Love makes all things possible

“It is love, not violence or hatred,

that will have the last word in history.”

- Adolfo Pérez Esquivel*

Love is the essence of all. It is the creative power of the universe, made intentional by an ineffably brilliant genius Creator, aka God, who fills the universe with His Spirit, His essence and His creative intelligence.

Love is all that is real. And, when we connect to each other in Love, with the conscious awareness that we are intending to connect in love and the Source/Creator of Love, we are super charged by this love. It is the only real power and is able to accomplish anything, even undoing a very complicated and sophisticated corrupt system.

Since we already know this, we must stay vigilant and aware and not be tempted (otherwise known as manipulated and duped) to give over our power to the loveless dark manipulations of those blind leaders who reign over us. We all know that all our political leaders have been bought by big business. We know that our military machine is out there to protect big business. We need to remember that they are merely emperors without clothes, leaders who feed their own pocketbooks with our labor, who live in their mansions, drive their Mercedez and BMWs, all bought and paid for with our blood, sweat and tears. Did we all forget that they have no authority, unless we give it to them? When will we stop giving it to them and stop believing the world's biggest lie?

Today we are not going to give them authority. We are not going to deliberately blindfold ourselves and fall back to sleep to be duped by those who live by the world's money game, who think "this" is all there is, those who don't know love, and rather are cold, indifferent cowards who hide in their corporate offices.

The power of the universe has never been with the worldly powerful but with the oppressed and downtrodden. Sometimes I think that Jesus says "Blessed are the poor in spirit," BECAUSE the poor already know that they aren't powerful and consequently have opened their hearts and minds and lives to the One who is and does indeed bless them.

The money people rely on their own manipulations, control efforts, to dupe those less cunning out of their money. Our country is run rampant by slick salesmen and marketers who use sophisticated psychological means to manipulate us into giving them our hard earned money. I honestly think the best thing we can all do is turn off the television, read the newspaper for information, and start reading and listening to some of the great and brilliant people out there who understand the incredibly complicated economic systems and some of the political-economic-social philosophies.

It's interesting that the naked emperors out there are also condescending and harsh toward those who would use spiritual language to describe love as the ultimate substance, source and creative power of the universe. But, then, someday they will see, though today their eyes are blinded by their own ambition.

*1980 awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:
       Adolfo Pérez Esquivel was born in Buenos Aires in 1931. After training as an architect and sculptor he was appointed Professor of Architecture. In 1974 he relinquished his teaching post in order to devote all his time and energy to the work of co-ordinating the activities of the various non-violent elements in Latin America. It was at a conference in Montevideo in 1968 that the decision was made to set up a joint organization covering all non-violent elements throughout Latin America.
     At a conference in 1974 it was decided to give the organization a more permanent form, and Pérez Esquivel was appointed its Secretary-General. In 1976 he initiated an international campaign aimed at persuading the United Nations to establish a Human Rights Commission, and in this connection a document was drawn up recording breaches of human rights in Latin America. In the Spring of 1977 Pérez Esquivel was imprisoned without cause being shown. In May 1978 he was released, but with the obligation to report to the police as well as being subject to various restrictions. These have subsequently been allowed to lapse, and in 1980 he had an opportunity of visiting Europe.
       The organization of which Pérez Esquivel is the leader, Servicio Paz y Justicia, is a well-established one. Latin America is divided into three regions, each with its own offices, and under these come the national organizations. Their activities are co-ordinated from Pérez Esquivel's office in Buenos Aires.
       The organization is based on a Christian view of life, and enjoys close contact with clergy and bishops critical of present-day conditions in Latin America. The chief task of the movement is to promote respect for human rights, a phrase that is intended to include social and economic rights. On the practical level this means that Servicio provides assistance to the rural workers in their struggle for land, and to the trade unions in their struggle to protect the rights of their workers. This is done in the form of legal aid.
     Despite the opposition he has encountered, Pérez Esquivel insists that the struggle must only be waged with non-violent means.
    (From Les Prix Nobel)

Occupy Buffalo

I wish I were there with you, Occupy Buffalo.

