholesufficient numbers in a constitutional republicthe electorateelected an individual who has insufficient understanding of the nature of the human person. Not only is this represented in the individual of the Presidency, but it is also represented in the Congress and in the behavior of a large segment of the citizenry of the republic. Given the abundance of the historical record, we have ample evidence showing that if we give someone (or many people) too much, they do not appreciate the gift. There are many reasons for this: the human person learns to expect when patterns prevail, and if we have some ostensibly reliable source of food, money, health care, or what have you, we (many of us) will merely wait for that to be produced and delivered. This must be viewed through the instructive facts of history. Historically, we have always had the Seven Deadly Sins and the Virtues. For those of you who may have forgotten, the Seven Deadly Sins are Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony. The Virtues are Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Courage, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Historically, the former have been reviled whereas the latter have been prized and respected. Human nature lies at the disposition of reality and intent. We can, by our commitments, better ourselves and care
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for our loved ones to the degree we are able. The free expression of our capabilities and our actions maximizes our ability to do this. Concerning our current presidential and political scene, there are many red flags: Our national debt is approaching impossible numbers. Individuals on the governmental dole exceed any rational number. Taxpayers cannot support the current levels of governmental activity in any conceivably fair way. The cost of education in no way can be justified by the return on our investment. Health care is a personal responsibility, for the most part. It is also true that accidents do occur and nature prevails. Many utopias have been described and debated, but we have yet to find any at the human level, or any other level for that matter. * * * There is a certain pathos in our current circumstance. The Congressional approval rating is at an all-time low. The Presidents approval rating approximates the governmental dole. Trust in our social institutions is fading. The Free Press has been co-opted by those who would have you believe that there is only one way to Rome. When a constitutional republics working parts fail, there is a high likelihood that some adjustments will come to the governing of that republic. History is our most helpful predictor of change. There is pathos in and around this Presidency. The President is a fear-driven adolescent in a mans body. He manifests himself as an angry, arrogant adolescent who never grew into his own skin. He is driven ideologically as that adolescent and consequently he cannot comprehend nor defend his espoused ideology. He has not been able to comprehend the essential aspect of the absolute and sacred need for fundamental human freedoms. As an honestly dishonest adolescent, he cannot use
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the words truth and respect without stumbling over himself. He has lived all his life in a fear-driven, angry, guilt-ridden, and prideful (false pride, lying) vicious circle. This will continue forever, or until a maturing process moves him along to embrace the heroics of human growth. Unfortunately, he has never been able to accomplish this necessary growth. This circumstance is mirrored by a large group of people in the U.S. population who are also suffering a crisis of childhood/ adolescent behavior. This is also an attribute of too many of the current members of both parties in the U.S. Congress. We, those who should have been paying attention to the wellbeing of the body politic, have been seriously negligent. We have allowed our culture to devolve into a dependent morass of whiners who perceive themselves as entitled to everything and anything. And to make matters worse, we have not educated our populace sufficiently to comprehend some of the simple laws of physics: Bodies in motion tend to stay in motionto maintain a given directionality. The objective, to live in an entertainment universe, has taken the edge off our abilities to maintain sufficient credibility in dealing with the facts at hand instead of the facts on the screen/display or whatever. Responsibility is the key to success in the journey of humanitys efforts. Sweat counts for something! Objectives do matter. The truth belongs to itself, and it is in our best interests to comprehend sufficient truths in order to maintain a productive presence as individuals, families, groups, countries, and as a global whole. Leadership is an essential attribute of growing/ maturing societies. A leaderless gaggle, flock, herd, crowd, or group, cannot be in the best interests of the whole. Those who are poorly committed and those ignorant of the facts at handapproximately 50% of the voting public intend to vote for an adolescent attempting to lead. Neither they nor he have any clue as to what it takes to form a working
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whole while providing for sufficient expressions of freedom to sustain the activities of a whole. The sad facts of the matter are that most know that something is fundamentally wrong, and yet as frightened adolescents they and he continue on a course of failure. Grow or you lose. If you lose, those around you also 1 lose, and the whole world loses. Failure is not an option! What part of this do we not understand? Any part should serve to remind us to adopt a serious adult commitment to the virtues and to strike a course to remediate the madness of the present. The media is profoundly adrift; screaming minions make the news of the day at the speed of live, news is reported by mostly incompetents, schoolsfor the most partare failing, we have a government that does not understand how to balance a budget, Mother Nature needs our help, frivolities become lifelong goals, obesity reigns supreme, neophytes and children are elected to public office. How are we doing? It could be worse. Now is the time for each and every able body and able mind to gather their self, tighten their belt, roll up their sleeves, and focus their commitments. We must save ourselves and the nation. Lets get it done!

This is Rule 6 in The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others, available at pathtotheself.com/allpostingvols.html (also available at http://amzn.to/fOrqEi). 5

IMMIGRATION

There is, in the current discussion of immigration, the word amnesty. The dictionary definition of this word is A pardon extended by the government to a group or class of persons, usually for a political offense; the act of a sovereign power officially forgiving certain classes of persons who are subject to trial but have not yet been convicted. It includes more than pardon, inasmuch as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the offense. This does not bode well for a society that already possesses a deep historical amnesia. Who, in their right mind, does not understand the significance of this simple and delineated meaning? If there is any comprehension of the need for law, and by that I mean a spirit of and the encoding of and the administration of a set of principles that are designed expressly for the civil maintenance of any group of people, there must be some realization that decorum and respect are synergisms that reciprocally benefit us all. And I must now be clear about what is meant by this: we must extend our understanding to all people inasmuch as we are in the midst of an accelerating implosion of the human race on the planet earth. Those certain inalienable rights so touted by so much rhetoric need to be understood at a fundamental level so that each and every person has a deep commitment to an understanding of the necessity of such laws and regulations, which speak to essential human behaviors that complement opportunities to exercise and protect the rights of all people. This we cannot do without the essentials of law governing the honest movements of the species. The words open society do have meaning, but
See the complete treatment of Immigration in the various volumes of Sign Posts (pathtotheself.com/allpostingvols.html). 7
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not the one that fails to understand, along with the generous simplicity of the intent, the other words of anarchy, ignorance, destruction, and the list goes on. The movement of the species cannot be that honest interchange without sufficient recognition of appropriate laws that protect us all. For far too long the United States has turned a blind eye to the growing problems of the increasing numbers of illegal undocumented (what nonsense is that?) aliens within our borders. The time has come to address this issue and to do so in a manner that does not trample on the necessity to create sufficient oversight and regulations for everyone. This predicates the need to refrain from granting amnesty to those who have knowingly broken existing laws. A fundamental respect for the laws of the land creates an operational environment of mutual respect that births trust among the citizens of a nation. To ignore this fact is to create a future disregard for essential decorum and respect. Laws are an essential attribute of a nations well-being. They add structure to the fabric of a well-ordered society. The dismissal of any responsibility for the obeying of our laws suggests that they really carry no weight, and are of little significance. Such is not the case.

NOT A MANDATE As we move away from the pomp and circumstance of the Inaugural and the peaceful continuation of a presidential term of office, without the turmoil so often witnessed throughout the history of the species, we need to reflect on the facts at hand: This particular election was not a mandateit was an unfortunate moment, made possible by suppression of the opposition and a lot of mistakes in so many ways: poor choices, procrastination, and in general a lack of focus representing a lack of in-depth understanding of the sustaining human purpose. A cobbled-together critical mass made up of a few here and a few more there, made the difference. To this we must turn our attention. From all these groups the left put together sufficient numbers to have a win. This was a win that could in no way be called a mandate. That assessment could only come from the minds of entrenched ideologues who actually believe what he, she, or they sayeven if what is said makes no sense, has no enduring precedent, and is described as impossible by those who have a better understandingeven professional standingsuch as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO). Both entities have indicated that federal spending is going to wreak havoc on the United States of America, destroying its essential character. In this vein, maybe it could be referred to as a mistake of perception or a mandate of destruction. It does not take a genius, a historian, or an economist to have a measure of concern about our national and international wellbeing, the well-being of the parts and of the whole of the world. These are difficult times for many in this nation and
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across the globe, and while we have leaderless political moments in the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government, other governments also have their difficulties. They are dysfunctional precisely because they are dishonest. Nowhere, in all of this, has there been sufficient courage by socalled leaders to say, Stop! We need to cut spending and take care of our personal and communal responsibilities, both domestic and foreign. It is obvious that our current problems did not appear overnight or in the last few years, but there has been a growing cultural and political vacuum that has added to the growing stagnation, deflation, inflation, and the downright debilitation of the greatest country in the history of the world. This touting of this country as the greatest beacon of hope will remain true for the entire human family only if we maintain a fidelity to actively following the precepts of our founding documents. To put this in some context regarding the now universal tool of technology and the truths that are being used and really do matternumbers and perceptions and how this will only matter if there is an inherent integrity that is maintainedthe fact is that there are more of us here, there, and everywhere, and it is indisputable that technology has succeeded in penetrating every culture and country in the world. To put it simply, we are, we matter, math matters, and technology is here to stay. In the statistical enclaves, we discover the famous bell curve where we find less thans and more thans, the unemployed and employed, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, atheists and believers, liberals and conservatives, and everything in between, the all-in-all of the famous curve. It is indeed true that some are always more this or that, and yet we categorize them
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as this or that. We forget or choose not to know that the organic is always 24/7 and always, in the very long run, always more or less than because lifes innate characteristic is growth and death. And yet we can, in our honest reflections, agree that this curve does help us identify similarities and differences as well as the gradations of those differencesand that the knowing and the understanding of those differences helps us to develop essential cultural cohesion. We must always remember that forgiveness is another innate aspect of our humanity that gives us more of ourselves as we express our fundamental freedoms. One example to elucidate these facts would be the issue of Immigration policy (Health Care and Education would also 1 serve). We can find in the whole of immigration a sufficiently broad field of facts and figures to gain some understanding of our current milieu. Upholding the laws of a countrys Constitution should be paramount to protecting its citizens, and that is surely a major responsibility of government. The current Mexican moment in the United States serves as an example of groupsand the parts of the groups and the individuals (all of them) who have found their way, through the media of the day, onto the stage of the whole. The statisticians and the political gurus have now found them and they target them with insightful delight and many times with dishonesty downright liesre-creating and abetting the age-old nemesis of class warfare: us against them (the U.S. against the world) or whomever the aggrieved may be, whatever the fringe elements that have managed to catch the attention of some eager beavers (unseasoned news technicians) to whom we cannot apply the term reporters. They are Creators of Information, Masseuses of Facts. We also must now add Advocates for
The reader may wish to view essays on immigration and education in the first four volumes of Sign Posts. 11
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themselves, as an adolescent I or Me who desperately wants and actually really needs to be noticed and will do anything in order to get noticed. The 24/7 news cycle, glorified by the entertainment industry, has been swept up in the numbers of illegal immigrants, and I choose the use of the term illegal immigrants for a reason: that is what they are. Every country has laws and they have them for a purpose: to protect the general populace and maintain a productive social order in which the citizens, I use that word also on purpose, can enjoy their inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is what we espouse as a nation and what we advocate and have been willing and are willing to spend life and treasure to help bring to the rest of the world. That we have been, at times, remiss in doing this is the subject of another essay. Here, I only point out the fact that as a nation we have been at the leading edge of promoting the recognition of these same just inalienable rights for all the people of this world. So, what is it that we need to know? When people ignore another countrys laws to enter that countrys sanctuarial space undocumented and then some (not all) continue that disobedience by driving without licenses, without insurance, and accessing goods and services that are supported by a legal infrastructure created to protect and serve the citizens of that country, they do not merit the privilege of the protection of that country. They are law-breakers and should be treated that way. Now, before we go any further in this discussion, I want to share something with my Mexican brothers and sisters and everyone else, for that matter. Pues, soy Mexicano de corazn, norteamericano de nacionalidad. (Well, Im Mexican at heart, North American by nationality.) This is not only a sentiment of nationality; it is a sentiment that was gained after spending
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many years in their midst. It is also true that I married a Mexican, and we are working on some 48 years of the miracle of marriage. It is also a fact that I attended a university in Mexico, graduated from a university in Mexico, taught at a university in Mexico, was a Dean of Men at a university in Mexico, during which time my responsibility included dealing with the Mexican judicial system. I know something of Mexico. I say this because I want you to know that it is the similarity of our personhoods that matters and we need to wear them as a personal and social responsibility. Now, to get back to the subject of Not a Mandate. For some of the fringe elements of the Obama Mexican-American voters, there is a mentality that each and every country has been distilled over time and come to some fundamental synthesis of values. (All lying somewhere on our famous bell curve.) The United States is no exceptionneither is Mexico. I ask my Mexican compatriots to examine Octavio Pazs insightful work, The Labyrinth of Solitude. It is a historical analysis of the psyche of the Mexican people. It is a description of their collective and individual consciousnessit is a window into their soulit provides an understanding of their collective motivations and behaviors. In short, it describes why they would support a Patrn who would mouth simple platitudes concerning social consciencethe gilded rhetoricwhile stealing freedoms from the most vulnerable among us. This is why they, from their beautiful familial standpoint, without the additional understanding of the importance of laws in their new cultural milieu, would justify lying, cheating, and stealing from the basic constructs of a civil society that they, themselves, want so desperately to be part of. This is not without understanding. Integrity of purpose at the individual and social levels is the glue that gives opportunity to individual presence and social cohesion. To live in a society that at its heart and soul has set as fundamental goals the mandates and truths of
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our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution requires sufficient knowledge of the freedoms and subsequent responsibilities that are concomitant with those freedoms. There are also those U.S. citizens who also do not understand these responsibilities or the freedomsfor different reasons. This is 1 also a subject for a future essay. The greatness of the United States, this Beacon on a Hill, is precisely that it provides opportunities to give expression to each one according to their talents and abilities within the construct of a civil society governed by laws and customs. To have not known enough about either is an indictment of those who did not know enough to protect themselves from the Patrn who has as his agenda the fundamental transformation of what they came here to enjoy, to offer to their children. This is their greatest sin of ignorance. Therein lies the great tragedy of their naive participation in this last election. It was a perpetuation of a consciousness that, while given birth in Mexico, that by the way has an excellent constitution, also has a society that says, Cumplo, pero no obedezco. (I will comply but not obey.) And here, does this remind you of anyone? Executive Orders, perhaps? Multiply this by the statistical fringes of the ill-informed, the elitists and their destructive intentions, and the ignorant, and you have a win but you certainly do not have a mandate, much less a coalition of sufficiently prepared participants to enhance this countrys potential in order to take care of current and future generations.
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Again I refer you to Sign Posts for essays on these subjects. You may wish to read A Beacon on a Hill in Pebbles on the Shore, a collection of poetry available at http://amzn.to/gpHPRB. 14

