{"id":77972,"date":"2014-07-12T03:53:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-12T07:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=77972"},"modified":"2014-07-12T20:30:43","modified_gmt":"2014-07-13T00:30:43","slug":"the-red-crayon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/the-red-crayon\/","title":{"rendered":"The Red Crayon"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Bless the beasts and the children;
\nGive them shelter from a storm;
\nKeep them safe;
\nKeep them warm.<\/p>\n

Bless The Beasts And The Children<\/em>
\n— lyrics by Richard Carpenter<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve run across a number of articles on sharing lately. Talk about elemental education for personhood, best learned early on! If we utterly refuse to grasp the concepts of Sharing 101 in Kindergarten, we’ll grow up to be either a hermit hoarder or a bloodthirsty and wildly successful CEO. <\/p>\n

\"Political<\/p>\n

Those are extremes, of course. Should we make a reluctant peace with not owning and controlling all of the world we see around us\u00a0 — as in, “All right, you can use all those others but the red crayon is MINE!” — we apparently end up in the middle of that spectrum, confused about what can\/should be shared and what\/who issues the final word in that regard: Mom, Dad, teacher, pastor\/priest? And when we’re older, is the authority religion, government or business? Some would say all three, in the guise of the Corporate States of America.<\/p>\n

Those of us familiar with these prototypes would agree that sharing belongs in the Libra cabinet, where most things experienced as “ours” are stored. Its opposite, Aries, is all about “mine,” so — given our current mix of astrological signals — it’s no surprise that the fight to retain the red crayon (and primary access to all the colors) continues to light the sky with Uranian fireworks. <\/p>\n

This week the news reflected that essential push\/pull with wars, all too often centered around the world’s children. In war, the innocent bystander is always the big loser, but lately even the protection of these, our most precious resource, seems expendable in the struggle for power and control.<\/p>\n

There are wars that kill the body and wars that attempt to kill the soul. Neither reflect the concept of sharing nor the mutual respect necessary to sustain life on this planet. We too often see others as disposable, a frightful disconnect from the truth of our commonality, our entwined humanity. With the war against women’s sexuality highlighted just days ago, shifting to view the victimization of children can be considered the flip side of the coin. Much of female vulnerability has traditionally centered around protection and nurture of offspring, and self-sacrifice on its behalf.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Essentially the issues that divide us are about boundaries, defining the limits on our capacity to share either dialogue or resources in the pursuit of peace and common good. The price paid for dragging our feet in the accomplishment of this is written in human suffering, and is both personal and political. For instance, in this most elemental divide among us, gender, we are still licking wounds and counting coup. Are we even close to ready to have a true dialogue about boundaries? Can men and women share consciousness — political, cultural, sexual — equally? And if not, why the hell not?\u00a0If we can’t do that within our own households, how can we expect to accomplish anything similar in the world?<\/p>\n

That’s a bigger topic than I’d intended, since we seem pretty conflicted about that as well, so let’s look at the politics that continue to dog us in this revelatory, and increasingly revolutionary, period. Remember, our filter is sharing. When we break all this political mumbo-jumbo down to its nitty-gritty, Israel refuses to share with Palestine, who mistrusts Israel as illegal occupiers; the U.S.A. appears to be at war with — supposedly\u00a0criminal<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0diseased<\/a>\u00a0[sic] — children from Central America who might as easily be called refugees seeking political asylum as illegals; and the newly established ISIS Caliphate of extreme Islam refuses to share the whole of the world with any but its own cookie-cutter followers. If this looks like, feels like and seems to be tribalism at its very worst, be assured: it is.<\/p>\n

Like everything these days, it’s complicated. Take the egregious pounding of the Gaza Strip. Some say that this assault was provoked by the kidnap and murder of three Israeli\u00a0teens (one with dual American citizenship). Yes, a terrible act of violence and hatred leaving three families and\u00a0two nations heartbroken. It might have ended there, with a real attempt to find the perpetrators, but of course it didn’t. Instead, it provoked an 18-day search-and-rescue operation in Gaza by the Israeli military, disrupting thousands of Palestinian households and prolonging hope that the three might yet be alive, although it’s been revealed that the Israeli government knew the boys were dead from the very beginning.<\/p>\n

And so, despite a successful cease fire between these two national actors, both sides readied their rockets as the hard-right of each agitated for war. Israeli extremists apparently retaliated by snatching a 16-year-old Palestinian boy and burning him alive. This brought the first missiles from Hamas, which were met with an aggressive response as the Netanyahu government moved to shell Gaza.<\/p>\n

