By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Horror in Boston, a craven vote to defeat modest gun safety measures, toxins in the mail, a factory explosion in West, Texas that rocked the Richter. Lord knows, this was a week that demanded pleasant diversions, if one could find them. I wasn’t overly picky. While watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the umpteenth time, AMC’s version with story notes, I discovered that one of Willy’s wonky yet profound asides — “Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?” — is from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Who knew? And you’ve got to give it to Will, the Bard knew how to get to the point. Too bad we don’t.
We keep peeling the onion of our dysfunction, but never quite get to the core. Our collective fancy — our desire, our aspiration, our vision — continues to be thwarted at every turn, blocked by opposition and marked by violence. Here in the United States, the majority seems to have a decidedly liberal bias, hungry for economic fairness, reforms to immigration, gender and gun control policies, an end to war on drugs — to war in general, along with its crippling cost — and a return to the kind of government that helps rather than hinders. We worry for our environment, our retirement and our children, but evidently not enough to blast through the confusion and power mongering to establish a renewed commonwealth.
If we’ve made it through to the 21st century with most of our faculties — essentially, if the majority of our BBs are still tightly packed in their tube — then we’ve begun to question everything, aware that PR disinformation campaigns have come to drive the machinery of our times. We grind our teeth over religion gone out of the parlor and into our private lives, over provincialism masquerading as morality, over educational standards gone to hell.
That last is key to all the others, but we have to peck away at the layers of repression and regression piled on those others before we find ourselves able to yank jealously-guarded educational reforms out of the hands of local school boards. Allowing educational standards to sit out modernity is still a matter of states’ rights, instead of federal sovereignty, more’s the pity (unless you don’t trust government, of course, and there you have it: the challenge of our times and our most petrified example of us vs. them thinking).
I had a defining moment this week — on the day Boston exploded in misery, smoke and screams looped on all channels — as I stood waiting for a young thing helping me at the local deli counter. Her hands were busy working but her eyes never left the TV hanging on the wall by the lunch tables, her face twisted in anxiety. “That’s how they’re gonna get us,” she said to no one in general, slapping cheese slices onto waxed paper. “They’re gonna blow us up ‘cuz they can’t get guns any more.” It was as if the long years between the Towers falling and the marathon explosion had melted away. Unnamed terror nibbled at her soul and delusional end-of-days rhetoric shone from her eyes.
She was too worked up to notice my perturbed wince, too preoccupied with the images of people running from — some toward — the explosions, to take in my reassurance that nobody was after her gun, or her daddy’s. I didn’t even try to calm her fears that somebody was going to “get us.” That would have taken not just a real conversation but an epiphany of social, religious and political awareness — perhaps all three — hard come by in these parts.
This was a girl not long out of school, a woman-child still forming her relationship to the world at large, and I could almost hear the errant thought-forms collide with one another: her pack of BBs spilled out on the floor, bouncing frantically in her muddled brain. I’d like to have quoted one of Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ — a romance author she might have read and considered credible — fictional characters to her: “I finally figured out that not every crisis can be managed. As much as we want to keep ourselves safe, we can’t protect ourselves from everything. If we want to embrace life, we also have to embrace chaos.”
I’d like to have convinced her that chaos was not the end of the world, that the ability to embrace life takes a bit of fearlessness, stepping out into the unknown, but she was well past commentary of any kind. I took the package she handed me, thanked her and went home.
Granted, this was a week of utter chaos. One thing after another, striking sparks off the anvil of our hearts. And as we struggle to process both the loss and the meaning, we have to ask ourselves a question: is this a duck and cover moment, or one in which we can find common cause? There’s another way to see it, illustrated by the actions of brave Bostonians: are we those who run away from the smoke, or toward it? Do we pull back to safety? Or do we plow forward to discovery, to possibility, to answers?
The black/white way to look at all this — us vs. them, in terms of terrorism and political maneuver; a punishing and/or disinterested god in terms of natural disaster — leads us back to the loop of default human response A Course In Miracles calls attack/defend. One follows the other, follows the next, in endless rounds of tit/tat, tribal in nature, unforgiving in practice and therefore unending and unwinnable. And in black/white thought-process, winning is paramount, but the cost is astronomical: our emotional health. In the simplest possible terms, we can never be at peace if we cannot transcend our constant need to war (attack/defend.)
Regarding the background-check legislation whose filibuster the Senate was not able to break, the Pubs will surely call it a win for the Second Amendment and a gun owner’s right to buy — own, bear, carry, trade, sell, manufacture and wave in the air — any fire arm s/he wishes. The President, uncharacteristically emotional on the topic, had a few choice words for the NRA-inspired win and the lobbied Senators that supported it, but those who think in black and white can’t be shamed. The win was all that mattered, feathering their political nests until, and hopefully past, the next voting period. There is nothing admirable about their position. There is much, however, to be anticipated from the unyielding determination of those whose hearts have been swept up in this battle against violence. I think we can believe Obama when he tells us that this is not done, but instead, well begun.