The challenges for my Mexican brothers and sisters as well as those other citizens is to understand sufficiently the constructs and opportunities that this great nation has to offer and to participate in its maintenance as well as its growth and development by protecting the laws and other attributes that make it the greatest country in the world. If we were to multiply this description of the edges of the curves of the many bell curves of U.S. society, we could see how many there were who believed the rhetoric, bought into the message, and participated in the winand lost because they didnt know or couldnt understand the deceit inherent in the message. We would have a better idea of those who helped create the win that gave birth to the supposed mandate. We have all lost a measure of the freedoms that they purport to defend and that so many on both sides of the border have labored and died for. There are many who must rethink their future and the future of their children and, as well, what this country is all about. Trends toward the freedoms of humankind must be protected by those few who in the making of new history, knew and know and choose to defend those freedoms while others grow in their strength and understanding of the 1 very nature and purpose of those freedoms. There is much to do. Game on!

For specific suggestions on what to do about our current immigration problems, and there are many, see the previous volumes of Sign Posts (which can be read free of charge at pathtotheself.com/allpostingvols.html). 15

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IT WAS PREDICTABLE It was predictable that evolution, in every sense of that reciprocity of movement, would also lead to devolution. Life follows the famous sine wave, ascending and descending. And, also in this case, the cancer analogy has been a good one: it grows so fast and spreads so far that it kills its host and in so doing also kills itself. Beautifully efficient in a negative way and so too, is the ignorance of the day. Ignorance creates a popular synergism that breeds upon itself it becomes fashionable to be ignorantwhile we wear, use, or carry the current branded whatever. The glory of the glitzy ads of the day: You are not anyone unless you have what everyone is buying, having, wearing, flashing as their blinky, holding as their blanky, and displaying ones goodies to the other children and adolescents. All of whom know how to use their pester power to illicit guilt and indiscriminant largesse from the plastic of guiltridden, anxious parents who have (almost) forgotten the 1 quadrivium of fear, anger, guilt, and false pride. Why else the anxiety, the simmering angerthe most visible of the four denizens of a personal and social apocalypse? The movement, the directionality of being, including ours, is from the beginning to the endwhich, when we remain ensconced in ignorance again and again, starts all over again in a perverse, negative synergism, from fear begetting anger, leading to guilt,
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See The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others. 17

culminating in false pride, leading inevitably, again, to fear, anger, etc., etc., etc. This is also true of those malevolent governments who dont have a clue about staying out of the peoples wayas well as those legislators in countries that they have been elected to represent and serve, as opposed to resent and demean. We must all remember the snake eating its tail, the mandala of failure in the face of life. Life is the universes gift to all things. For those shallow secular elitists and the ignorant: You, the elitists, lose life in an active way by stealing others freedoms; and you, the ignorant, lose life opportunities in a passive way by not growing into an acceptance of the fullness of your freedoms. The following trilogy sheds some light on our perception of ignorance.

O IGNORANCE Ignorance! Ignorance! O Ignorance! You bloody dirty thing! We do not know what we do not know, yet when we come to know, we must also know there was a time when we did not know. What humbling magnificence! What joy! To know that we can come to know that there is yet something for us to know.

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DEDICATED IGNORANCE The creeping tide of humanity surprises us and frightens us. Presenting choices to enmesh ourselves in the onslaught, to have the feckless hope of a romantic choice, or to live on the edge trying to stay slightly ahead of the wave. We try and try and try to fight the inexorable, changes, flows, flashes, crashes, opportunities. The question: How to succeed when we inherited a dedicated ignorance?

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IGNORANCE AGAIN We are tumbled on a new shore. In exhaustion, we crawl as children. In exuberance, we prance as adolescents. Raping the sensitivities of our elders, we wreak havoc on our gifts. We inherited a Dedicated Ignorance and a predilection for bad manners. Our only portal providing any hope to pay homage to our history, ourselves, and the Giver, is the gaining of sufficient experience, presenting that supreme gift of an informed choice, a choice in which we exercise our freedom, complementing what is eternally already here.

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For those prudent enough to wonder about their honest purpose: They are participating in Gods intent in the giving of the gift of life to begin with, and along with that gift the necessity of exercising sufficient freedoms to coincide with the gift of those freedoms by taking the necessary steps to grow into those responsible selves, selves committed to enabling activities that make all of the difference in availing ones self to the exercising of our own freedoms and the freedoms of others.

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IMAGE AND LIKENESS I am an I am! Pulled into being by my real selfish-self, exuding an integrity of being, saying Yes! to all I am, becoming all that I can be, all that I must be, all that I am a gift of the Giver, giving my me to my loving-self, to all others, and to my God. 1 I am an I am!

These poems appear in Pebbles on the Shore: A Collection (available at http://amzn.to/gpHPRB). 22

TODAYS MOMENT The childish response to our current circumstance (the perceived chaos as well as order) from many, perhaps even most, apathetic citizens, incompetent elected officials, and absolutely idiotic prognosticators as well as educators, is pathetic. The floundering footsteps of history have castrated the mind and confused the soul yet we continue to search. From those great reciprocals of beings thrusts and drags the earth of heaven and the heaven of earth we choose again our current plate where sanctimony is served, humility reigns, and the still point beckons. When cynics and sentimentalists come together to commiserate in their blabberings and flounderings with each others standpoints, they wallow in a disfunctionality that deepens the risks to which we expose ourselves and our children in this current stage of our global implosion. Heat will build, thought and actions become clouded. We are unable to see that Madness is just madness. Glory lies to justify the madness. Addendum for an agreement between two parties: This applies to all actions related to (The Agreement): It is understood that all actions between both parties will be carried out with an integrity of being in thought, word, and deed, exuding a belief that encompasses all actions; and in this casenamely that no
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one has the right to complain or take contrary actions against a nativity scene, statues, the Ten Commandments, or other manifestations of historys efforts placed in public placesefforts that have graced public space for centuries. If you dont like them or disagreeSuck it up! Shut your mouth, and move on. Any healthy person wearing their own personhood would have sufficient understanding that they and they alone have the capacity to act upon their own beliefs and not be offended by what anyone else may say or dounless there is an immediate existential threat to ones very existence, ones own life, or the life of a loved one.

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ALMOST ... In grief we fight from moment to moment never knowing yesterdays truths or tomorrows lies. With blinders on we see only cataracts of time falling, falling, dropping off to God knows where. I seek to know, help me in my unknowing. And finally, when shall I know that the intellect knows so little? When from the depths of some abyss pristine drops of water come, and touching me they find and baptize a soul wanting, wanting so much to be touched by the truth, to be free. How could I know how wonderful it feels to be a self if it were not for you? And what do I say when the gentle breeze calls for a response? Madness is just madness. Glory lies to justify the madness. And yet, in their souls lies a hidden time when truth is one.

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26

THE MULTIFACETED DIAMOND Winners and losers, survivors and victims, along with all of the ordinary folks, form the story of our presence in the process 1 of being becoming as an awareness of our purpose, and our actions on the planet Earth have so defined us. The manyfaceted diamond of human perception, a perception of our place in the great human drama, with its many whys and wherefores, helps us to create an understanding of the bonds of our history. To have access to these many facets gives us a more comprehensive picture of our accomplishments as well as our trials and tribulations. The fabulous Human Story presents us with many tracks, fodder for our seeking after truths of our presence, forming a road map of our many wanderings and wonderings. Whether speculations or descriptions, whether conscious or unconscious, whatever, we have attempted to place in context some understanding of our presence. We have judged and been judged, we have slaughtered members of our own kind for eons, we have lied, cheated, and stolen from our brothers and our sisters, we have sinned our way and blessed our way to the present. Where do we go to find that great synthesis, that well-grounded tale or truth of our efforts? How difficult it is to find a valueladen yet honest trail of our endeavors. We always ask, Whose truths are we seeking, the winners or the losers? And yet in the pits of our stomachs we always know that there are 2 those silent ones, those who were not left to tell.
1 2

See Image and Likeness in Pebbles on the Shore: A Collection. Left to Tell, by Immacule Ilibagiza. 27

So within the beliefs of the probabilities and possibilities of historys efforts, we collude to create a picture of our human familys triumphs and failures. If it is within the realm of the possible, at this moment in our story, we (some of us at least) go out of our way to say (definitively) that we are describing the facts of our long journey. Yet in the confusion of our efforts, we know that much that we think we know is just that; something that we think we know. Many accept the pictures of the past that are thought to be true; a few maintain a predilection for the long search for the demonstrable facts of the trail of our presence. From this great morass of conflicting stories we sort out our own predilections and create our world views, we form our beliefs, the ones that form the pedestals of our standpoints. These have many times become standpoints that we have been (in the millions) willing to die for, to create interminable sufferings for those others with whom we share our presence, and to create ideologies that have provided less than sufficient infrastructures for our untiring governing efforts. In all of this, it can be said with some assurance and conviction that we have survived! Now, while this is true, we cannot say that there were no other choices that could have been taken or made. In retrospect, we do fathom other options that we could have taken, or better yet that we should take now. These other moments have spawned treatises and ideologies that promulgated solutions to the many problems of human existence. Then, in retrospect, after having them tried by this culture, or in that country, we look upon the results and wonder how those choices could have been made with an honest and open heart.