Is either side interested in sharing responsibility, accountability, open dialogue about this series of mis-steps and errors? Unlikely. Is either side ready to stand down? No. Will this get worse rather than better? I fear so. Is either side ready to live next door to the other in peace? Despite growing movements within both territories to find peaceful solutions, no one thinks this is possible in the near future,\u00a0even as\u00a0the state of Israel is being re-branded by Mid-eastern intellectuals as moderate in the face of growing right-wing jihadist rule.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile — from a more humanistic point of view — those who consider the Palestinian territories an example of apartheid view this assault by Israel akin to shooting fish in a barrel, and there is no indication that Israel is through punishing Palestinians for their ongoing crime of despising and resisting the Jewish state. Abby Zimet, over at Common Dreams, has published\u00a0the names of the dead<\/a>, adding, “The children’s names are in bold. Because we can give them, at least, their names,” and that was when the death toll was just over 50. It has more than doubled —\u00a0so many more, by the time you read this — with no expectation of a quick end in sight.<\/p>\n

It appears that vengeance has won the popular vote thus far, with justice looking on from the wings. Although Obama has offered to broker peace talks, the U.S. is unlikely to raise its voice or use any of its power\u00a0to stop this bloodletting. All\u00a0you and I\u00a0can share in this instance is a growing horror of war that ravages little children and loops on itself in\u00a0never-ending, incestuous infighting that kills natural cousins, Arab and Jew;\u00a0we\u00a0can also\u00a0share\u00a0this video<\/a>\u00a0of thousands of protesters gathered in NYC, mid-week.<\/p>\n

On the home front, what to do with\u00a0thousands of\u00a0children crossing the border from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador? The majority of the American public is not so hard-edged as the Tea Partiers who favor their immediate ouster, playing to the base by saying truly stupid things. Take Texan Representative Randy Neugebauer who told the world that the children held in make-shift camps repurposed for deportation, ” … belong back with their families. When you look at the lovely way they’re getting treated — they’re getting free health care, free housing, you know, they’re watching the World Cup on big screen TVs.” Randy must be one of the majority of Pubs, fine Christians all, who think the poor are better off than they deserve to be. Their\u00a0answer is to turn their backs on immigration except to bitch about it, refusing Obama’s plea for emergency resources to handle this situation.<\/p>\n

In more ways than one, this nation has to take responsibility not just for the immigration problem, but for much of the instability and violence in\u00a0South America\u00a0as well. Yeah, I know, we seldom hear that conversation, but we’d better share that basic information with anyone who will listen. With illegal immigrants representing over 5 percent of our labor force, our systemic reluctance to do without that cheap labor puts us at odds with those purists who think every undocumented worker needs to leave the nation. And our trillion-dollar war on drugs has been an exquisitely painful failure. No amount of jack-booted enforcement has stopped us from being the biggest consumer of illegal substances in the world, and the most incarcerated for it. That’s just for starters.<\/p>\n

When you follow the money — over 100 billion spent on illegal drugs in this nation per year — it’s a no-brainer that the source of that industry would explode into rigidly organized narco-states run by illegal cartels, dealing out death to those who either accuse or refuse them. Add to the conversation the skewed trade agreements this nation has fostered in Central America, the booming border-industrial technology markets that encourage paranoia and spread rumors on both sides of the ‘fence,’ and the general poverty that these children live in. Then we can share\u00a0actual reality about what that influx of children we’re warring against are facing when we spin them around for an about-face, and send them back into chaos. Last night Bill Maher mentioned that these kids face twice the danger children endured in the Iraq war, twice the chance of dying. Makes you wonder just how stony a heart must become to turn them away, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

Obama’s determination to bypass obstruction and address immigration problems by executive order is part of what lit the fire under Tea Party xenophobes (not that much was necessary, this being — besides taxation — one of their favorite topics). The growing number of unaccompanied children\u00a0surfaced simultaneously, exploding into sight at the Murrieta check-point.\u00a0The right is pointing fingers\u00a0but the reality is, people traditionally migrate based on issues of opportunity, climate, repressive government and, of course,\u00a0war. We look on in sympathy when countries in Africa grow refugee camps like mushrooms in spring, constantly mobile and\u00a0in\u00a0chronic need of international assistance as their own war-torn nations spin in blood and violence. We shake our piggy banks, eager to help out, or at least we do when a humanitarian event is traumatic enough to catch our attention: a Christmas tsunami or collapse of an entire internal culture, like Haiti. But here, on our borders? Just pesky diseased kids, entrusted to for-hire coyotajes<\/em> navigating the border crossings, or\u00a0making it across vast and deadly stretches of the Sonoran desert in summer, looking for a handout and a big screen TV.<\/p>\n

