The Good Earth

Staying Open

2008-06-17T18:28:00.002-04:00

I just spent a frustrating hour chasing down blogs with an interest in "animism" and found most of them had stopped writing years ago. I don't want that to happen here. Even though I've been crazy busy and distracted, I am still on the path, and still hoping to connect with like-minded others. If you stumble on this blog, through whatever topic interests you, I hope you will leave a comment and we can connect!
Love!
Lilly

So, what exactly did you mean by that?

2007-12-08T11:14:00.000-05:00

I read in a book about the historical Jesus that when Jesus admonished his followers that they were not “of the world” he meant the human-created world. I call this the “manufactured world.” The manufactured world is to be distinguished from the God-created world, the Earth. So, I would agree with Jesus that those who follow his path of love must live in the created world and not in the manufactured world.

This definition is just one tiny piece of my struggle with definitions as I work to consolidate my understandings into some kind of cohesive system of belief.

Humans do not live in a static, scientifically-provable “real world.” There may be a static, scientifically-provable world out there, but we cannot directly experience it. Humans simply don’t have the capability. First, we have to experience it through our physical sensory equipment. Then we might use various tools to extend the reach of our senses. More than that, and more important than that, are the internal models and other mental tools we use to make sense of what we see.

Can we see without making sense of what we see?

If, for example, I see a ghost and the ghost is real, I might still only “see” a wisp of smoke, a shimmer of light. I don’t believe in ghosts. They don’t make sense in my internal model of reality. I cannot and never will see one. But in some models of reality, in some cultures, ghosts are very real and people see them all the time.

One can only imagine what infants experience: a chaos of sensory input. Without the models and mental tools that give this input meaning, humans would never be able to sort out the sensory input, connect it to other input, make sense of it, store it, retrieve it, or interact with the world using it.

I believe that we live inside our models of the world. I call these models culture, but only for lack of a better word. Culture is still associated with the “high culture” of the arts and music, or with the interpersonal culture of manners and morals. But culture is more than that. Culture is also understood as location-, religion-, or group-related world models, such as “French Culture,” “African-American Culture,” “Islamic or Christian Culture.” But culture is more, even, than that. It is the experiential water in which we swim. Everything we do, say, believe, how we understand our bodies, our souls, the meaning of life, our medicine, education, transportation, and all the multitude of systems that define and control our lives is culture.

We don’t notice culture, unless we make a serious effort to do so, and even then, there are parts of culture that appear to be related to the human instinct, that appear “cross-culturally,” such as the a priori models of space and time (a la Kant). Confused yet? Me, too!

But I can’t begin to point out to people that they live in a variation of the Dominator Culture — or should I call it the Dominator Reality? — unless I can define my terms. I can’t point to an alternative reality, the possible world of the Animist Culture, unless I can define the words dominator, culture, animist, reality, internal models, and so on. My readers might understand these words in typical ways, for example, “reality is what is.” But they won’t understand them as I seek to define them, for example, “reality is the meaningful model of the world in which we live, which exists inside of an unknowable mystery.” God is another of those words. The soul is another.

Argh! It’s been years working on definitions. And all I want to say is “Come on, human people! There’s another world out there and it’s a good one! Open the gates. Walk on through into the garden!” No wonder Jesus had such a hard time getting people to understand him. He, too, was challenging the reality of the Dominator Culture in his own time and place.
Love,
Lilly

Musings on a winter day

2007-12-02T12:10:00.000-05:00

Hello online friends,
It's not officially winter, but it sure feels like winter. We had a first snowfall last night and woke up to a white wonderland. Our little apartment felt cozy enough to bake a peach pie.

Now, I don't have it in me to continue to wax pedantic about immigration. I'd be preaching to the choir anyway. So, I'll let go of the post about contemporary immigration and NAFTA, and the post about who the real terrorists are. I'll skip right to the question that's important to me:

Why would any Christian be afraid of a terrorist anyway? What's with this orange alert bullshit for the heaven-bound? Jesus admonished us to be not afraid of those who would harm the body. He said we should fear the men who can steal our souls. I would say, therefore, that we should be more concerned about the soul stealers of our time: the fear mongers and those who make war in our name, the profiteers, the corporations that carelessly damage our one-and-only earth-nest, as well as the TV shows and other media messages that turn us into weak, selfish, lazy, materialistic, empty shells of humanity.

And that's my say for a winter day. Let's go sledding! Sending love to all,
Lilly

The Melting Pot in Action

2007-11-29T06:59:00.000-05:00

The following tidbit about immigrants was brought to my attention by the Liberator Online, a Libertarian newsfeed. Libertarians are making more sense to me than the fascist-leaning Republicans. Never thought I would come to that!

"Immigrants contribute nearly one-fourth of the
economic output of New York State, and outside of New York City, they are
overrepresented in some of the most critical occupations, including higher
education and health care, according to a study to be released today. In the
suburbs north and east of the city, about 4 of every 10 doctors and more than
one-fourth of college professors were foreign-born, the study by the private
Fiscal Policy Institute found. In upstate New York, where just 5 percent of
residents are foreign-born, immigrants accounted for about one-fifth of the
professors and more than one-third of the doctors, according to the study. The
study, conducted over the past year, concluded that the contributions of people
born outside the country have spread far beyond the low-wage, low-skill work
often associated with immigrants."

-- "Immigrants Pull Weight in Economy, Study Finds," New York Times, November 26.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/nyregion/26report.html?ref=todayspaper

The New Colossus

2007-11-24T10:28:00.000-05:00

The New Colossus
by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Like every Jewish school child, I learned about Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) in Hebrew School and felt pride that these words, which grace the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, were written by a fellow Jew. It was the violent anti-Semitism of the Russian and German pogroms in the early 1880s that radicalized Lazarus’ poetry, and led to the passion about immigration that she expresses in her seminal work.
Love,
Lilly

Immigration

2007-11-22T09:14:00.000-05:00

A friend recently sympathized with my daughter’s experience, but added that she didn’t know much about the immigration issue. “Wouldn’t it be like opening our borders to terrorists to allow just anybody in?” she asked. Here is my answer to her, in three parts.