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There is that body of thought and known facts that depict those magnanimous, benevolent if you will, solutions to the human endeavor. There have been those mandates, those commandments, edicts, that have encapsulated behaviors as individuals and, as well, social groups that have served us in good stead. And yet, even with these stellar efforts, the movements of our efforts continue to present with dos and donts. We seek the freedom to do or not to do whether or not the effects of our actions complement the presence of each and every one of us in our personal and communal efforts to maintain meaningful actions to protect and foster opportunities to present sufficient latitude in our single and corporate behaviors to manifest our creative genius in ways that complement our human existence. How do we, as a group or as a nation, form a coherent ideology that captures a sufficiently cosmopolitan standpoint that could be embraced by a plurality or a majority of the voting public? Are there some definitive standpoints that could have a commonality that would be acceptable to most mature voting citizens? Is it even possible in this age of individual expressions, through the many venues of the social media and the groups and organizations that protect and harbor those so inclined, to come together and vote in a democratic republic in sufficient numbers to get the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government to actually propose solutions to the many problems of our personal and communal existence? How can we stop the bloviating, stop ignorant or well-informed but not sufficiently articulate individuals from blathering nonsense about all manner of subjects? It strikes me that there must be some way of achieving sufficient integrity of an informed purpose that could be innately comprehensible to those with sufficient life experience. One way to begin, perhaps, could be to agree that some information is age dependent. Sufficient facts could speak for
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themselves. Some things are just not comprehended until sufficient life has been lived in the vagaries of space and time to enable most people to understand the fundamentals of logic that can assist in the identification of relationships that depend upon mutual agreements in order to move projects along, whether they are individual, corporate, or communal projects. We dont let children play with real guns in public or drive cars when there is insufficient understanding of cause and effect. Nor should we allow people to spend more than they have or can legitimately borrow and repay in some realistic time frame. 1 Nothing is free! The age of reason, although culturally laden, can be mutually understood. Responsibility and patience are reliable harbingers of success.

Sign Posts IV. 30

SOME WOMENS VOTE To vote an informed vote, one has to be sufficiently informed to own responsibly the opportunities of the present moment. Currently, we, as an organic whole, are not prepared for what we must be/do. That is, we must comprehend our role in our local edge/corner of the great cosmic interplaywe must act as if this is our best and final hour on a stage that has the rest of humanity as a part of the cast. There is an existential totality that can only offer that which is actually and potentially already here, there, and anywhere. It must be connected to some preexisting reality of possibility. And it cannot be merely of my own making, even though I can create some possibility that surges from my imagination. This is because I fathom some vortex of space/time from which I draw an actuality, or some potential, a thing or idea that I cause to come into being, somehow related and yet nuanced in some different way. Nothing is done in isolation. I am a part of something much bigger, much grander, than me alone. One wonders, if this is the case, why so many single, or young women would vote overwhelmingly for someone who possesses so little understanding of our current state of affairs, a person without leadership qualities, very little experience in anything, really, and totally inept at his current post. Actually this mirrors all adolescent behavior; they attempt to escape from societal responsibilities for as long as they can. The inherent danger in having a President who, as an immature ideologue, in his fumbling attempts to be all to all, is lying and therefore stealing the ability to own creatively the essential attribute of personal and communal freedom, a freedom that is essential to a healthy personal and communal development.
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Could it be, with the young and single women demographic in mind, that what we saw in this last election was a resentment vote, a vote that spoke to the annals of history, the tortuous road that women, as a whole, have had to endure throughout the course of most of human history? Think about this for a moment: I am I, a woman, a complementary presence in the great human epic. I have suffered immeasurably throughout most of human history. I have been put upon by my own, by others of every stripe, the yawing infamous gender gap. And now it is that I have an opportunity to express my feelings, long pent up, about this historical circumstance, now is the time for me to remonstrate the agony of my fellow sisters throughout the ages, now is the time for me to cast a vote for an angry adolescent, someone who arrogantly has achieved a measure of prominence from his compromised circumstances, someone with no leadership qualities but some talent with rhetoric, someone who I feel can understand my circumstanceand maybe even help me a bit, a kindred spirit, so to speak. All adolescents tend to find in their own group those who they think/feel will side with them in the confrontational moments when reality presents itself and we refuse, or are unable to understand and own responsibly lifes many consequences. When we become aware of and understand our relational circumstance, we can choose to self-empower and to see and relate to the big picture. As the stages of human growth play out from childhood to adolescence, from maturing young adult to maturing adult, we have witnessed, really lived through ourselves, these various phases of maturation; and we know that when we enter the adolescent stage of our development we tend to think we possess enough wisdom to make a go of it (life and all that life has to offer) when indeed most of us dont have much of a clue, especially in a culture that has made an art of delaying maturation while pretending that it can happen when we are too
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young to understand the ramifications and subsequent responsibilities of our developing lives. The skewed preponderance of the single/young feminine vote of a given demographic presents much food for thought. Perhaps we have shortchanged our children and have set them on the pathway of life with insufficient knowledge about the seasons of life, seasons that will demand a certain maturation along with the assumption of responsibility that comes with age. Expectations are one thing; the facts of the matter, as our world view expands through experience, are many times something altogether different. We may ask, did Title 9 help? You bet it did. Did it solve all the problems or meet our expectations? Obviously it did not. That we might have expected it to was a sign of stupidity. The road has been long, and equal pay for equal work is still debated and demonstrated by the facts at hand. What we have, 1 2 in addition to cultures ugly lassitude, is an ignorance that runs very deep, an ignorance that can provoke, when we havefor the first timea plethora of information that is available to almost everyone. Women now know (as if they werent already well informed from their mothers and grandmothers, and great grandmothers, etc., history itself) that they (women) have been sorely mistreated throughout history. Now, ostensibly, they have an underdog, someone with whom they can identify, want something from, someone who will help them, make them feel good. They (the young and the single) chose to make a statement that, while expressing some knowledge of historys long road, has a fundamental flaw connected to it.
See Perpetrators in the last essay in this collection. This trilogy of Ignorance poems will appear in the forthcoming Still Water: A Collection.
2 1

33

Human history is always the story of one with another. This circumstance has led to subjugation and to love, to slavery and to freedom. And here lies my point: What does that word freedom really mean? In the great bio-dance of nature there manifests a certain reciprocity that changes over time; it changes from dependent to independent and back to some measure of dependence, a new dependence that manifests as a complementary contribution to the well-being of the presence of the whole of humankind, indeed of all lifefrom one to One. I think this is where a mistake was made when so many chose to cast their lot with someone who did not measure up, someone upon whom they projected their pent-up aggression and thought they had a sincere partner, another put-upon adolescent with whom to commiserate, from whom they could expect some measure of self-fulfillment, some assistance. In this false expectation we see the failure of parenting and the abject failure of an educational system in presenting a progressive and ascendant understanding of human growth and development. Expectations are one thing; personal responsibility is quite another. Dreams are essential and yet when a certain level of maturation is achieved they are tempered with the realities of life. Does this mean we should not dream? Obviously it does not; dreams are an essential aspect of the human moment. What it does mean, however, is that we assume a measure of responsibility for our own dreams. We eventually become Santa Claus for others and for ourselves only to the degree that we are able. It is not for us to expect (as most adolescents do, and this culture has been remiss in its acceptance of adolescent and especially prolonged adolescent behavior) that others will
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dance to our preferred tune. We must sing our own song, dance our own dance, and become a positive contributor to society and the needs of others, especially those who are less able, less fortunate. In other words, we must become a mature adult who 1 fully understands that Nothing is Free, and that there is a concomitant relationship between freedom and responsibility. The task at hand, for any capable adult, is to recognize the gift of one, the self, and assume all of the attributes of a freedomseeking adult with all of the accompanying responsibilities. The skewed number of those who expected (but will not receive or be fulfilled in their expectations) to be taken care of are part of a quasi-permanent cadre of adolescents who demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of the process of human life. This vote, at least in part, was an indictment of a culture as well as those who knew better and responded in an immature in-kind way, a way that has failed to respond to the necessities of a democratic republic, a republic that cannot function without an informed maturing citizenry that understands the miraculous creation of a Bill of Rights and a Constitution that speaks to the necessity of complementing circumstances with a literate and participatory population that possesses a deeply inculcated spiritual and humane morality that complements a freedom-loving, freedom-possessing, participative citizenry of a democratic republic. As time has worn on, we have failed in our attentive commitment to maintain an enlightened participatory involvement in the health of the nation. We get what we deserve when we are not honest with the facts at hand and do not possess an in-depth understanding of the human condition. Bon apptit!

See Nothing is Free! in Sign Posts IV. 35

36

UNITED WE STAND DIVIDED WE FALL We have just experienced a moving, transparent (in that everincreasing knowability) example of the ponderous pendulum of history. There is always a wake in the trailing edge and a compression on the leading edge of a pendulum in the human realm. There are those who are swept up in the reverberations of the wake who are struggling to understand the new waves and the loss of the old ways of human effort and understanding, and then there are those on the leading edge who are grappling with new pressures and opportunitiesthe new necessities of an accelerating accretionwho are committed to a new age. In the human realm there are always those overlapping Venn diagrams thatwhile encompassing a critical massdevelop at their phasing edges a confrontation that melds into the moving body of humanity. These confrontations run the gambit of petty to colossal, from a mere discomfort to bloody, vicious encounters. The great new awareness of the movement of our imploding coalescence carries with it a foreboding sense of the loss of perceived and actual security, as well as a new sense of excitement, of risk. As we observe the cresting undulations in the sea of humanity, we see the entire spectacle of our kind, depressions that build and become the waves that eventually rise, turn, break apart, and fall back into the wholeonly to rise again and again as the inexorable movement of time carries us all to forever new 2 horizons.
See The New Age of Transparency in Sign Posts IV. See the many treatments of water by Impressionist painters, especially Monet. Also see Moon in The Twelfth Hour: A Collection, as well as Towards Those Far Horizons in Iris and Other Things: A Collection, for perceptions on the movement of time.
2 1 1

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I think it is important in using the wave metaphor that we see the big picture: a sea of individual waves that although they possess individual attributes, they also possess an inherent sameness. Nevertheless, in that attribute of sameness there exists in all of those waves a bell curve of every circumstance that encompasses the full spectrum of the possibilities of waveness: small, huge, bright, dull, a long duration in time and circumstance as well as a short duration in time and circumstance. In other words the wave analogy can potentially and actually depict, in the human realm, a composite of the human 1 circumstances and times. I share this because we have a penchant for the stereotyping of classifications, of observations, and knowledgethat although helpful can be very misleading and very far from the truth. I say this so that we can develop the essential behaviors of reflections and actions that will better enable us to sort out gradations of difference in each and every event. Too often we take a cursory glance as a profound understanding when nothing could be further from the truth. This is true about almost all circumstances. God creates to a uniqueness in similarity in all the realms of His infinitude, and especially in the human realm where this encompasses our necessary and impassioned embracing of essential freedoms. To return to the wave/humanity analogy, we need to know that to each there is their own good, bad, up, down, long, short, whateverand so in this vein in the fields of governance and social programs of every ilk, one size never fits all. The moving force of life demands a growing ability to appreciate differences and time. This is something that few politicians understand.
1

See Wave and Which Crest? in Through the Swamps of Time: A Collection, for the individuals sense of presence in time. 38