Buffalo's story may be an interesting mix of lost economic opportunity met by a stepped up civic response and determination which has cocooned the city preventing a plunge into economic despair like other steel belt northeastern cities. That pride and initiative may be the energy behind the city's occupy movement.

During the Clinton years when the country was experiencing a bit of an economic boom, Buffalo never boomed.  The only boom Buffalo ever had was the ice boom they put in the Niagara River to keep it free of large ice jams during the long frigid winters. The city of the "beautiful river" continued to stagger under inflationary high costs due to many factors. Topping the list was the loss of economic development and the high cost of doing business in New York State which deterred small business development.

The city, which has seen the loss of one of the nation's largest steel producers when steel production was "shipped" overseas and has grappled with the high cost of an aging infrastructure, seems to have held its own with a steady and even relatively low 7.3% unemployment rate. (low in comparison to other cities in the country)

The city can be proud of its strong and well educated grass roots peace and justice conscience, active and outspoken interfaith peace network, a Peace Center launched during the Vietnam war years and active Catholic peace and justice workers along with dedicated and passionate Catholic religious sisters who work for the poor, homeless, hungry, imprisoned - carrying the gospel into the inner city. 

The photos above are from several of the city's news outlets.

To afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted

From:  http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/

"Fired for criticizing company on my (his) blog. Now on unemployment and food stamps. No Insurance - who can afford COBRA w/o a job? Looking for work @ 52, my wife is 62. Retirement? Just a dream. The Banksters have stolen the American Dream. Corporations are not people. They consume people. We Are The 99%. OccupyWallStreet.org."


... and, there are many more Americans - just like you and me - featured on this website, which will be a real wake up call to those who are comfortable, and comforting to those who aren't. 

Columbus Day, setting a new course

“I could conquer the whole of them with fifty

men and govern them as I pleased”

- Log of Christopher Columbus after the

landing of his first voyage to America in 1492. 

American lore and legend has heroized Christopher Columbus who, like the other explorers and conquistators who would follow him, is a human bi-product of the colonial imperialism that swept the globe dividing it up as booty for the strongest - or actually, best armed militarily. Whole cultures and peoples were subjecated or erased from the earth.  Only lately, are we rediscovering the awesome wisdom and giftedness of the Mayan, Incan, Aztec, Hopi, Sioux and other indigenous people here in North, Central and South America. 

Columbus' heinous treatment of the Native American people has already been recounted, yet it's essential we wake up to the truth about our history and change our own course and find a new direction, inspired by a new vision of who we want to be, not who we once were. 

I find it ironic that today, a day on which thousands of Americans are gathering in our nation's streets protesting the abuses of corporate America and the country's imperialistic military machine resulting in the on-going poverty and victimization of Third World and Middle Eastern women and children, and minorities, women, children, single parent families as well as now including a diminishing middle class here at the U.S., the banks and government offices are closed to honor this crude, barbaric explorer, who exploited, oppressed, raped, tortured and exterminated, the Indian population in the West Indies.

What a terrible irony! 

It is time we move beyond merely acknowledging the mistaken histories we learned and which we continue to teach our school children and look with new eyes at the "sins of our nation's fathers," repent and choose a new path, a new worldview, a new paradigm and write a new story for our country and our world.

Dan Furmansky of Standing on the Side of Love, invites us to consider this day, Indigenous People Day, rather than Columbus Day.  I am grateful to him for his thoughts and courage.  He wrote:

"Honoring Christopher Columbus is just another symptom of our country’s fundamental denial. It means lifting up a man who sent the first slaves across the Atlantic. More slaves—about five thousand—than any other individual, according to historian after historian. It means honoring a man who kidnapped indigenous Americans to take back with him to Spain, with several dying along the way. It means holding up as an example a man who demanded food, gold, and spun cotton from indigenous Americans, and used punishments like cutting off their ears and noses and hands to make sure the goods were received. It means celebrating someone who instituted policies of rewarding his lieutenants with indigenous women to rape.