The ever-present current of chaos we’re learning to live with is, I suppose, at the behest of the gods. We’ve made the leap into a new baktun, made an authentic shift into a new era, one that will determine humankind’s ability to survive. The Uranus/Pluto machinery of change has swung back around to rattle our cage, to push us into — albeit reluctant — action. More, the massive failures of governments, world-wide, to protect and nurture their own people can no longer be ignored, let alone the urgent stewardship of the planet. The need to change brings with it the cold wind of chaos, upping the ante, outlining our problems in bold relief, creating us anew in search of solutions.
Necessity is the mother of invention, or, as Mary Shelley — who gave us the mythology of a fractured and frightening Frankenstein — tells us, “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.” That’s just the way of it. It’s always the pain that prods us forward, isn’t it? Aren’t the boldest, brightest remedies born of anguish and disaster? Don’t our finest moments often rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of our failures?
Perhaps we’re looking at this chaos thing wrongly. Perhaps it’s the idea of chaos that stumps us, turns us into addled puppets running for the exit. The actuality of chaotic circumstance presents an opportunity to re-think, preferably outside the box, and recharge our determination. If we think of society as walls, surrounding us, we can see them one of two ways: as keeping us safely in, or keeping trouble safely out. When those traditional walls begin to collapse, fresh air is waiting on the other side to give us a glimpse of new options.
Radical philosopher Terence McKenna told us uncomfortable truth when he said, “Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.” It’s uncomfortable because we’re anxious to feel safe, because we want to remain in control. But at any cost? Ego, intellect, says yes. What do you say?
So, back to the question, posed centuries ago: Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head? Our fancy — our desire as a people, our aspiration for ourselves and our children, our vision for a healed commonwealth and healthy planet — cannot be birthed in our head, if we’re to actualize it. It must spring naturally from our heart, the seat of our soul.
It must build itself in compassion, much like those who have become gun safety advocates, allowing their hearts to break (open.) It cannot count the cost, like those few legislators — including my own — who bucked their constituents because they felt the need to do what was right. It cannot seek for itself, like the politicians who have covered their asses and whether they know it or not, lost their self-respect.
If we want to win a war, that desire can be charted and planned, plotted and manned. We have the military intellect, the history of strategy, the schematics and technology all figured out. Same with an election, all words and one-up-man-ship, political playbook at the ready. But if we want to win back the 21st century for the restoration of Gaia and her climes, the common good of our brothers and sisters, and an experience of ourselves that transcends the limits of those who seek to control us, then that journey must be born of our hearts’ desire to do what is right. We’ll know it when we feel it.
When Willy Wonka mentioned fancy bred, it was just after bratty Veruca Salt (belting out I Want It Now like a mini-diva) got sucked up in the (bad) egg sorter. That was commentary on desire gone wrong, selfish and cold. Toward the end of the musical’s dark tale, Wonka again quotes the Merchant of Venice as young Charlie voluntarily surrenders his Everlasting Gobstopper, simply because it’s the right thing to do. Says he, “So shines a good deed in a weary world.”
The entire quote, from the fifth act of Merchant, begins with this sentence: “How far that little candle throws his beams!” There are billions of us shining that Light now, throwing those beams. Millions of us would rather choose peace than war, equality over privilege, moving energy into our heart-chakra in response to what we’re learning in our chaotic hot-pot of a 21st century. We’re offering Light to a weary world, one smile, one kindness at a time. There are enough of us now, so they say, to turn the tide. It’s simply a matter of time before all that has been drawn in darkness falls apart.
Until then, don’t let fear distract you, don’t allow the very thought of chaos to confuse your intent to remain steadfast. In fact — from you to me as we wait for the tipping point — if you fancy a little heart massage, hold your breath, make a wish, count to three and open this link. You just can’t argue with what feels this good. A world that can create this — that can put a song in our heart, that can light our imagination — can do anything!
Well, gosh, dearhearts. Seems to me if the world is looking for strong(hearted) women, it should begin here, with the Planet Waves community. Thanks, everyone, for thoughtful dialogue!
I’m having computer issues and I’m squeaking in under the wire with this post, so I’ll make it quick. Thanks, everyone, for adding so much to this discussion. Many Happy Solar Returns o’ the Day, eco — and perhaps life IS an art exhibit, aword; each of us art, artist and medium alike. For all of me, there are days it feels like a dance, sometimes a song, often a movie — and, whimsically, sometimes I’m stunned to find that the “snozzberries taste like snozzberries.”
Loved Women: The Best Troops Around, Mia — and I posted a couple of reads on this issue on Political Waves last night. I thought you’d appreciate the one by Norm Solomon.
Be, you gave me a big A’HA with that Chiron of the Younger son at 24 Leo, which is my Moon. This is a largely defining point for those of us with this degree:
A LARGE CAMEL IS SEEN CROSSING A VAST AND FORBIDDING DESSERT.
Keynote: Self-sufficiency in the face of a long and exhausting adventure.