In the back and forth of our human efforts there has always been the separation of similitude, groupings that desired some sense of cohesion and ostensibly some benefits from belonging to a groupperhaps some primitive vestige of our herd mentality. There has also been, in all of this, the tendency to coerce, separate, pit class against class, group against group, the individual against other individualsbringing out the worst and best of human nature. This process has been especially difficult for women and children, the special ones, and the elderly. They have all experienced subjugation and oppression. This has been a hallmark of human existence. It is also true that all groups have their own bell curve of actual and potential relatedness with intra and inter circumstances. Latinos here in the United States are a good example of a racial group. I use that word group carefully because so many from Latin America, although born there, are not Latinos. The entire world is phasing. We have historical winds at our backs and future winds in our faces. We are now realizing at a deeper and deeper level that there are many truths (because of the human bell curve in any and all times and circumstances) that we are barely aware of and many truths that we must become aware of in all times and circumstances. Think here party affiliations really red, light blue, fading red, indigo, and all of the other human permutationswe must remember in this new and ever accelerating human implosion that there is also the implosion 1 of new knowledge. In all of this, we cannot forget the great composite, that great composite that comprises our individual selves, and how in the depths of each freedom-seeking soul there is that need to make a passionate act of faith in ones self and the integral necessity
1

See The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others. 39

for a reasoned expression of that freedom. And in that expression of freedom lies the opportunity to seek those heroic examples of human excellence that will serve as essential examples of what we really need and what we must personally emulate for two historically manifested reasons: One, to admire and be inspired by; and two, to incorporate in our actions an example of human behavior that matters to us all. These essential aspects of heroics seem to have aided and abetted a class of warriors and leadersand hence developed a class of doers and the inevitable takers. This Ying and Yang of tensions has forged the backdrop of the politics of history. Where is the continual development of the species ability to comprehend its sameness and to incorporate its differences, at every levelracial, cultural, intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, and religious? The attempt to deal with knowledge on the move comprises the rollercoaster of our machinations, and our stellar moments. The ThinkSayDo of the human operational modus operandi, although maturing and becoming a greater part of the global cultural template, still has fundamental enclaves of ignorance that have haunted and continue to haunt humanitys efforts to meld into more productive and synergistic manifestations of a greater and ever greater expression of the freedoms of our human potential. Class warfare has never produced (in and of itself) the essential harmony needed for complementing human growth and development. The new culture in the United States leads us to believe that to lie is okay. Many people now expect everyone to lie. We all know that most adolescents are masters of the lie of omission
1 1

See again The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others (http://amzn.to/fOrqEi). 40

and also upon occasion commission. This is a confirmation of the adolescent behavior of our current culture. As a sufficient critical mass, we have failed to mature enough to accept responsibility as well as the wisdom of the ages which has been so essential to our survival. My word is my bond is the hallmark of a mature person. And this aspect of human behavior is an essential attribute of an open, growing, trusting human circumstance. A warning: We cannot stand still and do the same old thing or just any new thing as the human implosion accelerates on the planet. We must do all we can to create an opportunity to engage in thought, word, and deed in such a way that we foster a deeper understanding of all the attributes of human behavior as essentials in the very survival of our kind.

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FACTS There are myriad ways of finding facts. The problem lies in making sense of them. What do we do when we cannot understand those pesky facts at hand? Some of us just ignore them, some just give them a tired glance and move along at their harried pace, and a few grab them and wrestle them to the mat and finally give them that 360-degree turn to see if they fit the template of common sense. In most cases we dont need a head-of-the-pin focussome practical standpoint will do. Take for example the 17 trillion dollars in U.S. debt. Everyone with an ounce of sense knows this is a really big number. They also knoweven if they have paid only passing attention to the facts of the daythat this number now surpasses our entire yearly GDP (gross domestic product). How stupid can politicians and citizens be? It has become perfectly clear that many people of every ilk can be very stupid in their wanton avarice and ignorance. This debt belongs to someone. We might say that as the pendulum of human behavior swings, these are human moments when forgetting (ignoring) simple truth, we all act like lemmings. Group think sweeps the field where the wolf pack waits its turn. Meanwhile, we choose ignorance in the face of the facts. We walk a dangerous path. It is of value to recall: Events always conspire and make of a significant number of men and women what they really are in times of need and deed. When we really find ourselves otherwise engaged we are presented with opportunities to own the mettle of our souls. Now is that time. Now we have that purpose to which the winds of time and change have brought us. Behold the sacred mantle of freedom. Behold the souls of each and every one. Muster the strength of purpose to hold high the lantern and strike the bell. Let freedom ring!
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NOW IS THE TIME! Someone has already said, It must be importanthe said it twice. The current moment mirrors a previous moment 1 How long, GW? How long? When and where will we find enough honest people to articulate the facts at hand? Does life mirror art or does art mirror life? There is an inherent synergistic reciprocity that feeds upon itself. In all of this, cultures surge on and the individual flows back and forth with the tides, always looking for that eddya calmwater momentto catch ones breath, to reminisce, to wonder. Coincidental happenings grab our attention and for brief sheltered seconds we think we possess some understanding of lifes purpose, we think we have insights that give us an anchor or a good. Then we come to know: A persons life weighed out in pieces of silver becomes a perception of ones humanity governed by an economic circumstance. Obamas attempt at national psycho/emotional surgery was ideologically infected and did not sit well nor did it heal. His election was the single greatest political mistake ever made in U.S. history. He is a rapisttaking sacred personal gifts of freedom from those who cannot and have not yet learned to possess their freedom, those who find themselves dependent upon the largesse of a government. In this way he rapes the truly innocent and the aggrieved. You cannot commerce in life and death.
The former is from the movie Bite The Bullet, and the latter is from the movie McClintock. Both represent cultural moments that mirror an essential directness when it comes time to take action. 43
1

In his misplaced messianic hubris, he believes that what he does is good for everyone. What childish logic causes one to believe that one size fits all and that less freedom makes one feel more secure? And he is not alone in his lack of commitment to those founding documents that birthed this nation. Ignorance is alive and well in both parties, as both infiltration and institutionalization have spoiled the soup, and so it is that with an ignorant and lazy citizenship, the nation is losing its ability to own the truth of its birthright, and its very purpose for being. Word and realityconnect the dots of truthcall a bastard a bastardand dont get caught in some naive idiocy, thinking of circumstances of birth. This is a reference to the bastardization of behavior itself towards humanity itself against the very nature of our species, of those endowed with certain inalienable rightsthose of life, liberty, and the pursuit of individual happiness. There is a difference between knowing that one is being raped and only recognizing the rape in retrospect and then becoming aware of just how much was lost. As candles flicker in the sanctuariesand candles flicker in all the nooks and crannies of the sacred spaces of the worldone may ask, how many candles? You may ask, and I will tell you, more than you could count in a lifetime. How will we ever know, then? Well now, we could try to imagine all those flickering candles or we could light our own candleand share its light with the world. The tide of numbersthey all matter in some space/time that sits upon us allcomes superimposing the omnipresent dictum: Pay attention or die! This has always been the cry of
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natureof which we are all an integral part. Lest we become seduced to malaise, beware: As it was in the beginning, is 1 now, and forever shall be. The adversity of the age presents itself along with those eternal gifts of the ages. It is with our current moment that we all begin. Questions in moments of adversity come, and we wonder: Is there, could there have been a better, a more efficient way to learn what we need to know? The answer perplexesWell, yes! There could have been, and yet, the serendipity of the struggles helped give insights that we otherwise would not have had. Who among us holds beliefs that turn the rights of people upside-down? Some Sharia law recognizes some human rightsbut not all human rights. Our issue is with that part that dehumanizes humanity itself: No freedom of religion, no freedom of conscious choice. The iron fist of history or the running water of timeboth are baptisms in a religious cultural sense, offering an opening which must be traversed with the will of dedication. It is always the case that the old world passes away and a new world comes into being. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: For the first heaven and the first earth were gone and the 2 sea is now no more. Form dictates content and it all starts for you and me, for all of us, with the self, with one, and a choice by that one to do what is perceived to be in its and its loved ones best interests.

1 2

From Platos dialog Phaedo. Holy Bible, Revelations 21:1, Duay-Rheims Challoner version, 1941. 45

Touch is communication. To know ones self is paramount. To become endowed sufficiently by ones self is paramount. To know someone, to be a friend with someone is essential. To hold anothers hand. To walk some distance with anotherwhile one coincides with the One. To be in that silent presencelistening to another is the greatest of gifts. To stay the course of giving the gift of one to one as one shares the self with others along the way. To Protect the Pilgrim Road! 1 To hold fast to the Rules of life. The pendulum never swings twice in the same direction before it swings in the opposite direction. If there is an attempted counter-swing, the follow-through swing happens in its own context. Say what you want about the United States of America. Have we sinned? Who hasnt? Have we made mistakes? We have never sat down. We have grown into a union and we have saved that union time and time again. We will not languish in our mistakes. It may take us some time to sort out our problems, but eventually we will, and we will remain committed to our founding principles. This we also knowthat deep down in our souls we will have to revisit those founding principleswe will have to embrace them over and over, again and again. Such is lifes way.

See The Game of Life: A Manual for Executives and Others. 46

Grinding away, albeit with a demonstrated passion on a formulaic momentwho, where, how, rags to riches, poor me, poor youcould be problematic, could be a place that is not in our best interest. The how makes us who we are, today and tomorrow.

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THE GREAT WOUND The Great Wound in the side of Europe has been festering for some time. Now is the time to excise, to cauterize the wound. To isolatecontainremove, that is the mandate from natures plate. When Greece, Iceland, California, or any other country or state, cannot maintain a fidelity to the essentials of selfrespect and self-responsibility, they must be let go. Sufficient wisdom is present in the whole to set those floundering groups of like-minded people free to choose, to give them an opportunity to get their house in order, or fail. What part of the idiocy of something for nothing dont we get? Whatever the rubric of the piteous blather crying Save me, it will ultimately become so obnoxious that we will finally say, Yours, not mine! The wounds to your own freedom are self-inflicted, and consequently, your own existence is in peril. You have violated Natures first law: Once here, pay attention or die! Only when catastrophe is not of your own making does the morality of the ages, the Samaritan Rule, kick in. And hope may not serve us well. There may not be those who can come to our aid. You have sinned against yourself. You lose! And we dont expect to hear some progressive slobbering nonsense that speaks to some corporate disease, some communal malady, or governmental failure. From the mist of our clouded minds may emerge the message: Whose choice was it?