"As educator and historian James W. Loewen writes in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me, 'All of these gruesome facts are available in primary source material—letters by Columbus and by other members of his expeditions, and in the work of Las Casas, the first great historian of the Americas, who relied on primary materials and helped preserve them.'

... honoring Christopher Columbus—though he was skilled as an explorer—as some sort of national hero just makes me sad.

Each time we hallow Christopher Columbus over indigenous people, or Rick Santorum over a gay soldier in Afghanistan, or Sherriff Joe Arpaio over a migrant, I believe our moral amnesia is flaring up.

For many of us, commemorating Indigenous Peoples Day over Columbus Day is one way to show that we understand the symptoms of the lies that have been embedded in our country’s collective consciousness. Let's face it. We live in a country where children grew up playing 'cowboys and Indians.' Saying our country is in denial about our own story—our roots, our history—doesn’t make us unpatriotic, ungrateful, or unaware of the staggering beauty of our land, our freedoms, and of so many people in our nation, including people who may not agree with us a lot of the time. But we can't authentically move forward if we don't truly know the ground we are on, and where we have been. Honoring Indigenous People's Day is one important way to do that.

On this Indigenous Peoples Day, people are taking to the streets, hungry for a change that is sweeping the world, chanting for a country where those in power govern with love and justice, and heed the moral imperative to serve the needs of humanity over the needs of consolidating wealth or power.

The United States is full of countless children who go to bed hungry every night, overwhelming environmental degradation costing us our health, and a colossal disparity between the very few uberwealthy and the millions of everyone else. Our deeply ailing nation is full of people who think that constitutional rights should be abrogated in favor of their God-beliefs over others’ God-beliefs, or non-God beliefs. It is full of individuals who have convinced themselves that undocumented people—the poorest, most hard-working people in our country—are somehow taking something away from them, and that if immigrants end up being abused in border detention, it’s their own fault.

I believe those of you who are taking part in Occupy Wall Street protests across the country are trying to deliver these messages through inspired love. And I thank you.

This evening, I begin a 24-hour period of Yom Kippur fasting, contemplation, and prayer. I’m overwhelmed by the need for change—from deep within to that which connects us all to one another, and to all.

Wherever we are this long, Indigenous Peoples Weekend, let us think. Let us pray, however we may choose. Let us speak. Rally. Commit. Act.

And, above all else, let us love.
Dan Furmansky
Standing on the Side of Love

We, the people, are speaking again

Today is the 10th anniversary of the longest war the U.S. has ever fought, the war in Afghanistan, and yet a new breeze of hope is ever so slightly wafting through the nation's atmosphere.  

Until recently, Americans grasping for economic renewal have been tursting with antiquated systemic windmills, lunging blindly at old systems, not realizing the dire need for - or maybe realizing it but not knowing how to effect it - a complete and total change in American economics, a change that just might overhaul the system from the roots up.

Maybe this time, the vision for a new America won't be created by a wealthy religious-right selfish class of white men who felt entitled to their wealth made on the backs of those they deemed less worthy.

Initially, after the near collapse of the U.S. economy, which sent rippling effects throughout the world, "progressives" were silent.  Perhaps we couldn't yet imagine what kind of response was best.  We were in diaspora, silent and scattered, throughout the U.S. workplace and found the best way to keep whatever meager jobs we might have was to remain silent. 

Maybe it was a lack of organization, or vision, that kept change, real change, at bay.  But, our silence was finally broken on Sept. 17 when a smart group of courageous people made camp outside the New York Stock Exchange, demanding change and with a bright, outspoken, well regarded leadership.

Now, the "Occupy Wall Street" movement has extended to 778 U.S. cities with an agenda which focuses on ending our wars, investing in jobs, regulating and taxing Wall Street, and protecting the future.