I suspect this young man felt “swept along” toward an unknown destination, driven by a need to cut ties with the known. This is a kind of mandatory point of departure from 3D into self; a very tender place in which to entertain wounding. And somehow, that makes this even more tragic, as his life is — functionally — over. This is a point of isolation; not lonely, but definitely alone. And that, he certainly is.
Watching pundit TV this morning, I found the conversation elevated from the usual. We’re looking at things we haven’t noticed before, coming at them from — amazingly — a point of compassion. We’re also noticing the vital things: how much looped programming played into terrorizing the public, how much “war machinery” was used in rescue. These are things we seldom talk about. We still aren’t at the core of the problem with the brothers, i.e., the question hanging fire all these years: WHY would they do such a thing, were they turned by bad guys??? Which discounts all the reasons some of our citizens might feel betrayed and distraught, but … well … at least we’re closer to noticing our own culpability in this kind of discontent. That’s progress of a sort.
Now I think we’ll find the Younger becomes a litmus test for American civil liberties — that’s a conversation we’ve been aching to have for quite a while. What CAN we deprive a citizen of, exactly, and still call ourselves a democracy?
Amazing times we live in. Thank you all for sharing yourselves, here. We lift ourselves with communal wings.
Green-star-gazer,
Good point regarding Saturn’s transit over Older Brother’s Pluto when he was in Russia. It is reported that the first 6th months of 2012 he was out of the U.S. In February 2012, there was a New Moon at 2+ Pisces, sextile his natal Neptune at 3+ Capricorn, with Chiron at the time of the NM at 5 Pisces, one degree from where transiting Neptune is now. In February 2012, transiting Borasisi (feels good but not real) was conjunct Older’s natal Jupiter at 13+ Pisces. Transiting Jupiter squared that natal Jupiter and the 2012 Borasisi during the week before the Boston bombings. Transiting Chiron will conjunct Older’s Jupiter and 2012’s Borasisi starting the 1st week in May.
Mercury in the February 2012 NM chart was at 14+ Pisces, one degree from Older’s natal Jupiter a 13+ Pisces. He WAS the messenger for this moment. Thanks for pointing that out.
be
Thank you Be for more in-depth spotlighting…absolutely riveting stuff!
I am struck with the older brother’s just having had Saturn transiting his natal Pluto and with an absent father (figure) or a place to ground that deep, churning pressure how potent and seething a passage that can be…the search of meaning and answers is soooo deep with that one. He may have been in Russia when the actual transit was happening, but certainly we can see the fruits of his quest/process. Trying to find and honor the ancestors can so easily get subverted in patriarchal cultures especially ones steeped in blood.
I am also struck that his sun is knocking on the event’s 3rd house…as Eric talked so much about this being a message-event…certainly it seems the older brother felt he was the messenger for this moment. Also, I am reading reports that the younger brother has sustained a gunshot wound to the throat and they suspect an unsuccessful suicide attempt. This makes me think again of the Mercury Uranus on the Aries point and what Eric said about this looking like a suicide chart.
I’m also trying to process this at the bigger-picture level…what this says about our own country and shadow. The event happened on a day called Patriots day… a day commemorating violence and new beginnings. The struggle for Freedom in the way that seems so typified by Uranus crossing the Aries point and getting joined in the drama with his “little” brother Mercury showing up to do the Firedance in the house of shadows. SO astonishing to see the archetypes so clearly here…all put into motion and playing their parts…amazing.
Thanks Be… your information is so helpful, especially when you lay these complex patterns on top of the event chart…such a sense of fated-ness to it all. I am doubtful that this could actually happen but imagine for a moment what a turn-around this could be if the younger brother could actually speak about how he was pulled into this…and if somehow, we could as a nation listen and learn and heal. Could we as a collective use that cantilevered bridge and walk across the gorge to the other side? WOW…what a vision…thank you!
Thank you, Be, for providing the astrology on the brothers. You wrote:
“These (for all intent and purposes) motherless young men, these brothers (Gemini) exemplify the excessiveness (Jupiter) of how the masculine influence has reached the saturation point (indicated by trans. Neptune-Chiron in Pisces, Saturn in Scorpio).”
These two young men do not, in my opinion, come close to reaching the saturation point of the masculine influence. What they have done is truly horrible but far less than the bombing that took place in Iraq this past week. Where is the continual news cycle on that?
I grew up in Trumbull, CT, the next town over from Sandy Hook. These are my people. We morn the loss of Americans yet we destroy the lives of people elsewhere around the globe. Karma is real and what we perpetrate will ultimately find its way home to us.
I do not own a gun. Regardless of what happens in America I will not buy a gun. I believe in a woman’s right to choose. However, I never considered abortion to be an option for me because it is my responsibility to manage my contraception needs. We euthanize millions of unwanted cats and dogs each year because people won’t spay and neuter their pets. I won’t even get into factory farming and how we treat what we eat. Life is not as so very valuable here in the U.S. as we pretend it to be. And if it is of real value then we need to treat it so, for everyone.