1) We are the immigrants.
Every citizen of this country, except for the Indians, came here within the last few hundred years as immigrants. After the first import of British colonials, who began the genocidal sweeping out of the native population, great waves of immigration subsequently brought Jews, Catholics, Irish, Germans, Slovaks of all kinds, Asians of all kinds, Latin Americans and a marvelous variety of other ethnicities, languages, races and religions to our shores. The African-Americans, of course, were originally forced here as slaves. I believe my friend’s background is Italian. None of us can claim “nativehood” except those who immigrated ten thousand or more years ago across the land bridge from Siberia.

Every time a new kind of immigrant came to the United States seeking freedom or financial gain, those already here complained. Sometimes, as in the case of the KKK, we complained violently. Mostly, we complained because we were afraid the newcomers would bring disease or bad religion, or would take our jobs, or would act in un-American ways. They sounded different. They looked different, and we feared difference. But in truth, the newcomers brought fresh energy, took jobs we disdained, worked hard, enriched our culture and cuisine, and integrated fully. Why, now, do we close our doors, except out of the same old fear? And who is fear-mongering now?
Love,
Lilly

My response here is, by its blogging nature, simplistic and incomplete. For more information, please check out these websites.

Immigration History offers the basics.

For the more erudite among us, try the Immigration Research Center at the University of Minnesota.

Immigration Debate Links from the Constitutional Rights Center offers this page of links at the high school reading level.

No Borders Camp. Who are the terrorists, here?

2007-11-19T05:51:00.001-05:00

Last week, my daughter was at the No Borders Camp at Calexico, at the Mexican border. As they have at walls around the world, our kids met to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall and share their ideal world: one in which no person is illegal, in which love prevails, in which we need no walls to wall people in or out.

They threw food over the wall and kissed through the wall. They cried shame to the border police and their weapons and hate-contorted faces. They danced and banged on drums, made music and art. For most of the “action” everything was quiet, even though it was tense to be surrounded by armed police and their vehicles, and sleeping under their kleig lights. Then, at the last moment, 100 police brutally attacked a group of about 30 kids, ganging up on them, beating them with heavy sticks and shooting them at close range with their pellet weapons.

Three young men were severely beaten and arrested, and ironically, charged with attacking the heavily armed federal officers. Please go to the No Borders Camp website to see video of the attack as well as scenes from the peaceful week of action. Although the No Borders Camp has met at other locations around the world, here in the United States is the first place they were attacked by representatives of the national government.

how come?

2007-10-17T18:49:00.000-04:00

How come I can't just be honest? How come I have to work at a stupid job to make money when food grows on the trees? How come people who call themselves Christians support murder, war and a culture of greed? How come I don't have the time to live my life and do art?

How come so many people are ashamed of their bodies? How come so many people hurt their bodies with bad food and anger?

How come I ask these questions and other people don't.

How come I have to talk to you with printed words, and we have lost the scent and the faces of one another?

Good night,
Lilly

Small Changes

2007-09-21T07:39:00.000-04:00

If the Dominator System is so powerful, able to manage all input and maintain itself, do we have the slightest chance of changing it? Yes! Absolutely! We can take small risks and create change a wee small bit at a time. There are so many of us! Who knows whether it will be you or I whose smile tips the world balance toward Love?

You—a tiny individual—you don’t have to change the whole system, or throw yourself against the monster and bring its wrath down on your own particular neck. You can change the world with small, random acts of goodness, kindness, caring, listening, questioning, playfulness, lovemaking, or even just enjoying your food. Or saying a simple no. Say no to advertising, for example. Say no to television. Say no to greed.

Refuse to give up your seat on life’s bus. Refuse to obey the rules. Do things a little differently. Speak kindly, even though your old friends call you a dork. Dress differently. Turn off your tee-vee. Do something unexpected. Dye your hair blue.

Raise your hands, my young friends, and question your teachers. Take a day off from school to learn and grow and to be out in nature running around. Who says you have to do homework? Be subversive, kids. What if the whole 9th grade took the day off? Would they suspend you all? Great! Hold school for those three suspension days down at the beach, out in the woods, or visit your county court house, or check out your local library. Get a life! School is not life.

And you and I, wage slaves, let us burst into song at the water fountain! Be merry and full of wild ideas. Sing in the elevators! Sing on the subways! Make your relationships more important than your paperwork. More important than the meeting. Tell your boss how much you care about him or her. Ask, “And how are the kids?” Make relationships more important than television. Teach your kids right from the start that evenings are for tossing balls and riding bikes, reading books and playing interpersonal games.

Here’s another idea: we don’t need as much money and stuff as the Dominators say we do. We certainly don’t need much money when we have friends. I know that the Dominator Culture chastises the poor for being lazy, for not working, and for living off the dole . . . whatever meager dole is still available. But, maybe the poor don’t want those dominator jobs. Maybe the non-working poor have in some small way triumphed over the system. Maybe they are smarter than the rest of us.

Let family come first, and neighbors and friends. We who think we have so much to lose, what if we banded together? What if we started talking to our neighbors again? What if we shared our homes and our gadgets, our stereos and computers and cars and lawn mowers. We’d need less. We connect more. Two wonderful things would happen.

Risk what small change you can. Risk being a fool. Does it seem like you have a lot to lose? Don’t worry about your money! You’ll survive because you have education, critical thinking skills, good work habits, the ability to make connections, to communicate, to love. These are the skills that we really need to thrive. The poor in money are not poor, unless they are also poor in spirit, intellect, understanding, or experience.

