{"id":68426,"date":"2013-07-06T08:12:15","date_gmt":"2013-07-06T12:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=68426"},"modified":"2013-07-06T12:37:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-06T16:37:01","slug":"looking-back-looking-forward-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/looking-back-looking-forward-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back, Looking Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

I’m writing this on the evening of the Fourth of July. The windows are open and I can hear fireworks, music, laughter. It’s well past nine, and I expect there are some very annoyed seniors out there, unwilling to flex their schedules or stay awake a little longer, indulge a younger set of weekenders. It’s not that these people are cranky by nature, they’re just set in their ways and value countryside peace and quiet.<\/p>\n

\"PoliticalThis year, they’re in for a ride. With the Fourth landing mid-week, there will be discounted fireworks at the stands well into the weekend, when the community will present its yearly light show, shot from the little island in the middle of the lake. Most of us probably aren’t aware that the founders directed the nation to celebrate this day with parades, fireworks and speeches from the very first. It was, to quote our own Vice President, “a big damn deal,” a rebellion that lost many a citizen his home, family and fortune, and could have gotten all the participants hung if they had failed. Somewhat miraculously, they didn’t, so no less than Sam Adams made it public policy to bring on the fireworks.<\/p>\n

Sadly, that’s easier said than done this year. Some spots on the map have found that sequestration has taken a big bite out of the holiday, resulting in canceled fireworks displays and parades and disappointing those who can’t imagine a Fourth without them. Used to pulling our own weight in the Pea Patch, the young, and the young at heart, have been filling collection cans since early in the year. We’re not a prosperous county, but, well, the Fourth is the Fourth!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I read a Gallup poll today that finds the majority of us — some 71 percent — believe that the founders would be disappointed in America today. That’s a 17 percent increase since 2001. Having survived Y2K, we must have believed ourselves invincible, partying like it was 1999 for a few more years while basking in what we considered an iron-clad economic boom. We had yet to take that u-turn, lost in the quagmire of Iraq’s killing fields, circling its money pit, sucked into an everlasting War on Terror and, even then, a growing surveillance state. And even though we reveled in our local customs and identities, most of us had yet to stub our toe on the absolutes and stumble into the opposing ideologies that have divided the country so bitterly. In 2001, we still thought of the future as broad, blue sky in which to spread our wings.<\/p>\n

In fact, leafing through Marianne Williamson’s book of collected essays published in 2000 about the possibilities of a new century made me a bit pensive this week. Written by spiritual types, visionaries and activists, it included works by, among others, Thom Hartmann, Eric Utne, Caroline Myss, Deepak Chopra and Neale Donald Walsch. Entitled Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century<\/em>, it supposed that we came to that lift-off point without the concrete boots we soon found hanging from our ankles.<\/p>\n

It made me muse — once again — that humankind found it necessary to make this such a hard slog through the collective, dug-in energies of devolution and resistance. We’ve been at this for 14 years now, wrestling the dregs of a dour Calvinism that clings to patriarchy and punishment as opposed to creativity and freedom, and all magnified by predatory capitalism gone rogue. Why, you ask? Cynics would point to the worship of the rugged individualist model, that self-absorbed, adolescent fantasy we imagine ourselves to be. Imagine, indeed!<\/p>\n

I was pleased that Len mentioned the similarities<\/a> of this July Fourth to that of 1776 this week, because there is some encouragement to be found there. The grand experiment drawn in Philadelphia on that day long ago was a culmination of several years of fomented anger, frustration and outrage over being denied rights that Americans had considered theirs as British subjects, though colonized. The original Tea Party in Boston was designed to make a statement against unfair taxation of those given no voice in governance half a globe away from the seat of power.<\/p>\n

The motherland was milking its colonies to fill its war chest, oblivious to the possibility that a rag-tag group of businessmen, farmers, slaves and indentured servants would rebel, let alone prevail. If we studied this period, we’d find that resentment had been growing for a good while, since at least the French\/Indian wars a decade earlier. These things need time to perk, people need examples to collect, giving them reason to risk everything, and isn’t it just amazing how dependable Uranian energy is, coming to the rescue of those seeking liberation with timely precision?<\/p>\n

The Sun Uranus square, just passed, always brings about the unexpected. On a personal note, it zapped me good this time around, a one-two punch that stripped away some things I considered vital and — as it does, if we can keep our emotional balance — freed me to embrace change, should I choose it. Uranus pushes just the right levers to unhook us from what was and ask us if we want to jump into something else, but let’s remember that change of the sort the American colonies demanded — much like what Egypt is demanding — doesn’t suddenly come upon us; the need for it grows slowly over years and becomes, eventually, too heavy a burden to longer endure, in our case, a good 14 or more.<\/p>\n