So many aspects and eclipses have been experienced since 9/11 and finally, now, with this event in Boston, the average person is questioning if what they are seeing is what is actually happening and if what they are being told is actually the truth. That is one of the most important consequences of recent events. My friend in New Hampshire has the right idea.She and her friends are actively educating their community on behind the scenes issues. Those of us who know have the opportunity to do the same. It matters not whether you are man, woman, child or some other species. The acts of profound generosity and love I have witnessed with my animals confirms the existence of Universal Love for me and how developed they are in terms of consciousness.
My first letters to the editor were published when I was in 8th grade. In 2008, I began a letter writing campaign that continues to this day. In May of that year, I wrote to Warren Buffett suggesting the billionaires pledge two years before it was announced. I wrote to him again after the fall of Lehman Brothers asking what would it take to get them to do something. Here is part of that first Buffett letter:
“I am writing to you because you are a visionary and a great
humanitarian. I have been involved in public philanthropy for 22
years, ever since organizing my friends to put together a benefit
auction for the homeless at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in
Manhattan. I am writing to ask you and others like you to consider
rethinking how your foundations operate and to consider giving away
not only interest, but part of the principle as well. With things as
dark as they are in the world, when is it time to say that there is
enough suffering? How long is a day in the life of someone who is in
incredible need for whatever reason? I do not know the full extent of
the answer to that question, but I can say for certain that I have
been on the same road as many of these people, and even part of one
day is too much suffering when there is such wealth in the world. In
the face of potential nuclear war, what good will it do for all of
these foundations to hold on their endowments? It is time for a
change and it is people like you and Bill Gates and George Soros who
can help make it happen.
A friend whom I consider to be one of the most enlightened people I
have ever met told me several years ago that in order to balance the
wealth in the world, everyone needs to give away half of what
they have. It will be only be possible, after every person on this
planet had their basic needs met, for people to turn to their
spiritual lives, whatever that means for them.”
I have handed out these letters at Occupy Wall Street in Manhattan on a number of occasions. I was such a good protester they paid me ten dollars. Each of us cannot decide for all of us, yet each of us can follow our inner guidance and act in some way in a positive direction. Waiting for direction is not the answer right now. And if that creates chaos, it will be a creative chaos for the good.
Thank you, Judith and PW, for allowing me to vent. If I were clever, I would rewrite the spoof on sending women soldiers to find bin Laden to sending women out to change the world. Perhaps someone more clever than me will do just that.
Diva, Yes!
If you read my phases, I have seven. I add on sloth at the begin place and separate tai chi moving through honey and stillness at the end. A little bit longer than five. But it is the dance through the same deep, innately human rhythms. They release, reform, and rebuild us.
We also unexpectedly went out dancing in the world last night. It was my birthday. We were passing through an Irish pub and surprise, from the street to the car, and surprise! There was rock n’ roll and people needing to have fun at the end of this tumultuous week. The music was delicious and we started dancing and the place soon began to dance too. The whole town, both at our restaurant and the pub afterward, seemed filled with others celebrating their happy birthdays. I found a violin teacher, a funny Chinese American man. When we dance, we start something wonderful in the world. How we all need wonderful.
How I also wish that the “custom” at borders was to dance.
Aword,
I love the idea of that art exhibit. Wish I could have been there!
Thanks for the add-on read, Be. Interesting as always.
This article and comments bring to mind a project I did for school a few years back. For art history; curate an exhibit.. Other details aside, one portion of the theoretic exhibit I created had to do with entering, experiencing, then departing a “Chaos Room”. But there was not only one exit. Anyone experiencing the chaos had to make a choice as to how they left, and therefore, where they would end up – which set the path for their next experience/s.
Were life only an art exhibit.
xo
Some astrological notes on the Brothers; Older and Younger regarding mothering, nurturing.
1) Older has Pluto 6 Scorpio conjunct his CERES 4 Scorpio (with natal Sun close at 27 Libra). Younger has CERES at 1 Taurus opposite older brothers Pluto-Ceres and where trans. Sun + Mars is now. Younger’s CERES squares his Sun, (29 Cancer or 0 Leo) so combined with his older brother’s CERES there is a family fixed T-square with the open leg of a fixed grand cross in early Aquarius. In mid March Juno (partners) moved into Aquarius.
2) Older has natal Chiron (wound, wounder, wounded, REJECTED BY MOTHER) conjunct U.S. Sibly Mars at 21 Gemini. He has a 4-planet conjunction of Venus (value) Mercury (thinking, reading), Ixion (blows 2nd chance) and Quaoar (deity who dances things into being) between 19-21 Scorpio that is quincunx (irritate, adjust) his Chiron (wound).