Turn off the mind control machine and teach love.

Introduce chaos into your social and personal life. Suggest playing games together as a family, and even though your kids might think you’re nuts at first. If they go along with it, something is guaranteed to happen between you. Go for hikes with groups of others. Grab your power as a citizen and start writing to your legislators. We could send so many letters, make so many phone calls and e-mails, that even the moneybags of the elite won’hold enough gold to drown out our voices.

Vote. Vote your heart. Vote for your beautiful Earth. Vote for people and not for money. Eat dessert first. Stop sending e-mail and write letters again. Be naked in nature. Bake a cake from scratch. If you don’t have the time to make love with your partner, then you’re doing too much. Quit your damned job if you have to, but never give up making love!

Have a great day!
Lilly

2007-03-22T16:53:00.000-04:00

conte crayon

2007-03-11T19:22:00.000-04:00

Jack helped me take digital photos of some of my conte crayon drawings to share with you. In many of them, you can see the board that they're clipped to, but I think it gives you a sense of my art. Some things come easy, but for me, drawing is a constant struggle. Still it is also a pleasure and a passion, and I want to master this skill more than I've ever wanted to master any skill, so I keep on drawing.
Have a great week!
Love,
Lilly

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness

2007-03-06T07:17:00.000-05:00

Dear Sophie,
Thinking of you. It's been a week of personal growth for me, as I work through feelings about being a mom, and strengthen myself to move into the future. Ben's arrest and Vivi's being overseas have brought it all into sharp focus. I can see where I failed in my parenting, but also where I was good and strong.

Last night, I remembered quoting Kahlil Gibran "On Children" to my father when I was Vivi's age. "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself." He pitched an incredible fit about it. It really hurt his feelings. Now I understand Gibran's words so much better, but I also understand my dad's reaction to it, because I have mistakenly made you kids my identity, and you are not me.

"You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts." And I see clearly that each of you has your own thoughts, that are not my thoughts. You live in a world that is not my world, and within that world, you each have your own life to live. "Their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams."

Although I see my mistakes, it's too late to correct them. And as much influence as I have had with you, I am just a part of what has made you who you are today. You came into this world with a spirit of your own. This spirit, your siblings and peers, the world in which you grew up, your dad and your stepdad, your heritage, all these things and more have also formed and shaped you. And you will continue to grow, with and without me, through the years to spiritual maturity.

As for me, this letting go is part of my own growing up. The process never ends. I only wish I had been wiser younger, so I could have shared that with you, but still, I have been honored to be the bow. "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the infinite, and He bends you with His might that his arrows may go swift and far."

Meanwhile, my dear oldest daughter, I think of you often with the greatest affection. I have been working hard on my art, because the passion to share my vision is growing stronger every day. I must get Jack to scan more of it . . . I have a dozen pages of pencil drawings to ink in, and I spend every discretionary cent on art books.

I wonder how things are for you in the new house, and how your work is coming along at Earth First! I'm so proud of the work you do!
Love,
Mom

Earth Christian

2007-03-04T12:50:00.001-05:00

Hello folks,
Thought I'd share one of my older cartoons from the Earth Christian series.
Love,
Lil

Mr. and Mrs. Bonobo

2007-02-25T09:26:00.000-05:00

Police Brutality

2007-02-21T14:07:00.000-05:00

Do you need more evidence that our country is shifting toward fascism? Here is evidence: our police have been claiming increasing rights to use deadly force, to brutalize, terrorize, and humiliate, without justification or provocation.

A few days ago, my son was arrested in New Orleans. He was walking home from a Mardi Gras parade with three other young men and was picked up by police because they had a report "that four white guys were making trouble." Here was a handy group of "white guys," obvious out-of-towners, easy marks. I believe that the police chose this group of young men because they knew they'd get no resistence, there would be no weapons . . . only fear in their eyes and polite protests.

My son was handcuffed, thrown against a car, and brutalized, and kept in jail without being allowed to make a phone call, and without being formally charged. In jail with no one knowing where he was, given little food, sleeping on the gound, no toilet paper, witnessing beatings.

After three days, he was missed by his friends, bail was paid, and he was out and able to call me.

Although New Orleans has a shocking history of police brutality and corruption, reports from cities across the country show increasing levels of police violence against citizens. Young men, especially young black men, are being shot and killed with impunity. Others are being tortured, tormented, and beaten. Why should police be immune from the law?

And my mother's heart cries, "Why my son?" Why any mother's son? When I see violence that is random and cruel, it tears at my faith and makes me wonder why we are here on this earth at all.

Please pray for the safety of Ben and his band mates. They are determined, he told me, to stay on and continue volunteering with the local rebuilding efforts, as they had been doing for several weeks. He has more love in his heart than I do.
Sadly,
Lilly

Who stole my time?

2007-02-18T12:49:00.000-05:00

Never enough time.

I spend two hours commuting each day and eight and a half hours daily at work. Consider how much additional time most people spend on shopping, watching television, and other passive entertainments. It's no wonder that life seems to pass us quickly by.

In prehistoric times, it's estimated that the daily chores, including food acquisition and preparation and other necessities, used about four hours daily, and those four hours were also social time.

When I was a kid in the late 50s and 60s, there was talk of the coming era of leisure time, of four day work weeks and extended vacations, of hobbies and do it yourselfing.

Our contemporary spiritually-ill culture demands that we move faster all the time, valuing speed for its own sake; that we spend the best hours of our day working for others for pay, often in personally meaningless tasks; that we see time doing nothing as lazy time and that we fill every unworking moment with passive entertainments.

In despair for time, I carefully apportion my weekends: this much time for art. This much time for loving play. This much for baking a cake or wandering along the frozen creek.