In an interview by "Between The Lines" news radio magazine (http://www.btlonline.org/2011),  Chris Hedges, a pultizer Prize-winning reporter, told BTL reporter Scott Harris,

"People are doing something, they're rising up against this corrupt financial system that seized control not only of our economy and our political process, but our judiciary and our systems of information. And are dismantling everything that we have in place to create neo-feudalistic society. Looting the U.S. Treasury, trashing the ecosystem. In theological terms, these are systems of death because they know no limit. Karl Marx was right, unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force which turns everything into a commodity. Human beings become commodities, the natural world becomes a commodity that you exploit until exhaustion or collapse. And because are there no impediments within the formal structures of power, unless we begin to engage in acts of civil disobedience we will not thwart the destruction that is being unleashed by corporate power."

Again, we, the people, are speaking out. It seems the initial constitutional vision for our country may be working, allowing us, as a people, to peacefully correct the course we've been on. The occupation of Wall Street, which is now spreading to most of the major cities in the country, is calling for a complete renovation of the U.S. economic system, one that has the potential to have a strong empowering effect on the larger global economic atmosphere. 

If it succeeds, it may end the pernicious evil of capitalism while maintaining the American dream of free enterprise.  Could it end this nation's fraudulent practices that have ripped off everyone?  Is it possible, just possible, for once and for all, we may end greed, the exploitation of the working class, the demoralization of the youth, the starvation of rising number of poor, hungry and homeless, and those who do not have the money, skills or sophistication to excel in this quickly narrowing over-the-top-competitive, elitist, wealthy class?

In the next few weeks, I hope to run a few pieces by people who are involved actively and far more knowledgable than I on what is happening in the Occupy Wall Street movement.  For more information,  please see:

"Occupy Wall Street Activists Inspire Non-Violent Resistance Across the U.S."
http://www.btlonline.org/2011/seg/111014af-btl-hill.html
Photo courtesy of:
(Minnpost.com)                  

Open hearts will heal the earth

"Prophecy tells us that at the very end the number of men with ambitious minds will decrease, while the people of good hearts, those who live in harmony with the earth, will increase until the earth is at last rid of evil. If the Hopi are right, this will be accomplished, and the earth will bloom again. The spiritual door remains open. Why not join the righteous people who are moving toward it?"

From Techqua Ikachi (Hopi for "Land and Life"), a newsletter published by Hopi Elders.


The human heart is infinitely more powerful than the brain.  Recent studies of the human subtle energy field indicate that the radiant "power" of the heart is tremendously more powerful than that of the brain. 

Yet, despite this, we continue to prioritize brain function over heart function. We focus, almost exclusively on feeding our brains with data, educating our youth with information that will be outdated in a few years.  We may place this high value on the brain because it puts us in control of our ability to draw from the well of the brain and suceed in our ambition. 

In a sense, the brain is a closed cage of information, a kind of data bank.  The more information we garner, the bigger our achievements in our material world can be, which fuels a sense of superiority over those with less information.  It creates an intellectual elitism, adding to the ego's edge on selective valuing of others.   (However, I am not advocating NOT educating ourselves or our children, but calling for a reorganization of our prioritizing paradigm by putting the heart first and intellect second.)


The side effect to this is as we continue to place the highest regard and emphasis on more "brain stuff," we simultaneously suppress the vitality of the more intuitive, more emotive, gentler and kinder knowledge and leanings of the heart.  The brain is never wise.  It simply puts data together and draws a cold analytical conclusion.  The open, fearless heart, crystal clear, without the deafening and blinding walls of the ego,  draws from the brain's data bank as it simultaneously listens to the voices of the higher self, of the angels, even of God, as well as others and synergizes it all with its own graceful responses to turn a potentially divisive or even violent situation into a learning experience, and a peaceful outcome. Each and every human encounter can be a beautiful magical experience.