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THE NEW AGE OF TRANSPARENCY (and Our Current State of Cultural Affairs) As the human species continues to share our mutual planet home, discoveries and technology surge on. As the human presence coalesces around the known, along with discoveries of the new, information continues to pile up and filter down at an ever-accelerating pace. Our present challenge is the ownership of our history as well as the current implosive human moment. Integration of the facts at hand is always a process of the eventual acceptance of a must, and that must has to be recognized as sufficiently important to merit our time and effort; it must be integrated in some meaningful way, discarded, or just plain ignored. In retrospect, ignoring may place us personally, some of us, or most of us, in mortal danger. This has always been the human circumstance. Why does this seem to be so hard to remember? At some levels, knowledge integration is alive and well, although there is another ongoing process, the unfiltered plethora of savage attacks on the accumulated wisdom of the ages. There are those confrontations of science and justice: children and parents, generations upon generations, fundamental human truths, sedition, the continuance of an adherence to an apocalyptic age, always hoping for a better place, adventure, entertainment, and the parsing of the really real with the potential good and bad that surrounds us all. Always there is the need to know, to care, to be responsible, and to respect, to always respect the need to protect the innocent. This is becoming more and more difficult. Smaller slices of repose in our rapidly moving environment are providing insufficient space for reflection to understand and to integrate the truths of the ages.
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The downside of the current moment is that there are too many individuals who operate with insufficient understanding. They lack the necessary parsing tools to comprehend the facts at hand. While we know that we seldom have all the facts about any occurrence or happening, we do know that there are times when we have a critical massand that is enough information to make a reasonable assessment. And yet, it is also true that sufficient common sense is indispensible in fathoming the relationships of facts to the Truth as opposed to the truths from the facts at hand. We must have an ongoing, honest, and universal educational effort that encompasses our past and the ever-mounting new. Our survival depends upon our recognition that we must own Natures profoundly equanimical dictum: Pay attention or die! This must be understood and applied in the human realm to all four theaters of our very existence: the physical, the intellectual, the emotional, and the spiritual. Unless these are all recognized we cannot hope to survive. This all presupposes that there exist constructs of an ability to reason through various generalities as well as specifics, and arrive at what is termed a reasonable understanding that can subsequently be used to make some common sense response to the vicissitudes of life. Natures inherent efforts demand a moving participation in life itself. Taking a historical stance and maintaining a continued commitment to that stand makes sense, is reasonable, if and only if that standpoint meets the demands of our current moment. Whether the existential facts at hand demand a different response is always the perennial question. This can only be answered after a moments reflection in which we ascertain whether or not the presenting circumstance needs more or less than it would have needed beforedid need beforewould have been sufficient beforewould be sufficient now.
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Then, in that omnipresent existentialitythe one that always presents a new now in which an ever-increasing body of facts and information become available to usif we will only be open to them, facts present themselves as choices. And it is precisely this new information that needs to be brought to bear 1 on the current need. The facts, both historical and actual, of the human presence on the planet Earth are of paramount importance; nevertheless I feel we must now reference our current state of being as we spend more and more time and resources on space exploration. We inhabit a space station that exists in an earth-bounded orbit with some sense of earthly security. And yet we will, in the not-too-distant future, require a dependence on a different set of circumstances. To this we are destined, to this we must mature. The point here is that as a species we cannot hope to survive in either our current earth moment or our future space moments without the fundamentals of sufficient common sense that enable us to make life and death decisions about ourselves and others. As the depth and breadthand these are two different things grow and magnify, we are exposed to the thinking of everincreasing numbers of individuals from now not so far-flung countries and quite different circumstances. It behooves us to
You may wish to see An Agenda for Us All in Sign Posts I, as well as The Greatest Challenge of Our Time, Parts I and II in Sign Posts III, and also the essay Changing Our Minds in Sign Posts IV. Other essays in the previous four volumes of Sign Posts may be of some help in understanding the absolute need for educational programs, both formal and informal, that have integrity of purpose and that cannot be trifled with by pushing errant ideologies. All Sign Post volumes are available free of charge at pathtotheself.com/allpostingvols.html. 51
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assess the veracity of the current conversations and interactions in order to be able to relate to them in ways that will provide sufficient understanding so as to have adequate security to maintain our commitments to potential and actual mortal dangers, as well as opportunities to survive, much less take with us into the future necessities that will undoubtedly offer ever-greater opportunities to grow and develop. There will always be ideologies that foster the very attributes of being that made it possible for us to get to where we are nowexisting in the plenitude of benevolence that sustains our capacity to dream and hope with a faith that abounds in charity. We are all alike and yet different. To respect that similarity and uniqueness is one of Natures most profound laws. The phrase It is prudent to recall is another one of the most essential standpoints of the speciesthe call of humankind. That reflective parsing of new and old information, in the midst of the cacophony and rambunctiousness of our current selves, along with the new omnipresence of all forms of instant communication, has become our most pressing opportunity. This new sharing will provide a plethora of avenues for new responses to new and old contingencies. The way we choose to accomplish our survival and this new melding of the species must become the new hallmark of the behavior of humankind. Far too many individuals live ensconced in a pathetic intransigence of limited thinking or ignorance. Rule 6 is unequivocal: Grow or you lose. If you lose, those 1 around you also lose, and the world loses. Too many people
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Rule 6, Dedicate yourself to growth. See The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others. Rules and Corollaries give some constructs for lifes winning players (available at http://amzn.to/fOrqEi). The Phenomenon of Man speaks clearly of a sense for, and an absolute need for, the coming upon a realization of kindred spirits and the omnipresent sense of biophilia (see note 3). Especially for those who thinkbelieve 52

are unaware of the acceleration of an omnipresence of information that will demand a new level of integrity from each and every one of us. The audio and visual of an ever-attendant technology will present a new demand for absolute integrity, that if lacking, will crush the staid and the slow to adapt. They will be left wondering how it is that truth will come out so quickly and that lies will be exposed in the blink of an eye. The concomitant circumstance that will blindside these individuals will precipitate an immediate response of angerrising even to rage (that maligned behavior without reason). The swiftness and abruptness of this will come as a surprise when pitted against ignorance and intransigence. It is indeed shameful that most of our current politicians do not understand these changing times. They will spend untold hours trying to explain away the obvious, when indeed they are just plain lying. The subsequent confusion of an old understanding in the face of a new circumstance will make for very difficult moments, especially for those involved in making decisions meant to be in the best public interest. Those involved in the exercise of governance will need to be very well informed and act with the utmost integrity, or they will be met with swift and appropriate punishments. And this may preclude their presence in an elected office with some term limit or election in which they will not be allowed to participate. We will no longer have the luxury (if that was ever true) of allowing malfeasance to be carried on until the next election. Justice must be administered in a timely fashion. We now have sufficient tools to assess, in a reasonable time frame, the veracity of their behaviors.
that Sharia law holds, offers, some inherent holy purpose for humanity, I offer The Eternal Feminine. Both writings are by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. 53

A PERSON A person, an image and likeness, presents itself. What constellation of events makes a person a person? Time and space surely play a part history wraps its arms around our knowing (being) and we are caught in those tumbling times from which we come. The events of the ages adhere and dispose. Myth and legend merge from learned stories and surge to the forefront of our selected druthers: Choices! Always choices! Heroically we attempt to justify our beliefs, beliefs that we employ to weigh and measure those choices, our choices, choices that have bloodied the earth, maligned our souls, torn asunder relationships of family, of love, and as well inspired our heroics. Why is it that in the face of difference we resort to modes of being that do not complement the needs of the human family? What cursed daemon sits upon our right shoulder, what gargoyle perches upon the left?
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Why, in the face of Natures benevolence, do we insist in wallowing in chaos when we all stand in wonder and awe at the birth of a child? Simple truths befriend us all. To these we must adhere, to these we owe an everlasting thankfulness. Natures profound mandate, Pay attention or die! must be met with a chorus always singing, Yes to self! Yes to life! 1 Yes to all life!

This poem will appear in a forthcoming collection. The poem Perpetrators touches on the omnipresent theme of biophilia in the last essay of this collection. It is from Always Extolling: A Collection (available at http://amzn.to/gpHPRB). 55

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TRUTHS IN A BLINK Many of the peasants did not understand enough of history to follow trends and create a new history that would ostensibly operate in the interests of everyone. A reasonable participation in the history that we can creatively live in and contribute to is a hallmark of the culmination of history itself. This has happened over a long period of time and only in spurts and starts, flashes and crashes, and finally, as a major trend for most, in the 1700s. This new movement, expressing a greater spectrum of human freedom, eventually created a critical mass with the potential of providing enough, and a little bit more, of a return for workers and investors. And the excess drove the best and the worst of human nature. Meanwhile, individuals were swept up in movements driven by ideologies they could not comprehendand could not foresee the consequences of, or the available alternatives. The movements were co-opted with a new version of the old class warfare that turned to the use of disinformation and coercion. New bureaucracies drove their purposes with fear and loathingthe new class warfare for uswhich has turned to disinformation and fear mongering. It was only a matter of time for the many levels of society to be swept up in manifold expressions of hatred for anyone who was different racially, religiously, or economically, or any number of perceived threats by various identifiable groups. By what authority would the madness of the species be contained? Truth to power has a poor record in the short term. The bestiality of our kind is always at the mouth of the cave.
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The poets eye and the cynics heart do not create a positive synergism. The former is an advocate for life, the latter is the enemy of benevolence and ashamed of the truth and trifles with it instead of realizing it is the sacred aspect of us all. With this in mind, a consideration of our current momenta window on our nowreveals our current political scenario. Obamas window dressing, his cocked arrogant head, his supercilious speech, and his downright lies and logical inconsistencieshis demeaning activities lessen that most essential attribute of the human endeavor, that innate characteristic which makes us truly humanthe freedom to express and to act upon those expressions with a sense of liberty of intent. This is the single most essential attribute of our self-expression and should never be trifled with by anyone. It is in our thoughts, words, and deeds that we have set sail on the great sea of human history. Obama is nothing more than a trifling meddler in the back alleys of deceit, a peddler of inconsistencies and petty politics, deeply immersed in cronyism that benefits an array of political minorities and hacks. He will eventually become merely a blip in the sands of time.

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ALWAYS HOPE Always hope. Not because our druthers always end on a high note, but because by some miracle many of them happen at all. The Prayer Breakfast venue, the one where Dr. Carson spoke about the fact that Obama-Care was going to create a slew of difficult issues for everyone, was exactly the right venue to seek a deeper understanding and a greater appreciation of the truth in order to give thanks and praise for the ability to apply sufficient reason to a relationship with the truth: the very essence of our prayers of supplication and adoration. It was well done. Obama Care is notas a total piece of legislationa good thing. It is a terrible thing. Health care is everyones responsibility and it starts with the self, and to the degree we are able stays with the self. Lifes course changes over time. This is something we all know. Being responsible for ones self is an obvious commitment that must be made in the advance of age and the anticipation of changes in our health profile and our earning potential as we grow older. This, too, is something we all know. To be responsible is to own in an existential fashion the entire profile of the human circumstance in a personal and a societal way. Time moves on at its inexorable pace. Our lives unfold and we pass away. We must know, however, that always in times cauldron there are those who have labored in the darkness of their caves, and when ready will emerge in that baptism of light and understanding and then return to the cave to offer the gift of freedom to all the cave dwellers of their day.

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There will be those newcomers who will surprise us with their integrity and sense of purpose. They are always distilling in the mists of time and circumstance. For this reason we must always maintain a fidelity to hope, always to hope.

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THE IDIOCY OF IT ALL The double bind of the electoratethe taxpayers who pay and pay and payand then get disgusted and aggravated and start thinking, saying, and finally, in a fit of anger, doing. They vote, or not, for someone who they think (God only knows why, it never has been true) will spend some of those tax dollars on things that really matter, and then miracle of miracles, do that efficiently, which also has never been known to happen when the federal government is doing the spending. The idiocy of the voters is that in their anger/rage they scream at the feds to do something worthwhile with their tax dollars. Perhaps it is time to withhold some of those tax dollars until we see a track record of some ability of stewardship of the national resources. What an oxymoronic circumstance this thinksaydo paradigm becomes when government spending is involved. So who is it, that is really engaging in this asinine behavior, this thinking sayingdoing? EVERYBODY! When, and better yet who, if this is the case, will ever have sufficient courage to say, No! and stop paying taxes and hoping for the impossible? And while I still have the ladle and the fire is still hot, I might add (in this oxymoronic mode of thinksaydo), what about changing (fundamentally) the tax code of this mighty, adolescent nation? After all, adolescents are notorious for their keen ability to be honest and frugal. The greatest madness of it all is that a majority (although slim and compromised) actually thinks that the current occupant of the Oval Office or any Democrat or Republican has the savvy and the courage to do anything at all except babble oxymoronic prognostications of this is better than that or that is better than this. Where, oh where, in all of this is that wonderfully efficient modicum of common sense?
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While affirmations or injunctions such as Allah Akbar! and May God be with you! are true, we must constrain our personal hubris and admit that our ignorance knows no bounds. His house is large! His ways are infinite! God be praised! Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful, Be Praised! etc. etc. etc. The history of the species tells us much. (Much used respectfully in the Face of the All.) Blood is red in the species hominid, whether Sunni, Shia, Texan, or oh, what the hell everyone! 1 Would that transplanted kufr kidney, etc. etc. etc., that fills the void in a member of the radical Umma, etc. etc. etc., bring with it a predilection for McDonalds, Macys, mortgages, etc. etc. etc. If a person stands, kneels, or bows once, twice, thrice, in the presence of a flowers essence, does the action depict a true believer, or an apostate?
1

Kufr means infidel. 62

Tropic responses abound! If you shoot at me, I will shoot back. If you smile at me, I will return the grace. If you offer your hand in friendship, I will climb aboard. In the face of the unbounded beauty of humanity only idiots get it wrong and not always. What does an idiot do when they are thirsty? WE ARE ALL THE SAME! Does the All spend His time 1 laughing, or crying at our ignorance?