Who stole my time? I worked and drove my car and shopped and worried and did what I had to what I had to what I had to for 53 years and now I look back and mourn for the book I didn't write and the sunny days I was stuck inside at a job and the art school I never attended and the sledding expeditions with the kids I put off until the free time that never came.

Who stole my life?

Every day's pay I put away for the time when I will have enough to buy back my life from the Dominators.

Love,
Lilly

An Introduction to Contemporary Animism: One

2007-02-03T13:40:00.000-05:00

I am an animist. This is what I believe:

I believe that the universe (for want of a better word) is made of spirit-matter stuff. All that exists, exists because something non-material and something material became joined, as in a sexual intercourse, and out of that joining the universe was born.

All material being is suffused with intelligence and spirit.

All spiritual being is manifest in some way, be it as stars or blades of grass.

God—Great Being, All Things, Our Source—is also spirit-matter. The universe is the body of God.

Human beings are also spirit-matter. We are spirits in animal form. And so, too, is all of creation spirit-matter, all of creation is intelligence and spirit made manifest, and all things, even stars and blades of grass, are intelligent and spiritual.

All creation has language, even if we cannot speak it, although once upon a time, humanity could speak the language of animals and animals could speak the language of humans, and we recognized our kinship. We also recognized our kinship with rocks, waters, sky, and other created beings. Once upon a time.

An animist believes these things. An animist is so named because he or she believes in a reality in which all things are animate, and no thing is without soul. All creation is family. All is worthy of respect. We have no right to enslave another being, human or non-human, even though we kill and eat it. Nothing may be owned. It is all the body of God.

Love,
Lilly

Propaganda

2006-11-25T14:37:00.000-05:00

I received an e-mail last week through the school library system that made my blood run cold. A couple of years ago, I would have thought nothing of it. Now I recognized it for what it was: propaganda.

The e-mail comes, ostensibly, from my professional organization, the American Library Association. It urges libraries “as community leaders—to take charge of making sure their communities are prepared in the event of an emergency or disaster.” For more information, librarians are encouraged to visit the website of the “Ready Campaign,” maintained "as a public service" by the Department of Homeland Security and the Ad Council.

The Department of Homeland Security I don’t have to explain to you, but the Ad Council, which puts itself forward as the public service arm of the advertising profession, has been providing the government with high quality propaganda since its inception in 1942 with its earliest offerings in the war propaganda effort.

In fact, the government of the United States, which makes a point of telling the world that it does not use propaganda, and insists that it intentionally tells only the truth to the American people and to the people of the world, not only uses propaganda, but has perfected propaganda into a uniquely powerful twenty-first century form.

The book I’m reading now, Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle At Home and Abroad, by Kenneth Osgood, is a thorough and stunningly researched exploration of the evolution of propaganda into total psychological warfare. Some quotes from the book:

This quote refers to anti-nationalist propaganda, intended to dissolve the will of the people of other countries to create their own cultural identity: “Pointedly highlighting the economic stakes involved, the NSC [National Security Council] noted that ‘in some countries . . . nationalism expresses itself strongly against proposals for the development of natural resources, especially petroleum, by U.S. private capital.’” (p. 144). In fact, (now this is my opinion, not that of the author) the development of natural resources by U.S. private capital amounts to the plunder of the rainforests, metals, labor, and raw materials of that country for the benefit of corporate wealth. To protect access for the purposes of plunder, we engaged in psychological warfare against many countries during the 1950s, most notably in Latin America.

“American psychological operations abroad functioned both as weapons of political warfare and tools of empire . . . political warfare came to mean the use of all available means to influence the political, economic, strategic, and psychological orientation of foreign countries.” (p. 149). This, to me, reveals the global imperial intentions of the United States. Instead of controlling the world and its people and resources through violence and military victory, or even though political domination, the battle is now played on the field of culture and mind. The world belongs to the ones who can control our consensual reality, our culture and beliefs.

“Ordinary Americans also were encouraged to actively contribute to the propaganda campaign, making them both targets and participants. The Eisenhower administration’s sophisticated approach to information management made the subtle manipulation virtually invisible to taget audiences and to journalists who were (actively or unconsciously) agents of domestic propaganda.” (p. 178) The increasing sophistication of the machinery of mind-control made propaganda more invisible and effective than ever. That capability is continuing to increase today, with enhanced communications capabilities, faster and better information technologies, and a practiced understanding of psychological and cognitive processes and how to manipulate them. Propaganda is more insideous, prevelant, and effective than ever before, both domestically and internationally.

Atoms for Peace was a hugely successful propaganda campaign that countered public fear of the bomb and enabled the United States to continue to finance and stockpile its cache of nuclear weapons.

Another frightening realization from Total Cold War is that the perpetrators of psychological warfare are aware of the spiritual dimensions of culture and mind control. A “basic truth,” wrote President Eisenhower, is that “humans are spiritual beings; they respond to sentiment and emotions as well as to statistics and logic.” (quoted on p. 54). In 1956, Henry Kissinger wrote that diplomatic efforts had become struggles, not to negotiate, but “to capture the symbols which move humanity.” (quoted on p. 183).

It’s worth doing a bit of research to learn more about propaganda. Key issues include the use of disguise as education, news, or science, and the ability to create events that become news. Osgood contends that the increase in the power of public opinion and better media were the two principle reasons for the upsurge in propaganda during the Cold War. I would add a number of other factors, such as better understanding of psychological and cognitive processes, the success of advertising and marketing, the increasing world resistence to the use of force, and the global increase in literacy.

As for my e-mail from the ALA, I can only shake my head sadly. They would have me believe that my community is in danger. Why? Who is putting us in danger? They are telling me that I should be afraid, I should prepare for the worst. John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, declared in 1955 that “fear and moral superiority have been the cement which has held the free world together.” What would the dominators do if there was no fear left to exploit?