There has never been a more importent time in the history of the world for people to put away their ego-driven, blind ambition for that relational, vulnerable, gentle open hearted approach to building bridges among others. Only through open-hearted relationships can we achieve any kind of connectivity on the planet, any kind of unity among people, and a healing of the divisions among us, built and held by racism, fear and elitism. 

Clearly many religions still promote exclusivity, killing and torturing others who don't convert.  Consequently, we must respond by opening our own hearts to learning the cultural languages and religious teachings of those who threaten and oppose us.  As we learn to "love our neighbor"  and "love our enemies," we heal the gapping wounds that infect our planet. As we step outside our own fear which has closed and locked down our hearts, in order to open to the "enemy," we will step into that realm over which we cannot and do not control which throws open the door to God's love and infinite healing power to heal the planet.

One person cannot do this.  No matter how ambitious, well meaning, inspired, one person cannot do this.  We need each other and we need to do this together, collectively, as one people, unified for our survival on the planet. Each of us must turn up the flame on our own inner lamps, open our hearts and listen without condemnation or judgment.  The ego and the brain judge, condemn and enter into a "crime and punishment" mentality, which only keeps the hatred going.  Love forgives and forgives and forgives until the world is a place of mutuality, a table set with love, hope and prosperity. 

"Every individual who becomes a clear and undistorted channel for eternal love into these times offsets a thousand who remain locked in the dissolving values of the old."
Ken Carey, Starseed: The Third Millenniumn

The future is ours to have and to hold and how we hold it today will make all the diffence in our future world.  If we choose to discipline our quick tempered reactions and open our hearts to feel the suffering of the one who has acted rudely or even abusively, and then step up to the plate with love, compassion and patience, one by one, we can and will change our world.  We don't need more stuff, more invention, more technology, more wealth - we need more love, patience, humbly kneeling before each other, knowing that only the love we give can heal us, our brother and our world.  The time is now.  We can't put this off for tomorrow or tomorrow's challenge before us will be greater.

It seems the time is right for us to listen to the Hopi elders, whose wisdom stretches back to the ancient Mayan and perhaps even beyond.

Give me your hand

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, 

then walks with us silently out of the night.  

These are the words we dimly hear:  

"You, sent out beyond your recall, 

go to the limits of your longing.  

Embody me.  

Flare up like flame 

and make big shadows 

I can move in. 

Let everything happen to you; 

beauty and terror.  

Just keep going. 

No feeling is final.  

Don't let yourself lose Me.  

Nearby is the country they call life.   

You will know it by its seriousness.  

Give me your hand."  

Rainer Maria Rilke, 

The Book of Hours

Sometimes I feel like I'm carrying a 50 lb. bag of potatoes on my back. When I look around I can see other people seem the same.  Our eyes are dimmed by worry, bloodshot from too little sleep.  

Seriousness has creeped into our lives and taken up residence in our tender human hearts, a place better designed for laughter and joy, song and dance and lovemaking.  

Worry seems to be the word of the day.  Sometimes that worry slips into our words and we're short tempered or find ourselves losing our grace in our interactions with others.  I think maybe we've all become just too serious.  I remind myself that none of us are in charge of the universe. God still is.  Did we forget?  There is only one thing we HAVE to do and that is to remember to invite God into our daily lives.

Recently I was reminded of that simple little Prayer of Jabez which is so beautiful in its brevity. 


My paraphrase of it is simply, 


"Oh God, please bless me, please pour your blessings into my body, mind, heart and life and allow my entire world - all who I love and know and all that I do and dream to do - be blessed to increase, grow and prosper and please keep me away from the shadows of deception and control and allow your power and your presence to be with me, let your hand be upon me .... today, every moment of every hour of today, and everyday.  Please bless me, fill my life completely with your love and your blessings.,  I need you every moment of every day, especially in this moment and this day.  Thank you.  I love you.  Amen"

And, then I put on a smile, right after the lip gloss, and head off to work.  I think that's a good way of taking God's hand and remembering not to take all this too seriously.