In Still Water: A Collection (forthcoming). 63

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THE THREE MUSKETEERS Advertance! Aviso! Notice! Why three? One, two, three, a triune moment from a time when it was dangerous for one or even two to wander in the back streets of Paris and live to tell the tale. Pay attention or die! This was then, and has always been Natures clearest mandate. So, what does a hero do after they become a hero? Their challenge is to share that majesty, that predisposition, with others of their kind. The way, the journey, the sojourn is always with another. Chris Kyle knew that and he spent his last days doing just that. I love you enough to give you to the Fatherbefore you take your own, or anothers life. I live knowing that all life belongs to itself and that the Almighty and Eternal recycles everything. Chris knew this and we must also know this. Courage is the choice not to wait upon the understanding of the other. It is in knowing that life belongs to itself and our challenge will always be to protect the innocent. And woe to the ignorantbe they rightists or leftists! Protect the innocent! They are the gifts of the Eternal One, they are the reminders given so that we protect the sacred choice of freedom. Well done, Chris!

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THE FACTS OF THE MATTER What fundamental Islamists fail to understand is that people cannot be forced to conform to imposition for any length of time. We are free to condemn ourselves and as well perform those heroic acts of valor giving and maintaining that basic human right of freedom to follow our own paths to our own damnation or salvation. So it must be with Sharia, as with any form of human law. (All laws are human lawseither to make straight the ways of our kind or to enable us to express a point of view about Nature itself.) It must always be that our actions are a personal choice: to know or not to know, to do or not to do. The consequences fall upon us all. God runs the only true democracy and He has placed it in a garden of freedom. Our only real choice is to raise the crops and tend the garden. Any Ayatollah, Rabbi, Pope, Patriarch, or Teacher of any faith will be condemned to the ash bin of history if they issue edicts instead of offering suggestions. The record of the species heroics offers sufficient inspiration for us allour challenge is to pick up the historical gauntlet and instruct the faithful in the ways of our forefathers and foremothers and to integrate the accumulation of any new understanding of our mutual presence on the planet and in the universe. To all falls the responsibility to do their very best with their very best and this is never done with coercion, it is done with love. All of nature moves and we must move according to our own kind in our own time.

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POLLING THE YOUTH (On Matters of Importance) Who is surprised by the polls of the youngnow to be understood to be anyone under thirty? Only those who do not understand greater truths would think this strange. Old maxims say, Hush, be silent! And listen long enough to know enough to have an informed opinion. Manners do matter. Simply the truth will do. And these are all still helpful. Yet there is that other truth: Fight fire with fire. This is that technique whereby one, by setting a controlled fire, takes away from the marauding fire its fuel and thereby destroys the destroyer. Would it be that children were aware of sufficient caring/decorum to learn to watch and listen before they launch themselves into diatribes of ignorance or life-threatening 1 situations. Children lack any deep understanding of discipline. This is due to the fact that they, for the most part, do not have sufficient experienceenough knowledge of life to know what relationships matter, have value in that sense of reciprocity and necessity of all human encounters. And that this understanding is of supreme importance precisely because their main objective is to bring out what is eternally already there. This is lifes inherent objective. To know (to be in that eternal space/time), to be alreadyall readyis that experientially fulfilled (enough) state of being to operate with an existentiality that becomes (being becoming) sacred/holytruth (honestly) owned and lived.
See the trilogy of ignorance poems in Pebbles on the Shore: A Collection (http://amzn.to/gpHPRB). 67
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Dont offend the child! For heavens sake! has come to mean the exact opposite. We offend them when we do not guide them toward those greater truthstruths that they can only learn to believe and later on come to know. Remember, knowledge, care, responsibility, and respect are the cornerstones of the human way. This polling of the young, when adolescence is becoming interminable in the current cultural moment, is to attempt to 1 believe that history runs backward and it doesnt. Although there are those historical curves in which we ponder just how close we can come to past ignorance and yet be present in our new now. Civil unions are one thing, marriage is another. Redefining history because we choose not to understand history only sets up the need to re-experience historyto be forced by circumstance to chooseagain. The truth waits upon itself. Our forever challenge is to discover (dis-cover, uncover) it and own it. There are many truths. Let us be about discovery and ownership as we guide our children in their search for greater and better truthsthose that really matter in the moral, real, eternal sense. In this vein, I recommend Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm. Who in todays world could even tell you what is meant by the title, and yet today we have entire societies rushing headlong away from their own freedoms. This book is a classic in the field of social psychology. The excellent examples provided in the narrative are very helpful in understanding the relationships between ones standpoints and ones selfhood as well as how and why the exercising of personal freedom is indispensible in the process of healthy human growth and development.
1

See History Does Not Run Backward in Sign Posts III. 68

The ever-increasing statistical analysis of polling must take into consideration the plasticity of human development and what is termed healthy transitions in the process of selfownership. Adolescents have always rebelled to some degree from their eldersone must test knowledge and prowess while one integrates that elusive attribute of prudencethe forerunner of skepticism. As the family of societies has become more and more interconnected and human understanding has become more universal, we need to distill from some form of human template just where these fact-saturated young minds are really coming from and conceivably where they are going. The transitions from childhood to adolescence are extraordinarily important in building a maturing standpoint about the self and our relationship to the social whole. Pollsters need to be extremely careful that they dont misread the depth of understanding and the value of understanding. One person does not equate to one vote or one citizen with the ability and wherewithal to participate in a democratic republic unless they have sufficient preparation in the understanding of history and current affairs. The journalistic community is a reflection of the society at large as a whole (remembering that numbers matter)and the herd/peering instinct is alive and well. We need to evaluate who is doing what and for what reason; will those given reasons remain the motivating force as time and circumstances change? Using some statistical comparison to an age-old template (last monthlast yearlast decadelast century) can be disastrous.

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We are all now swimming in a new sea, in an astrophysical sense, and mass matters. A new mass, while it does have a very different meaning when push comes to shove and infrastructures fail or are destroyed, also has a velocity. Time waits for 1 no one. Grow or you lose. We might add grow up or we all lose. Remember the experimental fact: real success in ones ability to build a manageable productive life in the long haul, with patience and delayed gratification, is extremely important. In this age of increased acceleration we have moved away from a critical mass of time from which we draw meaning and understand the consequences of our actions in different times and different circumstances. Life, over time, has been the winning formula. As we dedicate most of our efforts and time to electronic communication and interaction, we dont have the experiential bank to draw from when electricity is not available. Our fuses are very short and it is only a matter of time before somewhere, somehow, we will be tested and called to account. The Scouts motto (Be Prepared!) may very well have been long forgotten.

Rule 6 in the Game of Life. 70

JUST HOW SMART ARE WE? Well, there are those times. We have created almost incomprehensible works of art. We have learned to travel far and wide. We have built tall and many, many buildings. We have truly advanced our understanding of ourselves. Medicine is, and has for the most part been, miraculous. We have also visited the moon and are planning trips to other places. So far so good. Yet there is that persistent underbellythe snakes of our kind. They have subjugated and ignored some of us, at times many of us. But as with everything, they roll upon themselves and sooner or later crash upon the shores of our enlightenment. We now find it easy to speak to each other and send our faces to each other as far away as the other side of the planet. We can now attest to our universal aspirations. Bigots and abusers bewaretribes no longer need to be led, they can lead themselves. Yes, there are still those remnants of tribal groups, bands, cohorts of the maligned and ignorant. Their numbers are diminishing. Even as small groups of the disaffected, with technology, they can still wreak havoc on major groups and countries. We can now choose to be free to love one another in that sacred space of magnanimityand yet we know there will be some retributions along with reconciliations. Dictatorswhat a word that is. Who really thinks they can now be the sole voice giving proclamations? How silly can we remain? In this twenty-first century we can promise the strongmen (anything but) and the malevolent (and they range from super71

imposed military leaders to wrongfully elected despots) that they will have short tenure. Gidaffy (that was kid smart), but really just kid-daffy, serves as an interesting case in point of fact. Yes, he gathered around himself those who in their misguided throes thought they could forever share in his stolen largesse (military leaders and hired thugs beware). But he could not sustain a floating ship on this new sea of freedom. He is gone, and those who chose to stand with him were disposed and are in the process of being punished. You cannot slay the innocent and forever merit accolades. The fox ate enough of his chickens, goats, sheep (people), and their cattle. He tried to buy allegiance. It only worked for a little while in the great theater of human events. They will all reap what they have sown. No one can now stand back and watch, no one can continue to raise poppies and think it doesnt matter. Atlas will shrug his mighty shoulders in the person of each freedom-seeking soul. The time has come. We are now meeting one another face-to-face and we cannot ignore the 1 sameness of ourselves. The list grows quickly. Courts in every land are convicting the thieves and murderers of our age. The Soroses of an age are dancing for the last time as they gaze stupefied at their own reflections. The new wind has caught our mighty sailswe will follow on to that new shore of our righted ship, steady the keel, and with willing hand upon the tiller. Make way the mighty ship of each free soul leading the flotilla of the ships of state.

From Fields of Sacrifice in Always Extolling: A Collection, available at http://amzn.to/gpHPRB. 72

MARRIAGE Most of the discussions of this sacred subject are asinine in their nuanced simplicity. Do this! Do that! Whatever! History speaks of this holy union as an essential institution that incorporates a mutuality of benefits for all concerned parties: the wife, the husband, children, the extended family. These relationships have provided a halo of essential attributes for the institution of marriage and this has provided well for the perpetuation of the species. For millennia there has been sufficient decorum and respect for the obvious, and now some individuals (for personal and political gain) are attempting to redefine the truths of history. It does not go without saying that there has been a plethora of competing interests between men, women, children, and family interests. All cultures do not yet comprehend the magnanimity of inalienable and mutually advantageous equal human rights. How absurd do things have to get before we choose to honor the truth? Love is an essential attribute of the human person. It sets us apart from all of creation. To deny its sacred aspect is more than ignorant; it is foolish and dangerous. Marriage, as an institution, has served the species well, even through all of the permutations of historys efforts. This does not mean that there are not other unions and institutions that have provided essential benefits for widows, widowers, and children. Our current challenge is to continue to create opportunities for the perpetuation of loving human environs that benefit each and every member of the species. There is no need to redefine the realities of history or the moment. There is, on the other hand, a real need to create opportunities for others to benefit from a mutually agreed upon definition of unions that provide those essential attributes of socially acceptable forms of human
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institutions that protect each and every individual (woman, man, child) as they participate in all human relationships. There is no need to extend this discussion to the nth degree. Natures mandate is pay attention or die! This requires a religious commitment to the well-being of ourselves and all others. We must grow or we lose. If we lose, those around us 1 lose, and the world loses. Who, in their right mind, wants so desperately, so dispassionately to be a loser? There are fundamentally five kinds of love: Motherly, Fatherly, Fraternal, Erotic, and Agape. What part of these do we not understand? The human family is a sacred endeavor with subsequent responsibilities that are only true in that if/then category of the thinksaydo of our logical paradigm. If, for whatever reason, there is an incapacity in the realm of human relations and one or the other or both cannot maintain sufficient knowledge, care, responsibility, and respect for themselves or their progeny, then the social whole must assume responsibility for those necessary and sufficient attributes that support the perpetuation of our kind. This is as true for the children as it is for the elderly. This has led to that historically significant dictum: Protect the widows and orphans. To this I would add, and the old warriors (who have typically been men and now includes women). We come as a whole to the great party 2 of life.