Thanks for your patience with this long post.
Best wishes,
Lilly

Some relevant links

ThinkQuest: Propaganda Techniques

Public Dimplomacy and Covert Propaganda

Center for Media and Democracy

Democracy Now: State Propaganda

2006-11-19T09:22:00.000-05:00

Because it feels good, that's why!

2006-11-18T11:51:00.000-05:00

Of fathers, love, and money

2006-11-17T12:58:00.000-05:00

I talked with my ex-husband this morning, and it was the usual heartbreaking, frustrating discussion that led us nowhere new. I realized as we spoke that this man and I see reality, and love in particular, in two different ways.

For him, love is not a feeling. He does not seem to experience affection. Instead, love means for him a set of obligations and behaviors. His love is limited and conditional, something that has to be earned with right conduct and right beliefs. And so, his sees his obligation to his children as material and predicated on their meeting their own obligations to him—obligations that include the conforming of their lives and personalities to his specifications.

“Don’t worry,” he said in a bitter voice. “I fully intend to divide my estate between the three of them when I die — but it’s disgusting to think they’d waste their lives waiting for an inheritance.”

“It’s not your money they want,” I pleaded with him. “It’s your love.”

But he just stared at me, unable to comprehend. If love is money, then what do the kids need with love? And how can he love them if they continue to insist on being other than the way they ought to be? What insolence!

As I drove back home and the tears were shed and dried, I started to think about my own father. He left me only a couple hundred dollars when he died last spring. He had no other money to give, but he instead, he offered me an inheritance more precious than the riches of the richest men on earth:

he gave me love while he lived.

My father loved me through it all, from start to finish. In his often clumsy ways, he dedicated his life and his work to his children and to all children. He forgave me even when I was cruel to him, and when I argued with him, he engaged me with all his heart and open mind.

My father was honest with me and honest in his dealings with the world. He let me go when I wanted to go and yet remained close by so he could help me when I needed a hand. Over time, he became a beacon for me of the steadfast light of the Loving Creator, a model of a life lived with integrity. I never heard him express hatred or disdain for another person.

He father was kind to me. My father loved me. This was his gift, his heirloom of love, and because of this gift, I will die in a state of grace and peace and self-acceptance. I will sing my way across the river, just like he did.

My father left me a couple hundred dollars when he died.

What will my children inherit from their father that can compare?

In the old cemetery . . .

2006-10-28T13:06:00.000-04:00

. . . I sat for a while this morning and watched the sky lighten, while the wheel of the year circled around me.

It was drizzling rain and the morning came late, but it came at last. I sat back on the ancient metal bench and breathed the air of change, in and out, quietly in and out.

The gravestones glittered faintly in the dim light. Looking at them, I remembered my mother and father, god rest their souls, and my dear friends Penny, Mary, Ann, and Tom, dead of cancer every one, leaving me lonely in my aching body on this troubled earth.

Death itself is always quick. It took only a moment for each of my loved ones to leave this world and enter eternity, and after all my waiting and my fear, it will take but a moment when my turn comes at last. Then I will enter eternity and return to the world again in the blink of an eye. This world and the next, time and eternity, in the body and out again, are just one inspiration and expiration of the soul that lasts forever.

For now I sit on the unfathomable bench under the pine trees of the universe, breathing the air of change, in and out, in and out.
Love,
Lilly

Here is an image of the Ithaca cemetery in the daylight:

Doing nothing is a wonderful thing to do

2006-10-22T07:04:00.000-04:00

After driving an hour each way to work and fighting my way through the day, I came home exhausted and discouraged . . . and then I went for a walk in the rain.

Just a walk around town, through the dark, deserted streets, in the pouring rain with my umbrella. I wandered, walking up one street and down another. I stopped often, just listening to the sound of the rain on the pavements, on the dying leaves, the water pouring down the drains, the swish of tires as an occasional car passed by.

I stopped by the creek to watch water rush under the bridge. I stopped in the little park with the playground and delighted at the glittering of the wet sliding board under the street lamps. I stopped for a long time by the side of a back street, watching bubbles form on the rain running along the gutter, running like a miniature river with leaves for boats, and watching the bubbles form and burst and run down in little eddies and currents and disappear under a pile of soggy, yellow leaves.

And I felt heartened and refreshed.

All day long, I did what was expected of me. I worked, I produced, I drove my car. I made money and I spent money and it drained my soul. Standing out in the rain, going nowhere, doing nothing, fed me, strengthened me, and made me whole again.

The irony, of course, is that the things I do that use me up are rewarded and the things I do that nurture me are considered wasteful. Doing nothing is frowned upon, because doing nothing is a subversive act in a social machine that uses our work like fuel.

And was I doing nothing of value? Is listening nothing of value? Is seeing the world nothing of value? Children should be spending whole days lazing about in back yards, watching the clouds change shape, or running along the sidewalks for no reason but the joy of running. These were considered normal childhood activities when I was a kid, but they are now no longer acceptable. We schedule our kids as pitilessly as we schedule ourselves, and in their “down time” they are expected to consume. The mind has no time to heal.

Who benefits when we are forced to produce or consume at every moment? Who benefits from our passive entertainments and the constant harassment of our minds and spirits?

Being in the body on the earth is not nothing. It is something—it's really something! It's special and wonderful and worthy of our time and attention. I would urge you to take some time, lots of time, to be unproductive, to sit and smile up at the sky, to walk nowhere, play with a twig, hum a little melody, stretch, skip down the street. Just look at the fascinating wonders of the world around you, just empty your ears of the human noise, and you will be strengthened and refreshed. Just rest.
Love,
Lilly

Soft and weak, we buy the dominators' comforts

2006-10-15T12:48:00.000-04:00

We Americans have become soft and weak, accustomed to physical comfort and ease. Out of touch with our physical and spiritual sources of power, willing slaves to Mammon, we have forgotten what it means to be free and strong and brave.