3) Younger has Pluto at 22 Scorpio square his Chiron at 24 Leo. His Pluto (square Chiron) is involved with Older’s 4-planet conjunction of Venus (attractive) Mercury (talk), Ixion (ungrateful for 2nd chance, commits heinous deed) and Quaoar (creator) and in FEBRUARY, two things happen to activate this family pattern. (1) The transiting north node reached 22 Scorpio and moved through to 19 Scorpio, and (2) the New Moon on FEBRUARY 10 at 21 Aquarius squared the combined brothers’ planets (Pluto, Mercury, Venus, Ixion, Quaoar) in Scorpio. The New Moon (Sun/Moon) formed a T-square with the transiting north and south nodes with an open leg in Leo, where Younger’s Chiron (wound-wounder-wounded) is. It is a cross-roads aspect.
4) Younger’s MOON (mother, home) is likely about 7 Virgo making it square the U.S. Sibly Uranus at 8 Gemini. Older brother’s MOON is likely about 7 Gemini squaring Younger’s Moon and conjunct the U.S. Uranus. Older’s Saturn (authority) at 7 Sagittarius is opposite his Moon (and U.S. Uranus) but trine his natal Mars at 7 Aquarius. His MARS gets along with both his Moon and his Saturn.
The Brothers have squaring Suns and squaring Moons; they don’t see eye to eye regarding who they are (Sun) and where they come from (Moon) but they are motivated, through their mutual rejection (pain) to retaliate. Younger has natal Uranus (revelation) conjunct Neptune (illusion) in Capricorn (authority-father) which at his age is likely projected.
That Uranus-Neptune conjunction of younger brother is sextile his older brother’s Mercury-Venus-Ixion-Quaoar stellium, and if combined with the U.S. Sibly Mars (21 Gemini) and older brother’s Chiron (21 Gemini) it forms a yod with the apex being the U.S. Mars and older brother’s Chiron, and that is where transiting CERES was in mid February, JUST AFTER STATIONING DIRECT.
We all most certainly agree that more of the feminine influence would benefit a masculine (gone overboard) dominated society, but not all agree on how it should be achieved. These (for all intent and purposes) motherless young men, these brothers (Gemini) exemplify the excessiveness (Jupiter) of how the masculine influence has reached the saturation point (indicated by trans. Neptune-Chiron in Pisces, Saturn in Scorpio). As Jude says, we have to embrace the chaos and transcend our constant need to war. A cross-roads for the U.S. is embedded in the Lunar Eclipse chart this Thursday. This eclipsed Moon at 5+ Scorpio falls between Older brother’s Pluto at 6+ Scorpio and Ceres at 4+ Scorpio.
The degrees of the Sun opposite eclipsed Moon cross the U.S. Sibly north and south nodes with the transiting Taurus Sun in the north bending of receptivity. A CANTILEVER BRIDGE ACROSS A DEEP GORGE is it’s Sabian Symbol, with a keynote: The conquest of separateness through group-cooperation.
In the south bending of release, the Eclipsed Moon’s Sabian Symbol is THE GOLD RUSH TEARS MEN AWAY FROM THEIR NATIVE SOIL. Dane Rudhyar equates this to “the capacity in man to tear himself away from the known and the familiar, gambling everything on a vision or dream.” This eclipse is the first of 3 eclipses, a season of speeding up change that could be one giant step forward on the path toward our evolving into wholeness. Becoming more conscious of the world around you is the goal.
be
http://forum.astro.com/cgi/forum.cgi?num=1366385827/11#11
For those who missed this:
Women: The Best Troops Around
Take all American women who are within five years of menopause. Train
us for a few weeks, outfit us with automatic weapons, grenades, gas
masks, moisturizer with SPF15, Prozac, hormones, chocolate, and canned
tuna – drop us (parachuted, preferably) across the landscape of
Afghanistan, and let us do what comes naturally.
Think about it. Our anger quotient alone, even when doing standard
stuff like grocery shopping and paying bills, is formidable enough to
make even armed men in turbans tremble.
We’ve had our children, we would gladly suffer or die to protect them
and their future.
We’d like to get away from our husbands, if they haven’t left
already. And for those of us who are single, the prospect of finding a
good man with whom to share life is about as likely as being struck by
lightning. We have nothing to lose.
We’ve survived the water diet, the protein diet, the carbohydrate
diet, and the grapefruit diet in gyms and saunas across America and
never lost a pound We can easily survive months in the hostile terrain
of Afghanistan with no food at all!
We’ve spent years tracking down our husbands or lovers in bars,
hardware stores, or sporting events…finding bin Laden in some cave
will be no problem.
Uniting all the warring tribes of Afghanistan in a new government?
Oh, please … we’ve planned the seating arrangements for in-laws and
extended families at Thanksgiving dinners for years … we understand
tribal warfare.
Between us, we’ve divorced enough husbands to know every trick there
is for how they hide, launder, or cover up bank accounts and money
sources. We know how to find that money and we know how to seize it
… with or without the government’s help!
Let us go and fight. The Taliban hates women. Imagine their terror as
we crawl like ants with hot-flashes over their godforsaken terrain.
I’m going to write my Congresswoman. You should, too!