Also, this is the first year of a new Baktun, a new era, some say a newly evolving root race (though the current one has not been purged away). And even as I feel the electric current of the Uranian energy this year, I feel the recent shift of ages even more. Nothing that I hear comes through to my crowded brain without a filter of authenticity, these days. The channelers had spoken of an inability for dark forces to hide any longer in plain sight or gather sufficient power to blindside a growing public awareness, and if we look at our headlines, we see that has come about.<\/p>\n

I used to call that the “all things work to good …” principle, awaiting it. And, glory in the highest, it showed up. Now I depend on it.\u00a0Secrets aren’t safe, these days, even among friends. What is done in shadow cannot escape the light, revealing not just motive and intent, but criminal and\/or immoral activity which leaves us to either condone it or do something about it. Because we think short-term, we are not aware how much change this represents, globally. I don’t think we realize how far along we actually are.<\/p>\n

Because the opposition to progress has engaged so ruthlessly, we think politics is as usual. It isn’t. Because the corporations still rake in the bucks and Wall Street still plays Russian roulette with our money, we think fiscal issues will turn out the same way they did before. I’m not so sure. Because the various countries of the world are shifting positions like musical chairs, touting their growing economies or falling under the bus — changing out their leaders or throwing them out, whichever comes first — we think the balance of international power is shifting dangerously, but perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps this really is working to good, perhaps the disenchantment with worn out systems and power-brokering is just what we need to recreate that Philadelphia experiment, tighten it up, renew our commitment to it. To see it differently.<\/p>\n

Williamson’s book asked her writers — and they, in turn, us — to imagine a future capitalizing on all the realizations we’d had by the year 2000, many of them filtered through a New Age movement that, at the least, sensitized us to the coming energy shifts. Fourteen years later, these templates for the future are still viable, vibrant and, if anything, more necessary than ever. What has stood in the way of achieving them has only been the muddled misunderstandings of a population steeped in habits of nationalism, exceptionalism and consumerism, and the desperate maneuvers of a fading patriarchy. What is working to good is more powerful than we know, especially when we magnify that with our intent, our activism and our enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

The sub-title of Marianne’s book gives us lots of wiggle room: What America Could Be in the 21st Century<\/em>. That gives us a bit of time, even though we’re feeling the urgency on so many levels. 237 years after the fact, Uranus is still pushing us toward a great social experiment, a more perfect union and one grown to encompass the entire planet.<\/p>\n

As messy and chaotic as all that seems, I’m thinking the founders would understand what’s going on today, would recognize the restlessness and rebellion. I’m thinking they wouldn’t be disappointed that we hadn’t fully realized the most progressive social contract the world had yet seen, but they’d urge us on into the next leg of the venture by reminding us that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were never a destination, but a journey.<\/p>\n

I’m thinking that with or without fireworks, with or without assurances that politics will yield to our demands or that reclaiming our freedoms will come to us easily, this was a pretty good national birthday. Our eyes are finally open, our emotions engaged and surely we know that whether or not the founders would be disappointed in us, the disappointment we’re experiencing is in ourselves.<\/p>\n

Maybe this Fourth is the first of its kind, not the institutionalized tribal excess of previous years but something quieter, more pensive, more sober. Perhaps this would be easily recognizable energy to those like Ben Franklin, who declared this union a “Republic, if we can keep it.” I think our forefathers\u00a0realized\u00a0how difficult\u00a0it would be to turn an ideal into reality.<\/p>\n

Would the founders be disappointed? Only if we fail to keep it, I think. And that can only happen if we turn away from our responsibility as citizens, our duty to one another and the realization of our spiritual power. We can hardly quit now, when we still have to deal with the problems we wrestled at the very beginning: the spirits of slavery, sexism, patriarchy, elitism. In short, the very aspects of human behavior we knew had to be overcome in order to make this experiment work. Get comfortable with this process, citizen.<\/p>\n

So if you were one of those annoyed by the fireworks, startled by the noise and unhappy when it goes on well into the wee small hours, just remember: we have the founders to thank, not just for the smoke and noise, the laughter and music, but for the freedom to shake ourselves awake at any point and celebrate, protect and recapture the essential idealism that put this nation on the map, to put into motion those essays of radical-love and insight given in Williamson’s collection.\u00a0Trust that we’re farther along than we think. Trust that it all works for good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves I’m writing this on the evening of the Fourth of July. The windows are open and I can hear fireworks, music, laughter. It’s well past nine, and I expect there are some very annoyed seniors out there, unwilling to flex their schedules or stay awake a little longer, indulge … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68426"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}