We no longer take pride in service to the community, we no longer eschew selfishness. In our media we glorify cruelty and greed. Physically weak, spiritually weak, we are ripe for the world’s dominators to pluck and eat.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Look around you. Everyday, everywhere, people are being kind and cooperative with one another. People give and help and share, overcome trama, build and build again. People hold hands and make love. People feed their neighbor’s children and pray that even their enemies would someday come to a place of peace and abundance.

Why do we buy into the dominator lie that we are by nature lazy, greedy, and cruel? Why do we buy their comforts and securities with the rare coin of our freedom? Why is easier, faster, and more considered "good" and tough, slow, and less considered "bad?"? Who does it serve that we are suspicious and afraid of one another? Who decides what is real?

We have what it takes to recreate the world. Why don’t we? What stands in our way? Tell me, who decides what is real?
Love,
Lilly

Good morning!

2006-10-13T05:54:00.000-04:00

The first snap of winter cold hits my face as I step down off the back porch and set out on my morning walk. The moon is small and hard and high up in the air, flooding the street with a light brighter than the street lamps, and the stars in Orion’s belt sparkle fiercely against a black sky.

I love the early morning world. Street lamps blink red and green for no one. I walk in the shadows of the trees. The air is fresher now than at any other time during the day, so that I can catch even the most subtle of scents, and I know as I pass in which house cigarette smokers are sleeping and which house embraces a family of cats. The windows are all dark.

And then, at 5:30, the buses start their runs down Cayuga Street, great lumbering beasts, lighted from within, empty except for the drivers. I see a black woman through the plate glass window of the laundromat, watching the dryer spin around, her head tilted sleepily to one side.

I drop my letter in the mailbox. The little door squeals and clanks. It feels good to swing my legs as I walk to the creek, where the water chuckles endlessly against the stones. A jogger goes by, his reflectors gleaming, and a light goes on in a bathroom, in a kitchen. Soon, there will be students walking to school, and cars and walkers of dogs and lines of wage workers, some angry, some defeated, waiting in lines at the bus stops. By then, I will be in my own car on the long drive to work, holding these quiet and shadowy moments in my heart.

I pause a moment on the back steps to send you a blessing—a blessing for you kids, for you friends, for you unknown reader.

Good morning.
Love,
Lilly

Concubines for the president

2006-10-09T06:07:00.001-04:00

Hello Folks,
Here's a thought. One of the great pathologies of humankind in post-animistic society is the perversion of sex. We have taken something good and pleasureful and made it sick with digust and shame. And yet, we know that a sexually satisfied person is generally happier and calmer than one who is sexually numb or frustrated.

Therefore, I would suggest that we return to the practice of providing concubines for the king. In ancient times, we understood that the more sexually satisfied the king was, the fewer heads would roll and the less likely that the king would leave the comfort of his multi-marital bed to go off to plunder and murder in foriegn lands.

So, let's help our unhappy, insane president get laid. Perhaps then he would stay out of trouble.

The trouble is, would we be able to rustle up any volunteers? I recently saw a bumper sticker, here in our tiny circle of sanity called Ithaca, that read "Won't somebody give this guy a blow job so we can impeach him?"
Best wishes!
Lilly

Saturday morning in the woods

2006-09-16T15:40:00.000-04:00

I was in the woods today with Jack. He walked off to see what he would find and I sat under a tree and drew cartoons and felt the presence of my beloved non-human friend Charlie. The woods were sweet and damp, but I could hear the sound of automobiles passing on the road below, and I felt the irritation of the sound on the spirits of the trees and on my spirit.

After a week of hard work in ordinary reality, I gently felt myself passing through the gate into the green world, and I wondered if Jack had also been able to relax and shake off the chains of the marketplace. I stood up, and there he was, walking towards me through the trees, all dressed in blue, with a big smile on his face. We came together and stood for a long time, hugging belly to belly, while the leaves rustled above us and sprinkled us with drops of water.

Someday, we vowed, we would be able to live in a woods where we could take off our clothes and stand naked and free before the Creator. There we would build a temple to our gods. It would be a sunny clearing in the woods, set about with stones and gardens of mushrooms and ferns. We would open our hearts to all the gods who served love and brought light to humanity and we would cast out the gods of cruelty, greed, and fear. In that space, the kingdom of love would be real, just as it was in that moment, under those trees, as it is wherever two human beings hold each other close with loving arms.

Have a great week!
Lilly

a cartoon I drew, from the 2004 elections

2006-09-05T18:32:00.000-04:00

Jack

2006-08-27T09:09:00.000-04:00

conte crayon on newsprint

resting in the sun

2006-08-23T10:29:00.000-04:00

Time to rest

2006-08-18T15:31:00.000-04:00

I’ve been feeling guilty and ashamed of being in pain and needing time to heal from my surgeries. Somehow, I’d come to believe that it was my secret laziness at fault for my suffering, or a lack of gumption that makes me take so long to heal, and that I don’t deserve any extra time or rest. I’m allowing other people to take care of me and that feels shameful.

Charlie tells me that there is no shame in the body, sick or well. He says that I should give myself as much pleasure as I can because pleasure is healing.

He says I should eat foods that are comforting and nurturing and drink lots of water. He says I have to move, however gently, and I have to give myself the time I need to heal — and it may be a long time, so I’ll need patience as well as perseverance.

Charlie tells me not to be ashamed to ask for help, not to be afraid to depend on others. He reassures me that my husband’s love will give him the strength and desire to help me and that he won’t be brought low, but lifted up on his acts of kindness.

Charlie tells me never to give up. He says that life is a struggle, sure it is, but that the struggle and the pleasure will never end, and I shouldn’t wish them away, that it would be best to embrace them both in balance. He tells me to rest and pamper myself.