And Blessings to you too, Green-Star-gazer,
I was born in Vermont and lived there for a little over six years. The Green + Blue Gallery in Stowe was mine. If we could use Vermont as an example . . . nice thought.
A wonderful friend in New Hampshire who is in her late 70’s recently learned of chemtrails and was horrified. She got her friends together for weekly meetings on this and other issues. They are in the process of educating their community through emails, phone calls, contacting legislators, anything they can think of to be proactive on what they see happening around them. As they learn of other issues they notify their community. Its ongoing. The average person is simply unaware. It is a great example of putting one’s hands to work on what they feel passionately about. We cannot afford to wait for the other shoe to drop.
awordedgewise,
I agree with you. That 19 year old boy looks like he needs his mother. His treatment seems like it’s own psyops in that we are accepting that someone who has barely entered adulthood in a country founded on justice for all is not being protected or even read his rights.
The Report from Iron Mountain, written in the 1960’s, puts forth the theory that America is dependent on war to fuel the economy. Almost 50 years later we see that is true. We talk with our piggy banks. The bus laws were changed in Montgomery because of the bus strike and refusal of Blacks to do business on Main Street. We have more power than we know but we need to get organized. Martin Luther King, Jr. found his voice at that bus strike. This of the gifts we can find if we step out of our comfort zones.
Perhaps some of you remember the spoof that went around the internet several years ago about sending menopausal women to Afghanistan to find Osama bin Ladin. I found it one day at the dump when I was recycling newspapers. I laughed my head off. What was so funny was the amount of truth in it. I turned 57 in February. If the Divine Feminine can manifest through all of us wise creative women around the country we can speak to power. Like the 13 Grandmothers who began their tour in 2011 in Vermont. We have to get organized.
Blessings on you Mia for all that you are and all that you do!
In the words of William James: “Act as if what you do matters. It does.”
I too am a Scorpio artist driven to try and make a difference thru art. My astrology won’t let me stop either…. love that phrase…thank you!
DivaCarla, my TV was also taken out by lightning about 10 years ago…took it as an omen and never had it replaced. Have never regretted the choice, not once. 🙂
Wandering_Yeti, I join in song with you at the campfire!
Another 5 rhythms waver, eco11! I love/hate that sloth phase. That must be the exhaustion I feel before I start, when the canvas is blank, and I am thinking… I’d rather be watching television. Only my tv was struck by lightning 15 years ago.
More dancing out loud, more talking about and doing about sex, more making art, more talking about what’s possible, more imagination. More weaving through the chaos. Void/chaos. Void is the dark matter churned up by the chaos. Sometimes the light is reflected sometimes it’s absorbed.
Waiting for meteors. Wonder if I can see the comet through my binoculars.
Hi Mia, I goggled Veterans Today and read some articles there. Thanks for the suggestion.
I continue to be appalled at just how many people have already passed judgement on these boy-men. Really? I do not have that confidence in our government/military agencies. Thanks Jude, for another thoughtful article. With the disparate ideas (we currently have in America) of what causes chaos and what causes order – and what resolves same; the opposition/s are tense, yes? (such as, Some think guns keep order, others think they cause chaos.)
And really? An unarmed dying 19 yr old who is in hospital and military custody is a threat such that he cannot be read his rights? wow oh wow. really.
“…immediately after Dzhokhar’s capture, federal prosecutors stirred controversy in legal circles by refusing to grant Dzhokhar his Miranda rights against self-incrimination, citing public safety concerns.
“There’s a need to immediately question the guy whether you Mirandize him or not to save lives,” Roper said. “The question is how far do you go before it turns into a custodial interrogation?”
Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina went a step further, suggesting Dzhokhar be treated as an enemy combatant like a soldier captured in war. The move drew the ire of longtime McCain aide and speechwriter Mark Salter.
“My friend, Lindsey Graham, is wrong on this,” Salter posted on his Facebook page. “However unforgivable his crimes, he’s a US citizen, arrested on US soil, with, at this time, no known associations with foreign terrorist organizations at war with the U.S. To declare him an “enemy combatant,” and deny him his rights is un-American.””
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/boston-bombing-suspect-arrest-presents-intelligence-opportunity-legal-183858408.html
“Boston bombing suspect’s arrest presents intelligence opportunity, legal challenges”
By Jason Sickles, The Lookout
This is a test. Eric asked me to post some articles from Veterans Today on another article and they have not posted yet so I am trying again now.
There is much about civilization that just doesn’t make sense to me or my heart.
I am also an artist.
The dance work I also do begins in the sloth phase, (yes, you have to dance it, the dance of the “I don’t feel like moving” is a place where a lot of us begin moving, by feeling our resistance, but admitting it, and being in it openly) and moves naturally into the steady beat, progresses into the staccato, which peaks and becomes chaos, where everything in the dance transforms, and then out the other side of that into lyrical, from there to a natural Thai Chi movement and, at last, into stillness.
These thoughts herein this discussion makes me wonder how might that set of progressions be incorporated into the heady world…
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On another note, a boy recently was in the news for inventing an app that summarized the news. I continue to think the conversation needs the room to develop.