Rule 6, in The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others (http://amzn.to/fOrqEi). The Rules can also be found on the website pathtotheself.com. 2 See Pachanga in The Twelfth Hour: A Collection (available at http:// amzn.to/gpHPRB). Raising children is a human endeavor. They can be raised well by any loving couple. After all, the parenting challenge is always to give a child to their own self in that ever magnificently unfolding of the gift of One to one. 74

The discussions of the day about gays and lesbians and marriage have no basis in human historynotwithstanding the fact there have been horrendous acts of violence perpetrated on those so inclined. That does not create a necessity to redefine history in some attempt to shelter those so maligned and so aggrieved. If, in fraternal or erotic love, there is a desire for two people to share their love in a permanent covenant, there should be civil unions that bequeath all of the essential attributes necessary for them to partake in the laws of their societies and along with that an acceptance in the extension of a fraternal love to all human beings. This is a no-brainer. No person should be prohibited from the exercising of their freedoms, among them the expression of their love for another person. In no way should anyone be made to feel other than a full participant in the great drama of the human family. Anything less than this equanimical understanding and acceptance diminishes their pride (in that honest sense of who a person really is), their passion, and their honorable commitment to one another in that ineffable synergism that draws out of one what is eternally already there. This is the goal of all human life. Our energies, our talents, should all be spent in that neverending open expression of the wearing of our personhoods, those magnificent individual gifts of the Creator to each and every one. Additional Notes Life is a social event. It is also, so to speak, a social experiment. Nature works on everything all of the time, 24/7, like we are all now so used to saying when we mean all of the time. Human beings, although the human body is on 24/7, are not totally cognizant in a conscious sense 24/7although we do
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live at the edges: dreams, sensations, subconscious ruminations, premonitions, feelings, etc. A good nights rest does indeed enhance the following day. To bill the current discussion of marriage as part of a social experiment hardly does the subject justice. We have had sufficient historical acumen for some time to take a comprehensive view of the meaning of marriage and come away with an understanding of what it has been about, is about, and for the foreseeable future will continue to be about. And yes, we all (well, some of us) read Huxleys Brave New World and we are also well aware of in vitro fertilization. Yet the need for those loving hands transcends anything (for the most part) that a laboratory can do. Just watch the arresting scenes of the various zoos with human hands accompanying those fuzzy little creatures and dogs wandering the halls of hospitals. Back to the subject at hand. Marriage is between a man and a woman. There are many other kinds of unions; however there is only marriage that ostensibly provides those essential attributes that meet the needs of most people who choose to accept the historical definition of marriage: two people of the opposite sex who enter into a complementary relationship with an intention of sharing their lives along with the possibility of having children. This in no way negates the abilities of single parents or gays and lesbians as individuals and as couples who wish to raise children. Loving and raising children is a human event. Welcome to the party! This does not mean that there is, of necessity, a fundamental shift in our understanding of history. History is just that: history. That which has occurred and under somewhat similar conditions would probably result in similar outcomes. To continue to redefine our comprehension of present facts has always been a pastime of the species. When we come to have a deeper
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understanding of certain events, we owe it to ourselves to incorporate that new understanding. There are always those cultural and historical facts that need further elucidation. This has all been an important aspect of our accumulation of wisdom. This applies to all aspects of our history including marriage. Marriage has evolved over the years, trending to a personal free choice bounded by some social conventions: recordings, laws, customs, etc., all giving a general understanding of what the institution of marriage is and was all about. To apply historical moments capriciously to others does a disservice to our understanding of history and the intent and purpose of the institution of marriage. To create a new history of civil unions that are free and open, with subsequent personal and communal responsibilities and benefits, should create a desire to add new meaning to the expression of human freedomnot to redefine history itself. This does not mean that there have not beenhistorically and actuallymarriages of convenience, necessity, usury; the adjectival list is interminable, including those who married with the express intention of not having children. Anyone who knows anything about history knows that children are not, of necessity, a by-product of marriage. The institution, in all of its venerability, has meant a union with an inherent intent to create a productive couple, productive in the complementing sense of helping to bring out the best in deed and need of both parties and to share in the communal responsibilities of child rearing. Orphans and the abandoned are not new ideas. There are few informed people who would not allow for civil unions of same-sex couples with a rubric that does not confuse the issues of marriage and yet does in that rubric elucidate a description for a mutuality of benefits that qualifies both
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parties to those socially accepted benefits of relationship. The we of that union can be a couple of any orientation that complements the fundamental aspects of human life. All things evolve and devolvedisintegratedieand other things take their place. History has demonstrated that this is not a straight line. There are spontaneous changes that then have an opportunity to create new history. That this is true of the social institutions of the species is obvious. Creating civil unions that accommodate same-sex couples is an example of this kind of change. We dont need to reach back into history and redefine history. We can move ahead and create new history. Marriage does have some inherent necessity that addresses the rights of individuals when it comes to sharing in the legal benefits of an accumulated estate. There are other simple legal means that can provide access to benefits as well as a recognized status of mutual commitment. All relationships have some measure of independence, or we couldnt tell one thing from another, and some measure of dependence. Life lives with another and of another. A civil union does not diminish the ennobling and comingling of efforts and resources that can provide a meaningful sharing of benefits for all concerned partiesincluding the children. Stop the nonsense. Define the present as it can be defined and move on. We dont have time to waste on matters that even using a modicum of common sense cannot be understood and accepted. Stop the bigotry! Love one another!

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WHAT LEGACY? A Barry turned Barackbut not really. A wounded youth abandoned by his father and his mother struggled to gain a foothold on a maturing path he could not find. In a transparent effort he attempted in The Dreams of My Father to pull together the pieces of his puzzled self. He couldnt succeed. Mentored by a Socialist-Marxist, he chose a path that he thought would ingratiate him to othersa bad choice. The liberal secular elite were also lost in mouthing rendered leavings of a dead ideology. Repetitions couldnt resurrect a failed errant faith. The human path trodden for years by the intrepid souls of the past sought, and keeps on seeking, a better way to manifest that hidden freedom of integrity and purpose for a self and all others. He lacked sufficient character to dedicate himself to that sacred human journeythe one manifesting a responsible freedom of the one to the One. Spending years in an angry church, he squandered precious time while feeding a mistaken hubris. He merely blossomed into an arrogant adolescent and there he has stayedpolishing a rhetoric of pseudo-intent and grasping after the mantra Like me for who I have become! All the while, blinded by the weakness of the many and the few, plying a supercilious sanctimony, he created what he thought was sufficient. He created a personality without mature character. Just what is he? He is a self that isnt, a person who doesnt, and a lie that cannot be disentangled from his selfimagethis just about sums it all up. Still he wonders why so many do not admire or fawn over his accomplishments.

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A lost soul that never grew up, elected by those whose guilt they couldnt understand or explain (there is no reason for it) and those who wanted someoneanyoneto take care of them, all made the grand mistake of putting an individual in the White House who isnt quite finished. He remains an angry adolescent who has difficulty telling the difference between a lie and the truth and does not know that there are only three answers to any question: yes, no, and I dont know. Mastering this fact takes a maturing courage, something unfortunately he does not have. The Current State of Affairs: A boy who couldnt and hasnt Obama Care that couldnt and shouldnt Immigration that isnt Gun regulation that doesnt A Foreign Policy that is a begging question Responsibility that isnt (blame themanyoneanything) Leadership thats nonexistent Character yet to be manifested Is this a legacy? Yes. A Presidential legacynot! Well, maybe only a footnoteand nothing more.

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A GLANCE AT THE PAST A PEEK AT THE FUTURE Pock-marked intrusions in the blackness of the night. Why does man insist on marking his presence with an artificial light, to better make his way in the twilight or the dawn, or to ward off his neighbors 1 from whom all trust is gone? Im sick and tired Well, Im not really sick or tired. I have been motivated into a productive aggravation. The moronic, shallow, childish behaviors of the elected bureaucrats (burrowing rats whose color does not matter) who scramble about the sandbox of Washington (what a sacrilegious use of a great mans name!) demonstrate very well the state of our nation petty to the nth degree and ignorant to the 12th degree. When a culture loses its sense of right and wrong and cannot bring itself to call a lie a lie, it is very sick, it is pathetically ill. It is such a shame that that wonderful Greek word pathos has lost, for most, its rich deep meaning. Pathos is a state of suffering, affliction (read victimhood in this case), a lack of a serious orientation, a loss of an appropriate knowledge of wellbeing as a sense of essential order, essential in honoring the necessity for each and every individual and their reasoned and impassioned commitment to the greater truths applicable in their own lives. These same truths are also applicable in the lives of their families and communities, and also the life of the state as well as the world. Many are lost in the depths of a funThe rest of this poem, Invasions, can be found in Pieces of the Journey: A Collection (http://amzn.to/gpHPRB). 81
1

damental ignorance. They lack sufficient common sensethat hallmark of an integrating capacityto fathom the if/then nature of human life. We are currently caught as a culture (here in the United States) in a Dantesque journey and we have no guide. Many individuals are present-day wannabes, lacking sufficient understanding of the fundamentals of the human process of growth and development. They wallow in a childhood and an adolescence, actually believing that they have sufficient maturity of character to walk around in an adult world, prognosticating such unbelievable prattle and babblefeeling as though what they utter is worth anyones time or attention. Although we still do need to maintain an eternal vigilance. Children play at the edge, so to speak, as they learn to crawl, walk, climb, and runit does behoove the adults to keep an eye on them lest they fall into a well or out of a tree. Winston Churchill noted well the characteristic of our adolescent cultural tendency when he said, You can always count on Americans to do the right thingafter theyve tried everything else. It was true thenlets hope there is yet a sufficient critical mass of maturity and wisdom to do it again now. A brief glance shows that U.S. culture, dare I say Western culture (and to a certain degree all postmodern cultures), has fallen off the reasoned cliff. From that apogee of the age of enlightenment where the shadows of the past had lost their grip on the limitations of the mind, heart, and soul of the species, thanks to an easier life and a plethora of entertainment venues, we have luxuriated ourselves into a fantasy of unfit ideologies and opinions, leading to thoughts and actions that no maturing, reasonably responsible adult would continue to waste their time and energy hanging on to. Those with any knowledge of the absolute need for essential human freedoms, along
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with a concomitant focus on a sense of personal responsibility, would have abandoned these ideologies long ago. Life is not free, in that naive sense of anything goes and nothing really matters; rather, it is governed by natures laws and the prudence of experience as well as an essential understanding of consequences. We are governed by these laws of nature and by the laws of our accumulated wisdom. There needs to be a critical mass of this acumen in order for individuals to follow the progressive and ascendant profile of human maturation. Life must learn to be responsible for itself and the lives of others. This has personal, familial, and societal implications, and this awareness of our participation in the human reality must follow the path from self out to others. The history of interpersonal relations is the essential record of the meshing of our individual and communal efforts as we have confronted natures claws and fangs, tempests and storms. We have learnedat least a sufficiently large number of usto pay attention or die. A fundamental characteristic of natures ecumenical attribute has provided us with sufficient wherewithal to survive and to progress. We are not living at the mouth of the cave, for the most part, staring out into the sounds and sights of an incomprehensible and uncaring nature. We have tamed the bull and the horse, we have collected the seed, channeled the water, and in all of this we have found a balanced (somewhat) pathway for ourselves and our progeny. This has taken us on an incredible journey in which we have circumnavigated our globe and stepped toward the stars. This was not always done with sufficient comprehension of the magnificence of our differencesmagnanimity has not been our long suit. It has taken eons for us to blend, to meld, to discover our innate sameness and to struggle in our ability to learn to understand and to trust one another.
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We now find ourselves on the threshold of the twenty-first century, and we can no longer ignore our numbers, our proximity, and our technologys intended and unintended aftermath. We are it and it is us, and while we are at it the pun is worth exploring; the United States is not the be-all end-all of the human story. It is, however, an incredibly important chapter and it happens to be ours. This means that we find ourselves in a circumstance that must be addressed with a reasoned effort and a focused dedication. It will not be easy or simple. We must do everything in our power to set right the ship of state. There has emerged, from our current morass of profligate spending, a culture of dependency and adolescent expectations. It has precipitated a mindset of I want mine now. I deserve mine now. And I will do anything to get it! The idea of a functioning republic was not born yesterday; it has been sifted and winnowed in the social storms and cradles of the ages and it finally flourished on a new continent in its own time. Documents were forged from the efforts of the ages and they sufficiently inspired the hearts and minds of stalwart souls who swore to commit our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor to the well-being of their shared existence. Indeed, their individual and communal efforts have inspired the dreams and desires of an entire speciesall those who are yearning to be free. From this legacy, bought with blood, sweat, hope, and tears, 1 we must never shrink. We must stand upright with head held high, shoulders set straight, and backs unbowed as we continue to manifest a fulfillment of humanitys greatest dreama dream that speaks to the very soul of the species. We cannot allow untoward ideologiestinged with or without religious
1

See Advice later in this essay. 84

attributesto bind us or to turn us from historys path, the path that has led us along on freedoms journey. As a species we have traveled on a journey that has given opportunities along with the time and resources to develop our innate personal rights to own and express our inalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Our personal and communal responsibility is now and has always been (at least for some lengthy time now) for us to manifest a developing sense of a global effort to master ourselves and our circumstances. We have watched and experienced the benefits of the World Health Organization (WHO), yet we naively carried on with our petty politics, wasting precious life and treasure, offering inane solutions to our personal and communal problems: pollution affects us all, disease is very democratic and I might add, just as stupid. It sometimes kills its host. What part of this universal circumstance is so difficult for us to comprehend? We are all riding on the same spaceship, at least for the foreseeable future. 1 Now is the time for us to fathom the depths of our sameness. To reiterate, this is not a matter of red or blue, conservative or liberal. And this is not something that we can lose to ignorance and pettiness.