Clearly, we have a humanitarian crisis on our hands, hundreds of kids sleeping like packs of puppies on hard floors, crowded and unwanted guests of the U.S. government. When these things get too close for comfort, we don’t share very well with those in need, do we? We don’t seem to have any reluctance to pass our hard-earned bucks up the pipeline to ‘people’ like Texaco and Standard Oil and the like, but feeding and housing immigrants? Horrors!\u00a0And let’s test long-term memory. If you don’t think that (and even worse) is the “American way,” then read up on the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. Sleeping under both a white flag and the Stars and Bars, Chief Black Kettle and his Cheyenne encampment were startled awake by the sound of cannon fire, then quickly set upon by a demented Colorado military commander, John M. Chivington, who told his makeshift army of Indian fighters to, “Kill them big and small, nits become lice.” And that’s exactly what they did. Now tell me, listening to those who want these kids out before Health and Human Services law steps up to protect them, that those voices don’t have that same hysterical ring!<\/p>\n

And Iraq? Today, according to Amnesty International, thousands of families are attempting to flee Mosul, now that ISIS has taken control of the city. Who in their right mind would want to stick around when radical religious extremists assume not just local control, but appear able to push past the Iraqi armed forces and Shi’a militias attempting to stop them? And this new ground war is not just wrecking property and economy, it’s killing those who survived BushWar II and their children, as well. Collateral damage, no big whoop. Staggering, isn’t it, the price these people have paid in destabilization and devolvement since George Bush set out to “share democracy” with them? Whether they liked it or not?<\/p>\n

This whole Caliphate notion sounds determined and unstoppable, given the feverish energies behind\u00a0their desire to renew fundamentalism, but it’s too narrow to do more than create temporary chaos and killing fields.\u00a0This will\u00a0ultimately burn out<\/a>\u00a0because there is no creative principal within it. It’s a dead thing, this kind of oppression.\u00a0Live things are bright with color and creativity and hope, they don’t reek of blood. Civil society will outlast them, and I hope the Iraqis that flee in the dark of night find a more hospitable country than our own to temporarily house them. Their children deserve better.<\/p>\n

Bless the beasts and the children,<\/p>\n

for in this world they have no voice,<\/p>\n

They have no choice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But we do, don’t we? And we are being called to use our voices in ways that awaken our countrymen and further the opening heart of humanity. This is our time to share what we feel, what we see, what we know. We must not be afraid to say out loud what we know to be right, because no matter what kind of response we receive, our souls are glowing all the brighter for being way-showers; might even be why we came. Many of our brothers and sisters are soul-sick from decades of rogue capitalism, fearful propaganda, and the dark and dwindling dregs of racism, confused about which way to turn. And until we point ourselves toward our own true north,\u00a0relying on our inner knowing and the whispers of our better angels, we remain part of the problem, not the solution.<\/p>\n

Healing is here, if we choose it, and it will take a bit of courage to leave group think behind, in the name of restored sanity and compassion. But it’s time to surrender the red crayon to our neighbor, time to make sure that the least among us get their turn at the table. That final bit of control, of security, of confidence\u00a0we like to keep close isn’t so awfully difficult to surrender when we realize the cost of keeping it to ourselves. Isn’t it time to trust it to those who need it as much as we once did?<\/p>\n

Years of struggle have shown us that our world is only safe if we decide it must be, if we trust ourselves to create it that way with every thought, word and action. Are we ready, yet, to let go of our talismans, share them with those who need them so badly? It’s our turn to create a world for the children where they can scribble away with the red crayon, with ALL the colors in the box, reclaim their mastery and put aside their misery, because — seriously, my dears\u00a0— how can we create rainbows for one another until we do?\u00a0Time to\u00a0share,\u00a0taking hands, just like we learned in Kindergarten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves Bless the beasts and the children; Give them shelter from a storm; Keep them safe; Keep them warm. Bless The Beasts And The Children — lyrics by Richard Carpenter I’ve run across a number of articles on sharing lately. Talk about elemental education for personhood, best learned early on! … 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\/77972"}],"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=77972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}