Thank you for being one of those places where conversations appear and wrestle with that which we cannot allow ourselves to just hold our noses and swallow.
Brilliant paragraph and point, Green Star Gazer:
I see a direct correlation between the lack of support for the Arts in school and the increased fear in our society. Without art in children’s lives, their ability to work with risk and chaos thru their bodies and senses in a 3-D world is not exercised and developed.
Wandering Yeti,
I don’t think war is human nature. Most of us have to be coerced into supporting war.
AND soldiers have to be coerced/brainwashed/aka highly trained to fight wars and kill our own kind
Green-Star-gazer:
You are right on regarding the arts and their lack in our school system. There is something else that is shockingly apparent and that is the obvious lack of artistic expression addressing our current social and political discourse. The creative community is mostly silent right now in any way that might be construed as critical or threatening. I am an artist and have been involved in the arts my entire adult life. While living in Manhattan for 18 years I used the arts as a means of helping others through the creation of A Shelter From the Storm: Artists for the Homeless of New York and other large-scale events. I am the creator of ARTWALK NY. The artist is the present day shaman, the visionary that leads his/her society into the future. Historically, artists have been some of the first to get behind important issues. Except for Bill McKibben and 350.org there is little protesting going on in our country and there is little inspiration in the visual and performing arts. People worry they have too much to loose. In conversation with a number of artists I have been told that the 1 percent can afford to buy their art so it feels hypocritical to complain about the situation even though they stand in theory with something like Occupy Wall Street. These same artists cannot afford health insurance. As Judith points out here, film is the medium where issues play out, often used as propaganda. The Hunger Games is taking the pulse of today and previews of the second installment have just come out this week, coincidentally.
God help us, is all I can say. But first, we have to help ourselves.
While the focus this week was on catching the Boston bombers more of our civil liberties have been eliminated in regards to privacy issues on the internet and phone calls. My Scorpio Moon is at 8 degrees exactly conjunct Saturn (again) and the eclipse on April 25th. I cannot pretend that we are anywhere near where we should be as a nation. I cannot pretend that the loss in Newtown, CT is a bigger loss that what America has done through drone attacks in Iraq and elsewhere. The violence will not stop in America until we stop perpetuating violence elsewhere. We are sitting on our creative energy here in America, afraid to make a move in any direction. We watch and we wait. My astrology is pushing me forward, no matter what.
On Chaos- as Eris and the Golden Apple it becomes apparent to me that it wasn’t Eris who started the wars. Perhaps if the Olympians had treated her with respect her input could have enlightened them instead of sparking greed. Kallisti- to the prettiest one: it’s inscribed on a golden apple. This can be seen through symbolic lens as the life of the sun clothed in the life of Earth. To the prettiest one- the only star close enough to be the Sun. Now that Eris has a body we can blend that perspective to the myth: the chaos with which she is associated could be the planetary body’s position of being within gravitational sense of the surrounding star family and only softly held in orbit by Sol, who is barely distinguishable as special from that far out, but when you move so slowly you have time to pay attention to faint perceptions.
An apple rolled into the hall from that distance is a love note to the Sun’s fire in the hearts of all the people. The small egos of the Olympians mistook the message as being addressed to one of them. Dominators can’t share. In order to win someone else has to lose. They use Paris as their judge- he chooses a natural desire for a young man: Hell yeah! Helen of Troy is HAWT! But wait- she belongs to someone else. Women are property in this world. Eris didn’t start the war: the dominators’ perception of women as property started it. The competition between women that keeps them from cooperating sufficiently to keep abusive males from taking power started the war. Chaos is just part of life. War is something humans chose to do.
Thank you. Your description of the woman’s response to the television breaks my heart. It seems like the design, the intention of the MSM’s handlers to generate just that kind of response. Whether it’s design or not weapons manufacturers and dealers enjoy a spike in profits whenever something like this is reported in non-stop loops for days and days as was 9/11 and now this. The way the media spins everything these all look like false flag attacks to me.
If I look at this in a systems way instead of a who-dunnit way it looks to me like all acts of violence that get blown way out of whack by the media’s magnifying glass are the dominator culture trying to protect itself. It doesn’t report on volunteers who feed hungry people. It doesn’t report on biorepair projects yielding fruit. It’s advertising a world view that says humans can’t be trusted because we’re naturally violent sinners. Without a strong man to replace our internal guidance we’re hopelessly lost. I think most of us don’t want war. I don’t think war is human nature. Most of us have to be coerced into supporting war. If you make money selling weapons then you have a vested interest in keeping people violent. This latest event looks like another advertisement for the culture of violence.
I’m so glad I don’t have a TV. But I’ve felt the emotional waves coming off of this. I’m glad I have a group of friends who don’t watch TV. Those things warp perception. Sure, you can learn to read media, but the back brain still sees violence no matter what spin the forebrain puts on it. Reading news on the webz doesn’t have all the looping videos imprinting my consciousness with a case for fear.