You may also wish to see The Twenty-First Century in Murmurings: A Collection, along with Reap the Wind, Polis Mundi, Refugees, and Who Is My Brother and My Sister? And for those Mexicans recently arrived or for those still at home, see And the Soul? in Always Extolling: A Collection (http://amzn.to/gpHPRB). 85

MESSAGES Doubt reigns supreme! The fire of pride fans fears flame. The fare we feed our children is fodder for their souls. Rococo is dissonant, an assault on senses. Those who glorify tragedy with inappropriate art forms, inappropriate subjects, inappropriate circumstances, sing Satans song. We are lost as we cross over the bridge of Mine! Theirs! Now! With vile obscenities assailing the innocence of children, we say we love them. You insidious bastards of ignorance, you defile the word Child. May we be wise enough to know: Eternal vigilance, Oh Lord! Abba, Eternal Vigilance! Eternal Vigilance, Oh Love!

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IT HAS BEEN SAID It has been said, 1 I come to you from fallen timber, born again for the first time. So who am I, some wandering ephemeral ought that seeks a definition of my being from some crumbling cultural template instead of a far distant aurora borealis of the space/time heavens? I am an I am, a conglomerate of being, a thought-thing with sentience. I feel seasons thrusts and drags, love another, covet amulets of history, know touch, listen, and taste. What ideology drives my druthers? Must I kill another to be myself? Only if means yes. Whose valuemine or yours? What madness takes us towards our judgments of others? Must our life be some rabid frenzy of slogans saying nothing, when we all live in that sacred crucible of shared being 2 emanating from the heart of One?

1 2

See Secret Places, in Reflections from Lucerne: A Collection. From Still Water: A Collection (forthcoming). 87

While this poem incorporates only a few strains of our current efforts, it has a focus that embodies sufficient understanding of eternal truths: We are all the same! The human journey has been a story of leaping ahead and falling back, of crawling up and slipping down. In all of this, we have continued in our personal, parental, and societal mode to instill an ever-present 1 attitude of hope. As we have covered the planets surface we have carried within ourselves the existential conundrum: mine and yours. We are now finally beginning to trifle with a new concept: ours. Life has demonstrated itself to be a communal endeavor. The ancient adages have proven themselves to be true: Stay the middle coursenot too much of this and not too much of that. Love thy neighbor as thyself. The journey is the destination this is where we eternally are. The current moment of our presence on this planet carries with it a new dynamica synergism of the human relationships of one to one and one to another. This demands a new level of integrity. This new level will bring with it a new appreciation of all life. The various fields of bioethics will flourish and give us individually and as a whole the awareness of a new depth of knowledge, care, responsibility, and respect, which will present us with new modes of intrapersonal and interpersonal relations. These will become a new road map for that never-ending, winding pathway of life. But we must all start by loving those closest to us and reaching out to those who know nothing about 2 love.

1 2

See Epitaph at the end of this essay. See Life, reprinted at the end of this essay, from Always Extolling: A Collection. 88

PERPETRATORS Men, women, young, old, every race, every creed all are victims. Where is the hue and cry from the Imams, Mullahs, Patriarchs, Popes, Clerics, Preachers and Priests, Monks and Nuns? Biophilia! Biophilia! It is the very sacredness of life that we all profess and so ignore. We come late to the table of magnanimous compassion. Too long have we felt ourselves sequestered by cultures ugly lassitude, that bigotry of ignorance, that conscious self-avoidance, leading us all to lonely deaths and no understanding of the beatific. In our shallow thinking, in our eclectic fleeting deeds, in our insipid wonderings, we lack that simple depth of purpose honoring the efforts of the All. Accumulating secular applications of knowledges shadowed purpose, we have slaughtered and ignored the slaughtering of every single thing. Their screams heard only by a saintly few meant nothing to most of the rest of our brothers and our sisters of the world.

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Moaning in prayerful hubris, we hunched our backs and turned away from any form of hope and love. To you bastards of no purpose, I scream into your ears, Stop the pilfering of the divine treasure chest! 1 Save the children!

From Always Extolling: A Collection. 90

ALWAYS WALKING ALWAYS RUNNING Walking in the shadow, running toward the Light, life is the I am! of existence over time. The conformation of presence the becoming of the beating heart of God, the still-point in the thrown-ness the yesness of the breathing of it all. Still, seeking the heart, we walk and run in the mind. We see with such clarity in the dark thought of night. We are the in-between. We shout, Lech Hiem! Then we silently, prayerfully, breathe, Awesome! Time is spent running and walking over the bridge, seeking to gather the other one in love, the one of self, 1 the One of all.

From Pebbles on the Shore: A Collection. 91

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ADVICE Who am I to think that I have something, something to offer other members of the species? All are heroes, the vast, current, multicolored wave of humanity. That we have endured is laudable, knowing that we will always succumb. Time and change besiege our bodies and our minds. And yet each dawning finds us scurrying towards a current purpose. We are existential by fiat, reflective in repose, never too long. The sun sets and we sleep. That holy wave of nocturnal quiescence bathes our battered selves. After which, once again, we rise for another day. And somewhere in the pristine present, hiding in its nowness, we feel and see something. It whatever it is causes us to believe enough to hope, to give ourselves again to the task of being a person. The truth is I can only speak of myself to myself, I love life. Among its many manifestations, 1 I love my wife and children the most.
1

From The Twelfth Hour: A Collection. 93

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EPITAPH Better red than dead! What have we read? Plato, Kant, Marx, Pope Leo XIII, Kierkegaard, Peoples Magazine and The National Inquirer. We live wanting so desperately to be led. What difference will it make when we are gone? The Rebellion of the Masses, Into what? Where is the mystery, The holy, Communalism, Socialism, Nationalism, Materialism, Paternalism, Feminism, And finally, Fraternalism? Will we all finally wake up and realize we have had the wrong faith? Did we know what to hope for? Fundamental needs conflict with numbers and time. The ideal must become some of the real: The All = A Few / A Few = The All. We have not learned what to give. Hope is what we try to give a child, isnt it? The agony of a people is in not finding a way to give. And still we hear, 1 How long does it take to rewind the movie?

From Through the Swamps of Time: A Collection. 95

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DECISIONS In the constellation of my moment all my river-paths have broken ice save one. Im battered with a vision of necessity, duty, honor, and history. It shrouds me, penetrating all my soul-waking hours. To begin again, in the midst of life, is not an easy thing. To produce clarity of soul, bespeaking a holy purpose, is always the greatest challenge. One cannot abandon another nor is that the objective. The gift of freedom is the only choice. To stand and do with passion is the thing! And what about those haunting dreams and time? They must be lived with equanimity, as souls bend magnanimously, birthing tranquility. And yet, and still, there are always others in our space. So?

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Freedom is theirs and choice is always made in the context of the now. The fire will always and forever be: 1 True! Mine! Now! One must add to the embers, and we can only add the Truth of One. Still, lingering thought remains, whose responsibility to hold the mirror? Always, always ones own, mine for me 2 and mine for them.

See Rule 2, in The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others. 2 From Reflections from Lucerne: A Collection. 98

CHOOSE! Dawns soft halo breaks the wall of night, bursting its brilliance beyond the mountains, edging darkness over the far horizon. Warmths fingers grasp the day. Historys deeds flash from forgotten snippets of awe and wonder. To greet my time the early sounds sift in saying. Choose! Choose! Choose! Leaping from my resting place, I choose to grip the day and mow the hay, 1 I choose to dance with God.

From Through the Swamps of Time: A Collection. All poetry collections cited are available at http://amzn.to/gpHPRB. 99

LIFE Yes! Game on!

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WHAT WE MUST KNOW, WE MUST BE (Part One) Follow me on this onepicture if you will a sparkling display on the gentle ripples of a lake where each brilliant flash of light represents a Miguel Angelo moment, when the tip of the finger of the Father touches soul into life. We are all astonished at those times when we are privileged to witness an event that carries with it a profound simplicitywe simply respond with a sincere, heart-felt, Yes! Now, let us think for a moment about the sea of humanity. We find an enormous expanse so large and with so many sparkling flashes of light, so many that we feel the need to shield our eyes at the reflecting surface of the water. We are overcome. And let us think that each one of those explosive sunspots is a single person, someone who represents the Imago Dei, someone who, for that fleeting nanosecond, is in complete synchronicity with their human role in the Divines eternal and infinite expression of a will that says only, Yes! Is there not something here that could serve to inform us and at the same time speak to us in ways that would humble us? We are in a new time is a phrase that has been with us for millenniaand it has always been true. Could we find other examples that could be accepted in like manner? We need sufficient faith that in just being what a thing is, there resides a something that we can re-cognize, catch over and over again and know that we can know it, whatever it is, again and again. There have been those who have said, This is that truth that we are able to know about ourselves. Upon occasion they have hinted: This is something that we can even know about
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the Creator. In either case, we have some sense of a feeling arising from the depths of our understanding or from some premonition present in our souls that there is something we can really know. Now let us go back to the sparkling water and think about all those individual bursts of consciousness that are aware that they are aware, that they, for a brief transitory nanosecond, realized that they really are who they are and that they belong in that co-participative sense to an infinite and eternal encompassing everything. Would this sense of oneness to Oneness weigh heavily on our participation or would we be awash with infinite joy? I think the latter says it all. In this picture, this Monet of reflective passing, we have something that we could use to gain a deeper comprehension of our place in this time, this right now! that we are living in and that we dream from, always hoping to accomplish some of our dreams. If, in the simplicity of this sparkling sea, we can sense a oneness with the All then it must be that it is possible for us to comprehend how it must be that we have come to know that we are here and that in that same instant there is a concomitant responsibility for us to be exactly what we are when we are here. That there is a sense of must, an ought that belongs to us, that we really are, that cradles us and gives us sufficient knowledge and courage to come to grips with our own existence. There is an integrity of being, exuded by those simple souls and the mystics of the ages, that has indeed reflected just such an acknowledgement of presence. And now, with our present confluence of the numbers of our kind and the manifold technological expressions of our innate genius, there is a heightened, always present need to manifest an integrity of purpose that complements all of the parts as well as the whole.
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Our momentary challenge is to be present in this Now as ourselves without any accompanying anxiety. Just me, here now, as my own real self, saying, Yes! to all that I am right now. Such serenity! Such integrity of purpose! Such adventure! Such joy!

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TO DREAM La vida es sueo y los sueos, sueos son. 1 (Life is a dream, and dreams are only dreams.) I dreamt about a new skin/membrane, a multipurpose universal, internal-external, concept-fabric that is intrinsically interactive protective open. A responsive-living (and I know that is redundant) holographicness, that is efeta stuff, where IT-WE is always becoming I-WE and love-life prevails.

Pedro Caldern de la Barca, La Vida es Sueo - Segismundo.

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