Movement and rest, nutritious food and water, love and kindness and trust are all means to heal our bodies when they’re sick and strengthen them when they’re well. There’s a whole lotta power in the healing things which can’t be bought.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m damned grateful for medical science, and I’d say that we’re blessed to have the scientific technologies, laboratory medicines, and university-trained surgeons to help us when we’re sick, but there are other technologies, medicines, and healers as well. Why not use them all? Do we think that those which can’t be bought for money have no value?

And why are so many of us taught to be ashamed of our weaknesses? Why do we feel like outcasts when we’re sick?

May love heal you,
Lilly

A Judgment Day Quiz

2006-08-11T18:08:00.000-04:00

The god you worship may not be the same god I worship. Take this little quiz to find out if our gods have values in common. Answer each question as if the god in the quiz was the god you worship, then compare answers below.

It is Judgment Day and the Mighty Creator of the universe is judging each of us before the throne. The petitioners come before the Creator in groups of three. For each group of three, circle the one whom your god would embrace on Judgment Day and call “good and faithful servant.”

Group One: the Nations
1) a mighty nation that is wealthy, free and proud
2) a religious nation that harshly punishes sexual sinners
3) a humble nation that feeds the hungry and clothes the poor

Group Two: the Career Women
1) a wealthy and powerful politician who dined with kings
2) a wealthy and beautiful movie star who married a wealthy and handsome movie star
3) an impoverished and meek nobody who swept the school floors when the kids went home

Group Three: the Religious Men
1) a religious man who never drank or used illegal drugs, hated his wife but would never divorce her, had absolute faith in his god’s salvation, worked hard, and never gave away a cent
2) a religious man who never drank or used illegal drugs, had a ranch, and hated fags and blacks and Japs and anybody who didn’t believe in the same god he believed in, and never gave away a cent
3) a religious man who was a pot-smoker and a bourbon drinker, who struggled with his faith, who felt romantic affection for both men and women, and who gave away everything he had to the poor so he could follow his god

Group Four: the Voters
1) a voter who chose the anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-war, pro-death penalty candidate
2) a voter who chose the candidate who would eliminate social welfare and give more money to the rich
3) a voter who chose the candidate who would feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and offer healing to the sick for free

Group Five: those with Enemies
1) a person who would kill his enemies so he did not have to live in fear of them
2) a person who would kill his enemies so he could take their oil or other resources
3) a person who would feed his enemies and pray for them without fear

Well, I could go on, but you get the picture. In every case my god would have embraced petitioner number three, but in every case, my god would forgive us all and every soul would be saved. I wonder what your god would do?

If so many of us worship a god

who commanded us to love one another
who told us to pray for our enemies
who wants us to feed the hungry and heal the sick in his name
who asked the rich man to give away all he had to the poor
and who is forgiving and merciful without end,

then why do we honor the wealthy and powerful? Why do we aspire to beauty and possessions? Why do we vote for war and against the social welfare?

If we believe in a loving god, then we should live a loving life.
Then we may stand before our Creator on Judgment Day, humble, but unashamed.

The Mushroom Apostle

2006-08-10T10:02:00.000-04:00

He was sitting on a bench at Bell Park, reading a book about Padre Pio, with a backpack and a hand-lettered sign at his feet that said: Art for Food. I was caught up short, thinking that my son is also out in the world somewhere, making music on street corners and depending on the kindness of strangers, and suddenly, I had to take care of this young man, as if my caring for him would be caring for my son as well.

I went home and packed him a lunch and returned to the park and gave him my offering. Then we talked for a bit. He said his name was Demitri. I told him about Ben and the Jugtown Pirates. Then he told me he was 35 years old, and that for the past 15 years he had wandered the United States from coast to coast, just so he could tell the people he met that god was Love and god was real, just so he could live his belief, and live in absolute trust in god.

I was blessed to be in the presence of such faith. Demitri fired my own determination to speak about my god, and gave me renewed hope that there are, indeed, people who know the same god that I know, the god that loves before all else, that asks us to love one another, that provides in abundance for all, that has created in us a spirit of kindness and the desire to care for one another.

Perhaps, I thought, there are not only these two of us, sitting on a park bench. Perhaps there are others, hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of others, who hear the voice of Love, and reach out in love, and desire only kindness, and reject possessiveness and fear, and find security in friendship, and would gladly give up cheap sneakers and SUVs and the latest techno-toys so that we could have a world of peace and abundance for all.

Maybe we’re like mushrooms, I thought.

Did you know that mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of organisms that exist underground? Some species of mushroom can live for thousands of years and grow to the size of thousands of acres. Perhaps, under the ground of the dominator culture, deep beneath the marketplace and the religious institutions, in the quiet and the darkness, there lives and grows a community of loving humanity. Perhaps, someday soon, we will see the fruits rising to the surface and breaking through like mushrooms in a fairy ring. Like magic mushrooms, the society that eats of these fruits will be transformed—from violence to kindness, from fear to love.
Blessed be,
Lilly

Resist Apocalypse!

2006-08-06T13:18:00.000-04:00

God will give us what we pray for,
so why pray for an apocalypse?
Why pray for a fiery and premature death for the human family?

Instead, please pray with me for peace.
Pray that people will treat one another with kindness.
Pray for the cooperation of all the nations.
Pray for the return of the garden.
Pray for ten thousand generations of abundance and joy.

What do you pray for?

Bonobos

2006-08-05T16:25:00.000-04:00

Bonobos, also known as pygmy chimpanzees, are creatures very like us . . . except that they have developed a peaceful culture, based on sharing pleasure and food, and we have developed a self-destructive culture in spite of our human intelligence and ability to reason. And they have hairier butts.

I think that we humans can learn some things from our brother and sister Bonobos! Here are a few links where you can learn more.

Best wishes,
Lilly

Bonobos, Sex and Society
by Frans Wells. This is an article by the most renowned of the Bonobo researchers, first published in Scientific American in 1995.