Keeping the bad spirits at bay with voice, guitar and a loving tribe…seems like the best way I can serve is to bring spaces into being that dispel fear and entrain the hearts of the participants to a common groove. As long as I’m singing and playing a wooden guitar resting against my heart and gut I can keep the fear out of my immediate perception, holding open a small sphere of harmony within the chaotic discord of the dying empire.
Thank you Judith for this very thoughtful piece. My answer to your question would be that if a Dream is to become real it must begin in the Heart but it must act thru the hands directed by the head. Living in the heart alone is not enough. The challenge for me on a daily basis is to ride that middle point that Be talks about…the point of “both/and”. It is the polarities or extremes of anything that get us into trouble. One can journey around the circle of the Zodiac and find examples in each sign where extreme polarization of that sign (and thus its shadow) will be detrimental if allowed to become too actualized. There is indeed a danger in too much of a good thing just as too much of a bad thing is also destructive.
A little bit of chaos brings in the element of innovation to the world of habit (to use Terrance’s language) just as a little bit of Scorpio can spice up a solid and reliable Taurus. But you’re right, we have allowed ourselves to become afraid of chaos…and pushing it away means it will need to slink in the back door, or burst thru the front because in its wisdom, it knows it needs to sit at our table and nourish us…right along with the mashed potatoes and pasta.
I see a direct correlation between the lack of support for the Arts in school and the increased fear in our society. Without art in children’s lives, their ability to work with risk and chaos thru their bodies and senses in a 3-D world is not exercised and developed. The ability of the dreams that may arise in the heart at not allowed to flourish thru the hand (and head). The innate desire that every child has to be creative and responsive from their hearts is subverted into a twisted program to turn children into consumers so as to feed and support the corrupt economy which stands in for “life” on this planet at the moment.
The seed for Fancy is nestled in the heart, but deprived of tending from the hands, and activation by the head, the seedling(s) do not thrive and we, as a collective sicken and become in need of radical healing. I see this as the phase we are in now.
” Is this the best we can do?” is what seems to be arising out of the fog of confusion and chaos. The ability to even ask it gives me hope, however slim a glimmer it may be.
Judith, thank you again for your writing, thinking, feeling.
I love this song, grateful for a new listen. It’s been years since I watched the movie. Mesmerized by Wilder’s implied warning in his dance, his measured mastery of his desires/lusts – and their enjoyment, knowing what dangers lie ahead for the uninitiated he’s just turned loose in the chocolate room. Why are we spending this gift of imagination on a world of conflict, deprivation, addiction, and control. We could so easily imagine and create Pandora, a world of connection, pleasure, plenty.
Be, your Virgo-Pisces axis sheds more light on my personal mystery: Pisces Sun and Virgo moon in opposition. With Saturn on my ascendant in Scorpio, can I finally learn to balance this teeter totter I was born on, and can’t get off of?
You never fail us Judith; thanks for this inspiring heart-felt essay. As I speak/think best in astrology, Chaos to me is one end of a spectrum and the name for it is Pisces. The other end of the spectrum is Order and it’s called Virgo. On the zodiac wheel they represent that space/time just before new beginnings. We humans have come to respect, if not worship, Order (one of its forms we call Science) and the balance between that and the other end, the Pisces end, has become too lop-sided. The planets, most obviously Pluto and Uranus, tell those of us at the Pisces end that it is time to re-configure that distribution of respect-if-not-worship. I’m guessing (a ‘Pisces end’ thing) that when transiting Chaos is opposed by transiting Saturn, probably around 2016, we might see evidence of that happening.
I visualize somebody standing at the center top of a teeter-totter, one leg ‘controlling’ one end, the other leg ‘controlling’ the other end. It takes a lot of practice to be able to do that I would ‘think’. Do you stand up straight with knees flexed and arms akimbo, or do you hunker down closer to the board in order to maintain balance? Some, more youthful perhaps, will be able to learn this quicker than those of us less flexible. Some who will have mastered this art and who have the patience, will teach, or try to teach others to find a balance for themselves. That will be a good thing. A Chiron thing.
The major influence of this past week’s struggle between chaos vs control, are symbolized by Pluto and Uranus in astrology. They were joined by Neptune’s (sort of) subtle impact through an aspect called a Septile (51+ degrees), first with Mars and then the Sun. Then midweek Mars and Sun were conjunct upping the effect of this off-the-radar aspect. Because if it’s division of the circle by 7, a septile is associated with larger forces of destiny at work. Fate. One astrologer, Robert Wilkinson calls it “the fork in the road of destiny”.
Neptune has shown up in other ways in astrological charts of this week’s major events. Energies symbolized by other planets are working with him to level and balance this playing field of transitioning times. As you said Jude, “our vision for a healed commonwealth and healthy planet cannot be birthed in our head, if we’re to actualize it. It must spring naturally from our heart, the seat of our soul.” We could call that the Chaos end of the spectrum, the Pisces end (one of its forms we call Love.)
be