Bonobos: The Left-Bank Chimp
by William Calvin. This website has lots of pix and links.

The Bonobo Way: Peace Through Pleasure
by the Block Bonobo Foundation
This website suggests that sharing pleasure could heal the world, that “you can’t fight a war while you’re having an orgasm.” I’m inclined to agree.

My work may stink, but I’m an artist never-the-less

2006-08-04T15:01:00.000-04:00

August 4, 2006

I'm an artist. My work may stink, but I’m an artist nevertheless. I came to the visual arts only recently so I’m still struggling every day with developing my skills, managing various media, and learning the rules of perspective and form, and I’m fighting frustration because I can’t yet express my vision the way I want to express it.

But it’s not the ability to reproduce the visual world in two dimensions or carve it perfectly into stone that matters with art, anyway. It’s the vision that animates the work, and the most technically skilled work of art is not art if it does not express the artist’s vision.

What do I mean when I say the word “vision?” I believe that everyone experiences the world in a unique way, and so each of us lives inside of slightly different realities. Our realities include our sensory experiences and the content of our lives, as well as what we believe about human nature and the nature of life-on-earth, about the human condition, about our eating and washing, our lovemaking and war-making and childbearing and god-speaking and tool designing, and ten thousand other things. This reality is our vision.

We live in a highly conforming culture. In the United States, a great deal of our experiences—realites—visions are the same. Homogenization (McDonaldization as some have called it) is flattening our world so that we tend to speak the same way, eat the same foods, and dress like everyone else. We are taught the same things in schools, model ourselves on the same TV shows, hear the same stories, do the same things for fun, and in every way come to resemble one another more and more.

There is tremendous pressure to conform. If we don’t match the group reality, we may be marginalized, pathologized, criminalized, or laughed or condescended back into line. A quick example is the energetic kid more interested in catching crayfish than “preparing for the standardized assessment tests” who is labeled ADHD and drugged into conformity. Eccentricity is no longer considered benign. There is no place for difference.

An artist is a person who rebels against conformity, who claims his or her vision and shouts it out loud.

Even if you are a highly conforming “ordinary” person, there is some piece of your world that is special to each of you, and your special piece is your unique vision. If you share that vision, you become an artist.

Some people may think that unless we all see alike, there will be no peace, but if we all see alike, we will no longer be fully human. I believe that peace will come when each of us shares our unique visions. We must each become artists, and discover what is special in us, and share that with others. Every vision is necessary to the whole, and in the coming together of the visions of every member of a community, the community forms its culture, its reality, its ways of being in the body, on the earth. Is your vision on the television set? Is your heaven talked about in church? Is your future of peace and abundance considered possible in this crazy dominator marketplace world? If not, then become an artist and share what you see.

This sharing, whatever form it make take, will be art. You can express it visually, in writing, with dance, music or theater, and even in the way you live and interact every day. A person who has a vision that fires him and drives her, and who works hard to express that vision in form, that person is an artist, whether technically skilled or not.

Best wishes,
Lilly

Integrity

2006-08-03T09:29:00.000-04:00

August 3, 2006
This little blog has become a force that urges me to self-reveal . . . and that's not something I ordinarily do. In fact, it seems like I've been hiding all my life. Hiding my smart and funny and talented little girl self from a family that expected compliance and ordinariness. Hiding my slim and sexy grown-up self under bulky clothes. Hiding my eccentricity and spiritual passion from a (now-ex) husband and his conforming world. Hiding my journal in a drawer.

But it's not just the fear that others will disapprove of me that's made me hide—because I have also been hiding from myself! Jung believed that at mid-life the soul goes through a crisis of integrity. It must explode outward or be forever silenced. That crisis has passed and now, my cyberfriends, it's time to detonate!

Explode and play!
Lilly

The god I love is Love

2006-08-01T13:06:00.000-04:00

August 1st, 2006

The god I serve is Love. I may follow Jesus’ radical agenda for the well-being of humanity, but I do not serve Jesus as a god. I serve the god that Jesus served.

Jesus taught that all commandments are to be subordinated to this one:

Love one another!

It is my duty to my god to love radically and without exception. No amount of wealth or possessions or power will please my god. No excuses for violence and war will satisfy him. Poverty and starvation witness against humanity in his eyes. He waits for abundance, kindness, and peace on earth.

You’ll notice that I say “my” god, and not “God.” Heck, I don’t claim to know the one and only true Divine Being. That Being is too big for me to know, and I believe that he will always remain a mystery to us puny humans. I only claim to hear the voice of a god whose name is Love.

I think there are many gods, and we can guess which god a person follows by looking at the fruits of his or her actions. Does a person generate great wealth for himself? Perhaps he is following the god Mammon. Does a person sacrifice herself for others? Perhaps she is following the god Jesus. Of course, there are plenty of American Christians who will support the plunder of our earthly home and eagerly await its destruction who also claim to follow Jesus as a god. Go figure! I am often confused by the gods of other people.

I believe that many of the gods are good. I’m not against your god. I just love my god, and I sing to him, “Who is like you among the gods, oh Love?”

There is no real separation between religion, politics, society, economics, education, and all the other institutions of human life and culture. Although they are all cast as fragmented shards in the marketplace society, life is a whole, all of a piece. If I follow Love as my god, then I love in my politics and I love in my economics and in my sex life and in raising my kids. I do the dishes with love and I do my gorcery shopping with love.

I sure do love my god. His ways are ways of pleasantness and peace. They lead away from apocalypse and home to Eden. Love is a fine choice of god for a humanity on the edge of disaster. Why not choose Love?

2006-07-25T13:32:00.000-04:00

The Possible World

2006-07-25T10:24:00.000-04:00

July 25, 2006
We can do it. We can create a better world.
I'm just setting up this blog . . .
See you here soon!
Lilly